YEC’s believe that all the varieties of animals we see arose by natural processes over the last 4,000 years, from pairs of animals on Noah’s ark. They invoke hyperevolution, a processes far faster than anything evolutionary science allows for, in order to make sense of this.
So here is my question. What about humans? Due to hyperevolution, why are there not multiple species of human? Doesn’t hyperevolution undermine any notion of the biological unity of all mankind?
Have YECs recognized this problem? How do they solve it?
As I understand: due to anthropocentrism, kinds get larger, and hyperevolution more hyper, the more distantly related a group is to humanity.The only certain thing about kinds is that Homo sapiens is not in the same kind as any other living species. While YECs don’t agree among themselves which fossil hominids are humans and which are apes, various extinct hominids are considered human, i.e. descended from Adam. So a hyperevolutionist YEC (not all YECs are hyperevolutionists) position would be that the other species are extinct.
The problem is that either Adam wasn’t Homo sapiens sapiens (if you consider that a problem) or that Adam was Homo sapiens sapiens and the fossils are in the wrong order.
But why? Where does it say that in Scripture? Other than universal descent from AE, what is to tell us that there are not biologically distinct subspecies of human?
Not wanting to be labeled as a racist. Once you allow for “biologically distinct”, then that’s what most people will fear in today’s world. Look at the trouble you’ve had with GAE even though you’re careful to avoid it.
Neanderthals were a group of humans, descended from Adam and Eve, who lived in the harsh post-Flood world. Archaeology confirms they made instruments, make-up, jewelry, weapons, and ritually buried their dead. Many humans today share DNA with Neanderthals. This fully human lineage died out sometime after the Flood.
and:
Denisovan DNA has left a footprint in the genomes of some modern humans. (This discovery of course is completely consistent with biblical history. All humans since the time of the global Flood share a common ancestry from Noah’s family.)
Empirical observation. Stephen Jay Gould wrote “human equality is a contingent fact of history” - a fact for which I am profoundly grateful.
Universal descent from Adam and Eve does not guarantee the absence of biologically distinct subspecies of human - there are YECs who would consider various fossil hominid taxa as descended from Adam and Eve.
I don’t think that substituting “theologically distinct” for “biologically distinct” is an improvement, especially when it proposes a narrow scope for humanity.
From the English you could argue that dove denotes a family of 310 (fide Wikipedia) species. Raven is not a taxonomically coherent term, but Wikipedia lists 9 living and 2 extinct species of raven.
YECs would say that humans HAVE hyper-evolved since the flood, arguing that ethnic diversity within H. sapiens is itself evolution. They have no consistent metric for distinguishing between phenotype and genotype, so they will say absurd things like how coyotes and wolves are more similar to each other than Great Danes and Terriers, even though we know scientifically that coyotes and wolves are much more different.
There are 21 genera and 132 species of Old World monkeys (Wilson and Reeder 2005). This family has an amazing amount of phenotypic diversity and abundant intergeneric hybrid data. This includes crosses connecting mangabeys (Cerococebus), macaques (Macaca), mandrills, (Mandrillus), guenons (Cercopithecus), and baboons (Papio; VanGelder 1977).
Though all the intergeneric hybrids are within only one of the two subfamilies, previous creationist research has suggested that the entire family is from a single created kind (Hartwig-Scherer 1993).
Some YEC argue that God front-loaded initial created kinds with varying degrees of genetic diversity designed to allow expression of many different forms upon which nature could select (anticipating the global flood). Over time and thinning of that diversity within populations after the flood, the speed of adaptation has decreased. Within humans, God limited the genetic diversity within Adam and Eve so that expression of different forms was muted. Archaic human forms (Homo erectus, Neanderthal, etc) are not viewed as precursors to modern humans, but as derivatives of Adam and Eve who wandered off into isolation and lost both genetic information and technological skills. YEC consider the Neanderthal/Homo-sapiens genetic differences to be of the same nature as Asian/European differences. [And, yes, there are a host of inconsistencies and problems that arise from this view.]