Let's discuss FACTS about race - Page 1

Did you know?

Skin color is determined by the presence of melanin?

Lighter skin is caused by red blood cells flowing close to the surface of the skin ?

If you wear sunglasses you will tan less?

The ability to tan is coincidentally related to the level of sunlight exposure in different parts of the world?

Less body hair makes it easier to cool the body by evaporating perspiration more easily?

Dark skin protects from skin cancer because the blood cells are buried deeper in the flesh?

Melanin (darker skin) protects against UV radiation?

Dark skinned people have problems with vitamin D deficiencies in high altitudes?

Light skinned people can develop symptoms of too much vitamin D absorption in tropical areas?

UV radiation can cause the destruction of folic acid, causing anemia?  Increased melanin preserves folic acid?  And most importantly, folic acid is need for DNA replication?

Light skin allows UV radiation to penetrate the skin easily to produce necessary vitamin D?

Some Europeans have lost their ability to tan?

Though the Inuit live in Arctic areas with less sunlight, their skin is darker due to a vitamin D rich diet (seafood) and the darker skin also protects them from the reflection of the sun on the ice?

There's more, but I think you get the point.

So now, lets take it a step farther.

We have seen that there has been little change in race over the last 2000 years, other than dilution due to inbreeding.  So, if Noah's sons repopulated the Earth slightly more than 2000 years before THAT, how do we account for all the skin, hair and eye color variations?  And how is it that skin color is coincidentally tied to sun exposure, regulating necessary vitamin D and folic acid, which are both tied to successful reproduction? 



Did all variations proceed from Noah?  Why does skin color correlate with built-in protections and differences in exposure to the sun?

My understanding is most scholars say there is about 3000 years between Noah and Jesus. 

Don't forget Noah's 3 sons and their wives who were on the boat, so it was more like those 3 couples who populated the earth with all these races

Beyond that I don't know, I'm not real sure these time/year estimates that scholars hold to either.  I'm no expert, I'm definitly not old enough to really know.  I'll wait til eternity to find out ;) lol

You are largely describing a variety of effects of a simple expression of melanin - a small cluster of genes.  "Race" is pretty much a social construct.  It seems biological because it is so visual -- but that is deceiving.  One cannot look at one's DNA and know skin color unless one identifies a VERY SMALL cluster of genes having to do with color, or mitochondria known to have come from one continent or another.

So I don't think the argument that races have evolved in so many specialized ways is the best case to be made against the kooky idea that mankind is only 5000 years old.

I think a host of evolutionary evidence is more compelling.

I am always amazed at how some people equate a persons race with their worth as if one is somehow superior to another.

Race is part of evolutionary evidence.  I once read an article in "Discover" magazine that actually went into race in much more detail.  And interestingly, concluded that teeth had more to do with race than the color of the skin and other physical characteristics.  It was probably about 15 years ago, so I can't remember the details, but it was quite interesting.

I often wonder how many secrets are buried in the ice at the polar caps, especially Antarctica.  The ice cap there is 2000 feet thick, on average and almost 5000 feet at it's thickest point!

Inuits skin protected? It can't be THAT protected when you look at that incredibly leathery/wrinkled skin they all seem to have.

As for races, who is to say Noah was white? Are you assuming he was white? Technically him, his family, and their wives all go back to Adam....How do we know what color Adam/Eve were? They could have been dark skinned.  Just as I often think people assume Jesus was white, he was actually more of an olive tone.  

Interesting topic/facts GSDtravels. However, the whites of south africa, arabs of tanzania/zanzibar, dark-skins in yemen, oman and the australian aborigines had neither changed their skin colour, so i do believe, God created varieties of skin colours from the first pair. For academic sake, we write science, but we do have our personal beliefs

Where did I say Noah was white?  Okay, he was black, that's fine with me.  And your point?

"However, the whites of south africa, arabs of tanzania/zanzibar, dark-skins in yemen, oman and the australian aborigines had neither changed their skin colour"

Due to natural, cataclysmic events or even for the sake of explorations, people even then would have migrated to new lands and eventually settled elsewhere.

Protected the skin from an increase of UV rays, cold dries and weathers skin.

It's facts about skin, hair and eye color in realtion to the level of sunlight in different areas that races originally populated.  It's a theory, but it's looking like it makes a lot of sense.  And even if it's later proven to have no merit, still the question... how did all of these variations come from one set of genes?

GSDtravels I didn't say you said he was white. I asked if you assumed because most white people seem to have it in their heads that  they were white, and that even Jesus was white. 

You stated that it's facts about all of that, but then you go on to state it's a theory? So, how is it a fact then? That doesn't add up. How did all of these variations come from one set of genes? Could it be possible that the first two people on earth were not the same color? Noah's family and their spouses  could not have been the same as well, we just don't know.

No, there's a difference between looking at facts and putting them together to come up with a theory.  The facts about race are facts.  Trying to determine that the facts lead to a conclusion, and just what conclusion they lead to, is the theory.

As far as the first two people on earth not being the same color?  That would contradict the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis.  Eve was made from Adam's rib, so they shared the same genes.  If that's true, how did the generations to Noah develop all of the different races?  Which brings us back to the original question!

And brings us back again to the question (that I asked in the "Judge Not" thread) of Cain's wife!  Who was she and where did she come from if Adam and Eve were the first and only people?