'Astonishing' skull unearthed in Africa

BBC Online ^ | 10 July, 2002 | Ivan Noble

[ccmay]

Show me evidence that God exists.

I believe in God, and I believe in evolution or something like it. The two are not mutually exclusive. Religious affairs are outside the province of science, and it is as foolish to ask for proof of God's existence as it is to ask for proof of His non-existence.

-ccm

[Dan Day]

There is no evidence, repeat again, no evidence, that any species every evolved into another species.

Repeat, no evidence. Zero, zip, nada.

Your assertion is, to use your own phrase, Barbra Streisand.

There's an enormous amount of evidence:

Macroevolution FAQ

29+ Evidences for Macroevolution - The Scientific Case for Common Descent
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution -- Part 1: The One True Phylogenetic Tree
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution -- Part 2: Past History
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution -- Part 3: The Opportunistic Nature of Evolution and Evolutionary Constraint
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution -- Part 4: The Molecular Sequence Evidence
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution -- Part 5: Change and Mutability
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution -- Closing Remarks
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: Scientific Proof?

Observed Instances of Speciation
Some More Observed Speciation Events

Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ Part 1A
Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ Part 1B
Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ Part 2A
Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ Part 2B
Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ Part 2C

The Origin of Whales and the Power of Independent Evidence
Fossil Horses FAQs
The Natural History of Marsupials
Archaeopteryx FAQs
Fossil Hominids: The Evidence for Human Evolution

Evidence for Evolution: An Eclectic Survey
Plagiarized Errors and Molecular Genetics
Evidence for Jury-Rigged Design in Nature

Introduction to Evolutionary Biology
Charles Darwin on Phylogeny and "Tree-thinking"
Evolution is a Fact and a Theory
Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution

Read them and learn something.

And those are just the overview pages on the evidence for speciation from ONE website oriented towards laymen.

I could *bury* you in links to the technical papers and scientific studies where the real heavy-duty evidence gets presented...

You don't necessarily have to agree with every piece of evidence, but for you to say that there is "no evidence, zero, zip, nada" for speciation displays amazing ignorance of the huge body of evidence for speciation via evolution.

[ccmay]

Awesome post Dan. Three cheers for science and reason.

-ccm

[Dan Day]

Here we go again. How many years will it take for this one to be declared a fraud?

Wow. One fraud fossil way back in 1912, and now you're ready to declare them all fakes, despite the hundreds of genuine ones from 1856 to modern day.

You might want to get your paranoia checked.

[Dan Day]

[... combination of modern and ancient features.]

That just bent the pin on my bullsh!t detector. Just what the world needs, yet another archeological find that turns out to be manufactured.

Excuse me, "yet another"? Just how many do you think there have been? To date there has been one, and that was way back in 1912.

And guess who uncovered and publicized the fraud? Scientists did.

Furthermore, a "combination of modern and ancient features" should in no way "bend the pin on your bullsh!t detector", because that's *exactly* what one would expect to see in genuine transitional fossils.

If that sort of thing raises alarms in you, then you don't know anything about archeology.

[danmar]

Credit him with creating a perfectly self-regulating system capabale of infinite speciation!

...well said my friend,...very well said indeed! I do subscribe to that point of view!

[PatrickHenry]

Me:
"There's no law that says every species must change into something else."

You:
Come now. That is a very simple cop-out. If one species evolves, others must as well. Life is life. It doesn't pick and choose.

Whoever taught you evolution should be taken out and shot for incompentence.

[Mamzelle]

re:Otherwise this wouldn't be described in such glowing terms.)))

As the monkeys (extra-evolved) said in Kipling's "Jungle Book"--"All of us believe it, so it must be true." This must be the definitive missing link, or they wouldn't be so excited.

A neat little piece of circular reasoning there...which is why I always hesitate to put my trust in the latest vogue of the "non-accountable" sciences. Find me a nice control group, and I'll take you more seriously.

Non-accountable scientists include much of the theorists of the origins of life, matter and humanity. They find thigh bones and suddenly are telling me that the bone's owners can talk and build houses. They find some pollen with a corpse and claim elaborate funeral rituals, complete, I suppose, with an elegy in iambic pentameter. Who's to say they're wrong? Are they not plausible? And don't get me started on the Big Bang.

A pharmiceudical company developing a possibly dangerous, possibly miraculous, new drug won't write in fanciful language, but in tediously qualified exposition. An engineer responsible for a bridge which must safely carry millions won't engage in whimsical speculation...but these are the accountable scientists.

[Elsie]

No. Modern, self-correcting dating methods have an uncertainty of only about 1%.

---

WHY does this make me a bit uneasy?

[Elsie]

Show me evidence that God exists.

Thomas! Where have you been?!

[DrCarl]

>and it is as foolish to ask for proof of God's existence as it is to ask for proof of His non-existence.

No, it is foolish to adhere to a theory without a shred of evidence to support it. "Faith" that God exists is much more foolish than faith that a spouse is loyal, for example, because in the case of the spouse, you have history at the foundation of your faith. But in the case of faith in God, you have nothing at the foundation of the faith but a fear of your own mortality and a personal need for supervision.

[Dan Day]

[No. Modern, self-correcting dating methods have an uncertainty of only about 1%.]

WHY does this make me a bit uneasy?

Most probably because you're taking it the wrong way.

Check out Isochron Dating and Watching a Rock Age on an Isochron Diagram

[Elsie]

There never was a logical reason to think there was.

Yeah..... 'Logic' says it all created itself!

---

NIV Deuteronomy 32:39
 39.  "See now that I myself am He! There is no god besides me. I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand.

 

 

NIV 2 Samuel 7:22
 22.  "How great you are, O Sovereign LORD! There is no one like you, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears.

 

 

NIV 2 Kings 1:3-4
 3.  But the angel of the LORD said to Elijah the Tishbite, "Go up and meet the messengers of the king of Samaria and ask them, `Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going off to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron?'
 4.  Therefore this is what the LORD says: `You will not leave the bed you are lying on. You will certainly die!'" So Elijah went.

 

 

NIV 1 Chronicles 17:20
20.  "There is no one like you, O LORD, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears.

 

 

NIV Psalms 14:1-2
 1.  The fool  says in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.
 2.  The LORD looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God.

[Elsie]

-

Modern Chimp Skull vs. 7 Million year old skull

[Elsie]

I believe in God, and I believe in evolution or something like it. The two are not mutually exclusive. Religious affairs are outside the province of science, and it is as foolish to ask for proof of God's existence as it is to ask for proof of His non-existence.

Well, they are if you believe JESUS is God.

[Elsie]

(From the chart on the right.............)

"Scientists are having difficulty working out how the different hominids relate to each other."

DUH!

[Elsie]

(from Talkorigins faq page)

---

 

I thought evolution was just a theory. Why do you call it a fact?

Biological evolution is a change in the genetic characteristics of a population over time. That this happens is a fact. Biological evolution also refers to the common descent of living organisms from shared ancestors. The evidence for historical evolution -- genetic, fossil, anatomical, etc. -- is so overwhelming that it is also considered a fact. The theory of evolution describes the mechanisms that cause evolution. So evolution is both a fact and a theory.

---

I was wrong!  You CAN have it both ways!!!!

[Taliesan]

They find thigh bones and suddenly are telling me that the bone's owners can talk and build houses. They find some pollen with a corpse and claim elaborate funeral rituals, complete, I suppose, with an elegy in iambic pentameter.

It was Chesterton who commented that he wouldn't be surprised to hear that scientists had lunch with an undistributed middle.

[Taliesan]

But in the case of faith in God, you have nothing at the foundation of the faith but a fear of your own mortality and a personal need for supervision.

Oh, you're welcome to your opinion, but you're just ignorant.

A. The simplest etiology which accounts for all the data is the one to be preferred.

B. Man displays a supra-physical dimension in a myriad of culturally empirical ways. These phenomena are data to be explained, just as much as variations in phenotypes are data to be explained.

C. Descriptions of physical processes, proffered as etiologies of intangible characteristics, are inevitably circular because they cannot embrace the describing subject in the model, and the existence of the describing subject is data to be explained.

This circularity is infinitally regressive, and has been demonstrated so many times that it bores literate people to have to go through the exercise yet one more time.

To reason that effect flows from cause and to extrapolate from the observation of intangibles to an intangible Cause may be an error, but it is demonstrably not necessarily rooted in the two motives you picked off the top of your head.

Intelligent folks may disagree that the postulate "God" is the best explanation of the data, or you may argue that the postulate is logically unecessary, but that is a debate over rival cognitive views of data.

To dismiss one side of this historical debate with a blanket attribution such as "fear of your own mortality and a personal need for supervision" is intellectually lazy. Some of us actually think the hypothesis "God" is required by the data. I suspect we define "data" differently, and that your conclusion lies just under the surface of your premise like a hominid skull glinting in the desert sun.

It's just as easy, and just as baseless and lazy, to say those who don't believe in God just have, like my three-year-old, a personal need to own a universe, and their intellect functions as the scaffold for the universe they feel least supervised in.

Don't be so cavalier.

[Licensed-To-Carry]

I used to be an evolusionist like you guys. I also like to play blackjack, you know, the odds and probability thing.

At this point now, I belive the odds of evolution really being THE explanation for life on earth are so remote and far fetched as to be laughable.

You have given me many links to read that you consider to be evidence of evolution.

Well go read a book called "Rare Earth" by Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee and see if you still consider evolution as the be all and end all for existence.