The Neanderthal

Neanderthal

Who were the Neanderthals? The Neanderthals were archaic people who colonized Europe and some parts of the Middle East as long ago as 400,000 years. They co-existed with the first modern humans from about 80,000 to 30,000 years ago when they became extinct.

What were they like?

Neanderthals were hunter-gatherers. They made and used flint and stone tools for day to day operations. But they also built shelters and were active in fire control operations. They were highly carnivorous  yet there is limited evidence of plant foods that they operated with and which survives in the archaeological record. Their locations puts them in Mediterranean regions such that they went after marine resources such as shellfish and seals. However, their use of aquatic foods was more limited than that of modern humans.

Quick Facts

Scientific name: Homo Neanderthalensis

Genus: Homo

Height: (Male, Adult) 164 – 168 cm [5.3 – 5.5 ft.] (Female, Adult) 152 – 156 cm [4.9 -5.1 ft.]

Mass: (Adult, Male) 77.6 kg [171 lb.] on average; (Adult, Female) 66.4 kg [146 lb.] on average

The Humanoid Subspecies

The Neanderthals are an extinct species of the genus Homo, possibly a subspecies of Homo sapiens. They are closely related to modern humans. That means that between 1% and 4% of the Eurasian human genome seems to come from Neanderthals. Furthermore, they differ in DNA by only 0.3% with that of Homo sapiens genome structure.

Their Appearance

Neanderthals looked much like modern humans only shorter, more heavily built and much stronger, particularly in the arms and hands. Their facial feature which included large nose and strong double-arched brow ridge distinguished them from modern humans. Their skulls show that they had no chin and their foreheads sloped backwards. The brain case was lower but longer housing a slightly larger brain than that of modern humans. Because they were largely carnivorous, both male and female Neanderthals hunted prey. The evidence of a huge number of injuries, like those sometimes seen with today's rodeo riders, suggests that hunting involved dangerously close contact with large prey animals.

Are the Neanderthals a different species?

No, the fact that they interbred with modern humans shows they were not a separate species. Modern humans are classified as Homo sapiens. Most scientists today view Neanderthals as a sub-species or hominid sister group of all present-day humans. Homo sapiens and Neanderthals are believed to have a common ancestor who lived about 500,000 years ago in Africa. The common ancestor? Homo heidelbergensis.

Eye Size and its impact on Human social connections

One study of Neanderthal skulls suggests that they became extinct because they had larger eyes than our Home sapiens species.  In fact, one research team explored the idea that the ancestor of Neanderthals that left Africa and had to adapt to the longer, darker nights and murkier days of Europe. The result was that Neanderthals evolved larger eyes and a much larger visual processing area at the backs of their brains.

To prove this a scientific researcher, Eiluned Pearce of Oxford University, checked this theory. She compared the skulls of 32 Homo sapiens and 13 Neanderthals. She found that Neanderthals had significantly larger eye sockets, usually by as much as an average of 6mm from top to bottom.

So what was the impact of the larger eyes? How did affect them? One of the results of this was that their social connection to other Neanderthals was not as significant as the connection that Homo sapiens use with other humans. This is in contrast to the humans that stayed in Africa who  continued to live with bright days and so had no need to make weather adaption. As a result our Homo sapien ancestors, evolved their frontal lobes, associated with higher-level thinking, before they spread across the globe.  Because the Neanderthals were not the socially connected species, as Homo sapiens were, they were not able to advance as a species, not because of their preferences, but because their brain biology had a preference for visual operations, not thinking operations.

One thing to point out is that research on primates has shown that eye size is proportional to the amount of brain space devoted to visual processing. Given that prognosis scientist researchers have made the assumption that this would also be true of Neanderthals.

Thus it is hypothesized that Neanderthals had a smaller cognitive part of the brain and this would have limited them, including their ability to form larger groups. The idea is that if you live in a larger group, you need a larger brain in order to process all those extra relationships. This may also have had another consequence resulting from their more visually-focused brain structure which was that this focus affected their ability to adapt and innovate to the ice age that was thought to have contributed to their demise.

On their extinction

Although they had survived for hundreds of thousands of years and mastered the cold climates of the last Ice Age, Neanderthals had a tendency to be over-specialized meaning that they weren’t the dynamic race that would easily or necessarily change to meet environmental features. Moreover, they were never very populous to begin with. They were eventually edged out by Homo sapiens, but not before hybridization had occurred. Hybrid vigor due to Neanderthal admixture may have played a role in what human populations best succeeded at during the changing climate of Europe. But in a sense, Neanderthals never became totally extinct. Their genes live today on in hybrid populations.

Bees Extinction...at the Time of Dinosaurs

Did Bees Die and Reach extinction at the same time that Dinosaurs did?

We know that Dinosaurs reached the end of their life cycle 65 million years ago. The havoc on Earth was monumental. And there was a lot of physical evidence to support that claim and scientific observation.
But was that the only species that went extinct at that time?

Perhaps not because some scientists like Sandra Rehan, an assistant professor of biological sciences at University of New Hampshire, and Michael Schwarz at Australia's Flinders University and Remko Leys at the South Australia Museum worked to model a mass extinction in the  bee group Xylocopinae, or carpenter bees.  The extinction occurred at the end of the Cretaceous and beginning of the Paleogene eras, otherwise known as the K-T boundary.

Molecular phylogenetics

Rehan and colleagues overcame the lack of fossil evidence for bees with a technique called molecular phylogenetics. What is that study? For starters, It is the study of organisms on a molecular level to gather information about the phylogenetic relationships between different organisms.

What this accomplishes is that this program maps out the evolutionary history of an organism or group of organisms. The end result is that scientists can be precise about their estimates  involving when various events in evolutionary history occurred.

How it works

This science branch relies on the fact that genetic change is a constant. In effect in each generation, they note that organisms change slightly, but the rate of change tends to be constant and reliable. So now scientists can compare genetic information between different species and determine when they diverged from each other by examining their degree of similarity and dissimilarity. This is important because now researchers can also use this information to construct an evolutionary timeline.

The Bees

How many species of carpenter bees were they looking through? Answer:230.  So the scientists began to analyze DNA sequences of four "tribes" of species of carpenter bees from every continent with the exception of Antarctica. They were looking for evolutionary relationships and connections. The result was that they observed patterns consistent with a mass extinction. Then by combining the fossil records with the DNA analysis, they managed to introduce time into the equation, and it yielded information not only how the bees are related but also how old they were.

So what did they learn?

With the four groups of bees in the fold the data showed the research scientists that something major was happening to these different groups of bees at the same time. Moreover, it happened to be the same time as the dinosaurs went extinct.

The end result is that if Bees went down in that time frame, what other species might have reached an extinction point? ...In process....

Source:

1. Sandra M. Rehan, Remko Leys, Michael P. Schwarz. First Evidence for a Massive Extinction Event Affecting Bees Close to the K-T Boundary. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (10): e76683 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0076683

The Successful Failure of Creationism

Creationism and its new enhanced version, Intelligent design, have succeeded in failing. They have done so by showing that their structure of understanding how things are created can only come about by science, which they deny occurs or exists.

Science is the study of nature. Creationism is the study of nothing, saying that the world as we know it comes about because God puts it there and before God put the universe here, there was nothing. So they endorse modifiers to make science irrelevant or not necessary.

But Creationism has managed to format itself into three parts. One which accepts science as being part of creation and the other with denies science having anything to do with creation. The third part accepts some science as relevant to creation, but not all.

No Science Creationism

The Flat Earthers. They believe that the world is flat and covered by a firmament or dome. They take the literal interpretation of the bible. Furthermore they can explain occurrences in the bible. For example, the water above the firmament was the source of Noah's flood.

The  Geocentric. According to this group, the world is spherical, but deny that the sun is the center of the solar system, or that the earth moves. To them, the earth is the center of the solar system.

Some Science Creationism

Young Earth Creationists 
At the foundation of their belief is the supposition that the earth is between 6,000 and 10,000 years old. Their interpretation of the bible: the bible is literally true. No errors, no problems. The creation of life occured in six days. And blame Adam and Eve for the human condition, for our problems because it was their fall from grace that forced humans to become what we are now.

Not only that, but why does the Earth look the way that it does? The Earth geology must be interpreted in terms of Noah's Flood. Floods are disastrous. A world flood is a disaster to the world.

However, they accept a spherical earth and heliocentric solar system, that is that the sun is the center of the solar system. Young-Earth Creationists popularized the modern movement of scientific creationism

The Omphalos Creationist View
 The Omphalos argument presents the view that the universe was created not long ago but with the old appearance of age, indeed that an old appearance of age is necessary.  The problem with this view is that taken to the extreme, the Earth, and the Universe could have been created 1 second ago, but forced to look old. This theory recognizes that the universe and the Earth are old, in contradiction to the Bible. This is a way to reconcile that contradiction.

Old Earth Creationism
Accept the bible, but also accept some science. That is the Old-Earth Creationists view. They accept the evidence for an ancient earth, millions of years old but still believe that life was specially created by God; that God was at the forefront of the creation. So they still base their beliefs on the Bible.  In this respect they believe what they choose to believe.

Gap Creationism
Look at the Bible and compare Genisis 1:1 and Genisis 1:2. This view says that there was a long temporal gap between the two with God recreating the world in 6 days after the gap. The result is that this allows both an ancient earth to exist and a Biblical special creation that makes it possible.

Day-Age Creationism
Accept the views of science, that the Earth and the Universe are millions or billions of years old. So how do you reconcile this view with the Bible? By looking at a day as more than 24 hours long. Day-age creationists interpret each day of creation as a long period of time, a day can be thousands or millions of years old. They see a parallel between the order of events presented in Genesis 1 and the order accepted by mainstream science.  So science and the Bible are not in contradiction.

Science Creationism

Progressive Creationism
Pick and Choose...Pick and Choose. Progressive Creationism is the most common Old-Earth Creationism around today. It accepts most aspects of modern physical science. The Big Bang? Yes they view the Big Bang as evidence of the creative power of God. In this way, God is more powerful by creating a scientific basis for the birth of the Universe, instead of blinking the eye and seeing it created.

Yet modern biology is not valid in their view. Progressive Creationists generally believe that God created some organisms; some types of organisms in sequential order; the kind that are seen in the  fossil record. But they say that the newer kinds are specially and newly created, and not genetically related to older kinds.

So yes, God showed his creative power with the Big Bang. But wouldn't show any creative power using evolution. That is their standing. Once science version is good but the other is not good.

Science...the Study of Nature

Nature has multiple components like force and power(physics), mixture of chemicals (chemistry), life (biology), the structure of the planet (geology), the structure of the universe (astronomy and quantum mechanics). Science has changed over time because new theories and supporting facts have come to dominate how science explains nature.

The science of Evolution, a biological science, appeared after scientists, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace  began to investigate the formation of life and how it changed. Before that, no one thought that life would change. Plants would never change; insects would never change; fish would never change; birds and animals would never change; and most importantly, humans would never change. Life was considered permanent. But science changed things.

After Issac Newton with Physics and Charles Darwin with Evolution opened, metaphorically, the door to a large multi-storied Science building where scientists continue the process of investigating how the changes in nature occur. Evolutionary Biological scientists began to see how life changed, and physicists and astronomers began to see how the universe changed.

The Failure of Creationism

Creationism is based on what the Bible says. And when science shows a different way of seeing things, they reject it, or where necessary how science works with the Bible.

The problem for Creationism is that they respond to science because it is a threat to their way of looking at nature, that is life, the earth, and the universe. Instead of delivering a new approach to the creation of these segments of nature, they fall back to the Bible. Their view is that science is wrong or they adjust their Biblical view to conform to science.

Creationism fails because it does not offer a new approach to how the Universe or life was created. Creationisms approach is to find an explanation to the Biblical mythology in order to make it true. To make the Bible true they alter its stance in order to conform to the findings of science: The universe is not 10,000 years old, instead the "six days" of creation involved millions and millions of years. The Big Bang did occur but evolution did not occur. They select some thing of science and leave others out.

Creationism is a pick and choose model. That is what Creationism is all about. They pick the science to explain the Bible, but discard the science that cannot explain or contradicts the Bible. Creationism succeeds in showing that you need to explain the Bible in terms of the effects of science. But if fails to show any new way of looking at the Universe or Life. It is a successful failure.

The Science of Science

What is science? It is the study of nature. Science is the study of the difference components of nature, like forces, chemicals, the structure of matter, the way that objects interact with one another, how those objects are made, and how and why they behave the way that they do.

Science is Theory

One of the criticisms of evolution is that it is just a theory.That is right, evolution is a theory. But all science, that is ALL science is theory. But there are supporting facts that make it relevant and real. Without the supporting facts, it would be a hypotheses. Which is what the critics of evolution really are trying to say, and they confuse theory with hypothesis.


Science is About Facts,  A Hypothesis is About Observation

A hypothesis is not about making predictions, it is about trying to explain certain actions, certain observations. Take for example, the Michelson Morley experiment.in the late 1800's. At that time physicists were very comfortable with Newtonian physics. They could explain about 90% of all occurrences in nature. But one event was a mystery. How did light travel across space? That is, was there an underlying structure that light traveled through, much like water wavers traveled over water.

Their experiment tried to measure the speed of light and see if there was some impact on the speed by comparing the speed across different directions. They measured it by comparing the speed as it traveled north to south, east to west, north-east to south-west, up and down, and so on. If it changed it was because the light traveled on an ether. That was their hypothesis. To their surprise, the speed was constant, it never changed.

This was not a fact, it was an observation, because no one knew what it meant. How could light always travel at the same speed?

It was not until Einstein, in 1905, published his special theory of relativity, that explained how the constancy of light speed affected the force of time, that the observation about the constancyof the speed of light became a fact.

Later on, in 1917, Einstein published the general theory of relativity. One of the remarkable incidents, that is observations, was used to verify that the theory was correct. It had been know for some time that Newton's theory of gravity could not explain stars with light rays that passed near the Sun would appear to have been slightly shifted. This was a well known observation, but they could not rely of Newtonian physics for an explanation. But the General Theory of Relativity did offer an explanation. But could the observations be verified and explained by the theory?

The astro-physicist, Arthur Eddington, travelled to the Principe island near Africa to watch the solar eclipse of My 29, 1919. During the eclipse, Eddington took pictures of the stars in the region around the Sun. According to the theory of general theory, stars with light rays that passed near the Sun would appear to have been slightly shifted because their light had been curved by its gravitational field. This effect is noticeable only during eclipses, because the Sun's brightness otherwise obscures the affected stars. Eddington showed that Newtonian gravitation could be interpreted to predict half the shift predicted by Einstein. So the observation became a fact, and it supported the theory of general relativity.

Science is About Making Predictions

A hypothesis is an observation or idea but one that has no supporting facts to make it a theory. Furthermore, a hypothesis cannot be used to make predictions. A theory not only explains how certain sciences act and behave, they have a predictive element. For example, a baseball pitcher throws a baseball at a batter in a baseball game. The batter hits the ball. Sometimes it is caught, sometimes it is not. But scientists can predict certain elements about the speed of the ball before and after it is hit, where it will go, and how far the ball will travel. These predictions come from understanding the basic function of force, which is matter times acceleration.

That is not to say that a scientist will predict when the batter will strike out, when he will hit a fly ball or a ground ball or a fowl ball or a home run. These elements have variables. The speed of the ball, the direction of the pitchers ball, whether it is a curve or straight ball, the reaction of the batter, the location of the baseball bat.  If all of the variables are known and  the aspects of the variable are also known, then predictions can occur. But with enough details, and instruments to measure the force and direction of the ball it may eventually become possible to make such predictions. But that is the point. If there are variables that scientists cannot take into account they cannot make a prediction. Science can make predictions about the behavior of objects when the variables are known. To make a prediction there have to be facts and how those facts play out in the theory.

Science is About Verifiability

Once a theory is put into public attention, that is scientific attention, where other scientists view the theory and try to confirm it or to falsify it.

But verifying it means that the same theory is confirmed by more than one scientist, this makes it a more reliable theory because it can be replicated. If a new experiment confirms the theory, then there is another supporting fact. This explains the reason why scientists feel sure about the theory and its results. They can also add predictive features. it explains the conditions under which the theory is applied.


Science is About Falsifiability

In any science, the details which show the structure of the operation of science, there is the possibility that the explanation is wrong. Science is not about perfection, it is about explanation, and there may be events for which there is insufficient explanation about what happened. The two examples, the Michaelson-Moreley experiment, and the Eddington photographs showed that the existing theory of physics was false. The Newtonian theory of physics could not explain the speed of light behavior, nor the shifting geometry where light was concerned. So yes the Newtonian theory of  physics was false...or was it?

What these experiments showed was that there are different areas that cannot be explained by the current theory, which leaves open to have another theory be created to explain. those events.

Since the bulk, say 95% of Newtonian physics, was still workable it is hard to dismiss it. What has to happen is that a new theory has to come into play to account for the areas that can't be explained by the current theory. That falsifiability leads to the sense of improvement of the theory by adjusting and showing its limitations. This falsifiability element is the reason that science grows. The observations need to become facts. To become facts, you need a theory. The theory explains the facts, and can make predictions. That is science.

How to Prove That god Exists

Any time anyone asks an atheist who says that god does not exist, the remark is...Prove it.

Of course, the problem is that you cannot prove a negative. That is you cannot prove that god does not exist. That is a problem of logic, not evidence. In other words, you cannot prove a negative. From a logical point of view, you can only prove that god exists...not that god does not exist. You can only prove a positive, not a negative.

A clear example of this comes from the fact that if a person is accused of committing a crime, the prosecution has to prove that the defendant committed the crime; the defendant does not have to prove that he/she did not commit the crime.

And if that is not clear, try this. Suppose you said that you were a good cook, and I said you were not. What would I have to do to prove that your are not a good cook?

Nothing.

I don't have to do anything to show that your are not a good cook. But on the other hand, you would have to cook meals; you have to show your cooking talent. You have to prove that you are a good cook. That is the positive side of logic. Proving that you are not a good cook is a negative side of logic. You can't prove a negative, only the positive. So if you are a good cook, prove it.

What does this have to do with talking about the existence of god? Well if god exists, then prove it. If I say god does not exist, I don't have to do anything. If you believe that god exists, the you have to prove it.

So there we have it. If god exists, then prove it.
So now we can go ahead a prove that god exists. To do so I will show five examples which can be used to prove that god exists.

To prove that god exists, there has to be some showing of how god can modify the rules of science. In other words, if you can show that a normal operation of science will be modified under normal circumstances, then there is a good likely hood that the change in science originated from outside of science; from some ad-normal operation. If we can show that a normal operation, under normal science rules is now being changed then we can support the view that an outsider modified the scientific operation. So science can be changed from the outside. This could be from an outsider, like god.

Proof #1. Gasoline.
In this view, take a person and cover their body with a cloak full of gasoline. Put the person into a box that also is filled with gasoline, then light a match and put it into the box where the person is. Now, if the gasoline starts to burn and the person does not get burned, then this would violate the rules of chemistry. In such a case if the person survives, completely intact without harm, then this would show that god interfered with the laws of science; specifically with the laws of chemistry. That would be proof that god exists.

Proof#2. Flight
Take a 747 jet airplane with about 400 passengers in the plane. They are flying at over 50,000 feet and at about 500 miles per hour. So then if the jet engines stop working but the jet plane continues to fly, that is it doesn't fall from the sky and hit the ground, but it continues to fly for 10, 50, or 200 hundred miles, then it is operating with out the laws of chemistry (jet fuel), physics (force), and evolutionary biology (human pilot). If it continues to fly and then lands, that would show that three laws of science are compromised; if they are compromised then something or someone compromised them. Then this would be proof than an outsider affected these laws. That could be proof that god exists.

Proof #3. Drowning.
Take a person and put that person into a boat and go to a deep part of a lake. Put a couple of 100 lb objects on the persons legs and then tie the person's arms around their back and throw them into the lake without any air support to their lungs. When the person delves under the water the chance of drowning has 100% probability. So if the person is brought back up to the surface after two days underwater, without any human or device support and is still alive, then there is a high likely hood that an outsider made that possible, made that survival possible, because the laws of chemistry and biology were affected. The laws were changed for this event. So that could be proof that god exists.

Proof#4. Gun control
Take a person who is contemplating suicide. The person has a guns with multiple bullets. The person starts shooting himself in the head, over and over again. If the bullets make a connection into the person's head, and the person continues to shoot again and again, with the bullets entering the brain so that the person does not die, then there is a violation of the laws of physics. The laws of physics show that the force created by the exploding bullet should create damage into the brain, and kill the person. But without the damage, the rules of physics are affected, making the person free of the laws of physics. So that could be proof that god exists.

Proof#5. Parachute
Take a person who is jumping out of a airplane at 10,000 feet. The person jumps out of the plane without a parachute and with his hands and legs tied together and falling over the ocean . Furthermore, the person is falling without any device that would slow the download to the water. So when the person hits the water, and goes under and stays there for hours, and later comes back up alive, then there is a violation of the laws of physics (the force hitting the water didn't kill the person) and chemistry (the drowning of the person didn't kill the person). So that could be proof that god exist.

Miracles
Having made the case the science is the determining factor about the existence of god, one thing comes to mind though, what about a miracles? If they occur, doesn't that prove that god exists?

Indeed, what is a miracle?

A miracle is an event that occurs for which there is no rational or scientific explanation; at least not now. Take, for example, the situation where a hundred years ago, someone drowned in a lake. The body was recovered, and the person was dead. But it may have occurred that the person woke up and came back to life. A miracle? Yes. At least then, because there would not have been a scientific explanation for the event.

But now it is possible to say that that the recovery event may have been due to the fact that the lungs were not filled with water, and that the brain and heart continued to function, even if under a very limited form. But they functioned enough for the person to recover.

Was that a miracle then? Now there seems to be a rational and scientific explanation for the occurrence. So, no, it was not a miracle. And such events have been reported over the last several decades.

Similarly, 2000 years ago, if a person recovered from leprosy, it would have been called a miracle, but now we know that there is medicine drugs used like dapsone, clofazimine, and refampicin to cure leprosy. This is not a miracle, it is science.

So from the five examples mentioned above, is it possible that the events could occur, and not lead to a disaster? Could a jet plane fly for 200 hundred miles without power? Could a person shoot themselves in the head and still survive? Could a person survive a gasoline fire on their entire body for an extended period of time? Could a person survive a fall of 10,000 feet, into an ocean or lake and not have their body break apart? For these five examples, the answer is no, but if it did happen, wouldn't that be a miracle? It would be an event that we would not have a scientific explanation or rational explanation for. But in due time, it could be explained.

Does god Exist?
So now, with these five examples, it shows that a clear proof that god exists is possible, but it also shows that these examples do not have a probability of success.  So does god exist? Well these examples do not show that it is possible. The answer is not likely. Although a violation of the rules of science makes it a possible...but it is unlikely. If an atheist says god does not exist, it would be very hard to prove that such an entity does exist.

Is it possible that god exists? Logically possible? Under those circumstances, sure. But that is opening up a Pandora's box of possibilities. Is is logically possible for god to exist and not exist at the same time? If god can do anything, then god can do anything that is possible. See? It is not the kind of entity that we are accustomed to talking about.