The “We share 99% of our DNA with chimps” claim rises again

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April 24, 2015

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Like Dracula it can’t really die, as it is culturally needed.* So it just keeps rising from the grave. Evidence is irrelevant.

In the context of giving apes human rights instead of protection, we read:

We share about 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees and it has been argued this makes ape experimenters 99% as bad as the Nazis. It has also been argued that the medical benefits obtained from experiments on chimpanzees have been minimal. The chances are that the advancement of medical research would suffer little if the apes were given new rights that protected them from these experimental procedures.

Most funding for chimp lab research in the United States was to end immediately in 2011, and the biggest problem is what to do with the chimps. The net effect, if not the intention, of giving apes rights they don’t understand and cannot use on their own will be to degrade civil liberties for humans. Just what civil liberties mean will be confused and confusing.

The above link from the The Telegraph is a remarkably stupid article, in a field with many close contenders.

For example, author Desmond Morris, who worked with a chimp, recounts:

When he was with us, the complexity of his brain never ceased to amaze me. There was one occasion when he caught a cold and could not appear on television. There were so many complaints from his fans that we obtained another small chimp to act as a stand-in. When Congo had recovered from his cold we decided to have both of them together on the next show. My assistant was standing by, holding one in each arm. Congo had been very friendly towards the new chimp, and we anticipated no trouble. Indeed, when I announced that Congo was about to appear, he leaned over towards the other little ape to kiss him. The newcomer protruded his lips for a friendly contact, whereupon Congo bit him hard and drew blood. The injured chimp started screaming and had to be rushed out of the room, leaving Congo as the sole star of the show. What is extraordinary about this incident is the timing of it. Congo waited until the crucial moment to dispose of his rival.

Aw, Morris, get out more.

I (O’Leary for News) have seen domestic kitties do exactly the same thing, and no one makes great claims for their intelligence, just their cunning in expressing spite.

(Yes, I have read Morris’s book about cats and found it superficial. Its redeeming feature is that they are, after all, only cats. His books on more intelligent creatures are more superficial.)

* Here is another dramatic example of the social use of off base 99% claims to facilitate nonsense. (Actual similarity figures are, obviously, much lower. See, for example, Genomics scientist Jeffrey Tompkins takes issue with BioLogos’ we are 98% chimpanzee claim, and Epigenetic differences between humans and chimps (vs. 98% similarity claims))

See also: Barry Arrington asks, “Here’s an interesting question. Would that same liberal judge extend habeas corpus rights to an eight pound human baby about to be chopped into pieces by an abortionist for the crime of not yet being born?” My answer is, of course, not:

Any horror or injustice that can legally be perpetrated on any human being advances progressive causes. So it is an advantage to the progressive that unborn children can legally be killed by dismemberment, or if born alive by some other method, left to die in the soiled utility closet. Just as it is an advantage if the law equates chimps and humans.

Does anyone remember Baby Doe of Bloomington, Indiana, legally starved to death in a hospital at the behest of his parents, because he had Down syndrome? (No, I thought not.)

In the progressive’s ideal world, the chimp is has civil rights and the human doesn’t. And that, folks, is the general direction, fast forward.

Wasn’t the current U.S. president the only legislator in the Illinois senate who the refused to endorse protection for children born alive from abortions.** Yet he was wildly popular (including among Christians who stressed that they were “really” pro life anyway). And Americans elected him twice as their head of state.

But civil liberties would appear to be a dying concept anyway. And if they are understood as being shared with non-rational beings, the concept will die faster.

** The situation is worse in Canada.

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Comments

KevNick
Do you know how embarrassing it was for my son’s biology teacher to have to explain to elementary schoolkids
I find evolutionists to be very embarrassing. But they don't seem to care about such things. Seversky asked this:
Why are people so offended by the prospect of being closely related to chimpanzees?
It's hard to believe this is a serious question. A five year old knows the answer. If I say, "you look and act like a chimpanzee" - there's nothing to be offended about? Evolutionism is embarrassing - and really stupid.Silver Asiatic_{April 25, 2015
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Querius although I can't give firm answers to your important questions at 71, none-the-less, here is Rana's quote in full context:
DNA Comparisons between Humans and Chimps: A Response to the Venema Critique of the RTB Human Origins Model, Part 2 - 2010 Excerpt: This figure, however, overestimates genetic similarity. When performing the comparison, the researchers examined only about 2.4 billion base pairs, which represent around 75 to 80 percent of the genomes. As the authors note:
Best reciprocal nucleotide-level alignments of the chimpanzee and human genomes cover ~2.4 gigabases (Gb) of high-quality sequence, including 89 Mb from chromosome X and 7.5 Mb from chromosome Y.9
The reason for this limited comparison stems from the fact that they struggled to get a significant fraction of the genomes to align, in part, because of differences. The authors of the study described the nature of the difficulties:
On the basis of comparisons with the primary donor, some small supercontigs (most <5 kb) have not been positioned within large supercontigs (~1 event per 100 kb); these are not strictly errors but nonetheless affect the utility of the assembly. There are also small, undetected overlaps (all less than 1 kb) between consecutive contigs (~1.2 events per 100 kb) and occasional local misordering of small contigs (~0.2 events per 100 kb). No misoriented contigs were found. Comparison with the finished chromosome 21 sequence yielded similar discrepancy rates (see Supplementary Information “Genome sequencing and assembly”). The most problematic regions are those containing recent segmental duplications. Analysis of BAC clones from duplicated (n = 75) and unique (n = 28) regions showed that the former tend to be fragmented into more contigs (1.6-fold) and more supercontigs (3.2-fold). Discrepancies in contig order are also more frequent in duplicated than unique regions (~0.4 versus ~0.1 events per 100 kb). The rate is twofold higher in duplicated regions with the highest sequence identity (greater than 98%). If we restrict the analysis to older duplications (less than/equal to 98% identity) we find fewer assembly problems: 72% of those that can be mapped to the human genome are shared as duplications in both species. These results are consistent with the described limitations of current WGS assembly for regions of segmental duplication.10
Given that the reason for the investigation’s failure to align 0.6 to 0.8 billion base pairs in the two genomes stems from the extensive genetic differences, it is unlikely that these regions display only a 3 percent difference, as is the case for the rest of the genomes. Instead the genetic difference in these regions must be greater. When this greater genetic difference is considered, it is reasonable to conclude that the overall difference between humans and chimpanzees is less than 97 percent and may well be as low as about 90 percent. In direct response to Venema’s criticisms, this is why we state the genetic similarity between humans and chimpanzees may be as low as 90 percent, not 95. Earlier work presaged the Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium’s struggle in their attempts to align large regions of the human and chimp genomes. In early 2002, The International Consortium for the Sequencing of Chimpanzee Chromosome 22 reported one of the first studies to make a large scale genome-to-genome comparison.11 To make this comparison, the Chimpanzee Genome Project team cut the chimp genome into fragments, sequenced them, then compared them to corresponding sequences found in the Human Genome Database. The team found that those chimp DNA fragments able to align with human sequences displayed a 98.77 percent agreement. However, the researchers also found that about 15,000 of the 65,000 chimp DNA fragments did not align with any sequence in the Human Genome Database. These fragments appeared to represent unique genetic regions. Furthermore, during a detailed comparison of the chimp DNA fragments with human chromosome 21, the team discovered that this human chromosome possesses two regions apparently unique to humans. A few months later, a team from the Max Planck Institute achieved a similar result when they compared over 10,000 regions (encompassing nearly 3,000,000 nucleotide base pairs). Only two-thirds of the sequences from the chimp genome aligned with the sequences in the human genome. As expected in those that did align, a 98.76 percent genetic similarity was measured—yet one-third found no matches.12 It is interesting that when evolutionary biologists discuss genetic comparisons between human and chimpanzee genomes, the fact that, again, as much as 25 percent of the two genomes won’t align receives no mention. Instead, the focus is only on the portions of the genome that display a high-degree of similarity. This distorted emphasis makes the case for the evolutionary connection between humans and chimps seem more compelling than it may actually be. In many respects this discussion is moot, unless there is a clear understanding as to how the genetic differences between humans and chimpanzee translate into the biological and profound behavioral differences between these two species. http://www.reasons.org/articles/dna-comparisons-between-humans-and-chimps-a-response-to-the-venema-critique-of-the-rtb-human-origins-model-part-2
bornagain77_{April 25, 2015
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If we are 99% genetically identical, why don't we look, think and most of all behave 99% identically? Since Darwinists believe that the evolution is all about genes, why can't they tweak the chimpanzee genome in the lab and make it at least to wipe after they take a dump? Do you know how embarrassing it was for my son’s biology teacher to have to explain to elementary schoolkids why a chimpanzee, 99% genetically identical to us and our closest living relative, first takes a dump in front of hundreds of people in the zoo and then doesn't even wipe?KevNick_{April 25, 2015
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The myth persists because some people want to think that there is only a 1% difference between chimp and human. We're 99% the same. But the difference between human and chimp is so great it cannot be measured. The two are an infinite distance apart. Genetic properties do not tell the story of what a human person is.Silver Asiatic_{April 25, 2015
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wd400:
I’d/creationism lost long ago.
What? You don't have a viable alternative so YOU lose.Joe_{April 25, 2015
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Timaeus: I pretty much completely agree with you in the sense that what the number is doesn't matter too much anddoes not prove one side of tthe argument. At worst for materialists even if the number was much lower than stated the time lines or rates of evolutionary change and the neutral theory would have to change to accommodate the number of mutations required. But it won't change much. my issue as a scientist is accuracy and truth. What I will argue about is that, and where ID comes in my argument lies with interpretation of truth (observable facts) and assigning how well observations fit hypotheses. so as such, the only concern I have is who is being most honest here. It boils down to someone letting their worldview lead the number they give rather than simply what is the number. This isn't a debate about what you interpret from a number or hypothesise what happened over time, in this case rather it us a debate as to what are the observable FACTS. And are those facts being misrepresented by one or both sides of a debate to advance a worldview. That is what this story is about. If indeed it has been shown chimps and human genomes differ by <99% then the question is why is it still commonly quoted as fact? Additionally I am more than happy to disagree with fellow IDers about the low end estimates if their methods are flawed. I'm not bothered if it is 99% or not. But I won't compromise on truth, honesty or deceptive methods to advance my own worldview even if the argument is very powerful to support my view. Dishonesty is wrong and lacks integrity. Sadly it happens on both sides. But the reason we have to fight for transparency is so that those seeking truth aren't fed misinformation and have the facts before them in honest and we'll reasoned arguments.Dr JDD_{April 25, 2015
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wd400: If you're interested in how anti-science propagates, study the hacked Climategate emails. No greater betrayal of the very spirit of science can be imagined. Indeed, the whole AGW propaganda machine has been an object lesson in how to spread extremely shaky science (mathematical models based on many questionable factual assumptions and at most about a 20% understanding of the complex causes of global climate change) and get it treated by the intelligentsia of the West as Gospel truth. You don't need evidence. You just keep repeating the same mantras ("the science is in"), demonize honest scientific dissent (they are all "deniers"), etc. If you keep on doing that, nobody will notice that the temperature has flatlined for years, that it failed to go up again after 2011 as predicted, that the Antarctic ice is recovering, that Eastern North America has shivered in the past two winters as it hasn't since the 1970s, that water mains are breaking on their own street in the winter, right in front of their noses, that never broke before, etc. Slogans, properly spread, will trump sense-evidence any time.Timaeus_{April 25, 2015
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bornagain: I can't verify your arguments as I haven't studied the technical material. I'm not familiar enough with the various methods that are used to measure similarity and dissimilarity. But supposing for the sake of argument your numbers are correct, then indeed, as you say, wd400's argument here is in even worse shape than I suppose. I suspect that, when all the dust of partisanship has cleared, the actual numbers accepted by just about everyone will be somewhere between the lowball numbers accepted by creationists and the ultra-high numbers accepted by the atheists. Somewhere in the 90s, I would say. But even a number in the 90s could not by itself prove common descent; and even if it could prove common descent, it could not refute design. wd400 apparently thinks that the higher the number, the worse the consequences for ID. But that's simply not true. I have nothing against you or others carrying on a fight for numbers lower than 99%, if that is what the empirical evidence warrants. If the atheists and materialists are wrong about the number, they should be corrected. But I always brace myself for the "worst" possible outcome. What if, after another 20 years of argument, the number were demonstrated to be 99%? Would any of my current views change? And the answer is, no. Even at 99% I could still deny common descent (if I wanted to, though I have no interest in doing so), and even at 99% I could still argue for design. And even at 99% I could still argue that chimpanzees are so obviously qualitatively different from human beings that all this stuff about chimps having lawyers to guarantee their rights is utter rubbish. My problem with these battles over the percentage is that I think that underlying them is still the old opposition of "creation versus evolution." I think that the creationists want to minimize the number because they think that creates a "gap" that makes human evolution impossible, and I think the atheists want to maximize the number because they think that closes all the "gaps" and makes evolution certain. But my whole motive for entering these debates is to argue that this is not the right opposition, that the opposition should be "design versus chance." Once design is established, the truly important question has been settled. So I'm neither going to accede to wd400's demand that I persuade others here to stop talking about numbers (if his numbers are wrong, he deserves to be contradicted), nor will I endorse lengthy debates by Christians motivated by the desire to keep the numbers lower than 99% at any intellectual cost. I think much more important questions than genome similarity include how new body plans are formed, why the universe is fine-tuned, etc. I think those are the things ID should be concentrating on. I think genome similarity is a red herring, which misleads people on both sides.Timaeus_{April 25, 2015
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Another question for anyone who knows the accurate measurements: 1) What is the accurate number of bp for the entire homo sapiens genome 2) What is the accurate number of bp for the entire pan troglodytes genome ThanksDr JDD_{April 25, 2015
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wd400 - why do you hold so strongly to the 99% figure? Of course it doesn't really matter, but the point is good vs bad science. Why do you reject papers from even 10 years ago which demonstrate it at 96%? You say "what's 3%" but when you are talking about giba bp any percent is significant. Are those papers wrong? Note - written by evolutionary biologists. http://genome.cshlp.org/content/15/12/1746.full
"The difference between the two genomes is actually not ?1%, but ?4%—comprising ?35 million single nucleotide differences and ?90 Mb of insertions and deletions"
That was 10 years ago. Is it incorrect? Now I agree, if in fact Tompkins analysis aligns as you give an example above, short sequences without taking into account gaps for indels - is an incorrect way of measuring homology. So I am wary of that 70% figure and the best answer I have heard from him was simply a refutation by saying someone cannot compare by doing a simple armchair analysis. I have not heard an answer to the challenge about that particular issue, if in fact that is how he arose to his figure. However to not budge on 99% when many non-ID scientists wouldn't even quote 99% but would say ">90%" is a bit odd to me. What do you make of this statement then: "Best reciprocal nucleotide-level alignments of the chimpanzee and human genomes cover ~2.4?gigabases (Gb) of high-quality sequence, including 89?Mb from chromosome X and 7.5?Mb from chromosome Y." http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v437/n7055/full/nature04072.html Does this not mean that only 2.4billion of the 3.2billion human base pairs in the genome could be aligned? If so, what to say about that 25% of the human genome sequence? Why could it not be aligned to the chimp genome, if in fact, it was 99% similar? Or even 96% similar? Why could 25% of the human genome not be aligned with chimp? Bear in mind 94% of the chimp genome was covered with 98% being high quality. ThanksDr JDD_{April 25, 2015
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Even if there was a 99% similarity between chimes and humans which there aren't it still means a staggering 30 000 00 base pair difference. Consider that our last common ancestor lived a about 6 000 000 years ago Darwinism still can't explain the amount of changes in such a short geological blink of time. WD400 the floor is yours. Enlighten us.Andre_{April 25, 2015
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WD400:
I’d/creationism lost long ago.
So why do you care? What are you continually foaming at the mouth about if you already won? Inquiring minds and all that.Mapou_{April 25, 2015
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bornagain77 relates
Fazale Rana Excerpt: It is interesting that when evolutionary biologists discuss genetic comparisons between human and chimpanzee genomes, the fact that, again, as much as 25 percent of the two genomes won’t align receives no mention. Instead, the focus is only on the portions of the genome that display a high-degree of similarity.
I see. So is this the data that wd400 has been referencing that shows that the parts of human DNA that matches chimpanzee DNA matches up extremely closely? A single data point shows little, so one is tempted to ask * What percent of closely matching dolphin DNA matches that of human DNA? * And what percent of closely matching dolphin DNA matches chimpanzee DNA? * Is this technique broadly used to determine evolutionary relationships? Just asking. -QQuerius_{April 25, 2015
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Timaeus, While I certainly agree that the broader points that you are trying to bring out, and which wd400 refuses to discuss, (since they 'uncomfortably' falsify neo-Darwinism), are very important, even the narrow point that wd400 is trying to defend is not even right on the 'narrow, science geeky point of view' he would like to make. ORFan genes by themselves refute his 99% claim for protein coding regions (by anywhere from a 10% to 40% margin, nobody really has a firm clue yet).
Finding Protein-Coding Genes through Human Polymorphisms – January 2013 Excerpt: We found 5,737 putative protein-coding genes that do not exist in the reference, whose protein-coding status is supported by homology to known proteins. On average 10% of these genes are located in the genomic regions devoid of annotated genes in 12 other catalogs. Our statistical analysis showed that these ORFs are unlikely to occur by chance. http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0054210 Mechanisms and dynamics of orphan gene emergence in insect genomes – January 2013 Excerpt: Orphans are an enigmatic portion of the genome since their origin and function are mostly unknown and they typically make up 10 to 30% of all genes in a genome. http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/01/24/gbe.evt009.full.pdf+html “However, with the advent of sequencing of full genomes, it became clear that approximately 20–40% of the identified genes could not be associated with a gene family that was known before. Such genes were originally called ‘orphan’ genes” http://ccsb.dfci.harvard.edu/web/export/sites/default/ccsb/publications/papers/2013/Tautz_eLS_2013.pdf
Of related interest to the large percentages of ORFan genes being found in ALL genomes is the disingenuous way that neo-Darwinists try to 'explain away' these dissimilar, non-Darwinian, sequences that are being found throughout the supposed tree of life
Another Horizontal Gene Transfer Fairy Tale by Jeffrey P. Tomkins, Ph.D. – April 6, 2015 http://www.icr.org/article/another-horizontal-gene-transfer-fairy
Moreover, wd400's claim that the entire genomes, not simply protein coding regions, of chimps and humans are 99% similar is simply, for lack of a better term at this point of dealing with wd400's continued misrepresentations of the evidence, a bald face lie.
DNA Comparisons between Humans and Chimps – Fazale Rana Excerpt: It is interesting that when evolutionary biologists discuss genetic comparisons between human and chimpanzee genomes, the fact that, again, as much as 25 percent of the two genomes won’t align receives no mention. Instead, the focus is only on the portions of the genome that display a high-degree of similarity. This distorted emphasis makes the case for the evolutionary connection between humans and chimps seem more compelling than it may actually be.
The only way that a 99% similarity figure for entire genome comparisons can possibly be reached is by Darwinists presupposing common ancestry as true and then filtering the data to accord with that presupposition. And that is in fact what they do.
Contradictory Trees: Evolution Goes 0 For 1,070 – Whif – Cornelius Hunter Excerpt: One of evolution’s trade secrets is its prefiltering of data to make it look good, but now evolutionists are resorting to postfiltering of the data as well.,,, Prefiltering is often thought of merely as cleaning up the data. But prefiltering is more than that, for built-in to the prefiltering steps is the theory of evolution. Prefiltering massages the data to favor the theory. The data are, as philosophers explain, theory-laden. But even prefiltering cannot always help the theory.,,, http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2013/06/contradictory-trees-evolution-goes-0.html Comprehensive Analysis of Chimpanzee and Human Chromosomes Reveals Average DNA Similarity of 70% by Jeffrey Tomkins on February 20, 2013 Excerpt: there is a great deal of preferential and selective treatment of the data being analyzed. In many cases, only the most promising data such as gene-rich sequences that exist in both species (homologs) is utilized from a much larger data pool. This pre-selected data is often further subjected to more filtering before being analyzed and discussed. Non-alignable regions and large gaps in DNA sequence alignments are also typically omitted, thus increasing the levels of reported similarity. https://answersingenesis.org/answers/research-journal/v6/comprehensive-analysis-of-chimpanzee-and-human-chromosomes/ The Myth of 98% Genetic Similarity between Humans and Chimps – Jeffrey Tomkins PhD. – video https://vimeo.com/95287522
Thus Timeus, since wd400 can't even be honest with the ‘narrow, science geeky point of view’ on his false 99% figure, I really don't see why anyone should expect him to be honest on the more important matters that more directly falsify his worldview. He simply does not care for the truth.bornagain77_{April 24, 2015
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I'm not the least bit interested in scoring points. I'd/creationism lost long ago. What interests me is how anti-scientific movements propigate. This is a great example, a cut and dried that is labeled a "myth" by many IDers and creationists! As I say, the torrent of links BA can provide to oppose so simple a finding is remarkable testament to how easy it is to find comforting "evidence", and why doing so is such a bad idea.wd400_{April 24, 2015
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wd400: I don’t care about that.Mung_{April 24, 2015
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wd400: You are right; you are not obliged to reply to anything anyone here says beyond what interests you. But clearly what interests you is polemics -- scoring points against ID from a narrow, science-geeky point of view. If you were a person of broader intellectual sympathies, you might find statements that go beyond narrow technical points (e.g., 94% versus 99%) and into broader considerations (like whether mere amount of genomic similarity establishes anything important) to be actually interesting and worth pursuing. You might actually learn something from reflecting upon such statements.Timaeus_{April 24, 2015
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wd400: the 99% thing isn’t a myth. So? Why do you care? Why does it matter? Even if it's true, you still have no response to Timaeus. wd400:
timeaus: a whole bunch of other stuff
Timaeus: It’s not how similar the genomes are, it’s the inferences we draw from the similarity. wd400: I don’t care about that. indeedMung_{April 24, 2015
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wd400:
wd400: the 99% thing isn’t a myth. That so many of you are ready to believe that it is demonstrates the danger of seeking out ‘facts’ that suit your own opinions.
Kind of like the way you want it to be 99% to suit your biased opinion, eh? Problem is, even 99% is not evidence for Darwinian evolution.Mapou_{April 24, 2015
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unwilling:
That is why I say that comparing to human design is not likely to be productive in concluding that design is the best explanation for any structure other than for structures designed and built by humans. To get beyond this, we must free ourselves of this bias.
You need to look at this from a different perspective. Intelligent design is not a conclusion. It is THE hypothesis. From this hypothesis we predict several things such as specified complexity, irreducibility, lateral inheritance and a hierarchical organization of the designs over time. From the predictions we can conduct experiments to find evidence for the hypothesis. This is why ID is falsifiable. And guess what? The evidence corroborates the ID hypothesis.Mapou_{April 24, 2015
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wd400 you claim that the dolphin genome is not even close to being “identical” to the human, You are, once again, completely wrong in your claim i.e. this time your 'not even wrong' claim is 'not even close' context is everything, so I will quote Sternberg in full:
On Human Origins: Is Our Genome Full of Junk DNA? Pt 2. - Richard Sternberg PhD. Evolutionary Biology Excerpt: "Here's the interesting thing, when you look at the protein coding sequences that you have in your cell what you find is that they are nearly identical to the protein coding sequences in of a dog, of a carp, of a fruit fly, of a nematode. They are virtually the same and they are interchangeable. You can knock out a gene that encodes a protein for an inner ear bone in say a mouse. This has been done. And then you can take a protein that is similar to it but from a fruit fly. And fruit flies aren't vertebrates and they certainly are not mammals., so they don't have inner ear bones. And you can plug that gene in and guess what happens? The offspring of the mouse will have a perfectly normal inner ear bone. So you can swap out all these files. I mentioning this to you because when you hear about we are 99% similar (to chimps) it is almost all referring to those protein coding regions. When you start looking, and you start comparing different mammals. Dolphins, aardvarks, elephants, manatees, humans, chimpanzees,, it doesn't really matter. What you find is that the protein coding sequences are very well conserved, and there is also a lot of the DNA that is not protein coding that is also highly conserved. But when you look at the chromosomes and those banding patterns, those bar codes, (mentioned at the beginning of the talk), its akin to going into the grocery store. You see a bunch of black and white lines right? You've seen one bar code you've seen them all. But those bar codes are not the same.,, Here's an example, aardvark and human chromosomes. They look very similar at the DNA level when you take small snippets of them. When you look at how they are arranged in a linear pattern along the chromosome they turn out to be very distinct (from one another). So when you get to the folder and the super-folder and the higher order level, that's when you find these striking differences. And here is another example. They are now sequencing the nuclear DNA of the Atlantic bottle-nose dolphin. And when they started initially sequencing the DNA, the first thing they realized is that basically the Dolphin genome is almost wholly identical to the human genome. That is, there are a few chromosome rearrangements here and there, you line the sequences up and they fit very well. Yet no one would argue, based on a statement like that, that bottle-nose dolphins are closely related to us. Our sister species if you will. No one would presume to do that. So you would have to layer in some other presumption. But here is the point. You will see these statements throughout the literature of how common things are.,,, (Parts lists are very similar, but how the parts are used is where you will find tremendous differences) http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/11/on-human-origins-is-our-genome-full-of-junk-dna-pt-2/
Thus wd400 faces quite the dilemma, there is found to be far more dissimilarity than he wishes there to be for chimps and humans and far too much similarity for dolphins and humans. All of this on top of the fact that mutations to DNA do not even effect basic body plan plasticity in the first place. Just keep lying to yourself and others wd400, maybe you can make the truth go away! :) Personally I'm sure you will fail !bornagain77_{April 24, 2015
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BA, Here's the dolphin genome, it's not even close to being "identical" to the human one: http://uswest.ensembl.org/Tursiops_truncatus/Info/Index But by all means, keep embarrassing yourself. Mung, It's more like wd400: the 99% thing isn't a myth. That so many of you are ready to believe that it is demonstrates the danger of seeking out 'facts' that suit your own opinions. Also, BA, just stop. timeaus: a whole bunch of other stuffwd400_{April 24, 2015
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Mapou: "Your argument is incoherent, IMO. First we know many designers, i.e., humans from all over the globe." I'm afraid that I have to disagree. You are correct if we were looking at what we think is a man made artifact and extrapolating from what we have observed from thousands (or millions) of human designers. But this technique only has power to reasonably identify human made designs. Since we have no idea how a non human designer of biological structures could facilitate the design and "manufacture" of a biological structure, we have nothing to compare against. That is why I say that comparing to human design is not likely to be productive in concluding that design is the best explanation for any structure other than for structures designed and built by humans. To get beyond this, we must free ourselves of this bias.unwilling participant_{April 24, 2015
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REC: See here.Mung_{April 24, 2015
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"I’d rather be related to slime than a chimp! Who’s with me" I'm with you Mung. I find it appealing I'm 50% Banana. Uplifting that I have Bird DNA. Lion DNA? Makes me feel regal. Not happy I have broccoli DNA. My spider DNA creeps me out, not feel like superhero no. Chimp DNA makes me want to shower. That's just me though.ppolish_{April 24, 2015
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unwilling (emphasis added):
We cannot rely on comparing what we see in biology to all known designers because we only know of one designer, humans. To be taken seriously we have to stop using this comparison.
Your argument is incoherent, IMO. First we know many designers, i.e., humans from all over the globe. Second, it has nothing to do with the species of the designers or where they come from but whether or not they are intelligent. The ID hypothesis is about both intelligence and design. It makes logical sense to reuse existing designs especially if there are only a few ways to do certain things due to environmental constraints. Reinventing the wheel every time one makes a new wheel is not particularly intelligent. It is stupid.Mapou_{April 24, 2015
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Jim@44 You've misread the paper. Try again.REC_{April 24, 2015
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Let me try my best to provide an accurate summary. wd400: It's of utmost importance that we admit to just how similar are the genomes of humans and chimps. Timaeus: It's not how similar the genomes are, it's the inferences we draw from the similarity. wd400: I don't care about that.Mung_{April 24, 2015
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as to some regions of genomic similarity being high, I repeat these facts:
Richard Sternberg PhD – podcast – On Human Origins: Is Our Genome Full of Junk DNA? Part 2. (Major Differences in higher level chromosome spatial organization) 5:30 minute mark quote: “Basically the dolphin genome is almost wholly identical to the human genome,, yet no one would argue that bottle-nose dolphins are our sister species”,,, http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/11/on-human-origins-is-our-genome-full-of-junk-dna-pt-2/ Kangaroo genes close to humans Excerpt: Australia’s kangaroos are genetically similar to humans,,, “There are a few differences, we have a few more of this, a few less of that, but they are the same genes and a lot of them are in the same order,” ,,,”We thought they’d be completely scrambled, but they’re not. There is great chunks of the human genome which is sitting right there in the kangaroo genome,” http://www.reuters.com/article/science%20News/idUSTRE4AH1P020081118
Thus once again, similarity in certain regions of the genome is not the be all end all Darwinists pretend it to be: Moreover
Evolution by Splicing – Comparing gene transcripts from different species reveals surprising splicing diversity. – Ruth Williams – December 20, 2012 Excerpt: A major question in vertebrate evolutionary biology is “how do physical and behavioral differences arise if we have a very similar set of genes to that of the mouse, chicken, or frog?”,,, A commonly discussed mechanism was variable levels of gene expression, but both Blencowe and Chris Burge,,, found that gene expression is relatively conserved among species. On the other hand, the papers show that most alternative splicing events differ widely between even closely related species. “The alternative splicing patterns are very different even between humans and chimpanzees,” said Blencowe.,,, http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view%2FarticleNo%2F33782%2Ftitle%2FEvolution-by-Splicing%2F Gene Regulation Differences Between Humans, Chimpanzees Very Complex – Oct. 17, 2013 Excerpt: Although humans and chimpanzees share,, similar genomes (70% per Tomkins), previous studies have shown that the species evolved major differences in mRNA expression levels.,,, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131017144632.htm "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 https://vimeo.com/106012299 podcast: Dr. Richard Sternberg presents evidence that refutes the myth that the human genome is full of junk DNA. http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/11/on-human-origins-is-our-genome-full-of-junk-dna/#more-26791
and I repeat, mutations to developmental Gene Regulatory Networks are 'always catastrophically bad':
Stephen Meyer - Responding to Critics: Marshall, Part 2 (developmental Gene Regulatory Networks) - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg8Mhn2EKvQ
bornagain77_{April 24, 2015
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wd400, not only are you completely wrong about genetic similarity, you are, at an even more fundamental level of theoretical importance, also completely wrong with your belief in the modern synthesis. i.e. With your reliance on the 'bottom up' modern synthesis of neo-Darwinism, you simply are not even in the right ballpark to begin with. Dr. Meyer puts the insurmountable problem for neo-Darwinists like this.
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) "These different sources of epigenetic information in embryonic cells pose an enormous challenge to the sufficiency of the neo-Darwinian mechanism. According to neo-Darwinism, new information, form, and structure arise from natural selection acting on random mutations arising at a very low level within the biological hierarchy—within the genetic text. Yet both body-plan formation during embryological development and major morphological innovation during the history of life depend upon a specificity of arrangement at a much higher level of the organizational hierarchy, a level that DNA alone does not determine. If DNA isn’t wholly responsible for the way an embryo develops—for body-plan morphogenesis—then DNA sequences can mutate indefinitely and still not produce a new body plan, regardless of the amount of time and the number of mutational trials available to the evolutionary process. Genetic mutations are simply the wrong tool for the job at hand." Stephen Meyer - Darwin's Doubt (p. 281) https://uncommondescent.com/epigenetics/epigenetics-why-it-is-a-problem-for-darwinism/ Darwin's Doubt narrated by Paul Giem - The Origin of Body Plans - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLHDSWJBW3DNUaMy2xdaup5ROw3u0_mK8t&v=rLl6wrqd1e0&feature=player_detailpage#t=290 Body Plans Are Not Mapped-Out by the DNA - Jonathan Wells - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meR8Hk5q_EM
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