Replies

There are supposedly some 10 million years of mutations separating man from chimps. Chimps and men differ by some 5% of their DNA (the evolutionist 1% has been proven wrong by the same man who originally made the statement).

BZZZZZT! It's more like 1.4% where it counts - in the genes themselves:

The new estimate could be a little misleading, said Saitou Naruya, an evolutionary geneticist at the National Institute of Genetics in Mishima, Japan. "There is no consensus about how to count numbers or proportion of nucleotide insertions and deletions," he said.
Indels are common in the non-functional sections of the genome, said Peter Oefner, a researcher at Stanford's Genome Technology Center in Palo Alto, California. Scientists estimate that up to 97 percent of DNA in the human genome has no known function. However, he added, indels are extremely rare in gene sequences.
"We haven't observed a single indel in a [gene] to date between human and chimp," said Oefner. Therefore, the revised estimate doesn't alter the amount of DNA that holds information about our species. Humans and chimps still differ by about one percent in gene sequences, he said.

Besides, IIRC his method of counting insertions & deletions would treat a 100 base pair insertion as 100 mutations. Nebullis, do you remember if this is true?

Since chimps and men have about 3 billion DNA base pairs that 5% represents some 150,000,000 favorable mutations in those ten million years. Since with all our science, all our billions in research on DNA for decades have not shown a single favorable mutation has ever happened, I think that your statement is absolutely wrong scientifically - just as evolution is completely wrong scientifically.

Plugging in the correct numbers & assumptions:

Since chimps and men have about ~~3 billion~~ 90 million gene-encoding DNA base pairs that 5% 1.4% represents some ~~150,000,000~~ 14,000 neutral or favorable mutations in those ten million years.

It's more like 1.4% where it counts - in the genes themselves:

Not quite. This 'study' is not a study at all. It is a reinterpretation of the work done by Roy Britten in comparing the sequences of human and chimp DNA. It is a reductionist view of the DNA differences between humans and chimps. It throws away most of the differences because supposedly they are unimportant because they are not in genes. Well the rest of the DNA does matter unlike what this hack has to say. Yes 97% of DNA does not code for genes, but his statement that

Scientists estimate that up to 97 percent of DNA in the human genome has no known function.

is totally false and he is not a scientist if he made it. The last half dozen years of biological research have been concerned with finding out just exactly what that 97% of DNA which evolutionists call "junk" does. What this DNA does is control what the gene does, when and how much protein it is to make, and even what specific proteins, amongst several which many genes can make, are to be made by the gene. In other words 'this junk' which this hack says scientists say 'has no known function' is what makes an organism function. In one single discovery, they have found what 10% of that DNA does - it acts as a zipper during cell division. So your article is total nonsense and National Geographic should be ashamed to publish such garbage.

So the 3.9% difference you wish to throw away is indeed important as is the 97% of DNA which your phony article claims is non-functional. What this shows is the quality of science being peddled by what were once respectable magazines in their attempt to save the totally discredited theory of evolution by discrediting the good reputation they had built up for decades.

As to your numbers in post 27, I have a source,
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992833 that says the true difference is actually just above five percent. As for your point that indels are mostly non-coding, and thus don't count, the article above states , "The result is only based on about one million DNA bases out of the three billion which make up the human and chimp genomes, says Britten. "It's just a glance," he says.

But the differences were equally split between "junk" regions that do not have any genes, and gene-rich parts of the genome, suggesting they may be evenly distributed.
"

That seems to be at odds with what Oefner implies when he claims indels are mostly in non-functional sections of the genome.

Note that snippet from the article also mentions three billion base pairs, not the 90 million figure that you use. I know you are only counting the part of the genome that we know codes, but if a human has a billion extra base pairs that do not code, that new stuff must have come from somwhere. It counts as far as being a mutation event that somehow established itself throughout the human genome.

In short, gore3000s numbers are better, its not 14K gene changes between man and chimp in 10 million years, but rather 150K changes that have established themselves througout the population.

However that is just the numbers. I think you are right on one important part. He seems to be counting all of those mutations as favorable, when you point out that many of them, most even, could be neutral. I'd like to know what gore3000's reasoning is on that. It seems to me that there is no reason all of those changes have to be favorable.

So how fast do mutations, neutral or favorable, work their way into populations today? That should give us a measuring stick to see of 150,000 mutations can work their way into the human genome in ten million years. Perhaps it would be better to say "work their way into the genome of an isolated group like Icelanders" since human populations were much smaller during most of our history.

That would be one mutation (neutral or favorable) working its way into the whole population every 67 years. I wish someone who knows about the rate now would speak up here, but that sounds like a really, really really short time, don't you think? I mean, we don't breed like flies, it takes a while for mutations to be established, yes?

Not only that, much of the difference between us and chimps is not just in the genes, but in the degree they are expressed.

Check here... http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992160

It says that human brains changed five times as much as chimp brains in the same period. That sounds like some favorable mutations to me. All of those changes must be reasonably doable in the 10 million years evolution allows in order for the evolutionary hypothesis to be more reasonable than the design hypothesis.

Am I missing something here, or are gore3000s numbers better than you first realized (considering neutral mutations are included too)?