Skulls Found in Africa and in Europe Challenge Theories of Human Origins

NY Times ^ | August 6, 2002 | By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

[VadeRetro]

Wistar Silliness (of 1966 for Gosh Sakes) Debunked by a Biologist Participant.

Other than that, you have not addressed the question of programmatic impossibilities:

Related features co-evolve. You have never in some X years addressed that all your personal models of evolution are too dumb to be pre-Lamarckian and thus irrelevant to science or logic.

[Chances Are]

Just curious...

Related features co-evolve.

What is the scientific basis for this statement? Is there something in the fossil record to demonstrate this? Has such a proclivity been demonstrated in laboratories? If true, does it apply to macro-evolution as well as micro-evolution?

If there's a large database of fossilized remains throughout history, it should be shown to apply across species. Has this been demonstrated by the record?

I don't know the answers to any of these questions, Vade. I'm just seeking answers to questions that pop into my head when I see a certain post such as yours. You seem to possess some degree of knowledge about these things. I'm hoping you can enlighten me.

Yours for a great weekend,

CA....

[PatrickHenry]

Can you locate the original article from the pulled thread? If so, I think it can be posted in the "smokey backroom" and then we can resume where we left off.

[VadeRetro]

What is the scientific basis for this statement? Is there something in the fossil record to demonstrate this? [Related features co-evolve.]

There are several fossil series which I have seen creationists actually try to debunk by stating that all creatures in the series seem integrated and fully functional. Well, duh! They seem integrated and fully functional precisely because if they weren't they'd be dead. The Darwinian model says exactly this; the creationist/medvedian strawman goes out of its way to say that first you have to evolve the wings, then the muscles, then the extra lungpower and by then some of the other stuff has de-volved because it was neutral or negative.

The Evidence for Dinosaur-Bird Transition. Note that, of all the fossil species represented, none seem freakishly unadapted although several are nearly halfway between dinosaur and bird. One (Confuciusornis) has that halfway claw/wing forelimb which so many strawman models say is a barrier because it can't be good for anything.

Here are reptiles becoming mammals. The multi-part reptile jawbone breaks up and becomes a single jaw bone plus some extra ear bones. (Reptiles, IIRC, have a single ear bone and hear best with their heads on the ground to pick up vibrations.)

The top two skulls are early mammals. The rest are increasingly old mammal-like reptiles except the bottom one, Hylonomus, is a probably ancestral very early reptile. This material is from The Fossil Record by Clifford Cuffey. The narrative therein relates that the insurmountable transition was made by a useful double jaw joint visible in some of the creatures. There was no "impossible freak" stage and the necessary changes happened together.

[VadeRetro]

I see you have indeed reposted the "Who Are the Creation Scientists?" article.

[PatrickHenry]

Right. This time it's posted in the "Smokey Backroom" forum. Knock twice. Give the password. We'll let you in.

[medved]

Related features co-evolve.

What is the scientific basis for this statement?

Imagination...

[gore3000]

The question, totally irrelevant to the discussion at hand, was a mean-spirited jibe of snobbish arrogance aimed at those who don't agree with you, and don't know who your Moses is.

You have the evolutionists pegged right there. They keep saying they have morals and that they do not believe in might makes right, however, they will pull any dirty trick, any low tactic they can think of to discredit an opponent.

[gore3000]

You won't get an answer from him. He typically runs and hides when pressed for such admissions.

He answered the questions in three <3> posts just above. Have you no shame??????

[gore3000]

Pardon me, when I typed my reply I had not read the entire thread.

Why bother to read the thread eh? Just shoot from the hip. People that have no shame don't bother if what they say is an obvious lie.

[gore3000]

I was saying that there is no scriptural basis for the fundamental, organic law of this country.

There definitely is. That each man should be free to follow his conscience. That the individual is worthwhile. That men are the masters of their destinies.

[VOYAGER]

Skulls Found in Africa and in Europe Challenge Theories of Human Origins!

What,again?

I'm thankful God never changes His account of creation.

Doesn't that make Him more credible?

[gore3000]

You would appear to be confusing an observation (survival of the fittest), with a prescription.

To Darwin it sure was. He believed in all that garbage he said. He believed that it should be implemented in the laws of the land. He believed that the world would be better off by it:

" Man scans with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of his horses, cattle, and dogs before he matches them; but when he comes to his own marriage he rarely, or never, takes any such care. He is impelled by nearly the same motives as the lower animals, when they are left to their own free choice, though he is in so far superior to them that he highly values mental charms and virtues. On the other hand he is strongly attracted by mere wealth or rank. Yet he might by selection do something not only for the bodily constitution and frame of his offspring, but for their intellectual and moral qualities. Both sexes ought to refrain from marriage if they are in any marked degree inferior in body or mind; but such hopes are Utopian and will never be even partially realised until the laws of inheritance are thoroughly known. Everyone does good service, who aids towards this end. When the principles of breeding and inheritance are better understood, we shall not hear ignorant members of our legislature rejecting with scorn a plan for ascertaining whether or not consanguineous marriages are injurious to man." Darwin, Descent of Man, Chapter 21.

"Man, like every other animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a struggle for existence consequent on his rapid multiplicaiton; and if he is to advance still higher he must remain subject to a severe struggle. Otherwise he would soon sink into indolence, and the more highly gifted men would not be more successful in the battle of life than the less gifted. Hence our natural rate of increase, though leading to many and obvious evils, must not be greatly diminished by any means. There should be open competition for all men; and the most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring." Darwin, Descent of Man, Chapter 21.

In man the frontal bone consists of a single piece, but in the embryo, and in children, and in almost all the lower mammals, it consists of two pieces separated by a distinct suture. ~~This suture occasionally persists more or less distinctly in man after maturity; and more frequently in ancient than in recent crania, especially, as Canestrini has observed, in those exhumed from the Drift, and belonging to the brachycephalic type. Here again he comes to the same nclusion as in the analogous case of the malar bones. In this, and other instances presently to be given, the cause of ancient races approaching the lower animals in certain characters more frequently than do the modern races, appears to be, that the latter stand at a somewhat greater distance in the long line of descent from their early semi-human progenitors. Darwin, Descent of Man, Chapter 2.

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
Darwin, "The Descent of Man", Chapter V.

Have you evos never bothered to read his blather or do you agree with him?

[gore3000]

I think I've pretty well figured out g3k. Believe me,

Is the above an insult, or is it supposed to be an answer to the following?

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To: exDemMom

In your example, your numbers indicated that the mutant, and only the mutant, was part of a breeding pair that produced 10 offspring, half of which inherited the mutation, as per my assumption 1 (sexual reproduction). However, your population size as a whole was increasing as if each individual was producing 10 offspring, as per my assumption 2 (asexual reproduction). Either every individual pairs up to produce offspring or every individual produces offspring asexually, in which case all the mutant's offspring are mutants. You cannot mix the two types of reproduction, as you did in your example.

You are correct, I was wrong. Now I understand my mistake. In sexual production we have a pair of organisms and in a stable population there will be two progeny from the organism with the mutant, which according to the laws of chance means that one of the two should carry the mutant gene. So the fate of a new mutation is not as awful as I thought it was.

However, that as you say " A trait which confers neither a survival advantage nor disadvantage remains in the population at a constant frequency" presents severe problems for the theory of evolution. For one thing, such a mutation will never spread through the population. This is necessary for it to be able to gain mutations which will turn it into a favorable mutation and give it the possibility of becoming widely adopted throughout the species.

There is another problem with such a new mutation not being able to spread. Even though it is true that a trait remains in the population at a constant frequency, this is only true when the sample is large. A new mutation has (in a constant size population) only one chance. That is why even such a pro-evolutionist site as TalkOrigins, and a pro-evolutionist author there is forced into the admission that:

Neutral alleles Most neutral alleles are lost soon after they appear. The average time (in generations) until loss of a neutral allele is 2(Ne/N) ln(2N) where N is the effective population size (the number of individuals contributing to the next generation's gene pool) and N is the total population size. Only a small percentage of alleles fix. Fixation is the process of an allele increasing to a frequency at or near one. The probability of a neutral allele fixing in a population is equal to its frequency. For a new mutant in a diploid population, this frequency is 1/2N.
From: Introduction to Evolutionary Biology

This may sound strange to many, but the originator of the theory of population genetics, Ronald A. Fisher in "The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection" (1958), admitted as much in spite of being such a devout evolutionist that he had originally tried to challenge the accuracy of Mendellian genetics. The reason for the loss of such a new gene is quite simply explained. With only one sample, at any time that the laws of chance do not even out, (in this example when neither of the two progeny carries the mutation), the mutation will die out. Since the mutation is not spreading, the likelihood of this happening is quite high. In fact, even a mutation with a slight degree of benefit would also be lost in this manner.

298 posted on 8/14/02 5:41 PM Pacific by gore3000
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To: exDemMom

Meaning that I am literally a walking textbook on the very subject matter on which you are trying to snow me.

I have no problem with that, thanks for the warning!

The fact is, genome project or not, we do not know how many genes or proteins are in humans. And the old adage that one gene = one protein is still pretty much true. When two different products come off a single gene, we call them isoforms--but still consider them the same protein.

While it is true that they are called isoforms, and that obviously they share much the same amino acid sequence, does not mean that this is not an extremely important discovery. It is also a fact that these different proteins are indeed necessary:

In vertebrates, the four A-actin isoforms present in various muscle cells and the B- and Y-actin isoforms present in nonmuscle cells differ at only four or five positions. Although these differences among isoforms seem minor, the isoforms have different functions: A-Actin is associated with contractile structures, and B-actin is at the front of the cell where actin filaments polymerize. From: The Actin Cytoskeleton

In this case the different forms have very important functions. So there is a need for this highly complicated system of alternative gene splicing.

This presents many problems to evolutionary theory of course. The change in one gene can affect several functions for one thing, it is hardly likely that it would be beneficial to all the gene's functions. Furthermore the existence of such multi-purpose genes makes it very unlikely that they could have arisen by random evolutionary means.

The further problem these multi-purpose genes show is that not only do many genes require a system to initiate, regulate, and stop protein production, but that they also need a system to tell them how to make different proteins. Surely developing such an intricate system is not the result of random chance. Surely, such a system is irreducibly complex and a sign of intelligent design.

325 posted on 8/14/02 7:21 PM Pacific by gore3000
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[gore3000]

The probability that said life will evolve to specialized organisms (e.g. higher mammals) is 1.

There is no higher probability than 1. Evolution, therefore, was inevitable.

Nice rhetoric, but totally deceitful. The real question is: what is the probability of constructing a piece of DNA some one million base pairs long at random?

[gore3000]

No one really knows what the first life was. A single cell, even a primitive one, is still a rather complicated organism. I have heard speculation that life arose from self-replicating RNA molecules; these exist today and are simple enough to arise by random mixing of organic compounds.

Since you have given us so many testaments of your supposed learning, I cannot say that the statement that there exist self-replicating RNA molecules is a mistake. It needs to be called a blatant and humongous lie, and I am calling on you to prove you are not a liar.

[gore3000]

I believe the fossil record shows some proto-mammals existing hundreds of millions of years ago; all mammals are believed to descend from a common proto-mammal.

That's a lot of believing going on there! However, the first supposed mammal, is just a lower jaw and some parts of a pasted up upper skull which is more like a jigsaw puzzle than anything else. In addition at over 200 million years old (supposedly) it is over a hundred million years away from the next definitely mammalian bones.

Well, should be expected from an evolutionist though, as Darwin's proof of the eyes evolving was if you have read through two hundred some pages of my absolute nonsense, you have to believe with me that these eyes evolved.

[gore3000]

Plants tend to have genomes larger than animals' by orders of magnitude. It's not a question of complexity so much as a problem of accumulating junk.

Total nonsense. To imply that a plant is as complex as a human is ridiculous. The reason men are more complex while having a smaller genome than some plants is that humans have very involved genomes which are able to reuse DNA in different ways, while most lower organisms cannot. Also, the junk is not junk at all. A Japanese puffer fish has just as many genes as humans and amazingly none of what you call junk DNA. The reason it is less complex than man is because what you incorrectly call junk and what real scientists call 'non coding DNA' is what enables humans to do so much more with their genes than a puffer fish.

[gore3000]

I do remember one of 'em saying that it's a sign the designer used common parts -Virginia-American-

Yeah, except the parts are not exactly the same from one organism to the next...

Of course not, because a higher organism requires different DNA. If it was exactly the same you would have the same species would you not? Guess, you must have been sick when that class was given.

[gore3000]

But many have attempted, out of benevolence, to impart information to him and to correct some obvious errors.

Whoever may have tried to correct me, was certainly not you. All you do on these threads is insult people and bash Christianity. If evolution was not so totally phony and you were not so totally lame, you would not need to insult me and others who oppose evolution, you would just prove me wrong and go on, but you know very well that evolution is false so your only defense against the truth it to attack your opponents because after all:

INSULTS ARE THE LAST RESOURCE OF SCOUNDRELS