Any practical use for Universal Common Ancestor?

I've been looking for a practical use in applied science for the information that all life on earth evolved from a microbe that existed billions of years ago, but can't find any. It seems to me that the whole Universal Common Ancestor thing is completely irrelevant and useless outside the realm of evolutionary theory.

I would argue that as we go back in time, any historical event becomes increasing irrelevant to modern times. But it still is information on how things are thought to have become what they are today.Is there anything relevant and useful in knowing who your grandparents were, say 40 generations back?Adminnemooseus

Thread copied here from the Any practical use for Universal Common Ancestor? thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

Perhaps it is, but so what? Is your concen that in unearthing this knowledge it will further undermine a few fundamentalists' beliefs?Or are you generally against the persuit of knowledge for its own sake?

The theory of evolution has major significance to everything from medicine thru genetics, biology, chemistry, agriculture thru psychology 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.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Do we really need to know that the world is round? If we thought it was flat, wouldn't we still have figured out how to get from A to B?

Have you really? Why?One of the interesting things about knowledge, it doesn't disappear if you can't find a practical use for it.Another interesting thing is, when humans study things they learn things that may be practical and things that may not be practical. I'm surprised you didn't realize that.Scientists are by nature curious and the mysteries of how life works and how life originated are interesting subjects that scientists want to understand. Creationism and religion do not give any useful details, so we have to rely on scientific methods if we want to really understand anything.If you don't want to know about these things it is pretty easy to ignore. If you want us to stop studying it, all I can say is, piss off.

No it doesn't. Name one useful thing medicine has taken from the ToE. 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. Name one use. Keep in mind that we know genetic variation is built into each Kind or Species, known as "microevolution." Name one. See above. Name one. Lots of room here for confusion with genetics which is not the ToE, and with microevolution. Nothing but weird speculation, nothing at all really useful. 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.

Sorry. Love. I'm not responding to your crazy today.

Because you can't. I'm right.

All you have is denial. No matter how anybody answers you, you'll just deny, deny, deny.

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.

Knowing that it pisses you off gives me a warm feeling inside.

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

No. Because I don't want to.