Posted on 02/09/2004 1:09:47 PM PST by CobaltBlue
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:49:37 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
More than half of the class at San Jose's Piedmont Hills High School, students from numerous racial and ethnic backgrounds, are linked in their DNA to the same ancestor, born more than 100,000 years ago in central China or Taiwan.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Well now, that does seem to be an ongoing problem, now isn't it, or there would be none of that ethnic cleansing still going on
Obviously there *are* identifiable groups within the human species. Skin color, for example, and other physiological characteristics, arising from a common ancestry and isolated geographical origin, are what have marked races historically, and these differences *exist*. I can't understand what, but ideology, would lead someone to say these things are not "real". Northern European people have lighter skin than sub-Saharan Africans, the differences exist because of historical geographical separation between the groups, and the differences are *obviously* based on the genetic inheritance of the two groups. Whites, or caucasians, of (relatively recent) European ancestry are a distinct group from Subsaharan Africans. Both groups are distinct from central and east Asians. And so on. Sheesh.
The article tells us that these differences are owing to "environmental adaptation", and not to "race". Oh, ok. Assuming anyone wants to go to the trouble to derive a coherent remark from a claim like that we're obviously going to be dealing with a straw man notion of race.
One fallacy: because there are no clear boundary lines between two groups, there is no real difference between the groups.
You'd think no one would take such a silly thought to be "scientific", much less true. There is a real difference between children and adults, one with a biological basis, despite the fact that there is no clear boundary line between one and the other. There is a real difference between a mound and a mountain, despite there being no clear boundary between them. There is a clear difference between green and blue...Etc.
Another fallacy: if there is more variation among members of each of two groups than between the average of the two groups there is no real difference between the two groups.
Does something like this even need rebutting? Obviously it could turn out that men and women differ on average by some amount in a certain kind of weight lifting, even though the difference between the strongest and weakest man was less than that between the averages of men and women. But so what? Would that show the remarkable "discovery" that there is no real difference between men and women, even in respect to weight lifting? Ugh. The mind reels.
You have to wonder why. After all where did they think they came from?
Only when it's in the interest of fostering acceptance is there no difference.
But when it comes to hate crimes, employment quotas, and college admissions--then leftists and other enemies of America tell us there is such a thing as race.
It would seem that the leftists are the ones obsessed with race. From a conservative point of view, race is irrelevant when determining the value of an individual human being.
I think it's just being an identifiable part of history. It's all such a blur, having a connection makes it personal, and we all care about #1 - ourselves.
The four biggest uses for the Internet are genealogy, news, investing, and porn. Not sure which one is the biggest but genealogy is a big one.
"It's not that we choose to hang out specifically with Asians; it's just that we grew up together"
In other words their parents choose to hang out with Asians and vice-versa. You can homogenize the world but eventually the cream rises to the top.
So true.
There's also a lot of hypocrisy, since the very people most determined to deny that race exists are also the first to notice if the racial numbers aren't balanced at a school or workplace.
Yes, and if race doesn't exist, then "diversity" doesn't exist.
Yes, but not in the same sense -- he would not be the "mitochondrial adam".
Similarly, if we are all descended from a "genetic Adam" who lived 60M years ago, we are also all descended from his MOTHER, who lived just 60000+20 or so years ago, and in one swoop you get the two sexes reduced to the same number of years ago.
"Similarly", this misses the point again -- his mother would not be the "genetic Eve" (or more accurately, the "Y-genetic Eve").
and in one swoop you get the two sexes reduced to the same number of years ago.
No, you don't.
Elementary, my dear Watson.
Too elementary, unfortunately. It fails to take into account the more subtle details of what exactly is, and is not, implied in the terms "mitochondrial Eve" and "Y-genetic Adam".
For example, while the Y-genetic "Adam" existed around 60,000 years ago, meaning that all patrilineal lines (i.e., your father's father's father's etc.) for all humans eventually trace through that one male individual, this does *NOT* mean that other males of the same generation are not *also* ancestral to some or all humans (although it *does* mean that the specific "marker" section of their Y-chromosomes were eventually lost in the genetic shuffle).
*NOR* does it mean that the Y-genetic "Adam"'s mother was the sole female ancestor, in any sense, of all modern humans. In fact, the evidence indicating that the "mitochondrial Eve" is 140,000 years older than this "Adam" proves that "Adam's mother" was indeed certainly *not* the sole contributor to everyone's mitochondria.
Thus, it's quite incorrect to conclude that "in one swoop you get the two sexes reduced to the same number of years ago."
It's even incorrect to conclude that you get *one* sex "reduced", since other males of "Adam's" generation almost certainly contributed their DNA (of other types) to the modern gene pool as well.
This also means that in every aspect these genetic discoveries are, when properly understood, no comfort for literalist creationists. Quite the contrary.
The following is worth reading on this issue: What, if anything, is a Mitochondrial Eve?.
"We are 99 percent the same,"
It's the one percent that isn't the same that makes a huge difference. Most genes have little or no effect but there are some genes that, if defective, are fatal.
We share about 95 percent of our genes with other primates.
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