October 2009. A few weeks ago, a Jehovah's Witness rang our door bell. At one point in the ensuing conversation, I told him that he was welcome to fit God into evolution if he wished to, but he had to accept the fact that scientific evidence proves conclusively certain Biblical events were pure fiction. He naively said “But evolution is just a theory”. I explained to him that evolution has long been an accepted scientific fact. DNA; and particularly RNA; along with other biological avenues of conclusive evidence, have mapped the tree of life and the relationships of all life on the planet from at least three separate forms of confirming evidence. He said “Why is it called a theory then?” I have to admit that I laughed out loud and said “You really don’t know anything about science, do you?” I tried to explain what 'theory' meant in terms of science and referred him to the Oxford English Dictionary so he could review the various meanings of the word. For the uninformed, the word ‘theory’ doesn’t just mean ‘unproven hypothesis’; it can, and in the case of evolution, it does, also mean “…a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment, and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts; a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or observed.” (OED – cited on p.9 of Richard Dawkins new book, reviewed below). What was theory (a hypothesis) in Darwin’s day has been confirmed as indisputable fact in our day.

The problem is that many people learn to believe in something and never keep up with the latest scientific evidence concerning aspects which may offend that belief. The fact is that evolution is a scientific fact. I am no expert in this area but I have studied it extensively in order to try and understand what we do know. Luckily, amongst all the material available, a new book has finally been written by Richard Dawkins which I highly recommend to everyone who has any interest in evolution. Although some of Richard’s earlier work is deeper and can be hard going for the casual reader, his new book effectively fills the ‘gap’ in the market for an up-to-date and simple to understand explanation as to why evolution is a fact. It is absolutely brilliantly written and easy to understand. You cannot put it down. It is the ultimate thriller and the outcome is that the reader obtains a clear understanding of the unassailable truth concerning evolution as a fact.

The book is called “The Greatest Show on Earth” with the sub-title “The Evidence for Evolution”. It is published by Random House (Bantam Press - Transworld Publishers). ISBN numbers are: 9780593061732 (cased) and 9780593061749 (tpb).

Richard wrote the book when he realised that “the evidence for evolution itself was nowhere explicitly set out, and this was a serious gap that I needed to close.” (Preface vii).

 “The Archbishop of Canterbury has no problem with evolution, nor does the Pope (give or take the odd wobble over the precise palaeontological juncture when the human soul was injected), nor do educated priests or professors of theology.” (p6).

“Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact. The evidence for evolution is at least as strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, even allowing for eye witnesses to the Holocaust. It is the plain truth that we are cousins of chimpanzees, somewhat more distant cousins of monkeys, more distant cousins still of aardvarks and manatees, yet more distant cousins of bananas and turnips… continue the list as long as desired. That didn’t have to be true. It is not self-evidently, tautologically, obviously true, and there was a time when most people, even educated people, thought it wasn’t. It didn’t have to be true, but it is. We know this because a rising flood of evidence supports it. Evolution is a fact, and this book will demonstrate it. No reputable scientist disputes it, and no unbiased reader will close this book doubting it.” (pp.8-9).

“Biologists often make a distinction between the fact of evolution (all living things are cousins), and the theory of what drives it (they usually mean natural selection), and they may contrast it with rival theories such as Lamarck’s theory of ‘use and disuse’ and the ‘inheritance of acquired characteristics’). But Darwin himself thought of both as theories in the tentative, hypothetical, conjectural sense. This was because, in those days, the available evidence was less compelling and it was still possible for reputable scientists to dispute both evolution and natural selection. Nowadays it is no longer possible to dispute the fact of evolution itself – it has graduated to become a theorum [Dawkin’s unique spelling used to establish a specific point throughout the book – explained elsewhere in his text] or obviously supported fact – but it could still (just) be doubted that natural selection is its major driving force. (p.17. Emphasis in original).

If you do not believe evolution is a fact – read Dawkin's book and you will be left in no doubt that the evidence is in and that evolution is indeed a fact. If you are already convinced, then his book will explain why and also how it is now known to be a fact. I recommend Richard Dawkins new book to everyone who has any interest in evolution.

Likewise, if you are a Mormon and do not yet believe that the Church is not true, my books will leave you in no doubt that the whole thing was a hoax. The evidence is in and the Mormon conspiracy to deceive is a fact. If you are already convinced, then my work will explain why and also how the hoax was established and the conspiracy perpetuated.

____________________

February 2009. Following the example of author, Richard Dawkins, I registered as a "Bright" on the internet. A "Bright" is a person who has a naturalistic worldview, free of supernatural and mystical elements.

You can check out the Brights web site here: BRIGHTS

To me, science & DNA support atheism as the only plausible reality. 

I actually hope I am wrong and that there is a God.

The one thing I am certain of, is that if there is a creative power;

He, She, They or It, is definately not the Mormon version.

God or Not, We Know Where We Came From

The  following  is  a  short  synopsis  of  just some of the main ‘characters’ in the history of mankind. It is by no means meant to be a complete or totally definitive view, rather a brief summary or thumbnail sketch of some of the background and forerunners of mankind. For a complete, simple and easy to understand overview of the full history of mankind, I strongly recommend the superbly illustrated, Human Origins, The Story of our Species by Yves Coppens, from which most of the following notes on mankind are summarised. There are many good books on the history of the Earth of course; and again, an easy to read and superbly illustrated version is Earth, The Definitive Guide published in 2003 by Dorling Kindersley Ltd., from which the following notes relating to the Earth are summarised.

You can make our current knowledge fit any religious or scientific view; there is no conflict to the rational thinker. However, these are not speculative notes either; they make up the most recent position taken from scientifically proven evidence of what is the case. The actual point of this is that modern mankind (and therefore Adam) is at least 40,000 years old (unless, as some people suppose, Adam entered an already existing race); and that Smith’s rocks could not have been Adam’s altar. I have tried to write this simply and make it easily readable, for those who may have no detailed knowledge of this area.

I will start with what happened before life appeared on the earth. It has only been within the last fifty years that the current accuracy of dating the Earth has been established and in the last twenty or so years that enough discoveries have been made to allow us to see a more complete picture of mankind than ever before, at last putting an end to the myths and contentious suppositions of the past. DNA and RNA have completed a basic picuture of the "tree of life".

People who still believe God created man in his own image and placed him on an empty earth in modern human form may decry the idea that DNA and particularly RNA now complete the jigsaw puzzle of life. Most probably have no idea that the phylogenetic tree of life can be confirmed from any discipline; comparative anatomy, embryology, developmental genetics, mutation studies, evolutionary ecology, population & quantitative genetics, transmission genetics… even palaeontology.

You can make an embryological assessment of all the organisms and construct a tree of life based on their evolution. You can do the same thing with genetics or comparative anatomy. They all line up correctly.

“Basically, organisms develop in a very specific way according to thousands of factors which allow their development to be examined, and placed on a phylogenetic tree.”

“Evolution unites all the disciplines as well as having useful applications in medicine and other fields.”

“Trees constructed from every gene in every organism on the planet all yield the same result… independently. Every single one!”

See: Proof of Evolution Part 2. (Summation). Don Exodus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CvX_mD5weM&feature=related

Life first appeared and evolved on our planet many millions of years after the planet itself had evolved sufficiently to actually produce and sustain life. Our own galaxy (the Milky Way) probably formed about 10,000 - 11,000 million years ago. Within our galaxy (cutting a very long story short), a nebula (a clump of gas and dust) began to condense into what became our solar system, some 4,560 million years ago. An object the size of Mars later collided with Earth around 4,500 million years ago, the debris from which, held by the Earth’s gravity; cooled and coalesced, ultimately forming a satellite that we call the moon. The intense bombardment that is still visible on the moons surface, which continued for 600 million years, continued more so on earth of course due to its size. The reason we cannot readily see it now is simply that the earth is covered with water and vegetation, whereas the moon has not significantly changed in its overall appearance since that time. Conglomerate rocks dated to 3,800 million years ago, show that the atmosphere and the oceans formed on earth at that time, thus hiding much of the visible evidence which would otherwise look similar to that which we still see on the surface of the moon.

Update note: 26 January 2009 - New Scientist. “A SPECK of the mineral zircon that's older than any yet found on Earth has been recovered from a rock sample brought back by Apollo 17 astronauts. The grain has helped pinpoint the age at which the molten moon solidified … is 4.42 billion years old, and came from the lunar highlands. …The moon is thought to have formed from debris ejected by a giant impact between Earth and a smaller body between 10 and 100 million years after the formation of the solar system, 4.57 billion years ago. Taylor reckons the lunar crust formed within 90 million years of the impact, which tallies well with the age of the zircon.”

The earliest evidence for life on Earth, which dates from about 3,800 million years ago, comes from hydrocarbon residues in metamorphosed sedimentary rocks in Greenland. By 3,460 million years ago, microbial photosynthesisers in warm shallow waters formed mounds known as stromatolites, while other microbes lived off chemicals generated by submarine hot springs. Chemical fossils suggest that the first eukaryotes (organisms with relatively complex cells that contain a nucleus) appeared about 2,700 million years ago, but the first direct fossil evidence for their existence does not appear until 2,200 million years ago from coiled filamentous microfossils called Grypania, found in Michigan, USA.

Subsequently, multicellular life existed 2,200 million years ago and red alga called Bangiomorpha existed 1,200 million years ago. By 1,000 million years ago, towards the end of the Proterozoic era, following a prolonged evolutionary gestation, the “big bang” of eukaryotic gestation had started. Evidence of the evolution of multicellular organisms with sexual reproduction (evidence of fossilised embryos have been found in China dating from about 600 million years ago) paved the way for larger and more diverse organisms. By 580 million years ago the first large animal fossils (known as Ediacarans) appear, followed by the first shelled animals, Cloudina, in 555-million-year-old marine sediments from Namibia.

Shark fossils date to 355 million years ago but it is thought they may actually have been in existence up to 528 million years ago. For 150 million years, from the late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous, terrestrial life was dominated by reptiles. There were over 900 genera in the group known as dinosaurs alone. Some 50% of all species and 90% of all life died out at the end of the Cretaceous in an event known as the K-T extinction event. This coincided with the impact of a huge meteorite in the Caribbean sea and the Deccan lava eruptions 650 million years ago. Effectively life, to a large degree, started again after this.

We now know and it is scientifically proven that the first true mammals appeared some 70 million years ago. After the great saurians became extinct, the mammals took over the ecosystem. They evolved and diversified. The first bipeds came about between 7 and 4.5 million years ago. Then 4.5 to 2.5 million years ago, several groups of hominids, collectively known as Australopithecus spread from Chad to southern Africa, scattered across three regions. Australopithecines were not just represented by A. aferensis, as in this period there were at least five related species. It is most likely that A. anamesis is the prime candidate for the title of our true ancestor.

The first “representative” of the human race, a new hominid, was Homo Habilis - (the handyman) the first toolmaker, some 2.5 million years ago. He was still much unlike us but he had a much larger brain than previous bipeds and used it to advantage. They were nomads wandering the savannah in groups. They had the ability to think and made shelters from large stones and branches between 1.8 and 1.3 million years ago. If Adam was the first of this race, unfortunately he lived in Africa and did not look much like us. If he arrived then and was in the image of God, then God also looks nothing like us; so if you are prone to imagine God actually looks white and like us, perhaps Adam came along somewhat later.

Homo Ergaster came on the scene around 2 million years ago. Hunter - gathers, they migrated and roamed the world. They stood tall and had a wider range of tools. Clearly a more likely candidate to include Adam, as no doubt they were in what we now know as the Americas, but again, facially very unlike today’s humans. H. ergaster enjoyed unparalleled thinking power and fresh neural networks arose, developing specific zones of the brain, such as those associated with language. Their brain capacity of 55 cubic inches (900 cm³) was almost as much as some modern H. sapiens. With other developments they became the beginnings of society. Was this the time of Adam? They were still quite ugly compared to modern man but quickly gaining intelligence.

Homo erectus (man on the move) had not only learned to walk upright, he had learned to think and organise. He lived from about 1.5 million years ago, mastering fire about 500,000 years ago. This led to cooking and inevitably to the further evolvement of the brain and their society. Closer in resemblance to modern man, but with still a long way to go, they had brains twice the size of their cousins, the great apes. Their height was about 5’ 3” - 5’ 9”, almost the same as us. Along with the brain, the larynx and other developments took place; such as the vocal chords and the ability to sweat, meaning man no longer had to breathe by panting, which meant a coherent set of sounds could evolve which would be the forerunner of speech. Adam would have looked a bit more human now but probably had to wait to arrive when speech would be properly formed and man could reason more.

Neanderthal man (homo neanderthalensis) 200,000 - 40,000 years ago, was not as some still seem to believe, a forerunner of homo sapiens. Indeed it is now clear that there have been several species of essentially what are termed homo erectus - those who stand on two feet. For many years, Neanderthals and H. sapiens lived side by side. There is little if any conclusive evidence that they ever interbred. A child found in a Portuguese cave showing signs of both Neanderthal and H. sapiens characteristics is perhaps all there is to date. We do know however that they co-habited the planet for a long time.

Considered for years to be ancient brutes, we later discovered that Neanderthals actually had quite modern brains, although they looked somewhat different to us facially. In the opinion of some palaeoanthropoligists, the Neanderthals descended from populations of H. habilis, or at a later period from H. erectus who arrived in Europe prior to 1 million years ago. Neanderthals were apparently well adapted to colder or even freezing climates. As they appeared to not easily technologically adapt to climatic changes that created a warmer environment, they became isolated into restricted geographical zones, mainly in Europe and were in competition with H. sapiens for territory and natural resources. H. sapiens were technologically more advanced and eventually and inevitably Neanderthals, who could not easily adapt to change, reduced in number and finally died out completely around 25,000 years ago. The process took many thousands of years.

Neandethals coexisted with H. sapiens. Homo sapiens (which means “The Wise One”) appeared some 200,000 years ago.  Between 100,000 and 30,000 years ago they were migrating across the planet and some 40,000 years ago this new type of human appeared in Europe before rapidly inhabiting the globe. Often referred to as Cro-Magnon man, whether originating from Africa or the Middle East, this new actor appearing on the stage of human history would inherit the earth. If not appearing before; Adam would surely have had to have been the first of these people who were essentially; us.

The upper Palaeolithic, from 40,000 years ago was the beginning of a period dominated by innovation, either technical or cultural. When he arrived in Europe some 40,000 years ago, this ‘anatomically modern Man’ as he is described scientifically, was very different from the native Neanderthals. His unique skull was somewhat rounded with a vast cranial capacity averaging around 88 cubic inches (1450 cm³) but sometimes as large as 122 cubic inches (2000 cm³). The evolutionary developments between the skulls of archaic and modern H. sapiens took place very quickly, that is over only 100,000 years. The skeleton of H. sapiens also acquired a more gracile form, especially the legs which were proportionally longer and less bandy. H. sapiens walked with the flat of his foot on the ground and therefore more efficiently. His arms were longer in proportion. This streamlining gave better balance, as the centre of gravity of his body was now measurably closer to the axis of his spine.

There were many “eras” during the last 40,000 years and such things as the first musical instruments date back 45,000 or even 60,000 years in Central Europe. Art and religious ritual developed. Cave art over a 25,000 year period suggests strong links between populations and a structured and defined means of communicating knowledge, myths and representations of the world, based on some form of religion.

Yves Coppens says “One of man’s innate characteristics is spirituality. He could visualise an afterlife, ceremonially daubed cadavers with red ochre (the colour of blood, i.e. life) and arrayed them with jewels, rather than leave them to the mercy of carnivores. He was able to portray symbolically the relations between men and animals and idealise those of man and woman. These activities reveal mental and psychical processes unique in the story of life on Earth.”

Whilst researching details about a different subject, I came across the following:

Visit:  TMD BOOK STORE