A Question of Race for the Bible Scholar

Genesis Chapter 1. God created each
after their own kind. God created
Adam and Eve, mankind (man kind).
All other human races are the ideas
of man, not of God.

 

genes

 

Dan usually writes in The Winston Cup Series.

 

BillyMac,
the reason that you are having difficulty in getting a straight answer is that the bible does not tell us where the differences came from. It is clear that there are differences in how we look and even in how we act and that is what we usually refer to races.
Technically it is true that there is but one race and that is the human race which came through Adam. However just pointing to Adam does not answer the question for most. So let me offer an opinion where the differences came from and I will refer to this as different races.

Some hold that at the tower of Babel in Gen. 11 when God confused the languages He also caused the races. To me that is one of the worst suggestions.

Most of us hold some sort of prejudice even when we do not acknowledge it. Here is what I mean. If we are white and we think of the creation of Adam and Eve most would picture them as two white people. However is we are black and think of Adam and Eve we might think of them as two black people and so on with the different races. However I believe that Adam and Eve at their creation had all the different possibilities of all the races we see today within their genes. One of them could have been of a dark shade of skin and one of a lighter. One may have had round eyes and one more of a slant eye and so on. In this as they had children and the gene pool would become more diverse as the children came together and had their own children.
As you know it is common for people to be drawn towards others who look like themselves and as each choose a partner who looked like themselves the distinctions would become more noticeable. By the time of the tower of Babel I believe that there was definite distinctions in looks of people, and when God confused the languages He most likely divided the languages up depending on what we call races and in doing so caused the nations with their races as they would have had to separate according to language bringing along certain distinct gene pools. Now like I said this too is a guess, but I think it holds some merit. God bless.

 

Billy Mac,

Winston Cup isn't tennis- it used to be NASCAR racing (It's now the Nextel Cup). I think Gib was trying to make a funny that Dan (a frequent poster here on the ol' BB) writes in the NASCAR event as his preferred "race."

Strange- not as funny once you have to explain it...

 

BillyMac,

Let's see if we can get some straight answers to you...

First of all, yes, there is one race: the human race.

But we have quite a bit of variation among us, right? And I think your basic question is, "Why?" or even "How?"

Primarily, because although we used to believe that one gene was responsible for one trait, right down the line, we have learned that is not true. Traits are determined by an interplay of numbers of genes along with genetic and cellular timing mechanisms which also control expression of traits.

So when a man and a woman of different parents marry and have children, every time they have a child, that child has a slightly different mix of genes from each parent and even, perhaps, some slightly different timing mechanisms. That's the first thing -- it's not one gene per trait.

Now, Adam and Eve were created with perfect genes. No mutations yet. As a result, their various mixes produced children with either perfect or awfully close to perfect genetics. In the meantime, variation would have been constant, even more so than today. Why more than today? Because we had an incredible population bottleneck at the time of the Flood (as well as several less severe later), which eliminated all genetic variations not present in the eight people on the Ark.

So what we have at this point is a bottleneck, true, but also eight different people. The men were all related (father/son), but the women weren't.

Genesis 10 tells us where many of the different groups originated by heritage. Why didn't they just stay mixed together? Well, when they refused to spread out much, God forced the issue with the Babel catastrophe, which forced them to move out of that area in terror -- and in small groups.

It's that 'small groups' which holds the real key to your questions. When we have an isolated reproducing population in any sexually reproducing group of organisms, then what we find within just a few generations is that some traits will predominate, as that is the genetic heritage predominate in that group. We do this artificially in things like horse and dog breeding. We limit the genetic mixes to force a trait.

So Babel did have a lot to do with it, actually. The languages were actually most probably confused as a result of the separation, and were not the cause of it. We see how quickly languages change now, even from generation to generation. It would not have taken long for isolated small populations to adapt their languages to themselves. (We still have clues as to common language origins, which is what part of the study of linguistics is about. It is a fascinating study: for instance, the term Maya not only identifies a South American ancient people, but is the Hindu word for illusion!)

Along with the small, isolated populations, we have environmental pressures. Those people who fled to Africa, for example, or anywhere in the tropics, found themselves subject to severe ultra violet exposure. The folks with the most melanin were therefore most likely to deal with that exposure better. Now some of these high melanin people had straight hair, like the Pacific Islanders. Some had kinky hair. Some had flat noses, like both some Orientals and some Africans, and some had smaller, straight noses, like the very black Ethiopians. The traits were a mix-and-match affair, depending on the population and where they were. You will note that there is only one place which allowed the blonde blue-eyed people to thrive -- northern Europe! So much for Aryan supremacy!

At any rate, the way things stand now, the closer to your genetic heritage you marry into, the less healthy your children are likely to be! It is when the mix is as far apart as possible that the strongest genes can express from both sides, resulting in healthier people.

Sort of inverse racism, eh?

At any rate, the really short answer is that 'racial' traits are the results of small, internally reproducing and isolated populations.

This was the condition after Babel. It was also the condition after the splitting of the continents at the time of Peleg, which enforced further separation.

That is why we have the different 'races' today.

 

Ill try and do a quicker response

I as a white male - with no African ancestry have the Chromosones necessary within me to be "black" or "Oriental"

As Helen stated environmental conditions combined with i believe the term is "macro" evolution the existence of what we call today the "races"

I believe the research done referred to a Gene square

 

That's me, humorless. Sorry to troll your thread.

 

I like the inverse racism idea. More diversity, stronger, healthier children, sounds great.