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mactbone
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Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
Sep 2001
time: 23:18
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Well, someone seems to be ignoring all of my posts, here goes another attempt at informing him.
http://home.talkcity.com/librarydr/...se/webdoc17.htm
"There are no transitional fossils" is the battle cry of the ignorant Creationist. I will comment briefly on the history of this argument, show the various transitional species of human ancestors, and finally show the existence of transitional hominid individuals, between species.
Around the 16th century, people thought they were completely separate from the animal kingdom. At that same time, the great apes, the gorillas and orangutans, the chimpanzees and other monkeys, were all unknown. When the great apes were discovered, a fierce debate raged as to whether these creatures were a strange race of men, or just another animal. An English physician, Edward Tyson, wrote a book in 1699 concerning the anatomy of apes. Tyson listed 48 physiological characteristics that made the ape similar to man, and 34 characteristics that, on the other hand, connected the ape more closely to the animal kingdom.
The point I am trying to make is that the ape is, in a sense, a transitional form between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. Creationists can't accept that, however, and demand a transitional form between man and apelike ancestors. When Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon remains were first found, creationists demanded transitionals between them and an ape-like ancestor, and between these human ancestors and present day humans.
Present day knowledge from the fossil record show the following progression from modern humans to ancient ancestors, as the table shows: Name
Looks Brain Size in cc's. # of specimens Dates Tools
Ramapithecus Small, no forehead, very apelike very small 20, mostly jawbones and a few skulls 12 million years old None
Australopithecus Half-Ape, half human, slight forehead, upright walk 600 cc. 800 specimens, mostly skulls, a few near complete skeletons 4 million years old None
Homo Habilus Slightly human head, bigger brain 725 cc. 200, mostly skulls, some hips and femurs 2 million years old Stone tools
Homo Erectus Larger brain, almost human head 1000 cc. 1500+ fossil specimens, some very complete skeletons 1 million years old Stone, and Fire.
Homo Sapiens Some look more human than others. 1350 cc. Tens of Thousands 350,000 years old All
Homo erectus discoveries demanded that the creationists employ a more refined strategy. Homo erectus is just as human as us, sloped forehead and all. Or, they were diseased humans. Or, perhaps they were apes, eaten by humans, and the tools found with them are simply what the humans used to carve up the apes. The fact is, H. erectus has an apelike head, human dentition, an upright walk. This ape-headed, walking creature also used tools and made fires. Over a thousand fossil specimens have confirmed this.
Homo Habilus is a transitional form between H. Erectus and the Australopithecines. H. Habilus has a smaller brain capacity than H. Erectus, 725 cc as opposed to 950 cc. The slope of the forehead is greater, and only stone tools are found at the Habilus sites. There is no evidence of fire use by H. Habilus.
When the Australopithecines were found, the initial thoughts were they were knuckle walkers, like apes. Creationists took the position they were just extinct apes. However, finds of australopithecine hips, femurs, and other bones indicate it walked upright--while having the unmistakeable head of an ape. Australopithicines are transitionals between older, knuckle-walking ape-like ancestors, and the more modern, tool using H. erectus.
Transitional Hominid Individuals:
There are quite a few fossil finds which don't translate well into one species or another. These are called "transitional individuals", and are intermediate in characteristics between an older type and a more recent specimen.
The Omo skulls, found by a team of Paleontologists led by Richard Leakey in Ethiopia in 1967 are skulls with a large (1430 cc) cranium capacity, but which preserve features of H. erectus skulls such as a receding forehead and prominent brow ridges. This is regarded as an early example of a human, even though it has characteristics of an H. Erectus specimen. It is over 100,000 years old.
Vertesszollos skulls were found in 1965 in a site in Hungary. The thickness of the skull and the one-piece brow ridge are features of an H. Erectus, but the brain capacity is modern: 1400 cc. The brain, though large, is configured in a more primitive manner than modern humans. It is an extremely early, and very primitive, example of H. Sapiens, but with distinct H. erectus features. It is about 400,000 years old.
The Petralona skull, about 400,000 years old, is from a cave in ancient Greece. It is an H. erectus skull with some advanced features normally found only in modern humans.
Ngaloba skull is an an early H. sapiens specimen found in sandstone and clay deposits in Tanzania in 1976. It has mostly human features, while retaining some archaic H. erectus features in its shape. It is about 120,000 years old.
Tautavel skulls originated in the Arago cave in southern France, excavated in 1964. The skull has features of both H. erectus and Neanderthals, and is a transitional fossil between the two species. It is about 300,000 years old.
Creationists use the same strategy with Archeopteryx. It's just a bird. In fact, Archeopteryx is fossil bird with reptilian characteristics. It could just as accurately be described as a fossil reptile with bird-like characteristics.
Transitional Amphibians, Reptiles, and Mammals
There are many transitional forms at all stages of evolution. Here are a few of the more interesting ones:
An ancient transitional species between invertebrates and vertebrates is the Jamoytius, a sea creature similar to the modern lamprey. Its "backbone" was a stiff, unsegmented tissue known as a notochord.
Acanthodes is a primitive jawed fish. Jaws, a major evolutionary development, originated from bony gill arches.
The Osteolepis is a bony fish, with a skull and jaw structure very analogous to early land-dwelling vertebrates. This is a lobe-finned fish, different from the lungfish, and indicates that this is the transitional form from sea creatures to the early amphibians, not lungfish.
Seymoura and Lyccaenops are early reptiles with amphibian characteristics, and are almost exactly half amphibian, and half reptile. They are transitional forms between amphibians and reptiles.
The Synapsids are a subclass of early reptiles that bridge the gap between reptiles and primitive mammals.
Conclusion:
Isn't this exactly what we would expect from the fossil evidence, if humans evolved from an ape-like ancestor? If life evolved gradually, from simple sea creatures without jaws or backbones, to large brained, tool-using mammals?
On the other hand, if humans were created by divine fiat, why does the fossil record show a slow and gradual progression from creatures who neither walked upright nor had large brains, through upright-walking, small brained creatures, and then to large-brained, tool using, upright walking creatures, and finally to modern humans?
If you want, you can visit your local museum of natural history, and verify everything on this page. Or, if you're intellectually lazy, you can continue to believe that humans were created by the impulsive act of a lonely Hebrew deity.
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Draco aka Se7eN
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EK yes yes i know, Dinosaurs were not entirely lizardlike.
Do we have to play the english spelling grammer game? Should i pat those on the back who showed they can profred?
Do i have to remind you that im typing as fast i possibly can and am ignorining spelling mistakes. Why do you see mistakes in spelling and grammer a lack of intelligence? If you think that then it shows a lack of commen sense on your part.
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MrBaggins
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quote:
Originally posted by Draco aka Se7eN
An explosion is energy release.
Energy is matter (among other things)
Matter is life (among other things)
Ok how many explosions have been conducted that have produced matter. |
A nuclear explosion.
E=mc^2
Atoms are composed of energy.
Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it isn't happening.
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MrBaggins
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quote:
Originally posted by Draco aka Se7eN
Breeding Dogs is called Microevolution. That is true.
You breed a dog its still a dog. would anyone like to try breeding a dog into a horse? |
They have different numbers of chromasomes, so they can't breed. It would take an aberent genetic mutation for them to be able to breed. These do happen.
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nbarclay
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Huntsville, Alabama
Dec 1999
time: 23:18
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I think the big point people miss on the creation-evolution issue is that the scientific method can ONLY deal with natural, repeatable processes. If our world came about through natural means, science can give us good answers. If not, science is practically guaranteed to mislead us because its methodology will push it to look for natural answers when the only true answers come from outside natural law.
Further, a supernaturally created universe could look as much or as little like it could have developed through natural means as its creator wanted it to. Depending on the creator's will, a universe created around 6000-10,000 years ago (1) could have huge numbers of discrepancies that make it virtually impossible to believe that natural processes can account for its origins, (2) could mimic a naturally evolved universe so perfectly that no conceivable scientific test could get even a hint of a discrepancy, or (3) could have characteristics anywhere in between.
And as if that didn't make things complex enough, both creationists and evolutionists have tricks they can pull out of their hats any time their viewpoints run up against uncomfortable data. Creationists can pull miracles out of their hats, while evolutionists can assume that natural explanations exist but just haven't been found yet or simply assume that since we're here, random chance must be able to account for things. (And, for that matter, creationists also have potential to speculate on as-yet-undiscovered or unproven natural processes.)
Science can do a lot to tell us where a specific concept of origins has internal flaws that have to be plugged up with miracles and/or as-yet-undiscovered natural processes. But to do a credible job of that with creation, science has to accept that creationist theories DO involve the supernatural, which means the initial state of the universe could potentially be whatever the creator wanted it to be and other miracles could have caused significant non-natural changes since then. Otherwise, science is cheating in favor of hypotheses that deny the possibility that supernatural forces were involved.
And before you complain that I'm demanding the impossible, if science finds it impossible to do the job right , it is obviously not an adequate tool for the job. Which takes us right back to my point at the beginning of this message: science is a grossly inadequate tool for attempting to evaluate the merits of supernatural possibilities.
Nathan
P.S. I may or may not follow this thread anymore, given its high ratio of heat to light. If you have a reply you especially want me to look at, please send me a copy privately to make sure I get it.
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Shadowlord
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Wow, you're typing as fast as you can and ignoring mistakes? That explains why you keep consistently spelling fossils incorrectly the same way.
Stop lying.
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MrBaggins
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Just for your information... (from ArsTechnica)
A simplified explanation of demonstrated Quantum Electrodynamics...
The method of creation of the universe
Nanotechnology and Quantum Mechanics
by Geon
Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are movable devices manufactured on semiconductors using the same techniques used to make computer chips. They are very small (the smallest separations between their parts are on the order of micrometers). So far, classical mechanics has done a good job of guiding the design of these devices. However, in an article (subscription required for access) in the March 9, 2001 edition of Science, H. B. Chan, V. A. Aksyuk, R. N. Kleiman, D. J. Bishop, and Federico Capasso experimentally demonstrated that quantum effects become significant at such size scales.
Some background information may be useful, before describing the experiment. Quantum electrodynamics (the part of quantum theory dealing with electromagnetic phenomena) predicts that empty space isn't really empty, so that there is no such thing as a perfect vacuum. Even in a vacuum, and even at a temperature of absolute zero, all kinds of particles pop in and out of existence as a consequence of the famous Uncertainty Principle of quantum mechanics. These particles pop into existence (in particle-antiparticle pairs), hang around for a little while, but must then must disappear again. How long they can hang around depends on how heavy the particles are -- the heavier the particles, the faster they must disappear, but even light particles can hang around for very short periods of time. These particles are called virtual particles, because they normally can't be directly detected - you might say they almost don't exist. The only time you normally notice virtual particles is by observing their interactions with normal particles during the short time that they do hang around. As a consequence of the existence of these virtual particles, there is an energy density associated with the vacuum (remember, matter is energy, and vice-versa).
Now, say you take two parallel uncharged conducting plates, just for fun. Bring them very close together, and something very peculiar will start to happen. The plates will start getting sucked in towards each other (or pushed, depending on how you look at it). Virtual particles turn out to be the culprits responsible for this phenomenon. It turns out that only some virtual particles will pop into existence in between the plates. Quantum mechanics says that particles also have a wavelength. And it turns out that only particles whose wavelengths can fit a whole number of times into the gap between the plates will appear there. There is no such restriction outside the gap. As a result, the vacuum energy between the plates will be less than the vacuum energy outside the plates. And this means that the plates will be sucked together. The force pushing the plates together depends directly on the area of the plates, and inversely on the fourth power of the distance of their separation. This is called the Casimir Effect (first predicted in 1948, but not experimentally measured until 1997, due to the very small forces involved). It's not limited to parallel plates, by the way - any two conducting things close together will work. For another explanation of the Casimir Effect, have a look at the entry for it in the Usenet Physics FAQ.
One of the weirder things about the Casimir Effect is that the energy between the plates can be said to be negative - after all, it's less than the energy of a vacuum, which it is natural to think of as the 'zero' energy! One of the more interesting things that you need negative energy for are some of the more useful types of 'worm holes'. But that's getting off on an (interesting) tangent.
The experiment Chan et al. came up with is elegantly simple. They etched a 3.5 µm thick, 500 µm2 doped polysilicon square plate, anchored in the middle of two opposite sides by small rods so that the plate is free to rotate. Underneath the plate there are two electrodes, which serve as sensors. There's a space of 2 µm between the plate and the electrodes. Now, what Chan et al. wanted to measure was the Casimir Effect on this plate. It turns out that to do the experiment with two parallel plates, as described above, is not very practical, as it would be very difficult to keep the two plates parallel. Instead, they decided to measure the Casimir effect between their micromachined plate and a gold-coated Styrofoam ball (with a radius of 100 µm, for those interested). This ball was glued to a wire, and moved to distances less than 2 µ from the plate.
The Casimir Effect produced a torque on the plate, as the end of the plate beneath the Styrofoam ball would be sucked towards towards the ball. As a result, the plate would rotate a bit. Since this changes the distance between the plate and the electrodes beneath it (increasing the distance to one of them, and decreasing it to the other), the capacitances between the electrodes and the plate would be changed. By measuring these change in capacitance, the fact that the plate was rotating, and by how much, was measured.
The results closely match the theoretical predictions. According to Chan et al., the "deviation of experimental data from the theoretical Casimir force, including both the finite conductivity and surface roughness corrections, is 2.4 pN." (The 'p' stands for pico - metric shorthand for 10-12). What does all this mean? Well, for one thing, it shows that quantum mechanics must be considered in the design of MEMS, as it can have a significant effect, as proved in this experiment. And, as Chan et al. also point out, this result "could open new possibilities for novel actuation schemes in MEMS based on the Casimir force and may be important in the design of nanoelectromechanical systems." In other words, designers of future nanomachines may end up using such seemingly abstract things as virtual particles to make their creations move.
by Geon
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Draco aka Se7eN
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Lol what posts, majority of what ive seen from you all is biased opinions as well
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18-04-2002 06:12
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