A curious link you found there, Alamo-Girl, and you seemed to have missed the significant details in it.
It may be helpful to know just a little bit about how sequence comparisons are done. One can come up with a uniform lawn if each individual base in one genome is compared to any base in another genome. It will be completely non-informative and all organisms will stand alone as single blades. But people who like to think instead of lawyer aren't this stupid and will, instead, look for ways to find meaningful information from a sequence comparison. The first task is to align matching genes. Do you see immediately that the 25% random match is eliminated? That's how sequence comparisons are done in real life. (Even the lawn in your analogy would be a spotty one. It would be similar to the effect of representing each branch on the tree of life by a light and then projecting this light onto the ceiling. You've eliminated the time dimension.)
The next task is to set an estimate of expected matches just by chance. That's the base line. The actual match will be compared to the baseline. But it gets tough because mismatches between gene segments are usually not just single base mutations. They include inversions and deletions. Scores of biostatisticians and biomathematicians have created algorithms to turn that meaningless lawn into something significant. Important information does emerge. Core genes, like histone genes, are similar between daffodils and humans. Other genes don't find any match at all. You may not be aware that the chimp genome has not been sequenced. Comparisons are estimates based on the information we do have. (Don't worry, those estimates are not based on godless bayesean priors.) What emerges is a visual representation of the relationship between species. It's, roughly, a tree. The rooting isn't at a single point. The trunk is fuzzy. But as you move up the branches, distinct clarity emerges. Naturally, it would, because we have DNA sequences from extant species.
(With your permission) I hope to use this quote some day during a statistical discussion. Sometimes I do indulge in ein bischen Schadenfreud (spelling?) watching the Bayseans, Frequentists, and Fiducialists, argue.
Naturally, it would, because we have DNA sequences from extant species.
I certainly agree that we have DNA sequences from extant species - it's the extinct species in the "tree" where I suspect we usually only have fossils, i.e. we're missing soft tissue samples to map the DNA.
My understanding of forensics is that DNA cannot be derived from bones. If you can do a DNA study from a fossil, please let me know!
It appears to me that the biggest part of the classic tree (bottom through limbs) was projected primarily from the study of fossil and geological evidence. DNA information on extant species can offer additional information on the "leaves" of that classic tree, but cannot speak any further without making considerable assumptions. So therefore, when I look at what the DNA research is capable of saying about evolution - I still think it will look like a "lawn."
Nice job obfuscating the matter! However, the fact is that the information we have is way too little to make such determinations. For one thing while the human genome has been mapped, the chimp genome has not as yet been mapped (and when the 98% was determined the human genome had not been fully mapped either). So the comparisons were made based on a small part of the genome. Whether the sections used were representative or not, is a guess. Second of all, while we have a pretty good idea of what most genes do, we cannot say the same for the 95% of DNA which is not in genes. What we do know is that the claim by evolutionists that that DNA was junk is absolutely false. As a result of ignoring the predictions of evolutionists we have found for example that the vast differences in human and chimp intelligence is not based on very much. It is based on expressing a gene which both of them have some 5 times more in humans than in chimps. Therefore these percentage comparisons are just plain nonsense.