Thanks to website feedback, these arguments have been retracted by their author.
The Twin-Nested Hierarchy
Proponents of Evolution say that because two objective hierarchies of life have been created from different data (phylogenetics and molecular data) and both these hierarchies are identical, Universal Common Descent must be true.
There are two problems with this. First, the claim that these hierarchies are objective. They say it's objective because no attributes are given arbitrary weight over another, but that is incorrect: more weight is arbitrarily given to complexity than simplicity. For all an advocate of Universal Common Descent knows, the trees could be backwards, and in actuality all life devolved to the same form! |
Secondly, and most importantly, circular logic is
involved. Similar life forms have similar DNA; this is a fact we can
observe. But just because they have similar DNA doesn't mean some
evolved from others. In other words, just because animals are similar,
doesn't mean they are related through a family tree.
So just because the phylogenetic tree and the molecular tree line up doesn't prove Common Descent. It only proves that animals with similar genes look similar to each other, and this can be known without using the trees. To make the claim that the identicalness of the two trees proves that Common Descent is true uses circular logic, because it assumes that similarities imply a common ancestor, which assumes that Common Descent is true before the analysis between the two trees is even made. |