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Humans First Arose in Asia?
IZ Reloaded writes "Two archaeologists are proposing the idea that early humans first arose in Asia instead of Africa as previously thought. These early humans then migrate out of Asia to parts of the world. From National Geographic: 'The unresolved status of the intriguing Flores finds attributed to H. floresiensis leaves open the possibility that this species is the end result and last survivor of an ancient migration of very primitive humans, or even prehumans, that formerly existed more widely across Asia ... '"
and humans.
Gorbachev sings tractors! Turnips! Buttocks!
We have tons of data points showing homo sapiens evolved in Africa. So many of the missing links like Lucy and other members of the homo tree have all been found in Africa.
I'm not debating their points (I've not read the article yet), but it would seem to require us to throw out the data that we already have. If homo species migrated to the rest of the world from Asia, then it would have requires Lucy, a relatively primitive human to have gotten to Africa, then start a long series of descendents and multiple branches of evolution there, eventually resulting in homo sapiens.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
You can find that almost anywhere. Like here - browse at -1, for example.
You feel that beeing releated to Slashdotter regulars is an improvement?
Amazing, even human evolution is getting outsourced to Asia!
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
...was an extrememly hot babe. Hotter than any babe that has existed since. Then a genetic abberation caused geeks to appear and people became less hot. Except for Carmen Electra.
Ah yes, but religion is so CONVENIENT. It means that often the believer needs to make no personal moral decisions (your religion makes absolute moral decisions for you), and everyone's split into two camps: People that are going to Heaven (usually believers) and people that are going to Hell (usually everyone else). Often the sheer convenience and lifelong training in a religion overrides a personal quest for scientific truth.
Furthurmore, in times where science would say to you "Hey man, you're 100% screwed!" religion can give a more optimistic answer. It's easy to decry religion when you're sitting in front of your LCD or CRT, but it's can give hope to the otherwise hopeless if they think that an all-powerful, all-knowing being is watching over their backs ready to send them to paradise when they die.
I have no problem with religion whatsoever. However, I think that religion should stay in churches (for example) and science should stay in schools, universities, etc. Everything has its time and place.
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Let me check with the Flying Spaghetti monster on this... he says no! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_spaghetti_mons ter
He IS a /. regular, you insensitive clod!
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
Wasn't spaghetti invented in Asia?
The earliest known pottery, some 20~30,000 years old, is found in Japan and China (every couple of years one side or the other finds an even older one). Pottery indicates civilization, simply because nomadic hunter gatherer type people don't have a lot of time to sit down, find suitable clay, mold it, and build a firing kiln, and pottery doesn't trvel particularly well to boot.
If the first civilization arrose in Asia, then it is not a completely abberational jump to say that humans started around there. Still would need a lot of investigation, of course.
Wow... I'm stunned by such arrogance. Are you blind to the fact that your are just replacing one god with another? You took a story about scientist finding evidence that humans may have originated in Asia and turned it into an anti-God tirade in an attempt to make yourself feel good about your own opinion. Wow...
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
"There is not enough love and goodness in the world for us to be permitted to give any of it away to imaginary things."
-- Nietzsche
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
Wouldn't it be possible that pre-humans migrated to different locations and finished their evolution separately? Considering Neandrathals are no longer considered in a direct evolutionary line to modern humans, that indicates a separate branch of evolution.
Distinctly different environments, like Asia and Africa, could account for something like this. Multiple evolutionary paths, occurring in multiple physical locations on the planet. Why do scientists seem so attached to the "Eve" theory?
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
For example, science isn't to blame for the atom bomb, that would have been invented by some means or other eventually (unless religious wars killed everyone first). Science just meant America invented it first (because they did the best science). Now everyone hates America even though they're the most benign world power in human history, mostly because they value rationalism and capitalism above religion or quasi-religious politics.
As for religion, it usually accomodates scientific discoveries after opposing them for about 50-100 years. The ID debarcle is unusual and serves as a warning to society that whilst we stive to accomodate a wide range of ideas, we must still be willing to detect and reject bullshit when it lands on our plate.
Evil Lord Xenu froze all the alien races and dumped them into volcanoes here on earth. Their souls were collected by soul vacuumes and then forced to watch movies and be brainwashed, only to then inhabit the bodies of primitive man. I think that's how it goes, I still have to pay for a few more audit councelings before my thetan levels are capable of truly grasping this profound knowledge
Intelligent Design is something most Christians reject and even a lot of fundamental Christians reject. Intelligent Design was created for political purposes and no religion has publicly supported the theory. You know when Rick Santorum hates Intelligent Design, it is dead. After the Bush clan leaves office, we will never hear about it again.
Most major religions do not reject the idea of evolution. After all God could have created man through evolution. Fundamental Christians (Bible literalists) actually believe God everything in seven days. Most other Christian religions don't interpret the Book of Genesis literally.
To say Christians are against science is nonsense. Some of the greatest scientists of our times were Christians.
On the first day, man created God and he was pleased with what he'd achieved. On the second day, man worshiped God and life was good. On the third day, different men had different ideas about God and their cultures diverged. On the fourth day, men spilt blood over these differences and it has been this way ever since.
Yeah because man wouldn't have wars if it wasn't for religion. All of John Lennon's lyrics are true if you just "imagine". If men were all the same except some people had blue eyes and other brown eyes, there would be wars between brown eye people and blue eyed people.
You seem to have a cartoon view of Christians I won't be able to change but go ahead and live in ignorance.
So an early asian humanoid and a early african humanoid walk into a bar...
What puzzles me is how remote volcanic islands became inhabited. Hawaii for example. Theres no way early man could have sailed there.
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Everything has its time and place.
Religion had its time before science started to explain the natural world phenomena. In the beggining humans attributed the power of thunder, earth and fire to mighty gods, it is on our nature to attribute to an allmigthy deitity the things that we can not (yet) understand.
Science has progressed a lot since those times. Since the inquisition or the Roman or Greek (or Mayan, or any other kind of ) gods. There was a small development from politheist to monotheist religions. And the worshiped books are nothing more than laws used to rule over the people that did not believed (or did not have) an established society
It is because of this that Religion has had its time. Of course, our current society structure is not optimal, it is not the best but it is better. Science might also not explain all things we see in the universe but instead of going backwards and begin to attribute them again the this "deitity" humans should continue to develop knowledge.
I do not have a position as neutral as yours about Religion. For me, religion sucks, all kind of religion is stupid and do not have any fundaments or basis. Religion has been used only as means of control, this can be seen now on your current government (if you are from USA). Your president is seeding terror on you by means of religion. And this is because your politics and your society is deeply rooted on religious grounds.
Take a look at your dollar bills "In god we thrust", how can a country be cosmopolite if there is a predominant religion which I bet your constitution embraces.
I repeat, religion sucks, someone will surely tell me that religion does not sucks by itself but it is men that use it for their own convenience. But, the way I see it, that has been the role of religion since human created it. It is a tool (and very powerful) to control masses of people.
Religion should not be in churches or any other place, it should be erradicated, it should be labeled as a thing for non intelligent minds.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Why can't intelligent design and evolution co-exist? Why does it always have to be either one or the other? Evolution itself may be by design. Perhaps humans came from both Africa, Asia and maybe even elsewhere. As a Muslim, I believe that God created all that exists. However, my faith does not prevent me from believing in scientific facts. I see evolution as something programmed in to life in order to survive. Every so often it may have had a boost here and there.
so, the theory assumes that 200,000 years is not enough for such a migration?
And, of course, talk of 'migration' is nonsense. It would have been more like 'hey, it is getting a bit crowded here, let's find a cave or tree a bit further away'. A few thousand generations of this and a species can spread a long way!
Why isn't everyone driving around at 20 mph with their turning signal on?
It seems that the large, flat expanses of Africa are more conducive to the evolution of bipedal locomotion; which is the most effecient form of leg-based movement for endurance and traversing long distances (bepedalism is essentially a pendulum).
;)
Asia does have it's fair share of flat expanses of course, but the amazing flora and fauna of Africa, the diversity thereof and climate change data still seems to point to an evolutionary hotspot on the globe.
Nevertheless, let's not fall into the mindset where alternative theories are tossed aside simply because they don't "feel" right.
Meteor crater in Arizona was once thought to have been caused by lava and steam - but now we know it was created by an intelligent designer
oh I kid, I kid!
Poor Australia, nobody ever remembers you.
> Take a look at your dollar bills "In god we thrust"
*chuckle*
ZOMG TORRENT PLS!!!
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Well, on the issue of Humans getting to North America, there is a huge margin as to when they got here. The Clovis points are the oldest flint tools associated with the North American Clovis culture. They date to the Paleo-Indian period around 13,500 years ago. Some archaeologists have found similarities between the Solutean in what is now the south of France and the later Clovis culture of North America and suggested that the Solutreans crossed the Ice Age Atlantic by moving along the pack ice edge using survival skills similar to that of modern Inuit people. The Solutean were around about 23,000 years ago.
The rise and fall of global sea levels has exposed the Bering Land Bridge in several periods of the Pleistocene. The bridging land mass" is believed to have existed both in the glaciation that occurred before 35,000 BC and during the more recent period 20,000-5,000 BC.
So, Humans by the Bering Land Bridge could have gotten here from before 35,000 BC to 11-12,000 BC. If the Clovis points point to European settlement, then theres a period from 21,000 BC to 11,000 BC for them to get here.
Now there is evidence in South America while predates Clovis by a 1000 years and evidence in South Carolina which dates to 50,000 years ago now.
Personally, I think settlement of the Americas likely happened over a longer period of time and new waves from Europe and Asia came during the various Ice Ages, with others coming from Oceania in boats over the centuries. Following that, there was likely contact at very low levels between the Americas and the rest of the world since then and predating both the Vikings and Columbus.
God? is that like aliens?
Why should I? Based on your thinking why should I be nice to anyone unless it serves my own self-interest. Why should I follow the rule of law, etc? Why shouldn't I just become a totally self-centered anarchist--kill or be killed? Survival of the fittest and all that, right? Where in evolutionary theory does it tell me that I have to or even necessarily should be 'nice' to anyone? Just because you want me to and it might make your life better?
I'm not flaming you, I would just like to find out an atheists opinion on these particulars regarding their stance. Thanks.
I'm turning Japanese
I think I'm turning Japanese
I really think so
Because evolution still has discrete boundaries. Population A has been separate from population B long enough and changed enough genetically that they can no longer interbreed. Ping! New species.
But, almost certainly, this article completely overstates the findings and theories based on them. Scientists certainly don't think in terms of "find me the square foot of land on which the first homo sapien was born". But questions about where certain traits first developed, and where they migrated to, or perhaps even evolved independently and separately, are subjects of great inquiry.
I swear, I at first read the'f' as a 't', and, oh, the imagery! What a South Park episode that would make!
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
Were they looking for I.T. jobs?
We didn't originate from Asia, we originated from the telephone cleaners, hairdressers, and account executives from Golgafrincha. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Restaurant_at_the _End_of_the_Universe
Oh god...eyes bleeding. WTF?!?!?! Can someone translate crazy for me so this makes some semblence of sense?
Imagine two civilizations. One is more or less cooperative, there is strife and people have to struggle to survive, but in general they have laws and don't attack each other without a very good reason. They live by the golden rule, even when it's not always in their own best interest.
The other civilization, on the other hand, is completely anarchistic; every person will kill their neighbor at the drop of a hat to take their food. The only penalty for doing so it that they may kill you first while you're sleeping and take your food.
Which civilization do you think will survive the longest?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Sweet, I'm off to find the dragonballs.
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR
They arose in Asia, but were quickly deemed illegal monopoly and split in several pieces accross the world.
You don't have to believe in God to be a nice person.
Social group are needed for a spieces to continue, and grow. People who behave in the manners you suggested tend to get removed from the group. So there is an evolutionary method for weeding that behaviour out. Bear in mind evolution is an ongoing process, and not something that happened and now is done.
Of course, being nice is required for a society to continue as well, so it is in the interest of th next generation that people are nice.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You are no less ignorant, friend. Your characterization of science as merely blind guessing reveals a deep misunderstanding. Science is not a religion because it's innacurate and old theories are superseded by new ones. This is is built in to science. It is intended to be this way. That's key to the scientific method. Science does not work in absolutisms as does religion. However, it is a pretty safe bet to say that a few things are unlikely to be disproven, and evolution is one of those. We understand its workings fairly well, though this is not to say that we completely do. We're almost certainly wrong on some of the specifics, perhaps even some of the basics. But in general, everything points in that direction. How often will you find someone willing to say that about their religion?
The current theory still holds that modern Native Americans are very largely descended from Siberian peoples crossing Beringia (the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska). What has changed is the recognition that there were earlier migrants who came to the Americas before an ice-free route from Beringia into the interior of North America was available. There is a good deal of evidence that there were ice-free pockets along the coastline and that earlier populations managed to get into the Americas via boats. The archaeological data is still pretty minimal, and legal battles over skeletal remains and sites have thrown something of a crimp in this investigation.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Kudos to the funny comeback however everything about the human body is needed in order for us to survive except for the appendix it seems. We couldn't have one thing develop without having something else as well, which goes against evolution which implies gradual changes. We need all of our organs and all the capabilities that our cells have to differentiate, multiply, copy dna, etc. is all needed at the same time so gradual changes would not suffice for us to exist based solely on evolution.
Come again? I don't know about everyone else but I've read this three times and can't identify either what point you are trying to make or the logic you are using to arrive at it. Please restate for the slower of us?
Dogs don't act like that.
You've never seen a bunch of starving dingos around a dead horse, I'm guessing.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
I dunno about western culture. Here in the Northwest region of America, every block there is either Indian, Sushi, Thai, Teriyaki or Chinese food. If you watch movies like the Matrix, you see Asian influenced martial arts. If you play video games you are most likely playing a Nintendo or a Playstation. If you watch cartoons, you are most likely watching a Japanese animated story.
It's a myth that the Chinese didn't use gun powder as weapons. In fact they did. In fact the idea of a Chinese person is also a myth. It's like the myth of an American person. That's why they are successful. They were one of the first places that took disparate groups and held it under one rule as one people, even though quite a few of the inhabitants spoke different languages and were of differerent "races". You might argue that the Romans did that as well, but they failed to hold on to it.
I saw that and thought for a moment I'd happened upon an off-topic thread about regular expressions.
the layman's guide to computer science
Take a look at your dollar bills "In god we thrust", how can a country be cosmopolite if there is a predominant religion which I bet your constitution embraces.
Yes, it also has an illuminati "all seeing eye" symbol called the Shining Delta with the words: "Novus Ordo Seclorum ( which can be translated to 'a new order of the ages')". The eye signifies the Illuminati's "all-seeing" infiltration of government and community. The triangle (or delta) around the eye is the mathematical symbol for change (the Illuminati's ultimate goal was to bring about massive change in the form of a secular New World Order.) And finally, the rays of light shining off the triangle signify enlightenment and illumination (i.e., intellectual freedom from the dangerous "myth" of religion.)
Just goes to show that the church wasn't the only influential group in America's founding fathers.
There's no place like ~/
The article talks quite a bit about fossil evidence, but what about the genetic evidence? If you look at the variability of human genetics, you find that europeans aren't very genetically diverse. Similarly, American Indians aren't very genetically diverse, and Asians aren't either. Africans, on the other hand, are very genetically diverse. What this indicates is that the human race' history in Africa goes back much further than anywhere else. It appears that a subset of Africans left Africa and colonized the rest of the world. Here's a short article that talks about human genetic diversity compared to their location: http://info.med.yale.edu/genetics/kkidd/point.html
http://www.umich.edu/news/?Releases/2005/Oct05/r10 1805
"Why should I? Based on your thinking why should I be nice to anyone unless it serves my own self-interest. Why should I follow the rule of law, etc? Why shouldn't I just become a totally self-centered anarchist--kill or be killed? "
Being nice to people is in your self-interest, because usually they will be nice to you. If you are mean to people, your reputation will quickly spread, and people will be mean to you.
People are interested in fairness, and mostly you will get treated the same way you treat others. If you deal with strangers all the time, it won't matter, but if you might see that person again sometime, or perhaps even every day, you will probably worry about what they think of you and therefore how they will treat you.
"Survival of the fittest and all that, right?"
That's right. We do still live in the jungle. Just step into South Central LA or the middle of the Amazon some time. However, in most places of the world, there is an official gang of tough guys who are called the police. The police are for the most part fair and honest. But they are not afraid to use force and kill people to keep the peace. In LA or the jungle, there are many gangs fighting each other, and none of them are interested in keeping the peace. Most people find that their life is a lot eaier if they side with the police gang instead of any of the others.
" Where in evolutionary theory does it tell me that I have to or even necessarily should be 'nice' to anyone? Just because you want me to and it might make your life better?"
Evolutionary theory says that anyone who can get along with other people will have a better chance of finding food, a receptive mate, and successfully raising children or grandchildren has better reproductive success. If you help someone, that person and everyone else will know about it, and they will help you. Loners who fight everyone and are only in it for themselves die alone, with no children.
Human beings are a group animal. Like ants or prarie dogs, we can't really make it on our own. People who can work co-operatively in groups fare better and therefore have more children than loners. Co-operative groups thereby outperform loners.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Even though that's better than eternal suffering, it's still a pretty bad thing once you've found out that you could have had eternal life if you'd only believed.
Because of course God would be way too stupid to know that you were only a believer so that you could reap the rewards...
How about this twist: If you are a believer and you turn out to be wrong, you've wasted your whole life (the only one you had) believing in a fantasy and applying all the accompanying restrictions. Essentially, your whole life was based on a lie.
It seems like you're paraphrasing (badly) Pascal's Wager. Google it.
Trolling is a art,
Flamebait? Sheesh! You guys got zero sense of humor!
Hiawatha Bray
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I live in the US, I can not see anything the government is doing to indicate it is using religeon to control people.
Then you should stop sticking your head inside your ass:
"I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen... I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it."
"God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam [Hussein], which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."
We are no longer fighting a great enemy, we are asserting a great principle: that the talents and dreams of average people - their warm human hopes and loves - should be rewarded by freedom and protected by peace. We are defending the nobility of normal lives, lived in obedience to God and conscience, not to government.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
The two speak different languages, eat different foods, and have somewhat different cultures
It's even more complex than that. Many towns would speak mutually unintelligible dialects, even if they're only 15-20 miles away from each other. Did you know that there are several million natives in Guangdong province that does not speak a word of Cantonese?
What most Westerners think is the "Chinese" language and culture is actually that of the southern Chinese particularly from the Guangdong region of China. The Chinese written language is what unites all the people in China.
This is mostly due to the fact that almost all early migrants from China to the West were from southern Chinese provinces (Guangdong, Fujian, etc.) In most Chinatowns in the West, all of the older people will speak their native Southern (mostly Cantonese-derived) dialect. It has been this way for the last 150-200 years. Of course, this will change as more immigrants from mainland China and Taiwan migrate to the West.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
What criteria are you using?
If you just use genes, then humans have largely similar DNA to mice.
Basically, the problem is that your has no standard against which to measure. For example, how about "there is X% as much variation across all humans as across all dogs". It still doesn't tell people too much, since they don't really know how much genetic variation is in dogs. But at least they know dogs do have much more varying appearances than humans.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
"Kudos to the funny comeback however everything about the human body is needed in order for us to survive except for the appendix it seems. We couldn't have one thing develop without having something else as well, which goes against evolution which implies gradual changes. We need all of our organs and all the capabilities that our cells have to differentiate, multiply, copy dna, etc. is all needed at the same time so gradual changes would not suffice for us to exist based solely on evolution."
Good point! After all, we can't survive without all of our limbs, eyes, lungs, kidneys, etc. Oh, wait, yes we can.
BTW - evolution isn't based on gradual changes. It's based on genetic mutations that can result in small or big changes. Those changes remain in the gene pool if they aid in the reproductive success of the species.
Also, I can't really understand you intelligent designers. You say life is too complex to have "just happened." Yet, you're happy to believe that your creator, with the power and complex knowledge necessary to create life, has always just existed...
Your mind looks a little cramped. Why don't you stretch it a little?
Take a look at your dollar bills "In god we thrust",
Yes, the "In God We Trust" was placed on the money in the 50s to show how America was better than the "godless commies." It was a mistake, but one that will never be rectified, because no one wants to be painted as "voting against God."
how can a country be cosmopolite if there is a predominant religion
The same way every other civilized country does. Hate to tell you this, but most people believe in a god.
which I bet your constitution embraces.
The Consititution of the United States doesn't. It doesn't mention gods at all. It specifically provides for freedom of religion and forbids the establishment of one. It was written by deists, agnostics, and athiests. And back in the 18th century it was evangelicals who were pushing for seperate of church and state since they were afraid that episcopalians would force their religion on them. Ironic isn't it?
You don't know what you're talking about here. You should get your facts straight, and then make a more coherent argument than "It sucks." Because you look fool.
I even tend to agree with your general argument, but you're making all athiests look bad. So do us all a favor, and shut up.
The problem has always been that there are two sorts of strong evidence: humans are almost all alike, and humans evolved in place. (E.g. early Australians were H. erectus; later they had mixed erectus and sap. characteristics; eventually the erectus features faded and vanished, leaving pure H. sap.) Naturally each had adherents who preferred to discount the others' evidence. The two have certainly seemed contradictory, up until now.
They were both right. What spread out of Africa was not actual populations of H. sap. etc., supplanting H. erectus populations that preceded them. Rather, successful gene complexes that define H. sap. spread out of Africa, upgrading local populations in-place. (Think of them as software patches.) Hardly anybody had to migrate any farther than the next village over. People married into neighboring villages, bringing their genetic advances with them, and the next generation brought them to the next village along. Of course successful genes could spread back to Africa, too, but Africa had the most variation, so produced more of the successful genes, and packaged them with more other, complementary genes.
Contrast this with the spread of agriculture into Europe, where there's evidence of farmers actually supplanting hunter/gatherers; and of course the historical record, with wholesale slaughters and genocides. (No doubt there was plenty of slaughtering earlier, but it takes technology, language, and civilized infantilization for genocides to be conducted efficiently.)
It doesn't seem like there are many other species in which this process would have worked. Bears, maybe.
We are Terrans. Goku and Vegeta are Saiyans. According to the Dragonball Z Series, the Saiyans have nothing to do with the Terrans. We are two totally seprate species. It just so happens that the Terrans and Saiyans are Biologically and genetically close enough to inter-marry.
I heard a conspiricy Theroy among Dragon Ball Fans that Akira Toriyama had the Kaioshin plan it that way.
Stephen Mansfield, author of The Faith of George W. Bush, goes on to say: "Not long after, Bush called James Robison (a prominent minister) and told him, 'I've heard the call. I believe God wants me to run for President.' " Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention heard Bush say something similar: "Among the things he said to us was: I believe that God wants me to be president, but if that doesn't happen, it's OK.' "
Source
We are no longer fighting a great enemy, we are asserting a great principle: that the talents and dreams of average people - their warm human hopes and loves - should be rewarded by freedom and protected by peace. We are defending the nobility of normal lives, lived in obedience to God and conscience, not to government.
Source
In Dilip Hiro's book "Secrets and Lies," Hiro quotes the Tel Aviv newspaper Ha'aretz of June 24, 2003, reporting that Bush told Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas: "God told me to strike at Al Qaida (sic) and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did."
Source
Of course, perhaps you can provide some sources that state otherwise?
/.: why the hell am I here?
On the other hand, God has seeded the earth with all this "evidence" (geological records, useless organs, similar features across species, etc.) that all these things happened on their own. Seems to me that God would rather we not believe in him and that belief in God is against His will. How can you be sure that the non-believers won't be rewarded for making good use of the rational abilities He so kindly supplied us with? Or that believers won't be punished for ignoring the vast pile of consistent evidence before them?
It's trickier than that. It's highly unlikely that there was only one woman. (Your post doesn't explicitly make that claim, but a lot of people misunderstand the subject to mean that.) It's possible for there to have been lots and lots of women, but because mitochondria are only passed from women to children, and because roughly half the kids are boys, it's possible to have, over a fifteen or twenty generation sequence, only one woman's mitochondria passed through. I'm working from "Patterns In Evolution" by Roger Lewin here, and, as a demo, he posits 16 couples, each of whom have two children, and tracking those through 15 generations.
"At each generation, one quarter of the mothers will have two male offspring, one quarter will have two females, and one half will have one of each. The mitochondrial lineages of mothers that have only males will come to an end and eventually one lineage will dominate the entire population."
In other words, the Eve hypothesis shows the region of origin of modern humanity, which is pretty clearly Africa, and tells us roughly when, assuming mitochondrial DNA information drift is relatively constant. It does not require a big population bottleneck. People probably assumed a bottleneck from an incomplete understanding of genetics and a certain wish to have a correlation with a well-known story (in the West) about a single mother of all humans.
The dude who did the original research, Alan Wilson, estimated there were probably over 10,000 women in the breeding community that contained the ancestral Eve. Other critics of the theory say you can't even make THAT claim.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Blood has rarely been spilled over religion. its spilled over stupid people that coop religion for their own purposes. Just like they coopt everything else.
Still, something in your understandings and beliefs compels you to act civily, what is it?
The ability to empathize with other human beings. It's actually hardwired into the brain, a fact that was established decades ago. People without this particular wiring (about 2% of the population) are defective in this regard and grow up as sociopaths. A PET scan can identify if the area of the brain we identify as governing ethical conduct is working correctly or not.
If we have normal brains, we're born with the ability to empathize with other human beings, which motivates us to (at least some of the time) act in ways that minimize harm to them. Most of us see wanton cruelty as a bad thing for this very reason.
You didn't form your concepts of 'nice' (as everyone has so kindly put it) in a vacuum did you? Of course not...
I didn't get them from religion, either. Growing up I thought the religious were full of shit, especially concerning all that "god will punish you" crap. It seemed to me (and still does) that the religious are far more likely to use their faith as an excuse to do evil to others rather than good for them. I initially came to this conclusion at the ripe old age of 3, when a priest proclaimed that my parents were sinful and would go to hell, upon which I tried to bean the bastard with one of my shoes before the entire congregation.
Conscience, knowledge imparted to you, and experience has lead you to certain beliefs, have they not?
Being human is enough, assuming you don't have a miswired brain. Humans aren't blank slates, not even close.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
The fact that institutions like the Roman Catholic Church waste resources on baubles does not devalue the Word. Citing fancy churches as evidence against God demonstrates your ignorance of the Bible and Christianity in general.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
That someone made the watch, or that it spontaneously self generated via some chance conglomeration of gears and springs
Check out The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins.
Trolling is a art,
*sigh* Phillip Johnson was a legal-beagle with an interest in protecting his mythology from science. Virtualy everything he's writing has been proven wrong by the scientific community. Of course you won't hear that from the Creationist money launderers.While we're trading links, here's one on Johnson.
Trolling is a art,
Gods are make believe. Grow up.
Trolling is a art,