Any practical use for Universal Common Ancestor?

Big deal - transitional fossils could also be the result of progressive creation - a process that can look like an overall process of biological evolution in the fossil record, but isn't. Imo, any transition from one genus into another genus is clear evidence of divine intervention (creation) - which means the fossil record contains lots and lots of clear evidence of creation.Evolutions do their darndest to explain the evidence (gaps) away with all manner of far-fetched theories, but a progressive creation model easily explains all those pesky gaps. It does. During the Cambrian explosion a vast array of very different creatures appear suddennly without any evidence of evolutionary ancestors, so the fossil record looks more like an orchard of unrelated trees. It appears that Darwin's "tree of life" is a myth and a fig-tree of evolutionary imagination."the Cambrian strata of rocks, vintage about 600 million years, are the oldest ones in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It's as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history" - Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 1987, p.229Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.

Thousands of years of animal and plant breeding by humans strongly suggests there are natural limits to evolution.No empiricial evidence exists that suggests genus-genus evolution (ie, macroevolution) is possible.

And yet scientists around the world are still using it. Your credibility is kaput.

I've been trying to think of a decent analogy, to help you out with your misapprehension that LUCA forms part of the theory of evolution.Let's try flight.In simple terms, the theory of flight is that the faster flow of air over the curved upper surface of a wing results in less air pressure than the slower flow of air over the flat(ter) lower surface. This difference in air pressure exerts an upward force on the wing, which when it exceeds gravity, results in the wing rising. There's the theory.Now, it's a not unreasonable inference to draw from the theory that there is an optimum wing design - one which results in greater lift than any other design. (Indeed, there are people spending their working days trying to find ever better wing designs).However, the existence and identification (if it exists) of the optimum wing design is not part of the theory of flight. (For one thing, an optimum design is not, by definition, falsifiable). It's a reasonable inference that one exists, but an optimum wing is not part of the theory. The theory continues to explain how birds and planes fly , and continues to guide the design of better wings, without any need to reference an optimum wing design.And that is how it is with the ToE and LUCA. LUCA is a reasonable inference of the ToE, but it is not part of the theory.(ABE - I'm ignoring the additional complexities presented by flapping wings/ornithopters - hat-tip to Frank Herbert).Edited by vimesey, : No reason given.

That's your problem right there. If you have dismissed the value of any Theory then what are you hoping to gain with this discussion? How can your request possibly be satisfied?As an atheist paraphrasing Ghandi, 'I like your Christ but some of your Christians are full of shit.'

What happens if you stop taking the antibiotic when the symptoms disappear but you've got plenty of antibiotic left? Hint: the answer begins with "e".

The theory of evolution. Heh, heh ...Do you think that's all there is to it?

Could be. The problem is that if one believed such an idea, one would look for independent evidence of such 'progressive creation'.If one were a real scientist.Or even if one were simply curious. I'm sure that is your opinion. Thank you. Again, that's a nice opinion on your part. The problem is that you have no evidence. See above. Actually they do appear with precursors in earlier geological periods. I have referred you to this fact before. Do you choose to ignore data? " ... as though ..."Interesting choice of words, don't you think?What does Dawkins go on to say? Does he then reject the theory of evolution?But it is interesting that you find Dawkins to be such a dependable expert on evolution.

I said that the common ancestor is "based on observation", not that it has been observed. Similarly, the electron is based on observation, even if there are no fossils of it. No. The ToE is about how one species evolves into another. The common ancestor is not a necessary part of the ToE.

"Despite denials by some ignorant creationists, scientists around the world are using the science of evolutionary biology to understand how life on our planet is reacting to a changing climate." Message 25If you dispute that statement, it's up to you to show that it's wrong.

"Since Darwin's time, the fossil history of life on Earth has been pushed back to 3.5 billion years before the present. Most of these fossils are microscopic bacteria and algae. However, in the latest Proterozoic ” a time period now called the Ediacaran, or the Vendian, and lasting from about 635 to 542 million years ago* ” macroscopic fossils of soft-bodied organisms can be found in a few localities around the world, confirming Darwin's expectations." The Ediacaran Period.The first Ediacaran fossils were discovered in 1946. I don't know offhand what was known in 1987, but it seems Dawkins was oversimplifying. There's certainly been a lot more learned since 1987.The mainstream explanation is that Ediacaran organisms were soft-bodied and extremely unlikely to fossilize. Many Cambrian organisms developed hard body parts in a geologically short time frame, and were much more likely to fossilize.

Excerpt: Richard Dawkins's New Book on Evolution:

quote:

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The biggest gap, and the one the creationists like best of all, is the one that preceded the so-called Cambrian Explosion. A little more than half a billion years ago, in the Cambrian era, most of the great animal phyla "suddenly" appear in the fossil record. Suddenly, that is, in the sense that no fossils of these animal groups are known in rocks older than the Cambrian, not suddenly in the sense of instantaneously; the period we are talking about covers about 20 million years. Anyway, it is still quite sudden, and, as I wrote in a previous book, the Cambrian shows us a substantial number of major animal phyla "already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists."

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The last sentence shows that I was savvy enough to realize that creationists would like the Cambrian Explosion. I was not (back in 1986) savvy enough to realize that they'd gleefully quote my lines back at me in their own favor, carefully omitting my careful words of explanation. On a whim, I just searched the World Wide Web for "It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history" and obtained no fewer than 1,250 hits. As a crude control test of the hypothesis that the majority of these hits represent creationist quote”minings, I tried searching, as a comparison, the clause that immediately follows the above quotation: "Evolutionists of all stripes believe, however, that this really does represent a very large gap in the fossil record." I obtained a grand total of 63 hits, compared to the 1,250 hits for the previous sentence.

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I have dealt with the Cambrian Explosion at length before. Here I'll add just one new point, illustrated by the flatworms, Platyhelminthes. This great phylum of worms includes the parasitic flukes and tapeworms, which are of great medical importance. My favorites, however, are the free-living turbellarian worms, of which there are more than 4,000 species: that's about as numerous as all the mammal species put together. They are common, both in water and on land, and presumably have been common for a very long time. You'd expect, therefore, to see a rich fossil history. Unfortunately, there is almost nothing. Apart from a handful of ambiguous trace fossils, not a single fossil flatworm has ever been found. The Platyhelminthes, to a worm, are "already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history." But in this case, "the very first time they appear" is not the Cambrian but today. Do you see what this means, or at least ought to mean for creationists? Creationists believe that flatworms were created in the same week as all other creatures. They have therefore had exactly the same time in which to fossilize as all other animals. During all the centuries when all those bony or shelly animals were depositing their fossils by the millions, the flatworms must have been living happily alongside them, but without leaving the slightest trace of their presence in the rocks. What, then, is so special about gaps in the record of those animals that do fossilize, given that the past history of the flatworms is one big gap: even though the flatworms, by the creationists' own account, have been living for the same length of time? If the gap before the Cambrian Explosion is used as evidence that most animals suddenly sprang into existence in the Cambrian, exactly the same "logic" should be used to prove that the flatworms sprang into existence yesterday. Yet this contradicts the creationist's belief that flatworms were created during the same creative week as everything else. You cannot have it both ways. This argument, at a stroke, completely and finally destroys the creationist case that the Precambrian gap in the fossil record can be taken as evidence against evolution.

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Why, on the evolutionary view, are there so few fossils before the Cambrian era? Well, presumably, whatever factors applied to the flatworms throughout geological time to this day, those same factors applied to the rest of the animal kingdom before the Cambrian. Probably, most animals before the Cambrian were soft-bodied like modern flatworms, probably rather small like modern turbellarians”just not good fossil material. Then something happened half a billion years ago to allow animals to fossilize freely”the arising of hard, mineralized skeletons, for example.

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And again you have it backwards: the DNA information is data, fact, and the fact is that the pattern derived from it is consistent with the predictions of the Theory of Evolution means that it validates the theory. This is a test of the theory, and it passed: there is no reason for this DNA pattern to show up unless the theory is valid.The tree of life from the DNA information also happens to match the one derived from morphological analysis of fossils, again something that should happen if the Theory of Evolution is valid. This too is a test of the theory, and it passed: there is no reason for this matching pattern to show up unless the theory is valid. What constrains this from happening beyond the level of genera: please layout the constraints in detail and show evidence for your assertion ...and tell me if are you using your false definition of "genus" (which is actually species by scientific technical definition) or the actual scientific technical definition for genera? Family genealogy is just a small portion of the tree of life, all within one particular species, and developing small sections like this does not refute or even begin to challenge the rest of the tree of life construction. In fact it reinforces it by demonstrating the process is valid at small levels, so again this validates the tree of life process for all species. To challenge the theory you need to provide an example where the process does not result in the predicted pattern of nested hierarchies. Indeed he could, because that is what the evidence (data, fact, observation) shows. What he would have, however is a test of two different concepts:

1. Descent from "original kinds" from created kinds, the impact of a purported flood on population dynamics, and the subsequent descent of surviving kinds from the purported ark passengers. IE:
   1. The trees of life for each "original kind" all converging to begin at the same point in time, both for the bottleneck event caused by the flood, and for the original time of creation.
   2. This is falsified if no well defined beginning points are found.
2. Descent from early original life formed on an early earth, with the pattern of nested hierarchies extending as far back in time as the evidence (data, fact, observation) allows, IE:
   1. The tree of life based on the evidence unconstrained by preconceptions, where the only well defined beginning point is at a early earth time from a common breeding population.
   2. This is falsified if a well defined beginning point is found for one or more branches of life that are not related by common ancestry to other branches.

This has been done by some YEC (pseudo)"scientists" ... where they can only get result (1) by ignoring evidence of earlier common ancestry, the age of the earth, and the lack of evidence for a flood with the subsequent bottleneck effect occurring simultaneously on all branches of life. This does not occur with an unbiased evaluation of all the evidence, as done by secular scientists with no religious preconceptions .IE concept (1) is falsified and concept (2) is validated by the evidence when all the evidence is used. Nope, it is just following the concept of descent from common ancestor breeding populations to the logical conclusion: If (D) and (E) are related via common ancestor (C), and (H) and (I) are related by common ancestor (G) and (F) is related to (C) by common ancestor (B), it is logical that there exists a population (A) that is a common ancestor to (B), (C), (D), (E), (F), (G), (H) and (I). If evidence of population (A) exists at the proper place in the spacial-temporal matrix, then this conclusion is validated as tentatively true because this is the best known explanation for the evidence (until a better explanation is provided). These are just your opinions, having ignored the evidence given for the use of knowledge, and as such they are eminently ignore-able until you provide actual objective empirical evidence of a wisp of validity.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .

What do you expect? I've often stated on this site that I have a fragile, eggshell mind. I got that description from a Door's song called Peace Frog - "Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile, eggshell mind."

I can't see how this supports your argument. One presumes that since "the principles of evolution are derived from the theory (of evolution)", then the "principles of evolution" are not the same as the "theory of evolution".Yet you claim that the practical uses of the "principles of evolution" (in the quote in post 183) are also practical uses for the "theory of evolution".
So, what are you trying to tell me? ... that the principles DERIVED from a theory are THE SAME as the theory?Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.