Evidence of Evolution

There was a great piece on NPR yesterday about the importance of meat, and then cooking, in helping us on the road toward evolving bigger brains. Cooking provided us with the most efficient caloric intake of any animal, and coming together around cooking fires may have led more or less directly to the development of language, which in turn fed back into brain evolution.

Meat

 

Reminds me of the story of a guy walking through Central Park. He comes across a man standing on a rock blowing a dog whistle.

The guy asks, "Why are you blowing that dog whistle?"

The whistle-blower answers, "It's to keep the elephants out of Central Park."

The man thinks about this, and says, "But there AREN'T any elephants in Central Park."

The whistle-blower raises an eyebrow and retorts, "See how well it works?"

 

I'm posting this here because I don't know if it belongs in the science/spirituality thread.

I have learned of another internet hoax someone came up with in order to prove that the Bible is literally true. There's a claim of giant human fossils/skeletons being found in both Greece and the Middle East, in an oil field. They have pictures and everything, except that no major news or media has reported the story. The National Geographic makes it clear that the photos are fake.

The claim is that these 'skeletons' prove that the verses in the Bible that refer to 'and there were giants in those days, men of renown...' are now proven.

And the one in the Middle East is touted to prove that certain verses in the Qu'ran are literally true.

This hoax has been going around since 2004, but I just found out about it over the weekend.

I wish that these hoaxers could be made to understand that they don't just damage creationism, they damage religion itself.

 

That's actually striking a very old stream of both hoaxers and "true belief"; centuries ago big fossil bones were sometimes declared to be those of giants that lived before the biblical flood, and even a few years ago when White and others found the (rather meagre) Homo sapiens idaltu remains in Herto in Ethiopia, they were declared by few to be in support of biblical and quranic descriptions, as the adult men (there were three partial skulls found) would have been tall, about 1.9 meters.

 

1.9 meters is nowhere near as big as these hoax skeletons appear to be.

I just found out about it, even tho it's been going around the internet since 2004.

Maybe this is why the creationists can so easily sway uneducated people into believing that real fossils are/might be fake as well.

 

I myself I'm about 1.9metres & I'm no giant. I'm sure even in the past there may have been people who could reach 7ft or more, and those people would be considered giants compared with the much smaller minority.

In the time of the Vikings there was a famous leader of there's known as Rollo the Walker (who was Duke of Normandy at one time). He was so called because he was apparently so big no horse was able to carry him and so he had to walk everywhere. Such freaks of nature are littered throughout history, they don't prove anything.

After all, I've heard some say that the Bible's mention of a so-caled Behemoth is actually describing Brachiosaurus and the Leviathan is Kronosaurus. This of course is alluding to man being around at the same time as Dinosaurs, which of course in nonsense.

 

I'm 191 centimetres myself, but overall in Human history 1.9 meters is pretty big. Some species, like the early african Homo erectus - now sometimes called Homo ergaster - has been thought to be about that as adult when it comes to males, but new findings show that it was just exceptional members of the species that were found at first. Early pre-Human hominids were quite small - some just 1-1.2 meters as adults apparently - and an average Human male might have been about 160 centimetres throughout Human history after Homo habilis. Average conscript to army in Liguria (Genoa and the neighbourhoods) in about 1790 was for example less than 1.5 metres (but they probably had childhoods where food was scarce, greating problems when growing up and some were still probably youths), and women tend to be of course significantly less tall, although not as much as is usual between genders in primates usually. Jeanne d'Arc at about 145 centimeters was probably quite normal for a medieval woman, for example. So, 1.9 meters can be considered rather tall when it comes to Human evolutionary history.

Medieval horses in Europe tended to be smaller than current horses, more comparable in size to current ponies, so Rollo might not have been a giant in our terms either.

 

As I recall, the photo hoaxes didn't even originate with creationists, they were part of a Photoshop contest and they then began circulating in chain emails removed from their original context.

Yeah, just looked it up. Aqui.

 

The point is, tho, that creationists/bible thumpers forwarded the hoaxed photos to their believers with the Bible verses quoted.

That's how my roommate ended up with an emailed photo of the giant skeleton supposedly found in Greece.

But, thanks for the link to the photoshop contest.

 

I was at a party over the weekend and had a very interesting discussion with a guy who is also an evolutionist.

We were discussing the various ways in which the creationists try to explain away fossils, like dinosaurs being found in the bottom layers and other mammals, etc., being found above them--the dinosaurs couldn't run as fast as the mammals who were headed towards higher ground when the flood waters started rising.

(Remember, the creationist view is that the flood caused all the extinctions).

So how could the 3-toed tree sloth, that takes an entire day to climb down a tree, have survived the flood? It can't run fast enough to evade the floodwaters, so how did it survive?

He posts in an actual creationism vs. evolution forum. I didn't get the web address, but I suppose it would be easy enough to find.

Another point he brought up is that according to creationists, there was no decay in Eden before the Fall. So, how could food be digested, since that is part of a decay process? And if Adam and Eve didn't need to eat, why would she have even thought of eating the apple in the first place?

Another point: I was reading about Dr. Schlessinger losing her TV show over a racial slur and the article mentioned that because she is being criticized for her view by the public and not by the government shutting her down, then she has not lost her free speech rights, only one forum in which to present them.

My point is that while creationists complain that creationism is not taught in the public schools in science classes, their free speech is not being compromised because they still have a number of other, more appropriate forums, in which to present their views, including Christian radio stations, their churches, etc.

So, a refusal by a school board to accept creationism and let it be taught in the public schools is not a loss of free speech.

 

Is creation science really science?

 

No matter how you contort it, the order is just plain wrong.

 

Creationism is not science and therefore should not be taught in science classes. There is nothing scientific about something just happening, science is about how and why things happen.

 

Hate mail

Evolution proven false

Heres a problem you can't answer. Why did evolution stop? Why don't human people have wings? I think your badly misguided. You should look for real answers in the Bible, not evolutionist propaganda. Jesus wasn't a monkey, he was the Son of God. A God that also made you in his image. That image is sacred and should not be mocked with evolutionist fantasy. If you won't pray for your salvation, I will.

 

I'll give you the Creationist reason why and how things happen:

Why?: Jes

How?: us.

 

Man, the cobwebs in this place! Let's revive it; we'll need a safe haven in the coming days.

Oklahoma starts the year by attacking evolution in science class

The legislation (HB 1551) titled the ?Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act? singled out ?biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning? as topics that are controversial and thus questionable.

It is the second of such anti-evolution proposals in Oklahoma and the fourth filed nationwide so far this year.

*More in the link*

The last bill died in committee; hopefully this one will too. So, it this year going to be another one where we constantly have to defend evolution from creationists?

 

Can't teaching evolution be part of Federal Law? That way everyone would have to teach it. Creationism in science class should then be banned under Federal Law.

1) Evolution hasn't stopped, it takes millions of years. Clearly these people haven't seen Dinosaurs or heard of carbon dating.
2) Wings are not practical, our skeletons are too heavy and so far we have no need for wings. I think more people need a better graps of biology and anatomy.
3) Jesus wasn't a monkey, he was an ape as we all are.

[image=http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/99.4percenthuman.jpg]

 

Here's another sobering notion: 13% of H.S. Biology Teachers Advocate Creationism in Class. Truthfully I have no problem with creationism being taught--in a bible study class. But treating it as if it's a real 'science' is just making a mockery of real science.

 

It is banned under Federal Law. The USSC already ruled that teaching creationism in public classrooms was unconstitutional.

 

So 87% say no to creationism. Yay!

 

Although I don't believe in it, I can see how the idea of intelligent design has arisen. We do live on a very remarkable planet with a number of very convenient situations that have led to life being created. Things like the tilt of Earth making seasons or tidal power from the Moon, even the fact that the Moon happens to be 400times smaller than the Sun and is 400 times further away and so we get to see perfect Solar Eclipses seem so brilliantly brought together it is as though it was all part of some grand plan to set all these things up together.

It is of course, all a cozmic coincidence, but it's not hard to see how people could believe it to be the work of a higher power.

 

Evolving.

Not "being created."

Evolving.

I've heard this before. It makes me kind of crazy and just goes to show how ill-equipped people are to think scientifically.

Think about it: if the Moon is precisely 400 times smaller than the sun, then its gravitational relationship to Earth is 400 times weaker, gravity being a function of mass. Meaning it would have to be 400 times closer to Earth to be in a stable gravitational relationship like the one we have with the sun.

It's neither mystical nor coincidental. It's a mathematical necessity. It would be much more incredible if the proportions WEREN'T clearly correlated.

I see your point, which is that most people look at how perfectly things seem to come together in the universe and think it must be planned, but the fact is we're about 14 billion years late to the party. The universe has had a chance to fall into a generally stable state as dictated by the laws of physics. Who knows how many would-be moons didn't hit that mass-distance sweet spot, and either crashed to Earth or were flung off into space?

The problem is of looking at the results and working backwards with the assumption of purpose. Same is true of evolution. Earth doesn't have an oxygen-rich atmosphere so that we could comfortably breathe it. We evolved to breathe oxygen because it was abundant in our atmosphere. An organism that needed to breathe something else would die here and not have babies, so nothing could be descended from them. We are the descendants of a long line of survivors. The Earth wasn't made to fit us, we have adapted to fit the Earth.

 

Indeed, we've not been here that long, nor are we that likely to be around for very long in the grand scale of Earth & evolutionary history.

Yeah, but the odds on it being that perfect are pretty slim. It's by chance the configuration we have exists and that is why our planet is so perfect for life.

The other planets in our Solar System do not have the same conditions, hence why they do not have life. It is indeed possible that life could exist on other planets, but how great are the odds of the conditions for Earth being exactly the same elsewhere (the right Moon distance and size, exact distance from the star, correct tilt and spin)?

One of my arguments against the Creation idea is why would God build an infinately large Universe with billions of stars and planets and only have one place where life exists? That seems totally pointless.

 

Also, the Moon isn't always exactly 400 times the apparent size. It's distance from the Earth varies from an average of 235,000 miles and any given eclipse is not always exactly the same visual display.

 

It's moving further away all the time. In the future a total Solar eclipse will never be as good because the Moon's shadow will not be able to cover the entire surface of the Sun.

But since we are currently at the stage in time when it does, such a phenomena must seem the work of a deity to some (it certainly did in the past)