googlef87758e9b6df9bec.html A Sure Word: Ten Lies Evolutionists Tell: Part 1

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

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?

15 comments:

dan story said...

Good research. It's all about divine design, isn't it!

RKBentley said...

Dan,

Thanks for your comment and encouragement. You're right that design is the conspicuous, divine fingerprint we see all over nature.

Please keep visiting. God bless!!

RKBentley

Steven J. said...

First, yes, this is the Quine-Duhem thesis at work: since an experiment cannot test a single hypothesis in isolation, any seeming falsification can be treated as a falsification of some auxiliary hypothesis (e.g. for a Precambrian rabbit, that the stratum in question was Precambrian). This is a feature of any test for any theory, however, not some special exemption carved out for evolution or the old Earth. Gravity has faced a few similar cases, from irregularities in the orbit of Uranus to reports of levitation; I do not think its survival is proof that it is some unfalsifiable fairy tale protected from testing.

And you need to distinguish between finding a fossil from a group that is older than any previously-known member of a group, and finding it before the primitive precursors implied by the the nested hierarchy of life existed. Thus, placental mammals can exist before the oldest known fossils, but not, e.g. before the "mammal-like" reptiles of the Permian or, preferably, before the placental-marsupial evolutionary split estimated to be ca. the mid-Jurassic. Likewise, genus Homo can come before Homo habilis, but it would be very awkward if it shows up before the australopiths, or before the estimated human-chimp split less than seven million years ago.

Steven J. said...

Note that the point of human-chimpanzee genetic similarity is that when one uses the same method of measuring it, humans are more similar to chimps than gorillas are to chimps. That was not entirely shocking to evolutionists (as long ago as Darwin, evolutionists had considered that we might be more closely related to one than to the other), but I think creationists would find it interesting, even troubling. Or take the fact that the similarity between humans and chimps, genetically, is about the same as the similarity between house cats and tigers, which many young-Earth creationists regard as the same "kind," descended from a pair of ur-felids aboard Noah's Ark.

How much similarity exists depends on how one measures it. The smallest figures are reached by calculating the minimal number of mutations needed to account for the differences. Since a single mutation can duplicate a long stretch of DNA, or insert or delete it, or relocate it to a different part of the genome, one can validly count as "one difference" what by another method might count as tens of thousands of differences.

Anonymous said...

To answer your question, "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?" What it would mean, even if it were true, which it is not, is that we are less closely related to our chimp cousins than previously thought. Not that we aren't related at all.

Unknown said...

"...You're right that design is the conspicuous, divine fingerprint we see all over nature."

You are presuming that your own standards for what constitutes a good design would be the same as a god's. In the hypothetical scenario in which a god exists and does create something, perhaps it would be so complex or fantastic that it would make our species seem the equivalent of random space debris. As you have no means of knowing the standards of a god, you are in no position to claim that life is a divine creation. Moreover there are no empirical indications that a god created life; on the contrary, most everything living can replicate or reproduce without divine intervention.

Unknown said...

Steven J. I wouldn't even bother wasting your breath on these idiots. They won't understand 1/4 of what you say anyways.

Anonymous said...

Who did fabricate the picture. Why this fraud? http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Trilobite-Pictures/trilobites1/Trilobites-33c.htm

RKBentley said...

Steven J,

You said, “yes, this is the Quine-Duhem thesis at work: since an experiment cannot test a single hypothesis in isolation, any seeming falsification can be treated as a falsification of some auxiliary hypothesis (e.g. for a Precambrian rabbit, that the stratum in question was Precambrian). This is a feature of any test for any theory, however, not some special exemption carved out for evolution or the old Earth.... And you need to distinguish between finding a fossil from a group that is older than any previously-known member of a group, and finding it before the primitive precursors implied by the the nested hierarchy of life existed.”

Dawkins said a single fossil out of date order could prove the entire theory wrong. I linked to his quote. Based on your comments, I'm going to assume you agree with me that his assertion is not true.

You said, “How much similarity exists depends on how one measures it. The smallest figures are reached by calculating the minimal number of mutations needed to account for the differences. Since a single mutation can duplicate a long stretch of DNA, or insert or delete it, or relocate it to a different part of the genome, one can validly count as "one difference" what by another method might count as tens of thousands of differences.”

The evolutionary source I cited said, “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.” Therefore, at least some of the additional length cannot be attributed to gene duplication. If you want to say that some of the chimp's DNA has been deleted from ours, then I say you're merely speculating. And again, I remind you that the study states clearly, “The combined alignments were chained and only best reciprocal alignments were retained for further analysis.” In other words, the parts that weren't similar weren't analyzed. How can you claim to know what accounts for the differences?

God bless!

RKBentley

RKBentley said...

Joel Hess,

I could provide some sources to support the 70-80% similarity but never mind that now. I have already shown an evolutionist who says chimp DNA is 10% longer than human DNA. That means if they were similar in every other way – which they're not – they could only be 90% similar at most. Are we agreed? If the high similarity isn't evidence that we're closely related to chimps, why do evolutionists feel the need to exaggerate it? Why not just tell the truth – human/chimp DNA is less than 90% similar?

Thanks for your comments. God bless!!

RKBentley

RKBentley said...

naiv ite or

You said, “You are presuming that your own standards for what constitutes a good design would be the same as a god's. In the hypothetical scenario in which a god exists and does create something, perhaps it would be so complex or fantastic that it would make our species seem the equivalent of random space debris. As you have no means of knowing the standards of a god, you are in no position to claim that life is a divine creation. Moreover there are no empirical indications that a god created life; on the contrary, most everything living can replicate or reproduce without divine intervention.”

Just a week or so ago, I wrote a post titled, Five quick arguments for the existence of God. You might read it. In it, I discussed some of the things you talk about here.

People used to believe in “spontaneous generation.” Through experimentation, though, (aka, “science), we found every supposed example of spontaneous generation was false. In every case, some previous life form was found to be the cause. Abiogenesis is a fancy name for spontaneous generation. It is still the belief that life can rise from non-living matter. Not only have we never observed this in nature, neither have we been able to accomplish it in the lab under any conditions.

Without a shred of evidence from your side to support your argument, why should I reject everything we've learned scientifically and believe an idea that was discarded not long after bloodletting?

Thank you for your comments. God bless!!

RKBentley

RKBentley said...

MrHyroko,

If I were you, I would applaud Steven J instead of discouraging him. Thus far, he is the only visitor who has attempted to address any of my points. No one else has even come close.

Steven J is sharper than your average evolutionist. I've said on here before that I sometimes consider him a contributor to my blog rather than a visitor. His comments have made my blog better by keeping me on my toes. I don't hold him responsible for the bad arguments made by other evolutionists but I have sometimes scolded him for not condemning their really bad arguments. Judging by the comments made by my other guests, I don't think they are at all concerned that lies are being told as long as creationists are getting bashed.

Aren't evolutionists supposed to be all about science? Don't they go wherever the evidence leads? Are you interested in the truth? Chimp DNA is 10% longer than human DNA; it cannot possibly be 98% similar. Why don't you join me in helping stop the spread of lies like this!

Thank you for visiting. God bless!!

RKBentley

RKBentley said...

To my anonymous visitor,

You said, “Who did fabricate the picture [of a rabbit in the Precambrian]. Why this fraud?”

I found the picture on Google. I'm not sure who made it originally but it's appeared on a lot of sites. I included it here because it captured a point that was being made in my post. It's obviously been photo-shopped. I'm sorry if you don't get it but I doubt anyone really thinks I'm trying to pass it off as real.

Thanks for visting. God bless!!

RKBentley

Anonymous said...

You've really embarrassed yourself here and you'd better pray this doesn't get into the wider public domain. It's rubbish on so many points I don't even know where to begin. Just astonishing. The frightening thing is there are people out there who will believe this, and they may be in the American Government.

RKBentley said...

Well, Dawkins quote is what it is. He said a single, out of date order fossil would disprove evolution. I’ve linked to articles showing fossils found where they weren’t expected any the theory keeps chugging along meaning Dawkins lied.

And chimp DNA is longer than human DNA. That’s a fact. Do all the research you want. So if it’s 10% longer, it cannot possibly be 98% similar to human DNA.

You’ve not said one word to even attempt to show how anything I’ve said is wrong so you’ll understand why I will just ignore it. Thanks for visiting though.

God bless!

RKBentley