Why are there no human apes alive today?

This thread is about no hairy apey half humans being about.Creationists have won the day based on facts.Evolutionists have won the day on being ignorant of creation sciences, abusive and showing they have no more than a bunch of debated theories to explain the facts.In other words I feel many of you have confimed you can no longer tell the difference between fact and fiction.

I give you the "forest man" (again): How is that NOT a "hairy apey half human"?Edited by Catholic Scientist, : typo

You lot will never recover from your earlier misrepresentation of Neanderthal. It took DNA to set the record straight.TheN of course there is CONTAMINATION, CONTAMINATION CONTAMINATION.None of your representations have any credibility.

Was that last sentence constructed by drawing words at random out of a hat? It's a complete non sequitur. Would it be possible for us to speak to the hat directly? The fact that there are intermediate forms in the fossil record supports the sane view that there were once intermediate forms. We're still waiting for your explanation. You can't even recite creationist nonsense properly. As I have told you before, you're meant to be pretending that evolution is unfalsifiable. Admitting that it is irrefutable is true, and as such has no place in creationist dogma. What is your "well supported stance" on why we can no longer find any Neanderthals or habilines or australopithicenes?If you can't answer that question, it seems that what you have is not so much a "well supported stance" as a "theoretical unresolved puzzle".When I have leisure, I shall count the number of times you have ducked answering this question. I shall continue to rely on scientists to tell me what is and isn't scientific. Their superior knowledge of science, combined with their ability to write coherent English, recommends them to me as being better equipped to do so then you are.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

If a chimp is what you see when you look in the mirror and can also debate about an afterlife, I'd say you may well be the missing linkPlease turn yourself over for resaerch.

Evidence and what the evidence means are two different things. The evidence doesn't suddenly go away if we disagree on what the evidence means. That is why you hear people speak of the difference between the fact of evolution and the theory. Whether or not scientists agree about the theory, the evidence remains. In other words, we can see that species have changed over time and have the fossils that record those changes (evolution); we have a 'theory' that describes how/why we think those changes occured (The Theory of Evolution). The evidence is in the fossil record. The Theory of evolution has withstood more than a century of attempts to falsify it. That doesn't mean it hasn't undergone some changes. Scientists did not have the understanding of genetics 100 years ago that we do today. The basic underpinnings of the theory remain; that variation in individuals exist, that natural selection weeds out the unfit, and therefor that populations evolve over time or go extinct. We just have a deeper understanding of the mechanisms involved.Just because your roof is leaking doesn't mean you tear down your house. You build a better roof, and you keep it up and stop neglecting it. I'm not sure how this supports your position? Saying that bat's use echolocation to navigate and find prey and humans now use it as well is not in dispute. Birds fly using wings and we have machines with wings that help us do the same. This does not falsify evolution. How could it? Science works with uncertainty. If we knew everything we wouldn't need to work at it. That doesn't mean we don't come closer to an understanding of the mechanisms at work. Would you throw out all we know about chemistry just because we don't know everything about the sub atomic particles that work to keep it all together. Even if we are still looking for that elusive higgs boson, doesn't mean we can't use our knowledge of chemistry to make new compounds.I apologize if you thought I was making fun of you. That was not my intention at all. Nobody, that I know of, is suggesting that creationists are wrong because they can't answer every question (even though it appears some creationists are saying science is wrong because it can't answer everything). They are objecting to creationists saying they are doing 'science' when they are not. Science requires the ability to test ones hypothesis, and requires the possibility that something might be falsified. Creationists appeal to God as the one who created all the species or moved that hurricane or making you trip and breaking your arm in order for you to have met your husband is what scientists object to. It isn't testable, and therefore isn't falsifiable. You're under the misapprehension that once scientists develop a hypothesis or theory, that that is the end of the story. Science doesn't operate like that. We GROW into our understanding over time. We make mistakes. We correct mistakes and we look for more data so that we can provide ourselves a better or deeper understanding of what is going on. We throw out what doesn't work and sometiems we start afresh. Just like we don't completely throw out Newton's theories. They still work to a certain degree. Einstein developed a more accurate understanding of gravity, light and time.Likewise with human evolution. You can't expect that scientists will have everything 100% correct when they don't have all the data and never will. that doesn't mean we don't have a broad understanding of what took place. We know we share many similarities in genes with chimpanzees and the other great apes. We have the fossils that tells us there were once species that had traits intermediate between us and the other apes. We see a gradual change in the shape and size of the cranium and post-cranial skeleton of these intermediates over time until we get to a point where the fossils appear more and more Homo sapiens-like. We have the evidence of species changing today, that give us clues into how species might have diverged.To take your example: What I am trying to say is that not knowing which of the dinosaur species was the direct ancestor of birds today doesn't mean we can't say dinosaurs evolved into the birds we see today. The transition is evident in the fossil record. We see the intermediates.

You appear to be alluding to events that have only taken place in your head. As a result, your narrative is hard to follow.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

No your interpretations and theories claim there are intermediates in the fossil record.My interpretation and theories suggest there was a great variety of non human primates with flat faces and rounded skull caps just like there is today. Your researchers have no clue what the flesh looks like on a fossil.The fact according to your own biased dating methods is that there are stuff all chimp fossils dating back to the split. My explanation for this is every adaptation in the chimp line has been lumped into the human line and that is why you have bugger all fossil chimps and lots of misrepresented homonids etc. eg Ardi the ape.My argument better aligns with the EVIDENCE found. You are still left explaining why stuff all chimp ancestors have been found, via a plethora of theories?

Nor do you.Your "discussion" is nothing more than regurgitated creation "science" talking points. You ignore what we post and continue to make the same baseless assertions again and again.You do the Gish Gallop in written form, never staying around one point long enough for a debate. Even when shown to be wrong you simply ignore our points and repeat the same discredited assertions again and again.But that's OK. That's what we have come to expect from creation "scientists."That's about the only field in which one can do "science" while 1) knowing nothing about science, and 2) using methods which are the exact opposite of real science.

---

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

I figured you'd totally avoid answering the question or even addressing the point.Par for the course.

The fact that there are intermediate forms in the fossil record proves that there are intermediate forms in the fossil record. This is a prediction of the theory, and therefore tends to confirm it.Interpretation does not, of course, come into it. "Just like there is today"? You are now claiming that they have survived?Please show us some examples. Could we have that again in English?And preferably without pretending that dating methods are "biased", you're not likely to deceive anyone. And yet the intermediate forms don't look much like chimps. Many of them look distinctly more like humans.P.S: Sally McBrearty1 & Nina G. Jablonski, "First Fossil Chimpanzee",Nature 437, 105-108 (1 September 2005) No, it doesn't, because the evidence (things which are anatomically unlike chimps) aligns better with the proposition that they were not, in fact, chimps. If that sentence was written in English, it would probably not be true. I have never "explain[ed] why stuff all chimpanzee ancestors have been found", mainly because this isn't actually true. The fact that I have never done this argues against your claim that I am still doing it.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

A phenomenon which you have not even tried to explain. If "winning the day" is the same as ducking the issue, then yes. Otherwise, not so much. I think we actually won by default, since you have produced no theory, "debated" or otherwise, to explain the facts. Of course you do. You also "feel" that H. erectus is a gorilla --- or is it a chimpanzee now? It's so hard to keep up.

Hi, Mazzy.A belated welcome to EvC! I agree with you. My interpretation of the data is also that there was, in the past, a great variety of non-human primates with flat faces and rounded skull caps. I think my interpretation differs in that I have also observed another pattern in the data: there seem to be some among these non-human primates that look a bit more like humans than others. Do you agree with me that some of these non-human primates look more like humans than others?----- If this is your stance, why don't we ignore the flesh for awhile (since you seem to be the only one discussing it anyway) and focus on things whose appearances "our researchers" demonstrably do have clues about (i.e., the bones themselves). This will be sufficient to demonstrate some things.

---

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

This is rule 5 from the Forum Guidelines:

5. Bare links with no supporting discussion should be avoided. Make the argument in your own words and use links as supporting references.

Those links which I have followed did not support your point in any discernible way, so if you think they support your point of view then it is incumbent upon you to explain how. What kind of discussion would it be if everyone just posted links? It might look like this: So please, include the evidence supporting your position in your messages and construct your own arguments around that evidence, using links only as references. Look in the mirror much? You just pegged the board's irony meter.We're not really having a discussion here. Every message you get launches you on another repeat of your unsupported accusations against evolution and evolutionists. We can't have a discussion, a back and forth, if you're not going to respond to what people say. Please start using quote boxes (cut-n-paste the text into your post, then put a [qs] in front and a [/qs] at the end), and then comment, critique and rebut what was actually said.--Percy

I'm not sure why you are having a hard time understanding that science is inherently self-correcting. As an analogy (too many?): whether you realize it or not, you are constantly making corrections in the direction of your car as you drive. That doesn't mean you stop going in the same direction. Sometimes you make a mistake (wander too far and cross the lines or turn into the wrong street) but you hopefully correct yourself. You see where you need to go and you make a plan on how to get there. Maybe someone else has a better plan or route, but are you really going to take the suggestion, if offered, that you ignore all the street signs and stop lights and trust that you will get there intact and unharmed?Science has the map (the evidence, the fossils) and we see where we are now. We are just trying to understand how we got here. For the purposes of this analogy, we were blindfolded. We know we didn't just 'pop' at the quickee-mart without taking a route. Scientists might disagree on which route we took, but we know we are not complete idiots to have taken a route that would have lead us across the ocean and back (after all we're in a car).Perhaps I take the analogy too far, and any mistaken inferences are my own. I hope you'll pardon me but that's a bunch of tripe. The reason it is called a Theory is because of its predictive power. It is called the Theory of Evolution because it has predictive powers concerning Evolution.A Theory will never be 100% correct, because we can never be 100% certain we didn't miss something or make a mistake. That doesn't mean we can't make a prediction using that theory. The Theory of Evolution predicts that we should find a fossil species that has intermediate traits between us and chimpanzees, if it is true we share a common ancestor. Notice the italicized bit. Not finding a fossil species that has traits intermediate between a chimpanzee and us doesn't mean that evolution isn't true. It might be we share a common ancestor with Orangutans instead. But not finding a fossil showing intermediate traits also doesn't mean that our theory of a common ancestor between us and the chimpanzees isn't true. Not finding evidence doesn't falsify a theory or give it support. Maybe the evidence is still out there we just didn't find it (in this case we have...but you get the point I hope). If a creationist will deny that the Earth is slightly over 4.5 billion years old, and that we have evidence of life for roughly 3.8 billion of those years, and it shows a rise in more complex organisms over time with extinctions and diversification, then I can say they are denying what has been observed. We can argue about whether the theory of evolution explains what we observe or whether God did it all ex nihio, but if the basis for our disagreement is a fundemental denial of these observations, then there is no reason to have further discussion on this topic. Please, Mazzy, I implore you to stop and think about what I am telling you. Just because there are no T-rex's alive today doesn't mean they never existed. Disagreements on why something died out (went extinct) doesn't mean it never existed. The fact that we observe in the fossil record, these species means they existed at one time. We can argue about whether it belongs on one evolutionary line or another*, that is to say, we can argue about whether the fossil is more akin to a gorilla or homo sapiens, but arguing that it never existed just defeats the purpose.I think I understand your point that, if it was intermediate, then it should have survived somewhere, but then we could say the same thing about a lot of species. We don't know why some died out and others survived. We can propose theories, such as the extinction of the dinosaurs being caused by a meteor strike. We make a prediction that a crater exists somewhere around the time of the extinction and one day we find the Chicxulub Crater. That doesn't mean that is what killed them though. Other scientists propose their theories and try to falsify that one, and so. In no case does that mean dinosaurs never existed or evolution is falsified.We don't know why the intermediates died out, but we do know that some existed alongside us up to 18,000 years ago. It could be they couldn't compete with us and they starved out. Maybe we killed enough of them that they couldn't keep a viable population and they went extinct. Whatever the case is, it doesn't make evolution untrue. I agree with you that evolution is a puzzle. One in which we don't know where all the pieces go. But like most puzzles that come in a box, we have a picture. Either God cut the pieces and made the puzzle or evolution did.Saying you are scientific doesn't mean you are scientific. To be scientific, it requires that you present testable ideas that can be falsified. It requires an openness to the idea that you could be wrong, but not so open that your brains fall out.*Not saying you need to believe in evolution, just trying to be as clear as possible.