DNA sequence comparisons, a similar designer or heredity?

Which is exactly what I mentioned in another thread. When confronted with overwhelming evidence...simply deny it.Cladistics is a wonderful tool that predicts an outcome. Let me make an attempt to explain the basics behind this concept. We set up rules on how organisms can be listed. Namely, we look at shared, derived characteristics. That is...things that are NEW. Species that then share this novel characteristic are grouped past a given branch point. Groups closer on the cladogram share a more recent common ancestor than those further apart. It’s a very objective way to list organisms . and importantly, it can be falsified. A cladogram would be useless if many species were found that combined characteristics of different nested groups. But yet we don’t see this. If it were impossible to place species into nested groups, evolution would be, for the most part, shown to be false. But yet again, we don’t see this.Now, before you hand wave this all away by saying, “Well God simply designed them that way”, you should look at other evidences and take them as a whole. You say creationists don’t accept evolutionary time lines. But yet, organisms listed on these cladograms match up with a time line as we would predict using the ToE. Keep in mind that a cladogram does not use any sort of dating method. It simply lists organisms based on novel traits. Yet they match. I'm not sure what you're trying to get at here. Are you suggesting that three different cupcakes from three different locations are all basically the same? So what. How does this compare in any way to crashfrogs example of measuring something using three different, completely independent, methods all giving the same answer? All you've done is determine that they are cupcakes using their "DNA" (ingredients), so to speak. Big deal.Let me see if I can use your cupcake example to teach you about time, cladistics, and genetics. We find a cupcake . or better yet . what we think “might” be a cupcake. We want to know if it is a cupcake and how it is related to other baked goods that we have found (which consists of a brownie, a cake, a cookie, a pie, a loaf of bread, and a butter tart). Let’s make a cladogram to list these baked goods. I’ll spare you all the details (because I cannot cook), but I would predict that on a cladogram, the cupcake would be nested with the cake, based on novel characteristics. And it does.Next we would use genetics to group the baked goods. Again, not knowing the ingredients of all of these things, I would predict that the cupcake would again be nested with the cake. And it is.Lastly, we want to know when these items were baked. We could use moisture content and/or a “staleness” level to determine this. (Of course, for this information to be of any value we would first have to have a theory which we would use to predict the outcomes of each of these measurements. Let’s say we have something called the Theory of Baked Goods (ToBG), and that this theory predicts that in the evolution of baking, bread was the first thing to ever be made. Archeological digs have determined that this was followed by butter tarts, then pies, cookies, brownies, cakes and lastly cupcakes (in that order)). Anyway, we date the item and we find that it is the most fresh.Now we have even more confidence that we have found is a cupcake. Why? Well let’s go back to crashfrog and his example.:What crashfrog was trying to tell you was that if we use three, independent methods of measurement to determine if what we have found is indeed a cupcake, and if each method leads us to the same conclusion, then the likely hood of it being anything else is diminished with each “positive” outcome. And, as even more measurement “types” are discovered and utilized, and if they support the predictions based on the ToBG, then the likelihood of it being anything other than a cupcake is lessened each time . and, IMPORTANTLY, the theory is supported and strengthened, and we are more and more certain of our claim. Does this help?

I know, I typed the damned thing...how do you think I feel? And my jaw is still pretty sore from yesterday, which makes the whole thing that much more "painful". Personally though...I want a butter tart!

Perhaps...but here's a fundamental difference. The results we expect to find (using methods like crashfrog suggested) are predictable based on the ToE. Your design nonsense has so such power. It's all "after the fact" garbage. It's pathetic. Nothing we have learned is a result of any creationism predictions followed by rigorous testing and peer-review. Once we (science) find some relatedness which we PREDICTED, you creationists simply claim that it was all designed that way. Why did you (by “you”, I mean creationist...not you specifically) not predict that cladistics would so beautifully compliment genetics, for example? Well get bold Faith...make a prediction based on your design nonsense. Show us the power of design. In other words, make a prediction using design, state a hypothesis, set up and run an experiment, reach a conclusion based on the evidence obtained, and see if your prediction holds.

And why is that Faith? Could it be because "design" has no predictive power...that it's a useless concept...that it's in no way supported by any evidence? How can you possibly arrive at this conclusion? The methods under discussion show nothing but common descent and in no way support design. Did you not read anything Crashfrog has written...or Modulous? Your uncanny ability to simply take anything that is written which fully and completely supports common descent and the ToE and somehow just hand wave it away and say "Nope...it shows design" is amazing. None of this information was obtained via anything done by creationists. Yet creationists take this valuable information and claim it shows design. How utterly dishonest! We do all the true scientific work, obtain consistent, independent, verifiable, and falsifiable results, go through peer-review, conduct further research...etc, etc, etc, and creationists "scientists" just hijack the idea and lie about what it says. And people like you just eat it up. Rather than learning, you just act like a lemming.Crashfrog asked a very good question, Faith. Think about it, would you? Why would a perfect creator duplicate errors (and importantly, errors in sections of DNA that don't code for proteins)?
Modulous mentions a very important piece of the puzzle as well...consistency index. It's a bit complicated...and I'm by no means a math wiz so I won’t even attempt to explain it (remember what happened when I tried to use cupcakes to explain cladistics, time and genetics . )...but I'm sure someone as intelligent as yourself can read up on cladistics and certainly grasp the concept. Try it Faith. Learn about cladistics before you simply dismiss it, or make a feeble, unfounded, and unsupportable attempt to claim that cladistics actually shows common design...not common descent.