Sam Harris

At last the common ancestor of humans and modern Primates? Check it out here-

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090519104643.htm

How will the creationists ignore or answer this?

With the usual stuff:

“Pray!”

“here we go again!”

“Deception”

“The great deception” ???

“We were created differently from the animals because God himself fashioned us from the clay breathed life into the first man denoting an intimate relationship with him and further noted when God gave dominion over the all the earth (including the apes) and ‘walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening.’”

“**sarcasm on** I must say, this fossil clears it up for me…the resemblance to humans is astonishing… **end sarcasm**”

“Anyone remember ‘Piltdown Man’?”

I always answer them with-if we were created separately and specially, why do we have the same heritablity, that being DNA, as all other life forms?

Piltdown Man? Yes, a mistake by science, found and corrected by science. Theology did not help one bit.

Yeah, I took the answers straight from the raptureready forum (the tin foil shed subforum :D )

The scientists made a pretty nice site for the lemur-ish monkeyman-link named IDA. http://www.revealingthelink.com/

Saw a link about it on Digg as well, with a great comment “The gap keeps getting smaller and smaller…” in the link comment field.

WOW! Nice link! They have been analyzing this fossil for a long time, as it was found originally in 1983, so I am sure they know what they are talking about on this one.

Ken Ham is not a happy man.

The cry and hand waving of ‘no transitional fossils’ is now completely empty, as it was anyway to those who cared to look at the data/evidence.

Here is another article about it from Britain.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1179926/Is-David-Attenborough-set-reveal-Missing-Link-human-evolution.html

Nice find.

In case anyone didn’t catch the trailer:

http://www.revealingthelink.com/more-about-ida/the-film

Cracking me up, the epic music and thunder clapping with the digital computer sound effects as the letters pop up, calling to mind Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

My son and I are looking forward to the full BBC production on Wed.

(What up with the jokers who originally found the fossil? Oh yeah, that’s right, they found it in the early “greed is good” 80s.  )

No amount of missing links will ever convince creationists that humans evolved from apes.  It seems our minds are designed to believe what our parents tell us.  We learn from them how to make sense of the natural and social world we are born into.  Mostly this is adaptive.  Obviously we learn to make some independent decisions.  But the majority of people hang on to the religious beliefs (or skepticism) they were taught.  Don’t you think?

I studied biology and geology in college.  Over the decades I have talked with many many college-educated adults who have almost no knowledge of science.  Either their schooling was weak in sciences, or they didn’t pay close attention, or they were pre-disposed against hearing/remembering anything that contradicted their religious beliefs.  These are not stupid people.  They are either just ignorant of science, or they are convinced that they must take the Bible literally to be saved. 

I don’t scorn them.  Their obstinancy reminds me to look with a critical eye at my own certainties.

Welcome hannah.

‘No amount of missing links will ever convince creationists that humans evolved from apes’

Of course there is a contingency of true believers who will never be persuaded by any amount of evidence, but I think that there are many people who have and will be eventually persuaded by scientific discovery. I am one such case.

Science, has up to this time, done a pretty poor job of marketing it’s success. Many common people do not even know of many scientific discoveries. Thus this fossil discovery is getting a lot of publicity.

Science must plod along, and publicize it’s discoveries. Some will become enlightened because of it, but many will not. However, I think eventually evolutionary science will become overwhelming for the majority of people if we survive long enough. That is my hope anyway.

It is and always will truely be….‘one long argument’ as I believe Darwin said.

hannahfriend - 20 May 2009 01:03 AM

No amount of missing links will ever convince creationists that humans evolved from apes.  It seems our minds are designed to believe what our parents tell us.  We learn from them how to make sense of the natural and social world we are born into.  Mostly this is adaptive.  Obviously we learn to make some independent decisions.  But the majority of people hang on to the religious beliefs (or skepticism) they were taught.  Don’t you think?

I studied biology and geology in college.  Over the decades I have talked with many many college-educated adults who have almost no knowledge of science.  Either their schooling was weak in sciences, or they didn’t pay close attention, or they were pre-disposed against hearing/remembering anything that contradicted their religious beliefs.  These are not stupid people.  They are either just ignorant of science, or they are convinced that they must take the Bible literally to be saved. 

I don’t scorn them.  Their obstinancy reminds me to look with a critical eye at my own certainties.

I wonder if America’s love affair with big, heavy, gas-guzzling cars is a parallel phenomenon?  That obstinancy has been carried to the bitter end - GM going under, massive hemorrhaging of dollars for Middle Eastern oil, oil wars, global warming, toxic air in major cities, foreign competitors surging ahead . . . and still they wouldn’t be caught dead in a smaller, fuel-efficient car.

Welcome Hannah.  An excellent post.  Maybe we should start a topic on our own certainties that (we know) are wreaking havoc with the planet.