What do YOU believe in? (Aquatic Ape Theory poll)

[CEngelbrecht]

This poll is seeking to find out what we people think about this whole 'Aquatic Ape Theory' that has been debated here on Deeperblue for a while. Try not to use this thread to voice argumentation for or against either option, the other threads should give room for this.

 

[tuomo]

Not much for options there. I personally dont believe in macro evolution but i do believe in some evolution happening all around us and within us. I would have liked to see some more options to that since i personally believe that God has created man and the whole earth, but yet i dont think that no evolution happens at all.

br.

Tuomo

 

[CEngelbrecht]

I worked with the concept of making 'gradual' options, like 'believe very, some, not at all', but I couldn't render that without it looking confusing. Also, the question is which of the three one finds the MOST plausible.

And besides, can one believe in one AND the other at the same time, but only small bits of each idea? I mean, they don't exactly get very well along, do they...

 

[Adrian]

Originally posted by CEngelbrecht

And besides, can one believe in one AND the other at the same time, but only small bits of each idea? I mean, they don't exactly get very well along, do they...

Why not? I belive in God, and think that God created man - through the mechanics of evolution. One can't discard good rational thinking based on scientific paleological findings nor discard the fact (for me, based on my own personal experience) of other levels of spiritual existence

Adrian

 

[tuomo]

Actually it is very easy to mix belief and evolution. In fact hardcore evolutionarist in my opinion has a religion of his own. This because he believes in theory that does not have facts to base on, and he will do his best to defend his views, just as i will defend christianity.
Sorry to dissapoint you CEngelbercht but i think your poll and your posts here represent your beliefs in evolutionary religion rather than actual need of information on subject what people think about aquatic ape theory. I personally see this as an anti religion poll.

Evolution as a theory is quite old, and was born at the side of religion. Darwin himself admitted that his theory does have some problems. These problems such as macro evolution, start of life. I have read a article by a professor in helsinki university that stated: Evolution will be soon replaced by other theories.

I would think that providing that you have to include spirituality at some level to your theory in order to make it complete. Evolutionary theory will by itself run short.

Tuomo

 

[CEngelbrecht]

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I personally see this as an anti religion poll.
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I'll take that on my cape, but I didn't think of it that way. With the poll I tried not to let any personal idea about how cosmos works or doesn't into consideration. I really did.
How would one make a better poll on the subject? (If we wanna make the bother...)

 

[tuomo]

I'm sorry if i offended you. If you do indeed want to make information gathering poll about views on aqatic ape theory or any other evolution theory, maybe you should not restrict options to tree different options. The two first options here are very similar to each other, but the last one goes much deeper.
Maybe you could leave some freedom of personal beliefs in you poll. Most of polls here have option other. I think that would be ok here too.
And leave God out of your poll totally, spirituality goes to another level than different ape theories..

Tuomo

 

[CEngelbrecht]

If not for anything else, one can see the poll as an image of which presented model people take to heart. The conventional Biblical one, the traditional scientific one or the newly debated scientific one. A God figure or some other creative/divine force doesn't necessarily have to be ruled out of either option.

 

[unirdna]

It all started with how the third option was worded....

I think that CEngelbrecht would have avoided critisism if he would have simply stated 'neither' for the last option, thus avoiding making up the reader's mind for him/her (there are other religions besides Christianity/Judaism that do not collectively adhere to the conventional theory of evolution as well). For that, I think that tuomo's observation of the poll having an antireligious tone is justified.

I agree with tuomo's point, "And leave God out of your poll totally, spirituality goes to another level than different ape theories.. ". So, I was surprised to see him(?) go on to say,"I would think that providing that you have to include spirituality at some level to your theory in order to make it complete. Evolutionary theory will by itself run short". These statements seem to contradict one another.

Evolutionary theory is not a religion to those who practice it using pure science. It does, however, take religious tones when reigning 'scientists' make steadfast, public conclusions based on miniscule amounts of information. Such conclusions usually serve to inflate ego rather than the knowledge database. A true scientist would see an unanswered question, and attempt to answer it using the tools of science. If the conclusions were inconclusive (as they frequently are), it would be stated as such, and the invite would be extended to others to improve the experiment.

Humans are great pattern recognizers. Mr. Charles Darwin (and the less known Alfred Russel Wallace) recognized a pattern, and used the information available at his time to propose an idea (natural selection) of what might have naturally created the variation amoung living things. His admission of the shortcomings of the theory is to his credit (although this is all too frequently used as 'proof' that he did not believe his own ideas) and is the predictable response from any true scientist. The theory was not contrived to undermine any religious institution; it stems from the human quest to better understand his/her world.

This is what science is. This is why it was created. Understanding the natural world... Sometimes it's used for good and sometimes (unfortunately) for bad, but you can't argue that it works (at least not while you are reading this message on your computer). *To ask the scientific community to turn it 'on' and 'off', so as not to bruise a personal belief system, is hypocritical and destroys the purity of the method.

Undoubtedly, the origin of humans (and to a greater degree - life) is not a question that will be answered by our generation. This one is going to take a while... That said, admitting to the vastness and difficulty of the question is not an invitation to invite a spiritual 'theory'. It is a question for the natural world, and spiritualilty pertains to the incorporeal - outside the realm of science. This applies no matter Who/what you believe set the 'rules' of the natural world in motion. If you disagree, then perhaps the wording of CEngelbrecht's post was justified afterall.



*by "turn it 'on' and 'off'" I am refering to the thinking and discussion portion of science. The methods for any experiment should always satisfy the majority public's ethical views.

 

[tuomo]

What I meant with adding some spirituality/religion to the view, was mostly for the fact that the theory wich ever, is not complete withouth some 'religious' statements. For example missing links / gabs in evolution theory need some believing and macro evolution even more so, as well as believing that God has created all things as they are. This was purely a statement towards the different evolution theories, not this poll.

I tried to state that this poll should have started withouth the third option or with much more options --> thus making this poll rather irrelevant. What I would have wished to see here is just the two options. Sorry if I confused you.

Tuomo

 

[Griff]

CEngelbrecht, I'm going to answer yes to all three (sort of) I read a lot of the discussions on the aquatic ape etc, and from what i could understand, humans are designed to be incredibly adaptable. i use the word designed because i see evolution as the mechanism of creation.

 

[Pablo]

I don't see the need to add a theology discussion (and the last option could have been different!).

He seem that the humans have been on different stages of development along they story on this planet. We could see this discussion as if one of this stages was wet or not: I mean after they can be described as forming part of the human family... and before us.

I say stages of development because he don't seem to me that the one that was carving stones (?) had the same kind of live or physical adaptations than us today... but we could still have some of this adaptations left!

Is notable that the first traces of social behavior is on close relation to the east shore of South Africa and developing along the same coast before start to move inland. The camps had fire and the base of the alimentation was sea harvested/fished/hunted at some level.

Is as well a fact that life for humans means in most of the cases water in abundance... if not look at a map of the human population in any point of his written or fossil history.

On my opinion is enough space for a wet stage, with out start to argue about how important has been this stage on our current form.

More personally: I believe on evolution of the species at periods of strong development when competitively facing expanding new resources (You can see an notable explosion of the feline populations and species when south america joined north america., the fossil record is well documented on this point).

The same way I expect an ape population adapt to new resources on a wet environment if they come by... like any other specie. As a diver I would like to believe about the aquatic ape theory, but we seem to be missing data to get a definitive conclusion: is a nice theory though... and I feel good to believe about.

Creation is another matter... the definition say: "The act of creating or causing to exist". I see theology discussing the status of existence himself. But because creation doesn't exclude evolution, and somehow we are here, our thirst of knowledge about ourselves is more than welcomed to fill the gaps.

And after all why not imagine angels with fins instead of wings? At the end Greeks know well they stuff and have Poseidon!

Is as well notable that religions and beliefs have evolve along the human history: each see our world thought different eyes... makes me wonder what could believe an aquatic human?

My last word could be: is not because you don't know, that he can not be... but believe what makes you happy!

 

[CEngelbrecht]

Originally posted by Pablo
And after all why not imagine angels with fins instead of wings? At the end Greeks know well they stuff and have Poseidon.
Is as well notable that religions and beliefs have evolve along the human history: each see our world thought different eyes... makes me wonder what could believe an aquatic human?

What would an aquatic ape with brains have for a God? A chanting dolphin?
What a wonderful question...

My last word could be: is not because you don't know, that he can not be... but believe what makes you happy!

I don't want to believe, I want to know. But that's the problem, ain't it? One can never fully know for sure about anything, that's one of the biggest problems for human thinkers in all of written history. At best, one can only give one's best guess based on as many observations and facts as possible. Or, at lest that's how science takes a grab at it. The rest of us usually makes use of wishful interpretation of observations.

"All I know, is that I know nothing" - Socrates
"The things you know, is nothing compared to the things you don't know." - Zhuangzi (Chinese guy)

So how to know for sure if human development went through the beaches of Africa or not? How can one be sure of any divine creature being a part of it? Well, I suppose you can't. Me as a diver would very much like my species to be a swimming primate, but that would be wishful interpretation, wouldn't it? Truth is, none of us can be sure of either the one or the other, and never can.

It wasn't really my intention to bring a theological partition into the poll, but I guess my wording made it inevitable. My fault.



"And yet the Earth still moves" - Galileo Galilei

Wonderful post, Pablo, thank you.

Chris Engelbrecht, Copenhagen

 

[Pablo]

Human development is closely correlated to the speech. Art and religious believes are based on communication exchanging abstract concepts and symbolisms... if we find evidence of one of them we can start to talk about organized language (east coast of SA).

One of the actual tendencies of the paleontology is to relate cerebral development with the evolution of the language. Rational language is the only truth character that set us apart the rest of the mammals (some highly social insect do have an rational language, but lack tradition and abstraction). Most of the human adaptations deviate from our ability to transmit and abstract out thoughts: rational thinking and tradition...

Sadly our underwater communication skills are a serious blow to an aquatic ape theory: Apes base they success on the group, and they degree evolution is related to the complexity of they language and related social structure. I don't see any ape with anything even close to an adaptation to underwater or on the water communication... no adaptations, no success, no evolution... no descendants.

But is not a last word... water could have been a survival edge not an environment!

 

[Shadowkiller]

Originally posted by Pablo
water could have been a survival edge not an environment!

Ive always felt that evolution is an edge effect, not a centrally based process. Its the edge factors that are more likely to produce beneficial adaptations, rather than a static environment.

 

[Pablo]

The theory of evolution presents a successful survival edge as a logical path for a specie evolution... If apes/humans ad a watery stage he wasn't that successful or a better alternative (like language?) turn up.

We need to prove they where right... back to the water!

 

[flyboy748]

Because I'm a creationist, I think the poll was perfect! Option Three describes what I believe perfectly. I also believe however that the human body is adaptable to many different things. I certianly cannot discredit the MDR, however I chalk it up to the wonderous complexity of the human body as God created it.

I certianly can understand how evolution can be believeable, but the way I see it (not to oppose anyone else's beliefs!) if evolution is happening, it's going in reverse... For instance we only use 1-5% of our brain, and it would be reasonable to presume (again in my opinion) that at one point we used 100% of our brain. From an evolution standpoint, we would've never needed a brain this size if we were only going to use 5%, making us that much lighter, able to run faster ect.

I realize that what I believe is what I believe and I'm certianly not trying to defend my beliefs, or trying to make anyone else believe them! I'm simply explaining myself very briefly to make "what I believe" a little clearer. Hopefully!! I will admit that what I believe I believe because of faith not evidence however, so I won't try to defend my standpoint factually, nor will I begrudge anyone else their beliefs. I will however continue to enjoy this disscussion!

Aaron

 

[roy_nexus_6]

Evolution or Creationism ?

And as usual, when presented with two extreme and opposing points of view the truth is found in the middle.

 

[Baur]

Perhaps its more a case of (re)creationism. The aquatic ape could have been part of an elite of recreational swimmers...and freedivers.
As depicted here where the individual is doing his breathup for a CB attempt while the AIDA judge looks on rofl

 

[flyboy748]

rofl rofl rofl rofl rofl rofl rofl rofl

Aaron