More Denton: Reply to Tony (Introduction)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Monday, July 20, 2015, 23:48 (3414 days ago) @ dhw

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 
> -I am not glossing over anything. I am stating it plainly. Our classifications are wrong. They are wrong because they are based on a faulty line of reasoning. Let me put this another way. Clear your mind of all Darwinian thoughts of evolution for a moment; pretend you had never heard of the theory at all. If I presented you with 10 human skulls of various sizes and shapes, and 10 Ape skulls of various sizes and shapes, would you believe that the humans were anything other than human, or the apes anything other than apes? Would you assume that similarity meant direct relation or causation? Would you feel compelled to come up with some unprovable (and thus un-disprovable) family tree that may or may not have existed? I don't believe in gradualism, whether miniscule or by leaps and bounds. So I do not feel the need to speculate and conjecture about things that can not be proven to have even happened. - 
>DHW: 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.-
No, what you saw was a chart that fits a certain mindset with certain assumptions:-A) That common descent is real (though there is no evidence and all attempts at a unified clasification have failed miserably...like the fact that humans are genetically similar to bananas..)
B) That morphological differences are the same as species differences. (Despite the indisputable evidence that we have a wide range of morphological differences in the extant species of mankind)
C) That speciation can even occur, though it has NEVER been observed.
D) That modern humans are the pinnacle to which life has been driving towards. -
> 
> 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.
> 
>DHW: 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?-Yes! Thank you. They were all HUMAN. Not ape, not chimp, not even different species. They were humans, likely with wildly different lifestyles and diets that lead to morphological dissimilarity between groups, much as Americans are morphologically different than Brittish, Arabs, Africans, and Asians. -->DHW: 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.-It wasn't one hominid at one location. It was 5 hominids, with complete skulls, from the same era, that showed a wide range of morphological differences, which is exactly what I have been trying to tell you all along.

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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.