Sorry. You are correct. Patience is something I need to work on. I am an
extreme type A. Ask anyone who works for me.
Russ wrote:
>>> P.S. To me, de novo means brand new. For Adam, a new creation. Not an
animal. Not, as you postulate, from a dead animal. <<
O.K. Thanks for the clarification. The scripture says that God took dust
and formed Adam. Dust always contains the chemical remains of decayed
material. Thus what I see you saying is that it is alright for God to have
taken dust with throroughly decayed chemical remains and form Adam but not
alright for God to have proceeded prior to the full decay of an object.
The only reason I go with this approach is that there is too much chemical
and physical similarity between the apes and humans to be ignored. There
simply has to be a connection between us. The evidence for the connection is
as follows:
1 98% similarity in the genome of a Chimp and mankind
This is often ascribed to the action of the same designer. But that designer
also created the sea anemone and they don't look very similar to us, nor is
the chemistry that similar.
Your definition of de novo as meaning 'brand new' raises an interesting
point, God didn't make Adam "brand new" in some senses. If God wanted to
make a special being why hide that specialness by making him look like he
wasn't special. For instance, God could have given us a radically different
reproduction method from all the other animals. This would have made us
'brand new'. Maybe our genitalia could have been on our chests and we fed
our young by feeding them chewed up food regurgitated into their mouth.
Instead of hair or feathers God could have created us with a leaf-like
covering which also engaged in photosynthesis, allowing us to go a lot longer
without food. This certainly would have set us apart from all other phylum
on earth and made us appear special. But God didn't make us a 'brand new'
body plan, he used an old one.
When we consider all the possible ways God COULD have made us the question of
why God made us the way he did i.e. similar to the apes, becomes even more
glaring. God could have made us very, very different but he didn't.
2. The peudogenes. A pseudogene is a broken gene which has been mistakenly
inserted into a given location. Normal genes have a control segment and
several coding segments separated by what appear to be junk sections. When
the gene is expressed, the control portion is cut off, the junk cut out and a
tail added on. The gene is then read and converted to its protein. The
pseudogene I am about to discuss consists of the coding section and tail
inserted into the genome. Without the control part and junk part, the gene
can not be expressed.
WORKING GENE
-control-coding part A-Junk-coding part B-junk
Pseudogene
coding part A-coding part B-tail
Edward Max reports on the epsilon immunoglobulin gene. A pseudo-gene was
found in the same genomic location in man, gorilla, and gibbon, but not on
monkeys. Since this is an unworking gene, no claim can be made that it is due
to common design! In fact, it can be claimed to be bad design, like the
isolated parts of junk computer code which occassionally accumulate in
programs I write. If you decide to copy a book and sell it, the common
mistakes the original book has with the copy you are selling will convict you
of plagarism. This is especially true in the production of maps. Map makers
intentionally place errors on their maps so that if someone copies their map
they can prove it by the errors not by the good information.
Notice I did not say that the gene had been found at the same location in
chimpanzee. The interesting thing is that eventually a remnant of the
pseudogene was eventually found at the proper location in chimpanzees.
Apparently part of the psuedogene had been cut out by a genetic mistake in
the lineage of Chimps, but the mistake had been there at one time.
(See Edward Max, "Plagiarized Erros and Molecular Genetics'
CREATION/EVOLUTION 6:3 Winter 1986/1987, p. 34-46