The Little Lady of Flores spoke from the grave. But said what, exactly?

_{Denyse O'Leary

June 23, 2014

Human evolution}

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If Darwinian evolution is true, the human race should evolve into different species. Indeed, Darwin said that in Descent of Man. It is a feature, not a bug. But there is no clear evidence that it is happening. Thus, it would be most helpful to the argument if a new species (i.e., clearly human but not homo sapiens) was unearthed. Or at least, if the evidence was mixed, a species that could be argued into existence.

Science-Fictions-square.gifIn 2003, an international archeology team was excavating the Liang Bua limestone cave (pictured above) on the Indonesian island of Flores, between Sumatra and East Timor. At a six meters depth, they unearthed the skeleton of a tiny ancient woman, about thirty years old. She was a meter in height (a little over a yard), with the brain capacity of a small chimpanzee. More.

No, the strange tale of Darwinian doings that follows really happened, and only a decade ago.

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Comments

goodusername at 9: Myers seems to think it worth taking seriously, to judge from his writings at Scienceblogs. Indeed, given that Gould (d. 2002) is getting the same treatment (“liberal creationist”), perhaps he had better.
If by "take seriously" you mean he's poked fun at it in his blog, then yes. And I guess you could say that Gould is "getting the same treatment" as that was also a single bizarre poster on the internet. One could build any narrative imaginable by relying on single, strange, posts one can find on the internet.goodusername_{June 24, 2014
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goodusername at 9: Myers seems to think it worth taking seriously, to judge from his writings at Scienceblogs. Indeed, given that Gould (d. 2002) is getting the same treatment ("liberal creationist"), perhaps he had better.News_{June 24, 2014
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One can see that 'artistic license' for human evolution being played out on the following site.
10 Transitional Ancestors of Human Evolution by Tyler G., March 18, 2013 http://listverse.com/2013/03/18/10-transitional-ancestors-of-human-evolution/
Please note, on the preceding site, how the sclera (white of the eye), a uniquely human characteristic, was brought in very early on, in the artists' reconstructions, to make the fossils appear much more human than they actually were, even though the artists making the reconstructions have no clue whatsoever as to what the colors of the eyes, of these supposed transitional fossils, actually were.
Evolution of human eye as a device for communication - Hiromi Kobayashi - Kyoto University, Japan Excerpt: The uniqueness of human eye morphology among primates illustrates the remarkable difference between human and other primates in the ability to communicate using gaze signals. http://www.saga-jp.org/coe_abst/kobayashi.htm
Perhaps the strongest piece of supposed scientific evidence for saying man evolved from ape, (seeing that Darwinists have no demonstrated mechanism as to how body plan morphogenesis is possible), has been the supposed 98.5% genetic similarity evidence. But now even that evidence is falling apart on Darwinists:
Guy Walks Into a Bar and Thinks He's a Chimpanzee: The Unbearable Lightness of Chimp-Human Genome Similarity - Sternberg - 2009 Excerpt: One can seriously call into question the statement that human and chimp genomes are 99% identical. For one thing, it has been noted in the literature that the exact degree of identity between the two genomes is as yet unknown (Cohen, J., 2007. Relative differences: The myth of 1% Science 316: 1836.). ,,, In short, the figure of identity that one wants to use is dependent on various methodological factors. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/05/guy_walks_into_a_bar_and_think.html The Myth of 98% Genetic Similarity (and Chromosome Fusion) between Humans and Chimps - Jeffrey Tomkins PhD. - video https://vimeo.com/95287522
Moreover, Dr. Tomkins is working to provide a much more detailed picture of the drastic genetic differences between chimps and man:
Using ENCODE Data for Human-Chimp DNA Comparisons by Jeffrey Tomkins, Ph.D.* Excerpt: In 2013, I published a research paper in which chimpanzee chromosomes were sequentially sliced into different sets of small pieces so that the algorithm could optimally compare them to human chromosomes. In so doing, I found that the chimpanzee genome was only about 70 percent similar to the human genome overall.7 More research is needed to show specifically how the new wealth of publicly available ENCODE data can be used beyond basic studies of human-chimp DNA similarity—incorporating lincRNAs and vlincRNAs to further highlight human uniqueness. Research using three large datasets produced by the ENCODE project is now underway at ICR for the purpose of addressing these questions. In a concurrent study, I am also comparing human protein-coding regions to those in chimpanzees. In combination, these new analyses will provide a much more detailed picture of what makes humans unique and will further demonstrate we are not evolved apes. http://www.icr.org/article/7856/
Thus, all in all when the evidence is examined in detail, it seems Darwinists have to rely more and more on imagination, bluff and bluster, to try to make their case for ape to man evolution since the evidence they thought they had simply evaporates into thin air with closer inspection and scrutiny. Such a downward trend in evidence is not indicative of a robust theory in science but of a failing theory.bornagain77_{June 23, 2014
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Since being introduced to the 'un-Darwinian' fossil record through 'Darwin On Trial' by Phillip Johnson,
Darwinism On Trial (Phillip E. Johnson) - video (35:33 minute mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=gwj9h9Zx6Mw#t=2133
And by the subsequent work of Stephen Meyer in 'Darwin's Doubt'
Socrates in the City - "Darwin's Doubt" Eric Metaxas with Stephen Meyer - video https://vimeo.com/81215936 picture - 550 million year old fossil fish - "Most major animal groups appear suddenly in the fossil record 550 million years ago, but vertebrates have been absent from this 'Big Bang' of life. Two fish-like animals from Early Cambrian rocks now fill this gap." "Lower Cambrian Vertebrates from South China" - Nov. 1999 http://www.evolutionnews.org/cambrianfish.jpg
Through those two books (and other various sources) I have been taught that the fossil record looks nothing like the Darwinists had falsely portrayed it to be all those years during my childhood. The discontinuity all throughout the fossil record, besides the Cambrian explosion, is pervasive:
: "The record of the first appearance of living phyla, classes, and orders can best be described in Wright's (1) term as 'from the top down'." (James W. Valentine, "Late Precambrian bilaterians: Grades and clades," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 91: 6751-6757 (July 1994).) “Darwin had a lot of trouble with the fossil record because if you look at the record of phyla in the rocks as fossils why when they first appear we already see them all. The phyla are fully formed. It’s as if the phyla were created first and they were modified into classes and we see that the number of classes peak later than the number of phyla and the number of orders peak later than that. So it’s kind of a top down succession, you start with this basic body plans, the phyla, and you diversify them into classes, the major sub-divisions of the phyla, and these into orders and so on. So the fossil record is kind of backwards from what you would expect from in that sense from what you would expect from Darwin’s ideas." James W. Valentine - as quoted from "On the Origin of Phyla: Interviews with James W. Valentine" - video Scientific study turns understanding about evolution on its head - July 30, 2013 Excerpt: evolutionary biologists,,, looked at nearly one hundred fossil groups to test the notion that it takes groups of animals many millions of years to reach their maximum diversity of form. Contrary to popular belief, not all animal groups continued to evolve fundamentally new morphologies through time. The majority actually achieved their greatest diversity of form (disparity) relatively early in their histories. ,,,Dr Matthew Wills said: "This pattern, known as 'early high disparity', turns the traditional V-shaped cone model of evolution on its head. What is equally surprising in our findings is that groups of animals are likely to show early-high disparity regardless of when they originated over the last half a billion years. This isn't a phenomenon particularly associated with the first radiation of animals (in the Cambrian Explosion), or periods in the immediate wake of mass extinctions.",,, Author Martin Hughes, continued: "Our work implies that there must be constraints on the range of forms within animal groups, and that these limits are often hit relatively early on. Co-author Dr Sylvain Gerber, added: "A key question now is what prevents groups from generating fundamentally new forms later on in their evolution.,,, http://phys.org/news/2013-07-scientific-evolution.html “The point emerges that if we examine the fossil record in detail, whether at the level of orders or of species, we find’ over and over again’ not gradual evolution, but the sudden explosion of one group at the expense of another.” Paleontologist, Derek V. Ager (Department of Geology & Oceanography, University College, Swansea, UK) “It is a feature of the known fossil record that most taxa appear abruptly. They are not, as a rule, led up to by a sequence of almost imperceptibly changing forerunners such as Darwin believed should be usual in evolution…This phenomenon becomes more universal and more intense as the hierarchy of categories is ascended. Gaps among known species are sporadic and often small. Gaps among known orders, classes and phyla are systematic and almost always large.” G.G.Simpson – one of the most influential American Paleontologist of the 20th century “Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead, he or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series.” – Ernst Mayr-Professor Emeritus, Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University “What is missing are the many intermediate forms hypothesized by Darwin, and the continual divergence of major lineages into the morphospace between distinct adaptive types.” Robert L Carroll (born 1938) – vertebrate paleontologist who specialises in Paleozoic and Mesozoic amphibians “In virtually all cases a new taxon appears for the first time in the fossil record with most definitive features already present, and practically no known stem-group forms.” Fossils and Evolution, TS Kemp – Curator of Zoological Collections, Oxford University, Oxford Uni Press, p246, 1999
The fossil record simply looks nothing like Darwin predicted. Many more quotes from leading paleontologists can be found here:
Fossil record: Leading paleontologists on the true state of the fossil record: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15dxL40Ff6kI2o6hs8SAbfNiGj1hEOE1QHhf1hQmT2Yg/edit
And although there are a few places that Darwinists try to defend, such as fish-o-pods and Dino-birds, for the most part the places where Darwinists can argue for a gradual transition from the fossil record are few and far between. Thus, considering the actual state of the fossil record, and how 'un-Darwinian' the overall fossil record is for the Darwinist, it has been more than a passing curiosity for me to witness Darwinists try to defend the imaginary ape to man transition. Phillip Johnson sums up the suspicious nature of the ape to man fossil evidence this way:
“What I saw about the fossil record again,, was that Gould and Eldridge were experts in the area where the animal fossil record is most complete. That is marine invertebrates.,, And the reason for this is that when,, a bird, or a human, or an ape, or a wolf, or whatever, dies,, normally it does not get fossilized. It decays in the open, or is eaten by scavengers. Things get fossilized when they get covered over quickly with sediments so that they are protected from this natural destructive process. So if you want to be a fossil, the way to go about it is to live in the shallow seas, where you get covered over by sediments when you die,,. Most of the animal fossils are of that kind and it is in that area where the fossil record is most complete. That there is a consistent pattern.,, I mean there is evolution in the sense of variation, just like the peppered moth example. Things do vary, but they vary within the type. The new types appear suddenly, fully formed, without an evolutionary history and then they stay fundamentally stable with (cyclical) variation after their sudden appearance, and stasis (according) to the empirical observations made by Gould and Eldridge. Well now you see, I was aware of a number of examples of where evolutionary intermediates were cited. This was brought up as soon as people began to make the connection and question the (Darwinian) profession about their theory in light of the controversy. But the examples of claimed evolutionary transitionals, oddly enough, come from the area of the fossil record where fossilization is rarest. Where it is least likely to happen.,,, One of things that amused me is that there are so many fossil candidates for human ancestorship, and so very few fossils that are candidates for the great apes.,, There should be just as many. But why not? Any economist can give you the answer to that. Human ancestors have a great American value and so they are produced at a much greater rate.,, These also were grounds to be suspicious of what was going on,,, ,,,if the problem is the greatest where the fossil record is most complete and if the confirming examples are found where fossils are rarest, that doesn’t sound like it could be the explanation." - Phillip Johnson - April 2012 - audio/video - 15:05 minute mark to 19:15 minute mark http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJDlBvbPSMA&feature=player_detailpage#t=903s
And Casey Luskin, who has dug deep into the technical literature on this point, finds that the discontinuity, contrary to what Darwinists adamantly claim to the contrary, is also found to be persistent in the imaginary ape to man fossil sequence just as it is in the rest of the fossil record:
How do Theistic Evolutionists Explain the Fossil Record and Human Origins? - Casey Luskin - September 14, 2012 Excerpt: In six recent articles (see the links at right), I have argued that the fossil record does not support the evolution of ape-like species into human-like species. Rather, hominin fossils generally fall into two distinct groups: ape-like species and human-like species, with a large, unbridged gap between them.,,, Third, not all paleontologists agree with Kidder that the lack of transitional fossils is simply the result of the unsophisticated (and all-too-easy) excuse the fossil record is poor. Consider what paleontologist Niles Eldredge and paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersal (who are both committed evolutionists) co-wrote in a book on human origins: "The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life's history -- not the artifact of a poor fossil record." (Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersall, The Myths of Human Evolution, p. 59 (NY: Columbia University Press, 1982).) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/09/how_do_theistic_1064301.html
The cartoon drawings falsely depicting man evolving from apes have been the most effective propaganda piece for Darwinists. None other than Henry Gee, editor of Nature, agrees on this point:
“We have all seen the canonical parade of apes, each one becoming more human. We know that, as a depiction of evolution, this line-up is tosh (i.e. nonsense). Yet we cling to it. Ideas of what human evolution ought to have been like still colour our debates.” Henry Gee, editor of Nature (478, 6 October 2011, page 34, doi:10.1038/478034a),
'Artistic license', instead of strict scientific protocol, is the rule for reconstructing a drawing of a supposed hominid fossil:
Paleoanthropology Excerpt: In regards to the pictures of the supposed ancestors of man featured in science journals and the news media Boyce Rensberger wrote in the journal Science the following regarding their highly speculative nature: "Unfortunately, the vast majority of artist's conceptions are based more on imagination than on evidence. But a handful of expert natural-history artists begin with the fossil bones of a hominid and work from there…. Much of the reconstruction, however, is guesswork. Bones say nothing about the fleshy parts of the nose, lips, or ears (or eyes). Artists must create something between an ape and a human being; the older the specimen is said to be, the more apelike they make it.... Hairiness is a matter of pure conjecture." http://conservapedia.com/Evolution#Paleoanthropology "National Geographic magazine commissioned four artists to reconstruct a female figure from casts of seven fossil bones thought to be from the same species as skull 1470. One artist drew a creature whose forehead is missing and whose jaws look vaguely like those of a beaked dinosaur. Another artist drew a rather good-looking modern African-American woman with unusually long arms. A third drew a somewhat scrawny female with arms like a gorilla and a face like a Hollywood werewolf. And a fourth drew a figure covered with body hair and climbing a tree, with beady eyes that glare out from under a heavy, gorilla-like brow." “Behind the Scenes,” National Geographic 197 (March, 2000): 140 picture - these artists "independently" produced the 4 very "different" ancestors you see here http://www.omniology.com/JackalopianArtists.html "alleged restoration of ancient types of man have very little, if any, scientific value and are likely only to mislead the public" Earnest A. Hooton - physical anthropologist - Harvard University
bornagain77_{June 23, 2014
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By the way, does goodusername have an opinion about the Nicholas Wade thing? PZ Myers getting called a creationist and all for opposing what sounds like a revival of Darwinian racism?
I haven't read Wade's book yet. It looks mildly interesting, so I may at some point, although I'm in no hurry to. I'm skeptical that human biological races truly exist, but I wouldn't say that someone is racist for expressing that view - but it appears that Wade may have gone beyond that. But I'd hardly call this book a "revival" of anything. Labeling Myers a creationist is beyond nonsensical, but as best I can tell it was a single tweet from one extremely bizarre twitterer.goodusername_{June 23, 2014
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By the way, does goodusername have an opinion about the Nicholas Wade thing? PZ Myers getting called a creationist and all for opposing what sounds like a revival of Darwinian racism?News_{June 23, 2014
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It sure doesn't come out in this passage. Oh well, if he really thought what you say he did, he would doubtless be pleased to know that Flores man is probably not a separate species. Many of his followers were not.News_{June 23, 2014
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He is saying that the differences between humans and apes is merely one of degree and that it will grow wider due to exterminations (presumably of the Negro and the gorilla, who are apparently supposed to be intermediate types between the Caucasian and the baboon).
Yes. And it's obviously unlikely for an extinct race to develop into a separate species.
“Man in a more civilised state … than the Caucasian” would have to mean a different future type/species from the present Caucasian, for the term to have any meaning. He was accustomed to expressing himself carefully so he can’t just mean that more Caucasians should shower and go to high school.
Yes, it does imply that humans will continue changing, although there will be less variety, not more.
And it seems clear that Darwin thought the “Negro” to be something like a different species already, closer to the gorilla.
That was the polygenist position (which was the leading theory of the time). Descent argues against polygenism and was strongly opposed to the idea. He argued that with evolution that polygenism would soon die. While often using the term "races", Descent would go even further and even question whether human races really exist, let alone species. Darwin points out, for instance, that various naturalists have argued for anywhere between 2 and 63 human races, which certainly brings into question the legitimacy of separate human races, and the usefulness of such designations. Darwin argued that all humans were far more similar to each other than was generally believed, and that the break between humans and apes was greater than generally believed. Darwin did believe that variety existed within humanity, and that some varieties were more similar, morphologically, to apes than others humans, but seemed to lean towards the position that humanity is a single race, albeit one with varieties.goodusername_{June 23, 2014
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It might help if we did a scala naturae (scala Darwiniae) of what Darwin seems to be talking about here: Here is his rank order of relative evolved-ness: man in a more civilised state ... than the Caucasian (so not just the Caucasian's grand-descendants, who would merely be as-yet-unborn Caucasians) Caucasian negro, Australian gorilla as low as a baboon He seems to regard them all as separate species in some way; otherwise his actual statement makes no sense. He believes that species (or whatever) three and four (negro/Australian, gorilla) will be exterminated, leaving a gap. So we now have: man in a more civilised state ... than the Caucasian Caucasian (his fate, in the face of the "more civilised state" is not explained) ... ... as low as a baboon Presumably, the first two are separate species, and species three and four have dropped out, leaving species five. I don't understand what he can have meant if he was not talking about species. And for sure finding a new human "species" that could be fitted into the table would be a big plus for his theory. As it happens, all hands are still currently on deck EXCEPT the "more civilised state ... than the Caucasian"News_{June 23, 2014
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"The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.” He is saying that the differences between humans and apes is merely one of degree and that it will grow wider due to exterminations (presumably of the Negro and the gorilla, who are apparently supposed to be intermediate types between the Caucasian and the baboon). "Man in a more civilised state ... than the Caucasian" would have to mean a different future type/species from the present Caucasian, for the term to have any meaning. He was accustomed to expressing himself carefully so he can't just mean that more Caucasians should shower and go to high school. And it seems clear that Darwin thought the "negro" to be something like a different species already, closer to the gorilla. I don't know what Darwin "may have believed," only what he said. Nice try though. The point of my observation was that his theory would be very much bolstered by any evidence of actual different human species in the last 100 k years, but so far we are coming up dryNews_{June 23, 2014
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News, That quote says just the opposite of what you're claiming. Darwin is saying that, due to genocides that had been occurring for centuries, that instead of differentiating and speciating, humans will become more homogenous. (And Darwin may have believed that that would occur even without the genocides, because he was skeptical that human populations formed true races, as human differences were small and populations regularly interbred.)goodusername_{June 23, 2014
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Oh sorry goodusername, it must have been the mirror Darwin, the one who said: "At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked,16 will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla." http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=F937.1&pageseq=181 Darn that mirror Darwin.News_{June 23, 2014
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If Darwinian evolution is true, the human race should evolve into different species. Indeed, Darwin said that in Descent of Man.
No, he didn't.goodusername_{June 23, 2014
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