I promised John Harshman for several months that I would start a discussion about common design vs. common descent, and I’d like to keep my word to him as best as possible.
Strictly the speaking common design and common descent aren’t mutually exclusive, but if one invokes the possibility of recent special creation of all life, the two being mutually exclusive would be inevitable.
If one believes in a young fossil record (YFR) and thus likely believes life is young and therefore recently created, then one is a Young Life Creationist (YLC). YEC (young earth creationists) are automatically YLCs but there are a few YLCs who believe the Earth is old. So evidence in favor of YFR is evidence in favor of common design over common descent.
One can assume for the sake of argument the mainstream geological timelines of billions of years on planet Earth. If that is the case, special creation would have to happen likely in a progressive manner. I believe Stephen Meyer and many of the original ID proponents like Walter Bradley were progressive creationists.
Since I think there is promising evidence for YFR, I don’t think too much about common design vs. common descent. If the Earth is old, but the fossil record is young, as far as I’m concerned the nested hierarchical patterns of similarity are due to common design.
That said, for the sake of this discussion I will assume the fossil record is old. But even under that assumption, I don’t see how phylogenetics solves the problem of orphan features found distributed in the nested hierarchical patterns of similarity. I should point out, there is an important distinction between taxonomic nested hierarchies and phylogenetic nested hierarchies. The nested hierarchies I refer to are taxonomic, not phylogenetic. Phylogeneticsits insist the phylogenetic trees are good explanations for the taxonomic “trees”, but it doesn’t look that way to me at all. I find it revolting to think giraffes, apes, birds and turtles are under the Sarcopterygii clade (which looks more like a coelacanth).
Phylogeny is a nice superficial explanation for the pattern of taxonomic nested hierarchy in sets of proteins, DNA, whatever so long as a feature is actually shared among the creatures. That all breaks down however when we have orphan features that are not shared by sets of creatures.
The orphan features most evident to me are those associated with Eukaryotes. Phylogeny doesn’t do a good job of accounting for those. In fact, to assume common ancestry in that case, “poof” or some unknown mechanism is indicated. If the mechanism is unknown, then why claim universal common ancestry is a fact? Wouldn’t “we don’t know for sure, but we believe” be a more accurate statement of the state of affairs rather than saying “universal common ancestry is fact.”
So whenever orphan features sort of poof into existence, that suggests to me the patterns of nested hierarchy are explained better by common design. In fact there are lots of orphan features that define major groups of creatures. Off the top of my head, eukaryotes are divided into unicellular and multicellular creatures. There are vetebrates and a variety of invertebrates. Mammals have the orphan feature of mammary glands. The list could go on and on for orphan features and the groups they define. Now I use the phrase “orphan features” because I’m not comfortable using formal terms like autapomorphy or whatever. I actually don’t know what would be a good phrase.
So whenever I see an orphan feature that isn’t readily evolvable (like say a nervous system), I presume God did it, and therefore the similarities among creatures that have different orphan features is a the result of miraculous common design not ordinary common descent.
colewd,
Imagine how you would go about constructing a phylogenetic hierarchy if presented with a set of identical genomes. Your objection is as much bullshit as Sal’s. You are saying that common descent cannot be inferred at all because everything is not the same.
Is that what you demand for linguistic evolution? If so, why? If not, why would you demand perfection from one and not the other?
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson,
Worse than that: he’s insisting that a process of descent with modification cannot be inferred to have taken place due to the ‘modification’ part interfering with the ‘descent’ part.
I keep tuning in to this broadcast wondering if anyone on the anti-evolution side will ever show a glimmer of understanding that could form the basis of a discussion.
There are two kinds of phylogeny, one that is believable and the other not-so-believable.
I have no problem using phylogenetic methods to determine the genealogy of human beings with each other. In fact, for that reason, the YECs should be very fascinated with Joe Felsenstein’s comprehensive book on inferring phylogenies so we can trace back our lineage to the table of Nations in Genesis 10….
However, slow gradual incremental evolution is not the same thing as punctuated evolution. I had no problem with Rumraket’s example with the randomly mutating gens. In fact I confirmed it and agreed with it and created phylogenetic trees with it that agreed with his claims…
But that slow random evolution model shouldn’t be represented as an explanation of punctuated evolution where we have POOFs and orphans. The statistical arguments supporting the model of Rumraket’s evolving genes totally fall apart with the POOFed genes and morphological features.
The branching pattern that isn’t explained by models like that illustrated by Rumraket’s example are those that involve totally different modes of change — aka POOF. Evolutionary theory only pretends that it has a statistical model for these POOFs by giving ad nauseam examples of systems where we do have statistical model (like in Rumraket’s example). The model illustrated quite well by Rumraket’s example doesn’t explain orphan genes nor coordinated change.
Birds have feathered wings, fish don’t. That is a taxonomic/typological/structural distinction. We nest birds, mammals, and fish in the vertebrate group. But because fish don’t have feathered wings, and birds don’t respirate with gills, it seems rather senseless to say birds nest within the fish group.
So I’ve shown, both in basic and more advanced analysis, a parrot is not a fish, a giraffe is not a fish, and therefore falsified Axel Meyer’s claim, “we’re Sarcopterygian fish.”
Implicit with the theory of common descent is that the transformation from fish to birds takes place with ordinary mechanisms that are nicely modeled statistically — like Rumraket’s phylogeny. The problem is, there are features of the taxonomic/typological/structural nested hierarchy that don’t follow nice statistical models. To use Kluge’s words, the don’t follow “Neyman-Pearson” statistics, these features emerge like unpredictable punctuated POOFs.
And contrary to what is advertised, the published gene trees don’t always agree with the taxonomy/typological/structural trees. Therefore the prevailing phylogenetic theories do not explain the conceptual branching pattern that is readily apparent in the taxonomic/typological/structural trees — i.e. Fish don’t have feathered wings, I don’t see that reflected in published gene trees that effectively claim birds are fish!
The fact that my and your watch might disagree by a few seconds, or even a couple of minutes, doesn’t mean we have NO idea what time it is and therefore you can just believe it’s whatever time of day you want it to be.
The incongruities between independent phylogenetic trees found in the literature, are down to parts per quintillions of quintillions. We literally can’t make atomic clocks that agree to the extend that phylogenetic trees corroborate each other.
I know that you literally don’t understand anything I just wrote, yet there it is, for anyone with a functional brain.
Yeah like fish not having feathered wings is a minor difference in the quintillions of quintillions or the orphan genes in mammals. Sorry, what you say is just not the case, it’s false advertising.
As a sign that apocalypse is nigh?
Glen Davidson
That door shut behind us ages ago.
No, you just don’t understand how phylogeny works. Possession of an apomorphy is no reason to suppose that a taxon is not related to other taxa. You know this yourself: mammals and birds are still vertebrates even though they have features not possessed by other vertebrates. So what tells you they aren’t also gnathostomes, osteichthyans, and sarcopterygians? Nothing but your prejudices.
Gnathostomes don’t have feathered wings, and adult birds don’t breath with gills — for starters.
How do you know gnathostomes don’t have feathered wings? And how do you know vertebrates do? Adult birds don’t breath with gills, but they also don’t have notochords, so by your logic I assume that birds aren’t chordates. You really aren’t thinking this through.
My brother has red hair, I don’t. Some people have brown eyes, others have green, still others blue. Some people have six fingers on one hand, some even have seven. Some have fewer than the usual five. Some people don’t have wisdom teeth, others have more than usual. Some people are born with extra nipples.
Rumraket,
Does you brother have red feathers to go with his red hair 🙂
Allan Miller,
Yes, your right, but this is not the issue. The problem is the mismatch between the morphological and phylogenetic nested data. This match was one of Theobald’s grand claims of evidence for common descent.
Are you taking Sal’s word for the extent of the mismatch? Bad idea. Sal knows very little. Everything he’s said about mismatch is wrong. Contradictions between molecular and morphological trees are rare, which is why they get published in fancy places when they happen.
Linguistic evolution is not quite comparable to biological evolution, because language as a subject-matter is different from species as subject-matter. Change in languages, both internal development and via borrowing, takes place under direct observation. Change of species is far more arguable, particularly if the term “species” is to have any meaning.
The subject-matter of biology is far more material (physical) than that of linguistics, so I suggest one might expect much more solid rigor and perfection from biology.
I have read two little articles by Baum (what a fitting name! or maybe not) asserting that people misunderstand trees and fail at tree-thinking. He is very emphatic that evolutionary theory requires tree-thinking (I guess everybody knew that already), but unfortunately offers zero empirical evidence that would require evolutionary theory.
I have a different suggestion for literature – Francisco Ayala and Walter Fitch, Genetics and the origin of species: An introduction http://www.pnas.org/content/94/15/7691.full – a good overview of the historical developments in biology in relation to Darwinism.
And Grant, Genetics and the origin of bird species http://www.pnas.org/content/94/15/7768.fulll The articles include both complementary and competing theories with examples/experiments that lead scientists to think in the ways they did, starting with Darwin’s finches.
That’s not an incongruity you gimp.
And incongruity is when there is mismatches between branches in two different trees.
This tree (A (B, C))
vs
This tree (B (A, C))
Has one incongruent branch. Now imagine there are 100 branches in total, and the trees are pretty much identical except for 4 branches out of those 100 total branches. Is that a significant mismatch? It’d be roughly like two atomic clocks disagreeing by 10^-184th of a second. Yes, that’s ten to the minus 184th power.
Yes it is, because feathered wings means birds don’t nest within creatures with no feathered wings.
Yes, and you’ll get those incongruities when you compare a tree built on cherry picked data vs one with a more representative set of characters like feathered wings and mammary glands and orphan genes.
Shorter Sal:
Differences between taxa are incongruities between trees. Phylogenetic analysis is not possible due to these differences. At any level (outside of a single gene pool). And … er … the genetic commonality and its treelike nature outside of the ‘believable’ can just be ignored.
Classic virtuoso disbelieving.
stcordova,
That’s not what incongruity means.
The feathers are derived from scales. One could call them “modified scales” and be quite accurate.
Of course this doesn’t matter to you, since you’re just trying to soil the work of those who actually did intellectual and scientific work to improve our understanding. But the fact that you don’t care about derivation doesn’t change the fact that morphologically and developmentally feathers are derived from scales, yet another fact that you pathetically fail to understand or to explain.
Sal. Always with the fail.
Glen Davidson
Consider a retroviral insert found in rats and mice but in no other taxa. Sal would have it that the presence of this insert is an ‘incongruity’ that actually means that rats and mice do not nest in the Rodentia. They don’t nest anywhere else either; they are simply suspended in space.
Since such ‘incongruities’ can be found everywhere, right down to subpopulations in a species, we have the conclusion that nothing nests anywhere. The anomaly (whose very existence as such depends upon standing out from the general pattern) is the only data we can actually believe! It’s a paradox, an’ no mistake.
Consider the existing Sarcopterygiian lungfish and the fossilized Sarcopterygiian lungfish. They are about the same. It echoes what we should expect from a process of common descent. If you start with a lungfish you end up with a lungfish after N generations and a few hundred million years.
Consider the existing Sarcopterygiian coelacanth and the fossilized Sarcopterygiian coelecanth. They are about the same. It echoes what we should expect from a process of common descent. If you start with a coelecanth you end up with a coelecanth after N generations and a few hundred million years.
But then there is that supposed missing ancestor called tetrapodomorpha that supposedly looks like Tiktaalik. After N generaitons and a few hundred millions years, this creature’s descendants diversified into parrots, crocodiles, turtles, salamanders, chickens, giraffes, elephants, sea lions, whales, dolphins, cows, monkeys, rabbits, kangaroos, penguins, walruses, bats, frogs, horses, bears, etc. perhaps 20,000 or so tetrapod species. For all we know, these creatures really never descended from at Tiktaalik-like creature at all, it’s just and assertion, not a verifiable fact!
Evolutionists insist evolution explains how a lungfish will be a lungfish after a few hundred million years, how a coelacanth will be a coelacanth after a few hundred million years, and something like Tiktaalik (pictured below) will evolve into the 20,000 such creatures just mentioned.
Seriously, look at the fossil below. From something like the mangled remains of a creature, would a statistical model predict the evolution of horses, kangaroos, turtles and bats. Of course not, but it doesn’t stop evolutionists from arguing their model is accurate to the quintillions.
What is really silly is that the fossil has no tail. It doesn’t stop evolutionists from concocting what they believe the tail and the rest of the pre-fossilized state of the creature should be. Take a look at the imagined creature that was concocted from the mangled remains below.
https://img00.deviantart.net/0ed3/i/2012/134/f/2/tiktaalik_roseae_by_jputman-d4zsrwe.jpg
Feathers, like fur, are part of a host of features that are necessary for a creature to obtain precise internal temperature regulation and precise internal temperature regulation is necessary for the type of nervous system that leads to self consciousness.
If we want to understand the evolution of life we should realise that the appearance of feathers and fur does not happen in isolation but these features come as part of an overall suite of features in the developing life forms. It is no accident that several features must appear together or in a specific order, in fact it is vital for the continued life of the animals in which they appear.
Two. I meant two. 🙂
This!
In other words: Things that came later depended on things that happened before.
stcordova,
Now, that’s cherry picking. A lineage that displays morphological stasis overthrows all of evolution – including genetic evolution in that very lineage.
So evolution explains rapid morphological change as well it explains no change at all.
Quite a theory.
It’s the best we have, unless you know better?
Sure it’s an accident. Otherwise it would matter if they appeared “together” or in a “specific order”. As formulated currently your position is that “whatever happened was no accident”.
I’m unfamiliar with the model of evolution where kangaroos were predicted before they appeared. Could you link me to this model? If not, will you admit you are a lying piece of shit?
No, it would just predict the basic structure from which things like horses, kangaroos, turtles, and bats, would evolve to become, once they did appear. Which is no mean feat, in fact, certainly nothing that ID can claim to do,
except by the ad hoc pretense that the Designer wishes it to be so.
But because evolutionary theory doesn’t tell us everything, we should be content with the absolute nothing of knowledge that ID affords us.
Glen Davidson
That would have to be the case for any theory that would explain the observation that one lineage is changing rapidly, and that another is changing slowly. If a putative design-explanation would have to also explain that observation. And then it’d also have to be “Quite a theory” that both explains things changing and things not changing.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Some geological formations are eroding very fast (disappear over millenia as they see lots of wind and rain), while others have remained relatively unchanged for hundreds of millions of years. We explain those facts with large variations in the rates of erosion due to local weathering conditions (like wind and rain).
So yes, it really is the case that there are varying rates of change in the world. In physics, in chemistry, and in biology.
It happened in the long-term evolution experiment with E coli. Huge differences in the rates of evolution in the twelve different lineages evolving in parallel. Look at this figure, and notice how in graph a, six lineages barely show any genetic change as they basically look like “flat” graphs on the bottom. This is what would look like “stasis” in the fossil record.
Whereas IDC is not limited by ancestry. There are no horses using wheels instead of legs, as IDC would permit. There are no horses using echo location, as IDC would permit.
I have no doubt that phoodoo will not address this criticism of his understanding. I also have no doubt that he will repeat the statement that triggered this criticism again, despite now knowing why he is wrong.
It’s just who they are.
Another way of looking at the same phenomenon is by representing it with phylogenetic trees, scaled to show the genetic distances between lineages. In this figure a, notice how the phylogenetic trees representing lineages named Ara+1, Ara+2, Ara+4, Ara-5, Ara+5, and Ara-6 are basically invisible next to the others. Again it looks in comparison like no evolution has happened.
It isn’t true, however, that no evolution has happened. As can be seen when the graphs are rescaled to show the changes that happened in the slow-evolving lineages.
Source of graphs is:
Tenaillon, O., J. E. Barrick, N. Ribeck, D. E. Deatherage, J. L. Blanchard, A. Dasgupta, G. C. Wu, S. Wielgoss, S. Cruveiller, C. Médigue, D. Schneider, R. E. Lenski. 2016. Tempo and mode of genome evolution in a 50,000-generation experiment. Nature 536:165-170. doi:10.5061/dryad.6226d
Rumraket,
Oh look, look, the graphs have very vertical lines, amazing! Can you believe that change! E coli, after 50,000 generations are…e.coli! Whoa!
Or perhaps the lack of that observation.
You’re confused. The argument was not that the E coli have stopped being E coli, it was a concrete example from the real world where huge variations in the rate of evolution has been observed in real time. This proves in the most direct and concrete way possible, that it is not just some baseless ad-hoc rationalization when biologists invoke varying rates of evolution to explain varying rates of change and stasis in the fossil record and from comparative genetics.
Regardless, don’t mistake the name “E coli” for the properties of the thing itself. Calling it E coli does not somehow cause the bacteria to remain unchanged. It’s just a label.
So you’re saying if design was true, there wouldn’t be any slow rates of change? Aren’t you then implicitly conceding that evolution is the better explanation now that you’re proposing that if design was true we would not observe varying rates of change at all?
No, its not the slow rate of change we don’t observe. We observe that all the time.
Its not the fast rate of change we don’t observe, its the change at all. We NEVER observe that. Everything just keeps staying the same, just like the e coli. What is this amazing change you are talking about?
Are chihuahua and St Bernards some of these examples of great change?
Yes. Are you telling me those aren’t changes?
“Everything just keeps staying the same, just like the e coli. What is this amazing change you are talking about?” – Phoodoo
So we are doubling down on the notion that a couple of ‘living fossils’ invalidate all of evolution? Eeenteresting.
This is actually nicely illustrative of the problem one has talking to Creationists – there are just so many, disunited Creationist positions! They unite only in thinking evolution a load of tosh.
On the one hand we have Sal, who can only think that ‘living fossils’ represent some kind of differential sorting issue during the Flood, and not lineage preservation at all. On the other, we have phoodoo, who would disagree with Sal on pretty much everything, except that he finds the siren song of broad-brush anti-evolutionism to be so soothingly congenial. Presumably, for phoodoo, the Tinkering Designer chose not to tinker in those lineages. For some reason.
I’m also finding it interesting that phoodoo is willing to accept the common descent of St Bernards and Chihuahua, despite not having been around to witness this transformation take place. In fact, I’m pretty sure no single human has seen such radical transitions. It’s not like a chihuahua has ever given birth to a St Bernards, or the other way around.
Yet he’s fine accepting the common evolutionary history of different breeds of dogs.
He’s also fine accepting that two quasi-similar fossils separated by a large chronostratigraphic distance would have to be related by descent, despite not having seen it happen himself.
Yet if there is an equally large (as observed between wildly different breeds of dogs) degree of morphological change between such two fossils , he’d be pretty adamant such a transition couldn’t possibly be believed ever took place.
Creationism requires some pretty impressive mental gymnastics. Some things have to be observed to be believed, other things must be rejected no matter what. Creationism is the mutated lovechild of cherry picking and hypocricy.
Even more ironically, while phoodoo requires that some things must be observed, to be believable, (morphological change due to evolution), he’s fine accepting that morphological change takes place due to an invisible designer working behind the scenes.
So when the designer is at work, we don’t need to observe it. That’s instantly believable to phoodoo. Even though the designer is invisible.
Yet for evolution, even were we to have any evidence of change, it couldn’t possibly be believed, because we couldn’t ever prove by observation that there was NOT an invisible (literally unobservable) designer behind the scenes making things happen.
The quintessential creationist double standard at work.
“I wouldn’t ever believe these changes happened due to evolution without observing it myself”.
“If those changes ever happened, it would have to be caused by … a designer that can’t be observed“.
“Everything just keeps staying the same, just like the e coli. What is this amazing change you are talking about?” – Phoodoo