Methodological naturalism scarcely entails any claims like that. Evidence is what informs the common design inference, not the thesis that we are with the tools at our avail unfit to construct usable predictive models of observable phenomena by aid of reference to magic.
The reasoning might be, but the conclusion is not. Nothing about the scientific method entails or requires common descent. If science like our own were developed in a world that looked like whales were separately created, qualified experts in that world would conclude that, as far as any of them can tell, they were. Unfortunately for creationists, that’s not our world.
Say, you don’t happen to be a young-earther as well, by any chance, do you?
We have no metric by which to gauge the bigness of a “challenge to explain” anything.
Plenty of things are weird enough for some of our intuitions, and plenty more things are less than fully understood. Methodological naturalism is not an excuse we get to invoke when ever we want to ignore evidence for fear of having to account for it otherwise[1]. If there was any indication whatsoever of separate origins, then with or without a satisfactory account of them, we’d have to acknowledge at least that indication.
Oh, there are differences, to be sure. But there are differences between parents and offspring, too. And you have been challenged, more than once, and including by yours truly, to propose a gene analytic means by which to correctly recognize the reproductive relatedness between parents and offspring that is consistent with what ever standard it is you use to argue a lack of it in more distinct organism pairs. Numerically, how different must two genomes be, before they are no longer related, in your opinion?
So far, you underwent no attempt to meet that challenge. Until you do, I for one feel perfectly comfortable altogether rejecting your claim that this is anywhere near “very clear”. It is not clear to myself, as someone who is not a trained biologist, and it does not seem to be any clearer to fellow users who are.
Ron: If someone makes claim A, they have to do this-and-that just to articulate what it is they even mean, before they can be taken any sort of seriously.
Bill *literally quotes the above, then proceeds*: Hi, Ron. But how about claim A, though?
We’ve come full circle in this thread! It started when I pointed out to one of our other resident ignoramuses that this “claim” is logically the same as: there is little evidence that microerosion can lead to the formation of the Grand Canyon.
He gave you the answer you wanted, but the answer you (particularly you) want is seldom the right answer. He apparently doesn’t understand how analogies work either.
