Potentially Big News On The Human Evolution Front

[Amarok]

Considering neither nothing or infinite are only asserted to be impossible by the cult of western theology . I agree

Um no, the idea of a magical forever isn't strictly a western concept.

Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism are full of their own mythology and superstitions. It is a mistake to assume the religions of Abraham have a patent on gap answers.

Eastern Asian religions also have their ideas of pre and post life, just like the Mayans did.

I see our species history worldwide the same way. I see all religions as making the same mistake at the core. The idea that "all this" is some patent created, owned or invented by any single one. All of them claim morality, all of them see their flavors as good. Some depending on individual or sect try to water it down from the word "religion" to the word "philosophy".

I see the universe as far older. I accept it does not give on shit about me or my fellow humans. I hate that far too many, when you say that, think I am being negative. It to me, is the same as knowing a good movie ends, or a good music concert, or a sporting event.

You don't need a magic hero or a religious club to accept that this is it.

Concepts of spirit worship in Asia and even with Natives in the Americas replaces central God/god/s sure, but they still have concepts of evil spirits and worship of ancestors, and even claims of reincarnation and karma, which I find to be just as superfluous. 

Again, there were no written religions of any label 200,000 years ago, much less 4 billion years ago, much less 13.8 billion years ago.

Infinite nor finite conflict to me, when you take magic and super heros out of it. I see nature and the universe as being a fluctuation between off and on. The off and on can be finite, the on can be finite, but the fluctuation between the two states can be infinite. 

What is not required for either is a human like comic book super hero with magical super powers.

No i was saying that the claim that the cosmos can't be infinite or come from nothing is a western apologist idea.

[Catholic_Lady]

Um no, the idea of a magical forever isn't strictly a western concept.

Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism are full of their own mythology and superstitions. It is a mistake to assume the religions of Abraham have a patent on gap answers.

Eastern Asian religions also have their ideas of pre and post life, just like the Mayans did.

I see our species history worldwide the same way. I see all religions as making the same mistake at the core. The idea that "all this" is some patent created, owned or invented by any single one. All of them claim morality, all of them see their flavors as good. Some depending on individual or sect try to water it down from the word "religion" to the word "philosophy".

I see the universe as far older. I accept it does not give on shit about me or my fellow humans. I hate that far too many, when you say that, think I am being negative. It to me, is the same as knowing a good movie ends, or a good music concert, or a sporting event.

You don't need a magic hero or a religious club to accept that this is it.

Concepts of spirit worship in Asia and even with Natives in the Americas replaces central God/god/s sure, but they still have concepts of evil spirits and worship of ancestors, and even claims of reincarnation and karma, which I find to be just as superfluous. 

Again, there were no written religions of any label 200,000 years ago, much less 4 billion years ago, much less 13.8 billion years ago.

Infinite nor finite conflict to me, when you take magic and super heros out of it. I see nature and the universe as being a fluctuation between off and on. The off and on can be finite, the on can be finite, but the fluctuation between the two states can be infinite. 

What is not required for either is a human like comic book super hero with magical super powers.

No i was saying that the claim that the cosmos can't be infinite or come from nothing is a western apologist idea.

I'm not saying they can't. I'm saying there's no proof that they can. 

In the natural, physical world, we have NO proof that anything can either spontaneously materialize from nothing, or that it can be infinite - ie, not have a beginning/origin. In fact, we only have evidence of the opposite - as far as we have gathered, things in the natural, physical world have origins.   

If you choose to believe the cosmos have always existed, or that they materialized from nothing, that's fine and dandy. But there's no proof of it. Also, there's no proof that anything exists outside the natural, physical world (ie, the supernatural).

Regardless of whether a person thinks the former is more likely, or the latter is more likely, there is still no proof of either and the person is making a guess. Personally, I think the latter is more likely because we have already observed that things in nature have origins. I find the likelyhood that we are wrong about that quite low.

[John V]

Fundies will run shrieking for their bibles but that just makes it easier for the adults to talk.

http://www.newsweek.com/archaeology-skul...man-710973

Ancient Hominin Skull From China Suggests Humans Didn't Evolve Just From African Ancestors

“In a real sense we are talking about a multiregional population, connected recurrently by migration and genetic exchanges,” John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison told New Scientist.

And nary a word about Adam and fucking Eve!

Why in the world do you think that yet another change to the human evolution story is a bad thing for creationists?

[Minimalist]

But I still think it's unlikely that the first thing to ever have existed just popped into existence from nothing.

Probably because that is a canard put forward by theists who don't know jack shit about evolution and don't want to learn.

Why in the world do you think that yet another change to the human evolution story is a bad thing for creationists?

All scientific advances are your enemy.  You fear the advance of science as a vampire fears the advance of sunlight!

[John V]

All scientific advances are your enemy.  You fear the advance of science as a vampire fears the advance of sunlight!

Change isn't necessarily an advance.

[Edwardo Piet]

In the natural, physical world, we have NO proof that anything can either spontaneously materialize from nothing, or that it can be infinite - ie, not have a beginning/origin. In fact, we only have evidence of the opposite - as far as we have gathered, things in the natural, physical world have origins.   

IMO it's completely impossible for nothingness to exist and therefore completely impossible for something to come from nothing.

And I don't think there's evidence either way for infinity. True, we only see finite things but that's to be just as expected if the universe is infinite. In an infinite universe finite beings can't detect infinity any more than they can in a finite universe.

[Minimalist]

All scientific advances are your enemy.  You fear the advance of science as a vampire fears the advance of sunlight!

Change isn't necessarily an advance.

Tell that to the fucking pope.

[AFTT47]

In the natural, physical world, we have NO proof that anything can either spontaneously materialize from nothing, or that it can be infinite - ie, not have a beginning/origin. In fact, we only have evidence of the opposite - as far as we have gathered, things in the natural, physical world have origins. 

To get our terms correct, what you have said is true of the universe we live in. It might not be true (probably wouldn't be true) of what's outside it. It is a mistake to think of something outside the universe (assuming it exists) as not part of nature though. It is simply a part we may never be able to access but there would be nothing magical about it.

Further complicating things is that the idea of multiple universes (once a fringe idea) has gone mainstream. Each of those other universes could have its own laws of physics. I don't know what you would call the realm in which all these universes exist but it certainly wouldn't be bound by the physical laws we are used to. This is still speculative stuff but following on the things we do know about the cosmos is leading some physicists there. Like I said, still speculative but much further grounded than the idea of a timeless, supreme being. There is absolutely nothing bolstering that idea.

[Catholic_Lady]

In the natural, physical world, we have NO proof that anything can either spontaneously materialize from nothing, or that it can be infinite - ie, not have a beginning/origin. In fact, we only have evidence of the opposite - as far as we have gathered, things in the natural, physical world have origins. 

To get our terms correct, what you have said is true of the universe we live in. It might not be true (probably wouldn't be true) of what's outside it. It is a mistake to think of something outside the universe (assuming it exists) as not part of nature though. It is simply a part we may never be able to access but there would be nothing magical about it.

Further complicating things is that the idea of multiple universes (once a fringe idea) has gone mainstream. Each of those other universes could have its own laws of physics. I don't know what you would call the realm in which all these universes exist but it certainly wouldn't be bound by the physical laws we are used to. This is still speculative stuff but following on the things we do know about the cosmos is leading some physicists there. Like I said, still speculative but much further grounded than the idea of a timeless, supreme being. There is absolutely nothing bolstering that idea.

There is 0 proof that there's anything outside this universe in the first place. Much less that there is another universe where the physical laws would be different, and that this universe spawned from it.     

Don't you see what I'm saying? 

Maybe there's a different universe not bound by physical laws, and that's where this one somehow spawned from... maybe there's an actual entity not bound by physical laws that set this all into motion. There's no proof for either, and whichever way you go, you're taking your best guess.

[Minimalist]

There has been a long-standing disagreement between the Out-of-Africa club and the Multi-Regional Club.

Out-of-Africa should be fairly obvious.  Multiregionalism is The hypothesis that humans first arose near the beginning of the Pleistocene, two million years ago, and subsequent human evolution has been within a single, continuous human species.

Homo Erectus, with specimens found at Dmanisi in modern Georgia, is a prime candidate. 

In essence what it says is that WE are Homo Erectus but that we have evolved from that common ancestor into what we are today.  It has already been demonstrated that the supposedly separate species HNS and HSS did interbreed in Europe.  As late as 2007 the OOA group was still insisting that no interbreeding occurred and then in 2010 the Neanderthal Genome project released their results.