They do offer a definition from my limited scientific knowledge: additional genetic letters.
They say in the video that if it’s possible, it would only be a few additional letters over too long a period of time for evolution from chimps to humans.
I’d say they’re lying through their teeth and drastically misrepresenting everything that is known about actually evolving changes to genomes. Claims like “humans needed hundreds of million of beneficial mutations to evolve from a chimp-like ancestor” are so wrong as to be laughable. Humans weren’t some lofty “goal” evolution had 6 MYA any more than extant chimps were the goal. Both species have evolved for the same length of time and have roughly the same number of genetic changes. The whole video is one long series of brutally bad Creationist science-free nonsense claims.
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Look! The distance between this twig on the oak tree here, and that twig over there on the other side of the same tree, is at least 10 meters! There is no way they could both have originated from the same acorn!
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No I don’t know that. First of all intelligence(however you elect to measure that), like all human traits, exists on some spectrum. With people on one end seeming to fall within the range exhibited by our closest primate cousins, and on the other end we find people who make the rest of us looks stupid in comparison. Second is intelligence is a heritable trait, and the units of inheritance is genes and some times, at least transiently, their products of expression. Hence, given that we are as similar genetically to our primate cousins as we are, I don’t see any reason to think any of the abilities you list are anything but the product of the evolution of genes.
And clearly, you are not.
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2 minutes in - lots of questions then “As stated by National Geographic Magazine…”. Unimpressive. Then more questions - and then they start the lies and conspiracy theories.
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I’ve noticed that phenomenon before in some YEC publications. Sometimes they give the impression that National Geographic is a peer-reviewed scientific journal (which they can cite in an erroneous effort to state what evolutionists “believe.”) At other times I see NG criticized for being nothing but a propaganda arm for atheist scientists who promote evolution.
As for me, I mostly like National Geographic for the glossy photos. Beautiful photography. I’ll never forget a spectacular issue of NG in the 1960’s featuring nothing but bioluminescent fungi. That sat on my coffee table (remember those?) for many years.
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Creationists tend to needlessly complicate things.
Here’s the simplest way to deal with this alleged time scale problem. The one evolutionary relationship that most gets creationists hopping mad is that between humans and chimps. So was there enough time for these two species to arise from a common ancestor?
This blog post from Larry Moran goes thru the calculations, and shows that the time that would be required for the number of mutations that separate us from chimps is exactly in the range of what would be expected, based on the observed mutation/fixation rate and the amount of time that scientists believe has elapsed since the existence of our common ancestor.
It’s important to note that this is based on all the mutations being fixed by neutral drift. It doesn’t even require any beneficial mutations. That whole issue is a red herring.
Is there any reason, given this information, that one could reasonable doubt that there has been enough time for evolution to happen?
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Are you serious? That’s their definition?
Is there any conceivable reason that “additional genetic letters” could not be added to a genome just by mutations?
So this article came up on my feed this morning.
https://phys.org/news/2020-10-chromosome-defects-over-exchange-dna-sperm.html
I’ve haven’t really researched evolution really at all yet.
Ironically I’ve learned a ton from this video. The tune is super catchy so I keep wanting to watch it. 
This article came up under the other one.
The list of examples could go on and on, but consider this. Most mutations can be reversed by subsequent mutations – a DNA base can be turned from an A to a G and then back to an A again, for instance. In fact, reverse mutation or “reversion” is common. For any mutation that results in a loss of information, logically, the reverse mutation must result in its gain. So the claim that mutations destroy information but cannot create it not only defies the evidence, it also defies logic.
Back to the article that came up on my feed first:
The research team identified two mechanisms that help counteract defects triggered by excess crossover activity in developing eggs and, thus, assist the coordination of the process that helps assure genomic integrity in new generations.
Libuda had reported in the Oct. 9, 2013, issue of Nature the discovery of a mechanism that inhibits the overproduction of crossovers in roundworms. However, Libuda said, it was not possible at that time to study the downstream effects in cases where too many crossovers did occur. Since then, her lab developed a way to generate extra crossovers on a single chromosome.
My question is:
If organisms have a natural defense against crossover from worms on up to more complex organisms, doesn’t that mean that adding additional information across multiple generations will be impossible?
actually this is probably true, even by evolutionists own numbers. for instance according to this paper the same function will evolve one in about 10^77 mutations. so it will take much more than the age of the universe to evolve the same function again by “convergent evolution”:
this doesnt exist in the case of convergent evolution (since we are talking about the same function and not just any possible function). see above.
“Worms on up to more complex organisms” – LOL.
You need to get past the idea that there is a goal of increased complexity. Yes, we do see increasing complexity. But that’s because the environment is becoming more complex, and organisms need to keep up with changes in the environment. If global warming causes a mass extinction event, then the environment could become less complex and we might see that reflected in future evolution – that’s assuming that humans survive the mass extinction, which is far from certain.
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The interesting discussion early in the film @thoughtful posted is about your starting worldview. If you believe that evolution ie common descent is the only sensible way that biodiversity happened then John’s working hypothesis of random indels makes sense and you can claim 98% similarity.
If you believe that genesis one is a reasonable overall description of biodiversity then the 98% number is inaccurate and indeed there is much less similarity as an intel maybe an intentional sequence made specifically for the separate kind. In one case it’s a single mutation in the other case it 1000 base pairs of designed differences.
The interesting case here is that the other side can seem dishonest depending on the worldview you are interpreting the data from.
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Great analysis. If you believe in magic then magic can explain everything you see in the world. At least you’re giving up all pretense of a scientific understanding of natural phenomena.
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Right. I’m saying we DO see it so we have to account for it. How can it happen in a purely naturalistic way if there’s a naturalistic mechanism that will resist it?
If the environment has become more complex, yet we evolved a trait to resist change that early, how is that not an unsolvable paradox?
People don’t “believe” in evolution by common descent Bill. People accept evolution by common descent because of the enormous quantity and quality of physical evidence supporting that conclusion. Evolution isn’t a worldview any more than gravity is a worldview. Both are observed and well documented scientific facts.
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It’s a matter of degrees. With zero genetic variation in each generation there can be no evolution and no way species can adapt to changing environments. With too much genetic variation you get too many large changes which don’t work in the current environment and the species again rapidly goes extinct. What works (and what natural selection discovered) is a “happy zone” with enough variation to provide beneficial adaptations and keep evolution going, tracking changes in the environment, but not so much the species’ genomes self destructs.
Not true. They’re talking about getting human beings rather than getting some other species that might have the same capabilities, and assuming there’s only one sequential set of mutations that would give those capabilities. Texas sharpshooter. Axe also uses the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, incidentally.
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Nobody ever said the indels were random. They are, but that’s not a necessary assumption. Even if a sequence is made separately for a separate kind it’s still a single event, not thousands of events, or one designed difference, not thousands.
Nonsense. It’s dishonest from any perspective, unless you just assume that people you agree with must be right, as you so often do.
There is no such mechanism. And in fact complexity doesn’t increase in evolution. There are still worms, you know. There are still bacteria. What you see is that complexity sometimes increases in particular lineages, and sometimes it decreases. If there are enough lineages, some will show lots of increase and others won’t.
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When you say a genome is 98% similar what exactly are you measuring? Has the creation community and evolution community agreed on a standard?
Why do you believe this?