It Is an opinion because they do not KNOW.
Saying that 99.99% certainty is "just an opinion" is a gross misrepresentation of science overall. By your definition, the only thing that isn't "just an opinion" is how mathematical equations work.
Because it is believed and taught does not make it true.
No, but a minuscule chance of a given conclusion being wrong doesn't make it any less absurd to act as if it's highly probable that this conclusion is wrong, "it's just an opinion".
There is no evidence on the earth a segment of such magnitude was ever broken off (even by a huge Astroid or Meteor) and flung only so far into space.
The Earth's tilts. Planetary tilts are caused by collisions with large objects. The reason why our planet doesn't have a giant scar is because it wasn't done forming yet when this happened. It's like you are claiming that since a cake I baked doesn't have a noticeable chunk missing that I couldn't have removed some of the batter at any point, even though I could have easily done so before I put it into the oven and the result would have only been a smaller cake, not a misshapen one.
Had the moon not always been there (causing a gyroscope effect) we would have been pulled closer to the Sun and life would never have happened.
No, we would have been pulled closer to the sun if the mass of the moon was missing (that is, when that mass was a part of the planet, it had the same impact on the distance). What you are thinking of is how the moon-Earth dynamic results in a much rounder orbit. So, if the lunar mass had remained a part of this planet instead, seasonal changes would be more dramatic. This wouldn't necessarily have made life impossible on this planet, though.
The statement Tas made was “Opinions that are premised on desires (NOT EVIDENCE) have no weight to them, they can be dismissed.” So having no evidence of the assumption based conclusion renders it dismessable (though I still place it in the “considerable” category, by HIS definition it must be dismissed)
Evidence that the moon was once a part of this planet:
1. a level of chemical composition similarity that is beyond the realm of "reasonable coincidence".
2. The Earth's tilt; an indication that the planet endured a massive collision at some point. With the fact that the surface doesn't have a lasting scar from it, it is reasonable to conclude that this happened while the planet was still developing.
3. The moon is too large for a planet our size to have captured it as a foreign celestial body.
These are evidence, whether you like it or not. Also, who was "desiring" this explanation? Out of all the physically possible ones, this has to be the most boring explanation. A deity or aliens putting it there would be infinitely cooler.
Again it IS an opinion! There are ZERO fossil examples of fibians or amphibish anywhere.
Tiktaalik is one, whether you like it or not. Asking for Animorphs is asking for the wrong thing.
a) a premise based on a presupposition (hence the desire) that the hypothesis is true (or obvious according to some)
Give 1 reason people would actually WANT evolution to be true. And no garbage like "not wanting to be accountable to some deity" or whatnot. Because all the reasons I can think of to want the theory of evolution to be accurate involve practical applications; the sorts of things that don't work if the theory isn't a good representation of reality.
b) the hypothesis being believed and accepted as truth before any such so-called evidence was produced influences the interpretation to fit the theoretical premise
I see a lot of that from Answers in Genesis.
was found by Mary Leaky around 750 feet away from (and 50 feet down) from the remains of some early stone tools that had footprints leafing away from them. The sparse Zinj fossils were unquestionably australopithicene (small cranial size and all).
Pfft, how old is your source? That species hasn't been called that in years. You're talking about Paranthropus boisei. Also, it's NOT a species thought to have used stone tools, though it is not impossible, given that there are stone tools near the bodies. However, there are also species in the genus Homo in that same rock layer, so the tools are generally attributed to them.
Apes do not make stone tools (even now after millions of years). They may use stones as tools and sharpen sticks to get at gnats and so on but that is magnitudes different.
I looked this up, and you are straight up wrong; chimpanzees do actually shape stones to use them as tools. Just not a whole lot, though there is actual evidence via remains depicting that chimps have been using stone tools for at least a few thousand years. Bonobos make tools as well, here is a video of that:
Yes some apes NOW use tools, perhaps their puny intellects are finally developing, and maybe some always did (though we have no evidence) but the case I am referring to is when 750 feet (almost a football field away) from stone tools (the tools found near the Laetoli footprints) the Leakys found the upper remains of a young female ape. Their conclusion (based on the preconcluded assumption that there were no humans in that time period AND eager for funding) that this implied that this young ape or her family made the tools and used them.
I have no idea if they concluded those tools were made by the species they found or not, but the modern consensus goes against it. So, why should I care?
So sad you have been fooled! Have you ever seen what we actually found for the fossil? You could not possibly conclude as you have done, with any sense of assurance if you had. What we found was only mostly the head of the creature and some of the top of the body, and IT was quite flattened and splintered.
Your description doesn't fit the fossil finds of any of the species we have been discussing. In fact, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you went out of your way to pick species which have remarkably intact fossil remains.
A German team sent to Java to investigate, shortly thereafter, unearthed thousands of cubic meters of material, sending crates of fossils back to Germany, Dubois himself refused cooperation with the expedition, and refused to let them examine the actual bones he had found. No evidence of Dubois’ Java man could be found! Dr. Carthaus, a geologist on the expedition, after only finding ape remains (mostly like gibbons or orangutan) mixed among possibly human remains, concluded that Dubois’ Java man did not exist. (See Nature, volume 87, page 50).
These fossils were later removed from Dubois's possession, and have been accessible for analysis since 1900. Historical context: in the late 1800s, there was a huge rush to find missing links in the human fossil record. Dubois did find a tooth, a skull cap, and a thigh bone, but critics claimed it wasn't good enough to warrant labeling the find as "a missing link". Dubois did not help his cause, ultimately; he erroneously depicted the creature he found as being more similar in structure to a gibbon in order to try and portray it more as a missing link. Link to the fossil, under an old name for it
File:Pithecanthropus erectus-PeterMaas Naturalis.jpg - Wikipedia
Looking at it, it's kinda funny, since he managed to find only bones that would, by themselves, look fairly human XD
Later Professor Emil Selenka’s team investigating the stone marked site of Dubois as well as the surrounding area, dug down an additional 35 feet and also failed to find even one more example. Why? Well later when scientists themselves rebuked his claim (though sadly still in some texts) they found he combined two unrelated fossil fragments and failed to report the two human like skulls (the Wadjak skulls) he had found at the same site (and had hid for 30 years from the scientific community).
Interesting thing about Dubois; he really, really wanted his discovery to be of a less human-like creature than it actually was. I'm not sure why you are focusing on the failings of a man that never influenced the entire scientific community, or even a notable portion of it, with his stubborn denial.
The skull cap and molars (totally ape) were found on one occasion, and then later, about 50 feet away (still in level D however), they found the femur (equal to any human though slightly thicker) and instead of seeing it as possible evidence of early HUMANS existing at the same time as this other creature (which would be against the conclusion that would get funded) they fit the two unrelated finds into the theory (typical of bad science), and so erroneously insisted they belonged to the same creature and presented it as proof of an ape-like creature that was upright and bi-pedal like a human (remember poor Ota Benga). Then Ralph von Koenigswald (a Paleontologist) found a definitely human skull cap from the same time period as Dubois’ Java man in the same area (but these truths do not make it into the textbooks for open minded consideration). The Mojokerto child skull cap (found by von Koenigswald later still) was also clearly human (he named it Pithecanthropus modjokertensis), but Dubois (the pedagoguery’s current hero at the time) protested that Pithecanthropus was not a human but an "ape-man" (do you see how the theory was used to interpret the data? Come on now….you know that is bad science)….see Theunissen, Bert (Jan 1, 1989), Eugène Dubois and the Ape-Man from Java: The History of the First `Missing Link' and Its Discoverer,(Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 161–162).
Based on analysis much later, they all are considered to belong to Homo erectus. FYI, all members of the genus Homo are called "human", regardless of species. I know, it's stupid, but people do that.
Yes possibly just a variety of Erectus but the re-naming and conclusion was made and accepted before these others were found which were then placed in this category. He was first named after a contrived combination of various bones from different countries (a mock creature that one cannot possibly know actually existed)...other skulls found from similar geological layers HAVE been so classified (now some from Africa).
Incorrect history of the naming and discovery of this species; the first fossil discovered was that half of the lower jaw in 1907, and the species was named then; the second find was a nearly complete skull (just missing a lower jaw) that was originally labelled as a different species but is currently considered to be a Homo heidelbergensis skull. Most of the fossils of this species are skulls or skulls in addition to other bones, there really isn't a lot of room for "a mishmash identity" here.
How about Richard Leaky's "The First Europeans", National Geographic, July 1997, page 108, which is a really imaginatively contrived composite (totally imagined, and I believe engineered to shape public opinion) based on the Boxgrove find (a few bones), the Heidelberg jaw (which may be Erectus or Ape due to the simian ridge), and a needed, sent for, and purchased, Bodo Ethiopian skull. Sounds a bit like Frankenstein...
1. you are communicating the finds incorrectly. At the Boxgrove site specifically, a tibia and some teeth were found. However, Homo heidelbergensis fossil skulls had already been discovered prior to the findings of this site.
2. Simian ridge... are you talking about the simian shelf seen in the jaws of many apes? If you are, I find no sources that suggest Homo heidelbergensis has such a structure in the jaw, or any mention of any controversial jaw fossil attributed to this species. I've looked at the jaws and compared them to both our species and that of Homo erectus (which does have the simian shelf) and... I'm actually at a bit of a loss. Homo heidelbergensis has a remarkably vertical front to the jaw, lacking the distinctive chin of our species and lacking the curvature I see in Homo erectus. I actually cannot tell if Homo heidelbergensis would count as having a simian shelf or not. If there is such a jaw, it would be understandable that there is some debate on the identity of it because of the presence of a simian shelf.
3. There have been plenty of skulls and jaws discovered of this species, so I have no idea why one would need to purchase either; usually, approximations based on other fossils are used to make casts to fill in the missing segments of fossil, since a jaw from one individual and the skull of another wouldn't likely be a good fit, for the reasons of variation within populations.
Nope not Lucy...you remember the half-naked African guy with the huge artistically derived mask on the cover? No? Oh ho....that’s hilarious propaganda...you have to see it for yourself...had so many talking for years and it was shown in schools as proof (that is where I first saw it). And why is the most primitive always a black man and the allegedly most “evolved” always a white man? Go figure (remember poor Ota)...Time Magazine, “How Man became Man” (Leaky 1977)
Oh yes, so funny, before the human genome was even sequenced. Ugh, why are you harping on about views discarded over a decade ago? Furthermore, is there a reason you aren't mentioning what species this is supposed to reference? Are you seriously going to try to make me track down your source that's older than I am just so that I can properly address it? This isn't a peer reviewed paper, you don't have to do citations, just link your sources.
Recall that I am 22, and thus have had no experiences from before 1995.
