How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

The_Metatron · **#6321** by **The_Metatron** » Mar 26, 2024 3:51 pm

A very cool benefit of living in New York, a library card from the New York City public library. And, that library system includes full access to the JSTOR database. It’s a pretty good place to get many papers.

Jayjay4547 · **#6322** by **Jayjay4547** » Mar 26, 2024 8:16 pm

The_Metatron wrote:
Jayjay4547 wrote:
[Reveal] Spoiler:
Fenrir wrote:.…scientists will only do it [overturn a paradigm] if they feel they have sufficient of the one thing you have never provided.
Evidence.

Not that I’m trying to overturn a paradigm. I’m just pointing to the absurdity of imagining that Australopithecus didn’t use weapons as part of their toolkit for wandering widely over the Earth. Dart twigged that from examining the Taung Child skull 99 years ago.

Yes, Dart thought his hominins used faunal remains as weapons. The trouble was, he couldn’t show any evidence for it.

In his 1925 article Dart didn’t speculate about what kind of weapons Australopithecus used. His reasoning was based on their apparent vulnerability to predation: “their failure to develop massive canines and hideous features”, and (citing Darwin) that modern baboons and apes use sticks and stones. To keep this post short I’ll snip your quotes Milks (2018) Lethal Threshold: The Evolutionary Implications of Middle Pleistoce Wooden Spears, pages 42 -43,, that recount Dart’s later mistakes with his Osteodontokeratic culture” proposal. And also C K Brain’s 1981 asking “The hunter of the hunted: The cave taphonomy of the Transvaal”, and opting for the latter. I have no argument with any of that.

[Reveal] Spoiler:

The_Metatron wrote:
Dart pointed to the use of humeri as clubs and horns as daggers (Dart & Craig 1959), rather than suggest as Oakley (1949) had that hominins may have manufactured tools from organic materials such as wood, which would not have survived in the archaeological record. Dart wanted direct material evidence to support his claim that A. afarensis was a hominin, and he provided this by claiming that shared with H. sapiens a predilection for flesh eating, hunting, and violence (Fig. 2.3) (Domínguez-Rodrigo 2002).

Ironically, it was an inability to verify that these faunal bones were used as tools that brought so much criticism from colleagues. Although infamous for his proposals of an early ‘Osteodontokeratic culture’, this idea had at least one precedent, put forward by Abbé Breuil at a conference in 1936. Describing a purported bone tool industry from the much later site of Zhoukoudien, Breuil had suggested that humans were ...surrounded by animals better armed by Nature than himself...What more natural than to rob them of these weapons to use against them? Ever a hunter, Man had around him the skeletal remains of his victims...Some of the completed longer bones made excellent clubs with handles not easily broken. (cited in Binford 1981, p.11)

Dart was aware of Breuil’s claims of a material culture involving bone weapons at Zhoukoudien, as well as Breuil’s claims of bone tool cultures at Cave of Hearths in South Africa (Dart & Craig 1959). Dart’s ideas were once again questioned by established academics, including Sherwood Washburn in Australopithecus: The Hunters or the Hunted? (Washburn 1957) on the basis of similar patterns at carnivore sites, with Dart’s theory ultimately disproven by C.K. Brain in his study of cave taphonomy (Brain 1980). Milks et al., 2018, pp. 43-44

Dart was sure that at Makapansgat, “the entire accumulation of bones in the grey breccia, running to many hundreds of thousands, had been taken to the cave by hominids, who ate the meat and then used the bones as a variety of tools and weapons.” Dart, 1956a, p. 454. He was convinced they were “mighty hunters” Dart, 1956b, pp. 317-338, “head hunters” and “professional decapitators”, because he found only skulls of baboons in the breccia there. Dart, 1949, pp. 150-152. He went on to dramatically infer behaviors: “… man's predecessors differed from living apes in being confIrmed killers: carnivorous creatures that seized living quarries by violence, battered them to death, tore apart their broken bodies, dismembered them limb from limb, slaking their ravenous thirst with the hot blood of victims and greedily devouring livid writhing flesh.” Dart, 1953, pp. 201-218.

C.K. Brain did further research and found that Dart’s conclusions were not based on evidence. He found hyena breeding lairs containing exactly what Dart described.

… many of the observations made by Dart, such as the striking disproportions of skeletal parts in the fossil assemblage, had explanations different from those that Dart had proposed. For instance, my work (Brain 1981) showed that the disproportions were linked to the varied robusticity of skeletal parts: some bones are simply better able to survive destructive treatment than others. In fact, it is possible to predict which parts of a skeleton will survive any given destructive process and which will disappear. It is no longer necessary to invoke deliberate hominid selection of bones to account for disproportions in a fossil assemblage. Similarly, subsequent work on hyaenas (Maguire et al. 1980; Skinner et al. 1980), particularly the striped hyaena, Hyaena hyaena whose fossils are found in the Makapansgat assemblage, have shown that these scavengers do, in fact, accumulate large numbers of bones in their breeding lairs. It now seems highly probable that they were more important as bone-collectors at Makapansgat than hominids had been. Brain, 1997, p.82

Dart did a lot of early work, to be sure. But, he didn’t have all of the answers, which led to his premature conclusions. Brain had this to say:

However, it will always be to Raymond Dart's credit that he embarked on a pioneering taphonomic investigation years before the basic principles of cave taphonomy had been formulated. Brain, 1997, p. 83

Jayjay4547 wrote:Everyone knows today that their descendants used spears to decimate the megafauna of continents.
The_Metatron wrote:

Everyone know this, do they? That’s a bold assertion you’ve made, and not for the first time. It’s actually a pillar in your claim of spear use back into the Pliocene. A review of the literature before you ejaculate such nonsense would prevent this embarrassment. But, one of the things I noted about your posts is you don’t mind looking the fool. Repeatedly.

The only pillar of my claim of spear use back into the Pliocene is Dart’s original claim, based on the impossibility of Australopithecus’ apparent vulnerability to predation having reflected their actual vulnerability.

The_Metatron wrote: So, after a very brief search through the literature, I find this paper from 2021, in which we find:
Together, our primary and extended analyses suggest that humans, or more precisely that estimated changes in human population levels, had little bearing on North American megafauna population levels, but that decreases in global temperature had an overall negative impact on megafauna population levels. (Stewart et al., p. 4)

In summary, the results of our quantitative analyses are consistent with climate-driven declines in North America’s megafauna populations. Data quality issues aside (see Introduction), using the largest assembled database of directly dated megafauna, we found no through-time relationship between megafauna and human population levels. While this does not preclude humans from having had an impact—for example, by interrupting megafauna subpopulation connectivity or performing a coup de grâce on already impoverished megafauna populations—it does suggest that growing populations of “big-game” hunters were not the primary driving force behind megafauna declines and extinctions. Instead, we found a consistent positive correlation between megafauna population levels and the NGRIP climate proxy. In other words, decreases in global temperature correlate with decreases in mega- fauna population levels. (Stewart et al., 2021, p. 10)

In terms you may understand, humans, with their spears, did not “decimate the megafauna”. Climate shift did.
Enjoy your usual look.

I am often shocked by your demeaning. I did overreach on what “everyone knows”. Spears do seem to have caused the extinction of giant sloths and armadillos in the South American continent:
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... n/download
“this paper evaluate the relationship between changes in projectile point technology and body mass of potential megafaunal prey and show that Fishtail were strongly linked to the largest extinct megafaunal species.”

Jayjay4547 wrote:The substantive issue is my rational explanation for that absurd denial: that the market place for human origin stories told in the name of science has been the site for building the origin story of man as a god; a conscious being who is a first cause, not made by anything prior.

The fossil record and the theory of evolution should provide the very worst context for building such an origin story but human ingenuity in story making seems be to equal to even that task.

Evidence that Fenrir denies is all about that context:
The agility of baboons in avoiding predation by leopards by climbing in trees.
The agility of leopards in hunting baboons in trees.
The aggression of baboons in mobbing a leopard on the ground.
The quick thinking of a leopard to assess its danger from baboon teeth and escape from a mobbing.
The agility of a gazelle in escaping from a leopard.
The short canines of Australopithecus, showing that they could not bite a leopard.
The short toes of Australopithecus showing that they did not have the agility of either leopard or baboon in a tree.
The thick legs of Australopithecus showing that they could not escape by running from a leopard.
The big hoof-less feet of Australopithecus showing that they could not kick a leopard
The use of sticks by chimpanzees against a leopard
The hugely effective use of spears by Australopithecus descendants.

There is an ugly and dangerous common thread in denying evidence like this: a contempt for Nature, and an overweening assertion of the uniqueness and effectiveness of human intelligence.

The Metatron wrote: No, the contempt is reserved for you, JJ. As for the singularly effective human intelligence, the proof is in the pudding, isn’t it? The only species that came close was h. neanderthalensis and they are gone, aren’t they? Who’s left? Us. Only us.

The contempt you express to me is just personal but contempt for Nature expressed in discounting the ability and autonomy of other species, and the infinite web of their intimate interactions, is a kind of blasphemy.

Like I have argued many times before, competition between groups was a likely engine for the expansion of Homo brain size shown in the “group” section below. While competition between Australopithecus and their predators determined their earlier and persistent distinctive body plan.

: C4 grasssland biome hominin habitat 2.jpg (124.43 KiB) Viewed 204 times

The_Metatron wrote: You know what it looks like? Australopithecines were on the menu. Looks like the species was able to survive by being able to move (bipedalism), and able to live in areas not favored by the big predators. You do know they didn’t have to achieve perfect success in predator avoidance as a species. Their species had to have a reproductive rate that exceeded their appearances on the menu. Here you are, displaying your ignorance in full bloom. Looks like the australopithecines won.

They didn’t use bone tools, even the likes of your hero Dart didn’t want to try to assert they made and used wooden weapons.

A spear is the simplest effective weapon to propose. Milks explained Dart’s proposal that Lucy used horns and bones, as his wanting “direct material evidence”. The bones were there, available as possible evidence. That can be called “the tyranny of evidence” And he doubted that the animal could fashion anything, even something as simple as a wooden spear.
You give three reasons for discounting the impact of predation on Australopithecus:

(a) “She could move (bipedalism}”. But the bipedal ostrich can run at 70km/h vs leopard 58km/h, baboon 45 km/h, man 38km/h. So a leopard could close on a fleeing human at 20km/h or 11 metres in 2 seconds.

(b) She could live in areas not favoured by the big predators. But we went over this a couple of days ago. You made a thing out of Lucy being “eurytopic” meaning, they could survive in a variety of environments. But then you got the significance upside down. Eurytopic means they could tolerate areas that WERE favoured by big predators. Like I said, all prey animals can tolerate living in areas without predators. The fact that Africa fountained a series of updates on the human form, that spread to the remotest corners of the Earth, is testament to how little they had to fear from predators in the regions they trekked through. Thanks to their spears.

(c) Higher reproductive rate than extinction rate. That is true of every critter on the planet, Lucy couldn’t have made up for being the Cadbury Chocolate of the savanna by breeding faster than her offspring could be eaten.

Jayjay4547 · **#6323** by **Jayjay4547** » Mar 26, 2024 8:45 pm

The_Metatron wrote:
Shall we talk about that spear use now? I’ll make this easier for you. Here are some pictures:

The attachment IMG_2494.jpeg is no longer available

Compared to a chimpanzee, with hands similar to A. Afarensis:

The attachment IMG_2493.jpeg is no longer available

It isn’t a question of weight ratios, it’s a question of how they could grip it. Oh, Milks went on in her thesis to thoroughly test thrusting spears, throwing spears, and various grips. The sort of work I suggested you attempt. Too late, it’s already been done by your betters.

“your betters” Hmm. Science isn’t a useful method for discovery when it's used as a method for establishing position in a social hierarchy, although that is obviously one of your main interests here.

Milks (2018) Lethal Threshold: The Evolutionary Implications of Middle Pleistocine Wooden Spears

Milks’ PhD thesis is a tour de force investigation around the topic of simple wooden spears like those found at Schöningen, when used for hunting. Apart from her historical review, she has little to say about weapon use before the Middle Pleistocene, or about defensive spear use against a predator. The pic you extracted of the squeeze power grip, (recognised by the forearm lying along the shaft direction) is one of the few, I trust her claim that this grip “was almost certainly not possible for A. afarensis”

Figure 7.8 mentions predators. It shows an expert practitioner, teacher and researcher of sharp force weapons including spears, demonstrating the “power assist”.

: Milks (2018) figs 7.8 and 7.3.jpg (34.88 KiB) Viewed 203 times

Caption: “Power assist. The foot anchors the spear to the ground, which would provide opposing power and stabilisation to an attacking/charging prey or predator”.

Notice that the expert isn’t using the Australopithecus-impossible “squeeze power grip” with either hand. This use of a spear against an onrush would stop a predator, take the initiative from it, and make it vulnerable to a melee onslaught. Not that an intelligent predator would actually impale itself before discovering the disadvantage of doing that.

Figure 7.3 shows a “reverse grip” without comment, but again showing both hands in a grip different from the “squeeze power grip. Such as posture might be used in a melee, equivalent to the brawl stage in the “all out brawl between a leopard and 50 baboons” video.

In her chapter 8 Milks used a series of tests using both thrown and thrusting spears, to establish:

“P340 The results of these experiments reject hypotheses that wooden spears function poorly as hunting weapons, and demonstrate that they are capable of lethally wounding a large adult horse."

P351Most significantly, the experiments presented in 8.4 have clearly demonstrated that, making biomechanical assumptions of similarity - if not superiority - with contemporary trained modern human participants, hominins using wooden spears as hand-delivered weapons on large prey were armed with the capacity to kill.”

When reconstructing Australopithecus abilities, “Hunting” could arguably be exchanged with “defensive” in the first passage, and “Prey” for “predator” in the second. We can have that argument if you like.

Milks does seem to support that Australopithecus was not adapted to throw a spear, where several pics show the squeeze power grip being used. That’s fine by me, I can’t imagine throwing a spear at a leopard unless I had another spear ready to use as a pike.

So, in spite of your sneering, Milks’ excellent experiments do little to forbid the defensive use of simple wooden spears by Australopithecus. Except in one passage on page 95:

“Although hafting is considered a significant step in cognitive evolution (e.g. Wadley et al. 2009; Wynn 2009), manufacturing a wooden spear is thought to require modularity of mind, with a long operational sequence including advance planning, knowledge of raw material location and material properties (Haidle 2010). Evaluating aspects of wooden spears including design and performance contributes to evaluating changes in cognitive evolution during this critical period in human evolution.”

Note that Milks isn’t citing her own research here, but sharing opinions expressed by others. She is agreeing that to make a simple wooden spear requires a particular level of cognitive development, that would be lacking in earlier times than the Mid Pleistocene.

Here is a conundrum: how come Lucy was too stupid to make a simple wooden spear, when the bird brained Cape Penduline Tit can make a nest out of specialised material, with an entrance mouth glued shut using spider web, and a fake entrance to an adjacent fake empty nest, which will protect the chicks from a predating snake?

The_Metatron · **#6324** by **The_Metatron** » Mar 26, 2024 9:16 pm

When you are surprised, when you have under two seconds to react to an attack as you suggest, you might have time to get your hands on the spear you didn’t know how to make. Then, it’s too late. If you are sprinting away from such an attack, your thrusting spear is useless to deter that attack.

Dart did claim a. Afarensis used bone tools. He was wrong. Washburn questioned it. Brain showed that hyenas make caches of bones, exactly like the ones Dart claimed were made entirely by australopithecines. Exactly. No bloodthirsty little cannibal australopithecines needed.

You question how Lucy could be so stupid as to be unable to make a spear. Why instead don’t you explain to us how you find yourself unable to understand that which I learned in a day? You, an h. sapiens, can’t understand, even when taught. A. Afarensis had an excuse. Tiny brain. What’s yours?

Fortunately for you, the inability to learn you are displaying, and have done so here for years, is not a survival factor. If it were, you would serve to improve the quality gene of the pool by your death. Others who possess the capability to learn from those who have gone before would survive where you would not.

Pride, JJ. Your ego has you so wrapped up in your worldview, you will probably never, ever climb out of it. You imagine a lot of shit here. What I cannot imagine is the prospect of going through life with such a handicap as you display. In an earlier post, you called us peers. No, JJ. You cannot or will not learn. I know of no darker fate. You’re going to go to bed knowing nothing new tonight. Every night. What a dull, grey life that would be.

Like I said, enjoy your look.

Fenrir · **#6325** by **Fenrir** » Mar 26, 2024 9:38 pm

Here is a conundrum: how come Lucy was too stupid to make a simple wooden spear, when the bird brained Cape Penduline Tit can make a nest out of specialised material, with an entrance mouth glued shut using spider web, and a fake entrance to an adjacent fake empty nest, which will protect the chicks from a predating snake?

The Charge of the Straw Brigade

An epic poem in 4500 vapid parts.

"Fact to the left of them
Fact to the right of them
Into the valley of derp rode the eleventy gazillion"

"Them mean atheists wouldn't let Lucy make a spear. Just so they could kick baby Jesus and make everything about them.
Meanies."

It'd be pathetic if it weren't so pathetic.

THWOTH · **#6326** by **THWOTH** » Mar 27, 2024 7:20 am

THWOTH wrote:
Jayjay4547 wrote:...
THWOTH wrote:This is by-the-by of course, because in making this errant assertion I note that you have neglected to engage with my argument on why atheism does not necessitate ideology. Regardless of what you reflexively repeat, contemporary thought on evolution is not the product of so-called atheist ideology but the product of a diligent commitment to empiricism and logic to which all are invited - the product of Science. If you believe that religionists like yourself are excluded from that grand epistemic project then I fear it can only be by a deliberate act of self-exclusion.

Your argument sparked a revelation, it made me see that I had been wrong in interpreting the influence of atheist ideology as just “messing up” or biasing the human origin story, I was dealing with a positive project to construct the atheist origin story as the self-creation of mankind as a god. ...

I would be interested to see your reasoning regarding that 'revelation', not least because at the moment it looks like a non sequitur that doesn't necessarily follow from anything I've written.

Cito di Pense · **#6327** by **Cito di Pense** » Mar 27, 2024 7:59 am

Recent discussions have been steered toward picking and choosing data in attempts to show that hominins of several million years ago were somehow specially-equipped to combat predation sufficiently to avoid extinction. As noted by other posters, JJ's focus on predation is fixated on technology-as-guarantor even at such an early stage. No effort is made to show that escaping predation is the only necessity for survival. What a myopic bunch of tripe, because JJ's narrative assumes that the appearance of hominins is taken for granted or even as intended by cosmic forces, accompanying an obsession with the unrecognized genius of Raymond Dart. Packaged along with that is a bunch of nonsense about the "northern" vs. "southern" conception of hominid evolution. Not only do we have a creationist component, but a jingoistic one, as well.

Just below is an informative video which will charm the socks off any IDiot/Creotard who chooses to believe that humans are the intended end product of earth history; so many things had to go right in the previous several billion years (and we haven't even started to worry about plate tectonics, ocean circulation, and volcanic activity's impact (no pun intended) on atmosphere and oceans, topics with which JJ is not obsessed and sounding informed about which he has no hope of even attempting:

Cito di Pense · **#6328** by **Cito di Pense** » Mar 27, 2024 8:31 am

Jayjay4547 wrote:The contempt you express to me is just personal but contempt for Nature expressed in discounting the ability and autonomy of other species, and the infinite web of their intimate interactions, is a kind of blasphemy.

A kind of blasphemy? Against whose word, JJ? Apparently only yours. Some arrogance, there, pal.

You have no apparent clue about how much else has to go right in order for this "web of interactions" to make miracles for you. When so much else has to go right, you end up having to imagine so many more miracles. Limits are placed, JJ, on childish imaginings purporting as "science" or "fact", and that condition is called "adulthood". Ah well, some of us are lucky enough to experience the "second childhood", and it's looking like this is what you're presenting to us.

The people you're interacting with seem largely content to discuss hominid paleoanthropology with you, but I don't think they take the appearance of human ancestors for granted the way you do. Yes, it's what happened, but if you want to explain how it happened, you can't stay fixated on what happened since then, unless you take what happened then for granted. That's what you're doing with your "creative biome". See the video above to see some of the bumps on the road you prefer to assume somebody planned.

Look at the map in the video. 70% of earth's surface is water, and there were steamy impacts there, as well, no less densely than the ones we can count on the land masses. Yep, the web of life survives, but it doesn't know or intend where it's going. Will Durant said, "Civilization exists by geological consent." Durant could have understood impact and tectonic maps had he seen them. You, on the other hand, would simply deny their validity and significance, if not their very existence. The story of human origins includes impact craters and plate tectonics and ocean circulation.

THWOTH · **#6329** by **THWOTH** » Mar 27, 2024 11:15 am

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

—Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Jayjay4547 · **#6330** by **Jayjay4547** » Mar 28, 2024 2:53 am

The_Metatron wrote:When you are surprised, when you have under two seconds to react to an attack as you suggest, you might have time to get your hands on the spear you didn’t know how to make. Then, it’s too late. If you are sprinting away from such an attack, your thrusting spear is useless to deter that attack.

If the Cape Penduline tit can know how to make an amazing device to protect its future nestlings from snakes, then Lucy could have known how to make a simple spear to protect her children from leopards. And it’s written all over her weapon-less body that she did.

It’s you who brought up the notion that being bipedal, she could “move” as an alternative to using a spear.

The_Metatron wrote:Dart did claim a. Afarensis used bone tools. He was wrong. Washburn questioned it. Brain showed that hyenas make caches of bones, exactly like the ones Dart claimed were made entirely by australopithecines. Exactly. No bloodthirsty little cannibal australopithecines needed.

Basically the things Dart wrote after 1925 were wrong. But the things he wrote in 1925 were inspired. That Australopithecus africanus had been a human ancestor, had an ape-sized brain, was bipedal, lacked massive canines, and used weapons for defence.

The_Metatron wrote:Why instead don’t you explain to us how you find yourself unable to understand that which I learned in a day? You, an h. sapiens, can’t understand, even when taught. A. Afarensis had an excuse. Tiny brain. What’s yours?

Look Metatron, I have been onto this topic for a while and with due respect for your good use of JSTOR in a New York library, I already know the back story on Dart and etc. But I am glad for your getting hold of Milks’ thesis, which is a goldmine.

Jayjay4547 · **#6331** by **Jayjay4547** » Mar 28, 2024 3:01 am

Cito di Pense wrote:Recent discussions have been steered toward picking and choosing data in attempts to show that hominins of several million years ago were somehow specially-equipped to combat predation sufficiently to avoid extinction. As noted by other posters, JJ's focus on predation is fixated on technology-as-guarantor even at such an early stage. No effort is made to show that escaping predation is the only necessity for survival.

Let’s say, survival necessitates eating without being eaten. Throughout the arc of life from birth to giving birth and enabling the infant. And for a prey species those two are intertwined. So Lucy maximised the places where she could safely access the plants she ate.

I don’t know that other posters have claimed that I’m fixated on technology as Lucy’s guarantee for survival. Fixated on spears, maybe. And the making of spears might well have led to the making of tools to make spears.

Cito di Pense wrote:What a myopic bunch of tripe, because JJ's narrative assumes that the appearance of hominins is taken for granted or even as intended by cosmic forces, accompanying an obsession with the unrecognized genius of Raymond Dart. Packaged along with that is a bunch of nonsense about the "northern" vs. "southern" conception of hominid evolution. Not only do we have a creationist component, but a jingoistic one, as well.

I think Dart’s genius is recognised, along with his limitations. I do suspect that I’m channelling Robert Broom’s jingoism. He had a chip on his shoulder about a blindness of the Northern hemisphere, that bled into the South African culture. Although he himself was born and educated in the northern hemisphere, where many other southern hemisphere scientists were educated, including Dart.

Cito di Pense wrote:Just below is an informative video which will charm the socks off any IDiot/Creotard who chooses to believe that humans are the intended end product of earth history; so many things had to go right in the previous several billion years (and we haven't even started to worry about plate tectonics, ocean circulation, and volcanic activity's impact (no pun intended) on atmosphere and oceans, topics with which JJ is not obsessed and sounding informed about which he has no hope of even attempting:

That straight science-informative video about major random events isn’t relevant to my interest here. Here is a pic on what is relevant to explaining how Lucy functioned:

: Phanerozoic_Biodiversity.png (20.59 KiB) Viewed 153 times

Especially the K-T extinction event, referred to in your video. This graph shows that SOME THING was damaged by a great rock hitting Earth, but THAT THING recovered “quickly”. It’s alive. And that thing is what you deny when you try to tell the human origin story in a way that discounts the ability and autonomy of other species, and the infinite web of their intimate interactions.

Fenrir · **#6332** by **Fenrir** » Mar 28, 2024 3:57 am

And that thing is what you deny when you try to tell the human origin story in a way that discounts the ability and autonomy of other species, and the infinite web of their intimate interactions.

There's that straw again.

Cito di Pense · **#6333** by **Cito di Pense** » Mar 28, 2024 6:19 am

Jayjay4547 wrote:
Let’s say, survival necessitates eating without being eaten.

There's your self-serving obsession with predation, again. One solution to that is just tasting bad. Your bad taste in resources you use for research doesn't protect you, but then, that's not the same as tasting bad. Is human evolution to blame for the fact that human flesh tastes good, even to other humans? Of course we would only eat the dead ones. Never mind. Humans make up plenty of excuses for hunting and killing each other besides feeling hungry. The fact that reproductive success outstrips these excuses is not by the by. Humans are also gifted by nature with an overactive endocrine system. This is a factor in everything from intra-species violence to sexual promiscuity. People get sufficiently wrapped up in their fucking that they can fall victim to predators who will thus end up with a double meal. How about that, you creationist, you?

Jayjay4547 wrote:
I don’t know that other posters have claimed that I’m fixated on technology as Lucy’s guarantee for survival. Fixated on spears, maybe.

If you don't recognize spears as technology, you should probably not be nosing around in paleoanthropology, because you're fixing to be the laughingstock of paleoanthropology. In fact, your singular success is as a laughingstock.

:rofl:

Anyway, back to your obsessive strawman: Survival necessitates being able to find enough for one's children to eat; survival necessitates being resistant enough to disease and likeable-enough by the rest of the band that one is not left behind for the scavengers to discover. Survival depends on being able to obtain nutrients from what one chooses to eat. Read the story of "Into the Wild". Ground apes need a lot more than weapons. They need to be able to learn what's good to eat, since inborn habitual behavior doesn't serve them as well as in species with less cranial capacity and cephalic crenulation.

On and on the list goes, but you have your self-serving obsession with predation. You're the one elevating the little hominins to the pinnacle of the food chain on land, beholden to no one but their own tool-manufacturing cleverness and military precision in defending the band. You're the one packing in the special self-created status of humans. Then you have the gall to project this myopia onto your interlocutors. Your creationist fantasies are both stupid and malicious, born purely of your rage against those who don't worship at your chosen altar.

Remember, if your group are being chased by a bear, you don't have to outrun the bear; you just have to outrun your group. You can be armed to the teeth with sticks and stones, but will still need to outrun other folks, who (knowing a little about you) don't much like you, anyway and won't lift a finger to protect you.

Jayjay4547 wrote:That straight science-informative video about major random events isn’t relevant to my interest here.

And isn't that just so fucking convenient in protecting your hilariously-fragile authority from having to face the consequences of your obviously-limited educational accumulation and analytical skills. If you don't understand how much contingency is shown in the biodiversity plot, then, well, I guess you don't. My point is that humans are not viewed in that context as the intended product of hundreds of millions of years of biological and environmental change. Global biodiversity has nothing whatsoever to do with the appearance and survival of a species of hominins in a particular and restricted savannah environment several million years ago.

THWOTH · **#6334** by **THWOTH** » Mar 30, 2024 10:43 am

THWOTH wrote:
Jayjay4547 wrote:...
THWOTH wrote:This is by-the-by of course, because in making this errant assertion I note that you have neglected to engage with my argument on why atheism does not necessitate ideology. Regardless of what you reflexively repeat, contemporary thought on evolution is not the product of so-called atheist ideology but the product of a diligent commitment to empiricism and logic to which all are invited - the product of Science. If you believe that religionists like yourself are excluded from that grand epistemic project then I fear it can only be by a deliberate act of self-exclusion.

Your argument sparked a revelation, it made me see that I had been wrong in interpreting the influence of atheist ideology as just “messing up” or biasing the human origin story, I was dealing with a positive project to construct the atheist origin story as the self-creation of mankind as a god. ...

I would be interested to see your reasoning regarding that 'revelation', not least because at the moment it looks like a non sequitur that doesn't necessarily follow from anything I've written.

Jayjay4547 · **#6335** by **Jayjay4547** » Mar 31, 2024 2:26 am

THWOTH wrote:
THWOTH wrote:
Jayjay4547 wrote:...
THWOTH wrote:This is by-the-by of course, because in making this errant assertion I note that you have neglected to engage with my argument on why atheism does not necessitate ideology. Regardless of what you reflexively repeat, contemporary thought on evolution is not the product of so-called atheist ideology but the product of a diligent commitment to empiricism and logic to which all are invited - the product of Science. If you believe that religionists like yourself are excluded from that grand epistemic project then I fear it can only be by a deliberate act of self-exclusion.

Your argument sparked a revelation, it made me see that I had been wrong in interpreting the influence of atheist ideology as just “messing up” or biasing the human origin story, I was dealing with a positive project to construct the atheist origin story as the self-creation of mankind as a god. ...

I would be interested to see your reasoning regarding that 'revelation', not least because at the moment it looks like a non sequitur that doesn't necessarily follow from anything I've written.

THWOTH asked the same question on March 20, 21, 26, 27, 30. I can’t offer a full explanation, revelations seem to appear as a formed idea. On the 20th, the context was his argument was as he quoted above, the revelation was that contemporary thought on evolution is exactly a product. It’s a thing in itself. It had been a mistake to go rummaging through presentations of the human origin story for signs of bias, as if, by removing the bias, the corrected story would be more objectively true.

For example, this passage from Milks’ Ph.D Lethal Threshold: The Evolutionary Implications of Middle Pleistocene Wooden Spears

P95: “Although hafting is considered a significant step in cognitive evolution (e.g. Wadley et al. 2009; Wynn 2009), manufacturing a wooden spear is thought to require modularity of mind, with a long operational sequence including advance planning, knowledge of raw material location and material properties (Haidle 2010). Evaluating aspects of wooden spears including design and performance contributes to evaluating changes in cognitive evolution during this critical period in human evolution.”

This isn’t just an arguably biased argument, it is directive. It is telling a distinctive story that the operation of making a wooden spear to hunt horses, marked or accompanied a stage in developing the human working memory or contributed to that mental advancement.

I argued earlier that this story is wrecked by the example of the intricate nest made by the bird-brained Cape Penduline tit. This little creature builds a nest that only makes sense as a means to deceive a nest-invading snake. It builds that nest before there are eggs in the nest. It uses specific materials which are different from those by its European cousins, including spider web to glue shut the true entrance to its nest. It is a much more developed device than is a wooden spear. So, Haidle is telling the origin story of an ape with the smarts. And Milks goes along with that. And, implicitly, so do the ratskep posters on this forum, who didn’t take up the penduline tit example when I put it up the first time.

It’s not a conspiracy, don’t ever call it that. It’s a mindset.

THWOTH also provided the context for another impulse I had, to stop talking about “weapons” and say “spears”. That was elicited by a contrary impulse to his reliance on generalities. I thought, let me try the opposite to generality. And that has turned out to be most useful. Maybe it was also due to THWOTH’s (icy) politeness. In contrast, Cito’s latest post has too much personal abuse for me to get anything positive from it.

Cito di Pense · **#6336** by **Cito di Pense** » Mar 31, 2024 7:26 am

Jayjay4547 wrote:I can’t offer a full explanation

You don't offer anything. Story of your career in this forum. Instead, you make up excuses and inflict your lame apologetics on an audience you despise. You complain bitterly about your ill-treatment by the bad, mean atheists, and yet I see nothing like compassion at your end.

Jayjay4547 wrote:This little creature builds a nest that only makes sense as a means to deceive a nest-invading snake.

That's you looking at adaptations through your god-goggles, so you talk about "means" (that is, designs). The behavior persists not because it was designed to thwart an enemy and it's not a learned behavior; it persists because its outcome is better reproductive success; offspring who inherit the genetic patterns that produce this behavior increase the chance their offspring will have it, too, by sexual reproduction. You have cause and effect reversed, but then, you're nothing but a very determined creationist ideologue attempting to support his idiosyncratic worldview. It's true that organisms like Homo sapiens with capacity for learning and teaching can teach their kids. Somebody taught you whatever behavior this is that so resents the folks who don't worship at your selected altar. You don't have an instinctive hatred of atheists, JJ. You hone it, as if you thought it a weapon, but all it produces is annoyance. Have you converted anyone to your version of the Gaia hypothesis, the marvelous creative biome?

Jayjay4547 wrote:
I argued earlier that this story is wrecked by the example of the intricate nest made by the bird-brained Cape Penduline tit.

You argue nothing with the dimwit and demonstrably inapt example you make of it. You practice apologetics. You persist in your dimwit mistake of treating the outcomes of adaptations as pieces of some grand design. Anything to banish chance. Your lame excuses are nothing but the rickety framework of a very determined and dogged creationist ideology.

The_Metatron · **#6337** by **The_Metatron** » Mar 31, 2024 11:59 am

…revelations seem to appear as a formed idea.

We’ve been trying to have a rational discussion with hallucinations. Worse, with a fella who preferentially believes the hallucinations. He honestly thinks his hallucinations describe reality. I’m guessing he’s been this certain about his own hallucinations for decades. That mind won’t be changed.

Sometimes, the pooch can’t be screwed.

JJ’s posts do nothing but serve as a warning to others. They show what happens when a man forgoes reality in favor of the voices in his own head. Learning stops.

Jayjay4547 · **#6338** by **Jayjay4547** » Apr 01, 2024 2:35 am

Cito di Pense wrote:
Jayjay4547 wrote:This little creature [Cape penduline tit] builds a nest that only makes sense as a means to deceive a nest-invading snake.

That's you looking at adaptations through your god-goggles, so you talk about "means" (that is, designs). The behavior persists not because it was designed to thwart an enemy and it's not a learned behavior; it persists because its outcome is better reproductive success; offspring who inherit the genetic patterns that produce this behavior increase the chance their offspring will have it, too, by sexual reproduction.

I didn’t use this bird’s behaviour to introduce the notion of intelligent design. I used it to demonstrate a double standard being applied in origin stories. In the case of the little bird, intricate manufacturing is explained by better reproductive success, genetic patterns and chance of offspring, in other words, by natural selection, as you describe. But in the case of a Mid Pleistocene hunter, it was argued by Milks that earlier ancestors had not yet the brains to be able to make a much simpler one piece spear:

P95: ”Although hafting is considered a significant step in cognitive evolution (e.g. Wadley et al. 2009; Wynn 2009), manufacturing a wooden spear is thought to require modularity of mind, with a long operational sequence including advance planning, knowledge of raw material location and material properties (Haidle 2010). Evaluating aspects of wooden spears including design and performance contributes to evaluating changes in cognitive evolution during this critical period in human evolution.”

Again, I’m not making this contrast to take issue with the theory of evolution, I’m using it to support that the human origin story told in the name of evolution is actually the product of an atheist origin story of mankind as a god.

Cito di Pense wrote:
Jayjay4547 wrote:
I argued earlier that this story is wrecked by the example of the intricate nest made by the bird-brained Cape Penduline tit.

You argue nothing with the dimwit and demonstrably inapt example you make of it. You practice apologetics. You persist in your dimwit mistake of treating the outcomes of adaptations as pieces of some grand design. Anything to banish chance. Your lame excuses are nothing but the rickety framework of a very determined and dogged creationist ideology.

Instead of calling my example “dimwit and demonstrably inapt” why not actually demonstrate that your explanation of the evolution of the Cape penduline tit’s nest is consistent with Milks’ explanation of why earlier Pleistocene homo could not have made a simple spear.

Fenrir · **#6339** by **Fenrir** » Apr 01, 2024 4:04 am

It's ok, earlier pleistocene tits probably couldn't make spears either.

fluttermoth · **#6340** by **fluttermoth** » Apr 01, 2024 10:48 am

The bird's nest is built by instinctive, subconscious, behaviours. The spear needs conscious thought and forward planning. They are in no way comparable.

How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Re: How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Re: How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Re: How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Re: How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Re: How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Re: How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Re: How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Re: How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Re: How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Re: How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Re: How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Re: How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Re: How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Re: How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Re: How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Re: How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Re: How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Re: How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Re: How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Re: How atheist ideology messed up the human origin story

Who is online