Any practical use for Universal Common Ancestor?

The theory of evolution has major significance to everything from medicine ...

No it doesn't. Name one useful thing medicine has taken from the ToE.

...thru genetics,

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.

...biology,

Name one use. Keep in mind that we know genetic variation is built into each Kind or Species, known as "microevolution."

chemistry,

Name one. See above.

agriculture

Name one. Lots of room here for confusion with genetics which is not the ToE, and with microevolution.

thru psychology

Nothing but weird speculation, nothing at all really useful.

and on, let alone just answering the simple questions of how we are the way we are and what might we expect in the future. Anything that impacts the evolutionary sciences, especially something as significant to the theory as the Universal Common Ancestor proposal, is not irrelevant to all that followed.

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.

Scientists can decide for themselves whether or not something is useful to them. They don't need to take your misunderstanding into account.

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 ask why because I suspect the agenda. I have a friend that has spent the last 5 years researching the use of music in Jane Austin novels, is the OP equally interested in the study of 18th century literature or is it just this one tiny branch off a sub branch attached to a main branch off the trunk of biology? If so why? You see, it's what we do, gather knowledge. We can't help it. Darwin spent years studying bloody barnacles. My tutor spent his whole life with ants. They don't do that because they think that one day it'll be useful, they do it because they just can't help themselves. And quite often it turns out to be useful and probably more often it isn't.

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.

There's two parts to R&D; the D bit the practical bit, the R bit is sometimes useful sometimes not but always interesting for itself. And the result of endless search for stuff that interests us has built what we are today.

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.

AZP writes: NNed writes: I can't think of anything for chemistry myself. Think protein folding, via proteomics, via genomics, via evolution.

Sure way to win an argument is by talking technical gobbledygook.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Of course the ToE is useful, it explains how life on earth developed. What could be more useful?

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.

Faith writes: Tangle writes: 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!!!! All of that is knowledge, even if you're right.

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.

What do you think knowledge is? I think it's factual information that can be demonstrated to be true.

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.)

You don't ever see a qualifyer that it also has to be useful. My neighbour's PhD showed that nothing he was researching was correct. That's also knowledge.

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.

PK writes: Faith writes: 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. No. You have never shown it. You have repeatedly asserted it, but the fact is that mutation does increase genetic variability, so it never runs out short of extinction.

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.

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. Of course they are evidence of evolutionary relationships. Evolutionary theory predicts that transitional fossils will exist, and they do. If life were really a collection of unrelated kinds we would not expect any to exist - the gaps between kinds should be clear.

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.

Likewise unrelated kinds should fall into a collection of discrete trees, not one big one.

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.

Now are you going to post another 50 posts on this [?]

I certainly hope not.

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