Darwin Online

[Ishtar]

Dig - thanks for the link.

However, it only supports my point (made several times now) that scientists set off to find out how, when and why we diverged from our common ancestor, and not whether in fact we did. There is a pre-supposition at work here which is entirely based on Darwin's theory of the Descent of Man. And even then, imagination and faith are involved:

Reich also explained that the new study doesn't prove that hybridization occurred.

"It's the only explanation that we could imagine," he said. "But there may be others that we can't imagine."

But the article did also produce this:

"This paper is very interesting, because it provides a hypothesis that is outside of the currently accepted dogma," said Kateryna Makova, a professor at Pennsylvania State University's Center for Comparative Genomics and Bioinformatics who is unaffiliated with the study.

Dogma is a word normally associated with religion.

[Digit]

The biological transition between bacteria and nucleated cells .... is so sudden, it cannot be effectively be explained by gradual changes over time."

That was one of the problems that Darwin was aware of and admitted to. But large changes in the higher species would probably fail to reproduce, so there's another problem there.
Arguing that Darwin was completely wrong does not make Creation correct, as agreed above. Neither does it provide a case for ignoring what evidence there is and promoting alternatives without some foundation in logic or science.
Replacing Darwin or God with romantic ideas does the argument little good. Before we throw Darwin overboard would someone explain to me where he was incorrect, remembering they he propsed his ideas within the known science of the day and as a theory, nothing more.

[Ishtar]

Mornin' Dig - how are you today?

To your points:

1. I'm not proposing anything 'romantic', unless you want to get together later. (just kidding! )

2. I'm widening the playing field by going back to the first indications we have of life on this planet (where a revolution took place) and taking the argument from there. In other words, I'm coming forward in time while Darwinists are going backwards. If you want to call that 'romantic', that's up to you.

3. This next point I have made several times - I am not saying that the whole of Darwin's theory on evolution is completely wrong. I'm saying that the decent of man from a common ancestor has not been proved. There is much to recommend Darwin's theories in my opinion. Like the old death trap with the doors falling off, you can get it work, after a fashion. But there are also some aspects to his descent of man theory that require some faith and belief in dogma - and bits of string to tie it together.

[Digit]

Morning Ish, sweating on the results of Daughter-ilaws surgery, gall bladder removal. I wasn't specifically directing my comments at yourself just expressing a viewpoint, and my use of the word romance was intended in it's original form, which has nothing to do with love in any of its forms. Think the Arthurian Romances for example.

[Ishtar]

Dig – if it’s any consolation, my father had his gall bladder removed last year, and he is 92! He recovered quickly and has had no complications - and is back to his usual gardening and playing bowls lifestyle.

[Digit]

My mother in law similarly Ish. It's just that at 22 she's scared and the stress is getting to my son. The hospital is 35 miles away and she wants him there each evening so it makes for a hard day for him as well. She's undergoing surgery today, having been in hospital for a week, so she should be home early next week and some form of normality will return.
The distance to hospitals is the penalty we pay for living where we do, I have to vist Morriston hospital in Cardiff regularly and that's a 120 mile round trip.
Not complaining though. Thanks for your kind thoughts.

[Beagle]

My mother in law similarly Ish. It's just that at 22

You're mother-in-law is 22?

[Minimalist]

Don't sweat it, Ish. I've been known to have a couple of drinks on occasion too.

PS - I actually did figure out what you were trying to say. A long lifetime of listening to drunks, I suppose.

[Digit]

Daughter-in-law is 22, I see how the error arose though, I'll have be more careful in future I think.

[Ishtar]

Don't sweat it, Ish. I've been known to have a couple of drinks on occasion too.

PS - I actually did figure out what you were trying to say. A long lifetime of listening to drunks, I suppose.

[Beagle]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4991470.stm

A detailed analysis of human and chimp DNA suggests the lines finally diverged less than 5.4 million years ago.

The finding, published in the journal Nature, is about 1-2 million years later than the fossils have indicated.

A US team says its results hint at the possibility that interbreeding occurred between the two lines for thousands, even millions, of years.

This hybridisation would have been important in swapping genes for traits that allowed the emerging species to survive in their environments, explain the scientists affiliated to the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the Harvard Medical School.

This article is on a study done a while back. There are many articles on the human/chimp split, and this is the right thread for that I guess.

So the time frame we're talking about is around 6 million years ago. There weren't actually any humans around then.

[Digit]

Nor Chimps Beag.

[Beagle]

Yes thanks. Just our common ancestor.

[Ishtar]

Thanks Beags. Interesting hypothesis ....

"This is a hypothesis; we haven't proved it but it would explain multiple features of our data," said David Reich, assistant professor of genetics at the Harvard Medical School and an author on the Nature paper.

"The hypothesis is that there was gene flow between the ancestors of humans and chimpanzees after their original divergence.

"So, there might have been an original divergence and a separation for long enough that the species became differentiated - for example, we might have adapted features such as upright walking - and then there was a re-mixture event quite a while after; a hybridisation event," he told the Science in Action programme on the BBC World Service.

... based on a huge presupposition, though.

The trouble is, when journalists write these stories, there is an unwritten/unspoken collusion between them and the scientists that they're writing about that man and chimp share a common ancestor. This belief is so ingrained into our pysches now, that no-one ever questions it.

And let's face it, which journalist wouldn't want to be the first with the breaking story that the common ancestor had been found? And which scientist wouldn't want to be the first to discover it, and have his picture on the front page?

When I was a journalist, I would know, even lbefore leaving the building to do the first interview, what the headline was going to be. This was decreed by my editor - who had no idea what I was going to find in my research. But they knew the story they wanted. It's the same when scientists do research. They can only get funding if their research is based on certain accepted given articles of faith, so that the result will fit the agreed narrative.

Usually, if a scientist is looking for something - anything! - they find it. Yet in 150 years of buckets of money, time and resources being poured into research to support Darwin's theories, they still haven't found the common ancestor...what does that tell us?

We can carry on having faith in this - like the fundies have faith in their story - or we can start doing some thinking of our own.

[Beagle]

OK. The Club doesn't get a free ride in this forum as you know. In this case, geneticists are looking at genes that go back that far. We haven't found the bones, as far as I know.

Lucy, the first Australopithecene found, is little more than an upright walking ape. She is 4 million yrs. old. So we have to look further back.

For myself, I do believe that we have arboreal ancestors, and that our last connection with our primate cousins was about 6 million years ago.

If you want to read more about it, all you have to do is Google "human chimpanzee split". You'll find lots of reading.

I do not adhere to an "Out of Africa Theory". But I've studied both sides pretty hard. Enjoy the search.