So, @gbrooks9, @billcole is actually a theistic evolutionist in that he largely accepts common descent, and certainly accepts an old earth. He is also convinced by many ID arguments, and because of this argues there is strong evidence that natural processes alone were not enough.
Moreover, he has been very open to the possibility he is wrong. He has been a kind and respectful interlocutor. We need to treat him better than this. Just assuming that he is YEC and making ad hominems is not really the best way to engage.
@Billcole, by the way, thanks for joining us here. I do really appreciate your comments. I’ve been a bit caught up with Hunter, but have always appreciated your open-mindedness and kind dialogue here. I hope that more people meet you on that level. Thanks for braving the forums here. I really appreciate it.
We have looked at this. And it makes a ton of sense in light of neutral theory and common descent. This is exactly the data that convinced me of the scientific strength of evolutionary theory. In the details, in the math, evolution makes rigorous sense of this.
Of course Special Creation is always a valid hypothesis, but we need a clear model of it to test against the data. Currently we have no model for special creation that makes sense of the data.
That is easy @GJDS, we falsify models of common descent all the time. For example the strict “Tree of Life” CD model was falsified by strong evidence of ad-mixing at the population level and also horizontal gene transfer. Also the neo-Darwinian positive selection dominate change model of CD was falsified in the 60’s by Haldane and Kimura. Also, there was several competing models of human CD; did we diverge first from our CA with orangutans or chimps? Turns out the answer is chimps, and orangutan CD model was not correct.
So I have now presented three CD models that have been falsified by the data. So yes, CD models are falsifiable. And in the genomic age, several trees built on much less reliable phenotyping data have been revised because of genetic data. This is exactly what we expect, because genetic data is much more powerful at adjudicating different models. There is so much information in DNA that it has allowed to see much more clearly the vague patterns we had only seen by phenotyping before.
So yes, CD is falsifiable.