Abaddon:
Sorry Earnest, I was in a hurry this morning...
Apology accepted. We all have our bad days. I came off my bicycle on Friday and am sporting a real bruiser of an eye so as bad days go you are not alone.
First of all, I'm not sure if you are even clear on the term 'mtDNA Eve'.
Make people alive today X0. Make the mothers of those people X1... Make the mothers of X1 = X2...Carry on the regression...Eventually, the population of Xx = 1. That is mtDNA Eve.
Thus mtDNA Eve is a fact, provable mathematically. This is well known.
I have read the article at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/mitoeve.html which explained it in a similar way to yourself but credited Daniel Dennett for the explanation in his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea (Simon and Schuster, 1995).
Well, beyond about 50,000-100,000 years so much degradation of DNA takes place it is not posssible with current techniques to do good work with the surviving DNA. There may be a limit to what is possible even with better technology. This is well known.
Thank you for explaining that. I ought to point out that using the expression "This is well known" adds nothing to the information and is a common tool used by fundamentalists to bolster their arguments. Not that you need to bolster this particular argument, but the ease with which you add these little put-downs certainly identifies you with the fundamentalist class.
Now, quite why you want to know about mtDNA to determine whether a fossil is hominid or simian, when you would get as good an answer from 'normal' DNA, is why I was such a grouchy camper.
You clearly misunderstood my question but I didn't explain it sufficiently at first. My question was not whether we could distinguish between hominids and simians by using mitochondrial DNA. But whether we could determine from fossils (either hominid or simian) whether their mitochondrial DNA could be used to identify them as our ancestors. As I said in my last post :
It occurred to me that if we could identify mitochondrial DNA in the fossil record then we could say with certainty whether or not a distant mitochondrial Eve was an apelike creature, and further back a small rodent.
You then said :
Thus my analogy about a painter. It was obvious to one extent or the other, you didn't know what you were talking about. You might object to me saying this, and I know why you object to me saying it - it's called the democratic fallacy; that everyone's opinion is as good as everyone elses'.
Oh dear, fundamentalism at its best. First, set up the straw man with an assertion "You might object to me saying this"..., then make it a fact "...and I know why you object to me saying it", and then knock it down. As your original premise (that I didn't know what I was talking about) was about a question I asked, and a question that you misunderstood in your morning haste, I do wonder why you bothered to reply at all. If I knew the facts I would not have asked the question so why should I object if you know more than I do on this subject?
This is demonstrably untrue, but time and time again I have had to contend with people who, to one extent or the other, didn't know what they were talking about, and were using this 'position of authority' to make sweeping statements or assertations that they would not make if they knew their subject.
Two straw men in two sentences.
[Mitochondrial DNA] clearly indicates that the Biblical account of creation is [genealogically incomplete], as mtDNA Eve lived long long before any Biblical Eve.
Agreed.
But beyond giving a time point for that common ancestor, it doesn't prove diddly either way as regards origins. You are wrong.
This time you misunderstood something as clear as day. I said that a common female ancestor "can either point to an ancestor that evolved or one that was created". In other words, a common female ancestor doesn't prove diddly either way as regards origins. I'm glad we agree.
I know my strengths!...time again Creationist apologetics try to pass themselves off as knowledgable when they are not.
Another straw man.
Your complaining about this is pointless...
And another...actually it's a repeat of the first straw man some paragraphs above.
Avoiding this particular Gordian knot is something believers in supernatural entities are VERY good at. It convinces them, at any rate...
And another...
Oh, and how can I be a fundamentalist...
Regards,
Earnest