Intelligent Design Creationists post their #1 story of 2025

Here's the post on Science & Culture (sic) by Casey Luskin: Happy New Year! No. 1 Story for 2025: Bombshell Overturns Myth of 1 Percent Difference.

How many times have you heard it said that the human and chimpanzee genomes are so similar that they are only “1 percent different” at the level of their DNA? This shows, we were told, not only that humans and chimps share common ancestry, but that humans aren’t all that special, which is a common talking point in science journalism and other public discussions. After all, we’re just slightly modified chimps! This “fact” has been discussed so much that it has become what the late biologist Jonathan Wells famously called an “icon of evolution.”

But now, new data reported in a recently published Nature paper by Yoo et al. has overturned this previous claim. The new findings reveal that human DNA is far more different from chimp DNA than previously thought.

That should be major news in the science world, yet those involved don’t seem interested in highlighting their discovery.

When I open a page of Darwin I immediately sense that I have been ushered into the presence of a great mind. ... When I read Phillip Johnson, I feel that I have been ushered into the presence of a lawyer.

Richard Dawkins (1996)

What does this tell us about Intelligent Design Creationists? It tell us that they don't understand science and their movement is bankrupt.

There are four things you need to know about the differences between the human and chimp genomes.

1. Most of the genome sequences can be aligned and the average difference is about 1.4%.
2. The two genomes contain many insertions and deletions that don't align. Scientists have known this for three decades.
3. Individuals in both populations also have multiple specific insertions and deletions; for example, the average two humans differ by about 1% if you count these segmental duplications. If you add up all the known deletions, about 7% of the human genome can be deleted without noticeable effect. [Segmental duplications in the human genome]
4. Evolution explains the differences between the human and chimpanzee genomes. Creationists can't explain this difference and they can't explain why it's so consistent with evolution.

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