Scientists want to rebuild neanderthal genome...

[UTEOTW]

I said

Being "in the image of God" has nothing to do with your physical appearance.

webdog responded

Prove it.

Well, I could ask the same, but let's take a more constructive approach.

How are you similar to the other animals and how are you different?

If you want to go for physical appearance, there is not a lot for you to go on. You have the same limb arrangement as any other tetrapod from a frog to a bird to a whale to a chimp. But I think the question was more along the lines of being like other apes. You have five fingers and five toes at the end of each limb. You have prehensile toes and dexterous hands. Your fingers and toes have nails instead of claws. You have just as many hair follicles as any other ape though your hair is finer than most. Your tail has been reduced to an internal stub. Your lactal nipples are found on your chest. You have a particular arrangement in the distribution of types of teeth and even the shape of the teeth. You have similar shapes to your face and ears though you do have a chin.

No, you look very much like any other ape. Maybe you think that God also made apes in His image and just did not say so.

But let's think about this in another way.

Humans are thinking, rational beings. They have an eternal soul. They have the capacity to determining right from wrong. These are all qualities shared with God and not with the other animals. Perhaps this is how we are in His image. In comparison, to be in His physical image would be a trivial thing. But this is one of the errors of YEism, focusing on the wrong part, ignoring the forest for the trees.

I said

Do you also deny that you are a mammal? On what grounds?

webdog responded

Yes. I'm a human.

I am not sure I follow.

Mammals are warm blooded. So are you. Mammals have four chambered hearts. So do you. Mammals lactate. So do humans. Mammals have hair. So do you. Since you were born alive and in a relatively mature state, we can even say that you are specifically a placental mammal. Just as you are an ape, a primate, a craniate, a chordate and a tetrapod. You share all the necessary characteristics with them to be classified as such.

Your differences with the animals are not physical, they are spiritual.

 

[webdog]

Well, I could ask the same, but let's take a more constructive approach

The one who makes the claim should be the one who backs it up

If you want to go for physical appearance, there is not a lot for you to go on. You have the same limb arrangement as any other tetrapod from a frog to a bird to a whale to a chimp. But I think the question was more along the lines of being like other apes. You have five fingers and five toes at the end of each limb. You have prehensile toes and dexterous hands. Your fingers and toes have nails instead of claws. You have just as many hair follicles as any other ape though your hair is finer than most. Your tail has been reduced to an internal stub. Your lactal nipples are found on your chest. You have a particular arrangement in the distribution of types of teeth and even the shape of the teeth. You have similar shapes to your face and ears though you do have a chin.

This proves only humans share some qualities with the rest of God's creation. We were, after all, formed from the Earth. Animals weren't. We share DNA with bananas, too, does this make man "fruit"?

No, you look very much like any other ape. Maybe you think that God also made apes in His image and just did not say so.

I don't look anything like an ape, thank you.

Mammals are warm blooded. So are you. Mammals have four chambered hearts. So do you. Mammals lactate. So do humans. Mammals have hair. So do you. Since you were born alive and in a relatively mature state, we can even say that you are specifically a placental mammal. Just as you are an ape, a primate, a craniate, a chordate and a tetrapod. You share all the necessary characteristics with them to be classified as such.

Again, this proves nothing except we share some similar traits. Fish swim...so do humans. Are we fish? We hunt...insects hunt. Are we insects? Sharing characteristics does not mean we ARE what we share.

 

[UTEOTW]

If being "in the image of God" is a physical thing, then apes very much are also in the image of God. What do you think looking like something else means? It is those physical traits that you share with apes and that if you are physically in God's image that you also share with HIm.

But again, this trivializes the issue. If it is just physical appearance, well any of us can make something in our own image. What's so great about that? But I cannot create another free willed being with an eteranl soul which can decide right and wrong. That is the power of God. And you trivialize that by insiting that it is just a physical thing and by denying the obvious physical similarities you share with the other animals.

I guess you are not an animal either. Are you alive even?

 

[UnchartedSpirit]

I sure then the translation would have read "now lets make another creature called man, but with our image." Humans who only wish to think and act as animals should be locked away

 

[webdog]

I guess you are not an animal either. Are you alive even?

You guessed right. I did not come from an animal, nor was I part of the animal species when other animals were created. Why do you think man was created SEPARATE from the animals?

 

[BobRyan]

Here is the full quote --

Neo-Darwinists were quick to claim that modern discoveries of molecular biology supported their theory. They said, for example, that if you analyse the DNA, the genetic blueprint, of plants and animals you find how closely or distantly they are related. That studying DNA sequences enables you to draw up the precise family tree of all living things and show how they are related by common ancestry.

This is a very important claim and central to the theory. If true, it would mean that animals neo-Darwinists say are closely related, such as two reptiles, would have greater similarity in their DNA than animals that are not so closely related, such as a reptile and a bird.

Fifteen years ago molecular biologists working under Dr Morris Goodman at Michigan University decided to test this hypothesis. They took the alpha haemoglobin DNA of two reptiles -- a snake and a crocodile -- which are said by Darwinists to be closely related, and the haemoglobin DNA of a bird, in this case a farmyard chicken.

They found that the two animals who had _least_ DNA sequences in common were the two reptiles, the snake and the crocodile. They had only around 5% of DNA sequences in common -- only one twentieth of their haemoglobin DNA. The two creatures whose DNA was closest were the crocodile and the chicken, where there were 17.5% of sequences in common -- nearly one fifth. The actual DNA similarities were the _reverse_ of that predicted by neo-Darwinism. 5
Even more baffling is the fact that radically different genetic coding can give rise to animals that look outwardly very similar and exhibit similar behaviour, while creatures that look and behave completely differently can have much in common genetically. There are, for instance, more than 3,000 species of frogs, all of which look superficially the same. But there is a greater variation of DNA between them than there is between the bat and the blue whale.

Times Higher Education Supplement
http://www.baptistboard.com/showpost.php?p=819631&postcount=5

Notice this is not BOB claiming something - this is actually the Times Higher Educational Supplement -- but into each of UTEOTW's posts "a little historic revisionism must fall"

But of course - this is one of UTEOTW's more honest attempts to show facts - so I am trying not to complain too much about it.

 

[BobRyan]

Then the Times Supplement added this --

as we saw on that same thread --

Further, if neo-Darwinist evolutionary ideas of gradual genetic change were true, then one would expect to find that simple organisms have simple DNA and complex organisms have complex DNA.

In some cases, this is true. The simple nematode worm is a favourite subject of laboratory study because its DNA contains a mere 100,000 nucleotide bases. At the other end of the complexity scale, humans have 23 chromosomes which in total contain 3,000 million nucleotide bases.
Unfortunately, this promisingly Darwinian progression is contradicted by many counter examples. While human DNA is contained in 23 pairs of chromosomes, the humble goldfish has more than twice as many, at 47. The even humbler garden snail -- not much more than a glob of slime in a shell -- has 27 chromosomes. Some species of rose bush have 56 chromosomes.

So the simple fact is that DNA analysis does _not_ confirm neo-Darwinist theory. In the laboratory, DNA analysis falsifies neo-Darwinist theory.

 

[UTEOTW]

Come on Bob address the issue. Don't go down your normal path of obfuscation.

You posted that genetic testing showed crocodiles to be more closely related to birds than to snakes and said that it was a problem for evolution as it would predict that crocodiles should be more closely related to their fellow reptiles.

I then showed that this was only your lack of understanding speaking. That crocodiles and birds are both from the archosaur branch of reptiles according to scientists and should therefore be expected to test as being genetically more similar.

You, in your ignorance of evolution, posted material supportive of evolutionary theory and not against it as you claimed.

You only choices here are to prove your own post incorrect or to prove that science does not really think that birds evolved out of the archosaurs.

What you have done is merely to handwave and hope we don't notice that you did not address the substance.

But that is your pattern.