proving evolution as just a "theory"

[Jimmy D]

First, in limited genomes (e.g., mitochondrial, bacterial), we DO see more than 1 mutation occurring at specific loci. This is called homoplasy. We know about it, understand it, and take it into account.

Second, in eukaryotic genomes, which are much, much larger than prokaryotic genomes, the rate of mutation is substantially less. Recent estimates put the number of new mutations any given person has at birth to be about 100-200 (probably closer to 100).

That is 0.000003% of the genome.

The probability that any 2 organisms possess the same mutation at the same locus by chance alone is vanishingly small (something like 0.00000000000000001%). That is just a 'random' sharing of a single SNP. Consider that we see THOUSANDS of these unique shared SNPs or indels (which are much less common than SNPs) - the numbers soon exceed the limits of Borel's law (which I frankly could not care less about, but IDcreationists seem to think it is important - a quick back of the envelope calculation shows that 6 organisms sharing a single unique mutation by chance alone in a genome of 3 billion bps is 1 in 1.37*10^-57).

Add to that the articles I have cited several times documenting the accuracy and reliability of molecular phylogenetics methods when tested on knowns, and arguing against this area of evidence comes across as little more than ignorant desperation.

Er, hello?

Certain finches are mis-classified as different species, stop ignoring scientific defintions.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

Look kid, I asked you to support your claims of "perfect genomes". All you've done since is duck, dodge, and evade to avoid providing support.

You can accuse me of whatever you want, but it's a simple thing. If you have real support for your contention, present it. If you don't, then don't. Given your evasion, it's patently obvious you don't.

But these continued games you keep trying to play are tiresome and lame. If you're just here to troll, then back to the ignore list you can go.

Whatever excuse floats your boat to cover your fear of answering a simple question.

Can we get wolves from poodles?

Everyone here can see you are doing nothing but running... I understand tho, because the answer will be devastating to your claims....

 

[Justatruthseeker]

Er, hello?

Certain finches are mis-classified as different species, stop ignoring scientific defintions.

I’m glad you finally understand.

 

[pitabread]

Everyone here can see you are doing nothing but running... I understand tho, because the answer will be devastating to your claims....

You need to work on your reading comprehension. I wasn't the one making the claims. You made a claim about humans coming from an original two "perfect genomes". I've repeatedly asked you to support it, and you've completely failed to do so. And now you are engaging in childish tactics to try to turn this around like we've somehow entered Bizarro World.

At this point, I'm putting you back on my ignore list because you have nothing to offer. Your claim of "perfect genomes" remains completely unsupported.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

You need to work on your reading comprehension. I wasn't the one making the claims. You made a claim about humans coming from an original two "perfect genomes". I've repeatedly asked you to support it, and you've completely failed to do so. And now you are engaging in childish tactics to try to turn this around like we've somehow entered Bizarro World.

At this point, I'm putting you back on my ignore list because you have nothing to offer. Your claim of "perfect genomes" remains completely unsupported.

proving evolution as just a "theory"

I am supporting it. Can we get wolves from poodles?

 

[rjs330]

This post makes no sense given the context of your later post where you claim "All those things you talk about are evidence of common design. "

That latter claim implicitly implies that you believe that the evidence used to support evolution is inherently valid, even if you think it somehow supports your fantasy conclusion of "common design".

But then to also claim that there is "no evidence we came from a common ancestor" implies that you are rejecting that very same evidence. The evidence you claim is evidence for common design.

So either the evidence for evolution is inherently valid which is the implication in claiming it also somehow supports common design. Or the evidence for evolution is inherently invalid, in which case it doesn't support common design.

One way or another, you've contradicted yourself.

That is incorrect. It is evidence of common design. If there are commonalities among life all it shows is that there is common design. Just like there are commonalities among anything such as buildings or cars or anything else. It does not mean we came from the same ancestor. A skyscraper stands because of the design of it. There is no evidence it came from the same building that one in another city came from.

Common design is NOT the same thing as evolution. In fact there is no evidence of evolution from a common ancestor. There is evidence that all life has common design. There is no commonn ancestor. No one has found one. In fact there is no evidence that anything came from anything it was not already. A bird was always a bird. It was never anything but a bird. A spider was always a spider. It was never anything else but a spider. But those two creatures have things in common that allow it to survive. They all have DNA. They are designed to breath the air that exists on this planet. Or the fish in the ocean are designed to live in the salt water. Design.

 

[rjs330]

You are calling me out on knowing what I'm talking about?

Yep. I see you didn't answer my challenge.

 

[rjs330]

Incorrect. You must understand anything about evolution if you seriously think that a bird with wings and arms would "prove"* it. That same goes for any of the other things on my list. If you are that bereft of understanding of the subject, I suggest reading more and commenting less.



This particular misconception has nothing to do with my list of potential falsifications. I'll try and keep this really simple.
1. Descendants never stop being that their ancestors were. Humans will always be hominids, primates, mammals, synapsids, sarcopterygians, etc.
2. Lineage specific characteristics like fur/hair in mammals being found in another branch like fish would falsify evolution.
3. Beings that are not closely related (humans and armadillos) having more in common genetically than beings that are closely related (humans and chimpanzees) would falsify evolution.
4. Lobsters are invertebrates and thus lack a vertebral column. If we were to observe one with a vertebral column that would falsify evolution.
5. Etc.



Again, we're getting into the fact that you don't actually understand evolution. A "bird" is not some sort of pure Platonic form. Birds evolved from feathered theropod dinosaurs which themselves evolved from basal archosaurs. "Birds" however, never stopped being dinosaurs or archosaurs (etc.). The are merely a branch of theropod dinosaurs that split off in the Jurassic and survived the K-Pg extinction event. Again, I suggest you read more and pontificate less until you grasp some of the basics of evolution.

* You really need to learn that science doesn't prove anything and there's no such thing as scientific proof.

Nope it would show evolution to be true. Because that is exactly what evolution teaches. Something without arms, grew one. At some point it grew an arm that it never had to begin with.

 

[Bugeyedcreepy]

Whatever excuse floats your boat to cover your fear of answering a simple question.

Can we get wolves from poodles?

Everyone here can see you are doing nothing but running... I understand tho, because the answer will be devastating to your claims....

I am supporting it. Can we get wolves from poodles?

Oh, Look! A Creationist that doesn't understand Evolution! Who'd have thought?

Poodles, like all Dogs, are a domesticated subset of Wolves.

Would you like me to say that again for you?

Poodles.... like ALL DOGS, ARE A DOMESTICATED _SUBSET_ OF WOLVES.

Poodles... ARE A DOMESTICATED _SUBSET_ OF WOLVES.

Poodles... ARE A _SUBSET_ OF WOLVES.

POODLES.... ARE.... WOLVES.

POODLES ARE WOLVES.

......now, tapdance.

 

[USincognito]

Yep. I see you didn't answer my challenge.

You didn't offer a challenge. And I notice you ignored post #4126 where I broke down the paper in layman's terms. Why is that?

Nope it would show evolution to be true. Because that is exactly what evolution teaches. Something without arms, grew one. At some point it grew an arm that it never had to begin with.

No, no, no NO, NO. Stop asserting and start reading. Or, at the very least, start actually discussing.

Everything I listed is a potential falsification for evolution. If you cannot understand that, then you do not understand nearly as much about evolution as you think you do. Again, here is the list. Instead of just repeating yourself, why don't you pick a specific example and we can discuss it in detail. You misunderstood my example of a bird with arms and wings. Would you like to discuss that one?

- A bird with wings and arms
- Lizards with mammary glands
- Lobsters with vertebrae
- Roses with melanocites
- Humans and armadillos sharing more DNA than humans and chimpanzees
- Fish with fur​

 

[pitabread]

That is incorrect. It is evidence of common design. If there are commonalities among life all it shows is that there is common design. Just like there are commonalities among anything such as buildings or cars or anything else. It does not mean we came from the same ancestor. A skyscraper stands because of the design of it. There is no evidence it came from the same building that one in another city came from.

Common design is NOT the same thing as evolution. In fact there is no evidence of evolution from a common ancestor. There is evidence that all life has common design. There is no commonn ancestor. No one has found one. In fact there is no evidence that anything came from anything it was not already. A bird was always a bird. It was never anything but a bird. A spider was always a spider. It was never anything else but a spider. But those two creatures have things in common that allow it to survive. They all have DNA. They are designed to breath the air that exists on this planet. Or the fish in the ocean are designed to live in the salt water. Design.

You're still contradicting yourself. But considering your responses are just the same repetitive soundbites, you likely don't even realize where the contradiction lies.

This started with your claim that "We can say there is a common design in life and it works just as well. Because we can use that common design to make all the discoveries we want.", in response to my discussion about applications of evolutionary biology.

I then presented a paper to see if you could demonstrate it: Discovery of Regulatory Elements by a Computational Method for Phylogenetic Footprinting. Specifically the paper described an algorithmic approach to finding regulatory sequences in genomes using phylogenetic trees. Phylogenetic trees are by definition a hierarchy of evolutionary relationships. And just for emphasis, this isn't merely a case of "commonalities". They show specific evolutionary relationships (i.e. which organisms share specific common ancestry) as well as data related to relative divergence times. This is about patterns not mere commonalities.

Your response was the lackluster, "All those things you talk about are evidence of common design."

By this you are effectively stating that phylogenetic trees are somehow evidence for common design, which on the surface makes no sense. But I'll run with it and thus you are implying two things:

1) that phylogenetic trees are valid hierarchical relationships of different organisms; and,
2) since phylogenetic trees are constructed on the basis of evolutionary relationships, if life was designed then it has the appearance of these evolutionary relationships.​

IOW, you're basically saying that life has the appearance of evolution.

But when you turn around and claim that there is no evidence for common ancestry, you're effectively stating that phylogenetic trees are in fact not valid. And if phylogenetic trees aren't valid, then they certainly can't be evidence for common design.

Now this would be the more logical approach for a creationist to take, since phylogenetic trees make no sense from the perspective of independently designed objects. Again, phylogenetic trees are constructed on the basis of evolutionary relationships. If you're saying those relationships aren't valid, then the trees themselves aren't valid.

But let's go back to your prior claim:

"We can say there is a common design in life and it works just as well. Because we can use that common design to make all the discoveries we want."​

You're now in a quandary. The example I showed you makes use of evolutionary relationships via phylogenetic trees for genomic analysis. If you want to claim you can do the same with "common design" AND reject evidence for evolution at the same time, you need to come up with a valid substitute instead of phylogenetics. But you don't actually have one do you?

Consequently your claim about using "common design" for scientific inquiry is false.

Thus you're stuck repeating contradictory sound bites ad nauseum without even realizing those contradictions. It's like you're the creationist equivalent of Schrodinger's cat, only simultaneously affirming and rejecting evolution.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

Oh, Look! A Creationist that doesn't understand Evolution! Who'd have thought?

Poodles, like all Dogs, are a domesticated subset of Wolves.

Would you like me to say that again for you?

Poodles.... like ALL DOGS, ARE A DOMESTICATED _SUBSET_ OF WOLVES.

Poodles... ARE A DOMESTICATED _SUBSET_ OF WOLVES.

Poodles... ARE A _SUBSET_ OF WOLVES.

POODLES.... ARE.... WOLVES.

POODLES ARE WOLVES.

......now, tapdance.

No, poodles are not wolves.

Please show me where poodles are ever listed when describing wolves?

Types of Wolves | International Wolf Center

Oh, you mean in fantasy where subspecies are incorrectly classified as the same species.

Your own evolutionary biologists disagree with you. Which is why you will never provide one citation that when describing wolves, lists a poodle....

But I notice you didn’t answer the question either.

Can we get wolves from poodles.

So according to your messed up classification, we are still fish then? Or maybe bacteria?

 

[pitabread]

Oh, Look! A Creationist that doesn't understand Evolution! Who'd have thought?

Poodles, like all Dogs, are a domesticated subset of Wolves.

Would you like me to say that again for you?

The funny thing is one doesn't even need to understand evolution to understand what this means, just basic taxonomy.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

You're still contradicting yourself. But considering your responses are just the same repetitive soundbites, you likely don't even realize where the contradiction lies.

This started with your claim that "We can say there is a common design in life and it works just as well. Because we can use that common design to make all the discoveries we want.", in response to my discussion about applications of evolutionary biology.

I then presented a paper to see if you could demonstrate it: Discovery of Regulatory Elements by a Computational Method for Phylogenetic Footprinting. Specifically the paper described an algorithmic approach to finding regulatory sequences in genomes using phylogenetic trees. Phylogenetic trees are by definition a hierarchy of evolutionary relationships. And just for emphasis, this isn't merely a case of "commonalities". They show specific evolutionary relationships (i.e. which organisms share specific common ancestry) as well as data related to relative divergence times. This is about patterns not mere commonalities.

Your response was the lackluster, "All those things you talk about are evidence of common design."

By this you are effectively stating that phylogenetic trees are somehow evidence for common design, which on the surface makes no sense. But I'll run with it and thus you are implying two things:

1) that phylogenetic trees are valid hierarchical relationships of different organisms; and,
2) since phylogenetic trees are constructed on the basis of evolutionary relationships, if life was designed, the consequence is that it carries the appearance of these evolutionary relationships.​

IOW, you're basically saying that life has the appearance of evolution.

But when you turn around and claim that there is no evidence for common ancestry, you're effectively stating that phylogenetic trees are in fact not valid. And if phylogenetic trees aren't valid, then they certainly can't be evidence for common design.

Now this would be the more logical approach for a creationist to take, since phylogenetic trees make no sense from the perspective of independently designed objects. Again, phylogenetic trees being constructed on the basis of evolutionary relationships. If you're saying those relationships aren't valid, then the trees themselves aren't valid.

But let's go back to your prior claim, ""We can say there is a common design in life and it works just as well. Because we can use that common design to make all the discoveries we want." You're now in a quandary. The example I showed you makes use of evolutionary relationships via phylogenetic trees for genomic analysis. If you want to claim you can do the same with "common design" you need to come up with a valid substitute instead of phylogenetics. But you don't actually have one do you?

Consequently your claim about using "common design" for scientific inquiry is false.

Thus you're stuck repeating contradictory sound bites ad nauseum without even realizing those contradictions. It's like you're the creationist equivalent of Schrodinger's cat.

Then present a single solitary “common ancestor” where this split took place on any of these phylogenic trees? Ahhh, is this the point where we start using our imagination and enter the realm of make believe?

Or do we accept the evidence that no common ancestor existed for any claimed split, and assume merely that the same basic materials and genomes were used to create everything separately? Which you then mistake as ancestory, even if your phylogenic tree is missing every single common ancestor at every single split....

What about Schrodinget’s cat? Oh you mean some brain dead person that believed a cat is neither alive nor dead until we open the box and observe it? That’s funny, it took me two hours to get the stinking mice out of my wall that died from eating poison, and I sure didn’t need to wait until I opened up the wall to know it was dead, nor observe it at all. I didn’t ven have to know it ate the poison. Sometimes people with brains overthink things and don’t think at all.

And the funny thing is he got almost everyone to accept cats won’t die and stink in boxes because we haven’t opened the lid yet.... oy vey!

 

[Justatruthseeker]

The funny thing is one doesn't even need to understand evolution to understand what this means, just basic taxonomy.

Nothing basic about it, or we would still be listed as fish, no wait, a collection of jellyfish like organisms, wasn’t that it?

But that begs the question, where did they come from?

 

[Bugeyedcreepy]

No, poodles are not wolves.

Please show me where poodles are ever listed when describing wolves?

Types of Wolves | International Wolf Center

Oh, you mean in fantasy where subspecies are incorrectly classified as the same species.

Your own evolutionary biologists disagree with you. Which is why you will never provide one citation that when describing wolves, lists a poodle....

From Gray wolf - Wikipedia :

"The gray wolf or grey wolf (Canis lupus),[a] also known as the timber wolf[3][4] or western wolf, is a canine native to the wilderness and remote areas of Eurasia and North America. It is the largest extant member of its family, with males averaging 43–45 kg (95–99 lb) and females 36–38.5 kg (79–85 lb).[6] Like the red wolf, it is distinguished from other Canis species by its larger size and less pointed features, particularly on the ears and muzzle.[7] Its winter fur is long and bushy and predominantly a mottled gray in color, although nearly pure white, red, and brown to black also occur.[4] Mammal Species of the World (3rd ed., 2005), a standard reference work in zoology, recognises 37 subspecies of C. lupus.[8]"​

If we follow this to: Subspecies of Canis lupus - Wikipedia , we find among the various sub-species,
we find this under Domestic Dog (Canis Lupus Familiaris) :

"The dog is a divergent subspecies of the gray wolf and was derived from a now-extinct population of Late Pleistocene wolves.[18][37][38] Through selective pressure and selective breeding, the dog has developed into hundreds of varied breeds, and shows more behavioral and morphological variation than any other land mammal.[39]"
​

Then, it's a short step to genetically map out the connection between that and the Poodle, a layman's summary (with pretty, easy to understand pictures for those challenged by big sciency words and ideas): A Simple Chart Shows How Dogs Today Evolved From A Wolf

All these articles are for the unwashed masses, but links to the peer reviewed science to back them up are on these pages - if you have difficulty locating and clicking the link to them, I can do that for you, so just let me know if you have issues.

But I notice you didn’t answer the question either.

Can we get wolves from poodles.

I did answer your question, so as explained again, Poodles are in fact Wolves through ancestry, just as you're an Ape through ancestry. and a Placental Mammal through ancestry, and a Synapsid, and an Anmiote, and a Vertibrate, and a Eukaryote, etc.

So according to your messed up classification, we are still fish then?

Technically, Yes. Aren't you aware of Tiktaalik? You know, the transitional life form between fish and all air-breathing land animals?

Or maybe bacteria?

We were never bacteria. Although, we do have mitochondria, which is a co-opted prokaryotic cell that was most likely bacteria, so I guess we could say that bacteria are an essential makeup of all Eukaryotes?

 

[rjs330]

You didn't offer a challenge. And I notice you ignored post #4126 where I broke down the paper in layman's terms. Why is that?



No, no, no NO, NO. Stop asserting and start reading. Or, at the very least, start actually discussing.

Everything I listed is a potential falsification for evolution. If you cannot understand that, then you do not understand nearly as much about evolution as you think you do. Again, here is the list. Instead of just repeating yourself, why don't you pick a specific example and we can discuss it in detail. You misunderstood my example of a bird with arms and wings. Would you like to discuss that one?

- A bird with wings and arms
- Lizards with mammary glands
- Lobsters with vertebrae
- Roses with melanocites
- Humans and armadillos sharing more DNA than humans and chimpanzees
- Fish with fur​

Apparently fish do have fur. Since fish are the ancestors of bears fish do have fur. Therefore evolution is falsified by your standard.

 

[rjs330]

It has been explained to you previously that using magic words like "speculation" and "assumption" is:
1. Not actually addressing the evidence.
2. Does not make the evidence somehow not evidence.
3. Does not poof the evidence away in a cloud of smoke.

You need to actually address the evidence, not just repeat Creationist magic words.



Title - Colonial origin for Eumetazoa (the title is a typo)
Meaning - True animals evolved from early colony beings

"These transitions included the origins of Metazoa, Eumetazoa, and Bilateria and involved the successive development of poriferan, cnidarian, and bilaterian grades of organization."
Meaning - the origins of animals involved sponges*, then true animals followed with jellyfish* followed by bilatarian body plans for, axiomatically, bilaterians.

"In the model offered for the cnidarian-to-bilaterian transition, the last common ancestor of Eumetazoa is considered to have had a colonial, cnidarian-grade of organization."

For the evolution of jellyfish to bilaterians, the population that gave rise to that spilt (basal true animals) would have had a colony type, jellyfish style body plan.

"Whatever its cause, the individuation of a cnidarian-grade colony furnishes a possible explanation for the rapid diversification of bilaterians in the late Vendian and Cambrian."

An explanation for the development of Ediacaran fauna and the Cambrian explosion can be explained by jellyfish type colony beings developing a variety of body plans.

* I'm using common example beings for porifera and cnidarians.

Thanks for taking a stab at it. I'm still not convinced that you actually know what it all means. I think you had Google help. But that's okay really. We have Google help. So once again we see by your own explanation that what you originally posted is nothing but a bunch of assumptions and suppositions based upon a preconceived belief in evolution. Not surprising really. Just not evidence of a common ancestor.

 

[Bugeyedcreepy]

Apparently fish do have fur. Since fish are the ancestors of bears fish do have fur. Therefore evolution is falsified by your standard.

Everyone already gets how little you understand evolution, no need to flaunt it. Interestingly though, I'd like to see your reference in whatever article is giving you that pearl of wisdom...

 

[rjs330]

You're still contradicting yourself. But considering your responses are just the same repetitive soundbites, you likely don't even realize where the contradiction lies.

This started with your claim that "We can say there is a common design in life and it works just as well. Because we can use that common design to make all the discoveries we want.", in response to my discussion about applications of evolutionary biology.

I then presented a paper to see if you could demonstrate it: Discovery of Regulatory Elements by a Computational Method for Phylogenetic Footprinting. Specifically the paper described an algorithmic approach to finding regulatory sequences in genomes using phylogenetic trees. Phylogenetic trees are by definition a hierarchy of evolutionary relationships. And just for emphasis, this isn't merely a case of "commonalities". They show specific evolutionary relationships (i.e. which organisms share specific common ancestry) as well as data related to relative divergence times. This is about patterns not mere commonalities.

Your response was the lackluster, "All those things you talk about are evidence of common design."

By this you are effectively stating that phylogenetic trees are somehow evidence for common design, which on the surface makes no sense. But I'll run with it and thus you are implying two things:

1) that phylogenetic trees are valid hierarchical relationships of different organisms; and,
2) since phylogenetic trees are constructed on the basis of evolutionary relationships, if life was designed then it has the appearance of these evolutionary relationships.​

IOW, you're basically saying that life has the appearance of evolution.

But when you turn around and claim that there is no evidence for common ancestry, you're effectively stating that phylogenetic trees are in fact not valid. And if phylogenetic trees aren't valid, then they certainly can't be evidence for common design.

Now this would be the more logical approach for a creationist to take, since phylogenetic trees make no sense from the perspective of independently designed objects. Again, phylogenetic trees are constructed on the basis of evolutionary relationships. If you're saying those relationships aren't valid, then the trees themselves aren't valid.

But let's go back to your prior claim:

"We can say there is a common design in life and it works just as well. Because we can use that common design to make all the discoveries we want."​

You're now in a quandary. The example I showed you makes use of evolutionary relationships via phylogenetic trees for genomic analysis. If you want to claim you can do the same with "common design" AND reject evidence for evolution at the same time, you need to come up with a valid substitute instead of phylogenetics. But you don't actually have one do you?

Consequently your claim about using "common design" for scientific inquiry is false.

Thus you're stuck repeating contradictory sound bites ad nauseum without even realizing those contradictions. It's like you're the creationist equivalent of Schrodinger's cat, only simultaneously affirming and rejecting evolution.

The trees themselves are nothing but assumptions. Show me one tree that proposes a common ancestor that isn't an assumption will you? You make my point for me. You said yourself they are based upon evolutionary relationships. The belief in evolution comes first then the tree. That is an assumption. There is no evidence that it actually occurred.

Common design no matter what you claim fits better than evolution. Just accept that all life was formed from a common design and bingo, you have all you need to be able to be able to understand how life works. And there is evidence in all life that the design exists. There is no evidence of evolution from a common ancestor. It cannot be tested or reproduced. It is an evolutionary assumption nothing more. Genomic analysis does not need an evolutionary tree. All it needs is to know all life was made from a common design.