Any practical use for Universal Common Ancestor?

What the fuck are you dissembling about?The complete genealogy from the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu, to the modern-day Emperor has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. Rather, I offered it as documentation far superior to your biblical invention which completely fails to support your bald assertion that humans have only been around for 6,000 to 10,000 years. Despite your false and deceptive claims to not be a YEC, that belief is pure YEC and has no place in actual progressive creationism.So you are lying about not being a YEC, as you are lying about being a progressive creationist. And you are lying about what others say. Why do you need to lie all the time? Because you are a creationist and all that creationists have to work with are lies and deception.Here is my question from my Message 574. You know, the one that you are so terrified of that you went out of your way to avoid: Stop your stupid lying and just answer the fucking question!If you are so terrified of simple direct questions, then there is something very seriously wrong with your position. And it's not just you; every creationist acts the same way. If all you have to offer are lies and deception and you are so terrified of simple direct questions, then you very seriously need to do some self-evaluation. You are just like your puny frightened impotent little "God of the Gaps" who has to hide in the shadows in absolute terror of knowledge and the light. How absolutely pitiful!Edited by dwise1, : Added last paragraph

The hell you did! You expressed the YEC belief in the recent appearance of humans, contrary to the teachings of progressive creationism, referring solely to the YEC practice (again contrary to progressive creationism) of biblical literalism to support your religious assertion of the recent appearance of humans (ie, 6,000 to 10,000 years ago). This is a Science Forum! What scientific evidence you have to support your religious assertion of the recent appearance of humans? You have not yet provided any scientific support for that!Therefore, you have not even begun to answer that question! So answer the fucking question, you troll!Furthermore, you mocked the idea of humans having been around for longer that you assert: For that reversion to your imbecilic trolling you have not offered any kind of evidence nor support. You need to support your bald assertion that humans could not have been around for that long. What is your scientific evidence that would indicate the impossibility of humans having been around for 200,000 years?Again, you have never even begun to answer that question. Therefore, when you claim that you have already answer either of those questions, then you are lying to us!Stop your stupid lying and answer the fucking questions!

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The Physicist and the Metaphysicist

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In the 1920s, there was a dinner at which the physicist Robert W. Wood was asked to respond to a toast. This was a time when people stood up, made a toast, and then selected someone to respond. Nobody knew what toast they'd be asked to reply to, so it was a challenge for the quick-witted. In this case the toast was: "To physics and metaphysics." Now by metaphysics was meant something like philosophy -- truths that you could get to just by thinking about them. Wood took a second, glanced about him, and answered along these lines: The physicist has an idea, he said. The more he thinks it through, the more sense it makes to him. He goes to the scientific literature, and the more he reads, the more promising the idea seems. Thus prepared, he devises an experiment to test the idea. The experiment is painstaking. Many possibilities are eliminated or taken into account; the accuracy of the measurement is refined. At the end of all this work, the experiment is completed and ... the idea is shown to be worthless. The physicist then discards the idea, frees his mind (as I was saying a moment ago) from the clutter of error, and moves on to something else.

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The difference between physics and metaphysics, Wood concluded, is that the metaphysicist has no laboratory.

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(reportedly from an essay by Carl Sagan)

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Testing of your ideas is required, if you are capable of it.

Basically, you have that one point right but then completely misunderstand it. And that is what we keep trying to tell creationists (eg, Dredge and candle2) who try to use the false claim that evolution would require a species of one genus to give birth to a species of a different genus (eg, a dog giving birth to kittens or a chimp giving birth to a human or an "ape-man") -- they are also known for their befuddled cry of "But they're STILL MOTHS!!!!!".The genera of Homo and Pan (ie, chimps and bonobos) both derived from the tribe, Hominini. Our genome and chimpanzees' genome and bonobos' genome all come from our common ancestor's genome, a population of Hominini. We are still Hominini, as are chimps and bonobos.Hominini share a common ancestor with gorillas, Homininae, so we are also Homininae, as are chimps, bonobos, and gorillas, and we all share the same ancestral genome. And Homininae's ancestor was Hominidae, so we are also Hominidae and share its genome. And Hominidae's ancestor was Hominoidea (AKA "apes"), so we are also all Hominoidea and share its genome. Skipping a few levels of higher taxa, we also find that we are also Mammalia, so our genome came from that Mammalia genome. Skipping a bit again and we find that we are also Amniota (reproduction through eggs, whether oviparous or viviparous), so our genome came from that Amniota genome. Skipping again and we find that we are also Chordata (vertebrates), so our genome came from that Chordata genome. Basically, we just went through a rendition of Dem Bones and have reached the line, "Now hear the word of the Lord", but you are blind and cannot see and deaf and cannot hear.So then:

• The Chordata genome only produced Chordata, including its Amniota descendants.
• The Amniota genome only produced Amniota, including its Mammalia descendants.
• The Mammalia genome only produced Mammalia, including its Hominoidea descendants.
• The Hominoidea genome only produced Hominoidea, including its Hominidae descendants.
• The Hominidae genome only produced Hominidae, including its Homininae descendants.
• The Homininae genome only produced Homininae, including its Hominini descendants.
• The Hominini genome only produced Hominini, including its Homo and Pan descendants.
• The Homo genome only produced Homo, including its Homo sapiens descendants.

Nested clades, AKA Monophyly. That's how it works.

Casting pearls before swine is rarely a total waste of effort, especially when done in a public forum. Even though the swine does not benefit, spectators can benefit and often will.Besides, it annoys the pig.

As caffeine covered yesterday in Message 761:

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caffeine writes:

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Faith writes:

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You will never get even a human fingernail from the chimp genome

Chimpanzee and human fingernails are almost identical. The precise amino acid sequence of human and chimp keratin is a little different, but only a little, and here we probably could give you the exact mutations necessary. All you need to do is download the protein sequences for human and chimpanzee keratin; look at the compositional differences, and then list some hypothetical point mutations that could cause the different sequence. If we really wanted to, we might not need to stick at hypothetical, since the human and chimp genomes have been published. It's theoretically possible for us to track down the specific genetic changes responsible. I'm not going to do that, since I don't see what value it would have. Similarly, you ask

Faith writes:

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How do you turn chimp skin and fur and nails into human skin and nails?

And, again, that we could do, since they're made of the same proteins with slight differences in sequence. Scientists figured out the genetic code long ago; we know the requisite mutations to account for specific changes in protein sequence. Is this really what you want to see? Below is the first 60 amino acids in human and chimp KRT5 ( a type of keratin). As you can see, the only difference is at position 52 (bolded), where chimps have glycine and humans have alanine.

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MSRQSSVSFR SGGSRSFSTA SAITPSVSRT SFTSVSRSGG GGGGGFGRVS LGGACGVGGY
MSRQSSVSFR SGGSRSFSTA SAITPSVSRT SFTSVSRSGG GGGGGFGRVS LAGACGVGGY

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Would it help your understanding for me to look up the genetic code and list point mutations that could change glycine to alanine, or vice versa? Because I doubt this is getting to the heart of your misunderstanding. What do you think are supposed differences between chimp and human hair, or nails, that can't be accounted for by this kind of tedious exercise?

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In reading his "As you can see, the only difference is at position 52 (bolded), where chimps have glycine and humans have alanine.", I just had to look it up.Basically, proteins are strings of amino acids and those amino acid sequences are encoded in genes with codons, a sequence of three bases which encode for a specific amino acid -- it turns out that a particular amino acid can have more than one codon that encodes for it.A common creationist error about proteins is to assume that each protein has one highly specific amino acid sequence -- we especially see this in their standard fallacious probability argument of the chances of an 80-amino-acid-long protein falling together by chance (see my discussion of it at http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/proteins.html). In reality, only a small number of loci in a protein requires a specific amino acid or type of amino acid while most loci can take any amino acid -- eg, in class notes for their balanced-treatment class (the only true one I know of), Thwaites and Awbrey describe a calcium binding site 29 amino acids long in which only 2 positions (7%) require specific amino acids, 8 positions (28%) can be filled by any of 5 hydrophobic amino acids, 3 positions (10%) can be filled by any one of 4 other amino acids, 2 positions (7%) can be filled with two different amino acids, and 14 of the positions (48%) can be filled by virtually any of the 20 amino acids. One consequence of that is that a particular gene can undergo a high number of point mutations that change the amino acid sequence of the protein and still remain viable. Another consequence is that we can sequence the same protein from many different species and compare their differences, an exercise which so far has strongly agreed with our ideas of how closely various species are related to each other (and provided fodder for false creationist claims, including Gish's outright lie on national TV about a bullfrog protein showing that humans and bullfrogs are more closely related (it was complete bullfrog!)).Back to the two sequences for keratin (finger-nail material), chimp and human, which only differ by one amino acid in locus 52, glycine (chimp) versus alanine (human). The codon for glycine is GG(GACU) -- that means that the first two bases are specified while the third base can be any of the four possible. The codon for alanine is GC(GACU). That means that the only difference between chimp and human keratin is one single base. That is about as minimal and simple a mutation possible. So for that one feature, finger nails, that Faith thought was so insurmountable a change, all it actually took was one single simple base substitution.Referring back to my page, The Bullfrog Affair, Gish's nationally televised blatant lie was in response to Dr. Russell Doolittle's story of comparing several human and chimp proteins and finding them all to be identical. From my page (originally uploaded to CompuServe back in the day):

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In a recent article in _Discover_ magazine, Dr. Russell Doolittle tells
how his early research in protein comparisons had sparked his interest in
evolution.  In a 1982 PBS program ("Creation vs Evolution:  Battle in the
Classroom", KPBS-TV, aired 7 July 1982), he told this story:
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Doolittle:  "Ever since the time of Darwin the chimpanzee has been
regarded as man's nearest living relative.  Naturally it was then
of interest to biochemists to see what chimpanzee proteins would
look like.  Now the first protein to be looked at in a chimpanzee,
and compared with a human, was the hemoglobin molecule -- hemoglobin
one of the blood proteins -- and in fact, there were no differences
found in the chimpanzee molecule when 141 amino acids were looked at
in the hemoglobin alpha chain.  In contrast, if you looked at a
rhesus monkey, there were four differences; or if you looked at a
rabbit, you found the differences got up into the 20s.  If you got
up to a chicken you'd find 59 differences; and if you looked at a
fish you'd find there were more than a hundred differences.  Now
this is exactly what you expect from the point of view of evolution."
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Narrator:  "Three more proteins were analyzed."
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Doolittle:  "Once again, no differences compared -- chimpanzee
compared with human.  It was astonishing.  In fact a rumor began
to sweep around biochemists, that maybe all the differences
between chimpanzee and human were really going to turn out to be
cultural.  Well, in fact, one more protein was quickly looked at
-- this was a large one -- 259 amino acids -- and a difference
was found.  Whew!"

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So then, in comparing the human genome and the chimp genome we find them to be very nearly identical with a very small number of differences. I would be willing to bet that the degree of differences between humans and chimps are little different from the degree of differences between species under Felidae which are divided into two different genera (plural of genus) Panthera and Felinae. Faith insists that Felidae is one big happy species whereas Hominini (including Pan and Homo) is not. Add to that her insistence that trilobites, an entire class(!!!!), Trilobita, is all simply one big happy single species (for reference of scale the Linnean classification system: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species).By Faith's own perverted re-invention of the whole of biology, humans and chimps are clearly and undeniably the same species. By actual science, they clearly are not the same species. Faith's own perverted re-invention of the whole of biology clearly fails completely and utterly.

OK, so you have nothing whatsoever.Your move.

And Hominini genome makes nothing but Hominini (which includes both genera, Homo (humans) and Pan (chimps and bonobos)).{voice=creationist}But they're still HOMININI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!{/voice}Silly, willfully stupid creationists!Edited by dwise1, : bold tags

Do you even have any clue whatsoever what a mutation is? Sorry, extremely stupid question, since obviously you do have no clue whatsoever.Most of the time creationists think of physical mutations, often caused by outside factors called mutagens which cause gross physical changes which are very obvious. Those are of absolutely no interest to evolution.The only mutations that are of any interest at all are genetic, and furthermore only those genetic mutations which appear in the germ cells which would make them inheritable. Any genetic mutation which is not heritable is of absolutely no interest to evolution.The relationship of genetic mutations to changes in the phenotype is not in the least bit proportional and is very difficult to predict. You can have a lot of genetic changes with virtually no change in the phenotype, or you can have a single genetic change with a very large change in the phenotype. IOW, it is virtually impossible to make a general statement on this matter.The genetic mutations of interest to evolution are of a few specific types (see classification of mutations). Insertion or deletion of nucleotides (the CGTA bases in DNA) can result in frame-shift errors that completely mess up the gene, unless they occur in multiples of three (the size of a codon). Insertion or deletion of a copy of an entire gene is far less problematic -- inserting yet another copy of a gene results in redundancy (ie, multiple alleles) and deletion or destruction (eg, via a frame-shift) of a redundant gene likewise has little effect in the phenotype.Base substitutions are far less problematic, since in genes they only result in changes in the amino acid sequence of a protein. From class notes for the only true "balanced-treatment" creation/evolution class I've ever heard of (offered by Thwaites and Awbrey at San Diego State University in which half the lectures were by professional creationists from the then-nearby Institute for Creation Research (ICR), until escalating protests by campus Christian clubs pressured the administration to close the class (DAMNED LEFTISTS!!!!!!!!)), we find that there's a lot of wiggle room for changes in proteins' amino acid sequences. From my page, THE "RANDOM" PROTEINS ARGUMENT:

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Rather than brandying about a hypothetical protein, let's look at a specific case. In the class notes of Frank Awbrey & William Thwaites' creation/evolution class at UCSD (the Institute for Creation Research conducted half the lectures and Awbrey & Thwaites the other half), they give the example of a calcium binding site with 29 amino acid positions: only 2 positions (7%) require specific amino acids, 8 positions (28%) can be filled by any of 5 hydrophobic amino acids, 3 positions (10%) can be filled by any one of 4 other amino acids, 2 positions (7%) can be filled with two different amino acids, and 14 of the positions (48%) can be filled by virtually any of the 20 amino acids.

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So a lot of base substitution mutations (at least about half of them) have no effect on the resultant protein. These are the so-called "neutral mutations" which have no effect on the phenotype and which are the basis of "molecular clocks" for making rough estimates of how long ago past populations had split off into different branches. Furthermore, they are the basis for comparing the same proteins in different species to see how closely or remotely related they are -- the picture that they paint agrees very closely with the Linnean classification system (created by a creationist BTW), creationist false claims not withstanding (eg, Gish's "bullfrog protein" (based solely on a joke about an enchanted prince -- No Duff!), Walter Brown's rattlesnake protein claim (same page)).One of the things we see when base substitutions cause a gene to produce a different protein is that the old protein's functions are still provided by the other copies of that gene (again, multiple alleles). An example is the gene for lysozyme (used to attack bacteria) mutating to produce alpha-lactelbumin (a mammalian precursor to milk production -- also discussed in The Bullfrog Affair), in which the old functionality of lysozyme continues to be covered by the other multiple genes that produce that protein.Again, casting such pearls before swine mostly only serves to annoy the swine, but it also can serve to educate the lurkers, my intended audience.

Says the person who believes that the Mueller Report concludes that there was zero collusion and completely exonerates Trump of obstruction of justice.

This leads us to an important point that I don't think has been addressed yet. As I pointed out in an old topic, So Just How is ID's Supernatural-based Science Supposed to Work? (SUM. MESSAGES ONLY) (2007-Nov-27 to 2011-Jun-06, 396 messages), in which my OP concluded started with:

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Now, an extremely valuable by-product of all this hypothesis building and testing is questions. In science, the really interesting and valuable discoveries are the ones that raise new questions. Because questions help to direct our research. Because by realizing what we don't know and what we need to find out, we know what to look for and we have some idea of where to find it. Without those questions, science loses its direction and gets stuck.

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A very important thing in engineering (which is what Dredge is fixated on; ie, his "applied science", though I feel that it's more of an ID invention to generate more confusion) as well as in science (which too many engineers do no like; we could have a nice long talk about this one over some fava beans and a nice Chianti) is to have an understanding of how things work in general in order to be able to ask meaningful questions that will inspire new solutions and discoveries. Those would be questions like, "Huh, I wonder why that happened?" or "I wonder if that will make this work?" or the infamous last thing said before the total destruction of the universe "I wonder what will happen if I do this."Without that understanding of how things work, of what to expect, you won't be able to recognize when something unexpected happens and so will miss out on new discoveries. That even applies when dealing with known phenomena, where you need to know how the device is supposed to work so that you can notice the ways in which it's not working correctly as well as to understand how the components of the device work in order to realize how that could be causing the problem.One example was an electronic device that worked when the case was closed, but then the output had a lot of noise on the output signal when the case was open. Any energy entering a semiconductor will increase current. Knowing that, the engineer also noticed that the power supply's rectifier diodes were encased in glass, so when you opened the case then the room's ambient light would hit the semiconductors and induce noise. The solution was to replace those diodes with ones encased in an opaque material. Without that knowledge of how semiconductors work, the engineer would probably still be trying to fix the problem or have gotten fired for incompetence (given how long ago our EE or tech school class was told about that, a third outcome would have been that that engineer finally retired after a lifelong career of trying to fix that problem).Another example is what happened with one of our products a few jobs back. We had monitoring equipment that communicated with a base station via radio. They kept having interference problems, such that the entire box would just go crazy, but as soon as we opened the box the problem would go away so we couldn't troubleshoot it. Finally our EE, knowing how RF and electronics work, realized that the antenna connector had to be leaking RF energy back into the box where it would bounce around injecting RFI in all the circuits. That fixed the problem, but it took knowledge of how things work.The same idea applied in my first programming class, FORTRAN, after I switched from foreign languages to computer science. I had an understanding of how languages work and how to learn and use them, so I applied that knowledge to programming languages. When my program didn't work as expected, I would read it for content to see what I was actually telling the computer to do (which is not always what you want it to do) and then make corrections so that I was telling the computer to actually do what I wanted it to do. Most of the other students would panic and try random changes which would almost never fix the problem.That is similar to Dredge's example of a "creationist Muslim biologist". Without the realization and understanding of why he should expect those genetic similarities and where, he would either not realize to look for them nor where. Worse yet, being a creationist he would be motivated to deny that those genetic similarities even exist.First, Dredge's inclusion of the biologist's religion was completely irrelevant and contributes absolutely nothing. Neither the natural universe nor science (the study of the natural universe) could care less which stinkin' god you believe in -- they're going to function exactly the same regardless of your beliefs. You're going to get the same results whether you're a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jew, Pastafarian, or atheist. That is just one reason what "goddidit" is so utterly useless: including a god adds absolutely nothing and leaving the gods out detracts absolutely nothing. The same as the next time you microwave a frozen dinner; you're going to get the exact same meal regardless of any stinkin' gods you might be inclined to include or to leave out.But, including that he's also a creationist (yes, Virginia, there are Islamic creationists) is important. As a creationist, he would not only not accept the idea of common descent, but he would also be motivated to deny it. That denial could even be to the point of denying that such patterns of genetic differences even exist, or just merely that it's too uninteresting and deserves no further study. We saw precisely that behavior in Faith within the past month when she was confronted with the patterns of genetic differences that match the independent phylogenetic trees near perfectly. As I recall, at first she tried to deny that those patterns even exist and then shifted to a position of "so what?" and arbitrarily dismissed them as unimportant and uninteresting and unworthy of any study.That's the other two deleterious effects of "goddidit". On the one hand, it misleads you into thinking that you have found an answer to the question or else that any question exists, so you stop investigating. On the other hand, there develops the dangerous attitude that by continuing to investigate you are denying God and even acting in direct opposition to Her. The wages of heresy can be extremely unpleasant *.And, of course, at the end of the day, a creationist biologist responsible for coming up with an effective test would be stuck with being unable to approach the problem except in the manner that you describe: trial and effect, making random choices and changes in the vague hope of something falling into place ex nihilo. Like my fellow FORTRAN students.And in case the point has been lost (especially on the self-professed nearly brain dead troll), the value and practical use for common ancestors is because by understanding how the real world works we can ask useful questions and arrive at useful solutions. Without that knowledge, we would just be stumbling in the dark.-----------------------------------------------* Paula Poundstone (from memory):
"Yes, it is true that the wages of sin are death. But after all the withholding for taxes and the like, all you're left with is feeling very tired."

Interestingly, that article does not offer any alternatives, not even use of other lab animals.In the penultimate section, Discussion and Conclusions, the author refers to alternatives, but gives us no hint about them (emphasis added):

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Legislation banning experimentation on chimpanzees has been implemented largely due to ethical concerns namely, that research with chimpanzees causes extreme pain and suffering to animals with very highly developed cognitive and emotional capacities. This rationale is being increasingly augmented by a burgeoning scientific argument that data from chimpanzee experiments are flawed and invalid with regard to human medicine, and that superior alternatives, with greater human relevance, do exist.

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. . .

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Only by moving away from chimpanzee research, and by fully embracing and adopting superior human-specific alternatives, can treatments or cures for the many diseases that blight the lives of hundreds of millions of people be realised quickly and safely.

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Just what are these unnamed "superior human-specific alternatives" supposed to be?Is he suggesting experimenting on humans? Is that what Dredge advocates? I'm sure that we learned a lot from the Nazi medicine that we liberated (and from Nazi medical researchers assuming that they were also brought over in operations like Operation Paperclip (no, that was not made up by Marvel Comics)), but ethical and moral cost was still horrendous. It would be very ironic if the author is suggesting we use human experimentation, since much of the case that he makes is based on the ethics of experimenting on chimpanzees. 
We should note that there are several factors that are considered when choosing which kind of experimental animal to use. Besides suitability for the type of experiment, there's also the cost of the animals (especially of a large number of them will be used) and the degree of difficulty in handling and caring for them.
Certainly, chimps are costly and difficult to handle, so if a different subject animal would be cheaper and easier to work with (eg, dogs, lab rats, lab mice) then those other animals would be a more attractive alternative.But that begs the question of how suitable those other animals, who are less similar genetically, would be. That article doesn't address the question of whether that are any alternative subjects who have fewer differences that those listed between humans and chimps.