> One thing that particularly bothers me when it's assumed that physical
> similarity between human beings and animals, living or extinct, constitutes
> evidence for the descent of human beings from animals. Rather, I want to
> assume that God creates in a way so that whatever it is, it "fits" into
> this kind of universe. So DNA similarity or any other kind of similarity is
> no more than an indication that it was created to fit. That argument does
> not _rule out_ descent, but neither does it prove such descent.
>
> My simplistic example: Moons, planets, and stars are spherical. Why? they
> obey the laws of this universe. We'd be a tad surpised to find a cubical
> planet. There may well be "descent" among moons, planets, and stars. But
> descent could not be proved by the fact that each such object is spherical.
But we understand why a sufficiently large body should be
approximately spheroidal - the surface must be an equi[potential for
gravitational + centrifugal force so there's no force tangent to the
surface. We don't know any reason why the particular genetic code homo
sapiens uses should be the same that other organisms use. Admittedly
there might be such a reason other than common descent, but until there
is another plausible suggestion, common descent is the best explanation
we have.
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@imperium.net
http://www.imperium.net/~gmurphy