Any practical use for Universal Common Ancestor?

You keep repeating this claim, but hitherto have failed to explain how the theory of common descent (ie, the theory that all life on earth shares a common ancestor) has provided a practical use in medical science.

Yes.

This is factually true and makes a lot of sense. My question to Dredge, if I had any, would be this:

If we were to throw out the basic theories of evolution...among which you assume is a "Universal Common Ancestor" hypothesis...praytell what would you replace these theories with??!!

Dredge, replying to Stile writes:

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Er, try reading the OP again. Which part of it asks for uses "within evolutionary theory"? I'm almost certain the OP is confined to only practical uses in applied science.

OK...lets limit my question to applied science. What specifically would we use as the basis for our new hypothesis as to how applied science works and what commonality, if any...humans specifically have that supplants the UCA?

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Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. ~RC Sproul
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." ~Mark Twain "
~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith

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You can "get answers" by watching the ducks. That doesn't mean the answers are coming from them.~Ringo

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Subjectivism may very well undermine Christianity.
In the same way that "allowing people to choose what they want to be when they grow up" undermines communism.~Stile

It would be more accurate to say "a species from one genus evolved into a species of a new genus." The genus did not exist before this new nomenclature was applied. Nope.It's inferred from the evidence showing common ancestry. You can access the abstract HERE, but the article is behind a pay-wall.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .

Name some and quote their complaints.

When you have to declare you've won the debate in a pathetic attempt to duck issues...You haven't won.

So, does this mean that you accept the existence of practical uses for the theory of evolution, just not for common ancestry?Actually, in this thread there has been a lot of mixing of the two concepts, even by yourself IIRC. Are you also aware the 'proof' is not a criterion for a theory? Are you also aware that , as scientists, we consider 'scientific proof' to be the weight of the evidence for a theory? A common mistake among YECs. Actually, I say that it is the best explanation for the evidence. I do not "know" (your sense of the word) nor do I "prove" anything. See above. It would seem that "proof" applies to YEC and alcohol, which may not be a coincidence. See above. Once again, I do not attempt to "prove" anything, at least not in the sense of absolute proof (200, I would guess) that you require.As for your comment about the Pope and aliens, I would like to see your evidence before I consider "knowing" anything about the subject. I believe that it is the best explanation of the data.You really have no idea what scientists think or believe or do; and yet you cant sit at your keyboard and attribute all kinds of nonsense, innuendo and outright falsehoods about them. Once again, I do not "know" anything in your sense of the word, but AFAIK, you have provided no evidence for any other possible explanation. If I were a YEC, I don't think I'd delve into the realm of logical fallacies for supporting argument. The problem you have is that this evolutionary event is supported by evidence. All we have is the data and some known mechanisms. Unlike anti-evolutionists, we do not claim to "know" everything and there are disagreements as we learn more about evolution.I'm not sure how someone who is a proponent of the "Extended Evolutionary Synthesis" can be considered as a source to support your anti-evolution arguments.

You should have stopped there ... Oh, now that's just wonderful. You 'dredge' up three quoted from edited, anti-evolution sources.How convincing!Edited by edge, : No reason given.

Some how it doesn't seem odd at all to me anymore that someone who complains about being labeled a YEC has no problems reading all kinds of fallacious and nefarious motives into what scientists do and think. It's all very trollish if you ask me.

An old post, but no-one seems to have responded to this bit directly yet.There are no known jellyfish from the Ediacaran. Kimberella (below) has been described as a jellyfish, but this is generally rejected now. It's more commonly associated with molluscs (one of the phyla you think has no evolutionary history) but that too is controversial. It's not uncommon for the classification of Ediacaran fossils to bounce all over the place. Partly that's due to preservation, but of course if different animals do all have a common ancestor; it would make sense that, for animals close to the split between different groups, it would be difficult to figure out in which group they belong. There's not really much in the way of worms, either. It's odd that you bring up worms in the connection with the idea that bilaterian phyla have no pre-Cambrian evolutionary history, though. Lots of the bilaterian phyla are worms, and their common ancestor is presumed to be some kind of worm. If you want to look for the evolutionary history of bilaterians in the late pre-Cambrian, worms are exactly what you'd be looking for.On the other side of the explosion, there are neither fish nor insects in the Cambrian. The oldest fishes are known from the Silurian; though there are fossils from the Ordovician that have been interpreted as fish scales. If that's correct there were presumably fish that they came from. No sign of fish in the Cambrian though.As for insects, there are no sign of them till about 90 million years after the Cambrian.It may help to learn something about the fossil record before making conclusions based on it.

You like to complain a lot about people not understanding your arguments or ignoring them. And yet when someone tries to explain why questions like the above do not make sense (like I did here), you tend to ignore them and go and find an insulting post to respond to and complain about instead.May I suggest that more progress might be made if you do things the opposite way around - address the substantive posts and ignore the insulting ones?

A scientific theory is built on existing evidence to explain that evidence, and then predict possible new evidence. This is tested by finding new evidence that either validates or invalidates (disproves) the theory. Theories can be "proven" false but not true (see Karl Popper, Falsifiability)

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... My proposal is based upon an asymmetry between verifiability and falsifiability; an asymmetry which results from the logical form of universal statements. For these are never derivable from singular statements, but can be contradicted by singular statements.
””Karl Popper, Popper 1959. p 19

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When a theory passes such testing it is said to be validated rather than "proven" and the theory is a valid explanation of all the evidence known, including the original evidence and the new evidence from the testing. We know that all the evidence known to date is consistent with the theory of evolution explanation for the various intermediate stages of development of the mammal ear from the reptile ear, and that the theory of evolution provides the best known available explanation for this evidence. The evidence is not only consistent with the theory, it is consistent within the restrictions of the temporal/spacial matrix on the theory of evolution -- that it must occur in close proximity in both time and space between ancestral populations and descendant populations.Enjoy

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"Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory."
(Scott D. Weitzenhoffer)

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Though it's very telling that you are going for debate instead of discussion. Discussion entails listening to each other in order to exchange ideas and learn about the other's position while presenting yours, and offering and receiving and dealing with critiques and criticisms of each other's position (as such, it serves the useful function of testing your own position in order to correct errors). Debate means winning at all costs, making the other side lose regardless of what lies, deceptions, and dirty tricks you need to use.We are here to discuss. Creationists only come to debate (and to merely assert). We want to learn through discussion; creationists only want to "disprove" their "evolution model" (a caricature based on their misunderstanding of evolution and other sciences). You are clearly playing the role of creationist here.Please engage in discussion.

But you think that adding "God did it" anywhere there are gaps in our knowledge improves our ability to explain things scientifically? Scientists are always open to new theories or modifications to existing theories that better explain the data and provide a more effective framework with which to work in. Special creation doesn't offer a suitable scientific answer. We would be better off just saying we don't know.If creationists or ID proponents would spend their time developing explanations that helped move our understanding of diversity forward, they would be much better off. Instead, all they do is disparage evolutionary theory. They think that if evolutionary theory is false, then creation is true by default. But what you don't seem to get is that even if evolutionary theory was actually a terrible theory, we would still continue to use it until a better theory came along - simply because it IS the best theory we have regarding the diversity of life on earth. On a philosophical level, I agree. But as a scientist, it is the best we got... so that's what we use. Sorry, Typo. It should have been: shared and derived traits No, this is not an appeal to authority. But you can makes all kinds of claims about what biologist do and do not need to do, because you never actually have to put your claims to the test. For example: You can make the claim since you never need to actually do anything that requires this type of study. You never have to test your claims. Same way Faith makes wild claims about genetics... she never has to put those claims to the test. Do you think I am going to go to work next week and apply your claims to my work? No, I am going to go with what has been proven to work. How could you possibly know if all members of a genus shared a common ancestor? How could you know if several genera shared a common ancestor. For example: in the cat family, Felidae, there are at least 14 extant genera. Are each of these separate creations? or is each of the 8 lineages a separate creation? Or is the whole family descended from a common ancestor - as most creationists claim? What is your criteria for determining the answer? There is a lot of things you could argue we don't "need", but we do it anyway. We are a curious sort. We want to understand our planet and our universe. But beyond that, understanding diversity helps us understand how to preserve diversity, a problem we are increasingly confronted with. Understanding how organisms adapt and change can help us predict how creatures will be affected by our changing world. Understanding diversity helps us develop food crops and medicine.If you are disparaging basic research in general, sure, often times basic research has no application in applied science. But that building block will be added to by another basic researcher and another until something useful does come from it. Just because it doesn't have a useful application (in the view of a non-biologist) doesn't make it wrong. That's where you argument fails (despite your false claim of victory).HBD

Well, there are of course different kinds of creationists, including both young- and old-earthers, so of course "YEC" doesn't serve as an overall label. But it was the YEC school which created the deliberate deception of "creation science", which the other kinds of creationists draw from for claims, arguments, tactics, etc., so then we could say that in their hearts they are all YECs.My point was that if you use a claim or argument, regardless of its source, then you are responsible to support and discuss that claim or argument. Dredge tried to dodge his responsibility purely on a technicality by objecting to being called a YEC -- a typical creationist tactic for avoiding having to support his claims.I started discussing "creation science" circa 1986 after having started studying it in 1981. Before that, I was a "fellow traveller" of the Jesus Freak Movement c. 1970. I learned the Jesus Freak hard-sell proselytizing tactics at that time and I still see them being used to this day by creationists, including Dredge.I have also seen instances of someone putting on the act of not being a creationist but he just had a few questions, but then after you've answered all his questions and countered all his objections he suddenly reverts to full-blown YEC mode. So then creationists have no scruples against posing as something that they are not (yet another morality argument against them).Similarly, we have Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) which set the legal precedence that "creation science" is purely religious and hence has no place in the public schools and cannot be used to bar the teaching of evolution (as had earlier been established by Epperson v. Arkansas (1968), which struck down the "monkey laws" of the 1920's and motivated the revival of the anti-evolution movement and its creation of "creation science" as a legalistic deception to circumvent that decision). In response to Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), creationists dropped the now-tainted "creation science" (AKA "The Game of 'Hide the Bible'") and quickly adopted a parallel school of thought, "Intelligent Design", in an effort that has been characterized as "The Game of 'Hide the Creationism'." The archetypal example of that was the "smoking gun" in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005) which revealed that ID was nothing more than yet another smoke-screen for biblical creationism. Central to the case was the ID textbook, Of Pandas and People, which was being written around the time of Edwards v. Aguillard (1987). The "smoking gun" was a misapplied word processor change, the infamous "cdesign proponentsists", which demonstrated that the original drafts of the book used the term "creationists" and after the US Supreme Court decision that term was superficially replaced with "design proponents", except where the editor had munged it up.Nowadays when we encounter YECs, they will almost never ever have anything to do with young-earth claims, but rather they will concentrate on IDist complexity claims. I gave Dredge an example of my 20-year correspondence with a staunchly young-earth creationist who loudly proclaims that he converted because of young-earth claims, yet in all that time he voided all my attempts to discuss young-earth claims with him, every single time. Apparently, the extreme weakness of young-earth claims are so very clear even to YECs that they avoid ever using them against anyone who could possibly know better. Sure, the newbies will navely blunder into harm's way, but then they learn very quickly to practice deception instead, and start traveling along the path to the Dark Side.