Today’s New Reason To Believe

Posted by Fazale ‘Fuz’ Rana

The 1% Myth

I kept thinking the project was a disaster because I couldn’t find any difference,” Mary-Claire King once mused. Ironically, it was the absence of any difference that made the results of her Ph.D. project so remarkable.

While working at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1970s, the burgeoning geneticist compared the amino acid sequences as well as the immunological and physical properties of several proteins isolated from humans and chimpanzees. These three measures all indicated to King and her Ph.D. supervisor, Allan Wilson, that only a small genetic distance separated the two species. (An organism’s genetic material directly specifies each protein’s structure and, hence, physical and immunological properties.) In fact, King uncovered a 99 percent agreement in the amino acid sequences of several human and chimpanzee proteins.

While King felt disappointment with her inability to unmask any genetic or biochemical differences between humans and chimpanzees, the scientific community did not. In fact, Science, one of the world’s most prestigious science periodicals, published the article she co-wrote (with Wilson) on the molecular comparisons between human and chimpanzees as the cover piece for the April 11, 1975 issue?a rare honor indeed.

King and Wilson predicted, at that time, that gene regulation must account for the biological and behavioral differences between humans and chimpanzees. In other words, they did not regard the high percentage of genetic similarity between human and chimpanzee genes as particularly meaningful. (I discussed this point last week.)

In the last few years, scientists have demonstrated that gene expression patterns between humans and chimpanzees differ, particularly with regard to brain tissue. (See Who Was Adam? for a detailed discussion of this work.) This new insight validates the early ideas of King and Wilson.

Two recent studies uncover added evidence for gene expression differences between our species and chimpanzees. One investigation compared gene expression patterns in humans and chimpanzees by looking at both mRNA and protein production and concluded that bona fide differences in gene expression exist for the two primates.

Another study identified differences in the promoter regions of a number of genes in humans and chimpanzees. Promoters are segments of DNA associated with genes that control gene expression. The genes most impacted are those associated with neural activity and nutrition-related functions.

Scientific advance continues to demonstrate that humans and chimpanzees do display significant genetic differences. These differences relate to how the genes are used, not the sequence differences in those genes. The two species differ genetically where it counts. Therefore, to say that a human is 99% chimpanzee is a meaningless statement.

Hugh Ross, Ph.D.

One of the cornerstone doctrines of the Christian faith is that humans alone among all life-forms on Earth are sinners. According to the Bible, all humans and only humans are born with the propensity to commit evil acts. That being the case, it should not be difficult for scientists to develop tests to confirm or deny this essential teaching of the Christian faith.

A team of evolutionary biologists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology recently performed such a test.¹ The team put chimpanzees in cages where the chimps could withhold food from other chimpanzees by pulling on a rope. The researchers found that the chimpanzees would not withhold food from their compatriots out of pure spite. They would only do so, in a statistically significant manner, in response to a chimp that stole its food.

Interestingly, if a human stole its food and gave it another chimp, there was no significant response toward the chimp that received the food. Also, the team made no attempt to test whether or not chimpanzees would engage in “altruistic punishment” (punishing fellow chimpanzees who stole food from other chimpanzees with whom they had no social contact), though they hinted that they would do so in a future study.

The research team concluded that spiteful behavior appears to be unique to the human species. Only humans will engage in malicious behavior toward their compatriots for no other reason than the fact that they want to hurt someone. The team also commented on humanity’s flip side, namely, that only humans will engage in “pure altruism” (self-sacrificial acts performed to reward or rescue another human being with whom no social context has ever existed or could ever possibly exist). The team thus confirmed the Bible’s repeated commentaries on the state of humanity: uniquely evil among all life on Earth but also uniquely righteous.

1. Keith Jensen, Josep Call, and Michael Tomasello, “Chimpanzees Are Vengeful But Not Spiteful,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 104 (August 7, 2007): 13046-50.

Hugh Ross, Ph.D.

One of the cornerstone doctrines of the Christian faith is that humans alone among all life-forms on Earth are created in the image of God. Part of this image entails that humans are spiritual beings uniquely endowed with the physical apparatus to engage in spiritual activity. According to the Bible, this image of God did not evolve within the human species. It appeared fully established and fully functional when God created the first human male and female.

Given how extensively and specifically the Bible describes humanity’s image of God (for example, Genesis 1:26-27; 9:6; James 3:9), it should not be difficult to develop scientific tests to confirm or refute the doctrine. However, little research effort has been devoted to putting the image of God to any kind of scientific test because much of the biological research community has been entrenched in Darwinism. That view holds that humans have evolved naturally from ape-like ancestors and that humanity’s mental capabilities differ from the animals’ only by degree and not by kind.

A team of European and American anthropologists unwittingly provided dramatic evidence for the Bible’s image of God doctrine. The evidence arose out of a comparative study they performed on the mental capabilities of adult orangutans and chimpanzees with human children aged just 2.5 years.¹ In selecting children aged 2.5 years the team eliminated any possible benefit from education or literacy from the human test subjects.

The researchers discovered that the human toddlers manifested no significant advantage over the adult apes in their ability to learn from their physical environment. However, their capacity to share and gain knowledge, understanding, and comprehension from their social interactions was far superior to anything manifested by either adult chimpanzees or adult orangutans. As the researchers put it, “Humans are not just social but ‘ultra-social.’”²

Without an extraordinary capability of interacting, communicating, and learning from social interactions no spiritual activity would be possible. The fact that even the most intelligent non-human animals lack the social interaction capability necessary to support spiritual activity while even toddler humans do provides evidence for the biblical doctrine that humans alone among all life on Earth are spiritual creatures.

The lead authors of the research team work for the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and in the title of their paper they state, “Humans Have Evolved Specialized Skills of Social Cognition.” However, nowhere in their paper do they provide any evidence that present-day humans manifest a higher social interaction capability than do the earliest humans. Nor do they show that the hominids that preceded human beings (Homo sapiens sapiens) demonstrated a level of social interaction capability adequate to support spiritual activity.

In fact, archeological evidence strongly supports the conclusion that the first humans were just as capable of practicing spiritual activity as are humans today. Thus, the biblical doctrine that the first humans possessed a fully functional capacity to engage in spiritual activity has gained scientific support.

1. Esther Herrmann et al., “Humans Have Evolved Specialized Skills of Social Cognition: The Cultural Intelligence Hypothesis,” Science 317 (September 7, 2007): 1360-66.

2. Herrmann et al., 1360.