Determining similarity statistics between the human and chimp genome

@Frank

I’d like a shot at answering these questions too!

Theistic Evolutionists tend to believe the true/real God does not expect his worshippers to believe the opposite of what their Eyes and Ears reveal. For example, if before the rise of the Copernican Model of the solar system, a Theistic Evolutionist was lifted up to orbit by an angel, and he saw the spherical curvature of the Earth - a Theistic Evolutionist would not say: "My eyes deceive me … "

He would say, especially after a few orbits, the Earth is clearly a sphere. So if any of my dear friends tells me the Bible proves a flat earth (no… I’m not trying to start that topic again!), I know they are mistaken somehow: either because of their lack of knowledge or because of someone who taught them to believe this.

And when Job describes Hail and Snow being kept in treasures [treasure houses / store houses], modern day Theistic Evolutionists know that God does not the believer to believe there are actual storage chambers somewhere in the sky or deep space. The Evolutionist knows that whatever category of literature Job is using, it is not to be interpreted literally.

So … when geologists and physicists show that multiple experiments agree with each other that the Earth is tremendously old, the Evolutionist has to conclude that whatever genre the Creation Story might be, God does not expect him to think the earth is less than 10,000 years old.

So this is part 1 of the “Creation Reaction” of the Theistic Evolutionist.

Part 2 is the creation part. If God created all the kinds in a special miracle, then the Evolutionist would see with his own eyes that horse bones and cow bones and gazelle bones would be mixed in with creature that are called herbivore dinosaurs! But the Evolutionist does not see that… so, he must conclude that the Genesis Creation story, whatever genre, cannot be treated as historically relevant. And when someone who doesn’t know anything about fossils insists that the story is the truth, the Evolutionist has to conclude the man is blind to what others can see.

The topic of “Intelligent Design” is a little more subtle. Some, but not many, ID folks believe what the geologists say about the age of the Earth. More relevant are the few ID supporters who do accept the logic of “Natural Selection plus Mutation” creating Speciation and new Kinds, but do not believe the Earth is old enough for that to be able to happen.

So that means ID supporters conclude that God stepped in to differentiate Kinds and Species … which were then wiped out in a Global Flood (let me know, Frank, if you hold to the Regional Flood idea) - - then this means all the species and kinds that we can see living with our eyes today (well over 1 million terrestrial species/kinds) - had to have been specially created by God, or that natural speciation is, in fact, even faster than Evolutionists assert.

Frank, how’s this for explanations?

Hi Frank,

You’re absolutely right that accusations such as “deliberate stacking of the results” do require solid evidence. However, the only alternative explanation is that the results were stacked carelessly or negligently, and were not picked up at peer review. Either way, the adjective “inexcusable” still applies. Sloppy research and sloppy peer review are not acceptable in any scientific or technological endeavour.

Williamson’s critique of Tomkins’ paper provides examples (to all intents and purposes, test cases) that demonstrate this clearly.

I don’t understand why you expect me to. What benefit would it provide given that others have already said what needs to be said?

That’s because it didn’t have any bearing on the point I wanted to make. However, since you’ve asked, I shall give a couple of comments.

  1. You haven’t included any clickable links whatsoever to your sources. It looks like you’ve just copied and pasted it from one of the YEC websites, but you need to provide links to the articles that they cite. Otherwise we can’t check that they really say what they’re being made out to say.
  2. It doesn’t address the issue of the ungapped parameter.
  3. It’s rejected the idea of the creation of evidence for common ancestry that never happened, but what it’s proposing in its place still amounts to the creation of evidence for common ancestry that never happened.
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Can I have this whole thing tattooed on my chest?

I am always amazed when someone pops in here repeating the half-baked ideas and shoddy work of some third-rate scientist at ICR or the Biologic Institute as if they are “gospel,” and when afforded the opportunity to ask questions and learn from someone who actually authored the original scientific paper on the subject, all that happens is a flurry of articles from AIG and ENV and other dubious sources. Oh well…

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Hi Frank,

While it is true that the fusion displayed in chromosome 2 could, in theory, have happened in the past few thousand years, the variance within the chromosome in the human population points to a far, far older population in our lineage.

Also, it is a violation of copyright to quote more than a few sentences from an article. It is certainly a violation of copyright to quote an article in its entirety. As a courtesy to the original authors, could you be more careful about that?

Thanks, and have a great weekend!

“Fair Use” covers more than just a few sentences, but your point still remains valid

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As Williamson’s article pointed out, using the “ungapped” parameter rather than the “gapped” parameter guarantees that the Blast software of any version is going to give you an irrelevant answer. To get an answer to the questions that we should be asking about genetic similarity, you need to run the analysis with the “gapped” parameter.

Perhaps you should go back and re-read Williamson’s article, the one Steve linked to.

Best regards,
Chris Falter

Frank
I think I don’t actually need an “excuse” to ask you to retract your remark because I never asked you to do so in the first place.

Steve: I didn’t suggest you had. My point was that my description is evidence-based, and I will change it if offered evidence.

Frank: Okay. But if you dismiss out of hand other articles about Tomkins work you may just not be giving consideration to other research and lines of evidence.

In reading your response in its entirety I have to say that you demonstrate feelings that could accurately be described as somewhat more than simply assertive and could be construed as mildly aggressive.

Steve: I’m a scientist. Scientists typically react vigorously, even aggressively, to bad science. That doesn’t mean we don’t like the person responsible (although that happens too). It means we don’t tolerate crappy science out of politeness.

Frank: I studied the ‘Origin of Life: RNA World Hypothesis’ at University under Professor Jim Naismith who was quite openly a Darwinist and an atheist. He was even tempered, sociable,
friendly, patient and indeed courteous even in the face of my end of lecture discussions in which I critiqued the hypothesis. At the end of the course we had a lengthy discussion in which I critiqued the hypothesis in all the details he taught during his lectures. He maintained his cool calm self and even admitted of the RNA World: “It doesn’t work. It’s not the answer.”

I’ve also had numerous discussions with Richard Dawkins, Peter Atkins, Desmond Morris, Simon Conway-Morris, Vic Stenger, and so many more I can’t recall everyone and with a very few notable exceptions e.g. Richard none of the others reacted aggressively and so dismissively as do you.

As one Christian to another I thought you would have done so as a matter of courtesy. Evidently I was mistaken.

The point in contacting him directly, in my view, would have been as stated previously as a matter of courtesy and out of scientific curiosity.

Steve: I don’t see what courtesy has to do with this issue. I’m responding publicly to a published, nominally scientific argument, just as Tomkins responded publicly to our published work on the chimpanzee genome. As for scientific curiosity – no. Just no. I’ve read Tomkins’ article, and there is nothing of scientific interest in it.

Frank: Yes, I can see quite clearly that common courtesy doesn’t rate high on your behavioural list.

If you had specific issues with the findings in that article I thought you may address those issues on a point-by-point basis instead of resorting to the dismissive hand-waving away of alleged “misrepresentations by creationists” which is really nothing less than an ad-hominem.

Steve: Pick a particular claim and we can discuss it in detail. I don’t have the time to undertake a response to the whole thing. We have a Zika paper to get this week.

Frank: The content in the second article addresses the issue of the chimp-human similarity which you see as evidence for common ancestry whereas other scientists of whom you are most dismissive see evidence for a common designer.

If you’re too busy to complete a discussion may I suggest it’s better to give consider to that factor before entering such a discussion.

So, my question, which is based on discussions with quite a number of theistic evolutionists, is this. Why are you and other theistic evolutionists ( I’m not, of course, asking you to speak for all theistic evolutionists and asking only in general terms) so antagonistic and in some instances outright hostile to Christians who believe in either Intelligent Design or Creation?

Steve: I’m not hostile to Christian who are creationists. I was raised as a creationist, my mother was a creationist, many members of my church are creationists. I pray with them, worship with them and hang out with them. I am hostile toward bad arguments and falsehoods, especially when offered in the name of Christ. I am hostile toward professional creationists, because they produce and promote those bad arguments and falsehoods; based on decades of experience with the material they produce on science, it is routinely wrong, misleading and unscientific. I am hostile to attempts to stake the truth of the gospel to the rejection of science – I think it’s bad for the church, especially bad for our young people, bad for science and bad for society.

Frank: I think you do yourself no favours in having such a hostile attitude which manifests in these type of comments.

As to your point about the Bible versus science I do think you have this issue completely backwards.

Speaking as a former atheist who moved to agnosticism after drilling down into the details of Darwinism to find out that the hypothesis (it cannot truly accurately be described as a theory) is hugely holed and doesn’t stand up to scrutiny I moved to the position of agnostic and after a lengthy time period became a believer in our Lord Jesus Christ as revealed through Holy Scripture.

If the Genesis account of creation and the global flood of Noah’s day – events which are authenticated in the New Testament (more accurately described as the New Covenant) – by certain apostles and by Jesus Christ – are just-so stories or mere myth or allegories there is no basis whatsoever in believing in a real historical Adam and Eve, no basis for believing in sin, nor the Fall – and no basis for believing in Jesus Christ.

Because if there was no Adam there was no sin and nothing from which he could Fall and the ransom sacrifice, as elucidated by Paul, of Jesus Christ was all for nothing.

In his TV diatribe against theistic religion called The root of all evil? (broadcast on Channel 4, 16 January 2006), he said:

‘Oh but of course the story of Adam and Eve was only ever symbolic, wasn’t it? Symbolic?! So Jesus had himself tortured and executed for a symbolic sin by a non-existent individual? Nobody not brought up in the faith could reach any verdict other than barking mad!’

It’s a rule of thumb. You’re allowed to quote enough to interact with. In a lengthy analysis, you might indeed quote more than a few sentences. But then I would expect a proportionately greater amount of original analysis from the writer who is quoting an article.

To say “Look at this interesting article” and then quote the article in its entirety is indisputably a violation of copyright.

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Thank you for your comments.

I beleive I explained my limited programming know-how in a previous post.

And in a subsequent article I posted information about work carried out by Tomkins in which he used programmes other than BlastN and his reported findings are not good from the Darwinist perspective - but no-one up to this point has commented.

“It’s a rule of thumb” to whom?

It’s not a violation of copyright when you have been given permission to post articles in their entirety, right?

Well, I have been granted such permissions.

jammycakesJames McKay
2h
1
Frank
However, I would be very reluctant to say without solid evidence that a scientist who is a Christian would deliberately stack the cards in his favour which in effect would be a fraud. I apply this standard to scientists whether they are IDer’s , creationists, or theistic evolutionists.

Hi Frank,

James: You’re absolutely right that accusations such as “deliberate stacking of the results” do require solid evidence. However, the only alternative explanation is that the results were stacked carelessly or negligently, and were not picked up at peer review. Either way, the adjective “inexcusable” still applies. Sloppy research and sloppy peer review are not acceptable in any scientific or technological endeavour.

Frank: What evidence do you have that he “configured” his programme in such a way?

James: Williamson’s critique of Tomkins’ paper provides examples (to all intents and purposes, test cases) that demonstrate this clearly.

Frank: Let us for the sake of the argument agree that Tomkins figure of 70% is in accurate ( but I again point out that I posted an article in which he used another programme other than BlastN and the findings don’t look good from a Darwinist perspective) but that does not of necessity entail that he deliberately configured the BlastN programme to deliver the results he wanted.

It is my observation that “some” theistic evolutionists have feelings of antipathy for scientists who are creationists to the extent that they very speedily accept the findings of their fellow theistic evolutionists and instantly reject the research of creationists and IDers. Such prejudice is of no benefit to any of the parties involved.

I do think I would be rather nervous of getting a carefully considered verdict in the event I were an innocent party standing in a courtroom accused of a crime if all jury members were of a similar mindset to you James who seemingly is not willing to exercise reasonable doubt.

What about you? Have you or will you contact him to point out what in your opinion is a deliberately misleading article?

James: I don’t understand why you expect me to. What benefit would it provide given that others have already said what needs to be said?

Frank: Actually, I was not really expecting you to do so. If others have already said what needs to be said why is it you say such things to me – and not to Tomkins?

In common with Steve Schaffner you have made no comment about the subsequent article I posted.

James: That’s because it didn’t have any bearing on the point I wanted to make. However, since you’ve asked, I shall give a couple of comments.

  1. You haven’t included any clickable links whatsoever to your sources. It looks like you’ve just copied and pasted it from one of the YEC websites, but you need to provide links to the articles that they cite. Otherwise we can’t check that they really say what they’re being made out to say.
  2. It doesn’t address the issue of the ungapped parameter.
  3. It’s rejected the idea of the creation of evidence for common ancestry that never happened, but what it’s proposing in its place still amounts to the creation of evidence for common ancestry that never happened.

Frank: Yes, I copied and pasted articles which I’d read and considered. Presumably you read and consider articles written from the Darwinist perspective? In future I will try to remember to provide links/references – even though the articles and extracts I post are easily obtainable by doing a Google search.

Although the second article didn’t specifically touch on the point you raised it does mention the relevant point that Tomkins used programmes other than BlastN and from a Darwinist perspective his findings are not good.

Yes. Common ancestry i.e. a self replicating molecule which evolved over time by means of natural selection and mutation into higher life forms did not actually happen despite all the talk that it did.

Hi Frank,

Thanks for mentioning that. Ordinarily, those who secure a special permission from a copyright holder mention that permission as part of their presentation. In fact, at the end of the Super Bowl you will, if you pay attention, hear the network mention that they have received “express permission from the NFL” to perform the broadcast.

You misunderstand Tomkins’ subsequent article. His second analysis was based on a different version of Blast, one that didn’t have a particular defect. But he was still misusing that later version of Blast. In fact, he was misusing it in the same way that he had misused the earlier version of Blast.

That he continues to misuse Blast (of whatever version) in spite of repeated admonitions from the scientific community marks him as an untrustworthy source of genetic data and analysis. I’m not saying he’s overall untrustworthy. I would happily buy a used car from him. I am just saying that his analysis of genetic data is not to be trusted.

But you haven’t yet recognized your limitations, because you think that no one has commented on Tomkins’ second article. In fact, everyone who has been talking with you about this issue has been commenting on all of Tomkins’ research and articles, every single bit of it.

Frank, I appreciate your love for God and your desire to speak His truth. Your friends here on this forum aspire to similar qualities.

Have a great weekend,

Cool. A link and short summary would work more effectively, though. Just sayin…

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I find this dialogue really remarkable. The data is unambiguous. It shows that we are about 1 to 3% different than chimps (depending on how exactly we measure it). Glen does explain in detail why all four of Tomkin’s calculations are wrong…

  1. First one was based on a bugged BLAST version. You can tell because comparing identical human to human datasets → 70%.
  2. Second one (using BLAST) was based on faulty parameters (no gaps allowed) that would leave two different humans with much more different than that. You can tell because comparing different humans to one another → similarity about 85% (though Glen did not do this).
  3. Third one using nucmer was based on faulty post analysis (by averaging all similar sequences instead of taking the best one). You can tell because comparing identical human to human datasets → 88%.
  4. Fourth one using lastz based on faulty post analysis that takes average similarity instead of best. Remarkably, here Tomkins actually reports in his tables that the similarity is >98% for the best alignment (the right answer!!!) but ignores it to focus on the mean alignment. He throws this out because he can’t get this fault analysis to match the other faulty analyses. You can tell his approach is wrong because comparing identical human to human datasets his way → less than 75%.

So Tomkin’s analysis is really indefensible, and it does not take an expert to see this. The controls (the human to human comparisons) come out very far below nearly 100%, and nearly match what he says is the human/chimp similarity. I cannot comment on why he thinks this is quality analysis, but it seems fairly obvious the problems here.

So I’m curious @Frank, if some one gave you code to actually look at this yourself, would that make a difference?

Given that all this data and software is freely available online, if I stepped you through it would you go run the analysis yourself? Would the data change your mind about this in any way?

Of course, maybe we did not evolve. But I cannot understand willful ignorance of the facts here, if that is truly what this is.

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That’s not true either, even according to the most generous interpretation of the ENCODE data.

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Hi Frank,

Did you understand the nature of the criticisms of Tomkins’s papers? They were not “instantly rejected”; they were tested.

As @Swamidass and others have pointed out, he configured the software in such a way that when human DNA is compared to itself, the result is far below 100%. Do you understand why this is a very serious error that no PhD geneticist—and certainly not one with clearly non-trivial computer programming skills—should make?

The fact of the matter is that YEC science is riddled with schoolboy errors such as this one. Errors that are purely technical and procedural in nature. Errors that should never have passed peer review, and that should have been retracted when pointed out. Yet Tomkins’s articles are still being promoted on the Answers in Genesis website. In fact I could give examples where objections to even more serious errors are rejected as “nitpicking” or “petty” and even denounced as “compromise” or “atheism.”

Given this complete absence of any kind of meaningful quality control, and a completely unjustifiable hostility towards correction, is it any wonder that many Christian evolutionary scientists are upset about YEC “science”?

Prejudice has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with it.

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For someone who prides himself as a scientist and critical thinker, Miller’s argument beggars belief. Even a child could see the fallacy of it. If, in Miller’s view, it is reasonable to believe that the chromosomes became fused in a small population of half-ape/half-humans a few million years ago, why is it not reasonable to believe that this occurred in a small population of actual humans a few thousand years ago? This could have happened very early on in human history, soon after Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, or in a small, isolated group from which Noah and his family were drawn prior to the Flood.

@Frank

George: That was an awful lot of text for a position that cannot hold when related evidence is brought to bear. This is one of the amazing strengths of Evolutionary theory in general. It is so robust it survives analysis from dozens of different scientific perspectives!

Frank: “Dozens of different scientific perspectives!” ?

Do please name those “dozens”.

I have in my library a copy of ‘The Microbiology of Cell’ written by too many evolutionary naturalists to mention but if you do a Google search I think you will recognize a number of well known persons.

I contacted Bruce Alberts, a major contributor to this publication and a former President of the National Academy of Sciences, Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California.

I explained to Bruce that the publication talks in great length and detail about “information specifying in extraordinary detail the characteristics that the offspring [of parent organisms] will have.” page 3. But the publication does not offer an explanation for the origin of highly complex specified information nor does it explain how an organism has new increased gains in the type of information necessary to evolve one organism into a higher organism.

I asked him if he could offer explanations addressing those issues. Bruce was very pleasant open and honest and said that he doesn’t know. To assist me to accept the evolutionary model of bottom to top he sent me an article ‘Science, Evolution and Creationism’ which did nothing in the way of addressing my specific questions.

The publication was clearly one long sales pitch for evolutionary naturalism with appeals to the fossil record and related matters - but did not contain “dozens of perspectives”.

In other words microbiology is not a stand-alone explanation for evolutionary naturalism and it needs must be propped up by other areas of science which, according to certain facts and evidence, are also highly suspect.

I’ll add a further point that is of some significance in this issue. It became very clear to me years ago that (“some”) evolutionary scientists for the purpose of all appearing to sing from the same song sheet unquestionably accepting the findings of scientists in other fields. For example Richard Dawkins admits he knows very little, if anything, about cosmology and Vic Stenger admitted he knew very little about biology. But both parties, as evolutionary naturalists, accepted the beliefs of each other. Hmmm.

I should say that is a position, not of solid hard facts and evidence science, but more a position of faith in one’s fellow evolutionary naturalist scientists, don’t you agree?

George: In the case of the primates … you are propose the following:

“If, in Miller’s view, it is reasonable to believe that the chromosomes became fused in a small population of half-ape/half-humans a few million years ago, why is it not reasonable to believe that this occurred in a small population of actual humans a few thousand years ago? This could have happened very early on in human history, soon after Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, or in a small, isolated group from which Noah and his family were drawn prior to the Flood.”

This means, of course, that the fused chromosome event would have involved one of Noah’s few ancestors, right? If it had happened after Noah, there would be humans without the fused Chromosome, right?

Frank: Statham is arguing that the fused chromosome event could have occurred sometime after the Fall and prior to the Flood.

He goes on to argue that the fused chromosome event could have occurred in a small, isolated group who were the ancestors of Noah and his family. In other words Noah and his family and their descendants – post Flood- would inherit the fused chromosome, right?

So, if you take Statham’s argument in the context of Miller’s view it’s not an unreasonable argument.

You haven’t said whether or not you recognize Statham’s argument as either reasonable or unreasonable – and instead you jump ahead and propose a different scenario in which the fused chromosome event happened after Noah (a time frame of thousands and not millions of years) and suggest that there would be humans without the fused chromosome.

George: So let’s hang onto this point and bring in the broken Vitamin C gene.

See how the coincidences start to become a little too much to swallow? And this is only the 2nd evidence. We haven’t even begun to discuss the aggregate genetic markers that show approximately when various changes happened, based on analyzing the genetics of all the surviving examples of primates!

Frank: Other than make assertions you haven’t actually presented a fact and evidence based argument in the very few words you’ve spoken thus far.

George: But let’s wrap up the Vitamin C issue: Certainly you can’t argue that it is coincidence that Noah’s lineage just coincidentally suffered a corruption of the Vitamin C gene in exactly the same way that the Primates suffered the same corruption.

Frank: “Wrap it up”? You haven’t even started an argument yet.

Where is your evidence that “Noah’s lineage… suffered a corruption of the Vit C gene in exactly the same way ……”? And specifically when did both those events occur? How was this evidence achieved? Did it involve software programmes?

George: It seems God is pretty intent on trying to convince Evolution-deniers, that it looks like evolution! He gives primates the same chromosome count as pre-Fusion humans … and then creates all these primate kinds (and humans) with exactly the same broken Vitamin C gene.
But he breaks the Vitamin C gene in guinea pigs and fruit bats in 2 other ways.
I can only guess that the reason you oppose Common Ancestry is that you think it is unlikely that natural selection can work quickly enough to cause speciation. And yet, if all terrestrial life was destroyed in the Global Flood, then all the hundreds of thousands (nay, millions!) of terrestrial “species” and “kinds” that we find on Earth today had to be speciated from the surviving kinds released from the Ark!

Frank: If you are interested in giving consideration to a fact and evidence based argument the following article, of which I have posted a very brief summary of its conclusions, discusses amongst other matters the issue of Vitamin C which you belief to be a ‘match winner’ for your viewpoint:

The Human GULO Pseudogene—Evidence for Evolutionary …

https://answersingenesis.org/genetics/human-gulo-pseudogene-evidence-evolutionary-
Summary and Conclusions
One of the key arguments used by some proponents of evolutionary dogma is that the human and chimpanzee GULO pseudogenes are examples of inherited shared genetic mistakes. However, as demonstrated in this report, overall evidence for common ancestry across the entire human GULO locus with chimps and other apes is completely negated by the following discoveries:

  1. Compared to chimpanzee and gorilla, the 28,800 base GULO region in humans is only 84% and 87% identical to chimpanzee and gorilla, respectively.
  2. The 13,000 bases upstream of the human GULO region corresponding to the putative area of loss for at least two major exons, is only 68% and 73% identical to chimpanzee and gorilla, respectively.
  3. The individual six exon regions which are generally very similar among humans and various apes, each independently exhibit completely different and discordant phylogenetic patterns of similarity for all but one exon. A general lack of human SNPs in these exons indicates that incomplete lineage sorting based on alleged ancestral polymorphisms is not a likely explanation.
    The transposable element (TE) content for each region of putative exon loss is taxonomically restricted and evolutionarily discordant between humans and each ape taxon. Unequal recombination associated with transposable element repeats can lead to disruptive deletion events in the genome and likely did in……

And there is this article:

Adam and Eve, Vitamin C, and Pseudogenes
by Daniel Criswell, Ph.D. *
Extract: “Thousands of human pseudogenes have been catalogued, but in spite of the similarities to functional genes, the exact role of pseudogene sequences in the genome are not known by any scientist. It is not necessary to assume that pseudogenes are remnants of once functioning genes that have been lost and now clutter the genome like junk in a rubbish heap. It is possible that these regions of DNA do have a role in human and animal genomes and this role has not been discovered yet. Over 100 years ago, Robert Wiedersheim hypothesized that the human body had more than 80 organs that lacked any function simply because it was unknown at the time what these organs did (Wiedersheim 1895). They were assumed to be vestigial or “junk” leftovers from evolutionary history and several of these organs are still presented this way in biology textbooks today. The science of genomics is in the same position today. Just because scientists do not currently know the function of a portion of DNA does not mean that it does not have any function and therefore it is an evolutionary leftover. It has been reported that pseudogenes play a regulatory role in yeast for the functional genes that they share sequence homology with (Hirotsune et al. 2003). There needs to be more research in this area to verify these claims, but at least there are some indications of a functional role for pseudogenes in the human genome.”

And also this article with relevant extracts:

VITAMIN C GENE? Humans share the same broken vitamin C gene as apes. Doesn’t this prove evolution?
The original question was: If man was separately created, how come apes have the same broken gene for making vitamin C as humans do? Surely this could only come about by man evolving from chimpanzees. To claim God made the same mutant in both stretches credulity….
To argue that the same broken genes in man and chimpanzee are good evidence of relationship certainly sounds logical – until you discover that broken vitamin C genes are also found in creatures such as guinea pigs and bats. So far we have not found any evolutionist who wants to claim common Vitamin C mutations must mean man ascended from guinea pigs or bats!..

First we must note that the human GULO gene is actually only 84% identical to the chimpanzee, yet it is 87% identical to the gorilla. Therefore even though the chimp is claimed to be our nearest evolved relative, we can’t ignore the fact that the human gene more similar to a gorilla than to the chimp.

The human and ape non-functional GULO genes are often compared to the functional GULO gene in the rat, which is significantly longer than both the human and ape gene. It is therefore assumed that a large chunk of the man’s and apes’ GULO gene was lost, or has became defunct in the common ancestor of apes and men. However the real fact is we have no way of knowing if the human or ape gene was ever the same as the rat gene, since the bit being compared is absent. Furthermore, comparing the region immediately in front of the GULO gene where this loss was supposed to happen, the human segment is only 68% the same as the chimp while it is 73% the same as the gorilla.

To all this let’s add to the mix a published observation by three Canadian biologists, about vitamin C production and non-production, which occurs in a pattern that doesn’t fit any standard evolutionary trees.

You’re showing that you failed to pick up on a key aspect of the argument here: although guinea pigs and bats also have broken vitamin C genes, they are not broken in the same place. All the ape and human C genes have the exact same mutation, but although bats and guinea pigs also have broken C genes, they are broken in different places.

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Please, where does Miller describe these ancestors as half-ape/half-human?

Thank for your input.

My programming is limited to C++ and I’m not at all sure that if you gave me the BlastN or other codes, which I think James said is PERL , that I’d have much, if any, understanding.

What I find quite amazing is that a number of persons,including you, have made really excoriating attacks against Tomkins in connection with his abilities and even his character but unless I’m much mistaken no-one amongst those crtics has actually had the either the common courtesy nor, it has to be said, the courage to contact tomkins direct and confront him.

As I stated I simply don’t have the software programming skills to determine whether or not the accusations hurled at Tomkins are accurate. But I had I those skills and were of the same opinion as you and the others believe me when I tell you that I would not hesitate to confront him on such a major issue.

You will perhaps understand why I find the retince of those accusers most puzzling.

However, putting that aside for the moment - this matter of such excoriating attacks on Tomkins is unfinished business, believe me.

It’s not only Tomkins who is of the conviction that the human-chip genome similarity is considerably less than the alleged figures of 99%, 98%, 96.9% aand other similar numbers. I do think you must be aware that there are large numbers of Ph.D’s who are of the conviction that the % figure is not in line with those numbers mentioned.

But for the sake of the arguemtn let us say that the similarity was 95%, okay?

Just how does that figure “prove” common ancestry? It’s not actually “proof” at all, is it? It’s a belief. A belief to accord with the preconceived belief that life is a bottom to top model - and with that prior commitment to that model any data must be interpreted through that mindset to reach the conclusion - common ancestry.

Do tell me how when you consider that a 5% difference which equates to around 150 Million differences is evidence for common ancestry without a prior commiitment to that belief?