As Christians....

[rmwilliamsll]

Granted -- perhaps a better word than similarities would be just pattern. I think the other parts still hold.
TEs see patterns and deduce common ancestry, while also believing in a common process starter. YECs see patterns and deduce a common designer.

as the plagarism issue strongly suggests, common designer is not deducible from errors but common descent is.


the only suitable 'common designer' argument is that this designer designed it so that it looked as if it had evolved.


the first big issue is swapped modules.
the second is the genetic equivalent of speling errors.

the fact that spelling errors are introduced into copyrighted works IN ORDER TO catch plagarism should give every "common designer' believers pause to contemplate.


if you copy this posting and claim it as your own. and your defense is that we are talking about the same thing and it is only wise to think that we would say the same kind of thing.

then i point out that i misspelled speling above.
don't you see how this is evidence for common descent and evidence against a common designer? one is derived from the other, a tree, not as AiG is so fond of saying, a forest or even a cut lawn with multiple root systems.

you copied an error, what are the odds of a spelling error being independently derived, along with the whole rest of the sequence? why are courts comfortable with plagarism evidenced by embedded spelling or factual errors(embed a false encyclopedia entry)?

 

[shernren]

Granted -- perhaps a better word than similarities would be just pattern. I think the other parts still hold.
TEs see patterns and deduce common ancestry, while also believing in a common process starter. YECs see patterns and deduce a common designer.

Yes, you may. But are both deductions valid? How do you know your deduction is valid? How do you know mine isn't?

At a crime scene, a man is found dead with a bullet in his head.

Detective A sees the bullet and thinks someone shot him.
Detective B sees the bullet and thinks he shot himself.
Detective C sees the bullet and thinks he was born with a bullet in his head and died of some other mysterious cause.

How would we tell who is right? By comparing the strength of the evidence, both direct (the bullet) and indirect (everything else on the crime scene), to what each detective's claim predicts, since all three claims predict different things.

Just saying "If I saw similarity I would deduce a common designer - I see similarity - therefore it is valid for me to believe in supernatural common design instead of common descent" does not de facto make whatever you said right. Invalid deductions do exist, and with all due respect, the deduction above seems to be one of them, as rmswilliams' discussion of the evidence seems to point to.

 

[gluadys]

I agree that TEs see a common process starter -- but I don't think that flows directly from the observation as much as a common ancestor does.

True. Observation leads to the thesis of a common ancestor. Faith leads us to believe this was God's plan for creating new species.

Also, I do not see God as merely a "process starter". That strikes me as a Deist belief. I believe that God is always interacting with his creation. He doesn't just start processes. He nurtures them and guides them to fulfil his purposes.

 

[gluadys]

Granted -- perhaps a better word than similarities would be just pattern. I think the other parts still hold.
TEs see patterns and deduce common ancestry, while also believing in a common process starter. YECs see patterns and deduce a common designer.

And this is where we come to what separates science from metaphysics.

The pattern we see leads science to conclude common ancestry. This is because the pattern is consistent with common ancestry and inconsistent with any other pattern. If something inconsistent with common ancestry is found, then that hypothesis will need to be rethought.

But what conceivable pattern would be inconsistent with a common designer? How could you use patterns of similarity and difference to show that there was no common designer?

A common designer is not falsifiable. Every conceivable pattern is consistent with a common designer. Even a pattern of totally unique species with no similarities to each other would be consistent with a common designer who valued originality in design.

So the question is not one of ancestry vs. design, but why does this design (nested hierarchy) exist? Why would God design species to fit into a pattern produced by common ancestry if that was not the means by which he designed them?