http://jcolavito.tripod.com/lostcivilizations/id5.html

Lost Civilizations Uncovered
Extraterrestrial Evolution


Author Alan F. Alford claims to be the "Voice of Common Sense" when it
comes to ancient aliens. We take a look at his decidedly non-sensical
views on evolution.

by Jason Colavito


INTRODUCTION

Alan F. Alford calls himself the "voice of common sense" on his
website where he publishes many articles about his books, which
include Gods of the New Millennium and The Phoenix Solution. He is one
of the few authors in the alternative history genre to say that he
firmly rejects the ancient astronaut concept after doing extensive
research in the field. He has determined that the "gods" were not
flesh-and-blood aliens, but exploded planets instead: "I have argued
that the religions of the ancient Near East were 'exploded planet
cults' and that the priests popularised their religion by telling the
celestial story with human-like imagery. In other words, the ancient
priests 'dumbed down' their religion." Of course, appearances can be
decieving, and the ancient astronaut theory does not die such an easy
death.

While there exists no scientific evidence to back up the claim of
planets blowing up willy-nilly across the solar system, as Alford
suggests, it is his shameful lack of knowledge about evolutionary
theory that has led many of his readers into believing that our own
species, Homo sapiens, was the genetic legacy of advanced residents of
an exploded planet, a process he calls Interventionism: "For me, the
most intriguing aspect of Interventionism is the possibility that
ancient astronauts interfered with the evolution of the hominids on
Earth, thus giving rise to Homo sapiens." The ancient aliens are back
again in force.

The 40-year-old Alford became interested in ancient mysteries by
reading alternative literature, according to his website: "The Ancient
Astronaut Hypothesis has intrigued me for 15 years, ever since I read
the books of Erich von Däniken. It was the writings of von Däniken,
[Zecharia] Sitchin and other ancient astronaut writers which really
got me hooked on the subjects of religion and ancient history." While
he supposedly rejected this philosophy, even today he claims on his
website to show that man is not descended from apes, but is the
product of Interventionism from above. Whether the product of God or
aliens is for the reader to decide. With this background in mind, let
us examine Alford's arguments.

1. THERE IS NO MISSING LINK

Alford uses selective quotations from scientists like Stephen J. Gould
(called "America's evolutionist-laureate" by Alford) to build a case
that science has no concept of human origins. He quotes Gould as
saying humanity is "an awesome improbability" without mentioning that
Gould does not treat this as anything other than a mathematical fluke;
winning the lottery is an awesome improbability, but someone wins
somewhere in America every week.

Of the earliest of man's ancestor species, Alford says "It is also
important to emphasise that many of these finds have skulls more like
chimpanzees than men." Far from being a strange fact, this is
precisely what one would expect from ancient ancestors, that they
would be most like the apes from which they diverged millions of years
ago. There is no mystery here.

Alford then cites a newspaper article as evidence that the human
family tree baffles scientists, who he says cannot find a connection
between the mysterious chimp-like creatures and modern man: "The
missing link, however, remains a mystery. In 1995, The Sunday Times
summarised the evolutionary evidence as follows: 'The scientists
themselves are confused.'" Of course, as Stephen J. Gould or any
number of evolutionary biologists will testify, this is not true.
While the human family tree is complex and often incomplete, it is not
without the general trend of ape-like to man-like creatures.
Australopithecines gave way to Homo erectus and then modern man. This
is fairly well-established, and Alford offers no evidence that this is
wrong; therefore, we must conclude this argument does not hold water.

2. HUMANS HAVE NO HAIR

"Today, four out of ten Americans find it difficult to believe that
humans are related to the apes. Why is this so? Compare yourself to a
chimpanzee. Man is intelligent, naked and highly sexual - a species
apart from his alleged primate relatives," Alford says. This is
demonstrably false.

Alford maintains that the work of Sir Arthur Keith in 1911
demonstrated that the human was "nearly three times more distinctive
than any other ape." He based this on "generic characters" that
supposedly measure the distance between species. Alford shows his
ignorance here, since 1911 was long before scientists learned that
genetics, not noses or fur color, determined the relationships among
the species. Therefore, Keith's study, while good zoology, is bad
taxonomy.

"Darwinism has yet to produce a satisfactory answer as to how and why
man lost his hair," Alford says. Strictly speaking, this true, since
there is more than one possible explanation. Alford ignores volumes of
scientific literature and attributes the furless human skin to sex and
sexual selection. Among many explanations, one theory says hair loss
came from a need to sweat to cool the body when tree-dwelling apes,
who were in the shade, ventured to the savanna where a hot sun beat
down on the body. Fur caused overheating, so a naked skin cooled the
body. Alford ignores such ideas, saying "The one conclusion that can
perhaps be drawn, based on the principle of gradiented change, is that
man spent a long time evolving, either in a very hot environment or in
water." Yes, exactly. Anyone who has traveled to the African savanna
knows it is hot. Paleoclimatology says that 100,000 years ago, it was
even hotter.

3. HUMANS LIKE TO HAVE SEX

Alford says that humanity has is different from all other animals
because Homo sapiens has "unique human features such as extended
foreplay, extended copulation and the orgasm." Unfortunately for
Alford, foreplay, copulation and orgasm are not uniquely human. The
bonobo (pygmy chimpanzee) engages in near constant foreplay with
frequent and sometimes homosexual sex. The rhinoceros copulates for
hours at a time. Lastly, if animals had no orgasms, why would they
have sex? Obviously and biologically sex is enjoyable for most
mammals.

He goes on to say that hidden ovulation, the fact that women do not
advertise their periods of fertility as other apes do, is an
"evolutionary enigma that cannot be explained by natural selection."
Once again he is wrong. Concealed ovulation and open ovulation are
used variously by different species, and evolutionary histories
suggest that species go back and forth between the two as
environmental situations warrant. Concealed ovulation leads to
constant sex and a reinforcement of pair bonds. There is nothing
unnatural about that.

For much of the above, Alford relies on the work of Desmond Morris.
Morris, however, is not an evolutionary biologist but a zoologist with
no special training in evolution. In fact, the biography Morris' agent
provides says specifically that Morris "reminds us that man is
relative to the apes--is in fact, the greatest primate of all." This
is a far cry from the implication in Alford's work that Morris finds
faults with the relationship between man and ape.

4. OTHER HUMAN PARTS ARE INCORRECT

Alford then complains about "the appalling ineptitude of the human
skin to repair itself." Anyone who has had a cut or bruise can agree
that skin can and does heal, and since most of us are not covered in
scar tissue from cuts, the skin heals quite well.

Another problem for Alford is our eating habits: "Whereas most animals
will swallow their food instantaneously, we take the luxury of six
whole seconds to transport our food from mouth to stomach." He says
humans had no place to develop this "luxury." Apparently the apes in
the forest are flukes, too. Let's not leave out the pandas. These
animals take time to swallow and have no problems with evolution.

5. THE BRAIN IS UNIQUE

He then argues that the complexity of the human brain shows that
evolution could not create it. He even says that it is so complex that
"it is so complex and unique that there is no chance of reverse
engineering the evolutionary process that created it." Yet he expects
us to believe that this miracle of complexity was bestowed by the
aliens which apparently were able to grasp this self-same process of
complexity creation.

6. EVOLUTION IS TOO SLOW

Alford then says, "It is widely accepted that we are the descendants
of Homo erectus (who else was there to descend from?) but the sudden
changeover defies all known laws of evolution." It does not. Here
again his ignorance shows. All it takes to start a new species is two
animals with the same mutation. He then says, "The experts all agree
with Darwin's basic idea that natural selection is a very slow,
continuous process" He obviously ignored the previously-quoted Gould's
puntuated equilibrium which shows that great changes happen very
rapidly followed by long periods of stasis. Thus, a lack of smooth
transition is expected.

But Alford has another card up his sleeve: "If the evolution of a
species is a time-consuming process, then the separation of one
species into two different species must be seen as an even longer
process." Here again he is wrong. As the artificial production of new
plant species shows, new species can be created in a single
generation. A mutation affecting sexual organs can do the same. He
then claims, "Today, however, it is impossible to pinpoint a single
example of a species which has recently (within the last half a
million years) improved by mutation or divided into two species."
Sea-gulls are dividing into not two, but multiple species as we speak.
So far, those gulls can mate only with geographic neighbors; sea-gulls
from farther away are too genetically distant and cannot mate. This is
speciation.

Of course, the human birth canal is too small for babies' heads, so it
is "extremely doubtful that natural selection would have favoured a
gene for large brain size, with its potential harmful consequences to
both mother and child." He forgets that the large brains made
primitive humans survive on the savanna, a very useful trait. Those
who lived got to mate, regardless of brain size. It just turns out
that big brains are smart enough live longer.

That brain is too complex, Alford argues again, because it has
programming for "non-essential abilities in art, music and
mathematics." He forgets that those abilities are all related to
spacial perception, a key necessity for living in a three-dimensional
world.

7. THE CULT OF DARWINISM

Alford plays numbers games and makes many other arguments derived from
"creation science" literature, but at this point we see how his
thinking goes. It should not surprize us then that he finishes his
essay by claiming "Clearly everything is not 'hunky dory' with
Darwinism." He calls for an "alternative" to Darwinism, which is his
label for science with which he disagrees. He even says that
evolution's "general principles are of great value in explaining the
evolution of animals and specific organs such as the eye, but severe
doubts surround its practical application to man." If it can explain
all of man's organs, then, pray tell, why not man? The answer for
Alford is that an "intelligent extraterrestrial species migrated to
the Earth." He believes that this is much more scientific than a
century and a half of evolutionary research. Needless to say, he does
not say whether the aliens evolved.

http://jcolavito.tripod.com/lostcivilizations/id5.html

Lost Civilizations Uncovered
Extraterrestrial Evolution


Author Alan F. Alford claims to be the "Voice of Common Sense" when
it comes to ancient aliens. We take a look at his decidedly
non-sensical views on evolution.

by Jason Colavito


INTRODUCTION

Alan F. Alford calls himself the "voice of common sense" on his
website where he publishes many articles about his books, which
include Gods of the New Millennium and The Phoenix Solution. He is
one of the few authors in the alternative history genre to say that
he firmly rejects the ancient astronaut concept after doing
extensive research in the field. He has determined that the "gods"
were not flesh-and-blood aliens, but exploded planets instead: "I
have argued that the religions of the ancient Near East were
'exploded planet cults' and that the priests popularised their
religion by telling the celestial story with human-like imagery. In
other words, the ancient priests 'dumbed down' their religion." Of
course, appearances can be decieving, and the ancient astronaut
theory does not die such an easy death.

While there exists no scientific evidence to back up the claim of
planets blowing up willy-nilly across the solar system, as Alford
suggests, it is his shameful lack of knowledge about evolutionary
theory that has led many of his readers into believing that our own
species, Homo sapiens, was the genetic legacy of advanced residents
of an exploded planet, a process he calls Interventionism: "For me,
the most intriguing aspect of Interventionism is the possibility
that ancient astronauts interfered with the evolution of the
hominids on Earth, thus giving rise to Homo sapiens." The ancient
aliens are back again in force.

The 40-year-old Alford became interested in ancient mysteries by
reading alternative literature, according to his website: "The
Ancient Astronaut Hypothesis has intrigued me for 15 years, ever
since I read the books of Erich von Däniken. It was the writings of
von Däniken, [Zecharia] Sitchin and other ancient astronaut writers
which really got me hooked on the subjects of religion and ancient
history." While he supposedly rejected this philosophy, even today
he claims on his website to show that man is not descended from
apes, but is the product of Interventionism from above. Whether the
product of God or aliens is for the reader to decide. With this
background in mind, let us examine Alford's arguments.

1. THERE IS NO MISSING LINK

Alford uses selective quotations from scientists like Stephen J.
Gould (called "America's evolutionist-laureate" by Alford) to build
a case that science has no concept of human origins. He quotes
Gould as saying humanity is "an awesome improbability" without
mentioning that Gould does not treat this as anything other than a
mathematical fluke; winning the lottery is an awesome
improbability, but someone wins somewhere in America every week.

Of the earliest of man's ancestor species, Alford says "It is also
important to emphasise that many of these finds have skulls more
like chimpanzees than men." Far from being a strange fact, this is
precisely what one would expect from ancient ancestors, that they
would be most like the apes from which they diverged millions of
years ago. There is no mystery here.

Alford then cites a newspaper article as evidence that the human
family tree baffles scientists, who he says cannot find a connection
between the mysterious chimp-like creatures and modern man: "The
missing link, however, remains a mystery. In 1995, The Sunday Times
summarised the evolutionary evidence as follows: 'The scientists
themselves are confused.'" Of course, as Stephen J. Gould or any
number of evolutionary biologists will testify, this is not true.
While the human family tree is complex and often incomplete, it is
not without the general trend of ape-like to man-like creatures.
Australopithecines gave way to Homo erectus and then modern man.
This is fairly well-established, and Alford offers no evidence that
this is wrong; therefore, we must conclude this argument does not
hold water.

2. HUMANS HAVE NO HAIR

"Today, four out of ten Americans find it difficult to believe that
humans are related to the apes. Why is this so? Compare yourself to
a chimpanzee. Man is intelligent, naked and highly sexual - a
species apart from his alleged primate relatives," Alford says.
This is demonstrably false.

Alford maintains that the work of Sir Arthur Keith in 1911
demonstrated that the human was "nearly three times more distinctive
than any other ape." He based this on "generic characters" that
supposedly measure the distance between species. Alford shows his
ignorance here, since 1911 was long before scientists learned that
genetics, not noses or fur color, determined the relationships among
the species. Therefore, Keith's study, while good zoology, is bad
taxonomy.

"Darwinism has yet to produce a satisfactory answer as to how and
why man lost his hair," Alford says. Strictly speaking, this true,
since there is more than one possible explanation. Alford ignores
volumes of scientific literature and attributes the furless human
skin to sex and sexual selection. Among many explanations, one
theory says hair loss came from a need to sweat to cool the body
when tree-dwelling apes, who were in the shade, ventured to the
savanna where a hot sun beat down on the body. Fur caused
overheating, so a naked skin cooled the body. Alford ignores such
ideas, saying "The one conclusion that can perhaps be drawn, based
on the principle of gradiented change, is that man spent a long
time evolving, either in a very hot environment or in water." Yes,
exactly. Anyone who has traveled to the African savanna knows it is
hot. Paleoclimatology says that 100,000 years ago, it was even
hotter.

3. HUMANS LIKE TO HAVE SEX

Alford says that humanity has is different from all other animals
because Homo sapiens has "unique human features such as extended
foreplay, extended copulation and the orgasm." Unfortunately for
Alford, foreplay, copulation and orgasm are not uniquely human. The
bonobo (pygmy chimpanzee) engages in near constant foreplay with
frequent and sometimes homosexual sex. The rhinoceros copulates for
hours at a time. Lastly, if animals had no orgasms, why would they
have sex? Obviously and biologically sex is enjoyable for most
mammals.

He goes on to say that hidden ovulation, the fact that women do not
advertise their periods of fertility as other apes do, is an
"evolutionary enigma that cannot be explained by natural selection."
Once again he is wrong. Concealed ovulation and open ovulation are
used variously by different species, and evolutionary histories
suggest that species go back and forth between the two as
environmental situations warrant. Concealed ovulation leads to
constant sex and a reinforcement of pair bonds. There is nothing
unnatural about that.

For much of the above, Alford relies on the work of Desmond Morris.
Morris, however, is not an evolutionary biologist but a zoologist
with no special training in evolution. In fact, the biography
Morris' agent provides says specifically that Morris "reminds us
that man is relative to the apes--is in fact, the greatest primate
of all." This is a far cry from the implication in Alford's work
that Morris finds faults with the relationship between man and ape.

4. OTHER HUMAN PARTS ARE INCORRECT

Alford then complains about "the appalling ineptitude of the human
skin to repair itself." Anyone who has had a cut or bruise can agree
that skin can and does heal, and since most of us are not covered in
scar tissue from cuts, the skin heals quite well.

Another problem for Alford is our eating habits: "Whereas most
animals will swallow their food instantaneously, we take the luxury
of six whole seconds to transport our food from mouth to stomach."
He says humans had no place to develop this "luxury." Apparently
the apes in the forest are flukes, too. Let's not leave out the
pandas. These animals take time to swallow and have no problems
with evolution.

5. THE BRAIN IS UNIQUE

He then argues that the complexity of the human brain shows that
evolution could not create it. He even says that it is so complex
that "it is so complex and unique that there is no chance of reverse
engineering the evolutionary process that created it." Yet he
expects us to believe that this miracle of complexity was bestowed
by the aliens which apparently were able to grasp this self-same
process of complexity creation.

6. EVOLUTION IS TOO SLOW

Alford then says, "It is widely accepted that we are the descendants
of Homo erectus (who else was there to descend from?) but the sudden
changeover defies all known laws of evolution." It does not. Here
again his ignorance shows. All it takes to start a new species is
two animals with the same mutation. He then says, "The experts all
agree with Darwin's basic idea that natural selection is a very
slow, continuous process" He obviously ignored the
previously-quoted Gould's puntuated equilibrium which shows that
great changes happen very rapidly followed by long periods of
stasis. Thus, a lack of smooth transition is expected.

But Alford has another card up his sleeve: "If the evolution of a
species is a time-consuming process, then the separation of one
species into two different species must be seen as an even longer
process." Here again he is wrong. As the artificial production of
new plant species shows, new species can be created in a single
generation. A mutation affecting sexual organs can do the same. He
then claims, "Today, however, it is impossible to pinpoint a single
example of a species which has recently (within the last half a
million years) improved by mutation or divided into two species."
Sea-gulls are dividing into not two, but multiple species as we
speak. So far, those gulls can mate only with geographic neighbors;
sea-gulls from farther away are too genetically distant and cannot
mate. This is speciation.

Of course, the human birth canal is too small for babies' heads, so
it is "extremely doubtful that natural selection would have
favoured a gene for large brain size, with its potential harmful
consequences to both mother and child." He forgets that the large
brains made primitive humans survive on the savanna, a very useful
trait. Those who lived got to mate, regardless of brain size. It
just turns out that big brains are smart enough live longer.

That brain is too complex, Alford argues again, because it has
programming for "non-essential abilities in art, music and
mathematics." He forgets that those abilities are all related to
spacial perception, a key necessity for living in a
three-dimensional world.

7. THE CULT OF DARWINISM

Alford plays numbers games and makes many other arguments derived
from "creation science" literature, but at this point we see how his
thinking goes. It should not surprize us then that he finishes his
essay by claiming "Clearly everything is not 'hunky dory' with
Darwinism." He calls for an "alternative" to Darwinism, which is his
label for science with which he disagrees. He even says that
evolution's "general principles are of great value in explaining the
evolution of animals and specific organs such as the eye, but severe
doubts surround its practical application to man." If it can explain
all of man's organs, then, pray tell, why not man? The answer for
Alford is that an "intelligent extraterrestrial species migrated to
the Earth." He believes that this is much more scientific than a
century and a half of evolutionary research. Needless to say, he
does not say whether the aliens evolved.