I would agree. As I said before, we can try to make some educated guesses about the relationship by using the degrees of difference to try and place them in a relative taxonomy. That's not conclusive, of course, but it can point us in a productive direction. And we can compare our results to morphological/cladistic taxonomies, to give us another factor in deciding the relationship.Yes, some judgement can be made by taking other information into consideration. COGS has little cladistic trees for each COG.
This must be viewed in light of the photosynthesis experience.
As for the materialism, been there, done that.
Mat 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
Materialism explains some things very well, and other things not at all. The trick is knowing which is which...