Whatever terms are used, the ideas behind evolution have been (are being) applied to a wide variety of fields. These ideas of determinism, natural selection, and survival of fittest could even be a life-style choice. Indeed they should be for those who believe them. As for the straw man claim, it only applies if the opposing side is misrepresented. Secular attitudes against creationists are generally condescending, or worse.
Evolution has a general use indicating change, things changing over time. In Genetics the idea is traits, aka alleles, especially adaptive traits. The only real issue for the Creationist is at the point of origin, other then that how evolution works is identical. Bill Mayer on Politically Incorrect has some pretty comical political commentary, I really enjoy his show. What gets me about this guy is he claims religion is always wrong and dangerous. This is the attitude of Richard Dawkins, he compares it to a virus and he is especially venomous about Catholicism. Religious intolerance is anything but politically incorrect, it's not only popular but pretends something close to moral indignation.
I have issues with the Darwinian philosophy of natural history for one reason, the Scriptures are clear, God created life. If you are anyone else is convinced that Darwinian evolution has made it's case conclusively I say go in peace I have no problem with you. I'm just not going to pretend what they are telling me about the actual scientific evidence is true when I know for a fact it's otherwise. This is what I'm talking about, a statement that is corrected and easily refuted with basic math:
The difference between chimpanzees and humans due to single-nucleotide substitutions averages 1.23 percent, of which 1.06 percent or less is due to fixed divergence, and the rest being a result of polymorphism within chimp populations and within human populations. Insertion and deletion (indel) events account for another approximately 3 percent difference between chimp and human sequences, but each indel typically involves multiple nucleotides. The number of genetic changes from indels is a fraction of the number of single-nucleotide substitutions (roughly 5 million compared with roughly 35 million). So describing humans and chimpanzees as 98 to 99 percent identical is entirely appropriate (Chimpanzee Sequencing 2005). (Talk Origins,
Claim CB144)
The question is what is 1.23% plus 3%, this isn't a trick question, it's not between 1% and 2% it's 4.23%. That's not my opinion, that's not my interpretation, that's exactly what the Initial Sequence of the Chimpanzee Genome paper, that they specifically cite, actually says:
Genetic differences that have accumulated since the human and chimpanzee species diverged from our common ancestor, constituting approximately thirty-five million single-nucleotide changes, five million insertion/deletion events,
- Single-nucleotide substitutions occur at a mean rate of 1.23%
- we estimate that the human and chimpanzee genomes each contain 40–45 Mb
- the indel differences between the genomes thus total ~90 Mb.
This difference corresponds to ~3% of both genomes and dwarfs the 1.23% difference resulting from nucleotide substitutions (Initial Sequence of the Chimpanzee Genome, Nature 2005)
That is their cited source material, the comparison is base pairs, NOT NUMBER OF EVENTS. The number of events does not change the percentage, it's explicitly stated in the paper. No Creationist would get away with such an obvious misstatement, accidental, intentional or otherwise. Not one single evolutionist has conceded this point and I have seen the argument made and have seen it made in this thread.
There is nothing complicated about this, it's as simple as 3 plus 1.23, there is no way it's between 1 and 2 percent. Not once have I seen an evolutionist honestly admit this statement is obviously in error. If I can't trust someone with the obvious, why would I take them seriously with the obscure?
What do you expect? Consider these boards as an example. Most of our time here is spent attempting to explain what scientific terms mean, what the theory of evolution actually claims, over the objections and accusations of lying and trickery leveled by creationists, who seem to prefer straw men. But the "secular" side has no monopoly on arrogance and condescension--we are left in the dust in that race. In fact, one is left to wonder how Christianity survived almost two thousand years until fundamentalist Protestants arrived to finally get it right.
Fine, Protestants can get it wrong just like anyone else. Just look at the math here and tell me honestly, did Talk Origins get the math right?
Grace and peace,
Mark
