Willowtree's Scientific Evidence against Evolution

Well, the thread you started was supposed to be about evidence, so this thread was started to get back to the evidence you offered. Sounds good to me. The thread title seems like a pretty straightforward statement of the topic. It is, after all, about your evidence against evolution. Thus, the title.The philosophical issues could go into its own topic.Surely you don't mind talking about your own evidence?

Surely you don't think this counts as a refutation? "That is not a difference really" doesn't really say much, does it?

What's so special about that sample? Why does it contradict convergent evolution?

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Perhaps chimps & humans are also the result of convergent evolution?

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Interesting question! How would we tell the difference?Convergence is only about general morphology and adaptive function; common descent is about specific genetic similarity independent of function. IN convergence, functionally similar structures may develop from different structures embryologically. With common descent, they'll develop from the same structure.You get the idea - convergence means similar function for similar ecological niches; close relatedness means genetic and developmental similarity, often despite differences in function.Chimps and humans share a wide array of genetic similarities, including identically "broken" genes, etc. This deep similarity at a genetic/developmental level makes convergence untenable.An example of convergence is the "flipper" of the dolphin and the pectoral fin of fishes; functionally similar and superficially similar morphology, but structurally very different. And, of course, dolphins and fishes are quite different genetically.In contrast, the dolphin's flipper is structurally very similar to the human hand, despite having a different function; humans and dolphins are, I would assume (although I haven't looked this up - but I have made a prediction which could be proven false!) are more similar genetically than dolphins and fishes. This shows relatively close relatedness, despite functional differences.[This message has been edited by Zhimbo, 12-18-2003]