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Sarfati's `book' - small pages, large font and all - seems to be a collection of half-truths, bizarre extrapolations, aspersion casting, and nonsense. Does anyone really wonder why the only people that give it the time of day are lay creationists? The laughable naiveté displayed by Sarfati in his description of molecular phylogenetics indicates that he has at best a cursory understanding of it. Considering that Sarfati may have had Batten look over this section for him - a creationist that has made many of the same errors in his own writing that Sarfati does in his book - there is little reason to wonder how such nonsense made it into print. Sarfati's 'common designer' alternative is a case in point. He mentions only similarities - if he had an understanding of how such analyses are done, he would - or should - have known that it is not mere similarity that indicates descent. If this 'common designer' schtick of Sarafti's and other creationists made any sense, should not the DNA of a whale be more 'similar' to that of a shark, given their morphological similarity? Sarfati even alludes to this when he mentions the relationships of crocodiles to chickens rather than reptiles (which actually, contrary to Sarfati's ignorant implication, makes perfect sense). Furthermore, Sarfati makes a blatant false claim on p. 83: "Similarities between human and ape DNA are often exaggerated. This figure was not derived from a direct comparison of sequences. Rather the original paper inferred 97% similarity between human and chimp DNA from a rather crude technique called DNA hybridization." In reality, the % 'similarity' figures had been batted about for a few years - it was the Sibley paper that got quite a bit of attention because 1. DNA-DNA hybridization compares the entire single copy genome 2. Sibley and Ahlquist were accused of fraud because they did not explain the techniques they used in deriving their figures and when others replicated their work, they came up with slightly different numbers. The original numbers were gleaned form direct DNA sequence comparisons, and, sadly for Sarfati's readers (and Sarfati himself), the numbers have been borne out by ever more studies using many more loci. Studies pre-dating the S&A paper cited in Sarfati's book: Chimpanzee Fetal G-gamma and A-gamma Globin Gene Nucleotide Sequences Provide Further Evidence of Gene Conversions in Hominine Evolution. Slightom et al., 1985 Mol Biol Evol 2(5):370-389. This paper found a 1.4-2.25% nucleotide difference, depending on which sets of alleles are compared.(1.8 kilobases). That is 97.75-98.6% identity. Primate Eta-Globin DNA and Man's Place Among the Great Apes. Koop et al., 1986. Nature 319:234-238. This paper found a 1.7% distance measured by direct comparison of aligned nucleotide sequences (2.2 kilobases in a pseudogene). That is 98.3%. Just one paper of many post-dating it that come to similar conclusions: A Molecular View of Primate Supraordinal Relationships from the Analysis of Both Nucleotide and Amino Acid Sequences. Stanhope et al., 1993. In Primates and Their Relatives in Phylogenetic Perspective. MacPhee, ed. This book chapter discusses Epsilon globin gene, (~4 kilobases), 1.1%. That is 98.9% identity When one knows a little bit of science, creationist claims can seem to have merit. When one knows quite a bit of science, one can see how shallow and nonsensical creationist claims can be. On the next page, Sarfati refers to electrical engineer ReMine's self-promotion book and his application of "Haldane's dilemma." Which it would seem Sarfati does not appear to understand any better than ReMine does. Sarfati writes: "Population genetics calculations shows that animals with human -like generation times of about 20 years could substitute no more than about 1700 mutations in that time." Where to start? What is the evidence that the ancestor of both humans and apes had a 20 year generation time? Sarfati presents none. ReMine didn't either. Sarfati does not mention that the calculation applies only to fixed, beneficial mutations, and not all mutations (most of which are neutral with regard to fitness and so can accrue much faster in a population). Why is that? Was it to make the total estimated difference between humans and chimps seem that much more unbridgeable? Or was it because Sarfati, like his Answers in Genesis colleague, Batten, doesn't understand (or care about) the difference? Did Sarfati present any evidence that even if that number is correct, that human evolution cannot be accounted for? No. Just assertions and emotional rhetoric. Most other topics were dealt with in a similar fashion. Of course, as is clear from the many positive reviews, the average reader will not know - or care about - the disinformation, the errors of omission, the empty rhetoric, etc. Again, when one knows a little bit of science, creationist claims can seem to have merit. When one knows quite a bit of science, one can see how shallow and nonsensical creationist claims can be.