Of Primates and Percentages: No, Humans Aren’t 99% Chimp Whether we are 99 or 84% similar to chimps genetically, there is clearly more going on than materialists can account for.

breakpoi ^ | 03/13/23 | John Stonestreet and Shane Morris

[daniel1212]

In a recent discussion on The Discovery Institute’s ID the Future podcast, geologist Casey Luskin explained that the original “98-99%” figure was derived from a single protein-to-protein comparison before the chimp genome was sequenced. Since then, we’ve gained a great deal more precision.

According to Luskin, humans and chimps have about 35 million single base-pair genetic differences and five million insertion-deletion differences. Humans also have 689 unique genes not found in chimps. And while there are different ways of quantifying the differences, almost none of these ways yield the famous “98-99%” number.

For example, in 2018, Queen Mary University of London evolutionary geneticist Richard Buggs performed a one-to-one analysis of human and chimp nucleotides. He reported that “the percentage of nucleotides in the human genome that had one-to-one exact matches in the chimpanzee genome was 84.38%.”

Other methodologies have yielded numbers ranging from the mid-80s to 90s. Why the different results? Well, because as Luskin explains, it is not entirely clear how we should compare human and chimp genomes:

Are you comparing the number of genes or copies of genes that the organism has? Are you comparing one-to-one nucleotide similarities? Are you including just the protein-coding DNA or also the non-coding DNA? Are you looking at certain segments of the genome that aren’t even necessarily places where the sequence matters, like the centromeres … ?

It turns out you’ll get a different answer depending on which method you choose. And there is an even deeper problem, says Luskin:

All of the chimp genomes we have today were effectively humanized. … The human genome was used as a scaffolding during the construction of these chimp genomes, which essentially makes the chimp genomes appear more similar to humans than they truly are.

None of this is new. Back in 2007, a paper in the journal Science admitted that the “1%” statistic was a myth and called for the truism to be retired. Yet 16 years later, this zombie idea shambles on, perpetuated by publications like Smithsonian Magazine, Nature, and the American Museum of Natural History website...

“There’s a vast cognitive and behavioral gulf” between humans and apes:"

[Fuzz]

Didn’t expect you to think otherwise, and I don’t care. I’m not your Jedi, Padawan.

[Elsie]

nope

[Elsie]

Only an aberration - a defect if you will — enables a zygote with the ‘wrong’ chromosomes.

So we still will get the SAME kinda of animal.

[alexander_busek]

nope

Well, since you are apparently unable to google it yourself, and since I am a considerate person:

There! Now you've learnt something new for today (in reference to your original query).

Regards,

[Elsie]

Well, since you are apparently unable to google it yourself...

Wrong assumption - and you know what that means.

Everyone knows (well; maybe not) that being unable to do something is NOT the same as choosing not to do it.

But I do thank you for your effort in trying lessen my perceived inadequacies a little.

[Elsie]

...and since I am a considerate person...

Yes.

The time you spend on FR shows that.