Cladistics

From CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science

This cladogram shows the assumed evolutionary relationship among various insect groups. In such cladograms, the length of the horizontal lines indicates time elapsed

Cladistics is a classification system for species which seeks to determine how different species are related. Evolutionary cladistics is based on the hypothesis of common descent, or the belief that all life on Earth is related. Creationist cladistics, on the other hand, is based on the hypothesis of created kinds, or the idea that all life on Earth was created by God fully formed and functional, so that some forms of life are related, but others are not.

One variation of systematics is known as phylogenetic systematics (from the Greek words for phylon which means race and genetics which means birth). Instead of relying only upon morphology, cladists also use fossil evidence, genetic, and biochemical analysis to construct treelike diagrams called "cladograms".

Cladistics and Taxonomy

Cladistics is different from taxonomy. Taxonomy, devised by the creationist Carolus Linnaeus, classifies species by their characteristics, but makes no claim to their ancestry. Cladistics, on the other hand, is the study of the ancestry of species. Due to their assumption of common ancestry, evolutionists sometimes equate cladistics and taxonomy, assuming that because lifeforms are similar, they must be related. Creationists do not equate the two, because they recognize that similarities between species do not necessarily imply common ancestry.

A massive web-based cladistics project with an evolutionary perspective can be found at The Tree of Life. Here a group of biologists from around the world are attempting to put the consensus evolutionary relationships of all organisms onto the web. The creation science community is currently without a similar collaborative resource for the created kinds. However, the Baraminology Study Group has developed some useful databases, such as the HybriDatabase, and the Multivariate Analysis Repository, which are sure to become valuable tools in our study of the history of created kinds.