<<Glenn quoted Walker and Shipmen re: the poor erectus who died from a bad
disease:
"The implication stared me in the face: someone else took care of
her. Alone, unable to move, delirious, in pain, 1808 wouldn't have
lasted two days in the African bush, much less the length of time her
skeleton told us she had lived."
This implication isn't staring at me for some reason. How do the authors know
this creature was "alone"? Why couldn't she be part of the group sitting there
by their water source, fighting off predators while she painfully sipped
water? >>
Bill Hamilton responds:
<<Still, someone was caring for her, which was the point Walker and Shipmen
were making.>>
I didn't mean to say someone was caring for her. Fighting off predators is
caring for YOURSELF. Animals do that out of a sense of SELF-preservation. That
was my point. My last sentence sloppily could have given the impression that
they had her welfare in mind. Sorry about that.
<<To be fair to Glenn, you ought to enumerate those assumptions, so they can
be responded to.>>
Who wants to be fair to Glenn?
Oh, OK. The speculators assume:
1. 1808 had a certain disease which...
2. ...caused a certain clotting pattern which...
3. ...took place in a certain environment which...
4. ...was necessarily antithetical to survival and...
5. ...only causes this pattern over an extended period of time because...
6. ...it did not evolve like everything else, so...
7. ...it was impossible for 1808 to help herself and...
8. ...she was all alone, thus...
9. ...leaving no alternative but a Homo Nightingale to help her.
This I find to be a rather large leap of the imagination. I'm not against such
leaps, because I like stories as much as the next guy. I just wouldn't base my
scientific judgments on them.
Too often, that is just what evolutionists do. They reach a wall of
inexplicability, and substitute a story. Very often, that story is nothing
more than a variation on a single theme: "There must have been some adaptive
advantage. Let's think of one..."
This is doing science backwards.
Jim