Posted on 09/21/2004 5:37:12 PM PDT by beavus
An evolutionary expert who says meat-eating made us human has been awarded New Zealand's top science prize, the Rutherford Medal.
Professor David Penny, a Massey University biologist, raised vegetarian hackles when he wrote in Nature this year that "an increased proportion of meat in the diet of early humans was important for an increase in brain size".
"Apes were mostly vegetarian," he said yesterday. When the early ancestors of humans ventured out of the trees a few hundred thousand years ago and started stalking wild animals, they took in new chemical compounds which enabled brain growth.
"The brain is a very costly organism. It requires a lot to grow it and keep it running," Professor Penny said.
"Since the domestication of peas and beans [a mere 10,000 years ago], we have probably got richer sources of proteins from plants, but of course that's really post-being human.
"Now you can be vegetarian and have all sorts of plants that have high amino-acid levels. But you probably couldn't have been a vegetarian 50,000 years ago."
Professor Penny, who turns 66 next week, was born in Taumarunui and raised on a sheep farm near Ohura in the remote southern King Country.
He is now a regular referee for Nature and other leading journals and is an expert on evolutionary issues ranging from the peopling of the Pacific to the spread of the hepatitis B virus.
In the late 1990s, he led the movement to ban experiments on our closest relatives - chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans - unless the research also benefited them.
"I think evolution is continuity," he said. "There must be a continuous series of common ancestors of chimps and humans, and the humans have been going out more into the open and have had to learn a whole lot more skills.
"If you look at the chimp and gorilla genomes, you find that the differences from humans are just the normal sorts of changes between any pair of species, so there is nothing special.
"We have pretty well all the same genes. It's often the timing that is different - our brain keeps on developing several years more. It's not that we are different, it's just that we have a much longer learning period."
After New Zealand passed the world's first law protecting the apes, other countries followed.
"New Zealand did it first. It's not that we actually have many great apes, but others have looked at it and said, 'New Zealand has done it, perhaps we should'."
The award coincided with publication of a paper by Professor Penny and colleague Matthew Philips yesterday arguing that birds and mammals displaced the dinosaurs gradually during the 20 million years before the disastrous asteroid impact which is traditionally blamed for the extinction of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago.
"Although the asteroid at the end of the period was real, we think it's natural evolutionary processes that made the difference," he said.
"We think mammals and birds over 20 to 30 million years were starting to outcompete dinosaurs. From about 80 to 90 million years ago, the birds and mammals were diversifying."
Professor Penny is now delving back further into the past to work out how the first complex living cell with a distinct nucleus evolved about 1.5 billion years ago, producing what is called the "last universal common ancestor" of all plants, animals, amoebas and fungi.
Even further back, he is researching the origin of life itself, perhaps 3.5 billion years ago. It is a riddle he believes scientists will eventually solve.
"The general feeling is that the problem is solvable, and that in itself is quite an amazing statement," Professor Penny said.
The evidence so far suggested that life began in the sea, at a time when the atmosphere outside was inhospitable to any living thing. But earlier theories that life began in hot volcanic underwater vents were now discounted.
"We think there are lots of reasons why it was in a low-temperature place."
The Rutherford Medal
* The Rutherford Medal is awarded by the Royal Society of New Zealand.
* One previous winner was Nobel chemistry laureate Alan MacDiarmid in 2000.
* The 1991 winner, Professor Vaughan Jones, was the first person in the Southern Hemisphere to win the maths equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
ping for later
It is a Fool who says there is no God...
Belief in God requires belief in poofism?
If evolution were true, and it isn't, and evolution always progresses from the lesser plane to the greater level, than how do we as humans explain John Kerry and Dan Rather?
Reverse evolution?? Mutant forms?? Biological waste material congealing in the present day atmosphere???
Therefore (unless we learn of something new and genuinely important which absolutely must be posted), we have declared a unilateral moratorium on posting new threads and flogging old ones in the ongoing creation/evolution debate, until after the election is decided. The debate will resume in earnest after the celebration of Kerry's humiliating defeat. We urge the other side of the debate to join us in making this moratorium, and Bush's victory, a reality.
You got me there.
I don't think you have to worry about Bush losing Freeper support.
YEC - read later
In the Beginning God said let there be, and "poof" there it was...horrible misquote but you get the point.
uh, oh.
Sounds like you're confusing God with David Copperfield (no offence to either intended).
Still, hats off to Professor Penny. Anyone able to simultaneously piss off both the creationists and vegans with equal effectiveness gets a thumbs-up from me.
Do you mean things like aberrant grammar practices? See, you have to be on the lookout for signs of evolution (or lack thereof) in smallest of things. I speculate that your misuse of the word "except" in this context probably stems from some kind gross phonetic learning discontinuity of the kind the universe shall one day eliminate through the process of natural selection. I also think that this fact scares you and that's why you have chosen to think like a conservative prick.
You so hooked on phonics monkey, little monkey. LMAO
I think you read a bit too much into grammatical errors, but thanks anyway for this insight into the mind of a poofist.
[...]this man concisely states in one sentence why the poofists are unbelievable--they expect us to except gross discontinuities of the kind the universe does not seem to allow.
"Poofists"? Poofists? (You must be referring to the scientists...no? Yes, you are...and let me explain why.)
"...gross discontinuities of the kind the universe does not seem to allow?"
Sir, are you completely ignorant of the Big Bang Theory? ;) Now, there's "poofism" coming from physicists, my friend! ;) LOL!
(To complete your education, study who/what happened in 1927, and how science--which OPPOSED THE BIG BANG THEORY--eventually came to accept it. You might be surprised at how the scientists have "changed sides" in the great argument over creation.)
You see, it was the scientists who argued, since ancient times, that the universe was itself "eternal." They even proposed the now-defunct "steady state theory," in a last-ditch attempt to AVOID having to admit that the universe was, in fact, not eternal, that it had an origin in time.
They didn't like the idea of a finite universe, you see. A finite universe strongly implied a creation event, and creation...well, creation implies a CREATOR or some extra-universal causation.
:P
Seriously, and no insult intended, there's a fascinating study: how the flip-flop of scientific thought occurred in 1927--when scientists (grudgingly) accepted what Judeo-Christian theologians had always maintained and science had always fought--that there was a creation to the universe.
Now, today, to get away from this admission (and to try to "beg the question" of a creating event), they're postulating the existence of parallel dimensions--"branes" and "string theory"--for which they have no physical proof. But when a Christian postulates GOD, well, that's rhetorical cheating, and they scream bloody murder, because there's no direct physical (although plenty of circumstantial!) proof...but, it's okay for the physicist to make the same rhetorical leap.
I'm merely arguing that, HEY! The same rhetorical rules should apply to BOTH sides.
Peace.
LOL?
What is observed is simply the expansion of space. Projected backward in time we have the common denominator of all "big bang" theories. However, there is no discontinuity required in the theory, and there certainly is no gross discontinuity that has been observed that needs to be explained. Furthermore, nobody would describe the big bang as a complete theory since the operational physics during its earliest moments remain inexplicable.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but what exactly is the discontinuity that you presume the big bang entails?
You see, it was the scientists who argued, since ancient times, that the universe was itself "eternal." They even proposed the now-defunct "steady state theory," in a last-ditch attempt to AVOID having to admit that the universe was, in fact, not eternal, that it had an origin in time.
They didn't like the idea of a finite universe, you see. A finite universe strongly implied a creation event, and creation...well, creation implies a CREATOR or some extra-universal causation.
I think you envision a conspiracy that didn't exist. It is true that people have, and do, hypothesize, or at least are open to the possibility of "infinite" space. The universally accepted fact is that we can only see so far, and what lies beyond is open to speculation. I would argue that the only coherent concept of "infinity" that we have, or at least that I know of, is the mathematical one in which physical properties are abstracted out of the method of quantifying them. Thus, it does not make sense, as far as I can tell, for any observable property (space, time, energy, etc.) to be infinite. That is to say, it doesn't make sense to talk about observing infinite quantities.
However, that is not a disproof of infinite observables, only a conceptual arguement. Physicists like observations, and so the possibility of infinite (or its counterpart--infinitessimal) observables is technically considered an open question to science. Even so, when models run into infinite quantities, it is usually presumed that the model has failed under those conditions.
A finite universe strongly implied a creation event, and creation...well, creation implies a CREATOR or some extra-universal causation.
What you don't realize here is that you are denying the possibility of a finite universe. Let us call "all that has ever existed" the "universe". Then clearly you require that there be temporal extension prior to the big bang. You are presupposing an infinite universe in your effort to concieve of a finite one. However, that is not what the notion of the big bang is...
The big bang is usually concieved as the beginning of EVERYTHING including time itself. Thus, there is no such thing as BEFORE the big bang (in this variation of the theory). The physics of time under the conditions projected for the earliest moments of the big bang are a mystery, but presumably it would be consistent with the finite and finitessimal world we observe.
it's okay for the physicist to make the same rhetorical leap
Well, to be fair to physicists, parallel universes and string theory are held firmly in the category of pure speculation, not fact. Although these speculations are interesting thought experiments and seem to explain some observations, physicists accept the possibility, even the likelihood, that they are false. And physicists are CERTAIN that these things are UNCERTAIN.
Now, if you really want the same rules to apply to both sides, let me hear how uncertain you are of your god theory.
I’ve got an old friend I’ve known since high school; he works on allocating time for the Hubble. It’s always been rather odd that, every time the Hubble gets an upgrade (and it won’t anymore, sadly) EVEN MORE galaxies come into view. We’re at an estimated 50 billion galaxies right now. We haven’t found an area of blackness beyond the furthest, most red-shifted galaxy, nor any emptiness behind the furthest quasar. Space really does appear to be infinite to observational astronomy.
…and all of this formed 15 billion years ago, in less than a femtosecond, from a point with no physical dimensions? (“Poofism,” anyone?)
My friend and I have argued physics and religion before. But nevermind that, back to our discussion.
When you call Christian belief "Poofism" (which, frankly, it is) without also acknowledging that the Big Bang theory is also "poofism" (which, frankly, it is, too), it opens the door for me to point out the obvious: both are proclaiming the creation of an entire universe ex nihilo.
Eerie similarity, eh? Compare other world religions: we're on the back of a giant turtle, Atlas holds the earth on his shoulders, or we're entangled in a giant tree. Is it not...odd?...that the ancient Jews pretty much described the creation of the Earth in the correct order almost 3000 years ago?
No, I'm not a YEC (Young Earth Creationist). I'm a Christian, but I believe in an old earth. There is no cognitive dissonance between the two. Sadly, a lot of us are YEC, and I think they’re going to be stunned and humiliated as knowledge further develops.
I believe in solar system formation as described by our science. My science. Our science. As a Christian, a few of us say (and the Apostle Paul teaches!!), one should not shut out one's mind to truths outside of Christianity--because the Bible never discussed all things, just some things. (And THAT'S where we're so much better than Islam! Christianity affords individual freedom, where Muslims attempt to fit the Koran onto every aspect of human endeavor.) Truth must be embraced, no matter where it comes from, and there’s a lot of truth outside of Christianity, and Paul advised Christians to embrace these other truths, so long as they don’t interfere with the Gospel.
And that explains why science, individual liberty, and tremendous creativity have characterized the West.
Christianity is DESIGNED to allow for maximum human individuality. If you disagree with this, please trash your mainstream media perceptions of what Christianity is, and go research the actions of Christ Himself. You will learn that He never forced others to change, he merely gave them opportunities to do so. Even I, as a Christian, have learned much that I didn’t know, and I found there’s a common thread: Christ never compels by force. Free will remains preserved.
Is it a “prime directive” of God?
Science and Christianity aren't at odds. Historically, every time we thought they were, we were proven wrong. (You’re probably thinking about Galileo—science—being right, and the Church being wrong time after time. But not always so; read on about Georges Lemaitre, infra.)
That said, science and other world religions ARE at odds.
Take a general look at the Creation as described by Genesis: Earth formless, and “void.” Darkness on the face of the “deep” (water). (There was an excellent corrabative article in Science News that argued that Earth was entirely a water world, with only a few islands poking up above the surface!) Although there are some backward events that seem to be out of order, most of the events are really in the correct order. Not bad for 2,500-3,000 years ago, huh? Kinda argues for a non-human origin for the book of Geneis, dontchathink? What other religions came even half this close to an accurate description—or guess—of the origin? This alone should be reason enough to at least delve into it as potentially authoritative. It was for me.
I would encourage you to make a serious study of Christianity, in a comparative sense against other world religions. They are not all the same. It's been my experience that most people--even many Christians--think they understand Christianity, when they actually do not.
There are some succinct but excellent (and fairly written) books that have charts that allow one to see the main tenets of each of the world's religions and very quickly compare them. I own several. You can find them in most Christian bookstores. (They're basically designed for "apologists" [Greek: "to give a reason for one's belief"] in studying other religions, but they'd be a valuable addition to the library of any thoughtful person.)
Here is my own summary of an article I found by Greg Easterbrook in Wired, issue 10.12 December 2002, at www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/convergence.html:
50+ billion galaxies…without end…and all of this formed 15 billion years ago, in less than a femtosecond, from a point with no physical dimensions? (“Poofism,” anyone?)
Set aside all the various explanations for what might have caused it. SOMETHING caused an entire cosmos to be made out of nothing. Even Allan Sandage, one of the world’s leading astronomers, attributes this to a “miracle.”
“Initially, scientists found the big bang’s miraculous implications off-putting. When, in 1927, Catholic abbe’ and astronomer Georges Lemaitre first hypothesized that existence began with the detonation of a “primordial atom” of infinite density, the idea was ridiculed as a translucent ploy to place Genesis on technical grounding.” [Emphasis added]
[Aha! Now go back and re-read my first post! --Sauron]
“But Lemaitre enclosed a testable prediction—that if there had been a big bang, the galaxies would be rushing away from each other. This idea, too, was ridiculed…”
[…and it was ridiculed BECAUSE scientists resented any implication that the universe wasn’t eternal, that it had an origin, because then they would have to confront the prospect of an “Originator.” Later, they will grasp at the straw of “steady state” theory, and the secret reason why is because they were uncomfortable with having to face the prospect of a creator…some of them are actually on record on this fact.]
“…until Edwin Hubble stunned the scientific world by presenting evidence of cosmic expansion. From Hubble’s 1929 discovery on, science has taken big bang thinking seriously.”
How can there exist a condition before the creation of space/matter/time? Something from OUTSIDE. God. Creation implies a Creator. How could anything have existed before the beginning of existence?
Poofism isn’t the province of Jews and Christians. Poofism is the very thing being postulated by our best scientific minds—they’re trying to explain how the mass of an entire universe can just—spontaneously?—pop out of (or rather, into!) a void.
Muons seem to be influenced by particles that spring into existence from NOTHINGNESS, then disappear. They exist for only a fraction of a second, and are terribly unstable.
And yet, the infinitely dense particle from which the whole universe was created is very stable, and perhaps, permanent.
"A superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology" (Fred Hoyle)
ping for later
Sorry, my bad, didn't see the post saying not to do it. I did it until I didn't do it.. sorry again.
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