Scott Walker On Evolution: 'I Am Going To Punt On That One'

[TyroneSlothrop]

Thank you for the debate. More in the morning I hope....7:30 pm here.

Greg

No way, no how. It is not debate with you: it is talking to a very silly person. Totally tiresome.

he is from Australia that should explain it ....

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

Well, Scotty, if you have any serious hope of becoming president - you'll have to answer that question.

No he doesn't. He's absolutely correct, it's not a question that should be seeping into politics.

It's a perfectly appropriate and legitimate question – Walker's response indicates why.

 

[orogenicman]

Dude, we can doubt everything all the time, but that gets us nowhere at all. Yes, I can say that there is a 0.0001% probability that we are not anthropoid apes. But I can also say with 99.9999% certainty that we are. Sorry, my money is on the latter. And by accepting the latter, I can get on with the business of discovering more amazing facts about our biological history, particularly with regard to genetics and how we fit within the larger animal kingdom. For instance, we have features that evolved over 350 million years ago in fish (our tetrapod ancestry originated in a fish/fish-like animal). Our backbones evolved much further back than this. So we are included in the phylum Chordata. We even have microscopic structures that first evolved in sponges. All life on this planet is interrelated via our genetic legacies. And the fact remains that of all the life forms on the planet, we are most closely related to the anthropoid apes, and so are ourselves classified as such.

I agree with everything you just posted except that doubt somehow would prevent one from making amazing discoveries. In fact, doubt leads to amazing discoveries. What if no one doubted Newtonian physics or the Bible? In fact, look at those who do not doubt the Bible?

I'd bet on science any day of the week. But at some point, a new discovery is made, there is a paradigm shift, and what we thought we knew was't exactly accurate.

And after 150 years of discovery, what do you think are the chances that we are going to discover that humans are something other than anthropoid apes?

I'd say pretty small. Except of course we are not "apes".

Greg

There is no doubt whatsoever that we are, in fact, apes. You can disagree all you care to, but it isn't going to change this fact.

Humans aren t monkeys. We aren t apes either. 8211 john hawks weblog

Are you really an ape??

Greg

Hawks is welcome to his opinion, but he is playing a semantics game, and for a piss poor reason. The classification is this:

The Order primate is subdivided into the Suborders Strepsirrhini and Haplorrhini. The Haplorrhini are divided into the Infraorders Tarsiiformes (tarsiers) and Simiformes (anthropoids). The Simiformes are subdivided into the Parvorders
Platyrrhini (New World monkeys) and Catarrhini (Old World monkeys, apes and humans). the Parvorder Catarhini is subdivided into the superfamilies Cercopithecoidea (Old World monkeys) and Hominoidea (greater and lesser apes and humans). The superfamily Hominoidea is divided into the families Hylobatidae (lesser apes) and Hominidae (hominids-great apes and humans). The family Hominidae is divided into the subfamilies Ponginae (Orangutans), Gorillinae (gorillas), and Homininae (Chimpanzees, Bonobos, and Homo - all species). Chimpanzees, Bonobos, Gorillas, Orangutans, and Homo are all Hominidae. Now you can split out homo from the great ape if you want, but the genetic distinction at the superfamily level is simply not there. At the super family level, we are all the same and so it makes no sense all to make the distinction. The Great apes and lesser apes, and Homo are Hominoidea (which is what I am referring to when I say "ape"), and so are all of the species of Homo. We aren't descended from modern apes. We are related to them via a common ape ancestor, which makes more like distant cousins. We are, via our Hominoidea superfamily classification, 'apes'.

Hawks says that he doesn't like including homo with the apes because

That’s what “humans are apes” ultimately is – it’s an argument that we aren’t as great as we think we are. Whether humans are special or not should be derived from biology; I don’t think we need to make the argument by applying Orwellian coercion to the meanings of English words.

And I say to that, get over it. We are apes. End of story.

 

[TyroneSlothrop]

Evolution has nothing to do with trade. Liberals think hard hitting questions are the ones that ask the attorney general to quack like a duck.

The liberal wanted to derail the subject. Good for Walker not giving her the chance.

Yup. Another dumbass question that should be ignored by anyone being asked it.

Good for Walker. He should have punted the idiot asking the question right out the door.

He was really being asked do you believe in Science or mumbo jumbo...he could not answer that question....

 

[orogenicman]

Dude, we can doubt everything all the time, but that gets us nowhere at all. Yes, I can say that there is a 0.0001% probability that we are not anthropoid apes. But I can also say with 99.9999% certainty that we are. Sorry, my money is on the latter. And by accepting the latter, I can get on with the business of discovering more amazing facts about our biological history, particularly with regard to genetics and how we fit within the larger animal kingdom. For instance, we have features that evolved over 350 million years ago in fish (our tetrapod ancestry originated in a fish/fish-like animal). Our backbones evolved much further back than this. So we are included in the phylum Chordata. We even have microscopic structures that first evolved in sponges. All life on this planet is interrelated via our genetic legacies. And the fact remains that of all the life forms on the planet, we are most closely related to the anthropoid apes, and so are ourselves classified as such.

I agree with everything you just posted except that doubt somehow would prevent one from making amazing discoveries. In fact, doubt leads to amazing discoveries. What if no one doubted Newtonian physics or the Bible? In fact, look at those who do not doubt the Bible?

I'd bet on science any day of the week. But at some point, a new discovery is made, there is a paradigm shift, and what we thought we knew was't exactly accurate.

And after 150 years of discovery, what do you think are the chances that we are going to discover that humans are something other than anthropoid apes?

I'd say pretty small. Except of course we are not "apes".

Greg

There is no doubt whatsoever that we are, in fact, apes. You can disagree all you care to, but it isn't going to change this fact.

If the ancestors of humans, chimps, and gorillas parted company earlier than expected, it would give more validity to claims that the fossils purporting to be the earliest members of the human family, such as the 6 million to 7 million-year-old Sahelanthropus tchadensis from Chad, really are hominins, the group that includes humans and their ancestors but not the African apes. The longer generation times will also influence evolutionary models on skeletal and dental development that assume that human ancestors had more rapid growth patterns, similar to apes, than to living humans.

The study has yielded "the most accurate estimates of generation length yet possible for wild chimpanzees and gorillas," says paleoanthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the work. While these precise dates for both generation times and the split between lineages may be modified as more data is collected from more apes, adds evolutionary biologist Wen-Hsiung Li of the University of Chicago, the new work is significant because it "provides a novel approach to the long-standing issue of the divergence time between human and chimp."


Posted in Plants & Animals, Biology, Evolution

This is why I don't accept anything is "settled" Science.

Greg

As I pointed out in my classification, at the superfamily level, we are apes. Nothing what you posted above changes that fact. And the odds of any discovery changing our classification at the superfamily level is infinitesimally low.

 

[orogenicman]

Exactly. DNA proves it.

More proof that the far left religion is the most dangerous religion on the planet..

There is no doubt whatsoever that we are, in fact, apes. You can disagree all you care to, but it isn't going to change this fact.

Exactly. DNA proves it.

You share most of your DNA with a pig...(so do I)

URBANA - Another mystery of life has been unraveled, one DNA strand at a time. University of Illinois animal geneticists Lawrence Schook and Jonathan Beever have created a side-by-side comparison of the human genome and the pig genome that reveals remarkable similarities. "We took the human genome, cut it into 173 puzzle pieces and rearranged it to make a pig," said Schook. "Everything matches up perfectly. The pig is genetically very close to humans."

Schook explained that when we look at a pig or a human, we can see the difference instantly. "But, in the biological sense, animals aren't that much different from one another -- at least not as different as they appear," he said. Animals all have eyes, ears, stomachs, etc., but as Beever put it, "The same gene in the pig may work in combination with other genes to control something very different than it does in a human."

Human to Pig Genome Comparison Complete ACES News College of ACES University of Illinois

Greg

We are evolved from apes. DNA proves it: "Along the common chimpanzee, the bonobo is the closest extant relative to humans"
"The bonobo (/bəˈnoʊboʊ/ or /ˈbɒnəboʊ/) (Pan paniscus), formerly called the pygmy chimpanzee and less often, the dwarf or gracile chimpanzee." wiki

Your study in Illinois is just that: a study at a agriculture school in Illinois: college professors (in agriculture of all things) trying to keep their tenure by publishing, publishing anything they can get attention for.

I am not going to be swayed by agriculture teachers into doing a paradigm shift regarding evolution. You may be dense, and desperate, enough to do that, I'm not. It is truly beyond comprehension why people are so exponentially afraid of being connected to apes: it's purely emotion and purely illogical. Defies reason.

Nonsense. Couldn't give a damn about it myself. I understand "divergence"..do you??

But to say YOU ARE AN APE is just.....open to question. As is all good science.

Greg

No one is saying they are an ape. They are saying they are evolved from apes: huge, monumental difference. You are trying to pretend your ideas on this are intellectual: they are not. They are silly and based in a denial of science, real science. Look, I'm done with you. I find trying to dialogue with folks like you extremely tireseome. You just are not worth my attention, so don't expect any more responses to your silliness.

we are an ape. We are just not evolved from modern chimps, bonobos, gorillas, or Orangutans. We have a common ape ancestor to those species. At the superfamily level, we are all the same - Hominoidea.

 

[Papageorgio]

So Walker, goes to a trade and economic think tank, and wants to talk economics and trade. Then they want him to criticize a sitting President on foreign soil and Walker deflects.

It sounds as if Walker stayed on task answered the questions correctly.

The looney left get their panties in a bunch for no real reason. This is the crap the left has been crying about for years that the looney right does with Obama.

Both looney sides need to go away.

 

[Mac1958]

Both looney sides need to go away.

Well, I'd certainly be all for that.

That said, the GOP keeps this issue (and similar peripheral issues) alive and has to answer to it.

My guess is that Walker is pragmatic and sees it's a no-win answer for him.

.

 

[TyroneSlothrop]

So Walker, goes to a trade and economic think tank, and wants to talk economics and trade. Then they want him to criticize a sitting President on foreign soil and Walker deflects.

It sounds as if Walker stayed on task answered the questions correctly.

The looney left get their panties in a bunch for no real reason. This is the crap the left has been crying about for years that the looney right does with Obama.

Both looney sides need to go away.

why can't Scotty answer a simple question on Evolution which is a Right wing nut bugaboo....to keep the no information one tooth slack jawed fundamentalist nut bags happy...end of story...

 

[Papageorgio]

So Walker, goes to a trade and economic think tank, and wants to talk economics and trade. Then they want him to criticize a sitting President on foreign soil and Walker deflects.

It sounds as if Walker stayed on task answered the questions correctly.

The looney left get their panties in a bunch for no real reason. This is the crap the left has been crying about for years that the looney right does with Obama.

Both looney sides need to go away.

why can't Scotty answer a simple question on Evolution which is a Right wing nut bugaboo....to keep the no information one tooth slack jawed fundamentalist nut bags happy...end of story...

In an economic/trade summit?

If he answers in a different setting fine, but I see no benefit going off topic and I see him controlling and staying on point, not getting side tracked. I wish you slack jawed nuts would focus on the topics instead of being easily deflected.

 

[TyroneSlothrop]

If he answers in a different setting fine, but I see no benefit going off topic and I see him controlling and staying on point, not getting side tracked. I wish you slack jawed nuts would focus on the topics instead of being easily deflected.

Its because his slack jawed no information booger drooling one tooth voter believe in the talking snake....it was not a difficult question...do you believe in science or mumbo jumbo...he could not answer ...

 

[Kosh]

More proof that the far left religion is the most dangerous religion on the planet..

Exactly. DNA proves it.

You share most of your DNA with a pig...(so do I)

URBANA - Another mystery of life has been unraveled, one DNA strand at a time. University of Illinois animal geneticists Lawrence Schook and Jonathan Beever have created a side-by-side comparison of the human genome and the pig genome that reveals remarkable similarities. "We took the human genome, cut it into 173 puzzle pieces and rearranged it to make a pig," said Schook. "Everything matches up perfectly. The pig is genetically very close to humans."

Schook explained that when we look at a pig or a human, we can see the difference instantly. "But, in the biological sense, animals aren't that much different from one another -- at least not as different as they appear," he said. Animals all have eyes, ears, stomachs, etc., but as Beever put it, "The same gene in the pig may work in combination with other genes to control something very different than it does in a human."

Human to Pig Genome Comparison Complete ACES News College of ACES University of Illinois

Greg

We are evolved from apes. DNA proves it: "Along the common chimpanzee, the bonobo is the closest extant relative to humans"
"The bonobo (/bəˈnoʊboʊ/ or /ˈbɒnəboʊ/) (Pan paniscus), formerly called the pygmy chimpanzee and less often, the dwarf or gracile chimpanzee." wiki

Your study in Illinois is just that: a study at a agriculture school in Illinois: college professors (in agriculture of all things) trying to keep their tenure by publishing, publishing anything they can get attention for.

I am not going to be swayed by agriculture teachers into doing a paradigm shift regarding evolution. You may be dense, and desperate, enough to do that, I'm not. It is truly beyond comprehension why people are so exponentially afraid of being connected to apes: it's purely emotion and purely illogical. Defies reason.

Nonsense. Couldn't give a damn about it myself. I understand "divergence"..do you??

But to say YOU ARE AN APE is just.....open to question. As is all good science.

Greg

No one is saying they are an ape. They are saying they are evolved from apes: huge, monumental difference. You are trying to pretend your ideas on this are intellectual: they are not. They are silly and based in a denial of science, real science. Look, I'm done with you. I find trying to dialogue with folks like you extremely tireseome. You just are not worth my attention, so don't expect any more responses to your silliness.

we are an ape. We are just not evolved from modern chimps, bonobos, gorillas, or Orangutans. We have a common ape ancestor to those species. At the superfamily level, we are all the same - Hominoidea.

Proof that the far left religion is the most dangerous religion on the planet..

 

[Kosh]

Well, Scotty, if you have any serious hope of becoming president - you'll have to answer that question.

No he doesn't. He's absolutely correct, it's not a question that should be seeping into politics.

It's a perfectly appropriate and legitimate question – Walker's response indicates why.

Only to the far left religious drones..

 

[orogenicman]

You share most of your DNA with a pig...(so do I)
Human to Pig Genome Comparison Complete ACES News College of ACES University of Illinois

Greg

We are evolved from apes. DNA proves it: "Along the common chimpanzee, the bonobo is the closest extant relative to humans"
"The bonobo (/bəˈnoʊboʊ/ or /ˈbɒnəboʊ/) (Pan paniscus), formerly called the pygmy chimpanzee and less often, the dwarf or gracile chimpanzee." wiki

Your study in Illinois is just that: a study at a agriculture school in Illinois: college professors (in agriculture of all things) trying to keep their tenure by publishing, publishing anything they can get attention for.

I am not going to be swayed by agriculture teachers into doing a paradigm shift regarding evolution. You may be dense, and desperate, enough to do that, I'm not. It is truly beyond comprehension why people are so exponentially afraid of being connected to apes: it's purely emotion and purely illogical. Defies reason.

Nonsense. Couldn't give a damn about it myself. I understand "divergence"..do you??

But to say YOU ARE AN APE is just.....open to question. As is all good science.

Greg

No one is saying they are an ape. They are saying they are evolved from apes: huge, monumental difference. You are trying to pretend your ideas on this are intellectual: they are not. They are silly and based in a denial of science, real science. Look, I'm done with you. I find trying to dialogue with folks like you extremely tireseome. You just are not worth my attention, so don't expect any more responses to your silliness.

we are an ape. We are just not evolved from modern chimps, bonobos, gorillas, or Orangutans. We have a common ape ancestor to those species. At the superfamily level, we are all the same - Hominoidea.

Proof that the far left religion is the most dangerous religion on the planet..

OMG. Could you be any more idiotic?

 

[TyroneSlothrop]

There are no leftist snake handlers ...those are the one tooth mouthbreathin slack jawed southern fundamentalist nutbag GOP voters....ready to turn all of America into Mississippi the heartland of Conservatism...

 

[Esmeralda]

Thank you for the debate. More in the morning I hope....7:30 pm here.

Greg

No way, no how. It is not debate with you: it is talking to a very silly person. Totally tiresome.

Well that got me back here in a hurry. lmao

Tiresome?? You're the one trying to convince people that Evolution is a religion...believe in...what humbug!! Anyone who "believes in " science is a humbug.

Karl Popper Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

If you wish to remain ..well..."tiresome"....then don't read the link. I have been quite impressed by Popper since a young age....well worth a reach into "rightardism"...as you might put "enlightenment".

Evolution is a wonderful theory...but you miss the point if you say you "believe" in it.

You need to look up and understand epistemology. Everything thing is a 'justified true belief.'

 

[Kosh]

We are evolved from apes. DNA proves it: "Along the common chimpanzee, the bonobo is the closest extant relative to humans"
"The bonobo (/bəˈnoʊboʊ/ or /ˈbɒnəboʊ/) (Pan paniscus), formerly called the pygmy chimpanzee and less often, the dwarf or gracile chimpanzee." wiki

Your study in Illinois is just that: a study at a agriculture school in Illinois: college professors (in agriculture of all things) trying to keep their tenure by publishing, publishing anything they can get attention for.

I am not going to be swayed by agriculture teachers into doing a paradigm shift regarding evolution. You may be dense, and desperate, enough to do that, I'm not. It is truly beyond comprehension why people are so exponentially afraid of being connected to apes: it's purely emotion and purely illogical. Defies reason.

Nonsense. Couldn't give a damn about it myself. I understand "divergence"..do you??

But to say YOU ARE AN APE is just.....open to question. As is all good science.

Greg

No one is saying they are an ape. They are saying they are evolved from apes: huge, monumental difference. You are trying to pretend your ideas on this are intellectual: they are not. They are silly and based in a denial of science, real science. Look, I'm done with you. I find trying to dialogue with folks like you extremely tireseome. You just are not worth my attention, so don't expect any more responses to your silliness.

we are an ape. We are just not evolved from modern chimps, bonobos, gorillas, or Orangutans. We have a common ape ancestor to those species. At the superfamily level, we are all the same - Hominoidea.

Proof that the far left religion is the most dangerous religion on the planet..

OMG. Could you be any more idiotic?

Says the far left drone that is promoting religious propaganda not based in science.

So far all we have seen is far left religious dogma not backed by any science fact.

 

[Kosh]

There are no leftist snake handlers ...those are the one tooth mouthbreathin slack jawed southern fundamentalist nutbag GOP voters....ready to turn all of America into Mississippi the heartland of Conservatism...

From the far left drones religious propaganda not based on reality or any type of science fact.

 

[TyroneSlothrop]

Nonsense. Couldn't give a damn about it myself. I understand "divergence"..do you??

But to say YOU ARE AN APE is just.....open to question. As is all good science.

Greg

No one is saying they are an ape. They are saying they are evolved from apes: huge, monumental difference. You are trying to pretend your ideas on this are intellectual: they are not. They are silly and based in a denial of science, real science. Look, I'm done with you. I find trying to dialogue with folks like you extremely tireseome. You just are not worth my attention, so don't expect any more responses to your silliness.

we are an ape. We are just not evolved from modern chimps, bonobos, gorillas, or Orangutans. We have a common ape ancestor to those species. At the superfamily level, we are all the same - Hominoidea.

Proof that the far left religion is the most dangerous religion on the planet..

OMG. Could you be any more idiotic?

Says the far left drone that is promoting religious propaganda not based in science.

So far all we have seen is far left religious dogma not backed by any science fact.

Tell them about the talking snake....

 

[Papageorgio]

Both looney sides need to go away.

Well, I'd certainly be all for that.

That said, the GOP keeps this issue (and similar peripheral issues) alive and has to answer to it.

My guess is that Walker is pragmatic and sees it's a no-win answer for him.

.

Mac, the looney left and the looney right will only be satisfied with one or the other answer. It also is not the time or the place to ask the question or it to be answered. The article points out that they tried to get him to criticize Obama and he wisely answered that question, yet the looney nuts only see the one question he side stepped.

Had he criticized Obama, I would have changed my opinion of him to a negative one. You don't criticize a sitting President on foreign soil. It was an inappropriate question, just as the evolution question was. I think Walker handled them both well.

He will have to answer the question on evolution soon, and I am sure once he gets back to the states he will, however it will not satirist the looney left, even if he totally agrees with them.