Woese's progenote hypothesis

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The real issue is that randman claims that the paper is evidence against common ancestry of the three domains (or whatever you call them).

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If you do not feel that your solution to this supposed problem is better than Woese's then what is the point of the thread ? Woese blieved that he had found a problem and proposed a solution based on his understanding and expertise. That was nearly 20 years ago and things have changed since then.And why continually refer to the idea that there was no common ancestor unless you wish to promote itFrom the OP From Message 75Now if you were simply suggesting that since we don't know what happened we ought to consider your idea as good as Woese's without actually considering the evidence you would just have an argument from ignorance as I suggested in Message 95. You vehemently rejected that possiblity (Message 96)

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No, you have steadfastly ignored the OP, made false representations
of my argument and refused to engage the debate here, and so you are just fouling up the thread.

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This is a complete falsehood. Most of the "fouling up" is due to your refusal to admit the truth. I proved that you had misrepresented Woese in several places including Message 48, Message 50 and Message 61 to pick out those that stand alone best.

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What, for instance, do you make of Woese' claims that a progenote is a necessary invention to overcome the problems he depicts with normal, vertical evolution producing the 3 kingdoms?

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I think that it is an interesting idea

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Do you agree with Woese or not?

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As I have already told you I neither agree nor disagree. I would have to do a better survey of the scientific consensus (or lack of it) before I came to a conclusion. I am certainly not going to come to a conclusion based on this paper when the author himself expected it to be thoroughly outdated within a decade of its writing - nearly twenty years ago.

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Do you have an alternative to his theory?

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Why would I need one ? I'm not an expert in this field.

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Do you think it feasible to consider there was no common ancestor at all?

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I don't think it likely. I can't see any plausible scenario in that vein that explains what we see without making too many ad hoc assumptions.

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Will you address any substantive point of this thread?

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I already have. I

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PaulK, no you proved nothing

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False.

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You refused to admit that Woese was arguing the changes were too great for a genote to be the common ancestor or misunderstood what that means

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This is badly wrong. Firstly it is not the misrepresentation I referred to as having proved as can easily be seen by anyone who bothers to check the links. However it is ANOTHER misrepresentation of Woese since he did not make this argument.

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even though I would like to discuss the alternative of no common ancestor since you refuse to engage the data, no discussion has really taken place with you,

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This is an outright lie. I did not refuse to engage the data - you refused to present any ! The reason no discussion has taken place is because you keep refusing to present any data or any reasonable argument.

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and yet you have fouled up the thread with baseless charges.

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No, you have. I've simply caught you in misrepresentations and falsehoods galore.

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in other words, you have chosen to make asinine comments on a thread in which you have no intention of doing the necessary work to find out what the thread is about and so be able to discuss it intelligently.

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Since you have not done the "necessary work" either, it would seem that it is not needed to post to this thread.

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So, on the one hand, you admit your ignorance, and yet you assert here sufficient knowledge to dismiss an alternative

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I beleive that I am sufficiently aware of the details to have an opinion on this issue. You clearly know no more, since when I asked you to present data or argument supporting your alternative you had none other than to say that you considered it "perfectly reasonable" and even that took you several posts. In short my one comment itself is more than you have managed to produce in that at least it states a reason. So to dismiss it as you do simply illustrates how completely hopeless your own position is.

Yes, Woese's authority applies equally to his interpretations of the data and the plausiblity of his proposed solution. Something randman doesn't seem to understand.I believe that Woese is now in favour of the idea that the "common ancestor" was a community of replicators sharing genes. Certainly he proposes a good deal of HGT to explain why the archaeans and bacteria are not as distinct genetically as his ideas would suggest.But a pool of common ancestors where we can't pick out THE ancestor is still common ancestry of a sort, and certainly not the independant origins preferred by randman. Woese's views call on known or plausible mechanisms to explain the similarities and the differences. If randman wishes to put his views on the same level then he needs to do the same, without relying on ad hoc assumptions (why, for instance, would an assumed designer create three lineages of single-celled life with the degree of shared similarities - and differences - that are observed ?)