Phylogeny

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A typical Evolutionist cladogram.

Phylogeny is a pseudo-scientific concept that describes the alleged relationships between groups of animals as understood by ancestor/descendant history, so that groups are linked together on the basis of the recency of their supposed common ancestry. According to some evolutionists this is assessed primarily by the recognition of shared derived characters. The pattern of evolutionary relationships within and between groups can be depicted in the form of a branching diagram called cladograms, which are like genealogies of species.

Evolutionists often argue that not only is phylogeny important for understanding paleontology, however, many Evolutionist claims about paleontology have been shown to be false (such as denialism about the Great Flood for example). Many groups of organisms are now extinct, but the mere presence of their fossils does not show that they all evovled from a common ancestor. Despite this, Darwinists often fill in the gaps and extrapolate results to fit the preconceived picture they have already agreed upon.

Evolutionist Ernst Haeckel is well known for his claim that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," meaning that organisms pass through stages in development that mirror their evolutionary history. He produced fraudlent drawings, such as the one pictured, to support this view. Evolutionary biologists maintain that other evidence supports this conclusion, albeit not as strongly as Haeckel suspected.

Phylogenetics

Phylogenetics, the science of phylogeny, is one part of the larger field of systematics, which also includes taxonomy. Taxonomy is the science of naming and classifying the diversity of organisms. Although Evolutionists have recently attempted to conform the accepted Linnaean system of taxonomy to alleged but unproven common ancestry theories, the Linnaean system is arguably better because it recognizes the God-given distinction between different species of animal.

Many problems in computational biology are inspired by work in phylogenetics and systematics, several of which have been shown to be NP-complete. However, this does not necessarily mean that phylogenetics is true about animals.

See also