First-ever chimpanzee fossils found. Discovery raises questions about human evolution

The first-ever chimpanzee fossils were recently discovered in an area previously thought to be unsuitable for chimps. Fossils from human ancestors were also found nearby.

Although researchers have only found a few chimp teeth, the discovery could cause a shake-up in the theories of human evolution.

“We know today if you go to western and central Africa that humans and chimps live in similar and neighboring environments,” said Nina Jablonski, an anthropologist at the California Academy of Sciences. “This is the first evidence in the fossil record that they coexisted in the same place in the past.”

It had previously been thought that chimps never lived in the arid Rift Valley — they prefer more lush environments like the Congo and jungles of western Africa. For years, scientists believed that early human ancestors left the jungles and moved east to the less wooded grasslands, and that this move caused the evolutionary split between the human and chimp lines.

But now, with the discovery of ancient chimps and humans in the same area, evolutionists may have to rethink what caused humans to become humans.

“For many years people have used this kind of geographic split in environment as an explanation as an origin of humans and bipedalism,” co-author Sally McBrearty of the University of Connecticut told LiveScience. “People have still retained this idea of a split geographic distribution of chimps and humans. This shows it certainly wasn’t true half a million years ago, and may not have been true before that. We need to look for another reason for the evolutionary split.”

It has now been combined with another pseudoscience, psychology, and is actually called “evolutionary psychology,” and is being used to put over the worst of anti-human ideas, such as sexuality and behavior being determined by one's evolution—a direct assault on the volitional moral nature of man and individual responsibility.

The essence of being human -- or, rather being intelligent creatures -- is that we can we can overcome, through our intelligence, genetic programming we are born with.

Granted, some would use evolutionary psychology as an excuse for bad behavior. That doesn't mean that such phenomenon don't exist. Rather, it increases the importance of individual responsibility to overcome those aspects of our genetic programming that would make for a non-functional society.

Intelligence is the divine spark that raises us above the animals and above mere evolutionary programming. However, that does not deny that the evolutionary programming in every beast lurks in our brains, as well.

Whatever came before is interesting, but of no practical importance, relative to what is.
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When you do not fall for that bait, they put words in your mouth, like: “the argument that the past has no significance,” which argument no one, as far as I know, has made.

What, “genetic programming?” There is no such thing. More evolutionary fiction.

In the first place, all of psychology is a huge fraud, now it’s combined with the equally baseless nonsense of evolutionary fairy tales, and you have fictions like, “genetic programming,” or “evolutionary programming.”

You are either a volitional being or a programmed being—you cannot be both. In truth you are a volitional being whether you like it or not. Everything you do as a human being, every strictly human action, you must consciously choose to do. If you do not choose to do anything, that’s exactly what you will do—nothing—and you will die. (Mere animal action like reflexes and the autonomic nervous system are common to all higher animals, so not strictly human.)

Evolution and psychology are a two-pronged assault on the two necessities of successful human life, individualism and volition (which makes objective knowledge both necessary and possible).

Hank

In the course of trying to have it both ways you contradict yourself right here. As you point out, we have reflexes and the autonomic nervous system. They are pre-programmed to react and, in some cases, we can't even turn them off by an act of will. We have the autonomic system and reflexes of the lower animals. It is irrational to think that we magically skipped over the preprogrammed behavior of the higher animals.

It is not contradictory to say we have both volition and programming. Again what makes us human is not that we lack programming, but that we have the ability to use our volition to overcome it.

“We have the autonomic system and reflexes of the lower animals. It is irrational to think that we magically skipped over the preprogrammed behavior of the higher animals.”

The reflexes and autonomic responses are strictly physiological, like the heart pumping blood, or the behavior of the digestive system. Such behavior is part of the physical organism, it has nothing to do with what is normally referred to as “human behavior.”

You are mistaking physiological actions with psychological behavior—two totally distinct things. We share with the higher animals the physiological reactions, we do not share with any other animal that pre-programmed pattern of behavior call instinct. None of our behavior as human beings is pre-programmed; all of an animal’s behavior is pre-programmed.

Now I do not care whether you understand this or not (though I would prefer that you would), but I am making a point that others will understand. Ultimately this will make a difference in your own life. If you really believe that you are subject to impulses to do things the origin of which you have no idea except some vague “genetic” or “evolutionary” pre-programming, you will never be totally in control of your own life. Nothing has pre-programmed you and you are totally free to think and choose whatever you like. If you do not understand that, you will never be totally free.

Hank

If you really believe that you are subject to impulses to do things the origin of which you have no idea except some vague “genetic” or “evolutionary” pre-programming, you will never be totally in control of your own life. Nothing has pre-programmed you and you are totally free to think and choose whatever you like. If you do not understand that, you will never be totally free

You're engaged in magical thinking. You are saying that humans have all the physiological reflexes of lower animals plus our own higher level of volitional thinking. But somehow -- Presto! -- we don't have any of the intermediate instinct and pre-programming between the two.

I suppose that if I were a creationist, I could assume that the creator left it out of us, when he plunked us down. But while I am a theist, but I'm no creationist.

In any case, I suspect that I am in more control of my life than you are. After all, I am aware that I sometimes act by instinct and can, therefore, act volitionally to overcome them. If you deny that you have instincts you're probably, at least sometimes, reacting to them and fooling yourself into thinking you're acting volitionally.

And if by some chance, you are right and there is no instinct, then by assuming I have an instinct that I need to check, I'm just making an extra, if unnecessary, step to ensure I am acting in a responsible manner.

This thread is a good example of the disingenuous methods of evolutionists. The questions asked are always false dichotomies, you either swallow evolution or you a creationist; you either accept evolution or your believe you life is determined by conditioning and socialization. When you do not fall for that bait, they put words in your mouth, like: “the argument that the past has no significance,” which argument no one, as far as I know, has made.

Yes, that is the nature of Darwinian controversies. Getting deeply involved in their favorite pointless disputes will lead you nowhere and simply sap your life. It's best to study Darwinians forensically, chronicling their intellectual and moral crimes--in the same way that one approaches the problem of Marxism or feminism. Nobody in their right mind involves themselves in lengthy debates with a marxist or feminist about economics, religion, the Bible, the existence of God, the philosophy of science, or whatever. Merely highlight their intellectual and moral vaccuum and leave the rest to the audience.

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