…and this is a 
Since I wrote about the wacky creationist who couldn't wrap his mind around the idea that plants and animals are related, and since I generally do a poor job of discussing that important kingdom of the plants (I admit it, I'm a metazoan bigot…but I do try to overcome my biases), I thought I'd briefly mention an older review by Elliot Meyerowitz that compares developmental processes in plants and animals. The main message is that developmental processes, the mechanisms that assemble the multicellular whole, are very different in the two groups and are non-homologous, but don't get confused: the basic cellular processes are homologous, and there's no doubt that we are related. The emphasis in this paper, though, is the evidence that plants and animals independently evolved multicellular developmental strategies. There is some convergence, but the tools in the toolbox are different.
First, here is a basic overview of the evolutionary history of these two groups.
Notice that we're talking about events in deep time here: we eukaryotes (organisms with a true cell nucleus) evolved as single-celled animals 2.7 billion years ago, and we only know this because we find smears of characteristic hydrocarbons in the rocks of that age. The last common ancestor of plants and animals is estimated from molecular clock data to have lived 1.6 billion years ago — that's a very long time ago. It's hard to get the concept of that huge amount of time across to people, but look at the relative amounts of time: complex, multicellular animals evolved a bit more than 0.5 billion years ago, and all of the macroscopically large animal diversity we see now evolved since then; but there's a period twice as long as that before arthropods and molluscs developed hard shells in which change was percolating in single-celled eukaryotes, laying the foundation for the current differences between orange trees and cats.
But wait…what was the plant-animal common ancestor like? Was it a single-celled organism, or did it have a more complex multicellular organization? Meyerowitz catalogs the different molecular tools that plants and animals use in development, and concludes that development evolved completely independently in the two, with a few hints of some shared elements that tell us a bit about the genetic heritage we have received from that mysterious Proterozoic cell.
Meyerowitz summarizes a few broad categories of similarities and differences in plant and animal development.
Pattern formation: Pattern formation is a very wide assortment of developmental processes that define regions of an embryo — the events that put a head on one end and a tail on the other, or a flower above ground and roots below ground, are examples of pattern formation. In animals, the classic example of pattern forming genes are the Hox genes, which establish regional specifications in the early embryo. Plants have similar genes, the MADS box genes, that also set out overlapping regional identities in the growing plant — but MADS boxes and Hox genes are not homologous. Animals have MADS box genes, but don't use them in pattern formation; plants have Hox genes, but also don't use them in pattern formation. This suggests that the last common ancestor of plants and animals was single-celled or at best colonial, and lacked any differently developed regions; when regional specialization evolved later in each lineage, different sets of transcription factors were arbitrarily used for the job.
Another example is dorsoventral specification. We know quite a bit about how that axis is defined in animals, and it's an elaborate process involving a TGF-α-family protein, an EGF receptor, a receptor tyrosine kinase, a Ras activated cascade, etc. Trust me, it's detailed, and to developmental biologists with a metazoan bias, like me, the components are all familiar friends. Plants have a similar task, setting up the adaxial-abaxial axis (you've certainly noticed that the top and bottom sides of leaves are different), but the molecules involved are completely different, and plants lack homologs of many of them altogether. Instead, plants use REVOLUTA/PHABULOSA/PHAVOLUTA receptors and REV/PHAB/PHAV homeobox proteins, KANADI genes, and the YABBY family of transcription factors. It's a whole new language as far as I'm concerned, but fascinating — plants use a similar logic to animals, but the pieces are alien to me.
Chromatin processes: Another critical step in development is the maintenance of a pattern. After pattern formation initializes the organization, cells in the embryo that descend from an early cell with a particular identity have to maintain that specification; development is a strongly hierarchical process. There are gene products that maintain the pattern of activators and repressors of gene activity and that are inherited by daughter cells in mitosis. In flies, for example, there is a gene called Enhancer of zeste, E(z), that helps lock in expression of some of the Hox genes. Plants have similar genes, and in some cases at least, they've been found to be homologous. Arabidopsis has a gene called CURLY LEAF (CLF) that is an E(z) homolog, and there are other chromatin-regulatory proteins that are found in both plants and animals. CLF and E(z) are clearly related genes, and they carry out similar functions in the regulatory logic, but note that while E(z) regulates a Hox gene, CLF regulates a MADS box gene.
Cell:cell signaling: During development, cells must communicate with each other, and they do so with molecules, ligands and receptors, that can activate signal transduction cascades inside the cell that lead to changes in metabolic activity or gene regulation. In animals, one common and important family of cell signaling receptors are the receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs). A kinase is an enzyme that phosphorylates other proteins, attaching a phosphate group to certain amino acids. A tyrosine kinase is one that phosphorylates tyrosines. Plants don't have any RTKs at all — they are unique to the animal (well, opisthokont) lineage. Plants certainly do have receptor kinases, and carry out cell signaling quite well, but are more likely to use a receptor serine/threonine kinase. Again, we find similar logic carried out by nonhomologous components.
Another example are the familiar steroid hormones. Both plants and animals use steroid signaling, but animals receive that signal in each cell via members of the nuclear hormone receptor family, while plants use a receptor kinase. Steroid synthesis is common to both lineages, but each has its own way of using it as a signal.
Horizontal transfer: Don't get the impression that animals have all the cool, unique, new stuff, though — that isn't true. Plants also have their own unique flavors of proteins for which we animals have no homolog. One example are the families of ethylene receptors, a chemical plants use as a signal. These receptors resemble bacterial two-component receptors, and are thought to have aisen by horizontal transfer from cyanobacteria. This transfer event probably occurred after the divergence of plants and animals, so we missed out.
Another example are the phytochromes, red and far-red light receptors that are similarly related to bacterial two-component receptors. We have nothing similar. What's particularly interesting about these is that in cyanobacteria, they act as histidine kinases, but in plants, they fit into the more common plant pathways by working as serine/threonine kinases. While horizontal transfer may be a common phenomenon, retention and expansion of such genes shuffled across species also requires some modification to incorporate them into a functional pathway.
The bottom line is that plants and animals clearly arose from a common ancestor, almost certainly single-celled, and that they've evolved the processes that allow cells to cooperate and communicate and assemble into complex, elaborate entities with tissues and organs nearly completely independently. We don't need to go to Mars or Betelgeuse to find aliens, they're living side-by-side right here on planet Earth. Most importantly, if evo-devo wants to find truly general, universal principles of multicellular development, we can't get too fixated on gene identities in metazoans (and especially not on the specifics of development in one beastie, Drosophila melanogaster) — we have to throw a wider phyletic net and distill out a bigger picture of the mechanisms involved. The important focus should be on developmental logic, rather than developmental details.
Meyerowitz EM (2002) Plants Compared to Animals: The Broadest Comparative Study of Development. Science 295(5559):1482-1485.
Life Science
Comments
Posted by: Holydust | February 17, 2008 11:59 AM
hoohoo. best way to spend a sunday -- biology lesson. :D I'm not being sarcastic. serious. that's sad, isn't it? :'D
Posted by: raatrani | February 17, 2008 12:11 PM
I agree. The more I learn about the world, and the organisms in it, the greater is my wonder at the very nature of existence. I'm really baffled by the insistence of religious dogma that, as humans, it is somehow beneath our dignity to be related to, and associated with, animals.
Posted by: tsig | February 17, 2008 12:17 PM
I could only live up to the dignity of my cat.
Posted by: danley | February 17, 2008 12:21 PM
Pomegranates for Christ.
Posted by: Matt | February 17, 2008 12:21 PM
Holydust: Ha! I completely agree. When the new addition of "Biology" came out and the 6th edition dropped to less than $20 on amazon, guess who was one of the first to pick it up?
I've got a fort of books on biology and physics right now, keeping out the religious heebie-jeebies.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | February 17, 2008 12:25 PM
Fascinating post! I don't know how a physics geek like me could keep up with biology if it weren't for Pharyngula and its fellows. It's unfortunate that these posts seem to attract less discussion than the straight-up creationist bashing — harder for people to think of things to say, I guess, other than "Jebus, 1.6 billion years is a long time!"
(And Jebus, 1.6 billion years is a long time!)
If I might continue in the tradition of using and abusing analogies to computers, it sounds like PZ is advocating an approach which looks at developmental rules coded in a high-level language; plants and animals "compile" that code to the "machine language" of particular genes in different ways.
Well, we know where PZ stands on the usefulness of evo-devo, so I guess we're just waiting for his statement on multilevel selection — betcha that'll spark some discussion. . . .
Posted by: negentropyeater | February 17, 2008 12:30 PM
"This suggests that the last common ancestor of plants and animals was single-celled or at best colonial, and lacked any differently developed regions; when regional specialization evolved later in each lineage, different sets of transcription factors were arbitrarily used for the job."
Something I still don't understand ; that single celled common ancestor must have had a very short genome. How does one explain that it grew in size, added more base pairs and enabled the evolution of different regional spezializations ?
Posted by: spurge | February 17, 2008 12:36 PM
"Something I still don't understand ; that single celled common ancestor must have had a very short genome."
Why must the common ancestor have had a short genome?
Were they not evolving for a billion years before the split?
Posted by: Physicalist | February 17, 2008 12:36 PM
@ #2: Their problem (or part of it) is that they're so focused on their fairy tales and magic lands that they're happy to ignore the truly wonderful nature of the actual world. Sad.
Great post, PZ. Thanks for the learnin'.
Posted by: Dee | February 17, 2008 12:45 PM
Nice way to spend a Sunday morning. Brisk walk in the cold sunshine and back to a cool biology lesson. Thanks for these, I really enjoy them. I haven't had biology since junior high or high school, and yes that means it's been so long ago that I can't remember anymore. It's a lot more interesting than I remember. Keep 'em coming.
One question - looking at the chart, does this mean plants have mitchondria as well as chloroplasts?
Posted by: alias Ernest Major | February 17, 2008 12:49 PM
Re #6 - the assumption that the common ancestor of plants and animals had a short genome is not obviously true; the size of the genomes of organisms is not well correlated (this is known as the C-value paradox) with complexity (with caveats as to the problems in defining a measure of organismal complexity) - for example certain amoebae are notorious for their large genomes.
One living single-celled eukaryate (a dinoflagellate) has more cell types than some animals.
There are processes which increase genome size; polyploidy (which doubles genome size in a short period of time) may be the most important.
Posted by: windy | February 17, 2008 1:02 PM
"Two groups"? Fungi don't get respect...
Posted by: The Science Pundit | February 17, 2008 1:04 PM
Great post PZ! It complements the Neil Shubin book I'm reading quite well. Back to Your Inner Fish for me.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | February 17, 2008 1:08 PM
Dee:
Yep!
Posted by: Dan | February 17, 2008 1:20 PM
negentropyeater asks (#6)
"Something I still don't understand ... How does one explain that [the genome] grew in size, added more base pairs and enabled the evolution of different regional spezializations?"
Gene duplication
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/293/5535/1551a
Posted by: Dee | February 17, 2008 1:22 PM
Thanks for the link, Blake. I must not have been paying attention that day in class. All these years I thought plants had chloroplasts instead of mitochondria.
Another chance to display my ignorance (and I hope you don't mind; I'm supposed to be working and it's easier to ask than read the book you linked to) - but don't these two play the same kind of role in the cell? Mitochondria uses oxygen to react with ATP to make chemical energy available to the cell, and chloroplasts use photons to do something similar? Or is the role of mitochondria modified in plants?
Cool.
Posted by: andy | February 17, 2008 1:23 PM
Where do fungi branch off on that diagram, before or after the plant/animal split?
Posted by: Paul Burnett | February 17, 2008 1:25 PM
"alias Ernest Major" posted (#10): "There are processes which increase genome size; polyploidy (which doubles genome size in a short period of time) may be the most important."
Diploidy "doubles genome size" - polyloidy is just "many" - there's triploidy, tetraploidy, pentaploidy, hexaploidy...
Yeah, thanks for the lesson, PZ. Question: If the subject predates the split between prokaryotes and eukarotes, is it a biology lesson or a botany lesson?
Posted by: PZ Myers | February 17, 2008 1:37 PM
Fungi and animals split later, and animals and choanoflagellates later still. (Be patient, I'm working on another post about these recent papers on the choanoflagellate genome that were recently published -- evolution of multicellularity must be my theme this week!)
Posted by: dzho | February 17, 2008 1:38 PM
Gawd, I feel so old: Back in the 70s when I studied botany, did anybody know anything? At the library today I'm gonna look for a basic biology textbook. Should be like exploring a whole new world. Thanks, PZ.
Posted by: Beth B. | February 17, 2008 1:43 PM
Fascinating post! I hadn't realized eukaryotic cells are so ancient -- that 2.7ish time window around the end of the Archean eon must have been a happening time in earth history. Photosynthesis is thought to have evolved at around the same time or slightly later.
Posted by: Jim Thomerson | February 17, 2008 1:45 PM
Does anyone know why flowering plants have double fertilization? Maybe this is one the ID folks could work on.
Posted by: Chris | February 17, 2008 1:46 PM
Andy (#16): "Where do fungi branch off on that diagram, before or after the plant/animal split?"
Fungi branch off after the plant animal split. If fungi were included in the above tree, they would split from the red branch that shows animals as an extant group. The fungi and animals are thus sister groups.
http://www.tolweb.org/Eukaryotes
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/90/24/11558.pdf
Posted by: Ned in Zurich | February 17, 2008 1:48 PM
Somehow this reminds me of something I read not too long ago: Two types of bacteria were said to be less closely related to one another than humans are to potatoes. A very striking analogy. Unfortunately I can't remember what the bacterial strains were.
Ned
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | February 17, 2008 1:53 PM
What happened to the 2.1 Ga old fossils of multicellular red algae? Did they get radically reinterpreted? And aren't the 2.7 Ga old chemofossils dinosteranes, something that only dinoflagellates produce? (The dinoflagellates are nested deep inside a large tree, so most of eukaryote diversity must have been present when the first dinoflagellates appeared.)
The horizontal transfer from cyanobacteria -- is there any evidence that this didn't happen at the same time as the origin of chloroplasts?
Not at all, why?
Yes, but chloroplasts work only when and where the sun shines. The stem and roots (and the epidermis) have no choice but to breathe, and at night the whole plant does so.
This is the whole point of making sugar in the chloroplasts.
Long after. Fungi and animals are very close relatives. (Together they are called Opisthokonta because they -- originally -- have a single cilium that inserts at the back end of the cell.)
Posted by: KM | February 17, 2008 1:56 PM
PZ:
I always enjoy your posts calling out Creationists but this bit 'o biology was refreshing. Thanks for a great and fascinating post.
Posted by: thalarctos | February 17, 2008 1:59 PM
This quote would be the icing on the cake for the paper I'm currently revising. Do you mind if I use it, PZ?
Posted by: thalarctos | February 17, 2008 2:01 PM
PS, PZ (heh!)--if you want to see a draft before you answer my previous question, that can certainly be arranged.
Posted by: Bing McGhandi | February 17, 2008 2:02 PM
I don't know if anyone else feels the same way, but the simplicity and elegance of evolutionary theory, as well as the complexity it gives rise to, not only satisfies the rational part of my mind, but also tickles my aesthetic sense.
Because evolution has such inherent aesthetic appeal, I wonder how often artists have been able to make use of it. What occurs to me first is Bruce Sterling's short story "Swarm," which you should read. Vonnegut's Galapagos also comes to mind. In an oblique sort of way, cyberpunk and posthuman fiction deal with the possiblities of human evolution. Any others?
HJ
Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM | February 17, 2008 2:03 PM
I took this post and ran it through
A New-Age Verbiage Filter--
Resulting in conclusions which
Are just a bit off-kilter.
It seems you've given evidence
For many a woo-woo notion,
And I predict the following
Will soon be set in motion:
If just two billion years ago,
In some primordial goo,
We shared a common ancestor
Then plants have feelings too!
And surely you have proved beyond
A shadow of a doubt
That houseplants are much happier
When folks don't scream or shout.
Indeed, the information that
This science paper cites
Becomes a legal argument
That plants have civil rights!
The converse, also, must be true
That deep inside, we're plants,
And we can photosynthesize
In meditative trance!
If just two billion years ago
The plants and we were one
It's proof that man can live while
Eating only air and sun.
Of course, since none of this is true
No matter our desires--
The scientists are clearly wrong
And all a bunch of liars.
http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2008/02/science-through-new-age-filter.html
Posted by: Sili | February 17, 2008 3:03 PM
What's with all this Science?!
I come here for the snarky relidiot-bashing. Not this hoiti-toiti biology.
(Sorry - it had to be said.)
Posted by: Malky | February 17, 2008 3:17 PM
A good analogy of the difference in time is that 1m seconds is @ 11.6 days but 1bn seconds is @ 31.7 years
Posted by: HP | February 17, 2008 3:43 PM
Great post, and it leaves me wanting more.
I generally do a poor job of discussing that important kingdom of the plants
So that reminds me: When, oh, when is the ScienceBlogs hive mind going to assimilate a plant biologist?
Posted by: Ron | February 17, 2008 4:05 PM
Dee-
Mitochondria rip carbon skeletons apart and use some of the energy of the bonds to build a hydrogen ion gradient across the inner mitochondrial membrane. That's right, inner membrane; mitochondria have two membranes! The hydrogen ion gradient is built using an electron transport chain found in the inner membrane. The energy in the hydrogen ion gradient is used to produce ATP. This process requires molecular oxygen to stick the electrons on at the end of the electron transport chain, and results in water being produced.
Chloroplasts build carbon skeletons up using the carbon in carbon dioxide to generate a three-carbon sugar (which you can stick together to make glucose if you want) using some similar processes. Light energy is "captured" by pigment molecules and the energy is used to build a proton gradient across a membrane using an electron transport chain. In this case, electrons are pulled from water at the start and oxygen is produced as a "waste" product. This all takes place in a membrane (the thylakoid membrane) that is found inside the inner and outer chloroplast membranes. The process does generate ATP, but the ATP is used in the chloroplast to help build the carbon skeletons.
So the two organelles use some very similar processes to do almost exactly opposite things. :-)
Jim-
Why do plants have double fertilization? People are still arguing about why, but the result is the production of a triploid endosperm. In some plants (mainly monocots), the endosperm persists and is used as a nutrient source for the germinating seedling. In other plants (mainly dicots), the endosperm is transient, and the reserves are moved to the cotyledons. We, of course, take advantage of this storage process to feed ourselves and our animals. A good example of endosperm that most of us have seen is the big fluffy part of popcorn.
Posted by: Dee | February 17, 2008 4:44 PM
re #34
Taking a short break from a paper I don't really want to write, and I find #34. It's a pleasure to read your response, Jim, thanks for the time.
So does the mitchondiral double membrane(sounds like chloroplasts have them too, and for the same reason?) have any thing to do with the fact that they used to be free bacteria?
This thread isn't making it any easier for me to get my damn work done, you know.
Posted by: Sam | February 17, 2008 4:46 PM
Thanks for the fascinating post PZ! I never thought I'd be reading about pattern formation, chromatin processes, cell:cell signaling and horizontal transfer today! I always learn something new at this blog which keeps me coming back.
Posted by: truth machine | February 17, 2008 4:46 PM
@Cuttlefish
Fucking genius. I hate you for making me feel puny.
Posted by: harley gee | February 17, 2008 4:52 PM
Nobody covers this area as well as Dawkins does with 'Ancestors Tale'. It is elegant and it is authoritative and it is one of the best books I have ever read.
Posted by: Nick Kanellos | February 17, 2008 5:12 PM
Thanks PZ.
Did you say you'd be blogging on the evolution of multi-celled organisms. I'd love a post on the transition from single celled organisms to multi-celled ones. Just hypothesizing here, not being a biologist, but could it be that colonies of single celled organisms developed sub-colonies with their own areas of specialization? What would have been the mechanisms of differenation back then?
Very interesting stuff. Thanks again. I love these Sciencey posts (but the snarky creationist-bashing ones are great too!!!)
Posted by: Ron | February 17, 2008 5:14 PM
Dee-
It's Ron, actually, but that's okay. From what I remember, the outer membrane of mitochondria is thought to have been derived from the membrane surrounding the critter as it was endocytosed (so from the "host" organism) and the inner membrane is the critter's membrane. It's been a long time since I read the literature on this so the viewpoint may have changed. I don't have a clear recollection of how the three membranes of plastids got there, and I can't remember if some photosynthetic bacteria have elaborations of their plasma membrane. Time to go back and do some reading.
Posted by: kc | February 17, 2008 5:22 PM
Paul (#18)
Well, diploidy isn't quite just the lowest level of polyploidy, because the "diploid" number of chromosomes is that which gets divided at meiosis in a eukaryote into "haploid" gametes/spores, etc. You can have a (allo)tetraploid with a diploid number of, say, 24 chromosomes, which come from two parental lines (say 11+13). It's still a polyploid (tetraploid), but also a functioning (meiotically) diploid at the same time. It can get real messy with various types of polyploids, aneuploids, etc., but it's really a fascinating area (especially in plants!)
Posted by: Dee | February 17, 2008 5:49 PM
Oops, sorry Ron. I know I'm bad with names, but that's really bad. I've been staring at a computer screen all day, so my eyes are pretty crossed. But thanks!
Posted by: negentropyeater | February 17, 2008 6:11 PM
DELIRIUM ON
DELIRIUM OFF
(sorry for the very sudden attack)
Posted by: negentropyeater | February 17, 2008 6:12 PM
DELIRIUM ON
- Ah these evil scientists who need billions of years to explain how everything was made, when it took God only seven days. They want to make us believe that if you left a bucket of dirt outside in your backyard, after some billions of years, it 'd transform itself, without any miracle, into cabbages, ceiling wax and kings. Do they think we're stupid or what ? No wonder with this kind of beliefs, we're all gonna become communist embryo eating homosexuals !
DELIRIUM OFF
(sorry for the very sudden attack)
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | February 17, 2008 8:26 PM
The thylakoids are simply budded-off infoldings of the inner membrane. The inner membrane, like that of mitochondria (which also has lots of infoldings), is the chloroplast's own membrane, and the outer one ultimately results from the endocytosis event that led to the origin of chloroplasts.
The chloroplasts of the glaucophytes, called cyanelles, have a bacterial cell wall in the expected place: between the two membranes.
Posted by: Nomen Nescio | February 17, 2008 8:42 PM
re. #11:
er, how's a single-celled organism have more than one cell type? i don't get it.
Posted by: windy | February 17, 2008 9:01 PM
"how's a single-celled organism have more than one cell type?"
How could Liz Taylor have seven husbands? :)
Posted by: JohnnieCanuck, FCD | February 17, 2008 9:25 PM
I think he may have phrased it like that on purpose, Nomen.
Sort of an answer begging for your question.
Posted by: foxfire | February 17, 2008 10:32 PM
PZ, thank you so much for this article - and thanks to the folks posting comments too. The links, additional information, thoughts and comments are wonderful.
To Holydust @ #1: Today is my 57th birthday and I feel the same (except did go to a dynamite brunch and Sagan's Cosmos is now mine, plus some really awesome fish-art!)
To Matt @ #5: Oh wow! You too? Cool! Unfortunately, age takes its toll and it's annoying that learning takes longer nowdays.
To Ron @ #34: Thank you for yet another perspective of what I'm learning - that is a really cool and thanks to Dee for asking.
And then there is Cuttlefish:
Delightful rhymer,
science love showing,
faces ID whiner
by poem-ing with knowing.
Be it YEC* or ID
they can have no hopes,
as science and C-Fish
reveal they are dopes
Delightful writer,
clever and true;
making threads brighter,
we really like you!
* YEC - pronounced like Heck, but with Y instead of a H.
Posted by: Monado, FCD | February 17, 2008 11:25 PM
If you want a good basic biology book online, here's Miller and Levine's Biology, also called "the Dragonfly book" (the one recommended for teachng actual science in Dover, Pennsylvania).
Evolutionary theory has advanced so much since I took Bio. in university that I think I'd start there.
Posted by: ColinB | February 17, 2008 11:31 PM
Ok, so finding my biological knowledge a bit stretched, I had to look up the word - opisthokont. My google search took me to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opisthokont) where to my surprise the topic was labelled "controversial"?
What gives - is there a serious scientific controversy or has some fundy simply complained about grouping animals with fungi?
Posted by: Alan Kellogg | February 18, 2008 12:54 AM
From what I've seen it would appear that a that a plant/animal split is an oversimplification. The actual sequence was probably more like...
Algae arise from protists incorporating cyano bacteria. Plants will later evolve from algae in the transition to the land.
Slime molds arise from a different protist group. This event will occur twice more. Of these three groups one might be the ancestor of fungi and animals, or those two might have arisen from different slime mold kingdoms.
Then you get into phyta and phyla, which gets complicated. Then add in red plants, which are descended from red algae and so form a phytic kingdom all their own. Making matters even murkier you have viral lateral transference, bacterial lateral transference, and even (maybe) eurkaryotic lateral transference of DNA. We may have gotten the gene for creativity from an African shrub who used it to regulate cell communication.
Think of biology as a soap opera murder mystery with 50 years of backstory, missing film and video, and no organization to the records other than what one can devise for one's self.
Posted by: DrFrank | February 18, 2008 3:33 AM
Great post, PZ - it's corrected a couple of misconceptions I had about plant/animal relatedness, which isn't something I'd really read about :)
Posted by: zer0 | February 18, 2008 11:36 AM
I thoroughly enjoyed the post PZ and hope you find the time to do posts like these more often. You explain things very well, it's almost as if you know this stuff ;)
Cuttlefish, great poem. Always a pleasure.
Posted by: DrA | February 18, 2008 3:16 PM
RE: Jim Tomerson's question "Does anyone know why flowering plants have double fertilization? Maybe this is one the ID folks could work on. "
As mentioned above, the 2nd fertilization makes endosperm, both diploid (in basal lineages of flowering plants) and triploid (2n) in the rest. It functions in nutrition of the embryo, and when the embryo is large (one strategy, and not all dicots do this, and dicots aren't a group anymore anyways) the endosperm is totally absorbed. But that doesn't answer why make endosperm?
In all other land plants, including the other seed plants, the embryo (diploid organism) grows within and receives nutrition from the maternal parent (a haploid organism), so it has been proposed that there is an genetic compatibility advantage to endosperm which is a genetic twin to the embryo. Great idea, but no real proof.
However the production of endosperm has one fairly clear reproductuve advantage. Flowering plants do not start packing food reserves into a seed until after a successful fertilization produces an embryo, whereas in other seed plants, the gymnosperms, a fairly large female gametophyte with food reserves had to reach maturity before fertilization could take place. The female gametophyte in flowering plants is greatly reduced, minimally consisting of just 4 cells, although usually illustrated as 8 nuclei in 7 cells where the 2 nuclei together fuse with a sperm to make 3n endosperm.
RE: "So that reminds me: When, oh, when is the ScienceBlogs hive mind going to assimilate a plant biologist?"
Good question. A few of us are out there, and we resist assimilation. Oh, that's the Borg not the Blog. Sorry.
Posted by: John Scanlon, FCD | February 18, 2008 8:00 PM
ColinB #51, maybe it's the term itself that's seen as a little risqué. My Greek's just a little rusty, but it reads to me as 'rear-konts' or 'having a kont at the back end'. Many of those little words in English go all the way back to Proto-Indo-European and have cognates in other IE languages...
Posted by: Abhishek | February 20, 2008 7:38 AM
Just in case you take questions after class - what exactly is 'developmental logic'? I read Endless forms most beautiful and it talks about the 'combinatory logic' of gene regulation (I assume this has nothing to do with that term as used in comp sci) with a few diagrams that resemble flowcharts, but no more details.
Posted by: pastorschild
|
March 3, 2011 4:33 PM
To be perfectly honest, I am a creationist and after reading this article, I have not seen any definitive proof that humans and plants must have a common ancestor. All this article did, essentially, is note the incredible similarities in the functions of plants and animals, which could just as easily be used as evidence for life being designed by a common creator rather than decending from a common ancestor. I, as a creationist, recognize that plants and animals have incredible similarities but that does not mean that they both decended from the same ancestor. If I could go back in my family photo album millions of years, would I see grandpa fern?
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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March 3, 2011 4:40 PM
Resurrection by a godbot. What a surprise.
There are plenty of people here who would love to engage with you on this topic, why not try a more recent thread? There is one less than a week old about Darwin.
For your question, if you went back billions of years, you wouldn't find vertebrate or fern in your lineage. Does this surprise you?
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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March 3, 2011 4:46 PM
No: if you'd read this part of the post:
you'd know you'd have to go back one point six thousand millions of years to find the last common ancestor of plants and animals.
Or what that a question you really didn't want an answer to—the sort of dumb, rhetorical questions your pastor daddy or your Sunday school would pat you on the head for asking?
Posted by: Nightjar
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March 3, 2011 4:55 PM
'Cause it's probably a drive-by troll, not actually interested in engaging with anyone.
I could be wrong, though.
*waits*
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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March 3, 2011 5:02 PM
For any other dumb creationists lurking around here until it's time to pass the plate at their next big tent revival, here's a fun little game:
Assuming an average lifespan of fifty years per ancestor, it would take you just under a year and one week, at a constant rate of one 'great' per second, just to say the name of the last common ancestor of plants and animals, using greatnparent nomenclature.
Try it. I guarantee it'll be a more fruitful use of your time than the Lord's Prayer.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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March 3, 2011 5:02 PM
Nightjar,
Phooey! I thought that would be the case, but couldn't resist anyways.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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March 3, 2011 5:05 PM
Except for this teeny-tiny problem. That of scientifically, rather than religiously, showing conclusive physical evidence for said designer. And we both know, by designer you mean Yahweh, the deity of the babble, a book of mythology/fiction. And Yahweh is a deity-come-lately in the over 3000 deities imagined by humans. There is no way to separate that delusion from the crowd of delusions.Considering the gap between cyano-bacteria, which started about 3.4 billion years ago, and the cambrian explosion at 550 million years ago, there is plenty of time for evolution to occur, which yields the conclusion of a common ancestor, and doesn't require your imaginary deity.
Posted by: David Marjanović
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March 3, 2011 5:21 PM
pastorschild, the difference is that we don't need to assume the existence of a designer. If we did, we'd have to explain its origin (look up "Ultimate Boeing 747"), how it made anything and completely covered up all evidence of that, and so on.
Ockham's Razor;
Russell's Teapot.
Posted by: David Marjanović
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March 3, 2011 5:27 PM
While I am at it...
The "ultimate Boeing 747" gambit.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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March 3, 2011 5:47 PM
And, of course Pastorschild, you would have to prove how the designer came about. None of this religious outside of space-time considerations, since it has to act upon our real world, it is inside of space-time, and should be detectable.
Posted by: pastorschild
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March 4, 2011 1:09 PM
Guys, I truly do appreciate all of the statements thrown at me in such an incendiary fashion, but certain aspects of evolution such as anagenesis are simply not scientifically testable in the same way that the existence or non-existence of God is not able to be empirically proven.
Since humans were not around to physically observe evolution for x million amount of years, and because there is no way to actually view the process of phylitic evolution, (unless you base your evidence on the fossil record, which in itself has so many exceptions that it in itself cannot possibly be evidence for evolution) one must place the theory of nothing to something to that something burping and becoming alive and then millions (or billions, the number is irrelevant) of years later we have you and me writing comments on a website, in the category of faith.
Nerd of Redhead, in the same way, you would have to prove that everything came from nothing, which you, nor anyone else in this world is able to do. The entire idea of God is that he is transcendent of the laws of this world, and therefore is able to do such things like create everything in 6 days.
As it seems to me, the theory of evolution is just as much of a fairy tale as is the story of the princess and the frog, but at which point does the human mind accept fairy tales as truth?
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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March 4, 2011 1:17 PM
Pastorschild,
Abiogenesis is not evolution.
The fossil record is not the only evidence we have for evolution, but it does refute your claim that we can't observe the past. Even when you read my words here, you are looking at a record of the past, do you trust that I wrote them?
Posted by: Nightjar
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March 4, 2011 1:24 PM
Dhorvath, I think pastorchild really meant what was written: anagenesis.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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March 4, 2011 1:32 PM
Oh hell, I read what I wanted to read.
Posted by: Nightjar
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March 4, 2011 1:35 PM
Yes, and? How is that relevant? Do you realise that we could use the same argument to argue against continental drift? And can't you see how ridiculous it is?
I don't know what you mean here. What "exceptions"?
That's an entirely different debate, and we can go there if you want, but it really has nothing to do with evolution. I realise you're ignorant about many things but, please, one thing at a time.
So, where do you want to begin?
Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes
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March 4, 2011 1:38 PM
Pastors Child: Thanks for reviving this post. It was written before I read much here, and it made me squee with delight. I f'ing love you PZ*.
Also, PC, you should learn something about evolution before you make such ridiculous claims. Love to help you with that, but I have to go teach botany. If this is still breathing, it might be fun to discuss how multicellularity in plants and animals is remarkable different from a structural point of view.
SQUEE!
*Did you hear me, you clever old goat??
I F'ING LOVE YOU, MAN!
Posted by: Owlmirror
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March 4, 2011 1:40 PM
So... if God himself manifested in the sky and told everyone the he existed, you wouldn't believe it?
And as for evolution -- if you, personally, lived for a few tens of millions of years, and were able to see for yourself those aspects of evolutionary change that you are so dubious about, would you simply ignore your own observations?
Finally, have you really not heard of the principle of parsimony?
Wait, what "exceptions" are these that palaeontologists have not heard about?
We have molecular and genetic evidence as well, or did you not know about that?
Do you really not understand the principle of parsimony?
Except that the principle of parsimony is relevant here.
Except that there is no evidence whatsoever of any entity "transcendent of the laws of this world". Parsimony rules that out as being nothing more than the desperate imagination of individuals who were, at the time they dreamed it up, utterly ignorant of what the "laws of the world" even are in order for some invisible person with magical superpowers to transcend them.
When it is the parsimonious inference, supported by evidence -- as opposed to the actual fairy tale of an invisible person with magical superpowers that transcends the laws of the world, for which there is no evidence.
QED
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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March 4, 2011 1:48 PM
If you try to use the babble as a reference book, you just first prove it is inerrant. Good luck there. There is absolutely no scientific evidence for the flood, a one-time total world inundation, or the exodus. Which means that as book of history/geology, the babble fails the test of inerrancy. Without that, you have nothing but presuppositions that the world was made in 6 days, like the presuppostions for your imaginary deity. Science can at least say "I don't know yet, but we are working on it".Posted by: pastorschild
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March 7, 2011 4:23 PM
In the same way that I may not understand the principle of parsimony, (which I do admit I have never studied) it seems that none of you have studied the creationist works which do show that creationism is plausible.
My largest source of information describing the holes in the fossil record, particularly in the human fossil charts, can be found in the book The Bones of Contention by Marvin Lubenow (I believe this is the correct author) in which he brilliantly uses the fossil charts to point out some of the flaws in the fossil evidence and I suggest that you guys read it so that I do not have to explain myself. All of the scientific evidence taken from the human fossil charts proves that modern man existed some 4 million years ago, a fact that totally goes against the current theories of human evolution.
Also, Nerd of Redhand, can you explain to me how there have been fossils of sea creatures discovered at Mt. Everest? Can you give me an explanation for the ice age? The flood is the only logical explanation for the ice age unless you want to do some intense mental gymnastics. There have also been many more evidences for the flood, mostly found in the fossil record, that are excellently documented by Dr. Kent Hovind.
Owlmirror, could you please explain to me the principle of parsimony; I am not very familiar. Everything coming from nothing and a frog becoming a prince still sounds like nothing but fairytales to me.
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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March 7, 2011 4:36 PM
What a dumbfuck. Many of us grew up creationist, and choked on the lies that we were told. You're just a moron who hasn't studied evolution who's projecting his own dishonesty onto us.
Oh yeah, you just forgot the (non-existent) evidence for your lie.
See, you fucking ignoramus, anyone who'd done a smattering of study would know the answer to that. The seafloor got pushed upward as India ploughed into Asia, and caused general uplift as the crust thickened, while highs of the wrinkles (like Everest) ended up especially high.
Why don't you learn something, dumbass, instead of telling those who have to read appalling BS?
Glacial Ages tend to follow the Milankovitch Cycles. Learn some basic science, hypocrite.
How does it explain anything, dumbfuck?
You haven't given us anything real, just enough mindless creo-bullshit to show that you know nothing worthwhile about these matters.
So, you don't even have the basics of critical thought? You aren't even at the stage at which you could begin to study science.
Pastorschild, eh? Let me guess, homeschooled, or at best, taught a bunch of Bible claptrap at a religious school.
Glen Davidson
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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March 7, 2011 4:56 PM
That's because they show creationism is unscientific, and implausible. First you must prove your imaginary deity exists. No evidence for that to date. Secondly you must prove said deity is Yahweh, the deity of the babble. Again, no evidence to date. Then you must prove the babble is inerrant. You have presented no evidence to date. Essentially, all you, and creationist claims have, is presupposition and twisted evidence. Nothing that flows like evolution with a million or so scientific papers, backing it directly and indirectly. I bet you can't even cite ten peer reviewed scientific papers, not from creationist web sites, that back creationism.Books are the worst possible type of documentation you could offer. After all, there is this thing called Vanity Press. Also, lie your ass of press. Not as realiable as the peer reviewed scientific literature. Found at institutions of higher learning world wide. In the science sections.Care to cite the peer reviewed scientific literature for that claim? Not a religious work? Religion cannot refute science. Only more science refutes science. And the science is found in the peer reviewed scientific literature. Your citations please.Yep, the Himalayas formed from what was a seafloor prior to the Indian subcontinent ramming into the Asian continent. Wiki article. ThinkQuest article. Animation from PBS Nova. ScienceRay.And Hovind has proven nothing scientifically. Other that he is a tax dodger presently serving time for his crime.
Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy
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March 7, 2011 5:17 PM
Look at this. You don't know the name of the author. You apparently can't be bothered to Google it.
How does a worldwide flood explain ice ages? Where in the Bible can one even find anything about a lasting period of extreme cold (which you think would be the sort of thing they'd write about?)
Seeing as how man only ascended to the summit of Mt. Everest about 50 years ago, and even now it remains a very challenging place to exist, let alone set up a major paleontological dig, I had to wonder if there were really fossils discovered on Mt. Everest. I did a quick Google search, and the first page was nothing but hits from creationist web sites and message boards. No actual reports of actual fossils found by actual fossil diggers.*
I don't mean all this as any comprehensive knock-down of your arguments, such as they are, but just to point out that you are a very poor scholar, and you're going up against people on this blog who really do know what they're talking about. You might want to take that into consideration when you think of just how supported your views are.
In other words, you're out of your element, Donny.
* Now if you want to talk about fossils found on other mountains, we got plenty of those. But fossils found on Mt. Everest? That just makes you sound like a fourth-grader trying to impress his friends. We have higher standards for accuracy and truth around here.
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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March 7, 2011 5:31 PM
Of course, whether or not fossils have exactly been found at or near the summit of Everest I do not know for certain. What is not in dispute is that the top of Everest is in fact limestone known to contain fossil fragments:
Did Wager's sample contain fossil fragments? I wouldn't be surprised, but the issue of whether he did or didn't is moot. It's a fossiliferous limestone, and it makes up the top of Everest and other peaks.
http://www.earth.ox.ac.uk/~davewa/research/himal/everest-lrw.html
Glen Davidson
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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March 7, 2011 5:46 PM
As excellently as he documented his taxes? How about his conversations with God while in jail? ("You're right, God." "I'm always right!" the Monty Python version of God snaps back.)
If you believe anything that huckster says, well, I've got a whole fossil of the dinosaur Jesus rode to sell you. (Don't mind the water or the New Yorkers infesting it. It'll clean off with soap and water.) How's a cool million sound?
Posted by: Nightjar
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March 7, 2011 6:08 PM
Sigh.
Indeed, I have spent a great deal of time, perhaps way too much, debating creationists and reading their "works". How much time did you spend reading about the principle of parsimony? My guess is you didn't even bother to look it up.
No. If you want to debate it, bring up the arguments you wish to discuss. I don't believe I'll find anything new in that book, but perhaps if you give some examples of the evidence and arguments it presents I may feel like reading it. Convince me that I won't be wasting my time first.
That's nice. But I thing you forgot something. The evidence. You didn't present it. Wanna fix that?
Plate tectonics. Do you know what that is?
Do tell how the the flood explains the ice ages.
"Evidences" is not a word. And Kent Hovind cannot be trusted on anything.
But do bring the evidence. For some reason you have been forgetting to include it in your posts. Surely you're going to fix that.
I'm sure he'll be quite happy to do it, but again, did you even bother to look it up? It's one thing if you did and want to discuss it here, but that's not quite what it seems you're doing.
So, you built a strawman and you're now calling it a fairytale. How cute.
Still nothing to do with evolution, though.
Posted by: Owlmirror
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March 7, 2011 6:14 PM
There are no creationist works that show that creationism is scientifically plausible.
All creationist works are based on misunderstanding, distorting, ignoring, and even deliberate lying about what science actually shows.
There is a review of Lubenow's work on this page, which shows that, like all creationists, he distorts and misrepresents the actual science.
That is indeed an extraordinary claim. Let's see what the reviewer says:
I note that the page is dated 4/25/2005. Since then, more work on the Laetoli footprints has been done. Nothing showing that they were made by modern humans has been found.
Clearly, though, Lubenow does not really understand much about current theories of evolution, or much about evolution in general.
What else?
As Glen noted, the understanding is that Everest -- or rather, the entire Himalayan mountain range -- was formerly part of the sea floor before India moved north far enough, for long enough, to lift that section of sea floor by compressing it.
This is not surprising, and is part of the known science of geology combined with an understanding of plate tectonics.
First of all, there was more than one ice age.
Secondly, as Glen noted, Milankovitch cycles are the best current explanation for ice ages occurring. These cycles refer to slow changes in the Earth's orbit that change how much sunlight the Earth receives, over very long periods of time. Obviously, if the Earth receives less sunlight, it will, all other factors being equal, tend to become cooler.
First of all -- what flood? Are you seriously proposing that the global flood told in the bible actually happened? Geologists have been studying the Earth for quite some time now, and the consensus is clear: There was never a global flood. There could not have been a global flood. Floods leave evidence of their having occurred. This evidence would show up in the geology of the Earth. It does not. Therefore, there was never a global flood.
There have been some very large floods indeed. Some that creationists like to cite are the Missoula megafloods that created the Scablands of Eastern Washington. But that works against their argument for there having been a global flood -- the tremendous scouring of the Earth and deposition of debris on land and in the ocean is exactly what provides evidence that those floods did occur. But we would expect to see that same evidence all over the world, in much larger scale, if there had been a global flood.
We don't.
There was no global flood, ever.
How is a flood, even if it happens, supposed to cause an ice age? Really, what's the mechanism?
We have evidence for Milankovitch cycles and their effect on climate. You have no evidence for a global flood, and no causal connection between a global flood and ice ages.
Who, exactly, is doing the "intense mental gymnastics", I wonder?
There most certainly has not been any such thing. Kent Hovind is a fraud and a liar, and has documented nothing but lies and distortions.
The principle of parsimony simply states that if an entity is not necessary for some explanation, do not posit that that entity is necessary for the explanation.
We have no evidence that an invisible person with magical powers exists, or has ever existed, or has ever acted on the universe.
We do have evidence for the universe expanding about 13.7 billion years ago, and over that course of time, natural causes -- like the laws of gravity and chemistry -- producing the galaxies, the stars, our own sun, our own planet, liquid water on that planet, plenty of complex chemicals and different complex chemical reactions in different places, and signs of life showing up in the rock record a few billion years ago, and life itself slowly evolving to the many many varied forms that we see today.
Parsimony says that what we have observed so far is sufficient to explain what we have observed.
So an invisible person with magical superpowers is thereby eliminated as a necessary explanation.
If you think that this is wrong, you need to show exactly how it is wrong, using the methods of science -- without resorting to misunderstanding, distorting, ignoring, and even deliberate lying about what science actually shows.
The bible is indeed a fairytale. Your misunderstanding and distortion of science is also a fairytale.
How about learning actual science, rather than misunderstandings, distortions, and even deliberate lies about what science actually shows?
Posted by: Nightjar
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March 7, 2011 6:17 PM
FIFM.
Posted by: David Marjanović
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March 7, 2011 7:02 PM
What do you mean by "phyletic evolution"? It sounds like saying the same thing twice to me (and yes, I know how to spell it).
I'm a paleontologist, and I don't know what you're talking about. Anything besides Lubenow's arguments from his personal lack of knowledge?
BTW, it's funny that you mention Kent Hovind. Keep in mind that the term "university" is not protected in the USA; if I buy a barn on US soild and write "university" on it, it is a university. That's pretty much what the founders of Patriot Bible University did.
We've discussed his doctoral thesis at length. It is an endless source of laughter. Read the comments; it'll take a while, but it's worth it. Even Kent the Tax Fraudster's son Eric chimed in.
The principle of parsimony, also called Occam's Razor, is described at length on Wikipedia. Why didn't you simply start there?
Posted by: David Marjanović
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March 7, 2011 7:07 PM
Uh, soil.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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March 7, 2011 7:12 PM
Funny how Pastorschild presented not one iota of evidence for their imaginary deity, or to demonstrate that the babble is inerrant. Zip, zero, nil, null, nothing. Almost like they know there is nothing concrete to support those presuppositions, and must avoid any evidence at all costs...
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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March 7, 2011 7:21 PM
For ice ages:
Wiki
PBS Nova
LiveScience
Course at Ohio State
Still waiting for your equivalent non-religious evidence for your imaginary deity Pastorschild...
Posted by: Timberwoof
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March 7, 2011 7:55 PM
"All this article did, essentially, is note the incredible similarities in the functions of plants and animals, which could just as easily be used as evidence for life being designed by a common creator rather than decending from a common ancestor."
I have a question about that. A video I recently saw from a fundamentalist shows not a single tree of life but a "forest of life", with each tree representing a "kind" and all its branches cut off at the Flood. The hypothesis was that after the Flood, each Kind speciated again (in the past 5000 years) to give us the observed biodiversity.
Leaving aside the ridiculous claim that all current animals speciated from the ones Noah rescued on his Ark (there is way too much genetic diversity for that to have even considered the possibility of having happened), let's look at the underlying assumption: Not just one tree of life, but dozens and dozens, each one reproducing after its kind.
If a single tree of life is supposed to mean a single Creator, then explain to me why a Forest of Life does not mean one Creator for each Tree in it. That explanation makes a whole lot more sense to me, from a theological point of view. There were a bunch of Gods running around, and each one made one tree of life—one Kind each. The Jehovah got all uppity and said He was the only one. He drowned all the rest while saving their Kinds. (Except the dinosaurs and unicorns! Another Biblical mystery solved!)
Jehova did tell his people not to worship any other Gods. And there was the business about the other people that Adam's family met: They were obviously made by the other Gods. It's just not in the Bible because Jehova decided not to tell you about it. He is, after all, a Jealous God.
Oh … you want evidence?
Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy
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March 7, 2011 9:11 PM
I believe he means evolution of phyla. "Anagenesis" and "phyletic evolution" are just gussied-up versions of "macroevolution". It's just the same argument. Again.
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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March 8, 2011 11:57 AM
Timberwoof, you might be interested to read Richard Hoppe's Multiple Designer theory.
Posted by: Owlmirror
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March 8, 2011 5:00 PM
Ah, but the bible itself says that Noah had a raven (Gen. 8:7) and a dove (Gen 8:8). Those are two specific species of bird, rather than some generic bird "kind". It also says that Noah had "clean fowl" (Gen. 8:20) to sacrifice (!)*, which strongly suggests additional species of birds. "Clean" is a imprecise translation of the Hebrew "tahor" (טָּהֹר), meaning in this sense a kosher bird; one that it is proper to both eat and sacrifice. While doves are one type of "clean" fowl, the implication of not specifying doves implies other types of fowl.
QED.
Of course, this would cause headaches for creationists if they actually cared to think about the implications regarding further descent and (presumable) speciation from the birds that are specified on Noah's ark, and what that would imply about how many (non-avian) dinosaur "kinds" Noah would have had to bring on board, but if there's one thing I've noticed about creationists, it's that they don't actually care to think about the nonsense that they spout, and indeed, do not actually care if they contradict themselves, or the bible. As many have noted before me, there are no biblical literalists; not one.
So . . . there's that.
___________________________________
*: Yes, everything on the planet had been killed except for what Noah had in his ark -- so to thank Yahweh that what was in his ark had not been killed, he killed some of the few animals remaining that he had in his ark... Look, I didn't make this stuff up, I'm just reporting it.
Posted by: Ichthyic
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March 8, 2011 5:13 PM
There is absolutely no point in using logical argument against this bullshit.
true, in the sense that rationality is misplaced when applied to the irrational, but OTOH it tends to keep one's teeth sniny.
moved the goalposts
of course they did; what else could they do in order to maintain the fiction? It is what religion has done for eons; I think they call it "adapting".
I do wish they'd stop trying to redefine words, though. "Bullshit" is perfectly cromulent, without trying to relabel it as "adapting".
Posted by: pastorschild
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March 9, 2011 1:01 PM
I was hoping you could rise above name calling, but apparently not.
As nearly all of you have mentioned, it is impossible to scientifically prove the existence of God and I understand that but you also must understand that even science has its limitations.
If you discredit The Bones of Contention, you must also discredit all of the scientific sources from which his book primarily consists of, including articles from Nature magazine.
Moving on to evidence for the holes in the human fossil charts:
H. Valladas, J. L. Reyss, J. L. Loron, G. Valladas, O. Bar-Yosef, and B. Vandermeersch, published in Nature, February 18th, 1988, discovered through Thermoluminescence dating that anatomically modern man existed 90,000 years ago in the Qafzeh site in Israel.
The Neandertal Amud 1 from upper Galilee, Israel was dated at 5,710 years old.
Shanidar, Iraq, Neandertal material from Layers C and D give radiocarbon dates as low as 26,500 years
The Banolas mandible is 17,600 years old
Rudolf Virchow, the “father of pathology” decided after studying the first discovered Neandertal, that it was a modern man who suffered from Rickets. In 1970, Francis Ivanhoe wrote an article entitled “Was Virchow Right about Neandertal?” in Nature magazine.
Francis Ivanhoe, “Was Virchow Right about Neandertal?” Nature 227 (8 August 1970): 577-79
The Kanapoi (KP 271) arm fragment, discovered in Kenya, is virtually indistinguishable from that of modern man but was dated at 4.5 million years.
The Composite Fossil Chart reveals that Homo erectus, Archaic Homo sapiens and modern Homo sapiens have lived as contemporaries for the past 500,000 years.
These are just a very few of the examples of the scientifically supported claims by Lubenow, and again if you discredit his work, you must also discredit the scientists from which Lubenow’s work is primarily built of. From observing the human fossil chart, one can clearly see that the modern theory of the evolution of man is simply not true. This book is mostly concerned with the evolution of humans, and I have not had time as of yet to study the evolution of animals because I am only a high school student.
Moving on to plate tectonics, this whole idea is simply (and I’m sorry to sink to this level) dumb. If you were to drain all of the water in every ocean in the world, what would you find at the bottom? Land. I do understand that there are cracks in the earth’s crust and that these giant plates are moving, but there must be a limitation to their movement. Someone please explain to me how, if earth is the result of an extremely violent explosion, all of the livable surface of the earth was conveniently clumped together in one giant land mass. Shouldn’t it have been haphazardly scattered all across the surface of the earth? In fact, the Bible has a plausible explanation for the cracks in the earth’s crust, as when the fountains of the deep burst forth during the time of the flood, one possible evidence for the flood.
It is also logical to say that the atmosphere must have been drastically different at one point in the earth’s history, but where is science’s explanation for this? A Brontosaurus’s nostrils are the same size as a modern horse, and if that is the case, how in the world could the Brontosaurus have gotten enough oxygen? There is obviously no way to know, but one theory by Kent Hovind (who is very credible, actually, and just because he has had some tax issues doesn’t mean that he should be disregarded) called the Canopy Theory, in which there was a layer of water surrounding the earth and giant lakes of water found below the earth’s surface. During the flood, the flood gates of heaven opened (the canopy is released) and the fountains of the deep are opened (the giant pools of water are forced to the surface violently). It has been theorized that this canopy would have made the earth like a giant greenhouse, increasing the air pressure and making the atmosphere a much more desirable place to live, which would be an explanation for 900 year old men and giant lizards and insects.
Again, I understand that there is no way to know for certain anything in which we cannot personally observe. If you believe in the big bang and evolution, you must first place faith in the scientists who have presumably discovered evidence for evolution. You must place faith in the theories which those scientists create. You must place faith in the accuracy of scientists and their experiments. I simply place my faith in God.
I respect you guys because you have much more faith than I do.
You must wholeheartedly believe that there is no God and that we are all simply the product of a cosmic accident. But if this is true, then we have climbed the evolutionary ladder over millions of years only to find nothing on top. Life is ultimately meaningless and we live in a perpetual nothingness. If, after we die, we simply become tree food and cease to exist, then who cares? If you are right, then so what? But if I’m right, you guys have some serious explaining to do. Why would you want to risk eternity for supposed “truth” that is ultimately meaningless anyways?
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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March 9, 2011 1:47 PM
You forgot to mention that we should just be monsters to each other. I have to wonder: Poe?
Did brontosaurua (apatosaurus, I think) need as much oxygen per pound as a modern horse? How do you know? Also, the cretacious period had higher oxygen levels, no canopy necessary.
Lighter minerals float on heavier minerals, hence our granitic continents float on the heavier basalt underneath them. No need for intervention to get land to where it is. Add a little second law of thermodynamics and clumping is the result, an even distribution is far less likely than any continental arrangement. Again, no intervention necessary.
As to faith, I have faith that the ammonite fossils which I have found at the beach were not placed there as part of an elaborate hoax by paleontologists to support evolution. I can see these things, what can you see of your god?
More to the point, I have faith that as much as you want to discredit science, the people who are doing it want to find holes in one another's thinking and theories. Not only are they competitive, they have the requisite information at their disposal to make cogent objections.
There is no top of the ladder, we are not pinnacles of evolution, merely an aberration because we know about the process. This doesn't make life empty, it doesn't render our conversation meaningless to me. Why would it do so to you?
Posted by: CJO
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March 9, 2011 1:50 PM
No, what's dumb is to think that your unexamined judgements about such matters are relevant.
Not all "land" is the same. There is continental crust, which is lighter than sea-floor material. Imagine the continents, big chunks of lighter material, "floating" just above the level of the heavier rock. Then flood the whole setup with water. The continents will be higher than the sea floor, which will be pressed even lower by the weight of all the water.
Why? Because your naive common sense about such matters tells you that the Earth is flat and motionless? That's not a good reason. Sea-floor spreading is as well-confirmed an empirical result in planetary science as there is. Many multiple, independent lines of evidence from biogeography, the fossil record, and geomagnetism confirm the phenomenon. It also does exactly what we ask scientific explanations to do; it unifies a great many diverse phenomena into a single theoretical framework: earthquakes and vulcanism, the mineral composition of various rock types, mountain uplift, and a host of others.
You're confused. The Earth is not the direct result of the Big Bang, if that's what you mean by "an extremely violent explosion." The Sun is a latecomer to the universe, a third-generation star. The Earth formed out of an accretion disk around the sun as it formed. It was still molten in its earliest life, and under continuing cosmic bombardment in the early solar system, its surface was made entirely molten several more times. The "giant land mass" from which the current arrangement of continental crust developed is a late phenomenon: so called Pangaea didn't itself form until over 90% of the Earth's history had already taken place.
Because your naive common sense tells you this is how it "should" have been? No.
This word, "plausible": it doesn't mean what you seem to think it does. The stories contained in your holy book reflect the deep ignorance of pre-modern peoples about matters on a global scale. They are made up, wildly implausible fictions, and we know better now. Well, most of us.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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March 9, 2011 2:03 PM
argumentum ad ignorantiam is strong with this one.
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
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March 9, 2011 2:04 PM
I will let other people who better understand and are better able to rip up your blathering. But it is telling that you use yet an other typical creationist canard. Sorry, you deluded fuckwit, but there is proof of plate tectonics along with everything else you dispute. No faith needed at all.
Yet you insist on dressing science in religious drag.
(Yes, I will insult you. That is because you are a gibbering idiot.)
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
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March 9, 2011 2:06 PM
And Pascal's Wager to boot?
Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort
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March 9, 2011 2:34 PM
@pastorschild:
I'm not good enough to talk to the science in your post (though thank you everyone else who is doing it, I learn a lot through you guys) but I'll address Pascal's Wager in your last part of your post.
And if the Norse were right, none of us are going to Valhalla cause we didn't die in glorious battle.
And if the Greeks were right, we're all going to Hades because we didn't sacrifice.
And if the Buddhists are right, we're going to be recycled depending on our karma.
And if the Muslims are right... I don't know to be honest - some kind of Sheol?
And if...
Here, watch this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZpJ7yUPwdU
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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March 9, 2011 2:49 PM
Compared to religion, imaginary deities, and a book of mythology/fiction use for reference, science is limitless in comparison. Data is what matters, and science can change with the data. You can't. That makes you and your ideas bad. Still, if the creator existed and did interact with the universe, then traces of that interaction are there. So, show us conclusive physical evidence that your imaginary creator exists, evidence that will pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers, as being of divine, and not natural origin. Or shut the fuck up about said creator. Welcome to science, where evidence, not faith, rules. Still no evidence your babble is inerrant either. Still the idjit loser.UMich, PDF from UChicago, ColumbiaUNote every time I give multiple sources. You don't. That is a problem with your evidence, or rather, lack thereof.
First of all Nature is a journal, not a magazine. Just because something was published once doesn't mean later evidence, will change the conclusions. I smell cherry picked papers. Lets see.Thermoluminescence has big error bars. Besides, modern homids developed about 120,000 years ago. Not very convincing.And how was the age determined. Sounds like an acheologist pulling a number out of the air.Which means absolutely nothing. Many hominids lived at that time. Almost full skeletons and bones are needed for good determination of features. STill nothing conclusive from your creationist liar and bullshitter.Lets see, a theory consistent with the scientific data, gathered by geologists over hundreds of years and many countries around the world, compared to one derived from the presuppositions that an imaginary deity exists, and a certain book of mythology/fiction is inerrant. That is the totally dumb idea. Not plate tectonics.Hovind has the scientific credibility of a con-man. Which he is. Which is why he is in prison. He lied to himself. Then he lied to the IRS. He lies about creationism. What else is new? Liars lie.There is no god until your prove otherwise with solid physical evidence. You are a delusional fool, wasting your time here, unless you want to be educated. You have nothing but lies, bullshit, and presuppositions of offer in evidence for your inane ideas. Earth is a cosmic accident. I can live with that.Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort
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March 9, 2011 2:51 PM
@my 100:
Ah, Islamic Hell is similar to Christian Hell. Judaic Hell is the Gehenna I was thinking about.
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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March 9, 2011 2:57 PM
Hoping? Not praying? Oh, ye of little faith.
You're a lousy Christian. If you're right, and Jesus exists, he's gonna slap your faithless fucking ass back down to hell.
Say 'Hi' to Hitler as you burn.
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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March 9, 2011 3:03 PM
You're dumber than Hovind's dumb-as-shit son, Eric. At least he has the excuse of filial piety, but you believe a known liar and a con man.
Say 'Duh' to Hitler as you burn.
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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March 9, 2011 3:18 PM
I was hoping you could rise above dishonesty, pig-ignorance, and stupidity, but apparently not.
Above all, fuckwit, you started in with false accusations when you know nothing about science, so STFU about "tone." It has nothing to do with anything, except that your ignorance and lack of ability to reason ought to be called what it is.
Duh, idiot. That's the point, the limitations of science lead us to accept the old earth and evolution. If we knew everything, it's possible (not likely, IMO) that we might think otherwise.
Wow, you really are a blithering moron. We do not discredit honest sources when we call you and Hovind liars, just because you misuse honest sources.
including articles from Nature magazine.
Moving on to evidence for the holes in the human fossil charts:
So what, cretin? We never denied that, in fact credible claims exist that "modern humans" existed 200,000 years ago.
While dates as late as 5710 are thought doubtful, there's no reason why Neandertals couldn't have lasted that long--Neandertal genes exist in present-day Europeans. Learn some science, and quit attacking your ridiculous strawmen, pig-ignorant buffoon.
Wow, an arm fragment. How impressive! And even if it turns out to be an H. sapiens arm bone, you'd have to show that it wasn't a more recent burial.
And what if they did, idiot? There's nothing to prevent it?
Most of those claims aren't even problematic, you ignoramus. You're such a hypocrite that you haven't even studied what we actually accept and understand, rather you believe the moronic lies told to you by dishonest creationists.
Even were that so, jackass, what of that? Why don't you try to explain why modern humans don't show up 400 million years ago? What's a colossal failure is your creationist claims.
So, you haven't studied evolution because you're a creo-tard high schooler. You don't study the evolution of humans apart from that of animals--or plants and prokaryotes, for that matter.
You've never gotten above the level of dumb, you hypocritical liar and pig-ignorant pseudoscientist.
There is, tardboy. That's why India smashing into Asia ends up with thickened crust and mountains.
It's not, you ridiculously ignorant believer. It's the result of accretion.
It was haphazardly scattered all across the surface, you simpleton. By chance, most of the continents ended up colliding and sticking together (much as India has done to Asia) a couple of times, at least. How could that not happen?
Dumbass, the cracks in the ocean floor are due to tectonic activity, and the Bible says nothing about cracks in the ocean floor.
Photosynthesis, you simplistic science-denier. Are you too stupid to know what happens when carbon is reduced (with release of oxygen) then buried so that it can't recombine with the oxygen?
If the apatosaurus had nostrils the size of a modern horse it would surely have no problem with getting plenty of oxygen.
OK, I'm kidding, I know what you mean, but I don't know from what you say how large its nostrils are, as you're abysmally ignorant of science.
One thing that's true is that dinosaur lungs were like bird lungs, more efficient than that of mammals--gee, why didn't the focus of creation, humans, receive lungs as efficient as that of birds/dinosaurs? You have no answer, as you're too much into "faith" to learn anything worthwhile.
Sorry, dickhead, the water vapor would dilute the oxygen and make it even less available. You can't think at all about science, can you?
Only if you can't handle the evidence. I can, you can't, and you aren't even learning how to do so, you brainless thing.
No, I can and do evaluate these things. You could too, if you weren't an ignorant creotard.
Since you've been taught not to question the lies you've been told.
Bullshit, you haven't a clue.
Fucktard, I have no such belief. I merely have no evidence for God, any more than I do for Santa.
Neither evolution nor life is a "climb" to anything. I'm immersed in life. You don't dare to be.
I'm something. You're doing your best to remain nothing.
My friends and relatives. How is it better for an invisible unevidenced being to supposedly care?
Actually, you never understand explanations, pig-ignorant primate.
What is more, evolution doesn't tell us that there is no God. If fine-tuning pointed to God (it doesn't), this would change nothing about the fact that life evolved. You're too ignorant to know that, too. We can make a good case for science as a whole indicating that there's no reason to suppose a God, but evolution is only a part of that.
Posted by: pastorschild
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March 9, 2011 3:40 PM
I think it is quite amusing how you describe with absolute certainty how things happened millions of years ago CJO, you must have been there to watch. If that's the case, I have many more questions for you.
Nerd of Redhead, science does indeed have its limits and you should recognize them. Science can answer the who what how and where, but it can never answer the why. I am not starting a new argument, but it is obvious that science cannot answer everything.
I have even said that God cannot be proven with science, and I am not arguing about that, but I am simply pointing out some holes in the evolutionary theory.
The biggest problem is, guys, that naturalism equals nothingness. We live and then we die so we might as well drink and be merry, but then that is it. Your life nor my life ultimately matters, and for that reason Hitler could have been justified for murdering six million innocents, for he was simply speeding up the process of natural selection, wasn't he? Racism is justified in the eyes of the evolutionist because those who are inferior should be eliminated.
While you guys write these heated responses to my comments, you assume that you are important and therefore that your responses are important, but if life is purely the product of chemistry plus time plus chance than you can have no worth and neither can I or anyone else for that matter. You are doing more to prove the existence of God rather than his non-existence because worth must be passed on from transcending worth.
You live your life believing that you are nothing but an animal, whose sole existence is to pass on your DNA (as Richard Dawkins has said) and then die.
I live my life knowing that I am the unique creation of a loving God who passed worth onto me from his ultimate worth and because of that worth that I have, I can pass worth onto others and know that their lives are worth defending.
Just sayin.
I'm going to stop writing after this comment. I will leave you guys so that you can get together and laugh at and swear and condemn those who actually have hope in something while you slowly recognize that without God, you life is meaningless and, as Nietche did, live your last days in dark seclusion and madness.
God Bless!
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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March 9, 2011 3:44 PM
Ah yes. What suitable polite response of good will should I reply with? Ah got it
"May you one day get to heaven and be given the honor of having Jesus's throbbing cock shoved down your throat"
WHY!? Why would you prolong someone's life when they go to heaven when they die? You should promote the death of the good and innocent and strive to save the evil from death.
What are you gonna do...cry about it?
Posted by: CJO
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March 9, 2011 3:46 PM
Fuck you too, asshole.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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March 9, 2011 3:46 PM
Some evidence>>>>no evidence. Even if you did poke a hole rather than verbally shitting out PRATT god still loses.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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March 9, 2011 3:49 PM
Also why Nietzsche? I really don't give a shit about him. Fuck, may YOU spend your last days as much in guilt, doubt, and darkness as Mother Teresa.
Lots of people would be lucky to have lived as well as some famous atheists.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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March 9, 2011 3:50 PM
Pastorschild,
God bless is an insult around here, thanks for finally joining in.
You don't think that your relationships with your fellow humans are important and provide motivation and satisfaction in life? I seriously doubt that you are unconcerned about your family, friends, or coworkers (classmates, more likely.) This is meaning, it is life, and we all share it.
Posted by: Ichthyic
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March 9, 2011 3:50 PM
I think it is quite amusing how you describe with absolute certainty how things happened millions of years ago CJO, you must have been there to watch.
fuck millions of years ago...
were you there when your parents conceived you?
of course not, ergo, by your own logic, you can't possibly convince us you exist.
now fuck off.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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March 9, 2011 3:51 PM
Oh and Pastorschild you want to know why people bother replying to you if they dont' care about a nonexistent god? Scroll down for spoilers!
we are laughing at you.
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
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March 9, 2011 3:54 PM
So young and yet already a master of smug.
Shorter pastorschild: My big sky daddy loves that I am an ignorant little shit.
Good riddance, you special little snowflake.
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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March 9, 2011 3:57 PM
The biggest problem, creotard, is that your lies equal nothing other than empty fapping. Your obvious problem with facing up to truth does nothing to make science of creationism, nor lend any credence to your fantasies about Gawd.
Not if you know what natural selection is, instead of being an idiot liar like you.
Oh, please, you disgusting wanker, we're not heated when we read the same droning idiocies that we've seen dozens of times before. We just call it what it is, dishonesty, idiocy, and mindless mental masturbation.
What's the evidence for that?
Oh right, it's what liars told you.
Just living a lie.
BTW, why didn't you just admit that you're a hypocritical ignoramus with no respect or desire for knowledge, rather than trying to pretend that you know what you clearly do not? We're not out to bother godbots who aren't lying about science, and if you'd been that there'd have been no problem. As it is, you lie for Jeebus simply because you'd rather believe a lie than face a truth that doesn't appeal to you, and you have no interest in being open-minded, even though you don't mind accusing the open-minded of being close-minded when you haven't a clue.
Fuck you too, which is what you'd have written if you weren't dishonest through and through.
You couldn't begin to understand what Nietzsche (learn how to spell names that you drop, poseur) did, prior to his organic mental illness. And, much as you wish disease upon us, I'm afraid that's no more likely than that God will save you from your endless mental wanking.
Glen Davidson
Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM
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March 9, 2011 4:01 PM
Fuck, may YOU spend your last days as much in guilt, doubt, and darkness as Mother Teresa.
Ing, you are letting the special little snowflake off lightly. Try as much pain as the dying poor people under the care of that sadist.
Posted by: Owlmirror
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March 9, 2011 4:14 PM
You have to understand, people have seen the nonsense of creationist arguments being made for far too long. It becomes very irritating.
Especially when creationists -- like you -- demonstrate a complete lack of interest in intellectual rigour and honesty.
It's not just that, though. There's no reason to even posit the existence of an invisible person with magical superpowers.
The limitations of science are the limits of what evidence we have of the real world.
Why? Did you not read the review, or at least what I cited from the review? The entire point is that Lubenow did not use the scientific sources correctly, and demonstrated a repeated failure to understand the theory of evolution. It is Lubenow's work itself that is discredited -- not the scientific sources that he drew upon, but failed to understand.
... So what?
Citation needed, I nearly think.
This paper I found states: "Age-estimates ranging from 50 to 70 ky were obtained for the Mousterian deposits of Amud Cave in Israel from thermoluminescence measurements performed on 19 burnt flints."
That's 50 thousand to 70 thousand -- more than ten times your claim.
Ref.
Valladas, H. et al. TL Dates for the Neanderthal Site of the Amud Cave, Israel. Journal of Archaeological Science (1999) 26, 259-268
That is indeed rather low. Citation, again, needed.
The reference that I found says:
"Shanidar 3 derives from layer D1 (Solecki and Solecki, 1993), near the top of the Mousterian sequence at Shanidar and slightly below two radiocarbon samples that produced (uncalibrated) dates of 46.9 ± 1.5 ka and 50.6 ± 3.0 ka (Vogel and Waterbolk, 1963)."
"The oldest radiocarbon date derived from the Baradostian assemblage in layer C of Shanidar is 35.4 ± 0.6 ka (Olszewski and Dibble, 1994, 2006)"
However!
"The 14C dates from layer D at Shanidar were obtained in the early 1960s using the solid carbon method, and their reliability is questionable (Olszewski and Dibble, 2006)"
Ref.
Churchill, S. et al. Shanidar 3 Neandertal rib puncture wound and paleolithic weaponry. Journal of Human Evolution 57 (2009) 163-178
Also:
"Shanidar Cave is located in the Zagros Mountains of northwestern Iraq (44° 13? E, 36° 50? N). It was excavated between 1952 and 1957 by Ralph Solecki and colleagues (48-55). Four main archaeological layers were described in the nearly 14 m of sediments removed (48), and Mousterian artifacts and Neanderthals' remains were found in the lowest layer (layer D) (48, 56). A date of 44,000 B.P. was acquired using a bulk sample radiocarbon analysis on sediments at the top of this 10-m-thick layer; the lower age is unknown. Palynological samples indicated a warm climate and the presence of a variety of edible plants in the site's vicinity, including date palms (Phoenix dactylifera), walnuts (Juglans), chestnuts (Castanea), oaks (Quercus), relatives of chicory and lettuce, and relatives of culinary herbs (49, 57-59). The Shanidar III fossil remains were found at 5.4 m below datum and 1-1.4 m below the sloping surface of level D, in the northeast corner of square B9 and near to, but slightly below the remains of Shanidar I (48). The teeth were not immediately recognized during excavation and were found later in bone bags from that same square and level. On the basis of a radiocarbon date of 44,000 B.P. near Shanidar I, Shanidar III was thought to be slightly older, possibly as old as 50,000 B.P. (48)."
Ref.
A. G. Henry et al. Microfossils in calculus demonstrate consumption of plants and cooked foods in Neanderthal diets (Shanidar III, Iraq; Spy I and II, Belgium). PNAS January 11, 2011 vol. 108 no. 2
Good grief. You can't even spell properly. Banyoles.
And your sources are either lying, or they just suck.
"All mandibular teeth with preserved enamel from Banyoles (Girona, Northeast of Spain, 45,000-100,000 BP) " (emph mine)
Ref.
Lalueza, C. et al. Microscopic study of the Banyoles mandible (Girona, Spain): diet, cultural activity and toothpick use. Journal of Human Evolution v. 24, Issue 4, April 1993, pp 281-300
URL: dx.doi.org/10.1006/jhev.1993.1022
LOL. And you wonder why people call you names?
The damn summary for that paper in Nature even says: "Neandertals living in early Würm times may have suffered from a vitamin D deficiency."
Neandertals, NOT MODERN HUMANS.
"Virtually indistinguishable" isn't good enough. As best as science can tell, it is nevertheless an australopithecine arm fragment. It may well have been human-like -- but you have nothing that proves that it was specifically from Homo (let alone Homo sapiens) and not from an australopithecine.
"The results agree with what the original describers observed about the distal humeri of Au. afarensis: humeri are generally similar to each other and are more human-like than ape-like in shape (Johanson et al., 1982a,b; Lovejoy et al., 1982). "
The point is that Australopithecines were indeed transitional between non-hominin apes and the genus Homo.
Ref.
McHenry, H. M. and Brown, C. C. Side steps: the erratic pattern of hominin postcranial change through time. Journal of Human Evolution 55 (2008) 639-651
. . . So what?
[Taking a break here to post the researched citations. So much garbage to refute; so little time]
Posted by: KG
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March 9, 2011 4:23 PM
That's a barefaced lie. I'm sure it's not originally your lie: in everything you have said, you have just been parroting lies that older liars have told you. Nevertheless, to repeat such vile slanders is undoubtedly "bearing false witness". I thought Christians were not supposed to do that.
I'll check this out tomorrow, but if you google the title, you get a summary of the article, which reads:
"Neandertals living in early Würm times may have suffered from a vitamin D deficiency."
IOW, it appears Ivanhoe was not claiming Neandertals were modern humans suffering from rickets. (Of course, even if he had been, it's a typical creobot delusion to think that one 40-year-old paper that disagrees with the scientific consensus is of any significance.) One thing we can be sure of: pastorschild has not read this paper.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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March 9, 2011 4:28 PM
Then recognize the limits of your imaginary deity and your mythical/fictional holy book. There are many more limits there than with science. And you would know that if you had a real education, and thought about reality.Fixed that for you creobot. Those wholes don't exist in the science, only in your pretense of the science. Get a real education.Ah, the old well worn and refute nihilist argument. Still no evidence for your imaginary deity. Just loser presupposition arguments, like this.Actually cupcake, Hitler was a Catholic, and remained Catholic until he died. He didn't believe in evolution. He used animal husbandry arguments to kill "undesirables". He is one of yours loser.You are proving the non-existence of you imaginary deity. Since you keep avoiding providing the conclusive physical evidence for it. Science and reality has no need for your imaginary deity. They do quite well without it. Losers like you are lost without your binky (diety).Proving you are delusional fool who hasn't read the babble. The god of the babble is one sick puppy, who makes your Hitler look like a saint. Slavery, genocide, sexual slavery, arbitrary rules for no real reason. Kill and torture your friends. Allow your people to enslaved. If you can worship such a devil, you are a psychopath.Fuck you too.Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake
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March 9, 2011 5:41 PM
Billy Ray:
Well, I wouldn't say "simply". In order to place your faith in the Christian god, you have to:
1. Place faith in the Bible. That means -
1.1 Placing faith in the people who wrote the Bible, and assuming they weren't deluded about God speaking to them and weren't lying in pursuit of alterior motives.
1.2 Placing faith in the people who edited the Bible prior to canonization: believing that they didn't just do away with inconvenient books or passages.
1.3 Placing faith in the people who translated the bible and assuming they knew the language and context well enough to do their job, and weren't altering the meaning for the sake of their own agendas.
2. Placing faith in the people who interpret the Bible for you. That means -
2.1 Assuming that the people who teach you about the Bible know the correct interpretation (which means also trusting that the people who taught them knew the correct interpretation, and the people who taught those people, and so forth) and that people who have different interpretations are wrong.
2.2 Assuming that those people are honest, and would say something if they suspected they had it wrong, even though it would mean psychological discomfort (it's hard to admit a mistake) and sometimes loss of money for them.
3. Placing faith in your own judgment. Which means -
3.1 Believing that you would have been able to discern if you had been brought up in the wrong religion, despite being immersed in it.
3.2 Believing that you would be able to tell if people around you were mistaken in their faith. Otherwise you couldn't trust what they teach you.
3.3 Believing that the scientists are wrong about the science, and that you are correct about it, despite never having studied science to any substancial depth.
///wow, you really have to see yourself as infallible to pull this faith thing off, don't ya? How does it feel to be a demi-god?///
Anyway, this was a partial list of the things you have to place your faith in first in order to "simply" place your faith in God, Billy Ray.
So next time, if you decide to be honest about it, just say "I simply place my faith in the authors, editors and translators of the Bible, in the people who interpreted it, in the people who taught me the interpretation and in the infallibility of my own judgment about all those people, the science that I know precious little about, and the Bible".
Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake
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March 9, 2011 5:47 PM
Owlmirror, wow. Thou art awesome.
Posted by: Owlmirror
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March 9, 2011 6:08 PM
[. . . and I see I missed so much. Bleh.]
Not at all. Lubenow either flat-out lied about, or accidentally distorted, or deliberately chose to distort, the science that he built on. Lubenow alone is discredited; palaeoanthropology continues on as a valid science.
From observing Lubenow's distortion of the data, we can clearly see that Lubenow's claims are not true.
Well, so were many former creationists before they wised up and stopped being creationists.
CJO addressed this already, but I will point out, that in addition to all the other scientific evidence in support of plate tectonics, scientists have been able to measure the movements of those plates with GPS.
Ref.
Prawirodirdjo, L and Bock, Y. Instantaneous global plate motion model from 12 years of continuous GPS observations. Journal of Geophysical Research, v. 109, B08405, 15 PP., 2004
doi:10.1029/2003JB002944
Science has the evidence. You have nothing but your own ignorance, and your strange preference for ignorance over knowledge.
Why are you so ignorant of basic geology and cosmology? Again, this has been addressed by others.
Once again: There was never a global flood. So "cracks in the earth's crust" cannot be an evidence for an event that did not happen.
Why, exactly, do you refuse to read up on the basics of plate tectonics? Are you too stupid to understand it, or do you have some kind of ideological commitment to ignorance?
Why do you think it is it logical? Science has found evidence that the atmosphere has been different in the past -- and provided explanations for these differences as well.
Would you read references on paleoclimatology and paleogeology if they were provided, or would you just ignore them?
Hovind is a liar and a fraud about science as well as about his taxes, and he should very definitely be disregarded.
... and what, exactly, was holding this water up?
Good grief. You call plate tectonics dumb, and you offer water just sitting there above the Earth because of... what?
Of course, you have no evidence for these "giant lakes".
Why was the water down there in the first place?
. . . which did not happen and could not have happened . . .
Uh-huh. And where did the water go afterward?
Uh-huh. Right. Do you actually know the effects of high pressure on human and non-human physiology?
Did you ever wonder why no-one is using hyperbaric chambers to, I dunno, maybe test the above hypothesis? Did you ever wonder why no-one is using hyperbaric chambers to increase human lifespan? Do you really think that no-one wants to live to be 900+ years old?
The answer is because the above "explanation" is bullshit.
Except the scientists have evidence for their theories.
Since you don't have evidence for God, you're not placing your faith in God. You're placing your faith in yourself, and in other human beings, that this ludicrous fairytale about the bible is true despite there being no evidence for its truth.
And that is dumb.
I have "faith" in the laws of logic, and in the self-correcting method of science. If some new evidence shows that a current understanding of science is wrong, then the logic and the evidence will support changing that understanding.
What would demonstrate to you that your "understanding" -- or rather, your blind belief with no evidence at all -- is wrong? Anything at all?
I believe that there is no evidence for God, and that we are the result of remorseless laws of physics and the contingent interaction of those laws on matter.
Evolution is not a "ladder". It's a process.
What's wrong with making our own meaning? We don't live in "perpetual nothingness"; we live on a planet with a sun that will be around for quite a while yet, and lots of interesting things to see, learn, and do.
If God does not exist -- and there is no reason to think otherwise -- then your life is just as meaningless as ours, only you're finding "meaning" in a fairytale.
Come to think of it, if God does exist, how does that existence give your life meaning? Ultimately, you're nothing more than a puppet created by a giant invisible puppetmaster. Is that supposed to be a good thing? You still need to find "meaning" in being the meat puppet of a giant invisible puppetmaster.
Here and now, we are alive. Why shouldn't we care, while we live?
What is there to explain, other than the invisible person with magical superpowers not providing sufficient evidence for his existence?
Really, how hard would that be? All the invisible person with magical superpowers would need to do is talk a little. Or manifest visually. Something.
Instead, we hear nothing that sounds like an the invisible person with magical superpowers. We see nothing that looks like a visible person with magical superpowers.
Do you really think that an invisible person with magical superpowers would care so much about people believing that he exists, despite never providing evidence of that existence, that he would annihilate or torture those who don't?
Why do you think that? What evidence do you have that it might possibly be true?
Posted by: Owlmirror
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March 9, 2011 7:38 PM
Science works by making parsimonious inferences. For example, you mentioned that you were a high-school student. But it's a parsimonious inference -- based on the way that you're deliberately misconstruing and dismissing what he wrote -- that you're also an asshole.
See how that works?
Geologists have been doing the work of studying the Earth; examining stratigraphy on all of the continents; drilling ocean core samples; studying how the seafloor has been spreading at the mid-Atlantic ridge and other ridges; studying the various subduction zones; measuring the movement of continents with GPS, and so on and so forth. And someone comes along and summarizes the results of all of these many years of work . . . and you, more ignorant than a rock and blinded by ideology, just sneer at it. Which is the behavior of an asshole.
Do you really think that given the way you're acting, that you don't deserve to be called names?
Sigh. What does that even mean?
Nonsense. Naturalism is what it is. "Nothingness" isn't.
Do you not care that you're blathering nonsense?
Of course not. Evolution is not prescriptive.
Do you not realize that Hitler, and most of the Nazis who carried out the Holocaust, were devoutly religious, and in fact, the only stuff that Hitler wrote on the matter shows that he was in fact a creationist?
Obviously false. Again, the theory of evolution is not prescriptive.
Racism is justified in the eyes of the religious, because they tell each other that they are the chosen of God, and those of other races aren't.
You're astonishingly ignorant of the fact that religious slave traders used the bible to justify the slave trade.
No, I assume that truth is important.
Is truth actually not important to you?
Why not? What is the magical connection between how we came into existence, and "worth"?
Why? Because you say so? What is this magical "transcending worth"?
Well, I'm a specifically human animal. And what does passing on DNA have to do with it? If I don't pass on my DNA, do I magically get "worth"?
And Christians die too. Always have, so far. If that changes, well, that might provide evidence of an invisible person with magical superpowers. So... when is that going to happen?
No, you don't know it. Knowledge is belief that is both true and justified. You have blind belief, not justified truth.
And I'm pretty sure that I'm the unique product of evolution.
If you weren't unique, would that matter? Are twins a debasement of "worth"?
What makes you think this invisible person with magical superpowers is "loving"?
This is semantic garbage.
And who gave God "ultimate" worth, whatever that even means? How do you know that this invisible person with magical superpowers isn't worthless?
Hitler believed that being an Aryan was the only thing that gave people "worth".
How, exactly, are you different from Hitler?
Are you going to ever open a science book and actually learn what science says about the universe?
And for that matter, what's the connection between creationism and your bizarre belief of there being some magical ultimate worth?
If creationism weren't true, and science did in fact have the evidence that it says it has (which is kind of the point of science), would that affect the existence of God? Would that have any impact on your "worth"?
Would it matter if what you "have hope" in were not true?
You can't even be bothered to look up the spelling of "Nietzsche"?
And I hope that you realize that not every atheist is Nietzsche, and atheists are perfectly capable of living their last days surrounded by loved ones and happiness.
If an invisible person with magical superpowers did exist, why do you think he'd do what you tell him?
Posted by: Nightjar
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March 9, 2011 7:43 PM
Heh. I love it when someone triggers Owlmirror's SIWOTI syndrome like that.
Posted by: Ichthyic
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March 9, 2011 7:51 PM
[Taking a break here to post the researched citations. So much garbage to refute; so little time]
and there lies the rub.
It takes 10 seconds for a moronic creationist to copypasta the lies he found on some idiotic website, but it takes HOURS or even DAYS to post the full evidence that both refutes the lies and explains the real story.
and for what?
little creotard boy will just stick his fingers in his ears and pretend he never heard it, and re-spew the same lies tomorrow.
it just ain't fair, I sez.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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March 9, 2011 8:49 PM
Amen brother. A sight to behold.Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes
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March 9, 2011 9:00 PM
Ha ha! Fucking hopeful assholes sucki!
ermm...I think I missed most of the fun.
Posted by: John Morales
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March 10, 2011 12:14 AM
QoC, you think you laugh at Nerd, but have you ever looked at Nature?
Here.
"Welcome to Nature, the weekly, international, interdisciplinary journal of science.
Citations and Impact Factor
Nature is the world's most highly cited interdisciplinary science journal...
Aims and scope
Nature is a weekly international journal publishing the finest peer-reviewed research..."
Posted by: Ichthyic
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March 10, 2011 12:17 AM
yes indeed, there is an actual difference between a peer reviewed journal (Nature) and a magazine (National Geographic).
laughing boy just made a baboon out of himself.
Posted by: Ichthyic
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March 10, 2011 12:20 AM
...btw, I know what ROFPMSL means, but wtf does it mean with an extra "L" slapped on the front of it?
Posted by: amphiox
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March 10, 2011 12:26 AM
Ah. So QoC is physically incontinent as well as intellectually.
Not. Surprised. At. All.
Posted by: amphiox
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March 10, 2011 12:35 AM
On the contrary, evolution tells us that value judgments such as "inferior" and "superior" are completely contingent on a continuously changing and unpredictable environment.
The only rational course is to preserve variation whenever possible, always.
Nothing should be eliminated, for Nature is efficient enough at eliminating to warrant any additional help from us.
Posted by: Rorschach
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March 10, 2011 12:39 AM
Funniest thing I've read for a long time !
Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy
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March 10, 2011 12:43 AM
Yeah, and I guess one can always sit back and dream about privileged little pissant preacher boys being forced to read and understand it and realize that they've been shitting all over the actual hard work of innumerable scientists in favor of a phantasm of backwards dullards.
Hell, I'd just settle for him reading my comment and realizing what a bad case of Dunning-Kruger he has.
Posted by: KG
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March 10, 2011 8:14 AM
OK, I checked out the paper. As I suspected, Ivanhoe was not suggesting Virchow was right in considering Neandertals to be modern humans with rickets. So pastorschild is simply lying. Of course, the lie is not his/her own, but we can be absolutely certain (s)he has not read the paper, and is simply parroting a creobot lie without making any attempt to check it. Bearing false witness again, pastorschild!
Ivanhoe does suggest Neandertals may have suffered routinely from rickets (vitamin D deficiency), and that this influenced their appearance; but, once again, not that they would otherwise have been anatomically modern in appearance - if that were so, of course, modern humans with rickets would look like Neandertals, which they most certainly do not (even Virchow did not consider rickets the sole cause of the features in the specimen he studied). Rather, Ivanhoe is trying to account for what was then perceived as a puzzling "reversal" in the evolution of anatomically modern humans from Homo erectus, which he assumes to have taken place in Eurasia - fossils show that the distinctive Neandertal features became more rather than less pronounced over time. He believes Neandertals to have been the direct ancestors of modern Europeans. It has become clear in the 40 years since he wrote that this is not the case: recent DNA research shows Neandertals did contribute a small amount to the ancestry of modern non-Africans - between 1% and 4% - but overwhelmingly, non-Africans are all descended from a small group of anatomically modern people who left Africa perhaps 70,000 years ago. Ivanhoe is thus proposing a solution to a "problem" which more recent research shows does not exist (that such a "reversal" of trends should be considered problematic is itself a holdover from ideas that evolution is "progressive").
Further information on the gaping holes in this particular creobot lie is readily available here.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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March 10, 2011 8:22 AM
QoC is probably the banned liar loser troll, Slanted Science. Who knows nothing about science, and it shows.Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD)
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March 10, 2011 4:05 PM
The number of things about which PC is clueless is quite staggering. And yet it doesn't stop him from professing to know better about those subjects than all the scientists who've ever devoted their careers to studying them. Remarkable indeed.
Posted by: Owlmirror
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March 14, 2011 1:37 AM
On the off chance that pastorschild returns, I thought I'd leave a few words here.
First of all, a citation, from Adolf Hitler himself:
That's from Mein Kampf, vol. ii, ch. xi. Note that this emphasizes the fixity of species, which is a tenet common to all creationists.
And from the same chapter:
(emphasis mine)The point being that Hitler was definitely a creationist. Also a racist, obviously, but a creationist racist nonetheless.
Some have also suggested that if any science inspired Hitler, it was not evolutionary biology, but rather immunology. He, and other Nazis, offered an analogy whereby a culture or people was like a body, and foreign people were like a disease of the body which must be eliminated.
See Genocide as Immunology for details.
Of course, just because Hitler and the Nazis were inspired by misused and distorted medical science does not mean that medical science is false, or wrong, and even if Hitler had been inspired by Darwin -- misusing and distorting evolutionary biology -- this would not make evolutionary biology false or wrong.
Note, again, that science in general is descriptive, not prescriptive. Pasteur and Koch discovered how diseases spread; doing anything with that discovery -- especially based on a distortion of that science, as Hitler and the Nazis did -- is an additional prescriptive step. Both the distortion and the prescription came from Hitler and the Nazis, not from Pasteur or Koch.
As an analogy, consider the far more basic knowledge that humans need to breathe in order to live. That knowledge is a description of a fact. Taking the step of stopping people from breathing by, say, drowning them -- as God supposedly does in the mythical global flood -- is an additional step based on that knowledge, along with the prescription that they should be killed, just as Hitler asserted the prescription that some people should be killed so that the "body" of the Aryan people would be "healthy".
Is that clear, or do you need this to be explained this in even simpler terms?
Posted by: Owlmirror
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March 14, 2011 2:03 AM
Oh, and also:
"Vapor Canopy". Even if you ignore the problem of what holds the water up, there would be the mass of 9 kilometers of water in or above the atmosphere -- meaning that the pressure would be 900 atmospheres, or the equivalent of the pressure at 9 km deep in the ocean.
And the only way to keep that much vapor from condensing is if it was at a temperature at the boiling point for that pressure. Yeah, that sounds real healthy and conducive to 900+ year lifespans. So... everyone from Adam through Noah was pressure cooked, and being pressure cooked magically made them live longer?
More thorough history of the "Vapor Canopy" myth -- made up from nothing in the late 1800s, and stolen in 1961 by Whitcomb and Morris. And never something that ever made any sense at all.
Not that that fraud and liar Hovind would ever admit that.
Posted by: Ichthyic
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March 14, 2011 2:09 AM
So... everyone from Adam through Noah was pressure cooked, and being pressure cooked magically made them live longer?
holy crap!
is that the real secret secret behind Kentucky Fried Chicken??
Posted by: Owlmirror
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March 14, 2011 2:37 AM
Googling on the term "transcending worth" comes up with this hit, from a book by Ravi Zacharias:
Is that where you got your line about "transcending worth" from, pastorschild?
An can you explain how humans magically getting "worth" that way can possibly be true in a theology where the alleged "person of transcending value" allegedly decided that all humans were so worthless that they should all be killed and drowned, and presumably tortured forever in hellfire? With a tiny exception for eight humans, and two (or seven, in some cases) of every animal in a big boat.
Which reminds me...
There are some problems with the whole "eight people in a boat" business.