Posted on 04/13/2006 12:18:35 PM PDT by Senator Bedfellow
When the famous skeleton of an early human ancestor known as Lucy was discovered in Africa in the 1970s, scientists asked: Where did she come from?
Now, fossils found in the same region are providing solid answers, researchers have announced.
Lucy is a 3.5-foot-tall (1.1-meter-tall) adult skeleton that belongs to an early human ancestor, or hominid, known as Australopithecus afarensis.
The species lived between 3 million and 3.6 million years ago and is widely considered an ancestor of modern humans.
The new fossils are from the most primitive species of Australopithecus, known as Australopithecus anamensis. The remains date to about 4.1 million years ago, according to Tim White, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley.
White co-directed the team that discovered the new fossils in Ethiopia (map) in a region of the Afar desert known as the Middle Awash.
The team says the newly discovered fossils are a no-longer-missing link between early and later forms of Australopithecus and to a more primitive hominid known as Ardipithecus.
"What the new discovery does is very nicely fill this gap between the earliest of the Lucy species at 3.6 million years and the older [human ancestor] Ardipithecus ramidus, which is dated at 4.4 million years," White said.
The new fossil find consists mainly of jawbone fragments, upper and lower teeth, and a thigh bone.
The fossils are described in today's issue of the journal Nature.
Found Links
According to White, the discovery supports the hypothesis that Lucy was a direct descendent of Australopithecus anamensis.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
The philosophical applies to religion. This was a bit of debate the other night as to what is meant by "in God's Image". This was kind of a brainstorm idea that hit, so I thought I'd throw it out there to ponder.
You have brought up how philosophical methods and scienitific methods are separate and not interchangible. I'm agreeing with you. I do, on occassion, wonder if it has to be that way, or we make it be that way though. I guess may years of evolution of the two have made them so different that they can no longer intermingle. These threads are rather like debating apples and oranges. Those whose literal interpretation of the Bible trumps scientific evidence, give no authority to the methods by which scientist research, and interpret evidence. As opposed to those that depend soley on science for the explanations of our existence. Some, not all, give little or no authority to biblical accounts. There is very little middle ground, as many see no value in the others point of view.
Not just two, all three. If any are compatible,any one should be able to prove, disprove or determine any one of the other. Review the basic definitions of each and how each method is different.
Plato said the mind is like a chariot in the sky pulled by a pair, one a white horse, one a black horse and each the opposite of the other. They worked or pulled together by the effort of the driver. Freud said id ego and superego but was a great reader of Plato. My professor who studied under and worked with Freud said Freud was a fraud and that the concept was Plato. A tug here, a twist there and originality is lost. Take away philosophy and most conflict would be eliminated but what would provide direction for societies of things unknown whether correct or incorrect?
Logic never checked emotion to any great extent. Only countervailing emotions do that. Emotions are what you are--logic is a minor tool, like a hammer.
Thanks I had forgot some of that.
Science did not just evolve from philosophy. Philosophy has long accepted that it can only argue for unknowns. Science was specificantly invented by some who were of philosophy to observe what they of philosophy could not observe or argue.
(Not valid, thats how some reasoned a flat earth)
Holy Yikes! Okeedokee, I shall steer clear of that. In my defense, someone did dare that it couldn't be done. they never said anything about being correct though.
(You take away emotion, and we can exist without conflict, because we don't feel it, but then we'd also never experience joy?
Eh? Take away emotion, and you remove the chemical signaling system that predates neurons. Take away emotion and you'd have nothing but conflict--emotion(chemical signaling) is how living entities locate their appropriate place, and an appropriate place for their offspring, in the environment they depend on. Take away emotion and you have a world of sociopaths with nothing but hunger drives.
You take away logic, and you have unchecked emotion, that can inflict God knows what.
Logic never checked emotion to any great extent. Only countervailing emotions do that. Emotions are what you are--logic is a minor tool, like a hammer.)
Well....What do I know! lol!
Oh, I wouldn't say that, depending on how stringently we define "valid". Inductive reasoning is how you know just about everything that you know. It's how science proceeds, by and large - by accumulating evidence one way or another.
Your ideas are interesting. I think our souls do have an effect on how we live in this world, but I'm personally careful about what attributes I hang on God.
I never really knew there were Christians who thought God had a physical body. That he was yay tall or weighed so many pounds. I guess it shows my Gnostic side in that the idea really, really creeps me out.
Religion is philosophy!! The middle east is mostly philosophy and little science. Most of their science are the toys invented as weapons that they use to kill themselves, each other and others in order to preserve their philosophy. The mean IQ of the ME is but 89 and in that area philosophy is dominate.
I figure that eventually my philosophical nature might possibly lead me to some probable absolutes, theoretically anyway. Maybe?
Doubtful, cannot be achieved by the method, and not probably in the extreme. I have had to settle with the below an it is my own:
Mankind is what he sees in others and what other see in him, therefore he has a moral and ethical responsibility to conduct himself in such a manner that he is observed as benefactor rather than a hindrance to Mankind.
I would certainly question it if generalized no matter how many of the conclusion. However other might not.
Validity Formal logic as most people learn it is deductive rather than inductive. Some philosophers claim to have created systems of inductive logic, but it is controversial whether a logic of induction is even possible. In contrast to deductive reasoning, conclusions arrived at by inductive reasoning do not necessarily have the same degree of certainty as the initial premises. For example, a conclusion that all swans are white is false, but may have been thought true in Europe until the settlement of Australia. Inductive arguments are never binding but they may be cogent. Inductive reasoning is deductively invalid. (An argument in formal logic is valid if and only if it is not possible for the premises of the argument to be true whilst the conclusion is false.) In induction there are always many conclusions that can reasonably be related to certain premises. Inductions are open; deductions are closed.
The classic philosophical treatment of the problem of induction, meaning the search for a justification for inductive reasoning, was by the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Hume highlighted the fact that our everyday reasoning depends on patterns of repeated experience rather than deductively valid arguments. For example, we believe that bread will nourish us because it has done so in the past, but this is not a guarantee that it will always do so. As Hume said, someone who insisted on sound deductive justifications for everything would starve to death.
Instead of unproductive radical skepticism about everything, Hume advocated a practical skepticism based on common sense, where the inevitability of induction is accepted.
Induction is sometimes framed as reasoning about the future from the past, but in its broadest sense it involves reaching conclusions about unobserved things on the basis of what has been observed. Inferences about the past from present evidence – for instance, as in archaeology, count as induction. Induction could also be across space rather than time, for instance as in cosmology where conclusions about the whole universe are drawn from what we are able to observe from within our own galaxy; or in economics, where national economic policy is derived from local economic performance.
Twentieth-century philosophy has approached induction very differently. Rather than a choice about what predictions to make about the future, induction can be seen as a choice of what concepts to fit to observations or of how to graph or represent a set of observed data. Nelson Goodman posed a "new riddle of induction" by inventing the property "grue" to which induction does not apply.
You don't believe in Jesus, Satan, souls or free will, so there's no point in talking to you.
Evolution is a moot point.
It has been interesting to me to read the different views. It does make me reconsider my own. It doesn't neccessarily change mine, but on occasion I find something enlightening.
(I'm personally careful about what attributes I hang on God.)
Tell me about it! How can anyone know for absolute certain. I am not asserting that this is what "His Image" means. I've never actually thought of it in this way though. Since it was a topic the other night it seemed appropriate to throw it out there for thought, and discussion.
Their philosophy is every bit as logical to them as your philosophy is to you. Its their faith and belief and many accept it. 5 million muslims in the US, 2.1 million are African American and converts. While you might seek to convert and debunk their way of life at the same time they would seek to convert you and debunk your way of life even if most of them think us less of a human.
The DemiurgeDitit placemark
placemarker
Actually I perfer Shiva as a God. He has lasted longer than any other therefore he must be the most credible.
His name means The Auspicious One. He is Pure Consciousness, Chidanandaroopa - the form of joy that pure consciousness takes. He is the oldest god known to mankind, and more interestingly is perhaps the oldest living god, tracing a genealogy of worship that is easily five thousand years old. Naturally, therefore, he is described as the God with no lineage. Like Yahweh, who may be his only contemporary, his name was not to be taken in vain. In fact his name was not to be uttered at all. He is the howler, Rudra, when he first appears to us in the Rig Veda. He is Raudra Brahman, the wild God of the Hymns. He is also Nataraja, the elegant King of the Dance, and in fact of all the fine arts. He is the Lord of yoga, the culmination of the universe, the cause of its dissolution - yet always transcending such petty events.
To attempt an overview of Shiva in one essay is an act of extreme idiocy. I shall therefore seek to communicate some of the flavors that are associated with Shiva, trusting that time will be vouchsafed us to explore him in detail as we grow as a web-site. Shiva has been around for so long that entire encyclopedias on him are necessary to get just a bird's eye view. This god is perhaps the single most important influence on the arts and culture of the Indian subcontinent. In a very real sense, you find Shiva all over the country, he is in fact the country, so closely interwoven are the myths of his actions with the culture and geography of the land. So strong is Shiva's hold on the imagination that all local area gods which seek to gain in prestige, or are sought to be subverted to the main body of the Hindu religion, end up being described as various manifestations of Shiva. If the god lives on a hill, a forest or a cave then there is no way he escapes being but one more aspect of Mahadeva - the great god who loves to linger in hills, forests and caves. This is what has happened to Khandoba in Maharashtra, Skanda in Tamil Nadu and Ayyapan in Kerala to give the three most common examples. In fact another manner of accommodating these local religions was to decree the gods to be sons of Shiva.
The Rig Vedic Shiva was known as Rudra. He was a grim mysterious god, living on the fringes of Vedic society, a god who was so much of an outsider that he was not even entitled to a share in the fire sacrifices. Yet the Vedic pantheon was clearly in awe of this self sufficient Hunter-God. The hymns praise him in all-too-visible anxiety that his strange powers may be aroused, and his name as mentioned was never to be invoked. "We live in dread, and pray that you pass us by", quavers the Rig Vedic verse. Yet it immediately goes on to add that He is the Awakener, who when touched by pleas, grants a thousand kinds of balm that heal.
In a sense Rudra was too much a part of the Life-Force, too acutely felt to be just a god. Rudra punishes Prajapati for the first primordial act of incest and in a sense he is the defender of Dharma ever since. He is also a slayer of a brahmana, Prajapati, in the service of a higher morality, a fact that has caused much anguish to medieval commentators who were busy trying to show brahmanas were gods on earth as well as in heaven. Rudra-Shiva is thus always about living an authentic life, with utter disdain for convention.
This Vedic manifestation of Shiva was thought to be the earliest known(1500 B.C.) before he became the great God of later Hinduism. Then came the discovery of a few seals from the Harrapan civilization (2750 B.C.) and the picture changed completely. The seals show a figure who is so manifestly Shiva that it had to be acknowledged as such, even though it smashed the nice theory that was emerging of invading Aryans destroying the cities of the Indus valley. It is known as the proto-Shiva seal. However, for those who can read the signs and can decode the evidence, this figure is far more important.
He is surrounded by animals, which directly links him up with the Rudra-Pashupatinatha of the Vedas. The tiger, the elephant, and the bull depicted here, all play prominent parts in the Shiva mythology. Even more importantly he is shown in a typical yogic posture, which would indicate the knowledge of the ancient art.
This posture is the Udharva Linga posture (and not the ithyphallic posture as is so easily assumed) and it indicates the triumph over the sexual impulse.. The balls of the feet press into the sacral region behind and beneath the testicles as is shown. The lingam is erect and it presses into the navel, signifying the complete conquest of the sexual energy. He is now Udharva Retas, "he whose semen flows upwards". In the yogic system when you do not dissipate semen through ejaculation, it transforms itself into a food for the brain called ojas, vital energy, and is the source of the creative force that alone can provide you with the fuel to break through into enlightenment. This posture is commonly practiced even today and the udharva linga experience is not uncommon for many spiritual practitioners. Even the founder of Kriya yoga has left an account of precisely this linga entering the navel and the subsequent freedom from all thoughts and desire of lust.
Inevitably, Shiva the Conqueror of Lust and Desire is also known as the erotic ascetic! The Tantrik tradition uses the Shiva Energy very heavily and many of the texts of Tantra are lectures that Shiva gives to his spouse who may be Kali or Parvati, but actually is a representative of all the Divine Feminine energy in the world.
Shiva's sexuality inevitably brings us to the Shiva lingam, the supposedly sacred phallus. Contrary to popular perception, the Shiva lingam has a world of meaning attached to it and it is not just the obvious one of phallic symbolism. Most lingams are representations of Shiva who is never worshipped in the form of an image. Popular mythology holds that he was cursed so by an enraged rishi. The lingam is an abstract stand-in for the Howler who must never be named. The entire process is an elaborate avoidance of naming the dread name by substituting something else, which is also a creative and generative force.
Under Tantrik influence, the lingam placed in a yoni base - which means exactly what it sounds like - became a frank avowal of the ultimate origin of new life, it was fertility symbolism at its best. Educated Hindus tend to be over-apologetic about this aspect, though the average Hindu lives in a curious innocence about the nature of the Lingam. This was typically expressed in Gandhi's naïve confession that he had to read foreign authors before he realized that there might be anything sexual about the lingam.
According to Swami Vivekananda, not just the lingam but also the entire external image of Shiva is an elaborate symbolical construct. In his view, Shiva is a personification of the entire Vedic fire sacrifice. Thus the ash with which his body is smeared is the ash of the sacrifice. (Ash is also what's left when everything is destroyed and it does not decay. So too with god, what is left when everything is gone. Shiva covers himself with ash because he is the only life form in the Universe who is aware of this truth at every moment.) The white complexion of Shiva is indicative of the smoke of the sacrifice. The animals He is associated with indicate the animals tied to the sacrificial posts and so on. The Shiva linga, in Vivekananda's view is actually a feebly recalled Yupa Stambha, the Cosmic Pillar that is the center and support of the Universe, The Axis Mundi, in fact. This yupa stambha is always represented in all fire sacrifices and it is permanently installed in temples in the form of the linga.
If prayers could not be offered to images of Shiva, then the temples could be covered with depictions of scenes from his ancient life. So great was the Shiva factor in Indian art forms that it almost obscures the other gods. The temples and their sculptures run riot. Khajuraho, Ellora, Elephanta, Rameshwaram, the Chola temples, the Bhuvaneshwar and Madhya Pradesh temples, and the great dancing Shiva temple at Chidambaram, it's a universe drunk on the creative energy, fertile and fecund with originality and beauty that is not as well regarded as it should be, merely because there is too much of it. If there were only one such temple in India the world would have gone mad with appreciation. As such, you can actually overdose on beauty, the Beauty that is the transcendent state of the Truth that is Shiva, expressed in the famous formulation Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram.
The mythologies surrounding Shiva are immense. It must be remembered that the Shiva story has been going on for five thousand years now and they only too obviously reflect the concerns of people at the time they were being composed. Shiva Himself is a composite god today, involving many local area gods and little tradition mythologies into his all-embracing grasp. Shiva is more or less what you want Him to be, as in Him all contradictions casually coexist. The notion of Shiva as exclusively a Wild Man of the forests and mountains, traveling with a band of ghosts and ghouls as their leader, Bhoothnath, is a recent phase of his worship. For while He was always capable of peculiar behavior, Shiva used to live outside of society not because He had rejected it but because He had transcended it. Shiva is repeatedly described as the Supreme Master of all the Arts, and that indicates a highly socialized being, the Nagarika of ancient India, not a rustic.
To those who did not understand this aspect of the lord, to those who still had on their defensive shell of sophistication and cynicism, Shiva was Bholenath, the Simpleton God. Yet, traditionally India has regarded Shiva not as any of these roles but as Vishwanatha - the Lord of the Universe. That is why in all the old temples you find him represented as a king, decked out in lordly robes with crowns and jewels. This homeless-wanderer recent incarnation of Shiva was perhaps a reflection of a culture that had lost its moorings and was reeling under alien domination.
Yet even at this much reduced level, Shiva seems to appeal the most powerfully, of all the gods of India, to the collective unconscious. Since most Goddess worshipers also acknowledge Him as the divine spouse of the Goddess, Shiva may easily have the most devotes in sheer number alone. He is laughed at as an old man by devotees with the affection that comes only with comfort. Yet in some corner of the old limbic brain he lurks, Rudra-Shiva, the old god of India, the source of the songs of the Rig Veda.
Of all who are born You are the greatest
Of all the powers, you are the most compelling
Lustre itself becomes pale and outshone by you
O Rudra!
Protect us from the hordes of sins that assault us
Stand between us and them
Repel them with the thunderbolt of your arm
O Rudra! Lead us to the other bank
Let us cross with ease.
Read more
Kirtimukha - Gargoyle in Indian temples
The Myth of the Wild Man
moot placemarker
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