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From David DeWitt at Liberty U: Contemplating Bill Nye’s 51 skulls slide

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David A. DeWitt, Biology & Chemistry chair at Liberty, knows a thing or two about skulls, and writes to say,

This afternoon and evening I tracked down 46 of the 51 skulls that were on the slide Nye showed in the Ken Ham debate (at about 1:05 on the Youtube video).

This was a challenge because some of them are not very well analyzed, partial skulls, etc. While some of them are well known, others are rarely discussed. I believe only a well-trained anthropologist would have been able to address that slide in the very brief time that it was visible. It was especially confusing because the skulls are in different orientations (including one that is viewed from the bottom and one that is just a jaw). They were not shown with the same scale so the relative sizes are wrong, and they are not grouped or lined up in any clear order. They are mixed up by type of skull and by date, and the only label is the name of the individual skull. I suspect that this was deliberate. I am also curious whether Nye knows very much about those skulls at all, and this may be why he didn’t say which ones were humans or how many were represented on the slide.

Some of the comments Bill Nye made: 

“I assure you not any of them is a gorilla.”

That is actually true. There is no gorilla skull on the page.

He said the fossils were found “all over the place.” That is true if you mean in a variety of locations. It is not true if you mean that they are common.

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They are mixed up by type of skull and by date, and the only label is the name of the individual skull. I suspect that this was deliberate.

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He asked where would you put modern humans/us. The technical definition of modern human would be Cro-magnon which is the last one, but you should probably include the whole bottom row and the last 2 in the row above it since these are all homo sapien. Some of those homo sapiens are called ‘archaic’ because of their age and that is the distinction to ‘modern human.’

There are issues with Dali however because it is difficult to say whether it is homo sapien or homo erectus. However, if we accept the recent analysis (by Lorkipanidze et al) of the Dmanisi skull variation, then we would start humans with the last one on the top row which is H. habilis. Personally, I would not do that, I would start 2 in from the second row because I think the 1470 skull H rudolfensis has reconstruction issues and I would classify this with K. platyops which is not on the chart.

Bill insisted that there were more than 2 kinds represented on the chart, and perhaps he is right. It may be 3, but that depends on whether you include the australopithecines with paranthropus or not. It would be a max of 4 if rudolfensis is a distinct kind from the other two apes. I conclude that most of the skulls are in fact human, and there are likely up to 3 different kinds of extinct apes depending on how those are grouped. The Smithsonian website shows the Australopithcus group as distinct from the Paranthropus group, which is probably reasonable especially since they show both of them and not being direct human ancestors. I was surprised that Nye’s slide did not show the more recent fossils from the last few years such as ardipithecus, Australopithecus sediba, and Sahelanthropus.

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I am also curious whether Nye knows very much about those skulls at all, and this may be why he didn’t say which ones were humans or how many were represented on the slide.

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It is important to remember that some of these fossils are of extinct types of apes that were different from chimps and gorillas. Due to variation within the type as well as sexual dimorphism (along with partial and fragmented skulls) it can be challenging to distinguish the fossil apes.

The entire first row is messed up because it is:

Australopithecus afarensis (~3 million)

Paranthropus aethioopicus (~2.5 million)

3 Pranthropus Boisei (1.8-1.7 million)

2 Australopithecus Africanus (2.5-2.1 million and then 2.8-2.4 million)

Homo habilis 1.7 million

Overall there is a general trend to the fossils shown, but there are Neanderthals, H. heidelbergensis and H. erectus skulls that are out of order and out of a time sequence. I can only conclude that the sole purpose of showing such a slide was to confuse and obfuscate, not educate.

Oh, not to worry, when Darwin’s followers run the world, confusion and obfuscation will be education, and there will be no one left who knows the difference.

Heck, the other night we noted a science writer reviewing books in a prominent publication who  thinks there is little or no difference between humans and other animals. If you can get published saying things that are as clearly un-evidence-based  as that, you needn’t bother confusing people.

The multiversers are right: Science doesn’t have to make sense any more. It just has to support the right causes.

See also: Science-Fictions-square.gif The Science Fictions series at your fingertips

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Comments
Could I make some basic points and questions? 1. If an intelligent creator might make a nested heirarchy for conceivably good reasons, would that mean that a nested heirarchy is not evidence of undirected evolution? 2. Is convergent evolution evidence against undirected evolution and even against universal common descent? If not, why not? 3. I notice that state laws are in a nested heirarchy. Title 57 of the Utah State Code is about "Real Estate." Chapter 1 is about the Conveyancing of Real Estate. Chapter 1 part 12.5 is about Special Warranty Deeds to real estate. Special Warranty Deeds deal with conveyancing issues and conveyancing issues are about real estate. And all of these things are "laws" in Utah.Collin
March 5, 2015
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The best line in the article:
"Science doesn’t have to make sense any more. It just has to support the right causes."
So true!tjguy
February 23, 2014
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scordova:
I respect that you believe in universal common ancestry, and with that belief you can construct any phylogeny you want. The objection creationists have is with the mechanical barriers to such a transformation. The objection Darwinists have is the creationist appeal to supernatural special creation, and somewhere on the sideline are IDists who accept common descent.
That's a totally skewed perspective. Both Darwinists and creationists can be accused, if you like, of accepting/rejecting universal common ancestry as a result of adherence to a model that either requires or conflicts with it.
I respect that you will accept common ancestry without experimental proof like hybridization because that seems less fantastic than supernatural special creation. I respect that, but it doesn’t work for me.
The use of the word "proof" implies that you think hybridization actually proves common ancestry. But it doesn't; maybe both subspecies were separately created. Surely someone even "more creationist" than you could say: "I respect that you will accept common ancestry without experimental proof like personally watching the two subspecies evolve from a common ancestor in real time, because common ancestry seems less fantastic than supernatural special creation." When you consider what's wrong with that, maybe you'll see what's wrong with what you said. You assumed without basis that hybridization was the only possible form of evidence, and thus that when people use phylogenetics it can only mean they're desperate to avoid a creationist conclusion. But in reality, scienists accept genome comparison because it works, it makes sense, it integrates with known data about DNA, etc.Lenoxus
February 14, 2014
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That last line in my comment above should say the "MHC Adam/Eve", revealed by the same methods as used for Y-Adam, mt-Eve and the rest, would certainly not be human - since gorillas and chimps would also trace their ancestory to that individual.wd400
February 14, 2014
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Lenoxus:
Evolution expects a nested hierarchy that can be drawn as regions around a family tree.
You still haven't provided any reference to what a nested hierarchy is and what it entails. And you sure as heck cannot provide a reference that supports that claim.Joe
February 14, 2014
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OK. So phylogentic evidence is the same in each, it's just in the case of among-species trees you personal increduility represents a strong enough prior that evidence can't overcome it. Now, what do you make of genes like MHCs and those responsiable for the ABO blood groups, which show trans-species polymorphism in apes? i.e. Some human genes are more closley related to chimp and gorilla genes than some other human genes and the "MHC adam" was certainly a human? http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6127/1578.fullwd400
February 14, 2014
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You still haven’t answered my question.
I did, but we're obviously not on the same wavelength.
How do you think the phylogenetic methods used to infer the phylogenies behind y-adam and mt-eve are different from the methods used to infer the shared common ancestor of humans and chimps
The methods differ because one method depends on an unproven assumption (plausible evolutionary pathway) to make the inference and the other relies on a demonstrable fact (interbreeding) to make an inferencescordova
February 14, 2014
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You still haven't answered my question. I don't care why you think universal common descent in not true. I want to know what it is what about phylogenetics that makes it work when we are working within a species but not when we work among species?wd400
February 14, 2014
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. Doesn’t it seem awfully convenient to just draw this abritrary line?
Arbitrary? Humans don't breed with chimps so the line is pretty well defined by nature. Whereas, the descendants of Y-chromosomal Aaron are apparently capable of interbreeding with other descendants of Y-chromosomal Aaron. By way of comparison the species of tiger (which may be as old as 35 million years) can interbreed with the species of lion (which may be as old as 1 million years) and create a Tigon or Liger. So in approximately the time scale (5 million years) needed to evolve 20 unique animal phyla in the Cambrian explosion, we have something like the Panthera genus (tigers, lions, leopards, jaguars) that diversifies so slightly that the members can still interbreed. So here we have lineage (tigers) that may be older than the supposed chimp/human ancestor, but it can interbreed with more recent Panthera species, thus creationists don't draw an arbitrary line between lions and tigers -- it is empirically demonstrated they have a plausible common ancestor. It would be interesting to see interbreeding experiments with living fossils. I respect that you believe in universal common ancestry, and with that belief you can construct any phylogeny you want. The objection creationists have is with the mechanical barriers to such a transformation. The objection Darwinists have is the creationist appeal to a supernatural special creation, and somewhere on the sideline are IDists who accept common descent. I don't see why hybridization and interbreeding experiments are a bad test for establishing phylogeny or lack thereof. I respect that you will accept common ancestry without experimental proof like hybridization because that seems less fantastic than supernatural special creation. I respect that, but it doesn't work for me.scordova
February 14, 2014
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scordova:
Futhermore, orphan genes are a real barrier. There are probably more barriers.
You're free to treat orphan genes as a "barrier" between created kinds for definitional purposes (although they happen to be exactly the sort of "new information" that ID wants to deny can happen), but it makes no sense to treat them as a cause of this purported barriable, as if the orphan genes are capable of preventing over-large amounts of change. How exactly would that work? For the record, I'm happy to continue talking about genetics and phylogeny, just not to address Joe G's particular argument about nested hierarchies somehow conflicting with a continuum of intermediates.Lenoxus
February 14, 2014
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I am trying to ask you to tell me what it is about phylogenetics that means it should work within a freely interbreeding population and not beyond it. Doesn't it seem awfully convenient to just draw this abritrary line? Even if you think, for other reasons, that humans and chimps don't share a common ancestor you have to admit the same methods reveal common ancestors of the Y chr and mitochondrial genomes provide evidence for a human-chimp common ancestor? This also doesn't seem to relate to your earlier claim that above the species level phylogeny "only" reveals sister species and not shared ancestors (which, by the way, is a nonsensical claim).wd400
February 14, 2014
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Which is a long of way of not quite saying the the methods are not different?
Shorter answer: Humans can interbreed with humans, not humans and chimps, thus phylogenetics works for each separate kind. Futhermore, orphan genes are a real barrier. There are probably more barriers.scordova
February 14, 2014
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They’ve been used to reconstruct Y-chromosomal Aaron, and possibly Abraham, and maybe, just Maybe Noah or the daughters in law of Noah.
I'm pretty sure that if humanity really did once consist entirely of Noah and his immediate family, then "Y-chromosomal Adam" is actually Noah, or rather, a male grandson/great-grandson (when all the post-Flood inbreeding is taken into account.) Beyond that, there's basically no way you could determine (from present DNA alone) anything about the DNA of an hypothetical even-earlier bottleneck-ancestor (Biblical Adam). (All that is to pretend there's any substance to the hypothesis that humans went through such a drastic bottleneck within the last twenty thousand years.) In terms of plausibility, a Y-chromosomal Abraham makes a lot more sense. By definition, all of today's ethnic Jews have a most recent common patrilineal ancestor. We may as well suppose that ancestor to be "the" Abraham, though I personally think Abraham is another classic mythical-ancestor of the sort we find in nearly all cultures around the world.Lenoxus
February 14, 2014
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OK then you understand why evolution does not expect a nice, neat nested hierarchy.
Evolution expects a nested hierarchy that can be drawn as regions around a family tree. The very edges of those regions can be arbitrary -- but only in a single area (the bottom, if we draw the tree like a tree) because of the gradualism of transitions. That's all I can say about it and I'm going to stop banging my head about this, lo, as have dozens before me on these Interwebs in years past.Lenoxus
February 14, 2014
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Which is a long of way of not quite saying the the methods are not different?wd400
February 14, 2014
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How do you think the phylogenetic methods used to infer the phylogenies behind y-adam and mt-eve are different from the methods used to infer the shared common ancestor of humans and chimps?
The gap of orphan genes is significant, and maybe many other markers as well as laid out by Jeff Tomkins. It is undeniable primates are very close to humans in form and genes, but there is also an undeniable discontinuity. Whereas, the divergences in Y-chromosomal Adam are considerably smaller, and the transitionals are conceptually easy to reconstruct. No so with the gaps of orphan genes and who knows what else. Maybe decades ago the gaps were not so pronounced, but they are becoming more pronounced today. We obviously won't settle the matter in this discussion, but we might have clearer picture in 20 years. When I was at ICC 2013 the idea of using orphan genes to identify created kinds was mentioned in passing during conversations. I think that will be the best way to describe things. The creationist model is that of an Orchard of Trees where the phylogenies are individual trees in the orchard. But each tree in the orchard can be distinguished by markers like orphan genes. Common Descent has a single tree whereas special creation has an orchard of phylogenetic trees where sets of trees can be encircled by Venn Diagrams that are sets nested in sets. So to answer your question:
How do you think the phylogenetic methods used to infer the phylogenies behind y-adam and mt-eve are different from the methods used to infer the shared common ancestor of humans and chimps?
They ignore obvious gaps between created kinds such as those I highlighted here: New Mechanism of Evolution -- POOF Otherwise, the phylogenetic methods for a created kind I think are really cool. They've been used to reconstruct Y-chromosomal Aaron, and possibly Abraham, and maybe, just Maybe Noah or the daughters in law of Noah. We'll see. I'm not totally against phylogeny, but I don't believe in 1 universal phylogenetic tree, I believe in an orchard of phylogenetic trees.scordova
February 14, 2014
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Sal, I hesitate to start back on this topic, but really <i?Nested hierarchies within the same species are inevitable because of phyologeny. We see that with thing like Y-Chromsomal Aaron, Y-chromosomal Adam, mitcontrial Eve, etc. But the nested hierarchy that refers to characters between species cannot easily be produced by common descent, instead you get sister groups. Brief explanation in... How do you think the phylogenetic methods used to infer the phylogenies behind y-adam and mt-eve are different from the methods used to infer the shared common ancestor of humans and chimps?wd400
February 14, 2014
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OK then you understand why evolution does not expect a nice, neat nested hierarchy.Joe
February 14, 2014
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If we have nice, neat distinct categories such as “mammal” and “reptile”- each mammal having all of the defined characteristics of a mammal and all the reptiles having all of the defining characteristics of a reptile, where would we put the organisms that have some of the defining characteristics of a mammal and some of a reptile, but not enough of one or the other to be a part of either of those groups?
Isn't that the sort of question to be asked of creationists? For example, which "nice, neat, distinct" category does the cynodont go into, or any of the other mammal-reptiles? Cynodonts are obviously not a problem for evolution, they're the whole point. We apply "nice, neat" categories for usefulness, but not because evolution actually calls for those categories to be Platonically real. (It feel good to reject Platonism on Valentine's Day...) I imagine astronomers make reference to constellations when telling one another the location of a particular star; that doesn't mean their theories require that constellations to be actual "things", which they're not.Lenoxus
February 14, 2014
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sal:
Nested hierarchies within the same species are inevitable because of phyologeny.
What? A branching tree pattern does not a nested hierarchy make. Linnean classification is the nested hierarchy wrt biology. And yes it can be depicted as a branching tree pattern.Joe
February 14, 2014
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Lenoxus, If we have nice, neat distinct categories such as "mammal" and "reptile"- each mammal having all of the defined characteristics of a mammal and all the reptiles having all of the defining characteristics of a reptile, where would we put the organisms that have some of the defining characteristics of a mammal and some of a reptile, but not enough of one or the other to be a part of either of those groups? And yes if a mammal is a mammal by definition then it cannot be a fish by definition. Words have definitions for a reason. If they didn't then words would be meaningless ;)Joe
February 14, 2014
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Two Faced Nick Matzke
Matzke's main point is that the very nature of the data at hand means we can't pinpoint a particular species as an ancestor (for example, which species of therapod gave rise to birds), but we can say with significant confidence how closely species are related, and build a genuine tree from this. A DNA test would show me and my sister to be siblings even if our parents were both totally unknown, or if they had somehow become skeletons with no recoverable DNA (equivalent to fossilization) and hence tricky to distinguish from other human skeletons (but still groupable with larger groups, by broader characters.)
Platonic Forms do no suggest we evolved from fish
Platonic forms may indeed suggest we , but reality isn't Platonist, especially not when it comes to biology. You may as well assert that teenagers are impossible because one can't conceive of an intermediate between the Platonic Ideal of a baby and the Platonic Ideal of an adult. (What would that even look like, a baby head on an adult body? Absurd.) And like it or not, the fossil record gives us those teenagers. You know about the transitionals already, you just pretend they aren't (and never could be) enough evidence.Lenoxus
February 14, 2014
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Nested hierarchies within the same species are inevitable because of phyologeny. We see that with thing like Y-Chromsomal Aaron, Y-chromosomal Adam, mitcontrial Eve, etc. But the nested hierarchy that refers to characters between species cannot easily be produced by common descent, instead you get sister groups. Brief explanation in : Two Faced Nick Matzke The same difficulties hold at the molecular level. See: Platonic Forms do no suggest we evolved from fishscordova
February 13, 2014
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Venn diagram with overlapping of defining characteristics. I definitely wouldn’t expect complex processes to produce a mice, neat objective nested hierarchy.
Okay, I see where you're going with that. I wouldn't be surprised if the nested hierarchy of life is actually topologically equivalent to the Venn diagram you're talking about, but I'm not sure. How about a Venn diagram in the overall shape of a tree, with a series of linked circles forming each branch and a set of three overlapping circles at each point of divergence? Ah, but one problem is that traits tend to remain rather than be lost. It's hard to figure out how to label the region corresponding to the earliest fish, for example, while non-arbitrarily excluding all their descendents that share the same ancient features.
And yet the anti-ID mob wants to define ID out of science.
That's about argument into the dictionary, not out of it. Though I admit that "dictionary arguments" (like "Id has feature X and the dictionary says that makes it not a science) have been made against ID, they should be avoided. That's different from saying "X, Y, Z, therefore we shouldn't consider ID to merit the label 'science'." An example of a very poor dictionary argument is this, used to declare that mammals could never be considered fish, essentially because the dictionary says so.Lenoxus
February 13, 2014
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Lenoxus:
If a massive evolutionary process, with a branching tree of life, did occur (perhaps guided by a designer, if in fact “macroevolution” is impossible without assistance), what sort of organizational structure would life exhibit, that wasn’t a nested hierarchy?
Venn diagram with overlapping of defining characteristics. I definitely wouldn't expect complex processes to produce a mice, neat objective nested hierarchy.
Science isn’t about arguing from the dictionary.
And yet the anti-ID mob wants to define ID out of science.Joe
February 13, 2014
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Okay, let me try a different track to understand this better. If a massive evolutionary process, with a branching tree of life, did occur (perhaps guided by a designer, if in fact "macroevolution" is impossible without assistance), what sort of organizational structure would life exhibit, that wasn't a nested hierarchy? What would it look like and what would you call it? Would it have no structure at all? Is the question unclear or incoherent? It's possible I could have my terms completely screwed up, and the taxonomy that biologists deal with isn't remotely a "nested hierarchy", but that's just language. Science isn't about arguing from the dictionary.Lenoxus
February 13, 2014
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Lenoxus:
There is no single magic definition of nested hierarchy; it’s not like an industry standard.
Actually, there is. For example the nested hierarchy has to exhibit summativity.
think that most people who have spent a lot of time in the broader evolution/creationism discussion have a decent sense of what a nested hierarchy is.
LoL! Nested hierarchies exist outside of this debate. And anyone who understands Linnean taxonomy knows what a nested hierarchy is: Linnean Classification:
The standard system of classification in which every organism is assigned a kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. This system groups organisms into ever smaller and smaller groups (like a series of boxes within boxes, called a nested hierarchy).
Looking closer at the nested hierarchy of living organisms we have the animal kingdom. To be placed in the animal kingdom an organism must have all of the criteria of an animal:
All members of the Animalia are multicellular (eukaryotes), and all are heterotrophs (that is, they rely directly or indirectly on other organisms for their nourishment). Most ingest food and digest it in an internal cavity. Animal cells lack the rigid cell walls that characterize plant cells. The bodies of most animals (all except sponges) are made up of cells organized into tissues, each tissue specialized to some degree to perform specific functions.
The next level (after kingdom) contain the phyla. Phyla have all the characteristics of the kingdom PLUS other criteria. For example one phylum under the Kingdom Animalia, is Chordata. Chordates have all the characteristics of the Kingdom PLUS the following:
Chordates are defined as organisms that possess a structure called a notochord, at least during some part of their development. The notochord is a rod that extends most of the length of the body when it is fully developed. Lying dorsal to the gut but ventral to the central nervous system, it stiffens the body and acts as support during locomotion. Other characteristics shared by chordates include the following (from Hickman and Roberts, 1994): bilateral symmetry segmented body, including segmented muscles three germ layers and a well-developed coelom. single, dorsal, hollow nerve cord, usually with an enlarged anterior end (brain) tail projecting beyond (posterior to) the anus at some stage of development pharyngeal pouches present at some stage of development ventral heart, with dorsal and ventral blood vessels and a closed blood system complete digestive system bony or cartilaginous endoskeleton usually present.
The next level is the class. All classes have the criteria of the kingdom, plus all the criteria of its phylum PLUS the criteria of its class. This is important because it shows there is a direction- one of additive characteristics. That is how containment is kept and summativity is met. (NOTE: evolution does NOT have a direction. Characteristics can be lost as well as gained. And characteristics can remain stable.) An Army can also be put into a nested hierarchy- with the Army example we would be classifying the US Army which is broken up into Field Armies, which contain and consist of Corps, which contain and consist of Divisions, which contain and consist of Brigades, which contain and consist of Battalions, which contain and consist of Companies, which contain and consist of Platoons, which contain and consist of Squads & Sections. Squads and sections contain and consist of soldiers. Each level, down to the soldier, has a well defined role and place in the scheme. The Army consists of and contains, soldiers- it exhibits summativity.Joe
February 13, 2014
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There is no single magic definition of nested hierarchy; it's not like an industry standard. I think that most people who have spent a lot of time in the broader evolution/creationism discussion have a decent sense of what a nested hierarchy is. In fact, I think nearly all ID-ists and creationists get it; you are just an exception. For one thing, I haven't heard your arguments from anyone else, although I guess you are elaborating on arguments made by Michael Denton. I'll check out that source sometime.Lenoxus
February 13, 2014
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Lenoxus, Neither you nor CLAVDIVS have referenced any valid definitions of what a nested hierarchy is. And that has been the case with each and every evo I have ever debated about this. OTOH I have referenced my claims. So all I can say now is read "Evolution" A Theory in Crisis"- it is all explained in chapter 6Joe
February 13, 2014
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Just like Linnaeus doesn't "own" taxonomy in such a way that we aren't allowed to use taxonomic evidence unless we are creationists like Linnaeus, so it is with Mendel and genetics. If science were to be defined in terms of scientists' own prior convictions, it wouldn't get far. Even if Mendel was a YEC, so what? Newton was an alchemist. Both fact are irrelevant to the question of whether their hypotheses are true and useful. Do you understand the distinction between Clavdivus's point that inheritence is particulate, and my point that we do see smooth long-term transitions between groups? Do you see how those can both be true at the same time? As for your arguments abut nested hierarchies, the more I read it, the better I think I can understand. You're saying that a nested hierarch would require clear distinctions between child groups and their ancestors; that it would be incorrect to say "the bird clade nests within dinosaurs" unless there was, in fact, a first bird. You're wrong, but I myself have thought the same thing in the past. It's actually a decent counter-argument to the assertion that cladistics is the only proper form of taxonomy (on the grounds that cladistics lacks arbitrary cutoff points given that it treats lines of descent as never "losing" a taxon of its ancestors): solely in order to talk about this stuff, we do have to make arbitrary cutoff points. However, that's just a semantic debate between biologists who do agree about the actual relationships, just disagree in the labeling. (Birds are definitely descended from dinosaurs, but it's a matter of taste whether they "are" dinosaurs.)Lenoxus
February 13, 2014
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