Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Adam and evolution

In conspicuous contrast to other species, human beings are uniquely defenseless. We lack any of the standard defense mechanisms that enable other species to survive, viz. speed, strength, stench, horns, hooves, fangs, tusks, quills, claws, wings, venom, camouflage, thick skin, or high reproductivity.

We’re even quite defenseless when compared to “other” primates, with which the Darwinias have classified us. The major defense mechanism for most primates is their arboreal lifestyle.

A few primates are basically land animals, but they have compensatory defense mechanisms. Baboons and mandrills have fangs and travel in packs.

Gorillas have size, strength, and fangs.

Man’s only survival advantage is his brainpower. Yet, according to Darwinism, he brainpower is, itself, a long, evolutionary adaptation.

How did the human species survive in the transitional period when it was lost its natural defense mechanisms without having as of yet acquired the mother wit to invent weapons?

Man is exactly what you would expect if Gen 1-3 is true. A creature designed to live in a semitropical paradise with abundant food and no natural predators. A creature ill-adapted to survive outside such a charmed existence.

This is one reason, among others why banishment from his natural habitat was genuinely punitive. Life outside that natural sanctuary was far less hospitable, and man was ill-equipped to survive, apart from the singular gift of reason.

19 comments:

  1. It also seems odd that evolutionists would impute the gift of reason to mankind when they (seemingly) can't account for where it came from. I asked an evolutionist once where reason and the ability to conceptualize came from - not to be tendentious, just out of genuine curiosity - and his answer was that science isn't concerned with those questions. Science is only concerned with what it can empirically prove. Strange.

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  2. Brilliant post!

    I don't know why the idiot scientists didn't think of this before!

    I bet they think humans just up and lost all their defense mechanisms one day as they transitioned from their ancestors BEFORE they had big brains!

    They are so dumb! I bet they don't even know what gradualism is!

    Darwinism is dead; long live Darwinism!

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  3. Anonymous said...
    Brilliant post!

    I don't know why the idiot scientists didn't think of this before!

    I bet they think humans just up and lost all their defense mechanisms one day as they transitioned from their ancestors BEFORE they had big brains!

    They are so dumb! I bet they don't even know what gradualism is!

    Darwinism is dead; long live Darwinism!

    ****************************************

    And can you actually show us a series of viable intermediates in the fossil record, or is this just rhetorical bluff and bluster on your part?

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  4. Hey stimpy, no need for the smart-butts, buddy.

    This timeline shows that teeth size, like the other features, gradually changed over time, like cranial capacity.

    This graph demonstrates the change in cranial capacity for all available hominin fossils. (also see the previous post)

    Note that different characters separate species than *just* cranial capacity, so don't think it's a matter of "rigging" by graphing by size and then assigning species. Dentition, spine curvature, feet, etc., all make the delineations between species possible.

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  5. "In conspicuous contrast to other species, human beings are uniquely defenseless."

    You mean, such as a rabbit, a fish, or a mouse? What a strange comment on your behalf with no basis in fact. We are neither defensless 'uniquely' or otherwise.

    "We lack any of the standard defense mechanisms that enable other species to survive, viz. speed, strength, stench..."

    As compared to what? Our viz is better (and worse) than some other animals..our speed is better (and worse) than some other animals, our strength is better (and worse)than some other animals. Further, Other animals can smell us a mile away. Here is a test of your theory...don't take a bath for a year and get back to us on that "stench" thingy.

    what a strange series of assertions.

    "We’re even quite defenseless when compared to “other” primates, with which the Darwinias have classified us."

    We are not 'defensless' against other primates. We are in fact, much stronger than some, and weaker than others such as gorillas and chimps.

    This entire post is little more than a cool tall glass of Dr. Feelgood's snake oil.

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  6. anonywuss said:
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    I bet they think humans just up and lost all their defense mechanisms one day as they transitioned from their ancestors BEFORE they had big brains!
    ---

    I'm more interested in the question of why they lost these defense mechanisms at all? I mean, seriously, wouldn't someone who evolved a big brain and still had those defense mechanisms be better able to survive than someone who just had the bigger brain?

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  7. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  8. CalvinDude,

    Are you saying, in one sense that human beings should have kept the gills they once had, so that we would not drown (i.e. defense mech.)?

    With props to L-Train! Who I recently heard, maybe debating Robert Morey.

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  9. But what about the birdman?

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  10. Jeff wrote:
    ---
    Are you saying, in one sense that human beings should have kept the gills they once had, so that we would not drown (i.e. defense mech.)?
    ---

    Well, I don't think gills would be a "defense mechanism" but that does bring up another interesting point.

    When the marine critter began to come up on land, he had to be able to breathe both in and out of water. What survival advantage would there be to losing one of those two methods?

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  11. ahh..the great minds of science all gathered together in one thread!

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  12. anonywuss said:
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    ahh..the great minds of science all gathered together in one thread!
    ---

    And the poor lesser mind of the pre-teen anonymous can't keep up.

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  13. CalvinDude,

    When the marine critter began to come up on land, he had to be able to breathe both in and out of water. What survival advantage would there be to losing one of those two methods?

    I strongly suggest you look at Tiktaalik Roseae and lungfish to help you understand what you're trying to get at here.

    These creatures live in low-oxygen, marshy areas, and are the direct precursors to amphibians. Studying these with seriousness, I doubt you'll come away with such incredulity towards the issue you've raised here.

    Once a fully functional tetrapod appears, there is no selective pressure to retain systems like gills for terrestrial vertebrates.

    For that, see Ichthyostega (and others).

    Therefore, freely (without cost to survival), mutations then may occur that change gill-features into pharyngeal pouches, eustachian tubes, earbones, etc.

    In turn, those features confer survival advantage, so Nature always (opportunistically) turns a neutral character (no selective pressure) into one that allows selection. This is a law-like feature of evolutionary biology. It doesn't depend on common descent -- it's observable, empirical.

    If half of you were as interested in the scientific evidence of evolution as you are in disproving it, you'd probably adjust your doctrines accordingly.

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  14. PS: Check out Mudskippers too.

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  15. I started to type up a comment, but it got long enough that I turned it into a post over on my blog:

    http://evangelutionist.com/blog1/2006/11/16/divorced-from-science/

    if you're interested.

    I don't even know where to start with the scientif problems in this post, and that is the issue that I take up there.

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  16. Kudos to the owners of this blog, though, for being open enough to take comments from all comers. It's getting more and more rare to find Christian blogs that don't abuse their admin powers in the comments section of their site.

    -Touchstone

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  17. Touchstone, do you have any refutations to post or arguments to offer? Or is "I don't know where to start" a sufficient rebuttal, in your opinion.

    PS--I read your entry, and I was actually interested in examining your counterarguments, but it's sort of like your post ended abrubptly where the actual argumentation was supposed to begin.

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  18. Hi anonymous,

    Let me throw out a few bullets here, and I will post a follow up post on my blog detailing the counter-arguments at more length (will post a note here to let you know).

    First, our hominid ancestors distinguished themselves from all other creatures by the use of tools and weapons. Archaelogical evidence dating back many hundreds of thousands of years demonstrates proto-humans master of spear making and similar items. Fangs are a poor match for a strong set of weapons in hand, even stone age weapons.

    Proto-humans, then, had so much an advantage in terms of defense mechanisms (which also had offensive capabilities), that it seems quite unfair to the rest of the animal kingdom.

    Second, (proto-)humans are social animals, and social in such a way as to make them extraordinarily dangerous and lethal. The ability to communicate verbally, whether looking back at the rudiments of spoken language very far back, or at full blown conversation more recently, the hominid social capability produced a strong survival advantage that other primates don't have. Other primates are social as well, but their limited communication abilities constrain the their effectiveness in terms of defensive and offensive capabilities (survival and hunting).

    Third, and which should be so obvious that the original poster appears not to have thought things through before posting this, even without the defensive capabilities of living/traveling/hunting in coordinated teams or using weapons, the enlarged brain itself is the ultimate survival weapon.

    Long before our brains reached the size they are today, proto-human brains were far larger and more capable than the other beasts in their environment. As such, they possessed a "meta-weapon", the ability to reason and plan in ways that transcended the ferocious capabilities of other animals.

    We learned the power of human ingenuity tragically on 9/11/2001, as a handful of primitive humans, armed with small, crude weapons, used their brains as weapons of cruelty to bring down the World Trade Center Towers. Proof that fangs and muscle, and even armor or computers are no match for ingenuity, a weapon put to horrifying use on that day.

    It's true that (proto-)man had a good number of potent predators, including most notably, other (proto-)humans. Over many hundreds of thousands of years, the "brain as power" effect became increasingly decisive in man's battle to survive, and ultimate achieve supremacy over all of God's other creatures.

    None of the above is controversial, scientifically, and a good number of studies, archeology digs and artifacts can be brought forth to support the idea that developing man profited immensely from a) tools and weapons b) social coordination and c) ingenuity and brain power as transcendent advantage over all opponents.

    -Touchstone

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