Posted on 10/24/2006 10:55:25 AM PDT by lizol
Neanderthal man walks among us, Poland's far-right says by Jean-Luc Testault
Mon Oct 23, 11:22 AM ET
WARSAW (AFP) - Poland's far-right League of Polish Families (LPR), which is part of the coalition government, claims Darwin's theory of evolution is all wrong, that humans lived alongside dinosaurs and that Neanderthal man is still among us.
Last week, Poland's deputy education minister Miroslaw Orzechowski, a member of the LPR, bluntly rejected British naturalist Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection and his postulate that man is descended from apes.
"The theory of evolution is a lie, a mistake that we have legalised as a common truth," said Orzechowski.
"We must not teach lies, just as we must not teach evil in the place of good and ugliness in the place of beauty."
This weekend, Orzechowski was given some high-level support when European lawmaker for the far-right party, Maciej Giertych -- the father of LPR leader Roman Giertych -- told a seminar that Neanderthal man still roams the planet, notably in the United States where examples can be spotted in a boxing ring.
"A scientist showed me a picture of an American boxer. He had all the traits of Neanderthal man. These people are among us. They are part of the human race, probably more prevalent once upon a time, but who still exist," Giertych, who has a doctorate in biology, told the seminar.
Taking up the mantra of creationists -- who have a strong following among Christian fundamentalists in the United States, but whose theory that God created all living creatures at the same time has not won a huge following in Europe -- Giertych also propounded that man and dinosaurs roamed the earth together.
"Research shows that dinosaurs and man were contemporaries. In every culture, there are indications that we remember (dinosaurs). The Scots have Loch Ness, we Poles have Wawel dragon (in Krakow), Marco Polo spoke of an imperial carriage in China which was pulled by a dragon," Giertych said.
Giertych's son Roman, currently Poland's education ministry, insisted, however, that such anti-Darwinist outlooks would not impact on the school curriculum.
"The status of the theory of evolution will not change in Polish schools," he said Monday in a radio interview.
But he held back from condemning those who have criticised Darwin.
Meanwhile, teachers appear to fear there could be a backlash, with only those who toe the creationist line making it through the selection process in Poland's education system.
Centre-left daily Gazeta Wyborcza reported last week that a high school in the central city of Lodz had removed posters showing the evolution of man from the australopithec to homo sapiens.
Teachers' fears are understandable as LPR has been trying, since it joined the three-way coalition government in May, to stamp its ideology on Poland's education system.
In June, the head of a teacher training school in Poland was fired for publishing the Polish language version of a Council of Europe brochure that the education ministry said encourages contact between pupils and gay groups.
Under Giertych, the education ministry has also tried to take the works of Polish 20th century writer Witold Gombrowicz off the curriculum in Polish high schools, arguing that he was not patriotic enough.
To counter the LPR's anti-Darwin message, Poles have turned to the late pope John Paul II, who in a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1996 said: "Truth cannot contradict truth."
"Today, almost half a century after the publication of the Humani Generis encyclical (in 1950 by Pius XII), new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis," John Paul II said.
"It is remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory," the pope said.
She's cool.
"they are not from this planet"
We are your overlords.
"Of course no one as wonderful as a redhead could be from this planet.(just in case the wife is watching)"
Good [and most wise] 'last second' recovery, there....LOL!
You got to be kidding!
How many of the findings of science does this "scenario" ignore?
False. It was scientists who discovered this in the first place.
What, do you think creationists are out there doing paleontology?
NExt time maybe do a little research?
Sorry, that happens not to be the case.
We could use all the help this 1st WORLD educational country can give us
'currently suggests'? Err never mind ...
So which son of Noah sired the Neanderthal, Shem, and Ham, or Japheth?
Confucius say: not all bandwidth can be stolen easily...
Track Title: The Bertha Butt Boogie - Part 1
Album Title: Have A Nice Decade: disc 5
Prime Artist: Jimmy Castor Bunch
Written by: Jimmy Castor
Written by: Johnny Pruitt
Lyrics:
The party was jumpin' when Bertha got off o' her stump,
The whistles were blowin' and everybody did the "Bump".
But all the time Bertha had been workin' on her goodie,
Now folks call it "The Bertha Butt Boogie".
When Bertha Butt did her goodie,
She started "The Bertha Butt Boogie".
No question.
When Bertha got movin' her hips were hummin' in the wind,
The ground started shakin' - no grass grew where she'd been!
The music was poppin', the crowd had formed a ring,
Her sisters yelled, "Boogie, Bertha, do your thing!".
Uh, for your information, Bertha had three sisters,
Betty Butt, Bella Butt and Bathsheba Butt.
When Bertha Butt did her goodie,
She started "The Bertha Butt Boogie".
I said no question.
Hey, Leroy, get away from that woman!
The boy'll never learn!
Uh-oh, here comes the Troglodyte!
Troglodyte: "Come here, sock it to me!"
Bertha stood back and yelled, "Betty, Bella, Bathsheba!"
And the Butt Sisters backed her up when she yelled, "I need ya!".
The Troglodyte, Leroy, Luther and the Butt Sisters all knew
That "The Bertha Butt Boogie" was now the thing to do.
When Bertha Butt did her goodie,
She started "The Bertha Butt Boogie".
No question.
Bertha: "I'll sock it ya, daddy!"
Troglodyte: "Me like, me like! Come here, woman, woman!"
Leroy: "Yo' mama, I'm calling you, man!"
Troglodyte: "Yeah - the Boogie!"
FADE OUT
"We now have a significant amount of DNA from Neanderthal sources. "
in Science vol. 277 July 11, 1997, pp. 176-178. "The method used to extract the DNA (on Neanderthals) was the polymerase chain reaction, which on old and damaged DNA is highly error prone."
A nine year old source. Try to keep up.
Viagra would help.
Their cranial capacity was indeed larger, but the cerebellum took up the incremental space and not the frontal lobes. They needed the large cerebellum to coordinate the big muscles. They bwere likely great athletes, just not very smart (or at least not smart enough to avoid getting their *sses kicked by my Cro Magnon ancestors).
This is not a quotation from the Science article, and it completely misrepresents the conclusions of the article. Moreover, more recent research completely supports the 1997 article.
Check out the article coyoteboy, I found this on a darwinist website (Science mag is darwinist big time and wouldn't dare print something critical of your mythical god),
I have read the original article. That is different than reading the two sentence treatment of the article on a creationist website. Creationist sites do not tend to tell the truth about evolution and related subjects.
its also common sense that DNA breaks down after a limited time.
Sure, DNA breaks down, but not after any particular time. The preservation rates can vary greatly. I currently have a lab working at extracting a sample from bone about 4800 years old, and they are having a hard time. But another sample several hundred years older produced results on the first try.
If you had read the original article, not just the comment that the creationist website wanted you to read ("Moreover, the damaged state of ancient DNA makes the method used to amplify it--the polymerase chain reaction (PCR)--far more error prone") you might have learned something. They sequenced the mtDNA in two different labs (Munich, Germany and Penn State) and got the exact same results. Those results were statistically outside of the modern human range.
btw, why does Neanderthal have a bigger brain cavity then modern humans if they were just monkeys (and monkeys have a smaller brain cavity in case you didn't know)
Monkeys? Neanderthal has the same relation to monkeys as we do--monkeys and apes split about 25 million years ago, and the ape line led to both humans and Neanderthals.
You really need to study up on this subject. Your comments suggest you are searching creationist websites for anything that may support the creationist case, but are really reading and understanding the materials.
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