Rating: Excellent Reviewed by: Eric Jones It’s become rather fashionable in literature today for authors to put a new spin on the link between science and religion. As both philosophies continue to collide, spin, and evolve into one another readers have been treated to books like Genome Scientist Francis Collins’ “Language of God”, which presents religion from a scientific point of view, along with rebuttals like Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion”, but nobody makes an argument quite like Ahamed V.P. Kutty. In his similar exploration of these worlds, Kutty presents evidence in the face of a religious question often overlooked among Christians, Muslims, and Jewish practitioners. The question is simple: If incest is a sin, and Adam and Eve were the first humans created by God to conceive and populate the earth, then wouldn’t their offspring be forced to mate with one another in order to achieve such ends? In essence, has God, or the creators of the Bible and Qur’an, created a situation where humanity must sin to survive? The answer, as always, is not as simple as the question. As the title might have given away, this is a book of scientific research which takes the writings of biblical scripture into account in order to achieve an answer. As such, it assumes that the reader is also religious. But not blindly so, as an overwhelming amount of scientists are turning to religion to solve the questions that they themselves cannot, it is no small readership that Kutty addresses. And his writing is cleverly detailed from both points of view so that ministers of faith will find it just as interesting as those of science. Answering the proposed thesis leads the reader on a journey through many questions that befuddle even the most devout religious followers. Where is the biblical Garden of Eden? How does religion account for the theory of evolution? Who are the real Adam and Eve? Is the Bible meant to be taken literally, or as hyperbole? Walking a middle path between the radical views of both science and religion is bound to offend fringe readers, but I think the majority of us tend to hold a similar middle ground. And for us, Kutty lays an overwhelming amount of evidence at our feet, which take all widely accepted viewpoints regarding the nature of evolution, the Garden of Eden, and the many different versions of Adam and Eve, into account. Often Kutty excludes the verbalized opinion that is so prominent in the works of his contemporaries, allowing the reader to connect the dots for themselves having looked over each textual exhibit. This layout is also helpful for quick reading, reference, and maintaining interest of laymen, like me, since all of these points are categorically organized and labeled. Each chapter begins with a clearly stated paragraph that elaborates on its title, and is often followed by the listing of evidence which lead the reader to the drawn conclusion. What Kutty is able to do, using this method, is clearly present his case without reducing anything to simple conjecture. Although this method does have a few minor holes since using evidence connecting so many different sources is sometimes thin. For instance, the use of a theory in general relativity to explain how angels of heaven might be able to travel through wormholes to get between Heaven and Earth is, according to Kutty himself, “not readily acceptable but feasible”. In other words, there is only so much that science can explain. However, the research regarding DNA histories which trace ancestry back to an original Adam and Eve, (though admittedly not the Bible’s Adam and Eve) is extremely positive. These many cases often provide a jumping point for those who wish to examine the issues more closely through the inclusion, at the end of each chapter, of a detailed bibliography. “Adam’s Gene and the Mitochondrial Eve” is brilliant. It constructs a dazzling house of carefully implemente

This national bestseller, now in paperback, reveals how all humans are descended from seven prehistoric women--the Seven Daughters of Eve.

It is well established that all humans today, wherever they live, belong to one single species. Yet even many people who claim to abhor racism take for granted that human “races” have a biological reality. In Troublesome Science, Rob DeSalle and Ian Tattersall provide a lucid and forceful critique of how scientific tools have been misused to uphold misguided racial categorizations. DeSalle and Tattersall argue that taxonomy, the scientific classification of organisms, provides an antidote to the myth of race’s biological basis. They explain how taxonomists do their science—how to identify a species and to understand the relationships among different species and the variants within them. DeSalle and Tattersall also detail the use of genetic data to trace human origins and look at how scientists have attempted to recognize discrete populations within Homo sapiens. Troublesome Science demonstrates conclusively that modern genetic tools, when applied correctly to the study of human variety, fail to find genuine differences. While the diversity that exists within our species is a real phenomenon, it nevertheless defeats any systematic attempt to recognize discrete units within it. The stark lines that humans insist on drawing between their own groups and others are nothing but a mixture of imagination and ideology. Troublesome Science is an important call for researchers, journalists, and citizens to cast aside the belief that race has a biological meaning, for the sake of social justice and sound science alike.

Genomic science indicates that humans descend not from an individual pair but from a large population. What does this mean for the basic claim of many Christians: that humans descend from Adam and Eve? Leading evangelical geneticist Dennis Venema and popular New Testament scholar Scot McKnight combine their expertise to offer informed guidance and answers to questions pertaining to evolution, genomic science, and the historical Adam. Some of the questions they explore include: - Is there credible evidence for evolution? - Do we descend from a population or are we the offspring of Adam and Eve? - Does taking the Bible seriously mean rejecting recent genomic science? - How do Genesis's creation stories reflect their ancient Near Eastern context, and how did Judaism understand the Adam and Eve of Genesis? - Doesn't Paul's use of Adam in the New Testament prove that Adam was a historical individual? The authors address up-to-date genomics data with expert commentary from both genetic and theological perspectives, showing that genome research and Scripture are not irreconcilable. Foreword by Tremper Longman III and afterword by Daniel Harrell.

Examines the history and future of the Y chromosome and maintains that because it is unable to exchange genetic material or repair itself, the day will come when it will cease to exist.

Around 60,000 years ago, a man—genetically identical to us—lived in Africa. Every person alive today is descended from him. How did this real-life Adam wind up as the father of us all? What happened to the descendants of other men who lived at the same time? And why, if modern humans share a single prehistoric ancestor, do we come in so many sizes, shapes, and races? Examining the hidden secrets of human evolution in our genetic code, Spencer Wells reveals how developments in the revolutionary science of population genetics have made it possible to create a family tree for the whole of humanity. Replete with marvelous anecdotes and remarkable information, from the truth about the real Adam and Eve to the way differing racial types emerged, The Journey of Man is an enthralling, epic tour through the history and development of early humankind.

In a brilliant synthesis of genetic, archaeological, linguistic and climatic data, Oppenheimer challenges current thinking with his claim that there was only one successful migration out of Africa. In 1988 Newsweek headlined the startling discovery that everyone alive on the earth today can trace their maternal DNA back to one woman who lived in Africa 150,000 years ago. It was thought that modern humans populated the world through a series of migratory waves from their African homeland. Now an even more radical view has emerged, that the members of just one group are the ancestors of all non-Africans now alive, and that this group crossed the mouth of the Red Sea a mere 85,000 years ago. It means that not only is every person on the planet descended from one African 'Eve' but every non-African is related to a more recent Eve, from that original migratory group. This is a revolutionary new theory about our origins that is both scholarly and entertaining, a remarkable account of the kinship of all humans. Further details of the findings in this book are presented at www.bradshawfoundation.com/stephenoppenheimer/