Evolution is only self evident to those who believe it is.
Creationism is only self evident to those who believe it is.
It's based upon faith in an unprovable theory.
Actually, it is based, for me, on things like this list I came across elsewhere:
Anat Rec. 1977 Aug;188(4):477-87.
Sperm/egg interaction: the specificity of human spermatozoa.
Bedford JM.
Abstract
Human spermatozoa display unusually limited affinities in their interaction with oocytes of other species. They adhered to and, when capacitated, penetrated the vestments of the oocyte of an ape--the gibbon, Hylobates lar--both in vivo and in vitro. On the other hand, human spermatozoa would not even attach to the zona surface of sub-hominoid primate (baboon, rhesus monkey, squirrel monkey), nor to the non-primate eutherian oocytes tested. Among the apes the gibbon stands furthest from man. Thus, although the specificity of human spermatozoa is not confined to man alone, it probably is restricted to the Hominoidea. This study also suggests that the evolution of man and perhaps the other hominids has been accompanied by a restrictive change in the nature of the sperm surface which has limited and made more specific the complementary surface to which their spermatozoa may adhere. For the failure of human spermatozoa to attach to the zona surface of all non-hominoid oocytes stands in contrast to the behaviour of spermatozoa of the several other mammals studied which, in most combinations, adhered readily to foreign oocytes, including those of man. Taxonomically, the demonstration of a compatibility between the gametes of man and gibbon, not shared with cercopithecids, constitutes further evidence for inclusion of the Hylobatidae within the Hominoidea.
Amino acid sequence data also supported the close affinity of humans-chimps-gorillas in 1985 (and earlier) -
"PHYLOGENY OF PRIMATES AND OTHER EUTHERIAN ORDERS: A CLADISTIC ANALYSIS USING AMINO ACID AND NUCLEOTIDE SEQUENCE DATA"
Abstract— Genealogical reconstructions carried out by the parsimony method on protein amino acid and DNA nucleotide sequence data are providing fresh evidence on cladistic branching patterns at taxonomic levels from the classes of Vertebrata and orders of Eutheria to the genera of Hominoidea. Minimum length trees constructed from amino acid sequence data group Mammalia with Archosauria (i.e., Aves plus Crocodilia), Amniota with Amphibia, and Tetrapoda with Teleostei. Within Mammalia, Edentata and Paenungulata (e.g., Proboscidea) appear as the most anciently separated from other eutherians. Another superordinal eutherian clade consists of Artiodactyla, Cetacea, and Perissodactyla. A third consistently contains Primates, Lagomorpha, and Tupaia. The cladistic positions of such orders as Carnivora, Chiroptera, Insectivora, and Rodentia are not well resolved by the currently still sparse body of sequence data. However, recent dramatic progress in the technology of gene cloning and nucleotide sequencing has opened the way for so enlarging the body of sequence data that it should become possible to solve almost any problem concerning the phylogenetic systematice of extant mammals. An example is provided by hominoid genera. Minimum length trees constructed from mitochondrial DNA nucleotide sequence data very strongly group Pan, Homo, and Gorilla into Homininae and then join Homininae and Ponginae (pongo) into Hominidae as the sister family of Hylobatidae (Hylobates). Resolution of the hominine trichotomy into two dichotomous branchings should be forthcoming as kilobase sequencing of nuclear genes progresses.
And of course DNA sequence data has been the icing on the cake - starting with analyses of the entire single-copy genome -
J Mol Evol. 1990 Mar;30(3):202-36.
DNA hybridization evidence of hominoid phylogeny: a reanalysis of the data.
Sibley CG1, Comstock JA, Ahlquist JE.
Abstract
Sibley and Ahlquist (1984, 1987) presented the results of a study of 514 DNA-DNA hybrids among the hominoids and Old World monkeys (Cercopithecidae). They concluded that the branching order of the living hominoid lineages, from oldest to most recent, was gibbons, orangutan, gorilla, chimpanzees, and human. Thus, a chimpanzee-human clade was indicated, rather than the chimpanzee-gorilla clade usually suggested from morphological evidence. The positions of the gibbon and orangutan branches in the phylogeny are supported by substantial evidence, but whether the chimpanzee lineage branched most recently from the human lineage or from the gorilla lineage remains controversial. The conclusions of Sibley and Ahlquist (1984, 1987) have been supported by several independent studies cited by Sibley and Ahlquist (1987), plus the DNA sequence data of Hayasaka et al. (1988), Miyamoto et al. (1988), Goodman et al. (1989, 1990), and the DNA-DNA hybridization data of Caccone and Powell (1989). The laboratory and data analysis methods have been criticized by Marks et al. (1988) and Sarich et al. (1989). In response to these critics, and for our own interests, we present a reanalysis of the Sibley and Ahlquist data, including a description of the corrections applied to the "raw counts." The validity of the laboratory methods is supported by the congruence of tree topology and delta values with those of Caccone and Powell (1989), although their tetraethylammonium chloride technique differs from the hydroxyapatite method in several respects. The utility of the T50H distance measure is indicated by its congruence with percent sequence divergence at least to delta T50H 30, as noted by Goodman et al. (1990). The Sibley and Ahlquist uncorrected data indicate that Pan is genetically closer to Homo than to Gorilla, but that Gorilla may be genetically closer to Pan than to Homo. Melting curves are presented for the pertinent experiments, plus one that includes representatives of most of the groups of living primates.
Chimpanzee genome paper:
Nature 437, 69-87 (1 September 2005) |
Initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome and comparison with the human genome
Nucleotide divergence
Best reciprocal nucleotide-level alignments of the chimpanzee and human genomes cover ~2.4 gigabases (Gb) of high-quality sequence, including 89 Mb from chromosome X and 7.5 Mb from chromosome Y.
Genome-wide rates. We calculate the genome-wide nucleotide divergence between human and chimpanzee to be 1.23%, confirming recent results from more limited studies12, 33, 34. The differences between one copy of the human genome and one copy of the chimpanzee genome include both the sites of fixed divergence between the species and some polymorphic sites within each species. By correcting for the estimated coalescence times in the human and chimpanzee populations (see Supplementary Information ‘Genome evolution’), we estimate that polymorphism accounts for 14–22% of the observed divergence rate and thus that the fixed divergence is ~1.06% or less.
And sundry other papers/sources using DNA sequence data:
10kTrees Website: Dataset
The 10k trees project (link above) used highly conserved sequences (e.g., ribosomal subunit genes, cytochrome b, etc.) from hundreds of primate species and constructed a massive phylogeny, showing human-chimp kinship to the exclusion of gorilla.
"A Molecular Phylogeny of Living Primates"
Hominoidea
Once contentiously debated, the closest human relative of chimpanzee (Pan) within subfamily Homininae (Gorilla, Pan, Homo) is now generally undisputed. The branch forming the Homo and Pan lineage apart from Gorilla is relatively short (node 73, 27 steps MP, 0 indels) compared with that of the Pan genus (node 72, 91 steps MP, 2 indels) and suggests rapid speciation into the 3 genera occurred early in Homininae evolution. Based on 54 gene regions, Homo-Pan genetic distance range from 6.92 to 7.90×10−3 substitutions/site (P. paniscus and P. troglodytes, respectively), which is less than previous estimates based on large scale sequencing of specific regions such as chromosome 7 [50].
Feel free to pick one of those and I will debate its merits with you.
It can't be tested observed or reproduced.
It can be tested (see above). It can be observed. And it does not have to be reproduced - this is standard naive "science" argumentation from creationists, probably gleaned from AiG or ICR or some similar propaganda site, but the fact is, it is EXPERIMENTS that need to be reproducible, NOT the event itself.
It would be great if creationists would take a few minutes to learn the basics before pretending to be able to argue with those that do this for a living.
You see it in the world around you. We creationists see God's magnificent glory and power. We base it on faith. Creation can't be observed tested or reproduced. So both systems are based upon belief.
Only if you misrepresent one system. So thanks for that.
