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Genome Project Revelations
Several orthodox explanations of the universality of the genetic code can be suggested, but none is generally accepted to be completely convincing. It is a little surprising that organisms with somewhat different codes do not coexist.
FRANCIS CRICK AND L. E. ORGEL
As noted in the previous chapter, mitochondria within cells have their own mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA).
There are approximately twenty-three thousand genes in the human genome, well within the same range as in mice, roundworms, mammals, and primates. Scientists tell us that understanding how these genes express themselves will provide clues to how diseases are caused.
Here are some rather anomalous facts about the genome.
The Human Genome Project was started in 1989 with the goal of decoding the human genome by sequencing and identifying all of the approximately 3.3 billion base pairs—that is, the chemical units in the human genetic instruction set—finding the genetic roots of disease, and then developing treatments. With the report of the sequence in hand, the next step was to identify the genetic variants that increase the risk for common diseases like cancer and diabetes.
Project scientists used white blood cells from the blood of two male and two female donors (randomly selected from twenty of each), with each donor yielding a separate DNA library. One of these libraries (RP11) was used considerably more than others, due to quality considerations.
One minor technical issue is that male samples contain just over half as much DNA from the sex chromosomes (one X chromosome and one Y chromosome) compared with female samples (which contain two X chromosomes). The other twenty-two chromosome pairs (the autosomes) are the same for both sexes.
All of this recent work began when Francis Crick and James Dewey Watson codiscovered the shape of the DNA molecule in 1950. That was an amazing breakthrough at that time. However, less than forty years thereafter, it was announced that a far more incredible undertaking was going to take place, the mapping of the human genome (which begat the Human Genome Project).
By 2003, the first rough draft of the genome sequence was finished. It was an almost unbelievable accomplishment coming so soon after the rather basic, by way of comparison, discovery that Crick and Watson had made.
During the intervening years—from the time of the project announcement to the rough draft being made public—people on both sides of the evolution versus creation debate waited anxiously to see what story our human genes would tell when scientists finally deciphered their secret language.
Before the Human Genome Project, some microbiologists had estimated that the known three billion or so DNA letters combined to form a hundred thousand or more genes. However, Christopher Wills, professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, says:
But the amazing thing is that there are much fewer genes in the human genome than expected [only about twenty thousand to twenty-five thousand], which means that each gene has to be very sophisticated in what it does.1
Because the number of DNA letters per gene is limited, the new, lower gene count made clear that about 98.5 percent of our DNA seemingly had little or nothing to do with genes; it was junk DNA, as some scientists called it.
When the results were published, neo-Darwinians were shocked. Ironically, the head of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins, was not a Darwinist but a devout Christian.
The discovery that the approximately twenty-three thousand genes in human beings were in the same range as those in mice and roundworms came as a humbling surprise. That was a not-so-flattering fact, and it was not at all anticipated because of our “superior” brains.
Evolutionary microbiologists were surprised to learn that the human genome was not the long, much more complicated code they had predicted; not only that, they soon learned that it was not even substantially different from the codes of various plant species.
So the notion that “size matters” was quickly tossed out by geneticists. Apparently, the number of genes was not the good predictor of the complexity of a species that they had envisioned it would be.
The focus then shifted to the great similarities that existed between the human and chimpanzee genomes. That became the battle cry of evolutionists then and still is to this day. Of course, creationists took their humbling when it was revealed that the chimp and human genomes only differed by a mere 2 to 3 percent.
However, I submit that the concept of similarity is misplaced and taken way too far by Darwinian microbiologists and other scientists who share their philosophy. Why?
If we look at the animal classification referred to as mammalian, we will find creatures that have many things in common, such as eyes, ears, mouths, teeth, noses, lungs, hearts, and so forth. This entire very large kingdom shares certain characteristics that make them mammals. We humans have those same features, so we can say that we are a similar species but mean it in a very general way.
In fact, most mammals share at least 85 percent of their genomes with humans.
Using the figure 98 percent makes it sound like we are so close to being the same as chimpanzees that it is a virtual certainty that we emerged from the same ancestor. But wait a minute. Perhaps most of the 90 percent is also shared by other mammals and especially other great apes as well (93–95 percent).
In fact, that is true. We could also say that we are genetically very similar to gorillas, about 95 percent, and even horses and dolphins, more than 90 percent for both species.
That calls the entire meaning of the statistical comparison methodology into question.
By using this method, geneticists have made several assumptions that might not be valid. First, they assume that they have examined and understood all of the important details of different genomes and made one-to-one, side-by-side comparisons of each gene in the entire genome sequence. They have not done so.
The second assumption is that the 2 to 3 percent difference is of lesser importance than the 97 percent similarity. Is it?
In fact, it is apparent—due to the relative uniformity of the genetic code—that up to a point the code is like a template, a foundational framework that does not mean much, in terms of speciation, until the final speciation genes responsible for divergence are added.
Since the human and chimpanzee genomes are very similar up to a point, then the genes that make up the uniformity are not nearly as pivotal and potent as the genes that give expression to the two distinct species (chimps and humans).
As Wills noted above, “Each gene has to be very sophisticated in what it does.”
Keep in mind that when the genomes were first deciphered, geneticists considered a sizable portion of the code to be nonfunctional junk. Wrong.
Time has shown the geneticists that their original perception was erroneous, and they have since learned that their assessment of some genes as being junk was, in fact, just a reflection of their own ignorance. The so-called junk genes play a functional, regulatory role in the genetic code.
When a geneticist tries to argue the case for neo-Darwin theories by using the apparent similarity of the human and chimp genomes, I respond with the following: please explain then why you are studying chimpanzee DNA while they are eating bananas in the forest like they have for millions of years.
If we are so close to being the same, then why do humans act more like social insects by clustering together in vast cities, like hives, while chimps live in extended family clans of fewer than a dozen individuals?
Humans have a definite herd instinct that goes beyond just being social animals, which chimps are, too. However, chimps do not try to mass together to form insect-like hives, which humans have done all over the planet. Not only that, chimps are environmentally and habitat stable; we humans are the most unstable creatures on the planet, always seeking to venture over the next horizon.
The genome dissimilarity actually points to the issues that we should be focused on: Why are humans so radically different in their social behaviors, technological innovativeness, language, customs, migration, and violent impulses? What is it about the 2 to 3 percent of the genetic code that differs so much from that of animals that it makes humans want to go to Mars, meddle with plant and animal genes, and in engage in mass murder (i.e., warfare)?
Let us examine the human race through a different lens: males and females.
This examination definitely prevents this presentation from slipping into a mere academic debate and keeps the discussion real. A man shares about 97 percent of his genes with a woman. That’s right. Even on an intraspecies level, we are not the same, though we are very similar, of course.
All embryos start out female.
Different creatures have different ways of determining sex. However, in the mammal kingdom, sex is determined by genetics. A handful of Y chromosome genes cause maleness by turning on a few biochemical switches during the early gestation period. This is universal in all mammals.
It means that, if you are male, the basic genes that made you male extend back to the earliest mammal species, if not earlier. In regard to those genes, you are closer to a male rabbit or horse than you are to a female human. You see, this whole similarity thing is very much a matter of which information you select to focus your attention on.
Does that mean that human males are closer to rabbits and horses than to human females? Of course, that is not the case. It means that in one narrow context the genes that determine the male sex traits are more similar to those in males of other mammal species than to females of the same species. But only in that very limited context.
As noted above, all fetuses start as female, and a handful of Y chromosome genes causes the fetus to turn into a male. What is more important: the fact that females and males are both human or the fact that the former has the capability to reproduce either sex? Are the similarities important, or are the dissimilarities that define how a male differs from a female, and the reverse, of equal or even greater significance?
It is all a matter of perspective.
Chimps and horses do not speak English, nor do they feel the need to learn to read Stephen King novels. Does that mean they share a close genetic bond? Some humans also do not speak English, nor do they read horror fiction. Should we put them in the chimp or horse category, too?
Levity aside, this whole genetic arena has an important underlying reality to it, of course. But if we are not careful, that reality can be distorted and tweaked to mean just about anything anyone wants it to.
THE CHROMOSOME BARRIER
Now that we have established some caveats and ground rules, let us proceed to objectively find out what it is that makes us human and chimpanzees themselves. First, one of the initial findings in the field of genetics was the fact that humans have one fewer pair of chromosomes than do the great apes.
As noted in the previous chapter, we humans have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, and chimpanzees and gorillas have twenty-four pairs, forty-six and forty-eight chromosomes in total, respectively.
Chromosomes are of paramount importance because they are the vectors of heredity. The ABO and Rh blood groups are defined in them.
In humans, they can be divided into two types: autosomes and sex chromosomes. Certain genetic traits are linked to a person’s sex and are passed on through the sex chromosomes. The autosomes contain the rest of the genetic hereditary information. All chromosomes act in the same way during cell division.
As noted above, human cells have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes (twenty-two pairs of autosomes and one pair of sex chromosomes), giving a total of forty-six per cell. In the human evolutionary lineage, it is thought that two ancestral ape chromosomes fused, producing human chromosome 2.
This is considered to be the main divergence between the human and chimp genomes.
In the preceding chapter, we learned that the human and chimpanzee ABO distribution pattern is very different. Chimpanzees completely lack two blood types that we humans possess (B, AB) and have minimal occurrences of type O, which forms our major blood group, and no Rh negative group.
(Clarification: the human and chimp [A, minimal O] blood groups are not identical; the chimp type A is a species-specific blood group. Human type-A individuals could not receive type A chimpanzee blood or donate their type A blood to a chimp in need of a transfusion.)
A two-chromosome difference does not sound like much (mathematically), but this seemingly small difference means that our genetic codes are not compatible enough to produce offspring. That is a wide genetic divergence between two species that supposedly branched off from the same ancestor. (It is even wider with the gorilla.)
The major structural difference is that human chromosome 2 was apparently derived from two smaller chromosomes that are found in the great apes. A simple fusion of two separate chromosomes is said to be the main difference between human and chimp chromosomes.
Once again, a seeming small mathematical difference, when translated into the variations between genomes, turns out to make a huge difference. So far, we have seen that humans and chimps have dissimilar blood groups and dissimilar chromosome patterns.
Once again, neo-Darwinists want to emphasize the closeness of the two species using numeric relationships that imply a near match. However, genetics does not seem to work that way.
A small number of gene differences can cause sharp distinctions between species.
In the genetic code, an apparently minor variation can translate into very different species-specific genetic expressions, such as the simple biochemical switches that trigger a female fetus to change into a male. At the point that the human and chimp genomes depart, this may translate into a small number, but that is irrelevant. The departure produces major differences, such as a new blood type or fewer chromosomes that act as species partitions and so forth.
As we noted in the previous chapter, the ABO/Rh factor blood groups are inherited from both parents. Chromosomes are also inherited; one copy from each parent forms one of the pairs so that the offspring inherits one-half of the mother’s chromosomes and one-half of the father’s as well.
Now this genetic transmission system produces some interesting and unanticipated results. Since each succeeding generation is the product of the combination of twenty-three chromosomes from the mother and twenty-three from the father, it only takes seven generations to disconnect from the original ancestor or founder.
What does that mean? For example, if I try to trace a person’s heritage back two hundred years to the late seventeenth century, there is a problem. He probably does not have any of the chromosomes that his remote ancestor back eight generations possessed. Why?
This is due to the fact that each intervening generation only received 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, and then 1/128 of that eighth-generational ancestor’s original chromosome makeup.
Since the last figure is less than one, my chromosomal makeup is entirely different, which means that it does not take that long to depart entirely from the alleged ancestral chromosome. This is very counter-intuitive to the way we consciously think about our ancestral lineage. We tend to think of genetic inheritance going back in a straight line to the original block (we were chipped off), right to our remotest ancestors, with a conservation of traits and a high degree of genetic uniformity.
Yet genetics does not work that way. We are not really chips off the direct-line ancestral block.
The ABO/Rh factor blood group transmission genetics underscores this fact. We all believe that we are virtually identical genetic copies of our parents. Given this assumption, it is natural to think that we could freely exchange blood or donate or receive organs from our parents (at the very least), if not our siblings, if necessary. Not true.
I am a type A negative, and my mother is a type O positive, meaning that I can neither give nor receive blood to or from my own mother. We may be close emotionally and genetically in many ways, but not in terms of blood groups; in that specific area, we are rather distant relatives.
Both family ties as well as shared ethnic and racial traits give us a false impression of the underlying genetic reality. You may be able to save the life of a neighbor down the street with a transfusion, but not a family member. Blood groups unite and divide us genetically, not eye, hair, or skin color and so forth, which are very superficial traits.
In fact, our senses of family, racial, and ethnic uniformity are delusions. Even though everyone in your family may have black hair and brown eyes, if you are a type A negative, you might find that only an individual outside of your family or ethnic group can save your life in a crunch.
Though this book is not written to support the Creationist version of human origins or of Judaism or Christianity, the Bible made a crucial point by flatly stating that all life is in the blood—not in the color of your eyes, skin, or hair, but in your bloodstream.
The chromosomes have a story to tell, and it is simply this: if you possess forty-eight of them, you go that way and join the chimpanzees and gorillas in the forests of central Africa; if you possess forty-six, then you are a card-carrying Homo sapiens and go wherever you want to.
THE MYTH OF mtDNA EVE
We just saw that all of our assumptions about familial and racial closeness in terms of a shared blood type and chromosomal pattern are more often wrong than right. We also learned that the alleged similarity between chimps and humans is really a matter of perspective, and in fact, we are two very separate and distinct species in terms of blood groups and chromosomes.
However, there is another component of the genome that evolutionists insist tells the real story of human history and evolution: mtDNA, to which we were introduced in the previous chapter.
Exactly what is mtDNA?
A human cell contains two types of DNA—nuclear and mitochondrial. The first constitutes the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes contained within the nuclei of our cells, which we examined above. As we learned, each parent contributes to the genetic makeup of these chromosomes.
On the other hand, mtDNA is found outside the nucleus, in the mitochondria, and is inherited solely from the mother.
Mitochondria are very small cell structures wrapped up within all of our cells. They are the power plants of the human body, providing about 90 percent of the energy that the body needs to function.
Each cell contains hundreds to thousands of mitochondria; this effectively means that there are hundreds to thousands of mtDNA copies in a human cell. This compares to just two copies of nuclear DNA (chromosomes) located in that same cell.
Whereas nuclear DNA is composed of a continuous linear strand of nucleotides to make up the gene sequence (a multitude of combinations of just four nucleotides: adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine [A, T, G, and C]), mtDNA is constructed in a circular or loop configuration. Each loop contains a sufficient number (usually 16,569) of nucleotide combinations to make up the thirty-seven genes involved in mitochondrial energy generation.
In addition to energy production, mitochondria also play a role in several other cellular activities. For example, mitochondria help regulate the self-destruction of cells and are also necessary for the production of substances such as cholesterol and heme (an iron-containing component of hemoglobin).
In effect, we do not get exactly half of our DNA from our father and half from our mother since a tiny piece of our DNA is inherited only down the female line in the mtDNA bundle.
While males, like females, receive and use their mother’s mtDNA, they cannot pass it on to their children. Their sperm have their own mitochondria to power the long journey from the vagina to the ovum. However, upon entry into the ovum, the male mitochondria quickly dissipate and die. This leaves the female as the sole carrier of mtDNA.
Given this set of characteristics, according to microbiologists, each of us inherits our mtDNA from our own mother, who inherited her mtDNA intact from her mother, and so on back through the generations—right back to what they call “the Eve gene” from “mtDNA Eve.”
This scenario, if taken to its ultimate conclusion, means that every person alive today has inherited their mtDNA from one single great-great-great- (long series) grandmother, who begat the ancestral mitochondria nearly two hundred thousand years ago.
Our first question then, in light of the ABO/Rh factor blood group data, is, Which blood type did our mythical Eve possess? She had to have one.
She had to have carried and transmitted one blood group (ABO and Rh factor) as well as twenty-three chromosomes to her children, both sons and daughters. In addition, her husband would have also made a similar genetic contribution, though none to the mtDNA gene group.
As we learned above, it is impossible to retrace the chromosomes backward in time from a specific living individual to a specific ancestor because of the way they are transmitted and the genes are combined, lost, and recombined so quickly.
As for our Eve, we only know she had forty-six chromosomes and twenty-three went to each child, but the exact nature of each division remains unknown. In terms of chromosomes, none of us is a “chip off the old block” because the block disassembles and is replaced by a new one in eight generations.
If this is true in terms of the human lineage, and it certainly is, then how much more true is it in relation to the chimpanzee lineage, which does not even possess the same overall number of chromosomes?
We will return to the blood group question a little later. For now, let us simply acknowledge that trying to establish a direct line of ancestry backward to a point in time, or to a single individual ancestor, is like trying to trek through the Sahara Desert in a sandstorm.
First, you are blinded by the immediate swirls of sand stinging your eyes, and then, when the storm passes, you are confused by the shifting sands that have rearranged the environment.
In the previous chapter, we carefully walked through the various distinctions that exist between the ABO/Rh factor blood groups and what they imply about human origins and history. Through that basic genetic filter, it did not appear that there was either (1) a single place of origin or (2) a single human group that could have produced the diverse ABO/Rh blood group distribution pattern we see today around the globe.
Keep in mind that according to several of the key principles of evolution, successful mutations are rare, and natural selection processes favor simplicity over increasing complexity. Since that is true, it suggests that modern humans have appeared recently—very recently, in fact.
The chimpanzee population reflects those principles. They have not displayed any significant mutations in tens of millions of years; their homogenous blood group is the reflection of selective filtering, which produced a fixed blood group that is type A dominant.
Now we are faced with figuring out what basic genetic configuration our theoretical Eve possessed beyond the forty-six chromosomes that distinguished her from chimps. Was she type O positive? If so, when and where did the recessive O negative blood type enter the picture?
If it was an early mutation, given the fact that it is recessive, it should have been filtered out by the Rh positive type even before the type A and B mutations appeared to become codominants. Rh negative blood did not originate in Africa; we saw that in the last chapter.
But we have already seen that the current worldwide blood group distribution pattern not only has O positive on top of the chart, but O negative also has a significant minority in some regional populations.
To say that our mythical Eve (and Adam) presents a problematical model is therefore an understatement.
If she was type A, as some geneticists contend, then type O should have sunk into near oblivion long ago, just as was the case with chimpanzees and gorillas; that proposal begs the question of the origins of types O and B and Rh negative and their continued existence even more.
Of course, mtDNA Eve has produced billions of daughters, granddaughters, and so forth. If all of her descendants’ chromosomes had been an exact copy of hers, then every daughter would be a virtual clone to this day. But we have seen that the chromosomal transmission method completely prevented that.
If she and her husband, the theoretical Adam, had both been type A positive, then the human blood group would be like the chimpanzee blood group, perhaps with minimal examples of type O, assuming Adam was type O or B, but no Rh negative blood would exist.
All the genetic evidence points to the fact that we are not clones, and we cannot even freely exchange blood group genes among ourselves. We are a diverse population now, and that suggests that we came from a diverse population in the past.
The theoretical mtDNA Eve is just an abstract model that is once again supposed to shore up the neo-Darwinian out-of-Africa hypothesis, but it does not really stand up under close scrutiny.
Ironically, one of the only scenarios that can be used to make it work is to radically shorten the time since modern Homo sapiens first appeared. If an ancestral Eve existed to transmit her mitochondria intact down through the generations, then she could have been a type O positive person and her husband a type O negative.
But then, to allow for the mutations within types A and B later, our hypothetical progenitors could not have started the race two hundred thousand years ago, but more like ten thousand years ago or even less. This also could not have happened in Africa because there is no Rh negative blood among native tribal Africans.
That prospect is not one that neo-Darwinians are going to embrace.
In the prior chapter, we saw that Earth has been an uncontrolled experimental genetics lab for the past five hundred years, where a pure type O positive population in the Americas was inundated by a mixed blood group European population, which quickly diluted the American people’s historic O positive homogeneity.
The resultant ABO distribution pattern is now starting to reflect that of the mixed populations that existed and still exist in the colonized countries. Type O blood does not withstand an influx of types A and B, and the Rh negative blood type is quickly displaced by the Rh positive type.
If you are suspecting that something is amiss with the current switch from understanding the origins and distribution patterns of the ABO blood groups to the results quickly obtained using mtDNA genetics, we are on the same page.
Something has gone very wrong in the science of genetics when it comes to applying mtDNA to human evolution, history, and migration.
All of a sudden, mtDNA is being used as if it somehow supersedes the genetics of blood groups, which it clearly does not. Not too surprisingly, the results almost always confirm the out-of-Africa and Bering Strait theories.
The results seldom if ever are matched against the established ABO data, and there is this very aggressive rush to judgment, a push that implies that any skeptic just does not understand this new genetic paradigm. Right. . . . Where have we heard that elitist propaganda before?
I pose this challenge:
But no real statistical simulation using the rules of ABO transmission can produce those results. Any population with a mixed ABO pattern, which both Africa and Asia have had for a prolonged time period, will produce a mixed ABO population during migration and settlement. It is not possible to have a homogenous type O positive population emerge.
Barring those events (and I do not expect any biologist or geneticist to pick up that gauntlet), I shall hold mtDNA studies, interpretations, and conclusions at greater than arm’s length and suggest that all serious readers do the same.
PARSING THE GENETIC CODE
The DNA code is often compared to a human language. It has letters that combine in different sequences that mean different things. The main task of any language is to communicate something to someone.
Is the main task of DNA to copy itself to each new generation like the Old Testament was supposed to have been faithfully copied?
If Earth had provided each of our remote ancestors a manual that contained a detailed explanation of how to survive and thrive on the planet, then one of the jobs of our ancestors would have been to hand down an exact copy of that manuscript to us. Of course, that is what oral traditions and sacred texts are supposed to represent.
However, when a new individual is born, sometimes a small part of the DNA is not copied in every detail. One change can cause a very minor mutation, which is usually discarded rather quickly because mutations rarely prove beneficial.
But sometimes mutations do prove beneficial, as in the case of types A and B blood group antibodies. Then the genetic code goes through a slight revision, and the new mutations are added and copied by succeeding generations.
Now if we take the Old Testament as an example of a sacred book intended to convey critical information to succeeding generations, we must note several things up front.
Consider the language the version we are reading is written in. If it is the original Talmud, written in ancient Hebrew, and we have been schooled in that language, we have a pretty good chance of understanding the words as they were originally meant to be understood.
However, if it is in English and that was translated from Greek, we are removed several times from the foundation material, which was first translated from the ancient Hebrew; we may not understand what the original authors intended or understand only a portion of it.
The ancient Hebrews had many words for God that denoted various attributes, but they still referred to a singular deity. They also had a plural word for gods that does not translate well into English: elohim.
Each of the translations risks mutations, which are usually corruptions, of the original text. Does the text in Genesis 1 really say that the God of the universe created human beings, in his image, as it has been interpreted by generations of Christian Bible scholars?
No; parsed as carefully as a geneticist would the genetic code, it switches to the plural form and denotes that gods, not God, create man in “Our image and likeness.” The switch to the plural has never been clarified by biblical scholars or believers.
Since it is understood that God is an invisible spirit or absolute presence, then he (or she or it) has no image or likeness; only a distinct physical entity has an image, form, or likeness. Deciphering the biblical code is not unlike trying to decode the human and chimpanzee genomes.
Human languages, like human civilizations, do not last very long, and even when they are alive and being spoken every day, as ancient Greek and Latin were not that long ago, they undergo constant permutations, additions, and deletions.
In a much, much broader context, this has also been the case with human evolution on the biological level.
It is bold but naive to think it is possible to retrace our ancestry back through countless generations to an alleged, mythical Eve (who were probably Eves anyway) and find all the alleged fossils of the various “missing links” that would then constitute the final pieces of the Darwinist puzzle.
There is actually no good basis for making that assumption. The reasoning is based on the notion that there were species extant upon Earth that represented intermediate stages of evolution between the common ancestor of the chimpanzee and us, modern humans.
However, there is no immutable law of genetics or biology that requires that to be the case.
Modern Homo sapiens is more likely the outcome of an external agency intervening in primate genetics to produce a hybrid race. That is what our ancient, sacred codes (like the Bible) tell us, as surely as our genetic code tells us that we are not chimpanzees.
Genetic intervention could and did happen, according to our most ancient oral traditions and sacred texts. There are no laws of physics, astronomy, or biology that can rule out extraterrestrial involvement in the evolution of life on Earth.
The Genesis Race (or Cosmic Ancestry) theory offers a third alternative that neither neo-Darwinians nor creationists are prepared to deal with, because it does not abrogate the laws of science or conflict with religious traditions.
Positing that an advanced race came from a distant solar system, seeded life on Earth, and then intervened in human affairs at infrequent intervals does not conflict with the Old Testament at all; it agrees with it. The theory also agrees with the early histories of the Sumerians and Hindus.
Neo-Darwinists dismiss creationism because, in the end, the arguments are faith based (involve miracles) and therefore are not scientific. Then they dismiss intelligent design by claiming it is religion pretending to be science.
How will they react to the theory that, while evolution exists, it did not start on planet Earth and the reason there are no missing links is because none ever existed on Earth?
Neo-Darwinists would rather argue with creationists because they know that intelligent design is a viable scientific thesis. As noted in chapter 1, directed panspermia (Cosmic Ancestry II) was conceived by two eminent scientists, Francis Crick and L. E. Orgel.
CONCLUSION
When deciphered, the human genome presented to scientists some enigmatic surprises that confounded their expectations. In fact, the DNA code is amazingly uniform for the most part, and it only branches off where speciation manifests.
Therefore, humans are very similar, in terms of DNA, to all primates and similar to all mammals as well. However, when evolutionists predicted that the human genome would be five times as large as it turned out to be, that was due to a false assumption. When it comes to the DNA sequence, quality, not quantity, is what matters.
Homo sapiens is likely a product of bioengineering on the part of an advanced, extraterrestrial civilization.