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Location: Sitting on a bar stool. Guinness in hand.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by squall-lionheart
If the above picture was wright we would have been superheroes by now :
Some can fly , some can breath underwater , See in the dark etc ...
Depends on the environment which he/she lived at !!!
My ancestors lived in the desert for thousands of years and until now I still feel hot every time I entered the desert !!!
I am waiting for that genetic mutation to kick in any time now !!
Not to nitpick too much but the picture is not a very good one for an evolution argument.
Superman: an alien
Captain America: created by U.S. government.
etc. etc.
This is better.
But beside from that. Why would you think we would evolve superpowers? What in the environment would require us to evolve these powers naturally? Actually if you think about it. While not directly, we (our genetic ancestors) have lost some "superpowers". I mean if one believes in evolution. Then at one time our long lost ancestor...maybe a lungfish or some type of amphibian had the ability to go in between both aquatic environment and land (air breathing) environment. Eventually the ancestors that decided to exclusively stay on land lost the ability to have respiration under the water. Also with super strength while not on the level of superman (maybe Capt. America). Both of our closer relative Cro-Magnon man and our cousins the Neanderthals where much stronger and probably had better athletic abilities than we have as modern humans. But from the evidence I've seen. Once humans came up with some technological advances I.E. the throwing spear. Strength and power were required less and physically weaker humans that we are today evolved. So again we lost that ability(ies).
Basically we probably lost more abilities than gained through our evolution. Though we have gained one of the most important abilities in all of evolution. This would be Super intelligence. No other animal in history (that we know of) has been able to manipulate our environments like we have. Most animals have to go with the seasons to survive. In fact we use to do the same. But eventually we had the intelligence to "create" environments (I.E. agriculture and irrigation,) that made areas of the world habitable to us that otherwise would not. It amazing what we have accomplished with our invented technology.
In fact let me go back to one of the pictures I put up ealier.
While I had originally posted this picture as a joke. And since I am a big "believer" in the eventuality of transhumansim and the technological singularity. I will say that for the most part, the future of "humankind" evolution will not be brought upon us through natural means. We will through biotechnology and silicate interfaces, will most likely evolve ourselves and perhaps even create a completely new species through A.I. Basically we will be playing "god". And while time lines vary. (Kurzweil think basically this will happen in 2049 - 99. Dates I personally have strong doubts about) I truly have "faith" that "it" will happen sometime in the near future.
If you doubt this. Please just consider how you and I are communicating right now. 100 - 150 years ago I doubt very much that most people would have thought that we as a species we could communicate any thought, at anytime almost instantaneously through a little box that has images on it. Of course this is just a one modern creation we have at present to point at. We have advanced technologically and socially so far from our days on the hunting plains. And from what I can see from a technological aspect we will continue our march forward.
Actually there are more than just birds that have eye sight to rival our own. The octopus for a random example has eye sight comparable to eagles. Their eye sight is very keen indeed. There are a number of other examples too.
It has sometimes struck me (along with noting evolved amounts of cleavage in the females of the superhero species) that the theists who look for something more in humans (so as to provide a characteristic peg on which to hang something 'special' and thus God -given) often pick up on our particularly developed problem -solving, organizational and sign - leaving abilities because out of animal abilities including ability to see, smell, hear, navigate, climb, fly and change colour, that is the only one we do rather well, so it has to be made into something so mysterious it has to be God - given.
Well, I see you guys are having a whale of a time with this one.
I doubt whales have evolved from land lubber status. Of course you already knew which side of this I'd take. But really, Whales eat zooplankton and schooling fishes. Their mouths are not made to be able to eat any land species of bugs etc. Next you will say, "Well, it actually used to fly through the air and open its mouth and filter in all the little bugs in the air (tons of bugs each day). It lost its wings and just slugged along on the ground (even though the whale would have been easy food for the meat eating critters). But those meat eating critters just bugged the begeebies out of the whales and so they headed for the water and the whale just said: "Heck with the land, I'm going to learn to eat zooplankton and teach my wife how to have sex in the ocean cause we couldn't have sex on land. Oops! I (as a whale) should not have said that. Now the evolutionists are going to bug me too."
Well, I see you guys are having a whale of a time with this one.
I doubt whales have evolved from land lubber status. Of course you already knew which side of this I'd take. But really, Whales eat zooplankton and schooling fishes. Their mouths are not made to be able to eat any land species of bugs etc. Next you will say, "Well, it actually used to fly through the air and open its mouth and filter in all the little bugs in the air (tons of bugs each day). It lost its wings and just slugged along on the ground (even though the whale would have been easy food for the meat eating critters). But those meat eating critters just bugged the begeebies out of the whales and so they headed for the water and the whale just said: "Heck with the land, I'm going to learn to eat zooplankton and teach my wife how to have sex in the ocean cause we couldn't have sex on land. Oops! I (as a whale) should not have said that. Now the evolutionists are going to bug me too."
It's obvious you're grossly exaggerating "our case" so as to make yours seem more viable and realistic. The fundamental flaw in your thinking is that the whole of the whale's mouth MUST have come before it was on land as though it's impossible for its mouth to have evolved after the ancestors of the whale went back into the water.
For an example of this ridiculous line of thinking we can look at our own human ancestry. Our ancestors had very large jaws. So large, in fact, it's widely believed that it prohibited the growth of the frontal lobes and other parts of the brain. Once our ancestors developed fire it's widely thought that the need for these powerful jaws was diminished. Because fire enabled us to chew our food more efficiently, the need for larger jaws went down. With that, fundamental changes in our skull size allowed for adaptations to enlargements of our brain case and for further growth of the brain itself - including the reasoning centers of our brains.
But your line of reasoning insists that the jaws we currently have must have been there prior to the advent of fire - which is not supported by the fossil record or, for that matter, any type of evidence. Change in jaw size is adaptable so there is no reason to believe that through the whale lineage we will see a constant of excessively large jaw size.
If having a larger mouth was favored for its survival, then those whale ancestors that had larger mouths would have had a better chance of survival than those with smaller mouths. I really don't see how you can be so fundamentally dense as to not be able to grasp that concept.
Well, I see you guys are having a whale of a time with this one.
I doubt whales have evolved from land lubber status. Of course you already knew which side of this I'd take. But really, Whales eat zooplankton and schooling fishes. Their mouths are not made to be able to eat any land species of bugs etc. Next you will say, "Well, it actually used to fly through the air and open its mouth and filter in all the little bugs in the air (tons of bugs each day). It lost its wings and just slugged along on the ground (even though the whale would have been easy food for the meat eating critters). But those meat eating critters just bugged the begeebies out of the whales and so they headed for the water and the whale just said: "Heck with the land, I'm going to learn to eat zooplankton and teach my wife how to have sex in the ocean cause we couldn't have sex on land. Oops! I (as a whale) should not have said that. Now the evolutionists are going to bug me too."
Today there are 79 species in the whale family...71 of these are toothed whales, and only 8 are baleen whales (The ones who eat krill and small bait fish) There are many more whale species that are now extinct..... You really don't know much about the whales that exist today, let alone their evolutionary history, do you?
Early baleen whales first appeared as far back as the early Oligocene, or perhaps the latest Eocene (39–29 million years ago; Early baleen whales possessed teeth inherited from their ancestors, as opposed to baleen, in modern species. The Oligocene species Aetiocetus cotylalveus is considered the evolutionary link between toothed and baleen whales.
Does the photo below look familiar?
Last edited by sanspeur; 03-20-2012 at 05:10 PM..
Reason: Add photo
Well, I see you guys are having a whale of a time with this one.
I doubt whales have evolved from land lubber status. Of course you already knew which side of this I'd take.
√ But really, Whales eat zooplankton and schooling fishes.
WRONG; (as usual) Some do. You demo your ongoing incompetence with predictable regularity. Others, like killer whales, eat leopard seals, sea lions and penguins.
Their mouths are not made to be able to eat any land species of bugs etc. Next you will say, "Well, it actually used to fly through the air and open its mouth and filter in all the little bugs in the air (tons of bugs each day). It lost its wings and just slugged along on the ground (even though the whale would have been easy food for the meat eating critters).
Will we now? Why would we make absurd and unsupportable claims? That we leave up to you. PS: specific wahle mouth parts reflect the ecological niches, and thuis the food types, that they go after. You Eco-ninny-head!
Facts are, if an intelligent person were to take an honest look-see at their morphology (go ahead: look it up. You might learn something...) their bone structre, including obvious hands, feet and claws, and the SAME IDENTICAL BONE ELEMENTS in the same postions, but just differently adapted for there specific tasks they have evolved into. Bones that we and cats fully share. WhyZhatt I wunder?
But those meat eating critters just bugged the begeebies out of the whales and so they headed for the water and the whale just said: "Heck with the land, I'm going to learn to eat zooplankton and teach my wife how to have sex in the ocean cause we couldn't have sex on land. Oops! I (as a whale) should not have said that. Now the evolutionists are going to bug me too."
Yep. This is how you think. Thanks for demo-ing your strawman talents coupled with a further absurdist-denailty's keen () mentality. VERY impressive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GCSTroop
It's obvious you're grossly exaggerating "our case" so as to make yours seem more viable and realistic. The fundamental flaw in your thinking is that the whole of the whale's mouth MUST have come before it was on land as though it's impossible for its mouth to have evolved after the ancestors of the whale went back into the water.
For an example of this ridiculous line of thinking we can look at our own human ancestry. Our ancestors had very large jaws. So large, in fact, it's widely believed that it prohibited the growth of the frontal lobes and other parts of the brain. Once our ancestors developed fire it's widely thought that the need for these powerful jaws was diminished. Because fire enabled us to chew our food more efficiently, the need for larger jaws went down. With that, fundamental changes in our skull size allowed for adaptations to enlargements of our brain case and for further growth of the brain itself - including the reasoning centers of our brains.
But your line of reasoning insists that the jaws we currently have must have been there prior to the advent of fire - which is not supported by the fossil record or, for that matter, any type of evidence. Change in jaw size is adaptable so there is no reason to believe that through the whale lineage we will see a constant of excessively large jaw size.
If having a larger mouth was favored for its survival, then those whale ancestors that had larger mouths would have had a better chance of survival than those with smaller mouths. I really don't see how you can be so fundamentally dense as to not be able to grasp that concept.
Some less ingenious or logical types can only think with one degree of freedom, GCST! They are intellectually incapable of thinking in at least two, much less 4 or five, independent degrees of freedom, such as you, I, Mystic, as well as serial and intelligent atheists demonstrate so frequently. Others, the devout fundy Christians or Muslims, can only think in serial monotony...
I'd not waste any of your formidable logical, educational and reasoning abilities on this one, GCST! This would be like actually and seriously considering spending $100,000+ on fully restoring a totally clapped-out Chevy Cavalier or Vega whose engine has a big rust-hole in the side of the block, and is entirely missing it's transmission!!
Spending any time on this guy debating with reason & rationale makes absolutely no sense, because even if you do even one correction, you still have a total junker with no redeeming automotive characteristics!
Ditto for trying to redeem Eusebius'spiritual beliefs here, because he so effectively and exactingy defines [i]"idiot-level strawman philosophies"[/I] at it's best.
It's obvious you're grossly exaggerating "our case" so as to make yours seem more viable and realistic. The fundamental flaw in your thinking is that the whole of the whale's mouth MUST have come before it was on land as though it's impossible for its mouth to have evolved after the ancestors of the whale went back into the water.
For an example of this ridiculous line of thinking we can look at our own human ancestry. Our ancestors had very large jaws. So large, in fact, it's widely believed that it prohibited the growth of the frontal lobes and other parts of the brain. Once our ancestors developed fire it's widely thought that the need for these powerful jaws was diminished. Because fire enabled us to chew our food more efficiently, the need for larger jaws went down. With that, fundamental changes in our skull size allowed for adaptations to enlargements of our brain case and for further growth of the brain itself - including the reasoning centers of our brains.
But your line of reasoning insists that the jaws we currently have must have been there prior to the advent of fire - which is not supported by the fossil record or, for that matter, any type of evidence. Change in jaw size is adaptable so there is no reason to believe that through the whale lineage we will see a constant of excessively large jaw size.
If having a larger mouth was favored for its survival, then those whale ancestors that had larger mouths would have had a better chance of survival than those with smaller mouths. I really don't see how you can be so fundamentally dense as to not be able to grasp that concept.
So whale mouths must have grown after they gave up roasting fish over fire.
oh my gosh I just thought of your odd post! Will all people who don't cook at all these days cause their offspring to develope HUGE APE JAWS?
Really? You have undeniable proof of the relation of fire to jaw? LOL
So whale mouths must have grown after they gave up roasting fish over fire.
Whazzamatter...Too much info in my last post that goes against your creation myth? Is that why you ignore it? Your last two posts are not addressing the topic at all...Just sarcasm...I guess you must have run out of ammo, huh?
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) mentality. VERY impressive.
