tas8831
Well-Known Member
One would think that a person presenting him or herself as a good representative of their religious faith, an educated person, a person well-versed in the science of evolution such that their arguments should be taken seriously, would actually BE educated and well-versed in the science of evolution.
Alas...
This is not generally the case. When it comes to evolution, the anti-evolutionist will often throw out any old argument they can read about, believe without question (because it came from another creationists, so it MUST be right... right?), and paraphrase (or plagiarize) to make themselves appear to have made a good, anti-evolution claim.
In my 20+ years at this, I can safely say that each and every time a creationist thinks they have made a great argument against evolution, they have failed, and in this OP, I will present one example.
The claim:
Wow - sounds like a big problem for evolution, right? One of the key bits of evidence - genetic similarity (a rather vague 'bit of evidence', but that will do for the purposes of this thread) - shot down! Whatever shall the evolutionist do now, huh???
Well, those that understand evolution, upon hearing such claims, will do what creationists rarely if ever do - check the claim to see if it has merit.
The most recent time I heard this claim, a HuffPo article was linked for the bananas. I had to look around a bit for info on the honey bees:
Insights into social insects from the genome of the honeybee Apis mellifera
One will note the number of genes compared - 2404 (out of an estimated 10,000 in the honey bee). This means that of the ~20,000 genes humans have, there are 2404 that have orthologues in the honeybee, that is, genes that we share with honeybees via common ancestry. When these orthologues were sequenced and compared, they were ~46% (not 44% - that was a species of fly) identical. But 2404/10,000 is but 24% (and 2404 out of 20,000 is 12%) of the honey bee genes have a match with humans, so already the numbers indicate something other than what they are often portrayed. Also, I bolded what I did intentionally - they specifically looked at orthologues that are present in only 1 copy. Why does that matter, well, many genes are present in more than one copy, sometimes, a lot of copies. They looked only at orthologues that were present in a single copy. They had their reasons for doing that, which I am not concerned about, but it would appear that this may be the source for the 44% claim.
For bananas, the 50% similarity link provided in the HuffPo article went to the Mirror, where there was just a list of crazy 'facts', some of which appear not to be facts. I was unable to find any actual scientific publications on this (I did not search very hard, I must admit) - lots of internet 'factoids' of course. I did find out some relevant actual facts however -
bananas apparently have more genes that humans (~36,000, but with a much smaller overall amount of DNA than us, only about 400 million bps), which shouldn't be a huge surprise, given that one of the common mechanisms for speciation in plants is genome duplication (any plant people out there, feel free to correct me). Since bananas have ~3x the number of genes as honey bees, the relevant issue here is orthologues. I came across a blog post by a knowledgeable fellow that already did the leg work -
Seems that, in real life, only 17% of genes are shared between bananas and humans.
Now, there were more orthologues, which, given the restrictions in the honey bee paper does not really surprise me, but the sequence identity was not indicated. It comes down to whether one compares numbers of genes, or actual sequence identity, but neither of those appear to rescue the claims.
Bottom line - quoting fake 'crazy facts' - and BELIEVING them! - as evidence against evolution without having the knowledge base to understand where those claims came from, whether or not they are valid, etc. - is actually a GREAT way to argue against evolution, for those doing so make advocates of creationism look desperate and ignorant.
So, keep up the good work, folks!
Alas...
This is not generally the case. When it comes to evolution, the anti-evolutionist will often throw out any old argument they can read about, believe without question (because it came from another creationists, so it MUST be right... right?), and paraphrase (or plagiarize) to make themselves appear to have made a good, anti-evolution claim.
In my 20+ years at this, I can safely say that each and every time a creationist thinks they have made a great argument against evolution, they have failed, and in this OP, I will present one example.
The claim:
'You cannot use genetics to argue for evolution. One of these discoveries that Darwinists use for evidence — genetic similarities — is flawed. Based on genes, we’re more closely related to bananas than honey bees.
Go figure. We’re closer cousins to a Plantae-Kingdom organism, than to an Animalia-Kingdom lifeform!.'
Go figure. We’re closer cousins to a Plantae-Kingdom organism, than to an Animalia-Kingdom lifeform!.'
Wow - sounds like a big problem for evolution, right? One of the key bits of evidence - genetic similarity (a rather vague 'bit of evidence', but that will do for the purposes of this thread) - shot down! Whatever shall the evolutionist do now, huh???
Well, those that understand evolution, upon hearing such claims, will do what creationists rarely if ever do - check the claim to see if it has merit.
The most recent time I heard this claim, a HuffPo article was linked for the bananas. I had to look around a bit for info on the honey bees:
Insights into social insects from the genome of the honeybee Apis mellifera
"Comparison of the 2,404 single-copy orthologues present in exactly one copy in each of the insects and in human revealed that the mean sequence identity between honeybee and human is considerably higher than that of fly and human (47.5% versus 44.5%, with t-test significance of 10−11, see Fig. 6 and Supplementary Fig. 6) and also higher than between mosquito and human (46.6%). "
One will note the number of genes compared - 2404 (out of an estimated 10,000 in the honey bee). This means that of the ~20,000 genes humans have, there are 2404 that have orthologues in the honeybee, that is, genes that we share with honeybees via common ancestry. When these orthologues were sequenced and compared, they were ~46% (not 44% - that was a species of fly) identical. But 2404/10,000 is but 24% (and 2404 out of 20,000 is 12%) of the honey bee genes have a match with humans, so already the numbers indicate something other than what they are often portrayed. Also, I bolded what I did intentionally - they specifically looked at orthologues that are present in only 1 copy. Why does that matter, well, many genes are present in more than one copy, sometimes, a lot of copies. They looked only at orthologues that were present in a single copy. They had their reasons for doing that, which I am not concerned about, but it would appear that this may be the source for the 44% claim.
For bananas, the 50% similarity link provided in the HuffPo article went to the Mirror, where there was just a list of crazy 'facts', some of which appear not to be facts. I was unable to find any actual scientific publications on this (I did not search very hard, I must admit) - lots of internet 'factoids' of course. I did find out some relevant actual facts however -
bananas apparently have more genes that humans (~36,000, but with a much smaller overall amount of DNA than us, only about 400 million bps), which shouldn't be a huge surprise, given that one of the common mechanisms for speciation in plants is genome duplication (any plant people out there, feel free to correct me). Since bananas have ~3x the number of genes as honey bees, the relevant issue here is orthologues. I came across a blog post by a knowledgeable fellow that already did the leg work -
Seems that, in real life, only 17% of genes are shared between bananas and humans.
Now, there were more orthologues, which, given the restrictions in the honey bee paper does not really surprise me, but the sequence identity was not indicated. It comes down to whether one compares numbers of genes, or actual sequence identity, but neither of those appear to rescue the claims.
Bottom line - quoting fake 'crazy facts' - and BELIEVING them! - as evidence against evolution without having the knowledge base to understand where those claims came from, whether or not they are valid, etc. - is actually a GREAT way to argue against evolution, for those doing so make advocates of creationism look desperate and ignorant.
So, keep up the good work, folks!
