Scientific Evidence Supports the Theory of Evolution

My opponent has demonstrated an alarming ignorance of the scientific method. The entire point of discussing the p-value of a claim (what my opponent calls "statistics") is that the p-value determines whether the null hypothesis should be discarded. It is not possible to confirm or disconfirm a theory using evidence if you are unable to say whether or not the results occurred by chance. This is the essence of falsification. Yet my opponent acts as though I haven't even touched on the subject. The twin nested hierarchy makes a series of predictions about what should happen when we analyze a nested tree based on morphology versus genetics for any set of species. If you are analyzing eight different taxa, and the twin nested hierarchies shows four incongruities, Evolutionary Theory has been falsified. There's no getting around this. Choose any eight taxa, do the math, and you can personally falsify Evolutionary Theory. My opponent asked for examples of times when the twin nested hierarchy was confirmed. I provided six examples as well as their citations. Each citation refers to an empirical experiment which confirmed the twin nested hierarchy in some way. It is hard to imagine what else my opponent wishes other than a step-by-step explanation of each document. My opponent began by quoting an article in order to demonstrate that complexity cannot arise in the first place. When I pointed out that the article's conclusion is that complexity can increase over time, but complexity itself is not inherently beneficial, my opponent suddenly became indignant that I have not provided criteria for selecting complexity. This ignores the whole point of the article. Complexity can enter the gene pool through variation, but unless that complexity leads to an increase in fitness, the complexity will vanish. For instance, a gene duplication leading to a new ability to survive sub-arctic temperatures increases complexity and will survive because it enables new niche exploitation (1). There is no "criteria" for selecting complexity, complexity is an aspect of what may be selected for. Had my opponent taken the time to peruse the Introduction to Cladistics, we might have saved quite a few characters. The difference between objective and subjective hierarchies involves the difference between comparisons of synapomorphies (shared derived characteristics not present in ancestors) as opposed to just shared characteristics. Given a starfish, a human, and a jellyfish, they can be arranged under subjective criteria like "lives in water" or "radial symmetry" or other such criteria and have multiple trees. However, when the criteria is based on synapomorphy, we see that the starfish and human are actually more closely related the starfish and jellyfish or human and jellyfish. Comparing cars is an act of comparing shared characteristics. Comparing languages is an act of comparing shared derived characteristics, synapomorophy. Biological cladistics is based on synapomorphy (2). It is not possible to create an objective hierarchy of cars because the hierarchy cannot be based on shared-derived characteristics. Any attempt to do so establishes only that my opponent does not understand basic cladistics. One can only hope that the utter ridiculousness of my opponents car music player argument is blatantly apparent. It assumes, nonsensically, that cars can be classified based on synapomorphy. ""...No matter how "fit" an animal is, if it's randomly struck by lightning or crushed by a rampaging elephant, the genes will not pass to the next generation...." "...No matter how "fit" an animal is, if it's randomly struck by lightning or crushed by a rampaging elephant, the genes will not pass to the next generation...." " I would be interested to know exactly how these two sentences contradict each other. My opponent began this debate by claiming nested hierarchies are unfalsifiable. I have provided six examples which could have lead to falsification but instead lead to confirmation. My opponent began by refusing to distinguish between subjective and objective nested hierarchies and proceeded to then say that subjective hierarchies can be made objective. His current stance is that cars can be arranged according to shared-derived characteristics. This should be an utterly ridiculous notion to even the most dogmatic Creationist. Evolutionary Theory is exact enough so that two independent methodologies were able to distinguish between 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possibilities and both land on the same answer. I have demonstrated six independent times how the twin nested hierarchy can be used on sub-sets of taxa ranging throughout the eukaryotes and prokaryotes to create trees with statistically significant relationships. Each time could have lead to falsification, but it did not. 1. http://www.life.illinois.edu... 2.http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu...