People with higher IQs are less likely to believe in God, according to a new study.

TeaTreeOil said:

FLoJo, oh, so a missing link like... say... a walking fish?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_fish

Yes, those exist.

Or a fox bat, because foxes evolved from bats:

http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=fox+bat&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

How do we know this? Because one exists in fossil records while another doesn't.

It's not perfect, but far from illogical.

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like i said, i believe in environmental evolution, adapting to conditions in the ecosystem.. but trying to say that people evolved from monkies who evolved from this and that that evolved from the walking fish, which evolved from the shrimp in the ocean and an amoeba on the ocean floor is ludicrous my friend, just ludicrous.. if darwin discounted his own theory before he died who are you to say he was correct?

anyways can we stick to religion, ill debate evolution with you on another thread

Chimpanzees are so closely related to humans that they should properly be considered as members of the human family, according to new genetic research.

We shared a common ancestor many millions of years ago

Scientists from the Wayne State University, School of Medicine, Detroit, US, examined key genes in humans and several ape species and found our "life code" to be 99.4% the same as chimps.
They propose moving common chimps and another very closely related ape, bonobos, into the genus, Homo, the taxonomic grouping researchers use to classify people in the animal kingdom.
Humans, or Homo sapiens to give the species its scientific name, are the only living organism in the genus at the moment - although some extinct creatures such as Neanderthals (Homo Neanderthalis) also occupy the same grouping.
Six species
"Since people have been studying primate evolution, there's been this dichotomy between humans and the apes," said Dr Derek Wildman, who has published the findings of the genetic study with colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
"And so what we've shown is that humans and chimpanzees are actually more similar to each other than either is to any of the other apes," he told BBC News Online.
Modern genetic science offers researchers another way to establish the relationships between different species, by measuring the similarity of their DNA code.
It is a far cry from the traditional way of categorising organisms on the basis of what they look like, either live or in fossil form.
The Detroit team compared 97 important genes from six different species: humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans, Old World monkeys, and mice.
From this, the scientists constructed an evolutionary tree that measured the degree of relatedness among the organisms.
Horses and donkeys
According to this analysis, chimpanzees and humans occupy sister branches on a family tree, with 99.4% genetic similarity. Next on the tree are gorillas, then orang-utans, followed by Old World monkeys.
None of the primates were closely related to mice, which were used as a control.
Dr Wildman said: "You could say that humans and chimps are as similar to one another as say horses and donkeys.
"And there really isn't much evidence for them to be divergent at the family level, which would be something like the divergence between apes and monkeys.
"There has been this notion since Aristotle's time of this great chain of being with humans at the top and then less complex life at the bottom. But while that might seem intuitive to some people, it doesn't appear to be borne out by the data.
"There's been as much change on the lineage on the line leading to chimpanzees as there has been on the lineage to humans since they last shared a common ancestor around six million years ago."
Chimp troubles
The Detroit team says its work supports the idea that all living apes should occupy the higher taxonomic grouping Hominidae, and that three species be established under the Homo genus.
One would be Homo (Homo) sapiens, or humans; the second would be Homo (Pan) troglodytes, or common chimpanzees, and the third would be Homo (Pan) paniscus, or bonobos.
Not all scientists will accept the new classification.
Whereas Dr Wildman's team find that chimps and humans are 99.4% similar, other researchers last year put the similarity at around 95%; the figure you get depends on precisely which genetic differences you look at.
As to whether this will improve the lot of chimpanzees themselves, a spokeswoman for the conservation group the Jane Goodall Foundation was skeptical.
The problems of habitat loss and commercial bushmeat hunting would continue whatever genus we put them in, she said.


out.

Mice and men share about 97.5 per cent of their working DNA, just one per cent less than chimps and humans. The new estimate is based on the comparison of mouse chromosome 16 with human DNA. Previous estimates had suggested mouse-human differences as high as 15 per cent.
The new work suggests that neither genome has changed much since we shared a common ancestor 100 million years ago. "The differences are going to be few rather than many," says Richard Mural of Celera Genomics, the Maryland company that compared the mouse chromosome with human DNA.
"Perhaps 100 million years separating the two genomes is not long enough for wholesale rearrangement," says Mural, or conservation may be necessary to preserve essential functions.
However, Tim Hubbard, head of genome analysis at the Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK, is sceptical about the significance of the 2.5 per cent difference. He thinks that the genes might in fact all be identical and that differences between species might arise solely through divergence in the "regulatory regions" which switch other genes on and off.
Nonetheless, scientists are hopeful that the close match will enable researchers to unpick much more rapidly the genetic roots of human disease. By "knocking out" genes in mice using genetic engineering, they can learn the gene's function.
Doppelganger genes

Mural and his colleagues found chunk after chunk of matching DNA in mice and humans. Of the 731 genes they located on the mouse chromosome, only 14 did not have a doppelganger in humans. Likewise, there were only 21 genes in the corresponding regions of human DNA that did not turn up in the mouse.
Unlike its human genome sequence, Celera is publishing the mouse chromosome 16 data openly on the internet. But the remaining mouse data will require subscribers to pay to see it. "We've no real plans to publish anything more," says Mural.
A version of the mouse genome is already available free of charge on the internet, assembled by researchers at publicly-funded institutes around the world. The Sanger Institute is one of the participating institutes and Hubbard claims that the Celera data is inferior.
"We have fewer gaps, and overall our fragments are larger," he says. He dismisses the Celera paper as little more than a puff for the company: "It's a taster for what they are selling."

Journal reference: Science (vol 296, p 1661)




so i guess we are just like mice too? its all about how you measure the data.. scientists can show us to have over 90 percent genetic similarities with just about every species on the planet... maybe cuz we are all on the same planet?


its a bunch of pseudo scientific bullshit.. scientists believed the world was flat and that earth was the center of the universe at times too.... very wrong..



evolution cannot be proven, and we were never apes period.

No we were never apes but we did spring from a common ancestor. By the way I would have absolutely no problem if we were chimp like once. Who cares?

out.

Stoney McFried said:

I've tasted that apple. With respect, good works come from within a person, not an external entity.Your beliefs only apply to YOU, not anyone else.There is more than one path, and not everyone is on the same one.

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I can't disagree or argue with you. You are absolutely right.

I am going to UNSUBSCRIBE here, and move on. I actually started this on a different thread and will move it there to

https://www.rollitup.org/spirituality-sexuality-philosophy/171226-i-believe-god-he-real.html

Peace be with you

Yes yes, shuffle off.

out.

if you dont care then why do you keep trying to prove it?

i care because i think it downplays the importance of humanity by saying that we are nothing but animals.. we are spiritual beings which is why we have a drive to find a purpose in life and discover our roots and our future.. we are the only beings on this planet that operate on consciousness and not instinct.. if we are so close to apes came from them why are they not making works of expression through art and building temples and worshiping gods? because we evolve faster? i think not

no amount of evolution can create spirituality in my opinion, or free thinking. while we may still have similar traits like hair, walking on 2 legs, and we breathe air, that does not mean that we are the same.

again i say, i dont believe that we came from apes, i would think it would be more feasible to believe that apes descended from humans, and not the other way around.

i think that we were more spiritual at times, which is obvious in the beliefs and culture of ancient civilizations with their intense knowledge of celestial bodies and ceremonies of worship around them. i feel that with technology we have stopped looking at ourselves as beings, and started looking at ourselves as animals. we have progressed in technology but digressed in spirituality which is what makes us human in the first place.

Why does it downplay our importance? I certainly don't feel the heat from chimps...

out.

FLoJo said:

if you dont care then why do you keep trying to prove it?

i care because i think it downplays the importance of humanity by saying that we are nothing but animals.. we are spiritual beings which is why we have a drive to find a purpose in life and discover our roots and our future.. we are the only beings on this planet that operate on consciousness and not instinct.. if we are so close to apes came from them why are they not making works of expression through art and building temples and worshiping gods? because we evolve faster? i think not

no amount of evolution can create spirituality in my opinion, or free thinking. while we may still have similar traits like hair, walking on 2 legs, and we breathe air, that does not mean that we are the same.

again i say, i dont believe that we came from apes, i would think it would be more feasible to believe that apes descended from humans, and not the other way around.

i think that we were more spiritual at times, which is obvious in the beliefs and culture of ancient civilizations with their intense knowledge of celestial bodies and ceremonies of worship around them. i feel that with technology we have stopped looking at ourselves as beings, and started looking at ourselves as animals. we have progressed in technology but digressed in spirituality which is what makes us human in the first place.

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its all right there.. im not feeling the heat from chips, im feeling the heat from other humans who act like animals

Okay, I can repeat myself too Man and ape come from a common ancestor. Chimps didn't come from us and vice versa. I think you are getting a bit confused with that point. So man doesn't have instincts? uhhh.

out.

ok cracker, believe whatever you want its really no skin off my nuts, but i will never believe that man and chimp or any other animal had a common ancestor.. ill believe a desperate man fucked a monkey creature and made some chimps thats about it.

and i never said man didnt have instincts.. of course we have instincts, but we do not live by our instincts, we are capable of creativity and decision making and have a conscience, whereas animals live purely by their instincts. if animals had all this we would have deers painting picassos, chimps building skyscrapers, and fish preaching the gospel and birds coming up with new philosophy...

you will not convince me, your argument is redundant, and again this is a religious thread, if you wanna talk about evolution go start a thread, im done

FLo

We are also capable of tremendous cruelty, usually with a religious backdrop.

I'm not trying to convince you. You simply reject the science which you don't like while you take full advantage of the ones you do like. Lots of folks take that road.

out.

FLoJo said:

ill believe a desperate man fucked a monkey creature and made some chimps thats about it.

FLo

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Interesting. That would explain a lot.

So why aren't all humans the same? Different skin colors, different shapes, sizes, bone structures, etc.

So is one form of man then greater than the others? One is the most... what? Pure? Are you a bigot by any chance? Also, how long have you been a specist?

Do you idolize those who'd bring about genocide?

Actually, there is a place for evolution here.Most folks who reject religion lean toward evolution.We Evolutionists are representing the other side of the coin.Fair and balanced.

FLoJo said:

you will not convince me, your argument is redundant, and again this is a religious thread, if you wanna talk about evolution go start a thread, im done

FLo

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CrackerJax said:

We are also capable of tremendous cruelty, usually with a religious backdrop.

I'm not trying to convince you. You simply reject the science which you don't like while you take full advantage of the ones you do like. Lots of folks take that road.

out.

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right that is part of our conscious that allows us to be good and bad, do right or wrong... animals dont make that distinction, they go on instinct.

i dont reject the science i want, i accept it all, i just showed you an article that said we were 2.5 percent genetically different from mice. could it be because we, like everything living on this planet are carbon based life forms? why does it have to be that we had a common ancestor with primates? science only can theorize, they cannot prove it, and they dont have enough evidence to lean conclusively that way... and agin i bring up the point that darwin, who created the theory you preach, did not believe in it, and he spent his entire life studying it, yet you believe it because you read a few snippets on the net?


and TeaTree, like we were talking about, environmental adaptation, which is like evolution within a species as you know..

dark people are dark due to being on a continent with great exposure to the sun, and hotter climates, this goes on every side of the world, from africa, south america, asia etc.. people with fair skin are in typically colder, less harsh climates such as europe, russia and siberia, canada etc. they also tend to have thicker facial and body hair presumably to protect themselves from the elements makes sense considering even if a fair skinned person is in the sun, they will get dark.. people are of different shapes an sizes due to the same thing along with diets.. like they say you are what you eat, and your body reflects that .. again this is purely theory represented by various scientific research, but it makes a hell of a lot more sense than humans coming from monkeys...

and no, i am not a bigot, i am not a racist, i am not a specist.. why do you try to lash out at me? is it because you cannot debate the facts? are you getting frustrated? i believe that despite the changes and differences on the outside, humans are still spiritual beings operating in human vessels, and just because they may have evolved differently over time in different areas, doesnt make anyone any better or worse than another. all men are created equal

haha stoney, just like fox news.. well that is true. people are always searching for something to believe in. i myself am not religious, and have fairly radical beliefs if i laid them all out.. i also do not understand how people can believe in the theory of evolution in the sense of the origin of man and species.. i can understand how people can believe in environmental adaptation because it makes sense, but trying to link them all together just seems silly to me.

in the end people will believe what they want to believe until something better comes along. since we are all looking to believe in something, generally people will llook for something that goes along with their situation in life or lifestyle, not neccisarily the truth. people can theorise and throw scientific research at eachother back and forth but an infinite amount of arguements and debunks can be made to satisfy the other party.. in the end its all about personal choice and what rings true in the mind of the beholder.

Eskimos have darker skin. Native Americans are all darker skinned.

You're trying to create causation where there is merely some correlation.

As it seemed, both North and South America were all people of medium tone skin before Europeans came(Americans, Canadians, etc). But even within that common trait there are hundreds of sub traits that are all genetically spread. Native (blood) people from similar areas all look similar. It's not solely environmental. If you move to Africa you don't magically gain the genetic traits of dark skin and curly hair.

There's certainly no convincing anyone of evolution if they don't know some history.

White people are a minority in the world. They fled from Europe, and now are losing numbers once again in North America.

No one ever said evolution was a 'one way street'. That a species only evolves to greater and greater. It certainly can go both ways.

You seem like a specist, to me. http://www.reference.com/search?q=Specist

What do you think? Should all animals have equal rights? Does the inability for one to defend itself strip it of it's rights somehow?

correct but what you fail to take into account is the fact that with tectonic plate movements people became isolated over millions of years and continents drifted apart, so where they may have originally adapted for millions of years, is not the same as where they ended up millions of years later, and without intermixing the traits would remain fairly similar throughout extended periods of time. and of course if you move to africa you dont turn black and get curly hair but if you live in the deserts and savannas for millions of years you would... hell if you go there for a month you get a hellacious tan and people might think you are black lol

and no like i said we are beings, not animals, i think we are the rulers of this planet and at the top of the food chain and animals are below us.. sure there are animals on this planet that can potentially eat us, but there are none that can outsmart us which makes us dominant

I don't think you realize how slowly tectonic plates move.

Humans(homosapian) are only believed to be a few millions years old(Ethiopia skeleton). So Christianity has existed for .05% of humanities known existence. Amazingly over 99.95%(temporally) of all humans ever born over time have gone to hell because they have not accepted JC as their personal savior, been baptized, repented, or whatever.

The oldest found/known skeletal human remains in the Americas is about 14,000 years old according to this Nat Geo article: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/080903-oldest-skeletons.html

Evolution is a rapid process. You just can miss it easily... not even living for 100 years. Evolution is all around you. Viruses can evolve several times a year. The flu virus evolves yearly, and that's why people continue to get sick. They lack antibodies for the newly evolved forms. Where do all new diseases come from? Why do new species continue to be discovered? Why have we tracked the rise and fall of so many creatures though out numerous eras in history? From massive global extinctions to a planet once again vibrant with diverse life(and yet not the same exact life, curious, seems almost 'random').

Evolution is just as natural as gravity.

tea tree, you keep comparing apples to oranges. i dont think you know anything about how much i know.. i dont think you know how tectonic plates move, i can sit here and write pages about how the earth changes and evolves, how plates swallow each other over time, how life adapts in various forms.. you keep using things i agree with to try and compare it to your bottom line..

heres the bottom line, i already stated i believe in environmental adaptation which is what you keep talking about, yes it is as natural as gravity i agree. yes the earth constantly changes and creates unique ecosystems for various life forms to adapt at different rates of speed, but no matter what scientific bs you come up with and try to throw at me you cant sit here and try to tell me we evolved from apes..

if you are trying to say something else say it, if not hold your breath because scientists and researchers have been trying to prove it since darwin, and if they cant do it neither can you.

and as far as the christianity comment i donno where you were going with that because if you read my posts you will see i have stated i am not christian, i dont believe jesus is the end all be all, and i dont believe in a heaven or a hell.

and evolution is a slow process my friend.. natural evolution that is.
we humans tend to cause changes that are contrary to natural environments which can speed up the process of adaptation enormously.. and the flu virus does not evolve every year, if you believe that then you definitely buy into all the bs you read in natgeo and watch on the discovery channel (thats where most of your info sounds like its coming from) the flu virus is manipulated every year and the various viruses, enzymes, and chemicals that they put into flu vaccines causes it to adapt.. it was bioengeneered from the start.

you keep coming at me with the same stuff trying to manipulate the debate away from the core so this will be my last post.. i think you make a lot of good points but you need to look at what those points actuallly point to... and quit watching nat geo and discovery lol

later

FLo

So where did humans come from?

So you're a conspiracy theorist.

Calling it environmental adaptation is like calling a computer silicon. You're missing a lot of pieces.

Yes, many lifeforms share similar genes, while others do not. For instance similar genes are found even between the common house fly and humans.

If we did not come from apes, do we agree humans and apes share a common ancestor?
Humans and rabbits? Humans and lizards? Humans and fish?

If not apes, then from where did we originate?

You assume the virus is 'adapting' because of vaccines but can't see it mutating on it's own due to host immunity or any other reasons?

It all seems really short-sighted.

I see mutation(evolution) as a requirement for further existence due to corruption of host DNA over time.