What If...?

[theStudent]

Currently, I am doing what was suggested by some on these forums.
I am researching information both for, and against evolution, and trust me - I am doing so objectively.
While I am still researching, I want to put this out, to hear the different views on it.

During my research I discovered that lately, just over the last decade or so, a lot of informations has been surfacing about fake fossils.
In fact it has now become common place for fossils sold at museums to be checked for genuineness.
I find this interesting.

Why now, is this happening?
Could it be that evidence as it always does, is now surfacing?

For example
Remember the dinosaur hoax - the one that was said to be put together using different bones?
It has recently been found out that it wasn't a hoax after all.
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/02/ ... ecies.html

That is quite interesting.

The fossils aren't the only things that were/are claimed to be fake.
There are the drawings, and pictures as well.
Right now, I am going through a very long document considered a case against some of Darwins picture illustrations.
But have you ever come across this one?

Pictures from the past powerfully shape current views of the world. In books, television programs, and websites, new images appear alongside others that have survived from decades ago. Among the most famous are drawings of embryos by the Darwinist Ernst Haeckel in which humans and other vertebrates begin identical, then diverge toward their adult forms. But these icons of evolution are notorious, too: soon after their publication in 1868, a colleague alleged fraud, and Haeckel’s many enemies have repeated the charge ever since. His embryos nevertheless became a textbook staple until, in 1997, a biologist accused him again, and creationist advocates of intelligent design forced his figures out. How could the most controversial pictures in the history of science have become some of the most widely seen?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Haeckel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Haec ... eks4-6.jpg
English: The pictures illustrate Ernst Haeckel's biogenetic law. In the beginning embryos of different species look remarkable similar, later different characteristics develop. The images initiated controversies and charges of fraud.

All of this lends to a possibility.
Consdering the fact that fossils can be faked, we must accept the fact that Darwin, and other scientists could have lied.

My question here, isn't whether he did lie or not, but rather, Does this not place evolutionists in the same position as the Christians they claim are believing in fables?

Consider:
Christians accept the Bible, as the word of God.
Here are just a few facts about the Bible.
With estimated total sales of over 5 billion copies, the Bible is widely considered to be the best-selling book of all time.
It has estimated annual sales of 100 million copies.
It has been a major influence on literature and history, especially in the West where the Gutenberg Bible was the first mass-printed book.
It was the first book ever printed using movable type.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible

Archaeological findings of the Dead Sea Scrolls, also called the Qumran Caves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls

The evidence is there however, that the book we hold in our hand today (the Bible), contains information written centuries ago.

Atheist call the book fables - the reason I have yet to find out.
Maybe one of the reasons is that they have not seen God, or seen him write any book - whatever.
So they claim that Christians' belief in them and what they present is blind faith, and belief in stories.

However, is this not the case with those who accept the theory of evolution, where all they have to go by, is what scientists claim to be evidence?

By the way...
No one, to this day have seen them recreate the theories.
Any data they give you on species, is usually what already existed (at least what I have come across so far).
As regards other claims, all we have are pictures, and claimed fossils, which could have been edited.

So evolutionists are really believing what men claim - without any substantial proof of their claim.
How is this different to believing a book?

And what if Darwin, and others lied?


I'm just interested in you different opinions and thoughts, on the above.
Here is a nice short video of someone's opinion. Reasonable too.

[theStudent]

[Replying to post 233 by Clownboat]

I hope this is true, but more importantly, I hope you understand WHY you should never ask it again.

After what you wrote above... Well... You don't even have to hope.
You can bet all your life's possessions, and your life, on it.

[theStudent]

Now I am compelled to talk to myself... again.

Does a tree grow in the air?
Only in fairytail books, on some cloud or ?

If a tree has no root, can it grow?
No silly. What are you - nuts?

If a tree's cannot produce branches, will it produce leaves?
Say what? Something I wonder why you ask such ridiculous questions.

If something has no root, no stalk, no branches, and no leaves, is it a tree?
Are you serious... Medic!!!

Root

Last universal ancestor

Hypothesis
In 1859, Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in which he twice stated the hypothesis that there was only one progenitor for all life forms. In the summation he states, "Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed." The very last sentence is a restatement of the hypothesis: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one."

When the LUA was hypothesized, cladograms based on genetic distance between living cells indicated that Archaea split early from the rest of life. This was inferred from the fact that all known archaeans were highly resistant to environmental extremes such as high salinity, temperature or acidity, and led some scientists to suggest that the LUA evolved in areas like the deep ocean vents, where such extremes prevail today. Archaea, however, were discovered in less hostile environments and are now believed to be more closely related to eukaryotes than bacteria, although many details are still unknown.

In 2010, based on "the vast array of molecular sequences now available from all domains of life," a formal test of universal common ancestry was published. The formal test favored the existence of a universal common ancestor over a wide class of alternative hypotheses that included horizontal gene transfer. [etc. etc. etc.]

Location of the root

The most commonly accepted location of the root of the tree of life is between a monophyletic domain Bacteria and a clade formed by Archaea and Eukaryota of what is referred to as the "traditional tree of life" based on several molecular studies starting with C. Woese. A very small minority of studies have concluded differently, namely that the root is in the Domain Bacteria, either in the phylum Firmicutes or that the phylum Chloroflexi is basal to a clade with Archaea+Eukaryotes and the rest of Bacteria as proposed by Thomas Cavalier-Smith.

[url=file:///C:/Users/John/Downloads/debating/evolutionTheories/Evolutionary%20history%20of%20life%20-%20Wikipedia,%20the%20free%20encyclopedia.mht]Evolutionary history of life[/url]

Origins of life on Earth
Biologists reason that all living organisms on Earth must share a single last universal ancestor, because it would be virtually impossible that two or more separate lineages could have independently developed the many complex biochemical mechanisms common to all living organisms. As previously mentioned the earliest organisms for which fossil evidence is available are bacteria. The lack of fossil or geochemical evidence for earlier organisms has left plenty of scope for hypotheses...

Life "seeded" from elsewhere
There are three main versions of the "seeded from elsewhere" hypothesis: from elsewhere in our Solar System via fragments knocked into space by a large meteor impact, in which case the most credible sources are Mars and Venus; by alien visitors, possibly as a result of accidental contamination by microorganisms that they brought with them; and from outside the Solar System but by natural means.[Interesting]

Scientists are divided over the likelihood of life arising independently on Mars, or on other planets in our galaxy.

Independent emergence on Earth
Research on how life might have emerged from non-living chemicals focuses on three possible starting points: self-replication, an organism's ability to produce offspring that are very similar to itself; metabolism, its ability to feed and repair itself; and external cell membranes, which allow food to enter and waste products to leave, but exclude unwanted substances. Research on abiogenesis still has a long way to go, since theoretical and empirical approaches are only beginning to make contact with each other.

...and on, and on, and on...
Replication first: RNA world
Metabolism first: Iron–sulfur world
Membranes first: Lipid world
The clay hypothesis

No starting point huh?
From nothing to a single celled organism? Never happened.
Do the math.
Zero ones = zero (0 x 1 = 0), or one nothing is still nothing (1 x 0 = 0).
Zero millions equal zero (0 x 1, 000, 000 = 0), or one million nothing is still nothing (1, 000, 000 x 0 - 0).

Common ancestor - No Root


Branch

Mutation

By effect on fitness[edit]
See also: Fitness (biology)
In applied genetics, it is usual to speak of mutations as either harmful or beneficial.

A harmful, or deleterious, mutation decreases the fitness of the organism.
A beneficial, or advantageous mutation increases the fitness of the organism. Mutations that promotes traits that are desirable, are also called beneficial. In theoretical population genetics, it is more usual to speak of mutations as deleterious or advantageous than harmful or beneficial.
A neutral mutation has no harmful or beneficial effect on the organism. Such mutations occur at a steady rate, forming the basis for the molecular clock. In the neutral theory of molecular evolution, neutral mutations provide genetic drift as the basis for most variation at the molecular level.
A nearly neutral mutation is a mutation that may be slightly deleterious or advantageous, although most nearly neutral mutations are slightly deleterious.
Distribution of fitness effects[edit]

Attempts have been made to infer the distribution of fitness effects (DFE) using mutagenesis experiments and theoretical models applied to molecular sequence data. DFE, as used to determine the relative abundance of different types of mutations (i.e., strongly deleterious, nearly neutral or advantageous), is relevant to many evolutionary questions, such as the maintenance of genetic variation, the rate of genomic decay, the maintenance of outcrossing sexual reproduction as opposed to inbreeding and the evolution of sex and genetic recombination. In summary, the DFE plays an important role in predicting evolutionary dynamics. A variety of approaches have been used to study the DFE, including theoretical, experimental and analytical methods.

One of the earliest theoretical studies of the distribution of fitness effects was done by Motoo Kimura, an influential theoretical population geneticist. His neutral theory of molecular evolution proposes that most novel mutations will be highly deleterious, with a small fraction being neutral. Hiroshi Akashi more recently proposed a bimodal model for the DFE, with modes centered around highly deleterious and neutral mutations. Both theories agree that the vast majority of novel mutations are neutral or deleterious and that advantageous mutations are rare, which has been supported by experimental results. One example is a study done on the DFE of random mutations in vesicular stomatitis virus.[47] Out of all mutations, 39.6% were lethal, 31.2% were non-lethal deleterious, and 27.1% were neutral. Another example comes from a high throughput mutagenesis experiment with yeast.[52] In this experiment it was shown that the overall DFE is bimodal, with a cluster of neutral mutations, and a broad distribution of deleterious mutations.

Though relatively few mutations are advantageous, those that are play an important role in evolutionary changes. Like neutral mutations, weakly selected advantageous mutations can be lost due to random genetic drift, but strongly selected advantageous mutations are more likely to be fixed. Knowing the DFE of advantageous mutations may lead to increased ability to predict the evolutionary dynamics. Theoretical work on the DFE for advantageous mutations has been done by John H. Gillespie and H. Allen Orr. They proposed that the distribution for advantageous mutations should be exponential under a wide range of conditions, which, in general, has been supported by experimental studies, at least for strongly selected advantageous mutations.

Mutation rates[edit]
Mutation rates vary substantially across species, and the evolutionary forces that generally determine mutation is the subject of ongoing investigation.

Mutations are random

Researchers have performed many experiments in this area. Though results can be interpreted in several ways, none unambiguously support directed mutation. Nevertheless, scientists are still doing research that provides evidence relevant to this issue.

In addition, experiments have made it clear that many mutations are in fact random, and did not occur because the organism was placed in a situation where the mutation would be useful. For example, if you expose bacteria to an antibiotic, you will likely observe an increased prevalence of antibiotic resistance. Esther and Joshua Lederberg determined that many of these mutations for antibiotic resistance existed in the population even before the population was exposed to the antibiotic — and that exposure to the antibiotic did not cause those new resistant mutants to appear.

Mutations - No Branches

From a single celled organism to multi-cellular reproductive organisms with complex systems? Never in a zillion years.
Mutations can never be responsible for the complexity of life.
Do it in a lab, and present the evidence to the public. When flies grow toenails.
Perhaps they also have unique fingerprints, like we do. After all, they have DNA.
Show me that too.

Scientific method

Since new theories might be more comprehensive than what preceded them, and thus be able to explain more than previous ones, successor theories might be able to meet a higher standard by explaining a larger body of observations than their predecessors. For example, the theory of evolution explains the diversity of life on Earth, how species adapt to their environments, and many other patterns observed in the natural world; its most recent major modification was unification with genetics to form the modern evolutionary synthesis. In subsequent modifications, it has also subsumed aspects of many other fields such as biochemistry and molecular biology.

A tree isn't a tree, if it has no roots.
Evolution as a scientific theory has not been observed, and it will never be observed. After all how can it - when it doesn't exist.

If you went somewhere, and saw leaves on the ground. You searched and searched, and you found no tree. Would you conclude they came from a donkey?
You mean like... Pin the tail on the donkey? LOL

[Peds nurse]

[Replying to post 207 by theStudent]


Moderator Comment

Hello student! I appreciate your humor, I really do, but unfortunately, it doesn't advance the debate at all. It could even be read as a personal attack, of which I am sure was not your intent. Refrain from personal remarks, and just stick to the debate, and that way no one is in doubt of your intentions.

Carry On!

Please review the Rules.


______________

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[Bust Nak]

Now I am compelled to talk to myself... again.....

You are just contradicting what the articles says, you need to be more explicit if you want to argue against what they say. It's no good just quoting them and disagreeing with them, explain why you disagree with them. Don't just say evolution has no root, tell us why you think explanation of root of evolution you quoted is incorrect.

[Kenisaw]

[Replying to post 222 by theStudent]

Oh sweet god...the 'it's just a theory!" line? I thought you said before you had studied all this! Try looking up next what a scientific theory is, NOT what the common parlance of theory is. These are two different things.
Do you reject gravity because what we have is a 'theory of gravity'? A theory is the highest status one can get to in science.

Pleaase note, I did not say scientific theory.
I am already aware that it is a scientific theory.
I said theory.

I'm sure you know the difference, but just in case you forgot regular English, due to scientific indoctrination.

Scientific theory

Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge.

It is important to note that the definition of a "scientific theory" (often ambiguously contracted to "theory" for the sake of brevity, including in this page) as used in the disciplines of science is significantly different from, and in contrast to, the common vernacular usage of the word "theory". As used in everyday non-scientific speech, "theory" implies that something is an unsubstantiated and speculative guess, conjecture, or hypothesis; such a usage is the opposite of a scientific theory. These different usages are comparable to the differing, and often opposing, usages of the term "prediction" in science (less ambiguously called a "scientific prediction") versus "prediction" in non-scientific vernacular speech, the latter of which may even imply a mere hope.

So to be clear...
The theory of Evolution is still nothing more than a theory - an unsubstantiated and speculative guess, conjecture, or hypothesis - a story, left unfinished - from beginning to somewhere.
It hasn't even gotten halfway through the scientific method.

See Evolution as fact and theory for more clarification.

For the life of me I can't figure out why you linked us to an article that makes a case that evolution is a valid scientific theory...

The vast majority of scientists (based on those polls I mentioned to you in a previous thread) agree that the theory of evolution is so sound and valid that no realistic doubt remains as to its veracity.

If the theory of evolution hadn't gone through the scientific method yet then why don't you explain to us in detail where it has faltered. Can you do that for us, Student? (Oh, and if you try to claim you already did, then tell us the post #)...

[Kenisaw]

[Replying to post 226 by Bust Nak]

But the text in bold is agreed upon by all of science, even the part that you accused of being biased. The problem is with the un-bolded part. Creation is not an explanation, let alone an acceptable one.

"It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

You should know this, you've quoted it yourself.

Thank you.
You strike me as an honest man.
I like honesty.

Regarding my question on origin of species, I don't know if you picked it up, or not, but I was not interested in anything about Darwin's book.
I was seeking to highlight the facts.
Origin of species, is the same thing as origin of life.

No, that is YOUR misunderstanding of the words, or YOUR intentional word play to make it out to be something that it is not.

The first life forms were all the same. There was no "species" because there were no different creatures. Once two separate genetic populations existed that were distinct enough from one another, you had "species".

Darwin does not try to explain how life first started. I've told you to read his book, but you are "not interested in anything about Darwin's book." Yet you think you can tell everyone else what "origin of species" means? I can't decide if that is ignorant, arrogant, or deceitful...

According to Darwin, a single celled, living organism gave birth to all living species.
I don't care what biological name he gives them. If he called them species, taxon, whatever.
They are a group of life forms. A kind of, or form of life.

So whether the species is a team, or a book, containing players or pages, they all make up the whole.
So as the theory goes, so does the book - all life descended with modification from a putative single primitive source.

Or maybe I should give Darwin a break, because it may well be the men that came after him that made some altercations, since theories don't often stay the same.

Or maybe you should read his book....

Darwinism

...all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.

Britannica

Evolution, theory in biology postulating that the various types of plants, animals, and other living things on Earth have their origin in other preexisting types...

Wikipedia

All life on Earth shares a common ancestor known as the last universal ancestor...

Yes. I think I will do that.
Currently I have downloaded, and started to look at his book.
So I will see how far adjusted his theory is - if it has been.

Glad to hear it!

[Kenisaw]

[Replying to post 222 by theStudent]

Oh sweet god...the 'it's just a theory!" line? I thought you said before you had studied all this! Try looking up next what a scientific theory is, NOT what the common parlance of theory is. These are two different things.
Do you reject gravity because what we have is a 'theory of gravity'? A theory is the highest status one can get to in science.

Pleaase note, I did not say scientific theory.
I am already aware that it is a scientific theory.
I said theory.

I'm sure you know the difference, but just in case you forgot regular English, due to scientific indoctrination.

Scientific theory

Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge.

It is important to note that the definition of a "scientific theory" (often ambiguously contracted to "theory" for the sake of brevity, including in this page) as used in the disciplines of science is significantly different from, and in contrast to, the common vernacular usage of the word "theory". As used in everyday non-scientific speech, "theory" implies that something is an unsubstantiated and speculative guess, conjecture, or hypothesis; such a usage is the opposite of a scientific theory. These different usages are comparable to the differing, and often opposing, usages of the term "prediction" in science (less ambiguously called a "scientific prediction") versus "prediction" in non-scientific vernacular speech, the latter of which may even imply a mere hope.

So to be clear...
The theory of Evolution is still nothing more than a theory - an unsubstantiated and speculative guess, conjecture, or hypothesis - a story, left unfinished - from beginning to somewhere.
It hasn't even gotten halfway through the scientific method.

See Evolution as fact and theory for more clarification.

This is a bald faced lie. Hasn't gotten halfway? So I suppose then that all the scientific papers that have been published supporting it are just imaginary?

Prove the lie then.
So far, these are the theories that has been observed.

• Adaptation: Any heritable characteristic of an organism that improves its ability to survive and reproduce in its environment. Also used to describe the process of genetic change within a population, as influenced by natural selection. Alternatively, some heritable feature of an individual's phenotype that improves its chances of survival and reproduction in the existing environment.
• Variation or diversity (or genetic diversity): A measure of the possible choices of different information at a gene. For example, whether it codes for brown or blue eyes.
• Over-reproduction: organism populations tend to reproduce beyond the environment's ability to support them ultimately encountering a limit on population size.
• Natural selection: The differential survival and reproduction of classes of organisms that differ from one another in one or more usually heritable characteristics. Through this process, the forms of organisms in a population that are best adapted to their local environment increase in frequency relative to less well-adapted forms over a number of generations. This difference in survival and reproduction is not due to chance.
  

None of them prove ToE - never observed.
Otherwise show me.

It has been observed in the fossil record. It has been observed in the genomes of living things. It has been observed in the studies of many succeeding generations of creatures like E Coli, fruit flies, and bacteriums.

You, Student, do not understand what "observe" means in the scientific method. You think a human has to physically be present at the moment something happens in order for it to be "observed". But evidence left over from events allow us to observe what happened. Fossils are evidence from long ago. Genomes are evidence from long ago AND today. If it were required that a human physically observe every event than explain how anyone ever goes to jail on forensic evidence and no eyewitness report....

I can only assume you got that from a website of one of your creationist masters since cultists often have this incorrect definition.

[Kenisaw]

[Replying to post 227 by Kenisaw]

Everyone will notice that once again Student fails to address specific points of my reply. He can't (or won't) explain how one quote from one scientist equates to "many scientists do not accept the evidence". He fails to discuss specific fields of research and the findings within them. But he did recently post a link to an article at the institute for creation research as if that is a scientific source....

Why do I have to go into all of that, when I can just kick at the root - if there is one - and everything crumbles.

Because it is one opinion, and for every opinion like that there are 99 others that disagree. And those opinions either offer up no alternate explanation for the change we see if the fossil record, in genomes, and in live experiments in the lab, or the explanation they offer up is a god creature. You are one of the god creature types. If you don't think all the evidence points to evolution, and points to a god creature, so be it. So now prove your god creature, and prove that this god creature actually created stuff (because it could exist and not did any of it, that is a possibility). Let's see your evidence...

And this is the point where every single cultist has nothing. I'll go out on a limb and say you won't be any different.

Note. Again...

Have sufficient fossils been found to draw a sound conclusion?
No.

Is there any hard evidence?
Not yet.

Let's wait then.
While I provide some against.

There's lots of hard evidence. That is obvious because it's been so hard for some cultists to understand it.

[theStudent]

Now I am compelled to talk to myself... again.....

You are just contradicting what the articles says, you need to be more explicit if you want to argue against what they say. It's no good just quoting them and disagreeing with them, explain why you disagree with them. Don't just say evolution has no root, tell us why you think explanation of root of evolution you quoted is incorrect.

What is this???
A joke? LOL.

Root
Last universal ancestor

Hypothesis
In 1859, Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in which he twice stated the hypothesis that there was only one progenitor for all life forms. In the summation he states, "Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed." The very last sentence is a restatement of the hypothesis: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one."

When the LUA was hypothesized, cladograms based on genetic distance between living cells indicated that Archaea split early from the rest of life. This was inferred from the fact that all known archaeans were highly resistant to environmental extremes such as high salinity, temperature or acidity, and led some scientists to suggest that the LUA evolved in areas like the deep ocean vents, where such extremes prevail today. Archaea, however, were discovered in less hostile environments and are now believed to be more closely related to eukaryotes than bacteria, although many details are still unknown.

In 2010, based on "the vast array of molecular sequences now available from all domains of life," a formal test of universal common ancestry was published. The formal test favored the existence of a universal common ancestor over a wide class of alternative hypotheses that included horizontal gene transfer. [etc. etc. etc.]

Location of the root
The most commonly accepted location of the root of the tree of life is between a monophyletic domain Bacteria and a clade formed by Archaea and Eukaryota of what is referred to as the "traditional tree of life" based on several molecular studies starting with C. Woese. A very small minority of studies have concluded differently, namely that the root is in the Domain Bacteria, either in the phylum Firmicutes or that the phylum Chloroflexi is basal to a clade with Archaea+Eukaryotes and the rest of Bacteria as proposed by Thomas Cavalier-Smith.

Evolutionary history of life

Origins of life on Earth
Biologists reason that all living organisms on Earth must share a single last universal ancestor, because it would be virtually impossible that two or more separate lineages could have independently developed the many complex biochemical mechanisms common to all living organisms. As previously mentioned the earliest organisms for which fossil evidence is available are bacteria. The lack of fossil or geochemical evidence for earlier organisms has left plenty of scope for hypotheses...

[These are just some of the hypotheses]

Life "seeded" from elsewhere
There are three main versions of the "seeded from elsewhere" hypothesis: from elsewhere in our Solar System via fragments knocked into space by a large meteor impact, in which case the most credible sources are Mars and Venus; by alien visitors, possibly as a result of accidental contamination by microorganisms that they brought with them; and from outside the Solar System but by natural means.[Interesting]

Scientists are divided over the likelihood of life arising independently on Mars, or on other planets in our galaxy.

Independent emergence on Earth
Research on how life might have emerged from non-living chemicals focuses on three possible starting points: self-replication, an organism's ability to produce offspring that are very similar to itself; metabolism, its ability to feed and repair itself; and external cell membranes, which allow food to enter and waste products to leave, but exclude unwanted substances. Research on abiogenesis still has a long way to go, since theoretical and empirical approaches are only beginning to make contact with each other.

...and on, and on, and on...
Replication first: RNA world
Metabolism first: Iron–sulfur world
Membranes first: Lipid world
The clay hypothesis

hypotheses

1. A proposal intended to explain certain facts or observations
2. A tentative insight into the natural world; a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena
3. A message expressing an opinion based on incomplete evidence


If I said there must be an invisible fire burning somewhere in the earth's atmosphere, I think that would be a hypothesis - no matter how crazy it sounds.
As the above definition shows, it is not a proven fact. It has to be tested.
Therefore, the idea of a last universal common ancestor is an idea inbeded in the minds of some individuals.

Hence, the so called evolutionary tree(s) of life has...


No starting point huh?
From nothing to a single celled organism? Never happened - except in the minds of some.
Do the math.
Zero ones = zero (0 x 1 = 0), or one nothing is still nothing (1 x 0 = 0).
Zero millions equal zero (0 x 1, 000, 000 = 0), or one million nothing is still nothing (1, 000, 000 x 0 - 0).


Summary
No Common ancestor - No Root

[theStudent]

Branch
Mutation

By effect on fitness[edit]
See also: Fitness (biology)
In applied genetics, it is usual to speak of mutations as either harmful or beneficial.

A harmful, or deleterious, mutation decreases the fitness of the organism.


A beneficial, or advantageous mutation increases the fitness of the organism. Mutations that promotes traits that are desirable, are also called beneficial. In theoretical population genetics, it is more usual to speak of mutations as deleterious or advantageous than harmful or beneficial.

A neutral mutation has no harmful or beneficial effect on the organism. Such mutations occur at a steady rate, forming the basis for the molecular clock. In the neutral theory of molecular evolution, neutral mutations provide genetic drift as the basis for most variation at the molecular level.


A nearly neutral mutation is a mutation that may be slightly deleterious or advantageous, although most nearly neutral mutations are slightly deleterious.
Distribution of fitness effects[edit]

Attempts have been made to infer the distribution of fitness effects (DFE) using mutagenesis experiments and theoretical models applied to molecular sequence data. DFE, as used to determine the relative abundance of different types of mutations (i.e., strongly deleterious, nearly neutral or advantageous), is relevant to many evolutionary questions, such as the maintenance of genetic variation, the rate of genomic decay, the maintenance of outcrossing sexual reproduction as opposed to inbreeding and the evolution of sex and genetic recombination. In summary, the DFE plays an important role in predicting evolutionary dynamics.


A variety of approaches have been used to study the DFE, including theoretical, experimental and analytical methods.

One of the earliest theoretical studies of the distribution of fitness effects was done by Motoo Kimura, an influential theoretical population geneticist. His neutral theory of molecular evolution proposes that most novel mutations will be highly deleterious, with a small fraction being neutral.


Hiroshi Akashi more recently proposed a bimodal model for the DFE, with modes centered around highly deleterious and neutral mutations. Both theories agree that the vast majority of novel mutations are neutral or deleterious and that advantageous mutations are rare, which has been supported by experimental results.


One example is a study done on the DFE of random mutations in vesicular stomatitis virus. Out of all mutations, 39.6% were lethal, 31.2% were non-lethal deleterious, and 27.1% were neutral. Another example comes from a high throughput mutagenesis experiment with yeast. In this experiment it was shown that the overall DFE is bimodal, with a cluster of neutral mutations, and a broad distribution of deleterious mutations.



Though relatively few mutations are advantageous, those that are play an important role in evolutionary changes. Like neutral mutations, weakly selected advantageous mutations can be lost due to random genetic drift, but strongly selected advantageous mutations are more likely to be fixed.


Knowing the DFE of advantageous mutations may lead to increased ability to predict the evolutionary dynamics. Theoretical work on the DFE for advantageous mutations has been done by John H. Gillespie and H. Allen Orr. They proposed that the distribution for advantageous mutations should be exponential under a wide range of conditions, which, in general, has been supported by experimental studies, at least for strongly selected advantageous mutations.


Mutation rates[edit]
Mutation rates vary substantially across species, and the evolutionary forces that generally determine mutation is the subject of ongoing investigation.

Mutations are random

Researchers have performed many experiments in this area. Though results can be interpreted in several ways, none unambiguously support directed mutation. Nevertheless, scientists are still doing research that provides evidence relevant to this issue.

In addition, experiments have made it clear that many mutations are in fact random, and did not occur because the organism was placed in a situation where the mutation would be useful. For example, if you expose bacteria to an antibiotic, you will likely observe an increased prevalence of antibiotic resistance. Esther and Joshua Lederberg determined that many of these mutations for antibiotic resistance existed in the population even before the population was exposed to the antibiotic — and that exposure to the antibiotic did not cause those new resistant mutants to appear.

Directed mutagenesis

Directed mutagenesis, also known as directed mutation, is a hypothesis proposing that organisms can respond to environmental stresses through directing mutations to certain genes or areas of the genome.

Mutations are random
Mutation
Mutations result from damage to DNA which is not repaired, errors in the process of replication, or from the insertion or deletion of segments of DNA by mobile genetic elements.

Neutral theory of molecular evolution
The neutral theory of molecular evolution holds that at the molecular level most evolutionary changes and most of the variation within and between species is not caused by natural selection but by genetic drift of mutant alleles that are neutral.

Most mutations are damaging or harmful.
Few mutations are neutral which is one that does not affect an organism's ability to survive and reproduce.



From a single celled organism to multi-cellular reproductive organisms with complex systems?

Never in a zillion years.

Mutations can never be responsible for the complexity of life.
Experiments on species of flies and cattle did not produce birds.
They produced mutant sick flies, mutant dead flies, and mutant living flies.
Same with the cattle.
Variation of a trait that is already there, is not evidence leading to imagined LUCA.
Evidence of a mutant bird man would be not nice, but acceptable.
Do it in a lab, and present the evidence to the public.

When flies grow toenails.
Perhaps they also have unique fingerprints, like we do. After all, they have DNA.
Show me that too.

No Mutations to new species, or complex systems - No Branch


A modified and enhanced theory of evolution.
Scientific method

Since new theories might be more comprehensive than what preceded them, and thus be able to explain more than previous ones, successor theories might be able to meet a higher standard by explaining a larger body of observations than their predecessors. For example, the theory of evolution explains the diversity of life on Earth, how species adapt to their environments, and many other patterns observed in the natural world; its most recent major modification was unification with genetics to form the modern evolutionary synthesis. In subsequent modifications, it has also subsumed aspects of many other fields such as biochemistry and molecular biology.

Testing... Testing... Testing...

A tree isn't a tree, if it has no roots.
Evolution as a scientific theory has not been observed, and it will never be observed. After all how can it - when it doesn't exist.

Well... What do you think?
What do I think about what?
Ahh. Never mind.


Notice how generous I am being - at the expense of my time.
I think I have already done enough to present my arguments though.
It's not for me to do all the hard work, while you guys sit back, and twiddle your thumbs, while looking for something to question my ability to understand, in order to create a merry-go-round.
The info here is as clear as day.
If what I say after the quotes is unfounded, highight it, and I will address it.