Beating a dead horse- Nested Hierarchy

First so that when Zachriel misrepresents this post it will be obvious:

Common Descent refers to the premise that all of the extant living organisms owe their collective common ancestry to some unknown popuklation(s) of single-celled organisms.

common descent refers to the premise that I am directly related to my parents and my children. There are subsequent degrees of separation in both directions, each with varying degrees of genetic connectivity.

My only argument is using nested hieararchy as evidence for Capital C capital D, ie Common Descent. The scientific reasosn and references have been provided that demonstrate traits can be lost. And if the premise of Common Descent is true traits can also be gained. That fact alone says that a nested hierarchy is not an expected outcome of Common Descent.


However, The MAIN reason NH is NOT an expected outcome of common descent- NO ANCESTRAL OR TRANSITIONAL FORMS CAN BE PERMITTED TO SURVIVE (page 136 of "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis"). For if they do that would do away with the nice neat distinctive divisions as then the classes and traits would be blurred due to overlapping.

Confirmed by Darwin:

Extinction, as we have seen in the fourth chapter, has played an important part in defining and widening the intervals between the several groups in each class. We may thus account for the distinctness of whole classes from each other- for instance, of birds from all other vertebrate classes from each other- by the belief that many ancient forms of life have been utterly lost, through which the early progenitors of birds were formerly connected with the early progenitors of the other and at that time less differentiated vertebrate classes.

Zachriel's response- ignore that and instead falsely accuse me of not understanding nested hierarchy.

Then Zachriel trys deception by attempting a (false) analogy with a real tree. Everyone knows the alleged "tree of life" is just a methaphor, IOW a piece of imagination. And even on that imagined tree all we have to observe are the imagined twigs.

Agassiz:

What we call branches expresses, in fact, a purely ideal connection between animals, the intellectual conception which unites them in creative thought. It seems to me the more we examine the true significance of this kind of group, the more we shall be convinced that they are not founded upon material relations.

With a real tree and its alleged nested hierarchy I could pull off 20 twigs from different branches and no one could even hope to place them back in the correct places.

I also provided the following as a reference:

Nested Hierarchy

Nested hierarchy" refers to the way taxonomic groups fit neatly and completely inside other taxonomic groups. For instance, all bats (order Chiroptera) are mammals. All mammals are vertebrates. Likewise, all whales (order Cetacea) are also mammals, and thus also vertebrates.

While it might seem that this arrangement is obvious and unavoidable, it is not. Taxonomic groups are defined by traits and it should be possible to mix traits from multiple defined groups. An example from classical mythology is the Pegasus, a creature with features defined as both mammal and bird (class Aves). Mammals and birds are both orders, so, if pegasus existed, it would be a violation of the nested hierarchy, a creature that belonged to two seperate groups.

Oops! Did someone say something about a creature with features defined as both mammal and bird?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the platypus

Zachriel's next tactic? Use a nested hierarchy of common descent.