The Power of the New Intelligent Design...

Continue with your monologue, but don't bother me with your nonsense and ignorance. If you don't understand how your questions are poor, even after it has been spelled out for you multiple times, then you are hopeless.

How is it poor form to compare the predictions of a theory to observation? That is science, that's just how it works.Why did you sign up here sensei? Of all the forums on the net, what attracted you to this one? No-one forced you to come here. You could just as easily signed up to the Hello Kitty forum, but you didn't. You came here. Well here, on this forum, we discuss the evidence for the theory of evolution. You claimed you wanted to discuss evidence. But when invited to do so you recoil, like a vampire presented with a crucifix. It's just such deeply weird behavior. Why join an evolution/creationism forum if you don't want to discuss evolution or creation?If you're unable to answer the evidence presented by nested hierarchies, that's fine. We can move on to one of the many other lines of evidence. I would encourage you to address one of the examples Taq gave. Or we could talk about something else, like biogeography, another powerful piece of evidence for the ToE.Mutate and Survive

That is your problem. You keep arguing against things nobody said. That is called a monoloque. Has anybody claimed that it is poor to compare prediction with data? No. So you should fix your problems before discussing anything.

No it isn't. That's called a straw man. Yet when I ask you to compare this predictions of the ToE with data, you call it a poor question and scuttle away. What exactly is poor about asking you to compare the prediction of nested hierarchies with the data?So again; do you think that the observations of nested hierarchies are somehow flawed? If so how? How exactly do the observations fail to meet the predictions of the ToE?Mutate and Survive
​

We should absolutely disregard eyewitness accounts as scientific data. Forensic evidence is scientific data, and it often shows eye witness accounts to be wrong.

Well, you would be wrong. The most parsimonious explanation was heliocentrism because it didn't require crazy orbits for the other planets, like this one: The Heliocentric model only required elliptical orbits.Once again, if you are going to claim there are assumptions you need to list them.

It was an example of data. Now you add the requirement of data to have to be scientific, in this simple context of an example even. This is what you evolutionists do. You been shown that your arguments fail, so you change the rules as you fit.

I thought you were doing real science. Is that not the case?Are you saying that your data is not scientific?

And you think mankind have always been able to observe and measure movents of other planets?In early days, when we only had observations of Sun moving through sky during the day, geocentric was more parimonious.Parsimony rule is not perfect, so don't hold on to it like it's a must follow rule.

For the last thousand years, yes. In what way?

If you insist on this game of yours of observing nested hierarchies, you should first define what you call a hierarchy and what not.How else are we going to determine whether or not some observation is to be considered as a hierarchy?

Ahh, yes. Dueling dictionaries. One of the dishonest creationists favorite ploys.Would you like me to define ploy for you?

Wait a second. You can demand definitions, but no one else can?

Okay.

quote:

---

If different species share common ancestors, we would expect living things to be related to one another in what scientists refer to as nested hierarchies — rather like nested boxes. This is indeed what we observe in the living world and in the fossil record. When we study their traits, species naturally cluster into groups based on suites of similar, inherited traits (i.e., homologies). And they don’t just cluster into groups. They cluster into groups within groups within groups…etc. This observation makes most sense if we understand that, over time, lineages have split and formed new species, which then split and formed even more species, and so on, passing down traits and generating the branching structure that is the Tree of Life. An example is illustrated below.

​

In this evolutionary tree, sunflowers and orchids nest together because they share many homologies, including flowers. Similarly, pine trees and cypress trees share many homologies, including cones. These two groups (flowering plants and cone-bearing plants) nest together because they all share homologies such as seeds. And then seed-bearing plants nest with ferns because they all share homologies like stomata (pores for gas exchange). And so on … across the whole Tree of Life.

​

It doesn’t have to be this way. It could be that each species has a random assortment of traits and that there is no obvious way to group them. But that’s not what we observe. In fact, it’s fairly easy to group most organisms into a nested hierarchy. This was recognized by scientists like Linnaeus long before Darwin came along and proposed an explanation for the pattern: that organisms on the Tree of Life are descended with modification from common ancestors. Common ancestry is conspicuous when we examine the distribution of traits in living things.
Nested hierarchies - Understanding Evolution

---

In other words, it is a tree-like structure of shared derived features. There are synapomorphies which are the features found in the common ancestor. There are apomorphies which are the unique features that evolve on each branch and are not shared with other branches. You can learn about synapomorphies and apomorphies here:Apomorphy and synapomorphy - Wikipedia That can be done quantiatively (i.e. scientific data).

quote:

---

The degree to which a given phylogeny displays a unique, well-supported, objective nested hierarchy can be rigorously quantified. Several different statistical tests have been developed for determining whether a phylogeny has a subjective or objective nested hierarchy, or whether a given nested hierarchy could have been generated by a chance process instead of a genealogical process (Swofford 1996, p. 504). These tests measure the degree of "cladistic hierarchical structure" (also known as the "phylogenetic signal") in a phylogeny, and phylogenies based upon true genealogical processes give high values of hierarchical structure, whereas subjective phylogenies that have only apparent hierarchical structure (like a phylogeny of cars, for example) give low values (Archie 1989; Faith and Cranston 1991; Farris 1989; Felsenstein 1985; Hillis 1991; Hillis and Huelsenbeck 1992; Huelsenbeck et al. 2001; Klassen et al. 1991).
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: Part 1

---

It's not a game, it's a conversation, or a debate if you prefer that framing. Nested hierarchy. Lots of things can be arranged into hierarchies, very few things can be placed into nested hierarchies.And I'm using the standard definition, as understood in evolutionary biology. Groups emerging within groups which emerge from within groups would the quick version. I f you want more detail, I agree with the definition Taq provided above.This matters because it is a good test of the predictive power of the ToE.

• The ToE predicts that evolving populations would produce nested hierarchies.
  ​
• Nested hierarchies are widely observed in biology.
  ​
• No other model predicts the existence of nested hierarchies.

To me, that looks like a validated prediction for the ToE? Do you dispute any of this?Mutate and Survive