More Denton: Reply to Tony (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, July 20, 2015, 20:31 (3204 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
edited by dhw, Monday, July 20, 2015, 20:37

TONY: Gradualism has, as a variable, granularity. Whether your granuals are infintesimally small (Darwinism) or the size of bolders (inventive mechanism), it is still gradualism, just on different scales.-If there is no evidence of transitions from one species to another, or of complex organs slowly developing out of primitive organs, I would talk of leaps. If your God created every species and every new organ separately, I would also regard that as a leap. Darwin specifically argued that natura non facit saltum, which both David and I disagree with, so the distinction is important in any discussion of evolution, whether you accept the theory or not.
 
DHW: I am arguing in favour of leaps and against gradualism. ... However, enough fossils have been found to indicate that there were different types of humans, just as there were and are different types of ape, but noone knows where to draw the earliest borderline between the one and the other. So when you say “all humans are humans”, you are glossing over the whole range of hominins -TONY: As for the 'different types' of humans, the evidence for that is really, really, really sparce, and mostly conjecture. Even the deviations in genetices between the supposed species of humans are relatively minor, and our understanding of genetics is such that those differences have little to no real meaning for us. The genetic and morphological variance in modern humans should be enough to illustrate that point. So, I am not glossing over the changes, merely pointing out that we have scant evidence upon which to base our speculations about those so-called other species of humans. -You have, however, glossed over my point that no one knows where to draw the earliest borderline between ape-like and human-like. Which, if any, of the australopithecine species were our ancestors? I don't know enough about the subject myself, so I've done some googling and have found a useful chart, with an article that is very honest about the gaps in our knowledge, but also seems to me to suggest that there is more than zilch behind the theory of common descent.
 
1.	Hominini - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomininiCached
(I can't seem to create the link, but it's easy to find if you google it yourself.)-dhw: ...if you believe God created humans separately, do you think Adam was a Neanderthal, a Denisovan, a Heidelbergiensis, or a sapiens?-TONY: I think he was a human. The first 'neanderthal' actually does have a biblical record though, in the form of Essau. He is described as 'hairy', with 'red hair', stronger than normal, etc., but he was still born from a human woman and mated with human women, which defies our definition of a separate species.-Neanderthals, Denisovans, Heidelbergienses were also “human”. Heidelberg man is believed to have come first, though. If you believe the Genesis story of Adam and Eve, do you think God created Adam as homo sapiens or someone rather less like yourself?
 
TONY: http://science.time.com/2013/10/17/rethinking-your-ancestors-the-fossilized-ones/-Quote: “We have one global human species today,” said Christoph Zollikofer, of the Anthropological Institute and Museum in Zurich, Switzerland, a co-author of the Science report, at a press conference. “And what we can infer from our study is that 1.8 million years ago there was another [single] global human species.”-Clearly his conclusion is hotly disputed (Tattersall is one of David's favourite authors), and frankly the discovery of one hominid in one location doesn't seem to me to offer a reason for dismissing the argument that there have been different forms of hominid elsewhere.-DHW: What a wonderful piece of intellectual contortionism. Instead of humans being God's purpose, they now “seem to be the pinnacle”. And to whom do they seem to be the pinnacle? Ah, humans, of course.-TONY: I did not say (I know David did..) we were the pinnacle. I said we are integral. We are a creature, like all other creatures, with a purpose (one that we admittedly failed miserably at).-My reference was only to David's contortionism, as he had tried to wriggle away from his belief that humans were God's purpose for creating the universe, and substitute his belief that we are the pinnacle (which apparently only means “most complex”).