Discussion of Phylogenetic Methods

I addressed your point.Go ahead and explain how you didn't mean what you plainly wrote.

So that's two replies now you've avoided clarifying what you allege is a misunderstanding on my part. I guess you're bowing out of our discussion.

I think you're missing caffeine's point.You guys are constantly stressing the supposed "consilience" of data, yet the history of evolution theory shows conflict, e.g. molecular data causing major revision of evolutionary relationships that had been inferred from fossil morphology.And the fossil data alone had already produced all sorts of conflicting interpretations.... and no, not at the "tips of the branches", but among entire classes of animals like mammals.The rosy picture that evolutionists paint for the public tends to be a world apart from the picture they discuss among themselves in the literature.

What he's saying is that because DNA didn't group giraffes with turtles instead of other mammals, Common Ancestry was totally vindicated.Evolutionists really set the bar high.

As I said, there is a pattern. Animals that share similar anatomical systems tend to share similar genetic organization of that anatomy.Your problem is you cannot see the distinction between this observation and your assumption of common ancestry.

Sorry I was referring to you not caffeine. Right, and to an evolutionist this is vindication of the theory. Because if DNA had grouped one family of mammals closer to reptiles than other mammals, then Common Ancestry would have been falsified. Evolutionists use examples like this to celebrate how amazing the theory it is. Oh good. I'd love to know how you've arrived at this special knowledge of how life would or would not appear absent of common descent.Dr. Adequate vaguely alluded to calculating the chances of this scenario but he kinda clammed up when I pressed him for details.

The "sets are correct" ? What does that mean? Debatable. The common ancestry narrative is surprisingly malleable.Also, I asked you to explain how you knew this: It seems a lot of your case hinges on this claim.

Eh... I don't see that concordance as confirming much of anything but the concordance itself.You seem to be making the same leap in logic and just assuming common ancestry.You are selecting a group of shared traits (e.g. mammals: endothermy, hair, neocortex, mammary glands, etc.) and bringing them into deeper focus on a molecular level, and finding the pattern of similarity to persist.Why would it not persist?

What do you mean similarity doesn't matter? The nested hierarchies are arranged based off similarity to begin with.

Probably, yea. I just think it's lame to consider it a stunning victory of evolution theory.I think even if molecular researchers had no concept of common ancestry they could have made similar predictions based off the simple idea that beings of similar anatomical properties are going to be more similar to each other in additional ways than not.If you had no concept of evolutionary relationships and furthermore knew absolutely nothing about internal anatomy and saw a dog, a cat, and a turtle. Which ones would you guess to be more similar to each other if you dissected them?

I'm still not getting the distinction you're making. I thought that's what I was saying with the mammal example... that the similarities clearly are not random. We find similar anatomy tends to be organized by similar genes.Can you give an example of what you're talking about....

Darn... Tangle, you were just teasing I see.You refuse to back up this claim... just like Dr. Adequate...

Or maybe they are left-over from a previously served function. Why'd you dodge the question? You're telling me you couldn't make a guess before you dissected them?

Do you get a perfect match with cytochrome b ? Okay, what's your point? There's no reason evolution would be forced to give rise to eukaryotes.

Was the code for each version written by different people? Why expect this? If a particular template works, why change it?