Why are there no human apes alive today?

No, of course not. You are now making stuff up about what you were making stuff up about. This renders the rest of your drivel moot.Incidentally, could you try to be a bit more consistent? The research that shows that Ardipithecus is not even in the human lineage shows a fortiori that it is not a variety of H. erectus. Well, I was meaning to point out that you classified a Neanderthal as an "ape" back in post 820, and I guess that this is as good a time as any.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

What "one would expect" depends, of course, on who "one" is. When "one" identifies modern humans as apes, and when "one" thinks that H. erectus is "nothing more than a variety of gorilla", and when "one" can't tell the difference between an Australian and an orangutan, then "one" may not be such an expert on taxonomy as, for example, the people who are not as uneducated as you confess yourself to be; who have actually seen the fossils; and who have, by the way, already identified both male and female specimens of Ardipithecus.

Perhaps this would be a good time to explain that as a chimp is an ape, a chimp-like creature would in fact be an ape-like creature.Here's Ardipithecus and a chimp. You seem to have got your tenses mixed up. Surely you mean "were", not "are", unless your confusion extends to thinking that the past is the present. Yes, well, you were also certain that actual modern humans weren't humans. Your certainty isn't worth a tinker's damn. Though to give you credit, you are uncertain sometimes, as when you vacillated between the same skull being Australian, orangutan, or australopithecine.Personally, my money's on the paleontologists being right and you being wrong.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Hi Mazzy,I'm just now starting to catch up on last night's posts, and in this message I see you've taken me up on my suggestion to quote what you're responding to, and I appreciate that, but then I hit this passage: Until I hit the word "anagenetic" I thought you had written this, then I noticed the link you'd placed a dozen or so lines further down, so I assumed that meant the cut-n-pasted material had come from the webpage you linked to at Apologetics Press. Except it doesn't. It actually comes from Reasons to Believe: From Wence do we Come? Part 1 of 2.Anyway, to avoid confusion about which are your words and which are not you can quote the entire passage, including an indication of where it came from, like this: Even better would be to summarize the points from the link in your own words and go on to describe how they support your view, providing the link only as a reference.Edited by Admin, : Clarify.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Hi Mazzy,I'm putting a portion of my effort in this thread into maintaining a civil and courteous level of dialogue, and I noticed that Dr Adequate responded rather rudely to your message, but it seems to be because you asked him this: Not only did Dr Adequate never state that he believed Ardi, Lucy and Homo Erectus are all human ancestors, I'm pretty sure no one else here has said this, either. And I recall many people writing that it is impossible to tell which ancestral candidates are cousins and which are actual ancestors.So I think it would help the discussion if people weren't asked to defend things they didn't say.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Pressie says Well I am glad we agree on this at least. I accept your response in that the theory of evolution is just a theory and is not a proven fact. It is based on theories that are used to support other theories similar to creationists but with differing assumptions. This is why I feel TOE should be referred to as a faith and not a science. Here is what one of your leading researchers in the field had to say about the so called common ancestor of humans and chimps..."The australopithecines are a good example of Lubenow's third point. These extinct apes are trumpeted as human ancestors because of their crude bipedal walking ability. But nearly everything else about them is ape-like. The origin of their bipedality would be no small evolutionary task. Even Richard Leakey admits as much in his book with Roger Lewin, Origins Reconsidered (pp. 83-84), when he says that the change from walking on four legs to walking on two legs...would have required an extensive remodeling of the ape's bone and muscle architecture and of the overall proportion in the lower half of the body. Mechanisms of gait are different, mechanics of balance are different, functions of major muscles are different--an entire functional complex had to be transformed for efficient bipedalism to be possible.Yet these immense changes are not documented from the fossil record."Human FossilsSo even your leading researchers suggest we evolved from ape like creatures. They are ape like because they appear dissimilar to todays apes. However I think much of the hoo haaa is due to the misrepresetations entwined in many reconstructions.There is huge variety in species skulls. Just take a look at the link below to see for yourself what the range of human skulls alone look like. Even non human primates of each species vary greatly just like we do.Access deniedA skull on it's own could be anything form a juvenille gorilla to a homonid.'Australopithecine' means ape like, in case you have not picked up on that yet. They are represented as bipedal apes, like Lucy. They are apes in every other context even according to your own researchers, as if chimps can't walk bipedally today. They can, and this is all really a nonsense attempt to humanise an ape be they similar to todays apes, or not.Still your point is good...in the end your evolutionary researchers have no idea. Perhaps we descended from a squirrel like creature that stood upright and lost its' tail. These are evo dilemmas.As for me, I know there is no common ancestor between apes and mankind, no matter what the heck you think they look like this year.

Wow.
Is that really the best you can do?Pathetic. Really pathetic.
You are admitting that you are actually too stupid to use Google.

Edited by Admin, : Hide content of duplicate post.

Admin says Dr Adequate basically suggested my info re Ardi was inacurrate. Ardi was once hailed as a human ancestor initially. I have also discredited Lucy. So what you actually have is vaguary and a bunch of apes your researchers have little clue about.So let me get this straight. You are suggesting that no one here on EVC involved in this discussion asserts that Lucy or Ardi are in the human line....WELL that's just great. Then they all should stop referring to mythical fossil evidence for human ancestry. In actual fact if neither of these representatives and their cohorts were in the human line, then effectively evolutionists have absolutely no evidence for ancestry to a common ancestor of humans and apes. I love it!!!!!Are you also suggesting that Dr Adequate and others are saying that Homo Erectus, or at least one or some of the African specimens are also NOT in the human line? If not then you guys have a gigantically huge problem as effectively you have no fossil evidence for the decent of man from anything. What you have is a blur and no more than fossil evidence of a variety of apes that may or may not resemble todays apes.If any here are so sure of the basis of the fossil evidence that they are prepared to belittle me, than I'd like to see some credibility laid behind this so called evidence of yours. If none here are prepared to back their assertions with evidence, biased as it may be, then effectively I have won this debate, as I can back my claims well often using research and words from your own researchers. Evos apparently have no evidence to speak to.To debate on presumed evidence and then say you have no actual fossil evidence for the ancestry of mankind to a common ancestor that you are prepared to back really is a winner for me. Don't you think?It appears I am right in saying there are no intermediates around today because there never were any to begin with. It appears you have inadvertantly supported my stance. Thanks.Edited by Mazzy, : No reason given.

Panda says Pathetic looks like someone unable to refute the body of my asertions and stooping to insults to bolster their self image. Do you feel better about yourself and your inabliity to lodge any sort of substantial refute, now that you have insulted me.Believe me when I say it will take more than you and your lack of credibility to offend me.You will have to do much better than this woffle of a reply if you are to have any substance at all.

Why would I bother refuting your assertions.
If you had any evidence, then they wouldn't be just assertions.You've been told repeatedly to provide evidence - but you haven't.
All you are able to do is stoop to insults to bolster your self image.You will have to do much better than this woffle[sic] of a reply if you are to have any substance at all.

You might want to educate yourself a little bit. Something that is a scientific theory is not an educated guess.Maybe you can read this and attempt to understand.
Scientific Laws, Hypotheses, and Theories

quote:

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A theory is what one or more hypotheses become once they have been verified and accepted to be true. A theory is an explanation of a set of related observations or events based upon proven hypotheses and verified multiple times by detached groups of researchers. Unfortunately, even some scientists often use the term "theory" in a more colloquial sense, when they really mean to say "hypothesis." That makes its true meaning in science even more confusing to the general public.

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In general, both a scientific theory and a scientific law are accepted to be true by the scientific community as a whole. Both are used to make predictions of events. Both are used to advance technology.

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In fact, some laws, such as the law of gravity, can also be theories when taken more generally. The law of gravity is expressed as a single mathematical expression and is presumed to be true all over the universe and all through time. Without such an assumption, we can do no science based on gravity's effects. But from the law, we derived the theory of gravity which describes how gravity works, what causes it, and how it behaves. We also use that to develop another theory, Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, in which gravity plays a crucial role. The basic law is intact, but the theory expands it to include various and complex situations involving space and time.

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The biggest difference between a law and a theory is that a theory is much more complex and dynamic. A law describes a single action, whereas a theory explains an entire group of related phenomena. And, whereas a law is a postulate that forms the foundation of the scientific method, a theory is the end result of that same process.

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A simple analogy can be made using a slingshot and an automobile.

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A scientific law is like a slingshot. A slingshot has but one moving part--the rubber band. If you put a rock in it and draw it back, the rock will fly out at a predictable speed, depending upon the distance the band is drawn back.

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An automobile has many moving parts, all working in unison to perform the chore of transporting someone from one point to another point. An automobile is a complex piece of machinery. Sometimes, improvements are made to one or more component parts. A new set of spark plugs that are composed of a better alloy that can withstand heat better, for example, might replace the existing set. But the function of the automobile as a whole remains unchanged.

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A theory is like the automobile. Components of it can be changed or improved upon, without changing the overall truth of the theory as a whole.

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Some scientific theories include the theory of evolution, the theory of relativity, the atomic theory, and the quantum theory. All of these theories are well documented and proved beyond reasonable doubt. Yet scientists continue to tinker with the component hypotheses of each theory in an attempt to make them more elegant and concise, or to make them more all-encompassing. Theories can be tweaked, but they are seldom, if ever, entirely replaced.

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A theory is developed only through the scientific method, meaning it is the final result of a series of rigorous processes. Note that theories do not become laws. Scientific laws must exist prior to the start of using the scientific method because, as stated earlier, laws are the foundation for all science.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

This misuse of the term "theory" is so common that I'm surprised that creationists are still doing it. Well actually, no, I'm not surprised.It's very common for a term to mean one thing in common speech and mean something quite different in a specific field. For example, when people use the word "myth," they usually mean something that isn't true but that some people believe in: "It's a myth that there are alligators in the New York sewer system." But in folklore and literature, a myth is a traditional story that illustrates some fundamental truth or explains some natural phenomenon, e.g. the myth of Prosperine and Pluto tells us why we have summer and winter. Same word, two different meanings depending on the context.Similarly, in everyday, non-scientific speech, "theory" is used interchangeably with "hypothesis," both words conveying the idea of something that's a supposition or an educated guess. "No, you don't know for sure that it's going to rain the rest of the summer. That's just your theory."However, in science, "theory" has a very different meaning. A theory is a coherent proposition that explains a group of related phenomena. So cell theory tells us that the cell is the fundamental unit of life. Newton's theory of gravity tells us that all physical bodies attract each other in direct relationship to the product of their masses and in an inverse relationship to the square of the distance between them. These are explanatory statements, not guesses.For a hypothesis to reach the status of a theory, it has to have such explanatory power and be supported by the facts that to withhold consent to it would be intellectually perverse. A theory holds the place of the highest certainty in science. A fact is just a data point. A hypothesis is a proposed explanation that is still being tested and has yet to achieve the status of a theory.No theory is held to be absolutely true, because new data could always come along that the theory fails to explain. However, very rarely if ever does a new theory contradict a previous one, because the factual basis on which a true theory is based is so extensive and well established. What happens is that a new theory explains not only all of the facts that the old one did, but does a better job of it and can be used to explain even more phenomena. Thus Einstein's Relativity Theory doesn't contradict what Newton said, it just has greater explanatory power.It's always possible that a new theory will replace an old one, thus the statement that nothing is every proved in science with 100% certainty. But that doesn't at all mean that a theory is just a haphazard guess, as good as any other guess.There is the fact of evolution; evidence from a multitude of fields - biogeography, taxonomy, paleontology, physiology, and genetics, to name a few - all agree that genetic information in populations changes over time. Those are facts. What the Theory of Evolution does is tell us why this is true: inheritable traits always shift over time due to imperfect copying of genetic information, and changes that all allow greater reproductive success are more likely to be inherited than those that don't. Simple, clean and almost mathematical in its logic.I've noticed that the bulk of your rhetoric is based on what I call the "Experts are Idiots" defense. This is a weak and even foolish line of reasoning. For tens of thousands of intelligent, educated individuals to be fundamentally wrong about areas in which they are experts and in which they have years of training, while someone like yourself, self-admittedly totally uneducated in these same fields, to be right, is a highly unlikely proposition, to say the least.Experts can often disagree about details. Some historians may argue that the dependence on slavery in the agricultural South was the primary cause of the American Civil War, while others may believe that the conflict between states rights and federalism was much more to blame. Fine. Both of these propositions are based on facts. But no credible historian is going to propose that the primary cause was actually mind manipulation by Egyptian wizards. There are no facts to support that, so no one wastes time asserting or investigating it.While I don't think that one should just blindly accept what's commonly believed as true, it does seem that the most intellectually supportable position is to accept, however provisionally, what people who are experts are saying.It has been pointed out many times that the facts do not support your position. In fact, you often cite studies and articles that actually contradict what you're asserting. But far worse is your refusal to accept or even address rationally the work of experts. For example, back in Message 663 I answered this assertion: by providing an example of how forensic anthropologists can do quite an amazing job of reconstructing likenesses even of individual people using only bones.Here's a reconstruction on the left, built on a nothing more than a badly damaged skull and a pair of glasses found with the remains. The photograph on the right is the actual missing person who was identified by this reconstruction. Your response was essentially a restatement of the "Experts are Idiots" defense, which is no response at all.I've gone on at length, but I hope that I've done something to convince you to abandon this line of reasoning. Your argument may fall apart if you do, but you'll gain some intellectual credibility.At least please stop using the word "theory" the wrong way.ABE: It appears that Theodoric beat me to the punch in explaining the proper use of the word "theory." Maybe if you see the same explanation twice, it will suffice to convince you on this point at least.Edited by ZenMonkey, : No reason given.

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Your beliefs do not effect reality and evidently reality does not effect your beliefs.
-Theodoric

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Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
-Steven Colbert

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I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.
- John Stuart Mill

This is, of course, not true. It appears that you can't understand simple propositions written in the English language. But then, we knew that.

Hi Mazzy,You seem to be a little unclear about the concept of common ancestry, and what it means for an ancestor to be direct or indirect.Let's assume that you have a sister. You both have a common ancestor: your mother. Now let's say that you also have a cousin, whose mother is your mother's sister. You and your cousin also have a common ancestor: your grandmother on your mother's side. Everyone is related, but you have to go back two generations to find the common ancestor that you share with your cousin, but only one generation to find the one you share with your sister.Good so far?Now let's shoot forward in time a hundred years, three more generations down the line. Your great-granddaughter is unquestionably related to all three of you - yourself, your sister, and your cousin. She is directly related to you, and indirectly related to your sister and your cousin. She is more closely related to your sister than she is to your cousin, but she's still related nonetheless.So if a paleontologist says that Ardi (or any other extinct hominid) may or may not be a direct ancestor to human beings, that isn't at all the same thing as saying that we're not related. In the example above, H. sapiens is your great-granddaughter. Ardi might be you, or he might be your cousin. Ardi might not be a direct ancestor, but he's still related. Our common ancestor is just further back in the lineage.And there's the answer your primary assertion that the fact that there are no other hominids alive today proves that there never were any. Just because your sister didn't leave any children, that doesn't mean she never existed.

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Your beliefs do not effect reality and evidently reality does not effect your beliefs.
-Theodoric

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Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
-Steven Colbert

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I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.
- John Stuart Mill