Fallacy of “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution,”

I can find a bunch of different shared similarities. For example, you can find a car, bus, and SUV that use diesel. If you group by the use of diesel you get a very different tree. You can also construct a tree for which vehicles use propane and get yet another different tree. You can group them by the presence of Michelin tires and get yet another tree. You can group them by being electric powered and get yet another different tree. You get wildly different trees for different features. That is not so for life.[quote=“NonlinOrg, post:54, topic:36621”]
And no one can argue that a Volvo sedan should be categorized with a BMW sedan while a Volvo truck with a MAN truck.
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I could certainly argue that. I could organize the tree by the use of diesel and have a Volvo and BMW on one branch and other Volvos and BMW’s on other branches. I could organize by the presence of a turbo charger or overhead cams. I could organize by hybrid systems. All of these would produce wildly different trees with some Volvos sharing more with a BMW than other Volvos.[quote=“NonlinOrg, post:55, topic:36621”]
Don’t be fooled by adaptations like skin color, beak size and pesticide or antibiotic resistance. These all revert when conditions change.
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I don’t see how neutral drift falsifies positive selection. Can you please explain?

Of course selection pressures are going to change if the environment changes. How is this a problem?

Fitness is measured by the ability to pass on your genes, so genes that prevent you from passing on genes are less fit. Genes that increase your chance of passing on your genes are more fit. It really isn’t that hard to understand, and there is nothing magical about it.

The theory of evolution predicts a nested hierarchy for both morphology and genetics. These predictions are tested anew every time a new living species is found, a new fossil species is found, or a new genome is sequenced. This prediction has been tested millions of times, and it has passed those tests.

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What predictions have been scrapped? You keep making these allegations, but you have yet to support them.

Also, the Drake Equation has nothing to do with the theory of evolution.

Added in edit:

Here is a picture of the exon/intron data I am talking about. This is from the UCSC genome browser:

If the picture doesn’t load, you can go the page here.

Those boxes on the top line are exons for the human MMP9 gene. The lines between them are introns. The line with the spikes on them is a measure of conserved sequence across 100 vertebrates. As you can see, there is a lot of conserved sequence that lines up with the exons but not the introns. This is EXACTLY what the theory of evolution predicts, and it is what we see. As Dr. Francis Collins, head of the NIH and former head of the Human Genome Project, describes it . . .

“It is not just a human/mouse comparison one can do. Eric Green at the Genome Institute has looked at this same region in many other species and, in fact, you can find this same CAPZA2 gene in everything from chimps down to zebra fishes and a lot of things in between (see Figure 4). Notice the pattern. The chimpanzee is almost 100% identical to the human, except the chimp has a deletion just before exon 2 that we do not have. Otherwise the match-up, as in most cases of human and chimp comparison, is about 98.5% to 99%. You can see that the baboon is starting to diverge. The cat and the dog and the cow all look a lot alike, and again if you look at the CAPZA2 exons, you will see that every one of those species has a nice conserved little segment there. But as you get further away to rats, mouse, chicken, two different kinds of pufferfish and then a
zebra fish, about the only thing you see is the protein encoding regions, while the rest of the scattered noise goes away. Again, this is a very compelling kind of pattern in terms of what one would expect from evolution.”–Dr. Francis Collins, “Faith and the Human Genome”

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All such predictions? No. But many, many predictions about genetics have been made based on evolution and then proven accurate from new data. Why do you think that is the case?

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The prediction is a statistically significant phylogenetic signal. Pointing to minor noise due to known biological processes like ILS does not make the phylogenetic signal go away. The signal overpowers the noise, and that is the prediction.

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I assume you mean ‘the Drake Equation did not inform the theory of evolution’.

The DE is a product of the ToE, so it is misleading to say that the two have nothing to do with each other.

How is the DE a product of the ToE?

Daniel, I had 7 different questions that immediately came to mind from your post last night. I’ll give credit where it is due, you did respond with one url. But I was really hoping you would use your own words to address my questions.

That has nothing to do with the predictions I’m talking about. I’ll try again: why do you think it is the case that common descent enables us to make many accurate predictions about genetic data we haven’t seen yet?

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Let me dispel the fog here with a question. Do you, or do you not, want me to believe both:

(A) that such as Creation Ministries International and Answers in Genesis are disingenuous crackpots,

and

(B) that the motives and logic of the primary researchers and popularizers in the evo community is a pure as the purest snow?

In other words, that your side has all the logical integrity, and that that of the YEC side has only erroneousness?

I don’t want you to do any such thing right now. I’m really just hoping you’ll answer my questions using your own words rather than simply providing links.

What we want is for you to engage us in a discussion. It’s a bit difficult to have a discussion with a hyperlink.

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Why the time qualification? Because you already do espouse that particular A + B?

That’s my question. That’s why I posted that link.

I didn’t mean to ask for an immediate response, bad wording on my part. What I mean is that I really would like to talk about details, but so far, you have refused to do so. I’d like to echo what @T_aquaticus said. I posed these questions last night, but you seem hesitant to give any sort of answer that isn’t someone else’s words.

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Let’s call in a few witnesses. Regarding things that can be termed “facts,” CMI and AiG are constantly checked by their opponents, who can find numerous instances of lies, distortions, and plain old errors. So, Proposition A may be considered a reasonable belief. On the other hand, primary research in the “evo community” is checked for factual accuracy before it is published, and after it is published, it is subject to the same critical scrutiny. So, regardless of the motive of the original researchers, any lies, distortions, or plain old errors would be pointed out by the thousands of people (many of them Christians) who study their work. Surprise! It turns out that the primary research is not full of lies, distortions, and plain old errors, as are AiG and CMI.

So, to dispel your fog, if you follow the blind, you will fall into a ditch. As far as truth goes, AiG and CMI are devoid of it.

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@Daniel_Pech

I’m going to encourage Curtis ( @cwhenderson ) and @T_aquaticus to ignore your persistent and disruptive line of questions until you start explaining your own position.

It is a basic truth that the person that never has to answer questions about his own position is usually the one that seems to look better in the discussion.

And it is almost always true that this reverses itself as soon as such person has to start explaining the how’s and why’s for their own position being more logical or persuasive.

So - - what do you have, @Daniel_Pech? What is your position ?

You are painting a rather ideal picture there. My position is that the real world has never, on any side of that issue (evo, YEC, etc), come close to such an ideal. Therefore, there is no point for me any longer in discussing any details here, since you will only paint the issue to (a) so favor your side, and (b) trash the YEC side.

FYI, I have opted, instead, to make a discussion on something that I presume is not so neatly maintained by anyone on any side. It’s about John Walton’s (and I presume many of yours’) logic on Genesis 1.

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What do you know about real-world scientific endeavor? Several of the people you have been trying to lecture about it actually engage in primary scientific research in the real world, and they do it as Christians. If you were wise, you would take this opportunity to learn from people with real experience and expertise, rather than relying on secondhand information from dubious (crackpot) sources.

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