tyreth said:
This is simultaneously untrue and irrelevant.
It is neither, as I will show.
It is irrelevant because I simply sought to demonstrate why it seems completely reasonable to the young earth creationist to believe that God designed the world showing unity on the fundamental level, and diversity on the higher levels.
It is relevant because in your attempt to do so, you overlooked contradictory evidence and oversimplified supportive evidence.
It is untrue because we see plenty of things intelligently designed by humans that show a principle of inheritence. Stories for example start off simple, ideas are stolen, and the stories deepened and widened. Music is the same, starting from a simple sound being heard, and then built upon. Designs in buildings also - since the original architecture of humans was presumably simple shelters, all the way to the modern designs. Again, these all inherited intelligently designed aspects from predecessors.
True, but all of this is meme inheritance not gene inheritance. Memes are not spread after the same biological pattern as genes. Intelligent design generally follows the patterns of spreading memes than that of spreading genes, because it is not restricted to the mechanism of biological inheritance.
And there is no philosophical or theological reason why a divine creator would be restricted to the lines of biological inheritance either.
Then there is also the honest possibility that in the future humans will design things that will mimick natures inheritence even greater - AI that can combine with other AI to produce offspring that are both similar and different to the AI it spawned from. Robots that are capable of recreating in kind, with variability. These are all things not beyond the scope of human ability.
I would not expect any self-replicating robots to be restricted to lines of biological inheritance either.
A sequence of evolved building designs over the history of humans would be sufficient, if I understand your challenge correctly.
No, a sequence would not be sufficient. What would be needed is a single nested hierarchy. And I think your misinterpretation of the challenge and the reason you consider my comments irrelevant is that you either do not understand what a nested hierarchy is, and/or you do not understand why it is relevant.
So let's skip directly to Theobald's work since it is his first point.
There is a lengthy response, though not up to date (since Theobald modified the original document, making it hard to maintain a response) here:
http://www.trueorigin.org/theobald1a.asp
I have read this before and bookmarked it. I do not consider that he has successfully dealt with any of Theobald's points, but it is more important at this time to deal with my understanding and yours than with the opinions of third parties.
Theobald says:
Based solely on the theory of common descent and the genetics of known organisms, we strongly predict that we will never find any modern species from known phyla on this Earth with a foreign, non-nucleic acid genetic material. We also make the strong prediction that all newly discovered species that belong to the known phyla will use the "standard genetic code" or a close derivative thereof.
In simplified English, he is saying the theory of evolution predicts that all living organisms from bacteria to dandelions, from amoeba to mushrooms to elephant and humans, will speak the same DNA "language" with no more difference than one might find in a regional dialect of the language. There will not be different meanings to the same DNA sequence as one moves from one species to another.
This is in contrast to human languages where, even when the same alphabet is used, the meaning of a sequence of letters differs from one language to another. In English the sequence "c-h-o-s-e" is the past tense of a verb referring to making a decision among two or more alternatates. The exact same sequence of letters in French is a noun meaning "thing".
This does not happen with DNA sequences. A codon for an amino acid refers to the same amino acid in all forms of life, no matter how diverse.
Some prediction. What exactly is it predicting? This sounds precisely like something that a young earth creationist would also predict with their model. It says nothing.
So yecs say. But that simply shows they do not grasp the force of the evidence.
Let us agree from the start that the universal DNA code can mean either common descent or common design.
The difference is in the relationship of each to the universal code.
The universal code may be consistent with common design, but it is not required by common design. A code that differed from kind to kind would
also be consistent with common design. Such differences in DNA "language" could still fall into families the way real languages fall into Indo-European, Semitic, Mongolian and other trans-lingual families. But they would also be clearly different languages with a good chance that the same DNA sequence would NOT code for the same amino acid from one kind to another.
It would also be possible for an intelligent designer to borrow a "word" from one DNA language and use it in the language of a different kind, as English has borrowed words from languages as diverse as Arabic, Japanese and Inuktitut.
None of this is even conceivable with evolution. A universal DNA code is not simply consistent with common descent; it is
required by common descent. Or to say the same thing in different words. Common descent
predicts a universal DNA code.
That is what the scientific notion of prediction means: that given X, the existence of Y is a requirement. Not just a consistency--a requirement such that if it did not exist, X would necessarily be false.
So you are wrong when you say that "discovering otherwise would not falsify Darwinism." It very much would falsify Darwinism, since it is a strict requirement of common descent.
But it is not a strict requirement of common design. As you say "common designer also can explain or permit such a situation." But common design can also explain or permit an alternative situation in which the DNA language is not universal, and "borrowings" from one language to another need not follow lines of biological inheritance, but can be deliberately chosen by the creator as each kind is created.
The fact that common design would permit both scenarios means that neither is a requirement of common design. And neither, therefore, is a prediction of common design. The thinking of the designer is inscrutable to humans and we do not and cannot know why the design pattern we have was chosen over another equally possible and plausible design pattern.
So we cannot show that a universal DNA code is inconsistent with common design. We can, however, show that it is neither required nor predicted by common design, and therefore not essential to common design. The discovery of a new species in which the DNA code worked differently than it does in all other species would not falsify common design. In fact, the discovery of a new species in which the genetic code was not even based on DNA would not falsify common design. There is no reason a designer might not choose to use a totally different basic model for one or more creations.
It would, on the other hand, falsify common descent.
The question is one of a difference between common designer or common ancestry. Both of these models share the prediction above. And, as I said, making the discovery he points out would not falsify common ancestry.
No, both models do not "share the prediction". Only common descent predicts that "we will never find any modern species from known phyla on this Earth with a foreign, non-nucleic acid genetic material. We also make the strong prediction that all newly discovered species that belong to the known phyla will use the "standard genetic code" or a close derivative thereof."
Common design only permits this scenario, but also permits others, so it does not, in fact, make this prediction.
And yes, making the proposed discovery would indeed falsify common ancestry, because it means that a modern species would have either a different DNA "language" or a genetic language based on something other than DNA. Given that common descent requires that genes be inherited from biological predecessors, how could that be?
Tell me, if the discovery above were made, would you discard Darwinism?
In so far as a universal common ancestor is concerned, yes indeed. So would all the scientific world. It would be prima facie evidence of separately created kinds. Only evolution "within the kind" could be sustained.
No doubt, some (many?, most?) biologists would spend a good deal of time in research trying to show that the newly discovered species could somehow be included in the standard phylogeny with some tweaking of the branches. But if that could not be accomplished, there would be no choice but to accept that there are two or more independant phylogenies each with its own common ancestor.
One other things bears pointing out - not all science requires falsifiablity. Falsifiability is a useful requirement for science, but not necessary (which is why I said it is preferable above, but not something I required). What is needed is the ability to test and repeat the test.
Comes down to the same thing. All scientific tests are attempts to show the theory is false. There simply is not and likely will not be enough confirmatory evidence to completely validate a theory. For example, even when we find every fossil that ever fossilized, we will not have a complete past history of life on earth because of the rarity of fossilization.
Edit: As you can imagine, I don't have the time or motivation to go through the greater proportion of Theobald's writeup, so if you'd care to quote the portions you think are particularly telling, that would make the discussion easier for us both.
I find the nested hierarchy particularly telling, especially as it has now been twinned. I know of no process other than common descent which
must produce it. And given that it often produces sub-optimal as well as good design, I know of no reason common design by an intelligent agent would produce it.
