Is Zecharia Sitchin's Theory on Genetic Engineering by Aliens Valid?

[Luke*]

I am not sure if this is the right place, I am 14 and have been greatly interested in astronomy for a huge portion of my life, and started studying theory's on planet x etc, now, I somewhat came across Zecharia Sitchin's theory on us being genetically engineered by a more intelligent than us race, now. I read about it and listened to audio books but then I came across a Documentary which I always adore more ;]

Its Genesis Revisited, now I was wondering if you guys would share your opinions on this theory. Would be greatly appreciated. Personally I believe in it as the evidence these ancient people provided is to great and actually true and to be actually found out with there technology at the time is quite. Well hard in my opinion.
The link is below, there's 5 parts. You will see them on the side. Please discuss thoughts.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=VXSYW-QwM_w

 

[Evo]

I'm afraid it lost me in the first 60 sconds when the host asked "is it possible that humans were genectically engineered 6,000 years ago?". Possible, highly improbable, but if they were, history shows no signs of any unique advancement in humans 6,000 years ago.

 

[jambaugh]

There is good evidence to reject any hypothesis of our being genetically engineered 6000 years ago. Studies of genetic drift are consistent with a large diverse population of humans going back much farther than 6000 years.

Of course omnipotent beings can do anything including create the Earth and all of us on it last week with memories and fossil records et cetera. The question is what the evidence tells us is reasonable.

For humans to have been genetically engineered 6000 years ago there would have needed to be a very large initial group each genetically engineered to appear to be part of a genetically interbreeding evolving species. It is a another example of "we were created with the illusion of a past history carefully crafted to make it appear we evolved over millions of years".

You must look at the total amount of chromosome encoded information in the current human population and figure the minimum number of distinct individuals who could have contained all of it at a given time minus the amount of new material which could have been generated via mutations from then until now under reasonable circumstances. Especially consider just the mitochondrial DNA which provides a good metric of how far back you must go in a group of individuals to find a common maternal ancestor. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve"

It is just not reasonably possible that all living humans evolved from a small group as little as 6000 years ago.

Finally let me say that the only reason for such a "wacky" theory in my opinion is to support a pre-existent cherished non-scientific hypothesis (e.g. Biblical literalism) and it is not a theory formulated to explain some distinct new empirical data.

In general in society you are free to believe what you will. However you cannot label just any belief system as a "scientific theory".

Science has earned the authoritative respect it currently has by being very careful about what it does and does not address. You cannot borrow that authority (or attempt to undermine it) by recasting some theologically motivated hypothesis in "scientific" language and demand equal time in science class.

Teach creationism (more recently rephrased as "intelligent design") all you like in a philosophy class as one of many social beliefs important to people. But as Scarlet's Mammy might say:
"It just ain't science! It ain't scieNCE, it ain't SCIence!"

 

[Luke*]

Hmm, I still stand by my idea, I didnt understand some of what you said as some of the stuff there I don't even know the meaning, heh, but its just like why do people suddenly start coming together and writing reading building, and well I don't know. It confuses me when I think about it. There is a good point he says in his book though, the people that live in tribes around the world, supposedly are isolated from the world thus living in well the way they live, but isolated from what? Why havnt they discovered the wonders our kind has in the same span of time? Theyre evolving at the same rate they should of been where as humans suddenly started to well spurr out of control and well doing what we do. It should of took us millions of more years to learn what we have learnt. Iono, this is my theory anyway, feel free to laugh at it or mock ;]

Luke.

 

[jambaugh]

Sorry Luke,
I got on a soap box and didn't take your age into consideration.

Let me say it this way.

People believe all sorts of things.

When several people get together and try to work together there are some beliefs they will need to agree on because the belief is a necessary part of the work and there are some things on which they can agree to disagree.

Now where disagreements about "what is true" come up how can the group reach consensus? How do they decide what to accept as true? This is the branch of philosophy called Epistemology.

There are various Epistemological disciplines a group can choose.

They can elect a leader or the biggest toughest guy can slug it out and become the leader, however the leader is elected... when everyone accepts the leader's decision as to what is true then this is the epistemology of authority. The authority needn't be a living person but can be the author of an authoritative text.

Another form of epistemology is faith. Typically faith is a personal epistemology and cannot be used to build a consensus between random people. Rather people with a common faith will group together on such endeavors as their faith dictates (which is sometimes to try an annihilate those with different faiths when that is the moral choice dictated by their faith based belief).

Science is an epistemological discipline of repeatable empirical testing. In the issue of say how much support a building needs to withstand a hurricane, you can test the strength of building materials... and I mean literally "you" can if you don't trust what others tell you. You can measure the maximum wind speeds of hurricanes, you can calculate the forces acting on a building and you can come to a conclusion about how likely is it a building will be damaged.

But part of the strength of science is it only addresses issues which can be tested or which can be derived from testable hypotheses.

One testable fact is the rate at which mitochondrial DNA (mDNA) randomly mutates. (Mitochondrial DNA is the DNA outside the nucleus of the cell which is passed on only from the mother.) Siblings have almost exactly the same mDNA as their mother and their mother's mother, but for random mutations induced by background radiation, toxins, viral infection, copy errors during cell division, and other methods. You don't even need to know the exact mechanisms but simply measure the rate of change looking at the mDNA over many generations.

With that information you can compare the mDNA of two people and extrapolate how far back along the two persons have a common maternal ancestor. You can do the same for three or more people and in general calculate roughly how far back a given population would have to have descended from some smaller population size.

Figuring 6000 years is only 300 generations it is not very likely in the extreme that we evolved from a small population that recently. Remember that this mDNA doesn't get shuffled around during reproduction but is inherited totally from the mother. To genetically engineer the human race 6000 years ago would have required hundreds of thousands of separate individual genetic engineerings on hundreds of thousands of pre-humans who had previously evolved over millions of years. It just isn't a reasonable hypothesis. They wouldn't have had any reason to work on so broad a scale except to hid this bit of evidence I am suggesting here.

It must even go further than this as we do have good correspondence between mDNA drifts and various pre-historic migrations of humans.
http://www.dnai.org/text/mediashowcase/index2.html?id=250"

In fact one of the best bits of evidence I can imagine that we were genetically engineered recently would be that the mDNA evidence points to a common female ancestor to all humans some 300 generations ago.

Finally let me say that another scientific fact you can empirically confirm is that people tend to seek evidence which preserves their given beliefs rather than choose their beliefs based on evidence. Indeed it is a difficult phenomenon to excise from scientific investigations and careful discipline in the methods must be exercised to prevent bias. Consider the Pons and Fleishman debacle.

Take this and consider the "evidence" presented by those advocating this 6000 year ago external intervention. Look at their motivation and the scope of the evidence they consider. Is it a single argument made from a single phenomenon? If so then they are likely rationalizing a previously held belief rather than taking the evidence and drawing the most likely conclusion.

 

[jambaugh]

Oops, I beg your pardon again. I didn't actually read up on what Zecharia Sitchin claims w.r.t. genes. Rather he is claiming that a number of genes identified in humans (and other vertibrates) which we have in common with bacteria were "gifts from aliens".

As some of these are mitochondrial then the previous posts still apply. But each must be investigated separately to determine whether they were transferred to vertebrates from bacteria, from bacteria to vertebrates or simply evolved in both. It is a question of determining their function in both organisms. Its a bit early yet to draw conclusions.

But let me add that this fellow is generating theories in an attempt to actualize his interpretation of ancient Sumerian mythology (and sell books). Given much of his proclamations are physically impossible w.r.t. planetary collisions et al, and you should take this into account when considering others of his suppositions. I recommend you file him away in your "crackpot" category.