How Does ID/Creationism Identify Gaps in the Fossil Record?

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To show that the absence of gaps is relatively meaningless to ID. Chihuahua’s were the product of intentional breeding by intelligent agents trying to achieve a desired outcome using a process that has no gaps. (The fact that no one intelligent designer conceived of chihuahuas 10,000 years ago when they saw a wolf and oversaw the whole process themselves is beside the point.)

Gaps don’t indicate ID. Lack of gaps doesn’t contra-indicate ID.

There are two very important events in the history of robins and chihuahuas. One is the origin of warm-blooded vertebrate animals with which they might share common design features. The other is the K-Pg extinction event that left only a few ancestral bird species and a few ancestral mammal species. That culling event profoundly shaped what animals are alive today. Whether the K-Pg impactor was a random event or the act of God is really down to what you believe for other reasons, not what you can prove scientifically about these animals in particular.

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My point is that the pattern of perceived gaps is what contra-indicates ID. The gaps are found in a nested hierarchy, a pattern that has no reason to exist if ID is true. The only reason we would see gaps in a nested hierarchy is if common ancestry and evolution are true.

The point I am trying to make is that there isn’t a gap between robins and chihuahuas. The only reason why we can have any confidence in saying this is because of evolution and common ancestry.

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I accept that there is not a gap between robins and chihuahuas. And I understand that many ID advocates annoyingly point to gaps as supporting ID, which you disagree with.

My point is that a “gapless” hierarchy (assuming all the pieces can be put into place) does not in fact meditate against ID. “gapless” does not imply “thoughtless”.

Yet, wolves to chihuahuas is a nested hierarchy which exists only because of ID. So ID can cause nested hierarchies, which may or may not have “gaps” in terms of what we know about the steps.

Over a 300 million year time span, intelligent agency may cultivate species as diverse as birds and dogs from a common ancestor. This would produce a nested hierarchy in the presence of ID - call it theistic domestication if you like. Ecologically, it makes sense to do this if the Creator has a specific species (humans) that is the desired outcome, rather than settling for a random outcome. There are strong ecological rational for wanting diverse species to have a shared biology (you are what you eat, after all).

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I agree that there are gaps in the fossil record. That’s what we would expect from an imperfect fossil record and after searching such a tiny, tiny portion of the Earth for fossils.

The hierarchy itself is strong evidence against ID.

It exists because of common ancestry and evolutionary mechanisms. It doesn’t exist because wolves and chihuahuas were separately created.

ID/creationism states that these groups of animals are not related through common ancestry. That’s what I am addressing.

Your theistic domestication is indistinguishable from natural processes. It’s as unfalsifiable as theistic weather or theistic infections. For example, one could say that the weather is being intelligently guided in a way that is indistinguishable from natural processes.

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Maybe, but human domestication is distinguishable from natural processes. No one believes that chihuahuas simply “evolved” in the wild.

You are using a definition of “evolutionary mechanisms” that is so broad that it is unfalsifiable. Your “evolutionary mechanisms” include human-guided breeding programs.

Common descent is also squishy term. Is there a “gap” between domesticated wheat and GMO wheat? They have common descent, but one was separately created in a laboratory through ID.

What about a species that carries a transgenic mutation delivered from a non-interbreeding species via a virus? The affected trait is not due to heredity and the receiving organism is suddenly “created” and is “gapped” from its ancestor - even if you can’t tell from a fossilized bone or shell.

ID does not claim that separately created species are completely unique from similar species.

Well, then you can’t falsify ID. And you also can’t distinguish whether “gaps” are due to the erasure of the evidence of intermediates by time or due to non-inherited mutations and gene transfer or due to theistic domestication or theistic GMOs. You know something about what happened, but you can say little about why it happened.

Determining whether any free-running generative process is being “guided” comes down to figuring out whether the outcome is specified or unspecified. If the Creator wanted to get humans from the start, he would have to have guided the process. If humans are a specified outcome, then the process was guided by the Creator. That’s fairly provable. Run the “experiment” again and you won’t get humans again without intervening. With enough intervention, you can get humans many times. That’s at least a falsifiable argument.

The problem is not with ID or gaps, the problem is starting with the premise that there was no intervention by intelligent agency, and therefore, humans are an unintended outcome, a random result. One can believe that, but it is less likely to be true than that humans are the intended outcome of intelligent agency. So, the un-guided emergence of humans is simply mostly likely wrong, but with a very small chance of being right. Relish in that, because that’s the whole reward right there, that very small chance of being right.

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AFAIK, the phylogenetic data indicate that warm-bloodedness evolved independently in those two lineages, so it’s not a good marker.

In support of that independence, here’s a tasty, warm-blooded fish:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaa8902

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No. That is rather confused.

First of all chihuahuas descent from ancestral wolves, and share a common ancestor with extant wolves. All extant species of canines, including wolves and domestic dogs, form a nested hierarchy because of common descent. That is, their common ancestry. Not because anyone performed selective breeding.

Chihuahuas evolved from ancient wolves by selective breeding, a form of artificial selection, which is a subset of natural selection, which is still evolution, not ID.

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Then it’s not squishy at all.

They also don’t have a common ancestor; you don’t seem to realize that domesticated wheat is the product of a vast amount of random, destructive mutation and not merely interspecific, but intergeneric hybridization. IOW, design, but not so intelligent. :grinning:

https://www.fao.org/3/y4011e/y4011e07.htm

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And GMO wheat wasn’t “independently created”, they took already existing dpmesticated wheat and inserted genes into it. Not so much a “creation” as it’s a small modification.

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ID can’t claim anything. People make claims. Scientific hypotheses make predictions.

As presented, yes, which is why it is pseudoscience.

Nor are horizontal gene transfers.

Yet the receiving organism passes on the trait in both cases.

Sure you can. You don’t seem to be grasping the concept of a nested hierarchy.

There is no such premise.

“Unintended” is not a synonym of “random,” and selection by the environment is not random. That’s why we see so many cases of convergent evolution, like fish fins and whale fins.

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Quantitatively piddling, next to what Sears et al. did.

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All of this is irrelevant to the ID/creationist argument that species groups were created separately.

No, it isn’t. Common ancestry means two organisms share an ancestor in common.

Genetic modification often involves a violation of a nested hierarchy. For example:

If common ancestry is not true then the above should be the rule, not the exception. There is absolutely no reason why we should see a nested hierarchy if species groups were created separately. The fact we do see a nested hierarchy, and can therefore predict where gaps should be, is evidence for common ancestry.

What we can do is point to the fact that the evidence is consistent with natural processes. Parsimony takes care of the rest.

That’s not what is happening. We are following the evidence, and the evidence is consistent with natural processes, including random processes.

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Here is the answer:

What is most amazing is the number of traditional systematic methods and terminology that are employed by baraminologists. While they use many of the same methods as most systematists, from cladistics to the Analysis of Pattern (ANOPA) method, they use these tools to identify the “gaps”, rather than the connections in life as most systematists do. This is why baraminologists principally employ phenetic methods of Sokal and Sneath (1963) — which are based on overall similarities in appearance or general features — computing distance matrices for a group of taxa and producing character mismatch statistics based on the matching coefficient of Sokal and Michener (1958). They see phenetics as useful in determining the biological gaps.

ncse.ngo

Baraminology | National Center for Science Education

Creation science comes as a surprise to many scientists, and thus I suspect that the fact that there is creationist systematics will come as an even bigger surprise to systematists.

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Why do baramins form a nested hierarchy?

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