Smithsonian opens $21M human evolution hall

hosted ^ | Mar 17 | BRETT ZONGKER

[JoeProBono]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History is opening a new permanent exhibit exploring human evolution over 6 million years.

The nearly $21 million Hall of Human Origins opens Wednesday. It will include more than 285 fossils and artifacts, including the only Neanderthal skeleton in the United States....

[JoeProBono]

A reconstructed Neanderthal skeleton, right, and a modern version of a Homo sapiens skeleton

[Ingtar]

$21 million more wasted.

[Pan_Yan]

... including the only Neanderthal skeleton in the United States ...

Lincoln Chafee left the country?

[JoeProBono]

[stormer]

Why do you say that?

[spetznaz]

Maybe they should have included a model of humans walking with dinosaurs ...maybe even riding one. Only way they could waste more, but that idea was already taken.

[rjsimmon]

[Constitution Day]

“Where’s my jacket? It’s suede, with a fringe...”

[The Comedian]

Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.

[JoeProBono]

[Reeses]

As much as I dislike leftists, human-style evolution started at the point the first humanoid tribe envied another tribe's wealth, starting tribal warfare. We'd still be eating grubs from a stick if it wasn't for leftists trying to destroy the more successful grub hunters.

[Ingtar]

$21 million for an exhibit on only one side of a controversial issue. It would be the same as opening a pro-abortion museum on the public dime. (Or the same as apologizing to the Japanese for WWII that they did in that exhibit.) I guess it is $21 million of our money not wasted on other things, but it is still wasted.

[stormer]

Controversial? The Theory of Evolution is among the most studied and sound concepts in science. The only people who think it is controversial are either people who don’t understand biology or those who want to push a religious agenda under the guise of science.

[Varda]

Cool. This is something I'll visit sometime. Here's a link, David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins

[US Navy Vet]

The Smithsonian has always been one of the leading purveyors of the Government Sponsored Evolution “Religion:.

[Ingtar]

Gallup Poll 2007 May 21-24

Now thinking about how human beings came to exist on Earth, do you, personally, believe in evolution, or not?

Yes 49
No 48
Undecided 2

Can you get more divided than that?

By the way, for Republicans it was 30% yes and 68% no. The only reason it came close to even overall was the typical oversampling of Democrats.

[stormer]

Wow. 64% of Americans believe that space aliens have had contact with human beings, 50% believe aliens have abducted humans, and 37% believe the aliens have contacted the US government. Good thing science doesn't rely on polling.

[Ingtar]

Controversial is what I was saying. What I meant was controversial among the general public, not among the scientific community. (Who, by the way, are famous now for their belief in the Theory of Global Warming.)

[Reeses]

Controversial? The Theory of Evolution is among the most studied and sound concepts in science.

No, cynics have a very valid point: humans could not have evolved from natural selection alone in the timeframe they did. And many evolutionists simply can't handle the truth. The evolutionary pressure that drove human evolution, while leaving the evolution of other animals untouched, is tribal warfare. Many academians cannot accept that modern humans are violent war makers by nature any more than cynics can accept natural selection caused intelligent humans to pop out of the background so fast. Until scientists do the math and discover that humans are fundamentally nasty creatures and that eglatarian socialism could never work, the theory of human evolution is flawed.

[allmendream]

Tribal warfare is an example of selective pressure; i.e. natural selection.

Six million years is plenty of time for humans to differentiate themselves from the closest related species, chimpanzees, by 2% in genetic DNA and 6% in genomic DNA. The observed rate of mutation is both necessary and sufficient to effect this amount of change over six million years.