Re: TOBS: Apes Built the Pyramids

On Sun, 09 Nov 2003 01:18:06 GMT, "jabriol" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

>
>"Kronk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> On 7 Nov 2003 09:40:05 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JaBrIoL) wrote:
>>
>> >Mekkala <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>> >> On 06 Nov 2003, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JaBrIoL) screwed up his face,
>> >> groaned, pushed hard, and farted out the following message in
>> >> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
>> >>
>> >> > Aegyptopithecus-Egypt ape:
>> >> >
>> >> > This creature is said to have lived about 30 million years ago.
>> >> > Magazines, newspapers and books have displayed pictures of this small
>> >> > creature with headings such as: "Monkey-like creature was our
>> >> > ancestor." (Time) "Monkeylike African Primate Called Common Ancestor
>> >> > of Man and Apes." (The New York Times) "Aegyptopithecus is an
>ancestor
>> >> > which we share with living apes." (Origins) But where are the links
>> >> > between it and the rodent before it? Where are the links to what is
>> >> > placed after it in the evolutionary lineup? None have been found. So
>> >> > first we have a ratman, then the pyramid-ape :-) with no links in the
>> >> > fossil record.
>> >>
>> >> Tell me, Jabberwocky, what would satisfy you?
>> >> Every single animal along
>> >> the entire line from rodent to human?  How many intermediary forms must
>> >> there be before you no longer demand yet more forms in between the
>known
>> >> ones?
>> >
>> >how many intermediate forms exist today?
>>
>> Are you asking how many fossils we have found which appear to be
>> intermediate between other fossil types (in which case, nearly all the
>> fossils we have would qualify as intermediate) or are you asking how
>> many existing life forms are intermediate between other existing life
>> forms?--(in which case the answer is none, modern forms are not
>> intermediary between other modern forms)
>
>Not acording to some who have reply to the thread. When does a form cease to
>be modern?

Are you asking where is the dividing line between modern and
pre-modern?  Such a question presumes there was some objective line of
demarcation.  That isn't what evolution predicts.  That sounds more
like something your view would predict.

>> Let me try a variation on Mekkala's question.  How similar must two
>> forms be in order for you to consider them one form?  Do you consider
>> the African elephant and the Indian elephant to be one form or two?
>
>can the the two interbreed?

Is that the test?  Does any offspring count?  How about if the union
always produces sickly or infertile offspring?  And what test do you
use for organisms that do not reproduce sexually, or that strictly
adhere to sibling mating?

And does this suggest a testable prediction of your notion?  Would you
predict that two lines of descent would always be able to interbreed,
no matter how much they changed "within their limits" so long as both
lines came from a single population that was able to interbreed?

>> >> Do you know anything about how fossils are formed, and how rare
>> >> that process is?
>> >
>> >uh..yup.. I do.
>>
>> Then why are you prattling on about missing links?  The record is
>> spotty at best.  Even for some fairly recent epochs, we probably have
>> fossils representing only a few percent of the life forms that
>> existed, and some periods were clearly terrible for fossilization.
>
>
>that is my point.... Science is claiming that these faulty remants are 100%
>accurate evolved superapes, and there  no tangible evidence except a few
>bones and much imagination and speculation, that can not be falsified, or
>reproduce in a lab.

Was there really some scientist that used the term superape?  

And lines of descent are not only falsifiable, many proposed lines
*have* been falsified.  Even before we examined fossils in earnest, we
noticed that many animals could be classified in groups according to
similarity of structures, or development.  With systematic analysis of
the fossil record, we gained an independent way to compare the
apparent relatedness we see in modern forms.  Usually, the fossil
record merely confirms what seemed apparent, but sometimes tracing the
lines back leads to surprises.  It was the fossil record which first
suggested that the hyrax was closer kin to the elephant than to
rodents, for example.  And now with genetic analysis, we have a third
way to study relatedness, and it too has forced some
revisions--removing the early whale ancestor from the line leading to
carnivora, for example, and placing it with the artiodactyl line.  All
three ways are independent, and each can be used to complement and
double-check the other two.  A conclusion arrived at using one method
will very commonly generate predictions about what we should find
using one or two of the other methods, and if any of those predictions
prove wrong, that lets us know that something needs revision.

>> There is a short chunk of strata in the mid-Jurassic in which we have
>> yet to find any tetrapod.  Given the very strong, but not quite
>> perfect, continuity of life forms from before that period to after
>> that period, should we assume that period represents a time of poor
>> conditions for fossilization, or should we assume that it accurately
>> reflects a time during which all tetrapods disappeared from the face
>> of the Earth, only to return in very similar forms a few million years
>> later.
>
>You called me an interventionist.. therfore you should already know my reply
>to that particular question.

I don't know enough about your view to be able to answer for you.
I know you have some vaguely-described belief that some unspecified
beings have done some sort of meddling, but I haven't seen where you
have given any particulars as to the nature of and the process of
intervention.  How, for example, is a new animal form introduced?  Is
each new animal form created as a full adult?  (or rather, a whole
population of full adults)  Does the first generation grow from single
cell to adult all on their own?  Or do the beings implant the new
species into existing similar animals--much as some are proposing that
we implant a woolly mammoth blastocyst into an Indian elephant?  If
the beings do an implantation, do they have to work from scratch with
completely novel genetic material, or can they tweak existing genetic
material?  If they can take the tweak approach, do they have to do
multiple simultaneous tweakings in order to get enough offspring for a
viable new population (and how do the special new offspring find each
other?), or can they tweak just one individual so that its new program
can spread through an existing population?  How does the intervention
process operate--and how did you determine this?

>> >>  And if
>> >> not, how many fossils do we need to find in that chain for you to be
>> >> satisfied?
>> >
>> >how many is required now?
>>
>> The scientific community already has way more fossils than it needed
>> to arrive at very high confidence that evolution took place.  But what
>> I think Mekkala is trying to get at is how fine the gradations between
>> fossils have to be before you will accept that it is more reasonable
>> to conclude they represent a simple population continuum rather than a
>> zillion distinct creation events by some unknown meddlers who have
>> left no trace of evidence of themselves.
>
>I think what we need to see is evolution in action, in the sense, that we
>can use the scientific method to confirm that evolution is the origin of
>man.

No, we don't need that at all.  There are many robust branches of
science which have been built on indirect observation and trace
evidences after the fact.  Look at nuclear physics.  We have decay
traces, we have detector hits, we have several, very indirect ways of
examining atomic behavior, but no one has ever directly observed any
of the atomic processes which nuclear physics describes.

>> >>  Do you want an ancestor that is the same species as the
>> >> descendant?  You won't find it.
>> >
>> >it all depends on your defintion of the term "species"
>>
>> Exactly so.  It is an arbitrary category which we have imposed on a
>> continuum.  The term is flexible and ambiguous because it does not
>> reflect the separateness one would expect to see if each form of
>> modern life originated in a distinct creation event.
>
>unless an organism was design to change, but there is a limit to the change.

Do you mean here that a tolerance for change is built into the design,
or do you mean that the design actually includes instructions which
cause change?

And can you point out even one genetic mechanism which would impose an
inherent limit on change?

>> >can we accelarate this, so that it would pass the scientific method?
>>
>> 1) Evolution already passes scientific muster.  Your rejection of
>> evolution has no scientific basis.
>
>
>scientific muster is not the same as the scientific method.

You keep talking about *the* scientific method.  There isn't one
method.  There are a variety of methodologies.  A few philosophers
(eg. Popper) have proposed that there is one formulaic approach which
can be applied to all science, but I've seen some devastating
criticisms of that view (eg. Bauer: "Scientific Literacy and the Myth
of the Scientific Method").  Science is a considerably richer and more
diverse field of endeavor than you realize.

>> 2) The rates of morphological change can be varied by varying
>> population size and selection pressure.  Human selection pressure has
>> produced enormous morphological variation in animals in a geologic
>> instant (a few thousand years).
>
>yet these animals do not change their form. I like to use the pitbull as an
>example. Man intervention brought on the Pitbull. His intervention brought
>on the killer bee. Yet, the Bee is still an insect

"Insect" covers everything from giant water bug, to butterfly, to
walking stick, to flea.  That's like pointing out that a shrew-like
mammal could become pangolins, dolphins, bats, humans, and giraffes,
but they are all still mammals.

>Their behaviour and intinct are predicitable.

So?  What does predictability matter?

>Funny, when I say this
>about humans and behaviour.. more so negative trait. People goes nuts..
>which was why  this subject would be banned on Talk.Origins

So long as you don't violate some basic posting policy, I doubt you
would actually be banned for talking about this.  You might be ignored
and dismissed, but that's easily explained by two facts:  You are
critical of evolution, but you have yet to point out any problem with
the theory (gaps are not a problem for the theory); and you have some
alternative notion of how modern life forms got here, but you have
offered only scant description of it and no support for it.  The one
and only chance you have of toppling evolution is to show that there
is some other theory which is better, and I haven't seen you even
attempt to do that.  If you, yourself, don't consider it important
enough to try to make your case, it isn't surprising that others might
also conclude it isn't important.

>> If you mean how can we prove and observe changes in known forms,
>> that's already been done.  If you mean how can we prove and observe
>> known forms today changing into other known forms today, I don't know
>> of any way to prove that, and I don't know of any scientist who
>> suggests that is happening.
>
>I proposed a hybrid ape, I called it the manpanzee. A human-bonobo hybrid.
>this might be something I would accept..

I don't understand what this would accomplish.  If we tried to
hybridize homo sapiens and bonobos, there are several things we might
find.  We might find the sperm of one absolutely would not fertilize
the egg of the other; we might get fertilization and a few divisions,
but then spontaneous degeneration; or we might even get something that
lasts long enough to come to term, and perhaps even live a while; but
for any of these cases, so what?  None of them would confirm or defeat
either evolution or your view, would they?  If the test does nothing
to discriminate between two theories, of what use is the test?

Kronk