Can a Common Design model be useful?

Conversation
, ,
61

There are NO plausible definitions for those terms which do not render your original statement utterly nonsensical in terms of what we already know and have thoroughly confirmed about the ancestry of these creatures.

I’ve said nothing whatsoever about universal common descent. I’m talking about basic phylogeny here. Your categories cannot be made to make sense.

But, of course, it can provide no starting point to guide anything because it is incoherent and ill-considered and fundamentally at odds with everything we already know about these lineages. REALLY: you NEED to learn a little bit of basic biology. You cannot expect to up-end the entire discipline of phylogenetics with this kind of slapdash reasoning.

3 Likes
62

I was wondering about seals, sealions and sea otters.

63

so replace “infinite” with 10^30. what is the chance to evolve similar creature again by convergent evolution, if there are 10^30 possible ways to evolve a living creature?

actually it doesnt look like a common descent more than common design. we can perhaps make a prediction about this: if common design is true then there is a functional reason even for synonymous codons\amino acids. and we indeed find such evidence.

no problem. a convergent trait is a convergent trait, and it doesnt matter if we are talking about anatomical/molecular level.

64

We were talking about protein amino acid sequences, not the putative phenotypic effects of different synonymous codons. But even if there is selection for particular codon uses that doesn’t explain why you should get a particular nested hierarchy under common design.

1 Like
65

Depends on how different the starting points are and whether there’s the same selective pressures operating.

1 Like
66

I think you mean to say “species” within kinds. After kinds are created “speciation” can occur according to some YEC models.

I am not sure the term “species” is used in Genesis. Animals were created according to their own kind. We can get variation from that kind that would create the equivalent of species but maybe better described as variation within kinds.

What would be interesting is a model like @Winston_Ewert built for separate kinds. Would a tree fit better then a dependency graph in this case?

67

why not? a functional reason. but we already have been there. arent we?:

68

Okay, prove it. You’ve now made up that explanation, time to test it.

69

No. I see no reason for using your invented numbers.

Insufficient data. Among other things, you’d need to specify (i) how similar, and (ii) how many creatures.

Please do not mistake this response as showing any interest in exploring your (off-topic) ideas.

1 Like
70

To be honest, I just throughout that list of species out there for discussion and critique without any rigorous research. It is obviously wrong but I needed to see how wrong so I can have some direction as I research into this further.

The word “bara” in genesis is only used for Birds, sea mammals, and humans. so ,for now, I can only say with confidence that those are separately species.

1 Like
Would this Origin of life model work?
71

So we should bear in mind when we read your posts not only that you probably haven’t read any of the sources you cite, but also that you may know (but not say) that what you’ve written is obviously wrong and you’re just fishing for ideas.

5 Likes
72

Genesis doesn’t mention sea mammals at all. And what exactly do you mean by “species”? What do you mean by “kind”? How do they differ?

2 Likes
73

Believe me, the word “rigorous” is wholly unnecessary in that sentence. It’s obvious that you have no idea what the known details of animal descent are, what the evidence is, what the fossils show, what the work of phylogenetics consists of, or anything else that would in any way prepare you to discuss this topic.

Ha! Now, that’s a good one. Up above you were DEFENDING it:

But then, of course, you realized that THAT was wrong (so both your biological and your ancient-text-based phylogenies are completely shot):

And, by the way, that still leaves you with the problem that we already know “sea mammals” not to be a clade so your hypothesis has still run smack into a brick wall: falsified before it was ever formulated.

Before you write more on this subject and make these yawning gaps in knowledge even more obvious, why don’t you take a little bit of good advice? Go find out what actual biologists and actual paleontologists know about the history of living things. No account which does not explain those facts, which have been illuminated immensely by work in those fields, will be worth a damn. How seriously would YOU take someone who was empty of knowledge but full of notions and who says things like “I KNEW everything I was saying was false, but I had to say it so that people could show me HOW false so that I’d have a starting point”? If you would take such a person seriously, you are no judge of what is worthwhile.

5 Likes
74

(Before I start, I just want to remind everyone that I am relying heavily on RTB’s model and sources rather than my own knowledge. So don’t get your butt hurt if I forget to properly cite the information I get from them. Just about everything I say is coming from them. So keep that in mind)

Depending on which translation you read, Genesis 1:21 suggests that whales, all sea mammals, and all birds, which would probably be considered “species” along with humans:

And God created the great sea monsters, and every living creature (nephesh) that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good.

According to Genesis, God also created three specialized kinds of land mammals: “a) short-legged land mammals, b) long-legged land mammals that are easy to tame, and c) long-legged land mammals that are difficult to tame—all three specifically designed to cohabit with humans.”

However, Genesis doesn’t clarify the issue of how we should define “kinds” since it seems to represent a diverse group of animals and plants. For instance, most Hebrew scholars think “kinds” probably refers to what biologists would classify as genera or families, but there are certain verses in the bible that suggest a broader definition:

These, moreover, you shall detest among the birds; they are abhorrent, not to be eaten: the eagle and the vulture and the buzzard, and the kite and the falcon in its kind, ( Leviticus 11:13-14 )

every raven in its kind, ( Leviticus 11:15 )

and the ostrich and the owl and the sea gull and the hawk in its kind, ( Leviticus 11:16 )

and the little owl and the cormorant and the great owl, and the white owl and the pelican and the carrion vulture, and the stork, the heron in its kinds, and the hoopoe, and the bat. ( Leviticus 11:17-19 )

These of them you may eat: the locust in its kinds, and the devastating locust in its kinds, and the cricket in its kinds, and the grasshopper in its kinds. ( Leviticus 11:22 )

Now these are to you the unclean among the swarming things which swarm on the earth: the mole, and the mouse, and the great lizard in its kinds, and the gecko, and the crocodile, and the lizard, and the sand reptile, and the chameleon. ( Leviticus 11:29-30 )

But these are the ones which you shall not eat: the eagle and the vulture and the buzzard, and the red kite, the falcon, and the kite in their kinds, ( Deuteronomy 14:12-13 )

and every raven in its kind, ( Deuteronomy 14:14 )

and the ostrich, the owl, the sea gull, and the hawk in their kinds, ( Deuteronomy 14:15 )

the little owl, the great owl, the white owl, the pelican, the carrion vulture, the cormorant, the stork, and the heron in their kinds, and the hoopoe and the bat. ( Deuteronomy 14:16-18 )

…Their fish will be according to their kinds, like the fish of the Great Sea, very many. ( Ezekiel 47:10 )

These verses suggest that the “kinds” could be classified as genera, family, and Orders. Therefore, the “kinds” seen in Genesis one probably does not represent species.

Genesis 1:21 is referring to sea mammals because “creature” in Genesis means “Nephesh”. Read this source for more:

Which Animals Are Nephesh Animals? - Reasons to Believe

75

The ones I’ve picked out are individual species or small groups of species, at or below the genus level, and therefore suggest a narrower definition of kind than you are proposing.

Blatherskite. Genesis does not mention nor limit itself to mammals, nor say anything about long or short legs. Do you think geckos, tortoises and crocodiles are mammals, and snakes have short legs?

This is you saying things that you know are obviously wrong again.

Oh, and this garbage doesn’t come from RTB either. They’re bad, but not this bad.

3 Likes
76

One thing I’d like to see is a complete taxonomy of “kinds” based on Creation Science that includes all known species, extant and extinct, along with the genomic, phenotypic and paleontological evidence that supports this classification.

Such accounts exist for the universal common descent concept based on evolutionary science. It puzzles me that a similar one does not exist for creation science.

6 Likes
77

I don’t think that the purpose of Gen. 1’s categorization of animals was to interact with a 21st century understanding of Biology. To suggest that we should look to Genesis for help with how to parse species seems similar to pointing boat builders to Genesis 6 and animal husbandry experts to Genesis 30.

3 Likes
78

None of that helps you at all. Seriously, dude. Let’s be clear.

You are attempting to form a hypothesis ABOUT BIOLOGY. Ancient writings can be of no use to you here as biological science has moved beyond them by millennia. The analysis and classification of living things by modern biologists is not an arbitrary sorting into categories that make sense in some sort of colloquial folk-wisdom sense but is based in the one truly objective criterion which can make for natural groupings: descent. To challenge this you do not need a very old book full of colloquial folk-groupings of creatures: you need to instead understand biology, and to understand it deeply.

This descent is inferred from a HUGE volume of morphological and genetic evidence. What’s more, the inferences drawn from the morphological and from the genetic evidence conform very nicely to one another. To that we may add the evidence from the fossil record which confirms the story: the faunal succession leading to mammals, for example, is just what one would expect to find if synapsids did indeed evolve from earlier amniotes and if mammals did indeed arise within the synapsids.

There is no possibility of a “common design model” meaning anything at all to anyone unless it gives a better account of all of these facts, from the genetic and morphological phylogenetic evidence to the fossil record. You seem to be laboring under the delusion that nobody has ever really bothered to think about any of this, and that there’s really no particular evidence for common descent, and that you can therefore show up with a bunch of half-baked philosophical notions about what you think common design would look like and, by so doing, mount a challenge to common descent which serious-minded people ought to bother themselves with.

The reality? You cannot. If a serious and worthwhile challenge is to be brought to the entire discipline of phylogenetics, it will not be brought by you or by me. It will be brought by someone whose mastery of phylogenetics is deep, profound and comprehensive. Darwin spent a damned long time looking at barnacles before he was ready to up-end the entire theoretical basis of the diversity of life.

6 Likes
79

As I told @John_Harshman, I don’t feel right about using mainstream biology’s definition of species since it seems pretty clear that it does not fit with Genesis, which the common design model is derived from.

Sea mammals, short-legged land mammals, wild land mammals, domesticated land mammals, Birds, Whales, plants and humans are as far as I can go with species.

Again, “creature” in Genesis means “Nephesh” in hebrew,. Read this source for more:

Which Animals Are Nephesh Animals? - Reasons to Believe

Yes, since genesis suggests this.

I encourage you to read this as well because everything I’ve said came from RTB:

Summary of Reasons To Believe’s Testable Creation Model - Reasons to Believe

The reason why it’s not there yet is because created kinds cannot be defined a priori but must be determined through observations and comparisons, which is why I created this topic to potentially provide a complete model in the future.

NO, we are merely using genesis as a starting point for further investigation. Ultimately, it will be the common design model’s confirmed predictions through observations and experiments that we use to parse species and kinds. In other words, scientific evidence will make the determination not special revelations .

I almost agree with you since Universal common descent is already challenged by the data not the bible.

What the data actually indicates is that phylogenomics can show a variety of possible but uncertain inferred relationships:

[Turning the Crown Upside Down: Gene Tree Parsimony Roots the Eukaryotic Tree of Life | Systematic Biology | Oxford Academic (oup.com)]

(Turning the Crown Upside Down: Gene Tree Parsimony Roots the Eukaryotic Tree of Life | Systematic Biology | Oxford Academic)
An Alternative Root for the Eukaryote Tree of Life - ScienceDirect

Rooting the Eukaryotic Tree with Mitochondrial and Bacterial Proteins | Molecular Biology and Evolution | Oxford Academic (oup.com)

The Eukaryotic Tree of Life from a Global Phylogenomic Perspective (cshlp.org)

And tell me how this conflicts with the common design model.

This is not about common descent, but this is about UNIVERSAL common descent and this topic is not about challenging or refuting universal common descent. It is about showing how the common design model can be useful NOT whether it is true or a better explanation than common descent.

Thus, if you want to concede this topic’s objective so I can create another one showing how you are wrong, then by all means do so. I actually would not mind showing how common design is a better explanation on here even though I never planned on it before.

I am curious now. What exactly do you think I am challenging here in regards to common descent that is not already challenged by the data?

80

That’s a problem for you, since RTB does not appear to have a model, and they abuse their sources.

Nope, that doesn’t mention whales or mammals. And you still haven’t said what you mean by “species”, though it appears to differ radically from what anyone else in the world means.

Where is any of this actually stated? The RTB article gives no support for its claims.

More importantly, why should Genesis be able to tell us anything about actual biology?

3 Likes