In Part 1, I recounted how Darwinists are deeply invested in the rhetorical value of the emotional argument that humans and chimps have a 98% – 99% genetic similarity. Anthropologist John Marks reports that sometimes Darwinists even use this statistic to contend that our lives are “meaningless”! To explore this debate, I recently blogged about a Science news article entitled “Relative Differences: The Myth of 1%” that reported that the 1% human/chimp genetic difference statistic was a “myth,” because “studies are showing that [humans and chimps] are not as similar as many tend to believe.” The Science news article reported that improved genome comparison modeling methods indicate that humans and chimps are “6.4%” genetically distinct from one another. Apparently my Read More ›

From a technical scientific perspective, the degree of genetic similarity between humans and chimps seems to be of questionable relevance when one is trying to determine whether two species share a Darwinian past. After all, designers regularly re-use parts that work, especially programming components, so there’s no reason to presume that mere genetic similarity necessarily implies common descent over common design. Moreover, even if such genetic similarities were to imply common ancestry, they don’t demonstrate a plausible stepwise Darwinian evolutionary pathway. Nonetheless, on a rhetorical level, the claim that humans and chimps are 99% the same is a powerful emotional argument aiding those seeking to evangelize for Darwinism. For example, last year a cover story of Time magazine proclaimed: “chimps Read More ›