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

[jayem]

Indeed humankind has a whole day devoted to their development following the day in which God developed and differentiated all the different kinds of animals.

Not to nitpick, but that's not accurate. The text of Genesis 1 states that man and all the land animals were created on day 6. And on the following day, God rested.

 

[PsychoSarah]

The alignment programmes I have looked at choose a selection of the DNA to make a comparison with. You stated a whole genome analysis was made comparing apes and humans. I admit this was a surprise as you know from my comment about junk DNA. I asked you what programme made the comparison you referred to. Simple reason I want to see what thresholds it sets for what it considers alignments, what filters are in place and what assumptions it employs in this matching. It must take a very long time to run and I very much doubt any degree of infallibility can be claimed for it.

All genes begin with ATG, preceded by a distinct and consistent sequence needed for various proteins to bind to the DNA in order to make RNA from that gene. Furthermore, most genes are well over 1000 base pairs long, so analogous genes will clearly have large sections which are identical. The more genetically similar the organisms being compared, the easier this alignment is to perform. The longer the sequence used, the more accurate the alignment, and considering that the entire human and chimpanzee genomes have been sequenced, this is fairly simple.

Heck, I've aligned a gene sequence myself by hand, typing it in base pair by base pair while looking at dozens of other sequences that produce similar proteins to determine what my sequence was most closely related to.

 

[mindlight]

Not to nitpick, but that's not accurate. The text of Genesis 1 states that man and all the land animals were created on day 6. And on the following day, God rested.

You are correct. The creatures of the air and sea were created day 5 and the creatures of the land and then man were created on day 6. Thanks for clarifying.

 

[mindlight]

Not arguing with you on that. But, one more viewpoint to understand or allow for, or be aware of, is that some/many of those believing in God as Creator also then believe of course that means He created physics/biology, and because of this, it's quite possible then to think that --

That God was able, a good creator -- competent even to the level to design nature so well that it could all unfold perfectly, by His design, like a flower from a seed.

See? We don't have to presume no time passed during verse 1, nor do we need to presume no time passed between any of the days of the vision. We can think the narration from God to Moses was in order that Moses might understand some of what he was seeing in this vision (instead of little or nothing). Instead, these relatively less important questions of mere duration quantities are....ultimately beside the point, in the end. Could it matter for faith if some time period was 7,423 days instead of 8,158? 28,000 years instead of 11,000? Eons instead of hours? No. None of these is a basis for faith. This wonderful chapter brings us the majesty and awe and wonder of creation, which I can testify to you I have experienced more than once reading in this wonderful chapter.

So, when we do any of us speculate on mere time duration, mere numerical quantities, it's not....very important, really. But, it can help some people hung up on this question of whether God could use evolution to realize it's perfectly possible He could, because He is able, and it would fit the text just as well.

All of this isn't the main point of Genesis chapter 1 -- instead that is to open our minds to the deeper reality.

The point of Genesis chapter 1 isn't history! It's a change of mind. A change in a person's state of mind, to open us up to the wonder/awe of God.

For faith, we have now Romans 10:17 -- the way for those not knowing the accurate things Christ said, that by hearing what He said, they could have faith awakened.

Why cannot God open a flower from its seed in 2 days rather than 4 billion years?

The straight forward reading of Genesis is 6 days. This is what the Exodus 20 Sabbath commandment confirms about the creation time period - for in 6 days God made heaven and earth. The book is written in an historical style and there is no reason to separate off the first few chapters and claim a different style to them.

God is awesome! God is the Creator. Not sure how reinterpreting Genesis as some kind of allegory , literary framework or series of days separated by eons adds to His awesomeness.

I do not rule out the possibility of an ancient universe but I think the stronger interpretation of Genesis 1 is the obvious and straightforward view that it means what is says

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Why cannot God open a flower from its seed in 2 days rather than 4 billion years?

The straight forward reading of Genesis is 6 days. This is what the Exodus 20 Sabbath commandment confirms about the creation time period - for in 6 days God made heaven and earth. The book is written in an historical style and there is no reason to separate off the first few chapters and claim a different style to them.

God is awesome! God is the Creator. Not sure how reinterpreting Genesis as some kind of allegory , literary framework or series of days separated by eons adds to His awesomeness.

I do not rule out the possibility of an ancient universe but I think the stronger interpretation of Genesis 1 is the obvious and straightforward view that it means what is says

Can we please not have this discussion on this thread please?
This thread isn't about the historical validity of Genesis, or any talk about whether or not God created anything.

 

[mindlight]

All genes begin with ATG, preceded by a distinct and consistent sequence needed for various proteins to bind to the DNA in order to make RNA from that gene. Furthermore, most genes are well over 1000 base pairs long, so analogous genes will clearly have large sections which are identical. The more genetically similar the organisms being compared, the easier this alignment is to perform. The longer the sequence used, the more accurate the alignment, and considering that the entire human and chimpanzee genomes have been sequenced, this is fairly simple.

Heck, I've aligned a gene sequence myself by hand, typing it in base pair by base pair while looking at dozens of other sequences that produce similar proteins to determine what my sequence was most closely related to.

Good for you so maybe you know the following:

1) No alignment is a perfect match.
2) Analogy is not proof of connection but it makes the inference of connection stronger
3) Sometimes even very minor changes in sequences can mean irretrievable damage to a genome. So even minor changes are significant.
4) More than 40 million differences have been identified between the chimp and human genomes. 250000 of these are recognised as being responsible for key differences between the two.

The reason for analogy is the key here however. Common descent is one theory and Common Creator is the other. No facts change either way. Your mappings only prove which ever position people choose to believe.

The reasons for the difference are also in what you choose to believe here. Either God wrote code that is uniquely human or this all happened by accidental naturalistic processes.

"For about 23% of our genome, we share no immediate genetic ancestry with our closest living relative, the chimpanzee"
Mapping Human Genetic Ancestry | Molecular Biology and Evolution | Oxford Academic

"By placing the two codes alongside each other, scientists identified all 40 million molecular changes that today separate the two species and pinpointed the mere 250,000 that seem most responsible for the difference between chimpness and humanness."
Scientists Complete Genetic Map of the Chimpanzee

 

[mindlight]

Okay.
Humans are still apes, same as chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos.

That is not what was said.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

That is not what was said.

He was trying to argue that humans aren't apes based on some very poor criteria. I corrected him.

 

[mindlight]

He was trying to argue that humans aren't apes based on some very poor criteria. I corrected him.

He = Me I think.

Intelligence and Language are the only differences that survive serious scrutiny. The ape brain is too small to be comparable to the human one. This difference has made all the difference. So these remain insurmountable obstacles for humans who would prefer to be called apes.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

He = Me I think.

Intelligence and Language are the only differences that survive serious scrutiny. The ape brain is too small to be comparable to the human one. This difference has made all the difference. So these remain insurmountable obstacles for humans who would prefer to be called apes.

Ah, it was you. My mistake.
But still, that does nothing since, apart from a superior intelligence on our part, humans are still classed as apes.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Good for you so maybe you know the following:

1) No alignment is a perfect match.

Depends on the genes. HOX genes are particularly consistent, seeing as they govern bilateral symmetry. There are most certainly genes that you have which are identical to ones seen in other species.

If you mean the alignment of the whole genome, of course none are a perfect match. It wouldn't make sense even for another human to have an identical genome to yourself unless you have an identical twin.

2) Analogy is not proof of connection but it makes the inference of connection stronger

Proof isn't a thing in science, only in math, since proof demands that all other alternative explanations be absolutely eliminated, and one of the qualifications hypotheses and theories in science must meet is the capacity to be disproven.

Also, analogy? It's not like there's a biological need for us to share so many genes with chimpanzees and other apes. Due to how redundant codons are, if I, as a designer, wanted to make it apparent that humans were specially created, I could make it such that no human genes properly aligned with any other genes of other creatures while still only using the 4 nucleotides used in everything else.

3) Sometimes even very minor changes in sequences can mean irretrievable damage to a genome. So even minor changes are significant.

Of course, it all depends on what that change is. Changes as drastic as an entire chromosome being duplicated can still result in a viable organism (uncommon in mammals), yet a single base pair change can mean death. It all depends on what is impacted and how. The high mutation rate in our species is considered a contributing factor to our high miscarriage rate.

The reason for analogy is the key here however. Common descent is one theory and Common Creator is the other. No facts change either way.

Common creator, as you put it, isn't a theory. Claiming that your alternative interpretation of the data is equal is horrifically flawed, in that evolution actually predicted similarities in genomes long before those genomes were sequenced and verified the prediction. Creationism does not do this, you'll find no creationist predicting these genetic similarities prior to genomes actually being evaluated.

Your experiments only prove which ever position people choose to believe.

Nah, it just makes 0 sense for us to share so many viral remnants with chimpanzees without sharing ancestry. No rational designer would bother to make commonalities between non-coding regions, because they don't do anything and thus don't have to have any specified content. Especially not make some of them look like broken viral genes all inserted in the exact same places.

 

[Halbhh]

Why cannot God open a flower from its seed in 2 days rather than 4 billion years?

The straight forward reading of Genesis is 6 days. This is what the Exodus 20 Sabbath commandment confirms about the creation time period - for in 6 days God made heaven and earth. The book is written in an historical style and there is no reason to separate off the first few chapters and claim a different style to them.

God is awesome! God is the Creator. Not sure how reinterpreting Genesis as some kind of allegory , literary framework or series of days separated by eons adds to His awesomeness.

I do not rule out the possibility of an ancient universe but I think the stronger interpretation of Genesis 1 is the obvious and straightforward view that it means what is says

Click my icon and have a conversation if you like. Our Redeemer lives!

 

[Speedwell]

The reason for analogy is the key here however. Common descent is one theory and Common Creator is the other. No facts change either way. Your mappings only prove which ever position people choose to believe.

"Common creator" isn't a theory, it's a statement of faith. If you believe in God then you believe that all creatures have a common creator whether the many species were created de novo one at a time or they evolved. Is not God the author of all?

 

[pitabread]

The similarity with apes is thus not accidental, it is evidence of a shared template being developed into the later more sophisticated human form. Modules of code are inherited by hierarchical descent from the creatures which first corresponded with that design. But usually these are also changed to accommodate the new creature.

You seem to be agreeing then that the designer was constrained by a process that gives the appearance of evolutionary descent. And that's really all science can tell us: life looks like it evolved.

In fact science treats the universe as an objective backdrop with which to test ideas. So if current life has the appearance that it is the result of billions of years of evolution, then it's the result of billions of years of evolution.

You're more than welcome to reject that idea and adopt you're own philosophical notions. But there isn't really a good way to compare ideas then if one is rejecting the basis that the universe is inherently objective.

The only difference with the evolutionist view here then becomes the time scale. I think this happened in 2 days while you say billions of years.

And meanwhile life also has the appearance of having evolved over ~4 billion years. Likewise the Earth and solar system also have the appearance of having existed for ~4.6 billion years.

You can believe life's evolution happened in 2 days or 2 trillion years, but it's not going to change the fact that it appears to have taken ~4 billion years.

We have developed tools of analysis as a result of the growth of science which we can now use to look at creation with more depth. You think that these tools are tied to the evolutionary theory but I do not. I think what you have found just adds more insight into how the Creator did it.

Which by all appearances appears to have been an evolutionary process.

 

[pitabread]

Common descent is one theory and Common Creator is the other.

Leaving aside the fact that "common creator" has never been a scientific theory, what I find more telling is conflating the idea of a "common creator" with a common template. Even by your own description of what you believe the process to be, you're not really invoking a common creator so much as a common template. But a common template could just as easily be used by multiple creators. We see this all the time in human design.

 

[Tanj]

The alignment programmes I have looked at choose a selection of the DNA to make a comparison with. You stated a whole genome analysis was made comparing apes and humans. I admit this was a surprise as you know from my comment about junk DNA. I asked you what programme made the comparison you referred to.

There are numerous software packages for whole genome alignment, LAST and MUMmer
to name two.

In the original paper (which can be found here https://www.genome.gov/pages/research/dir/chimp_analysis.pdf) they used BLASTZ and BLAT, together with a number of statistical tests.

Simple reason I want to see what thresholds it sets for what it considers alignments, what filters are in place and what assumptions it employs in this matching

Well, here's your chance then.

It must take a very long time to run

Why? I can get access to a 1000 core machine with a terra of RAM. And even if it did take a long time to run, what's the relevance?

and I very much doubt any degree of infallibility can be claimed for it.

Right. Whatever that means.

 

[jayem]

Intelligence and Language are the only differences that survive serious scrutiny. The ape brain is too small to be comparable to the human one. This difference has made all the difference. So these remain insurmountable obstacles for humans who would prefer to be called apes.

I'd say that bipedalism as the standard gait is another significant difference. Humans have evolved some unique skeletal modifications to accommodate this. Our spines are long, and S-shaped. The vertebral columns of the great apes are shorter relative to body size, and either straight or somewhat concave. There are also major differences in the pelvis. Ape femurs are straight, while ours tilt inward towards the knee (which directs the center of gravity down to the feet.) Humans have arched feet (which act as shock absorbers.) And unlike many apes, we lack opposable big toes, which are useful for grasping, but are somewhat of an impediment to bipedal locomotion.

 

[AnotherAtheist]

I'd say that bipedalism as the standard gait is another significant difference. Humans have evolved some unique skeletal modifications to accommodate this. Our spines are long, and S-shaped. The vertebral columns of the great apes are shorter relative to body size, and either straight or somewhat concave. There are also major differences in the pelvis. Ape femurs are straight, while ours tilt inward towards the knee (which directs the center of gravity down to the feet.) Humans have arched feet (which act as shock absorbers.) And unlike many apes, we lack opposable big toes, which are useful for grasping, but are somewhat of an impediment to bipedal locomotion.

There are a lot of posts here, by both Christians and non-Christians pointing out the unique aspects of humans. But, the other apes are not an identical group. Each species of ape will also have its own unique aspects as compared to the other apes including us. So, I'm not sure that discussions of unique aspects of human biology are answering the question.

For humans to not be apes, it doesn't just require that human beings have unique adaptations that other apes don't have. Humans would have to be radically different so that we don't even fit into the clade.

 

[AnotherAtheist]

I'd say that bipedalism as the standard gait is another significant difference. Humans have evolved some unique skeletal modifications to accommodate this. Our spines are long, and S-shaped. The vertebral columns of the great apes are shorter relative to body size, and either straight or somewhat concave. There are also major differences in the pelvis. Ape femurs are straight, while ours tilt inward towards the knee (which directs the center of gravity down to the feet.) Humans have arched feet (which act as shock absorbers.) And unlike many apes, we lack opposable big toes, which are useful for grasping, but are somewhat of an impediment to bipedal locomotion.

There are a lot of posts here, by both Christians and non-Christians pointing out the unique aspects of humans. But, the other apes are not an identical group. Each species of ape will also have its own unique aspects as compared to the other apes including us. So, I'm not sure that discussions of unique aspects of human biology are answering the question.

For humans to not be apes, it doesn't just require that human beings have unique adaptations that other apes don't have. Humans would have to be radically different so that we don't even fit into the clade.

 

[juvenissun]

So... Biologically, how aren't humans apes?

Biologically, can you marry your mother?
(please, say can)

 

[AnotherAtheist]

Biologically, can you marry your mother?
(please, say can)

Can you please explain how your question is relevant to the discussion?