Iti oj and Peggs discussion on human origins

[Iti oj]

Not to observers this is not a debate this is a discussion please tread our discussion thread as such too as well as a place to share more info n various topics. i look forward to more info on both me and peggs view from you the reader.
comments here: http://www.religiousforums.com/foru...n-iti-ojs-peggs-human-origin.html#post2868812
DA RULEZ:
each poster will make a point , they will reply to any question asked from their previous point and ask a question from the other persons view about their point.
these can be done in any order and manner deemed best =D
My intent is for us both to learn from and educate each other most importantly we should have fun.

We have agreed upon human origins as a topic but are allowed to go out side of this to help enhance the larger picture we are presenting.

We have agreed i will go first. since i am going first i will only make a point for this thread....might change my mind and ask a preemptive question.....

point
I want start by discussing some of the various Homini-moder humans and all previous human ancestors and australopithicne ancestors. Also i would like to demonstraight their human like qualities.


Homo erectus is suggested as the first discovery and usage of fire though the claim is a bit sketchy compared to the explosion we see latter. It is thought that cooking food played a huge part in our ability to going nutrition and the development of our brains.
We definitvly know that H.erectus used Acheulean tools which is the second advance in hominid tools. These tools while primitive were shaped, sharpened, and created. The design and regularity of these tools show a complex socialization with in geographical dispersers culture. circa 2 million years ago

homo habilis/rudolfesis was using oldowan tools with newly developed and created edges this is circa 3 million years ago. this tool usage developed from the same type of tool usage we see in chimps and such.

I think I'll keep it to these two guys for now pegg more on other homini to come.

i look forward to your question and your first point.

H.erectus

 

[Pegg]

Hi,
To start off, i want to ask you if you think that scientists can accurately depict what a creature looked like from fossil specimens? When they draw up pictures like the one you posted, how much of it should be considered accurate?
One thing to note about these depictions is that they are deliberately drawn with monkeylike features because that is the point the artist is trying to make...they they were more like monkeys or more like humans. So the artist draws from a biased view depending on the fossil they are using and its age.
So for me, this is one part of evolution which doesnt sit right...i am very skeptical of artists impressions of 'ape-men'


My second point is that such re-contructions of the past are also biased because they are trying to fit such fossil evidence into a very strict story...the story of a slow evolution. This means that you are hearing only one possibility, but the reality could be far different. For example, and this is my 3rd point about fossils, the final stages of human evolution was said to progress from Homo habilis to Homo erectus to “modern man,” Homo sapiens.

However, two fossils of each species (erectus & habilis) were found within walking distance of each other in Kenya, and a new opinion is that these two 'species' lived at the same time. That changes the ball game because it means they co-existed. Here is the article about this particular find

What it shows to me is that they have already devised a story (progressive evolution) before they have all the evidence firmly in place. In a court case, there is no way a trial could go ahead if all the evidence was not already confirmed and proven....yet in evolution theory, the judge has already given the verdict (evolution is true) before the evidence supports it.

 

[Pegg]

Just to make this point about artists impressions... i want you to look at this dog skull, and tell me its coloring, the type and length of it hair and the color of its skin.

However you choose to dress it, do you agree that it will be from your imagination...not from any physical evidence, but from your own imagination?

 

[Iti oj]

Hi,
To start off, i want to ask you if you think that scientists can accurately depict what a creature looked like from fossil specimens? When they draw up pictures like the one you posted, how much of it should be considered accurate?
One thing to note about these depictions is that they are deliberately drawn with monkeylike features because that is the point the artist is trying to make...they they were more like monkeys or more like humans. So the artist draws from a biased view depending on the fossil they are using and its age.
So for me, this is one part of evolution which doesnt sit right...i am very skeptical of artists impressions of 'ape-men'


My second point is that such re-contructions of the past are also biased because they are trying to fit such fossil evidence into a very strict story...the story of a slow evolution. This means that you are hearing only one possibility, but the reality could be far different. For example, and this is my 3rd point about fossils, the final stages of human evolution was said to progress from Homo habilis to Homo erectus to “modern man,” Homo sapiens.

However, two fossils of each species (erectus & habilis) were found within walking distance of each other in Kenya, and a new opinion is that these two 'species' lived at the same time. That changes the ball game because it means they co-existed. Here is the article about this particular find

What it shows to me is that they have already devised a story (progressive evolution) before they have all the evidence firmly in place. In a court case, there is no way a trial could go ahead if all the evidence was not already confirmed and proven....yet in evolution theory, the judge has already given the verdict (evolution is true) before the evidence supports it.

Just to make this point about artists impressions... i want you to look at this dog skull, and tell me its coloring, the type and length of it hair and the color of its skin.

However you choose to dress it, do you agree that it will be from your imagination...not from any physical evidence, but from your The cown imagination?

The color of skin amount of hair etc do not matter as much as the faicial features based off of the skeletal features and density. if any one has more info please share.

pegg what does the bible say about various types of humans ?
a. afarensis aka lucy

H habilis aka the handy man

H.neanderthals had cave paintings burial rights culture clothes tools all euraisins have 1-4 percent of their dna

 

[Pegg]

The color of skin amount of hair etc do not matter as much as the faicial features based off of the skeletal features and density. if any one has more info please share.

and usually they only have a small fragment of bone with which to reconstruct an entire skull ... rarely do they find complete sculls

pegg what does the bible say about various types of humans ?
a. afarensis aka lucy

H habilis aka the handy man

H.neanderthals had cave paintings burial rights culture clothes tools all euraisins have 1-4 percent of their dna

The bible states:
Acts 17:26 And he made out of one [man] every nation of men, to dwell upon the entire surface of the earth
So mankind have all descended from Adam, the first human created. You know, one of the features evolutionists use to determine how close an ancestor is to human, is the size of the brain. If you look at the capacity of Lucy's brain, surely you can see its far smaller then ours. Her brain is only one third the size of ours. Clearly it was nothing more than a now extinct species of ape.
As for neanderthals, the more they learn about them the more human they appear. The long-held view has been that Neanderthals were inferior ape-men, but as you rightly point out, they were far more like us then first thought yet science has been teaching that they are primitive ape-like creatures. How far from the truth have they been? And why? Because they are biased in that they want to present natural history in line with the 'evolutionary theory' and they are doing so with or without the evidence.

 

[Iti oj]

Hey pegg I wanted to address a point you mad earlier.

However, two fossils of each species (erectus & habilis) were found within walking distance of each other in Kenya, and a new opinion is that these two 'species' lived at the same time. That changes the ball game because it means they co-existed. Here is the article about this particular find
.

This is a straw man/fallacy. just because some individual of a given species evolve into something new does not mean all do or that the ones who do not immediately die out. Regional isolation in breeding groups is key factor. I could also imagen sexual selection possibly playing a role.

and usually they only have a small fragment of bone with which to reconstruct an entire skull ... rarely do they find complete sculls





The bible states:
Acts 17:26 And he made out of one [man] every nation of men, to dwell upon the entire surface of the earth
So mankind have all descended from Adam, the first human created. You know, one of the features evolutionists use to determine how close an ancestor is to human, is the size of the brain. If you look at the capacity of Lucy's brain, surely you can see its far smaller then ours. Her brain is only one third the size of ours. Clearly it was nothing more than a now extinct species of ape.
As for neanderthals, the more they learn about them the more human they appear. The long-held view has been that Neanderthals were inferior ape-men, but as you rightly point out, they were far more like us then first thought yet science has been teaching that they are primitive ape-like creatures. How far from the truth have they been? And why? Because they are biased in that they want to present natural history in line with the 'evolutionary theory' and they are doing so with or without the evidence.

Man a lot going on ok.
Brain size:
You are committing another fallacy here." a larger brain large more intelligence argument" if this were true whales and elephants would surpass us greatly. "brain size" is relative to body size not brain surface. Brain function is determined by the size and form of different brain areas, not brain mass.
Important increases in the frontal lobe,pushing from olfactory analysis to complex abstract processing. it has been suggested that even syntax language might have originated from this change.
The brainal cavities of the fossils show a steady progress in the size increase in this and other brain areas.
Modern humans have a large expansion of the parietal lobes which gives our brains their roundish shape compared to the football shaped brain of other hominids.

you said

the long-held view has been that Neanderthals were inferior ape-men

This is the first time i have ever heard of this. i have always seen them presented as primitive humans never ever ever apes or even ape like.

Also skeletal reconstruction is no where near as sketchy as you make it sound.

Pegg i have two questions for you:
Where do Neanderthals fall in the bibical picture? and are modern humans biologically the same as humans preflood?

also do you mind if i source all my sources and references at the end of our discussion?

 

[Pegg]

Hey pegg I wanted to address a point you mad earlier. This is a straw man/fallacy. just because some individual of a given species evolve into something new does not mean all do or that the ones who do not immediately die out. Regional isolation in breeding groups is key factor. I could also imagen sexual selection possibly playing a role.

the point about the significance of the find is that it has shaken the previously held view, as the article states: habilis was thought to have evolved into the more advanced Homo erectus, which evolved into us....It is most likely that both species evolved from a common ancestor."
And you see, this is the problem, they now have to find another ancestor for these two because the evidence is that habilis is not from erectus.... what if there is no common ancestor linking us to them? The fact is they dont have an ancestor linking any of these yet , but they continue to proclaim that we are all related to ancestors. Without the proper evidence, they still expect us to believe it and that is not proper science.
Are you ok in believing such things without proper evidence? ....and by proper evidence I mean 'solid' evidence that doesnt keep changing with every new discovery.

Man a lot going on ok.
Brain size:
You are committing another fallacy here." a larger brain large more intelligence argument" if this were true whales and elephants would surpass us greatly. "brain size" is relative to body size not brain surface. Brain function is determined by the size and form of different brain areas, not brain mass.

thats a good point, and one i agree with. However, when it comes to explaining apes to human evolution, that is exactly what they propose. So why do scientists line up the fossils used in the “ape-to-man” chain according to brain size when it is known that brain size is not a reliable measure of intelligence?

Doesnt it seem that they could be forcing the evidence to fit their theory, rather then focusing on what these creatures really were?

This is the first time i have ever heard of this. i have always seen them presented as primitive humans never ever ever apes or even ape like.

im not sure how old you are, but a few decades ago, neanderthals were 'cave-men' who grunted and growled to communicate and used wooden mallets to beat the 'females' over the head

but seriously, more recent researchers have backed away from such depictions. In 2009, Milford H. Wolpoff wrote in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology that “Neandertals may have been a true human race.”

If you've ever seen some of the Papua New Guinean tribes people, or even Australian aborigines, they too have thick brows and use primitive stone age implements for hunting and carving things.

Look at the difference in the facial structure of a white European and a black aborigine for example. In my view, neanderthals were a human tribe with very strong traits just as we see strong traits in current living humans.

Do you see why Im skeptical when science attempts to put things into one strictly defined context such as 'human evolution'? Its because they are fitting their finds into a story that may not be true. Dont you think its strange that the story remains the same, even thought the evidence is constantly changing?

Pegg i have two questions for you:
Where do Neanderthals fall in the bibical picture? and are modern humans biologically the same as humans preflood?

of course i cannot answer that question. They may have been a race who lived prior to the flood...and if so, then they would have all been killed in the flood. But if you have a look at the following map, this is where all current neanderthal sites are located. Do you think its a coincidence that they are all situated in the same area of the globe?

also do you mind if i source all my sources and references at the end of our discussion?

thats fine

 

[Iti oj]

friend pegg.

you are right in saying we do not know who was an ancestor and who was a cousin, but honestly it matters little who is who. Evolution expects too see both. More importantly it still shows a steady progress towards us.

The diffrence in traits in those two pictures,is in phenotypes/allies. the difference between us and Neanderthals is different genes and different phenotypes/allies... we have sequenced both sets of genes and they are different Neanderthals were not humans.

as for your map regional isolation is what one would expect from a short lived divergent group...also just because we found fossils only there doesn't mean they are not else where fossils are rare.

brain size is an important part of human evolution we have huge brains. i never said brain size was not a human charecteristic i said it didn't dictate intelligence

our understanding of our evolutionary history changes not the facts of evolution not the evidence/

what makes humans so special in your mind?

 

[Pegg]

friend pegg.

you are right in saying we do not know who was an ancestor and who was a cousin, but honestly it matters little who is who. Evolution expects too see both. More importantly it still shows a steady progress towards us.

I think in terms of 'apes/monkeys/chimps' it shows how these specific animals have evolved...but their evolution does not necessarily lead to us. That is the part of the story that has yet to be proved...it is only 'assumed' that they led to us because the theory of evolution says that all living things evolved from other living things, thus humans too evolved from other living things.

The diffrence in traits in those two pictures,is in phenotypes/allies. the difference between us and Neanderthals is different genes and different phenotypes/allies... we have sequenced both sets of genes and they are different Neanderthals were not humans.

Im not sure if that is the current view...in 2010 researchers compared the haplotype to the Neanderthal genome to the DNA of existing humans. They found that the sequence was present in people across all continents, except for sub-Saharan Africa, and including Australia.... see this article

A Draft Sequence of the Neanderthal Gene
We show that Neandertals shared more genetic variants with present-day humans in Eurasia than with present-day humans in sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting that gene flow from Neandertals into the ancestors of non-Africans occurred before the divergence of Eurasian groups from each other...Conclusion: The analysis of the Neandertal genome shows that they are likely to have had a role in the genetic ancestry of present-day humans outside of Africa, although this role was relatively minor given that only a few percent of the genomes of present-day people outside Africa are derived from Neandertals.

This is evidence to me that neanderthals were not a separate species to humans, but were just as human as we are.

what makes humans so special in your mind?

well we have abilities that other animals dont. For example, we dont adapt to our environment...we make our environments adapt to us.

We are not governed by instinct...we need to learn how to do things unlike animals who can hatch out of an egg and know exactly where it needs to get to and what it needs to eat... that is a built in knowledge animals have, but we dont have such knowledge. Our children need to learn everything from us. You would think that if we have evolved from animals, we would have many of those same instincts that enable them to survive...yet we dont.

We also have the ability to display unselfish acts in behalf of others which animals do not. They fight for food, and for the right to mate, they kill each others offspring...its a 'survival of the fittest' existence for animals, but humans are different because we help the weak & needy...We work together in terms of justice and righteousness.

We also have a spiritual nature that animals do not display. We make memorials for our dead and like to think they are still living in another realm... we have a desire to worship.

Haven't you ever wondered how we came to have such strange qualities? And why did we loose the many instincts that other animals have? where did they go?

 

[Iti oj]

I think in terms of 'apes/monkeys/chimps' it shows how these specific animals have evolved...but their evolution does not necessarily lead to us. That is the part of the story that has yet to be proved...it is only 'assumed' that they led to us because the theory of evolution says that all living things evolved from other living things, thus humans too evolved from other living things.

i haven't really posted any such species just human ancestors and/or their/our cousins. so ape evolution has absolutely nothing to do with any fossil iu have present thus far.

I have been showing two Genii Australopithecus and Homo. These have nothing to do with any ones evolution but our own... so thinking in terms of apes and chimps is false. Australopitheucs is a divergent line from apes and chimps and such... also note the chimps and monkey are also a divergent line from that of the apes. Humans and chimps evolved along side each other . not from each other.

I have only shared a fraction of the two genii fossil records and evidence and all species have a large quantity of specimens.

These show some divergent groups but mostly show a slow change into more and more human like and mushc less ape like creatures. would you like me to post all the fossils? just the ones that show a steady progress into humans? and twhat off al the homo fossils? their are clearly not apes and are mostly human like.
Also we have genetic evidence that iu will get to. i have been avoiding since i do not know/understand this evidence the way i do the fossil evidence.

Im not sure if that is the current view...in 2010 researchers compared the haplotype to the Neanderthal genome to the DNA of existing humans. They found that the sequence was present in people across all continents, except for sub-Saharan Africa, and including Australia.... see this article

A Draft Sequence of the Neanderthal Gene
We show that Neandertals shared more genetic variants with present-day humans in Eurasia than with present-day humans in sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting that gene flow from Neandertals into the ancestors of non-Africans occurred before the divergence of Eurasian groups from each other...Conclusion: The analysis of the Neandertal genome shows that they are likely to have had a role in the genetic ancestry of present-day humans outside of Africa, although this role was relatively minor given that only a few percent of the genomes of present-day people outside Africa are derived from Neandertals.

This is evidence to me that neanderthals were not a separate species to humans, but were just as human as we are.

this still is the curent view yes we share a small fraction of their dna.... which suggest that most of their dna were not the same as us ergo not homo sapiens.

well we have abilities that other animals dont. For example, we dont adapt to our environment...we make our environments adapt to us.

We are not governed by instinct...we need to learn how to do things unlike animals who can hatch out of an egg and know exactly where it needs to get to and what it needs to eat... that is a built in knowledge animals have, but we dont have such knowledge. Our children need to learn everything from us. You would think that if we have evolved from animals, we would have many of those same instincts that enable them to survive...yet we dont.

We also have the ability to display unselfish acts in behalf of others which animals do not. They fight for food, and for the right to mate, they kill each others offspring...its a 'survival of the fittest' existence for animals, but humans are different because we help the weak & needy...We work together in terms of justice and righteousness.

We also have a spiritual nature that animals do not display. We make memorials for our dead and like to think they are still living in another realm... we have a desire to worship.

Haven't you ever wondered how we came to have such strange qualities? And why did we loose the many instincts that other animals have? where did they go?

yeah we adapt our environment to us thats how humans adapt. and?

humans still have instinct, they just take second place to our thoughts... also its likely we are not aware of where/how they do control us. yes we are able to deny our instinct...and?

ok and altruism is un natural how? how about how dolphins help drowing men? or help chase fish into our nets? how about dogs saving people?

Did you read the posts about elephants and death rituals?

Whats so strange about humans?

 

[Pegg]

These show some divergent groups but mostly show a slow change into more and more human like and mushc less ape like creatures. would you like me to post all the fossils? just the ones that show a steady progress into humans?

yes it would be good to know what the fossils are that you are referring to, so by all means put them up.

and twhat off al the homo fossils? their are clearly not apes and are mostly human like.

Well im interested to see your list of fossils that you believe are human because there are many notable examples of some researchers reaching different conclusions about fossil evidence. If all the researches dont agree, then it leaves room for doubt. Until all the doubts are cleared up, its best to err on the side of caution rather then believe it one way or the other.

yeah we adapt our environment to us thats how humans adapt. and?

its quite different to the way animals live...if we are from the animals, wouldnt you expect us to live similarly to them? I would. But the fact that we dont is a problem for me in believing that we have descended from animals.

humans still have instinct, they just take second place to our thoughts... also its likely we are not aware of where/how they do control us. yes we are able to deny our instinct...and?

have you ever found an animal who decided not to live by its instincts? If there was evidence that animals could pick and choose how they wanted to spend their short lives, then perhaps I could find it easier to accept that humans simply chose not to live purely by instinct... but animals just dont do that. I dont see what made it possible for one family of apes to do so and not the rest of the ape families.

ok and altruism is un natural how? how about how dolphins help drowing men? or help chase fish into our nets? how about dogs saving people?

Did you read the posts about elephants and death rituals?

Whats so strange about humans?

in the animal kingdom, altruism is unheard of between different animals. Even among their own kinds, they will kill each other for territory and fight over food...sharing is only common to pack animals, but even then, the strongest take the first and best parts of the meal...the weaker ones get whats left.

With regard to elephants, i dont think it can be adequately understood if they are performing rituals (which i dont believe they are) in the way we do. Sure, they mourn when their young dies, but they are unique in that regard and its probably more to do with them having stronger bonds then other animals.

Humans look to the heavens for supernatural help. We believe there is something out there and we attempt to communicate with the unseen world. why do we do that? And why do we specifically have an area of the brain that lights up when it comes to the supernatural...its like its been hardwired into us.