In another thread we are debating the opening post of this thread. As that discussion is more applicable to this thread, I am replying here.
God may have used evolution to create humans but I believe the evidence points to creation over long periods of time. Each time the environment changed radically the creator had to salt the earth with organisms that could handle the change. Understood in its original language and from the proper viewpoint that author was trying to convey, I believe that fits the Biblical story of creation the best.
You seem to be going for the old catastrophic view, that says various large transitions occurred in past creation events roughly correlated with the geologic periods. This has been refuted long ago. Creation of new species has not occurred in a dozen distinct events. Rather, new species began many times over many millions of years.
You also seem to have some similarity to modern progressive creationists, who apparently think there were millions of creation events as new species were introduced. This odd violation of all the laws of physics to pop new species into existence in millions of different creation events is, to say the least, bizarre.
Let me ask it to you this way: How do you think the first zebra came into existence? I agree with science, that the zebra evolved from something like the eohippus over many millions of years. How do you think it happened? Do you think that all of a sudden, boom, there is an adult zebra popping into existence out of nothing?
Most anthropologists believe humans came thru the afarensis line.
You say this in response to my mention that the africanus skull had some similarity to humans. Let me explain it to you once more. There were perhaps dozens of Australopithecus and similar species. One of them was our ancestor. We don't know which.
Heredity could have caused another species to share some traits of both the ararensis and africanus lines. Or gene transfer between species could have allowed one species to adopt a good gene from another species. We don't know the exact lineage.
The important thing is that we are seeing the beginnings of human traits in these fossils.
Australopithecus body and brain is much more chimplike than you are willing to admit.
OK, I will explain it to you one more time: The Australopithecus had some characteristics that were transitional to humans, but they were also very different from humans.
Instead of addressing what I actually say, you instead keep building these two straw men:
1) That I say Australopithecus had large brains.
2) That I say Australopithecus were equipped as well as humans for bipedal travel.
I have repeatedly explained to you that these are strawmen. I am saying neither. But that doesn't seem to stop you from gleefully knocking down the same strawman arguments over and over again.
According to Dr. John Hawks at the University of Wisconsin "No australopithecine species is obviously transitional to Homo erectus."
My guess is that you got this from a Creationist source that quoted Hawks out of context. If you are not aware of it, Creationists notoriously quote scientists out of context. So be careful.
Did you look at the original source? I think the original quote comes from
Population Bottlenecks and Pleistocene Human Evolution . Hawks is not saying what you claim.
Not according to all anthropologists as I demonstrated above. Their foramen magnum is also in the wrong place for obligate bipedalism.
Once again you gleefully knock down the strawman argument that Australopithecus were fully equipped for bipedal travel. How about addressing the actual point? Although they were not fully equipped for bipedal travel, they have skeletal features that clearly made it much easier for them to travel on two feet.
Yes, and that is strong evidence that they are not ancestral to humans.
You write this regarding the small brains of Australopithecus.
Again, Australopithecus were not yet ready for huge brain expansion. They were still limited in the size of the skull that could pass through the birth canal. Humans get their big brains by the skull growing after birth during a prolonged childhood. Although we are not sure of the exact evolutionary path, we do see changes happening in Australopithecus that likely led to the ability to expand brain size. In particular:
1. Brain structure changes allowed some to have increased cognitive ability by limiting the proportion of the brain dedicated to sight.
2. These cognitive abilities and other factors allowed them to get more protein and build more cooperative social orders.
3. This allowed mothers to spend more time with helpless infants.
All this opened the door to brain expansion after birth. Once that process was fully rooted, an arms race drove brain size bigger and bigger.
As Dr. Hawkins states above, the transition between Australopithicines and the genus Homo is too large for it to be a transitional form. We have yet to find such a form, if it even exists.
His name is John Hawks. In addition to the previous link, here is a blog post he wrote:
Human evolution .
He begins with:
Living humans evolved from ancestral apes during the last 5 to 7 million years. Our ancestors and relatives, called hominins, remained limited to Africa for two thirds of their history. With chimpanzee-sized bodies and brains, early hominins diversified into several lineages with different dietary strategies. One of these found a path toward technology, food sharing and hunting and gathering, giving rise to our genus, Homo approximately 2 million years ago.
So please explain to me why John Hawks is a good authority for your claim that the gap is too large for a transitional form.
