someone argued this point to disprove evolution in humans

kraig26
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someone argued this point to disprove evolution in humans

they said that how can we evolve from apes into something that is innefficent at survival e.g walks upright easier to be preyed upon, no fur to keep warm.

 

I wanted to say "because we learned how to use tools and didnt need these things anymore" but he left. what would you guys of said?


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It's been a while, so anyone

It's been a while, so anyone correct me if I'm wrong.

I think that human ancestors, who lived on the plains, started walking upright so they could see further. That way they could avoid predators, and find prey.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.


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I would have said if apes

I would have said if apes were more efficient at survival than humans then the world would be full of apes, so obviously humans are more efficient..

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mindspread wrote: It's been

mindspread wrote:
It's been a while, so anyone correct me if I'm wrong. I think that human ancestors, who lived on the plains, started walking upright so they could see further. That way they could avoid predators, and find prey. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I would agree - I did a paper which touched upon this back in school.  As we moved from the trees to the savannah, we developed upright posture to peer over the tall grass in watch for predators.  This consequently permitted our hands to become more versatile, whereas before they were specialized for movement (swinging from trees or walking on all fours).  

If he really thinks apes are more "efficient" than humans, one is left to wonder who did god make in his image?

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From some really

From some really interesting books by paleoanthropologists Ian Tattersal and Jeffrey Schwartz I read that as forests shrunk, thinned and as the savannas of Africa developed, bipedalism helped in moving between patches of forest that the earliest bipeds still sheltered in. They and other s argue (in my amature opinion, convincingly) that the earliest bipedalists were still arborealists for a long time. Modern chimpanzees are capable of walking upright over short distances, and a greater need for this more efficient method of movement (over longer distances) brought about the change to exclusive bipedalism. Being able to see above the vegetation, as zarathustra says, would more than likely have been a part of it too.

The loss of fur and development of a taller more lanky stature was a *good* adaptation to the new savanna environment as the hominids needed to be able to disperse heat more efficiently. It's hardly a change that would make them less efficient at survival. The great migrations of ancient hominids to less hospitable environments like northern china would have only been possible with the invention of clothing and the development of tools.

This is just from what I've read, and what I find convincing. They may not be the most commonly held beliefs in the paleoanthropological community though.

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they said that how can we

they said that how can we evolve from apes into something that is innefficent at survival e.g walks upright easier to be preyed upon, no fur to keep warm.

 

He must be an idiot. Evolution pursues different paths of trait advantage. Every animal has some claim to fame that makes it more likely to survive.

 

 This argument is quite strange. It says that “well, humans have really poor noses and crappy eyesight compared to other animals, if evolution is survival of the fittest, shouldn’t that have been fixed”? Well, no actually. Evolution is the result of trade-offs. It takes a huge amount of free energy for evolution to go through the amount of trial and error to construct new mechanisms. Does a burrowing mole need vision? No. Are the pressures of natural selection going to give it vision? Will it give the mole an advantage? No. Evolution works with trade-offs. For instance, if you rip off a salamander’s leg, it will grow back. Deep within the active genetic code of the salamander, or indeed any amphibian, are twisting strands that encode for a protein cascade that will create a new leg. Evolution left us Mammals in the dark on that. Think about the priorities. Evolution is all about trade offs and compromises. A perfect organism cannot be built, after all, evolution is not a drive with foresight or design in mind, but rather survival. Pure probability and mathematics without marring, wholly uncaring and ruthless. This is what makes it so good at shaping life.

The example of amphibian regeneration is an example of such a trade-off. Mammals cannot do this. They cannot even regrow the tip of a finger if severed. Regeneration is an awesome biological feat that belongs to the amphibians. The reasons, when we think about it, are obvious. Take man for example. We have some patchy trauma responses given to us by evolution. In the event that a limb is severed, chances are that the Paleolithic man on the African Savannah would bleed to death. But if not, some ancient mechanisms kick in. Blood pressure lowers allowing the fibrin meshing to work it’s magic and patch the spurting arteries, body temperature lowers to keep metabolism low which prevents necrosis and apoptosis of cells starved for oxygen as blood is diverted to the most vital functions (hence the pale pallor of the face, skin is not important for the time being). In time, the wound heals and the skin grows around it, and a stump is formed. But why can we not regenerate the leg? For a mammal, the evolutionary-trade off would be too great a price. It would take utterly vast reserves of energy to do so, probably more than an animal in the Spartan world of the Paleolithic could spare, the animal would need to rest for weeks, an easy target for predators, and it would probably not regain full function of the leg until axongenesis fully kicked in. In short, it is not a worthwhile path for evolution to pursue. On the other hand, in low-metabolism small Poikiothermic animals, it works quite well.

There is actually another explanation which I will pursue because I like this example. A few years ago, molecular biologists tagging mice for transgenics were using a holepuncher to punch a hole in their ear to tag. When they came back, they noticed that the mice in question had filled the gaps in the ear with cartilage. That was odd. Mammals should not be able to regenerate. A quick check revealed that these were no ordinary mice…they were MRL mice, specially bred with no immune system. This led the researchers to hypothesize, could the immune system represent a trade off between regeneration and survival of the fittest? It makes sense, the Immune system, led by the hunter killer T-cells, is extremely ruthless and kills everything that is not tagged by MHC tissue, even it’s own cells if it is convinced it is foreign. Undoubtedly, the immune system would need to shut down such regenerative projects. We have traded our ability to grow limbs back with the ability to fight pathogens.

Evolution does not build perfect organisms, only a designer could do that. And since life has no designer…

 

So what is the human claim to fame? It is not fur, or four legs...it is our brain. "Inefficient at survival" he cannot be serious. There are 25 speciative links between monkey (the pan genus) and man (Homo Sapiens). Every Hominid before us went extinct. We killed them all, that is what happens when an organism is too successful. Man may be the most genocidal creature nature ever produced.

 

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

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Great responses

Great responses everyone....another advantage to bipedal motion, other than seeing farther and absorbing less heat as already mentioned, is that it is the most efficient at long range travel.  This is very advantagous to a group hunting and gathering food over a huge expanse of near wasteland.  A cheetah can beat a man in the 100 meter dash, no doubt.  But it tires quickly.  Man would easily beat a cheetah in a 50 mile race.


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kraig26 wrote: they said

kraig26 wrote:

they said that how can we evolve from apes into something that is innefficent at survival e.g walks upright easier to be preyed upon, no fur to keep warm.

I wanted to say "because we learned how to use tools and didnt need these things anymore" but he left. what would you guys of said?

I would have said culture and the ability to get more done by working together in groups.

I also would have said that if we are not good at surviving, then why are there 6 billion of us on the planet?

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mindspread wrote: It's been

mindspread wrote:
It's been a while, so anyone correct me if I'm wrong. I think that human ancestors, who lived on the plains, started walking upright so they could see further. That way they could avoid predators, and find prey. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Nobody knows for sure why we adapted to be upright. There are many possible hypotheses. Another hypothesis might be so that we could use our hands for holding tools and weapons (hunting). I'm sure there are other hypotheses too.

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I've seen recent studies

I've seen recent studies suggesting that running and standing upright evolved at a similar time, when we started hunting larger animals in packs.

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The stuff I read argued that

The stuff I read argued that the first bipedal apes were mostly still arborealists, walking short distances on their 'hind legs' and spending most of their time feeding and resting in trees. The fossil evidence for bipedalism is much much older than any evidence of tool use and modern day chimpanzees are known to hunt small mammals in packs, so I don't think bipedalism had anything to do much with the 'need' to hunt for food. Tattersall also argues (and convinces me, at least)  that the first hominids were just scavengers and gatherers for a long time. I think saying that bipedalism evolved for the purpose of seeing over grass, or running faster or hunting better might be getting a bit ahead of the game.

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Even humans with the most

Even humans with the most basic tools are incredible at survival, because of the human brain and manual dexterity.  How many of the larger or more dangerous fauna of the Americas, Australia, New Zealand etc survived after the pre-European settlers got there?  Everything from mammoths to the moa went on the fire, and I bet they tasted greatSmiling  I remember seeing a program on TV about the Kalahari bushmen - when they saw some lions they just walked straight at them and the lions ran off, because they recognised danger coming!


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kraig26 wrote:

kraig26 wrote:

they said that how can we evolve from apes into something that is innefficent at survival e.g walks upright easier to be preyed upon, no fur to keep warm.

 

I wanted to say "because we learned how to use tools and didnt need these things anymore" but he left. what would you guys of said?

 

Well again, this shows ignorance on the subject of evolution. I find it amazing how the most ignorant of people on a subject claim they are right. Evolution is driven by 3 things, genetic mutations, time and most importantly selective pressures. First of all, we did not evolve from APES.... because APES are still around today. We evolved from "ape-like" ancestors. Check out

http://www.becominghuman.org

Now....what this person fails to understand is that we have DNA remnants of past traits in our body. There is "forensic" evidence of evolution within our own genome. You cannot deny that: Read this: http://seanbcarroll.com/books/Endless_Forms_Most_Beautiful/excerpt/

I highly recommend you pick up this book to better understand evolution and to have a grasp in a debate against an anti-evolutionist. It's ironic how theists will be so quick as to judge a person in a guilty verdict if the DNA evidence is there, however, when we use the DNA to prove evolution...everyone shuts a blind eye. Intellectual dishonesty....

 

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Rave wrote:The stuff I

Rave wrote:
The stuff I read argued that the first bipedal apes were mostly still arborealists, walking short distances on their 'hind legs' and spending most of their time feeding and resting in trees. The fossil evidence for bipedalism is much much older than any evidence of tool use and modern day chimpanzees are known to hunt small mammals in packs, so I don't think bipedalism had anything to do much with the 'need' to hunt for food. Tattersall also argues (and convinces me, at least)  that the first hominids were just scavengers and gatherers for a long time. I think saying that bipedalism evolved for the purpose of seeing over grass, or running faster or hunting better might be getting a bit ahead of the game.

Read this:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041123163757.htm

I should mention that my first post here was a bit off. I meant to say that running appeared to lead to our evolution, not that running and walking showed up at the same time.

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mindspread wrote: It's been

mindspread wrote:
It's been a while, so anyone correct me if I'm wrong. I think that human ancestors, who lived on the plains, started walking upright so they could see further. That way they could avoid predators, and find prey. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

The theories I've heard about Australopithecus afarensis (earliest known upright human ancestor) would jive with what you said.  Also, the new finding of a Australopithecine baby supports the idea that our ancestors were still good tree-climbers, as well as being bipedal. 

At around the time Australopithecus afarensis evolved, the forest was receding.  Savannah was taking over.  Being able to see over the grass would be a distinct advantage.  Also, if you can scamper up a tree, that helps, too. Smiling

Australopithecus afarensis had a slightly higher brain mass than a chimpanzee, so I believe they are considered more ape than human (check me on this...not sure).  

So if being upright was a disadvantage for apes, why did Australopithecus afarensis even exist? (I'm sure the guy in question would say it didn't...good luck with that idea, creationists).

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