Jim Foley wrote: (in a post I did not recieve)
>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.
My problem with this sentiment is that it misses a key point.
Let's say that I wanted to argue that the diversity of created life is such
that an arbitrary "vector of progress" could be drawn through unrelated
species and interpreted as evolutionary change. (In fact, I do want to make
such an argument.) Let us further say that I wanted to discount such
"vectors of progress" as evidence for evolution on the basis that they could
equally well be drawn where a relationship is known not to exist. Any old
"vector of progress" is not sufficient to claim confirmation of my idea.
Only a falsified "vector of progress" is sufficient to show that the existence
of plausible "vectors of progress" is not good evidence of evolution.
Do you understand? My problem with:
> 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.
is that an unfalsified "vector of progress" could not just as easily,
"be construed . . ." I certainly believe that all such "vectors of
progress" are the product of diversity and evolutionist imaginations, but
not all such "vectors of progress" are evidence that this is true because
not all of them have been falsified. (i.e. Found to be in conflict with
other geological, morphological or molecular data.)
Now I freely admit that there are much better examples of falsified "vectors
of progress" than the human evolution scenarios that are falsified by the
Y chromosome evidence we were discussing. (The phenomena of convergence
between certain marsupial and placental forms is an excellent example here.)
But I was not here making the argument that human evolution provided the
best illustration of this phenomena, only that it provided an example.
In Christ,
robert van de water
associate researcher
UCLA