The Sean McDowell Show - DNA Denial: Exposing the 99% Genetic Similarity Myth

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

For decades, we’ve been told that humans and chimpanzees are 99% genetically identical a claim repeated in museums, textbooks and by science celebrities like Bill Nye. But new genomic research tells a very different story. In this episode, Dr. Casey Luskin joins to reveal why the “1% difference” statistic is outdated, misleading, and scientifically inaccurate. We discuss how this number became one of evolution’s most popular talking points, why it persists despite being debunked, and what the latest studies actually show about human-chimp DNA. READ: Casey's Article: https://nypost.com/2025/07/26/opinion/smithsonian-exhibit-monkeys-around-with-the-scientific-evidence-on-human-origins/ *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

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Life Audio. A major piece of evidence for evolution and common descent is shown to be incorrect by magnitudes. And yet proponents continue to proclaim it because they are either unaware of the latest studies or unwilling to accept them. You've probably heard that chimps and humans share about 99% genetic similarities. Buckle your seatbelt because the emerging truth will surprise. you, it challenges that head on. Here to talk about it is Dr. Casey Luskin, a friend for probably a

couple decades or so, and the author of Science and Human Origins. Casey, this is long overdue, but thanks for coming on the show. Oh, so glad to be here with you, Sean, and grateful for the opportunity. Well, let's jump right in. I'm really curious. This is, again, first time on the show, but we've known each other for a while. Tell us the backstory just what got you first interested in the topic of origins in general to work at discovery, to write on this, and then human origins in particular. Sure, I'll give you the relatively short version of the story, Sean, but I got interested in the topic of origins when I was an undergraduate science major at the University of California, San Diego. I was an earth sciences major, but for almost all of my electives,

I would take courses in evolution. And as I took more and more courses in evolution, I felt that the explanations just were not adding up. You know, we would learn about all these incredibly complex and beautiful features in living systems, but my classes would never even try to give Darwinian explanations for how those complex features might have evolved. And so, you know, like a lot of college students, we would stay up late in the dorms talking about crazy things

like the origin of life, et cetera. And at the end of my freshman year, a friend suggested that I read this book called Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe. You are familiar with that book, no doubt. And, you know, I read his ideas about irreducible complexity, where multiple parts are needed to be able to provide function for a system and how this provides a challenge to Darwinian evolution. And I felt like Behe really put into words a lot of the ideas

that my sort of rudimentary freshman brain was thinking about the invalvability of many complex features. No offense to freshmen in college. There would be very sorry people. But I felt like Behi really put into words what I'm not. I was what I was trying to articulate. And so from there, it was just all downhill, Sean. I started reading books by and articles by other ID folks like William Dembski, Jonathan Welles, Steve Meyer, and I got really interested in this fascinating debate over where we came from. And now what got me interested in human origins, I think, is that not just learning about human evolution in my

classes. You know, we would study these hominid fossils in my classes, but just frankly, being a human being who lives in this world. I mean, what topic is more interested? than where we came from and how humans came to exist. And so the question of human origins really just gripped my interest over the years. And then, again, I won't give you the long story here, but from 2016 to 2020, I had the opportunity. My wife and I, we moved to South Africa and lived there for about four and a half years. And while living there, I got to visit many fossil sites that have produced many of the supposed hominid fossils that are supposed to be our ancestors.

So that guy, I'm even more interested in the topic, being able to see these, sites and in some cases the fossils in person. And so it's just been a topic I've been really interested in and had a lot of opportunities to read about and write about over the years. Well, you not only bring study and interest in this, you bring passion, which helps come this topic alive. And I love it just like you do to talk about this stuff. Let's narrow down a little bit. What's interested you specifically in the topic of human chimp genetic similarity? Yeah, you know, on this one shot, I was thinking about this question when he sent it to me. And I think, again, it's just kind of like being a human being who lives in this world.

And I've constantly heard over the years people telling us that we are just 99% genetically similar to apes. And we're basically just slightly modified apes. And I've always wondered, you know, is that really true, scientifically speaking, that we are 99% genetically similar to apes or, you know, only 1% genetically different. And so I follow this debate over the years. And as we've sort of had this revolution in genome sequencing over the last. last 20 or 30 years, we've been able to sequence the human genome, then sequence the ape genome,

the chimp genome and other ape genomes. We've had more and more data be able to bear on this question. And so it's just something that I've been following as the science has come out over the years. That's a great answer. Now, can you give us some examples, like, of people who've claimed that were 99% genetically similar to chimps or apes, or kind of 1% different from nymphs? them and as they use that to make an argument for common descent slash evolution. So give us example just to make sure you're not setting up a straw man and people realize how popular this

claim has been. Yeah, I mean, we've all heard this argument. But yeah, it's important to document things and show, you know, who is making this argument? Well, it's coming from really the highest levels of the scientific community. Two summers ago in August of 2023, I visited the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. And when you walk into their human origins exhibit, Sean, right there on the wall in very big letters, it says you and chimpanzees, 98.8% genetically similar. And it goes on to say in a sort of a smaller caption on the wall that we're only 1.2% genetically different from chimpanzees. I'm sure that, you know, many folks have heard of Bill Nye, the science guy. I used to watch Bill Nye back in the day. He wrote a book in 2014 called Undeniable,

in the science of creation. And he said in that book, quote, we share around 98.8% of our gene sequence with chimpanzees. And then he says, this is striking evidence for chimps and chumps to have a common ancestor. Okay. So very clearly, Bill Nye is making an explicit argument for common ancestry from the supposed, you know, 98.8% genetic similarity between humans and chips. And we could keep doing this all day. But let me give you just a couple more quick examples. Yeah, please.

There was a book published, yeah, a book published by University of Chicago Press in 2008, and the title was 99% ape, how evolution adds up. And this book was authored by seven university professors. And here's what this book says. It says, quote, of the roughly three billion letters of the genetic code, they say that, quote, the difference is just 1.06%. So what they're saying, again, in their words, the difference is, quote, 1% of,000. 3 billion. So they're very explicitly saying that if you look at the entire genome, you know,

this is the haploid genome basically, you know, one half of your genome you would get from one of your parents, that exactly 1%, 1.06% out of all 3 billion DNA letters is different. And on the backside, the back cover of this book, it says that Darwin was mocked for suggesting that humans have apes for ancestors. But it says, quote, every scientific advance in the study of life in the last 150 years has confirmed the reality of evolution. So they're making, you know, a very forceful argument for human ape common ancestry and what they say is the reality of evolution based upon the idea that when you look at the entire genome, they say that only one percent of it is different from apes. And again, you know, you want more examples. The journal Science in 1998,

said, this is a quote from an article titled, which of our genes makes us human? It says, we humans like to think of ourselves as special. But when it comes to genes, humans are so similar to the two species of chimpanzee that physiologist Jared Diamond has called us the third chimpanzee. And it says, for any given region of the human genome, humans and chimpanzees share at least 98.5% of their DNA. So note here, Sean, that they're making this argument based upon the entire

human genome, not just upon certain, say, protein coding sequences or certain gene sequences. They're saying that the entire genome from one end to the other is 98 or 99 percent genetically similar to that of a chimp. And we could do this all day. I mean, I've documented so many cases of this that I don't want to bore your viewers to death here, but just as far as to say, we've all heard this argument being made and it's out there, but you can find prestigious examples from the highest levels of the scientific community, people making this argument and also science popularizers like Bill Nye. It's a very common argument that we've heard. Thank you for quoting Captain America that we can do this all day. I can do this all day. Good job. Way to weave that in subtly. Now, a couple of quick things. I'm kind of on a Marvel kick right now.

I'm in the middle of watching Loki season one. So I'm kind of getting the, I'm kind of getting into Marvel right now. So anyway. Well, I just did a two and a half hour interview with Todd McFarlane, one of the most influential comic creators of the past four decades, going to release that soon. So folks who know who that is, hang tight, that's coming up. But you said something I just want to highlight on. You said in one of these references, it said, we like to think of ourselves as special. Now, there's a difference between the genetic similarity and what we draw from this for what it means to be human. and even concluding that is just filled with worldview implications, and we'll get to that.

But I have to pause for people to realize when we talk about the science of human origins, it's not worldview neutral. We're all bringing a certain lens to the table. And of course, we have to interpret the data. Now, you gave an example of a book from the University of Chicago, The Smithsonian, Bill and I, the science guy. This is all over the place. I checked earlier this morning. And according to the Smithsonian website, in 2024, 3.9 million people visited the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

And that's the museum. Did I get the museum correct? The Museum of Natural History? That is their top visited museum by 1.8 million people. So there's a ton of people seeing this and having their worldview shaped by it. Now, we're going to come to a journal article that recently came out in nature that I think as many ways is blowing this thing up. But when did people first start to realize that this is what we would call an icon of evolution and it's actually wrong? When did that data first emerge? Yeah. So, I mean, I think it first became clear when they first published the first draft of the chimpanzee genome, which I believe was around 2005. And in fact, in 2007, the journal science actually had an article that kind of criticized this 1% statistic.

They called it, quote, the myth of 1%. And this article in the journal science said that the 1% statistic is a, quote, myth or truism that they said should be retired. And they said it's even more of a hindrance for understanding than it helps. So I think that it was around that time when they first sequenced the chimp genome that people realized it's a lot more complicated than just saying we're only 1%. different and the data may not even support that. Now, I just want to highlight this for folks. That's two decades ago at the time you and I are recording this. This has been known.

People have had time to catch up displays at the Smithsonian books, journal articles, with the data. And yet still, it hasn't been corrected. Now, I call this an icon of evolution, which is borrowing a term from the, probably one of most famous neo-Darwinian critics, Jonathan Wells, trained at, if I remember Berkeley and maybe Yale as well, just high-level scientist. Such a kind man, but also a bulldog. He was at Biola many times, got to sit down and have lunch with him, got to interview him

one time, just so kind and thoughtful. He actually came to speak. I had a case for creator event when Lee Schroble's book came out 20 years ago. And Jonathan Wells brought a flash drive and gave me all of his slides for free. Like so kind. Well, he coined this term icon of evolution, icons of evolution, and wrote a book on it. Explain what he means by icons of evolution. And do you, Casey, think the human chimped genetic similarity falls into that category?

Yeah, I agree with you. Jonathan Wells was a really kind man. He passed away about a year ago. September of 2024, and we really miss them a lot here at Discovery Institute. And his book, Icons of Evolution, was very influential on me. It was one of those books I read when I was an undergraduate that really got me interested in this subject because I'd taken all these courses in evolution. I was taught the icons. So what is an icon? He defines an icon. He says, quote, these are these examples are so frequently used as evidence for Darwin's theory that most

of them have been called icons of evolution. Yet all of them, he says, in one way or another, misrepresent the truth. And I would argue that, yeah, although Jonathan did not include human chim genetic similarity as one of the icons of evolution in his original book, I think it bits its definition of an icon almost perfectly because we can see that this has been used as an argument for evolution, you know, whether it logically is an argument for evolution, we can talk about that, but it's been used as an argument for evolution over and over I mean, I can't imagine hardly any of your viewers have not heard this argument that we are 99% genetically similar to a chimp, 1% different, and therefore we share a common ancestor.

And yet, the argument is not correct. The science shows that we are not only 99% genetically similar to a chimp or 1% different. The differences are much greater than that. I'm sure we'll get into that. So I think it fits Jonathan Wells' definition of an icon. Want to keep God's word with you wherever you go? The King James Bible Study KJV app by Salem Media makes it easy to read, study, share, and pray daily with a timeless KJV translation. Enjoy features like offline access, audio Bible listening, smart search, and tools to highlight bookmark and take notes, all designed to keep your Bible studies simple and organize.

Best of all, it's free to download in the Google Play Store. Growing your faith every day. Search for King James Bible Study KJV and download the app today. Very, very well. Do you have a sense of how significant this is in a place? piece of evidence that's offered for evolution. And what I mean by that, I realize on YouTube might be different than in a high school textbook, might be different than in a college textbook or in the journal articles. But like, where would you place it in terms of just kind of

its popularity and the force that people have said? Is this like, yeah, this is 17 on my list or this is top five? And I know you're just kind of guessing and assessing this. How significant would you say this claim is or has been? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if I can pull a number out of thin air, Sean, but I would say that it has been used by evolutionists. Many evolutionists believe that it is a very rhetorically persuasive argument for evolution. And it has been up there as one of their top arguments that they use for evolution. And this again is being used by folks coming from the highest levels of the scientific community. I mean, the Smithsonian Institution really wants you to know that you are 98.8% genetically similar to a chimp. It's right there in huge letters as you

walk into the human origins exhibit. The journal Science, many other prominent folks have made this argument, but then many other just popular folks. I mean, we've seen this argument made from top to bottom. So I would say that many evolutionists, at the very least, they believe that it is a very powerful and persuasive argument for evolution. Whether it really is or should be, we can talk about that. I personally don't think that logically it really means that. My But certainly a lot of folks believe that it is. And so it's been up there. Yeah.

Okay, good. Let's start getting into that. And maybe break it down for us how this original 1% genetic difference calculation was derived. And of course, you know, most people watching this, myself included, are not PhDs in science. Even though I've written a book on Understanding Intelligence Design with your colleague, William Dembski, that's not my specialty. So break it down for the non-specialist, how they first got. that 1% genetic calculation.

By the way, your book Understanding Intelligent Design is still a great introductory book on ID, Sean, and I still recommend it to people. So really great work you and Bill Dembski did. But yeah, so if you think of our genome like a long string of letters, okay, we actually have 46 chromosomes, each of which has, you know, millions of nucleotide bases. And it's the ordering of these nucleotide bases in your DNA that determines things like the ordering of amino acids in your proteins or how to regulate the production of proteins and many other features, you know, where and when to produce limbs as you're developing, et cetera,

et cetera. It's encoded in the DNA molecules in your cells, okay? And so our genome has about three billion nucleotides. If you look at just half the genome, the half that you would get from one parent. If you add, you know, the half from one parent to the half of the other parent, it's about close to seven billion total nucleotides. And as we just saw, you know, people will do an analysis looking at just one half of your genome, what you got from one parent, okay?

Again, it's about three, maybe three point two billion nucleotides. Some people have said, and we've heard this in some of the quotes I gave earlier, that when you look at one half of the genome, you know, the entire three or three point two billion nucleotides, that 99% of those nucleotides are going to be in the same order in a human being as they are in a chimp. Okay, only 1% of it is different. So they claimed the way that they did a calculation, at least some people have claimed, is that it's based upon looking at the entire three or 3.2 billion nucleotides in your haploid genome is what it's called. Okay. Now, I don't really believe that was ever true because we never really had complete A genomes for

comparison until just recently. So how they made that claim in that 2008 book 99% A, that, you know, 99% of our entire genome is the same as a chimpanzee. I don't know how they knew that because we didn't have complete ape genomes until just recently with this nature paper that just came out. I think what they were really doing is they were really talking about certain proteins in humans that might be 99 or even, maybe even like in some cases, 100% similar to chimps. And that's true.

There are certain protein sequences. You know, we're just talking about individual proteins that might have amino acids. that are in virtually the exact same order in the human version of that protein as they are in the chimp version of that protein. And as an ID proponent, I want to say, Sean, this doesn't bother me at all because these kinds of functional similarities could represent common design just as much as they could represent common descent. Okay.

Hold that thought. I'm going to jump in. We're going to get towards interpreting this. I just want to make sure we give the data first as carefully as we can. So you explained how that 1% genetic difference was derived before the chimp genome was even mapped out interestingly enough. But now you sent me actually this summer we sat down for coffee. I think it was June or July where I live and you even got to try out my new e-bike that I zip around and kind of my new toy. Everyone has one in Southern Orange County.

It was kind of fun. But you broke, you shared this nature paper with me that was not on my radar and I was stunned. that argues that the difference is really 14.9%. Now, any scientist right away will know how significant nature is, but maybe explain why that journal is so significant. And just kind of briefly, how they derive this 15% rough difference. Yeah. So, I mean, the journal nature is widely considered to be one of the top scientific journals, if not the top scientific journal in the world. And in April, they published a very large paper titled Complete Sequencing of Abe Genomes. And for the first time, this paper presented what they called telomere to telomere sequences of the ape genomes.

What that basically means is from one end of the chromosomes to the other, they sequenced the entire ape genomes for chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and some other apes. And they did it from scratch. Okay. You may not believe this, but some of the early drafts of the chimp genome actually used the huge. human genome as a guide or a scaffolding when they produced these early drafts of the chimp genome. And that made the earlier versions of the chimp genome look more human-like than they actually were. But these newly sequenced ab genomes, they were complete sequences of the ape genomes, and they were done from scratch. They didn't use the human genome as a guide. So I think this is probably

the most reliable data set of the chimp and other ape genomes ever produced to date. And what they basically found is that there are two major types of differences in when you compare the human and the chimp genomes. One is called the single nucleotide variation. This is one you basically just have two long stretches of DNA that are very similar so you can align them. And you just count the nucleotides that are different. Okay. And they found that 1.6% of the human and chimp genomes are different when you talk about the single nucleotide variation. Now, the other type of difference is a little bit more complicated.

This is what they called the gap divergence. And they found that when you look at the gap divergence, that the human and chimp genomes are about 13.3% difference. Okay. And the gap divergence basically mean that when you try to align the two genomes, you find that sometimes one section of a genome is missing in the other genome or it failed to align. And so it introduces what they called gaps. And that means it's either that it failed to align or, as they put it, it was inconsistent with a simple one-to-one alignment. Can I explain this really quick using a language analogy from human language? Yeah, go for it.

Okay. So let's say that you have two sequences of letters. And one sequence reads A, B, C, D, E, and the other sequence reads VWX, X, Y, Z. Okay. Those two sequences are so different that you can never line them up and try to compare them. They're like 0% different. So in their analysis, this would be like saying that the DNA, quote, failed to align. They're just so different that you can't even line them up.

But then there's another type of difference they called inconsistent with a simple one-to-one alignment. And this has to do with the fact that a lot of the genetic differences between humans and chimps is found in DNA, which is repetitive. You have the same DNA sequences that repeat over and over again. Now, these repeat sequences aren't necessarily junk DNA. We'll talk about that more later, but they are repetitive. And under the analysis that they did, they used a computer program to align the DNA. Under their program, a given stretch of DNA is only allowed to be aligned one single time to the other genome. Okay.

So once it's been aligned, you can't use it a second time. So let's consider an example from the old nursery rhyme, row, row, row your boat. Okay. Let's say again, you have two sequences. One sequence says row, row, row, and the other sequence just says the word row one time. So the first sequence has three copies of the word row, and the second sequence only has one copy of the word row. So if you're comparing those two sequences, then in the one sequence that only has one copy,

that instance of the word row can align. But the second and third instances of the word row, they don't have a matching counterpart in the other genome, okay? because there's only one copy of the word row. So that would be like a gap of six letters, two instances of the word row. It would be a six-letter gap. And how they would put this is that it's inconsistent with a simple one-to-one alignment. So to make a long story short, when you add this up, you're counting up nucleotides or outing percentages.

You get a 1.6% difference from the single nucleotide variation and a 13.3% difference from what they call the gap diver. You can just add those two percentages up and you get a total of a 14.9% genetic difference between the human and chimp genomes. And that's where the number comes from. Okay. So it's not that the 1% was wrong. It was just incomplete and not taking the entirety of the genome, including the gaps and the other repetitive features that you mentioned. So we take the genome in its entirety, including, I think you said 1.6 was the number. added to the 13.2 or three, and you get to about 15%.

So that, okay, that math makes sense to me. Now, before we go any further, there's some objections that I've come across and I've seen you address, but are these numbers being challenged? Are critics accepted them saying this is the new data? Or are we going to see a journal article come out in nature and three months and go, nope, it's really 2%. These guys are off base. We recant. Yeah, so to go back to Jonathan Wells really quick, he wrote a sequel to icons of evolution called zombie science, where he said that these icons, they're kind of like zombies, where they don't die easily.

And people continue to defend these icons of evolution long after they've been shown to be false. So I was kind of anticipating that folks would not give up the 1% human chim genetic similarity icon very easily. And that prediction has turned out to be true. There's been a lot of pushback and a lot of, I would say, critique from many different angles. So, yeah, there are some folks who are challenging the numbers. But for the most part, folks are not challenging the actual numbers. They're not challenging the data from this paper in nature that found that, you know, I think it's pretty clear that we are about 14.9% genetically different from chimps. In fact, what was interesting is there's an evolutionary geneticist named Richard Bugs, who's a professor at Queen University London.

And on his blog, he posted an analysis of this paper and basically came to the same numbers that I did. And what's interesting is that Professor Bugs, he was actually thanked in the acknowledgments of the nature paper that reported the complete ape genomes. He wasn't a co-author of the paper, but they thanked him. So he clearly is a relevant thinker on this topic. And he basically came to the exact same numbers that I did when I was thinking about how to add those two numbers together. and so it's always nice to see an expert who comes to the same conclusion. So I am very confident that these numbers are right. And when you look at a lot of the objections, they're not actually challenging the numbers.

They're trying to find ways to dismiss the numbers as irrelevant or unimportant. Okay, so science is always provisional. We can't guarantee the future. But it sure seems like these numbers are solid, peer-reviewed, appears in nature. Critics are challenging the interpretation, maybe small parts about the number, but largely realize that this 1% difference is not claim is not even close to the real genetic differences. Now, one response that I've heard is that our genome is full of what's called junk DNA. So the differences are like repetitive DNA and thus junk. Thus, we can ignore them

and get a much smaller number getting closer to that 1% if we assess the genome that way. Is that fair or reasonable? Yeah, so that's exactly right, Sean. A lot of folks have tried to dismiss the differences as basically junk DNA. And they claim that this repetitive DNA that's newly discovered as different between humans and chimps is basically meaningless. It's not doing anything. So the differences don't mean anything. The only differences that matter, they would say, is that 1.6% of the single nucleotide variation,

which again, as you correctly said, I think that probably is where they got. that original 1% statistic. And so the question is, is this repetitive DNA that's different between humans and chimps junk? And the answer to that is definitely not. One of the most interesting things here, Sean, is that right around the same time that this nature paper came out, there was another paper that came out in the journal, nucleic acids research. And this paper was actually co-authored by some of the same scientists who also authored the nature paper, reporting these completely sequenced ab genomes.

And this paper in the journal Nucleic Acids research, it actually specifically looked at the repetitive DNA, the newly discovered repetitive DNA that is different between humans and chimps. Need a daily spark of hope and direction? Let the Daily Bible app from Salem Media be that spark. This free Android app delivers an uplifting verse each morning, plus reading plans, devotions, and trusted podcasts

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that's different between humans and chimps is what they call non-B DNA. And this non-B DNA is very important for forming different structural shapes in the DNA. And like you can have loops or hairpin turns or other shapes that this repetitive DNA helps to create in our crunch. chromosomes. And it's the shapes of these chromosomes, these structural shapes that is created by this repetitive DNA that's very important for regulating many cellular processes. In fact, if I can just quote from this paper, it talks about the fact that this non-B DNA is, quote, increasingly recognized as a major regulator of myriad processes in the mammalian cell. It says it's quote, it's known to be, quote, important regulators of cellular processes and quote, has unequited. equivocal importance for genome function. And some of these functions include initiating DNA replication, being involved in regulating gene expression, a hugely important function, being involved in the functions of telomeres and also centromeres and other functions as well.

So if folks want to dismiss this newly repetitive DNA that's repetitive between and different between humans and chimps, they're basically going against what the same. science says. The science says that this type of repetitive DNA can perform very, very important roles in the cell. Of course, it can perform sequence-based roles, but also structural roles that are involved in very important functions, like regulating gene expression. So I won't get into all the scientific details of how that works. Yeah. But suffice to say, this study nucleic acid research shows that the DNA that's different from humans and chimps, we cannot dismiss it as junk DNA. So the term junk DNA is, it has roots in a certain worldview, really a naturalistic

materialistic worldview that would kind of assume that our DNA was cobbled together not by an intelligent designer, but a blind, purposeless process. Hence, either most or at least much of it has no purpose because it wasn't placed there intentionally. The problem is that, That's an assumption that ironically can stop scientific research. People say intelligent design is a science stopper. This is actually a science stopper because if people had assumed that the genome was intelligently designed, we would have looked for these features much earlier. But I just want to point out to people, again, the worldview implications and thoughts that are shaping so much of this.

Now, here's another objection that I've heard, Casey, maybe you can respond to this one for us. Mark, can I sound off on what you just said really quick? Yeah. So here's something interesting, just to go a little bit more detail on, you know, quote, junk DNA. The Nobel Prize last year in physiology and medicine was actually awarded for the discovery of function of microRNAs, which were originally thought to be a type of junk DNA. Interesting. So literally, they awarded the Nobel Prize last year in physiology and medicine for discovering a type of function for junk DNA. And when I read through some of the writings talking about this Nobel Prize, there were some

scientists who were saying that actually the reason why this Nobel, this evidence was originally not accepted in the scientific community is because people just dismissed it as junk DNA. So you're absolutely right. In fact, so much so that, you know, last year's Nobel Prize, acceptance of that discovery was hindered by this evolutionary view that our genomes are full of useless junk DNA. So you're absolutely right, Sean. This is a big issue, but what's interesting is that I would say in the last 10 or 15 years, we have seen nothing short of a scientific revolution on the question of junk DNA.

There was an article in the journal bio essays about two years ago that said we have seen what is called a Coonian paradigm shift in biology away from the idea of junk DNA. That basically just means a scientific shift, major shift in thinking in the scientific community. So junk DNA is no longer thought to be prevalent. unless you're defending evolution and then folks still bring it up a lot. And just for those listening, when you say a Coonian revolution, this is Thomas Coon, who's a writer that said science doesn't advance kind of like tinkering along, but has revolutions like an Einsteinian revolution, a Newtonian revolution that just radically shifts the paradigm. And for that to even be compared here is such a radical paradigm how we think about DNA points out how significant this. is. Let's shift to the second objection. And here's one that, that again, I've heard, I'm sure

you've heard this one as well, is that humans already have a large percentage of intrasteces genetic differences. So intra would be within the human genome. There's already a lot of differences, and some I've seen show up to like 10%. Thus, if we have 10% genetic differences within the human population, we shouldn't be surprised at a 15% difference with apes or chimps. And so really, the data that we're discovering is not that significant. Yeah. So we are learning a lot about the genome right now, Sean. We're developing better and better techniques for sequencing genomes, and we're able to study parts of the genome that we were not able to study until just recently. And so some folks are saying that based upon these new versions of human genomes that are being

sequence, we can say that we're up to 10% genetically different. So this is very interesting, and I find this to be a fascinating topic, but it really doesn't answer my argument. My argument is that people have been making this claim that we are 1% genetically different from chimps for years. And they've been using this as an argument for evolution. And that claim is wrong. It's wrong on both the facts and the logic. We can get into the logic more later, but it's scientifically wrong. So whether humans, you know, the percent genetic difference between humans and humans or say the percent genetic, intraste species, genetic differences in other species like chimpanzees or, you know, within orangutans or whatever, this is all very interesting, but it's

simply not relevant to the point I'm making, which is to compare the human and the chimpanzee genomes and ask how different are they. So let's just get that straight. This objection really involves changing the topic. It doesn't really answer my argument. But this is still an area where there's a lot to learn. It seems like if you look at the alignable DNA within humans, that our differences are very, very low. From what I've seen, it's probably around 0.06% to 0.17% different within the human species. Okay.

That's a lot lower than between humans and chimps where it's more like 1.6% different. I think that it's probably 9 to 16 times less different in, or sorry, 9 to 26 times. less different within humans among our alignable DNA than it is between humans and chimps. And also I've seen some evidence, again, this is an area where there's still a lot being discovered, so there's a lot to learn, but I've seen some evidence that shows that the character of the differences in the non-alignable DNA between humans and chimps can be very different and of a lesser degree or of a, sorry, it's of a greater degree between humans and chimps than it is between humans and humans. Within humans, the differences in repetitive DNA usually amount to differences

in copy numbers of the repeats. But between humans and chimps, we can see that the differences involve both differences in the number of copies of the repeats and differences in the sequences of those copies, in some cases at least. So again, there's still a lot we have to learn, but it seems like the character of the differences between humans and chimps, in some cases at least, can be of a greater nature than the character of the differences between one human to another. And by the way, it's not 10% difference typically between two humans. Some of the experts who I have seen talking about say that it's probably more typically maybe four to five percent genetically different when you compare two typical human beings. But again, this is still an active area of research. There's a lot

that we still have to learn. I appreciate you qualify that. But it seems that we've seen the differences between humans and chimps minimized and the differences between humans and other humans maximized, which is probably driven by a worldview. And I realize I can do the same thing, given my assumptions on a range of issues, but I think it's important to call out what's driving this. Now, some people might say, sorry, Casey, people have known this for two decades, that there's 1% genetic difference. So why is this new? is. Yeah, some folks are saying, you know, this is old news. We've known this for a long time that humans and chimps are more than 1% genetically different. And my response is, you're right.

And that's great that you acknowledge that. I really appreciate that. And I actually respect the fact that some folks are acknowledging that we've known this for a long time. But then my response is, well, then why haven't you been calling out people from, you know, folks who share your evolutionary view who have been promoting the 1% genetic myth? Why are you? are you only attacking me for pointing this out? You know, you should have been also calling out folks from your own perspective who have been using this supposed one percent genetic difference between humans and chimps as an argument for evolution. And, you know, our critics, they devote their lives to debunking things that they think that we've long known or false. So, you know,

why attack me when I'm pointing out something that we also have known for a long time? I mean, I'm not going to worry about this objection too much. We're all allowed to talk about different topic. I think this is interesting. But I just find it interesting that people are saying, well, we've known this for a long time, Casey, this is old news. It's like, okay, well, if that's true, then where have you been? Why haven't you been calling out so many of the folks from your own sort of perspective that have been making this false argument for evolution? Okay, that's fair. So far we've talked about how there's this claim that's persisted in University of Chicago books, Smithsonian, Bill Nye, a ton of other places, about one percent.

genetic similarity humans and chimps, we see it's actually closer to 15%. So the evidence scientifically, so to speak, simply doesn't match up with it. Let's shift to what you mentioned earlier about what follows logically from this. So in some ways, just start with, I remember when Bill Dembskin and I wrote Understand Intelligent Design, I think it came out in 08, so we wrote it 18 years ago or so. this new data was just kind of emerging. We're skeptical about it, but not with the confidence that we have today. So if I remember, Cuckley, one of the points that we made is that even a 1% genetic difference,

depending on where it is could be very, very significant. So it wouldn't follow if we were 99% genetically similar, that that 1% couldn't radically shift things. But I also think we argued that even if it's 99% similar, this could be a common ancestor or it could be because of a common creator. Assumidably, you see it the same. But tell us what you think logically falls from this. No, I absolutely see it in the same way as you do, Sean. Sometimes when I'm presenting on this topic, I will repeat that famous speech from Empire Strikes Back where Darth Vader confesses to Luke that he's his father.

say, what if we were to take this, you know, 40 or 50 word speech and just add a couple instances of the word not. It would completely change the meaning of the whole Star Wars saga, you know, like Luke, I am not your father. Join me. We cannot rule the galaxy together as father and son. We cannot destroy the emperor, you know, blah, blah, blah. So it just a couple changes in, in specific locations can have radical changes in the meaning of a text or of a genetic code even. So I think that's very important to remember that, you know, even a 1% different, if we turned out that we were only 1% genetically different from chimps, that could still have a great, what we call a phenotypic effect upon the organism, changing its actual body structure or the nature of its proteins, et cetera, et cetera. But let's just say for the sake of argument, Sean, that we were in fact 99% genetically the same as a chim. I don't think this really provides any kind of, you know, strong evidence for common ancestry because as I kind of, as I kind of.

alluded to earlier, common design can explain those functional similarities just as well as common descent. It's actually a very good design strategy to reuse functional components in different designs. We see that designers will reuse our wheels on both cars and airplanes or reuse keyboards on both cell phones and laptops. If you're a computer programmer, I wrote about 30,000 lines of computer code during my PhD, I became very well versed in Python and kind of went deep down that rabbit hole. And, you know, when I would create a new program, the very first thing I would do is I would hit copy and paste. I would copy an old program that was kind of similar to the new program I wanted to write and I would use that old program as sort of a template for building the new program. So computer

programmers will very regularly reuse code that works in new programs. So why would it be so surprising if we were intelligently designed to find that there is DNA code that's being reused between different organisms. I think it simply reflects that we have common design based upon a common blueprint to meet similar functional needs in different organisms. So if it turned out that we were 99% similar to chimps, even when we believe that was true, it never really struck me as an argument for common ancestor. I think common design can explain those similarities just as well.

as common descent. Okay, that last phrase is exactly how I see it, that if we have some common ancestor and there's some mechanism that explains it, we might expect to see 99% genetic similarity. So it largely matches on to a Darwinian explanation, largely. Would we, Sean? Would we go? I mean, you know, according to some evolution, I mean, you can compare the genomes of different species. You know, I could make these numbers up. But okay, now there were only 85% genetically similar to a chip. Do you think that they're abandoning common ancestry? Absolutely not.

Some people have said there were, you know, 50% the same as a banana. I don't think that's true. But every evolutionist on the planet thinks that we are related through common ancestry to a banana if you go back far enough. So I actually don't think this is an objective or rigorous argument at all. The more the genetic difference, what's going to happen is they're just going to push the timeline of when we supposedly, diverged from a common ancestor back. And so it's basically an unfalsifiable argument. You're never going

to find a percent genetic difference that, in my view, is going to allow them to actually refute common ancestry and evolution. And so I really don't see this as a serious argument for common ancestry, the way they typically structured their arguments. Okay. So my point is, if it were 99% in common, that in principle it could be consistent with a dark. Need a daily spark of hope and direction? Let the Daily Bible app from Salem Media Be That Spark. This free Android app delivers an uplifting verse each morning plus reading plans, devotions

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to revisit later. Share inspiring messages with loved ones right from the app. Feel God's presence in every notification. Search for Daily Bible app on Google Play and begin your day with hope, purpose, and peace. Our winning an explanation. We'd expect to find similarity, but it's also similar. It also makes sense within the perspective of intelligent design for the reasons you mentioned, smart designers reuse patterns that work. So in itself, it's somewhat neutral and doesn't

prove design or prove evolution. It's neutral. Now, that we found it's 85% and it's even greater difference, would you say now it's shifting towards challenging common dissent in itself? Or, yeah, tell me what you think falls from this for common descent. Is this evidence against common descent now? Yeah, to be honest with you, Sean, I have never seen the mere percent genetic similarity or different statistic as an argument for or against common ancestry.

And I've been saying this for years. This is not something new that I sort of just came up with. I was going through some old blog posts. I've been saying this since about 2008 was the earliest time that I could find myself writing about this. I just don't think that the percent genetic similarity is relevant. That mere statistic is relevant or really useful in answering the question of common ancestry. Now, I do think that there's other lines of evidence that are relevant. If you look at the fossil evidence, we can see a distinct break between the human-like body plan

and our supposed ape-like evolutionary precursors in the fossil record that I believe is a real problem for common ancestor and, you know, an unguided Darwinian evolution. I think that the fossil evidence does not support common ancestry. If you look at many of the higher cognitive abilities of human beings, I think that there's a very serious break between humans and all other creatures that challenges evolutionary explanations. And I think it is also possible to make a genetics big. argument against unguided evolution, but it has to do with finding multiple mutations that are required to give you some functional advantage. You have a great where you need multiple coordinated mutations before you get any functional advantage according to the mathematics of how population genetics work, it can take very,

very long periods of time to get those multiple mutations that are needed. I'll just say one thing here very quickly. There was a paper a number of years ago in the journal genetics. 2008, which said that if you had a trait in human beings that just required two mutations, two specific mutations to be present before you gain some functional advantage to help you to survive and reproduce, a trait just two mutations needed to help you survive and reproduce, it would take over 200 million years for a trait like that to arise in a typical population of hominence, okay?

That is way longer than what is allowed by the fossil record. So that is the kind of, we call that a waiting times argument. That is the kind of argument that I think could be made from genetics to challenge an unguided evolutionary origin of humans or even common ancestry. But I just don't think that the percent genetic similarity statistic is going to be helpful. Is relevant to it. Okay. So one of my- Great, great question, Sean.

It's a really important question. One of my colleagues at Bilella who works with Discovery, Doug Axe, has done some of the best. work on this, his book, Undeniable. Same title I think is Bill Nye's book. Let's shelve that conversation. We can come back to it. There's also other things like people point toward like pseudogenes and other things within the genetic code that people will say are evidence for common descent. We just don't need to address that right now. I pointed out to say, we're not pretending to address everything here. We're dealing with one icon. But people listening, let me just make one important distinction. We've used evolution and common descent somewhat synonymously on this program, but they're not the same things.

The word evolution is equivocal could be small changes within a kind. It can mean changes across kind. Now we're getting towards common descent. But then you also have to have the mechanism that drives it. So there's some intelligent design proponents, I believe Bhee is one of them, that is okay with common descent, but challenges. the mechanism behind it, the idea that there could be a naturalistic mechanism to explain it, and still says, even if there is common ascent, there's signs of intelligence. So I just want to put that out there for folks to make sure they're tracking with this. That's a such a crucial

point you just made, Sean, that there is sort of three ways, three main ways we can understand the idea of evolution. Mere change over time, which nobody disagrees with, change within species. Nobody disagrees with that. The idea is. that species share common ancestors, it could be universal common ancestry. And as you correctly said, within the ID camp, some folks accept common ancestry. Some are skeptics. I tend to be a skeptic, but my good friend Michael Behe, he supports common ancestry. We all agree there's evidence for design in the natural world. And so that's where we disagree with the third definition of evolution, which is that random mutation and unguided natural selection and other sort of

standard unguided evolutionary mechanisms that they built all the complexity of life. And that's where we take most greatest issue with the standard evolutionary model. So very well said you the way you just parse that out, Sean. You've written a piece in the New York Post that came out recently talking about this. And the title was something effective like kind of this Smithsonian monkeying with the evidence I thought was creative, where that was you or the folks there at the New York Post. but you reached out to the Smithsonian, sent them a letter. And I haven't seen the letter, but I assume you made your case and did it kindly because I know you.

Did they respond at all? And if so, what did they say? Yeah, I did not actually give the title for the New York Post article. As is often the case. The editors did that. But I thought it was a clever title. It was. But yeah.

But yeah. So, yes, I did write a letter to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., basically notifying them about this letter and saying, oh, sorry, about this paper that just came out in nature and saying, look, this paper shows that we are much more than just 1.2 genetically percent genetically different from chimps as your exhibit states. And I quoted the statistics and the findings from this paper in the letter that I sent to Sassonian, and I encourage them to update their exhibit. They did respond with a very short, you know, kind of a non-response I would call it. They said, yes, thank you.

We will take this into account next time we update our exhibits. Does that mean they will change it? When will they update the exhibits? They didn't say, but at least, you know, they received the letter and they acknowledged, you know, that I had sent it. And I appreciated that. And so I don't know if or when it will happen or make any difference. I suppose only time will tell, but we can always hope for the best.

Are there other areas of scientific misinformation at the Smithsonian that either you saw when you were there in person or you've just seen in your research. Yeah, definitely, Sean. In fact, when you look at the fossil evidence, they actually have some spectacular exhibits showing some of the fossils, hominid fossils that are thought to be relevant to human origins. But unfortunately, in my opinion, in many cases, the Smithsonian's human origins exhibit,

it either overstates or misstates the evidence for human evolution. I'll give you just a couple examples here. In one case, they talk about this ancient species called Sathalanthropist Chedensis. They call it an early human that, quote, walked on two legs. But there are leading paleoanthropologists who would sharply dispute this claim. In fact, there was an article in nature, this was long ago in 2002, that found that Sathalanthropist was an ape and that many features linked the specimen to chimpanzees, gorillas, or both, to the exclusion of hominids.

In other words, this nature paper said that Sal Anthropis is not a human ancestor. Certainly it would be wrong to call it a, quote, early human as the Smithsonian's human origins exhibit calls it. And then there was an article in the Journal of Human Evolution a few years ago in 2020 that looked at the femur of Sal Anthropis and found that it would look like that you would find in a chimp-like quadruped. So in other words, it probably didn't walk upright and it wasn't a human ancestor. If you go on in the human origins exhibit, it actually says, quote, we became human gradually, unquote, and that we evolved from, quote, earlier primates. Again, I think the distinction is to try to blur the, trying to blur the distinction between humans and other creatures. But the great Harvard evolutionary biologist Ernst Merr, he said that there is a, quote, large unbridged gap in the fossil record between the Australopithecines and the first human-like members of our genus Homo.

In fact, he said in his own words that were, quote, in a position of not having any fossils that can serve as missing links. And one scientific commentator called this scientific evidence, quote, a big bang theory of human evolution. Actually, he said that we were, quote, not having any fossils that can serve as missing links. So my question is, you know, why doesn't the Smithsonian Institution basically disclose this information, that there are serious gaps in the hominid fossil record that do not show this nice, gradual evolutionary pathway that is predicted by Darwin's theory in which they claim exists.

Instead, we see serious gaps, large unbridged gaps, according to Ernst Mayer, in the hominid fossil record, that I think pose a serious challenge to standard evolutionary models of human origins. So unfortunately, the Smithsonian Institution, you know, it's sort of got its own perspective. you might even say an agenda to promote that perspective. And they really don't acknowledge leading scientists or credible scientific literature that challenges the view that they're promoting. So in one case, with a 98.5 or so genetic similarity, it's false. And we pretty much know that, at least with confidence right now.

The other one, it's like, you know, they're stating something for which there's a controversy, but they're just giving one side should be more balanced. balanced here, and there's an agenda or a worldview behind it. By the way, taking public funds. And so minimally, they should at least show the controversy when this isn't just you at Discovery, me at Biola saying, I'm taking issues with this, but other leading scientists and publications like nature calling them out on it, I'd like to see them catch up with the data.

So if you hear stuff, Casey, if you see a change that's made. this might more be on your radar than mine. Let me know. I love to update folks, certain people watching this. If you see an update or you're at the Smithsonian, or you have another example of what you think is misstated evidence for evolution. Link it below. I would like to see it. Where does this go next as far as you can see things, Casey?

Yeah. So I think that right now it's just going to be interesting to see how the data plays out. There's so many new discoveries we're making about the human genome, about genomes in general, about functions for junk DNA. Sean, you mentioned pseudogenes earlier. I know we're not going to dive into that today, but that would be a fun conversation for another time because there's many scientific papers that are finding function even for pseudogenes now.

So there's so much more that we're learning about the genome. As an intelligent design proponent, I personally am very encouraged by the data because we you're predicting function for junk DNA for, you know, multiple decades. And now the scientific research has confirmed that the intelligent design prediction is correct. And this is helping us to actually make sense of these newly discovered differences between the human genome and the chimp genome. So it's all coming together in my view in a sort of paradigm of perspective that is very consistent with intelligent design. And I'm just going to keep following the evidence. And we'll continue to report on it on evolutionnews.org.

our main website and just see where it goes. When Dembski and I were writing Understand Intelligence Design again, 2007 came out 2008. One of the things that I remember was really popping up on the radar was that intelligent design is not a science because it doesn't make any predictions. Not only did we say that's false it makes predictions and a lot of ID proponents over the years that said specific, I think Myers has this. Stephen Myers said, we will find more purpose. for, you know, what's called junk DNA.

And that's not only found to be true, but someone gets a noble, you know, award-winning, you know, recognition for discovering this past year. So I have a lot of confidence like you do moving forward that we'll find more and more purposes within the genome that were considered junk. Did I miss anything? Maybe just sum up for us what your key takeaway is so you're not misunderstood by people who are watching this. And did I miss anything in the interview? You're like, you know what? I really wanted to make that point. Sure.

No, I appreciate that, Sean, and appreciate the opportunity just to talk about this. But, yeah, so I mean, my main point here is that we've all heard for years that the human and chimp genomes are 99 or so percent similar and, you know, one or two percent genetically different. If you're living, breathing, and paying attention, you probably heard this argument. And people have used that statistic as an argument for evolution for human chimp common ancestry. My main point is that this icon of evolution is wrong. And it's wrong actually by over an order of magnitude. The data, the best data that's coming out now shows that we're more like

about 14.9 or even 15% genetically different from a chimpanzee. No, I'm not saying that that number, that new, the correct, more accurate data point that we have now. I'm not saying that that necessarily refutes evolution or refutes common ancestry. What I'm saying is that this common icon of evolution, this argument you have heard being made for evolution, that argument is wrong. And we need to put it to bed and move on. And then we can have a more robust conversation about what the data really says and whether or not, you know, we are, in fact, genetically related to chimps. And we did evolve through standard evolutionary mechanisms. I hope some of the critics will just acknowledge, hey, okay, you know, this is Casey's right, maybe. I don't know if they would say that,

but, you know, or not Casey's right, but just this icon of evolution was wrong. Okay. I don't need to be acknowledged to be right. But just that the icon of evolution is wrong, that a lot of evolution proponents got it wrong when they made this claim that we were 1% genetically different from chimps and that this is somehow evidence for human evolution. Acknowledge that they got it wrong. And let's move on and continue to have this conversation in a civil and informed way. That's what my heart desires. If there are other folks out there who want the same thing, I'd love to hear from them. And maybe we can have that conversation to be a lot of fun. All right, Casey, last question. If a follow-up comes in a

a journal article as prestigious as nature. And they go, you know what, we got it wrong. It's 0.5% genetic difference. And we blew it, whether two years, five years, 10 years, will you come back and say, you know what, I'll own it? Data is different. It's now been assessed. You would come back on and say, you know, we got to follow truth and own it.

Do I have your word? I can hold you to this. This will be on YouTube. Would you come back and correct that? No problem, Sean. Absolutely. I mean, I will follow data where it leads. In fact, I've made a couple of minor mistakes in the way that I have described the paper in nature,

and I've got a couple of posts coming out on Evolution News that'll talk about, you know, I need to correct one little thing. It doesn't affect my overall commentary or the points I'm making. But, you know, we make corrections when we make mistakes. It's no big deal. Everybody gets things wrong sometimes. And this is how science goes. You learn new things.

You improve your arguments. You accept when the data, you know, changes your understanding of the situation. So no problem there at all, Sean. I knew you were going to say that, and I knew you would come back because I've known you for years. But I also point out that if you're willing to own some things that you've missed, and that's all of us have missed some things, and you're going to cite that in articles, then people watching this who have advanced this argument, we invite them to do the same.

And I hope that they will, for the sake of science, one of its strength is that it's self-correcting and follows the evidence wherever it leads. Casey, this has been fun. I can't believe we waited so long to do this. Ten years ago, you wrote a chapter for me in a book, a new kind of apologist, and we probably knew each other ten years before that. But keep me posted on stories that drop like this. My audience will want to know when there's kind of fascinating big data and kind of

dramatic, interesting stories that unfold that have worldview apologetic implications. Keep us posted on that because we're going to revisit this topic time and time again. Folks, check out Casey Leskin. His work online, his blogs, has some excellent blogs where he fills in even some of the details we didn't get to today, a series of blogs. And also his book, Science and Human Origins. And while you're at it, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got some other interviews coming up again on near-death experiences. We're going to revisit the resurrection.

We've got a range of topics coming up, including the conversion, amazing conversion of a former Muslim. who argues that many Muslims are coming to faith. Make sure hit subscribe, and if you've thought about studying apologetics or science and religion. We have two master's degrees out of Biola. One is an apologetics. I teach you that. And also a degree in science and religion in which you take a couple of my classes as well.

Information is below. Check it out. Think about joining me. Casey, this was fun. Thoroughly enjoyed it. felt like a late night conversation back in college when we're trying to figure things out, although hopefully we've come a little way since our freshman year in high school or in college. No insult to freshman, like you said.

We're glad if any of them watch. But this is fun. We'll do it again for sure. Thanks a lot, Sean. And by the way, quick point that book Science and Human Origins was actually co-authored also by our friend Doug Axe and also Ann Gager. So I appreciate you recommending that and look forward to doing it again sometime. Thanks a lot, Sean. Thanks.

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