Hi John
We don’t need to quantify the likelihood null hypothesis. We simply need to quantify the likelihood of a reproductive connection between the targeted species. If the species can mate with each other the likelihood of a reproductive connection is much higher than if they cannot.
That doesn’t work because that doesn’t address the scenario of a creator creating a bunch of individual populations of chickens that can interbreed with one another. For all we know, the creator could have created a million different populations of chickens, and there are a million different ancestral populations.
You’re still stuck on this notion that interbreeding somehow demonstrates common ancestry while ignoring the fact you have no way of assessing the independent creation of populations that can interbreed.
You appear to have no way to tell which is which.
Hi E
This is exactly why independent origin works well as null hypothesis. I am simply testing common ancestry which we can investigate against no ancestral relationship.
You claim to be testing common ancestry but you have not shown any test for common ancestry. All you have said is that interbreeding shows common ancestry but you have done nothing to justify that claim. When challenged, you merely repeat the claim. The wheels spin, and the car doesn’t move.
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It doesn’t work as a null hypothesis in this instance because it’s not exclusive of the criteria you are using to investigate relatedness (e.g. interbreeding).
If a creator created a million populations of chickens that can all interbreed, all that testing whether their descendants can interbreed tells you… is that they can interbreed. It doesn’t tell you which ancestral lineage they are descended from.
In case anyone is still wondering how Trump managed to come to power, remember that Bill Cole is not an isolated case.
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Interbreeding shows evidence of an ancestral relationship. If two animals cannot interbreed then you need to show the likelihood that this capability existed in the past. As the genetic distance widens this becomes very challenging.
As I said, when challenged, you merely repeat the claim. Why does interbreeding show evidence of an ancestral relationship? How does it argue against your supposed null hypothesis, when your null hypothesis fails to rule out interbreeding of separately created taxa?
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Are you claiming that interbreeding is not evidence of an ancestral relationship? I would think this is quite obvious. If you were accused of being the father of a child and you could demonstrate that you were born sterile don.t you think this would help your case?
I am not testing against the interbreeding of separately created taxa. I am testing against an ancestral relationship between species independent of how they were created.
It’s not obvious when you consider a scenario where a creator creates multiple populations capable of interbreeding.
If you want to argue that interbreeding is a sign of a common ancestor, you need to first demonstrate that a creator couldn’t create individual populations capable of interbreeding. Not only have you not done this, but you don’t appear to have even considered a means of doing this.
All you’re testing is whether organisms can interbreed. You’ve yet to present why this would necessarily demonstrate common ancestry versus independently created populations with the ability to interbreed.
If a creator created a million different populations of chickens all capable of interbreeding, testing whether two chickens can interbreed tells us nothing about the population they came from.
Hi E
I have shown how interbreeding is evidence supporting common ancestry.
Showing the ability to interbreed is a starting point. Over time we need to understand how breeding works and when isolation exists between two populations. We currently know that chromosomal miss match can explain some of the isolation.
What reproductive mechanisms can show how two populations might be ancestrally connected in the distant past?
Sure it is, unless your null hypothesis is separate creation. Your problem is that separate creation makes no predictions; nothing is incompatible with it. God could make whatever he wanted. So ability to interbreed does nothing to falsify the separate creation hypothesis.
Sure would, but that seems entirely irrelevant to the current discussion.
Then why did you bring up the separate creation as a null hypothesis? You aren’t making the least bit of sense here. Also, ancestral relationships between species are not in any way independent of how they were created. If they were created separately, there is no ancestral relationship. If they weren’t, there is. No independence at all.
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No, you have not.
All you have done is repeat this claim, while failing to demonstrate a means of distinguishing common ancestry from separate origins of populations created with the ability to interbreed.
Until you have a way to distinguish the former from the latter, you’re stuck with a test that doesn’t demonstrate common ancestry.
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Nope. Making a claim is not showing.
What word salad can show pistachio macaque?
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Bill, one major problem (among very many) with your argument is that your claimed null hypothesis is useless. It just isn’t well enough fleshed out to test. There is no conceivable observation that would cause us to reject it. If you want to improve your argument, start with that.
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What you and E are unable to do is give any reason why using independent creation as a null hypothesis does not work. We are not testing the null hypothesis we are simply using it to compare to the common ancestry hypothesis between two species.
This is true but I am not testing for this. I am looking for evidence of an ancestral relationship.
Have you not been reading my posts?
I have repeatedly given you the reason: the creation of multiple independent populations than can interbreed.
This is a scenario where modern organisms can have separate, independent origins and which testing for interbreeding can’t distinguish separate ancestral populations versus a single common ancestral population.
Consider the chicken example I posted earlier:
A creator creates a million individual populations of chickens all capable of interbreeding versus a single population of chickens. How does testing modern chickens for the ability to interbreed distinguish between these two scenarios?
Wrong and wrong. I have given you a good reason: it’s too vague to have any consequences. A null hypothesis must be testable. Apparently you are just using “null hypothesis” as a meaningless buzzword, because in real science a null hypothesis is an alternative that must be rejected by a test, which is then interpreted as support for the alternative hypothesis. Your second sentence, in other words, is word salad.
…as opposed to no ancestral relationship. This is how science works; you must compare a hypothesis to at least one alternative for which the expected observations are different. In this case, your alternative to ancestral relationship has no expectation whatsoever, which makes it useless. And you can’t get out of this difficulty by denying that you’re “not testing for this”.
What you can do is get a null hypothesis of separate creation that makes particular predictions that differ from those of descent. You could, for example, make the additional assumption that separate creations would not be capable of interbreeding. But of course this aspect of the null hypothesis would not be subject to falsification, but at least it would be a coherent hypothesis.
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It is evidence of an ancestral relationship, but only if one “assumes methodological naturalism.”
Is that what your hypothesis of “separate creation” does?
Hi E
This is indeed an interesting argument. This however does not however come into play when we use independent origin as the null hypothesis.
If two separate populations of chickens were separately created my test would not show that. In the same way when you use no cause or random as a null hypothesis we cannot prove that the result that shows correlation is not simply luck.
It simply shows that the likelihood of common descent is higher than if they could not interbreed.