Simplify Evolution

[A_Nony_Mouse]

Cute but ... Creationists are the ones who use the evolved from apes phrasing to mean modern apes. One has to address the invented misstatements not encourage them.

This is not just cute. It puts the question into meaningful context.

Fundamentally, even all but the most obtuse creationist must recognize that in principled it doesnn't matter whether the ape is modern. What matters in principle is "what is an ape".

There can be little scientific meaning in arbitrarily naming some characteristics as defining traits for determining what is an ape, and say if something had this but not that then it's an ape. Instead scientific system of classification traces and classifies according to the origin of derived traits in different species. You classify something by how they are related as revealed what sort of traits the animals in question has that clearly had common recent origins.

As it turns out, both modern anatomical evidence and fossil evidence shos that humans and modern ape belong to the same monophyletic group. That is to say any group which is defined by all the shared derived traits between modern apes and humans must also include the first animal in which these same share derived traits first arose.

If humans and apes evolved from a common ancester, but that ancester did not have all the traits which apes and humans share, them humans and apes would belong to a polyphyletic group. Fossils evidence suggests this is not the case.

So it is not just semantics. It goes to the nature of "what is an great ape".

Yes, yes, yes but ...

We had a question from a guy who may have lost some nooky for disagreement on this subject. He asked to simplify it, see OP and title of this thread. We do not help the man get laid by needlessly complicating the discussion.

That is particularly true when our entire quibble is over semantics. We do not disagree on the subject. We do disagree way to express it. Believe me, as a physicist I cringe at many of the statements in A Short History of Time yet I not attempt to explain why I cringe save in a forum where all the participants said they cringed too.

[Rev. Rye]

Try this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdocQHsPCNM

[paulpablo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivkQoCuws60

Evolution is just basically

Bacteria--fish--mermaid--man

[Anomalocaris]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivkQoCuws60

Evolution is just basically

Bacteria--fish--mermaid--man

So where did bacteria come from?


Huh?


It is clearly

creationist -> mud -> slimy mud ->abiogenesis -> bacteria -> Christians who believe in directed evolution -> fish -> Mermaids -> the missing link -> the flintstones -> man.

[Minimalist]

Humans are classified in the sub-group of primates known as the Great Apes.

It seems to me that the theists should be classified as merely Mediocre Apes.

[Anomalocaris]

Humans are classified in the sub-group of primates known as the Great Apes.

It seems to me that the theists should be classified as merely Mediocre Apes.

No. Unlike apes, the Theists form a polyphyletic group - an artificial group uniting a hodge podge of independently derived stupidities that, through convergent evolution, came to resemble each other to a superficial observer, and furthermore fail to include some otherwise similar stupidities like aliens and UFOs.

In this sense, theists are more like traditional concept of reptiles, which is also artificial grouping that unite some independently derive but similar look traits, while arbitrarily excluding others.



Damn, I should write a paper on cladistic approach to classifying theists.

[Fruity]

This is stupid. We did not evolve from apes, morons. That's ridiculous because they're hairy, and, well, some of us aren't.

A God who existed since forever, made an imperfect servant that would later become Satan, created a perpetual torture chamber to throw evil doers in, then wave a fruit in his creation's face only to prohibit it, if not throw them in the chamber, but is really love for all, who killed all life in a great flood except for a few in a huge boat, kind of like the giant fish that swallowed one of his creations then spit it out once he apologized... makes more sense to me. Duh.

[downbeatplumb]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xat1GVnl8-k

[A_Nony_Mouse]

Evolution is just basically

Bacteria--fish--mermaid--man

So where did bacteria come from?

Mermaid feces.

---

This is stupid. We did not evolve from apes, morons. That's ridiculous because they're hairy, and, well, some of us aren't.

Besides, who ever heard of a hairy mermaid?

[The Grand Nudger]

"Descent with modification" there you go, three words, that's as simple as it gets, and is accurate in every particular. You'll never lack for examples of it. Nothing else is required. Presumably you both have a mother and father - and you are at least auditioning to be so yourselves. You are, again presumably, different from your mother and father in some way - and would expect the same of any future progeny the two of you might have. That's it, that's all there is to it.

In this context, you have cousins (more closely related to your mother and father respectively -depending upon which side they fall- than they are to you) and so do humans as a species. An LCA is, essentially and accurately, you and your cousins grandparents. You may be a Johnson (your father), your cousin may be a Smith (his father) - but you are both Howards (your shared grandfather). There's really nothing spectacular about this in principle.

(I've always been tickled by the idea of "species" and all of the other rungs up the ladder as eing frozen in time. Perhaps they may be so, a little, for dead-ended branches of the bush, but if we're going to continue using this system we will have to keep adding rungs to the "bottom" of the ladder. For every "Smith" and "Johnson" in the world today there will one day be a "Clark" and "Hennessy" beneath/above them on their family tree)