Posted on 10/10/2009 9:32:40 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Discovery of 4.4 Million-Year-Old Fossil Does Not Shake Creationists' Faith
By RUSSELL GOLDMAN
Oct. 7, 2009
Sometimes an ape is a 4.4 million-year-old fossil that sheds light on the evolutionary origins of human beings, and sometimes… an ape is just an ape.
In the case of "Ardi," the ape-like fossil recently discovered in Ethiopia and already being celebrated as the oldest found relative of modern human beings, the final determination depends on who is doing the talking.
In one camp are evolutionary scientists who last week published and hailed the discovery of an upright walking ape named Ardipithecus ramidus, or "Ardi" for short, who made Ethiopia her home nearly 5 million years ago.
But despite the excitement from the paleontology community, another group of researchers, many of them with advanced degrees in science, are unimpressed by Ardi, who they believe is just another ape...
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
So what empirical evidence do you have to support your assertion?
Just what are these bones? Look at the skeleton and guess, a grant awaits you.
As far as I can tell from my little bit of research, Ardi is a bunch of bone fragments that some evolutionists intepret as putting us further from the branch of other primates than was thought before.
Seems to this layman they are going a long way off on a speculative tangent...as it seems they have done with Lucy et al.
LOL you respond to a post complaining about a lack of empirical evidence with a request for empirical evidence.
Which begs the question...do you have empirical evidence that empirical evidence is always necessary for the support of an assertion?
Isn't *advanced science degrees* what evos appeal to when wanting to attach some kind of authority to what they way when providing support for the ToE?
Book, chapter and verse, please.
“Among Ardipithecus’s ancestors, such a strategy could catch on if searching for food required a lot of time and exposure to predators. Males would be far more successful food-providers if they had their hands free to carry home loads of fruits and tubers—which would favor walking on two legs. Females would come to prefer good, steady providers with smaller canines over the big fierce-toothed ones who left as soon as they spot another fertile female. The results, says Lovejoy, are visible in Ardipithecus, which had small canines even in males and walked upright”
See? Male Ardipithecus had small canines which let females know they were steady providers and it is known they were steady providers because they had small canines....maybe...since everything was “stew”. Just put the carrots and celery together and we have a new veggy!
Considering that science is based on empirical evidence, for scientific questions the answer would be yes.
So I can assume by you failure to cite any empirical evidence to support Fabians assertion that you then agree that Fabians assertion is not supported by science.
“ding ding”
Use of word “liberal” by Tpanther increments by 2
Lamestream Media gets it wrong again.
Seems to me that science is based on repeatable experiments that put falsifiable theories to the test.
Empirical evidence can be cited and speculated about, but that does not make such an exercise science.
“I say that as a true Christian”?"
LOL! On target tpanther!
The empirical evidence is what is tested in the experiments, and falsification is a possible result of those experiments. This is basic elementary level science.
BTW nice job of misdirection, you still have not answered the original question. That seems to be a common tactic with the id/creationists/cdesign proponentsist crowd.
Falsification needs to be the goal of the experiments, or the scientific method is abandoned.
BTW nice job of misdirection, you still have not answered the original question.
I wasn't really taking either your side or Fabian's side per se. Its just that I'm amused by your question.
So far it seems this Ardi "theory" is a bit light on empirical evidence, very heavy on speculation, and to my knowledge void of any real test by experimentation. Albeit I'm just learning about it now.
I'm sure the researchers are doing their best, but questions of the ancient past are not practical candidates for the scientific method. What really annoys me is watching proponents of one side or the other try to sell their theories as if it they had been rigorously tested.
But enough with my "misdirection".
Seemed to me Fabian was concerned that there was not enough empirical evidence to exclude alternative explanations. So your response of demanding empirical evidence does not seem to me to be the "original question" but seems to be misdirection of his original query.
Moreover, since you injected the demarcation of science into the question, I felt I had to untangle that issue from the rest.
Some people think that the old earth "theory" is a bit light on empirical evidence, very heavy on speculation, and void of any real test by experimentation.
And they know all this how?
Oh yeah. Who needs drugs when a degree in anthropology can supply all the hallucinations one needs?
I've read more credible science fiction.
Well its not a scientific theory, and I do not try to dress it as one.
The big bang is a scientific theory though, and seems quite supportive of old earth creationism. But one must consider more than science to reasonably investigate the question of the origin of all things. For example, the cosmological argument for creation is very compelling to a reasoned observer, but is so extremely modest in what it needs as a starting premise it is silly to talk about it needing "empirical evidence".
We do not need scientific method to show what reason shows on its own. Heck the only reason we have faith in the scientific method at all is because reason directed us to it.
The belief in the evolutionist dogma, (they were raving liberals) was the worldview I needed for my radical liberalism.
I now know the evolutionist professors (all liberals) who taught me were liars, lying to support their dogma and their leftist politics.
After throwing off the evolutionary dogma, I became a creationist of sorts, though I don't have all the answers.
I do know the philosophical speculations of the loudest evolutionists are energized by their politics, their arrogance, or in most cases, their personal immorality.
They found a tooth! End of story.
We can't have any of that reasonable stuff. Sheesh, people's jobs are at risk, you know.
Where would the funding come from then? There goes academic welfare.
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