Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Coffee!! More completely ridiculous news, courtesy tax-funded or legacy broadcasters:

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The longer I live, the more stupid stuff I hear in legacy mainstream media whose only possible value is to front Darwinism. Here’s a good one:

Chimpanzees eat their dead?

“Researchers may have witnessed it, but been unwilling to report it for fear of drawing undue attention to cannibalism among our close relatives, he says. ”

If there is any remaining doubt that tax-funded Darwinists are nuts, let it be laid to rest.

When was the last time you were at a funeral where the reception lunch was in fact the deceased?

Oh, wait, this just in: “Chimpanzees and humans share about 99% of their DNA, and are so closely related that some academics have suggested they should be given rights similar to human rights.

PS: and, did you know, “Chimps feel death just like humans? (BBC)

Dr Anderson suggests the treatment of death marks another similarity. “

What utter rubbish, honestly. Chimpanzees do NOT know that they will all die.

For animals like them, that is a mercy. For humans, it is the beginning of philosophy.

That animals may mourn their dead is no surprise.

About fifty years ago, I heard a pack howl at an animal shelter when a healthy dog was led to the gas chamber. (He was just too big; no one wanted to adopt him.)

So that proves dogs are … what?

One thing they are not is philosophers. They never get beyond the pack howl.

While we are here: The future I can see for “animal rights” is jobs in the legal industry, raising cain with farmers.

Farmers feed almost all humans on the planet. Their efforts have led to a worldwide increase in obesity, which I see as a benefit.

(If you need to lose weight, that is a choice. If you are starving, that is a whole different problem. Hand all starving people hoagie sandwiches now!)

Nothing would be worse for all of us than interference by ideologically driven legal know-nothings, who hope to gain fees by pretending that apes need “human” rights, instead of the protection from cruelty that would actually do them some good.

While we are here: The most humane people I have ever met, with respect to treatment of large animals, were farmers. No surprise, as they would otherwise swiftly get their heads kicked in. Animals can be pretty stupid, but not about stuff life that.

I remember one farm wife explaining to me that she and her husband could make much more money off their farm. But if they kept more cows, the cows would wait too long to be milked. Then the cows would suffer. So …

So they lived all their lives on a lower income, lest the cows suffer.

So would you rather she make the decision or Dr. “Ape Rights” makes it? Which of them understands animals better?

Comments
While we are here: I used to have a demographics beat, and talked to lots of maternity nurses. Sometimes when a baby died, the mother or father just could not get past the grief. So, after much later grief disasters, a nurse was assigned to take the parents through everything that had happened, step by step, explaining what happened and showing them the exact place their baby had been at each stage before committal to a (usually, here, Catholic) burial ground*. *Whose main point is, from the Creed: "And I believe in the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come." So then, in almost all such cases, the parents could just accept it. And move on with their lives.O'Leary
May 2, 2010
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Thanks, Winston Macchi at 6: Now, a couple of questions spring obviously to mind. 1. Did the animal even realize that either she or her infant had names? Or is that just a human invention? In the Christian churches, the first thing the pastor asks of the couple who present a child is "What do you NAME this child?" Maybe that is just a human idea. Maybe chimps do it all by smell. Not wrong, but different. 2. Did the animal realize that her baby was in fact DEAD? Did any other member of her troupe help her realize that fact? Did they even know or understand? Of course, she would eventually abandon it, but ... in human societies, we have ... ... well, for example, in a maternity hospital I know of in Canada, there is a little room off the main nursing station for unfortunate mothers whose babies died during or shortly after delivery. (That hospital does NOT do abortions. So if the baby died, he or she died naturally. Much effort is aimed at helping the mother and father accept this fact in a rational, cognitive way, and make appropriate, dignified arrangements, which would not include moving the body around and grooming it, as if it were still alive.) Oh wait? Father? Did I use a forbidden word? Yes, they do always try to involve any man who considers himself a "father". In some societies, that is an honour, even if things do not always turn out as we would hope. I've been there, waited, and watched.O'Leary
May 1, 2010
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Just to summarize, the same mother (Jire)lost another child and carried it around for 67 days this time and a different mother lost a child and carried it for ~20 days. This is all in a group containing something like 15 - 20 animals.Winston Macchi
May 1, 2010
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An interesting new article that is tangentially related in this weeks Current Biology. "Chimpanzee mothers at Bossou, Guinea carry the mummified remains of their dead infants"
The forests surrounding Bossou, Guinea, are home to a small, semi-isolated chimpanzee community studied for over three decades [1]. In 1992, Matsuzawa [2] reported the death of a 2.5-year-old chimpanzee (Jokro) at Bossou from a respiratory illness. The infant's mother (Jire) carried the corpse, mummified in the weeks following death, for at least 27 days. She exhibited extensive care of the body, grooming it regularly, sharing her day- and night-nests with it, and showing distress whenever they became separated. The carrying of infants' corpses has been reported from a number of primate species, both in captivity and the wild [3,4,5,6,7] — albeit usually lasting a few days only — suggesting a phylogenetic continuity for a behavior that is poignant testament to the close mother-infant bond which extends across different primate taxa. In this report we recount two further infant deaths at Bossou, observed over a decade after the original episode but with striking similarities.
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2810%2900218-6Winston Macchi
May 1, 2010
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efren ts, thank you for reminding us of Haiti. On my recent 60th birthday*, I asked people to refrain from giving me gifts and to send donations instead to organizations they considered reliable for Haiti relief. Other older persons may wish to consider that suggestion too. (At my age, a person usually has everything they need. Otherwise, they wouldn't be my age.) My hope for Haiti is that the reconstruction following the earthquake will result in genuine progress. Truth is, things have been going wrong there for many decades. Sometimes, a disaster can have the odd effect of sinking a non-working system and replacing it with a working system. No one wishes the disaster on anyone, but climbing out of the rubble, people have been known to just decide that things better be different now.O'Leary
April 30, 2010
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Really? Do these males even know what a gene is? Do they know that they have them?
No, but I am pretty sure they know who is gettin' busy with whom. In other news: Haiti continues to struggle to recover from the devastating earthquake. Tax funded Darwinists don't care because it is all just survival of the fittest, right? Coffee!efren ts
April 30, 2010
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In the article: Wild bonobo mother ape eats own infant in DR Congo it says: "Infanticide, the practice of killing younger members of the same species, occurs among common chimps and gorillas." If this is true then it appears that the human species has more in common than I thought. The difference is that humans have found a way to perform infanticide with the baby still in the womb. The article also says: "Biologists believe that infanticide is often triggered by males who wish to eliminate infants carrying genes different to their own." Really? Do these males even know what a gene is? Do they know that they have them? Do they know the difference between a tree and a 2x4? On this blog a lot has been said about the Moral Law and whether one exists or not. Well even teh biologists in their hesitancy to to report the observation denotes and uncomfortableness because they believe this is our 99% comparable ancester we descended from. However this would assume that 1. a moral law existed and 2. that these primates were accountable to this law. and 3. if they are accountable to this moral law then they would have to know it and understand it. But they don't because they can't know it and understand it and aren't bound by any moral law anyway!! (That is not to say they aren't effected by it meaning sin and the fall)wagenweg
April 30, 2010
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If there is any remaining doubt that tax-funded Darwinists are nuts, let it be laid to rest. When was the last time you were at a funeral where the reception lunch was in fact the deceased? Denyse - the point of the article is not that cannabilism is something we have in common with chimps (although of course there are plenty of examples of human cannabilism). In fact in the entire article the only reference to humans is the quote you supply. It is not even certain the author is Darwinian (or tax-funded) although of course almost all biologists are Darwinian and many are publically funded. It is an article about Bonobos not about other species or evolution. The main point of the article is that Bonobos are not the idyllicly happy species that they are sometimes portrayed to be. The point of the brief quote is that we are in many ways similar to chimps and therefore it is disturbing to find that they are cannibals.Mark Frank
April 30, 2010
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This post, of how Humans and animals interact, reminded of a very, very, humorous series of books I read by James Herriot about his work as a veterinarian: The Lord God Made Them All http://www.amazon.com/Lord-God-Made-Them-All/dp/0312966202 An excerpt of his bestselling first book can be read here: The Lord God Made Them All http://books.google.com/books?id=oGfN4s8XTL8C&dq=the+lord+god+made+them+all+james+herriot&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=g7HaS5iaGIzkNa_7rfsB&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false Here is the poem, set to music, that served as the source for the titles for his books: All Things Bright And Beautiful - Canon In D - Pachebel - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4082996bornagain77
April 30, 2010
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