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New Skeleton Finds May Revamp History of Human Evolution
brindafella links to a series of articles published yesterday in the journal Science "on Australopithecus sediba, explaining that skeletons found in the Malapa cave in the World Heritage listed 'Cradle of Civilisation' push back to 1.97 million years the oldest known tool-using, ape-like pre-humans." As is typical, the full Science articles are paywalled, but the abstracts are interesting. (If you're a university student — or, in some cases, an alumni club member — you may have full journal access and not even realize it.) NPR has a nice article on the find as well.
Evolution of full of evolutionary useful adaptations reinventing themselves. Doesn't mean it's direct ancestry.
It has happened before and it will happen again.
Don't they do this every couple of years?
I thought civilization had to do with agriculture and an end to being total nomads, so one could build a city.
Tool use is great and all, but not civilation I would think.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Even if you are an AC I'm still commenting.
I would say articles are submitted on main line tracts of every topic every week. Just to get it published means it's worth paying attention to. On the other hand it also means you'll see another revolutionary evolution/refinement every couple years. As far as the subject matter I think it's very apropos.
P.S. And yes I transposed a word in my previous post.
Nono, you have it wrong. Evolution is wrong because of all the gaps that keep increasing. See, say you have fossil A and E. The creationist says, "Aha, there's no fossil between A and E! There's a gap there!" Then the evolutionist finds fossil C, which fits nicely between A and E. Now the creationist says, "Aha, now there's a gap between A and C, and between C and E! You've just created MORE gaps!" This is creatinionism logic at its finest.
As is typical, the full Science articles are paywalled
Indeed, the articles in question are behind the Science paywall. But it is like that because we've liked it that way for some time. This is changing as time goes on; now all NIH-funded (read: US government-funded) research must be published in a way that allows for free access. Science, Nature, and other high-impact journals have ways to comply with that when needed.
However, the journals do need to be able to make money to pay their staff and meet their business expenses. Maybe the model doesn't fit modern times, but it is what it is.
And we are talking about the journal Science, one of the most widely subscribed journals anywhere. You might not even need to go to your closest university to read it; there is a good chance your local public library has a subscription to it as well. You may even be able to get to it online if you're creative.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
How is that supposed to be a "proof"? Scientists are less wrong today than they were yesterday. Creationists on the other hand are still exactly as wrong as the bronze age goat herders who came up with the creation fairy tale several thousand years ago.
I beg to differ. By my reckoning, this proves that the history of the earth now goes back at least 7000 years.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
New evidence = new theories.
As opposed to politics and religion, new evidence = character assassinate those who presented the evidence.
I read it in National Geographic at the dentist's office.
She compared my teeth to the ones in the photos, not very favorabley.
I see... So the creationist theory cannot be proven false, and the evolutionist's theory is proven false time and time again. I get it!
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
That and any correction is taken that all evidence is wrong. "Yes we now believe homo habilis coexisted with homo erectus instead of preceding it." = "Did you hear that? All their hominid data was wrong."
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
So after an infinite amount of time, the set of gaps in the fossil record will resemble the Cantor set?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
ALL HAIL AUSTRALOPITHECUS
What's his take on this? Seriously..
I'm guessing he hasn't received his copy of Science yet.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It' behind a paywall, sadly. We'll never get to it now...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
I find it baffling that modern-day creationists, given the vast amount of information available to them, can still be more wrong than someone living thousands of years ago.
This biblical literalism appears to be a more modern fad. Some of the great thinkers of church history would be appalled at the way in which creationists discredit their religion by clinging to literal interpretations of scripture in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Augustine is a good example of a notable Christian two-thousand years ago who realized scripture will have to be continually reinterpreted as new information comes to light. Reinterpretation is not without its pitfalls, but it's better than trying to defend a verse that is clearly indefensible in the face of evidence.
I like the way you summed that up. Succinct and on the money.
The evolutionists have changed their minds again..
This isn't a flaw... this is a feature.
# Tooraleye ooralye ooralye ooralye ooralye ooralye ay
Tooraleye ooralye ooralye ooralye ooralye ooralye USA... /#
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
In Soviet Russia, time loops YOU!!!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
ID in no way specifies a thousands-of-years-old Earth, as few theists per se do, but carry on with the boilerplate YEC Straw Man / outright deliberate lie, while you can.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
When you see your likeness, you are pleased. But when you see your images which came into existence before you, which neither die nor become manifest, how much you will have to bear!
...oh wait, that was actually...
--Darwin, concisely summarizing his Natural Selection theory, and the personal and social challenges accepting our pre-existing forms is likely to be, circa 1800
--Jesus, saying the same thing, a couple thousand years earlier
Seems pretty consistent over that time to me.
By the way, you may want to familiarize yourself with what a Bare Assertion Fallacy is.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
I should point out that there is a silent sizable chunk of religious folk that embrace science and evolution as the how. Starting with the big bang (maybe) a little (or maybe a lot) of influence to eventually create humans (but not necessarily just home sapien). What we have in scripture as to how it all happened is (at least in my opinion) the way who ever wrote it understood what was being said, or written. If God created the universe, it would be foolish to limit how he did it.
Indoctrinate : to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments Educate : to develop mentally, morally, or aestheti
You haven't even used the term "ID" in your demonstration of what "ID" supposedly is.
Typical.
Let me put it to you succinctly. "Creationism", as you use it, and imply it -must- be used, is an erroneously-constructed concept that includes two totally disparate concepts--the notion that the world was created thousands of years ago, and the notion there is a God. There is no necessary relationship between those two premises. "Creationism", as it is used typically, is simply presented so that this fallacious concept-formation can be embedded in a word and the demand to accept it in totality (both premises) or reject it in totality (both premises) can be presented.
Per Aristotle, who knew how to construct -proper- concepts, "Creationism" means -one thing only-, the premise that the universe was created by an intelligent being, irrespective of its age. Anyone hearing it used as an accretion of multiple premises should stop, realize they are dealing with someone so dishonest and irrational that these traits are embedded all the way down in their psyche to the very way they use words, and walk away.
One can believe the universe was created, and believe it is millions of years old. Period. This is a valid use of the term "Creationism", and any particular content beyond this requires specific qualification. Accreting it with any other premise as a definitional characteristic (again, per Aristotle) is just bullshit. Unfortunately, theists often don't realize the purpose of the term (though they should--embedding fallacies in individual words is par for the course in politics), and some actually adopt this usage. After that, no argument can be viable using the loaded word--which was the intent all along.
So, so much for "Creationism". As for the term I actually used, "ID", this is a view that overlaps, but is not synonymous, with Young Earth Creationism and Old Earth Creationism (and "designed by aliens", for that matter), and the overwhelming majority of people -supporting ID-, including the "founders", are Old Earth Creationists. I know they need to be definitionally the same for your argument you are parroting from Dawkins et al for the millionth time. Sorry, even though it's obviously useful and necessary for you to claim they are, they still aren't, and your premise is still false, the millionth-and-first time.
I trust you can work something so simple out without needed to bring in a Venn Diagram.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
The common aspect of ID and creationism both is that they distrust established mainstream science, for reasons that don't really have anything to do with the science itself. The motives are political and religious. Neither contributes anything to scientific research or literature.
Okay, continue to claim this. It will likewise continue to be directly false. If -nothing else-, Darwin's Black Box contributed significantly to my knowledge of the several-hundred-item causal chains of immune response on a specific biochem level. If -nothing else-, it has necessitated closer specification of testability within propositional claims. And, naturally, it is wholly inappropriate to dismiss a priori a viewpoint which is backed in the respects it is, not backed in the respects it is not (with quite candid assessment of this by Behe et al), and open to further refinement. The Theory of Relativity would have been gone in the 1920's if it were a hundredth as stridently suppressed. Of course, it wasn't, despite being quite nascent itself in terms of testability--and we both know exactly why, and that those motivations have nothing to do with concern for the advancement of science.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Regardless of what you learned from Behe's book, he has religious motives for taking his position.
And, I assume you aren't saying this is relevant to whether or not what he says is -true-, because that'd be textbook Genetic Fallacy.
he goes a step further and claims not just that science hasn't explained all the mechanisms of evolution
The cases haven't even been exhaustively enumerated--how would one do anything else than accurately note science hasn't explained them all? If you say it will before even defining the scope of proposable IC cases, well, sure, but that's simply untestable psychic assertion. More "hope" than science.
He then goes on to suggest that supernatural explanations should be considered since naturalistic ones are not up to the task.
Explanations outside the default context, and avoiding "naturalistic" as just being a tautological substitution for "what I think is natural", sure. Same as how someone might encounter a fluorescent cat, and wonder how we might explain that, and then investigate it to accurately conclude what is correct--design. In this case, design as fact, rather than design as hypothesis, but the only distinction really is if you like the time period we happen to be discussing being applied.
Of course, other scientists went on to prove him wrong about irreducible complexity,
Odd, people in biochem here don't even seem to be able to do that with -me- here. I'll need something way more definitive being presented on that claim with respect to Behe. Especially since claiming "proof" is anathema to claiming to be staying in the domain of science for all topics, for theist and atheist alike.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
So, you've got just an Ad Hominem... in four parts. Indeed, nothing new to see here. But since lately everyone replies to me Anonymous Coward, I can't even tell if I'm still responding to the same person. Makes thread continuity difficult... so, really, I'll have to wait for a more conducive time for discussion.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Since you're confident they have "demolished" it, and you wouldn't be taking such a claim on "mere faith", why not simply present your refutation, and be informative to Slashdot--if you think you can, and this isn't mere poseur bluff?
I get quite a lot of that, actually. Show me otherwise.
My motives? I'm a theist, and I don't like a priori suppression of hypotheses that are uncontroversially accepted as within the domain of "science", based upon criteria that virtually every other scientific principle would have failed at they hypothesis-formation stage, if applied at its original proposal, such that we'd never know of it. And I don't like this being done as sheer hypocritical arbitrariness completely provable as such by taking every single scientist's published papers and pointing out the untestable premises contained in it, line by line, until we get to a hundred and move on with life. Thing is, I agree that inferential support is a valid scientific criterion, -and so does every scientist-, except when the topic of ID comes up.
So, in short, honestly: A) I'm a theist, have never made any attempt to hide this (refer to my posts and my sig I've had for 8 years, if unsure on this), and B) I don't like science being damaged, especially by people claiming they are supporting it.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
So, handwaving and links.
But, glad to hear you take your definitive determinations of scientific questions from lawyers--as long as they wear one of those cool black robes and sit on an elevated platform.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
If you don't believe it, you are the first of a great many ID believers who are of this mindset. However for me to believe you have any brain power (if you are an ID believer) you would have to tell me that you think it is possible for God to have used evolution (starting with apes) as a means of creating and improving on 'man'. And that six days is allegorical and could just as well meant six billion years. Too many retards in your camp insist that six days means six days, and that the earth is six thousand years old. I don't believe that the allegories in the bible are mutually exclusive of evolution, and in fact believe evolution was the mechanism that lead to our present state of being (whether initiated by God or not).
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
And as an advocate of science, I hope you'll come to the factual conclusion that those who proclaim themselves as champions of the "science versus religion" false dichotomy, in fact do nothing but damage both science and religion.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
The central support of ID is generally an argument that certain complex structures could not arise by naturalistic processes in the time-frames that modern evolutionary science has discovered. The arguments are generally broken down into statements about irreducible complexity (no viable evolutionary path between an original phenotype and a current phenotype) and specified complexity (the impossibility of creating information by random processes).
The former argument I attribute to a lack of imagination. For instance there are well-defined stages of eye evolution, and almost all intermediate stages are present in some species observable today. Many ID advocates nevertheless use the eye as an example of a structure that points to design, apparently ignoring the multitude of research on specific evolutionary models and examples from nature.
The latter argument is simply mathematically and physically incorrect. The basic definition of specified complexity almost exactly matches the criterion for compressibility; an example of a random letter, a random string of letters, and a string from a Shakespearean play is a good example. Guess which of the three is highly compressible and also used as an example of specified complexity. This should not be surprising because all living structures are essentially the result of "decompressing" the information stored in genes as they are repeatedly expressed or inhibited in complex feedback loops. It is trivial to create specified complexity by creating random formal grammars (context free or context sensitive, for example) and then generating random strings in the language by iteratively choosing a random production rule to extend a string of grammatical (terminal and non-terminal) symbols. It is trivial to generate random strings that look very much like Shakespeare (meter, word choice, etc.) but lack semantic meaning, yet I see no way of using the definition of specified complexity to distinguish between the two. A fitness function seems to be necessary to judge the semantic content, but given a fitness function over the language in which the strings are produced there exists an evolutionary processes to produce strings of ever higher fitness by randomly combining and changing the most fit strings that have been produced so far. Fit specified complex structures exist precisely because they can survive and reproduce, not because they are specified and complex.
Physically it can be shown that the sun is capable of converting its energy into tremendous amounts of information stored in the physical state of the Earth. Even if the Earth was a solid uniform sphere at some point in the past the repetitive heating and cooling by the sun would create more information (reduce local entropy) in the Earth over time by changing its configuration away from uniformity. The sun itself received its store of energy from an even more energetic star before it, and ultimately received its energy from the even more energetic big bang. Ultimately, ID must reduce to the sole argument that the laws of the universe and the initial conditions must have been intelligently designed. Given that even the rules of the game of life allow Turing completeness, it seems unlikely that the particular laws of our universe are necessary for sentient life. The anthropic principle suffices to explain why humans, and not aliens or glider-computers, are discussing this on slashdot. Given that the initial conditions of the big bang appear to be highly uniform, as well as the subsequent development of the universe, it seems likely that there is either no designer or that the designer is extremely subtle, to the point of being undetectable. Belief in a being because of an abundant lack of evidence does not, to me, seem scientific.
That's because creationist Christianity (usually evangelical) is a cult. It's not recognised as such by most because it's become so main stream; but any religious sect that preaches absolutes (e.g. the bible is inerrant) and is blind to any other way of thinking is a cult.
Officially, he'll have none. It's a losing proposition. He's made it clear to the people who want to hear it that he doesn't need facts from any experts. Once that's clear enough, he doesn't need to talk about it anymore. The fundies know he's one of them, and bringing it up just makes him look nutso to more moderate voters.
Please keep the forum family-friendly.