I have recently read several articles from anti-evolutionists that supposedly “prove” that the extreme similarity between humans and chimpanzees (or bonobos) is a “myth”. Their argument depends on the fact that when doing this type of comparison, Count Number Variations (CNVs) (among other things) are not included and if CNVs are included, then the percentage drops to ~95% (or lower).
Indeed, this is true. CNVs are generally not included as they are not considered by most geneticists to be relevant when making a comparison. If this is the case, doesn’t it blow the idea of us being similar to chimpanzees out of the water and that the anti-evolutionists are right?
Well, not exactly, but the anti-evolutionists would like you to think so.
Here’s the problem. Indeed, if you include CNVs, the percentage of similarity drops. However, if you include CNVs when comparing humans to other humans, recent studies show that the similarity of human genes to each other drops from 99.9% (on average) to as far as 90%! What that means is that it is possible that a given pair of humans may have more in common genetically with a chimpanzee than with each other if you use the same criteria! Are one of the two humans not really human? Or, is the chimp more human than one (or both) of them?
Nice try anti-evolutionists, but no cigar. You need to make sure you are comparing apples to apples.
But here’s the real “hidden” myth. The real myth is that life on our planet is actually organized in discrete groups like species, genus, phylum, etc. That whole taxonomy is a structure imposed on life by human beings from the outside and is completely arbitrary! Life on our planet and the DNA it is based on is a continuum (at least until you get down to the atomic level–but the number of base pairs is practically limitless).
Where do you draw the line between species? Originally, it was all about how things looked. Well, that can’t be right because a dachshund and a great dane look quite a bit different (to me at least) so they’re different species, right? Nope. Well, of course not. All dogs, wolves and coyotes are canines, so they must be all the same species. Nope. Canines, belong to the genus Canis–it’s a genus not a species. But, dogs, wolves and coyotes are still the same species, right? Nope. Dogs belong to the species Canis Familiaris, wolves (some of them at least) belong to Canis Lupus, and coyotes belong to Canis Latrans. (To be fair, Canis Familiaris can be considered a subspecies of Canis Lupus, but that doesn’t change that coyotes are a different species).
Suppose you have a box full of shapes: cubes, spheres, and tetrahedrons (four-sided solids). They are of various sizes and colors (let’s assume red, green and blue). Now, you want to organize them so you can better classify and understand them. One obvious way to organize them would be by shape; group all the cubes together, all the spheres and all the tetrahedrons. That would be perfectly valid if shape were important to you.
But what if color were more important? You could group all the red shapes together, all the green shapes and all the blue shapes. That would be equally as valid. So, how do you choose which way? It’s totally up to the person (people) doing the grouping and what’s important to them. In other words, arbitrary.
What happens if you have a shape that’s a bluish-green and you are grouping by color? Someone might say it’s blue, but someone else might say it’s green? Who is right? It depends on who is looking at the object. Of course, you could always create a new “blue-green” group, but where do you draw the line? When does a blue object become green enough to be blue-green (or green) or when does a green object become blue enough to be blue-green (or blue)? Again, it’s completely arbitrary.
The divisions used for life on Earth are also completely made up. You could draw lines between animals in other ways than we currently do, and those groupings would still be valid. For example, we could group animals by whether they live on land or water. That would group fish and cetaceans together where, traditionally they are not. You could group land animals by whether they live (make their home) in trees or on the ground. That would group birds together with other non-birds that live in trees (such as some primates). You could group animals that fly and those that don’t. Birds and bats would go together when ordinarily they wouldn’t. These are all valid groupings…and just as arbitrary as the groupings (e.g. species) we currently use.
At one time, anti-evolutionists maintained that evolution did not happen at all. Then, as evidence mounted, they had to concede (there may be a few die-hards out there) that it happened, but only within a species, not across species. But, if the concept of a species is completely arbitrary (and it is), how can you know that a mutation did not cross a species boundary line?
You can’t, because it depends upon where that boundary is and that depends upon who’s drawing the line.
Now, if an anti-evolutionist can show me in one of their holy books where their god has specified to which groups (species) all the animals (and plants) on Earth belong and the criteria by which we can judge, then they might have something. But until then, the divisions between species is something man-made and imposed from the outside and is subject to question and error. That means that the idea that evolution cannot cross species is also subject to question and error.
Every time that religion has come up against science regarding anything in nature, religion has lost. The Christian church once taught that the Earth was the center of the universe and punished, sometimes severely, anyone who dared to say otherwise.
But, they were wrong.
Religion needs to stay in the realm where it belongs: the realm of things outside or beyond nature (the so-called “supernatural”) and leave natural things to that which has a much better track record of being correct.
Namely, science.
Be well and think well