On 6/20/12 09:42 , Kevin Alfred Strom wrote:
On 6/19/2012 7:05 PM, Mike wrote:
On Tuesday, June 19, 2012 11:16:01 AM UTC-4, Ric Trexell wrote:
[...]
That fish turned into a monkey. 8. That monkey turned into a
man. So although evolutionists say we are related to the
monkey, we are really related to a rock. If you have any
problem with this, according to evolutionists you are nuts. I
hope this clears up any misunderstanding as to what
evolutionist believe. This is what is taught in the public
education system and our colleges. Those that don't think we
were evolved from a rock are called creationists. So next time
you pick up a rock to throw in the lake or river, look it over
carefully because it might be your ancestor.

As hard as it is for you to accept, everything in this universe
comes from elements created by the fusion of hydrogen. But
hydrogen can result in many different elements under conditions
of enormous pressure. I choose to believe that this is the
process God used to create the universe. God's creation is what
we have in common with rocks, stars, and all life throughout the
universe. Only the truly ignorant can think they can explain
exactly how God created this Universe, but I think people with
intelligence can figure that the total story was not neatly laid
out in Genesis.

I pity someone whose faith requires them to abandon scientific
reasoning. They need to closely examine the foundations of such a
belief.




A creationist may not acknowledge that he is related to a chimp, but he
probably would admit that he is related to his own mother. "After all,"
he might say, "obviously I share 50 per cent. of my genes with her."

But that estimate is wildly off the mark. Actually, he shares more than
99.9 per cent. of his genes with her -- because, in addition to the
obvious one-half _direct_ ancestry, he shares almost _all_ of his
ancestry with her in common, because _both_ his parents share almost
identical common ancestry too.

_Common ancestry_ is the only rational explanation, and it is the full
explanation, for the near-total agreement between the gene-patterns of
father, mother, and child.

Common ancestry is also the only reasonable explanation for the
astonishingly high degree of common ancestry between humans and other
mammals.

The genetic similarity of a man and a mouse, for example, is about 92
per cent.

It is almost as if you had a 100-volume set of the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_, with each volume consisting of 1,000 pages of very small
type on onionskin paper, 100,000 pages in all -- and then compared it to
another, unknown, encyclopedia, and discovered that its first 92,000
pages were _absolutely identical_ to those in the _Britannica_ (to say
nothing of the fact that the remaining 8,000 pages had a lot of
similarities too).

Could that be a random coincidence? Could the two encyclopedias have
just by some sort of luck, or by the very nature of
encyclopedia-writing, turned out to be _that_ similar? I don't think so.
It would be obvious to anyone not inebriated by Maury Povich, Benny
Hinn, or Jack Daniels that one was derived from the other -- or that
both were derived from a common source.

Mice and men share so many -- almost all, in fact -- of our genes
because we share many, many common ancestors.

Common genes equals common ancestors.

The percentage of genes we share with other species is a measure of how
many common ancestors we share with them -- and that itself is a measure
of how long ago we diverged from them.

Bearing that relationship in mind, consider that we share 44 per cent.
of our genes in common with fruit flies -- 26 per cent. with yeast --
and almost 20 per cent. in common with a grain of wheat.

That is proof as absolute as it is possible to get in this imperfect
world that there was a time, long long ago, when our ancestors -- and
wheat's ancestors -- _were the same species_.

For even in a case where "only" the first twenty volumes of the
encyclopedia -- 20,000 pages -- were word-for-word identical with our
_Britannica_, who would be so foolish as to say they had no common source?



With all good wishes,


Kevin Alfred Strom.



Damn, Kevin. We're dangerously close to agreeing here.