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Author Topic:   "If I descended from an ape, how come apes are still here?"
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 274 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(1)
Message 76 of 286 (637616)
10-17-2011 6:02 AM
Reply to: Message 73 by Chuck77
10-17-2011 5:56 AM


Re: the ape to human chart
Im sorry, I only have a GED and im to lazy to google that.
It refers to the science of chemistry.
The fact that early chemists made some mistakes is no impediment to my understanding chemistry. I do not have to "work through" their mistakes.
The fact that creationists seem to do nothing but make mistakes, on the other hand, is more problematic. You look at a mistake some scientist made 85 years ago and then corrected. I'm looking at mistakes creationists were still making yesterday despite having been set right a jillion times. And then you wonder how I "work through" scientific mistakes laid to rest by scientists fifty years before I was born.
"Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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Tangle
Member
Posts: 9486
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.6


Message 77 of 286 (637617)
10-17-2011 6:06 AM
Reply to: Message 70 by Chuck77
10-17-2011 5:25 AM


Re: the ape to human chart
How did you work your way thru all the lies (or maybe a better word-mistakes) and eventually come to accept it?
I guess you missed post 60
(I do worry about people who still quote Piltdown Man as a problem for evolution. Why anyone would think a Victorian fraud was relevant today I can't imagine. It's like saying that because scientists proved cold fusion to be wrong, physics is therefore wrong. Weird.)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 70 by Chuck77, posted 10-17-2011 5:25 AM Chuck77 has not replied

  
Chuck77
Inactive Member


Message 78 of 286 (637618)
10-17-2011 6:22 AM
Reply to: Message 75 by caffeine
10-17-2011 6:02 AM


Re: the ape to human chart
caffeine writes:
If your link means the picture posted above when it talks about the 'Evolution Ape Man chart',
It doesnt, obviously. Notice it was in a different comment?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 75 by caffeine, posted 10-17-2011 6:02 AM caffeine has replied

Replies to this message:
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 Message 80 by Admin, posted 10-17-2011 8:08 AM Chuck77 has not replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1014 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 79 of 286 (637620)
10-17-2011 6:47 AM
Reply to: Message 78 by Chuck77
10-17-2011 6:22 AM


Re: the ape to human chart
It doesnt, obviously. Notice it was in a different comment?
Posted immediately afterwards, without any reference as to what 'chart' he's supposed to be talking about, it's hard to tell.
And to repeat, if all the fossils have turned out to be 100% ape or 100% human, what are the criteria used to make this judgement?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 78 by Chuck77, posted 10-17-2011 6:22 AM Chuck77 has not replied

  
Admin
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From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
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(1)
Message 80 of 286 (637622)
10-17-2011 8:08 AM
Reply to: Message 78 by Chuck77
10-17-2011 6:22 AM


Moderator On Duty
Hi Chuck,
I have a couple brief suggestions that might help the discussion go more smoothly.
From your Message 74:
It's time to provide evidence of your education big mouth. Until then you are a pathetic internet troll.
If you feel someone is violating the Forum Guidelines then please request moderator assistance by posting a note to Report Discussion Problems Here 3.0 rather than taking matters into your own hands and by so doing violating the Forum Guidelines yourself.
From your Message 68:
If they would stick to one story we wouldn't all be so confused about the why are there still apes today, ya know? Image below:
From your next message, Message 70, where you were quoting from an on-line article:
It was difficult finding any fossils that appeared to be 'ape-men' to fill in the Evolution ape man chart during the first few decades of the theory.
And from your Message 78:
caffeine writes:
If your link means the picture posted above when it talks about the 'Evolution Ape Man chart',
It doesnt, obviously. Notice it was in a different comment?
It would be helpful if you would provide the correct information. What is being referred to in the article you quoted when it refers to the "Evolution ape man chart"? And regardless of what chart is meant, Caffeine deserves a response to the information he posted in Message 75.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
 Message 78 by Chuck77, posted 10-17-2011 6:22 AM Chuck77 has not replied

  
Nuggin
Member (Idle past 2483 days)
Posts: 2965
From: Los Angeles, CA USA
Joined: 08-09-2005


Message 81 of 286 (637665)
10-17-2011 11:40 AM
Reply to: Message 74 by Chuck77
10-17-2011 5:59 AM


Yawn revisited
It's time to provide evidence of your education big mouth. Until then you are a pathetic internet troll.
Chucky, chucky, chucky.
I'll just refer you back to the last 4-5 replies I've made to you demonstrating your lack of maturity and consistent hypocrisy.
By the way, I'm EXTREMELY proud of you for using "you are" instead of "your".
Are you learning? Or did you do this by accident?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 74 by Chuck77, posted 10-17-2011 5:59 AM Chuck77 has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 274 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(5)
Message 82 of 286 (637672)
10-17-2011 11:56 AM
Reply to: Message 70 by Chuck77
10-17-2011 5:25 AM


"How did you work your way thru all the lies"?
Let's look at some creationist mistakes. I'll use the passage you quoted.
in addition to Java Man (which was later shown to be the combination of two bones from different species).
This is not even possible, since the Java Man specimens consist of more than two bones.
It has been suggested by some people that two species were mixed up in the specimens, but it has certainly not been "shown" that this is the case.
Evolutionists desired to put evolution into the schools but were finding it very difficult. They decided to put on a ‘circus' type event in order to get attention to the theory. This event was called the ‘Scopes Trial' but was eventually referred to as The Monkey Trial.
This is, of course, not true. The purpose of the trial was not to "get attention to the theory", but to challenge the law against teaching evolution. Duh.
It was more of a spectacle than a real trial. With all of the national attention that this event received, it was important that the evolutionists "made a splash". They certainly did that with a new \'ape-man\' dubbed The Nebraska Man.
This \'ape-man\' was drawn with artistic license from one single tooth. The creationists felt like this was \'foul play\' because they were presented with this creature without having any chance for research.
This is made up out of the whole cloth. We have trial transcripts for the Monkey Trial. "Nebraska Man" wasn't mentioned once. Not once. And yet here is this creationist telling us that it was, and even what the creationists thought about its introduction into the trial ... this is pure fantasy.
After the ‘smoke had cleared', the Darwinists walked away with an outright victory (technically they lost the ‘trial' but won the national approval by many). The huge amount of publicity had worked. This so called \'ape-man\' was very instrumental in putting Darwinism on the map and into the schools.
Again, this so-called "so called ape-man" was not mentioned in the trial.
Darwinism was, of course, already "on the map", and the result of the trial (which as the bozo admits in a rare moment of honesty the evolutionists lost) was certainly not to put evolution into schools but to keep it out. In Tennessee, for example, where the trial was held, the teaching of evolution would remain illegal until 1967.
Weeks later it was discovered that this tooth that had been used to draw The Nebraska Man had actually come from an extinct pig.
Peccary. For Pete's sake. Creationists pour scorn on Osborn because he couldn't tell the difference between an ape and a peccary with nothing but a single tooth to go on, but they can't tell the difference between a peccary and a pig when all they have to do is observe the difference between the letters ig and eccary. OK, peccaries are similar to pigs and related to them, but then you could say the same of men and monkeys.
As for "weeks later", the evidence suggests that Osborn discovered his mistake over "Nebraska Man" shortly before the trial.
The Nebraska Man, The Piltdown Man and the Java Man were the ‘ape-men' that had given credence to the idea of human evolution for the first few decades of the theory.
Darwin published in 1859.
Today, the evolution ape man chart for Darwinism is no better than it was those 5 or 6 decades ago. Though we have been taught (and our schools are still teaching today) that the human evolution chart is based on fact, reality is the exact opposite.
The reality is that it is based on actual, factual fossils.
Besides having to remove ‘ancestors' like the Piltdown Man and Nebraska Man, other flaws also exist with this chart.
Every one of the \'ape-men\' have now turned out to be either one hundred percent ape or one hundred percent human.
This is mere assertion, like a flat-Earther saying "The Earth has now turned out to be one hundred percent flat". Well, not according to people who aren't nuts it hasn't. Yer actual paleontologists say there are lots of intermediate forms.
And one sign of this is that creationists, who are dogmatically committed to classifying everything as 100% one or the other, can't agree with one another as to what is which. If H. erectus is 100% human, why do some creationists assert that it's 100% ape? If it's 100% ape, why do some creationists assert that it's 100% human?
Answer: because it is in fact intermediate.
Even the fossils labeled as Australopithicene (including \'Lucy\') are entirely ape (extinct).
Except that some creationists class some australopithecines as human ...
There are no known fossils that tie apes to humans.
The \'human evolution\' chart,if it was truly accurate should consist of nothing but 100% apes and 100% humans with just a very large blank spot between them.
And again, creationists are unable to agree where this "very large blank spot" should go. If it's such a yawning gulf, why can't they locate it? Why, indeed, does this author not bother to tell us where it is instead of making up fatuous nonsense about the Monkey Trial?
Because he's not telling the truth, that's why. There is no "very large blank spot".
And if you think there is ... see if you can find it.
---
Now, please note that in order to find an example of creationist blunders --- multiple creationist blunders --- I did not have to go back to 1925, nor did I have to content myself with pointing out a blunder which creationists themselves responsibly corrected. I just had to look at the slab of creationism you quoted in the very post in which you asked me how I work my way through the mistakes made by evolutionists!
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 70 by Chuck77, posted 10-17-2011 5:25 AM Chuck77 has not replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9486
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.6


(2)
Message 83 of 286 (637689)
10-17-2011 1:25 PM


Any better?
If we descended from apes, how come apes are still here?
What’s wrong with this picture?
Well nothing or pretty much everything — depending on what you think it shows.
If you see it as man evolving from million year old ape-like ancestors, you’re right. But if you see it as a picture of how monkeys change into people, that’s probably why some people ask the question:
If we descended from apes, how come apes are still here?
To ask that question means that there’s a vital piece of information missing from the questioner’s understanding of what evolution is. That vital piece of information is the concept of the tree of life, that all things are related to each other.
An evolution scientist on hearing that question will sigh deeply or change the subject quickly because religious fundamentalists regularly use it as a really bad argument for creationism.
A more tolerant scientist may ask you a question back. Such as:
"If Iceland was colonized by Scandinavians, why are there still Scandinavians?" Or
"if I'm descended from my grandfather, how can I have cousins?"
That’s something to think about because it does provided the answer. Meanwhile here’s fuller explanation.
Imagine that you are standing face to face with a chimpanzee - let’s call him Pan. The chimp’s scientific name is Pan troglodytes, she’s an ape and one of our closest animal relatives.
Now imagine that with your left hand you are holding the hand of your mother and that your mother is holding the right hand of her mother and so on for thousands of generations back into the past. By doing this, you know as an absolute certainty that you are descended directly on your mother’s side to everyone in the chain.
Imagine that Pan is doing the same but with her right hand.
You now have two imaginary lines of women and female chimps holding hands going backwards in time - like a railway track with women and chimps lining each side.
You can now walk down the centre of the rails and look carefully at your mother's family line and the chimp's family line going back millions of years.
So what would do you see?
Walking back about 200,000 years you see a mother who’s husband was a chap science named Heidelberg Man (Homo heidelbergensis ) This is the first different species that we’ve come across in our chain. But you wouldn’t be able to tell exactly when H. sapiens merged into Heidelberg because each mother would look almost identical to the next — you can’t see the join. The changes from mother to mother are so gradual that you only see a change by comparing mothers thousands or millions of years apart. We only now know that Heidelberg is different from us because we’ve found his fossilised remains and we can compare it to ourselves today.
This is why there’s no such thing as a transitional fossil or a missing link; every fossil is a transitional fossil and every living species is in transition to the next — if we had a fossil for every mother in the lines, even the experts wouldn’t be able to say where a separate species had been formed. We can only guess with hindsight.
If you find this hard to grasp or you think it’s impossible for one species to change slowly into another we can see it happening today. For example, we call species that change slowly over geographic areas rather than time, ring species.
Here in the UK the Herring Gull and the Lesser Black-backed Gull are distinct and non-interbreeding species. But if you physically follow the Herring Gull west towards Siberia it gradually blurs into something more like a Lesser Black-backed Gull. It carries on changing towards North America and when it finally returns to Europe the Herring Gull has become a Lesser Black-backed Gull and the two species don’t interbreed. At no point in the ring can you say exactly where it changed species — it’s a gradual merging of characteristics over distance.
As you walk back further, at about 500,000 years ago, you’d see a branch form and go off sideways from our line, these are the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis). They lived along side us but developed separately. There may even be Neanderthal mothers in our line, because we think that for some time there was interbreeding.
And so on down the line of mothers through increasingly apelike creatures until at about 2.5 million years ago we reach an animal called the Southern African ape (Australopithecus africanis).
At this point something amazing happens - you see that the right hand of a mother from the chimp line is holding the left hand of a mother from the human line. The lines have met.
This mother starts the lines to both Pan and you, so Pan is your distant cousin.
And both you, the human, and Pan, the ape, are still here.

Replies to this message:
 Message 84 by Dr Adequate, posted 10-17-2011 1:39 PM Tangle has replied
 Message 89 by caffeine, posted 10-18-2011 4:21 AM Tangle has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 274 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 84 of 286 (637690)
10-17-2011 1:39 PM
Reply to: Message 83 by Tangle
10-17-2011 1:25 PM


And so on down the line of mothers through increasingly apelike creatures until at about 2.5 million years ago we reach an animal called the Southern African ape (Australopithecus africanis).
At this point something amazing happens - you see that the right hand of a mother from the chimp line is holding the left hand of a mother from the human line.
No ... australopithecines aren't ancestral to chimps. By then the split had already taken place.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 83 by Tangle, posted 10-17-2011 1:25 PM Tangle has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 85 by Tangle, posted 10-17-2011 2:09 PM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9486
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.6


Message 85 of 286 (637694)
10-17-2011 2:09 PM
Reply to: Message 84 by Dr Adequate
10-17-2011 1:39 PM


I think I've misinterpreted what Dawkins was saying here:
According to molecular evolution principles (Human evolutionary genetics, Jobling, Hurles and Tyler-Smith, 2004), the most recent common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees had as much pre-human traits as chimp-like traits. In other words, progressing along the chimpanzee line means losing some human-like traits and gaining chimpanzee traits, whereas progressing along the human line means losing some chimp-like traits and gaining human traits. A fossil close to the last common ancestor is thus difficult to place in a precise chimp or human lineage because it has not accumulated enough differences since the two have diverged. For instance, the most recent paranthropus fossils are 1.2 million years old, fairly recent compared to the time since the divergence of humans and gorillas (7-9 mya), therefore many of the paranthropus traits are very much like gorillas (see Homininae). In contrast, it is more difficult to place a 3 or 4 million years old australopithecines fossil in the chimp or human lineages. A.africanus seem to be close to the human lineage, whereas A.afarensis are closer to the chimp lineage, with the exception of Selam (3.3Mya) who has been placed in A.afarensis, but has more human traits than Lucy (3.2Mya) for instance, and would better be placed in A. africanus The mainstream view among paleontologists can be found in this page and in the main "human evolution" page, but similar conclusions were reached by at least two other biologists, independently: the author of the Paranthropus aethiopicus page of the Online Biology Dictionary Paranthropus aethiopicus - Online Biology Dictionary and Richard Dawkins in his book The ancestor’s tale 2004 Boston: Houghton Mifflin Eds, "According to this theory, chimps and bonobos are descended from Australopithecus Gracile type species while gorillas are descended from Australopithecus Robustus, or parnthropus type species. These apes were once bipedal but then lost this ability when they were forced back into the semi-forest, presumably by those Australopithecines who eventually became us"; In short, ancestors of chimpanzees are Australopithecus afarensis and ancestors of gorillas are Paranthropus..
Australopithecus - Wikipedia
Can you fix it for me?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 84 by Dr Adequate, posted 10-17-2011 1:39 PM Dr Adequate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 86 by Dr Adequate, posted 10-17-2011 3:04 PM Tangle has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 274 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 86 of 286 (637704)
10-17-2011 3:04 PM
Reply to: Message 85 by Tangle
10-17-2011 2:09 PM


The mainstream view among paleontologists can be found in this page and in the main "human evolution" page, but ...
I'm surprised WP let this in.
Now the quote given from Dawkins says "According to this theory", which does not mean that he actually endorses it, especially as Dawkins is very casual about using the word "theory" when he should say "hypothesis". I've just been looking at The Ancestor's Tale, and I don't think that he believes this. Mind you, I can't find the quote either, even with extensive use of the index for every key word that appears in it. Which is puzzling.
Anyway, I should say that the suggestion that australopithecines are ancestral to humans, chimps, and gorillas is extremely speculative and should certainly not be stated as fact.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 85 by Tangle, posted 10-17-2011 2:09 PM Tangle has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 87 by Tangle, posted 10-17-2011 5:26 PM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9486
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.6


Message 87 of 286 (637736)
10-17-2011 5:26 PM
Reply to: Message 86 by Dr Adequate
10-17-2011 3:04 PM


Looks to me atm that the split was at least 4m years earlier - perhaps Toumai is the nearest I can get.
Fossil Hominids: Toumai

This message is a reply to:
 Message 86 by Dr Adequate, posted 10-17-2011 3:04 PM Dr Adequate has replied

Replies to this message:
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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 274 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 88 of 286 (637752)
10-17-2011 7:19 PM
Reply to: Message 87 by Tangle
10-17-2011 5:26 PM


Looks to me atm that the split was at least 4m years earlier - perhaps Toumai is the nearest I can get.
7mya is (AFAIK) the nearest date allowed by molecular clocks, which gives us a ballpark figure.
Toumai is an interesting case. Everyone agrees that it is "a find of major significance", as the article says, but no-one will know what it signifies until they find more fossils, as the article also says.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 87 by Tangle, posted 10-17-2011 5:26 PM Tangle has not replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1014 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 89 of 286 (637812)
10-18-2011 4:21 AM
Reply to: Message 83 by Tangle
10-17-2011 1:25 PM


Ring Species
I think your ring species example has a bit of a problem. Firstly, because Siberia is east of Britain, not west! But, more importantly, the herring gull doesn't appear to be a ring species, according to DNA evidence. The history of herring gull speciation is very complex, according to the evidence from mitochondrial DNA, but Larus occidentalis of the American west coast seems to be the sister group to the rest of them, so these split off from all other herring gulls first. The rest fit into two family groups, one of which forms an incomplete ring that stretches from Western Europe, through Russia and into the Americas, but which doesn't cross the Atlantic to form a complete ring; and the other of which is found in Europe and North America. You can read the DNA study online for free here.
For a better example, try an old favourite of this board - Asian Greenish Warblers.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 83 by Tangle, posted 10-17-2011 1:25 PM Tangle has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 90 by Tangle, posted 10-18-2011 5:58 AM caffeine has not replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9486
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.6


(1)
Message 90 of 286 (637816)
10-18-2011 5:58 AM
Reply to: Message 89 by caffeine
10-18-2011 4:21 AM


Re: Ring Species
I think your ring species example has a bit of a problem.
It seems nothing is straightforward.
I didn't make up the Gull story, it's originally from Mark Ridley 1985, p5 and reproduced in Daniel Dennet's Dangerous Ideas book.
I guess they didn't have DNA to play with in 1985
Thanks for keeping me honest.

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