On DNA percent differences between taxa and YEC timelines

tas8831

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Creationists like to assert that the 4-8% DNA difference between chimps and humans* is just too much to account for in the 5-10 million year divergence time estimate, and thus humans and chimps cannot be related via descent.

OK... As it turns out, any 2 humans can differ by as much as 1.6%.


Now surely much of that is just SNPs. So, let's say the relevant difference is more like 0.5%.

But this is still a conundrum for the young earth creationist.

Let's take the smallest divergence time estimate for humans and chimps of 5 million years, and the highest mutation difference estimate of 8%.
Let's make things as simplistic as possible, and just do some division to come up with a mutation rate:

8% of 3 billion base pairs is 240,000,000 mutations (for simplicity, I am lumping indel events in the mix).

240,000,000/5 million years = 48 mutations per year

But what about 2 humans, in a YEC perspective?

0.5% of 3 billion base pairs = 15,000,000,

15,000,000 mutations in 10,000 years (max time since Genesis) = 1,500 mutations PER YEAR.

So.. the creationist claims 48 mutations per year is just too much to occur if evolution is true, thus humans and chimps are not related, BUT 1,500 mutations per year in 10,000 years between 2 humans is totally cool!

That is, in order to accept YECism genetics, one has to be totally fine with a human mutation rate some 30x that seen in reality-based evolution, which the YECist claims is way too much.

Another day in YEC land...

ADDED IN EDIT: Oops! Forgot to add - *these numbers are based on a range of percentages and divergence times that I have seen used in various sources, I am not taking a stand on any specific number.

Also - I posted this on another forum and not 1 creationist could even try to offer an explanation.
 

Mark Quayle

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Creationists like to assert that the 4-8% DNA difference between chimps and humans* is just too much to account for in the 5-10 million year divergence time estimate, and thus humans and chimps cannot be related via descent.

OK... As it turns out, any 2 humans can differ by as much as 1.6%.


Now surely much of that is just SNPs. So, let's say the relevant difference is more like 0.5%.

But this is still a conundrum for the young earth creationist.

Let's take the smallest divergence time estimate for humans and chimps of 5 million years, and the highest mutation difference estimate of 8%.
Let's make things as simplistic as possible, and just do some division to come up with a mutation rate:

8% of 3 billion base pairs is 240,000,000 mutations (for simplicity, I am lumping indel events in the mix).

240,000,000/5 million years = 48 mutations per year

But what about 2 humans, in a YEC perspective?

0.5% of 3 billion base pairs = 15,000,000,

15,000,000 mutations in 10,000 years (max time since Genesis) = 1,500 mutations PER YEAR.

So.. the creationist claims 48 mutations per year is just too much to occur if evolution is true, thus humans and chimps are not related, BUT 1,500 mutations per year in 10,000 years between 2 humans is totally cool!

That is, in order to accept YECism genetics, one has to be totally fine with a human mutation rate some 30x that seen in reality-based evolution, which the YECist claims is way too much.

Another day in YEC land...

ADDED IN EDIT: Oops! Forgot to add - *these numbers are based on a range of percentages and divergence times that I have seen used in various sources, I am not taking a stand on any specific number.

Also - I posted this on another forum and not 1 creationist could even try to offer an explanation.
Not to speak for Creationists, as I don't understand the science myself, but from what I do understand, your argument here assumes the numbers related to mutation, which you believe in, while they don't believe mutation is the difference. Simple as that.

Thus, your numbers applied to their stand are not applicable. You are there still imposing 'mutation' on the difference, while they do not accept 'mutation' as relevant, therefore the numbers are not relevant to the 6000 years.
 
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pitabread

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Not to speak for Creationists, as I don't understand the science myself, but from what I do understand, your argument here assumes the numbers related to mutation, which you believe in, while they don't believe mutation is the difference. Simple as that.

Thus, your numbers applied to their stand are not applicable. You are there still imposing 'mutation' on the difference, while they do not accept 'mutation' as relevant, therefore the numbers are not relevant to the 6000 years.

If you're referring to created heterozygosity and recombination, the problem of not enough time still arises.

Short of miraculous intervention, there's just no way to get the current level of genetic diversity in human population within YEC timeframes (including a genetic bottleneck 4500 years ago).
 
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Hans Blaster

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If I understand one of the prior posts, we are seeing a counterclaim to the "rapid mutation would be needed" to explain post-Noachian human genetic diversity with variations present in the human survivors. Under this model there are *5* people that have to provide all of the genetic diversity of modern humans: Noah, Noah's wife (hereafter [wife]), and Noah's daughters-in-law ([DiLs], or [DiL1], [DiL2], and [DiL3]). If we consider only Mendelian genetics with 2 sites for 2 variants of each gene, we have 10 possible variants for genes to be passed to Noah's grandchildren. (What about Noah's sons? Their genes just came from Noah and [wife], so we need not worry about them, except...

Since Noah only has 3 sons and each only gets *one* of his variants for each gene, approximately 1/8 of the unique gene variants in Noah are not passed to any of his sons. This is also true of [wife]. Though there are 4 possible variants for each gene within the sons of Noah, on average only 3.5 are present.

Any human gene with more than 10 variants is ruled out by the Noah story, or rather the Noah story violates basic genetics without additional, postdiluvian mutations.

But wait, it gets worse...

The X chromosome has one copy in males and 2 in females, so you might think with 1 man and 4 women contributing there would be 9 copies with up to 9 variants of each gene. You'd be wrong. Fathers do not pass the X to their sons (or they'd be daughters) and since Noah isn't known to have surviving daughters his X doesn't make it to his sons, or grandchildren. So only at most 8 variants can make it to modern times on the X chromosome.

The mitochondrial DNA has some similar issues. This genetic material is passed from mother to child, so long there are at best 4 sources (4 women contributing to the genetics of the ark survivors). But this too runs in to the problem of Noah's sons. Thought they carried the mtDNA of [wife] they could not pass it on, so under the ark model, only 3 major lineages of mtDNA can exist in the modern population. The modern mutation rate is (as I recall) about once every 50 generations a single nucleotide is flipped, so there should be 3-5 differences in each of us relative to whichever of the [DiLs] we descend from matrilineally. (There are dozens of major mtDNA lineages, each with this kind of accumulated small mutations.)

We've got one more bit of genetic material to talk about -- the Y chromosome. Y is found in men and passed from father to son. the [DiLs] and [wife] don't contribute, only Noah. His sons would have had identical Y chromosomes and so would their sons, etc. All gene variants on the Y chromosome found in modern men would have to be from mutations in the last ~4000 years. There is no alternative.

So there you go, it's massive mutation after the flood, or the flood just didn't happen. Pick your poison.
 
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Shemjaza

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The common response is that genetics is somehow able to be overloaded so you can have thousands of traits rather then the evidenced 2.

Because DNA is lots of books... or computer programs... or man can't create life anyway... look at the sunset!
 
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chevyontheriver

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Creationists like to assert that the 4-8% DNA difference between chimps and humans* is just too much to account for in the 5-10 million year divergence time estimate, and thus humans and chimps cannot be related via descent.

OK... As it turns out, any 2 humans can differ by as much as 1.6%.


Now surely much of that is just SNPs. So, let's say the relevant difference is more like 0.5%.

But this is still a conundrum for the young earth creationist.

Let's take the smallest divergence time estimate for humans and chimps of 5 million years, and the highest mutation difference estimate of 8%.
Let's make things as simplistic as possible, and just do some division to come up with a mutation rate:

8% of 3 billion base pairs is 240,000,000 mutations (for simplicity, I am lumping indel events in the mix).

240,000,000/5 million years = 48 mutations per year

But what about 2 humans, in a YEC perspective?

0.5% of 3 billion base pairs = 15,000,000,

15,000,000 mutations in 10,000 years (max time since Genesis) = 1,500 mutations PER YEAR.

So.. the creationist claims 48 mutations per year is just too much to occur if evolution is true, thus humans and chimps are not related, BUT 1,500 mutations per year in 10,000 years between 2 humans is totally cool!

That is, in order to accept YECism genetics, one has to be totally fine with a human mutation rate some 30x that seen in reality-based evolution, which the YECist claims is way too much.

Another day in YEC land...

ADDED IN EDIT: Oops! Forgot to add - *these numbers are based on a range of percentages and divergence times that I have seen used in various sources, I am not taking a stand on any specific number.

Also - I posted this on another forum and not 1 creationist could even try to offer an explanation.
where do you get the four to eight percent difference between humans and chimps? The standard accepted difference is about 1.2% difference.

Comparing Chimp, Bonobo and Human DNA | AMNH
 
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tas8831

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If I understand one of the prior posts, we are seeing a counterclaim to the "rapid mutation would be needed" to explain post-Noachian human genetic diversity with variations present in the human survivors. Under this model there are *5* people that have to provide all of the genetic diversity of modern humans: Noah, Noah's wife (hereafter [wife]), and Noah's daughters-in-law ([DiLs], or [DiL1], [DiL2], and [DiL3]). If we consider only Mendelian genetics with 2 sites for 2 variants of each gene, we have 10 possible variants for genes to be passed to Noah's grandchildren. (What about Noah's sons? Their genes just came from Noah and [wife], so we need not worry about them, except...

Since Noah only has 3 sons and each only gets *one* of his variants for each gene, approximately 1/8 of the unique gene variants in Noah are not passed to any of his sons. This is also true of [wife]. Though there are 4 possible variants for each gene within the sons of Noah, on average only 3.5 are present.

Any human gene with more than 10 variants is ruled out by the Noah story, or rather the Noah story violates basic genetics without additional, postdiluvian mutations.

But wait, it gets worse...

The X chromosome has one copy in males and 2 in females, so you might think with 1 man and 4 women contributing there would be 9 copies with up to 9 variants of each gene. You'd be wrong. Fathers do not pass the X to their sons (or they'd be daughters) and since Noah isn't known to have surviving daughters his X doesn't make it to his sons, or grandchildren. So only at most 8 variants can make it to modern times on the X chromosome.

The mitochondrial DNA has some similar issues. This genetic material is passed from mother to child, so long there are at best 4 sources (4 women contributing to the genetics of the ark survivors). But this too runs in to the problem of Noah's sons. Thought they carried the mtDNA of [wife] they could not pass it on, so under the ark model, only 3 major lineages of mtDNA can exist in the modern population. The modern mutation rate is (as I recall) about once every 50 generations a single nucleotide is flipped, so there should be 3-5 differences in each of us relative to whichever of the [DiLs] we descend from matrilineally. (There are dozens of major mtDNA lineages, each with this kind of accumulated small mutations.)

We've got one more bit of genetic material to talk about -- the Y chromosome. Y is found in men and passed from father to son. the [DiLs] and [wife] don't contribute, only Noah. His sons would have had identical Y chromosomes and so would their sons, etc. All gene variants on the Y chromosome found in modern men would have to be from mutations in the last ~4000 years. There is no alternative.

So there you go, it's massive mutation after the flood, or the flood just didn't happen. Pick your poison.

Indeed - I did not even consider the massive bottleneck that is (or would have been) 'the flood' - which makes even the super-duper-oversimplified OP orders of magnitude worse for the YEC.
 
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tas8831

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where do you get the four to eight percent difference between humans and chimps? The standard accepted difference is about 1.2% difference.

Comparing Chimp, Bonobo and Human DNA | AMNH
As I indicated, it was from various sources. When/if one considers unalignable sequence, indels, etc,, the % difference increases (not that I agree with any of that). I could have gone as high as 30% ala Tomkins the creationist's nonsense, but that would have been going too far, even for demonstration purposes. Because that analysis was fraudulent.

I purposefully made the OP as favorable to the YEC position as I could, and the results are still YEC-crushing.
 
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tas8831

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Not to speak for Creationists, as I don't understand the science myself, but from what I do understand, your argument here assumes the numbers related to mutation, which you believe in, while they don't believe mutation is the difference. Simple as that.

I don't know what that means. Even the dopiest YECs accept mutation as a source of variety - this is how the Baraminologists allow for "microevolution".
Thus, your numbers applied to their stand are not applicable. You are there still imposing 'mutation' on the difference, while they do not accept 'mutation' as relevant, therefore the numbers are not relevant to the 6000 years.
As you said, you do not understand the science (yet make 'science' arguments.. weird) and do not speak for creationists.
 
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Hans Blaster

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Indeed - I did not even consider the massive bottleneck that is (or would have been) 'the flood' - which makes even the super-duper-oversimplified OP orders of magnitude worse for the YEC.

Even all of that "genetic variation" I was maximizing in the ark survivors had to come in ~2000 years from *1* person (Adam). He could have 2 variants for each gene, but his wife (Eve) was just a clone of himself presumably with a duplicated X chromosome. Their sons would have only been able to marry their own sisters, so the 3rd generation of humans would have effectively 1 grandparent. (Adam as both grandfathers, and girl-Adam as both grandmothers.) There is no genetic diversity in this vision at all. Yikes!

[Edit: I accidentally used "Noah" in a couple places where I clearly meant "Adam". I fixed these.]
 
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Mark Quayle

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If you're referring to created heterozygosity and recombination, the problem of not enough time still arises.

I don't know enough to say whether that is true or not, but the fact that the principles by which heterozygosity and recombination are believed fundamental to diversity, operate at some implied constant rate does not mean they did so in the past, nor that some other principle, perhaps related, was not in play. Nevertheless, IF God, miraculous intervention is always available.

Short of miraculous intervention, there's just no way to get the current level of genetic diversity in human population within YEC timeframes (including a genetic bottleneck 4500 years ago).

Obviously. That is my point. The creationist doesn't hold to 'level of genetic diversity' being arrived at all. It was made as-is.
 
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Hans Blaster

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Obviously. That is my point. The creationist doesn't hold to 'level of genetic diversity' being arrived at all. It was made as-is.

How?

There is really only *1* person made at the beginning in the Genesis story and *5* people that contribute genetically to post-flood epoch (and three of those are the unnamed wives of Noah's sons). The story is *clear* about this. There is NO other place for genetic diversity to enter in the Genesis model. None.

(That is unless you want to posit that the sons and grandsons of Adam got wives that were separate creations with their own genetic diversity, and the same for the grandsons of Noah. As your people would say: "That is unbiblical."
 
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pitabread

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I don't know enough to say whether that is true or not, but the fact that the principles by which heterozygosity and recombination are believed fundamental to diversity, operate at some implied constant rate does not mean they did so in the past, nor that some other principle, perhaps related, was not in play. Nevertheless, IF God, miraculous intervention is always available.

The "maybe things worked differently" does hold much water in absence of any evidence thereof. Plus, if it takes miracles then the whole thing is moot to begin with.

Obviously. That is my point. The creationist doesn't hold to 'level of genetic diversity' being arrived at all. It was made as-is.

Sure they do. They're starting with a single pair of humans and then alleging the current diversity was derived from said pair.
 
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Mark Quayle

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I don't know what that means. Even the dopiest YECs accept mutation as a source of variety - this is how the Baraminologists allow for "microevolution".
Of course it is A source, but they don't claim (as I understand it) mutation is the only one, nor even a pervasive cause (if there is one) of beneficial reproducible variety.

As you said, you do not understand the science (yet make 'science' arguments.. weird) and do not speak for creationists.
So ignore me! Lol

I've had my face slapped by teachers in grade school and had at least one college prof scream at me, for what I thought was mere logic, that obviously frustrated them. All I was after was the truth. I see a system in the current scientific community, or at least in their tag-along-ers, that tends to accept narrative rather than logic, and pursues investigation along lines of political correctness. I am not against science itself. Far from it. I am curious. I want to know. But when something that one scientist calls 'theory' is called 'established fact' by someone else, I can't help but wonder.
 
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Mark Quayle

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How?

There is really only *1* person made at the beginning in the Genesis story and *5* people that contribute genetically to post-flood epoch (and three of those are the unnamed wives of Noah's sons). The story is *clear* about this. There is NO other place for genetic diversity to enter in the Genesis model. None.

(That is unless you want to posit that the sons and grandsons of Adam got wives that were separate creations with their own genetic diversity, and the same for the grandsons of Noah. As your people would say: "That is unbiblical."
For example, let's say heterozygosity is indeed the way it was done. Does it necessarily follow that more than one instance of two alleles cannot have occurred in any one heterozygous individual? Seems to me and my ignorance, that very different brothers and sisters could have existed than nowadays.

But I have my doubts that, though heterozygosity is considered fundamental to the study of genetic variety, that it is therefore implied that it is the only source of genetic variety. But forgive my skepticism. I'm skeptical of myself too.
 
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Mark Quayle

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The "maybe things worked differently" does hold much water in absence of any evidence thereof. Plus, if it takes miracles then the whole thing is moot to begin with.
My point, I guess, extracts from a different source than yours. You rely on science for truth, or at least you try to, or you try to think you do. I admit I don't know the truth, but I rely on God.

I don't need a preponderance of scientifically direct evidence to believe what God says is true. You do. (Yet you function all day long without it for lack of time, because it is practical to do so.)

"Maybe things worked differently" isn't unscientific, nor is it meant to be authoritative. It is only an expression of skepticism, curiosity and imagination, which are scientifically prudent on the part of anyone.

As for miracles, yes, the whole question is moot, unless the miracles happened within natural law. Again: IF First Cause, then what we consider natural is also miracle. But you are talking about temporal intervention, I think, which he can do at any stage along the way of natural sequence.

Sure they do. They're starting with a single pair of humans and then alleging the current diversity was derived from said pair.
Is more than one pair of alleles not possible within a heterozygous individual? Or is heterozygosity the only source of diversity between individuals?
 
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Hans Blaster

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For example, let's say heterozygosity is indeed the way it was done. Does it necessarily follow that more than one instance of two alleles cannot have occurred in any one heterozygous individual? Seems to me and my ignorance, that very different brothers and sisters could have existed than nowadays.

If you have two parents that are maximally heterozygous in a gene there are 4 variants: AB in one parent, CD in the other. Their possible offspring are: AC, AD, BC, & BD. There are no other combinations for the siblings. (There are other parts of your statement I cannot parse.)

But I have my doubts that, though heterozygosity is considered fundamental to the study of genetic variety, that it is therefore implied that it is the only source of genetic variety. But forgive my skepticism. I'm skeptical of myself too.

Heterozygosity isn't a source of genetic variety. It is how genetic variety can be present in a particular gene in a single individual.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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... when something that one scientist calls 'theory' is called 'established fact' by someone else, I can't help but wonder.
They are basically saying the same thing - a scientific theory is a well-established, well-tested explanation, it's as close as explanations get to being factual in science while still being provisional.

Strictly speaking, it is the results of repeated observations and measurements that are the scientific facts.
 
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