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datapad
Friday, April 15, 2005
Frank Zindler: You see, the whole problem is he is saying that there is no scientific explanation to these things. He's saying only a magical solution is possible. Now one of the other things that Dr. Gish is required to believe without any contradiction from the evidence that he might someday find, is that humans and the apes were created separately, and that the humans and the apes are totally unrelated to each other. Now one of the problems, of course, that creation science, so-called, has, is to account for the fact that when you analyze the genome of the chimpanzee and that of the human being you find that the genes of chimps and humans are 99% identical. Now I know that Dr. Gish is fond of talking about clouds and watermelons being 99% water, but they aren't related. But, of course, he knows that a cloud is not 99% water, 40 and that what we're talking about is... the recipe [sic] for making a chimpanzee and a human being are 99% identical. We're not talking about the recipe to make a cloud or to make a watermelon. How do you account for this near identity of chimps and humans if they are not related? Duane Gish: The... it is said and I, I, I simply doubt that it's certainly rigidly true that chimpanzees and humans are 98.4% genetically similar. Frank Zindler: That's in the gorilla. Duane Gish: Now that has to be in the genes that governs the structural proteins, the enzymes and things like that, which would certainly not be a shocking surprise to a creationist. 41 After all apes and humans eat the same food, we have the same metabolic problem, we have to do all of these things. Why would not our biochemistry in that sense, be similar? 42 But now Frank, if you're trying to tell me and this audience that a chimpanzee and man are 98.4% similar, I will b'lieve that when you will allow your daughter to date a chimpanzee and so forth. And you know you wouldn't do that because there's a whale of a difference between a chimpanzee and a human. Frank Zindler: Ha, ha, ha. That's, that's a wonderful ad hominem. I've not heard that one before in all my years of debating. Duane, I'll give you the medal for that one. (laughter all around) Duane Gish: All right, now here's another thing. I have articles with me where molecular biologists are pointing out that contradictions between evolutionary phylogenetic trees based upon proteins and things like that, they are absolutely contradictory, they do not follow any... any evolutionary pattern at all. 43 Frank Zindler: Well, the entire, the overall pattern of molecular studies. Dr. Gish, you know perfectly well, shows a very close parallelism between the molecular evidence of homology and the comparative anatomical and fossil phylogenetic trees that have been drawn up. Now, one thing we better get back to the chimpanzee... Duane Gish: Now wait a minute Frank... Frank Zindler: Wait a minute, wait a minute! [hubbub] Duane Gish: I can contradict you... in an article just published in the... 1987... where the scientists, they have a ex... specific example, they studied mammalian phylogenetic trees based either on morphology or protein sequences, and this is what they say. This is published by Wyss, Novacek, and McKenna, 44 Molecular Biological Evolution, [sic] and that is 1987, they say this: "To a large extent, the mutual affinities of the mammalian orders continue to puzzle systemists [sic, Gish] even though comparative anatomy and amino acid sequences offer a massive data base from which these relationships could potentially be adduced." They go on to say, "Qualitative comparisons between the morphologically based and molecularly based trees are were [sic, Gish] also made; only moderate congruence between the two was observed." Jim Bleikamp: Okay, I want a brief response from Frank and then I'm going to go to some calls here. We're getting off here into some pretty highly technical... Frank Zindler: Yeah, I hope all the people out in listening land have memorized that. But I want to ask Dr. Gish, how come not only are the hemoglobins of chimpanzees and humans identical, but we share even pseudogenes. These are genes that are there in our DNA makeup, but the genes are non-functional. They can't do anything. How is it that we got the same useless genes from the creator that the chimpanzee did? Duane Gish: What is a pseudogene Frank? Frank Zindler: A pseudogene is a stretch of DNA that codes for a protein, but it lacks one of the control regions, and therefore it can't be turned on to actually produce protein. Duane Gish: You're saying there's a section of gene that has no function? Frank Zindler: That's correct. Duane Gish: It's useless? Frank Zindler: That's right. It's identical... Duane Gish: And you say that these have been carried on in the chimpanzee and the human for millions of years. Frank Zindler: Yes... Duane Gish: That's nonsense! --- footnote by frank zindler: At first, I thought Gish was trying to trap me into making some slight error in my definition of 'pseudogene,' so that he could make himself look like a superior authority in molecular genetics as well as in Genesis genetics. It is clear from what follows, however, that Gish is actually completely ignorant on the subject. In actual fact, pseudogenes are very useful to scientists in reconstructing evolutionary histories (phylogenies) of plants and animals. Since the pseudogenes no longer code for a protein or enzyme product which might determine the survival of its owner, pseudogenes have broken free from the constraints of natural selection and are free to mutate completely at random over the course of time. Analysis of the different changes that have accumulated in the pseudogenes of humans, apes, and other primates make it possible to reconstruct the pathways by which those species have separated from each other in the course of evolution. A good example of a pseudogene that is shared by humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans is the wn-globin gene. |
