Re: To John Drayton, re MC

• From: "John Drayton" <bitbucket55@xxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: 2 Feb 2006 03:33:54 -0800

Zoe wrote:

> On 1 Feb 2006 00:08:27 -0800, "John Drayton" <bitbucket55@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
> snip>
> >
> >My question was (cut and pasted from the original thread):
> >
> >Once you have a good grasp of the (MC) concept, it's quite clear
> >that Kenneth Miller's criticism was quite valid: the authors
> >of "Pandas" presented information that showed they lacked
> >an understanding of quite fundamental evolutionary concepts.
> >
> >That is, they weren't questioning any premises related to the
> >molecular clock.  They presented data which was directly in
> >line with evolutionary expectations, and claimed that the data
> >was *not* in line with evolutionary expectations.
> >
> >> From what little I have picked up, the molecular clock concept states
> >> that for any particular DNA sequence, mutations will pile up at a
> >> fairly constant rate, and the difference between the proteins in two
> >> species would be proportional to the time since the species supposedly
> >> diverged from a common ancestor.  Right?
> >
> >Correct. The authors of "Pandas" quite clearly didn't understand
> >this.
> >
> >This is a book critiquing evlutionary theory, yet the authors don't
> >understand one of the central tenets of the theory.
> >
> >Not only that, the error is uncorrected in the second edition, and
> >to top it off, this book is being proposed as a text book.
> >
> >I'm wondering what you think about that Zoe?
>
> oh, sorry, I guess I forgot the exact point of your post.
>
> Apparently, the mistake of the authors in Pandas was that they thought
> evolutionists were saying that the carp and the horse and the rabbit,
> etc., all had the same most recent common ancestor (MRCA not LCA),

By "last common ancestor" I meant the last in the chain of
common ancestors between a pair of species - i.e most
recent. MRCA is probably a less ambiguous way of saying
this though, so thanks, I'll stick with that term.

> and
> therefore, if there was a 13% difference between the carp and all
> those other species, then evolutionists were wrong to say that the
> amphibian was midway between the water-dwelling species (carp, for
> instance) and the land-dwelling species (horse, for instance).
>
> As to what I think about that?  It was a misunderstanding.

The mistake wasn't just about comparing a few species.
Pretty much all their comparisons were wrong.

This is not a minor misunderstanding of an obscure
insignificant piece of evolutionary theory, it shows a
lack of understanding of *fundamental tenets* of
evolutionary theory: common ancestory, and descent
with modification.

If they understood these two fundamental concepts
they wouldn't have tried to read the data the way they
did.

> Hopefully,
> it will become clear enough to where the authors would redress the
> wrong done to the opposing viewpoint and approach the data from a
> stronger angle -- one of understanding.

Well, understanding what they are criticising would help.

I think it's appalling that people would presume to write a
text for schools without actually understanding the theory
they are criticising.

They've already has a chance to fix these errors: the book
is in its second edition.  The error is still there.

--
John Drayton

.

• References:
  • Re: To John Drayton, re MC
    • From: John Drayton
  • Re: To John Drayton, re MC
    • From: Zoe

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