Theos-Talk Archives (July 2001 Message tt00017)

Greetings All -
I recently posted the URL for wisdom world on a new newsgroup
aus.science. I started a debate on the topis of the Origin of the Ape.
Below is a response I got. Any help in framing a reply would be greatly
appreciated.

Namaste

Nos



"PORT" <nos@granite.net.au> wrote in message
news:Ygh%6.8$jn.1545@nsw.nnrp.telstra.net...
> ANTIQUITY OF MAN
>
> THE ORIGIN OF THE APE
>
> It is evident, especially after the most fundamental principles of
> Darwinism, that an organized being cannot be a descendant of another
whose
> development is in an inverse order to his own.... Consequently, in
> accordance with these principles, Man cannot be considered as the
descendant
> of any simian type whatever. (de Quatrefages: The Human Species.)
> The respective developments of the human and Simian brains are
referred
to.
> "In the ape the temporo-spheroidal convolutions, which form the middle
lobe,
> make their appearance and are completed before the anterior
convolutions
> which form the frontal lobe. In man, the frontal convolutions are, on
the
> contrary, the first to appear, and those of the middle lobe are formed
> later."

Altered temporal regulation of brain development may be one of the
evolutionary changes that makes us human and another primate. Depending
on
the control systems invovled, it may not take changes to many genes at
all...in fact the changes would probably be to operator regions and not
nessesarily even the coding regions of the genes themselves.

>
> Lucae's argument versus the Ape-theory, based on the different
flexures of
> the bones constituting the axis of the skull in the cases of Man and
the
> Anthropoids, is fairly discussed by Schmidt. ("Doctrine of Descent and
> Darwinism," p. 290). He admits that "the ape as he grows becomes more
> bestial; man ... more human," .... The writer evidently is not a
little
> disquieted at the argument. He assures us that it upsets any
possibility
of
> the present apes having been the progenitors of mankind. But does it
not
> also negative the bare possibility of the man and anthropoid having
had a
> common -- though, so far, an absolutely theoretical -- ancestor? (The
Secret
> Doctrine, 1888, Vol. II, 646.)

An ape growing more like and ape as it grows and a human growing more
like a
human as it grows? Seems like that just an outlandish assertion that
can't
possibly be true (sarc). Of course one species will look more like
itself as
it grows. The idea of something being more or less bestial is also
foolish
and would be on some kind of scale with behaviour of the most human
nature
being one and the least human at the other with humans being at the
human
extreme and apes being very close by.

>
> Such anthropoids form an exception because they were not intended by
Nature,
> but are the direct product and creation of "senseless" man. ... the
> transformation of species most directly connected with that of the
human
> family, a bastard branch engrafted on their own stock before the final
> perfection of the latter. (The Secret Doctrine, I, 185.)

Nature has no intent and so things can ONLY be outside its intent. I'm
sure
it didn't intend humans to exist to mess it up either.

>
> That man was not the last member in the mammalian family, but the
first in
> this Round, is something that science will be forced to acknowledge
one
> day....

Humans aren't the first and they aren't the last either.

>
> That man can be shown to have lived in the mid-Tertiary period, and in
a
> geological age when there did not yet exist one single specimen of the
now
> known species of mammals, is a statement that science cannot deny and
which
> has now been proven by de Quatrefages. (The Secret Doctrine, II, 155.)

The secret doctrine does not sound like a scientific journal to me. Such
evidence should surely be in a journal of natural history. Many species
of
mammals in some form or other massively predate even homonid species
which
in turn predate humans. Humans are not the last mammalian species to
have
emerged, but they are very recent. Also, other evidence of ape and human
recent common decent was not available at the time. Also, more ape like
fossils are found in earlier layers than more human like fossils
suggesting
the common ancestor was more ape like than human like.

<snip rest of interesting though unsupported hypothesis>

What work of fiction is this all from? All these claims you post are
unsupported since the fossil record does not show humans before mammals
at
all, its shows them towards the modern end of mammalian evolution. Also,
degeneracy is not supported by evidence by genetics and evolutionary
mechanisms either.

--
Blade ICQ#27537648

Comparing religion to science is like comparing a molehill to a
mountain!

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