What proof would you need?

[Astridhere]

How is a feature in modern chimps evidence of anything in modern humans. You've got something mixed up here.

I am sorry that I am not going to bother putting up a reply to you. I have had a gut full of evolutionists that have absolutely no idea of what they are on about wasting my time.

For your information, up untill Ardi, comparisons with modern chimps was all they had as a comparison and chimps were used ad nauseum.

Hence you are wasting time as you have no idea what you are talking about.

You have now posted a scientific source, but it's not Scientific American. While SciAm is a thousand times better than ICR, it's still just a magazine, not a scientific paper.



I've never come across anyone who says humans are closer morphologically to orangutans and you've never expanded on what these morphologies are. And no, you haven't refuted that chimps are our closest genetic relatives.



Yes you keep saying this, but you haven't given a good reason why. You can't claim something doesn't have a mix of morphologies if you just point at one feature! The point is having features we find in humans increasing as time progresses (bipedalism, increasing brain capacity etc) and and reducing chimp features such as canines and forehead ridges. This is the transitional nature.

[/color]

What has the location of one fossil specimin got to with the average cranial capacity across all hominids? Try and address the point!



Cranial capacity is only part of it. If you look at more than just the skulls you see the increasingly human pelvis as we gained larger brains and more upright stance.

Can you back up your comment about cranial capacity with sources please. At the moment this is nothing more than your assertion.

This is the first reply I saw today.

Sorry if you do not know that chimps WERE the ONLY comparison up until recently with the publication of Ardi then you have absolutely no idea at all.

Indeed the point that you lot cannot do comparisons with modern chimps as you lot have been is the basis of one of my points which totally elludes you.

 

[Astridhere]

If these fossils are just from chimp ancestors, why do they have human characteristics, such as human like pelvises?
Even Turkana Boy does not have a human pelvis. Its pelvis can only deliver small brained offspring. ..additionally..His pelvis appears asymetrical like as if the two halves are from different individuals.

Secondly, the common ancestor has not been shown to have no chimp features, just less chimp features than previously thought.
Is that so? Then you had better read below. Indeed you have absolutley no idea what the common ancestor looked like and derived features are no more than speculative, especially with Ardi being dethroned

Finally, genetics confirms chimps as our closest relatives.

Genetics based on chimps as the bootstrap, in other words biased, demonstrates that chimps have some regions that are similar to mankind more than other species despite the ornag being closer morphologically. However, some creature was going to be more similar than another to mankind. This does not prove anything as far as ancestry goes unless you apply the assumption of ancestry to the finding.

All regions show deletions and insertions. That is how you lot hand wave away the fact that they are not similar at all, really. Algorithms ignore the differences and compare what is deemed as similar. Algorithms count as similar hits less than 60% in some cases and graph them as 'the same'. This of course is after ignoring any deletions and insertion and dissimilarity to begin with. You should know this.

Additionally the chimp is 30% dissimilar in the Y chromosome, 10-12% larger, different surface composition and I had been all over this before.

I asked for a description of what exactly is a human trait. I have had a gut full of you evolutionists woffling on and saying absolutely nothing.

I have spoken to comparative genetics with no substantial refutes.

The bottom line is that evolutionists can no more than speculate on what is or isn't a human ancestor. You have had headlines of new missing links found that have ended up being other primates to evos embarassment. There is so much overlap and so many features that are shared amongst all primates including apes, new and old world monkeys that whole lot of you taxonomy is based on finding ancestral ghosts.

You do not have evidence. You have a wish list.

Why? Fossilisation is a rare process and chimps live in an environment that is not only poor for fossiliation but difficult to go digging for them now. Frankly I'm amazed we've found one.

OH so you are amazed at a few teeth being found dated to 500,000 years and stuff all. You obviously have no idea!

Strange how come so many supposed human ancestors fossilized but chimps did not. Ardi, Lucy are chimp sized yet they managed to be fossilized.


You've never qualified what morphology humans share with orangutans and why this is more than chimps. Could you actually provide some details?
I have had a gut full of would be evolutionists. I have had a gut full of posting common knowledge you lot should know.

By contrast, humans share at least 28 unique physical characteristics with orangutans but only 2 with chimps and 7 with gorillas, the authors say.
Orangutans May Be Closest Human Relatives, Not Chimps


Of course not. The fossils are still there, you've been posting pictures of them! The only thing that has changed is our understanding of when bipedalism started developing.

Again you have no idea. I have already spoken to the revolving door of human ancestors. If you had any recent understanding of the science you supposrt you would know it and would need an unqualified creationist to inform you.

"how many alleged human ancestors must be debunked before the world views these false evolutionary claims with appropriate incredulity. Chapters one and two of the Apologetics Press book The Truth About Human Origins deals definitively with Aegyptopithecus Zeuxis, Dryopithicus africanus, Ramapithesu brevirostris, Orrorin tugenensis, Australopithecus ramidus, Australopithicus anamensis, Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba, Kenyanthropus platyops, Lucy, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Neanderthals, Nebraska Man, Piltdown Man, Java Man, and Rhodesian Man (2003). In addition, Hobbit Man has been debunked (see Harrub, 2004; Harrub, 2005) and “Lucy’s Baby” is no longer viable"
Apologetics Press - Ardi Joins a Long, Infamous List of Losers

You can add Ardi to the list of loosers.

You lot reckon bipeds were around 8mya and I can challenge that. Then you can find research to challenge me. Then I can find research to challenge anything you say. This strikes me as a delusional science..all of it.

The commonly accepted split date is 6mya. Therefore perhaps chimps evolved from a biped. You lot really have no idea past speculation. All evolutionary discussions are about facing off one theory after another. Speculation and chaos is not science

So why all the human traits? Why do these skeletons point to a progression that gets closer and closer to modern humans if they are chimp ancestors.

Your researcher have no idea what a human trait is. There is way to much overlap in the primate world


Perhaps you ought to do what real researchers do and look at all the evidence.

Perhaps you should do BIO101. I obviously know more about your science than most of you evolutionists do.

Why do you keep implying this is a computer model? We get the average capacities from measuring the skulls of the fossils we find.

I have spoken at length about that nonsense. Bigger brains in comapratively same cranial vaults is like suggesting a pygmy is less human that a basketball player. The observed evidence demonstrates how many so called ancestors are the same and no more differenct than races. Indeed many researchers agree that there are too many species named. Algorithmic nonsense turns observed evidence into evo myth. Algorithms do not look at differences. They tune into similarities alone based on the presumption of ancestry. They are all nonsense. Read my signature.

What, that chimps aren't human? Find me any one who's disputing that. The point is they are the most closely related creatures still in existance to modern humans.
.and comparative genetics tells you we did not evolve from modern chimp species. Hence the requirement of a common ancestor myth.

Again someone not up on their own current research. You evos, if you have text books older than a year, throw them out. If it has been more than a year since your PHD then you need to be re educated as your world has changed substantially.


Comment on the Paleobiology and Classification of Ardipithecus ramidus

Science 28 May 2010:
Vol. 328 no. 5982 p. 1105
DOI: 10.1126/science.1184148

Fourteen of the 26 characters in table 1 in (1) common to Ardipithecus and Australopithecus are in the canine/premolar complex. However, reliance on the canine/premolar complex to diagnose hominids (in the classic sense) has misdiagnosed Miocene fossil apes (i.e., Oreopithecus and Ramapithecus) as early human ancestors (12, 13). Character polarity for this complex is not clear-cut, with many early hominoids, especially females, often showing a humanlike condition. The canine/premolar complex shows such a marked grade of character lability (e.g., conspecific males and females show the diagnostic character differences) that reversals in polarity could have occurred repeatedly over the evolutionary periods necessary for these fossil genera to differentiate (12). Approximation to the humanlike canine/premolar complex, therefore, does not indicate that Ardipithecus is a hominid or ancestral to Australopithecus any more than it indicates that Oreopithecus and the orangutan-like females of Sivapithecus, both of which also share a humanlike premolar/canine complex, are hominids or represent a descendant-ancestor continuum.
Of the remaining characters listed as common to Ardipithecus and Australopithecus, none of the eight postcranial characters (sagittal iliac/isthmus orientation, slightly broadened iliac breadth, strong anterior inferior iliac spine formed by separate ossification center, robust second metatarsal base and shaft, dorsally domed second to fifth metatarsal heads, upwardly canted proximal foot phalanges, and short iliac isthmus and pubic symphysis outline), nor the other four craniodental characters [anterior basion position (14), advanced cranial flexion, and broad lower molars and mandibular corpus] are shown by systematic comparisons to be exclusive to humans or share-derived with humans. Nearly all are quantitative characters that appear in early hominoids (i.e., Oreopithecus and Dryopithecus) and have appeared independently in other primate lineages, and character simplicity is such that parallelisms or reversals in polarity cannot be demonstrated (12, 15). Moreover, attempts to link Ar. ramidus to an exclusive human lineage by pointing to suspected facultative bipedal characters in the foot (9) are not convincing (16). All of the Ar. ramidus bipedal characters cited also serve the mechanical requisites of quadrupedality, and in the case of Ar. ramidus foot-segment proportions, find their closest functional analog to those of gorillas, a terrestrial or semiterrestrial quadruped and not a facultative or habitual biped (17).
Comment on the Paleobiology and Classification of Ardipithecus ramidus

Also

Ardi: Scientists Challenge Human Ancestor Connection - TIME

As you can see all the woffle about Ardi being a human ancestor is now thrown in the rubbish. The same has happened to Lucy. The more recent ones are a revolving door with erectus being dethroned in favour of ergaster and many more changes. You are trying to work out which ape is closer to which and which may or may not share some human trait that is ill defined and homoplasic in other species. Do I need to repost that support for the third time?

Look, seriously I have had a gut full of replying to time wasters.

I would prefer to have discussions with qualified biologists or closely related field with recent credentials. Otherwise I will spend the next weeks informing would be scientists of their own science, posting evidence of common evo knowledge and basically getting nowhere. Even self proffesed scientists on CF have demonstrated limited understanding of recent research but at least they have some vague idea and aren't quite as frustrating.


RUINED FAMILY TREE, "Either we toss out this skull [1470] or we toss out our theories of early man,” asserts anthropologist Richard Leakey of this 2.8 million year old fossil, witch he has tentatively identified as belonging to our own genus. “It simply fits no previous models of human beginnings.” The author, son of famed anthropologist Louis S. B. Leakey, believes that the skull’s surprisingly large braincase “leaves in ruins the notion that all early fossils can be arranged in an orderly sequence of evolutionary change.”, National Geographic, June 1973, p.81
The Evolution of Early Man | The Emperor Has No Clothes

Ardi and Turkana Boy

Ardi has more similar human leg proportions than Turkana Boy. Turkana Boys dentition is out of whack with the rest of his morphology re estimating age. The rib construction can also be realigned to be ape like. Do not forget theat these pieces are put together on the basis of an assumption.

Turkana Boy has an extra vertebra and a small neural canal.

Mankind is discontinuous with other species due to the higher reasoning ability and sophisticated language. That is a dependable and reliable, non homoplasic comparison. Turkana Boy is therefore an ape and discontinuous with mankind.

I have no reason to change my view. The evidence for common ancestry is non credible and unstable. The evidence for creation is clear.

 

[Astridhere]

Double post

 

[Astridhere]

How would it be if you used one post to show us how/why creationism is true? just one post?
I have. No transitions between ape and man. No transitions between common ancestor and chimp.
Use the same critical methods on creationism as you try to use with evolution, can't be done can it?

Baramins with discontinuity as the basis for separate kinds. Your 150 years of falsifications and instability is nothing to toot your horm over.
there's nothing there even to look at because all you have is words.

Again I am sick of time wasters

 

[Loudmouth]

have. No transitions between ape and man. No transitions between common ancestor and chimp.

This is false. We have shown that these fossils have a mixture of chimp-like and human-like features which makes them transitional according to the definition you accepted for transitional. H. erectus has a mixture of chimp-like and human-like features. The pelvis is much more human like than the pelvis found in any other ape. The brain size is much more like humans than any other ape. The dentition is much more like humans than any other ape. This is what makes H. erectus transitional, and you have done nothing to cast any doubt on the mixture of characteristics in H. erectus.

Baramins with discontinuity as the basis for separate kinds. Your 150 years of falsifications and instability is nothing to toot your horm over.

IOW, if a fossil differs at all from modern humans then you reject it as a transitional. This means that you reject transitional fossils, even if they are transitional.

Again I am sick of time wasters

Says the person who rejects transitional fossils, even when they are transitional.

 

[Astridhere]

And I'll say again that the choice is not evolution vs creation, it is science vs creationism.

Creationism is the choice to ignore evidence that threatens one's religious prejudices. It sets up a strawman amalgam of scientific evidences and conclusions that it calls "Evolution" or "Darwinism."

Science, including the theory of evolution by natural selection, is not in opposition to the idea of Creation by God. It is silent on the issue -- by design. Science is a modelling of the laws of nature. Supernatural events, such as the creation of the universe (or a marble), ex nihilo, by God do not follow the laws of nature, and do not have anything to teach us about them.

"Darwinism" or "Evolution" is supposed by Creationists to have been set up, not according to the evidence, but despite it, for the specific purpose of tearing down belief in God. And yet, Creationists have never presented any original evidence, that they can show that "Darwinists" have ignored, but only re-interpretations or denials of Science's evidence.

150 years of changing ideas, falsifications and debate demonstrates that indeed it is evolutionists that have no idea what the heck they are on about.

Your predictions have been proved wrong so many times your science belongs in a comic strip eg gradualism out the window, Y chromosome similarity out the window, junk DNA out the window, knuckle walking ancestry gone Mendellian inheritance as the only form of inheritance gone. advantageous alleles gone with the uptake of viral sequences that caused lessening of fitness. All rubbish.

You have stuff all answers to anything. However in typical hypocritical style you would have the world believe that creationists are at any less of an advantage because you have 150 year of nonsnese, instability and changed thinking behind you.

 

[CabVet]

150 years of changing ideas, falsifications and debate demonstrates that indeed it is evolutionists that have no idea what the heck they are on about.

Your predictions have been proved wrong so many times your science belongs in a comic strip eg gradualism out the window, Y chromosome similarity out the window, junk DNA out the window, knuckle walking ancestry gone Mendellian inheritance as the only form of inheritance gone. advantageous alleles gone with the uptake of viral sequences that caused lessening of fitness. All rubbish.

You have stuff all answers to anything. However in typical hypocritical style you would have the world believe that creationists are at any less of an advantage because you have 150 year of nonsnese, instability and changed thinking behind you.

And that is the beauty of science, we are humble and improve theories and hypotheses as we get better evidence. Evolution is stronger than it has ever been, no matter how much smoke you throw at it.

Denial won't change the fact that science is based in observation and religion is based on personal belief.

 

[Loudmouth]

150 years of changing ideas, falsifications and debate demonstrates that indeed it is evolutionists that have no idea what the heck they are on about.

So you are saying that scientists should not adjust their conclusions when new evidence is found?

Your predictions have been proved wrong so many times your science belongs in a comic strip eg gradualism out the window, Y chromosome similarity out the window, junk DNA out the window, knuckle walking ancestry gone Mendellian inheritance as the only form of inheritance gone. advantageous alleles gone with the uptake of viral sequences that caused lessening of fitness. All rubbish.

That's a lot of porkies in one paragraph. However, none of it involves transitional fossils.

Still waiting for you to tell me what functions mice lost when they removed 2 million base pairs of junk DNA from their genomes. When will you be doing that?

However in typical hypocritical style you would have the world believe that creationists are at any less of an advantage because you have 150 year of nonsnese, instability and changed thinking behind you.

And yet you criticize scientists for not changing their mind. Go figure.

 

[Astridhere]

This is false. We have shown that these fossils have a mixture of chimp-like and human-like features which makes them transitional according to the definition you accepted for transitional. H. erectus has a mixture of chimp-like and human-like features. The pelvis is much more human like than the pelvis found in any other ape. The brain size is much more like humans than any other ape. The dentition is much more like humans than any other ape. This is what makes H. erectus transitional, and you have done nothing to cast any doubt on the mixture of characteristics in H. erectus.

I will say it again for about the 100th time. A mixture of chimp like traits will never demonstrate humanity. You have no idea what a human trait may look like and I have spoken to it at length

IOW, if a fossil differs at all from modern humans then you reject it as a transitional. This means that you reject transitional fossils, even if they are transitional.

You have only blurted vagueness. Just where is the humanity in any of these apes. Please specify or go away.

Says the person who rejects transitional fossils, even when they are transitional.
As yet you have not provided one.

You still do not get it, do you Loudmouth? You are absolutely unable to get over your chimp like talk. You are no more educated than I in the sciences. In fact I am more able to uptake information in your own field than you.

The authors also fail to show that the common Ardipithecus/Australopithecus characters provide evidence of an ancestor-descendant relationship and are exclusive to the hominid lineage and shared-derived with humans.
Comment on the Paleobiology and Classification of Ardipithecus ramidus

Your researchers now talk about derived traits, not chimp like traits, for the reasons we have been discussing for weeks and you clearly are unable to assimilate.

 

[CabVet]

Yet not a word that you posted here can be used to falsify this:

Biological Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations.

 

[Astridhere]

And that is the beauty of science, we are humble and improve theories and hypotheses as we get better evidence. Evolution is stronger than it has ever been, no matter how much smoke you throw at it.

Denial won't change the fact that science is based in observation and religion is based on personal belief.

I disagree. Your science is more in a mess than it ever was. I am sure it was much more convincing 20 years ago.

Your science is not based on observstion at all. if it was you would not be growing bigger brains in the same sized cranial vaults. It takes algorithmical magic to do such a thing.

 

[CabVet]

Yet not a word that you posted here can be used to falsify this:

Biological Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations.

 

[Astridhere]

Yet not a word that you posted here can be used to falsify this:

Biological Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations.

And you can only extrapolate that a change in beak size or colour and immunity to disease will result in an ape becoming human or a mouse deer poofing into a whale. Population genetics does not prove anything and Mendellian inheritance is not all there is to it all. Instead of different human species you have races because otherwise you evos would look really silly.

Have you heard of epigentic inheritance and HGT? Obviously not!

 

[Loudmouth]

I will say it again for about the 100th time. A mixture of chimp like traits will never demonstrate humanity. You have no idea what a human trait may look like and I have spoken to it at length

So you don't know what humans look like? Then how are you able to determine if a fossil is transitional or not?

You have only blurted vagueness. Just where is the humanity in any of these apes. Please specify or go away.

Humans are apes. You might as well ask where the horse features are in mammals. When you keep making such simple mistakes in the area of taxonomy I really have to wonder how you can even claim to have a defensible position.

As yet you have not provided one.

How did you determine this? What criteria are you using to determine if a fossil is transitional or not?

You still do not get it, do you Loudmouth? You are absolutely unable to get over your chimp like talk. You are no more educated than I in the sciences. In fact I am more able to uptake information in your own field than you.

There is nothing to get over. I defined transitional as having a mixture of chimp-like and human-like features. You agreed to that definition. Are you backing out of it now? If so, you need to give your definition of what a transitional fossil should look like per our original arrangement.

The authors also fail to show that the common Ardipithecus/Australopithecus characters provide evidence of an ancestor-descendant relationship and are exclusive to the hominid lineage and shared-derived with humans.

Comment on the Paleobiology and Classification of Ardipithecus ramidus

Peer reviewed papers please.

Your researchers now talk about derived traits, not chimp like traits, for the reasons we have been discussing for weeks and you clearly are unable to assimilate.

They also talks about shared traits which places humans in the ape clade. They also state that H. erectus is transitional. They also state that Australopithecines are transitional. They state this because these fossils have a mixture of shared ape features and derived human features. If you reject this definition of transitional, then it is time for you to tell us what definition you are using, and the criteria you are using.

Also, please explain why discontinuity disqualifies a fossil as being transitional. Why can't a species in the past differ from humans and still be our ancestor? Are you saying that if evolution is true then the very first life form was human and every single extant lineage diverged off of humans?

Your flat denial of transitional fossils is only making my point for me.

 

[Phred]

So if I could go back in time and put a ... flag of some sort into the DNA of an early primate, or of what we call our common ancestor, we'd be able to see that flag today. Only it would be in all primates and in chimps and humans.

Let's just say I could do that, would that convince you?

 

[Loudmouth]

And you can only extrapolate that a change in beak size or colour and immunity to disease will result in an ape becoming human

Humans are apes. You might as well ask for an example of a mammal turning into a horse. Just so we are clear on how the clade is arranged:

 

[Psudopod]

am sorry that I am not going to bother putting up a reply to you. I have had a gut full of evolutionists that have absolutely no idea of what they are on about wasting my time.

I'm sorry you're not going to bother as well. If you can't be bothered to debate, it's only you that looks bad so I don't mind.

For your information, up untill Ardi, comparisons with modern chimps was all they had as a comparison and chimps were used ad nauseum.

Really? Until we found something new, all we had was what we already knew about? Colour me shocked! Of course all we had were chimps and the other hominid fossls we had already discovered. Nobody has claimed that you could know exactly what the last common ancestor looked like, only that it would have a mixture of human and chimp features. We thought it wasn't bipedal, and it turns out that it was. That's all that's changed. It's an interesting discovery, but it doesn't challenge human evolution, let alone evolution in general

Hence you are wasting time as you have no idea what you are talking about.

Disagreeing with you does not mean I have no idea what I'm talking about. Let me ask you, why do you think no one else is claiming this as the end of evolutionary theory? (Waits to hear about the great scientific consiracy and how no one who questions the status quo will ever get published...

Sorry if you do not know that chimps WERE the ONLY comparison up until recently with the publication of Ardi then you have absolutely no idea at all.

Indeed the point that you lot cannot do comparisons with modern chimps as you lot have been is the basis of one of my points which totally elludes you.

No, we had other existing hominid fossils as well. But the fact that we were looking for something based on our understanding of what we already knew does not elude me. Tell me, other that the point in evolutionary history that bipedalism appeared, what has changed? Everything we know about chimps is still the same, everything we know about the fossils is still the same. The only thing we know now that we didn't before is that our ancestors were standing upright earlier than we first realised.

 

[Loudmouth]

Even Turkana Boy does not have a human pelvis. Its pelvis can only deliver small brained offspring. ..additionally..His pelvis appears asymetrical like as if the two halves are from different individuals.

Both halves are more human-like than any other non-human ape. That is what makes H. erectus transitional. Notice I said human-like, not exactly like humans.

Is that so? Then you had better read below. Indeed you have absolutley no idea what the common ancestor looked like and derived features are no more than speculative, especially with Ardi being dethroned

Doesn't change the fact that we do have transitionals with a mixture of shared ape features and derived human features. Whether the common ancestor was more human-like or more chimp-like it doesn't change the fact that these fossils are transitional.

To use an analogy, it doesn't matter if the common ancestral language of Spanish and French was more Spanish-like or more French-like. A mixture of shared french/spanish features and derived french features is a transitional between french and the common ancestral language of spanish and french.

All you seem to be arguing with respect to Ardi is that Ardi is human. Is that really what you want to be saying? If you say that Ardi is an ape then you have to admit that Ardi shares features with chimps since chimps are also apes.

I have no reason to change my view.

So what features in a fossil would cause you to change your view? Or is it possible for your views to change?

 

[CabVet]

I have no reason to change my view. The evidence for common ancestry is non credible and unstable. The evidence for creation is clear.

And where is that so-called evidence for creation?

 

[Loudmouth]

I know that it defeats the purpose of your thread, and I apologize in advance. But nothing would change my mind, as there will always be insufficient and incorrect evidence to support evolution.

Again, I apologize, and it's not my intention to stir you up or anything. It's just how I view the subject personally, based on my observations of the world.

Your honesty is a breath of fresh air.

I think the same could be said of creationism, and yet I would assume that you accept creationism as true. However, evolution has been shown to be a very useful theory in biology. To put it bluntly, evolution works. I have yet to see any research paper that used creationism to solve any problems in biology such as predict protein function. Evolution explains the pattern of shared and derived features, why we see shared genetic markers between species, the order of fossils in the fossil record, etc. Scientists view a working theory as a correct theory. Perhaps this is not something you personally accept.

Just to find some common ground . . . you state that evolution is supported by incorrect evidence. What would correct evidence be, in your view?