Groundbreaking Book: Science Shows Man Not an Ape

[ndt]

"Sorry to nitpick.."

Nitpicking is good.... It forces clarification.

Without a doubt you getting close to the point of divergence, but I don't think either of these two species could be ancestral to Pan.

[MamaTexan]

Whether sarchasm (meanig a gaping chasm between what's said and what's intended) one side or ridicule (of the other side), it is immediately insulting.

THANK you!

I don't care WHICH side of the fence a person stands on in the evo/ID debate, trying to have a rational discussion with someone who starts out with an immature and insulting attitude is NOT *civil discourse*, IMHO!

[Celtjew Libertarian]

Then you must just have a problem with the Bible. Either God created humans in their present form (per Genesis) or He didn't.

Genesis 2:7: Then G-d formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

"Formed," according to various sources I've seen, being related to the work of a potter. A potter does not instantly create. He molds and forms his work over time... Which is a rather good analogy to for evolution.

To the originally Hebrews the Bible was given to -- who spoke the language it was written in as their everyday language -- the Bible would not have spoken of instant creation, but of gradual creation over time.

I have no problems with the Biblical account of creation; I have no problems with evolution.

[goldstategop]

Science has an empircist bias. That limits what it can investigate but that doesn't invalidate religion. They both approach the issue of knowledge and truth from different ends, so to speak. The 19th Century assumed science was a complete, determinist and closed system with all the questions answered. Kurt Godel later showed such an ideal was impossible. So did Werner Heisenberg. No thinking person alive today can presume the findings of science lend support to the idea of a world with no God in it. They do not. If truth is incomplete, dynamic and open ended many possibilities present themselves. Unlike in Darwin's day, no one pretends to understand everything out there. New discoveries await us as long as there remain questions to be answered and the only safe thing one can say is they will never end. Its in our nature as human beings to try to better understand the world God gave us and using our gifts to figure out how it works. Insofar as this is the role of science, the role of religion is to help Man find his place in a world in which knowledge grows the day by leaps and bounds and we can barely assimilate what we've already learned.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[add925]

Easy, if a religious student says they do not believe in Darwinism and the public school science test he or she was given did not provide the correct choices, that student will fail the exam....case closed...common sense.

An Atheist student on the other hand, has no personal belief system that would preclude them from memorizing & regurgitating Darwinism, thus passing the test....case close...common sense.

Therefore, a religious student in Public School is FORCED to either memorize Darwinism and regurgitate it, or fail the test.

An atheist student has no spiritual compromises to make in public school regarding Darwinism. They are NOT FORCED to memorize and regurgitate Creationism.

Seems like discrimination to me.

[metmom]

Hey, you that's making sense... What are you doing on this kind of thread?

[RogueIsland]

Again, super brain, the newer studies have udpated that study.

I see. You post a study you claim supports your view, and when Startergerist posts a quote from it that in plain language states the exact opposite of what you claimed it did, you now say that "no, I didn't mean that study exactly, I meant a study that came after that study."

[Alter Kaker]

Therefore, a religious student in Public School is FORCED to either memorize Darwinism and regurgitate it, or fail the test. An atheist student has no spiritual compromises to make in public school regarding Darwinism. They are NOT FORCED to memorize and regurgitate Creationism. Seems like discrimination to me.

Well of course you're forced to regurgitate science in a science class. Because even if you're opposed to science, you have to know what you're opposing if you're going to oppose it effectively.

Schools shouldn't be forcing students to renounce religious beliefs, rather they should be teaching them science.

[ndt]

Sorry... poor wording on my part.

When I say "these species" I am referring all the Australopithecines and specifically Ardipithecus ramidis

[mlc9852]

But it doesn't say God created apes, then sat back and watched them change into humans.

[djf]

Funny thing is, when I read his works, especially Beagle, you can tell the man is profoundly excited. He is highly poetic, very meticulous in his observations.

And while he may not have ever attibuted the observations to a divine being, he was almost reverent in what he was finding out.

Great science is always like that. It answers many questions, but brings even more to the horizon.

[metmom]

I know some folks who are related to cockroaches; we lived next to them for some years. I saw all the proof I needed.

[sandbar]

>>>Sorry. The human genome project has revealed that both humans and chimpanzees share 97.3% of their genes and that while humans have 30,000 genes, earth worms have 20,000.>>>

LOL and Humand and Mice share 97.5% of their genes. So I guess we descended from mice instead of apes, eh?

[Sweetjustusnow]

Well, what I mean is that we know that cells and small biological organisms can mutate. But isn't it also true that all life forms eventually cease to exist and that we have yet to see any life form actually improve on itself and mutate itself into a continuous life form.

So to my way of thinking things are actually 'devolving' not evolving.

(oh, and thank you for actually engaging in dialog instead of flaming).

[Alter Kaker]

Without a doubt you getting close to the point of divergence, but I don't think either of these two species could be ancestral to Pan.

I agree that no species yet discovered can be conclusively shown to be the exact point of divergence. I don't think, because of parallel evolution, that we'll ever be able to say with exact certainty where the point of divergence was. But we're awfully close, and if it wasn't one of the Australopithecine species that have already been discovered it could still have been a member of the same genus.

[narby]

Feel free to believe whatever you wish. That's the beauty of faith.

The basis of what you believe should be based on more than what you "feel".

By the way, you need to answer the question about whether you think the earth is young or old. In other words, is the Bible the final authority on the age of the earth, or is science.

Was the earth created in 6 days, or not?

If the earth is old, then the clear wording of Genesis is wrong. If Genesis is wrong, then why do you oppose science on the subject of evolution?

Ducking the question again will tell us that you are disingenuous in this discussion.

[newcats]

What part of the word "proof" do you not understand?
All that is conjecture and opinion.

[Celtjew Libertarian]

But it doesn't say God created apes, then sat back and watched them change into humans.

It doesn't give any specifics with regard to what forms, formless clay evolved or was evolved through, on its way to man.... Nor does it say when God may have taken His hands off and just kept the wheel spinning. It just says God worked, as a potter.

[theBuckwheat]

>>They totally omit major portions of research currently underway with in biochemistry, chemistry, and biology, that show a variety of potential pathways to the emergence of proto-life. <<

Research is not proof. Evos insist it is. They think the more "research", the more proof. Yet what are they really trying to prove? How life came about from non-life.

They are trying to explain how an orderly system spring from nothing. More importantly, how a self-sustaining system, full of complex codependent components came about on a bare planet.

Of course, most of this "research" is devoted to explaining how, once the problem-we-cannot-talk-about is solved and assumed to be so naturally trivial we expect to see it occurring on every space rock we can see, life moves from the less-complex to the more-complex, like heat moving by itself from cold to hot and rocks rolling uphill.

And the evos complain that advocates of Intelligent Design are bringing "religion" into science! ROFL

[Alter Kaker]

. But isn't it also true that all life forms eventually cease to exist and that we have yet to see any life form actually improve on itself and mutate itself into a continuous life form.

I'm not sure what you mean. Yes, all organisms die, but the number of species has steadily risen over the last few billion years. Living things have evolved to occupy extremely specialized niches (like living in rocks, surviving thousand degree temperatures and even vats of acid). And we see organisms evolving all the time to carve out new niches and adapt to environmental pressuers.