Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

At last, a proposed answer re 98% human-chimpanzee similarity claim

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

From this comment (by Gordon Davisson, in response to this post):

In other words, I’m agreeing with Denyse here:

BUT claimed 98% similarity due to a common ancestor (a claim that hundreds of science writers regularly make, in support of common descent) *undermines anything else they have to say on the subject.*

I do not know how to put the matter more simply than this: A person who does not see the problem is not a credible source of information.

He responds:

…just disagreeing about which side is not credible. Take the 98% similarity figure as an example: one of the basic principles of science is that you must follow the evidence. If the evidence supports the 98% figure, and that conflicts with your intuition, then you either have to throw that intuition into the trash bin, or stop claiming to be doing science.

No. Absolutely not.

One should never discard intuitions formed from experience, especially about vast claims. Chimpanzees are so obviously unlike humans – in any way that matters – that claimed huge similarities only cast doubt on genetic science.

Genetic science is likely generally true but needs to be reformed and put in better, more realistic, less theory-laden hands.

In any event, today, vast corruption reigns in science findings. There is no reason to believe anything that contradicts carefully considered experience, simply because the claim appeared in a science journal.

Follow UD News at Twitter!

Comments
bornagain77, Looks like Aceofspades25 wimped out on you. Safer that way, I suppose. And I imagine it's not so fun when someone tells them that their prized "Norwegian Blue" parrot is dead rather than restin' or pinin' for the fjords---especially when it's not moving. ;-) -Q Querius
Well Aceofspades25, thanks for the link:
Jeff Tomkins response (1): I used the complete chimp and gorilla GULO genome sequences as queries against the human GULO region as a target database. This was all done on a local server and the human GULO database was constructed using the makeblastdb tool. I had to use optimized sequence slices to determine the similarity since the transposable element fragment differences, which are very large in this region as previously noted by several evolutionary authors, made the alignments highly discontinuous. In contrast, you did NOT do a one-to-one genomic regional comparison for the gulo region in human to the gulo region in chimpanzee. You also used human GULO as the query sequence and the entire chimp genome as the target database. Therefore, because you used the standard default web server blastn parameters, your alignment was chained across the entire chimp genome - which included partial sequence 'best' matches. ============== Jeff Tomkins response (2): No, basically you are wrong and you are merely pushing your evolutionary agenda and fake information in disregard of the scientific evidence. And you are misrepresenting my work with your imaginations. You invited me to download data which I already did and presented in a thorough peer-reviewed paper - and you didn't like it because it conflicted with your presuppositions. Well, I downloaded the data again for good measure and this time performed a MUSCLE alignment which shows the same thing I reported in my paper. You can access this data here. http://www.designed-dna.org/resources/human-chimp_gulo_muscle_alignment.png And more info here. http://www.designed-dna.org/blog-2/ http://www.reddit.com/r/NaturalTheology/comments/2625uu/my_first_reply_to_jeffrey_tomkins/
I will keep it for my notes. One more thing Ace, seeing as I, especially since I have caught Darwinists lying to me many times before in regards to the evidence, have no reason to trust you, whereas I have no reason to doubt Tomkins results, (seeing as he is more than qualified in this specific area of genetics), why in blue blazes do you think I should trust you, a Neo-Darwinist, now? Especially with the not too subtle invective, (any idiot, 3 year old), to which you try to defend your neo-Darwinian position? Since I'm not nearly as qualified as Tomkins to call your bluff in genetics, I'll make a deal with you Aceofspades25. I'm a practical man and trust experimental results much more than the chest thumping antics of a Darwinist on a blog. Thus I'll give you a chance to exonerate yourself, (and all other Darwinists), experimentally. Can you show me the lab work that refutes Dr. Behe's analysis of four decades of lab work? If so I will gladly admit that you have a scientific leg to stand on in the first place so as to make the grand claims that you do as to how life came to be on earth. Elsewise, if you fail to refute Dr. Behe, I will reasonably conclude that you are just desperately, by bluff and bluster, trying to defend your preferred atheistic worldview no matter what.
Four decades worth of lab work is surveyed here, and no evidence for neo-Darwinian evolution surfaces: “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain – Michael Behe – December 2010 Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain. http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/ Michael Behe talks about the preceding paper in this following podcast: Michael Behe: Challenging Darwin, One Peer-Reviewed Paper at a Time – December 2010 http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/player/web/2010-12-23T11_53_46-08_00
Thus, as far a empirical science is concerned, neo-Darwinian evolution is false. Feynmann sums the current situation up best for Darwinists in regards to experimental evidence:
The Scientific Method - Richard Feynman - video Quote: 'If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are who made the guess, or what his name is… If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL6-x0modwY
Verse and Music:
1 Thessalonians 5:21 Test all things; hold fast what is good. Good To Be Alive - Jason Gray http://myktis.com/songs/good-to-be-alive/
bornagain77
Dear BA77 Your hero Jeffrey Thomkins doesn't know what he is talking about. Please see the continued conversation I have had with him on Reddit after that thread was shut down preventing any further dialogue between myself and Jeffrey. http://www.reddit.com/r/NaturalTheology/comments/2625uu/my_first_reply_to_jeffrey_tomkins/ As any idiot can see, Jeffrey is plainly wrong. I have demonstrated this to him using analysis after analysis, showing all my workings and inviting him to duplicate my work. Frankly a three year old could count the number of differences between sequences so this isn't an "armchair analysis". Feel free to verify this for yourself, I assume you can count? My last reply to him was over a month ago now. He hasn't come back to me, nor has he printed a retraction. It seems he is content to allow blatant misinformation to persist in his pseudo-scientific papers. He hasn't done the honest thing by clearing up his mistakes. Thomkins is one of those "scientists" that expects to be taken seriously but clearly doesn't care about the truth enough to admit his mistakes and correct the people he has fooled into believing him. Aceofspades25
When theory trumps observation -- According to NOAA, "The last 12 months were the warmest 12 months ever recorded". Well, not exactly, 'recorded'. NOAA has begun adjusting the recorded temps upwards. So if actual data upsets theory, we simply adjust the data. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2012/06/13/doctored-data-not-u-s-temperatures-set-a-record-this-year/ leodp
Odd. PhD geneticist, Gene McCarthy, claims that many fertile animal hybrids are known, and that the evidence points to humans as actually hybrids of chimps and pigs. What's particularly interesting is the list of differences that he provides:
A list of traits distinguishing humans from other primates DERMAL FEATURES Naked skin (sparse pelage) Panniculus adiposus (layer of subcutaneous fat) Panniculus carnosus only in face and neck In "hairy skin" region: - Thick epidermis - Crisscrossing congenital lines on epidermis - Patterned epidermal-dermal junction Large content of elastic fiber in skin Thermoregulatory sweating Richly vascularized dermis Normal host for the human flea (Pulex irritans) Dermal melanocytes absent Melanocytes present in matrix of hair follicle Epidermal lipids contain triglycerides and free fatty acids FACIAL FEATURES Lightly pigmented eyes common Protruding, cartilaginous mucous nose Narrow eye opening Short, thick upper lip Philtrum/cleft lip Glabrous mucous membrane bordering lips Eyebrows Heavy eyelashes Earlobes FEATURES RELATING TO BIPEDALITY Short, dorsal spines on first six cervical vertebrae Seventh cervical vertebrae: - long dorsal spine - transverse foramens Fewer floating and more non-floating ribs More lumbar vertebrae Fewer sacral vertebrae More coccygeal vertebrae (long "tail bone") Centralized spine Short pelvis relative to body length Sides of pelvis turn forward Sharp lumbo-sacral promontory Massive gluteal muscles Curved sacrum with short dorsal spines Hind limbs longer than forelimbs Femur: - Condyles equal in size - Knock-kneed - Elliptical condyles - Deep intercondylar notch at lower end of femur - Deep patellar groove with high lateral lip - Crescent-shaped lateral meniscus with two tibial insertions Short malleolus medialis Talus suited strictly for extension and flexion of the foot Long calcaneus relative to foot (metatarsal) length Short digits (relative to chimpanzee) Terminal phalanges blunt (ungual tuberosities) Narrow pelvic outlet ORGANS Diverticulum at cardiac end of stomach Valves of Kerkring present in small intestines Mesenteric arterial arcades Multipyramidal kidneys Heart auricles level Tricuspid valve of heart Laryngeal sacs absent Vocal ligaments Prostate encircles urethra Bulbo-urethral glands present Os penis (baculum) absent. Hymen Absence of periodic sexual swellings in female Ischial callosities absent Nipples low on chest Bicornuate uterus (occasionally present in humans) Labia majora CRANIAL FEATURES Brain lobes: frontal and temporal prominent Thermoregulatory venous plexuses Well-developed system of emissary veins Enlarged nasal bones Divergent eyes (interior of orbit visible from side) Styloid process Large occipital condyles Primitive premolar Large, blunt-cusped (bunodont) molars Thick tooth enamel Helical chewing BEHAVIORAL/PHYSIOLOGICAL Nocturnal activity Particular about place of defecation Good swimmer, no fear of water Extended male copulation time Female orgasm Short menstrual cycle Snuggling Tears Alcoholism Terrestrialism (Non-arboreal) Able to exploit a wide range of environments and foods RARE OR ABSENT IN NONHUMAN PRIMATES: Heart attack Atherosclerosis Cancer (melanoma)
Wow, that supposed 1.4% difference in humans sure is busy. And isn't it interesting after all that evolution since the LCA, that one of the four primates is missing a baculum? But which one? -Q Querius
Arcatia_bogart:
All rational and sane people accept the fact that humans are closely related to other apes (and we are apes). The evidence is not only overwhelming, it is conclusive.
Humans are not apes and there is no scientific method of ascertaining that that humans are apes. No rational or sane person would accept as fact that humans are apes on the word of someone posting on a blog on the internet. Mung
HD, all the supposed 'evidence' for evolution is contrived and imaginary and falls apart on scrutiny. Moreover, there NO empirical, observational, evidence for evolution. Why Evolution Is Misunderstood - P.J. Levi - March 4, 2013 Excerpt: Consider the evolution of humans and chimps from a common ancestor, to which Coyne in his talk referred several times. Rather than offering evidence for such common ancestry, Coyne simply took it as a fact and then used it to support Darwinian selection. Yet the ubiquity of selection in creating these species makes little sense at the level of DNA -- the very level at which heritable change (evolution) occurs. By current estimates, the genomes of these two species differ by at least 300 million nucleotides. Given the premise that humans and chimps shared a common ancestor 6 million years ago, such a degree of divergence can only be accounted for by an average of 25 nucleotide changes per year in each line of descent. For Coyne's gradual version of the Darwinian mechanism to account for these differences, 25 new mutations would have to appear, conferring a reproductive advantage, and spread through each population every year. Yet even 25 advantageous substitutions per generation is unfathomable. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/03/why_evolution_i069771.html bornagain77
AB states: "All rational and sane people accept the fact that humans are closely related to other apes (and we are apes),,", actually, atheists are shown to be more irrational than Christian Theists,, Look Who's Irrational Now Excerpt: "What Americans Really Believe," a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178219865054585.html The Heretic - Who is Thomas Nagel and why are so many of his fellow academics condemning him? - March 25, 2013 Excerpt: Nobody thinks his daughter is just molecules in motion and nothing but; nobody thinks the Holocaust was evil, but only in a relative, provisional sense. A materialist who lived his life according to his professed convictions—understanding himself to have no moral agency at all, seeing his friends and enemies and family as genetically determined robots—wouldn’t just be a materialist: He’d be a psychopath. http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/heretic_707692.html?page=3 Moreover, this psychopathic characteristic inherent to the atheistic philosophy is born out empirically, in that people who do not believe in a soul tend to be more psychopathic than the majority of normal people in America who do believe in a soul. You can pick that psychopathic study of atheists around the 14:30 minute mark of this following video: Anthony Jack, Why Don’t Psychopaths Believe in Dualism? – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUmmObUi8Fq9g1Zcuzqbt0_g&feature=player_detailpage&v=XRGWe-61zOk#t=862s The atheists worldview is simply insane: Is Metaphysical Naturalism (Atheism) Viable? – William Lane Craig – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzS_CQnmoLQ bornagain77
AB states, 'Please don’t insult our intelligence',,, but alas, your materialistic worldview demands that all is just molecules in motion. Thus 'Intelligence' must be, as with consciousness, merely an illusion in your scheme of things. Thus how is it possible to insult a hallucination your molecules are having? :)
The Confidence of Jerry Coyne - January 6, 2014 Excerpt: But then halfway through this peroration, we have as an aside the confession that yes, okay, it’s quite possible given materialist premises that “our sense of self is a neuronal illusion.” At which point the entire edifice suddenly looks terribly wobbly — because who, exactly, is doing all of this forging and shaping and purpose-creating if Jerry Coyne, as I understand him (and I assume he understands himself) quite possibly does not actually exist at all? The theme of his argument is the crucial importance of human agency under eliminative materialism, but if under materialist premises the actual agent is quite possibly a fiction, then who exactly is this I who “reads” and “learns” and “teaches,” and why in the universe’s name should my illusory self believe Coyne’s bold proclamation that his illusory self’s purposes are somehow “real” and worthy of devotion and pursuit? (Let alone that they’re morally significant: But more on that below.) Prometheus cannot be at once unbound and unreal; the human will cannot be simultaneously triumphant and imaginary. http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/the-confidence-of-jerry-coyne/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 Physicalism and Reason - May 2013 Summary: So we find ourselves affirming two contradictory propositions: 1. Everything is governed by cause-and-effect. 2. Our brains can process and be changed by ground-consequent logical relationships. To achieve consistency, we must either deny that everything is governed by cause-and-effect, and open our worldviews to something beyond physicalism, or we must deny that our brains are influenced by ground-consequence reasoning, and abandon the idea that we are rational creatures. Ask yourself: are humans like falling dominoes, entirely subject to natural law, or may we stand up and walk in the direction that reason shows us? http://www.reasonsforgod.org/2012/09/physicalism-and-reason/ Do the New Atheists Own the Market on Reason? - On the terms of the New Atheists, the very concept of rationality becomes nonsensical - By R. Scott Smith, May 03, 2012 Excerpt: If atheistic evolution by NS were true, we'd be in a beginningless series of interpretations, without any knowledge. Yet, we do know many things. So, naturalism & atheistic evolution by NS are false -- non-physical essences exist. But, what's their best explanation? Being non-physical, it can't be evolution by NS. Plus, we use our experiences, form concepts and beliefs, and even modify or reject them. Yet, if we're just physical beings, how could we interact with and use these non-physical things? Perhaps we have non-physical souls too. In all, it seems likely the best explanation for these non-physical things is that there exists a Creator after all. http://www.patheos.com/Evangelical/Atheists-Own-the-Market-on-Reason-Scott-Smith-05-04-2012?offset=1&max=1
bornagain77
HD: ". So if there is evidence for evolution, can we deduce that man also evolved? And if man did evolve, how far fetched would it be that chimps and man share the same genes? Why is this so controversial?" It's not. All rational and sane people accept the fact that humans are closely related to other apes (and we are apes). The evidence is not only overwhelming, it is conclusive. Acartia_bogart
Ringo: " You do not know the difference between creationism and intelligent design?" There is no difference. One requires an intelligent creat called "god" and the other requires an intelligent creator called "god or some other name". Please don't insult our intelligence by claiming that there is a difference. Acartia_bogart
I am not a frequent commentator here, and I believe in God, but I want throw in my two cents regarding this comment: "One should never discard intuitions formed from experience, especially about vast claims. Chimpanzees are so obviously unlike humans – in any way that matters – that claimed huge similarities only cast doubt on genetic science." I do not believe experience is necessarily a good metric for what is false or true. We are often wrong on so many things based on intuition. Chimps and man is obviously different but nobody has claimed we are the same. We ARE different. But just because we are different - in the things that matter - says nothing regarding the genetic similarities. The whole evolution enterprise is not intuitive, but the evidence is overwhelming. So it's either we evolved or came out of nothing. Again, evolution is not intuitive to human beings, but its something we see has so much evidence behind it (and no, I am not arguing in favor or neo-darwinism). So if there is evidence for evolution, can we deduce that man also evolved? And if man did evolve, how far fetched would it be that chimps and man share the same genes? Why is this so controversial? HD
JLAfan2001 "If you are not a creationist then you must believe in darwinian evolution since that is the only science with evidence." There is one MAJOR problem with the above statement -- darwinian evolution doesn't fit the evidence that exists. What does one do with this itty bitty little fact. Moose Dr
Oh, and I forgot to mention the abrupt appearance of information, animals and there novel body plans in the fossil record! Again, the biblical account takes less faith! ringo
JLA, are you kidding me? You do not know the difference between creationism and intelligent design? Just do a google search! Your molecules to man evolution has no creating power and could not possibly account for even the first cell. Your starting points for the origin of the universe and the origin of life are doomed from the start! Natural Selection acting on random mutations can explain the "survival of the fittest", but not the arrival of fittest!! The biblical account at least can give us an intelligent designer or a higher power that can account for the arrival of the fittest! So, if your starting points are flawed from the very beginning then I will go with the biblical account before Darwinism any day my friend! ringo
JLAfan2001, perhaps you can also explain the epistemological failure inherent in naturalism? Alvin Plantinga has now shown that assuming naturalism as the driving force of Darwinian evolution is an epistemologically self-defeating assumption: Scientific Peer Review is in Trouble: From Medical Science to Darwinism - Mike Keas - October 10, 2012 Excerpt: Survival is all that matters on evolutionary naturalism. Our evolving brains are more likely to give us useful fictions that promote survival rather than the truth about reality. Thus evolutionary naturalism undermines all rationality (including confidence in science itself). Renown philosopher Alvin Plantinga has argued against naturalism in this way (summary of that argument is linked on the site:). Or, if your short on time and patience to grasp Plantinga's nuanced argument, see if you can digest this thought from evolutionary cognitive psychologist Steve Pinker, who baldly states: "Our brains are shaped for fitness, not for truth; sometimes the truth is adaptive, sometimes it is not." Steven Pinker, evolutionary cognitive psychologist, How the Mind Works (W.W. Norton, 1997), p. 305. http://blogs.christianpost.com/science-and-faith/scientific-peer-review-is-in-trouble-from-medical-science-to-darwinism-12421/ Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism by Alvin Plantinga – video https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL80CAECC36901BCEE “Refuting Naturalism by Citing our own Consciousness” Dr. Alvin Plantinga https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r34AIo-xBh8 Is Metaphysical Naturalism Viable? - William Lane Craig - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzS_CQnmoLQ List from Dr. Craig's video 1.) Argument from intentionality 1. If naturalism is true, I cannot think about anything. 2. I am thinking about naturalism. 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 2.) The argument from meaning 1. If naturalism is true, no sentence has any meaning. 2. Premise (1) has meaning. 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 3.) The argument from truth 1. If naturalism is true, there are no true sentences. 2. Premise (1) is true. 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 4.) The argument from moral blame and praise 1. If naturalism is true, I am not morally praiseworthy or blameworthy for any of my actions. 2. I am morally praiseworthy or blameworthy for some of my actions. 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 5.) Argument from freedom 1. If naturalism is true, I do not do anything freely. 2. I am free to agree or disagree with premise (1). 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 6.) The argument from purpose 1. If naturalism is true, I do not plan to do anything. 2. I (Dr. Craig) planned to come to tonight's debate. 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 7.) The argument from enduring 1. If naturalism is true, I do not endure for two moments of time. 2. I have been sitting here for more than a minute. 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 8.) The argument from personal existence 1. If naturalism is true, I do not exist. 2. I do exist! 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. bornagain77
JLAfan2001, since Atheism is so amicable to science and Christianity is so hostile towards it, perhaps you can explain to me why atheists are absent from the who's who lists of founders of modern science and Christians are at the base of each modern scientific discipline?
The Threat to the Scientific Method that Explains the Spate of Fraudulent Science Publications - Calvin Beisner | Jul 23, 2014 Excerpt: It is precisely because modern science has abandoned its foundations in the Biblical worldview (which holds, among other things, that a personal, rational God designed a rational universe to be understood and controlled by rational persons made in His image) and the Biblical ethic (which holds, among other things, that we are obligated to tell the truth even when it inconveniences us) that science is collapsing. As such diverse historians and philosophers of science as Alfred North Whitehead, Pierre Duhem, Loren Eiseley, Rodney Stark, and many others have observed, and as I pointed out in two of my talks at the Ninth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC), science—not an occasional flash of insight here and there, but a systematic, programmatic, ongoing way of studying and controlling the world—arose only once in history, and only in one place: medieval Europe, once known as “Christendom,” where that Biblical worldview reigned supreme. That is no accident. Science could not have arisen without that worldview. http://townhall.com/columnists/calvinbeisner/2014/07/23/the-threat-to-the-scientific-method-that-explains-the-spate-of-fraudulent-science-publications-n1865201/page/full Several other resources backing up this claim are available, such as Thomas Woods, Stanley Jaki, David Linberg, Edward Grant, J.L. Heilbron, and Christopher Dawson. Founders of Modern Science Who Believe in GOD - Tihomir Dimitrov - (pg. 222) http://www.academia.edu/2739607/Scientific_GOD_Journal Of 10 highest IQ's on earth, at least 8 are Theists, at least 6 are Christians - July 10, 2014 http://www.examiner.com/article/of-10-highest-iq-s-on-earth-at-least-8-are-theists-at-least-6-are-christians
Moreover, when the predictions of materialism/naturalism are compared side by side to the predictions of Theism, I'll take Theism any day!
God is not a “God of the gaps”, he is God of the whole show. John Lennox 1. Naturalism/Materialism predicted time-space energy-matter always existed. Whereas Theism predicted time-space energy-matter were created. Big Bang cosmology now strongly indicates that time-space energy-matter had a sudden creation event approximately 14 billion years ago. 2. Naturalism/Materialism predicted that the universe is a self sustaining system that is not dependent on anything else for its continued existence. Theism predicted that God upholds this universe in its continued existence. Breakthroughs in quantum mechanics reveal that this universe is dependent on a ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, cause for its continued existence. 3. Naturalism/Materialism predicted that consciousness is a ‘emergent property’ of material reality and thus should have no particularly special position within material reality. Theism predicts consciousness precedes material reality and therefore, on that presupposition, consciousness should have a ‘special’ position within material reality. Quantum Mechanics reveals that consciousness has a special, even a central, position within material reality. - 4. Naturalism/Materialism predicted the rate at which time passed was constant everywhere in the universe. Theism predicted God is eternal and is outside of time. – Special Relativity has shown that time, as we understand it, is relative and comes to a complete stop at the speed of light. (Psalm 90:4 – 2 Timothy 1:9) - 5. Naturalism/Materialism predicted the universe did not have life in mind and that life was ultimately an accident of time and chance. Theism predicted this universe was purposely created by God with man in mind. Scientists find the universe is exquisitely fine-tuned for carbon-based life to exist in this universe. Moreover it is found, when scrutinizing the details of chemistry, that not only is the universe fine-tuned for carbon based life, but is specifically fine-tuned for life like human life (M. Denton).- 6. Naturalism/Materialism predicted complex life in this universe should be fairly common. Theism predicted the earth is extremely unique in this universe. Statistical analysis of the hundreds of required parameters which enable complex organic life to be possible on earth gives strong indication the earth is extremely unique in this universe (Gonzalez). - 7. Naturalism/Materialism predicted it took a very long time for life to develop on earth. Theism predicted life to appear abruptly on earth after water appeared on earth (Genesis 1:10-11). Geo-chemical evidence from the oldest sedimentary rocks ever found on earth indicates that complex photo-synthetic life has existed on earth as long as water has been on the face of earth. - 8. Naturalism/Materialism predicted the first life to be relatively simple. Theism predicted that God is the source for all life on earth. The simplest life ever found on Earth is far more complex than any machine man has made through concerted effort. (Michael Denton PhD) - 9. Naturalism/Materialism predicted the gradual unfolding of life would (someday) be self-evident in the fossil record. Theism predicted complex and diverse animal life to appear abruptly in the seas in God’s fifth day of creation. The Cambrian Explosion shows a sudden appearance of many different and completely unique fossils within a very short “geologic resolution time” in the Cambrian seas. - 10. Naturalism/Materialism predicted there should be numerous transitional fossils found in the fossil record, Theism predicted sudden appearance and rapid diversity within different kinds found in the fossil record. Fossils are consistently characterized by sudden appearance of a group/kind in the fossil record(disparity), then rapid diversity within that group/kind, and then long term stability and even deterioration of variety within the overall group/kind, and within the specific species of the kind, over long periods of time. Of the few dozen or so fossils claimed as transitional, not one is uncontested as a true example of transition between major animal forms out of millions of collected fossils. - 11. Naturalism/Materialism predicted animal speciation should happen on a somewhat constant basis on earth. Theism predicted man was the last species created on earth – Man (our genus ‘modern homo’ as distinct from the highly controversial ‘early homo’) is the last generally accepted major fossil form to have suddenly appeared in the fossil record. (Tattersall; Luskin)– 12. Naturalism/Materialism predicted much of the DNA code was junk. Theism predicted we are fearfully and wonderfully made – ENCODE research into the DNA has revealed a “biological jungle deeper, denser, and more difficult to penetrate than anyone imagined.”. - 13. Naturalism/Materialism predicted a extremely beneficial and flexible mutation rate for DNA which was ultimately responsible for all the diversity and complexity of life we see on earth. Theism predicted only God created life on earth – The mutation rate to DNA is overwhelmingly detrimental. Detrimental to such a point that it is seriously questioned whether there are any truly beneficial, information building, mutations whatsoever. (M. Behe; JC Sanford) - 14. Naturalism/Materialism predicted morality is subjective and illusory. Theism predicted morality is objective and real. Morality is found to be deeply embedded in the genetic responses of humans. As well, morality is found to be deeply embedded in the structure of the universe. Embedded to the point of eliciting physiological responses in humans before humans become aware of the morally troubling situation and even prior to the event even happening. 15. Naturalism/Materialism predicted that we are merely our material bodies with no transcendent component to our being, and that we die when our material bodies die. Theism predicted that we have minds/souls that are transcendent of our bodies that live past the death of our material bodies. Transcendent, and ‘conserved’, (cannot be created or destroyed), ‘non-local’, (beyond space-time matter-energy), quantum entanglement/information, which is not reducible to matter-energy space-time, is now found in our material bodies on a massive scale.
As you can see when we remove the artificial imposition of the materialistic philosophy, from the scientific method, and look carefully at the predictions of both the materialistic philosophy and the Theistic philosophy, side by side, we find the scientific method is very good at pointing us in the direction of Theism as the true explanation. - In fact it is even very good at pointing us to Christianity:
General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Entropy & The Shroud Of Turin - (video) http://vimeo.com/34084462
bornagain77
The "humans are apes" is rooted in Victorian Era racism. Those Euro White guys believed the "savages" (Blacks) living in Africa were closer to apes than themselves. Darwin's influence has had a dreadful impact on humanity. Continues to this day. ppolish
The BLASTN analyses done in this paper were performed after stripping all N’s from the data set and sequence slicing the large contiguous sequence into optimized slice sizes – all done on a local server using optimized algorithm parameters. My data not only takes into account gaps, but sequences present in human and absent in chimp, and vice versa. Doing an amateur armchair analysis on the BLAST web server with default parameters never designed for a one-on-one large scale genomic regional comparison as noted in the comment above by aceofspades25 is bogus. Of course, if the paper was actually read in it’s entirety in regards to the above comments this would have been obvious. Also, as noted in several evolutionary papers, which I cited in my paper, the large scale comparison and major differences in structural variability surrounding the GULO regions between humans and great apes in the intronic areas has been noted before. Interesting that the misleading post by aceofspades25 did not make note of that. My paper was in fact accurate in all respects and true to previous findings published by evolutionist themselves. My work just hashed out and exposed what was already known, but never previously elaborated upon because it shows just another aspect of what a complete fraud the human evolution paradigm truly is. - Jeffrey Tomkins PhD Genetics https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/human-evolution/evolutionary-convergence-saves-creationist-hypothesis-over-gulo/#comment-500813 The Myth of 98% Genetic Similarity between Humans and Chimps – Jeffrey Tomkins PhD. – May 2014 – video https://vimeo.com/95287522 bornagain77
"And I am not a Creationist, but I do believe the Biblical account actually is more scientific than Darwinism!" If you are not a creationist then you must believe in darwinian evolution since that is the only science with evidence. That's interesting because in post # 75 it sounds like you don't believe in it. If you do then show me how evolution and the bible can be reconciled. In fact, show me where and how science supports genesis. A reminder, though, don't twist or allegorize the texts because anyone can plainly see the texts were meant to be read literally. The historical church read it that way until Darwin and Lyell proved it wrong. This is why Darwin gets a day named after him. He did what so many in history sought to do and failed. He killed god. JLAfan2001
Ringo: "And I am not a Creationist," So, if you are not a creationist, what are you? Acartia_bogart
JLA, the only reason I brought up the very first line of Genesis is because I found it rather humorous that your whole challenge was debunked within the first few words of Genesis!! God has a sense of humor! And I am not a Creationist, but I do believe the Biblical account actually is more scientific than Darwinism! JLA try to be a little more open minded. You have been spending way too much time on TALK ORIGINS! ringo
ringo This is really funny. I know that alot of christian apologists, especially willie craig, love to point out that the universe had a beginning as validation for the bible. What you guys leave out is how the rest of the creation text is all wrong. The bible gets one thing right and it's the word of god. My broken alarm clock MUST be divine because it's right twice a day. That's one more than the bible. “The purportedly overwhelming DNA evidence for a fusion event involving two primate chromosomes to form human chromosome 2 does not exist, even without the aid of new analyses”. What creationist babble site did you get this tripe from? JLAfan2001
Good points DRC! "The purportedly overwhelming DNA evidence for a fusion event involving two primate chromosomes to form human chromosome 2 does not exist, even without the aid of new analyses". And JLA, you need to look no further than the first few words in the book of Genesis to answer your challenge. I think it went something like, " their are many universes..." No wait that is not it, "The universe was all their ever was and all there ever will be..." Dang it wrong again (that was Carl Sagan) Hmm, ah yes, "In the beginning God...." "For the scientist who has lived by faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries." Robert Jastrow God and the Astronomers ringo
Aceofspades25 I would also like to propose a challenge. I believe JoeCoder has mentioned that you are a christian. My challenge to you and other christians here, after they fail your challenge, is to admit that the bible was wrong about our origins and can't be the word of god and therefore the christian god doesn't exist. I challenge christians to walk away from their faith after they realize we descended from ape like ancestors and were not special creations. Please answer this chalenge without having to distort, change or allegorize the genesis text like the clowns at BioLoonies do. JLAfan2001
Ace: Go ahead and do them all. As long as you use a fair definition of "% similarity", the values will be less than 98%.* Start with Chromosome Y. Oh, wait, that's right - you cherry-picked out 10% of the chromosome data right from the start. So your 98% is already shot, even using your suspect comparison technique of completely ignoring entire sections. Here - we did some of the work for you: Chromosome comparisons *Make sure you use a method that would not state that a book containing the first and last chapters of "War & Peace" is 100% identical to the entire novel. Thanks. drc466
Alright creationists, I would like to suggest a challenge: Pick 10 positions from the regions suggested below. For each of these 10 positions, make a prediction of how similar you think these sequences will be in Chimpanzees. For each of your chosen positions, I will personally go and retrieve 5000 nucleotides from either side. I will then take these 10 sets of 10,000 nucleotides and blast them against the chimpanzee genome to find the matching sequences and I will personally demonstrate a sequence similarity of about 98% Requests to compare regions around centromeres or defunct centromeres will be ignored since these are rich in Satellite DNA, meaning that multiple matches will likely be found. Here are the regions I invite you to choose positions from: Chromosome 1: 5 million - 240 million Chromosome 2: 5 million - 240 million Chromosome 3: 5 million - 190 million Chromosome 4: 5 million - 188 million Chromosome 5: 5 million - 170 million Chromosome 6: 5 million - 160 million Chromosome 7: 5 million - 150 million Chromosome 8: 5 million - 140 million Chromosome 9: 5 million - 130 million Chromosome 10: 5 million - 130 million Chromosome 11: 5 million - 130 million Chromosome 12: 5 million - 120 million Chromosome 13: 30 million - 110 million Chromosome 14: 20 million - 100 million Chromosome 15: 20 million - 100 million Chromosome 16: 5 million - 85 million Chromosome 17: 5 million - 80 million Chromosome 18: 5 million - 75 million Chromosome 19: 5 million - 55 million Chromosome 20: 5 million - 60 million Chromosome 21: 15 million - 45 million Chromosome 22: 20 million - 45 million Good luck with that. Aceofspades25
At one point in my indoctrinated past, I remember my high school biology teacher and my World History teacher showing the "accent of man" illustration as if paleontologist had found complete fossils and hard data to confirm the accent from an ape like creature to modern humans. I had no idea that this illustration was born out of pure speculation. I had no knowledge of how weak the evidence for human evolution was at the time. But, I do not blame them! They were only teaching what they were taught. There is more than one way to interpret this shoddy incomplete fossil record. ringo
1.) Only 1% of DNA is 98% identical from human to chimp. And within that 98% there is suspiciously no consensus as we know that epigenetic variants create divergence. Ergo, our genomes are more like 0.0098% identical. Of course, genome doesn't play that big a role. Physical structure is dictated by overall "membranome" of which the entirety of DNA comprises but a relatively small component. Subsequently, after formation of the animal, there are all of the divergent ways in which one acts, reacts, thinks and expresses oneself. 2.) In the panoply of possibilities we are more like chimps than a stone; but even that is a certain perspective. I know personality types who share more characteristics in common with vegetation than animals. 3.) And last but not least, who cares? Genetic similarity tells us jack nothing. There is no meaningful disease study applicable to the good of humanity which uses any of the primates. That is, chimps are so unlike us that we can study no physical, emotional or social disease in them and learn anything worthwhile. We use mice and rats... And humans. Can this awful, tired and worthless meme please go away? We are not like any animal in any meaningful way. jw777
One can deny Design by using the "It's only the Appearance of Design" gambit. But an "It's only the Appearance of Information" would be silly right? Even an "appearance of information" would still be genuine information it would seem. ppolish
"When Theory Trumps Observation" -- the result of decades of academic selective breeding. Similar to when NOAA recently began to revise actual temperature readings and replacing them with what they "should have been" based on predictions by climate models that predict global warming. Rather than falsifying the models, falsify the records. leodp
DNA contains intelligent information. (Intelligent information = language or mode designed to communicate instructions, order, and / or relationships.) Intelligent information cannot form or advance due to mindlessness. Now, after comparing human and chimp DNA – maybe we could compare the moon landing with flinging poo at one another… Heartlander
Rodw I know your intentions are good, and I'm aware of those papers bit here is the issue, and please go think about it. Nothing in any of those papers where they speculate, think about, conclude or propose, none of it can actually be tested. It is storytelling at a grand scale and the one thing humans love is a good story. You are welcome to be upset with me, call me closed minded if you must but I will remain skeptical of untestable claims and so should you..... Andre
There is an omission in all this back-and-forth that is so glaring that, well, I think everyone on both sides should be ashamed of him-or-herself. Namely, what do chimps think about being 98% similar to humans? Surely, being so closely similar to us, they must have some opinion on the matter, like we do. Now maybe they don't hold to their views so strongly as we hold ours, but how will we know if we never ask them? See what I mean by "glaring"? jstanley01
When Theory Trumps Observation: Responding to Charles Marshall's Review of Darwin's Doubt -Stephen C. Meyer - October 2, 2013 Excerpt: Developmental gene regulatory networks (dGRN) are control systems. A labile (flexible) dGRN would generate (uncontrolled) variable outputs, precisely the opposite of what a functional control system does. It is telling that although many evolutionary theorists (like Marshall) have speculated about early labile dGRNs, no one has ever described such a network in any functional detail -- and for good reason. No developing animal that biologists have observed exhibits the kind of labile developmental gene regulatory network that the evolution of new body plans requires. Indeed, Eric Davidson, when discussing hypothetical labile dGRNs, acknowledges that we are speculating "where no modern dGRN provides a model" since they "must have differed in fundamental respects from those now being unraveled in our laboratories."8 By ignoring this evidence, Marshall and other defenders of evolutionary theory reverse the epistemological priority of the historical scientific method as pioneered by Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin and others.9 Rather than treating our present experimentally based knowledge as the key to evaluating the plausibility of theories about the past, Marshall uses an evolutionary assumption about what must have happened in the past (transmutation) to justify disregarding experimental observations of what does, and does not, occur in biological systems. The requirements of evolutionary doctrine thus trump our observations about how nature and living organisms actually behave. What we know best from observation takes a back seat to prior beliefs about how life must have arisen. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/10/when_theory_tru077391.html Gene Regulation Differences Between Humans, Chimpanzees Very Complex – Oct. 17, 2013 Excerpt: Although humans and chimpanzees share,, similar genomes (70% per Tomkins), previous studies have shown that the species evolved major differences in mRNA expression levels.,,, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131017144632.htm Evolution by Splicing – Comparing gene transcripts from different species reveals surprising splicing diversity. – Ruth Williams – December 20, 2012 Excerpt: A major question in vertebrate evolutionary biology is “how do physical and behavioral differences arise if we have a very similar set of genes to that of the mouse, chicken, or frog?”,,, A commonly discussed mechanism was variable levels of gene expression, but both Blencowe and Chris Burge,,, found that gene expression is relatively conserved among species. On the other hand, the papers show that most alternative splicing events differ widely between even closely related species. “The alternative splicing patterns are very different even between humans and chimpanzees,” said Blencowe.,,, http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view%2FarticleNo%2F33782%2Ftitle%2FEvolution-by-Splicing%2F "Where (chimps and humans) really differ, and they differ by orders of magnitude, is in the genomic architecture outside the protein coding regions. They are vastly, vastly, different.,, The structural, the organization, the regulatory sequences, the hierarchy for how things are organized and used are vastly different between a chimpanzee and a human being in their genomes." Raymond Bohlin (per Richard Sternberg) - 9:29 minute mark of video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/8593991/ bornagain77
Andre You should only be dissppointed if you thought that a complete understanding of evolution in general or the evolution of humans and chimps in particular could fit in a paragraph or two. As for the speculation, some have given you concrete numbers from specific papers to back up a statement. In other cases the speculation is a very small step from things that have been observed over and over. I think your question on expression is a useful topic to explore but I think youre phase "pure dumb luck" is loaded. If I throw a ball of paper behind my head without looking and it lands in the waste-paper basket thats pure dumb luck. If a leaf falls off a tree in the forest and lands on another leaf in the exact same orientation thats not pure dumb luck. Changes in expression are mostly due to random mutations. Every popuation of organisms contains a huge amount of genetic variety. Genetic differences which occur in regions that directly or indirectly influence the expression of other genes will cause a change of expression. Many changes of expression will have no noticable effect. Others will lead to variation in traits that we're familiar with. Some will be slightly harmful but remain in the population, others will be more harmful and lead to disease which will likely be culled. This is not speculation. Its the result of thousands of scientific papers. When 2 identical populations become seperate and stop interbreeding they immediatly start accumulating differences. Many of these differences will be completely invisible. Others will cause changes to the appearance of the 2 populations in trivial ways. Other changes will cause selectable differences between the 2 population and this will cause more rapid change. Eventually this can lead to the production of 2 different species and the more time that elapes the more different they will appear. Epigenetics is not problematic for evolution. Quite the contrary. Decades ago people had more difficulty imagining how evolution in animals could ocurr when they assumed it was due to changes in proteins. Most proteins look pretty similar in different groups and most changes seem to be lethal. So it seemed unlikely that random changes to proteins could lead to recognizable changes. But random changes to regulatory regions are much more likely to lead to non-lethal changes in tissues, structures, organs or limbs etc that could accumulate and/or be selected for in evolution. Epigenetics just takes this one step further. Mutation dont just occur in regulatory regions. They can occur in regions that effect the regulatory regions epigeneticslly. This increases the posibility that a random mutation will lead to a non-harmful change in expression that could contribue to a change in the appearance of an organism RodW
Thank you for the responses gents, but I have to admit, I'm a bit disappointed, I see allot of, "I think", "could" and speculation..... nothing concrete, which brings me back to the point can you explain the differences in any concrete manner? Why is the expression different? Is it just by pure dumb luck? Lastly if you are a Darwinian please don't get too excited about epigenetics, if you understand what it means you will realize it does not support your view.... not by a long shot, in a nutshell it means information flow is two way, and that complicates matters even more for Darwinian evolution. Andre
Andre, Anthropic and Gordon, You guys are having an interesting conversation so I think I’ll crash it. To get at functional differences between the human and chimp genomes first consider proteins. About 1/3 of the proteins in human and chimp are identical and the other 2/3rds differ by only 1 or 2 amino acids – a difference of about 0.1 -0.2% overall. There are outliers though. Genes involved in the immune system and some genes involved in connecting cells to the extracellular matrix have more changes. We’d say they are fast evolving proteins but in the case of the ECM proteins that’s probably because the proteins are structural and can tolerate more change with no change in function. There are several hundred proteins that are unique to either chimp or human. In many cases this is because the gene was present in the common ancestor but lost in one lineage but not the other. An example of this would be the olfactory receptors. Most mammals (especially mice) have thousands of genes involved in olfaction ( smelling) Humans have lost most and many are present only as pseudogenes – hence our poor sense of smell. I’m sure many of these losses we share with chimp but I think its likely that there are a fair number of differences in the sets retained. I’m a bit skeptical of this but there seem to be a handful of proteins unique to either lineage that arose de novo from untranscribed regions. These would be random polypeptides that would be retained and have function. The authors who work on this claim there is good evidence for function in these orphan genes. I think the general consensus is that few of the interesting differences between chimps and humans are due to the above differences in proteins. Most have to do with changes in the expression of genes that humans and chimps share in common. I’ll consider an example: The foramen magnum (fm) is the hole at the bottom of the skull from which the spinal cord emerges. In humans it angles straight down- hence our upright posture, in chimps it angles back – more suitable for their knuckle-walking. There could be hundreds or thousands of genes involved in creating the fm. These could be genes involved in the timing and rate of growth of bone. They could be genes involved in transmission of reception of signals to coordinate activities between difference groups of cells….and there are other possibilities etc such as cell death. The important point is that its entirely possible that humans and chimps have an identical set of proteins making the fm and surrounding bone. The difference in placement is due to changes in the expression of the various genes controlling the process of growth. An overly simplistic example, by way of illustration would be a single nucleotide change in an enhancer which controls the expression of a gene involved in bone growth. I think its unlikely that 1 or 2 or 3 changes accounts for the change in the FM between humans and chimps. More likely its dozens of changes, each of which would have no effect in isolation but together lead to the change in morphology we see. RodW
wd400
Nothing in the paper suggest the tooth is from H. sapiens, and “related to” doesn’t mean “member of”.</blockquote. 'Suggests' is not the most precise term to use, but in any case ... They might not have stated it outright (we have to ignore the scientists' comments interpreting their own report?) doesn't this suggest that there is some likelihood (within Darwinian standards) that they are h. sapien ancestors?
There are three scenarios that might account for the morphological details in the Qesem teeth. The first one is of a local archaic Homo population occupying southwest Asia during the Middle Pleistocene, to which the Qesem specimens would be attributed. Perhaps relevant in this regard, the Qesem lithic assemblages studied to date indicate a local origin, with no evidence of African and or European cultural affinities (Barkai et al., 2005; Gopher et al., 2005; Barkai et al., 2009). Albeit the lack of other diagnostic Middle Pleistocene SW Asian teeth, considering the evidence in its entirety, we believe that the Qesem ‘‘package’’ is more Skhul/Qafzeh like, even if some of its features are plesiomorphous
Silver Asiatic
correction: whatever silly tricks you need to pull to get teh human-chimp similarity up to 99% There all better :) bornagain77
A related reading for all interested parties:
Very appropriate article. Thank you. jerry
Silver Asiatic, Nothing in the paper suggest the tooth is from H. sapiens, and "related to" doesn't mean "member of". Mahuna, The thing is, whatever silly tricks you need to pull to get teh human-chimp differenec down to 70% would also bring the human-[anything else] coparison down in the same way. There is now way to escape that (human-chimp) are the closest (and share many differences from other apes). anthropic, Read the UD threads from the time of Morans post -- you'll see most of the IDists finally came around to the mainstream position (after some fairly embarrassing mistakes and hold outs). wd400
/// you’ve already told us science has figured out the similarities, if the one is so easy why is the latter so hard? /// Epigenetics - a relatively new field is beginning to explain differences between species even when the genomes are very similar. Why is figuring out differences hard? Because genomes are regulated, switched on/off in many different ways. Even a subtle change in gene regulation can lead to vastly different outcomes. Evolve
Andre, //as an engineer I hold that the parts used (proteins) between humans and chimps need to be very similar because as carbon based life forms there would be some minimum requirement to allow for survival. /// Comparison of living things with engineered structures is wrong. Living things fall automatically into what's called a nested hierarchy, i.e a groups-within-groups arrangement. Imagine nested gift boxes. You open one large box to find a smaller box inside it. You open the second box to find another smaller box within it. And so on. That's how living things arrange. The most-related species fall inside the same group (box). But this group fits neatly inside a larger group (larger box). That larger group fits neatly inside an even larger group (an even larger box). And so on. For eg: humans and chimps are primates. All primates fall within a larger group called mammals. All mammals fit inside an even larger group called vertebrates. All vertebrates fit inside an even more large group called deuterostomes. All deuterostomes fall within a bigger group called animals. All animals fit inside a much bigger group called eukaryotes. Members of each group share unique features that are absent from those outside it. But at a more inclusive level, they also share some features with the larger groups in which they're enclosed. The degree of similarities decrease as you go outward from the smallest box to the largest. For eg: All mammals have hair - a unique feature absent in all other vertebrates. But mammals also share some features with the larger vertebrate group in which they're enclosed, a backbone for instance. This kind of nested arrangement is absent in human-designed/engineered objects. It's only found in naturally evolved things like living beings. As such, nested hierarchy provides strong support for a natural explanation of life as opposed to design. Evolve
Gordon Davisson @ 17, ///if you use my #4 method (where indels count proportional to their length, rather than as single differences), you get around 5% total difference (or 95% similarity)./// This is not right. Indels have to be counted as single differences since each insertion and deletion happen in one go - in one mutational event. For eg: If an insertion or deletion is 100 bases long, then it should not be counted as 100 mutations, but as 1 mutation. Evolve
#48 Gordon Thank you for the reply, yes I am more interested in the functional differences, as an engineer I hold that the parts used (proteins) between humans and chimps need to be very similar because as carbon based life forms there would be some minimum requirement to allow for survival. But let me ask you this, why don't you think about the problem a little more on why the functional differences are so difficult to understand. Just a word of caution please don't say that science is still figuring this out, because in the same breath you've already told us science has figured out the similarities, if the one is so easy why is the latter so hard? If you don't know the answer, I'll offer my assistance..... Story telling on similarities are easy....... Andre
A related reading for all interested parties: http://sites.bio.indiana.edu/~hahnlab/MediaFiles/GeneFamilies/Science_2007.pdf The word 'myth' again makes it to the header in relation to the evolutionary paradigm. Human/chimp overestimated similarity, junk DNA, what other myths shall we see 'thrown into the trash bin' in future? EugeneS
Gordon 48, thanks for the response to my question. It was quite sincere and I appreciate your effort. Right now we have dueling scenarios regarding this issue, with BA 77 citing very different study results than Moran got. I admit to being skeptical that primates can fix tens of millions of mutations in 6 million years, or even in the lifetime of the universe. However, I will look at Moran's analysis and I thank you for bringing it up. anthropic
footnote to the 'homology problem' for Darwinists: 'Convergent evolution' (i.e. homology in unexpected places) is found to be much more widespread than originally thought. Far more often than would be expected under the neo-Darwinian framework.
"Despite its complexity, C4 photosynthesis is one of the best examples of 'convergent evolution', having evolved more than 50 times in at least 18 plant families (Sage 2004; Conway Morris 2006)." http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/8/1909.full.pdf "The reason evolutionary biologists believe in "40 known independent eye evolutions" isn't because they've reconstructed those evolutionary pathways, but because eyes don't assume a treelike pattern on the famous Darwinian "tree of life." Darwinists are accordingly forced, again and again, to invoke convergent "independent" evolution of eyes to explain why eyes are distributed in such a non-tree-like fashion. This is hardly evidence against ID. In fact the appearance of eyes within widely disparate groups speaks eloquently of common design. Eyes are a problem, all right -- for Darwinism." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/03/its_a_shame_rea083441.html In fact, Simon Conway Morris has a website documenting hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of 'convergence': Map Of Life – Simon Conway Morris http://www.mapoflife.org/browse/ Simon Conway Morris: “Fossil evidence demands a radical rewriting of evolution.” – March 2012 Excerpt: “The idea is this: that convergence – the tendency of very different organisms to evolve similar solutions to biological problems – is not just part of evolution, but a driving force. To say this is an unconventional view would be something of an understatement.” https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/evolution/simon-conway-morris-fossil-evidence-demands-a-radical-rewriting-of-evolution/ Convergent evolution seen in hundreds of genes - Erika Check Hayden - 04 September 2013 Excerpt: “These results imply that convergent molecular evolution is much more widespread than previously recognized,” says molecular phylogeneticist Frédéric Delsuc at the The National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the University of Montpellier in France, who was not involved in the study. What is more, he adds, the genes involved are not just the few, obvious ones known to be directly involved in a trait but a broader array of genes that are involved in the same regulatory networks. http://www.nature.com/news/convergent-evolution-seen-in-hundreds-of-genes-1.13679 Same Old Darwinian Drivel - June 26, 2014 Excerpt: the six electric fish lineages, all of which 'evolved' independently, used essentially the same genes and developmental and cellular pathways to make an electric organ, https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/same-old-darwinian-drivel/#comment-505369
bornagain77
Davisson, regardless of Moran's back of the envelope calculation, (with highly questionable assumptions I might add), you have no empirical evidence that unambiguously beneficial mutations can fix in a metazoan population:
Experimental Evolution in Fruit Flies (35 years of trying to force fruit flies to evolve in the laboratory fails, spectacularly) - October 2010 Excerpt: "Despite decades of sustained selection in relatively small, sexually reproducing laboratory populations, selection did not lead to the fixation of newly arising unconditionally advantageous alleles.,,, "This research really upends the dominant paradigm about how species evolve," said ecology and evolutionary biology professor Anthony Long, the primary investigator. http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2010/10/07/experimental_evolution_in_fruit_flies Waiting Longer for Two Mutations - Michael J. Behe Excerpt: Citing malaria literature sources (White 2004) I had noted that the de novo appearance of chloroquine resistance in Plasmodium falciparum was an event of probability of 1 in 10^20. I then wrote that 'for humans to achieve a mutation like this by chance, we would have to wait 100 million times 10 million years' (1 quadrillion years)(Behe 2007) (because that is the extrapolated time that it would take to produce 10^20 humans). Durrett and Schmidt (2008, p. 1507) retort that my number ‘is 5 million times larger than the calculation we have just given’ using their model (which nonetheless "using their model" gives a prohibitively long waiting time of 216 million years). Their criticism compares apples to oranges. My figure of 10^20 is an empirical statistic from the literature; it is not, as their calculation is, a theoretical estimate from a population genetics model. http://www.discovery.org/a/9461
Moreover, Behe's 'Edge of Evolution' has now been vindicated in the lab;
podcast - Michael Behe: Vindication for 'The Edge of Evolution,' Pt. 2 http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2014-08-06T15_26_19-07_00
Nor do Darwinists have any empirical evidence that mutations can produce radical changes in basic morphology:
Response to John Wise - October 2010 Excerpt: A technique called "saturation mutagenesis"1,2 has been used to produce every possible developmental mutation in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster),3,4,5 roundworms (Caenorhabditis elegans),6,7 and zebrafish (Danio rerio),8,9,10 and the same technique is now being applied to mice (Mus musculus).11,12 None of the evidence from these and numerous other studies of developmental mutations supports the neo-Darwinian dogma that DNA mutations can lead to new organs or body plans--because none of the observed developmental mutations benefit the organism. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/10/response_to_john_wise038811.html
Thus, Neo-Darwinism, despite all the bluff and bluster from neo-Darwinists, is devoid of ANY substantiating evidence that changes to genotype can produces fundamentally new changes in phenotype:
The Fate of Darwinism: Evolution After the Modern Synthesis - David J. Depew and Bruce H. Weber - 2011 Excerpt: We trace the history of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, and of genetic Darwinism generally, with a view to showing why, even in its current versions, it can no longer serve as a general framework for evolutionary theory. The main reason is empirical. Genetical Darwinism cannot accommodate the role of development (and of genes in development) in many evolutionary processes.,,, http://www.springerlink.com/content/845x02v03g3t7002/ With a Startling Candor, Oxford Scientist Admits a Gaping Hole in Evolutionary Theory - November 2011 Excerpt: As of now, we have no good theory of how to read [genetic] networks, how to model them mathematically or how one network meshes with another; worse, we have no obvious experimental lines of investigation for studying these areas. There is a great deal for systems biology to do in order to produce a full explanation of how genotypes generate phenotypes,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/11/with_a_startling_candor_oxford052821.html Not Junk After All—Conclusion - August 29, 2013 Excerpt: Many scientists have pointed out that the relationship between the genome and the organism — the genotype-phenotype mapping — cannot be reduced to a genetic program encoded in DNA sequences. Atlan and Koppel wrote in 1990 that advances in artificial intelligence showed that cellular operations are not controlled by a linear sequence of instructions in DNA but by a “distributed multilayer network” [150]. According to Denton and his co-workers, protein folding appears to involve formal causes that transcend material mechanisms [151], and according to Sternberg this is even more evident at higher levels of the genotype-phenotype mapping [152]. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/junk-dna/open-mike-cornell-obi-conference-chapter-11-not-junk-after-all-conclusion/
bornagain77
JLA, first, refresh your familiarity with the WACs, and above: Common descent, even to universal degree is distinct from the design inference -- cf. Michael Behe's view and that of Wallace, co founder of modern evolutionary theory. But if you conflate that with UCD by blind chance and mechanical necessity you will conflate what should be separated. Beyond, blind chance and mechanical necessity cannot credibly account for FSCO/I, which is necessary for OOL, and origin of main body plans. The presence of FSCO/I is indicative of the only empirically warranted cause, design. KF kairosfocus
Heck, chimps aren't even closely related to chimps! Mung
The last I saw, the 98%, which I thought was only 95%, is now down around 70%. So humans are related to chimps the same way we're related to horses and dogs. There are many better explanations at this site on the specifics of the miscounting, but the analogy used is "Hamlet" is 95% the same as a modern English dictionary because most of the individual words (though none of the sentences or paragraphs) appear in the dictionary. The one I like is: Jellyfish are 98% water. Clouds are 98% water. Therefore jellyfish are closely related to clouds mahuna
#43 wd400 It appears that Discover Magazine was having a difficult time dealing with the implications that the scientists offered. The scientists apparently couldn't arrive at a conclusion that was consistent with their own paper - or perhaps not, it depends ...
The new paper documents the struggle of the scientists to figure out who the Qesem teeth belong to. In some ways, they seem more like Neanderthal teeth. In others, they seem more like the choppers of Homo sapiens, as represented by the Skhul/Qafzeh fossils. The authors tilt towards a relationship with Homo sapiens, but mostly because the teeth are “plesiomorphous.” ['Tilt toward', i.e. the scientists favored that explanation while Discover Magazine did not.] Ari Gopher, the lead author on the paper, about the hype (and the take-downs from me and Switek). The article is particularly useful for finally tracking down the source of all these articles: a press release from Tel Aviv University that claims that "evidence was discovered pointing to the existence of modern man (Homo sapiens) in Israel as early as 400,000 years ago." (The press release was only in Hebrew, so I'm relying on Nature's translation.) Gopher claims that he told all the reporters who called him to be very cautious, but didn't think the press release was incorrect. "We offer the most reasonable conclusion based on the statistical evidence: that they represent the same population as the Skhul and Qafzeh finds, thus pushing the date for that type of early man back to a much earlier time."
Scientist offers an interpretation of the data. That's the way it works. Evolution isn't exactly a precise science. Silver Asiatic
Anthropic, #22:
How long would it take for the mutations necessary to take place and become fixed in a primate population?
The observed divergence is about what we expect based on measured mutation rates and fossil-record-based estimates of how long ago the lineages diverged. Larry Moran did a quick summary of the math a few months ago ("Why are the human and chimpanzee/bonobo genomes so similar?") (which was then followed by a long discussion in which VJTorley and some others gradually got the hang of the neutral theory of evolution). Andre, #21:
Mark Frank & all skeptics alike I have a challenge for you….. Instead of explaining the similarities between humans and chimps, can you make the effort to explain the differences?
The project is well underway, but it's being led by scientists who're way more knowkedgable and competent than me (I won't speak for Mark). If you take a look at "Initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome and comparison with the human genome" (by The Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium, Nature 437, 69-87 ,1 September 2005), it has extensive coverage of both the mechanics of the changes (look at the "Genome evolution" section, and its subsections "Nucleotide divergence" [i.e. point mutations], "Insertions and deletions" [indels], "Transposable element insertions", and "Large-scale rearrangements"). (Note: you may find this and other technical articles on the subject rather dense and hard to read; they're really written for others working in or near the field, so they tend to assume a lot of background knowledge. The alternative, or course, is to read popularized summaries; but if you don't trust those to be accurate...) But you're probably more interested in functional changes than what happened at the DNA level, right? That's a much harder question for two reasons: it's very hard to figure out the effects of a given genetic change just from knowing the difference in DNA sequence, and that most of the changes are functionally neutral (making for a bit of a needle-in-haystack problem). As the "Initial sequence..." paper puts it:
The hardest such question is: what makes us human? The challenge lies in the fact that most evolutionary change is due to neutral drift. Adaptive changes comprise only a small minority of the total genetic variation between two species. As a result, the extent of phenotypic variation between organisms is not strictly related to the degree of sequence variation. For example, gross phenotypic variation between human and chimpanzee is much greater than between the mouse species Mus musculus and Mus spretus, although the sequence difference in the two cases is similar. On the other hand, dogs show considerable phenotypic variation despite having little overall sequence variation (~0.15%). Genomic comparison markedly narrows the search for the functionally important differences between species, but specific biological insights will be needed to sift the still-large list of candidates to separate adaptive changes from neutral background.
...which is not to say the problem is unassailable. Just in that paper alone, for example, they take several approaches to locating genes that've undergone positive selection (and therefore are expected to contain functionally significant changes). See the "Rapid evolution in individual genes" and the following sections, as well as, "Signatures of strong selective sweeps in recent human history". And of course, that's just one particular paper (and almost a decade old!). There's been far more work done on the subject since then, but I'm not familiar with it to give you a very good overview. But as usual in any active field of science, we know more than we did last year, and we'll know more still next year. Gordon Davisson
Embryology -
Icons of Evolution 10th Anniversary: Haeckel's Bogus Embryos - January 2011 - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAC807DAXzY Haeckel's Embryos - original fraudulent drawing http://www.darwinthenandnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Haeckels-Embryos-Cropped-II.jpg Actual Embryos - photos (Early compared to Intermediate and Late stages); http://www.ichthus.info/Evolution/PICS/Richardson-embryos.jpg There is no highly conserved embryonic stage in the vertebrates: - Richardson MK - 1997 Excerpt: Contrary to recent claims that all vertebrate embryos pass through a stage when they are the same size, we find a greater than 10-fold variation in greatest length at the tailbud stage. Our survey seriously undermines the credibility of Haeckel's drawings, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9278154 The mouse is not enough - February 2011 Excerpt: Richard Behringer, who studies mammalian embryogenesis at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas said, “There is no ‘correct’ system. Each species is unique and uses its own tailored mechanisms to achieve development. By only studying one species (eg, the mouse), naive scientists believe that it represents all mammals.” http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/57986/
Lab experiments –
Scant search for the Maker Excerpt: But where is the experimental evidence? None exists in the literature claiming that one species has been shown to evolve into another. Bacteria, the simplest form of independent life, are ideal for this kind of study, with generation times of 20 to 30 minutes, and populations achieved after 18 hours. But throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another, in spite of the fact that populations have been exposed to potent chemical and physical mutagens and that, uniquely, bacteria possess extrachromosomal, transmissible plasmids. Since there is no evidence for species changes between the simplest forms of unicellular life, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for evolution from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells, let alone throughout the whole array of higher multicellular organisms. - Alan H. Linton - emeritus professor of bacteriology, University of Bristol. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=159282 Where's the substantiating evidence for neo-Darwinism? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q-PBeQELzT4pkgxB2ZOxGxwv6ynOixfzqzsFlCJ9jrw/edit Peer-Reviewed Research Paper on Plant Biology Favorably Cites Intelligent Design and Challenges Darwinian Evolution - Casey Luskin December 29, 2010 Excerpt: Many of these researchers also raise the question (among others), why — even after inducing literally billions of induced mutations and (further) chromosome rearrangements — all the important mutation breeding programs have come to an end in the Western World instead of eliciting a revolution in plant breeding, either by successive rounds of selective “micromutations” (cumulative selection in the sense of the modern synthesis), or by “larger mutations” … and why the law of recurrent variation is endlessly corroborated by the almost infinite repetition of the spectra of mutant phenotypes in each and any new extensive mutagenesis experiment instead of regularly producing a range of new systematic species… (Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, “Mutagenesis in Physalis pubescens L. ssp. floridana: Some Further Research on Dollo’s Law and the Law of Recurrent Variation,” Floriculture and Ornamental Biotechnology Vol. 4 (Special Issue 1): 1-21 (December 2010).) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/12/peer-reviewed_research_paper_o042191.html podcast - Michael Behe: Vindication for 'The Edge of Evolution' http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2014-08-04T17_51_38-07_00
bornagain77
What would convince me that universal common descent was true? Easy, some way to objectively test the claim. A starting point would be to know what, exactly, makes an organism what it is. If it isn't the genome then changes to genomes cannot produce different types of organisms. ERVS? Nope they just look like they could be remnants of some viral infection. Chromosome fusion 2? IF it happened it happened in the human lineage and had nothing to do with common ancestry with chimps Biogeography – nope what does that have to do with universal common descent? DNA similarities – nope- common design Population genetics – nope- has nothing to do with universal common descent and relies on simplistic modelling Embryology – nope- doesn't help universal common descent seeing that you have to be able to account for embryonic development and you cannot Lab experiments – nope- they support baraminology Joe
fossil record -
Fossil record: Leading paleontologists on the true state of the fossil record: Excerpt: "A major problem in proving the theory has been the fossil record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth's geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin's hypothetical intermediate variants - instead species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created by God." Paleontologist, Mark Czarnecki "There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil record. In some ways, it has become almost unmanageably rich and discovery is outpacing integration. The fossil record nevertheless continues to be composed mainly of gaps." T. Neville George - Professor of paleontology - Glasgow University, "Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them." David Kitts - Paleontologist - D.B. Kitts, Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory (1974), p. 467. "The long-term stasis, following a geologically abrupt origin, of most fossil morphospecies, has always been recognized by professional paleontologists" – Stephen Jay Gould - Harvard etc.. etc.. etc.. https://docs.google.com/document/d/15dxL40Ff6kI2o6hs8SAbfNiGj1hEOE1QHhf1hQmT2Yg/edit
Fox Pr gene -
Richard Dawkins claimed that the FOXP2 gene was among ‘the most compelling evidences’ for establishing that humans evolved from monkeys, yet, as with all the other evidences offered from Darwinists, once the FOXP2 gene was critically analyzed it fell completely apart as proof for human evolution: Dawkins Best Evidence (FOXP2 gene) Refuted - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfFZ8lCn5uU In the following paper, even the Darwinists who authored the paper admit that the FOXP2 gene evidence is ‘tenuous’,, Human brain evolution: From gene discovery to phenotype discovery - Todd M. Preuss - February 2012 Excerpt: It is now clear that the genetic differences between humans and chimpanzees are far more extensive than previously thought; their genomes are not 98% or 99% identical.,,, ,,our understanding of the relationship between genetic changes and phenotypic changes is tenuous. This is true even for the most intensively studied gene, FOXP2,, In part, the difficulty of connecting genes to phenotypes reflects our generally poor knowledge of human phenotypic specializations, as well as the difficulty of interpreting the consequences of genetic changes in species that are not amenable to invasive research. http://www.pnas.org/content/109/suppl.1/10709.full.pdf As well, the primary piece of evidence, at the Dover trial, trying to establish chimp human ancestry from SNP (Single Nuecleotide Polymorphism) evidence was overturned: Dover Revisited: With Beta-Globin Pseudogene Now Found to Be Functional, an Icon of the “Junk DNA” Argument Bites the Dust - Casey Luskin - April 23, 2013 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/04/an_icon_of_the_071421.html
African origins -
"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla" ? Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man Yet contrary to what Darwin presupposed, it is found that the differences between individuals in a population are far greater than differences between populations: Genetic Similarities Within and Between Human Populations – 2007 Excerpt: The proportion of human genetic variation due to differences between populations is modest, and individuals from different populations can be genetically more similar than individuals from the same population. Yet sufficient genetic data can permit accurate classification of individuals into populations. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1893020/ Race in a Genetic World – May-June 2008 Excerpt: ,,85 percent occurs within geographically distinct groups, while 15 percent or less occurs between them. (Agassiz 1972) http://harvardmagazine.com/2008/05/race-in-a-genetic-world-html In fact, Africans are more genetically robust than Europeans, who have substantially reduced genetic diversity; "We found an enormous amount of diversity within and between the African populations, and we found much less diversity in non-African populations," Tishkoff told attendees today (Jan. 22) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Anaheim. "Only a small subset of the diversity in Africa is found in Europe and the Middle East, and an even narrower set is found in American Indians." Tishkoff; Andrew Clark, Penn State; Kenneth Kidd, Yale University; Giovanni Destro-Bisol, University "La Sapienza," Rome, and Himla Soodyall and Trefor Jenkins, WITS University, South Africa, looked at three locations on DNA samples from 13 to 18 populations in Africa and 30 to 45 populations in the remainder of the world.- New analysis provides fuller picture of human expansion from Africa - October 22, 2012 Excerpt: A new, comprehensive review of humans' anthropological and genetic records gives the most up-to-date story of the "Out of Africa" expansion that occurred about 45,000 to 60,000 years ago. This expansion, detailed by three Stanford geneticists, had a dramatic effect on human genetic diversity, which persists in present-day populations. As a small group of modern humans migrated out of Africa into Eurasia and the Americas, their genetic diversity was substantially reduced. http://phys.org/news/2012-10-analysis-fuller-picture-human-expansion.html
morphology -
The Types: A Persistent Structuralist Challenge to Darwinian Pan-Selectionism - Michael J. Denton - 2013 Excerpt: Cell form ,,,Karsenti comments that despite the attraction of the (genetic) blueprint model there are no “simple linear chains of causal events that link genes to phenotypes” [77: p. 255]. And wherever there is no simple linear causal chain linking genes with phenotypes,,,—at any level in the organic hierarchy, from cells to body plans—the resulting form is bound to be to a degree epigenetic and emergent, and cannot be inferred from even the most exhaustive analysis of the genes.,,, To this author’s knowledge, to date the form of no individual cell has been shown to be specified in detail in a genomic blueprint. As mentioned above, between genes and mature cell form there is a complex hierarchy of self-organization and emergent phenomena, rendering cell form profoundly epigenetic. http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2013.3/BIO-C.2013.3 Since neo-Darwinism (i.e. reductive materialism) cannot even explain morphology (i.e. body plans) in the first place, I guess JLAfan2001 meant homology instead of morphology. The following article & video shows why homology fails as evidence for common descent: Repeated acquisition and loss of complex body form characters: Cornelius Hunter - December 2011 Excerpt: In other words, morphological patterns in biology, including the pentadactyl structure, do not fit the common descent model. This has evolutionists doing mental gymnastics as limbs and other designs must come and go as needed to make sense of evolution. They are lost, then reevolved, then lost, then whatever. It is all just storytelling. 'per Darwin's God - Cornelius Hunter PhD. Investigating Evolution: Homology - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgXT9sU6y18
bornagain77
Chromosome Fusion 2 -
Refutation Of Chromosome 2 argument for common ancestry and Vitamin C pseudogene - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1enllGchcY4Thz0xWFG8Rj8Y0bddOcBdIzKeoY1XxSqs/edit
Biogeography -
Here is how evolutionists avoid falsification from the biogeographical data of finding numerous and highly similar species in widely separated locations: More Biogeographical Conundrums for Neo-Darwinism – March 2010 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/03/sea_monkeys_are_the_tip_of_the032471.html The Case of the Mysterious Hoatzin: Biogeography Fails Neo-Darwinism Again – Casey Luskin – November 5, 2011 Excerpt: If two similar species separated by thousands of kilometers across oceans cannot challenge common descent, what biogeographical data can? The way evolutionists treat it, there is virtually no biogeographical data that can challenge common descent even in principle. If that’s the case, then how can biogeography be said to support common descent in the first place? http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/11/the_case_of_the_mysterious_hoa052571.html As Evidence of Darwinian Evolution, Biogeography Falls Well Short of Satisfying - Jonathan M. - December 6, 2012 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/12/as_evidence_of5067151.html
DNA similarities -
Logged Out - Scientists Can't Find Darwin's "Tree of Life" Anywhere in Nature by Casey Luskin - Winter 2013 Excerpt: the (fossil) record shows that major groups of animals appeared abruptly, without direct evolutionary precursors. Because biogeography and fossils have failed to bolster common descent, many evolutionary scientists have turned to molecules—the nucleotide and amino acid sequences of genes and proteins—to establish a phylogenetic tree of life showing the evolutionary relationships between all living organisms.,,, Many papers have noted the prevalence of contradictory molecule-based phylogenetic trees. For instance: • A 1998 paper in Genome Research observed that "different proteins generate different phylogenetic tree[s]."6 • A 2009 paper in Trends in Ecology and Evolution acknowledged that "evolutionary trees from different genes often have conflicting branching patterns."7 • A 2013 paper in Trends in Genetics reported that "the more we learn about genomes the less tree-like we find their evolutionary history to be."8 Perhaps the most candid discussion of the problem came in a 2009 review article in New Scientist titled "Why Darwin Was Wrong about the Tree of Life."9 The author quoted researcher Eric Bapteste explaining that "the holy grail was to build a tree of life," but "today that project lies in tatters, torn to pieces by an onslaught of negative evidence." According to the article, "many biologists now argue that the tree concept is obsolete and needs to be discarded.",,, Syvanen succinctly summarized the problem: "We've just annihilated the tree of life. It's not a tree any more, it's a different topology entirely. What would Darwin have made of that?" ,,, "battles between molecules and morphology are being fought across the entire tree of life," leaving readers with a stark assessment: "Evolutionary trees constructed by studying biological molecules often don't resemble those drawn up from morphology."10,,, A 2012 paper noted that "phylogenetic conflict is common, and [is] frequently the norm rather than the exception," since "incongruence between phylogenies derived from morphological versus molecular analyses, and between trees based on different subsets of molecular sequences has become pervasive as datasets have expanded rapidly in both characters and species."12,,, http://www.salvomag.com/new/articles/salvo27/logged-out.php
Population genetics -
Using Numerical Simulation to Test the Validity of Neo-Darwinian Theory - 2008 Abstract: Evolutionary genetic theory has a series of apparent “fatal flaws” which are well known to population geneticists, but which have not been effectively communicated to other scientists or the public. These fatal flaws have been recognized by leaders in the field for many decades—based upon logic and mathematical formulations. However population geneticists have generally been very reluctant to openly acknowledge these theoretical problems, and a cloud of confusion has come to surround each issue. Numerical simulation provides a definitive tool for empirically testing the reality of these fatal flaws and can resolve the confusion. The program Mendel’s Accountant (Mendel) was developed for this purpose, and it is the first biologically-realistic forward-time population genetics numerical simulation program. This new program is a powerful research and teaching tool. When any reasonable set of biological parameters are used, Mendel provides overwhelming empirical evidence that all of the “fatal flaws” inherent in evolutionary genetic theory are real. This leaves evolutionary genetic theory effectively falsified—with a degree of certainty which should satisfy any reasonable and open-minded person. http://www.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/Using-Numerical-Simulation-to-Test-the-Validity-of-Neo-Darwinian-Theory.pdf Calling all Darwinists, where is your best population genetics simulation? - September 12, 2013 Excerpt: So Darwinists, what is your software, and what are your results? I’d think if evolutionary theory is so scientific, it shouldn’t be the creationists making these simulations, but evolutionary biologists! So what is your software, what are your figures, and what are your parameters. And please don’t cite Nunney, who claims to have solved Haldane’s dilemma but refuses to let his software and assumptions and procedures be scrutinized in the public domain. At least Hey was more forthright, but unfortunately Hey’s software affirmed the results of Mendel’s accountant. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/evolution/icc-2013-calling-all-darwinists-where-is-youre-best-population-genetics-simulation/ Using Numerical Simulation to Better Understand Fixation Rates, and Establishment of a New Principle - "Haldane's Ratchet" - Christopher L. Rupe and John C. Sanford - 2013 Excerpt: We then perform large-scale experiments to examine the feasibility of the ape-to-man scenario over a six million year period. We analyze neutral and beneficial fixations separately (realistic rates of deleterious mutations could not be studied in deep time due to extinction). Using realistic parameter settings we only observe a few hundred selection-induced beneficial fixations after 300,000 generations (6 million years). Even when using highly optimal parameter settings (i.e., favorable for fixation of beneficials), we only see a few thousand selection-induced fixations. This is significant because the ape-to-man scenario requires tens of millions of selective nucleotide substitutions in the human lineage. Our empirically-determined rates of beneficial fixation are in general agreement with the fixation rate estimates derived by Haldane and ReMine using their mathematical analyses. We have therefore independently demonstrated that the findings of Haldane and ReMine are for the most part correct, and that the fundamental evolutionary problem historically known as "Haldane's Dilemma" is very real. Previous analyses have focused exclusively on beneficial mutations. When deleterious mutations were included in our simulations, using a realistic ratio of beneficial to deleterious mutation rate, deleterious fixations vastly outnumbered beneficial fixations. Because of this, the net effect of mutation fixation should clearly create a ratchet-type mechanism which should cause continuous loss of information and decline in the size of the functional genome. We name this phenomenon "Haldane's Ratchet". http://media.wix.com/ugd/a704d4_47bcf08eda0e4926a44a8ac9cbfa9c20.pdf
bornagain77
Silver Asiatic, Don't rely on the Daily Mail for science reporting: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/12/29/oldest-homo-sapiens-fossil-journalistic-vaporware/ wd400
JLAfan2001 list some examples which he believes nails the case down for common ancestry. Let's look at the failings of each and see how they fail to support common ancestry: ERVs –
The definitive response on ERV’s and Creation, with Dr. Jean Lightner http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feHYEgzaGkY Refutation Of Endogenous Retrovirus - ERVs - Richard Sternberg, PhD Evolutionary Biology - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrEOe2E0Euc Sternberg, R. v. & J. A. Shapiro (2005). How repeated retroelements format genome function. Cytogenet. Genome Res. 110: 108-116. Endogenous retroviruses regulate periimplantation placental growth and differentiation - 2006 http://www.pnas.org/content/103/39/14390.abstract. Retrovirus in the Human Genome Is Active in Pluripotent Stem Cells - Jan. 23, 2013 Excerpt: "What we've observed is that a group of endogenous retroviruses called HERV-H is extremely busy in human embryonic stem cells," said Jeremy Luban, MD, the David L. Freelander Memorial Professor in HIV/AIDS Research, professor of molecular medicine and lead author of the study. "In fact, HERV-H is one of the most abundantly expressed genes in pluripotent stem cells and it isn't found in any other cell types. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130123133930.htm Transposable Elements Reveal a Stem Cell Specific Class of Long Noncoding RNAs - (Nov. 26, 2012) Excerpt: The study published by Rinn and Kelley finds a striking affinity for a class of hopping genes known as endogenous retroviruses, or ERVs, to land in lincRNAs. The study finds that ERVs are not only enriched in lincRNAs, but also often sit at the start of the gene in an orientation to promote transcription. Perhaps more intriguingly, lincRNAs containing an ERV family known as HERVH correlated with expression in stem cells relative to dozens of other tested tissues and cells. According to Rinn, "This strongly suggests that ERV transposition in the genome may have given rise to stem cell-specific lincRNAs. The observation that HERVHs landed at the start of dozens of lincRNAs was almost chilling; that this appears to impart a stem cell-specific expression pattern was simply stunning!" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121125192838.htm Retroviruses and Common Descent: And Why I Don’t Buy It - September 2011 Excerpt: If it is the case, as has been suggested by some, that these HERVs are an integral part of the functional genome, then one might expect to discover species-specific commonality and discontinuity. And this is indeed the case. per Uncommon Descent - there are many studies suggesting non-random and preferential positioning of retrovirus sequences. This kind of data refutes the claims of re-used ERV sites having to be an ‘amazing coincidence’ if not by common descent. Perpetually mobile footprints of ancient infections in human genome http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014579398004785 Although not available for HERVs at this point, the results for other retroelements demonstrate that transcriptionally active genome regions might be preferred targets for retrovirus integration and that the site selection during retroposition can be influenced by many factors A good example of retroelement–host interaction gives the study of de novo insertions of Ty1 and Ty3 yeast retrotransposons that are analogues of endogenous retroviruses. Most of the integration sites were found clustered upstream of the genes transcribed by RNA polymerase III. There were identified `hot spots’ containing integration sites used up to 280 times more frequently than predicted mathematically. A recent study of the de novo retroviral integration demonstrated also preference for scaffold- or matrix-attachment regions (S/MARs) flanked by DNA with high bending potential. Integration specificity of the hobo element of Drosophila melanogaster is dependent on sequences flanking the integration site http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1003712619487 We analyzed the integration specificity of the hobo transposable element of Drosophila melanogaster. Our results indicate that hobo is similar to other transposable elements in that it can integrate into a large number of sites, but that some sites are preferred over others, with a few sites acting as integration hot spots. Large-scale discovery of insertion hotspots and preferential integration sites of human transposed elements http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/content/38/5/1515.full We first discovered that most TEs insert within specific ‘hotspots’ along the targeted TE… Finally, we performed a global assessment to determine the extent to which young TEs tend to nest within older transposed elements and identified a 4-fold higher tendency of TEs to insert into existing TEs than to insert within non-TE intergenic regions. Our analysis demonstrates that TEs are highly biased to insert within certain TEs, in specific orientations and within specific targeted TE positions. TE nesting events also reveal new characteristics of the molecular mechanisms underlying transposition. Retroviral DNA Integration: ASLV, HIV, and MLV Show Distinct Target Site Preferences - per plos - Chromosomal regions rich in expressed genes were favored for HIV integration, but these regions were found to be interleaved with unfavorable regions at CpG islands. MLV vectors showed a strong bias in favor of integration near transcription start sites, as reported previously. ASLV vectors showed only a weak preference for active genes and no preference for transcription start regions. Thus, each of the three retroviruses studied showed unique integration site preferences, suggesting that virus-specific binding of integration complexes to chromatin features likely guides site selection. ERVs are known to have highly targeted insertion points, even in different species, in separate infections. - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv0Qj7mAW10 Integration of retroviral vectors - 2012 per science direct Several members of the retrovirus family show distinct pattern for preferential integration into the host genome.
bornagain77
African origins – nope
Recently, discoveries of early human remains in China and Spain have cast doubt on the 'Out of Africa' theory, but no-one was certain. The findings of Professor Avi Gopher and Dr Ran Barkai of the Institute of Archeology at Tel Aviv University, published last week in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, suggest that modern man did not originate in Africa as previously believed, but in the Middle East. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1341973/Did-humans-come-Middle-East-Africa-Scientists-forced-write-evolution-modern-man.html#ixzz39duInQIJ "From the most recent data, it is now accepted that anthropoids originated in Asia," said Jean-Jacques Jaeger, a paleontologist at France's University of Montpellier, who wrote an accompanying commentary in Science. "But when did they immigrate into Africa?" Jaeger said. "This is still a point of hectic debate." http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/10/1017_051017_egyptprimates_2.html Silver Asiatic
What would convince some at UD that common ancestry is the best explaination for what we observe? ERVs - nope Chromosome Fusion 2 - nope Biogeography - nope DNA similarities - nope Population genetics - nope fossil record - nope Fox Pr gene - nope African origins - nope morphology - nope Embryology - nope Lab experiments - nope What convinces some at UD that creation is the best explaination? Bible - yes That is all. JLAfan2001
Neandethal & Erectus are Hominids that walked the Earth along with Sapien. All three diverged from "Great Apes" long ago. Not great apes themselves if you "split" instead of "lump" Our nearest cousins went extinct not that long ago. Chimps are cool and all, but understanding our Homo cousins and the nature of their demise is much more important/interesting. I did not see the recent "Rise of Planet of the Apes" movie. How did Hollywood turn Apes into Hominids? Radioactivity? Experiment gone haywire? Evolution? ppolish
One of the greatest examples of intuition leading people astray is natural selection. It is so simple and so obvious that it has to be true. We have numerous examples of people here right now on this thread who believe it explains evolution. Nearly everyone in the general public nods their head in agreement when it is explained. The only problem is that it isn't true in the sense that it has never led to anything meaningful. So we have living breathing examples in our midst who have been led astray by their intuition. jerry
Mr. Frank had a mistaken impression re chimps & humans, true. But all of us make mistakes or have gaps in our knowledge, so I don't see the point in beating up on him. And I think he is correct in observing that our intuitions sometimes lead us astray. If scientific observation contradicts our intuition, that does not necessarily mean our intuition is wrong -- science gets things wrong, too -- but at least we should consider the evidence. anthropic
The title of this science-based and really interesting and informative article by the title of 'How Related to Chimps are we Really?' link http://diggingupthefuture.com/2014/08/02/how-related-to-chimps-are-we-really/ I believe says it all. I have read most of the above comments with great interest and people have posted great links and references and ideas about this whole issue, I think this article will help move the discussion on a great deal. cosmicrabbit
Mark Frank is just upset because most of his claims atre unscientific nonsense. Joe
Mark Frank, you were corrected of your fallacious claim in 23 by me at 25.,,, An apology for being wrong in your claim, and a thanks for being corrected, would be the normal response from someone who was genuinely interested in the truth of a matter. Why is it that you don't react normally??? bornagain77
Frank counts on his readers not to know (or notice, especially if they were educated in an entirely unjustified sense of  intellectual superiority) one thing:  Prior to the development of calculations and instruments over the past half millennium, there was no way of determining the relations between sun and Earth accurately.
My you are getting worked up about this one. Please don’t make assumptions about my motives. I wasn’t counting on anything. I was simply pointing out that this piece of advice
One should never discard intuitions formed from experience, especially about vast claims.
is wrong.  I happened to refer to the intuition about the Sun going round the earth. In the comment above Gordan made the same point and listed many other examples which demonstrated that intuitions are often wrong. You differentiate the 98% similarity case from my example (and presumably the others) on the grounds:
Not only isn’t it true but no information is likely to arise anywhere that will show that it is true. Because all observation is against it, not for it.
I am sure many people said similar things about numerous other things that were assumed to be intuitively obvious e.g. that the angles of a triangle always add up to 180 degrees, that a heavy object falls faster than a light object, that if two events happen at the same time that is an objective fact independent of who is observing it and so on. What you are doing is tantamount to repeating “I am right because it is obvious”. As it happens the specific statement you found intuitively obviously false was a very poor candidate. It was not “are chimpanzees are very similar to men” but “the 98% similarity figure” which is a measure of genetic similarity not overall similarity.  To say that “no information is likely to arise anywhere that will show that it is true” and “all observation is against it, not for it” is just amazing.  Genetics is hard and not at all easy to observe.  Mark Frank
@AB
Bull mastiffs and Chihuahuas have much greater phenotypic differences than humans and chimps but, genetically, they are essentially identical. But I haven’t heard anybody disputing their genetic similarity. That is only because their genetic similarity does not call into question anyone’s religious beliefs.
You know how species work, right? Your false analogy suggests you don't. How many chimp/human mating-fests end up in viable offspring, Bogart? Though I enjoyed your arrogant ad hominem at the end there, punctuating such a sophomoric argument. It really displays your vainglorious character. TSErik
Here is a comment I made a couple months ago about the differences between the chimp and human genomes. It is mainly about a review of chimp and human genomes in terms of control mechanisms.
The most interesting thing about the Meyer book was his emphasis in the latter part of the book on this non-genomic control of development. There may be a hunt for structure of the information for this as there was for DNA 60 years ago. And when they find it, the form may be so strange that it will be hard to interpret. When they found DNA they already had primitive digital codes to relate it to. Who knows what the structure will be that controls development and how it varies from species to species. John Garvey has on his site a discussion about what makes human unique. It primarily references a paper by a population geneticist David Wilcox. Here is the Wilcox paper http://www.asa3.org/ASA/meetings/belmont2013/papers/ASA2013Wilcox.pdf One of the things it says is that the regulatory nature in the human genome is extremely more complex than the next species. Here is a quote:
What shall we say about the genes which make us human? We and chimps share 96% to 99% of our protein coding sequences. Why are we different? Not the 1.5% of our genome that codes for proteins but the 98.5% that controls their production. Literally, no other primate lineage has evolved as fast as our lineage has during the last 1.5 million years, and it’s all due to unique changes in our control genome. At least 80% probably more of our “non-coding” genome is also transcribed, starting from multiple start points, transcribed in both directions, with overlapping reading frames of many sizes and a whole spectrum of alterations, producing a whole zoo of ‘new’ types of RNA control elements – piRNA,siRNA, miRNA,sdRNA, xiRNA, moRNA, snoRNA, MYS-RNA, crasiRNA, TEL-sRNA, PARs, and lncRNA. Most of these unique RNA transcripts – and there are thousands, if not millions of them – are uniquely active in developing human neural tissue – uniquely active compared to their activity in chimpanzees, much less other primates or mammals. It is the new epigenetic world
We are only a short way there to understanding what is happening. And all this appeared by chance?
So look to other things besides the coding sequences. We may have the same building blocks but how are they assembled is the real issue. jerry
hi joe. actually there is no such a tree even among chimp-human-orange: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/090623-humans-chimps-related.html mk
I provided a reference that states the two genomes are only 70% similar. This was after both genomes were sequenced and compared side by side. See comment 16. OK so Gordon's claim of a nested hierarchy is refuted. There isn't any evidence that organisms are a sum of their genome so genetic similarity is meaningless. Not only that the chimp genome is not as similar as once thought. It may be only 70% similar. And given the mutation rates there just isn't enough time to account for that big of a difference anyway. As for intuition- it is only a biased intuition which says humans and chimps share a common ancestor. Joe
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. -Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride. humbled
BA77 #25:
One difference in sexual reproduction of chimps and humans is that human males are ‘hydraulic’ in their arousal and chimp males are ‘mechanical’ in their arousal,,, i.e. male chimps have an actual bone to achieve erection. Needless to say, giving a step by step account of the transition from mechanical to hydraulic reproduction, whilst maintaining reproduction all the time, is an extremely difficult task to imagine.
The fact that humans share 50% of their DNA with bananas may shed some light on this problem. Box
The novel War and Peace may share 98% of its ‘words’ with a pocket Dictionary. What should we conclude? Heartlander
Mark Frank you state @ 22:
I am not a developmental biologist but I guess the differences between man and chimp are mainly down to faster development of the brain in infancy.
And in that 'guess' you would be completely wrong. First off, the 99% similarity figure was derived by a method that produced biased sampling:
Geneticist Jeff Tomkins vs. Evolutionary Biologist who got laughed off stage - August 12, 2013 Excerpt: Tomkins described the origin of the fallacious comparison as a myth that got started in reassociation kinetic methods of comparison in the mid-1970's prior to the advent of modern sequencing techniques (like Illumina and Solexa). Reassociation kinetics was a technique where fragments of chimp and human DNA were mixed in the same chemical soup, and the DNAs that were reasonably similar would pair up, hence we got a biased sampling! https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/genetics/icc-2013-geneticist-jeff-tomkins-vs-evolutionary-biologist-who-got-laughed-off-stage/
But leaving that biased 99% sampling aside for the time being, even King and Wilson, who were the original source for this 1% myth, point out that chimps and humans 'differ far more than sibling species in anatomy':
In “Science,” 1975, M-C King and A.C. Wilson were the first to publish a paper estimating the degree of similarity between the human and the chimpanzee genome. This documented the degree of genetic similarity between the two! The study, using a limited data set, found that we were far more similar than was thought possible at the time. Hence, we must be one with apes mustn't we? But…in the second section of their paper King and Wilson honestly describe the deficiencies of such reasoning: “The molecular similarity between chimpanzees and humans is extraordinary because they differ far more than sibling species in anatomy and way of life. Although humans and chimpanzees are rather similar in the structure of the thorax and arms, they differ substantially not only in brain size but also in the anatomy of the pelvis, foot, and jaws, as well as in relative lengths of limbs and digits (38). Humans and chimpanzees also differ significantly in many other anatomical respects, to the extent that nearly every bone in the body of a chimpanzee is readily distinguishable in shape or size from its human counterpart (38). Associated with these anatomical differences there are, of course, major differences in posture (see cover picture), mode of locomotion, methods of procuring food, and means of communication. Because of these major differences in anatomy and way of life, biologists place the two species not just in separate genera but in separate families (39). So it appears that molecular and organismal methods of evaluating the chimpanzee human difference yield quite different conclusions (40).” King and Wilson went on to suggest that the morphological and behavioral between humans and apes,, must be due to variations in their genomic regulatory systems. David Berlinski - The Devil's Delusion - Page 162&163 Evolution at Two Levels in Humans and Chimpanzees Mary-Claire King; A. C. Wilson - 1975
In terms of sexual biology and reproduction we could hardly be more different:
The Red Ape - Cornelius Hunter - August 2009 Excerpt: "There remains, however, a paradoxical problem lurking within the wealth of DNA data: our morphology and physiology have very little, if anything, uniquely in common with chimpanzees to corroborate a unique common ancestor. Most of the characters we do share with chimpanzees also occur in other primates, and in sexual biology and reproduction we could hardly be more different. It would be an understatement to think of this as an evolutionary puzzle." http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2009/08/red-ape.html
One difference in sexual reproduction of chimps and humans is that human males are 'hydraulic' in their arousal and chimp males are 'mechanical' in their arousal,,, i.e. male chimps have an actual bone to achieve erection.
Ian Juby's sex video - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab1VWQEnnwM
Needless to say, giving a step by step account of the transition from mechanical to hydraulic reproduction, whilst maintaining reproduction all the time, is an extremely difficult task to imagine. In fact so great are the anatomical differences between humans and chimps that a Darwinist actually proposed that a chimp and pig mated with each other and that is what ultimately gave rise to humans:
A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans? - July 3, 2013 Excerpt: Dr. Eugene McCarthy,, has amassed an impressive body of evidence suggesting that human origins can be best explained by hybridization between pigs and chimpanzees. Extraordinary theories require extraordinary evidence and McCarthy does not disappoint. Rather than relying on genetic sequence comparisons, he instead offers extensive anatomical comparisons, each of which may be individually assailable, but startling when taken together.,,, The list of anatomical specializations we may have gained from porcine philandering is too long to detail here. Suffice it to say, similarities in the face, skin and organ microstructure alone is hard to explain away. A short list of differential features, for example, would include, multipyramidal kidney structure, presence of dermal melanocytes, melanoma, absence of a primate baculum (penis bone), surface lipid and carbohydrate composition of cell membranes, vocal cord structure, laryngeal sacs, diverticuli of the fetal stomach, intestinal "valves of Kerkring," heart chamber symmetry, skin and cranial vasculature and method of cooling, and tooth structure. Other features occasionally seen in humans, like bicornuate uteruses and supernumerary nipples, would also be difficult to incorporate into a purely primate tree. - per Physorg
Moreover, Physorg published a subsequent article showing that the pig-chimp hybrid theory for human origins is much harder to shoot down than Darwinists had first supposed it would be:
Human hybrids: a closer look at the theory and evidence - July 25, 2013 Excerpt: There was considerable fallout, both positive and negative, from our first story covering the radical pig-chimp hybrid theory put forth by Dr. Eugene McCarthy,,,By and large, those coming out against the theory had surprisingly little science to offer in their sometimes personal attacks against McCarthy. ,,,Under the alternative hypothesis (humans are not pig-chimp hybrids), the assumption is that humans and chimpanzees are equally distant from pigs. You would therefore expect chimp traits not seen in humans to be present in pigs at about the same rate as are human traits not found in chimps. However, when he searched the literature for traits that distinguish humans and chimps, and compiled a lengthy list of such traits, he found that it was always humans who were similar to pigs with respect to these traits. This finding is inconsistent with the possibility that humans are not pig-chimp hybrids, that is, it rejects that hypothesis.,,, http://phys.org/news/2013-07-human-hybrids-closer-theory-evidence.html
Thus Mr. Frank contrary to your false belief that 'the differences between man and chimp are mainly down to faster development of the brain in infancy', the anatomical differences between chimps and humans are, in reality, drastic. Moreover, as Berlinski pointed out,
King and Wilson went on to suggest that the morphological and behavioral between humans and apes,, must be due to variations in their genomic regulatory systems
And in that 'guess' they were found to be correct.
Gene Regulation Differences Between Humans, Chimpanzees Very Complex – Oct. 17, 2013 Excerpt: Although humans and chimpanzees share,, similar genomes (70% per Jeffrey Tomkins), previous studies have shown that the species evolved major differences in mRNA expression levels.,,, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131017144632.htm Evolution by Splicing – Comparing gene transcripts from different species reveals surprising splicing diversity. – Ruth Williams – December 20, 2012 Excerpt: A major question in vertebrate evolutionary biology is “how do physical and behavioral differences arise if we have a very similar set of genes to that of the mouse, chicken, or frog?”,,, A commonly discussed mechanism was variable levels of gene expression, but both Blencowe and Chris Burge,,, found that gene expression is relatively conserved among species. On the other hand, the papers show that most alternative splicing events differ widely between even closely related species. “The alternative splicing patterns are very different even between humans and chimpanzees,” said Blencowe.,,, http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view%2FarticleNo%2F33782%2Ftitle%2FEvolution-by-Splicing%2F "Where (chimps and humans) really differ, and they differ by orders of magnitude, is in the genomic architecture outside the protein coding regions. They are vastly, vastly, different.,, The structural, the organization, the regulatory sequences, the hierarchy for how things are organized and used are vastly different between a chimpanzee and a human being in their genomes." Raymond Bohlin (per Richard Sternberg) - 9:29 minute mark of video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/8593991/
Yet, finding that development Gene Regulatory Networks are 'orders of magnitude' different between chimps and humans is extremely problematic for Darwinists since changing the developmental Gene Regulatory Network is 'always catastrophically bad':
A Listener's Guide to the Meyer-Marshall Debate: Focus on the Origin of Information Question -Casey Luskin - December 4, 2013 Excerpt: "There is always an observable consequence if a dGRN (developmental gene regulatory network) subcircuit is interrupted. Since these consequences are always catastrophically bad, flexibility is minimal, and since the subcircuits are all interconnected, the whole network partakes of the quality that there is only one way for things to work. And indeed the embryos of each species develop in only one way." - Eric Davidson http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/12/a_listeners_gui079811.html
The reason why changing the development Gene Regulatory Network is 'always catastrophically bad' is explained by Dr. Nelson in the following video:
Darwin or Design? - Paul Nelson at Saddleback Church - Nov. 2012 - ontogenetic depth (excellent update) - video Text from one of the Saddleback slides: 1. Animal body plans are built in each generation by a stepwise process, from the fertilized egg to the many cells of the adult. The earliest stages in this process determine what follows. 2. Thus, to change -- that is, to evolve -- any body plan, mutations expressed early in development must occur, be viable, and be stably transmitted to offspring. 3. But such early-acting mutations of global effect are those least likely to be tolerated by the embryo. Losses of structures are the only exception to this otherwise universal generalization about animal development and evolution. Many species will tolerate phenotypic losses if their local (environmental) circumstances are favorable. Hence island or cave fauna often lose (for instance) wings or eyes. http://www.saddleback.com/mc/m/7ece8/
Thus where Darwinian theory most needs plasticity in order to be viable as a hypothesis, i.e. in developmental gene regulatory networks, is the place where it is found to be least flexible. Yet, it is in these developmental gene regulatory networks where 'orders of magnitude' differences are found!,,, bornagain77
God likes to 'scatter the proud in the imagination of their hearts'. The discovery of the cosmic 'fine tuning' is one example, the matter, 'all over bar the shouting;' settled science, its implication being inescapable, except for the malcontent bitter-enders, who won't have it, of course, although that was predictable. He's saying to those mbe's, 'Now you see it!' (the close similarity.) How long before he definitively says to them: 'Now you don't!' Not that that would impress them, of course. They'd go into their very own 'superposition'(!), refusing to collapse the wave function, pending God's letting them have their own way! Axel
#21 Andre I am not a developmental biologist but I guess the differences between man and chimp are mainly down to faster development of the brain in infancy. This article (which I just Googled) seems to address it.  I imagine that speeding up development like this does not require a large genetic change. Does that answer your question?  I am not sure what you were getting at. Mark Frank
Gordon 17, you stated that "As I understand it (while the genomes are known, I’m not that familiar with the detailed results), there are around 35 million single-base differences between the Human and chimp genomes, and another 5 million indels (sections that’re missing from one of the two genomes)." Question: How long would it take for the mutations necessary to take place and become fixed in a primate population? anthropic
Mark Frank & all skeptics alike I have a challenge for you..... Instead of explaining the similarities between humans and chimps, can you make the effort to explain the differences? I would really like your point of view and insights on the differences, from an evolutionary narrative explaining the similarities is really easy, now put that wonderful mind of yours to good use and give us the explanation on the differences! I await your acceptance of this challenge with great enthusiasm! Andre
So what if chimps and humans are genetically related? Does that prove Darwinian evolution? I think not. Mapou
Re #18 I see Gordan made the same point much more completely at the same time. Mark Frank
One should never discard intuitions formed from experience, especially about vast claims.
At one time there was a widely shared intuition that the sun went round the earth. Do I have to produce a list of intuitions that science has found to be wrong? Mark Frank
Take the 98% similarity figure as an example: one of the basic principles of science is that you must follow the evidence. If the evidence supports the 98% figure, and that conflicts with your intuition, then you either have to throw that intuition into the trash bin, or stop claiming to be doing science.
No. Absolutely not. One should never discard intuitions formed from experience, especially about vast claims. Chimpanzees are so obviously unlike humans – in any way that matters – that claimed huge similarities only cast doubt on genetic science.
Yes, one should absolutely discard (or at least modify) your intuitions when they conflict with the evidence. Intuition is what tells us that the Earth is stationary, that solid matter is solid (not mostly empty), that heavy objects fall faster than light ones, that it is impossible to sail downwind faster than the wind, that adding heat to an object will always increase (not decrease) its temperature (link), that if you throw an object at a wall with two separate holes, it might go through one or the other but not both (link), etc, etc, etc. If you do enough science, you'll learn not to trust your intuition too far. Intuition can be very useful as a starting point for your thinking about a given subject, but it should never be where you stop thinking. So, let's take a closer look at your intuition vs. the 98% figure. You speak of "intuitions formed from experience", but do you really have any experience with how much genetic change is needed to produce a given phenotypic effect? And as for the 98% figure... we've now sequenced both genomes, so there's not a lot of ambiguity left. As I said before, there are a variety of ways of counting the differences, though. As I understand it (while the genomes are known, I'm not that familiar with the detailed results), there are around 35 million single-base differences between the Human and chimp genomes, and another 5 million indels (sections that're missing from one of the two genomes). If you use my #5 counting method that gives a difference of 1.3% (or 98.7% similarity). On the other hand, if you use my #4 method (where indels count proportional to their length, rather than as single differences), you get around 5% total difference (or 95% similarity). Does 95% similarity fit your intuition any better? If so, please realize that it's the same result, just reported in a different form so the number looks smaller. If the form the data is reported in makes a significant difference to whether you accept it or not, then you're doing something seriously wrong. (BTW, before you get too excited that those indels contain exciting new information that could explain the differences... my understanding is that most are either deletions, or duplications of pre-existing sequences.) Gordon Davisson
Hey News (and Acartia_bogart) The following is an article that tells you how the 99 or 98% figure was reached: 99%? 95%? 87%? 70%? How Similar is the Human Genome to the Chimpanzee Genome? And it will also tell you about other estimates- Joe
Actually, it has been refuted in peer-review*. And the only way chimps are related to us is via a common design. BTW imagination is not evidence. *95% similarity- and that is also too high. Joe
Joe: "Geez, the 98.x% similarity has been refuted in the peer-reviewed journals. And any and all similarity can be accounted for via a common design. Actually, it hasn't. But even if it has, all it has done is moved the bar. Chimps and Bonobos, regardless of how you measure it, are still more closely related to us than any other animals. Why does that upset some people? Let's face it. The creationists (IDists) will object to anything that suggests that humans were not created as the apex species on earth. Personally, I blame it on insecurity and lack of imagination. But what do I know? Acartia_bogart
Geez, the 98.x% similarity has been refuted in the peer-reviewed journals. And any and all similarity can be accounted for via a common design. No one knows what makes a human a human nor a chimp a chimp. And there isn't any evidence that organisms are a sum of their genome, ie the DNA does not determine the type of organism. Joe
@ Acartia: Except there's one, glaring, flaw in your assumption: unlike chimps, apes, and humans et al, we *know* dogs are all, well, dogs and, thus, are related because we can sit down and breed them into vastly different shapes and sizes--good luck, given all the time in the world, getting a chimp from a pair of humans. ECMIM
The only reason people dispute the 98% similarity (or 95, or 85, it doesn't matter) is emotional, not rational. A 2% difference can still make a huge difference. Yes, chimps are hairier, but there are many humans (Ed Asner and Robin Williams) who have a lot of body hair. Chimps have long arms, but so do basketball players, Abe Lincoln and myself. Bull mastiffs and Chihuahuas have much greater phenotypic differences than humans and chimps but, genetically, they are essentially identical. But I haven't heard anybody disputing their genetic similarity. That is only because their genetic similarity does not call into question anyone's religious beliefs. Acartia_bogart
Take the 98% similarity figure as an example: one of the basic principles of science is that you must follow the evidence. If the evidence supports the 98% figure, and that conflicts with your intuition, then you either have to throw that intuition into the trash bin, or stop claiming to be doing science.
If the 98% similarity figure is accurate, then you might have a point, but even then, as pointed out, the differences are significant - too significant for a mere 2% genetic difference it would seem. But the point is, this claim of 98% is arrived at using an evolutionary mindset and approach to the genome so that many of the differences that do exist are neglected and factored out of the equation assuming they are leftover evolutionary junk DNA. So they can only arrive at this figure by being very choosy. In other words, a scientific bias is at work to arrive at these figures it would seem. BA pointed out an article entitled "The myth of the 1%" in a secular source which is helpful as well. So we would not be willing to call the 98% similarity figure as "tried and true science" or "settled science." tjguy
The human fossil record is certainly not what Darwinists portray it to be either: No Known Hominin Is Common Ancestor of Neanderthals and Modern Humans, Study Suggests - Oct. 21, 2013 Excerpt: The article, "No known hominin species matches the expected dental morphology of the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans," relies on fossils of approximately 1,200 molars and premolars from 13 species or types of hominins -- humans and human relatives and ancestors. Fossils from the well-known Atapuerca sites have a crucial role in this research, accounting for more than 15 percent of the complete studied fossil collection.,,, They conclude with high statistical confidence that none of the hominins usually proposed as a common ancestor, such as Homo heidelbergensis, H. erectus and H. antecessor, is a satisfactory match. "None of the species that have been previously suggested as the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans has a dental morphology that is fully compatible with the expected morphology of this ancestor," Gómez-Robles said. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131021153202.htm Skull "Rewrites" Story of Human Evolution -- Again - Casey Luskin - October 22, 2013 Excerpt: "There is a big gap in the fossil record," Zollikofer told NBC News. "I would put a question mark there. Of course it would be nice to say this was the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and us, but we simply don't know." - http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/10/skull_rewrites_078221.html Many very useful references highlighting the many problems of the Darwinian narrative for human evolution are on this following site: Human/Ape Common Ancestry: Following the Evidence - Casey Luskin - June 2011 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/06/following_the_evidence_where_i047161.html and just yesterday: What Can We Responsibly Believe About Human Evolution? - Denyse O'Leary - August 4, 2014 Excerpt: "In the minds of the European anthropologists who first studied them, Neanderthals were the embodiment of primitive humans, subhumans if you will," noted Fred H. Smith, a physical anthropologist at Loyola University in Chicago in 2003. But "The evidence for cognitive inferiority is simply not there," says Paolo Villa, a curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History in 2014. "What we are saying is that the conventional view of Neanderthals is not true.",,, A 2012 article in Scientific American acknowledged,,, "The origin of our genus, Homo, is one of the biggest mysteries facing scholars of human evolution." Intriguing finds lead to a barrage of conflicting narratives, partial and uncertain, much like ancient mythologies.,,, Basic outlines of our origins are admitted to be uncertain and conflicting: In PNAS, paleobiologist Bernard Wood puts it like this: "The origin of our own genus remains frustratingly unclear. Although many of my colleagues are agreed regarding the "what" with respect to Homo, there is no consensus as to the "how" and "when" questions.",,, Science writer Henry Gee explains in Nature, "We have all seen the canonical parade of apes, each one becoming more human. We know that, as a depiction of evolution, this line-up is tosh. Yet we cling to it." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/08/what_can_we_res088531.html bornagain77
funny that Darwinists never seem to honestly admit that body plans are not even reducible to genetic sequences: The Gene Myth, Part II - August 2010 Excerpt: “It was long believed that a protein molecule’s three-dimensional shape, on which its function depends, is uniquely determined by its amino acid sequence. But we now know that this is not always true – the rate at which a protein is synthesized, which depends on factors internal and external to the cell, affects the order in which its different portions fold. So even with the same sequence a given protein can have different shapes and functions. Furthermore, many proteins have no intrinsic shape, taking on different roles in different molecular contexts. So even though genes specify protein sequences they have only a tenuous (very weak or slight) influence over their functions. ,,,,So, to reiterate, the genes do not uniquely determine what is in the cell, but what is in the cell determines how the genes get used. Only if the pie were to rise up, take hold of the recipe book and rewrite the instructions for its own production, would this popular analogy for the role of genes be pertinent. Stuart A. Newman, Ph.D. – Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2010/08/gene-myth-part-ii.html The Types: A Persistent Structuralist Challenge to Darwinian Pan-Selectionism - Michael J. Denton - 2013 Excerpt: Cell form ,,,Karsenti comments that despite the attraction of the (genetic) blueprint model there are no “simple linear chains of causal events that link genes to phenotypes” [77: p. 255]. And wherever there is no simple linear causal chain linking genes with phenotypes,,,—at any level in the organic hierarchy, from cells to body plans—the resulting form is bound to be to a degree epigenetic and emergent, and cannot be inferred from even the most exhaustive analysis of the genes.,,, To this author’s knowledge, to date the form of no individual cell has been shown to be specified in detail in a genomic blueprint. As mentioned above, between genes and mature cell form there is a complex hierarchy of self-organization and emergent phenomena, rendering cell form profoundly epigenetic. http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2013.3/BIO-C.2013.3 Stephen Meyer - Functional Proteins And Information For Body Plans - video https://vimeo.com/91322260 Dr. Stephen Meyer comments at the end of the preceding video,,, ‘Now one more problem as far as the generation of information. It turns out that you don’t only need information to build genes and proteins, it turns out to build Body-Plans you need higher levels of information; Higher order assembly instructions. DNA codes for the building of proteins, but proteins must be arranged into distinctive circuitry to form distinctive cell types. Cell types have to be arranged into tissues. Tissues have to be arranged into organs. Organs and tissues must be specifically arranged to generate whole new Body-Plans, distinctive arrangements of those body parts. We now know that DNA alone is not responsible for those higher orders of organization. DNA codes for proteins, but by itself it does not insure that proteins, cell types, tissues, organs, will all be arranged in the body. And what that means is that the Body-Plan morphogenesis, as it is called, depends upon information that is not encoded on DNA. Which means you can mutate DNA indefinitely. 80 million years, 100 million years, til the cows come home. It doesn’t matter, because in the best case you are just going to find a new protein some place out there in that vast combinatorial sequence space. You are not, by mutating DNA alone, going to generate higher order structures that are necessary to building a body plan. So what we can conclude from that is that the neo-Darwinian mechanism is grossly inadequate to explain the origin of information necessary to build new genes and proteins, and it is also grossly inadequate to explain the origination of novel biological form.’ Stephen Meyer - (excerpt taken from Meyer/Sternberg vs. Shermer/Prothero debate - 2009) Darwin's Doubt narrated by Paul Giem - The Origin of Body Plans - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLHDSWJBW3DNUaMy2xdaup5ROw3u0_mK8t&v=rLl6wrqd1e0&feature=player_detailpage#t=290 Body Plans Are Not Mapped-Out by the DNA - Jonathan Wells - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meR8Hk5q_EM "Although this theory [neo-Darwinism] can account for the phenomena it concentrates on, namely, variation of traits in populations, it leaves aside a number of other aspects of evolution... Most important, it completely avoids the origination of phenotypic traits and of organismal form. In other words, neo-Darwinism has no theory of the generative." - Gerd B. Muller & Stuart A. Newman - Origination of Organismal Form, p.7 bornagain77
News you might like this per Timothy Kershner: Human "speciation" takes it's 4th death-blow in under 6 months:--- In October 2004, excavation of fragmentary skeletal remains from the island of Flores in Indonesia yielded what was called "the most important find in human evolution for 100 years." Its discoverers dubbed the find Homo floresiensis, a name suggesting a previously unknown species of human. Now detailed reanalysis by an international team of researchers including Robert B. Eckhardt, professor of developmental genetics and evolution at Penn State, Maciej Henneberg, professor of anatomy and pathology at the University of Adelaide, and Kenneth Hsü, a Chinese geologist and paleoclimatologist, suggests that the single specimen on which the new designation depends, known as LB1, does not represent a new species. Instead, it is the skeleton of a developmentally abnormal human and, according to the researchers, contains important features most consistent with a diagnosis of Down syndrome. http://phys.org/news/2014-08-flores-bones-features-syndrome-hobbit.html bornagain77
You are conflating "similarity" in the sense of phenotypic similarity (physical, cognitive and behavioral similarities and differences), which can't be easily quantified, with quantitative measures of genotypic similarity. Regarding genotypic similarity, the Smithonian has this to say:
While the genetic difference between individual humans today is minuscule – about 0.1%, on average – study of the same aspects of the chimpanzee genome indicates a difference of about 1.2%. The bonobo (Pan paniscus), which is the close cousin of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), differs from humans to the same degree. The DNA difference with gorillas, another of the African apes, is about 1.6%. Most importantly, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans all show this same amount of difference from gorillas. A difference of 3.1% distinguishes us and the African apes from the Asian great ape, the orangutan. How do the monkeys stack up? All of the great apes and humans differ from rhesus monkeys, for example, by about 7% in their DNA. Geneticists have come up with a variety of ways of calculating the percentages, which give different impressions about how similar chimpanzees and humans are. The 1.2% chimp-human distinction, for example, involves a measurement of only substitutions in the base building blocks of those genes that chimpanzees and humans share. A comparison of the entire genome, however, indicates that segments of DNA have also been deleted, duplicated over and over, or inserted from one part of the genome into another. When these differences are counted, there is an additional 4 to 5% distinction between the human and chimpanzee genomes. No matter how the calculation is done, the big point still holds: humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos are more closely related to one another than either is to gorillas or any other primate. From the perspective of this powerful test of biological kinship, humans are not only related to the great apes – we are one. The DNA evidence leaves us with one of the greatest surprises in biology: the wall between human, on the one hand, and ape or animal, on the other, has been breached. The human evolutionary tree is embedded within the great apes. The strong similarities between humans and the African great apes led Charles Darwin in 1871 to predict that Africa was the likely place where the human lineage branched off from other animals – that is, the place where the common ancestor of chimpanzees, humans, and gorillas once lived. The DNA evidence shows an amazing confirmation of this daring prediction. The African great apes, including humans, have a closer kinship bond with one another than the African apes have with orangutans or other primates. Hardly ever has a scientific prediction so bold, so ‘out there’ for its time, been upheld as the one made in 1871 – that human evolution began in Africa. The DNA evidence informs this conclusion, and the fossils do, too. Even though Europe and Asia were scoured for early human fossils long before Africa was even thought of, ongoing fossil discoveries confirm that the first 4 million years or so of human evolutionary history took place exclusively on the African continent. It is there that the search continues for fossils at or near the branching point of the chimpanzee and human lineages from our last common ancestor.
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics Reciprocating Bill
Guy Walks Into a Bar and Thinks He’s a Chimpanzee: The Unbearable Lightness of Chimp-Human Genome Similarity – Richard Sternberg PhD evolutionary biology - 2009 Excerpt: One can seriously call into question the statement that human and chimp genomes are 99% identical. For one thing, it has been noted in the literature that the exact degree of identity between the two genomes is as yet unknown (Cohen, J., 2007. Relative differences: The myth of 1% Science 316: 1836.). ,,, In short, the figure of identity that one wants to use is dependent on various methodological factors. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/05/guy_walks_into_a_bar_and_think.html
bornagain77
But you just don't understand how important it is for some people to apply the Copernican principle to biology, political science, religion, ethics, law, mental health, logic, sexual behavior, culture, finances, education, and personal hygiene. In a universal gray area, nothing is special, transcendent, or demonstrably better, and no one is held responsible for doing what they darn well please. And that's the bottom line. -Q Querius
Heck, even classifying humans as "Great Apes" is Bad Science. Sheesh. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/02/13/the-great-ape-taxonomy-debate/ ppolish
Are chimps and humans 99% genetically identical? "Short answer - No": http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Are_humans_and_chimpanzees_99_percent_genetically_identical ppolish
Wouldn't intuition tell us that given the 98% similarity we are more closely related to two male chimps than we are to our parents? Mung

Leave a Reply