T
Evolution question.
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His makes perfect sense, as his comes from documented material. Yours does not, since dinosaurs could not provide proof or even circumstantial evidence.LL, was most certainly not my intent but whatever helps you at last make some sense works for me
tao
We can't find one damn solid structure that gives accurate age or links to what you profess, yet we know there was someone, named Jesus, that rocked the world...
Pretty lame to try and tie god in with evolution...apples and oranges. right?
Please explain 24 vs 23 Chromosone pairs between all other primates, and "man"...I wait with bated breath. (sorry I double everything when it is pairs).
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Can't be done, because we are not the lemur nor the gorrilla. We are unique. Similar to primates but not of the same tree. The proof is in the numbers.
path_of_one
Embracing the Mystery
We had a common ancestor with the modern apes a long, long time ago (DNA evidence indicates 6-8 mil years ago the line of hominoids-apes split from hominids-human-like critters though there is debate and some camps believe the split was later, about 4 mil years ago). The branch that led to us would obviously have speciated from the this long distant ancestor, so our genetics would (of course) be different from all other modern apes. People always mistakenly think that we came from apes. That's not really true. What happened is that the modern apes and us have a common biological ancestor, which is not the same thing as saying the modern apes are just like us or are our ancestors. More like distant cousins.
The reason for having one fewer chromosome pair in humans is thought to be a fusion event.
This is a student exercise, but explains it briefly and well: http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/c.fus.les3.pdf
Here's the visual, showing the matching banding:
Human / Ape chromosome differences
Here's a fun article, for balance:
What It Really Means To Be 99% Chimpanzee
Yeah, we're not lemurs nor gorillas. But we're a whole lot more like chimps and gorillas than we are like lemurs... and we're a whole lot more like lemurs than we are like dogs, horses, or cats...
That's biology for you- successfully smaller groupings lead you to one interbreeding group. Doesn't mean we're still not ancestrally part of a larger family. That's speciation at work. By definition, we are in the primate group. Primates are a diverse group, but we have all the characteristics other primates have. No biggie- we observed the similarities and created the concept. We're noticing similarity and difference, which becomes categorization of nature.
China Cat Sunflower
Nimrod
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I asked my dad about it because he's a retired big cheese in the SDA organization, and he said that they teach evolution as a mere formality, but I don't believe that. My experience is that there is a definite class structure within the organization where unenlightened dogma is shoveled at the ignorant at one end, and a sublime high wire act of intellectual compartmentalization occurs at the other end.
Chris
juantoo3
....whys guy.... ʎʇıɹoɥʇnɐ uoıʇsǝnb
False.
Good for you.
Francis Collins, Human Genome Mapping Project.
The Discover Interview: Francis Collins | Genetics | DISCOVER Magazine
No apparent function...sounds like garbage to me.
Let's see...your word versus his...no contest.
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juantoo3
....whys guy.... ʎʇıɹoɥʇnɐ uoıʇsǝnb
Spoken like a true zealot...maybe there's hope for you yet?L
juantoo3
....whys guy.... ʎʇıɹoɥʇnɐ uoıʇsǝnb
See? That's the thing though, path...as recently as 1969 they were pushing the envelope by suggesting that humans went back even as far as 1 million years. Now every so often they just jumble the numbers...eh, what's a million here and a million there? In less than 40 years the numbers are now pushed back to 6-8 million years???
More number jumbling. "They" can't seem to decide if we're 95%, 97%, 98% or 99% like bonobos. I have heard every one of these from so-called experts, they can't even get their own story straight.
Now, what is the similarity between Neandertal and modern human genomes? I bet it's less than 99%...and since Lapedo shows *potential for* interbreeding...where does that leave the potential for hybrid human/bonobo? Disgust and ethics aside...
juantoo3
....whys guy.... ʎʇıɹoɥʇnɐ uoıʇsǝnb
The Complete Vindija 33.16 Neandertal Mitochondrial Genome Announced in Cell « Anthropology.net
Analysis of one million base pairs of Neanderthal DNA : Article : Nature
http://www.promega.com/profiles/402/ProfilesinDNA_402_09.pdf
Neanderthal DNA illuminates split with humans - being-human - 11 October 2006 - New Scientist
The last two quotes were referred from:
Neanderthal DNA
In Sequence: Neandertal Mitochondrial Genome Suggests Small Population; Sequencing Continues in ‘08
Hmmm, can’t seem to get a straight answer…guess I’ll just have to take it on faith…
T
Tao_Equus
Guest
hallelujah brother!!
You know there is a fundamental difference between getting your knowledge from some dusty old tome written by the power mongers and despots of history and reading a science journal. Scientific knowledge evolves!! One piece of research leads to another and over time the original question has a body of independent and peer reviewed work from which a conclusion can emerge. The past 40 years has undergone a truly huge leap of insight into genetics. It would be very suspicious if our ideas on evolutionary dating had not changed in that time. So what is your point?
I have seen estimates go a lot lower, but so bleedin what? Evolution theory does not fall apart because of that.
And this is saying/asking what?
You know I have reached the conclusion you dont know what your 'point' is. I certainly do not.
tao
T
Tao_Equus
Guest
If you mean by that I am writing in my own words and not just googling my way through creationist cesspit's then you are right! and I have no idea what you are talking about regarding dinosaurs.
you mean the leader of that little Jewish cult who had his story hijacked and perverted beyond recognition by the emperor Constantine? Sorry but there is no proof he ever really existed, though my guess is that he did. But so what. Lets face it we do not have a single documented word from his mouth. just the recollections of a band of people who had cousins or distant aunties that might have met him. Jim Morrison has a lot more material that we can be certain is his, and he did rock the world
No. what is lame is to try and ignore or deny the fact of evolution in favour of some ancient superstition.
lol, I find it so amusing when you try to say something smart but the question itself shows you have such a limited understanding of what you are trying to say.
tao
juantoo3
....whys guy.... ʎʇıɹoɥʇnɐ uoıʇsǝnb
There's also a difference between reading and forging ahead with the presumption that I pulled my research from "creationist cesspits" and "dusty old tomes written by the power mongers and despots of history." But then, you are not the first to leap to that erroneous conclusion.
Look again, I pulled from science journals and science oriented sites, as I almost always do, aside from wiki. Horse's mouth, one might say. At least I'm not pulling manure out of the other end of the horse...and the references are there for all to see. Where's yours?
Ad hominem is not logic. Double standards is not logic. Moving goalposts is not logic. Seems to me that if these are the standards of a person, that person has little place to cast judgment on more stable methods of inquiry into the mysteries of life.
Such shifting "truth" must demand a whole lot of faith in order to believe, 'cause Lord knows its gonna change again tomorrow. I'm sure glad reality isn't like that...it's nice to know the sea is green, the sky is blue, and the mountains are purple...they were yesterday, and they will be again tomorrow. THAT is truth, and THAT is fact.
You actually buy the "Constantine made it all up" rubbish? You're intellectually identical to the hardcore creationists.
T
Tao_Equus
Guest
I think you should assume that when I reply to Q I am talking to him and not you.
tao
T
Tao_Equus
Guest
No. I do not believe that Constantine 'made it all up'. What I do believe is that as an expert politician he saw it as a great political expediency to create a monotheistic church which he could control. As his mother was a Christian he knew it well and used that one.
tao
bananabrain
awkward squadnik
Tao_Equus said:
*gasp* - that is probably the nicest thing you've ever said to me. i'm more than happy with where this gets us; i'm not aiming to get you to "drop your wholesale rejection of religion", though - only to get you to a point where you can allow that religion does not *necessarily* require intellectual dishonesty and in particular both the misunderstanding and misrepresentation of science. i have already, i hope, made it clear that it is up to us believers to challenge our own ways of thinking; the unexamined PoV cannot be mollycoddled - what sort of belief system can't stand a poke or two?
are you familiar with the passover seder story of the four sons? each asks a question commensurate with his knowledge and each requires an appropriate answer. there is one who is knowledgeable and asks within the context, one who challenges as a sceptic, one who asks naive or information-gathering questions and one who doesn't even understand what questions are. my older child is 2; it is inconceivable that i could pressure him to "believe". he doesn't even know that we're jewish, or what that is. what he does know is that on friday night we sit down as a family and make kiddush and he's allowed to stay up for it and drink a little bit of sweet grape juice, that we light candles and have people over, that he gets a blessing from me (not that he understands what that is yet) and that it is *special*. he understands we don't listen to music or watch TV or go in the car. eventually he will begin to ask why that is and eventually he will have to make the decision whether to carry that behaviour on as an adult. i can influence him, but i will not (unlike some) prevent him getting influenced from other sources; this is because i have confidence that the way we do things has much to recommend it. as far as science is concerned, he has already started to understand that some animals, like alligators, he can see in real life and others, like dinosaurs and dragons, he can only see on TV; he can't quite articulate yet why this is, but eventually he will understand that dragons aren't real and that we're out of dinosaurs these days and this will come about through questioning. this, to my way of thinking, sounds very much like what you're suggesting. hopefully i'm not stunting the little bloke's critical faculties.
well, it does clearly posit a gradualist world view, even if it's not an evolutionary one, at least in the apparent plain sense of the words, even if it is an implicit possibility once you understand how the text works. we have a principle that "the Torah speaks in human language"; this means it must speak in such a way as to cater for any stage of human development; it is part of the Divine genius of the text that it can be shown to do so. in my opinion, that is.wil said:
hah, i arrived at mine through a process of critical evaluation and empirical evidence, as far as i'm concerned, but that's an individual path, not one i could reliably transfer to someone else.path_of_one said:
hmmm. be careful with this; at some point it begs the question "so what am *i*, then?" and one needs to be able to answer that effectively; "i am an interfaith citizen of the world" is unlikely to be a satisfactory answer, by the same logic that one may speak many languages, but one must have at least one particular mother tongue to rely on as a first port of call. if identity is a matter of different hats, we cannot do with no hat at all.
i can see how that might happen, but i wonder how they cope with the logical disconnect between the experimental and research methods that are required for medicine and those required for archaeology, not to mention genetics. surely at some point they have to concede that if you can rely on the results of one, you can rely on the results of the other.China Cat Sunflower said:
you seemed to me to be objecting to evolution on the grounds that it might lead to eugenics; i would consider that "whataboutery" on the same level as criticising religion because it might lead to genocide.juantoo3 said:
to be precise, q, we know that people believe he existed, but we don't know for sure, because of the different agenda involved. accuracy in both is a matter of degree. you might trust tacitus, or the chroniclers of various cultures, or scientific agenda, or you might not. it's not always a matter of *faith*, but it *is* a matter of trust and trust, as we know, must be earned.Quahom1 said:
precisely. the fact that a theory changes its calibration does not invalidate its parameters. as someone said once, "when the facts change, i revise my opinion. what do you do?" i was recently at an event talking about the documentary hypothesis; the current academic state of the art is, unsurprisingly, a huge argument about which dates x or y happened, but none of them are questioning whether it's a human document or not, that's ruled out a priori. the fact that some of the dates held by at least one of the schools agree with the traditional dating seems not to disturb them either! however, it did give me some comfort that my test of intellectual honesty is still reliable enough to sustain my faith in Revelation and Torah mi-Sinai.Tao_Equus said:
b'shalom
bananabrain
Namaste Q,
It is a short drive down to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Right between the White House and the Capitol down there on the mall.
You can read all the charts, the family tree, from the shrew forward. This is your national museum, your tax dollars at work, right there to explain it all for you, tis what you've been defending the shores for.
It is a short drive down to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Right between the White House and the Capitol down there on the mall.
You can read all the charts, the family tree, from the shrew forward. This is your national museum, your tax dollars at work, right there to explain it all for you, tis what you've been defending the shores for.
path_of_one
Embracing the Mystery
First, the issue of how old the human split is has changed due to improvements in genetic science (including the technology to study genetics).
Evolutionary theory is not shifting truth. It is theory- it is a good, useful, working model to explain something. Theories necessarily change over time when we obtain new technology, methodology, data, or even when humans are born that have a unique ability to see the old data in new ways. It's part and parcel of science.
The general public seems to think science is about facts. Science is not about facts. Science is about making facts into useful information. It is about inquiry. If we stayed at the "facts," much would never be accomplished. Indeed, we find usefulness in our theories and hypotheses long before we fully understand the processes behind what we're doing. As a key example relevant to evolution, we have long been fighting bacterial diseases based on the theory that strains evolve over time and we have to change our medicines and treatments to have optimal healing. All this information about how humans should eat lean meat and whole grains and lots of fruit and veggies-- that's based in evolutionary theory too. And long before humans even knew that DNA coded for life and all that info, we were already harnessing evolution to our advantage through our observations and hunches-- in animal and plant domestication and breeding. Our grains, corn for example, are due to humans harnessing mutation in a population and cultivating the mutations that benefit us.
Science is not about the facts- that corn once was a grass that was useless for eating, and then we saw a cob, and now we eat corn. Science is about the process- that even those in ancient times who noticed that mutation, had an idea about the processes at work and harnessed it for human benefit.
That one would throw out scientific theory because it changes as we gain more information- for example, to throw out evolutionary theory because researchers have not yet figured out the exact percentage that we're like chimps... this is like throwing out one's religion because everyone has a different idea about what it means. In fact, the latter is far more divergent amongst "experts" than the former. It's like the people who reject Christ because Christians can't figure out one unified view of Him and God, and we don't know exactly where all the text from the Bible came from, or when it was written, or what got left out and why.
Both are throwing the baby out with the bath water.
There are very few facts in life. Most depends on perspective. Even the color of sky could change if one is color blind, or entirely blind from birth. But more importantly, these facts don't do anything for us. We have to categorize, analyze, look for predictive models and processes to make any of it useful.
So far as I can see it, reality changes every day- because we can't know reality. Reality used to be a flat earth and the sun going 'round us. Reality used to be thinking flies spontaneously generated from meat. We used to not know there were cells, much less atoms and subatomic particles. We're bound by all sorts of limitations. Some of these fade away as we have new technology, new ideas. But we can come up with good, working models.
Both Tao and Banana have been having an eminently worthwhile exchange here. Thank you.
I wanted to add something to what Banana says here:
This is precisely how I arrived at the point where I'm now a believer, after having been a skeptic most of my life (my parents were agnostics). I don't know of anyone else who's followed the same evaluation trail I underwent, though, so -- yes -- I am interested in knowing more details of Banana's path. (Too inquisitive of me?) Sometimes I admit I've been under the delusion(?) that I might at least reliably make a skeptic _understand_ the logic of my own rationale/path to eventually crediting the concept of belief after all ("your brain just went soft" I can hear Tao saying;-), if not _accept_ it. So perhaps the notion of "reliably transfer" is still an overreach, as Banana implies.
My own story is an involved one, although I'd never have arrived at belief without an abiding and lifelong conviction that evolution is now a proven fact, so I guess it's not that off-topic in this thread. (To ward off any confusion, yes, it was my abiding conviction that evolution has gotten the big picture essentially correct that actually helped me arrive at belief.) The sheer length of my story is what might derail this thread anyway (hard to say). So in the mean time, if Banana's story is not that involved, I would like to know it.
Thanks,
Operacast
I wanted to add something to what Banana says here:
This is precisely how I arrived at the point where I'm now a believer, after having been a skeptic most of my life (my parents were agnostics). I don't know of anyone else who's followed the same evaluation trail I underwent, though, so -- yes -- I am interested in knowing more details of Banana's path. (Too inquisitive of me?) Sometimes I admit I've been under the delusion(?) that I might at least reliably make a skeptic _understand_ the logic of my own rationale/path to eventually crediting the concept of belief after all ("your brain just went soft" I can hear Tao saying;-), if not _accept_ it. So perhaps the notion of "reliably transfer" is still an overreach, as Banana implies.
My own story is an involved one, although I'd never have arrived at belief without an abiding and lifelong conviction that evolution is now a proven fact, so I guess it's not that off-topic in this thread. (To ward off any confusion, yes, it was my abiding conviction that evolution has gotten the big picture essentially correct that actually helped me arrive at belief.) The sheer length of my story is what might derail this thread anyway (hard to say). So in the mean time, if Banana's story is not that involved, I would like to know it.
Thanks,
Operacast