Just a few thoughts. Do theists here accept the basic premise that one doesn't invoke supernatural causation where a natural explanation already exists? Also, re common design vs common descent, is there anyway you could imagine that we could tell the difference between the two? Is there any discovery which would make one more likely than the other, or even a discovery that would rule one of them out?
On this topic, have any creationists read this by Todd Wodd - http://documents.clubexpress.com/documents...lyArVOo%2FgM%3D - he is a trained biochemist giving his view on the data from a creationist point of view.
"Since the Bible clearly teaches the special creation of human beings (Gen. 1:26-27; 2:7, 21-22), what does the similarity of humans and chimpanzees mean for creationists? Creationists have responded to these studies in a variety of ways. A very popular argument is that similarity does not necessarily indicate common
ancestry but could also imply common design (e.g. Batten 1996; Thompson and Harrub 2005; DeWitt 2005). While this is true, the mere fact of similarity is only a small part of the evolutionary argument. Far more important than the mere occurrence of similarity is the kind of similarity observed. Similarity is not random. Rather, it forms a detectable pattern with some groups of species more similar than others. As an example consider a 200,000 nucleotide region from human chromosome 1 (Figure 2). When compared to the chimpanzee, the two species differ by as little as 1-2%, but when compared to the mouse, the differences are much greater. Comparison to chicken reveals even greater differences. This is exactly the expected pattern of similarity that would result if humans and chimpanzees shared a recent common ancestor and mice and chickens were more distantly related. The question is not how similarity arose but why this particular pattern of similarity arose. To say that God could have created the pattern is merely ad hoc. The specific similarity we observe between humans and chimpanzees is not therefore evidence merely of their common ancestry but of their close relationship.
Evolutionary biologists also appeal to specific similarities that would be predicted by evolutionary descent. Max’s (1986) argument for shared errors in the human and chimpanzee genomes would be an example of a specific similarity expected if evolution were true. This argument could be significantly amplified from recent findings of genomic studies.
For example, Gilad et al. (2003) surveyed 50 olfactory receptor genes in humans and apes. They found that the open reading frame of 33 of the human genes were interrupted by nonsense codons or deletions, rendering them pseudogenes. Sixteen of these human pseudogenes were also pseudogenes in chimpanzee, and they all shared the exact same substitution or deletion as the human sequence. Eleven of the human pseudogenes were shared by chimpanzee, gorilla, and human and had the exact same substitution or deletion. While common design could be a reasonable first step to explain similarity of functional genes, it is difficult to explain why pseudogenes with the exact same substitutions or deletions would be shared between species that did not share a common ancestor.
Creationists have addressed these more specific arguments in a variety of ways. Batten (1996) makes three arguments: (1) similarity is necessary to reveal a single Creator, since dissimilarity implies multiple creators (also in ReMine 1993, p. 23), (2) biochemical similarity is functionally necessary in order for humans (and other organisms) to obtain food (also in Wise 1992), (3) the anatomical similarity of humans and chimpanzees should imply a molecular similarity as well (also in Wise 1992; Rana 2001; Wieland 2002).
The first two arguments are good reasons to create some degree of biological or biochemical similarity but they do not explain degrees of similarity. If there were no nonhuman primates, humans would still be recognizably mammalian and therefore revealed as part of the design of a single Creator, but humans would also stand out as special mammals not closely similar to any other particular group of mammals. The necessity for a common biochemistry for nutrient cycles does not explain why chimpanzees exist. They neither form a major source of dietary nutrients for most humans nor share a significant fraction of the diet of most humans. Further, common biochemistry would not explain shared pseudogenes. The third argument merely shifts the problem to the anatomical level. The question remains as to why God created an animal that is so similar to humans.
More recently, creationists have begun to argue that the similarity between chimpanzees and humans is less – sometimes much less – than claimed by evolutionary biologists (DeWitt 2003, 2005; Criswell 2005; Thompson and Harrub 2005). These arguments are inspired in part by a study by Britten (2002) that concluded that the overall similarity of human and chimpanzee genomes is 95%. Britten arrived at this greater dissimilarity by including in his calculations not only nucleotide mismatches but also alignment gaps. Creationists also tend to emphasize other important differences between the human and chimpanzee genomes, including the differing chromosome numbers (DeWitt 2003, 2005) and the differences in gene expression in the humans and chimpanzees (Rana 2001).
Differences are certainly important, and there are many differences between the human and chimpanzee genomes, as detailed above. However, emphasizing these differences does not resolve the problem of similarity. Even if the chimpanzee genome were more than 5% or 10% different from the human genome, the differences are still vastly outnumbered by the similarities (at least 9 to 1). The major pattern that requires explanation is the surprising degree of genomic similarity, as King and Wilson (1975) noted thirty years ago. Listing differences between the genomes does not alter the overall pattern. If anything, the differences are more striking because of the overwhelming similarity.
Having found most popular arguments about the human/chimpanzee genome similarity insufficent, I find myself in the unenviable position of devising my own explanation. Since I have none, I will attempt instead to develop some principles that could guide research into this problem."
Is Wood wrong in his assessment of the data? If so, why?
Anyway, it is definitely worth reading what he has to say, whatever you think about this subject.
