We don't have a "complete" fossil record, and no such thing can possibly exist short of having a record of every single animal that has ever lived.

It doesn't matter, we don't need complete fossil record to reach that conclusion. That why transition fossils are so cool.

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"Perfect knowledge is not necessary to verify a pattern. One does not need to watch Jupiter constantly for twelve years, without blinking, to verify that it orbits the sun. Common descent implies a pattern of gradual change and diversification through time. The hundreds of thousands of fossils which have been discovered are consistent with this pattern, and they are not consistent with any other pattern that has been proposed. (In particular, they rule out the possibility that all present life forms existed in essentially the same form throughout the history of life.) It is conceivable that fossils which have not been found might differ wildly from this pattern, just at it is conceivable that Jupiter might zigzag across the Solar System while we blinked, but there is no reason to think so.

A transitional fossil is simply a fossil which shows traits intermediate between two other fossils. Transitional fossils show likely relationships clearly, and they sometimes show details of how particular features arose. For example, the transitional fossils from reptiles to mammals show how the inner ear bones developed. Such patterns are shown whether the fossils are connected by direct ancestry or by another close relationship. And since we expect extinct side lineages to be common, we would have evidence against evolution if most transitional fossils were not from extinct side lineages.

Knowledge advances by subjecting hypotheses to tests that effectively distinguish one hypothesis from another. Fossil evidence, along with other lines of evidence, does this. Since every hypothesis would fail Wells's requirement for having perfect knowledge before accepting it, his is not an effective test. It can serve only to reinforce one's own preconceptions. Wells himself promotes other propositions on much less evidence, to put it mildly."

Source: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC202.html

Wtf is a theistic evolution anyway? Either the theory is correct or it isn't and as of today there is no reason to believe that it isn't correct since the theory is so well supported by many areas of science where the knowledge from one area perfectly correlates with the knowledge of the other and the information from one fits the other like nice little blocks of puzzles.

If the process works the way it is described by the theory than I have no idea how it could be designed. If it is designed than we also have to conclude that everything is already predetermined by GOD. Meaning the plan for all of this was already written a long time ago and **** is just being played out. Remember, mutations and random selection depends on the circumstances surrounding the life. If many things wouldn't have happened before than humans would most likely not be here. So either GOD planned out every mutation(which was also correlated on surrounding environment) which compounded through billions of years ended up with varieties of life including us. So that means GOD pre planned locations, sexual reproduction (matching one male with another female since different selections would have resulted in different mutations) , locations of life, temperatures, etc, etc, etc, to almost every tiny detail. There is no free will in this process. If a desired mutation is required to survive and needs to show up in 5000 AD that means specific circumstances need to happen prior that year.

I just don't see how theistic evolution can work out if free will also needs to be included.

Can any of you reconcile that?

I'm not saying we need to. I'm saying that the justification provided is patently false.

Does it not concern you when someone writes something IN CAPS FOR EMPHASIS, but the statement contained is completely false?

So God got lucky in creating man? Trial and error?

His statement may be false in a absolute literal sense, but the deeper context he was driving at is definitely true. Of course we don't have a complete fossile record, just thinking about such a thing is tiring and an exercise in futility. I'm more concerned with deeper truths, so in this case it really isn't bothersome because I'm able to decipher it.

It reminds me of how when making use of mathematical induction it is not needed examine every case to prove something, I see parallels in this discussion (please don't dwell on how this isn't a perfect analogy, I'm fully aware)

http://www.myvidster.com/video/31685...olution_Debate

More precisely, I think it doesn't bother you because you already know how to resolve the false statement with a true statement that you already knew. Not everyone has the benefit of knowing the answer to the question before it was asked.

My primary issue with the statement was that it appeared in the middle of someone trying to lambast someone else about how wrong they are in their understanding of evolution. When read for comprehension (as the quote asks the reader to do), the statement is clearly false. The sentence that follows,

is also pretty bad. Paleontologists don't really do that sort of work. (Skull sizes and brain position fit, but nothing else does.) Some of that is very clearly in the area of archaeology (toolmaking), and I believe that some of the other bits and pieces fall towards evolutionary biology, though I'm not sure how broad "measurements of the intellect" is really supposed to cover. I'm pretty sure we don't have a measurement of the "rationality" of the dinosaurs, for example.

It's a lot of partially-true blustering.

That's fine as a general matter. The problem is we have a fossil record, so we know that the evolution of intellect and rationality (the two things the theists here are claiming are what justifies the claim that modern H. Sapiens and ONLY modern H. Sapiens are made in God's image and are the purpose of the creation of the universe) was gradual and staged.

We have a complete fossil record on the issue whether the evolution of intellect and rationality was gradual or sudden. We do not need any more fossils of any more transitional species to know the answer to that question.

Aaron, it isn't as though paleontologists ignore the tools that are located next to the fossils. They combine findings from fossils WITH the findings regarding tools. We have a very complete picture of the PACE and GRADUAL NATURE of the evolution of intellect and rationality. (I could mention as well the evolution of burial practices, which is another indicator of intellect and rationality.)

You are pretending that my statements have no context so you can knock them down. What I was responding to was a claim that what we know about evolution was consistent with the idea that humans are completely separate and apart from all of our predecessor species and are the only species on the planet with intellects and rationality, which makes us created in God's image. Indeed, that poster said there's no way you can look at human beings and not conclude that.

Instead of picking my statements apart, deal with the actual claim. And make your own argument. What you think about theistic evolution would be a lot more interesting than your tired attempts to knock down my claims.

Simply the idea that evolution was led by God in some way. Evolution is the tool He used to create humans according to theistic evolution. It's not denying any part of evolution at all.

What if God controlled everything up until the point where he introduced free will?

The point is that there are people who support the idea of theistic evolution that know much more about evolution than yoda. Francis Collins happens to be one well known example.

What have I said that is inconsistent with evolutionary theory or portrays a lack of understanding of it? Also, how would one tell if we evolved through accidents or God? I mean, you say that we know for a fact that it was accidents, but I don't know how you'd go about showing that. It's not that I think you need to provide evidence, it's that you are clearly just saying that religion is all false, and therefore theistic evolution is wrong. That's all well and good but not very good for a discussion on this topic, and nothing to do with one's understanding of evolution itself.

In a deterministic universe, if you have the same starting state and the same physical rules, ignoring quantum randomness and free will (if it exists), will you have the same end result?

If by 'theists' you mean 'only Stu' then you would be correct. Unless 'here' refers to the whole of RGT and there are posts on this subject that I haven't read.

No, what I'm doing is pointing out that your positions are significantly overstated. In your desire to bolster your position, you're repeatedly overstating what is available in order to give the appearance that your position is stronger than it actually is. A better option would be to state the position precisely and correctly, and let the actual truth value of the claim carry the weight of the argument.

I'm very unclear about how you're measuring things. The advances of "intellect and rationality" on the time scales of the "fossil record" have actually been very sudden. The advances in the last 100,000 years or so are extremely dramatic. (This is a very short time frame, considering that time frames of paleontology is in "millions of years.")

I think you're talking about cultural advances here, rather than advances in intellect. The dramatic advances you're referring to were spurred by discoveries such as agriculture and writing, rather than a sudden advance in human intellect or evolution of the species. The humans who first conceived of a writing system 6000 years ago were not vastly more intelligent than humans born 94,000 years before that, but they had the benefit of agricultural advances which made more time for intellectual pursuits.

To put this another way, if you could take a human baby from the year 100,000 BC and raise it today, I don't think its intellect or rationality would pose a barrier to integration with our society. We haven't made significant gains in our inherent intelligence or rationality over this short timespan, we've just discovered ways of building knowledge across generations which was nearly impossible before writing existed. The development of actual intellect is a function of brain size and structure, which has been very much a gradual process, and has not seen substantial change over the past 100,000 years. The sudden advance in knowledge and rationality that we've developed as a society resulted from redirecting efforts from basic survival to intellectual pursuits, using intellect similar to what proto-human ancestors have had for hundreds of thousands of years.

That's totally speculative, isn't it. At least I am not aware of any substantive test that supports this assertion. Brain size is measureable via cranial capacity, but does not correlate well with intelligence. Brain structure is not accessible.

No, it's not speculative at all. We've dissected the brains of most every species on earth, have mapped their structure in much detail, and can tell a great deal about a species' intellect by comparing the sizes of their various regions.

Actually, we have a very strong piece of evidence in favor of Janibis' claims, and that is that there are still genetically similar human populations living in isolated tribes with cultural development that is very similar to that of our distant ancestors. These people are modern H. Sapiens just like we are and members of their gene pools have integrated into more culturally modern societies.

While the theory of Bicameralism doesn’t appear to have much support in anthropology circles, Joyce makes a very compelling case that humans, as little as a few thousand years ago, didn’t appear to describe ‘the human condition’ in a way modern humans if placed in a similar sort of ‘nurtured’ world would.

I am interested in finding clarification of the meaning of "advance of human intellect." What exactly is it that is being measured and compared? Can you cite some relevant articles (maybe something that can expose something about methodology and so forth)?

I also find the claim that you've made about the baby from 100,000 years ago to be extraordinary and dubious, but I will give you the opportunity to provide an argument or evidence to support the position. I hope it would include a clarification of what "actual intellect" means.

Edit: Maybe an interesting point of clarification would be for you to push the 100,000 number as far back as you can and find the claim to remain justifiable. Even if you push it back to 1 million years, I would still say that for the advances of human intellect to cover the span of 1 million years is still an extremely short period of time in terms of the "fossil record" (which dates something like 500 million years, I think).

I didn't introduce these terms, but merely quoted them from your post, so the real mystery here is what you meant by them. Specifically, you stated that "The advances of "intellect and rationality" on the time scales of the "fossil record" have actually been very sudden" and that "The advances in the last 100,000 years or so are extremely dramatic." The definition implicit in your assertion would seem to have something to do with technological advancement (which has been dramatic in the last 100,000 years) rather than advancement in cognitive ability (which has not been dramatic, given what we know about genetic similarities between us and prehistoric **** sapiens).

I'm surprised you find the claim controversial at all, given that we are the same species today that we were 100,000 years ago. The evidence being that we are physically and genetically nearly identical to early **** sapiens. If you could time travel you could breed with humans 100,000 years in the past. Why would you suppose your intellect is vastly superior? Again, I am rejecting the definition of intellect implied by your post (ie. that it is synonymous with technological advancement) and using the conventional meaning of the word (cognitive ability, mental capacity, ability to learn, etc.)

The claim can easily be pushed back as far as the late transitional period between **** erectus and **** sapiens (roughly 300,000 years ago). However I wouldn't be surprised if other proto-human ancestors could integrate with a modern human society to a degree similar to a modern mentally-disabled human.

Your right in that you can tell a lot by analysing cranial cavities but you can't tell everything. The only way to see some structural differences is with an MRI of the brain. All we can say given the fossil record is that modern humans share a very similiar brain structure with prehistoric humans. We are in no position to claim that there are no significant differences in brain structure. We simply do not have any prehistoric brains that we could dissect.

There is a term used in anthropology called Behavioral modernity . About 50,000 years ago there was such a significant and sudden change in behavior of human beings that a term had to be coined to mark the event. There are two schools of thought concerning modern human behavior. The Continuity Hypothesis and the Great Leap Forward hypothesis.

Because I have the ability to speak a language and think in a language. We are not sure the folks who lived 100,000 years ago could do the same.

Wow, didn't expect this many replies in such short of a time. Anyway, RLK, what have I said that makes you think I don't understand evolution? I accidently said we evolved from monkeys in a previous thread, but what I meant is we share a common ancestor with monkeys and that animal was much more monkey looking than human looking.

Anyway, let's get some scientific facts out there because I think they matter in this discussion. Here's the story of Earth:

13.7 billion years ago the universe was formed. We are not sure if it was natural or not. 4.54 billion years ago the Earth and Moon was formed. Again, we are not quite sure if it was natural or not but alot of physicists probably believe it was natural. The first lifeforms on Earth were single celled prokaryotes and showed up ~3.7 billion years ago. Fish evolved around half a billion years ago. At one point, a lobe finned fish attempted to crawl onto land. Once a small, reproductively isolated group of fish were on land, natural selection favored anything that increases survival on land (lungs, limbs, vertebral articulations, ect). 250 million years ago to 65 million years ago reptiles dominated. 65 million years ago to now, mammals dominated. The time humans have existed on Earth, if you pretend all of life on Earth is one calandar year, would be equivalent to the last second on the last day of December before midnight. For most of the time, life on Earth has only been microscopic simple organisms. Around 95-99% of species have gone extinct before humans arrived on the scene. Once life on land evolves, species diverge quickly in what is known as the cambrian explosion. This makes perfect sense, because on land it's easier to become reproductively isolated. For example, a mountain range can form between one population, splitting it into two populations. Or a river could form, splitting a population. They evolve, become reproductively isolated, and now you have two populations. Or, by chance, an organism can find it's way onto an island and evolve since it's reproductively isolated. Once there's alot of species, there's suddenly a lot more ways for a creature to die so there's far more selection pressures. A mouse has selection pressures now due to starvation, heat, cold, hawks, parasites, snakes, ect. If, on the other hand, you have just a large population of one bacteria, then there's little selection pressures since there is no selection pressure due to the living environment.

I'm saying these facts because I think they matter. This is basic evolutionary theory and I assumed you all know all this stuff but I'm just saying it anyway to make sure we're all on the same page.

Now ask yourself, does this story make more sense if evolution occurred naturally or supernaturally (guided by an intelligent mind somehow)? I think it makes more sense if it occurred naturally. One major reason is the fact that 95%+ of species went extinct before humans arrived. Theistic evolutionists, why would God guide evolution and then let virtually all of his creation go extinct?

Also, theistic evolutionists, let's assume evolution occurred almost all by natural selection and the remaining part of it occurred by genetic drift. Please, specifically, explain what exactly God does. Does he physically stick his hands in and move creatures? Does he physically insert genes and mutations? Does he control natural disasters? ALso, where's your proof? We have this perfectly rational natural explanation here that not only needs no supernatural guidance, but IMO it also doesn't make sense if there were supernatural guidance.

doesn't work because what if humanity is to live another 500,000 years and future mutations will matter as well? and the ending result is important and the mutations required to be there depend on GOD'S guidance meaning there is no free will at this moment because he is guiding everything to reach that ending point.