@Michael_Callen very nice analogy on the skydeck! You are a pretty good communicater!
Since the questions is being discussed. I thought I would add one I have also been wondering about. @swamidass and @John_Harshman
It seems to me that common descent in multicellular organisms is inevitable if we assume naturalism. I.e, the only known natural way for an organism to appear in history is through reproduction and hence common descent. The only scientifically accessible question would be whether LUCA is true.
I get that common descent has a lot of lines of evidence supporting it and that’s something I learned from here. But I don’t see how anyone can rule out special creation at the level of family or order as it would be impossible for science to examine the idea because of self imposed limitations as well as limitations of the scientific method.
So my question to @swamidass and @John_Harshman is whether Science can authoritatively reject Special creation? I doubt it can (because it would require one to take positions on metaphysics). In which case, a lot of criticism of those who believe in Special creation (and thus skeptical of common descent) as “Science deniers” is ill thought out. Very often, they don’t deny science, They deny that naturalistic answers are the only valid ones and believe God could intervene in history at a much larger level.
I don’t see how affirming common descent as something that actually happened in history is a purely a scientific stand.