Posted on 06/07/2002 11:35:28 AM PDT by jennyp
This would seem particularly strange. What you are saying is that all of these life forms existed over large parts of the world, but that East Africa was the place where the "evolutionary step" was made at every stage of evolution. If what you are saying is true, then I would have expected a little more randomness to this development.
As in: Ramapithecus first appears in East Africa, and spreads out over some area of the world over thousands of years. The group that lived in an area now known as France evolved into australopithecus, who then spread out over thousands of years. The "austras" who lived in Southeast Asia evolved into homo habilis, etc.
What is it about East Africa that made it the location of every major step of human evolution? If anything, I would have expected humans to "evolve" in areas where harsh factors such climate would require them to evolve simply to survive.
Among other things, interestingly enough...there's a natural nuclear reactor spitting out a constant stream of neutrons and gammas.
The modern international free market economy is a marvelous, interconnected system. Yet if you remove only the electrial switches, the system will collapse. Or if you remove only the rubber products. Or if you remove all the receptionists. Or if you remove all the capacitors.
Or if you remove just one industry among the hundreds that make up the economy: Remove just the stockbrokers. Collapse. Remove just the package delivery services. Collapse. Remove just the gas stations. Collapse. Remove just the farms. Collapse.
The modern free-market economy is irreducibly complex. And yet, despite our great intelligence, no one person - indeed no one committee or soviet or economic design bureau - was ever responsible for designing the modern economy as it exists today. This in spite of the fact that several Communist countries destroyed themselves by trying to do just that. The modern free market economy evolved into its present IC state.
I don't believe that's true now.
Why is it that there are numerous species that share all of these characteristics (eyes, gills, legs, etc.) living today, but for the characteristics that specifically define a human being (a bipod that walks upright, thinks rationally, shows emotion, etc.) there are no other species that share them?
What makes Intelligent Design so shaky as a theory isn't that it requires a deitic or non-deitic intelligence, but that there is no connection between the data and "intelligence". Until someone comes up with a mathematically rigorous algorithm for discerning "intelligence" in data, it is a worthless hypothesis. The very existence of an automobile in now way proves that it is the consequence of intelligent design. There are other unrelated scientific reasons we would probably find any other hypothesis to be statistically improbable, but those reasons are specific to the properties of the automobile which don't necessarily apply to anything else.
I personally am skeptical of ID claims for our universe and existence not because it is not possible that this is the case, but because there is no discernable separation of design or intelligence from everything else as a point of mathematical fact, so it makes anyone who claims to have such things a snake oil peddler or ignoramus.
When you can develop an objective algorithm for discriminating "intelligence" and "design" in an arbitrary set of data, then ID can become a solid theory. Since I can tell you right now this is mathematically impossible, you are left with demonstrating the existence of a Creator that is capable of what the ID theorists claim as that is the only avenue to theory-hood available to ID theorists.
False. There is such a thing as "convergent evolution" -- Insect wings and bird wings are physically different, and have different origins within the organism, but they are functionally similar. This is true of bat wings, pterosaur wings, whatnot. The eye may have developed independently in several different lines of evolution -- however, as the common ancestor of eagles and humans had eyes human and eagle eyes can be considered to be products of the same evolutionary line.
Ironically, I could use East Africa as a perfect supporting argument in favor of human evolution, but in reverse. If humans evolve over time, I contend that they are more likely to evolve in areas where adverse conditions require a substantial adaptation.
A place like East Africa would never have required such adaptation. It is located in an area that won't have seasonal extremes because it is on the equator, and (surprisingly) much of the region doesn't even have harsh summer heat because of the higher elevations. Uganda probably has the most "perfect" climate in the world -- it is something like 70-75 degrees there every day of the year.
If I were to look at East Africa today in terms of its vital statistics, social order, etc., I'd say that humans have evolved there less than anywhere else on the planet.
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