The debate has accepted human and chimp DNA to be 97 to 98 percent similar.
Left as is - this fact is very deceiving since the debate has also accepted the disparity to represent 5 MILLION years since the hypothetical split.
The debate accepted that 5 million years is an evolutionists figure, and it has accepted that the evolutionary time frame is 4 billion years. It has been established, and not refuted, that 5 million is 99.9% of 4 billion, and that makes it very close in time indeed...relative to the age of life on earth.
But you are almost right when you say:
Left as is - this fact is very deceiving
It isn't very deceiving but it is not enough information. I compared the cytochrome b protien coding sequence in the DNA of various organisms. Here are the results I got for human comparisons:
quote:
Human-Chimpanzee: 95.25%
Human-Marsupial Mouse: 76.46%
Human-Kangaroo: 75.93%
Human-Alligator: 64.91%
This gives us an indication of evolutionary distances. Chimps are closer to us than mice than kangaroo than alligator, as predicted by the evolutionary model based on cladistics. This data is very simple, but it demonstrates the basic principle.