Any practical use for Universal Common Ancestor?

LNA writes:I was going to start this message by asking for the creationist understanding of cross-specie applied research relative to diseases...

LNA writes:This is important because mice have been used in laboratories as experimental animals for research into human disease processes for years. Mice are currently ...

LarmarkNewAge writes:I think it is obvious that the UCA "macro-evolutionary" theory can easily offer the mice disease research as powerful (?) support for the theory.

I want the creationist argument.

I fully expect some lame, "God was efficient, so he made us mammals with similar DNA", type of response

Stile writes:Transistors are only "eminently useful in a practical sense and have also proven useful in applied science" within the realm of electronic devices.
Go ahead, try it.
Can you think of any usefulness of a transistor at all outside of electronics?
That's what you're doing with "useless stories of UCA."
Sure - they may very well be useless "outside the realm of evolutionary theory."

ringo writes:Then why are you wasting time with this thread?

edge writes:Then you agree that common ancestry is useful in pure science, yes?

edge writes:Then you guess wrongly. I am not a biologist and that is not my first impression of the argument.

LarmarkNewAge writes:The sames creationists say there was divergence and "evolution".
The same creationists accept DNA as real.
Genetic understanding is relevant to deciding which people are more likely to suffer from whatever type of disease.
Genetic understanding is also relevant to getting the best treatment.Now, the question:
The question is whether "macro" evolutionary understanding of DNA comparisons can help clue a scientist in on fruitful areas of disease research, and in a way that creationists might be inclined to avoid.
Look at the issue of using animal research to help find cures to human diseases.
Whales get HIV, I believe. Rats and Chimps have some useful "disease research" functions.
Does the macro-evolutionary understanding cause more and better research to necessarily happen?

Dredge writes:Which is why your "transistor" analogy is lame - a transistor has a practical use; UCA has no practical use ... anywhere.

Common descent is useful in theoretical science, yes, but it is also useful in explaining why the Tooth Fairy has blonde hair and why ETs look a little like us humans.

. Please be advised that "research" and even "better research" is not a practical use. Research can and often does lead to a practical use, but until it does, research is practically useless.

You seem to be conflating useful facts (which can lead to useful applications) with an irrelevant and useless theory (which never leads to useful applications).

Dredge writes:Common descent is useful in theoretical science, yes,

but it is also useful in explaining why the Tooth Fairy has blonde hair and why ETs look a little like us humans.

Thank you, that's the end of the discussion then.

RAZD writes:Except the argument shifts to whether theoretical science has a practical use ...

Creationists don’t like new information that disrupts their fragile thinking.

My comment was a play on Theodore Dobzhansky's line that "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution", which has become a kind of mantra in biological science and is the title of his famous essay.

Upon reading said essay, one realizes that what Dobzhansky meant by "evolution" was the Darwinian interpretation of the fossil record, which of course includes the concept of UCA.

But Dobzhansky was deluded and wrong, for there is nothing in all of applied biology (ie, the only form of biology that matters) that depends on the concept/theory/conclusion of UCA or even human evolution.