Humans aren't apes... but biologically how?

hecd2

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Aside from the skewed interpretation of data included right in the OP it answers the question "Biologically, how aren't humans apes?" They are as uniquely different from apes as apes are from monkeys...
Have you got a reference for that assertion, or is it just your belief?
 
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hecd2

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i dont think so. the felidae family contain about 40 species of cats. but as you can see in this figure, most of them can interbreed with othehr species:

Authenticated_Felid_Hybrids_%282013%29.jpg


this is why "kind" is more close to the family level rather than the species one. as far as i aware there are even examples of creatures which can interbreed even outside of their family. means that the original "kind" may even go beyond the family level. and if we consider this we only need to explain about 2-3 convergent loss.
(image from wiki)
Indeed it is quite common for individual species to be able to hybridise and even produce viable offspring (the biological definition of species is that they do not interbreed in the wild). That is the case with many members of the Felidae. But it is also a fact that any member of the Felidae cannot prouce viable and fertile offspring with any other member.

And it is the case with the Old World monkeys, and the gibbons, both families. As far as the old world monkeys, they are a very diverse group. There are extensibve reports of hybridisation within genera but not so many between genera. And gibbons form four genera with different chromsome counts and there are no reports of fertile hybrids between genera. So in just these two families, even if we accept that some hybridisation can occur with viable fertile offspring, then you have a lot more than two "kinds".

Your case is shot whichever way you turn. If you equate "kinds" with "can interbreed successfully", then you have a lot more than seven kinds in the Haplorrhini, and you have to explain how the same gene came to be mutated in the same way in all these "kinds". On the other hand, if you equate "kinds" with families, then you're skewered, because humans and chimps are in the same family.

And in any case, it's astronomically unlikely that even in a case of two taxa, say humans and chimps, that the same gene will be independently broken in the same way with an identical set of accumulated mutations.

ETA: it's also clear that you don't have a good definition of "kinds".
 
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hecd2

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You're probably right, but I think that xianghua is arguing from obviously false premises, not from logically inconsistent premises. He's like a man who thinks that he's Napoleon and therefore concludes that his wife's name must be Josephine, and who defends this conclusion against all the evidence. The premise is false but it is not logically inconsistent.
I understand the distinction, but Xianghua's premises are logically inconsistent. He is proposing the example of a car as something that is self-evidently designed and then asserting that it can reproduce. The set of cars and the set of things that can reproduce do not intersect, so the object he is proposing has logically contradictory properties. It violates the basic logical principle of the Law of Non-contradiction. This is illustrated well by people who have used the examples of tringles and squares in this thread to illustrate his fallacy. No argument built on his premises can succeed (or even make sense).

To get back to the point, my argument in post 476 was that the possession of a shared trait, for example a gene that is broken in the same way in a large number of species of animals, or a mirror that is broken in the same way in a large number of cars, is evidence for common descent, but that does not show that the species of animal or the cars were not designed.
It is only evidence for common descent in classes of things that have descent. It cannot be evidence for common descent in cars, because cars do not reproduce.

Of course, if one examines a large number of well-used cars of the same type and finds that they are all damaged in different ways, for example, that they have different mirrors broken, or that where they have the same mirror broken it is broken in different ways, one can conclude that the cars are not descended from a common ancestor, and that the damage is an acquired characteristic, not something inherited from the car's parents.
Cars don't have parents.
 
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hecd2

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First we can look at the more obvious outward topical characteristics and then I will address some issues we have discovered in science.


We have big brains (1100 cc to 1500 cc), they have small brains (300 cc to 600 cc)…

We are bi-pedal, and they are knuckle walkers,

We have pronounced chins, they have small receded chins,

We have a big toe in line with our other toes, and they have opposable or separated big toes.

Ours are for balance and walking, theirs for grasping and other forms of manipulation…

We also have very different skeletal structures…

We have rounded craniums and a flatter face, Apes have a flatter cranium with a pronounced sagittal crest and protruding lower face (better for biting adversaries)…they have a distinctly protruding brow ridge (which varies to a small degree) and we have a far less protruding brow ridge (which varies to a small degree)

The difference in the orbital socket allows us to see laterally for more than any ape but definitely more than chimps (their skull hinders viewing freely to the sides). Our eye sockets are allegedly wider relative to our height than a chimps and in humans the outer margin is recessed much further back.

Ape teeth demonstrate a need as a weapon and a show of dominance as well as for eating, where humans teeth are smaller, more regular, for eating (and sometimes part of attracting mates)

Our pelvis is properly designed for our distinctly bi-pedal gait, the Ape's is longer and narrower for knuckle walking, Humans by nature are bi-pedal except for short bursts of walking on all fours, apes are arboreal knuckle walkers with short bursts of standing or walking upright.

Our spines are long and straight for energy efficiency and support, the Apes is bent differently and positioned so their heads can jutt forward for walking on all fours.

Ape intelligence is dwarfed compared to even the lowest examples of human intelligence.

Humans demonstrate things like uniqueness of culture, religion, philosophy, abstract thinking, art, intricate application of symbolic thought, and more, where chimps exhibit none of these things,

Humans live very long compared to most apes.

We have a covering of fine hairs and with apes their's is thick, coarse, fur.

The best of signing chimps only know objects wanted or not wanted, and learn specific phrases or tasks taught by conditioning (in order to get food, petting, sex, and so on).

Human communication (language) utilizes vocabulary AND also syntax. For chimps "give orange me," can mean something totally different than "give me an orange" even among different signing chimps. We can condition them to sign “give orange me” to ask for an apple, or even “give me orange” to say “I am tired now”.

That would make no sense to a human (and even confuse a child). On the other hand, from a very young age, humans sense and understand syntax. If your two or three year old asks for some orange and you gave them apple, they would protest or say “No! Orange not apple”…or at least exhibit confusion. When taught this or that apes merely perform as conditioned, they do not get confused, nor do they associate the difference.

Humans appear to have an innate ability to create new meanings by combining and ordering words in diverse ways. Chimps studied, taught, and even conditioned for years, show no such capacity.

Human children demonstrate the ability (on their own) to vary syntax and express related ideas and concepts (sometimes very abstract), while even the most mature chimps, trained from birth show no propensity of being able to produce this variance to either communicate with others or even to get their own way.

Cognition scientists have concluded after half a century of research that apes are nearly unable to infer the mental state of another, like if they were interested in some goal, or in love, or jealous, or otherwise, while even 1 and 2 year old humans can do this (see the Project Nim documentary).

My proposition is not true because it has not been proven false...it is true because it has been proven true. These differences are real, and I believe they are significant enough to be considered meaningful to the full implications of "How humans are not apes" aside from us merely creating a new umbrella category to place them both in.

We should not just buy into the media popularized assessments but always pose new questions...you are free to disagree and believe these are not significant, but I say there are enough notable differences that these should be equally stressed.

Finally as lead in to the next few posts, depending on which description one presents, it IMPLIES to the hearer two different things....of course numerically they are the same.

However, IF presenting the 4 or 5% figures (or less) the masses assume incredible similarity...but IF the 120 or 165 million differences is stressed in the presentation then they get a totally different perspective. Millions of differences becomes the logical and factually demonstrated reality.
And yet when comparing humans and chimpanzees across a wide range of anatomical, biochemical and genetic traits, the consensus view of phylogeneticists is that chimps and humans are more closely related than chimps and gorillas, or chimps and orangutans. That's the way the data pans out. Nobody claims that chimps are identical to humans, the claim is that humans and chimps are closer relatives than chimps and other great ape genera. To succeed in your argument, you'd have demonstrate across a huge range of criteria, including biochemistry and genetics, and not just the ones that differ, that humans are more different from chimps than chimps are from the other great apes. (For the avoidance of doubt, when I use the word chimp in this post, I mean chimpanzee and bonobo).
 
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Warden_of_the_Storm

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The pongidae classification was dissolved, and no longer used, by DARWINIANS (who at the time were all racists) who were trying to make man into ape or ape into man.

Okay, just so you know: in my eyes, everything you say is now completely useless because you made that claim.
 
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Warden_of_the_Storm

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I keep "using that phrase" because unlike many young earth creationists (of whom I am not) who often think up ever newer criticisms, I actually apply critical thinking skills and do my homework. What is the data does not always equal the narrative that is given to explain/interpret the data in light of the already held belief. I do this when discussing theologies as well. Hence not the most popular guy in either camp.

It is precisely all the many many differences that constitute our difference from this other group (some of which I have already indicated, though there are many many more). It is the biological reasons that indicate that the original and now alternate explanation/classification is equally plausible.

I think that the reason you're not 'the most popular guy' is because you approach everything with a serious air of condescension and you also reek heavily of being an arm-chair scientist with the regard to you saying that scientists aren't looking at the facts 'objectively'.
 
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hecd2

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Now let’s look a little at the language of persuasion? For example, the “only 1.8% difference” language, describing the similarity between humans and chimps, is truly just an opinion! The actual difference is more like 5% (National Geographic claims 4% but close enough to show the smaller number to be enhanced) and most scientists agree with the greater numbers while given the same data. Even 4% of 3,000,000,000 base pairs equals 120 MILLION differences and if 5% it becomes 165,000,000 differences at this most basic level.

In the limited and chosen sections of the genome accessed for these 1.8% studies, exploring the limited aspects of the genome that they selectively used to derive these figures, add to that the fact that the average person will not bother to understand, most are simply persuaded by the appeal to authority, and by their faith in statistics (see How to Lie with Statistics, by Darrell Huff…a must read for any statisticians).

Secondly, being already programmed to believe it, we do not question the alleged consensus figure (1,8%). It does not matter that it is an inadequate and incorrect analysis. Instead we accept it as confirmation (but it is skewed by the interpreters, not those scientists who did the studies)
There is more than one way to compare genome similarity, so you need to make sure you are not comparing apples with frogs. The key question is whether the difference between human and chimp genomes is greater or less than the difference between chimp and gorilla genomes, using the same measure. Do you know the answer to that? And do you know how many of the base pairs in the genome actually have phenotypic consequences? And did you know that even in functional parts of the genonme, synonymous differences have no phenotypic consequences? And did you know that that in the vast tracts of non-functional sequences that not under selection, nucleotide differences make no phenotypic differences and are not conserved? The fact that you want to compare the entire genomes tells me that you don't understand these details.

In my opinion, one of the very best and most complete studies, as far as I know, is that of Fujiyama, Watanabe, Toyoda, Taylor, Itoh, Tsai, Park, Yaspo, Lehrach, Chen, Fu, Saitou, Osoegawa, de Jong, Suto, Hattori, and Sakaki (2002), titled, ‘Construction and analysis of a Human-Chimpanzee Comparative Clone Map’ found in Science 295:131-134, and that study actually utilized only 19.8 million selected base pairs (out of 3 BILLION). Though this sounds huge, when compared to the total known differences (120 to 165 MILLION differences) it really is not large or significant at all, thus nothing learned in this study should be generalized as an overall fact, but sadly for many it is.
In your opinion it's the very best and most complete study; and yet it pre-dates the first publication of the draft chimpanzee genome by three years. Since then the chimpanzee and human genome projects have had 13 years to increase the coverage and determine detailed polymorphic maps for each species, and refine the analysis. Buddy, you need to catch up.

The 2005 study, which is here, compared 2.4 billion bases and puts the nucleotide divergence at 1.23% with 14% to 22% of that being expained by within-species polymorphism.
 
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hecd2

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Read the studies!
I think you should take some of your own medicine. Since you don't seem to have read any of the studies that are more recent than the one you keep going on about, I would say your views are completely out-of-date.
It was a figure derived from studying selected portions hence not nearly a representation of the complete package.
And yet the more recent draft chimp genome study from 2005, had coverage of 2.4billion bases and found 1.23% nucleotide difference.
Add to that that most scientists disagree and say more like 4 to 5% (that from including other factors) the picture immediately begins to change.
Most scientists say 4% - 5%? Who are these "most scientists" , pray tell?

Did you know that there was a three-way study of human, bonobo and chimp published in Nature (The bonobo genome compared with the chimpanzee and human genomes) with much greater coverage genomes than the 2005 study and it says: "On average, the two alleles in single-copy, autosomal regions in the Ulindi (name of bonobo sequenced) genome are approximately 99.9% identical to each other, 99.6% identical to corresponding sequences in the chimpanzee genome and 98.7% identical to corresponding sequences in the human genome." The autosomes are all the chromosomes other than X and Y. You need to abandon this erroneous idea that the sequence similarity estimates are based on tiny samples.

Now before we enter on this journey please re-examine a quote from a prominent evolutionist. In What Makes Biology Unique? (p. 198, Cambridge University Press, 2004), Ernst Mayr revealed to us that “The earliest fossils of Homo… are separated from Australopithecus by a large, unbridged gap. How can we explain this seeming saltation? Not having any fossils that can serve as missing links, we have to fall back on the time-honored method of historical science, the construction of a historical narrative.
The gap before Australopithecus has been filled since Mayr wrote by Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Orrorin tugenensis, Ardipithecus kaddaba and Ardipthecus ramidus. Ardipithecus is the earliest known bipedal ape. There really isn't a gap between Australopithecines and Homo, the latest Australopithecines overlap with the earliest Homo.

Now with that in mind, aside from the FACT that there are no less than 165,000,000 differences in the base pair sequences (around 4 to 5%) we have recently found 1,307 orphan genes that are completely different between humans and chimpanzees, and these from just four areas of tissue samples. We can only imagine the vast numbers of differences that will be revealed once more areas are fully analyzed (see J. Ruiz-Orera, 2015, “Origins of De Novo Genes in Humans and Chimpanzees”, PLoS Genetics. 11 (12): e1005721). The standard mantra drilled into us is that Humans co-evolved alongside Chimpanzees from a common primate ancestor, but is there really evidence for this claim? Do we have any idea what or who this alleged common ancestor was? (I assure you we do not)

Orphan genes, as many here know, are found only in particular lineages of particular creatures, or sometimes only in a specific species, or only a variety within a species. What is really interesting is they appear to have no have evolutionary history shared by any other evolutionary ancient creature.

Despite that, we have come to know these genes are incredibly important! Their expression often dictates very specific qualities and processes allowing for specialized adaptations of particular tissues, like the antisense gene, NCYM, which is over-expressed in neuroblastoma; this gene inhibits the activity of glycogen synthase kinase 3β (GSK3β), which targets NMYC for degradation (Suenaga Y, Islam SMR, Alagu J, Kaneko Y, Kato M, et al. (2014) NCYM, a Cis-antisense gene of MYCN, encodes a de novo evolved protein that inhibits GSK3β resulting in the stabilization of MYCN in human neuroblastomas. PLoS Genet 10: e1003996. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1003996).
And from the Ruiz-Orera paper you reference:

"The advent of massively parallel RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) has provided new clues to this question, with the discovery of an unexpectedly high number of transcripts that do not correspond to typical protein-coding genes, and which could serve as a substrate for this process. Here we have examined RNA-Seq data from 8 mammalian species in order to define a set of putative newly-born genes in human and chimpanzee and investigate what drives their expression. This is the largest-scale project to date that tries to address this scientific question. We have found thousands of transcripts that are human and/or chimpanzee-specific and which are likely to have originated de novo from previously non-transcribed regions of the genome. We have observed an enrichment in transcription factor binding sites in the promoter regions of these genes when compared to other species; this is consistent with the idea that the gain of new regulatory motifs results in de novo gene expression." To fully understand this, you need to understand the difference between transcription and translation and the effect of transcription factor binding. To paraphrase, the orphan genes appear to arise from previously non-transcribed portions of the genome.

This genetic curiosity has been being studied for around 20 years with little insight as to why they are there at all (where did they come from).
Except for the insight in the very paper you cite.
 
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hecd2

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All living things share huge sections of the genome. The base pairs are like the plan for that kinbd of creature spelled out in building blocks (codons of ATCG). We are allegedly 99% genomically the same as mice. Why then are we not stuck into the "rodent" box in our intelligently designed system of categorization? Because it would not support the already indoctrinated presupposition. It placed in THAT category then the pre-accepted belief falls apart.
No we are not placed in that box because the data doesn't support it. On the one hand you say there 4 - 5% difference between human and chimp and now you say there 1% difference between human and mouse. Needless to say you are misunderstanding something, misquoting something, or being deliberately misleading. (A reference to the 1% difference bewteen human and mouse would be a good thing to provide).

Hypothesis driven interpretation ARE the rose colored glasses of the convinced (and that applies to denominational theologies as well). But that is backward science..the data (165 million differences) should shape the hypothesis not be presented to appear to fit into it.
The data, that we are genetically closer to chimps, than chimps are to gorillas or orangutans is the data that shapes the hypothesis and the conclusion.
 
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sfs

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The 2005 study, which is here, compared 2.4 billion bases and puts the nucleotide divergence at 1.23% with 14% to 22% of that being expained by within-species polymorphism.
I pointed this fact out to him two years ago.
 
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DogmaHunter

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Humans are simply CATEGORIZED as Apes (to fit the hypothesis).

Not "to fit the hypothesis". Because of the evidence.

Biologically "what is an ape"? Not "categorically", biologically...

From Ape - Biology-Online Dictionary

Ape

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Definition

noun, plural: apes

Any of the tailless anthropoid primates of Hominoidea, which includes the great apes and the lesser apes

Supplement
The apes are a group of anthropoid primates belonging to Hominoidea. The members of Hominoidea are called hominoids. They may be grouped into two: (1) the great apes and (2) the lesser apes. The great apes or the hominids include Pongo, Gorilla, Pan, and Homo genera. They belong to the family Hominidae. The lesser apes of the family Hylobatidae is comprised by four genera of gibbons. The lesser apes differ from the great apes in having a smaller body frame and long arms they use to swing from branch to branch. The lesser apes also show low sexual dimorphisms.

The apes, together with the Old World monkeys, form the catarrhine clade. The apes are characterized by having a rather flexible shoulder joint, broad chest, long arms, and the absence of tail. Most of them are agile tree climbers and feed on fruits, nuts, seeds, leaves, etc.

Scientific classification:

  • Kingdom: Animalia
  • Phylum: Chordata
  • Class: Mammalia
  • Order: Primates
  • Suborder: Haplorhini
  • Parvorder: Catarrhini
  • Superfamily: Hominoidea [Gray, 1825
 
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pshun2404

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Okay. Now I would like you to please think about this with your truest honesty and objectivity. Here we have a real section of the compared genomes after being fed through one of the Algorithms intelligently designed to find areas of similarity. I am sure you are aware of the GIGO principle.

The programmers (already taught and convinced of the idea that humans ARE apes), designed a program that would ignore the obvious dissimilarity and focus on, in fact select, those areas where the sequence appears to be the same. However it is an unintentional deception and I will show you.

The top line represents humans and the bottom apes. When the algorithms are applied, we can see that in some places they do not match and in others unnatural spaces are created. The spaces do not exist in reality (the actual data). Aside from the more obvious G A difference, after the following AGTC section if we take away all the intelligently contrived spaces the two genomes remain dissimilar for the remaining over 2 billion sequences of base pairs.

Hence in reality, the two genomes are actually almost totally different if we just compare the two as they naturally occur making these two different kinds of creatures. As for containing similar sequences so what. We can find many of these in other creatures as well, and even in some fruits.

In truth we have:

Humans: AGTCGTACCAGTCGTACC

Apes: AGTCATACCAGTCTACCG

Once again I will remind you that we KNOW that even a change or mutation of a few base pairs can cause incredible changes in form or function and mostly (if occurring within the same creature) can and often does cause horrific medical deformities and conditions (like from particular mental deficiencies, to cystic fibrosis or sickle cell, and so on).

Now in truth, at least in chimps, we see many “shared genes.” But what you are not taught is revealed in some of the studies I already referenced.

a) Many of these genes contain very different sequences in the two creatures (some are larger and some are smaller).

b) Some pf those that are exact have a totally different function and purpose (same gene functions differently). In other words same genes different effects.

c) Many products (particular proteins coded for) are produced from entirely different genes in each creature. In other words same effect from different genes.
 
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hecd2

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...And though the recent comparisons are performed on only about 33% of the genome, Wong concludes that “individual differences pervade the genome, affecting each of our chromosomes in numerous ways.”

In addition, in the Britten study (Britten, R.J. 2002. ‘Divergence between samples of chimpanzee and human DNA sequences is 5% counting indels.’ Proceedings National Academy Science 99:13633-13635) they used only 779,000 base pairs. The study concludes 1.4% of the bases were “substitutions” (meaning completely different, and not actually demonstrating they were once one thing that has been “substituted” later), plus they also added the additional number of indels (what can be “interpreted” as insertions or deletions when comparing one genome to another).
Why do you keep quoting these outdated studies? Complete genome analyses have been available since 2005.
Plus this was what was found using ONLY around 800,000 base pairs (not even 1 million). Some of the alleged indels (I am sure some actually were) were small sections being only 1 to 4 nucleotides in length, and others were quite large (even as much as 1000 base pairs long).
There you go again with the outdated studies. And yes indels can be anything from 1 to 100s or even 1000s of bases.

Who selected just these sections, their varying lengths, and why? How many of the same sections were compared from different humans and different chimps, or were they from just one of each?
Within species polymorphism is studied in depth in chimpanzees and up the wazoo in humans. The human polymorphism database is vast and growing. But I predict you are going to ignore this, like you have dishonestly ignored all the reports since 2002 and just come back with the same fallacy after a decent (or an indecent) interval.
When these additional differences have been added into the alleged “percentile” it changes the figure from 1.8 to 5%. Now if we multiply that out to the truly complete genome (all 3 billion base pairs) and the differences will be much, much, greater (but that will only come in time, if we can get more scientists to stand outside the box and view these things objectively).
but we've been doing whole genome comparisons for 14 years. You do need to catch up. And stop ignoring the papers that falsify your position.
 
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hecd2

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I keep "using that phrase" because unlike many young earth creationists (of whom I am not) who often think up ever newer criticisms, I actually apply critical thinking skills and do my homework.
Well it seems that you don't if you think the best and most complete human-chimp genome comparison dates from 2002.

It is precisely all the many many differences that constitute our difference from this other group (some of which I have already indicated, though there are many many more). It is the biological reasons that indicate that the original and now alternate explanation/classification is equally plausible.
It's not, because humans are genetically (and biochemically) closer to chimps than chimps are to gorillas or orangutans.
 
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pitabread

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As a recent joiner I didn't know this, and I'm surprised because he states it as though no-one has corrected him before.

A lot of creationists on this forum have a bad habit of doing just that. It seems to be creationism 101.
 
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hecd2

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Okay. Now I would like you to please think about this with your truest honesty and objectivity. Here we have a real section of the compared genomes after being fed through one of the Algorithms intelligently designed to find areas of similarity. I am sure you are aware of the GIGO principle.
It's a very short sequence consisting of 18 or 19 bases.

The programmers (already taught and convinced of the idea that humans ARE apes), designed a program that would ignore the obvious dissimilarity and focus on, in fact select, those areas where the sequence appears to be the same. However it is an unintentional deception and I will show you.

The top line represents humans and the bottom apes. When the algorithms are applied, we can see that in some places they do not match and in others unnatural spaces are created. The spaces do not exist in reality (the actual data). Aside from the more obvious G A difference, after the following AGTC section if we take away all the intelligently contrived spaces the two genomes remain dissimilar for the remaining over 2 billion sequences of base pairs.

Hence in reality, the two genomes are actually almost totally different if we just compare the two as they naturally occur making these two different kinds of creatures. As for containing similar sequences so what. We can find many of these in other creatures as well, and even in some fruits.

In truth we have:

Humans: AGTCGTACCAGTCGTACC

Apes: AGTCATACCAGTCTACCG

OK, here is what is wrong with your analysis

1) what are the actual species? The top line is clear. Are you claiming that the bottom line is the sequence in all non-human apes? You don't say so we don't know if there is a frameshift deletion in humans or a frameshift insertion in a species of ape.
2) Where is this sequence found? Is it within an exon, in an intron, or in repetitive or other non transcribed sequence?
3) Assuming we are in an exon, we don't know where the open reading frame starts so we don't know whether the substitution A to G is synonymous (TCG and TCA code for the same amino acid - serine).
4) we have no idea what protein this codes for (or whether it's part of an ORF at all), so we don't know whether the substitution has a phenotypic effect and if so, how significant it is.
5) If we are in an exon we don't see whether the indel causes a fatal frameshift so that the gene is broken. Are both of these sequences functional in both species?
6) I can't believe you are claiming that because of one indel the entire 2 billion bases following are dissimilar. That shows a lack of understanding of genes and start and stop codons and transcription and splicing and open reading frames that is so profound that I'd say it entirely disqualifies you from discussions of genomics. I have emboldened this because this is a huge mistake on your part.
7) The key point, which has been repeated several times, is not whether humans and chimps share similar sequences, but whether the overall similarity is greater than that bewteen chimps and gorillas, and chimps and orangutans.

Once again I will remind you that we KNOW that even a change or mutation of a few base pairs can cause incredible changes in form or function and mostly (if occurring within the same creature) can and often does cause horrific medical deformities and conditions (like from particular mental deficiencies, to cystic fibrosis or sickle cell, and so on).
It can but mostly it doesn't, because they might be occurring in non-transcribed areas, or because the substitution is synonymous, or because the change from one amino acid to another has little or no phenotypic effect. Every human is born with between 60 and 75 new mutations in their genome (about 4 in protein-coding genes). A vast majority of mutations are neutral or have minor effects. There are several hundred thousand SNPs known in humans and the human population is more than 6 billion more or less healthy individuals. [ETA: Actually there are several hundred million SNPs known in humans - I mis-spoke]

Now in truth, at least in chimps, we see many “shared genes.” But what you are not taught is revealed in some of the studies I already referenced.

a) Many of these genes contain very different sequences in the two creatures (some are larger and some are smaller).

b) Some pf those that are exact have a totally different function and purpose (same gene functions differently). In other words same genes different effects.

c) Many products (particular proteins coded for) are produced from entirely different genes in each creature. In other words same effect from different genes.
And yet we are genetically closer to chimps than chimps are to gorillas.
 
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Job 33:6

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As a recent joiner I didn't know this, and I'm surprised because he states it as though no-one has corrected him before.

Its interesting because, I came to these forums not that long ago (about 9 months ago). I entered discussions with people like pshun. But unfortunately, I gave them the benefit of the doubt and went down the rabbit hole of the bizarre young earth creationist mind. Only to find that they were gone long long before we ever even began our discussion. Their minds, lost at sea.
 
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hecd2

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You can see the exchange here.
I've just read the first few pages of that thread. It's not just that he makes the same refuted arguments in this thread that he made in that one, but the words are identical. It's an unthinking cut and paste as though that thread and the complete demolition of his ideas there had never happened. People like Kent Hovind do that over and over and over again. Same MO.
 
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