I agree. What’s your point?
No, it’s nothing like what you’ve been trying to argue.
Not true. There are all manner of sources for error and deviation. Still, there’s a dominant signal. And you have forgotten that we aren’t talking about universal common descent but about descent within mammals. Further, there’s really no such thing as a paleontological tree. Some trees incorporate fossils, but the data aren’t used in any special paleontological way and extant taxa are freely mixed in.
Why? Universal common design has no expectations or predictions.
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It claims that the difference between a fish and chicken is random gene gain and loss. Yet there is no model of how this creates the functional pattern we see in both animals.
How did you come to this conclusion?
I already mentioned one and you dismissed it with a stuff happens brush off.
There is no such claim. There are many differences that don’t involve gain or loss, and gain or loss is not random, though it certainly has a random component.
Nor does anyone think that gain and loss necessarily create a functional pattern, whatever you may mean by that.
If you disagree, please explain what Ewert’s model explains and how it can be tested.
Not sure what you’re referring to there.
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You said in reply to @John_Harshman that wave collapse and proton tunneling were the supernatural change that explain nested hierarchy;
It is not obvious to me how wave function collapse or proton tunneling causes nested hierarchies at all.
Please explain how wave collapse and proton tunneling result in nested hierarchy? As much detail on the mechanism as you can please, and also why you think they are supernatural as opposed to natural.
If you cannot, you are simply writing technobabble.
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Yes, this is because you have tried to steer it in another direction that does not attack at the heart of the issue.
All this means is that common descent is less falsifiable than you think it is.
No, but this is what I have been trying to refute in order to show that my model better explains the broken chains.
Why is that so significant to you? How does it make or break my common design model or make it less or more useful?
Again, as I explained before, you cannot separate random mutations from common descent They are inseparable.
For instance, when researchers assumed that mutations were only additive and the effect of each mutation is done singly in experiments, the striking result of this design is that the simple additivity assumption was validated. The success of the method implied that additive mutations is big enough for engineering potent changes in activity.
In other words, only directed mutations by a conscious agent has been shown to produce meaningful changes. On the other hand, the evidence showing that random mutations can produce the same potent changes has yet to be determined.
Therefore, under a directed mutations/common design model, we would expect a large amount of innovation in the history of life, which would involve discontinues and conflicts between phylogenetics and the fossil record. Under a random mutations/common descent, we would not as Gert Korthof suggested in his book Why Intelligent Design Fails:
"Common descent of life means that all life on Earth is physically, historically, and genetically connected. Common descent of life means that life is one unbroken chain of ancestors and descendants. Common descent of life means that every organism inherited all its genes from the previous generation (with slight modifications). And that includes irreducibly complex systems. Every supernatural intervention is a violation of common descent, because it means that a new irreducibly complex system in the first individual showing it was not inherited from its parents. It would be unjustified to say, ‘I inherited all my chromosomes from my parents, except an irreducibly complex system on chromosome X, which has a supernatural origin.’
Common Descent: It’s All or Nothing (updated chapter) (wasdarwinwrong.com)
False. Bill, might you be bothered to take just a little time to understand evolutionary biology? If it’s so important to oppose it, the least you can do is to represent it accurately.
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But there aren’t any.
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No, this is because you are a veritable fount of non sequitur and self-contradiction. Please, I beg you, try much harder to be coherent.
This is you avoiding an explanation for nested hierarchy, nothing more.
What broken chains?
It falsifies the separate creation model, which is what you mean by “common design”. And a falsified model is not useful.
That’s your claim, unsupported by any argument. That claim is wrong.
I’ll stop you right there. Whenever you say “for instance” or “therefore” or something similar, what follows is inevitably not an instance of the thing you said just previously or not a valid conclusion from the think you said previously. And the current case is no exception.
For example?
And I would disagree with portions of the Korthof quote, whatever you may be getting from it. Every mutation is something you don’t inherit from your parents, and you have a hundred or two of those yourself. Just because you can find somebody saying something somewhere isn’t an argument that it’s true.
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How can it be applied improperly?
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It appears that history has demonstrated, on numerous occasions, that non-methodological supernaturalism has repeatably led to faulty conclusions.
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Hi WD
This may be true.
At the end of the day the origin of new animal types may be outside the scope of science given the limitations of science under methodological naturalism.
There goes your central confusion operating again. Do you need to be reminded of what it is?
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You are using a labeling fallacy. You are labeling my understanding confused. I think your arguments are fine under methodological naturalism. I don’t think you are capable of arguing outside the discipline of MN at this point because your evolutionary filter is too heavy. You default to unsupported assertion outside the MN umbrella. That’s my experience with this discussion.
If we open the discussion up to outside MN I know you are capable of moving out of your current paradigm but you must be willing to go where the evidence leads even if it leads to doubt about the common descent of vertebrates.
You are making a false accusation.
We’re not discussing mere arguments. We’re discussing hypotheses, theories, and evidence, with you avoiding all three.
Why are you presenting the ill-conceived paper of Ewert, which, while terrible, is entirely inside MN?
Isn’t that incredibly hypocritical?
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I am. What evidence? You don’t do evidence, Bill.
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I believe that claim is scientifically resolved in favor of common descent.
You advanced earlier that…
…despite common observations in real time, that natural processes of mutation are responsible for adaptive functional variation.
So ID pounds away at some undefinable quality of information as a central plank in the design platform, and then, where information actually is present, about faces and dismisses it.
For protein coding DNA, humans and chimpanzees are close to 99% identical. Overall, the DNA similarity runs 95% give or take, there is some contention over the data and methodologies leading to this number. While the close genetic agreement does not seal the case for common ancestry, it features as information, a quantitative indication signaling in that direction. Zooming into specific regions of DNA yield confirmation.
There is no need to speculate as to the function of the GULO gene, which is essential for ascorbic acid biosynthesis. We know what it is supposed to do, and it works just fine in most species in which it is found. In humans and apes it is broken, and broken in the exact unique way. Creation by common design is teleological, which inoperative GULO genes clearly are not. So that is genetic information against common design and for common descent.
Then there is the clear signal of the head to head fusion of human chromosome 2. Creationists maintain that they only interpret evidence with a Biblical lens, but the only reasonable interpretation here is that humans and apes share common descent. This informs of ancestry, not teleology. So the YEC response is to outright deny the existence of the fusion site, despite the presence of telomeres or centromeres, and the mapping of the genes.
To the above, add in the comparison of olfactory receptor genes in chimpanzees and humans, and note the repertoire of hundreds which have lost their function and become pseudogenes. More information revealing not purpose but past.
Whether junk or otherwise, endogenous retroviruses are indeed information indicating ancestral germ line infections captured in DNA which can be utilized to construct phylogenies connecting humans with other primates.
Against the coherence of this evidence, ID fights an asymmetrical war of attrition, attempting to fragment the totality of the information present in DNA into disparate parts, and separately by rhetoric dismantle the force of their argument. Often, this takes the form of vacuous speculation of some yet to be discovered “function” for what is already well known to have a function, and observed to be broken. But unaddressed is that the consilience of these varying lines of genetic information together with the fossil record constitute an incontrovertible case. ID harps on and on about DNA being information. Absolutely. DNA is information which informs us of our common descent.
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It’s not a fallacy if your understanding is really confused. You are completely unable to separate common descent/separate creation from the source of difference/novelty. That’s your central confusion.
Name one such unsupported assertion.
What evidence? Where does it lead? How does it cast doubt on the common descent of vertebrates? And please don’t say it’s Sal’s flower, which is more evidence of common descent.
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I believe that’s 99.5% and 98.7%, respectively. To get down to 95% you have to count a 1000-base indel as 1000 differences.
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It’s rather pointless to attempt a scientific discussion with people who lack a basic understanding of logic and reason.
Just an observation.
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