Gracchus

Jolene: Maybe this will help.

I was baptized and raised as a Roman Catholic. I went to a school taught by nuns for eight years, and to a school taught by the Christian Brothers for one year. In spite of winning a medal after those first eight years for being the most proficient in my class in spitting out word for word the questions and answers in the Baltimore Catechism, I had quit believing in the second grade. The whole concept of original sin outraged my sense of justice.

Over the years I informed myself about many religions and dabbled in science, and one day it all came together. I am made of atoms, patterns of energy that have existed since time primordial, or forged in the furnace of the stars. I am not always the same atoms. It well may be that not a single atom of my original self is still a part of me. And still I am me? It does not say enough.

I am descended in an unbroken chain of life from the first self-replicating molecule. I exist on a tiny speck of dust circling a miniscule spark among trillions of sparks in a darkness so immense that I cannot really conceive it. In fractal mathematics I learned that the whole contains the part and the part can contain the whole. From Goedel's theorem I learned that not even the most rigorous logical system can state every truth. Marx, Freud, Einstein, Cantor, Beethoven, van Gogh, Shakespeare, these are our kin. The organisms clustered around the black smokers, the dinosaurs, the hawk soaring on the thermal, the great whales thinking unknown thoughts and singing strange songs, the giant sequoias, the drifting diatoms : all these are our cousins. Alexander, Temujin, Attilla, Hitler, Caesar, my heart has known the fear that drove their ambitions.

And the creationists, these "fundamentalists" huddle in their ignorance, alone and separate, cut off from all the wonder, clinging jealously to a life that they must lose, a lie, like original sin. I look at the pettiness, the cowardice, the greed, the lust, the arrogance and disdain, the cruelty, and I realize that were it not for the lies, I could not appreciate the value of truth, were it not for the cowardice, I could not appreciate bravery, without arrogance I could not appreciate how much I have to be humble about, without the cruelty I would never realize the beauty of senseless kindness.

Where, in all of this is God? And where in all of this am I?

I am here, on this forum and so many others, with people who have cut loose from the fairy tales and blasphemies (because they are untrue), with those who have given over beating dead dogmas, trying to infuse them with life, I am with all these self-proclaimed infidels, who think hard and search closely, who offend the popular morality by daring to think for themselves. For science, this fellowship, only strict honesty is required. To learn and to teach are the only obligations. I am with the anchorite who has cut loose the anchor, I sit with the Buddha beneath the Bo tree, I stand with Moses before the burning bush.

"Tell them, I Am, has sent you."

Anyway, if the earth is only 6000 years old, how do you account for the Green River varves? How does Noah's flood deposit geological non-conformities?

nobody

Some one may have already answered the topic question...

But, if you've ever really studied evolution...you would know that some species can evolve independantly, Usually caused by isolation. Therefore, if we did actually evolve from monkies, it was only the monkies found where people origionated (sp?)...There were plenty of other species of monkies that could be found in other parts of the world.


....is that understandable?. I'm new at this...

Duvenoy

Ok, fast and dirty: first off, we did NOT evolve from monkeys We, the great apes and monkeys had a long-ago, common ancestor. Apes and monkys split off and later, we split off from apes. It gets really complicated when you add tarsiers, marmosets, lemures, and so forth (all are primates) into the equasion. One must remember the time frame for all this. When these split-offs occured, the world was a very different place.

Many animals that evolve in isolation become grotesque -- the Komodo monitors and the galapagos tortoise, for example. Darwin's finches, too are pretty weird -- one of them is a vampire.

Welcome to II, no. Hope ya enjoy the ride!

doov

nobody

Well, apes...that's what I meant by monkies, sorry I should have made myself more clear.
But, if isolation wasn't the cause for this branch off from the Apes...than how can you explain how we split. If it were a gene mutation, we would have no Apes.


Your probably right, considerring I only know so much about this...but I still don't understand what your saying.

MyKell

Ok, I think you are pretty much confused about the neo-Darwinian view of evolution. No one claims that an ape family woke up one day having a human child. Even if that was the view, why would there be no apes? It's a single incident, however, it is imaginary!

What really happened is a series of genetic variatios that were followed by natural selection all the way from the common ancestor. The theme in neo-Darwinism is gradual change, not single step changes that are highly improbable to occur.

Indeed, this is what we observe in the fossil record.

nobody

No, no, no... I may be somewhat confused about darwn's theory on evolution, but I know that by chance one human baby wasn't the offspring of an ape...I understand how things evolve. And I am well aware of the differences between punctuated equilibrium and natural selection. I was trying to answer the topic question the best I knew how.

Which...I obviously didn't know how to answer correctly. I just know that we still have apes, because not all evolved ( if true ) into people. And the way they evolve is through natural selection, different variations within offspring being passed down, and molded time and time again.
But for some to not have evolved, they must not have been interacting with the ones that were... therefore, wouldnt the apes that werent evolving had been separated from the ones that were?....

Damn...I don't know. This is how I understand it.

I'm sure you know alot more than me on the subject, like I said...I've just began to understand evolution.

Duvenoy

Oh dear. Ok, go to this link. It is one of the best you will find, aimed at the layman.

http://www.talkorigins.org/

Now, as for a species 'splitting off', isolation is not necessary. Enviormental pressures will do it. For instance: one group of hominids being pushed out of the forest onto the savanna by popuation pressures. Over time, they will adapt to their new enviornment, even to the extent that they can no longer interbreed with their original species. The original species, still in the forest, need not go extinct. Simple, no?

Well, no. But, that's the gist of it.



doov

MyKell

Ok, nobody, I see where all the confusion comes from,
Modern apes evolved from the common ancestor just like we did. They are as adapted to their environments, just like we are to ours. Baboons for instance can hunt in groups and can even challenge lions with simple tools. How many "average" human beings can do such a thing? Why do you assume that we are "better" than all other apes. And what's weird is that you are using the word ape as if to describe a homogenous population of animals. Chimpanzees are closer to humans than they are to orangutans. Evolution did not just result in humans, it also resulted in other homininds, like chimps, gorillas, organutan, each of which is highly adapted to its specific habitat. It seems that we are the only species that can talk about evolution as a concept, but it doesn't mean that we are the only ones who really evolved from the common ancestor.

Doubting Didymus

Well, I think you're doing well so far, nobody. Lets see here...

More or less, yes. However, its not just interacting that keeps a species from diverging, its specifically interbreeding. When a species is divided in two by some geographical divide and eventually speciates, it's called allopatric speciation. This does require isolation of a sort, though it might not be terribly drastic. Once the population has become two populations that can't breed together, they may come back together again and interact all they like, but it is impossible (or extremely unlikely) that they will ever breed together.

On the other hand, allopatric speciation is not the only form of speciation, though it is probably the most common. There's also parapatric and sympatric speciation, where total isolation is not required.

Parapatric speciation is where parts of a species are breeding with some members of the species, but not others. This is usally due weakly to geographical factors. For example, if you had a species of ape spread evenly accross the whole of africa, it's likely that the apes in the north are not breeding with the apes in the far south. If this goes on for long enough without enough genetic mixing to bridge the gulf of the apes in the centre, you might eventually find that the northern apes can no longer breed with the southern apes.

sympatric speciation is a rare case, where one species diverges into two without any geographical isolation at all. It is usually due to highly exceptional circumstances.

Anyway, the point is, even given that geographical isolation was the cause of our lineages speciation from apes, (which incidentally, would have given rise not only to us, but to all the other now-extinct hominids such as neanderthals and homo habilis), the newly diverged species could then interact with the parent species as normal, and lived side by side indefinitely.

TealVeal

If a group of a species started becoming nocturnal would this be parapatric speciation?