Darwinist
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- Mimio0
They're not biochemists. They the founders of the Discovery Inst. Which is part of your problem...they're all biased.
- Nairn0
Die.
- mrdobolina0
The branch of theology that is concerned with defending or proving the truth of Christian doctrines?
- flagellum0
mmm, nope mimio. Show me the conclusive research. Detail for me a viable tested Darwinian pathway from (I'll even give to free of charge) base protiens to a functional flagellum. Hasn't been done... can't be done.
And no, pointing to homologous components in other machines and systems, isn't going to cut it.
- KuzII0
woops, forgot most people don't have a subscription to the economist like me. Here's the full text:---------
WHEN Homo sapiens emerged as a species, he was not alone. The world he entered was already peopled by giants and dwarfs, elves, trolls and pixies—in other words, creatures that looked humanlike, but were not the genuine article. Or, at least, not as genuine as Homo sapiens has come to believe himself to be.
Like the story of Homo sapiens himself, the story of the whole human family begins in Africa. About 4.5m years ago, probably in response to a drying of the climate that caused forest cover in that continent to shrink, one species of great ape found itself pushed out into the savannah, an ecological niche not normally occupied by apes. Over the next 300,000 years these apes evolved an upright stance. No one know for sure why, but one plausible explanation, advanced by Peter Wheeler of John Moores University in Liverpool, is that standing upright reduces exposure to sunlight. To an animal adapted to the forest's shade, the remorseless noonday sun of the savannah would have been a threat. Dr Wheeler's calculations suggest that walking upright decreases exposure at noon by a third compared with going on all fours, since less of the body's surface faces the overhead sun. Humanity, in the form of Australopithecus anamensis, had arrived.
AdvertisementAustralopithecines of various species lasted for over 3m years. But half-way through that period something interesting happened. One of them begat a species known to science variously as Homo rudolfensis and Homo habilis. All modern great apes make tools out of sticks and leaves to help them earn their living, and there is no reason to believe that this was not true of australopithecines. But, aided by hands that no longer needed to double as part-time feet, Homo habilis began to exploit a new and potent material that needs both precision and strength to work—stone. This provided its immediate descendants with a powerful technology, but also gave its distant descendants in human palaeontology laboratories an additional way of tracing their ancestry, for stone tools often survive where bones do not.
Homo habilis's successor species, Homo erectus, did not bestride the globe in the way that his eventual descendant Homo sapiens did, but he certainly stuck his nose out of Africa. Indeed, the first fossil erectus discovered was in Java, in 1891, and the second one, several decades later, turned up in China, near Beijing. It was not until 1960 that erectus bones were found in Africa.
Homo erectus is a frustrating species. His tools are found all over the southern half of Eurasia, as well as in Africa. But China and Java aside, his bones are scarce outside Africa. There are two skullcaps from Georgia and half of one from India. He did, however, leave lots of descendants.
Naming fossils is a game that beautifully illustrates Henry Kissinger's witticism about academic disputes being so bitter because the stakes are so low. The best definition of a species that biologists have been able to come up with is “a group of creatures capable of fertile interbreeding, given the chance”, which clearly makes it hard to determine what species a particular fossil belongs to. Researchers therefore have to fall back on the physical characteristics of the bones they find. That allows endless scope for argument between so-called splitters, who seem to want to give a new name to every skull discovered, and lumpers, who like to be as inclusive as possible.
Some splitters, for example, argue that the African version of Homo erectus should be called Homo ergaster. Whatever the niceties, it is clear that by 500,000 years ago, if not before, Homo erectus was breaking up into anatomically different populations. Splitters would like to turn the Georgia fossils, an early twig of the erectus tree, into Homo georgicus. There is also Homo rhodesiensis, found in southern Africa, Homo heidelbergensis from Europe, and a whole drawer's-worth of specimens known to some as Homo helmei and to others as archaic Homo sapiens.
How little is really known, though, was thrown into sharp relief by the announcement just over a year ago that yet another species, Homo floresiensis, had been found. It was discovered on Java's nearish neighbour island, Flores. Finding a new species of human is always exciting, but what is particularly intriguing about Homo floresiensis is how small it was—barely a metre tall when fully grown. Perhaps inevitably, though to the disgust of its discoverers, Homo floresiensis became known to journalists as the hobbit, after J.R.R. Tolkien's fictional humanoid. Homo neanderthalensis, the descendant of Homo heidelbergensis, by contrast, was if not a giant then at least a troll. Though he stood five or ten centimetres shorter than a modern European Homo sapiens, the thickness of his bones suggests he was a lot heavier.
Both Homo neanderthalensis and Homo floresiensis were certainly around when Homo sapiens left Africa—whichever version of that story turns out to be the correct one. There may also have been some lingering populations of other hominid species. That raises the intriguing question of what happened when these residents met the sapiens wave.
Some researchers believe there was interbreeding, echoing the ideas of an older school of palaeoanthropology called multiregionalism. The multiregionalists thought either that pre-sapiens hominids were all a vast, interbreeding species that gradually evolved into sapiens everywhere, or, against all Darwinian logic, that Homo sapiens arose independently in several places by some unknown process of parallel evolution.
As recently as 2002, Alan Templeton, then at the University of Washington at St Louis, claimed to have found a number of genetic trees whose roots were 400,000-800,000 years old, and yet which included non-Africans. That, if confirmed, would support multiregionalism. Meanwhile, John Relethford, of the State University of New York's campus at Oneonta, has criticised the conclusions of studies on mitochondrial DNA extracted from the bones of Neanderthals. This does not resemble DNA from any known modern humans, which led the authors of the work to conclude there was no interbreeding. Dr Relethford points out that Neanderthal DNA brought into the sapiens population by interbreeding could subsequently have been lost by chance in the lottery of who does and who does not reproduce. Similar losses are known to have happened in Australia, where mitochondrial DNA from human fossils is absent from modern Australians.
Most students of the field, though, think there was no interbreeding, full stop. Either Homo sapiens persecuted his cousins into extinction or, with his superior technology, he outhunted, outgathered and outbred them. The next question is where that technology—or, rather, the brainpower to invent and make it—came from.
- Nairn0
Don't care..
- Mimio0
Most scientists have the integrity to change their viewpoints when they're shown they are mistaken or incorrect. It's the "not knowing" that creates all the debate, and allows people to inject doubt for the sake of ulterior motives.
- DrHuxtable0
In short, NeoDarwinism is empty philosophy masquerading as science and it contains holes big enough to drive an intelligently designed truck through.
flagellum
(Jan 6 06, 08:39)Its funny how believers in ID act as if they are on to some "new" science. I find it especially cute when Darwin's Theory of Evolution is labeled as "steamboat era" science. I'm sure its been said before about ID, but I will state it again: a pig with lipstick is still a pig. You are just calling creationism something else and claming science is supporting it.
Crafty. Discipler, couple months ago I asked you to point me in the direction of some scientific papers supporting ID, and you tried. I read about 4 or 5 of them, and all I can conclude is that followers of ID are reinterpreting other peoples work. For example, someone publishes work which does not fit the evolution theory perfectly, the result is taken and twisted into meaning that there must have been a designer. Kind of shady if you ask me.
Where are the papers where people are attempting to prove the existence of a designer. Maybe I was not specific enough with my initial request. The links you provide do not show that. They simply steal others work, and claim it means something other than the author's stated meaning.
Scientific theories are just that, theories. No one takes these things as being absolute, and I don't beileve I was ever taught they were. Obviously there are large holes in evolution, but take away a designer and you have nothing to support your theory. Stating something is so complex that there has to be a designer is insulting really and waters science down. Science will not progress if this is going to be the thought process we adopt.
If ID is just so obvious, why is there a need to have to pass legislature to have it taught? The people who came up with the Big-Bang Theory certainly did not have to do this. They went to the lab and did there work ... until believers of ID start doing their own work, and not reinterpreting everyone else's, it is a joke.
- mr_snuggles0
I am nothing...
- mrdobolina0
the christian bible says that the earth is only a bit over 6,000 years old.
All scientists agree that the earth is older than that.
What gives?
- Nairn0
..if I..
- TheTick0
And yo uknow what - the ID guys are dishonest going the other way as well hby trying real hard to say publicly - "It's not about religion.."
Which is total BS..I would rathe rthem be honest and say "Look, this is our view of the world and we're going to judge it against this other criteria that science provides and see what we get"..
Now that would be honest and I would respect that, but they can't even be honest about that - Discipler/Flagelating Man or whatever he is now even goes to great lengths to say "It's not about religion - but in the Bible it says..."
Ug. No honesty or integrity anywhere. It's bullshit, and it's lightweight religious thought. I get more deeper and heavier religious thought from a street beggar than from these guys...
- flagellum0
mimio, Michael Behe has published over 40 peer-reviewed treatments.
But, another good example of ignoring all the other examples and focusing one. ;)
- Nairn0
woops, forgot most people don't have a subscription to the economist like me.
;)
just kidding, i'm news geek too.not usually as articulate as you, mind.
- kyl30
If noah had two of each animal on a ark there would have been 4000 tons of shit produced daily, essentially sinking said ark.
- discipler0
There are many anonymous posters on this board. Who is mimio?
It doesn't matter.
I'm only interested in communicating data. People should be educated on issues like Darwinian Evolution and it's fatal flaws. There's too much of an imbalance here.
- flagellum0
hehe, i love how you keep pasting that link, pavlov. If you had actually read the articles I linked, you would have an understanding of how things worked with slavery in the OT.
And no, I'm not going to get into another unproductive discussion about that with you.
- Mimio0
//Not if you believe in magic kyl3.
- Nairn0
..Get a strike for..
