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But Isn’t There a Consilience of Data That Corroborates Common Descent?

In my previous post, we saw that Eugenie Koonin argued that a formal test of universal common ancestry (UCA) “is unlikely to be feasible” but yet he claimed that the evidence in support of UCA “by comparative genomics is overwhelming.” Such thinking is common among evolutionists, who seek to to demonstrate UCA by finding a consilience of multiple lines of evidence in favor of it. In his Nature paper, Douglas Theobald similarly seeks to support UCA through a consilience of multiple lines of evidence:

UCA is now supported by a wealth of evidence from many independent sources, including: (1) the agreement between phylogeny and biogeography; (2) the correspondence between phylogeny and the palaeontological record; (3) the existence of numerous predicted transitional fossils; (4) the hierarchical classification of morphological characteristics; (5) the marked similarities of biological structures with different functions (that is, homologies); and (6) the congruence of morphological and molecular phylogenies.

(Douglas L. Theobald, “A formal test of the theory of universal common ancestry,” Nature, Vol. 465:219-222 (May 13, 2010).)

Dr. Theobald might have had a point, were it not for the fact that:

Casey Luskin

Associate Director and Senior Fellow, Center for Science and Culture
Casey Luskin is a geologist and an attorney with graduate degrees in science and law, giving him expertise in both the scientific and legal dimensions of the debate over evolution. He earned his PhD in Geology from the University of Johannesburg, and BS and MS degrees in Earth Sciences from the University of California, San Diego, where he studied evolution extensively at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. His law degree is from the University of San Diego, where he focused his studies on First Amendment law, education law, and environmental law.

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