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Are Look-alikes Related
F. C. Kuechmann

In an article titled Are look-alikes related? from Creation ex nihilo (Volume 19 Number 2: 39-41, Mar-May 1997)  famous creationist Don Batten informs us that:

My childhood best friend looked so much like me that our teachers, and even our friends, had a lot of trouble telling us apart. Are you twins?, we were often asked. However, there was no family connection as far back as anyone could trace. The similarity in our appearance was not due to being closely related - or, putting it another way - due to us having a recent common ancestor, like a common father, grandmother, or even great grandparent. It was just a fluke.

The main (only?) argument for evolution is that similarities between living things are due to relatedness, or common ancestry. If two kinds of animals share a lot of common features, then they are obviously closely related and so must have had a recent common ancestor - or so the evolutionary reasoning goes ...People would assume that because my friend and I were so similar we must have shared a very recent common ancestor - like the same parents. They were wrong. In like manner, the evolutionists are often - not always - wrong in assuming similarity is due to common ancestry.

That is, at best, a deceptive analogy on Batten's part. An evolutionist would not note the similarity between Batten and his friend, and from that conclude that they were close blood relatives. An evolutionist would, after noting a number of specific taxonomic identities and similarities, conclude that Batten and his friend were both the same species, presumably Homo sapiens, with a common ancestor perhaps tens of thousands of years in the past - which is relatively recent on an evolutionary time scale.

The remainder of Batten's drivel is no better. One deceptive argument after another. And more illustration for why creationist pseudo-scientists are not highly regarded in legitimate scientific circles.

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