And now that it’s 6%, does it really make all that much of a difference?
Like everything else in these debates, it's as important or irrelevant as you want it to be.
That’s just for starters. The more we learn the greater the differences will be. It should be obvious just in terms of the way we look, act, walk, think, etc. If you read the article, it quotes a darwinian zoologist who admits that they emphasized the 1% myth in order to dupe us into believing that we are far more similar than we actually are. They have known this for quite some time, but it was only until recently that they were willing to let the cat out of the bag. I guess they have come to the conclusion that their myth/lie has accomplished its objective and decided to fess-up before the IDers/Creationists beat them over the head with such an obvious lie.
The amazing elastic ToE. If it doesn’t work, stretch it to fit.
It may make a very large difference. There are separate fields of science which must be in agreement as to a time line for natural selection to be convincing for the origin of particular species. These are different fields such as the geologic record, the fossil record, and genetics.
When comparing two species and trying to look backwards in time to when they "split" from a common ancestor, scientists can compare the DNA and find how many genes are different between the two species. There are models of how fast genetic mutations can be propagated through a population, given factors such as population size and the lifespan of the individuals. With these, we can backtrack to estimate when these two species had a common ancestor.
By increasing the number of differences, natural selection proponents must also have to increase the amount of time required to propagate those changes. I would guess that previously, scientists probably would have claimed to the public that the fossil record and the DNA record were in agreement for chimps and humans. By increasing the number of differences by 600%, is that still a true statement? Has there been enough time in the fossil record to account for this? What now is the estimated date these two species had a common ancestor? Is it millions of years ago? Is it hundreds of millions? Did apes even exist in the fossil record back then?
This is the same reason why the recent new findings of "junk DNA" are important. The claim of junk DNA can be misused by scientists as a fudge factor if all the sciences do not agree on a time scale. Recent findings have been chipping away at what can be considered junk, and added to the pile of what must be accounted for in the other sciences. All the recent genetic findings that I have seen published have increased the amount of time required by natural selection.