Faithful Ancestors

Science News Magazine ^ | 6-11-2005 | Bruce Bower

[blam]

GGG Ping.

[marylandrepub1]

I read 'Lucy' back in the early 80s and loved it. Never read a book from a creationist that could match even the Bookcover Summary of Lucy's investigative brillance. In fact I never read a creationist book that proposed 'any' ideas at all except the other side is wrong.

If you want to read nonsense. Go to this post:


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1423308/posts

[Criminal Number 18F]

For body weight and many skull measurements, including braincase size and facial width, individuals within each sex usually differ far more from each other than average members of opposite sexes do, he argues.

That's a sign of someone that has not absorbed any scientific education received.

Variation within groups is certainly interesting, but variation among groups is extremely significant, especially when the groups have widely different medians. Think of Pygmies and Watusi: this guy would have you believe that the individual variations among all Pygmies or all Watusi are more important than any group differences -- which is patently a crock.

If I didn't see people who sat through four years of college-as-indoctrination make such innumerate statements daily, I'd never believe anyone with a four year degree could make such a retarded comment. It's a complete straw man, and this guy i as much a scientist as Jeffrey Dahmer is a surgeon.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Nathan Zachary]

That would be a fateful trip, jumping into a time machine and setting the dial to a time which never existed.

And I swear, my ancestors were not monkeys. If there was a planet 3 million years ago, and it had monkeys on it, they looked exactly like monkeys do today.

[Nathan Zachary]

" In fact I never read a creationist book that proposed 'any' ideas at all except the other side is wrong."

What malarky. The creationist argument has much more science on it's side than does the evolutionist argument, which has none, other than theory and wild guesses. try again.

[calex59]

I guess you haven't heard, as apparently lots of people haven't, that lucy was discounted in the 1990s as a chimpanzee species. As for the rest of this article there hasn't been enough fosil fragments of Afarensis recovered to make any judgements on size and variations between the sexes, there have been, however, many people who claim they are simply chimpanzees, and with good evidence to support them.

It seems strange, doesn' it, if one just thinks about it, that although Louie Leaky and others can find so called ancestors to man all over african, apparently at will, that not one specie of Chimpanzee ancestors have been found. Think about that for a while.

If you haven't read any books by creationists that make sense to you perhaps you haven't read the right books or are simply letting your hidebound mind set get in the way.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Blam.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[Mylo]

A time which never existed? Um, excuse me, but isn't there light visible from objects a LOT more than 3 million light years away? Wouldn't this indicate to a reasonable person that the universe is at least as old as the time it would take for the light from the most distant visible objects in the universe to reach us?

[marylandrepub1]

No ideas, none. The last two ideas from creationists were from the so called Book of Moses. There are 2 Creation stories and 2 Noah's Ark stories in Genesis . Each of the stories contradict the other (in most details) because they were written by different people at different times (JE+P). One was written in the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the other in the southern kingdom of Judah, both as competing stories, after the Kingdom split. Both must have had the same verbal folklore origins. You can't possibly claim that these stories explain anything about nature.

Lucy was the upright walking human relative with the chimps brain. Even if Don Johanson made mistakes at least he had an idea and explained how he came to his conclusions. Creationists never pose any ideas so they assume they win because they have nothing to defend(sound familiar?)

[marylandrepub1]

"but isn't there light visible from objects a LOT more than 3 million light years away? "


You forget. God created light in mid transit so we would 'think' the universe is older than it 'really' is. This is typical creationist brillance.

[Mylo]

If God created a universe 6,000 or so years ago that, to all intents and purposes, appearers to be billions of years old; then for the purpose of observing and predicting the universe (using the scientific method) there is absolutely no use is "knowing" that the universe is only 6,000 years old.

In other words, Creationism is useless.

[marylandrepub1]

"In other words, Creationism is useless."

Yes-Exactly!!! And it tells Christians that they have shut down their brains to be believers. The creationists allow Liberals to paint Christians as uneducated illogical red-necks.

[Mylo]

"More Science"? We got more o' dat science on our side!

Try facts, evidence, experiments, falsifiable and accepted theories that help to observe and predict the universe.

Science is a process, not a result. Saying "More Science" is like a Communist insisting that they have "more Economics" on their side. And he may well be right in that there is more WRITTEN on his side, but unfortunately for the millions who have suffered under that sick system, the facts, evidents, and experiments all indicate that Capitalism is a much better system.

You don't even have that going for you. There are hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific journals that discuss evolution, molecular evolution, geology, paleontology, and astronomy; and they all contradict the Creationist view of a young Universe and an Earth inhabited by unchanging species.

[Mylo]

Creationist also try to set up a false dichotomy of anti-religious scientists versus all Christianity. This allows them to assert that they are defending Christianity from the atheists.

Most American scientists are Christians, and they see no conflict between the evolutionary theory of natural selection and their belief in the God of the Bible. Many Christians worldwide, including the Pope, also see no conflict between the evolutionary theory of natural selection (which the Pope said the evidence for was overwhelming)and belief in the God of the Bible.

Science is not the enemy of truth, it is a tool used to ascertain that which is predictable and replicable; and therefore true.

[marylandrepub1]

"Um, excuse me, but isn't there light visible from objects a LOT more than 3 million light years away? "


Let me try the old Creationist Game:

Well the evolutionists came up with the distance to the stars using circular reasoning, assuming an old universe. But in fact if we go back to when the creator said, 'Let there be light' and multiply a short time times the speed of light we can prove the stars are a few feet way. The distant start theory is just another plot by atheists. It is now common fact (except for those evolutionists) that the stars are orbiting the earth.

Now let's re-write the science books

[Question_Assumptions]

I've heard college graduates, indoctrinated into believing that all of the differences between men and women are cultural, deny that male hormones influence muscle mass, that the size and strength differences between the sexes are cultural, etc. There's just nothing like twisting the data to fit your theory. Let's just hope the socialists don't rediscover Lemarkian evolution.

You might find this article, written by a liberal, interesting.

[lemura]

Ignore the scientists; they will only taunt and torment you with facts. I'm with you - I've believe in a young earth as well, as recounted in this Norse tale:

In the beginning there was the void. And the void was called Ginnungagap. What does Ginnungagap mean? Yawning gap, beginning gap, gap with magical potential, mighty gap; these are a few of the educated guesses. Along with the void existed Niflheim the land of fog and ice in the north and Muspelheim the land of fire in the south. There seems to be a bit of confusion as to whether or not these existed after Ginnungagap or along side of it from the beginning. In Niflheim was a spring called Hvergelmir from which the Elivagar (eleven rivers - Svol, Gunnthra, Fiorm, Fimbulthul, Slidr, Hrid, Sylg, Ylg, Vid, Leiptr, and Gioll) flowed. The Elivargar froze layer upon layer until it filled in the northerly portion of the gap. Concurrently the southern portion was being filled by sparks and molten material from Muspelheim.

[Mylo]

The article is interesting to me in that it brings up, without actually saying it, the relation between sexual dimorphism (males being larger than females) and polygynous species(one male with more than one female). The correlation is almost absolute, the larger the male is in relation to the female the more females per reproducing male. Among sea lions there is no overlap in sizes, the male is HUGE, and has about a dozen females that his large bulk defends from other males. Among humans there is significant overlap in our sizes, but males are slightly larger; indicating that we are a slightly polygynous species (highly successful human males throughout history have had more than one female).

It is also interesting in that they mention human females cryptic ovulation (i.e. neither you nor they know precisely when they are ovulating and ready to be impregnated)and relate it to our sexual behavior. Only two species I have ever heard of have cryptic ovulation, the bonobo chimp and humans; and both species engage in recreational sex (i.e. WAY more often than needed for reproduction). Males of most species are simply not interested in sex unless there is a possibility for reproduction. A male that will refuse sex with a receptive female he has already inseminated will somehow find the energy to inseminate a new female (This is called the Coolidge effect, due to a funny story involving President Coolidge and his wife at a government chicken farm). Because women hide their time of ovulation, unlike most female mammals that let the entire neighborhood know, men are interested in sex at any time because any time MIGHT be an opportunity for reproduction; one simply never knows. This allows frequent (although not as frequent as most men would prefer) recreational sex to strengthen the pair bond, and ensures that males will stick close by their mates instead of only dropping in when they were receptive to reproduction.

[ASA Vet]

There's really little point in attempting conversation with the super-naturalists.
To do so only encourages them in their thread hijackings.

Ignore them completely and they'll move on to targets who'll give them the attention they crave.