There is no proof that we evolved from apes. Period

the Sunday Telegraph ^ | 9/11/05 | Vij Sodera

[flevit]

Simon Schama appears to have little understanding of biology (Opinion, September 4). With an ostrich mindset that tries to ignore reality, pseudo-scientists continue in the vain hope that if they shout loud and long enough they can perpetuate the fairy story and bad science that is evolution.

You don't have to be a religious fundamentalist to question evolution theory - you just have to have an open and enquiring mind and not be afraid of challenging dogma. But you must be able to discern and dodge the effusion of evolutionary landmines that are bluster and non sequiturs.

No one denies the reality of variation and natural selection. For example, chihuahuas and Great Danes can be derived from a wolf by selective breeding. Therefore, a chihuahua is a wolf, in the same way that people of short stature and small brain capacity are fully human beings.

However, there is no evidence (fossil, anatomical, biochemical or genetic) that any creature did give rise, or could have given rise, to a different creature. In addition, by their absence in the fossil record for (supposed) millions of years along with the fact of their existence during the same time period, many animals such as the coelacanth demonstrate the principle that all creatures could have lived contemporaneously in the past.

No evidence supports the notion that birds evolved from dinosaurs, nor that whales evolved from terrestrial quadrupeds, nor that the human knee joint evolved from a fish pelvic fin. And the critically-positioned amino acids at the active sites within enzymes and structural proteins show that the origination of complex proteins by step-wise modifications of supposed ancestral peptides is impossible. In other words, birds have always been birds, whales have always been whales, apes did not evolve into humans, and humans have always been humans.

But you might protest that it has been proved that we evolved from apes. In fact, the answer is a categorical No. Australopithecines, for example, were simply extinct apes that in a few anatomical areas differed from living apes. If some of them walked bipedally to a greater degree than living apes, this does not constitute evidence that apes evolved into humans - it just means that some ancient apes were different from living apes.

[connectthedots]

I can see you lack of logic is not merely associated with your opinion of evolution. I have never identified flevit as a friend.

[connectthedots]

LOL. That's gonna hurt.

[thomaswest]

You: "I was just showing that the oceans would not boil away, as you claimed they would."

Quote from sources below:
"If the canopy began as vapor, any water from it would be superheated. This scenario essentially starts with most of the Flood waters boiled off. Noah and company would be poached. If the water began as ice in orbit, the gravitational potential energy would likewise raise the temperature past boiling.
........
"Walt Brown's model proposes that the Flood waters came from a layer of water about ten miles underground, which was released by a catastrophic rupture of the earth's crust, shot above the atmosphere, and fell as rain....

"How was the water contained? Rock, at least the rock which makes up the earth's crust, doesn't float. The water would have been forced to the surface long before Noah's time, or Adam's time for that matter.
Even a mile deep, the earth is boiling hot, and thus the reservoir of water would be superheated. Further heat would be added by the energy of the water falling from above the atmosphere. As with the vapor canopy model, Noah would have been poached."

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

http://www.durangobill.com/Creationism.html


I notice that you ignore and fail to respond to the theological and moral issues.

[CharlesWayneCT]

We so rarely find large numbers of creatures together, or even fossils at all, that it is hardly surprising that we don't find fossils of multiple creatures that cross boundaries. When we do, they just change the boundaries.

The "find fossils from different time periods together" is a good way to disprove evolution I suppose, but NOT finding them does not prove evolution, since you wouldn't expect to find it in any case.

Evolutionists didn't use to use the "lack of fossil" argument against creationists, since it was the "lack of fossils" showing transitions that cast the largest doubt on evolution. Evolutionists argued that you wouldn't expect to find transitional fossils because fossilization is so rare.

Now you are arguing that something even RARER than fossilization, the fossilization of multiple organisms together, is a good "evidence" that evolution correctly describes the history of speciation.

[antiRepublicrat]

How about just one. One dinosaur and one human together.

Already found in the Paluxy Riverbed of Glen Rose, Texas.

Oops, scientifically discredited long ago, and years later finally abandoned by the majority of creationists after they kept getting called on it.

[thomaswest]

You wrote: "If God had the power to flood the earth (not to mention creating it to begin with), why would you then claim that he would follow the laws of physics?

It's an illogical point. No one is claiming the flood was an entirely natural event. The entire claim is that it was an act of God."

Reply:
Thank you for making my point.
Noah's Flood is illogical from a theological and moral perspective. If God is so powerful as to create the Universe, surely He could have found a way to punish the bad people without having to kill innocent fetuses in pregnant women, without drowning innocent newborns and toddlers, without wiping out millions of innocent animals that had no stake in the argument, apparently in a fit of pique.

There are many who claim to have supernatural powers--psychics, palm readers, shamans, ... etc. I choose to think there is a natural, observable world that works according to well-established principles and understandings, and I reject the notion you seem to have of a Deity as "cosmic meddler" who constantly changes things on the basis of whim or pique.

[Calpernia]

[antiRepublicrat]

No one is claiming the flood was an entirely natural event. The entire claim is that it was an act of God.

My problem is that somebody apparently forgot to tell the Egyptians they were flooded and wiped out 4,000 years ago.

[Deut28]

You wrote: "Thank you for making my point.
Noah's Flood is illogical from a theological and moral perspective. If God is so powerful as to create the Universe, surely He could have found a way to punish the bad people without having to kill innocent fetuses in pregnant women, without drowning innocent newborns and toddlers, without wiping out millions of innocent animals that had no stake in the argument, apparently in a fit of pique.

There are many who claim to have supernatural powers--psychics, palm readers, shamans, ... etc. I choose to think there is a natural, observable world that works according to well-established principles and understandings, and I reject the notion you seem to have of a Deity as "cosmic meddler" who constantly changes things on the basis of whim or pique."

You've committed the same error twice. You're forcing your limitations into a area that has no limitations. You make assumptions about God's will and His actions, and base your conclusion off your own assumptions. You even go so far as to claim that God's actions were the result of whim, and not planned. You have no basis for that other than opinion. And you question other's faith?

Have you read the Bible to understand why God flooded the earth?

[Deut28]

You wrote: "My problem is that somebody apparently forgot to tell the Egyptians they were flooded and wiped out 4,000 years ago."

Why do you believe the flood was 4,000 years ago?

[R. Scott]

I have read the “Man came from apes” in the popular press – but never in a serious scientific publication, and certainly not in Darwin’s Origin of Species. I guess the ignorant can be excused if their education comes only from the pulp magazines. Might as well put The New York Times in the classroom as educational material.

[untrained skeptic]

Here we go again:

Let me start off by saying that I am not claiming that evolution is wrong, just that it is unproven.

The standard phylogenetic tree is just another way of displaying the same information that can be said to support the theory of evolution, but does not prove it.

The problems with using is as evidence is that there is no solid evidence such as DNA to justify where the fossils are placed in the tree. They could belong where the researcher placed them, or the fossil could belong to an extinct species rather than an intermediate form. Since we keep finding that there are many, many more extinct species than we knew about, the tree is not likely to be something set in stone. It's going to change as we learn more, however there is simply too much about examining fossils that is subjective to make for solid evidence, and too much that we do not know.

Coelacanth:

I agree that this does not disprove the theory of evolution. It does however, make you wonder is tow simular creatures with no fossil records showing how one became the other such a long period of time exist, why the different intermediate forms that are claimed to show evolution couldn't just be different species rather than intermediate forms.

The birds evolving from dinosaurs evidence faces tha same limitations.

Sodera wrote: And the critically-positioned amino acids at the active sites within enzymes and structural proteins show that the origination of complex proteins by step-wise modifications of supposed ancestral peptides is impossible.

Your response is to lump this in with broad claims that things are so complex that they must be created. It then gives some examples where complex things apper to evolve and you suggest that disproves Sodera's point which wasn't addressed directly.

That's called a straw man argument.

I don't know the details about critically-positioned amino acids, but I doubt the disprove evolution. They might disprove a particular theory about how evolution works, but darwins theory of evolution is pretty much impossible to disprove, and we do not have enough information to prove it.

The theory of evolution is a good working theory. It's based on factual observations. However when people claim the theory is proven they are discounting other possible explainations for those observations.

That nice list you give does a decent job of discounting most arguments attempting to disprove evolution. That's much easier than proving evolution.

[thomaswest]

I enjoy two of your witty lines especially:
"if you want proof, try mathematics, photography, or a fine Scotch"

"I love the sound of beta decay in the morning!"

I appreciate even more your delightful posts and steady use of facts.

Evolution is quite a beautiful idea, really, for it connects ideas from physics, geology, chemistry, biochemistry, genetics, astronomy, paleontology, archeology, oceanography, et al. into a coherent whole. Evolution is obviously a fact in the sense that it occurred, as we see from all the evidence. Conservatism is an evidence-based outlook on life. Evolution is a grand Theory in the sense that it provides an intelligent understanding of how all the facts are integrated. Like age of the cosmos, age of the solar system, age of the earth, age of the first appearance of life on earth, age of multicellular organisms, vertebrates, mammals, and us.

The TOE is beautiful because it makes sense. And it avoids the chaos of random interventions by a 'designer meddler' who might turn everything upside down in a finger-snap. Hooray for a sane natural world.

[GreenOgre]

In the past 100 years of digging for fossils has there been absolutely ZERO modern animal bones found mixed with dinosaurs and pre-dinosaur fossils.

Here's another question... How could so many different species be able to occupy the same area with enough food and habitat to support both Bears, T-Rex, Sauropods, Bison, Elephants, Rhino, and every other animal we have fossils for.

[Coyoteman]

Why do you believe the flood was 4,000 years ago?

2252 BC -- layevangelism.com

2304 BC -- Answers in Genesis (+/- 11 years).

2350 BC -- Morris, H. Biblical Creationism. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1993.

[thomaswest]

Have you read the Bible to understand why God flooded the earth?

Reply: Actually I have. Can you explain to me why God used his power to kill innocent fetuses, babies, and chilren?

If he had the power you claim, why wasn't He more selective?

[Coyoteman]

Like age of the cosmos, age of the solar system, age of the earth, age of the first appearance of life on earth, age of multicellular organisms, vertebrates, mammals, and us.

And like the age of a good Irish whiskey! Don't forget that.

Thanks for the kind comments. I try to keep things on an even keel--the patience of an archaeologist I guess.

[GreenOgre]

It's interesting how your argument relies on the assumption of scientific fraud.

[wolfcreek]

We could argue about this subject until hell freezes over and it might take that long for the truth to be told.

[Deut28]

Coyoteman - Interesting that you would extrapolate those views onto an entire group. Young earth believers are very much a minority, and I'm not among them. In fact, I'm not aware of a single significant denomination of Christianity that holds the young earth view as fact.

Here's an example of how weak that logic is.

There have been studies done that date Mitochondrial Eve to less than 10,000 old, based on mutation rates (Parsons, Gibbons, et al). These are evolutionists, and according to their studies, man is a mere 6,000 years old.

Now if I extract that and apply it to all evolutionists to disprove evolution, it's pretty weak, isn't it?

That's exactly what you're attempting with the young earth perspective.

Find a new angle!