Scientific American on "Creationist Nonsense"

DAVID COX

Helen wrote:

I don't believe that cladistics is circular in the sense that we are referring to.

Cladistics is based on common descent in this way:

IF common descent is true, THEN we should be able to construct a statistically significant cladogram of life based on morphologies, or based on genetic sequences, or any other shared derived characteristics.

The validity of the cladogram does not depend on the assumption of common descent, rather it depends on its statistical significance. That is why it supports common descent. I would call it sort of a "test" for common descent.

As an analogy:

Circular or not?

IF my gravitational theory is true, THEN a 10 lb. ball and a 1 lb. ball will fall at the same rate.

My statement that the balls will fall at the same rate completely assumes that my theory is true. The successful outcome of the test, however, does not depend on the assumption of my gravitational theory, rather it depends on the measurements made when I drop the two balls. Once I perform the test and get the expected results, then I can use the statement "A 10 lb. ball and a 1lb ball fall at the same rate" as scientific support for my theory. This is not circular reasoning.

So, while cladistics is based on common descent, it is not the assumption of common descent that renders it valid. Therefore, it is not circular.

[ August 12, 2002, 10:44 AM: Message edited by: Administrator ]

 

HELEN

David, when a cladogram is constructed, it must be constructed around a chosen trait or set of traits, must it not?

Who chooses those traits?

Who chooses which genetic sequences will be used? (I believe only a couple of organisms, or at least VERY few even have their genomes fully sequenced yet…)

And why?

And when you say ‘or any other shared derived characteristics’, you are automatically assuming common descent from the first. You cannot then use the results of your presupposition as evidence for that same presupposition. That is what is circular. All you are doing is giving evidence that you HAVE that presupposition, not that it is true.

In the meantime, your gravitation analogy does not work.

You have not stated what you refer to as “your gravitational theory”. You are simply repeating an experiment done many, many years ago. Example: would a simple theory of gravitation also predict that a one pound unloosed bundle of feathers would fall at the same rate as a one pound unloosed bundle of buckshot?

 

RICHARDC

Helen wrote:

You, as do many, make the assertion that creation science is “poor”. But you might be interested to know that almost every major field of science was begun by a Bible-believing creationist!

Including evolutionary biology: Darwin and most other European scientists of the later 19th century started out as Bible-believing creationists, and revised their views as they studied the evidence as presented by Darwin and others. This also includes most of the Christian evangelical scholars of the late 19th century; most of them accepted an old earth and some form of evolution. Indeed, several of the authors of The Fundamentals, the founding document of Christian fundamentalism, accepted some form of evolutionary theory. (See for example David N. Livingstone, Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders.)

Even before Darwin most evangelical geologists accepted an old earth and rejected flood geology. As you may know, 19th-century creationist geologists such as Sedgwick, Lyell and Agassiz rejected a young earth and a global flood, long before radiometric dating was ever heard of. Why is their reasoning no longer valid, in your opinion?

This question raises a larger and more fundamental issue. Just as it’s futile to play a sport unless there is some agreement on the rules of the game, it’s futile to discuss the observational evidence for or against evolution unless there is agreement on the criteria for determining which of the alternative hypotheses is best supported by the totality of the evidence, i.e., what the “rules” are for deciding whether common descent, special creation, or other alternatives have won the tournament or at least are ahead in the score.

So let me ask you: What would be the minimum in terms of observational evidence, if it actually existed, that you would accept as demonstrating, either conclusively or as being more likely than not, that life on earth is descended from a common ancestor? In other words, what are the criteria for deciding that the sum total of the available evidence says either Yea or Nay to evolution-as-common-descent? A reply such as “convincing evidence that the earth is billions of years old” won’t answer the question; the question is, by what criteria do we judge that the evidence is convincing or compelling?

Helen:
I think you mistake what ID is postulating, actually. It should not be confused with creationism, by the way. ID is simply saying that there are tests we can use to indicate whether any natural phenomena shows signs of being intelligently designed rather than the product of either natural law or probability.

What about a third alternative, that natural laws were intelligently designed? Or perhaps that they weren’t “designed” in an anthropomorphic sense but are in some way a manifestation of the universal intelligence underlying everything. We can eat our scientific cake and have ID (here pronounced “id”), in this particular sense, too.

In any case, the importance of the question of creationism or ID for you seems to be simply what it tells us about the veracity of the Bible. You write of trusting the Bible:

if the Bible is not right about what we CAN verify, why on earth should we trust it regarding anything we CAN’T verify? If God can’t get simple science right when He speaks about it, why trust Him with anything else?

Why couldn’t one believe that the Bible is trustworthy as a guide to salvation without having to believe that the Bible is 100% correct when interpreted as literal history and science throughout? We would have to believe this, I suppose, if we assumed that God, in effect, dictated it word for word and intended every word to be understood as literal historical truth. But why make this assumption?

I do not need to wait until a few minutes after my death to know the state of my soul: that is something I can know here and now, by direct experience. That is, I believe the Bible is right on the spiritual essentials because I can experience directly what it is talking about. I do not need to “trust” the Bible in the sense of having to take its word for it about the essential spiritual matters of sin and salvation: these are things that can be known in one’s heart.

If Genesis is incorrect as literal history and science, that just means that it should be understood and interpreted in a different way. And understood as myth it gets the essentials right: God in His role as Creator, and the Fall, i.e., our separation from God. Nothing essential is lost, in my view, when the Creation story is understood in this way, and a great deal is gained: our religious faith can be independent of whatever science may reveal about the earth and the origin of the human species. When our religious belief is tied to empirical evidence about evolution and the age of the earth, we cannot possibly, even with the best of intentions, evaluate the evidence objectively and dispassionately – everything is riding on the outcome. Also, the result for some may be a personal crisis and loss of faith when the study the evidence; see for example Steve Robertson’s story and others at

http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/person.htm

You said, “I trust the Bible as a guide to “how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go.” There are different ways in which one may trust a book or person.” That’s another one from “Galatian” -- you guys the same person???

The aphorism is attributed to Galileo.

 

DAVID COX

Helen,

You seem to be suggesting that any cladogram would be equally valid as long as it conforms to what we want it to conform to.

If I were to assert that humans were more closely related to jellyfish than to cats, and constructed a cladogram that conformed to that assertion, would that cladogram be more valid than the converse just because I want it to be that way? This is the point I am trying to make here – while cladistics assumes common descent in its construction, the validity of the common descent cladogram is not based on the assumption of common descent. Otherwise, it would be a useless field of study. Any cladogram would be just as valid as any other. I do not believe this to be true. I don’t think that I could construct a cladogram that had birds closer to insects than to reptiles, or humans closer to fishes than to other mammals. Could you? If not, why not?

I think that you missed the point with my gravitation analogy. I was trying to get across the methodology of using cladistics as support for common descent, or using anything as support for any theory. When hypothesis are put forth, how do you determine if they are correct or not? You can assume that the hypothesis is true, decide what the consequences are and look to see if the consequences are true. If they are, then your theory has at least some support.

This is what I think would be circular reasoning when talking about cladistics and common decent:

Common descent is valid because I can make a cladogram that shows common descent. That cladogram is valid because it conforms to my presuppositions about what the cladogram should be like based on the assumption of common descent.

That, to me, would be circular.

 

RICHARDC

Helen wrote:
Fooling around with the word definitions as [Rennie] did above does not alter the truth that the root and core of evolutionary theory is a denial of the possibility of anything other than natural causes as we understand them to be responsible for anything encountered by man.

I asked Helen to defend this characterization of evolutionary theory. She replied with some quotations:

What do these quotes have to do with the question I asked? You don’t explain how they support the claim that evolutionary theory is founded on the belief that only naturalistic causation is possible or that only material things exist; the first quote expresses an opinion about consciousness, the second is not about evolutionary theory at all.

Lewin is saying that the Darwinian revolution replaced divine design with common descent and natural selection as the explanation of the origin of species and their adaptations to their environment. Like all other scientific theories, evolution explains a multitude of observations as the outcome of the workings of nature as described by natural laws, i.e. by using naturalistic explanations. In the same way, we now have a naturalistic explanation of lightning that has replaced older explanations in terms of the wrath of Zeus and so forth. Biology now explains diseases in naturalistic terms rather than by supernatural demonic possession. Astronomers explain the motions of the planets and stars naturalistically rather than by invoking the actions of angels or other supernatural powers.

That is what science does, by definition: it seeks naturalistic explanations of observed phenomena in terms of natural laws, the regularities of nature. But it is simply a logical non sequitur to say that either the activity of seeking naturalistic explanations or offering such explanations entails the belief that only naturalistic causation is possible or that only material things exist.

…some of which may show that the author is a philosophical materialist or ontological naturalist; others will say that we now have naturalistic explanations for various biological phenomena. None, however, will demonstrate that


Evolution declares under no uncertain terms that all causes are natural and material. Nothing else is allowed.

since, as I noted above, neither the activity of seeking naturalistic explanations (i.e., science) nor the offering of naturalistic explanations requires the belief that only natural and material causes are possible.

Evolutionary biology is materialistic and “godless” in exactly the same way that modern chemistry, medicine, plumbing, and auto repair are materialistic and godless. If you object to evolutionary explanations for this reason, you must, if you wish to be consistent, object to the refusal of agricultural science to explain crop failures in terms of God’s curse upon the land for Adam’s disobedience, and the failure of medical schools to teach their students to consider seriously the possibility that diseases are caused by demonic possession, witchcraft, and the like.

A supernatural explanation cannot be a scientific explanation. The supernatural is not constrained by natural laws, it is inherently mysterious to us (“God works in mysterious ways…”), and it is not controllable by us. Science, however, operates by testing hypotheses which can be disconfirmed by reference to empirical data. How could one test or disconfirm a supernatural hypothesis? Supernatural intervention could explain any conceivable data.

 

JHAPPEL

RichardC said:

This is a common mistake that evolutionists make time and time again.
Planetary motion and diseases are repeatable in the present.
No one
has ever seen a chimp change into a man.

RichardC said:

Again other branches of science like chemistry, plumbing, auto repair
deal
with repeatable observations in the present. We need not invoke the
supernatural when we have repeatable observations that can be
reducible to
known natural causes. However there are no experiments we can setup
to see
if a bacteria can evolve a falgella without intelligent intervention.
Chance mutations and natural selection can explain any biological
structure
without actual demonstrating in a detailed testable way how it
happened. So
its no more scientific that design. At least design can be falsified
by
Occam's Razor by demonstrating natural processes is sufficent to
account for
a biological structure. However the mechansim of evolution cannot be
falsified. As long as someone can come up with a 'just-so-story'
evolution
is safe from falsification.

 

DM

Helen wrote the following:

"And when you say 'or any other shared derived characteristics', you are automatically assuming common descent from the first. You cannot then use the results of your presupposition as evidence for that same presupposition. That is what is circular. All you are doing is giving evidence that you HAVE that presupposition, not that it is true."

There appears to be a basic misunderstanding on Helen's part. She is correct in the sense that IF the purpose of cladistics was to demonstrate the truth of common descent, THEN it is circular; *however*, the purpose of cladistics is NOT to demonstrate the reality of common descent. It is to construct hypotheses of relationships among taxa. Therefore, it is logically fallacious to reject cladistics because it fails to demonstrate something it is not designed to demonstrate.

Now, one might claim that the reality of common descent is an underlying assumption of the method, and this is true. But because it is an underlying assumption, the purpose of cladistics is not to demonstrate whether that assumption is true. The assumptions are taken as a given. Whether or not the underlying assumptions behind a given research proposal are true is a separate question and must be addressed separately; a well-designed proposal anticipates these questions. And whether certain creationists like it or not, it is a fact that in mainstream biology, the reality of common decsent has not been a question for over 150 years.

Furthermore, this assumption (the reality of common descent) is accepted by creationists who study baraminology and discontinuity systematics, because they use cladistics to investigate the reality of certain hypothesized holobaramins. Common descent is understood to be a real phenomenon within holobaramins, and therefore cladistics is a perfectly useful (and utilized) method (for examples, see various papers by Cavanaugh and Robinson, separately and together, in CRSQ).

So the question obviously is not: Is cladistics circular because it presumes common descent?, since the answer is clearly: No, it is not, because its purpose is *not* to demonstrate the reality of common descent. Common descent, even according to creationist researchers, is quite real. Rather, the question seems to be: What are the limits to common descent, if any, and how can they be identified?

 

JEFF

Helen: I will simply repeat my statement that if evolution were established beyong (sic) a reasonable doubt, there would not be so many scientists, of which Mike Behe certainly is one, who seriously question/challenge one or more areas of it.

Gravitational theory has NOT been established beyond a reasonable doubt. We can observe gravitational behavior but we have yet to explain it.

 

HELEN

Response to Richard C:
You stated that Darwin was a Christian. No, he was not. There are indications in his writings that one of his goals was to disprove the necessity of any god at all.

You also stated that most evangelical geologists before Darwin accepted old ages. The word ?most? is going to hang you up pretty badly there, and for the sake of not trying to knit-pick, I?m going to ignore it and simply tell you that you have no way of really knowing that. However two points should be made here:
1. Truth is never a matter of majority opinion, regardless
2. The acceptance of old ages was predicated upon uniformitarian-gradualism (which was all ?uniformitarianism? at the start). The very reason the definitions of uniformitarian and gradualism separated somewhat later is because gradualism is denied by the geologic record itself, which records a number of catastrophes.

Whether or not this man or that man accepts or rejects something, whether it be biblical or anything else, has nothing to do with the truth of the occurrence of that particular thing, or of its existence. We can use the opinion of people we respect as evidence, but certainly not as proof. You respect Lyell and co. I don?t. They were essentially untrained and geology was only a hobby back then. Anyone could put forward any theory, no matter how silly, and have it considered. I am not saying that Lyell?s theory was silly, please, only that there was little to no discrimination due to the lack of knowledge in this field.

You went on to say, ? This question raises a larger and more fundamental issue. Just as it?s futile to play a sport unless there is some agreement on the rules of the game, it?s futile to discuss the observational evidence for or against evolution unless there is agreement on the criteria for determining which of the alternative hypotheses is best supported by the totality of the evidence, i.e., what the ?rules? are for deciding whether common descent, special creation, or other alternatives have won the tournament or at least are ahead in the score.?

You have actually combined a lot of points there. One at a time?
I agree that agreement on parameters and ?rules? is a good thing.
Empirical or observational evidence can easily be discussed regardless, however. It sits there rules or no rules, parameters or no parameters, and can be noticed by anyone presumably.
And all of that is different from deciding which model or theory is best supported by the totality of evidence.

I would request that evidence we can work with ? i.e. lab evidence in genetics and experiences we have in daily work with populations or even individuals take precedence over interpretations of, say, the fossil record, which demands presumptions of what the truth already is before a conclusion can be made. In other words, if you refuse to consider special creation, then that will certainly color what you are willing to consider valid interpretation of the fossil evidence. Therefore, although there is evidence there, and it should be considered, I would also like to subject any possible conclusions drawn regarding something like that to the knowledge we have from actual work ourselves in science today.

In line with this, you asked me what evidence I would consider valid to consider the conclusion that life on earth came from a common ancestor.

First of all, that is a reasonable hypothesis to work with. So I am not denying its validity as a hypothesis, just for the record.

I don?t think fossil evidence can be used here, because ?transitionals? are in the eye of the beholder. What you may see as a transitional, I might see as an interesting variation ? along the lines of comparing a poodle to a great Dane or something like that. And we could argue until several herds of cows came home about who had the more valid interpretation and we would still be arguing when the cows left again in the morning.

Instead, we should be able to show something taking place in the very short generation-time species today, such as bacteria, which would show evidence of this hypothesis being true. Even if it were guided in a lab, we should be able to show something in line with new forms and functions where information ? meaningful information, not just stochastic information ? was added to the genome and used by the organism in a novel way. We should be able to see some kind of progression within, say, a thousand linear generations, of this new form and/or function not only being used but being built upon to continue some kind of change which is not only established in a population, but then differentiates that population from its parent or sister populations on a permanent basis.

I would certainly give more credence to the concept of common ancestry if anything like this could be shown to happen.

Going on to the intelligent design part of our discussion, you asked about the third alternative of the laws being intelligently designed. ID as a scientific endeavour would be useless then, for ID could then be claimed for anything if you just went back a few steps. This does not mean it could not be true, but only that ID is not dealing with anything other than primary causation in terms of evidence. They had to limit it at some point in order to work with some kind of testing procedure effectively, and that was the most logical place.

You mentioned a ?universal intelligence underlying everything.? Could you explain to me what you meant by that, please? I have heard this idea before but it has never made any sense to me.

Moving on with your response, you wrote, ? Why couldn?t one believe that the Bible is trustworthy as a guide to salvation without having to believe that the Bible is 100% correct when interpreted as literal history and science throughout? We would have to believe this, I suppose, if we assumed that God, in effect, dictated it word for word and intended every word to be understood as literal historical truth. But why make this assumption??

And I would ask you, why should we believe anything it says about what we cannot see if it is wrong about what we can see? It does not mean God had to dictate at all, but only that what was written as part of His Word to us is true.

You went on to say, ? I do not need to wait until a few minutes after my death to know the state of my soul: that is something I can know here and now, by direct experience. That is, I believe the Bible is right on the spiritual essentials because I can experience directly what it is talking about. I do not need to ?trust? the Bible in the sense of having to take its word for it about the essential spiritual matters of sin and salvation: these are things that can be known in one?s heart. ?

What you are talking about here is experiential truth, and there is absolutely no guarantee that what you feel inside is accurate. The Bible tells us the heart is deceitful above all things. Is it wrong here? I might also mention that every Buddhist, every Mormon, every transcendentalist, etc., also are quite sure that their experiences are verification of their spiritual state. But experience is a lousy guide for this, I?m afraid, since the devil himself, as the Bible also says, can masquerade as an angel of light. Deception is rampant. What do you have except Bible by which to judge your experiences? What outside frame of reference is available to you if you reject the Bible as God?s Word? If you look at Genesis 8:21, you will see God remark that the heart of every man inclines, or tends, toward evil always from childhood. So how can you be sure you understand the feelings inside of you relative to the truth?

If God is God, then what He has told us in the Bible will correspond exactly with historical and scientific truth. Not scientific paradigms or interpretations, but the actual truth of something. And, time and time again, we have discovered this is true, in both history and science. God has validated His Word through the world we can see. Paul speaks somewhat of this in Romans 1. The Psalms certainly speak of it. Very frankly, and not to be offensive, it is wrong not to take or reject the Bible on its own terms. It presents itself as straightforward history and the facts we regard as scientific as straightforward as well. Either that is right or wrong. To declare it mythology in order to save what you would like to save and throw out what you would like to throw out is to end up depending on your own intelligence as well as that of other sinful, finite humans. That?s a poor trade in my book. Either God presented the truth in ways we could verify, at least in part, or He did not. If He did not present what we can verify, then forget the rest ? there is no reason to trust it. If He did present accurately what we can verify, then we have a basis on which to trust the rest completely apart from any feelings we may have about it or our own spiritual condition.

Regarding your second post disagreeing with my quotes supporting my contention that evolution is based entirely on naturalistic materialism to the exclusion of anything else, I?m sorry you did not see my point in what I chose to quote. There is plenty of other material but I am on a friend?s computer here in Australia at the moment, and not in California, and the resources that are handy to me at home are simply not here. However, if you can show me any point at which the evolutionary ideas permit the intrusion of something which is not natural and material, I would be very interested to know about it.

You did, actually seem to agree with me when you stated, ? That is what science does, by definition: it seeks naturalistic explanations of observed phenomena in terms of natural laws, the regularities of nature.? I am simply taking what you agree with one step further, and saying that if there is an indication of a non-natural, non-material cause, it is rejected on an a priori basis by science today, and in particular those parts of science having to do with evolution.

While the limitation to natural and material causes is, by the nature of finite man, a limit of what science is capable of dealing with, that is a weakness it has, not a strength. The fact that we must deal within the confines of that weakness does not mean our weakness determines the truth of the universe or even of life on earth.

Response to David Cox

I was not talking about the validity of any cladogram, only that one must choose what characteristics are going to be considered, and that this choice depends on what one already believes to be true ? in this case common descent. If one does not believe common descent to be true, one might choose an entirely different set of characteristics to find evidence of whatever one DID consider to be true. The point I was making about cladistics is that it is very much part of a circular argument because the characteristics chosen for representation are those which the ?chooser? has decided are relevant in terms of what that person already believes to be true. As such, cladistics cannot be used to buttress the evolutionary argument but only work within its framework ? it works on the inside and is not support from the outside.

As such, if one honestly believed there was something more similar linking jellyfish to humans than cats to humans in terms of body types or chemistry or whatever, one would choose the representative characteristics one had in mind to form the cladogram. You and I might disagree violently regarding the initial presumption, but that would not make the cladogram invalid!

Could I construct a cladogram which placed birds closer to insects than reptiles? Very possibly if I considered only those characteristics which influenced flight?

You asked how hypotheses are determined to be true (or tested). They must be tested via means that do not depend on them being true in the first place! It is not a matter of defining it to be true or of working with it as though it were true, but of breaking outside the confines of that theory and seeking objective data which would either confirm or deny it.

Suppose, for instance, that I hypothesized that grass, unlike all other green plants, was not involved in photosynthesis. Well, we know what photosynthesis is, and we have worked with it, so we can check grass (or my hypothesis about grass) by coming at it from the outside, so to speak, and making the chemical tests necessary to check for the process of photosynthesis.

But suppose I demanded that my hypothesis be considered true and that all evidence to the contrary was simply biased religion? Suppose I redefined photosynthesis to be something grass does not do? And suppose I was in charge of the way science was taught and declared that anything you said to the contrary was bad science by definition. I am curious, how would you fight that?

You see, that is the position we find ourselves in as creationists. There is good, solid evidence against evolution in a number of areas. But by defining anything we present as ?non-science? and religiously motivated, the evolutionist has attempted not just to marginalize some very intelligent and qualified scientists, but to sweep under the rug material which it really should be confronting head on. In redefining words like ?species? and ?evolution?, the evolution camp manages to define the opposition out of existence. But that has nothing to do with science, really, just with rhetoric.

Scientifically, the data are still there and we still can look at all of it and know that evolution is not possible in terms of common descent of all life forms on earth from a single life form in the beginning. There is nothing in empirical science to support that ? only words redefined, interpretations of some things, and the declaration that the opposition is irrational, uninformed, lazy, stupid, or whatever.

But that does not change reality.

To Jhappel:

Thank you for bringing up the mention of repeatability. We can work with things like chemical reactions, quantum mechanics, gravity, and the like. We cannot work with evolution past the point of simple, within kind, variation. That makes it vastly different from all those other areas of study where variables can be manipulated or, as in astronomy, observations can be repeated by others.

To DM

You wrote, ? the purpose of cladistics is NOT to demonstrate the reality of common descent. It is to construct hypotheses of relationships among taxa.?

Feel free to call me the California blond that I am, but would you mind explaining the difference between those two things? Thanks.

You continued with, ? Now, one might claim that the reality of common descent is an underlying assumption of the method, and this is true. But because it is an underlying assumption, the purpose of cladistics is not to demonstrate whether that assumption is true. The assumptions are taken as a given. Whether or not the underlying assumptions behind a given research proposal are true is a separate question and must be addressed separately; a well-designed proposal anticipates these questions. And whether certain creationists like it or not, it is a fact that in mainstream biology, the reality of common decsent has not been a question for over 150 years.?

I agree with you. The entire point I was making in my remark about cladistics is that it is based on the very presumption (common descent) that it is trying to buttress. That makes it circular. The assumptions dictate what characteristics are used and how the interpretations of the ensuing data will be made. And I do disagree with you that common descent has not been in question for over 150 years. It has been very much in question by very many and that is what this forum is all about.

But yes, you are right that limited common descent, from originally created populations, is very much a part of accepted creation science. That is not a matter of argument, is it? And when that presumption is used, then cladograms are made within that framework and interpretations made accordingly. But this does not invalidate what I said about the field of cladistics as a whole ? it is an evolutionary field operating within the evolutionary framework. But it is also used as evidence for evolution and/or common descent and when it is used that way it is invalid as part of a circular argument.

And, finally, to Jeff:

You are right about gravitational theory being in question. But that does not invalidate the reality of gravity which we work with scientifically and unscientifically on a daily basis. We are able to determine gravitational fields mathematically even though we are not sure what causes them. This is radically different from the fact that evolution in terms of bacteria-to-bear variety cannot be worked with, mathematically dealt with, observed, or anything else! It is imaginary. True or false, it is a product of the human imagination at this point with zero data to support it. Interpretations of data are used to support it, but I can interpret something a different way and all you can do is tell me I am wrong, but you cannot give me an objective reason why. Interpretations are only interpretations, and that is all evolution has going for it.

In the meantime we can work with gravity, measure it, predict it, etc. There?s a big difference here.

 

David Cox

In response to Helen regarding cladistics:

I would have to agree with DM's post regarding cladistics proper.

I believe that what we (at least I) have been talking about is not "cladistics", but rather taxonomy or systematics. I think that there is an important distinction here. When we talk about grouping together organisms based on characteristics, we are talking about taxonomy. I learn something new every day.

I do not think that I have ever seen a true cladistic analysis being used as a buttress for evolutionary theory, because that is not its purpose, but I have seen the use of an argument that goes something like this:

"Evolution is supported by the fact that organisms can be arranged in a nested hierarchical structure that is consistent with common descent."

Is this what we are discussing?

As for the rest of that post, I am not one for discussing conspiracy theories or religious discrimination claims, so I will leave that matter to someone else. I was just hoping to discuss whether or not a certain claim was circular.