- What separates humans from other organisms, and by how much? Dexterity (opposable thumb), Lifespan, Sociability, Speech, Bipedalism, Hairlessness, Body Size, and Diet, all separate humans from others, but none is more important and more off the chart than our Intelligence. And from these gifts, humans developed even more abilities; some natural like thick fur on demand, flight, excellent sensors, and powerful actuators; while others completely new like handling fire, writing, and life in the outer space.
Humans dominate by far all other organisms and, unlike them, we continue to improve. While we can live everywhere and can survive where no others can, even our partner species (a select group from the beginning) have not progressed one bit despite our best efforts to bring them closer to our level. The capability gap between us and our companion organisms (human intervention aside) increases all the time as our abilities continue to grow, while theirs are perpetually stationary. This is why we no longer need them for their capabilities (transportation, power, security, food gathering and pest control), instead keeping them only as pets and food products.
- Is there a credible developmental path from ape to human? Many triggers have been hypothesized: “bipedalism due to climate change”, “aquatic ape hair loss”, “killer ape”, “increased brain size due to better nutrition or fire or language”, etc. However, none of this stands up to scrutiny. Bipedalism is common in animals including all birds, many lizards, rodents and more, yet none of these shows human-comparable intelligence. Venturing into new habitats due or not to climate change is very common for most animal families, yet despite dramatically different lifestyles, members of the same family are more or less equally endowed. The naturally hairless and the language-rich species are not known for superior intelligence. Finally, better nutrition leads invariably to larger populations and sometimes to larger body sizes (within limits), but never to human-level intelligence. And while larger body size generally comes with increased cranial capacity (used as a proxy for intelligence of the fossilized) the relationship between cranial capacity and actual intelligence is tentative at best, especially when comparing across animal families.
- What if humans are just a freak accident of evolution? While the most important, intelligence is not the only feature separating humans from apes. Not one but a series of freak accidents would have had to happen on the transition path to human. These accidents would be independent of each other given that bipedalism, hair loss, language and diet do not lead to human-level intelligence as seen, but also given that superior intelligence as in elephants and dolphins does not lead to bipedalism, dexterity, new diet and so on. In a “blind, unguided and purposeless” universe, this unbelievable series of events would not have happened once and only once. Yet this assumed series of unbelievable freak accidents is just a continuation of an even less plausible series including abiogenesis – also a singularity since abiogenesis is not currently observed and since all organisms show commonality (they would be different if product of different abiogenesis episodes), the Big Bang (another singularity), and the “arising” of everything else. This many “freak accidents” do make a pattern …that indicates pure fantasy.
- Can “natural selection” explain the humans? No. Both supposed evolutionary branches survived and developed in the same African environment. Why “struggle for survival” did not eliminate either one of the branches has yet to be plausibly explained. In addition, the supposed “common ancestor” is a regular chimp, so no evolution of any kind on that branch of the “common tree”. Why then would the human branch explode with changes? Felines, canines, bovines, and primates ex humans are all more or less the same on all family branches. There is no feline/canine/bovine/etc. human equivalent. No “evolutionary arms race” can possibly account for human brains being able to make sense of the quantum and the cosmos – notions far removed from everyday survival. As far as we know, no other organism has such a removed capability inexplicable on the account of “natural selection”.
- The fossil record lends no support for human evolution for several reasons: it is sketchy at best inviting proponents to make whatever desired of it via artistic license, is static hence one must presume evolution to see evolutionary links (the animation movie), and fossils are not positively linked to one another hence likely part of other animation movies altogether. Along the years, we have seen an inflation of hominid “species” as everyone that found a bone or two claimed they discovered a new species. And even after some cleanup, we’re still left with Neanderthals and Denisovans that successfully mated (fertile off-springs) with Sapiens despite being labeled “separate species”.
Summary:
- Humans are truly exceptional
- There is no plausible developmental path from ape to human
- Humans just a “freak accident of evolution” is likely just fantasy
- “Natural selection” cannot explain “humans from apes”
- The fossil record does not support the “human evolution” story
Links:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/299/5615/1994
http://city-press.news24.com/News/Scientists-question-Homo-naledi-20150919
Pro-Con Notes:
Con: Both chimps & humans had a common hominid ancestor some 5 mill. yrs ago
Pro: Even with the Hollywood artistic license, this 25 mya looks just like a chimp today: https://www.livescience.com/32029-oldest-monkey-fossil-found.html. See? No evolution.
Just admit it, you have no idea what the words even mean. 🙂
1. What are you talking about? The whole “evolution” thing is a retard hoax. Darwin’s nonsense sums up to: “it’s true because I can imagine”.
2. Another “just so” story without any justification:
a. Compare to other social animals and learn this is a random “explanation”
b. There’s no link between “social” and intelligence, dexterity, bipedalism, hairlessness, etc.
c. When a group of apes “decides” to become social, either they all become social or the less social die out.
d. If turning social would be feasible, we would see grades of social development among chimps, etc. and then also grades of bipedalism, etc. – see b.
3. Are you saying “we are to chimps as chimps are to macaques”? Why not compare chimps to bacteria for more drama? What has this to do with anything?
4. You don’t understand your own circular logic. Nothing links these skeletons to humans or each other except your prior belief that they are linked. There’s a lot of BS artistic license to get from 40% of skeleton (if from the same individual) to a red lipstick cardboard model. 52% is for sure not from the same individual, not that – if true – this would help your circular logic.
1. Intelligence drives bipedalism, dexterity, speech, etc.? And which one was first, the chicken or the egg? Are you trying to be nonsensical or is this just natural to you?
2. Total nonsense. There are way too many unique human characteristics and they all supposedly appeared in a timeframe in which all other comparable organisms have remained virtually unchanged. Where is the outstandingly handy feline? The biped canine? The talking seal? The superintelligent bear? And where is another family with another member that combined ALL these characteristics and more while its relatives remained ordinary?
3. There is and never will be a “second”. This is very relevant.
4. Human intelligence is clearly of the chart by any measure. And all others have been offered as “explanations” by Darwinistas for why we’re so different.
5. We can live in outer space because we can control the environment to that extreme. Insect cannot do that.
6. Is that drawing as different from chimps as we are? NO! It looks like a regular chimp-ape.
Once again, no arguments or evidence is supplied by Nonlin, just mere declarations. All you do is state your beliefs, you don’t argue for them or show why they necessarily or even most likely follow from uncontested premises.
There’s no use having an argument with you if it just reduces to you waiting for another go at re-asserting a still unsubstantiated and yet-to-be-even-argued-for belief you happen to possess.
Missing the point, I see. I doesn’t really matter what you want to link it to. The key word was “phenotypic trait” here. Are dexterity, lifespan, sociability, speech, bipedalism, hairlessness, body size, diet and (yes) intelligence not ALL phenotypic traits? Did you not decide that humans were different based on our phenotype, an “unstable infinite set hence unknowable and theoretical” in your own words?
Intelligence? Measured when? In what environment? Each individual is different. Hey, you can’t just measure one trait and think it makes all the difference, right?
Obviously you won’t recognize evidence when it hits you in the face… which it does… all the time.
What’s your point? Again, debunking the “human evolution” myth has nothing to do with “natural selection” and survival. Bacteria and bugs of all kinds survive just fine.
Then explain the consilience of independent phylogenies.
No, but setting humans apart based on our intelligence has everything to do with the phenotype. In the “natural selection” thread you played the “phenotype is infinite, theoretical and unknowable” game to prevent us from inferring any sensible relationship between a phenotypic trait and survival. In this thread you were quick to drop that line of reasoning, because you desperately need intelligence as proof that humans are distinct from the rest of creation. But guess what? Intelligence is a phenotypic trait as well. It depends on genetic and environmental factors and changes throughout a human life. That clearly demonstrates that you have a double standard and you seem to be oblivious to it, even after I have pointed it out to you several times.
Oh, is that what you think you are doing?
I thought you were just another timecube guy. http://timecube.2enp.com/
I am so glad someone saved the time cube.
Do you do realize that to build a “phylogenetic tree” one has to PRESUPPOSE “evolution”? If not, ask your dog about circular logic. Furthermore, do you realize that anatomy is not independent of biochemistry? Your source replies to this with the nonsense: “Netscape works essentially the same on a Macintosh, an IBM, or a Unix machine, but the binary code for each program is quite different.” Which is obviously stupid as:
a) We’re likely not dealing with multiple designers
b) “Binary code” is for sure not the equivalent of DNA because (and you won’t understand this): http://nonlin.org/dna-not-essence-of-life/
I simply don’t see what shorts your brain:
a. Survival is independent of “phenotype”
b. Human “evolution” is baseless
c. a. is different than b.
d. QED
Present your arguments if your claim is that “setting humans apart” is wrong or if you think that “camels are different than dolphins” should tell you something about their relative survival rate.
Nonlin.org to Corneel:
That’s because the short circuit is in your own brain.
Yes, but you’re not being asked to explain merely the construction of a phylogenetic tree. You’re being asked to explain why phylogenetic trees derived from independent data still yield highly similar branching topologies.
Do you understand the difference?
This reveals your ignorance. Genetic sequences completely independent of anatomy can be chosen and compared. For example, a simple enzyme in some metabolic pathway that breaks down sugars does not cause you to have a spine, does not cause you your spine to have a certain shape, does not cause you to have four limbs, does not cause you to have a jaw and a cranium, etc. etc. So that enzyme is independent of morphology, it just has to break down sugars.
So when the phylogenetic tree derived from the metabolic enzyme yields a tree that is highly similar to a tree drawn morphology, or from another enzyme unrelated to it (from another and separate metabolic pathway), that is a remarkable result that requires an explanation.
Common descent explains that. The branching patterns yielded the data when analyzed by phylogenetic algorithms would have been constrained by the time of divergence of the species in question and the rate of molecular and morphological evolution independently in each lineage after they split.
You have just revealed that you are just completely ignorant about biochemistry and phylogenetics.
There was nothing in that that constitutes a valid response to the article I linked or the particular argument. What Theobald writes is true, there are many different functional ways to yield a similar result. That means there is no necessary requirement that the genetic (or digital sequences in computer code) be identical or even similar, in order to get similar results.
Theobald even gives a good example with the cytochrome c sequence. The DNA sequences for this enzyme is different between all species, but it’s function is pretty much identical. In the primates the human and chimpanzee cytochrome c amino acid sequences are identical, but the DNA sequence that codes for the protein has a few (silent) mutations in it. The DNA sequences from cytochrome c yields the same phylogenetic tree as morphology does.
Why would it do that? There’s no functional reason to change the cytochrome c sequence for primates, whether at the DNA level or the amino acid level of the actual protein.
What is your explanation for that fact?
Common descent immediately explains why: The cytochrome c gene has been diverging under neutral drift, and species that share more recent common descent have had less time to diverge by independent accumulation of nearly neutral or silent mutations, than older divergences.
There are literally thousands upon thousands of genes we share across the primates and the vast majority of them can be used to construct phylogenetic trees that consistently look extremely similar. So similar that it requires an explanation.
And no, there is no functional reason for it, as it is trivial to pick genes that are independent of anatomy where the genetic sequence from any primate would do just as well in any of the others (like an enzyme that breaks down sugars, to pick an example, it’s job is to just break down sugars). So there is no functional design-reason to even have the gene-sequence of that sugar-metabolizing enzyme changed between species if they were all created by the same designer. A 100% identical version would have worked just fine for all of them. So when it is different for all of them, and when those differences when analyzed by a phylogenetic algorithm yields a tree with a similar branching topology to another such gene also independent from it, or to morphology, then we have bona fide evidence of common descent. And you don’t have a rational design-explanation for it.
ROFL.
This isn’t just wrong, it’s a conclusion that can only be entertained by an insane person.
Why are so many animals camouflaged if survival is independent of phenotype? Are people who work out and stay in shape better able to handle life in the wild? I rest my case.
You don’t even have to believe that phenotypes are due to evolution, or that life evoled, to understand that OF COURSE phenotypes are not independent of survival. That is utterly, utterly fatuous.
No, I’m sorry. The connection between phenotype and survival is non-negotiable. If you insist it isn’t so, then we have left the arena of rational discourse and I must accept that I am talking to a mentally ill person and withdraw from the conversation.
Goodbye.
a is different from b is not what needed to be demonstrated. And after having tried to explain to you three times in different ways what was bothering me about your argument, I think I am going to give it a rest.
Please note that Rumraket in the immediately preceding comment rejected your argument (yes, the one I am attacking). I am pretty sure you’ll find no one accepting your bizarre view of the phenotype, not just among “darwinistas” but not outside it either. Perhaps that could give you some pause considering who is having a short circuit in his brain.
Corneel,
Nonlin thinks that she/he can redefine evolution, or anything he doesn’t like, out of existence. Even worse, Nonlin doesn’t care if his redefinitional “strategies” contradict each other. I doubt that she/he can even notice those contradictions, or the problem with imagining that by redefining al gusto things stop being what they are.
This is why I stoped trying. Nonlin is unreachable and, thus, unteachable.
QED 😀
Nonlin,
Where do I go to dig up a fossil that will prove the truth of your claims?
It’s about the truth is it?
1. Total nonsense from you as usual. How the heck do you build a “phylogenetic tree derived from the metabolic enzyme”? And who does that, the Martians? As far as I can tell, it’s all done by the same Darwinistas interested in the same outcome using the same favorable assumptions. Zero credibility and of course the “results” are fudged to match. How often does the “tree of life” change? Why would it change so often if it were anything other than an artificial human construct that needs fudging all the time?
What common descent nonsense? This OP just demonstrates “human evolution” is a stupid myth. And since you don’t have any counterarguments to what was written, you chose to bring up this other nonsense.
Also, even if your “phylogeny tree” were honest work (huge if), “Common Design” explains whatever similarities just as well. Of course more closely related models will be more similar than dissimilar ones.
2. “a) We’re likely not dealing with multiple designers“ is a perfect reply to your “there are many different functional ways to yield a similar result” if you like it or not. Obviously you know nothing about how engineering works. Why would a designer reinvent the wheel? Just to satisfy your baseless belief?
3. So what? Just because you don’t know the reason for a certain design you don’t understand, doesn’t mean there is no reason. Even the AI of today has some level of built in autonomy. Every time I see some moron talking about this or that failure of the human body I want to ask him: why don’t you change your design, stupid?
Look, you’re too much of a zealot to understand that anything built on the pre-supposition of “evolution” stinks. Zero credibility. Now, do you, or don’t you have any valid counterarguments to the arguments in this particular OP? I see none from you or your partners.
This is a very simple example that you either ignore, or don’t understand, or like fishes keep forgetting:
“In a small farm, only organisms closely related to their wild cousins survive, but agribusinesses select for chickens with oversize breasts and research labs select for populations with specific genetic mutations requiring tight environments to survive. As shown, all these different organisms may or may not survive regardless of their phenotype. ”
Make a mental effort and reply to this simple example… if you can.
Fossils have nothing to do with these particular arguments. But feel free to read the OP paragraph 5. and reply (with solid arguments!) if you disagree.
So let me see. In a small farm organisms closely resembling their wild cousins survive, and at large agribusinesses the chickens with oversize breasts survive, and at research labs individuals expressing specific genetic mutations survive.
I would say that makes three examples where organisms with specific phenotypes have a survival advantage in their respective environments, don’t you?
And if you’ll excuse me, I need to lie down from the enormous mental effort involved in replying to this example.
What is “Common Design”? I’ve heard the term used many times but still haven’t figured out what it means.
Should give you some time to evolve and come back more perfect than ever. 🙂
You sequence variants of the gene from multiple species, then you make an alighment of the different sequences you get from the different species, then you use a phylogenetic algorithm to derive a tree according to some basic set of rules. The phylogenetic algorithm basically assumes a particular hypothesis about how evolution proceeds and finds the arrangement of branches that best fits the hypothesis. This is now your phylogenetic tree.
Human beings with computers.
What are those favorable assumptions and what outcome is that? Are you saying that scientists are FORCING consilience of independent phylogenies? How? Where?
Prove it.
What relevance does that have to what we are discussing? Regardless of what hypothesis you assume (what algorithm to use to construct trees), independent genes drawn from multiple species still overwhelmingly converge on similar branching orders.
You are not being asked to account for the fact that the data can be used to construct a tree with an algorithm, you are being asked to explain why independent genetic loci from multiple species converge on a similar branching structure. Those are two different questions.
You get more data you didn’t have before?
The common descent implied by the fact that independent genetic loci from multiple species used to construct phylogenetic trees, converge on a similar branching topology. THAT common descent.
You are confusing demonstration with assertion. The OP merely declares your opinion, the truth of that opinion is not demonstrated anywhere in the OP.
Yadda yadda. Nobody is under any obligation to argue against mere assertions.
You’re not being asked to explain merely the fact that aspects of the physiology or genetic sequences of organisms are similar, you are being asked to explain why independent genetic loci exhibit similar branching topologies when analyzed by a phylogenetic algorithm when there is no functional reason to constrain the sequence for such a result.
I get that you don’t even understand what this means, so instead of bluster and bravado you should stop arguing and start learning instead.
Related? Doesn’t that imply common descent is the explanation for the degree of similarity? LOL, hoisted by your own petard.
Nobody says it has to be reinvented, in fact I’m saying the opposite. There’s no reason to introduce any changes to it when it is performing the same job in each species. There’s no reason for there to be any mutations in the DNA between human and chimpanzee cytochrome c genes. They are exactly identical at the amino acid level. They might aswell be exactly identical at the DNA level, but they aren’t. That doesn’t make sense if you believe they were independently created by a designer that is re-using the same design in new creations.
But the nucleotide sequence of cytochrome c diverges increasingly with divergence times. As we get to gorillas, there starts to be amino acid sequence differences in addition to the DNA nucleotide differences between human, chimp, and gorilla. But why? There’s no functional reason for it, it still performs the same function in the electron transport chain. Again, the exact same gene would do, but that’s it not what we see, we see it diverging and it yields the same tree as thousands of other genes and morphology.
So we are not saying the wheel needs to be re-invented, we are saying there’s no reason to even change it when the changes don’t affect the function. That implies the changes are due to nearly neutral mutations accumulating over time.
But I do understand how cytochrome c works, and there’s no reason for there to be silent nucleotide mutations between the human and chimp version.
This is idiotic. It’s like if you buy a piece of software and it keeps making errors, you call the seller who tells you that you just haven’t yet figured out how these errors actually make it a really good program, then when you say that’s terrible service the seller replies “oh yeah, then how about you make a better one?”.
Fantastic logic there buddy.
How nice, you totally showed me there. This deep and penetrating analysis is sure to change a reasonable person’s mind.
I think that’s because you don’t understand how any of this works. You understand very little of the philosophy of science, even less how things like hypothesis testing by comparing predictions to observation can be used to test the predictions of common descent.
And it contradicts the claim you supported: “OF COURSE phenotypes are not independent of survival“
Don’t know about others, but I use it as “created by the same designer”.
1. What part of “circular logic” don’t you understand? Your dog is obviously not smart enough to explain it to you. Get one of those that chases its own tail. Your “common descent” conclusion is based on “common descent” presupposition.
2. It is a property of modelling that you will build a model no matter how crappy the data is, if building a model to “prove” your prejudice is what you desperately want.
3. It demonstrates with arguments you were not able to dispute. You’re in denial or incapable of logical arguments.
4. You don’t know “no functional reason”. I see many “functional reasons”: http://nonlin.org/five-questions-for-id/
5. No. See 2.
6. I explained: “Just because you don’t know the reason for a certain design you don’t understand, doesn’t mean there is no reason” and “Even the AI of today has some level of built in autonomy”
7. See 4. And 6.
8. Going in circles again. It’s idiotic to think you’re the judge of a design you don’t understand – see link above for some answers.
9. For sure one of us doesn’t understand how things work. I am offering logical analyses and conclusions that you don’t like. But neither are you able to dispute anything with logical arguments. Keep trying.
I’m curious whether it is “not,” “independent,” or “OF COURSE” that you don’t understand.
There is no circular logic involved here buddy.
In order to test a particular hypothesis, you must assume the hypothesis is true in order to find out what it predicts. In this particular case, the hypothesis predicts that independent data sets should yield similar phylogenetic trees to a high level of statistical significance, if analyzed by a phylogenetic algorithm that isn’t informed of the already suspected species relationships.
The assumption here is a particular model of evolution, like “minimum evolution”.
But it doesn’t matter what kind of model of evolution you assume, it is still the case that when different independent sets of data (such asvariants of multiple particular genes from a collection of different species) are used to infer phylogenetic trees, those trees converge on a highly similar branching topology when there is no functional reason to do so. But that is what common descent predicts they should.
Notice how that at no point is it assumed, in the construction of the individual phylogenetic trees, that they SHOULD converge on a similar tree. So when they nevertheless do that, that is a result that cries out for an explanation.
You mistakenly think the scientists are somehow forcing the trees to be similar. But they don’t, so your charge of circular reasoning is simply a mistake you make. Look, it’s pretty obvious you don’t know anything about the subject, so stop acting as if you do. Be prepared to come to terms with the fact that there’s something here you didn’t know before.
Plainly false.
But this isn’t what is going on, that is just some ad-hoc rationalization you make without even having a goddamn clue what the phylogeneticists are even doing. You are making up excuses and believing your own made-up excuses without even knowing whether they are true.
It is ironic that it is actually you who are the biased one sticking to your preconcieved ideas here. Sad and ironic.
There were zero reasons given there for why there should be silent nucleotide differences between human and chimpanzee cytochrome c DNA.
So you explicitly state that degree of relatedness is a reason to think why organismal biology should correlate with similarity of genetic sequence, yet now that I point out how that basically concedes the point (relatedness implies common descent), you just say no and refer back to yourself mindlessly declaring that common descent is assumed in modeling.
Score another one for irony with the thickness of continental crust.
You didn’t explain that, you stated that. Your mere statement is not an explanation. And I gave reasons to think the statement is false. We know what cytochrome c does. And we understand the relationship between DNA nucleotide sequence and protein amino acid sequence. The mutations are silent, so the protein that ultimately results from transcription and translation from that DNA is unaffected. So those differences are without rhyme or reason, yet there they are.
They’re still failures for the same reason. You ability to just re-declare the same debunked assertions don’t somehow settle this argument in your favor. You understand that, right?
But I do understand it.
Cool story bro.
If by logical analysis you mean statements of opinion based mostly on ignorance and your personal biases, then yes, that is what maintains your conclusions flawed though they are.
And yet here I am having done almost nothing but that. Argued for why most of what you say is either wrong, or ignorant, or misleading.
Rumraket,
You keep repeating the same nonsense, and you’re beyond logic. Go ahead and be happy with the “proof” of your nonsense – a stupid model build assuming its nonsensical conclusion is true. Maybe you’ll have something intelligent to say one day. But not today, yesterday, or any other day so far.
I invite you to perform the work yourself so you can see the results. Pick 10 species of primates including humans, pick 20 arbitriary nuclear genes shared between all 10 species, pick a phylogenetic algorithm you like. Pick an alignment tool and make alignments for all 20 genes. Construct the trees using the algorithm. Compare the branching orders for all 20 trees. Count the number of incongruent branches yourself.
You can perform all of this work yourself without fudging any data. Save your work and let us know about the results when you’re done. 🙂
You need to read about hypothesis testing. What you’re describing is not it (it’s just curve fitting). I let you figure out why.
Furthermore, this would be like third and forth-order evidence and an argument from ignorance when in fact we have second-order evidence as shown in this OP and elsewhere and which you ignore (first-order would be direct observation which is missing).
This IS hypothesis testing.
The hypothesis that species share common descent predicts patterns in biological data. Specifically it predicts that independent data sets (such as genetic sequences that are not mutually constrained to yield particular branching topologies) should converge on the same overall tree topology if analyzed by a phylogenetic algorithm (as common descent by splitting of lineages from common ancestors is what would make independent genetic sequences corroborate the same branching order). Also, the data should yield significant levels of (tree-like) hiearchical structure as measured by the consistency index. Those are bona fide predictions of the common descent hypothesis. As in those are lines of evidence that could fail to support the hypothesis of common descent. So when we nevertheless do find those lines of evidence, they are best explained by the hypothesis of common descent.
Attempts have been made to explain them using various design hypotheses that nevertheless fail under close scrutiny. An often used rationalization is that a “common designer” would use “common design”(as in make things be similar), and from this it would automatically follow that different genetic sequences subjetic to phylogenetic analysis should match the same branching order. Turns out that actually isn’t true, it is overwhelmingly more likely that you end up with significantly incongruent trees, rather than significantly congruent ones, even if you are deliberately forcing things like genetic sequences from independent genes to be similar.
I’ll let you figure out how that’s wrong.
We are trying to explain how things that already exist came to be some time in the past when nobody was around to see it. We can’t travel back in time, so the only thing we can do is to make models that account for collected data and predict how data yet-to-be-collected should also look. That would be true whether we try to account for the diversity of life using an evolutionary or design theory. The theory of common descent is such a theory, that both accounts for the data we have and predicts what patterns data yet-to-be-collected should corroborate.
This is total nonsense, and so is the rest, but this more so 🙂
How can genetic sequences (?) be independent of tree topology. It goes against your own dogma – remember “natural selection” that is supposed to work on the genetic heritage?
Design hypotheses cannot fail under any circumstance as designers have maximum flexibility – the “failure” is only in the minds of those that do not understand design.
Not surprising, you don’t understand your model is curve fitting. Thanks for confirming.
You also don’t understand first, second, third and forth-order evidence. No surprise there either.
The fact that you even have to ask that reveals you’re really not all that informed of evolution or biochemistry in general. But we already knew that.
So let me help you:Genetic sequences are constrained by function but they are not constrained to follow a particular tree topology unless they track a historical process of splitting lineages and subsequent independent descent with modification.
There are many neutral DNA mutations that have no effect on the proteins that are translated from them (they’re called “silent”, or “synonymous” mutations). This is due to something called codon degeneracy, which is a property of the genetic code that governs protein translation from RNA. Read about it here. This means there can be mutations happening in protein coding genes that natural selection don’t remove because they don’t affect the function of the gene.
Sure, but natural selection works to enhance beneficial traits, or remove deleterious traits. But that selection effect is not towards a particular branching topology, it is only towards reproductive success. So natural selection does not constrain a gene to exhibit a similar branching topology, it constrains it to keep working if it is beneficial to the organism.
So when genes nevertheless DO exhibit similar branching topologies, particularly when we know many of the mutations that contribute to a particular phylogeny are actually neutral and therefore not constrained to be the way they are due to function, this is a result that cries out for an explanation. And common descent is the best explanation for that fact.
Even more obviously, there are genes which are independent of morphology, as I have already explained. Many core metabolic enzymes who’s function basically is to generate energy for the cells of your body, do not affect the particular body plan of the organism. For example the core metabolic gene GAPDH (Glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase) does not cause you to have a spine, nor to have four limbs, nor the shape of your limbs, nor the number of vertebrae on your spine, nor the position of those four limbs relative to each other. It’s function is to break down glucose.
In other words, the GAPDH gene is not what makes you be a chordate, or a vertebrate, or a mammal, or a primate, or even an animal at all (plants also have the GAPDH gene). So when the phylogeny derived from shared GAPDH genes across some clade of organisms nevertheless corroborates the phylogeny derived from comparative anatomy, that is a result that cries out for an explanation. And common descent is the best explanation for that fact.
Multiply that fact by literally tens of thousands of genetic loci and you should start to see the picture. And by you I mean the average reader, you personally won’t get any of this I’m quite sure.
It is that very thing that makes design hypotheses fail, not because they are falsified, but because they are unfalsifiable. You can make up any excuse you want in ad-hoc fashion for why a designer wanted to make things a certain way. Even if there is no functional reason to have genes exhibit similar branching topologies when analyzed by a phylogenetic algorithm, you can always just declare that the designer WANTED to make them exhibit similar branching topologies just because the designer felt like it. Maybe the designer is a big trickster who likes to confuse and mislead, and therefore decided to leave exactly the sort of evidence behind that an evolutionary process of common descent with modification would produce?
You can believe that if you want to, but it’s not science. If you do that, then you have decided to believe in something that you would never be able to discover was false because you have accepted the use of a methodology that is incapable revealing if the thing you believe is false.
Your ability to write that does not establish the truth of it.
Your ability to write this also does not establish the truth of it. And you have done no work to even make that claim plausible.
Meh, and then I remembered who I was talking to here. You’re the guy who denies the obvious and straightforward relationship between survival and phenotype. Like you just can’t seem to understand how it could be a survival benefit to be camouflaged, or be able to fly, or have thick fur in the arctic.
Now that I remember this I also remember I promised not to engage you any more. I have no reason to argue with such a person. You get to have the last word, goodbye.
Rumraket,
I have to wonder if he knows what genetic sequences are. It may seem odd in the age of genomics for someone, much less an expert like nonlin, not to know, but that would seem to be the implication of the question mark he puts after the term.
Anyway, for nonlin: a genetic sequence is the sequence of the four bases abbreviated A, C, G, and T in some portion of a genome. For example, the sequence of a random part of one of the hemoglobin genes in a rock hyrax (found on the UCSC Genome Browser) has the sequence CACTGAGCAGAGAGAACTCAGTGGTACTTGTGGGACAGA.
[Nonlin:] Design hypotheses cannot fail under any circumstance as designers have maximum flexibility – the “failure” is only in the minds of those that do not understand design.
Dude, designers are free to incorporate whatever mechanism they want including intelligent “selection”(humans do!) and “common descent”(humans do!) if they so desire. If you haven’t figured out, the debate is “designer versus no designer”, not “descent versus no descent”.
On the other hand, “common descent without a designer” doesn’t have a chance in hell as explained here and elsewhere: http://nonlin.org/natural-selection/. The ‘designer’ hypothesis doesn’t have to be falsifiable – it’s enough that “design without a designer” can be falsifiable and is FALSE as shown many times.
Again, when you will successfully dispute any of these, then you might have something:
1. Natural Selection concept fails since phenotype does not determine survival which is also tautological with “best adapted”
2. “Blind, mindless, purposeless, natural, and process” qualifiers fail
3. Phenotype is an unstable infinite set (hence unknowable and theoretical)
4. Fitness concept is redundant since never defined independently of survival
5. “Selection” is Survival
6. The only selection is Intelligent Selection – always done by an Intelligent Selector
7. Selection is limited to a narrow set of adaptations – one cannot selected what is not there
8. Selection and Mutations lack creativity, therefore cannot explain body designs
9. We do not observe “divergence of character” but ‘limited variations around a mean’
10. Extinct organism were not flawed and their features were not “selected away”
11. Intelligent Selection should replace Natural Selection but only if we ever transmutate organisms
12. Humans do not apply Natural Selection because it doesn’t work
13. Designs must cross an inevitable optimization gap making evolution impossible
“Natural selection” proponents must answer these simple questions – pick any biologic entity including populations and give the 80/20 Pareto without too much accuracy or precision :
1. What is that biologic entity’s phenotype?
2. What is its environment?
3. What is its fitness function?
4. What is the relationship between its phenotype, environment, fitness, and survival/reproductive success?
The five ridiculous claims of “natural selection”
1. “Design by multiple choice” is ridiculous
2. “Multiple choice from ALL random answers” is ridiculous
3. “Designing without trying” is ridiculous
4. “Self design” is ridiculous
5. “Design by incremental optimization” is ridiculous
Also, last I checked, the oldest DNA ever found is 700k yrs old: https://nationalpost.com/news/breaking-the-time-barrier-700000-year-old-horse-fossil-oldest-ever-found-from-dna-mapped-animal, which means that all you’re doing is arranging organisms in a tree based on “morphology” and then comparing with the same tree built on DNA. The two trees are not independent and I see you’re not explicitly denying “DNA not independent”. Let me refer you to a biology book that explains how much of an “art” rather than “science” is the building of a “tree of life”, and this is from a guy that is 100% behind the Darwinist nonsense: https://www.amazon.com/Biology-The-Science-of-Life/dp/B00DTNWA4Y/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1530385294&sr=1-6&keywords=biology+by+stephen+nowicki
Being childish doesn’t help your cause. Now, do you have anything intelligent to add to the discussion? Or are you on an “I-have-no-more-arguments” strike like your buddy, Rumraket?
So you do know what a genetic sequence is? Then what did you mean by “How can genetic sequences (?) be independent of tree topology.”?
Most of your post is merely opaque or senseless, but perhaps we could discuss this bit. Please quote the bit in that book where the author explains that building trees is an art rather than a science. I will be glad to explain why that isn’t true.
Of course, most DNA is independent of phenotype, because most DNA in most vertebrate genomes doesn’t affect phenotype. The only consistent correlation is with phylogeny.
I had a full check up done last year with an MRI, X-Rays, and a CT scan…the works…
O colleague of mine, a radiologist, was reviewing the pictures as I was gazing at them bluntly not really knowing what I was looking for…
“Everything seems fine”- he assured me
“Are you sure?”- I asked
Looks good to me – He said.
“Am I evolving anything, like a new limb to hold a cellphone while I’m driving?
“Nuh”- he confirmed.
“You have been reading diagnostic imaging pictures for over 35 years and you have never seen any indications of human body evolving new features?”- I asked again
“Yeah, I have seen it….Malignant tumors growing like fermented dough. The transitional features in evolution are only in the minds of the fantasy writers, like Dawkins…” – he added while looking at me as if I was born again.
This is a more a less content of the conversation I had last year, so I can’t remember the details exactly…but the motto is obvious: We apparently have 10 billion of species on Earth today. If we X-Ray them all or just the majority of vertebrates, how many of them will be found to be transitioning from one species to another?
Would anybody like to take a guess?
I’d guess that the conversation never actually happened. Do I win?
Incidentally, the transitions between species very seldom if ever involve anything that could be discerned as the appearance of new organs.
Really? How about the breast bone lose in the flightless birdies? Are you going to ignore that? Why? Because you can or you have to?
ETA: Have I ever mention to you the flightless birdies pitol elevation thingy?
Sorry, that was incoherent and I don’t know what you were trying to say. Flightless birds all have breastbones; they just (some of them) don’t have keels on their breastbones. And I have no idea what a “pitol elevation thingy” might be. What does any of that have to do with speciation featuring new organs?
ROFL. Cool story bro.
Therefore the appearance of new organs can be swept under the rug because we can explain the appearance of new species without mentioning them. How convenient.
It’s not convenience Mung. It’s faith, which is stronger, as John has demonstrated over the years…
You have to look at things from Harashman’s point of view: Evolution must be true or my life is s..t…
There must be something in the rules about insulting claims like that.
So, the point is that almost every “new” organ is just a different version of an old organ. The human heart, for example, can be shown through comparative anatomy as having begun as a thickening of the muscles in an arterial wall and having through many intermediate conditions, some of them shown in living organisms.