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To: mlc9852
Seems to me defining a human wouldn't be so difficult.

This is an issue that I have explained to you at considerable depth before but I'll explain it again for the lurkers. It is possible to define a a species at an instant in time, but the definition of each species changes over time (most of the most dyed-in-the-wool creationists accept that simple observation, indeed the Noah's Ark story demands it to gain even the thinnest patina of credibility) due to the fact that children are not identical copies of their parents. If you geographically separate a species into two non-contact groups they will drift apart genetically even if their environments aren't selecting for different characteristics. At some point the two groups will become distinct species, no longer capable of interbreeding, but who can say exactly when it occurred? As I've told you several times before, the fuzziness of the species concept is a *prediction* of the theory of evolution, and it is borne out by ample real-world observations. Given a set of old hominid bones creationists cannot agree amongst themselves if they are human or non-human. Scientists are unsurprised at this failure, since this inability to categorise past individuals into modern species is exactly what you would expect, yet creationists should be very disturbed at it. Creationists don't seem to worried at the failure of the real world to match their beliefs though, and that is because they don't actually conduct any real science, or make any predictions, or make any attempt to falsify their beliefs.

519 posted on 02/01/2006 4:50:31 AM PST by Thatcherite (More abrasive blackguard than SeaLion or ModernMan)
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To: Thatcherite

So in other words, you don't know either. Thanks.


525 posted on 02/01/2006 5:19:32 AM PST by mlc9852
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