Humans aren't apes... but biologically how?

klutedavid said:

Hello Jimmy.

I looked up two of the so called, 'templates', you provided as links above.

If you check the underlined phrase in two of these templates provided below, we seem to be extrapolating to the extreme.

Kenyanthropus platyops (Fossils)
This species was named in 2001 from a partial skull found in Kenya with an unusual mixture of features (Leakey et al. 2001). It is aged about 3.5 million years old. The size of the skull is similar to A. afarensis and A. africanus, and has a large, flat face and small teeth.

Australopithecus garhi (Fossils)
This species was named in April 1999 (Asfaw et al. 1999). It is known from a partial skull. The skull differs from previous australopithecine species in the combination of its features, notably the extremely large size of its teeth, especially the rear ones, and a primitive skull morphology. Some nearby skeletal remains may belong to the same species. They show a humanlike ratio of the humerus and femur, but an apelike ratio of the lower and upper arm. (Groves 1999; Culotta 1999)

I would not speculate on the basis of a partial skull.

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I haven’t read up on the justification for concluding that they are separate species so for sake of argument I can agree to disregard those two.

What about the rest of them? How are they explained by creationism?

mindlight said:

Human beings are not just more developed. Our brains are better organised, have new areas, denser numbers of neurons and work in ways we cannot yet quantify to give unparalleled intelligence, Self, Other Nature and God consciousness and spirituality unique to us

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How does this stop us being apes? While we have unique aspects to our brains, that doesn't stop us being apes. Like all other apes we have some characteristics that make us unique, or we wouldn't be separate species.

'God consciousness' and 'spirituality' is not unique to humans as animals can be superstitious too Are monkeys superstitious? and it appears that a tendency to superstition can be a natural consequence of evolution. (The evolution of superstitious and superstition-like behaviour)

mindlight said:

Creation was an unanalogous supernatural event. If there is a process here it occurred over a single day. We now view the history of that event through the mutated DNA of distant descendants whose story is disrupted by fall and flood. Unless you can claim to have Adams DNA that is.

To claim any degree of certainty here is a kind of arrogance and especially when it is an explanation that cannot duplicate and which therefore does not really understand what happened.

The only honest model is an open ended set of questions and observations. Certainty is dishonest.

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As soon as you insert magic the discussion leaves what is rational. With magic everything can be explained and therefore nothing. All bets are off with the supernatural.

Thats why its an auto-loss in an scientific debate and can never be a part of science.

This is a massive post in response to another massive post. I'm not sure that I've covered every point you have raised, or that everything is a sequitur, but I've tried.

Tom Farebrother said:

As far as I know all world religions have some kind of creation story, usually involving some transition from chaos to order. For those that originated in the Ancient Near East there seems to be a correlation between the development of urban civilisation and (later) a priest class and (later still) ruling class, and the notion of moving from chaos to order.

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I am familiar with some creation stories, and looked at Wikipedia to see more. While creation from chaos is a major category of creation stories, they are many and varied. E.g.

Creation ex Nihilo
Earth Diver
Creation from Chaos
Earth Parents
Emergence Myths
Creation by Dismembering a Primordial Being

And there are more here: Creation myth - Wikipedia

There are similarities and differences between them - to put some of it very basically Sumerians, as builders of cities and industrial agricultural systems, had it that the Gods built the first cities and irrigation canals and then created man to do all the work. Then followed a process whereby the Sumerian gods jostled for position and power and various different gods came into being that represented different trades and physical things. David Rosenberg has some interesting ideas about the development of religion and religious theatre in Sumerian culture that fills some of it out a bit. In Egypt questions of creation tended to reinforce religious and royal hierarchies, e.g there’s a foundational text that asks the question ‘who (when there was only chaos) performed the rituals? There was no-one to perform the rituals’ and so on, with the idea that creation (as order) came into being with/through the performance of ritual and the establishing of ‘proper’ social hierarchies.

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This description, to me, seems closer to an atheistic explanation of religion and creation stories. From an atheist perspective, we'd expect creation stories (and religions) to reflect the societies that they came from, rather than a universal truth.

Obviously there’s more to it but that’s a general theme.
Where I think Judaism differs and is distinct is in the relational nature of the stories and teachings. It’s all about relationships. Not that other religions don’t address that, but none do so as deeply as Judaism/Christianity. The continual failures of Israel/Christians are transgressions of relationship.

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OK.

Most directly relevant is John H Walton’s ‘The Lost World of Genesis 1’. Eliade’s tome ‘a history of religion’ is relevant in a more general and speculative sense, speculative in that he went back beyond writing systems to earlier foundational beliefs there’s not much data about. As above David Rosenberg’s Abraham - the first historical biography, also the relevant sections of Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis - on Abraham in particular. These 2 don’t address the creation account as such but do provide well researched approaches to the text. Jordan Peterson seems to have a lot to say on meaning in the OT stories also, but I’ve only just started reading his stuff.

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OK. I'm not sure what I can respond to here as this looks as if you are thinking things through for yourself. I'll mention that from an atheistic perspective we can compare historically recent religions for which we know the origin (Scientology, Tenrikyo) to older religions when theorising (or wildly conjecturing) how the older religions came about.

I've looked at a review of 'The Lost World of Genesis 1', and I'm not sure it's the right thing to read for me to understand the origin of Christianity, as it appears to presuppose the truth of The Bible and is therefore not objective to my eyes. https://biologos.org/resources/books/the-lost-world-of-genesis-one-book-club

I suppose. The study of science seems to lead some people to faith, and others away from it. I think maybe it’s more about perception than proof. I don’t know. My grandad was a scientist who believed in God, that’s my only personal link. The idea of taking ‘is god necessary for the universe to exist’ as the or a reason for faith is probably a modern one that we’ve read into ancient texts.

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From my point of view, that someone is a capable scientist in one part of their life does not stop them being entirely unscientific in others. When I read the writings of those who have both a strong religious faith and a scientific background, then it looks to me if the belief hasn't come about because of the science, but in spite of it. E.g. Francis Collins. In the extreme case, we have people with a scientific background whose faith is so strong that they will clearly disregard the process of science in order to support their beliefs.

Yes although that’s a tricky one to argue. On the face of it for example the Sumerian religions with their gods for everything approach and explanations sort of like Aesop’s fables about how this or that thing came to be, seem to be about explaining the world. Put in their original context however from the point of view of a Sumerian those tales may have been perceived more as a way of defining his or her role and place in the world, rather than as an explanation of how the world works. JH Walton argues pretty convincingly I think that in the ANE material creation was not something people were concerned with, that it was perhaps just an unconscious backdrop to their preoccupation with significance, order and relationship. Balanced with that though is the whole ‘the gods are angry’ bit, e.g there’s plenty of evidence that the Sumerians, like other cultures, saw the gods as being capricious and behind natural or personal disasters etc. It’s not a straightforward picture of God’s being thought up to provide explanations. It’s ages since I waded through most of Eliade’s work but I think he tends towards that view, but Rosenberg, who is a poet and writer as well as a translator of ancient Hebrew, compares existing religious texts with literature from the same period and comes out with what I think is a broader and more credible view.
The Biblical account might seem to be an attempt to explain the physical universe, but only if interpreted through the lens of our modern preoccupation with material creation. I don’t think that was the original intent.

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From an atheist perspective, the original authors of the stories that comprise The Bible and other religious texts had a very limited knowledge of the world, and there are many things that we can be certain that they were entirely ignorant of. E.g. genetics, deep geology, the form of the universe in terms of what stars are, galaxies, etc. We do know that people are very keen to explain things and to appear wise by being able to do so. Hence, while from a Christian perspective there is a desire to work out what The Bible means when that conflicts with modern knowledge, based on a presupposition that The Bible is divinely inspired and true. However, from an atheistic point of view, I'm more likely to take the literal meaning of The Bible to be the original intent. And that errors that are therefore found in a literal interpretation being the understandable errors due to the limit of human knowledge at that time.

Yes I suppose I should learn more about evolution, if only for the sake of these discussions. I’m not attempting to argue against evolution, as far as I know it is an accurate explanation of the data. I’ll check any comments I make on it. What I was vaguely referring to there is the idea of separating belief from established fact, i.e. I believe that in some sense life and the universe is sustained and driven by God, although I have no idea what the mechanism for that is, and that could be described as a kind of teleological belief. The opposite of that would be the ‘dis-teleological’ idea that, whatever the mechanisms are, they have their origin in some kind of completely material event in which no creator or initiator played any part. The other option is of course ‘I don’t know’ but I just find holding that view as a practical position difficult to get my head around.

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It seems a minor point, but the word 'blind' in terms of evolution is a big red flag as it is among the top ten straw man arguments of Young Earth, Bible Literal, Creationists. Hence, it's hard to let it go by.

Well, of course I don’t ‘know’ that in the sense of being able to prove it empirically. I believe it to be the case, for other reasons (bear with me). Overall I think that the scientific method is perhaps the least useful way of trying to evaluate anything about the bible. I’ve read some articles in the past that indicate that some of the dietary regulations in the OT have sound nutritional principles behind them (I don’t know if that’s true or not), but, apart from that I’m not aware of anything that is in any way intentionally scientific in the bible.

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It's hard to talk science back then, as science as we know it didn't exist then. I would classify parts of The Bible as a pre-scientific attempt to explain the world based on religious beliefs. Science is an attempt to explain the world based on evidence, falsifiable theories, repeated testing, etc.

There are some things in The Bible that will be true. However, that's not unusual even from an atheist perspective as we view The Bible as being the creation of humans at a particular time. Therefore we would expect The Bible to be mute on things not known by humans at that time, but also that it would contain information known to humans then. E.g. Proverbs 23:20-21 says 'Be not among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat, for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and slumber will clothe them with rags.' Non-drinking vegan me agrees with that, but this is not beyond what we'd expect humans back there to know. Ezekiel 4:9 also gives fairly vegetarian advice, but I'm not sure about the lying on one's side for 390 days. However, these quotes are cherry picked from a vegan non-drinking perspective, and if I look at a longer list, I find as much to agree with as to disagree with: What Does the Bible Say About Nutrition?

The physical universe is simply a backdrop to what the bible is concerned with, which is relationships. That is what the bible is all about.

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My understanding of The Bible says that it is more than that. It includes morality, and an explanation of the natural (e.g. creation, diversity of life) and the supernatural (e.g. God, Jesus, The Holy Spirit.)

And not in any woolly sense, but in a real, visceral, everyday fashion. I think the latter chapters of Job put this really clearly. Putting aside the very personally/emotionally challenging nature of the material, these passages show man looking up and trying to impose his understanding on God, who then goes from the general to the specific to starkly put man in his place, finishing with a return to what is essential - relationship. There are other approaches such as establishing what might constitute proof in a legal setting etc that some authors have used well I think when examining some aspects of faith, but I think that ultimately the proof is in the living of it. Academic studies like those I’ve cited above are invaluable in understanding the how and why of it, but the bible is a book for living, and it’s only in the living of it that it can be properly understood I think. There’s a lot to that idea though I think, I mean in terms of trying to explain it, there are so many possible tangents and related ideas.

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I can see that this is your personal interpretation of The Bible and the intentions of its authors. However, while I have understood more about what you believe, I don't see an argument that should convince me to accept your interpretation as better than mine.

xianghua said:

are you talking now about "bad design"? the original claim was about common similarity. so i showed that a common similarity can point to a common designer. if you want to move to a "bad design" argument thats fine. so first we both agree that a common similarity isnt evidence for evolution.

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My point, using your analogy of Ferrari cars, is that what we see in living things is not what we would expect to see from competent, intelligent, design.

Just common similarity in itself isn't particularly strong evidence for evolution. However, the kinds of similarities that we see, e.g. see my previous reply to you, is strong evidence for evolution as it makes absolutely no sense if we posit a capable designer but complete sense if we posit biological evolution guided by feedback from the environment.

Wet Squirrel said:

Creationism is not bad logic , evolution is disproven by mutations simple as that .

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How exactly to mutations ‘prove’ evolution to be false?

Skreeper said:

Something something self-replicating robot penguins

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Oh, please.

Magical animal-cars, surely.

tas8831 said:

I am curious - why are creationists so terrified of the prospect that they might not be "special creations"?

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Because Jesus would vanish in a puff of smoke.

Which is odd because you would have thought faith would be enough.

Larnievc said:

How exactly to mutations ‘prove’ evolution to be false?

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Because most of mutations replace cytosyne / guanine into thymine and if we are thousands of years old our DNA would be containing mostly thymine . Also there are spots which try to back off the mutation in our genes which means it was better before mutation occured that's impossible according to theory of evolution .

Didn’t quite understand that . If you’re saying that natural selection suppressed a harmful mutation, that’s evolution . Or are you saying that a harmful mutation mutated back into not being harmful in subsequent generations. That’s also what we’d expect to see in evolutionary processes

Wet Squirrel said:

Because most of mutations replace cytosyne / guanine into thymine

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No they don’t.

What makes you think that?

Wet Squirrel said:

Because most of mutations replace cytosyne / guanine into thymine and if we are thousands of years old our DNA would be containing mostly thymine . Also there are spots which try to back off the mutation in our genes which means it was better before mutation occured that's impossible according to theory of evolution .

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Your post shows that you do not understand evolution and the role of mutation in it.

Mutations are put through a strong filter: survival of the fittest. It is not just a random drift.

Your last sentence appears to claim that evolution states that mutations invariably lead to improvements. Evolution does not say this. Are you claiming that it does?

If you wish to discuss evolution, then you need to have at least a basic understanding of it. Your posts suggests that you don't. You are discussing a weird theory from an unknown source, not evolution.

It took me a while but I realized long ago that creationists have their own “theory “ of evolution. Theory is in quotes since it isn’t fact based. I call it the creationist inaccurate versions of the TOE. I’ve abbreviated it as CrVTOE aka CIVTOE

Brightmoon said:

It took me a while but I realized long ago that creationists have their own “theory “ of evolution. Theory is in quotes since it isn’t fact based. I call it the creationist versions of the TOE. Aka CVTOE

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Too right! The bits you can prove we accept. The bits where you are only guessing, or explaining on the basis of reductionist or merely naturalistic assumptions, we reject or qualify based on our own eyewitness testimony of the events you are guessing about.

The creationist versions of evolution outright lie about what we actually know . It’s designed deliberately to confuse laymen about science facts so that they’ll accept the Bible ( or other holy book) version of creation stories. None of them, either the creationist versions or the Bible explain science facts accurately.

mindlight said:

Too right! The bits you can prove we accept. The bits where you are only guessing, or explaining on the basis of reductionist or merely naturalistic assumptions, we reject or qualify based on our own eyewitness testimony of the events you are guessing about.

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No. The bits that you make up that have nothing to do with the theory of evolution, we reject.

E.g.

Brightmoon said:

The creationist versions of evolution outright lie about what we actually know . It’s designed deliberately to confuse laymen about science facts so that they’ll accept the Bible ( or other holy book) version of creation stories. None of them explain science accurately.

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Surely the lie is to start with Nature rather than with God. Who after all is the basis of all reality.

Creationists have no issue with useful science. Macroevolutionary theory and Abiogenetic theory are deceptions in the hands of many evolutionists because they imply to these theories a certainty that does not exist for them and label scientific what cannot be demonstrated with the scientific method in repeatable peer reviewed experiments.

Also Evolutionary theory is pretty much irrelevant to the useful work done by science over the last few centuries in the areas of industrial production and product development, in medicine, in construction, communications, space flight and indeed military technologies.

Brightmoon said:

Theory is in quotes since it isn’t fact based.

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It is based on Marvel Comic’s X-Men publications.

This is the real reason scientists reject creationist versions of evolution - they are incompetent

mindlight said:

Surely the lie is to start with Nature rather than with God. Who after all is the basis of all reality.

Creationists have no issue with useful science. Macroevolutionary theory and Abiogenetic theory are deceptions in the hands of many evolutionists because they imply to these theories a certainty that does not exist for them and label scientific what cannot be demonstrated with the scientific method in repeatable peer reviewed experiments.

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Since there isn't any objective verifiable evidence that God is real, there is no reason to posit God as the basis of all reality.

Also Evolutionary theory is pretty much irrelevant to the useful work done by science over the last few centuries in the areas of industrial production and product development, in medicine, in construction, communications, space flight and indeed military technologies.

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Just taking one example, the ToE is vital for modern medicine, which in large part has been a battle against the evolution of disease causing organisms. Here's a Wikipedia page on Evolutionary Medicine you could start with: Evolutionary medicine - Wikipedia