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.
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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?
Are chimps and humans 99% genetically identical? “Short answer – No”:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Are_....._identical
Heck, even classifying humans as “Great Apes” is Bad Science. Sheesh.
http://blogs.scientificamerica.....my-debate/
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
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:
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics
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-f.....obbit.html
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.co.....rt-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/.....O-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?l.....page#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
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/re.....153202.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/2.....78221.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/2.....47161.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/2.....88531.html
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.”
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:
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.
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: “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?
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.
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-
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.)
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?
Re #18
I see Gordan made the same point much more completely at the same time.
So what if chimps and humans are genetically related? Does that prove Darwinian evolution? I think not.
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!
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?
#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.
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!
Mark Frank you state @ 22:
And in that ‘guess’ you would be completely wrong. First off, the 99% similarity figure was derived by a method that produced biased sampling:
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 terms of sexual biology and reproduction we could hardly be more different:
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.
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:
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:
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,
And in that ‘guess’ they were found to be correct.
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’:
The reason why changing the development Gene Regulatory Network is ‘always catastrophically bad’ is explained by Dr. Nelson in the following video:
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!,,,
The novel War and Peace may share 98% of its ‘words’ with a pocket Dictionary. What should we conclude?
BA77 #25:
The fact that humans share 50% of their DNA with bananas may shed some light on this problem.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. -Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride.
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.
hi joe. actually there is no such a tree even among chimp-human-orange:
http://news.nationalgeographic.....lated.html
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.
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.
@AB
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.
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
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:
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, 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???
Mark Frank is just upset because most of his claims atre unscientific nonsense.
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/.....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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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/sci.....z39duInQIJ
“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.....tes_2.html
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 –
Silver Asiatic,
Don’t rely on the Daily Mail for science reporting:
http://blogs.discovermagazine......vaporware/
Chromosome Fusion 2 –
Biogeography –
DNA similarities –
Population genetics –
fossil record –
Fox Pr gene –
African origins –
morphology –
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
Embryology –
Lab experiments –
Anthropic, #22:
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:
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:
…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.
#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 …
Scientist offers an interpretation of the data. That’s the way it works. Evolution isn’t exactly a precise science.
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
Heck, chimps aren’t even closely related to chimps!
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
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:
Moreover, Behe’s ‘Edge of Evolution’ has now been vindicated in the lab;
Nor do Darwinists have any empirical evidence that mutations can produce radical changes in basic morphology:
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:
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.
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.
A related reading for all interested parties:
http://sites.bio.indiana.edu/~.....e_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?
#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…….
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.
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.
/// 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.
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).
Very appropriate article. Thank you.
correction:
whatever silly tricks you need to pull to get teh human-chimp similarity up to 99%
There all better 🙂
wd400
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.
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
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
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/2.....77391.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/re.....144632.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/?.....plicing%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/
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”?
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…..
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…
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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: “And I am not a Creationist,”
So, if you are not a creationist, what are you?
“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.
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
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-500813
The Myth of 98% Genetic Similarity between Humans and Chimps – Jeffrey Tomkins PhD. – May 2014 – video
https://vimeo.com/95287522
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.
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?
Moreover, when the predictions of materialism/naturalism are compared side by side to the predictions of Theism, I’ll take Theism any day!
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:
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.....ism-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.
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!
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!
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.
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?
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.
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.
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? 🙂
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/.....54585.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/.....tml?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?l.....zOk#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
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/2.....69771.html
Arcatia_bogart:
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.
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:
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
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/ja.....this-year/
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/Natura.....y_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.
Well Aceofspades25, thanks for the link:
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.
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:
Verse and Music:
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