Rize, I wanted to start a different thread for discussing the data itself, rather than the methodology. A good jumping off point is this statement of yours:
The evidence that apes and men share a common ape ancestor is conclusive. The evidence that birds did evolve from dinosaurs is conclusive. I may decide later to discuss the evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but for the sake of our conversation, I am going to stick to the evidence for human evolution. How I present this evidence and how you respond to it will tell us all that we need to know about the strenght of our respective methodologies. I will begin with the very general evidence, and move to the more specific:
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 most 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 only in the last two million years, and only 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 only 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 very general 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).
My next post in this thread (maybe today, maybe tomorrow) will discuss some of the specific evidence for the evolution of humans from an ape-ancestor.
The evidence that apes and men share a common ape ancestor is conclusive. The evidence that birds did evolve from dinosaurs is conclusive. I may decide later to discuss the evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but for the sake of our conversation, I am going to stick to the evidence for human evolution. How I present this evidence and how you respond to it will tell us all that we need to know about the strenght of our respective methodologies. I will begin with the very general evidence, and move to the more specific:
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 most 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 only in the last two million years, and only 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 only 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 very general 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).
My next post in this thread (maybe today, maybe tomorrow) will discuss some of the specific evidence for the evolution of humans from an ape-ancestor.
