There Is Reasonable Cause To Doubt The Theory Of Common Descent

My opponent has said that all his evidence holds and that he is not wasting my time. For this reason, I will answer the claims by reference to his comments and by looking at the sources cited. As such my rebuttals are numbered according to the sources cited by my opponent.1) http://myxo.css.msu.edu...Great resource which undoubtedly proves natural selection. The fact that a multicellular organism has not evolved is not the aim of this experiment, so I am not sure why this is proof that common descent is not true. Additionally, 50000 cycles is long for humans but not for prokaryotes.Regardless, my opponent will be pleased to know that in fact single cells can move to the next step through co-operative functioning as has been shown by Ratclif et al.(1)(2) http://www.mirror.co.uk...Waste of time.No one claims that bananas evolved from humans, this statement makes no sense. "To claim that this means bananas evolved from humans would be silly." Not even sure why this is here, maybe my opponent wants to clarify. This has nothing to do with the debate.(3)A member of the Korowai tribe of south-eastern Papua who requested that I keep his identity confidential (for obvious reasons)Waste of time.(4)Genesis 2:7Waste of time.Prove god according to my statement from round 2.(5)An ignorant creationist.Waste of time.(6)Nature, vol. 345, 1990, p. 765This is a brilliant example of a creationist using a website and not bothering to actually read the relevant article. For example if my opponent had read his reference 6 he would have known that Profesor Bengston did not mention the word trilobite in the opinion piece. So this manuscript has been dishonestly used by my opponent to express a view that is not present. I ask that my opponent please clarify this deception to the voters in his response.Regarding this nature paper maybe we should note that Professor Bengston was excited about the discovery reported (reported in the same issue of Nature) of the finding of a complete halkieriid fossil. He was excited as it helps to give a clearer picture of common descent.(7)Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe , 1982, pp. 26-27Waste of time.My Opponent cites a quote from Francis Hitching. This is the same Francis Hitching who is an author of paranormal books and member of a dowsing association (i.e. he is a dowser), in other words someone who believes that supernatural powers exist.(2,3) He believes something which has never been proved so please see point 4. Regarding evidence for trilobite evolution, a possible ancestor for the trilobites Primicaris larvaformis has been found and identified by Zhang et al. in the journal Paleontology. (4) Additionally, my opponent may wish to consider the existence of the Parvancorina fossil which is from an earlier time than the Primicaris fossil mentioned in reference 3.(5) This Parvancorina fossil is now thought to be an ancestor to the trilobites. Interestingly, this trilobite evolutionary link denied by creationists has been elaborated on by others. (6,7)(8)Preuss, T. M. 2012. Human brain evolution: From gene discovery to phenotype discovery. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109:10709–10716.I am not sure what my opponent intended with this reference. He was pointing out a single sentence from the abstract of the article by Preuss in PNAS to say that humans and chimpanzees are not the same or not as closely related. I think everyone knows this, you just have to see a human and a chimpanzee together to know they are not the same. I should also add this is a statement with no proof of the claim. I will add here a link to a recent study showing that in fact this statement by my opponent is disingenuous as the data does show that 99 % of our genetic makeup is the same as Chimpanzees and Bonobos.(8,9)What is interesting is that if my opponent had read the article he would have seen that this article is just another among the thousands that actually proves common descent. It does this by showing that various DNA mutations are responsible for human characteristics (such as speech) compared to other species.(9)Answers Research Journal 6 (2013): 63-69.Waste of time. Not an accredited journal, and comes from a creationist perspective hence see point 4. Additionally, as I have shown above that we are genetically close to Bonobos and Chimpanzees.(10)mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/25/6/1007.full Great proof of the fact of common descent. In this paper the researchers say that the rate of evolution in humans and other species are actually underestimated. So what my opponent is claiming is proof against common descent is actually proof for common descent. The manuscript goes deeper into the reasons why the statistics calculated using the McDonald–Kreitman statistical tests are not to be trusted as they are underestimating adaptive evolution.(11) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...Here my opponent is using the title of a publication to dishonestly present the views of the author. The author is not saying humans should have been extinct 100 times, the author is saying the mutation rate is high and a possible consequence of not dying out must rely on either epistatsis or soft selection.(10, 11)(12) http://www.cod.edu... Fantastic resource showing how epistasis works see point 11 above. Epistasis is when genes act in groups to either make a trait occur in an organism or not occur in an organism. i.e. (the genes abcdefghijklmno should be present to cause disease x, however if any 1 gene is missing then disease x is not present). What my opponent is presenting here as to much mutation killing of a species is a horribly incorrect interpretation of mutations and adaptation.(13) http://journals.cambridge.org...Another article which my opponent uses as proof for mutations killing species and another misinterpretation. Mullers ratchet is a theory that explains the evolution of sexual reproduction.(12) The paradox that arises from Mullers ratchet relies on a set of premises which are not happening in society. These premises are according to the paper cited by my opponent.(i) recombination is absent, (ii) population size is finite, (iii) slightly deleterious mutation rates are high and (iv) purifying selection is too weak to remove all new deleterious mutations.If these premises are not happening in the human population then the paradoxes of Mullers ratchet are only of interest theoretically hence a theoretical paper. (14) http://www.genetics.org...This manuscript again deals with epistasis likely been the reason behind harmful mutations. I think my opponent needs to carefully understand epistasis to realize that one mutation does not mean death or improvement. One mutation can mean nothing if not in association with other mutations.(15) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...Unfortunately, I could not get access to the full source for this article. But let me just state that I believe my opponents interpretation is incorrect as the abstract to this manuscript says, "These facts may lead to an ostensibly paradoxical conclusion that the size of a minimal genome is restricted by the physical size of a DNA molecule able to replicate rather, than by the amount of genetic information." This leads me to believe that the paradox has to do with gene size and not with common descent. Could my opponent elaborate on this point please, as it is clearly not obvious how his argument and this research are even related.Please can my opponent clarify what is Nano. e? I believe my opponent could be referring to Nanoarchaeum equitans but this archaea is a parasite, and so that it needs a host to live is not remarkable and reason to doubt common descent. Like a virus some things need others to live.(16)I wanted to reach 16 sourcesWaste of timeIn closing I have shown that the most of the arguments of my opponent were misleading and dishonest. I hope my opponent can reply clearly in his rebuttal to the opinions I gave of the sources that are meant to cast doubt common descent but are in fact proving common descent.(1) http://www.pnas.org...(2) http://evolutionwiki.org...(3) http://www.talkorigins.org...(4) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...(5) http://www.landesmuseum.at...(6) http://www.trilobites.info...(7) http://www.palaeontologyonline.com...(8) http://www.nature.com...(9) http://www.amnh.org...(10) http://www.blackwellpublishing.com...(11) http://www.nature.com...(12) http://www.jstor.org...