A good summary of so called human evolution.

Dio, what you mean to say, is that you haven;t got the logic or intelligence to debate with me, as evolution doesn;t answer your prayers, and all you end up with is 'luck and chance responses' and maybe a few snide remarks.If you want to defeat me or creationists then tell us who were our forefathers, who were our primate ancestors ? Nobody else can, so give it a try.... or make something up.Or then maybe a personal attack is all you can muster up because you have no flow chart of humanity. You dont know our ancestors and so 'attack' rather than face your lack of knowledge.Edited by Davidjay, : No reason given.

Not true.. Thats an absolute LIE, a despicable LIE, as over and over and over again Razz has been trying to con people on Humans and Dogs and Bones, that his inbreeding dog chart shows how variability can lead to evolutionary change.See that thread and apologise..But then again, repeat your words to RAZZ and disagree with him and teach him that inbreeding is NOT a proof of evolution.You evolutionists are so inconsistent and unstable and erratic and evasive, it makes one doubt your sanity and of course doubt your stupid theory.

Of course, since RAZD does not say what you claim he says, there is no need to disagree with him.Only YOU have claimed that inbreeding is proof of evolution.Since it is so easy to check claims like these that you make; and since in all cases when checked it shows you are simply lying; is there any reason to think your claims about the God you try to market are not simply more of your lies and as worthless as all the cut & paste shit from your website?

Not so, the evidence exactly states that Razz says over and over and over again that inbreeding is a sign that evolution could have might have, should have surely did make the jump and create a new species, and is proof of evolution......Its written by him, multiptle multiple times, and is not a MIS REPRESENTATION..... he refuses to take down his doggie inbreeding chart, and now as expected you try and cover this up and deny it.And yet still you evolutionists are inconsistent as one of you says inbreeding is not a proof of evolution and the majority of you are silent as a graveyard, and others like you say, no one said that and youre a liar and misrepresenting us poor evolutionists who are being picked on (paraphrased for clarity sake)EvC Forum: The story of Bones and Dogs and HumansEvolutionists please refraim from mentioning your feces when posting on my threads, use respect rather than disrespect as your tools in debating rather than gross language and inconsistent principles and deceptions. ThanksEdited by Davidjay, : No reason given.Edited by Davidjay, : No reason given.

Firstly I don't represent evolution or religion ok.
Interesting reading the replies. Many of them just automatically dismiss the facts presented by the op and others are just outright rude and offensive.
But out of all these one eyed evolutionists no one has been able to produce an example of fossils found to be ape/man. Not even one...
Wake up evos. This is not science. This is philosophy. Anti religious philosophy

Welcome to the fray Porkandcheese, Sure ... and some are inane and don't address the op. How rude and offensive. Wrong. But then you probably don't know what a transitional fossil is. Ignorance can be cured. and why are you so concerned, if you don't "represent" religion, ok?Enjoy

Ok then oh wise one please explain what a transitional fossil is and some human examples.
Why am I so concerned. Cos I'm searching for answers. Bought up by catholics I rejected the bible when I was old enough and looked to science only to find the same stuff. Unfounded stories.
Both religion and biology need to wake up and accept the fact that know one knows for sure.
What is the term for that position anyway. I don't accept religion nor do I accept the biological theory.Edited by Porkncheese, : No reason given.

To begin with the proper term is "intermediate" ... as in intermediate between ancestor and descendant populations. Evolution occurs in populations, not individuals as each individual is a product of mutation and selection in a changing ecology. This is not theory, it is observed objective empirical fact, documented in hundreds of peer reviewed scientific studies.This is a two-step feedback response system that is repeated in each generation: Like walking on first one foot and then the next. Every generation is intermediate and every individual in that population is intermediate. Modern human, Australopithicus (lucy composite), and modern chimps. Do you see how Australopithicus is intermediate between human and chimp? Look at the hip bones in particular.

quote:

---

http://www.talkorigins.org/...mdesc/images/hominids2_big.jpg

---

A whole bunch of skulls showing intermediate stages in development over time. Chimp at one end, modern human at the other. Then you haven't really looked at science to see how it works. In science hypothesis are based on objective empirical evidence and then used to predict something new that tests the hypothesis, and a theory is a tested hypothesis.The theory's purpose is to explain all the evidence as well as can be explained, and the testing of a theory is never complete. They can be falsified but not proven, as each test only validates the theory while the next prediction result may invalidate it.They are not "stories" they are well researched and tested explanations that are the best explanations of the reality we can establish at this point. Only religion claims to. In science the results are tentative, however, the more tested they are the higher the confidence we have that they approach/approximate reality. Each theory built on the last one brings that approximation closer. Agnostic (and science is agnostic)
or confused
or just ignorant of biological theory.A good place to start is Welcome to Evolution 101! by the Understanding Evolution team:

quote:

---

What is evolution and how does it work? Evolution 101 provides the nuts-and-bolts on the patterns and mechanisms of evolution. You can explore the following sections:

​

​

• An introduction to evolution
  Evolution briefly defined and explained
  ​
• The history of life: looking at the patterns
  How does evolution lead to the tree of life?
  ​
• Mechanisms: the processes of evolution
  How does evolution work?
  ​
• Microevolution
  How does evolution work on a small scale?
  ​
• Speciation
  What are species anyway, and how do new ones evolve?
  ​
• Macroevolution
  How does evolution work on a grand scale?
  ​
• The big issues
  What are some of the big question

---

You can go at your own speed.Enjoy

There are few terms for it, the most polite probably being 'confused'.From the remarks you've made so far about biological theory you plainly don't actually know what it is, so it's not a matter of not accepting it, you need to understand it first. You appear to have absorbed a lot of religious hogwash about it.Stick around here and listen to what is said and you'll be in a position to accept it or not - at the moment you're denying something that isn't biology.

Thanks RAZD for your reply. Your correct in saying I'm ignorant in biology and confused.Accepting religion growing up I then started to hear and learn the opinion of others. By the age of 16 I had rejected religion and just went along with evolution, big bang, all that. I didn't give it much thought again until I was in my 30's when I started to hear and learn the opinions of others. And after watching, listening and reading arguments for and against I'm not at all convinced that the biological theory of evolution is 100% fact. Much of the so called supporting evidence is inconclusive or subject to various assumptions.This leaves me with a similar feeling I had about religion. The feeling of being lied to. But this is worse because while religion is about faith science is meant to be about facts.You see I'm in engineering and at university I studied physics where mathematics dictates everything. There is only one correct answer. Any other answer is incorrect. There are no estimates or assumptions. There is no ifs buts or maybes. Everything is observable and measurable. Biology, as I'm learning, is nothing like that. Like the earth is 6.5 to 6.6 billion. Why the 100 million discrepancy? Thats just unheard of in maths and physics. Not only is it acceptable but it is declared to be fact in Biology.Like your example of Australopiticus being a transitional or intermediate is very convincing. But many conclude that it is just a species of ape and that not enough bones were recovered to conclude it to be human. No hand or feet bones, only tiny fragments of skull and a few other bones. In engineering we cannot make any assumptions for the consequences could be catastrophically fatal to thousands. Nothing is released before being totally confirmed of its safety and functionality. Australopiticus is a guess isn't it? One opinion vs another.You show me a series of skulls claiming it to show evolution. You are effectively asking me now for the same thing religion asks... Faith. You are asking me to have faith in your word that these specimens are in fact links in the evolution of man. Can you see how that is not acceptable for myself? Why I must question everything and not just go along with it all.Iv heard many say that no transitional (intermediate or whatever you prefer to call them) fossils have ever been found. Archaeopteryx is apparently the only example of evolution, supposedly showing the transition from reptiles to birds. Only one example. Would you call that conclusive evidence?You made an interesting statement which I totally agree with
"The theory's purpose is to explain all the evidence as well as can be explained, and the testing of a theory is never complete. They can be falsified but not proven, as each test only validates the theory while the next prediction result may invalidate it"So by your statement you must agree that the theory cannot be regarded as "Gospel". There may be some supporting evidence but our knowledge of the subject is just not enough to say with 100% certainty that every aspect of our theory is correct. Someone else said that the theory doesn't not even address the beginning of life. So if we cannot explain the beginning of life and our fossils don't really support evolution without an artists impression then why are we claiming it to be unquestionable fact and teaching it to our kids.I feel I'm going to be totally abused for this post but I challenge anyone to be logical, look at it like Isaac Newton and lay down some decent evidence. Part of your flow chart is "predict something" well what has been predicted?As for cells... One cell or one cell organism ok my bad. But in the end isn't it still essentially one cell that created everything? One cell that multiplied on its own?This frustrates me. There are a lot of things that strike me as being religious about the whole thing. Like how offensive people get, unable to have a normal conversation about it, unable to listen to reason or take another perspective on it often resorting to insults to exit the debate. Saying it is "Gospel" when they know that the theory has much speculation and conjecture, it already has many pieces of evidence against it and is subject to further new findings in future studies that could disprove it.. The exaggerations of everything like see how you presented all those skulls to me as if it were 100% fact. Or how you presented Lucy not with the few bones that were found but as a complete skeleton. This is very misleading and is the type of stuff I saw in religion. People modifying fossils, frauds and fakes to trick the average civilian. Why all that? And this automatic assumption that I'm a preacher really makes u guys seem unbelievably bad and untrustworthy. Everyone here has labelled me a preacher. But is religion a part of my argument... Not at all. I see anyone with any religious arguments gets discriminated against, shamed and outcast. Their are so many unanswered questions...Im not here to take any sides. Rather just to have people admit that their religion, science, doctrine or whatever you like to call it could have some details that are incorrect. That it could actually contain things that are not totally true and/or cannot be explained.Ok you can all begin your attack on me now...

You appear to have fallen into a false dichotomy, an either-or mentality. You appear to think that there is conflict between science and religion and between evolution and creation (as is evidenced by your last sentence there). That false mentality is central to creationist rhetoric along with being a common misconception among non-creationists, mostly stemming from taking creationist false statements at face value (eg, "If evolution is true then the Bible is false and God does not exist." and a legion of similar statements).If you believe that there is conflict between evolution and creation, then please explain to us why you would think that. A new topic would be appropriate if an actual discussion were to emerge from this question, but I somehow doubt that you will respond.There is no inherent conflict between evolution and creation by supernatural means. The only conflict that can arise is if one's claims of creation include contrary-to-fact claims as they mere mortal fallible humans dare to dictate to God how He can and cannot have Created. Similarly, there is no inherent conflict between science and religion unless religion chooses to create conflict with statements about the real world that are contrary to fact. In both cases, it is religion that would create any conflict, not science.According to actual creationists, God created the natural universe (AKA "the physical universe", AKA "the real world") -- please note that my reference to "actual creationists" is appropriate since one of our most rabid creationists here, Faith, rejected that idea altogether for no reason that I can remember her having given. Science is the study of the physical universe, AKA "the real world", and how it works. When done correctly (as science always strives to do in order to avoid invalid results), science cannot contradict the Creation, regardless of how It actually got here (ie, regardless of which of countless Creator Gods had actually done the deed, if any). Science only deals with how the real world works and does not get involved with the supernatural, which it cannot deal with.Now, there is a theology far too often adopted by creationists (and which is fundamental to Intelligent Design) called "The God of the Gaps", which basically posits that God exists within the gaps of human knowledge. That this leads to viewing God as weak and hiding frightened in perpetual fear of Man's increasing knowledge should be obvious even to the most pious of observers. Its application among IDists and many creationists is to argue: "Oh look how complex this is! We in our ignorance cannot imagine how it could have evolved, therefore God!" Besides diminishing God even further with each new discovery by humans, it also establishes a metric by which to disprove God: any naturalistic explanation for something disproves God. That is utterly false, yet that is the implicit creationist and IDist position. Thus "creation science" accomplishes what no anti-God atheist ever could, disproving the existence of God. The irony it burns!By the same token, however life appeared, once it came into existence it started evolving. Stated very basically, evolution is the cumulative results and effects of life doing what life naturally does, of populations of organisms surviving and reproducing and surviving and reproducing. That would have happened regardless of how life had gotten there in the first place. Therefore, evolution does not contradict creation ... unless "creation" is arbitrarily redefined to contradict the real world, such as YEC does.Even abiogenesis does not inherently contradict creation. In opposition to "The God of the Gaps" stands God as "The Sovereign over Nature". Instead of hiding impotent terrified in the shadows of the gaps, the Sovereign over Nature is omnipotent and able to use all the forces and processes of Nature, which It had created in the first place. For example, from Genesis 1 of the King James Version:

quote:

---

1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, [and] the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed [is] in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

​

1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the
moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above
the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

---

1) God is not being described as having created all that life directly, but rather had used the earth and the waters as intermediate agents which then performed all that work.2) For those apologists who want to try to match up actual earth history with Genesis, Genesis has land life appearing two full days before sea life, completely opposite of what we actually know. Sorry, but that's how the matzah crumbles.So then, did the Creator magically poof life into existence (again, please note that our most rabid creationist here, Faith, strongly opposes any mention of God having done anything magically, though that context is mainly geological) or did the Creator use natural processes to bring life into existence? What difference would it make? Well, for actual creationists it would make no difference. For YECs who want to dictate to God how He did and could not have created (never a good idea!), God using the natural processes He had Himself created would end up disproving God. What idiocy! You don't know the players yet. Mike the Wiz is basically a YEC troll who spends most of his time in creationist forums enraptured in their massive circle jerk in the sky and where no one can dare ever question any of their unsupported and false claims. On occasion, he will return here to try to stir up trouble with his outrageously false posts.Such as the OP (Message 1), which does nothing more than to repost a long refuted claim. As I responded in Message 8: A few decades ago, a local creationist created his own poor man's cheap knock-off of the Chick Pubs' "Big Daddy?" (BTW, now all you can find is an inferior second edition purportedly written by that convicted fraud, Kent Hovind, whereas I had read the original back circa 1970, but unfortunately never kept a copy, a lament sung by so many comic book readers). The original included that parody of Time's March of Human Evolution (my name just now made up), of which Mike the Wiz' list is a copy and which my local creationist reproduced in his own Chick Pub knock-off. Here is my response to that creationist (G.S. is the high school teacher with a PhD, Dr. Gee I'm Smart, while Stu is the "true Christian student -- gee, isn't this guy oh so subtle?):

quote:

---

Page 3:

​

Frame 1:
G.S.: Sure! We evolutionists are very proud of it.
Stu : Isn't it true that Heidelberg man was built from one jawbone claimed to be human? That Nebraska man was built from one tooth later found to be a pig's? That Piltdown man was built by one jawbone which was later revealed to be an ape's jaw? That there is no evidence to merit Peking man? That Neanderthal, New Guinea and Cro-Magnon are as human as any human today?

​

Oh, no. Not this nonsense again. Instead of trying to deal with the current list of hominid fossils, you put together a parade of straw men just so you can blow them away. Your techniques vary a bit from one to the other. Some of these (Nebraska and Piltdown) were discredited long ago and would never be included in a legitimate chart. Then you try to isolate two others (Heidelberg and Peking) as being individual hominids based on questionable or nonexistent evidence when they actually are examples of Homo erectus, which is well-documented and widespread.

​

Let's get down to some specifics:

​

Heidelberg Man:
The remains of Heidelberg Man indeed consist solely of a single massive lower jaw found in a sand pit near Heidelberg, Germany. This jaw is large and heavy and lacks a chin, unlike modern man. The teeth are of moderate size and are generally like modern man's. In many respects, it resembles Neanderthal, which some scientists consider it to be ancestral to. The consensus is that it is a later grade of Homo erectus, whose remains have been found in Africa, Asia, and Europe and whose later examples are found to grade into Neanderthal forms. Homo erectus is well-documented and widespread, so the Heidelberg remains are hardly an isolated case.

​

I have not heard of anybody having claimed that it was human. Could you please provide more information on this point?

​

Nebraska Man:
"Nebraska Man" (Hesperopithecus) was a mistaken, though not undisputed, "reconstruction" from a human-looking tooth. Hesperopithecus only lasted a few years before it was refuted by the same team that had found it. Even though it was laid to rest over half a century ago, creationists continue to misrepresent it as part of current evolutionary thought.

​

Harold Cook found the tooth in Nebraska in 1917 and sent it to vertebrate paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, President of the American Museum of Natural History, in March 1922 to determine the tooth's affinities. Osborn determined that the tooth appeared to be "one hundred per cent anthropoid," announced Hesperopithecus haroldcookii as the first anthropoid ape from America, and sent casts of the tooth out to 26 institutions in Europe and America.

​

As would be expected, Hesperopithecus was largely met with skepticism, but a few scientists did acknowledge Osborn's claim. One of them, British anatomist Grafton Elliot Smith, helped an artist, Amedee Forestier, come up with an imaginative artistic reconstruction, which appeared in the Illustrated London News. Osborn and his colleagues were unimpressed with the drawing, feeling that "such a drawing or 'reconstruction' would doubtless be only a figment of the imagination of no scientific value, and undoubtedly inaccurate." This "reconstruction" did not appear in any other publication until it was "rediscovered" by creationists and reprinted in their own books.

​

Rather, Osborn chose to interpret the fossil as that of an anthropoid ape and put a colleague, William King Gregory, in charge of defending it. At first, Gregory concluded that the tooth "combines characters seen in the molars of the chimpanzee, of Pithecanthropus, and of man, but ... it is hardly safe to affirm more than that Hesperopithecus was structurally related to all three."

​

Then later in 1923, Gregory backed off a bit and suggested that it was of the gorilla-chimpanzee group. Indeed, it was Elliot Smith who had made the overzealous extrapolations from the tooth; most other scientists, including its discoverer and defender, were much more cautious. Which is as it should have been. Starting with further field work at the original site in 1925, doubt began to spread about the tooth's owner. By 1927, Gregory became aware that Hesperopithecus was an extinct peccary (pig) and he printed a retraction in the journal, _Science_. As far as science was concerned, that was the end of "Nebraska Man."

​

Misidentification of incomplete fossil specimens is not uncommon; the self-correcting nature of science normally takes care of them as it did for Hesperopithecus. Nor was the misidentification of the tooth totally unwarranted. It does bear a compelling resemblance to hominid molar teeth in terms of size, shape, and wear patterns. However, the tooth is not an upper molar, but a rotated upper premolar (or bicuspid) which had undergone abnormal wear. Ironically, 13 years prior Harold Cook and W.D. Matthews, a colleague of Osborn, had observed a startling resemblance between the premolars and molars of Miocene peccaries and anthropoid apes, so that they "might well be mistaken for them by anyone not familiar with the dentition of Miocene peccaries."

​

A mistake was made and it was corrected, as it should be in science. And in this case, it only took five years to go from "discovery" to refutation -- by its very discoverers! When a creationist makes a mistake, he simply denies it and continues to use the mistake.

​

Now, given all this, why did you misrepresent "Nebraska Man" as being current?

​

Piltdown Man:
Like "Nebraska Man," Piltdown Man (Eoanthropus dawsonii) was a mistake that has been corrected. The main differences are in how long that correction took and that it had been a deliberate hoax. It is still not known "who dun it" and the finger has been pointed at the discoverer Charles Dawson, his digging partner Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Piltdown proponent Arthur Smith Woodward, and, more recently, even at Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

​

Dawson had discovered the first skull fragments in a gravel pit at Piltdown in 1908. After collecting fossils there until mid 1912, he took them to Woodward for evaluation. When the three (Dawson, Woodward, and Teilhard) continued digging later in 1912, the first jaw was found. Woodward published in December.

​

The find instantly attracted much criticism. The skull was thick but otherwise indistinguishable from modern humans and the jaw was identified as "chimpanzee" (actually it was from an orangutan) except for the wear on the teeth which appeared human (those wear patterns had been filed in). The critics, who were many, clearly saw that the combination was a monstrosity and argued that the remains were of two different animals that had been mixed together. Since it fit the current ideas of human evolution that a large brain would have developed first, Woodward stoutly defended Piltdown Man until his death at the end of the 1940's. Then in 1914 a second find associating a human skull and apish jaw with human wear patterns tipped the scales in favor of Woodward and most critics were effectively silenced.

​

It was finally in 1953 that Piltdown was exposed by Kenneth Oakley, J.S. Weiner, and W.E. le Gros Clark. When the bones failed an fluoride age test, further examination showed that they had been chemically stained to simulate great age and that the teeth had been filed down. Furthermore, the mammal fossils that had been found at Piltdown had been planted there and the flint tools found there had been recently carved. Just as the critics had said, the skull was human and the jaw was ape. The whole thing was a hoax.

​

True to the corrective nature of science, Piltdown Man was publically exposed as a hoax and he was "evicted" from the family tree, never to be used again -- except by creationists. When scientists construct any kind of chart or tree of human descent, Piltdown NEVER appears on it. Why then did you include him and misrepresent him as a currently accepted human ancestor? Are you deliberately trying to deceive your readers?

​

Creationists parade Nebraska and Piltdown Man to show the folly of science, yet both cases actually illustrate the greatest strength of science: through continual testing and re-evaluation, mistakes can be detected and corrected. Both Nebraska and Piltdown were mistakes, they were discovered and immediately revealed to the public for the mistakes they were, and neither received any further consideration from science. Contrast this with many creationist claims, such as the Paluxy "man-prints" and the self-exploding bombardier beetle, which creationists of the ICR have admitted as being mistakes and yet they continued to use the same claims. They proclaim loudly about the dust motes in science's eye, yet they cannot see the boulders in their own eye.

​

Peking Man:
Here is another case of creationists trying to discredit science by concentrating on a few specific details about one specific fossil and forgetting the entire story. In 1927 while digging in cave deposits at Choukoutien, about 50 km southwest of Beijing (then Peking), Dr. Davidson Black discovered a few hominid molar teeth and named them Sinanthropus pekinensis ("Peking Man"). Two years later, his team discovered a complete and undistorted skull of the same species. While Black felt that his naming was justified, anthropologists at the time felt that the find was another example of Dubois' Pithecanthropus ("Java Man"), which we now call Homo erectus. After the discovery, Black sent photographs, measurements, and a preliminary descriptive account to Marcellin Boule at the Institute of Human Paleontology in Paris.

​

When Black died in 1934, he was replaced by Franz Weidenreich, who produced the definitive monographs on the fossils. He made further photographs, note, measurements, and a set of excellent casts, which he took with him as he fled the oncoming Japanese invasion. He had left the original fossils in China to be evacuated with a Marine detachment, but when they arrived at the port on 7 Dec 1941, their ship was sunk and they were captured. The original fossils disappeared.

​

Now Dr. Gish of the ICR freely admits that if we can trust Weidenreich's work then Peking Man would indeed "occup[y] a position intermediate between anthropoid apes and man." So of course Gish and other creationists do everything they can to discredit Weidenreich's work and to claim that the only evidence for Peking Man are the casts and a few teeth. Gish even goes so far as to cast doubt on the very existence of the caves at Choukoutien.

​

After World War II, especially after China opened to the West again, further digging at those "nonexistent" caves has yielded many more finds, so that the evidence for Peking Man is massive. Interestingly, the back part of a skull found in 1934 fits perfectly with a front portion found in 1966. On top of all this evidence, Peking Man is no isolated case, but is only one of many examples of Homo erectus remains which have been found in Africa, Asia, and Europe, with late examples grading into Neanderthal forms. Homo erectus is well-documented and widespread.

​

"No evidence"?

​

Neanderthal:
"That Neanderthal, ... [is] as human as any human today?" This brings to mind the following comment:

​

"Indeed, W. L. Duckworth [British professor at the turn of the century] once exuberantly exclaimed that if Neandertal man entered a bar in modern dress the majority would not notice him. One marvels at the sort of person Duckworth drank with." (_The Piltdown Men_, Ronald Millar, p. 148)

​

A good part of the disagreement over Neanderthal does lie in how to classify him. This ranges from treating him as part of our genus and species (Homo sapiens neandertalensis) to classifying him as a late form of Homo erectus. Indeed, late examples of Homo erectus are found to grade into early Neanderthal forms.

​

One thing they do all agree on is that Neanderthal predates modern man. Even if we do group him within our own genus and species, the fact remains that Neanderthal morphology is very distinctive and different from that of modern man. Even though creationists try to explain their morphology away as having been caused by disease, none of those claims stand up to examination. In a systematic study of multiple Neanderthal crania, G. M. Morant found certain characteristics of all the skulls to lie either well outside or entirely outside the interracial distributions for modern man.

​

New Guinea:
What the hell is "New Guinea Man"? I've never heard of this one before and I have been unable to find any mention of it anywhere, not even in creationist books. Is there another name used for it and what is the story supposed to be?

​

Cro-Magnon:
Cro-Magnon remains date back about 40,000 years and are indeed very similar to modern man. There are a number of small skeletal differences between Cro-Magnon and modern man, but only about as much as between the modern races. Cro-Magnon is clearly an earlier form of modern man which is very closely related to us and I know of no scientist who claims differently. What claims were you thinking about?

​

This does raise an interesting problem about "missing links." In their "no transitional forms" complaint, creationists often demand to know where the "missing links" are: i.e. given two different forms, come up with one that is intermediate between them. The practical problem with this is that once you do that, you no longer have a single to gap to account for, but two gaps for which you must now find two more intermediates! Accomplish that and you will have four gaps requiring four more "missing links." And so on, with the quantity of demands doubling each time! It'll never end until a continuous spectrum is achieved, which is impossible since there isn't even a continuous spectrum from one generation to the next; in strict terms, you cannot be considered as being a transitional form between your own parents and your own children, even though you are definitely related.

​

Furthermore, Richard Dawkins has suggested that if the fossil record were entirely complete, if every single "missing link" were present and accounted for, that the patterns of evolution would be extremely difficult to see. We wouldn't know where to draw the lines. We already see this happening with species of frogs ranging across the Eastern Seaboard of which neighboring species are related closely enough to interbreed and yet the more distant species are too different to be able to. Where can we draw the line between them? The same thing has happened to herring gulls that ring the Arctic Sea; by the time the gradations make it around the pole, you have an entirely different species. Just where along that continuum do you draw the lines?

​

So then, if you would not accept a "missing link" that is different from us nor one that is very similar, what kind of "missing link" would you accept?

---

It was on this forum that I encountered an acronym: PRATT -- "Point Refuted A Thousand Times". Are you calling us all penises? Is he calling us all penises? Is he having a laugh? (in Death to Smoochy, the scene of a live children's TV show he tried to sabotage with a penis cookie)Also, on Drew Carey's comedy improve show (whose name I forget), they were supposed to portray a penis and one commedienne (that's the feminine form in case you are so grammatically deprived) made sure to maintain that one-eyed stare.So fuck you too, you hypocritical "true Christian" asshole!

That is not biology that is geology. And that determination is based on math and physics. There is error in every calculation, nothing can be measured perfectly you'll learn this as you go along in engineering.

Ah, the ol' "bog-standard creationist fails at mimicking neutrality" ploy. Yah, you'll get piledAustralopitacus was just an ape. Pongo pygmaeus is just an ape. Homo sapiens is just an ape.

Whose Line is it Anyway.

It sounds as though this is what you want to happen. Why would we? It seems to me that you're just confused; you've got a very mixed up idea of what evolution is and you're frustrated that biology isn't mathematics. Well if you think biology isn't exact, don't ever look into the social sciences. You'll only get attacked if you turn out to be a creationist trying it on or if we spend a lot of time trying to explain things, providing you with evidence and you continue to mis-represent it. It happens a lot here.In biology you're not looking a V=I*R, you're looking at accumulating vast quantities of data and building connections and correlations, creating hypotheses and testing them against real observations. With the theory of evolution - ToE - we have 150 years of accumulated facts and thought which has now got the the stage were it's almost impossible to be wrong.Don't dismiss this out of hand, it's clear that you barely know the first thing about it and what you think you know is wrong. If you really are a scientist, you need to approach this with a scientific mind - at the moment you don't sound like one. Prove us wrong.