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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."
that this comes right after the story entitled "Attack of the Evil Monkeys From Hell".
Last I checked, "apes" were actually paraphyletic—that is, humans and chimpanzees actually forma a clade, and gorillas split off some time earlier (and orangutans before that, and gibbons even before that). So it should really say that the split between gorillas and Hominini (chimps and humans) was earlier than previously thought. The discovery gives no information at all about when humans and chimpanzees split.
Ask yourself why.
With our schools being under attack from the creationists who want to indoctrinate our children in their superstitious fairy tale, it's not surprising at all. We of no faith don't have to turn the other cheek, but are morally free to kick back. So we do.
Butt kicking for goodness!
If we're created in the image of your god, does he have a tail bone and an appendix?
If not, why didn't he fix that in us? Did something go wrong?
If he does, why? They only serve negative purposes for humans.
No, evolution and a belief in men created in the image of god just doesn't mix. If anything, that's less believable than what the creationists hawk. At least they can say that god created everything to look like there had been an evolution, for purposes we don't understand. Ridiculous as it is, it's at least theologically possible, while the view that evolution has led to humans in the image of god just doesn't fly.
However, Occam's razor tells me that the simpler explanation is true: God was created in the image of humans.
Depends on what you mean by "attacks". If I tell you that I believe my cat can fly, are you not free to say "wow, what a ridiculous thing to believe". Does that count as an attack? Are you supposed to say, "yes I respect your beliefs very much and lets include them in the school curriculum and here is some money and tax breaks for you"
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
I called myself agnostic until someone posed the question if I was agnostic in my the belief in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and the flying spaghetti monster.
At that point I realized that calling oneself agnostic because there is a very tiny possibility that a god exists is just playing with the definition of the word agnostic. For all practical purposes I am an atheist.
Othwerwise, I agree with what you said.
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Dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago at the KT boundary.
Prior to that time the mammal line had already split much more than we previously gave it credit for, a lot of the main groups were developed. This article is a fairly worthless crock. Basically some teeth were found that looked vaguely gorilla like and dated back 10 million years. So we know that there was some ape-like creature with a gorilla-like diet 10 million years ago. However, saying that this is the Ape-Human split is as stupid as saying it's the Human-Mammal split. Humans are apes. We are clearly within the same grouping of gorillas, orangutans, and chimps. There's no real grouping of animals which includes those yet excludes humans. This find perhaps sets back the date of chimp-gorilla split but not "human-ape". That's just stupid. Chimp-human is a split which dates back about 4-6 million years. Gorilla-chimp goes back 8 million years, though perhaps 10 if this isn't just some offshoot.
Finally, 10 million years is about 2/17th of 85 million years. Basically your math is off, and you're using old information, and to top it off this article is totally stupid. It's 10 million year old gorilla-like teeth. It actually has almost nothing to do with human evolution, though if you studied gorilla evolution you might care. Though, it's even weak evidence that it's actually a gorilla just that it had a diet like that of a gorilla.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
That's what happens when the Chimp's Intelligent Designer licensed his work under the BSD.
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.