09-15-2005, 11:21 PM | #181 |
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Lief - there was technological development in those years. As a specific example, there were HUGE leaps in stone tool technology, from things that look like you or I could go out back right now with no experience and make them to microblade that are smaller than my finger, as sharp as a razor, and can be chipped out of a single core stone by the dozens. Stone tool development doesn't sound all that impressive when you just hear the name, but it really does require a lot of effort and time to figure out progressively better methods for making those tools, because a lot of the changes are mental - like realizing that the flake rather than the core should be the tool.
As for animal migrations/environmental change, I think the canonical answer would not be "they migrated," but rather "their range already covered parts of the world outside of the Sahara or the Gobi, and while large numbers of the species died out, they were able to repopulate later from areas that were not subject to such drastic climate change." That is, you don't have 100% of the species in the Sahara, it overlaps with the Sahel or the North African coast, so when the Sahara goes dry the species survives in the other areas, to come back to the Sahara when it is habitable again.
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09-15-2005, 11:26 PM | #182 | |||
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09-15-2005, 11:33 PM | #183 | |||
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09-16-2005, 12:59 AM | #184 | ||
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I need to do more research though, to see what else I can find. Especially about the small secluded tribes Insidious brought up. If I can find many more startling inventions from separate peoples like the Iroquois' Republic, I may be able to express my point more effectively. I am tired and strapped for time though, so I expect it will be a long time before I can get around to such research . Quote:
Look at how swiftly trees and all the surrounding plantlife come back after lightning starts a forest fire. Look at how swiftly islands can come into being. Look at how seeds, when planted, can swiftly cover landscapes in foliage. I think there is ample evidence that we have an extremely swiftly changing environment, on the whole. Much of evolutionary theory is based upon slow changes taking place as creatures adjust to the slow environmental changes. As environmental changes are not slow, however, evolution would have to be fast as well, if it were to match environment. Else there is no point to evolution. If creatures can migrate to escape any change in nature, there is no need for them to evolve to cope with environment. I believe as you do, however. Many cannot migrate. Many die. I think also that many evolve, however. You see, I'm of the opinion that evolution may well occur, but if it does, it has to be faster than supposed. The environment is fast, so if evolution is to have any connection to the environment at all, the creatures would have to evolve quickly too. Evolution by natural selection also usually is thought to occur over long periods of time. Herbivores feel the disadvantage they are under because of carnivores, and they evolve to cope with the threat. The carnivores must change by evolving still keener weaponry, or ability to get the prey. The herbivore must evolve again, to be either faster, or better camouflaged, something like that. The difficulty with this is that if the environment is changing extremely rapidly everywhere and creatures are migrating all over the place, they will be coming into contact with a large variety of predators. They won't be able to find strategies that deal with all of them. My idea that evolution takes place more swiftly than previously believed would answer this dilemma too. If the animals can evolve swiftly to cope with our swiftly changing environment, they won't have to scamper around the globe to survive. Neither will they have to cope with hundreds of different species of predators, many of which have different strategies of hunting and varying talents and abililities. If creatures can evolve more swiftly in response to these millenial drastic changes, all this migration may not be necessary. Neither would it be necessary for the animals to deal with hundreds of different predators from different continents. They can deal with the same ones. I think everything takes place faster than supposed. The evidence concerning the environment's speed really is a serious road-bump in the modern version of the theory of evolution. As BeardofPants once told me, "the key to evolution is gradualism." If gradualism is taken away, evolution is in trouble. I think the modern evidence concerning the environment is really stripping gradualism away, but I am not convinced that this means the Theory of Evolution is completely incorrect at all. I think evolution may well have occurred, but if so, it had to be much more swiftly. Humans also would have evolved more swiftly, and this makes sense. The technology gap for our first hundred thousand years of existence is very large. I've heard scientists also argue that the population growth is not nearly what we would expect. Population levels should have risen far faster than they have, according to these people. I used to argue for them, but then I realized that I didn't understand what they were saying, so I've stopped . I might research it again though, sometime. There are certainly evidences supporting a slower evolution. I do question some of our commonly used dating techniques, however, and I know that many, many other Christians do. I think a faster evolution fits better several of the things we can now see. The visible speed of environmental change really does seem to be a bad hitch in current evolutionary theory. Well, I am totally wiped out now. Totally fatigued. It's nearly 10:00 PM, and I had a big day today, and have a big one before me tomorrow as well. Forgive me if these most recent two posts seem weak or incoherent. I don't have time to research for this round of debate, and as I write I am quite exhausted. I'll see if I can do better for you another time .
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09-16-2005, 03:51 AM | #185 | |
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Technological advancement, as we would recognise it, cannot happen without a fairly large-scale, stable and organised society. It needs mass communications, trade, writing, organised education, lots of leisure time, etc. We are too easily seduced by the idea of a technology being on a deterministic forwards path. |
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09-16-2005, 04:38 AM | #186 | |
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After the ice age, there was a sudden change in the lives of the hunter-gatherers' way of life. They had to travel longer distances for food and had to work much harder, which eventually lead to agriculture - a much easier way to get food in this new climate. In turn, agriculture lead to an excess of food, which lead to specialization (the farmers could support those who didn't farm), which lead to new professions, new ideas and new technology. The point I'm trying to make is that it was pretty darn hard to make any technological progress before agriculture got into the picture and that if the aftermath of the ice age hadn't pretty much forced us to start farming, perhaps we'd still be hunter-gatherers today. On the topic of the theory of evolution, in which natural selection is a vital part, the farmers devoted some of their time to refining of their crops, by "human selection" if you like. The people gave rise to new breeds of plants and also animals (cows, dogs etc.). The line between a race and a species can be thin and there is no real definition of what constitutes a species. Anyway, if we humans can make new breeds, then surely nature is powerful enough to make new species - see there is no proof whatsoever of a hindrance between going from a new breed to a new species.
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09-16-2005, 10:16 AM | #187 | |||
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09-16-2005, 11:25 AM | #188 | |||||||
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People in the past would have had the same bug, and approximately the same amount of time available as my father has to satisfy it. Of course they couldn't come to the same kinds of dramatic discoveries and conclusions. There were methods and tools available to them. Quote:
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However, that mine is also just a theory. I am sure however that there are problems with the current version of the Theory of Evolution. A good look at the recent history of massive scale environmental changes (those that took place before humans could influence things, I'm talking about) clonks the ToE's idea of slow changing environment on the head and, IMO, knocks it out cold . If evolution happened, it would have had to happen very quickly. I think we might even now be underestimating nature, when we say that creatures cannot evolve quickly to cope with stressful environmental changes. I'm not talking about changes that take place in a couple of months here, but of changes that take place over a thousand years. I think that given that much time, evolution may be able to take a hold and help creatures to adapt. Quote:
No, I don't think the Earth is certainly 6,000 years old. Perhaps it's 5 billion. I can go on for a while about how I explain the scripture, "7 days," and I think it's quite a reasonable explanation. In brief, it's plain the Genesis account was given to someone as a word from the Lord. The humans weren't even created until the sixth day, so they couldn't have seen it all themselves. If it came as a word from the Lord, it may well have been a vision. The vision of Revelation, at the end of the Bible, is just packed with the word seven. There are seven lampstands (the churches), seven crowns, monsters with seven heads, etc. Seven is a highly symbolic number. Revelation was a vision at the end of the Bible. That the Bible should begin with another vision makes sense. It shows the past and shows the future, and then it shows all between that is most important for us to know. That the Genesis vision should have had a strong symbolic use of the number seven fits well with the rest of the Bible. I think the seven might be referring to seven major periods of creation (or as on the last day, lack thereof). That is indicated by what happened on each day. Some major change or new divine innovation. But the symbolic use of the word seven in the rest of the scripture, and the likelihood that the first part of Genesis was revealed in a vision, strongly connects with the Biblical message and Christian tradition. Some visions aren't meant to be taken completely literally. When Jesus talked about the seven lampstands in Revelation, he was not talking about seven physical lampstands . Quote:
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09-16-2005, 12:10 PM | #189 | ||
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a bit off topic ~ this is why i try to avoid labels like "creationist" or "evolutionist" some creationists believe the universe is 6,000 years old some creationists believe it is much older (as you do), but "life" is not some scientists believe in the big bang and evolution, but still think god "created" the initial state... so they are, in a sense, "creationists" too i think every poster should put their definition of "creationism" in their sig Quote:
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09-16-2005, 12:14 PM | #190 | |
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All known "sharp" evolutionary leaps seem to have come in intervals and they have also coincided with paleontological eras. [edit] Lief, your question about how humans could live as hunters and gatherers during these vast periods of time with hardly any technological progress at all, is a good question. However I think the fact that there are tribes that have lived a hunter-gatherer's life until this day, that is many thousands of years, is a good evidence that it is possible for humans not to develop new technologies . Though I guess it is possible that the tribes might have invented interesting stuff in the past, only that throughout the generations they've reverted to the hunter-gatherers used to be.
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09-16-2005, 12:23 PM | #191 | ||
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the main problem with this whole debate is that evolution and creation are both unscientific, neither can be observed anywhere in the physical world. all we are arguing really is ideas that scientists have come up with, the evolutionist that believes all of the evolutionary ideas that are being espoused has just as much faith (or more) as a christian who believes that it was created.
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09-16-2005, 12:25 PM | #192 | ||
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[QUOTE=brownjenkins]i didn't mean it as an attack... i just get confused with the differing opinions on "creationism" here (i was thinking rian and tr, i guess)[/QOUTE]
am i being catagorized now?
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09-16-2005, 12:29 PM | #193 | ||
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When you say, "species can evolve slowly or rapidly," how rapidly do you mean? Could they concievably adjust to a climate change from grassland to desert in the space of a thousand years?
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." |
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09-16-2005, 12:37 PM | #194 | |
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Creationism and Evolution both rely upon evidence of one kind or another. Both also have an element of faith involved, however, it is true.
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." |
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09-16-2005, 12:53 PM | #195 | |
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As to your other question - yes, an animal can adapt to a completely new environment in a few thousand years. It doesn't have to evolve into an entirely different species to do that though - changing into a new race would suffice. Think of mammoths and elephants. Same species (I think) but they adapted to the different areas they lived in. I don't know how long the elephant-like animals have been around - it can't have been that many millions of years - still they had time to adapt. If the mammoth had been given some more time, they might have evolved into a species separate from the elephant. Think of lions in Africa and lynxes in the arctic. Cat-like animals can't have been around that long either but they've adapted as well to the areas they live in. Keep the cats separated and in a few hundred thousand years they might have to be considered two separate species. So I'm saying it again - life adapts remarkably quick to new environments through natural selection, maybe in just a few thousand years. However they don't have to turn into new species to do that.
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09-16-2005, 01:07 PM | #196 |
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09-16-2005, 02:40 PM | #197 | |
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09-16-2005, 02:50 PM | #198 | |
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." |
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09-16-2005, 03:14 PM | #199 | |
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i bolded the last part, 'cause it's an assumption that may be unfounded we say that they were very close to today's humans due to things like brain cavity size... and in some rare and more recent cases, dna fragments... but this doesn't mean that they had the capability to be as intelligent as we are today's monkeys use tools much like early man (of millions of years back) were thought to use... and those monkeys have existed just as long as we have, yet have not advanced in intelligence any further (or much, one would assume) for a long period of time it appears that mankind developed a slight edge, fashioning rough stone tools and eventually (about 12,000 years ago) shaping naturally-occurring metals (copper)... but this does not mean they had the intellectual capacity to go any further... it may be that as recent as 5-10,000 years ago that mankind developed the intelligence (in terms of physical brain makeup) to achieve some of the things we did in more recent history intelligence is not an on/off switch... we see many animals, monkeys in particular, that show rudimentary intelligence and it may be that it just took that long for a more advanced capacity to evolve in humans
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09-16-2005, 03:24 PM | #200 | |||
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