Genesis is not fact, there for Jesus is not necessary?

[ManMachine]

I don't for a moment buy into MRCA for our ENTIRE race leading back to a single male and female.

This male and female actually live thousands of years apart. There is less confidence in Y-chromosomal Adam (about 95%) than Mitochondrial Eve, but the genetic evidence is fairly persuasive.

A species evolves as a whole, not as a single mutation.

Sorry, you're just flat out wrong here. Accumulation of mutations lead to organism changes that are more or less efficient in the prevailing environment. These drift into what we call 'species', they do not just erupt as distinct organisms out of the sea of genes,. that's nonsense.

One single mutation in one single Man or Woman isn't how a new species is formed.

Uh-hu.

Though, a single mutation can easily grow and spread as as dominant mutation over time, especially if it is massively favored in natural selection.

So, it can then.

That's far from a single human that all humans "evolved" from as put forth in Genesis.

I agree, but Genesis could be analogous, as I said.

The very best this argument could show is that all humans on earth should be able to trace a single gene back to a single common ancestor, and another gene should trace back to yet another common ancestor.

That is exactly what I'm saying.

Go back far enough, and you'll be able to trace a gene back to a common ancestor that isn't even Homo Sapien.

She is believed to have existed as Homo Sapiens Sapiens was developing as a distinct species.

Mitochondrial DNA, the one in your example, is found in.. uh... pretty much all life (grade 9 biology class, don't fail me now)! In fact it's an example of a gene that scientists use to show the relationships among various species.

Yes, but each mtDNA sequence is uniquely identified by it's haplotype (DNA signature). This means we are able to identify unique sequences and there is one we all carry, all of us (with the exception of later mutations), everyone in the world, and we get it from her.

Also, your eg of mtDNA fails with one single sentence. "Mitochondrial Eve is named after mitochondria and the biblical Eve.[2] Unlike her biblical namesake, she was not the only living human female of her time. However, her female contemporaries, excluding her mother, failed to produce a direct unbroken female line to any living woman in the present day."

So much for the "first" woman argument, just happened to be the better evolved one.

I didn't call her the 'first' woman. I did say,

"This doesn't mean they were the only male and female alive in their times, just the male and female from which we are all descended..."


Have a look, it's there, near the top.

My favorite part of MRCA is the fact that in order for this to support Christianity ...

I'm not a Christian by the way, I'm an atheist putting forward the idea that Genesis story of Adam and Eve does work as a crude analogy and given when it was written is a pretty neat one given what we now know. That doesn't make it true, just interesting...

... Y-Adam and M-Eve would have to have mated.

No. Nowhere have I suggested a literal interpretation of Genesis, never have, never will.

A mathematical improbability. This convergence you speak of doesn't not for a moment have to be a single pairing of man and woman.

I said 'male/female' but whatever - you don't seem to be reading what I've written so far why would I expect you to start now...

Not to mention, we're still tallking only about a subset of our genes. What makes us Human is more than a single gene.

This highlights the folly in the abstraction of concepts like 'species'. There is no such thing as a 'species' just a tide of genes that throws up environmentally stable organisms momentarily.

"... By definition, it is not necessary that the Y-MRCA and the mt-MRCA should have lived at the same time, even though current (as of 2014) estimates suggest the possibility that the two individuals may well have been roughly contemporaneous (albeit with uncertainties ranging in the tens of thousands of years)."
Talk about a "leap of faith".

Again, I did say all of this.

Thanks for what on face value is a decent response, but one that isn't hard unravel.

?

Unlike my initial argument which points to the Christian faith being founded on a single, and first, "fallen" man (not single gene) and woman. to which we all owe for his sin. Evolution shows there clearly was not a single first man and woman.

No first man, no fall, no need for Jesus.