This statement reminds me of this video about taxonomy. Not only did we descend from apes, we are apes.Originally Posted by LA Ute
This statement reminds me of this video about taxonomy. Not only did we descend from apes, we are apes.
Here is an interesting article I saw today. The overwhelming preponderance of genetic evidence points to a common male ancestor somewhere between 60,000 and 170,000 years ago. But recent discoveries show a tribe in the Congo whose Y chromosome split off 340,000 years ago. Of course the DNA is mixed with modern DNA, but the archaic markers still exist.
http://www.newscientist.com/mobile/a...years-old.html
Do you believe we have evolved at all? If so, do you believe we have evolved from simpler life forms? How much simpler? Where is the line? If you don't believe humans have evolved, why the exception for humans among animals?
One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike -- and yet it is the most precious thing we have.
--Albert Einstein
The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice.
--Richard Dawkins
Be kind to all, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.
--Philo
The scientific evidence seems to be that we did evolve. It is possible that we did not. In any case, I believe God caused humans to be here and that we are his children. How that came to be, I don't know. It's not important to me to know exactly how. As I said, I am prepared to be surprised either way. I just find the study of evolution fascinating.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
One of the most interesting things I like to read about is when humans developed those uniquely human traits: complex language, appreciation of art and music, self-awareness, fear of death, belief in God, etc.
Seems like that started about 400,000 years ago -- where evidence of ritual burial and artwork starts, along with human control of fire.
I know you didn't want to make this a theology vs. science debate LA but I gotta say it bugs the hell out of me when intelligent people say things like "Well it could have all happened like it says in Genesis." "Adam and Eve could have been literal people." etc.
Genesis is a creation MYTH. That is so freaking obvious that I don't see how anybody could believe in a God who would ask people to dumb themselves down enough to call the Genesis creation myth anything other than myth, a fictional story, a creation narrative. Maybe in the 1800s it was OK to believe in a literal Adam and Eve but I think even very religious people have moved past that and will admit that they know it's fictional if they're being honest with themselves and others.
You need to finish with "I know this is true."
Seriously, if you're arguing that it's outlandish to say "I think God caused man to be here, but I don't know how he did that, and evolution may have been the way" is flawed thinking, that's fine. But you ought to pick other, more attractive targets for your scientific concerns, like the universal resurrection. I believe in that too.
BTW, many believers think the Biblical Adam and Eve story may well be allegorical, in whole or in part. That's how I see it. But I acknowledge that I wasn't there so I don't know. You're the one arguing from a position of certainty. But I still love you, bless your hardened scientific heart.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
I don't think intelligent people say it all could have happened like Genesis.
One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike -- and yet it is the most precious thing we have.
--Albert Einstein
The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice.
--Richard Dawkins
Be kind to all, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.
--Philo
Study: If aliens exist, they probably want to destroy usWhen considering the prospect of alien life, humankind should prepare for the worst, according to a new study: Either we're alone, or any aliens out there are acquisitive and resource-hungry, just like us.
These two unpalatable options are pretty much the only possibilities, according to the new study. That's because evolution is predictable, and alien biospheres should thus produce intelligent creatures much like us, with technological prowess and an ever-increasing need for resources.
But the fact that we haven't run across E.T. yet argues strongly for the latter possibility — that we are alone in the universe's howling void, the study suggests.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
You would think that the universe is so vast, and expanding so rapidly, and the length of time needed to evolve into advanced life forms so long, that the odds of humans ever being able to reach out to other advanced life forms is infinitismal. For all practical purposes, we are alone.
Last edited by concerned; 03-07-2013 at 01:15 PM.
"Humans May be the First Generation of Advanced Life in the Milky Way"
“Columbus forced everyone to rethink, redesign and rebuild their world view.That’s what we’re doing here," says Dimitar Sasselov, professor of astrophysics and director of Harvard University’s Origins of Life Initiative. "To put it in 15th-century terms, we’ve reached the Canary Islands. Getting to where we ultimately want to go is a slow process that involves astronomers, aeronautical engineers, biochemists, anthropologists and businessmen."
“It’s feasible that we’ll meet other sentient life forms and conduct commerce with them,” Sasselov said. “We don’t now have the technology to physically travel outside our solar system for such an exchange to take place, but we are like Columbus centuries ago, learning fast how to get somewhere few think possible.”
...
Though it may be hard to think of it this way, at roughly 14 billion years old, the universe is quite young, he said. The heavy elements that make up planets like Earth were not available in the early universe; instead, they are formed by the stars. Enough of these materials were available to begin forming rocky planets like Earth just 7 billion or 8 billion years ago. When one considers that it took nearly 4 billion years for intelligent life to evolve on Earth, it would perhaps not be surprising if intelligence is still rare....
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
Did a comet kill the dinosaurs? New data seems to suggest that one did.
Some 66 million years ago, a giant space object of some kind slammed into Earth right around the Yucatan peninsula. The resultant explosion sent debris high into the atmosphere; the dust resettled to earth newly enriched with the elements iridium and osmium--elements that are much more abundant in space than on Earth--and formed a thin layer in the rock strata now called the K-Pg boundary. A side effect of this violent impact was the extinction of most of the megafauna--dinosaurs, etc--living during that time. The impact site itself was discovered in 1978 by a geologist working for an oil company, but it wasn't until 1990 that the now-named Chicxulub crater was associated with the proposed impact that caused the mass extinctions. Since 1990, scientists have debated the nature of the rock that hit Earth--asteroid or comet? The scientists know generally how big the explosion would have had to be in order to create the fallout found in drill samples. Based on the size of the explosion and the amount of iridium and osmium deposited at the K-Pg boundary, the most common theory is that the impactor was carbonaceous asteroid about 13 kilometers across. But scientists from Dartmouth College argue that the real culprit was a comet.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
One thing that fascinated me is witnessing the decrease in complexity of animals and plants as we march backward through the geological time scale. The relative complexity and diversity of individuals through the last several hundred million years is astonishing. But as we approach a few billion years in the past we see the descent from large, highly complex organisms, to smaller complex organisms, to simple vertebrates, to invertebrates, to complex multicellular, to simple multicellulars, and finally to simple single-celled organisms. Step-wise the evolution appears fairly linear but by time scale it is almost exponential.
The time step from single-celled organisms to multi-celled organisms took approximately ONE BILLION years. The level of complexity to jump from a single-cellular to a multi-cellular organism isn't particularly large, but it required a huge revolution in DNA coding.
Last edited by NorthwestUteFan; 03-09-2013 at 04:43 PM.
Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction
Annalee Newitz, founding editor of IO9 and former EFF staffer, has a new book out today called Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, and it's terrific.
Scatter's premise is that the human race will face extinction-grade crises in the future, and that we can learn how to survive them by examining the strategies of species that successfully weathered previous extinction events, and cultures and tribes of humans that have managed to survive their own near-annihilation.
What follows from this is a whirlwind tour of geology, evolutionary biology, cultural anthropology and human history, as Newitz catalogs the terrifying disasters, catastrophes and genocides of geology and antiquity. From there, the book transitions into a sprightly whistle-stop tour of sustainable cities, synthetic biology, computer science, geoengineering, climate science, new materials science, urban theory, genomics, geopolitics, everything up to and including the Singularity, as Newitz lays out the technologies in our arsenal for adapting ourselves to upcoming disasters, and adapting our planet (and ultimately our solar system) to our long-term survival.
This has both the grand sweep and the fast pace of a classic OMNI theme issue, but one that's far more thoroughly grounded in real science, caveated where necessary. It's a refreshingly grand sweep for a popular science book, and if it only skims over some of its subjects, that's OK, because in the age of the Net, one need only signpost the subjects the reader might dive into on her own once she realizes their awesome potential.
This is a delight of a book, balanced on the knife-edge of disaster and delirious hope. It neither predicts our species' apotheosis nor its doom, but suggests paths to reach the former while avoiding the latter.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
Yes, a massive object from space killed off the dinosaurs.
IMO, the most fascinating thing about that is the actual extinction took around 75,000 years to complete. We tend to think of some massive event that killed off most of the life forms on earth within a few years leading to the rise of the mammals, but in truth it was a long transition.
I think the article's point was that the object was a comet, not an asteroid. It was also new information (to me) that the object from space actually brought minerals to the earth in greater abundance than they were already here.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
I think that article is very interesting. Scientists have long thought about the Doomsday Asteroid event but it is only very recently that the Event has become the most widely accepted theory (within the last decade).
I just wanted to mention that the length of time required for the mass extinction was a shock to me.
I agree. I didn't know that, so thanks for posting the info, even though it makes human extinction event movies like "Deep Impact" less believable.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
This is really a science article, with theological implications for religions that believe God was a human being.
http://news.discovery.com/human/evol...ans-130327.htm
Population geneticists have found 1-4% of European and Asian DNA is Neanderthal. This specimen has mitochondrial DNA from a Neanderthal female, with human jaw bone characteristics.
So, was God also part Neanderthal? Jesus, too?
My hunch is that humans have frequently made God in their own image, but claim the theology asserts the reverse. This is another issue where theology appears set up to take a beating .
Those bodies may not have had spirits like we have because the evolutionary process that culminated in full modern humans (which is what God is) was not complete yet. Or perhaps humans had not been created and placed on the earth yet and this individual represents a group of animal life that, while very sophisticated, never had spirits like we have. Or maybe you are right that on the planet where God first came to be that his body was the result of the genetics of part human and part Neanderthal and that process was simply replicated on this planet to create humans. Or maybe "in his image" is something you are taking to literally.
“The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.”
― Carl Sagan
Hey gang. I guess I signed up at the beginning and then never came back. Probably because I care not for Utah sports. This is a neat thread though. A couple things after skimming:
Scientific ideas, hypotheses, and theories basically never get promoted to laws. Theories don't, because theories and laws are simply different kinds of things (law of gravity vs theory of gravitation). How it generally goes is that if the first person to introduce an idea has already demonstrated the validity of his or her characterization of a very simple phenomenon (e.g. things tend to fall toward the earth at 9.8m/s/s unless acted upon by another force), he or she will propose it as a law. If accepted by the community, it is thereafter known as the law of whatever. One idea in my field is called "Wolff's law" which is the basic idea that bone is deposited in the body only as it is needed, or in other words, that skeletal tissue responds to loading. This is generally true, but also kinda vague. It's nevertheless referred to as a law.
Evolution isn't generally considered to be a law, but I think it could be if it actually mattered. It could go like this: "Relative allele frequencies in a given population change over time." Not terribly interesting, but it's never been found to not be the case. Perhaps more to the point, a law of natural selection could go like this: "Given the following conditions, natural selection will occur: Variation within a population, heritability of said variation, limited resources." Because there's variation within every population, and because a large amount of that variation is indeed heritable through a mechanism Darwin didn't know about (genetics), and because resources are almost always limited, natural selection is basically always occurring. This has been demonstrated experimentally in populations with quick generation times (bacteria, fruit flies), and perhaps as importantly, it just makes sense (try to think of conditions under which it wouldn't just naturally happen. Good luck).
So, while evolution and natural selection are still definitely theories in the sense that they are just way too complicated to ever boil down into basic equations and will therefore be studied in perpetuity, I propose that they are also laws, or at least the equivalent of laws given that being a law, as explained above, isn't actually as much of a thing as people think it is.
The other topic I saw mentioned is the neandertal/bunny thing. The phenomenon of comical explanations for why neandertals went extinct has become somewhat of a joke in my field. For instance, a study just came out a couple weeks ago saying that they went extinct because their eyes were too big. The most obvious thing to note is that all non-African populations (and I think probably all humans in general, but those data are forthcoming), are descendents of neandertals. So, they aren't necessarily extinct to begin with, depending on how you look at it. The other issue is simply that no single silly explanation like that will ever actually explain it. Neandertals were very smart folk who lived over a very large geographical area, invented new types of tools, buried their dead, etc. They didn't go extinct because they couldn't catch bunnies, for the love.
Given the differential populations sizes between neandertals and their non-neandertal contemporaries (non-neandertal upper paleolithic anatomically modern Homo sapiens, if you like), their extinction could reasonably explained by simple genetic dilution as the the two interbred. I don't necessarily believe that, but damn, enough with the whiz-bang "a volcano did it!" studies.
Ok the end. I'm sure there are others here who know a lot about this stuff so I don't mean to swoop in and set everyone straight or whatever.
Go blue.
Last edited by woot; 03-31-2013 at 09:42 AM.
Oh and I might as well also note, since my research deals directly with human and ape anatomy, that if humans didn't evolve from apes, god is playing a really funny joke. Apes used to be a lot more common than they are today. There were dozens of different genera during the Miocene (23-5million years ago). Then the climate changed and who knows what else happened, and monkeys became a lot more successful and apes became a lot less successful (in the sense of overall numbers). What's interesting is that many of the fossil apes we've found are actually more anatomically similar to humans in some ways. I think what happened is that extant apes evolved to become very specialized for doing what they do (being crazy acrobats in the trees while, in some cases, also being very proficient on the ground), but that most of this process didn't occur until after the split with humans, which is why human anatomy is often more similar to that of fossil apes than extant ape anatomy is.
This is complicated so I don't know if I'm explaining it well, but the basic idea is the humans absolutely, positively evolved from apes. Genetic evidence 100% confirms this as well, obviously. So yeah, I guess if god wanted to play a funny joke and just make it extremely obvious to us humans that we evolved from apes when we really didn't, science has no way of knowing. But it seems more sound, both scientifically and theologically, to just go ahead and update your beliefs.
I seem to recall somebody remaining skeptical of it in this thread, but if that's not the case then all the better.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
Wow. 50X depth is really good sequencing data.
as for the Kennewick man, I wonder why the Corps of Engineers is not allowing acquisition of additional material for DNA extraction. After losing the case, what is their rationale?
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
Boffins identify ancient Earth asteroid strike that dwarfed dinosaur killer: Massive space rock impact may have set the continents sliding. “The impacting body, which could have been an asteroid or a comet, was between 37 and 58 kilometers (23 to 36 miles) wide and hit the Earth at 20 kilometers per second (12 miles per second). The impact would have caused a crater around 500 kilometers (about 300 miles) across and the resulting tsunamis would have been thousands of meters high.”
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
Woot, I am glad you are posting, even though it is against your sports alliances to be on this site.
I appreciate your perspective on many topics
I agree. Woot and I probably won't agree on much but he has good information to offer and I learn a lot from his posts.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
Mud DNA means we can detect ancient humans even without fossils
We have an astonishing new way to study our early human ancestors: looking for their DNA in ancient sediments in places such as caves.A team of researchers has found the DNA of Neanderthals and Denisovans in some of the sites where they are known to have lived.
“I think we show convincingly that these sequences are authentic,” says lead author Viviane Slon of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.
The approach can now be used to find out whether early humans were present even when no bones have been found – and what kind of humans they were. It might also help resolve the debate about when the Americas were first inhabited by people, for instance....
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
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