Let’s have a serious discussion about phylogenetic systematics.
What are the assumptions, the methods, and the inferences that can be drawn from phylogenetic analysis.
For example, is there anything to the creationist claim that phylogenetic systematics assumes common ancestry and does it even matter?
I’ll be using a number of different references such as Molecular Evolution: A Phylogenetic Approach and Molecular Evolution and Phylogenetics.
This thread will not be password protected, but it will be protected by angels.
Mung:
Jesus, Mung. Rumraket was talking about how the statistical tests are validated.
Not reasonably rule out. If we see a nested hierarchy, then it is consistent with branching descent with variation. However, there may be other hypotheses that could conceivably explain the same data. Whether it would be consistent with ALL the data, such as the fossil succession, is another matter. Each hypothesis would have to be evaluated to make that determination.
The diagram is hierarchical, but not properly nested.
It’s not objective. There are any number of arbitrary (subjective) ways to group vehicles. For instance, you might put commercial above the distinction between land and sea.
I think Mung already has. He seems to be saying that both special creation and common descent can be made to be indistinguishable from each other, given gods remit. And therefore you can never rule out special creation (even if it is the special creation of everything ever) and he seems happy with that. All the benefits of common descent (i.e. scientific support) with the cherry on the cake of going to heaven too.
OMagain,
Does a fish seem like it is descended from yeast? Does a dog seem like it was descended from a fish? This delusion that God made things look like they are descended from each other is quite something.
And they often add in new features that are not derived from earlier models, rather from some unrelated source. We see that in computers, and obviously in autos. Radios had nothing to do with cars, then someone made one that works in an automobile. Later, computers and bluetooth.
Any good designer thinks beyond the mere modification of what existed in the old design. Incorporating new, previously unrelated, features is often an important aspect of redesign.
Glen Davidson
keiths,
If you were following along with the discussion you would not ask this question.
Well, how does it work?
When god created the first horse, how many did it create? Did god create just two horses, safe in the knowledge that one would not accidentally trip over and die before breeding? Or did it create a population of horses sufficiently large to avoid such random accidents?
Does the sun seem like it orbits the earth?
I didn’t see keiths answer my question as to why it was so all-fired important to the case for common descent that the nested hierarchy be objective, but I’ll dive in anyways.
The phrase, “objective nested hierarchy, refers to what, exactly? THE ONE TRUE TREE OF LIFE that evolutionists believe is out there and that their attempts at creating phylogenies seek to recover?
Or does it refer to the man-made phylogenies themselves, as indicated in the quote by Theobald:
GlenDavidson,
Explain how sight, flight, walking, and hearing are not major innovations without invoking unsupported evolutionist assumptions.
colewd:
Sure I would. None of you has offered a sensible answer.
If you had an answer, you’d not be afraid to give it.
Before they were major innovations they were minor innovations.
Now, you describe the day the first thing that could fly appeared on the earth. Presumably there will be a “poof” involved.
Why don’t bears have echolocation? They spend a lot of time in dark caves.
OMagain,
So why do you equate speculation with observation?
I think I already answered this. Common descent is a myth. There is no evidence for common descent. None. There is nothing to mimic. There’s nothing to be deceptive about. It’s not THE DESIGNERS’ fault that people have misinterpreted the data in order to exclude the evidence for design.
I didn’t say that there were no major innovations. I wrote:
So an Apple can have flash drive, or hard drive, two quite unrelated technologies. Sight, flight, walking, and hearing are major innovations, but they’re certainly derivative of previous structures. Like sight and cilia.
Why don’t you once try to deal with something without using your unsupported assumptions to concoct a strawman that only points out your lack of understanding of the issues? My “evolutionary assumptions” are supported, precisely by what I wrote, and you couldn’t even ask something that actually related to what I wrote. So busy with the dislike of evolution, so unable to handle the issues.
Glen Davidson
OMagain,
Foul: Evolutionist speculation 🙂
OMagain:
But the question isn’t whether an omnipotent God could mimic common descent. He could, of course. The question is why:
I think it’s a modern day miracle!
I don’t think that we do infer the exact same tree.
Mung:
So you’re a creationist now?
GlenDavidson,
They are not unrelated technologies. Just like life they are related. Both store digital bits in the form of voltage. Both are accessed by address location. Both use transistor logic and c-mos derived gates. All are derivative of the properties of electrons.
Glen you need to think this through. There is a reason that life as a design seems different but it is not what you think.
And to set the record straight, my point wasn’t that you cannot rule out God or special creation. It was that the exact same logic could be used to reach opposite conclusions.
I can demonstrate that separate origins is true by the same logic that is used to demonstrate that common ancestry is true.
The takeaway is that something is wrong with the argument for common ancestry (as presented), not that common ancestry is false.
In what way? Before lungs there was something simpler. The pattern is everywhere you look. It’s not speculation, it’s a reasonable inference.
I’ve presented a hypothetical scenario. I probably really ought to create a new OP to make that clear. No, I don’t actually believe that God has separately created each species. But if he had, for the sake of argument …
I know you, of all people, understand how one can put forth such an argument. 🙂
No, you can’t. As otherwise you would have and you’d be coining it in from the rubes.
And yet you can make a functioning computer from wooden cogs.
Sounds made up, what exactly does harmony imply?
The fact that there was an identifiable first computer seems to neatly disarm your argument entirely. A designer created ex nihilo the first computer. Totally unrelated to everything that had come before it.
And yet we don’t see that in biology. Most of the time where expect to see a precursor we find it. Sufficiently often to make the assumption that precursors are a thing. And when we can’t find a direct ancestor we can usually find a cousin.
So your computer analogy fails.
Is there really any difference between believing god created each species and god created the original “kinds” that became extant species (presumably what you actually believe)?
Both seem as likely as each other.
First off, no, they don’t both store digital bits in the form of voltage. It’s magnetic storage in hard drives, which is very different.
Second, obviously one could say that they’re “related” by using electricity, or by being digital–if you’re playing with words and not paying attention to context. I rewrote “related” as “derivative of previous structure” in the very quote that you misrepresented:
By no means is flash derived from magnetic storage, or vice versa. If you were dealing properly with what I wrote, that’s exactly what I was writing about, explicitly stated more than once.
IOW, essentially unrelated, in the normal sense of “related.”
Says the guy who has constantly tried to game what I actually did write. No, I don’t need to think this through, you need to quit trying to make everything like you’d prefer that it is, when I’m discussing the derivative nature of life that doesn’t exist in nearly the same way in technology (it’s not rare, but neither are the aspects not derivative of previous history either).
You don’t even know how discuss this properly, but you’d pretend to inform me of some idiotic notion that you must have.
If you can’t quit denying the rather strong difference between life and its derivative morphologies and genes, and technology which brings in quite unrelated technologies quite often, you’ll never even be able to pretend to deal with the issues. I realize that you don’t want to actually deal with the issues, but it’s just so obvious that it’s what you’re avoiding.
Glen Davidson
The question involves a category error. You have not given due consideration to the manuscripts analogy.
A phylogenetic tree is not the same thing as (Darwinian) evolution or common descent. Manuscripts are grouped in family trees, texts are said to evolve or descend in lineages. The terminology and methods are similar in both fields, the tree-like pattern is also similar, but nobody assumes that manuscripts evolve by themselves.
The pattern is what the data looks like, but how it became to look like this is a different question. In case of manuscripts, scribes copy them, so the causes of the pattern are not in the manuscripts. The manuscripts contain only the traces. The traces form the data that yield the pattern, but the traces are not the causes.
Similarly in case of biological organisms, it takes an additional line of argument to demonstrate that, given the tree-like pattern, we are looking at the causal line, not at the traces or effects of some ulterior cause(s).
GlenDavidson,
Glen your argument is not real. All designs are derivative of prior designs to some degree. You are not thinking this through. Life is derivative of morphologies and genes and genes are derivative of atoms and molecules. Computers are derivative of silicon metal and other matter. Like life these are all derivative of atoms and molecules. Life fundamentally is just a more efficient at using atoms and molecules then man made designs so it requires less fundamental change over time.
Since the basic use of atoms and molecules was optimized at the origin of life the designs appear more derivative at this point but both designs are based on the properties of atoms and molecules.
OMagain,
Do you really believe this? Have you look at the early computers made of vacuum tubes? Do you think the vacuum tube was created at the same time? Were numbers invented at that time also?
What came before the transcription translation mechanism in biology? Can you demonstrate that this was not an ex nihilo architectural innovation?
OMagain,
And wooden cogs are made of? 🙂
Let’s start at the top.
Theobald:
What does he mean by an evolutionary process, and further, by a branching evolutionary process?
Is the creation of stars, for example, an evolutionary process?
Which wasn’t the point in the least. I was actually pointing at the fact that, unlike life, designed objects often derive in part from unrelated sources. You’ve pontificated endlessly, managing to ignore what I wrote, which was:
Says the guy who can’t respond to what I actually wrote, only to various misinterpretations of what I wrote.
That isn’t even normal use of the word “derivative.” Genes are not derivative of atoms and molecules, they’re made of atoms and molecules. Computers are derivative of design and new developments, they’re not derivative of the material component in any normal sense of “derivative.”
You really don’t know what “derivative of” means, do you? It is not a synonym for “composed of.”
Complete nonsense. Just another creationist assertion sans any sort of evidence, while it’s more than a little obvious that life could benefit from some thought. Why don’t we use radio for communication “naturally,”
for instance?
Hang onto your little fantasies. It appears that you need them, while actually getting anything right seems nothing but haphazard for you in these matters.
Glen Davidson
I for one got that and I appreciate the effort you put into this.
The resulting kerfuffle has demonstrated that you were definitely on to something.
again thanks
peace
Because they are bears and not bats or dolphins
peace
proper according to whom? Who has the authority to make that determination
Just as there are any number of arbitrary (subjective) ways to group organisms. for example
by color
by size
by diet
by life span
by region of origin
by most likely time of activity
etc etc
If in order to be objective a grouping must be the only one possible then the nested hierarchy of organisms is definitely not objective
peace
That doesn’t answer the question. You seem to be saying that there is no actual nested hierarchy of life, just one imposed by human preference. I have shown you that this is not true.
Gee whiz. If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? It’s the definition of nested hierarchy. You have one egg (the square) which is in two different nests at the same time!
Sure. You could group them alphabetically by name, which forms a nested hierarchy. But when you look at all the various physical traits, you will find that organisms fall into a single, specific nested hierarchy pattern.
Not at all,
I think it’s possible that there is an actual nested hierarchy of life because that is what we need to make sense of it all.
It’s not imposed it’s providentially gifted to us
peace
The choice of graphic displays is certainly subjective, but it’s also trivial and irrelevant. The choice of data isn’t subjective either. That’s one of the great advantages of DNA sequences. Any sequence you pick will reflect the same information.
If there were no true nested hierarchy you would be correct, but it happens that picking different genes tends to give the same result.
Damn, fifth. You are one slow dude.
Read that section of Theobald, which explains the concept of the objective nested hierarchy. If you’re baffled by it, quote the parts that confuse you and we’ll paraphrase them for you.
Just about everything except life. There are exceptions, but the exceptions all arise from some close analog of common descent, copied manuscripts and languages being the commonly noted ones. Computers, cars, and geometric shapes most certainly are not among the exceptions.
Not sure what you mean by “systematic”, but certainly if quinarianism were borne out by the data that would be most difficult to fit into any scheme of common descent. In other words, if the data had some very strong pattern incompatible with nested hierarchy, common descent would not be our first hypothesis.
Yes it is. You are just misreading. I presume that this time it isn’t on purpose.
There is a difference between creating mutations and creating species from scratch. The former is compatible with common descent while the latter merely imitates it.
I would be interested in your clear statement of some hypothesis you would like to advance, rather than merely quoting one I made up for you. Is there anything you are willing to defend?
Your point is???
And a crow is a bird and an omnivore and bipedal. to which nest does it belong?
It all depends on the characteristic you what to focus on. The number of nests and the shape of the hierarchy is determined by subjective choice.
A jaguar gets it’s strong jaw not from the ancestral proto-canine “nest” but from the adjacent lion “nest” on the tree.
https://phys.org/news/2017-07-genome-clues-history-big-cats.html
peace
Now I’m puzzled. Didn’t you previously state on many occasions that you accepted common descent? Now you deny it. What’s your alternative scenario?
Your “nothing to mimic” idea is sterile and you need to avoid it. We know exactly what the results of common descent ought to look like: the nested hierarchy that you from time to time agree exists (though at other times you seem to deny it). If you want to seriously advance an alternative explanation for that hierarchy, please do so, and perhaps we can figure out a way to distinguish the two hypotheses.
Why do you avoid clear statements of what you think?
You need to explain this claim as I presented a nested hierarchy of vehicles and geometric shapes I’m sure I could provide one for computers as well.
So you have some grouping systems that might suggest common descent and some that make it less likely but no slam dunk either way.
Is that a fair characterization?
peace
You seem incapable of any clear statement of your position. You create a desert and call it peace.