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The article that was published by Reuters on 23 Feb 07 states that Chimpanzees and man separated just 4 million years ago. There are approximately 120 million differences in the nucleotides of DNA between the two species. That would mean that on the average 15 changes would have to have been made to man and also to chimps each year since separation. If there are that many changes, then it should be very easy to see the changes over the period of years in which we have known about DNA.

Clyde Berkley

That's not bad considering that humans and chimps are about 98.8% the same. And that the difference between one human and another is about 6 million nucleotide pairs.

If you use the logic you are using and we say that the human race was created about what, let's say 10,000 years ago just to make the math easy. Then humans would have had to change about 600 nucleotide pairs a year on average. According to you that is not possible. Please explain so I can follow your logic.

First off, ID does not equate to YEC so there goes the main thrust of your argument.

Secondly, the commonly cited 98.8% is an old estimate. The original claim of 98 percent is based on a process called DNA hybridization. I don’t want to get too technical, but it consists of splitting some human DNA into single strands. They found they could rather conformably make it form a double strand with chimp DNA. They then inferred from that the 98-99 percent similarity.

Considering that the entire field of genetics is being overhauled by new discoveries I would not put much faith in such estimates, although I should note that based upon other methods current estimates I've read vary between 86% to 94%.

One example:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=9D0DAC2B-E7F2-99DF-3AA795436FEF8039

But let me say this — since men and chimps look so similar, it wouldn’t be surprising that the DNA, which dictates their physical appearance--the phenotype--would also turn out to be somewhat similar (although I'm ignoring epigenetic factors). I would expect human DNA to be more similar to chimp DNA than to whale DNA on the same ground that you would expect two software programs for word processing to be more similar than a spreadsheet application. Let’s also remember that a 4% difference is about 120 million base pairs difference. Even if the 1% were true it would mean 30 million base pair differences.

“Bergman (2004) has studied the topic of beneficial mutations. Among other things, he did a simple literature search via Biological Abstracts and Medline. He found 453,732 “mutation” hits, but among these only 186 mentioned the word “beneficial” (about 4 in 10,000). When those 186 references were reviewed, almost all the presumed “beneficial mutations” were only beneficial in a very narrow sense- but each mutation consistently involved loss of function changes-hence loss of information. He was unable to find a single example of a mutation which unambiguously created information. While it is almost universally accepted that beneficial (information creating) mutations must occur, this belief seems to be based upon uncritical acceptance of RM/NS (Random Mutation/Natural Selection), rather than upon any actual evidence.”(Dr. J.C. Sanford PhD., Genetic Entropy: 2005 pg. 26 and 27)

I should also note that while unguided, unintelligent Darwinian processes appear incapable of bridging the gap there is no reason why intelligent processes cannot. So common descent between humans and chimps "could" be true, except the mechanism for change was based in intelligence.

So common descent between humans and chimps "could" be true, except the mechanism for change was based in intelligence.

I'm not sure I understand this logic. What is the difference between intelligent and unintelligent change? How would you seperate the two? There are plenty of things that would seem intelligent which are not.

First off, ID does not equate to YEC so there goes the main thrust of your argument

I was not saying that there was in anyway YEC involved. I was mearly saying that the human race, since it's creations, has not been around more than 10,000 years. If man was created fully formed as per our only real guide on this subject then that fully formed man could not have existed for more than a few thousand years. If you look back at the fossil record then man in his current form only appeared around 400,000 years ago. If you look to the bible for answers then man was here less than 10,000 years.

If you go be the fossil evidence then that would be 15 changes per year or about the same as the change between man and chimp's divergence about 4,000,000 years ago.

I'm not sure I understand this logic. What is the difference between intelligent and unintelligent change? How would you seperate the two? There are plenty of things that would seem intelligent which are not.

You are asking for a mechanism for design. Let me be clear that the core of ID theory is not mechanical in nature. There are ID-compatible hypotheses that offer mechanisms for design in biology. Two examples are front-loading and punctuated intervention, which are both compatible with universal common descent. Of course, even in a YEC scenario there can still be partial front-loading and other epigenetic or intelligent mechanisms which can account for rapid evolution. While front-loading has predictions unfortunately the results of punctuated intervention and unintelligent mechanisms might look much the same. The difference is that intelligent mechanisms need not be gradualistic, which of course is more compatible with the fossil record. But while we know that intelligence is quite capable of producing specified complexity we are still trying to determine the exact limitations of unguided Darwinian mechanisms. We do have experimental evidence (see Behe's Edge of Evolution) but most Darwinian mechanisms are untested...they're just assumed to work as advertised.

In short, while the rate of change required by the evidence is a monstrous challenge to unintelligent mechanisms for intelligent mechanisms it would not be much of a problem.

You might find this interesting:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071017145252.htm

The figure of 300,000 generations is an accepted estimate by Darwinists themselves. A1% difference between man and chimp genome is approximately equal to a difference of 35x10^6 (35,000,000) Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNP) difference. I'll be generous and presume the new estimate of 94% instead of lower estimates. So we have 210x10^6 SNP.

1/2 that is = 105x10^6

So from there we take approximately 105x10^6 SNPs and divide it by 3x10^5 (300,000) generations. This results in the the per-generation average of 350 SNPs required for a successful unguided Darwinian scenario. But that's just the beginning...we have not taken the deleterious mutation rate into account.

Darwinists grudgingly admit that at least 999 out of 1000 SNP to DNA will be deleterious before any “hypothetical” beneficial SNP will occur...and this is a low end estimate for a deleterious mutation rate biased to make Darwinism more plausible.

Thus, 350 Beneficial SNP x 1000 Total SNP required equals 350,000 SNP per generation required to generate the average of Beneficial SNP required for a chimp-like ancestor to reach man via unintelligent mechanisms. I'll also be very generous and assume the deleterious mutations are not seriously detrimental and that the beneficial mutations manages to spread throughout the population with no problems.

So let's assume that 120,000 year old modern human fossil I linked to is valid and assume an average of 20 years per generation. That is 6000 generations of humans. What happened to all those millions of SNPs?

Now an intelligent mechanism can self-terminate aka "stop". Darwinian mechanisms on the other hand have no reason to do so. So, unless unguided, unintelligent Darwinian mechanisms happen to be on vacation they are either not active today at the same level or they were never capable in the first place. It's always possible we are misunderstanding something about unintelligent mechanisms but so far the outlook is grim for Darwinism. I for one am open to the possibility that intelligence was only involved during OOL and the system was configured in such a fashion to allow unintelligent mechanisms to unfold the rest (like a culmination of lego block pieces). But I do not see any evidence or experiments to validate that scenario.

What is the difference between intelligent and unintelligent change? How would you seperate the two?

You are asking for a mechanism for design

I think he is asking for an application of the Explanatory Filter. Sal Cordova had offered to work through an example some months ago over at the SciPhiShow, but got distracted before it ever got off the ground.

Pat I don't think your trying to confuse things on purpose but you sure do get your numbers wrong.

What was claimed was that the human and chimp branches of the evolutionary tree diverged 3 to 4 million years ago, not the 120,000 years you used for your calculations. Those and other numbers you used are far from factual. The difference today between one person and another is somewhere around 6,000,000 SNP's.

What I was saying is how would you explain this great diversity between humans if the modern human linage began - let's use your numbers - say 120,000 years ago? In that case it would have taken 50 SNP's per year or 1000 per generation to get to the point we are currently at. And if you agree that 1000 SPN's per generation is possible then what's to say that there couldn't be more?

Try reading it again.

I very clearly said 300,000 generations at the top:

"The figure of 300,000 generations is an accepted estimate by Darwinists themselves."

I was being generous to Darwinism by giving more time and using 6 million years (20 X 300k) as an estimate for the divergence of the human and chimp branches of the evolutionary tree.

The 120,000 number refers to earliest known evidence for modern humans:

"Before, the earliest evidence for human use of marine resources and coastal habitats was dated about 125,000 years ago"

I did make a minor mistake since I used 120k instead of 125k. I was using that number since it's far more generous to Darwinism than the new discovery putting modern humans back to 164,000 years:

"Evidence of early humans living on the coast in South Africa, harvesting food from the sea, employing complex bladelet tools and using red pigments in symbolic behavior 164,000 years ago, far earlier than previously documented, is being reported in the journal Nature."

Also, the 35,000,000 number:

"A 1% difference between man and chimp genome is approximately equal to a difference of 35x10^6 (35,000,000) Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNP) difference."

1% of 3.5x10^9 (entire genome) = 35x10^6

Anyway, the point is that we should be able to see Darwinism in action if it's maintaining the rate required for various scenarios. But we don't see it in action. In fact, we see stasis.

Run the numbers yourself. I overly biased the numbers in favor of Darwinism (notice that number of SNPs required were arbitrarily halved) and they are not pretty. I would not be surprised if I made some errors in these quick calculations but I doubt they would dramatically changes things, biased as they are.