Genomics scientist Jeffrey Tompkins, who has written More Than A Monkey: The Human-Chimp DNA Similarity Myth, also maintains a Web site, Designed DNA, that offers synopses of arguments and posts relevant news items.
For example,
New! 9/713 Newly Discovered ‘Orphan Genes’ Defy Evolution
8/31/13 VlincRNAs Provide Clues to Genomic Dark Matter
8/24/13 Epigenetic Study Produces ‘Backwards’ Human-Ape Tree
So where is Venema keep getting the 98.6% human-chimp DNA similarity value from, and why does he keep pushing this fraud when even the secular scientific community is now rejecting it? Notice the recent quote below by leading primate evolutionist Todd Preuss in a 2012 PNAS paper.
“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.” (1)
The 98.6% number that Venema touts is actually only related to base substitutions and very small insertions and deletions in sections of the chimp and human genomes that are highly similar. This data totally omits the regions of the genomes that are not similar. It definitely does NOT indicate overall genome similarity.
In fact, you can calculate the actual DNA similarity yourself by …
Some of us have said all along that if such high values were representative of the two genomes, they would mainly demonstrate that genetics was not a useful source of information about life forms, as the actual differences are striking, and evident to anyone. The fact that people like Venema proceed, oblivious to such an obvious difficulty, mainly illustrates the extent to which their argument is ideological in character. That is, it is believed because supporting the ideology underlying it feels good, not because it is likely.