Who Owns the Standard Definition of Evolution

Taq:

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That's not what I said. I said that the theory proven beyond a reasonable doubt makes it the preferred theory.

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Yes, that was what you said. If it was not, then your argument was pointless.Even so, your changed "statement" that the proven theory beyond doubt, is the preferred theory, is not even useful.
If a theory is proven beyond doubt, why even compare to other theories and deciding which is more preferred?But that was not what you said. You said it was the preferred theory, because you think it makes good or better predictions.You cannot even follow along with your own line of reasoning.

Taq:

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Instead, it would branch off at the very base of the tree of life on Earth.

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Exactly, branching off still makes it one tree as a whole. And that does not prove common ancestry with the alien species.So if any general rule holds, it is that hierachical tree does not always mean common ancestry.
You can continue making up rules and apply them inconsistently, only where it fits your narrative. And then call it evidence beyond reasonable doubt. But those rules don't hold in general.

Quoting Taq's exact words from when he first stated it in Message 674: While the exact words may vary each time he says it, I haven't noticed Taq saying anything different. I think somehow you got it backwards in your mind and didn't verify your recollection. "Proven" is just a casual shorthand way of saying, "Supported by a great deal of evidence." All accepted theories, including the theory of evolution, fulfill this criteria. Theories can't actually be certain or proven in any mathematical sense because of the principle of tentativity. As mentioned a couple times now, tentativity is an important concept in science. Nothing is certain in science. All theory is open to change or even rejection in light of new information or improved insight. Making successful predictions is the second criteria Taq listed. Being supported by the evidence, or to put it another way, placing the evidence into a rational interpretive framework, was the first. Here are Taq's exact words from Message 679: Moving on: I think it's clear that you're either making up things Taq never said, or you just don't understand the information Taq has provided. You've lost the plot. Taq was responding to the possibility that life on Earth was seeded from space, in which case of course it's one tree. That's implicit in what Taq said. You left out the word "nested." A nested hierarchical tree. And you're right, a nested hierarchy does not conclusively prove common ancestry. For example, an omniscient creator could create all life with all the evidence of common ancestry included, even though there was not any actual common ancestry.But for natural processes, only evolution can produce a nested hierarchy No one's making up any rules. If you reread the posts carefully enough to make sure you understand what's being said then you'll be able to see that.--Percy

What I was trying to do is show you how theories are assessed. For example:Theory A makes very specific predictions.Theory B can accommodate any possible observation.In this case, Theory A is the preferred theory. In the case of the theory of evolution and common design, the theory of evolution makes a very specific prediction which is a nested hierarchy. Common design does not. Common design can accommodate any and all combinations of features and DNA sequences. On its face, the theory of evolution is already ahead. This is before we even look at the evidence.Your response to this basic explanation of assessing theories was to say that I had downgraded evolution from proven (beyond a reasonable doubt) to just the preferred theory. This is a complete mischaracterization. Because that is what ID/creationists are asking us to do. We are explaining why common design doesn't measure up to the theory of evolution, both from a theoretical basis (makes better predictions) and from an evidentiary basis (proven beyond a reasonable doubt).This was all hashed out 140 years ago:

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For, be it observed, the exception in limine to the evidence which we are about to consider, does not question that natural selection may not be able to do all that Mr. Darwin ascribes to it: it merely objects to his interpretation of the facts, because it maintains that these facts might equally well be ascribed to intelligent design. And so undoubtedly they might, if we were all childish enough to rush into a supernatural explanation whenever a natural explanation is found sufficient to account for the facts. Once admit the glaringly illogical principle that we may assume the operation of higher causes where the operation of lower ones is sufficient to explain the observed phenomena, and all our science and all our philosophy are scattered to the winds. For the law of logic which Sir William Hamilton called the law of parsimony—or the law which forbids us to assume the operation of higher causes when lower ones are found sufficient to explain the observed effects—this law constitutes the only logical barrier between science and superstition. For it is manifest that it is always possible to give a hypothetical explanation of any phenomenon whatever, by referring it immediately to the intelligence of some supernatural agent; so that the only difference between the logic of science and the logic of superstition consists in science recognising a validity in the law of parsimony which superstition disregards.
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Now, since the days of Linnæus this principle has been carefully followed, and it is by its aid that the tree-like system of classification has been established. No one, even long before Darwin's days, ever dreamed of doubting that this system is in reality, what it always has been in name, a natural system. What, then, is the inference we are to draw from it? An evolutionist answers, that it is just such a system as his theory of descent would lead him to expect as a natural system. For this tree-like system is as clear an expression as anything could be of the fact that all species are bound together by the ties of genetic relationship. If all species were separately created, it is almost incredible that we should everywhere observe this progressive shading off of characters common to larger groups, into more and more specialized characters distinctive only of smaller and smaller groups. At any rate, to say the least, the law of parsimony forbids us to ascribe such effects to a supernatural cause, acting in so whimsical a manner, when the effects are precisely what we should expect to follow from the action of a highly probable natural cause.
--George Romanes, "Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution", 1882
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution, by George J. Romanes, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S.

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It would be strong evidence for common ancestry. As mentioned by Percy, panspermia is a thing. It could also be that aliens seeded our planet with life by bringing in a microorganism from their planet, or seeded both planets. They are applied consistently.I also find it rather telling that you use imagined evidence against the theory. Why not look at the evidence that actually exists?

Or sensei is a liar and/or a troll.

I tend to think that this type of behavior in general is a mixture of cognitive dissonance and conditioning from ID/creationist literature.ID/creationism is almost entirely rhetoric and semantics. This is why we see them arguing over the semantics of how theories are described instead of actually addressing the data. In fact, they will use imaginary evidence as a rhetorical device, as seen in this very thread. ID/creationist literature is all about how words are defined, so that is what they are conditioned to do. For example, they will argue incessantly that DNA is designed because they have defined DNA as a code. What they won't do is reference actual DNA sequence data.What we have is two groups with different purposes. Science is trying to explain the data using the scientific method. ID/creationism is trying to justify their religious beliefs using rhetoric and semantics.

The reasoning was never "If it fits in a hierarchical tree it was produced by common ancestry". Obviously we can put a lot of things in a tree that don't even have ancestors much less a single one, and you could already do it with life since it's a subcategory of matter.The reasoning is that if the diversity of life was produced by a series of populations diverging and changing, we would expect all of life to fit in a nested hierarchy defined mostly by those points of divergence. But there are also a lot of specific features we would expect that tree to have that wouldn't be present in one you could make about galaxies or cars or whatever non-living thing.So to go back to the previous question: That depends on the nature of the similarities. We could classify both sets as life by virtue of the alien set also satisfying the definition of "life", but that doesn't necessarily mean that they will share the sort of things in common that are predicted by common descent and found in all Earth-based life.Different theories would have different predictions at that point. Panspermia would predict those similarities since it does propose that both sets of life actually do have a common origin. Multiple origins wouldn't, and would probably propose a level of classification below "Life" to encompass the products of each of those multiple origins and the characteristics that apply within that group but not to the other. The functional design theory might predict some degree of similarity but wouldn't necessarily expect it to fall in to a single tree, which would be a fresh opportunity for that explanation to predict anything with any kind of specificity.

You can force any group of items into a tree. The big question is how good is the fit. For scientists, it needs to have a number on it in order to be science. This is why scientists constructed several methods for objectively measuring how well a data set fit a tree-like structure. As it turns out, complex life gets a much higher score than random distributions of characters, as we would expect to see if common ancestry is true.The other question we could ask is what we would expect to see if common design is true. The answer is anything. There is absolutely no reason why we would expect to see tree-like structures in the data if common design is true. We would just as likely expect a species to have fur and three middle ear bones as we would a species with feathers and three middle ear bones.

Part of creationist "basic created kinds" nonsense is to identify species as being in the same "basic created kind" depending on whether they can form hybrids. Doesn't matter what kind of hybrid -- fertile, infertile (eg, mules), or limited-fertililty (eg, ligers) -- ; if they can form a hybrid then they're of the same kind.Yesterday, I just learned about human-hamster hybrids, AKA humsters:

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A humster is a hybrid cell line made from a zona-free hamster oocyte fertilized with human sperm. It always consists of single cells, and cannot form a multi-cellular being. Humsters are usually destroyed before they divide into two cells; if isolated and left alone to divide, they would still be unviable.

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Humsters are routinely created mainly for two reasons:

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• To avoid legal issues with working with pure human embryonic stem cell lines.
• To assess the viability of human sperm for in vitro fertilization

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Somatic cell hybrids between humans and hamsters or mice have been used for the mapping of various traits since at least the 1970s.

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So then, according to creationists, does that make us members of the "basic created hamster kind"? Or of the larger "basic rodent kind"?

An article in today's Washington Post invites us to Meet the surprisingly complex ancestor of all life on Earth. The article does not appear to be behind a paywall. The original paper appearted in Nature: The nature of the last universal common ancestor and its impact on the early Earth systemWhat's new is the possibility that early life became complex much than earlier currently thought, that LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor) occurred around 4.2 billion years ago. This is a surprisingly early date because most assume that the bombardment of Earth by asteroids and comets between 4.1 and 3.8 billion years would have sterilized the planet.What's not new is LUCA itself. Whoever and whenever it was, there is a very widespread consensus that there was a single LUCA.--Percy

Biologists use "change in allele frequency in a population" or words to that effect.Evolution is defined as a change in the genetic composition of a population over successive generations.
Evolution Definition and Examples - Biology Online Dictionary

Just weighing in here: The definition of ALL words have already been defined. Society, which is in the hands of Satan, has taken the bait to re-define words such as "Evil", and "Good", and "Love". It is not for everyone, unfortunately tares are among us. ty

"Descent with modification" was the definition Darwin used, and it still works as a good general description. Allele frequencies incorporates a modern understanding of genetics

If abiogenesis did occur 4.2 billion years ago it also indicates that simple life should be somewhat common in the universe (i.e. where there is a rocky planet with liquid water).David Kipping put out a paper just a couple of years ago that looked at the chances of abiogenesis being easy or rare. In 2020, his analysis had a 2.8 times higher chance for easy abiogenesis over rare based on a much later date for abiogenesis. However, one of Kipping's latest videos on his Cool Worlds youtube channel reanalyzes the odds with this new data, and the chances are now statistically significant at 13.8 to 1 in favor of easy abiogenesis.