From: mrl@st-andrews.ac.uk (  Michael Ladomery)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.messianic,alt.atheism,sci.skeptic,talk.origins
Subject: Re: Object-oriented creation (Was Re: Creationist CRAPOLA!)
Date: 30 Sep 92 13:09:20 GMT
Organization: St. Andrews University, Scotland.

In article <1992Sep29.003242.6@sycraft.com> ken@sycraft.com (Ken Richardson) writes:
>In article <1992Sep28.100020.27769@hsr.no>, onar@hsr.no (Onar Aam) writes:
>> I should mention that comparing genomes directly is a relatively new technique.
>> The older, more standard, technique is to compare proteins of individuals ( which
>> relies ONLY on the 10% meaningful DNA) and the results are the same: 99%
>> identical. So there is no need to doubt that humans and chimps are very much
>> alike. No, the stunning thing, which alone almost proves the
>> chimp/human-relation, is that also the junk-DNA are alike. 
>> 
>> ...
>> 
>> Not only does DNA-dating increase the integrity of the existing dating techniques,
>> it supports and CONFIRMS the theory of evolution even further. 
>
>Well, I appreciate your conviction.  But "confirmation" is a bit strong.
>
>I mean, consider for a moment: If you were the Creator, and you were about
>to create life, what techniques would you use to put order and simplicity
>into the task?  Object-oriented techniques!
>
deletion
>
>There is, after all, a high degree of similarity between DNA programs
>and computer programs.

Perhaps you might care to explain this similarity!

I think the point that was being made was that DNA sequencing data is able
to confirm/reinforce alleged evolutionary relationships.
Instead of getting bogged down in words, can I give you an example? 

We happen to be working on a family of proteins, let's call them Y. These
proteins are found in all vertebrates and even in invertebrates. They have
a very conserved chemical structure across species. However, if we look at the
DNA sequences, we see a greater divergence, and that is due (at least in part)
to the redundancy of the code (since more than one codon specifies an amino acid,
many mutations have no effect on the protein). The species for which we
have a sequence are :  frog, mouse, rat, human. Now BEFORE we compared these
sequences, we had in the back of our mind the established evolutionary
paradigm which tells us that the mouse and rat are the most closely related in that
group of four; the human should be closer to the [rat+mouse] than to the
frog since amphibians diverged earlier. Now the sequence alignment confirmed
this relationship, ie the frog sequence was more divergent; the rat and mouse
sequences were very close; the human sequence was closer to the [rat+mouse]
than to the frog, and the frog sequence was substantially divergent from all
mammalian sequences. 

Please note that the actual protein sequences of all four are almost identical.
The divergence in the DNA is consistent with previous evolutionary theory;
this data confirms that theory; careful though, 'confirms' in this context
means 'adding evidence'. Please note that the relationship between frogs,
rodents and humans was known (oh sorry, theorized) before the advent of DNA
techniques.

Surely you can't dispute that. 

What alternative explanation would you have for the divergence of these
sequences (nb: this is one of thousands of examples), other than, for
example (without putting wordsin your mouth), oh 'God just happened
to make these sequences like that'??