Table of Contents
Kurt Wise teaches at Truett McConnell University and, for Is Genesis History, compares two stories of humanity. One is evolution. The other is Genesis as he reads it. He opens that second story six millennia back, with a single pair, then growth for roughly 1,656 years before a flood. After the flood, on his telling, one family stays together until Babel and only then splits. He sets that beside a picture in which modern humans are far older and many groups could have stayed apart for immense spans. The thread he follows is mitochondrial DNA, passed along the maternal line because, he says, the father does not pass on this loop. Evolution, at his scale, should draw a very tall tree. His creation reading predicts a short tree and three forks only a few changes apart, tied to three ancestral mothers after the flood and Babel. He says the published human tree looks like the short pattern, and he treats that likeness as support for his biblical chronology. That is his biblical claim, not a ranking of peoples.
Key points
- Wise sets a roughly 6,000 year biblical narrative against an evolutionary history he says is vastly longer.
- In his reading, one family passes through the flood and divides only afterward.
- He uses maternal mitochondrial DNA because, on his account, the father’s contribution does not include it.
- An evolutionary sketch, as he draws it, should be a tall tree with many long separate lines.
- His creation sketch predicts three nearby forks, and he says the real human tree looks much more like that short pattern.
Short quotes
The commonly used text would say 1656 years, where population apparently just uniformly increased, probably in an exponential fashion.
Kurt Wise, DNA and a Biblical History of Humankind
In his reading of the usual biblical numbers, population grows quickly across that short span before the flood. Watch at 1:26
Mitochondrial DNA is a string in humans of sixteen and a half thousand or so nucleotides.
Kurt Wise, DNA and a Biblical History of Humankind
He defines the molecule he is using as a short human sequence of many thousands of units. Watch at 8:00
Also according to biblical history it starts from two people, goes up to a Flood just 1,600 years later.
Kurt Wise, DNA and a Biblical History of Humankind
His biblical clock starts with a single pair and reaches the flood in well under two thousand years. Watch at 15:31
Whereas in the creation model you should have three nodes that are three mutations apart from each other.
Kurt Wise, DNA and a Biblical History of Humankind
The creation sketch he prefers has three splits, each only a few changes apart. Watch at 21:03
Video by Is Genesis History?. Watch on YouTube.