Hi Ray
herepton writes:
The Creationist model is better supported
Well it goes without saying that
a creationist model can easily be invented to be 100% consistent with any data. For example it is perfectly possible that every single thing in existence was all created by God this morning in such a way as to make it look as though evolution had occurred. That's a good reason why supernatural creation should never be considered a null hypothesis.
herepton writes:
5 million years is exactly what we claim as to when the split occurred. IOW, only by outlandish assumption and you guys call it evidence
What are the outlandish assumptions of the molecular clock? You make it sound as though these (unidentified) assumptions are applied uncritically by evolutionary biologists, but this is quite untrue. Any biologist using a molecular clock will test the assumptions to see if they are valid. For example, from Yoder and Yang, Molecular Biology and Evolution 17:1081-1090 (2000):
Yoder and Yang writes:
Protein-coding genes of the mitochondrial genomes from 31 mammalian species were analyzed to estimate the speciation dates within primates and also between rats and mice. Three calibration points were used based on paleontological data: one at 20-25 MYA for the hominoid/cercopithecoid divergence, one at 53-57 MYA for the cetacean/artiodactyl divergence, and the third at 110-130 MYA for the metatherian/eutherian divergence. Both the nucleotide and the amino acid sequences were analyzed, producing conflicting results. The global molecular clock was clearly violated for both the nucleotide and the amino acid data. Models of local clocks were implemented using maximum likelihood, allowing different evolutionary rates for some lineages while assuming rate constancy in others. Surprisingly, the highly divergent third codon positions appeared to contain phylogenetic information and produced more sensible estimates of primate divergence dates than did the amino acid sequences. Estimated dates varied considerably depending on the data type, the calibration point, and the substitution model but differed little among the four tree topologies used. We conclude that the calibration derived from the primate fossil record is too recent to be reliable; we also point out a number of problems in date estimation when the molecular clock does not hold. Despite these obstacles, we derived estimates of primate divergence dates that were well supported by the data and were generally consistent with the paleontological record. Estimation of the mouse-rat divergence date, however, was problematic.
If you were able to actually explain what the assumptions of the molecular clock are, and explain why you think they are outlandish, then you might be able to put together a stronger argument. But critiquing the assumptions of the molecular clock has no bearing on the validity of the "creationist model", whatever that is supposed to be.
Mick
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