Origin of the species, where do you stand?

[pajarito 0]

An evolutionist dug up a fossilized fragment of an ape's jaw and promptly declared it to be an ancestor of man. He was so exited about the find he said, "I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't believed it."

[Squeak 17]

Hey John you know what the worst thing about forums like this is?


You cant slap people up the back of their heads and say "snap out of it stupid"

You are not now, nor will you ever be, good enough to not die in this sport (Sparky)
My Life ROCKS!
How's yours doing?

[billvon 2,433]

>Is this like claiming something is "fake but accurate".

Some early claims for powered aircraft were fake. Do you therefore not believe in airplanes? Are they "fake but accurate?"

>how did Einstein discover that Newton's Laws were "a fraud"?

Space is warped; Newton believed space to be flat. Therefore, the underlying assumptions that Newton based his work on were wrong. Yet even today we use his work - because it covers 99.9% of what we see in our world.

Back then, of course, Newton was called a fraud by the flat-earthers. Now we understand that the work he did was incredibly important, and for most of what we use it for, very accurate.

I have no doubt that we will continue to discover new aspects of evolution. Some of our knowledge will be updated with time. The really cool thing about evolutionary science is that it's converging - every time we discover something new about paleontology, it gives us a hint on the biology of the time, which leads to new avenues of exploration, which produces yet more science that fits into the framework we have been developing.

I can't imagine how much it would suck if every time a scientist found out something new about hominid evolution, he said "eh, disagrees with the bible; discard it." Heck, if all scientists were like that, we'd still think disease was the result of evil miasmas, and we'd be bleeding sick people.

[Amazon 7]

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You cant slap people up the back of their heads and say "snap out of it stupid"

I can SOOO relate to that...


OH and where do I stand on evolution..


UPRIGHT

[NCclimber 0]

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>Is this like claiming something is "fake but accurate".

Some early claims for powered aircraft were fake. Do you therefore not believe in airplanes? Are they "fake but accurate?"

>how did Einstein discover that Newton's Laws were "a fraud"?

Space is warped; Newton believed space to be flat. Therefore, the underlying assumptions that Newton based his work on were wrong.

I'm not sure how this answers my question. Are you saying fraud is synonymous with being incorrect?

[billvon 2,433]

>Are you saying fraud is synonymous with being incorrect?

Fraud is essentially deliberate incorrectness. Often, creationists present evolution as a "fraud" since they believe that it's all a diabolical liberal plot to destroy religion and establish a godless secular society.

[NCclimber 0]

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>Are you saying fraud is synonymous with being incorrect?

Fraud is essentially deliberate incorrectness.

How does this support your claim that Einstein discover that Newton's Laws were a "fraud"?

Was Newton deliberately incorrect?

[pajarito 0]

I don’t think all of the findings are fraud. However, some certainly seem to be. Most seem to be examples of wishful thinking.

Piltdown Man – Human skullcap with the lower jaw of an orangutan; teeth were stained and filed down to make them look human and to match size of teeth in upper human jaw.

Nebraska Man – Pig’s tooth which was claimed to have been Hesperopithecus. The reconstruction of the tooth’s owner was shown as an upright-standing ape-man with human-like anatomical features along with a mate, domestic animals, and tools.

Peking Man - Brow ridges, sloping forehead, and prognathus face exist in Neanderthal and archaic Homo sapiens and in some modern skulls. Almost every Peking fossil mysteriously disappeared in 1941.

Java Man – Regarded as suspect when its discoverer allegedly hid two fully human Javan skulls in order to strengthen his claims for the Pithecanthropus (erectus) specimen known as Java Man. A year or so later, two fully human femur bones of Java Man were also “discovered” 15 meters away from where the skull cap was originally found.

Australopithecines (southern ape) – Claimed to be the closest to the common ancestor of humans and apes. However, CAT scans of the inner ear region of the skulls show their semi-circular canals (balance & ability to walk upright) resembling those of existing apes. ***Most well known (Lucy: Australopithecus afarensis) was 40% complete but without the upper jaw, most of the skull, and no hand or foot bones. Lucy, however, has been restored and displayed worldwide with an ape-like head face & head and a human-like body including human-like hands & feet. On the contrary, other specimens show that Australopithecus afarensis had long curved fingers and toes (tree-dwellers) and the restricted wrist anatomy of knuckle-walking chimpanzees and gorillas. More like a specialized ape and not a human link.

Homo habilis (handy man; works with tools) – Most well known is KNM-ER 1470. A fossil skull and leg bones were found. CAT scans of the inner ear of the skull found that it walked like a baboon and not a human. Most consider it to be comprised of bits of Australopithecus and Homo erectus. It is an invalid taxon (never existed as such).

Homo erectus (upright man) – Use of tools, control of fire, buried their dead, use of decoration. Brain size was somewhat smaller but within human range. Recent evidence of seafaring skills. CAT scan of inner ear region of skull indicates posture such as ours. Variation within a kind of modern humans.

Neanderthal – Early findings were reconstructed with a hunched over appearance fitting preconceived notions very well. However, some specimens probably suffered from bony diseases such as rickets (childhood vitamin D deficiency) causing bowing of the skeleton. Might have been caused by lack of exposure to sunlight consistent with having lived during the Ice Age. The minor variation in brain size is also consistent with the minor variation between humans today (variation within a kind driven by natural selection). Many think Neanderthal should be regarded as Homo Sapiens.

All these really represent are some of the temporal, regional, climatic, dietary or pathological variants of both humans and apes driven by natural selection.

[jakee 1,259]

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Soon soon something like :

NEWS TODAY !! - A group of philosophers, professors and kickass scientists who has been a leading champions of atheism and evilution on Dropzone.com for more than a few years has changed their minds. They now believe in God -- more or less -- based on scientific evidence.
After decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Evilutionists has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature Speakers Corner Evilutionists said .
They came to the conclusion as a group and said they are best labeled as deists now like Thomas Jefferson, whose God was not actively involved in people's lives , thus not to admit defeat to clearly.
We now think of a God not very different from the God of the Christian but far away from the God of Islam "It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose."
Over the years, these DZ.Com locals proclaimed the lack of evidence for God while shooting down and criticizing any belief that conflicts with their evilution theory..
There was no one moment of change but a gradual conclusion over recent months for them,
… biologists' investigations of DNA "has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved," Speakers on DZ.Com now have new threads relating to subjects like "Has Science Discovered God?"
The first hint of Evilutionists’ turn was when one of their locals on the forum and sect leaders posted and wrote “it has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism,"
DZ.Com Evilutionists said the debate over God (since they accepted Him has to exist) will start a million new threads on DZ.com and keep them busy as they have a lot to learn….

Free busy ...

Two things I find hilarious:

1. That after (supposedly) reading the point by point rebuttals of your arguments and the external sources you have been shown you creationists still think that your position is not only plausible but actually defeating evolution on the grounds of scientific evidence! Your stubborness in the face of reality is breathtaking.

2. Even your attempted satire takes after your 'theory' and is riddled with internal inconsistencies

If there weren't so damn many of you out there I'd be laughing so hard I'd cry.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[kallend 1,647]

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An evolutionist dug up a fossilized fragment of an ape's jaw and promptly declared it to be an ancestor of man. He was so exited about the find he said, "I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't believed it."

And he was correct. Maybe he had expertise that you don't.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[billvon 2,433]

>However, some specimens probably suffered from bony diseases such
>as rickets (childhood vitamin D deficiency) causing bowing of the skeleton.

Every single neanderthal fossil found (and there are at least a dozen complete ones) showed the same structural differences. A few of the differences:

Suprainiac fossa
Occipital bun
Projecting mid-face
Barrel-shaped rib cage
Flat, elongated skull
Long collar bones
Supraorbital torus
Thick, bowed shaft of the thigh bones
Lack of a protruding chin
Shorter shinbones and calf bones
Crest on the mastoid process behind the ear opening
Long, gracile pelvic pubis
No groove on canine teeth
Retromolar space posterior to the third molar
Bony projections on the sides of the nasal opening
Distinctive different shape of the bony labyrinth in the ear
Larger mental foramen in mandible for facial blood supply

>All these really represent are some of the temporal, regional, climatic,
>dietary or pathological variants of both humans and apes driven by
>natural selection.

A gradual change of the phenotype of a species, driven by natural selection to adapt to a given temporal, regional, climactic or dietary niche IS evolution. I think you may have just copied that part without reading it.

[kallend 1,647]

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Rubbish!

Do you think this is complicated?

z(i+1) = z(i)^2 + c

Nope - easy...

z(i+1) = z(i)^2 + c = Primordial Polynomial in a Complex Variable Soup

Give you the irrelevant details in a few...

So something that is "easy" generates the most complicated object known to mathematics.

Kind of kills your complexity argument, doesn't it.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[StreetScooby 5]

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Newton's Laws were "a fraud"

Newton's Laws weren't a fraud. They applied in that context which most people can view with their own eyes.

We are all engines of karma

[SpeedRacer 1]

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Newton's Laws were "a fraud"

Newton's Laws weren't a fraud. They applied in that context which most people can view with their own eyes.

gravitational theory is bullshit.

things fall because the whole world just sucks.

Speed Racer
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[pajarito 0]

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I think you may have just copied that part without reading it.

No need to be insulting Bill.

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A gradual change of the phenotype of a species, driven by natural selection to adapt to a given temporal, regional, climactic or dietary niche IS evolution.

Adaptation and Natural Selection as a result of environmental cues happens all the time. This is observable. Transspeciation does not and cannot be shown to occur. Natural Selection always results in a loss of information. It cannot add to the genome. Populations selected become more specialized and less information is available. Evolution (as you would describe it) requires the addition of new information. Not just reorganization, copying error, or mutation. Completely new information.

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Dr Werner Gitt from Germany’s Federal Institute of Physics and Technology in Braunschweig, says, ‘There is no known natural law through which matter can give rise to information, neither is any physical process or material phenomenon known that can do this.

[SpeedRacer 1]

I've noticed that the ones arguing against evolution have yet to propose an alternative theory.

Speed Racer
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[billvon 2,433]

>Newton's Laws weren't a fraud.

Right; that's why I put the word in quotes. People back then called his laws a fraud because they conflicted with what they believed. "Newton has taken away the need for God, by claiming the planets move by themselves!" was one line of reasoning.

>They applied in that context which most people can view with their own eyes.

Ah, but that's OUR eyes. To someone in the 1600's, the stars and planets were lights in the sky. It makes no sense that they stay up there, hovering over our heads, with nothing to hold them up! It offended some people's religious sensibilities, and so they preferred to not believe it.

Realistically, though, it was a small minority of people that denounced his "secular" views on motion; he came upon the scene late enough that people had begun to accept a heliocentric view of the solar system. He had it much better than, say, Galileo (who was condemned and imprisoned by the church for his heretical view that the earth rotated around the sun) or Giordano Bruno (who was executed for his heretical beliefs.)

Today we have a small minority of people who are uncomfortable with the idea of evolution. They don't like the idea that they are the end result of a process that produced us (and chimpanzees, and horses, and trees) from the same basic starting point; it makes them uncomfortable. Indeed, many think that if evolution "succeeds" their religion will be damaged or destroyed. Like the Catholic Church in the 1600's, they seek to prevent that from happening, although fortunately today their methods (the Discovery Institude, Intelligent Design and heavily funded political activism) are far less brutal.

[NCclimber 0]

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Today we have a small minority of people who are uncomfortable with the idea of evolution. They don't like the idea that they are the end result of a process that produced us (and chimpanzees, and horses, and trees) from the same basic starting point; it makes them uncomfortable.

From what I've read in this thread, many people question the validity of its assumptions.

[pajarito 0]

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I've noticed that the ones arguing against evolution have yet to propose an alternative theory.

We're discussing NDT here. What I believe to be true is no secret and has been discussed A LOT in many other threads. Just trying to stay on topic. (this time)

[billvon 2,433]

>No need to be insulting Bill.

Sorry. You just stated one of the fundamentals of evolution in a post doubting that such fundamentals exist; I thought you meant to say something else.

>Adaptation and Natural Selection as a result of environmental cues
>happens all the time.

Agreed. Do you also agree that traits that arise as a result of natural selection are heritable?

>Transspeciation does not and cannot be shown to occur.

New species that we have observed forming:

Evening Primrose (Oenothera gigas)
Kew Primrose (Primula kewensis)
Raphanobrassica
Hemp Nettle (Galeopsis tetrahit)
Madia citrigracilis
Brassica
Maidenhair Fern (Adiantum pedatum)
Woodsia Fern (Woodsia abbeae)
Stephanomeira malheurensis
Yellow Monkey Flower (Mimulus guttatus)
Fruit fly (Drosophila paulistorum)


>Natural Selection always results in a loss of information.

Nope. All the offspring of a given set of parents have approximately the same amount of DNA, even if one is better adapted than the other.

>Populations selected become more specialized and less information
>is available. Evolution (as you would describe it) requires the
>addition of new information. Not just reorganization, copying error,
>or mutation. Completely new information.

Then how do you explain the new species that arise?

I think you may have a misconception about what evolution is. It's not a magical process that turns a horse into a giraffe. It's not a secret process that adds whole sections of useful DNA to a genome. It's a eons-long process that only has two parts to it:

1) Better adapted organisms (i.e. horses with long necks) survive better than organisms without the new adaptation. The organisms without the adaptation die.

2) Those adaptations are heritable; they appear in offspring.

That's all you need for pandas to evolve a sixth finger (a "thumb"), for people to evolve the skeleton/musculature for walking upright, for giraffes to grow long necks, for fish to turn fins into spines into legs, for squirrels to turn loose skin into wings. The "new information" you talk about is nothing more than DNA that has only one advantage over every other bit of DNA ever made - it survived slightly better than a version that died out.

Do this experiment. Take a bunch of cards, each with a number from 0 to 9 on it. Shuffle them. Now go through them and throw out every card that has a number greater than 1 on it.

If you look at the deck when you are done, it has new information in it! It now consists of only binary digits (0 or 1) in a new configuration! Where did the new information come from? You didn't create it; you just threw out _other_ information.

Now throw out every card that's a repeat. In other words, if one card is a 1 and the next is also a 1, throw it out. Now check out the pattern when you're done.

You will notice a pattern beginning to appear - it will look something like 0101110101010010101. There are a lot more alternating patterns. Again, how did that pattern appear? Did God do it? After all, if you didn't do it, someone must have put all that new information there.

The answer, of course, is that God didn't do it. Neither did you, directly. You didn't PUT the cards in that order; you just threw out some information. But by removing some information you have made the remaining information more ordered. A pattern is beginning to appear.

The above experiment shows how you can get order from randomness by just plain throwing away patterns you don't like. Which is exactly what natural selection does. Who added the new information? God? Again, no. Just the natural process of selection acting on a process with a lot of randomness to it (sexual reproduction.)

[SpeedRacer 1]

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I've noticed that the ones arguing against evolution have yet to propose an alternative theory.

We're discussing NDT here. What I believe to be true is no secret and has been discussed A LOT in many other threads. Just trying to stay on topic. (this time)

Even if you believe in Intelligent Design, I still don't understand what PHYSICAL MECHANISMS you believe actually took place. So God did it. Fine. But how did it happen??

Speed Racer
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[StreetScooby 5]

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Natural Selection always results in a loss of information. It cannot add to the genome. Populations selected become more specialized and less information is available. Evolution (as you would describe it) requires the addition of new information. Not just reorganization, copying error, or mutation. Completely new information.

Ah pajarito, it's taken a while, but I see your point now. I think billvon's point here is that this process happens ALOT. So, it's the sum of all of these processes that brings us to where we are.

We are all engines of karma

[StreetScooby 5]

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Indeed, many think that if evolution "succeeds" their religion will be damaged or destroyed.

And, indeed, their belief system will be damaged, if not destroyed. That's a very frightening thing. I was 21 when I shucked my fundamentalist Christian beliefs. It was a very difficult time in my life.

We are all engines of karma

[Andy9o8 0]

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Many think Neanderthal should be regarded as Homo Sapiens.

In parts of Appalachia, it's actually true.
But I digress.

[kallend 1,647]

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Today we have a small minority of people who are uncomfortable with the idea of evolution. They don't like the idea that they are the end result of a process that produced us (and chimpanzees, and horses, and trees) from the same basic starting point; it makes them uncomfortable.

From what I've read in this thread, many people question the validity of its assumptions.

Depends how you define "many". I've seen a few people repeat the same misrepresentations many times.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.