Casey Luskin at the Discovery Institute has made a post on this issue. He introduces it:
I think most people would say we are special. In fact, many people would say we are so great that we do not deserve to be tortured in hell for eternity, but besides that, Luskin sums it up.
But then he goes on:
The problem is that there are different ways to measure these things; if you want to emphasise the similarity you choose one, and if you want to emphasise the difference you choose the other. So where does that leave us?
The important point is that chimp DNA is closer to human DNA than it is to gorilla DNA. And all three are closer to each other than they are to orangutans. And all the great apes are more similar to each other than they are to monkeys.
How does Luskin address that?
Well, of course he does not. He knows creationism cannot explain it, so he quietly sweeps in under the rug. It is, of course, pseudo-science, not real science, so ignoring evidence you do not like is standard procedure.
For years we’ve been told that human and chimp DNA is some 99 percent identical. The genetic similarity statistic is then used to make an argument for human-ape common ancestry, and human-ape common ancestry is then employed in service of the larger philosophical point that humans are just modified apes, and nothing special.
I think most people would say we are special. In fact, many people would say we are so great that we do not deserve to be tortured in hell for eternity, but besides that, Luskin sums it up.
But then he goes on:
In 2007, not long after the chimp genome was first sequenced, the journal Science published an article, “Relative Differences: The Myth of 1%,” which called the idea that humans are only 1 percent genetically different from chimps a “myth” and a “truism [that] should be retired.” It observed that the genetic differences between humans and chimps amount to “35 million base-pair changes, 5 million indels [sequences of multiple nucleotide bases] in each species, and 689 extra genes in humans.” The article further reported that if we consider the number of copies of genes in the human and chimp genomes, “human and chimpanzee gene copy numbers differ by a whopping 6.4%.”
The problem is that there are different ways to measure these things; if you want to emphasise the similarity you choose one, and if you want to emphasise the difference you choose the other. So where does that leave us?
The important point is that chimp DNA is closer to human DNA than it is to gorilla DNA. And all three are closer to each other than they are to orangutans. And all the great apes are more similar to each other than they are to monkeys.
While the genetic difference between individual humans today is minuscule – about 0.1%, on average – study of the same aspects of the chimpanzee genome indicates a difference of about 1.2%. The bonobo (Pan paniscus), which is the close cousin of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), differs from humans to the same degree. The DNA difference with gorillas, another of the African apes, is about 1.6%. Most importantly, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans all show this same amount of difference from gorillas. A difference of 3.1% distinguishes us and the African apes from the Asian great ape, the orangutan. How do the monkeys stack up? All of the great apes and humans differ from rhesus monkeys, for example, by about 7% in their DNA.
Genetics
humanorigins.si.edu
How does Luskin address that?
Well, of course he does not. He knows creationism cannot explain it, so he quietly sweeps in under the rug. It is, of course, pseudo-science, not real science, so ignoring evidence you do not like is standard procedure.