Young Earth Creationism: 10-20 Year Predictions

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@Rumraket

It doesn’t look like a topic you ever studied at all. You were put to a challenge here 4 years ago. I have to assume now that you’re back more convinced than ever that evolution is false, you must have alighted upon a solution to the challenge, right?

That merits reproduction here:
Continuing the discussion from Phylogeny - Help me see what you see:

@Rumraket

@jeffb

What I’m curious to know here is how you find this leaning you towards common descent and away from design (again, help me “see” what you’re seeing)…

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.

Have you looked at and/or constructed any such trees for yourself in the last 4 years, @jeffb? All of the data and software are free to use.