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Ape-Human Split Moved Back By Millions Of Years
E++99 writes in to let us know about a development in paleo-anthropology. It seems that up until now, scientific consensus has placed the divergence of man from the ape line five to six million years ago (based on "genetic distances"). But newly discovered fossils in Ethiopia place the divergence at least twice as far back, and perhaps as long ago as 20 million years. They also largely put to rest any doubts that man and modern apes both emerged from Africa. From the article: "The trail in the hunt for physical evidence of our human ancestors goes cold some six or seven million years ago... Beyond that... fossils of early humans from the Miocene period, 23 to five million years ago, disappear. Fossils of early apes especially during the critical period of 14 to eight million years ago were virtually non-existent — until now... [T]he new fossils, dubbed 'Chororapithecus abyssinicus' by the team of Japanese and Ethiopian paleo-anthropologists who found them, place the early ancestors of the modern day gorilla 10 to 10.5 million years in the past, suggesting that the human-ape split occurred before that."
If we're created in the image of your god, does he have a tail bone and an appendix?
No idea. Possibly.
If not, why didn't he fix that in us? Did something go wrong?
Why fix it? Maybe it needs to be there, like the poorly-documented bit of stub code that I commented out earlier that turned out to be essential for reasons that remain unclear to me
If he does, why? They only serve negative purposes for humans.
Sure, falling and injuring your coccyx is a bit nasty, but since we don't really know what effect it has or what would happen if it wasn't there, I don't think we can say it only serves a negative purpose for humans.
You cite about 5 cases, but there were a lot more findings.
Apparently the 98% genetic similarity with chimpanzee doesn't convince you.
Or you just patologically deny the facts, like your predecessors denied the round earth (aww, man, we would all fall down if earth isn't flat).
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
- Man was incapable of sin until eating the fruit.
- Man became capable of sin after eating the fruit.
- Man at the fruit while incapable of sin.
- Eating the fruit was a sin.
There's a ??? step I'm missing somewhere...I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Why copy the wrong answers too? Seems a little bit odd to move the pseudogene for the creation of vitamin C into all the great apes, and yet give all the other mammals the ability to create their own. With the exception of the guinea pig which oddly rather than having an identical flaw has a completely different one. Copied not only every answer, but the little doodle you did of what the teacher would look like getting mauled by a raptor.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Apparently the 98% genetic similarity with chimpanzee doesn't convince you.
Careful of naked statistics.. For example 99% uptime is HORRIBLE. You have to provide a frame of reference.. What would the genetic different be between a worm and cat. How about cat to an ape.. great-ape to a chimp. Etc.
-Michael
And that a drift with NO control whatsoever never has stagnant times or changing times. (Natural radiation varies from place to place so if one group of life ends up dominant from the low area, the clock is different than if it was from a higher mutation area. Same concept with viruses and whatnot, lots of the "junk DNA" appears to be genes of old micro-organisms that worked their way in to replicate with the host instead of infecting it.
Etc. etc.
Those "DNA clocks" are just something they like to ponder being stable, whereas they may turn out not to be.
I think you've come very close to the real reason a number of Christians have a problem with evolution.
:)
With a lead in like that, it's hard to disagree. There are a couple of billion Christians world-wide by some measures. We could probably find "a number of Christians" who have a problem with evolution because they were attacked by monkeys as children, and they associate evolution with monkeys because of that famous graphic depicting an ape slowly turning into a man.
The bible tells us that man was created in God's image, but evolution tells us that we are just the latest in a long line of incremental improvements.
This enters into it, but not in the way that you and the parent seem to think. The parent asked, "If we're created in the image of your god, does he have a tail bone and an appendix?" It's hard to tell whether he's being sarcastic. If not, why stop there? Men and women have some obvious physiological differences. So, which is it? Are men created in the image of God, or are women? Apparently (and amazingly) the parent believes that being created in the image of God means that we bear some physical resemblance to him. Just drawing attention to this premise in his argument should reveal how ridiculous it is, but just in case, I'll spell it out. No group of Christians I'm aware of has ever believed that the Imago Dei has anything to do with our physical bodies.
Having your religion tell you that you aren't special is hard for a lot of people to take; especially people attracted to a religion like Christianity that tells you that you are so special Jesus chose to die for you.
Again, this is a little hard to refute. All over the world, there are undoubtedly sermons being preached about how inherently special we are. But you should take note of a fine but significant distinction. Historically, most Christians have not believed that Jesus died for people because they were special. The song is called Amazing Grace because Newton believed the favor shown to him by God was completely undeserved. He calls himself a wretch, which some modern, mainline denominations have edited out in the belief that traditional Christianity has too negative a view of mankind. If you're shopping around for a worldview that caters to ego, there are much better options than Christianity.
I'd like to suggest to you that the real psychological problem (that is, putting aside the theology and science) that a lot of people have with evolution isn't, as you say, as simple as stubborn, childish insistence that we are better and more important than the apes. The problem is with naturalism. (Many educated Christians believe in "theistic" evolution.) Absent something like the image of God, it's hard for many people to believe that their lives have meaning, that they are capable of apprehending truth, that morality boils down to anything more than personal preferences (which in turn boil down to chemical reactions), etc. In other words, what they are really afraid of is radical nihilism. This is more than just a blow to the ego. It's a question of whether it can be meaningfully said that such a thing as the ego exists.
I wish I could find a reference. Humans also have a lot in common with pigs, genetically speaking. The percentage is almost as high, but I don't recall the exact number. Heck, they even say humans tastes like pork. There is a reason why pig parts and cells are now used for both human organ replacement and medical research. Odd we're not using chimp parts.
Also, lots and lots of living organisms have some 40%-60% in common with humans, if not more. So that really means we only differ some 60%-40% from some drastically different organisms. That really means 98% genetically alike really means something like 4%-6+% genetically different where it matters. Add in the fact that a tiny percent of one percent in genetic material can have huge impact what it it means to be "human". This really suggests we have far more not in common then we have in common with the likes of chimps and great apes. Especially once you consider not all genetic material is created equal. Seriously, where it matters, ignoring the material that is largely common between humans and other varying life, we are probably some 10%-20% different...where it really matters.
Given a scholar or monk fully trained up in literacy and languages may have had a vocabulary of only 3000-4000 words! And your average person had less, and most often could not write or read proficiently. You're just making this up - people have far higher vocabularies than that now (50000+ is standard for an educated english speaker) and there is no reason to believe that an educated person back then didn't know a lot. A 6 year old kid knows about 6000 words. There are a lot of things to name out there, you know.
Can you provide a link? I'd like to see this claim in context, but a quick Google search doesn't seem to turn up anything from the horse's mouth. Are you referring to the 1957 paper by Straus and Cave referenced here?
Got a citation for that? I don't know enough about microbiology to evaluate such claims (especially when they lack specifics), but if you could link to an abstract of a paper published in a major peer-reviewed journal of science, which states that the current model of evolution has been falsified by observing irreducible complexity in a microbiological structure (or any biological construct for that matter) then I'll start to consider the possibility that what you've just said here is true.
Until then, it has about as much credibility as any random sample of technobabble from Star Trek, as far as I'm concerned. I may not be able to explain exactly why any particular bit of it is nonsense, but it is a sensible conclusion to reach.
Depends on what you mean by "creationism." Evolution doesn't disprove the idea that there is a creator who set the whole universe in motion according to an unfathomably complex plan, resulting in the intentional evolution of human beings and every other species on the planet, but it does pretty soundly debunk the accounts of most folks who call themselves "creation scientists" and believe in a 6,000 year old Earth and other nonsense derived from literal interpretations of the Bible.
Maybe you should re-read Darwin's Black Box, then.
... you get the picture).
Here is how evolution works. You've got an organism, with genes (physically manifested in DNA) which dictate how the organism gets built. Genes can mutate (the DNA changes). Most genetic mutations have a negative impact on a organism's ability to reproduce (pass on their genes), though some improve the lifeform's odds of survival/reproduction. Naturally, the beneficial genes tend to get passed on and are more widely represented in a population than the "negative" mutations, and this is what we call "natural selection." It is this process of genetic mutation acted on by natural selection which was/is responsible (over millions/billions of years) for producing all of the diversity of life seen on the planet, from a single common genetic ancestor (that is, humans descended from some kind of chimp-like ape, who if you go back far enough, probably descended from some sort of shrew-like mammal, who if you go back far enough
Behe is in agreement with my entire description of evolution.
The difference between Behe and other scientists working in the field is that he think that gene mutations (DNA changes) sometimes happen as a result of the meddling of an intelligent designer. Most everyone else thinks the genes mutate randomly (that is, with no guidance or overarching purpose) and that these mutations happen often enough and in such a way that natural selection is the only "guiding" mechanism required to produce large scale morphological changes, speciation, etc. and the scientific literature reflects this.
It's a review of Behe's latest book (not Black Box), but check out Jerry Coyne's article titled The Great Mutator for a lengthier distillation and robust criticism of Behe's claims.
You seem to be a pretty good example of why I have a problem with ID and other forms of pseudo-
"There are creationists who have science training and knowledge"
There are? Well, why don't they actually use it?
If we look at one major subdivision of Creationists, the Young Earth Creationists or YEC's, it is impossible to assert they utilise any scientific knowledge in forming those Creationistic beliefs as to be a YEC you basically have to deny modern science at every point it contradicts the Bible (or the Qu'ran or the Bhagavad gita). A Creation occurring well after written records, a Global Flood that took place after the Great Pyramid at Giza was built and after trees still growing today were saplings. So, whether through ignorance or cognitive dissonance, a YEC cannot claim to use science.
The second division, Old Earth Creationists, equally ignore droves of modern scientific facts. They (typically) demand a differentiation between macro and micro evolution that doesn't really exist, and carp on about the lack of transitionals when this shows a very poor knowledge of the process of fossilisation or time scales or evolution. They seem unaware species go through transitions in time just as Ring Species go through transitions in geography.
The last and most contemptible category (because of their heavily marketed and disingenuous attempt to be taken seriously as scientists) are the Intelligent Design posse, or ID-ots as I like to call them. Whilst they of any group of Creationists should know better, they parade something which at best is a hypothesis which contradicts its own basic premise - that complex design requires a designer - in hypothizing the existence of a designer with no designer (special pleading of eternally existing creators is not scientific). They also typically repeat refuted claims; they still chunter on about irreducible complexity despite the fact most if not all of the examples they use have been soundly rebtted and shown to be reducible.
So please, in your apologism for Creationists, give me some examples of where they use scientific training to construct their faith-based beliefs. Well?
In other words, what they are really afraid of is radical nihilism. This is more than just a blow to the ego. It's a question of whether it can be meaningfully said that such a thing as the ego exists.
Exactly. But it is important to remember that *radical nihilism* is entirely a projection, a reaction formation. It does not follow from the premises, it is merely the most fearful and debilitating possibility.
Consider that existentialism does not preclude the question of morality or ethical behavior. In many respects, it reifies these issues and constitutes them on a firm, immediate footing, absent onto-theological appeals. Many people are understandably uncomfortable with the idea that they are personally responsible for figuring out what is right and wrong. Most folks desire shared limits; desire the conceptual shorthand the Imago Dei offers, and the vast rubric of codes and norms erected (pun intended) in His name, or conditioned by His possibility.
If God is dead, everything is permitted. --Sarte
If God is dead, nothing is permitted. --Lacan
In other words, any act must be justified for oneself and others without reference to an ontos, telos or theos. We are already outside the Law. We don't need permission, we need courage. We are struggling with the manifold symptoms of our collective historical experience.
The question of the existence of a discrete human being as the basic unit of ethical discourse is an excellent one, but does not implicate the question of ego. Whether the accretion of ideas that represent *me* is an accurate representation of a unitary mind affiliated to a discrete physical being is entirely beside the question of ego. Ego happens the moment this accretion of ideas finds itself confronted by an other. Ego exists in differential relation to other, similar, egos.
Enjoy your symptom!
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