Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Never a First Human Being

[ant]

Johnson wrote:

He slammed you for being unreasonably dickish in response to interbanes perfectly reasonable, un-provacative post.

Interbane was chippy in his own fashion.
Stop being a one-sided whinny wuss here.

Do what a moderator is supposed to do.
Start with yorky and move from there.

Gosh, you're such a child. Only those that play in your sandbox get a pass, right?

[ant]

Do you disagree with Dawkins that if you lined up your ancestors, they would show a very gradual shift until you've reached a very primitive species?

If you agree with this non-controversial statement -- which was the sole purpose of this thought experiment, I just thought it was a good way of stating it -- then what are you getting all bent out of shape about? And how can you reconcile this with a unique human soul, which I assume you believe in? When did God put it in?

If you disagree, then you believe in Creationism, yes?

This is all really very idiotic to take this thought experiment and turn it into an undisputed fact, which is exactly what Dawkins is attempting to do.

He states in the video that the chapters begin with a mythical answer and then "the true scientific answer."

Dawkins states that his family picture game is taken to an arbitrary 185 millionth generation.
He goes on to state that homo erectus would have been our 1 1/2 millionth ancestor.

Then he goes on to say "every person, every animal belonged to the same species as his parent."
He concludes by stating the following:

take it back as far as you like - I take it back 185 million years ago and you reveal your 185 million years greats granfather was a fish

Really? A fish? That's a scientific fact, as he stated in his introduction to the thought experiment?

Where is the fossil evidence for this claim?
We were taken back 185 million years, stopped at homo erectus as being a parent because "every person every animal belonged to the same species as his parent" and then wound up with a fish.
Based on what continuous stream of evidence?

"The whole process is incredibly gradual."

Uh., well, duh.., yeah, but what evidence is there that the process was as he stated - regression to a fish?

There was a nice picture of a fish at the end.
Is that the evidence you're going to present here for us, Dexter?
BWAHAHHAAHA!

What evidence is there that setsforth the overlapping of species related to homo erectus?

Are you just going to babble on by saying it all took millions of years and that it's so slow that we don't have one parent to point to but that it surely in the end points to a fish?

And again, how do we test this hypothesis to prove it's a scientific fact?
That's what he said.., we have the mythical answer and the "true" scientific answer."

This isn't the sharing of scientific facts. This is dressing up biological narrative as fact in the hope of indoctrinating minds that won't question beyond the claim that there was no parent ancestor, no first human being because you can't pin-point when you became and adult in time, and because evolution is a process on a time scale of millions and millions of years, we can nevertheless safely say it's a fact that your 185 million year greats grandfather was a fish.

Bullcrap.

But this is a great post because it's so silly.

[Dexter]

Bullcrap.

But this is a great post because it's so silly.

Your protests are not making much sense.

You say you accept evolution, but because Dawkins gave a specific example of what your distant ancestor looked like, you say it's "idiotic," "silly," "bullcrap," "indoctrination." Again, what are you getting all bent out of shape about? Would you be OK with it if he made a disclaimer and said a fish or some kind of fish-like animal?

I have his book that this comes from, it's not meant to be a scientific treatise but it mentions both fossil and DNA evidence that has helped to construct the evolutionary tree -- showing, for example, that chimps are our close cousins, mice are more distant cousins, mammals share a common ancestor about 180 million years ago, etc.

Are you holding out hope that all of this is based on flimsy evidence?

Take a stand if you're going to hurl insults at the mere mention of evolutionary claims-- what are you trying to say?

[geo]

There's quite a lot of evidence that we evolved from fish, not just humans but all terrestrial animals. Neil Shubin wrote a book called YOUR INNER FISH. But right, it's not ironclad that we evolved from fish. But if life arose from the seas, it's a pretty good bet that we evolved from some aquatic creature. Let's call it a . . . a fish.

Do we know the precise evolutionary line? Of course not. This is a thought experiment, meaning conjecture into what might be and what might have been based on our limited understanding which itself is based on a limited fossil record. When Dawkins says 350 million years or some such number, he doesn't mean that this is the precise year in which the evolutionary line branched. It's simply absurd to have to explain this.

Some people seem to want things to be black and white and can't help but protest (loudly and incoherently) when it doesn't work out that way.

[Robert Tulip]

Ignoring the troll infestation here, this reminds me of a comment I made this morning on the Anthropocene thread, that humans are different in kind from animals because we have language and they do not.

It is interesting how evolution can somehow cross tipping points such that a difference of degree eventually transforms into a difference of kind. Fish can't talk about philosophy, but humans can. Somewhere along the way, a threshold was crossed, marking the emergence of humanity. But the threshold is so gradual that you cannot say at any one point that the child was human and the parent was not.

We discussed Your Inner Fish here. http://www.booktalk.org/your-inner-fish ... n-f85.html

Great book.

[johnson1010]

Ant, you sound very confused about evolution.

Why don't you write out, briefly, what you think the theory of evolution has to say about the origin of new species and let's see if we can spot where you diverge from what the theory actually has to say about the topic.

[sonoman]

Ignoring the troll infestation here, this reminds me of a comment I made this morning on the Anthropocene thread, that humans are different in kind from animals because we have language and they do not.

The "troll infestation here", are you referring to yourself, Robert? Or is this another in the never ending atheist gang attacks on theists posters? I wish you guys would just grow up and stop the ad hominen attacks on us theists. If you've got gripes against theists, post the gripes but lay off the crappy putdowns, OK?

It is interesting how evolution can somehow cross tipping points such that a difference of degree eventually transforms into a difference of kind. Fish can't talk about philosophy, but humans can. Somewhere along the way, a threshold was crossed, marking the emergence of humanity. But the threshold is so gradual that you cannot say at any one point that the child was human and the parent was not.


Elijah was fed by ravens and most every day I feed ravens on my walks. They talk to each other. They tell each other where I am walking and then they meet up at the spots where I usually feed them. They know my car because when I go to the market a couple of miles away some are there to "talk" to me, crow at me, and they are silent with every one else in the market parking lot. These ravens are smarter than the dogs I've fed on my walks before. I don't think our "human" monopoly on language will hold up as we learn more about animal communication.

We discussed Your Inner Fish here. http://www.booktalk.org/your-inner-fish ... n-f85.html

Great book.

[johnson1010]

Ant:
Then he goes on to say "every person, every animal belonged to the same species as his parent."
He concludes by stating the following:

Quote:
take it back as far as you like - I take it back 185 million years ago and you reveal your 185 million years greats granfather was a fish

Every person and every animal do belong to the same species as their parent, but that is not true of our 1 millionth ancestor. Remember the branching tree diagram. Where any divergence occurs in the branching, everything that shoots off from that node is all part of the same clade, or lineage, up to the point of branching. All the lineages which shoot off become their own thing not involving their sister branches, but they will all forever remain in the same clade up to the point of their divergence.

So imagine a node labeled “tetrapoda” which means a bony skeleton adapted for four extremities. This branches off into a wide variety of animals. Dogs, cats, deer, elephants, apes, dinosaurs, birds, lizards etc… but it also includes whales, dolphins and seals.

There is a very wide variety of animals here and they are indeed different species. They cannot interbreed and the offspring of the lizard is not the same as the offspring of the bird. Dawkins was not saying that all offspring of everything from the node “tetrapoda” would all be the same species, only that each of those diverging branches would have children of the same species, within that lineage, but with slight variation until those variations add up to a different species.

So, you can never evolve out of being a tetrapod, even when you lose your hind legs as the whales did. And the offspring of a set of parents will only be like the parents. In other words, no fish gave birth to a lizard. No lizard gave birth to a snake. Instead small variations add over time until the “ten thousandth” generation would not have been able to breed with the “first” generation (generation numbers are arbitrary and only relatively accurate).

There is some nit-picking we can do with Dawkin’s statement. For instance our ancestor would not be in the same clade as a trout. It was not a “fish” since it lacked many of the definitive characteristics that identify fish (they had lobes instead of the fin you see on fish), but for brevity the word “fish” gives people the rough idea of what to picture in their heads. Fish is really a colloquial word and difficult to assign to a clade, just as the word reptile also is not really appropriate.

“Like saying all things that are grey”

Really? A fish? That's a scientific fact, as he stated in his introduction to the thought experiment?

Where is the fossil evidence for this claim?

The fossil record is the evidence for this claim.

We were taken back 185 million years, stopped at homo erectus as being a parent because "every person every animal belonged to the same species as his parent" and then wound up with a fish.

So the difficulty you encounter is that he didn’t present you with every ancestor in a continuous lineage from modern man back to a single celled organism?

I recommend you check out AronRa’s youtube channel and find the “falsifying phylogeny” playlist as an interesting primer. He sets out in those videos what it is the theory of evolution says should happen, how we could tell if that were incorrect, and how we know that it is not.

"The whole process is incredibly gradual."

Uh., well, duh.., yeah, but what evidence is there that the process was as he stated - regression to a fish?

Literally all research about evolution and cladistics points us to this conclusion, and still further… you have ancestors that looked like flat worms and eventually a single celled organism, and before that, some kind of proto-cell chemical reaction.

Did you not realize this about evolution? Everything springs from a common ancestor. If you trace the lineages back and end up with a “fish” and a plant, you haven’t traced back far enough, because that plant shares a common ancestor with the “fish”.

Are you just going to babble on… by saying it all took millions of years and that it's so slow that we don't have one parent to point to but that it surely in the end points to a fish?

From now on I might start calling “accusing others of the things you are guilty of” “Anting”.

by saying it all took millions of years and that it's so slow that we don't have one parent to point to but that it surely in the end points to a fish?

What don’t you like about the time frames of evolution, and how do you propose we do anything about it?

And again, how do we test this hypothesis to prove it's a scientific fact?

Haha.

This isn't the sharing of scientific facts.

He wasn’t presenting a research paper to peer review. He was explaining evolution through a story that would be easy to comprehend and give people an understandable representation of what it is that the theory is telling them.

This is dressing up biological narrative as fact in the hope of indoctrinating minds that won't question beyond the claim that there was no parent ancestor, no first human being because you can't pin-point when you became and adult in time, and because evolution is a process on a time scale of millions and millions of years, we can nevertheless safely say it's a fact that your 185 million year greats grandfather was a fish.

Directionless tantrum.

But this is a great post because it's so silly.

“Anting.”

[sonoman]

It's an exercise in atheist propaganda and a feeble one at that. It's nothing more than stating the obvious but it obviously does the job of convincing atheist fundies that something important was being said. Every bullet counts in the atheist arsenal against theists, right?

It's hard to pin down you or ant on making any actual arguments, but lets try again. Do you disagree with Dawkins that if you lined up your ancestors, they would show a very gradual shift until you've reached a very primitive species?

If you agree with this non-controversial statement -- which was the sole purpose of this thought experiment, I just thought it was a good way of stating it -- then what are you getting all bent out of shape about? And how can you reconcile this with a unique human soul, which I assume you believe in? When did God put it in?

If you disagree, then you believe in Creationism, yes?

An aside on reincarnation: Souls come with the formation of each individual human being. Souls are unique to each person and cannot be reincarnated into another body because each body has its own unique soul and no two souls can occupy the same body at the same time. If it could happen it would result in what we used to call "possession" but now call "schizophrenia", "multiple personalities", but it's still just one person's mind. The Hindus and all believers in reincarnation have it wrong. Only Spirits are able to move from body to body through time and space. Spirits can appear in different people, e.g. the Spirit of Elijah reappearing in John the Baptist and John and Elijah's Spirit appearing in my work.

As for Darwin's theory of natural selection explaining evolution, yes and no, as to it's overall validity. As most of you know by now I've been into anthropology actually since I was a kid and am thoroughly grounded in Darwin's ideas and have no complaint with them anymore than I do with a lot of scientific theories that are based on a worldview that all things are ultimately "explained" by measurement, measuring this with that to see differences and formulate theories to explain them. Unfortunately, Spirit is not subject to controlled experimentation so science is left with anecdotal reports which science doesn't accept as valid no matter how high the stack of reports go, even 40,000 years worth is not enough to convince atheist science that they might not actually know something other than the accepted atheist fundamentalist mantras. Such as Creationists aren't thinking rationally, which is true of Bible believing Creationists but not at all true of my type of Christian belief in the origin and unfolding of Creation. Yes, "unfolding" as it is like a giant Universal Tree or Tree of Life through time and space that has developed from its Big Bang "seed" beginning and will eventually whither away sucked into its own Black Hole annihilation system that keeps Creation continually going...for those of us within it in our mortal bodies. But it's not at all a "random" purposeless universe. Creation has a definite purpose and while it has all the technical effects of grand illusion down to the very last Higgs-Bosun and further down still to come because no matter where we look Creation will appear what it needs to appear as--for our learning. In other words, it is truly illusion but the only "real" way to know this is either by the extremely rare I've discovered experience of "maya", the world as illusion, or by death itself when our souls move on to that "World to Come". And learn what Creation was put here to teach each and every soul for entry into that World to Come.

[youkrst]

and Elijah's Spirit appearing in my work.

yes i saw his work in "the lord of the rings" and i'm amazed i didn't pick up the similarity before

(sorry sonoman but you do take yourself a bit too seriously at times i think, i'm much worse though)