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On DNA percent differences between taxa and YEC timelines

tas8831

tas8831

Well-Known Member
Creationists like to assert that the 4-8% DNA difference between chimps and humans* is just too much to account for in the 5-10 million year divergence time estimate, and thus humans and chimps cannot be related via descent.

OK... As it turns out, any 2 humans can differ by as much as 1.6%.

Now surely much of that is just SNPs. So, let's say the relevant difference is more like 0.5%.

But this is still a conundrum for the young earth creationist.

Let's take the smallest divergence time estimate for humans and chimps of 5 million years, and the highest mutation difference estimate of 8%.
Let's make things as simplistic as possible, and just do some division to come up with a mutation rate:

8% of 3 billion base pairs is 240,000,000 mutations (for simplicity, I am lumping indel events in the mix).

240,000,000/5 million years = 48 mutations per year

But what about 2 humans, in a YEC perspective?

0.5% of 3 billion base pairs = 15,000,000,

15,000,000 mutations in 10,000 years (max time since Genesis) = 1,500 mutations PER YEAR.

So.. the creationist claims 48 mutations per year is just too much to occur if evolution is true, thus humans and chimps are not related, BUT 1,500 mutations per year in 10,000 years between 2 humans is totally cool!

That is, in order to accept YECism genetics, one has to be totally fine with a human mutation rate some 30x that seen in reality-based evolution, which the YECist claims is way too much.

Another day in YEC land...

ADDED IN EDIT: Oops! Forgot to add - *these numbers are based on a range of percentages that I have seen used in various sources, I am not taking a stand on any specific number.
 
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TagliatelliMonster

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
tas8831 said:
Creationists like to assert that the 4-8% DNA difference between chimps and humans* is just too much to account for in the 5-10 million year divergence time estimate, and thus humans and chimps cannot be related via descent.

OK... As it turns out, any 2 humans can differ by as much as 1.6%.

Now surely much of that is just SNPs. So, let's say the relevant difference is more like 0.5%.

But this is still a conundrum for the young earth creationist.

Let's take the smallest divergence time estimate for humans and chimps of 5 million years, and the highest mutation difference estimate of 8%.
Let's make things as simplistic as possible, and just do some division to come up with a mutation rate:

8% of 3 billion base pairs is 240,000,000 mutations (for simplicity, I am lumping indel events in the mix).

240,000,000/5 million years = 48 mutations per year

But what about 2 humans, in a YEC perspective?

0.5% of 3 billion base pairs = 15,000,000,

15,000,000 mutations in 10,000 years (max time since Genesis) = 1,500 mutations PER YEAR.

So.. the creationist claims 48 mutations per year is just too much to occur is evolution is true, thus humans and chimps are not related, BUT 1,500 mutations per year in 10,000 years between 2 humans is totally cool!

That is, in order to accept YECism genetics, one has to be totally fine with a human mutation rate some 30x that seen in reality-based evolution, which the YECist claims is way too much.

Another day in YEC land...
Click to expand...


A problem with YECs I seem to find is that they have little to no insights in what it means to think about millions of years as opposed to thousands of years.

It's kind of like the law of big numbers. People tend to not be able putting such things in perspective.
 
tas8831

tas8831

Well-Known Member
TagliatelliMonster said:
A problem with YECs I seem to find is that they have little to no insights in what it means to think about millions of years as opposed to thousands of years.

It's kind of like the law of big numbers. People tend to not be able putting such things in perspective.
Click to expand...
Indeed - they hear BIG NUMBERS and nothing else matters. As an interesting coincidence, I was just re-watching Matt Parker's takedown of the Trumper claim that the odds of Biden winning the 4 swing states was more than 1 in a quadrillion, therefore, stolen election. The clip of Kayleigh McEnany making such a huge deal out of it were emblematic of this. All despite the fact that Cicchetti did not realize (or lied about) that assessing voting trends is NOT taking random samples of voters should have been obvious - even to a lawyer like McEnany (though she was probably just lying, too), but the BIG NUMBERS awed so many that few even considered that the claims might have been wrong.
 
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ecco

ecco

Veteran Member
tas8831 said:
So.. the creationist claims 48 mutations per year is just too much to occur if evolution is true, thus humans and chimps are not related, BUT 1,500 mutations per year in 10,000 years between 2 humans is totally cool!
Click to expand...
Your statistics sound a lot like science. Therefore, we can conclude that your numbers are wrong. Science keeps changing what is fact and what is not. One day the world's flat, the next it's a sphere. One day the earth is in the middle, the next, the sun is in the middle and then it's a black hole that's in the middle. One day the earth is millions of years old, then it's billions.

YECs, using the unerring words in the Bible, correctly and unchangingly, stated the age of the earth ~6000 years.




ETA: That was sarcasm.
 
tas8831

tas8831

Well-Known Member
ecco said:
Your statistics sound a lot like science. Therefore, we can conclude that your numbers are wrong. Science keeps changing what is fact and what is not. One day the world's flat, the next it's a sphere. One day the earth is in the middle, the next, the sun is in the middle and then it's a black hole that's in the middle. One day the earth is millions of years old, then it's billions.

YECs, using the unerring words in the Bible, correctly and unchangingly, stated the age of the earth ~6000 years.




ETA: That was sarcasm.
Click to expand...
Yes, yes you are right! I repent!;)
 
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