It is? And you imagine that what is a better model now? That none of the yeast have any common ancestry but spontaneously popped into existence?
Furthermore, I’m not quite sure why earlier attempts with conflicting phylogenetic relationships is a problem at all. As the authors note there are “complex evolutionary events, such as deletion, insertion, duplication, and whole genome duplication”- and so that makes the entire field very challenging. So the more recent paper simply demonstrates that our methods have improved and we have an even more accurate tree for yeast than we ever have before. But somehow you interpret this to mean that the entire premise of building a tree from common descent is hopeless. Perhaps if newer models and methods completely overturned all previous phylogeny‘s then we would have something to talk about… But as I’m sure you’re aware despite tweaks here and there- the major relationships are unmoved. This was a big chance to falsify common descent with cladograms from morphology being completely at odds with genetic and molecular ones- but alas besides some reshuffling hasn’t changed much!
Hi Randy, Thanks for the intro. Regarding origins, I was nominally an evolutionist, but I didn’t care about it. Then I heard about all the powerful evidence, and how it was beyond reasonable doubt, etc. This got me curious about exactly what the evidence was. So I did some research and discovered there are some seep metaphysics involved, and that the empirical science is actually problematic for evolution. Looking back on it, it seems rather obvious that there would be problems with the idea which, in fact, claims the world arose by natural law and chance events.
You just evaded the question, I didn’t use ad hominem, since I didn’t call you an idiot or anything like that, I just questioned the validity of your statements. Argument from authority? Well, you could technically say that since I questioned why most specialists (authority) don’t accept your views, but in some cases we do need to rely on authority from specialists, or it would just go completely free style, I could say that the earth is flat and “refute” anyone who tries to show me contrary evidence by saying "that is just argument from authority, the fact that scientists claim to have evidence contrary to my statement says nothing! Besides, I asked you to explain why the authorities are not to be trusted in this case, instead of just calling it a day for the discussion, and again you evaded the question.
Yes. In their approach they punted, and resorted to other metrics (genome-wide events, gene ordering, etc).
Actually I did not say that. Recall the context here was the claim that sequence comparisons (i.e., sequence alignments) confirmed evolution / CD. I pointed out that these have failed, and “T_” replied that it is not a problem because you have a bunch of additional explanatory mechanisms (e.g., incomplete lineage sorting, deletion mutations, drift, strong selection, horizontal gene transfer, etc., etc.), to which I pointed out make CD essentially unfalsifiable. Even identical DNA not under selective constraint are no problem.
So to your point, by no means is the entire premise of building a tree from common descent hopeless. Indeed, you can always build trees, no matter how badly the data fit.
Thanks for your notes. Good for you in your thinking. Maybe someday you will be able to give personal background (from the US, Canada, overseas, science hobbies, etc), but that’s fine. I’ll sit back and watch you guys.
How is that ad hominem? Even if you take that as a personal offense to you or the author, it is a critiscism that is in within the scope of the discussion, and not a attempt to disqualify someone based on something completely unrelated (I.E. saying that a paper in pure mathematics by a mathematician is wrong because he is a creationist and thus must not be taken seriously, even if the paper has nothing to do with creationism).
I’m not saying that the Discovery Institute is necessarily bound to never produce anything reliable. All I’m saying is that I would expect that if they did come up with some big, robust evidence for flaws in evolution, that evidence would be published and discussed not only inside the ID/Discovery community, but outside of it as well. What is your explanation for the fact that this does not happen?
Right, so we really don’t have any empirical content here. Anything goes, right? I’ve been in lectures where the guy just laughs at sequences that absolutely don’t fit at all. There are always the usual suspects to roundup (ILS, HGT, deletion, duplication, drift, insertion, etc., etc., etc.). Let’s not kid ourselves. This is why model selection is so very important. Without it we’re just playing games. Ewert uses standard model selection and CD is absolutely crushed. We’re not even in the ballpark. Evolution has gotten along for centuries with very little rigor and a lot of bluster.
Let’s say the data is incredibly convincing. Why it is not being discussed outside of the ID bubble? That is the question I’ve been asking from the start…
These ideas aren’t even accepted by many of the scientists most associated with ID. Many ID-friendly scientists have no problem with common descent, which is what is being argued against here.
Well keep in mind, evolution has never been good science. The science has never indicated the world arose spontaneously–that has always been motivated by the metaphysics. Darwin’s book was loaded with it. It didn’t start with him, and it didn’t end with him.
I’m not, but molecular biologists know enough about DNA sequences to discuss which model (evolution vs creationism) is more consistent with what we observe in them. So if a big, robust argument against evolution was made, why would it not be discussed by them in non-ID journals? Why not publish these observations in a molecular biology journal?
Physicists resisted relativity and quantum mechanics. Geologists resisted continental drift. New ideas get resisted, that’s life. Some for good reason, some for not so good reason. If you want to find reasons to resist a new idea, it shouldn’t be too difficult. But for those interested in the science, none of that matters.
Some resisted it, others supported. But the experiments supporting both relativity and quantum mechanics were nonetheless published and discussed in the community, with both sides defending their arguments. That is not what happens in the evolution vs ID/creationism debate. ID/creationism is not published or discussed in the scientific community, but rather in its own bubbles like answers in genesis and BIO-complexity. It is one thing to have different and conflicting views, another thing is to create a bubble instead of defending your ideas by the same standards used for everyone in the academia.