Apes and humans: How did science get so detached from reality?

_{Denyse O'Leary

July 28, 2019

Human evolution, Intelligent Design}

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From the Smithsonian: We and the chimpanzees “are one”:

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.
“What does it mean to be humans” at Smithsonian Museum of Natural History

Except, we’re not “one”. The wall has not “been breached.” So far as anyone can tell, it is not even breachable.

Nobody thinks chimpanzees are the same as humans except a few researchers who may have spent too long in the bush.

“Spent too long in the bush”? As a child, I (O’Leary for News) spent some years in a northern wilderness, where we had occasion to use the expression “bushed.” It meant that a person had gone mad living alone in the wilderness.

One manifestation of this madness is believing that a nearby animal is like a human being. The mood is captured in a British Isles poem in which a lighthouse repairman comes to think that way about a seal.

Similarly, Canadian author Farley Mowat (1921–2014) recounts in Never Cry Wolf that, after spending a great deal of time among wolves, he began to think of them as people. In both these stories, friends noticed the odd behaviour and got the guy out of there. As I recall, bushed people in the far northern community in which I lived were generally sent south by bushplane to see a psychiatrist before something really crazy happened.

None of this silliness about “we are one” has anything to do with protecting chimpanzees or ensuring their humane treatment. That’s done by enforcing legal protection, backed up by education on humane principles, not by airing counterfactual theories.

If only the time and energy wasted on claiming that chimps are just like humans had been spent on rescuing chimps from awful conditions in labs and from the crackpots who try to make them into people and render them unfit for chimp life). The two have tended to coincide, all too often.

But meanwhile, what becomes of sciences that solemnly assert absurdities like “the wall… has been breached ,” commanding the assent of all? Certainly not credibility.

See also: Why can’t we make apes behave like people? A history of doomed recent efforts.

em>Further reading, courtesy Michael Egnor: Apes can be generous Are they just like humans then?

Can animals reason? My challenge to Jeffrey Shallit

and

University fires philosophy prof, hires chimpanzee to teach, research: A light-hearted look at what would happen if we really thought that unreason is better than reason

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Comments

R7, very interesting. I wasn’t aware of this. Does this mean we have to stop calling some of them foxes? :)Brother Brian_{July 31, 2019
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Foxes. That’s the stumper. Unlike dogs/wolves/coyotes the many fox species are truly separate species with unique numbers of chromosomes. They may look like one kind, but in terms of chromosomes they most definitely splintered into many. Doesn’t really fit the YEC modelrhampton7_{July 31, 2019
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Ha Ha Ha,, so you have trouble telling a dog from a cat?
Nope. But what about dogs from wolves? Wolves from coyotes? Coywolves from coyotes and wolves?
Or a human from an ape?
What’s to distinguish? Humans are different but still amongst the same group as chimps, gorillas and orangoutangs. Humans developed the system of classification and the rules used for it. These were based on measures that are as objective as are possible given the circumstances. And based on these rules, we are one of the great apes. If you don’t like it, propose a different classification system. Perhaps introduce a “God promised we were special” rule.Brother Brian_{July 31, 2019
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BB is having trouble telling kinds of species apart from each other. "The bigger question is why a designed system wouldn’t make the distinctions between species clearer than they actually are." Ha Ha Ha,, so you have trouble telling a dog from a cat? Or a fish from a bird? Or a human from an ape? If so, in case of the later, we are the ones who build and visit zoos, we do not live in them. Hope that helps you in sorting out your confusion.bornagain77_{July 31, 2019
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July 31, 2019 at 5:46 pm Brother Brian, in his own way, honestly concedes that his Darwinian framework cannot classify what a species truly is
And, strangely, no evolutionist claims that you can define what a species truly is. The concept of species long predates Darwin. It stems from the human “need” to classify everything we see. Evolution, however, predicts that this will not always be possible. A prediction that has proven to be true. Only creationists think this is a problem for evolution. The bigger question is why a designed system wouldn’t make the distinctions between species clearer than they actually are.Brother Brian_{July 31, 2019
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Brother Brian, in his own way, honestly concedes that his Darwinian framework cannot classify what a species truly is
A species is just the result of humans trying to slot organisms into a strict, well defined, classification system. Evolutionary theory predicts that doing so is not possible.
And yet even though he honestly concedes that there is no rigorous way for him to rigorously classify organisms within the reductive materialism of his Darwinian worldview, he still, none-the-less, wants to reach over into the Theistic worldview and 'borrow' some 'abstract' scheme for classifying organisms. He, of course, prefers to subjectively classify humans with great apes. Indeed that is his primary motivation for 'borrowing' some abstract scheme of classification. BB could care less about the actual science behind the matter. And although he listed no rigorous criteria for classifying apes with humans, and indeed, as he already conceded, he can have no rigorous criteria for doing so within his Darwinian worldview, He did so anyway. This is a shining example of intellectual dishonesty,,, a blatant contradiction in logic all within the space of the few sentences of BB's post. As he himself conceded, the reductive materialism of his Darwinian worldview simply cannot ground the 'immaterial' abstract concept of species. It gets worse for BB and other Darwinian materialists. To make this dilemma even more devastating to the Darwinian materialist, it turns out that atoms themselves are not the solid indivisible concrete particles, as they were originally envisioned to be by materialists, but it turns out that the descriptions we now use to describe atoms themselves, the further down we go, dissolve into “abstract conceptual tools for describing nature, which themselves seem to lack any real, concrete essence.,,,”
Physics Is Pointing Inexorably to Mind So-called “information realism” has some surprising implications By Bernardo Kastrup – March 25, 2019 Excerpt: according to the Greek atomists, if we kept on dividing things into ever-smaller bits, at the end there would remain solid, indivisible particles called atoms, imagined to be so concrete as to have even particular shapes. Yet, as our understanding of physics progressed, we’ve realized that atoms themselves can be further divided into smaller bits, and those into yet smaller ones, and so on, until what is left lacks shape and solidity altogether. At the bottom of the chain of physical reduction there are only elusive, phantasmal entities we label as “energy” and “fields”—abstract conceptual tools for describing nature, which themselves seem to lack any real, concrete essence.,,, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/physics-is-pointing-inexorably-to-mind/
In fact, according to quantum theory, the most fundamental ‘stuff’ of the world is not even matter or energy, (as Darwinian materialists presuppose) but is immaterial information itself
“The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, but information–and it is the processing of information that lies at the root of all physical, biological, economic, and social phenomena.” Vlatko Vedral – Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and CQT (Centre for Quantum Technologies) at the National University of Singapore, and a Fellow of Wolfson College – a recognized leader in the field of quantum mechanics. “It is operationally impossible to separate Reality and Information” (48:35 minute mark) “In the beginning was the Word” John 1:1 (49:54 minute mark) Prof Anton Zeilinger speaks on quantum physics. at UCT https://youtu.be/s3ZPWW5NOrw?t=2984
Thus, in irony of ironies, not even the material particles themselves turn to be are ‘real’ and concrete, (on the materialistic definition of what is ‘real’ and concrete), but turn out to be “abstract” immaterial information. This puts the die-hard materialist in quite the conundrum because, as Bernardo Kastrup further explains, to make sense of this conundrum of a non-material world of pure abstractions we must ultimately appeal to an immaterial mind. i.e. we must ultimately appeal to God!
Physics Is Pointing Inexorably to Mind So-called “information realism” has some surprising implications By Bernardo Kastrup – March 25, 2019 Excerpt: “To make sense of this conundrum,,, we must stick to what is most immediately present to us: solidity and concreteness are qualities of our experience. The world measured, modeled and ultimately predicted by physics is the world of perceptions, a category of mentation. The phantasms and abstractions reside merely in our descriptions of the behavior of that world, not in the world itself.,,, Where we get lost and confused is in imagining that what we are describing is a non-mental reality underlying our perceptions, as opposed to the perceptions themselves. We then try to find the solidity and concreteness of the perceived world in that postulated underlying reality. However, a non-mental world is inevitably abstract. And since solidity and concreteness are felt qualities of experience—what else?—we cannot find them there. The problem we face is thus merely an artifact of thought, something we conjure up out of thin air because of our theoretical habits and prejudices.,,, As I elaborate extensively in my new book, The Idea of the World, none of this implies solipsism. The mental universe exists in mind but not in your personal mind alone. Instead, it is a transpersonal field of mentation that presents itself to us as physicality—with its concreteness, solidity and definiteness—once our personal mental processes interact with it through observation. This mental universe is what physics is leading us to, not the hand-waving word games of information realism. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/physics-is-pointing-inexorably-to-mind/
Or to put it much more simply, as Physics professor Richard Conn Henry put it at the end of the following article, “The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy.”
The mental Universe – Richard Conn Henry The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things. Excerpt: “The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy.” – Richard Conn Henry is a Professor in the Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/The.mental.universe.pdf
Of supplemental note: The Darwinian materialist, in his rejection of God, simply has no anchor for reality to grab onto: As I have pointed out several times now, assuming Naturalism instead of Theism as the worldview on which all of science is based leads to the catastrophic epistemological failure of science itself.
Basically, because of reductive materialism (and/or methodological naturalism), the atheistic materialist is forced to claim that he is merely a ‘neuronal illusion’ (Coyne, Dennett, etc..), who has the illusion of free will (Harris), who has unreliable beliefs about reality (Plantinga), who has illusory perceptions of reality (Hoffman), who, since he has no real time empirical evidence substantiating his grandiose claims, must make up illusory “just so stories” with the illusory, and impotent, ‘designer substitute’ of natural selection (Behe, Gould, Sternberg), so as to ‘explain away’ the appearance (i.e. illusion) of design (Crick, Dawkins), and who must make up illusory meanings and purposes for his life since the reality of the nihilism inherent in his atheistic worldview is too much for him to bear (Weikart), and who must also hold morality to be subjective and illusory since he has rejected God (Craig, Kreeft). Bottom line, nothing is real in the atheist’s worldview, least of all, morality, meaning and purposes for life.,,, – Darwin’s Theory vs Falsification – video – 39:45 minute mark https://youtu.be/8rzw0JkuKuQ?t=2387
Thus, although the Darwinist may firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to. It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
bornagain77_{July 31, 2019
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Brother Brian:
A species is just the result of humans trying to slot organisms into a strict, well defined, classification system. Evolutionary theory predicts that doing so is not possible.
Which is why evolution does not predict a nested hierarchy. A nested hierarchy requires " a strict, well defined, classification system".
But when we follow basic cladistics and taxonomy to say that we fit best with the great apes (chimps, gorillas and orangutans) some people get all bent out of shape.
Because we do NOT fit with the great apes. We are upright bipeds. There are many glaring physical DIFFERENCES between humans and the great apes. It's as if our resident evos are blind or willfully ignorant.ET_{July 31, 2019
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BA77
A Darwinist recently admitted that, according to Darwinian assumptions, the concept of what a species truly is, the most important concept in all of biology, is a complete mystery:
A species is just the result of humans trying to slot organisms into a strict, well defined, classification system. Evolutionary theory predicts that doing so is not possible. Humans are mammals. No argument. Humans are primates. Again, no argument. But when we follow basic cladistics and taxonomy to say that we fit best with the great apes (chimps, gorillas and orangutans) some people get all bent out of shape.Brother Brian_{July 31, 2019
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A Darwinist recently admitted that, according to Darwinian assumptions, the concept of what a species truly is, the most important concept in all of biology, is a complete mystery:
What is a species? The most important concept in all of biology is a complete mystery - July 16, 2019 Excerpt: What is a species? The most famous definition of a species comes from the 20th century German-born biologist Ernst Mayr, who emphasised the importance of interbreeding. The idea (roughly) is that two organisms are of the same species if they can breed with one another to produce fertile offspring. That is why a donkey and a horse aren’t the same species: they can breed and produce offspring, but not fertile offspring.,,, But it wasn’t long before the problems with Mayr’s approach became apparent. The definition makes use of the notion of interbreeding. This is all very well with horses and polar bears, but smaller organisms like bacteria do not interbreed at all. They reproduce entirely asexually, by simply splitting in two. So this definition of species can’t really apply to bacteria.,,, In the 1960s, another German biologist, Willi Hennig, suggested thinking about species in terms of their ancestry. In simple terms, he suggested that we should find an organism, and then group it together with its children, and its children’s children, and its children’s children’s children. Eventually, you will have the original organism (the ancestor) and all of its descendents. These groups are called clades. Hennig’s insight was to suggest that this is how we should be thinking about species. But this approach faces its own problems. How far back should you go before you pick the ancestor in question? If you go back in history far enough, you’ll find that pretty much every animal on the planet shares an ancestor. But surely we don’t want to say that every single animal in the world, from the humble sea slug, to top-of-the-range apes like human beings, are all one big single species? Enough of species? This is only the tip of a deep and confusing iceberg. There is absolutely no agreement among biologists about how we should understand the species. One 2006 article on the subject listed 26 separate definitions of species, all with their advocates and detractors. Even this list is incomplete. The mystery surrounding species is well-known in biology, and commonly referred to as “the species problem”. Frustration with the idea of a species goes back at least as far as Darwin.,,, some contemporary biologists and philosophers of biology have,,, suggested that biology would be much better off if it didn’t think about life in terms of species at all.,,, One of the great discoveries of evolutionary biology is that the human species is not special or privileged in the grand scheme of things, and that humans have the same origins as all the other animals. This approach just takes the next step. It says that there is no such thing as “the human species” at all. https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-species-the-most-important-concept-in-all-of-biology-is-a-complete-mystery-119200
Well I guess that he is happy that he has no clue how to define what a species truly is just long as humans are, contrary to Christian presuppositions, "not special or privileged in the grand scheme of things". Of course others of us who are not so enamored with the idea of being so easily classified alongside pond scum,,,,
“human life has no more meaning than that of slime mould.” John Gray - Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals - page 33 - 2002
,,,and who also expect to have a little more scientific rigor from a supposed scientific theory that purports to explain, of all things, 'The Origin of Species' itself, might find his flippant dismissal of the Darwinian ability to define what a species truly is to be a superficial dismissal of his self-admitted very serious shortcoming within his Darwinian framework. And indeed, this inability for Darwinists to define what a species truly is within the Darwinian framework gives a glimpse into a irredeemable, and catastrophic, defect within the Darwinist's reductive materialistic framework: Darwinists ultimately seek to 'scientifically' explain everything in materialistic terms. i.e. Reductive materialism. And yet, if something is not composed of particles or does not have physical properties (e.g., mass, energy, orientation, position, etc), it is abstract, i.e., spiritual. Numbers, mathematics, logic, truth, distance, time, beauty, ugliness, species, person, information, etc.. etc.. all fall into that category of being abstract. It is amazing how many things fall into that 'abstract' category even though most of us, including scientists, (“scientists” also happens to be an abstract term itself), swear they exist physically. The following article is good for explaining exactly why Darwinists will never be able to give an adequate account of what a species truly is
Darwin, Design & Thomas Aquinas The Mythical Conflict Between Thomism & Intelligent Design by Logan Paul Gage Excerpt: First, the problem of essences. G. K. Chesterton once quipped that “evolution . . . does not especially deny the existence of God; what it does deny is the existence of man.” It might appear shocking, but in this one remark the ever-perspicacious Chesterton summarized a serious conflict between classical Christian philosophy and Darwinism. In Aristotelian and Thomistic thought, each particular organism belongs to a certain universal class of things. Each individual shares a particular nature—or essence—and acts according to its nature. Squirrels act squirrelly and cats catty. We know with certainty that a squirrel is a squirrel because a crucial feature of human reason is its ability to abstract the universal nature from our sense experience of particular organisms. Think about it: How is it that we are able to recognize different organisms as belonging to the same group? The Aristotelian provides a good answer: It is because species really exist—not as an abstraction in the sky, but they exist nonetheless. We recognize the squirrel’s form, which it shares with other members of its species, even though the particular matter of each squirrel differs. So each organism, each unified whole, consists of a material and immaterial part (form).,,, One way to see this form-matter dichotomy is as Aristotle’s solution to the ancient tension between change and permanence debated so vigorously in the pre-Socratic era. Heraclitus argued that reality is change. Everything constantly changes—like fire, which never stays the same from moment to moment. Philosophers like Parmenides (and Zeno of “Zeno’s paradoxes” fame) argued exactly the opposite; there is no change. Despite appearances, reality is permanent. How else could we have knowledge? If reality constantly changes, how can we know it? What is to be known? Aristotle solved this dilemma by postulating that while matter is constantly in flux—even now some somatic cells are leaving my body while others arrive—an organism’s form is stable. It is a fixed reality, and for this reason is a steady object of our knowledge. Organisms have an essence that can be grasped intellectually. Denial of True Species Enter Darwinism. Recall that Darwin sought to explain the origin of “species.” Yet as he pondered his theory, he realized that it destroyed species as a reality altogether. For Darwinism suggests that any matter can potentially morph into any other arrangement of matter without the aid of an organizing principle. He thought cells were like simple blobs of Jell-O, easily re-arrangeable. For Darwin, there is no immaterial, immutable form. In The Origin of Species he writes: “I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience, to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, for convenience’s sake.” Statements like this should make card-carrying Thomists shudder.,,, The first conflict between Darwinism and Thomism, then, is the denial of true species or essences. For the Thomist, this denial is a grave error, because the essence of the individual (the species in the Aristotelian sense) is the true object of our knowledge. As philosopher Benjamin Wiker observes in Moral Darwinism, Darwin reduced species to “mere epiphenomena of matter in motion.” What we call a “dog,” in other words, is really just an arbitrary snapshot of the way things look at present. If we take the Darwinian view, Wiker suggests, there is no species “dog” but only a collection of individuals, connected in a long chain of changing shapes, which happen to resemble each other today but will not tomorrow. What About Man? Now we see Chesterton’s point. Man, the universal, does not really exist. According to the late Stanley Jaki, Chesterton detested Darwinism because “it abolishes forms and all that goes with them, including that deepest kind of ontological form which is the immortal human soul.” And if one does not believe in universals, there can be, by extension, no human nature—only a collection of somewhat similar individuals.,,, Implications for Bioethics This is not a mere abstract point. This dilemma is playing itself out in contemporary debates in bioethics. With whom are bioethicists like Leon Kass (neo-Aristotelian and former chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics) sparring today if not with thoroughgoing Darwinians like Princeton’s Peter Singer, who denies that humans, qua humans, have intrinsic dignity? Singer even calls those who prefer humans to other animals “speciesist,” which in his warped vocabulary is akin to racism.,,, If one must choose between saving an intelligent, fully developed pig or a Down syndrome baby, Singer thinks we should opt for the pig.,,, https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=23-06-037-f
This inability of Darwinists to ground abstract concepts in their reductive materialistic worldview is, as mentioned previously. catastrophic to Darwinian evolution as a scientific worldview. One of the main reasons this failure to ground abstract concepts is catastrophic to Darwinian evolution as a scientific worldview is that mathematics itself, (the very backbone of all science, engineering and technology), is an abstract concept that can find no basis within the reductive materialism of Darwinian evolution.
What Does It Mean to Say That Science & Religion Conflict? – M. Anthony Mills – April 16, 2018 Excerpt: Barr rightly observes that scientific atheists often unwittingly assume not just metaphysical naturalism but an even more controversial philosophical position: reductive materialism, which says all that exists is or is reducible to the material constituents postulated by our most fundamental physical theories. As Barr points out, this implies not only that God does not exist — because God is not material — but that you do not exist. For you are not a material constituent postulated by any of our most fundamental physical theories; at best, you are an aggregate of those constituents, arranged in a particular way. Not just you, but tables, chairs, countries, countrymen, symphonies, jokes, legal contracts, moral judgments, and acts of courage or cowardice — all of these must be fully explicable in terms of those more fundamental, material constituents. In fact, more problematic for the materialist than the non-existence of persons is the existence of mathematics. Why? Although a committed materialist might be perfectly willing to accept that you do not really exist, he will have a harder time accepting that numbers do not exist. The trouble is that numbers — along with other mathematical entities such as classes, sets, and functions — are indispensable for modern science. And yet — here’s the rub — these “abstract objects” are not material. Thus, one cannot take science as the only sure guide to reality and at the same time discount disbelief in all immaterial realities. https://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2018/04/16/what_does_it_mean_to_say_that_science_and_religion_conflict.html
Of supplemental note: The following video goes over several lines of scientific evidence that reveal that humans are not nearly as inconsequential in this universe, and on this earth, as Darwinists would, apparently, prefer to for us to believe.
Atheistic Materialism vs Meaning, Value, and Purpose in Our Lives – video (review of the scientific evidence starts at the 13:00 minute mark) https://youtu.be/aqUxBSbFhog?t=782
bornagain77_{July 31, 2019
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Brother Brian:
Similarily, we commonly classify the gorilla, chimpanzee, orangutan and humans as the “great apes”.
And yet the only people to do so think that we evolved from them, albeit without any way to test the claim. So THAT is the problem.
Some humans get all bent out of shape about this...
Because it is question-begging nonsense.
Does anyone really think that the snow leopard gets all pissed off being lumped in with those other cats who can’t even purr?
You have to be daft to think that they even know or careET_{July 29, 2019
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goodusername:
Close – I’d phrase it as that humans are *one* of the species of great ape, not that we are somehow all one great ape.
I would say that is question-begging nonsenseET_{July 29, 2019
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mimus:
If the group “great apes” exists is necessarily includes us.
Nonsense. We are only in that group to the willfully ignorant people on an agenda. We are NOT knuckle-walkers. We are NOT quadrupeds.ET_{July 29, 2019
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This has to be one of the strangest disagreents I have read here. Maybe this will put it in context. We commonly classify the tiger, lion, jaguar, leopard, and snow leopard as the “big cats”. Similarily, we commonly classify the gorilla, chimpanzee, orangutan and humans as the “great apes”. Some humans get all bent out of shape about this, presumably due to some misplaced idea about human exceptionalism. Does anyone really think that the snow leopard gets all pissed off being lumped in with those other cats who can’t even purr?Brother Brian_{July 29, 2019
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No. It's like saying "squares are not only like rectangles, they are one". If the group "great apes" exists is necessarily includes us. That's all there is to it. The great apes are not "indivisible", but it you want to divide the group it cant be {(orangs, gorillas, chimps)(humans)}, as you seem to wish, because chimps are more close to humans that gorillas. The taxonomically valid divisions are { (organs) (gorillas, chimps, humans)} { (organs) (gorillas) (chimps, humans)} { (organs) (gorillas) (chimps) (humans)}Mimus_{July 29, 2019
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News,
I supposed they meant the first and you supposed they meant the second – that we are all one great ape.
Close - I’d phrase it as that humans are *one* of the species of great ape, not that we are somehow all one great ape. It’s similar to how some people might mistakenly say that since dogs are related to wolves, that therefore “dogs are related to carnivora”. Well, that’s true, kind of, but it gives the impression that dogs left carnivora, and so it’s worth pointing out that dogs still are one. I.e., dogs are one of the species of carnivora. (I should point out that I’m not really in full agreement with the Smithsonian statement. I’m not personally opposed to informal, paraphyletic groups. Paraphyletic groups are groups that exclude members who are actually more closely related to certain members than the members are to each other. I agree that there are important ways in which chimps and gorillas are more similar to each other than we are to chimps, even though humans and chimps are indeed closer relatives than chimps are to gorillas. Thus I don’t mind there being a term for chimps, gorillas, and orangutans that excludes humans. Another example of a paraphyletic group is “fish.” Humans are more closely related to trout than trout are to lamprey, but I don’t mind people calling trout and lamprey “fish” but excluding humans, as trout and lamprey have a rather “fishy” quality that humans lack. Thus “fish” is not a formal taxonomic group. But while not opposed to such groups, as an informal designation, it is fascinating to learn, IMO, that such groups are indeed paraphyletic. Some are philosophically opposed to such groups, which is why some will argue that humans are fish.)goodusername_{July 29, 2019
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h, Mimus and goodusername above, I am beginning to see what you mean - what a clever piece of grammatical equivocation the Smithsonian indulges in! " humans are not only related to the great apes – we are one." This is capable of two different interpretations: humans are not only related to the great apes – [they and] we are one. [one indivisible group] or humans are not only related to the great apes – we are one [we are one great ape]. I supposed they meant the first and you supposed they meant the second - that we are all one great ape. Perhaps they did. But then what does that mean? "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." In the first place, to the Smithsonian crowd, that wouldn't be a "surprise" at all, They've been talking the idea up since forever, But what barrier has been breached? If anything, the fact that humans and chimpanzees have such similar genetics and are so vastly different should make us wonder how much genetics matters in these things.News_{July 29, 2019
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An analogy may help to understand why chimps and humans can have 95% (or whatever) the same DNA, yet be so different. Consider buildings: you can start with a pile of bricks, a pile of lumber, some steel pieces, roofing materials, floor tiles, windows, doors, wiring, paint, etc., and then make two totally different buildings using these materials; one a small house and the other a library or school. The house and school are quite different, although they might use the same materials The genes in DNA mostly describe how to make proteins or building materials. The remaining 5% (at least) tells you how to put those materials together one way or other. Thus, most animals share a significant number or genes for bones, blood, various cell types, and cell internal components that are much the same (or very similar) in all animals. It's like a LEGO set, fifty or more different types of building block from which you can build whatever you like.Fasteddious_{July 29, 2019
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Aarceng at 16, thanks for the link. Too funny, even the guy behind the very questionable and misleading 98.5% figure does not believe Darwinian evolution to be true.
Margaret Wieland interviews bird expert and former renowned evolutionist Dr Jon Ahlquist - 2018 Excerpt: Drs Ahlquist and Sibley may well be best known to non-specialists for applying their DNA-DNA hybridization techniques to man,6 coming up with the well-known alleged ‘98% chimp-human similarity’. ,,, Dr Ahlquist says,,, "Molecular evidence of any sort proves nothing about evolution, in fact. All we are doing is measuring ‘God’s numbers’—or as Charles [Sibley, his long-term collaborator] used to call them, ‘nature’s numbers’ of genetic similarity or difference. The techniques used by phylogeneticists to make their ‘trees’ are laden with evolutionary assumptions. They simply assume that evolution is a fact and then stuff their data into their algorithms, which therefore will always produce an evolutionary result. Regardless, we all have the same data, the difference is how we interpret it." https://creation.com/jon-ahlquist
And again to repeat, a Darwinist, who studied the methodology of how one of the more famous 98.5% Chimp-Human DNA similarity comparisons was derived, (i.e. Ahlquist and Sibley), stated that the 98.5% comparison “needs to be treated like nuclear waste: bury it safely and forget about it for a million years”,,,
The Rise and Fall of DNA Hybridization – Jonathan Marks – 2011 Excerpt: the technique of DNA hybridization had devolved into being doubly “tricky” – but more significantly, the outstanding charge of data falsification was there in black-and-white in the leading science journal in America. It seemed as though nothing more needed to be said for the “wheels of justice” to begin turning. Yet they didn’t. In 1993, I was asked by The Journal of Human Evolution to review Jared Diamond’s book, The Third Chimpanzee. Noting that the book’s “hook” was based on the Sibley-Ahlquist work, which Diamond was still touting uncritically, I said: Perhaps you recall Sibley and Ahlquist. In a nutshell, their results were: (1) chimp-gorilla DNA hybrids were more thermally stable than chimp-human hybrids; (2) the differences were insignificant; and (3) reciprocity was very poor when human DNA was used as a tracer. Unfortunately, the conclusions they reported were: (1) chimp-human was more thermally stable than chimp-gorilla; (2) differences were significant; and (3) reciprocity was near-perfect. And they got from point A to point B by (1) switching experimental controls; (2) making inconsistent adjustments for variation in DNA length, which was apparently not even measured; (3) moving correlated points into a regression line; and (4) not letting anyone know. The rationale for (4) should be obvious; and if (1), (2) and (3) are science, I’m the Princess of Wales. This work needs to be treated like nuclear waste: bury it safely and forget about it for a million years.31 31Marks, J. (1993) Review of The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond. Journal of Human Evolution, 24:69-73. http://webpages.uncc.edu/~jmarks/dnahyb/Sibley%20revisited.pdf
bornagain77_{July 29, 2019
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News,
Your defense of the Smithsonian is well-meant.
I haven’t given a defense of the Smithsonian; I’m merely trying to explain what they are saying.
No matter how the calculation is done, the big point still holds: dogs, coyotes, and cats are more closely related to one another than either is to squirrels or any other mammals. From the perspective of this powerful test of biological kinship, dogs are not only related to the coyotes – they are one. But the Smithsonian probably wouldn’t say that.
Well, yeah, obviously they wouldn’t say that. But I’m confused as to why are you bothering to point that out? Hopefully, if you read post #11, you understand why they wouldn’t say that. Dogs and coyotes are both species. Dogs, coyotes, and cats are indeed more related to each other than they are to squirrels. Dogs, coyotes, and cats thus all belong to carnivora, while the squirrels are left out. Thus a statement analogous to the Smithsonian statement would be: “dogs are not only related to the Carnivora - they are one.” Dogs and coyotes are both mammals, Dogs and coyotes are both carnivora. That doesn’t mean that dogs are coyotes, or cats, or any other carnivoran species.
Some do not want to acknowledge what it says and what it means.
Apparentlygoodusername_{July 29, 2019
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From what I can tell as a confirmed layman, DNA appears to be acting more like a database than a blueprint (IOW an informational resource rather than a program). It's understandable that biologists would resist losing their mechanistic analogy to an informational one, even in the midst of the Information Age, if in doing so the program (formerly known as "the blueprint") by which an organism constructs itself actually resides somewhere as yet unknown.jstanley01_{July 29, 2019
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Here are a few more factoids that don't bode well for those who desperately want to be kissing cousins with chimps,, Humans are far more genetically unique from one another that was presupposed by the 'gene-centric' assumption of Darwinists
Duality in the human genome - November 28, 2014 Excerpt: The results show that most genes can occur in many different forms within a population: On average, about 250 different forms of each gene exist. The researchers found around four million different gene forms just in the 400 or so genomes they analysed. This figure is certain to increase as more human genomes are examined. More than 85 percent of all genes have no predominant form which occurs in more than half of all individuals. This enormous diversity means that over half of all genes in an individual, around 9,000 of 17,500, occur uniquely in that one person - and are therefore individual in the truest sense of the word. The gene, as we imagined it, exists only in exceptional cases. "We need to fundamentally rethink the view of genes that every schoolchild has learned since Gregor Mendel's time.,,, According to the researchers, mutations of genes are not randomly distributed between the parental chromosomes. They found that 60 percent of mutations affect the same chromosome set and 40 percent both sets. Scientists refer to these as cis and trans mutations, respectively. Evidently, an organism must have more cis mutations, where the second gene form remains intact. "It's amazing how precisely the 60:40 ratio is maintained. It occurs in the genome of every individual – almost like a magic formula," says Hoehe. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-11-duality-human-genome.html DNA Variation Widens Human-Chimp Chasm - Jeffrey Tomkins - 2017 Excerpt: In the past several years, new sequencing technologies have become commercially available that provide much longer reads of 10,000 to 215,000 bases.2,3 These new long-read sequencing technologies allow for the more accurate assembly of the human genome, revealing some incredible surprises about human genetic diversity.,,, The results from these new papers using long-read technology have been startling and are shaking up the entire human genomics community. The most surprising finding was that the research demonstrates that large regions of the human genome can be markedly different between any two humans,,, The bottom line is that any two human genomes can be up to 4.5% different from one another, in marked contrast to the previous estimate of 0.01% based solely on single-base changes.5 These newly found large differences in human genomes conflict with the evolutionary idea that humans and chimpanzees are 98.5% similar in their DNA. If humans can be up to 4.5% different from each other, how is it that chimps are supposedly only 1.5% different from humans? The fact of the matter is that the 98.5% similarity figure is based on cherry-picked data designed to bolster evolution. Newly published research by this author clearly shows that chimpanzee DNA overall is, at most, only 85% similar to human.9 http://www.icr.org/article/9939
Moreover, as was pointed out in post 4, the genetic similarity numbers quoted in the Smithsonian article are found to be highly questionable and most likely to be tainted by Darwinian bias, (in fact, as was also pointed out in post 4, the most trustworthy numbers are turning out to be around 85%), it is also interesting to point out that the fossil record is also found to be highly questionable and most likely to be tainted by Darwinian bias.
Contested Bones: Is There Any Solid Fossil Evidence for Ape-to-Man Evolution? - Dr. John Sanford and Chris Rupe Excerpt: We have spent four years carefully examining the scientific literature on this subject. We have discovered that within this field (paleoanthropology), virtually all the famous hominin types have either been discredited or are still being hotly contested. Within this field, not one of the hominin types have been definitively established as being in the lineage from ape to man. This includes the famous fossils that have been nicknamed Lucy, Ardi, Sediba, Habilis, Naledi, Hobbit, Erectus, and Neaderthal. Well-respected people in the field openly admit that their field is in a state of disarray. It is very clear that the general public has been deceived regarding the credibility and significance of the reputed hominin fossils. We will show that the actual fossil evidence is actually most consistent with the following three points. 1) The hominin bones reveal only two basic types; ape bones (Ardi and Lucy), and human bones (Naledi, Hobbit, Erectus, and Neaderthal). 2) The ape bones and the human bones have been repeatedly found together in the same strata – therefore both lived at the same basic timeframe (the humans were apparently hunting and eating the apes). 3) Because the hominin bones were often found in mixed bone beds (with bones of many animal species in the same site), numerous hominin types represent chimeras (mixtures) of ape and human bones (i.e., Sediba, Habilis). We will also present evidence that the anomalous hominin bones that are of the human (Homo) type most likely represent isolated human populations that experienced severe inbreeding and subsequent genetic degeneration. This best explains why these Homo bones display aberrant morphologies, reduced body size, and reduced brain volume. We conclude that the hominin bones do not reveal a continuous upward progression from ape to man, but rather reveal a clear separation between the human type and the ape type. The best evidence for any type of intermediate “ape-men” derived from bones collected from mixed bone beds (containing bones of both apes and men), which led to the assembly of chimeric skeletons. Therefore, the hominin fossils do not prove human evolution at all.,,, We suggest that the field of paleoanthropology has been seriously distorted by a very strong ideological agenda and by very ambitious personalities. https://ses.edu/contested-bones-is-there-any-solid-fossil-evidence-for-ape-to-man-evolution/ “Contested Bones” review by Paul Giem – video playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6ZOKj-YaHA&list=PLHDSWJBW3DNU_twNBjopIqyFOwo_bTkXm
It is also interesting to point out that when we step away from the highly questionable and, apparently, biased evidence for human evolution that is put forth by Darwinists, then both the genetic and the fossil evidence reveal a very different story than the story that Darwinists want to be told.
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 The Ham-Nye Creation Debate: A Huge Missed Opportunity - Casey Luskin - February 4, 2014 Excerpt: "The record of the first appearance of living phyla, classes, and orders can best be described in Wright's (1) term as 'from the top down'." (James W. Valentine, "Late Precambrian bilaterians: Grades and clades," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 91: 6751-6757 (July 1994).) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/02/the_ham-nye_deb081911.html Scientific study turns understanding about evolution on its head - July 30, 2013 Excerpt: evolutionary biologists,,, looked at nearly one hundred fossil groups to test the notion that it takes groups of animals many millions of years to reach their maximum diversity of form. Contrary to popular belief, not all animal groups continued to evolve fundamentally new morphologies through time. The majority actually achieved their greatest diversity of form (disparity) relatively early in their histories. ,,,Dr Matthew Wills said: "This pattern, known as 'early high disparity', turns the traditional V-shaped cone model of evolution on its head. What is equally surprising in our findings is that groups of animals are likely to show early-high disparity regardless of when they originated over the last half a billion years. This isn't a phenomenon particularly associated with the first radiation of animals (in the Cambrian Explosion), or periods in the immediate wake of mass extinctions.",,, Author Martin Hughes, continued: "Our work implies that there must be constraints on the range of forms within animal groups, and that these limits are often hit relatively early on. Co-author Dr Sylvain Gerber, added: "A key question now is what prevents groups from generating fundamentally new forms later on in their evolution.,,, http://phys.org/news/2013-07-scientific-evolution.html
As Phillip Johnson noted, there is something very strange about how Darwinists interpret the overall fossil record,
“What I saw about the fossil record again,, was that Gould and Eldridge were experts in the area where the animal fossil record is most complete. That is marine invertebrates.,, And the reason for this is that when,, a bird, or a human, or an ape, or a wolf, or whatever, dies,, normally it does not get fossilized. It decays in the open, or is eaten by scavengers. Things get fossilized when they get covered over quickly with sediments so that they are protected from this natural destructive process. So if you want to be a fossil, the way to go about it is to live in the shallow seas, where you get covered over by sediments when you die,,. Most of the animal fossils are of that kind and it is in that area where the fossil record is most complete. That there is a consistent pattern.,, I mean there is evolution in the sense of variation, just like the peppered moth example. Things do vary, but they vary within the type. The new types appear suddenly, fully formed, without an evolutionary history and then they stay fundamentally stable with (cyclical) variation after their sudden appearance, and stasis (according) to the empirical observations made by Gould and Eldridge. Well now you see, I was aware of a number of examples of where evolutionary intermediates were cited. This was brought up as soon as people began to make the connection and question the (Darwinian) profession about their theory in light of the controversy. But the examples of claimed evolutionary transitionals, oddly enough, come from the area of the fossil record where fossilization is rarest. Where it is least likely to happen.,,, One of things that amused me is that there are so many fossil candidates for human ancestorship, and so very few fossils that are candidates for the great apes.,, There should be just as many. But why not? Any economist can give you the answer to that. Human ancestors have a great American value and so they are produced at a much greater rate.,, These also were grounds to be suspicious of what was going on,,, ,,,if the problem is the greatest where the fossil record is most complete and if the confirming examples are found where fossils are rarest, that doesn’t sound like it could be the explanation." - Phillip Johnson - April 2012 - audio/video 15:05 minute mark to 19:15 minute mark http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJDlBvbPSMA&feature=player_detailpage#t=903s
Of course we all have our own biases, but I think it is more than fair to say that Darwinists have clearly let their own biases completely cloud their judgement to the point of them being completely blind in terms of fairly and objectively assessing the evidence, i.e. When the overall body of fossil and genetic evidence contradicts the already highly questionable fossil and genetic evidence for human evolution that is put forth by Darwinists, then it is, of course, the already highly questionable fossil and genetic evidence for human evolution that should be completely reassessed to see where it went wrong.bornagain77_{July 29, 2019
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"we are one" This is just another nonsensical non-scientific proclamation from an air-headed Evolutionist. Statements like these are a dime-a-dozen from the Evolutionist crowd. This is just one more brick in the Great Wall of why Evolutionists cannot be taken seriously. Happy Monday Andrewasauber_{July 29, 2019
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The ONLY way chimps are related to humans is via a Common Design. And there still isn't a mechanism that can transform populations of knuckle-walkers into upright bipeds. So thoughts of Common Descent are untestable and as such not part of science.ET_{July 29, 2019
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bornagain77 @ 4 In your 3rd block quote it mentions Sibley and Ahlquist who produced the 98% similarity estimate. Jon Ahlquist featured recently in a CMI article "Convert to Creation: Margaret Wieland interviews bird expert and former renowned evolutionist Dr Jon Ahlquist ", https://creation.com/jon-ahlquistaarceng_{July 29, 2019
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Given DNA identical in the 90th percentile yet the vast differences between the two species that share it, the obvious conclusion is that DNA isn't nearly as important to biology as previously hypothesized. A blueprint which cannot account for the differences between a cathedral and a shack isn't much of a blueprint.jstanley01_{July 29, 2019
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I don't how this could be made any clearer to you, so I guess I give up.Mimus_{July 29, 2019
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goodusername and mimus above: Your defense of the Smithsonian is well-meant. However: "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." Now: No matter how the calculation is done, the big point still holds: dogs, coyotes, and cats are more closely related to one another than either is to squirrels or any other mammals. From the perspective of this powerful test of biological kinship, dogs are not only related to the coyotes – they are one. But the Smithsonian probably wouldn't say that. Speciation is the grand claim of Darwinian theories of evolution. In any event, the human mind puts humans in a different category in principle. Those who will not acknowledge that are dangerous even if they - and we - don't recognize it. Aaron1978, you didn't misread it. Some do not want to acknowledge what it says and what it means.News_{July 29, 2019
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I apologize it looks like I miss read thatAaronS1978_{July 29, 2019
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News,
goodusername at 1, you outdo yourself. Compare: “humans are not only related to the great apes – we are one.” with “dogs are not only related to the cats – they are one.”
Yes, do compare the two statements - notice how they are very different. They are not analogous because the second statement is talking about two different species. The first statement is talking about a species and a GROUP. If you wanted to make a statement analogous to the first statement, it would go like this: "dogs are not only related to mammals - they are one." Another analogous statement would be "we are not only related to primates - we are one." A statement that would NOT be analogous would be: "we are not only related to chimpanzees - we are one." Which is not at all what they're saying.goodusername_{July 28, 2019
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News, You are still missing the point. Member of a taxonomic group are necessarily more closely reletaded to each other than they are to creatues not in that group. Chimps are more closely related to humans than they are to orangs or gorillas. So, if great apes include chimps gorillas and orangs then it has to include humans. In other words, if there is such as thing as a "great ape" then humans are one. This is an inescapable fact, and not some rhetorical device used to upset certain American conservatives.Mimus_{July 28, 2019
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