…I think that there could be other explanations…I think that what needs to be determined is what caused the identical mutations…Now, I have no idea why the mutations that you mentioned happened but it seems to me that both species needed the same mutation.
Here’s the problem with that, though. Some of the mutations that happened in both species
broke the genes that mutated. But not only were these genes broken, they were also broken
in the same way.
For example, let’s say that “ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ” is the DNA code for a gene, and the removal of any 3 letters in a row from this gene will render the gene non-functional. Now, if I were to tell you that this gene was broken in both humans and chimps, that doesn’t really say much – you can still easily argue common design (although why God would choose to include a broken gene in these two genomes as part of His “design” is up for debate). But what if I were to tell you that this gene was broken in both humans and chimps
in the same way – e.g., the letters “HIJ” are missing from the gene in both humans and chimps?
Even worse, there is a real-life example demonstrating not only a gene duplication that happened in both the human and chimp genomes, but a copying error that occurred during the duplication process in both genomes. Literally, a particular gene was retrotranscribed – introns removed, trailing-A tail attached – and then was “clipped” during the reinsertion process so that the end of the retrotranscribed copy was cut off near the tail end. So, if we were taking all the separate elements of this evidence as a stepladder of probabilities, we’d wind up with something like this:
- Two distinct genomes have a copy of the same gene – no big deal.
- The copies are both retrotranscriptions – still no big deal.
- These retrotranscribed copies were inserted into the same location in each genome – okay, that’s kind of a big deal because those copies could have wound up anywhere, even on a different chromosome.
- These retrotranscribed copies both experienced the same “clipping” error during reinsertion – okay, hold up…this is the kind of thing that just doesn’t happen twice!
And that’s just the story of this one copy of that particular gene. There are
eleven more copies of this gene we haven’t even covered. And this is only one “family” of genes that we’re discussing. There are
hundreds, if not
thousands, more. So, you have to look at the circumstances surrounding each of these mutations found in both human and chimp genomes, add up
all of the respective probabilities of
all these mutations’ having happened randomly in two entirely separate genomes, and then ask yourself which is the more reasonable explanation: Did all these common mutations happen twice (i.e., once in each species), or are the evolutionists right in saying that all these mutations happened once in a common ancestor species and were later passed down to humans and chimps?
Never ever did a pro-evolution scientist have any information that an anti-evolution scientist could not counter.
That’s because you haven’t read Relics of Eden yet.
–Mike
