Any practical use for Universal Common Ancestor?

Your straw-man unwittingly raises a pertinent point - believing life on earth is 6000 years old would certainly contradict the science surrounding radioactive decay. But as for the study of disease and stellar movements, I can't see how such a belief would affect them in any way. How many religionists are still YECs? In the Catholic Church (population 1.2 billion), there seems to be relatively few. YECs probably represent only a small (vocal) minority of religionists. Er, no ... you're confused ... PE is a theory that attempts to explain an observation. PE is also an untestable theory, and is therefore nothing more than a pseudo-scientific story. Too easy! The genealogies from the first humans are recorded in the Bible (an historical document) - from which it can be calculated that man was created less than 10,000 years ago. Homo sapiens have been dated as 200, 000 years old? HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!! Deary me ... the delusions and nonsense you evolutionists are forced to come up with!

The theory of common descent certainly offers me no practical use, but the OP asks if the ToCD offers any practical use to applied science - so far none have come to light.

The OP concerns only science. By asking me for a practical use for a religious belief you are going beyond the bounds of science. Not true. Scientific evidence of an old earth was presented to me (on another site) and I eventually accepted it ... which forced me to radically reinterpret the Biblical accounts of creation.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.

In that case, it's failed. ToE can't explain the Cambrian explosion, for starters. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but your atheist belief system (aka evolution) is contradicted by the evidence.

Exhibit A: Most (if not all) of the novel organisms that appear during the Cambrian explosion have no fossil ancestors. Sorry to deliver the depressing news.

Oh, so you think I should place my trust in evolutionary scientists? That's HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA so funny!

The Cambrian explosion exists and is there for all to see - you have no excuse.

I realize that - like I said, a species from one genus evolved into a species of another genus. Hey, that's a very impressive graphic - but you forgot to mention that it's all based on the ASSUMPTION of common ancestry - all those branches are inferred from a BELIEF, not fact.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.

The OP asks for practical uses for the theory of common descent, not for ToE. Thank you, but I'm aware that a scientific theory is not proven. 1. You say you can't "prove" that the inner-ear of a mammal evolved from the jaw-bone of a reptile, yet you "know" it happened. This could mean you observed it happening ... but somehow I doubt that's the case.2. You cannot demonstrate (prove) that the inner-ear of a mammal is even capable of evolving from the jaw-bone of a reptile, yet you "know" it happened. (This is like saying, "I know the Pope is controlled by aliens", but you can't so much as prove that aliens exist.) It seems to me that your claim to scientific knowledge consists of taking a gigantic gap in the fossil record and filling it in with your blind faith in evolution.3. The fact of the matter is, you don't "KNOW" it happened - you merely BELIEVE it happened.4. The only reason you claim to "KNOW" it happened is that you believe there is no other possible explanation - thus your claim to Knowledge is actually nothing more than an example of a Fallacy of the False Alternative.5. What selection pressures could have possilbly caused the jaw-bones of a reptile to evolve into the inner-ear bones of a reptile and how did each evolutionary step (mutation) confer a survival advantage? Evolutionists can't even begin to answer such questions, of course; they simply do what they've always done ... pull out their "evolution done it (somehow)" card and bluff their way through. Is it any wonder increasing numbers of evolutionary theorists (such as Gerd Muller) are calling out current evolutionary theory for its lack of explanatory power viz-a-viz macroevolution?Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.

Since there are different definitions of ToE, I hesitate to say that the Cambrian explosion contradicts it. Rather, I would say the Cambrian explosion contradicts the theory of common descent, which is included in some defintions of ToE."... there’s another deposit in the region that throws the whole evolutionary story into disrepute: the Chengyiang bed in southern China. Here, the Cambrian Explosion has been documented in fine detail; all the major animal phyla appear in the early Cambrian without precursors. Even though conditions for the preservation of ancestral forms, whether soft-bodied or microscopic, are ideal (even sponge embryos are found in similar strata), the precursors are nowhere to be found. Paleontologist J. Y. Chen said in the film Icons of Evolution, “Darwinism is maybe only telling part of the story for evolution. Darwin’s tree is a reverse cone shape. Very unexpectedly, our research is convincing us that major phyla is starting down below at the beginning of the Cambrian. The base is wide and gradually narrows. This is almost turned a different way.” His colleague Zhou Qui Gin, a senior research fellow at the site, says (translated), “I do not believe that animals developed gradually from the bottom up. I think the animals suddenly appeared. Among the Chengyiang animals we have found 136 different kinds of animals. And they represent diversity in the level of phyla and classes. So their sudden appearance makes them very special.”
Chinese Fossil Bed Astounds Paleontologists, freerepublic.com, 02/21/2003
Chinese Fossil Beds Astound Paleontologists"On this episode of ID the Future, Dr. Gnter Bechly, paleoentomologist and former curator for amber and fossil insects for the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany, talks with host Andrew McDiarmid about evidence for macroevolution among insects. The fossil record is “saturated,” Bechly says. By that he doesn’t mean there aren’t new fossil forms to discover. Bechly himself has discovered several. He means we have an extensive enough sampling to confidently discern the major patterns of change and stasis in the history of life. And it shows no sign of insect evolution. It shows no transition from marine arthropods to terrestrial insects, none from wingless insects to winged insects, and no gradual evolution to insects (such as beetles and butterflies) that go through a metamorphosis that includes a pupal stage. And evidence for common ancestry is either contradictory or missing. In short, Bechly argues, the insect fossil record is much better explained by intelligent design than blind evolution."
Gnter Bechly: Rich Fossil Record Says No to Insect Evolution, March 11, 2019 , discovery.org.
Gnter Bechly: Rich Fossil Record Says No to Insect Evolution | ID the Future"The 1909 discovery of the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies provided the best fossil record of the Cambrian explosion until the 1984 discovery of the slightly older Maotianshan Shales in Chengjiang, China. Because of their excellent preservation, the Chengjiang fauna (many of which were soft-bodied) document the Cambrian explosion in exquisite detail, and J.-Y. Chen was the world expert.
In his February (1999) lecture at the Burke Museum of the University of Washington, Chen described many of the Chengjiang fossils and argued that their abrupt appearance in the early Cambrian was a problem for Darwinian evolution. Darwin’s theory predicts that minor taxonomic differences (such as species and genera) gradually evolve into larger differences (such as classes and phyla), whereas the fossils show that the phyla and many classes appeared first and then diversified into a variety of genera and species. Chen called this “top-down” evolution, to contrast it with the “bottom-up” evolution required by Darwin’s theory. Afterwards, scientists in the audience asked him a lot of questions about specific fossils, but they completely avoided the topic of Darwinian evolution. When Chen later asked me why, I told him that perhaps they were just being polite, because most American scientists disapprove of criticizing Darwinism. At that he laughed, and said: “In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government; in America, you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.”
""In China We Can Criticize Darwin": Prelude"
"In China We Can Criticize Darwin": Prelude | Evolution NewsEdited by Dredge, : No reason given.

I don't discuss YEC beliefs because I'm not a YEC.

Thank you for that explanation. This means that when an evolutionary scientist claims the theory of common descent is a fact, he has committed the fallacy of an appeal to authority, since an evolutionary scientist is not an authority on reality, but only an authority on evolutionary science.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.

No manipulation of words required ... and you're a bit late - I've already won the debate.

It's interesting that even the many highly qualified scientists who doubt the claims of evolutionary science make the same complaint about evo' scientists - ie, ad hominem attacks.

I said, "all life shares a common ancestor"... which you've somehow twisted into "life comes from a common ancestor".I will reiterate: To say, "all life is connected", is to say that all life shares a common ancestor - a belief that has no practical use in applied science.