Scientific Evidence Supports the Theory of Evolution

My opponent wished to make the point that his article shows that "complexity could not even have begun in the first place" and that "the sort of change desired to turn bacterium into homo sapiens is non-existent." However, the article he cited ends by saying that complexity DOES increase, but only when selected for. This is precisely how Evolution works. If complexity does nothing for selection, then, as the article says "complexity didn't help or hurt them." But, as the article concludes, when selected for, complexity does arise. This article makes the point that complexity is not a goal unto itself, it must have a selective benefit. That is why in this case complexity did not help or hurt, and thus was not selected into fixation. My opponent fails to recognize that hierarchies can be arranged either subjectively or objectively. While cars may be arranged under various criterion, does my opponent really wish to argue that it is subjective whether French is more similar to German or Chinese? For decades, languages have been classified under objective hierarchies, a fact I assumed would be known by my opponent before talking about cladistics (1, 2, 3). My opponent believes he has Cladistics by the short-hairs, yet even the opening page of "Basics of Cladistics" begins with what he considers his silver bullet: the fact that similarity may be due to convergence or homologous structures. The other 74 pages are devoted to explaining how statistical tests can be used to get rid of this possibility (4). If my opponent is interested in an introductory course to how subjective and objective hierarchies are different, this would provide an excellent resource. The very fact that he believes cars can be arranged in an objective hierarchy suggests it would benefit him. I have been challenged as to whether Evolution is falsifiable. In response, I provided an entire methodology allowing for nearly infinite ways to falsify Evolution. Since my opponent would prefer me to be more specific, I shall oblige by showing several examples. In 2001, Brown et. al. mapped 23 proteins across 45 species and found it matched an analysis of the same samples but for specific rRNA sequences (5). In 2010 Parfrey et al made a major taxonomic sampling of 451 species and did gene sequencing and confirmed the twin nested hierarchy (6). In 2000, Baldauf et. al. sampled four highly conserved proteins across eukaryotes and found they matched the small ribosomal subunit RNA (7). In 2003, Sanderson et. al. compared a multigene analysis in plants to over 100,000 protein sequences and found the twin nested hierarchy confirmed (8). In 2000, Hansmann et all created a phylogenetic tree of 39 proteins across 18 prokaryotic genomes and found it matched highly conserved genetic clusters (9). Finally, in 2007, Swingley et. Al compared 24 cyanobacterial genomes in a wide variety of niches and integrated the data for around 1,000 protein-encoding genes and found the predicted Markov clustering (10). I ask that all readers very carefully read my opponents section "What is this contradiction in Wnope's Argument." It reveals major misconceptions about biology in general. "Randomness" refers only to the fact that genetic recombination and differential selection are not directed. Natural selection does not stand on a mountain with a sniper rifle looking for creatures with the wrong alleles. Genes do not ponder how they should recombine before doing so. Save for genes which immediately kill the creature, whether or not alleles are passed on is a probability weighted by selection pressures. 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 "unfit" an animal is, if every other animal except one of the opposite sex is wiped out in a fire, those genes will pass on. Complexity results from stochastic variations. If complexity does nothing other than "be complex" then it will not be selected for under differential reproduction. However, if an increase in complexity also leads some benefit in fitness, then stochastic evolutionary processes will lead to fixation of increased complexity through differential reproduction. An "orchard of life" would lead to complete falsification mathematically. There is no possible way to model an eukaryotic tree, as shown above, without identifying a lack of common ancestry. To invoke an "orchard" does nothing to help explain away the Twin Nested Hierarchy. It could only explain things if my claim was that only sub-sets of taxa match. I am claiming the total data sets involving all living organisms will match. In my opening, I showed how you can falsify Evolutionary Theory in nearly infinite number of ways, and how Evolutionary Theory has achieved absurdly exact results when it comes to determining which of the 10 with 38 zeros behind it possibilities are in fact representative of the tree of life. I have shown that the ability of the two trees to independently come to the same conclusion occurs with statistical significance far beyond what is needed for scientists to claim they have succeeded. Now, I have provided multiple examples of possible falsification which lead to confirmations. Above, my opponent says he could make an "objective hierarchy" out of cars. I have shown this is not only a misguided venture, it is entirely nonsensical. Cars are a subjective hierarchy. But not all hierarchies are subjective. Does the scientific evidence support Evolution? When the p value of a hypothesis is below 0.01, it is considered significant and we must reject the null hypothesis. The methodologies described above achieve a p value FAR below 0.01. Evolution is falsifiable, empirically confirmed, and its results are statistically significant. 1. Ringe, D. (1999) "Language classification: scientific and unscientific methods." in"The Human Inheritance, ed. B. Sykes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 45-74 2. Robinson, Peter M.W., & Robert J. O"Hara. 1996. Cladistic analysis of an Old Norse manuscript tradition."Research in Humanities Computing, 4:115"137. 3. Colin Renfrew. At the Edge of Knowability. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10:1 (2000), 7"34 Towards a Prehistory of Languages 4.http://www.gwu.edu... 5.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 6. Parfrey, Laura. "Broadly Sampled Multigene Analyses Yield a Well-Resolved Eurkaryotic Tree of Life." System Biology. 2010 Oct, 59(5): 518-533 7. Baldauf, SL. A kingdom-level phylogeny of eukaryotes based on combined protein data. 2000. Science 290: 972-977 8. Sanderson MJ, Driskell AC, Ree RH, Eulenstein O, Langley S:"Obtaining maximal concatenated phylogenetic data sets from large sequence databases. Mol Biol Evol"2003,"20(7):1036-1042. 9. Phylogeny of 33 ribosomal and six other proteins encoded in an ancient gene cluster that is conserved across prokaryotic genomes: influence of excluding poorly alignable sites from analysis. Int. J. Syst. Evol. Microbiol. 50, 1655-1663. 10. Swingley, Wesley. Integrating Markov Clustering and Molecular Phylogenetics to Reconstruct the Cyanobacterial Species Tree from Conserved Protein Families. Mol Biol Evol"(2008)"25"(4):"643-654.