googlef87758e9b6df9bec.html A Sure Word: January 2016

Sunday, January 31, 2016

10 Evidences for Biblical Creation: Part 3

#7: Mimicry & Symbiosis: I just recently wrote a post about mimicry in nature. This is where one species supposedly has evolved to look like another species. An insect might look like a plant. A fly might look like a bee. A moth might look like a bird.

Looking like something else might camouflage the mimic, allowing it to hide from predators or sneak up on prey, or it might fool predators into thinking the mimic is too dangerous to eat. In many cases, the resemblance is uncanny; it's far too similar to be an accident.

According to evolution, the mimic would have had to evolve the similarity gradually. One generation is only slightly like the model, a later generation is a little more like the model, a later generation even more similar, et cetera. The problem with this theory is that evolution is not a directed process. Natural selection did not know the mimic should later look like the model.

The other problem is that the model is also believed to have evolved so over the millions of years that the mimic was evolving to look like the model, the model was also evolving: model changes – mimic changes – model changes – mimic changes. That something like mimicry could ever happen by undirected processes is incredible. To believe it has happened the numerous times we find in nature is laughable. It is much more reasonable to believe the creatures were designed to look similar.

A similar problem for evolution is symbiosis. Symbiosis is where two species of animals exist together in a relationship that benefits both. For example, the Egyptian Plover bird will fly into a crocodile's mouth and pick food out from its teeth. This benefits both creatures – the bird gets an easy meal and the croc get its teeth cleaned – but how did such an arrangement evolve? How did the bird evolve an instinct to fly into a crocodile's mouth? How did the crocodile evolve an instinct to not eat the bird? Keep in mind that both of these unusual instincts would have had to evolve simultaneously in both creatures. If some plover ancestor had the urge to fly into a croc's mouth and was eaten then evolution is over. That bird is removed from the gene pool.

There are thousands, maybe millions, of instances of mimicry and symbiosis found in nature. Two, unrelated species strongly resembling each other is hard to explain with evolution. Believing that it happens time after time after time after time by sheer chance is impossible. To be sure, evolutionists have offered explanations. I find them to be more like “what if” stories than real science. Believing that similarities or symbiosis among different species is the result of design is far more reasonable.

#6: Homoplasy: According to evolutionary theory, some animals share similar features because they have a common ancestor. However, some creatures have features in common even though they aren't closely related in an evolutionary sense. Homoplasy, also called convergent evolution, is the term used to describe similar features in species of different lineages.

It's easy to understand why two (supposedly) closely related species would resemble each other. It's harder to understand why two, distantly related species would resemble each other. This isn't mimicry, as described above, but the problem for evolution is very similar. For example, placental and marsupial mammals are believed to have diverged some 160 million years ago; why would marsupial moles and placental moles resemble each other since they're not closely related?

The usual evolutionary response is that “form follows function” and two animals can have similar features because they've evolved to live in similar environments. The problem I see in this explanation is that if similarities are not necessarily the result of common ancestry, how can they ever be considered evidence of common ancestry?

Humans and chimps, for example, both have an appendix. Most evolutionists will claim this is the result of us having a common ancestor. However, possums (another marsupial) also have an appendix. Humans are not considered by evolutionists to be closely related to possums so the appendix would have had to evolve independently in each creature. Yet the appendix is considered vestigial in humans – a useless evolutionary left over. It may have once had some function but apparently not such an important function that we can't live without it. Why would such an allegedly non-critical organ evolve independently in different species?

Evolution doesn't occur at all, of course, but I can at least understand in theory how analogous structures might evolve in distantly related species. However, the existence of similar vestigial organs in different species is much more difficult to swallow. Evolution is a very weak explanation of homoplasy. It's not hard at all to see how different creatures could have been created with similarities. Creation is the better explanation of the evidence. 

Read this entire series


Friday, January 29, 2016

10 Evidences for Creation. Part 2

#8: Fossils:

According to the Bible, there was a worldwide deluge that destroyed all terrestrial life. The only survivors were Noah, his family, and the animals he had taken with him on the Ark. The event, known commonly as Noah's Flood, radically changed the earth's topography and created most of the fossils we find in the so called, “geological column.” A popular meme used by evolutionists has the caption, “We have the fossils. We win.” The truth is, there are so many things about fossils that are better explained by the creation model that I would say that I could do a 10 part series on just fossils. Of course I won't do that. Consider this a single item with multiple sub-points. We'll call it a series within a series.



Abundance: Evolutionists advance the idea that fossils are created gradually as creatures die, are buried, and their bones become mineralized over millions of years. The reality is that fossilization is normally an extremely rare event. When a creature dies, its carcass is usually gone in a matter of weeks or maybe days, the result of scavenging and decay. There is very seldom enough carcass left to even become a fossil. The best chance for an animal's remains to become fossilized is if the poor critter is buried immediately. As we observe the world, we see there are literally trillions of fossils buried everywhere. You can hardly turn over a shovel of dirt without finding one. Seeing that there are so many fossils everywhere and knowing that virtually none are being created now, our observations fit well with the idea that the creatures were buried in the catastrophic flood described in the Bible.

Sudden burials: Numerous examples have been found of animals fossils in the middle of the act of doing something. For example, fish have been found fossilized in the act of eating another fish. An icthyosaur has been found in the act of giving birth. These fossils and others further attest to the fact that these creatures were buried suddenly in some disaster – even before having time to swallow – and preserved as fossils.

Polystrate fossils: The common evolutionary assumption is that rock layers are laid down gradually with each stratum representing some amount of time, similar to the rings of a tree. The lower the layer, the older the fossils in it are believed to be. Often, though, we will find fossils that intrude through several layers. Fossil tree trunks are a common example, where a trunk, several feet tall, stands upright through several strata. Obviously, the tree could not have stood upright for millions of years while sediment was deposited around it. Neither could it have been driven down into the rock like a nail. The more reasonable explanation is that the successive layers were laid down rapidly before the trunk had time to decompose. Besides trees, clam burrows have been found showing where clams had dug through several strata. The clam certainly could not have dug through solid rock so the strata had to still be soft when the clam dug through it.

Preserved Details: Completely intact, larger animals are more scarce in the fossil record. However, an abundance of smaller fossils exist. Something striking about many are the exquisite details that have been preserved – the fragile wings of insects, the scales of fish, leaves (which begin to wilt almost immediately after falling from the tree), and even the soft bodies of jellyfish have all been preserved. Since all of these things would begin to shrivel and decay within hours, the remarkable details could have only been made if the creature was buried immediately upon death. Again, this fits well with the biblical flood.

Ubiquitous Marine Animals: If you've ever found a fossil, I'll bet I can guess what it was. //RKBentley thinks// It was a shell!! Am I right? It's not hard to guess, really, because nearly the entire fossil record (some 95%) is comprised of marine animals, primarily shellfish. Most of what is left are plants and algae. The next largest group (about .25%) of fossils are insects. Only the tiniest fraction of fossils are of terrestrial vertebrates. Even dinosaur and primate fossils are always found with marine fossils in the same layer. There are marine fossils found from top to bottom in the geological column. Marine fossils cover nearly the entire earth's surface including the tops of the highest mountains. The fossil record does not show a history of simple to complex; a more accurate description would be marine animals, amphibians with marine animals, plants with marine animals, reptiles with marine animals, dinosaurs with marine animals, and birds and mammals with marine animals. It is entirely consistent with a worldwide flood.

Out of sequence fossils: Richard Dawkins once told a great lie when he said, Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours.I've written before about human footprints found in volcanic ash in Mexico dated by evolutionists to be 1.3 million years old. There are also the Laetoli footprints; these (allegedly) 4 million year old footprints are virtually indistinguishable from modern human footprints. They are said to belong to the species Australopithecus afarensis except that the fossil specimen, Little Foot, shows A. afarensis had very chimp-like feet. Flowering plants are believed to have evolved only 380 million years ago but fossils of pollen spores has been found in Cambrian rocks dated at 1.7 billion years old. There are many more examples I could cite; Dawkins said just one would disprove evolution!

Creationists believe the order in the fossil record depicts better where the creatures lived rather than when they lived. In a universal flood, the bottom-dwelling sea creatures would be buried first, then swimming marine creatures, amphibians and reptiles further up, with mammals and birds at the top. That's roughly what we observe. “Out of place” fossils are only a problem for the evolutionary theory which claims the creatures were separated by eons rather than environments.

Read this entire series


Friday, January 22, 2016

10 Evidences For Biblical Creation

You've heard me say many times that evidence is neutral and not really for any theory. Instead, theories are simply our attempts to explain why the evidence is the way it is. Still, some theories seem to explain the evidence better than other theories. If I found a suspect's bloody fingerprints on a murder weapon, I would immediately think he was there at the time of the crime; the defense might claim someone framed the suspect by painting his fingerprints onto the weapon with blood. Both theories could explain why the fingerprints are there but one is more likely than the other so I might say the bloody fingerprint is evidence for his guilt.

Critics love to say there is no evidence for creation. The truth is that creation has exactly the same evidence as evolution. We try to explain things like the fossils, for example, according to creation and secular scientists attempt to explain the same fossils with their theory. There is a dispute between both sides about which is the better explanation but the fossils themselves don't say which theory is correct.

Now, even though evidence isn't truly for any theory, I feel some things are better explained by creation than evolution. I know I keep saying I'm going to stop writing series. Actually, I should just stop saying that instead of thinking I'll ever stop writing series. Anyway, over the next few posts, I'm going to list 10 observations that I feel are best explained by young earth creation. I was going to call it “The Top 10 Evidences for Biblical Creation” but I really couldn't decide if these are the best 10. Actually, there are so many evidences that I thought about making a top 20 list but I didn't want this series to run that long. I'm just saying that to say there are other items that could have made this list but I'm only listing 10.

In this post, I thought I'd start with some ontological arguments. Here goes.

# 10: The existence of matter/energy: The first law of thermodynamics says that matter or energy can neither be created nor destroyed, they can only change form. You can convert matter into energy (as per Einstein's E=mc2) but the net amount of matter/energy in the universe remains constant.

This creates a quandary for secular science: if neither matter nor energy are being created, where did all the matter in the universe come from in the first place? Like Kent Hovind used to ask, “Who bought the gas that runs this machine?” Matter either has to be eternal (which merely ascribes to matter a divine-like quality which is hardly scientific) or it had to be created.

Logically speaking, something cannot create itself. But then again, many evolutionists are strangers to logic. In his book, The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking said, Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. I've always wondered how such a bright guy could make such a nonsensical statement. How could there even be a law such as gravity if nothing existed? Physical laws, such as gravity, are very likely properties of matter. At the very least, physical laws describe how matter behaves. In any event, if nothing exists, then neither do physical laws exist.

Secular science really has no explanations for the origin of matter, energy, or the physical laws that govern them. They merely acknowledge these came into existence in a creation event they call the Big Bang. They are believers in poofism. Nature-did-it is the god of the gaps argument of evolutionists.

Note carefully that I'm not saying that since we don't know how it happened then it must be God. The Bible has told us that God created all matter (John 1:3). What we observe empirically is consistent with what the Bible says. It is not consistent with secular science that says matter/energy cannot be created naturally. If matter/energy cannot be created naturally, the only other possibility is that it is created supernaturally.

# 9: The existence of life: The theory of evolution proposes that all life on earth has descended from a common ancestor yet scientists excuse themselves from saying where the first life form came from.  In Darwin's time, a cell was believed to be a gelatinous blob that could just fall together from an accidental arrangement of chemicals. It was called, “spontaneous generation.” Through scientific experimentation, all supposed examples of spontaneous generation were shown to be false. The idea was finally totally rejected and replaced by the Law of Biogenesis which states that life only comes from life.

Secular scientists still cling to a rehashed version of spontaneous generation, only now they call it “abiogenesis.” Besides being completely contrary to the scientific law of biogenesis, science hasn't been able to produce a single example of life coming from non-living chemicals.

A famous “origin of life” experiment was done by two scientists named Miller and Ulrey. They set up a contraption that produced various amino acids “naturally.” It's hard to credibly say a designed system producing amino acids does so “naturally.” Additionally, amino acids have been found in other places, like on meteors. Since amino acids are the building blocks of DNA, and because we sometimes find amino acids in nature, scientists believe these could be arranged serendipitously to create life.

Life isn't about substance; it's about arrangement. Believing amino acids could fortuitously organize into a living cell is like finding rocks and believing they could be accidentally arranged to create the pyramids. The more complicated the arrangement, the less likely it is the result of happenstance – the abundance of materials notwithstanding.

By the way, if life could not have even started, then the entire rest of the theory of evolution would be moot.  I'm just saying...

God creating life is not only consistent with the law of biogenesis, it has also been observed as recorded in the resurrection accounts found in the gospels.  A Creator is, by far, the more reasonable and scientific explanation of the origin of life.


Read this entire series

Friday, January 15, 2016

So you're saying evolution is not a directed process?

In my last post, I discussed an analogy, often used by evolutionists, to show how one species can change into another via tiny mutations over a long time. In that analogy, the author turned the word AARDVARK into BASEBALL but changing one letter at a time over 6 generations. It's a gross over simplification and one complaint I have with it is that evolution is not supposed to be a directed process. The author of the graph knew he was heading toward BASEBALL so he only selected changes that made the word more like BASEBALL. In the real world, natural selection doesn't know the arm is supposed to become a wing. Instead, natural selection will select a variation of an arm that is a more-fit-arm over a more-like-a-wing arm.

Evolutionists scoff at my criticism. Their usual response is that it's just an analogy and not meant to be a scientific model of how evolution works. Evolution, they say, is fine with any outcome. If not BASEBALL, it could become GIRAFFES or PENGUINS or WHATEVER.

Oh, really? What, then, is Batesian mimicry except directed evolution? From Study.com, we find the following description of Batesian mimicry:

One well-known anti-predator adaptation is Batesian mimicry. This describes a relationship where one organism that is harmless has evolved aposematic coloration that mimics a noxious species. A noxious species has some sort of harmful or damaging protection, and aposematic coloration is a distinctive warning marking that sets the noxious species apart and makes it easily identifiable. By imitating a harmful species, the mimic can avoid predation. (bold added)

In more ordinary language, this form of mimicry is when a harmless creature (called the mimic) possesses similar colors/body shape as a poisonous creature (called the model) which tricks predators into not trying to eat the harmless creature.

Hmmm. It seems like they're saying some species evolved specifically to look like another species for the purpose of avoiding predation. Design and purpose. It sure sounds like it was intended. Of course, they can't really be saying that because evolution is not a directed process. Through random mutations and undirected natural selection, some species just happen to strongly resemble some other, completely unrelated species. Yeah, sure. That's it. //RKBentley rolls his eyes//


How strong is the resemblance? See for yourself. In this photograph, one bug is a Robber-fly, which may be annoying as most flies are, but has no sting or bite. The other is a bumblebee. Even with close scrutiny it is easy to confuse the two.

Certainly they look alike. How did the mimic evolve to look so much like the model? Keep in mind, too, that both bugs are believed to have evolved so the bee did not always look like it does now. Therefor, the mimic couldn't have just evolved to look like how the bee looked 100 million years ago; it had to evolve to look like how the bee looks now. So we have a couple of options: maybe the bee evolved first, stopped evolving, and hasn't changed since thereby allowing the fly to catch up. Or, maybe both evolved independently over millions of years and reached their similarity by sheer coincidence. How fortuitous!!

There are hundreds of examples of mimicry found in nature. Besides mimicking dangerous models, some mimics resemble plants or sticks, like this leaf-tailed gecko. Still others, like the octopus, can even change its shape and color to match its surroundings. Are all of these cases coincidental? Or did natural selection guide the process as if intentionally making the mimic look like the model? Either option is hard to swallow.

I've read evolutionists' fanciful stories as they seek to explain what clearly seem to be examples of design with purpose. No matter how far fetched their explanations may seem, they prefer their natural causes over the far more reasonable possibility that they were created that way!

Thursday, January 14, 2016

1, 2, skip a few, 99, 100!!

The other day, I googled the best arguments used against creationism. No worries, folks. They're mostly offering bald assertions, appeals to authority, and straw men. Any way, I did find an interesting graph. Actually, “interesting” is probably too strong a word. It's more like amusing. At least it sparked my interest in writing this post.

The author was trying to make the point that little changes can accumulate over time to create big changes. It's one of the Five Lies that Evolutionists Tell. Evolutionists say that the only difference between micro- and macroevolution is time and scale. By the way, I discourage use of those terms; evolution doesn't happen at all – neither micro nor macro. To make his point, the author showed how you could change the word AARDVARK to BASEBALL by changing only one letter at a time.

Now, as a lover of using analogies, I can appreciate how difficult it is to create a really good analogy. I normally wouldn't nitpick an analogy if I can at least see the overarching point its author is trying to make. However, in this case, there are such fundamental flaws in the analogy that I believe it better illustrates some of the difficulties of evolution rather than how evolution could progress.

Before I get into the difficulties in the analogy (and, by extension, with evolution), let me offer a thumbnail of what the author is trying to demonstrate. Evolution supposedly happens via mutation and natural selection. A mutation will occur in the DNA of an organism; on rare occasions, the mutation will offer a benefit to the host; because of this advantage, the host may live longer (natural selection) and leave more offspring which will inherit the beneficial mutation; eventually, the descendents with the beneficial mutation will replace the entire population. In the analogy, the changes in the letters represent mutations in the DNA. The accumulation of these changes can turn the ancestral species into a different species in the same way changing one letter at a time can turn AARDVARK into BASEBALL.

Did I misrepresent anything? The we'll continue.

The first problem is rather glaring. The steps in between AARDVARK and BASEBALL are just groups of letters that don't even make words. Going from words to meaningless letters represents a loss of information. Why would natural selections select mutations that don't gain anything?

For evolution to happen, a mutation must make the host more fit for that environment than before the mutation. For an arm to become a wing, certainly there must be thousands of generations in between the fully formed arm and the fully formed wing. Every step of the way, the mutated limb had to be more beneficial than the generation before it. It's hard to imagine a scenario where a limb that is not quite an arm but not yet a wing will be selected over a functioning arm. To imagine that it happened thousands of time is beyond incredible. Oh, and by the way, we only have a handful of fossils alleged to be transitional between a forelimb and wing. The thousands of in between forms that must have existed apparently left no fossil evidence showing the change.

Evolution is impossible if any of the transitional forms between the starting and ending species are one bit less fit than the generation before it. They'd be like the meaningless words between AARDVARK and BASEBALL.

The second problem is that evolution is not a directed process. The author of the graph knew he was heading toward BASEBALL and selected only those letters that worked toward that goal. Natural selection doesn't know that it's supposed to choose the limb that is more like a wing; instead, it will only select the one that is a more fit arm. Neither will it select the other features necessary for flight (like hollow bones, intricate feathers, or perching legs) unless those features offer some survival benefit to the earth-bound creature. Natural selection will have the tendency only to make a terrestrial creature a more fit terrestrial creature. It will not select mutations that could eventually make an earth-bound creature a flying creature.

The final flaw I see in the analogy is the enormous room for error. For the analogy to be realistic, all the steps in between the starting and ending words should also be words. Here's an example with a 4-letter word, PLAY – FLAY – FLAG – FLOG – FROG. In this case, every step in between is a real word. However, in each place there are 26 possible replacements which means you are far more likely to get a meaningless word than a real word. In the real word, mutations are far more likely to be neutral or harmful than they are to be beneficial. The harmful mutations in the DNA will far outpace the beneficial mutations which means for every beneficial mutation that a creature inherits, it will inherit thousands of unbeneficial mutations. This is known as genetic burden.

In 1995, A.S. Kondrashov published a paper in the Journal of Theoretical Biology where he discussed contamination of the genome by very slightly deleterious mutations. Over time, the ratio of harmful mutations to good mutations should become unbearable and he says, This paradox cannot be resolved by invoking beneficial mutations or environmental fluctuations. In the title, he asks, “Why have we not died 100 times over?”

In conclusion, the graph is not just an oversimplification - it's deceitful. It presents evolution as a simple, stepwise process where tiny, gradual changes and a whole lot of time could easily do what seems impossible. 1, 2, skip a few, 99, 100!!  

Friday, January 8, 2016

Why is Atheism the “Default” Belief?

If you were to ask an atheist why he's an atheist, very seldom will you hear a positive answer. That is, you will hardly ever hear “evidence” for why atheism is the correct belief. Instead, the person will likely say he's an atheist because he hasn't been convinced that theism is the correct belief. In other words, he's withholding belief in God until he sees the evidence that God exists. Because of this, many atheists will describe atheism as the “default belief” of any thinking person.

At first hearing, this sounds reasonable. In some ways, I hold a similar view. I don't believe in Bigfoot or UFOs, for example, because I've yet to see any convincing proof that they exist. The anecdotal stories, the grainy video footage, and the dubious trace evidence (like footprints or crop circles) seem better explained as hoaxes or misidentification. I'm sure many atheists look at a belief in God in much the same way as I look at a belief in Bigfoot. But is this skeptical attitude necessarily the correct attitude?

Pretend, for a moment, that you're walking through a forest and you happen upon a log cabin. It's crude and has only a dirt floor. It has no electricity, plumbing, or glass windows. It's just basically logs, notched and stacked, with openings cut out for the the door and windows. There's not a stick of furniture inside nor any other sign of anyone having lived in it recently. What questions might you ask yourself? I would think your first thoughts would be, I wonder who built this? Does someone live here? Where is he now?

I'm fairly certain no one would ask, “That's incredible! I wonder how these logs fell into the shape of a cabin?”

You see, logs organized into the shape of a cabin show design. Sections having been cut out to allow light and access show purpose. Design and purpose are the characteristics of created things and created things are the proof of a creator. The cabin obviously had a creator. Withholding judgment about the existence of a builder of the cabin is not the sign of a rational, thinking person. It's the stubborn refusal of an idiot to acknowledge the obvious!

Life is all about design and purpose. Never mind something as advanced as the human brain – even a single DNA molecule is far more complicated than logs stacked in a square. How can anyone look at a stack of logs and know there was a builder yet see something a million times more incredible and stubbornly withhold judgment about its Creator?

In his book, The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins said, Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” There are those words again, “design” and “purpose.” He further says, The complexity of living organisms is matched by the elegant efficiency of their apparent design. If anyone doesn’t agree that this amount of complex design cries out for an explanation, I give up. Dawkins clearly sees design and purpose in the creation. Note, too, his use of the term, “this amount of complex design” which suggests it's more than a few examples of design.

What strikes me as most curious about his comment is how he says design cries out for an explanation. What is there to explain? Design and purpose immediately point to a Designer. I don't need any explanation about how some logs in the woods became formed in the shape of a cabin. The only thing that would need explaining is how so much design and purpose could come about without a Creator. But why would someone look for some other cause for design except that he rejects the most obvious cause a priori?

Dawkins has also said, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” In other words, people might reject the concept of God but, without evolution, how could they explain the obvious design and purpose visible everywhere in the creation? That question would gnaw at the atheist's intellect making it impossible for him to be entirely secure in his disbelief. This seems a tacit admission that God is the best, first explanation behind design and purpose.

It seems to me that skepticism about God is not the most reasonable starting point. Indeed, it's not the default position at all. Skeptics aren't open-minded people willing to be persuaded if they are presented with compelling evidence. Instead, they have committed themselves in advance to the idea there is no God. They can see the evidence for God in the creation; they simply refuse to believe in the Creator!

Sunday, January 3, 2016

They've Been Lying About Human/Chimp DNA Similarity

I've always said that creationists don't ignore the evidence. Take fossils, for example. Both creationists and evolutionists have different ideas about how and when most fossils formed but the fossils themselves are real. When we say the fossils aren't evidence for evolution, we're not “ignoring” the fossils – we're disagreeing with certain conclusions about the fossils made by secular scientists.

What, then, am I supposed to do with the oft-repeated claim that human and chimp DNA is 98% similar? Actually, I've heard various estimates from 95-99% (which should have been a clue that comparisons aren't necessarily objective) but DNA is something we can examine here and now. It's not a conclusion we have to draw about something that happened in the distant past; it's an observation of something that exists in the present. I trusted the secular scientists that the similarity was there. I wasn't going to “ignore” the evidence like we're often accused of doing. I simply disagreed that it was evidence that we are related to chimps.

I can see that humans and chimps have certain, physical similarities and, if DNA works like a blueprint for building an organism, then creatures that are the most similar will necessarily have the most similar DNA. Creation would predict that our DNA is most like a chimp's, less like a bear's, and least like a bird's. That's exactly what we find so the high similarity between human and chimp DNA was never a problem for creation. I've come to realize, though, that my confidence in the reports by secular scientists about the DNA similarities was misplaced. It seems their bias toward evolution causes them to engage in some “monkey business” when comparing our genomes (pardon the pun).

The first red flag for me should have been the fact that chimp DNA is 8% longer than human DNA. Now, I'm not a math whiz or anything but I do know that if you have 2 strings, and one of them is 8% longer than the other, then they could – at most – only be 92% similar. That's assuming, of course, that the strings are identical in every other way but their length. In the case of human/chimp DNA, there are more differences than just their length.

The information in DNA is represented by four letters. If you could lay a human and chimp genome side by side, it would be difficult to compare them due to their different lengths. What scientists have to do is line up the parts of the genome that are most similar. Even then, there are still parts that are dissimilar. Where there are letters in one genome not represented on the other, scientists assume this information was either inserted or deleted from the DNA – they call these “indels.” This chart shows how the genomes are lined up for comparison.



In this representative chart, only the “alignment region” is compared – the DNA before and after the alignment region is ignored. Even the indels inside the alignment region are ignored. The highly touted 96%+ similarity in human/chimp DNA is essentially achieved by comparing only the most similar parts of the DNA and ignoring everything else!

When you consider the additional length of chimp DNA and factor in the indels within compared regions, chimp DNA cannot possibly be more than 87% similar to human DNA. If you do a letter by letter comparison of the two, estimates of their similarity range between only 70-81%.

So what does this mean to evolutionists? Not much, I'm sure. They're still going to trumpet an absurdly high percentage as evidence for their theory. But it's not evidence of anything because it's not even true. And if similar DNA is evidence for evolution, then dissimilar DNA should be evidence against evolution.

I don't ignore scientific evidence. I was wrong, though, to believe the highly inflated similarity between human and chimp DNA offered by secular scientists. I know better now. Secular scientists, on the other hand, are ignoring the evidence. They're lying about the similarity between human and chimp DNA.