Over at Creation Today host Eric Hovind interviewed Dr. Georgia Purdom (degree in molecular genetics) on gene editing, and while the entire interview was fascinating, what I enjoyed most was the segment on human evolution, specifically, whether or not human chromosome 2 is evidence for evolution.

Evolutionists are fond of claiming that the study of genetics provides evidence for evolution, so it’s not surprising they would also promote a chromosome fusion event in humans and chimps as irrefutable proof, even when that’s not the case.

According to evolutionists, 6-8 million years ago a common ancestor of both chimps and humans had 24 pairs of chromosomes (48 total). At some point, after the line of humans and chimps split, two of the chromosomes belonging to the line of humans became fused end to end, resulting in humans having 23 pairs of chromosomes (46 total). This is supposed to explain why humans have fewer chromosomes than chimps while still sharing a common ancestor. But are they right?

One of the main lines of evidence is the staining of chromosomes, which, we’re told, shows that the two chimp chromosomes closely match the single human chromosome.

At first glance, that may appear convincing to some. But there are a number of problems that have gone overlooked. Consider, evolutionists needed a rescuing agent. Their worldview- a belief in evolution- demands evidence to support the theory of common descent, and their story achieved that. They saw what they wanted to see and ran with it. This is often the story with evolution. Future evidence ends up refuting the theory, but the damage has already been done.

Dr. Purdom explains what’s wrong with the evolutionary explanation and calls it “simplistic”. If we analyze the actual sequence of human chromosome 2, she says, “It does not look similar”. The lack of similarity provides enough evidence to rule out common descent.

Another problem is that evolutionists expected to find repetitive sequences- called telomeres- in the middle of the fusion site… hundreds of thousands of them. But, instead, they found only a few hundred and can’t explain why. Their evolutionary prediction failed. The evidence actually refutes the idea that there was a fusion event, which means there’s no common ancestor between humans and apes.

Further, another scientist, Dr. Jeffrey Tomkins, has provided several lines of evidence explaining that what evolutionists think are telomeres are actually interstitial telomeric repeats, which are found throughout all human chromosomes, and they serve an important role in regulating DNA. In fact, there’s an active gene at the alleged fusion point, yet genes are never located inside telomeres, so this is direct evidence that they’re not telomeres after all, nullifying the fusion idea.

Overall, Dr. Purdom did a fine job refuting this icon of evolution. In contrast, I believe the Bible presents our true history and origin. Humans were created in the image of God, and we have been fully human from the beginning. Genetics is actually in agreement.

Dr. Purdom went into greater detail on human chromosome 2 during a different presentation I’ll link to, and she also tackled the evolutionary claims of human-chimp DNA similarity. Check these out to learn more.