Any practical use for Universal Common Ancestor?

And fossils confirm nothing at all about what caused these changes.

Thanks, I'll try it. If it doesn't improve things, I expect you to pay for the aluminium foil I wasted.

Yeah, right ... yet so many palaeontologists point out that there is very little evidence of evolution in the rocks! But hey, who cares what paleontologists think?

All I need to know is that genetic engineering has the potential to reshape the genome such that massive changes in morphology are possible. Believing that your puny mechanisms of evolutionary can turn a rodent into a whale is grand delusion.

I'm not a YEC

Thousands of people have claimed to have seen UFOs - on the other hand, ZERO people have claimed to have seen macroevolution.You're getting ahead of yourself - fossils show that macroevolution has occurred, but fossils don't tell us HOW it occurred. Your Darwinist explanation is merely one possible explanation ... which is supported by fossil evidence, but isn't CONFIRMED by fossil evidence.

I didn't ask why "you would WANT to know the answer to" such questions. I asked why I - or more to the point - why a biologist would NEED to ask such questions. Why do you as a biologist NEED to link an extant organism you are studying to some distant ancestor that lived millions of years ago? I contend that doing so achieves nothing of any practical benefit - in other words, it's a useless exercise and a waste of time. By "ancestral state" I take it you mean the ancestral state of an extant organism. But that's not what I'm talking about - obviously. You haven't yet explained to me how the theory of common descent is useful in your work. (Note: For Pete's sake don't confuse the "theory of common descent" with "common descent" - the latter is obviously useful in a practical sense.)Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.

Fossils reveal that "evolution" has occurred, but fossils don't confirm any explanation for that "evolution". One find in scientific terms is regarded as no more than luck - oh, except in evolutionary "science", in which the accepted norms of statistics are ignored when convenient.

What the evolutionary ancestors of a trilobite? Algae? Bacteria?

I agree - but fossils don't tell us HOW.

Inexplicable gaps and sudden appearances of novel creatures in the fossil record - insects, for example.

Ah yes, but fossils don't confirm that Darwinian evolution is responsible for that progression. And insects appearing out of nowhere, for example, is hardly evidence of Darwinian evolution. Other huge gaps in the fossil record don't support Darwinism - they contradict it.

1. Aliens manipulated DNA to produce nested hierarchies. That capability is evident in the ancestral patterns of extant creatures.As for 1-4, all these phenomena (which any Grade 7 student would be familiar with) are explained by 1. above - they are legacies of genetic engineering performed by aliens over millions of years. Consider this scenario:
One group of scientists is given the task of producing a whale from a rodent using the principles of mutations and artificial selection.
Another group of scientists is given the task of producing a whale from a rodent using the principles of genetics engineering.Given that thousands of years of humans using mutations and artificial selection has failed to produce anything even close to macroevolution in any plants or animals, which group of scientists do you think is going to have the most success? (You don't have to be Einstein to come up with the correct answer!)Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.

Nonsense - "known evolutionary processes" demonstrate nothing more "known evolutionary process". You are conflating wishful thinking and science. Oh, and I suppose all those gaps and sudden appearances in the fossil record are predicted by ToE as well! Your quack theory relies on cheery-picking the evidence. The "incomplete fossil record" excuse is running out of puff - Gunter Bechly considers the fossil record to be "saturated" - meaning, we have enough fossil evidence now to conclude that the record is complete in a general sense. That is to say, the gaps and sudden appearances will always be gaps and sudden appearances. Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.

Yeah, right ... and this is why Gould described the fossil record as an "embarrassment" to Darwinian gradualism! Not even the reptile-jaw to mammalian-inner-ear fossil sequence demonstrates microevolutionary changes.
And apparently insects appearing out of nowhere demonstrates microevolutionary changes - hilarious! Tell that to Gunter Bechly. Deny the evidence, if that's the best you can do. It amusing the lengths you've gone to in order to deny that my "aliens" theory is light years ahead of your simplistic, still-stuck-in-the-nineteenth-century Neo-Darwinism (a horse-drawn cart with new wheels is still a horse-drawn cart).
The history of science is littered with the remains of mediocre, conservative thinkers who couldn't adapt to change.