Scientific Evidence Supports the Theory of Evolution

It is unfortunate that my opponent has failed to actually address my argument. His attack is limited to a single nested hierarchy. I am talking about the TWIN nested hierarchy. I will post what would have been my opening statement on the twin nested hierarchy. You will find that, in this post, I dispose of the following arguments my opponents puts forward. A. Nested hierarchies are subjective, not objective. B. Nested hierarchies are unfalsifiable because any trait similarity which is not due to a nested hierarchy can be simply attributed to convergent evolution. C. Fossils are found in multiple strata, and any divergence can be explained after the fact by expanding or contracting what is defined as a geological strata. Thus, fossils appearing in a particular strata is not falsifiable evidence. D. Evolution does not necessarily drive life towards greater complexity. Because assigning fossils to a strata is not part of the evidence implied by the twin nested hierarchy, I will not appeal to this methodology. As to D, my opponent unfortunately failed to cite the full article. If he had, he would have come across this passage: "Then why are the most complex ammonoid sutures also the later ones? The two results, says Boyajian, are not contradictory. Even if the evolution of ammonoid sutures is random, as the ancestor-descendant comparisons suggest-- meaning that at any given time an ammonoid is just as likely to become simpler as it is to become more complex--the maximum complexity to be found among all ammonoids will increase over time." The article cited concludes that complexity DOES increase, but only when it is selected to increase. Phylogenetic Nested Hierarchy The first nested hierarchy is based on phylogeny. The immediate reaction is that this is nothing other than placing animals together that look alike. What this ignores is that a nested hierarchy based on Evolutionary Theory MUST conform the relevant mathematics known as Markov processes and chains. This is because evolutionary gradualism is "stochastic and memoryless" instead of directed by some higher being (i.e. Intelligent Design) or arranged by some random ordering of animals that look alike (subjective hierarchies). (2) By measuring the degree of cladistic hierarchy structure in a phylogeny, it has been determined multiple times that the nested hierarchy is not subjective (like categorizing cars) but instead objective (like categorizing languages). (3,4,5) Because of this, potential falsification occurs every time you pick out some traits and see whether it occurs in a nested hierarchy. For instance, nested within vascular plants will be seed and non-seed plants. Nested within seed plants are angiosperms and gymnosperms. You can even take small samples from the phylogenetic tree, and they will all show statistically significant hierarchical restructure (6, 7). Molecular Nested Hierarchy The redundancy of genetics is highly unappreciated. Proteins are strings of AMINO ACIDS. Amino acids are determined genetically by the relevant CODON. A Codon is made of three NUCLEOTIDES. Multiple combinations of nucleotides lead to the same codon. Multiple codons lead to the same amino acid. DNA sequences like certain introns or third-base position of DNA codons can be added or subtracted without effecting the amino acid sequence (8). These DNA changes are not correlated to morphological similarity. Using these "silent" markers, we can establish a "genetic tree" of organisms based on the nucleotide similarities independent of morphological ones. Twin Nested Hierarchy The thirty taxa generally used for classification can be arranged in 10 ^ 38th (ten with 38 zeros after it) different ways. The burden on the Evolution is to show NOT ONLY that around 10 ^ 38 possibilities are incorrect, but that both trees INDEPENDENTLY come to the same statistically significant conclusions. If both trees do not have the same answer, common descent is falsified. Even more daunting, EVERY POSSIBLE SUB-SET of taxa must have a consistent twin nested hierarchy or Evolutionary Theory is falsified. Evolution is a stochastic (random) process. Because of this, there will be incongruities between the two trees. The question is how the incongruity effects statistical significance. By determining the maximum p-value, we can find this. For instance, if you wish to test a set of twelve taxa, but you find three incongruities, the p-value is still 0.00011. Statistical significance is assumed at a P-value of 0.01. However, if you take eight taxa and find four incongruities, the trees do not match with statistical significance (9). By using a combination of Bayesian inference, maximum likelihood, and parsimony, we know the p-value is not the result of any one statistical method failing (10). This is buttressed by the ability to check for Anomalous Gene Trees, when the stochastic nature of Evolution leads what appears to be a gene discordance in the trees (11, 12). A failure of the markov process on a genetic level would be evident within a few generations. You don't need thousands of generations or a heap of fossils. It can be done with bacteria, rabbits, apricots, flies, whatever you like. The experiments showing what Creationists deridingly call "microevolution" are such confirmations of the markov process. I have shown how, out of 10 ^ 38 possible combinations of 30 taxa, two independent methods (genetic tree and phylogenetic) achieve the same result with statistical significance far beyond what scientists require in terms of a p value. Not only this, but any sub-set of either tree must end up in the predicted mathematically determined nested hierarchy. This allows for constant possible falsification or confirmation. All empirical evidence has confirmed the twin nested hierarchy. Thus, I appropriately make the analogy that, in terms of argumentation, the twin nested hierarchy is devastating to the point of Creationists [as the opponent has already quoted me saying] "wetting their pants." 1. http://en.wikipedia.org... 2. http://en.wikipedia.org... 3. Huelsenbeck, J. P., Ronquist, F., Nielsen, R., and Bollback, J. P. (2001) "Bayesian inference of phylogeny and its impact on evolutionary biology." Science 294: 2310-2314. 4. Faith, D. P., and Cranston, P. S. (1991) "Could a cladogram this short have arisen by chance alone?: on permutation tests for cladistic structure." Cladistics 7: 1-28. 5. Hillis, D. M., and Huelsenbeck, J. P. (1992) "Signal, noise, and reliability in molecular phylogenetic analyses." Journal of Heredity 83: 189-195. 6. Baldauf, S. L., Roger, A. J., Wenk-Siefert, I., and Doolittle, W. F. (2000) "A kingdom-level phylogeny of eukaryotes based on combined protein data." Science 290: 972-7. 7. Brown, J. R., Douady, C. J., Italia, M. J., Marshall, W. E., and Stanhope, M. J. (2001) "Universal trees based on large combined protein sequence data sets." Nature Genetics 28: 281-285 8. http://darwin.eeb.uconn.edu... 9. http://www.talkorigins.org... 10. Penny, D., and Hendy, M. D. (1986) "Estimating the reliability of phylogenetic trees." Mol. Biol. Evol. 3: 403-417 11. NA Rosenberg,"R Tao"(2008) Discordance of species trees with their most likely gene trees: the case of five taxa."Systematic Biology"57: 131-140