Quiz for evilutionists.

[Squawk]

But I believe in Creation, not evolution, so I'll use Creation biologists; not evolutionary biologists.

[/quote]

I accept evidence based conclusions, so I accept the findings of any scientist who bases his findings entirely on the evidence regardless of his personal belief and reject those who bias their findings, regardless of their belief.

With this sentence he has stated that he already has his conclusion and is attempting to make reality conform to it. Point out that this is an illogical position and that he has just conceded that he is closed minded.

 

[borrofburi]

Lets start with nylonaise, a bacteria that has evolved to digest a substance that did not exist in nature until 60 years ago. That would be new information.

And I see I'm late to the discussion.

Since these specific examples refer to specific genes it is reasonable to suggest that the author is unfamiliar with the technique as using a single gene to identify speciation events is a terrible method of constructing a phlogeny.

So, apparently the cytochrome c protein of a human varies in 12 places from that of a horse but only in 10 places from that of a kangaroo. So what? You cannot base an evolutionary tree on just one single protein. We're all modern-day animals, and our ancestral lines branched off each other millions of years ago. Plenty of time for individual proteins to mutate in some places. A reliable tree can only be constructed by comparing a substantial part of the genomes, instead of cherry picking an individual protein.

^ This. Picking a single factor and using it for phylogeny is a terrible method, this becomes readily apparent with linnaen classification methods: which is "closer" a whale and a human or a dolphin and a shark? Clearly you can *see* that dolphins are closer to sharks, therefore the whole modern theory of evolution is a lie from satan. Using a single classification method is always a bad idea, whether that be based off looks or a single protein sequence. [err in case it wasn't clear, whales are mammals and the shared common ancestor between humans and whales is more recent than between whales and sharks]

And, no function at a higher level of complexity, that involves multiple proteins totaling more than a few hundred fairly specified residues, has ever been shown to evolve in real time.

This is ridiculous, of course we haven't seen change other than specific change, that's how evolution works. Also of course we haven't seen "real time evolution", we haven't been around for hundreds of millions of years, including massive global disasters, to be ABLE to see it in real time.

This is absurd though. The Fossil Record shows sudden appearance of fully formed organisms, followed by stasis. It does not show gradual change as the Darwinists predicted. There are plenty of evolutionists who acknowledge this, and those that do usually support punctuated equilibrium (species are typically in stasis, and are allegedly punctuated by occasional bursts of rapid evolution).

What is his problem with punctuated equilibrium? I think he does not understand "sudden": we're not talking today there was no FSM, tomorrow there is because it evolved in 24 hours, we're talking instead of millions of years only hundreds of thousands producing major changes because massive niches were wiped out and created. "Sudden" is an odd term when you are applying it to geological time scales.

At the moment he seems to be shifting to new questions whenever you provide an answer. Make him stick to the original point, until he concedes that you've answered him and drops the point, or he gives up.
When I started debating it was a mistake i used to make. Instead of admitting that you've got them, they'll shift to a different argument. Keep him pinned down until the original issue is resolved.

And this.

 

[ExeFBM]

If he keeps complaining about puctuated equilibrium, there's a good video by cdk007 about the blind watchmaker. All he's done is program in random mutaion and natural selection, no additional factors, but the population graph at the end shows what appears to be punctuated equilibrium, with periods of stasis, followed by sudden changes. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcAq9bmCeR0

 

[Rhed]

I see I wrote this about 6 years ago. I was the one being quoted in support of Creation when posting on facebook. Wow! Fun times.

 

[Collecemall]

I'm not sure I'd be admitting that in public. But different strokes and all.

 

[Deleted member 619]

That's pigeon-chess for you.

 

[Rumraket]

And to think you've been running around confidently stating a trivial to show falsehood, that universal common descent cannot be falsified, now for at least 6 years. What's that like?

 

[Rhed]

And to think you've been running around confidently stating a trivial to show falsehood, that universal common descent cannot be falsified, now for at least 6 years. What's that like?

You can't falsify common descent. The more we learn, the more ridiculous it appears.

 

[JRChadwick]

You want to falsify common decent? Find the parts where the taxonomic and phylogenetic trees of life do not overlap perfectly.

 

[Rhed]

You want to falsify common decent? Find the parts where the taxonomic and phylogenetic trees of life do not overlap perfectly.

Common descent isn't falsifiable. Homologous traits are explained because of similar structures on the "same" branch" derived from a common ancestor. Analogous traits are explained because of similar structures on a "different" branch and didn't derive from a common ancestor. Rescue device in play, which is convergence.

And just so you know, evolution has many many unobservable rescuing devices. I plan on touching each and every one. But for now, we'll discuss convergence.

 

[Deleted member 619]

Common descent isn't falsifiable.

Total bollocks. Find an organism with DNA whose chirality is opposite, and UCD is falsified.

 

[SpecialFrog]

Common descent isn't falsifiable.

Total bollocks. Find an organism with DNA whose chirality is opposite, and UCD is falsified.

I predict a repeat of the original claim without any attempt to deal with your point.

 

[australopithecus]

I'm dubious it was yourself having that conversation with me 6 years ago on Facebook, but if so, sorry to see you haven't learnt much in those years.

 

[Rhed]

It was me. You have to trust me. Your profile pic was you with dark hair and glasses. Then like every week you updated it to look more like a zombie.

And no, I haven't changed my worldview. Sadly you haven't.

Good to talk to you though. They were fun times.

 

[Rumraket]

You want to falsify common decent? Find the parts where the taxonomic and phylogenetic trees of life do not overlap perfectly.

Common descent isn't falsifiable.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#nested_hierarchy

Scroll down to "Potential falsification".

Potential Falsification:

It would be very problematic if many species were found that combined characteristics of different nested groupings. Proceeding with the previous example, some nonvascular plants could have seeds or flowers, like vascular plants, but they do not. Gymnosperms (e.g. conifers or pines) occasionally could be found with flowers, but they never are. Non-seed plants, like ferns, could be found with woody stems; however, only some angiosperms have woody stems. Conceivably, some birds could have mammary glands or hair; some mammals could have feathers (they are an excellent means of insulation). Certain fish or amphibians could have differentiated or cusped teeth, but these are only characteristics of mammals. A mix and match of characters like this would make it extremely difficult to objectively organize species into nested hierarchies. Unlike organisms, cars do have a mix and match of characters, and this is precisely why a nested hierarchy does not flow naturally from classification of cars.

If it were impossible, or very problematic, to place species in an objective nested classification scheme (as it is for the car, chair, book, atomic element, and elementary particle examples mentioned above), macroevolution would be effectively disproven. More precisely, if the phylogenetic tree of all life gave statistically significant low values of phylogenetic signal (hierarchical structure), common descent would be resolutely falsified.

In fact, it is possible to have a "reciprocal" pattern from nested hierarchies. Mathematically, a nested hierarchy is the result of specific correlations between certain characters of organisms. When evolutionary rates are fast, characters become randomly distributed with respect to one another, and the correlations are weakened. However, the characters can also be anti-correlated—it is possible for them to be correlated in the opposite direction from what produces nested hierarchies (Archie 1989; Faith and Cranston 1991; Hillis 1991; Hillis and Huelsenbeck 1992; Klassen et al. 1991). The observation of such an anti-correlated pattern would be a strong falsification of common descent, regardless of evolutionary rates.

One widely used measure of cladistic hierarchical structure is the consistency index (CI). The statistical properties of the CI measure were investigated in a frequently cited paper by Klassen et al. (Klassen et al. 1991; see Figure 1.2.1). The exact CI value is dependent upon the number of taxa in the phylogenetic tree under consideration. In this paper, the authors calculated what values of CI were statistically significant for various numbers of taxa. Higher values of CI indicate a greater degree of hierarchical structure.

Figure 1.2.1. A plot of the CI values of cladograms versus the number of taxa in the cladograms. CI values are on the y-axis; taxa number are on the x-axis. The 95% confidence limits are shown in light turquoise. All points above and to the right of the turquoise region are statistically significant high CI values. Similarly, all points below and to the left of the turquoise region are statistically significant low values of CI. (reproduced from Klassen et al. 1991, Figure 6).
As an example, a CI of 0.2 is expected from random data for 20 taxa. A value of 0.3 is, however, highly statistically significant. Most interesting for the present point is the fact that a CI of 0.1 for 20 taxa is also highly statistically significant, but it is too low—it is indicative of anti-cladistic structure. Klassen et al. took 75 CI values from published cladograms in 1989 (combined from three papers) and noted how they fared in terms of statistical significance. The cladograms used from 5 to 49 different taxa (i.e. different species). Three of the 75 cladograms fell within the 95% confidence limits for random data, which means that they were indistinguishable from random data. All the rest exhibited highly statistically significant values of CI. None exhibited significant low values; none displayed an anti-correlated, anti-hierarchical pattern.

Note, this study was performed before there were measures of statistical significance which would allow researchers to "weed out" the bad cladograms. Predictably, the three "bad" data sets considered under ten taxa—it is of course more difficult to determine statistical significance with very little data. Seventy-five independent studies from different researchers, on different organisms and genes, with high values of CI (P < 0.01) is an incredible confirmation with an astronomical degree of combined statistical significance (P << 10-300, Bailey and Gribskov 1998; Fisher 1990). If the reverse were true—if studies such as this gave statistically significant values of CI (i.e. cladistic hierarchical structure) which were lower than that expected from random data—common descent would have been firmly falsified.

Keep in mind that about 1.5 million species are known currently, and that the majority of these species has been discovered since Darwin first stated his hypothesis of common ancestry. Even so, they all have fit the correct hierarchical pattern within the error of our methods. Furthermore, it is estimated that only 1 to 10% of all living species has even been catalogued, let alone studied in detail. New species discoveries pour in daily, and each one is a test of the theory of common descent (Wilson 1992, Ch. 8).