When did Adam/Eve Live?

[Ghosty]

A more symbolical / figurative / allegorical view of the early Genesis chapters might solve some of these.

Phil: Good thing the Catechism already points this out; the story of Adam and Eve is explicitly refered to as “symbolic language”. It’s absolutely true, but the words aren’t used to mean the same things that “Young Earth” types say they are. This comes directly from the Magisterium.

hecd2: Actually, if I read what you posted correctly then I think you’ve addressed many of my concerns, and demonstrated that I’m more inline with contemporary science than I believed. In school I was taught the “purely random mutation” style evolution as being the absolute end all of contemporary accepted science, and that caused me to wrinkle my nose quite a bit. The evidence you mention of the “genome savings bank” that is used in response to environmental stimuli in “parents” is precisely the kind of thing I always suggested in school and was criticised heavily and repeatedly for. It’s nice to know that science is catching up with my visionary theories

My point about Ice Ages and what not was that the speed of change in certain species required for survival seemed to preclude the timeline necessary for purely random mutations to breed true and affect survival (just how many wooly elephants are born every hundred years?). Despite your lack of certainty on my meaning, no doubt due to my sleepless attempt to state a position I haven’t discussed in 10 years, you nailed the exact issue I have struggled with as someone who accepts evolution fully, yet couldn’t swallow what I thought was the predominant model for it.

 

[hecd2]

PhilVaz:

BTW, Catholic Answers recognizes the importance of this question. Some of This Rock is now available online, for example this article

Confronting Creation’s Complexity: Why Darwinism Isn’t Fit to Survive by Robin Bernhoft (This Rock, Sept 2003)

…he discusses theistic evolution which may be compatible. But unfortunately we also have the typical creationist “whoppers” clobbered by TalkOrigins, such as “no transitional forms” in this article.
Phil P

The Bernhoft article is appalling. I am quite disturbed and upset to find it on a reputable Catholic site and in a reputable Catholic journal. Its arguments are misleading, fudged and downright mendacious. It’s the sort of thing that one has become reconciled to finding in fundamentalist sources, but I had hoped that Catholics would have too much respect for the truth to present such nonsense.

This kind of lying is doubly sinful, because it is not just a lie, but a lie presented from a (false) position of authority. Those unsophisticated in science might well take what he has to say at face value - he is not just lying in a an attempt to win a debate with scientists; he has chosen to lie in a forum that is designed to deliberately mislead the innocent about the facts of the case.

Of course, I do not accuse Bernhoft of lying in This Rock lightly. Let me therefore give you an example of his extreme error: he writes as follows:
'Everyone agrees that many species have extremities that end in five digits. Humans have five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot. Whale flippers, bird wings, and mammalian paws all end in five digits. The Penguin Dictionary of Biology assures us that this sharing of five-digited extremities is strong evidence that all life shares a common ancestor and is a major proof of the truth of Darwin’s theory.

Maybe when Darwin wrote, a century and a half ago ago, it seemed obvious that the sharing of five-digited extremities suggested descent from a common ancestor. But if human hands and animal extremities are variations on a theme pioneered by a common ancestor, it would be reasonable to expect that the genes of that common ancestor ought to be the baseline from which human hands, dog paws, bird wings, and whale flippers branch off as variations on a common theme. They are not.

Similarly, if these digits descended from a common ancestor, one would expect them to begin in roughly the same place embryologically, then branch off as they develop into hands, flippers, or wings. They do not.

The genes controlling the formation of five-digited extremities are completely different in each of these species. Embryologically, each of these structures begins in a different place, and develops through radically different routes into hands, flippers, or wings. Different genes produce different patterns of development, yet arrive at similar (five-digited) structural outcomes.’
This is an argument presented almost word for word by Harun Yahya, an Islamic fundamentalist creationist on his websites on the authority of a another crank called William Fix. Neither Fix, Yahya nor Bernhoft can support their nonsense with references to the primary literature. The fact is that the genetic program for the development of tetrapod limbs (involving, for example sonic hedgehog, FGF and Hox D, expressed in a homologous sequence) demonstrates deep homology and the claim that tetrapod limb buds orginate in different parts of the embryo in different tetrapod species is simply not true. There has been extensive work in real science on the developmental program of tetrapod limbs in the last five years. I can post all of this in detail if required, but the bottom line is that Bernhoft’s claims in this matter are false.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

dts:

I don’t won’t to get bogged down into this debate, but I looked at the transitionals link provided above and have viewed similar materials in the past.

I am unconvinced. Frankly, I am not even sure what a transitional is? What traits must it possess or is it just some type of ancient monkey? How do we know that it falls into the human ancestry? Can we declare that a transitional exists simply because we have a piece of a jaw bone or even a whole skull?

So you are a sceptical about transitionals when you, by your own admission, don’t know what a transitional is? A transitional is a species that shows a mixture of both primitive characteristics (ie characteristics of earlier species) and derived characteristics (ie characteristics that evolved later). There are very many transitionals in the fossil record contrary to false fundamentalist testimony.

And since I just posted an attack on the dishonest claims of Bernhoft about homology in tetrapod limbs, let us use the emergence of tetrapods as an example. We are aware of a number of fossil species that represent the transtion between fish and tetrapods. See, for example, Jennifer Clack’s wonderful book, Gaining Ground. Transitional species in the emergence of tetrapods include Pederpes finneyae, Acanthostega, Icthyostega, Eusthenopteron, Greererpeton, Tulerpeton. Is there a good reason why you think these fossil species might not be transitionals?

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[PhilVaz]

hecd << And since I just posted an attack on the dishonest claims of Bernhoft about homology in tetrapod limbs, let us use the emergence of tetrapods as an example. >>

You are good dude, I really enjoy your posts. Too bad Bernhoft is not here to defend himself, or get clobbered. Maybe he is, there are over 11,000 people registered here now. I hope someday Jimmy Akin teams up with a Catholic biologist to produce one of those “Catholic Answers Special Reports” on creation/evolution and the whole Genesis/Adam/Eve issue.

Phil P

 

[hecd2]

Hi Marcia - see below

marciadietrich:

Hi Alec,

I am not a literal 6 day creationist. Though I am currently reading a book by a gentleman who is, and I have come to be sympathetic to their feeling that way. It is a perfectly valid viewpoint for Catholics to hold and fits the theology hand in glove.

Of course you are not a literal 6 day creationist and although you are sympathetic to creationism, you also know that, although it might fit the theology, it certainly doesn’t fit the science.

So, God/Bible/Church says 6000 years —> it really is 6000 years old our time —> science doesn’t see that because it presumes things have always occured in a fashion we can measure by today’s standards = not direct deception as God divinely revealed that it was only 6000 literal years old in the first place. Scientists feel it is deceptive because they expect what they observe to be the truth on origins and God (tends atheistic or pantheistic). That would seem to be a case of a rejection of the revealed truth by those who adhere to the science over faith, rather than an outright deception by God. God told us the truth, we preferred to go by our own observations.

Well God can tell us the truth in a number of ways - and one of those ways is very important - that is through the universe itself. In other words, I don’t believe in a theology where biblical revelation or theological teaching take precedence over natural observations. The truth is written in the world, we have only to seek it. We shouldn’t believe in a God who makes the universe appear, through multiple complex interlocked observations, other than it is. The many lines of astronomical evidence that I posted are just such a complex set. Sustaining a belief in a young earth in the light of such overwhelming and coherent evidence requires that the entire cosmos was created to appear radically other than it is. That’s what I mean by deception. So, if by multiple complex lines of evidence the minimum bottleneck of the human lineage is 10,000, then a belief in a literal Adam and Eve requires a similar sleight of hand.

something is terribly wrong.

Don’t know if that is clearer. I am probably mixing you up because of my own discord on the whole issue.

Marcia, I am a compulsive debater and will leap at any opportunity to argue one point against another. That is my weakness. If in doing so, I am intensifying your discord or causing you unnecessary distress, then I suggest you ignore what I have to say.Others on this thread have already characterised what I have to say as pure ‘technical complexity’ , I’d rather you did the same than I became a source of scandal and unhelpful uncertainty in your life.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

Ghosty:

hecd2: Actually, if I read what you posted correctly then I think you’ve addressed many of my concerns, and demonstrated that I’m more in line with contemporary science than I believed. In school I was taught the “purely random mutation” style evolution as being the absolute end all of contemporary accepted science, and that caused me to wrinkle my nose quite a bit. The evidence you mention of the “genome savings bank” that is used in response to environmental stimuli in “parents” is precisely the kind of thing I always suggested in school and was criticised heavily and repeatedly for. It’s nice to know that science is catching up with my visionary theories

Absolutely - well you have clearly been well ahead of conventional science! A Nobel prize beckons ?!

The epigenetic program has gained great credibility in the last few years. One very telling finding of the sequencing of the mouse genome is the startling discovery that almost as much DNA is conserved that lies outside recognised gene sequences as lies within sequences that clearly are in open reading frames. This probably means that there is a lot of non-gene coding (things like suppressive and promotional sequences are known, but there is a lot to discover about the functionality of non-gene conserved code - ie valuable DNA sequence that does not translate directly to protein.)

None of this means of course, that evolution is directed to a particular end; simply that it is more complex than the neo-Darwinian mantra of random mutation of genes and selection would suggest. And all of this, before we even get into the complexities of evolutionary development - or evo-devo - a 21st century radical contribution to evolutionary theory.

My point about Ice Ages and what not was that the speed of change in certain species required for survival seemed to preclude the timeline necessary for purely random mutations to breed true and affect survival (just how many wooly elephants are born every hundred years?). Despite your lack of certainty on my meaning, no doubt due to my sleepless attempt to state a position I haven’t discussed in 10 years, you nailed the exact issue I have struggled with as someone who accepts evolution fully, yet couldn’t swallow what I thought was the predominant model for it.

Well the Ice Age lasted for a lot longer than a few hundred years. The glacial period has been at least 450 thousand years. We are living in a deep respite from the Ice Age (an interglacial) but there is little evidence to support the notion that the interglacial will last forever. It’s due to end soon. That’s scary. We’re doing our best to confound it with global warming - that’s scary too.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

PhilVaz:

You are good dude, I really enjoy your posts. Too bad Bernhoft is not here to defend himself, or get clobbered. Maybe he is, there are over 11,000 people registered here now. I hope someday Jimmy Akin teams up with a Catholic biologist to produce one of those “Catholic Answers Special Reports” on creation/evolution and the whole Genesis/Adam/Eve issue.

Phil P

Thanks, mate.

I am willing to meet Bernhoft to discuss his misleading claims anytime. Are you there Mr Bernhoft?

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[Ghosty]

None of this means of course, that evolution is directed to a particular end; simply that it is more complex than the neo-Darwinian mantra of random mutation of genes and selection would suggest.

And that was my stance as well. I was a die-hard atheist when I was making those arguments, and even today I don’t agree with “intelligent design” arguments. I obviously believe in an intelligent designer, but I don’t believe that such a thing can be inferred from nature, and I get frustrated with such philosophical arguments in a scientific arena.

As for Ice Ages, they certainly can last a long time, but there is evidence that, at least in a few cases, they can come on suddenly (on an evolutionary time scale, that is). There were enough instances of events like that in geological history to make me shake my head at purely random mutation guiding all of evolution, because it seemed to me that without some kind of latent genetic information that could be rapidly applied, many genetic lines should have died out that didn’t. Of course I could have then, and now, just be misreading the information, but it was things like that which led me to believe in the kind of mechanics your saying are currently gaining favor and showing ample supportive evidence. Perhaps a Nobel Prize isn’t in the offing afterall

 

[PhilVaz]

BTW, this is the position of Karl Keating, president of Catholic Answers:

“Catholics are obligated to believe that the entire human race is descended from Adam and Eve. There were no other human beings preceding them, and no human beings who came after them were descended ultimately from anyone other than Adam and Eve. Although portions of Genesis may be taken allegorically, the existence of Adam and Eve may not.” (Karl 5/22/2004)

In this early thread on the board

Thought I’d throw that in. That is my reading of the Catechism as well, that everything else in the early chapters of Genesis can be seen as allegorical / symbolical / figurative, but not the real literal historical existence of Adam/Eve themselves. That causes problems with human evolution as understood by modern science today, which is why This Rock sees the need to publish anti-evolution articles.

Phil P

 

[hecd2]

Ghosty:

As for Ice Ages, they certainly can last a long time, but there is evidence that, at least in a few cases, they can come on suddenly (on an evolutionary time scale, that is). There were enough instances of events like that in geological history to make me shake my head at purely random mutation guiding all of evolution, because it seemed to me that without some kind of latent genetic information that could be rapidly applied, many genetic lines should have died out that didn’t. Of course I could have then, and now, just be misreading the information, but it was things like that which led me to believe in the kind of mechanics your saying are currently gaining favor and showing ample supportive evidence. Perhaps a Nobel Prize isn’t in the offing afterall

Well, even in ‘classical’ neo-Darwinism, random mutation doesn’t guide evolution. Mutation provides the raw material of evolution and the guidance comes from selection. I wouldn’t like you to think that I am belittling this mechanism or claiming it’s not important. On the contrary, it still represents the foundation of evolutionary theory. However, there are other effects going on as I pointed out, so this adds to rather than replacing conventional neo-Darwinism.

By the way the evidence about the possibility to mask variations in genotype from the phenotype and release them in stressful times so far exists (as far as I know) in self-fertilizing plants (Arabidopsis thaliana) [by the the way the specific protein is Hsp90 not Hsp50 as I had previously posted - I just looked it up - memory plays strange tricks. I’m surprised Carl didn’t berate me for fundamental error ], yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisae) and fruitflies (Drosophila melanogaster). The controlling protein in both Arabidopsis (plant) and Drosophila (insect) is Hsp90 - isn’t that astonishing homology?

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

PhilVaz:

BTW, this is the position of Karl Keating, president of Catholic Answers:

This board has a ‘president’?! BIzarre!

“Catholics are obligated to believe that the entire human race is descended from Adam and Eve. There were no other human beings preceding them, and no human beings who came after them were descended ultimately from anyone other than Adam and Eve. Although portions of Genesis may be taken allegorically, the existence of Adam and Eve may not.” (Karl 5/22/2004)

In this early thread on the board

Well this is precisely the attitude that I deplore. It can do no good for the church or her apologists to take an authoritarian attitude to matters amenable to scientific investigation. That way, as has been demonstrated time and time gain, lies embarassment and ridicule. Of course the pronouncements of people like Karl about what can and cannot be believed carry absolutely no weight with the scientific community who have and who will continue to discover the truth about human origins unfettered by mediaeval prohibitions.

There is, of course, a serious consideration. If in attempting to defend his posture of authority, Karl, the ‘president’, is led to entertain the dishonesty of the likes of Bernhoft in the publications he controls, then he is doing the Church a deep disservice by being seen to defend misrepresentation and deception. That undermines the credibility of his calling.

From reading this and other posts, and articles in This Rock, Karl likes to be seen as some sort of authoritative teacher. Well, in this matter at any rate, his ‘teaching’ is wrong. The plain evidence is that humans are descended from more than two individuals in all generations. Telling thinking people that they are not ‘permitted’ to believe the plain evidence is rather futile and does more harm than good to the Church.

My bet is that neither Karl nor Bernhoft will appear on this thread to defend their position. Those whose position depends on authority are usually loathe to expose their teaching to actual expertise. I hope I am wrong. What do you reckon?

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[twf]

hecd2: Do you have a problem with Mr. Keating beyond the issue of Adam and Eve? Because you seem to have quite a low opinion of him…your post seemed quite condescending of both the Church and of Mr. Keating. Mr. Keating does not like to think he speaks with authority…he simply reiterates what the Church teaches. The Church teaches with authority, he has never claimed that he has. You are doing the exact same thing…all your posts are written an air of authority in manners of the origins of man, but you are simply reiterating what you believe science teaches. Karl Keating is doing the same thing, except he reiterates the teachings of the Church.

 

[PhilVaz]

<< This board has a ‘president’?! BIzarre! >>

Well not exactly. Catholic Answers is the apologetics group in San Diego. Their president is Karl. They’ve been around since the 1980s. Publish a fantastic magazine This Rock. Produce an entertaining and informative radio program “Catholic Answers Live.” Big budget, great Catholic people. Read all about them. This board is just an add-on to that organization. They do excellent work defending the Catholic Church, despite their scientific failings. To defend Karl a little, he wrote a very good article on the Grand Canyon and an old earth. So he’s not nuts.

The Testimony of Rocky Halls

The Catholic apologists who have much worse scientific problems are those defending geocentrism as viable (along with a young earth). Sungenis does good apologetics work otherwise.

Galileo Was Wrong by Robert Sungenis

Phil P

 

[hecd2]

twf:

Do you have a problem with Mr. Keating beyond the issue of Adam and Eve? Because you seem to have quite a low opinion of him…your post seemed quite condescending of both the Church and of Mr. Keating. Mr. Keating does not like to think he speaks with authority…he simply reiterates what the Church teaches. The Church teaches with authority, he has never claimed that he has. You are doing the exact same thing…all your posts are written an air of authority in manners of the origins of man, but you are simply reiterating what you believe science teaches. Karl Keating is doing the same thing, except he reiterates the teachings of the Church.

You were right to chide me. The tone of parts of my message were unnecessarily critical - I must have been feeling particularly splenetic yesterday. I apologise to you and Karl.

Let me try again - I was making two points: one is that the church is getting into hot water by requiring the faithful to believe in something that we can see is simply not so. Karl, of course, was merely, as you say, reflecting or interpreting the church’s teaching which, of course, he is perfectly entitled to do. Second, I was pointing out that Karl does bear some responsibility for the publication in This Rock of the silly article by Bernhoft - an article which, owing to its contempt for the truth, has no place in a respectable Catholic publication.

Finally, you pointed out that neither Karl nor I speak on our own authority but reflect, in Karl’s case, the teaching of the Church and, in mine, the scientific literature. That’s true - it’s a point well made. I’d just plead one difference between the two magisteria. In the case of the science, all possible hypotheses can be entertained so long as the evidence does not disallow them - Nature herself is the ultimate arbiter. In the case of the Catholic magisterium, certain beliefs, even those that impinge on natural observations, are required and other beliefs are disallowed - the Church (or the Church speaking in the name of God) is the ultimate arbiter.

I am very uncomfortable with being told what hypotheses about natural phenomena I can and cannot hold (in fact I reject the authority of anyone or any institution to do so, for good reasons), and this discomfort probably led to yesterday’s regretted bile.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[marciadietrich]

hecd2:

Marcia, I am a compulsive debater and will leap at any opportunity to argue one point against another. That is my weakness. If in doing so, I am intensifying your discord or causing you unnecessary distress, then I suggest you ignore what I have to say.Others on this thread have already characterised what I have to say as pure ‘technical complexity’ , I’d rather you did the same than I became a source of scandal and unhelpful uncertainty in your life.

Alec,

I tend to want to debate the same point into the ground myself, it is a common fault. I do appreciate knowing that you have seen the same conflict that I see on the polygenism vs. monogenism issue. Some people don’t feel there is a conflict for various reasons, and with various explanations, that haven’t resolved the problem for me.

While I have your attention, have you seen this article on dating Neanderthal’s in Europe ? I happened to be on a creationist site this morning and this was the latest breaking news item. I’m fairly certain that most scientists denied any interbreeding or ancestry of Neanderthal and/to modern man, but the possibly inaccuracy on dating and possibly identifying certain remains most likely human as neanderthal would seem to be a problem. Looks like this is fairly recent, and all the google pointers look like it is creationists commenting and passing on the information so far.

Marcia

 

[hecd2]

PhilVaz:

To defend Karl a little, he wrote a very good article on the Grand Canyon and an old earth. So he’s not nuts.

The Testimony of Rocky Halls

Well, it’s a fine article. I might take issue with the fact he puts forward Johnson, Behe, Dembski and Denton as providing credible challenges to the Theory of Evolution - you might like to take a look at ‘Creationism’s Trojan Horse - the wedge of Intelligent Design’ by Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross, but generally a good and fair article.

The Catholic apologists who have much worse scientific problems are those defending geocentrism as viable (along with a young earth). Sungenis does good apologetics work otherwise.

Galileo Was Wrong by Robert Sungenis

Phil P

Very funny. An object lesson in how to bring the Church into disrepute.

I am rather taken aback. Before I joined this board, I innocently thought YEC was a Christian Fundamentalist problem. Now I find that not only are there YECers in the Church, there are even worse cranks. I feel the quotation from St Augustine coming on:

‘Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.’

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

marciadietrich:

Alec,

While I have your attention, have you seen this article on dating Neanderthal’s in Europe ? I happened to be on a creationist site this morning and this was the latest breaking news item. I’m fairly certain that most scientists denied any interbreeding or ancestry of Neanderthal and/to modern man, but the possibly inaccuracy on dating and possibly identifying certain remains most likely human as neanderthal would seem to be a problem. Looks like this is fairly recent, and all the google pointers look like it is creationists commenting and passing on the information so far.
Marcia

Dear Marcia,

The only thing I saw before your link was a few lines in Nature from 26th August:

'According to the German news magazine Der Spiegel, Reiner Protsch von Zieten carbon-dated several human skulls from Germany and found them to be up to 30,000 years old. Other labs date the bones at just 7,000–8,000 years old. Protsch von Zieten’s results have been used to back controversial hypotheses on prehistoric population movements in central Europe. It is unclear how Protsch von Zieten managed to get such radically different results; the university says that he stands by his findings.
Protsch von Zieten was suspended from the university in April, after allegedly attempting to sell more than 200 institute-owned ape skulls to collectors in the United States. According to the university, Protsch von Zieten says he owns the skulls himself. Legal proceedings in this case are pending.

Nature was unable to reach Protsch von Zieten for comment.’

Other than that, all of the furore is over Tony Paterson’s Telegraph article that you posted. I’m afraid the article has all the signs of sensationalism. You have to be very careful when reading popular press articles. Until peer reviewed material emerges, we need to suspend final judgement, but I would not expect any of this to be a challenge to the fundamentals of human evolution. Of course there is some sort of scandal going on , but nothing that, at first sight, requires major revisions of the science.

After all, none of the major fossil material including the type specimen is implicated here (the type specimen is Neandertal 1 from the Feldhofer Grotto, Neander Valley, Germany - near Dusseldorf, in Northern Europe). Indeed none of the major findings from Israel to Gibraltar are implicated. (I have consulted two books dedicated to Neanderthal - ‘Neanderthal’ by Paul Jordan and ‘The Last Neanderthal’ by Ian Tatersall. In neither case is von Zieten nor any of the fossil material in question mentioned.) I really can’t see this making much impact on the basic palaeontology. I don’t see how it’s possible to claim that the whole palaeontology is called into question by the uncertainties around this quite peripheral material.

I’d put it down to journalistic sensationalism, but don’t believe me - wait for peer reviewed material to be available.

But just watch how creationists attempt to make propaganda out of this!

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

marcia:

While I have your attention, have you seen this article on dating Neanderthal’s in Europe ?

hecd2:

Dear Marcia,

The only thing I saw before your link was a few lines in Nature from 26th August:

'According to the German news magazine Der Spiegel, Reiner Protsch von Zieten carbon-dated several human skulls from Germany and found them to be up to 30,000 years old. Other labs date the bones at just 7,000–8,000 years old. Protsch von Zieten’s results have been used to back controversial hypotheses on prehistoric population movements in central Europe. It is unclear how Protsch von Zieten managed to get such radically different results; the university says that he stands by his findings.
Protsch von Zieten was suspended from the university in April, after allegedly attempting to sell more than 200 institute-owned ape skulls to collectors in the United States. According to the university, Protsch von Zieten says he owns the skulls himself. Legal proceedings in this case are pending.

Nature was unable to reach Protsch von Zieten for comment.’

Other than that, all of the furore is over Tony Paterson’s Telegraph article that you posted. I’m afraid the article has all the signs of sensationalism. You have to be very careful when reading popular press articles. Until peer reviewed material emerges, we need to suspend final judgement, but I would not expect any of this to be a challenge to the fundamentals of human evolution. Of course there is some sort of scandal going on , but nothing that, at first sight, requires major revisions of the science.

After all, none of the major fossil material including the type specimen is implicated here (the type specimen is Neandertal 1 from the Feldhofer Grotto, Neander Valley, Germany - near Dusseldorf, in Northern Europe). Indeed none of the major findings from Israel to Gibraltar are implicated. (I have consulted two books dedicated to Neanderthal - ‘Neanderthal’ by Paul Jordan and ‘The Last Neanderthal’ by Ian Tatersall. In neither case is von Zieten nor any of the fossil material in question mentioned.) I really can’t see this making much impact on the basic palaeontology. I don’t see how it’s possible to claim that the whole palaeontology is called into question by the uncertainties around this quite peripheral material.

I’d put it down to journalistic sensationalism, but don’t believe me - wait for peer reviewed material to be available.

But just watch how creationists attempt to make propaganda out of this!

Alec
evolutionpages.com

Dear Marcia, you asked for a view on this but seemed to have missed it. Was this helpful?

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[buffalo]

<< This board has a ‘president’?! BIzarre! >>

Well not exactly. Catholic Answers is the apologetics group in San Diego. Their president is Karl. They’ve been around since the 1980s. Publish a fantastic magazine This Rock. Produce an entertaining and informative radio program “Catholic Answers Live.” Big budget, great Catholic people. Read all about them. This board is just an add-on to that organization. They do excellent work defending the Catholic Church, despite their scientific failings. To defend Karl a little, he wrote a very good article on the Grand Canyon and an old earth. So he’s not nuts.

The Testimony of Rocky Halls

The Catholic apologists who have much worse scientific problems are those defending geocentrism as viable (along with a young earth). Sungenis does good apologetics work otherwise.

Galileo Was Wrong by Robert Sungenis

Phil P

You could make some money if you could prove the earth revolves around the sun. Sungenis has offered an online reward and many have tried but to my knowledge no scientist has collected.

 

[hecd2]

buffalo:

You could make some money if you could prove the earth revolves around the sun. Sungenis has offered an online reward and many have tried but to my knowledge no scientist has collected.

On the contrary no-one will ever collect because Sungenis is the judge and he has decided a priori that the earth does not orbit the sun. It’s a simple fraud not worthy of a moment’s consideration.

Any half decent scientist will tell you that the earth and the sun rotate around each other as any pair of orbiting bodies do. Strictly speaking they orbit the centre of mass of the sun-earth system where their orbits are a conic section with a focus at the centre of mass.(The equations of motion of rotating bodies and the mathematics of conic sections are gorgeous - they send shivers down your spine. If Sungenis had the slightest feel for the aesthetics of science and maths, he’s be using this beauty to support the existence of the Creator instead of driving away serious people with his futile, cranky, moribund ideas). Since the mass of the sun is 328,900.56 times the mass of the earth plus the moon, the centre of mass is 328,900.56 times closer to the centre of the sun than the centre of the earth. That puts the centre of mass 281 miles from the centre of the sun deep inside it. The sun orbits this centre of mass - the diameter of the sun’s orbit is 562 miles and the diameter of the earth-moon system orbit is 186,000,000 miles.

By the way there are many reasons for agreeing to the fact that, with reference to the universal frame, the earth rotates around the sun, but may I suggest stellar parallax. The fact is that, at least with regard to geocentrism, Sungenis is a crank who does the Church far more harm than good.

Alec
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