Does genetics challenge a single-couple origin to humanity? William Lane Craig explains how we found that this challenge was an illusion.
Does population genetics challenge a single-couple origin to humanity? In early 2017, Dr. Richard Buggs raised scientific concerns about Dennis Venema’s book, Adam and the Genome . His concerns were distinct and addition to concerns that Dr. Swamidass raised that year too. In late 2017, Dr. Venema responded at BioLogos, and a conversation grew. Together, several scientists did indeed find several fundamental mistakes with Dr. Venema’s argument against a single couple origin of humanity. Eventually, in 2020, even BioLogos began backing away from Venema’s scientific claims. In this article, Craig summarizes for a lay audience the science behind this shift. For technical readers, the forum thread for this article expounds and clarifies his summary with greater precision.
@moderators will govern this thread more tightly so we can keep it brief and to the point with any specific questions raised by scientists about this article. Some of WLC’s usage of terms (e.g. “genetic diversity”) will be somewhat confusion, and also it is possible that there is trans-species variation of more than 4 lineages. His basic summary, nonetheless, seems correct, though targeted at a lay audience.