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.

[otseng]

If my last post on ERVs was inducing 'tl;dr' yawns, consider the following analogy:

No, I didn't fall asleep reading it. Actually, it was a very good post. I try to address posts in sequence, so yours was next.

However, the authors point out that this is consistent with the current understanding of primate phylogeny. ...

What this demonstrates is that evolution is unfalsifiable. It can take in any evidence and present an ad hoc explanation for it.

Parsimony is key here. You're right that Barbulescu et al. provide post-hoc explanations for the the unexpected ERV pattern. Why? Because it conflicts with the preponderance of evidence to the contrary.

If you're referring to evidence outside of ERVs, then we can address those later. If you're referring to ERVs, then it questions the value of it since it is open to ad hoc explanations. Also, several other assumptions of ERVs are called into question.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

You should be careful with your phrasing, though. You ask Goat about "an ERV ... found in humans and not in chimps" - there are many such ERVs. However, they're also absent in gorillas, orangs, and other primates... because we have acquired them after our divergence from chimps (and all other primates).

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?"

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.

[otseng]

Let me make the comment that this thread is about human evolution, not NDE, Cayce, coal fields, blood coagulation, Great pyramid, isotope dating, age of the Earth, numerology, Mt St Helens, etc. Please avoid bringing up anything that is not directly related to the OP.

[otseng]

Again, similarity doesn't prove lineage.

Says who?

Because similar features can either be homologous or analogous. If it's homologous, they would not be directly related. So, similarity doesn't prove lineage.

[Goat]

If my last post on ERVs was inducing 'tl;dr' yawns, consider the following analogy:

No, I didn't fall asleep reading it. Actually, it was a very good post. I try to address posts in sequence, so yours was next.

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.

That is what you said you would provide, and I am waiting for that.

[nygreenguy]

Again, similarity doesn't prove lineage.

Says who?

Because similar features can either be homologous or analogous. If it's homologous, they would not be directly related. So, similarity doesn't prove lineage.

Homologous is, by definition, derived from a common ancestor.

Like the hands/fins/wings of mammals. They all look an awful lot alike. Why is that?

Their hand bones have all the exact same parts, and the same number of parts, and are arranged in the same way. But only in what we classify as the mammals. Birds are different, but the same among birds.

If we follow the fossils in the reverse direction we even see the gradual changes in these parts.

If all of this doesnt prove lineage can be assumed from similarity, than Im not sure what can.

[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 ago…Never 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… Pasteur’s time had little to no knowledge of the internal workings of cells — and don’t 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 cell’s 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 haven’t 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;