With all these fights over race, the real question, is it worth it?

What does the Bible say about race?

Any serious biblical study of race or ethnicity should start in Genesis 1. The Bible does not start off with the creation of a special or privileged race of people. When the first human being is created he is simply called adam, which is Hebrew for “humankind.” Adam and Eve are not Hebrews or Egyptians; they are neither White nor Black nor even Semitic. Their own particular ethnicity is not even mentioned, for the Bible seems to stress that they are the mother and father of all peoples of all ethnicities. Adam and Eve are presented as non-ethnic and non-national because they represent all people of all ethnicities.

Human Skin Color

Human skin color ranges from the darkest brown to the lightest hues. Differences in skin color among individuals is caused by variation in pigmentation, which is the result of genetics (inherited from one's biological parents), the exposure to the sun, or both. Differences across populations evolved through natural selection, because of differences in environment, and regulate the biochemical effects of ultraviolet radiation penetrating the skin.[1]

Was the original man white or of color?

Evolutionarily speaking, there never was a “first” human (either man or woman). In fact, as weird as that sounds, there never was a “first” of any species, and never will be. We only use the phrase “the first (insert whatever organism you want here)” to help us grasp on which recognizable species evolved when based on the different fossils found throughout geologic time. The reason being is that since evolution is such a fine and gradual process, every individual, of every generation, of every population, of every species, was, is, or will be an ever so imperceptibly slight modified version of whatever it’s parents were, are, or will be. This also means that the current generation can still interbreed with the most recent generation before it and inherent any mutations (either beneficial, detrimental, or neutral depending if those mutations help that next immediate generation survive in that particular environment(s)) from that previous generation.

Where were the earlies humans found?

Simple Thing on Race

First Peoples Out Of Africa

In western countries, nearly every imaginative painting of Adam and Eve depict two adult Caucasians with fair skin and blue eyes. These images, even used as Bible illustrations, tend to shape the reader’s mental image of the first man and woman. The Sunday-school origin of the dark races is often that they were descendants of Adam and Eve who had migrated to a hot climate where the suntan eventually became an inherited characteristic. These images and explanations discredit Christianity. The true explanation began to be resolved in 1913 when it was shown that human beings carry two genes for color and that each gene consists of “black” or “white” alleles. One allele was received from the mother and the other from the father. The allele is part of the gene, and the gene is part of the DNA – while the DNA resides in the nucleus of every cell in our body. Our skin color is caused by the pigment melanin, and this is controlled by two pairs of genes that geneticists refer to using the letter designations Aa and Bb, where the capital letter represents dominant genes and the small letters represent recessive genes. A and B, being dominant, produce melanin in good quantity while recessive a and b produce only a minor amount of melanin. Hence, our coloration depends upon the number of black and white alleles we received from our parents. The color genes express themselves in only one place – specialized skin cells called the melanocytes – that produce granules of melanin that are delivered to neighboring cells. Eve was made from Adam’s rib and was thus a clone of Adam [Genesis 2:21-22]. They would therefore have had identical genes for melanin production. If they were both AABB, they would have been Negroid and produced children of only the darkest of Negroid coloration. If this were the case, the world’s population today would be entirely Negro. In fact, only about 10% of the world’s population is Negro, so we can be certain that our first parents were not of the AABB combination. By the same argument, if Adam and Eve had both been aabb, all their children would have been aabb meaning that all their descendants would be the lightest Caucasoid possible – there would be no other colors. Clearly, this is not the case, so by a process of deduction we can conclude that Adam and Eve were heterozygous, each having two dominant and two recessive genes, AaBb. They would thus have been middle-brown in color and from them, in one generation, the various shades of brown would have been produced.


Evolution to Man

Early Britons

In 1903, the remains of a 10,000-year-old man were discovered in the Cheddar Gorge of Somerset, England. Dubbed the “Cheddar Man,” it remains the oldest almost complete skeleton ever found in Britain. Over the years, research has shown that he stood around five-foot-five, he was well-fed and he likely died in his early 20s. Now, as Paul Rincon of the BBC reports, genome analysis has revealed that Cheddar Man had dark brown skin and blue eyes—a discovery that adds to a growing body of research indicating that the evolution of human skin color was far more complex than previously believed.


Who Were the First Americans?

Some 12,000 years ago, a teenage girl took a walk in what’s now the Yucatan Peninsula and fell 190 feet into a deep pit, breaking her pelvis and likely killing her instantly. Over time, the pit—part of an elaborate limestone cave system—became a watery grave as the most recent ice age ended, glaciers melted and sea levels rose. In 2007, cave divers happened upon her remarkably preserved remains, which form the oldest, most complete and genetically intact human skeleton in the New World. Her bones, according to new research published in Science, hold the key to a question that has long plagued scientists.

Science Reshaping of Race

The divisions between races are doubtlessly blurred, but does this necessarily mean that race is a myth—a mere social construct and biologically meaningless? As with other race-related questions, the answer is multi-dimensional and may well depend on whom you ask.>/h3> In the biological and social sciences, the consensus is clear: race is a social construct, not a biological attribute. Today, scientists prefer to use the term “ancestry” to describe human diversity (Figure 3). “Ancestry” reflects the fact that human variations do have a connection to the geographical origins of our ancestors—with enough information about a person’s DNA, scientists can make a reasonable guess about their ancestry. However, unlike the term “race,” it focuses on understanding how a person’s history unfolded, not how they fit into one category and not another. In a clinical setting, for instance, scientists would say that diseases such as sickle-cell anemia and cystic fibrosis are common in those of “sub-Saharan African” or “Northern European” descent, respectively, rather than in those who are “black” or “white”.

The Color of Adam and Eve