The Mysterious Downfall of the Neandertals: Scientific American

The Mysterious Downfall of the Neandertals: Scientific American: "Research led by Rachel Caspari of Central Michigan University has shown that around 30,000 years ago, the number of modern humans who lived to be old enough to be grandparents began to skyrocket. Exactly what spurred this increase in longevity is uncertain, but the change had two key consequences. First, people had more reproductive years, thus increasing their fertility potential. Second, they had more time over which to acquire specialized knowledge and pass it on to the next generation—where to find drinking water in times of drought, for instance. “Long-term survivorship gives the potential for bigger social networks and greater knowledge stores,” Stringer comments. Among the shorter-lived Neandertals, in contrast, knowledge was more likely to disappear, he surmises."

And of course the old farts became shamans and invented religion to provide them with a livelihood. They couldn't hunt or gather any more, but they could demand a sacrifice to God who provided all the lore that made the hunt successful. Then anything that God didn't eat they did.

The Mysterious Downfall of the Neandertals: Scientific American

The Mysterious Downfall of the Neandertals: Scientific American:
"Stringer, for his part, theorizes that the moderns’ somewhat wider range of cultural adaptations provided a slightly superior buffer against hard times. For example, needles left behind by modern humans hint that they had tailored clothing and tents, all the better for keeping the cold at bay. Neandertals, meanwhile, left behind no such signs of sewing and are believed by some to have had more crudely assembled apparel and shelters as a result."

Did Omar the tent maker out compete Nimrod the mighty Hunter? It was cold out there in 36000 BC, was portable warmth the deciding factor? Hard to tell, but an interesting theory.

Ring speciation in humans?

Beliefnet Community > Thread - Evolution: Objective Science or Sociological Science?:

If evolutionism is real then the human split has already begun.

It has, it just does not happen on racial lines. Believers tend to mate with other believers, and rational thinkers tend to mate with rational thinkers in ways that transcend traditional racial lines. Frequently 'interracial' couples whatever the hell that means, are both intelligent, think beyond stereotypes, and are looking for a partner that thinks like they do, and can keep up with them in the intelligent thinking department. But similar ethnicity couples may use the same criteria, and just happened to find a partner that looked like a neighbor. But the evolutionary split is the same in either case. Again, I am not making a value judgment that one group is an evolutionary dead end, available evidence says that believers are holding their own. But the ring speciation seems to have begun. Interbreeding is rare.

It will be interesting to see if the Abrahamic believers in particular with their denigration of half of their species as less than the other half will be able to continue to hold their own. The other variable that will certainly affect the outcome is the internet. Unrestricted and uninterpreted availability of information on all matters including those of faith should be fatal to the stranglehold the priesthood has on believers. Whether their God can salvage the belief system will be an interesting evolutionary data point both on the viability of faith based social systems and on the existence and power of God.

Are Dog Breeds Actually Different Species?: Scientific American

Are Dog Breeds Actually Different Species?: Scientific American: "Amazingly, right now Chihuahuas are still considered C. lupus familiaris, a subspecies of wolf. And calling a Chihuahua a wolf is like calling someone at the Discovery Institute a scientist."

Not a bad idea. I have always thought of the working breeds a different species from the lap dogs, the breeding barrier being the matron who wouldn't let her beloved fluffy out of his upholstered carrier long enough to sniff a working breed. The question of hunting vs herding dogs is a bit more difficult, but again I would argue that temperament population isolation due to work environment would qualify them for speciation.

Abiogenesis

Chemist Shows How RNA Can Be the Starting Point for Life - NYTimes.com:

"An English chemist has found the hidden gateway to the RNA world, the chemical milieu from which the first forms of life are thought to have emerged on earth some 3.8 billion years ago.

He has solved a problem that for 20 years has thwarted researchers trying to understand the origin of life — how the building blocks of RNA, called nucleotides, could have spontaneously assembled themselves in the conditions of the primitive earth. The discovery, if correct, should set researchers on the right track to solving many other mysteries about the origin of life. It will also mean that for the first time a plausible explanation exists for how an information-carrying biological molecule could have emerged through natural processes from chemicals on the primitive earth.

The author, John D. Sutherland, a chemist at the University of Manchester, likened his work to a crossword puzzle in which doing the first clues makes the others easier."

I like his theory as it takes place in the warm puddles that life like us should start in. The high energy source is UV rather than geothermal which again makes more sense for surface life. A major step in the right direction as it gives a plausible pathway to RNA.

The purpose of Death.

Beliefnet Community > Thread - Evolution makes no sense.:
"Death is Nature's way of telling you you flunked out."

Is Evolution a Science?

Thread - Is Evolution a Science?:

"Evolution is alive and well for humans, it just doesn't involve physical survival to breed anymore. It is a given in a modern technological society that mortality prior to adulthood is minimal, and evolution is focused on how adults are able to cope with living in that modern technological society. Numbers are no longer a measure of fitness, indeed out breeding resources without the technology to manage those resources is evidence of lack of fitness for survival in a modern society and the results speak for themselves. The wars and genocides in Africa and the Middle East and the slaughter of millions of citizens by modern despots while deplorable, can be thought of as evolution in action. Evolution has never been kind to the less fit by whatever standard species fitness is determined.

Evolution is occurring in Bangalore, Shanghai, parts of the US and a few other areas of the planet. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out over the next few generations. I suspect that those parts of the US where creationism is taught in science class, will find themselves among the unfit. The country is rich enough and benevolent enough to provide all with a couch and a TV to keep them off the streets, but it will be interesting to see if their religion provides them with meaning and purpose to get off the couch even to breed."

Evolution like economics is a dismal science.

YEC vs Homo Sapiens.

Thread - where is the apeman??

From Ken : "Young Earth Creationists don't belong to the species Homo sapiens. They believe they were created from 'the dust of the ground' about six thousand years ago. If they're right, they can't be related to those of us who evolved from countless generations of animals during millions upon millions of years. We're Homo sapiens. They're a kind of pottery."

Pharyngula: Chemical replicators

Pharyngula: Chemical replicators: "We're one step closer to self-sustaining chemical replicators, similar to what would have existed a few billion years ago, before true cells evolved. Lincoln and Joyce have created a couple of relatively simple molecules that assemble themselves from even simpler precursors in a test"

J'C: A really cool experiment that shows how early RNA type chemical replicators may have come about. I loved their comment on why not now?

The world around us is swarming with the ravenous, finely-honed products of billions of years of evolution, creatures like bacteria, that would readily swoop down on any accumulation of nucleotides and consume them before these kinds of reactions could even start.

Is tribal morality an evolutionary selection parameter?

A question on morality :

"It is hard to say anything is wrong in an evolutionary sense, since either it will work and the species will flourish, or it won't and the species will die out. For social animals the situation becomes more complicated as the evolutionary unit seems to be the herd, pack, or in the case of humans, tribe, village, or parish. From an evolutionary standpoint that which enhances the survivability of the tribe, becomes good, or if you will, evolutionarily favorable.

Morality, that is compliance with the rules and customs of social interaction of the tribe becomes simply another evolutionary selection parameter. Tribes with functional morals survive, those with dysfunctional morals die out.

The main advantage of God is that Hesh conserves (ossifies) moral systems that helped the particular tribe flourish under a certain set of conditions. As long as conditions don't change much and the tribe flourishes under those conditions, one can say that God based morality is an evolutionary advantage.

I can't think of conditions that would favor a child torturing tribe, but under conditions that favor properly nurtured and highly educated adults, if the torturers had to compete for resources with tribes that didn't torture their children I predict they would lose out in a few generations.

It seems to me that such an evolutionary situation is playing out right now in the treatment of women in society. Some tribes are systematically removing half their population from the knowledge based competition for intellectual property. (Some tribes seem to be eliminating their entire population from this competition, but that is a different issue.) It will be interesting to see whether these tribes are able to compete in the cosmopolitan world that seems to be the evolutionary niche humans are beginning to occupy.

Survival

Human Dignity, Good and Evil - Beliefnet Forums:

The desire to survive is a sentiment.

The genes to compel survival are dominant and active in all animals including humans that are alive today. From the single celled amoeba to those miraculous culminations of all those evolutionary selection activities, my grandsons, the compulsion to eat and breathe, and

Run and find out (thanks Ricki-Ticki-Tavi)

in other words survive in the modern world, is alive and well and involves no sentiment at all."

Evolutionary success

Pet ownership an affront to Islam - Beliefnet Forums: "Numbers don't necessarily count for evolutionary success, see the buffalo, the passenger pigeon. or the dodo. It will be interesting to see what happens to the Islamic world when the oil money runs out. Just as it will be interesting to see what will happen to the religious right when their political power runs out. Their base is the poorest, the fattest, and the least educated in the US. In evolutionary terms success in measured in generations, fecundity is of course significant, but success in the modern world is measured in intellectual property, and using it effectively. It will be interesting to see how home schooling and Bible Colleges compete for the jobs at the next Google."

Purpose in Life.

Looking for an Atheist - Beliefnet Forums:

Is it simply for the biological purpose of continuing the species?

This is a major misunderstanding of evolution and the universe in general. Biology has no purpose and neither does evolution. Evolution is just another scientific law. You put sodium and chlorine together you get salt. Not because somebody needs salt, or finds sodium or chlorine dangerous they are simply more stable as salt than separate. A species that is effective in filling an ecological niche has no purpose in filling the niche, but is a stable solution. The fact that filling the niche well increases the welfare and continuation of the species is a result not a purpose.

I have to find some other purpose in life than continuing the species because frankly a large part of my species is not worth continuing. Therefore I find purpose starting very locally. There are people whose welfare is integral with my own. They provide me with the intellectual challenge, love, sustenance and fun that makes my life worth living. By making my purpose to provide the same for those others I get a nice feedback loop that increases worth of all our lives. Although this starts locally, as one recognizes the importance of people outside of the face group ones purpose must expand as well to take into account the larger world one is a part of.

Evolution and the God Gene

The Atheist Test - Beliefnet Forums: "The elimination of the God Gene is clear evidence of modern evolution. Prior to the 18th century it was almost impossible to survive in western society without this adaptation to living in a church dominated culture. With the Enlightenment, those without the God gene who were able to think for themselves about important social and political issues prospered and in many areas of Europe and the US have become dominant in the society."

"Reason" to be Proud.

Intuitive vs. Rational thinking - Beliefnet Forums: "It is our ability to reason that is our major evolutionary advantage over animals that are instinctively more vicious, stronger, faster, and more agile than we are."

Evolutionary analysis of Romeo and Juliet

Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion pp 221-222 brilliantly uses the entire play as an extended metaphor for the "misapplication" of genetic drives of lust, in group altruism, xenophobia, and charity. He explains both the play and evolutionary drives succinctly, and understandably. Incredibly well done!!!

The God gene. How long to extinction.

The God gene causes behavior like basing education including science education on bronze age mythology and keeping the female half of the population in uneducated sexual slavery. In some parts of the world the gene is so dominant that they have to recruit those without it to build infrastructure, provide their transportation, and market their products. How long will this gene last in the human pool? Since warfare between God followers is all too common, my guess is very few generations.
Big Big problem for Evo's - Beliefnet Forums: "Beliefnet Forums > INTERESTS & TOPICS > Science & Religion > Origins of Life > Big Big problem for Evo's"