Below is a paste from Wikipedia. That's one spot where I read that eragaster likely had linguistic ability. It seems that with each new piece of conflicting evidence, scientists change their view of the family tree. Perhaps these folks were no different from us than neanderthals are. After all, how much adaptation needs to occur before something is classed as a new species. Ok, poking holes in evolutionary theory does not prove creation or the existence of God. However, let me propose this idea. The science within the bible prooves there is a higher intelligence behind it.
Perhaps religionists are not looking at the bible through the eyes of the people that wrote it in a day when todays scientific terminology was not about. It seems silly to say animals or mankind were made from dust. And yet recent discoveries have shown the building blocks of life are scattered throughout the universe in the dust. Given the time Psalms was written, the word 'dust' may be a simple way of stating the scientific nature of how all life is made. You requested no bible quotes but I must at least use Psalms 139 to support the Genesis account of creation. Ps 139:5 says "You hem me in-behind and before, you have laid your hand upon me, such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain". So what have we recently found to be 'hemmed in" so to speak? It's Chromosome 2, hemmed at the telomeres together, a simple way to describe fussion, and the writers acknowledgement that it is too 'lofty' to understand. Could this be a macroevolution event, the splitting point that differentiated mankind from animals? A macroevolution event where God breathed the breath of life to make sure the macro mutation survived against the odds. This psalm goes on to talk about the unformed body and all the days for man were written down, a basic concept of DNA.
At 15 the bible says "My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth". Could this mean my DNA was not hidden from God when God first kick started life, knowing this was the frame that mankinds DNA would be built on? Perhas the writter is indicating that the 'frame' was known, all that was needed was a macro evolution event.
I was surprised to hear Hawkins entertaining a belief in God. I also thought it a misquote untill I heard him say this in his Universe documentary "It's as if a higher intelligence is at work" or words to that effect"
If Hawkins is so amazed by what he has discovered and knows, that he now entertains the concept of God, why should it be so hard for all to accept. Hawkins has acknowledged that creation and science can stand together.
The bible speaks to the circle of the earth, gave hygiene rules as comandments, gives a relatively accurate accound of the formation of the earth and stages of life, and took no glory for themsleves in doing it (a miracle in itself) The bible writers did well to 'guess' such information.
I say being able to poke holes in the bible writings is no more proof that it is rubbish than being able to poke holes in evolution means it's rubbish. In fact the bible gets many scientific facts correct in an age of little science...and that's proof of a higher intelligence. Science is Science but God made the rules.
___________________________________________________________________
Linguistic use
There is no archaeological evidence that
Homo ergaster made use of symbolic thought (such as
figurative art), but the well-evolved brain and physical capabilities (along with reconfiguration of
ergaster's breathing-apparatus) suggest some form of linguistic or symbolic communication.[
dubious discuss]
More from Wiki
According to the
Chimpanzee Genome Project, both human (
Ardipithecus,
Australopithecus and
Homo) and
chimpanzee (
Pan troglodytes and
Pan paniscus) lineages diverged from a common ancestor about 5 to 6 million years ago, if we assume a constant rate of evolution. It is theoretically more likely for evolution to happen more slowly, as opposed to more quickly, from the date suggested by a gene clock (the result of which is given as a "
youngest common ancestor", i.e., the latest possible date of diversion.) However, hominins discovered more recently are somewhat older than the
molecular clock would theorize.
Sahelanthropus tchadensis, commonly called "
Toumai" is about 7 million years old and
Orrorin tugenensis lived at least 6 million years ago. Since little is known of them, they remain controversial among scientists since the
molecular clock in humans has determined that humans and chimpanzees had an evolutionary split at least a million years later. One theory suggests that the human and chimpanzee lineages diverged somewhat at first, then some populations interbred around one million years after diverging.
[3]
Homo habilis has often been thought to be the ancestor of the more
gracile and sophisticated
Homo ergaster, which in turn gave rise to the more human-appearing species,
Homo erectus. Debates continue over whether
H. habilis is a direct human ancestor, and whether all of the known fossils are properly attributed to the species. However, in 2007, new findings suggest that the two species coexisted and may be separate lineages from a common ancestor instead of
H. erectus being descended from
H. habilis.
[3]
It appears Hawkins has shifted from his strong athiest views ...read below.
Are those incompatible positions: to believe in God and to believe in evolution? No, I don't think they're incompatible if only because there are many intelligent evolutionary scientists who also believe in God--to name only Francis Collins [the geneticist and Christian believer recently chosen to head the National Institutes of Health] as an outstanding example. So it clearly is possible to be both.
This book more or less begins by accepting that there is that compatibility. The God Delusion did make a case against that compatibility in my own mind.
Another Hawkins quote from 'Origin of the Universe':
The no boundary proposal, has profound implications for the role of God in the affairs of the universe. It is now generally accepted, that the universe evolves according to well defined laws. These laws may have been ordained by God, but it seems that He does not intervene in the universe, to break the laws.
The debate about whether, and how, the universe began, has been going on throughout recorded history. Basically, there were two schools of thought. Many early traditions, and the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions, held that the universe was created in the fairly recent past. For instance, Bishop Usher calculated a date of four thousand and four BC, for the creation of the universe, by adding up the ages of people in the Old Testament. One fact that was used to support the idea of a recent origin, was that the Human race is obviously evolving in culture and technology. We remember who first performed that deed, or developed this technique. Thus, the arguement runs, we can not have been around all that long. Otherwise, we would have already progressed more than we have. In fact, the biblical date for the creation, is not that far off the date of the end of the last Ice Age, which is when modern humans seem first to have appeared.
