Our Knowledge of Genetics Severely Limited

Right after the flood, in order for mankind to grow in population, people had no choice but to marry relatives- that's all there were to choose from! Yet today, we cringe in horror at the thought of blood related people getting married to each other. Why?

Today, with our new knowledge (which is STILL severely limited) we know that there is "genetic" material contributed by each parent which gives offspring their characteristics. At this late date in the "life" of mankind, as well as the animal kingdom, it appears that we have reached the "dead-end" of the gene-pool; in other words, the possible genetic combinations that can find their expression in what we term a "species" have all but been exhausted. But there is more to consider before we think we know it all.

If God is Who we believe He is, then we KNOW He was certainly able to ensure that Noah's family possessed a gene-pool without flaws, or at least relatively flawless, or else the human race would not have survived. As they reproduced, this gene-pool thinned out, as we today have every color of skin, eyes, hair, every shape body from tall to short,- in short, every characteristic of the human race today had it's beginnings in Noah's family.

Somehow, sometime, defective, or mutated, genes arose. Present day science has shown that genes mutate due to environmental factors, radiation, certain foods, and other reasons we don't know about. Genetics is a very complicated subject- but to make the point, we need to understand only that it's a well-known fact that if 2 people marry, one with a defective gene causing a certain defect or disease, and one with a non-defective gene, their off-spring have a chance of NOT inheriting the defect (this is a broad statement, intended only to illustrate a point, which does not take into consideration "recessive" and "dominant" genes, as well as other more complicated factors.). But, the defective gene may have been passed on to the child who, although free of the defect, becomes a "carrier" of that gene and capable of passing it on to it's offspring. Now, if 2 closely related people marry who are from a family with a defective gene, and both are carriers, the chances are that their off-spring WILL have the defect. Thus, "in-breeding", or marrying within one's own family, significantly increases the chances of producing children with genetic defects and illnesses. Albinism, insanity, deaf-mutism and cleft palate were commonly found in families who had inbred for long periods of time. Finally, sterility and infant mortality is much higher in these unions than others.

Ok, so why didn't all this happen to Noah's family? Why didn't they all have defects from in-breeding? The only answer can be that they started out with no defective genes. In order for mankind to effectively repopulate the earth, God made sure that they could produce healthy off-spring by providing them with a "clean slate" to start out with. But after an unknown period of time, if people kept marrying who were closely related, these defective genes would start crippling the population. We know that God gave specific instructions to the people through Moses forbidding "kinship" marriages, but the evidence indicates that He also made it known to the people prior to the dispersion from Babel that it was important for man to marry as far from his own blood-line as possible. How do we know? Because the earliest civilizations, those soon after Babel, all had strict laws about incest and marrying within your own family. More on that later.

But what does this have to do with animals? It tells us that God has set limits or bounds to insure the diversity of His creation, and also to maintain the purity of that which He created. It also tells us that He made certain "genetic exceptions and provisions" at the time of the flood that no longer are valid today. He obviously took great care to insure that mankind, in it's rebirth after the flood, would have the best genetic material with which to begin. Man, alone, was created in His image. From the beginning, with Noah's family, the "order" or "family" of man would not branch out into new species. Although mankind would exhibit various shades of skin color, hair color and texture, eye color, and size, he would always remain as God created him. And though closely-related humans risk producing defective offspring, God made special provisions to accommodate the situation after the flood.

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