Scientists Discover Common Ancestor of Monkeys, Apes, and Humans 391
reporter writes "According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, scientists have discovered the common ancestor of monkeys, apes, and Slashdotters. The 47 million year old fossils were discovered in Germany. The ancestor physically resembles today's lemur. Quoting: 'The skeleton will be unveiled at New York City's American Museum of Natural History next Tuesday by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and an international team involved in the discovery. According to Prof. Gingerich, the fossilized remains are of a young female adapid. The skeleton was unearthed by collectors about two years ago and has been kept tightly under wraps since then, in an unusual feat of scientific secrecy. Prof. Gingerich said he had twice examined the adapid skeleton, which was "a complete, spectacular fossil." The completeness of the preserved skeleton is crucial, because most previously found fossils of ancient primates were small finds, such as teeth and jawbones.'"
Re:Oh this is gonna be fun :) (Score:5, Insightful)
FYP:
It is important not to associate belief with knowledge.
Re:Evolution is real -- even for modern man. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't even know where to begin with you. First off, you don't seem to know how evolution works. Second of all, social evolution plays the greatest roles in the natural selection of humans. If your standpoint were true, then the Indians and Chinese (the greatest of the populations) would be the "fittest" species. The Africans have been subject to tyranny of countless nations, and now they face the oppression of their own dictators. And I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but one's scientific success is heavily dependent on luck and ambition, not just intelligence. Otherwise, women would seem extremely inferior to men in science, which is not true because I know countless women who perform better than men academically. It pisses me off when uneducated people start talking out of their ass. I'm not even claiming that you're 100% wrong, just that you have overlooked so many other variables (mainly nurture over nature).
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
creationism is very much a minority opinion amongst christians (in fact I've only ever met one who thought like that, and I've met a lot of christians over the years). The belief in a literal 7 days is something that historically would have been laughed at long before darwin. A few noisy fundies in the US don't get to choose what christianity is, no matter what you might want to think.
Re:I can has DNA sample? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll believe it when it's been peer reviewed and the hypothesis has been examined by lots of people and agreed on.
Fakery happens. Sheer bad judgement happens. The fact that this has been kept secret is a huge red flag... science doesn't keep things secret.
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:1, Insightful)
"Christians" can't win with you, can they? I think, being a Christian, he could have said anything, and you would have responded as you just did.
The fact of the matter is (as Tony pointed out), many/most Christians don't seriously consider the literal interpretation.
And, I agree with the GP poster - why WOULDN'T God develop the world so that it can continue to grow and EVOLVE. The only hangup I have with evolution is that I don't see any half-man/half-apes running around. Granted, if it did happen, it would have happened over a long time, but wouldn't that cycle already be in the pipe, so we would be seeing more man/ape combos around?
Re:I can has DNA sample? (Score:3, Insightful)
Pseudosciences (Score:2, Insightful)
The difference between science and pseudoscience is not that one is right and the other is wrong, it's that one is at least in theory demonstrably right or wrong and the other, well, the other will forever be unprovable.
Barring a direct revelation from God, such as might happen at "the end times" discussed in Revelation, Creationism is not provable. While the detailed account in Genesis is disprovable assuming God didn't muck up the data, the idea that "God created the Universe in 7 days, then mucked up the evidence so it looked 13+ billion years old" is not disprovable. The Bible is silent on whether God mucked up the evidence.
I guess you COULD call Creationism a science if you said "Hypothesis: God Created the Universe in 7 days. Test of Hypothesis: Wait for universe to end and as God how it began." However, because it is a hypothesis that can't be tested any time soon and, unlike scientific hypotheses which are waiting for the march of technology before they can be tested, there is nothing we can do to find an answer sooner, as a scientific theory it has no practical value. It has much more practical effect on the world as a religious belief than as a scientific theory that is well before its time.
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless they really meant "God created complex mechanisms which eventually gave rise to life and then millions of years later resulted purely by chance something that resembled God." I don't buy it.
If you don't consider the literal interpretation what do you consider? What is your 'source' on God? If the bible means nothing then where do you get your religious beliefs from? The church? That sounds risky. If it is a personal attachment to something spiritual then why the need to go to some building on Sunday? Surely you didn't just 'feel' that God wanted you to go to church on Sundays. What is the basis for your religion if not the bible? And if it is the bible then how can you not believe 80% of it?
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
Taking their name and their religion and then doing as you please.
Who gets to decide what Christianity is supposed to be? You?
....
Turn in your atheist card at the door. I don't want people like you to be in any way associated with people like me. I don't think I'm alone in that either.
So you can ask someone to turn in their Atheist card for trying to judge what Christianity is, but you can judge what Atheism is? You sound like one of them.
Re:Evolution is real -- even for modern man. (Score:3, Insightful)
Japan wasn't really "devastated by two nuclear bombs".
It's a pretty big place. Neither a majority of their population nor their land was even affected by the nuclear bombs.
More Japanese died prior to the bombs in regular combat than the nuclear blasts. The Japanese may have overcome adversity but the Nuclear blasts weren't much worse than the firebombing of Tokyo or the sustained loss of life during combat.
Just as the US wasn't devastated by the World Trade Center collapsing.
Re:I can has DNA sample? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or a combination of the two.
If you discover a skeleton then you get a monopoly on its data until you reveal it. By keeping it secret you can be certain to glean as many discoveries as possible from it before opening it up to further investigation and interpretation.
If you find it and open it to public scrutiny immediately then you're competing on equal footing with everyone else to draw conclusions and write papers. If you hold it secret for 2 years then you can be sure any significant conclusions and papers are written by your own team and not someone else.
It's like finding a clue in the scavenger hunt. Don't give it up until you've found the prize or need help looking.
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
(Boy, is this going to cost me karma...)
You're an idiot. FYI, I have mod points today, and still I decided to post into this thread just to be able tell you that you're an idiot.
And now, since I'm out of modding this thread anyway, let's get it straight, piece by piece.
Who gets to decide what Christianity is supposed to be? You?
Several instances, but, ultimately, it's the Pope. However, it's not like the Pope simply pulls phrases out of his ass and then they're declared truth. It's only when a certain issue now and then needs clarification that cannot be archieved otherwise that the Pope dictates how to be thought of that issue. It's then that the Pope speaks ex cathedra, and it's only then that he is regarded as an infallible instance and whatever he says is regarded as true.
The reasoning behind this is less to create truth, but instead to allow a large community to start from the same premisses and end fundamental quarrels without a sense.
However, this doesn't happen fairly often. Since 1870, the Pope has spoken ex cathedra twice so far, last time having been 1950; before 1870, there are somewhere between 10-20 documented ex cathedra decrees.
For all other cases, what Christianity is, is less of a "decission" as in "law", it's rather an "interpretation" of certain events. Church people sit together and decide what position to take towards a certain event.
The oldest Christian church (the Catholics) have no beef with evolution.
There's more truth to that sentence than you probably wanted it to.
You see, the Church absolutely has no interrest whatsoever in getting involved in evolution. But that's not because they disapprove evolution. It's because the Church has no interrest in getting involved in science questions at all. (That might have been different in the Middle Ages, when people used the bible as a poor replacement for physics, however that's not today.) But then again, like in any other matter, there are those who understand and those who don't understand Christianity. Whoever tells you that the Church disapproves evolution either didn't understand Christianity, or is simply ripping you off for one reason or the other.
The Church stays away from evolution is not because they disapprove with it, it's because evolution is not their job. Period. Church may have an oppinion about how to use science to the best of mankind, blabla yadda yadda. But the Church won't tell you how to do science, just as little as they're going to accept advice from you on how to do religion.
Your statement would mean, in car analogy, that a car mechanics guy staying away from a baby that needs a diper change disapproves with the idea of having babies.
Turn in your atheist card at the door. I don't want people like you to be in any way associated with people like me. I don't think I'm alone in that either.
I'm pretty sure the feeling is mutual -- I have a lot of atheist friends, none of which I think would like to be associated with you right now...
Devolution (Score:3, Insightful)
All religions do eugenics on their adherents to breed them into loyal servants of the administration. Creationism is just a way of obfuscating their misuse of the law of nature that is evolution. Unfortunately, only nature can do genetics, which breeds entities suitable for their environment. Eugenics results in devolution, in the case of religion, breeding subhumans. Hey, if this continues, someday humans might be discovered to be the ancient lifeform from which monkeys, apes and lemurs evolved.
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:2, Insightful)
That said, I used to be a fan of the "God of the gaps", too. Then I realized I was just trying to make my old beliefs fit in with reality, as if they were a security blanket. Over time, I let go of those beliefs and accepted I am an atheist.
p51d007, you're an atheist (or at least strongly agnostic), you just don't realize it yet. Come out of the closet whenever you're ready.
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously, thousands of years ago, we were different
Thousands of years ago, we were not different. Tens of thousands of years ago, we may have been slightly different.
I believe we were created by god, to evolve.
There is an unbroken chain of a billion years of evolution connecting us to simple bacteria. If God created any species from scratch, it must have been simple bacteria, but the rest evolved from that.
What's interesting, is when I say that, depending on which side of the creationism/evolution debate you are on, sparks controversy from both sides ;)
Well, from the scientific side, you spark controversy because you're wrong. From the creationism side, you spark controversy because you use the "evolution" word.
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:2, Insightful)
So you believe in deities ? A
Creationist "created" their gods, not the other way around.
Re:Oh this is gonna be fun :) (Score:5, Insightful)
It's time we stopped referring to them as creationist and start calling them what they really are: evolution deniers.
Congratulations on your enlightenment by the way. It takes an open mind to weigh the evidence and change your point of view. You are to be commended.
Re:The article has suggestive and leading lanuage. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a "Creation Research Institute" talking point.
In actual fact, carbon dating is able to give the ages of formerly living materials up to about 60,000 years old. Any older, and the C-14 that the method relies on will have completely decayed. No material has ever been carbon dated as "millions of years old". I know of several hoaxes involving artifacts supposedly excavated from coal-mines and the like, for example the London Hammer. This is almost certainly what you refer to. The keepers of these ersatz fossils have never permitted them to be dated or thoroughly examined by actual scientists. Draw your own conclusions about somebody refusing to allow their claims to be tested.
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:4, Insightful)
Americans form only a fraction of Christianity. The biggest christian denomination, the catholics, consider evolution compatible with their faith.
Re:The article has suggestive and leading lanuage. (Score:3, Insightful)
Anthropologists have long believed that humans evolved from ancient ape-like ancestors.
No they don't 'believe' they use reason based on radiocarbon dating of fossils and other hard scientific and rigorously tested and reviewed evidence to reach the most accurate and logical conclusion based on findings and observation.
Wow, you clearly do not know the definition of the word "belief." Here you go (From Merriam-Webster): 1: a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing 2: something believed ; especially : a tenet or body of tenets held by a group
3: conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence
Notice that your little screed about evidence is completely irrelevant.
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
You must not be an American. Or know very many protestants.
Almost everyone I know is protestant. The vast vast vast majority of them accept Genesis as the literal description of creation.
You must only know evangelical protestants. Episcopalians have no trouble with evolution. The Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology. I don't think Methodists have much of a problem with evolution either.
I am an atheist with degrees in the biological sciences. I have no problem with Christians who believe that god guided evolution. The fundamental source of variation at work in evolutionary processes is mutation. This is mediated by radiation and other quantum mechanical processes. So evolution is funamentally stochastic. It can have many possible outcomes dependant on what mutations are presented when and where. A sane and scientific Christian believes that God guided it by presenting the mutations required to bring about the world He has chosen. While I interpret it on the basis of the Many Worlds Interpretation of QM.
The two of us live in the same scientific world and we are likely to agree on the same evidence and its interpretation in evolutionary theory. No my problem is with the YEC's and ID people.
The YEC's are obvious raving loony fundies, the American Taleban. While IDers try to subvert the theory of evolution by by presenting non science (nonsense) as science.
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:4, Insightful)
First of, I am atheist.
> Unless they really meant "God created complex mechanisms which eventually gave rise to life and then millions of years later resulted purely by chance something that resembled God."
Why is religion and evolution irreconcilable? If I accept an omnipotent and omnipresent god, what is so strange at accepting, that said god created a universe, with exactly those laws, which science deciphers, which obviously lead to our existence? Is it disprovable? No. Does it contradict with scientific knowledge? No. Is it compatible with further scientific findings? Yes. So, why bother, when you have people, which claim, the earth is 4000 years old.
> If the bible means nothing then where do you get your religious beliefs from? The church? That sounds risky.
Who says the Bible means nothing?
My knowledge of theology is certainly incomplete, but AFAIK:
The Bible is open to interpretation for several reasons. But how do you interpret it?
As there is only one truth, there can be only one meaning. But who determines what is true? There is one group, which says, the successors of the apostles determine the one truth. This is the Catholic Church. One group claims the successor of Peter, sitting in Rome, presides over the others and is ultimately right. That is the Roman Catholic Church.
Protestants claim "Sola Scriptura", the scripture is the authoritative word of god. Which in turn can mean, there is no authoritative interpretation, but each persons. That doesn't mean you can cherry pick, but that you have to do your best to understand the teachings revealed in the Bible, especially through the life of Jesus, and lead your life accordingly. How do you treat other people. Not necessarily that you literally believe every single word of a scripture.
At least, that is the position most protestant in Europe seem to have.
The other meaning it can have, is the literal one, which several US protestants seem to follow.
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:4, Insightful)
God created man in his image. Unless they really meant "God created complex mechanisms which eventually gave rise to life and then millions of years later resulted purely by chance something that resembled God." I don't buy it.
There's this really cool literary tool that you should check out. It's called metaphor.
Re:Oh this is gonna be fun :) (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:4, Insightful)
"Evolution, that is, the idea that human beings developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life"
That's a strange definition. Evolution implies that human beings developed over millions of years, but that implication is but a small part of Evolution. And some evolutionary biologists, including SJ Gould would quibble about "less advanced".
It's a bit like describing quantum mechanics as the idea that a cat can simultaneously be dead and not dead.
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, that is only to be expected from a nation founded by fundamentalists.
Puritans: people so uptight that the British kicked them out.
I wonder, though, how long will America be able to retain its supremacy with what seems to me a rapidly increasing ratio of fundies vs. evolutionists? And what happens if fundies get their hands on nucular weaponry?
But don't mind me; I'm paranoid.
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:2, Insightful)
The two are not compatible. And only one is supported by evidence.
On a separate subject, humans *are* apes, and we *are* monkeys. The distinction between 'ape' and 'monkey' is nothing more than an English semantic argument. The most recent "common ancestor" between apes, humans, and monkeys is... [insert the name of your parents here].
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:3, Insightful)
God created man in his image.
Unless they really meant "God created complex mechanisms which eventually gave rise to life and then millions of years later resulted purely by chance something that resembled God." I don't buy it.
Why would it be important to specify the process at that point? What happens is that some wannabe prophet walks up to the top of a mountain and calls out for god to speak to him. For whatever reason, god decides this is The Guy and now is the right time to reveal some part of the Grand Scheme and that an important part of this is to get the people to understand that god caused them to be. So god simply states "I created you in my image". It is short, simple and to the point. It gets the message across. What in all of existence could possibly motivate god to want to completely muddy his message by instead going "see, thirteen billion years ago I effected a primal explosion that was carefully engineered so as to cause the existence of gaseous clouds that would eventuelly coalesce and form primary star systems that would create complex elements from simple ones through fusion processes" ... and so on and so forth to the tune of several hundred stone tablets before finally coming to the salient point "and thus through carefully manipulating the physical history of the universe I caused you to be"? I have no problem at all seeing why god would go for the Reader's Digest version.
Disclaimer: I do not believe in god.
Re:Slashdotters? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, no doubt, although most of the nerds were there with women, too. Nerdettes, perhaps. But since they were mostly older folk, like me, they were probably married, also like me, and, hence, don't actually have sex any more.
Re:Oh this is gonna be fun :) (Score:3, Insightful)
Why logical people buy into the Evolution vs Science mess that was created buy the conservative christians always amazes me. By definition every Catholic is both a creationist and believes in evolution. Mods come sling your arrows, for I have heresied in your hallowed halls.
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:1, Insightful)
If that is a metaphor, what else could be a metaphor? God itself? It then becomes impossible to know what is a metaphor and what isn't, in that context.
Re:Oh this is gonna be fun :) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:creationism/evolution (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, if the religious are correct, then God wrote the rules to say that chemicals would most likely someday combine to form the original organic compounds that would evolve to be life as we know it
That position is called "deism" and is very different from "theism", and it's very different from saying "God created man".
Scientists that say "There's no God, because Science doesn't allow there to be a God,"
Since there is no accepted definition of "God", scientists generally don't make such statements. What scientists can say is that there is no shred of scientific evidence for the existence of anything like any of the "God" concepts of the Abrahamic religions. Furthermore, scientists can say that any literal interpretation of the Bible contradicts known facts and observations and therefore has to be wrong. The only even remotely Christian theology that is known to be compatible with science is deism, but deism is physically indistinguishable from atheism, so it's not clear that it is a theology at all.
So, scientists don't say that there "is no God", but that no religion has yet been able to put forth a concept of "God" that isn't either trivial or wrong. You're welcome to try.
Re:Oh this is gonna be fun :) (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't believe in evolution. There is nothing to believe. I use it as a very valuable vehicle to make sense of the biological world. But if it turns out that there was something fundamental going on we didn't spot yet, I am ready to abandon the concepts.