Epigenetic Study Produces 'Backwards' Human-Ape Tree (article)

Institute for Creation Research ^ | Aug. 16, 2013 | Jeffrey Tomkins, Ph.D.

[Maelstorm]

Very little of that needed Darwin. Darwinism did not usher in the modern world nor is Darwinism a prerequisite for biomedical advancement. Not that Darwin’s contribution was necessarily a bad thing but many of the derivative ideas have been horrific and dehumanizing at least as much so as any of the allegations made against organized religion as a source of social angst. Personally I think what is most important to take away from Darwinism is how very different and unique human beings are in comparison to their alleged ancestors. Not only do we have less chromosomes but we accomplish things that an Ape could never dream of. We can resist base drives and be trained and self train ourselves in vastly complicated abstract processes.

My primary argument with atheist evolutionary types is that they often sell fantastical fictions and tell stories that make our religious books look tame ascribing anthropomorphic purpose to ‘evolutionary’ processes where no such purpose should exist. There is no good or bad in a strict evolutionary world there is only what is and what is survived and reproduced sometimes by accident sometimes by advantageous traits.

The most amusing thing though is how evolutionary dysfunctional the ‘modern’ world is. The ‘smartest’ and ‘brightest’ at least by current human standards are reproducing at rates far below those who are not as ‘bright’. Luckily simply going to highly rated liberal academic institutions isn’t a perquisite for intelligence but a person who claims to be intelligent but chooses not to reproduce is essentially committing a form of evolutionary suicide but since evolution in its purist form has no moral or ethical qualms and essentially what “is” can be nothing else but what is “right” in the great indifferent wild yonder of the universe because “right” becomes meaningless or merely a tool to conscript the strong in the service of the weak.

[DManA]

People who voluntarily, willfully, end their line are fools.

[Marko413]

That’s something I could never understand in school. How is it that if there really is this progression of fish, reptiles, birds, mammals, and humans that all these prior species just suddenly stopped evolving? Shouldn’t some small lizard have sprouted wings in the last 10,000 years?

Not saying this as a creationist, I spent my first 18 years as an atheist and it puzzled me then.

[BrandtMichaels]

“Connecting the dots fancifully.”

Things that make me go hhhhmmmm...

6 days to create the Earth and Universe magnifies God far beyond anything man can conceive. We are not equals with God so who are you kidding about who is being magnified.

There are plenty of past and present scientists who don’t put any faith whatsoever in evolution. To trust it while poo pooing creation shows just how little you have studied both sides of this argument. Course you seem to prefer this self-deception allowing you to have a god in the image of your choosing rather than the God of the Bible who does not lie nor sin. There is more evidence for creation if you are willing to study the other side of this argument.

101 Evidences for a Young Age of the Earth...And the Universe
http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth

Center for Scientific Creation - In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/IntheBeginningTOC.html

[DManA]

6 literal days or 16 billion years. Who is it who is reducing God to an image a human can manage?

[Springfield Reformer]

No one on either side of the “in house” debate between Christians on this issue discounts the eternity of God as awesome beyond imagination. But time is just time. If you have a lot of it, does that give God more credit? Less. Neutral? I say neutral. What young earth creationists are unwilling to do is put God in a box either way. If God wanted to intervene creatively at any ratio of time to effect, He is not limited by anything but His own desire to create.

Therefore, His own statements on the matter must be given greater deference than any system of thought which would either limit him or render him unnecessary to the process. He could create over 16 trillion gazillion years if He so chose. Or he could create in units of time so small we cannot even imagine them. The point is, He *chose* to create over a six day period, and that appears to be, not because of any limitation on Him, but for our benefit, for us to have a pattern of worship that was suitable for *our* limitations.

So the burden of proof has to be, if God inspired Scripture, and the inspired writer used the ordinary term for day, then that must be what God meant to say, and what He meant for us to understand, unless some justification, not from the hobbled and half blind notions of human science, but from the text itself, would warrant a more abstract meaning for the term. And in other places such justification may be found. But not here.

[Reddy]

Answers in Genesis believes that the debasement of civilization increased with the attack on the origins of mankind as found in Genesis. IOW, if you are able to convince the population that God did not make man in His image in six literal days, then it’s easy to convince everyone that killing an unborn baby is fine, homosexual marriage is ok and giving control of your life to the government is what’s best for you.

[DManA]

The evidence of His creation says 16 billion years (from our perspective). He doesn’t lie in either His Word or his Creation. So if there seems to be a contradiction then either we are misreading the clues in nature OR we are misinterpreting His Word.

[Resolute Conservative]

Exactly. If you devalue man as a child God then man is no different than chimps.

[reed13k]

save for later

[BrandtMichaels]

OR

the small part of evidence some focus upon is simply mis-interpreted. Afterall if 13.7 or 16 billion years elapsed time were correct there would not be over 100 other natural clocks contradicting said pet theory.

Science is no longer science when it attempts to recreate history.

So sad that we are so annoyed when the PTB spike stories and avoid disclosing all facts and contradictory ideas b/c it does not support their hidden agenda yet fall for other lies time and time again. Here we have the internet helping expose lie after lie but simply can not believe that fabrications and hidden agendas have always been the practice of mankind.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

All animals at the same point in time have evolved equally, a point missed by many creationists.

It's also a point missed by many evolutionists, who told us that Tasmanians and Africans are less evolved than Europeans.

[BroJoeK]

posted by fishtank:

That gene-tree is highly confusing and essentially meaningless.
Here is an actual representation of the expected gene & species tree of great apes:

This gene/species-tree is "expected" because the fossil evidence is not robust enough to necessarily confirm it.
DNA analysis produces a mixed picture -- with some evidence confirming the above, others... not so much:

"A and B are two different loci.
In the upper figure they fit to the [expected] species tree.
The DNA that is present in today's gorillas diverged earlier from the DNA that is present in today's humans and chimps.
Thus both loci should be more similar between human and chimp than between gorilla and chimp or gorilla and human.
In the lower graph, locus A has a more recent common ancestor in human and gorilla compared to the chimp sequence.
Whereas chimp and gorilla have a more recent common ancestor for locus B.
Here the gene trees are incongruent to the species tree."

Translation: more research needed.

But, overall, DNA sequence differences between

• humans and chimps is: circa 1%,
• between humans and gorillas: 1.5% and
• between humans and Orangutans: 3%.

So contrary data -- apparently suggesting humans more closely related to Orangs or Gorillas -- might, in fact, suggest something quite different.