Re: Atheists are the biggest fools on Earth

Jim Spaza wrote:

> John Harshman wrote:
>
>>Jim Spaza wrote:
>>
>>
>>>John Harshman wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>widsith wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>John Harshman wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>widsith wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>John Harshman wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>Jim Spaza wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>and that there
>>>>>>>>>are genetic barriers or "islands" at the order or family level between
>>>>>>>>>which no evolution is naturally possible.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>That's what this newsgroup is really for. You seem to shrink from
>>>>>>>>thinking about the evidence that those barriers either don't exist or
>>>>>>>>have been breached. While there is no way to show that they have been
>>>>>>>>breached *naturally*, it's certainly easy to show that they have been
>>>>>>>>breached routinely through the history of the earth. I.e., all
>>>>>>>>eukaryotes at least are descended from a single common ancestral
>>>>>>>>species, and humans in particular are related to all other animals,
>>>>>>>>including, most recently, the other apes.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I dont believe in such genetic barriers, but allow me to play devil's
>>>>>>>advocate for the moment. If we assume, axiomatically (as it appears
>>>>>>>Jim does), the existence of such barriers, does not this affect how we
>>>>>>>interpret the evidence? We interpret the evidence, namely the
>>>>>>>distribution of species in the space of possible genomes, to indicate
>>>>>>>common descent, which we claim is incompatible with such genetic
>>>>>>>islands. But if we have assumed genetic islands, would we still
>>>>>>>interpret the evidence to indicate common descent?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>IOW, assuming the existence of genetic islands, and interpreting the
>>>>>>>evidence in that light, how can we conclude that the assumption is
>>>>>>>invalid?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>That's not "in other words". Those are two quite different questions. We
>>>>>
>>>>>Perhaps you could be more specific as to how those questions differ. I
>>>>>thought that the third was a reasonable combination of the two earlier
>>>>>questions.
>>>>
>>>>Sorry, I misinterpreted what you meant by "we have assumed". I thought
>>>>you meant "what if they really existed".
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>don't have genetic islands, so it's pointless to imagine what we would
>>>>>>think if they existed. It's fairly easy to show that they don't exist,
>>>>>
>>>>>I disagree. As the inhabitants of T.O. argue daily with people who
>>>>>believe they exist, it seems quite worthwhile to try to imagine what
>>>>>such people think.
>>>>
>>>>I had thought you were talking about actual scientific reasoning, not
>>>>just beliefs. Creationists can interpret anything in any way they
>>>>choose, and frequently do. But this has little to do with reason, even
>>>>with reasoning in conjunction with unusual axioms. The only way to make
>>>>the genetic island axiom fit the data is to ignore the inconvenient
>>>>data. Some people do this explicitly, like Kurt Wise and his group at
>>>>Bryan College. Their explicit assumption is that Genesis is literally
>>>>true, and anything that seems to contradict that view is wrongly
>>>>interpreted by definition. There is literally no way that data could
>>>>alter that view. I'm hoping that Jim is not in that position, and is in
>>>>fact amenable to reason.
>>>
>>>
>>>Yes, sir. My beliefs in God have everything to do with reason,
>>>inference, and logic.
>>
>>As far as I know, we aren't actually talking about your beliefs in god
>>here. We're talking about evolution, which is orthogonal.
>>
>>
>>>I don't know about Kurt Wise, Bryan College, or any other group. All I
>>>know is what I myself believe and why. If these people believe that
>>>Genesis describes a literal 7-day (24 hour) creation period, then they
>>>are wrong. Science has shown that this is not the case.
>>
>>This makes sense if you simultaneously believe that Genesis must be
>>literally true and that its meaning must be interpreted based on what we
>>know about the world.
>>
>>>It's not a question, in this instance, of either believing the Bible or believing
>>>in science. The creation account uses the Hebrew word "Yom" which does
>>>mean "day" and is never used in the Bible for anything other than a
>>>literal "day". Yet, how can there be a day before there was a Earth
>>>completely formed and rotating on its axis with a star 93 million miles
>>>away for reference?
>>>
>>>Anyway, it seems that science allows for many possible explanations of
>>>how life occured and evolved. Some of these explanations don't mesh
>>>with the Bible. Some do. The ones that don't mesh tend to be the ones
>>>that some scientists prefer. And the religious interpretations of the
>>>Bible that don't mesh with some scientific conclusions tend to be the
>>>ones that some Chistians adhere to. Hence, the supposed conflict
>>>between science and religion.
>>>
>>>I have yet to encounter a rock solid scientific conclusion that
>>>contradicts the Bible. Nor have I ever encountered a rock solid
>>>Biblical interpretation which contradicts rock solid science.
>>
>>If the bible is flexible enough, that never has to be the case. However,
>>last time we discussed this I mentioned several ways in which a literal
>>interpretation of Genesis conflicts with "rock solid scientific
>>conclusions". I don't think you ever responded to that. I'll repeat:
>>
>>Genesis 1 has plants being created before sea creatures, in fact before
>>the sun, moon, and stars, and birds created before land animals. We know
>>absolutely that none of this is true. Perhaps you can avoid this problem
>>by reinterpreting Genesis in such a way that it matches reality. For
>>your benefit, here is the actual order:
>>
>>Sun, moon and stars first. Sea creatures, then plants, then land
>>animals, then birds. Now this is predicated on taking the first
>>occurrence of any species in the category as being the date of
>>"creation". But of course different sorts of each appear continuously
>>from the time of first appearance on down to the present day. The bible
>>describes a single, simultaneous creation of each sort, separated in
>>time from the single creation of each other sort. Thus we would expect
>>to see, in the fossil record, all sea creatures appearing before all
>>plants, and so on. That's another discrepancy.
>
> Well, the Bible doesn't demand any fixity of species or that all
> species were created originally and are still in their same forms
> today. So, if the sea creatures that Genesis 1:20-22 refers to were
> just the original ones, then certainly new sea creatures could have
> evolved (or been created later on) after the original land animals or
> plants were created. Thus, we have 100 million year old fossils of sea
> creatures, 50 million year old fossils of land creatures, and then 20
> million year old fossils of new sea creatures.

Afraid this doesn't work either. Even if you count the very first of
everything, the order is wrong. Let me note again:

Genesis order Real order
earth stars
plants sun
sun, moon, stars earth and moon
sea creatures and birds sea creatures
land animals plants
land animals
birds

I really don't see a way to reconcile them.

> I don't think that the Genesis accounts demand a single, spontaneous
> creation of all sea (or air or land) creatures at one point in time.
> It would seem that way, maybe, if the Hebrew word for day ("yom")
> really meant one literal 24-hour period. But, science has shown that
> the earth is not 6,000 years old. Thus, "yom" must mean unspecified
> periods of time.

The difficulty lies not with the length of periods, but with the order.

>>>>>>too. If there were such islands, they would not be connected by ancestry
>>>>>>and descent, and we would not expect them to fit together into a
>>>>>>consistent, nested hierarchy with members of other islands. The fact
>>>>>>that we can easily do this tells us there are no such things.
>>>>>
>>>>>One, who assumes axiomatically, as it appears the OP does, that there
>>>>>exist such islands, would be inclined not to interpret the available
>>>>>evidence to indicate ancestry and descent. He will claim that we only
>>>>>see descent and ancestry because we must to support our theories, and
>>>>>that the nested hierarchy is a result of a nested heirarchy of the
>>>>>families which is a result of their creation process.
>>>>
>>>>He could claim that, but it doesn't make sense. There is nothing in the
>>>>separate creation process that implies such a hierarchy ought to exist.
>>>>That's merely an ad hoc explanation. X data appear because the creation
>>>>process resulted in X data appearing.
>>>
>>>Maybe. I agree with the fact that much evolution is real. I disgree
>>>with the conclusions of scientists that evolution is wholly extensive
>>>to all life and explains everything. For example, if God created and
>>>placed various life forms throughout history on the earth and allowed
>>>them to partially evolve to some extents, then what scientific
>>>discovery would contradict this? There is none.
>>
>>Not true at all. There is very good evidence that, for example, all
>>eukaryotes are related through a single common ancestor. Similar
>>evidence exists for a great many subsidiary groups, like Metazoa
>>(animals), seed plants, angiosperms, vertebrates, tetrapods, insects,
>>and so on. Presumably your "genetic islands" are much more restrictive
>>things. They just aren't viable. Pick any two any two eukaryotes and I
>>can give you good evidence for their common ancestry.
>
> OK. Let's start with a modern horse and a modern fish. I would like
> to argue that these two animals are certainly on different genetic
> islands.

No big problem. Studies show that horses are more closely related to
some fish than to others. Lungfish are closer to horses than to trout.
Trout are closer to horses than to sharks. It will take a bit of time to
find the papers that show this. If we could agree in advance that any
mammal is as good a choice as a horse (i.e. if all mammals belong to the
same island), it would be easier.

Cytochrome c sequences, at least, show this; that's one of the earliest
proteins to be sequenced for a large sample of species. Here are some
10-year-old references, which should be good enough. But most of them
lack any direct reference to horses. You have to work down, first
showing that all mammals are in one island, then all amniotes, then all
tetrapods. Finally, you get to some fish.
http://tolweb.org/tree?group=Sarcopterygii

>>>The fact that God used the same genetic replication system and
>>>carbon-based cellular systems just means that God likes to use the same
>>>materials. That's all.
>>
>>Agreed. But the evidence for common descent goes way beyond this.
>>
>>
>>>If God really did this, then we could still map the now-thousands of
>>>common descents and create many evolutionary trees, not just one. The
>>>only reason to combine everything into one evolutionary tree with a
>>>supposed single common ancestor is to promote a purely natural cause
>>>(abiogenesis) of all life on this planet. Now, if scientists wish to
>>>promote such a thing, then they should describe it as just one theory
>>>assuming abiogenesis, not as a historic fact.
>>
>>You are confusing abiogenesis with common ancestry, and universal common
>>ancestry with common ancestry of much bigger groups than you allow.
>>Universal common ancestry is compatible with divine intervention -- if
>>god creates the first cell, for example. And common ancestry is not just
>>assumed; it's the only hypothesis compatible with the data. You just
>>haven't confronted the data at all.
>
> OK. The only reason I bring in abiogenesis is because the evolutionary
> tree is believed to have only one starting point, one universal common
> ancestor. This is so apparently because everything is simpler with one
> universal common ancestor. I guess the thinking is why assume more
> than one ancestor when just one can fit the tree?

No, the thinking is that the evidence (genetic code, ribosomes, various
other bits of machinery) points that way.

>>>>>I fully agree that the traditional explanation is more parsimonious and
>>>>>more accurate. Frankly, I think the above explanation is a bit loony,
>>>>>but I also think there are quite a few people who hold to it and it is
>>>>>therefore worth while to find a way to disabuse them of such notions.
>>>>
>>>>Some people can indeed be disabused. Some can't. For those that can,
>>>>demonstrating that the data do not fit their assumptions is the only way
>>>>I know. Perhaps you have another notion.
>>>
>>>I would rethink my position if the data showed conclusively that
>>>abiogenesis occured and the tree of common descent DEMANDS that there
>>>be only one common ancestor. Really, I would.
>>
>>It should be easier than that. Just tell me what your genetic islands
>>encompass, and I'll give you evidence joining some of them. If you think
>>that humans and chimps are in separate islands, the evidence against
>>that is particularly easy to find. None of that depends on abiogenesis,
>>or even upon a universal common ancestor.
>
> OK. Let's do the chimp and human thing. Specifically, I'm looking for
> the sequence of genetic events which turned chimp DNA into human DNA.

You understand that there were no such genetic events, right? Chimp DNA
didn't turn into human DNA. A common ancestral genome turned into both,
with about half the changes happening in each lineage. For a summary of
changes over the entire genome, see this:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v437/n7055/abs/nature04072.html

The sorts of differences observed here are exactly the kinds of things
that happen through random mutation: point mutations, deletions,
insertions, retroviral insertions, etc.

Now if you're talking about a detailed list of what differnces caused
what morphological changes and in what order, you're out of luck. We'll
know some of this in a few years, but never all of it. But if you demand
such evidence, then every species will end up in a different genetic
island too.

As for evidence of common descent, that's simple. Every single gene you
want to pick will provide you with the same tree of primate
relationships. Here's a small sample; I could, with a little effort,
produce dozens of others, all saying the same thing.

[You need to view this in a font in which all the characters take up the
same amount of room. If you view it in a proportionally-spaced font,
both the tree and the DNA sequence will fail to line up properly.]

Evidence for human relationships to the other apes.

But first, a primer on DNA and how it can be used to understand
phylogenetic relationships. If you understand
this already, skip ahead to "Here is a set of DNA sequences" below the
dotted line.

DNA is double helix, each half being a twisted string of chemicals,
called bases or nucleotides, on a backbone. The bases come in four
flavors, each with a slightly different chemical formula, which can be
represented as single letters: A, C, G, or T, from the first letters of
each chemical's name. Because each of the two strings completely
determines the other one, we can ignore one of them, and because of
DNA's beads-on-a-string structure, we can completely describe a given
gene by a linear sequence of the four bases. So if I tell you that the
DNA sequence in some gene in some species is AAGAAGCTAGTGTAAGA, I have
completely described that particular part of the DNA molecule.

Different species have slightly different sequences, and when we line up
the corresponding sequences from different species, the patterns of
bases (letters) at each position (or site) in the sequence can tell us
about their relationships. Consider a set of 5 species. At any
particular position in the sequence each species has either A, C, G, or
T. For my purposes I don't care about the particular bases, only about
the patterns of similarity, so I'm going to use a different symbolism to
describe those patterns. I'll use lower case letters to represent
identical bases. So if I say a position has pattern xxxyy, I mean that
the first three species have one base and the last two have another. The
real bases could be TTTCC, GGGAA, or any other combination. There
are many possible patterns: xxxxx, xyzaz, xyxyy, etc. But only a few of
them can be used to determine relationships. It should be obvious that
xxxxx, all bases the same, tells us nothing. If only one base differs,
such as xyxxx, that also tells us nothing except that one species is
different from all the rest; but we already knew it was a separate
species. The only patterns that make a claim of relationships are those
in which two species have one base, and the other three have another:
xxyyy, xyxyx, xxyxy, and so on. (Actually, patterns like xxyzz tell us
something too, just not enough for my current purposes.) Why is this?
Because such patterns split the species into two groups, implying a tree
that looks something like this:

y x If all the species on the left have state y, and
\ / all the species on the right have state x, then
\ / somewhere in the middle (the branch marked *),
y__\_____/ there must have been a change in that site --
/ * \ a mutation -- either from y to x or x to y
/ \ (we can't tell which from this information).
/ \
y x

A little further note: the patterns that I represent in rows above
(xxyyy, etc.) are shown in columns in the DNA sequences below. That is,
in the sequences below, you read across to find the sequence in a single
species, but you read down to read the contents of a single site in five
species. So the first column of the sequence, reading down, would be
AAGAG, which is an xxyxy pattern.

-------------------------------------------------------

Here is a set of DNA sequences. They come from two genes named
ND4 and ND5. If you put them together, they total 694 nucleotides. But
most of those nucleotides either are identical among all the species
here, or they differ in only one species. Those are uninformative about
relationships, so I have removed them, leaving 76 nucleotides that make
some claim. I'll let you look at them for a while.

[ 10 20 30 40 50]
[ . . . . .]
+ 1 2++ 3 11 +4 3 ++ 52+1 2615+4 14+ 3 3+6+
gibbon ACCGCCCCCA TCCCCTCCCT CAAGTCCTAT CCAATCTACT GTACTTTGCC
orangutan ACCACTCCCA CCCTTCCTCC TAAGACTCAC ACAACTCGCC ACACCTCGTC
human GTCATCATCC TTCTTTTTTT AGGAATTTCC TCTCTCCGTC ACGCTCTACT
chimpanzee ATTACCATTC CTTTTTTCCC CGGATTCTCC CTTCTTCATT ATGTCTCATT
gorilla GTTGTTATTA CCTCCCTTTC AAGAACCCCT TTCACCTATC GCGTCCCACT

[ 60 70 ]
[ . . ]
+++ +++1 + + 2 + +++
gibbon CCTACAGCCC AGCCAAACGA CACTAA
orangutan CCTACCGCCT AGCCATTTCA CACTAA
human CCCCTTATTT TCTTGTCCGG TGACCG
chimpanzee TTCCTCATTT TCTTACTCAG TGACCG
gorilla TTCCTTATTC TTTCGCCTAG TGATTA

I've marked with a plus sign all those sites at which gibbon and
orangutan match each other, and the three African apes (including
humans) have a different base but match each other. (That's the xxyyy
pattern mentioned above) These sites all support a relationship among
the African apes, exclusive of gibbon and orangutan. You will note there
are quite a lot of them, 23 to be exact. The sites I have marked with
numbers from 1-6 contradict this relationship. (Sites without numbers
don't have anything to say about this particular question.) We expect a
certain amount of this because sometimes the same mutation will happen
twice in different lineages; we call that homoplasy. However you will
note that there are fewer of these sites, only 22 of them, and more
importantly they contradict each other. Each number stands for a
different hypothesis of relationships; for example, number one is for
sites that support a relationship between gibbons and gorillas, and
number two is for sites that support a relationship between orangutans
and gorillas (all exclusive of the rest). One and two can't be true at
the same time. So we have to consider each competing hypothesis
separately. If you do that it comes out this way:

hypothesis sites supporting pattern
African apes (+) 23 xxyyy
gibbon+gorilla (1) 6 xyyyx
orangutan+gorilla (2) 4 xyxxy
gibbon+human (3) 4 xyxyy
gibbon+chimp (4) 3 xyyxy
orangutan+human (5) 2 xyyxx
orangutan+chimp (6) 2 xyxyx

I think we can see that the African ape hypothesis is way out front, and
the others can be attributed to random homoplasy. This result would be
very difficult to explain by chance.

Let's try a statistical test just to be sure. Let's suppose, as our null
hypothesis, that the sequences are randomized with respect to phylogeny
(perhaps because there is no phylogeny) and that apparent support for
African apes is merely a chance fluctuation. And let's try a chi-square
test. (I'm not going to explain chi-square tests here; just understand
that it's a statistical test that tells us the probability that we would
see the patterns we see if sequence differences were random.) Here it is:

hypothesis obs. exp. (obs.-exp)^2/exp.
African apes (+) 23 6.29 44.4
gibbon+gorilla (1) 6 6.29 0.0
orangutan+gorilla (2) 4 6.29 0.8
gibbon+human (3) 4 6.29 0.8
gibbon+chimp (4) 3 6.29 1.7
orangutan+human (5) 2 6.29 2.9
orangutan+chimp (6) 2 6.29 2.9
sum 44 44 53.7*

(*This column is rounded, so it doesn't quite add up here.)

These are all the possible hypotheses of relationship, and the observed
number of sites supporting them. Expected values would be equal, or the
sum/7. The important column is the third one, which is a measure of the
"strain" between the observed and expected values. The larger the sum of
this column ("the sum of squares"), the greater the strain. There are 6
degrees of freedom (meaning that if we know 6 of the observations, we
automatically know the 7th), and the sum of squares is 53.7. That last
number gets compared to a chi-square distribution to come up with a P value.

It happens that P, or the probability of this amount of asymmetry in the
distribution arising by chance, is very low. When I tried it in Excel, I
got P=8.55*10^-10, or 0.000000000855. That's pretty close to zero, and
chance can be ruled out with great confidence.

Having ruled out chance, now the question is how you account for the
pattern we see. I account for it by supposing that the null hypothesis
is just plain wrong, and that there is a phylogeny, and that the
phylogeny involves the African apes, including humans, being related by
a common ancestor more recent than their common ancestor with orangutans
or gibbons. How about you?

By itself, this is pretty good evidence for the African ape connection.
But if I did this little exercise with any other gene I would get the
same result too. (If you don't believe me I would be glad to do that.)
Why? I say it's because all the genes evolved on the same tree, the true
tree of evolutionary relationships. That's the multiple nested hierarchy
for you.

So what's your alternative explanation for all this? You say...what?
It's because of a necessary similarity between similar organisms? But
out of these 76 sites with informative differences, only 18 involve
differences that change the amino acid composition of the protein; the
rest can have no effect on phenotype. Further, many of those amino acid
changes are to similar amino acids that have no real effect on protein
function. In fact, ND4 and ND5 do exactly the same thing in all
organisms. These nested similarities have nothing to do with function,
so similar design is not a credible explanation.

God did it that way because he felt like it? Fine, but this explains any
possible result. It's not science. We have to ask why god just happened
to feel like doing it in a way that matches the unique expectations of
common descent.

By the way, if you want to see the full data set I pulled this from, go
here:

http://www.treebase.org/treebase/console.html

Then search on Author, keyword Hayasaka. Click Submit. You will find
Hayasaka, Kenji. Then click on Search. This brings up one study, in the
frame at middle left. Click on Matrix Fig. 1 to download the sequences.
You can also use this site to view their tree. The publication from
which all this was drawn is Hayasaka, K., T. Gojobori, and S. Horai.
1988. Molecular phylogeny and evolution of primate mitochondrial DNA.
Mol. Biol. Evol., 5:626-644.

>>>>>>You can intrepret any data in any light you want, but some data fit one
>>>>>>set of assumptions much better than they fit another. When that happens,
>>>>>>we suppose that the second set of assumptions (or theory, if you prefer)
>>>>>>has been falsified. You can keep trying to stuff the data into that
>>>>>
>>>>>I would disagree. We only conclude that a set of assumptions has been
>>>>>falsified when we gather data incompatible with that set of
>>>>>assumptions, not merely that the data fits another set better. The
>>>>>latter causes us to favor the set that the data fits better, but doesnt
>>>>>falsify the the other.
>>>>
>>>>I really don't want to get into heavy philosophy of science, but
>>>>black/white falsification doesn't fit the nature of science very well.
>>>>Data can show that theory X is more likely to be true than theory Y, and
>>>>statistical tests can quantify "more" for you. In the current case, the
>>>>data fit common descent quite well, and separate creation very poorly,
>>>>enough so that we can easily choose between them. If there's a third
>>>>hypothesis you want to advance, let's take a look at it in comparison
>>>>with common descent, because separate creation has already lost.
>>>
>>>No problem. I agree with the black/*** falsification aspect.
>>>Inference, however reliable, leads more to best guesses than conclusive
>>>facts.
>>
>>Wrong too. Inferences are in fact all we have to go on. Reliable
>>inferences can be as close to 100% true as you could want. I don't want
>>to get into this, but you have to realize that everything we know is
>>inferred.
>
> OK. But, what about things that are actually observed or reproducible
> under controlled conditions?

Those are all inferences too. Have you ever seen an atom? How do you
know they exist? Does Pluto orbit the sun? How do you know? If you come
upon a neat, flat tree stump in the forest, do you know that someone has
been by with a chain saw, or is it "just an inference"?

>>>Actually, while I am not the scientist that some of you are, I
>>>disagree that the data fits creationism very poorly. I say this from a
>>>purely scientific standpoint.
>>
>>You can say whatever you like, but you are wrong.
>>
>>
>>>We know what? Maybe 50,000 points of data for the evolutionary tree,
>>>most of which is morphological, not genetic (which is highly more
>>>accurate).
>>
>>You are entirely wrong about that too. I'm not sure what you mean by
>>"data points" here. Species? There are over a million described living
>>species. DNA sequences? Many more than 50,000.
>
> Well, when looking at the evolutionary tree, at all of its billions or
> even trillions of life forms in it throughout the ages, how much of it
> is based on scientific data recovered from present life forms and
> fossils? If the tree is made up of pixels like an image on a monitor,
> what percentage of pixels have data directly related to them?

The tree isn't made up of pixels. That's a bad analogy. Trees tell us
about the relationships among the particular species included. There
could be billions of species that aren't included, but that doesn't
affect the relationships of the species that are. There are certainly
millions of species, living and extinct, that we don't know about.
Doesn't matter.

>>>Given that there have been untold billions if not trillions
>>>of greater-than-microscopic life forms since abiogenesis is thought to
>>>have occured about 2 billion years ago, data filling in only %0.0005 of
>>>the gaps is nowhere near enough to state that the data supports a
>>>single common ancestor rather than creationism.
>>
>>Your time scale is off. Life is at least 3.5 billion years old, more
>>likely 4 billion. At any rate, the two hypotheses you are considering
>>here are not useful. "Creationism" is too vague, and "single common
>>ancestor" isn't necessary to refute your claims. Let's start with
>>something simpler, comparing multiple common ancestors vs. single common
>>ancestor for, say, primates. How many do you propose, and which groups?
>
> If I had to guess, I'd say maybe one. Allow me to keep humans separate
> from other primates for sake of this argument.

Why? What objective reason could you have?

> I don't know which
> group within primates. I don't know what the original primate-like
> animals looked like. If I had to guess, let's say a chimpanzee-like
> creature.

You would be wrong. More like a lemur. But OK, all primates (except, for
some unknown reason, humans) are in a single island. Now what about
placental mammals? Are primates in a different island from bats,
colugos, rodents, tree shrews, and rabbits?

>>>>>>worldview, but you will have trouble, increasingly so as you gather more
>>>>>>data.
>>>>>
>>>>>My question was meant to ask what are the problems/trouble that would
>>>>>occur as we try to stuff tthe data into the OP's worldview. Where is
>>>>>the data incompatible with that view, not merely favoring another view.
>>>>
>>>>It's the same thing. Since common descent and separate creation are (in
>>>>particular instances) mutually exclusive, data that support one refute
>>>>the other and vice versa. In this context, that's what support means.
>>>
>>>If you mean common descent as in a SINGLE common ancestor, then you're
>>>correct that descent and creation are at odds. But, you can have
>>>common descent from thousands of original life forms, can't you?
>>
>>Yes, because a single ancestor isn't what I was talking about. I was
>>talking about the common descent of any particular set of species. They
>>either do or do not have a common ancestor, and this can be determined.
>>Every time we have tried this so far, the answer has been that they do
>>indeed have such an ancestor. But go ahead. Present a hypothesis to be
>>tested. Which two groups of species do not share a common ancestor?
>
> I agree that groups of species have common ancestors, like all rodents
> or all birds. To answer your request, let's use Pelecanus occidentalis
> (brown pelican) and Ursus arctos (grizzly bear) or let's just use
> pelicans and bears.

Do I get you right that you agree that all birds are a single island? So
any bird would do. Now let's work on bears. Are bears, dogs, and cats in
a single island? All carnivores? What about carnivores, cows, and
primates? I'm trying to make my job easier by lumping the groups as far
as you will go before I look for evidence. Just as with the fish and the
horse.

>>>There is another problem which I asked about but never got a solid
>>>answer. Who says that there was only one instance of abiogenesis?
>>>Creationism aside, why not a thousand cases of abiogenesis? Because
>>>each instance would result in life forms each with a slightly different
>>>DNA replication system? Hmmm...maybe the present DNA replication
>>>system is the only one that works on this planet.
>>
>>There is no reason to suppose that the present system is the only one
>>possible. The genetic code could be permuted so as to switch each purine
>>for a corresponding pyrimidine, for example, without affecting any
>>feature that has even been proposed to be systematic. The system
>>wouldn't be slightly different, but different in every codon. Further,
>>the various enzymes and RNAs that make up the replication,
>>transcription, and translation systems are only a few of the varieties
>>that are functionally possible. It's possible to imagine a translation
>>site that looks nothing at all like a ribosome, yet all we have are
>>ribosomes, each with a large and small subunit. This is not credible as
>>hundreds of independent events.
>
> I was just thinking that, what are the odds that only one viable
> abiogenesis events would happen?

We have no idea. Perhaps many of them happened. But there appears to be
only one survivor, and there's only one for which we have any evidence.

> And, if genetic mutation is powerful
> enough to go from a proto-bacteria (or whatever the first life form
> was) to humans, what are the odds that 99.999% of all life forms would
> still use the same DNA replication system (apparently immune to genetic
> mutation) after billions of years?

Well, there are many variants. But the reason that the system is so
stable is that it works fine as it is, and changes tend to cause
confusion, resulting in death. Imagine if, for example, one codon in the
genetic code changed its meaning. That would cause changes in thousands
of different proteins, with at least some of those changes likely to
have lethal consequences. No wonder the code is so conserved.

>>>>Now there are many ways in which separate creation doesn't work as an
>>>>explanation, but the best single source for this would be the genetic
>>>>data. We would not expect any nested hierarchy to emerge between
>>>>"islands" under separate creation. At least nobody has every articulated
>>>>a reason for such an expectation other than the lame "shows God's plan"
>>>>(lame because any pattern at all would show God's plan, but nested
>>>>hierarchy specifically shows common descent, and the coincidence would
>>>>be ver odd).
>>>
>>>Interesting. Do we have any examples of nested hierachies between
>>>birds and amphibians? What about horses and something different? What
>>>about chimpanzees and something else?
>>
>>Yes, of course. All tetrapods fall into a nested hierarchy. Amphibians
>>are the sister group of all other tetrapods, and birds' closest living
>>relatives are crocodiles. Horses belong to the order Perissodactyla
>>along with tapirs, rhinos, and lots of extinct sorts. Chimpanzees? You
>>must be kidding here. Chimpanzees, as everyone should know by now, are
>>the closest living relatives of humans, with gorillas, orangutans,
>>gibbons, old world monkeys, new world monkeys, and a couple of groups of
>>"prosimians" as successively distant relatives. There are dozens of
>>recent publications showing all these things as necessary outcomes of
>>analyses of different sets of data.
>>
>>
>>>>>>In the words of Johnny Cochran, if the data don't fit, you have to quit.
>>>>>
>>>>>But all you have offered is that the data fits something else better.
>>>>>To someone who understands science, thats sufficient. To the OP and
>>>>>many like him, it is not, you still need to show the data doesnt fit
>>>>>his "theory".
>>>>
>>>>"Doesn't fit" is not an all or nothing criterion. The data fit poorly.
>>>>They always fit in some fashion. Or to put it in a statistical
>>>>framework, P is never 1 or 0, but can approach arbitrarily close to either.
>>>
>>>Well, to me, having the data somewhat fit when there is no other
>>>information to consider to good enough for a best guess. However, in
>>>my case, when I consider the Biblical accounts at the same time, having
>>>scientific data come closer to X (contradicting the Bible) than Y (more
>>>in line with the Bible) is not enough for me to dismiss the Bible in
>>>favor of science's best guess.
>>
>>You seem to be saying that P=.99999 is just a guess, no better than P=.5
>>(flipping a coin, e.g.). That's silly. What level of certainty in the
>>analysis would you actually need to convince you that your
>>interpretation of the bible was wrong (not necessarily that the bible
>>was wrong)?
>
> Well, P=.99999 would be a really good start. It all depends what
> P=.99999 is based on. If based on observable data, then good. If
> based on inference because there are no other scientifically acceptable
> possibilities, then not so good.

I'm afraid this shows that you don't understand how science works.
Observable data, inference, it's all the same. Theories are compared to
other theories, and the best one wins for now. Nothing is ever settled
once and for all, though in practice some things are settled well enough
that we really can't imagine a way they could be upset. Thus we know
that Pluto does orbit the sun, hydrogen does have one proton, and all
mammals are related by common ancestry.

>>>Why do I not think that the Genesis accounts really happened in seven
>>>literal days? Because the scientific evidence shows conclusively that
>>>the earth is older than 6,000 years. Thus, whether the data supports a
>>>4 billion year versus a 6 billion year birth date for the planet is
>>>irrelevant. There is zero data that supports a 6,000 year birth date.
>>>And the Biblical account does not DEMAND a 6,000 year date. The Bible
>>>allows it. Science points to it. Thus, I believe the earth is about 4
>>>billion years old.
>>>
>>>Common descent from a single instance of abiogenesis alone? This is
>>>where I have a problem.
>>
>>No, that's not where you have a problem. You also deny most of what we
>>know of evolution. Your genetic islands, as I understand them, are
>>restricted to a few similar species each. I don't need to think about
>>abiogenesis at all in order to falsify that, just about common descent
>>of species that span two or more of your "islands". Now, if your islands
>>get big enough, eventually we may reach a point at which the evidence
>>joining them is not overwhelming. But that would be (if anywhere) after
>>you have joined all eukaryotes into one island, at least. Are you OK
>>with that?
>
> Actually, I was thinking about genetic islands encompassing hundreds or
> thousands of species.
>
> I couldn't join all eukaryotes into one island. I could join all
> primates except humans into one. Rodents, fish, aquatic mammals,
> insects, and birds would have their own islands. Something like that.

This is progress. Why have you picked the islands you have? And are you
sure they're complete islands? Are rodents unrelated to rabbits, birds
unrelated to crocodiles?

I'm afraid this reveals the arbitrary nature of your islands. Apparently
the closer they are to humans (or perhaps to your experience) the
smaller you make the islands. "Fish" are just vertebrates that aren't
tetrapods; there is no such real group. Birds, which you call one island
so easily, are just as old a group as placental mammals, which you call
many. Insects are about as old as, and much more diverse than, all the
tetrapods. Aquatic mammals are not a group at all; some are
artiodactyls, some are carnivores, and some are related to elephants.

But the easiest thing to work on is this demand that one species, Homo
sapiens, belongs to its own separate island. Can you justify that in any
way? Because the idea that all insects are one island while humans and
chimps are in different islands is so scientifically ludicrous that I
wonder how you can possibly defend it.

>>Because the evidence for eukaryotes all being related is just as good as
>>the evidence for the age of the earth.
>>
>>
>>>Thanks. This is very interesting.
>>
>>My pleasure.
>
>

.