Verifiable evidence for creationism?

[james bond]

I know it doesn't say anything directly/specifically about alien life, but many see certain passages as having implications as to whether life exists outside of earth. All in all, since the authors of the Bible did not have any kind of scientific understanding of the vastness of our universe or even our solar system, it should not have any kind of bearing as to whether alien life actually does exist.

What implications do you think it makes?

No doubt aliens are popular (along with dinosaurs or dragons), and its popularity is rising according to polls. In fact, I'm trying to write a sci-fi story about aliens. Maybe it'll turn into a novel.

You are correct in the "certain passages as having implications as to whether life exists outside of earth." The Bible does not give credence to aliens nor life anywhere else in the universe. It states human life is in the blood. Aliens supposedly has a different system in the sci-fi tales. If alien life did form, then some bacteria or lichen would have to be transported nearby, a very remote possibility. The experiments that our astronauts are doing is this very thing in space, whether life can bloom in outer space. If you watched the hit film, The Martian, then you know one of the main topics of importance is this. Watney had to use "evolution" to fertilize his potatoes.

 

[james bond]

Isn't that forbidden?

Ciao

- viole

Teaching religion is, but not creation science.

 

[viole]

Teaching religion is, but not creation science.

So, it is allowed to teach oxymorons?

Ciao

- viole

 

[james bond]

First of all, you might check this out because it appears you haven't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(Australopithecus)

Secondly, when a body is laid down and eventually fossilized, because of the pressures that surround the body, bones can be somewhat distorted and fossilized that way. This is commonplace and does not in any way distract from the evaluation of the fossils themselves in most cases. In no way can Lucy be described as an ape if one knows what to look for, and we know that with absolute certainty unless one decides to try and redefine both terms.

The strong impression I get from you is that you seem to think that anthropologists, biologists, and paleontologists are either basically ignorant and/or dishonest. As one who came out of a fundamentalist Protestant church, I saw the evidence over five decades and even in the first decade of study I realized that the church simply was not telling the truth, and then I pursued and received a graduate degree in anthropology.

However, if you are not willing to do the homework, preferring instead to believe in non-truths, that's obviously your right.

Wikipedia is not a reputable source since it's biased and can be written and modified by anyone. Its links are a good source. I already provided the scientific evidence that Lucy was a chimp or "chimpanzee-like ape" and will expound on it when I go into Don Johanson.

 

[metis]

First, wikipedia is not a reputable source since it's biased and can be written by anyone. Its links are a good source. I already provided the scientific evidence that Lucy was a chimp or "chimpanzee-like ape" and will expound on it when I go into Don Johanson.

Lucy is clearly an early human, and there can be no doubt about that. Again it seems that you think that those who studied her and either fools, dishonest, or both. I think you're gonna have a very difficult time trying to sell that to those of us who've studied this for decades now.

 

[james bond]

It is very apparent that you either didn't read my reply or you have ignored it, where I have pointed out your error, regarding to the Ardipithecus and this silly "100 million years".




Where did you get the "100 million years"?

Do you have a single scientific source that dated the Ardipithecus to "100 million years"?

Lucy has been dated to about 3.2 million years.

The Ardipithecus ramidus lived about 4.4 million years.

The oldest evidence they found of the Ardipithecus is the Ardipithecus kadabba, which lived around 5.5 million years ago.

If you do the maths, when comparing to that of Lucy, you don't get "100 million years".

The A. ramibus would be 1.2 million years older than Lucy, while A. kadabba is 2.3 million years older.

I don't know you got your sources for the Ardipithecus being "100 million years" from, but it is clearly wrong.

100 million years would put the Ardipithecus in the middle of Cretaceous period, the time of dinosaurs, when the Ardipithecus didn't exist.

If you keep repeating the same error, you are just compounding your errors.

And when you don't learn from errors, it make you look either wilfully ignorant, or worse, dishonest.

The 3rd option could be that you are very lousy at maths.

I stand corrected. It could be I misread Lovejoy's article. It should be "1 million years" as you list above. The point was Ardi came before Lucy. Can we eliminate Lucy and focus on Ardi? Or do you have more to say about Australopithecus? I'll talk about Johanson in my next post, so you can reply to that.

 

[james bond]

Since Sapiens listened to Don Johanson and did not reply, here's what creation scientists have about Johanson, the man who discovered Australopithecus.

Lucy was discovered by Donald Johanson in 1973, near Hadar in Ethiopia. The discovery was named Lucy as the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was playing at the camp the night after the fossil was discovered. Johanson also called the collective fossils from the area the "First Family", helping to popularize the find as early humans.

Initially only a knee-joint was found, which he believed was 3 million years old, based on the animal fossils in the area. A 40%-complete skeleton of a 3.5 ft tall female was later discovered in another location sixty to seventy meters higher in the strata and two to three kilometers away.

The claim that Lucy walked upright was largely based on the appearance of the leg and hip bone. This was the hip bone that Lovejoy stated was shaped to give it a more human appearance.

Australopithecines include two closely related genera -- Australopithecus and Paranthropus. Australopithecines are distinguished by their very ape-like skull (though the teeth are more human-like than chimpanzee-like), small brain size (between 375 and 550cc), and knuckle-walking stance. Like all australopithecines, Lucy has long forearms and short hind legs. Australopithecines also have curved finger and long curved toes. Curved fingers and toes in extant primates are readily recognized as having no other purpose other than full or part time arboreal (tree-dwelling) life.

So, what did Johanson say exactly?

 

[metis]

Here:

One of the most striking characteristics of the Lucy skeleton is a valgus knee, which indicates that it, or "she", normally moved by walking upright. Her femur presents a mix of ancestral and derived traits. The femoral head is small and the femoral neck is short; both areprimitive (that is, ancestral) traits. The greater trochanter, however, is clearly a derived trait, being short and human-like – even though, unlike in humans, it is situated higher than the femoral head. The length ratio of her humerus (arm) to femur (thigh) is 84.6%, which compares to 71.8% for modern humans, and 97.8% for common chimpanzees, indicating that either the arms of A. afarensis were beginning to shorten, the legs were beginning to lengthen, or both were occurring simultaneously. Lucy also had a lordose curve, or lumbar curve, another indicator of habitual bipedalism. She apparently had physiological flat feet, not to be confused with pes planus or any pathology, even though other afarensis individuals appear to have had arched feet...

The first reconstruction had little iliac flare and virtually no anterior wrap, creating an ilium that greatly resembled that of an ape. However, this reconstruction proved to be faulty, as the superior pubic rami would not have been able to connect were the right ilium identical to the left...

In 1979, *Johanson and *White claimed that Lucy came under an ape/man classification (Australopithecus afarensis). -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(Australopithecus)

Just a reminder than since Lucy was found, there have been numerous other Australopithecus afarensis finds, so the "puzzle" is becoming increasingly more complete. Statements made 30 years ago may or may not have been spot-on, depending on what had been said. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus_afarensis

 

[metis]

Let me add the following to the above from another source:

Australopithecus afarensis is one of the longest-lived and best-known early human species—paleoanthropologists have uncovered remains from more than 300 individuals! Found between 3.85 and 2.95 million years ago in Eastern Africa (Ethio --pia, Kenya, Tanzania), this species survived for more than 900,000 years, which is over four times as long as our own species has been around. It is best known from the sites of Hadar, Ethiopia (‘Lucy’, AL 288-1 and the 'First Family', AL 333); Dikika, Ethiopia (Dikika ‘child’ skeleton); and Laetoli (fossils of this species plus the oldest documented bipedal footprint trails).-- http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/australopithecus-afarensis

 

[shmogie]

Abiogenesis has never been observed, has never been replicated, and no one has a clue as to how non living chemicals can combine to become alive. the content of the "primordial soup" where this is alleged to happen is unknown, the weather conditions are unknown, the mechanism by which DNA suddenly has the information to program a living creature cannot be fathomed, the odds of programmed DNA attaching in a chain with every bit of information in exactly the right place to create a functional living creature are astronomically high, to the realm of impossibility. The very act of DNA chains forming at all is very suspect. Depending upon the amount of various gasses and chemicals present, the chains would detach as quickly as they attach or simply be destroyed. To sustain a population of these alleged creatures, the attachment of information filled DNA chains in the correct order would have to happen many times. Then, the environment must provide sustenance and no hostility to these creatures. How did the DNA "know" how to make a creature that would live and thrive in the environment it found itself in ? These are basic points. We can get into a lot more detailed reasons as to how it couldn't happen, if you choose. Sir Fred Hoyle, the great British astronomer put it this way. "How many hurricanes going through an airplane junk yard would it take to assemble a fully functional 747" ? It is more complicated than even that. For the analogy to work properly when compared to abiogenesis natural forces would have to create steel and aluminum from their deposits, mold them into parts, then assemble the parts into a functional plane purely by chance, totally a result of present natural materials suited and exploited by accident by some kind of blind natural process that produces functioning aircraft. This would be simple compared to the accidental creation of life

 

[james bond]

Lucy is clearly an early human, and there can be no doubt about that. Again it seems that you think that those who studied her and either fools, dishonest, or both. I think you're gonna have a very difficult time trying to sell that to those of us who've studied this for decades now.

A 3

Here:

One of the most striking characteristics of the Lucy skeleton is a valgus knee, which indicates that it, or "she", normally moved by walking upright. Her femur presents a mix of ancestral and derived traits. The femoral head is small and the femoral neck is short; both areprimitive (that is, ancestral) traits. The greater trochanter, however, is clearly a derived trait, being short and human-like – even though, unlike in humans, it is situated higher than the femoral head. The length ratio of her humerus (arm) to femur (thigh) is 84.6%, which compares to 71.8% for modern humans, and 97.8% for common chimpanzees, indicating that either the arms of A. afarensis were beginning to shorten, the legs were beginning to lengthen, or both were occurring simultaneously. Lucy also had a lordose curve, or lumbar curve, another indicator of habitual bipedalism. She apparently had physiological flat feet, not to be confused with pes planus or any pathology, even though other afarensis individuals appear to have had arched feet...

The first reconstruction had little iliac flare and virtually no anterior wrap, creating an ilium that greatly resembled that of an ape. However, this reconstruction proved to be faulty, as the superior pubic rami would not have been able to connect were the right ilium identical to the left...

In 1979, *Johanson and *White claimed that Lucy came under an ape/man classification (Australopithecus afarensis). -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(Australopithecus)

Just a reminder than since Lucy was found, there have been numerous other Australopithecus afarensis finds, so the "puzzle" is becoming increasingly more complete. Statements made 30 years ago may or may not have been spot-on, depending on what had been said. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus_afarensis

The knee could not have belonged to the rest of Lucy. It was found too far away.

Too many assumptions made by Johanson. Of course, he wanted a transitional fossil. If he was right, then we would all know his name and be familiar with his work. ]]

The kicker is the "femoral head is small." A small skull means that it was more likely an ape. The rest of Lucy made it 3.5' tall. The size of a chimp.

 

[Zosimus]

You linked it hence your video. The mistake he was the appeal to simplicity along with treating religion and science as equal. Swing and a miss. Religious faith is not the same as in the video. The problem of Induction is overblown by you and others since science is tentative and descriptive not prescriptive. His definition of knowledge is flawed and is wrong, or did you miss the part in which he defined it. Look up what knowledge is actually considered in philosophy. The whole video make no point due to these distortion. Yawn.

Knowledge is justified true belief.

Science, as usually set out here, rests on the principle of induction. Therefore,

1. You accept induction on faith or
2. You think that induction is known to work.

Since you deny that science is faith based, you will need to prove that reliance on the principle of induction is both true and justified.

I am waiting with baited breath.

 

[Zosimus]

The fact that something exists is not proof of a god. It is only proof that something exists. If you want to assert that a being, or intelligence did the creating, you must support your assertion with evidence.

What counts as evidence?

 

[metis]

A 3

What's that supposed to mean?

The knee could not have belonged to the rest of Lucy. It was found too far away.

False. It is not at all unusual for bones to be spread over a limited area because the body could dismember prior to fossilization or the the was a shifting of the layers after fossilization.

The kicker is the "femoral head is small." A small skull means that it was more likely an ape. The rest of Lucy made it 3.5' tall. The size of a chimp.

That not at all a "kicker". When we look backwards through the years of the Australopithecines, the head size keeps getting smaller. What we see with Lucy and the other afarensis is a relatively large brain for that time period on quite a small body mass whereas the ape line, including the chimps, have a much stockier body mass. One has to compare apples to apples and not apples to watermelons.

Again, there is absolutely no doubt at this time that Lucy is an early human as the sites stated that I linked you to but you apparently ignored. Wouldn't it seem much more sensible for you to go in the direction of those who have done the research and did the comparisons instead of relying on many your faulty assumptions? If I'm going to get my car fixed, I'm not going to rely on someone who doesn't have much knowledge with how cars work. OTOH, if I need a root canal, I'm not going to an auto-repair shop.

IOW, it's typically best we go in the direction that the experts tell us.

 

[leibowde84]

No doubt aliens are popular (along with dinosaurs or dragons), and its popularity is rising according to polls. In fact, I'm trying to write a sci-fi story about aliens. Maybe it'll turn into a novel.

You are correct in the "certain passages as having implications as to whether life exists outside of earth." The Bible does not give credence to aliens nor life anywhere else in the universe. It states human life is in the blood. Aliens supposedly has a different system in the sci-fi tales. If alien life did form, then some bacteria or lichen would have to be transported nearby, a very remote possibility. The experiments that our astronauts are doing is this very thing in space, whether life can bloom in outer space. If you watched the hit film, The Martian, then you know one of the main topics of importance is this. Watney had to use "evolution" to fertilize his potatoes.

A couple of questions.

1. Do you not believe that dinosaurs existed?

2. By alien life did you mean intelligent alien life, because I did not. And, the scientists you mentioned did not necessarily mean intelligent alien life either. Bacteria, plant life, and even mold fits the bill just fine.

 

[james bond]

Lucy is clearly an early human, and there can be no doubt about that. Again it seems that you think that those who studied her and either fools, dishonest, or both. I think you're gonna have a very difficult time trying to sell that to those of us who've studied this for decades now.

I never said that. I said the evo scientists and atheists are usually wrong.

Here's what others have said about australopithecines (australopithicus and paranthropus) which includes Lucy.

"Charles Oxnard, former director of graduate studies and professor of anatomy at the University of Southern California Medical School, who subjected australopithecine fossils to extensive computer analysis stated:

The australopithecines known over the last several decades from Olduvai and Sterkfontein, Kromdraai and Makapansgat, are now irrevocably removed from a place in a group any closer to humans than to African apes and certainly from any place in a direct human lineage. All this should make us wonder about the unusual presentation of human evolution in introductory textbooks, in encyclopedias and in popular publications. In such volumes not only are australopithecines described as being of known bodily size and shape, but as possessing such abilities as bipedality and tool-using and -making and such developments as the use of fire and specific social structures. Even facial features are happily (and non-scientifically reconstructed. (The Order of Man: A Biomathematical Anatomy of the Primates, p332.)

SECOND "APE MAN" OUT, ROGER LEWIN, Ed., Research News, Science, Richard and his parents, Louis and Mary, have held to a view of human origins for nearly half a century now that the line of true man, the line of Homo large brain, tool making and so on has a separate ancestry that goes back millions and millions of years. And the apeman, Australopithecus, has nothing to do with human ancestry." BONES OF CONTENTION, 1987, p.18

His Lordship's scorn for the level of competence he sees displayed by paleoanthropologists is legendary, exceeded only by the force of his dismissal of the australopithecines as having anything at all to do with human evolution. 'They are just bloody apes', he is reputed to have observed on examining the australopithecine remains in South Africa.. Zuckerman had become extremely powerful in British science, being an adviser to the government up to the highest level...,while at Oxford and then Birmingham universities, he had vigorously pursued a metrical and statistical approach to studying the anatomy of fossil hominids....it was on this basis that he underpinned his lifelong rejection of the australopithecines as human ancestors. (Roger Lewin, BONES OF CONTENTION, 1987, p.164, 165)

The australopithecine skull is in fact so overwhelmingly simian as opposed to human (figure 5) that the contrary proposition could be equated to an assertion that black is white." (Lord Solly Zuckerman, BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER, p.78)

...earlier finds, for instance, at Kanapoi...existed at least at the same time as, and probably even earlier than, the original gracile australopithecines... almost indistinguishable in shape from that of modern humans at four and a half million years... (CHARLES E. OXNARD Dean, Grad. School, Prof. Bio. and Anat., USC American Biology Teacher, Vol.41, 5/1979, p.274)"

Here's the widely pictured model of Australopithecus:

Here's an actual skull:

The skull does not match the model. The top of the skull is too small to house a human-sized brain while the model was made to to make the ape more human-like, i.e. apeman.

 

[james bond]

What's that supposed to mean?




False. It is not at all unusual for bones to be spread over a limited area because the body could dismember prior to fossilization or the the was a shifting of the layers after fossilization.

That not at all a "kicker". When we look backwards through the years of the Australopithecines, the head size keeps getting smaller. What we see with Lucy and the other afarensis is a relatively large brain for that time period on quite a small body mass whereas the ape line, including the chimps, have a much stockier body mass. One has to compare apples to apples and not apples to watermelons.

Again, there is absolutely no doubt at this time that Lucy is an early human as the sites stated that I linked you to but you apparently ignored. Wouldn't it seem much more sensible for you to go in the direction of those who have done the research and did the comparisons instead of relying on many your faulty assumptions? If I'm going to get my car fixed, I'm not going to rely on someone who doesn't have much knowledge with how cars work. OTOH, if I need a root canal, I'm not going to an auto-repair shop.

IOW, it's typically best we go in the direction that the experts tell us.

How do you know it's false? The knee was found over 1.5 miles away and in a different depth than the rest of the bones.

I read your links, but I disagree. One is wikipedia lol. It does not give who is writing it nor what they did to come up with their conclusions. One link's from the Smithsonian, but the Smithsonian is biased against creation scientists just like many secular scientists. Again, it does not give who is writing it and what they did to back their statements up. I posted my sources above. You also jump to definitive statements like "there is absolutely no doubt." That's just your opinion. You sound like you've made up your mind based upon opinions of experts who have no name nor tell you what they did.

Malcolm Bowden states that, "It must be emphasised that where there is sufficient evidence, ALL skulls can be identified as being either ape or human. There are NO other classes, for they are all the imaginings of the evolutionary paleaoanthropologists who insist on concocting a string of links between man and apes. In order to fill this enormous gap, any ape skull is greatly enlarged and the fossil's 'human' features exaggerated (e.g. Pekin man and 'Lucy'), whilst human skulls are decreased and their 'ape' features are similarly emphasised (e.g. 1470 Man)."

http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j03_1/j03_1_152-153.pdf

 

[james bond]

A couple of questions.

1. Do you not believe that dinosaurs existed?

2. By alien life did you mean intelligent alien life, because I did not. And, the scientists you mentioned did not necessarily mean intelligent alien life either. Bacteria, plant life, and even mold fits the bill just fine.

I know dinosaurs existed because of the overwhelming evidence.

That's what I meant by alien life. Didn't I make it clear with my examples? It does not necessarily mean intelligent aliens, but Carl Sagan assumed it from the vastness of space. NASA's giving us shrimp and little fishes based on water being found. Come to think of it, wouldn't they have taken life from this planet and see how it does in space? Did we take any plants or living organisms to the moon to see if they survive?

 

[leibowde84]

I know dinosaurs existed because of the overwhelming evidence.

That's what I meant by alien life. Didn't I make it clear with my examples? It does not necessarily mean intelligent aliens, but Carl Sagan assumed it from the vastness of space. NASA's giving us shrimp and little fishes based on water being found. Come to think of it, wouldn't they have taken life from this planet and see how it does in space? Did we take any plants or living organisms to the moon to see if they survive?

Life from Earth would obviously not survive on the moon or in space, so why would they do that? That doesn't speak in any way to whether life exists elsewhere in the universe. Why would you even suggest that?

No one claims that life will be found in space. They claim that it might be found on other planets. Keplar just recently found 4 more earth like planets. Planets like those would be where they might start looking.

 

[metis]

I never said that. I said the evo scientists and atheists are usually wrong.

Here's what others have said about australopithecines (australopithicus and paranthropus) which includes Lucy.

"Charles Oxnard, former director of graduate studies and professor of anatomy at the University of Southern California Medical School, who subjected australopithecine fossils to extensive computer analysis stated:

The australopithecines known over the last several decades from Olduvai and Sterkfontein, Kromdraai and Makapansgat, are now irrevocably removed from a place in a group any closer to humans than to African apes and certainly from any place in a direct human lineage. All this should make us wonder about the unusual presentation of human evolution in introductory textbooks, in encyclopedias and in popular publications. In such volumes not only are australopithecines described as being of known bodily size and shape, but as possessing such abilities as bipedality and tool-using and -making and such developments as the use of fire and specific social structures. Even facial features are happily (and non-scientifically reconstructed. (The Order of Man: A Biomathematical Anatomy of the Primates, p332.)

SECOND "APE MAN" OUT, ROGER LEWIN, Ed., Research News, Science, Richard and his parents, Louis and Mary, have held to a view of human origins for nearly half a century now that the line of true man, the line of Homo large brain, tool making and so on has a separate ancestry that goes back millions and millions of years. And the apeman, Australopithecus, has nothing to do with human ancestry." BONES OF CONTENTION, 1987, p.18

His Lordship's scorn for the level of competence he sees displayed by paleoanthropologists is legendary, exceeded only by the force of his dismissal of the australopithecines as having anything at all to do with human evolution. 'They are just bloody apes', he is reputed to have observed on examining the australopithecine remains in South Africa.. Zuckerman had become extremely powerful in British science, being an adviser to the government up to the highest level...,while at Oxford and then Birmingham universities, he had vigorously pursued a metrical and statistical approach to studying the anatomy of fossil hominids....it was on this basis that he underpinned his lifelong rejection of the australopithecines as human ancestors. (Roger Lewin, BONES OF CONTENTION, 1987, p.164, 165)

The australopithecine skull is in fact so overwhelmingly simian as opposed to human (figure 5) that the contrary proposition could be equated to an assertion that black is white." (Lord Solly Zuckerman, BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER, p.78)

...earlier finds, for instance, at Kanapoi...existed at least at the same time as, and probably even earlier than, the original gracile australopithecines... almost indistinguishable in shape from that of modern humans at four and a half million years... (CHARLES E. OXNARD Dean, Grad. School, Prof. Bio. and Anat., USC American Biology Teacher, Vol.41, 5/1979, p.274)"

Here's the widely pictured model of Australopithecus:

Here's an actual skull:

The skull does not match the model. The top of the skull is too small to house a human-sized brain while the model was made to to make the ape more human-like, i.e. apeman.

Again, you simply are working from older evaluations, many now established as being either false or needing to be tweeked, whereas we now know so much more about Lucy. It's like you are saying that there's been no advancements in psychology since Freud.

You're going mostly by outward appearances and not comparative physiology. On top of that, you are virtually ignoring the overwhelming consensus on Lucy from scientists around the world, instead playing the "Joe Schmoe say this..." card. I post links to consensus evaluations, which you virtually seem to ignore, so how can anyone have a serious discussion with you on that when you play these games? [rhetorical-- we can't]

It seems that somehow you feel threatened by Lucy being an early human, and it begs the question why. Even if one totally disregards Lucy, there's plenty more where she came from, and the "puzzle" is gradually become increasing clear in realizing what has been happening in human history over the last several million years.