“The assertion that the evos “need” 98.5% etc is goofy.”
Not really, when you understand the nature of the speculative assertions they make. Evolutionists assume a relatively constant rate of change in the genome over long periods of time, then use that assumed rate of change to extrapolate when species must have diverged from their assumed common ancestors based on the discrepancies we observe in their genomes today.
If the discrepancy is much larger than previously thought, then all of the subsequent estimations based on it are invalid. If we assume a relatively constant rate of change, then going from a 1.5% difference in the genome to a 15% difference means that instead of a common ancestor 6 million years ago, now scientists would have to speculate that the common ancestor was 60 million years ago. Unfortunately for them, 60 million years places them back in the time of the dinosaurs, when mammals were tiny shrew-like creatures hiding in little holes in the rocks, not primates.
So that is very inconvenient for the current model of human evolution.
Once again: it's irrelevant exactly what the numbers are -- 98% or 85% -- so long as you use the same methods/assumptions to calculate "average rate of change" and to count up the percent of differences between species.
Is that concept too hard for you to grasp?