Does Common Descent Follow Logically From Darwin's Four Postulates?

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by Eugene Shubert, May 10, 2017.

  1. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Humans and bananas share the same DNA code translation, eukaryotic cell structure, and cellular reproduction sequence. That is an enormous pile of evidence almost impossible to explain except via a common ancestral lineage of some kind.

    And if none of that were true, your modification and fifth postulate handwaving would still not rise to the level of scientific theory - because lack of evidence for some other theory is not evidence for yours, and you don't have any. You don't have a valid theory, no matter what anybody else has. (You don't even have a theory in the first place - just some abstract "postulates".)
     
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  3. Eugene Shubert Valued Senior Member

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    What's so impossible about a Creator choosing to use a common design strategy for the creation of all the various forms of life on earth? And how do you propose proving that there's no probability amplitude that could allow for the spontaneous creation of a vast array of extraordinarily complex living things having similar design structures?
     
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  5. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    It's a perfectly respectable argument. Showing that bananas and humans share many of the fundamental structures of life is a good argument that we shared an ancestor - just as finding large identical sections of text in two different books is a good argument that they shared material from a common source at some point.
     
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  7. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Nothing at all. You could postulate an arbitrarily devious creator who deceives everyone to any level you like - just as you could postulate that we all live in the Matrix, or that I am the only living person and you are all figments of my imagination. Those are all potentially possible explanations; all fantastically unlikely, of course.
     
  8. Eugene Shubert Valued Senior Member

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    Do you believe that there's something especially devious when an extraordinarily versatile writer decides to write many books in one preferred language? If many fundamentally distinct life-languages that could define self-replicating molecular forms of life are possible, then how is one language in nature not an argument for a single Creator?

    How many fundamentally distinct life-languages are there?
     
    Last edited: May 11, 2017
  9. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Proof plays no part in establishing a scientific theory.

    You have no idea what you are talking about.

    And you are quite clearly an obsessive nutter with whom it is pointless to converse.

    I have made my initial reply for the sake of other readers and I will now pop you on Ignore, along with the other cranks and halfwits I have identified over the years.
     
  10. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Nothing's impossible - you need evidence, is all.
    I don't. I just point out that you have presented no evidence that any such thing has been going on, and until you do you have no scientific theory.
     
  11. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    I read up a little about bananas

    Are you aware bananas are
    • a botanical berry
    • the modern banana has been modified from the wild variety
    • (you MIGHT make a case while bananas are NOT descended from humans - humans acted as midwives)
    • is seedless so
    • they are are propagated asexually from offshoots
    Wikipedia

    There are fuzzy bananas whose skins are bubblegum pink; green-and-white striped bananas with pulp the color of orange sherbet; bananas that, when cooked, taste like strawberries. The Double Mahoi plant can produce two bunches at once. The Chinese name of the aromatic Go San Heong banana means 'You can smell it from the next mountain.' The fingers on one banana plant grow fused; another produces bunches of a thousand fingers, each only an inch long.

    — Mike Peed, The New Yorker

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana

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  12. Eugene Shubert Valued Senior Member

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    The existence of a probability amplitude that could allow for the spontaneous creation of a vast array of extraordinarily complex living things having similar design structures completely invalidates your religious belief that common descent is the only possible conclusion. There is no evidence that common descent is even possible. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said in the character of Sherlock Holmes, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

    You have overlooked an obvious flaw in your religious belief. Where is your evidence that common descent is possible?

    Do you even understand what is required to prove that common descent is possible?

    At the very least, you need to come up with instructions on how to build a self-replicating molecular machine that may be modified in slow steps to produce a viable series of molecular machines, the last one in the series being a beautiful, healthy and intelligent woman. So, other than by arm-waving, how do you propose proving that each molecular machine in an evolutionary sequence will be viable?
     
  13. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    Strawman alert!
    Please show where anyone has claimed that common descent is the only possible conclusion.

    Absolutely correct.
    Unless you look at the evidence of course.

    Alternatively you're just making sh*t up for the sake of it.

    Have you taken any classes in evolutionary biology?

    Oh do tell, please.

    Um, because the non-viable ones die off.

    No.
    There are no "instructions on how to ...". You seem to be assuming that the aforementioned woman is a goal: she's not. She's a result of various alterations that proved viable. If the whole thing is run again from the start it may very be that she won't eventuate at all.
    Nor is "the last one in the series" a "beautiful healthy woman". She's just the latest.
     
  14. Eugene Shubert Valued Senior Member

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    Kindly observe the contempt in post #26 for my perfectly consistent alternative theory.
     
  15. Eugene Shubert Valued Senior Member

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    That is correct. All you have is a religious belief.
     
  16. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Where are the instructions on how to make a god?

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  17. Eugene Shubert Valued Senior Member

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    I would be impressed by the proof of viability for a sequence of self-replicating molecular machines resulting in the aforementioned woman nevertheless.
     
  18. Eugene Shubert Valued Senior Member

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    I happily acknowledge my belief in God is an unprovable axiom. http://everythingimportant.org/God
     
  19. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Do you believe that there's something especially devious when an extraordinarily versatile writer decides to write many books in one preferred language?

    No. Not if it is the only language the writer knows, nothing devious

    If many fundamentally distinct life-languages that could define self-replicating molecular forms of life are possible, then how is one language in nature not an argument for a single Creator?

    How is it a not a argument for evolution?

    How many fundamentally distinct life-languages are there?

    Currently we know of one

    So it appears your almighty creationist god

    like the writer

    knows only one language

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  20. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Something like looking for the missing link?

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  21. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    So your belief is - a self-evident truth (AXIOM) that requires no proof - which is unprovable

    Care to try again?

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  22. Eugene Shubert Valued Senior Member

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    Isn’t the famous linguist Noam Chomsky well-known for concluding that there’s a universal grammar that controls all human languages?
     
  23. Eugene Shubert Valued Senior Member

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    For mathematicians, the word axiom simply means "fundamental assumption."
     

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