A YLC is Bemused At Others Engaging Evidence

[scd]

@RonSewell

That is why trucks can have a various wheel counts, but all vertebrate flyers, whether birds or bats or pterodactyl, must sacrifice independent fore limbs for airfoils

some vertebrate have different number of digits (horse for instance). so i dont think that this tell us something or falsify design. if the digit-like structure help the wing then why not using it actually

@T_aquaticus

This directly contradicts your earlier claims that design would produce a nested hierarchy.

no. you still have the same tree basically. but with many cases of non-hierarchy.

@Rumraket

Roughly speaking, most of those genes seem to follow the tree pretty well.

i will agree with you actually, but the criteria above was to find mix of traits among species. and that is what we find.

@Roy

To use your “12345” expectation, this would be 1234…5. Not out of place. Strike 1

actually there is no such fossil in earlier layers. so this fossil appearing too late. how much? about 200 my after where it should be. so this is like 13452. out of place fossil.

@Roy

So we don’t actually know how old it is

its still open to debate, so we cant say that its in the correct place eihter.

@Roy

But the main problem with describing this as an out-of-place fossil is that we simply don’t have enough fossils of evolving tetrapods to be certain what the pattern is

great. in science we go by the fossils we have. and according to these fossil these tracks are indeed out of place. so at least 2 out of the 3 are indeed out of place and i can bring you more but that point is that it will no falsify evolution.

@evograd

If we discovered Cambrian tetrapods, then we’d be shocked.

i see no problem to push back evolution of tetrapod by about 100 my. if we already pushed it back by about 20 my why not by 100?

[Timothy_Horton]

@colewd

If I ask you how gravity curves space time you do not have a tested hypothesis you can cite. We know that minds can generate information as we know gravity can curve space time. The details are interesting but are not necessary for a scientific hypothesis.

Another day, another case of Bill refusing to provide a means to test or falsify his “mind magic POOF!” hypothesis.

BTW Bill just because a mind can produce information is not evidence a mind actually did generate any given specific example of information. You keep dodging that rather critical point too.

[T_aquaticus]

@scd

no. you still have the same tree basically. but with many cases of non-hierarchy.

This contradicts your earlier claim that design would produce a nested hierarchy.

What you also fail to forget is that common descent and evolution in vertebrates is expected to produce a noisy phylogeny. Pointing out the noise does not falsify this prediction. What you need to show is the phylogenetic signal is not there.

[scd]

@T_aquaticus

This contradicts your earlier claim that design would produce a nested hierarchy.

What you also fail to forget is that common descent and evolution in vertebrates is expected to produce a noisy phylogeny.

remember that the original criteria was to find mix of traits among species. we said nothing about noise. so first: we do find such mix of traits as we seen. and second: the noise also exist in designed objects. if we will check out cars and bikes for instance we will find out that in general bikes shared more parts with other bikes than with a car or a truck (it make sense after all, otherwise it will not be a bike probably). so the minority of parts (the noise part) might be non-hierarchical. but the hierarchy still exist in general.

[Roy (34-year veteran)]

@scd

@Roy

To use your “12345” expectation, this would be 1234…5. Not out of place. Strike 1

actually there is no such fossil in earlier layers. so this fossil appearing too late. how much? about 200 my after where it should be. so this is like 13452. out of place fossil.

Codswallop. Chimerarachne is not out-of-order w.r.t. any other fossils.

@Roy

So we don’t actually know how old it is

its still open to debate, so we cant say that its in the correct place eihter.

You claimed it was out-of-place. Now you admit we don’t know whether it is in-place or out-of-place.

Were you lying, were you mistaken, or were you just repeating some-one else’s garbage?

@Roy

But the main problem with describing this as an out-of-place fossil is that we simply don’t have enough fossils of evolving tetrapods to be certain what the pattern is

great. in science we go by the fossils we have. and according to these fossil these tracks are indeed out of place.

Unless they’re fish feeding impressions, as some experts have argued.

But that just gives you only one possible out-of-place fossil, not the many you claimed.

[T_aquaticus]

@scd

remember that the original criteria was to find mix of traits among species.

The original criteria were numerous and obvious mixture of traits. Low amounts of noise, like those found in the data sets we are discussing, are not numerous and obvious.

@scd

and second: the noise also exist in designed objects.

Why would the phylogenetic signal be expected if life were designed?

@scd

if we will check out cars and bikes for instance we will find out that in general bikes shared more parts with other bikes than with a car or a truck (it make sense after all, otherwise it will not be a bike probably). so the minority of parts (the noise part) might be non-hierarchical. but the hierarchy still exist in general.

You still haven’t measured a phylogenetic signal in these data sets. Until you do, your argument lacks evidence.

[evograd (Blogging Graduate Student)]

@scd

i see no problem to push back evolution of tetrapod by about 100 my. if we already pushed it back by about 20 my why not by 100?

That you see no problem doesn’t surprise me. You obviously don’t have a grasp on how the fossil record informs us about evolution. Pushing back tetrapod origins 100 million years bulldozes through the gradual evolution of various tetrapod ancestors (e.g. the jawed vertebrates) between the Cambrian and Silurian.
Pushing back the evolution of major groups by huge amounts of time has knock-on effects. In the case of the pushing back of tetrapod origins by ~20 million years, it doesn’t really. This should be obvious. If it turns out modern humans originated 500,000 years ago it would be surprising, but not overturn our entire understanding of the phylogeny and/or timing of major groups. Finding out that we originated 5 million years ago would. This should be common sense.

[evograd (Blogging Graduate Student)]

@scd

some vertebrate have different number of digits (horse for instance).

That’s a poor example, because not only can we see gradual digit reduction in the fossil record, but even modern horses actually possess the remnants of all 5 toes:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.171782

[T_aquaticus]

@evograd

That’s a poor example, because no only can we see gradual digit reduction in the fossil record, but even modern horses actually possess the remnants of all 5 toes

Digit count can be somewhat fluid, even within a species:

[evograd (Blogging Graduate Student)]

I’m not aware of any species in the last 300 million years that have fixed that kind of polydactyly though.

[scd]

@Roy

Chimerarachne is not out-of-order

actually it is. as even wiki state: " Since the earliest spider fossils are from the Carboniferous, either answer results in an at least a 170 myr ghost lineage with no fossil record". so this fossil appearing too late in the fossil record.

@Roy

But that just gives you only one possible out-of-place fossil, not the many you claimed.

indeed. they are just few examples out of many (again: at least according to my criteria, and we can argue about that too if you want). here is an article about plants fossils. as you can see there is no real correlation between their phylogeny and their fossils:

Turn back the molecular clock, say Argentina's plant fossils

and if you will look at the original paper you will see that some fossils appearing to late compare to what they should be. and that is only a small group of plants so it can give us a general indication about fossil deviation in general.

@T_aquaticus

You still haven’t measured a phylogenetic signal in these data sets. Until you do, your argument lacks evidence

so what are you suggesting? that a bike in general can be more similar to a car than to other bike?

@evograd

Pushing back tetrapod origins 100 million years bulldozes through the gradual evolution of various tetrapod ancestors.

Pushing back the evolution of major groups by huge amounts of time has knock-on effects.

again; we both agree that we can push back the origin of tetrapods by 20-30 my. so why it will be impossible to push it back by extra 70 my? what is your main reason and where is the limit that we cant push it anymore?

@evograd

That’s a poor example

it was just an example. there are many others:

(image from “Evolutionary developmental biology: Use it or lose it”)

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Rumraket

Hey Bill, have you considered that gene loss is actually perfectly consistent with Michael Behe’s “devolution” argument?

Gene loss happens does not mean gene loss explains a specific pattern. You were the one to point out this logical fallacy.

One of the problems with making gene loss the cause is we see gene gain. The appearance of a rare gene sequence is very hard to explain as to why the authors of the paper focused on gene loss. A mind explains gene gain as it can work through the problem of creating a complex sequence. A mind can also work through the problem of selecting a group of genes that will build a specific animal.

A mind is a very good solution to the problems we see in the patterns like the one showing the different WNT gene families in invertebrates.

[evograd (Blogging Graduate Student)]

@scd

again; we both agree that we can push back the origin of tetrapods by 20-30 my. so why it will be impossible to push it back by extra 70 my? what is your main reason and where is the limit that we cant push it anymor?

I literally just explained it in that comment.

@scd

it was just an example. there are many others:

I know. Digit reduction is fairly common, relatively speaking, and doesn’t undermine common ancestry in the slightest. The horse is a good illustration of that point. Same goes for the 3-toed Jerboa in your diagram.

[scd]

@evograd

I literally just explained it in that comment.

are you referring to this part?: "Pushing back tetrapod origins 100 million years bulldozes through the gradual evolution of various tetrapod ancestors.’

but as we seen with the tetrapod case, there was no problem to push back not only the first tetrapod but the whole group of tetrpod ancestors as well.

[T_aquaticus]

@scd

so what are you suggesting?

I am suggesting that you measure the phylogenetic signal in your data set. Google “measuring phylogenetic signal” and start reading.

[T_aquaticus]

@colewd

Gene loss happens does not mean gene loss explains a specific pattern.

If we have a natural process that can produce the observations then we don’t invent a supernatural explanation that just happens to mimic the natural process.

@colewd

One of the problems with making gene loss the cause is we see gene gain.

Are you saying that we can’t use erosion as an explanation for canyons because we see deposition happening in river deltas?

@colewd

The appearance of a rare gene sequence is very hard to explain as to why the authors of the paper focused on gene loss.

Every mutation produces a rare sequence. It’s not hard to explain at all.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@T_aquaticus

If we have a natural process that can produce the observations then we don’t invent a supernatural explanation that just happens to mimic the natural process.

A mind is a known mechanism we can model and test. You don’t have another natural process you can model and test how it would create the patterns we are observing.

@T_aquaticus

Every mutation produces a rare sequence. It’s not hard to explain at all.

Sorry, a functional rare sequence.

[T_aquaticus]

@colewd

A mind is a known mechanism we can model and test.

And yet you never do.

@colewd

You don’t have another natural process you can model and test how it would create the patterns we are observing.

We do. Gene loss.

@colewd

Sorry, a functional rare sequence.

You haven’t shown that functional sequences are rare enough to not be explained by random mutations.

[evograd (Blogging Graduate Student)]

@scd

but as we seen with the tetrapod case, there was no problem to push back not only the first tetrapod but the whole group of tetrpod ancestors as well.

How are you still not understanding this simple point? Bigger changes have bigger knock-on effects, and are therefore less likely given current data.
Are you really suggesting that the mere existence of a single new ghost lineage means that we can’t have any confidence in our understanding of macroevolutionary events? Think a little.

[RonSewell (RonS)]

@scd

many fossils are indeed out of place.

You are offering what you take as counter examples to the progression of the fossil record, but none of these are inexplicable. On the other hand, YEC predicts that there should be essential NO order to the fossil record. Trilobites should be jumbled in with lobsters, stegosaurus with elephants, whales with plesiosaurs, sail-backed synapsids with bears. That is the triceratops in the room.