The stupid. The burning out of control stupid. What a fucking moron wrote and what I wrote at Reddit.

[–]ChristianConspiratorChristian, Creationist [score hidden] 23 minutes ago 

According to some, a fusion may have happened in humans sometime between Adam and Noah, maybe even as a consequence of the fall. The number of chromosomes being the same before a hypothetical fusion doesn't imply a relationship unless you think we're also closely related to rabbits and potatoes.

But the problem is worse than that, since there is extremely scant evidence of a fusion to begin with, the data is generally massaged to fit the theory. From what I understand, one would expect thousands of bases characteristic of telomeres in succession, with a point around which they would be mirrored.

That's not what is found. Researchers have had to cheat by looking for mirrored or non mirrored sections on both sides of the supposed fusion; when they do that they find less than 1% of what one might expect, with an onus to explain how sequences mysteriously got to the other side or reversed. Great evidence for evolution right?

When they cheat even more and look for sequences that are "close", they find something like 2% of what you might expect. Combine this with the fact that there are several genes in the supposed fusion region where as far as I know genes have never been discovered in telomeres, you have very poor evidence for evolution.

It gets worse of course, since there is effectively zero evidence of the two centromeres that should have existed, nor of the ability for the centromere to somehow switch to the right location where it is now.

All in all, the evidence looks bad, but evolution is predominantly a product of the imagination rather than the evidence. I don't have a vibrant enough imagination to accept the countless hypothetical scenarios of evolution without good evidence they could have happened.

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[–]BobCuAtheist, Ex-Catholic 1 point 11 minutes ago* 

there is extremely scant evidence of a fusion

I don't understand why you wrote that because biologists can see the whole thing in extreme detail. It's there. Period. Nothing to debate.

"evolution is predominantly a product of the imagination rather than the evidence."

I respectfully suggest you could look things up. There are countless thousands of extremely powerful evidences for evolution from embryology, DNA sequencing, and many other branches of science.

Evolution is the strongest fact of science and the foundation of biology.

Another idea for you: Throw out the crackpots who spread lies about science to defend your religious beliefs. There are "real" scientists out there, thousands of them, and they all accept the established truth of evolution because of the mountains of evidences that you apparently know nothing about.

You will never learn anything from crackpots. If you have any curiosity left in you, you would have studied this stuff a long time ago.

Google is your friend. Do your homework please.

One more thing: "Researchers have had to cheat"

You have just insulted all the world's biologists. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Sorry to tell you these things. It's not your fault. You just have to learn how to throw out the crackpots.

A copy and paste job:

Q. Could you give us another example?

A. Sure, I'm very happy to. The next slide, this is another test of the evolutionary hypothesis of common ancestry.

We have, as I'm sure most people know, 46 chromosomes in our human cells. That means we have 23 pairs of chromosomes because you get 23 from mom and you get 23 from dad, so we've all got 46 total. We've got 23 pairs.

Now, the curious thing about the great apes is they have more. They have, as you can see from the slide, 48 chromosomes, which means they have 24 pairs. Now, what that means, Mr. Walczak, is that you and I, in a sense, are missing a chromosome, we're missing a pair of chromosomes. And the question is, if evolution is right about this common ancestry idea, where did the chromosome go?

Now, there's no possibility that that common ancestry which would have had 48 chromosomes because the other three species have 48, there's no possibility the chromosome could have just got lost or thrown away. A chromosome has so much genetic information on it that the loss of a whole chromosome would probably be fatal. So that's not a hypothesis.

Therefore, evolution makes a testable prediction, and that is, somewhere in the human genome we've got to be able to find a human chromosome that actually shows the point at which two of these common ancestors were pasted together. We ought to be able to find a piece of Scotch tape holding together two chromosomes so that our 24 pairs -- one of them was pasted together to form just 23. And if we can't find that, then the hypothesis of common ancestry is wrong and evolution is mistaken.

Go to the next slide. Now, the prediction is even better than that. And the reason for that is chromosomes themselves have little genetic markers in their middles and on their ends. They have DNA sequences, which I've highlighted in here, called telomeres that exist on the edges of the chromosomes.

Then they have special DNA sequences at the center called centromeres, which I've highlighted in red. Centromeres are really important because that's where the chromosomes are separated when a cell divides. If you don't have a centromere, you're in really big trouble.

Now, if one of our chromosomes, as evolution predicts, really was formed by the fusion of two chromosomes, what we should find is in that human chromosome, we should find those telomere sequences which belong at the ends, but we should find them in the middle. Sort of like the seam at which you've glued two things together, it should still be there.

And we should also find that there are two centromeres, one of which has, perhaps, been inactivated in order to make it convenient to separate this when a cell divides. That's a prediction. And if we can't find it in our genome, then evolution is in trouble.

Next slide. Well, lo and behold, the answer is in Chromosome Number 2. This is a paper that -- this is a facsimile of a paper that was published in the British journal Nature in 2004. It's a multi-authored paper. The first author is Hillier, and other authors are listed as et al. And it's entitled, The Generation and Annotation of the DNA Sequences of Human Chromosomes 2 and 4.

And what this paper shows very clearly is that all of the marks of the fusion of those chromosomes predicted by common descent and evolution, all those marks are present on human Chromosome Number 2.

Would you advance the slide. And I put this up to remind the Court of what that prediction is. We should find telomeres at the fusion point of one of our chromosomes, we should have an inactivated centromere and we should have another one that still works.

And you'll note -- this is some scientific jargon from the paper, but I will read part of it. Quote, Chromosome 2 is unique to the human lineage of evolution having emerged as a result of head-to-head fusion of two acrocentric chromosomes that remain separate in other primates. The precise fusion site has been located, the reference then says exactly there, where our analysis confirmed the presence of multiple telomere, subtelomeric duplications. So those are right there.

And then, secondly, during the formation of human chromosome 2, one of the two centromeres became inactivated, and the exact point of that inactivation is pointed out, and the chromosome that is inactivated in us -- excuse me, the centromere that is inactivated in us turns out to correspond to primate Chromosomes Number 13.

So the case is closed in a most beautiful way, and that is, the prediction of evolution of common ancestry is fulfilled by that lead-pipe evidence that you see here in terms of tying everything together, that our chromosome formed by the fusion from our common ancestor is Chromosome Number 2. Evolution has made a testable prediction and has passed.

Q. So what you're testifying here is that modern genetics and molecular biology actually support evolutionary theory?

A. They support it in great detail. And the closer that we can get to looking at the details of the human genome, the more powerful the evidence has become.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day1am2.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/comments/6kr40e/genesis_is_wrong_we_evolved_from_apes/?sort=new