Scientific Evidence for Universal Common Descent

[Jim]

Why do you call them 'mock' debates?

I was comparing it to the structured formal debating that I remember hearing about in high school, where there were judges and rules. Forum debating, with all its mudslinging, notorious logical fallacies, and puffed up folly and ignorance on all sides; and where each person is their own judge of what counts as “evidence” and who is winning; looks to me like a mockery of that.

 

[Polymath257]

I was comparing it to the structured formal debating that I remember hearing about in high school, where there were judges and rules. Forum debating, with all its mudslinging, notorious logical fallacies, and puffed up folly and ignorance on all sides; and where each person is their own judge of what counts as “evidence” and who is winning; looks to me like a mockery of that.

And I see the high school debate style as a pale image of the hand-to-hand debate that is common in real science. This isn't high school any more.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I was not aware you wanted to engage in a scientific discussion with me.

We are posting in a thread "scientific evidence for universal common decent" and I was responding to a post of yours where you were talking about the scientific theory of evolution.

Yet, you didn't expect a scientific discussion?

I saw pages of heckling and ridicule

I saw pages of explanations of scientific principles, evidence for evolution with citations and pictures... and you replying to those with accusations of heckling and ridicule.

, and assumed you wanted to align with the hecklers

I'm almost certain that at some point you'll decide that I'm a "heckler".

I'll debate under the terms i gave. Do you wish to do that?

Or.... you could just discuss the topic of this thread, in this thread, instead of complain, while ignoring what you perceive to be "personal attacks" and just engage the actual points raised. Just a thought. I bet it would be more constructive.

 

[Jim]

And I see the high school debate style as a pale image of the hand-to-hand debate that is common in real science. This isn't high school any more.

Are you saying that debating between scientists is like the debating here, or are you saying that people debating here are trying to imitate debating between scientists? Either way, that’s even worse than what I was thinking.

 

[Polymath257]

Are you saying that debating between scientists is like the debating here, or are you saying that people debating here are trying to imitate debating between scientists? Either way, that’s even worse than what I was thinking.

Debate between actual scientists tends not to be the formal 'at a podium' style of debate. Instead, they tend to ask direct questions after talks, discuss evidence in the hallways, suggest ways to test the different ideas, discuss setups of experiments, etc.

Instead of the adversarial style of high school debate with a fixed debate topic, it tends to be much less structure free-wheeling. The goal is to fing the truth and everyone is in on that, critiquing all ideas that come by and making suggestions for improvements.

Forums such as this one tend to me more adversarial because the proponents tend to have non-scientific agendas and often don't understand the fundamentals of the topics they are trying to discuss. For scientific meetings and discussions, that is not the case (usually).

 

[Jim]

Debate between actual scientists tends not to be the formal 'at a podium' style of debate. Instead, they tend to ask direct questions after talks, discuss evidence in the hallways, suggest ways to test the different ideas, discuss setups of experiments, etc.

Instead of the adversarial style of high school debate with a fixed debate topic, it tends to be much less structure free-wheeling. The goal is to fing the truth and everyone is in on that, critiquing all ideas that come by and making suggestions for improvements.

Forums such as this one tend to me more adversarial because the proponents tend to have non-scientific agendas and often don't understand the fundamentals of the topics they are trying to discuss. For scientific meetings and discussions, that is not the case (usually).

Where do you think people get the idea to call what they’re doing in these forums “debating”? What have they ever seen or heard of that’s called “debating, that they think they’re doing? TV debates between election candidates? Where does the idea come from of calling their reasons for believing what they say “evidence”? Courtroom dramas? Actually it might be an imitation of an imitation passed down through years or even decades of feuding on the Internet. The first I remember seeing the “substantiate or retract” ritual was at least fifteen years ago. Where did the idea originally come from to call Internet feuding “debating”? Oh! Maybe from TV and YouTube debating between faction celebrities. Wherever the idea came from to call flame wars “debating,” it still looks like a mockery of something to me.

 

[Jim]

I’m thinking now that the idea of calling things “evidence” in forum feuding might have come originally from one or more of the Four Horsemen of Atheism. Maybe they got the idea from courtroom dramas.

Now I’m thinking that maybe the reason people call forum feuding “debating” is because they see other people calling it that. In fact that’s how I started calling it that. It used to be called “flame wars.” Originally the idea of calling it “debating” might have come from public debating between faction celebrities.

 

[SkepticThinker]

If you’re referring to this: “I don’t believe that it was done honestly and responsibly,” I’m not denying that I said that. I disagree with making that into an accusation and demanding substantiation for it, but if you want to do that, you’re welcome to it. You’ll just have to do it without me. My online games are WoW and some phone games.

Of course it's an accusation.
You are accusing people who carried out a study of being dishonest and irresponsible.
What would you call it?

 

[Jose Fly]

See? That's what I'm saying. From the article, "And the institute believes that the 1,000 plus scientists who have signed the statement represent the tip of a massive iceberg. “While that number surely represents a scientific minority, it also no doubt vastly understates the number of Darwin-doubting PhD scientists,” wrote Discovery Institute Senior Fellow David Klinghoffer at Evolution News."
So who is lying here?

The Discovery Institute is. Take a close look at the statement they agreed to, all it basically says is that there's more to evolution than natural selection and mutation, and we should encourage careful examination of the evidence. Heck, if I didn't know the political background of that statement, I may have signed it!

Then once you've considered that, pay attention to how many of the signatories actually work in the biological sciences. Turns out it's very, very few.

Finally, I have to wonder....if you find this statement and list of signatories compelling, then why isn't the fact that many, many, many more scientists agree with evolution even more compelling to you?

 

[Jose Fly]

@Jose Fly @ImmortalFlame I see that there could possibly be a misunderstanding about what I meant. I didn’t read the report itself, and I have no idea what’s actually in it, or how the research was done.

Then your statement should have been "I don’t believe that it was done honestly and responsibly, although I've not read it, I have no idea what's in it, and I have no idea how they did their work".

But then, that wouldn't put you in a very good light, would it?

It’s what the researchers said in the abstract that they were doing, and their reasons for it, along with what I’ve learned from direct experience and from reports of the experiences of others, about corruption in all the professions and institutions of society, that leads me to think that it wasn’t done honestly and responsibly.

That's just ridiculous.

However that may be, even if it was done honestly and responsibly, I don’t see it as a reason to stigmatize people who don’t believe that all life on earth has a common ancestor.

They're "stigmatized" the same way flat-earthers are "stigmatized". And much of the time, the harsh treatment they get is due to how they behave more than the views they hold. When a person habitually distorts things, dodges good-faith questions, and generally behaves dishonestly, they're going to get called out. Welcome to life.

 

[Jose Fly]

These were computer nerds, manipulating data for their own purposes.

That's a very serious accusation. Do you have any evidence that Larget et al. dishonestly manipulated the data?

The 'criticisms' from peer reviewed responses from earlier studies, that they referred to, were just as appropriate for this study. Merely asserting, 'Ours was different!' 'We proved evolution!', does not change anything.

Completely wrong. The criticisms were centered on Theobald's previous work and how it assumed that sequence similarity = common ancestry. Larget et al. eliminated that assumption.

So again, your objection is 100% the opposite of reality.

No peer reviews for this obscure study were quoted, just the self aggrandizing conclusions of the authors.

???????? Nonsensical.

If this study was as significant as some believe, it would be heralded, along with fierce scrutiny over their methods and data.

It was, within evolutionary biology circles.

My review examined the methodology, assumptions, and goals of the study, and is the closest to a peer review that has been produced.

Completely false and ridiculous. The paper was published in a peer-reviewed journal.

This is NOT a sound, scientifically based study, but a contrived, presupposed, propaganda piece, to fool the gullible.

Again, you make a very serious accusation. Do you have any evidence to support your accusation that the work was conducted dishonestly?

Techno babble and assertions mask the actual scientific methodology involved, but any critically thinking person can see through it. That is it's only success.. otherwise, nobody would have ever heard of this 'study'. It is not even weak evidence for CA.

I'm sure that's your opinion, but that only matters to you.

The significance of this number can only be described as 'a trivial consequence of similarity'.

Again, 100% completely false. They specifically accounted for similarity = common descent (hint: that's what the phrase "functional constraints" refers to).

If this "rebuttal" is the best you can do, that speaks volumes.

 

[tas8831]

That's fine.

Now, how about we get back to the comments you made about the paper I posted where the researchers tested between separate ancestry and common ancestry? @usfan appears to have merely waved it away and exploited the crowd here to hide his dodge, so I'm hoping that you'll specify what in that paper caused you to denigrate their work.

Nah... Ignoring exposures of ignorance makes it easier to keep pretending one is correct.

 

[tas8831]

Over 20 pages later, we still seem fixated on the statistical study of a computer model.

Odd - 60 pages and you've still had ZILCH to say about this Primate study using the "Eve gene":




A Mitogenomic Phylogeny of Living Primates
July 16, 2013

From the results and discussion:

We produced complete mt genome sequences from 32 primate individuals. From each individual, we obtained an average of 1508 tagged reads with an average length of 235 bp, yielding approximately 356 kb of sequence data corresponding to 21-fold coverage. All newly sequenced mt genomes had lengths typical for primates (16,280–16,936 bp; Table S1), but the GC-content varied largely among taxa (37.78–46.32%, Table S2, Figure S1). All newly generated mt genomes consisted of 22 tRNA genes, 2 rRNA genes, 13 protein-coding genes and the control region in the order typical for mammals. By combining the 32 newly generated data with 51 additional primate mt genomes, the dataset represents all 16 primate families, 57 of the 78 recognized genera and 78 of the 480 currently recognized species [31].​

They used 81 complete mitochondrial genomes from primates representing all 16 families. The descriptions of the genomic content represent all of the markers that one could hope for. The use of these markers allow for the tracing of the ancestry of all of the primate taxa used, as shown in this phylogenetic tree, and such trees are produced as the output of a rigorous analysis - the same sort employed in the Canid paper.

Note that this includes humans, Neanderthals, etc. This phylogenetic tree incorporates the tracing of mtDNA snps and other such markers. The shared ancestry of all Primates is thus proven.

The type of data used and the means of analysis employed have been BY YOU, so there is no denying the shared ancestry of human, chimps and other primates.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. ~Benjamin Disraeli

There are three kinds of lies: lies creationists get from other creationists, damned creationist lies, and creationist assertions, which sadly often turn out also to be lies. ~ anyone that has debated science with a creationist Dunning-Krugerite

 

[tas8831]

I'm glad you laughed, I like to see people laugh sometimes. I'm not reading all explanations (not that much time), but do you have a reason you laughed or is it just funny?

It is funny because so many folks on your side of the fence present themselves as having great deals of intellectual acumen and scientific knowledge, then write things that show they do not.

 

[Bear Wild]

I was not aware you wanted to engage in a scientific discussion with me. I saw pages of heckling and ridicule, and assumed you wanted to align with the hecklers. I'll debate under the terms i gave. Do you wish to do that?
of course they do. They deflect with fallacies, ad hom, and disdain as well as any. Humans do that sort of thing. Among progressive indoctrinees, it is a constant tactic.

It is the SCIENCE.. the FACTS and METHODOLOGY. that anybody can examine. Scientific debate and analysis is not limited by credentials. Science is much more democratic than that. It is not owned by a self serving elite.

Yes, to the progressive, steeped in Mandates by Authority. But to the true scientist, facts, evidence, reason, and sound scientific methodology are better tools of discovery.

Scientific Truth is not a majority vote, nor a consensus.

You know this is a fallacy.. I could just as easy include common ancestry in that list of absurd beliefs, once held by the majority of 'scientists!'

..you mean like the propagandists for common ancestry? You would have no issue with me ridiculing and demeaning them for their ignorance and delusions?

.yes, that seems to be the practice, among the True Believers in UCA.

There is no excuse for your comments. Your statements are without basis and are intentionally inflammatory. All you do is show your ignorance of science and your lack of respect for what it shows. Be honest for a change and just state you do not care what evidence is provided because you will reject it based on your beliefs and not evidence. At least that would be an honest answer.

 

[tas8831]

So again -- whatever did come from the soil? (laugh again...)

Ancient tales claim Yahweh made a man from the "dust of the ground" on Day 6, plants having been created on day 3 (the first living things). 3 previous days is insufficient for things to have died, decayed and rendered their forms to the soil, especially since some creationist claim there was no death until later. Since much 'dust of the ground' is these decay products (organic compounds), it stands to reason that Adam was made from the other primary constituent of 'dust' - silicates.

So what are the experiments demonstrating that a deity can transform silicates into thousands of bio-organic molecules via speaking?

 

[tas8831]

There is no excuse for your comments. Your statements are without basis and are intentionally inflammatory. All you do is show your ignorance of science and your lack of respect for what it shows. Be honest for a change and just state you do not care what evidence is provided because you will reject it based on your beliefs and not evidence. At least that would be an honest answer.

Classic bully.

 

[tas8831]

I don't know about that, but to you it's apparently a fact.

As far as I know, yes, it is a fact, that nearly all 'scientists' claiming to reject evolution do so for religious reasons.
Even those that will say they reject it for scientific reasons to the general public, in tighter circles, they admit that it is all Jesus, all the way down. Bill Dembski, for example.

 

[tas8831]

It's possible but not necessary to explain how God did it all.

Why is THAT not necessary, but anything else regarding origins IS?

Why the obvious double standards?

Because it may never be revealed by God to humans.

How convenient.

How un-scientific.

How special plead-y....

 

[tas8831]

Debate between actual scientists tends not to be the formal 'at a podium' style of debate. Instead, they tend to ask direct questions after talks, discuss evidence in the hallways, suggest ways to test the different ideas, discuss setups of experiments, etc.

Instead of the adversarial style of high school debate with a fixed debate topic, it tends to be much less structure free-wheeling. The goal is to fing the truth and everyone is in on that, critiquing all ideas that come by and making suggestions for improvements.

Forums such as this one tend to me more adversarial because the proponents tend to have non-scientific agendas and often don't understand the fundamentals of the topics they are trying to discuss. For scientific meetings and discussions, that is not the case (usually).

Plus, this isn't 1862 - scientific issues are no longer decided (as such) by virtue of who is the better debater at a singular encounter.
I would argue that NO issues are decided in such a fashion any more (if they ever were) - but golly does one side of the aisle seem to think that this is so (so-and-so DESTROYS leftist with FACTS...)...