I want to start by saying I believe in most of science but I find much of science incomplete. I believe our universe started with a flash of singularity, but I don't think the beginning of our universe is the begining of everything. I am aware that all particles to life can be found in the dust of an exploded star. Most importantly for us, I believe almost all of evolution on earth is based on truth. However, I have an issue with the whole monkey to man part of evolution. My concerns: #1 I haven't figured out why a monkey would lose it's primary deffense mechanism (jaw strength) as well as lose a large portion of its muscle mass, in favour of a larger brain, in an uncivalized world. #2 Most of evolution is simply species gradually adapting to a changing environment over an extanded period of time. Monkey to man happen quite rapidly without any known environmental reasons. #3 Why did some monkeys have to adapt where others didn't? Evolution may have needed some help. The missing link could play a huge role in understanding these concerns. Now, take a ride on probably the most absurd possibility you've ever heard! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Suppose aliens do exist, and that they visited earth a long time ago, before man came to be. Aliens played a huge role in our evolution as they are the missing link. Primitive man had many perceptions of these 'creators of man' and many stories were told. All ancient religions are based on true events, but they are misinterpretations and misunderstandings of what primitive man perceived! Religious stories begining only reffers to the begining of Man, and has nothing to do with the actual begining. Man would have asked the 'creators' where it all began. Many different man probably received many different versions of the begining, and primitive man could have very well had mis perceptions about that too! Religion doesn't have to contradict science, as long as we can perceive things differently, and not take primitave mans perceptions of the truth to heart! So in this fantastic tale, Much of science would still be true, and still be incomplete. (good for science) The missing link would finally be known. (good for science) Althouth the missing link is ET, lol. (good for fantasy). Religion is actually based on true events. (good for religion). But those events are all misunderstandings of our ancestors perceptions. (not good for fanatics, but can be good for 'loose' believers) Science can go on to try and explain the rest of everything without contradiction. (good for science) I love this possiblity, probably because it does take a little bit from everything and it is so absurd. I believe this, along with many other possible explanations to be possible, but I don't believe so strongly in any one thing, that I wouldn't be able to change my beliefs with new knowledge. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Just opening more and more doors Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed thinking out of the box.
I couldn't get beyond this statement in your post because I don't understand what you mean by "truth". Can you help?
I just meant, most of evolution has been tested and measured, or so I have been lead to believe it has anyway, Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!. The 'truth' I was reffering to would be the fact based evidence that we have studied. I was just having fun though, the first statements were kinda like my disclaimer so others would see where my fantasy stems from.
Well the thing is that I couldn't get to your fantasy because I had trouble with "truth". Now that you have explained it you have at the same time made the rest of the fantasy uninteresting. Do you have a point in posting about fantasy and should I bother the read the rest of the OP? And I still want to know how you got the ID Pipes? Are you a vocalist?
My point is just to look at all possible explainations. As absurd as this fantasy is, it is also completely possible, and that's what I like, opening as many doors as I can. So yes you should read it, and pick it apart so I have to revise it Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!! Honestly, I am skinny, I played hockey for many years, Pipes was just an old nickname from grade school that stuck. The 75 is the year I am born. But I would be more interested in replies to the OP. I love exploring everything!
While it is true that many things are possible, the introduction of fantasy into science is not allowed. Invoking the supernatural or fictional fantasy into science takes a great deal of expertise Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!. I suggest Free Thoughts for threads like these. Would you consider it? I do too. You PM me when you start a thread like this in Free Thoughts and I will post to it. And as for nicknames ... I was a brain so they called me smart ass.
Such flights of fantasy are not required. You should educate yourself better on the issues. First of all, monkeys in general are very successful, they inhabit many types of habitats and there are many species. Some were big, some were small, and few needed their jaws for defense. Large canine teeth are more often used against other males in fights for females and territory. The missing link has already been found. Or rather, lots of them. Monkeys evolved into an ancestor of ours that was in most ways, another monkey, although it walked upright. It was of the ape family. Monkeys evolved into apes long before they became humans. Apes and monkeys do not depend on their muscle mass to survive, they depend on their brains to know where the food is and how to hide from predators. As the climate changed in Africa and became drier, this skill became that much more important. Early hominids seemed to adapt with two separate strategies. One became plant eaters "robusts", with strong jaws for chewing. The other was termed "gracile", with small bellies and small jaws adapted to eating concentrated nutrition that our larger brains were able to find or hunt (and perhaps cook). I would also add that your understanding of what science is seems confused. That science is "incomplete" is not a criticism of science. It is understood that science is a process leading to greater understanding, and that this take time, and must be rigorous to prevent error. It will never be complete.
I hope you stick around the Pseudoscience forum a little more. Your response was informative and respectful of the originator. That kind of behavior is appreciated by me and the original poster too I bet, and is worth pointing out. More and more people are taking that approach here lately and it is good IMHO.
I want to start by reconfirming what wave said. I appreciate you staying respectful while trying to explain what you see as possible. I don't believe my fantasy is the only possibility, but rather one of many, and I went for the most outrageous possibility in this version Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!. But I don't think your explaination is the only one that works. The missing link has not been discovered, just different opinions on what the missing link could be. Evolution is flawed as long as there is a missing link (at least with the begining of man, that is). That doesn't mean evolution couldn't have happened without help, sure it may have. But evolution might have needed help too, that is another of many unknowns that science has not yet proved. As for monkeys, my understanding is chimps are our closest relatives, not apes. Yes there were many versions of primitive man, but all the monkey to man stuff happened very quickly when compared to other evolution. Not all monkeys 'evolved' so I question why did some need to while others didn't. Although monkeys did require all the skills you listed, but jaw strength was extremely important as well, and how they adapted after change is not the same as why they changed in the first place. Monkeys were not in jeopardy of perishing if they didn't adapt, we still have plenty of monkeys. Brute force was also extremely important in an uncivalized world, so muscle mass most certainly was an important factor. When I said science is incomplete, I meant it the same way you redirected it. Science is ongoing, the more answers and possibilities we do find, the more questions we have. It could never be complete unless we understood everything. Thats why I like to mix alot of stuff with science and see if science can prove them wrong Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!. Oh, wave, I don't want to repost this, why not reply in pseudoscience, I thought this was a place to explore things that science has not yet explained. Does it really matter where the thread is?
Correction: chimps are apes. The idea that evolution needed alien help is just unnecessary. Evolution is not flawed just because there are gaps in the fossil record. There are plenty of natural reasons why some monkeys evolved into hominids. Environmental pressure was one. Adaptation to the savanna from the jungle affected many species around the same time. In fact, the rapid evolution of pigs is used as a marker when dating hominid fossils. Jaw strength was an adaptation to eating tough plant foods. Plenty of tiny mammals evolved in spite of the threat from predators. Brute force isn't the only possible solution to predation. It is thought that the variety of monkey species is due to climate change creating islands of tropical forest in a sea of drier landscape. Obviously, any monkey that could adapt to drier conditions would have an advantage (like baboons). Our ancestors had the advantage (the pre-adaptation) of bi-pedalism. Maybe this freed their hands to dig up nutritious roots and tubers. Maybe they used stones to scavenge brains and marrow from the kills of other animals. It was in this new and difficult environment that hominids grew larger brains in some cases, or larger guts in others. The large, muscular species died out. Certainly all natural explanations would need to be ruled out before more outrageous ones could be considered.
Wow Pipes, spidergoat is doing such a good job at responding to you, and I don't hold a candle to her. I have the book, Evolution, the Triumph of an Idea. It is the companion book to the PBS series and I think spidergoat could have written it Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!. My view of the origin of life in the universe is simple. Life has always existed somewhere if the universe has always existed. That means that I think life is generative and "evolvative" if I can coin a word. Given the right conditions, environment and chemistry, life can be generated on an otherwise lifeless planet. Once generated, given hospitable and changing environments, life evolves. The record of evolution is fragile and the cataclysms of planets can create gaps in the fossil record. As for the possibility that life could spread from a place of generation, why not. But do I know of any evidence that is or ever has been the case, not yet.
Her? The idea pipes is getting at is called Directed Panspermia, where aliens deliberately spread life (as opposed to simple Panspermia (that life or some life on Earth came from another planet or body by accident)), and it is not disproven. It is worthy of consideration, as there is nothing in physics to prevent an alien species from seeding a planet, or micro-managing the evolution of a species. One would have to show where this intervention could have occurred, and would be necessary to explain some otherwise inexplicable phenomenon. Human evolution is vulnerable to wild speculation because few hominid fossils have been found, and it seems to have happened in the course of 4 million years or so. But it does correspond with dramatic changes in Africa's climate that effected more creatures than just primates. Theories I have heard to explain our rapid development range from the ingestion of hallucinogens, the complexity of social relations, the improvement in diet that comes from eating meat, or from cooking, the freeing of the hands to make tools, the invention of language, the need to have a good memory for foraging. Few scientists view that the change to a larger brain was so extraordinary that only a visit from aliens would explain it.
There is an anthropologist who recently proposed that cooked food is what allowed the advance. We spent so much less energy digesting food. Other primates have much larger stomachs because they eat raw and difficult to digest foods. The extra energy that we had left over went to brain building. He also said it's a great way to lose weight. Eating raw, tough to digest foods that is.
That is the principle of the catabolic diet. I know it works because that combined with exercise has helped me drop 20 pounds over the past year.
I'll give you that. All natrual explainations should also be explored, and since they should be easier to test for, they would probably get tested first unless we discovered something dramatic like the remains of an alien perhaps Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!. Don't get me wrong, I know that there is no proof that evolution needs help, I just think since there are holes, it could have. It also seems fishy to me that we can find and test for pretty much all evolution, much older than us, but we can't fully test our time period. And that's why I love your posts. If I'm reading you correctly, you just look for the most rational expaination first, but you still leave open doors. I'm still opening doors, I'm just exploring, not really believing, yet. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! On a side note, you made more sense outta monkey to man 'natural' evolution than anyone has before ever since I started asking questions. I am still skeptical though Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!.
No one dreaming with we? I was hoping for more responses Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I still like how absurd of a story as this, can fit into everything, and include tidbits of truth from many different sources, and also still allow all of science and physics to continue on to explain the rest. Some evolution, meets some sci-fi (missing link alien!!!), religion gets included, although it is quite different than how man percieved it along time ago. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
