More News on the Changing Evolution Scene :-) !!! :-)

[SkepticThinker]

Look, you believe life came about by itself (more or less as in a fusion of things). I no longer believe that, one reason is because it is incredible. By incredible I mean -- beyond reason. Anyway -- have a good night.

So your argument rests on a logical fallacy. Great.

 

[metis]

Lucy is the "missing link" in the sense that she is different enough so that no creationist (well perhaps almost no creationist) will call her human. They have no problem calling her an ape, even though of course we are all apes, They have to deny her since if they admit that Lucy is our ancestor than those darned evolutionists had to have been right all along.

I took "missing link" in a different way [common ancestor], so I'm happy that's now corrected.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I took "missing link" in a different way [common ancestor], so I'm happy that's now corrected.

To be fair "missing link" is a term that shares one thing in common with other creationist terms. It is never properly defined. This comes in handy for creationists since when one version is shown to be wrong they merely move the goalposts to another. At one point in time Homo erectus fit the bill of being the "missing link" as shown by Duane Gish himself. During his lifetime he declared Homo erectus to be a "true man" and at another time an ape:


"For that million-year stretch of time between about 1.5 million and 500,000 years ago, the only kind of hominid for which we have any evidence is a form that most anthropologists now refer to as Homo erectus. The first such specimen was discovered in Java nearly a century ago by Dutch physician and anatomist Eugene Dubois who labeled it Pithecanthropus erectus. Modern appraisers usually do not feel that it is distinct enough from Homo to warrant a separate generic name, but Dubois' species erectus is accepted by nearly all.

One "modern" appraiser who has rejected Dubois' initial claims and more recent assessments of his Java finds is Duane Gish. Curiously, in this matter he is not supported by the director of his own institute, Dr. Henry Morris, who declared that "Homo erectus was a true man, but somewhat degenerate in size and culture" (Morris, 1974:174). In contrast, Dr. Gish has concluded, "We believe that the claim for a man-like status for Pithecanthropus should be laid to rest" (Gish, 1979:127). The dilemma of the creationists, of course, is the fact that their own preconceptions require them to categorize something as either ape or human. When they actually encounter a creature that is in between, then they have to throw it in one or the other of the modern categories, and it is not surprising that a form with genuinely intermediate features should be randomly assigned to each of the only possibilities they will accept. From the point of view of their own logic, they are both equally correct. From an examination of the actual evidence, they are both demonstrably wrong."

Creationists and the Pithecanthropines | National Center for Science Education


Please note that Pithecanthropus is another term for Homo erectus. It used to be the "missing link" since creationists claimed that it was both ape and man. Not at the same time of course. But at one time they would insist that it was one and at another that it was the other.


Today they all tend to accept Homo erectus as human so the goalposts have been moved back to Lucy. Eventually they will almost certainly move the goalposts again.

 

[YoursTrue]

You would think that if the basic foundation of evolution was flawed you could find one. You are merely grasping at straws with this extremely foolish "Where were her feet?" question.

Once again, could an artist make a fairly accurate statue of you head to toe without seeing your feet?

1. The depictions of Lucy are all different.
2. Lucy's feet are integral to the type or kind of animal she was.

 

[YoursTrue]

It is evidence for human evolution. Please do not give me any more of this "does not prove" crap. You know that is wrong. An honest person would quit making that argument.

Do we need to go over the concept of evidence again? You were given a burden of proof. You could not meet it. Continued denial in the face of your failure is not proper.

I do not "know that is [lack of proof] wrong" What I do know is that fossils have been found. (I also know that Lucy's feet, important to characterizing her) were not found. I'm beginning to love Lucy. Now, as the saying slightly goes -- show me the proof, ok you say your science has no proof, so show the evidence leading to conclusion. Not proof, of course, because there is none. (Why is that, by the way?) Thank you.

 

[YoursTrue]

LOL! It does not matter if she died falling out of a tree. That does not mean that she was not bipedal. Her hips are a far stronger piece of evidence that she walked as we do. Here is an image of her hips along with human and chimpanzee hips:

And another:

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2014.0063

Clearly Lucy was far more "human" than chimpanzee.

I'm not sure if it was you that answered me a little while ago with "so"? And so I will say, "So"?

 

[metis]

To be fair "missing link" is a term that shares one thing in common with other creationist terms. It is never properly defined. This comes in handy for creationists since when one version is shown to be wrong they merely move the goalposts to another. At one point in time Homo erectus fit the bill of being the "missing link" as shown by Duane Gish himself. During his lifetime he declared Homo erectus to be a "true man" and at another time an ape:


"For that million-year stretch of time between about 1.5 million and 500,000 years ago, the only kind of hominid for which we have any evidence is a form that most anthropologists now refer to as Homo erectus. The first such specimen was discovered in Java nearly a century ago by Dutch physician and anatomist Eugene Dubois who labeled it Pithecanthropus erectus. Modern appraisers usually do not feel that it is distinct enough from Homo to warrant a separate generic name, but Dubois' species erectus is accepted by nearly all.

One "modern" appraiser who has rejected Dubois' initial claims and more recent assessments of his Java finds is Duane Gish. Curiously, in this matter he is not supported by the director of his own institute, Dr. Henry Morris, who declared that "Homo erectus was a true man, but somewhat degenerate in size and culture" (Morris, 1974:174). In contrast, Dr. Gish has concluded, "We believe that the claim for a man-like status for Pithecanthropus should be laid to rest" (Gish, 1979:127). The dilemma of the creationists, of course, is the fact that their own preconceptions require them to categorize something as either ape or human. When they actually encounter a creature that is in between, then they have to throw it in one or the other of the modern categories, and it is not surprising that a form with genuinely intermediate features should be randomly assigned to each of the only possibilities they will accept. From the point of view of their own logic, they are both equally correct. From an examination of the actual evidence, they are both demonstrably wrong."

Creationists and the Pithecanthropines | National Center for Science Education


Please note that Pithecanthropus is another term for Homo erectus. It used to be the "missing link" since creationists claimed that it was both ape and man. Not at the same time of course. But at one time they would insist that it was one and at another that it was the other.


Today they all tend to accept Homo erectus as human so the goalposts have been moved back to Lucy. Eventually they will almost certainly move the goalposts again.

Yep, and just so you know, I covered physical anthropology in my intro to anthro course starting back in the early 1970's and then finishing it 30 years later. And I still have a subscription to Scientific American that goes back to the 1960's, although there were times that it lapsed.

It was around 1975, that Gish was here in the Detroit area and debated a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan [Dr. Peoples, if my memory is correct] for three hours that was covered on local radio, and Gish got "smoked" to the point whereas the moderator, who had done a good job being neutral up until near the end, finally had to chime in with the fact that much of Gish's whole spiel was so blatantly illogical and non-scientific in numerous areas.

 

[Subduction Zone]

1. The depictions of Lucy are all different.
2. Lucy's feet are integral to the type or kind of animal she was.

1. Yes, that is only because we are not 100% sure of what she looked like yet. Unlike your book of myths scientists do not take such depictions as if they were carved in stone. They are reasonable approximations.

2. When you avoid answering a question you admit that you are wrong. We do not need her personal feet. Do you think that we would need your feet to know that they look like this:

We have the foot bones of other Australopithecus.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I do not "know that is [lack of proof] wrong" What I do know is that fossils have been found. (I also know that Lucy's feet, important to characterizing her) were not found. I'm beginning to love Lucy. Now, as the saying slightly goes -- show me the proof, ok you say your science has no proof, so show the evidence leading to conclusion. Not proof, of course, because there is none. (Why is that, by the way?) Thank you.

Thanks for admitting that you are wrong again by continuing to bring up Lucy's feet after your error was explained to you multiple times.

And you unfortunately are just a denier. You were given evidence. It placed a burden of proof upon you. You would have to show that it is not evidence, not use failed 6th grade level arguments.

It is time to ask yourself if helps Christians if someone lies for him.

I understand that you believe in Jesus. No one is saying that is wrong. Do you think it helps a belief in Jesus to tell falsehoods? To me that indicates a weak faith not a strong one.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I'm not sure if it was you that answered me a little while ago with "so"? And so I will say, "So"?

Alright I can see that you have no concept of how the hips are key in bidpedal locomotion. Lucy's hips are very similar to ours and quite different from chimpanzees and other non-human apes. Her hips alone are enough to "prove" that she was bipedal. One can analyze them and determine the angle of the femur to the hip using them. We found her knees as well. They are also the knees of a biped and not a quadruped. Have you forgotten why she was such a major find? She was the first human ancestor with a head that any creationist would call "an ape" and yet had other traits clearly much more similar to humans. It is a clear transitional fossil between the common ancestor that we share with chimps and modern humans. It is an ancestor that you cannot deny is an "ape". Even though of course we still are apes.

 

[GardenLady]

2. Lucy's feet are integral to the type or kind of animal she was.

So if you were missing your feet, but we had feet from a couple hundred of other homo sapiens, like you except for your missing feet, we couldn't be sure you are a homo sapiens? Now do you realize how cognitively disordered your point above sounds?

 

[YoursTrue]

So if you were missing your feet, but we had feet from a couple hundred of other homo sapiens, like you except for your missing feet, we couldn't be sure you are a homo sapiens? Now do you realize how cognitively disordered your point above sounds?

OK, they found certain fossils in the area, they say about "40% of Lucy's fossils." And so, she is a version of something they did not know existed. And so? Does that prove, show, or evidence some type evolved from something to humans?

 

[YoursTrue]

Alright I can see that you have no concept of how the hips are key in bidpedal locomotion. Lucy's hips are very similar to ours and quite different from chimpanzees and other non-human apes. Her hips alone are enough to "prove" that she was bipedal.

And so? But I am not sure of that, although it may be true. Does that prove evolution? Or shall I say, add to the evidence that evolution is -- true? In other words, that Lucy evolved from another form and then Lucy's formation went on to evolve to another type of hominid?

One can analyze them and determine the angle of the femur to the hip using them. We found her knees as well. They are also the knees of a biped and not a quadruped. Have you forgotten why she was such a major find? She was the first human ancestor with a head that any creationist would call "an ape" and yet had other traits clearly much more similar to humans. It is a clear transitional fossil between the common ancestor that we share with chimps and modern humans. It is an ancestor that you cannot deny is an "ape". Even though of course we still are apes.

You say she is a human ancestor. Others say she is a human ancestor. There is nothing to say that this animal evolved from other types of animals and went on eventually after many breedings to be humans. When that is discovered in reality, as in humans becoming Lucys or gorillas becoming something other than gorillas, I'll say ok, humans descended from Lucy since they're becoming Lucy in form and genetics. Of course, Lucy is no longer available.

 

[YoursTrue]

So if you were missing your feet, but we had feet from a couple hundred of other homo sapiens, like you except for your missing feet, we couldn't be sure you are a homo sapiens? Now do you realize how cognitively disordered your point above sounds?

Lucy was not a homo sapien, by the way. At least I don't think she is classified as such. Maybe I'm wrong.

 

[Subduction Zone]

OK, they found certain fossils in the area, they say about "40% of Lucy's fossils." And so, she is a version of something they did not know existed. And so? Does that prove, show, or evidence some type evolved from something to humans?

No. She is a version of something that they did know that existed. Lucy was not the first Australopithecine ever discovered.

 

[GardenLady]

Lucy was not a homo sapien, by the way. At least I don't think she is classified as such. Maybe I'm wrong.

As usual, you completely deflect from the point. It was an analogy. And you know that.
Completely done with you; a total waste of time.

 

[Subduction Zone]

And so? But I am not sure of that, although it may be true. Does that prove evolution? Or shall I say, add to the evidence that evolution is -- true? In other words, that Lucy evolved from another form and then Lucy's formation went on to evolve to another type of hominid?

It is evidence of evolution. "Proof" is a poor term to use in the sciences. But yes, Lucy is clear evidence of that.

You say she is a human ancestor. Others say she is a human ancestor. There is nothing to say that this animal evolved from other types of animals and went on eventually after many breedings to be humans. When that is discovered in reality, as in humans becoming Lucys or gorillas becoming something other than gorillas, I'll say ok, humans descended from Lucy since they're becoming Lucy in form and genetics. Of course, Lucy is no longer available.

Since all animals in existence evolved from a predecessor it does mean that she evolved from other animals. If you want to discuss general evolution we can discuss that too.

And please, you are making mistakes in classification. The problem is that our classification system describes species as they are now. I need to get a bit more technically correct. We cannot be sure that Lucy is an ancestor yet. But she still is a transitional species in our lineage. Transitional species include close relatives.

For example if you had a great great grandmother who had two sons and one was your great grandfather and the other was your great grand uncle. Even though you are not descended from your great grand uncle he would still be transitional between you and your great great grandmother. He would have some of the genes of your great grandfather that your great grandmother did not have. It is not a perfect analogy but it gives you an idea I hope.

Evolution can get very complex when there are multiple subspecies that sometimes still interbreed. This image tells you why recent human evolution is "a big mess":

 

[Subduction Zone]

In the above image you can see "Java Man". He was the first Homo erectus ever discovered. But that line of Homo erectus is not the one that we are descended from.

By the way, Homo erectus use to be the perfect "missing link". When first discovered he was claimed to be both "Human" and "Ape" by creationists. Sometimes the same creationists made both claims.

 

[metis]

Even though of course we still are apes.

Which is why I was in gymnastics in high school and college.

BTW, I have a banana almost every day for breakfast, so that pretty much proves my point.

 

[YoursTrue]

As usual, you completely deflect from the point. It was an analogy. And you know that.
Completely done with you; a total waste of time.

hmmm ok...