What Are They Teaching at Washington University? S. Joshua Swamidass and the Chimp-Human Divergence

Stunning Evidence For Common Ancestry

I once had a rare and valuable baseball card I wanted to sell. I placed an ad and was shortly contacted by a collector. But to my dismay he wasn’t interested. He had probably looked at hundreds of baseball cards and it only required one look for him to know that my treasured card held no value for him. He did not attempt any negotiating tricks, just a polite “thank you” and off he went. I would have felt better about the encounter if he had tried to haggle down the price. For I would have had the comfort of knowing my card held at least some value. Instead, there was no price discovery—apparently the card was worthless.

I too am a collector of sorts. And like that baseball card collector I have looked at hundreds of specimens. No matter how unlikely the source or the venue, I will go there and have a look. And in short order, I will know exactly what I am looking at, and if there is any value there. But unlike the baseball card collector, my subject is not something you can touch. What I am interested in are the arguments and evidences for evolution. Ever since Darwin, evolutionists have insisted that their idea is undeniable—beyond all reasonable doubt. I find that complete certainty to be fascinating. So I search, find, analyze and categorize every justification and explanation for that conclusion that I can find.

My goal is to find the strongest, most powerful, such arguments and evidences, and to understand how we can have such certainty. This brings us to S. Joshua Swamidass’s recent article, Evidence and Evolution where Swamidass explains, in typical fashion, that the evidence for evolution is powerful and compelling. Swamidass describes the evidence as stunning. As a professor in the Genomic Medicine Division at Washington University, Swamidass deserves to be listened to. This is definitely a specimen I want to have a look at.

In his article, Swamidass’ focus is human evolution. Evolutionists believe that we humans evolved from a small ape-like creature and that our closest relative on the evolutionary tree is the chimpanzee. The chimpanzee must be our closest relative, they reason, because the chimp’s genome is closest to ours, and according to evolution, genetic mutations are the fuel behind evolutionary change.

The problem with this reasoning is that the chimpanzee is not very similar to humans according to many other measures. There are enormous differences between the two species. Simply put, from an evolutionary perspective the genetic data are not congruent with the other data. Swamidass’ evidence will need to overcome this obvious problem.

But that’s not all.

The basic idea of humans arising via a long series of genetic mutations is, itself, not indicated by the science and unlikely to say the least. Remember, the mutations have to be random. According to evolution, you can’t have mutations occurring for some purpose, such as creating a design. And natural selection doesn’t help—it cannot induce or coax the right mutations to occur. This makes the evolution of even a single protein, let alone humans, statistically impossible. So this is another enormous problem Swamidass’ evidence will need to overcome.

But that’s not all.

The incredible designs in the human body are not the only thing those random mutations have to create—they will also have to create human consciousness. Evolutionists may try to explain consciousness as an “emergent” property that just luckily arose when our brain somehow evolved. Or they may try to explain that consciousness is really no more than an illusion. But these are just more demonstrations of anti realism in evolutionary thought. Evolutionary theory constructs mechanisms and explanations that do not correspond to the real world. So this is another problem Swamidass will need to overcome.

But that’s not all.

In recent decades the genomes of humans and chimps have been determined, and they make no sense on evolution. One of the main problems is that the genes of the two species are almost identical. They are only about 1-2% different and, if you’re an evolutionist, this means you have to believe that the evolution of humans from a small, primitive, ape-like creature was caused by only a tiny modification of the genome.

This goes against everything we have learned about genetics. You can insert far greater genetic changes with far less change arising as a consequence. It makes little sense that tiny genetic changes could cause such enormous design changes to occur. This is yet another problem for Swamidass to overcome.

But that’s not all.

Not only is evolution limited to tiny genetic modifications to create the human, but the majority of those modifications would have had to be of little or no consequence. Here is how a 2005 paper on the chimpanzee-human genome comparisons put it:

In particular, we find that the patterns of evolution in human and chimpanzee protein-coding genes are highly correlated and dominated by the fixation of neutral and slightly deleterious alleles.

The paper is written from an evolutionary perspective, assuming that humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor. Given that a priori assumption, they were forced to conclude that most of the mutations affecting protein-coding genes led to “neutral and slightly deleterious alleles.” So not only are evolution’s random mutation resources meager, in terms of both quality and quantity as explained above, but even worse, those mutations mostly led to “neutral and slightly deleterious alleles.” This is no way to evolve the most complex designs in the world and it is yet another problem for Swamidass to overcome.

But that’s not all.

The supposed divergence rate between chimps and humans also has an unexplainable variation towards the ends of most chromosomes. This is another problem that seems to make no sense on evolution, which Swamidass must explain.

But that’s not all.

This supposed divergence rate between chimps and humans also has an unexplainable variation that correlates with chromosomal banding. Again, this makes no sense on evolution. Why should the chimp-human divergence vary with the banding pattern? Evolutionists have only just-so stories to imagine why this would have happened, and it is another problem for Swamidass to address.

But that’s not all.

This supposed divergence rate between chimps and humans is not consistent with the supposed divergence rate between the mouse and rat. The mouse-rat divergence is about an order of magnitude greater than the chimp-human divergence. And yet the mouse and rat are much more similar than the chimp and human. It makes no sense on evolution. In fact, before the rat genome was determined, evolutionists predicted it would be highly similar to the mouse genome. As one paper explained:

Before the launch of the Rat Genome Sequencing Project (RGSP), there was much debate about the overall value of the rat genome sequence and its contribution to the utility of the rat as a model organism. The debate was fuelled by the naive belief that the rat and mouse were so similar morphologically and evolutionarily that the rat sequence would be redundant.

The prediction that the mouse and rat genomes would be highly similar made sense according to evolution. But it was dramatically wrong.

Another approach is to ignore the morphological similarities and reason from the number of generations available to produce the genomic differences between the mouse and rat. The mouse-rat divergence date is estimated by evolutionists to be older than the chimp-human divergence date. Furthermore, the lifespan and generation time for mice and rats are much shorter than for chimps and humans. From this perspective, and given these two effects, one would conclude that the mouse-rat genetic divergence should be much greater—at least two orders of magnitude greater—than the chimp-human genetic divergence. But it isn’t. It is only about one order of magnitude greater.

So either way the mouse-rat comparison does not help to explain things and is another problem for Swamidass to explain.

Swamidass arguments and evidences

The science makes no sense on evolution. If we begin by assuming chimps and humans share a common ancestor, we end up with all kinds of contradictions and failures. So what exactly are Swamidass’ arguments and evidences? How is it that he is so certain? What is it in the data that he finds to be so stunning? And most importantly, how does he resolve the above problems?

Well, he doesn’t.

Astonishingly, Swamidass doesn’t even mention the above problems. It is as though they don’t exist. After some stories and high claims of certainty, here is what Swamidass says:

As predicted by common ancestry, human and chimpanzee genomes are extremely similar (greater than 98% similarity in coding regions), much more similar than we would expect without common descent. Remarkably, just as predicted by the fossil record, humans are about 10 times more genetically similar to chimpanzees than mice are to rats.

First, the high chimp-human genomic similarity was not predicted by common ancestry. No such prediction was made and no such prediction is required by common ancestry. Common ancestry would be just fine with very different levels of similarity than 98-99%. In fact, this high similarity makes no sense on evolution, for several of the reasons given above.

Swamidass’ claim that this evidence is a stunning confirmation of common ancestry is utterly at odds with the science. It is in stark contrast to the scientific facts.

Second, Swamidass’ claim that mouse-rat divergence, compared with the chimp-human divergence, is “just as predicted by the fossil record” is also blatantly false. While evolutionists can always combine various explanatory mechanisms to rationalize just about any comparison, that does not make for stunning evidence that is “just as predicted.”

Finally, the real strength of Swamidass’ argument lies in its metaphysics. The professor states that the chimp-human genome comparison is “much more similar than we would expect without common descent.”

Without common descent?

The evolutionist has just made an unbeatable (and unfalsifiable) argument.

This is not science. Swamidass’ claim about what is and isn’t likely “without common descent” is not open to scientific scrutiny.

Scientists, qua scientists, do not have knowledge of all possible explanations for the origin of life. This is why scientists, qua scientists, make statements about theories, not about the complement of a theory. A scientist cannot know that something is unlikely “without” his theory. That implies knowledge of all other possible theories. And that knowledge does not come from science.

This is the strength of Swamidass’ argument. Notice that with this metaphysical knowledge, all of the scientific problems melt away. No wonder he does not address them. They are inconsequential. At worst, they are simply interesting puzzles. The truth of the matter is already known.

If Swamidass is correct then, yes, of course, the genomic data must be strong evidence for common ancestry. But it all hinges on his metaphysics. This is not about science. It never was.

[Ed; Removed sentence about the orangutan, 1-Mb segments section, and the gene functionality section. Please see the followup article here.]

Evolution Professor: “None of these facts would make sense, if we weren’t related”

The IFF Statement

In his 1924 classic The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science E. A. Burtt explored the non scientific ideas that motivated and influenced the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But the story doesn’t end there and today non scientific ideas drive science as much as ever. Of course there is nothing wrong with non scientific, metaphysical reasoning, per se. Indeed science would be unable to proceed without a metaphysical basis. So the problem is not that science is driven by metaphysics, but rather that science is driven by bad metaphysics. Consider the recent Nelson-Velasco debate where professor Joel Velasco relied on the if-and-only-if reasoning that underlies evolutionary thought.

If there was any doubt about evolution’s reliance on metaphysics before the debate began, it was quickly dispelled when Velasco began his segment with what has effectively become the motto of evolution: “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” This motto comes from the title of a famous paper written by evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky and it is none other than an if-and-only-if statement. For example, if-and-only-if evolution is true, then we should observe X. Here is a sequence of equivalent statements to illustrate this:

● Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.
● Everything in biology makes sense only in the light of evolution.
● Only with evolution does anything in biology make sense.
● Only evolution can explain anything in the entire biological world.
● If-and-only-if evolution is true, then we should find what we find in the entire biological world.

But a scientist, qua scientist, cannot know that a particular theory is the only explanation for a particular observation (much less the entire biological world). That knowledge simply cannot come from science.

As I have discussed many times (here, here, here and here, for example), this if-and-only-if statement (or IFF for short), is bad metaphysics. It cannot be known to be true, and yet evolutionary reasoning entails just this. It is practically the official motto of evolution and, true to form, was a constant theme for Velasco. No less than ten times in the debate Velasco made this non scientific claim. Here are some examples, in Velasco’s own words:

[23:15] Now I’m going to tell you how I know that [all life is related via common ancestry] is true. So, the basic reason is the following. Now, Theodosius Dobzhansky was an important geneticist, he passed away in 1975, but before he did, in 1974, he penned an essay called, “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.” Now he was a committed Russian Orthodox Christian, who in the actual article defended theistic creationism, he said, “Well, God got it started and then evolution,” but I’m not going to talk about that part. I’m just going to talk about the basic fact that he was right. [23.50] Nothing in biology makes any sense unless you believe in evolution, and then it does. That’s the basic argument.

[28:16] How do you predict this nested hierarchical structure? What does this have to do with evolution? Well only an evolutionary process—only descent with modification can possibly explain why when you look at different traits you get the same classification, over and over and over again.

And you know what? There are transposon elements, ALU elements, in exactly the same place in the chimp genome as in the human genome. With exactly the same sequences. Why? I’ll tell you why. Because actually, when the transposon jumped, it was in an ancestor of humans and chimps, and then just got passed on. That’s why. [49:05] None of these facts would make sense, if we weren’t related. It would be a massive coincidence.

[52:35] So common ancestry explains all the similarities we share with the other apes, and not just similarities—it’s not like “well we’re bound to be close to something,” similarities in precise ways. That only can be explained by common descent. But common descent leads to puzzles. If we’re related, how can you get there from here? Lots of times we don’t know. But we can still see the effects. Here, now, we know.

[53:02] Nothing else could explain this data other than a fusion, and the fusion answers the puzzle of how we got there from here. So I want to just say that there is so much evidence, that backs this up. Now I don’t have time to go through it all, but in fact it’s the same kind of reasoning that goes all the way through, all of life. I know Paul wants me to say that because that’s what he’s going to focus on, but everything is related. We see the effects throughout our bodies, throughout our fossils, throughout all life. We see the effects of common descent, nothing else can explain it. Thanks.

[1:32:59] And they started in one place. Why are there penguins in South America and Antarctica, and the bottom of Africa? Well because they’re all in one place. Well you might say, “They’re not in one place.” Well 150 MYA that was one place because it was connected. Common descent explains these facts, nothing else does, even if you don’t know the origin of the penguins.

This repeated theme is not a slip of the tongue. It was a consistent, underlying and crucial theme for Velasco, as it has been for evolutionary thought in general. Indeed, Velasco canonizes it as “the basic argument.” This is the type of reasoning that proves evolution is a fact.

Religion drives science, and it matters.