Christians: If you Refect Evolution then why do you.....?

Question

....seek treatments for cancer, that are the product of genetics and evolutionary biology. Genetics has established that humans are a primate species, that is about 98% similar to chimpanzees in coded DNA. Yet you would not hesitate to get a genetic screening to see if you have the genetic markers for a certain cancer. Explain your hypocrisy please.....

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Reject, not Refect. Mo Baa

Answer 1

Oh my God. I had no idea that by being a Christian i was refecting evolution. I'm terribly sorry, I've been refected once and it wasn't good (you know, with the fog and all).

Personally i have nothing against evolution and it doesn't goes against christian faith, only against a particular interpretation of the Bible

Paz de Cristo

Answer 2

Who said Christians Reject Genetics?

The math behind the genetic theory of evolution is accurate, however, it does not match the physical evidence.

It is possible to predict specific genetic traits of some intermediate species in the "evolutionary" chain and the amount of time and time frame that these species would have been around. It is too bad that the fossil record does not support the math, otherwise you might actually have a case for evolution.

The math is a fact. The interpretation of the facts is called theory and that is exactly what the "genetic evidence" of evolution is.

Christians can believe in genetics without believing in evolution because we are not stupid enough to think theories are facts.

Answer 3

The word you need to use is 'genomics' not genetics, and the sequence homology is 98.5 %.

But that percentage is based on only a fraction of the total genome of man and chimpanzees. If indels, heterochromatin, and unresolved alignment gaps are included, the homology drops BELOW 90%.

But even if the homology is 98.5 %, what does that prove? Let me again emphazise, creationists and evolutionists use the same scientific data; the difference lies in the interpretation of that data.

And you need to differentiate between microevolution and macroevolution. Everybody accepts microevolution. What was your question again?

Answer 4

Genetics has established that humans are a primate species, that is about 98% similar to chimpanzees in coded DNA.

All that proves is that there is a common designer. It doesn't prove that two species had a common ancestor. Not believing in the far fetched theory that all of the complex DNA code is the result of time + chance + natural selection doesn't mean that human beings cannot benefit from studying the code that God designed.

Dr. Francis S. Collins is Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He currently leads the Human Genome Project, directed at mapping and sequencing all of human DNA, and determining aspects of its function. His previous research has identified the genes responsible for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, Huntington's disease and Hutchison-Gilford progeria syndrome. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences. For the rest of his credentials, click on the link here: http://www.genome.gov/10000980. Collins spoke with Bob Abernethy of PBS, posted online at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/transcripts/collins.html, in which he summaries the compatability of fact and faith thusly:

"I think there's a common assumption that you cannot both be a rigorous, show-me-the-data scientist and a person who believes in a personal God. I would like to say that from my perspective that assumption is incorrect; that, in fact, these two areas are entirely compatible and not only can exist within the same person, but can exist in a very synthetic way, and not in a compartmentalized way. I have no reason to see a discordance between what I know as a scientist who spends all day studying the genome of humans and what I believe as somebody who pays a lot of attention to what the Bible has taught me about God and about Jesus Christ. Those are entirely compatible views.

"Science is the way -- a powerful way, indeed -- to study the natural world. Science is not particularly effective -- in fact, it's rather ineffective -- in making commentary about the supernatural world. Both worlds, for me, are quite real and quite important. They are investigated in different ways. They coexist. They illuminate each other. And it is a great joy to be in a position of being able to bring both of those points of view to bear in any given day of the week. The notion that you have to sort of choose one or the other is a terrible myth that has been put forward, and which many people have bought into without really having a chance to examine the evidence. I came to my faith not, actually, in a circumstance where it was drummed into me as a child, which people tend to assume of any scientist who still has a personal faith in God; but actually by a series of compelling, logical arguments, many of them put forward by C. S. Lewis, that got me to the precipice of saying, 'Faith is actually plausible.' You still have to make that step. You will still have to decide for yourself whether to believe. But you can get very close to that by intellect alone."

Answer 5

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, 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 obtained the original data and used them in their discussion of which parameters should be used in homology studies. 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.

Answer 6

Keep in mind that even if a scientific theory has been shown to present a fundamentally wrong model of reality, it can still be useful. Einstein's view of the universe superceded Newton's, but Newton's laws got us to the moon and back. Einstein's gravitation theory can't cope with quantum effects, but theoreticians still depend on it.

Answer 7

How do you equate a belief in the creation with getting a screening for cancer as being hypocrisy? Anything to bash a Christian, I guess.

Answer 8

if the study of evolution leads to discovering somthing then thats great ... it doesnt necessarily mean the theory is correct ... it means they were looking and found somthing ... and i dont reject sound knowledge .... and btw 98% similar means nothing to a code as large and complex as dna ...

Answer 9

It is only the fundamentalist extremists in USA Christianity and Arabic Islam who reject science and choose religion instead.
They are extremely anti-science in the USA

Answer 10

Not all Christians reject (if that's the word you meant) evolution. Hell, I had a biology teacher who was a Xaviaran Brother.