Why is evolution so controversial?

Why would I need faith when I have 150 years of evidence on my side?

Good post...

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how do you know the average generation is 20 years? chimps live for 35 years in the wild and reproduce at 12 years. And we don't know what the life cycles of our extinct ancestors where.

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Because evolutionist do no other reason.

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Show your work: given a plausible demographic model of the Out of Africa migration, and estimates for the amount of Neandertal admixture, calculate the probability that Neandertal mtDNA would have survived.

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I can not because the out of Africa model is a fraud. Neanderthals were fully human and actively interbreeding with other humans.

Words cannot express how little your faith matters to me. I'm a committed secularist: I believe in your absolute right to whatever religion you choose. Equally, I'm totally unimpressed by any argument based in faith; the only agenda I have - relevant to this discussion at least - is that of evidence-based science.Scientists don't believe in Evolution because of some agenda but because we follow where the evidence leads. The great thing about science is that we can argue based on objectively-verifiable facts so my agenda, and yours, are pretty much irrelevant. The problem for you is that the objectively-verifiable facts do not support the version of history that you are religiously committed to.Edited by Mr Jack, : No reason given.

It's a widely used figure with some evidential basis, although a slightly higher figure of around 23 is probably more accurate. As you say, we have little direct information for extinct species so any value is going to be of slightly questionable accuracy.In any case I think Zaius use of the figure is perfectly legitimate.

You don't have to accept the Out of Africa model as true in order to determine the genetic outcome of that model. sfs' questions still stand."Show your work: given a plausible demographic model of the Out of Africa migration, and estimates for the amount of Neandertal admixture, calculate the probability that Neandertal mtDNA would have survived. " If active interbreeding was extremely limited then we wouldn't expect to see neanderthal mtDNA lineages in the modern population.

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Go back and read the post immediately before yours. It gives the units, and also explains why Nachman and Crowell's equation is just fine for single-base substitutions. Think about it until you understand it.

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(indels) are also quantifiable under neutral model calculations. They are in essence a slower molecular clock. If this was not true your 1/7 (u) could not work because you would not have a linear relationship in mutation rates.The majority of all papers dealing with indel variation, directly or indirectly, note that indels must be included in percentage similarity. The paper in question, discounted indels because the paradigm had not changed at that time.Indels must be included in the divergence calculation or you must throw out the entire premise of that calculation.

If that is the case how come they are so morphologically distinct? And so genetically separated?

I respect your opinion.

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Units are mutations and represent variance is percentage.

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No, mutations represent mutations. How much divergence they represent depends on big they are. This is simply a fact. There's no opinion here: what you've been saying is wrong.

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OK let us count every site difference between the two genomes and see what percentage of variance comes up. The number is bp adjusted via alignment tool.

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Fine. To go along with that, we'll also need the mutation rate in base pairs per generation. Do you know what it is for indels? It's not the rate you've been quoting -- that's the rate of mutations per generation. If you don't know it, you can't do the calculation.

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Again bp is not completely counted, it is defiantly the adjusted percentage difference between the human chimp genome. Look, if you did a bruit force comparison between base pairs, human against chimp, the similarity of base pairs would be in the 65% range. You do not want to go there. So saying that all base pairs are accounted for in variance is just not true.

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I used to write algorithms for variance (not for biology). The alignment tools used in these comparisons adjust for distances and gaps and bp, in the genomes.

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They don't adjust anything. Alignment tools align the parts that align and show gaps where they don't.

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If that is the case how come they are so morphologically distinct? And so genetically separated?

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How are pigmies so morphologically distinct?My opinion: There has been a very recent bottleneck to a few individuals in very recent human history. At that bottleneck a lot of human diversity was lost. The surviving Neanderthal alleles were pre incorporated in the remaining human genome.

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(indels) are also quantifiable under neutral model calculations.

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Of course they are. But since we don't have a good direct estimate of their mutation rate, you can't independently check to see whether human/chimpanzee divergence in indels fits with the mutation rate. There's nothing to compare it to.

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The majority of all papers dealing with indel variation, directly or indirectly, note that indels must be included in percentage similarity.

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The vast majority of papers dealing with indels having to do with similarity. Indeed, the overall percentage similarity is of very little scientific interest.

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The paper in question, discounted indels because the paradigm had not changed at that time.

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What paper discounted indels? And what paradigm changed?

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Indels must be included in the divergence calculation or you must throw out the entire premise of that calculation.

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That depends on what you're calculating and why. So far, in this thread, you haven't been calculating anything connected to the real world.

Geographical and cultural separation. Pygmies are also nowhere near as morphologically distinct as Neanderthals. You may also be interested in findings reported in this paper on the genetic divergence of African pygmies from other groups. Perhaps you'd like to quantify this bottleneck? Preferably in a manner which explains why European populations share certain Alleles with Neanderthals that are not found among African populations.

If you want to include indels, you must take into account the fact that they are not single nucleotide substitutions. They are indels.Sheesh.