You wrote:
>>God did it, the Bible says. He didn't do it by way of evolution, the
physical world says. Therefore God created man special. <<
and
>>
That either/or mind keeps knocking about, eh? Are you really trying to
understand, or is this more of the "devil's advocate" sort of thing? I'm
starting to wonder.<<
If you want to talk science, then let's cut the stuff about poetry. Science
IS an either/or type of enterprise and it is NOT poetry. I know that they
don't teach biology/geology/physics/astronomy at law school so I would
imagine your exposure to the scientific method in the laboratory has been
restricted. Science is in the business of explaining how the facts of the
world fit together into a coherent picture. It is not in the business, as
you emulate so well, of explaining all data away.
A scientist tries to isolate a variable so that he has an either/or
situation. Only in this fashion can he determine what happened in his
experiment. They have flown an atomic clock around the world to test the
prediction of relativity that a moving clock tick's more slowly. The
situation was set up to see if this was true. Either the clock would tick
more slowly or it wouldn't. This is an either/or situation. If the clock
ticked more rapidly, it would be an equal disproof of relativity as it would
if the clock's ticking rate remained constant! All experiments are designed
that way. In cancer testing, animals are treated absolutely identically
except for the application of a carcinogen. This limits the observed effects
for the two populations to the effect of having the carcinogen or not having
the carcinogen. Either/or! If you worked in science you would understand
that.
So in answer to your question about the devil's advocate business, it is not
a devil's advocacy that I am engaging in. If you say that science disproves
evolution, then you MUST play by the rules of science NOT poetry. I have
over the past few months cited numerous examples of human activity in fossil
man. You have rejected each one. My perception is that the data doesn't
matter to you at all. Here is another one.
Modern men make costumes out of butchered animals and wear them in
ceremonies. No animal does that. Yet, evidence for such a costume, a
leopard skin, was found in the burial of a Neanderthal in 1972. Shreeve
writes:
"But the Neandertals' true humanity revealed itself in the actions of
their souls. At the 50,000-year-old site of Hortus in southern France, two
French archaeologists in 1972 reported the discovery of the articulated bones
of the left paw and tail of a lepard. Their arrangement suggested that the
fragments were once the remnants of a complete leopard hide worn as a
costume."~James R. Shreeve, The Neandertal Enigma, (New York: William Morrow
and Co., 1995), p. 52
I know, some soul-less ape man did this. We KNOW that man didn't evolve.
This is just as we KNOW that the art work created by archaic homo sapiens at
Berekhat Ram 330,000 years ago was also done by a soul-less ape. The fact
that stone tools from 1.5 million years ago show evidence of wood-working is
also not relevant because apes in Africa today are all busy chopping down
forests with their stone axes. And those modern apes in Africa are carrying
around red ochre, just as Homo erectus did 1.8 million years ago. Ochre has
no technological purpose except to use for body painting, which chimpanzees
engage in with great gusto during their yearly festivals. Religious objects?
If the Golan Venus (330,000 years ago) was not a religious object then the
treatment of the bears remains in Neanderthal caves would suffice. Of course
apes are known for their complex theologies. Fire? Oh, that is first known
to have been domesticated 750,000 years ago. But not to fear. Gorillas have
long
been known to worship fire at their temples. They go to great trouble not to
let the fire go out. The first spear was made 400,000 years ago, which also
was made by that soul-less ape-man. We know this because bands of marauding
gorillas all carrying the spears they have carved have ransacked 15 villages
in Rwanda. The first evidence for buildings made by these soul-less brutes
is from 300,000 years ago at Terra Amata. But
obviously that is not beyond the capability of modern apes. Jane Goodall has
observed peaceful chimpanzee villages made of thatched-roofed huts all over
Africa. The chimps always greet her with offerings of peace pipes just like
the American Indians used to do. The first evidence of scalping by means of
stone tools is from Bodo, Ethiopia from 300,000 years ago. Orangutans, the
truly evil ones of the ape world, have been observed scalping each other
with their stone tools so we can rule out this evidence also. The first
quern, a grain grinding device, is from 132,000 years ago. But I think that
gorillas were the first ones to invent them (I might have to check the patent
office on this one though). Couldn't have been a man, cause he wasn't
created yet. Broca's area? Nah! Apes have been known to talk for years and
years. Just ask 'em! The fact that there is absolutely a gradational series
of fossils between Homo erectus and homo sapiens also should have no bearing
on the issue at all.
I give up, Jim, there is little point in arguing the science with you. If
you had really wanted to discuss evidence you wouldn't simply say "Can't be"
to anything I put forward. And you wouldn't avoid explaining HOW you think
it occurred. You never give any explanations on your own but merely say that
the other fellow isn't right. I will tell you this: It is a lot harder to
try to build a theory than it is to throw rocks. As one friend put it, you
are
engaged in "intellectual drive-by shooting. Nothing more, nothing less."
glenn