by Wortfish wrote:Calilasseia wrote:
In short, they're engaging in desperate twisting of the facts to fit their mythology fetish.
The mere fact that it's possible to construct a molecular phylogeny for the entire tree of life, destroys their wishful thinking. Because if their assertions were something other than rectal products, the data in question would not even exist.
They would argue that molecular phylogeny is made possible only because of a common genetic design rather than a common ancestry. They would also argue that the "kinds" can be proved by the fact that interbreeding is possible between species of the same kind but not between species of different kinds.
Except that the requisite apologetics is bullshit for numerous reasons.
One, we have evidence for inheritance followed by the acquisition of modifications, on a grand scale. We have zero evidence for magic conjuring tricks by an invisible magic man.
Two, as anyone in the world of software development will tell you (and I'm one of those people), a major aim of human designers is to produce core components that can be re-used frequently, without modification. Not least because this saves a hell of a lot of money on product development, when it's done correctly, but more importantly, facilitates the development of new prototypes for testing. In the case of critical components, it's understood that modification thereof is undertaken at one's peril.
But, when we look at a sample critical component in the natural world, namely the insulin gene in vertebrates, this has been subject to modification time and again across a vast span of lineages. I covered this in more detail here seven years ago, and the essential details still stand.
Now, we're all familiar with creationist assertions to the effect that any mutation will purportedly break something that works,(though the literature documenting known beneficial mutations stuffs them on that point as well, as does the volume of work done since Kimura's neutral theory. Those assertions about the purported "inevitability" of mutations being deleterious, are manifestly incompatible with any idea that a gene for a critical component, such as insulin in vertebrates, can undergo modification and still work. Yet, that's what the evidence tells us - insulin genes, whilst subject to a high degree of conservation, are not identical across vertebrate lineages by any means, and have undergone modification with the passage of generations.
Any "designer" proliferating lots of modifications of a critical component, would actually be violating the basic rules of design, as understood in the world of human design. Since human design is, effectively, the only well-studied model we have for information on this - and indeed, said model is frequently plundered for apologetic purposes by creationists, though usually with a heavy leavening of incompetence and duplicity - any attempts to use that model as being [1] applicable to supernatural magic design, something that has never been directly observed, or [2] a prescriptive account of the biosphere, when it fails even to be competent as a descriptive model, are doomed for the obvious reasons to those of us who paid attention in class.
This is before we examine in detail the hilarity ensuing from creationist attempts to erect assertions about "kinds", a term that has no scientific validity, and one that means different things to different creationists (ah, the heady, pungent aroma of anti-consilience is once again detected!). Enjoy a particularly hilarious example thereof here, which gives us this famous graphic:
- Creationist Hominid Skull Fail.jpg (271.84 KiB) Viewed 1972 times
Worse still, the requisite apologetics frequently betray not only scientific ignorance on a vast scale, but point to the typical creationist have a three-year-old's understanding of basic taxonomy, let alone anything as advanced as molecular phylogeny. For example, when it comes to the ridiculous attempts to rearrange Linnaean taxonomy, for the sole purpose of erecting an entirely specious and synthetic "special status" for humans, creationists routinely demonstrate that they don't even care about most of the phyla on the planet, and the consequences thereof arising from their fatuous assertions. So long as they can preserve their precious mythological "special status" for humans, they don't give a shit about the rest of the biosphere, except as a source of hamburgers and fries. Which is why we see hilarity, such as the assertion that "kind" corresponds to Genus for mammals, Family for the likes of birds, reptiles and fish, and anything up to SuperClass for many invertebrates. Meaning, by extension, that hybridisation is, according to those creationist assertions, purportedly possible between any members of the taxonomic subdivisions nested therein. Except that, whoops, hybridisation across taxonomic categories that large has not, to my knowledge, been observed, let alone documented, by biologists, who have had plenty of time to track such occurrences down. Furthermore, hybridisation is frequently an indicator to biologists, that the species in question have not yet completely diverged, and are still in the process of acquiring complete interfertility failure after the splitting of the common ancestral population. Indeed, I've presented here numerous scientific papers documenting this very process, including a superb paper by Diane Dodd, describing an experiment in this vein that you can perform in your own back yard greenhouse if you want to. I emphasise that for good reason.
Indeed, that's another enormous misunderstanding that creationists routinely exhibit about evolution, aside from the more fatuous ones that give rise to the likes of Ray Comfort's risible "crocoduck", or the "I've never seen a cat give birth to a dog" bullshit that is a more direct product of the misunderstanding I'm covering here. Namely, they think of ancestors in terms of individuals, the way we humans have tended to for millennia as a result of our own insular concerns about parenthood, whereas evolutionary biologists, at least the rigorous ones, have in mind ancestral populations. Specifications for ancestral individuals in the literature are, at least when conducted properly, performed principally as an aid to understanding, and to provide an archetype for the population of interest. Now it may well be possible, given enough collected data, and a rigorous generation-by-generation audit trail, to link a modern population to a specific past individual, courtesy of the fact that said individual's genes are present throughout the descendant population, but since we don't have audit trails at this level, we have to content ourselves with the data we have. But, analysis of data from matings of known provenance (including controlled matings in laboratories) has provided scientists with the tools they need to know what to look for in the case of matings of unknown provenance, and detect with confidence ancestry therefrom.
That data is conclusive - we are not "special", or isolated from the rest of the biosphere, but a direct product thereof, and intimately linked via inheritance to everything from bacteria through fungi, to eagles and lions. We, along with every other terrestrial vertebrate on the planet, are basically Sarcopterygian fish that got too big for our boots. As for the connection we humans have with the other great apes, which creationists hate with visceral passion, it's tough shit - they're going to have to suck on the mountains of data pointing in this direction. Data such as shared broken genes and shared endogenous retriviral insertions, that could only have arisen in our genome through shared ancestry. In short, it's Game Over for creationist bullshit, and no amount of fabrication is going to elevate their bullshit above the level of bullshit.
