I am not an ape!

[NapoleonGH]

Vendetta Evolution is both a fact and a theory.

The fact of evolution is common descent.

the theory explains how that happened (Natural Selection with Modification)

[Vendetta]

Actually, mutability of species is the fact behind evolution. Species change and separate over time, quite a lot of people had begun to notice this quite some time before Charles Darwin (Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, wrote a book called Zoonomia, which also made reference to mutability of species, he just didn't have a theory to explain it).

Evolution is a theory which explains that fact and organises it in a framework with other facts like transmissable heredity and the requirement of resources by organisms, and hence competition for them within species.

The point is that evolution is reliable and provable because it is a theory. It has been tested by attempts to disprove it, found stable, and can be used to make predictions.

We like to bandy this word 'fact' around on the Internet, especially in debates with people who don't want to think for themselves, because it sounds weighty and unchallengable, but what we're doing is misleading ourselves into forgetting what theories are, and why in science they are far more important than mere facts.

Evolution is not a fact, it's far more useful than that.

[wolveraptor]

Isn't a fact something like a law? Under a Y situation, X will always occur.

[Vendetta]

Isn't a fact something like a law? Under a Y situation, X will always occur.

No.

The situation Y and the event X are facts, the relationship between them is first a hypothesis, then, if it was correct (or correct enough, Newton's laws of motion are correct enough, but not 'law'), it becomes a theory.

[Jarl Sven]

Personally, I take offense to the fact that we aren't ape-like enough. Apes kick ass; they can hang from trees for many times the length that we puny humans can; and launching one's self through trees seems like an awesome way to move around.

Chimps can do that because they have too
We on the other hand can build machines to do it for us

I’m evolved enough to work in an office all day while a monkey merely sits in a cage, masturbates, and flings poo


Hmmmm maybe this dominant species thing isn’t what it’s knocked up to be

[Vendetta]

I’m evolved enough to work in an office all day while a monkey merely sits in a cage, masturbates, and flings poo

For at least two of the above, the internet and metaphor provide.

[FireNexus]

Trek and Buffy suck, please stop me-tooing, and so stupidly at that. Also, on another note, Buffy is awesome, and there will be fisticuffs, I swear it!


Anyway, there's just no way to convince someone who believes, against all the evidence, that we were created in a few days. I wonder why i even bother?

[Zero]

Trek and Buffy suck, please stop me-tooing, and so stupidly at that. Also, on another note, Buffy is awesome, and there will be fisticuffs, I swear it!

Actually, I think Trek and Buffy suck was banned already for some dipshit comments in a thread about justification of intollerance of intollerance.

[DPDarkPrimus]

Vendetta Evolution is both a fact and a theory.

Oooh, what's "Vendetta Evolution"? Sounds sexy!

[Cthulhuvong]

Isn't a fact something like a law? Under a Y situation, X will always occur.

A fact is one point of data. "Canada is a country" or "2+2=4".
A law is scientific generalization. They are more complex and are like a set of rules for a certain subject. Like Newton's Laws of Motion. Those are rules of the universe that are not broken. They must be simple, true, universal, and absolute.

If a hypothesis is found to be correct over and over, then it becomes a theory only if it is used in connection with a law. A theory is a description of a law and how it interacts with the world. Einstein's Theory of Relativity touches on and expands on the Laws of Motion,

[Max]

This is a somewhat on topic of apes and evolution. So hopefully I can get an answer. I apologize in advance if this is off topic, but I'm having an evolution debate in another thread, and someone brought up chickens. This is his actual quote.

It has proven that the creature with the closest genetic structure to ours is the chicken, not the monkey. Now, can you honestly believe that we evolved from a chicken?

also followed by this

If Evolution is so widely accepted, why are there so many scientists, people of your liking, MAX, that admit that life is too complicated to have simply evolved?

I wouldn't mind a little help with serving a hot plate of smack down to him. =)

[Vendetta]

It has proven that the creature with the closest genetic structure to ours is the chicken, not the monkey. Now, can you honestly believe that we evolved from a chicken?

You could, of course, mention the obvious point that this is a complete and utter lie, as our closest genetic relatives are Chimpanzees, having a 98% common genome, whereas chickens only have a 60% commonality.

He may be confusing or more likely misrepresenting the fact that chickens have the same number of genes we do, but they're not the same ones, as they are with Chimps.

http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/genome/the ... 1n016.html

You could blind him with science and mention introns and RNA messaging, and the reason that massive differences in organism can be accounted for by a tiny difference in DNA, being that the way DNA is interpreted to protiens is not, as once thought, a simple one to one relationship, as protien production can be inhibited and changed by RNA. (the human genome encodes around three or four times as many protiens as it has genes)

also followed by this

If Evolution is so widely accepted, why are there so many scientists, people of your liking, MAX, that admit that life is too complicated to have simply evolved?

The thing to do here, of course, would be to first of all demand support for his position that there are reputable scientists who believe this. Be sure to demand he produce peer reviewed journals where scientists have claimed this.

Also mention "A Pessimistic view of the time taken for an eye to evolve" (Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, vol. 256 pp53-8, Daniel Nilsson and Suzanne Pilger), which predicts that a functioning varifocal eye like the human one can evolve from a patch of photosensitive cells in only 100,000 generations (which, in geological time, is about cornflakes time this morning) and have a functional use at every stage. (Eyes are a common fuckup with design theory, as they try to rationalise that 'half an eye is no good at all')

[Vendetta]

Oh yes, there's also the other misconception to address in there, with the whole 'evolved from a chicken' thing.

Y'see, we didn't 'evolve from' chimpanzees, chimpanzees and us, and the other apes as well all evolved from a common ancestor which wasn't like any of the things that have come out of it.

[Max]

So what if he counters with a

And yes, I have previously quoted scientists who feel that evolution isn't true, but why would I waste my time again? But, why not, I'll throw the dog a bone.

1974 Encyclopædia Britannica: “Fossil remains, however, give no information on the origin of the vertebrates.”

The Limitations of Science says: scientists do not “invariably tell the truth, or try to, even about their science. They have been known to lie, but they did not lie in order to serve science but, usually, [their own] religious or antireligious prejudices.”

“Fossils, unfortunately, reveal very little about the creatures which we consider the first true mammals.” (The Mammals, p. 37)

“Unfortunately, the fossil record which would enable us to trace the emergence of the apes is still hopelessly incomplete. .*.*. Unfortunately, the early stages of man’s evolutionary progress along his own individual line remain a total mystery.” (The Primates, pp. 15, 177)

“Modern [evolutionists] are no less likely to cling to erroneous data that supports their preconceptions than were earlier investigators .*.*. [who] dismissed objective assessment in favour of the notions they wanted to believe.”Missing Links by David Pilbeam.

“Darwin himself wondered how nature selected emerging forms before they were perfectly functional. The list of evolutionary mysteries is endless. And today’s biologists have to humbly admit, with Prof.*Jean Génermont of the University of South Paris in Orsay, that ‘the synthetic theory of evolution cannot readily explain the origin of complex organs.’” --Philippe Chambon

that's just some of what I've got, Rott.

[wautd]

So what if he counters with a

And yes, I have previously quoted scientists who feel that evolution isn't true, but why would I waste my time again? But, why not, I'll throw the dog a bone.

1974 Encyclopædia Britannica: “Fossil remains, however, give no information on the origin of the vertebrates.”

For one thing, that's pretty dated

[Vendetta]

Indeed it is.

I'd also investigate how archaic his other sources is, as he is likely producing deliberately misleading quotes.

For a start, it's a deflection of the issue. The fossil record shows us that until a certain point in history, there were no vertebrates, and then a few million years later there were.

You could also note the modern discoveries in China like this one, which show a route for the evolution of things like detached jaws, seen in modern vertebrates.

There's a third flaw in his argument as well, which is the really obvious one, that shell-less invertebrates don't leave fossils, and the kind of features that a soft body fossil does preserve aren't the features that would tell us about vertebrate evolution.

[Max]

Indeed it is.

I'd also investigate how archaic his other sources is, as he is likely producing deliberately misleading quotes.

For a start, it's a deflection of the issue. The fossil record shows us that until a certain point in history, there were no vertebrates, and then a few million years later there were.

You could also note the modern discoveries in China like this one, which show a route for the evolution of things like detached jaws, seen in modern vertebrates.

There's a third flaw in his argument as well, which is the really obvious one, that shell-less invertebrates don't leave fossils, and the kind of features that a soft body fossil does preserve aren't the features that would tell us about vertebrate evolution.

I made the same comment, but then he pretty much...not a surprise really...came at me with.

It's funny how the sources are old, because, with all the modern technology available, it cannot defuse the basic doubts that scientists have. Hah. It even proves that with such dated technology at their disposal, they could see that evolution has more holes than swiss cheese.

“Since 1950 the scientific evidence has pointed inescapably to one conclusion: man did not evolve in either the time or the way that Darwin and the modern evolutionists thought most probable.”--Man, Time, and Fossils by evolutionist R. Moore.

“It is proving particularly difficult to understand the evolution of man .*.*. We know too little of the timing or mechanisms of evolution, nor is there enough evidence from fossil material to take our theorising out of the realms of fantasy.” magazine, New Scientist

I especially like the word of fantasy. Quite accurate.

“Evolution cannot be supported by evidence available to the student of basic biology .*.*. and since high ranking scientists have been known to reject it, the widespread custom of presenting it as a fact is indefensible.”--On Call, British Medical Journal (italics their own)

Indefensible. Very good word.

[Dakarne]

I'm not an ape, merely descended from them.

[Rye]

I'm not an ape, merely descended from them.

Wrong, humans are apes, they're just bipedal ones. This is like saying "I'm not a mammal, merely descended from them," or "I'm not a vertebrate, merely descended from them," ... yet you still have a spine and I'm betting you like looking at tits.

[Dakarne]

I was actually saying that we've stopped resembling apes to the point of insanity...

We've evolved into a Seperate Species, it's all I'm saying... but on a Genetic level, yes we are Bipedal apes.

[Rye]

Chimps have evolved into a seperate species to Orang Utans too, doesn't mean either one of them isn't an ape.

And no, we've not stopped resembling them to the point of insanity. To quote this post:

You are an ape.
Your tail is merely a stub of bones that don't even protrude outside the skin. Your dentition includes not only vestigial canines, but incisors, cuspids, bicuspids, and distinctive molars that come to five points interrupted by a "Y" shaped crevasse. This in addition to all of your other traits, like the dramatically increased range of motion in your shoulder, as well as a profound increase in cranial capacity and disposition toward a bipedal gait, indicates that you are not merely a vertebrate cranial chordate and a tetrapoidal placental mammalian primate, but you are more specifically an ape, and so was your mother before you.

Genetic similarity confirms morphological similarity rather conclusively, just as Charles Darwin himself predicted more than 140 years ago. While he knew nothing of DNA of course, he postulated that inheritable units of information must be contributed by either parent. He rather accurately predicted the discovery of DNA by illustrating the need for it. Our 98.4% to 99.4% identical genetic similarity explains why you have such social, behavioral, sexual, developmental, intellectual, and physical resemblance to a bonobo chimpanzee. Similarities that are not shared with any other organism on the planet. Hence you are both different species of the same literal family. In every respect, you are nearly identical. You, sir, are an ape.

[Vendetta]

“Since 1950 the scientific evidence has pointed inescapably to one conclusion: man did not evolve in either the time or the way that Darwin and the modern evolutionists thought most probable.”--Man, Time, and Fossils by evolutionist R. Moore.

Ruth Moore's Man, Time, and Fossils draws it's conclusion from the discovery of Piltdown Man, thought to have been a Pleistocene skeleton.

Piltdown Man was exposed in 1953 as a deliberate hoax, the (human female) skull was no more than six hundred years old, the jawbone was that of an ourang outan.

I think the application of the term "Lying shitstain" would not be out of place.

[quote[“It is proving particularly difficult to understand the evolution of man .*.*. We know too little of the timing or mechanisms of evolution, nor is there enough evidence from fossil material to take our theorising out of the realms of fantasy.” magazine, New Scientist

I especially like the word of fantasy. Quite accurate.[/quote]

I don't have the article to hand, of course, but I will offer odds that he is deliberately misrepresenting it, as seems to be his wont, and that the actual content is based on specifics, not the entirety of the development of man. And, of course, as time goes by we are building ever more complete pictures of our early history. There's a wealth of fossil information Here, which shows that the easy answers that fundies blame evolution for not providing aren't there because the answer isn't easy

[Vendetta]

Wrong, humans are apes, they're just bipedal ones. This is like saying "I'm not a mammal, merely descended from them," or "I'm not a vertebrate, merely descended from them," ... yet you still have a spine and I'm betting you like looking at tits.

I like the classification in The Science of Discworld.

We are pan narrans. The storytelling ape.

[Zero]

Why do people seem to expect a perfect fossil record of every when fossilization is such a rare event?

[Dakarne]

And of course, Time can degrade fossils pretty quickly.