Is Chimp DNA and Human DNA Really a 99% Match?

Allan CP (: 00:01

Imagine you're in science class and then the teacher says humans and chimpanzees share about 99 % of the same DNA. You look around, everybody nods. It seems smart. It seems settled, done. But what if it's not? A new study may have just shattered that number. And it's not just about monkeys and math. It's about you. You know, what makes humans human and why the answer to this may be

way bigger.

What's up everybody? This is the Science Dilemma. My name is Alan C.P. and today we have a special guest, Dr. Casey Luskin. He's a geologist, attorney, one of the leading voices at the Discovery Institute. He's written tons about intelligent design and recently dropped a bombshell about something you've probably heard, which is that humans and chips are 99 % the same. We're going to be diving into that. But first, Dr. Casey Luskin, thank you so much for joining us today.

Great to be with you, Alan. Thanks so much.

Are we related to chimps by 99 %? Yes or no, Dr. Casey Luskin.

Dr. Casey Luskin (: 01:09

So the question you're asking is, our DNA 99 % similar to chimpanzees? And the answer to that question is no. Now as a separate question, are we related to chimps? If you go back far enough, do we share a common ancestor with chimps? I would also say the answer to that question is no. I don't believe we share a common ancestor with chimps, but I would say that the percent genetic similarity that we have to chimps really is not even relevant to whether we share a common ancestor. Cause even if we were,

99 % genetically similar to a chimp that just might mean that we were built by a designer using a similar blueprint You know like yeah, if you look at a Honda Civic and a Toyota Corolla like they've got a lot of similarities All right, they were built by intelligent human beings But those similarities don't mean that they somehow evolved through random and unguided evolutionary processes They were intelligently designed to be very similar

So you can have intelligent design producing very similar things. Doesn't necessarily mean that they are related through unguided evolution. When I talk about human design, I like to talk about our behavior, okay? We have all these incredible behaviors that don't really show anything to do with natural selection, okay? Why can we, why do we build cathedrals? Why can we investigate the mysteries of Einstein's theory of relativity and how physics of the universe works?

Why do we worship God? Why do we write poetry? Why do we? Compose symphonies. These are all incredibly beautiful Abilities that the human the human beings have all human beings or every culture in the world composes music Okay, but what does any of that have to do with you know? Just surviving and reproducing and passing on your genes all evolution says is that our ancestors had to be able to survive and reproduce

and pass on our genes on the African savanna a million years ago. But we have all these incredible abilities that show that we were designed for higher purposes. And we are not just about, you know, surviving, reproducing and passing on our genes. To me, that is some of the most beautiful ways that we can see that we were designed. Of course, many of those abilities come from our genetics. You know, we are genetically enabled. Our brains are encoded by our genes and they allow us to compose music, to do science and math, to write.

Dr. Casey Luskin (: 03:34

beautiful Shakespearean sonnets to, come, you know, to do all these amazing things, even to, to worship God, you know, when we're worshiping God, we're using both our, our soul and our mind. so part of this is our physical bodies and our, and we're doing this from the bodies God gave us. So yeah, certainly I think that there are many aspects of our physical genes and our bodies and our behaviors that show that we are not, we did not just evolve by natural selection, random mutation.

So when it comes to human genetics, why do so many people believe that we did evolve?

So I think what we hear is this argument from evolutionists, Alan, where they will say that because we are 99 % similar to chimpanzees, therefore you must be genetically related to a chimpanzee. And there's a lot of examples of this. Many people have argued this from an evolutionary perspective. I think it's a fallacious argument. I don't think that our percent genetic similarity says anything about whether we are related to chimps, even though I think we're not related to them.

But check this out, Bill Nye, the science guy. I'm sure that many of our listeners have heard of Bill Nye. He's a great example of an evolutionist trying to argue that the percent genetic similarity shows that we share a common ancestor with chimps. Here's what he wrote in his book, Undeniable. He says, as our understanding of DNA is increased, we have come to understand that we share around 98.8 % of our gene sequence with chimpanzees. This is striking evidence for chimps and chumps, that's us, to have a common ancestor.

So he's directly arguing that this high percent, 98, 99 % genetic similarity with chimps shows that we share a common ancestor with them. Even the Smithsonian museum of natural history. If you go to their website, it says that we are only 1.2 % genetically different from chimps. So again, 98, 99 % genetically similar. And it says that this shows quote, how closely or distantly related, uh, you know, that we are to these other species. Okay.

Dr. Casey Luskin (: 05:34

So they are trying to make an argument for common ancestry based upon the percent genetic similarity that we have to chimpanzees. And so we've seen this argument made from both the highest levels of the scientific community, like the Smithsonian museum and from science popularizers by like Bill Nye, great science communicator. enjoy Bill Nye's work, but you on this point, he's wrong.

I'm going to do this in 10 seconds. If you want more bonus resources for this and every episode and early access to all future Science Dilemma series, go to our website for more information. That's it. I got one second.

Okay, and what does that like DNA difference even mean? So, I mean, I'm sure there's plenty of students out there that have no idea what this even means for us.

Great question. Let's explain sort of scientifically, what are we talking about when we're saying that our DNA is 99 %... It's not 99%, we'll get to that. But whatever percent it is, similar to a chimp. Okay, so in our DNA, our DNA is composed of chromosomes that are very long molecules. And along the backbones of these molecules are what we call nucleotide bases. There's four of them that are used in our genome. The nucleotide bases are adenine,

Cytosine, thymine and guanine. They're often represented by the letters A, T, C and G. So if you think back to that old Jurassic park movie from the nineties where Mr. DNA is explaining how they, they resurrected dinosaurs. says, well in our DNA, have these four nucleotide bases, adenine, cytosine, thymine and guanine, A, T, C and G. And it's the ordering of those nucleotide bases, those ATCs and Gs that determine the order.

Dr. Casey Luskin (: 07:19

of all the amino acids in your proteins and many other parts of your body are determined by the ordering of the nucleotide bases in the DNA. So we can almost see that these, ordering of these, these nucleotide bases, they're kind of like analogous to letters. Okay. They're like letters in the DNA. So if you had two paragraphs and you wanted to compare, you know, the percent similarity of those paragraphs, okay. you can have a paragraph that says you are.

99 % chip and then you could have a paragraph that says you are a sentence that says you are 50 % chip now those two sentences are the same except for one says 99 % and the other says 50 % and if you're going to count all the letters and numbers and characters that are similar between those two sentences you are 99 % you are 50 % by the way both those numbers are wrong you know but you know you could recalculate the percent similarity

in terms of the letters, how many, what percentage of the letters are identical between those two sentences? And I didn't do the math, but it's probably something like, you know, maybe 80 to 90 % of the letters are similar. turns out we can do similar thing with our, with our DNA. We can compare the DNA in our genome to the DNA of other species genomes. And it's known for a long time that humans and chimps in many respects have very similar DNA. I mean, there are some proteins and some

even long stretches of DNA in humans and chimps that actually are 99 % similar. Again, this simply reflects the fact that we are built upon a common blueprint. Okay. So there are many genetic similarities between chimps and human beings. But the question is, is it true that when you look at our genomes overall, you got to look at the whole thing, the whole package. What is the actual percent genetic similarity between humans and chimps? And that's what we're going to talk about today and how this

this 99 % statistic that you know, the A's, the T's, and the C's, and G's, it's not true that 99 % of those line up between humans and chimps. It's way less than that.

Allan CP (: 09:24

What study was it that came out that basically flipped this all on its head?

are interviewing it's may of: 2025

Totally complete sequences of the ape genomes another thing that they did when they sequence these ape genomes basically giving us the complete sequences is That they they did them from scratch What do we might from scratch you might find this hard to believe but many not all but many of the earlier drafts of the chimp genome Where they were comparing it to human they actually used the human genome as a scaffolding when they built the chimp genome and This made the chimp genome look artificially

more human-like than it really is, okay? So a lot of the people out there that have been quoting these percent similarity statistics between humans and chimps, they were going off of older drafts of the chimp genome. It's amazing to understand this. When they built those versions of the chimp genome, they actually used the human genome as a scaffolding, which made them humanized. They looked more human than they really were.

In like middle school terms, that just be similar to like they used the human genome to kind of trace this and that's why it looks so much similar. Like I'm thinking of kids that might not know what the word scaffolding.

Dr. Casey Luskin (: 11:04

I mean it gets a bit complicated, but let's say that you have okay you ever have those little Magnet words that you can put on your fridge and spell out funny sentences. You know yeah Yeah, so let's say you've got you've got one of those magnet word sets And you've got all these words and you want to put the words in the right order, okay? So you so this is kind of like sequencing DNA You've got all these these sort of segments of DNA that you sequence from the genome But now you got to put those segments in the right order so they actually

correspond to what the genome, you know, actually says. Okay. So it's like, that's kind of what we're talking about in order to figure out how to put those segments of DM in the right order. They use the human genome as a guide. Okay. Cause they already have a human genome sequence. Of course it's going to look more like us. Okay. So, so this new paper that was done in nature, what they actually did is they both sequenced it from scratch and they sequence the complete.

it's gonna look like us.

Dr. Casey Luskin (: 12:03

Ape genomes. this is the first time that they, it had been done from scratch, think once before, but this is the first time that they sequenced the complete, from end to end of the chromosomes, sequenced the complete ape genomes. And it's a very important technical feat. The scientists who did this research, I was the consortium of scientists all over the world, and they really deserve a lot of credit. This was hard research that they did, and it's really important research, because now we can do a better comparison of human and ape genetic similarities, and it's really important research that they've done.

So why is it such a big deal right now for human origins?

So it's a big deal because for years, as I said, we've been told by our evolutionist friends that the human and chimp genomes are 99 % the same. Therefore we evolved from a common ancestor that we share with chimps. Okay, this is the argument they're making. I think it's fallacious if that's what they say. It turns out that their argument is not just fallacious, it's also wrong factually. And that is because we are not 99 % genetically similar to chimps. This new paper that came out in Nature shows that it's more like we are

probably more like 85 to 86 % genetically similar to chimps. So we are not 1 % different. It's more like we are 14 to 15, maybe even 16 % genetically different from chimpanzees. So basically the, our, the degree of genetic difference between humans and chimps is over an order of magnitude. That's more than 10 times greater than what we were being told all these years by the folks who promoted that 99 % genetic similarity statistic.

So this is a really big story. And I think it's important people to know, know, the, the Smithsonian museum still says, you know, actually I have my, my wife was at the Smithsonian museum a couple of weeks ago. She was in Washington, DC for a friend's graduation ceremony there in DC. And she went in there and took a photo and it still says we are 98.8 % genetically similar to a chimp on the wall. So the public is still being told this. Now I hope that they will correct this. You know, this is the way science works.

Dr. Casey Luskin (: 14:06

Science learns new things. I'm not blaming people who, you know, maybe at one point when they made this claim, maybe they thought it was true. I'm not saying that they were deliberately lying or anything like that. But the way science works is you learn new facts, you get new evidence, and you're supposed to adjust what you're talking about. And in this case, I think that I hope that people will adjust what they're saying because the reality, Alan, is that we've known for a long time. This is not new information.

that were actually less than 99 % genetically similar to a chip. We didn't know the, I think a very precise value until this paper that just came out, but it's been known for a long time that the number is less than 99%. And yet you have these major science spokespeople or spokesgroups like Smithsonian, like Bill Nye, et cetera, et cetera, using this 98, 99 % for statistic, even though it's been known for a long time that it's not true. So I'm hoping they will change it. We'll see what happens. actually sent a letter.

to the Smithsonian yesterday, asking them to change it. It's a nicely worded letter. just said, look, you know, this is new data. Please change it. Please update your, your, your website, update your, what you have on your, at your exhibit and, please do that. We'll, see what they do.

So this isn't something of just opinion either, right? Like this is a cold hard fact. Like it's not where they can come back and say, well, some people say this and other, you know, like, is this something where when you're asking them to change it, it's because the facts have changed.

It's because science is always learning new things. Okay. The earlier drafts that we had of the chimp genome, they were incomplete and they were, they made the chimp genome look more human than it really was because of the, way that they built it using the human genome as a scaffolding. Okay. So science is always learning new things. Science often makes discoveries that overturn what we previously thought to be true. That's okay. That's a good thing. That's how science is working. I hope that now people will adjust their.

Dr. Casey Luskin (: 16:07

rhetoric in their public discourse and the way that they talk about this. One of the kind of disturbing things about this is that you would think that when the top journal, nature publishes a paper, you know, that the data show. Yeah. You would hope that when the, when the journal nature publishes a major paper like this and the data that it's publishing shows that we're only 85, 86 % similar to champs, the 99 % statistic is.

That's I was exactly...

Dr. Casey Luskin (: 16:35

is very much wrong. You would hope that then they would also sort of have maybe what we call an explainer article. And scientific journals often do this where they will publish articles that are short explainer articles so that people can understand sort of the larger implications of the technical data that's being reported. Okay? And in this case, the technical paper was very technical. Okay? It talked about the fact that, you know, some of these differences represent

single nucleotide variations. Some of the differences represent what are called gaps between the two genomes. There's a lot of repetitive DNA that was different between humans and chimps. And they're talking about, you know, what are all these differences? But what the journal articles didn't do, what neither the technical paper nor the explainer article, Nature did publish an explainer article to sort of, you know, help us, you know, us regular folks understand what the science is saying.

Neither of those two articles made the simple statement. Hey, this data shows that that old 99 % statistic that were 99 % similar to humans and chimps is wrong. And actually the data shows that we're more like 85, 86 % similar. That data was in the paper. You can see it. I had to dig through the paper deep into the technical details, wading through technical jargon to find it. It's there.

But it seemed like they did not want to make this sort of easy for people to see. had, they buried it basically in technical jargon. And I think that's very unfortunate because you know, this is a profound question. The percent genetic similarity is being used by evolutionists to argue not just for, you know, human common ancestry, but also to argue against human exceptionalism. That's the idea that humans are unique and special. How many times have you heard people say,

Oh, human beings were just slightly modified chimpanzees. All right. You've heard people say that, right? And they'll, they'll say, well, we're 99 % chip. Well, what if we're not 99 % chip? Okay. So this is a question that ought to people ought to know about, cause it's going to affect the way people think about these larger implications. don't know exactly what the implications should be. I don't even know if this settles some important questions, but it gets talked about in these really important societal questions. So why not?

Dr. Casey Luskin (: 18:58

put it out there. Why bury it in technical jargon? And so this is the way I've been putting it. I don't want to be the one breaking the story to the world. I shouldn't be the one breaking the story to the world. I want the scientists who publish this nature paper to get all the glory for the great research they did. I want the journal nature to get all the glory for publishing this paper that if you dig through the details very clearly shows that we are not 99 % similar to a chimp. So why didn't they do this? Why didn't they make

That's a simple one sentence. The data report in this paper shows that we're not 99 % similar to a chimp. We're more like 85 to 86 % similar. Why couldn't they, that was very easy. Why couldn't they do that? I don't know. I mean, it's a little bit disturbing. And for me, it makes me feel like some folks in the scientific community really are not being real with us in the public sometimes. And I don't like, I don't like that because I love science. I think science is a great thing. I think the scientists who did research here did great research.

but I want them to be transparent with us in the public. And I don't feel like this is such an important question, not just scientifically, but for sociological, philosophical, even theological questions. Why not spell out the implications clearly? They don't have to answer those theological questions, but just report the data in a clear way. And they didn't do that. And to me, that's not right. And I think there's something wrong with the way that they went about this. And I think there's something weird going on here.

What are the implications as an intelligence design advocate?

Sure. So look, strictly speaking, I've said for a long time, long before this paper came out, that whatever the final exact percent similarity between humans and chimps turns out to be, I don't think it actually has great import for questions like, are we genetically related to chimps? And the reason why is, whatever the percent similarity is, common ancestry might be one way to explain it, but you could also explain it through common design, where designers will regularly

Dr. Casey Luskin (: 21:00

Reuse parts that work in different systems. Okay, so we reuse wheels on both cars and airplanes, right? We will reuse keyboards on both cell phones and tablets if your computer programmer you're constantly You know borrowing or some might say stealing code from other programmers to put into your computer programs This is very normal engineering design process to reuse parts that work in different designs So the fact that we share similar DNA to a chimp could just reflect reflect the fact that the designer reused

functional DNA coding modules in these different organisms and built us up, you know, both humans and chimps upon a very similar blueprint. You know, the mammalian primate blueprint is the blueprint that we have. That doesn't mean we're exactly the same as a chimp. Obviously, you know, 15 % of our DNA, that's hundreds of millions of nucleotides of difference, Hundreds of millions of nucleotides. That's a lot of DNA, okay? So there's plenty of DNA that's different between humans and chimps to encode all kinds of

important differences. Okay. Nobody disagrees with what I just said that plenty of differences between humans and chimps. However, the fact that we have a lot of similarities to me, that could just show common design. So I don't think that actually this question is sort of, you know, it's not the deciding factor for human ape common ancestry. for me, I would say a better deciding factor would be like the fossil record, human ape, a human behaviors.

that are very difficult to explain under evolutionary psychology like we talked about. Look at the fossil record, we see that there's a distinct break in the fossil record between human-like fossils and ape-like fossils. And to me, that right there is a major problem for the common ancestry story. I looked to other reasons as to why I'm a skeptic of common ancestor. I think that the percentage of genetic similarity just doesn't settle the issue one way or the other.

Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, the same way that like a Honda and a Jeep are both using engines doesn't make them the same. But yeah, yeah, okay, wow. That makes it so much more digestible the way that you just put that.

Dr. Casey Luskin (: 23:05

But let's be really clear. Okay. Yeah for the evolutionists this 99 % Genetic similarity statistic has been very important to them. We we call them icons of evolution here

something like these icons are like zombies or something yeah yeah so explain that sure

So the term icon of evolution was coined by my colleague, Jonathan Wells, was a biologist here at discovery Institute. Unfortunately, he passed away last year. He, I think it was about 82 great guy. We, we, miss, we loved him. We miss him terribly, but Jonathan wrote this book called icons of evolution, where he looked at the common lines of evidence that are used to argue for evolution in biology textbooks. And he found that most of them are actually not true. Okay. They're actually not even correct. can get into some of the other icons, but.

He did not use this 99 % statistic as an icon, but I think he could have because it's so commonly used by the evolutionist to argue for evolution. I think it's a fallacy, you know, that when they do it, but they're using it. Okay. And so he also then wrote a follow-up book after he wrote the book, icons of evolution, he wrote a follow-up book called zombie science. And what he said in that book is that these icons of evolution, they're like zombies. never actually die. Even though they've been refuted by the evidence, people still keep using them. They don't go away. You can't.

kill the zombie, right? So I'm going to make a prediction right now that even though this 99 % statistic has been refuted definitively by this, this new nature paper, it's going to, we're going to still hear it. People are still going to say it. I mean, I hope this Smithsonian changes its exhibit, but if they don't, that's what I'm talking about here. But I think we're still going to be hearing this statistic for a long time, unfortunately.

Allan CP (: 24:45

Is that probably where the Smithsonian changing that statistic would then maybe help it make headlines or are people just going to keep on trying to bury it? Because it feels like if you talk about this so much and always use this as an arguing point that like we were not designed by a designer where you know we have the common ancestor with apes and people are always saying that that 99 % is their thing, it's their icon, they should be just as loud when everything changes.

But they haven't.

You would like to hope so. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, so I want to give people the chance to do that. we're not trying. Yeah, I hope that Smithsonian will change it. If they don't change it, we'll take that as it comes. I don't want to speculate. Okay. reasoning. Of course. About something that they may or may not do and certainly haven't done yet. I couldn't speculate on that, but I hope that they will. I like to think I'm an optimist. I like to think that in the long term, the truth wins out, even though sometimes it does take a while to get there. So, you know, let's.

I'm to...

Dr. Casey Luskin (: 25:44

Let's hope for the best here. That's just the way I look at things. Yeah.

that positive thinking especially we don't want to ever put malicious intent on anybody we just want to believe that they'll they'll catch up as soon as you

Give them the chance to do the right thing. I am a little bit Unhappy with the journal nature. I think that they really missed the mark by not Talking about this groundbreaking finding in the paper they've in a great paper that they published in great research that was done I think something was off there, but let's give other folks now the chance to do the right thing. Yeah

You got us, our interest has peaked. Please let us know as far as hopefully we can stay updated on what the Smithsonian says. Back to you.

That'd be fun. check out evolutionnews.org. We've been blogging about this, but I'd love to come back and talk more and we'll give you guys an update at some point. Hopefully have some good news to share.

Allan CP (: 26:37

Where should students check out or look to stay updated on what you're writing about, what you're discussing? Where would be the best place for them to be checking out online?

Yeah, they can go to evolution news.org, which is our main news site. Also intelligent design.org is kind of our, our gateway portal website to lots of intelligent design materials. And also ID the future.com is our podcast.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Dr. Leskin.

Thank you, Alan. It a lot of fun.

So here's the big takeaway. You're not 99 % chimp. And that number's not even outdated. It's now misleading. And like Dr. Casey Luskin said, we're not trying to say put mal intent on anybody, but what we are saying is that there is new evidence. Thanks again to Dr. Casey Luskin for breaking down the science and giving us so much to think about. If this episode made you curious, wanting to learn more, keep engaging with us on Instagram, YouTube, wherever platform we're on.

Allan CP (: 27:36

You can find us at the Science Dilemma or Science Dilemma. You can also engage with more of our resources and get more of our resources at thesciencedilemma.com.