According to the Bible, all humans on Earth today are descended from Noah and his wife, his three sons and their wives, and before that from Adam and Eve. But today we have many different groups, often called “races,” with what seem to be greatly differing features. The most obvious of these is skin colour. Many see this as a reason to doubt the Bible’s record of history. They believe that the various groups could have arisen only by evolving separately over tens of thousands of years. However, as we shall see, this does not follow from the biological evidence.
So-called ‘racial characteristics’ are only minor variations among the people groups. Scientists have found that if one were to take any two people from anywhere in the world, the basic genetic differences between these two people, even within the same group, would typically be around 0.2 %. Furthermore, the so-called ‘racial’ characteristics that many people think are major differences (skin color, eye shape, etc.), account for only 6% of this 0.2% variation—which amounts to a mere 0.012 % difference genetically! In other words, the so-called ‘racial’ differences are absolutely trivial.
Furthermore, all people have the same skin color. You see, we all have the same colouring pigment in our skin called ‘melanin’. If we produce a little melanin, it means that our skin will be a very light brown (or ‘European white’) If our skin produces a great deal of melanin, we will be a very deep brown (‘black’ if you will).
If Adam and Eve were a middle brown, as is most likely, one can explain all the different shades of brown skin that we see in people today. Surprisingly, we find that an entire range of ‘colours’, from very ‘white’ to very ‘black’ can result in one generation, if beginning with this particular type of mid-brown parents. Some readers may recall the accompanying newspaper photo from a few years ago of twins, one of whom was very light and the other very dark.
Scientists have also shown, through the study of mitochondrial DNA, that all people today trace their ancestry to a single mother. Why should we be surprised that the Bible records such a woman, Eve, whose name means ‘to become the mother of all living!’ Although evolutionists are at pains to point out that they are not saying that this ‘mitochondrial Eve’ is the Eve of the Bible, they are forced to agree that, at the least, this evidence confirms that all the groups of people alive today are astonishingly closely related.
The Bible and science are in remarkable harmony – there are no different ‘races’ of people today!
Read more at www.onehumanrace.com |