Time Aping over Human-Chimp Genetic Similarities

[Editor's note: This was adapted from an article originally posted at EvolutionNews.org on October 4, 2006, here. It is regarding the article "What Makes us Different?" in Time Magazine, by Michael D. Lemonick and Andrea Dorfman, October 1, 2006. The illustration below is linked from their website, and is for Time by Tim O'Brien.]

The current issue of Time features a cover story preaching evolution to the skeptical public and editorializing that humans and chimps are related. Though the article's graphic (below) shows half-human, half-chimp iconography, University of North Carolina, Charlotte anthropologist Jonathan Marks warns us against "exhibit[ing] the same old fallacies: ... humanizing apes and ape-ifying humans" (What It Means to be 98% Chimpanzee, pg. xv [2002]). The cover-graphic commits both fallacies:

The article also claims that it's easy to see "how closely the great apes--gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans--resemble us," but then observes in a contradictory fashion that "agriculture, language, art, music, technology and philosophy" are "achievements that make us profoundly different from chimpanzees." Perhaps Michael Ruse was wise to ask "[w]here is the baboon Shakespeare or the chimpanzee Mozart?" (The Darwinian Paradigm, pg. 253 [1989]).

Common Descent, or Common Design? The article predictably touts the 98-99% genetic similarity statistic between humans and chimps, assuming that the similarity demonstrates common ancestry. Can common ancestry explain shared functional genetic similarities between humans and chimps? Sure, of course. But so can common design: designers regularly re-use parts that work when making similar blueprints. The article ignores that shared functional similarities between two organisms do not rule out design in favor of descent.

Evolutionary Miracle Mutations The article also discusses a "mutation" that could allow a loss in jaw-muscle strength, which evolutionary biologists hypothesize allowed the human braincase to grow larger. It's a nice just-so story, but paleoanthropologist Bernard Wood explained why simply identifying these genetic differences does not provide a compelling evolutionary explanation where natural selection would preserve the mutations:

"The mutation would have reduced the Darwinian fitness of those individuals … It only would've become fixed if it coincided with mutations that reduced tooth size, jaw size and increased brain size. What are the chances of that?"

(quoted in Joseph Verrengia, "Gene Mutation Said Linked to Evolution" Union Tribune, 03-24-04) The article also makes the unbelievable claim that two mutations could account for "the emergence of all aspects of human speech, from a baby's first words to a Robin Williams monologue." Are they joking? If human speech evolved via Darwinian means, it would require slowly evolving a suite of highly complex characteristics lacking in animals—a feat some experts think is impossible: Chomsky and some of his fiercest opponents agree on one thing: that a uniquely human language instinct seems to be incompatible with the modern Darwinian theory of evolution, in which complex biological systems arise by the gradual accumulation over generations of random genetic mutations that enhance reproductive success. ... Non-human communication systems are based on one of three designs [but] ... human language has a very different design. The discrete combinatorial system called "grammar" makes human language infinite (there is no limit to the number of complex words or sentences in a language), digital (this infinity is achieved by rearranging discrete elements in particular orders and combinations, not by varying some signal along a continuum like the mercury in a thermometer), and compositional (each of the infinite combinations has a different meaning predictable from the meanings of its parts and the rules and principles arranging them). (Pinker, S., Chapter 11 of The Language Instinct (1994).) While Pinker believes that human language can be explained by Darwinism, human speech and language is exceedingly complex compared to animal language. Claiming it could evolve in two mutations is unbelievable.

Functional Non-Coding DNA: The Evolutionists' New Best Friend? Ironically, the article admits that stark differences between humans and chimps may stem from functional non-coding DNA, which regulates protein production. In an elegant analogy, Owen Lovejoy explains that the 98-99% similarity in coding-regions of DNA ("bricks") may be irrelevant because it's "like having the blueprints for two different brick houses. The bricks are the same, but the results are very different."

Darwinists often cite similarities in non-coding DNA as evidence of chimp-human common ancestry. Yet the Time article explains that non-coding DNA has function—perhaps holding the functions responsible for the differences between humans and chimps: Those molecular switches lie in the noncoding regions of the genome--once known dismissively as junk DNA but lately rechristened the dark matter of the genome. ... "But it may be the dark matter that governs a lot of what we actually see." Though the article still asserts much of the genome is junk, Richard Sternberg and James A. Shapiro wrote recently that "one day, we will think of what used to be called 'junk DNA' as a critical component of truly 'expert' cellular control regimes" ("How Repeated Retroelements format genome function," Cytogenetic and Genome Research 110:108–116 [2005]).

Evidence of function in non-coding DNA not only casts doubt upon whether the 98-99%-protein-coding-DNA-similarity statistic is relevant to assessing the degree of genetic similarity between humans and chimps, but it also shows that similarities in human and chimp non-coding DNA could be explained by common design.

Read the last Chapter of Ann Coulter's book "Godless."

It's to the advantage of the "cults of death" to try to push evolution on the rest of us. If we're no different from a monkey, then abortion is not the killing of a human, but of "the product of conception." If we're no different from a monkey, then, as in the animal world, the old, infirm, handicapped can be killed off.

Humans have a soul, unlike animals. Humans have morals (some not practicing) which explains the ability to give importance to some habits, practices, characteristics.

A male lion in the wild will not raise another lion's offspring. He will kill the offspring of the lioness after he's run the other male lion off so that the lioness will go into heat, he can impregnate her and then raise his young. At least until some larger, stronger male lion shows up.

LOOK what is happening today! Men are told "you're like an animal" and thousands of boyfriends have abused the offspring of the woman they're currently shacking up with. And occasionally the man kills the "step"child and the media is shocked.

Hypocrites! The media pushes this "evolution-devolution" of humanity and then wonders why people kill so easily? If killing a human is no different from killing a deer or elk or bear or cougar -- well, why should the killer of the human feel any emotion toward the human he's just killed?? After all - that person isn't a "real" person, he's just two steps beyond "monkey."

Mohammedanism sees the USA as weak because we have a moral structure in our society (although it's been attacked by the ACLU and others recently). They have no moral structure to dictate what's acceptable and what's not. The Koran has moral character so screwed up and twisted, that right can be wrong and wrong can be right and "it doesn't matter as long as the spread Islam is the ultimate goal."

The USA has moral absolutes. The USA was founded on moral absolutes. The Mohammedans do not. Nothing other than Islam is absolute to them.

We are fighting a war for the hearts and minds of members of a cult who have hearts of stone and closed minds.

I think Ann Coulter noted in her book "Godless" we also have about 35% genetic similarity with daffodils. :)

Coulter did claim that, but like almost everything else in her chapters on evolutionary biology, it's dead wrong.

When it comes to biology, Coulter is clueless.

This is what she incorrectly asserts on page 231:

Except the genome argument proves too much. The human genome is 35 percent identical to that of a daffodil. I think even a Darwiniac would admit humans are not 35 percent identical to a daffodil. Again, the cult's smoking gun of evolutionary proof turns out to be an imaginary water pistol.

The key problem with Coulter's daffodil claim is that it just isn't true, but of course that doesn't stop her telling her readers falsehoods anyway. Nor does she even attempt to footnote or otherwise source it, she just asserts it and hopes that her audience won't bother fact-checking her on it. Sadly, in most cases, she's right and thus she feels safe in pulling this kind of nonsense all throughout her chapters on evolution.

But she obviously got this (directly or indirectly) from the paper, "98% Chimpanzee and 35% Daffodil: The Human Genome in Evolutionary and Cultural Context". But if she had *read* the paper, she'd have seen that a) the author pulled the "35% daffodil" figure out of thin air, just for discussion's sake, it wasn't based on any actual comparison of DNA, and b) the point he makes in the paper is that the chimp comparison is *highly* significant, even more than the 98% figure might appear at first glance, whereas even a "35%" difference with some other species would be *less* meaningful than it might appear at first glance (partly because two TOTALLY RANDOM genomes would still have a 25% match by chance, so that's the "baseline", the "zero point".

In other words, his paper demonstrates why Coulter's little rhetorical trick is a dishonest and inappropriate one. So ironically, her source for her figure is one that *torpedoes* the argument she's trying to make from it. We see this again and again in her chapters on evolution -- when you check her source material (even the ones she fails to list in the hopes that no one will be able to check it against her claims, as in this this one), you find over and over again that her source material CONTRADICTS the claims that Coulter tries to make using them.

And again, the author just *made up* the 35% daffodil figure for discussion purposes, but Coulter cluelessly states it as established fact.

Furthermore, even if the 35% figure *had* been the correct one, only a naive reader (her favorite kind) would find any reason to conclude that it's "ridiculous", because a) as the author points out, 35% is only a little over the 25% "random match" rate, and b) all multicellular organisms do share a whole crapload of common biochemistry and foundational mechanisms regarding metabolism, cellular activity, replication, etc. Coulter is playing off the fact that the naive reader will ponder the *apparent* lack of similarity between humans and daffodils (e.g. "I ain't green!") without realizing how very much we have in common "under the hood" as multicellular eukaryotes.

The "35%" paper can be read here, although it's scanned sideways, very annoying: http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/pubs/natureculture.pdf

Another paper by the same author on the same topic makes his "out of thin air" source for the daffodil figure even more obvious: http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/interests/aaa/marksaaa99.htm. Key excerpt:

Once again, the DNA comparison requires context to be meaningful. Granted that a human and ape are over 98% genetically identical, a human and any earthly DNA-based life form must be at least 25% identical. A human and a daffodil share common ancestry and their DNA is thus obliged to match more than 25% of the time. For the sake of argument let’s say 33%.
The point is that to say we are one-third daffodils because our DNA matches that of a daffodil 33% of the time, is not profound, it’s ridiculous. There is hardly any biological comparison you can make which will find us to be one-third daffodil, except perhaps the DNA.
In other words, just as Simpson argued in the 1960s, the genetic comparison is exceptional, not at all transcendent. DNA comparisons overestimate biological similarity at the low end and underestimate it at the high end – in context, humans are biologically less than 25% daffodils and more than 98% chimpanzees.

Underlining was in the original, red-fonting is mine.

This "35% daffodil" meme, however, is making the rounds. For example it appears here in a Guardian review of a biology book:

The new starting point came from the recognition of the surprising continuities in genes between one species and another. We not only have nearly 99% of our genes in common with chimps, but some 35% in common with daffodils.

From the way the review states it, you'd think he got it *from* the book. But fortunately the book itself is fully text searchable at amazon.com, and the word "daffodil" doesn't even appear anywhere in the book, nor its scientific name, nor is any occurrence of the number "35" in the book relevant.

Getting back to Coulter's inanity, what in the hell does it mean to say that the genome comparison "proves too much"? It's word hash.

And I'm afraid that her "hey, someone said we're apes", and "we share DNA with daffodils" remarks in no way demolishes the DNA evidence or demonstrates that the DNA similarities are "an imaginary water pistol", although she's apparently stupid enough to think it does, because this is the air-headed entirety of her "rebuttal" to the great breadth and depth and richness of the DNA evidence for evolution and common descent.

I can't believe anyone is gullible enough to fall for that kind of hand-waving, but apparently I've overestimated her audience, and she has correctly assessed her audience when she brazenly makes fallacious and false claims that she knows they'll uncritically swallow.

I've been working through her chapters on evolution and writing up all the errors, lies, fallacies, and other mindbogglingly bad material in them. Sadly, it's far harder to find anything she got right than to find things she got stunningly wrong. If you'd like to be pinged when I finally get the (HUGE) fact-checking list compiled and post it, please FreepMail me.

Another thing, take any chemical process whether it is one that makes a more complex compound or one that breaks a compound down into the more and more simple ending up with the most basic of compounds and or elements. For example when you burn methane you end up with water & some Co2 etc. But Methane is not those elemental compound and those base elemental compounds are not methane.

Neither water nor CO2 are "elemental", you goof, plus the phrase "elemental compound" is a contradiction in terms -- if something is an element it's not a compound, and vice versa. Nor are water or CO2 somehow "elemental" relative to methane in any other sense of the word. Where did you "learn" chemistry, from Jack Chick comics?

But Methane is not those elemental compound and those base elemental compounds are not methane.

Thank you, Mr. Obvious...

Now apply this to the part physical and part bio mechanical extraction processes to produce 'dna'.

I'd like to, but in order to "apply this" it would have had to have made some kind of sense, and your ramblings didn't. Also, I find hugely amusing your apparently belief that "bio mechanical extraction processes" are somehow not "physical" processes.

My point here is that substance they are seeing after the extraction process is only a facsimile of dna, not the real article that exists in a live cell.

And your "point" is quite simply entirely erroneous. Come back and try again when you have a clue about how DNA analysis is actually done. Hint: It's actually done on real DNA, not "facsimile" DNA, whatever in the hell *that* might be in your wild fantasies.

Someday I hope to meet an anti-evolutionist who actually understood the first thing about the subject he's attempting to critique, and who didn't have his head filled full of all sorts of bizarre things that were just plain wrong, but I'm still waiting in vain for that happy day.

Sounds to me like Ann Coulter and Jonathan Marks looked at the same data and came to different conclusions.

No, sorry.

First, Coulter claimed as fact something that Marks clearly presented as a "what if". There's no excusing that.

Furthermore, Coulter didn't even "look at the data". She at most glanced at the title of Marks's paper, didn't even look at the body of the paper *or* any data, then cluelessly presented a rhetorical number as a "fact" to her readers in order to airily blow off the entire field of DNA analysis, as if that somehow invalidates the vast wealth of data that is there.

Coulter had to do this because she had no desire or ability to deal with the actual data itself. She just had to find some way to giggle, make it sound like a ridiculous topic to her readers, then pretend that she had somehow demolished "the data" when she hadn't, followed by a flip of her hair and a sudden change of topic.

That's nothing remotely like "looking at the same data and coming to different conclusions". That is instead using the air-headed teenager's favorite method of dodging anything they would prefer not to have to deal with -- dismissively declaring, "that's stoopid!"

Coulter just laughed off the entire subject of DNA analysis and all of the vast amount of information it is producing in support of evolution and common descent by saying, "we have DNA kinda like daffodils too, isn't that just silly!"

No, Ann, it isn't silly, but your attempt to hand-wave away the vast amount we have learned from DNA in over half a century is beyond silly, it's deeply and cynically dishonest.

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