Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Evolutionists Find Evidence For Convergence

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The theory of evolution states that the species arose spontaneously, one from another via a pattern of common descent. This means the species should form an evolutionary tree, where species that share a recent common ancestor, such as two frog species, are highly similar, and species that share a distant common ancestor, such as humans and squids, are very different. But the species do not form such an evolutionary tree pattern. In fact this expectation has been violated so many times it is difficult to keep track. These violations are not rare or occasional anomalies, they are the rule. Entire volumes have been written on them. Many examples are the repeated designs found in what, according to evolution, must be very distant species. Such evolutionary convergence is biology’s version of lightning striking twice. To explain this evolutionists must say that random mutations just happened to hit upon the same detailed, intricate design at different times, in different parts of the world, in different ecological niches, and so forth. The idea that the most complex designs we know of would spontaneously arise by themselves is, itself, not scientifically motivated and a real stretch of the imagination. But for the same intricate designs to arise independently by chance is even more of a stretch. That is why evolutionist’s claim this week that they have found evidence for convergent evolution was so intriguing.  Read more

Comments
Two evolutionists converged on a bar...Mung
November 27, 2012
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I asked this:
Were the thylacines present in the ark or did they speciate after the flood?
Mung answered:
yes
Which is not an answer.timothya
November 25, 2012
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timothya:
Were the thylacines present in the ark or did they speciate after the flood?
yesMung
November 22, 2012
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Arguing God from Teleology? (William Dembski) - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGTOQ-fUNMYbornagain77
November 22, 2012
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Tim asks: "Were the thylacines present in the ark or did they speciate after the flood?" And yet, in a small miracle of convergence :) , ENV posted this last night: "Is ID Creationism? William Dembski Answers Top Three Objections to ID" - podcast Nov. 21, 2012 http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2012-11-21T17_23_03-08_00bornagain77
November 22, 2012
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Robert Byers posted this:
Everyone just google the marsupial wol moving/still pictures and decide if thats a wolf like ours or a more flexible kangaroo.
Are there placental wolves that rear their young in a belly pouch? Were the thylacines present in the ark or did they speciate after the flood?timothya
November 22, 2012
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This is a great and well written thread. So very important I think. A creator would have a common blueprint or programe that upon need kicked in. As Mr Hunter said NOT only is the odds impossible for any design but convergence of design , from randomness, is JUST impossible to thinking people even without odds calculating ability.. The more research there is the more convergence is demonstrated. That is like anatomy/organ for like need. Like a thinking being would do and not a unthinking happanchance. Mr Hunter hit on about marsupials. BANG to this YEC. I insist marsupials are just slightly modified placentals. Is mr Hunter saying that marsupials looking like placentals means they are from coinvergent evolution or that they were not from it and so created separately? i would add that many "oders" of creatures in the fossil record are identical likewise as marsupial/placentals but said to be from convergent evolution. Of coarse as a YEC we need to explain the marsupial anomaly of marsupial exclusiveness and others exclusiveness in australia if one believes in the biblical ark and logical animal migration. I wrote an essay on this. JUst google if interested. I do think convergent evolution claims are the weak soft underbelly of evolutionary biology. Everyone just google the marsupial wol moving/still pictures and decide if thats a wolf like ours or a more flexible kangaroo. Its a side correction to discover classification systems have been wrong. Convergent evolution goes a bridge too far in suspending credibility about odds of natural mechanisms.Robert Byers
November 19, 2012
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There are no proposed transitional species.Mung
November 18, 2012
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Do any of the proposed transitional species come as close morphologically as do the more identical convergences? If not, then the fossil evidence of evolution is no more than special pleading.JoeCoder
November 18, 2012
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More overwhelming evidence for evolution! How could anyone not believe? :roll: "You just don't understa-a-a-a-a-nd!", wail the evolutionists. Yes, and if we were smart enough to understand the beauty of epicycle theory, we would see that the sun and planets revolve around the earth, too.sagebrush gardener
November 18, 2012
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In a classic example of evolutionary blowback, Hoy reasons that (i) mammals and katydids evolved, (ii) their hearing designs are remarkably similar, so (iii) therefore it is proof of convergent evolution.
If we can just add enough epicycles... If the facts don't match the theory, add another theory. Then, when confronted with the incoherence of your theories, claims it's all one theory, and call it modern. If convergent evolution were falsified, they would claim the flying squirrels and the flying phalanger were closely related and come up with yet another ad hoc theory as to how it could be so and then claim if you could not prove it to be impossible it must be true.
This is a confirmation not of convergent evolution but of how evolution has corrupted scientific thinking.
Indeed. It's not so much that the theory is wrong, it's that it turns otherwise intelligent people into nothing more than useful idiots.
Thus, two phylogenetically remote organisms, katydids and mammals, have evolved a series of convergent solutions to common biophysical problems, despite their reliance on very different morphological substrates.
Well, since we know how the mammalian ear evolved from the reptile jawbone, it must be the case that the insect ear evolved from the jaw of something...Mung
November 18, 2012
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"Convergence" is a common phenomenon among designed things, of course. The latest Ford truck may draw most of its features from previous Ford models, but designers are free to copy ideas from GM or Toyota truck designers. Another great post, Cornelius.Granville Sewell
November 18, 2012
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