Is convergent evolution evidence against common descent?

Actually they assume common ancestry in a couple of cases (for calibration), then they use their calibrated testing device to test what age it would put the divergence of marsupials (for example), and the result they get matches with the physical evidence (fossils). Maybe their callibrating assumptions were wrong, but they produce astonishingly accurate results.This is the equivalent of not knowing the weights of any object, so using what little information you have, you assume the blue object is 1kg...if you then use that assumption and weigh the green object as being 10kg, which closely resembles some information you found in a book (8-11kg), then you might assume your initial assumption (the weight of the blue object) was possibly accurate. Especially when you weigh other objects and they agree to.In short, using this method it shows that marsupials are a long way away from us, and mice, genetically speaking. I know this isn't the direct comparison between morphologically similar placental/marsupillian organisms, but I don't think the general trend can be easily ignored.

Modulous, it doesn't show that.It bases it's methodology on an assumption, and then tries to test for the range ASSUMING the assumption is correct.It also does not test for the pairs. It's really an apples versus oranges thing here, in terms of addressing what the thread topic.But first, exactly which study are you referring to. Is it this one? If so, why not just link it again? I responded to it earlier.http://lsweb.la.asu.edu/skumar/pdf_new/KumarHedges98.pdfI think maybe you do not realize that there are several competing theories here, and studies that contradict one another over this exact issue, which is why I simply alluded to the disagreements, assuming you knew that.The letter to Nature (the study) is dated April 1998. If you want me to prove to you there have been a number of subsequent studies on the issue of when and how mammals evolved, I will, or you can take my word on it.But regardless, imo, your linked study proves my point. You are pretty strong in your opinion here.Let's do a little prediction analysis here.Your study claims dates that you think agree with the fossils, right?If fossils are shown that totally contradict that this study, what would your assumption be?

Btw, you guys are the ones that state you do not want long cut and copies. Consider the following, in terms of how much I should quote to illustrate my point: Imo, this provides real data between genetic variation in a single "species", defined in layman's terms, orangutangs that can interbreed.But the authors of the study, based on this recommend: link Now you could say the first quote above is deceptive because the study is about how they are 2 species, but I would call hogwash on that. I don't care how you classify the orangutang, I am after an understanding of the process, and what I get is there can be huge genetic disimalirities between the same interbreeding creature, which I call species for lack of a better word.It's significant to this discussion because in order to properly evaluate how much genetic differences mean, one must be able to see how much can exist in a single population of a creature that can interbreed, and once again, I find stuff like this to be very problematic for the dogmatic assertions of evolutionists, in this case on predicting when something evolved and relatedness via common descent.This message has been edited by randman, 06-07-2005 04:44 PMThis message has been edited by randman, 06-07-2005 05:12 PMThis message has been edited by randman, 06-07-2005 05:16 PMThis message has been edited by randman, 06-07-2005 05:17 PM

Seems to me more like it has a hypothesis, and it tests the hypothesis. Frankly I'd be surprised if other studies haven't been performed in the last seven years. The study already mentions known anomolies...so I'd not be surprised. I'd continue looking at the trend for accurate prediction. I'm totally sure when I entered this thread I said that very thing, and apologised for it. Indeed, in my last post I alluded to that very thing.

Modulous, you said I did not address the link when I did. That was wrong. I did not put more detail into my response because it's fairly common knowledge from even a cursory review of the subject that the data is in much debate and does not line up with your study.The fact the data does not line up supports my contention here. Lets look at some stuff I gleaned from a cursory review. shortened linkThis disgree significantly with the idea from your genetic study that there was separation 173 million years ago. They would predict placental and marsupials split 130 million years ago, a massive difference if this data is reliable, and this data totally disagree as to when the monotremes split off, and every study and data to date seems to disagree on this as far as when the splits between monotremes, marsupials, and placentals split off.This message has been edited by AdminJar, 06-07-2005 04:21 PM

Well I put the Mouse, Kanagroo and human in because those are the species for which the site gave data which you claimed showed that the mouse was more closely related to the kangaroo.I can put a Dunnart sequence in however, in this case the fat-tailed dunnart. If you add that to the previous sequences for alignment then you will see that the Dunnart trees out with the Kangaroo. Dunnart and mouse score 68.7, Dunnart and kangaroo - 80.1 with Mouse and Kangaroo scoring 69.2.So in fact the Mouse amino acid sequence is more similar to that of the Kangaroo than the Dunnart.TTFN,WK

Modulous, I apologize for sort of lumping you together with some others and having a harder tone that I should have. I found the specious charges towards me of intellectual dishonesty offensive and let that affect my tone.Back on topic; the genetic research and fossils are not yet in agreement on this stuff you linked.It had been thought that placental mammals evolved first and that marsupials were a later offshoot from that family tree, with North America being the likely point of origin for both groups, Archer said. Ancient Worlds News - World's oldest marsupial found in China - 12/12/2003 Please use peek mode to see how to post linksThis sort of discrepancy is troubling, especially in light of the dogmatic assertions of such and such happening, found in evolutionist literature, especially in introducing the topic.It is troubling, for me as a skeptic in this, to the degree that even if new genetic research will conform with the new fossil finds, that still may represent a disturbing "convergency pattern" in the research (if you don't mind the pun) where perhaps "natural selection" (not really but just to illustrate) of human behaviour tends towards making the data fit to correspond with common descent. That does not mean necessarily deliberately cooking the data, but with a strong belief system in place, that belief of common descent being the only plausible explanation for commonalities could be skewing the data, and there are at times it appears that way to me.That's one reason I am asking for the studies and data that show things like similarities in design of creatures are not the result of similarities in genetic design, for convergent evolution.This message has been edited by AdminJar, 06-07-2005 05:09 PM

Maybe you aren't familiar with how science works. Scientific research is published in journals. Only a small subset of those journals are available online and of those an even smaller subset are available to those without institutional access from a university or similar body.Not all of the relevant research is going to be freely available to you or to those debating with you. If you can't even be bothered to try and uderstand why looking for yourself at the primary literature is important then this whole exercise is pretty futile. That would certainly be the acid test, but it would take a pretty sophisticated major bit of developmetal genetics to do that. At the moment however all of the genetic evidence points to common descent and away from convergence at the genetic level. In the literature, in Genbank. Did you do your homework and run those FASTA sequences through CLustal yourself? I don't want you just to be taking my word for this stuff.TTFN,WK

Who taught you 'evolutionism'? Because none of my biology lecturers ever tried to indoctrinate me.TTFN,WK

Can you break this down into layman's English? What do you mean by "If you add that to the previous sequences for alignment"?Mouse to kangaroo score (whatever that means) is 69.2.Mouse to Dunnart is 68.7.Mouse here is nearly identical but slightly closer to the kangaroo, right?That is some real data, thanks.The next questions to my mind would be, exactly what does this mean in terms of the amino-acids?How about doing more pairs?Is there anyway to isolate and separate the areas that code for the differences in the placental and non-placental areas so we could see if different genetic sequences can produce similar traits, very similar in fact?If similarities can be produced via a wide range of genetic sequencing, then does that not cast some doubt on the presumption that similarities in the fossil record correspond to genetic similarity and thus common descent? As I mentioned before, regardless of the outcome here, there are some problematic issues since we can have similar traits and dis-similar DNA.This message has been edited by randman, 06-07-2005 05:57 PM

WK, the theory of evolution is presented and taught as a conclusion-first, believe first, and then understand later process.Some typical areas that go along with that are biased artistic drawings that present the idea, but subtly suggest to the student, usually young, that the data fits the artistic drawings when the drawings are fudged to fit the concept and not the data, and this occurs earlier in popular media and science shows.The link Ned provided that used Hackel's drawings is a sympton of that.The depiction of Neanderthals as excessively ape-like is another.The claim that microevolution proves univeral common descent is a different propoganda approach, but the same idea. Ignoring the problems with the claim, just the fact that something could happen is not proof it did happen.The over-reliance on faulty knowledge, specifically developing and dogmatically asserting such a wide ranging theory only on the observation of natural selection, when things like genetics had not even been understood is typical.We have discovered, as you posted, some non-randomness in DNA mutations. What else are we going to discover.A proper view would be to realistically assess what we cannot yet test for prior to asserting universal common descent and a multitude of other assertions based on limited data.take for example the claim we cannot test for intelligent design because that is artificial. If that's the case, if we cannot rule it out, we can't say for sure how things happened, now can we?The whole TOE concept needs to account for:other commonalities such as:
1. convergent DNA
2. similar physical laws
3. similar environment
4. Non-randomness
5. possibly intelligent intervention in the processAnd to account limited technology:1. Such as limited but emerging research on genetics
2. Limited but emerging research on the fundamentals of quantum physics and the physical laws and mechanisms affecting chemistry
3. Limited evidence due to things happening in the past
4. Possibly erroneous assumptions whether uniformatarian assumptions, assumptions about how to interpret data that indicate similaritiesetc,...

So you didn't do your homework? In a previous post I gave you the neccessary instructions to both find the relevant data and to put it into the ClustalW program to produce a multiple alignment.I provided the amino acid sequences for Kangaroo, Mouse, Human and a monkey species which you could put into the program if finding the sequences on Genbank proved too time consuming.I then, at your request, provided the amino acid sequence for the fat-tailed dunnart which could be added to the previous data to produce a further alignment. It means that they are calculated to be 69.2 percent similar in their amino acid sequence. The distance between mouse and dunnart and mouse and kangaroo is very similar yes, but as you say the kangaroo is slightly more similar. That about 100 out of 146 amio acids are align identically between Mouse and Kangaroo. Why don't you try doing some, all you need is genbank and the ClustalW program, and I've provided you links for both. If you find one of the heme protein sequences i linked to previously you should be able to use the taxonomic report to find other marsupial species and a similar search on the mouse sequence should provide more mammalian ones. Alternatively just put the species you want and 'beta chain hemoglobin' into the protein serch box at National Center for Biotechnology Information . Only if you are hung up on morphology. Personally I can take it or leave it. The problem is that in most cases morphology is all we have in the fossil record. But where genetic data is available it is almost infinitely superior, IMNSHO. I am perhaps somewhat biased since my background is in molecular biology and developmental genetics.TTFN,WK

I've been looking pretty dog-gone hard, spending many hours on this. But to ask that the others making the original claim, at least do the same, is not too much to ask, especially since it appears to me quite common for those within the evolutionist camp, on other threads, to demand evidence to back up the smallest claims, even those that can be easily verified in a matter of minutes.I am not being unreasonable. I recognize that all articles are not always available to the public.That doesn't change the fact that clearly unfounded beliefs are asserted here by those in the common descent camp, beliefs it appears that they have never even looked into for themselves, namely actual evidence on how closely genetic similarities correspond with physical similarities.

That seem to be a lot of assertion and no evidence. If you need to go back to Haeckel's drawings then you are really reaching, Von Baer had cut the legs off recapitulation before Haeckel even came up with it.TTFN,WK

Because as I stated in my OP, I do not know a lot about genetics. I am reading differing conclusions and looking at the data. I am not asking trick questions. You say "all you have to do", but you have been educated to know how to do that.Take my question on the amino-acids. I am looking for some basic stuff. I thought the genome consisted entirely of amino-acids. Does that mean this is comprehensive?From what I can glean studying this the past week, it does not appear that way.maybe you can help explain?Basically, I am looking for the data to make an informed opinion. When I see stuff that doesn't add up, that disagrees, I point that out. But that's a big problem especially even with mammals, the genetic evidence has caused some rewrites of current understandings.