Consider this item on the recent find of the remains of a girl from 90,000 years ago:
The discovery of the first-known offspring of parents from two different hominin species took scientists by surprise. While evidence has been pointing to interbreeding among the ancestor species of modern humans, the direct link is being hailed as a significant finding.Kevin Kelleher, “A Neanderthal Mom and a Denisovan Dad: 90,000-Year-Old Bone Fragment Reveals Startling Human Hybrid” at Fortune
“Species” “hybrid” “interbreeding”? What kind of talk is this about humans getting together? Yet it is everywhere.
A reader wrote to ask,
I’m not an expert on how ancient human species were defined, but I would assume that the authors aren’t using the biological species concept (the ability to mate and produce viable offspring that can reproduce) to define species. My question is, could we then call midget humans and very tall humans two different species?
I (O’Leary for News) replied,
Here is my theory: In Darwinism, somebody has got to be the subhuman. Otherwise, there is no beginning to human history. Hence the dehumanizing terminology.
Fortunately, physicist Rob Sheldon offered some more comprehensive thoughts on the geneeral problem:
—
“Species” are not very well defined. Paleontologists work from bones, naturalists work with dead specimens, geneticists work with DNA, and ecologists work with living communities. Each group has its own definition, and very often they are in conflict with the others.
Take for example, a mule. The horse has 64 chromosomes, the donkey 62, and the hybrid mule has 63. Mules are usually sterile, but every once in a great while a mule gets pregnant. Are horses and donkeys two species? Are hybrids a new species? Could pregnant mules start a new species? After all, even if only 5 mules were fertile in the past 200 years, think of what might happen in 5 million years.
Just to make it more interesting, the wild horses of Europe, thought to be the predecessors of the domesticated horse, had 66 chromosomes. Did domestication make new species? Or are we just looking at the natural variations in a horse baramin (to use a non-standard category)?
And this story is not the exception–it’s the rule. All the Galapagos finches can cross-breed. Lizards on some Caribbean islands seem to have 3 isomorphs that fluctuate in a semi-regular pattern. Some shorebirds appear to have 4 sexes or two intermingled species. If “evolution” is about changes in species, then it piles uncertainty on uncertainty, ambiguity upon ambiguity.
It’s not just biology.THere can even be uncertainty in mathematics. For example, mathematicians in the 1700’s kept finding paradoxes in mathematics, which you would have thought was well-defined. For example, what is the answer to this infinite sum: 1+ (-1) + 1 + (-1) …? If we group them in pairs, then the first pair =>0, so the sum is: 0+0+0… = 0. But if we skip the first term and group it in pairs, we get 1 + 0+0+0… = 1. So which is it?
Mathematicians call these “ill-posed” problems and argue that ambiguity in posing the question causes the ambiguity in the result. If we replace the numbers with variables, do some algebra on the sum, we find the answer. It’s not 0 and it’s not 1, it’s 1/2. By the 1800’s a whole field of convergence criteria for infinite sums was well-developed, and the field of “number theory” extended these results for non-integers etc. The point is that a topic we thought we had mastered in first grade–the number line–turned out to be full of subtleties and complications.
Someday we will have to abandon the naive definition of “species” if for no other reason than it has been defined improperly for so long. Perhaps “baramin” will replace it, perhaps some other word.
Certainly in microbiology, the easy transfer of DNA means that bacteria are losing their distinctive species label. Shigella is just a pathological version of E. coli. If one subspecies makes you better and one subspecies makes you sick, then what is the point of differentiating bacterial species anyway? Or to put it another way, these species are not distinguished by their intrinsic character differences, but their extrinsic effect on humans.
Now see how this plays out in higher animals. “There are two species of humans: those who vote like me, and those who don’t”. At this point, I think you would agree with me that “species” just is not a useful word any more.
—
Note: Evolutionary biologists will want to find a term other than baramin, due to its association with creationism, but we assume that Rob is just giving their chain a tug there.
Rob Sheldon is an experimental [physicist and the author of the novel, Genesis: The Long Ascent
See also: Neanderthal woman, Denisovan man Two longstanding Darwinian myths are threatened by these types of finds: One is the “missing link,” the not-quite-human, that we hardly expected to interbreed. The second myth is the notion that life is a war of all against all, such that current humans got where we are by exterminating other lineages.
and
Nothing says “Darwin snob” like indifference to the mess that the entire concept of speciation is in.
In the case of infinite series, there are a number of different yet valid ways of defining the sum, so there is no one unique correct answer.
Perhaps the same holds for species? There may be multiple different, yet valid ways to define the concept, depending on what you want to do with it.
Defining things in terms of their current contextual relationship is more natural, more verb-like, more in keeping with how our nervous system works. Everything is expressed as a spatial delta from current baseline, and a temporal delta from previous state.
An interesting study on the sense of smell in insects focused on the relationship of actual chemical input to the baseline:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180803103318.htm
What kind of insects? Locusts. Did they mean cicadas? No, they meant the form that grasshoppers assume in certain conditions.
So it was a self-reflexive study of deltas from baseline, in a “species” that exists only as a delta from baseline.
Focusing on the relationship would clarify things like locusts, and the E. coli vs shigella problem. When bacteria + human = illness, the delta is shigella. When bacteria + human = nothing special, the delta is E. coli.
Another analogy: We find the concept of “extended family” useful, even though it’s vague—there is no clear boundary between those in my EF and those not in it. You could make the concept precise by setting a strict definition, but that would arguably make the concept less useful.
If Darwinian evolution were true, we should see a blending together of characteristics between forms, but that is not what we see.
As Stephen Meyer stated,”the differences in form between any member of one phylum and any member of another phylum are vast, and paleontologists have utterly failed to find forms that would fill these yawning chasms”
These “yawning chasms” between forms hold for the fossil record subsequent to the Cambrian Explosion as well:
A when peering into the details of molecular biology, we find that the reductive materialistic explanations for how any particular organism might achieve its basic form are grossly inadequate:
And as the following paper, which extended Godel’s incompleteness theorem to physics, proved, Darwinian explanations, (i.e. just so stories), for how any particular organism might achieve its basic form will forever be beyond its reductive materialistic scope.
To state the obvious, since neo-Darwinian, (i.e. reductive materialistic), explanations are grossly inadequate for explaining how any particular organism might achieve its basic form, then neo-Darwinian speculations for how one type of organism might transform into another type of organism are based on pure fantasy and have no discernible experimental basis in reality.
Whereas, on the other hand, Theism, especially with these recent breakthroughs in, “spooky action at a distance’, quantum biology,,,
,,,is found to be very well supported in its claim that God, Who is beyond space and time, has formed each of us in our mother’s womb.
Verses:
ba77 @ 4 –
Indeed. It caused Darwin (and indeed Darwinism) problems when Fleeming Jenkin pointed this out. Fortunately we’ve worked out the basis of heredity, and Darwin was wrong.
Bob (and weave) O’Hara falsely claims:
Darwinian Atheists have done no such thing.
If anything, the merging of Mendelian genetics with Darwinian evolution, i.e. the modern synthesis,, neo-Darwinism, has falsified Darwinian claims that they have “worked out the basis of heredity”.
First off, the mathematics of population genetics has now cast Natural Selection itself, Darwin’s infamous “Designer substitute”, by the wayside.
Empirical evidence supports this mathematical analysis from population genetics:
Since natural selection has been cast by the wayside, Darwinists now claim, via neutral theory, that the vast majority of the amazing integrated complexity found in life, i.e. the ‘appearance of design’. is the result of pure chance instead of being the result of natural selection.
In the following article Larry Moran quotes Austin Hughes who states, ‘Darwinism asserts that natural selection is the driving force of evolutionary change. It is the claim of the neutral theory, on the other hand, that the majority of evolutionary change is due to chance.’
Thus, with Natural selection being tossed aside by the mathematics of population genetics, and by empirical evidence, as the explanation for the ‘appearance of design’ that we see in life, Darwinists, instead of accepting the finding as a falsification of their theory, now claim, basically, that random mutations, all by their lonesome, with virtually no help from natural selection, (i.e. neutral theory), created all the amazing integrated complexity, i.e. ‘appearance of design’, that we see in life.
To call such a move on the part of Darwinists “disingenuous to the science at hand” would be a severe understatement.
Moreover, there is a “small” problem with this heavy reliance that Darwinists now have on ‘random’ mutations to do all the heavy lifting within Darwinian evolution (minus natural selection).
Mutations are now, empirically, shown to NOT be random mutations in the first place but are overwhelmingly shown to be ‘directed’ mutations:
Moreover even these ‘directed’ mutations are of no help to Darwinists. Specifically we find that, “Even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.”
Moreover, when realistic estimates for detrimental mutations are included,,,,
Moreover, when realistic estimates for detrimental mutations are included, “Fisher’s belief that he had developed a mathematical proof that fitness must always increase is also falsified.”
Thus both natural selection and ‘random’ mutations are shown to be virtually non-existent, and even ‘directed’ mutations are found to be detrimental to a greater or lesser extent and are thus of no help to Darwinists.
If Darwinian evolution were a normal science, these findings SHOULD HAVE rendered it to the garbage heap of failed scientific theories. But alas, Darwinian Evolution, at least how Darwinists treat it, never really qualified as a testable/falsifiable scientific theory in the first place:
To continue on in the falsification of the Darwinian presupposition of ‘randomness’ within biology, it is now found, due to advances in quantum biology, that there is far less ‘randomness’, or more specifically, far less ‘random thermodynamic jostling’ within molecular biology than was originally presupposed by Darwinists:
At the 6:52 minute mark of the following video, Jim Al-Khalili states:
The following video goes over many more lines of evidence from quantum biology that have now falsified the Darwinian presupposition of a massive amount of ‘random thermodynamic jostling’ within molecular biology.
Moreover, as if all that was not more than enough to completely falsify Darwinian claims, Darwinists hold that heredity is based in an organism’s genotype (i.e. in an organism’s DNA).
Yet it is now known that a organism’s phenotype is not reducible to its genotype. Moreover, even if an organism’s phenotype were reducible to its genotype, as Darwinists presuppose, the interweaved complexity of genes underlying any particular trait has completely overwhelmed the mathematics of population genetics. And as such has clearly shown that Darwinists certainly do not have the ‘basis of heredity’ all worked out as Bob (and weave) O’Hara falsely claimed that they did.
And to top that off, the mathematics of population genetics has now also proven that if neo-Darwinism were actually true, then ALL of our perceptions of reality would be illusory.
Yet, reliable observation is a necessary cornerstone of the scientific method.
Thus, since Darwinian evolution denies ‘reliable observation’, which is a necessary cornerstone of the scientific method itself, then Darwinian evolution can never be based upon the scientific method and is therefore falsified once again in its claim to be a scientific theory.
Moreover, completely contrary to what Hoffman found for Darwinian theory, it turns out that accurate perception, i.e. conscious observation, far from being unreliable and illusory, is experimentally found to be far more integral to reality, i.e. far more reliable of reality, than the mathematics of population genetics predicted. In the following experiment, it was found that reality doesn’t exist without an observer.
Apparently science itself could care less if atheists are forced to believe, because of the mathematics of population genetics, that their observations of reality are illusory!
Moreover, although it is almost universally acknowledged that mathematics exists in some kind of transcendent “Platonic” realm,
, and although every rigorous theory of science requires verification from mathematics, and experimentation, in order to be considered scientific in the first place,
,,, the reductive materialism that Darwinian evolution is based upon denies the existence of anything beyond the material realm.
There simply is no place for the immaterial realm of mathematics to find grounding for its reality in the reductive materialism that undergirds Darwinian thought.
As David Berlinski states, “There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time….”
Therefore, besides Darwinian evolution already being shown to be mathematically impossible (by Sanford, Dembski, Marks, Axe, Behe, Durston etc.. etc..), Darwinian evolution is further falsified by mathematics as being a scientific theory since Darwinism denies the very reality of one the thing it most needs, i.e. mathematics, in order to be considered scientific in the first place.
Moreover, many of the ‘inherited’ characteristics that Bob (and weave) O’Hara and other Darwinists seek to explain the heredity of are in and of themselves immaterial characteristics:
As Sedgwick told Darwin, “There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical. A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly.”
And indeed, as Sedgwick warned Darwin, with the denial of the moral and metaphysical part of man, the 20th century saw that “humanity in my mind, would suffer a damage that might brutalize it—& sink the human race into a lower grade of degradation than any into which it has fallen since its written records tell us of its history.”
In conclusion, it would be hard to fathom an idea that has been more detrimental to science, and humanity in general, than Darwinian evolution has turned out to be.
LoL! @ Bob O’H- Are you seriously suggesting that we should ne see innumerable transitional forms? Really?
Or are you that dense that you don’t understand what a blending of characteristics entails?
News,
Just noticed this:
I think a “Darwinist” would agree that there is no clear beginning to human history.
This is evidenced by the fact that even ID proponents have trouble cleanly separating ancient fossils into “human” and “nonhuman” groups.
Perhaps from a theological perspective this raises issues, but for atheists, it’s not a problem.
daves:
But there is. We will never find it because of Darwinism, though
Evidence, please.
daveS claims
Any confusion between ape and human fossils is solely due to overeager Darwinists who constantly try to stuff imaginary ‘missing links’ into the the chasm that separates us from apes. Yet when one delves into the details of the fossil record, and sees how disingenuous Darwinists have been with the fossil record, the confusion disappears, and the record reveals itself to be one of sudden appearance and stasis (just like the pattern for the rest of the fossil record)
Here is a video playlist of Dr. Giem’s series reviewing John Sanford’s new book “Contested Bones”. The book “Contested Bones” (by Christopher Rupe and John Sanford) is the result of four years of intense research into the primary scientific literature concerning those bones that are thought to represent transitional forms between ape and man. This book’s title reflects the surprising reality that all the famous “hominin” bones continue to be fiercely contested today—even within the field of paleoanthropology (The last videos listed in the series also deal with the misleading genetic evidence).
A few related notes and quotes:
In fact so great are the anatomical differences between humans and chimps that a Darwinist, since pigs are anatomically closer to humans than chimps are, actually proposed that a chimp and pig mated with each other and that is what ultimately gave rise to humans:
Moreover, Physorg published a subsequent article, (since the preceding article badly upset the prevailing just so story of the ‘march to man’ cartoon), showing that the pig-chimp hybrid theory for human origins is much harder to shoot down than some Darwinists, who opposed McCarthy, had first supposed it would be:
Simply put, the fossil evidence, despite what may be popularly believed, simply fails to support the claims from Darwinists no matter how much they may falsely imagine that it does.
ET,
Here’s an example. Note the disagreements between vjtorley and Casey Luskin. Lots of interesting discussion in that post; wd400’s posts are especially relevant, IMHO.
The problem is that I doubt any of them actually studied the skulls- pictures, maybe but not the skulls. But that is moot as they would need the entire living organism to figure out how human or not it is.
Quotes vjtorley and wd400 to support his false claim???
Well golly gee whiz, I’m going to start quoting the Wino on the street corner as an ‘expert’.
🙂
This is a very strange theory, even for this place. For evolutionary biologists the distinction between modern human, archaic humans, and apes is diffuse. We know from other species that the barriers between lineages get stronger as those lineages spend more time apart from each other (sometimes we can even measure the rate with a “speciation clock”), so we shold expect recently-diverged lineages to produce hybrids, and more distantly related ones to be more distinct.
When we look to humans this is precisely what we see. Lineages with limited divergence like neanderthals and denisovans produce hybrids. But those hybrids didn’t to that well, suggesting they were neverthless distinct lineages.
On the hand, creationists believe in a very sharp distinction between man and ape. But, as daveS points out, no one can agree on where this obvious line exists!
daves pointed out that some fossil skulls may be difficult to classify. Universal common descent demands their be a sub-type for every existing type. It cannot be any other way.
So far from being a “strange theory” it is the way it has to be given the concept.
ET,
If by “subhuman”, News simply means something like an ancestor to humans, without the obvious negative connotations, then perhaps you’re right (although the boundaries between types will still be unclear). I don’t think that’s what she means, though.
daves, I can’t see how anyone would read it any other way.
Boundary? Technology would be a good start
ET,
Here’s part of a comment by Ms O’Leary from a previous thread:
The part I bolded indicates that “not inferior” implies “not subhuman”, hence “subhuman” implies “inferior”.
They are/ were inferior. It isn’t a negative connotation any more than saying college football teams are inferior to NFL teams.
ba77 @ 6 –
Indeed. Mendel was a monk, so I don’t think he was an atheist. And Fisher was a lay preacher. Again, not really an atheist.
So, you managed to (a) use a deliberately insulting nickname, (b) incorrectly said I made a false claim, (c) mis-attribute my claim (I didn’t write anything about the the religious views of the people who worked out heredity), (d) make another false claim (essentially that all of modern genetics is wrong).
So, that’s not a good start. Why should I bother reading the rest of your response to me?
Bob (and weave) O’ Hara,
In case you did not notice, since you steadfastly refuse to ever be honest towards the evidence, my response was not even directed towards you in the first place, but was directed towards unbiased readers. I could care less if you ever read the response or not. My purpose was to expose your argument as fraudulent for those who care for the truth.
I have given up any hope that you will ever be truthful towards the evidence at hand.
As to religion, you could have thrown Charles Darwin himself in as well. After all, his college degree was in Theology (not ‘science or math), and his book, “Origin”, is basically one long (bad) Theological argument.
To this day, Darwinists still use (bad) liberal theology.
In fact, you can still find hundreds, if not thousands, of so called “Theistic Evolutionists” who still use bad liberal theology.
As to Fisher in particular, seeing as he promoted both eugenics and racism,,,
Seeing as he promoted both eugenics and racism, I consider his religion, much like Darwin’s and modern day Theistic Evolutionists, to be functionally dead in regards to his public life, his science, and how he viewed others.
Verse
bs77 –
OK, so you want to comment on what I write, but you’re not interested in responding to me?
Nice that you accuse me of falsehoods, and then go on to acknowledge that I was right: not all Darwinians were atheists. They may not be the sort of Christian you like, but Christianity is a broad church, and Fisher and modern-day TEs are certainly not atheists.
LOL, and this is a pristine example of Bob (and weave)’s debating style. Calling functional atheists Christians does not negate the “smell test” criteria for ascertaining whether something is true or not.
Moreover, I did not merely accuse you that you made a patently false statement,,
,,, I proved it!
And again, I don’t care if you read the response or not.
ET,
Who are “they”, specifically? I’m guessing you don’t mean Neanderthals or Homo erectus. Which groups are inferior to humans?
Wait, what? If someone believes in God, and that Jesus was His only begotten son, then they are a Christian, no?
Next you’ll be telling us that the Pope isn’t a Christian either.
By providing a series of links to discussions that are not about working out the basis of heredity, but actually assume the mechanisms of heredity that were worked out. Yes, thank you for that interesting approach to logic.
Whatever Bob (and weave), I’ll let the readers decide for themselves who is being honest towards the evidence and who is being disingenuous.
As to people who falsely pretend to be believers in God but are, in reality, not, Jesus himself held religious hypocrites to be especially contrary to the will of God above everyone else. In fact the religious leaders and/or hypocrites were the ones who orchestrated his crucifixion.
For example:
Needless to say, they certainly considered themselves believers in God, but Jesus would have none of their hypocrisy.
This reader votes for Bob! 🙂
correction:
“This
readerbiased atheist votes for Bob!”There all better! 🙂
Typical: anyone who disagrees with you is biased, but you – you aren’t biased, you’re right! That’s quite a bit of arrogance.
Well seeing as you consistently argue for atheistic materialism until it is pointed out to you that atheistic materialism undermines free-will and personhood, then you switch to arguing for some ill defined form of pantheism, I would hardly consider you a paragon of logically consistent reasoning.
But alas, that is only “my” personal opinion, but at least in Christian Theism, I can consistently ground the free will and personhood necessary to have a valid personal opinion in the first place.
Of note:
Dr. Craig states that Metaphysical Naturalism (Atheism) is reducto ad absurdum on (at least) these eight following points: (8 points which, by the way, Dr. Craig pulled from Dr. Rosenburg’s own book on atheism.)
I strongly suggest watching Dr. Craig’s following presentation of the 8 points to get a full feel for just how insane the metaphysical naturalist’s (atheist’s) position actually is.
,,,Some of the insanity inherent in Atheism in Rosenberg’s own words,,,
daves:
Wow- any of them who didn’t and couldn’t produce any technology. Knuckle-walkers, obviously
Bobby:
TE’s say that Darwinism is a joke. “Christian Darwinist” is an oxy-moron.
Mendel definitely was not a Darwinist
TE Joshua Swamidass wrote:
bornagain77 was right- the Darwinian atheists didn’t do anything
ET,
In binomial nomenclature, please.
daves:
So every transitional population has been so labeled?
Take your moving goalposts and – well never mind.
Clearly, if humans and chimps shared a common ancestor then there had to have been sub-humans. That is populations along our branch that were not humans or not quite human.
Or is it that the concept too difficult to grasp?
ET,
I agree, assuming your interpretation of “sub-human”. You’re actually illustrating my point—assuming common ancestry, there were non-human populations in our branch, but it’s very difficult to find a clear boundary between the humans and non-humans.
daves:
It wouldn’t be if we had actual specimens to examine. But having what we do the best we can say is that under the scenario that chimps and humans shared a common ancestor sub-human populations had to have existed.
That is what Denyse was referring to
daveS repeats his false claim,,,
Yet as was mentioned in post 14 in response to when he first made his false claim, there is a clear boundary in the fossil record between humans and apes:
And given the fact that the entire fossil record, as was briefly mentioned in post 4, contradicts Darwinian predictions for gradualism, one would expect that Darwinists would have fairly compelling empirical evidence to substantiate their belief that one type of species can morph into a fundamentally new type of species.
But no such empirical evidence exists. In the following paper, Alan H. Linton – emeritus professor of bacteriology, states that ‘Bacteria are ideal for this kind of study, But throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another,’
Ann Gauger and Doug Axe have found that Darwinian processes would need a trillion trillion years or more—to accomplish the seemingly subtle change in enzyme function that requires just a few mutations.
Michael Behe, in his book ‘The Edge of Evolution’, noted that the ability of the malaria parasite to develop resistance to chloroquine is a two mutation event with a probability of occurring of 1 in 10^20. He then notes that ‘for humans to achieve a mutation like this by chance, we would have to wait 100 million times 10 million years’ (or 1 quadrillion years)
Michael Behe then put what he has dubbed ‘the edge of evolution’ to be at 10^20 times 10^20, which is 10^40. ,,, Behe puts the edge of evolution at 10^40 since, as he states, ‘there have likely been fewer than 10^40 cells in the world in the last 4 billion years,’.
Moreover, in terms of morphology, billion year old bacteria “surprisingly looked exactly like modern species,” and the similarity in morphology is widespread among fossils of [varying] times,”
And on and on it goes. As the following video shows, multiple studies conducted on microbes consistently contradict Darwinian claims that one species can morph into another.
This is not a matter of “Well we have abundant empirical evidence supporting evolution so we can overlook the gaps in the fossil record”. Not in the least. No, this is a matter of, “We have multiple lines of empirical evidence that directly contradict Darwinian claims but we will still pretend that the gaps in the fossil record are no big deal”.
Given Darwinists refusal to ever deal with the evidence properly, Darwinian evolution certainly does not qualify as a testable/falsifiable science. But is more properly classified as a unfalsifiable pseudoscience and/or even a religion that requires extraordinary amounts of blind faith to believe in.
To further refute daveS’s claim that
Although daveS may find it “very difficult to find a clear boundary between the humans and non-humans”, Ian Tattersall and Jeffery Schwartz had no trouble finding a ‘clear boundary. Specifically they stated, “Unusual though Homo sapiens may be morphologically, it is undoubtedly our remarkable cognitive qualities that most strikingly demarcate us from all other extant species.”
Ian Tattersall and Jeffery Schwartz are hardly the only leading experts to note this ‘clear boundary’.
As the following study found, “there is a significant discontinuity in the degree to which human and nonhuman animals are able to approximate the higher-order, systematic, relational capabilities of a physical symbol system,”
And as Juan Arsuaga noted, “No other mammal controls and uses fire, writes books, travels in space, paints portraits, or prays. This is not a question of degree. It is all or nothing”,,,
And as the following study noted, “Although technologies became more complex over the history of the genus Homo (Tattersall, 2012), indications of modern-style iconic and representational activities (Henshilwood et al., 2002, 2004) begin only significantly after the first anatomically recognizable H. sapiens appears at a little under 200 thousand years ago,,”
And in the following study Marc Hauser, Charles Yang, Robert Berwick, Ian Tattersall, Michael J. Ryan, Jeffrey Watumull, Noam Chomsky and Richard C. Lewontin stated that “We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved.”
To which Casey Luskin rightly noted, “It’s difficult to imagine much stronger words from a more prestigious collection of experts.”
Thus daveS may have a difficult time finding a clear boundary, but leading experts in the field certainly have no trouble whatsoever finding that ‘clear boundary’.
The late best selling author Tom Wolfe was so taken aback by this honest confession by leading Darwinists that he wrote a book, “Kingdom of Speech”, on the subject. Here is one of his main arguments in his book:
That is to say, although humans are fairly defenseless creatures in the wild compared to other creatures, such as lions, bears, and sharks, etc.., nonetheless, humans have, completely contrary to Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ thinking, managed to become masters of the planet, not by brute force, but simply by our unique ability to communicate information and, more specifically, to infuse information into material substrates in order to create, ‘intelligently design’ tools that are extremely useful for our survival, etc.. etc…
What is more interesting still about the fact that humans have a unique ability to understand and create information, and have come to dominate the world through the ‘top-down’ infusion of information into material substrates, is the fact that, due to advances in science, both the universe and life itself, are now found to be ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis.
As Vlatko Vedral, who is a Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, stated, “The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, but information–and it is the processing of information that lies at the root of all physical, biological, economic, and social phenomena.”
It is hard to imagine a more convincing proof that we are made ‘in the image of God’, than finding that both the universe and life itself are ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis, and that we, of all the creatures on earth, uniquely possess an ability to understand and create information, and have come to ‘master the planet’ precisely because of our ability infuse information into material substrates.
I guess a more convincing evidence could be if God Himself became a man, defeated death on a cross, and then rose from the dead to prove that He was God.
And that is precisely the claim of Christianity.
Verse:
ET,
Do you see the pattern (or lack thereof?) In answer to the question “who were the first humans?”:
1) You say there is a clear boundary between humans and non-humans, but more evidence is needed to locate it
2) Casey Luskin says Homo erectus
3) vjtorley says Homo heidelbergensis
4) someone else suggests Homo sapiens
daves- As far as I am concerned there was never a common ancestor between chimps and humans. To me kinesiology alone blows that alleged transformation out of the water.
So, to me, who were the first humans is a fool’s errand because the answer is whoever the first humans were.
And also, to me, the sub-humans are the ones banning teleological explanations from science. 😛 😎
They are devo DEVO
A few notes: