A new method for computing evolutionary trees may revolutionize evolutionary biology. That's good because evolutionary biology needs some revolutionizing. So far its fundamental predictions have consistently turned out to be false. Indeed, at evolutionary biology's very core, the idea of an evolutionary tree is problematic given the data, and even some evolutionists are suggesting the "tree thinking" may not be useful. But the new research isn't likely to help on that score. What the research does enable is the creation of erroneous results at a much faster pace."Detailed, accurate evolutionary trees that reveal the relatedness of living things can now be determined much faster" is how one report summarizes the new research. Well, the new trees certainly will be computed with much greater speed, and they will be detailed. But will they really "reveal the relatedness of living things"?
Such high confidence in the face of poor data fits is not limited to science writers. Evolutionists routinely make such absurd claims. In spite of such confidence, the biological data present an abundance of outlier data that make no sense on the evolutionary assumption that all the species are related via a tree (or a bush, or whatever the latest shape is that evolutionists are sure of).
For instance, species that seem to be highly similar actually have substantial differences (even variants within the same species!). And species that seem quite different actually have profound similarities. The outliers are far outside any evolutionary explanation, aside from the usual tautologies about how it turns out that rapid change occurs all the time, hmmm, and about evolution having a universal toolkit or some such (I wish I had one of those).
One of example, of many, is the eye of the squid and human. These incredibly complex, intricate designs are strikingly similar, and cannot be due to a common ancestor. Nor can they be due to a similar environment (though even if so that wouldn't get us very far). It would be like finding the same Rube Goldberg device on different planets. But evolutionists are absolutely sure these vision systems evolved, no question about it.
The idea that the species evolved according to common descent, along some sort of evolutionary tree, is not motivated by the evidence. It is motivated by the assumption that evolution is true, which in turn is motivated by religious and philosophical assumptions. Religion drives science, and it matters.
