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Tricks Theists Play (Part 1)


Uber Genius

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1 hour ago, Billiards Ball said:

Why assume Mr. Ham's main outreach is to unbelievers or a subset of unbelievers including scientists? He has a great ministry for Christians.

That's arguable. I tend to have a great deal of distrust for anyone that has the audacity to claim that only their view on a Biblical passage is correct, and all others are dangerous heresies. I'll not even start on his views on science.

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1 hour ago, Uber Genius said:

Now you are making an ad hoc explanation in order to explain away something that Ham not only said, but defended saying. His point was to destroy testimony as a way of gaining understanding of our world. He makes this on other videos I have seen. So this is not an honest way of communicating. Both His and yours. 

 Secondly your analogy is false because you being a man make yourself out to be like GOD! God knows everything as an essential attribute of his nature. It seems absurd to have to bring this up, but NEITHER YOU NOR KEN HAM KNOW EVERYTHING BY YOUR NATURE. Making it impossible to analogize God's knowledge with man's as you did to defend Ham's ham-handed statement, "Were you there?"

 

Huh? My question remains valid. Did Mr. Ham say dismissively, "Were you there?" then say nothing about dating assumptions, uniformitarian assumptions, etc.?

Also, when I say "Were you there?" I'm citing God's statement to Job. Why is God's statement in the scriptures inappropriate in this context?

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53 minutes ago, Uber Genius said:

I don't make that assumption. I am saying that he has made an argument that we should eliminate testimony as a valid source of knowledge. 

So if we adopt his view, evangelists (not Ham per se), and scientists, and lawyers, and historians, and school teachers teaching things other than math and a few hard sciences, will find they are out of a job!

Or Ham could admit that he didn't realize the ramifications of his advice and now rejects the whole, "Were you there," approach as hopelessly epistemologically flawed... I'm not holding my breath here. 

So why are you so interested in saving Ken Ham that your would rewrite history about what he was saying to make it sound as if it weren't fallacious? 

You recognize that even if we conclude that Ham is a suffering from some mental disorder (He's not but for arguments sake) it does nothing whatsoever to injure the inference that the Earth is young and Gen 1-2:4 is best interpreted as a literal 6 days? 

 

How does a creationist's view that different scientists interpret the same data differently "eliminate testimony as a valid source of knowledge"? Christians interpret the scriptures, like scientists interpret forensic and biologic evidence, differently at times.

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Hi Uber,

You said, “"Theory" in scientific parlance means an inductive inference about the data that has withstood the test of time, hundreds or thousands of confirmatory experiments, and is accepted by all the experts as knowledge

Respectfully, this is a nonsense definition that is so ridiculously vague, and subjective, as to have no actual utility in any legitimate scientific context.

So it has “withstood the test of time”. How much “time” exactly? What is the survival period for an explanation before it graduates to a theory? Where is this specific time period stated in the literature and how is the change of status (to theory) based on this period justified in logic?

It has also withstood “hundreds or thousands of confirmatory experiments”. So which is it – hundreds or thousands? Because that's a magnitude difference of ten-fold. How many hundreds or thousands exactly? Again, where is the amount of required experiments stated in literature and how is the change of status (to theory) logically justified by this exact amount of experiments? And what is a “confirmatory experiment”? If the claimed mechanism has been confirmed by direct observation, then the claim is no longer a theory, but a fact.

And it is “accepted by all the experts as knowledge”. So how are you defining an expert? Because Ken Ham has a Bachelor of Science. Many Biblical creationists have higher degrees at all levels of expertise in all scientific fields. I work at a medical science research institute. In my experience, there is no topic upon which every expert agrees. But even if they did, that wouldn't have any scientific meaning. Experts can be wrong, experts can be biased, experts can have agendas and even lie. Furthermore, even if everyone on earth agrees about something, we could all be wrong. That is why Appeals to Expertise/Authority and Appeals to Consensus are technical logic fallacies. And when was the consensus taken ensuring that “all the experts” are in agreement about the claim? Where is this recorded?

Science makes a fundamental distinction between the empirical (the facts) and the theoretical. I don't know the context of Ken Ham's statement, but I do know that creationists often encounter claims of fact about things which are not facts. Under such conditions, it is perfectly reasonable to explain that a claim is theoretical rather than an established fact. You accuse Ken Ham of being deceptive, but I respectfully think you have been deceived by a definition of theory that has no practical scientific utility – except to belittle those presenting “it's just a theory” arguments.

As an aside, most informed creationists dissuade the use of “it's just a theory” - because it is too vague to be meaningful.

 

"In common usage it is equivocal to a hypothesis"

A theory is not an hypothesis. In science, we have a word for hypothesis. It's called an hypothesis.

 

After Ham's presentation a student asked the question, "How do you account for all the dinosaur fossils that are millions of years old." Without missing a beat Ham responded, "We're you there?"

Here is a good example of someone confronting a creationist with a statement of fact, that is not a fact. The claim that the fossils are “millions of years old” is not a fact. Those millions of years of history were never scientifically observed. So it is perfectly rational for Ken Ham to respond to the question by forcing the student to question the logical foundation of their confidence in the premise.

 

I did ask him after the talk how he demonstrated the validity of the historical info about Jesus' death and resurrection. He blurted out a bunch of one-liners, to which I responded, "We're you there?"

And you were right to recognise that the same logical weakness applies to all claims about both the past and the supernatural; namely, confidence in any such claim relies on some element of philosophical faith assumption. The difference between the two circumstances, according to your own account, is that you asked Ken Ham for an argument to support his position – which he proceeded to provide, whereas the student confronted Ken Ham with an unsupported fact claim.

 

Ham's epistemic approach destroys all scientific and historical knowledge

Not at all. It just recognises that investigating historical claims relies on a logically less robust process than the scientific method – and therefore the role of faith presupposition has to be taken into account before accepting claims about the past. It doesn't mean we can't make claims about the past, or provide arguments for our position. It just means there is a broader scope for scepticism of those claims – when compared to the application of the operational scientific method.

 

In fact legal knowledge is greatly injured as well as no one on a jury could every "know' something based on eye-witness testimony

Right. We recognise that historical knowledge suffers this logical weakness so we instruct a jury base their conclusions on the standard of “beyond reasonable doubt”. Because we understand that in the absence of direct observation, there is always some logical scope for doubt. And the further we get away from the events, the less facts we have available, and the more logical scope we have for doubt.

 

Ham is perhaps the Christian equivalent of the plethora of Internet infidels found out on places like YouTube. This is a step below the new atheists in that they are unaware of historic claims, and philosophical claims, and logic in general. Both appeal to a poorly educated audiences focusing on rhetorical flourish alone. (P.S. I have relatives that fall for this Answers in Genesis propaganda)

And now you descend into fallacy – labelling Ken Ham an “infidel”, denigrating the education of his audience (i.e. adhominem), calling the message of his ministry “propaganda” - based on 2 de-contextualised examples (i.e. innuendo, generalisation & contextomy).

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On 12/5/2018 at 2:05 PM, masonlandry said:

Honestly, the most common thing I encounter when theists (really, atheists too, for that matter) debate about evolution is that they don't really have any idea what it is or how it works. ...

Hi Mason, I'd like to respond to your post from my Biblical creationist perspective.

I think I should first qualify that I am reluctant to use the term “evolution” – as it can be used for a suite of concepts (i.e. Natural Selection, speciation, mutations, adaptation, Common Ancestry, changes to allele frequencies etc.) that can all be equivocated to “evolution”. The only one of these my creationism necessarily contests is Common Ancestry. So I generally prefer to use more precise language.

 

theists (really, atheists too, for that matter) debate about evolution is that they don't really have any idea what it is or how it works

I'm glad you recognise that this is a people issue, not a theist issue. On all sides of the debate, there are people with PhD credentials, and others who simply heard something from some guy who says they heard it from someone else – which they thought sounded smart at the time.

 

1.)" You think we came from goo! How can a bunch of chemicals turn into living things!?" This has nothing to do with evolution. This is a criticism of abiogenesis, which is an entirely separate claim. Absolutely feel free to contend with it, but that's not evolution. The theory of evolution by natural selection describes the mechanism by which living organisms diversify over time due to heredity and mutations. Evolution doesn't come into the picture until living things already exist.

There are several problems I have with this statement

The first is that it demonstrates a lack of objectivity. That is, you are failing to consider the premise of the opposing position. The debate compares two models of reality. The Biblical model of reality incorporates a single origin event for the universe, life, and diversity. Just because the secular model separates these events in time doesn't make them “entirely separate” issues.

The secular 'evolutionary' paradigm is ultimately premised on some form of abiogenesis. In 1960, British zoologist and physiologist Gerald Allen Kerkut defined the General Theory of Evolution as “the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form”. So in defending creationism, it is perfectly rational for a creationist to contest the premise of a naturalistic origin of life.

I normally don't address trivial errors, but in a context where you are criticising the opposing position for not understanding the issue, I feel I would leave myself open to criticism if I leave such errors unanswered. So this is mostly irrelevant to your point, but “Natural Selection” represents an entirely different mechanism to “mutations”.

 

2.) "Mutations can't add new information." Yes, they certainly can. The entirety of our DNA consists of only 4 amino acids in various pair combinations. If they are arranged in different ways, they code for different proteins, and this determines your entire biology. If one or more of the amino acids are altered at an allele, it will work differently than it did before, if it still works at all. There are only a handful of ways the mutations occur (translation, deletion, addition, etc.) and only 4 acids to work with, but there are countless combinations that can be created from these changes. If they can change in structure, they can change in output.

Actually, there are only 64 possible codons that can be generated from 4 nucleotides – making only 20 different amino acids. Diversity is manifested in the variety of proteins arising from different combinations of these 20 amino acids.

But to your point, you are dealing with a simplistic argument. In order for current diversity to arise from a common ancestor, there has to be a mechanism generating additive, novel, functional, heritable, adaptively beneficial genes. Additive – Something added to the existing genome; leaving the existing genome undisturbed (i.e. not simply a change to the existing information), Novel - the gene has to be new (i.e. coding for something that has never existed before), Functional – the gene has to do something useful, Heritable – the gene has to exist in the germ line to be passed onto offspring, and Adaptively Beneficial – the gene has to warrant its continued selection and energy expenditure. By analogy, this mechanism would have to add an entirely new chapter of information (i.e. meaningful data) to an existing book – for every unique gene that has ever existed in every biological organism. Yet that kind of genetic change has never been observed in any organism at any scale. Simply changing the existing information (which is what we do observe) can't account for the current, extant diversity arising from a common ancestor.

 

3.) "Microevolution happens but macroevolution doesn't happen" These are the exact same things, only over different periods of times. This is like saying minutes pass, but hours do not pass.

They are absolutely NOT the “same things”. That is why informed creationists discourage the use of this terminology – because it gives the false impression that the differences are merely a matter of scale. They refer to completely different types of genetic changes that putatively result in completely different scales of outcome.

The only types of genetic changes we observe today are the filtering, sorting or destroying of existing information – i.e. the sort of change that might 'evolve' one kind of animal into a different version of the same kind of animal (i.e micro). But no amount of scaling up of these types of changes can ever 'evolve' one kind of organism into a completely different kind of organism (i.e. macro) – no matter how much time is given. That type of change would have to meet all of the conditions I described in my above answer – but has never once been observed in anything.

Note – I'm not requiring an observation of one type of organism to completely 'evolve' into another. I am only seeking an observation of the type of genetic change that would make such an outcome theoretically plausible. Changing allele frequencies, speciations by Natural Selection, sorting, filtering or destroying genetic information can never 'evolve' a cat into an elephant (or to use a real secular claim – can never 'evolve' a four-legged land mammal into a whale). That requires a mechanism facilitating the wholesale addition of completely new, functional, heritable, beneficial genetic information. And that type of genetic change simply hasn't been observed – not even in bacteria which have highly pliable genomes and can be studied over thousands of generations.

 

4.) "I didn't come from an ape." You are an ape. Ape is a taxonomic classification, like a mammal. Saying you didn't come from an ape is exactly like saying you didn't come from a mammal.

Ape is NOT a “taxonomic classification, like a mammal”. Mammalia is a class in the Linnaean classification system. Ape is not. The word “ape” was originally coined to make a distinction between humans and other higher primates. Secularists have changed the connotation for ideological reasons (i.e. to remove the idea that humans should be considered separate to animals – to counter the idea that humans are God's special creation). But that doesn't make the original usage an error.

 

As for other issues commonly discussed when there is contention between science and religion, I often hear "you think we came from nothing?" This is a straw man, as most people who accept the Big Bang theory (which many theists do, as well) don't claim it came out of nothing. Most people I have ever heard discuss it doesn't claim anything about what caused the Big Bang, what happened "before" it

I agree this is a Strawman, but I would wager in most cases it is a response to someone ridiculing the creation model as 'God waving His magic wand' (or some such). That doesn't excuse the fallacy, but it is a far more rational criticism that the Big Bang model has no proposed cause, then that the creation model incorporates a supernatural cause.

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On 12/23/2018 at 9:19 PM, Tristen said:

i.e. the sort of change that might 'evolve' one kind of animal into a different version of the same kind of animal (i.e micro). But no amount of scaling up of these types of changes can ever 'evolve' one kind of organism into a completely different kind of organism (i.e. macro) – no matter how much time is given.

Hello Tristen,

In order to determine whether an adaptation is within a "kind" or has transcended a "kind" relies on our ability to define what a "kind" actually is. Do you have a working definition? If so, how did you derive this definition? How would barriers between kinds be maintained and how could we detect such barriers? Sorry, I have lots of questions about "kinds"...

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6 hours ago, one.opinion said:

Hello Tristen,

In order to determine whether an adaptation is within a "kind" or has transcended a "kind" relies on our ability to define what a "kind" actually is. Do you have a working definition? If so, how did you derive this definition? How would barriers between kinds be maintained and how could we detect such barriers? Sorry, I have lots of questions about "kinds"... 

Hi One,

In order to determine whether an adaptation is within a "kind" or has transcended a "kind" relies on our ability to define what a "kind" actually is

Not at all. Common Ancestry essentially makes the claim that bacteria evolved into whales. That claim conceptually requires a mechanism to make massive, wholesale, sequential additions of completely novel genes to existing genomes. Some theoretical mechanisms for this have been proposed (each with their own conceptual challenges), but no such mechanism has actually been observed. What has been abundantly observed is speciation through filtering, sorting and loss of existing genes – e.g. fish populations changing into fish which are slightly different from their ancestors.

 

Do you have a working definition?

What do you mean by “working definition”? The only utility in any classification system is the ability to categorise things into a logical order. In the Linnaean classification system, Class is defined as the classification level between Phylum and Order. Order is defined as the level between Class and Family etc. There is no ubiquitous feature defining what may or may not belong to these levels. We only approach a more meaningful definition when we get to the bottom level – and even that is debated. You'll only hear the “viable offspring” definition of species in first year biology. After that, you are expected to know that nature is rarely that simplistic.

The definition of a kind is simply the major types/groups of animals created by God during Biblical creation week.

 

how did you derive this definition?

It's from the Hebrew word 'meyn' used in Genesis 1 to distinguish the major divisions of newly-made creatures.

 

How would barriers between kinds be maintained and how could we detect such barriers? Sorry, I have lots of questions about "kinds"... 

Not sure exactly what you mean by maintaining “barriers”. There are generally two main evidences indicating a Biblical kind;

1) The most obvious is the ability of different species to hybridise. For most creationists, that is akin to confirmation that the species descended from the same gene pool (i.e. belong to the same kind).

2) Genomic differentiation. That is, those that belong to the same kind tend to have very similar genomic structures – whereas with unrelated creatures, there is generally an overt distinction in the genomic structure (which is probably why it's not possibly to hybridise them).

No classification system is absolute. As with the Linnaean system, the creationist system fluctuates with increasing knowledge.

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2 hours ago, Tristen said:

Not at all. Common Ancestry essentially makes the claim that bacteria evolved into whales.

This does not address the issue at all. Young Earth Creationists readily admit that change in alleles and their frequencies occurs all the time. But how do we know whether a change has crossed over from one “kind” to another? This also brings to mind a Biblical question. Is there any reason to be sure that “kinds” themselves could not change over time?

24 Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind”; and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

A clear reading would suggest that offspring resemble parents. The Bible does not at all say that no changes in kind could take place over long periods of time.

2 hours ago, Tristen said:

What do you mean by “working definition?

I mean, what constitutes a “kind”? A better question is where would a definition come from? Modern attempts at “baraminology” clearly extend beyond what is given in the Bible. Genesis 1:25 lists three “kinds” - beasts, livestock, and creeping things. What other Bible passages refer to kinds?

 

2 hours ago, Tristen said:

In the Linnaean classification system, Class is defined as the classification level between Phylum and Order. Order is defined as the level between Class and Family etc. There is no ubiquitous feature defining what may or may not belong to these levels.

As I’m sure you are aware, there are defined physical characteristics that were originally used to delineate different taxa. Additionally, reclassification has been needed as genome sequencing data has become increasingly available. These are not just arbitrary terms.

2 hours ago, Tristen said:

Not sure exactly what you mean by maintaining “barriers.

If organisms can only reproduce according to specific kinds, then there must be some type of physical barriers that prevent any differentiation beyond the set “kind”.

2 hours ago, Tristen said:

There are generally two main evidences indicating a Biblical kind;

1) The most obvious is the ability of different species to hybridise. For most creationists, that is akin to confirmation that the species descended from the same gene pool (i.e. belong to the same kind).

But that isn’t at all what modern baraminologists claim.

Often, people are confused into thinking that a “species” is a “kind.” But this isn’t necessarily so.

https://answersingenesis.org/creation-science/baraminology/what-are-kinds-in-genesis/

2 hours ago, Tristen said:

2) Genomic differentiation. That is, those that belong to the same kind tend to have very similar genomic structures – whereas with unrelated creatures, there is generally an overt distinction in the genomic structure (which is probably why it's not possibly to hybridise them).

Do you mean similarity on a sequence level? If so, then that leads back to an earlier question. How would changes in DNA sequence be limited in order for progeny to remain within the same kind?

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4 hours ago, one.opinion said:

This does not address the issue at all. ...

This does not address the issue at all. Young Earth Creationists readily admit that change in alleles and their frequencies occurs all the time. But how do we know whether a change has crossed over from one “kind” to another?

This seems to misunderstand the premise of a kind. Membership of a kind is determined by ancestral relations - no matter what degree of “change” occurs. We might initially misplace species into wrong kinds, but the species itself can't change its ancestry.

The question I was addressing is - what degree of change is possible – given current observational knowledge? Forgetting the terminology of “kinds” for a moment, there is currently no observational justification for confidence that one type of creature can evolve into a completely different type of creature – no matter how much time is given. The mechanisms we do observe simply cannot logically accomplish what is needed for that degree of change. An, as-yet undiscovered mechanism of change would need to be found to make that plausible.

 

The Bible does not at all say that no changes in kind could take place over long periods of time

No it doesn't – and neither do I. But given our current knowledge of genetics and genomics, there is no plausible mechanism for evolving one type of creature into a completely different type of creature (as would be required by Common Ancestry). So again, given our current knowledge, there are limitations to how much change can occur.

 

I mean, what constitutes a “kind”? A better question is where would a definition come from?

A kind is a population, or populations, related by ancestry back to one of God's original, distinct creations.

 

Modern attempts at “baraminology” clearly extend beyond what is given in the Bible

Honestly, I didn't even know there was a word for it (had to google it).

As with many things, scripture gives some information about the natural world, and the rest we have to figure out by experience and observation. I don't think generating models that “extend beyond what is given in the Bible” is a problem – until our ideas conflict with God's word and we presume to know better than He.

 

Genesis 1:25 lists three “kinds” - beasts, livestock, and creeping things. What other Bible passages refer to kinds?

The “beasts, livestock, and creeping things” are not the designated kinds. They are broad groups consisting of kinds.

Gen 1:11-12 speaks of kinds of vegetation

Gen 1:21 speaks of kinds of sea creatures and winged animals

Lev 11 also uses the term frequently for birds and insects and water-dwellers and animals of varying types.

 

As I’m sure you are aware, there are defined physical characteristics that were originally used to delineate different taxa. Additionally, reclassification has been needed as genome sequencing data has become increasingly available. These are not just arbitrary terms”

They are “arbitrary” in terms of a “working definition”. Obviously, creatures are placed into a particular Class because they share some feature with every other creature in the same Class; a feature which is specific to that group of creatures, not the Class-level definition. Creatures from a different Class share a different characteristic. So the level of Class itself has no taxonomic rules; no specific definition – apart from being a level in the classification hierarchy.

Likewise, kinds is just a different classification system attempting to categorise living creatures according to the Biblical premise that God created a variety of creatures independently of each other – as relayed in Genesis 1.

 

If organisms can only reproduce according to specific kinds, then there must be some type of physical barriers that prevent any differentiation beyond the set “kind”

Unless you can figure out a way to change your ancestry, you can't change your kind. There are natural limitations to how much genetic change can occur in a population (given current knowledge of the mechanisms of change) before there is too much damage to maintain viability. What prevents larger scale changes is the lack of a mechanism to accomplish that type of change.

 

But that isn’t at all what modern baraminologists claim.

Often, people are confused into thinking that a “species” is a “kind.” But this isn’t necessarily so

We are dealing with different classification systems based on different principles. There is no reason to assume that kind would be the direct equivalent of any of the levels of the Linnaean hierarchy.

 

Do you mean similarity on a sequence level? If so, then that leads back to an earlier question. How would changes in DNA sequence be limited in order for progeny to remain within the same kind?

You can't logically change your kind.

Not just “sequence”, but structure. You can't just stick any two strands of DNA together – there are several levels of structural compatibility that are required to make them fit. Sometimes minute differences can be tolerated (which is why hybridisation is sometimes possible between closely related species). But overwhelmingly, incompatible DNA is non-viable.

There are obvious patterns of compatibility/non-compatibility throughout the living world.

For example, Parrots represent an Order of many highly diverse species of birds, but molecular analysis of parrots finds that while there are clear phylogenetic relationships within the parrot Order, “they have no close sister relationship with modern birds” (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2727385/). That is an example of a genomic pattern indicating to creationists that parrots are a created kind - i.e share an ancestor back to God's creation. Likewise, genomic analysis reveals a pattern in the molecular research showing that humans were genetically compatible with other members of the Homo genus (e.g. Neanderthal), but not with other primates (either extinct or extant). Such patterns are everywhere in the literature – i.e. of groups that seem closely related (close genetic compatibility) interspersed with overt gaps between unlike groups. Not sure if that answers your question – but that's the sort of thing I was talking about.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Tristen said:

This seems to misunderstand the premise of a kind. Membership of a kind is determined by ancestral relations - no matter what degree of “change” occurs.

This seems to suggest that tremendous degrees of evolution are possible. All that is needed is the claim that a common ancestor existed. All mammals could be a kind, or even all tetrapods.

2 hours ago, Tristen said:

Lev 11 also uses the term frequently for birds and insects and water-dwellers and animals of varying types.

I’m a little confused by the classification if Leviticus 11 gives examples of kinds. Why would bats be classified with birds? Why are insects described as having four feet? If we observe that insects have six feet, why isn’t that “claiming to know more than God”?

3 hours ago, Tristen said:

Not just “sequence”, but structure. You can't just stick any two strands of DNA together – there are several levels of structural compatibility that are required to make them fit.

This is still vague. Biotechnologists have been sticking two strands of DNA together for decades now. Are you talking about karyotype here?

3 hours ago, Tristen said:

For example, Parrots represent an Order of many highly diverse species of birds, but molecular analysis of parrots finds that while there are clear phylogenetic relationships within the parrot Order, “they have no close sister relationship with modern birds” (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2727385/).

This is interesting, but I can’t get the link to work in my phone. A copy/paste doesn’t link to anything. I’ll try later on the computer. How would you answer an argument that this is only begging the question?

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