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To: Ichneumon

pretty strange that not one, chimp-human has ever been found...


112 posted on 04/14/2005 12:11:27 AM PDT by Echo Talon (http://echotalon.blogspot.com)
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To: Echo Talon
pretty strange that not one, chimp-human has ever been found...

Not one -- dozens: Prominent Hominid Fossils, Hominid Species

And this chart is several years out of date -- many more have been found in the past few years.

117 posted on 04/14/2005 12:36:19 AM PDT by Ichneumon
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To: Echo Talon
pretty strange that not one, chimp-human has ever been found...

You should find this page interesting. As you say anti-evolutionists maintain that no intermediates between humans and our ape ancestors have been found. They say that every fossil hominid can be easily classified as "human" or "not human". Curious then, that the anti-evolutionists differ on the classification of fossil hominids. How can this be when there is no such thing as an intermediate? The existence of such difficult-to-classify intermediates is a *prediction* of ToE (You know, that science that according to you isn't falsifiable ;) ) and the existence of these hard-to-classify fossils is a vindication of ToE.

Here is another set of predictions made by ToE. The best things that can be said about a scientific theory are that (a) It is in accordance with the known data (b) It has made successful predictions about previously unknown data (c) It has survived falsification attempts. ToE connects millions of data points, has made numerous predictions, and numerous potential falsifications have instead confirmed it.

As a specific example you might care to ponder how "evolutionists" managed to successfully predict that marsupial fossils would be found on Antarctica. That is a highly specific prediction. One of many, many, many. How did they know that? (think plate-tectonics) Science can explain its reasoning behind such predictions, but faith-based belief-systems do not make verifiable predictions.

Millions of repeatable observations have the potential to falsify common descent with modification. Every time we dig up a fossil we can make predictions about its morphology based on its depth in the geological column, and based on its geographical location. We can predict what radiometric dating will say about the fossil. Every time we gene-sequence a new species we might get results that falsified common descent, but this never happens.

If there was a designer that designer went to great pains to make the biological kingdom appear as if all organisms are descended from a great tree of life. Perhaps to fool scientists into disbelieving Genesis I/II and going to hell? Or perhaps Genesis is not literally true in the most simple-minded interpretation. Creation stories that made sense to bronze-age goat-herds don't make sense in the light of modern knowledge. If you want to accept the literal truth of the entire bible you are rejecting more than just a major branch of biology (the keystone of modern biology). You are rejecting physics (radiometric dating), astronomy (SN1987A), cosmology (Cosmic Microwave Background), paleontology (fossil record), archeology (timelines for other civilizations that deny the biblical account), geology (no evidence for global flood).

123 posted on 04/14/2005 1:14:10 AM PDT by Thatcherite (Conservative and Biblical Literalist are not synonymous)
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