Tree of life not real (Introduction)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Sunday, February 16, 2014, 19:40 (3934 days ago) @ David Turell

I think the link from David sums up my point nicely, even if on the surface it still holds with the more traditional assumptions of evolution.-
"Our work implies that there must be constraints on the range of forms within animal groups, and that these limits are often hit relatively early on...."A key question now is what prevents groups from generating fundamentally new forms later on in their evolution..." -Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-07-scientific-evolution.html#jCp-Leaving God out of it for the moment, as I am not trying to get into the debate over whether or not God exists or whether he created anything (I think he did like its said he did, David thinks it did but not the way it's said he did, and DHW refuses to commit other than to say he can't believe what anyone says), but rather I am just trying to get beyond the hype and actually look at the empirical evidence without the additional burden of speculation and dogma. What do we know without adding speculation into the mix? We know these creatures existed. We know that there is variability within a species, and that there appears to be some very hard limitations on that variability. We know that complex and simple life have lived side by side for long epochs of time. -I am just trying to reframe this discussion in terms of what we know instead of what we believe.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.