Evolution (Evolution)

by David Turell , Wednesday, January 21, 2009, 14:11 (5573 days ago) @ George Jelliss

<< Authors such as Richard Dawkins argue that such constant-rate gradualism is not present in academic literature, serving only as a straw-man for punctuated equilibrium advocates. He refutes the idea that Charles Darwin himself was a constant-rate gradualist, as suggested by Stephen Jay Gould, for Darwin has explicitly stated that &quot;Many species, once formed, never undergo any further change...; and the periods, during which species have undergone modification, though long as measured by years, have probably been short in comparison with the periods during which they retain the same form.&quot; >> - It is marvelous if quotes are cherry-picked, the wrong impression can be given. Just today the following story appeared: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090120144508.htm The true import of this story, that Homo floresiensis, the &quot;Hobbit&quot; (human?) found in 2003 in Indonesia is a 1,500,000 year old Darwinian dead end. There are, I believe, over 20 branches of &apos;our&apos; ancestors, ones that lived with us like the Neanderthals or the Hobbits, but none found so far to show a gradual change to us. Darwin does not explain the HUGE jump in the function of our brain, or why &apos;we&apos; suddenly appeared. The Neanderthals have been shown to have simple religious functions, but nothing else to indicate their thinking capacity was anything close to ours. The important philosophic book to read is &quot;The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes&quot;, by Mortimer J. Adler, in which he shows clearly that &apos;we&apos; are different in kind, not degree as Darwin proposes.&#13;&#10;The moral is: an open mind can learn a great deal, and earlier conclusions changed.