* Real Science Radio Focuses its Beetle Eye on Sponges: Co-hosts Fred Williams with Creation Research Society, and Bob Enyart, on this episode of Real Science Radio draw from the January 2011 issue of Creation magazine to discuss:
* If Chimps are 95% Human, Sponges are 70%: The sequencing of the Great Barrier Reef sponge genome shows, according to the co-author's interview with AFP in Scientists find sea sponges share human genes, "that sea sponges share almost 70 percent of human genes!" The study, reported in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, Sponge genome goes deep, goes beyond it's factual findings of human-to-sponge overlap to speculate on a period of evolution after sponges that, "Nearly one-third of the genetic alterations that distinguish humans from their last common ancestor with single-celled organisms took place during this period."

* 20,500 Human Genes; 18,000 Sponge Genes: While humans have about 20,500 genes and simple worms have 20,000, it turns out that sponges, according to Nature, have "more than 18,000 individual genes." Thus "the sponge genome represents a diverse toolkit." Exactly says RSR! As Nature reports, "according to Douglas Erwin, a palaeobiologist at the Smithsonian, such complexity indicates that sponges must have descended from a more advanced ancestor than previously suspected. 'This flies in the face of what we think of early metazoan evolution,' says Erwin."
So, What's This Doing In There? Nature also says about sponge DNA: "The genome also includes analogues of genes that, in organisms with a neuromuscular system, code for muscle tissue and neurons." Those Darwinists who hold to the circular logic of methodological naturalism do not have the intellectual liberty to consider that perhaps the Intelligent Designer devised a genetic toolbox from which He could pull out of the same basic blueprint tools for making sponges, kangaroos, and people.