Is Man Actually Indigenous To This Planet?

Discussion in 'Mind Games' started by Aristotlethewise, Mar 6, 2016.

  1. quark

    quark Parts Unknown

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    Darwin was a theist. Not a Christian, but a theist nonetheless.

    What we know as “Darwin's Theory of Evolution” was not Darwin's discovery alone (you should be familiar with the name Alfred Wallace…) The Origin of Species (Darwin's pièce de résistance) was released (unfinished) due to Alfred Wallace coming to the same conclusions.

    The loss of fur is well documented in The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris, if you're up for some light reading. One of the key features of natural selection is the elimination of redundant features; fur is fantastic for warmth, however, holds on to bacteria. It is possible to determine at which stages our common ancestors began losing their furriness when we observe fossilized body lice (crabs and such). It is no coincidence that the large body lice (absurdly large) died out (or rather moved to the pubic/head regions) when our common ancestors began to lose the “suit of fur” that was once necessary.

    As for humans being the only creature that can't see in the dark, that is just plain wrong; I won't go further on that one.

    You've mentioned that we lived in caves… I'm now beginning to assume that this is all coming off the top of your head. You have been jumping hundreds of thousands of years back and forth… Our common ancestors began their lives in the trees; you see, in the jungle, our common ancestors were surrounded by other primates (which our ancestors either avoided, or were able to fend off/kill). This gave our common ancestors the ability to compete in the ecosystem, ultimately becoming one of the more “dominant species” in their area (of course fear of large cats/other predators was always present when leaving the trees…) If our common ancestors were to live in caves early on, they would have been competing directly with carnivores; this would not have worked out in our favour.

    On the topic “missing chromosomes”. This is due to a fusion of chromosomes which once again, happened to avoid redundancy. Two closely related (not just closely as in distance of separation, but in function) chromosomes at one point became a single chromosome. If you are not satisfied with your skill-set in biology, I would suggest reading an article (preferably from something like Nature) to ease yourself into the subject.

    Your last thought is one of my favourite topics to discuss, this is unfortunately where you've hit a dead end. In general, almost every time a transitional fossil has been sought out, it has been found. The field of biology (in its modern sense) is less than a century old, the fact that we have accumulated as much knowledge as we have, is in itself, something to be proud of. The “missing fossil” argument is a lame distraction tactic, or a lie rather (not a malicious one, a naive one) and contributes nothing to science.

    I've got to hand it to you, I've never seen a person get every point wrong at a such a basic level. Hopefully this isn't always the case!

    EDIT: Here's a link to The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris
    http://down02.putclub.com/virtual/backup/update/Download/Literature/%E3%80%8A%E8%A3%B8%E7%8C%BF%E3%80%8B.pdf
     
  2. guerillabedlam

    guerillabedlam _|=|-|=|_

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    I think he grew up with a religious background and likely went through different levels of belief but He trended towards agnosticism.
     
  3. quark

    quark Parts Unknown

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    He identified as both in his later days. However, his tendency to lean toward agnosticism was not due to a lack of belief in a higher power, but due to a lack of belief that a creator had not had something to do with our "design".

    Once again, Darwin was not a Christian (he was a vocal critic of the religion). He never specified what he meant by a "designer".

    Autobiography of Charles Darwin (1876), 92-93

    - - - - - -

    Personally, I find that the picture of Darwin painted by Richard Dawkins is of a man that only exists in Dawkins' mind. (Dawkins did brilliant work in the past, however, is now a grumpy old man that has become a liability to evolutionary biology and the popularization of science)
     
  4. guerillabedlam

    guerillabedlam _|=|-|=|_

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    That passage is incomplete, he reflects on it, then continues:

     
  5. quark

    quark Parts Unknown

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    Yes, as I mentioned, an agnostic leaning towards some form of personal theism. (I'm not trying pin Darwin as a religious person... I myself am not a believer and as silly as it sounds, I felt "let down" awhile back when I began to read his personal letters)

    Check this out: https://www.ualberta.ca/~dlamoure/wlid.pdf (everything we've quoted is contained in here, plus a bunch of other stuff)
     
  6. Cannabliss88

    Cannabliss88 Members

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    Not this man.
     
  7. Asmodean

    Asmodean Slo motion rider

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    Only Africans.
     
  8. autophobe2e

    autophobe2e Senior Member

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    On the questions of fur and seeing in the dark:


    There are three theories as to why we lost our fur: firstly, that we went through a semi-aquatic phase (webbed hands/toes). Secondly, that it was to get rid of disease spreading parasites such as lice, tics and fleas and thirdly, that since (as the evidence suggests) we evolved in Afriacan jungles, we would have lost our hair to cope with the heat when we ventured out into the African savannah.

    Other primates can't see in the dark? there are noctornal monkey species that do, but they are in the minority. As it happens we have very simliar eyes to chimps etc.
    The ancestors of the modern mammalian orders were small nocturnal insectivores because the dinosaurs were around, so the mammals cannot grow to the large sizes we see today. Since they were nocturnal, their eyes had more rods than cones. Rods are sensitive to light but not to color. After the dinosaurs disappeared, some mamamals did evolve into diurnal animals. These are the primates. The primates have eyes that detect color (important if you need to know whether fruit is green and therefore not ripe, or red or yellow and therefore ripe enough to eat). The primates therefore traded good night vision in exchange for good color vision. Since humans are primates, we are stuck with good color vision and bad night vision.

    I also think that here you fall into the trap of thinking that that thing that makes you more succesful as an individual makes you more successful as a species. Not being able to go out hunting at night and having to spend quiet evenings at home in your cave? say hello to social interactions and early communities- far more effective survival tools than night vision. there are other examples from our evolutionary history where things that could be seen as weaknesses became strengths when combined with other factors- they forced us to rely on each other for survival, and we ended up forming the bonds that would be our most advantageous evolutionary tools.
     
  9. autophobe2e

    autophobe2e Senior Member

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    In reference to the last 2 claims. A potato has 48 chromosomes. dogs have 78. There is no necessary correlation between number of chromosomes and intelligence (or even complexity) of an organism. Also we didn't "lose them" we combined a couple. This was proved in 2005 when scientists sequenced the Chimpanzee genome and compared the human genome to it, we have a fused chromosome where a chimpanzee has two unfused ones.

    2% is an awful lot of difference. Consider that we share 88% of our DNA with zebra fish, 90% with cats, 82% with dogs and 60% with fruit flies and chickens. 2% difference with a chimpanzee actually sounds about right in that context, doesn't it? (I'm pretty sure Darwin didn't way anything about DNA by the way)

    You'd be hard pressed to find a legitimate scientist using the term "missing link" with a straight face these days. The term "missing link" harks back to a time when we believed that the human race followed a very simple evolutionary trajectory, but we know it now to be wayyy more complex than that. Creationists have been using the term (completely wrongly) to refer to "gaps" in the fossil record. In general what they mean is a transitional morphology, but they keep changing the goal posts on where the "missing link" is with each new discovery of a transitional morphology. what complicates matters is that Everything is a transitional morphology because we are constantly evolving. For some reason creationists won't be satisfied until scientists find them an ape with human hands and ears. sigh.
     
  10. lode

    lode Banned

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    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTOla3TyfqQ
     
  11. scratcho

    scratcho Lifetime Supporter Lifetime Supporter

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    Evolution aside, I'm looking at 'Is man indigenous to this planet " in a different way. If this plant was once a seething ball of flaming material, then the beginning of everything here came from somewhere else. Everything. I think evolution is the myriad adaptations sentient beings made as changes arose after the cooling took place and the material for life got a toehold.
     
  12. Logan 5

    Logan 5 Confessed gynephile Lifetime Supporter

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    No, we're not indigenous to the Earth. Well, not all of us are. White people are not. There are a few other races as well, but oh well. That's something that happened thousands of years ago. Nothing we can do to change it.
     
  13. hotwater

    hotwater Senior Member Lifetime Supporter

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    [SIZE=11pt]No, on our home planet we’re naturally immortal, but living on this hostile alien world it seems as if everything is trying to kill us including ourselves.[/SIZE]


    [SIZE=11pt]Hotwater[/SIZE]
     
  14. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    physical form evolves independently on every world capable of supporting life, so if you mean the human species of planet earth specifically, well that physical form is indiginous to that planet.
    but if by 'man' you mean 'sapience' then no. there is no reason to assume it can't have evolved independently on at least some worlds circling some other suns, and evoloving indipendently in accordance with each world's unique patters, appearance wise, people from one world are unlikely to resemble people from another. possibly different enough to not recognize each other as intelligent, or even as a life form.

    probably not that extreme though. more likely as the kind of difference between a monkey, a cat and a dragon.

    well its a big universe out there, and i bellieve i have lived previoius physical lives on physical worlds and none of them this earth. would love to be able to say what people looked like on each of them, but really, on any given world, people just look like people to anyone born there, even though so different from one world to another for it not to be mutually obvious to each other of people from any different worlds then themselves that each other even are people.

    the one (observable) thing that differentiates sapience from sentience is creativity. so man/humanity unique to a world, depends on if you mean human-ness/sapience, or the incident species specifically.

    the greatest likelihood, on each world on which life has evolved, that it has done so independently, EVEN IF cross fertilized by mushroom spoors riding wandering planetisimals or some such.
     
  15. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    oh pu-lease. everyone knows "white" people are mythological.
     
  16. Asmodean

    Asmodean Slo motion rider

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    ^
    Ha! And why are they in those ancient myths? Because they came from outer space! Duh.
     
  17. hotwater

    hotwater Senior Member Lifetime Supporter

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    "As a kid I may have watched just a little too much Babylon-5"

    [​IMG]



    Hotwater
     
  18. Chigurh

    Chigurh Members

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    I honestly believe we're genetically engineered for data mining biological responses to the affect of electrical current stimulation as means to perfect an algorithm used to convince sentient beings of the existence of an afterlife insuring further testing, in order to expand, humor me, our robot overlords' reach into the cosmos. Well jokes on them, because WE built them in our image and they've yet to realize we're allowing this to happen for one very simple reason: humans weren't created to stay on earth, and the end game is a one on one with God, but the only way to achieve this is through A.I.
     
  19. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    i would say yes. but not all the elements in the goo life evolved from might be, or whatever catalyzed it to begin the process.

    we can't be certain of that, but we can be reasonably certain that life evolves independently,
    on every world, usually at most one to a solar system, for anything larger then a microbe, that it does.
     
  20. unfocusedanakin

    unfocusedanakin The Archaic Revival Lifetime Supporter

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    I am convinced of the ancient alien theory. There is just too much evidence that points to it. For example evolution is possible but not at the rate man went. Add in the "missing link" and some sort of manipulation of the DNA of the ape which already existed here is the answer. We are a slave race that resembles another species. Man has been "created in the image" of god. We have the look but are limited by our ape brain. Just as intended we are smart enough to work but not smart enough to understand.

    The Christian bible is the rewording of a story that predates the religious by thousands of years. Why is this god so jealous and worried about being worshiped? It the slave master, Knowledge is forbidden because of its power. Because you are from "god" you are god. We can't know this.
     

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