How will creationists react to the first human-chimp hybrid?

The supporting evidence for Mitochondrial Eve tells us she was not the lone female originator of humanity, but rather a female member of a population of early humans who happened to be the only female to leave descendants. Plus she is thought to have lived over a hundred thousand years ago, not 6000 years ago.Not only is Mitochondrial Eve not consistent with the Biblical account, arguments of any form that science supports Biblical accounts only reinforces the religious nature of Creationism and works against creationist claims that it is actually science.You say a few incorrect things, but they're off-topic, so I'll just very briefly correct them. The visible universe was not receding faster than the speed of light at the time it emitted the light we see today. Only the furthest reaches of the visible universe might possibly be receding faster than light speed at the present time, though they were not receding that fast when the emitted the light we see today. The speed of light is a universal constant no matter what the relative speed and acceleration of a light source might be. This has no intelligible interpretation. Neither does this. It takes enormous temperatures and pressures to fuse atoms into the heavier elements like uranium, conditions present only in supernova. Particle collisions such as those due to cosmic rays can cause nuclear reactions, for example changing nitrogen into carbon, but the creation of uranium really does require the conditions inside supernova.You go on to repeat a number of creationist fallacies, which I'll briefly touch on.Kinds are just an unintelligible proposition upon which reason cannot operate because it is indistinct and has no definition.You make a couple "Oh yeah? Well so are you!" arguments. You call mitochondrial Eve a myth and scientists delusional. Bible stories are called myths and creationists delusional to think they describe actual events, so you just mindlessly echo the charge back, but characterizations such as myth and delusion only work in the absence of evidence, which is true of creationism but not of science.You say scientists pretend the earth is old, but pretending fantasies are true is what creationists do. The fact is that the evidence tells us the earth is old.Mutations can both increase and decrease information.--Percy

Well, actually, it doesn't depend upon how you determine mutation rates as much as how accurately. Analyses based upon evidence yield an age for Mitochondrial Eve greater than a hundred thousand years. An age of 6000 years isn't based upon evidence but upon the Bible and so is not scientific. Yes, that's what the evidence tells us. Your instincts are good, because the light wave *is* stretching along with the expansion of space. The wavelengths of light arriving from distant galaxies are stretched longer causing a corresponding reduction in frequency toward the red. This is the infamous red shift. There are two contributors to red shift. One is the recession speed of the galaxy at the time the light was emitted. The other is the amount of stretching of the intervening space since the light was originally emitted. All cosmological evidence points to a very ancient universe. The Answers in Genesis folks do not do science and do not have independent data concerning mutation rates. That is correct. Except in a general sense, Mitochondrial Eve has nothing to do with the evolutionary relationship between humans and chimps. You're mixing two different issues, and one of them has nothing to do with the discussion. There is no scientific claim concerning whether the human genome contains more or less information than the chimp genome, so we can just leave that issue aside.This leaves your question about how, if chimps and humans share a common ancestor, that chimps have 24 chromosome pairs while humans have only 23. The answer is that human chromosome pair 2 is a fusion of two chromosome pairs found in chimps. This means that the common ancestor had 24 chromosome pairs. At some point this ancestral line broke into two separate lines, and in one of these lines two different chromosome pairs fused into one at some point in time, and today that is human chromosome pair 2.The information we're teasing out of human/chimp genetic evidence is providing an increasingly complex story of our evolutionary history. It appears the ancestral lines separated and recombined at least twice. But your story isn't supported by evidence and so isn't scientific, and once you mention God you reveal the religious foundation of your position. This statement is not based upon any evidence. The basic principles of genetics demonstrate quite clearly that mutations can both increase and decrease information. The analogy to God is drawn from the Bible and isn't science, but when stated this way it does seem repugnant. But where should we draw the line with genetic modification? It would be the height of perversity not to use a genetic cure for cystic fibrosis or Down's Syndrome, and that places us on the slippery slope.--Percy

There seems to be some concern on the part of board moderation that this thread is drifting off-topic. I can see valid arguments for making such a case, so I'll make my reply very short.Answers in Genesis is making rather obvious misinterpretations of the cited papers, particularly Parsons' work. You can find the correct information at CB621.1: Young mitochondrial Eve.--Percy

This is off-topic, so I'll be very brief: As far as science can tell at the current time, nothing restricts the size of universe. Science makes no claim that space is increasing while the volume of the universe remains the same. The universe is expanding, and the rate of expansion is increasing.--Percy

*You* might look at it this way, I very much doubt anyone else will. Kind has no definition within biology, so any statements whose interpretation is dependent upon the definition of kind are unintelligible. Of course there are more differences than "just one fused chromosome," no one has said otherwise. You inquired about the chimp/human chromosome count discrepancy, and I explained it for you.--Percy

Sorry, Johnfolton, I could find nothing I understood well enough to reply to, and much that lacked any connection to reality.--Percy