Ed

I agree basically with what you are saying as I stated australopiths are facultative bipeds. But there are no fossils showing the movement of the FM from the Australopith position to the human position and that difference is quite significant as I demonstrated with my measurements of the drawings.

ps418

Sorry, but that's plainly nonsense, and you have 'demonstrated' no such thing. The difference in placement of the FM between humans and australopiths is hardly 'quite significant,' unless by 'quite significant' you really mean 'utterly trivial.' Furthermore, even though I have used terms loosely, I don't think its really correct to call australopiths 'facultative' bipeds, in the same way that some living apes are facultative bipeds. They obviously were very well-suited to bipedal locomotion, far more so than any living ape, and share many postcranial skeletal adaptations for bipedal locomotion that are only found in humans, some of which have been brought to your attention earlier in this thread, and many of others which you can read about in any textbook on human evolutionary anatomy.

Patrick

ps418

Another dramatic demonstration of your expertise in these matters. You mention only 1805 and 1470. Why? Surely you are aware that 1805 is poorly presrved and consists of only a piece of skullcap, mandible and maxilla? Curious minds would still like to know where, for example, ER 1813 fits. If, as your quote implies, you classify ER 1470 as a human, how do you classify ER 1813? Click here to compare ER 1813 and ER 1470 side by side. Are you going to tell me with a straight face that these are members of different kinds?

You could argue that ER 1470 belongs to either Australopithicus or to Homo, because it has features of both. Amazingly, you seem to think that this somehow works in your favor, when in fact it is devastating to it. No matter how you wish to split or lump them taxonomically, there should be no doubt at all that ER 1805, ER 1813, and ER 1470 belonged to very closely-related homonids.


Patrick

ps418

I noticed that you have ignored Coragyps request to substantiate this claim. I don't know about you, Ed, but it is very important to me to admit and correct mistakes when I make them. You have clearly made a mistake with this claim, and you should now either retract your claim or reveal the basis for it.

For future reference, Archaeopteryx remains the oldest definite bird. You may have Sankar Chatterjee's Triassic Protoavis in mind. If so, then you need to understand that 1) it is far from clear whether this a bird at all (Sereno for example notes that Protoavis is "widely regarded as a composite of several nonavian species"), and 2) even if it is a bird, it is most certainly not a "modern bird," either in the sense of belonging to an extant genus or in the sense of being morphologically very similar to any living bird.

Sereno, 1999. The evolution of dinosaurs. Science 284, 2137-2147.

Nope. After 35 pages of this thread, you remain clueless about natural selection, despite the fact that almost nothing is simpler. Natural selection only maintains the status quo as long as the the status quo is the most adaptive available option. When and if the environment changes, natural selection no long favors the status quo. This is so easy to see that it would require superhuman powers of misunderstanding to miss it. Just to take one example off the top of my head -- antiobiotic resistance. With regard to antibiotic resistance phenotypes, is natural selection maintaining the status quo? Of course not. Not so long ago, very, very few pathogens displayed resistance. Now many do. This is because natural selection has radically altered the 'status quo.'

Could you possibly fit just a few more weasel words and/or squid ink into that sentence? What do you mean by "large patterns" and "major groups"? Certainly there are transitional fossil forms-- transitional both in time and morphology-- illustrating the stepwise emergence of 'major groups' like tetrapods and mammals.

Patrick

Ed

Umm, you still did not even provide a hypothetical transition form that would be able to function. So I guess you are admitting that you dont know how such a creature could even exist but you have FAITH that it will turn up in fossil record. :boohoo:

Duvenoy

I have no faith in any such thing. If you'd been paying attention to what I said about snake fossils, you'd not make such an asinine remark. Well, probably not. Maybe.........

Further, if you'd given my post some thought, you'd see how, hypotheticaly, such a creature might have arisen.

Yeesh! what a waste of time! :banghead:

doov

Oolon Colluphid

Aha! Found it! I knew Ed had said something like this!

It was right back on 8 March 2002. Referring to the oft-posted picture (and, heehee, here it is again:



... and asked which are human, and which ones ape, Ed said:

(My emphasis.)

Okay...
Now, I take it that Ed quotes Falk with approval, ie that Ed considers 1470 to be human (“the endocast of KNM-ER 1470 is shaped like that of a modern human”).

Well, let’s put them side by side (or rather, one above the other ) and compare.

KNM-ER 1470:



KNM-ER 1813:



And let’s throw in OH24, while we’re at it:



You are, as my American cousins might say, damn tootin’.

Bearing in mind this greater variability, which you yourself claim...

Bearing in mind, also, that by your own definition, a kind isn’t a species, but either a genus or even family...

Are you honestly claiming these creatures could not be relatives?

And don’t you bloody well dare, after all this time, to whiffle-waffle. Be specific. Millimetric specific. Or admit that they are the same kind.

TTFN, Oolon

ps418

We all have experience with vertebrate anatomy, provided we've looked at ourselves in the mirror. That you have any experience beyond that, I find highly improbable in light of the claims you've made on this thread, like that garble-speak above about "ancient humans given their slightly diverse skull structures."

Though I doubt you'll recognize it, you've pushed yourself into a corner. D and E in the image above, which you classify as human, are both habilis (RE 1813 and OH24, respectively). Now, if you don't mind lending us your expertise in vertebrate anatomy, please explain why in the world ER 1813 is human while ER 1805 is not.

Patrick

Oolon Colluphid

Ah, that's easy, Patrick. I can answer that one for him.

[Ed mode] I have already said why. Dr Falk says the endocast is similar to that of an African pongid. Dr Falk says it's an ape. What more do you want? [/Ed]



Cheers, Oolon

Ed

It doesnt, sometimes God wants us to use our brains.

Quote:

lp: There is some indirect evidence that the Bible was written only for its immediate audience, and not for all of humanity over all places and all times.

No, its audience is established in Genesis 1 where it describes the origin of all humans. Though since the hebrews were God's chosen people and He interacted with them more directly than other societies, it deals primarily with their history with God.

Quote:

lp: There is a fair amount of less-than-clear vocabulary, like the terms for all the different kinds of animals in Leviticus 11. The authors must have taken them for granted, otherwise they would have done what they did in the rest of the book and offered some exacting guide for identifying them.

They very well may have. But certain terms in hebrew have much broader meanings than in english.

Quote:

lp: That book specifies the details of animal sacrifice and other offerings in rather exacting detail, and one of its few ancedotes is the story of how Nadab and Abihu got zapped for burning incorrect incense.

That is because sacrifices deal directly with their relationship with God which is of supreme importance and is the main thrust of the entire bible.

Quote:

lp: Ed clearly interprets away any part of the Bible he dislikes, like the flat-earth and geocentric parts. Ed: There are no such parts as I demonstrated. lp: With totally vacuous "demonstrations".

Evidence?

Quote:

lp: I note also that Ed rejects Galileo's view that the Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go. Ed: Actually I agree with him. I said that the bible is not a science textbook but just that it is accurate on the areas that it covers. lp: His Eddianness thus claims that the Bible is accurate about how the heavens go, thus asserting what he had denied half a sentence before.

No, the bible does not cover the structure of the solar system or the atomic system, or etc. But in areas that it does cover, it is acccurate. That is all I am saying.

Quote:

lp: (converting to other Xtian denominations...) Ed: Why should I? As I stated, at their core they are the same. lp: His Eddianness projects Eddianity on Catholicism, Anglicanism, and Lutheranism once again. I call it "Eddianity" because it reflects His Eddianness's personal beliefs more than anything else.

No, it reflects 2000 years of basic Christian teachings.

Quote:

lp: His Eddianness's curious rationalism is remarkably exceptional, for starters.

My use of logic is my preferred method of apologetics because of my scientific background. But different Christians use different methods for apologetics. The early Christians practiced several different methodologies in apologetics so there is no one orthodox methodology unlike the way to salvation.

Quote:

lp: And Ed fails to address the question of why science got restarted in northwestern Europe centuries after Constantine made Xtianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. If Xtianity is such a superscientific religion, then the Byzantine Empire would have developed modern science long ago. Ed: Because of the limited access to the scriptures. Once the scriptures were widely diseminated after the Reformation science flourished. lp: Except that the Bible was available to anyone educated for most centuries after Constantine.

Yes, but those were mostly the leadership and they became largely corrupt not long after Constantine. Also they were not interested in learning about God thru creation as later laypersons were.

Quote:

lp: The practice and results of science have MUCH more in common with various schools of ancient Greek philosophy than anything in the Bible. All that those philosophers needed was some good idea of how to construct an experiment.

No, the problem with the Greeks were that they did not want to get their hands dirty with experiments, they considered the material world inferior and corrupt. But Christianity taught that creation is good and that we can learn about God from it. That is why the Greeks never developed modern experimental science and Christians did.

Quote:

lp: Why do doctors recite the Hippocratic Oath instead of some possible Christic Oath? Could it be that present-day medicine has MUCH more in common with the approaches of Hippocrates than those of Jesus Christ? If you don't believe me, when is the last time you went to see an exorcist? Or a spit therapist? Admittedly, if exorcism or spit therapy could be demonstrated to outperform other therapies, one would have to accept that they work. But has anyone ever done so?

No, these were supernatural events done by the son of God. Ordinary believers used medicine like Paul recommending Timothy to take wine for an upset stomach. But my primary point is that the worldview of the bible encouraged experimentation and study of the natural world as I stated above.