Plus, humans and chimps are the same by your criteria.
Actually, not just Faith's hyper-simplistic phenotype criterion (ie, having the same "basic shape") would classify humans and chimps as being of the same species, but also her criterion of having the same basic genome.
Humans and chimps have many of the same genes
in the same places on the same chromosomes. Ah, she would equivocate and back-pedal yet again, humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes instead of 24 as chimps have. In fact, if you look at
human Chromosome 2, you find that it was formed by the end-to-end fusion of two ancestral chromosomes which are still separate in chimps -- its very structure demonstrates that it is two fused chromosomes (eg, a second vestigial centromere, vestigial telomeres in the middle of the chromosome). Not only have we identified the two "ape chromosomes" that fused to form human Chromosome 2, but we have also found the same genes in the same places on human Chromosome 2 that are on the two "ape chromosomes".
Additionally, for decades now biochemists working with protein sequence comparisons have found the genetic commonalities between chimps and humans to be amazing. In 1990 I wrote a report on Duane Gish's deliberate lie on national TV about a bullfrog protein showing humans and bullfrogs to be more closely related (the most evidence he ever provided to support that was admitting that it was based on a joke he had overheard about the protein having been taken from an enchanted prince who had been turned into a frog ... seriously!). At the time, I posted it in a CompServe library and have re-posted it on my site:
THE BULLFROG AFFAIR or The Enchanted Prince Croaks.
Here is my report what Dr. Russell Doolittle reported on the PBS documentary (copied from that show's transcript):
quote:
In a recent article in _Discover_ magazine, Dr. Russell Doolittle tells
how his early research in protein comparisons had sparked his interest in
evolution. In a 1982 PBS program ("Creation vs Evolution: Battle in the
Classroom", KPBS-TV, aired 7 July 1982), he told this story:
Doolittle: "Ever since the time of Darwin the chimpanzee has been
regarded as man's nearest living relative. Naturally it was then
of interest to biochemists to see what chimpanzee proteins would
look like. Now the first protein to be looked at in a chimpanzee,
and compared with a human, was the hemoglobin molecule -- hemoglobin
one of the blood proteins -- and in fact, there were no differences
found in the chimpanzee molecule when 141 amino acids were looked at
in the hemoglobin alpha chain. In contrast, if you looked at a
rhesus monkey, there were four differences; or if you looked at a
rabbit, you found the differences got up into the 20s. If you got
up to a chicken you'd find 59 differences; and if you looked at a
fish you'd find there were more than a hundred differences. Now
this is exactly what you expect from the point of view of evolution."
Narrator: "Three more proteins were analyzed."
Doolittle: "Once again, no differences compared -- chimpanzee
compared with human. It was astonishing. In fact a rumor began
to sweep around biochemists, that maybe all the differences
between chimpanzee and human were really going to turn out to be
cultural. Well, in fact, one more protein was quickly looked at
-- this was a large one -- 259 amino acids -- and a difference
was found. Whew!"
Well, now according to Faith's "new and improved" criteria, it turns out that humans and chimps are indeed the same species and the differences are purely cultural.
On that page, I review several creationist claims about protein comparisons, including Walter Brown's infamous rattlesnake protein (which was still in his on-line book last I saw, though in a footnote without any details). From
http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/bullfrog.html#RATTLESNAKE:
quote:
Then in the Summer of 1984, Kenney wrote to Walter Brown about the fetal
horse hemoglobin. Brown responded with a telephone call. Kenney tried to get
Brown to confirm or deny the ICR's claims, or at least to pressure the ICR to
produce some kind of documentation. Brown refused, but instead offered another
claim: rattlesnake proteins.
Brown claimed that on the basis of data from a 1978 study by Margaret
Dayhoff, comparisons of cytochrome c show that the rattlesnake is more closely
related to humans that to any other organism. When Kenney asked Brown to
provide the name of the scientific journal and the page number in which Dayhoff
had reached this conclusion, Brown stated that he couldn't. Dayhoff had never
reached such a conclusion, but rather Brown's son had used Dayhoff's data to
reach that conclusion for a science fair project. It was Brown's son who had
concluded that rattlesnakes are more closely related to humans by cytochrome c
than to any other organism.
For fifteen dollars, Brown sent Kenney photocopies of his son's project
(apparently, Brown's price depends on who you are). Kenney wrote:
"In the project I quickly found that the rattlesnake and humans differed
by only fourteen amino acids. Humans and rhesus monkeys differed by
one amino acid. Later, Brown called me again and then explained that
of the forty-seven organisms in the study, the one closest to the
RATTLESNAKE was the human, not that the one closest to the human was
the rattlesnake. You see, among the forty-seven there were no other
snakes." (CEN Vol.4 No.5 Sep/Oct 84, pg 16)
Most of the other organisms in the study were as distantly related to the
rattlesnake as were humans; it is coincidence that human cytochrome c was just
barely less different than the others. Obviously, this is just semantic
sleight-of-hand which can serve no other purpose than to mislead and it is so
blatant that Brown had to know what he was doing.
Later after a debate, Kenney found Brown telling a small group about
rattlesnakes being more closely related to humans than to any other organism.
When Kenney started explaining to the group how misleading that was, Brown
quickly changed the subject.
Note also that chimpanzees were also not included in the Dayhoff study. About half a decade after having written that, I obtained a library of protein sequences for various organisms and software to perform those comparisons. I ran the comparison of cytochrome c between humans and chimps. Do you remember how rhesus monkeys and humans differed by one amino acid? The difference between chimps and humans was
zero. Chimp and human cytochrome c are
identical.
Yet more evidence for Faith to show that humans and chimps are of the same species.
Well, if for no other reason than for sh17s and giggles, here is Gish's deliberate lie on national TV. Copied from that same PBS documentary described above, here is Dr. Duane Gish's response to Dr. Doolittle's story of chimp and human protein comparisons:
quote:
The Bullfrog Affair itself starts with the KPBS production, "Creation vs
Evolution: Battle in the Classroom", which aired 7 July 1982. After Dr.
Doolittle related his story of the chimpanzee blood proteins (see above), Dr.
Duane Gish responded:
"If we look at certain proteins, yes man then, it can be assumed
that man is more closely related to a chimpanzee than other things.
But, on the other hand, if you look at certain proteins, you will
find that man is more closely related to a bullfrog than he is to a
chimpanzee. If you focus your attention on other proteins, you'll
find that man is more closely related to a chicken than he is to a
chimpanzee."
This was immediately followed by Dr. Doolittle's response, "Oh bullfrog!
I've heard that gibberish before, I have to tell you." This was the first
recorded use of "Bullfrog" that I am aware of. Then Doolittle indicated a
book full of amino acid sequences from thousands of proteins taken from
many hundreds of species and offered Gish all his worldly belongings, a '63
VW and half a house, if Gish could find just one protein in chickens or
bullfrogs that is more closely related to human proteins than chimpanzee
proteins.
What followed was a comedy of errors in Gish's attempts to perform a cover-up, which ended with him claiming that if we wanted that evidence so much, then it was
our responsibility to come up with that evidence, not his. Gee, doesn't that sound so very familiar from all our dealings with creationists?
It also became common practice for years afterwards to respond to typical creationist BS, especially when done by Gish himself, with cries of "Bullfrog!" instead of "Bullshit!"
BTW, the original researchers didn't know what Gish had meant by his references to chicken proteins, but I think that I've tracked it down to Gary Parker's misrepresentation of the book,
The Structure and Action of Proteins by Richard Dickerson and Irving Geis (1969, page 78). In their discussion of "molecular clocks" which is dating estimation based on the accumulation of neutral mutations (and therefore not subject to natural selection), they used the example of the evolution of lysozymes into alpha-lactalbumin, which were subject to selection, to warn against over-simplistic application of the "molecular clock" idea. Either Gary Parker was unable to understand what Dickerson was writing or else he deliberately misrepresented it. The answer to that question is pretty much a toss-up.
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