Article on chimp and human dna

[bippy123]

And as Casey Luskin points out Miller Greatly exagerates the importance of chromosome 2 fusion and a relation between man and ape. This is called the evolution of the gaps argument , where Evolutionists assume that man and ape share a common ancestor (which has never been proven) and then try to fit chromosome fusion 2 as proof that this is true.
On the surface anyone that hasent truely studied this assumes that its great evidence for ancestry but when doing some in depth research we are seeing that all it is is the apriori commitment of the evolutionist to try to fit everything into evolution assuming that only evolution is true from the start. This isnt critical thinking but philosophical dogma in action.

//www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1392

And the Miller Told His Tale: Ken Miller's Cold (Chromosomal) Fusion (Updated)
by Casey Luskin (originally written in Oct. of 2005, some updates and changes added later.)

A Chromosomal Fusion Event Does Not Tell Anything About Whether Humans Share a Common Ancestor with Modern Apes.Dr. Kenneth Miller was the leadoff hitter for plaintiffs last week in the trial over ID in Dover. Amidst other things, Miller's testimony was aimed at making a case that the Neo-Darwinian hypothesis is as well-supported as gravitational theory. It was my understanding that this trial was about whether or not Dover had violated the First Amendment by mentioning to students that some book in the library advocated intelligent design. So I was a little confused as to why it was relevant for Miller to give us all a lesson in evolutionary biology. Nonetheless, this article will respond to Dr. Miller's arguments that evidence for fusion in human chromosome #2 demonstrates that humans share a common ancestor with living apes.

According to Neo-Darwinism, humans and extant apes supposedly share a common ancestor. During Dr. Miller's testimony supporting the theory of evolution, he discussed how human chromosome #2 has two centromeres, which are the central - attachment points used for pulling a chromosome to one end of a cell during mitosis. Chromosomes normally only have one centromere, but human chromosome # 2 looks like two chromosomes were fused together within its interior because it has two centromeres (or at least, it has one normal centromere, and another region that looks a lot like a centromere elsewhere within the chromosome). Miller further noted that human chromosome #2 has a section where there are two telomeres, structures normally at the tips of chromosomes, which are found in the middle of chromosome #2. Essentially, these two telomeres are oriented in a way that it looks, genetically speaking, like the ends of two chromosomes were fused together.

I am more than willing to acknowledge and affirm that Miller provided good direct empirical evidence for a chromosomal fusion event which created human chromosome #2. He claims this evidence strongly supports his view that humans and chimps share a common ancestor, because humans have two fewer chromosomes than chimp, and Darwinian evolution predicts this fusion evidence. But his argument raises two crucial questions:

(1) Is his chromosome fusion story good evidence for Neo-Darwinian common ancestry between humans and apes?
(2) Does Dr. Miller's hypothesis perhaps pose problems for a Neo-Darwinian account of human genetic history?

As will be discussed below, the answer to Question (1) is "No" and the answer to Question (2) is "Yes."

Now pay close attention to what Luskin says here

I will bold this part as it is very important

Evidence for Fusion in a Human Chromosome Tells you LITTLE TO NOTHING about whether Humans Share a Common Ancestor with Living Apes
Usually Darwinists argue for human-ape common ancestry based upon alleged "shared errors" in human DNA and ape DNA. But the chromosomal fusion evidence is not a “shared error” argument for human / ape common ancestry, because apes do not have a fused chromosome. The human chromosomal fusion argument focuses on a fusion event that is specific to the human line, and therefore provides a highly limited form of evidence for human / ape common ancestry.


It happened within human history, not some supposed common ancestor between apes and humans . this is miller conflating the importance of chromosome fusion 2. In this section miller left science and is actually doing philosophy.

All Miller has done is documented direct empirical evidence of a chromosomal fusion event in the human line. But evidence for a chromosomal fusion event is not evidence for when that event took place, nor is it evidence for the ancestry prior to that event.

To be more specific, the fusion-evidence implies that some of our ancestors likely had 48 chromosomes. But Miller has not provided any evidence that the individual with 48 chromosomes was historically related to modern apes. (I grant that our chromosome #2 has banding patterns similar to two ape chromosomes, but given that our chromosome structure is generally similar to that of apes anyways, it is not a stretch to assume that any 48 chromosome ancestor of modern humans might have also had a chromosomal scheme similar to that of apes, regardless of whether or not that individual was related to apes. Claiming that banding pattern similarities is evidence of common ancestry with apes simply invokes the “similarity = common ancestry” argument, and thus begs the question.) It is entirely possible that our genus Homo underwent a chromosomal fusion event within its own separate history.

Under Neo-Darwinism, the common ancestor of humans and apes is thought to have lived about six million years ago. But under Miller's account, it is entirely possible that this chromosomal fusion event happened in a human population only 10,000 years ago, in a population that has no relation to living apes. In such a case, this chromosomal fusion event thus needs not have anything to do with making us human-like as opposed to ape-like. Clearly this chromosomal fusion event could be extremely far removed from any alleged ancestry with apes.

In essence, we don't know that this chromosomal fusion event happened on a line which leads back to some alleged common ancestor of apes and humans. All we know is that this fusion event happened in the line that led to you and me. Whether that line has common ancestry with apes is a separate question which cannot be answered by this fusion evidence.

All that evolutionists have claimed is that this fusion event occurred after the split that led to humans, so it occurs only in the human lineage. Evidence of a chromosomal fusion event is not evidence that our line leads all the way back to apes.

Given that we had a 48-chromosome ancestor, we don't know if our 48-chromosome ancestor was an ape or not. For all we know, our 48-chromosome ancestor was a part of a separately designed species, as fully human as any person you might meet on the street today. There is no good reason to think that going from a 46-chromosome individual to a 48-chromosome individual would make our species more ape-like.

This is explained in figure 1 below:

Miller's "prediction" of Neo-Darwinian evolution is not a hard prediction of his theory: if common ancestry is true, Miller predicts that there must have been a fusion event. But the converse is not true. The presence of this fusion event in no way requires that common ancestry is true.

It only gets worse for Neo-Darwinism
Under Neo-Darwinism, genetic mutation events (including chromosomal aberrations) are generally assumed to be random and unguided. Miller's Cold-Fusion tale becomes more suspicious when one starts to ask harder questions like "how could a fusion event get fixed into a population via random and unguided processes, or how could it result in viable offspring?" Miller's account must overcome two potential obstacles:

(1) In most of our experience, individuals with randomly-fused chromosomes or extra chromosomes can be normal, but it is very likely that their offspring will ultimately have a genetic disease. A classic example of such is a cause of Translocation Down's syndrome, where part of chromosome 21 become fused to another chromosome, resulting in extra material from chromosome 21 in an individual, causing Down's syndrome.

(2) One way around the problem in (1) is to find a mate that also had an identical chromosomal fusion event or chromosomal splitting event. But this would require a rare mutant finding a mate with identical traits. Valentine and Erwin explain that the odds of rare-mutants finding mates with identical traits are highly unlikely:
"[T]he chance of two identical rare mutant individuals arising in sufficient propinquity to produce offspring seems too small to consider as a significant evolutionary event."

(Erwin, D..H., and Valentine, J.W. "'Hopeful monsters,' transposons, and the Metazoan radiation", Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci USA, 81:5482-5483, Sept 1984)
In other words, Miller has to explain why a random chromosomal fusion event which, in our experience ultimately results in offspring with genetic diseases, didn’t result in a genetic disease and was thus advantageous enough to get fixed into the entire population of our ancestors. Given the lack of empirical evidence that random chromosomal fusion events are not disadvantageous, perhaps the presence of a chromosomal fusion event is not good evidence for a Neo-Darwinian history for humans.

Miller may have found good empirical evidence for a chromosomal fusion event. But our experience with mammalian genetics tells us that such a chromosomal aberration could have created a non-viable mutant, or a normal individual who could not produce viable offspring. Thus, Neo-Darwinism has a hard time explaining why such a random fusion event was somehow advantageous.

If it were to turn out that the fusion of two chromosomes can only result in a viable individual if the fusion event takes place in a highly unlikely and highly specified manner, then we may actually be looking at a case for a non-Darwinian intelligent design event in the history of the human genus.

[bippy123]

Nothing in this article is technically new information. The chromosome 2 bit of information is a tremendous and fascinating example of how genetic research has added so much to the list of evidence for evolution. A creationist could argue that such blatant relatedness between humans and other primates is simply there because "God said so," but even most religious people out there have trouble finding ways to debunk the evidence. Like the guy listed in the article, who pretty much just makes stuff up and hopes the general public doesn't actually fact-check his statements.

Thats simply not true Ivellious and I listed many scientific reasons why chromosome fusion 2 is as JoeCoder from UD says

are

poor taxonomic dividers and don’t necessitate a speciation event. Some species show a very diverse range of karyotypes (number of chromosomes), with little-to-no effect on phenotype (how an organism looks and behaves):

This is the evolution of the gaps argument in full motion. This just simply isnt the way real science is done my friend.
and as he has shown here

It is now considered that there is little or no evidence to suggest that centric fusions in a variety of combinations affect the total productive fitness of domestic sheep”, and interestingly, these fusions seem to have little phenotypical effect, “Less than 1% of phenotypically abnormal lambs were recorded in a total of 1995 progeny born over 10 years.” Cytogenetics and reproduction of sheep with multiple centric fusions, Reproduction, 1979

“We report an unprecedented amount of chromosomal variation in a natural population of the South American marsh rat Holochlus brasiliensis. This variation consists of four distinct classes of chromosomal rearrangements: whole-arm translocations, pericentric inversions, variation in the amount of euchromatin, and variation in number and kind of supernumerary (B) chromosomes. Twenty-six karyotypes are present among 42 animals.”, Hampton L. Carson, Exceptional chromosomal mutations in a rodent population are not strongly underdominant, PNAS, 1989

and yet the sheep stay sheep and teh marsh rats stayed marsh rats.

This is simply the fairy tale imagination of evolutionists inserted into evolution to make it look like a legitimate scientific fact or super evidence when it is nothing of the sort.

Ivellious why not research both ends of the argument. If evolution was such a strong theory it wouldnt need to insert philosophical assumptions and make believe they are great scientific evidence for evolution.

This is the just the start. This doesnt even talk about the very poor transitional chart of whales which I have mentioned numerous times on this forum.

Gosh this itching is making me more ornery than usual

[jlay]

If there is really only 1% difference in human and chimp, then I am definately going to protect that 1% of my DNA.
That's a pretty important 1% in my estimation. If that gets damaged, you'll be swinging from branches and throwing poo at the neighbors.

Maybe we should start lobbying for Chimp rights. Or how about a human-chimp marriage movement?

Kidding aside though, do you have any resources that explain the similarities such as the chromosomal fusion, ERV insertions, etc, from a progressive creationist or YEC perspective?

I've read several papers, but it's a lot of technical language.
One has to first assume an old earth, because the argument is that this event happened about 6 million years ago. This has problems even if you hold to an old earth view. Decay. For example, "telomeric DNA is predicted to degenerate quickly after a fusion event, then it is not very persuasive to cite telomeric DNA as evidence for such an event." - See more at: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/wh ... pDtsW.dpuf
But that is exactly what they do. I've yet to see anything regarding molecules to man evolution that is not founded on question begging and equivocation. This is another example of digging for evidence to support ones presuppositions.

[bippy123]

If there is really only 1% difference in human and chimp, then I am definately going to protect that 1% of my DNA.
That's a pretty important 1% in my estimation. If that gets damaged, you'll be swinging from branches and throwing poo at the neighbors.

Maybe we should start lobbying for Chimp rights. Or how about a human-chimp marriage movement?

Kidding aside though, do you have any resources that explain the similarities such as the chromosomal fusion, ERV insertions, etc, from a progressive creationist or YEC perspective?

I've read several papers, but it's a lot of technical language.
One has to first assume an old earth, because the argument is that this event happened about 6 million years ago. This has problems even if you hold to an old earth view. Decay. For example, "telomeric DNA is predicted to degenerate quickly after a fusion event, then it is not very persuasive to cite telomeric DNA as evidence for such an event." - See more at: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/wh ... pDtsW.dpuf
But that is exactly what they do. I've yet to see anything regarding molecules to man evolution that is not founded on question begging and equivocation. This is another example of digging for evidence to support ones presuppositions.

Its the question begging and equivication that caused me to leave evolution for intelligent design

[neo-x]

If there is really only 1% difference in human and chimp, then I am definately going to protect that 1% of my DNA.
That's a pretty important 1% in my estimation. If that gets damaged, you'll be swinging from branches and throwing poo at the neighbors.

Maybe we should start lobbying for Chimp rights. Or how about a human-chimp marriage movement?

Kidding aside though, do you have any resources that explain the similarities such as the chromosomal fusion, ERV insertions, etc, from a progressive creationist or YEC perspective?

I've read several papers, but it's a lot of technical language.
One has to first assume an old earth, because the argument is that this event happened about 6 million years ago. This has problems even if you hold to an old earth view. Decay. For example, "telomeric DNA is predicted to degenerate quickly after a fusion event, then it is not very persuasive to cite telomeric DNA as evidence for such an event." - See more at: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/wh ... pDtsW.dpuf
But that is exactly what they do. I've yet to see anything regarding molecules to man evolution that is not founded on question begging and equivocation. This is another example of digging for evidence to support ones presuppositions.

Its the question begging and equivication that caused me to leave evolution for intelligent design

I don't find that all, in fact evolution makes the most sense to me. For me the evidence of DNa similarity is just too much. For example it is fine if one questions the difference between the base pairs of man and ape, they translate into millions of differing pairs. But how do you explain why the rest of itvis Exactly the same as yours, including genes that don't work in is but work in chimps. How intelligent would it be to have a gene that has gone redundant via evolution.

[bippy123]

If there is really only 1% difference in human and chimp, then I am definately going to protect that 1% of my DNA.
That's a pretty important 1% in my estimation. If that gets damaged, you'll be swinging from branches and throwing poo at the neighbors.

Maybe we should start lobbying for Chimp rights. Or how about a human-chimp marriage movement?

Kidding aside though, do you have any resources that explain the similarities such as the chromosomal fusion, ERV insertions, etc, from a progressive creationist or YEC perspective?

I've read several papers, but it's a lot of technical language.
One has to first assume an old earth, because the argument is that this event happened about 6 million years ago. This has problems even if you hold to an old earth view. Decay. For example, "telomeric DNA is predicted to degenerate quickly after a fusion event, then it is not very persuasive to cite telomeric DNA as evidence for such an event." - See more at: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/wh ... pDtsW.dpuf
But that is exactly what they do. I've yet to see anything regarding molecules to man evolution that is not founded on question begging and equivocation. This is another example of digging for evidence to support ones presuppositions.

Its the question begging and equivication that caused me to leave evolution for intelligent design

I don't find that all, in fact evolution makes the most sense to me. For me the evidence of DNa similarity is just too much. For example it is fine if one questions the difference between the base pairs of man and ape, they translate into millions of differing pairs. But how do you explain why the rest of itvis Exactly the same as yours, including genes that don't work in is but work in chimps. How intelligent would it be to have a gene that has gone redundant via evolution.

i explain it by explaining that it isnt Neo.
and this supposed 98% relation has also come into question as well

http://www.uncommondescent.com/news/fro ... echanisms/
http://creation.com/human-chimp-dna-sim ... -evaluated

Code: Select all

The initial estimates of high human-chimp DNA similarity came from a field of study called reassociation kinetics. These initial reports fueled early claims by such popular evolutionary luminaries as Oxford Professor Richard Dawkins, who stated “Chimpanzees and we share more than 99 per cent of our genes.”1 At the time, this statement was presumptuous, because gene numbers for humans and chimps were not known. The initial drafts of the human and chimp genomes were not announced until 2001 and 2005, respectively.2–

The supposed gene data Dawkins referred to in 1986 was an indirect estimate based on the reassociation kinetics of mixed human and chimp DNA, not clearly defined genes.1 In reassociation kinetics, heat and/or chemistry are used to separate double-stranded DNA into single strands. When the DNA is allowed to reassociate in a controlled manner, it can be fractionated using various protocols. The slower the reassociation, the more complex and gene-dense the DNA is thought to be. In general, three types of DNA can be recovered: high-copy (highly repetitive, gene poor), low-copy (moderately repetitive, low levels of genes), and single copy (gene-rich). For comparative studies, the single copy fraction of DNA is collected from two species, mixed together, disassociated and allowed to reassociate so that human and chimp DNA can recombine. The level of complementary base matching between strands can be indirectly measured by a variety of methods that indirectly measure rates/levels of reassociation. 

 The caveat is that only the single-copy fractions of the human and chimp genomes were utilized to obtain early estimates of similarity. Scientists focused on the single-copy fraction because of the high gene content. However, many genes are located in the other genome fractions and were thus left out of the analysis. Another problem is that virtually the entire genome is now known to be functional in some aspect and the non-coding regions have been shown to provide many critical control features and nucleotide templates.6,7,8

The first 99% similarity claim, which Cohen calls “The Myth of 1%”, was made in 1975 by Allan Wilson and Mary-Claire King using reassociation kinetics of single-copy DNA.9 Other similar studies came up with an average divergence in single-copy DNA that measured about 1.5%, producing the widely spread quotes of 98.5% DNA sequence similarity.10–12 While a vast majority of the human and chimp genomes were actually excluded in the early quest to compare DNA, the supposed high similarities in the relatively small portions represented by single copy fractions surprised researchers. The eventual consensus, as reviewed by Gibbons, was that the dramatic differences between human and chimp anatomy and behaviour were based on the assumption that small genetic differences produce enormous physical differences.13 

 Subsequent research using sequenced DNA built upon the early high similarity dogma established by reassociation kinetics. In a companion to this paper, we discuss the possibility that an unspoken dogma-based ‘Gold Standard’ regarding the human–chimp similarity issue was established during the initial studies involving reassociation kinetics.14

A review paper written by creationist Todd Wood on biological similarity between human and chimp highlighted and supposedly confirmed evolutionary similarity claims, yet ignored the important bioinformatic issues surrounding widespread data omission and selective analyses.15 Wood’s review did little to support creationist claims that humans were uniquely created in the image of God rather than being a few DNA base pairs from a chimp. Therefore, our focus on DNA sequence similarity will address the same publications listed in Wood’s review in addition to several more recent papers. The summarized data from these studies including estimates of similarity adjusted for omitted data is shown in table 1.

Table 1. Summary of human–chimpanzee genome comparison papers. Where possible, omitted data from the reported alignments is used to produce an actual percent DNA identity.

I cant print the date but it shows the true numbers and they are no where near the 1 to 2% claimed by evolutionists
The number is closer to 81% actually which is a HUGE difference.

and in other more recent studies is actually no more then 65%

Another notable study published by Ebersberger et al. the same year as Britten’s paper utilized chimp genome sequence obtained from randomly sheared, size-selected fragments in the 300 to 600 base range.19 These DNA sequences were aligned to an early version of the human genome assembly using the BLAT (Blast-Like Alignment Tool) algorithm. Researchers selected two-thirds of the total sequence for more detailed analyses. One-third of the chimp sequence would not align to the human genome and was discarded. The methods section in the paper19 describes how the subset of prescreened data was further filtered to obtain only the very best alignments. The resulting data was then subjected to a variety of comparative analyses that, for all practical purposes, are completely meaningless given the extremely high level of selection, data masking, and filtering applied. Not surprisingly, they report only a 1.24% difference in only highly similar aligned areas between human and chimp. A more realistic sequence similarity based on the researchers’ own numbers for discarded data in the alignments alone is not more than 65% (table 1).

Shortly after these initial human–chimp comparison papers, a disturbing trend quickly emerged. This trend involved only reporting final alignment results and omitting the specific details of how such data was filtered, masked and selected. Key data to allow critical readers of human–chimp similarity papers to calculate a more accurate overall similarity began to be consistently omitted. For example, Liu et al. reported on the alignment of human genomic sequence with chimp, baboon, and marmoset.20 Important information concerning the starting set of sequences and specific data for the alignments was omitted. They state only that they used a total amount of 10.6 Mb of sequence for all species combined. Their similarity estimate on the final alignment, omitting indels and non-aligned areas, was 98.9%. Including indels, we derived a value of 95.6% for the alignments, similar to Britten’s research. Important data outside the aligned areas was impossible to evaluate because of the omitted sequence data.

Suffice to say that what I accepted as gospel truth on evolution for the first 41 years of my life isnt what I thought it was. I have been on both sides of the fence (theistic evolution and ID) and I wouldnt mind coming back to tehistic evolution but the more I study it the more I find things like this and also philosophical assertions being branded as scientific ones.
I just dont see my faith in evolution coming back unless some huge finding comes out and thats highly unlikely.

[bippy123]

And this small fact is also emphasized which evolutionists keep forgetting to mention to us
http://www.uncommondescent.com/news/fro ... echanisms/

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.
http://www.reasons.org/articles/dna-com ... del-part-2

By this argument we also get a 70% genetic similarity between humans and zebra fishes.

bornagain77December 10, 2013 at 2:53 pm
related notes:
Family Ties: Completion of Zebrafish Reference Genome Yields Strong Comparisons With Human Genome – Apr. 17, 2013
Excerpt: Researchers demonstrate today that 70 per cent of protein-coding human genes are related to genes found in the zebrafish,,,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 131725.htm

Now maybe I can make the case of me being similar looking to the zebra fish but I cant do that for most normal looking human beings

This is yet another poor argument for apes and humans coming from a common ancestor.

[Morny]

Byblos wrote:
Kidding aside though, do you have any resources that explain the similarities such as the chromosomal fusion, ERV insertions, etc, from a progressive creationist or YEC perspective?

Byblos,

It's not very in depth, but it's something:
http://www.reasons.org/articles/chromos ... -evolution

Thanks for the link Rick. I'm no biologist but even I could see the flimsiness of the conclusion. It boils down to 'it's highly improbable therefore God did it'. Seriously we need a little more substance than that.

On http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/ ... eationists, Carl Zimmer (science writer for Discover magazine) gives an easy to read explanation of the progression of chromosome-2, from the common ancestor of all apes, to gorillas, chimps, and homo sapiens. Carl gives step-by-step, color-coded chromosome-2 drawings that make the changes easy to follow.

[jlay]

Morny,
The problem, as is so often the case, is that those color graphics are NOT evidence. Remember, NONE of this was observed. And it is evident that the author of the article views the graphs as actual evidence, as do you. Again, question begging.

[Morny]

Morny,
The problem, as is so often the case, is that those color graphics are NOT evidence. Remember, NONE of this was observed. And it is evident that the author of the article views the graphs as actual evidence, as do you. Again, question begging.

Cool magic trick! Just a wave of the hand, some jabberwocky, and poof ... uncountable man-years of scientific investigation and multi-discipline evidence disappear. Oh well, what has science ever given us anyway?

[Byblos]

Morny,
The problem, as is so often the case, is that those color graphics are NOT evidence. Remember, NONE of this was observed. And it is evident that the author of the article views the graphs as actual evidence, as do you. Again, question begging.

Cool magic trick! Just a wave of the hand, some jabberwocky, and poof ... uncountable man-years of scientific investigation and multi-discipline evidence disappear. Oh well, what has science ever given us anyway?

Seriously who exactly said that? Absolutely no one. For you to just dismiss what J said is doing exactly what you falsely accuse him of doing. With the wave of your hand you are utterly dismissing his argument without the benefit of a response. He happens to be correct, unless you consider graphics as scientific proof.

The point is this: The scientific claim is that the chromosome 2 fusion in humans is an indication of common ancestry between chimps and humans. Although it has merits, it is an incomplete theory precisely because it fails to address why two species cannot have the same number of chromosomes and still be unrelated. After all, humans and stable antelopes have the same number of chromosomes. By the same token are we to assume humans have more in common with stable antelopes than they do with chimps? How about dolphins who have 44 chromosomes. Are we as humans genetically equidistant from both dolphins and chimps since the relative chromosomal difference is the same? Those are the kind of questions that need answering. Now I'm not claiming there aren't answers, I'm just saying you haven't provided any.

[Morny]

Morny,
The problem, as is so often the case, is that those color graphics are NOT evidence. Remember, NONE of this was observed. And it is evident that the author of the article views the graphs as actual evidence, as do you. Again, question begging.

Cool magic trick! Just a wave of the hand, some jabberwocky, and poof ... uncountable man-years of scientific investigation and multi-discipline evidence disappear. Oh well, what has science ever given us anyway?

Seriously who exactly said that? Absolutely no one. For you to just dismiss what J said is doing exactly what you falsely accuse him of doing. With the wave of your hand you are utterly dismissing his argument without the benefit of a response. He happens to be correct, unless you consider graphics as scientific proof.

The point is this: The scientific claim is that the chromosome 2 fusion in humans is an indication of common ancestry between chimps and humans. Although it has merits, it is an incomplete theory precisely because it fails to address why two species cannot have the same number of chromosomes and still be unrelated. After all, humans and stable antelopes have the same number of chromosomes. By the same token are we to assume humans have more in common with stable antelopes than they do with chimps? How about dolphins who have 44 chromosomes. Are we as humans genetically equidistant from both dolphins and chimps since the relative chromosomal difference is the same? Those are the kind of questions that need answering. Now I'm not claiming there aren't answers, I'm just saying you haven't provided any.

jlay: Remember, NONE of this was observed. So what? Every day all of us, including scientists, juries, doctors, and biologists, make useful (and often life-saving) inferences based on evidence from unobserved events.

jlay: And it is evident that the author of the article views the graphs as actual evidence, as do you. Again, question begging. Nonsense. Where do Carl Zimmer or I use a circular argument? The chromosome graphics are accurate models from living gorillas, chimps, and humans. The bandings, telomeres, centromeres, codon differences, etc., are consistent with common ancestry with gorillas splitting off before chimps. In addition, Carl Zimmer's excellent overview cites research supporting the likelihood for each of the proposed chromosome transitions, e.g., how telomeres can stick end-to-end to fuse 2 chromosomes.

So yes, jlay dismissively waved his hands.

Your last paragraph has excellent questions, which are exactly the kinds of questions scientists and other curious people should be asking. Carl Zimmer answers those in his article, but in a couple days, when I have a bit more time, I will give short responses to your questions.

[Philip]

I don't find that all, in fact evolution makes the most sense to me. For me the evidence of DNA similarity is just too much.

It's a huge mistake to think that just because there are genetic code similarities, these prove evolution. Who created the genetic code and its assigned applications? GOD! Just as we use the very same 26 letters to create an enormous number of words, and the words to countless books, God could code anyway he saw fit with His same code adaptable to an unfathomable number of organisms. Same with computer code - I've argued before - same code, vastly different software and uses, operationally and purposefully different, independently developed software, etc - ALL using the same code, just uniquely and individually developed. Did you ever begin to deduce that something (genetic coding) is useful to create across many types, precisely because the very same code, sequenced uniquely, can produce such widely diverse and different species - and yet also/often sharing similar physical characteristics/aspects of the SAME code. It's a huge mistake to think that shared genetic markers are a slam dunk for proving macroevolution!

Hugh Ross remarks: " Speciation and extinction remained roughly balanced before the appearance of human beings. Then speciation suddenly ended., becoming overwhelmed by extinctions after humans arrived." So "once humans arrived, He (God) ceased making new kinds of life and no longer replaced extinct life-forms. "

"From a Biblical perspective, one reason so many apparent transitions in the fossil record for whales and horses is that the Creator had a particular time, place, and purpose for each one in the ecosystem. Because these kinds of animals go extinct so rapidly, the fossil record shows frequent replacements, or "transitions," for them. It seems that God frequently created new species to replace those that went extinct."

Ross also makes some interesting observations about so-called "transition life forms":

"Why are the so-called transitional life-forms most abundant among species with the lowest probability to survive mutational and environmental changes and least abundant among species with the HIGHEST probabilities to survive such changes?

[Morny]

Byblos: The point is this: The scientific claim is that the chromosome 2 fusion in humans is an indication of common ancestry between chimps and humans.

Yes, one of many indications, but an extremely important indication. For some time, scientists had known that chimps (and gorillas and orangutans) had 24 chromosome pairs, but humans had only 23 pairs. How could chimps and humans have very close common ancestry, when that missing chromosome pair might have several hundred genes? But then, ever-improving DNA sequencing showed that human chromosome #2 was really two chromosomes stuck end-to-end. If the new DNA analysis had shown simply a missing chromosome pair in humans, claiming common ancestry would have been massively problematic.

Although it has merits, it is an incomplete theory precisely because it fails to address why two species cannot have the same number of chromosomes and still be unrelated. After all, humans and stable antelopes have the same number of chromosomes. By the same token are we to assume humans have more in common with stable antelopes than they do with chimps? How about dolphins who have 44 chromosomes. Are we as humans genetically equidistant from both dolphins and chimps since the relative chromosomal difference is the same?

DNA (what in large part defines living things) rides piggyback on chromosomes. The number of chromosomes is not, in and of itself, special. Over many millions of years, various mechanisms can change the chromosome count (up and down) independently for each lineage in the tree of life. So for example, that chimps and potatoes have the same chromosome pair count (24) shouldn't be surprising, but the DNA on those chromosomes is significantly different. Your human and sable antelope chromosome count match is another good example.

However, close common ancestry, e.g., humans and chimps, does require close DNA matching. For example, a bigger DNA difference between chimps and humans, than between humans and baboons, would again have been massively problematic for evolution's view of animal common ancestry. Close DNA matching doesn't prove close common ancestry, but is supporting evidence consistent with the claim.

[Stu]

This is evidence of nothing but a common designer. Remember commonality in all it's forms was used as evidence of design long before it came to be used by evolution.

Here's a list:

Chimpanzee 48
Deer Mouse 48
Gorilla 48
Hare 48
Orangutan Pongo 48
Potato 48
Tobacco 48
Human 46
Reeves's Muntjac 46
Sable Antelope 46

So what does that list tell us? That we are closely related to a potato and at some point we split along an alternate evolutionary path.

No, of course not, all it means is that Humans have 46 chromosomes (two of which fused), potatoes have 48 chromosomes and chimps have 48 chromosomes. You can read a whole lot into anything if your particular (evolutionary) paradigm demands it be so. However it can be just as easily used as evidence for a common designer. And evidence that can be used by two completely opposing views is not very good evidence....