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Pastimes : Ask God -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas Calvet who wrote (17580)	6/16/1998 12:59:00 AM
From: Father Terrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 39621

Tom: Maybe it's time for you to go back and hit the books. I don't know how much you know about biology, but it can't be too much based on your question. If human DNA were a 100% match, then we would not be evolved, but all just great apes. The DNA evolved just enough to cause that slight difference -- the difference between great apes (such as gorillas and chimpanzees) and homo sapiens. Neanderthals were probably even closer to the great ape DNA than we are today, yet our ancestors could still mate with them. Part of mutation is from natural selection, but part is also from genetic "mistakes" and even from the fact that as far as stars go, ours is a rather "dirty" second generation one pumping out a lot of hard radiation in the form of its solar wind. Most of this radiation is deflected from the earth by the Van Allen Belt (formed by earth's magnetic fields) and this shield accounts for the Northern and Southern auroras. But some of the radiation, including x-rays, leaks through. That, coupled with natural background radiation such as found in granite, also serves to mutate species. The effect is virtually invisible over a few tens of thousands of years, but spectacular over 100,000s or millions of years. It is the process that can take one ancestor, such as a prehistoric tree sloth, and mutate the genetic pool over tens of millions of years to evolve 1,000s of different four-legged species as diverse as the giraffe and the elephant. Father Terrence