Any practical use for Universal Common Ancestor?

No it doesn't. Name one useful thing medicine has taken from the ToE. Nope. Oh it isn't that you all don't mentally apply the ToE to the sciences, which unfortunately you do, but without any useful application whatever, and in fact it most likely misleads the scientist in ways that may never be detected until it's too late. Name one use. Keep in mind that we know genetic variation is built into each Kind or Species, known as "microevolution." Name one. See above. Name one. Lots of room here for confusion with genetics which is not the ToE, and with microevolution. Nothing but weird speculation, nothing at all really useful. Etc etc etc etc etc. You won't be able to name one single actually useful application of the ToE for any of the above. You'll either confuse it with microevolution or with the true knowledge from the science that has nothing to do with the ToE.Cheers.abe: Oh, and as for the idea that science may be knowledge for knowledge's sake, the ToE doesn't qualify for that either because it's just an elaborate mental construction that can't be proved, so isn't in fact knowledge at all.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Because you can't. I'm right.

No, whatever you say to demonstrate the usefulness of the ToE to any science, which neither you nor AZ has done, which is of course telling, can be shown to be nothing but mental castle-building because there is no actual usefulness. As I said, you'll either confuse it with what the science itself does actually know completely apart from the ToE, or with the known fact that Species or Kinds do have built in ability to vary but only within the Kind. There is no evidence whatever, just theory and tnothing but theory, that says variation continues beyond the Kind. Perhaps you can at least show some usefulness for the fact of microevolution, I'm not sure.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Obviously there simply is no objective usefulness to the ToE since all I'm getting is weird evasions.

But it isn't even knowledge, it's just an elaborate cogitation.And knowledge isn't a "use" anyway, as we are using that term here.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Do you have your right hand over your heart as you intone that credo?

I understand and I love that sort of stuff myself, reading about it I mean. But it's been claimed the ToE is useful and I'm saying no it isn't. I'm also saying it isn't even useful as knowledge. Darwin's pigeon breeding is very interesting too but it doesn't prove the ToE it only proves built-in variability. When the pigeons are released from controlled reproductive isolation they revert to pretty much their original form. They obviously have pigeon genetics and only pigeon genetics and all the variations lead nowhere except to different varieties of pigeons. When you select a trait and isolate your breeders to emphasize that trait, that trait will become elaborate in the offspring. It's a pigeon trait, it goes nowhere except to a variety of pigeon. Lenski's endless experiments never produced anything but e coli. There is absolutely NO evidence for the ToE AT ALL, NONE!!!!So we don't even get knowledge, it remains this mental construction and nothing else. It's false but it keeps on being believed against the utter absense of any corroborating evidence. You'll never get anything but a pigeon from breeding pigeons but the varieties may be interesting science in themselves -- I'd expect them to show the limits of the pigeon genome myself but as long as the ToE is believed that is not likely to be noticed. This is how the theory can interfere with actual scientific knowledge. Likewise, the assumption that mutations are the source of healthy alleles, which is necessary to the ToE, is only going to mislead scientists into false expectations that cover up the fact that mutations are destructive events that should be the basis for aggressive methods of slowing down the disease processes that are the consequence of the Fall. Dangerous mistake. But nothing you've said has anything to do with the ToE though it may be interesting science in itself, and again the challenge here is to the idea that the ToE is useful. In fact it is neither useful nor genuine scientific knowledge.

None of that has anything to do with the ToE, it's about variation within the Kind which is absolutely limited to the Kind. And all the observed effects you are tlaking about are amply explained by that fact. You are talking about microevolution.

To the extent that this is going on it is about microevolution, period. You are assuming the Toe, but there isn't one iota of evidence for evolution beyond the Kind. As I said above, this claim that the ToE is useful to the sciences will turn out to be the result of confusion with variation within the Kind or Species, otherwise known as "microevolution," or confusion with the actual results of the separate sciences without any input from the ToE whatever. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I've shown that there is a natural limit to evolution in many threads already, showing that any line of variation will eventually run out of genetic variability as it were, ending in fixed loci for so many traits there is no further variation possible.Nested hierrarchy and transitional fossils are simply interpreted to support the ToE but there is no ACTUAL evidence of such a relationship, it's merely assumed. It's all nothing but theory. And you get distant genetic relationships also by assuming the ToE, otherwise you'd have to explain it more realistically.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Sure way to win an argument is by talking technical gobbledygook.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Lots of myths explain how life on earth developed. The only way an explanation is real knowledge is if it's true and the ToE is not, it's just another myth. Of course it's knowledge, it just isn't knowledge due to the ToE. It COULD be knowledge that verifies creationism, and I believe it does. Me too. (With the exception of the kind of knowedge I was just writing to Straggler about on another thread, knowledge derived through faith in the Biblical revelation. But that's not relevant here beyond being an exception to the general statement.) Yes but I'm not the one claiming the ToE is useful. The OP says it is not and I agree, but others here have disagreed and I'm answering them.

I've explained how any genetic increase -- which would include beneficial mutations if they actually existed in the necessary numbers, which they don't -- would meet the same fate as any allele in such a situation, ending up as fixed loci from which further variation is impossible.Once you have fixed loci for a great number of traits you have this situation that further evolution is effectively impossible. Even if you get a single mutation that is passed on it is a trivial change that is hardly cause for optimism for any change on the scale required by the ToE. Fixed loci are essentially the end of the evolutionary road. And this is where an evolving line has to end up. In the same condition as the cheetah and the elephant seals, and the fact that they got there a lot faster doesn't change the fact that it's the same situation, and if mutation could provide the basis for further variation that might save either from extinction it would have by now. Evolution defeats evolution: it "spends" genetic diversity in order to produce new phenotypes, and if this trend continues to its logical extreme that's the end of evolutiion for that line of variation. And that has to be the definition of the boundary of the Kind: where evolution stops for lack of genetic diversity. But if they aren't they aren't, or they are except that onfirmation bias has prevented this from being seen. Transitional fossils do not occur in anywhere near the numbers Darwin himself said would be necessary to prove his theory. You have a very scanty collection, and there is no reason to think of them as anything but variations on a Kind, or another Kind unto itself. According to the ToE though, which is self-confirming.In any case the FACT, and it is a fact, that the processes of evolution use up genetic diversity in the formation of new phenotypes, means none of these other considerations carry any weight at all. Evolution beyond variation within the Kind can't happen. Period.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I certainly hope not.

You have misattributed those quotes to me, but it is dredge who said them. Please correct.