Proof of Evolution: Humans are Evolving

^ Excellent posts. Grade A. That is what I love to see on GC, a reply that uses examples and evidence to respectfully refute the other person's previous statement.


I never made it to that last part of the video, and with that nice little essay of yours I now have an improved point of view on the subject and the videos themselves. He does make some interesting points at times but most of what he says is either completely unfounded or at the very least overstated aka opinion stated as fact.

I completely agree that there is no point giving something the benefit of the doubt if you have evidence that proves it inaccurate (negative evidence, that you ironically bashed then used very succesfully to disprove the video). It's just that witholding that evidence and only refuting the opinion does nothing for science, negative evidence is just as important as positive evidence, every time.

 

^Or.. think of it this way. Technology will evolve us, instead of the other way around.

 

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This is a picture of fossil homonid skulls from the Smithsonian. The picture is arranged as so: The skull labeled A is a modern chimpanzee skull. The skull labeled N is a modern human skull. The ones labeled B through M are fossils arranged in chronological order from oldest to youngest. To me this is an excellent example of transitional fossils. Each skull grades into the next. It is also HIGHLY suggestive that evolution occurred. If you do not accept that, ask yourself a couple of questions: (1) “Where do ape skulls end and human skulls begin?” and (2) “Exactly what criteria did you use to determine that?” If you find your answers to those questions unsatisfactory, then ask yourself a third question (3) “Why should this NOT be considered excellent evidence that chimps and humans share a common ancestry.

But wait! There's more. Most people know by now that chimpanzees and humans share between 95 and 99% sequence homology in their DNA. This too is highly suggestive of common ancestry. Creationists, however, claim that this is better explained by common functionality. I'm going to show you they are wrong.

Look at the following picture:

What you see are pairs of chromosomes. In each pair the chromosome on the left is human and the chromosome on the right is chimpanzee. These chromosomes have been stained with Giemsa dye. Giemsa is soluble in an environment with a basic pH. The outside of DNA is acidic and Giemsa will not stain it. However, the inside is basic and Giemsa will penetrate it. Thus, Giemsa will stain DNA only where the chromatin puffs out enough for it to gain access to the inside of the DNA molecule. So when Giemsa is applied to a chromosome, it will only stain it in certain places. The staining produces a stereotypic pattern of banding (G-banding) that allows us to uniquely identify each of the 23 pairs of chromosomes in humans. Note that each human chromosome has unique chimpanzee chromosomes that correspond to it.

Modern evolutionary theory says the reason for this is because chimpanzees and humans have shared a common ancestor in the not so distant past. ID would call this another example of common functionality. But there is no reason for it. It does not matter what chromosome a gene complex may be on. Nor does it matter what gene complexes may be its neighbor. By all rights human and chimp chromosomes could have had no G-banding similarity and still have been as functionally similar as they are. So from an ID perspective the G-banding similarity is solely because the designer decided to do it that way because he was either too lazy or saw no reason to vary it from one species to another. From an evolutionary perspective, IF chimps and humans shared a recent common ancestor, it HAD to be that way.

To show you that chromosome structure between humans and chimps do not have to be identical, let me show you the evidence that they are already beginning to diverge in interesting and evolutionarily significant ways. This picture that shows you just the G-banding pattern of human chromosome 2 (again on the left) and its chimpanzee homologues (on the right):

Look! Human chromosome 2 is homologous to TWO chimpanzee chromosomes. The top part of human chromosome 2 shares a G-banding pattern with one chimp chromosome while the bottom part shares a G-banding pattern with a different chimp chromosome! (If you were to go back to the original picture and look closely you would see the same thing there).
Indeed! While humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, chimpanzees have 24. How could this have happened? From an evolutionary perspective there are two ways, sometime between the split of lineages that led to modern humans on the one hand and modern chimps on the other, either two chromosomes fused together to form human chromosome 2 or chromosome 2 split to form two chimpanzee chromosomes. Can we tell which one it was? YES!
This picture shows human chromosome 2 (again on the left) and its homologues not only with chimpanzees, but also homologous chromosomes of gorillas and oranguatans.

What we see here is that not only chimps, but also gorillas and orangutans have two chromosomes homologous with human chromosome 2. And consistent with that is the fact that both gorillas and orangutans have 24 pairs of chromosomes. That says that IF there was a common ancestor then almost certainly that common ancestor had 24 pairs of chromosomes. That means, IF evolutionary theory is correct then human chromosome 2 was formed by a fusion of two chromosomes. Is there any evidence for that? You BET!

First, chromosomal fusions are common. It has been seen that during both mitosis and meiosis occasionally one chromosome will become translocated onto another. This type of chromosomal mutation even has a name. It is called a ROBERTSONIAN TRANSLOCATION.

Second, chromosomes are made of long linear strands of DNA. At each end of the strand is a TELOMER. Telomers have a stereotypic sequence to them. In other words, just by doing DNA sequencing we can tell when we are sequencing near the end of the chromosome. But, if human chromosome 2 were actually a product of a Robertsonian translocation, then the two chromosomes that must have fused together would have fused telomere to telomere, leaving a telomeric-like sequence in the middle of the chromosome. Do we find such a telomeric-like sequence in the middle of the chromosome? OH YEAH!

Third, if you go back and you look at those pictures of chromosomes you will notice that each chromosome has constriction in it. It is almost as though it had a little waist. This is called the CENTROMERE. It is the place where spindle fibers attach to the chromosome so that in cell division it can be pulled to the appropriate pole of the cell. Centromeric regions of the chromosome ALSO have a stereotypic sequence. So again we can tell by DNA sequence when we in that region.

If as evolutionary theory says, human chromosome 2 is the product of a Robertsonian translocation of two chromosomes, each with its own centromere, then we should find not just one centromeric region in the chromosome (like most chromosome have) but instead we should find two. Do we? ABSOLUTELY.

So what does that mean? It means that we almost certainly had an ancestor that had 24 pairs of chromosomes like chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans still have. Each of those chromosomes must have been VERY similar in structure to those of chimps, gorillas and orangutans. This all fits together perfectly IF humans, chimps, gorillas, and orangutans shared a common ancestor. One has to do a lot of hand-waving to make it fit with an ID perspective not involving common ancestry.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! (I'm beginning to feel like Ron Popiel selling knives in an infomercial). All mammals with the exception of Primates (monkeys, apes, and humans) and guinea pigs make their own vitamin C. They have to get vitamin C from their diets. The reason Primates and guinea pigs don't make vitamin C is that they are missing an enzyme, gulono-lactone-oxidase (GLO), that is necessary for its synthesis.

It turns out that within their genomes both Primates and guinea pigs have the gene to make GLO, it has just been inactivated by a mutation. This inactivation of a gene by mutation is common. Such a gene is called a pseudogene since it no longer produces a functional gene product. Pseudogenes are easily incorporated into modern evolutionary theory. If an organism finds itself in an environment such that the product of that gene is no longer necessary, then there is no selection pressure preventing such an inactivation. Pseudogenes are a bit harder to incorporate into an ID prospective. Why on earth would a designer put an non-functional gene in an organism's genome.

In any case, one thing that makes this particular example more convincing is that in all primates so fare examined the mutation that inactivates the gene is the same point mutation that causes a frameshift error. Frameshift errors generally lead to non-functional gene products.

However, guinea pigs are not particularly closely related to primates. There is no way that a single mutation could account for the fact that Primates and guinea pigs, but no other mammal, have non-functional GLO genes. Consistent with this is fact that the mutation that inactivates the guinea pig's GLO gene is different. In guinea pigs the gene is inactivated by a large section of it being deleted.

There is even more actually. HIV is a retrovirus. What is meant by that is that it incorporates it viral genome into the genome of the host cell. When it does so it includes genes that are common to all retroviruses. This allows us tell the exact site that a retrovirus has been inserted. Everything we know says the viruses are inserted at random places within the genome. Furthermore, retroviruses have been around a long time. Some of them have inserted themselves into sex cells and get passed onto succeeding generations. It turns out that humans and chimps share several identical retrovirus insertions at identical places in their genome. How did this happen if they do not share a common ancestor?

and: Modern Evolutionary Theory vs Intelligent Design | Progressive U.org

Some good copy pasta. Hope you like it.