Did humans descend from other primates?

[McCulloch]

Man did not descend from the primates.

Did humans descend from other primates?
Are humans primates or should there be special biological taxonomy for humanity?
Please cite evidence.

[sinebender]

tit for tat......easily written, show me your refutation of behe 's book...'darwins black box'......your blowing smoke. you don't have a thing.

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 76:

tit for tat......easily written, show me your refutation of behe 's book...'darwins black box'......your blowing smoke. you don't have a thing.

...

Though influential within the intelligent design movement for several years, the book has lost some of its currency as more and more examples given by Behe as evidence of irreducible complexity have been shown to be explicable by known evolutionary mechanisms, something Behe conceded under cross examination while testifying as an expert witness on behalf of the defendants in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.
...
Peer review controversy
In 2005, while testifying for the defense in the Dover trial, Behe claimed under oath that the book had received a more thorough peer review than a scholarly article in a refereed journal,[16] a claim which appears to conflict the facts of the book's peer review.[17] Four of the book's five reviewers (Michael Atchison, Robert Shapiro, K. John Morrow, and Russell Doolittle) have made statements that contradict or otherwise do not support Behe's claim of the book passing a rigorous peer review.

Michael Atchison
Atchison has stated that he did not review the book at all, but spent 10 minutes on the phone receiving a brief overview of the book which he then endorsed without ever seeing the text.[18]

Robert Shapiro
Shapiro has said that he reviewed the book, and while he agreed with some of its analysis of origin-of-life research, he thought its conclusions are false, though the best explanation of the argument from design that was available.[19] Had the book been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal and this comment had appeared, the review provided by Shapiro would have forced the conclusions regarding intelligent design to be changed or removed.[19]

K. John Morrow
Morrow criticized the book as appalling and unsupported, which contributed to the original publisher turning down the book for publication.[20]

Russell Doolittle
Doolittle, upon whom Behe based much of his discussion of blood clotting, described it as misrepresenting many important points and disingenuous,[21] which also contributed to the original publisher turning down the book for publication.[22]

In the same trial, Behe eventually testified under oath that "There are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred".[23] The result of the trial was the ruling that intelligent design is not science and is essentially religious in nature.

Lying about peer review indicates Behe is a less than honorable researcher, and places all his "research", and conclusions thereof in doubt.

[Jester]

Moderator Caution

tit for tat......easily written, show me your refutation of behe 's book...'darwins black box'......your blowing smoke. you don't have a thing.

The civility is breaking down a bit here.
Also, this could be seen as a one-liner comment. In general, debate participants are expected to outline arguments themselves and use references to books and websites for clarification and support.

[sinebender]

The problem is that even a one-celled organism turns out to be far more complex than anything which man has yet built.
The odds against even the simplest parts of a one-celled animal arising via chance are known to be far beyond astronomical.
Of course, no available amount of time would suffice for trying to overcome those kinds of odds, least of all the piddling four billion years which evolutionists claim as an age of the Earth. You're still looking for an event with odds like 1 to ten to the 167,887 power EVERY YEAR for a billion years, assuming one-celled animals are supposed to have arisen in a billion years.
That's assuming a cell might have developed ala evolutionism over a billion year time span without being destroyed by outside forces as Struss notes. Realistically, the cell would probably have to completely form from scratch in less than one day.
Aside from the impossible odds, there is another problem just as bad. All versions of abiogenesis require a "pre-biotic soup", a rich amalgam of the major kinds of building blocks required for living cells in the ancient oceans of the world. Such a concentrations of proteins etc. would leave traces in the rocks of those oceans; unfortunately for the evolutionists of which there is no evidence.
Why do people still believe in evolution when it was disproven over 140 years ago by Louis Pasteur. Pasteur proved that life comes from life, life cannot come from nonlife. Omne vivum e vivo. Evolution requires spontaneous generation in order to have the first cell.
Like Pasteur said in Sorbonne, Paris (1864): It is dumb, dumb since these experiments were begun several years agoNever will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow of this simple experiment! No, there is now no circumstances in which it could be affirmed that microscopic beings come into the world without germs, without parents, similar to themselves.
Why do evolutionists, who have yet to prove that Pasteur was wrong, continue to believe an impossible theory? They do fallow his proof when it comes to medicine and pasteurization of food. so they know the proof to be correct. the evolutionist just chooses to believe in what they know to be impossible. again, exactly what steven j gould has been saying all along. He would rather believe in something that he knows is impossible than to believe in a God or a designer.

Your counter argument will be that Pasteur could not produce something one would consider life from something one would consider non-life is not sufficient to disprove evolution " it only indicates that a more detailed experiment may be needed.
After all, it was only in the middle of last century that it was shown that a mix of primitive non-living gases, in a flask with high voltage electrodes, could produce the basic compounds that lead to amino acids Pasteurs time had little to no knowledge of the internal workings of cells " and dont even consider the nature of a virus (which many do not consider to be living " a free virus is just a chemical coating around a chunk of rna or dna, with nothing available to take in energy or process matter but let a virus contact a cell wall, and chemical reactions dissolve the coating, drawing the rna/dna into the cell, where the cells own production systems start treating the virus as if it were its own).
Why not just say evolution is probably the hardest theory to disprove: lack of evidence does not disprove something " if one seeks to disprove evolution, one must produce overwhelming AND TESTABLE evidence of an alternative process that covers the same situations. We see evolution in action (look at all the disease causing bugs that are becoming tolerant and immune to formerly effective antibiotics); we can trace changes through the fossil record. We can produce components of life (amino acids, etc.) through chemical reactions That we havent produced a strand of functional rna from a raw chemical soup /yet/ does not prove it can never happen.
A counter to evolution then is going to have to explain why germs become resistant to antibiotics and at the same time explain why " given time and energy, some primordial mass of chemicals can never produce components of life And then offer up testable experiments to support this counter proposal
The creationist Edward Blyth discussed natural selection 25 years before Darwin, but recognized that it was a conservative, not a creative, force. In other words that natural selection has been used to show creation for 25 years longer then it has been claimed to help evolution.
The reason that germs become resistant to antibiotics is that they loose DNA and thereby loose what the antibiotic reacted with. This can be by loosing a pump in the cell wall, change a control gene, or loose the enzyme the antibiotic attacked.
A loss of information is not evolution .evolutionists have yet to show that Pasteur was wrong.

[sinebender]

hands feet wings.....? looking similar.....all that suggests is that they had a common designer. If you follow the fossils backwards, you find nothing. there are no intermediate fossils. there are no transitional fossils. Recent articles have Steven J gould still looking for the hopeful monster. There is no evidence supporting evolution. The major protagonists of evolution are embarrassed by their lack of evidence. they even say so themselves. steven J gould has said himself- that 'i would rather believe in something i know to be impossible than to believe in intelligent design;

[sinebender]

in response to....What I want, is not an attack on evolution, which you seem to be continuing, but rather evidence for the positive claim for special creation.

I think the evidence you are looking for is the mathematics, the golden triangle, the fibonacci number sequence in how it applied to the human body. Evidence of design.

[sinebender]

design- The golden section- a precise way of dividing a line, music or anything else-is showed up early in mathematics. It goes back at least as far as 300 B.C., when Euclid described it in his major work, the Elements. Moreover, the Pythagoreans apparently knew about the golden section around 500 B.C. The oldest examples of this principle, however, appear in nature's proportions, including the morphology of pine cones and starfish. Further more, "The golden section is thought by some people to offer the aesthetically most pleasing proportion."
Euclid, a Greek mathematician wrote the Elements which is a collection of 13 books . It was the most important mathematical work up to present days. In Book 6, Proposition 30, Euclid shows how to divide a line in mean and extreme ratio which we would call "finding the golden section point on the line." Euclid used this phrase to mean the ratio of the smaller part of the line, to the larger part is the SAME as the ratio of the larger part, to the whole line. Euclid in Elements called dividing a line at the ratio 0.6180399.. : 1 , dividing a line in the extreme and mean ratio. This later gave rise to the name golden mean, golden ratio and even the divine proportion.
In order to describe the golden section, imagine a line that is one unit long. Then divide the line in two unequal segments, such that the shorter one equals x, the longer one equals (1 - x) and the ratio of the shorter segment to the longer one equals the ratio of the longer segment to the overall line; that is, x/(1 - x) = (1 - x)/1. That equality leads to a quadratic equation that can be used to solve for x, and substituting that value back into the equality yields a common ratio of approximately 0.618. We shall use the Greek letter phi for this Golden Proportion . Also, we shell use Phi for the closely related value 1.6180339887...


The Golden Section, also known as Phi, is manifested in the structure of the human body. If the length of the hand has the value of 1, for instance, then the combined length of hand + forearm has the approximate value of Phi. Similarly the proportion of upper arm to hand + forearm is in the same ratio of 1: Phi .The human face abounds with examples of the Golden Section. The head forms a golden rectangle with the eyes at its midpoint.The mouth and nose are each placed at golden sections of the distance between the eyes and the bottom of the chin.Phi defines the dimensions of the human profile. Even when viewed from the side, the human head illustrates the Golden Proportion.The human body is based on Phi and the number 5.The number 5 appendages to the torso, in the arms, leg and head. 5 appendages on each of these, in the fingers and toes and 5 openings on the face.The human body illustrates the Golden Section or Divine Proportion, also.The Divine Proportion in the Body The DNA cross-section is based on Phi.A cross-sectional view from the top of the DNA double helix forms a decagon. A decagon is in essence two pentagons, with one rotated by 36 degrees from the other, so each spiral of the double helix must trace out the shape of a pentagon.The ratio of the diagonal of a pentagon to its side is Phi : 1.So, no matter which way you look at it, even in its smallest element, DNA, and life, is constructed using phi and the golden section!The DNA molecule, the program for all life, is based on the Golden section. It measures 34 angstroms long by 21 angstroms wide for each full cycle of its double helix spiral.34 and 21, of course, are numbers in the Fibonacci series and their ratio, 1.6190476 closely approximates Phi, 1.6180339.There are many examples of the Golden Section or Divine Proportion in Nature. For example,the eye, fins and tail all fall at Golden Sections of the length of a dolphin's body. Phi is frequently expressed in many of Natures creations, and by varying the angle between adjacent radii, a number of Natural spirals and leafshapes can be created. The Fibonacci numbers form the best whole number approximations to the Golden number. Plants illustrate the Fibonacci series in the numbers and arrangements of petals, leaves, sections and seeds.Plants that are formed in spirals, such as pinecones, pineapples and sunflowers, illustrate Fibonacci numbers. Many plants produce new branches in quantities that are based on Fibonacci numbers.


:

[GrumpyMrGruff]

Is it not originally assumed that ERV is assumed to not have a function? That they just "sit quietly"?

This characterization only holds with respect to viral behavior. As has been previously pointed out, spawning actively infectious retroviruses isn't good for survival. However, loss of viral activity has no bearing on whether natural selection jury-rigs an ERV for host-beneficial functions after it is in the host genome. Conversely, some ERVs contain viral genes which are not completely inactivated and can promote retrovirus-related diseases such as cancer[1] and MS.[2]

For the most part I'll stick to evidence and not theological speculation, but I think it's decidedly odd that a designer littered all of our cells with broken viruses, especially when some may randomly cause the same diseases as exogenous viruses.

Also, ERV was considered to be a small part of the genome, around 1%.

"In humans, endogenous retroviruses occupy about 1% of the genome, in total constituting ~30,000 different retroviruses embedded in each person's genomic DNA."
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc ... troviruses

However, the number discovered is now closer to 8%.

"There are many thousands of endogenous retroviruses within human DNA (HERVs comprise nearly 8% of the human genome, with 98,000 elements and fragments[9]). All appear to be defective, containing nonsense mutations or major deletions, and cannot produce infectious virus particles."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous ... troviruses

How did 8% of the genome originate from mistakes from viruses? This is more problematic if most of these are found to have a function.

1% versus 8% is a bit of a non sequitur. More sequence information was processed between 2000 (1%) and 2004 (8%), leading to more identified ERV sequences.

You're also focusing on a false dichotomy here. There is no reason to assume that ERVs must be completely inactive genetic elements OR have host-beneficial functions. The only functions that need to "sit quietly" are the pathogenic ones. So far as mutation and natural selection are concerned, ERVs are just a few more bits of genetic raw material which may or may not be co-opted for the benefit of the host. Mutations which reactivate pathogenesis are selected against (due to cancer, MS, etc.), but mutations which benefit the host will be selected for.

Conversely, some partially activated retroviruses, retrotransposons, do appear to make many "junk" copies within a genome.[3] This is an ongoing process in living organisms and may be inherited. Like recently acquired (human-only) ERVs, patterns of human retrotransposon variability can be used to look at human lineages. (Retrotransposon copies are some of the genetic elements that give rise to the iconic 'DNA fingerprinting' banding patterns in forensics.) But like ERVs, a subset are shared by multiple species in the same genomic locations and can be used to infer inter-species relationships.[4] Again, nothing says that old retrotransposon copies can't be retrofit for new functions via natural selection.

I don't see the problem you think is posed by host-specific ERV functions. Arguably the burden of 8% viral junk DNA is less problematic if some of that DNA has been co-opted so that it is no longer junk, but functional. An even greater percentage of our genome is made up of randomly replicating junk sequences regardless.

Also, the prediction that I mentioned before is that we will continue to find functions for ERV and that they will not all just be considered "defective" and "containing nonsense mutations". However, if they are all indeed found to be completely functionless, it would make more sense that it is an inactive remnant from an ancestor.

See the above regarding function. Again, why is it either-or? Why do they all need to be completely functionless? I'll make my own prediction, though it may be a while before I can dig up the relevant papers: ERV sequences shared by all primates, all mammals, etc. (and therefore thought to have been acquired by a distant ancestor) will be more likely (on average) to have host functions than ERVs shared by only great apes or those found only in humans (or recently acquired ERVs in any other genus/species). Why: Mutation and natural selection will have had more time to co-opt old ERVs than those incorporated only recently.

Stating this more strongly, comparative genomics would falsify the concept of species descent/modification if resampling different traits (different genes, ERVs, etc.) inferred the same tree no more frequently than when using randomized data. In other words, all noise and no signal would be evidence against shared ancestry.

If ERV is indeed functionless, yes, what you stated would make sense.

More on this below...

The preponderance of genomic sequence data (including ERVs), mtDNA sequence data, karyotypic evidence, and fossil distribution are consistent with a single ancestral tree.

However, as for actual fossil evidence of a common ancestor, it is lacking. As for genetic similarities, if species share morphological similarities, it would make sense that they also share genetic similarities.

This line of reasoning might hold in genes and regulatory elements controlling morphology (e.g., homeobox genes, bone morphogenetic proteins, hedgehog genes, etc., and their promoters), but it cannot logically be extended from morphological features to all genetic sequences in an organism. However, we infer the same ancestral tree regardless of the genetic sequences we examine (whether morphogenic or not).

ERVs are genetic sequences too, and are compared the same way. Presence or absence of an ERV at a particular genome location isn't the only thing to consider. We can compare sequences of shared ERVs at the same genomic location just like we look at shared genes. Bear in mind that regardless of whether an ERV has acquired a host-beneficial function, it will most likely have its own pathogenic genes broken by mutation (a few known examples don't - cancer, MS, causing ERVs). By the chemistry of DNA, there are many, many possible broken sequences and only a few sequences that "work" (pathogenically or otherwise). Even when there is no known beneficial function, ERVs shared by multiple species at the same genomic location all tend to share the same pathogenically inactivating mutations. Probabilistically speaking, there is no a priori reason to expect this without common descent: Any of the many, many possible inactivating mutations would do. However, when we look at retroviral genes at the same genomic position across humans, chimps, and gorillas, we see that they are broken the same way. ERVs at different genomic positions are broken different ways, but each position shares the same inactivating mutations with its cross-species counterparts. Regardless of host-beneficial functions, the most parsimonious explanation for this pattern (accounting for known molecular mechanisms) is that each location's ERV was pathogenically inactivated once in an ancestor. These inactivated copies were then inherited by descendant species. Conversely, convergent evolution of all these inactive ERVs from different initial states is exceedingly unlikely.

I do not believe I said that. I did state: "How about if I find an ERV common to primates (including chimps), but not found in humans?"

I was referring to (and Goat was responding to) post #40 where the 'common to primates' part may've been implied, but it wasn't stated. We read too literally. No biggie.

Incidentally, this seems at odds with your earlier claim that the host-specific functions of some ERVs imply their design. Different human populations have different total numbers of ERVs. While we all have some ERVs in common (including those inherited from our common ancestor), various reproductively isolated human populations have accumulated different ERVs at different positions in their genomes. Just as inter-species ERV distributions make sense in light of evolution, this pattern makes sense in light of virology and population genetics... but not in light of your assertion that ERVs were specifically engineered in the genome. If they're designed to serve a purpose, why do some human populations need different types and numbers of ERVs? Did the Designer continue to tinker after Adam and Eve?

If there are ERV differences in humans, it would not show that humans evolved. It would only either show that a virus infected a certain group or that there would be differences in genotype/phenotype in populations.

True, but within the patterns of isolated HERV acquisition one sees primate evolution writ small. When a lineage of humans shares a unique ERV at a particular genomic position, that ERV shows the same pattern of inactivation across the isolated breeding population. Some human-only ERVs were acquired on the course of the human migrations. Their unique mutations show the same patterns of hierarchical organization among descendant human lineages that we see writ large across ERVs of the great ape genomes.

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 79:

>some snipping for brevity and clarity<

The problem is that even a one-celled organism turns out to be far more complex than anything which man has yet built.

That depends on one's perspective. Given a once celled animal is composed of x atoms, I can think of far more complex structures of human origin.

The odds against even the simplest parts of a one-celled animal arising via chance are known to be far beyond astronomical.
Of course, no available amount of time would suffice for trying to overcome those kinds of odds, least of all the piddling four billion years which evolutionists claim as an age of the Earth. You're still looking for an event with odds like 1 to ten to the 167,887 power EVERY YEAR for a billion years, assuming one-celled animals are supposed to have arisen in a billion years.

This doesn't take into account that these one celled animals are likely products of previous evolutionary steps, and that these modifications may be occurring simultaneously.

That's assuming a cell might have developed ala evolutionism over a billion year time span without being destroyed by outside forces as Struss notes. Realistically, the cell would probably have to completely form from scratch in less than one day.

Gross misunderstanding of evolutionary theory.

Aside from the impossible odds, there is another problem just as bad. All versions of abiogenesis require a "pre-biotic soup", a rich amalgam of the major kinds of building blocks required for living cells in the ancient oceans of the world. Such a concentrations of proteins etc. would leave traces in the rocks of those oceans; unfortunately for the evolutionists of which there is no evidence.

Proteins are very unlikely to become fossilized, given their soft composition.

Why do people still believe in evolution when it was disproven over 140 years ago by Louis Pasteur. Pasteur proved that life comes from life, life cannot come from nonlife. Omne vivum e vivo. Evolution requires spontaneous generation in order to have the first cell.

Only to those who lack understanding of evolutionary theory. No credible biologist proposes one celled biotics were the first step.

Like Pasteur said in Sorbonne, Paris (1864): It is dumb, dumb since these experiments were begun several years agoNever will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow of this simple experiment! No, there is now no circumstances in which it could be affirmed that microscopic beings come into the world without germs, without parents, similar to themselves.

It amuses me when theists argue against "spontaneous generation" - when that is exactly what they propose occurs with their god.

...the evolutionist just chooses to believe in what they know to be impossible.

I object to this slur, and find your use of it typical of those who don't understand evolutionary theory - regardless of that theory's accuracy.

The reason that germs become resistant to antibiotics is that they loose DNA and thereby loose what the antibiotic reacted with. This can be by loosing a pump in the cell wall, change a control gene, or loose the enzyme the antibiotic attacked.

Incomplete data may produce incomplete conclusions.

[Grumpy]

sinebender

The golden section

Has nothing to do with the subject, numerology is not science.

I think the evidence you are looking for is the mathematics, the golden triangle, the fibonacci number sequence in how it applied to the human body. Evidence of design.

And then the lead turns into gold.

If you follow the fossils backwards, you find nothing.

You find other fossils all the way back to single cells. There are gaps, but there are also detailed lineages, it's like a long film movie that someone ran over with a lawn mower, if you examine each clip it will give a bit of information about the whole, given enough clips and enough study the clips can be arranged in an order that gives you an idea about what the film was about. Fossils are the clips, the history of life is the movie. The movie can be understood even if not all the frames are recovered(not every fossil is recovered, not every species has an unbroken line of recovered fossils(yet).

there are no intermediate fossils. there are no transitional fossils.

This is just false. Whether by ignorance or intent it is actively promoted by Creationists and is complete garbage as science...





"In the beginning there was Archaeopteryx" Most combatants in the debate agree that Archaeopteryx is the first bird. Recovered from limestone quarries in southern Germany, Archaeopteryx is a 145 million-year-old, crow-sized skeleton covered in feathers. There is no disputing that Archaeopteryx had feathers, they are clearly preserved along with two of the seven known specimens, and feathers are a distinctly birdie feature. But the skeleton of Archaeopteryx is distinctly non-bird-like with a long bony tail, teeth instead of a beak and claws on the wings. The Birds-Are-Dinosaurs group contend that, if feathers had not been found with Archaeopteryx, it would have been identified as a small dinosaur (in fact the five specimens without feathers had previously been identified as the small dinosaur Compsognathus)."

http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/dinobird/story.htm

Recent articles have Steven J gould(sic) still looking for the hopeful monster.

Stephen Gould
1941-2002

Were these articles from Heaven? Or were the articles about research he is doing in Heaven and written by psychics?

Please find out something about the things you disparage BEFORE you post.

Grumpy