jabriol <jabriol@bluegender.org> wrote in alt.atheism

ever heard of the manpanzee?

Yes, I have. What do you think about it? Impossible?

"Rich" <someone@someplace.com> wrote in message
news:3F902D53.2090401@someplace.com...

JaBrIoL replied:

freehand_THX1138@hotmail.com (Kermit) wrote in message

It was the fossil record which demonstrated that we are apes. Other,
more recent data simply affirms that. No 19th century scientist
started off claiming we were related to chimps, therefore we shold go
out and search for the evidence. Of course we have always been very
interested in our own particular origin.

Are you sure? From the accounts in scientific literature, in museum
displays and on television, it would seem that surely there must be
abundant evidence that humans evolved from apelike creatures. Is this
really so? For instance, what fossil evidence was there of this in
Darwin's day? Was it such evidence that encouraged him to formulate
his theory?

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists informs us: "The early theories
of human evolution are really very odd, if one stops to look at them.
David Pilbeam has described the early theories as 'fossil-free.' That
is, here were theories about human evolution that one would think
would require some fossil evidence, but in fact there were either so
few fossils that they exerted no influence on the theory, or there
were no fossils at all. So between man's supposed closest relatives
and the early human fossils, there was only the imagination of
nineteenth century scientists." This scientific publication shows why:
"People wanted to believe in evolution, human evolution, and this
affected the results of their work."

After more than a century of searching, how much fossil evidence is
there of "ape-men"? Richard Leakey stated: "Those working in this
field have so little evidence upon which to base their conclusions
that it is necessary for them frequently to change their conclusions."
New Scientist commented: "Judged by the amount of evidence upon which
it is based, the study of fossil man hardly deserves to be more than a
sub-discipline of palaeontology or anthropology. . . . the collection
is so tantalisingly incomplete, and the specimens themselves often so
fragmentary and inconclusive."

Similarly, the book Origins admits: "As we move farther along the
path of evolution towards humans the going becomes distinctly
uncertain, again owing to the paucity of fossil evidence."8 Science
magazine adds: "The primary scientific evidence is a pitifully small
array of bones from which to construct man's evolutionary history. One
anthropologist has compared the task to that of reconstructing the
plot of War and Peace with 13 randomly selected pages."

Just how sparse is the fossil record regarding "ape-men"? Note the
following. Newsweek: "'You could put all the fossils on the top of a
single desk,' said Elwyn Simons of Duke University." The New York
Times: "The known fossil remains of man's ancestors would fit on a
billiard table. That makes a poor platform from which to peer into the
mists of the last few million years." Science Digest: "The remarkable
fact is that all the physical evidence we have for human evolution can
still be placed, with room to spare, inside a single coffin! . . .
Modern apes, for instance, seem to have sprung out of nowhere. They
have no yesterday, no fossil record. And the true origin of modern
humans-of upright, naked, toolmaking, big-brained beings-is, if we are
to be honest with ourselves, an equally mysterious matter."

This seems to be the case for all kinds of fossils (with the possible
exception of shellfish). How many T-Rex skeletons are there? Not many.

yet the fossils of the t-rex are consistent. not the case with homonids,
well, I must exclude the neanderthal.

But how many T-Rex skeletons does it take to prove that T-Rex existed?
Seems to me that one is sufficient.

How many skeletons of early man does it take to show the existence of
early man? You tell me.

are they really early man? that would be the question.

Let me ask you this...
what are the ancestors in the fossil record of chimpanzee, Gorrilas, and
orangutans. And yes I do know about King Kong of asia :-)

I quite agree that extrapolating from little data is a bad thing. But when
that's all you got, it seems unavoidable.

why not an alternative? And I am not reffeirng to hocus-pocus, or the
olympains

My question to you is not one about the abundance of data, but one about
the existence of data. Do you deny that there is data (hard fossil
evidence) for the existence of early man? If not, why not? If so what
conclusions do you draw?

I admit to the fossils, no problem here, but to refer to them as early man,
or homonids is a fancy of human imaginations in the absence of facts that
would pass the scientific method

Oh yes, one more thing. What do you think of dating techniques? Do you
believe that rocks can be dated by measuring radioactive decay? How about
C-14 dating? What's your take on dating?

I have no problem with fossil, nor the methods used to date them.

If we have fossil evidence and can date it, seems to be that everything
needed to establish a timeline is there. Do you?

Not a problem. I had a similar conversation with Kronk.

First of all, Per today science defintion, Men are Ape's
However many people, including educators simplify the terminology and
in some instances the term "ape-man" is used, to distinguis between
modern man (homo spaiens) from it ancestors in the homonid family.
Some individuals will refuse to refer to themselves as apes. For many
years there have been reports that the fossil remains of apelike
humans have been found. Scientific literature abounds with artists'
renderings of such creatures. Are these the evolutionary transitions
between beast and man? Are "ape-men" our ancestors? Evolutionary
scientists claim that they are. That is why we often read expressions
such as this article title in a science magazine: "How Ape Became
Man."
some evolutionists do not feel that these theoretical ancestors of man
should rightly be called "apes."

Even so, some of their colleagues are
not so exacting. Stephen Jay Gould says: "People . . . evolved from
apelike ancestors." And George Gaylord Simpson stated: "The common
ancestor would certainly be called an ape or a monkey in popular
speech by anybody who saw it.

Since the terms ape and monkey are
defined by popular usage, man's ancestors were apes or monkeys."

Many
people use the term
Homonids.Why is the fossil record so important in the effort to
document the existence of apelike ancestors for humankind? Because
today's living world has nothing in it to support the idea. As
mentioned before there is an enormous gulf between humans and any
animals existing today, including the ape family,

yes there is a 98%
genetic match with the bonobo Then again human have over 50% match
with a banana.

Hence, since the living world does not provide a link
between man and ape

(semantics here people, per definition of science,
man is a monkey... uh ape or homonid),

it was hoped that the fossil
record would.