Out of curiosity: a question from an unbeliever.

Here is some more information on the matter to consider, from a scientific perspective.

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. (http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics)

While many evolutionists proclaim that human DNA is 98% identical to chimpanzee DNA, few would lie by idly and allow themselves to receive a transplant using chimpanzee organs. As a matter of fact, American doctors tried using chimp organs in the 1960s, but in all cases the organs were totally unsuitable. The claim of 98% similarity between chimpanzees and humans is not only deceptive and misleading, but also scientifically incorrect. Today, scientists are finding more and more differences in DNA from humans and chimps. For instance, a 2002 research study proved that human DNA was at least 5% different from chimpanzees—and that number probably will continue to grow as we learn all of the details about human DNA (Britten, 2002).

If we consider the absolute amount of genetic material when comparing primates and humans, the 1-2% difference in DNA represents approximately 80 million different nucleotides (compared to the 3-4 billion nucleotides that make up the entire human genome).

Would a 1% difference be ‘almost identical’?

The human genome has about 3,000 million ‘letters’. If the 1% figure were correct, this would amount to 30 million letters difference, which would take 10 Bible-sized books to print. This is 50 times as much DNA as the simplest bacterium. This is actually a huge difference that far exceeds the ability of even the most optimistic evolutionary scenarios to create, even given the claimed millions of years.

What is the real difference?

The publication of the human and chimp DNA sequences made possible a comparison. However, even this is problematic because the chimp genome was not built from scratch. Small pieces of the chimp DNA were first sequenced; that is, the order of the chemical letters was determined using chemical procedures in laboratories. These small strings of ‘letters’ were then aligned with the human genome in the places the evolutionists thought they should go (using computers to compare and place the segments). Then the human genome was removed, leaving a pseudo-chimp genome that assumed common ancestry (evolution), creating a mongrel sequence that is not real. The assumption of evolution in constructing the chimp genome in this way would make it look more like the human genome than it really is. But even with this evolutionary bias, the actual differences are much bigger than 1%.

In 2007 Science published an article on the similarity of human and chimp DNA titled, “Relative differences: the myth of 1%”.2 Author Jon Cohen queried the continued use of the 1% figure, citing comparisons following the publication of the draft chimp DNA sequence of around 5% difference. And yet the 1% myth is perpetuated in 2012 in the same journal.

Illustrating how wrong this is, in 2012 Drs Jeffrey Tomkins and Jerry Bergman reviewed the published studies comparing human and chimp DNA.5 When all the DNA is taken into account and not just pre-selected parts, they found,

“it is safe to conclude that human-chimp genome similarity is not more than ~87% identical, and possibly not higher than 81%.”

(https://uncommondescent.com/genetics/icc-2013-geneticist-jeff-tomkins-vs-evolutionary-biologist-who-got-laughed-off-stage/)

/r/Christian Thread