Scientific Evidence for Universal Common Descent

[ImmortalFlame]

I do think that it’s relevant. What I think is not relevant is how many people with science degrees agree with any particular view.

But that's not what is being said. Simply stating that there is a scientific consensus isn't any kind of appeal to numbers - it is an acknowledgement that overwhelming opinion of experts, and the conclusions of their collective findings, agree with specific conclusions. Nobody is touting them because they agree with "a particular view". What matters is their conclusions, which is how the scientific consensus is formed.

 

[tas8831]

You want to try a scientific debate? What do you have to lose? Are you afraid i will refute the arguments your beliefs depend on?
Why are you afraid to engage me in rational, scientific debate?

I did that here:

Scientific Evidence for Universal Common Descent

It was my first post in this thread. I provided a preamble:

OK. Here is my case, along with the evidence (hate to be the broken record):

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I forget now who originally posted these on this forum, but I keep it in my archives because it offers a nice 'linear' progression of testing a methodology and then applying it - I have posted this more than a dozen times for creationists who claim that there is no evidence for evolution:​

followed by 6 partial abstracts or quotes from 6 cited papers, and ended with my "point":

CONCLUSION:

This evidence lays out the results of employing a tested methodology on the question of Primate evolution. The same general criteria/methods have been used on nearly all facets of the evolution of living things. Other than bland, predictable, and rather lame attempts to undermine the evidence by citing 'worst-case scenario experiments' and the like, no creationist has ever mounted a relelevant, much less scientific rebuttal. And, of course, no creationsit has ever offered real evidence in support of a biblical-style creation.​

I even left in my typos for transparency.

Your response?

Scientific Evidence for Universal Common Descent

I'm not going to sift through all that to try to discover a 'point'. This is obfuscation with volume. Long cut & pastes, with no specific point being made does not equal 'evidence!' Perhaps it applied, in whatever setting you wrote it for, but this is not that setting. Bible verses are irrelevant in this discussion.​

Debate Questions:


What "markers" are you referring to in the Canid paper?

How are papers using the entire mtGenome NOT also, by default, using all of the markers used in your Canid paper, to include the other more recent Canid paper that I referred to?

Would not the use of the entire mtGenome by definition also be using any and all mtGenomic 'markers'?

And this is a very serious question - Do you really think that, for example, the Primate tree I posted was made first, without using evidence or data analyses, as you seem to have implied, but that the tree in your Canid paper alone used mtDNA 'markers' to 'trace the ancestry'?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

First I want to say that I consider opinion polls worse than useless as a way of knowing what anyone thinks about anything. I think that not only are they not designed for that purpose, they are actually designed to misinform us, to serve factional interests on all sides. The only reason I’m discussing Pew polls is because those are the sources that people gave me for what they were saying about the views of scientists. For me the population that the poll percentages represent is purely fictitious. I’m discussing what the poll results tell us about that fictitious population.

The tell us that when that fictitious population was required to choose between “Humans and other living things have evolved due to natural processes such as natural selection,” and “A supreme being guided the evolution of living things for the purpose of creating humans and other life in the form it exists today,” 6% of them chose the second answer. It doesn’t seem plausible to me that 6% of working Ph. D. biomedical scientists think that humans and other living things have not evolved due to natural processes such as natural selection. It seems more plausible to me that when people who agree with both answers were faced with the requirement to choose only one of them, they did so, rather than refusing to answer. The poll results don’t tell us, or even give us any way to guess, how many would choose both answers if they could. Personally I don’t think that it would be all of them, but the poll results don’t eliminate that possibility, unless you want to claim that 6% of working Ph.D. biomedical scientists think that humans and other living things have not evolved due to natural processes such as natural selection.

Polls have their weaknesses, but given the nature of the questions being addressed, they are one of the few ways to answer them. I do not consider polls to be as useless as you do, but they are a sampling technique with assumptions and limitations.

In the poll, the first point is answered by the 6% that are also qualifying that they believe that evolution is theistic. I do not have the image you posted in front of me, but if 98% answered that they accept that life changes over time or evolves, and of those, 6% qualify it further with a religious element, it is telling us who chose both answers.

 

[Thief]

Then since you cannot define your terms or provide evidence for your claims they are irrational beliefs.

The topic of this thread involves rational beliefs.

I gotta laugh....


hehehehehehehe

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I don’t see any victims here, but I will say that agreeing with some things that @usfan is saying doesn’t mean that I’m endorsing what he’s doing.

I see a person trying to manipulate the thread and frame their self as a victim, and they are doing it by creating the atmosphere of this thread and victimizing others. It is very old strategy.

I hope you are not. His tactics are the worst sort of political propagandizing and mudslinging.

 

[Thief]

Common ancestry is not a belief. It is a theory. DNA is the universal molecule of heredity. Highly conserved genes with developmental functions common to invertebrates and vertebrates. Shared characters and genotypes. Shared and divergent ERV's. Homologies. All of these are explained by a common ancestry.

did you say ,...someone found the missing link?

 

[usfan]

Seriously? You expect me to believe that you really see that as a possibility? With whom?

Yes, you are probably right. It is becoming increasingly difficult to have a rational debate on origins, anymore. I try, but my points are drowned out by the hordes of hecklers. Still, i keep tilting at the windmills, like they will listen to reason..

It is my delusion, that science and reason can overcome superstition, bigotry, and Indoctrination. I don't think it can, really, but I'm stuck with a logical, scientific mindset, or am a sucker for lost causes..

I believe that one day, the belief in common descent will go the way of flat earth, geocentrism, the 4 humors, and spontaneous generation. It is bad science, and lives on only through institutional Indoctrination. But, like the other beliefs before it, not without a fight from the status quo, and the devoted True Believers.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I don’t see any victims here, but I will say that agreeing with some things that @usfan is saying doesn’t mean that I’m endorsing what he’s doing.

While personal characteristics, philosophical and political positions are irrelevant to a discussion of science and specific aspects of science, a person's actions within the frame of that debate are not. Continually acting contrary to what is actually occurring and repeating claims that have no foundation might be out of ignorance if it were to happen once or twice, but when it is the entire response, post after post, it becomes clear that it is a tactic in support of strategy. Not a noble strategy either.

 

[Thief]

ah....another facet to tear down

noble are you?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

did you say ,...someone found the missing link?

The missing link is a media popularization of intermediate forms within the fossil record. In real and practical terms, every fossil is a link to those that came before it and those that come after it.

They do continue to be found in the study of evolution, however.

Recent genetic work has revealed observations of previously unknown species of Homo that were introgressed into the Homo sapiens genome in Asia. Those genes are in effect, genetic fossils that link us to other branches of our own genus.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

ah....another facet to tear down

noble are you?

If you are referring to me, I have made no claims about my own nobility, but have merely pointed out that the actions of some others--one other--are not noble at all.

 

[Thief]

so we think we are discussing a line of COMMON descent

ok......at the dawn of life on this planet
life began as a clump of molecules in a mud puddle

brothers we are

 

[Jim]

@Dan From Smithville If there are any questions that you asked me that I haven’t answered, that you would still like me to answer, let me know.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

So what methodology do you propose in order to ascertain the opinions of a specific group is more reliable?


The distinction made by the questions is the one between theistic and non-theistic evolution - I.E, the scientists who believe that evolution is in some way guided by intelligence, and those who do not. I don't think it's fair to categorize that 6% as not believing in biological evolution by natural selection; they may simply believe that natural selection is the mechanism used by intelligence in the process. But the distinction is still useful to delineate between those who believe a God or God-like entity is explicitly involved in the process versus those who do not. For clarity, I do not believe this necessarily makes anyone outside of the 6% atheists, or even people who explicitly believe that God is NOT involved in the process of evolution - just that they do not believe that God is explicitly involved in the process.

I would agree that it's a largely meaningless distinction if simply trying to ascertain whether or not the individuals accept biological evolution (if God does exist, their influence on the Universe may be indistinguishable from nature), but as the poll was specifically conducted for the purposes of providing information regarding the evolution vs. creationism debate, it's still a relevant subset to take account of.

The way I read the results is that 98% of the subset answered the first question and within that 98%, 6% followed a theistic version of evolution, while the other 92% considered it by natural causes. Of that 92% we can no nothing of how why they chose that answer. It could be that they believe in a deity, but recognize that there is no evidence they can use to show the involvement of a deity. That is only speculation, but it is all that we can do with the information of the poll.

What we can get from the poll is that greater than 98% of the scientists surveyed accept the theory of evolution. If they are representative of the greater body of scientists, and I have no reason to conclude otherwise, then an overwhelming consensus of scientists accept the theory of evolution.

 

[Jim]

I am more interested in how many people who are active researchers agree with them. Merely having a degree is a weak filter.

And the agreements on what should be taught are a decent description of the consensus of those in the appropriate organizations (for example, the AAAS). Did you look at my links for the recommendations of the AAAS on what should be taught? Did you notice that it includes common descent?

Maybe you didn’t see that my questions about scientific consensus have been answered.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

@Dan From Smithville If there are any questions that you asked me that I haven’t answered, that you would still like me to answer, let me know.

I have not finished reading everything, so you may have answered it already. But my question of the social issue that you see involved here may still remain unanswered.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

so we think we are discussing a line of COMMON descent

ok......at the dawn of life on this planet
life began as a clump of molecules in a mud puddle

brothers we are

All the evidence indicates that this is correct, both physically and philosophically.

 

[tas8831]

Some of the earlier arguments presented, with my summation rebuttal:

1. Canidae.
Canids remain canids, with a wide range of morphological (looks like) variability. But they are all descended from the same parent stock, as evidenced by the mtDNA, they are able to breed, and they share the same genomic architecture. There does seem to be some variations in chromosome numbers, but the basic genetic architecture.. the core haplogroup that they all came from.. is traceable and evidenced through genetic analysis. But there is NO EVIDENCE that they are 'evolving' to or from another phylogenetic structure. Their ancestors were canids. Their descendants are, and forever will be, canids. There is nothing evidentiary to suggest otherwise.

mtDNA indicates that Canids have a common ancestry with other Carnivores. I presented such evidence to you and you dismissed it out of hand by referring to "markers" in the Canid paper. You produced a similar un-scientific dismissal of similar papers I presented about Primates - all used mtDNA - COMPLETE mitochondrial genomes.

Now please tell us all what "markers" were used in your Canid paper that were not used in any of the mitogenomic papers I have cited in this thread:

Genomic analyses reveal the influence of geographic origin, migration and hybridization on modern dog breed development

https://www.researchgate.net/figure...ed-on-mitochondrial-DNA-genome_fig1_275026081

http://uahost.uantwerpen.be/funmorph/raoul/fylsyst/Arnason2007.pdf

Primate phylogenetic relationships and divergence dates inferred from complete mitochondrial genomes - ScienceDirect

Why are you afraid to engage me in rational, scientific debate?

 

[tas8831]

Why are you afraid to engage me in rational, scientific debate?

1. Please define "new genetic information" as you understand it.
2. Explain how such new genetic information could be created.
3. Explain why new genes are needed to alter phenotype.
4. explain how mutations are not changes in the genome.

Why are you afraid to engage me in rational, scientific debate?

 

[tas8831]

You want to try a scientific debate? What do you have to lose? Are you afraid i will refute the arguments your beliefs depend on?

Why are you afraid to engage me in rational, scientific debate?

Came across this paper using complete mitochondrial genomes and all of the markers contained therein to assess Primate evolution.

A Mitogenomic Phylogeny of Living Primates
July 16, 2013

From the results and discussion:

We produced complete mt genome sequences from 32 primate individuals. From each individual, we obtained an average of 1508 tagged reads with an average length of 235 bp, yielding approximately 356 kb of sequence data corresponding to 21-fold coverage. All newly sequenced mt genomes had lengths typical for primates (16,280–16,936 bp; Table S1), but the GC-content varied largely among taxa (37.78–46.32%, Table S2, Figure S1). All newly generated mt genomes consisted of 22 tRNA genes, 2 rRNA genes, 13 protein-coding genes and the control region in the order typical for mammals. By combining the 32 newly generated data with 51 additional primate mt genomes, the dataset represents all 16 primate families, 57 of the 78 recognized genera and 78 of the 480 currently recognized species [31].​

They used 81 complete mitochondrial genomes from primates representing all 16 families. The descriptions of the genomic content represent all of the markers that one could hope for. "The mtDNA provides clear evidence of the descendancy..." The use of these markers allow for the tracing of the ancestry of all of the primate taxa used, as shown in this genetically evidenced descendency chart, and "You can see from the following chart, where they mapped the genome sequence, & followed the trail of the mtDNA":


View attachment 31631

Note that this includes humans, Neanderthals, etc. "And btw, this phylogenetic tree has evidence to support it. The genetic lines can be traced, not just presumed."

The type of data used and the means of analysis employed have been BY YOU, so there is no denying the shared ancestry of human, chimps and other primates are demonstrated in this genetically evidenced descendency chart.


You want to try a scientific debate? What do you have to lose?

Why are you afraid to engage me in rational, scientific debate?