Floyd, my dear friend,Thank you for the kind note, and again, sorry to wind you up this time. At least there is often intrigue in our sparring, if nothing else.
: Now, to restate the argument in the hopes that you will actually look at what we are saying, instead of what you wish we were saying: Races are not species. They are, instead, populations within a species that differ in the frequency of some alleles, relative to other members of the same species. Species are defined on the basis of reproductive isolation. Speciation takes hundreds of thousands of generations. Things like bacteria can speciate relatively quickly (within a human lifetime) because the length of their generations is so short and their DNA is so simple. This has been observed many times, both in the lab and in the field. Human generation times are considerably longer, and humans are also highly mobile, so we are not reproductively isolated. In order for humans to speciate, something as drastic as migration to another planet, as Farinata suggested, would be required. As it is, there was nearly 90,000 years between the time the first anatomically modern humans left Africa, and the time extra-African populations were reunited with African populations, and this was not enough time for speciation to occur.
Well if "speciation takes hundreds of thousands of generations" to occur, let's do some quick computations for the human "ancestors":
1 generation = 20 years (conservatively)
200,000 generations is the minimal required for hundered(s) of thousands
20 years/generation x 200,000 generations = 4,000,000 years
Are we saying that Homo-Neanderthalis is minimally 4,000,000 years old? I've always heard that he was on the order of 130,000 years.
Or perhaps, H-D does not qualify as a different species, by your definition?
: I really hope that it's clear this time, because if you call me a racist or a nazi again, you'll make it functionally impossible for us to ever have a polite discussion, and that would defeat the whole purpose.
Floyd, dear friend. I'm not trying to characterise you, and I'll never call you a name (even though you've called me an idiot before). I'm just attempting to warn you off as to where your evolutionary thought may lead you.
Darwin, as you may recall, saw this exact same flaw himself during his later years. In fact, one of the main reasons that he renounced evolutionism is that of Haekel's interpretations of his theory when applied to the human species. It had "racial weeding" overtones and Darwin was horrified.
Thankfully, Charles Darwin on his death bed in Kent accepted Christ as his Creator, as we know from the testimony of his maid. Darwin read the Bible so fervently then that he even named the Book of Hebrews the "Royal Book". Praise God!
Floyd, from here on, the Peace of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, be with you.
Robert
P.S. Apparently you are a professor? Excellent. Here is a site to see what professors think about the subject.
Again, if I come to America perhaps we'll do lunch. Cheers.
