Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Platonic forms do not suggest we evolved from fish

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For the sake of argument, let us assume, as Michael Denton did, that there is universal common ancestry. The problem, both in terms of comparative anatomy and biochemistry, is that an unprejudiced view of the data suggests we didn’t evolve from fish. When I brought the topic up earlier in Taxonomic nested hierarchies don’t support Darwinism, in the course of my arguments in that thread, it became ever more apparent even at the molecular level, it was hard to justify the claim that we evolved from fish.

Linnaeus and other creationists perceived Platonic forms we know by names today such as: Vetebrates, Mammals, Primates, and Humans. These forms defy the story that we evolved from fish.

Again, let us suppose we all evolved from a common ancestor. Based on the data, who would be our ancestor? Would it be a fish, or some unspecified vertebrate? Let us, in an unprejudiced way simply lump the most similar organisms with each other based on similarity. What would the REAL groupings look like. Here is the grouping we would see using Bone Morphogenic proteins:

Click here for a larger image: Bone Morphogenic Proteins

bone morphogenic proteins

You’ll get a similar grouping with the protein cytochrome-c which agrees with the old creationist Linnaean classification based on comparison of characters:

linnaean taxonomy

Amusingly, those diagrams were assembled to prove evolution. Superficially the impression of common descent is there, but problematic is the groupings look like the old creationist system where fish aren’t ancestors of mammals but instead (at best) some unspecified vertebrate. As Denton pointed out, as overwhelming the impression is of common descent, overwhelming as well is the impression there can’t be transitionals (like say between fish and mammals), and therefore evolution is impossible even in principle.

The creationist reasoning would go like this:

Vertebrates descend from Vetebrates
Mammals descend from Mammals
Primates descend from Primates
Humans descend from Humans

Therefore: Humans descended from Humans

The Darwinist reasoning goes like this:

Vertebrates descend from Vetebrates
Mammals descend from Mammals
Primates descend from Primates
Humans descend from Humans

Therefore: Humans descended from Fish 😯

So why do Darwinists, in the view of this overwhelming evidence against fish being our ancestors, insist mammals are actually fish (via phylogeny)? I did a little more digging into phylogentics and lo and behold, the answer emerged. Those clever weasels figured out methods to project whatever evolutionary story they want onto the data with fancy sounding methods like: Maximum Likelihood Phylogenetics and Baysian Evolutionary Analysis.

See: Phylogenetics 101. Look at page 25 where it shows how you can build trees with a preconceived model of evolution, and how you can build trees without one. (btw, Joe Felsenstein of PandasThumb and SkepticalZone is featured on page 29). You’ll see that one can build trees anyway you want with these “advanced” methods. All you have to do is assume who the common ancestors are first, and you can force fit the data anyway you want to agree with your preconceived evolutionary story. As I told Nick Matzke many moons ago, with such loose parameters you can argue fish evolved from humans!

And from the Berkeley evolution site:
Phylogentics

Another cool thing about phylogenetic classification is that it means that dinosaurs are not entirely extinct. Birds are, in fact, dinosaurs (part of the clade Dinosauria).

And by such phylogenetic reasoning also, we aren’t mammals we are fish — a claim which is at variance with an unprejudiced grouping based on comparative anatomy and biochemistry. The data agree with the existence of Platonic forms, not the twisted Darwinian view that rejects Platonic forms in favor of saying we are fish.

Though Denton accepts common ancestry, the incongruity of the Darwinist reasoning cannot explain the appearance of Platonic forms which seem to transcend (if not defy) any possible evolutionary story.

After looking at the data in an unprejudiced way, it bothered me that evolutionists would insist we evolved from fish when the data told another story. Something smelled fishy (pun intended).

Comments
The central flaw in the argument is that it confuses living representatives of groups with the extinct common ancestors. This has all been explained many times before in decades past, there’s no reason to re-type it again: http://www.don-lindsay-archive.....enton.html
WRONG, MATZKE! The close distances between fish and other fishes are the problem, and if mammals are fish, they should be within the fish group not mammal group: Lindsay misrepresents the real problem Denton highlights, and on top of that, when larger sets of DNA plus morphological issues are considered, the gaps become wider and can't be explained by molecular clocks. YOU'RE the one pathologically ignoring the data, and further you didn't even address the morphological problems barb raised. You're the one setting records for repeated mis-representation, which was well in evidence in your work to help generate falsehoods in the Dover trial... Thanks for visiting. You're lack of credible responses, I'm sure will be noticed by the readers....scordova
June 19, 2013
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Nick Matzke:
Sal is breaking records for ignorance and misunderstanding in this thread.
So? You are well known for propagating ignorance and misunderstanding. Statements you make about others are immediately suspect.Mung
June 15, 2013
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That's something I hadn't thought of, Barb. You've got a mind like a corkscrew!Axel
June 9, 2013
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Axel @ 78: Maybe God is putting phylogenetics here on Earth to test the evomalutionists' lack of faith.Barb
June 9, 2013
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He's a rotten God. If he was half decent, he wouldn't keep pulling these kinds of stunts on evomalutionists. But alas, for them - to quote the gnomic founder of Schroeder Insurance, 'Life is just one damn thing after another.' Make that, 'Research is just one damn thing after another.'Axel
June 9, 2013
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Nick is just upset because phylogenetics relies on untestable assumptions and doesn't support any mechanism.Joe
June 9, 2013
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Mr Matzke, I thought of you when I read this following article: Phylogenetic Conflicts Turn Ant Genus into "Motley Assortment of Unrelated Species" - Casey Luskin June 7, 2013 Excerpt: According to Myrmecos, when this diagram was shown at the ant conference, "the whole room broke into laughter." Why is that? As can be seen in the diagram, the ant species that were once thought to belong to Pachycondyla group instead into different, distantly related groups, when one considers their DNA sequence data. Evolutionary biologists would not have expected these ants, once gathered together in a single genus, to be what Myrmecos called "a motley assortment of unrelated species." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/06/dna_study_turns072951.htmlbornagain77
June 8, 2013
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Sal is breaking records for ignorance and misunderstanding in this thread. He's basically repeating a confused and garbled version of Michael Denton's already-confused "molecular equidistance" argument from "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis". This argument was so bad it is one of the few bad arguments that the ID movement has abandoned. Even Michael Behe dismissed it as misunderstanding, when he was asked about it in the Kitzmiller case. The central flaw in the argument is that it confuses living representatives of groups with the extinct common ancestors. This has all been explained many times before in decades past, there's no reason to re-type it again: http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/denton.htmlNickMatzke_UD
June 8, 2013
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Speaking off phylogenetic trees, here's an article in ENV that should be of some interest :) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/06/dna_study_turns072951.htmlPeterJ
June 7, 2013
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wd400:
Lungfish are more closely related to tetrapods than they are to coelacanths or other fish.
Related how? By design or descent? And how can we tell?
You really need to read a little more closley/widely if you want to make a meaningful argument about this.
And YOU need some evidence that a fish can evolve into something other than a fish if YOU want to make a meaningful argument about this.Joe
June 7, 2013
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The nature paper didn’t describe how close lungfish were to other fish Yes it does, check out the tree. Lungfish are more closely related to tetrapods than they are to coelacanths or other fish. You really need to read a little more closley/widely if you want to make a meaningful argument about this.wd400
June 7, 2013
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Btw, Lungfish have a genome size of 100 billion gigabase pairs vs 3.5 for humans. Current methods are hard pressed to decode the lungfish DNA. How deep is the similarity between lungfish and other fish? Why the absence of literature showing the similarities between fish. Would it be too embarrassing to admit how isolated fish really are from tetrapods? The nature paper didn't describe how close lungfish were to other fish (a sample of which I gave between coelacanth and other fishes). That would be a better benchmark of the quality of the supposed ancestor. Is it too embarrassing that an lungfish looks more like a fish than a tetrapod? If the nature paper wanted to give a fair rendering of the issue, how about reporting how close lungfish are to other fish, then reporting how close lungfish are to mammals. But we know that would leave an unprejudiced comparison which give the correct impression fish are fish, and mammals are mammals, amphibians are amphibians, and reptiles are reptiles.scordova
June 7, 2013
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Oh, It just occurred to me, isolating single proteins isn't as targeted as say entire architectures. Barb listed so many anatomical features, and those features imply regulatory features that distinguish fish from mammals. In that case, Coelacanth isn't even in the ball park of a mammal. What distinguishes mammals from fish isn't just the proteins but the assembly instructions. Further if the assembly instructions are convergent in outcome versus process, then the platonic form will even be more in evidence. No need to settle the issue today, the morphology is telling enough, the DNA data will come eventually. Such radically different and clustered anatomies imply radically different assembly instruction for fish and mammals.scordova
June 6, 2013
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I'm not here to convince you of anything, JLAfan2001. If you are indeed a biological automaton, then anything I say doesn't matter; if you are not, then no amount of convincing can penetrate what the will has decided to deny.William J Murray
June 6, 2013
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wd400:
It’s a consculision, inferred from the data by people that actually understand how to estimate a phylogeny.
It's a conclusion based on an untestable assumption. And a conclusion absent of a mechanism.Joe
June 6, 2013
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You use random BLAST results to estimate phylogenies. Check out the tree from the whole genome sequences of the coelacanth wd400
June 6, 2013
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JLAfan2001, this following video may interest you because it directly refutes a claim you made the other day: Was Jesus a Myth? Part 1 - Dr. James White - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=00WOGeGcjYo#t=1951sbornagain77
June 6, 2013
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Scordova What are you talking about. No one is “forcing” (ancient) fish to be ancestors of tetrapods. It’s not in anyones interest to make up that story then try an confirm. It’s a consculision, inferred from the data by people that actually understand how to estimate a phylogeny. (And know what a lobe finned fish is, there are none in either of the trees you present in this article).
I mentioned the coelacanth, I even mentioned the outlier of Tuna-Coelacanth-human, but argued it was an exception. So let's take this lobe finned fish and look at the cytochrome-c oxidase subunit 1 BLAST comparison. Tetrapods are nowhere to be seen without going through the ray-finned fishes first. If lobe-finned fishes were tetrapod ancestors, we ought to be seeing birds (or other tetrapods) before ray-finned fishes, or at least mixed in there with the ray-finned fishes. Sorry, the claim of fish-to-bird evolution (even assuming evolution is true) smells fishy.
>tr|Q9PSF7|Q9PSF7_LATCH Cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 OS=Latimeria chalumnae PE=3 SV=1 MITRWLFSTNHKDIGTLYMIFGAWAGMVGTALSLLIRAELSQPGALLGDDQIYNVVVTAH AFVMIFFMVMPIMIGGFGNWLIPLMIGAPDMAFPRMNNMSFWLLPPSLLLLLACSGVYAG AGTGWTVYPPLAGNLAHAGASVDLTIFSLHLAGVSSILGAINFITTVINIKPPTMTQYQT PLFIWSVLVTAVLLLLSLPVLAAGITMLLTDRNLNTTFFVPVGGGDPILYQHLFWFFGHL EVYILILPGFGMISHIVAYYSGKKEPFGYMGMVWAMMATGLLGFIVWAHHMFTVGMDVDT RVYFTSATMIIAIPTGVKVFSWLATLHGGVTKWDTPLLWALGFIFLFTVGGLTGIVLANS SLDIILHDTYYVVAHFHYVLSMGAVFAIMGGLVHWFPLMTGYTLHNTWTKIHFGVMFTGV NLTFFPQHFLGLAGMPRRYSDYPDAYTLWNTVSSIGSLISLIAVIMFMFILWEAFLAKRE VLIVEMTTTNVEWLHGCPPPHHTY Latimeria chalumnae (West Indian ocean coelacanth) 100.0% Latimeria chalumnae (West Indian ocean coelacanth) 98.0% Latimeria chalumnae (West Indian ocean coelacanth) 98.0% Latimeria menadoensis (Indonesian coelacanth) 98.0% Triacanthodes anomalus (red spikefish) 93.0% Megalops cyprinoides (Indo-Pacific tarpon) 93.0% Elops saurus (Ladyfish) 93.0% Carapus bermudensis 93.0% Pantodon buchholzi (Freshwater butterflyfish) 93.0% Capros aper (boarfish) 92.0% Elops hawaiensis (Hawaiian ladyfish) 93.0% Neoceratodus forsteri (Australian lungfish) (Ceratodus forsteri) 92.0% Gasterosteus wheatlandi (blackspotted stickleback) 92.0% Pungitius sinensis (Amur stickleback) 92.0% Megalops atlanticus (Tarpon) (Clupea gigantea) 92.0% Mola mola (ocean sunfish) 92.0% Masturus lanceolatus (sharptail mola) 92.0% Phractolaemus ansorgii (hingemouth) 92.0% Neoceratodus forsteri (Australian lungfish) (Ceratodus forsteri) 92.0% Rondeletia loricata (redmouth whalefish) 92.0% Psephurus gladius (Chinese swordfish) 93.0% Salmo salar (Atlantic salmon) 92.0% Sargocentron rubrum (redcoat) 92.0% Dactyloptena tiltoni 92.0% Esox lucius (Northern pike) 92.0% Retropinna retropinna (cucumberfish) 92.0% …..
scordova
June 6, 2013
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I don’t see why it would; the BLAST results you posted are pretty much what I’d expect given the standard reconstruction of the evolutionary tree. Or rather, they’re what I’d expect from the standard tree plus the assumption that the rate of molecular evolution is constant, aka the molecular clock hypotheses. It’s now known that the MCH isn’t quite true — the rate of molecular evolution isn’t quite constant — but it doesn’t vary that much, so it’s still close enough for rough work.
Thank you for raising the issue. If you put an unspecified vertebrate as the root for all vertebrates, you get a nice clocked result as well, even better. At issues isn't just the clock hypothesis (which has problems of its own) it's the clustering. Problematic with the standard interpretation is that why aren't fish (like say a shark) as sharply divergent from all other fish as mammals are from fish? If the MCH were true, old fish lineages should be very divergent from each other. Now if use sequence divergence to affix the ancestry of fish, you've circularly reasoned the MCH as true by tautology for fish, and hence by fiat you'll just prevent the problem of fish clustering so close to each other. The MCH runs into serious problems because every species has different regeneration rates, yet the clock seems beautifully synchronized. The only to get around the differing regeneration rates is via tautology (each species has a different clock rate/generation). Some fish have substantially faster regeneration cycles than humans. Why aren't they more divergent from invertebrates then, or for that matter from each other? The MCH is broken. Thank you for your comment. That is a good objection.scordova
June 6, 2013
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Scordova What are you talking about. No one is "forcing" (ancient) fish to be ancestors of tetrapods. It's not in anyones interest to make up that story then try an confirm. It's a consculision, inferred from the data by people that actually understand how to estimate a phylogeny. (And know what a lobe finned fish is, there are none in either of the trees you present in this article).wd400
June 6, 2013
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JLAfan2001:
hat about tourette’s syndrome, OCD, alzheimers, schizophrenia, psychopaths, sociopaths,mental disability, severe brain damage. Do these people have free will? Are they not hijacked by the activities of the brain and forced to do things?
Sociopaths and psychopaths have free will and a conscience, which they deliberately suppress in order to do whatever they feel would bring them pleasure. See "The Sociopath Next Door" for further reading. They are most assuredly not the same as schizophrenics or people with OCD.
Your brain is in working order and that’s why you have the illusion of free will. The illusion is much more evident when the brain is not working correctly. Are brains are shaped from our DNA which we get from the lower animals.
Then why do the lower animals not contemplate abstract concepts like love, art, music, and the like? Only humans do. Why do the lower animals not have the same capacity for language that humans do?
All our sense of morality, mind, free will and consciousness is received from them.
Prove it. Do animals know when they've been wronged? Do they seek revenge for wrongs committed against them?
That’s why you can see these things in the animals to a certain degree or another. Our brain is much more complex so the illusion is much more “real”.
The human body and the human brain are of immeasurably greater complexity than those of lower animals. Human makeup is different physically, mentally, and spiritually. Man alone has the desire to worship, and even the most godless of governments has been unsuccessful in stamping out this trait. Man also has the capacity for morality, which lower animals do not possess. See my remarks above; people are rightly angered if they are cheated or lied to, animals are not. Animals do not have any concepts that can be compared to the human concept of justice.
Also, it’s not really a matter of finding a way out of materialist nihilism, that’s inescapable, It’s more trying to switch the neural pathways to accept the illusion of another worldview. Whatever the brain adapts to.
And I say it's a matter of deciding what you believe and then determining why you believe it.Barb
June 6, 2013
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If and only if DNA is the magical form-creating molecule evos need it to be, is phylogenetic analysis a representation of any tree, trees, bush, bushes, web or webs of life. Is there any evidence that DNA is such a molecule?Joe
June 6, 2013
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WJM What about tourette's syndrome, OCD, alzheimers, schizophrenia, psychopaths, sociopaths,mental disability, severe brain damage. Do these people have free will? Are they not hijacked by the activities of the brain and forced to do things? Your brain is in working order and that's why you have the illusion of free will. The illusion is much more evident when the brain is not working correctly. Are brains are shaped from our DNA which we get from the lower animals. All our sense of morality, mind, free will and consciousness is received from them. That's why you can see these things in the animals to a certain degree or another. Our brain is much more complex so the illusion is much more "real". Also, it's not really a matter of finding a way out of materialist nihilism, that's inescapable, It's more trying to switch the neural pathways to accept the illusion of another worldview. Whatever the brain adapts to.JLAfan2001
June 6, 2013
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If I may drag the discussion back closer to the original topic...
But, doesn’t it bother you that molecular similarities group the way they do?
I don't see why it would; the BLAST results you posted are pretty much what I'd expect given the standard reconstruction of the evolutionary tree. Or rather, they're what I'd expect from the standard tree plus the assumption that the rate of molecular evolution is constant, aka the molecular clock hypotheses. It's now known that the MCH isn't quite true -- the rate of molecular evolution isn't quite constant -- but it doesn't vary that much, so it's still close enough for rough work. What I expect from evolution+MCH is that our closest cousins will have the most sequence similarity, with more and more distant cousins further and further down the list. Something like this: Humans, followed by non-human apes (chimps, orangs, etc), followed by non-ape primates (monkeys, lemurs, etc), followed by non-primate mammals (mice, cows, etc), followed by non-mammal tetrapods (reptiles, frogs, etc), followed by non-tetrapod fish (perch, lungfish, etc), followed by non-fish chordates (tunicates, lancets, etc), followed by non-chordate deuterostome (sea urchins, etc), followed by non-deuterostome animals (grasshoppers, squid, etc), ... The BLAST results don't match exactly, of course. For instance, all of the apes have 100% sequence identity, so they're listed in arbitrary order. Later entries may also be slightly out of order because of limited resolution, as well as variations (both random & systematic) in the rate of fixed mutation. I've also simplified the list somewhat; for example, we're a little more closely related to the lungfishes and lobe-finned fishes than we are to the ray-finned fishes, and more closely related to them than we are to the cartilaginous fishes (sharks and rays), but I've lumped these all together as "non-tetrapod fish". So I'm not entirely sure why you think there's a problem here. But that won't stop me from speculating... I think you may be confusing three different meanings of the word "fish":  1; The common meaning of "fish" as rereferring to modern finned animals that live in the sea  2: The Linnaean classification, which includes ancestral forms (i.e. the fish we're descended from, which are quite different from modern fish)  3:The cladistic classification, which includes everything descended from those ancestral forms, including us When someone says that humans are fish, they're using meaning #3 (or else they're very confused); but when you say "I took human cytochrome-c and ran BLAST. You’ll see fish are no where near primates, in fact fish didn’t even show up in the first few pages of the query..." you're clearly using definition #1 (or possibly #2, but since the extinct ancestral fish isn't available for sequencing it's effectively #1). There's a contradiction here, but it's due to inconsistent terminology, not anything deeper. If you use meaning #3, primates are fish, and so are rats, mice, etc; in fact the first few pages of your query results are all fish (meaning #3), just as expected. To make this even more explicit, let me rewrite the expected similarity list I gave above: Humans (a type of fish), followed by very closely related fish (chimps, orangs, etc), followed by less closely related fish (monkeys, lemurs, etc), followed by even less closely related fish (mice, cows, etc), followed by distantly related fish (reptiles, frogs, etc), followed by more distantly related fish (perch, lungfish, etc), followed by non-fish chordates (tunicates, lancets, etc), ...Gordon Davisson
June 6, 2013
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I guess phylogenetic structure is in the data after all. Game over.
Game over for fish-to-bird Darwinists, the similarity was seen since creationist Linnaeus if not earlier. Platonic forms might have been noticed since, err, Plato.scordova
June 6, 2013
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Sal writes,
The clustering is very natural and without any prejudice, it suggest a “phylogeny” but not one where one group is ancestral to another.
I guess phylogenetic structure is in the data after all. Game over.NickMatzke_UD
June 6, 2013
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JLA: You accept that materialism is necessarily incoherent, self-referring and self-annihilating. It's nihilistic. Thus, there's no reason to believe it because if true, all reasoning, logic and evidence for it self-destructs as being of no more validity than monkeys throwing feces. So, that leaves only the fact that you feel compelled to believe it (and argue it), as you say, simply because that is how your neurons roll. If true, then you'll stop believing it when/if some assortment of flapping butterfly wings and pizza makes your neurons fire differently. You ask for words of "truth" that will compel your neurons to fire differently; but even if I could offer such a string of words, that would only be evidence that materialism is true - that I could utter a string of words that would compel your neurons to fire differently. You are asking for a materialist way out of your materialist position. I was in that exact same place many years ago, and I realized that what I was asking for was self-contradicting - to be caused, by compelling argument or evidence, that I had free will and was not just thinking stuff because I was caused to do so. But, if someone could do that - compel me to believe that which I did not, by uttering a few words - that would in fact violate my own free will, if I were to actually have it. Claiming or reclaiming your free will, if it exists, would necessarily be a choice, not a compulsion of fact, argument or evidence as computed by material interactions. You either choose it, or you remain (self-perceived) the tool of physical computation. There's nothing I or anyone else can do about it, except show you the door.William J Murray
June 6, 2013
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@JLAfan
I apologize for the insults but I’ve just reached a point in life where I just don’t care anymore. To me, evolution just keeps on proving my Nihilistic worldview.
Insightful post. It shows that you realize the dangers of Nihilism. And it shows that you realize there really is right and wrong. When confronted, you realized that you stepped over the line and apologized. I applaud you for your willingness to apologize. Certainly that was the right thing to do, but if Nihilism is true, there is no need to apologize for anything, right? And yet your heart tells you clearly that certain things are wrong and you need to apologize for them. It seems to me your heart may have a point there! Perhaps you really were made in the image of God with a conscience so you could understand right/wrong, and good/evil. Perhaps you do have a choice as to what words to use in your post. Perhaps you aren't the robot you think you are. In reality, no one can really live their lives as if nihilism is true. If you can't live by your worldview, if it doesn't work in reality, then isn't that a good indication that it might not be true?tjguy
June 6, 2013
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JLAfan2001 writes:
If you believe in truth then which truth do you believe in? Why is it truth? Why not someone else’s truth is truth?
"What is truth?" - Pontius Pilate. Truth is that which conforms to reality.
I mentioned before that there are three competing creation views among some of the posters. Which one is right? Jguy came back and said that the core of the Christian doctrine is the agreed upon truth from the three posters.
Which one do you think best conforms to reality? You have a brain. Try using it. Try thinking critically about what you have read about creation and evolution.
Why is that and not the Quran or the book of mormom?
Have you ever read the Quran or the Book of Mormon? Have you ever visited websites that explain the beliefs of Mormons or Muslims (like Beliefnet)? Do your own homework and stop whining about how you can't find truth when it's becoming obvious that you haven't been looking for it in the first place.
The earliest gospel was written in 70 AD some 40 years after the death of Jesus. This would be 40 years of the telephone game and they were mostly likely not written by eyewitnesses. Would you find truth in such an event?
Yes, I would. Luke wrote the book of Acts while some of the eyewitnesses to the events he mentions were still alive; they would have noted if he'd made false statements or exaggerated. But they didn't. There's an interesting book you might want to look at: The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History by Colin Hemer. In that book, Hemer shows how archaeology has confirmed hundreds of small details from the biblical account of the early church. He compiles a list of 84 details that Luke got right when writing this account. Hemer also gives more than a dozen reasons why Acts had to have been written before 62 AD, and earlier than that, Luke had written his own gospel. So you have a historian with impeccable credentials who has been proven right in hundreds of details (and never proven wrong), writing the history of Jesus and the early church. Why wouldn't I find that truthful?
I know that you believe but if you eliminate all the holy books, what evidence is there for God? We would just have scientific knowledge of evolution etc and be fine with it.
You know, I'm really not sure what to make of your posts. Have you read anything contrary to what you believe, ever? Have you read any of the posts of those responding to you? You claim to have searched for knowledge, but it doesn't look to me like you put much effort into it.
I’ve mentioned before that Genesis is completely false.
Did you even read my post where I answered your objections? Do that, and then get back to me. Otherwise, you're simply trolling.
Multiple true worldviews is not logical and therefore the truth can’t be known and hence Nihilism. Please tell me what the absolute truthful and correct worldview is and my brain may rewire itself to accept it.
Oh, give me a break. You have a brain. USE IT and stop whining about how you can't or won't understand what truth is or where to find it.Barb
June 6, 2013
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Here’s one: phylogenies estimated from junk DNA and silent sites are the same as or congruent with those estimated from functional DNA. In fact, most of variants in phylogenetic studies will have very little to do with the function of an organism.
Actually, that's a very good argument that selection doesn't act on most of the genome, and if Junk DNA is found functional, then we have evidence of function that didn't happen via selection. The platonic forms show more congruent and sensible "phylogenies" as can been seen even with the cursory look at the data above, and won't likely be refuted even with more scrutiny. It's understandable that the suggestion the ancestor of vertebrates was a concept (a concept in a MIND) rather than a physical ancestor is troubling, but that's what the data suggests...scordova
June 6, 2013
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