Other species may be more appropriate ancestors, than apes - what then?

Psalm 101:3 I will set no worthless thing before my eyes. I ...
Psalm 101:3 I will set no worthless thing before my eyes. I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me.
I will set nothing of Belial before my eyes: I hate the work of those that betray; it shall not cleave to me. King James 2000 Bible I will set no wicked thing before my eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me.

I Will Set No Wicked Thing Before My Eyes!( Psalm ... - Blogger
Daily Devotional from John: I Will Set No Wicked Thing Before My Eyes!( Psalm 101:1-4 )
Jul 9, 2009I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me. A froward heart shall depart from me: I will not know a wicked person. Psalms 101:1-4 -----
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+101:3-4&version=ESV
Psalm 101:3-4 ESV - I will not set before my eyes anything ...
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+101:3-4&version=ESV
Psalm 101:3-4 English Standard Version (ESV) 3 I will not set before my eyes. anything that is worthless. I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me. 4 A perverse heart shall be far from me; I will know nothing of evil.

excerpts ============ from the devotional from John blogspot above:
In verse 2 David speaks to God on how he will walk wisely in a perfect way. Now before I continue let me remind you that perfect doesn't mean without error, but instead with a whole heart. Here David is making a promise to God to live godly. This we no isn't easy. Read Romans 7, in it you find there is a war even within the believer. The war is that we battle the flesh, but to win the battle is to walk in the spirit so as not to fulfill the lusts of the flesh. To do this we must be constantly renewed( Romans 12:2 ) by the Word and be absolutely nourished( 1 Timothy 4:6 ) in the Word.

In Closing with verse four David states a froward heart shall depart from me. As you know a froward heart is a perverse heart. Friends I can tell you this, no wicked person is honestly going to want to stick around you long unless God changes them. I can guarantee you this. One thing I noticed after I met Christ in 2007 I lost contact with people and it wasn't slowly either. It was quite fast indeed. The fact is people don't like truth and when you become consumed by God people are either drawn to you or away. Not because your special, but because of who dwells in you. I don't find it a coincidence of the people I've made friends since then. The second half of the verse David says he knows not a wicked person. Now at first glance you would say well, that can't make sense we all know some really bad folks. What he means by know is to have a personal relationship. Like I've stated before your quality time should be spent with believers. As I stated before this doesn't mean you don't evangelize, in fact I encourage you to evangelize. Just remember when it comes to quality time spend it with the brethren.

Brothers and sisters I encourage you throughout your walk. Remember we are called to a holy calling( 2 Timothy 1:9 ). This isn't suggested, it is in fact the way we should live( 1 Peter 1:16 ). It isn't easy, but Jesus never spoke about the easy life( Matthew 7:14 ). He did say that if anyone would wish to be His disciple they would deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow Him( Mark 8:34 ).


Good night and God bless,
John W. Whybrew III <><
Posted by GrowingInObedienceDaily at 10:21 PM
"

Gottservant said:

Hi there,

So as you will have noticed with a few of my threads, I have wanted to come to you first
(in the Christian section), rather than cast my pearl before swine - the moreso as Evolution continues to be more and more unregenerate (amongst its proponents). Its not that I don't know how to communicate, for the most part - simply that they don't want to see (about Evolution) what they don't like and it makes it very difficult to get a point across (for example "members of a species don't evolve, only species do - absurd, right?). So anyway, I came up with an angle that might give useful leverage and I wanted to see what you thought...

What if other species make better candidates, for ancestors, than apes?

The point I am making is that if I like eating fruit from trees, but trees are sparsely populating my environment, as a Man, it would be better that I saw myself as descendent of giraffes, not apes. Apes are advantageous when you are in dense jungle - but what if as a Man, I don't want to live in the jungle: aren't I helping my Evolution, by taking claim of the giraffe species - and thereby making myself more likely to survive difficult to find trees?

I could give heaps of examples: fish staying hydrated, mammals having holes to hide from predators, venom to ward off intruders. You basically have no advantage being from an ape, except that you move quickly at height. I don't see that as reason to claim that apes were our ancestors. If I chose an ancestor that helps me fight territory, I am going to trump ancestors that remain aloof from that that could help them survive (while they seek shelter). Take a bear, for example: a bear is always going to win in a fight against a monkey - if there are no trees nearby... game over!

So, yes I think even setting out a second possibility for an ancestor, would be better than trivializing the human race, to one past connection. Do you see how little sense, that makes? There is more to being the fittest, than concentrating on your own fitness. Being there for other members of your species, in the most diversified way possible (in principle), is only the beginning of what we can do for creatures other than ourselves. We must fight to maintain the integrity of the conversation between Man and God, that we learn to flourish as He created us. If that means looking outside ourselves or what is superficially like us, then so be it!

The one exception I think you can find to this, is that tangible gains have been found, relating to apes. If you can cut through the proverbial jungle and learn from apes, great! But given the choices of ancestor, there is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater: these teachings have to be understood as survivally limited. It would be better to spread out our learning, regardless of which species was specifically more derivative than others.

Derivation does not come by appearance.

Thanks for your thoughts!

Click to expand...

Pigs are very close (although Evolutionists put this down to "convergent evolution")
Human to Pig Genome Comparison Complete | Department of Animal Sciences :: College of ACES, University of Illinois

We're dogs. We're hairless, vocal, car-driving, anti-social dogs. There.

Matthew 15:27 "Yes, Lord," she said, "even the dogs eat the ...
Matthew 15:27 "Yes, Lord," she said, "even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table."
… 26 But Jesus replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs." 27 "Yes, Lord," she said, "even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table." 28 "O woman," Jesus answered, "your faith is great! Let it be done for you as you desire."

Gottservant said:

But to be objective, you have to start with what looks similar to us (
humans)?

Click to expand...

Yahuweh Sovereign Creator of all life? "LET US make man in our image" .....

Everything did "start with" Yahuweh! HALLELUYAH !

Gottservant said:

But to be objective, you have to start with what looks similar to us (
humans)?

Click to expand...

Many people might suggest that we act like Pigs.

Pigs and giraffes are artiodactyls and are more closely related to whales and deer than they are to humans .Dogs are more closely related to the artiodactyls than to us. Yes we’ve got the fossils and the genetic information and the anatomical and biochemical evidence for that . You’re stuck with humans being apes . Nah,... nah,.... nah,nah,.....nah!

Brightmoon said:

Pigs and giraffes are artiodactyls and are more closely related to whales and deer than they are to humans .Dogs are more closely related to the artiodactyls than to us. Yes we’ve got the fossils and the genetic information and the anatomical and biochemical evidence for that . You’re stuck with humans being apes . Nah,... nah,.... nah,nah,.....nah!

Click to expand...

Not really. We are related in the same way as the Nissan Skyline is related to the Nissan Titan, and perhaps have many of the same components and concepts, but as a derivative: apes we are not.

99% genetic similarity.. humans ARE great apes. Creationists like to pretend that they aren’t

Brightmoon said:

99% genetic similarity.. humans ARE great apes. Creationists like to pretend that they aren’t

Click to expand...

Genetic similarity is only a small part of what a creature is.

On the other hand, evolutionists know that genetics are a whole lot more involved than a simplistic percentage comparison, but they do like to draw broad conclusions from very scanty evidence.

In any case..."There are good logical reasons why different species may have similar genetic sequences: namely, functional requirements. Those requirements have nothing to do with common ancestry. Engineers know from much experience that there are good ways to design things and bad ways. If you want your design to work a certain way, and you find a good blueprint that accomplishes what you seek, then it’s a good design principle to use that blueprint over and over again. That could easily explain why we see similarities in different species — common design to meet functional requirements....

...Venema’s points here ultimately seem to be rhetorical, though. He writes: “No matter how you slice it, the human and chimpanzee genomes are nearly identical to one another.” (p. 32) This is supposed to impress the reader, leaving no alternative but to conclude that humans and chimps must be related. Venema admits that by some metrics the human and chimp genomes are only 95 percent similar. Fine. But the exact number really isn’t important. What is the metric for demonstrating common ancestry based upon genetic similarity? There doesn’t seem to be one. Venema’s argument appears arbitrary.

Moreover, others geneticists have argued that human-ape genetic similarity might be significantly lower than 90 percent. See, “Human/Ape Common Ancestry: Following the Evidence.” See also, “Critically Analyzing the Argument from Human/Chimpanzee Genetic Similarity.” Perhaps the best treatment of the issue of human-chimp genetic similarity, however, is the chapter “Genetic Evidence for Human Uniqueness,” by Ann Gauger, Ola Hössjer, and Colin Reeves in the book Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique. We recommend it to Dr. Venema."
Adam and the Genome and Human-Ape Genetic Similarity | Evolution News

"First, Venema claimed his series would show “a natural mechanism that does add functional, specified information to DNA sequences” namely “natural selection acting on genetic variation produced through random mutation.” But shared functional genetic similarity between humans and chimps is (at best) evidence for common descent, not evidence for natural selection and random mutation.

Second, Venema has misstated comparisons of human/ape “whole genome” similarity and human/human DNA similarity. Far from being “but a hand-breadth away from our evolutionary cousins at the DNA level,” the evidence shows that the genetic differences between humans and chimps amount to “35 million base-pair changes, 5 million indels in each species, and 689 extra genes in humans.”[3] Such a level of differences is not known to exist for human/human intraspecies genetic variation. Moreover, as geneticist Richard

Buggs has explained, the genetic similarity between humans and chimps may be even lower than 95%:

To compare the two [human and chimpanzee] genomes, the first thing we must do is to line up the parts of each genome that are similar. When we do this alignment, we discover that only 2400 million of the human genome’s 3164.7 million “letters” align with the chimpanzee genome — that is, 76% of the human genome. Some scientists have argued that the 24% of the human genome that does not line up with the chimpanzee genome is useless “junk DNA.” However, it now seems that this DNA could contain over 600 protein-coding genes, and also code for functional RNA molecules.

Looking closely at the chimpanzee-like 76% of the human genome, we find that to make an exact alignment, we often have to introduce artificial gaps in either the human or the chimp genome. These gaps give another 3% difference. So now we have a 73% similarity between the two genomes.

In the neatly aligned sequences we now find another form of difference, where a single “letter” is different between the human and chimp genomes. These provide another 1.23% difference between the two genomes. Thus, the percentage difference is now at around 72%.

We also find places where two pieces of human genome align with only one piece of chimp genome, or two pieces of chimp genome align with one piece of human genome. This “copy number variation” causes another 2.7% difference between the two species. Therefore the total similarity of the genomes could be below 70%.

Third, whatever shared functional genetic similarities do exist between humans and chimps, they might be explained by common design just as well as by common descent. In fact, had the now-refuted statistic that humans and chimps are only 1% genetically different turned out to be correct, why should that demonstrate common ancestry? Why is a 1% genetic difference any better than a 5% genetic difference for demonstrating common ancestry? At what point does the comparison cease to support common ancestry? How about a 10% difference? 25%? Is there an objective metric for falsification here, or are we seeing a fallacious argument for human/chimp common ancestry?

Intelligent design is certainly compatible with human/ape common ancestry, but the truth is that the genetic difference expressed as a percent says nothing about whether humans and chimps share a common ancestor. The genetic similarity between humans and apes does not demonstrate Darwinian evolution, unless one excludes the possibility of intelligent design (and all other non-Darwinian evolutionary scenarios). Just as intelligent agents “re-use” functional components that work over and over in different systems (e.g., wheels for cars and wheels for airplanes), genetic similarities between humans and chimps could also be explained as the result of the re-usage of common genetic programs due to functional requirements of the hominid body plan. Even Francis Collins (who frames the question theologically) admits this is the case:

This evidence alone does not, of course, prove a common ancestor; from a creationist perspective such similarities could simply demonstrate that God used successful design principles over and over again.

(Francis Collins, The Language of God, p. 134 (Free Press, 2006).)"
Critically Analyzing the Argument from Human/Chimpanzee Genetic Similarity | Evolution News

Evolution News is a creationist essay mill. As such their information about evolution is probably incorrect. Sometimes you do have to consider the source

Humans have over a 99% similarity with any other human . That certainly does demonstrate common descent. You can see that with any other genus and family as well. What would unequivocally demonstrate separate creation would be if human eye genes were working in mice, for example, to make limbs. Instead we find that primates and rodents are closely related in Euarchontaglires

Anguspure said:

Genetic similarity is only a small part of what a creature is.

On the other hand, evolutionists know that genetics are a whole lot more involved than a simplistic percentage comparison, but they do like to draw broad conclusions from very scanty evidence.

In any case..."There are good logical reasons why different species may have similar genetic sequences: namely, functional requirements. Those requirements have nothing to do with common ancestry. Engineers know from much experience that there are good ways to design things and bad ways. If you want your design to work a certain way, and you find a good blueprint that accomplishes what you seek, then it’s a good design principle to use that blueprint over and over again. That could easily explain why we see similarities in different species — common design to meet functional requirements....

...Venema’s points here ultimately seem to be rhetorical, though. He writes: “No matter how you slice it, the human and chimpanzee genomes are nearly identical to one another.” (p. 32) This is supposed to impress the reader, leaving no alternative but to conclude that humans and chimps must be related. Venema admits that by some metrics the human and chimp genomes are only 95 percent similar. Fine. But the exact number really isn’t important. What is the metric for demonstrating common ancestry based upon genetic similarity? There doesn’t seem to be one. Venema’s argument appears arbitrary.

Moreover, others geneticists have argued that human-ape genetic similarity might be significantly lower than 90 percent. See, “Human/Ape Common Ancestry: Following the Evidence.” See also, “Critically Analyzing the Argument from Human/Chimpanzee Genetic Similarity.” Perhaps the best treatment of the issue of human-chimp genetic similarity, however, is the chapter “Genetic Evidence for Human Uniqueness,” by Ann Gauger, Ola Hössjer, and Colin Reeves in the book Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique. We recommend it to Dr. Venema."
Adam and the Genome and Human-Ape Genetic Similarity | Evolution News

"First, Venema claimed his series would show “a natural mechanism that does add functional, specified information to DNA sequences” namely “natural selection acting on genetic variation produced through random mutation.” But shared functional genetic similarity between humans and chimps is (at best) evidence for common descent, not evidence for natural selection and random mutation.

Second, Venema has misstated comparisons of human/ape “whole genome” similarity and human/human DNA similarity. Far from being “but a hand-breadth away from our evolutionary cousins at the DNA level,” the evidence shows that the genetic differences between humans and chimps amount to “35 million base-pair changes, 5 million indels in each species, and 689 extra genes in humans.”[3] Such a level of differences is not known to exist for human/human intraspecies genetic variation. Moreover, as geneticist Richard

Buggs has explained, the genetic similarity between humans and chimps may be even lower than 95%:

To compare the two [human and chimpanzee] genomes, the first thing we must do is to line up the parts of each genome that are similar. When we do this alignment, we discover that only 2400 million of the human genome’s 3164.7 million “letters” align with the chimpanzee genome — that is, 76% of the human genome. Some scientists have argued that the 24% of the human genome that does not line up with the chimpanzee genome is useless “junk DNA.” However, it now seems that this DNA could contain over 600 protein-coding genes, and also code for functional RNA molecules.

Looking closely at the chimpanzee-like 76% of the human genome, we find that to make an exact alignment, we often have to introduce artificial gaps in either the human or the chimp genome. These gaps give another 3% difference. So now we have a 73% similarity between the two genomes.

In the neatly aligned sequences we now find another form of difference, where a single “letter” is different between the human and chimp genomes. These provide another 1.23% difference between the two genomes. Thus, the percentage difference is now at around 72%.

We also find places where two pieces of human genome align with only one piece of chimp genome, or two pieces of chimp genome align with one piece of human genome. This “copy number variation” causes another 2.7% difference between the two species. Therefore the total similarity of the genomes could be below 70%.

Third, whatever shared functional genetic similarities do exist between humans and chimps, they might be explained by common design just as well as by common descent. In fact, had the now-refuted statistic that humans and chimps are only 1% genetically different turned out to be correct, why should that demonstrate common ancestry? Why is a 1% genetic difference any better than a 5% genetic difference for demonstrating common ancestry? At what point does the comparison cease to support common ancestry? How about a 10% difference? 25%? Is there an objective metric for falsification here, or are we seeing a fallacious argument for human/chimp common ancestry?

Intelligent design is certainly compatible with human/ape common ancestry, but the truth is that the genetic difference expressed as a percent says nothing about whether humans and chimps share a common ancestor. The genetic similarity between humans and apes does not demonstrate Darwinian evolution, unless one excludes the possibility of intelligent design (and all other non-Darwinian evolutionary scenarios). Just as intelligent agents “re-use” functional components that work over and over in different systems (e.g., wheels for cars and wheels for airplanes), genetic similarities between humans and chimps could also be explained as the result of the re-usage of common genetic programs due to functional requirements of the hominid body plan. Even Francis Collins (who frames the question theologically) admits this is the case:

This evidence alone does not, of course, prove a common ancestor; from a creationist perspective such similarities could simply demonstrate that God used successful design principles over and over again.

(Francis Collins, The Language of God, p. 134 (Free Press, 2006).)"
Critically Analyzing the Argument from Human/Chimpanzee Genetic Similarity | Evolution News

Click to expand...

the common design equals common designer puts god way more ineficient then humans. Sure a RV and a truck are simular, but someone designing a rv wouldn't make a line 3*'s longer because in the car it's a short distance, but in the rv the same path would make it much longer. They wouldn't have a bunch of pointless features in the truck simply beacuse it was based upon a rv. Like having a fridge or sink welded to the under carriage for no other reason then they were both based on the same design.

This is the kind of thing we see in animals. We see designs that don't make ANY sense in humans or giraffes, but make a TON of sense if they were from earlier animals having to use the same design shape. God had no reason to use the fish design for the one nerve in the giraffe, he could have made it a new design as he's not constrained by limitations. Evolution is.

loveofourlord said:

the common design equals common designer puts god way more ineficient then humans. Sure a RV and a truck are simular, but someone designing a rv wouldn't make a line 3*'s longer because in the car it's a short distance, but in the rv the same path would make it much longer. They wouldn't have a bunch of pointless features in the truck simply beacuse it was based upon a rv. Like having a fridge or sink welded to the under carriage for no other reason then they were both based on the same design.

This is the kind of thing we see in animals. We see designs that don't make ANY sense in humans or giraffes, but make a TON of sense if they were from earlier animals having to use the same design shape. God had no reason to use the fish design for the one nerve in the giraffe, he could have made it a new design as he's not constrained by limitations. Evolution is.

Click to expand...

Now we enter the theological argument for Evolution: "If I were God I wouldn't have done it that way, therefore God didn't do it".
The positive evidence for design evident in Biological forms is strong enough that the observation that this argument calls upon should have us humbly sitting at the feet of the Creator seeking greater understanding, not ignorantly pointing out what we think are flaws in His method. The pursuit of Science is sprinkled with such claims of bad design, vestigial organs or junk DNA, that on further investigation and understanding only reveal embarrassing ignorance and much to be learned.

Anguspure said:

Now we enter the theological argument for Evolution: "If I were God I wouldn't have done it that way, therefore God didn't do it".
The positive evidence for design evident in Biological forms is strong enough that the observation that this argument call upon should have us humbly sitting at the feet of the Creator seeking greater understanding, not ignorantly pointing out what we think are flaws in His method. The pursuit of Science is sprinkled with such claims of bad design, vestigial organs or junk DNA, that on further investigation and understanding only reveal embarrassing ignorance and much to be learned.

Click to expand...

you shouldn't accuse people of ignorance when using ignorant meanings of junk DNA and vestigal organs, might want to look up what those actually are before you use one of the oldest PRATTS

loveofourlord said:

you shouldn't accuse people of ignorance when using ignorant meanings of junk DNA and vestigal organs, might want to look up what those actually are before you use one of the oldest PRATTS

Click to expand...

I don't recall defining those terms. Certainly the terms have been used in popular/mainstream science to boost the perception that things have been invented from natural selection acting on random mutation. Certainly the way they have been used has been debunked for many of them where deeper understanding of biological development and design has been gained.

Anguspure said:

Pigs are very close (although Evolutionists put this down to "convergent evolution")
Human to Pig Genome Comparison Complete | Department of Animal Sciences :: College of ACES, University of Illinois

Click to expand...

They based this on 1% of the swine genome!? That's instructive, isn't it?

The reasons we know humans are apes,

• we and chimpanzees are genetically more similar to each other than either of us is to other apes
  
• the huge number of transitional hominins in the fossil record
  
• The chromosomes in humans and apes line up perfectly, with one chromosome fusion in humans
• anatomical details that show our relationship
• morphological shifts that show how human skulls developed from ape skulls

No point in denial. If you'd like to learn more about any of these, let me know.

Anguspure said:

Buggs has explained, the genetic similarity between humans and chimps may be even lower than 95%:

Click to expand...

That doesn't do your case any good. What matters is how much different organisms differ from us by comparison. If you use different criteria, you shift all the comparisons by the same percentage.

Changing yardsticks won't make the distances any different.

Anguspure said:

I don't recall defining those terms. Certainly the terms have been used in popular/mainstream science to boost the perception that things have been invented from natural selection acting on random mutation. Certainly the way they have been used has been debunked for many of them where deeper understanding of biological development and design has been gained.

Click to expand...

you didn't define, it's just classic pratts. But fine give examples of why you think they are wrong, maybe you got something new going.