[Alan Fox asked why I’m a YEC (Young Earth Creationist), and I promised him a response here at The Skeptical Zone.]
I was an Old Earth Darwinist raised in a Roman Catholic home and secular public schools, but then became an Old Earth Creationist/IDist, a Young Life/Old Earth Creationist/IDist, then a Young Life/Young Earth Creationist/IDist. After becoming a creationist, I remained a creationist even during bouts of agnosticism in the sense that I found accounts of a gradualistic origin and evolution of life scientifically unjustified.
The fundamental reason I accept YEC is the physical evidence appears to me to be consistent with the recent miraculous emergence of humanity followed by a global flood in a way that is mostly line with the genealogy of Jesus as described in Luke 3 and Matt 1.
Theoretical physicist turned minister, John Polkinhorne said what distinguishes Christianity from any other religion is it’s bold claims about history. Luke 3 is a bold claim about history. Because of the boldness of the Bible’s claims and recent evidence supporting those claims, I came to accept the Divine Inspiration of Luke 3 and Matt 1.
The genealogy of Christ is partly elaborated in the Old Testament (OT), and I became astonished that the OT, unlike other religious texts (like the Book of Mormon), had archaeological confirmation for some of its claims related to Christ’s genealogy, like the existence of King Hezekiah (715 BC) , the exitence of Saul (1050 BC), etc. The genealogy of Christ may have support perhaps as far back as Abraham (2100 BC) who was only 9 generations away from Noah who was 9 generations from Adam.
My belief in the New Testament follows along the lines of former atheist and famed police detective James Warner Wallace’s journey to faith. Wallace was featured on national TV for solving cold case murders, but he also wrote the book Cold Case Christianity which details how he came to accept the New Testament as credible witness testimony though the witness records are ancient and often presumed to be fabrications.
The most important part of YEC for me personally is the creation model which posits miraculous events as the origin of life and of species versus the mainstream model which posits natural origin of life followed by Darwinian Selection.
Darwin led the world into thinking that nature acts like an engineer. He supposed if given time, nature will construct ever more complicated designs. Darwin thought giving nature more time is friend of mindless design like time is a friend to intelligent design by an engineer. This is demonstrably false at least as far a known science and OOL and debatable with respect to the post OOL world. As far as a supposed pre-OOL world, we observe biological materials in an almost-working state decay quickly into far-from-working state. Time is the enemy, not friend of mindless design (which is an oxymoron as far as I’m concerned).
Even if one argues life is not Turing complete, nor a full-blown Quine software system, nor full blown von Neumann Constructor, emergence of elements of these systems in biological chemistry (DNA-RNA-Protein) is far from natural expectation as a matter of principle, so much so infinite many worlds are put forward by researchers like Koonin as a solution to OOL. If one posit infinite Many Worlds as the creator, one could just as well posit the infinite Christian God as the Creator.
What we have seen in the lab is that all the essential parts of living von Neumann Constructors must be in place for the algorithmic style of 3D replication/printing in cells to take place. Hence, a chemical evolutionary scenario is ruled out as a matter of principle. This is not an argument from ignorance, but rather a proof by contradiction. Whether one is an atheist or not, it would seem to me, as a matter of principle, the origin of life was a highly unusual event far from expectation. But at what point is an unusual event indistinguishable from a miracle? Though “miracle” has theological connotations, it seems the first life was a miracle.
If the first life was created, Darwin claimed subsequent life from that first life evolved:
…the first creature, the progenitor of innumerable extinct and living descendants, was created.
Charles Darwin
But what about after OOL? Superficially, similarity of DNA appears compelling evidence of common ancestry, but it could just as well be evidence of common design of separate special creations if there is a Creator. Rather than Darwin’s Tree of Life, the Creator could just as well create an Orchard of Life from which all life radiated from specially and independently created ancestors.
One set of strong evidences of the Creationist Orchard of Life vs. Darwinian Tree of Life was articulated in two papers by an Associate Professor of Biology at a secular university, Change Tan. This professor got her PhD at an Ivy League school, so she is no run-of-the-mill-Kent-Hovind-preacher-type creationist. See:
Information Processing Differences Between Archaea and Eukarya and Information Processing Differences Between Bacteria and Eukarya. Tan’s paper highlights several problematic evolutionary molecular convergences that defy common descent as a matter of principle (not argument from ignorance, proof by contradiction).
In addition to molecular convergence, common descent is also challenged by the problem of orphan genes and orphan features. Orphan and taxonomically restricted features just pop up without any suggestion of a gradual pathway. Hence, it is easy for one to believe if the first life was created, the Creator also created a set of ancestral species which radiated into the sub-species we have today. How to define the actual trees of the orchard could be an active area of research.
Having at least a provisional case for a Creator of life and ancestral species, we can turn to hard-nosed empiricism to establish when species might have appeared on Earth. The physical data suggest the fossil record is far younger than claimed by the mainstream.
An old universe and Earth seem intuitively satisfying in as much as something so grand and changeless as the Earth should rightly be old. One would think if the Earth isn’t Old, God ought to make it that way! But as aesthetically pleasing the thought may be of an old or eternal universe, I decided if the evidence favors a young fossil record, I can accept by faith that maybe the Earth or even the universe could also be young. Part 2 will state some reasons I think the fossil record is young.
I’m sure Sal won’t mind me pasting an earlier account:
“I started getting interested in ID in 2001 when my father was terminally ill and I was searching for meaning in life. There were also future missionaries from my churches and Bible studies who were risking their lives for their faith. It bothered my conscience that if the Bible were false, I was merely encouraging them toward their doom. One of the missionaries was Heather Mercer who became world famous in 2001 when US Army rangers rescued her from the Taliban. Thus, I had to be assured that ID was probably true so I could sleep at night, for their sake. If ID were false, the moral thing to do would be to discourage them from being missionaries.”
Can anyone see any logical fallacies in there?
I will be the first to admit that I didn’t read all of Sal’s justifications for being YEC. Life is just to short. But how do you reconcile your belief with:
: the fossil record
: geology
: cosmology
: radioisotope dating
: tree rings (which date back beyond the oldest age of a YEC earth)
: etc. ??????
I honestly don’t see much at all in the OP that has anything at all to do with being a Young Earth Creationist.
Here’s your statement of the fundamental reason:
It makes reference to physical evidence. Echoing Arcatia .. such as?
What is the physical evidence that indicates the earth is only 6,000 years old and that a global flood occurred, when, 5,000 years ago?
And what is the physical evidence that indicates that pretty much all extant life evolved from a few animals that exited the ark some 5,000 years ago?
I don’t mind you posting.
I said I had bouts of agnosticism, 2001 was one of them as my father was terminally ill. How could a good loving God cause so much grief in my life…
I do have issue that you’d not ask for clarification, especially since I’m talking about a few personal tragedies and then you feel free to take pot shots at my characterization of a time of grief and doubt as some sort of logical fallacy.
First of all Sal, condolences to you and anyone else going through a hard time. *hugs*
My point was I think you hold onto YEC despite having the scientific background to see its implausible because if its not true past events would have been ill-advised, which is an argument to consequences.
Superficially, the similarity of the accused’s DNA to that found in the crime scene appears to be compelling evidence that the DNA at the crime scene was left by the accused, but it could just as well be evidence of common design by the creator of the algorithmic style of replicators (not that I believe life would need to begin that way at all). It could just be a transplant from the Orchard of Life.
Yes, it is the same “logic,” it just doesn’t treat the evidence found in life differently than that left by a criminal. Either you just make up a little story to make it fit with your a priori beliefs, or you follow the evidence according to how it has been observed to have been produced and reproduced.
When one models entails specific results, and another at best is compatible with these, the model that entails the results wins in science, and usually in courts, too. That’s because patterns that are highly unlikely by chance are understood to need an explanation. Creationism doesn’t explain it–indeed, the patterns are contrary to known designers’ typical practices–so it comes down to life’s patterns being coincidental at best (or the whim of the Designer, etc.).
Of course the DNA might have been poofed at the crime scene, as a logical possibility, and the DNA might have been poofed into life’s patterns. However, either way it’s evidence for much more prosaic processes putting the DNA in those places, and not evidence for creation. I can’t think of any good evidence for creation at all.
Glen Davidson
Sal
I felt a bit of despair reading your post because I realized what a vast gulf there is between us – in terms of our worldview and the way we interpret evidence. And of course most Americans think the way you do. I think these differences are so fundamental between yourself and I ..and other members of the site that it seems pointless to discuss it.. It may be one of those things were we ‘agree to disagree’. But I’m here so what the hell………
You mention the genealogy of Christ from the NT as evidence that Christ performed miracles. I”m a descendant of Count Cordorcet, Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great. Those people existed; does that support my claim? Its bedside the point but many of the people listed in that genealogy lived 700-1000 years before Christ, so its likely that a sizeable fraction of the population in the ME were their descendants.
It rained in Connecticut yesterday and for years I’ve been in contact with Aliens from Gliese 581c. If you look at weather reports you’ll find it did rain in CT. Does that lend support to my claim about aliens?
I know my examples are rather trite, but as far as I can see the flaws in my examples are precisely the same as some of the flaws you make in interpreting evidence.
Thanks Rich.
To help set the record straight on what I believed and when. I have always been skeptical of the ideas I defended publicly, but I what I say publicly represents my best estimate of what is true with caveats. I won’t be offended if anyone doesn’t read it due to length.
I was an OEC at the time in 2001 around late October after 9/11. My world looked like crap right after being at the pinnacle of my life. I attended church up until then because it made me feel good, however I didn’t really like the “don’t- ask-hard-questions” culture of the church, yet Christian’s went on the mission field to Muslim countries at the risk of their lives without really seeming to have answers to my hard questions.
We used to get to get together to pray and it seemed on occasion things would get better for a few people we prayed for. Heather Mercer was on our list, so was my Dad who finally passed in 2003.
I could not reconcile at the time how an all-Wise God could make such a mess of this world as well as looking like The apparently absent Designer. It seemed immoral to send friends to their doom on the mission field without having a better answers to hard question than just insisting people believe for no reason.
In 2001, I was a still a creationist, had met Michael Behe in 1998 at a talk, but had a lot of doubts because of the problem of evil in the world especially in the 2001 time frame after 9/11 and my Dad breaking the news to the family. I then studied the debate more intensely, especially ID literature because at the time I rather despised the Kent Hovind culture. IDists were real academics vs. preachers with fake PhDs.
I decided at that point if I didn’t find some answers to hard questions, it would be better to join the atheists and agnostics. That would be the moral thing for me to do if the Christian God were false.
I spent lots of time with atheist and agnostics and was surprised I could identify with so many of them. Hence, even to this day, as you can see, I don’t froth at the mouth like some theists toward atheists and agnostics…..
The only thing that kept me from disbelieving in God at the time in 2001 was an Old Earth book by Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers. I probably was close to accepting Einstein’s God at the time–maybe some sort of All Powerful impersonal physical force indifferent to human suffering.
I also remembered Charles Duke visiting our campus and learning of one his prayers for a blind girl getting answered and her receiving sight. But these just seemed like threads to hold on to. The miracles certainly weren’t of that magnitude in my life…
I then read the book by James Coppedge whose son David I befriended later. I began reading an Old Earth ID book Mystery of Life’s Origin and then I got more persuaded that life was a miracle. In the Appendix was a reference to something by Nobel Laureate in physics Eugene Wigner on the impossibility of life based on quantum mechanics. I tried to use Wigner’s proof to explain why 100% fair coins heads was improbable. It was years later I found a more satisfying approach since Wigner’s proof had some flaws.. After reading Improbable, I got interested in studying quantum mechanics more so I could understand the debate.
Though it would be years before I would have relative peace about all the horrible things the All-Wise creator would subject this world to, I had a spark of hope from the books I read in 2001. In 2002 I then read Denton’s book and then Spetner’s book and began joining the ARN forum hoping to meet other IDists, instead I encountered the Panda’s thumb crowd. 🙂
In 2004 I organized an ID club at GMU with one other student. For some reason, when I prayed, I found myself asking God to get national attention for our little group that was of no consequence. Out of nowhere a reporter from Nature wanted to cover our story, so the story went public and one of those that attended our meeting was Caroline Crocker who was featured in Expelled. After getting on the front page article in Nature, I finally met the Discovery Institute members starting with Nancy Pearcey, then Stephen Meyer, Bruce Chapman, Howard Ahmanson, Jonathan Wells. Oddly, though I was sympathetic to YEC, I didn’t like the YEC crowd and their authoritarian attitudes as evidenced by Ken Ham. I actually rooted for Bill Nye in the debate. 🙂
In 2007, I was invited by Bill Dembski and Robert Marks to the informatics lab at Baylor, but then it was shut down, and besides, I thought physics was more in line with my interest since I was undecided though sympathetic to YEC.
I enrolled in the Whiting School of Engineering to study Physics for Engineers. It was there I studied General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Astrophysics, Cosmology, and Statistical Mechanics. At least one IDist was mentioned favorably in class lecture, namely, Frank Tipler….
But I was only about 70% convinced of YEC at the time. In 2008, YEC John Sanford welcomed me into his home and I spent the day with him. I also met YEC John Hartnett who offered me a chance to be his PhD student.
After studying cosmology and General Relativity, I began to see why there was so much skepticism of the Big Bang. I graduated in August 2012 and YEC Ben Carson was to speak at my commencement in 2013.
But I was still doubtful of YEC, but less so. By 2014, I could say I accepted YEC mostly on evidence, partly on faith.
So most of the time that I posted on the Internet, I was not as convinced of YEC as I am today. The empirical model I think defensible is Young Life/Young Fossil Record leaving the question of the age of the Earth and Universe in a state of irresolution. I will detail the reasons as time permits.
Glen,
You totally glossed over the problem of molecular convergence, you didn’t even address it. Common descent doesn’t explain it as a matter of principle. The similarity exists independent of common descent.
To clarify, the Genealogy of Christ claims humanity emerged less than 10,000 years ago, maybe 6,000. To the extent the fossil record is shown to be young, that is confirmation of a rather bold historical claim that humanity is young. This would count as evidence for me at least that the genealogy has some special origin. Whether it is special enough to be divine, reasonable people can disagree, it’s good enough to get my attention.
Thanks for you comment.
Yes, I went for the major patterns, which you never explain. That’s the problem, not deep homologies.
As usual, you want to ignore the overwhelming pattern by bringing up what likely is no problem, and at worst merely a question within the data. It’s hardly consistent for you to pretend that “microevolution” is shown by the DNA evidence, yet “macroevolution” is not. That’s the issue, consistent treatment of the data. You completely fail the consistency test.
I don’t have to explain everything, especially when you won’t even deal consistently with the major patterns of DNA, which happen to also be consistent with the overall patterns of the fossil record. You explain nothing, evolution explains a great deal.
Glen Davidson
Salvador,
para 1. Nothing to do with why anyone would be a YEC.
para 2. Nothing to do with why anyone would be a YEC.
para 3. Asserts your acceptance of YEC is based on physical evidence.
para 4. Nothing to do with why anyone would be a YEC, and John Polkinghorne is definitely not a YEC, so trusting what he writes cannot be a reason for you to be a YEC.
para 5. Nothing to do with why anyone would be a YEC.
para 6. Nothing to do with why anyone would be a YEC.
para 7. Nothing to do with why anyone would be a YEC.
para 8. Nothing to do with why anyone would be a YEC.
para 9. Nothing to do with why anyone would be a YEC.
para 10. Nothing to do with why anyone would be a YEC.
para 11. Nothing to do with why anyone would be a YEC.
para 12. Nothing to do with why anyone would be a YEC.
para 13. Nothing to do with why anyone would be a YEC.
para 14. Nothing to do with why anyone would be a YEC.
para 15. Nothing to do with why anyone would be a YEC.
para 16. Nothing to do with why anyone would be a YEC.
I’m baffled by the whole OP, honestly.
I can’t wait for Part II, where perhaps you will share the physical evidence for an earth that is only 6000 years old, the physical evidence for a global flood that happened only 5000 years ago, and the physical evidence for the hyper-evolution and hyper-migrations that took place after the flood from a single point of origin in Turkey.
At that rate we should be able to see macro-evolution with our own eyes happening all around us.
Molecular convergence happens for the same reason morphological convergence happens. There are only a finite number of soultions to the physical and biochemical problems species are confronted with. With enough species and enough time natural selection is going to occasionally drive two non-closely related species to the same solution. The classic example is the convergence of the prestin gene that provides high frequency hearing in both certain species of bats and cetrain species of whales.
The big problem you have is if you going to claim ‘common design” you need to explain all the cases where species in the same environment came up with radically different solutions to the same survival problems. Why did the Common Designer need four completely different ways to achieve powered flight in insects, bats, birds, and pterosaurs?
Why the major patterns are there might be debated, but the fact convergence exist is sufficient to reject common descent as an necessary explanation.
I’m not the only one to consider an Orchard Model, Woese had his own version of it which he explains by Horizontal Gene Transfer (a dubious mechanism for some of the features):
If there is a Creator, it doesn’t seem parsimonious to invoke HGT to explain convergences, especially if the HGT may be lethal. Some of the HGT candidates are aa-RS genes. That seems a real stretch since aa-RS genes are critical to protein formation.
If you don’t accept the explanation, that’s fine, but let’s not pretend common descent isn’t without theoretical challenges on scientific (not theological) grounds alone.
Even non-creationists have noticed the Orchard model has some superiority to Darwin’s tree.
There is no Darwinian Tree of Life, there is an Orchard.
The rampant amounts of convergence going sort of doesn’t make common descent a necessary postulate does it? At issue then is what causes the convergence. Common design seems to me the best explanation because of the improbability of convergence by natural evolution. Convergence is more likely if there is a premeditated design, because convergence arrives at a target.
Convergence has a perfectly good evolutionary explanation that is backed with considerable evidence. Not science’s problem if you personally don’t understand or accept it.
Why? Do you have an explanation for them? No, you don’t, you just ignore the massive problem that you have, and that happens to be an entailment of evolution, by claiming that deep homologies (or HGT) obviate the issue. They don’t, there are good explanations for them, while you have no explanation for the patterns throughout life, which blend with the patterns of “microevolution.”
It was never a “necessary explanation.” Quit misrepresenting science. The patterns of inheritance are an entailment of evolution, and an embarrassment for any “design claim,” since the limits followed are idiotic limits for any great intelligence to follow.
Well, now they are.
Let’s not pretend that you have the slightest explanation for why a designer would generally follow the limits of evolution. By the way, it would be interesting if you’d tell me why HGT is found in the macroevolutionary DNA record so much more in organisms presently undergoing HGT, and not much in the records of, say, vertebrates for the last few hundred million years. What you’d expect of evolution, really really bizarre for a Creator, certainly nothing you’ve explained.
For a really long time ago. Shocker, evolutionary changes occur.
There is very much an evolutionary tree of life, among the organisms lacking in much lateral gene transfer. Perhaps you should deal with what present-day claims are, rather than acting as if we’re believers in Darwin’s Holy Writ.
Nothing could make it a necessary postulate. Your absolutism doesn’t belong to science. The “convergence” happens to have good explanations, while you have no explanation for anything, especially the differing patterns of HGT in prokaryotes vs. in most eukaryotes.
Really. Why don’t you explain how HGT could be prevented in evolution.
Why is there so little re-use of “design” in vertebrates? That’s the problem that defies design altogether, while it’s expected from non-miraculous evolution.
Why do mammals lack the ability for spermatogenesis at higher temps, like birds? Why would the designer ignore the better “design” for mammals? Likewise, why don’t birds get the mammalian ear? Was it patented by one Designer, or what?
Why is there so little convergence in life lacking much HGT, then? Why don’t you explain the patterns of life using actual entailments of design?
Should we convict the accused on the basis of DNA, or is it produced and reproduced magically?
At what point in life’s variation should we cease to accept hereditary patterns as indicating heredity, and where should we begin to accept the same hereditary patterns as indicating design? More importantly, why should we?
Glen Davidson
That’s pretty much how I read the OP.
BTW Sal, please do everyone a favor and don’t post any more of the PRATT horsecrap from AIG. It just wastes everyone’s time.
No I don’t, I merely needed to demonstrate similarity isn’t necessarily evidence of common descent, and convergence shows cases common descent can’t be an explanation for similarity even in principle.
Contrary to claims that phylogeny and molecular clocks affirm phylogeny, things like the
Dayhoff Diagram don’t really demonstrate mammals are descended from fish. That’s a real stretch because mammals don’t cluster inside the fish group.
That molecular diagram actually is anti-phylogenetic if taken at face value. One has to force a phylogeny upon it by using assumptions that are outside the face value sequence divergence.
One thing I’ve suggested, and which can be experimentally and observationally confirmed: The intra-species (within the same species) divergence should also assert itself if molecular clocks are in play. But it does not diverge in accordance to the molecular clock hypothesis.
Here is a study that should be alarming, but is ignored because it grates against the mainstream especially since it hints of recent special creation:
Paradox of Ancient Bacteria with Modern Protein Coding Genes.
There are other ways to emphasize the paradox less controversially, namely with intra species comparisons of supposedly “ancient” bacteria.
Why should the E. Coli aa-RS genes be similar among all E. Coli while yet the molecular clocks tick between species. It’s like the clocks stopped between species of E. Coli but kept right on ticking between bacterial and other species. This is logically contradictory of a molecular clock and common descent.
The paradoxes disappear if one assumes an Orchard Model and recent special creation.
Does anybody publish on this anomaly? Hardly! Is it worth investigating? Yes.
It’s a testable prediction of the Orchard Model. Maybe a decade from now that particular conjecture will hold a bit more traction, but it’s too deep in the weeds for most internet discussions….
Adapa,
Adapa,
You might dimiss the source, but you can’t pretend the problems don’t exist. 🙂
The lead author is an Ivy League PhD and associate professor of biology. I’d hardly classify what she has to say as crap just because AiG was the only place willing to carry her paper.
So no dice. I don’t accept your characterization. You’ll have to refute the arguments if you want to put the issues to rest.
Convergence isn’t caused by common descent and isn’t offered as evidence for common descent. I already gave you the correct explanation for convergence which of course you ignored completely. You’re face planting and you haven’t even got out of the batter’s box on this one.
So why does the phylogenetic hierarchy not fit the morphological and molecular hierarchies?
You can see it for yourself in the Dayhoff diagram. Do mammals nest within the fish group? No. Only with force fitted phylogenies do mammals nest within fish. As Matzke said, you only have sister groups, not ancestral groups.
The absence of ancestral groups suggest the “ancestor” is only conceptual, not physical, and conceptual ancestors point to a premeditated plan versus common descent, exactly the way Richard Owen first defined homology in terms of expression of a premeditated architecture rather than common physical descent.
Darwinists have since distorted Owen’s more sensible definition of homology.
I never said it was, actually the opposite. You’re now refuting arguments which I never made. Maybe you can try refuting the arguments I actually made.
The problems only exist in the tiny closed minds of YECs.
That’s exactly why the paper should be rejected as crap. Any Bozo can publish YEC garbage in AIG, and usually does. Come back when she gets her work published in a professional science journal.
Arguments made without evidence can be rejected without evidence. In case you hadn’t noticed the burden of proof is on you to provide positive evidence for your YEC claims. Myself and the rest of science could’t care less what an obscure and willfully ignorant YEC thinks about evolution.
No, you need an explanation, not mere negativity. That’s because you need evidence for your claims, not merely to fault the reigning idea. The enormous problem for you is that evolutionary theory could be totally junked, and you still wouldn’t have the first bit of good evidence for design/creation. Worse, the evidence would still be against design, since no designer has ever been observed to follow evolutionary limits.
Paley at least understood the need to show that creation occurred, while present-day creationists don’t even acknowledge that point. And the truth is, even without a good evolutionary theory, Paley did not convince the biologists, for life simply doesn’t show the sorts of leaps and reason that we’d expect from a super-intelligent designer (and nothing but a super-intelligence could design life’s complexity, while simple design elements completely elude said “designer”).
Nothing’s “necessary” in science, but entailments, like the patterns of life, are powerful evidence for evolution.
Then do we throw out DNA tests? No, we stick by the evidence, and you just make baseless claims.
Oh geez, the cytochromes don’t show a perfect evolutionary phylogeny.
Why must they? Are fish and mammals close, even there? Yes, of course they are. Not all changes are neutral, and the odds favor deviations from the pattern any time you get to statistical data like DNA or proteins.
Oh get real. Mammals are quite divergent from orange trees, relatively close to fish. You cherish any apparent deviation, while ignoring the overall pattern, which, per the usual, you completely fail to explain via “design.”
Why do mammals and fish share so many genes? Why, for Chrissake, do yeast, plants, and animals share so many genes, indeed? There is no need for them to do so, and plenty of genes are used in a rather divergent manner.
Gee, you think it might be because they’re a species?
Here is a study that should be alarming, but is ignored because it grates against the mainstream especially since it hints of recent special creation:
Paradox of Ancient Bacteria with Modern Protein Coding Genes.
Maybe because aa-RS genes are rather vital, and cannot change readily. That is, for the same reason Hox genes differ little in insects vs. humans.
The paradoxes disappear if one assumes an Orchard Model and recent special creation.
Why is it an anomaly? Conserved genes would be expected in evolution. How do creationists explain it?
It’s a way for you to ignore the fact that you never explain anything about life via creationism.
OK, so you have no explanation for anything, while evolutionary patterns are rife throughout life. Coincidence? A trickster god? Whim of the Designer? We want to know, not that we expect a good answer.
Glen Davidson
It does fit to a remarkable degree once you get above single celled species. Why do you keep making these dumb strawman claims?
So why do you misrepresent the issue? We all know that that there are issues in molecular phylogeny, yet certainly the overall pattern largely agrees with cladistics based upon morphology. Your nitpicking only shows that you’re not dealing with the overall evidence, merely looking to fault evolution and to pass off an idea with no explanatory ability at all.
In other words, fish and mammals are close, as expected. You demand perfect congruence with evolutionary theory, when that’s not realistically expected. And you have no creationist explanation for the closeness, either, just picking at the real theory without acknowledging that indeed the DNA does fit the data, if not perfectly.
No, it suggests that they’re dead.
Don’t you understand the point that the ancestors are dead, and fish and mammals have evolved separately since genetic separation occurred?
Evolutionary theorists made sense of it, and who are “Darwinists”?
Glen Davidson
So uhm, all this babble about the origin of life and how stcordova doesn’t see any evidence for it, so he believes in divine magic instead. That must mean he has</b seen instantaneous divine creation with magic right? I mean, he surely wouldn’t be a hypocrite and believe hypothesis A on zero evidence while simultaneously rejecting B for the same reason?
“There’s this thing that has never been demonstrated so I don’t believe it, so instead I’ll believe this other thing that’s never been demonstrated either.”
The creationist stance on contemporary origin of life research is intrinsically hypocritical.
The Dayhoff “diagram” (a table of differences between cytochrome sequences) shows a fairly clean tree. Yes, there is a fork which has one lineage that leads to teleosts (bony fishes) and another to all tetrapods (amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals).
The strength of the evidence for the tree is in what similar data would show for other proteins. They reinforce the same tree. Not perfectly, as each molecular tree has a limited amount of information. There is a *lot* of this reinforcement, particularly in eukaryotes.
Similar concordance of patterns is one of the main sources of evidence that persuaded biologists that there really was a branching evolutionary history. How recently? 150 years ago.
Your concern that we don’t see mammals “nested within fish” depends on what you call a “fish”. If coelacanths and lungfish had been included, they would not be “inside” the teleosts, but more closely related to the tetrapods. Their common ancestor with each other would also be an ancestor of all tetrapods. If you call teleosts+lungfish+coelacanths “fish”, then yes, mammals would be nested within “fish”.
I am not sure what you mean by “ancestral groups” whose “absence” suggests that the “ancestor” is only conceptual. What would have to be where on the tree of these cytochromes to satisfy you that you had seen an “ancestral group”? Trees have clades within clades, and clades sister to clades. They do not, cannot show a clade located at the ancestor. So the absence of that is not evidence for or against anything.
Dead? How about non-existent physically!
Don’t you understand if mammals came from fish, they should not be substantially more diverged from fish as fish are from other fishes? You’re not seeing the obvious pattern because of evolutionary distortions. The diagram is obviously against fish-to-mammal transitions that phylogenetic excuses have to be concocted to explain away the severity of the mammalian divergence from every fish form.
Clearly the molecular diagram, if there is a common ancestor at all, mammals and fish are sister groups descended from some unspecified ancestor. Creationist like Owen would call that unspecified ancestor a conceptual not physical archetype.
Mammals didn’t descend from fish any more than fish descended from mammals because the divergences make them sisters, not a fish parent group of mammalian child group. The fact that the molecular hierarchy and morphological hierarchy don’t line up with the phylogenetic hierarchy is evidence for the Orchard Model and against the Darwinian model.
Finally, there needs to be a mechanically feasible transition in terms of morphology and chemistry. Phylogenetic speculations are insufficient explanations of why the transition is mechanically feasible, it’s just handwaving, not science.
So’s your great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother. Does that now mean she never existed?
Surely they should be, due to natural selection for completely different environments. That’s why mammals don’t look like fish.
Joe Felsenstein,
Thank you for responding. I know you’ve written the standard textbook on phylogeny that is studied by practically every university student in the field.
The intra-species clock problem bothers me. Maybe to state the problem more clearly, more studies in the lack of intra-species divergence when there is interspecies divergence might shed more light on the problem I’m pointing out.
The Oxford journal on the paradox of ancient bacteria matching modern forms is indicative of the problem. Because the specter of contamination keeps being thrown up as an explanation (which I don’t necessarily buy) for this paradox, I think measuring intra-species clocking might be a less assailable way to show the problem. If the variable regions are neutral and evolving, why should the intra species clocks be frozen while the interspecies clocks keep ticking?
The same problem could be said of groups. Why do the regions of the intra-group clocks appear frozen, but the inter-group clocks keep ticking.
Of course population bottlenecks and founder populations can be invoked, but at some point such explanations seem forced, especially for species geographically dispersed like bacterial species with multiple strains.
It is a research area I’m suggesting the bio-informaticists in the creationist and ID community. It essentially makes a testable prediction possibly in favor of the Orchard of Life model.
Thank you for responding.
There is. I recommend Neil Shubin’s book: Your inner fish for a start.
Phylogenetics is not “an explanation”, they are merely genealogies and can serve as hypothesis tests. If mammals evolved from fish, we should expect to find certain phylogenies. We do to an overwhelming degree.
The explanation for the feasibility of the transition is found in physiology(not phylogenetics obviously, it simply shows genetic distances), developmental biology, comparative anatomy, the fossil record and so on. Even today there exists many species of amphibians that show varying degrees of adaptation to semi-aquatic lifestyles.
But all this blather about macro evolution aside. You complain the evidence isn’t there to support the evolutionary inference. So where’s the evidence that instantaneous creation with divine magic is a concrete and feasible reality?
Like, forget the creation of a tiger, or worse an entire living whale. I’m not even going to demand the creation of an ant, or a dustmite. I’m not going to ask for Macro-creation, only micro-creation. I’ll believe macro-creation if you can show-micro-creation. Please demonstrate to me the divine magical creation of a single bacterium. No, let’s make it easier. Where’s the demonstration of divine magical creation of a single protein molecule?
They aren’t very divergent, and no one legitimately expects perfection from one set of genes.
Why the highly shared genes between fish and other vertebrates? Why don’t you try to deal with all of the evidence, instead of picking and choosing whatever can best be distorted to fault evolution?
No, I’m seeing relationships that are roughly what is expected from the cytochromes, and much other evidence that shows that we derive from a common ancestor with fish. Perhaps we shouldn’t call the common ancestor “fish,” since by no means are they the same vertebrates that swim in the waters today.
Yeah, not even close. The divergence is not severe, you’re hyping relatively small divergence.
Of course there aren’t physical ancestors alive from a few hundred million years ago.
How could they be anything else? Our common ancestors died out hundreds of millions of years ago.
The molecular evidence indicates as much.
As in, you have absolutely no basis for claiming that evidence of heredity ceases to indicate heredity past some point of divergence, let alone any reasonable explanation as to why we should abandon consistency in the treatment of the evidence.
Phylogenetic evidence indicates that the transitions occur. You only have magic to conjure up an “explanation” for the relatedness of all life, including the sister groups of fish and mammals.
Glen Davidson
Were you following ‘Barry’s bomb’, Sal? Astronomical statistical signifance for evolution.
Yup.
None of what you just said has anything to do with whether trees from different parts of the genome tend to reinforce each other. (They do, big time, in eukaryotes).
None of what you just said has anything to do with whether there is some pattern that could in principle show groups being ancestral to other groups.
That’s what you were talking about, not issues of clocks. Now suddenly it’s clocks. Let’s go back to the issue you raised.
Just scanned comments and moved a comment to guano. (Echoing Lizzie – I guano’d the comment, not the commenter 🙂 ) Notwithstanding my personal history with Sal, I appreciate his efforts at dialogue now and hope everyone can rein in their exasperation at views that diverge significantly from their own.
The “fish” included are all teleosts.
Put in coelacanths, lungfish, sharks and rays. Those are all “fish” too. Now you’ll find that mammals are not substantially more diverged from other mammals than lungfish are from coelacanths. Nor than sharks are from lungfish. Nor than sharks are from tuna.
This alleged pattern of yours will collapse if more “fish” are put on the tree.
It is, by the way, perfectly true that mammals aren’t descended from teleosts. No one said they were.
Richard,
I don’t read most of what Barry writes.
I’m simply stating why I believe OOL was miraculous, others here have a different view. If I personally didn’t believe the statistics were astronomically remote for naturalistic OOL, we’d probably be ATBC pals.
An effective refutation of my assessment would be something like, “the chances of OOL are 1 in 10^x, but there are 10^y trials involved, so naturalistic OOL is reasonably inevitable.” Such responses have been not been put forward here or anywhere in OOL literature for a life implemented as a von Neumann constructor. The only comparable response in literature is Koonin, where he asserts the unproven existence of many worlds.
I’m not insisting anyone should agree with my viewpoint here, I’m merely stating why I don’t find naturalistic OOL believable and why a supernaturalistic OOL scenario is more believable to me. Simultaneous appearance of all the necessary parts solves the problem of needing all the parts to be in place at the same time for proper functioning.
Sal, I don’t particularly want to probe your personal beliefs in detail. It seems very common among humans to have or seek an explanation for life, the Universe and everything and take comfort in beliefs about an afterlife and so on. I have no problem with this while the trappings of such beliefs remain unfalsifiable and dogma isn’t hijacked as a tool of political control.
What I find curious is your ability in what Dawkins refers to as virtuoso believing. Specifically, let’s consider the age of the Earth. There is a considerable amount of consilient evidence converging on a figure of around 4.5 billion years. The only reason to claim it is younger that you have is that the Bible, depending on how the texts are translated and interpreted, says so.
The Dalai Lama, in a little book called The Universe in a Single Atom makes the astute observation:
It’s not as if the Earth’s age has any bearing on the central tenets of Christianity. I don’t see the need to hang on to a daft idea just on a “literal” interpretation of passages that are obviously myth turned into metaphor and are utterly contra-factual.
If the intra-species clocks aren’t ticking it suggest the inter-species clocks are just a phantom of the phylogenetic presumption, that the sequence divergences were created from the start. What I said about the clocks is highly relevant, if the clocks are physically frozen, supposed patterns diversification from a common physical ancestor are only illusory.
There is no question of a hierarchical pattern. It is quite clear in this diagram of bone morphogenetic proteins for example:
BMP diagram
At issue is whether such diagrams incontrovertibly demonstrate one presumed phylogeny over any other. But that’s all moot if the clocks aren’t really ticking and the cause of the divergences is special creation of the pattern of diversity from the start rather than diversity due to molecular evolution from a common ancestor.
Even that said, as Denton noted, and as Matzke affirmed, the groups look like sisters. It’s hard to say one sister group was most definitely the ancestor of another. One could argue the real ancestor group no longer exists, to which I would say, maybe it never existed to begin with. That’s how I would read the diagram of Bone Morphogenetic Proteins and similar such diagrams.
Why would the Designer create such patterns of diversity? It’s not immediately relevant to the question at hand, and I’ve proposed an observation and experiments that may help resolve the question of whether the diversity patterns are of a phylogenetic origin or were specially created .
But that said, the patterns of diversity and similarity seems to help us quickly identify biological structures. For example, “conserved” regions often highlight active protein sites. If God created certain proteins, he could have used the same protein pattern in all species if He wanted to. It would appear the diversity patterns have utility only for human scientists that isn’t necessary for survival and might not be explained by molecular clocks either. If so, it is yet another evidence of our privileged status in the universe.
Thanks for reading.
Even assuming that is true (which I have evidence now to the contrary) the fossil record looks to be young, and if true that would favor recent special creation maybe only thousands of years ago. That is part 2. I wanted to segment it into another part since the topic is very specialized in physics and chemistry.
There were numerous relevant experiments at the University of Colorado and at the Proton-21 lab in the Ukraine that moved me more solidly in the YEC camp. There was no way I could cram that discussion in this thread, so the age of the fossil record is a topic of its own, and that will be YEC part 2.
There is one discussion here regarding the age of biological species as it pertains to molecular biological clocks. I’m essentially arguing that either the molecular clocks are frozen or that life was specially created recently or both. That is the issue I’m discussing with Joe.
Sal, echoing the comments of some others here, your posts read as if your YEC belief is the result of a series of life experiences, rather than a proper understanding of the massive and consilient geological and astronomical data which indicate that the Earth is very much older than 6000 years, and that a global flood never happened.
Do you think that is a wise and sound basis for rejecting a very strong scientific consensus?
fG
Oh …. it just isn’t, OK? Indels, synonymous substitutions, transposons, virogenes, copy number variation … oh, what’s the use? This ‘common design’ idea has to be the dumbest of all the possible explanations of commonality. Our genetic relatedness to relatives (common descent) shades into common design where exactly, taxonomically speaking? How come we can’t see the join?
Said after many ignored posts of arguments why YEC is simply impossible.
How remote? Be specific. And when that possibility is multiplied by the predicted number of life suitable planets in the universe, how remote then?
I’m not interested in physics and chemistry if the basic practical questions remain impossible.
Sal, why don’t you write an OP on your thoughts on how the Koala bear got from the middle east to Australia, all the while carrying eucalyptus in a bag to eat. Sure, you can simply re-post the standard YEC answer for this but can you honestly say you believe it? If not, then everything else has to unravel, right?
How do you calculate the probability of the OOL ?
What was the first lifeform? How do you know? At the very least you must know that, to calculate the probability of it forming naturally.
After that, you must know the probability of a divine being creating such a lifeform too, so you can weigh the probabilities against each other, so you must have calculated the probability of a divine being creating the first lifeform too.
Please show us where you did these calculations. How you found out what the first lifeform was, how you found out the probability of a divine being creating that particular lifeform etc. etc.
You can’t just say “the probability of a natural OOL is low therefore divine magic”. What’s the probability of divine magic? It could be even lower. How do you know?