Humans specially created or descended from non-humans?

Here's a post to extend the discussion from our last meeting (Sept. 8th) and hopefully reach a conclusion - at least a consensus. Or at least to get some more thinking on the subject.

Instead of restating what we said at the meeting, I'll only give the gist: RTB's testable creation model proposes that humans are not descended from previous creatures, but wre specially created with their own genome. Francis Collins, in his new book, The Language of God, points out that in the human genome there are errors or blunders where functional genes have gotten accidentally inserted in non-functional areas and transmitted by inheritance, and that the same non-functional copies exist in the same places in the human and mouse genome. Why would a Creator add the same non-functional blunders to the human genome that were introduced in the mouse genome in the same places? In some cases, it is even partial genes and not whole genes that are repeated – things that could never function, according to Collins. It was much more reasonable to take this as evidence that humans descended from non-human ancestors and inherited their genome mistakes too.

The objections at the meeting were (please correct me if I don't get it right)
1. that RTB’s model didn’t require humans be created de novo without ancestors;
2. it is more likely that those regions had to be there for some reason we don’t understand yet. Similarities between our genome and other species’ don’t require common descent.

Okay, here's more detail on those points:

1. RTB's testable model does assert humans were not descended from earlier primates.

I checked Hugh Ross' latest book, Creation as Science, and he says on page 156 that "The RTB creation model predicts that as geneticists look deeper into the genomes of the great apes and the hominids that preceded humanity..., they will continue to confirm that the human species is genetically distinct, not linked through natural evolutionary descent to other primates. The RTB creation model predicts that future genetic research will attest humanity' uniqueness - a special creation in whom the Creator made appropriate use of similar or identical genetic designs He already optimized for other species." (italics mine.)

2. Collins points out (The Language of God, pp. 134 - 136) several observations pointing to common descent between mouse and human genomes:

a. The order of genes along the human and mouse genome match over considerable stretches of DNA - in one case cited, virtually all the genes of human chromosome 17 match mouse chromosome 11. The order of genes can be critical to their function, of course, but biologists have a hard time imagining it to be critical over an entire chromosome.

b. What I was trying to describe are AREs ("Ancient Repetitive Elements") in genomes. These are repeated genes which have been copied into non-functional parts of the genome and thus been deactivated. In some cases, only a fragment of the gene is copied, not the whole thing, so the gene is certainly non-functional. It's not a case of us not understanding how it works; it cannot work. Of course, I have to trust Collins for that. I don't know enough about genetics to check that statement. The interesting thing is, one can find the same fragmentary AREs in the same places in the human and mouse genomes. Collins says, "Unless one is willing to take the position that God has placed these decapitated AREs in these precise positions to confuse and mislead us, the conclusion of a common ancestor for humans and mice is virtually inescapable." (p. 137, op. cit.).

NOTE: Hugh Ross' book argues that chimpanzee and human comparisons are based on several fragments of the genome and not the whole thing. The same might be true of the mouse and human genome, though Collins says he picked it because the mouse's is the next most completely sequenced. Or, maybe there are other details Collins isn't giving, about the AREs. I'm not saying this is conclusive, but if it is actually true as described, I think it is a really strong argument that humans' bodies are descended from non-human ancestors.

c. Collins notes that the human chromosome pattern is virtually identical to the chimpanzee's and the gorilla's and orangutan's, with one exception: We have a very long 2nd chromosome and only 23, while the others have 24 chromosomes, all shorter. Human chromosome no. 2 has long been suspected to be a fusion of two chromosomes in a common ancestor. Genome sequencing supports that theory, by showing that right where human chromosome 2 should have been fused, it has genetic sequences which are otherwise found only on the tips of primate chromosomes. Seems like another strong argument for humans' descent from a previous ancestor.

NOTE: Hugh Ross on p. 156 of Creation as Science also says that the comparisons between chimp and human genomes is not as good as claimed. He says the published numbers are from comparison of fragments which "by common sense" ought to be similar, and that "the most complete comparisons to date indicate that the degree of similarity is more like 85 to 90 percent." Collins in his book cites a 100% similarity between the regions that code for protein, and a 98% similarity in the segments between genes (p. 127).