Thanks for your post! :-)
I'm sorry if I got testy with you. I'm not trying to obfuscate anything. I'm not a scientist and I can't possibly know all the currently applicable terms used in the laboratory.
I thank you for your contribution but I think we were just on two different wavelengths. Evidence is fine and I respect you for providing it. You may be right. But I think that as long as there are alternative explanations we shouldn't be so dogmatic. After all, wouldn't creatures designed by God have close DNA if they are comparatively similar? You might not believe that such a thing could occur, and I understand that, but some of us look at the evidence and see something different than you, or at least are open to the possibility of an alternative explanation.
You're a very bright fellow, and I think you're an excellent debater.
it is not the similarity between similar critters of DNA which works... it is the exact correspondance of DNA *errors* - non-functional DNA, crippled DNA - in the same loci of the same genetic sequences which constitute the smoking gun of common descent.
think about it.
it is analogous to a particular flaw in the printed lettering of word 39 on page 231 of the 3rd print run of the 17th edition "Ostrogoths; and the Roman Women Who Submit To Them" - that shows up in all copies from that print run, in that location, but nowhere else and in no other print run. - it is inarguable evidence that they all came from the same common ancestor (printing typeset, in this case).
evidence just don't get better'n that.
I don't know where this thread has been, but similarity of DNA is the least of the evidence demonstrating common ancestry of humans and primates.
One of the more important evidences is tracking "errors" in the genome (such as the "vitamin C" gene problem), and noting that species that are "farther removed" from common ancestors have error patterns that match.
Science understands pretty well how genomes change, and the specific base pair changes between species match what we would expect between species related via evolution.
Just as we can demonstrate with a huge degree of certainty the paternity of a child based on DNA comparisons, we can also track relationships between species. There are many more differences, but genome comparisons are much more detailed than mere pattern matching of dyed DNA strands as is done with human paternity testing.
Rejecting evolution at this point is like rejecting the fact that OJ did it, because you don't believe in DNA tests.
Quoting: "But I think that as long as there are alternative explanations we shouldn't be so dogmatic. After all, wouldn't creatures designed by God have close DNA if they are comparatively similar? "
This raises important questions about "alternative explanations".
Are faeries, psychics, pixies, various demons, jinis, Hindu gods, spirits from numerous Native American traditions, wiccam beliefs, pagan gods, pantheism, denial of material existence in favor of spiritual existence, Nostrodamus, ... are these also "alternative explanations"??
I ask you, where do "alternative explanations" stop?
Teaching every "alternative explanation controversy" that comes along would seem to me to throw children into a whirlpool. There are 630 different creation myths alone. Is every one equal, as you suggest?