Humans Share a Common Ancestory with other Primates

Thank you Con for your response. Though I was hoping to debate someone who would actually formulate arguements and not just cut and paste from a christian apologetics website. You could have saved us all the trouble by providing the link to http://www.apologeticspress.org...; instead of the charade of listing your supposed sources numbers 1-5. I find it incredibly frustrating and tedious that the anthropologist "you" quoted, Henry Harpending, has no expertise and has conducted no research whatsoever in genetics. In fact, he hasn't published a single scientific paper on anything. He is not a scientist. He doesn't do scientific research. Why you would site him as an "expert" in the field of genetics is beyond me. Even worse, the quotes that you provided in no way impact the validity of mDNA being used to support common ancestory. The concern that Henry Harpending was addressing was that if mDNA was cross contaminated by the fathers genome we would not be able to determine an exact date for Mitochondrial Eve. He did not, nor did any of your other references, makes the claim that mDNA cannot be used to show common ancestry. You are trying to add things that none of your sources said.You make the statement, "The validity of this assertion, is dependent upon a critically important assumption: that mtDNA is, in fact, derived exclusively from the mother." This is entirely false. Even if you could show that mDNA can be transferred via the father it would in no way impact the conclusion. mDNA would still be passed through paternal inheritance. It would still show that humans and apes share a common ancestry.It's also a shame that you didn't bother to read the paper you cited by Schwartz and Vissing. In the case of the 28 year old man the paper states, "Sequencing of blood mtDNA from the patient's healthy parents and from his paternal uncle demonstrated that the haplotype of the patient's muscles mtDNA was identical to that of his father's and uncle's blood. The haplotype of the patient's blood was identical to that of his mother."The man had chimeric mitochondrial myopathy. It is an incredibly rare disease. So rare, in fact, that there have only been 30 documented cases worldwide. And it is not clear which mDNA the man would pass along to his offspring. Either way, to try and debunk the maternity (paternity still withstanding) of mDNA by using a disease that affects only one in two-hundred-million people is completely absurd.As for the mice, the scientest were able to trace fractions of the fathers mDNA by a specialized process. The mice mDNA was none the less still maternal.I wasn't kidding when I said the research showing that mDNA proves common ancestory is lock solid. And it has only gotten better over time. Within recent years we have been able to completely map mitochondrial genomes from ten different ancient modern humans for which reliable radiocarbon dates are available. And this has given us the ability calculate the human mtDNA mutation rates directly. But don't take my word for it, here's a peer reviewed scientific paper (more recent per your request) from 2013 that you can read for youself: http://ac.els-cdn.com...Your assertion that,"The once popular theory of mDNA showing us a common ancestor has, in fact, been long debunked." Is completely false. Had you actually done the research for youself instead of just parroting Apologetics Press you might have known this line of attack would be a complete waste of time.Mitochondrial DNA used to determine common ancestory stands. And debunking it would require more than just showing it isn't neccissarly passed through maternal lines. You would have to show that it isn't passed by either of the parents at all. On to your next point about the Y chromosone. Your offer up a quote about how human and chimpanzee Y Chomozones differ by thirty percent. This is a red herring. It is not the percentage of shared genetic material that shows common ancestory. It's the shared genetic material occuring in the exact same sequences and in the exact same locations that shows common ancestory. For more on that check out this peer reviewed scientific paper: http://genome.cshlp.org...You also claim that "only two chimp chromosomes have been examined in great detail." This statement is demonstrably and painfully false. Please, do your reasearch instead of just parroting wild assertions. I really don't know where you come up with this stuff. All 48 chimpansee chromosomes have been studied and poored over extensivley. There are litterally hundreds of peer reviewed articals that have been written on this. Here's just a couple for you:http://www.sciencedirect.com...https://bio.cst.temple.edu...http://www.plosgenetics.org...Next you try to argue that ERV aren't the prodcut of retrovirus' because they serve a function. Firstly, this is a non-sequitor (it does not follow). Just because ERVs are functional does NOT mean that they aren't the product of retrovirus'. You're statement . . . "Viruses do not randomly insert tens of thousands ERVs in exactly the right location to provide us with invaluable function." . . . is exactly correct. Retrovirus' do not insert tens of thousands of ERVs at a time. They insert one at a time. And the vast majority of ERVs in our DNA are non-functional. They serve no purpose. Of the nearly 100,000 ERVs in our genome only 97 of them are active. Less than one in ten-thousand are being utilized by our DNA. And I'm really kind of surprised you made this arguement because the only peer reviewed artical that you did site clearly spells this out. But if you would like further reading on the number of ERVs and their functions here's another good one:http://www.pnas.org...In closing, the evidence provided by mDNA, the Y chromosome, and endogenous retrovirus' all stand. If Con wishes to debunk them he is going to have to do far better than Apologetics Press.