Speaking of bananas, we were serving bananas as s snack to some kids at church, and I split the banana into three longitudinal sections (squeeze then a bit to get it started and find the seams) as an example of the Trinity, imperfect though the example is.
Would Neapolitan ice cream work better? 
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The fact horseshoe crabs have barely changed in all this time is a hint to Darwin’s godmother: “they are perfect… even God dare not change them.”
Maybe some protein like cytochrome C.
It would be rather silly anyway to say that the genome of a banana was 50% similar to a human. If creationist want to believe that argument, they demolish their whole claim to “kind” and what not. It would make a good banana split, though.
You are probably correct. It’s just something I’ve come across a few times. I’ve also heard that humans and chimps share “98.8% of their DNA” - whatever that means.
[quote=“gbrooks9, post:182, topic:35756, full:true”]
@Dredge
You will know you have a robust understanding of the BioLogos “side” when you can correctly write about the following topics:
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Evolution - Evolution as a technical term is Any change in a population’s gene pool… and that includes even trivial changes. The ongoing hum of alleles variously changing their ratios … whether anyone notices or not, is a fundamental principle.
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Speciation - When a population gets divided by some kind of barrier (either a physical one or sheer distance as a barrier), or by any other factor that would reduce the free interchange and exchange of genes, over time the newly separated populations (all other things being equal) can become increasingly less compatible in reproductive terms. When the average individual from one population can longer create fertile offspring by mating with the average individual from the other population, “Speciation” has occurred.
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By definition, when Speciation occurs, you have 2 or more populations that are related by “Common Descent”. It’s a corollary of Speciation. So some people use the phrase “Common Descent” as a short-hand way of referring to Speciation.
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By definition, once you have speciation, you have the machinery for eventually creating very diverse subsequent populations (anatomically, psychologically, physiologically, etc).
Believe it or not, there is no qualitative distinction in genetics between so-called “Micro-Evolution” and so-called “Macro-Evolution”. There are life forms that look very similar but that are not reproductively compatible, while other life forms, that have dramatically different appearances, can still produce fertile offspring.
When you understand these 4 ideas, Dredge, you will then understand the the body of science called Evolution, even if you don’t agree with it.
[/quote]Thank you for this, George. Most of your points I’m familiar with. At point 4) I have a problem, though: I accept that speciation occurs, but I don’t accept that it will eventually produce bug-human evolution (if indeed, that is what you are implying). Green Warblers, for example, are known to have speciated, but I believe that in a billion years time, Green Warblers will have produced nothing more than more Green Warblers.
[quote=“Jay313, post:179, topic:35756, full:true”]
It’s a little long. Maybe just: “I am like a weaned child”. Put it in Old English font. Mucho respect when you take your shirt off at the beach with that one! [/quote]
It’s bound to impress!
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Yes, warblers is an easy one to pick out of the crowd. But the trick about Evolution is that little fishies don’t just explode into primates … for big changes, there has to be a consistent chain of big environmental changes to nudge the population’s genetic profile along.
So instead of looking at birds, living like birds, and wondering why these birds, don’t become something else, we have to look animal case histories where a continuous population made several fortuitous moves into a new environmental niche - - to exploit food resources, to evade predators or both!
So that’s why we need to discuss the connection between Hippos and Whales! It turns out that the closest living relatives to Hippos (the last surviving member of it’s branch in the tree of life) are whales!
Genetically, physiologically and anataomicaly, the case is a convincing one:
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Hippos and Whales have similar physical traits such as hairless skin, a lack of conventional sweat glands, and a thick layer of blubber.
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Both hippos and whales can nurse their young fully submerged.
And most dramatically, anatomical comparisons show an unusually similar similarity between Hippo ankle bones, and the still-existing ankle bones of proto-whales!
“…recent fossil discoveries have borne out [a] prediction [based purely on Evolutionary hypotheses]. Scientists found ancient whales with hind legs and pelvises: these whales had the same kind of double pulley ankle bone that modern pronghorns, camels, cows and hippos have.”
So, @Dredge, quit waiting for a magician to put a mouse in a hat, and expecting a rabbit to jump out. If you want to find dramatic change, you have to find populations that have experienced dramatic changes in their environment.
For example, one of the reasons why Bears are such good climbers is because they used to be a lot smaller, and they spent most of their time in the tree tops to avoid predators. As their territories changed, and bears became bigger (and badder) over time … they became the dominant predator. But their paws are still configured for excellent tree climbing…
This is not what you would expect if God created Bears separately from all the other forest creatures.
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It would be more accurate to say that chimps share 98.5% of our DNA, and that shared DNA is 98.8% identical between the two species.
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That is closer to the truth. There are two major types of mutations: indels and substitutions. Indels are an amalgamation of “insertions” and “deletions”. These are mutations where DNA is either added or taken out of a genome. These indels can be a single base or millions of bases in a single mutation. Substitution mutations are mutations that change the base at a specific position. Where there was once an A there is not a C, as on example.
The ~98% figure is just looking at substitution mutations. In other words, it is a comparison of DNA that humans and chimps still share compared to the DNA that has either been added or subtracted since common ancestry. When you include indels the overall similarity is ~96%.
Since it has been a long, long time since the human and banana lineages diverged it is nearly impossible to identify orthologous or paralogous DNA for the vast majority of the genome, which is what you have to identify when calculating similarities between genomes. The only homologous DNA you are going to find is for genes that are conserved for most eukaryotes, which makes up a small percentage (~5%) of the human and banana genomes.
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Not really 96%. That’s what you get if you add the amount that’s unique to the human genome and the amount that’s unique to the chimp genome and subtract both from the size of the genome, which is not a procedure that makes much sense. If humans and chimps were identical in 50% in of their genomes, it would not be reasonable to say they had a similarity of 0%. That’s why I described it as I did above.
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AGGTAGTCCATACTTAG
AGCTAGT--ATACTTAG
So there is a two base indel and a substitution at the 3rd base in a 15 or 17 base sequence. What is the percentage of similarity?
If we focus on shared DNA, then the similarity is 14/15, or 93%.
If we compare all of the DNA, then there is a difference at 3 of the positions for 14/17, or 82%.
Both numbers make sense to me.
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Then why did you write, “evolution means it all started from dirt anyway”?
Why do you describe evolution as a ladder (bug-human), when it is like a bush? Why engage in such a fundamental misrepresentation?
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They both make sense to me, too. But you don’t get to 96% similarity that way. You get to 96% if you count deletions in the human sequence and also deletions in the chimp sequence.
As I wrote above, ~98.5% of the human genome is shared with the chimp genome; 98.5% of the chimp genome is shared with the human genome. You get 96% similarity by adding the 1.5% that’s unique to the human genome to the 1.5% that’s unique to the chimp genome (and then adding the 1.2% single-base substitution fraction). That’s the procedure that doesn’t make sense.
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Number 4 in the Biologos
We believe in the historical incarnation of Jesus Christ as fully God and fully man. We believe in the historical death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, by which we are saved and reconciled to God.
A universalist could hold that though a Unitarian in the original sense of the word wouldn’t.
Hey, @Erp, are you having laptop problems? This is the second post in a row to me where it seems you loose a word or two at the very end.
I think there are probably some Unitarians who might believe Jesus could have ascended in the Elijah/Enochian tradition. Certainly there are Unitarian Jews who think humans have experienced this.
But for my part, you are absolutely correct.
If you took the route from bug to human it would look like a ladder.
It would look more like a walk following the branches of this bush:
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A straight line of descent can be drawn between humans and the first bug, figuratively speaking.