All Life Is Ultimately Inbred, Zebra or Otherwise

I got a very interesting comment from a Captain Cranium on my last blog post. I shall re-post the comment here, verbatim, because he makes very good points & it's worth a blog post of its own.


( Captain Cranium, by the way, has a very cool website called Cranium's Ark and you should definitely check it out. )

I think you have it right. Whether you subscribe to a creationist or evolutionist view, all life is ultimately inbred, zebra, person or otherwise, since all species had a starting point. (which raises some interesting questions regarding evolution, since you need male and female of the species to produce offspring--we must assume that there was some kind of genetic "backward compatibility" which allowed the pre-zebra to mate with the zebra, as it would seem a long shot at best to hope that the first zebra male and the first zebra female evolved simultaneously, yet separately and within close proximity to one another.

Plus, the bible seldom mentions daughters in the lineage, so the absence of female offspring isn't surprising. Of interest is to note the ages of offspring from Adam to Noah. Except for Methuselah, the ages exhibit a regular decline, which one would expect in a limited gene pool. And an anomaly like Methuselah, isn't surprising also.

Similarly, when the gene pool is significantly limited again, with Noah and his family, the maximum human life becomes 125--again, a not unexpected result from a scientific standpoint, considering the amount of "inbreeding" up to that point. All of which might make one think the authors of the bible were extremely well versed in genetics.

Similarly, when the gene pool is significantly limited again, with Noah and his family, the maximum human life becomes 125--again, a not unexpected result from a scientific standpoint, considering the amount of "inbreeding" up to that point. All of which might make one think the authors of the bible were extremely well versed in genetics.

It's interesting, the more science uncovers, the more the bible gets right. For over 100 years science was certain the universe didn't have a beginning, then Hubble notices the red shift and confirms what a 4000 year old book has been saying all along.

"The more science uncovers, the more the bible gets right" -- perhaps so, I don't doubt the bible has intention to falsify any of earth's records of history.

It's just that, I can't help but have this niggling feeling the bible leaves out a lot of things. It's the whole "I'm not lying, I'm simply withholding the truth".

Over the centuries, I'm pretty sure plenty of things have been misinterpreted, mistranslated and misconstrued.