How many monkeys have you seen evolve in your lifetime, or for that matter, in history books (not just a science book)? If your answer is that, that happened millions of years ago and no books existed, then tell me how old homo sapiens (wise) humans are? You say about 200,000 years. When and what was the first form of writing? (we actually agree on this) 3200 BC and Heiroglyphics (which is mainly drawing and symbols that depict a message) So you expect us all to swallow that it took wise humans approximately 197,000 years to accomplish this simple form of writing? Forgive me for saying so, but evolutionists are so stuck on their science that they forget concrete history.
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Yes. It takes a lot of things to fall into the right place in order for writing to evolve. You need a sedintary life style, which requires agriculture, which was only possible after the last ice age. You need large populations living in a large community, again, also not possible until the end of the ice age. You need a centralized government that needs to keep tract of things.
People just don't invent writing willy nilly. Also remember there were large populations of people in North America who didn't have writing for their entire existence.
The earliest 'known' writing is probably dated at around 6,000 BCE and comes from China. It is also quite possible that neolithic cave painting was used to convey information, (the whole purpose of writing, after all).....I'm sorry, did you have a point?
Cave drawings also were writing.
Shoot, I somehow double posted. Ah well, this person is an idiot. First, a spoken word had to be created before a written language to represent those words. It took thousands of years to create a complex language, which further deviated into other languages when humans diverged into their own separate tribes.
There are cave paintings in France that are about 17 000 years old. Pictures are the first form of written communication.
We are still evolving. Isn't there signs that we are about to loose our littlest toe, it's getting smaller and less insignificant with each generation. But it will still take maybe 10 generation till it's gone.
For the umpteenth time, it is NOT MAGIC! It is v-e-r-y s-l-o-w changes, thousands of years for the slightes change.
Btw, concrete was used in ancient Rome, but with vulcanic ashes instead of cement. Then it was forgotten till the 1800s.
Humans of the past had bigger concerns than writing stuff down. Namely, this little thing called Survival.
1. Cuneiform would like a word with you. Specifically Linear A, because I doubt you, or your blood-god could decipher Linear B.
2. Hieroglyphs are not the oldest form of writing, see 1. In fact, hieroglyphs are not even a language per se. They are meant to display actions and emotions, not words like I'm typing. There is a glyph for man, a glyph for god, one for goddess, ones for the expected jobs of men and women. But the whole A = bird / hand with arm Hieroglyphs are just an attempt to cross-referrence them.
Your knowledge of hieroglyphs is poor.
You fail.
This is so stupid I had to read it three times along with the accompanying article to even understand the argument.
Let's say I put you in the woods with nothing- not even the clothes on your back or the knowledge you had passed onto you by your parents or any other form of education. Now build a jet engine.
I'm waiting.
So you expect us all to swallow that it took wise humans approximately 197,000 years to accomplish this simple form of writing?
No, it took that long to develop the need for writing. What does a band of hunter-gatherers need writing for?
@ Rubber Chicken
Wow, cool, thank you.
Actually, writing was around much longer than that. It just took 197,000 years to find someone who could read it.
By Unknown's logic here, I can prove that human civilization is only about 50 years old.
You say human civilization is about 10,000 years old. When and what was the first form of transistor? (we actually agree on this) 1950 A.D. and the PNP transistor (which was large enough to dwarf your little finger). So you expect us all to swallow that it took wise humans approximately 9,950 years to accomplish this simple form of semiconductor? Forgive me for saying so, but archaeologists are so stuck on their science that they forget concrete history.
"evolutionists are so stuck on their science that they forget concrete history."
Christianists are so stuck in the concrete in their head that they know nothing of history. Or biology or basic common sense.
From the original article:
Britt concludes that since swine flu is a mutated form of the influenza virus, it proves that viruses evolve to survive, thus confirming Darwin's theory. The only real problem with Britt's conclusion is that it is utterly absurd. For Darwin to be affirmed, the swine flu would have to demonstrate some new genetic information that hadn't been present in the original influenza strain. It doesn't. No new genetic information is present just mutated forms of pre-existing material."
A mutation isn't something new? What is it then? Where did it come from? The original article is as retarded as the comment.
Major history fail!
Wow! The fail is burning my poor little mind. There is some controversy over what writing IS--especially WRT what separates proto-writing from writing. (one common line is whether or not the symbol represents sound as well as any other meaning associated with it.)
You also fail to understand WHY writing developed. Writing did not develop as a means to preserve myth, history or literature. A griot is quite effective in a nomadic tribal culture. Writing and most forms of proto-writing were developed to support commerce/accounting and/or taxation.
Also bear in mind that we have only the evidence that survives the ravages of time. Many writing materials do not Take for instance, the epic of Gilgamesh, it is really only an accident that it reached us. Gilgamesh was preserved on clay tablets while most early literature was written on papyrus. In the dry conditions of the desert, papyrus is a long lived material. In more humid conditions it degrades rapidly.
Well, Unknown, I guess you've "proven" that only fundies existed for the first 197,000 years of human history. If anything, I'm amazed that you idiots managed to come up with writing that fast.
[How many monkeys have you seen evolve in your lifetime, or for that matter, in history books (not just a science book)? ]
Well, how many men have you seen being "formed" from dirt?
Evolution takes place over generations, you twat.
And the invention of writing didn't happen overnight. It couldn't have. It takes a major leap to go from pictures of the hunt (which we have, dating back 200,000 years no less) to a written account of any event in ANY form.
Mr. Spak: That section was unnerving. Creationism presupposes divine sorcery, and they think evolution presupposes...natural sorcery (i.e. new genetic information ex nihilo), for lack of a better way of putting it. What would they call a theory with NO element that even resembles sorcery?
About the author of the original article, Peter Heck:
"Peter graduated cum laude from Indiana Wesleyan University in 2001 with a Bachelor of Science in both Social Studies Education and Political Science. Then after compiling a perfect academic record, he earned his Masters in Political Science from Ball State University in 2007." - http://www.peterheck.com/peterheck/bio
Indiana Wesleyan University does not provide accredited science degrees.
Why did I bother to double check that??? It's pretty obvious he knows less science than a 5th grader.
How often have you seen gold speak to humans or god commit wonders that cannot be explained by natural means in your lifetime (or read by them in a scientific book about history (which excludes the bible))?
"but evolutionists are so stuck on their science that they forget concrete history"
Oh yes, let's not forget our "concrete history". Well people have been using "stuff that sets hard" for a long time, but real concrete as someone today would recognise it was only invented about 2000 years ago. So the most widely used building material in the modern world, one we would not even have a modern world without, has existed for only a third of time in your own stupid chronology. Aeroplanes have been around for about 1/60th, computers for around a 1/100th, the internet for a 1/200th.
Why are you not incredulous that we could have done without concrete, cars, planes, computers and broadband for almost all of recorded history, but unable to believe that we did without writing?
The "snowballing" effect of new discoveries has been long recognised, well, at least it has by anyone not still stuck in the bronze-age.
Forgive me for saying so, but evolutionists are so stuck on their science that they forget concrete history.
Please, enlighten us on your "concrete history." I could use a good laugh.
From same source:
Comedy Gold.
"How many monkeys have you seen evolve in your lifetime..."
I've seen as many monkeys evolve during my lifetime as I've seen fundies evolve during my lifetime. I'm still waiting and the fundies are still cave-dwelling troglodytes picking fleas out of their arse and insisting that the world is flat!
Well, I don't have much interest in monkeys and haven't had an opportunity to study them in the field anyway, but I can guarantee you that primatologists paying attention to that have seen monkeys evolve. You just don't actually understand the definition of the word you use.
History and science are not mutually exclusive. You assume that writing in such form as hieroglyphics, even if it is the "first" form, is primitive, when it really isn't. Also you assume that modern humans would have need of writing as soon as they could be considered their own species. You assume that the modern humans of 200,000 years ago would be exactly the same as they are today. You assume that the name given to humans by Linnaeus in 1758 means much of anything in regards to the history of the species. Shall I continue? It's not that we forget history, it's that you can't (or won't) even identify and account for your own assumptions.
*double facepaw*
*headdesk*
*tail thrash*
Actually it would have taken approximately 200,000 years, because you don't quote the difference between two numbers each given to one significant figure to three. And we didn't evolve from monkeys; we share a common ancestor with them.
So cave paintings and carvings don't count because they weren't an official alphabet?
Sure, we don't know what they meant, but they're still there.
"How many monkeys have you seen evolve in your lifetime,"
The question mark is your friend here.
Also, Humans, being monkeys (in his semblance of the term) have evolved, I've seen it:
Each generation of humans builds upon the information produced by previous generations and makes new discoveries (random variation) of which are selected by us from their usefulness and given consideration. The reason these forms of evolution are faster is because the (somewhat) intelligent entity of us collective monkeys directs the process to improvement.
But I'm still waiting for a miracle in my lifetime.
:P
Inventing language takes time. Lots of time. I mean, try LEARNING another language. That alone takes several years, and you have to speak it every day for about ten years to be perfectly fluent in it.
Imagine trying to make your own language? From scratch. You can't use phonetics, those didn't come until much later. Each symbol has to mean a word. Then, try teaching others your language without using English, or any other language.
It's not easy.
Please try to research exponential approximation and other forms of prediction before you make judgments on what humans can theoretically do in a set time span. Just remember the internet in the form you see it is less than 20 years old and Google is barely into double digits.
You cannot accurately predict the rate of discovery that exists in our world, and even if you could, there are far too many variables to consider before making such overbearing remarks about how humans should've worked out a permanent way to record information in a physical form of writing in less time that 197,000 years, with no real way to measure the rate at which said discovery works or what other variables could have affected it.
Note: I guessed the age of internet age, It's a little bit too slow of a process to accurately work out the change over, but it was around 2 decades ago.
How many great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers have you seen in your lifetime?
The concept of writing is not a simple one, asshole. It's a revolutionary idea, right up there with the wheel, penicillin and contraceptives.
Scientists are not the ones that are stuck, dearie. A stuck scientist is a scientist without a job.
“How many monkeys have you seen evolve in your lifetime, or for that matter, in history books (not just a science book)?”
“If your answer is that, that happened millions of years ago and no books existed,”
"When and what was the first form of writing?”
"So you expect us all to swallow that it took wise humans approximately 197,000 years to accomplish this simple form of writing?”
"Forgive me for saying so, but evolutionists are so stuck on their science that they forget concrete history.”
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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