Jayjay4547 wrote:

THWOTH wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:...
I came here to explore how atheist ideology has messed up the human origin story. Although that aim has progressed into exploring the atheist human origin story told in the name of evolution.

And yet the specifics of this so-called 'atheist ideology' remains entirely opaque, in your own terms, beyond not encompassing myths about the origins of life on Earth told in the name of God.

Like I said, the atheist ideology can be mapped by looking at how the human origin story is told in the name of evolution, bearing in mind that since the Huxley-Wilberforce debate in 1860, evolution has been understood by atheists as a weapon to be used against theists. And the specific feature of that atheist origin story is that mankind created themselves, as ego. I hope that’s specific enough for you.

And like I've said, the only thing that is specifically 'atheist' about Evolution is that empirical methodologies take no account of the un-evidenced claims and assertions of religion. In that regard the 'human origin story' is no different that the 'amoeba origin story' or the 'lavandula angustifolia origin story' - none of which are "told in the name of evolution" but explained and understood through material processes revealed by robust, evidenced, inter-disciplinary scientific research and collaboration.

Moving on. If you believe so-called 'atheist ideology' can be, or is, clearly represented in what the agnostic Huxley and the unapologetic creationist Wilberforce said to each other, or even that Wilberforce offered strong counters to Darwin's big idea, counters that atheists at large still need to engage with and address, then perhaps you should outline them along with some specific arguments. This would be far more productive than just casting the assertion into the discussion and asking others to assume the Oxford Evolution Debate is relevant to an already sketchy conception of 'atheist ideology'.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

THWOTH wrote: While Evolution gives us an empirical basis for understanding the adaptation and speciation of all life on Earth it is but a single nail in the coffin of theism's claims and assertions on behalf of the Abrahamic mythological tradition. Other nails include the Problem of Evil, the temporal paradox at the root of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, contemporary cosmology and planetary science, and quantum theory, not to mention the broader epistemological and moral challenges members of the Abrahamic fellowship are patiently reluctant to engage with or address.

I’m only interested here in the human origin story as told in the name of evolution.

I'm afraid that "the human origin story as told in the name of evolution." is semantically as well as factually incoherent.

Evolution is an encompassing term representing all research that supports an empirical basis for understanding the adaptation and speciation of all life on Earth. The adaptation and speciation of any life-form on Earth is not a "story told in the name of evolution" but instead particular sets of contextual knowledge and understanding gleaned through observation and disciplined logical rigour. Mythologies and religions deal in stories; stories rendered indistinguishable from falsehoods, fabrications or fantasies by their lack of evidential support. By contrast, the sciences deal in observation and vigorous methods of falsification from which verifications can be provisionally arrived at and through which we can support claims that we have good cause to say this-or-that is actually the case - as far as we can tell, at present.

I would humbly suggest that an autodidact with such inclinations as you have demonstrated could do a lot worse than throw themselves into a comprehensive study of the history and philosophy of science before plunging headlong "... into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions, and skilled appeals to religious prejudice." (from Huxley's opening remarks in the Oxford Evolution Debate, 1860).

Jayjay4547 wrote:

THWOTH wrote: What I discern from your contributions to the forum's post count is that you clearly find the explanatory power of Evolution challenging to your religious perspective. I think that's a fair point. However, it also seems to me that your fundamental objection is not to the empiricism or methodologies of Science but to having that perspective challenged in the first place. Consequently, in order to maintain your religious perspective you have avoided meeting the challenge Science poses directly, and instead have placed upon atheists at large the entire responsibility for your personal disquiet; for your spiritual crisis.

I’m not having a spiritual crisis, I’m just exploring a thread that continues to be revelatory for me.

And yet that which is being revealed to you is not anything which you did not already believe you knew or understood, is it - whether that be the supremacy of your nominated deity's creative intent or the inherent moral/intellectual bankruptcy of heathens and non-believers? Your revelations are not epistemically, philosophically, or politically neutral are they? They are confirmatory to your beliefs.

In comparison, a diligent commitment to empiricism affords us a sound basis for discarding beliefs that do not match our observations of the natural world. Where you espouse revelation as a means to bolster your presumptive biases empirical methodologies merely bias the development of knowledge towards the factual.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

THWOTH wrote: It appears then that you have a need to devise and then rely on mechanisms that transfer (or, displace) the negative feelings Evolution inculcates within you onto others; onto atheists and atheism.

Without atheism challenges to your religious perspective would simply not arise, and yet without the claims, assertions, and insistences of theism atheism would obviously not exist or have any rational context. In other words, you need atheists in order to justify both your feelings and your religious perspective - and to authorise your resentment at having your views challenged to begin with. This is not a healthy way to live.

You impute negative feelings about evolution to me but without any foundation. Without atheism, the human origin story would be much more about the human embeddedness in nature, specifically, in the savanna food chain. And more about the evolution of the spear, and of the Uber-Ich.

I'm not imputing, implying maybe, but not imputing. Mostly I'm just reflecting what I have discerned from your contributions to the forum's post count: that you clearly find the explanatory power of contemporary evolutionary theory challenging to your religious perspective. Is that not a fair point?

I'll grant that you may find that challenge positive in some way even while your pronouncements on Evolution are invariably expressed in the negative, but at the same time you offer your arguments (such that they are) as a counterpoint to your peculiarly proto-putative 'atheist ideology' within a propositional context in which the insistences of theism unavoidably, necessarily prefigure any form of atheism. That is; theism must first be a thing before that negating 'a-' can be placed before it.

Of course, one can cast 'atheism' into the realm of ideas--specifically the idea that the insistences of theism are evidentially unsupported, or to put it another way, unbelievable; or non-sense; or ontologically incompatible with observation; or errant intellectual stool water, etc etc--but that does not render atheism an ideology - just a disagreement with religious ideas that always, and must always come first. As I've put it to you before...

THWOTH wrote:... A person's atheism says little about their motivation or moral outlook, besides that it's not bound to religious doctrine, precept, or proscription. Atheists might be left-wing or right-wing in their politics, hedonists or stoics by impulse or consideration, misogynists or anti-racists, vegans or fossil-fuel apologists, etc. In other words, atheists are as variable, inconsistent, or idealistic in their moral outlook, and the expression thereof, as anybody else might be, because the only thing one can reliably say about any atheist's moral outlook is that it's not necessarily bound to religious beliefs and practices - even if it shares some common moral ground with this-or-that religious perspective.

In this sense 'atheism' isn't described or defined by a set of doctrines or beliefs that are shared and adhered to by all atheists. 'Atheism' is not a system of ideas that form the qualifying basis of a coherent and encompassing, specifically atheist political, economic, social or moral perspective. In other words, 'atheism' isn't an ideology.

The commonality of atheists' atheism can only be represented in the eschewing of religious insistences, and in circumstances where 'atheism' can only be meaningfully contextualised in relation to religious insistences. In the absence of religious insistences atheism would simply not be coherent or rational, and in the absence of religions, telling others that supernatural, controlling, universe-creating entities did not exist and that they didn't want everyone to adopt, share, or adhere to specific sets of principles and actions would probably be seen as a form of derangement. The idea that there is a coherent set of doctrines or beliefs, the acceptance of which qualify one as an atheists, is what T_M and I were poking fun at when we talked about "secret atheist skool"...

Nonetheless, throughout your long participation here you have continued to bemoan atheists for, in some way, denuding "the human origins story" of its appropriate, theistic meaning, and justified your religious perspective in antithesis to the disbelief in, and disagreement with, your fundamental theistic doctrine. This renders 'atheism' the context in which your hereto expressed religious perspectives are embedded, and in this sense "you need atheists in order to justify both your feelings and your religious perspective - and to authorise your resentment at having your views challenged" by Evolution.

And finally I'll turn to your assertion that: "Without atheism, the human origin story would be much more about the human embeddedness in nature, specifically, in the savanna food chain. And more about the evolution of the spear, and of the Uber-Ich."

Frankly, this charge, that atheism entails viewing humanity as separate from the natural world, seems rather self-serving, if not patently ridiculous in the face of supposed divine instructions such as, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the Earth."

By the holy text of your faith tradition humanity is placed upon a planet specifically created for it to enjoy, tame, dominate, and exploit. After all, it was called the 'Garden of Eden', not the 'Wilderness of Eden', eh? Your religious tradition fundamentally views the Earth and everything on it as the rightful possession of a limited subset of supposedly purposely chosen humans. Tell me this doesn't sound to you like the super-ego of the faithful getting somewhat out of hand.

Indeed, is there any better example of an 'origins story' in which humanity are dis-embedded and detached from Nature than parochial mythological narratives asserting, "Every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind."? Are these not stories about the self-creation of humankind as virtual gods within a Nature created specifically for them to rule; stories in which the chosen are granted a celestial licence to secure their dominion and domination over Nature, and of all things in it, including non-believers, where necessary by the spear, axe, sword, bow, or by the sundry other impositions of human ingenuity violently brought to bear upon servicing the egos and ids of self-declared and self-authorising demigods? Once again I fear you are castigating atheism for something you have projected onto it from your own creed. Anyway...

Previously I've talked about how contemporary evolutionary theory encompasses a multi-disciplinary field in which researchers and theorists attempt to empirically examine and explain the adaptation and speciation of organisms within our planetary geo-ecological context. I've also gone to some lengths to sketch out the interconnectedness and evolutionary interdependence of species as participants in overlapping complex adaptive systems, and how these dynamic ecological forces interact within a wider natural environment which encompasses everything below our feet to everything above our heads - and everything in between!

That is not a reading of Evolution or the origins of life on Earth in which humanity is dis-embedded or detached from the context of the natural world. In fact, quite the opposite. However, engaging with and understanding Evolution in these terms would entail i) that you undertake a more rigorous and varied course of study, and ii) oblige you to throw away your strawman accounts of Evolution and what atheists apparently think about it - which is perhaps why you rely so earnestly upon agniology and demonstrable fallacies, fabrications, falsehoods, and fantasies.

Blip’s reopening of this thread has caught me by surprise. I interpreted the closing yesterday as the admin having finally run out of patience with me, and this morning I came to record how many had come to view the corpse. About 120, a little down from the pitiful usual numbers compared say with Pornhub views. But if there is anything in Rupert Sheldrake’s views, then the merest publishing of ideas even to a small audience, might be noticed. This forum has tolerated an exploration of views that would be practically forbidden for anyone in the world of science publication.

My opponents in this debate had perfected a strategy of ignoring specifics while contending at the city gate so to speak. So when the thread was closed I basically shut the book on it and digested the news while planning how to remove the gearbox from my Fiat Uno to get at a leaking Welsh plug. Now that the closing has been rescinded and I see that my assumption about why the thread had been closed were a bit wrong, I need to rethink the way forward.

Edit: changed "blocking" to "closing"

Jayjay4547 wrote:Blip’s reopening of this thread has caught me by surprise. I interpreted the closing yesterday as the admin having finally run out of patience with me,

What can this mean? Even to you! It's a tautology that you're embodying opposition and somebody might run out of patience with you, taking your opposition as vacuous, but that won't be moderation. That's the tautology. You shouldn't take the attitude that moderation is the same thing as debate. There's no debate on theist channels; opposition is dismissed, and long before an eight-year tenure is fashioned. Apparently you find it pleasing to talk a little bit about yourself. Never seen that from you before. Do you talk about yourself because you want to be talked about?

Jayjay4547 wrote:and this morning I came to record how many had come to view the corpse. About 120, a little down from the pitiful usual numbers compared say with Pornhub views. But if there is anything in Rupert Sheldrake’s views, then the merest publishing of ideas even to a small audience, might be noticed.

Another dose of self-obsessed doodling. Yawn. All you need to do is divide the number of posts in the thread by the number of views for this thread and any other of comparable size to get an impression of the size of the audience. You might have to figure in the size of the group that're replying to you, because every time someone replies, it's a view and you have no idea how many times one individual loads the thread to research what you wrote years ago. You fancy for yourself a better understanding of the medium than you actually possess, as with all the other understanding you claim to be displaying.

Jayjay4547 wrote:This forum has tolerated an exploration of views that would be practically forbidden for anyone in the world of science publication.

This is baked into our rules. Do you claim to be displaying understanding of anything, here?

Jayjay4547 wrote:My opponents in this debate had perfected a strategy of ignoring specifics while contending at the city gate so to speak. So when the thread was closed I basically shut the book on it and digested the news

How sad you must've felt...

Jayjay4547 wrote:I see that my assumption about why the thread had been closed were a bit wrong, I need to rethink the way forward.

You picked the low-hanging fruit of re-examining your assumptions. You pondered nothing. First of all, ponder why you REALLY supposed that you were the target of suppression. Why would anyone lose patience with a train of thought that simply repeats the same message for years and years? It's not as if you've not said your piece, and with a little more thought, you can draw reasonable conclusions as to whom your repetition-compulsion might appropriately be exposing itself.

Jayjay4547 wrote:
My opponents in this debate had perfected a strategy of ignoring specifics while contending at the city gate so to speak

Apparently your much hyped "rethink" doesn't include bringing an end to lying about the rest of us. Oh wait, WE were the ones who brought a supertanker load of specifics, including specifics obtained from a large array of peer reviewed scientific papers, to which your response was a mix of summary dismissal and apologetic twisting. While of course continuing with a pathologically monomaniac obsession with Australopithecines becoming arms manufacturers and video game warriors.

Though I suspect no one here will expect any departure from this conduct that your posts are utterly marinated in.

THWOTH wrote:

And like I've said, the only thing that is specifically 'atheist' about Evolution is that empirical methodologies take no account of the un-evidenced claims and assertions of religion. In that regard the 'human origin story' is no different that the 'amoeba origin story' or the 'lavandula angustifolia origin story' - none of which are "told in the name of evolution" but explained and understood through material processes revealed by robust, evidenced, inter-disciplinary scientific research and collaboration.

A Google search shows that the evolution of lavandula angustifolia (which I see is lavender) is told in terms of its classification and how it makes aromatic chemicals. Classification implies relatedness through roots in past time (Darwin’s Bush of Life) but beyond that it’s not much of an origin story, which is about what happened when and why and which is what the human origin story is all about.

THWOTH wrote: Moving on. If you believe so-called 'atheist ideology' can be, or is, clearly represented in what the agnostic Huxley and the unapologetic creationist Wilberforce said to each other, or even that Wilberforce offered strong counters to Darwin's big idea, counters that atheists at large still need to engage with and address, then perhaps you should outline them along with some specific arguments. This would be far more productive than just casting the assertion into the discussion and asking others to assume the Oxford Evolution Debate is relevant to an already sketchy conception of 'atheist ideology'.

My point about the 1860 Oxford Union Debate was that it showed enemies of religion that the theory of evolution could be used as a great tool to lambaste the theists with. A lot like Kubrick’s ape in 2001 Space Odyssey:

THWOTH wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
I’m only interested here in the human origin story as told in the name of evolution.

I'm afraid that "the human origin story as told in the name of evolution." is semantically as well as factually incoherent.

Evolution is an encompassing term representing all research that supports an empirical basis for understanding the adaptation and speciation of all life on Earth. The adaptation and speciation of any life-form on Earth is not a "story told in the name of evolution" but instead particular sets of contextual knowledge and understanding gleaned through observation and disciplined logical rigour. Mythologies and religions deal in stories; stories rendered indistinguishable from falsehoods, fabrications or fantasies by their lack of evidential support. By contrast, the sciences deal in observation and vigorous methods of falsification from which verifications can be provisionally arrived at and through which we can support claims that we have good cause to say this-or-that is actually the case - as far as we can tell, at present.

I would humbly suggest that an autodidact with such inclinations as you have demonstrated could do a lot worse than throw themselves into a comprehensive study of the history and philosophy of science before plunging headlong "... into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions, and skilled appeals to religious prejudice." (from Huxley's opening remarks in the Oxford Evolution Debate, 1860).

I’m learning about the history and philosophy of science as I go along in this debate, using online tools like Wikipedia. Where I learn that Wilberforce’s argument was that evolution was not evidenced, and most scientists didn’t accept it. In other words, an argument from authority, which is similar to the arguments used against my position that the market place for human origin stories told in the name of evolution, is for an atheist origin story of man as a god.

That Wiki entry has a pic of a monument to that debate, signalling its pivotal role in the earthquake transition in universities, from being the essential training ground for clerics in the established church, to the most celebrated Christian Oxbridge academics in the 20 century being the fabulist novelists CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. It would be dangerous to the career of a professional scientist to voice some of the points I raise, which is what makes this bottom-feeding forum an unusually safe space to expose heretical views.

THWOTH wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
I’m not having a spiritual crisis, I’m just exploring a thread that continues to be revelatory for me.

And yet that which is being revealed to you is not anything which you did not already believe you knew or understood, is it - whether that be the supremacy of your nominated deity's creative intent or the inherent moral/intellectual bankruptcy of heathens and non-believers? Your revelations are not epistemically, philosophically, or politically neutral are they? They are confirmatory to your beliefs.
In comparison, a diligent commitment to empiricism affords us a sound basis for discarding beliefs that do not match our observations of the natural world. Where you espouse revelation as a means to bolster your presumptive biases empirical methodologies merely bias the development of knowledge towards the factual.

It’s my empirical factual exploration of the impact of atheist ideology on the human origin story that has been revelatory for me.

THWOTH wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
You impute negative feelings about evolution to me but without any foundation. Without atheism, the human origin story would be much more about the human embeddedness in nature, specifically, in the savanna food chain. And more about the evolution of the spear, and of the Uber-Ich.

I'm not imputing, implying maybe, but not imputing. Mostly I'm just reflecting what I have discerned from your contributions to the forum's post count: that you clearly find the explanatory power of contemporary evolutionary theory challenging to your religious perspective. Is that not a fair point?
I'll grant that you may find that challenge positive in some way even while your pronouncements on Evolution are invariably expressed in the negative, but at the same time you offer your arguments (such that they are) as a counterpoint to your peculiarly proto-putative 'atheist ideology' within a propositional context in which the insistences of theism unavoidably, necessarily prefigure any form of atheism. That is; theism must first be a thing before that negating 'a-' can be placed before it.
Of course, one can cast 'atheism' into the realm of ideas--specifically the idea that the insistences of theism are evidentially unsupported, or to put it another way, unbelievable; or non-sense; or ontologically incompatible with observation; or errant intellectual stool water, etc etc--but that does not render atheism an ideology - just a disagreement with religious ideas that always, and must always come first. As I've put it to you before...

Atheism has a distinct history as an emergent social movement that individuals can join, champion or fight against. Yes, it surely did take powerful form as a counter to pre-existing theism, notably at Oxbridge, in the time of Darwin.

THWOTH wrote:
Nonetheless, throughout your long participation here you have continued to bemoan atheists for, in some way, denuding "the human origins story" of its appropriate, theistic meaning, and justified your religious perspective in antithesis to the disbelief in, and disagreement with, your fundamental theistic doctrine. This renders 'atheism' the context in which your hereto expressed religious perspectives are embedded, and in this sense "you need atheists in order to justify both your feelings and your religious perspective - and to authorise your resentment at having your views challenged" by Evolution.

My ideas aren’t challenged by evolution. I have had no problem with evolution since I was about 8, when I was the only child in the class to accept it. My gripe is that it has been used as a context in building a human origin story that is wrong and contrary to essential features of the theory. For example, Haidle (2010) makes out that for Heidelberg Man to have made and used wooden spears to hunt horses, required the most complex cognitive steps of any animal operations dealt with in her analysis, see this partial extract:

Whereas, in making and using those spears, those ancestors were surely just doing what they had been educated to do. This is how we make a flake tool. This is how we use it to make a spear. The theory of evolution shows how such abilities can develop though many generations. And the fossil record should tell us how deep in time those particular abilities would have been adaptive.

So I’m arguing that western society has gone far towards telling an origin story that is unrealistically driven by individual personal experience (the ego).

THWOTH wrote:
And finally I'll turn to your assertion that: "Without atheism, the human origin story would be much more about the human embeddedness in nature, specifically, in the savanna food chain. And more about the evolution of the spear, and of the Uber-Ich."
Frankly, this charge, that atheism entails viewing humanity as separate from the natural world, seems rather self-serving, if not patently ridiculous in the face of supposed divine instructions such as, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the Earth."
By the holy text of your faith tradition humanity is placed upon a planet specifically created for it to enjoy, tame, dominate, and exploit. After all, it was called the 'Garden of Eden', not the 'Wilderness of Eden', eh? Your religious tradition fundamentally views the Earth and everything on it as the rightful possession of a limited subset of supposedly purposely chosen humans. Tell me this doesn't sound to you like the super-ego of the faithful getting somewhat out of hand.
Indeed, is there any better example of an 'origins story' in which humanity are dis-embedded and detached from Nature than parochial mythological narratives asserting, "Every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind."? Are these not stories about the self-creation of humankind as virtual gods within a Nature created specifically for them to rule; stories in which the chosen are granted a celestial licence to secure their dominion and domination over Nature, and of all things in it, including non-believers, where necessary by the spear, axe, sword, bow, or by the sundry other impositions of human ingenuity violently brought to bear upon servicing the egos and ids of self-declared and self-authorising demigods? Once again I fear you are castigating atheism for something you have projected onto it from your own creed.

Your depiction of how the ancient Jews saw their relationship with nature, would accord with Ann Coulter’s infamous claim that God had told man “Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours”. No. In every action, the observant Jews expected each other to act respectfully as obedient servants of God. God was seen as in charge, continually in front of mind.

It was and still is true that man can dominate or assert his will over that of every other animal. Until a couple of centuries ago, that was achieved not so much by human ingenuity, as by the law of inertia that dictates that a spear that stays in the flesh of an animal, will immobilise it by increasing the pain the animal feels if it moves. Hence the advantage of a fish tail projectile point. That advantage can be seen as something gradually explored by our ancestors, through the processes of evolution, rather than as a consequence of human ingenuity.

So Genesis 1:26-31 would have been understood in its context more as a usufruct justifying an actual situation, a cause for wonder (Psalm 8) and with limitations (Job chapter 14, about the untameable Leviathan). It’s more difficult to justify a modern origin story in which our ancestors are depicted as so alienated from other animals as in the educational video “When humans were prey” where an Australopithecus male is shown picking up a bent stick he has just found lying around, to confront a savanna predator:

Unlike the ancient Jewish agreement between belief and understanding, the modern market for the human origin story is out of step with current belief in the intimate mutual comprehension between animals (a whale protects a diver from a shark, a polar bear asks humans to help dislodge a tin lodged its mouth) and out of step with scientific interest in global webs of relationships (Gaia).

Jayjay4547 wrote:
My opponents in this debate had perfected a strategy of ignoring specifics while contending at the city gate so to speak.

Hmm.

Indeed, he's still regurgitating the same tired and repeatedly destroyed lies ...

Calilasseia wrote:Indeed, he's still regurgitating the same tired and repeatedly destroyed lies ...

Yep, nothing new to see here. As if learning has stopped, isn’t it?

THWOTH wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:
My opponents in this debate had perfected a strategy of ignoring specifics while contending at the city gate so to speak.

Hmm.

The_Metatron wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:Indeed, he's still regurgitating the same tired and repeatedly destroyed lies ...

Yep, nothing new to see here. As if learning has stopped, isn’t it?

True enough for now. It hasn’t helped even to draw attention to those bent sticks by circling them in red. Rather just declare that my “lies” have been destroyed, and that I avoid specifics.

Fenrir wrote:Australopithecus did not have the anatomy required to throw or thrust accurately or with force.

How bout them specifics?

Awww, there you go again, telling the human origin story in the name of evolution, and using it as a narrative cudgel to berate, pester, bullyrag, annoy, bother, aggravate, vex, irritate, exasperate, irk, gall, nettle and otherwise rile theists who never did nothin' to anybody to deserve it. We should instead honor the odd theist who comes along telling the human origin story in the name of humankind's intimate and mutually-beneficial relationship with the living and non-living universe. Be grateful, or go home.

Jayjay4547 wrote:My gripe is that it has been used as a context in building a human origin story that is wrong and contrary to essential features of the theory.

Translated: "My gripe is that it has been used as a context in building a human origin story that focuses on facts rather than on gratitude, which gratitude I (JJ) specifically regard as an essential feature of any human origin story worth a pillar of salt."

Jayjay4547 wrote:
It was and still is true that man can dominate or assert his will over that of every other animal. Until a couple of centuries ago, that was achieved not so much by human ingenuity...

In other words, humankind had no need of a scientific account of evolution in order to assert its dominance over every other animal. Not to mention, plants. Remember the invention of agriculture, JJ? What of those poor plants, bred in captivity just to stuff into the gaping maw of any hungry vegetarian? It is meet that we should remember these, er, facts.

Jayjay4547 wrote:God was seen as in charge, continually in front of mind.

Well, pre-scientific goat-roasters may actually have had the conviction that a deity actually existed in their universe, because like other ignorant folks, they interpret the hell out of what they experience. But this kind of statement can come equally from the "fake it till you feel it" school of pretense, given the way people in pre-scientific societies get their nuts or their heads removed for daring to disagree with the priesthood that runs things.

Fenrir wrote:Australopithecus did not have the anatomy required to throw or thrust accurately or with force.

How bout them specifics?

That, and the inconvenient truth that branches lying about on the ground to be picked up are so weak they could no longer support their own weight on the trees from which they came.

Noisemakers, perhaps. Weapons? No.

The Gish gallop will go on, of course. Facts are of no significance to JJ’s imaginations.

The_Metatron wrote:

Fenrir wrote:Australopithecus did not have the anatomy required to throw or thrust accurately or with force.

How bout them specifics?

That, and the inconvenient truth that branches lying about on the ground to be picked up are so weak they could no longer support their own weight on the trees from which they came.

Noisemakers, perhaps. Weapons? No.

The Gish gallop will go on, of course. Facts are of no significance to JJ’s imaginations.

Mistaking edutainment for education is only the tip of the iceberg, here, and doesn't even make it as far as misrepresenting it as data. It's the edutainment producers who won't concern themselves with the tensile strength of dry, half-rotted deadwood. And man, have we ever got some half-rotted deadwood on display.

Fenrir wrote:Australopithecus did not have the anatomy required to throw or thrust accurately or with force.
How bout them specifics?

You said that before, and supported it with this reference:
Alison (2021) Trends in human evolution – the shoulder

Alison does say that australopithecus could not have thrown a spear with accuracy or force, but it looks to me that your “or thrust” is just your own add-on. Can you support it?

In Milks' (2018) innovative and thorough PhD thesis, built around the Schöningen spears, almost the only reference to predators is in figure 7.8:


Put a leopard off-stage like in the PBS video “When humans were prey” , and what you get is this man saying “talk to the spear”. In the same way, antelope tell their predators “talk to the horns”. A spear could be seen as an example of nature’s marvellous ability to come up with work-arounds, enabling an ape to access savanna resources where their predators had to take account of what horns do. Like horns, spears take away the predator’s advantage of its own momentum in a frontal onslaught. But a spear has a number of advantages over horns on the head of a buck. A spear can be replaced, resharpened, used by weaker individuals, and the flank of its bipedal user is more difficult to turn. It can even stab backwards.

The_Metatron wrote:

Fenrir wrote:Australopithecus did not have the anatomy required to throw or thrust accurately or with force.
How bout them specifics?

That, and the inconvenient truth that branches lying about on the ground to be picked up are so weak they could no longer support their own weight on the trees from which they came.
Noisemakers, perhaps. Weapons? No.
The Gish gallop will go on, of course. Facts are of no significance to JJ’s imaginations.

You don’t seem to have picked up my point that the PBS video clip is EXACTLY that it’s embarrassingly unrealistic. On the African savanna, you will never find a prey mammal doing such an incompetent thing as pick up a bent rotten branch to defend against a predator. Evolution gives a mechanism to help explain why. It’s because spears, used as a means of defence, are subject to intense adaptive pressure. Just suppose that they originated like the spears used by chimps to stab bushbabies in tree hollows. That’s just conjecture to provide an initial stage. Those spears would adapt towards being made from the best sort of wood, sharpened as best as possible, of optimal length and stoutness. And so on. For that to happen, the spears would have co-evolved with hominins. And the co-evolution would have invoked the innovative use of tools to speed up and perfect the manufacturing process.

Edit: spelling and grammar

Jayjay4547 wrote:You don’t seem to have picked up my point that the PBS video clip is EXACTLY that it’s embarrassingly unrealistic.

Of course it is, and nobody here has missed seeing that the example is from an edutainment video, and not a scientific contribution to understanding evolution. What's still not clear is what you were making of it by repeatedly posting the image.

Jayjay4547 wrote:On the African savanna, you will never find a prey mammal doing such an incompetent thing as pick up a bent rotten branch to defend against a predator.

Didn't somebody just point that out to you? But you didn't see fit to make that point previously! Are you asking to be taken seriously?

Jayjay4547 wrote:Evolution gives a mechanism to help explain why. It’s because spears, used as a means of defence, are subject to intense adaptive pressure.

Do you know what's faster than gene pool response to competitive pressure? Yes, you got it in one: Learning by individuals. Either Australopithecus had learning capacity (not a god-like learning capacity, mind you) or did not. This is your point to make; nobody here is waiting with bated breath to see when you will make any kind of a point about anything.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Those spears would adapt towards being made from the best sort of wood, sharpened as best as possible, of optimal length and stoutness.

You should say this differently so that you aren't sounding as if you seek to animate the spears themselves, not to mention the Mighty Power Rangers who wielded them in your fevered savannah cartoon fantasies. A person with operating intellect, not trying to see everything through god-goggles, would jump right to the realization that the people using them were learning. We still have no evidence that Australopithecus used weapons, or even had the anatomy necessary to wield spears, or even dry sticks, with force.

Jayjay4547 wrote:For that to happen, the spears would have co-evolved with hominins.

Cartoon-fashion. Not. When people eventually did learn how to fashion and use weapons, we would insert the word "learning" somewhere in our vocabulary. You seem constitutionally incapable of addressing the issue.

And the co-evolution would have invoked the innovative use of tools to speed up and perfect the manufacturing process.

This reminds me of the old joke about how many Zen Buddhists it takes to change a light bulb. There is no change until the bulb is enlightened. Oh, those physicists and the speed of light. I want to know, what's the speed of dark?

Cito di Pense wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:You don’t seem to have picked up my point that the PBS video clip is EXACTLY that it’s embarrassingly unrealistic.

Of course it is, and nobody here has missed seeing that the example is from an edutainment video, and not a scientific contribution to understanding evolution. What's still not clear is what you were making of it by repeatedly posting the image.

It’s not fair to the producers of that PBS video to imply that it isn’t their serious attempt to tell the story of human evolution. And I have argued that their inattention to intimate information traffic with predators extends into formal publications by Milks (2018) Lethal Threshold: The Evolutionary Implications of Middle Pleistoce Wooden Spears and Haidle (2010) "Working‐Memory Capacity and the Evolution of Modern Cognitive Potential: Implications from Animal and Early Human Tool Use"

In this instance, I posted the image to support my claim that you had perfected the tactic of ignoring specifics. That had the salutary effect of dragging you back onto specific pieces of evidence that I had circled in red. But Jesse paid no attention to what I had pointed out, so being a sensible man he just repeated my point about the uselessness of defending against a predator by picking up a bent stick that had just been found lying around. And you just joined in with him.

Cito di Pense wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:On the African savanna, you will never find a prey mammal doing such an incompetent thing as pick up a bent rotten branch to defend against a predator.

Didn't somebody just point that out to you? But you didn't see fit to make that point previously! Are you asking to be taken seriously?

Jesse did add “rotten”, which was a useful addition to my point, although an opponent could make an argumentative point about damage caused to trees by large savanna browsers elephant and black rhino. Anyway if a branch wasn’t rotten at the time it fell, it would soon by rotted on the ground by fungi and termites.

Cito di Pense wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:Evolution gives a mechanism to help explain why. It’s because spears, used as a means of defence, are subject to intense adaptive pressure.

Do you know what's faster than gene pool response to competitive pressure? Yes, you got it in one: Learning by individuals. Either Australopithecus had learning capacity (not a god-like learning capacity, mind you) or did not. This is your point to make; nobody here is waiting with bated breath to see when you will make any kind of a point about anything.

I just repeated my point that it is unrealistic to depict Australopithecus reaction to a threatening predation event, as males picking up bent sticks they had just found lying around.

Learning is coupled with teaching, which shows that it’s about copying existing practice. The short canines and short toes of australopithecus and earlier hominins, together with fossil evidence of their predators and in the absence of worked pebbles (which don’t decay and are easily identified), is evidence that for millions of years hominins learned from teachers how to make and use spears, with little innovation in the weapons.

Cito di Pense wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote: Those spears would adapt towards being made from the best sort of wood, sharpened as best as possible, of optimal length and stoutness.

You should say this differently so that you aren't sounding as if you seek to animate the spears themselves, not to mention the Mighty Power Rangers who wielded them in your fevered savannah cartoon fantasies. A person with operating intellect, not trying to see everything through god-goggles, would jump right to the realization that the people using them were learning. We still have no evidence that Australopithecus used weapons, or even had the anatomy necessary to wield spears, or even dry sticks, with force.

My supposed god goggles are just that I can see that the given human origin story is conspicuously about human ancestors exerting their initiative in a world where they are the only players. When actually they were moulded over millions of years by intimate interactions with other animals in the food web. The food web being their creator. Which looks a bit like the Old Testament God now that we confront the novel behaviour of webs that realise Large Language Models.

It's not a “fevered savanna fantasy” to visualise australopithecus demonstrating against a predator using a spear. Just replace the bent sticks with lances, change the posture, drop the unscary toothy snarl. And wake up the ladies knitting circle shown in the background.

No “Mighty Power Rangers” need be supposed. But the opposite invocation of the dodos of the savanna is indeed weird. What was to stop a band of predators from just strolling up and noshing this lot?

Cito di Pense wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:For that to happen, the spears would have co-evolved with hominins.

Cartoon-fashion. Not. When people eventually did learn how to fashion and use weapons, we would insert the word "learning" somewhere in our vocabulary. You seem constitutionally incapable of addressing the issue.

Nah. Rather, Haidle is neglecting “learning” in her use of a complex “cognigram” to depict all the steps that Heidelberg man would have needed to keep in their working memory in making and using a spear to hunt horses. Those individuals would have learned from their more experienced others (the educational philosopher Vygotsky’s “Zone of Proximal Development”) ”this is how we make a spear” “This is how we use a spear”.

To acknowledge a biologist at the top of her game at a top institution, that point seems to be covered in her pic of cognitive space, which might be the same as her “working memory”. The axis of “cultural transmission” is about “learning”. But what it doesn’t take account of, or what Milks doesn’t use in citing Haidle, is the length of evolutionary time over which skills were transmitted through learning, with very gradual innovation. Milks uses it to conclude that earlier hominins could not have made spears, so that the Schöningen spears represented a step in human cognitive development.

Cito di Pense wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote: And the co-evolution would have invoked the innovative use of tools to speed up and perfect the manufacturing process.

This reminds me of the old joke about how many Zen Buddhists it takes to change a light bulb. There is no change until the bulb is enlightened. Oh, those physicists and the speed of light. I want to know, what's the speed of dark?

We have nothing to laugh, clap, and dance about currently, in relation to the co-evolution of humankind with weapons.