I’m afraid you simply are not familiar with the literature. Failures are ubiquitous and even evolutionists have increasingly acknowledged that the common descent and evolutionary tree model doesn’t work very well. Of course, what scientists think about their theories is of only so much value. Science is not a democracy, and scientists have believed all kinds of things we no longer accept. And, importantly, they were very resistant to changing their minds about their theories, for all kinds of reasons including social, professional, funding, etc. And of course with evolution, the elephant in the room are the metaphysical mandates for naturalism that are so powerful and have motivated the theory for centuries. So when we start talking about what people believe as some sort of justification for our theory, not only is confirmation bias tempting, but the waters get murky very quickly.
Again, I think you are simply unfamiliar with the literature. There are many, many more examples of empirical contradictions than those examples from the past few weeks I pasted above. This is why even evolutionists recognize the problem. As for “broad patterns,” this metastudy [Klassen, 1991] showed dozens of data sets which consistently contradicted common descent (especially those data sets with more than about 15 taxa, which were the more significant ones). Most of the sets were actually closer to random than to the common descent model!
I’m not familiar with panda genomes in particular, but if you believe this is true of genomic comparisons, in general, then you are quite mistaken. Genomic comparisons suffer from the same kinds of convergences, divergences, and new structures which have no reasonable explanation on the theory. These are not merely “a small number of genes,” though of course even a small number of contradictions are still contradictions.
Well your bar for allowing common descent to be questioned seems to be rising. First it was any evidence that common descent could not reasonably explain. Then it became a large amount of such data. Now the data must be impossible or effectively impossible. And also, you need a “testable alternative,” which is self-refuting.
Frankly, these are all age-old, protectionist devices. Your theory is “accepted” and “standard.” What evidence you can find to support it is “normative.” Contradictory evidence is “anomalous” and safely swept under the rug, to the detriment of scientific progress. And philosophical criteria are erected against alternatives.
Your criteria that alternatives must be “testable” is a classic double standard. Even evolutionists admit their theory is not repeatable. And common descent’s incredible flexibility and ability to explain any outcome hardly put its proponents in a position to be demanding testability. As we’ve noted, common descent can basically explain anything. Convergences, divergences, new structures that even evolutionists admit they have no explanation for, are not a problem. So your criteria is self-refuting. Your own science is not testable, but you will use that criterion to reject interpretations of the empirical evidence with which you disagree.
[quote=“glipsnort, post:72, topic:34703”]
And that’s a problem for you because you don’t have an explanation for the overarching pattern. To replace an existing theory with a new one is easy: just show that the new one explains more data. [/quote]
Of course design explains the “overarching pattern.” The existence of complex structures and processes, whose origin is unexplained by natural processes, which appear abruptly in the strata, and their appearance across widely disparate taxa, and differences in neighboring species which also are unexplained by natural processes, all make perfect sense on design. The consistency index is a good way of illustrating this. I’ll be the first to agree that design apparently doesn’t give detailed predictions and can accommodate a range of outcomes. But I trust you won’t complain about that.