Creationist inconsistency when inferring relatedness

(1) they don't feel they need to defend it ... it's <.insert>authority of choice<./insert>'s word, and(2) the first level of cognitive dissonance reduction is to ignore and deny contrary evidence. If you want to see an example, you can look at mindspawn's posts on Great debate: radiocarbon dating, Mindspawn and Coyote/RAZDEnjoy

see On The Limits of Human Talent for another example.Enjoy

Hi AndrewPD, welcome to the fray.If you use the message reply buttons (there's one at the bottom right of each message) your message is linked to the one you are replying to (adds clarity). You can also look at the way a post is formatted with the "peek" button next to it.I assume it is Message 1: when you reply Can you tell me how evolutionary biology knows that these two critters are only very very distantly related? Morphology means much more than surface appearances.By "Pre-ToE" Atheos canadensis means the system was developed before Darwin and the classification nomenclature system was developed by Linneaus. Which implies that you think science is a conspiracy to fabricate theory and then only select evidence that supports it. Do you have any evidence of such a conspiracy? And your conspiracy theory does not explain why the use of morphology to develop a tree of life pre genetic science is virtually identical to the one that comes from genetics: if the system was prone to errors why is there such consilience in results? With nothing more than the skeleton we would assume that it was an ape. Where it would likely fit into the tree of life would depend on the age of the fossil and its relation to other fossils in the area. Perhaps because what you have said just covers a surface inspection of the science rather than an in depth critique.See An introduction to evolution - Understanding Evolution for general information on evolution science and Homologies and analogies - Understanding Evolution in particular to learn about homologies and analogies. It should not come as a great surprise that scientists have already considered your "problem" and determined methodologies to ensure confidence in actual relatedness rather than haphazard guessing.Enjoy. Edited by RAZD, : ,

But your thesis depends on all scientists making the same mistakes in the same lineages ... it's either due to conspiracy or it is due to proper derivation of relationships from the evidence. By other scientists yes? This is part of science -- testing, replication, and peer review. That this occurs does not mean the process is wrong or prone to errors, it means that people are people. It also means that as we learn more we know more. Convergent evolution in similar habitats -- like the flying squirrel (placental) and the honey glider (marsupial) shown in Message 26, analogous rather than homologous. Like flight in birds and insects.Similar features can either be derived, ancestral or homoplastic (analogous)See Building the tree - Understanding Evolution regarding shared derived traits. Shared derived traits are homologous by definition. See also Homologies and analogies - Understanding Evolution and Using parsimony - Understanding Evolution

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Of course, this was just an example of the tree-building process. Phylogenetic trees are generally based on many more characters and often involve more lineages. For example, biologists reconstructing relationships between 499 lineages of seed plants began with more than 1400 molecular characters!

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The more characteristics you can use in developing the phylogenies the more likely you are to have correct results and there gets to be a point fairly quickly where the arrangement becomes statistically unlikely if due to chance or random choices. I'm not sure you understood the question. The question is that

1. we have two independent ancestral phylogenic trees
2. one is developed solely from morphology and shared derived traits as discussed by Berkeley's Evolution 101 series (links above), and
3. one is developed solely from genetic evidence of shared genetic traits and non-coding inserts, and
4. they match virtually 1 for 1 on their division of all life on earth into the various phylogenic distributions ... so
5. why does this match occur if either is prone to errors and random choices

For example both morphology and genetics independently tell us that our closest relatives are chimpanzees and we are more distantly related to gorillas.Both morphology and genetics independently tell us that flying squirrels and honey gliders are only related by their ancestral division of mammalia into placental and marsupial mammals, that the honey glider is more closely related to the kangaroo than the flying squirrel and the flying squirrel is more closely related to the kodiak bear than the honey glider.If either tree were based on "coincidental similarities" then they ought to be different at many places. They aren't.The consilience is easily explained by them both representing the same process of evolution over time.It is not explained so easily by any other mechanism ... (unless perhaps you want to consider the evidence to be intentionally 'god-did-it' made to deceive ... and I don't think you do).Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : .Edited by RAZD, : ..Edited by RAZD, : ...Edited by RAZD, : ....

Curiously they do explain what the problems are and the scientific methods to resolve them as accurately as possible from the known information.Of course I would agree. This is stating scientific tentativity, that nothing is proven in stone, scientific concepts, hypothesis and theories can be invalidated by contrary evidence. The accuracy would extend to knowing that there is no intermediates or other branches in the phylogeny as well as not knowing that the best explanation of all the evidence is the actual phylogeny. If we knew all that stuff it wouldn't be science it would be fact.Accuracy refers to the ability to hit the bulls eye of the target, so if you don't know where that bulls eye is it is difficult to measure the accuracy.Precision on the other hand refers to the ability to hit the same place over and over, and so what we see are fairly precise derivations of phylogenic relationships that hit the same places.Science approximates reality by testing it and discarding notions that don't work, the end result is not a known fact but a tentative conclusion, one we can have high confidence in the more it is tested.These phylogenies are tested by every new piece of information, and so far -- since Linnaeus -- all known life fits this overall pattern. This is not a surprise if evolution is true.In this case there is no contrary evidence to date in testing the phylogenic trees and high consilience between two independent systems.Perhaps you have an alternate explanation that also covers all the evidence? If so please present it, if not then accept that this is the best explanation to date and that you can expect further refinement as time and new information becomes available. So you don't know but you are willing to make up stuff? In science we require evidence to substantiate assertions.And this still doesn't explain the consilience -- different errors in different systems would not be consilient. Perhaps you don't know what consilience means? consilience:

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In science and history, consilience (also convergence of evidence or concordance of evidence) refers to the principle that evidence from independent, unrelated sources can "converge" to strong conclusions. That is, when multiple sources of evidence are in agreement, the conclusion can be very strong even when none of the individual sources of evidence are very strong on their own. Most established scientific knowledge is supported by a convergence of evidence: if not, the evidence is comparatively weak, and there will not likely be a strong scientific consensus.

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The principle is based on the unity of knowledge; measuring the same result by several different methods should lead to the same answer. For example, it should not matter whether one measures the distance between the Great Pyramids of Giza by laser rangefinding, by satellite imaging, or with a meter stick - in all three cases, the answer should be approximately the same. For the same reason, different dating methods in geochronology should concur, a result in chemistry should not contradict a result in geology, etc.

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Bold for emphasis.For example if I have three tree dendrochronologies (tree ring chronologies) that extend to 8000 BCE and we measure the amount of 14C in each tree ring in each chronology and find that there is the same amount of 14C in each ring of the same tree ring count (age) in each of the chronologies but see that the amount of 14C varies with age in each chronology, it would be an extraordinary coincidence that those identical 14C measurements for identical tree ring counts occurred for every ring count due to pure chance, random error, and misalignment of tree samples used when making each chronology -- would you not agree?Consilience means taking two or more systems that have strong correlations -- such as morphology with evolutionary lineages and genetics with evolutionary lineagess -- and showing how they all point to the same result, thus consilience is stronger than any single set of evidence. Which is stunningly obvious unless you know of wheels that are capable of reproduction. Because they are products of manufacturing by wheel making companies I would be stunned if they weren't similar in basics (with some variations in size, materials, treads, etc etc etc).But how does this apply in any way to biology? Planets orbit the sun and they are similar in general characteristics, so should I include them in a phylogenic tree of biological life? Curiously, opinion has been shown to be relatively unable to alter reality in any way shape or form.Rather than "think there is a limit" why don't you show evidence of it -- at what point don't we know that life is descended from life? Again I don't see how this applies to biology ... but we could draw a pretty good time sequence of events, locations where and when each murder took place, how similar the murders were, what differences (if any) occurred, who the victims were, etc etc etc ... and we can do this without knowing who the ripper was, yes? We can approximate the truth from the facts we know.Historical biology necessarily works with incomplete information, but it is still able to draw strong conclusions from the information that is available. It is an approximation, but every new test -- and it is tested every year -- brings that approximation closer to reality. So I guess we should chuck all of science and go back to chewing on roots and living in caves eh? Can you prove conclusively that you exist?EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .Edited by RAZD, : ..

But everything that doesn't relate to the crime remains innocuous. You sure have a funny idea of how science works. This is sometimes called microevolution, however this is the process through which all species evolve and all evolution occurs at the breeding population level.This has been observed in all breeding populations of all living organisms, so it is a fact that this happens to life as we know it. This is also called the process of speciation, as this results in a non-arbitrary division into two diverging species. This is the process that forms branches in the tree of life.This too has been observed happening, so it is a fact that this happens to life as we know it. Once you develop an hypothesis the next step is to test it and specifically to see if you can falsify it, and a theory is a tested hypothesis. Curiously what scientists try to do is to falsify theories not make up support for them. In science anyone caught manipulating data in any way to bias the results is out of a career.To date, after over 150 years of trying, no evidence has been found that falsifies the theory of evolution. But eugenics is not a result of evolution, but of biased sociological thinking and using evolution as a justification.Typical creationist pablum, AndrewPD. You need to explain this further -- it seems muddled to me. Falsification is a yes\no proposition. Which again has nothing to do with the science of biological evolution. You need to learn what you are attacking so that you don't keep making mistakes. I suggest a thorough reading of evolution 101 before you proceed and then see if your arguments are mentioned there. Scientific tentativity again. Also note that the emphasis is that you cannot prove a positive, which is why falsification is used to eliminate concepts that don't work.If a function is found for a gene then THAT gene is not non-functional, but that would say nothing about the others.So far you are just throwing mud at the wall to see what sticks. A good high school education should suffice to give you a working knowledge, but if you didn't get that, then either you or your school are at fault. For remedial study you can read evolution 101and I strongly recommend it.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .

Not at all. There is NOT ONE THING that is proven in science ... ultimately there is no way to measure whether any theory is accurate or not.Notice the difference between accuracy and precision:

Below are some definitions that I think may be useful in this discussion, as these terms have been used frequently and I want to be sure we mean the same thing when they are used:

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ac•cu•ra•cy
[ak-yer-uh-see] noun, plural ac•cu•ra•cies.

1. the condition or quality of being true, correct, or exact; freedom from error or defect; precision or exactness; correctness.
2. Chemistry, Physics. the extent to which a given measurement agrees with the standard value for that measurement. Compare precision (def 6).
3. Mathematics . the degree of correctness of a quantity, expression, etc. Compare precision (def 5).

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In scientific use Accuracy means your ability to hit the bulls eye of a target. If we take a bow and shoot 200 arrows at a target, and all the arrow locations average out to a bull's eye, then the average result is very accurate, the closer they cluster to the bull's eye the greater the degree of accuracy, even though there may be significant error in any one shot and there may not even be a single bull's eye in the whole group. There could be a fairly large degree of scatter in the data and still have an accurate overall average result.

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pre•ci•sion
[pri-sizh-uhn] noun

1. the state or quality of being precise.
2. accuracy; exactness: to arrive at an estimate with precision.
3. mechanical or scientific exactness: a lens ground with precision.
4. punctiliousness; strictness: precision in one's business dealings.
5. Mathematics . the degree to which the correctness of a quantity is expressed. Compare accuracy (def 3).

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Again, in scientific usage Precision means the ability to replicate exactly the same results. With our bow and arrow example we now have 200 arrows all clustered very close together, but they may or may not be located near the bull's eye. There is very little scatter in this case, so it is highly precise, as the degree of scatter defines the precision.

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As you can see these terms are not quite the same, and ideally we would like to have a system that is both accurate and precise.

To be accurate you have to know where the bullseye IS ... and if you knew that, then you wouldn't need the theory.You can be highly precise and able to independently replicate results over and over and over ...... but we don't know where the bullseye IS so we can only make approximations that get refined by determining where the bullseye isn't. It's like playing pin the tail on the donkey, every miss means the bullseye is somewhere else. Evidence is not theory, it is fact. Something we accept as true in order to base a hypothetical model to see if we can predict more\new evidence. Again you are confusing evidence with theory.Theory says that humans and bananas are distantly related, and predicts that if this is true that then there should be some DNA sequences that are shared.There are, and thus the test has been run and the results validate-but-don't-prove the hypothesis. There is no reason to expect matching sections without some mechanism of relatedness, so if there were NO matching sections between humans and bananas then the hypothetical relationship would be falsified. First off, evolution IS science, a much investigated, tested and validated science. There has not been ONE thing that has invalidated evolution as an overall working model of life on earth, from the fossil record to the historic record to the record of life all around you. The model works, it gives results and it is massively tested.Second you don't impose restrictions on reality (you don't limit what can be studied about gravity for instance), only on your understanding of it. Wallow in ignorance if you want but don't call it science and don't call it a reasonable approach to science or knowledge.The ONLY limitation on science that is rational and intellectually honest is in knowing where there is insufficient objective empirical information to allow a logically consistent hypothesis to be formed to explain the evidence ... and even that doesn't rule out the possibility of that information becoming available at a later date.So if you want to limit the knowledge about reality that is available to you , then you are free to do that for yourself, but you have no right to ask other people to be so encumbered. Passing laws or regulating science in any way will not stop reality from existing, nor will it stop science from being a valid methodology to investigate reality and to form concepts to explain it. All it could do is delay the inevitable. Have you ever heard the statement that "as long as one person is not free, then none of us are free"? Think about it AndrewPD ... where do you draw the line? where do you stop? at a point that you are comfortable but someone else isn't? Science is not something that can be voted on. No it isn't -- it is taking your precept to its logical limit.

But not independent of biology. Darwin, Miescher and Mendel were contemporaries working on different aspects of biology, and it's a shame that there wasn't communication between them because that might have helped Darwin understand how traits are inherited better.But Mendel did not have a model for mutation, and in fact had to deal with a small amount of mutation that meant his hereditary tables did not add up to precise mathematical categories.Miescher classified molecules as (now) nucleid acids, and posited that they were involved in heredity, but again there was no model for mutations.The picture is not complete until mutations are demonstrated to be the mechanism for introducing new variation into hereditary traits. So yes, technically this is "independent" of evolution, because both mutation and selection are involved.Curiously, independent discovery in science is something that occurs frequently, because many people are involved in the search for knowledge, not just some maverick or two. Alfred Russel Wallace is considered by many to be a co-discoverer of evolution and is also considered the "father of biogeography". And the Nobel Peace Prize was established by the inventor of TNT to reward peaceful use of knowledge due to his dismay at the use for war.That knowledge can be misused for personal gain or bias is nothing new. That doesn't mean that the knowledge is intrinsically bad, just the people making that misuse argument. Nope. What you are seeing is your ideology and conceptual framework getting in the way of understanding the science. Please see [mid-715545] again for information to help you better understand what evolution is.You would also be well advised to discard anything you "learned" about evolution from creationist sites as it is more likely to be misinformed misinformation than fact and often full of falsehoods. A trip to the moon can be a nefarious ideologically conceived plot to conquer the world if it is to set up a missile base. All knowledge can be misused, but that doesn't mean it should not be pursued, it just means it shouldn't be misused.One of the best ways to prevent misuse is to make sure people have a solid understanding of the science. Lysenkoism was built on theories of the heritability of acquired characteristics ... This is a falsified hypothesis, discarded by science.Edited by RAZD, : .

It was a misuse of knowledge. It doesn't have to be a theory to be misused. It stems from misrepresenting evolution as "survival of the fittest" (so therefore the "fittest" are superior ... then convince yourself that you are superior). Evolution is survival of those able to survive, and that determines "fitness". So? The fact remains that this was incorrect. There is no ladder of evolutionary development, as all living organisms are the result of equal evolution. The "tree of life" is more like a bush, and all the limbs are the same length. No, it is ideology that misuses knowledge, ideology that makes car bombs with TNT. The idea of some group of people being superior to others did not arise after Darwin, but has a long human history. And here you have it in the correct light. The people doing the atrocities are no different than groups using different knowledge to justify atrocities, whether genocide or terrorism. All knowledge is benign, it is the use that is the problem. Nuclear information can be used to make bombs or generators. Should we not study nuclear physics because a terrorist country dropped an atomic bomb on civilians?This is history, this isn't science.Edited by RAZD, : st

The observation that new rock can cover old rock but old rock cannot magically rise up to cover new rock without some force that overturns the rocks.It's called the law of superposition:

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The law of superposition (or the principle of superposition) is a key axiom based on observations of natural history that is a foundational principle of sedimentary stratigraphy and so of other geology dependent natural sciences:

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Sedimentary layers are deposited in a time sequence, with the oldest on the bottom and the youngest on the top.

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The law was formulated in the 17th century by the Danish scientist Nicolas Steno.

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If a volcanic ash deposit covers a sedimentary deposit which is more logical -- that the ash is newer than the sediment or that it is older than the sediment?The "geological column" was developed by relative dating of rock layers long before radiometric and other means were developed to provide absolute dating of many types of rocks (not all).A good source for information on radiometric dating is Radiometric Dating. Some layers are observed to have oil/etc in them, other layers are observed to never have oil/etc in them. These layers are observed to have certain relative ages in the geological column. Drilling to those layers is observed to have a high positive result in finding the oil/etc. wanted.Curiously absolute dating is not necessary to accomplish this.

Nope. But it still took a while to catch on ... even if Leonardo da Vinci may have understood this ... This is probably older than the internet. Not needed to build a model of relative ages of rocks in layers as they overlap around the world. This was essentially done in the 1800's and early 1900's before the advent of radiometric and other absolute age measuring systems. These systems have not only validated the layering and relative ages but provided more accurate age determinations.

So once again misuse occurs, not because of the information but because of the ideology\beliefs of the misusers. Correct, and when the knowledge and methodology is correctly used then the implications reflect reality. When those homology and hierarchal claims are tested by DNA analysis and validated then we have an increase in knowledge built on the shoulders of previous knowledge. When two different systems are consilient in their results, the evidence is strong that these results represent reality even if each system on its own is weak. Except for those who think the heart is where emotions lie? All people are free to express their opinions. Personally I find Dawkins treading outside his field of expertise to be just as un/informed as any other person expressing their opinion. And as I have said before, opinion\belief has shown a very poor track record in affecting reality in any way. Thus opinion\belief needs to be based on knowledge of reality as much as possible to be as valid as possible. Thus science informs philosophy rather than the other way around. If the ramifications of knowledge of reality affects your opinions\beliefs in a perceived negative manner, then the responsibility is yours for having those opinions\beliefs. Hopefully it would result in a more reality based view of ourselves and society than one based on fantasy, imagination, hatred and ignorance.