Why are there still apes?

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

So the idea of a God who came down to earth in human form to die for you out of love so you wouldn't have to is ridiculous but this,..
View attachment 284221

turning into this,.. (Sorry guys I got a thing for this guy. XD!!)

<camp glamour puss>

is?? Which idea seems more logical to you? Oh wait never mind,.. I didn't mean to use a picture of your dear Uncle Chester. (JK )

False representation - humans didn't evolve from chimps.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Another thing what is easier to believe,.. that the whole entire universe came out of one great big fart caused by nothing or that it was created by God?

Mocking a misrepresentation of the rational case doesn't make your alternative any more convincing.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

In other words, believe this stuff...or else.

That is why folks here are so repulsed at the idea that apes could evolve to the point where they sing and dance around the campfire while dinner cooks. You have a book that tells you not to believe this. And many are afraid of what will happen if they don't believe the right things. So they cannot even think about believing something else.

But sometimes it is nice to ask questions, to explore, to ponder the possibilities, to leave the station we were given and understand life from another view. But that can not happens if one fears one will be punished for changing his or her mind on religion.

Part of the problem is that humans are loss-averse. If someone believes they will be rewarded for adhering only to a singular worldview, they may be extremely reluctant to investigate alternatives for fear of losing the reward they believe was promised.

 

[DamianWarS]

If people evolved from apes, why are there still apes?

evolution teaches apes and humans evolved from a common ancestor. so apes evolved from this common ancestor too and that's why apes are here.

 

[Tone]

Your false statements about me say more about you.

Okay, well, the way that some of you talk about it is as if you have locked it in.

So, you believe that science has much more room for growth and you are open to maybe rethinking your view on the age of things?

*Because, honestly, I believe science is somewhere in the pre-infancy stage and all its findings up for further testing.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

... they say Neanderthals were just as smart as us, but then some argue that they weren’t. Well nobody is arguing that they were more intelligent than us yet their brains were 20% larger. So this makes the progression of intelligence based on brain size argument a little suspect for me. They also say that human brain volume has a poor correlation with intelligence. So these things make me have doubts about how much weight to put on the other hominids having lower intelligence due to a smaller brain. We can’t study a non-human hominid brain they are all decomposed for thousands of years all we have is an empty skull to look at.

In primates, cranial volume is important, but also how that volume is distributed - the medial-frontal cortex and forebrain are the areas of particular interest in terms of cognitive ability, e.g. intelligence, planning, etc.

How much can we know from an empty skull?

Quite a lot - not only the relative sizes of brain as a whole, but the inside of the skull has a record of the relative sizes (and sometimes the convolutions) of the various brain areas.

... this would be a really tough situation for any species at all. Childbirth survival rates were horrible back then anyway, it isn’t like Homo sapiens were in some plush setting where it wasn’t a major problem. There are many species who stay put and don’t move around all the time not just Homo Sapiens. Ok so long infancy periods is the price you pay for having self aware cognition, so what, many species could have been given this same burden/benefit package deal.

The more severe the conditions, the stronger the selection pressures and the more rapid the evolution. Other species either did not have the characteristics that made self-aware cognition a major selective advantage, or the conditions that made it an advantage didn't persist long enough.

It being worth it is totally subjective though, yes it’s a tradeoff, but it makes no sense that out of millions of species it was only “Worth it” for a very select few in all of Earth’s history, and then on top of that the very few died off all except for Homo Sapiens. How could higher self aware intelligence NOT be worth it for 0.00000001% of species, but worth it for just one? “It was worth it” sounds ad hoc in order to hold onto the blind portion of evolution.

It's 'worth it' if it provides a reproductive advantage in some way. It was worth it for at least 6 to 8 hominid species that co-existed over roughly the same time frame. Some survived longer than others; we survived them all. It's not clear why the others dies out, but even modern humans were down to around 5,000 to 10,000 individuals at one time, so it would seem that we were extremely lucky. It may be that we were smart enough to survive when the others didn't, but it may just have been random chance.

The fact that evolution started this trend of giving a boost in cognition to about a dozen different species, and they all died off except for one, and evolution never again felt the need to repeat this process, looks very guided and goal oriented.

Evolution doesn't 'feel' anything. It's the process by which small advantages promoting reproductive success tend to spread through a population.

How does this even work exactly, if Homo Sapiens came onto the scene at let’s say 100,000 BC then what were they in 100,100 BC? If you object and say that the transition would be WAY longer than 100 yrs, well if that is the case then we would have transitional fossils.

We only have random snapshots of the evolutionary sequence. The decision to name a particular example in the sequence the first modern human is a judgement call - you see that a particular fossil has almost all the distinguishing characteristics of contemporary humans, and earlier fossils either lack some of those characteristics or has them in less well-developed forms. There will almost certainly be fossils prior to that 'first modern human' that could deserve the label, but we only have access to a tiny number overall. The picture is complicated by the branching of the hominid lineage and the interbreeding of various branches - we have genes from Neanderthals, Denisovans, and at least one other, as yet unknown, species.

But even if we had access to fossils of every generation back to the common ancestor primate, we'd still want to mark some point in the sequence as the first modern human, just as we find it necessary to mark the transition from childhood to adulthood at some arbitrary age in the late teens or early 20s.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Okay, well, the way that some of you talk about it is as if you have locked it in.

The science of some aspects of the world are sufficiently well established that they are beyond reasonable doubt. When a theory is confirmed by 150-odd years of continuous observations, experiments, and successful predictions, has become the foundation of a major scientific field, and is used extensively to provide practical solutions to improve the lives of billions, it's considered unlikely to be fundamentally wrong, although refinement and extension is likely to continue.

So, you believe that science has much more room for growth and you are open to maybe rethinking your view on the age of things?

Science does have much more room for growth; the more we discover and understand, the more there is to discover and understand; but - as mentioned above - some aspects of what we know of the world are so well-established that only discoveries about the nature of reality itself are likely to change them, in which case it becomes a metaphysical or philosophical question.

For example, the Simulation Hypothesis, that we are part of a simulation of a universe or consciousness, would make the age of the Earth and the universe itself meaningless, as such a simulation could be started at any point and at an unknown time in the simulator's universe.

OTOH, in the absence of evidence of such speculative ideas, including the God hypothesis, a reasonable person might be inclined to take reality as it reliably appears to be until there is plausible and convincing evidence otherwise.

 

[doubtingmerle]

So, you believe that science has much more room for growth and you are open to maybe rethinking your view on the age of things?

Of course there is room for growth in science. But judging by your previous posts, you seem to be suggesting that scientists should grow up and give equal weight to young earth arguments as they do to the old ages determined by science.

As I explained to you before, young earth arguments are based on faulty reasoning. They make invalid extrapolations or assumptions that invalidate their conclusions. Your response is that evolutionists make invalid assumptions also. Scientists sometimes make errors, sure, but the whole process of science works to correct those errors. When the errors are sorted out, we are left with an overwhelming array of evidence that all confidently points to the same conclusion, that most rock layers down there are many millions of years old.

As it relates to this thread, fossils like australopithecus and homo habilis date over 1.5 million years old. So no, you are not going to get anywhere by saying scientists should grow up and give equal weight to the idea that these are extinct apes that lived 6000 years ago.

 

[Hans Blaster]

We are told there are 3 classes of animals; cattle, creeping and beast

So which kind of animal are we? Cattle, creeping, or beast?

 

[Tone]

So which kind of animal are we? Cattle, creeping, or beast?

Animalia Noner.

Now, if we all agree and write this in the books it will be so. This is how education works!

 

[Tone]

scientists should grow up

You're taking it too personal.

by saying scientists should grow up and give equal weight to the idea that these are extinct apes that lived 6000 years ago.

This is not what I said at all.

*Science, as we know it is what 300 years old?

And you believe the earth is how old?

Like I said, pre-infancy...

 

[Hans Blaster]

Animalia Noner.

Now, if we all agree and write this in the books it will be so. This is how education works!

I take it this is your attempt to invent pseudo-Latin for "none of the above".

Why should we agree to this classification. It is meaningless set of criteria that are poorly defined. (What is "beast" just something that is not tamed by man and doesn't "creep"?)

See you later fellow beasts!

 

[Hans Blaster]

*Science, as we know it is what 300 years old?

And you believe the earth is how old?

Like I said, pre-infancy...

And so?

The age of a thing does not set its maturity.

What exactly has theology accomplished in those last 300 years to improve our understanding of the world?

 

[Tone]

And so?

The age of a thing does not set its maturity.

What exactly has theology accomplished in those last 300 years to improve our understanding of the world?

You do know that science wouldn't even be conceived apart from theology right?

 

[Hans Blaster]

You do know that science wouldn't even be conceived apart from theology right?

Thanks. I needed that laugh.

 

[Tone]

Thanks. I needed that laugh.

Are you laughing before you've completed your research?

 

[Hans Blaster]

Are you laughing before you've completed your research?

No, I just think it's amusing that you think the conception of science derived from theology.

 

[coffee4u]

So which kind of animal are we? Cattle, creeping, or beast?

Neither as you already know. God had completely finished with creating animals then he made humans.

 

[April_Rose]

Neither as you already know. God had completely finished with creating animals then he made humans.

Now that's where it gets confusing because scientifically speaking humans are animals. We're different from them in some ways but we're not in other ways.

 

[coffee4u]

Now that's where it gets confusing because scientifically speaking humans are animals. We're different from them in some ways but we're not in other ways.

Scienticly speaking by who? By human beings who decided and labelled us so. Doesn't mean they are correct. God says that animals are one kind of flesh and humans another.