It hardly matters which human genome is measured, as you are closer genetically to any other human being on Earth than are two chimps living on opposite sides of the same mountain in Africa. More evidence that the human genome is slow to change.
I agree with your point that we need to keep refining numerical models so that the numbers better reflect reality- that is what we are trying to do. The answer is to keep at it, like we are trying to do, not tip over the chessboard and speculate that we can't use numbers to calculate anything meaningful. Of course we can, if we try. What scares some is that the meaningful calculations will show the vast improbability of the chimp-man common ancestor.
But I think the larger point is this: No one doubts the similarity of chimps and humans. The physical and behavioral similarities are reinforced by genetic analysis, which points unquestionably towards common ancestry.
Your bias is showing. The common ancestry is unquestionable only to a person who accepts it on faith to begin with. Common Designer is just as valid a hypothesis, unless one dogmatically rules it out in advance regardless of the evidence due to a personal choice.
The mechanisms of genetic variation are still under investigation, and the creo side, instead of triumphantly crowing about how these mechanisms couldn't possibly have caused X degree of diffence in Y amount of time, need to present evidence for something that could.
You have it backwards I am afraid. It is up to the EVO side to show that there are mechanisms which can reasonably produce these changes in the time allowed. We already have "something that could"- an intelligent designer.
The mice that scientists recently inserted jelly-fish glow genes into can now glow in the dark. Should civilization end and these critters escape into the wild I suppose some scientits 500 years from now could speculate that these genes evolved. Others could hypothysize that these genes were the results of intelligent designers manipulating genes.
I don't think the first group of scientists should demand that the second group produce the bodies of those long gone researchers as "proof" of the design hypotheis. The second group should be able to use stats to show how absurd is the idea of evolution in this case, especially within 500 years.
Granted. Now how much closer? The claim that chimps are 5% or 1.4% different than humans is not particularly informative without a basis for comparison.
Common Designer is just as valid a hypothesis, unless one dogmatically rules it out in advance regardless of the evidence due to a personal choice.
Common Designer implies common ancestry. I'll cop to a slight semantic stretch at this point, of course, but even assuming the existence of a common designer, it still shows that he/she/it/they made people out of monkey parts. The thing is, we have a clear time line for the emergence of primates. Work backwards in time along the fossil record and the skulls of our ancestors become increasingly ape-like.
In the meantime, the Designer Hypothesis is not rejected because of dogma, or anti-religious fervor, or because of powerful mind-control rays from hyper-intelligent, 7-dimensional guppies. It's rejected because of a lack of evidence on the one hand, and a lack of unique predictions on the other. Put together and it's hard to make much of a case.
We already have "something that could"- an intelligent designer.
But no evidence to support that hypothesis. I'm also going to contest that "intelligent" bit. A sophomore in any ME program in the country can propose a laundry list of structural and engineering improvements in the human body this "intelligent designer" fellow somehow overlooked. And this without even putting down their beer or looking up from the PS2.
The second group should be able to use stats to show how absurd is the idea of evolution in this case
Only if the second group was fully conversant with the initial conditions at the period in time when the glow-in-the-dark mice first appeared in the animal kingdom. Without that info, calculating statistical improbability it just guesswork with a slide rule.