Posts by rawe

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

"It's hocus pocus. People who live off tax payers dollars in the education system trying to confuse the masses with their mumbo jumbo." To me this is a key thought in one of your posts. One that I was hitting on as well. That is, in regards to knowledge and expertise to there is a question of who to trust. And, it does relate to motivation. Maybe what is going on is most in the scientific community know their dating methods are bogus, that the theory of evolution is nonsense, but are trapped in a system wherein they need to promote a sort of orthodoxy in order to get paid. In fact we make a point very much like this in regards to the leadership of Jehovah's Witnesses. They are trapped, they simply cannot say things they might otherwise know is true.

So... how can we sort this out? How can we tell if the data we are being handed is not tainted by bias?

Cheers,

-Randy

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

rawe

Hi Cofty,

'Which when translated means, "I will stick with my precious dogma and don't upset me with your goddamned facts."' The point I was making in post was I found that as a Witness I did trust scientific understanding and many ways. I knew medications used on humans had been tested on animals. I knew cancer researchers used mice. In both cases the theory of evolution was at play, since the common ancestor between mice and humans allowed such research to reach reliable conclusions. Likewise I had no reason not trust quartz crystal ocsillator made a digital watch a great time piece. Or that packets of data could be modulated over a radio waves to make cell phones work. So it was, that I found myself more and more in the camp of "I will go with scientific understanding 99.9% of the time, but hold contrary views, even in closely related areas, solely because such upsets my Biblical view of the world."

I think as Witnesses the break away from this, can if looked at correctly, be easier. Because modern Witnesses accept dating for the age of elephants and the earth, but do special pleading only in the case of humans. Thus it became obvious to me I was being extremely selective and sometimes willfully ignorant, of what I was accepting as scientific knowledge and what I was rejecting.

Cheers,

-Randy

ps. Very much enjoyed this thread -- thanks to everyone for posting!

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

rawe

Hi Cofty,

"Some young-Earth proponents recently reported that rocks were dated by the potassium-argon method to be a several million years old when they are really only a few years old. But the potassium-argon method, with its long half-life, was never intended to date rocks only 25 years old." There is of course a basic question in all this. That is do we understand radiation well enough to draw conclusions? And is radiation a stable sort of thing? I appreciate this comment isn't a reference to carbon dating, but the same principal applies. That is carbon-14 will decay, whereas carbon-12 is much more stable, thus a ratio between the two is inevitable and the ratio will change over time.

Can our understanding of all this be so flawed that wild range errors will creep into all dating methods? I just don't think that is very likely. I'm a software engineer by trade and I know that understanding how phyiscal systems work, including precise timing, is key to how a computer operates. Likewise a microwave over shows that something is known about physical systems involving radiation work. Solar panels likewise and the list goes on and on. So when someone asks us to believe rocks at Mt. St. Helens were dated incorrectly and that shows our potassium-argon dating methods are flawed, should we not at least ask, is there some religious motivation in play here?

I do believe, some of this comes down to a question of trust. And I am not a radiometric dating expert, so I have to trust someone. But even I can reach a conclusion something is fishy when someone with a religious bias starts asking for a sample of only a few years age to be dated with a method where the half life is 1.2 million years! It is like asking someone to measure the distance between features on a modern CPU with a yard stick, then declaring the yard stick is useless to measure the width of my living room.

Cheers,

-Randy

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

rawe

Hi TD,

"He shows a picture of a dog, a coyote, a wolf and a banana." For any given example of a wolf we can reasonably assert it come from a parent form. Likewise for the banana. But if we followed the ancestory of a given wolf and a given banana back in time, assuming we had perfect record, would they ever converge on a single ancestor? The theory of evolution asserts that they would! The reality of this is breathtaking. Although it may seem unlikely from outward appearance we now are able to directly compare the DNA C, G, A and Ts for a banana and a human and see exact sequences match in many places. It is a bit like looking at our hair and fingernails and being told they are the same material and finding that hard to believe -- yet it is in fact true.

After leaving the faith and study more about evolution I have found the reality incredible. It explains so much of the world around us, from why one can eat a banana and get nourishment to how genetically modified plants have been created. The dramatic outside appearance of life really does disappear as one looks at the DNA level.

Cheers,

-Randy

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

rawe

Hi DATA-DOG,

"Say whaaatt!!?? I doubt the above statement. Unless it's because they are already dead and time machines are impossible." Indeed it is because they are dead and we don't have time machines.

I'm attempting to make the point physical isolation is not just a function of geography. Time also creates a separation. For a species to survive it is important that mating and reproduction of offspring is possible. From an evolutionary perspective it is unimportant that humans alive 200 years ago were the same species as us. Since they are dead, they obviously cannot be our mates. Likewise humans that will be alive 200 hundred years into the future cannot be mate for someone alive today.

For evolution to work, species must remain, in general stable, but even the temporal consideration shows such stability is not of the ulimate importance.

Cheers,

-Randy

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

rawe

Hi Lost,

"That millions of years ago, species accidently wandered off and seperated far from each other" I mentioned earlier that is is unlikely that under the current circumstances humans will split into two species that live at the same time. Because there is no physical separation between one group of humans and another. However, if a group of humans left earth and colonized Mars it is possible, in fact almost certain, Martians would evolve into a new species. In the future it may then be hard to imagine the very different looking Humans and Martians once had the same a great-great-great-times-X grandmother.

If the theory of evolution is true one of the things we should see this effect. Namely we should see that when a life form becomes isolated it takes a different path and becomes unique to its environment. That is why islands were such interesting places to Darwin. Yet, the idea all have a common ancestor, should show that even a very odd life form on a remote island has some relation to another species on nearby larger land mass.

It is also important to consider every form of separation. The most common one is time. While it is important for the survival of humans that a current male and female can mate and reproduce a fertile off-spring that grows to maturity and repeats the cycle. We must remember it is impossible for a human today to mate with a human who lived 200 years ago. So for evolution to be believable we want to see some evidence of balance here. We don't want evolution so loose that new species are generated willy-nilly because the inability to inter-breed would lead to extinction. Yet evolution would not be possible if species were so solidly established that they litterally could not change.

The example of hair lice I mentioned earlier wasn't a case of wandering as much as the body (land if you will) itself changed wherein a huge vast desert of hairless region between the head and the pubic area developed. This combined with basic texture difference lead to a distinction between head lice and pubic lice. Kind of a eeewww example, but a facinating nonetheless. Maybe one day there will be an Awake! article on these wonderful creatures ;-)

Cheers,

-Randy

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

rawe

Hi Lost,

"But you cannot cross breed a dog and cat, chicken and a duck etc" You can't breed a dog and a cat because they are difference species. Which of course is what we mean by species. But theory of evolution is a theory about the origin of species and in no way depends on different species being able to inter-breed. What we need to do is look backwards and ask, is it possible a dog and cat once had a common ancestor? Is that even possible? The game to play here is kill-the-theory. So... what we need to come up with is some specific evidence that would show there is no way a dog and a cat once had a common ancestor.

Closely related species such as a donkey and horse make it easy to imagine they once had a common ancestor. But the theory of evolution goes far beyond that, it posits that even the most wildly different life forms once had a common ancestor. Thus a blade a grass and an elephant, according to the theory, stem from a common ancestor.

Cheers,

-Randy

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

rawe

Hi Lost,

"Yet the Kennel club has refused to be active and address the matter." At the moment it is unlikely human evolution that is ongoing from generation to generation will produce a new species that lives at the same time. A key ingredient to the theory of evolution is the effect of isolated populations that find themselves in a new environment. For example, if humans were to colonize Mars, then stopped inter-breading with Earthlings, over time Martians would almost certainly become a related by separate species from humans. What the Kennel club is doing is creating a form of isolation, where gene selection is creating breeds, that in extreme cases could not inter-breed due to physical differences. You could still inter-breed a Great Dane with a Chihuahua if you used some mid-way bridge breeds to help. I have heard of natural cases of this with birds, but must admit to never having looked it up.

In regards to humans a fascinating case is that of lice that live in our hair. The loss of body hair has created a form of isolation, where in head lice are now a different species than pubic hair lice. DNA sequence comparisons and rate of mutation in this case has been used as a basis to estimate how long ago humans lost body hair.

"I find gene diversity fascintating in that you can selective breed different types within a species. But I have yet to see any evidence of successful cross-species breeding and reproduction." Of course the inability to inter-breed is the definition of species. After I read Darwin's book On The Origin of Species, it took me awhile to understandy why he was going on and on about hybrids. Finally I got it (I can be a bit slow with this stuff)... if two species had a common ancestor as the theory of evolution asserts is true of all species, then in some species the separation hasn't progressed so far that cross breeding is impossible. Thus a donkey and a horse can mate and produce a mule, a hybrid that is typically sterile. They can do this, because their common ancestor is not too far in the past and different from either.

Cheers,

-Randy

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

rawe

Hi Tornapart,

"I know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it. However..."

Evolution is of course a scientific theory that explains the origin of species. Like all scientific theories it should be believed based on its ability to explain and predict things we find in the natural world. Nonetheless there are still many specific things about the arrival of a given species such as us (homo sapiens) that still being discovered.

"If man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago? Surely there'd have been many billions by then?"

I think it would be helpful to break your question up here a bit. Please bear with me.

"If man evolved" seems to imply a single event in time that happened then remained static. I am the father of four children, each of my girls is 1 evolutionary generation from me. My first born has now given birth to my first grandchild, who is 2 evolutionary generations from me. I have found it best to think of evolution as a continuum, wherein 1 generation to the next always continues to be of the same species, but there is no specific hard barriers that would prevent a given line of descent from accumulating enough DNA difference to qualify as a genuinely new species.

"over hundres of thousands of years ago" is based on the initial study of DNA that is passed through females only. The mitochondrial DNA you have should be nearly identical to your mother and her mother, etc. Only mutations can effect this DNA. Based on estimates of the rate of mutational changes to this DNA it was worked out that homo sapiens are in the range of 100,000 to 250,000 years old. Since then a sequence of DNA unique to the Y chromosome has been used to cross-check this work. The Y-chromosome DNA of course passes through the male line only and is unaffected by DNA from the mother. The two studies build confidence in the 100K to max 250K numbers.

"why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?" This is a question about population dynamics. One part of the answer is the power of exponential growth of a population left unchecked by other forces. Thus humans were able to move their population number from 1 billion to 7 billion in little over 100 years! If we imagine human population was very small 100K years ago, perhaps as little as a few thousand it takes time and some good fortune to take that number up to the range of 100s of millions. Some have already suggested forces that would keep a population in check, such as disease, disasters and competition for resources, etc. However, I think it is kinda interesting to look at the flip side of this problem. If the human population was being kept in check with very little upward movement what might have released the flood gates of growth?

A fun documentary to watch on this subject is "How Beer Made the World." It is a bit tongue and cheek, but it does touch upon what must have certainly been a few of the major factors. The ending of the last ice age created a favorable conditions for humans to learn to farm. Small but significant mutations may also be very recent such as the FOXP2 sequence combined with increased brain power unleashing our ability to communicate and thus drive our numbers up. Even the act of cooking food, which is connected fire, has been seen by some as a key to allowing human brain power to increase.

What you're doing though is good. In considering any scientific theory we should look for ways to kill it. In fact for a theory to qualify as scientific there must be some method to show it is false. If DNA mutation and recombination were impossible, for example, it would deal a severe blow to the theory of evolution. Time and reproduction rates are also important, if enough time were not available or reproduction rates too low, evolution would be in trouble as a theory. Your question is there too much time, such that we should expect higher population numbers, is a good question and without a proper answer might get our understanding of life on earth in trouble.

Cheers,

-Randy

6

Great Meetup in Phoenix AZ yesterday!!

by Gayle in

about 28-30 of us there for two hours at the phoenix library.

alot of personal experiences of those being raised jws and experiencing shunning!

it was filmed but sensitivity was certainly given for those there, were several there, who could not be filmed because of jw family yet.

rawe

Hi Gayle,

It was so nice to see you and others! Thanks for reaching out to the Chandler Ex-JW meetup to help with this -- it was really wonderful, if at times, painful to hear some of the accounts!

Cheers,

-Randy