- What separates humans from other organisms, and by how much? Dexterity (opposable thumb), Lifespan, Sociability, Speech, Bipedalism, Hairlessness, Body Size, and Diet, all separate humans from others, but none is more important and more off the chart than our Intelligence. And from these gifts, humans developed even more abilities; some natural like thick fur on demand, flight, excellent sensors, and powerful actuators; while others completely new like handling fire, writing, and life in the outer space.
Humans dominate by far all other organisms and, unlike them, we continue to improve. While we can live everywhere and can survive where no others can, even our partner species (a select group from the beginning) have not progressed one bit despite our best efforts to bring them closer to our level. The capability gap between us and our companion organisms (human intervention aside) increases all the time as our abilities continue to grow, while theirs are perpetually stationary. This is why we no longer need them for their capabilities (transportation, power, security, food gathering and pest control), instead keeping them only as pets and food products.
- Is there a credible developmental path from ape to human? Many triggers have been hypothesized: “bipedalism due to climate change”, “aquatic ape hair loss”, “killer ape”, “increased brain size due to better nutrition or fire or language”, etc. However, none of this stands up to scrutiny. Bipedalism is common in animals including all birds, many lizards, rodents and more, yet none of these shows human-comparable intelligence. Venturing into new habitats due or not to climate change is very common for most animal families, yet despite dramatically different lifestyles, members of the same family are more or less equally endowed. The naturally hairless and the language-rich species are not known for superior intelligence. Finally, better nutrition leads invariably to larger populations and sometimes to larger body sizes (within limits), but never to human-level intelligence. And while larger body size generally comes with increased cranial capacity (used as a proxy for intelligence of the fossilized) the relationship between cranial capacity and actual intelligence is tentative at best, especially when comparing across animal families.
- What if humans are just a freak accident of evolution? While the most important, intelligence is not the only feature separating humans from apes. Not one but a series of freak accidents would have had to happen on the transition path to human. These accidents would be independent of each other given that bipedalism, hair loss, language and diet do not lead to human-level intelligence as seen, but also given that superior intelligence as in elephants and dolphins does not lead to bipedalism, dexterity, new diet and so on. In a “blind, unguided and purposeless” universe, this unbelievable series of events would not have happened once and only once. Yet this assumed series of unbelievable freak accidents is just a continuation of an even less plausible series including abiogenesis – also a singularity since abiogenesis is not currently observed and since all organisms show commonality (they would be different if product of different abiogenesis episodes), the Big Bang (another singularity), and the “arising” of everything else. This many “freak accidents” do make a pattern …that indicates pure fantasy.
- Can “natural selection” explain the humans? No. Both supposed evolutionary branches survived and developed in the same African environment. Why “struggle for survival” did not eliminate either one of the branches has yet to be plausibly explained. In addition, the supposed “common ancestor” is a regular chimp, so no evolution of any kind on that branch of the “common tree”. Why then would the human branch explode with changes? Felines, canines, bovines, and primates ex humans are all more or less the same on all family branches. There is no feline/canine/bovine/etc. human equivalent. No “evolutionary arms race” can possibly account for human brains being able to make sense of the quantum and the cosmos – notions far removed from everyday survival. As far as we know, no other organism has such a removed capability inexplicable on the account of “natural selection”.
- The fossil record lends no support for human evolution for several reasons: it is sketchy at best inviting proponents to make whatever desired of it via artistic license, is static hence one must presume evolution to see evolutionary links (the animation movie), and fossils are not positively linked to one another hence likely part of other animation movies altogether. Along the years, we have seen an inflation of hominid “species” as everyone that found a bone or two claimed they discovered a new species. And even after some cleanup, we’re still left with Neanderthals and Denisovans that successfully mated (fertile off-springs) with Sapiens despite being labeled “separate species”.
Summary:
- Humans are truly exceptional
- There is no plausible developmental path from ape to human
- Humans just a “freak accident of evolution” is likely just fantasy
- “Natural selection” cannot explain “humans from apes”
- The fossil record does not support the “human evolution” story
Links:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/299/5615/1994
http://city-press.news24.com/News/Scientists-question-Homo-naledi-20150919
Pro-Con Notes:
Con: Both chimps & humans had a common hominid ancestor some 5 mill. yrs ago
Pro: Even with the Hollywood artistic license, this 25 mya looks just like a chimp today: https://www.livescience.com/32029-oldest-monkey-fossil-found.html. See? No evolution.
The claimed debunking is a FAIL.
Hi Nonlin.org,
Interesting post. Before I offer any comments, I’d just like to ask you one question: when do you think the first human beings appeared, and which fossil do you identify as the first true human being?
Along with your post on information, this is simple yet interesting.
Thanks
Does it have to be natural selection only? What about genetic drift fixing non-adaptive phenotypes?
No.
They moved to different environments? Last I checked, Chimps live in large part in trees in dense jungles, whereas humans live primarily in open terrain and often near water.
Rofl. No it isn’t. Where are you getting this crap?
They both changed and adapted to different living conditions.
Ahh, the rigorously quantied “more or less the same” which is declared to not be the case for primates.
Can not POSSIBLY account for it? That must means you have managed to demonstrate it’s impossibility. But you haven’t, so you’re just making blind assertions.
Something has to be the first at something. Something could swim before everything else. Something could walk before everything else. Something could fly before everything else. And so on and so forth.
Your whole OP is just blind assertions and willful ignorance in a nice fat stew.
Hey, can you explain to me why there is consilience of independent phylogenies?
Simple-minded you mean.
One of the advantages that a scam like ID/creationism has.
For many people.
Glen Davidson
Oh, my sweet summer child, my innocent little darling.
A witness, the bible, says humans are unique.
Its clear that our thinking/intelligence is what separates us from critters. We are above all and no creature is above another as we are above all.
The evolutionist must make the human species as a first intellectually separate kind and this the origin for who we are. Not any other reason.
In fact its all about intelligence.
Evolutionism got away with making us upright, opposable thumbs, social etc for too long in its guesses on our origin.
The intelligence curve of mankind is the great thing as its a important thing amonst mankind.
In fact its likely more intelligent mankind is more likely to come to the accurate conclusions on if man evolved from a common ancestor for primates.!!
Sorry, but I stopped reading after this piece of nonsense.
”Humans dominate by far all other organisms and, unlike them, we continue to improve. While we can live everywhere and can survive where no others can,…”
Bacteria, fungus and insects all dominate us number wise, biomass wise and habitat wise.
This amused me:
Nonlin.org in the OP:
and Robert joins in:
compare this to what gpuccio wrote a few days earlier:
gpuccio@UD
Birds of a feather. What separates IDers from other organisms is an off the chart display of human exceptionalism. 😀
I think there’s some evidence that intestinal flora influence our food preferences.
So nothing so far from the Darwinistas other than tantrum? I am very disappointed.
Very laughable:
“Bacteria, fungus and insects all dominate us number wise”
“What about genetic drift fixing non-adaptive phenotypes?”
“They both changed and adapted to different living conditions.”
“Something has to be the first at something.”
“Oh, my sweet summer child, my innocent little darling.”
And the icing on the cake:
” consilience of independent phylogenies”
And here’s Lucy:
http://nonlin.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Lucy.png
vjtorley,
That’s not a question for me. My specialty is critical analysis, not fossils. You also missed paragraph 5 on the fossil record.
You get what you pay for.
Also, the word you’re looking for is “mockery,” not “tantrum”.
Either one works equally well when you have no argument.
One does not need arguments to rebut mere assertions.
Hum,
This is supposed to prove what?
1. Humans are apes.
2. Humans do develop from the fertilized egg to embryo to baby to adult. So far none has appeared magically.
Seems like it’s Nonlin’s fantasy about some imaginary people called “Darwinistas.” I’ve never heard such a thing from scientists. If anybody thinks that, well I don’t care, and it has nothing to do with whether humans evolved.
So this is what it boils down to? A mere assertion after a few empty “points” about development and freak accidents?
Sorry, but your ignorance about the fossil record doesn’t count for anything.
So that’s it? Assertions, ignorance, etc, presented in long word-salad format
Sorry Nonlin, but you’re far from being the great thinker that you imagine yourself to be. Your mother has to say that you are, but it doesn’t count. You’re clueless, and your mind too contaminated and confused by creationist “literature.”
Ok, I’ll play. I have a question about this quote from the OP:
Those look like phenotypic traits. I am sorry, but it is impossible to link individual phenotypic traits to our success as a species (or so I’ve been told). You need to consider the complete phenotype for that, which is a purely theoretical concept of course, that can’t be measured. In support, I quote Nonlin.org [perhaps you know him?] lucidly explaining this in another thread:
And the same goes for Intelligence. Right?
Does bipedalism separate humans from other animals, or is it common in other animals? Answers on a postcard, please.
… then proceed to Hairlessness 😀
There is no “debate” to be had here, any more than there’s a legitimate debate about whether people landed on the Moon, or if the Holocaust happened. It would take at least three years of college-level education in biology, anthropology, and psychology for someone like Nonlin to even begin to comprehend what was confused, vague, misleading, and just false about his/her starting assumptions. Without that, people like Nonlin are simply too ignorant to deserve to be taken seriously.
This.
Oh yes there is debate here.
Who is the judge of when there is no debate when origin subjects are the most famous and popular debates in science?!
One does not need years of college. Thats for teenagers.
anyways its not years its just semesters dealing with very limited data and this just memorized and not thought through much less serious, serious intellectual scientific scrutiny.
I think in our time evolutionism and many subjects in origin issues arfe going to be destroyed and a very famous topic about this demise. its possib;e these blogs will be brought up for hids projects, in the future, on the timeline and evolution of the demise of evolutionism. watch your reputations boys!!
Separates from some and is common with others. Point is, the Darwinist mythology of human evolution is bogus precisely because it make a story out of bipedalism.
Translation: “I don’t have any counterarguments but don’t want to drop the Darwinist mythology”.
And don’t you mean conclusions, not assumptions? If it doesn’t take you three years to figure out, what exactly do you dispute?
This OP is not about “success as a species”, but specifically about debunking the human evolution myth. As others have pointed out before, bacteria, roaches, etc. meet the “success as a species” criteria too. And of course we might bomb ourselves into oblivion one day.
Are you for real? That’s the conclusion, not the argument. I write the conclusion first and the argument after:
“
No. Both supposed evolutionary branches survived and developed in the same African environment. Why “struggle for survival” did not eliminate either one of the branches has yet to be plausibly explained. In addition, the supposed “common ancestor” is a regular chimp, so no evolution of any kind on that branch of the “common tree”. Why then would the human branch explode with changes? Felines, canines, bovines, and primates ex humans are all more or less the same on all family branches. There is no feline/canine/bovine/etc. human equivalent. No “evolutionary arms race” can possibly account for human brains being able to make sense of the quantum and the cosmos – notions far removed from everyday survival. As far as we know, no other organism has such a removed capability inexplicable on the account of “natural selection”.
“
This is what you should dispute if you can. But why do I bother with you?
” No “evolutionary arms race” can possibly account for human brains being able to make sense of the quantum and the cosmos – notions far removed from everyday survival.”
What makes you think we actually can make sense of the quantum and the cosmos? Quantum mechanics is a mess, and whether quantum mechanics can be reconciled with general relativity is anyone’s guess!
Besides which, it’s not as if physics is some quasi-mystical other-worldly mental perception of the beyond. Physical theories evolved in tandem with technology, and did so over the course of hundreds of thousands of years.
Here’s the interesting thing about human cultures, that makes them really different from ape cultures: human cultures display a “ratchet effect”, in which the innovations made by one generation form the platform for the next generation. We do this by teaching our children through games and with toys. All mammals play, but games are (I believe?) unique to human beings. That is, we construct artificial, simple scenarios — deliberately! — for the enculturation of our young. This plays a big role in scaffolding their cognitive, conative, and affective processes.
Think about chimpanzees for a moment here. Chimpanzees are very intelligent animals. Like all great apes, they make tools and they communicate with gestures. That requires some sophisticated understanding of causation and intention. They not only infer but they can tell what others have and have not inferred. Their theory of mind is pretty sophisticated. They can cooperate under some constrained conditions although they seem to compete most of the time.
Also, chimpanzees have about 30 billion cortical neurons, based on the recent estimates. Human beings have about 87 billion cortical neurons, again based on the most recent estimates.
We don’t know what the last common ancestor of humans and chimps was like. We assume that it was more like a chimp or bonobo than it was like a human, but that’s because of what Miocene apes in general were like. We don’t have any fossil chimps because they live in environments where fossilization is almost impossible. So we don’t know how much chimpanzees and bonobos have evolved in the six million years since they & the hominids went their separate ways, and we have no idea if the last common ancestor was more chimp-like or more bonobo-like in its behavior.
What would need to be shown here is that evolution can’t explain how to get from great ape minds, brains, and cultures to human minds, brains, and cultures — as if there’s something about language, technology, imitation, shared norms that’s just somehow, mysteriously, a gap that five million years of evolution cannot cross.
Exactly.
Sorry Nonlin, but I read that piece of crap you wrote, and it didn’t present anything of substance. That is why I didn’t bother with it. But let me show you:
This is false. The various Homo species diverged from the chimp lineage while living in separate habitats. The Homo species lived mostly in sabannas. Have you checked where chimps and bonobos live? Have you seen human tribes living in the very same environments?
This is and example as to why Kantian said that you need to study quite a bit before deserving being taken seriously. You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about, besides you’re abject ignorance of what an argument is. Clue: it’s not just asserting your ignorance as if it represented ultimate knowledge.
Evolution is not just “struggle for survival,” The evolutionary processes “reshape” populations. they don’t eliminate closely related species unless they share their territories and compete for the same resources. As Kantian said, you have a lot to study.
Another example of what Kantian is talking about. No, sorry. Not a “regular” chimp. While it’s hard to establish what kind of “chimp” they were, they were clearly not “regular” chimps. Take bonobos for example, to the non-expert eye they might look like “regular” chimps, but they have several differences, despite being closer to chimps than the common ancestor to all three (humans, chimps, bonobos). So, they were not regular chimps. Anatomical studies show differences. As an example, examination of some fossils of apes closer to our common ancestor has suggested that at some were a bit more bipedal than today’s chimps, for example (not last word written about it yet), which makes them suspect that the population leading to chimps lost the bipedalism, rather than the other way around.
So, your ignorance about anatomical studies might convince you that you’ve got it right, but, before judging, you need to understand what you’re talking about, which leads back to Kantian’s point about your need for studying.
Who the hell knows what you mean by “explode”? In any event, the fossil record shows quite a bit of hominids that had intermediate characteristics between what the ancestral forms to humans and chimps had and our species. Brains came in many sizes. So, a path towards humans is visible in the fossil record.
One more example of what Kantian said. You need to study quite a bit before deserving to be taken seriously.
This is false. When reconstructing phylogenetic relationships, we see branches as long as that between us and chimps. This is true for felines, canines, and apes-other-than-humans, whether the phylogenies are built using inserted transposons, or phenotypic characteristics. You just don’t know about any of it, which goes back to confirm Kantian’s point.
In what sense? Do you want every clade to evolve into humans? Are you that ignorant about what evolution means?
Of course not. For one, it’s not as if every human would be able to make the slightest sense of “the quantum and the cosmos.” The very people working on those areas have a difficult time with it. For another, it’s not the role of evolution to explain that, it’s the role of cultural development, which is a different beast.
Take yourself for an example. No matter how we explain things to you, you’re unable to focus and understand what’s wrong with your ignorance-presented-as-if-it-was-wisdom. That would put humanity much closer to the human/chimp ancestor than merely pointing to someone like Einstein.
Of course, because it’s not the role of natural selection to explain everything. Natural selection is one of the evolutionary processes behind the diversity of life, not about cultural developments. You’re making a categorical mistake. Akin to saying that there’s no planet orbits because natural selection doesn’t explain them.
Dispute? You have too much to learn. You didn’t produce any arguments there. you just made confused and mistaken claims after mistaken claims. I should be wondering why I bother with you myself. I know this will fall on deaf ears.
Now let’s see how you ignore what I wrote and go to some tangential bullshit, as you normally do. I won’t bother though. You have lots of mental maturation to go through, and that won’t happen within this forum.
As Kantian said: you have a lot to study before deserving any serious consideration. So, I’d rather leave it here.
Hum. Some paragraphs became a mess because I tried to edit them for clarity, but didn’t re-check them to make sure the changes went well. They didn’t. When I select and type I get some strange behaviour in the selection/substitution process. Anyway, I doubt that Nonlin would have made the effort of understanding any of it, well written or not. So no great loss.
Entropy,
What your leaving here is a long rant. You mean it it to echo despite the leaving.
All your answers were from wiki[edia. they address nopthing but only repeat stuff.
its up to your side to explain the explosion of human evolution, especially intellectual, while all other creatures includibng primates are as dumb as they ever were and as dumb as ech other.
the difference in intellect between us(well me) and all furry creatures is fantastic great and very unlikely from any arms race for survival. no other creatures needed to survive like this.
We are made in gods image and brilliant and primates ignorance is very evident they are not us , closer to us then others, or in any way superior to frogs or pigs.
our intellectual segregation is a glorious problem for old time evolutionism.
sure it is.
Which you failed to answer. So, why is there consilience of independent phylogenies?
And to “debunk the evolution myth” your were first trying to establish that our intelligence set us apart from all other organisms. Did you not write this?
Looks an awful lot like your are pounding yourself on the chest here for being such a clever bugger. In particular I note how you chose one of your criteria to be “survive where no others can”. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that you insisted that it was impossible to link any phenotypic trait to survival in the natural selection thread. So why did that argument cease to be valid all of a sudden?
Don’t be silly, if they were from wikipedia they wouldn’t have so many editorial mistakes. I suspect you’re projecting your deficiencies onto others. Maybe you didn’t understand any of it. Sure, there’s editorial mistakes, but I think that a bit of effort would help you out.
Did you even read it? I mean, sure, hard because of the editorial mistakes, but not impossible. There’s nothing to address in the paragraph that Nonlin told me that I “have to answer” (ha!), other than misinformation. So what do you mean by “address”? I explained some mistakes. I pointed to false claims. How’s that addressing nothing?
What do you mean by explosion? I explained how evolutionary analyses show the very same degree of divergence in other lineages. So, if measures of divergence don’t help you understand that there’s no explosion in evolutionary terms, then you might lack the preparation to understand, and thus you should not be making any claims about “explosions.”
Your seem unable to read, which contradicts the “fantastically great” “intellect” claim. Why should it be explained by an “arms race for survival”? What does that even mean?
Primates are superior in being primates, just as frogs are superior at being frogs. You seem as confused as Nonlin. Evolution is not about producing humans. Evolution is about the interplay between the environment and life forms variations. It’s not a process for making humans out of every life form. It’s just the stuff that happens because there’s such a thing as life. Life has no option but to vary. That makes it all diverge and diverge and diverge. Because life forms are deeply dependent on the environment and the particulars of their prior history, all roads lead to all kinds of places, rather than just Rome.
Maybe you’d be better off by getting an education, rather than posting comments that show deep ignorance and unwarranted expectations from phenomena you know nothing about.
Because they aren’t independent.
That’s precisely the point. In principle they’re independent, but, given the underlying evolutionary relationships, they’re not really as independent as we might think. Evolution is the “hidden” or “lurking” variable.
In what way aren’t they independent?
Yes. Their nucleotide sequences of different loci are independent of each other, in the sense that they do not cause each other to be a certain way. So something else is constraining their sequences to yield similar phylogenies, and other than common descent what would that be?
Entropy,
primates being primates, frogs being frogs is still rejecting the well made acciusation here THAT our intellectual superiority is way beyond any other creature and so way beyond selectionism. We are unreasonably smart and this undercuts a evolutionist claim of , aw shucks, we are just another result from evolution.
No creatures, including primates(which we are not),evolved smarts DESPITE all the same needs as us.
The difference is wonderful great and out of any probability curve of possiblity for evolution.
It indicates a god created being.
Its not about evolutions design to make other creatures smart but we are THAT SMART.
it must be addressed!. The difference between us and them is too great for evolution to have created.
in fact all other creatures don’t each show a spectrum within a inferior status. they are all as dumb or smart as eacj other. we don’t have any that even come up slightly to us. this is very unlikely if evolution was selecting creatures for smarts in all the time.
Seems like you are missing the point, which contradicts the claim about intellectual superiority. Pay attention: the point was that other animals have their own “superiorities.” Thus, to claim that we having some characteristics that distinguish us from other animals, means that we didn’t evolve is contradictory because evolution should, precisely, produce life forms with characteristics that distinguish them from other life forms in one way or another. So, frogs are very good at being frogs, cockroaches are very good at being cockroaches, etc.
How “unreasonably” smart we could be is undercut by your stubbornness to even try and be reasonable. You’re unable to understand that the evidence that we evolved and share common ancestry with many other life forms won’t disappear. The evidence stays. So, however you might feel about it, just because you think you’re superior to everything else in terms of intelligence, doesn’t matter. What matters is the facts, and the facts contradict your claim.
1. Yes, we’re primates. the group was named after our egos (primates means “the main ones” or something to the effect), because it includes us.
2. If other primates had the very same “needs” as us, but failed to evolve in the same way, then they’d be extinct. That means that other primates surviving today didn’t have those “needs.” That alone means that you might not know very well what you mean by “needs.”
Yet the evidence shows that we share common ancestry with the rest of the primates, the rest of the mammals, the rest of quite a chunk if not all life forms. Sorry again. The evidence trumps your ego.
My point about the length of branches of divergence answered this. We evolved that characteristic, other animals evolved other characteristics. Maybe it’s true that our intelligence is a one-time-deal. Maybe not. Whether the question is completely open, partially open, or almost closed, doesn’t matter. The amount of divergence is accessible within the time frame since our separation from the chimp lineage, there’s hominid fossils showing several of the transitional characteristics, the molecular evidence shows the relationships and the amounts of mutations expected since our separation from the chimp lineage, etc, etc, etc. So, no matter what your ego might say, or how open the question might be about the circumstances that lead to our intelligence, we still evolved.
You should avoid these kinds of claims Robert. Mixing some authentic question (like, I don’t know how human intelligence could be the result of evolution!), with false claims (chimps evolved under the very same environment as humans), and faulty conclusions (therefore god-did-it!) doesn’t help your case.
Animals vary in intelligence. I have worked with lots of animals, and there’s variation in intelligence even within a single variety of animals. Have you ever had dogs? Do you really think that all your dogs had exactly the same intelligence? Dogs vary in intelligence even within one breed Robert.
Ooooh, good one.
But not necessarily exclusively, sometimes they work well when you do.
Entropy,
doigs don’r have different smarts. they are all dumb dogs. any memory they acquire that impresses people is not sent to their offspring.
iit would be difficult to show any intelloigence difference in any type of creatuers or any between creatures. They are so low that the spectrum they live in would show no curve on a graph.
My big point was that human intelligence is so unique that its unreasonable to see it as just another evolved trait. Evolutionism needs more to explain this away. Of coarse they can’t do it.
I mean that if evolution is true we could not possibly of been so different from “other” critters to have evolved such a glorious thing as our intelligence.
Its just a great piece of evidence of how unlikely humans evolved relative to animals.
Memories are not inherited Robert.
My friends working on ethology would differ, and for some strange reason, I’m inclined to believe them much more than to believe you.
I know that was your point. I answered it. Here’s the summary: it doesn’t matter what you think, the evidence that we share common ancestry with many-if-not-all life forms won’t go away.
It’s more like scientists have to explain that in, not away. I would never deny that humans have intelligence, despite your efforts to convince me otherwise.
It doesn’t look that glorious after you missing the answers time and again.
However unlikely, the facts are that we’re here talking about it, and that there’s plenty of evidence that we evolved. So use that glorious intelligence to understand that it doesn’t matter what your opinion might be, the evidence for common ancestry and for the evolution of our brains, won’t go away. No matter how glorious our intelligences, our desires cannot change the evidence Robert.
Nonsense. We know enough to use quantum tunneling technology and to send people in the outer space.
As always, nothing more than total nonsense from you:
“Chimpanzees are adapted to several types of habitats, although they usually live in the jungle. They live successfully in rainforests, mainly in what used to be the equatorial jungle belt. However, they also dwell in humid and dry forests, in gallery forests (those near a river or other body of water), in Primary and secondary forests, swamp forests that flood seasonally, wet savannas, wooded savannas and sometimes in some grasslands and shrub-lands.”
As much as you try to behave like a chimp, the fossil record won’t help you.
“Felines, canines, bovines, and primates ex humans are all more or less the same on all family branches” means – for those that have an ounce of brain – that none of those has a human equivalent, aka entirely dominant of all other animals.
Etc. etc. total BS from entropy. Once again “why do I bother with you?”
Thanks for explaining. Still, we’re both wasting our time with entropy.
That of course is just gibberish from the new astrologers aka Darwinistas.
Not the same. We’re not all surviving in the outer space – just a few representatives. And even those don’t make their lifetime habitat over there. You’re conflating two entirely different things and asking childish “gotcha” questions.
Since no “evolution” there’s obviously no such thing as “phylogeny”. Don’t let them drag you into their mental institution.
Really? let’s see:
Your claim was that both lineages (human and chimp) were supposed to have evolved in the same environments, and that, thus, one branch should have been eliminated. My answer was that this was false. You come up with a list of places where chimps might be found, that includes, by the end, almost as an afterthought, a few subtypes of savannas. Sorry, the nonsense is all yours. Somewhat overlapping environments does not mean the same environment. More importantly, somewhat overlapping environments won’t result in the extinction of either lineage. Not only that, I also explained that for closely related species to be able to evolve alongside, it’s enough if they don’t compete for resources. Therefore, your quote makes my point, and you cannot read for comprehension.
As I said, you’re unable to focus. You don’t remember what your claim was about, so you thought it would be enough to find a tiny overlap in habitats to contradict my point, but you just confirmed it.
This is wrong two-ways:
1. Your quote was about modern chimps, not fossilized chimps (can you read at all?).
2. The fossil record is consistent with the branches evolving in different environments.
And I told you that if you expect every branch to evolve into humans, then you don’t understand evolution. Not surprising that you’d miss the point.
More like bullshit from you, since all you did was demonstrate that I am right, and that you’re too stupid, or unprepared, to understand the problems with your verborrea.
That makes Kantian’s point yet again, that you need a lot of an education before deserving to be taken seriously. Your unwillingness to understand is painful to watch. I can only hope that I’m right about you being just some teen with an inflated ego, who still has the time to mentally mature and learn.
Sorry Nonlin, but by demonstrating that you’re merely a merolico, you show that you are in no position to judge if anybody else might be an astrologer.
What about you try and do better by paying attention? No? Of course not! You’d risk losing face, or worse! you might end up agreeing that you’ve got it all wrong and then you’d have to erase your whole bullshit of a website.
Total nonsense, but very funny. Especially: “Chimps and humans do not compete for resources”.
Nice try Nonlin, but, yet again, you forget your claim: that both the human and chimp branches were supposed to evolve in the same environment and thus one should have gone extinct. The fact remains that evolutionary biologists don’t claim that both branches evolved in the same environment, that the fossil record doesn’t suggest such a thing, etc. Thus, that today humans have invaded everything to the point of destroying all habitats, even those where chimps live, doesn’t have anything to do with your misinformed claim.
So, call my points total nonsense if you want. You’ll still be wrong, and you’ll still be a misinformed ignoramus with an overinflated ego. Your poor attempts at “defence” demonstrate your mental immaturity. Nothing else.
Here is a summary of the main questions and answers to date:
http://nonlin.org/human-evolution/
Pro-Con Notes:
Con: Evolutionary analyses show the very same degree of divergence in other lineages.
Pro: Not at all. There is absolutely no animal family with so many and extreme differences between one member and all others: Dexterity, Lifespan, Speech, Bipedalism, Hairlessness, Diet, and – most importantly – Superintelligence.
Con: The various Homo species diverged from the chimp lineage while living in separate habitats. We both survived because we occupied different ecological niches.
Pro: There’s no evidence for this. Like humans, chimps live successfully in rainforests, humid and dry forests, wet savannas, wooded savannas, and sometimes in grasslands and shrub-lands. As omnivores we always had similar diets (environment allowing) which we also share with bears, monkeys, and many other omnivores. We all gladly share environments and seek one another’s food. A comparative analysis with other animal families like felines and canines shows that human “evolution” is simply not justified on the basis of “niche specialization” especially when all other supposed branches remained virtually unchanged.
Con: Humans are just the first species to reach this level. Something has to be the first at something.
Pro: And who will be second? Dolphins? Are they painting underwater caves already?
Con: Bacteria, fungus and insects all dominate us number wise, biomass wise and habitat wise.
Pro: Irrelevant. Makes no sense to compare humans and bacteria/fungus/insects number wise. Also, insects cannot live in outer space.
Con: Both chimps & humans had a common hominid ancestor some 5 mill. yrs ago
Pro: Even with the Hollywood artistic license, this 25 mya looks just like a chimp today: https://www.livescience.com/32029-oldest-monkey-fossil-found.html. See? No evolution.
Nonlin.org,
What puzzles me about your incredulity is that you seem fine with the idea that evolutionary theory can explain why mammals are more intelligent than other vertebrates, why primates are more intelligent than other mammals, why apes are more intelligent than other primates, but reject the idea that evolutionary theory can also explain why humans are more intelligent than other apes.
The leading theory among scholars of human evolution is that what makes hominids distinct is our ability and willingness to cooperate. Chimpanzees are not good at cooperating although they will under highly constrained conditions. Kim Sterelny suggests that hominids occupy a distinct ecological niche that he calls “obligate cooperative foraging”: in all human societies, members of the group work together to meet the daily nutritional and other needs of all. Only under conditions of enormous scarcity do they abandon the young, sick, or old who cannot care for themselves. By contrast, in all the great apes, basic provisioning is an individual affair — individuals will forage by themselves during the day and then come together later on for social interaction (grooming, fighting, and mating).
It should be pointed out that great apes and especially chimpanzees are highly intelligent animals. They have some understanding of causation and of intention. They can make inferences and they can understand what another chimp has inferred. They are very good at learning from each other but there is little explicit instruction in the human sense. Interestingly, all great apes are poor at imitating, compared to human beings.
By the way, modern humans have brains about 260% larger than modern chimps if you compare total number of cortical neurons — about 86 billion for humans and about 30 billion for chimpanzees. This is smaller than the difference between chimpanzees and macaques. (See here.) Interestingly, although humans do not have the greatest number of total neurons, we do have the greatest number of cortical neurons — the elephant has a much larger brain that we do but most of its neurons are in its cerebellum.
Also, the fossil record is a lot better than you let on: we have a 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton and a 52% complete Homo ergaster skeleton, plus lots of cranial and post-cranial material from other species that gives us a pretty good idea of when and where brain size increased.
I’m certainly not saying that we have a complete account of human evolution — we don’t and we probably never will. But the preponderance of evidence and balance of probabilities makes sheer incredulity an unreasonable view.
Many of those differences are DUE TO differences in intelligence. And the diets are really not that different and only really differ, again, due to differences in intelligence. And humans grow and then shed a coat of fur in the womb, I wonder why.
None of these things are extreme either in degree or in number. Of course, given how just calling them “extreme” is really just vague and arbitrary, it still doesn’t mean those differences didn’t evolve. The adjective with which you wish to describe the magnitude of the differences between us and our primate cousins is not an argument.
They’re using tools. In any case, what relevance does it have who will be second? The statement is true, somebody have to be first and your response isn’t even a response
But it makes sense to compare intelligence and hairlessness? Why? You are just describing arbitrarily picked attributes using lots of rhetoric and grandiose adjectives. The whole thing is subjective, so if you can pick attributes you find “extreme”, so can we.
Insects can live everywhere that we can live. They can’t build space-stations, but they can live in them just as we can.
Another completely arbitrary and subjective judgement. “No evolution”. There’s no argument there, just your subjective statement about the magnitude of the effect. It’s also patently obviously wrong as that drawing is still demonstrably different from chimpanzees, so it’s just factually incorrect to claim there’s been “no evolution”.
You don’t have any sensible arguments it seems, just subjective value-judgements using arbitrarily picked attributes.
Now, why is there consilience of independent phylogenies?
Nonlin.org,
Sorry Nonlin, but your new “comment” is further demonstration that you don’t know what you’re talking about to the point that you forget what your original claims were. You mostly repeated your already refuted falsehoods, and, in the process, you contradicted at least one of your original claims without noticing. I could take the opportunity to point it out and laugh at you, but I’d rather not. You would not understand it anyway.
I tried too many times already to help you out, only to be confronted by your astounding incompetence. No point in continuing. Adios.