Any practical use for Universal Common Ancestor?

Of course it doesn't! It never has! Yet virtually every creationist I've encountered over the past three decades have held staunchly to the belief that evolution does rule out the existence of God. They insist upon that belief so strongly, that it has defined the discussion with non-creationists who end up accepting those creationists' claim at face value. So the only people who belief that evolution rules out the existence of God are the vast majority of creationists and those non-creationists who have been fooled into accepting the creationists' false premises.Does this mean that you have broken ranks with your fellow creationists? That you have realized the basic fact that there is no conflict between evolution and divine creation? The simple fact is that the only thing that evolution conflicts with is specific religious beliefs that it does conflict with God.So if you are not deluded by the fundamental creationist false premise, then what's your beef?

Your link supports what I was thinking, that "applied science" is basically engineering. While engineering tries to take advantage of the findings of science, it will also use techniques that have no basis in science, just the empirical discovery of something that seems to work even though they don't know why. Science is about learning how everything works and why something works that way, whereas engineering only cares about getting something to work.To quote Slartibartfast, I've always been a big fan of science. A fundamental characteristic of my mind is the desire to figure out how something works, which is basically what science is about. In high school and college when I worked in carpentry and construction for my father (a master carpenter and general contractor), he kept emphasizing what he called "construction thinking", which is basically an approach to problem solving where you arrive at practical solutions. I feel that those two forms of thinking are where most of my questions and arguments on this forum come from. I also feel that those two forms of thinking, along with my computer science degree, are what helped to lead me to working as a software engineer (having a family to support also helped). As a software engineer, I have worked for 35 years alongside engineers of other disciplines, mainly electrical engineers (EE). In addition, my introduction to computers was my training as an Air Force technician, which I augmented while working on my computer science degree by taking a few EE courses for fun.In my first EE class, Linear Circuit Analysis, we basically did the same thing as I had done in my junior college DC & AC theory class and in my Air Force tech school blocks (the curriculum is divided into "blocks" covering specific topics), only from the EE perspective (eg, "current" flows in the opposite direction, because it's a different kind of current).Each circuit has an input and an output and analysis of that circuit yields a response function which is used to define the output for a given input. The problem is that the response function is in the frequency domain (ie, the response function is a function of frequency because the impedances of the reactive elements (eg, capacitors and inductors) are dependent on frequency) whereas we want the inputs and outputs to be in the time domain (ie, they are functions of time). That conversion between domains is accomplished or facilitated through convolution, a particularly gnarly application of integral calculus (I just barely survived that chapter of the textbook, plus I did not take the subsequent EE courses in which that technique was developed further, since I was taking this class for fun).A key component in convolution is the delta function, AKA "unit impulse symbol". Basically in calculus, when you integrate a function, you are finding the area under the curve. The delta function is an input impulse signal whose integral (ie, the area under the curve) is one (1). The impulse signal has a pulse-width and an amplitude, the product of which must be kept at one (AKA "unity" in math). Shrink the pulse-width to 1/100 and the amplitude must go to 100 in order to keep the area under the curve at 1. Got that? Now continue to shrink the pulse-width to where it's approaching zero (the idea of limits is absolutely essential to calculus and will be pounded mercilessly into your brain in the first part of your Calculus I course, but I avoided that treatment by having taught myself Calculus I first in a Schaum Outline and then in a university correspondence course). As that input impulse signal's pulse-width approaches zero, its amplitude approaches infinity: limit(1/x) as x->0 = infinity. Therefore, when you apply the delta function to a circuit, you are slamming it instantaneously with a signal of infinite amplitude, and the output is that circuit's resultant ringing. For further explanation, take the subsequent EE courses that I did not take.BTW, electrical and mechanical engineers can convert electrical systems into mechanical systems for analysis and vice versa. I have two versions of a book on musical engineering and acoustics which presents both mechanical and electrical models for a particular instrument's method of producing a tone. So even though we had learned about the delta function in a EE class, my understanding is that it came from mechanical engineering (ME).Now for the pertinent part of this story. Our professor for that class had actually worked as an engineer (unlike the department head, but that's another story). When he presented the delta function to us, he added that engineers were the ones who came up with it and they used it because it worked. Then he snidely remarked that it took those stupid mathematicians with their stupid adherence to stupid theories more than a century to figure out that the delta function did actually work, while throughout that century those superior engineers continued to use something that clearly worked. Of course, he did not actually use those adjectives "stupid" and "superior", but his intent and his contempt for "theorists" was quite clear.A more subtle example comes from a small company I worked at where I, as the sole software type (self-described as "chief programmer and disk formater"), worked very closely with the company's chief engineer and sole electrical engineer (a retiree who invested heavily in this computerized greenhouse controls company) who was primarily familiar with analog electronics, so my experience with digital electronics and ability to read and understand digital component data sheets was essential. Basically, we had sensors and controllers (eg, to control lights, fans, heaters, etc) out in the greenhouse which communicate with the central computer which would use the sensor readings to send commands out to the controllers. All our components communicated over power-line carrier (ie, our communications signals would be added to the normal power lines) whereas our principal competitor required direct connections to all sensors and controllers; if a grower wanted to install a new sensor or controller, our competitor required him to hire an electrician to run new wires to a new sensor or controller, whereas with our system all he had to do was to plug in the new sensor or controller and enter it into the controlling computer. I did the programming for the sensors, controllers, and the controlling computer (in our case, a PC, whereas our main competitor required their own proprietory computer).Whenever we would adopt a new sensor, I needed to help figure out how to integrate it into our system. I remember a new humidity sensor which had an odd curve. Being a big fan of science, I started to use that curve to derive patchwork functions (a big topic in orbital mechanics). Our chief engineer immediately overrode me and had me construct a look-up table based on that graph. His decision was correct from the engineering perspective, but not from the perspective of understanding what was happening. There were other instances of preferring empirical measurements over understanding, but I cannot recall them at this time.Now, many of the "scientists" that creationists always list are actually engineers (not counting the several theologians and a couple "food scientists" (which is actually a valid field -- refer to O'Reilly's book, "Cooking for Geeks" -- even though it has nothing to do with evolution, not even the monumentally stupid question of "How did food evolve?")). At the same time, I've encountered creationist engineers who proclaim loudly how much they love science, but then when push comes to shove they turn out unequivocally against science, even to the point of trying to completely redefine science. That is actually not a rhetorical question, nor hypothetical.One of the books in my personal library is Science and Creationism edited by Ashley Montagu (1984). Check your local libraries, including college/university libraries. It is a collection of essays, but many of those essays address the then-pertinent case of McLean v. Arkansas (it took the Louisiana act based on the same model bill by respiratory therapist Paul Ellwanger minus the explicit statement of the "creation model", which was blatantly religious, to lead to Edwards v. Aguillard which finally exposed to our court system that "creation science" is pure and simple religious dogma -- it was at that point that creationists adopted "intelligent design" as their new legalistic smokescreen.Some essays in Montagu's book reported on testimony in Overton's trial of Arkansas' Act 590. That act clearly outlines the basic anti-evolution stance: if you choose to teach evolution, then you must also give equal-time, balanced-treatment to creationism. If you choose to not teach evolution, then you do not need to include creationism. So the basic goal in those laws is not to teach creationism, but rather to prevent the teaching of evolution.Think about it. Back in the 1920's, all four "monkey laws" barred the teaching of evolution in the public schools (thankfully, not in the colleges and universities, though some chose to exclude it). It was the chance mandate of the Arkansas school district of using the BSCS (Biological Sciences Curriculum Study) that opened Pandora's Box. The BSCS was written by actual scientists instead of textbook hacks, so they stated what was clearly obvious, that evolution was the cornerstone of biology. Teach that in Arkansas under that state's "monkey law" and you lose your teaching credential for life. Refuse to teach what you are directed to teach and you lose your job -- clearly the school district did not realize what it was demanding. Susan Epperson (Epperson v. Arkansas) was the keystone US Supreme Court case that completely destroyed the anti-evolutionary movement which obliterated the "monkey laws" and led to the modern creationist movement, first with its game of "Hide the Bible", and then after 1987 with Edwards v. Aguillard leading to the game of "Hide the Creationism". 
 
 Back to your question of what to teach, in an essay in Montagu's book was a description of teachers' courtroom testimonials. One teacher broke down in tears at the very idea of having to lie to his students as required by the creationist law.Another teacher described being required to develop a creationist curriculum. He consulted with the leading experts in the field, mainly Dr. Richard B. Bliss of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), which at the time was the premier source of creationist educational materiel. That teacher found all the creationist materials presented to him to be far too religious in nature to be even close to acceptable. The best alternative materiel he could find was Gentry's article in Reader's Digest, but since then we find that Gentry's examples of "Genesis rock" are actually igneous intrusions into metamorphic rock, which means that there had to have been a helluva lot of geological history predating his "Genesis rocks".So then, to your question of "Now...if I were a teacher, what alternative lessons could I teach?", the creationist alternative would be that you lie your ass off to your students.How does that sit with your morality? Unfortunately, "True Christianity" requires that you lie your ass off to your students. Fuck "True Christianity"! It is an abomination!

Wow! You truly have absolutely no clue, do you?Please explain to us how your inability to understand the most basic evolutionary concepts should qualify you as an expert who can dismiss evolution altogether.If you were truly interested in fighting against evolution, then shouldn't you at least try to learn something about it instead of dreaming up complete nonsense to rail against?And of course all that will just go right over your head. If you ever wonder why we normals look upon you creationists as a bunch of fracking idiots, just look in the mirror.

Really? You really have no clue how "super bugs" evolve? Really?You have patients who follow the entire course of antibiotics as prescribed. You start with a population of bacteria. Some of them may have some low level of resistance to an antibiotic, but when that antibiotic is applied properly (ie, the entire course is followed), then that entire population of bacteria gets eradicated, so we have no problem. As a result, there is no antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria left for us to have to deal with.Now you have patients who do not follow the entire course of antibiotics as prescribed. You start with a population of bacteria. Some of them may have some low level of resistance to an antibiotic, but when that antibiotic is applied improperly (ie, the entire course is not followed in order to totally eradicate them), then that population of bacteria is not eradicated, but rather those bacteria with some level of resistance survive to propagate -- please note that it is the bacteria who are most resistant who are also most likely to be present to propagate, according to evolutionary theory. The next time that population of bacteria is exposed to that antibiotic and proper protocol is not followed (ie, the total eradication of that bacterial population) then the surviving bacteria are even more resistant to that antibiotic.In the end, you have super-bugs who are resistant to all antibiotics you could ever throw at them.And you are just yet another fucking creationist idiot.Edited by dwise1, : Added "creationist" to the last sentence

Great! Present some and let's discuss them!Where do you want to start?

• The "shrinking sun"?
• The claim that at the rate that the sun is losing its mass would mean that an ancient sun would have been so huge and massive as to have "sucked the earth in" and incinerated it?
• The "leap second" claim (ie, at the rate that the earth's rotation is slowing down then mere millions of years ago it would have been spinning impossibly fast)?
• The "moon dust" claim (ie, if the moon were truly ancient, then it should be covered by a layer of meteoric dust over 200 feet thick)?
• Human population growth?
• Radio-carbon dating?

So many PRATTs, so little time, and practically no creationists willing to discuss them. I have no doubt that you will also do everything you possibly can to avoid rising to the occasion.

The main reason why it had taken 40 years to get around to applying the fluorine dating technique to the "fossils" was that it was a new technique that had just been developed. To explain it in terms simple enough for even you to understand, you cannot use any kind of procedure, nor anything for that matter, before it exists. Basically, you're doing the same stupid thing as criticizing Darwin for not using Wikipedia!And yet scientists did expose the hoax and corrected it such that Piltdown Man was never again used by science; the only ones still using it are creationists making false accusations, such as yourself. Contrast that with the multitude of creationist PRATTs (Points Refuted A Thousand Times) that were soundly refuted decades ago and yet creationists continue to use them unabated and shamelessly. Quelle fromage! No, rather it demonstrates cultural bias and nationalism, human failings which should have no place in science. The British national ego chafed at the Homo erectus finds being made in Germany and was repelled by the thought of humans originating in Africa, so their national pride found the idea human origins in England to be very appealing. As Wikipedia reports (https://en.wikipedia.org/...own_Man#Scientific_investigation):

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The Piltdown Man hoax succeeded so well because, at the time of its discovery, the scientific establishment believed that the large modern brain preceded the modern omnivorous diet, and the forgery provided exactly that evidence. It has also been thought that nationalism and cultural prejudice played a role in the less-than-critical acceptance of the fossil as genuine by some British scientists. It satisfied European expectations that the earliest humans would be found in Eurasia, and the British, it has been claimed, also wanted a first Briton to set against fossil hominids found elsewhere in Europe.

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You are also ignoring the early critics of Piltdown. A particular problem was that the find did not fit the patterns of the other hominids being found, especially with the fully developed human cranium. As per Wikipedia: "In the decades prior to its exposure as a forgery in 1953, scientists increasingly regarded Piltdown as an enigmatic aberration inconsistent with the path of hominid evolution as demonstrated by fossils found elsewhere."It has been pointed out elsewhere that scientists can be susceptible to hoaxes because they are used to working with evidence from Nature and do not expect Nature to be trying to deceive them.It is also in the nature of science to constantly and repeatedly question and test and validate all findings. The purpose of science is learning how nature works.
A scientist's own research is based on the research of other scientists, so it's in that scientist's own interest to validate that other research. It is that repeated questioning and testing that exposes mistakes and hoaxes, as we see in the case of the Piltdown hoax. Science self-corrects.In contrast, it is in the nature of creationism to avoid examining its own claims. The purpose of creationism is to promote religious beliefs and to proselytize with convincing sounding claims, even when they are aware that those claims are false. The only test of a creationist claim is in how convincing it sounds. That is why the multitude of mistakes and hoaxes and outright deception in creationism persist and continue to be used for many decades. Not only does creationism fail to self-correct, but it actively preserves its mistakes, hoaxes, and deceptions; that's the nature of the beast. Wrong again. The juxtaposing of such disparate features just didn't look right to many, nor did the circumstances of the find. The strongest criticism came from other paleontologists who were discovering actual hominids and pointing out the obvious, that Piltdown was an aberration that did not fit in with the other hominids. And to point out the obvious to you, creationists would not be working to discover hominids.Creationists played no role in nor made any contribution to exposing this hoax. They never do. Rather scientists did all the work, as is always the case.

Actually, they do think that.Dan Barker described Christian fundamentalism (in which he had grown up) as "when your theology becomes your psychology." That is why they need an entirely different and separate set of counselors than we normals do.The problem lies in theology. There it's the words that matter, not reality. We mere normals use words to try to describe and explain what we see, whereas the theists use words to create new realities.It's almost as if they are thinking like lawyers, looking for every little possible twist with which they could create a new reality.

No you wouldn't be embarrassed and you know full well that you never would. You are a CREATIONIST, for cryin' out loud! You lie about everything you can and NEVER HAVE ANY SHAME ABOUT YOUR LIES AND DECEPTIONS! Trust me; I've been dealing with you creationists and your slimy ways since the late 1980's.If you have changed since then, please let us know. No, I didn't expect that you would.

But if you use the cup-holder on your computer, then you break the CD-ROM drive.
(old tech-support joke)

Or else it's in an episode of Star Trek: TNG through ENT. They always played far too fast and loose with DNA. Add to that the common sci-fi movie/TV trope of a light and stable alien element that's not on the Periodic Table (HINT: all elements up to Number 120 are all present or accounted for).But just exactly where did you get your stupid trope from? Every single time a creationist uses it, that tells us immediately that they have no idea what evolution is nor how it works.Please explain to us why you would think that that is what we should expect from evolution. Please explain to us what your special misunderstanding of evolution is. We really want to know how you misunderstand evolution so that we can understand how you could arrive at such a stupidly false conclusion.candle2 shares this misunderstanding of yours, but he refuses to tell us what his misunderstanding is. I doubt that you will do any better, because honest discussion is simply not in the mental make-up of a creationist. For example, you support YEC beliefs, yet you refuse to discuss them. I had a 20-year correspondence with a staunch YEC (ie, he absolutely believed in a young earth and had converted because of YEC claims) who in all that time absolutely refused to discuss any YEC claim at all. You (plural) know that your claims are false and indefensible, which is why you do not even try.So, what is your misunderstanding of evolution that led you to make the quoted statement?

No, the YEC model, combined with the evidence, deprives all that extremely rapid evolution of even that much time. Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, Baron Cuvier (1769 - 1832), AKA "The Founding Father of Paleontology", developed the practice of extrapolating information about an organism based on a few pieces. He was also a staunch opponent of evolution (being before Darwin, evolution in his time was mostly Lamarckian). A young-earther (a default position at the time), his examination of a wide variety of Egyptian mummies brought back by Napoleon, including many animal mummies, revealed no anatomical difference between ancient (c. 1000 BCE) and modern species. He interpreted that to be evidence against evolution, but that would only be the case within a young-earth time framework.You would allow YECs a 4,000-year window for their ridiculously extreme rates of evolution, but Cuvier reduces that down to 1,000 years at most. Since he's now come out explicitly as a YEC, I'm waiting for him to make that standard bunny-blunder claim. I'm sure that he'll revert to standard YEC behavior and avoid presenting any evidence to support YEC.

You need to learn something about the Bible, not simply accept the tall tales that your religious leaders tell you.The books of the Old Testament were written down in the Persian Period starting in 538 BCE. Before then, it was primarily oral tradition, stories passed down from generation to generation. Furthermore, that oral tradition had just gone through half a century of the Babylonian Exile where it had been exposed to and influenced by foreign traditions (eg, the assimilation of elements of the Gilgamesh Epic into the Noachian Flood story). Note also the Code of Hammurabi (c. 1754 BCE) which pre-dates Mosaic Law by a few centuries (estimates of when Moses was supposed to have been date to the 1500's BCE), yet Mosaic Law very strongly parallels Hammurabic Code (though Hammurabi was more lenient on some questions, such as the status of children of slaves and freemen).Please also note how much oral tradition can change in even a couple decades. One example is the old parlor game of "Telegraph" (AKA "Telephone") in which you line everybody up, give a message to the first person, have each person whisper the message to the next person, then compare the final version with the original -- they're usually wildly different. Another example is the fundamental conceit of Romanticism, which was that folk stories extended back many centuries into the past, whereas few were more than two or three generations old. Oral tradition is interesting, but its validity cannot be trusted, especially to the degree that you are assuming.Working through the chronology presented in the Old Testament yields a purported date for Creation of about 4185 BCE (see my page, ARE THERE GAPS IN THE GENEALOGIES IN DETERMINING WHEN ADAM LIVED?, which is a reposting of a YEC article). That date is 3647 years before the Old Testament started being written. We've seen how much that oral tradition changed in just half a century, but that's just a drop in the bucket compared to 3647 years of change -- assuming that the oral tradition had even been around that long and not simply 500 to 1000 years.Plus there's the trivial point that the word for such a period dominated by oral tradition is "prehistory." There can be no such thing as a prehistorical historical document.Now, if you want to see a historical genealogy, look to the complete genealogy of the Japanese Emperor which traces his ancestry directly all the way back to Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess. Every single ancestor in that line, generation after generation, is written down. Therefore, by your own logic, Shinto is the One True Faith, you barbarian heathen. So show us why that would be. Support your nonsense. Since you have now revealed that you are a YEC, I assume that you would use the human population growth claim, so just present it.Edited by dwise1, : Hammurabi

Bullshit! You presented a YEC claim, so you are responsible for that claim. That is a false YEC claim. I specifically called upon you to explain why you make such a false claim: Instead, you went out of your way to avoid answering the question. Like a typical YEC. If you do not want to be seen as a YEC, then stop behaving like one.So answer the question!

quote:

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"Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory."
(Scott D. Weitzenhoffer)

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Though it's very telling that you are going for debate instead of discussion. Discussion entails listening to each other in order to exchange ideas and learn about the other's position while presenting yours, and offering and receiving and dealing with critiques and criticisms of each other's position (as such, it serves the useful function of testing your own position in order to correct errors). Debate means winning at all costs, making the other side lose regardless of what lies, deceptions, and dirty tricks you need to use.We are here to discuss. Creationists only come to debate (and to merely assert). We want to learn through discussion; creationists only want to "disprove" their "evolution model" (a caricature based on their misunderstanding of evolution and other sciences). You are clearly playing the role of creationist here.Please engage in discussion.

Well, there are of course different kinds of creationists, including both young- and old-earthers, so of course "YEC" doesn't serve as an overall label. But it was the YEC school which created the deliberate deception of "creation science", which the other kinds of creationists draw from for claims, arguments, tactics, etc., so then we could say that in their hearts they are all YECs.My point was that if you use a claim or argument, regardless of its source, then you are responsible to support and discuss that claim or argument. Dredge tried to dodge his responsibility purely on a technicality by objecting to being called a YEC -- a typical creationist tactic for avoiding having to support his claims.I started discussing "creation science" circa 1986 after having started studying it in 1981. Before that, I was a "fellow traveller" of the Jesus Freak Movement c. 1970. I learned the Jesus Freak hard-sell proselytizing tactics at that time and I still see them being used to this day by creationists, including Dredge.I have also seen instances of someone putting on the act of not being a creationist but he just had a few questions, but then after you've answered all his questions and countered all his objections he suddenly reverts to full-blown YEC mode. So then creationists have no scruples against posing as something that they are not (yet another morality argument against them).Similarly, we have Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) which set the legal precedence that "creation science" is purely religious and hence has no place in the public schools and cannot be used to bar the teaching of evolution (as had earlier been established by Epperson v. Arkansas (1968), which struck down the "monkey laws" of the 1920's and motivated the revival of the anti-evolution movement and its creation of "creation science" as a legalistic deception to circumvent that decision). In response to Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), creationists dropped the now-tainted "creation science" (AKA "The Game of 'Hide the Bible'") and quickly adopted a parallel school of thought, "Intelligent Design", in an effort that has been characterized as "The Game of 'Hide the Creationism'." The archetypal example of that was the "smoking gun" in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005) which revealed that ID was nothing more than yet another smoke-screen for biblical creationism. Central to the case was the ID textbook, Of Pandas and People, which was being written around the time of Edwards v. Aguillard (1987). The "smoking gun" was a misapplied word processor change, the infamous "cdesign proponentsists", which demonstrated that the original drafts of the book used the term "creationists" and after the US Supreme Court decision that term was superficially replaced with "design proponents", except where the editor had munged it up.Nowadays when we encounter YECs, they will almost never ever have anything to do with young-earth claims, but rather they will concentrate on IDist complexity claims. I gave Dredge an example of my 20-year correspondence with a staunchly young-earth creationist who loudly proclaims that he converted because of young-earth claims, yet in all that time he voided all my attempts to discuss young-earth claims with him, every single time. Apparently, the extreme weakness of young-earth claims are so very clear even to YECs that they avoid ever using them against anyone who could possibly know better. Sure, the newbies will navely blunder into harm's way, but then they learn very quickly to practice deception instead, and start traveling along the path to the Dark Side.