Consensus should determine what's taught in science classes. Why?

[Meerkat_SK5]

@John_Harshman

You clearly don’t understand what a nested hierarchy is. Just using the word “nesting” doesn’t make a publication relevant. Words have meanings, but more importantly, sentences and paragraphs have meanings that aren’t communicated by the individual words taken in isolation. You appear not to have understood any of the random things you quote.

@T_aquaticus

Automata do not fall into a nested hierarchy.

I can’t wait to see how you guys weasel your way out of this one:

Tree (automata theory) - Wikipedia

@T_aquaticus

In other words, you have argued up and down that ID/creationism will produce a nested hierarchy, and yet you turn around and now argue that ID/creationism will produce numerous and obvious violations of that nested hierarchy. That is what convergence at the molecular level is, a violation of a nested hierarchy.

Yes, let me clarify this point so we can get on the same page. As Hugh Ross has explained:

"Convergence refers to the occurrence of identical, or nearly identical, anatomical, physiological, and/or genetic features in species of life that are unrelated or distantly related within an evolutionary paradigm. Both theists and nontheists offer explanations for convergence, but those explanations are radically different.

Theists see convergence resulting from supernatural, super-intelligent interventions by a single Creator who employs a single, optimal solution to address a common set of problems faced by organisms possessing different characteristics and living in different habitats.

Nontheists conjecture that convergence occurs when unrelated species encounter identical, or nearly identical, environmental, predatory, and/or competitive selection effects. In other words, nontheists suggest that natural selection channels randomly occurring variations in unrelated species toward identical outcomes."

So we would expect to find convergent evolution in genes and morphology for both models. This includes nested patterns AND their so-called violations of it, as both of you even alluded to. However, the real differences are the frequency in which they happen.

The common descent model claims that it is rare because of the constraints of natural selection acting on random mutations. On the other hand, common design claims that it is ubiquitous because we are dealing with non-random mutations.

It seems that only time will tell from future discoveries. But then again, the ecology criteria might be able to speed up the process and allow us to find out sooner which model is more useful.

@T_aquaticus

How many functional ERV’s and pseudogenes are there? All of us agree that there were always going to be some functional ERV’s because these DNA sequences start out as functional when they are inserted into the genome. That doesn’t change the fact that we expect the vast majority of ERV’s to be non-functional, and simply citing the existence of functional ERV’s and pseudogenes does not change this conclusion. It’s the numbers that matter.

@John_Harshman

Sure I can. But what percentage of human ERVs and pseudogenes have been shown to have a function? Can you say?

Well, it depends. What percentage or number is feasible enough to be considered validation for the common design hypothesis rather than common descent?

Without providing a number on your end, I don’t see the point of researching the number of cases on my end.

@T_aquaticus

Why would ecology preclude the creation of a species with a mixture of bird and mammal features?

@John_Harshman

What does that even mean?

Let me bring in Mike Gene, an ID proponent who wrote the Design Matrix, to explain it a different way:

"One of the criticisms of the front-loading hypothesis is that you can’t design a genome in a unicellular organism to evolve specific organs, tissues, biochemical systems, etc., several billion years in the future. But convergent evolution neatly answers this criticism.

A classic example of convergent evolution is the eye in the octopus and the mammalian eye.
The human eye and octopus eye both have the following tissues:

Comparative Analysis of Gene Expression for Convergent Evolution of Camera...

1. Eyelids.

2. Cornea.

3. Pupil.

4. Iris.

5. Ciliary muscle.

6. Lens.

7. Retina.

8. Optic nerve.

Furthermore, the arrangement of these parts are practically the same. And these two systems have arisen independently, through convergent evolution (i.e., they are not related through common descent; see Ogura et al., 2004). This means that these two organs have evolved as a result of the initial state of the last common ancestor of mammals and octopuses.

In short, the convergent evolution of these two organs demonstrates that a genome can be programmed to evolve a given objective. If we ran the “clock of life” backwards (to borrow from Stephen J. Gould), human-like eyes would probably appear on the scene once again. In other words, the same system keeps popping up again and again.

And this is evidence that a given objective can be front-loaded, starting with a specified initial state. The eye is a beautiful example of convergent evolution, wherein 8 separate “parts” independently came together in the same arrangement to produce the function of vision.

Are there examples of convergent evolution in biochemical systems? If so, this would provide evidence that not only can organs be front-loaded, but so too can biochemical systems."

Alright, let’s go back to my thesis…nested patterns are due to a common blueprint and mechanisms (i.e. homolpasy and non-random mutations) the designer used to front load the reproductive and survival capacity into basic types to adapt to their respective environments.

This means that the genes necessary for their origin did not have to gradually evolve, because the genes necessary for their origin were in the original life forms.

This also means that different ecology or environments should delineate separate basic types since they are supposed to be preprogrammed to survive and reproduce under a particular environment.

@John_Harshman

That study does not support the hypothesis. And the hypothesis itself is incoherent. Nothing you use in support of your claims actually support those claims

If the hypothesis is incoherent and you don’t understand it, then how do you know the studies don’t support it?

@John_Harshman

Because “a particular environment or several ones” covers all the possibilities, so cannot distinguish a group from a non-group, as any random assemblage of species will be either in one environment or in several environments.

@John_Harshman

Yes. But perhaps a few coherent examples would suffice. You have offered one incoherent example, a couple of groups of vipers,

Right, this is why I added more clarity to the criterion in the event that a set of basic types are in the same habitat. Again, If the answer is ‘No’ or ‘TBD’ to the question of “Is there a substantial difference in Habitat?”, then we ask a follow-up question, Do they respond differently in a different habitats?. (this may require artificially planting them in different habitats for an answer)

If the answer is ‘yes’ to either question, we can automatically conclude that God constructed each basic type separately. If not, we rely on other measures to make a definitive conclusion.