Posted on 05/01/2013 12:06:27 PM PDT by fishtank
Is Mankind Getting Dumber? by Brian Thomas, M.S. *
Do today’s children have lower I.Q.’s than yesterday’s? Yes, according to measurements of intellectual and emotional strength gathered from different countries and contexts. The results show the same basic decline and resist the notion that public or other forms of education are to blame. Could the cause instead lie within?
Stanford University professor Gerald Crabtree thinks so. He published a pair of essays in the journal Trends in Genetics, citing new discoveries that show why the human intellect is “surprisingly fragile.”1 This biblical creation-friendly notion didn’t sit well with the authors of a rebuttal paper, who countered that the human intellect is “robust.”2 What lies at the heart of this disagreement—bad science or bad assumptions?
Crabtree identified two fundamental processes as the main culprits. First, human intelligence uses neurons, and these cells can only function properly if their genes stay in top shape. Second, these genes are susceptible to degradation. This loss of organization occurs continually as mutations slowly, irreversibly garble genes, and the resulting errors pile up and are not corrected.
Our brains use 2,000 to 5,000 so-called Intellectual Deficiency (ID) genes, according to Crabtree’s estimate. Geneticists routinely identify specific mutations in ID genes as the causes of various types of mental retardation and similar intellectual syndromes that arise during imperfections in brain development.3 Proper human intelligence requires at least one clean copy of every ID gene.4 Like a missing wooden slat in a very long rope bridge, a mutant ID gene challenges the brain to carefully “step over” the gap on its way to developing the biological infrastructure for healthy intelligence.
Each new generation accrues about 60 new mutations to the gene-coding DNA regions of the human genome. Crabtree applied this rate to calculate that “every 20-50 generations we should sustain a mutation in one copy of one of our many ID genes.” As a result, “in the past 3000 years then (~120 generations), each of us should have accumulated at the very least 2.5-6 mutations in ID genes.” Accordingly, the human intellect “perhaps reached a peak 2000-6000 years ago.”1
This appears to confirm three lessons that can be drawn from the Bible. First, Adam and Eve’s brains were originally “very good.” Second, we had our best brains about 6,000 years ago. Third, humanity has suffered genetic degradation since then under the Curse.5,6
Some who wish to reject Scripture work hard to find ways to excuse Bible-confirming data from their own field of genetics. The authors of the technical rebuttal argued that Crabtree overestimated the true number of ID genes, but they did not offer data supporting an alternative number, nor did they explain why fewer ID genes should cancel Crabtree’s conclusion. The rebuttal team also rejected the idea that ID genes are susceptible to mutational buildup on the basis of “genetic theories regarding the evolutionary dynamics of deleterious mutations” and on the results of a computer model that illustrated how genes can increase in number assuming hypothetical evolution-friendly parameters.2
Both Crabtree and his detractors tried to extrapolate some set of numbers to make conclusions about the unobservable past. The rebuttal authors who resist the genetic-decay principle hand-picked numbers that support evolutionary history. Crabtree instead used numbers collected from real-world studies. And those studies present an ever-clearer case for a human race that was very good at the start, but is steadily falling apart.
References
Crabtree, G. R. 2013. Our Fragile Intellect. Part I. Trends in Genetics. 29 (1): 1-3.
Kalinka, A. T., I. Kelava, and E. Lewitus. 2013. Our Robust Intellect. Trends in Genetics. 29 (3): 125-127. One example is mental retardation caused by mutations in “Aristaless–related, homeobox” protein, expressed in developing nervous tissue. See Strømme, P. et al. 2002. Mutations in the human ortholog of Aristaless cause X-linked mental retardation and epilepsy. Nature Genetics. 30 (4): 441-445.
Generally, each parent supplies one copy of each gene, totaling two copies for each person. Brain cells that inherit one clean and one mutant copy of an ID gene often access the clean copy and sequester the mutated copy.
Tomkins, J. Genetics Research Confirms Biblical Timeline. Creation Science Update. Posted on icr. org January 9, 2013, accessed February 28, 2013.
Thomas, B. 2012. Human Mutation Clock Confirms Creation. Acts & Facts. 41 (11): 17.
* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.
Cite this article: Thomas, B. 2013. Is Mankind Getting Dumber? Acts & Facts. 42 (5): 17.
10 years ago we were fighting to oust a leader named “Hussein” now we have one in the White House.
But society is acquiescing to those who are dumb.
When more and more zeros are added to the total numerator, while the denominator is growing exponentially (ie, at a compounded rate), then yeah, the average plunges from 100. Look at the gov’t schools, urban voters and their commie POTUS, walmart shoppers when the welfare digits come, the gov’t hotels for future criminals and motels for adult criminals, etc.
Certainly in the USA, thanks directly to the woman killer/molester Ted, may he never rest in peace, Kennedy, we have been made dumber and lower class thanks to the deliberate immigration preference towards turd world types over the typical Europeans who wanted freedom and found it here.
There are some communities where you cannot watch Jeopardy because it is impossible to buy a vowel.
We are constantly importing more from the left side of the intelligence and cultural bell curve and only an idiot would expect this type of diversity to improve a nation.
One of my facilities in MN had to paint pictures of toilets with feet marked on them with the big red circle and single slash to tell these morons not to stand on the toilets.
How is a nation to continue advancement when you keep filling it with people who don’t even know how to use a toilet? You can’t and we see that daily.
The CPUSA uses the word “Progressive” to describe most of their subversive groups so when you hear Progressive it is not paranoia to think Communist.
If the Progressives do not destroy us on their own they will gladly work hand in hand with Islam to assure our demise.
Wow is this guy stupid.
People are getting taller, smarter, and healthier.
The average person today would make the average person of the Middle Ages look like a stunted stupid disease ridden moron.
If Mankind is getting dumber it’s probably because of all the chairshots he took to the head.
Actually the main problem is not being “savage and violent and brutal”, but having medical advances.
Hate to say it, but all the amazing advances we’ve had to sustain and improve life in the last century has led to those inferiors surviving, and seeming normal, being attractive, and reproducing. If by compassion you mean that part of it, helping the weaker, you’re correct.
We don’t need to be brutal, though, to improve the breed.
LOL, that’s a good one.
“It’s not about the race, it’s about the culture that race embraces.”
The more inferior a culture the more ignorant a person must be to gravitate towards it.
The best example is the people who are attracted to the hate cult of Islam. Large segments of certain races seem to easily embrace what is total nonsense to any thinking person.
Problem with that is they are talking about the whole world, not just our little diverse anti-culture.
When I lived in San Mateo, I dubbed part of Highway 92 that same name, as I saw some mind-boggling stuff happen there (the stretch between 101 and the Alameda exit).
My favorite was a guy who stopped in front of me to watch someone change a tire. At the time, we were on the on-ramp to SB 101. If I hadn't honked at him, who knows how long he might have sat there?
We knew it here ages ago in a legendary thread titled “Are we a nation of dumbies?” What happened to it?
First, where is it biblical that people would get dumber? Nice to see some kind of reference.
Second, you’d never know we’re getting dumber by all the (dumb) older people marveling at how “kids can do stuff on computers”.
Yeah, using a computer means you’re smart. Uh huh.
I tire of that stupid assessment, and I hear it all the time, including by some too close to me. But what can you expect from liberals.
That assumption may not be true:
http://www.kurzweilai.net/a-new-spin-on-origins-of-evolvability-survival-of-the-evolvable
A Humanist would say, based on his unquestioned assumptions, that people are getting smarter, healthier, and generally “better” with each generation. You’d have to believe that we’re getting more and better information in our gene pool from somewhere.
In reality, we’ve been in decline since the first humans were created, losing genetic information with each generation, becoming more susceptible to disease, becoming more analogous to inbred poodles, dachshunds and shih tzus instead of a better, than to a hardier breed of wolf.
But in terms of real effective IQ - the average keeps going up.
In terms of height - the average keeps going up.
In terms of health and longevity - the average keeps going up.
I don’t attribute genetic causes to it, but it takes one hell of a creationist mindset to absolutely ignore all of the evidence of the vast improvements in the average human.
“The average person today would make the average person of the Middle Ages look like a stunted stupid disease ridden moron.”
Yes the human race has advanced if you look back enough years, but if we look at recent history there SEEMS to be a split and maybe we are branching into 2 or more sub-species and one of those is grossly inferior to the other/others.
Just like I could make it look like the earth is heating or cooling or staying the same, without lying, by simply picking the start and end dates a liberal could pick a point in time, cavemen for example to PROVE humans have advanced.
Figures don’t lie, if liars don’t figure. And no I am not saying you were attempting to lie or deceive just maybe picked the wrong periods in time.
I discovered a book not but a couple of years ago called "Handy Farm Devices and How to Make Them". I was looking on Amazon for similar books because this one was so cool.
Here's the "dumber" part - people were giving this book bad reviews because it "didn't show you how to make them". Someone else rightly commented that the people at the time the book was written, 3 generations ago, could generally look at the pictures of the devices and figure out quickly how to make them, or even improve on them.
A lot of hard truth in your post!
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