Question for the theist

[John V]

Case in point john. I've gone back through this thread and read every single post you've made. Not once, when challenged about why you disagree with the inferences drawn from things like (for example) fossil records or common ancestors do you give an answer.

This is an argument from ignorance. My opponents don't get to make bare assertions and claim that they stand unless I refute them. I've politely asked for them to support certain claims, and they haven't been able to. I know that they can't, for example, support the claim that fossils and genetics all point to the same tree. I can support my position, but I shouldn't have to - they're making the claim, they should support it.

Since I've now made a claim, here's some support:
http://www.nature.com/news/phylogeny-rew...on-1.10885

Kevin Peterson grabs a pen and starts to scribble an evolutionary tree on the paper tablecloth of a bar in Hanover, New Hampshire. Drawing upside down to make it easier for me to see, he maps out the standard phylogenetic tale for placental mammals. First, Peterson scratches a line leading to elephants, which branched away from the rest of the placentals around 90 million years ago. Then came dogs, followed by primates (including humans) and finally rodents — all within a frenetic 20 million years. This family tree is backed up by reams of genomic and morphological data, and is well accepted by the palaeontological community. Yet, says Peterson, the tree is all wrong.

A molecular palaeobiologist at nearby Dartmouth College, Peterson has been reshaping phylogenetic trees for the past few years, ever since he pioneered a technique that uses short molecules called microRNAs to work out evolutionary branchings. He has now sketched out a radically different diagram for mammals: one that aligns humans more closely with elephants than with rodents.

“I've looked at thousands of microRNA genes, and I can't find a single example that would support the traditional tree,” he says. The technique “just changes everything about our understanding of mammal evolution”.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...141117.htm

"With this study, we learned two major things," said Sushma Reddy, another lead author and Bucksbaum Postdoctoral Fellow at The Field Museum. "First, appearances can be deceiving. Birds that look or act similar are not necessarily related. Second, much of bird classification and conventional wisdom on the evolutionary relationships of birds is wrong."

These kinds of findings are common. When someone says something like "fossils and genetics all lead to the same thing," it's a giveaway that they get their info from youtube, and are basically just evolution cheerleaders.