>> Jim Foley responded:
>Thought experiment: accept, for the sake of argument, that evolution is
>true, and we did evolve from habilis. Take my father, and his father,
>and so, until we've got 100,000 generations going back 2 million years.
>This would form a pretty impressive transitional series. Now, replace
>each of those skeletons with that of one of his brothers. We now have a
>series that looks just as gradual, with just as many transitional forms,
>even if not one of those skeletons had any descendents.
>> An excellent point, allow me to rephrase:
>> A chain of creatures from primate to man consisting of creatures known
>> to have no direct ancestral relationship with modern humans is not compelling
>> evidence for evolution because it could also be construed as evidence that
>> diversity and naturalistic presuppositions are responsible for the presence
>> of such "phylogenetic sequences" in the fossil record.
Even if true, this objection does not have a lot of force because not
that many hominids are known (or at least thought) to have no direct
ancestral relationship to man. Exceptions are the Asian H.erectus
fossils, the Neandertals, and the robust australopithecines. But
A.ramidus, anamensis, africanus, H.habilis, (African)H.erectus and the
archaic sapiens are still all in the running as potential ancestors.
More importantly, some non-ancestors (the Asian H.erectus fossils) are
thought to be non-ancestral for geographical, not anatomical, reasons;
they are extremely similar to potential ancestors found elsewhere. If
they can be interpreted as "evidence that diversity and naturalistic
presuppostions are responsible...etc", why not apply the same approach
to similar fossils that *are* thought to be human ancestors? In other
words, why not rewrite your paragraph as:
A chain of creatures from primate to man [deletion] is not compelling
evidence for evolution because it could also be construed as evidence
that diversity and naturalistic presuppositions are responsible for
the presence of such "phylogenetic sequences" in the fossil record.
-- Jim Foley Symbios Logic, Fort Collins, COJim.Foley@symbios.com (303) 223-5100 x9765 I've got a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel. -- Edmund Blackadder