Ten Lies Evolutionists Tell: Part 1

Several years ago, I wrote a post called, Five Lies Evolutionists Tell. I still reference it from time to time but since then, I've added a few more lies to the list. I thought it might be a good idea to put all the various lies together in a short series called, Ten Lies Evolutionists Tell. I'll include 2-3 in every post. Keep in mind that, when I say, “lies,” I mean things that are demonstrably untrue, not merely that I disagree with them.

As usual, I'm going to avoid calling this a “Top 10” list because I'm not convinced these are truly the most spoken lies, though I'm certain they rank highly. You've probably heard a couple of these yourself. I was also a little torn as to which 10 to include because there are others. Perhaps when I'm done with these ten, I'll write a short conclusion and include some of the honorable mentions.

Let's get started. Here, in no particular order, are ten lies routinely told by evolutionists.

1) A single fossil found out of order could disprove evolution

Richard Dawkins once wrote, “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.” Here's a little exercise: Google the phrase, “fossil redraws evolution” and see how many hits you find. Seriously. Do it! The simple fact of the matter is that scientists routinely find fossils in places that force them to reconsider where and when something evolved. They never chuck their theory because of it. Instead, they publish headlines like, “Fossil Shows Ants Evolved Much Earlier Than Thought.”

In spite of Dawkin's claim, other evolutionists admit that even grossly out of order fossils wouldn't disprove evolution. Look at this quote from Wiki:

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins said that the discovery of fossil mammals in Precambrian rocks would "completely blow evolution out of the water." Philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith doubted that a single set of anachronistic fossils, however, even rabbits in the Precambrian, would disprove the theory of evolution outright. The first question raised by the assertion of such a discovery would be whether the alleged "Precambrian rabbits" really were fossilized rabbits. Alternative interpretations might include incorrect identification of the "fossils", incorrect dating of the rocks, and a hoax such as the Piltdown Man was shown to be. Even if the "Precambrian rabbits" turned out to be genuine, they would not instantly refute the theory of evolution, because that theory is a large package of ideas.

Do you see what I mean? Even a rabbit found in the Precambrian wouldn't disprove evolution. Dawkins is merely posturing in order to make evolution seem like a robust theory that is tested every time a new fossil is found. He doesn't really believe it. That makes his quote a lie.

2) Human and chimp DNA are 98% similar

From the American Museum of Natural History website, we find this lie: The chimpanzee and another ape, the bonobo, are humans' closest living relatives. These three species look alike in many ways, both in body and behavior. But for a clear understanding of how closely they are related, scientists compare their DNA, an essential molecule that's the instruction manual for building each species. Humans and chimps share a surprising 98.8 percent of their DNA.... Human and chimp DNA is so similar because the two species are so closely related. Humans, chimps and bonobos descended from a single ancestor species that lived six or seven million years ago.

Since I was in high school more than 30 years ago, I've heard that human and chimp DNA is 98% similar. Actually, I've heard estimates ranging from 95-99% but it's always cited in a way to give the impression that the similarity is “proof” of our relatedness to chimps. Since DNA is something we can study in the present, I'd always assumed the similarity was there. It was only a few years ago that I learned this amazing similarity was a lie.

The first thing you have to consider is that chimp DNA is 8-10% longer than human DNA. Here is a quote from Anthropology: The Human Challenge:

Moreover, the genetic comparison is misleading because it ignores qualitative differences among genomes. Genetic evolution involves much more than simply replacing one base with another. Thus, even among such close relatives as human and chimpanzee, we find that the chimp’s genome is estimated to be about 10 percent larger than the human’s.... [T]he tips of each chimpanzee chromosome contain a DNA sequence that is not present in humans.

I'm not a math whiz or anything but even I know that if one sentence contained 90 letters and another sentence contained only 99 letters, there is no way the two sentences are 98% similar! Just knowing that chimp DNA is longer than human DNA already proves the “98% similar” claim is false.

In what manner do scientists compare DNA and claim they are 98% similar? You could say there's a little monkey business going on. According to Nature Magazine, “BLASTZ was used to align non-repetitive chimpanzee regions against repeat-masked human sequence. BLAT was subsequently used to align the more repetitive regions. The combined alignments were chained and only best reciprocal alignments were retained for further analysis.” It sounds a little technical but, in simpler terms, the highly touted similarity in human/chimp DNA is essentially achieved by comparing only the most similar parts of the DNA and ignoring everything else!  When scientists do a letter by letter comparison of the entire genomes, the similarity in more like 70-80%. 

Let me just conclude by saying that, if a 98% similarity is evidence that we're related to chimps, what does only a 70-80% similarity mean?

Part 2
Part 3

Part 4

Part 5