Theists: What is your stance on evolution?

[HappySkeptic]

Stories about gods and what they do are called Just-so stories or just so stories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story

It just means that it is a story. The only thing you can do is listen to it. There isn't anything to verify.

Just So Stories

I grew up reading these.

[Ferrocyanide]

Stories about gods and what they do are called Just-so stories or just so stories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story

It just means that it is a story. The only thing you can do is listen to it. There isn't anything to verify.

That poster mentioned Ken Ham which is a YEC. Modern science has blown away YEC during the 19 th century. And I think MichaelAngelo was also someone who claimed that the layers you find in the ground, the rocks, is evidence of an ancient Earth but there wasn't a large science community during his time so science doing advance much during his time.

I prefer to think of them as just bad stories. It's clear that they're woefully out of date (stoning people is no longer morally acceptable) and have never seen a marginally competent editor. If there had been dinosaurs in Job it would have been an improvement. Seriously though, Ken Ham and the YEC were what got you? Once he started mentioning dinosaurs in the Bible those fools were just icing on the cake.

I just mentioned Ken Ham since I wanted to keep it short.

I didn’t understand. Which fools?

But who mostly is a believer in Ken Ham, Kent Hovind and TV evangelists like Jim Bakker? It looks to me that they are mostly aging segment of the population. Maybe 60+ y old. They have grown in isolated pockets where new ideas don’t get introduced.
The younger generation has access to the internet. It is likely that at some point, they are going to decide to make up their minds for themselves.
They aren’t going to make up their minds if nobody talks about this stuff.

For example, it is important to understand that in general, people want to do good. For example, people aren’t going to stone their son for the fun of it.
Somehow, primitive humans came up with the idea that nature has spirits (various personalities).
Some of these personalities can get upset and they cause problems for humans, weather problems, disease, famine, etc.
If the question was “Why did I get sick”, “Why did my crop fail”, “Why is my son a lunatik (leprosy)” and so on, the chief priest probably made up some answer that seemed reasonable to him and claimed that you did X which pissed off god #N and he is punishing you now or he is punishing us all.

So, the reasonable thing to do is to stone the guy who is not obeying “god’s law” and the rest might be spared from god’s anger.
Or, their reasoning took the form of let’s sacrifice this guy or that goat to the gods and they’ll be cool with us.
-----------------------------
You can find those notions in judaism and other religions.
Jesus’s death is founded on the same idea:
1. You need to do a sacrifice for your god
2. Jesus’s death wipes away our sins which is just another way of saying that it reduces the anger of the god
3. Blood has to be spilled. Ancient cultures regarded blood as a magical life giving liquid. So, Jesus was a perfect guy and spilling his blood permanently satisfied the god. There is no more need to do a yearly sacrifice of a goat, which possesses less blood magic or something.

[Jehanne]

They are all money-making frauds who have found their niches in the marketplace, and now it is impossible for any of them to abandon not only what they do best, but the only job opportunity that is available to them.

[snowtracks]

Notice the position of the Foramen Magnum (FM). There is no fossil evidence that it moved from the rear to the center; it’s either center or rear. The spiral cord fits through it and fuses into the brain stem. So the spinal cord, brain stem, and the foramen would have to move as a unit.

Would be analogous to disconnecting the car steering wheel shaft from the linkage under the hood and drilling a hole in the center of the bulkhead, then placing the shaft through it, connecting it to the linkage in the original unmoved position. The point is the modification has to be intricately coordinated, can’t be any chafing of the cord against the FM, nor any misalignment to the brain stem which is located just on the inside the skull base.

So where are the fossils? Where are the common ancestor fossils that were the progenitor to the Homo Sapien, and to the Homo Sapien, Sapien? After that’s shown, then show how the FM got to the center location from that of the common ancestor. All we get is rhetoric and hypotheticals; we want skulls.

[The Grand Nudger]

You have your own skull. It drifted in your own lifetime.

[Peebothuhlu]

At work.

So basically Snowtracks wants a link to Aron Ra's videos that explain descent through the phylogenetic tree episodes or his other series focusing on hominid ancestry.

That would seem to be the best place to find the concise and succinct description/explanation.

Cheers.

[The Grand Nudger]

Wouldn't help. The only point of interest for anthropologists here is that the position is taken to be indicative of an upright walking habit. We start out the same way, and it's more accurate to say that the skull grows in proportion around the fm, and, ofc, to house that big ole brain. It should be noted that this does not all happen at once, as a unit, in our own lifetimes - so I'm not sure why there's any expectation of that.

Though it would be interesting to find a complete early human neonate. For comparison. It'd have to be pretty damned well preserved.

[HappySkeptic]

Notice the position of the Foramen Magnum (FM). There is no fossil evidence that it moved from the rear to the center; it’s either center or rear. The spiral cord fits through it and fuses into the brain stem. So the spinal cord, brain stem, and the foramen would have to move as a unit.

Would be analogous to disconnecting the car steering wheel shaft from the linkage under the hood and drilling a hole in the center of the bulkhead, then placing the shaft through it, connecting it to the linkage in the original unmoved position. The point is the modification has to be intricately coordinated, can’t be any chafing of the cord against the FM, nor any misalignment to the brain stem which is located just on the inside the skull base.

So where are the fossils? Where are the common ancestor fossils that were the progenitor to the Homo Sapien, and to the Homo Sapien, Sapien? After that’s shown, then show how the FM got to the center location from that of the common ancestor. All we get is rhetoric and hypotheticals; we want skulls.

This is completely stupid.  If the skull shape changed, the developing embryo would place the spinal cord in the freak'n hole.  It isn't like a set of blueprints, where if one part changes, the rest just don't fit.

[Peebothuhlu]

At work.

Notice the position of the Foramen Magnum (FM). There is no fossil evidence that it moved from the rear to the center; it’s either center or rear. The spiral cord fits through it and fuses into the brain stem. So the spinal cord, brain stem, and the foramen would have to move as a unit.

Would be analogous to disconnecting the car steering wheel shaft from the linkage under the hood and drilling a hole in the center of the bulkhead, then placing the shaft through it, connecting it to the linkage in the original unmoved position. The point is the modification has to be intricately coordinated, can’t be any chafing of the cord against the FM, nor any misalignment to the brain stem which is located just on the inside the skull base.

So where are the fossils? Where are the common ancestor fossils that were the progenitor to the Homo Sapien, and to the Homo Sapien, Sapien? After that’s shown, then show how the FM got to the center location from that of the common ancestor. All we get is rhetoric and hypotheticals; we want skulls.

This is completely stupid.  If the skull shape changed, the developing embryo would place the spinal cord in the freak'n hole.  It isn't like a set of blueprints, where if one part changes, the rest just don't fit.

Also note that Snowtrack's examples are all concurrent animals?

They should have been looking for examples of comparative anatomy through the fossil records at least.

Cheers.

[Jehanne]

Notice the position of the Foramen Magnum (FM). There is no fossil evidence that it moved from the rear to the center; it’s either center or rear. The spiral cord fits through it and fuses into the brain stem. So the spinal cord, brain stem, and the foramen would have to move as a unit.

Would be analogous to disconnecting the car steering wheel shaft from the linkage under the hood and drilling a hole in the center of the bulkhead, then placing the shaft through it, connecting it to the linkage in the original unmoved position. The point is the modification has to be intricately coordinated, can’t be any chafing of the cord against the FM, nor any misalignment to the brain stem which is located just on the inside the skull base.

So where are the fossils? Where are the common ancestor fossils that were the progenitor to the Homo Sapien, and to the Homo Sapien, Sapien? After that’s shown, then show how the FM got to the center location from that of the common ancestor. All we get is rhetoric and hypotheticals; we want skulls.

This is completely stupid.  If the skull shape changed, the developing embryo would place the spinal cord in the freak'n hole.  It isn't like a set of blueprints, where if one part changes, the rest just don't fit.

Maybe this explains, in part, the one-third to one-half rate of spontaneous abortion?