Sponges share 70% of human genes, contradicting the expected evolutionary
time frame and genetic predictions
DNA Doesn't Lie: For decades prior to the sequencing of the human genome, when evolutionists only had some of our genes to go by, they proclaimed that chimps were 98% the same as us. If that logic were valid, then sponges are 70% human, which is so absurd, that the whole evolutionary claim to genetic evidence for Darwin's tree of life is falling apart (though so far, only some leading Darwinists are admitting this). Evolutionists have long claimed that the sponge was a primitive organism that developed at least 600 million years ago, prior to the appearance of more complex animals that have advanced body plans, muscles and nervous systems. However, according to the peer-reviewed journal Nature, the sequencing of a Great Barrier Reef sponge genome shows that this sponge, "is remarkably similar to other animal genomes in content, structure and organization." Project lead, Dr. Bernard Degnan of the University of Queensland, reported, "We have found that sponges and humans, and their common ancient ancestor, share an amazing number of genes. Given how simple sea sponges are, this was completely unexpected.”
As reported by the AFP in Scientists find sea sponges share human genes, "sea sponges share almost 70 percent of human genes!" The Nature paper, Sponge genome goes deep, goes beyond it's factual findings of human-to-sponge overlap to speculate on a period of evolution after sponges that, "Nearly one-third of the genetic alterations that distinguish humans from their last common ancestor with single-celled organisms took place during this period."
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And whereas we humans have 20,500 genes, the lowly sponge according to Nature, has "more than 18,000 individual genes." Thus "the sponge genome represents a diverse toolkit." Exactly. As Nature reports, "according to Douglas Erwin, a palaeobiologist at the Smithsonian, such complexity indicates that sponges must have descended from a more advanced ancestor than previously suspected. 'This flies in the face of what we think of early metazoan evolution,' says Erwin." Nature also says about sponge DNA: "The genome also includes analogues of genes that, in organisms with a neuromuscular system, code for muscle tissue and neurons." Those Darwinists who hold to the circular logic of methodological naturalism do not have the intellectual liberty to even consider that perhaps the Intelligent Designer devised a genetic toolbox from which He could pull out of the same basic blueprint tools for making sponges, kangaroos, and people.
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From the Darwinist evolution press, about "the sponge, which was not recognized as an animal until the 19th century," Science Daily reports that, "the team looked in the sponge genome for more than 100 genes that have been implicated in human cancers and found about 90 percent of them." And from a researcher with the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass., "Though we think of a sponge as a simple creature whose skeleton we take to the bathtub, it has a lot of the major biochemical and developmental pathways we associate with complex functions in humans and other more complex animals," she said. See more at Real Science Friday about the sponge genome and at our List of Genomes that Just Don't Fit.