Hate is not a religious value

Hi Pamsm,

Which book is his part about Noah and the ark under, Pudd'nhead Wilson?

if/when this times out, whoever notices it, go to susan's newest thread and we'll go from there.

i have read the "white elephant" - but not the "diaries". i'll look them up. can't wait. thanks.

Hi Walter,
Yes, I like The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg, too.

Also a relatively unknown one of similar length called The Stolen White Elephant.

http://www.mtwain.com/The_Stolen_White_Elephant/0.html

Have you read his excerpts from the diaries of Adam and Eve (respectively)? Good stuff.

pam,
that twain diseases-on-the-ark thing was great too. he's so funny/poignant. my favorite story of his is "the man who corrupted hadleyburg". ever read that one? it's about a 20-page short story.

thanks, pam.
i hadn't read that - and i love mark twain. of course twain was railing against a "straw man" ark. you saw he called it 600 ft. long. that's ridiculous! it was only 450 ft. long - much more manageable. funny, the inspector guy mentioned pumps.

And more Twain:

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=91944113&blogId=485382677

Walter and Peter,
Since we've been talking about Noah, have you seen Mark Twain's piece on the ark?

It's just a few pages, here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=0HA4AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA468&lpg=PA468&dq=Mark+Twain+on+Noah%27s+Ark&source=bl&ots=_eOE6RrQVZ&sig=m9l7YSayXKNERJiOOKF-JoAiyAE&hl=en&ei=UO_tSsibGdLilAeN8YiABQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Hi Walter,

WALTER: "well, of course NOW you say "pillars" is figurative, but that's what people really used to think. they were "errant"."

That is the problem of taking everything literal Walter. You have to understand the type of language been spoken in interpreting anything. As for Genesis 1, it is an historical narrative.

re: childless abraham killing his descendents:

ME: "One explanation could be that Esau named his son after the Amalekites who lived in the region before he was born as an insult to his father Abraham, and that from Amalek another people bearing the same name emerged."

Walter: "so every other time there's a "people" or "tribe" it's named after the biblical character, but this time amalek was named after the amalekites....? i admit i don't see in the bible where it actually says "all amalekites are descendents of amalek", so i suppose it's actually possible. i hadn't thought of that interpretive gymnastic. you are a skilled gymnast. you get a 8 from the atheist judge...."

As high as a 8! I will take it, 10 being as the highest score from your inference, since you mentioned gymnastics. In the same way, as a Christian in knowing that God does not lie, there is always an explanation to an apparent contradiction, sometimes found in the Bible, other times drawn from inference.

WALTER: "you "stick the landing" with
"The New Bible Dictionary has this to say: "Some writers distinguish the nomadic Amalekites normally found in the Negev and Sinai area, from the descendents of Esau, because Gen. 14:7, which predates Esau, refers to ‘the country of the Amalekites. The distinction is unnecessary if we regard the phrase as a later editorial description.""

Yes, that was a double Mitzi Gainer with an added triple sour cow thrown in for style!

WALTER: "later editorial description"..."

Yeah, I thought the same thing, but in the New Testament there are a few passages not found in the earlier more reliable manuscripts (Mark 16:9-20 being one example). For such occasions a footnote is added at the bottom of the page that the reader may know that such a passage may not have been in the original inerrant writings.

peter,
your "two amelekites" move reminds me of the "two quiriniuses" gymnastic used to harmonize matthew and luke regarding when jesus was born.

peter,
well, of course NOW you say "pillars" is figurative, but that's what people really used to think. they were "errant".

re: childless abraham killing his descendents:

"One explanation could be that Esau named his son after the Amalekites who lived in the region before he was born as an insult to his father Abraham, and that from Amalek another people bearing the same name emerged."

so every other time there's a "people" or "tribe" it's named after the biblical character, but this time amalek was named after the amalekites....? i admit i don't see in the bible where it actually says "all amalekites are descendents of amalek", so i suppose it's actually possible. i hadn't thought of that interpretive gymnastic. you are a skilled gymnast. you get a 8 from the atheist judge....

you "stick the landing" with
"The New Bible Dictionary has this to say: "Some writers distinguish the nomadic Amalekites normally found in the Negev and Sinai area, from the descendents of Esau, because Gen. 14:7, which predates Esau, refers to ‘the country of the Amalekites. The distinction is unnecessary if we regard the phrase as a later editorial description.""

"later editorial description"...

Hi Walter (September 13, 2009 10:46 AM),

The phrase about pillars is figurative or metaphoric language.

WALTER: "genesis 14:7 says,
"Then they turned back and went to En Mishpat (that is, Kadesh), and they conquered the whole territory of the AMALEKITES, as well as the Amorites who were living in Hazazon Tamar."

WALTER: "and genesis 36:12 says,
"Esau's son Eliphaz also had a concubine named Timna, who bore him AMALEK."

WALTER: "genesis 36 is describing abrahams descendents through esau. how is it possible that abraham (in genesis 14) attacked the amalekites (named after amalek) before amalek was born (in gen 36)?"

First of all, I think you are making assumptions. You assume that there could only be one group of peoples called Amalekites. One explanation could be that Esau named his son after the Amalekites who lived in the region before he was born as an insult to his father Abraham, and that from Amalek another people bearing the same name emerged.

The New Bible Dictionary has this to say:
"Some writers distinguish the nomadic Amalekites normally found in the Negev and Sinai area, from the descendents of Esau, because Gen. 14:7, which predates Esau, refers to ‘the country of the Amalekites. The distinction is unnecessary if we regard the phrase as a later editorial description." P.28

As for four footed insects I took a quick browse but did not come up with much,

http://swordofthemind.blogspot.com/2009/05/crispy-crunchy-locust-legs-part-1.html

http://www.scripturessay.com/article.php?cat=&id=403

Hi Walter (September 13, 2009 10:46 AM),

The phrase about pillars is figurative or metaphoric language.

WALTER: "genesis 14:7 says,
"Then they turned back and went to En Mishpat (that is, Kadesh), and they conquered the whole territory of the AMALEKITES, as well as the Amorites who were living in Hazazon Tamar."

WALTER: "and genesis 36:12 says,
"Esau's son Eliphaz also had a concubine named Timna, who bore him AMALEK."

WALTER: "genesis 36 is describing abrahams descendents through esau. how is it possible that abraham (in genesis 14) attacked the amalekites (named after amalek) before amalek was born (in gen 36)?"

First of all, I think you are making assumptions. You assume that there could only be one group of peoples called Amalekites. One explanation could be that Esau named his son after the Amalekites who lived in the region before he was born as an insult to his father Abraham, and that from Amalek another people bearing the same name emerged.

The New Bible Dictionary has this to say:
"Some writers distinguish the nomadic Amalekites normally found in the Negev and Sinai area, from the descendents of Esau, because Gen. 14:7, which predates Esau, refers to ‘the country of the Amalekites. The distinction is unnecessary if we regard the phrase as a later editorial description." P.28

As for four footed insects I took a quick browse but did not come up with much,

http://swordofthemind.blogspot.com/2009/05/crispy-crunchy-locust-legs-part-1.html

http://www.scripturessay.com/article.php?cat=&id=403

well, glad you found us. just work your way up the sequence of post as time permits. it would be nice if we could get all the previous posts onto this thread (and take these to the next thread, if needed). this thread should last til around next tuesday, i think.

Hi Walter, Pam, Arminius,

You have been busy. Sorry for the delay. I am having a hard time finding time lately. There is a lot to sift through here. Thank you for being overly patient!

Let me try and figure out where we left off and continue from there. But first some sleep.

Hello Walter,

"the simple explanation is that consciousness ceases. now, it could be that consciousness goes somewhere, but there's no evidence for that. it could be that consciousness moves into a rock or tree or something, i suppose, but there's just no reason to think that's the case. "

It must be clear to you that the only source for the evidence that you cite is by observation of the physical body.

Think for a sec on that.

If that is the source of your data, and there is no other reference point that data is drawn from, then your data is solely dependent on the limitations, and the paradigm, of that source.

The assumptions that you make are based on the activity of life in corpo as observed through the senses of that body. And limited to the available forms of measurement and observation, again, through that body's senses.

If consciousness or awareness is not a substance, (and there is no corporal data that says it is or must be, outside of the assumption that a firing neurotransmitter is corporal), then one must observe the 'non-substantial' reality of consciousness in order to better understand it.

"it could be that consciousness moves into a rock or tree or something, i suppose, but there's just no reason to think that's the case. "

And I suppose the only way (assumptions of the observer skew the outcome), that you would believe that as possible, along with several other friends in these Hollow ed Halls, is if you could measure firing synapses in a rock?

:-)

jttn,
"The fact that brain waves cannot be seen as evidence of consciousness DOES NOT prove that consciousness has ceased."

i assume you mean to say that just because brainwaives cease, that doesn't mean consciousness ceases. right? like consciousness could have "gone somewhere", right? (like to a soul waiting room...maybe)

well, could be. like i said, the evidence suggests otherwise. we can study the brain of a conscious person, and discern the "signs" of consciousness. we can see that when a person dies those processes cease.

the simple explanation is that consciousness ceases. now, it could be that consciousness goes somewhere, but there's no evidence for that. it could be that consciousness moves into a rock or tree or something, i suppose, but there's just no reason to think that's the case.

Walter,

"sure, i suppose once life began, life became eternal in the sense that there is always something that's alive. but, YOUR life and MY life is not eternal - at least there's no evidence for that. there's plenty of evidence against it - for instance the cessation of brain waves upon death, and the non-existence of a brain before fertilization."

Part of my point was that there is an ongoingness to life. Not a personalized life, an ego identified life, but Life. It is the nature of Nature.

It is clear that death comes upon a body. That body ends, decays, goes back to elemental form, becomes available to reorganize into other form.

"Life" may be defined as the period that a form is animated. What animates is a question batted and bounced around. To some of the scientifically fixated, it is only about the physical vehicle, even consciousness is CAUSED by the biological process, somehow. I do not buy that view as a complete reading of the causes of life.

Of course the brain waves cease upon death. It is dead, after all, or else they would doubtless continue. The fact that brain waves cannot be seen as evidence of consciousness DOES NOT prove that consciousness has ceased. It DOES show that consciousness no longer resides in that form.

But then, that should already have been obvious. No?

edbyronadams, jttn,
oh, you guys and your eternal life stuff...;-)

sure, i suppose once life began, life became eternal in the sense that there is always something that's alive. but, YOUR life and MY life is not eternal - at least there's no evidence for that. there's plenty of evidence against it - for instance the cessation of brain waves upon death, and the non-existence of a brain before fertilization.

EBA, in your post to Pamsm,

"Belief in the eternity of life does require faith. No evidence will ever appear. There are suggestions. Virtually everything we observe in the universe is part of a cycle. I see no reason that our lives shouldn't reflect observed nature. It is the elegant solution. We are all manifestations of the Mystic Law."

Well, does require faith to some extent, that being the personalization of "life".

It is clear that 'life' is ongoing in terms of the continual cycles of, and 'recycling of', Life. Physicality manifests itself into specific form, following the blueprint of the genetic imprint of antecendants, lives, and then decomposes back to elemental form, which collects and congregates and organizes into any next new form.

The FORM is not the life, not the animation of it, and not the personalized and individuated consciousness that recognizes it's own identity along with it's own cognition of such.

The recycling of that LIFE requires a bit of faith, no? That life itself is is present in a form, from time A to time B, is hard to refute. Does that life continue, or is that specific consciousness indicated by THAT life connected to, and so continued through, other life?

I definitely believe so, and I believe your statement "I see no reason that our lives shouldn't reflect observed nature." All levels of life must interconnect, as does Nature.

cont'd

EBA: “I am puzzled by your assertion that hominids did not use tools before habilis. Since chimps do, it seems odd that you would not grant club and throwing stone use to our precursors, especially since the hand adaptations would certainly facilitate this use. Amateur publications of analysis are sometimes hard to come by but the one I read stated that Australopithicines had the ability to hold a stone in the three fingered grip that is best for stone throwing.”

Yes, chimps do use tools, but quite simple ones, and not, to my knowledge, as weapons. Maybe later Australopithicines did learn to club or throw rocks, but I would expect that the primary use for this, if they did, would have been to get food. Eating just seems like a much more likely impetus for growing a bigger brain than war, although the technology may have been adapted to that later.

EBA: "Belief in the eternity of life does require faith. No evidence will ever appear."

Because there isn't any. I'm just not "faithy."

EBA: "Why were you so fortunate to be born in a land where you could pursue your own vision of life and be lucid and driven enough to do so? You may think it is an unanswerable question or simply random. I prefer to believe that it is the result of past causes."

Just sheer dumb luck, most likely. And I don't ever believe what I "prefer" - I believe what the evidence leads me to believe.

EBA: “This is a distinction without a difference. According to this definition, the Vietnamese kicked us out of their country without even engaging in true warfare...Goodall use the word warfare. The interesting thing is that she only witnessed it once, early in her observations so that she wasn't even sure what she saw. It was only published toward the end of her career in Gombe.”

When I said that large groups of (mainly) males attacked single males of a neighboring group, you said that was not what Goodall observed. In fact, it was exactly what she observed, whatever she may have chosen to call it. It has also been observed since by others.

I do think Goodall’s study was flawed in some ways. She began it without educational credentials; she named the chimps, instead of giving them numbers, calling her objectivity into question. She also fed them, which changed all kinds of dynamics.

I prefer the work of Frans de Waal, who had a solid educational background before he began studying apes, and has studied them in a variety of settings; however, one could object that the bulk of his studies have been on captive populations. He’s published a number of fascinating books – here’s a review of one of them: http://www.fredbortz.com/review/InnerApe.htm Note what he says about the relative personalities of chimps, bonobos, and humans. An entire section of this book is about violence.

EBA: “This is representative of the twisted thinking that has permeated archeology and sociology and anthropology for generations. The academics have twisted themselves in knots to avoid evidence that intertribal killing is pervasive among humans because of a predilection to believe Rousseau's ‘noble savage’ myth.”

I have never read Rousseau, and assure you that I have no illusions about human tribalism and the violence that it engenders. I’m certain that there was territorialism, at least at times, throughout our history. I just don’t see this as driving the change in brain capacity. Many animals are territorial – probably more than are not – and they protect their territories by fighting. Still, none of them have come up with brains like ours. Feeding oneself comes first – if you can’t do that, you’ll have no energy for sex or warfare. For us, getting food, and avoiding becoming food, were of importance way ahead of fighting. With all of our disadvantages in the new African environment, a brain became a practical necessity. And carnivory, as a staple, rather than an adjunct, made it possible.

Unfortunately, our “tribes” have now taken on the political boundaries of countries, and warfare is possible on a scale that no chimpanzee could ever imagine.

edbyronadams,
"Perhaps there was more reason to that childhood admonition to think of the starving millions as you wasted food than you now think."

ha! good one. i think those kinds of "karma" and "pay it forward" ideas are great principles. we should strive to live as if karma happened. the world would be a better place.

(karma is different, in my mind, from rational benefits of cooperation, "altruistic" behavior and so forth.)

"if i think the mystic law, or god, or whatever is why i was so fortunate to be born into cushy circumstsnces, i'd have to wonder "why" millions die of starvation."

Perhaps there was more reason to that childhood admonition to think of the starving millions as you wasted food than you now think.

edbyronadams, you asked (of pam),

"Why were you so fortunate to be born in a land where you could pursue your own vision of life and be lucid and driven enough to do so?"

to think there is a "why" to that is to imply theat there is a "why" to someone born into poverty/starvation. if i think the mystic law, or god, or whatever is why i was so fortunate to be born into cushy circumstsnces, i'd have to wonder "why" millions die of starvation.

Pamsm,

"Or are you talking about an afterlife? I see no evidence that would lead me to believe in one of those."

Belief in the eternity of life does require faith. No evidence will ever appear. There are suggestions. Virtually everything we observe in the universe is part of a cycle. I see no reason that our lives shouldn't reflect observed nature. It is the elegant solution. We are all manifestations of the Mystic Law.

Why were you so fortunate to be born in a land where you could pursue your own vision of life and be lucid and driven enough to do so? You may think it is an unanswerable question or simply random. I prefer to believe that it is the result of past causes.

Pamsm wrote:

"“Ambush” is the operative word. There is not attack of numbers against numbers like human warfare."

This is a distinction without a difference. According to this definition, the Vietnamese kicked us out of their country without even engaging in true warfare. Perhaps I should have used "intertribal killing" to be more specific but its a bit cumbersome. Goodall use the word warfare. The interesting thing is that she only witnessed it once, early in her observations so that she wasn't even sure what she saw. It was only published toward the end of her career in Gombe.

This is representative of the twisted thinking that has permeated archeology and sociology and anthropology for generations. The academics have twisted themselves in knots to avoid evidence that intertribal killing is pervasive among humans because of a predilection to believe Rousseau's "noble savage" myth. This book,
http://www.amazon.com/War-Before-Civilization-Peaceful-Savage/dp/0195119126/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256650180&sr=8-1

has pretty much demolished that conceit and the soft sciences are finally coming around. Interpreters of hominid bones are just slow in getting the message.

I am puzzled by your assertion that hominids did not use tools before habilis. Since chimps do, it seems odd that you would not grant club and throwing stone use to our precursors, especially since the hand adaptations would certainly facilitate this use. Amateur publications of analysis are sometimes hard to come by but the one I read stated that Australopithicines had the ability to hold a stone in the three fingered grip that is best for stone throwing.

Well, I don't know where the hell you guys are, but I have immersed myself in a grand donnybrook with Farnaz and her bootlickers over on their blog. Tune in - great fun!

To help keep things straight:

http://anthropology.si.edu/HumanOrigins/ha/a_tree.html

EBA: “This is not what was observed by Goodall at Gombe. There one troop systematically ambushed members of an adjacent troop and killed all the males and older females and occupied the territory.”

How is that different from what I said? “Ambush” is the operative word. There is not attack of numbers against numbers like human warfare.

EBA: “What sets protohumans apart is the arms that allowed for effective tool use in the enterprise.”

Yes, but not much before the advent of Homo. Until then, the brainpower was no different than that of chimps.

EBA: “Wooden clubs, sharpened sticks and found weapons, such as throwing stones leave no fossil evidence. To posit that hominids did not use tools until they fashioned hand axes is a leap. However, how did hominids before habilis exist on meat without cutting stones or the dentition to shear meat?”

Not a leap, because (again) they didn’t have the brains for it. If they scavenged the kills of other animals, the skin was already broken. It’s possible to pull meat from bone with hands, also possible to chew off chunks with our present dentition (go buy a steak and try eating it raw without knife and fork) - especially if the meat was a bit “ripe” - it just isn’t optimal. They were more powerful than we are.

I think A. afarensis existence was one of subsistence, and that’s why evolution began to move rapidly at this point. A later version, A. garhi, began using tools about 100,000 years before H. Habilis did it routinely. Australopithecines split into “experimental” lines – H. habilis and Paranthropus boisei, among others. The “robusts” became vegetarian again, with huge grinding molars and small brains. The Homo line became brainier (about half the size of the present human brain) and used tools to help with their scavenging. The robusts didn’t succeed.

Note that “hand axes” were just rocks with a sharpened edge held in a hand. Don’t visualize an attached handle. That wouldn’t come until much later.

EBA: “Humans are in another league as far as intertribal violence is concerned. As far as the evolutionary shrub is concerned, the reason it was pruned is that the survivors were ruthless pruners.”

It only seems that way because technology has allowed us to kill on a scale not available to those who do it manually. Bonobos use sex and diplomacy to solve problems. Humans do this too – violence is not always the court of first resort (good thing, too). Chimps can appease with grooming, but they’re much more hair-trigger than we are and can be quite brutal even in their own cohort.

I’m not nearly as sure as you are that all other forms of Homo were killed by our own line. I think many were just out competed. It’s actually rather amazing that any of us made it. Remember that the first H. sapiens were herd followers. They didn’t need to kill for territory – they didn’t maintain one.

EBA: "Buddhism does not antrhopomorphize the Mystic Law. It is all cause and effect. Make a bad cause, get a bad effect."

Great, except it doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes crime does pay. Or are you talking about an afterlife? I see no evidence that would lead me to believe in one of those.

EBA: "The problem with a secular view is that the disconnect from other people is entirely logical. Tyrants have a good life. Why shouldn't they rule by terror?"

Now you're sounding like Peter (where is he, anyway?). The disconnect results from evolutionary tribalism, and can presumably be overcome by more evolution, by a shrinking world, or by global threats such as warming (if it begins to get bad) so that we expand our idea of tribe to include the family of man. We are also programmed to do right by others if we consider them related.

Tyrants live well for a while, but theirs is an uneasy existence. The numbers aren't on their sides, and when the people finally have enough and rebel, their ends aren't generally pretty.

Pamsm wrote:

"Rather, males (and occasionally some females) patrol their borders in groups, and if they happen to see a single male of another troupe, they chase him down and kill him. Males are picked off one-by-one until the territory and females are up for grabs. (ref. Our Inner Ape by Frans de Waal.)"

This is not what was observed by Goodall at Gombe. There one troop systematically ambushed members of an adjacent troop and killed all the males and older females and occupied the territory. What sets protohumans apart is the arms that allowed for effective tool use in the enterprise.

"Homo habilis is the first known to flake stones for hand tools, and for a million years after that, that style of tool was the best we could do. We went a good bit longer before knives, spears, and arrows were invented – millions of years past Ardi.

Wooden clubs, sharpened sticks and found weapons, such as throwing stones leave no fossil evidence. To posit that hominids did not use tools until they fashioned hand axes is a leap. However, how did hominids before habilis exist on meat without cutting stones or the dentition to shear meat?

"Of the three most closely related species, chimps are the most violent, bonobos the most peaceable and sexy, and humans are somewhere in between – sometimes acting like chimps, other times like bonobos. Seems like, according to your hypothesis, chimps should be the brainy ones."

I couldn't disagree more here. Humans are in another league as far as intertribal violence is concerned. As far as the evolutionary shrub is concerned, the reason it was pruned is that the survivors were ruthless pruners.

"Oh, man, I don't see that. I think it's time we dropped "mysticism" entirely and got real about things. If we stop looking for a magic savior, redresser of wrongs, and giver of eternal life, maybe we can start seeing each other as what we really are - the same species, all in the same boat."

Buddhism does not antrhopomorphize the Mystic Law. It is all cause and effect. Make a bad cause, get a bad effect. The problem with a secular view is that the disconnect from other people is entirely logical. Tyrants have a good life. Why shouldn't they rule by terror?

Hello Pamsm,

"If we stop looking for a magic savior, redresser of wrongs, and giver of eternal life, maybe we can start seeing each other as what we really are - the same species, all in the same boat."

I am in full agreement. I know that you may not take me at my word here, but off of this quote I wholly agree. The "what we really are" part is, by any account, altogether up in the air and yet... we can easily agree that it serves to deal with what is rather than what we would that it was.

This is not an affirmation of the physically substantiated as sole arbitrator of validity. Again, there is so munch that is unknown, or unproven and so in flux. Perhaps even if it were "proven" it may still be in flux. Can we say anything in the manifest world is absolute?

I loved your responses to Edbyronadams.

"Faith in a mystic reality that transcends our mundane lives, that connects us all, is the only hope."

Oh, man, I don't see that. I think it's time we dropped "mysticism" entirely and got real about things. If we stop looking for a magic savior, redresser of wrongs, and giver of eternal life, maybe we can start seeing each other as what we really are - the same species, all in the same boat.

EBA: “Warfare, although as it applies to apes and protohumans intertribal killing is probably a better term, is a persistent behavior. On the face of it, it defies Darwinism. Exposing oneself to such danger as an individual seems a negative selective trait. It only makes sense by group selection and to have the group hold enough common genes for self sacrifice to be rewarded by propagation of those common genes. The only way that groups can be closely held enough to keep common genes is though xenophobia.”

I’d call it tribal cohesion, rather than xenophobia, but tomatoes, tomahtoes. I agree with this, but I don’t think there’s so much “warfare” that it would become the driving force behind brain evolution. Chimps don’t fight in groups against other groups. Rather, males (and occasionally some females) patrol their borders in groups, and if they happen to see a single male of another troupe, they chase him down and kill him. Males are picked off one-by-one until the territory and females are up for grabs. (ref. Our Inner Ape by Frans de Waal.)

Many other species are similarly territorial, although most are content to stop short of murder, at least some of the time.

EBA: “Hidden estrus probably evolved fairly quickly. Intense cooperation among males would obviously be eased by hidden estrus. That necessary cooperation would drive the dominant human social arrangement of one male to female as well.”

There are a number of competing explanatory hypotheses concerning hidden estrus. One is simply that bipedalism made things harder to see, especially since we needed to evolve fairly substantial buttocks (junk in the trunk) to serve as a counterbalance because we had no tail, as other bipeds do.

Of the three most closely related species, chimps are the most violent, bonobos the most peaceable and sexy, and humans are somewhere in between – sometimes acting like chimps, other times like bonobos. Seems like, according to your hypothesis, chimps should be the brainy ones.

EBA: “It also explains why the human evolutionary ‘tree’ is beginning to look more like a shrub.”

Evolution is normally shrub-like. What’s unusual is to have all the twigs die off and leave only one species, as has happened with us. That would normally be the sign of an unsuccessful genetic experiment, but we found brains and technology just in time to save us.

EBA: “Chimps really lack the ability to throw things accurately or with any power. That is what sets Homo apart from the rest of the great apes. People focus on bipedality and ignore this crucial difference. The throwing ability and the ability to pronate the wrist so that a club becomes an extension of the arm are crucial adaptations. IMO, these paid for the multiple drawbacks of bipedalism and since aggression and defense were transferred to the upper limbs, larger canines became redundant and disappeared. You discount dentetion's relevance to diet but want to preserve its relevance to sexual arrangements.”

I didn’t mean to indicate that chimps kill predators by throwing things, or even that they hit them. But if you’ve ever seen a troupe threatened by a leopard, or the like, you know that they all scream loudly and rip branches from trees, which they throw or thrash around. It’s a display that can be quite intimidating.

I agree that arms freed from the task of locomotion can be used to wield weapons for intertribal conflict as well as for carrying things, but I doubt that that happened as early as Ardipithecus. Yet the long canines were lost by then. http://photos.cleveland.com/plain-dealer/2009/10/dentition_onepage_cs3.html

Homo habilis is the first known to flake stones for hand tools, and for a million years after that, that style of tool was the best we could do. We went a good bit longer before knives, spears, and arrows were invented – millions of years past Ardi.

And, BTW, I don’t at all “discount dentition’s relevance to diet,” I just don’t think that eating meat gives you lion teeth, unless you get your meat the same way lions do. No hominid has ever done that. In fact, our teeth differ from those of chimps in exactly the way you’d expect from animals that switched to meat from a diet of coarse vegetation like leaves. We don’t have the thick and broad molars that such an abrasive diet requires.

edbyronadams, you said,
"There exists a militant secularism in the land..."

i really think that is just a reaction to all the religious crap religionists try to "sneak in" to public life: for instance "under god" in the pledge, "in god we trust" on money (and now at the capitol visitors center), trying to get creation "science" taught in schools, instituting (always christian...) prayer in schools and on and on and on.

the christian majority in america may not even see these as encroachments. they see opposition to these encroachments as, like you say, "militant secularism". really, it's just non-christians (and fair-minded christians) trying to keep christianity in its place - out of government.

a perfect example of christians thinking they deserve "preferential treatment" was congressman bill sali's reaction to a congressional morning prayer.

to the dismay of jefferson and madison, the first session of the first congress of the united states began with a prayer. this ritual has been performed nearly every morning in congress ever since. this daily ceremonial breach of jefferson’s wall of separation is not specifically permitted or prohibited by the constitution, and was not really a problem until july 12, 2007.

about the prayer offered that morning, historian david barton laments, it “was never in the minds of those who did the Constitution, did the Declaration [of Independence] when they talked about ‘Creator.’” barton is president of “wall builders” – not as in “wall of separation,” but as in “wall of jerusalem.”

the problem for barton, baptist, is that after more than 30,000 consecutive christian morning prayers, congressmen were forced to hear a hindu prayer. congressman bill sali (r-idaho, evangelical christian) agrees with barton and believes a hindu prayer should never have been allowed. he says, “That’s a different god” and ominously, that it “creates problems for the longevity of our country.”

the secular nature of our constitution has made america the paradigm for religious freedom around the world. but the one thing rep. sali would like to change about our constitution is the secular part. he would prefer a christian version of an islamic state where hindu prayers and muslim congressmen are not allowed, where diversity means protestants and catholics.

fortunately, jefferson and madison knew people like sali. had they not been so emphatic about the separation of church and state, we would be just another nation beholden to this or that version of the christian god.

Welton Gaddy said
========================================
All crimes are not equal....
...
Legislation to prevent hate crimes must be passed and signed into law so that innocent people such as Mathew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. will not have died in vain.
========================================

Hate crimes may indeed need s^pecial treatment

How about love crimes?

1500. 1500 boys and girls molested, sexually assaulted or abused in Ireland by the christian clergy to whom they had been entrusted over the past 40 50 years.

Yes I did say 1 thousand five hundred.Out of a total of 25000. Say 2 out of each class!

How dod theyu get away with it? "Respect of religous instittions.

How about some legislation against religous abuse like this?

edbyronadams

"The us and them division does not come from just the sons of Abraham. There exists a militant secularism in the land that is just as much about division.

Yes, the tribalism that has been mentioned here is alive and well. We see it displayed in America today, the screaming binary 'reasoning' of We are right, You are wrong, you are therefore the enemy... and therein lie the seeds of self destruction.

"Rationality and demands for empirical evidence are fine in their place but they are insufficient tools to overcome our innate fear of the "other". Faith in a mystic reality that transcends our mundane lives, that connects us all, is the only hope."

Perhaps another expression of this would be the wonderful Pagan belief that all life is connected. I think this dovetails perfectly into progressive Christian thinking that the universe and God can be considered as One, a unity.

" At the same time, recognizing the eternity of life and its interconnection with all must not be used to discount the now, because the now is all we have."

As Mother Teresa said,
Yesterday is gone
Tomorrow is not yet come
All we have is today
Let us begin.

The us and them division does not come from just the sons of Abraham. There exists a militant secularism in the land that is just as much about division. Rationality and demands for empirical evidence are fine in their place but they are insufficient tools to overcome our innate fear of the "other". Faith in a mystic reality that transcends our mundane lives, that connects us all, is the only hope. At the same time, recognizing the eternity of life and its interconnection with all must not be used to discount the now, because the now is all we have.

I was encouraged by the video interview with Tony Blair and the congruence of his beliefs from the Catholic church and my own, a practicing Buddhist, on these matters.

Walter,

one impediment to this happening is that judeochrislamic religion is all about dividing the world (into believers and unbelievers). judeochrislam has tapped into that "us vs. them" tribal mentality we've just talked about.

Unfortunately, that is largely true. But some of us - the rebels? - have a differing view, based on the Gospels, and I once summarized it thus:

How is it then, I'm caught between
The Fundies and those who have not seen?
But Fundies hate both those who don't believe
And those like me, who can perceive
That it is not just black and white
And none hold keys to wrong and right.
Those who reject belief hold me to scorn
Tho’ I see God's hand in dawn's soft morn.
We're all God's children, can't you see?
It's not us and them, it's WE and WE.

i said,
"the way to save ourselves (cue the violins here) is to think of all of humanity as part of one tribe..."

one impediment to this happening is that judeochrislamic religion is all about dividing the world (into believers and unbelievers). judeochrislam has tapped into that "us vs. them" tribal mentality we've just talked about.

edbyronadams, you said,
"My greatest fear is that part of tribal identity is a basic instinct to define some group of people as the "other" and that reflexive need will forever deny the world peace. Without that peace and the inexorable spread of the technology of destruction, we face a bleak future.

the way to save ourselves (cue the violins here) is to think of all of humanity as part of one tribe...

walter-in-fallschurch wrote:

"but notice, also, that no wolf, lion (or "proto-human tribe"?) will share the carcass with the group from the other side of the mountain. this instinct, maybe called something like "group/tribe loyalty", which may have begun as a useful survival strategy, now manifests itself in humans as racism and xenophobia."

As I outlined, altruism, self sacrifice for another and xenophobia developed in humans as handmaidens. Tribal identity is one of the strongest human emotions, a fact that is hidden from westerners in general and Americans specifically by the fact that our tribe has been dominant for so long. But we can remember how everyone felt after the attacks of 9/11. That wellspring of emotion called patriotism is just tribal identity in another guise.

The fundamental challenge to every human being is to appeal to the better side of our dual nature and that requires spiritual strength. Rationality is a weak tool for this purpose.

My greatest fear is that part of tribal identity is a basic instinct to define some group of people as the "other" and that reflexive need will forever deny the world peace. Without that peace and the inexorable spread of the technology of destruction, we face a bleak future.

edbyronadams, you said,
"The only way that groups can be closely held enough to keep common genes is though xenophobia."

indeed. i think xenophobia is thus practically built into our dna - if not our actual physical dna, then our "cultural dna", or cultural chromosome.

most reptiles do not cooperate with each other, except for breeding. many mammals cooperate in hunting and in defense – pack and herd animals. they cooperate to ensure their own survival. pack animals share the spoils of the hunt with other animals in the pack. sharing is a useful survival strategy that has evolved in humans to include the morality of caring for the poor, elderly and disabled.

but notice, also, that no wolf, lion (or "proto-human tribe"?) will share the carcass with the group from the other side of the mountain. this instinct, maybe called something like "group/tribe loyalty", which may have begun as a useful survival strategy, now manifests itself in humans as racism and xenophobia.

Pam,

Chimps really lack the ability to throw things accurately or with any power. That is what sets Homo apart from the rest of the great apes. People focus on bipedality and ignore this crucial difference. The throwing ability and the ability to pronate the wrist so that a club becomes an extension of the arm are crucial adaptations. IMO, these paid for the multiple drawbacks of bipedalism and since aggression and defense were transferred to the upper limbs, larger canines became redundant and disappeared. You discount dentetion's relevance to diet but want to preserve its relevance to sexual arrangements.

Warfare, although as it applies to apes and protohumans intertribal killing is probably a better term, is a persistent behavior. On the face of it, it defies Darwinism. Exposing oneself to such danger as an individual seems a negative selective trait. It only makes sense by group selection and to have the group hold enough common genes for self sacrifice to be rewarded by propagation of those common genes. The only way that groups can be closely held enough to keep common genes is though xenophobia. The New Guinea highlands is a good example of this. In the human occupation of that island, tribes were so genetically isolated that they developed noticeable differences is stature, skin hue and hair texture and they were armed camps against each other. They viewed neighbors as something other than human and intertribal homicide was one of the leading causes of death.

This arrangement created a hothouse environment for evolution as well, with isolated groups, a key to evolution so that mutation can take root, along with intense competition between those groups. With the evolution of Homo, it was both cultural and physical evolution that was rewarded by this arrangement.

Hidden estrus probably evolved fairly quickly. Intense cooperation among males would obviously be eased by hidden estrus. That necessary cooperation would drive the dominant human social arrangement of one male to female as well.

It also explains why the human evolutionary "tree" is beginning to look more like a shrub.

Just a quick note about fecundity. In general, animals that have few predators or other causes of infant death (possibly, but not necessarily, due to parental investment), will tend to have lower birth rates and longer potential lifespans.

Think humans, elephants, whales, giant tortoises...

Part 2 – reply to Ed

When you consider what makes a species successful, you have to first look at whether it easily reproduces itself. Then you have to consider why it’s able to do so – how does it compete with other species for food, and how does it avoid predators.

What is a modern chimp’s strategy? It lives where its food – leaves and fruit, mainly, but including insects, and occasionally meat from monkeys and other small animals – is abundant, so competition from other animals is negligible. Predator avoidance is accomplished partly by climbing ability, aided by the ability to throw things, and by a cooperative social structure. There is competition from other troupes of chimps, and territories have to be defended from takeover. Sometimes raids on other troupes seem to be motivated by nothing more than the testosterone-soaked fun of it. They often end in death.

Ardipithecus, our earliest known hominid ancestor, had a brain no larger than that of a chimp or bonobo. Ardipithecus lived in the forest, climbed well, and probably had a diet similar to a chimp’s. They had a new characteristic, a bipedal gait. This allowed food to be carried, and shared. They had also lost their longer canine teeth, so probably males didn’t fight each other for female favors. Maybe gifts of food got them what they wanted.

Fast-forward a couple of million years. Here we have Australopethicus, more human-like in foot structure and arm length, still bipedal, and still with a chimpanzee-sized brain. No change there. He still has the curved fingers that signal climbing ability, but now the climate is beginning to change. The forests are shrinking, the dry grasslands appearing. His food strategy needs to change from leaves and fruit (now in short supply) to more meat. Fewer trees mean fewer monkeys, birds, even insects. There’s plenty of meat on the savannah, but he isn’t fast enough to catch it, and doesn’t have the teeth and claws to kill it. Predators like lions, leopards, and cape hunting dogs have been at it (in evolutionary terms) for far longer, and are much better adapted. All he can really do is hope to get the leftovers from their kills. Tough times.

After Australopithecus, we begin to see greater cranial capacity, and then the first flaked stone tools. We also see hominids living near bodies of water, and signs of shellfish-eating. Eventually, we see hunting tools. Only by increasing intelligence was a relatively helpless hominid able to compete. Brains are to us what speed, agility, body armor, poison glands, advanced physical weaponry, jumping ability, flight, camouflage, etc. are to other animals.

If the driving force was tribal war, why isn’t the chimp brainier? Why not at least brainier than the peace-loving bonobo, whose motto seems to be “make love, not war”?

Climate change, and the need for some competitive advantage, seems an obvious driving force to me.

Hi Ed,
I’m still not convinced about your intertribal warfare model for the evolution of the human brain. I’ll try to explain why. But first:

EBA: "I finally got to your site. I couldn't find the gut length arguments…"

Sorry, I gave you the link for the beginning of the article, rather than the specific page – I think the whole thing is interesting (if long), but here’s the gut-length page:

http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp-anat/comp-anat-6c.shtml

Longer small intestines, relative to large bowel, indicate meaty diets. The opposite indicates largely vegetable diets.

EBA: "Neoteny does carry a cost in reproductive potential. Children are not weaned for at least a year and not fully mobile until 3 years. This suppresses fecundity and survivability of hunter gatherer offspring."

This isn’t technically neoteny, which means the persistence of juvenile traits into adulthood. Our big brain makes it necessary for much brain growth to take place outside the womb, and ours does grow for about 25 years, but we don’t keep juvenile brains for life (hallelujah). Neotenous traits are our shorter faces, nakedness (vellus hair), big toe in line with the others… These are characteristics of fetal chimps.

Even so, our reproductive rate is not less than that of chimps. Female chimpanzees don’t reach puberty until they are 10-11 years old – not much earlier than humans. They will not rebreed until their infants are 3-5 years old. Many humans outpace that. Of course, humans don’t begin to breed as soon as they possibly can, but that’s a cultural idiosyncrasy – I’m sure that our hominid ancestors did. Chimp lifespan is similar to our own – slightly lower.

EBA: "There are other threads that support the idea of warfare selection from the psychology of altruism and xenophobia to an explanation for hidden estrus and the unique nature of human sexual dimorphism. The dam the Rousseau's philosophy built to look at this issue has recently broken. I'm certain that people with better academic qualifications than me will publish before long."

I’ll be interested to read the reasoning, but for now, I remain skeptical.

edbyronadams,
i'm still thinking about
"What was the selective process that worked from Ardipithicius to us that rewarded such an extreme adaptation?"

the adaptation is our huge brain. but our brain is, what, only 2 or 3 times the size of chimps'? our genes are practically the same. what sets us apart is our incredibly complex social structure. all the things we learn and teach. society stores and passes on this knowledge in...are you ready...our "cultural chromosome".

there is a bit of socrates and a bit of aristotle in my cultural chromosome. no other animal builds on "the shoulders of others" the way humans do.

as ardi hunted and gathered (following herds?) across africa, all the smarts and cooperation made big brains worth it - at least for the specific line that led to us. it's almost trite to mention how physically inept (on large scale, not dexterity) humans are: no teeth, no claws, can't run...all we've got is our brains. that's the way it was for ardi.

(pam, in zataomm, persig called aristotle "the great categorizer"... somewhat pejoratively, but indicatative of how aristotle believed the world was rational and understandable.)

peter,
re my post to you at 1:11 pm 24 oct: i characterized biblical presupposition #2 as "the bible is literal and inerrant". you actually said "infallible".

are all "presuppositionalists" literalists, or just you and yours (calvinist...ish?)? seriously, does infallible and inerrant necessarily mean "literal"?

Walter,

Found them. I have no idea what they were up to - I did not bother to read the whole thing. But anyone who knows me here will recognize instantly that I was not the author. Just Farnaz and sycophants having a little playground teasing 'fun', a subtle attempt to bully. Well, sure, they picked the wrong Celt.

sorry, gave you the wrong thread. it's here.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/susan_jacoby/2009/10/bad_question.html
Posted by: armenius3124 | October 20, 2009 11:34 AM

it's still there. i alerted them to it, but they never remove that stuff...

Walter,

"just because i, or any human, can't tell you that, it doesn't mean god can't. in fact, my theory includes the hypothesis that all that quantum uncertainty is one of the things god's always busy with. it's a lot to "juggle", but he can do it.

Just because God can do it, does not mean He does it. Any discussion of all-knowing, etc. is a slippery slope. This could get into a discussion of free will.

Also - thanks for the heads up on another false Arminius. I could not find the post - apparently it has been removed. But it is definitely Farnaz and her brood up to cowardly backstabbing again. I despise anyone not mature enough to stand up for their own cause under their own name.

arminius, you said,
"First, God DOES play dice! If you don't buy that, then tell me, given a set of space-time coordinates, just exactly the velocity, position, and mass of a given electron."

just because i, or any human, can't tell you that, it doesn't mean god can't. in fact, my theory includes the hypothesis that all that quantum uncertainty is one of the things god's always busy with. it's a lot to "juggle", but he can do it.

__________________________________________
did you see the post by "armenius3124" (October 20, 2009 11:34 AM) and the ensuing "hubub"?
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/susan_jacoby/2009/10/thanks_but_no_thanks_from_a_happy_atheist.html

i'm not commenting further on that sh*t, but thought you should know.

edbyronadams,
re parents of autistic children:

perhaps it would have been more accurate to say something like "autistic childrens' brains have not been fully developed" (for whatever reason).

you asked,
"What was the selective process that worked from Ardipithicius to us that rewarded such an extreme adaptation?"

well, that's a great question. i'm sure pam could shed some light. all i can imagine is that having such a big brain and long childhood is that each offspring is more likely to survive. the big brain gives the capacity to learn and the long childhood gives the time to learn.

raising helpless children requires cooperation among adults. cooperation builds bonds. bonds build societies. humans cooperate on a level no other animal does. in humans and many mammals the maternal instinct has become a societal concern. jane goodall began the documentation the elaborate social structure of chimpanzees – the animal with DNA most similar to ours, and with the next longest childhood (i think). we see the same parental, familial and group loyalties we see in human societies. we see sharing and bickering, kindness and cruelty, and empathy and malice. we also see teaching and playing and laughing. as in ancient and modern human societies, some care for the children while others look for food and shelter. enlightened civilizations today consider it a moral obligation to care for their children.

all this cooperation also lets humans live longer than just about any mammal (elephants? maybe longer?). old humans have a lot to teach young humans, so even after their "reproductive years" are over, old humans can still have an effect on the survival of young, reproducing, humans.

Walter,

Re scientific presuppositions:

First, God DOES play dice! If you don't buy that, then tell me, given a set of space-time coordinates, just exactly the velocity, position, and mass of a given electron.

Second, sure your other presuppositions are on the money. The only thing that I can add is that there is something else that is beyond all that, yet concurrent with it. Yes, I have just dived into spirtuality and religion. No proof for it, don't ask.

The interesting thing about the history of science is that the investigations started out looking for confirmations of biblical truth in the natural world.

People searched the heavens for the "crystal spheres" that carried the stars around the center of the universe, naturally Jerusalem. When they found the contrary, it irked the Church. That is why the Jovian moons caused Galileo so much trouble.

I like the way Jared Diamond wrote about the strength of political division in this regard. In a unitary state, like China, scientific discoveries that might have undermined the regime's claim to power, their own divine right was ruthlessly suppressed. In Europe, there was enough political division so that scientists with unpopular revelations could find shelter from rival princes and the disunified Church.

walter-in-fallschurch wrote:

"consider a neglected child or a person with autism as having a brain whose brain has not been nurtured. no other mammal can afford the luxury of such a long developmental period. the antelope that can’t run within a few minutes of birth will be eaten, and the lion that can’t hunt within a year will starve."

Ignoring the insult you have given to the parents of autistic children, I will just comment on the basic evolution idea. Antelope bear one, sometimes two, offspring per year and the onset of estrus is timed to take advantage of the best time for survivability. Humans or protohumans, on the other hand, can potentially bear more offspring at all times of the year but the survivability of the offspring is hampered by a very long dependency period called neoteny. The fact that the child must be carried for the first year and nursed lowers fecundity and the potential that offspring will survive if they come too frequently is lessened. Furthermore, neoteny means that there is a long period between birth and sexual maturity, lowering the reproductive potential because the years of production are relatively shortened.

To say that it has succeeded as an evolutionary strategy is to observe the obvious but the extreme investment in energy to produce successfully reproducing offspring in humans is an outlier in evolutionary strategy. There is a balance between reproductive potential and care per offspring. The evolution of humans is to take the care strategy beyond the limits of other species. The selective pressure that rewarded this is unexplained by the academics. Claiming that it worked as justification is a post hoc logic error.
It was a gradual process, well before the invention of elaborate cultural schemes that allow it to work now. What was the selective process that worked from Ardipithicius to us that rewarded such an extreme adaptation?

notice that peter's presuppositions (bible is from god and inerrant) point to conclusions. the bible already tells us what happened. given those presuppositions, there's really no point in us trying to figure anything out. - the answers are all in the book. the bible is thus like a textbook's "teaching edition" - with all the answers in it.

so peter's presuppositions start with the answers and work backward, from a scientific perspective. biblical presuppositionalist "scientists" can search the real world for...well...i don't know what...maybe confirmation of the presupposed answers. if the real world seemingly does not confirm the answer key (say, e.g., in the green river shale deposits), then see rule 4 (we cannot trust our observations). why even bother observing, then?

peter often criticizes mainstream scientists for "presupposing" evolution. evolution is nowhere in the scientific presuppositions. evolution is just where ALL the evidence (except a literal interpretations of any religious text) has led. saying "scientists presuppose evolution" is like saying "historians presuppose hitler murdered people."

mind you, there are holocaust deniers who question that "presupposition", though it's where all the evidence leads. these people, e.g. ahmadinejad, question the evidence for non-evidence-related (i.e. ideological) reasons, and are rightly considered crazy by rational people.

back when modern science started, scientists were more than happy to confirm the biblical account. many had serious pangs of doubt/angst/guilt about their findings because of contradictions with the biblical account of things. evolution is not a presupposition of science, it's just where all the evidence has led.

Hello, all,

Some damned interesting stuff coming along here. Have to think about it a bit. But first, some quick observations.

I am in the position of being midway between Peter and the others, mainly Pam and Walter. This is the fate of the moderate believer. I actually enjoy it. More on this later, in reply to one of Walter's posts.

Now, as for the whole ark thing: angels dancing on the head of a pin. But some really interesting stuff has surfaced re evolution, mainly from Pam but supported by others. Anyway, from my standpoint of a believer coming into the bible from outside, armed with skepticism, it simply demeans the true glory of God to try to cram Him into the small box of creationism that is the bible. Keep this in mind, that I am looking for truth in the bible, but from the outside, and Peter is locked in the bible, with nothing else but the bible. I am not trying to demean Peter, I consider him to be a very fine person, just mislead in his beliefs.

peter, re your presuppositions:

i will pare those down to the content relevant to our discussion about science.

biblical presuppositionalists presuppositions:

1)God has revealed Himself to man...by special revelation - the Bible.

2)Believing the Bible to be God's word means, as His word, it is infallible, and inerrant.

3)Man was created for a relationship with God. Sin has separated him from that relationship.

(this is entirely religious, not relevant here.)

4)Man no longer see things as they truly are.

5)Jesus Christ is the only means God has provided to restore that relationship with Him. Jesus came to meet all God's righteous requirements on our behalf (that is on the believers half), as well as taking the punishment we desire for our disobedience upon Himself for us.

(this is entirely religious doctrine also, and not relevant to science.)

so, what we're left with is
1)the bible is "from god"
2)the bible is literal and inerrant
4)we cannot trust our own observations/interpretations. (this obviously means "when there's a conflict between observations/interpretaions and the bible, see rule #2)

scientific presuppositions:

0a)god is not trying to fool us.

0b)the laws of gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces, material properties, gas laws etc... are constant. for example, the flood could have happened, but the "laws" of gravity etc... were still in effect.

1) That there is a reality outside of our own minds that exists whether we observe it or not, and whether or not we exist.

2) That reality is objective - observations, experiments, or measurements made by one person can be made by another with the same, or similar, results.

3) That nature operates only one way (corollary to yours about fundamental and unchanging rules or laws).

4) That whatever happens or exists is natural, and therefore knowable.

5) That humans have the ability to figure out the laws of nature.

edbyronadams, you said,
Children are not weaned for at least a year and not fully mobile until 3 years. This suppresses fecundity and survivability of hunter gatherer offspring."

i'm not sure about fecundity, but survivability is enhanced by humans' long childhood.

many animals care for their young. some don’t. many primitive animals’ babies are born as fully-functional miniature versions of adults. a fish’s idea of child care is to have 1000 babies and hope a few aren’t eaten. there are exceptions, like that fish that protects babies in her mouth – for about two weeks.

as we go up the "evolutionary ladder", from fish and insects to reptiles, birds and mammals, we see more and more maternal instinct, more child-rearing. mammals generally have fewer babies and invest more effort in raising them. human babies are dependent on adults longer than any other species. we use this time to learn all sorts of complex social behaviors. humans are especially receptive to this long childhood: our giant brains are not “done” when we’re born. neural connections are being made all through childhood as we learn language, cooperation and trust. most animals are hard-wired to thrive in a specific environment. our brains can adapt to, in fact are shaped by, our environment to a greater extent than any other animal’s brain.

consider a neglected child or a person with autism as having a brain whose brain has not been nurtured. no other mammal can afford the luxury of such a long developmental period. the antelope that can’t run within a few minutes of birth will be eaten, and the lion that can’t hunt within a year will starve.

Pamsm,

I finally got to your site. I couldn't find the gut length arguments but the site shows you must have had arguments with people about "natural" diets. Those who claim vegan diets and such as natural spring from the same root as those who have ignored intertribal warfare as a main selective pressure on human evolution. That root is Rousseau and his myth of the "noble savage". It has distorted many fields of the soft sciences for generations.

Neoteny does carry a cost in reproductive potential. Children are not weaned for at least a year and not fully mobile until 3 years. This suppresses fecundity and survivability of hunter gatherer offspring.

There are other threads that support the idea of warfare selection from the psychology of altruism and xenophobia to an explanation for hidden estrus and the unique nature of human sexual dimorphism.

The dam the Rousseau's philosophy built to look at this issue has recently broken. I'm certain that people with better academic qualifications than me will publish before long.

"But here's your problem: to get from the ancestral kinds to the animals of today requires far more alleles than 4. Mice, for instance, have 8 possible alleles at the C locus on chromosome 4, and 9 possible alleles at the A locus on chromosome 2. How did the ancestral pair, with only 4 possible alleles at each locus, produce these modern mice if no new information can come from mutations?"

very good point, pam. to anyone not beholden (emotionally and spiritually) to the "all-mice-came-from-two-mice-on-noah's-ark" theory, it would be convincing.

but again, you're underestimating god. you're assuming god didn't "poof" more alleles into existence since the flood. after all the sediment-laying and fossil-sorting miracles of the flood, poofing a few alleles into existence would have been child's play.

if you expand your argument to include ALL loci in ALL species with more than 4 alleles at a given locus, you'll find that god can poof alleles into existence whenever he wants, no big deal. awesome, huh?

this brings me to an observation i've made over the years. creationists, like peter, really seem to hate "random chance" and "undirected processes" and so on. who is to say god has not been playing the role of deciding which "random" outcome occurs - so it's not really random, it's god...

Peter,
To elaborate a bit about my point about alleles...

Here's one of many such quotes from the site you gave us (and other creationist sites):

"One of the most important creationist arguments concerns information. Understanding this issue deflects many anti-creationist equivocations, calling any change ‘evolution’. That is, no creationist denies that things change, and even speciate, but nearly all the cited changes do not involve the increase in information content required for microbes-to-man evolution, but go in the wrong direction. See one illustration: How information is lost when creatures adapt to their environment."

Yet they also propose that the animals on the ark were "kinds" of animals - no need to have a pair of horses, one of donkeys, and another of zebras, etc. - the ancestral kind (which I'm interpreting to mean an animal above the species level; presumbly at the genus level - please correct me if I'm wrong) later speciated through "microevolution" into all of the known species. Without any additional "information," genetic or otherwise.

I don't want to talk down to you, but I'm not sure how familiar you are with genetics. Do you realize that for any given genetic locus (a place on a chromosome where a particular gene is located) only one genetic variation (allele) can be present? Because we have 2 of each chromosome (except, in the case of males, for the X-Y pair), this means you can have two different genetic alleles for each locus. They may be the same (homozygous) or different (heterozygous).

For any given genetic locus, therefore, a breeding pair could possess a maximum of 4 different alleles - two per parent - which are passed to the offspring, one from each parent, randomly assorted.

For example, let's say you breed a pair of fictional animals together that have 4 possible color alleles at one locus. The female is blue, carrying cream, and the male is black, carrying red. The genes are dominant in this order: Black, blue, red, cream. The possible offspring are black carrying blue, black carrying cream, blue carrying red, and red carrying cream. Nothing else.

But here's your problem: to get from the ancestral kinds to the animals of today requires far more alleles than 4. Mice, for instance, have 8 possible alleles at the C locus on chromosome 4, and 9 possible alleles at the A locus on chromosome 2. How did the ancestral pair, with only 4 possible alleles at each locus, produce these modern mice if no new information can come from mutations?

Donald Prothero, Professor of Geology at Occidental College in Los Angeles and lecturer in Geobiology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, on synapsids:

"In this instance, we have hundreds of beautiful fossils of skulls as well as many complete skeletons that document the transition over 100 million years from the late Carboniferous to the early Jurassic... Among the striking evolutionary changes occurring in the synapsids was in their lower jaws. Most reptiles have several bones in the lower jaw, and Dimetrodon shares this characteristic. But mammals have only a single lower jawbone, the dentary."

"Throughout synapsid evolution, we see the gradual reduction of the non-dentary elements of the jaw as they are crowded towards the back and eventually lost. The dentary bone, in contrast, gets larger and takes over the entire jaw. In the final stage of evolution, the dentary bone expands until it makes direct contact with the skull and develops a new articulation with it."

"Where did the rest of the non-dentary bones go? Most were lost, but the articular bone and the corresponding quadrate bone of the skull are now the malleus ('hammer') and incus ('anvil') bones in your middle ear. This may seem bizarre until you realise that most reptiles hear with their lower jaws, transmitting sound from this to the middle ear through the jaw articulation."

"aka high school science teacher jan peczkis, holds two entire universes in his head."

Aye, a true schizophrenic.

"while we're waiting for peter to read about whale evolution, what animal's "transitions" would you say are best represented in the fossil record?
is it whales? horses? humans? other?"

Those three are the best represented of the "glamour" species (i.e., mammals). Whales and horses are both pretty complete, humans are getting there. But there are other, less exciting species that are completely smooth - nearly every species in the sequence left a fossil. This is true of a number of shelly animals, and of some plankton - specifically the single-celled radiolarian, which had a silica-based "skeleton."

There are also some very complete transitions in type, like from ray-finned fishes, through lobe-finned fishes, to tetrapods. Neil Shubin's tiktaalik was the final piece in that puzzle.

Likewise, the transition from basal amniotes (egg-laying tetrapods excluding amphibians) to basal mammals is complete and continuous. We have the complete jaw evolution from primitive synapsids (pelycosaur), to advanced synapsids (therasids), to mammals.

We also have 5 million years of a complete fossil record of Pelycodus, an extinct lemur-like ancestor of monkeys and apes (and us).

But even if we didn't have any fossils at all, compared sequences of DNA, RNA, and proteins, and molecular phylogenetics analysis would be sufficient to confirm relationships.

speaking of "woodmorappe"...

...aka high school science teacher jan peczkis, holds two entire universes in his head. jan peczkis has published a few papers about geology in real scientific journals, and about teaching in the magazine "science teacher". by day, he proceeds in matters scientific as if mainstream scientists know what they are talking about, but he spends his nights and weekends in a 6,000 year-old universe.

this dual existence can be useful. in the article "New Educational activities for Home Schooling Science: A Hands-on Science Activity that Demonstrates the Atheism and Nihilism of Evolution", fundamentalist woodmorappe quotes high school science teacher jan peczkis criticizing evolutionary theory. the peczkis article conflates evolution with the origins of life, and almost seems like it was written to be quoted by a fundamentalist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Woodmorappe

http://www.rae.org/nihilism.html

"i once read something, i think it was woodmorappe, that suggested the animals were trained (by god or noah) to pee and poop in containers (and/or troughs) that would make it much easier for noah and the others.... "

Yes, it was Woodmorappe. Glenn Morton, however, notes:

"At one point he suggests that the animals could be trained to urinate and defecate upon command while someone holds a bucket behind the animal. Assuming that this can be accomplished for the largest quarter of the animals and that they need to be serviced three times per day, each person must service 125 animals per hour, 2 animals a minute."

Presumably that includes running up to the top floor to empty the bucket in between animals. Pretty exhausting. Doesn't leave much time to feed and water them, either. And this was also assuming Woodmorappe's numbers - just 16,000 animals, which relies on "kinds" being at the genus level.

The problem with that is that some pretty heavy evolution has to happen in just a few thousand years. And creationists are opposed to evolution, even within kinds, if "new information" is added. But most (if not all) of today's species have gene loci at which there are more than four available alleles (all that would be possible with just two progenitors). Where did all these alleles come from if there's no new information?

"Flush it to where? There aren't any holes below the water line (lest it sink), and they certainly couldn't have flushed it up. The biblical ark was solid except for ridiculously tiny ventilation holes at the top, and the entry door that was sealed by God when everyone was aboard."

ye of little faith. gravity could have worked upwards just for waste products, the stuff could have drained to the magic sump pump on the lowest floor or god could have just poofed away the poop.

the bible doesn't specify every little detail, pam, and just because the bible doesn't say "magic sump pump" it doesn't mean there wasn't one. an appeal to things the bible doesn't say is a very useful "harmonizing" technique.

for example, when one gospel says "one angel" and another says "two angels", the one that says "one angel" doesn't say there wasn't another angel. see? it's easy.

pam,
while we're waiting for peter to read about whale evolution, what animal's "transitions" would you say are best represented in the fossil record?

is it whales? horses? humans? other?

pam, you quoted that site:
"How did Noah’s family dispose
of the waste of thousands
of animals every day? The
amount of labour could be minimized
in many ways. Possibly
they had sloped floors and/or
slatted cages, where the manure
could fall away from the animals
and be flushed away (plenty of
water around!)"

i once read something, i think it was woodmorappe, that suggested the animals were trained (by god or noah) to pee and poop in containers (and/or troughs) that would make it much easier for noah and the others....

Hi Walter,
Yes, it's both funny and sad to see them try to bend and twist the evidence to make it fit, when it so clearly doesn't.

They would have been better off just sticking with the abracadabra stuff, saying that God can do whatever is necessary. At least that would be consistent. But somewhere along the way, they decided that they had to get it into schools in place of science, which meant challenging science in its own ballpark.

So now they're stuck with facing the scientific evidence, and trying to explain it away.

I particularly loved this bit:

"How did Noah’s family dispose
of the waste of thousands
of animals every day? The
amount of labour could be minimized
in many ways. Possibly
they had sloped floors and/or
slatted cages, where the manure
could fall away from the animals
and be flushed away (plenty of
water around!)"

Flush it to where? There aren't any holes below the water line (lest it sink), and they certainly couldn't have flushed it up. The biblical ark was solid except for ridiculously tiny ventilation holes at the top, and the entry door that was sealed by God when everyone was aboard.

I know a bit about animal waste (I am right now procrastinating about cleaning cat litter boxes). The ammonia from urine alone would have suffocated them all within two weeks.

that website reflects the complex conspiracy-theory-filled world creationists inhabit. distrust, no, contempt for mainstream science is created and nurtured. it's notable that on that "arguments not to use" page, they felt the need to debunk moon landing conspiracy theories.

of course the "evilution conspiracy" imagined by creationists would put the "mooners" (and "birthers") to shame. creationists suppose a world-wide, religion-wide conspiracy of scientists clinging to a materialist paradigm, desperately trying to hide the failures of evilution from the public.

it seems like there's no article on that page that doesn't somewhere say something like, "god could have made fresh water fish salt-tolerant": is essence, it's pam's "then a miracle happened" cartoon over and over.

which brings us back to presuppositions.

peter, i think you have a point - sort of - when you say crazy things like science "rules out god". while there are plenty of scientists who believe in god, both pam and i (and you) mentioned god or supernatural in our presuppositions.

i guess science is a way of explaining the world as if god has not and does not intervene in the physical world. with that assumption, and others pam and i listed, science has done an incredible job of "explaining" a lot of things. of course there are areas of uncertainty. it used to be that everything was uncertainty. no one understood floods, thunder, lightning, sickness, the sun, and on and on and on. and magic was, apparently, everywhere... how could the ancients decide if a ruby or an emerald protects better against evil spirits? science has an answer for that. there's a lot to know, and who knows if we'll ever have "it all" worked out. but the scientific method will plod on. (pam, the slow, mechanical, but extremely effective nature of the scientific method was also a big topic in zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.)

meanwhile, creation "scientists" can keep harmonizing evidence with biblical texts, but they're not doing science - they don't "play" by the rules of the scientific method. they're dependent on miracles to get the evidence to match biblcal text.

pam,
this is a great/horrible page.

http://creation.com/hibernation-migration-and-the-ark

while the need for flood miracles taken as a given, they caution against the overuse of miracles in flood theories - lest they get all "abracadabra" on us.

here's a great line:

"The absence of a flurry of capricious, ‘abracadabra-style’ miracles in the Bible (apocryphal gospels have an abundance of these) is actually one hallmark of its authenticity."

pam,
that's what i was talking about. essentially, "arguements so bad even we don't use them anymore."

"this is interesting (from peter's website)."

Especially the part about arguments that creationists shouldn't use. :)

Ed,
Further evidence is the comparative small-to-large intestine ratio between chimps and humans.

http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp-anat/comp-anat-1b.shtml

this is interesting (from peter's website).

http://creation.com/qa

it's funny that they have to have it, but admirable that they do.

"for women, it's not only childbirth pain but being "ruled over" by husbands..."

Gotta love that old-time religion!

"no, no pam...that's the result of SIN. the birthing pain is eve's special punishment for her temptress role in the adam's apple affair (gen3:16). can't you read?"

Oh! [sound of forehead being slapped] How could I have forgotten?!

EBA: "That drying environment scenario says more about upright posture than brain burden and now we see that is what happened first."

We've known for quite a while that Australopithecus had a small brain and upright posture. He was around at this 2.8 mya juncture and was why the idea arose that moving out of the trees was what pushed upright posture. But now we have Ardi, and she shows us that upright posture arose at least 4.4 mya. She walked upright, but still had feet adapted for climbing, and lived in a forested area. So it now appears that what drove upright posture was the benefit of having the hands free for carrying food.

EBA: "The hunting explanation has been pretty well debunked since calorie analysis of hunter gatherer human societies show that the vast majority of calories come from gathering and our dentition did not really change to reflect a primarily meat diet."

Current hunter-gatherer societies? How are they relevant? They're now all confined to small areas. We know that early humans followed the migrating herds, that they made hunting weapons, and that sites that contain signs of them also contain large numbers of animal bones with cut marks.

Earlier hominids also are found among animal bones with cut marks, and their primitive stone tools would have been useful for skinning and cutting meat. No real use for vegetation.

Teeth are a red herring. I always hear this from my vegetarian friends. There would have been no pressure to develop what everyone thinks of as carnivore teeth (like lions, wolves, bears) because we never killed our prey with our teeth as they do, nor did we ever tear it from the bones with our teeth. That's what the stone tools were for. The longer canines that (especially male) chimpanzees have are used for fighting each other for territory and females, and Ardipithecus didn't have them, indicating a different social order.

Neoteny didn't really change the reproductive rate. Even chimps rarely have more than one infant, and they raise them for extended periods before mating again.

Tribal warfare is an interesting theory, but I just don't see it as sufficient to drive the development of a big brain all by itself.

ouch!

here verse 3:16:

To the woman he said,
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

for women, it's not only childbirth pain but being "ruled over" by husbands...

The zipper is God's punishment for men in a similar part of the anatomy.

pam,
"Our upright posture and large brain causes back problems, painful and difficult birthing, and knee and hip problems."

no, no pam...that's the result of SIN. the birthing pain is eve's special punishment for her temptress role in the adam's apple affair (gen3:16). can't you read?

"But we survived."

That we did but the DNA analysts have said we came mighty close to the edge. (It is funny that those teasing apart the genome at the molecular level are yielding more information about our past than those digging up fossils.)

That drying environment scenario says more about upright posture than brain burden and now we see that is what happened first. The hunting explanation has been pretty well debunked since calorie analysis of hunter gatherer human societies show that the vast majority of calories come from gathering and our dentition did not really change to reflect a primarily meat diet.

The current explanations simply do not pass the smell test for the overdevelopment of the brain and the lowered reproductive potential imposed by neoteny. My own candidate is that intertribal warfare played a major role. This has been reinforced by Goodall and others observation of a primitive type of this activity by other primates and cognition studies that show that the big difference between us and the apes is our ability to get inside the heads of other people. That has limited survival potential except in intratribal politics and intertribal ambushes.

"The outsize growth of the human brain and what payoff for its 25% calorie cost to operate had a positive selection pressure. What was it? That goes along with a outlier K strategy in reproduction.
Evolution usually punishes wild mutations from the norm, but that is exactly what humans are. 'Splain that to me, Lucy."

OK - to the best of my understanding: About 2.8 mya, the African climate changed from almost total rainforest, to smaller areas of rainforest, desert, and seasonally arid grasslands. This is also about the time that the Homo and Paranthropus lines diverged.

While apes did fine in forests, they would have been at a distinct disadvantage on the savannahs - with fruit and other vegtation less abundant, they had to rely more on meat, probably mostly scavenged from the kills of other animals. They could not compete by outrunning anything, nor kill/defend with claws and teeth or hooves and horns. However, eating meat, a concentrated source of calories and nutrients, allowed them to find a new way to compete - getting smarter and using tools. This, in turn, allowed them to kill, rather than scavenge.

Yes, as the brain, and therefore the head, got larger, a new strategy for giving birth became necessary - female pelvises had to become wider.

We're still young in evolutionary terms, and are pretty much jerry-built. Our upright posture and large brain causes back problems, painful and difficult birthing, and knee and hip problems. Women walk funny.

But we survived.

to continue on kangaroos/ice age,

we learn,
"Creationists generally believe there was only one Ice Age after, and
as a consequence of, the Flood. The lowered sea level at this time made
it possible for animals to migrate over land bridges for centuries."

so the theory is the (one and only...) ice age happened in 2400 b.c. and lowered sea levels. let's give that theory a chance to "play" science:

first, we have tons of evidence for multiple ice ages, and no evidence for one in 2400 b.c. we know of egyptian kingdoms in the nile delta continuing right through the flood. (remember, a delta is formed where a river meets the sea - at sea level.) the egyptian "old kingdom" - the builders of the famous pyramids.

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/egypt/history/timeline.html

http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/pharaohs/a/DynastiesEgypt_2.htm

so, suppose you say, and i gather you will, that "we don't know about when those pyramids were built. we weren't there to see it..." so, you might suggest "compressing the chronology". that may not seem like a big deal in this discussion about the 2400 b.c. ice age, but it seriously "throws off" all the well-known (and agreed to by fundamentalists) chronologies of later kingdoms. for instance, who is the pharaoh of the exodus? if you "compress the chronology" here, you can't say it was ahmose or thutmose or seti or rameses (depending on which exodus chronology you follow...) - they all get compressed too. there's a well-known continuous succession of kings.

this problem of civilizations surving right through the flood applies to ancient indian and chinese civilizations too.

peter, (and onofrio?)
from a link on that "creation" webpage from peter:

this paragraph is priceless:

Did the kangaroo hop all the
way to Australia?

"How did animals make the long journey from the Ararat region? Even
though there have been isolated reports of individual animals making
startling journeys of thousands of kilometres, such abilities are not
even necessary. Early settlers released a very small number of rabbits
in Australia. Wild rabbits are now found at the very opposite corner
(in fact, every corner) of this vast continent."

offer an irrelevant analogy... these rabbits were brought to australia on a BOAT.

"Does that mean that an
individual rabbit had to be capable of crossing the whole of Australia?
Of course not."

that's not the question. it's not hopping across australia, it's hopping across the ocean that's the tricky part...

"Creation speakers are sometimes asked mockingly, ‘Did the kangaroo hop all the way to Australia?’ We see by the rabbit example that this is a somewhat foolish question."

i did ask that question. he answers with the irrelevant story of rabbits, brought by BOAT.....

pam, to peter you said,
"...I did visit the site you linked to, and...There isn't a single shred of scientific merit to any of it..."

you know, i totally agree with your broader point. but the way they make it effective is there IS just a "tiny snippet" of real scientific content in there. for instance, in checking out peter's link i've learned of the "post-flood (one and only) ice age land bridge" "theory", which explains kangaroos in australia...

nevermind that there's no evidence for an ice age in 2400 b.c., and there's plenty of evidence of a thriving egyptian civilization right through the 2000s b.c., the fact is ice ages DO cause sea levels to drop. there's the "snippet" of real content. you have to look hard, but it's in there.

Pamsm wrote:

"They also presented her to other paleontologists, to check their conclusions. They presented her to the world when they could. No one would hide his light under a bushel basket for longer than necessary just to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Darwin's book."

There is probably more than a coincidence to the publishing date. Physical anthropologists are in a trend to hold onto any discovered fossils for long periods now. It is a form of job security if they wring all possible interpretation out of their finds over a long period of time rather than publishing early and letting other professionals piggyback on their bones for interpretation and published articles.

Many of the more interesting things about human evolution are often ignored by interested lay people and those who write for them. The outsize growth of the human brain and what payoff for its 25% calorie cost to operate had a positive selection pressure. What was it? That goes along with a outlier K strategy in reproduction.

Evolution usually punishes wild mutations from the norm, but that is exactly what humans are. 'Splain that to me, Lucy.

I'll leave the Noah's Ark part to Walter, since it was addressed to him, but I did visit the site you linked to, and poked around there for a while.

If it weren't for the knowledge that so many gullible and credulous people lap that stuff up, it would be incredibly funny. There isn't a single shred of scientific merit to any of it, of course, but even when you examine the biblical "proofs" that they offer, their assertions are completely unsupportable.

BTW, Peter, you do know that Kenneth Miller believes in God, don't you?

Oh, Peter, please. Irreducible complexity has been well and truly refuted. I notice that in this example, Behe compares blood clotting factors to a bicycle. Always something mechanical. But animals aren't "built" out of "parts," they evolve by co-opting earlier systems, some of which may have been used for something completely different (which is the basis for some pretty poor "design" - but more on that another time).

Here's a page that refutes all of Behe's examples:

http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/icdmyst/ICDmyst.html

Note especially this sentence:

"Under questioning at a recent meeting (16) Behe finally agreed that the cascade is not IC after all."

As for Ardi, you mischaracterize the find, and also why it took the time that it did. Did you watch the actual Discovery Channel program? If not, did you watch all of the excerpts at the link you sent?

Yes, there were many fragments of ardipithecus skeletons found at the general site. But Ardi was a single skeleton, still imbedded in the rock. The bones were shattered, but shattered in place - like thoroughly cracking the shell on a hard-boiled egg before peeling it. They used a type of glue to prevent the pieces from coming apart, and took out whole chunks of rock, encasing them in plaster until they could get them back to lab for extraction - slow, tedious work.

They also presented her to other paleontologists, to check their conclusions. They presented her to the world when they could. No one would hide his light under a bushel basket for longer than necessary just to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Darwin's book.

Hate can easily be an offshoot of any religion that purports to divide humanity along the lines of the righteous saved and the doomed unsaved. That insider-outsider rubrik is the basis for group hate.

What nonsense.

Hi All,

Next week I will be back to a regular routine. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Hi Pam,

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/12/how_kenneth_miller_used_smokea.html

I did not find the evidence on the "Ardi" find convincing. Most of the fossil fragments are deformed and eroded. Some are found by combing the site after a flood spread and washed the bone fragments about the site. From a collection of bone fragments and 35 sets of skeletons these scientists arrive at a conclusion after 15 years of deliberation, amazingly awaiting the 150 anniversary of Darwin’s Origins to announce their conclusions to the general public (that is 15-17 years after the find).

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/ardipithecus/ardipithecus.html

Hi Walter,

Some of your questions, and questions from critics, on the Flood and Noah's Ark answered here,

http://creation.com/media-center

I'm here. Peter?

hi peter, pam, et. al.
post away!