Did you know that we share 97% of chimpanzee DNA?

Question

its funny how our religious texts never mention this scientific fact. why is that i wonder?

Answer 1

I know!!!
That means that only 2,000,000 DNA strands are different!

Answer 2

Evolutionists say that the chimpanzee is the closest living relative to humans. For two decades (1984–2004), evolutionists and the media claimed that human DNA is about 99% similar to chimpanzee DNA. These statements had little scientific justification, because they were made before anyone had completed sequencing human DNA and long before sequencing chimpanzee DNA had begun.

Chimpanzee and human DNA have now been completely sequenced and rigorously compared. The differences, which total about 4%, are far greater and more complicated than evolutionists suspected. Those differences include about “thirty-five million single-nucleotide changes, five million insertions/deletions, and various chromosomal rearrangements." Although its only 4%, a huge DNA chasm separates humans from chimpanzees.

Finally, evolutionary trees, based on the outward appearance of organisms, can now be compared with the organisms’ genetic information. They conflict in major ways.

Answer 3

Does a high degree of similarity mean that two DNA sequences have the same meaning or function? No, not necessarily. Compare the following sentences:


There are many scientists today who question the evolutionary paradigm and its atheistic philosophical implications.
There are not many scientists today who question the evolutionary paradigm and its atheistic philosophical implications.


These sentences have 97% homology and yet have almost opposite meanings! There is a strong analogy here to the way in which large DNA sequences can be turned on or off by relatively small control sequences.


The DNA similarity data does NOT quite mean what the evolutionary popularizers claim!

Answer 4

Did you know that Chimpanzee's are a species of their own ? So many of you people like to think that we are related to them. They are an animal and in the Bible it says we are not to treat animals like Humans. Even if your quotes are accurate, it still goes to show we are NOT related to these animals. The other 3% link is missing and that makes it the true fact that the DNA Chimpanzee, is not a perfect match , so we are not related to these animals. The religious texts do tell us, That we are not to treat animals like Humans. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Answer 5

Did you know I share 97% of my butt with this chair, and that's not in some bible either... but it's on the Internet now-haa haa

Contrary to your mention of text omission, I kinda believe that the topic has been touched, but it has been misinterpreted. We are all creatures of god. Gods molded us all from the same sand. I wonder where this assumption came from that we are anything but a creature of god, just like everything else, placed here to live, together.
But yea, you are right, my mom the devout Catholic would probably rip me a new one if she heard me say that we might be related to monkeys, and then I'd have to subtract the area of a 2d whole from the percentage I share with the chair... yaadda yadda

Answer 6

Who on earth was going to dissect an animals DNA and compare it to our own for no reason? There was no reason to know that and noone could've figured it out on their own. Also, sharing chimp DNA does not counteract the Bible, which never says, "chimps do not share 97% of our DNA". That fact does not equal evolution because God probably just put them there that way. Its the kind of DNA they need to live, the kind we need to live, so why wouldn't he make them that way? And although I don't agree with the person above calling people idiots for their beliefs, I do agree that we were made out of similar elements by the same person. Its like comparing two artworks by the same guy, of course his paintings will have similar styles and motifs. A creator would be the same way, he being the master sculpture.

Answer 7

Wow! no way! I would never had known that if I hadn't been on Yahoo! because we religious people don't know anything!
Hmm, so since we are chimplike, and people have observed animals develop outside of their species, and we have found fossils of every in-between animal, and carbon dating proves that a 200 or less year old bucket can exist buried inside a 10,000 year old stalagmite, and a couple remaining red blood cells inside a T-rex bone can exist...
wait... what was my point? Oh, I guess you aren't correct about anything else. Sorry.

Answer 8

Why in the world would ancient religious texts mention DNA? You find this suspicious, do you?
How is DNA relevent to Religion?

It sure doesn't take much to cause you to wonder!

Answer 9

it does!!!

7:166 But when even after this they disdainfully persisted in that from which they were forbidden, We said to them, "Become apes—despised and disgraced!" (Maududi)

2:65 And you know well the story of those among you who broke Sabbath. We said to them: "Be apes—despised and hated by all." 66 Thus We made their end a warning to the people of their time and succeeding generation, and an admonition for God-fearing people. (Maududi)

Answer 10

I can see how that could be true in your case,yours may go as high as 99%,but I don't have any chimpanzee DNA in me,thank you, and thats how i feel about it,Chetta

Answer 11

Human/chimp DNA similarity
Evidence for evolutionary relationship?

by Don Batten

The idea that human beings and chimps have close to 100% similarity in their DNA seems to be common knowledge. The figures quoted vary: 97%, 98%, or even 99%, depending on just who is telling the story. What is the basis for these claims and do the data mean there really is not much difference between chimps and people? Are we just highly evolved apes? The following concepts will assist with a proper understanding of this issue:

*

Similarity (‘homology’) is not evidence for common ancestry (evolution) as against a common designer (creation). Think about a Porsche and Volkswagen ‘Beetle’ car. They both have air–cooled, flat, horizontally–opposed, 4–cylinder engines in the rear, independent suspension, two doors, boot (trunk) in the front, and many other similarities (‘homologies’). Why do these two very different cars have so many similarities? Because they had the same designer! Whether similarity is morphological (appearance), or biochemical, is of no consequence to the lack of logic in this argument for evolution.
* If humans were entirely different from all other living things, or indeed if every living thing was entirely different, would this reveal the Creator to us? No! We would logically think that there must be many creators rather than one. The unity of the creation is testimony to the One True God who made it all (Romans 1:18–23).
* If humans were entirely different from all other living things, how would we then live? If we are to eat food to provide nutrients and energy to live, what would we eat if every other organism on earth were fundamentally different biochemically? How could we digest them and how could we use the amino acids, sugars, etc., if they were different from the ones we have in our bodies? Biochemical similarity is necessary for us to have food!
* We know that DNA in cells contains much of the information necessary for the development of an organism. In other words, if two organisms look similar, we would expect there to be some similarity also in their DNA. The DNA of a cow and a whale, two mammals, should be more alike than the DNA of a cow and a bacterium. If it were not so, then the whole idea of DNA being the information carrier in living things would have to be questioned. Likewise, humans and apes have a lot of morphological similarities, so we would expect there would be similarities in their DNA. Of all the animals, chimps are most like humans,1 so we would expect that their DNA would be most like human DNA.
* Certain biochemical capacities are common to all living things, so there is even a degree of similarity between the DNA of yeast, for example, and that of humans. Because human cells can do many of the things that yeast can do, we share similarities in the DNA sequences that code for the enzymes that do the same jobs in both types of cells. Some of the sequences, for example, those that code for the MHC (Major Histocompatibility Complex) proteins, are almost identical.
* What of the 97% (or 98% or 99%!) similarity claimed between humans and chimps? The figures published do not mean quite what is claimed in the popular publications (and even some respectable science journals). DNA contains its information in the sequence of four chemical compounds known as nucleotides, abbreviated C,G,A,T. Groups of three of these at a time are ‘read’ by complex translation machinery in the cell to determine the sequence of 20 different types of amino acids to be incorporated into proteins. The human DNA has at least 3,000,000,000 nucleotides in sequence. Chimp DNA has not been anywhere near fully sequenced so that a proper comparison can be made (using a lot of computer time to do it—imagine comparing two sets of 1000 large books, sentence by sentence, for similarities and differences!).

Where did the ‘97% similarity’ come from then? It was inferred from a fairly crude technique called DNA hybridization where small parts of human DNA are split into single strands and allowed to re–form double strands (duplex) with chimp DNA.2 However, there are various reasons why DNA does or does not hybridize, only one of which is degree of similarity (homology).3 Consequently, this somewhat arbitrary figure is not used by those working in molecular homology (other parameters, derived from the shape of the ‘melting’ curve, are used). Why has the 97% figure been popularised then? One can only guess that it served the purpose of evolutionary indoctrination of the scientifically illiterate.

Interestingly, the original papers did not contain the basic data and the reader had to accept the interpretation of the data ‘on faith’. Sarich et al.4 obtained the original data and used them in their discussion of which parameters should be used in homology studies.5 Sarich discovered considerable sloppiness in Sibley and Ahlquist’s generation of their data as well as their statistical analysis. Upon inspecting the data, I discovered that, even if everything else was above criticism, the 97% figure came from making a very basic statistical error—averaging two figures without taking into account differences in the number of observations contributing to each figure. When a proper mean is calculated it is 96.2%, not 97%. However, there is no true replication in the data, so no confidence can be attached to the figures published by Sibley and Ahlquist.

What if human and chimp DNA was even 96% homologous? What would that mean? Would it mean that humans could have ‘evolved’ from a common ancestor with chimps? Not at all! The amount of information in the 3 billion base pairs in the DNA in every human cell has been estimated to be equivalent to that in 1,000 books of encyclopaedia size.6 If humans were ‘only’ 4% different this still amounts to 120 million base pairs, equivalent to approximately 12 million words, or 40 large books of information. This is surely an impossible barrier for mutations (random changes) to cross.7
* Does a high degree of similarity mean that two DNA sequences have the same meaning or function? No, not necessarily. Compare the following sentences:

There are many scientists today who question the evolutionary paradigm and its atheistic philosophical implications.

There are not many scientists today who question the evolutionary paradigm and its atheistic philosophical implications.

These sentences have 97% homology and yet have almost opposite meanings! There is a strong analogy here to the way in which large DNA sequences can be turned on or off by relatively small control sequences. The DNA similarity data don’t quite mean what the evolutionary popularizers claim!

Consider it mentioned, and dealt with.