We are primates. Many humans have a different number of chromosomes, too.
So you’re not examining the evidence and pretending that science is just rhetoric.
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As someone who has been known to mess about with phylogenies, I do recommend many of the articles that people have cited here (yes, including Doug Theobald’s article). Let me just add a bit about the history of how people came to consider these arguments. In the 1700s biologists and geologists began to take seriously the idea that fossils were remains of real organisms, not just artifacts. And that geological layers had information about past eras. Biologists (such as Linneaus) noticed that the “natural” arrangement of species was in a hierarchical classification, of groups within groups, rather than some arbitrary geometric scheme or being arranged overlapping along axes.
What really impressed biologists was that many different parts of the anatomy seemed to give quite similar signal of a hierarchical arrangement. So in addition to reading some of the modern-day versions of the argument, you should be aware that a less formal but still convincing argument persuaded anatomists by about 200 years ago that there was a tree underlying the diversity of life. By the time of Darwin’s 1859 book the pendulum had already swung quite far.
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It is particularly ironic given creationists happily accept at least 8 chromosomal non-disjunctions (over what, hundreds of years?) in Equus, which AiG, creation.com, and ICR agree are all one kind
Equus przewalski - Mongolian Wild Horse - 66 chromosomes (33 pairs)
Equus caballus - Domestic horse - 64 chromosomes (32 pairs)
Equus asinus - Domestic ass/donkey - 62 chromosomes (31 pairs)
Equus hemionus onager - Persian wild ass - 56 chromosomes (28 pairs)
Equus hemionus kulan - Kulan - 54/55 chromosomes
Equus kiang - Kiang, Asian wild ass - 51/52 chromosomes
Equus grevy - Grevy’s zebra - 46 (23 pairs)
Equus burchelli Burchelli’s zebra, common zebra - 44 chromosomes (22 pairs)
Equus zebra hartmannae - Hartmann’s mountain zebra - 32 chromosomes (16 pairs).
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Thank you.
As others have stated, it is that the method can be used to infer ancestry beyond wherever you might think the limit is.
The question is this: If you agree that tree structure in the data really is evidence for common descent (at least within some group of organisms), and you apply this method to elucidate the ancestry of that group of organisms (rodents, say), why does it stop being evidence for common ancestry if you include more organisms in this group, such as lagomorphs? If the same method still works, and there still is clear tree structure in the data, there doesn’t appear to be any reason why it should fail to remain evidence for common descent if you can still find the tree pattern in the data.
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Because the alternatives are rejecting common ancestry of humans, rejecting reason, and/or accepting that God is lying to you.
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To use an analogy, microevolution is like putting one foot in front of the other. All you do is repeat the process and it can get you from your front step to the curb, or it can get you all the way to the shop down the block. The steps in evolution are mutations, and it is the accumulation of single mutations that accounts for the evolutionary distance travelled. Macroevolution is the accumulation of microevolution.
Speaking for myself, there is absolutely no reason why we would expect a tree of life if design is true. Why would a designer not use certain designs where they make sense? For example, there are probably situations where a vertebrate species would benefit from having an eye with a forward facing retina like that found in the octopus. So why not do it? Why would I, as a designer, be forced to use an eye with a backwards facing retina in all species that have a backbone? Why wouldn’t I mix and match different parts in a way that didn’t form a tree of life? A tree of life makes no sense from a design perspective.
In one hand we have is a natural and observable process that can only produce one pattern, a tree of life. In the other hand we have a proposed process that can produce millions of different patterns that aren’t a tree of life. What do we observe? A tree of life.
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17 posts were split to a new topic: Macro vs Microevolution: side comments on Phylogeny
@jeffb, it is pertinent to note that a single mutation could be as little as a single nucleotide change or as large as a chromosomal inversion.
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@Moderators I think this whole discussion Paul Nelson brought up about whether microevolution explains macroevolution(and whether certain traits have a genetic basis), is off-topic for this thread and probably deserves it’s own.
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Personally speaking, I don’t find these as very strong arguments if they don’t address the quality of the tree. As creationists, we’re not totally surprised that one can make a tree. I see three contributors to the tree: 1) the common Designer and 2) the common environment organisms live in. and 3) the abundantly large pool of organisms to create the tree from. He made lots of four-footed animals; lots of things that swim in the ocean.
I also have to add that any question couched as “Why would God…?” holds differing values in the minds of each individual. It’s not a scientific question, but a philosophical question. I personally don’t find those arguments compelling (especially the more I read scripture, and learn about God’s character). I don’t seem Him having interest in being completely obvious.
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That was helpful.
In fact, with that in mind, I see a potential way of evaluating the common descent (CD) vs biblical creation. Perhaps one that’s already been done. The challenge is coming up with a more quantitative way of evaluating the two. Personally, just saying “Why would it look like a tree?” is a bit subjective because it doesn’t speak of the quality of a tree. For me, that’s the true issue.
@swamidass is very familiar with the quantitative goal behind this question, which is why he mentioned the SIFTER vs BLAST analysis here (BTW, I still need to research that more, and would like to hear from others on this one)
But what you shared gave me another question to ask. Creationists accept common descent within “kinds” but not external to kinds. Although I am aware that we have not yet identified accurate kind boundaries (which limits this obviously), this concept may give us something quantitative.
So here’s my question:
Has anyone tried to measure the quality of phylogeny within creationist “kinds” vs external to “kinds?”
(BTW we would expect to see some phylogeny signals between kinds, simply due to common features. Although felines and canines are separate kinds, the sure have a lot of similarities).
That is a good question. Certainly many people have tried. No one can find a clear cutoff of what would be within or outside a kind. By any objective metric of DNA, for example, chimpanzees and Humans are the same kind, and form a very nice tree alongside gorilla’s etc. At least that is what it looks like. After all, we are more similar to chimpanzees than we are mice to rats!
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The YEC separate ancestry hypothesis has been tested and compared with common ancestry.
Testing separate ancestry vs common ancestry using a concatenated dataset of 54 different genes across 178 taxa refutes the creationist “seperate ancestry” hypothesis in favor of common ancestry
If you want a more manual, visual and easy to explain explanation of how this works you can see a phylogeneticist do manual analysis of mitochondrial genes ND4/ND5 -
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Don’t you go calling me a geneticist. I’m a phylogeneticist. Big difference.
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My bad; fixed.
I assumed phylogeneticists were a subset within the group geneticists.
No, they just share a Greek root.
I’ve sometimes been called a “biogeneticist”. Which leaves me puzzled — what non-bio kinds of geneticists are there? People working on the genetics of abiotic entities?
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People who work with evolutionary software algorithms?
That’d make me an amateur abiogeneticist.
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It’s not that you can make a tree. You could make a tree for all kinds of things that didn’t evolve.
It’s that no matter what data you use, whether morphological or genetic, whether based on coding DNA or non-coding DNA or RNA or ERVs, whether you look at skeletal features or internal organs or proteins, you always end up with essentially the same tree.
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Okay, that makes sense. Depending on what exactly you mean by tree quality, there are measures of that.
Please be very specific about what you mean by “quality of phylogeny”? And to measure within and between kinds, we need to know what is within and between kinds of course, and how you determine that.
Mere shared common features should not support a particular tree over another. All that would do is result in some similarities, it would not explain why why some trees are much better supported than others.
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