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If it's true that there is a single origin of humanity out ot E Africa apx.150,000 years ago, then we are all family.
Paleoanthropologists hold the 'single origin' theory - where anatomicallly modern humans originated solely in Sub-saharan Africa from a single origin point - as the most widely accepted. That would mean we all have the same ancestors. If we all have the same ancestors, are we not all related? If we're all related, then we're all family. If we are all family, then we are more than just 'community'. We are the same. Everyone. It is done. It's time now to put aside our histories, our angers, our revenge, our murderousness, our exploitiveness, and 'reach across the table' and become the strong and unitfied humans we are (obviously now) created to be.The divisions amongst us are over and need to be 'torn down'. Indira Gandhi is credited with saying: "Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave." Think what 7 - soon to be 9 - billion people working in harmony could accomplish. The rich think they're rich now, just imagine the wealth if 'the whole family' participated in the economy - not nearly half of us unable to participate realistically. What if our security forces were small and the funds were devoted to education and economic deveiopment because we knew we were a 'good family'? We've learned to be selfish, protective, afraid, and 'enmitized' towards each other. It's a now a new day, and new skills are required.
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Gerald O'brian 50+
Everything on this planet is related to everything else.
However, we're not evolutionnally designed to consider every human being as part of our family. We're tribal and it takes restless efforts from institution to ensure that we remain at peace in a global society.
Debra Smith 200+
Gerald O'brian 50+
Debra Smith 200+
Obey No1kinobe 50+
edward long 100+
Gerald O'brian 50+
Evolutionnally designed, sure. As opposed to randomness, as opposed to chance.
edward long 100+
So, on your own, you are coining the phrase "Evoltionnally Designed" as the new, more precise name to replace what is now called "Intelligent Design"? You are saying the process of evolution is driven by an intelligent force? I am hoping for two precise resposes. Thank you Gerald for your provocative perspective
Gerald O'brian 50+
If you know anything about biology, you know that atoms didn't suddenly come together to shape the first animal. There is always a continuum. There was a continuum between energy and atoms, between atoms and mollecules, mollecules and the first replicating mollecules. So much so that there is no such thing as "THE FIRST" in either case. There is no first homo sapiens, for that matter.
I don't think I coined "evolutionnally designed". I must've heard it in a pub. Anyway I like it. Creationnists always oppose Intelligent design to Chance, as in the famous watchmaker explanation, or the more recent 747 boeing nonsense. The opponents to evolution are not opponents to evolution, it turns out.
1) Pure luck
2) Intelligent Design (everything comes from a creator, except the creator)
3) Evolution
1) and 3) are opposites. NO ONE ON EARTH supports 1)!!!
"You are saying the process of evolution is driven by an intelligent force?"
No, but driven by a process that fools us into thinking it's intelligent. Just like a computer chess game, where the moves are a result of an evolutionnary process of trial and error, and where the resulting move seems to be a clever one.
With evolution, however, every possible move is lived out. The "clever" one is the one that's survived the trial and error process.
I will explain things in more detail, if you want me to.
Regards
edward long 100+
Thank you!
Gerald O'brian 50+
1) What is the name of the first life form?
I have to dodge this question, Edward, because as I said ; there was no FIRST life form. The process that took basic chemical reactions to something like a bacterium takes millions and millions of years. There are countless stages, evolution is a gradual phenomenum. Let's see the implications of your assumptions that there should be a FIRST LIFE FORM. What would its parent be?
The way we name things is usually related to what we're lucky enough to dig up. We make categories up where they don't exist. Species don't exist, for that matter, as Darwin noted. (I can explain this point).
So I hold my position on this one : This question is nonsense. " I think you are unable to answer my first question because you profess to believe that life (the mysterious common ancestor) spontaneously sprang from non-life" This is not what I meant. I think that what we call non-life gradually evolved into what we call life, SPRANG, you say. I don't think that the verb "to spring" fits a progressive change spreading over a billion years. Perhaps this is the source of your skepticism.
2) Is the process of evolution "driven" in such a way that its effects always "appear to be clever"?
The systematic dispatching of its errors and the systematic selecting of whatever works is called cleverness when it's virtually carried out. But stupidity when it's Actually carried out.
Let's just say that it's very easy to forget how much time was in effect required for evolution to lead to something like a vertebrate, or like the human eye. The steps are so small and so numerous, we often can't imagine they were there at all. It's very human to think evolution is clever, since its waste basket is hidden to us, hidden to our very imagination.
Cheers.
edward long 100+
Gabo Moreno 100+
The name of that common ancestor is Trichituercas. I know, I know. But you shall now understand why Gerald would not give you a name. Not a very nice one this name. I blushed when I wrote it.
Evolutionary design. Well. the designer is natural processes themselves. The distinction from human designs is that there is no thinking in the process, but designs are attained by how nature works. I know, design implies purpose. But that is a very narrow definition of design. Since you like some pretty struck definitions of terms, think about the word design here as a metaphor for lack of a more appropriate word. Feel free to suggest a word though. Maybe we went for the metaphor because our vocabularies are too limited.
Best!
edward long 100+
"there is no thinking in the process"-- May I immortalize those words in a bumper sticker?: EVOLUTION IS THOUGHTLESS!. Design implies non-chaotic. Is evolution chaotic?
We Homo Sapiens are all one big family.
Gabo Moreno 100+
I have to correct you on a few things:
1. The hypothesis of universal common ancestry (I dot think it is a theory) is that all life comes from a single ancestral form. It does not say anywhere that there was "ABSOLUTELY" a prototype life form from which everything on Earth is descended. It is obvious that what we would say is that the boundaries between life and no-life are not clear today, would have been even less clear back when life was just starting. Regardless again, all life forms today might be descendants of a single life form in the past. However, what is incontrovertible, is that we share ancestry with many other life forms. Example, we can't deny common ancestry with the rest of the apes, nor with the rest of primotes, nor with ... perhaps quite clearly and undeniable up to all vertebrates. Further back it's quite possible and reasonable, but not as clear cut undeniable for technical and philosophical details that I don't have time to talk about.
2. Nowhere have I read that there was ABSOLUTELY no prototype (first) life form. Actually, it was most probably a mess of "prototypes."
3. Your breaking the law of non-contradiction is nothing but your own fabrication. Kind of a straw man. You can notice that if you read your own words then try and find them in any scientific explanation about life, common ancestry, and origin of life. I doubt you will find the word "ABSOLUTELY" there. Also, you are missing and matching ideas such as universal common ancestry, and first life form. Universal common ancestry might lead to one life form long ago in the past. But not necessarily to the first life forms ever to exist. Thus, origin of life and universal common ancestry are separate magisteria.
I hope that helps. remember, if you want to know about science, read science, not creationist propaganda.
edward long 100+
Gerald O'brian 50+
The statement that every living thing is descended from a common ancestor is true.
AND the statement that there is no such thing as a "first" living organism is true as well.
THe word "life" is not helpfull sometimes. We tend to forget that there is nothing chemically unusual about animals. There was no moment in history when life suddenly arose from chemistry.
There is a continuum between the big bang and mole-rats.
So the contradiction comes from the words, really. "Life" is not something with special properties.
"a common ancestor pair who were the first male Hominidae and the first female Hominidae"
I agree that we should have names for things around us, for the sake of understand each other. But names are just names. And "the first hominidae" doesn't mean anything. This is not how evolution works.
Go back in time and try to pinpoint the "first hominidae". You'll have a hard time doing so, because you'll always find that the "first hominidae" looked very much like its mom and dad, and was definitely part of the same species as them.
On a rainbow, where does orange become yellow, exactly?
Names are just names.
Gerald O'brian 50+
Brother and sister? Or did the couple evolve separately?
Warning, trick question.
Gabo Moreno 100+
As much as for those who understand science would find your question obviously flawed, the little and completely misinformed understanding of evolution, as propagated by creationist propaganda, makes many creationists actually think that this question you make is a valid question.
Gabo Moreno 100+
No contradiction again. The first life form is not necessarily the common ancestor. If there is universal common ancestor for all life (Trichituercas-but keep the secret), it does not follow that such universal common ancestor is the first life form (Uh-kuk-baram-balam). As I said too, first life form will be an elusive concept because the "boundaries" between life-non-life must have been looser back in the day than today.
There is no first Homo sapiens in the sense that it should be hard to pinpoint an exact individual that we could clearly say this is the first. Why? Because the changes from one generation to another are imperceptible. It would be as if we started with English of several centuries ago and wanted to know where exactly did the first person start talking nowadays English. It's blurred, and thus the boundary would be somewhat diffuse. (Oh, I see that Gerald already answered.)
Of course there's no thinking in evolution. But if you are interested, people have put together something called "genetic algorithms" which can solve problems, and "design" things such as circuits that people have been unable to solve/design, by using rounds of random mutations, selection, and reproduction often with recombination. The end products are often hard to understand. They solve the problems in non-obvious ways. But they work. So, that's how evolved stuff looks "designed:" rounds of random events combined with selection, and reproduction often with recombination. As you might notice now, that a component or event in a process is somewhat random does not mean that the whole process is chaotic.
When I talk about creationist propaganda, I mean creationist propaganda. I don't think that all creationism is propaganda. It might be all false, but propaganda is distinguished by the intention to mislead. Such is the case for those creationist quacks who misteach you evolution and science.
Be well.
edward long 100+
Oh, I couldn't agree more Gabo, that evolution is blurred and diffused.
I apologize for accusing you of generalizing that all of Creationism is propaganda. Which parts of it do you consider to be simply false, but not propaganda?
There are TWO possible truths regarding cosmogony, not just one. One includes God, the other denies God. Nothing Science has discovered is at variance with the Biblical statement, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the Earth." Allow for Faith Gabo.
Gabo Moreno 100+
Creationism is false in that, not only it proposes that the whole enchilada is the creation of some god(s), but adjudicates the creation to particular myths. Most of these myths are evidently nonsensical, thus false.
As for possibilities, there are many. Not just two. You have to count the many many myths, plus the many possibilities for natural origins to the universe and everything (42). While today the prevalent theory goes to a Big Bang, it might not be so. This is still a hot debate among physicists. I don't know what version of your preferred myth you hold to. Thus, I can't start to tell you how science contradicts such version. But it is evidently false that there are only two possibilities for cosmology. For myths the Aztec one is pretty cool.
edward long 100+
Gabo Moreno 100+
R H 20+
Gerald O'brian 50+
radu saritsk
R H 20+