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Author Topic:   Evolution is a Religious Issue
Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 204 of 303 (213015)
06-01-2005 9:32 AM
Reply to: Message 203 by J. Davis
06-01-2005 9:13 AM


It very much depends what method one uses to measure the difference. Different methods give results over a range of values around the mid to high 90s.
That means that a 1% tweak in the genes makes an astronomical difference.
This doesn't neccessarily follow. A 1% discrepancy in the genome, again highly dependent on how it is measured to some extent, does not imply a 1% discrepancy in all genes. Some genes, or at least their protein products, may have almost perfect identity while some may be entirely missing from the other species.
Estimates for the content of the genome which actually represents protein coding genes is often given as between 1-2% so in fact 50% of the coded proteins could be different and only produce a 1% discrepancy. If we use one of the larger discrepancy margins, say 5%, that allows for every single protein coding sequence to be completely different, with 3% of the genomes woth of changes still availabe for non-coding elements such as regulatory or chromosome structural features.
So really 1% is a hell of a lot of room for change in terms of genetics. The problem only arises if you expect all of that change to be equally distributed throughout the genome. Having said that we might expect the protein coding regions to show less variation assuming that they are under selective pressure to maintain certain functions. Since the protein coding regions of many genes are considerably conserved between humans and chimps it is obvious that not all of the change is concentrated there, as in my reductio ad absurdam, but even a fractional percentage change in only a few hundred genes perhaps could cause some radical changes in an organisms phenotype.
The main problem with your argument is that it only requires genius if one already has humans in mind when one begins, if you'll excuse the phrase, monkeying around with the ancestral genome.
It is also worth questining your assumption of the astronomical nature of the differences between chimps and man, they are certainly considerably smaller than the differences between man and Drosophila.
TTFN,
WK
This message has been edited by Wounded King, 06-01-2005 09:34 AM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 203 by J. Davis, posted 06-01-2005 9:13 AM J. Davis has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 205 by J. Davis, posted 06-01-2005 9:59 AM Wounded King has replied

Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 208 of 303 (213043)
06-01-2005 10:31 AM
Reply to: Message 205 by J. Davis
06-01-2005 9:59 AM


Do you actually have any familiarity with any of the evidence. You seem to be basing your argument solely on numbers rather than any actual knowledge of genetics?
Arguing quantative or qualititive difference is another topic
Surely it is precisely the point since you are basing your argument on a quantative value for genetic difference in comparison to the phenotypic differences?
a monkey is a different thing from a human, as can be clearly seen in morphology and behaviour.
Certainly, but to call the differences 'astronomical' smacks of hyperbole and make me wonder how you would describe much more divergent differences.
So then chimps are no where near like humans? Is that what you're saying? Because I would agree with that.
No, that wasn't what I was saying, I was saying that your argument was based on dubious premises such as there having been a specific outcome to the changes seen. It only requires genius if you think that a human was the desired outcome.
Certainly the processes of development are highly complex, but that doesn't imply a genius level of intelligence is needed to intercede in order for them to come about.
Either way, I think the whole percentage argument seems incredibly vague and can't favour evolution or relatedness to chimps, because quite clearly, like statistics, anyone can make them mean something wonderful when they don't mean much at all.
Only if you don't actually understand the data and the arguments based upon them. Similarly statistics can only be made to mean anything if the people who are being shown them are unable to evaluate their validity for themselves due to unfamiliarity with the techniques used or the source data.
There are very specific methods used to determine identity at different levels and these are used for specific, frequently distinct, purposes.
Now I've said this, it seems you are eager to say that chimps are 50% different.
What I'm saying is that simply having a 1% discrepancy in the whole genome tells us nothing about how significant the effects on morphology and behavior are neccessarily going to be. We have to actually look at the specific genes involved if we wish to determine the basis for developmental differences, since very small genetic changes (certainly in terms of the whole genome) can significantly alter phenotype. What I was saying was that a 1% genomic difference could in theory account for half of the estimated protein coding sequences in the genome, as I pointed out this is a reductio ad absurdum but it illustrates the point that 1% of several billion bases gives you a whole lot of genetic diversity to play with.
I still think a monkey wouldn't leave it's tree/niche.
You are welcome to believe so, but you haven't provided any evidence which might suggest so to me.
TTFN,
WK

This message is a reply to:
 Message 205 by J. Davis, posted 06-01-2005 9:59 AM J. Davis has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 209 by J. Davis, posted 06-01-2005 11:10 AM Wounded King has replied

Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 210 of 303 (213056)
06-01-2005 12:09 PM
Reply to: Message 209 by J. Davis
06-01-2005 11:10 AM


It requires genius because if you made a 1% difference to a morris minor car, and got a train, then you'd be bloody intelligent.
Ummm, sorry? I'm not quite sure if you are quite up to speed here. In what way are a morris minor and a train equivalent in terms of difference to a human and a chimp. This is the sort of problem that crops up if you refuse to try quantitating things, you come up with ridiculous comparisons which are totally meaningless.
Exactly. Every wildlife program I see tells me that chimps are 1% different from us.
This is more a question of the medias presentation of science, an issue I have a number of problems with. It is arguably in part due to the absolutists and novelty driven nature of the media that the public gets such strange perspectives on scientific issues.
You seem to know your stuff, can you tell me some other percentages possibly? Like the comparison of a banana and a human, or a tiger and a human? If not, just how can a layman search this data and find out what it means for himself rather than being brainwashed by those favouring an evolutionistic answer.
It depends on your approach as I previously suggested. I know that values around 50% are frequently quoted for some form of conservation between human and banana but the exact details are unknown to me. It would certainly be quite possible for a layman to do a large number of genetic comparisons between different animal species, or even bananas, for a particular gene or a wide panel of genes. The genetic data in published works is normally required by the publishers to be submitted to the genbank database at NCBI.
There is no reason why a large proportion of our genes should not be common to man and bananas. They are both made of living cells and many of the proteins neccessary for those cells to function are likely to be conserved. Many genes which are common to both may well not be identical in sequence in both cases though, and that is where you need to have a clearly defined question in order to get a meaningful answer.
If you are really interested in doing your own genetic comparisons then genbank and a program like Bioedit are all you really need. Well, that and a bit of time spent familiarising yourself with the subject in order to know what to do.
Unforunately there aren't all that many sequences for Bananas but if you wanted to look at animals then you could easily find ten or twelve sequences for a number of genes.
Doing a whole genome comparison is not really something which is feasible for a single person at home, not with todays computers anyway.
Then why exactly is this 1% difference broadcast by evolutionists everytime they get a chance, if it means nothing?
Well it obviously means something. Technically I think it is a reflection of the temperature at which homologous human and chimp DNA strands anneal/dissociate in comparison to human/human hybridisation. It is a very crude measure of the similarity between DNA strands. And when one actually looks at the specific differences in genes between chimps and human in the context of their development then we can ascribe importance to some of that variation in terms of the final differences in phenotype. Taken in concert with numerous other strands of data it fits in with commonly held theories of the phylogeny of the primates and our place within that phylogeny.
So it is not meaningless, but just given as a number without context it is not useful.
The true positive is that a monkey would leave it's niche. Has this been shown in nature? Has a monkey ever taken to the plains?
That isn't really a strong argument. In fact as evidence goes it is non existent. Certainly there are chimpanzees that live in different habitats such as savanna, grasslands and rainforests. In monkeys too there are many species which are almost exclusively arboreal and some which live at least semi-terrestrial lives.
TTFN,
WK
P.S. We seem to be wildly off topic. If you want to continue discussing homology and genetic comparisons then there may be some other relevant threads we could bump, or we could start a new one.
This message has been edited by Wounded King, 06-01-2005 12:10 PM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 209 by J. Davis, posted 06-01-2005 11:10 AM J. Davis has not replied

Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 214 of 303 (213068)
06-01-2005 12:29 PM
Reply to: Message 213 by randman
06-01-2005 12:25 PM


They will argue great similarities if that helps their argument, and turn around, as evidenced by this thread, and argue the exact opposite, and what is amazing is they can do it with a straight face and not even seem to be aware of the contradictory nature of their claims.
Well why not show some of those contradictory claims?
TTFN,
WK

This message is a reply to:
 Message 213 by randman, posted 06-01-2005 12:25 PM randman has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 215 by randman, posted 06-01-2005 12:57 PM Wounded King has replied

Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 216 of 303 (213129)
06-01-2005 1:51 PM
Reply to: Message 215 by randman
06-01-2005 12:57 PM


That isn't a contradictory claim. The 1% is an estimated difference between the entire genome of the 2 species. Since of that entire genome ~2% is estimated to code for proteins then in the most extreme theoretical situation 50% of the protein coding regions could be completely divergent between the 2 species. You would know this if you had been following the exchange J. Davis and myself were having.
Where is the contradictory claim that J. Davis just showed?
TTFN,
WK

This message is a reply to:
 Message 215 by randman, posted 06-01-2005 12:57 PM randman has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 217 by randman, posted 06-01-2005 2:14 PM Wounded King has replied

Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 242 of 303 (213393)
06-02-2005 3:02 AM
Reply to: Message 217 by randman
06-01-2005 2:14 PM


Nope, still no contradiction. The similarity is there and is greater between chimps and man than between man and species considered further away in terms of evolution.
The 'argument' as such was that 1% change in the genome accounting for the differences we see between human and chimp neccessarily required a genius level of intelligent design. This is a completely unwarranted asertio nin the first place as it would only be true if humans were your desired result. Not to mention the fact that a common ancestor of chimps and humans should only be roughly half again as dissimilar from each species as they now are from each other.
The point is that a 1% change in the genome is quite capable of accounting for any number of radical changes to gene complement, protein structure and gene regulation. The 1% figure has nothing directly to do with how similar man and chimps look or behave it is simply based on the chemical interactions between their DNA in a test tube.
same data could actually be as much as 50% different.
Could you actually read the exchange? Please? The 50% is in the protein coding regions, the 1% is across the whole genome. How many times do you need the same information reeated before it sinks in?
TTFN,
WK

This message is a reply to:
 Message 217 by randman, posted 06-01-2005 2:14 PM randman has not replied

Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 285 of 303 (214022)
06-03-2005 8:05 PM
Reply to: Message 284 by randman
06-03-2005 7:52 PM


Re: Hmmm....
Maimonides said it was wrong to consider "days" to mean 24 hour periods, in Genesis.
This is true as far as gross adult morphologies go, but in terms of the developmental genetics involved and the molecular basis there is considerable evidence for homology of the sytems beyond that accountable for by convergence of their morphology.
TTFN,
WK

This message is a reply to:
 Message 284 by randman, posted 06-03-2005 7:52 PM randman has not replied

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