Man or Mouse

[1798]

"Courtesy: National Human Genome Research Institute"
http://www.genome.gov/10001345
"Overall, mice and humans share virtually the same set of genes. Almost every gene found in one species so far has been found in a closely related form in the other. Of the approximately 4,000 genes that have been studied, less than 10 are found in one species but not in the other."

I am glad that we are able to make up our own minds about this science.

[dna]

An electric chair also has a closely related form to an ordinary chair..., but the outcome is very different!

W.

[1798]

An electric chair also has a closely related form to an ordinary chair..., but the outcome is very different!

W.

For any scientist to say that humans and mice share a common ancestor is ridiculous.
We modern humans are supposed to be descended from a man who lived 340,000 years ago. Has some of the descendants evolved into chimps?

[PNGarrison]

The branch point for the common ancestor with chimps was somewhere around 6 million years ago, but the date you get depends on the mutation rate you use for the calculation. I think the paleontologists have a few reasonable candidates for some species in Africa close to the common ancestor. It seems rather odd to spend so much time on recent human evolution and then deny the broader theory. Or maybe you were kidding?

I wrote a blog post a few years ago on some of the best genomic evidence for our common descent with other primates. It's the second post down on http://biomattersarising.blogspot.com/

The first is a basic explanation of the how mtDNA and Y chr. SNPs are used for tree building and inference of AMH migrations.

Maybe I'll have to write one on genomic evidence for common descent of mammals. There is a lot of it.

[1798]

The branch point for the common ancestor with chimps was somewhere around 6 million years ago, but the date you get depends on the mutation rate you use for the calculation. I think the paleontologists have a few reasonable candidates for some species in Africa close to the common ancestor. It seems rather odd to spend so much time on recent human evolution and then deny the broader theory. Or maybe you were kidding?

I wrote a blog post a few years ago on some of the best genomic evidence for our common descent with other primates. It's the second post down on http://biomattersarising.blogspot.com/



The first is a basic explanation of the how mtDNA and Y chr. SNPs are used for tree building and inference of AMH migrations.

Maybe I'll have to write one on genomic evidence for common descent of mammals. There is a lot of it.

Plants,trees,animals,humans etc. were created from the same or similar materials and are able to replicate.Does that mean we all have a common ancestor? Even Darwin in later years had doubts about his own theory.
There has been very little change in humans in 200,000 years. Why should 2,000,000 make a difference. Can you see chimps ruling the world some time in the future? That they will evolve into a brainy creature and look like us when humans all become extinct.
That is what we are being asked to believe. That we are descended from a brainless ape.

[PNGarrison]

Did you read the blog post I pointed you to?

I'm not really interested in arguing with you, as I've watched your protracted arguments with other people and seen how fruitless they are. I got a Ph.D. in biochemistry and worked in research for 35 years, and I've read a lot of material on the evidence. I don't think it's hard to understand if someone is really interested. No fancy math required.

It sounds like you really don't know much on the subject. I can't even figure out the point of your comments. You seem to be drawing inferences that don't really follow. I would suggest reading some background on the subject. The resources at the Biologos.org site are good and targeted at explaining things to the non-scientist. http://www.evolutionarymodel.com/ is also good.

[PNGarrison]

"That we are descended from a brainless ape."

I'm not sure what you mean here. Vertebrates and invertebrates all the way down to some primitive sea creatures all have nervous systems with some central processing. Chimps and other primates have very sophisticated brains that just don't have as much cerebral cortex as we do, and the common ancestor must have too.

[hansonrf]

@PNGarrison

Don't get excited... Don't type too fast or use real big words either as some of us folks might be part Irish...

[1798]

Did you read the blog post I pointed you to?

I'm not really interested in arguing with you, as I've watched your protracted arguments with other people and seen how fruitless they are. I got a Ph.D. in biochemistry and worked in research for 35 years, and I've read a lot of material on the evidence. I don't think it's hard to understand if someone is really interested. No fancy math required.

It sounds like you really don't know much on the subject. I can't even figure out the point of your comments. You seem to be drawing inferences that don't really follow. I would suggest reading some background on the subject. The resources at the Biologos.org site are good and targeted at explaining things to the non-scientist. http://www.evolutionarymodel.com/ is also good.

A person can believe in God and creation, the Big Bang theory or evolution. If one believes in evolution then how did the first ancestor come about?
I don't accept the theory that we are descended from an ape.
I don't accept the theory that we have a common ancestor with a mouse.

[PNGarrison]

A person can believe in God and creation, the Big Bang theory or evolution. If one believes in evolution then how did the first ancestor come about?
I don't accept the theory that we are descended from an ape.
I don't accept the theory that we have a common ancestor with a mouse.

It's possible to believe in God and believe that the Big Bang and evolution are the processes that He used to create. That in fact was a common response among well-informed Christians in the decades after Darwin. Asa Gray was a very prominent American biologist who was a friend of Darwin's. Gray was theologically quite conservative but considered common descent a good hypothesis. The famous Princeton theologian B.B. Warfield took the same position, as did many other American and British Christians.

[Concerning the Big Bang, I'm not big on trying to match up scientific theories with specific Biblical statements, but if the Big Bang happened, it makes "let there be light" a sort of wry understatement of the truth.]

Things became polarized to an either-or perspective with no middle ground in the fundamentalist-modernist controversies that began in the early 20th century and culminated in the '20s in the Scopes trial and several denominational splits into liberal and conservative denominations that accepted or rejected evolution as well as disagreeing on many other issues. The polarization was renewed by the publications of Henry Morris, an engineer, and Duane Gish, a biochemist, in the '60s, who argued that Christians were obliged to believe in special creation about 6000 years ago and "flood geology," accounting for all the vast sedimentary deposits as the results of the Genesis flood. That strict position is probably close to the perspective of most Christians before the scientific revolution, but had its modern roots in the Seventh Day Adventists, based on the visions of Mary Baker Eddy in the 19th century. An amateur geologist/Adventist named George MacReady Price worked out the details of the position in the early 20th century.

Frances Collins, who directed the public human genome project, is an adult convert to Christianity who takes a position similar to Gray and Warfield a century earlier, which he described in his book The Language of God. Collins of course has the advantage of a century's worth of evidence accumulated in biology, culminating in the results of comparative genomics, which he did as much as anyone to bring about. I recommend Collins book.

He founded the Biologos web site and organization to address issues in science and Christianity, not merely evolution, but other issues as well. He doesn't run it any more, as he is now the director of the NIH, which is a rather demanding job. I recommend the web site and blog. They usually put up 4-6 posts a week and have substantial resources on the site. If you join in commenting on the blog posts you do have to behave yourself, or the moderator will kick you off.

The question of where the first common ancestral cells came from is a difficult one scientifically, maybe the most difficult in science, both because it is the most difficult step in evolution and because it happened so long ago that a lot of the evidence has been lost. You can't tell a lot from the fossils of single cells. There has been a lot of work around the edges of the problem in the last 6 decades or so, but there really is no hypothesis that is terribly convincing to me, so I'm kind of uncommitted on what happened. But you don't have to know what happened way back there to make inferences about more recent events where the evidence is much clearer.

[1798]

It's possible to believe in God and believe that the Big Bang and evolution are the processes that He used to create. That in fact was a common response among well-informed Christians in the decades after Darwin. Asa Gray was a very prominent American biologist who was a friend of Darwin's. Gray was theologically quite conservative but considered common descent a good hypothesis. The famous Princeton theologian B.B. Warfield took the same position, as did many other American and British Christians.

[Concerning the Big Bang, I'm not big on trying to match up scientific theories with specific Biblical statements, but if the Big Bang happened, it makes "let there be light" a sort of wry understatement of the truth.]

Things became polarized to an either-or perspective with no middle ground in the fundamentalist-modernist controversies that began in the early 20th century and culminated in the '20s in the Scopes trial and several denominational splits into liberal and conservative denominations that accepted or rejected evolution as well as disagreeing on many other issues. The polarization was renewed by the publications of Henry Morris, an engineer, and Duane Gish, a biochemist, in the '60s, who argued that Christians were obliged to believe in special creation about 6000 years ago and "flood geology," accounting for all the vast sedimentary deposits as the results of the Genesis flood. That strict position is probably close to the perspective of most Christians before the scientific revolution, but had its modern roots in the Seventh Day Adventists, based on the visions of Mary Baker Eddy in the 19th century. An amateur geologist/Adventist named George MacReady Price worked out the details of the position in the early 20th century.

Frances Collins, who directed the public human genome project, is an adult convert to Christianity who takes a position similar to Gray and Warfield a century earlier, which he described in his book The Language of God. Collins of course has the advantage of a century's worth of evidence accumulated in biology, culminating in the results of comparative genomics, which he did as much as anyone to bring about. I recommend Collins book.

He founded the Biologos web site and organization to address issues in science and Christianity, not merely evolution, but other issues as well. He doesn't run it any more, as he is now the director of the NIH, which is a rather demanding job. I recommend the web site and blog. They usually put up 4-6 posts a week and have substantial resources on the site. If you join in commenting on the blog posts you do have to behave yourself, or the moderator will kick you off.

The question of where the first common ancestral cells came from is a difficult one scientifically, maybe the most difficult in science, both because it is the most difficult step in evolution and because it happened so long ago that a lot of the evidence has been lost. You can't tell a lot from the fossils of single cells. There has been a lot of work around the edges of the problem in the last 6 decades or so, but there really is no hypothesis that is terribly convincing to me, so I'm kind of uncommitted on what happened. But you don't have to know what happened way back there to make inferences about more recent events where the evidence is much clearer.

Christians were obliged to believe in special creation about 6000 years ago and "flood geology,". I don't believe in this.
How have humans evolved in 200,000 years? Where or what are the big differences?

[1798]

It's possible to believe in God and believe that the Big Bang and evolution are the processes that He used to create. That in fact was a common response among well-informed Christians in the decades after Darwin. Asa Gray was a very prominent American biologist who was a friend of Darwin's. Gray was theologically quite conservative but considered common descent a good hypothesis. The famous Princeton theologian B.B. Warfield took the same position, as did many other American and British Christians.

[Concerning the Big Bang, I'm not big on trying to match up scientific theories with specific Biblical statements, but if the Big Bang happened, it makes "let there be light" a sort of wry understatement of the truth.]

Things became polarized to an either-or perspective with no middle ground in the fundamentalist-modernist controversies that began in the early 20th century and culminated in the '20s in the Scopes trial and several denominational splits into liberal and conservative denominations that accepted or rejected evolution as well as disagreeing on many other issues. The polarization was renewed by the publications of Henry Morris, an engineer, and Duane Gish, a biochemist, in the '60s, who argued that Christians were obliged to believe in special creation about 6000 years ago and "flood geology," accounting for all the vast sedimentary deposits as the results of the Genesis flood. That strict position is probably close to the perspective of most Christians before the scientific revolution, but had its modern roots in the Seventh Day Adventists, based on the visions of Mary Baker Eddy in the 19th century. An amateur geologist/Adventist named George MacReady Price worked out the details of the position in the early 20th century.

Frances Collins, who directed the public human genome project, is an adult convert to Christianity who takes a position similar to Gray and Warfield a century earlier, which he described in his book The Language of God. Collins of course has the advantage of a century's worth of evidence accumulated in biology, culminating in the results of comparative genomics, which he did as much as anyone to bring about. I recommend Collins book.

He founded the Biologos web site and organization to address issues in science and Christianity, not merely evolution, but other issues as well. He doesn't run it any more, as he is now the director of the NIH, which is a rather demanding job. I recommend the web site and blog. They usually put up 4-6 posts a week and have substantial resources on the site. If you join in commenting on the blog posts you do have to behave yourself, or the moderator will kick you off.

The question of where the first common ancestral cells came from is a difficult one scientifically, maybe the most difficult in science, both because it is the most difficult step in evolution and because it happened so long ago that a lot of the evidence has been lost. You can't tell a lot from the fossils of single cells. There has been a lot of work around the edges of the problem in the last 6 decades or so, but there really is no hypothesis that is terribly convincing to me, so I'm kind of uncommitted on what happened. But you don't have to know what happened way back there to make inferences about more recent events where the evidence is much clearer.

1.I won't be joining the site.
2.That is why I believe in God.
I am a Christian and I have a young son born on Christmas day who is a clever and gentle kid.

[PNGarrison]

"How have humans evolved in 200,000 years? Where or what are the big differences?"

There probably haven't been much in the was of phenotypically big changes. Modern anatomical form was in place in Africa by about 200,000 ya. There are minor differences in skeletal anatomy in different populations, but it's not clear whether these came about with positive selection or just due to random changes. Since then we appear to have acquired some useful alleles from Neanderthals. Also, persistence of lactase expression was acquired in last 10,000 years or so among people who kept milk cattle. Changes in pigmentation in populations at high latitudes and in high altitude tolerance in mountain dwellers have occurred. There has likely been selection for some mitochondrial variants in response to local conditions. There are many more recent changes that can be seen in the genome, but why they were fixed or came to high allelic abundance hasn't been worked out yet. Some people have proposed that the acquisition of language has depended on recent mutations, but the main candidate, the FoxP2 gene, is the same in Neanderthals and modern humans. There might have been changes in other genes related to language that haven't been found yet.

As for whether you look at the resources available, suit yourself.

[PNGarrison]

More details in this article, although unfortunately it isn't free.

2014 Adaptations to local environments in modern human populations. Current Opinion in Genetics and Development. 29: 1

Also, this one is free in PubMed Central

Nat Rev Genet. 2012 Dec;13(12):853-66. doi: 10.1038/nrg3336.
Evolution of genetic and genomic features unique to the human lineage.

[dna]

"How have humans evolved in 200,000 years? Where or what are the big differences?"

There probably haven't been much in the was of phenotypically big changes. Modern anatomical form was in place in Africa by about 200,000 ya. There are minor differences in skeletal anatomy in different populations, but it's not clear whether these came about with positive selection or just due to random changes. Since then we appear to have acquired some useful alleles from Neanderthals. Also, persistence of lactase expression was acquired in last 10,000 years or so among people who kept milk cattle. Changes in pigmentation in populations at high latitudes and in high altitude tolerance in mountain dwellers have occurred. There has likely been selection for some mitochondrial variants in response to local conditions. There are many more recent changes that can be seen in the genome, but why they were fixed or came to high allelic abundance hasn't been worked out yet. Some people have proposed that the acquisition of language has depended on recent mutations, but the main candidate, the FoxP2 gene, is the same in Neanderthals and modern humans. There might have been changes in other genes related to language that haven't been found yet.

As for whether you look at the resources available, suit yourself.

Do you have anything handy that discusses mutation rates?

W.