Tomkins latest shenanigans - vitellogenin

[Loudmouth]

So maybe the assumption of a nested hierarchy is just conjecture.

Why don't you demonstrate that it is just conjecture instead of making empty accusations.

 

[Loudmouth]

Nonsense. Practically all designed objects will tend to fall into nested hierarchies, and more consistently so if produced by the same designer.

THEN SHOW THAT THEY DO!!!!

For crying out loud, stop making this claim unless you are willing to demonstrate it. If you fail to do so in your next response, then I will accept this as a tacit admission that cars do not fall into a nested hierarchy.

"Mix and matched" traits, as you describe them, do not necessarily violate a nested hierarchy.

YES THEY DO!!!!!

My word, man. Do you not know what a nested hierarchy is?

Example: If evolutionists decide that Birds did not descend from Theropods, this will not suddenly make their Theropod traits a chimeric violation. Evolutionists will simply assume that those similarities are the result of convergence, and modify their nested hierarchy accordingly.

And we are once again in fantasyland. What imaginary biologists do with imaginary data has nothing to do with reality. A chimera of bird and mammal features would falsify a nested hierarchy and falsify the theory of evolution. Period. How many times do we need to repeat it?

There is no obvious reason a designer would design in this peculiar way.

Yes, there is an obvious reason. It is exactly how we observe designers producing designs. We never see designers forcing their designs into a nested hierarchy.

We do find a great deal of genetic similarity between those three groups corresponding to their similar physiology and function.

AND THEY FALL INTO A NESTED HIERARCHY!!!

You keep ignoring this fact.

There is every reason to expect a nested hierarchy. That's how designs usually work.

Bovine excrement. You have failed to support this claim every time you have made it.

Nice try, but a nested hierarchy can manifest in countless different arrangements.

More bovine excrement. You can't even give a single example of cars falling into a nested hierarchy.

Additionally, intelligent designs almost always produce distinct groupings separated by pronounced gaps.

As do fossil groups produced by evolution. More to the point, fossils produced by evolution PRODUCE A NESTED HIERARCHY. Design does not.

Evolution predicts extremely fine gradations between all living things. There is no evidence of this gradation in either extant lifeforms or the fossil record.

Evolution does NOT predict that the fossil record will capture those fine gradations in great enough numbers to have been found by our scant search of the fossil record. That is the part you ignore.

Evolutionists once expected to discover this gradation.

No, they didn't. Darwin already explained why the geologic record would not contain these fine gradations.

 

[lifepsyop]

THEN SHOW THAT THEY DO!!!!

For crying out loud, stop making this claim unless you are willing to demonstrate it. If you fail to do so in your next response, then I will accept this as a tacit admission that cars do not fall into a nested hierarchy.

Are you seriously claiming designed objects can't be arranged in nested hierarchies?

YES THEY DO!!!!!

My word, man. Do you not know what a nested hierarchy is?

Calm down, I went on to clarify that a "mix and match" status is a subjective interpretation and not an actual "mix and match". Did that go over your head?

And we are once again in fantasyland. What imaginary biologists do with imaginary data has nothing to do with reality.

How is it "fantasyland" when it's an actual argument proposed by modern experts in the field?

In 1996, Feduccia published the first edition (second edition in 1999) of The Origin and Evolution of Birds, a comprehensive review of his research on both early avian evolution and a synopsis of the history of the Cenozoic radiation of modern birds. The book presented a thorough overview of earlier criticisms of the theropod hypothesis for the origin of birds and a "ground-up" origin of avian flight, expanded on many of those arguments, and presented a series of new arguments questioning the hypotheses of homology advanced as evidence for the theropod hypothesis. Feduccia argued that many of the proposed homologous similarities between theropods and birds were ambiguous, and that other similarities between birds and theropods could plausibly be explained as homoplasy, particularly those in the hindlimb and pelvis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Feduccia

As I explained, if consensus later shifts to Feduccia's views, it won't suddenly make Birds' "Theropod" traits a chimeric "mix and match" violation. It will simply cause evolutionists to re-characterize those traits from homology to convergence.

This is proof that the Evolutionary nested hierarchy can significantly switch major animal groups around without violating itself, thus the evolutionary nested hierarchy is clearly not objective as you claim.

A chimera of bird and mammal features would falsify a nested hierarchy and falsify the theory of evolution. Period. How many times do we need to repeat it?

Sorry, but earlier I pressed you repeatedly to explain your reasoning and you backed down, so this assertion of yours is meaningless.

Yes, there is an obvious reason. It is exactly how we observe designers producing designs. We never see designers forcing their designs into a nested hierarchy.

They don't have to force it. Nested hierarchies flow naturally from design. This is because designers tend to iterate off common templates or archetypes. They don't try to constantly reinvent the wheel. Not hard to understand.

AND THEY FALL INTO A NESTED HIERARCHY!!!

You keep ignoring this fact.

I don't ignore it. I have no problem that they fall into a nested hierarchy.

More bovine excrement. You can't even give a single example of cars falling into a nested hierarchy.

Here's a simple example. Before you critique it, you might want to revisit our previous exchanges as I've probably already addressed your criticisms.

As do fossil groups produced by evolution. More to the point, fossils produced by evolution PRODUCE A NESTED HIERARCHY. Design does not.

Previously addressed.

Evolution does NOT predict that the fossil record will capture those fine gradations in great enough numbers to have been found by our scant search of the fossil record. That is the part you ignore.

Weird that earlier evolutionary paleontologists predicted they would find a pattern of gradation. Later evolutionists admitted it was a failed prediction.

And the fossil record certainly is not scant with regards to groups like marine invertebrates. It is abundant. Funny that the same distinct gaps persist.

No, they didn't. Darwin already explained why the geologic record would not contain these fine gradations.

Sure not perfect gradation, but evolutionists predicted they would nevertheless find an unambiguous pattern. They later admitted this was a failed prediction, giving rise to new theories of punctuated equilibrium. It makes your side look really bad when you try and cover up simple facts like this just because they may paint your theory is a negative light.

 

[The Cadet]

This is not a particularly impressive tree. For starters, it's not really a tree. It's a line. Secondly, the units are cherry-picked so as to very rarely have overlapping characteristics. How does that graph look when we add various convertibles from various lines? Or convertibles at all? I don't think you understand how nested heirarchies work in the slightest.

 

[lifepsyop]

This is not a particularly impressive tree. For starters, it's not really a tree. It's a line. Secondly, the units are cherry-picked so as to very rarely have overlapping characteristics. How does that graph look when we add various convertibles from various lines? Or convertibles at all? I don't think you understand how nested heirarchies work in the slightest.

I was asked for an example of a nested hierarchy for vehicles and provided one. The image shows how different types of vehicles are placed within different sub-groups based on shared traits. If you can't understand how this is a nested hierarchy then maybe you shouldn't be participating in this discussion.

 

[46AND2]

So maybe the assumption of a nested hierarchy is just conjecture.

Conjecture? It's OBVIOUS. Your family tree forms a nested hierarchy. So does everybody else's. That's what common descent does. Designed things, obviously do not form a nested hierarchy.

 

[Papias]

Here's a simple example. Before you critique it, you might want to revisit our previous exchanges as I've probably already addressed your criticisms.

Not a tree, and as has been pointed out, you ignore most features. For instance, some of each kind have solid tires, some don't. Some of all have radios, some don't. Plenty of cars have dual wheels, and so on. Fail.

I'm amazed at how clear, open, and helpful so many people have been - especially Loudmouth - in responding to you.

In Christ-

Papias

 

[46AND2]

Come on, make a little effort to understand before you decide to disagree.
(but i guess we should all do that)

Wings for flight then.
Let's forget about hydrofoils.

Humanity has designed and manufactured jets, propeller-planes, delta wings, flying wings (fussilage = wing) all to be able to fly, yet in very different packages.
They all use (a) wing(s).

And they all have different designers. Your argument is common design, common designer, NOT uncommon design, common designer.

Really?
You admit it's designed and manufactured though, right?

Well,
THAT"S THE WHOLE POINT !!

Wut? Cars? Motorcycles? Vehicles? Of course they are. So what? If that was your point, then it has no meaning. Your point was SUPPOSED to be how cars were a good analogy for a nested hierarchy, and argument for common design, common designer. You failed miserably.

 

[lifepsyop]

Not a tree, and as has been pointed out, you ignore most features. For instance, some of each kind have solid tires, some don't. Some of all have radios, some don't. Plenty of cars have dual wheels, and so on. Fail.

Obviously it is not exhaustive. It's simply one example of vehicles being arranged in a nested hierarchy, which is what I was asked for.

As I've already explained, and shown with the Bird/Theropod example, Common Ancestry hierarchies work the same way. They can be arranged differently based on how you want to weight character traits. If you don't understand this, go back and review the thread. I don't have time to keep repeating myself.

 

[46AND2]

... If you can't understand how this is a nested hierarchy then maybe you shouldn't be participating in this discussion.

Too funny.

 

[The Cadet]

I was asked for an example of a nested hierarchy for vehicles and provided one.

Here are some traits you ignore:
- Does it have a radio
- What are its wheels made of
- What kind of engine does it have
- where is the engine positioned
- How many doors does it have
- What kind of windows does it have
- How much does it weigh
- How much does it cost to produce
- How much power does it have
- What kind of fuel does it need
- Is it a convertible
- Front, rear, or all-wheel-drive?
- Does it have a trailer hitch?

I could spend all day listing traits about automobiles, and by arbitrarily picking and choosing among those traits, I could form countless completely arbitrary, non-convergent nested heirarchies. This is what happens when the traits are designed - they're independent from each other. The number of doors on a car is fundamentally unrelated to where its engine sits. The type of wheels used is fundamentally unrelated to how the windows work. And so on, and so forth. I suppose the question was poorly phrased - you can make a nested heirarchy out of literally anything by randomly picking and choosing attributes. What you can't make is a parsimonious nested heirarchy.

Obviously it is not exhaustive. It's simply one example of vehicles being arranged in a nested hierarchy, which is what I was asked for.

And in doing so, you have completely missed the point. Here, let me highlight the part where the point is missed.

"It's simply one example of vehicles being arranged in a nested hierarchy"

I could create an entirely different nested heirarchy (and will, if you want me to!) that is equally valid, and that's our problem.

It's not just that the nested heirarchies of evolved organisms fit into nested heirarchies, it's that they objectively fit into singular, parsimonious nested heirarchies. The tree of life is not the way it is because certain traits are arbitrarily picked out of the mass and then strung together (as you did). You could not rearrange the tree of life in any more simple way.

This becomes blatantly obvious when we talk about genetics, where we have a perfectly clear measure of how different any particular gene is from any other. The fact that genetics falls so cleanly into a nested heirarchy is proof positive that genes evolve. That specific genes regularly recapitulate the entire genome, ERVs, and morphology is just the icing on the cake.

Relevant.

 

[Loudmouth]

Are you seriously claiming designed objects can't be arranged in nested hierarchies?

As your diagram shows below, things like V8's and two passenger doors do not follow your hierarchy.

Calm down, I went on to clarify that a "mix and match" status is a subjective interpretation and not an actual "mix and match". Did that go over your head?

It isn't a subjective interpretation. IT IS EXACTLY WHAT HUMAN DESIGNERS DO!!!!!

My word man, look around.

How is it "fantasyland" when it's an actual argument proposed by modern experts in the field?

"Evolutionists will simply assume that those similarities are the result of convergence, and modify their nested hierarchy accordingly."

The vast, vast majority of evolutionists put birds in the theropod group. Only a stubborn few put them outside of the theropod group because of personal pride, Feduccia being one of them.

This is proof that the Evolutionary nested hierarchy can significantly switch major animal groups around without violating itself, thus the evolutionary nested hierarchy is clearly not objective as you claim.

Really? Where is the mammal/bird mixture I keep asking for?

Sorry, but earlier I pressed you repeatedly to explain your reasoning and you backed down, so this assertion of yours is meaningless.

I never, ever backed down. I have CONSTISTENLY stated that a bird/mammal mixture of features would falsify the theory of evolution. I have repeated and repeated and repeated that same statement, NEVER BACKING DOWN FROM IT.

If all you can do is misrepresent my posts, then please go elsewhere.

They don't have to force it. Nested hierarchies flow naturally from design.

Yet another claim backed by zero evidence, and contradicted by all of it. Cars don't fall into a nested hierarchy. Computers don't fall into a nested hierarchy. Paintings don't fall into a nested hierarchy. Human designs do not fall into a nested hierarchy.

This is because designers tend to iterate off common templates or archetypes.

A species iterated from mammals and birds would violate a nested hierarchy. Cars that are iterations of different lineages of automobile violate a nested hierarchy.

They don't try to constantly reinvent the wheel. Not hard to understand.

If cars fell into a nested hierarchy then you would only find airbags in a single lineage of car, the first lineage that airbags appeared in. That isn't what you see. Once airbags were invented, the spread horizontally to all cars and trucks which is a CLEAR VIOLATION OF A NESTED HIERARCHY. This is just one example.

I don't ignore it. I have no problem that they fall into a nested hierarchy.

In the diagram below, show the distrubution of V6 and V8 engines. If it doesn't follow your diagram, then your nested hierarchy is violated.

Do the same for tire sizes, types of fuel, superchargers, and fuel injection. You will find that none of these features follow your hierarchy. Automobiles do not fall into a nested hierarchy.

Weird that earlier evolutionary paleontologists predicted they would find a pattern of gradation.

Weird that you can't quote any of them.

[qutoe]Later evolutionists admitted it was a failed prediction.[/quote]

Darwin himself said that we should not see fine gradations in the fossil record. He wrote an entire chapter on why this is.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter9.html

This was at the very start of the theory.

And the fossil record certainly is not scant with regards to groups like marine invertebrates. It is abundant. Funny that the same distinct gaps persist.

It is completely expected with evolution, as Darwin explained.

Sure not perfect gradation, but evolutionists predicted they would nevertheless find an unambiguous pattern.

And we do. IT IS CALLED A NESTED HIERARCHY. For crying out loud, pay attention.

They later admitted this was a failed prediction, giving rise to new theories of punctuated equilibrium.

That is a complete misrepresentation of the facts. Read here:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter9.html

 

[sfs]

Conjecture? It's OBVIOUS. Your family tree forms a nested hierarchy. So does everybody else's. That's what common descent does.

Human genealogies do not generally form nested hierarchies. They form nets because they inherit from two parents, not one. Species (in the absence of extensive horizontal gene transfer or hybridization) do form nested hierarchies because they only have one parent each.

 

[46AND2]

Human genealogies do not generally form nested hierarchies. They form nets because they inherit from two parents, not one. Species (in the absence of extensive horizontal gene transfer or hybridization) do form nested hierarchies because they only have one parent each.

I see. That makes sense. Thanks for the correction.

 

[lifepsyop]

I could spend all day listing traits about automobiles,

Yes, so could I, and that's not how I wish to spend my day.

and by arbitrarily picking and choosing among those traits, I could form countless completely arbitrary, non-convergent nested heirarchies.

Yes, and? You could do the same for living things, by say, arbitrarily grouping animals by their average size, their ecological zone, level of aggressiveness, whether or not they use poisons, etc.

This is what happens when the traits are designed - they're independent from each other.

Not really. There are strong relationships between traits. For example, if a vehicle has tires and a fuel reservoir, it's highly likely that it also has an engine and transmission system.

The number of doors on a car is fundamentally unrelated to where its engine sits.

So? Number of doors can be assigned far less weight/importance in classification schemes.
By the same token, I could say the adult size of an animal is fundamentally unrelated to its mode of reproduction.
Or that genetic similarity is fundamentally unrelated to whether or not an animal has flight capability.

The type of wheels used is fundamentally unrelated to how the windows work.

So? The mode of locomotion of animals is fundamentally unrelated to whether or not they utilize echolocation.

And so on, and so forth. I suppose the question was poorly phrased - you can make a nested heirarchy out of literally anything by randomly picking and choosing attributes. What you can't make is a parsimonious nested heirarchy.

Yes you can make a more, or most likely hierarchy of designs by using commonality/function to weight them. It doesn't have to be randomly chosen attributes.

"It's simply one example of vehicles being arranged in a nested hierarchy"

I could create an entirely different nested heirarchy (and will, if you want me to!) that is equally valid, and that's our problem.

I can organize wheeled vehicles using common relationships of tires, fuel reservoir and delivery system, and transmission.... or I could ignore these common trait relationships and arbitrarily sort them based on the body color, which would result instead in groups consisting of automobiles, bicycles, skateboards, etc. I could do the same thing with animals by disregarding their basic body-plans and sorting them only by average pigmentation.

It's not just that the nested heirarchies of evolved organisms fit into nested heirarchies, it's that they objectively fit into singular, parsimonious nested heirarchies. The tree of life is not the way it is because certain traits are arbitrarily picked out of the maou.ss and then strung together (as you did). You could not rearrange the tree of life in any more simple way.

Let's unpack this.

You are talking about two different things.
1. Parsimony
2. The Nested Hierarchy of Common Descent

The reason the two can be decoupled is because, while there will always be a quality of a "most parsimonious" nested hierarchy, the narrative of Common Descent is able to be significantly altered.

Example:
1. Most evolutionists currently nest Birds within Theropod Dinosaurs, believing the theropod similarities are homologous.
2. Some experts believe they are nested outside of Theropods, believing the theropod similarities are convergent.
3. If future research swings consensus to place Birds outside of Theropods, this will have significantly altered the Nested Hierarchy of Common Descent.... Yet, the end result will still be a "Most Parsimonious" Hierarchy.

If Universal Common Ancestry can accommodate such drastic changes, then it obviously isn't this monolithic objective hierarchy that evolutionists love to paint it as.

This becomes blatantly obvious when we talk about genetics, where we have a perfectly clear measure of how different any particular gene is from any other. The fact that genetics falls so cleanly into a nested heirarchy is proof positive that genes evolve. That specific genes regularly recapitulate the entire genome, ERVs, and morphology is just the icing on the cake.

This is some pretty vague elephant hurling.

Here again you are referring to just the quality of being a nested hierarchy as if this automatically equates to an objective hierarchy of common descent. This is not the case as I've demonstrated.

Let's say that genetic studies happened to place birds much closer to mammals instead of reptiles. You think that would be a problem for Evolution? No, it wouldn't. (Evolutionists have even toyed with this idea in the recent past) The theory is built to adapt to shifting narratives.

And by the way, I can point you to a study where ERV type insertions completely fight a favored nested hierarchy of mammals. (I've posted it here multiple times) You'll find that Evolution theory is pliable enough to accommodate data that is in severe conflict with a favored hierarchy.

 

[SLP]

https://answersingenesis.org/geneti...tellogenin-pseudogene-exists-in-human-genome/

Not sure if this is rank dishonesty or selective omission, but Tomkins claims the paper showing vitellogenin psudogenes in humans is wrong because 150 base pairs are actually part of a GAM gene. There's a number of issues with his claims, but the biggest stems from this part:

The sequence identified by Brawand, Wahli, and Kaessmann (2008) as being a vtg pseudogene is only 150 bases long
​

"The sequence" is actually one exon on one of three VIT genes.

Here's the original paper:
http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0060063

Trying to make science support an anti-scientific worldview breeds desperation and dishonesty. If people like Tomkins were so confident that their creation myths are reality based, why do they NEVER actually do any research on their own claims/beliefs?

 

[SLP]

The evolutionist's argument rests on the unfounded assumption that the presence of the "pseudogene" serves no purpose to the organism whatsoever, and therefore must only be present because it's a remnant from evolution.

Is that really our argument? If so, I was never told that nor have I ever read that, at least not in the field of phylogenetics. You see, in phylogenetics, what the sequence does is irrelevant. Pseudogenes are great targets for analysis because they are under little selection pressure, and accumulate lots of phylogenetic signal.

 

[SLP]

Easily. If the creator designs iterations off of common templates, (e.g. Vertebrate template, Mammal template, etc.) (much like a human designer) then it will necessarily produce a very orderly nested hierarchy.

Then surely it should be easy for you to provide examples of a common DNA template existing in sharks and dolphins with regard to their morphology.

 

[SLP]

That's an odd distinction to make considering phylogenies are fundamentally based on homologies.
It isn't evidence for evolution because the sequences don't fall into a specific arrangement predicted by evolution.

Evolutionists merely assert a sequence is more ancient, the more distantly it is shared between distinct animal groups.

If the VTG genes in question were only found in reptiles and not mammals, then evolutionists would just say the sequence was less ancient, and was a more advanced yolk production mechanism that evolved after reptiles and mammals split, and *poof* another arrangement that magically falls into the amorphous evolutionary phylogeny

Thank you for proving that you are spectacularly ignorant of how such things are actually determined. This is what happens when you fail to accept that YEC propagandists like those associated with ICR are not interested in telling the truth, rather, they want to gain converts.

 

[Loudmouth]

Yes, so could I, and that's not how I wish to spend my day.

You made the claim that automobiles fall into a nested hierarchy. That has been thoroughly refuted. You get vastly different trees when using different features.

I don't blame you for not spending more time on a loser.

Yes, and? You could do the same for living things, by say, arbitrarily grouping animals by their average size, their ecological zone, level of aggressiveness, whether or not they use poisons, etc.

Those aren't morphological characteristics. When you create a tree based on middle ear bones you get the same tree as when you create a tree based on fur, mammary glands, feathers, flow through lungs, and tons of other features. You keep getting the same tree with morphological characteristics with life. Not so with automobiles.

If we take all of the automobiles on your cladogram and organize them based on having a V6, V8, or inline 4 engine, we get a completely different tree. It isn't just a few changes at closely related nodes. We have a complete re-organization of the tree. We have pickups right next to cars and motorcycles where they were distantly related on your previous cladogram. If we organize based on being a Ford or Chevy, we have yet another vastly different tree.

Not really. There are strong relationships between traits. For example, if a vehicle has tires and a fuel reservoir, it's highly likely that it also has an engine and transmission system.

Which engines and which transmissions? If it has a V6, will it be strongly tied to an automatic or manual transmission? If it has a Ford engine, will it be tied to diesel and diesel only? If it is a diesel, will it be tied to a 4 speed or 6 speed transmission? Or all of these traits completely mixed together in no discernible pattern?

By the same token, I could say the adult size of an animal is fundamentally unrelated to its mode of reproduction.

The number of bones in the middle ear is completely unrelated to the need for fur, yet we find three middle ear bones tied to fur throughout life. We don't find anything like that in automobiles.

Or that genetic similarity is fundamentally unrelated to whether or not an animal has flight capability.

Why would species with fur have more similar cytochrome c alleles than species without fur? How do you explain that?

So? The mode of locomotion of animals is fundamentally unrelated to whether or not they utilize echolocation.

Mode of locomotion is not a morphological characteristic. If you want to make that comparison, then you need to compare the limbs involved in flight, the pattern and shape of the bones.

I can organize wheeled vehicles using common relationships of tires, fuel reservoir and delivery system, and transmission....

And when you do so, you get an entirely different tree than the one you already gave us.

You have completely failed to show that automobiles fall into a nested hierarchy. In fact, you have proven that they don't.