The Fossils for Human Evolution

renniks said:

Lol, that's your opinion. Which is worth exactly what I paid for it.

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And your opinions on what is or isn't correct in science is equally worthless.
So, level playing field at least.

renniks said:

If supposed human ancestors aren't that at all, why would I believe that the ToE is legitimate?

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Because the theory of evolution was developed without regard to human evolution and the subsequent evidence gathered in support of it has only a tiny percentage related to human evolution. Frankly, apart from anthropologists most biologists have very little interest in the possibility of human evolution. It only get discussed so much on forums like this because you chaps keep bringing it up. I'd far rather be talking about the latest info. on on graptolite extinction, or suture evolution in ammonites.

sesquiterpene said:

Many, many years ago I came across a thread in the Usenet group sci.anthropology about the aquatic ape theory. In it the professional scientists were schooling a clueless newbie about some of the finer points of anthropology and why they showed the AAT to be wrong. I found it very educational because I was a clueless newbie concerning anthropology - and still am.

I was many messages into the thread before I realized the clueless newbie, one Elaine Morgan, had actually written an entire book advocating the Aquatic Ape Theory, despite being completely clueless. Every time I see the AAT mentioned I think back to that thread and say to myself, fairly or not, "clueless newbie!"

It looks like her book The Aquatic Ape came out in 1982. I probably was reading the thread in the early 1990s.

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It's always interesting the people who you come across on the internet in the early days.

One of the people who I used to debate online with in the late 1990s on military history and general history forums has since gone on to become a US state senator (and his views appear to have changed very, very little - and more's the pity, because the stuff he used to write was a combination of yeesh and yikes). Another now has a rather successful youtube channel (million plus subscribers), but I'll always remember him as the man who advocated blanket nuclear strikes in the Middle East in response to the 9/11 attacks.

renniks said:

For example, Owen Lovejoy, who worked with Johanson analyzing the Lucy fossils disagree with his assessment of them.

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The bones they point to are fragmented and incomplete skeletons often mixes of human and primates bones.

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Do you have a reference for Lovejoy saying anything like your original claim?

renniks said:

For example, Owen Lovejoy, who worked with Johanson analyzing the Lucy fossils disagree with his assessment of them.

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Which was a difference of opinion as to whether Lucy's locomotion was more upright or not.

Really, if you're going to make statements like that then you need to check to see what the disagreement was about. If you don't, people will assume either that you are hiding what you know to be true or you had no idea about what you were talking about. I'm really not sure which is the case here (although I tend to the latter as it simply confirms previous impressions).

"The new specimen’s skeleton reveals that it is a highly evolved biped. “It turns out that some of ‘Lucy’s’ characters, which were argued to indicate that she was not fully adapted to upright walking, were in fact just due to her unusually small size,” Lovejoy explained. “‘Kadanuumuu’ corrects those impressions. It also tells us that the shoulder and thorax of Lucy’s species were very different from those of chimpanzees. These findings further confirm what we concluded from ‘Ardi’ – that chimpanzees have undergone a great deal of specialized evolution since we shared a last common ancestor with them.” " Lovejoy Helps Introduce New Early Hominid Skeleton

You guys keep missing the blazingly obvious fact that if you offer up a genuine scientist to deny a particular facet of the evolutionary process, that scientist's work - the very reason why he or she gets out of bed in the morning, will be directly opposed to what you are trying to propose. And it's a few seconds work to show that. And what you are left with is your original statement that this is a person we should trust.

So is Lovejoy a person whose opinion on anthropology we should trust (check out the bolded part)? If so, your views on evolution are seen to be worthless. If not, then your argument above is equally worthless.

I guess what you can now do to get yourself out of the corner into which you have painted yourself is to find someone who disagrees with some aspect of Lovejoy's work and we can do the dance again. Or you can ignore this post and hope that people forget how wrong you've been shown to be.

I recommend the second approach. But I'd have more fun with the first.

Humble_Disciple said:

You might be among God's elect without even realizing it yet. But you will not receive the gift of faith until you soften your heart, and then the Holy Spirit will do the rest.

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Curses. Must be something wrong with my connection these last couple of days. The posts I put up in response to yours are obviously not getting through. Let's try again...

Do you accept this statement? It's from the link you gave.

"It is now proven by mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosomal DNA, to nearly everyone’s satisfaction, that all living humans descended from a small population that lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago."

Humble_Disciple said:

This article is the most stunning admission for the lack of fossil evidence for human evolution that I've ever read. The author presents his own alternative, the aquatic ape theory, which he admits cannot possibly be demonstrated by fossil evidence.

It seems really desperate that he would even present an alternative to the mainstream view, while admitting that it cannot be supported by the evidence, just to maintain his belief in human evolution.

Acclaimed fossils might not depict human evolution

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Get back to us when you have something more than a little bit stronger. This appears to be rather "weak tea" since there does not to be any real evidence for this WAG.

Those who believe in special creation aren't ignorant or stupid. They just look at the evidence without a presupposition of naturalism and reductionism, and as a result, it comes up lacking.

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You are only half right. Stupid, probably not. There are many creationists that are not stupid. But ignorant, one is pretty much force to be either ignorant or dishonest to be a creationist. Tell my, why do you focus on the fossil evidence? Do you know that fossil evidence was not the original evidence for evolution. It is far from the only evidence and it is not even the strongest evidence. It is only the most obvious evidence for evolution that amateurs can understand. This is why your own post tells us that you lack an education about evolution, what the evidence is for it, and how it works.


There is no scientific evidence for creationism. And you can probably prove it:

What reasonable test could possibly refute creationism?

renniks said:

Um, wrong. If a find isn't legitimate, then obviously nothing connected to it is legitimate.

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This is called a black and white fallacy.

Bradskii said:

You guys keep missing the blazingly obvious fact that if you offer up a genuine scientist to deny a particular facet of the evolutionary process, that scientist's work - the very reason why he or she gets out of bed in the morning, will be directly opposed to what you are trying to propose.

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Big deal. You totally missed the point. If the evolutionary scientists can't agree on much of anything, it casts doubt on the whole find and on the whole ToE paradigm.

essentialsaltes said:

Do you have a reference for Lovejoy saying anything like your original claim?

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Look it up.

Ophiolite said:

Because the theory of evolution was developed without regard to human evolution and the subsequent evidence gathered in support of it has only a tiny percentage related to human evolution. Frankly, apart from anthropologists most biologists have very little interest in the possibility of human evolution. It only get discussed so much on forums like this because you chaps keep bringing it up. I'd far rather be talking about the latest info. on on graptolite extinction, or suture evolution in ammonites.

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If one part is incorrect, why would I accept the same idea about another species. Perhaps the whole paradigm is what is actually incorrect.

renniks said:

Big deal. You totally missed the point. If the evolutionary scientists can't agree on much of anything, it casts doubt on the whole find and on the whole ToE paradigm.

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They were disagreeing on a very minor point in how upright one of our ancestors walked. One of our ancestors which they both agreed came from a common ancestor we share with chimpanzees.

Leakey: I think she walked upright most of the time.
Lovejoy: No, Louis. I don't think it was that often. But here's another example which did.
Rennicks: Hah! They can't agree. Therefore the evolutionary paradigm crumbles!

Sometimes it needs a condensed version of your argument to show how nonsensical it actually is. You should become a flat earther. You'd kill it.

A: The planet is an irregularly shaped ellipsoid.
B: Actually, I'd say it was more an oblate spheroid.
Rennicks: Hah! They can't agree. Therefore the earth is flat!

renniks said:

Big deal. You totally missed the point. If the evolutionary scientists can't agree on much of anything, it casts doubt on the whole find and on the whole ToE paradigm.

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There is only debate on relatively minor details. And this one does not appear to be well accepted yet. There is far less diversity of opinion in evolution than there is in Christianity. By your standards that casts extreme doubt on the whole Christian paradigm.

renniks said:

If one part is incorrect, why would I accept the same idea about another species. Perhaps the whole paradigm is what is actually incorrect.

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I love it how by your standards Christianity is false. It would help you quite a bit if you reasoned consistently. You need to apply the same standards.

renniks said:

Look it up.

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Didn't think so. Bradskii has already alluded to the nothingburger your gross exaggeration is based on.

Bradskii said:

They were disagreeing on a very minor point in how upright one of our ancestors walked. One of our ancestors which they both agreed came from a common ancestor we share with chimpanzees.

Leakey: I think she walked upright most of the time.
Lovejoy: No, Louis. I don't think it was that often. But here's another example which did.
Rennicks: Hah! They can't agree. Therefore the evolutionary paradigm crumbles!

Sometimes it needs a condensed version of your argument to show how nonsensical it actually is. You should become a flat earther. You'd kill it.

A: The planet is an irregularly shaped ellipsoid.
B: Actually, I'd say it was more an oblate spheroid.
Rennicks: Hah! They can't agree. Therefore the earth is flat!

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Again you miss the point.
Is she, or isn’t she the human ancestor? Lucy has long been hailed (by evolutionists) as the poster-child for bipedality over braininess—the proof that our ancestors learned to walk on two legs before they really learned to think on their feet.

Was her branch on the evolutionary tree the one that led to us or just a dead end?

Johanson writes in Lucy’s Legacy, “I never veered from my original assertion that the knee belonged to a biped.”

Why does this matter?
Bipedalism has traditionally been regarded as the fundamental adaptation that sets hominids apart from other primates,” ( anthropologists Brian Richmond and David Scott)

Owen Lovejoy, who worked with Johanson analyzing the Lucy fossils and the casts made from them, believed the first reconstruction of Lucy’s pelvis to be in error and, in a much-publicized video shown on public television, demonstrated how casts of the bone fragments could be rearranged to produce a more human-like pelvis suitable for bipedal locomotion.

Evidence discovered by evolutionists like Berge indicates that whatever unique gait Lucy might have been capable of, it was not like a human’s.

So, who cares about Lucy? Just another ape, not a human ancestor.

Subduction Zone said:

There is only debate on relatively minor details. And this one does not appear to be well accepted yet. There is far less diversity of opinion in evolution than there is in Christianity. By your standards that casts extreme doubt on the whole Christian paradigm.

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The question is whether Lucy was really a human ancestor. So, yes, it does matter whether she was a biped or not.

Warden_of_the_Storm said:

It made no sense and still makes no sense.

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Maybe it will now if I repeat it:

Warden_of_the_Storm said:

Of course everything is contested in science. That's how advances are made, by contesting things.
But they're never contested in the way you are implying they are.

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AV1611VET said:

It's when they win that contest, causing others to lose (some dramatically), that science can take a hike.

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Subduction Zone said:

This is called a black and white fallacy.

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Is there a fallacy for excessive accusations of fallacies?

renniks said:

The question is whether Lucy was really a human ancestor. So, yes, it does matter whether she was a biped or not.

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Australopithecus afarensis may have been our ancestors, or they may not have been. They may be a distant "uncle". They are still transitional fossils. You are using strawman versions of evolution which makes your posts easily refuted.