How many times have you heard this?
"We know Evolution is true because all of life falls into a nested hierarchy of common descent."
Evolutionists like to paint the picture that this nested hierarchy is tightly constrained, and that any violation would disprove the theory. This is important because they need people to believe that Evolution is constantly being rigorously tested and confirmed in this way.
As with most of their grand sweeping claims of the theory's superiority, this one is also false. This is because the "nested hierarchy of common descent" is designed to always be able to be molded around to fit in new data that doesn't agree with it.
For example, a recently discovered dinosaur that did not fit.
Bizarre 'platypus' dinosaur: Vegetarian relative of T. rex - ScienceDaily
"Palaeontologists are referring to Chilesaurus diegosuarezi as a 'platypus' dinosaur because of its bizarre combination of characters that resemble different dinosaur groups. For example, Chilesaurus boasted a proportionally small skull, hands with two fingers like Tyrannosaurus rex and feet more akin to primitive long-neck dinosaurs.
The different parts of the body of Chilesaurus were adapted to a particular diet and way of life, which was similar to other groups of dinosaurs. As a result of these similar habits, different regions of the body of Chilesaurus evolved resembling those present in other, unrelated groups of dinosaurs, which is a phenomenon called evolutionary convergence.
Chilesaurus represents one of the most extreme cases of mosaic convergent evolution recorded in the history of life. For example, the teeth of Chilesaurus are very similar to those of primitive long-neck dinosaurs because they were selected over millions of years as a result of a similar diet between these two lineages of dinosaurs.
Martín Ezcurra, Researcher, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham said: 'Chilesaurus can be considered a 'platypus' dinosaur because different parts of its body resemble those of other dinosaur groups due to mosaic convergent evolution. In this process, a region or regions of an organism resemble others of unrelated species because of a similar mode of life and evolutionary pressures. Chilesaurus provides a good example of how evolution works in deep time and it is one of the most interesting cases of convergent evolution documented in the history of life."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150427124631.htm
An enigmatic plant-eating theropod from the Late Jurassic period of Chile - Nature 2015
"Chilesaurus represents an extreme case of mosaic evolution among dinosaurs, owing to the presence of dental, cranial and postcranial features that are homoplastic with multiple disparate groups. Using quantitative morphospace analysis, we explored morphospace occupation of different skeletal regions in Chilesaurus with respect to a variety of avian and non-avian theropods. This shows that Chilesaurus has a ceratosaur-like axial skeleton, a 'basal tetanuran' forelimb and scapular girdle, a coelurosaur-like pelvis, and a tetanuran-like hindlimb. General ankle and foot construction does not group with any theropod clade, probably as a result of the characters shared by Chilesaurus, sauropodomorphs and herrerasaurids."
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14307.html
Notice the rescue devices at work for any unexpected patterns. It is usually some type of independent "convergence" of traits, or a "mosaic" of traits. Evolutionists can never tell you what the limits are to this supposed convergence, they just keep invoking it whenever they need to explain something unexpected. There is no evidence that these traits "convergently evolved"... it is just assumed that they must have.
(notice that evolutionists will never distinguish for you what they're assuming and what is actually found in data. They always want to equivocate and keep things confusing for their audience)
So this is why the "nested hierarchy of common descent" can so easily adjust to new unexpected data.
Evolution theory is always basing its nested hierarchy models on the existence of imaginary "common ancestors". You are frequently presented a tree-like diagram depicting major animal groups at the node ends. What you are usually not told is that the base of those tree nodes (which represent common ancestors) are imaginary.
So because the ancestral nodes are imaginary, whenever an animal is discovered exhibiting an unexpected pattern of traits, evolutionists can simply carve out a new imaginary branching event for that animal in their nested hierarchy diagrams. They can root this animal's lineage as far back as necessary to show where it would have branched off from a "common ancestor" and began developing its unique pattern of traits.
This is all possible because evolutionists are constantly working with imaginary events in the mystical imaginary evolutionary past.
Furthermore, even existing lineages can be fundamentally rearranged if it means harmonizing evolutionary models with new data. All of it is malleable play-doh that is designed to accommodate unexpected data.
So essentially whenever their "nested hierarchy" is broken, they can simply fabricate a new nested group to fix it.
This is all fine and dandy for the purposes of working with hypothetical models... but hopefully you now see how absurd the claim is that Evolution is somehow being rigorously 'tested' because all of life falls into a "nested hierarchy of common descent". This is yet another myth that the evolutionary community perpetuates to sell you their creation religion.
Evolution is a fog that settles around the shifting landscape of data.
"We know Evolution is true because all of life falls into a nested hierarchy of common descent."
Evolutionists like to paint the picture that this nested hierarchy is tightly constrained, and that any violation would disprove the theory. This is important because they need people to believe that Evolution is constantly being rigorously tested and confirmed in this way.
As with most of their grand sweeping claims of the theory's superiority, this one is also false. This is because the "nested hierarchy of common descent" is designed to always be able to be molded around to fit in new data that doesn't agree with it.
For example, a recently discovered dinosaur that did not fit.
Bizarre 'platypus' dinosaur: Vegetarian relative of T. rex - ScienceDaily
"Palaeontologists are referring to Chilesaurus diegosuarezi as a 'platypus' dinosaur because of its bizarre combination of characters that resemble different dinosaur groups. For example, Chilesaurus boasted a proportionally small skull, hands with two fingers like Tyrannosaurus rex and feet more akin to primitive long-neck dinosaurs.
The different parts of the body of Chilesaurus were adapted to a particular diet and way of life, which was similar to other groups of dinosaurs. As a result of these similar habits, different regions of the body of Chilesaurus evolved resembling those present in other, unrelated groups of dinosaurs, which is a phenomenon called evolutionary convergence.
Chilesaurus represents one of the most extreme cases of mosaic convergent evolution recorded in the history of life. For example, the teeth of Chilesaurus are very similar to those of primitive long-neck dinosaurs because they were selected over millions of years as a result of a similar diet between these two lineages of dinosaurs.
Martín Ezcurra, Researcher, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham said: 'Chilesaurus can be considered a 'platypus' dinosaur because different parts of its body resemble those of other dinosaur groups due to mosaic convergent evolution. In this process, a region or regions of an organism resemble others of unrelated species because of a similar mode of life and evolutionary pressures. Chilesaurus provides a good example of how evolution works in deep time and it is one of the most interesting cases of convergent evolution documented in the history of life."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150427124631.htm
An enigmatic plant-eating theropod from the Late Jurassic period of Chile - Nature 2015
"Chilesaurus represents an extreme case of mosaic evolution among dinosaurs, owing to the presence of dental, cranial and postcranial features that are homoplastic with multiple disparate groups. Using quantitative morphospace analysis, we explored morphospace occupation of different skeletal regions in Chilesaurus with respect to a variety of avian and non-avian theropods. This shows that Chilesaurus has a ceratosaur-like axial skeleton, a 'basal tetanuran' forelimb and scapular girdle, a coelurosaur-like pelvis, and a tetanuran-like hindlimb. General ankle and foot construction does not group with any theropod clade, probably as a result of the characters shared by Chilesaurus, sauropodomorphs and herrerasaurids."
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14307.html
Notice the rescue devices at work for any unexpected patterns. It is usually some type of independent "convergence" of traits, or a "mosaic" of traits. Evolutionists can never tell you what the limits are to this supposed convergence, they just keep invoking it whenever they need to explain something unexpected. There is no evidence that these traits "convergently evolved"... it is just assumed that they must have.
(notice that evolutionists will never distinguish for you what they're assuming and what is actually found in data. They always want to equivocate and keep things confusing for their audience)
So this is why the "nested hierarchy of common descent" can so easily adjust to new unexpected data.
Evolution theory is always basing its nested hierarchy models on the existence of imaginary "common ancestors". You are frequently presented a tree-like diagram depicting major animal groups at the node ends. What you are usually not told is that the base of those tree nodes (which represent common ancestors) are imaginary.
So because the ancestral nodes are imaginary, whenever an animal is discovered exhibiting an unexpected pattern of traits, evolutionists can simply carve out a new imaginary branching event for that animal in their nested hierarchy diagrams. They can root this animal's lineage as far back as necessary to show where it would have branched off from a "common ancestor" and began developing its unique pattern of traits.
This is all possible because evolutionists are constantly working with imaginary events in the mystical imaginary evolutionary past.
Furthermore, even existing lineages can be fundamentally rearranged if it means harmonizing evolutionary models with new data. All of it is malleable play-doh that is designed to accommodate unexpected data.
So essentially whenever their "nested hierarchy" is broken, they can simply fabricate a new nested group to fix it.
This is all fine and dandy for the purposes of working with hypothetical models... but hopefully you now see how absurd the claim is that Evolution is somehow being rigorously 'tested' because all of life falls into a "nested hierarchy of common descent". This is yet another myth that the evolutionary community perpetuates to sell you their creation religion.
Evolution is a fog that settles around the shifting landscape of data.
