Posted on 03/07/2005 3:19:42 PM PST by Truth666
A joint Ethiopian-US team of palaeontologists announced on Saturday they had discovered the world's oldest biped skeleton to be unearthed so far, dating it to between 3.8 and four million years old.
"This is the world's oldest biped," Bruce Latimer, director of the natural history museum in Cleveland, Ohio, told a news conference in the Ethiopian capital, adding that "it will revolutionise the way we see human evolution".
The bones were found three weeks ago in Ethiopia's Afar region, at a site some 60 kilometres from Hadar where Lucy, one of the first hominids, was discovered in 1974. Researchers at the site in northeast Ethiopia have in all unearthed 12 hominid fossils, of which parts of one skeleton were discovered.
Careful, talking about Dennett's 'zoo's for church goers
will make them hysterical.
Baghdad Bob Bump
It's a passing thing. They've apparently run out of Mormons or Arminians or JWs or whatever the target du jour is in the snake pit, so they're dropping by to defecate here. Eventually fresh meat will wander back into their little cave, and they'll lose interest in life here aboveground. If you hang around though, you'll get to see the best part - when the pit denizens start crying their crocodile tears about how mean and rude those darn evos are, and can't we all have some manners around here. Watch and see if they don't.
and over here we have the Biblios Thumperis an endangered species , and soon to be extinct when sent on a Dennett "vacation"
why don't you come out and fight like an evolved life form?
'creationists' misuse God's [at least you acknowledge Him] work!
How can you talk about God and not be a 'creationist?
What did He create?.. are you confused?
Try wiping a majority of the "advances" in complexity clean every 50,000 years.
Clearly you know as little about geology as you do about biology.
Life has never been wiped "clean" in the history of the Earth, much less "every 50,000 years". You know as little about science and the history of our planet as, well, the average creationist.
There *have* been a few mass extinctions in the history of the Earth (although again, nowhere near as frequently "every 50,000 years), a few of which have indeed affected the "majority" of species on the planet (most notably the Ordovician extinction 440mya, Permian extinction 245mya, and the KT extinction 65mya). And note that these are separated by timespans about 4000 times longer than your "every 50,000 years"...
Nonetheless, even mass extinctions do not "wipe clean" the "the advances in complexity" as you so simplistically assert. Instead, they actually weed out the less adaptable species, while increasing selective pressures on the more adaptable survivors (as well as opening existing ecological niches and creating new ones). As a result, mass extinctions actually *acclerate* evolutionary "progress" for millions of years thereafter and induce an explosion of new biodiversity.
So if you thought this was a "problem" for evolutionary biology, not only are you mistaken, but the actual case is in fact the *opposite* of what you claim. But then you'd already know this if you had spent as much time learning about biology as you do perusing creationist screeds.
Quite a hurdle to leap when a theory relies so heavily on the element of time.
No "hurdle" at all.
Then throw in the passing life ending magnitude comet like Shumaker Levy, which we saw during our lifetimes hit a planet in our solar system.
...Life sprang back just fine after the impact which knocked off the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous 65 million years ago. In fact, it opened the door for the rise of the mammals. So don't try to paint such events as "showstoppers" for life or evolution. They're not.
It is not looking good when we stretch this thing out to the time for your fledgling deaf, dumb and blind theory to do it's work. Pinball wizard indeed; bouncing life out of existence conservatively every couple 100,000 years
You have a vivid, but faulty, imagination.
Try relying on facts next time.
Apparently the easily deluded P.H. thinks he has impugned my reaction to Daniel Dennets evil re-education camps for religious believers.. Tellus P.H.; What do you think of the Great Dangerous Darwinist's plan for people of faith if they don't submit to his "Acid" treatment?
Just how indifferent do you think we should be in the face of blatant slanders, repeated lies, shamelessly falsified quotes, and frequent failure to behavior honorably or responsibly?
And how do you justify siding with such behavior? Do you really have no problem with bearing false witness? I certainly do.
I care about the truth, and am appalled by lies. Aren't you?
from Darwin’s Dangerous Idea:
But hasn't there been a tremendous rebirth of fundamentalist faith in all these creeds? Yes, unfortunately, there has been, and I think that there are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism, of all the species: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as countless smaller infections. Is there a conflict between science and religion here? There most certainly is.
Darwin's dangerous idea helps to create a condition in the memosphere that in the long run threatens to be just as toxic to these memes as civilization in general has been toxic to the large wild mammals. Save the Elephants! Yes, of course, but not by all means. Not by forcing the people of Africa to live nineteenth-century lives, for instance. This is not an idle comparison. The creation of the great wildlife preserves in Africa has often been accompanied by the dislocation--and ultimate destruction--of human populations. (For a chilling vision of this side-effect, see Colin Turnbull, 1972, on the fate of the Ik.) Those who think that we should preserve the elephants' pristine environment at all costs should contemplate the costs of returning the United States to the pristine conditions in which the buffalos roam and the deer and the antelope play. We must find an accommodation.
I love the King James Version of the Bible. My own spirit rebels from a God who is He or She in the same way my heart sinks when I see a lion pacing neurotically back and forth in a small zoo cage. I know, I know, the lion is beautiful but dangerous; if you let the lion roam free, it would kill me; safety demands that it be put in a cage. Safety demands that religions be put in cages too--when absolutely necessary. We just can't have female circumcision and the second-class status of women in Roman Catholicism and Mormonism, to say nothing of their status in Islam. The recent Supreme Court ruling declaring unconstitutional the Florida law prohibiting the sacrificing of animals in the rituals of the Santeria sect (an Afro-Caribbean religion incorporating elements of Yoruba traditions and Roman Catholicism) is a borderline case, at least for many of us. Such rituals are offensive to many, but the protective mantle of religious tradition secures our tolerance. We are wise to respect these traditions. It is, after all, just part of respect for the biosphere.
Save the Baptists! Yes, of course, but not by all means. Not if it means tolerating the deliberate misinforming of children about the natural world. According to a recent poll, 48% of the people in the United States today believe that the book of Genesis is literally true. And 70% believe that "creation science" should be taught in school alongside evolution. Some recent writers recommend a policy in which parents would be able to "opt out" of materials they didn't want their children taught. Should evolution be taught in the schools? Should arithmetic be taught? Should history? Misinforming a child is a terrible offense.
A faith, like a species, must evolve or go extinct when the environment changes. It is not a gentle process in either case. We see in every Christian subspecies the battle of memes--should women be ordained? should we go back to the Latin liturgy?--and the same can also be observed in the varieties of Judaism and Islam. We must have a similar mixture of respect and self-protective caution about memes. This is already accepted practice, but we tend to avert our attention from its implications. We preach freedom of religion, but only so far. If your religion advocates slavery, or mutilation of women, or infanticide, or puts a price on Salman Rushdie's head because he has insulted it, then your religion has a feature that cannot be respected. It endangers us all.
It is nice to have grizzly bears and wolves living in the wild. They are no longer a menace; we can peacefully coexist, with a little wisdom. The same policy can be discerned in our political tolerance, in religious freedom. You are free to preserve or create any religious creed you wish, so long as it does not become a public menace. We're all on the Earth together, and we have to learn some accommodation
If you want to teach your children that they are the tools of God, you had better not teach them that they are God's rifles, or we will have to stand firmly opposed to you: your doctrine has no glory, no special rights, no intrinsic and inalienable merit. If you insist on teaching your children falsehoods--that the Earth is flat, that Man is not a product of evolution by natural selection--then you must expect, at the very least, that those of us who have freedom of speech will feel free to describe your teachings as the spreading of falsehoods, and will attempt to demonstrate this to your children at our earliest opportunity. Our future well-being--the well-being of all of us on the planet-- depends on the education of our descendants.
What then of all the glories of our religious traditions? They should certainly be preserved, as should the languages, the art, the costumes, the rituals, the monuments. Zoos are now more and more being seen as second-class havens for endangered species, but at least they are havens, and what they preserve is irreplaceable. The same is true of complex memes and their phenotypic expressions. Many a fine New England church, costly to maintain, is in danger of destruction. Shall we deconsecrate these churches, and turn them into museums, or retrofit them for some other use? The latter fate is at least to be preferred to their destruction. Many congregations face a cruel choice: their house of worship costs so much to maintain in all its splendor that little of their tithing is left over for the poor. The Catholic Church has faced this problem for centuries, and has maintained a position that is, I think, defensible, but not obviously so: when it spends its treasure to put gold plating on the candlesticks, instead of providing more food and better shelter for the poor of the parish, it has a different vision of what makes life worth living. Our people, it says, benefit more from having a place of splendor in which to worship than from a little more food. Any atheist or agnostic who finds this cost-benefit analysis ludicrous might pause to consider whether to support diverting all charitable and governmental support for museums, symphony orchestras, libraries and scientific laboratories to efforts to provide more food and better living conditions for the least well off. A human life worth living is not something that can be uncontroversially measured, and that is its glory.
And there's the rub. What will happen, one may well wonder, if religion is preserved in cultural zoos, in libraries, in concerts and demonstrations? It is happening; the tourists flock to watch the Native American tribal dances, and for the onlookers, it is folklore, a religious ceremony to be sure, to be treated with respect, but also an example of a meme-complex on the verge of extinction, at least in its strong, ambulatory phase; it has become an invalid, barely kept alive by its custodians. (from pp.515-20)
So was I advocating that creationists be put into zoos? Rea is not alone in making these particular charges, and I have chastised some of his colleagues who have done it before him. They are apparently incorrigible on this matter. They just can’t resist misrepresenting me for the good of the cause. This is an interesting datum, a small measure of the corrosive fear that can infect otherwise sound minds.
Is teaching creationism to a young child as evil as teaching them that, say, Jews–or Palestinians--are subhuman? No, but it is still the teaching of a blatant falsehood to an unsuspecting young mind. When these children grow up, in this Age of the Gene, they will want to know why you lied to them, why you hid the glories of evolutionary biology from them. Do you want to risk the credibility of your whole religious tradition by tethering it to a lie? I agree with Dawkins that “it is absolutely safe to say that if you meet someone who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked). . .” I think that it is particularly wicked to impose this ignorance on tender young minds. But I don’t advocate putting those who do it in cages or zoos. I advocate the much gentler course of trying to bring them to their senses by exposing their misrepresentations in public. I’m for telling the truth and letting people decide for themselves.
Apparently, according to your man Dennett, I have an "infection". I must needs go into a cage to contain it
Why do you keep repeating this lie, even after it has been exposed multiple times by comparison against the very same source material you (dishonestly) claimed as support for your accusations?
Have you no shame or integrity whatsoever?
And do you think this reflects well on creationists, Christians, or conservatives when one of them (yourself) behaves in such a shameful dishonest manner? If you think this is some sort of game, you're very wrong, it has real consequences. Do us all a favor and start behaving like an honest adult for a change, instead of making conservatives look bad. I frequently have to defend conservatism to people who are scared away from it due to encounters with people like you.
That's a good idea, but it's undermined by those people on this thread who post *DOCTORED* (mis)quotes in order to DISHONESTLY misrepresent what the book's author actually says instead of just leaving people to read the book itself if they so choose.
And you know who you are.
Darwinists sound like Jihadists. Agree or else!
I am amused by your hysteria. As if I even came near the viciouness displayed by darwinite crazies!
You see, Ich, Dennett and his like-minded followers, will have to kill us all,(we Jews and Christians, buddhists, whatevers) and he knows it. you may as well come out of your denial, we have
A creationist believes misinterpretations of the Bible.
I am a Christian who doesn't and thus not a creationist.
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