Posted on 09/20/2006 9:51:34 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
No, although it's perfectly possible that it wouldn't be able to, depending on the species. Evolution is simply a change in allele frequencies over time, and I'll bet you dollars to donuts that a population of 50kya cockroaches, while morphologically similar, would have a different allele frequency distribution than an extant population. If you looked at a 100kya population, the difference in distributions would be greater. A 2mya cockroach population might still look morpholigically similar, but the difference in alelle frequency distributions would be very high.
Waiting for the ole "abiogenesis is not our problem" dodge always used by Darwinists.
Why is that? Gorillas are not human beings, nor are Chimpanzees. Since they are not human beings, they do not get to participate in human affairs.
You'd probably not survive too well dumped into the Gorillas' environment, either, with no tools or clothing. In that regard, Gorillas are better adapted to their environment than humans. Gorillas, on the other hand, would not do well participating in human activities that require our special adaptations, like intelligence.
Arm wrestle a chimp. You will lose. That means that chimps are superior to humans in arm strength. Challence a chimp to a game of chess, however, and the chimp will lose, even if you are novice player. Humans are superior to chimps at board games.
Again, we're not better than other apes...we're just different.
That's a reference to Aristotle's "final cause" of his Four Causes above.
“The final cause is an end which is not for the sake of anything else, but for the sake of which everything [else] is. So if there is to be a last term of this kind, the process will not be infinite; and if there is no such term there will be no final cause. Those who maintain an infinite series do not realize that they are destroying the very nature of the Good, although no one would try to do anything if he were not likely to reach some limit (peras); nor would there be reason in the world (nous), for the reasonable man always acts for the sake of an end — which is a limit.” [Metaphysics, Book 12, Part 7]Funny thing is the life sciences seem not to recognize formal and final causes, evidently believing instead that material and efficient causes explain everything you need to know. But as Chandra Wickramasingh has pointed out, that is tantamount to the expectation that a typhoon blowing through a junk yard will produce a Boeing 747.
Great post, SirLinksalot. Thank you so much!
The evolutionary solution would be to grow larger, taller and more wider in order to accomodate the larger brain mass, but since we do not use anywhere near the maximum capacity of the human brain, such a change is not necessary. The de-evolution of man wil be brought about by the lack of use of the brain mass capacity and is evident in many animalistic behavioral traits of humans in gangs, prisons, Democrat conventions etc.......
"Are you saying that a revived 50,000 year old cockroach would not be able to mate and produce fertile offspring with present day cockroach?"
You are, perhaps, not aware that there are numerous species of cockroaches right now on this planet. Most cannot intebreed with other species of cockroaches.
So, there is no "present-day cockroach." There are many different species in the cockroach family. Yet, we call them all cockroaches. Evolution at work.
Yes. (1 + µ)n ~ 1 only if µ=0 (micorevolution does not exist) and/or n is small (young Earth). If you accept microevolution and an old Earth, macroevolution is inescapable.
Let's cut that avenue of the critics' attack early"
Don't hassle them with facts!
Well, no. Because absolute brain size isn't as important as the ratio of brain size to body size. A basketball player isn't necessarily smarter than a tiny Ukranian grandmother. That said, humans are getting larger, but that seems to have more to do with better nutrition, better healthcare and sexual selection and less to do with an increase in intelligence.
since we do not use anywhere near the maximum capacity of the human brain, such a change is not necessary
Speak for yourself!
Are you sure of that? Perhaps a wolf can outrun a man in a short sprint, but I don't think any four-legged critter can outrun a human over distance.
Yes, over long distances, but a wolf sneaks up on it's prey so long distances are not an issue..........
I don't think wolves typically sneak up. They hunt in groups, and gang up on the weakest individual. Just like sheep herding, but with follow through.
"What do you suppose that species was like? If apes and humans evolved from the same species, wouldn't skills needed to survive and environments have been the same? I wonder why only humans have mastered the use of fire for survival? Certainly all the apes could have benefited from the use of fire.
"
I don't actually know. Perhaps someone else here can point you to fossil remains of the proto-ape. I do know that it was a mammal, and probably an ape-like critter, but more than that I cannot say.
As for the same environment, animals move in search of food, water, and to avoid overcrowding. The proto-ape moved also, no doubt.
Separation is often a trigger for separate species to emerge. Here's how it might work with the proto-ape. Remember, this is just a thought experiment, not a description of the exact process that occurred.
One group of apes lives on the edge of a lake. Another species moves to the edge of a dry, broad savannah with little water available.
As adaptation occurs through random variations in genetics, the group that lives next to the water favors the development of apes that can swim well. These would be able to gather food from the water and escape predators by swimming.
The group that lives next to the savannah might favor apes that can run well in an upright position. These would be able to chase small animals and escape predators.
As evolution proceeds further, and as populations move into different areas or conditions change, more changes take place in both populations through the adaptive process, over many, many generations. At some point, the changes become too large for the two populations to interbreed, thereby creating two new species.
Repeat this separation and adaptation for a few million years and you have chimpanzees and human beings. That's basically how it works.
The question of the use of fire is a completely separate one. Until human beings evolved to a certain intelligence level, they would not have been able to utilize fire for their purposes. Fire is a dangerous thing to most animals, and confining it for use demands human-scale intelligence. Apes other than humans do not use fire because they are incapable of doing so. They don't need it, since their diet of raw food does not require it.
I'm thinking that the required knowledge to end this dispute is apparently above and beyond our current capabilities to understand.
"You'd probably not survive too well dumped into the Gorillas' environment, either, with no tools or clothing. In that regard, Gorillas are better adapted to their environment than humans. Gorillas, on the other hand, would not do well participating in human activities that require our special adaptations, like intelligence."
Their environment? Didn't "early man" live in the same environment as gorillas? NYC did not exist 10 million years ago. And you can't say "early man" built cities because they were social and apes were not. If the environment was the same, skills needed to survive were the same, and all have social behavior then why the vast difference in the evolutionary process?
"I do wonder what you find in common with most of us."
Well, we're all human beings. Most of us live in the United States of America. We all speak and write in English. We're all interested in political matters.
Really, about the only area in which we differ is in our beliefs regarding supernatural entities.
That's not a very large difference, it seems to me.
"Didn't "early man" live in the same environment as gorillas? NYC did not exist 10 million years ago. And you can't say "early man" built cities because they were social and apes were not. "
Actually, "early man" didn't live in the same environment as gorillas. Indeed, the modern gorilla didn't even exist at that time.
"Early man" developed on savannahs, primarily, where upright bipedal locomotion was an advantage. Gorillas have always been creatures of deep forests.
"Early man" did not build cities.
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