The More We Learn, the Less Room There is for Evolution

I wonder if it's interesting stuff, or dull stuff?
The theory of evolution had it's time, but that was long ago..Today's kids know of it's fallacies..
The more we learn the more science moves towards the Biblical accounts.
They should have included the periodic element table in the New Testament..
The only element they had back then was gold. Everything else was either fire, water, earth or air.
What? Another evidence of vast ignorance from the epitome of ignorance. Native silver and copper have been known for a long time.
 
I wonder if it's interesting stuff, or dull stuff?
The theory of evolution had it's time, but that was long ago..Today's kids know of it's fallacies..
The more we learn the more science moves towards the Biblical accounts.
They should have included the periodic element table in the New Testament..
Would that have helped your Salvation?
Salvation from what, silly ass?
 
I fixed it: the more we learn, the more we support evolution. The Bible supports evolution.
We will file that with Junk DNA of the OP. It does not exist.
We will file it the factual science studies. The far right evangelical take on Bible and evolution is hokeum. Always has been.
You can't address the OP so you go on a hate filled rant. So typical.
Science and Bible dovetail. Far right evangelicalism bases its hate on others who disagree with its principles of hatred and exclusion.
Yep, you can't refute the fact that evolutionists lost a huge chunk of their argument when we learned that junk DNA does not exist.
What the fuck are you talking about? The fact that we did not understand the full functions of DNA in our code? Well yes, that is true. And then, with further investigation, we have began to learn more. And the more we learn, the more we see the timeline of our evolution and that of other life.

I think that what you are trying to say is that one mistake in science invalidates all other science. And that, of course, is just about as stupid as it gets. You are another willfully ignorant loud mouth, spewing and demonstrating your ignorance for all the see. In the meantime, the scientists continue to investigate and learn.
 
I wonder if it's interesting stuff, or dull stuff?
The theory of evolution had it's time, but that was long ago..Today's kids know of it's fallacies..
The more we learn the more science moves towards the Biblical accounts.
They should have included the periodic element table in the New Testament..
The only element they had back then was gold. Everything else was either fire, water, earth or air.
What? Another evidence of vast ignorance from the epitome of ignorance. Native silver and copper have been known for a long time.
There was no such thing.
 
I wonder if it's interesting stuff, or dull stuff?
The theory of evolution had it's time, but that was long ago..Today's kids know of it's fallacies..
The more we learn the more science moves towards the Biblical accounts.
They should have included the periodic element table in the New Testament..
Would that have helped your Salvation?
Salvation from what, silly ass?
Massive demented 60 IQ libstain-ism.
 
For the past few decades most of the DNA was considered filler, and evolutionists claimed it was how DNA had the ability to become more diverse.

But now we know that everything within DNA has a purpose.

In January, Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, made a comment that revealed just how far the consensus has moved. At a health care conference in San Francisco, an audience member asked him about junk DNA. “We don’t use that term anymore,” Collins replied. “It was pretty much a case of hubris to imagine that we could dispense with any part of the genome — as if we knew enough to say it wasn’t functional.” Most of the DNA that scientists once thought was just taking up space in the genome, Collins said, “turns out to be doing stuff.”

Is Most of Our DNA Garbage?

How does this disprove evolution in any way?
 
For the past few decades most of the DNA was considered filler, and evolutionists claimed it was how DNA had the ability to become more diverse.

But now we know that everything within DNA has a purpose.

In January, Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, made a comment that revealed just how far the consensus has moved. At a health care conference in San Francisco, an audience member asked him about junk DNA. “We don’t use that term anymore,” Collins replied. “It was pretty much a case of hubris to imagine that we could dispense with any part of the genome — as if we knew enough to say it wasn’t functional.” Most of the DNA that scientists once thought was just taking up space in the genome, Collins said, “turns out to be doing stuff.”

Is Most of Our DNA Garbage?








Actually it is the opposite. The more we learn the more evidence of evolution there is. Garbage DNA is actually quite compelling evidence FOR evolution. If it was a Creator, why have garbage in the DNA?
 
For the past few decades most of the DNA was considered filler, and evolutionists claimed it was how DNA had the ability to become more diverse.

But now we know that everything within DNA has a purpose.

In January, Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, made a comment that revealed just how far the consensus has moved. At a health care conference in San Francisco, an audience member asked him about junk DNA. “We don’t use that term anymore,” Collins replied. “It was pretty much a case of hubris to imagine that we could dispense with any part of the genome — as if we knew enough to say it wasn’t functional.” Most of the DNA that scientists once thought was just taking up space in the genome, Collins said, “turns out to be doing stuff.”

Is Most of Our DNA Garbage?








Actually it is the opposite. The more we learn the more evidence of evolution there is. Garbage DNA is actually quite compelling evidence FOR evolution. If it was a Creator, why have garbage in the DNA?
You misread the article. What was believed to be garbage DNA is actually now known to be specific required information.
 
I fixed it: the more we learn, the more we support evolution. The Bible supports evolution.
We will file that with Junk DNA of the OP. It does not exist.
We will file it the factual science studies. The far right evangelical take on Bible and evolution is hokeum. Always has been.
You can't address the OP so you go on a hate filled rant. So typical.
Science and Bible dovetail. Far right evangelicalism bases its hate on others who disagree with its principles of hatred and exclusion.
Yep, you can't refute the fact that evolutionists lost a huge chunk of their argument when we learned that junk DNA does not exist.

Can't refute something that doesn't exist.

Junk DNA is not an argument for evolution.
 
We will file that with Junk DNA of the OP. It does not exist.
We will file it the factual science studies. The far right evangelical take on Bible and evolution is hokeum. Always has been.
You can't address the OP so you go on a hate filled rant. So typical.
Science and Bible dovetail. Far right evangelicalism bases its hate on others who disagree with its principles of hatred and exclusion.
Yep, you can't refute the fact that evolutionists lost a huge chunk of their argument when we learned that junk DNA does not exist.
What the fuck are you talking about? The fact that we did not understand the full functions of DNA in our code? Well yes, that is true. And then, with further investigation, we have began to learn more. And the more we learn, the more we see the timeline of our evolution and that of other life.

I think that what you are trying to say is that one mistake in science invalidates all other science. And that, of course, is just about as stupid as it gets. You are another willfully ignorant loud mouth, spewing and demonstrating your ignorance for all the see. In the meantime, the scientists continue to investigate and learn.

Bingo Old rocks...Science has to be perfect while his belief doesn't need to have one tiny bit of proof to satisfy his mindset. How the hell can you convince someone that they're wrong with such a rigid mindset?

Where is the evidence in the bible of this god? You're pulling the debate into the roam of science so you need to provide the evidence to stand toe to toe with evolution.
 
The more we learn the less room there is for GOD.

We have no evidence for god but mountains for evolution....Funny how it doesn't matter to the op.
Mountains? Give us one mole hill of concrete evidence.

We have no evidence that supports the theory of fairies in the sky.

We do have actual evidence that supports the theory of evolution.

So of course you reject the evidence and embrace what there is no evidence of.
 
The more we learn the less room there is for GOD.

We have no evidence for god but mountains for evolution....Funny how it doesn't matter to the op.
Mountains? Give us one mole hill of concrete evidence.

We have no evidence that supports the theory of fairies in the sky.

We do have actual evidence that supports the theory of evolution.

So of course you reject the evidence and embrace what there is no evidence of.
I can understand why you can't address the OP. The more we learn.........
 
The more we learn the less room there is for GOD.

We have no evidence for god but mountains for evolution....Funny how it doesn't matter to the op.
Mountains? Give us one mole hill of concrete evidence.

We have no evidence that supports the theory of fairies in the sky.

We do have actual evidence that supports the theory of evolution.

So of course you reject the evidence and embrace what there is no evidence of.
I can understand why you can't address the OP. The more we learn.........

I addressed the OP- and you carefully ignored my post.

The more we learn, the more we know you can't handle the truth.
 
For the past few decades most of the DNA was considered filler, and evolutionists claimed it was how DNA had the ability to become more diverse.

But now we know that everything within DNA has a purpose.

In January, Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, made a comment that revealed just how far the consensus has moved. At a health care conference in San Francisco, an audience member asked him about junk DNA. “We don’t use that term anymore,” Collins replied. “It was pretty much a case of hubris to imagine that we could dispense with any part of the genome — as if we knew enough to say it wasn’t functional.” Most of the DNA that scientists once thought was just taking up space in the genome, Collins said, “turns out to be doing stuff.”

Is Most of Our DNA Garbage?
Just to remind you of my post responding to your specious OP

Since that was never a part of the evolution argument- there really isn't anything to lose, other than to watch you fairytalists flail around and deny science.

Genetics | The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program
DNA is thus especially important in the study of evolution. The amount of difference in DNA is a test of the difference between one species and another – and thus how closely or distantly related they are.


While the genetic difference between individual humans today is minuscule – about 0.1%, on average – study of the same aspects of the chimpanzee genome indicates a difference of about 1.2%. The bonobo (Pan paniscus), which is the close cousin of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), differs from humans to the same degree. The DNA difference with gorillas, another of the African apes, is about 1.6%. Most importantly, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans all show this same amount of difference from gorillas. A difference of 3.1% distinguishes us and the African apes from the Asian great ape, the orangutan. How do the monkeys stack up? All of the great apes and humans differ from rhesus monkeys, for example, by about 7% in their DNA.


Geneticists have come up with a variety of ways of calculating the percentages, which give different impressions about how similar chimpanzees and humans are. The 1.2% chimp-human distinction, for example, involves a measurement of only substitutions in the base building blocks of those genes that chimpanzees and humans share. A comparison of the entire genome, however, indicates that segments of DNA have also been deleted, duplicated over and over, or inserted from one part of the genome into another. When these differences are counted, there is an additional 4 to 5% distinction between the human and chimpanzee genomes.


No matter how the calculation is done, the big point still holds: humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos are more closely related to one another than either is to gorillas or any other primate. From the perspective of this powerful test of biological kinship, humans are not only related to the great apes – we are one. The DNA evidence leaves us with one of the greatest surprises in biology: the wall between human, on the one hand, and ape or animal, on the other, has been breached. The human evolutionary tree is embedded within the great apes.


The strong similarities between humans and the African great apes led Charles Darwin in 1871 to predict that Africa was the likely place where the human lineage branched off from other animals – that is, the place where the common ancestor of chimpanzees, humans, and gorillas once lived. The DNA evidence shows an amazing confirmation of this daring prediction. The African great apes, including humans, have a closer kinship bond with one another than the African apes have with orangutans or other primates. Hardly ever has a scientific prediction so bold, so ‘out there’ for its time, been upheld as the one made in 1871 – that human evolution began in Africa.


The DNA evidence informs this conclusion, and the fossils do, too. Even though Europe and Asia were scoured for early human fossils long before Africa was even thought of, ongoing fossil discoveries confirm that the first 4 million years or so of human evolutionary history took place exclusively on the African continent. It is there that the search continues for fossils at or near the branching point of the chimpanzee and human lineages from our last common ancestor.
 
The more we learn the less room there is for GOD.

We have no evidence for god but mountains for evolution....Funny how it doesn't matter to the op.
Mountains? Give us one mole hill of concrete evidence.

We have no evidence that supports the theory of fairies in the sky.

We do have actual evidence that supports the theory of evolution.

So of course you reject the evidence and embrace what there is no evidence of.
I can understand why you can't address the OP. The more we learn.........

I addressed the OP- and you carefully ignored my post.

The more we learn, the more we know you can't handle the truth.
Your opinions versus science.
Guess who wins.
 
For the past few decades most of the DNA was considered filler, and evolutionists claimed it was how DNA had the ability to become more diverse.

But now we know that everything within DNA has a purpose.

In January, Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, made a comment that revealed just how far the consensus has moved. At a health care conference in San Francisco, an audience member asked him about junk DNA. “We don’t use that term anymore,” Collins replied. “It was pretty much a case of hubris to imagine that we could dispense with any part of the genome — as if we knew enough to say it wasn’t functional.” Most of the DNA that scientists once thought was just taking up space in the genome, Collins said, “turns out to be doing stuff.”

Is Most of Our DNA Garbage?
Just to remind you of my post responding to your specious OP

Since that was never a part of the evolution argument- there really isn't anything to lose, other than to watch you fairytalists flail around and deny science.

Genetics | The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program
DNA is thus especially important in the study of evolution. The amount of difference in DNA is a test of the difference between one species and another – and thus how closely or distantly related they are.


While the genetic difference between individual humans today is minuscule – about 0.1%, on average – study of the same aspects of the chimpanzee genome indicates a difference of about 1.2%. The bonobo (Pan paniscus), which is the close cousin of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), differs from humans to the same degree. The DNA difference with gorillas, another of the African apes, is about 1.6%. Most importantly, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans all show this same amount of difference from gorillas. A difference of 3.1% distinguishes us and the African apes from the Asian great ape, the orangutan. How do the monkeys stack up? All of the great apes and humans differ from rhesus monkeys, for example, by about 7% in their DNA.


Geneticists have come up with a variety of ways of calculating the percentages, which give different impressions about how similar chimpanzees and humans are. The 1.2% chimp-human distinction, for example, involves a measurement of only substitutions in the base building blocks of those genes that chimpanzees and humans share. A comparison of the entire genome, however, indicates that segments of DNA have also been deleted, duplicated over and over, or inserted from one part of the genome into another. When these differences are counted, there is an additional 4 to 5% distinction between the human and chimpanzee genomes.


No matter how the calculation is done, the big point still holds: humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos are more closely related to one another than either is to gorillas or any other primate. From the perspective of this powerful test of biological kinship, humans are not only related to the great apes – we are one. The DNA evidence leaves us with one of the greatest surprises in biology: the wall between human, on the one hand, and ape or animal, on the other, has been breached. The human evolutionary tree is embedded within the great apes.


The strong similarities between humans and the African great apes led Charles Darwin in 1871 to predict that Africa was the likely place where the human lineage branched off from other animals – that is, the place where the common ancestor of chimpanzees, humans, and gorillas once lived. The DNA evidence shows an amazing confirmation of this daring prediction. The African great apes, including humans, have a closer kinship bond with one another than the African apes have with orangutans or other primates. Hardly ever has a scientific prediction so bold, so ‘out there’ for its time, been upheld as the one made in 1871 – that human evolution began in Africa.


The DNA evidence informs this conclusion, and the fossils do, too. Even though Europe and Asia were scoured for early human fossils long before Africa was even thought of, ongoing fossil discoveries confirm that the first 4 million years or so of human evolutionary history took place exclusively on the African continent. It is there that the search continues for fossils at or near the branching point of the chimpanzee and human lineages from our last common ancestor.
Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is the director of the Human Genome Project. His most recent book is "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief."

ROCKVILLE, Maryland (CNN) -- I am a scientist and a believer, and I find no conflict between those world views.

As the director of the Human Genome Project, I have led a consortium of scientists to read out the 3.1 billion letters of the human genome, our own DNA instruction book. As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all living things, as God's language, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God's plan.

I did not always embrace these perspectives. As a graduate student in physical chemistry in the 1970s, I was an atheist, finding no reason to postulate the existence of any truths outside of mathematics, physics and chemistry. But then I went to medical school, and encountered life and death issues at the bedsides of my patients. Challenged by one of those patients, who asked "What do you believe, doctor?", I began searching for answers.

I had to admit that the science I loved so much was powerless to answer questions such as "What is the meaning of life?" "Why am I here?" "Why does mathematics work, anyway?" "If the universe had a beginning, who created it?" "Why are the physical constants in the universe so finely tuned to allow the possibility of complex life forms?" "Why do humans have a moral sense?" "What happens after we die?" (Watch Francis Collins discuss how he came to believe in God
icon_video.gif
)

I had always assumed that faith was based on purely emotional and irrational arguments, and was astounded to discover, initially in the writings of the Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis and subsequently from many other sources, that one could build a very strong case for the plausibility of the existence of God on purely rational grounds. My earlier atheist's assertion that "I know there is no God" emerged as the least defensible. As the British writer G.K. Chesterton famously remarked, "Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative."

But reason alone cannot prove the existence of God. Faith is reason plus revelation, and the revelation part requires one to think with the spirit as well as with the mind. You have to hear the music, not just read the notes on the page. Ultimately, a leap of faith is required.

For me, that leap came in my 27th year, after a search to learn more about God's character led me to the person of Jesus Christ. Here was a person with remarkably strong historical evidence of his life, who made astounding statements about loving your neighbor, and whose claims about being God's son seemed to demand a decision about whether he was deluded or the real thing. After resisting for nearly two years, I found it impossible to go on living in such a state of uncertainty, and I became a follower of Jesus.

So, some have asked, doesn't your brain explode? Can you both pursue an understanding of how life works using the tools of genetics and molecular biology, and worship a creator God? Aren't evolution and faith in God incompatible? Can a scientist believe in miracles like the resurrection?

Actually, I find no conflict here, and neither apparently do the 40 percent of working scientists who claim to be believers. Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.

But why couldn't this be God's plan for creation? True, this is incompatible with an ultra-literal interpretation of Genesis, but long before Darwin, there were many thoughtful interpreters like St. Augustine, who found it impossible to be exactly sure what the meaning of that amazing creation story was supposed to be. So attaching oneself to such literal interpretations in the face of compelling scientific evidence pointing to the ancient age of Earth and the relatedness of living things by evolution seems neither wise nor necessary for the believer.

I have found there is a wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or in the laboratory. By investigating God's majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship.

Collins: Why this scientist believes in God - CNN.com
 
The more we learn the less room there is for GOD.

We have no evidence for god but mountains for evolution....Funny how it doesn't matter to the op.
Mountains? Give us one mole hill of concrete evidence.

We have no evidence that supports the theory of fairies in the sky.

We do have actual evidence that supports the theory of evolution.

So of course you reject the evidence and embrace what there is no evidence of.
I can understand why you can't address the OP. The more we learn.........

I addressed the OP- and you carefully ignored my post.

The more we learn, the more we know you can't handle the truth.
Your opinions versus science.
Guess who wins.

My opinion matches the science- science and I are both winners


Genetics | The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program
DNA is thus especially important in the study of evolution. The amount of difference in DNA is a test of the difference between one species and another – and thus how closely or distantly related they are.


While the genetic difference between individual humans today is minuscule – about 0.1%, on average – study of the same aspects of the chimpanzee genome indicates a difference of about 1.2%. The bonobo (Pan paniscus), which is the close cousin of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), differs from humans to the same degree. The DNA difference with gorillas, another of the African apes, is about 1.6%. Most importantly, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans all show this same amount of difference from gorillas. A difference of 3.1% distinguishes us and the African apes from the Asian great ape, the orangutan. How do the monkeys stack up? All of the great apes and humans differ from rhesus monkeys, for example, by about 7% in their DNA.


Geneticists have come up with a variety of ways of calculating the percentages, which give different impressions about how similar chimpanzees and humans are. The 1.2% chimp-human distinction, for example, involves a measurement of only substitutions in the base building blocks of those genes that chimpanzees and humans share. A comparison of the entire genome, however, indicates that segments of DNA have also been deleted, duplicated over and over, or inserted from one part of the genome into another. When these differences are counted, there is an additional 4 to 5% distinction between the human and chimpanzee genomes.


No matter how the calculation is done, the big point still holds: humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos are more closely related to one another than either is to gorillas or any other primate. From the perspective of this powerful test of biological kinship, humans are not only related to the great apes – we are one. The DNA evidence leaves us with one of the greatest surprises in biology: the wall between human, on the one hand, and ape or animal, on the other, has been breached. The human evolutionary tree is embedded within the great apes.


The strong similarities between humans and the African great apes led Charles Darwin in 1871 to predict that Africa was the likely place where the human lineage branched off from other animals – that is, the place where the common ancestor of chimpanzees, humans, and gorillas once lived. The DNA evidence shows an amazing confirmation of this daring prediction. The African great apes, including humans, have a closer kinship bond with one another than the African apes have with orangutans or other primates. Hardly ever has a scientific prediction so bold, so ‘out there’ for its time, been upheld as the one made in 1871 – that human evolution began in Africa.


The DNA evidence informs this conclusion, and the fossils do, too. Even though Europe and Asia were scoured for early human fossils long before Africa was even thought of, ongoing fossil discoveries confirm that the first 4 million years or so of human evolutionary history took place exclusively on the African continent. It is there that the search continues for fossils at or near the branching point of the chimpanzee and human lineages from our last common ancestor.



Genetics | The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program
DNA is thus especially important in the study of evolution. The amount of difference in DNA is a test of the difference between one species and another – and thus how closely or distantly related they are.


While the genetic difference between individual humans today is minuscule – about 0.1%, on average – study of the same aspects of the chimpanzee genome indicates a difference of about 1.2%. The bonobo (Pan paniscus), which is the close cousin of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), differs from humans to the same degree. The DNA difference with gorillas, another of the African apes, is about 1.6%. Most importantly, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans all show this same amount of difference from gorillas. A difference of 3.1% distinguishes us and the African apes from the Asian great ape, the orangutan. How do the monkeys stack up? All of the great apes and humans differ from rhesus monkeys, for example, by about 7% in their DNA.


Geneticists have come up with a variety of ways of calculating the percentages, which give different impressions about how similar chimpanzees and humans are. The 1.2% chimp-human distinction, for example, involves a measurement of only substitutions in the base building blocks of those genes that chimpanzees and humans share. A comparison of the entire genome, however, indicates that segments of DNA have also been deleted, duplicated over and over, or inserted from one part of the genome into another. When these differences are counted, there is an additional 4 to 5% distinction between the human and chimpanzee genomes.


No matter how the calculation is done, the big point still holds: humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos are more closely related to one another than either is to gorillas or any other primate. From the perspective of this powerful test of biological kinship, humans are not only related to the great apes – we are one. The DNA evidence leaves us with one of the greatest surprises in biology: the wall between human, on the one hand, and ape or animal, on the other, has been breached. The human evolutionary tree is embedded within the great apes.


The strong similarities between humans and the African great apes led Charles Darwin in 1871 to predict that Africa was the likely place where the human lineage branched off from other animals – that is, the place where the common ancestor of chimpanzees, humans, and gorillas once lived. The DNA evidence shows an amazing confirmation of this daring prediction. The African great apes, including humans, have a closer kinship bond with one another than the African apes have with orangutans or other primates. Hardly ever has a scientific prediction so bold, so ‘out there’ for its time, been upheld as the one made in 1871 – that human evolution began in Africa.


The DNA evidence informs this conclusion, and the fossils do, too. Even though Europe and Asia were scoured for early human fossils long before Africa was even thought of, ongoing fossil discoveries confirm that the first 4 million years or so of human evolutionary history took place exclusively on the African continent. It is there that the search continues for fossils at or near the branching point of the chimpanzee and human lineages from our last common ancestor.
 
For the past few decades most of the DNA was considered filler, and evolutionists claimed it was how DNA had the ability to become more diverse.

But now we know that everything within DNA has a purpose.

In January, Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, made a comment that revealed just how far the consensus has moved. At a health care conference in San Francisco, an audience member asked him about junk DNA. “We don’t use that term anymore,” Collins replied. “It was pretty much a case of hubris to imagine that we could dispense with any part of the genome — as if we knew enough to say it wasn’t functional.” Most of the DNA that scientists once thought was just taking up space in the genome, Collins said, “turns out to be doing stuff.”

Is Most of Our DNA Garbage?
Just to remind you of my post responding to your specious OP

Since that was never a part of the evolution argument- there really isn't anything to lose, other than to watch you fairytalists flail around and deny science.

Genetics | The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program
DNA is thus especially important in the study of evolution. The amount of difference in DNA is a test of the difference between one species and another – and thus how closely or distantly related they are.


While the genetic difference between individual humans today is minuscule – about 0.1%, on average – study of the same aspects of the chimpanzee genome indicates a difference of about 1.2%. The bonobo (Pan paniscus), which is the close cousin of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), differs from humans to the same degree. The DNA difference with gorillas, another of the African apes, is about 1.6%. Most importantly, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans all show this same amount of difference from gorillas. A difference of 3.1% distinguishes us and the African apes from the Asian great ape, the orangutan. How do the monkeys stack up? All of the great apes and humans differ from rhesus monkeys, for example, by about 7% in their DNA.


Geneticists have come up with a variety of ways of calculating the percentages, which give different impressions about how similar chimpanzees and humans are. The 1.2% chimp-human distinction, for example, involves a measurement of only substitutions in the base building blocks of those genes that chimpanzees and humans share. A comparison of the entire genome, however, indicates that segments of DNA have also been deleted, duplicated over and over, or inserted from one part of the genome into another. When these differences are counted, there is an additional 4 to 5% distinction between the human and chimpanzee genomes.


No matter how the calculation is done, the big point still holds: humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos are more closely related to one another than either is to gorillas or any other primate. From the perspective of this powerful test of biological kinship, humans are not only related to the great apes – we are one. The DNA evidence leaves us with one of the greatest surprises in biology: the wall between human, on the one hand, and ape or animal, on the other, has been breached. The human evolutionary tree is embedded within the great apes.


The strong similarities between humans and the African great apes led Charles Darwin in 1871 to predict that Africa was the likely place where the human lineage branched off from other animals – that is, the place where the common ancestor of chimpanzees, humans, and gorillas once lived. The DNA evidence shows an amazing confirmation of this daring prediction. The African great apes, including humans, have a closer kinship bond with one another than the African apes have with orangutans or other primates. Hardly ever has a scientific prediction so bold, so ‘out there’ for its time, been upheld as the one made in 1871 – that human evolution began in Africa.


The DNA evidence informs this conclusion, and the fossils do, too. Even though Europe and Asia were scoured for early human fossils long before Africa was even thought of, ongoing fossil discoveries confirm that the first 4 million years or so of human evolutionary history took place exclusively on the African continent. It is there that the search continues for fossils at or near the branching point of the chimpanzee and human lineages from our last common ancestor.
Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is the director of the Human Genome Project. His most recent book is "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief."

ROCKVILLE, Maryland (CNN) -- I am a scientist and a believer, and I find no conflict between those world views.

As the director of the Human Genome Project, I have led a consortium of scientists to read out the 3.1 billion letters of the human genome, our own DNA instruction book. As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all living things, as God's language, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God's plan.

I did not always embrace these perspectives. As a graduate student in physical chemistry in the 1970s, I was an atheist, finding no reason to postulate the existence of any truths outside of mathematics, physics and chemistry. But then I went to medical school, and encountered life and death issues at the bedsides of my patients. Challenged by one of those patients, who asked "What do you believe, doctor?", I began searching for answers.

I had to admit that the science I loved so much was powerless to answer questions such as "What is the meaning of life?" "Why am I here?" "Why does mathematics work, anyway?" "If the universe had a beginning, who created it?" "Why are the physical constants in the universe so finely tuned to allow the possibility of complex life forms?" "Why do humans have a moral sense?" "What happens after we die?" (Watch Francis Collins discuss how he came to believe in God
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I had always assumed that faith was based on purely emotional and irrational arguments, and was astounded to discover, initially in the writings of the Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis and subsequently from many other sources, that one could build a very strong case for the plausibility of the existence of God on purely rational grounds. My earlier atheist's assertion that "I know there is no God" emerged as the least defensible. As the British writer G.K. Chesterton famously remarked, "Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative."

But reason alone cannot prove the existence of God. Faith is reason plus revelation, and the revelation part requires one to think with the spirit as well as with the mind. You have to hear the music, not just read the notes on the page. Ultimately, a leap of faith is required.

For me, that leap came in my 27th year, after a search to learn more about God's character led me to the person of Jesus Christ. Here was a person with remarkably strong historical evidence of his life, who made astounding statements about loving your neighbor, and whose claims about being God's son seemed to demand a decision about whether he was deluded or the real thing. After resisting for nearly two years, I found it impossible to go on living in such a state of uncertainty, and I became a follower of Jesus.

So, some have asked, doesn't your brain explode? Can you both pursue an understanding of how life works using the tools of genetics and molecular biology, and worship a creator God? Aren't evolution and faith in God incompatible? Can a scientist believe in miracles like the resurrection?

Actually, I find no conflict here, and neither apparently do the 40 percent of working scientists who claim to be believers. Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.

But why couldn't this be God's plan for creation? True, this is incompatible with an ultra-literal interpretation of Genesis, but long before Darwin, there were many thoughtful interpreters like St. Augustine, who found it impossible to be exactly sure what the meaning of that amazing creation story was supposed to be. So attaching oneself to such literal interpretations in the face of compelling scientific evidence pointing to the ancient age of Earth and the relatedness of living things by evolution seems neither wise nor necessary for the believer.

I have found there is a wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or in the laboratory. By investigating God's majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship.

Collins: Why this scientist believes in God - CNN.com

Thanks for posting another view supporting the theory of evolution:

Quoting your article:
Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.

Collins directly contradicts everything you have said in this thread- and all of your threads denying evolution.
 

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