DNA – Proof of Noah’s Flood

This page provides good scientific proof of Noah's Flood (and also Adam & Eve).

Genetic evidence for the Flood - a human population bottleneck matching Noah's Flood (Genesis 6-9) - is glaringly obvious when our DNA is examined truthfully and logically. You will learn how mutations in both Y Chromosomes and Mitochondria DNA can definitely point to the 4 men and 4 women who were on the Ark, around 4,500 years ago. Plus going back further - the genetic proof for the first humans, Adam and Eve.

Introduction

There's an old B-grade psychological horror film where a babysitter, babysitting at the client's home late at night, continually receives threatening calls from a stalker on the house phone. She calls the police who promise to trace the call if she keeps the caller on the phone line long enough. She's extremely frightened and arms herself, and then receives a final call from the madman. Soon after he hangs up, the police call her back and exclaim “we've traced the call... it's coming from inside the house!”

In a way, the following may invoke the same kind of feeling for the atheist/naturalist. There's actually proof of Noah's Flood, and therefore the Bible and God, inside each and every one of your cells.

Please read on, and decide for yourself if there's a call to your conscience from your very own hereditary blueprint.

The Y Chromosome and Mitochondria DNA (basics)

The sex chromosomes are named X and Y. Males have two distinct sex chromosomes (X & Y) and females have two of the same (X & X). So the Y chromosome is passed on only from father to son.

Mitochondria – these are little compartments inside each of our cells which house the components to produce the cell's energy. They have their own, separate strand of DNA (separate from the main/nuclear/chromosomal DNA) and it's called Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Since only the mitochondria contained in the fertilized egg are used at conception, mtDNA is only inherited from the mother. Males are therefore dead-ends for mtDNA.

When DNA (which contains the sex chromosomes) and mtDNA are passed down to offspring, mutations (copying errors) can and do occur. DNA receives over a 100 mutations per generation whilst mtDNA receives a lot less (due to the size of mtDNA being a lot smaller than DNA – approx 16,000 base pairs compared to approx 3 billion base pairs for DNA).

Because of these mutations, DNA and mtDNA have been slowly diverging/degrading from the DNA and mtDNA of our first ever ancestors (whose possible identities are about to be discussed).

Reminder:

What we should expect for proof of Noah's Flood

To begin with, the first Book of the Bible (Genesis) was written nearly 3,500 years ago (around 1,400 BC) by Moses. There is very good evidence to support this. The “documentary/JEDP hypothesis”, which denies that Moses was the writer and consequently dating the Book to around 600 BC, has no historical evidence to back it up (as explained here).

Genesis states that eight people were on the Ark: Noah and his wife, their three sons and their three wives. So: 

1. There should be signs of a population bottleneck in which humanity almost became extinct.
2. How many different Y chromosomes were on the Ark? One – the three sons inherited their Y chromosome from Noah, and since it's only one generation down, mutations would have been little to none.
   1. So, there should be only one Y chromosome lineage today.
3. How many different mtDNAs on the Ark for offspring? Three. The three wives of Noah's sons. (The Bible doesn't mention that Noah and his wife had any more children).
   1. So, there should be three mtDNA lineages today.
4. These three mtDNA lineages should trace back to a single female ancestor (Biblical Eve). Proof of this would be that the three mtDNAs lineages are similar.
5. Due to the relatively high amount of mutations humans pass down to children (approx 100 mutations per generation), and the Flood occurring about 4,500 years ago, genetic diversity in humans today should be consistent with thousands, not millions, of years. (Human history, not the age of the earth – the age of the earth is irrelevant).

What we observe today, from worldwide surveys of human genetics

1. The Human Genome Project was declared complete in April 2003. One of its findings was that all humans have virtually identical DNA. They suggested that this is due to a population bottleneck in our past, where our numbers dwindled so low that we teetered on the brink of extinction.
2. Y chromosomes are indeed similar worldwide. No divergent Y lineages have been found. Therefore, evolutionists acknowledge a paternal common ancestor, calling him Y-chromosomal Adam.
3. There are indeed three main mtDNA lineages found worldwide today. Evolutionists have labeled these lines “M”, “N”, and “R”. (In a court of law, this would be considered inculpatory evidence.)
4. There is little difference between these three mtDNA lineages, so they must have originated in a single female, who lived not long before the bottleneck. (Evolutionists call her Mitochondrial Eve).
5. Since humans have virtually identical DNA, the genetic diversity is consistent with thousands of years, not millions of years.

To summarize, recent genetic studies reveal one Y chromosome lineage, three very similar mtDNA lineages, and the whole human race having virtually identical DNA, firmly matches the Bible's account of Noah's Flood (and Adam & Eve).

It's important to mention here that evolutionists do not claim that the above evidence proves that there was only one male and/or female alive at any point in the past. This is explained shortly.

Proof of Noah's Flood: mtDNA

Here is one source of proof for the three mtDNA lineages, which will probably surprise you for two reasons: 1) It comes from evolutionary scientists, and 2) the Biblical scenario is surprisingly easy to see.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mitochondrial_DNA_haplogroup

Just look at the Lineage Perspective tree after the introductory paragraphs. Time effectively runs from left to right. At the top is the lineage evolutionists call L (Mitochondrial Eve). You can plainly see the three main lineages that appear further down – “M”, “N”, and “R”, which all have their own derivatives under them (caused by mutations passed down through the generations). (Interestingly, “R” is under “N” which could mean that two of the three wives on the Ark were related, possibly cousins).

Here is the Lineage tree, which I have rotated 90° and edited slightly:

Proof of Noah's Flood: Y-chromosome

Here is the Wikipedia entry for the Y-chromosomal Adam:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam

“In human genetics, Y-chromosomal Adam (Y-MRCA) is the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) from whom all living people are descended patrilineally (tracing back only along the paternal lines of their family tree). Recent studies report that Y-chromosomal Adam lived as early as around 142,000 years ago. Older studies estimated Y-MRCA as recent as 60,000 years ago.”

“Y-chromosomal Adam is named after the biblical Adam. This may lead to a misconception that he was the only human male alive during his time, even though he co-existed with other human males, including, perhaps, his own father who was not the "most recent". However, unlike himself and his paternal line, each of his male contemporaries failed to produce a direct unbroken male line to all males living today.”

What evolutionists make of this data

The evolutionary explanations for the above data are contradictory and confusing to say the least. Depending on which genes they use in their research, different bottlenecks ranging from 2 million years ago to 60,000 years ago are proposed. On top of this, they're also proposing different bottlenecks for males and females (e.g. a male bottleneck around 142,000 years ago and a different bottleneck for females around 200,000 years ago).

For the sake of simplicity, here is a general take on their beliefs concerning the required bottlenecking:

1. There was a population bottleneck in which humanity almost became extinct, about 70,000 years ago.
   1. The population became as low as 1,000 to 10,000.
   2. Even though many women made up these numbers during the bottleneck, only the lineage of one of them (dubbed “Mitochondrial Eve”) survived. All the other mtDNA lineages ended in dead-ends (childless couples or boys-only families). What are the odds of this happening?
   3. In much the same way, only one Y chromosome lineage survived from a single male (dubbed Y-chromosomal Adam). All other Y lineages ended in dead-ends (childless couples or girls-only families). Again, what are the odds of this happening? Then imagine what the odds are for BOTH male and female lineages suffering the same fate. Alternatively, how about there was actually only one male and one female in the beginning?
2. Another theory suggests a “long bottleneck” where the population dropped to around 2,000, and remained at that population for at least 100,000 years. Credible?

How evolutionists apply long timelines

You're probably thinking something like “the evolutionists are stating tens to hundreds of thousands of years, to millions of years of human history - how can it be just thousands of years instead?”

Well, evolutionists base their dates on evolutionary assumptions. They assume that evolution is true to start with, and so they assume that the fossil record represents millions to billions of years of history – bacteria evolving upwards through worms, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, primates and us. With this timeline in mind, they calibrate everything to fit to this timeline.

They use an idea called Molecular Clocks – that there is a fixed rate of mutations per year in any population. How do they know what this rate is? They calculate it by using evolutionary assumptions as I mentioned above – based on their interpretation of the fossil record.

E.g. they believe that humans and baboons shared a common ancestor “x” years ago, so they look at human's mtDNA and at baboon's mtDNA, and get the number of differences between the two, which is “y”. Then the mutation rate per year would be y/x. This type of logic has resulted in estimates for when their “Mitochondrial Eve” lived to be between 70,000 to 800,000 years ago.

As you can see, Molecular Clocks are derived from the assumption that evolution is true and that we're related to baboons/chimps/etc. There's no actual measurement of hundreds of thousands of years.

With their timeline in mind, the fossil record represents millions of years of separate catastrophic events (local floods, extinctions, volcanic flows, earthquakes, etc), whereas under the creation model most of these events occurred during and after the Flood.

New analysis points to a recent human genome

The following paper came out not that long ago (Jan 2013), throwing the idea that humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years (millions of years if you include earlier “ancestors”) into question:

10th Jan 2013 - “Analysis of 6,515 exomes reveals the recent origin of most human protein-coding variants”

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v493/n7431/full/nature11690.html

A couple of excerpts (SNV = Single Nucleotide Variant = 1 mutation/copying error): 

• “Large-scale surveys of human genetic variation have reported signatures of recent explosive population growth, notable for an excess of rare genetic variants, suggesting that many mutations arose recently”
• “We estimate that approximately 73% of all protein-coding SNVs and approximately 86% of SNVs predicted to be deleterious arose in the past 5,000–10,000 years”

What this is basically saying is, most mutations in humans occurred in the last 5,000-10,000 years. Obviously, this was not expected by evolutionists who believe that humans have been around for 200,000 to millions of years.

If evolution is to be believed, then for hundreds of thousands of years (or a few million years), human DNA hardly received any mutations, then in the last few thousand years most of the DNA damage we've all inherited occurred. Sound feasible? Or how about this: there was simply no human history prior to a few thousand years ago.

As you'll recall from above re: Molecular Clocks – that evolutionists assume that there is set mutation rates per year, and use that rate to date our supposed ancestors – some might say that these new findings have thrown the Molecular Clocks into the bin.

Declining human lifespan - Noah's descendants

If you look at the life spans of Noah's descendants after the Flood (about 4,500 years ago), they decrease exponentially – i.e. fast at first, then more gradually. Noah lived to 950, his son Shem 600, then Arphaxad 438, Shelah 433, Eber 464, Peleg 230, Reu 239, Serug 230, Nahor 148, Terah 205, Abraham 175, and so on. On a graph, it's an exponential decay pattern (see below). It looks very typical to many decay patterns seen in biology; a biological decay curve.

This is to be expected if a recent human history is true, beginning with Adam and Eve created with perfect genomes, which have been degenerating since then due to constant deleterious mutations (proven by the recent study mentioned above). It can be assumed that the decline in genome fitness would have taken life expectancy down with it.

Genesis was written nearly 3,500 years ago by Moses. Therefore to refute this, atheists will have to either believe that the lifespan drop recorded in the Bible that exactly matches a biological decay curve (see graph below) is just a coincidence, or the writer of Genesis fabricated the data using sophisticated math instead of a simple linear decrease. Though logically, if someone was writing fiction, surely they would have chosen believable life spans of under a 100 years for all of them?

(The above graph is taken from Dr. John Sanford's book Genetic Entropy & The Mystery of the Genome, a book I highly recommend Available Here)

This was actually a personal revelation for me. Prior to understanding genetics, I wondered why Biblical men lived to ridiculously old ages. It didn't make any sense at all, and in my mind, hurt the Bible's credibility. Now that I understand genetics and the harm that mutations do, and that the first humans had to have perfect genes, the life spans decreasing from abnormally high ages not only makes complete sense, but is a huge boost to the Bible's credibility. What better confirmation is there than new scientific research solving a long-held problem?

Logically, the truth is much more likely to be that the facts presented so far (our DNA, Y chromosome, mtDNA, recent human genome, etc) is proof of Noah's Flood, and that Moses recorded the lifespan of Noah's descendants accurately, further backing up that the Flood recorded in the Book of Genesis is true.

But – Is the Flood and Noah's Ark story really believable?

Yes. For example, the Ark could have housed 125,280 sheep, all animals were small juveniles, most would have hibernated, and they came to the Ark themselves (Genesis 7:15 “Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark.”). Please read more here: Could Noah’s Ark really hold all the animals?

What about Cain's wife, inbreeding, and modern human diversity?

Three of the many objections to Biblical creation are where did Cain get his wife, inbreeding causing deformities, and the human diversity we see today.

The answer for inbreeding is easily answered. The most important factor for the negative effects of inbreeding is the number of genetic defects in the population. Deformities occur when both parents have the same defective gene. If organisms do not have any genetic defects, there is no problem with inbreeding.

Since Adam and Eve were created with perfect genomes with no genetic defects, their offspring would not have suffered from the ill effects of inbreeding like we would today, due to our very imperfect genetics we've inherited from generations of mutations. The same case would have been for the created animals and plants. Also, at the time of Noah's Flood, human genomes were obviously less perfect, but at 4,500 years ago, much less mutated than they are today. Also, Noah's sons' three wives would have helped with genetic diversity.

Does this excuse incest? No. Initially, God permitted intermarriage between close relatives in order to commence humanity. Then, after about 2,500 years (after the Flood, and in the time of Moses) degenerative mutations in our DNA would have accumulated to a dangerous level so God brought in the laws forbidding close relative marriage (Leviticus 18-20).

Who was Cain's wife? Even though only Cain, Abel and Seth are mentioned by name, the Bible clearly states that Adam and Eve had more sons and daughters: Genesis 5:4 “After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters.” So Cain's wife was most likely his sister, and as mentioned above, this was okay both biologically and morally (and we are not talking about now).

Can today's human diversity come from just three couples?

This is another common argument against the Biblical Flood, and is made without considering that humans were created with perfect genomes, rich in genetic diversity. The three couples on the Ark had a great deal more genetic information than we have today. For proof of this, look no further than domestic dogs. All breeds of dogs have descended from a wolf-like ancestor, which had all the genetic information for all the dog breeds of today in its genome. Through breeding and artificial selection, information was lost, redistributed, and concentrated – not added to. From the Chihuahua to the Poodle to the Great Dane – all these traits were in the wolf-like ancestor, like all the traits in humans today were in the genomes of Adam and Eve. (By the way, evolution cannot explain why wolves had all this genetic diversity in the first place, but creation obviously can).

The creation model clearly explains where the genetic diversity in all plants, animals and humans came from, and why there were no problems with inbreeding. On the other hand, if evolution is true, and all organisms evolved “upwards” via mutations, what explanation can evolutionists give for why every organism's offspring weren't all deformed? The fact that organisms can produce offspring which are not mainly deformed is a testimony to creation, not evolution.

Summary

• All humans today have virtually identical DNA, indicating a recent population bottleneck. New (Jan 2013) genetic analysis found “recent explosive population growth”, “suggesting that many mutations arose recently”, which “arose in the past 5,000 to 10,000 years”. This logically dates the bottleneck to within the Biblical timeframe, rather than the evolutionary 70k+ years timeframe, otherwise there would have been virtually no mutations for at least 60,000 years, then suddenly almost all mutations. Illogical plus it's contrary to the Molecular Clock idea.
• The Y chromosomes in all humans worldwide are very similar, indicating a recent sole male ancestor – matching Noah, and before him, Biblical Adam.
• There are three mtDNA lineages, perfectly matching the Bible's record of the three wives on the Ark who repopulated the Earth.
• These three mtDNA lineages are very similar, indicating they diverged from a single female ancestor who lived one to two thousand years before the Flood – matching Biblical Eve. Eve's mtDNA would have diverged down through Eve's descendents for roughly 1,500 years (~75 generations), then at the Flood only three lineages were taken onto the Ark.
• The life spans of Noah's descendants decrease exponentially – on a graph, it's a biological decay curve. This is expected if creation is true.
• Humans have a high mutation rate, passing down over 100 mutations per generation. This is consistent with a human history of thousands, not millions, of years.
• If we descended from apes millions of years ago, our DNA would have diverged considerably (1 million years = ~50,000 generations). Since all humans today have virtually identical DNA, evolutionists had to come up with an explanation for this, so a population bottleneck was proposed (actually two, for males and females) where only ONE female's lineage AND ONE male's lineage survived to today, while thousands of other males and females, living at the same time, lineages died out. One lineage dying out is very improbable; BOTH dying out - in an expanding, post-bottleneck population no less - is ridiculously improbable.

Discussion

You may be wondering why you haven't heard about this overwhelmingly supportive proof of Noah's Flood before. You would be right to wonder if it's “too good to be true”. To answer this, you need to know that one of the basic guiding principles of science is naturalism. This means that supernatural causes must be ruled out as scientific explanations. All proposed scientific explanations must be testable and repeatable, and obey physical laws. Scientists simply cannot explain an event by invoking divine intervention.

In short, even if the evidence points to supernatural causes (e.g. Biblical events), they won't be able to make that conclusion. They will find the best “natural” explanation and run with that, no matter how improbable it is or how many unanswered questions it requires to work. Some might say if scientists are only allowed "natural" explanations, then they are not pursuing the truth; they are pursuing a natural explanation - even if a natural explanation is impossible.

Conclusion

What's the point of all of this you ask. Please continue to read, it would be a shame for you to stop here.

Firstly, if the proof of Noah's Flood is true, then the ramifications are obvious. It confirms the Bible and the reality of God's judgment by the Flood in the past, which is a warning of the judgment to come – a judgment by fire:

2 Peter 3:3-7: “First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, ‘where is this “coming” he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.’ But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and with water. By water also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.”

The Flood was also symbolic for the salvation we are offered today. Noah had faith that God's judgment was coming and obeyed His instructions. It took him 120 years to build the Ark, and all that time the scoffers refused to believe that judgment was on its way. Just before the Flood began, God shut the door of the Ark (Genesis 7:16 “... Then the Lord shut him in.”) - Noah did not have to shut the door on anyone's salvation; God did it. The door was left open until the last possible minute, but the day of salvation must come to an end. There were no second chances for those left out.

Secondly, again, if the above is true then evolution is false - the fossil record is not a record of organisms turning into other organisms over millions and billions of years. It was laid down in roughly a year – the 375 days of Noah's Flood. The order of the fossils is what you'd expect from rising waters – ocean bottom-dwellers first e.g. trilobites, then fishes, amphibians, smaller land animals, and upwards (and mammals etc would float first). Remember, fossilized bones can't be dated. They are dated from where they're found in the evolutionist's own assumed time-scale i.e. the geologic column. Also note that over 95% of all fossils are marine creatures, such as clams, corals, and trilobites. Most of the remaining 5% are plants, and only much less than 1% of all fossils are land animals (reptiles (including dinosaurs), amphibians, mammals, birds, and humans).

Thirdly, again, it means the Bible is true and trustworthy. If this is so, then the heart of Christianity – Jesus’ story – is true. His story, as recorded in the Bible, is amazingly bullet-proof. From fulfilling over 400 specific prophesies written in the Old Testament up to a thousand years before He was born, to His resurrection and appearing to over 500 witnesses, as the Apostle Paul recorded.

The empty tomb and the resurrection

The evidence for Jesus' empty tomb (proof of His resurrection) is water tight. From the Roman guards stationed outside the tomb, to His body never being found, to Him appearing visibly to over 500 witnesses as mentioned above.

Even His disciples were executed for confessing that they saw Him resurrected – think about this - no one dies lying. They could have just said they never saw Him. But they couldn't deny Him now that they knew He was God and denial would mean hell. Is this analogous with the command to refuse the coming Mark of the Beast? It appears so.

Of course, Christ's resurrection is fiercely attacked, because Christianity hangs on this being true. One argument is that His body was stolen. Here's a rebuttal, taken from the website I link to below:

Then consider the theory that the body was stolen by the disciples while the guards slept. The depression and cowardice of the disciples provide a hard-hitting argument against their suddenly becoming so brave and daring as to face a detachment of soldiers at the tomb and steal the body. They were in no mood to attempt anything like that.

The theory that the Jewish or Roman authorities moved Christ's body is no more reasonable an explanation for the empty tomb than theft by the disciples. If the authorities had the body in their possession or knew where it was, why, when the disciples were preaching the resurrection in Jerusalem, didn't they explain: "Wait! We moved the body, see, He didn't rise from the grave"?

And if such a rebuttal failed, why didn't they explain exactly where Jesus' body lay? If this failed, why didn't they recover the corpse, put it on a cart, and wheel it through the center of Jerusalem? Such an action would have destroyed Christianity - not in the cradle, but in the womb!

And finally

It's important to understand that this article's proof of Noah's Flood should not be taken to actually prove God exists; there can never be absolute proof because faith is important to Him. Proof is personal to believers, individually. If absolute proof was given to an atheist (like Him appearing in front of them or whatever), then the atheist's relationship with Him would probably be similar to one with the police or politicians – just obeying His commands without love or respect, just to avoid His ultimate wrath. There's good proof for this - I've personally heard, and seen online, many atheists say “even if God does exist I wouldn't $%£% bow down to him” etc. These people wouldn't want to go to heaven because that's where God is. But unfortunately for them, it's God's universe and we're not visitors; we are His creations (Colossians 1:16), and there are only two eternal destinations.

What this article should be instead, is an indication that something much more is going on than the philosophies of atheism, naturalism, and materialism demand. Then from there, if you really do want to find out the truth, take heed from Deuteronomy 4:29 “But if from there you shall seek the LORD your God, you shall find Him, if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.” With a serious and diligent effort to seek Him, you are being sincere and God promises to always respond to authentic searchers.

But if you're really not interested at all, please consider this: If it is true and there is a heaven, will you make it in when you die? Are you a good person?

Have you ever lied, stolen (illegal downloads?), blasphemed, committed adultery (even in thought)? How about sex, porn and parties etc?

If God was to judge you by the Ten Commandments on Judgment Day, would you be innocent or guilty?

I'll end with this. Remember the plot of the B-grade movie I started this article with? If there's a call to your conscience that's coming from inside your body, please read this relatively short article for the evidence for His resurrection and what you can do about it. After all, eternity is at stake.

Evidence for the resurrection:

http://www.bible.ca/d-resurrection-evidence-Josh-McDowell.htm

"God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life."

 Proof of Noah's Flood. Think about it.