A YEC Objection

Peter Sparrow of Creation Ministries International sent me his objection concerning my take on the data John Sanford (A Young Earth Creationist) provided.

Understand that John Sanford claimed that given the mutation rate of 100 mutations/individual/generation, then over the alleged 6 million years between the divergence of primates from homo sapiens, he claims that there would have been so much mutation that they entire human chromosome would have been rewritten 300 times.

My point was that Sanford did his math wrong. If you do the math correctly you end up with a divergence of the genome between human and primate we see presently as just about exactly as what you would expect.

Peter Sparrow
Creation Ministries International

You (BCBSR) say
"If there's 100 mutations/individual/generation and lets say 20 years per generation, that means 100/20=5 mutations per year. Multiply by 6 million years and you end up not with 1 trillion, but with 30 million mutations."

But you have not understood what John Sanford said at all. All you have done is found the total number of new mutations added to the genome if there were only 100 new mutations added in each generation.

Your Calculation
6 million divided by 20 (your assumed length of a generation) = 300,000 = the number of generations in 6 million years.

300,000 x 100 = 30,000,000 new mutations added to the genome if you take only one individual from every generation over the last 6 million years.
ie. 100 new mutations PER generation = 30,000,000

John's Calculation
John says EVERY individual (not just one) from EVERY generation in the last 6 million years.
ie. 100 new mutations PER individual PER generation.

To calculate the number of new mutations John is talking about you need to multiply your 30,000,000 new mutations by the average number of people who lived per generation in those 300,000 generations.

So if there were 5 people in each generation there would be a total of 30,000,000 x 5 new mutations added to the genome in 6 million years = 150,000,000 mutations.

There needs to be an average of only 34,000 people per generation to add the 1 trillion new mutations estimated by John.

Conclusion
I think John is being extremely conservative and you are being fraudulently mis-representative
and bordering on defamatory if your error was deliberately made to bolster your position.
If your mistake was a genuine mistake I expect it to be corrected or removed from this website (as well as anywhere else you have reproduced it) and a public apology given in its place.

There are several other places on your website where you obviously mis-understand or deliberately mis-construe the YEC position both theologically and scientifically. If you really are a Berean as your site indicates then you will wish to correct these things.

Feel free to contact me at peter@genesis11.net

My name is Peter Sparrow and I have been a speaker for Creation Ministries International (or its various antecedants) for the last 30 years.

BCBSR Rebuttal

Peter,

Thanks for writing. First of all I could hardly be accused of misrepresenting John Sanford when I'm quoting what he actually says - or rather quoting what someone else says that he says - which you yourself also affirm. Now given that you are an alleged "expert", speaking on this kind of subject for the last 30 years, I will make sure to include your objections in the posting to be fair and balanced, as I frequently do in many of my articles, allowing everyone a voice. And, though you may not be Berean in your thinking, I would hope you would likewise feel free to quote me in your lectures and articles as well, given the comments I make below.

Secondly it seems both you and John are under a mis-"conception" concerning the calculation. Consider one generation for simplicity. Let's say there are two parents, each have 100 mutations in their chromosomes. On the average their child will inherit 50 from one parent and 50 from the other, being born with 100 mutations and then developing another 100 during their reproductive life, on the average. Agree?

Let's use your way of calculating things. For you say, "To calculate the number of new mutations John is talking about you need to multiply your 30,000,000 new mutations by the average number of people who lived per generation in those 300,000 generations." OK, let's just talk about 1 generation rather than 300,000, so that your error may be clear. Let's say the popuation were 3.4 billion (which is close to today's numbers). And to further clarify the issue, let's say everyone starts off with the same chromosomes and diverges from there. Given 100 mutations per generation per individual, how much divergence is there in one generation of the population from one another and from their common origin? According to your calculation they should diverge from their common origin by 3.4 billion. But the math shows that they don't diverge by 3.4 billion, but rather by 100. In fact the maximum divergence between individuals in that whole population of 3.4 billion can only be 200, not 3.4 billion!

Even someone with just a BS in biology should be able to answer this:

Question #1: Given 100 new mutations per generation per individual, are the number of mutations per individual in future generations - yes even thousands of generations later - dependent upon the population size?

My Answer: No!
Your Answer: ?

Question #2: Given a population of 3.4 billion and a mutation rate of 100 per generation per individual, if you picked an individual from the next generation, how many mutations would they have developed in one generation?

Multiple choice: (to make it easy)
A: 100
B: 3.4 billion

Better yet, Question #3: Given a population of 3.4 billion and a mutation rate of 100 per generation per individual (A) how much more divergence from their common origin would there be expected in 4 generations? And (B) how much more divergent from one another would their population genome be?

My answers:
A: 400
B: 800

Your answers:
A: ?
B: ?

Now in case you still don't get it, let me elaborate.

Let's say we start off with a population that have all the same chromosomes. Doesn't matter what the population size is. Could even start off with Adam and Eve. Let's call that the common origin point. The next generation would diverge from that common origin by 100 mutations, as also they diverge from one another, assuming the mutations are uncorrelated. Think of a cone. If the divergence is 100, then the next generation would represent a circle of radius 100. The generation after that would have a radius of 200, and the next 300, each generation diverging from one another at the same rate as they diverge from their common origin. (That by the way is the basis for determining the common origin point based upon the divergence of the genome in the present population and the mutation rate. i.e. Generations from common origin = Divergence of present population/(2*mutation rate/per generation/ per individual).

In 300,000 generations, what divergence would you expect? 30,000,000. That would be the radius of that cone given those parameters. Doesn't matter what the population size is. Assuming the mutations are uncorrelated, you'd get the same result if the population were 5000 or 3.4 billion. So the calculation (done correctly) shows that that divergence between primates and hominids is just what you would expect given 6 million years and mutation rate of 100 per generation per individual.

HOMO SAPIENS:

Now let's apply this to homo sapiens. Hominids branched off to archaic forms of homo sapiens first appearing about 500,000 years ago, which again branched into subspecies, one of which is modern humans (homo sapien sapien) about 200,000 years ago. So we would expect the divergence of the human genome to correlate with those kind of dates. What do we calculate?

Wikipedia notes, "A difference of 1 in 1,000 nucleotides between two humans chosen at random amounts to approximately 3 million nucleotide differences since the human genome has about 3 billion nucleotides." So the present divergence is about 3,000,000. Now given 100 mutations/generation/individual, the formula:

Generations from common origin = Divergence of present population/(2*mutation rate/per generation/ per individual).

we calculate 15,0000 generations. Now give 20 years/generation, we end up with a common origin 300,000 years ago, which is what one would expect.

YEC is shown to be seriously flawed by the fact that it cannot account for the divergence of the human genome among the population today given mutation rates measured today. Whereas inferences of science with regards to the computation of the time of common origin based upon genetic drift, correlate with the results of fossils evidence and radiometric dating. (Though YEC types often falsely claim fossil dating is based upon circular reasoning. It is not. Get an education! ) This is the case not only with regards to hominids and modern humans, but also with other species.There is no YEC explanation as to why there is ANY correlation between the divergence of the genome of a population species and the radiometric dating of their common origin, let alone the correlation confirming a divergence from the same point in time! What's up with that?

As I say in my article, "Correlation is the key evidence for evolution, not to mention the key evidence against most young-earth creationist concepts. While some Christians desperately look for some anomalous evidence against evolution and in support of their theories, it seems that they turn a blind eye to the vast majority of evidence against their theory. It's not that young-earth creationists deny science, they'll agree with it when it supports their theory, but if it doesn't, then either there is some conspiracy in the scientific community to suppress the truth or perhaps the scientists made some mistake or presumption. Yet in my experience, I find that there is generally much more integrity, soberness and objectiveness in the scientific community than I find among those who hold the young-earth views, which often present "facts" in a sort of tabloid fashion."

In conclusion you say, "If your mistake was a genuine mistake I expect it to be corrected or removed from this website (as well as anywhere else you have reproduced it) and a public apology given in its place." But it seems the shoe is very much on the other foot. Now if you were to judge yourself by the standards of which you judge others, what would one expect you to do? I'll leave that up to your conscience.

steve amato
The Berean Christian Bible Study Resources
http://www.bcbsr.com

Peter Sparrow
Creation Ministries International


Hi Steve,
There is no reason for you to be rude and/or condescending in your replies. All that does is send the message that you have no wish to discuss these things because you are right and all others are wrong. This is not good Berean behaviour and I don't believe it reflects your heart anyway.

I did not say that you mis-quoted John, I said you mis-represented him. I am assuming you quoted him correctly and that the other person did as well. I am saying that your understanding of what John said in that quote is wrong. Your explanation of what John said is the mis-representation because your explanation is wrong.

You quote John as saying:
"over the 6 millions years since primates and homo sapiens are alleged to have diverged, each of their chromosomes should have received nearly 1 trillion mutations (based upon the uniform assumption of 100 mutations/individual/generation, which is the current estimated mutation rate in humans)."

You interpret that as:
"If there's 100 mutations/individual/generation and lets say 20 years per generation, that means 100/20=5 mutations per year. Multiply by 6 million years and you end up not with 1 trillion, but with 30 million mutations."

Your mistake lies in the fact that you think 100 mutations/individual/generation (John) is equal to 5 mutations per year. It is not. It is equal to 5 mutations per individual per year (given your 20 years per generation assumption).

This means that you cannot obtain the total number of new mutations just by multiplying 5 mutations by 6,000,000 years. You must also multiply that total by the average number of people alive in each of those 6,000,000 years.

If we say p = (average population size per generation) then the correct calculation for the total number of new mutations would be:

100p(6,000,000/20) = 30,000,000p

This means that p only needs to be 33,334 for the total number of mutations to top 1 Trillion.

You asked the question: "Where did he get his 1 trillion mutations figure?"

I have shown you where he gets it from and that it was either your poor understanding of what he said or your poor mathematics which caused you to mis-represent him in the first place.

In fact, it seems to me that an average population size of 33,334 is extremely conservative even for the very early generations. I would say that, for the evolutionist using evolutionary time, the number of new mutations would have been much higher than 1 trillion. Excellent evidence that the human genome (or any genome) cannot possibly be that old.

You mentioned much more than this in your reply but this was my main beef. Let's sort this one out and then we'll move on to something else.

Thanks for taking the time to reply Steve.

Much appreciated.

Peter

BCBSR Rebuttal

Peter,

Rude and condescending? Maybe you feel humililated at being proven wrong, but you should remain dispassionate. You're the one accusing me saying, "you are being fraudulently mis-representative and bordering on defamatory" You haven't shown that. Do you judge yourself by the same standards you judge others? You claim "All that does is send the message that you have no wish to discuss these things" which is the opposite of the ACTUAL substance of my email. And you make the emphatic statement as to my motivation, "because you are right and all others are wrong", making unfounded judgments. What does that say about you? A Berean is one who scrutinizes everything in light of truth. Perhaps that makes you feel uncomfortable. I provided the facts, facts of which you have yet to deal with, and yet you make these accusations.

Sanford claims ,"EACH base in the human chromosome should have mutated nearly 300 times in the last 6 million years. Thus, in all so-called "non-essential" regions of the chromosome, it should now be totally random in sequence. Why would there possibly be any similarity left between primates and humans in these regions."
I prove his math is wrong. He's using numbers in the wrong way. That's not a matter of opinion. It's a matter of fact. The computation of common origin is not based on the total number of mutations in a population, but upon the divergence of mutations, as I've shown. He and you confuse the total number of mutations with the divergence of mutations.
As I pointed out, with a population of 3.4 billion (and let's say for sake of argument that also equals the size of sites on the human DNA) with 100 mutations/individual/generation, according to his (and your) way of calculating things the entire human genome should have become completely random 100 times over in just one generation. But in fact the divergence among the population increasee only by 200 in that one generation.

This is not a matter of ego or opinion, this is a mathematical fact.

steve amato

The Berean Christian Bible Study Resources
Jul 29,2015