Evolution is a Religious Issue

Saying there is only a 1% difference is misleading. Saying that the whole genome is only 1% different is more accurate. That is not misleading (assuming that its true, because there is some variation in those figures). Is it presenting the whole of the data? What would be the whole of the data? Who is not presenting it? Scientists are not hiding it, what the media decides to report is its own business.However, the claim remains largely accurate, an enormous percentage of the chimpanzee genome is the same as our own.

Well, its been replied to twice now, but I don't think anyone answered your question. Let me try. The answer is: not necessarily. For a start of, we would not need to have the broken Vitamin C gene broken in the same manner. We could replace that whole gene with another load of random noise and still get an identical twin. Repeat and rinse for any other broken genes or 'junk DNA' (the kind of junk that isn't used for anything. There might be no code that is useless, but I believe there is redundancy in the genome. This could theoretically be tinkered with).Lets say, for example, that 50% of the genome serves no purpose when it comes making a human being (that is 50% of the DNA does not code or is not regulatory. The number is arbitrary). In that case the full DNA would be 50% different. Significant I would suggest.Let us also consider the possibility that the same job can be done in different ways (TIMTOWTDI as the Perl community would say). That is to say, one can create the same protiens using different amino acids. Why would the proteins in one twin be created in the same way as in the other?Amusingly this latter piece of information can be used to show evolutionary relationshipsThis message has been edited by Modulous, Fri, 03-June-2005 05:24 PM

I think the claim was that since paternity tests can determine our ancestory, we can apply DNA testing methods to go further and further back along our ancestory until we start reaching common ancestors with other species. If we had DNA samples from every individual that ever lived, and a computer the size of a planet, we could, with stunning accuracy show relatedness.As it stands we can't do this, however we can sample DNA from existing species and calculate just how different we are to one another. Lots of clever stuff goes on here, but suffice to say it is possible to calculate common ancestory. I'm a bit confused by your double negative. If you said "The DNA shows that we are closer related to a banana than a chimp", you'd probably find evolutionists say "This doesn't fit in with our concepts of common descent" But why would the be more similar in other ways as well? Why would they need to, for example, use the same sequence of amino acids to construct "cytochrome c" (essential protien composed of 104 amino acids) as we do? No other creatures do. In fact, the further away you go from things that 'look' like us the more different the cytochrome c protien encoding becomes. Rhesus monkeys have one amino acid difference in their encoding, whales: 10 turtles: 15 and tunafish: 21So there you have it, the difference are more pronounced in reptiles than in mammals and more pronounced still in fish. That just happens to be the order in which evolution happened. I'm fairly sure that there will be exceptions to this pattern, but the general trend is strong and undeniable. Also, as more and more genes are compared in this manner, the trend is strengthened.An excellent diagram which shows the DNA sequence very planely can be seen here. It shows the full DNA sequence of cytochrome c in humans and mice, and allows you to compare them. The conclusion is interesting...there are 78 codons which are are identical between the two of them. The number of DNA combinations that would produce exactly the same amino acids is 1.3x10³³. That's a heck of a lot of different ways they could have combined. For some reason, of all the different ways the same result could have been acheived, this way was used. And the closer you get to humans evolutionarily, the more similar, the further away, the more different the coding is.Why on earth is that? Is it just a HUGE coincidence? Here is a study, courtesy of PubMed, which looks at 100s of genes and compares them to come up with results which very closely match what we already knew based on the fossil evidence. More details hereHere is a simple graph which gives you an visual idea on what I am talking about, but of course, you'll need to study the methodology to understand the diagram better.This message has been edited by Modulous, Fri, 03-June-2005 09:35 PM