More Denton: Last essay of a 3 part series (Introduction)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Sunday, July 19, 2015, 23:36 (3415 days ago) @ dhw

TONY: DHW, unfortunately for you, your inventive argument suffers from the same pitfalls as Darwins, just on a different scale. You bypass the gradualism by allowing things to leap into being, but there is still no evidence of these types of gradual changes within any given species regardless fo time scale. All humans are human, and have been human since there were humans. All deviations within the species are well within the tolerance for deviation within a species. There is no evidence of gradual change from a common ancestor to us. None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Without evidence, the theory is little more than fan fiction.
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>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. And as a matter of interest, but in all seriousness, if you believe God created humans separately, do you think Adam was a Neanderthal, a Denisovan, a Heidelbergiensis, or a sapiens? -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. -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. As for Adam, 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. -http://science.time.com/2013/10/17/rethinking-your-ancestors-the-fossilized-ones/-“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.”->DHW: If the fossil record is becoming more complete, doesn't that suggest that the gaps are becoming less obvious? Tony is questioning common descent. You indiscriminately attack Darwin's theory as if it was all one piece, but you then go on to accept common descent provided God organized it. Either you accept it or you don't. Even Darwin granted the possibility of God's participation, or have you forgotten that? -The fossil record is hardly becoming more complete. The gaps are becoming more and more obvious, and even growing, as our understanding does.-
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> DAVID: In Nature's Destiny, 1998, he [Denton]takes the position that the universe is designed for humans, again with lots of chemical evidence.
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> TONY: .. I think that humans are an integral part of life in general, but not that we are the sole reason for all of creation.[/i]
> DAVID: I think Denton would actually agree with you, but humans seem to be the pinnacle of creation.
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>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.-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).

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.