Re: [asa] ICR's GENE project

> "The plan is to focus on analyzing the human genome, demonstrating the
> certainty that man and the animals have no common ancestor. A second goal is
> to establish the limits of the created "kind," delineating the limits of
> biological adaptation. I really do feel that in genomics we can conclusively
> show that "evolution by modification from a common ancestor" did not happen!

Neither goal could be achieved without data on other primates.
Actually, the first goal cannot be achieved at all-quite apart from
the fact that the data strongly point otherwise, it would be
impossible to entirely rule out the possibility of common ancestry
from such data. Even in the face of data favoring the ICR position
one could invent models involving common descent. (E.g., the analyzed
DNA has diverged too much in humans to be informative; common descent
has been adjusted a little with ID-style insertion of certain bits of
DNA, etc.) The second might be possible if one had a suitably precise
definition of "kind", but such cannot be obtained either from
Scripture or from the disparate uses found in creation science
literature.

As to the ethics of sending in a non-human primate sample, I think
one's approach would play a major factor. To test their methods, it
would be important that they did not know what the sample was, but it
might be possible to submit it explicitly as an unknown rather than
claiming to be a cousin. (This might result in different treatment at
their end, though, so it's hard to tell.) If they promptly informed
you that something was wrong with the sample and you insisted it was
really human, only to reveal that it wasn't after they publish, that
would seem dishonest. If they accepted the sample and didn't notice
anything unusual about it, or noticed but fudged the data or analysis,
then I think one could honestly use such an approach to debunk their
effort.

> Has anything "of lasting value" resulted from the RATE project?

The detailed report contains a number of admissions that run counter
to popular young-earth claims. However, as the popular summary
misreperesents it as a success, this information isn't reaching
young-earth supporters. It also consolidates a lot of bad arguments,
making it easy to see what needs refuting.

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections
University of Alabama
"I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
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