But it fits such a test only in so far as any two (or four) alleles would be compatible with some pair on an ark. But it would also be compatible with no ark. That’s not what a test is; a test must distinguish between hypotheses, not be compatible with any hypothesis at all.
You weren’t saying that very well, and you give no reason why it would fit creation better than evolution.
That was your mistake.
Generally speaking, YEC are strongly opposed to relativism, and frequently argue against it. However, as you noted, they are practicing relativists, though they seem quite unaware of their own relativism.
True. And that relativism of theirs extends even to morality, and does so even as they extol the virtues of “objective” morality. It’s quite odd. I have difficulty stomaching relativism in the extreme forms expressed by my few post-modernist acquaintances, but at least they do it more or less straight-up and acknowledge what they are doing. With creationists, it’s like having a friend who says that all music other than medieval woodwind pieces is odious noise to him, and then visiting his home and finding that he actually listens to nothing but Philip Glass. We tolerate all sorts these days; why can’t the relativists come out of the closet?
Then you’re not conveying it by portraying science as mere retrospective interpretation.
Or maybe you’re not nearly as aware as you think you are?
Thanks for the paper. I really did want an explanation, and I wouldn’t have thought of what you wrote.
Question though - genetics is tough to think through, so maybe I’m still missing something, but if these trees don’t match, doesn’t it lend more support for created heterozygosity because there isn’t a derived allele? Or I guess if the small dogs’ allele is due to a recent mutation I don’t understand why their haplotype is closest to Middle Eastern wolves.
Two or just the one, as far as we know from the paper’s data at this point? I wish they would have included a large cat. 
10,000 generations. And yes, I get that. I don’t have access to the paper, so I’m curious why the 10,000 generations and again I couldn’t find a reproductive age. A search for “Hamlet” doesn’t get one anywhere for obvious reasons; “reef fish” also.
Not understanding how I represented what science was in my post. Also this seems to be the sort of result creationists have predicted - selection acting on already existing alleles by making isolated populations more homozygous. The data in the paper was very interesting.
Well, I think that both life beginning as a proto-cell in a vent or a pool and Genesis 1 are both stories we tell.
I’m still not sure why you think me bringing up worldviews is relativism. I do not think all worldviews are correct. I do think there is only one truth. My only point was that we are all biased and if someone thinks the field of science is without bias, all he or she has to do is look at many CDC decisions in the last few years to know otherwise. I am happy to say that YEC is true and while current models explain the preponderance of the evidence better right now, as we learn more they will not at some point in the future. So of course I am biased, but that is what I believe to be true. I also like understanding the current consensus. How else would I know how it could be overturned? That’s part of the enjoyment of researching it for me. And I like to know how other people think.
I would like to understand why you accept the date of 23,000 years? Are you happy with the methods employed for dating that site? Does that mean that you would also be happy with the same and similar methods when they are used to date other sites and objects?
I suspect that they have bought into the apologetic argument that God is evidenced by the existence of an objective morality.
Would it be accurate to say that you won’t give up YEC no matter what the evidence is?
You also seem to be saying that the evidence does support evolution. The scientific consensus is following the evidence while you are not, and yet you accuse both sides of being biased. Do you see a problem with the claim of bias?
Partial disagreement here - YEC is mainly a religious belief, and physical evidence refuting specific propositions usually does not impact those beliefs. Belief imposes those propositions about reality, but reality does not impose those beliefs.
Anyway, the request was to interpret those propositions in light of specific examples, and that seems to be going well enough. 
No. First, there are two simple explanations, one of them in the paper and another that I have suggested. No need to invoke creation. Second, in order to take this as evidence of created heterozygosity you have to assume separate creation, which is contradicted by masses of evidence showing canids, carnivores, placentals, mammals, amniotes, and so on to be related by descent.
Possibly that’s because you don’t understand that figure. First, it doesn’t show that small dogs are most closely related to Middle Eastern wolves. It shows them equally related to all wolves and large dogs. Also, the support for many of the branches in that tree is poor. What it really shows is that it’s hard to separate dogs from wolves using the markers they used. In the gene at hand (not the same as the markers used to make that tree), dogs and wolves share several haplotypes, one of which is the one they’re interested in. But that haplotype differs from various other dog/wolf haplotypes by only one or two mutations, perfectly within the bounds of population variation resulting from recent mutation.
That appears to be because you don’t understand tree diagrams. The horizontal and vertical orders/distances, respectively, of the two diagrams you posted are arbitrary. Only the vertical and horizontal distances, respectively, represent the data. The best metaphor for understanding that is the classic mobile one hangs over a crib: each fork is free to rotate.
OK, I really dated myself with that, as they are no longer made that way. This is what I mean:
This is extremely important for understanding this data visualization. You’re missing a lot.
You portrayed it as retrospective.
That’s more cargo-cult science. The predictions come from the hypotheses. They have to be described clearly enough so that everyone can see what they predict. It’s not a competition between people’s predictions. In fact, the most fun I can have in science is when I come up with two competing hypotheses, then I figure out which of my hypotheses made the correct empirical predictions.
You are misrepresenting science as retrospective arguments about the data, instead of generating new data by testing the empirical predictions of hypotheses, because creationists avoid doing real science.
Do you think you might try to consider a hypothesis mechanistically, or can you only do so tribally?
Well, they ARE both stories we tell. But the type of claim that I was talking about comes closer to what you were saying: I didn’t say only that these are stories, but that the relativist says “these are just stories we tell ourselves, generated as much by our preconceptions as by the data.” And that’s where this comes in:
Was that your point? That isn’t the sense I get from the original remark:
Admittedly that is consistent with a “soft” relativism, which asserts that there may be an objective reality but we have no access to it, as opposed to a “hard” relativism which asserts the absence of that objective reality, but it really does sound like an attempt to drag science down by insisting that its conclusions are the products of a “worldview” (aaaagh, my ears!) and hence not inherently more trustworthy than the conclusions of anti-science.
But – and this is the thing – whatever biases, predilections and inclinations one might attribute to scientists, scientists have got something which the competition has not got: a method which has a way of getting down to business, where the investigation of facts is concerned. What method can do better? If the earth is young, then the only way to show that that’s so is the rigorous, careful reasoned scrutiny of evidence. Alas for the young-earther, if the earth is NOT young, then the same holds. Presuppositions and bias will not carry the ball very far in the face of that sort of methodological approach. And when people are disappointed that that’s so, all of a sudden the discussion is no longer about the merits of the thing itself. All of a sudden it’s not about the evidence, but about throwing up one’s hands and saying, well, y’know, everybody’s biased, so what can be said, really? Guess I’ll stick with “turtles all the way down,” because the people who say it’s not really turtles are biased.
Sure, both are stories but the former is way more likely than anything found in Genesis 1. In Genesis 1, we have a talking snake, a literal tree of life, one man to name all animals in the world, and every other frankly silly idea that the ancients could think of to explain how the world they found themselves in began and how it got to its present state.
That’s Genesis 2. Genesis 1 is the whole 6-day creation thing. It’s interesting that the God of Genesis 2 is a bumbler who can’t create in the “let there be…” mode, but who after searching all the animals for a companion for Adam, finally settles on a female human, and is forced to make her from a rib. Hilarity ensues.
I take it back. The tree is constructed from the region they’re interested in, 2682 based long, in which there are a total of 38 sites that vary (apparently). I do not understand how they combined the various alleles into the species phylogeny in S3B. Incidentally, I don’t understand what “phasing” is either. How about you, @swamidass (or anyone else)?
Doesn’t affect my point, though.
Phasing means assigning variants to distinct strands. Let’s say that DNA is heterozygous at two loci. Then there is two possible phasings,
xxAxxGxx
xxTxxCxx
Vs.
xxAxxCxx
xxTxxGxx
Phasing is the process by which we figure out which of these possibilities is the right one, which alleles are on the same strand.
I didn’t. I just thought the cultural and climatic correlation at that site were interesting. And the
age they gave it improbable. It was just interesting information; otherwise it doesn’t have particular significance.
I would agree with neither of those.
That’s not at all what I meant about a worldview.
I agree.
No.
Yes, both sides are biased. No.
I explained the hypothesis as I understand it, but you didn’t quote that part.
I’m still confused after both your posts. That’s ok, I’m probably not going to get it. What I don’t understand is this quote.
Lastly, our analyses demonstrate that Middle Eastern gray wolves (Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, n = 4) share a closely related haplotype containing the IGF1-AS small allele with small domestic dog breeds (Figure S3), thus supporting the idea of a common origin for the variant observed in small dogs and wild canids.
The difference is that one sides incorporates a method for self-correction to eliminate bias, the other side is based on authority as incontrovertibly true.
