A Question which Atheists could not answer

[Eric H]

Greetings and peace be with you Independent;

How much trouble has been caused by the word 'theory' in Theory of Evolution! It's just a scientific term for a hypothesis designed to account for data,

How much trouble has been caused by the word 'theory,' is dependant on how much this theory is pushed on other people; who don't share the same views.

In the spirit of searching for God

Eric

 

[Eric H]

Greetings and peace be with you Independent;

Originally Posted by Eric H View Post

What God would create Australia and put it at the bottom of a globe,

To be fair, it's man who put Australia at the bottom - or more precisely it was men like Mercator who put his map out first.

Very good, that deserves a ;D

Man may have made a toy image of God's creation, I am guessing there are limits as to what man can do, when it come to creating the real thing?

In the spirit of searching for God

Eric

 

[Eric H]

Greetings and peace be with you observer;

Environments are constantly changing. Therefore, animals must change to adapt. It's that simple.

No problem, an acceptable observation.

Look at giraffes - a pretty simple example. Giraffes eat leaves. As the leaves lower down trees in a certain environment are eaten, those with longer necks have access to leaves higher up. They thrive whilst shorter necked giraffes struggle. The long necked animal reproduces. It passes on its long-necked trait to its offspring. And so on.

No problem, an acceptable observation, now we need an explanation as to what conditions in the seas, would be conducive to making a complete skeletal system, we start with a soft bodied species, and go from there. You have offered an acceptable explanation as to chemical changes in the seas, making hard bodied shells, there is just the small amount of detail in between, that eventually leads up to giraffe necks, big or small.

In the spirit of searching for God

Eric

 

[Eric H]

Greetings and peace be with you observer;

Why would an ape living in the forest now need to evolve into a human? It just makes no sense and bears no relation to what TOE says

So why would a fish living in the sea, evolve into a giraffe, as you say above, it just does not make sense,

In the spirit of searching for God

Eric

 

[جوري]

Greetings and peace be with you observer;



So why would a fish living in t/he sea, evolve into a giraffe, as you say above, it just does not make sense,

In the spirit of searching for God

Eric

It depends on the theory right? I may not agree with the theory that states retrograde menstruation is the most acceptable reason for endometriosis for it doesn't explain endometriosis found in the nose of lungs, but no harm really comes of it, I mean it doesn't change management of the disease and they throw it out there. This on the other hand isn't only political, militant and dogmatic but it is actually pushed out with a very particular intent. So given the gravity of the intent, I expect monster demonstration and not all that nonsensical verbiage!

 

[~Zaria~]

Let's run through this again. There are some extinct creatures known as Neanderthals that Creationists need to explain. A key question that needs to be answered is: are they human or apes? You say they're humans. Hulk, based on the Qur'an, suggests they are apes (or to be exact, men turned into apes but not by evolution). Which is it to be? If you're right, he's wrong.

Creationists dont need to explain the existence of 'Neanderthals' if they are saying that all current evidence points to these fossils being HUMAN.

As mentioned above, the Quraan does NOT refer to 'Neanderthals' - a 'sub-species' of man.
The Quraan refers to a specific incident in history when a certain group of people were smithed into apes as a form of punishment upon them.

Once again I repeat, the term 'missing link' has no scientific value, it's just a popular phrase. If you want to amuse yourself with lists of species that were considered 'missing' from the fossil record in Darwin's day but have since been found, there are plenty to be found on the internet, I've got nothing to add.

A much better term than 'missing link' might be 'landmark species' - ie the first known species to exhibit a particular key characteristic such as bipedalism, the eye, bones etc.

The only thing amusing thus far is the manner in which you continue to contradict yourself.

In other words, You have stated: "Vast numbers of fossils have been discovered since his day and many of the so-called 'missing links' discovered."


but now say that you have "nothing (i.e. no missing links) to add" ?

If you now wish to call 'missing link' by your 'better term' - 'landmark species'.....so be it.

So, where are our references to them?

I've always liked the Piltdown Man story, it's one of those wonderful bits of history that add colour to this world.

Really?
A fake, fraudulent story that was believed for almost 40 years is something that you can speak of in a positive light?

Speaks volumes of the half-truths that have been displayed in this thread as well....

Looking at some of the other pictures in your illustration I see Peking Man. The text says: 'Supposedly 500,000 years old but all evidence has disappeared.' This seems to be based on the views of creationists Duane Gish and Malcolm Bowden. Along with Java Man, Peking Man was one of the first homo erectus fossils to be discovered. Earlier Creationists tried to discredit the discovery by saying it was all too convenient that it had disappeared (en route to the US in 1941) leaving only the plaster casts to examine. Basically, they suggested that it was a fake and there was no such thing as homo erectus.

in the next few decades many more similar fossils were found, matching Perking Man and entirely vindicating its authenticity.

Seriously, we are not interested in hearsay.

Can you list these 'similar fossils' for us?

This is my third request for actual evidence - will be appreciated! Thanks.

You need to stop pasting that diagram, it's out of date and malicious.

Every single representation in that diagram is true and verifiable.
It would only be seen as 'malicious' by those who find it threatening to the pseudo-science of evolution.

It's this kind of comment that shows that you haven't understood a thing about how TOE is supposed to work. How can you hope to make meaningful criticisms of something you comprehensively fail to understand? The idea that apes are somehow failing to complete their destiny to morph into humans is laughable and utterly inconsistent with TOE. Apes are fully adapted for their environment, we are for ours. Unfortunately for the apes their environment isn't going to last much longer, but that's another matter.

This question has been posed to evolutionists quite frequently - not stemming from ignorance, but instead common sense.

If you consider it 'laughable' to discuss why our current apes are 'failing to complete their destiny'.....then Im sure you can understand our similar response to the entire theory of evolution.

As sister جوري has mentioned: what exactly makes an ape 'adapted for their (current) environment'?

Im sure the chimps at our zoo would also like to walk on twos - esp when they see their 'cousins' (i.e. humans who believe they are related) coming to visit.

We also dont see any fish trying to leave their waters for drier lands, by developing limbs (as proposed by evolutionists).

So, in other words, does this mean that evolution only occurred millions of years ago - reached its peak (hence no intermediary forms).....and then came to an abrupt halt?

Tooo funny!

Peace

 

[Muhammad]

Greetings Independent,

I am surprised to find you taking such an interest in this thread!

: ) I have only been occasionally reading bits here and there, and was hoping not to get embroiled!

In this thread, you have put forth the impression that Creationism is an illogical viewpoint and said that 'TOE gives what is so far the only consistent account of a wide range of observable evidence'. Even now you argue that the theory of evolution is as factual as the force of gravity. However, as mentioned before, a closer examination of your claims reveals thatwe are not dealing with facts at all but merely assumptions and disputed conclusions. This is the crux of the matter. Guesswork cannot be used to cast doubt on a creationist worldview. An unproven hypothesis cannot be propagated as fact. Moreover, many of the claims you make against creationism fall right back on evolutionsts: their story changes and is not as falsifiable as suggested.

One of the ways in which you evade many of the pitfalls of evolution theory is to stick to the concept of general trends and patterns, so that the dots can be connected and the obstacles in between are ignored.

But we would be able to say something along the lines of 'Neanderthals are of the family of species' from which we were descended. Neanderthals share many key adaptions with homo sapiens and a closely related branch. So they still inform us adequately about the general trend of evolution (almost as well as an actual homo sapiens specimen would have done).

Although there are subspecies in between, the bottom line is that one species is being claimed to have descended from another, albeit not directly. This argument stands on shaky ground; in the words of a plant geneticist (who happens to be a member of this forum!), 'commonality of DNA structure or other molecular systems does not prove a common ancestry'. And of course we have the debate of whether we are actually talking about different species.

The most you can say about any organ is that it may appear to be irreducibly complex today, but tomorrow we may find that this is not true.

Creationists are claim TOE has been 'proved' wrong by irreducible complexity but this is not correct. Issues of IC is a challenge for TOE, but not (at this point) a refutation.

It's fine that we don't get bogged down with examples of irreducible complexity. But you do admit it is a challenge for TOE - a theory being presented as fact. 'Tomorrow we may find that this is not true' - the same can apply to TOE. Creationists will equally say that challenges posed to them are not refutations.

Yes, there are many possible explanations for this phenomenon, including whether the term 'explosion' is a reasonable description in the first place for a period covering some 20 million years - unimaginably long for humans.

On evolutionary time scales, 20 million years is a rapid burst that appears to be inconsistent with the gradual pace of evolutionary change.

Here is where we come to the point about the theory changing and not being as falsifiable. In light of new findings that contradict previous hypotheses, evolutionists amend the theory to account for the new findings. This is contrary to the notion that everything has been found according to what one would expect in a 'TOE world', which you said earlier. The same applies to other areas of the theory - no matter how many times one would falsify the tree of descent, proponents of common descent would be able to suggest new alternative trees.

You will make mistakes, but there some things that are immutable. Characters appear or disappear from the story and will never be found in the period before or after.

But once we start examining the detail, we realise that much of the theory rests on assumptions, some of which come close to impossible.

 

[~Zaria~]

I thought we should help our evolutionary friends with some of the 'missing links' (as they seem to be hiding them from us.....or else they realize that they are still 'missing').

This is a concise article that discusses the problems with the proposed fossils that have been found thus far. The authors humor makes for an easy read as well.

Basically, these fossils are either: fraudulent, or belonged to apes themselves.

And this is in short, what the theory of evolution rests on.

Happy reading : )

**********************
​

THE DARWIN PAPERS​

VOLUME 1 CHAPTER IX
​

VARIATIONS
ON
AN APE THEME

​

The Australopithecines are perhaps the most well renowned of the fossil apes ever found. Among their hallowed members we find such famous specimens as Dart's Taung child and Lucy, may she rest in peace, or rather in pieces, along with a whole host of other interesting hominid characters. Unfortunately, rest in peace was not to be the fate of our lowly Australopithecines; their fossils have been dug up with shovel, spade, and in some cases unceremoniously disinterred by earth movers (perhaps the animal rights movement should form a line of pickets at these digs to protest this irreverent lobotomizing of these sacred burial grounds of the noble primates) over the past seventy years by eager paleontologists plying their trade. Numerous research grants have gone into studying their possible relationship to human ancestry, volumes have been written on them in countless magazine articles; television reports on the "missing link" have been broadcast to multitudes, books are published on them, expeditions have been mounted by intrepid men and women who have trekked off into the African wilds to find our lost but not forgotten dearly beloved and departed supposed ancestral relatives.

As Weaver mentioned above (Part 1), we have another gap of quite a few million years between Ramapithecus and Australopithecus. The Miocene era ended along with all of it's ape inhabitants about eight to ten million years ago, however the Pliocene era does not begin until about five million years ago. Simons writes: "The only evolutionary room available in the fossil record for such a postulated ancestral form is the period between the last appearance of Ramapithecus and the first appearance of Homo and Australopithecus. This is the period between four and eight million years ago, or exactly where there is now a large gap in the fossil record."

The fossil record sounds like an orthodontists dream: a few isolated, worn out teeth with plenty of gaps in between.
This lack of evidence for their theory doesn't seem to bother most evolutionists, although we can always depend on the ever nettlesome Howells to stir up the pot. In typical fashion, this persnickety curmudgeon who just won't go along with the crowd, asks that bothersome question:

"Where are the fossils?" [SUP](59)
[/SUP]
Hmmm. Where indeed? Well, with that enigmatic question unanswered, let’s move on to find out more about our new contestant in "Who wants to be the Missing Link", Australopithecus.

We have Donald Johanson to thank for giving us a wonderfully concise, scientific assessment of the discovery of the very first Australopithecus:
"The Australopithecus mess actually started in 1924 . . . " [SUP](60)
[/SUP]
This was the Taung child, discovered in 1924 by Raymond Dart in South Africa. He named it Australopithecus africanus, meaning "The Southern Ape of Africa." Most British scientists at the time did not consider it a hominid at all, but Dart was persistent and his Taung child outlasted most of its early critics. Skull representations of it show very little difference between it and a young gorilla skull. It is still brought out now and then and proclaimed by the media as the genuine "missing link" despite the fact that Sir Arthur Keith and Sir Grafton Elliot Smith, the leaders in the scientific establishment of that day ridiculed it as "just a somewhat beat-up chimpanzee." Controversy surrounds it to this day in paleontology circles.

The actual skullcap of the Taung child was never found, the skeleton was never found either. All that they had was part of the jaw, some teeth, some facial bones, and part of an endocranial cast formed by the accumulation of lime inside of the lost skull, the rest of it had been blasted to smithereens at the limestone quarry where the remains had been discovered. Dart at first thought it was merely the endocranial cast of a baboon. It was cemented into clay and sand, and it took him four years to chip the face loose.

The Taung child was estimated to be between three and six years old at the time of fossilization (which must have been rapid, probably under unusal catastrophic weather conditions for anything to have been preserved). Representations of it resemble the juvenile skull of a gorilla. It had a brain capacity of roughly 440 c.c., which

is comparable to a young chimpanzee's brain size.

There are three main reasons why it has been proclaimed as a missing link:

First, the teeth are supposed to resemble human teeth, despite the fact that the teeth of young gorillas and chimpanzees can look quite a bit like human teeth. All gorillas and chimpanzees along with man have 32 teeth, comprised of incisors, canines, pre-molars and molars. There is a wide morphological variation found in the dental arcades of various apes, some of them are strikingly similar to those of humans. The teeth of any primate can be ground flat with excessive wear, which could occur if the food supply for some reason were reduced and the animals were forced to forage for hard shelled nuts and even the barks and branches of certain trees.

The second reason Taung was proclaimed a missing link was that later discoveries of Astralopithecines showed that the Foramen Magnum, the opening at the base of the skull through which the nerves from the spinal cord pass, was located near the bottom of the skull, similar to humans, indicating an upright posture and the possibility of bipedality, instead of having the opening near the back of the skull as found in most apes.

Of course this argument is useless, since it has already been stated that it was a juvenile creature. Juvenile gorillas and chimps have a Foramen Magnum located near the bottom of the skull much as humans do, but as the animal grows older the occipital condyle bones shift, while the Foramen Magnum gradually moves towards the back of the skull.
The third reason it is still being proclaimed as a missing link is simply that, like Ramapithecus, there isn't anything else left available. The twentieth century is full of dethroned "ape-men" who never existed outside of evolutionist imagination, such as Nebraska Man, a pig; Piltdown man, a fraud that fooled the entire evolutionist community for forty years; Java Man, disowned by it's discoverer and found to have been made up of parts of ape and human remains, while the evolutionists have still to figure out just what it was (see Foley's foggy reasoning in Part 1), etc. although some of these great finds in evolution were not proven to be mistakes and forgeries until many years later, during which time the Taung child was ignored, proclaimed an ape skull by the best and brightest of the anthropological community. It has simply outlasted it's competition. We will go into the details on the importance of bipedality shortly.

Actually, there is a fourth reason for Taung's role in the Keystone-cop-like saga of man's evolution, which is human ambition. The fact was that Dart, like Dubois before him, despite what others have said about him, as well as his own disclaimer, had been obsessed with finding the "missing link" for years, that is what brought him from Australia to England to study under Smith, and then to South Africa. While he was teaching in Johannesburg he had sent out reports for anyone to bring him fossils that might prove useful in pursuing his theory that the missing link was in Africa. He already had negotiated with the quarry owner to bring back any fossils that he might find.

Michael Brown wrote of the Taung child as recently as 1990: "Taung was clearly more ape, with a brain only slightly bigger than a chimpanzee's. The nose was flat. The Jaw dominated the face. There was a gaping, thrusting mouth . . .Whatever anyone wanted to call the Taung child, it belonged in a zoo more than it belonged in a day-care center."[SUP](61)[/SUP]
Sir Grafton Elliot Smith, the reigning patriarch among paleontologists of that day wrote: "It is unfortunate that Dart has had no access to infant chimpanzees, gorillas or orangutans of an age corresponding to that of the Taung skull for had such material been available he would have realized that the posture of the head, the shape of the jaws, and many of the details of the nose, face and cranium on which he relies for proof of his contention that Australopithecus was nearly akin to man, were essentially identical with the conditions met in the infant gorilla and chimpanzee."

Although most of the scientific community disregarded Dart's Taung baby, he did have one persistent and ardent supporter. This was Robert Broom, a wandering Scottish physician and fossil connoisseur who traveled to South Africa to find evidence of man's evolution. Broom was something of a rascal, he was barred from the South Africa Museum fossil collection for suspicion of absconding off with fossils that did not belong to him and selling them to Museums in Great Britain and America. He began snooping around the limestone quarry at Sterkfontein, South Africa to garner additional support for Dart's Taung child.

At least he was in the right place. The quarrymen at the mine had found so many fossils there that they had a guidebook for Sunday tourists with the headline:

​

Not too surprisingly, after two weeks at Sterkfontein Broom had his "missing link." In 1936 he found the first adult representative of Australopithecus. He arranged to purchase more fossils from the manager of the lime quarry.

Through this contact he met the South African schoolboy whom Broom enthusiastically described as having "four of the

most wonderful teeth ever seen in the world's history."

From additional fragments Broom pieced together a skull and named it Paranthropus robustus, later changed to Australopithecus robustus, the third Australopithecus to be discovered after Dart's Taung child.

The editors of Anthropology Today state that the Taung child and the rest of the Australopithecines were virtually identical to the apes that have already been discussed: "When taken together, all these specimens suggest that in dentition and facial structure Ramapithecus was a diminutive version of Australopithecus."[SUP](62)
[/SUP]
Kenneth F. Weaver has concluded that Broom's Australopithecus Robustus, along with another later "missing link" found by Louis and Mary Leakey in 1959, the famous Zinjanthropus boisei, known as Australopithecus boisei, were nothing more than extinct species that were never in the lineage of man in the first place: " . . .robustus is considered a ruggedly built, massive-jawed hominid. A similar form from East Africa is designated Australopithecus Boisei. Both may represent a single wide-ranging species. These two forms disappear from the fossil record, apparently as evolutionary dead ends; Although robustus' brain size might suggest that it was more advanced than africanus, this powerful creature is believed to be a dead end, an offshoot from the direct line of hominid ancestry. It seems to share this fate with an even more robust australopithecine known as boisei, which faded out perhaps a little later than robustus . . .Thus Zinj (Zinjanthropus) was probably a contemporary of robustus . . .He now bears the name Australopithecus boisei. Like robustus, boisei is believed to be a dead-end branch of the hominid line."[SUP](63)
[/SUP]
This still has not kept evolutionist Jim Foley from listing Zinjanthropus and Robustus on his Website in the supposed pantheon of human evolution.

It would be difficult to place the Taung child and his Australopithecus cousins in man's ancestry by evolutionists standards anyhow. Recent evidence has shown that the Taung child existed less than 900,000 years ago, yet Mary Leakey reportedly found footprints that indicated the presence of modern, bipedal humans as old as 3.5 million years ago.[SUP](64)[/SUP] (These are the dates used by evolutionists, not necessarily those ascribed to by the author, J.M.F.)

Problem: Since 1924 a whole host of partial bones of Australopithecines, along with teeth, and a few skull fragments have been found in various parts of Africa, and these have all been postulated at one time or another as man's Pliocene ancestor. It would be a disservice to these humble creatures to simply dismiss everything that has been written concerning them down through the years without at least finding out what further paleological study has revealed, so lets investigate the matter a little bit more just to settle any remaining questions.

In the article, Tools and Human Evolution, in Scientific American, Sept.1960, Sherwood L. Washburn stated, "The primary evidence for the new view of human evolution is teeth, bones and tools."[SUP] (65)
[/SUP]
Out of the above three categories which one would you pick as the wrong answer for the most reliable evidence of human ancestors? Most people might think that bones and teeth would be the most important evidence, unless they had read what Howells said earlier about teeth, so let us look at bones and tools.

In the Scientific American article, Stone Tools and Human Behavior, April, 1969, Sally R. Binford and Lewis R. Binford write: "The main evidence for almost the entire span of human prehistory consists of stone tools."[SUP](66)
[/SUP]
In November, 1977, Lawrence H. Keeley wrote in Scientific American, The Function of Paleolithic Flint Tools: "Almost the only evidence of man's presence on the earth for a period of more than half a million years is vast numbers of stone tools."[SUP] (67)
[/SUP]
We should have the matter pretty well in hand now, stone tools are definitely the best evidence for information on our early ancestors.

We have one slight difficulty. When these articles were collected with others into book form under the title Human Ancestors in 1979, Richard Leakey stated in the Introduction to that volume: "One of the most serious limitations in our understanding of the long-term record of stone-tool making has been our almost complete ignorance of the us

age to which the tools were put and of their role in adaption."

Even Washburn himself admitted: "Of course the association of the stone tools with man-ape bones in one or two localities does not prove that these animals made the tools."[SUP](68)
[/SUP]
Now we are lost somewhere in the middle of the Pliocene, searching for mans remote ancestor, and tools don't seem to be doing us any good. That's okay though, we still have bones and teeth . . . well, bones anyway, to help us out.

Washburn covered all three categories in his article, so let us find out what significance bones have from him. He discusses the discoveries made at Olduvai Gorge in 1959 by the famous L.S.B. and Mary Leakey. These are more of the Australopithecines. There are two main varieties, known as Astralopithecus Robustus (already discussed) and the gracile Australopithecus Africanus, (or George and Gracile) meaning respectively the "robust" strong Astralopithecines and the gracile, smaller Astralopithecines. Concerning these, he wrote: "The man-apes themselves are known from several skulls and a large number of teeth and jaws, but only fragments of the rest of the skeleton have been preserved." [SUP](69)
[/SUP]
Of the two kinds of ape, one weighed in at 50-60 pounds and the other at roughly twice that much, and Washburn wrote: "The differences in size and form between the two types are quite comparable to the differences between the contemporary pigmy chimpanzee and the common chimpanzee." Of their cranial capacity: "On the scale of brain size the man-apes are scarcely distinguishable from the living apes, although their brains may have been larger with respect to body size."

As the body sizes were comparable to the modern day chimpanzee and pigmy chimpanzee, and their skulls were about the same size, then perhaps they were apes. He further writes that "the skulls of the females and young of the apes look more like man-apes."[SUP](70)
[/SUP]

So the skulls of juvenile and female Australopithecine apes resemble so called "man-ape" skulls, in other words, the difference between apes and "man-apes" may only be the difference between sex and age characteristics among an extinct ape population.

Alan Walker and Richard F. Leakey write on the two types of Australopithecines that: "If among the species A. Robustus the morphological differences between males and females were as great as they are among gorillas, then the robust, crested specimens from East Turkana could be males and the more gracile specimens could be females." These two types of ape species might really be just the male and female of one single species.​

Thus what had been supposed by some to be two distinct species were merely the variations due to sex and age characteristics. As for the accuracy of classification, they state that "we ourselves cannot agree on a generic assignment for KNM-ER 1470."[SUP](71)[/SUP]​

One of the problems in any attempt at a cohesive study of the claims of paleontologists and their various schemes on how primates supposedly evolved into men is that the science of paleontology, if it can even be called a science, is in absolute chaos.

Things couldn't be worse if we had a group of monkeys trying to date the ancestry of human beings. Dates are thrown around from 3 million years to 30 million years with little or no consensus as to what fossil belongs to which "ape-man"family, and as has been demonstrated, many paleontologists have a predilection to contradict what they have just stated, sometimes nearly in mid-sentence.
​

Perhaps this is where the phrase "blind dating" might be useful.

Stein and Rowe have this to say on primate classification: "Much of the confusion on interpretation of the fossil record is the result of the incorrect usage of scientific nomenclature . . . With each new find, a new debate begins over its placement in the evolutionary scheme . . . The discovery of a new fossil is a highly emotional experience, and a new find becomes more significant if it can be said to represent a new species rather than simply another specimen of an already known species." [SUP](72)
[/SUP]
The prominent Paleontologist G.G. Simpson said: "It is notorious that hominid nomenclature, particularly, has become chaotic."

Page 308 of Physical Anthropology shows a series of six fossil skulls, differing quite a bit in appearance. The authors write: "Note the great amount of variation. How many species are represented here? In this case they are all modern gorillas. Yet a series of hominid skulls which shows as much variation or less would be broken up by a great many paleontologists into a number of distinct genera and species."

Concerning the accuracy of fossil taxonomy, they state,[SUP] (73)[/SUP]"How can species be defined for the fossil record? First, it must be reiterated that all taxonomic categories, with the exception of the living species are arbitrary." In other words there is no coordinated scientific scheme, the paleontologists classify fossils without any systematic definitions apart from their own personal, subjective conjectures. Further on they write: ". . . The species concept cannot be legitimately applied to fossil forms."

This statement sort of trashes the entire science of anthropology altogether, but since we wouldn't want evolutionary paleontologists swelling the welfare rolls of our country, I suppose that any kind of a job for them would be better than general relief, even with the kinds of salaries that a University professor makes for teaching their brand of nonsense.
Stein and Rowe further say that the "fossil record is an incomplete history of evolutionary change." [SUP](74)[/SUP]This is one of the classic understatements of all time.

Homo habilis enjoyed a brief moment of evolutionary fame. He was discovered by Louis Leakey sometime around 1962 (his full report did not come out until 1964).

Talk. origins primate evolutionist specialist Jim Foley has devoted an entire Web page to Homo habilis. Many of them were found in the 1970's. Foley takes issue here with certain creationist positions on habilis, while demonstrating that the evolutionist position on habilis has flip-flopped so many times over the years that it has reached dizzying propensities. It is unfortunate that Foley wasted so much of his time in this rese

arch, for C. Loring Brace (not a creationist) stated in 1979:
"Homo habilis is an empty taxon inadequately proposed and should be formally sunk."[SUP](75)[/SUP] Foley either ignored this quote in his FAQ or was unaware of it..

Alan Walker and Richard Leakey wrote that Louis Leakey's naming of Homo habilis "was not accepted by other students of fossil man and has even caused heated argument." [SUP](76)
[/SUP]
He is still used as an ancestor (more or less) of man in evolutionary textbooks.
Walker and Leakey write in Scientific American, August, 1978, on the problem of classification of Australopithecines in The Hominids of East Turkana: "If we ask further what fraction of the ancient population is represented by the relatively complete skulls in the collection, it may be smaller still; it is between a hundred-thousandth and a hundred-millionth of the total. The second figure is the equivalent of someone's selecting two individuals at random to represent the entire population of the U.S. today. It is on this small sample that our hypotheses concerning hominid evolution must be based . . . Again, do any or all of the species show signs of evolution during this interval of perhaps 1.5 million years or perhaps only 700,000 years (does this sound like accurate dating?) . . .

The answer to this question is not an easy one. Conspiring against a clear cut response the smallness of the sample, the fragmentary conditions of the individual specimens, the fact that even among individuals of the same species a


large degree of morphological variation is far from uncom

mon [as demonstrated by the above section on gorillas] and, under this same heading, the fact that a great deal of variation is often found between the two sexes of a single species.

Also, not to be neglected is the fallibility of the analyst, who is prone to human preconceptions. For example, the very order of discovery of the East Turkana hominids has affected our hypotheses, and we have had to chop and change in order to keep abreast of later discoveries."[SUP](77)[/SUP]

Of the three supposed species of Australopithecines they state: "At the same time we may have seriously misunderstood the quantity and quality of variation in any one of the three species."
One suggested reason for their confusion was the possibility that " . . . The three forms are only artifacts of our imagination..."

In fact C. Loring Brace and Milford H. Wolpoff of the University of Michigan believe that this is exactly the case. Another possibility they mention is that two of the three forms are actually only the male and females of one species, and the third possibility is that there are only two species with one of them having a high degree of variability. [SUP](78)[/SUP]

These are the people who are supposedly telling us how we arrived here on planet earth, they are carving out comfortable livings from taxpayer supported grants and research funds to spread their specious stories, and getting international prestige as "experts" when they can't even agree with each other on what they are writing about, yet they get by with ridiculing the religious faith of Christians who call their fantastic propositions into question.

Sometimes I ponder this possibility: Could ten anthropologists typing randomly at typewriters for 100 billion years eventually type out Darwin's Origin of Species? Well, statistically that could never happen, but I think that the science of anthropology could hardly be in a less chaotic condition now then whatever they might come up with before then.

Bipedalityis one of the primary characteristics that supposedly marked Australopithecus as a postulated ancestor of man. Mary Leakey said, "One cannot overemphasize the role of bipedalism in Hominid development. It stands as perhaps the salient point that differentiates man from other primates."[SUP] (79)
[/SUP]
Richard Leakey said: "The attainment of bipedality and upright posture signifies a very major change in the way these animals made a living. And it is probably at that level that you would draw your generic distinction. I think the main distinction we should be looking for is the most fundamental, which is locomotion (upright walking)."[SUP](80)
[/SUP]
That was written before the National Geographic article of March, 1992, entitled Bonobo's: Chimpanzees with a Difference. [SUP](81)[/SUP]Eugene Linden writes: "Bonobo's live in trees but they sometimes walk upright.This contradicts the conventional wisdom that upright posture began when hominids abandoned the forest and moved to the Savanna."
So we have bipedal chimps walking around in the African forest. The article, complete with pictures, documents the Bonobo's lives in the heart of Africa, as well as tool using chimpanzees who also live in "hunter gatherer" societies, two things once used to classify early humans. There is also documentation of baby-sitting among gorilla (and giraffe) communities, food-sharing, and mother chimpanzees teaching their young the correct methods and the right kind and size of rocks to use to crack nuts with, all qualities that were once used to differentiate between apes and the imaginary "ape-men."

Bipedalism has further been discredited as an important factor in defining hominids anyhow. In Anthropology Today the editors wrote: "Because there is no evidence from the Pliocene or earlier regarding the emergence of bipedalism among hominids, at present the definitions of hominidae that depend on the presence of these characteristics is unsatisfactory."(Anthro. Today, pp.166)

John Napier wrote: "The ischium of Australopithecus is longer than mans; this almost certainly kept the early hominid from striding in the manner of Homo sapiens. Instead the gait was a kind of dog-trot." ( The Antiquity of Human Walking, Sci. Am., April, 1967)

So even if Australopithecus did walk at times, it was not in the striding manner as modern humans. At least one distinguished anthropologist has flatly stated that Australopithecus is not at all ancestral to man. The noted Mary Leakey said in April of 1979 concerning both types of Astralopithecines: "But the two forms of Australopithecines, gracile and robust, represent in my opinion, evolutionary dead ends."[SUP](82)[/SUP]

Finally we have "Lucy", Australopithecus afarensis, (no relation to Ricky Ricardopithecus) discovered by Donald Johanson in 1974. He wrote a book named after her and "Lucy" was the star of a few documentary specials. It would be in keeping with scholastic thoroughness to consider statements made on Lucy by some of the leading paleoanthropologists of this century.

Ernst Mayr said of Lucy: "That was the most idiotic thing, it just shows that Johanson doesn't know what it's all about. . . Africanus and Afarensis quite likely were geographic races of the same species." [SUP](83)
[/SUP]
Richard Leakey said that Lucy's skull was so incomplete that nearly all of it was "imagination made of plaster of Paris."[SUP](84)[/SUP] Still, from this meager amount of evidence, Leakey was confident enough to proclaim: "Lucy may be considered a late Ramapithecus." [SUP](85)
[/SUP]
C. Loring Brace stated: "To consider Lucy a Ramapithecus is laughable."[SUP] (86)
[/SUP]
Lord Solly Zuckerman, one of the most eminent anatomists of the twentieth century, pioneered a scientific application of metric measurements to fossils (this should have been accepted practice all along with paleontologists) instead of the often spectacular (and embarrassing) subjective judgements pronounced by field workers with no scientific tools at hand. It was Zuckerman's considered opinion that all classes of Australopithecines, from the Taung child all the way to Lucy, were nothing more than apes, virtually identical to the pigmy chimpanzee, known as the Bonobo. So Lucy wasn't so unique after all. Oxnard along with others have said the same thing, Australopithecines were simply apes that walked upright at times.

Predictably, Zuckerman's method of using exact scientific analysis in the fossil field hasn't won too many supporters among paleontologists. And why should it? Evolutionists are having more fun spinning their stories than a barrel of monkeys! Zuckerman wrote, with more than a touch of irony: "It is something of a record for an active team of research workers whose strength has seldom been below four, never to have produced an acceptable finding in 15 years of assiduous study."[SUP](87)
[/SUP]
Dr. Greg Kirby, Senior Lecturer in Population Biology at Flinders University said, "...I don't want to pour too much scorn on paleontologists, but if you were to spend your life picking up bones and finding little fragments of head and little fragments of jaw, there's a very strong desire there to exaggerate the importance of those fragments..."[SUP] (88)[/SUP]
What of the ancestry of chimpanzees, gorillas, baboons, monkeys and orangutans? The present day apes just show up out of nowhere in the fossil record, sort of like Pliocene party crashers, fully formed, already distinct and popping bananas into their mouths, and man, of course, does not show up yet except as fully man, which will be shown.
When the old world monkeys and apes suddenly appeared, with no evidence for the evolution of either of them, Howells described the situation with the anthropoids: "Of these higher forms there are no early (Eocene) fossils . . When we find them in the Middle Tertiary they are already separated into the present three lines; the New World monkeys, the Old World monkeys, and the apes. Man, of course, is not yet distinct from the last of these."[SUP](89)[/SUP]
What were the immediate ancestors of New world monkeys? Did they give rise to human beings? For the origin of monkeys in the New World, Howells wrote: "For the New World Monkeys there are no significant fossils. But the opinion of most people, though vague, is that these monkeys do not take a place in human ancestry, that the higher Primates of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres descended separately from the unidentified ancestor of all of them." [SUP](90)[/SUP]

So we have found that none of these early relatives of man were relatives at all. In fact, the Biblical story of Adam and Eve created in a perfect world in all it's primaeval grandeur is a much more fascinating (and scientific) story than the fantastic claim that man descended from some rodent scurrying around dodging dinosaur feet. Based on recent biochemical analysis of the mitochondrial DNA in human cells and calculations of population genetics, scientists have discovered that all modern humans come from one single female, and they have called her "Eve." (The Search For Eve, By Brown, 1990).

We have traveled now through millions of evolutionary years in our search for human ancestors and have found no evidence of any genuine transitional links between man and any lower animal.

With no ape men having shown up at all, we are now about to enter the final era, the Pleistocene, encompassing roughly the last million years, where evolutionists are still furtively searching for some lost clue to support their theory, as we shall proceed to find out the true story of ancient man in the next issue ofThe Darwin Papers.

http://www.thedarwinpapers.com/oldsite/number9/Darwin9Part2.htm

---

 

[Independent]

Greetings Muhammad

a closer examination of your claims reveals thatwe are not dealing with facts at all but merely assumptions and disputed conclusions. This is the crux of the matter. Guesswork

I can understand why you might feel that there is enough uncertainty around TOE to withold judgement. However, I think you are not appreciating the balance of where there is certainty, and where there is not. The Creationist attack on TOE reminds me of the OJ Simpson defence, if you remember that case. Throw enough mud at the wall, confuse the jury with long technical digressions, and in the end cast enough doubt that they fall back on their existing sympathies.

Most people on this forum are getting all their information from Creationist critiques of evolution - they're not reading anything from the source material. It's equivalent to condemning the Qur'an using wiki Islam as your sole source.

To make any kind of fair assessment of TOE you need to read a large number of central texts - but plainly you're not going to do that and why should you? You have other things to focus on.

All I ask is that you give TOE the benefit of the doubt, as you ought to do without genuine scholarship. Leave science to the scientists, and theology to the theologians. That's it really...

 

[Independent]

This is a concise article that discusses the problems with the proposed fossils that have been found thus far. The authors humor makes for an easy read as well.

Over the last year you've posted a number of highly dubious videos and articles. But you have excelled yourself with this one. There isn't much in it worth keeping. However (as it is anything but concise) contradicting so many errors is no small task. Although instead of checking out your own material, you will doubtless demand I waste my time for you.

I particularly like the conclusion, which itself tells you just how little this idiot understands his subject. He actually goes out of his way to quote example of Mitochondrial Eve, under the mistaken impression that this supports his argument - even though it is powerful evidence against!

One of the worst articles I have ever read on this forum. Congratulations Zaria.

 

[جوري]

they're not reading anything from the source material

Actually we've all read the source material, and most of us who are familiar with science as it is our bread and butter questioned the methodology you yourself provided to bring about the end result you desire. Your overuse of verbiage and useless examples unfortunately doesn't makeup for what is missing.
Really bottom line, mutations, DNA breaks, translocations etc. don't cause speciation!
If you understand basic science then you won't need all this side crap, you'd actually use it to demonstrate how it occurred in lieu of asking us to accept it on blind faith!

best,

 

[Independent]

I guess I won't get a response to my criticism, ignored as before.

This is unfair, I have replied extensively to many posts, I simply don't have time to take on more.

The facts remain that:

- speciation has occurred
- it occurred in a distinctive pattern (unexplained by Creationism)
- genes are crucial to defining species
- genes are capable of change by mutation (an unnecessary and therefore inexplicable feature in a Creationist world)

In addition:

- there is fossil evidence for TOE
- there is no fossil or archaeological evidence at all for 90ft men or very long lived men, or any transitional fossil in between
- a 90ft human is impossible without major mutations

While scientists have questions to solve about the 'how' of evolution, there is no reason to suggest that this is impossible. Whereas, I see no prospect that Creationists are addressing the gaps in their theory.

 

[Muhaba]

This is unfair, I have replied extensively to many posts, I simply don't have time to take on more.

The facts remain that:

- speciation has occurred
- it occurred in a distinctive pattern (unexplained by Creationism)
- genes are crucial to defining species
- genes are capable of change by mutation (an unnecessary and therefore inexplicable feature in a Creationist world)

In addition:

- there is fossil evidence for TOE
- there is no fossil or archaeological evidence at all for 90ft men or very long lived men, or any transitional fossil in between
- a 90ft human is impossible without major mutations

While scientists have questions to solve about the 'how' of evolution, there is no reason to suggest that this is impossible. Whereas, I see no prospect that Creationists are addressing the gaps in their theory.

What does a 90 foot man have to do with all this? Does the claim that the first man was 90 feet make evolution the correct and more credible option?
If fossil of a 90 foot man hasn't been found yet, doesn't prove that the first men were the same size or smaller than current human height. The fact is that it's all too possible that the previous animals and humans were all huge. The tallest dinosaur was some 17 meters tall. So if an animal from the past could be so tall, why is it so hard to accept that a human could be too?

Paleoecological analysis indicates that Sauroposeidon lived on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, in a river delta. Extrapolations based on the more completely known Brachiosaurus indicate that the head of Sauroposeidon could reach 17 m (56 ft) in height with its neck extended, which would make it the tallest known dinosaur. With an estimated length of up to 34 m (112 ft) and a mass of 50–60 t (55–66 short tons), it also ranks among the longest and heaviest. However, this animal may not be as closely related to Brachiosaurus as previously thought, so these estimates may be inaccurate.

you may want to read this as well: http://www.ummah.com/forum/showthre...-Human(adam)-was-60-cubits-tall-!-alhamdullia

actually, it's very much possible that evidence will be found proving that the first human was 90 feet tall. Just because no evidence has been found doesn't make it a wrong claim.

I've provided some valid criticism to toe and since you're such an expert on it, why don't you enlighten us by showing us how my points are wrong.

 

[Independent]

What does a 90 foot man have to do with all this? Does the claim that the first man was 90 feet make evolution the correct and more credible option?

Usually, discussions about evolution are 100% spent dealing with Creationist attacks on one aspect or another. No one applies the same standards of criticism to Creationism (because it's assumed that anything can happen in Creationism, so there is no possible way to test it). But in fact there are at least some ways in which Creationism can be put to the test.

For instance, 90ft men. You can't just scale creatures up and down without causing other issues. A 2 metre long bee could not fly. A 90ft man could not stand up. His leg bones would need to be hugely thicker, amongst other changes. Even though large land creatures like dinosaurs have existed (although not remotely at the same time as men) there has never been a 90ft biped. Any such creature would be so different that you couldn't call it human.

Such a big boned creature is more likely to be preserved in the fossil record (which is why we have so many dinosaurs) and it would have taken many generations to 'shrink' to normal size. We should also see archaeological evidence in terms of large tools etc.

As for the link you attach...it most certainly has not been 'proved by science' that man was once 90ft tall. I think it's fair to say it might have made a few more headlines if it were.

actually, it's very much possible that evidence will be found proving that the first human was 90 feet tall. Just because no evidence has been found doesn't make it a wrong claim.

We have millions of fossils consistent with TOE and none against. But you complain about the gaps.

Whereas we have zero fossils to support either 90ft men or long lived men. None at all. But you say this is ok, maybe we'll find some one day.

It seems to me you place the burden of proof entirely on TOE, and ask nothing of Creationism.

 

[Independent]

There is no reason why the mutation should be dominant and appear in every child of the mutated creature and fill entire populations while all the original creatures should die out and get extinct.

No matter what theoretical obstacles can be thought up, the evidence suggests that is exactly what's happening.

Let's see how Creationism stacks up against TOE in explaining one example - modern man and Neanderthal. We'll start from the assumption that both are fundamentally human (as most Creationists today agree and as Zaria is saying). We know that they are very similar at the dna level but different enough to tell apart and with a number of distinct physical features.

First the TOE version: Neanderthals are not found in Africa. The evidence of their distribution suggests that their ancestors came out of Africa about 5-700,000 years ago. As a result they were geographically isolated from the African population for most of this time. Mutations accumulated in both populations, but in different directions. Subsequently modern man met up with Neanderthals in a further migration from Africa and Neanderthals became extinct.

These genetic changes must have been preserved because otherwise we would not see a genetic difference. So that which you say is impossible, has happened. With or without your permission.

All of this is completely consistent and predictable with TOE.

Now the Creationist version: Creationism says there is no genetic mutation. So, I guess the difference in dna has to be an act of divine fiat (along with all other species). God has made an African population with one set of genes, then created another with slightly different genes in Europe (either when they migrated or completely separately). For some reason He also did the same with two other populations - Denisovan Man and another unidentified species (assumed to be homo erectus).

Why would God create at least 4 varieties of men? They are not mere tribes or races, they are far more distinct than that. Why make the specific decision to give them different dna, even though dna doesn't seem to serve any purpose anyway (because God is doing all the work)? Why did 3 of them become entirely extinct? It could not be from lack of adaption (that would be a TOE explanation) so I guess it must be punishment? What's more, it's the entire people that have disappeared, selected on the basis of their genetic makeup. Where is any of this mentioned in scripture? It doesn't make sense.

 

[Eric H]

Greetings and peace be with you Independent;

For instance, 90ft men. You can't just scale creatures up and down without causing other issues.

Then you must apply this reasoning to other large species, we can say God created the universe and life, so a 90 foot man should not be a problem

Whereas we have zero fossils to support either 90ft men or long lived men. None at all. But you say this is ok, maybe we'll find some one day.

In the same way, there seems a silence when asked for fossils, that show the evolution of the skeletal system.

It seems to me you place the burden of proof entirely on TOE, and ask nothing of Creationism

TOE is science, and science demands some kind of proof, Creationism is faith, we take this on trust.

In the spirit of searching for God

Eric

 

[Muhaba]

http://www.icr.org/article/neanderthals-are-still-human/
This website says that Neanderthals are simply human beings. The problem with evolutionists is that whenever some scientist says something against evolutionary "evidence" (and provides scientific proofs backing up what they are saying), evolutionists accuse them of being creationists and using creationist methods etc etc. But if there is such proof, then you should look at it with an open mind. And don't ignore the proofs as you're doing.

For example, you said that the archaeopteryx is the intermediate form between dinosaurs and birds (and hence the missing link between the two) but one website showed (with evidence) that it had been proven that the archaeopteryx is actually simply a dinosaur and not the intermediate between dinosaurs and birds; it doesn't fly. But you completely ignored that statement. Shows you're blindly sticking to evolution theory and are closing your eyes to any proof against evolution.

Another example is bipedalism and quatropedalism. tell me why four legs should appear first before two legs according to evolutionary logic. And I do think that something as simple as four legs is actually an irreducibly complex function. you need all four (or two in the case of bipeds) for it to work. having three or one leg won't work. So tell me why and how four legs evolved. Did the fish that evolved into reptile sprout four legs all at once when it came on land (around the same time it also exchanged gills for lungs)? Like I said before, evolution theory is not a working model. It doesn't make sense when you consider how or why it actually happened, bit by bit.

 

[Independent]

Then you must apply this reasoning to other large species, we can say God created the universe and life, so a 90 foot man should not be a problem

I do - large land creatures have many adaptions in keeping with their size. My point is, you can't just scale a creature up or down without making many other changes. A 90ft man could not walk. By the time you made all the changes it wouldn't be human any more.

In the same way, if you made a Boeing 747 15 times larger it wouldn't fly. (In fact its wings would fall off,) Someone has spent some time on this here but I haven't read through it in detail so i won't vouch for his sums:
http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic171091.files/3_Small_Things/Physics_Biology_and_Size.pdf

 

[Muhaba]

Greetings and peace be with you Independent;



Then you must apply this reasoning to other large species, we can say God created the universe and life, so a 90 foot man should not be a problem



In the same way, there seems a silence when asked for fossils, that show the evolution of the skeletal system.



TOE is science, and science demands some kind of proof, Creationism is faith, we take this on trust.

In the spirit of searching for God

Eric

That is absolutely right. If you've never seen a fish, you'll never believe that creatures that breath under water can exist! The same goes for snakes. they move on land without feet, but who would believe it if they had never seen them before.

 

[Scimitar]

@independant

The scientific method which AlHazen perfected off the flawed method which Ptolemy sponsored, saw to it that Muslims gave the wider world a better, more honest Scientific method to follow. One of these requisites was the "observation" of "change"...

...Neo-Drwinists have understood that there is NO observable change in evolution - and this is something that cannot be reconciled with fake skulls from piltdown man and other fraudulent cases. Not one such case of observable evolution has ever been witnessed and nor will it be - for Allah tells us in the Quran in very beautiful words that when HE decrees a thing, HE merely says to it BE, and it manifests.

SO why then, are you rampaging about the scientific method and its propagative nonsense about evolution when the truth is, no 2 proponents of ToE agree anyway?

Does this not spell a sign out for you? That they have been misguided to the point where they cannot even agree with each other?

They promoted chaos theory in space - how is that even possible when space itself is so finely balanced and the planets hung in orbits and the stars destined towards their ultimate destinations? HOW?

Do you not understand that Allah tells us in the Quran to look at creation, in wonderment, so you may worship the Creator - Allah, with joy and happiness that HE created you as a HUMAN BEING and not a pig nor an ape?

What is the reason for you to "believe" in evolution? please help me to understand so I can attempt to deconstruct your existing neuro-pathways which lead you border-line kuffar thought processes.

Scimi

EDIT: Independent, you've just brushed past posts which give you information which throws your ideas into the wastelands... why? Thought you wanted a good discussion which helps to get to the bottom of this ToE crap... you should at least try to read Zaria's long and funny post which puts Neo-Darwinists on the back foot BIGTIME easy as pie to do that.

And I can't believe you thought piltdown man was real