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Human Origins Theory Tested By Recent Findings
annamadrigal writes "The BBC news is reporting on findings presented in Nature which suggest that Homo Erectus and H. Habilis were in fact sister species which co-existed. This challenges the view that the upright humans evolved from the tool users."
And fuck politicians who waste breath congratulating this bogus cheater instead of passing meaningful legislation. No wonder both Congress' and the President's approval ratings are in the crapper. Medicare is headed for over a trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities, and these jokers want to pack more people onto the Titanic, so to speak. But back to baseball... Barry Bonds is by far not the only cheater in baseball, but he is the poster-boy of the generation that shit all over our beloved American pastime. Fuck the media for even acknowledging this sorry event. If I were Hank Aaron I would choke Bonds and force-feed him his own severed, 'roid-shrunken weenie. It's no wonder that Bonds hails from a city that prides itself on wallowing in moral relativism.
I thought your post was funny, unfortunately, the selection list folded too quickly and instead of 'funny', I moderated you 'overrated'. So by way of repairing that, I react (so that my moderation goes to waste), and I say: MOD PARENT UP !
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I'm in no way a biologist, but I have read a certain amount about attempts to simulate genetic evolutionary processes in order to produce artificial intelligence. I've also read Genesis, and tried to read the Origin of Species once. (Although most of that went over my head)
;-)
From the AI stuff I read, I got the impression that in order for the entire evolutionary process to occur at all, you need a pre-existing set of heuristics (the "genetic algorithm") that define what "evolutionary fitness" means for a given species.
Hence, a chicken-and-egg problem. Once you've got the GA, the whole process can go along just fine, working according to the rules of the GA. However, the burning question is, how did the GA itself get there? I've never heard of any scenario where a GA itself can evolve via an atheistic process, but if anyone knows of one, please share.
Thus, when I think about it at all, at least at the moment I'm inclined towards a hybrid theory of how we got here, which actually includes elements of both creationism and evolutionary thinking. My own perspective is that yes, evolution happens. We see the end products of it all the time, and yes, to a degree the process has been successfully simulated (with some interesting results) in the AI field.
However, where God steps into the picture for me in this context is as the provider of the initial GA, after which organisms can themselves take over the process from there. I'm not claiming (at least in this context) to have any definite idea of what God actually is or was, either...but I do think that there are at least a couple of areas, (such as the GA question) which atheistic evolutionary theory alone can't really account for.
The other thing I'd like to have an atheist tell me is how they believe water got here initially, and more specifically, why the water cycle starts on some planets and not on others. From what I was reading a while back, water actually initially gets produced in a closed-circuit chemical reaction, with the three elements, hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon. Once it gets started, the loop can keep going as long as those three elements are all present; my question is, how did those three elements become present here on Earth, especially when oxygen in particular seems to be rare almost to the point of being entirely unique in the universe, from what I've seen?
Oh, and to get back on topic...Yes, of course Erectus and Habilis could co-exist simultaneously. The simultaneous co-existence of different sub-species, (or breeds, if you like) is the entire way in which the natural selection process can work. You don't need to know much about biology to know that.
Meaningful legislation... on baseball? Seriously, and I mean this in the nicest non-trolliest way possible: get a fucking life.
Why not demand meaningful legislation to prevent plot inconsistencies in comic books while we're at it... goddamned Spiderman and his thousand slightly different origins.
Anyway, steroids didn't make Barry Bonds any better at being able to see a 90 mph fast ball, or move his hands quickly and expertly enough to hit the ball once he does. Steroids don't help him maintain one of the most extreme diet and excercise regimens in professional sports. Steroids didn't get Barry Bonds his place in the Big Leagues or his record setting contract (the accusations of steroid use all begin well after both events).
You don't know that he couldn't have done this without steroids, and you don't know that Hank Aaron didn't use anything either; steroids were around back then, players were using, everyone knows this, and usually the explanation for why none looked quite so massive is the same explanation as why the pitching and running were slower, and why "steroids" referred only to a handful of expensive and difficult to acquire compounds... we've made massive advances in both training technique and in steroid technology. Baseball players have always used anything that would give them any sort of advantage over the competition, it's the nature of professional sports, where huge money is at stake and even the "worst" players are so good it could make your head spin. I'm not saying that Hank Aaron used steroids, or anything else for that matter, I'm just saying that we have no way of knowing either way, and that hating Barry Bonds for "stealing" his record by using unfair steroids is spurious and foolish at best.
[/ot response]
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Much of the Old Testament IS historical documents of the tribe of Judah, and prior to Judah, the history of a particular family line. Trouble with considering the bible to be "only legend and history" is that interspersed with an amount of "prophetic utterances" or writings that on the whole have been much more accurate than seems to be explainable by simple scientific investigation or logical deduction.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
I'm looking forward to the caveman TV series this autumn, although I heard the early reviews were mixed and the network has not yet ordered a full season of episodes yet. I vaguely remember some 1960s TV show about astronauts mixing with cavemen ("Its about Time").