[Jiggymike]

First of all, I read the OP link and LOL at this whole thing. Although I don't mind arguing ID vs. evolution with an intelligent, open minded person, this is just poor reasoning that is expected to be viewed as "science" because they are talking about OTHER science and quoting figures. I have no idea how a lot of similarity proves either point; evolution could have lead to similarity in the genome and so could creation. Honestly, when scientists quote numbers and facts like this to "prove" evolution, I'm not sure they are much smarter than the fundamental creationists (the dumb ones, that is). In fact, the creationists are probably right about no DNA being "junk", although it also isn't necessarily "necessary for the function of the individual."

Now onto their math and science. I'm actually not quite sure what they mean with their base pair #; one frameshift in a gene (one event) could lead to thousands of base pair differences, and one rearrangement event is not ONE change but could in fact represent thousands or hundreds of thousands. This article does not quote where or how the DNA differs, which is extremely important, especially since they are talking about non-coding DNA which is relatively malleable (at least it appears that way). They constantly talk of "progressive" evolution...obviously, evolution to a scientist is not progressive, it is just change that moves in a direction with the guidance of natural selection and genetic drift. The term "progressive" implies directional evolution from ape to human, which is scientifically incorrect by the theory of evolution.

In the next paragraph, they talk about gene pools and small populations as if this has any bearing on the subject; it does not. What probably happened in the human/chimp split was that the common ancestor of both became isolated either in habitat or behavior, eventually leading to the lineages we have today. The ancestor did not turn into a chimp and a human overnight; instead, many other species existed on the lineage to both chimps and humans. Small populations are NOT requisites for speciation but they do increase the chance of speciation, as a small population broken off from the main contingent will have a different genetic makeup than the overall species (by chance). Over time, this smaller population will inbreed but this will not necessarily kill them off; instead, the genetic frequencies will become very different than in the main population and eventually the two can become reproductively isolated, forming 2 separate species. However, this does not mean that it ONLY occurs when there is a small population, just that it is one of the major ways in which it is thought to occur. ALso they are not distinguishing between small POPULATIONS of an organism (which can have multiple populations and not be in danger of dying off if one or two or even most populations are small) and small numbers of an organism overall. Currently the number of great apes is vastly reduced in the wild in total and there is some fear that wild chimpanzees will go extinct due to human hunting plus Ebola outbreaks plus habitat destruction.

I guarantee you can bring up all these facts to your friend and he will find some other non-scientific way of explaining it away, or demand proof of these things while offering no proof of his own.