Species/Kinds (for Peg...and others)

Then that screws your definition up. If a kind is a genus, then lions, tigers, leopards and jaguars are the same kind. But cheetahs, ocelots, lynxes, bobcats, snow leopards, and cougars are of other kinds. On the other hand, your statement: You give the impression that bird is a kind which is not a genus but a class. All of the cats I listed above are of the family felidae, which is a lot lower than a class.

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008

Peg, give it up. You have no grasp of what science is or what science does.You've committed to a religious belief, and you are willing to do anything, and say anything, to make that belief true, or TRVE if you will.But you have essentially no education in the actual sciences you are dismissing. You are taking the word of some creationist websites, and we all have found that they routinely lie about science.Now I studied this subject in graduate school up to the Ph.D. level and could point out a dozen or two places where your post is incorrect.But is it worth the effort?No, because the facts wouldn't matter one bit to you. You have shown that you don't care about facts, just your a priori beliefs.If you ever want to know some of the real facts, let me know.In the meantime take my advice and proclaim that what you are posting is religion, and don't pretend that it is science. We'll all be happier.

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

Why can a small bird such as a parrot learn to speak, but an ape who has many of the physical characteristics needed for speech such as lips, tongue, vocal cords, cannot learn to speak?
if we are so close, explain why they cannot speak.Humans and apes cannot hybridize which means they are not closely related.Another thing that sets us apart dramatically is our cerebral cortex Our cortex is not only much larger then any ape, but it also has a much larger 'uncommitted' area, meaning it is not used for the physical functions of the body but is mostly used for mental processes...this is completely different to any ape.and more recently the DNA of chimpanzees and orangutans among other monkeys has shown that their genetic makeup is not as similar as was once thought. Apparently there are large differences in their DNA compared to ours.These facts make it nothing more then speculation that we are related to chimps...or any other type of ape.

i've never once claimed to be a scientistbut this site is for debating both sides and therefore im debating why i believe evolution is not sound. I'm pretty sure creationists are allowed to post their views here.

One quick question Peg, how do you know that humans and chimps can't hybridize? What experiments have been done? How about humans and orangutans?

The parrot isn't "learning to speak" it's learning to imitate sounds. Check out Koko, who has learned to communicate through sign language. Source?

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It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds
soon I discovered that this rock thing was true
Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil
Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
All of a sudden i found myself in love with the world
And so there was only one thing I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang along ling long - Jesus Built my Hotrod Ministry
Live every week like it's Shark Week! - Tracey Jordan
Just a monkey in a long line of kings. - Matthew Good
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist! - Get Your War On
*not an actual doctor

as far as i'm aware, it has not been done.here is an article about the possiblity of doing so but it does state that it has not been done yet. "A Department of Health spokeswoman said: "It's just not a problem. If you inseminate an animal with human sperm, scientifically nothing happens. The species barriers are too great."

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EVEN though hybrids of humans and animals have never been created, many other creatures have been crossed successfully."

Hi, Peg.Thanks for taking the time to respond to me. I know it can't be easy with so many people on your case. You already said that. However, you have never said it immediately after saying this: I think it's safe to say that "it has to do with genetics" is not really an alternative to "evolution/speciation."Perhaps you would benefit from a brief primer on what's called the "Modern Synthesis" of Darwin's ToE. Basically, it's a redescription of Darwin's original ToE in terms of genetic mechanisms. So, basically, it's the idea that the mechanism behind ToE "has to do with genetics."So, please either clarify for me what you mean by "it has to do with genetics," or stop repeating it.----- Earlier in this thread, you drew the line at reproductive compatibility. Do you remember that part? For example: Message 141: that was just yesterday! Now, you are backing off from that statement and saying that members of a kind need not be interfertile.----- But, you're just focusing on the words we use to describe it, and not on the concept it embodies. The fundamental concept is reproductive isolation. The arguments from the beginning have been tailored specifically toward the criteria on which you define "kind."Using your interfertility criterion, what could we possibly conclude about a group of varieties that shows a mix of interfertility and non-interfertility? You cannot divide a ring into two kinds, because, anywhere you draw the line, you will be dividing things that are interfertile, and you will have some animals that can breed outside of their "kind." But, you cannot call the entire ting one kind, because they do not all meet the interfertility criterion.A ring species is thus a grey area in your "kinds" classification, because, no matter how you choose to classify it, you have to violate the fundamental criteria of your classification schema!Therefore, there is a flaw in the reasoning behind your classification schema!But, don't worry: yours isn't the only schema that fails. That same flaw is common to literally ALL other classification schemas that any scientist, religious leader or lay person has ever invented. So, no, Peg, it is most emphatically NOT about definitions: it is about a real-life phenomenon that defies all definition.Biodiversity is NOT a conglomeration of categories, but a continuous spectrum. And, all indications are that literally ALL organisms can be positioned somewhere on this one spectrum. That's why scientists generally agree with common descent: because there are no really meaningful, clear breaks between literally any two organisms on the planet that could be reasonably interpreted as evidence for separate origins.

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

Do you know that human sperm has been tested and does penetrate a gibbon egg?Sperm/egg interaction: the specificity of human spermatozoa - PubMedGibbons are the apes furthest from humans on an evolutionary scale if I remember correctly.

Britten, R.J. 2002. ‘Divergence between samples of chimpanzee and human DNA sequences is 5% counting indels.’ Proceedings National Academy Science 99:13633-13635.

Peg, I would never dream of telling you not to post here. I actually enjoy discussing these matters with you.But what does bother me is that you post your views as science, or at least supported by science, without ever having studied the sciences in question.In my case it tends to annoy me, as I have studied a couple of those sciences intensely for forty years.You would never think of offering your opinions concerning approach and technique to a brain surgeon, but you seem to think it appropriate to tell other scientists how to do things, and where we are wrong.So don't be surprised when we sometimes get annoyed.

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

Correct, if you count not only base pairs substitutions, but also insertions and deletions, then the similarity between a given chimp and human scores at an average of 95%, rather than 98.5% as calculated using only the base pairs. But if you add indels to the comparison of different unrelated humans, this divergence also gets more than 3 times bigger. So it isn't saying anything we don't already know.Just a moment...A better comparison is found using only functional DNA, by this score Chimpanzees are 99.4% similar to humans. In comparison, the most distant humans appear to be about 99.6% similar. This is the reason science is seriously considering enlarging the genus Homo to include both kinds of chimp and probably also gorillas.Just a moment...Chimps and humans, as well as other Old World apes and monkeys, share examples of a series of retrovirus embedded directly in our genetic code. These aren't targetted, the slide in at random and if the host happens to survive when others don't, then it tends to become ancestral to further generations that share the copied virus.The most recent ones we share with chimps are not common to gorillas. Some ape survived and produced children that were also immune, who became the common ancestor of both us and them. Other apes, attacked at a different location, did not survive and became worm food.The odds of a retrovirus just happening to hit the exact same spot in two genomes, of two remarkably similar animals who were yet somehow unrelated, and both sets surviving to the point where they could see the amazing link and talk to one another about it, are pretty low. This isn't one of those, given enough time anything could happen, things. Time actually decreases the odds.http://www.sciencedaily.com/...ases/2002/08/020802075138.htm

Peg writes:

quote:

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Britten, R.J. 2002. ‘Divergence between samples of chimpanzee and human DNA sequences is 5% counting indels.’ Proceedings National Academy Science 99:13633-13635.

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And now for the most important question:Do you understand what this study is saying? Specifically, do you know what an "indel" is? No, don't look it up. No, don't look up the original study to see if you can glean something from it. You tell us right here and now what you think this study is saying with regard to the genome and what the indels have to say about it?This is actually an important paper you mentioned because it talks about the reason why human/chimp hybridization does not occur. You did read this paper first before you referenced it, yes?And most importantly, why would this paper be indicative of humans and chimps not sharing a common ancestor? Especially since the paper makes great use of the fact that humans and chimps do share a common ancestor in order to make its conclusions?You did read the paper before you referenced it, yes?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

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Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.

So: amounts to a 5% difference. That ain't that large.

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It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds
soon I discovered that this rock thing was true
Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil
Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
All of a sudden i found myself in love with the world
And so there was only one thing I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang along ling long - Jesus Built my Hotrod Ministry
Live every week like it's Shark Week! - Tracey Jordan
Just a monkey in a long line of kings. - Matthew Good
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist! - Get Your War On
*not an actual doctor

I know we've gone over this before, so I'm wondering why you would bring it up again.But here we go...Since Piltdown was one of the first "fossils" presented, there wasn't much to check it against. The only reason that it lasted 40 years is that people weren't allowed to examine it.It wasn't as though suddenly after 40 years they discovered Piltdown was fake. It was out of line with ALL the other evidence that continued to accumulate.When you have a collection of data and you have one outlying data point, that's reason to look more closely at it.As soon as they were able to get their hands on Piltdown it was demonstrated to be fake, which was quite a relief since it indicated the OPPOSITE trend in evolution (brain then body) from what was really happening (body then brain). Do you REALLY not understand this? Honestly?ALL mammals are related. They ALL descend from the earliest mammals. So, YES, that 70 million year old rodent-like animal is an ancestor to us. It is ALSO an ancestor to whales and sheep. But NO ONE would include it on the branch of homonid evolution. Just like you don't try and trace your family tree back to Noah. Actually, skull fragments and teeth can tell you A LOT about an animal if you are educated. For example, if there's no enlarged canines in the male (as we see in most other primates) it means that the males aren't battling for sexual partners. No battling = pair bonding. The angle at which the jaw attaches to the skull tells us where the spine could or could not enter. An upright animal has the spine enter the base of the skull.That's just a TINY fragment of the info you can get, and that's just off the top of my head. Now you are just lying. Here's the thing to ask yourself. WHO do you think you're going to fool with this lie? Surely you know that we're all much more familiar with the Australopithecines than you are. Are you lying to convince yourself? "Skull" actually. And, that's EXACTLY what we'd expect to see given the other fossils in the lineage. By the way, given that she was pretty tiny herself, if she had a skull the size of a modern human, she would have looked like a lollipop. Peg, you're living in the past.We don't have to prove anything. It's standard scientific knowledge. It's been confirmed COUNTLESS times but literally thousands of different lines of evidence.That's like saying "Physicists are hell bent on proving that gravity exists".You can choose not to believe. You can ignore facts. You can lie to us about the evidence. What you can't do is change the fact that the world has moved on without you.