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Author Topic:   True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing
Porkncheese
Member (Idle past 268 days)
Posts: 198
From: Australia
Joined: 08-25-2017


Message 121 of 154 (818927)
09-04-2017 8:33 AM
Reply to: Message 119 by Phat
09-04-2017 7:13 AM


Re: What point?
Thank you Phat for your kind words and advice which I will take.
All the best to you

This message is a reply to:
 Message 119 by Phat, posted 09-04-2017 7:13 AM Phat has seen this message but not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 122 of 154 (818932)
09-04-2017 9:11 AM
Reply to: Message 113 by Porkncheese
09-04-2017 3:22 AM


Re: What point?
Porkncheese writes:
RAZD I asked you about the dendrogram on message 44.
Ur explination came much later on message 85.
Meanwhile on message 46 Percy also calls it misleading and says that it is wrong.
I don't know why RAZD is using that misleading diagram. It makes it seem that chimps descended from gorillas and that humans descended from chimps. That definitely is not the case. Here's a much less detailed diagram that at least lends an accurate picture:
Chimps and bonobos are on the right and are very closely related to each other. Humans and chimp/bonobos shared a common ancestor around 4-6 million years ago. It's very important to understand that that common ancestor was neither human nor chimp nor bonobo. It was something else that was closely related. Further down the tree you can see that humans/chimps/bonobos shared a common ancestor with gorillas around 6-8 million years again. Again, it's important to understand that this common ancestor was neither gorilla, human, chimp or bonobo but something else that was closely related.
I'll repeat again that this chart is way oversimplified, but it at least accurately reflects the current state of our knowledge.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 113 by Porkncheese, posted 09-04-2017 3:22 AM Porkncheese has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 124 by RAZD, posted 09-04-2017 10:23 AM Percy has replied
 Message 126 by Porkncheese, posted 09-04-2017 10:38 AM Percy has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


(1)
Message 123 of 154 (818940)
09-04-2017 9:47 AM
Reply to: Message 113 by Porkncheese
09-04-2017 3:22 AM


What is misleading ... and what is similar
RAZD I asked you about the dendrogram on message 44.
Ur explination came much later on message 85.
Meanwhile on message 46 Percy also calls it misleading and says that it is wrong.
Who do I believe RAZD or Percy?
First answer: neither of us. Look at other sources and see how they compare -- is there radical differences between them or do they present the same general picture, differing slightly in the details?
Second answer: ask Percy to specify what he thinks is misleading, and see if you can clarify that.
Here is another source for human evolution, and what it shows is the bushiness in our past:
quote:
Human Evolution
Linked from this page are documents summarizing the hominid fossil record and hypothesized lines of human evolution from 5 million years ago to the present.
Under the current taxonomy (based on genetic rather than behavioral criteria), the term "hominid" refers to members of the biological human family Hominidae: living humans, all human ancestors, the many extinct members of Australopithecus, and our closest primate relatives, the chimpanzee and gorilla. According to The Tree of Life by Guillaume Lecointre and Herv Le Guyader (Harvard University Press: 2006), the similarly named and easily confused categories of humans and near human apes, in order of increasing inclusiveness, are:
  • Hominini - modern humans and all previous human, australopithecine, paranthropine and ardipithecine ancestors
  • Homininae - all of the above, plus chimpanzees (Panini), our closest living biological kin (a genetic kinship so close that some scientists have suggested their genus name should be changed from Pan to Homo).
  • Hominidae - all of the above, plus gorillas (Gorillinae)
  • Hominoidae - all of the above, plus orangutans (Pongidae)
  • Hominoidea - all of the above, plus gibbons (Hylobatoidae).
The chart (at right) shows the evolutionary
chronology inputed to these biological branches.
Ardipithecus, the common primate ancestor to
paranthropines, australopithecines and humans,
went extinct about 4 million years ago.
Human evolution is a puzzle made up of thousands of fossil pieces. The Chart of Human Evolution (below) shows the major pieces of that puzzle arranged in a likely solution.
The tentative connections between species or time of extinction, indicated by a "?", are open to clarification as new DNA and fossil evidence is reviewed in the scientific literature; see comments below the chart.

(note: yes the text says "right" and the image is to the left ... in the original)
This second chart covers the fossils for the human branch after the split with the chimpanzee branch.
To me this is the same basic information presented in a different format. Additionally this image has changed since I first viewed it as more information has been added and some lineages have been adjusted.
Another source is Origins of Humankind showing the same basic information in yet another format.
What I like about the Palaeos: Life Through Deep Time site is that it is interactive, but the problem is that the site is immense and that leads to problems with links when parts are updated.
They also talk in some detail about the Great Chain of Being and From Ladder to Tree. Interesting because this covers the history and how our thinking changed (evolved?) over time. And going back to that dendrogram that has caused so much trouble, clicking on the link to Hominini we get:
quote:
The Hominina
Editor's note: the following is copied verbatum, from Wikipedia, for no other reason than that the current editor has so much work to do in Palaeos that it was felt easiest to just copy n paste. At some point this material will be upgraded, updates, and elaborated upon (hopefully) - MAK111128
The more anthropomorphic primates of the Hominini tribe are placed in the Hominina subtribe. Referred to as hominans, they are characterized by the evolution of an increasingly erect bipedal locomotion. The only extant species is Homo sapiens. Fossil records indicate this subtribe branched from the common ancestor with the chimpanzee lineage about 3 to 5 million years ago.
Current evidence[citation needed] suggests that, about 2.6 million years ago, Australopithecus began to diverge into two paths. One path produced Paranthropus, more robust, specialized in a plant food that required a stronger jaw and molars and powerful facial muscles that required a cranial crest, much like a modern gorilla has, to unite them. The other track led to Homo, with a relatively larger brain, more delicate teeth and jaw. Both genera existed at the same time for about 1 and a half million years.
This subtribe is usually considered to include Australopithecus, Paranthropus, Sahelanthropus, Orrorin, Ardipithecus, Kenyanthropus, and Homo. However, the exact makeup is still under debate, as scientists continue to determine the order of descent in human evolution. - Wikipedia
Note on taxonomy
By rights, this should be a short section. Even in the hands of the more avid splitters currently working on it, the Hominini has never been an overly large clade, and only a single species is still extant. And yet, because of the minor detail that this species happens to be our own, the Hominini continues to receive a great deal of attention.
One side-effect of this high level of interest is that the Hominini have suffered to an extraordinary degree from bad and/or sloppy taxonomy. Almost every species known from more than one fossil individual has accrued a sizeable synonymy, with many available specimens being assigned their own names (both species and genus) at some point, and some single specimens even being assigned multiple names. The tree below attempts some order from the chaos. It presents more of a splitter's perspective on hominin evolution - many species would not be recognised by more conservative workers, some of whom would reduce the genus Homo, for instance, to only three species - Homo habilis, H. erectus and H. sapiens. There is also a considerable degree of debate of how best to treat the paraphyletic series of taxa generally included in the genus Australopithecus (the species between 'Australopithecus' anamensis and Paranthropus robustus in the tree below), with none of the suggested alternatives being really satisfactory.
Note the reference to "splitters" -- this refers to ongoing discussions within taxonomy between "splitters" (those who split the fossils into many species) and "lumpers" (those who lump the fossils into fewer species) -- part of the give and take in science.
The diagram following that is quite bushy and it only includes the "type species" (the initial find for each species) and not the several/many other fossils found later of the same species ... as classified by the type species descriptions.
That certainly fleshes out the bushiness in the last section of that dendrogram. More ancient sections would have similar fleshing out with more information added, but what I (you) can take from the dendrogram is that it is essentially an index to greater detailed sections.
Third answer: so what I say is -- don't just believe what people say, look at the details, see what is similar, what is different, and then ask about those differences. I think those differences will be minor, but you never know.
Evolution is a big field, and getting a good understanding of the science means doing more than just cursory reading and certainly not learned from any single source (even college classes can only hit the highlights).
One good source that has already been mentioned is Berkeley's Evolution 101: another interactive site, one that is designed for both individual study and as a teachers aid for teaching evolution in different grades from K-2 to undergraduate college courses.
Enjoy

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAmerican☆Zen☯Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


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This message is a reply to:
 Message 113 by Porkncheese, posted 09-04-2017 3:22 AM Porkncheese has not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 124 of 154 (818942)
09-04-2017 10:23 AM
Reply to: Message 122 by Percy
09-04-2017 9:11 AM


misleading?
I don't know why RAZD is using that misleading diagram. It makes it seem that chimps descended from gorillas and that humans descended from chimps. ...
Curiously, I disagree. It appears that you were mislead by the appearance, but not the details.
This section
quote:
                      └─┬─Ponginae
│ ╞═Sivapithecus X
│ ├─Gigantopithecus X
│ └─Pongo
└─Homininae

Shows the same split between Pongo (orangutans) and the Homininae line as your diagram ....
This section
quote:
                        └─Homininae
├─Samburupithecus X
├─Nakalipithecus X
└─┬─Gorillini
│ ├─Chororapithecus X
│ └─Gorilla
└─┬─Sahelanthropus X
Shows the same split between Gorilla and the Hominini line as your diagram ...
This section
quote:
                            └─┬─Sahelanthropus X
└─┬─Pan
└─Hominini
├─Ardipithecus X
└─┬─Australopithecus afarensis X
├?─Paranthropus aethiopicus (if descended from A afarensis) X
└─┬─Australopithecus africanus X
└─┬─Paranthropus X
│ ├?─Paranthropus aethiopicus X
│ └─┬─Paranthropus robustus X
│ └─Paranthropus boisei X
└─┬─Kenyanthropus X
└─Homo
├─Homo habilis X
╘═╤═Homo erectus X
│ └─Homo floresiensis X
╘═╤═Homo heidelbergensis X
└─┬─Homo neanderthalensis X
└─Homo sapiens

Shows the continued lineage to Homo sapiens ... with the common ancestor with chimps (pan) shown in your chart. Note where the branch to hominini comes: not under pan but just before it, just as the other common ancestors are shown before that.
What is missing is the links from the pan ancestor to chimps (and bonobos) in your chart. This -- as they say -- needs to be filled in.
Including chimp lineage would look like this:

└─┬─Pan
│ └─┬─Pan troglodytes (chimpanzee)
│ └─Pan paniscus (bonobos)
└─Hominini
Conclusion: not so much misleading, as just not easy to read at a glance.
Enjoy
Edited by RAZD, : .

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAmerican☆Zen☯Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 122 by Percy, posted 09-04-2017 9:11 AM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 129 by Percy, posted 09-04-2017 12:45 PM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 125 of 154 (818943)
09-04-2017 10:36 AM
Reply to: Message 120 by Porkncheese
09-04-2017 8:27 AM


Re: What point?
Ya'll won't admit it but those first 2 references and related arguments were totally crap ok. U can't expect people to jump on board with shit like that. Especially with others telling a different story
Total crap? no.
Curiously, the devil's in the details. The problem with those first two references is that you jumped to conclusions on both rather than waiting for explanations. Do you agree or not that explanations have been given?
Percy has said what he found misleading. I see it as not interpreting the dendrogram correctly - because it does show the same pattern as his diagram.
The other, iirc, is that you applied a comment about one part to the whole. I'll check that out.
Enjoy

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAmerican☆Zen☯Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 120 by Porkncheese, posted 09-04-2017 8:27 AM Porkncheese has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 127 by Porkncheese, posted 09-04-2017 10:47 AM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

  
Porkncheese
Member (Idle past 268 days)
Posts: 198
From: Australia
Joined: 08-25-2017


Message 126 of 154 (818944)
09-04-2017 10:38 AM
Reply to: Message 122 by Percy
09-04-2017 9:11 AM


Re: What point?
Thanks Percy.
See that diagram that's ideal to first show the noob like me. That diagram posted on message 114 is just wrong like Tangle points out. Kind of lesson 1 cos you see that diagram around alot.
Another good point is that we derived from a chimp/human like creature that is extinct. The noob pictures humans coming directly from chimps.
RAZD asked me to ask you why that diagram was wrong. Can u just tell him directly please. I don't need to be a mediator.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 122 by Percy, posted 09-04-2017 9:11 AM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 131 by Tangle, posted 09-04-2017 1:25 PM Porkncheese has not replied
 Message 134 by Percy, posted 09-05-2017 9:00 AM Porkncheese has not replied

  
Porkncheese
Member (Idle past 268 days)
Posts: 198
From: Australia
Joined: 08-25-2017


(1)
Message 127 of 154 (818945)
09-04-2017 10:47 AM
Reply to: Message 125 by RAZD
09-04-2017 10:36 AM


Re: What point?
Im not sure what ur still arguing about cos im cool.
Ur disagreement is with Percy. He said ur diagrams were wrong ok.
Talk to him.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 125 by RAZD, posted 09-04-2017 10:36 AM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 128 of 154 (818946)
09-04-2017 10:57 AM
Reply to: Message 120 by Porkncheese
09-04-2017 8:27 AM


Re: What point?
Ya'll won't admit it but those first 2 references and related arguments were totally crap ok. U can't expect people to jump on board with shit like that. Especially with others telling a different story
Again, details, details, details.
Message 115: Then on Message 51 I'm given a link with a quote clearly saying not much is known on that species. (Point. Increased skepticism)
What Tangle said in Message 51 was
http://anthro.palomar.edu/earlyprimates/early_2.htm
quote:
The first primate-like mammals, or proto-primates, evolved in the early Paleocene Epoch (65.5-55.8 million years ago) at the beginning of the Cenozoic Era. They were roughly similar to squirrels and tree shrews in size and appearance. The existing, very fragmentary fossil evidence (from Asia, Europe, North Africa, and especially Western North America) suggests that they were adapted to an arboreal way of life in warm, moist climates. They probably were equipped with relatively good eyesight as well as hands and feet adapted for climbing in trees. These primate-like mammals will remain rather shadowy creatures for us until more fossil data become available.
It goes on to explain in a lot more detail. You're going to have to live with the odd 'probably' now and then - when real scientists don't know the answer to total certainty, they say so and say why.
Your response was Message 53
I did see that website
According to the quote presented
"The existing, very fragmentary fossil evidence suggests..."
"They probably were"
"These primate-like mammals will remain rather shadowy creatures for us until more fossil data become available"
Sure is alot of conjucture. And from this knowledge these trees are drawn up showing direct links between every species all the way back to the ocean.
You seem to apply the "shadowy creatures" to the whole set of fossils and later relationships, rather than just this instance.
Tangle followed up in Message 56 with
It's not conjecture it's presenting the facts as we know them. But did you read the whole article? It gives you a readable and easily understood explanation of how primates evolved?
Here's the summary of what we know.
quote:
Primates are relative newcomers on our planet. The earliest ones are found in the fossil record dating to 50-55 million years ago. These first prosimians thrived during the Eocene Epoch. There were no monkeys or apes for them to compete with yet. By the time of the transition to the Oligocene Epoch, monkeys had begun to evolve from prosimians and became the dominant primates. Many of the prosimian species became extinct probably as a consequence. By the early Miocene Epoch, apes had evolved from monkeys and displaced them from many environments. In the late Miocene, the evolutionary line leading to hominins finally became distinct. This hominin line included our direct ancestors.
Does that or does that not compare with the evidence and lineages presented in other websites?
So is this cleared up yet? Do you still think it is "totally crap?"
Enjoy

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAmerican☆Zen☯Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 120 by Porkncheese, posted 09-04-2017 8:27 AM Porkncheese has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


(1)
Message 129 of 154 (818949)
09-04-2017 12:45 PM
Reply to: Message 124 by RAZD
09-04-2017 10:23 AM


Re: misleading?
Using diagrams that even people who agree with you easily misinterpret is probably going to work even less well with people who don't agree with you.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 124 by RAZD, posted 09-04-2017 10:23 AM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(3)
Message 130 of 154 (818951)
09-04-2017 1:09 PM
Reply to: Message 115 by Porkncheese
09-04-2017 5:36 AM


Re: What point?
You avoided the question and missed the point which is that I was totally confused at that stage given there was contradictions and differences in opinions.
Nobody can remove your confusion, but rather can only try to help you rid yourself of your confusion. If explaining it one way doesn't work, then we try to explain it in another way. That is standing operating procedure (SOP), but now you complain that that only increased your confusion.
So far you have been feeding almost exclusively on creationist sources, which has given you a set of false contrary-to-fact expectations and misunderstanding of what science is and how it works. I can only imagine how it feels when an entirely false mind-set and world view is suddenly confronted with reality and the truth. Must feel very confusing.
Only you can rid yourself of that confusion.
People were still making the false claims of me being a creationist.
Yet you keep presenting creationist arguments. So just exactly who is it who is presenting you as being a creationist? Look in the mirror.
From what you've told us, you have been feeding almost exclusively from creationist sources. You are what you eat.
I strongly recommend a change of diet. Start learning from scientific sources, starting with what science is and how it actually works. Also read critiques of your creationist sources to see what's actually in there.
For example, you express opposition to religious motives, yet one of the sources you named (by posting a YouTube video by him) is IDist Jonathan Wells. I assume that much of your objections come from his Icons of Evolution. As that article points out: "Several of the scientists whose work is sourced in the book have written rebuttals to Wells, stating that they were quoted out of context, that their work has been misrepresented, or that it does not imply Wells' conclusions." So why does Wells oppose evolution? For purely religious reasons. He's a member of the Unification Church, a "Moonie", who decided that God wanted him to defend Unification Theology from Darwinism. His stated motivation for a PhD in Christian Theology (ie, another religion's theology) and his PhD in molecular and cellular biology was to defeat Darwinism. To do so, he employs the standard creationist approach of misrepresenting evolution and other sciences, by ignoring and misrepresenting the evidence supporting evolution and other sciences, and seeking to replace evolution and other sciences with ideas that support his own religious beliefs.
When you use somebody as a source, you need to vet him; ie, you need to find out who he is and what agenda he has.
BTW, Icons of Evolution addresses what Wells presents are deliberate deceptions being taught school children. You brought up the same complaint early on, which indicates to me that that book was a likely source of your statement. There is a definite issue in the USA over public school textbooks and the quality of science education, including a very telling incident in the 1980's concerning high school biology textbooks in California.
I can tell you more about it, but the basic problem is that most science textbooks are not written by scientists, but rather by professional textbook writers who don't understand the material. In addition, smaller school districts cannot afford to hire teachers schooled in the subjects that they teach, so you end up with the PE teacher teaching high school biology (an actual local case, John Peloza, a creationist who abused his position to proselytize to students and then, when reprimanded for it, sued the school district for violating his freedom of religion), in which case they end up teaching their own misconceptions about science and evolution.
So then, you say that you do not want to be a creationist. Well, you have turned yourself into a creationist by accepting their propaganda uncritically. If you really and truly do not want to be a creationist, then you must reverse the process. We cannot do that for you; only you can.
ABE (added by edit, not "Anybody But England"):
A very wise general wrote millennia ago:
quote:
Therefore I say: "Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.
When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal.
If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril."
You have chosen to declare evolution your enemy, yet you know nothing about it. Worse than nothing, because you have learned falsehoods and misconceptions about it, a strawman. In order to properly fight evolution, then you must learn everything you possibly can about it. Only then can you actually fight evolution itself and have any hope of doing so effectively. If you don't, then you will waste all your efforts fighting a strawman, never coming even close to throwing a punch at evolution. Fight your foe, not a shadow.
Ironically, creationist parents are dooming their children to fight shadows. They want their children to be able to fight evolution, yet their method is to campaign for laws that would keep their children from ever learning evolution. You cannot effectively fight an enemy you don't know.
You must also know yourself, which you do not. You have turned yourself into a creationist, but deny that you have done so. You have accepted a position without having examined it. You're 19, within the right age range for uncritically accepting and fanatically following some glib talker in a crusade for some cause. We've all been that age before. We've all grown out of it (well, most of us). But since you haven't done due diligence and researched that cause or that crusade or that glib talker (eg, Wells), then you don't know yourself. As already pointed out, you don't even know that you have turned yourself into a creationist.
So, you don't know your enemy and you don't know yourself. What are your chances?

Professional Advice:
... and making a point out of spelling errors.
The most important classes in your engineering curriculum and the English classes, especially the composition classes where you learn to write. Also classes in public speaking. Working professionally as an engineer, the vast majority of your time will be spent communicating.
Besides doing a lot of reading, you will mostly be writing. Reports, specifications, technical and maintenance manuals, user manual, etc. In order to do so, you must learn proper writing techniques which include using proper grammar and spelling, using proper sentence and paragraph structure, etc. Your goal in writing must be to express that which you wish to communicate in a manner as clear and unambiguous as possible, so that your receiver will understand you.
In university, you are given very simple and usually trivial projects, most of which you simply do on your own. Later, they will give you slightly larger projects and have you form teams of a few people. Professionally, you will be working on enormous projects with much larger teams, many of whom split off to form smaller teams to work on different parts of the project. You will been to be able to communicate effectively with your team members, most commonly by memo or email. Again, written communication skills are of the utmost importance. That becomes far more important when you need to work with customers or sub-contractors or vendors remotely.
Plus, there are the many meetings that you will need to sit through and contribute to. That's where the public speaking comes into play.
I have talked with so many engineers who had shunned English class in college, thinking that had nothing to do with engineering, only to later express their deep regret for that poor choice.
BTW, one really great method for learning English grammar is to learn a foreign language. If nothing else, it will teach you the vital importance of a grammar as the key to using the language. And if you learn German, then you will learn vastly more about English grammar than you ever thought to be possible (English is definitely a Germanic language, albeit with a thick slathering of French vocabulary covering it up).
The best time to start learning how to communicate is yesterday. And learning to touch-type will also help greatly.

Regarding the nature of textbooks, biologist Bill Bennetta ran The Textbook League, where he published reviews of textbooks and other educational material. He closed the human part of the site in 2011 (retiring at age 72), but kept the site up. Two articles about the site that are online are:
  • At Mother Jones: One Man’s Crusade Against Fundamentalist Claptrap
    quote:
    This spring, poor health and scarce funds forced Bennetta to shutter the Textbook League. Yet he’s content to hole up in his clapboard house, far beyond the fray. You have [Glenn] Beck and all those guys saying whatever they’re saying this week. If you look in the textbooks, you see something very similar, he says. What these people do is create a past that never existed and relate it to a present that doesn’t exist. That’s why this erudite, lifelong science buff spent 22 years watchdogging religious groupseven though he was powerless to keep them from hijacking his work. Nature doesn’t lie, he says. Men do.
  • The Textbook League Closes Its Books, Stays Online
In the late 1980's when the California School Board was considering new high school biology textbooks, Bill Bennetta recruited a panel of scientists to review the proposed books. None of those books were even remotely acceptable, being full of misconceptions and outright false statements. Only one book came even close, so the scientists drew up a lengthy list of corrections that needed to be made. The publisher made a few of the corrections and then the state school board accepted the book behind the scientists' backs.
So if you wish to complain about what's in the textbooks, consider how it got there. Is that acceptable? No! Should it be corrected? Yes! But your creationist idols do not want to correct the problems, but rather they want to make it far worse.
Edited by dwise1, : ABE

This message is a reply to:
 Message 115 by Porkncheese, posted 09-04-2017 5:36 AM Porkncheese has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 132 by Porkncheese, posted 09-04-2017 2:53 PM dwise1 has replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


Message 131 of 154 (818952)
09-04-2017 1:25 PM
Reply to: Message 126 by Porkncheese
09-04-2017 10:38 AM


Re: What point?
PnC writes:
That diagram posted on message 114 is just wrong like Tangle points out. Kind of lesson 1 cos you see that diagram around alot.
Another good point is that we derived from a chimp/human like creature that is extinct. The noob pictures humans coming directly from chimps.
I created a sort of word picture that explains how man evolved alongside other apes, it was designed to explain this idea that man IS an ape and to answer a very common and erroneous idea that a lot of people have in their minds about how evolution works.
It goes back to that picture of the 'ascent of man'. Many people think that people evolved from modern day chimps. They didn't, we both share a common ancestor. This misconception is critical to understanding something very simple and fundamental about evolution which is pointed to by the ignorant creationst question of "if man descended from apes, how come apes are still here?"
You only have to read the first post which is the edited result of the thread. I was quite pleased with it at the time (I was a noob like you.)
EvC Forum: "If I descended from an ape, how come apes are still here?"

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona
"Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 126 by Porkncheese, posted 09-04-2017 10:38 AM Porkncheese has not replied

  
Porkncheese
Member (Idle past 268 days)
Posts: 198
From: Australia
Joined: 08-25-2017


Message 132 of 154 (818954)
09-04-2017 2:53 PM
Reply to: Message 130 by dwise1
09-04-2017 1:09 PM


Re: What point?
24 people replied to this thread.
A hand full had good intentions, at some point at least, and tried to give explinations, links and references which I appreciate.
Only 2 of those people seem to understand how and where there was some miscommunication which caused me further confusion at the time and that I walk away with a bit more knowledge than i arrived.
The rest, dwise1, were people like you. People who just talk a whole lot of bullshit.
When 80% of people are talking bs its damn hard to filter out the crap down to the 20% who actually are trying. And its these 80% which make you doubt ToE even more.
I had heaps more questions about things like transitional species today, if water mammals like seals, otter, platypus, etc are evolving in or out of the water. Marsupials and how certain creatures evolved in certain regions. Like in New Zealand the kiwi seems to have evolved from a bird almost into a mammal. Could the absence of land predators in NZ also factor into the natural selection process. And humans, any clues on the next step for mankind. Can increased brain power and efficiency be part of evolution. Certain arguments against like the claim of things being dated from way back when they aren't.
So many questions I have but this isn't the place to get into that.
I must take the advice of Phat, stop pondering such things and get back to my studies really or else I'll fail... LoL

This message is a reply to:
 Message 130 by dwise1, posted 09-04-2017 1:09 PM dwise1 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 133 by dwise1, posted 09-04-2017 4:35 PM Porkncheese has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(5)
Message 133 of 154 (818961)
09-04-2017 4:35 PM
Reply to: Message 132 by Porkncheese
09-04-2017 2:53 PM


Re: What point?
Yeah, I keep casting pearls before swine and all it does is irritate the swine.
Your idol, Jonathan Wells, is a creationist. By accepting his writings uncritically, you are turning yourself into a creationist.
If you only read creationist materials which misrepresent evolution and the other sciences, then you will get a false idea of what evolution and science are. How is that supposed to be bullshit? Please be specific.
Saying that in order to learn about a subject then you need to study that subject, how is that supposed to be bullshit?
Saying that in order to oppose evolution, then you need to oppose it and not some strawman caricature of it, how is that supposed to be bullshit?
Saying that you need to critically examine all your sources, including your creationist idol, Jonathan Wells, how is that supposed to be bullshit?
Learn what evolution actually is. Learn how evolution is actually supposed to work. Learn what the evidence actually is. Learn how science works (including what a theory actually is). How is that supposed to be bullshit?
And BTW. Laws just describe how we observe things to work, not why it is that they work that way. For that deeper question, we need science to build a theory. Theories do not grow up to become laws, but rather theories explain laws. Laws do very little to expand our knowledge, to lead us to new discoveries, rather it is the theories that expand our knowledge and lead us to new discoveries. How is that supposed to be bullshit?
Also, engineering is not science; engineers are not scientists. Engineering is just a discipline of applied technology. Many engineers, including engineering professors, are openly contemptuous of scientists and their theories. In those creationist lists of "scientists who believed in creation", many of them are in fact engineers.
Just a few more pearls cast before you. And one more, a purported Mark Twain quote:
quote:
When I was 18, I thought my father was the stupidest man who had ever lived. But when I was 21, I was amazed at how much the old boy had learned in only three years.
See you in a few years.

... like transitional species today, if water mammals like seals, otter, platypus, etc are evolving in or out of the water.
Sorry, but that doesn't make sense. Populations evolve over generations, whereas in those examples individuals within a single generation of the population would be spending some time in the water and some time out. The proportions of those times could change over the generations such that they would be more or less land-bound.
This is an example where it would help you greatly to learn more about evolution and about how it works. With that better knowledge, you could ask a better question that would give you a more meaningful answer.
Marsupials and how certain creatures evolved in certain regions.
Yes, biogeography. It also involves what are called ring species or "chain species" (a ring spread out in a straight line), in which you can follow a series of very similar species blending from one to the other along the ring or chain until you reach the ends with two rather different species.
You have an interesting feature near you, a number of faunal boundaries in Indonesia while include the Wallace line. As you go from island to island, you find land animals who are very similar to each other, that is until you reach a boundary on the other side of which the land animals are very different, but on that other side of the boundary they are similar among themselves as you go from island to island. The Wallace Line runs between Borneo and Sulawesi and between Bali and Lombok. If we examine the ocean depths, we find that the islands west of Borneo to connect to it by shallow water, about 200 ft, whereas the Wallace Line traces along a deep-water strait of thousands of feet deep -- between Bali and Lombok, the water is about 400 to over 1000 feet deep. During the ice age, sea levels were much lower, nearly 400 feet lower, so what's shallow water now was dry land then -- the Persian Gulf is less than 200 feet deep, so it too was dry land.
There are similar biogeographic boundaries to the east of the Wallace Line: Weber's Line and Lydekker's Line.
Like in New Zealand the kiwi seems to have evolved from a bird almost into a mammal.
Despite repeated creationist mischaracterizations, birds cannot evolve into mammals, no more than dogs can evolve into cats. They claim that such things not happening disproves evolution, whereas actually evolution would be disproven if things did happen.
Rather, there's parallel or convergent evolution in which different unrelated species develop very similar physical characteristics because they live in the same kind of environment. Hence whales and dolphins evolved bodies and life styles very similar to fish while never becoming fish but rather remaining mammals. While they may appear the same superficially, they are very different when you take a closer look.
Could the absence of land predators in NZ also factor into the natural selection process.
Yes, of course.
And humans, any clues on the next step for mankind.
Hard to say, since civilization isolates us from the environment, or should we say that it creates an artificial environment. I don't think there's much selective pressure to drive us in any particular direction(s), so mainly I foresee ever increasing genetic diversity, including some bad traits that we keep from being selected against.
Can increased brain power and efficiency be part of evolution.
Yes, it can, if it is being selected for. While our knowledge and technology could easily continue to progress, that would not require our own brain power to increase. If anything, we may see a drop in intelligence, especially if we continue to offload ever more of our mental tasks onto our technology for it to perform them. As I pointed out before, with a lower tech level you must work smarter, but with a higher tech level you can afford to work dumb and still get the job done.
Certain arguments against like the claim of things being dated from way back when they aren't.
That question is a bit mangled. Please heed my professional advice to you about learning how to communicate effectively. That is the most important skill you can develop in order to be an engineer and that is what you will be spending the vast majority of your professional time doing.
I don't understand what you are asking there:
  • Are you questioning claims for a young earth and are asking us how to counter those claims?
  • Or despite all your belly-aching about being called a creationist, does it turn out that you are indeed a young-earth creationist (YEC)?
Either way, present one of those claims and we can discuss it. The "shrinking sun"? The rate at which the sun is burning its fuel? The rate at which the earth's rotation is slowing down? The speed of light slowing down? Radiocarbon dating anomalies? Niagara Falls?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 132 by Porkncheese, posted 09-04-2017 2:53 PM Porkncheese has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 134 of 154 (819016)
09-05-2017 9:00 AM
Reply to: Message 126 by Porkncheese
09-04-2017 10:38 AM


Re: What point?
Porkncheese writes:
RAZD asked me to ask you why that diagram was wrong. Can u just tell him directly please. I don't need to be a mediator.
I don't think RAZD's diagram is wrong, it's just misleading, and I think it's because the character graphics they use to show descent just don't mean to me what was intended. For example:
└─┬─Pan
  └─Hominini 
To my eyes this says that Hominini is descended from Pan, when what I think it is trying to say is that Pan and Hominini were descended from a common ancestor. In other words, to me it looks like it's saying this:
Pan
 \
  Hominini
But that's obviously wrong, so then I thought it might mean this:
/\
         /  \
        /    \
       /      \
  Hominini    Pan
But looking up Hominini at Wikipedia it seems that it includes Homo, Pan and Australopithecina (extinct), which would be this and would mean RAZD's diagram is wrong or I just have no idea how to interpret it properly:
Hominini
                   |
      ---------------------------
      |            |            |
     Homo         Pan   Australopithecina
RAZD is rarely wrong, but he tends to unload a lot of data all at once that is much more lengthy and complex than necessary to making the point. The analogy would be day 1 of a course where someone asks a question, and in response the professor jumps forward to Chapter 14 and expects everyone to follow along.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 126 by Porkncheese, posted 09-04-2017 10:38 AM Porkncheese has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 135 by RAZD, posted 09-05-2017 9:56 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 135 of 154 (819020)
09-05-2017 9:56 AM
Reply to: Message 134 by Percy
09-05-2017 9:00 AM


Re: What point?
I don't think RAZD's diagram is wrong, it's just misleading, and I think it's because the character graphics they use to show descent just don't mean to me what was intended. ...
And I agree that the character graphics are difficult, and a bit misleading until you get the hang of it. Possibly a hangover from early limitations on web graphics that can be linked.
But that's obviously wrong, so then I thought it might mean this:
/\
         /  \
        /    \
       /      \
  Hominini    Pan
That's the way I read it at each location where this configuration
└─┬─
  └─
is used (see elsewhere in the dendrogram)
But looking up Hominini at Wikipedia it seems that it includes Homo, Pan and Australopithecina (extinct), which would be this and would mean RAZD's diagram is wrong or I just have no idea how to interpret it properly:
From the other source I provided
quote:
Human Evolution
  • Hominini - modern humans and all previous human, australopithecine, paranthropine and ardipithecine ancestors
  • Homininae - all of the above, plus chimpanzees (Panini), our closest living biological kin (a genetic kinship so close that some scientists have suggested their genus name should be changed from Pan to Homo).
  • Hominidae - all of the above, plus gorillas (Gorillinae)
  • Hominoidae - all of the above, plus orangutans (Pongidae)
  • Hominoidea - all of the above, plus gibbons (Hylobatoidae).
The chart (at right) shows the evolutionary
chronology inputed to these biological branches.
Ardipithecus, the common primate ancestor to
paranthropines, australopithecines and humans,
went extinct about 4 million years ago.

This too seems to be at odds with wikipedia, which also puts gorillas in Homininae, orangutans in Hominidae and gibbons in Hominoidae ... but it doesn't match entirely with the palaeos.com dendrogram (modified to flesh out the pan branch in orange) to add what was missing:
quote:
Primates: Dendrogram
Archonta

└─Primates MH
├─Strepsirhini MH
│ ├─Lorisiformes
│ └─Lemuriformes
│ ├─Indrioidea MH
│ └─Lemuroidea
└─┬─Adapiformes X
└─┬─Darwinius X
└─Haplorhini
├─Tarsiiformes MH
└─Anthropoidea MH
├─Platyrrhini ToL
└─Catarrhini
├─Cercopithecidae (baboon)
└─Hominoidea MH
├─Proconsul X
└─┬─Kenyapithecus X
└─┬─Hylobatidae (gibbons)
└─Hominidae Hominoidae
├─Dryopithecus X
└─┬─Pierolapithecus X
└─┬─Ponginae
│ ╞═Sivapithecus X
│ ├─Gigantopithecus X
│ └─Pongo (orangutans)
└─Homininae Hominidae
├─Samburupithecus X
├─Nakalipithecus X
└─┬─Gorillini
│ ├─Chororapithecus X
│ └─Gorilla (gorillas)
└─┬─Sahelanthropus X
└─Homininae
└─┬─Panini
│ └─┬─Pan troglodytes (chimpanzee)
│ └─Pan paniscus (bonobos)

└─Hominini
├─Ardipithecus X
└─┬─Australopithecus afarensis X
├?─Paranthropus aethiopicus (if descended from A afarensis) X
└─┬─Australopithecus africanus X
└─┬─Paranthropus X
│ ├?─Paranthropus aethiopicus X
│ └─┬─Paranthropus robustus X
│ └─Paranthropus boisei X
└─┬─Kenyanthropus X
└─Homo
├─Homo habilis X
╘═╤═Homo erectus X
│ └─Homo floresiensis X
╘═╤═Homo heidelbergensis X
└─┬─Homo neanderthalensis X
└─Homo sapiens

So I have corrected the palaeos diagram to match the handprint.com diagram, and until further notice, I'll take this over wikipedia.
and I'll email my suggested corrections to palaeos.
Enjoy
Edited by RAZD, : .
Edited by RAZD, : corrections to dendrogram
Edited by RAZD, : .

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This message is a reply to:
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