Maybe I am not catching your drift. Your evolutionary compatriots do not agree with you about the use of the “tree of Life”. Nova has the Penn. school board matter evolutionary experts displaying the tree of life during court. TalkOrigins has also has it clearly displayed on their website and they argue that it is the thing which most graphically depicts the central point of evolution.
My point... although you may say Common Descent is science, it is not reproducable by scientific experimentation and yet seems to qualify as science based upon the inferential speculation evolutionists do. Is this alright when it agrees with their inferences, but a defect when you see it done by the ID crowd. It seems evolutionists want it both ways. When they need to infer (outside of reproducable experimentation), that’s fine science. When anyone else infers, that’s religion.
And the argument that gravity is a theory (which evolutionists mockingly note when anyone questions Common Descent as a “theory”) is nonsequitor. Gravity is reproducable, but Common Descent is not. Evolutionists hold that Common Descent postulates all life originated from One living thing at the base (or root) of the tree of life (their words not mine or yours). Of course, they hold off saying where this One living thing came from, calling this last “little” step, abiogenisis. And, you see all of this as rock solid science (even though you do not dabble in the discussion of abiogenesis)? Please correct me here.
Please show me an example of reproducing gravity.
Or a nova.
Now that that is out of the way, this link gives a good analysis of the history of “trees of life” ...we’re basically down to a shrub now (yes, he uses the term “tree” of life, but most non-lay folk really don’t, we tend to talk about clades and dendrogram means tree-like diagram, not tree):
It gives a nice accessible overview of the evolution of evolutionary thought.
And the first formation of life is still not a part of how speciation occurs. Different subject, different mechanisms, different qualifications needed to study.
I’ve included a couple of courtesy pings to others who might enjoy the presentation.