Evidence for human evolution

[LadyShea]

A thread in General Apologetics derailed into a discussion about human evolution. I looked but have been unable to find a thread dedicated to ONLY human evolution so I wanted to start one. I know many of you have information and evidence to share, and I thought it would be helpful to everyone to have it collected in one place.

I would like to start with this article, written for the layman (like me), discussing the fossil finds of transitionals.

http://www.theistic-evolution.com/transitional.html

I am hoping for some evidence including maps of early human migrations and how the fossil finds match up with this migration theory. Also, mitochondrial dna information, and extintion of other humans (Neanderthals), and our genetic connection to other primates (the challenge presented here and elsewhere with the chromosomes). Please try to present the evidence for us laymen as many lurkers may read this thread and some are turned off by the scientific language and difficult concepts....surely the language can be tweaked to be of use to everyone.

 

Please do not derail this thread with questions about other aspects of evolutionary theory, flood geology, abiogenesis, cosmology, etc. I would like this to stay on the topic of Human evolution only.

 

[Pete Harcoff]

This thread contains 5 excellent post by Jerry Smith on human evolution: http://www.christianforums.com/threads/34582.html

Well worth a read.

 

[LadyShea]

The evidence below was originally posted by Jerry Smith. I have pasted it here under the assumption he will not mind. Please PM me Jerry if I have overstepped my bounds.

 

We find fossil remains of living organisms deposited in many rock formations. We have various methods for dating those specimens that give us both relative ages of the remains and absolute ages of the remains. Human (Homo sapiens) remains are entirely absent from <I>most</I> of the fossil record of life history. When they are found, and their relative or absolute ages can be determined with any degree of certainty, they universally appear <I>only</I> in the last two million years, and <I>only</I> in younger strata than the oldest ape remains occur. Since fossil excavation has been done for the past 150 years, and many fossils multi-cellular organisms have been identified in all of the geological periods since the Vendian, there is ample reason to believe that humans appeared on earth more recently than apes, and were absent before apes had existed for quite some time (roughly 5 million years, if memory serves).

Fact 1a: Humans are late-comers to the planet, and were preceeded by apes.

Fact 1b: Universally, our experience of complex living organisms is that they come to exist <I>only</I> through reproduction of similar complex living organisms. (Law of biogenesis)

Fact 1c: Living organisms are almost continuously evolving by variation and natural selection, as they adapt to new environmental pressures, and this is observed often often in both the field and the laboratory.

Fact 1d: Apes and humans are similar in many respects.

Now we have two theories to test using this <I>very general</I> data:
Creationism: accounts for humans as late-comers by only one day. In order to accept it, standard geological methods must be scrapped and new ones invented that manage to survive falsification tests that standard geological methods have already passed.

Evolution: accounts for humans as late-comers, because they are descended from apes.

Creationism: By definition violates law of biogenesis. Depends on a mechanism (special creation) which has never been observed, nor has left any unique evidence behind.

Evolution: is consistent with law of biogenesis.

Creationism: ignores the possible impact of natural selection and adaptation over time on human origins.

Evolution: Requires that a mechanism operates that changes the genotype and phenotype of living organisms over time. Upon inspection, the required mechanism is found to operate consistently in nature.

So here, without even looking at transitional fossils, molecular evidence or any of the more eclectic evidence, and only glancing at the evidence from anatomical homology, we see a clear distinction between the two theories. Evolution is consistent with known laws (where creationism requires exceptions to an important natural law), we find that evolution is consistent with the general paleontological data (where creationism requires us to scrap many long-standing geological dating methods to reconcile the paleontological data with the theory), and evolution makes a minor prediction about an observable mechanism (where creationism has little or nothing to say about the observation of evolution's mechanisms).

 

[Pete Harcoff]

Today at 01:45 PM LadyShea said this in Post #3 (http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?postid=671290#post671290)

Outstanding job Jerry Smith, may I copy and paste those posts here, or would you like to?

You can copy and paste them if you want. I assume Jerry wouldn't mind. I would've done it myself, but I'm a lazy bugger.

 

[LadyShea]

Second Jerry Smith post

Alone, the evidence from transitional fossils may be incomplete. Together with the other, independent, lines of evidence, it is conclusive.

Anatomically speaking, our nearest relative is the chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes. The adult chimpanzee has an average cranial capacity of 350-420cc. If we have a common ancestor, it would have to be one that could reasonably have descendants with brains the size of chimpanzees, and others with brains our size. The simplest scenario is that the common ancestor had a brain size roughly the same as chimps, and that that characteristic has changed little in chimps and more in humans. The actual historical scenario is likely to be the same. Let us get started with the proposition that it is likely that no other vertebrates have brains as large as humans, and since there is no indication that they ever did, that we evolved from creatures with brains similar in size to or slightly smaller than the chimpanzee's brain.

We could look at all the more technical and detailed characteristics and get a much better view (teeth, leg joints, skull shape, etc.), and we would still find much the same pattern as I will show you with skull sizes. Bear in mind that not all of these transitional forms are direct ancestors of humans. Without question, Homo erectus is. Others may be direct ancestors, or they may be cousins of our direct ancestors, proto-human organisms that had diverged from the line that eventually would lead to us. Nevertheless, all are transitional in that all are in most ways representative of their genus, and their genera are absolutely transitional in morphology (the way their bodies were made) between humans and a more ape-like creature that would be the common ancestor of humans and other modern apes.

I will list them in roughly chronological order (oldest first), along with their brain-size. Note that the oldest australopithecines have chimp-sized brains. They are transitional because of the fact that they had begun to walk upright, and carry a few other characteristics of Homo.

Bear in mind, the chimp has a cranial capacity of 350-420cc.

Australopithecus afarensis:
cranial capacity: 400 - 500cc
Fossils found in age ranging from 3.5 - 3.0 million years old.

Australopithecus africanus:
cranial capacity: 400 - 500cc
Fossils found 2.8 - 2.3 million years old


Paranthropus boisei:
cranial capacity 450 - 550cc
Fossils found 2.3 - 1.4 million years old


Homo rudolfensis (closest to Homo habilis, which I omit from the list) :
cranial capacity: 750 - ca 800cc
Fossils found 2.4 - 1.9 million years old


Homo ergaster (close relative of homo erectus - species name reflects smaller cranial capacity and range of distribution limited to Africa):
800 - 850cc
1.8 - 1.5 million years old


Homo erectus:
1,043cc
500,000 - 300,000 years old


Homo heidelbergensis:
1,300cc
0.6 - 0.2 million years old


Homo neanderthalensis (or Homo sapiens neanderthaensis)
1200 - 1750cc
300,000 - 30,000 years old (not thought to be directly ancestral to modern humans)

This information is taken from the australian museum on-line human evolution exhibit

And finally, about 100,000 years ago, modern humans appear (Homo sapiens sapiens), sporting a cranial capacity of 1200 - 1700 cc.

Evolution strongly predicts that there were intermediates between the common ancestor of apes and humans and modern humans: evolution says that the differences between us and chimps are great enough that they should have taken several intermediate "steps." Finding several intermediate steps as fossils, that date (according to conventional methods) to the proper period (after the first great apes, before the first humans) is strong evidence in favor of evolution.

Special creationism has difficulty accounting for them. Creationists must maintain that any one of these must be either

1) a big-brained walking ape, specially created separately from humans, or
2) a human, specially created from any of the apes.

The problem is that those which are specially created apes can clearly "evolve within their kind", and there is little that separates them from the ones labelled human. Special creationism has another problem. Their theory is inconsistent. If you will follow this link:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/compare.html

And, if you will scroll just past the first group of photos, you will find a chart of creationist classifications of some of the fossil hominids. What better proof that they are transitional in morphology than when the same fossil is "100% human" in the eyes of one scientific creationist, and "100% ape" in the opinion of another scientific creationist?

I am leaving out quite a bit (including much that I had hoped to cobble together for this post. I meant for it to be more than just a stripped down list of ages and skull sizes.) I just cannot organize the vast amount of information (and the vast number of creationist criticisms) of the fossil evidence from the hominids. In fact, I did not list all of the fossil hominids that have been found. If you would like more detail on any particular issue, please ask & one of us will be glad to help you find it. If there is a creationist criticism of some part of this data that seems like it may be strong enough to counter the support this gives for human evolution, please post it and let us answer it.

Even though Lucaspa's post is too technical for easy digestion, it shows that even between these fossil transitionals, we find more intermediate steps!

Transitional hominid fossils are a kind of evidence we would never even think to look for should we take the creationist perspective, but we must consider the likelihood of finding if evolution is true. The fact that they exist, and bridge the "gap" between apes and humans so closely is powerful confirmation of evolution.

So now we have a recent arrival of humans, a law that says all complex life (humans for instance) comes from the reproduction of similar parents, the fact of "micro-evolution" (that the differences between parents and offspring introduces novelty that may give some of those differences enough of an advantage the characteristics of the species change), apes which preceded humans and are very similar, and several transitional fossils that are each similar to apes, but are more similar to humans than apes are! We see that the oldest of these is so similar to apes that they could easily have evolved from apes, and the most recent are so similar to humans that humans could easily evolved from them. Between, we find "stepping stones".

At this point, having very briefly reviewed the paleontological evidence, and having seen the difficulties creationism must face to explain it away, it would be easy to conclude that apes and humans are closely related with a fair degree of certainty, and dismiss the creationist position. We might chalk this up as a fluke, though, if we were not aware of all of the other paleontological evidence that seems to link so many groups of living and extinct organisms together. Instead of repeating this performance for all of the many, many, organisms known to be related, I will move on in my next post to the molecular data: to me, the most convincing.

 

[LadyShea]

Third from Jerry Smith

To recap where we are so far: We have seen that unless we throw out the standard geological dating techniques, we must conclude that humans are a very recent arrival on Earth, slightly more recent than the broader group of "apes". We have seen that a separate creation for humans violates an observed law of nature (biogenesis), and that evolution is the only known means of making the recent appearance of humans on earth consistent with this law. We have seen an almost linear progression of skull size over time in fossil organisms that are morphologically similar to both apes and humans and that appear in the fossil record between the oldest apes and the first Homo sapiens. We would not have expected to find this fossil data if special creation were true, but we must expect to find them if evolution is true. We have seen that creationists have difficulties in finding alternative explanation for this fossil data. And now, we move on to the genetic.

Most everyone who has debated creationism is aware of fact one:
Humans and chimpanzees share 98% of their DNA sequences. Of course if humans and apes must each carry much of the DNA of their ancestors (all that has not been lost or changed). Finding such similar DNA patterns can easily be interpreted as evidence for evolution. Creationists have an alternate explanation. They explain this as a result of "similar structures for similar functions," then go another step to explain that similar DNA is used to build similar structures. On the surface, this explanation works. It does leave some questions open about why, exactly, God would want His "prized creation" to have so much in common (function-wise) with His "lesser" creations, but that can be chalked up to God working in mysterious ways. On a deeper examination, this explanation doesn't work on a large subset of DNA homologies (similarities).

Creationists are also apt to point out that 2% of DNA sequence dissimilarity represents a very large number of nucleotides, and potentially a large number of genes. In other words, they point out that 2% is quite a lot of DNA. The fact is, that 2% is still a very small minority. It takes a very long strand of DNA to make a gene, and it usually takes several genes to make a significant difference in the gross morphology of an organism.

It should also be noted that the majority of differences in chimp and human DNA lie in the non-coding regions. When we look only at the coding regions of DNA, humans and chimps are much more similar.


This leads us to the types of DNA homology that will not answer to "similar design for similar function". Generally, I am talking about non-coding DNA. Estimates of the percentage of our genome that codes for proteins have fallen recently from about 10 % to about 2%. But, whether 10% or 2% code for proteins, the majority of our DNA does not. The majority of our DNA is involved in regulatory or structural function, or has no function at all. There are segments of DNA that are involved in regulating the expression of genes, and these may (to the best of my knowledge) require certain sequences for their function. Non-coding regulatory DNA is only one of many types of DNA sequence that do not code for proteins, and it is the only one where the DNA sequence could possibly relate to its function. I should qualify this: some non-coding DNA may have a function only in an evolutionary context - in being available for "back-mutations" (that restore a previous functionality) or to provide the basis for future mutations that may yield new genes with new functions. Nevertheless, for expression of phenotype (that is, the anatomical and physiological characteristics of an organism), the majority of DNA has no purpose, or works independently of the nucleotide sequence. Bear in mind that when we are talking about DNA homology (or similarity), we are talking about nucleotide sequence. For genes that are expressed, it is the nucleotide sequence that governs what proteins are made, and how they are assembled in the cell. When there is DNA homology in the non-coding DNA, we are talking about similarities that cannot simply be explained by "similar DNA for similar structures for similar functions," because the sequence (the part that is similar) has no bearing on the development of structures or physiological function.

Non-coding DNA comes in many forms. There are repeating line segments (bits of DNA that have been copied and inserted repeatedly into the genome). There are retroviral insertions (bits of DNA that were insterted by a virus that incorporated part of its own DNA into the germ-line DNA of one of our ancestors). There are transposons (bits of DNA that were lifted from one gene, and set down unceremoniously in the middle of another). And then there are pseudogenes: bits of DNA very similar to a gene that codes for a protein, but that have mutations that interfere with the protein synthesis either because they have "stop" codons that prematurely terminate transcription, or because they have accumulated mutations that make the protein itself unviable.
"Similar structure for similar function" does not account for shared pseudogenes. I will be pointing out two specific pseudogenes that are shared between humans and other primates, one of which is shared nearly identically, and the other of which accounts for an obvious maladaption that we share with primates. After that, I will be pointing out a piece of genetic evidence that does not have to do specifically with sequence similarity.

The first pseudogene that I will point out is the urate oxidase pseudogene (thanks, chickenman!).

chickenman started a thread about this and discussed it in depth. His thread is here. He points out that the transcription of this gene is terminated prematurely by a stop codon. (It actually has more than one premature stop codon). Now, looking at the sequence, I might have missed one or two, but I was only able to find three nucleotide differences between our copy of the pseudogene and the chimpanzee's. The premature stop codon that terminates transcription is in exactly the same place in humans, chimpanzees, and orangatans. Without these premature stops, this DNA would code for the urate oxydase enzyme. You will notice that there is significant homology (though not nearly as complete) between the primate pseudogenes and the working gene found in the owlmonkey. As evolution predicts, the pseudogene is more similar to the apes' (our near cousins) than the monkeys (our more distant cousins).

Creationists cannot account for this with "similar genes for similar organisms," because this gene doesn't work. The alternative interpretation is usually that the gene was broken after the fall. This leaves unexplained why the gene the stop codon that makes the gene non-functional occurs in exactly the same place and in exactly the same way in both chimpanzees and humans. The odds of this occuring by chance are extremely low.


The next psuedogene is the human LGGLO gene. It codes for a L-gulono-gamma-lactone oxidase, a key enzyme used in the synthesis of vitamin C. That's right, with a working copy of LGGLO, humans would never get scurvy, because they could manufacture their own vitamin C like most other organisms can. Other primates share this disadvantage, and a broken gene with close homology to that of humans. The only non-primate that shares it is the guineau pig, whose broken gene is not broken by the same mutations as the primate version.

Now, if God had designed humans and other primates to require vitamin C from their food, he could just as well have left out this gene (and others involved in the synthesis of vit C). Clearly, similar genes for similar functions fails the creationist on this count. But! We could rescue the idea by postulating that God created humans and apes and all the other critters with a functioning LGGLO gene and, due to the curse, humans became vulnerable to mutations that damaged that gene. And so did apes. But monkeys didn't. And neither did mice. And neither did goldfish. Or orange trees. Etc., etc., etc. Coincidentally it was only apes and humans that lost function by the same mutations in this gene, and only apes, humans and one other species that lost this function by mutations to this gene at all. The weakness of the explanation that this genetic trait began as a similar design, and later lost function should be obvious.

 

[LadyShea]

Fourth from Jerry Smith

I have one more example that does not bear directly on sequence homology at all. But before I present it, the genetic discussion on sequence homology would not be complete without mentioning endogenous retrovira. Since there are too many of them that have to be looked at together, and since I cannot summarize and present this info nearly as well as Dr. Douglas Theobald, I will have to just post a link:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/com...ml#retroviruses

Obviously the "similar genes for similar functions" argument cannot stand to this. No one believes that God created humans or any other animal with the copies of RNA viruses already embedded in their genomes. These viruses must have been inserted at some point after the oldest of the ancestors of these humans and other animals were already living on earth.

The only explanation for their identical placement in the genomes of the organisms that share them is wild blind chance: loads of it!

Yet this still does not explain why the different insertions, when used to construct a phylogeny of relationships among humans and other primates, yields exactly the same family tree as the fossil evidence and the anatomical evidence!

Notice that some ERV's are shared between all primates, then a few just among apes (including humans) and old world monkeys, some exclusive to apes, some exclusive to apes, but omitting gibbons, then some that only humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas share.

Why not at least one exclusive to both humans and new world monkeys? Because the ape/human line derived from the old world monkeys after the new world monkeys split, any retrovirus insertion we share with new world monkeys must come from before that split and must therefore be carried by all descendants of the pre-split ancestors.

Why not one shared by chimps, orangatans, and gibbons but lacking in humans? Same answer. Humans are descended from the same common ancestor of gibbons and orangatans that originally bore the insertion.

The only other possible explanation is pure, blind chance, and I will leave it to the technical types to compute those odds.

After one more post, on the "chromosome challenge" that has changed so many minds before, I will be done with the genetic evidence, & will sum up.

 

[LadyShea]

And finally from Jerry Smith

First, hats off to Scigirl at IIDB who first posted the "Chromosome Challenge"!

I am borrowing heavily from the information as presented on this page:
http://www.gate.net/~rwms/hum_ape_chrom.html

What we are going to be looking at is g-banding patterns in human chromosome 2, and in two chromosomes each from chimps, gorillas, and orangatans. You will be curious to know what g-banding is. The answer comes from NDI's terminology page
quote:
Differential staining of chromosomes to elicit chromosome bands (G bands), consisting of pretreatment with a salt solution or with proteolytic enzymes (usually trypsin or pronase) before staining with Giemsa solution. The same banding pattern may be obtained with other agents. Called also Giemsa banding.


The patterns created in g-bands are unique to each chromosome, and are used extensively in karyotyping.

Why two chromosomes each from the apes? The answer to this question lies in another question - a puzzle of sorts. You are likely aware that humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes. You may not be aware that all the apes have 24 pairs of chromosomes. So, if humans share a common ancestor with apes, where did that other pair of chromosomes go? The first hint of the answer can be found by looking at the human chromosome 2, lined up next to two ape chromosomes. Here is what the picture looks like:

H is the human chromosome 2. C, G, &amp; O are Chimpanzee, Gorilla &amp; Orangatan choromosomes, respectively.

Notice that the human banding patterns in the "top" part of chromosome 2 are nearly identical to the banding patterns in one of the chromosomes from each ape. Then, the banding patterns in the "bottom" part of chromosome are nearly identical to those of another chromosome from each ape.

Where did the other chromosome go? Nowhere - it is still there, but fused end to end with one of the others. Why can't we say that the apes' chromosome 2 broke apart instead?

According to the phylogenies from other data, humans are most closely related to the chimpanzees, and split off from them after gorillas and organgatans already split. That means that if the split occurred in the common ancestor of gorillas, chimps, and orangatans, then it must also have occurred in the human ancestor, since they are the same. A fusion (combination) of the chromosomes in the human line could have happened after humans and chimpanzees split, and therefore only be in the human line.

Or maybe (just maybe), there was no fusion or fission (breaking apart) - maybe we were just created with similar DNA for similar functions, but God decided to put more of it together on one chromosome for us. So, is there anything else we can look at to compare the merits of our two explanations?

Yes. Telomeres and centromeres. Telomeres are the "ends" of a chromosome, and "centromeres" are part of the chromosome near the middle that are involved in meiosis. Telomeres and centromeres have a distinct nucleotide sequence. You may read the article for more details about what these sequences are, and how they are recognized, but for us it is enough to know that they exist.

Now, if the fusion explanaiton was true, then you would expect to find that human chromosome 2 has two telomeres in the middle, and has two centromeric regions, each lining up with the telomeres and the centromeres of the ape chromosomes. In other words, you would expect to find all the "parts" of two chromosomes in this single one.

You won't be suprised at this point to learn that that is exactly what is found.

I have never seen a creationist who is not at a loss to explain this away.

There is little more for me to say, but I beg you to read the article that I borrowed this from, and check out the references for yourself. There is more information in there on how humans' other chromosomes line up against the apes', and if I'm not mistaken there is a brief explanation of how those early hominids carrying the fused chromosome could have mated successfully with others who did not carry it.

Telomeres and centromeres have long been understood, and they don't occur at random throughout a chromosome. There is no way to explain the telomeric regions and the double centromeric regions in the human chromosome without a chromosome fusion event having occurred in the past. That gives strong confirmation to the fusion hypothesis which explains the way human chromosome 2 lines up with the apes separate chromosomes. Clearly, the standard creationist interpretation of genetic evidence (similar genes for similar function) does not wash.

It does not wash for this. It does not wash for retroviral insertions, or non-coding pseudogenes. All of these point exclusively to evolution, and they can (at best) be dismissed by creationists. The fossil record confirms humans descent from apes by showing numerous fossil organisms that carry some traits that are very similar to humans and some very similar to apes, with the balance moving more toward human traits as the fossils are dated by independent methods closer to the present. Humans appear late in the fossil record by standard dating methods - after their potential ape ancestors. In order to dismiss this, we must throw out standard dating methods. In order to accept special creation over evolution, we must assume that the natural law of biogenesis was (at least once) violated.

The creationist explanations for the evidence in this thread just do not work. The evidence for evolution is very strong, and even though each piece is independent of every other piece, they all give the same answer.

We started this discussion because someone led you to believe that there was "no evidence" for the evolution of man from an ape-like ancestor. Whether you ever change your mind about creationism or not, you will never again be fooled into thinking that evolution lacks evidence, or that the creationist explanation for the evidence is equally valid. There is simply no comparison.

 

[LadyShea]

The Discovery Channel has an interesting interactive migration map.

http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/realeve/interactive/migration.html

&nbsp;

Here is another map. The information on the site is also informative and discusses specific hominids including Neandertals&nbsp;

&nbsp;

http://www.handprint.com/LS/ANC/disp.html


If you look at the site, you'll see another map showing the human fossil finds locations
&nbsp;

 

[Arikay]

Of course, you know all this amazing evidence is lies created by the satanic scientists. Its here because god made everything really old (but forgot to mention it in the bible) just to confuse us, and to allow the satanic scientists a way to show the bible was wrong.

 

[LadyShea]

Today at 01:06 PM Arikay said this in Post #10

Of course, you know all this amazing evidence is lies created by the satanic scientists. Its here because god made everything really old (but forgot to mention it in the bible) just to confuse us, and to allow the satanic scientists a way to show the bible was wrong.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

I know Arikay, and it's frustrating to me that intelligent people can look at all of this and say it's not convincing

 

[Hector Medina]

by Ladyshea:

I know Arikay, and it's frustrating to me that intelligent people can look at all of this and say it's not convincing

____________________________________________________________

I'd say it could be convncing but that dosen't make it true/right.

I believe my God did everything right the 1st time just like the Bible explains !!!


In Christ,

Hector

 

[Pete Harcoff]

Today at 06:04 PM Hector Medina said this in Post #12 (http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?postid=671780#post671780)

I'd say it could be convncing but that dosen't make it true/right.

If human evolution isn't true, then God's doing one heck of a job tricking us.

 

[wblastyn]

I believe my God did everything right the 1st time just like the Bible explains !!!

Did you ever think your interpretation might be wrong?

 

[Arikay]

Um, have you read your bible? Your god didnt get it right the first time, thats what the flood was for. God even repents and everything.

Today at 03:04 PM Hector Medina said this in Post #12 (http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?postid=671780#post671780)

by Ladyshea:

I know Arikay, and it's frustrating to me that intelligent people can look at all of this and say it's not convincing

____________________________________________________________

I'd say it could be convncing but that dosen't make it true/right.

I believe my God did everything right the 1st time just like the Bible explains !!!


In Christ,

Hector

 

[webboffin]

Yesterday at 11:42 PM wblastyn said this in Post #14&nbsp;

Did you ever think your interpretation might be wrong?

Did you ever think your interpretation&nbsp;could be wrong too?

 

[LadyShea]

Today at 04:52 PM webboffin said this in Post #16 (http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?postid=671999#post671999)

Did you ever think your interpretation&nbsp;could be wrong too?

Webboffin, do you have any comments in regards to the evidence presented?

 

[Micaiah]

Much of the evidence used by evolutionists to support human descent from apes stems from the apparent likeness of apes to humans. Of course this also provides evidence they had the same Creator. I've made an interesting observation of a number of land mammals. They all have two ears, two eyes, legs, and noses. This suggests to me that God was not seeking to provided unlimited variety in creation. Had we evolved, I would expect to see a much greater variety in lifeforms.

 

[Arikay]

Can you show why animals that all branched off from a basic gene set (at one point or another) should have major differences in their anatomy?

Today at 03:32 AM Micaiah said this in Post #18 (http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?postid=672767#post672767)

Much of the evidence used by evolutionists to support human descent from apes stems from the apparent likeness of apes to humans. Of course this also provides evidence they had the same Creator. I've made an interesting observation of a number of land mammals. They all have two ears, two eyes, legs, and noses. This suggests to me that God was not seeking to provided unlimited variety in creation. Had we evolved, I would expect to see a much greater variety in lifeforms.

 

[notto]

Today at 11:32 AM Micaiah said this in Post #18 (http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?postid=672767#post672767)

Much of the evidence used by evolutionists to support human descent from apes stems from the apparent likeness of apes to humans. Of course this also provides evidence they had the same Creator. I've made an interesting observation of a number of land mammals. They all have two ears, two eyes, legs, and noses. This suggests to me that God was not seeking to provided unlimited variety in creation. Had we evolved, I would expect to see a much greater variety in lifeforms.

The fossil record shows a much greater variety of life than we see alive today. Many of them have gone extinct. This is what random mutation and natural selection predicts. Unless you can show how a different body form than the one you have observed could arise from mutation and would provide an advantage, this does nothing to falsify evolution and matches its predictions.

When I look at life, I see the most variety in groups that have short gestation periods, and high rates of reproduction like fish, insects, and plants. This is what I would expect to see from random mutation and natural selection.