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• 351.Heavens Game:
  7 Sep 2012, 22:44 pm

  @TASSIES-346: Ag Tassies… too many beers… Getting credits indoors tonight for pink slip tomorrow…

  On this side of the window I am “working” here…

• 352.TASSIES:
  7 Sep 2012, 22:44 pm

  @cab-348: nite ou Cabbie. Didn’t really mean to spoil you fun.

• 353.fitz1ella:
  7 Sep 2012, 22:47 pm

  Perhaps the most essential questions we can ask ourselves are Who am I? Where do I come from? and Where am I going?

  Scientists would have us believe that we developed from a cell-like entity through random genetic mutations and the continued survival of the fittest forms, which eventually evolved into apelike beings, then primitive hominids, and finally Homosapiens. Most of us have seen pictures of a line of beings going from an apelike creature through various less stooping individuals to a fully upright modern human. Until recently most anthropologists presented this simple image as correct, but an increasing number of discoveries has confused this picture thoroughly.

  Finds of prehistoric humans have been recorded as such for only the last 150 years. Before this the Bible and its creation story were relied on, so that remains of extinct animals and men were not recognized or acknowledged for what they were. Early in the nineteenth century Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology described uniformitarianism, a principle which Darwin used in his Origin of Species, introducing the idea of gradual evolution of one species into another under the influence of natural selection. In his Descent of Man Darwin suggested that man descended from an apelike being, probably in a tropical area.

  The first recognized prehistoric human remains were found in Gibraltar in 1848 and in the Neander Valley in 1856. Initially their distinctive features were thought to be the result of disease, but when more complete remains were found in the 1880s scientists realized that Neandertals were an extinct type of human being, perhaps even a different human species. Around 1900 more Neandertal skeletons were discovered, mainly in France, as were the remains of another being, the Cro-Magnon — anatomically modern — from approximately the same period.

  Under the influence of Darwin’s ideas on human origins in the tropics, Eugene Dubois set out for the East Indies. Between 1891-93 he found a cranium and a femur in Java which he thought belonged to a giant chimpanzee, but later decided was a human ancestor, Pithecanthropus erectus (later called Homoerectus). There was much resistance to accepting Neandertal and Pithecanthropus as human ancestors. Some believed anatomically modern man had to be older than either Neandertal or Pithecanthropus, which were considered apelike evolutionary dead ends. Others accepted an evolutionary line going from Pithecanthropus, via Neandertal and Cro-Magnon, to modern man. In 1925 Raymond Dart and his co-workers found the skull of a young child in South Africa with both human and apelike characteristics, Australopithecus africanus. Much older than anything yet found, it was eventually placed at the beginning of the line of human ancestors, so that the theoretical sequence was Australopithecus, living a few million years ago; Pithecanthropus, about half a million years old; Neandertals, living between 100,000 and 30,000 years ago; and Cro-Magnon, about 40,000 years ago.

  Louis Leakey, however, believed that modern man was older than generally postulated. In 1960 he found the remains of a being with a bigger brain than Australopithecus which also looked more human, and he called it Homohabilis. In the 1960s opinions were strongly divided: one group was convinced Neandertals belonged to the line of direct descent, while another group pointed to great differences between Neandertals and anatomically modern humans. Some considered Australopithecus a real human ancestor, others thought Homohabilis fit the pattern better. In time doubts were expressed about whether Homohabilis was one legitimate species or several different ones. While searching for more humanlike ancestors, Leakey discovered another species in 1959, which was later categorized as a more robust version of the Australopithecus-type found by Dart. In 1972 Richard Leakey and his team at Lake Turkana discovered the almost complete skeleton of a juvenile Homoerectus-like being about 1.5 million years old, much older than those that had been found in Asia. This discovery made Homoerectus contemporaneous with Australopithecus, which did not fit the unilinear picture. Paleoanthropologists proposed that Australopithecus robustus was a dead-end specialization of A. africanus, but this hypothesis began to fall apart with the discovery of a robust type 2.5 million years old. The simple picture was beginning to blur.

  Another important find was Don Johanson’s discovery in Ethiopia in 1974 of Australopithecus afarensis, better known as Lucy, estimated to be between 3 and 4 million years old. Mary Leakey also made discoveries of early hominids, all archaic in appearance and between 3.6 and 3.8 million years old. Just as old are the so-called Laetoli footprints — a trail of human-like prints preserved in volcanic ash. More and more hominid bones have also surfaced in Asia. Between 1985 and 1988 excavations in the Lunggupo Cave in Sechuan, China, produced Homoerectus-like remains dated by Chinese scientists as old as 1.9 million years, but some think they compare better with Homohabilis-like beings.

  In the 1990s discoveries of new types of hominids continued to make news, such as Ardipithecus ramidus in Ethiopia, estimated to be 4.4 million years old, and Australopithecus anamensis in Kenya, 4.2 million years old. Additional finds of erectus-like hominids were located in Java, Indonesia, and in Dmanisi in Russian Georgia. In 2002 Michel Brunet and his team found a complete cranium in Chad’s Djurab Desert, Sahelanthropus tchadensi, dated at nearly 7 million years old. He considers this the earliest human forebear, but experts do not agree how these beings are actually related to humans, and some doubt if they are related at all. Some scientists still believe in unilinear evolution, while others see many parallel lines. That Homoerectus turns out to be contemporaneous with the later Australopithecus is a hard nut to crack for those who want to have one species transform into the other.

  In the twentieth century many more Neandertal remains were also found. Those in Western Europe have extreme browridges, a long head, and a heavy robust frame, while in Central Europe and the Near East this form is less extreme. In Western Europe they were contemporaneous with anatomically modern man for a short time and then seem to have disappeared quickly, while in the Middle East Neandertals and modern man coexisted for about 50,000 years. Some scientists continue to believe Neandertals evolved into modern man; others as adamantly say modern man had evolved elsewhere and replaced Neandertals. In the 1990s excavations in the Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain, brought to light two different finds: numerous remains of very early Neandertal-like beings, dated approximately 300,000 years old; and remains of hominids dated at about 800,000 to 1 million years old, with some Neandertal traits but also remarkably modern. Scientists have not decided whether the latter is a new species or a type similar to archaic Homosapiens.

  Where then did modern man evolve? The oldest finds of anatomically modern man come from South Africa (about 100,000 years old), closely matched in the Middle East (92,000 years old). He appears in Europe about 40,000 years ago. There are two main theories about the descent of modern man, both with staunch supporters. The Multiregional Model holds that modern man evolved out of **** erectus in different regions of the world more or less simultaneously. It involves little population migration, and transitional fossils should be found everywhere. The other theory holds that modern man evolved somewhere in Africa, and from there spread all over the world, replacing existing archaic hominid populations. This Out of Africa Model implies that extensive migration took place.

  If the Multiregional Model is correct, early examples of modern humans should appear simultaneously throughout the Old World, which is not yet seen in the fossil record. The Out of Africa Model also seemed supported in the 1980s by the mitochondrial DNA research of Allan Wilson, Rebecca Cann, and Mark Stoneking, which was used to show that all living humans could trace part of their genetic inheritance to a single female — a Mitochondrial Eve — who lived in Africa between 150,000 and 100,000 years ago. These results have been severely criticized, however, as too ambiguous and as supposing too fast a molecular clock rate. The researchers assumed it to be 2-4%, while others are of the opinion that 0.7% is more accurate, which would make the ancestral Eve 800,000 years old. Critics who repeated the tests have found other trees of descent, claiming that Asia was indicated or that there was no support for choosing one geographic area over another.

  That the anthropoid apes are our direct ancestors is no longer held by scientists — but the hypothesis of a common ancestor is very much alive. Molecular research in the 1960s claimed that humans and chimpanzees diverged from each other some 5 to 7 million years ago, and gorillas and orangutans diverged earlier. This was very surprising to paleoanthropologists who expected it to have happened about 15 million years ago. The earliest known hominid remains are about 5 million years old. Fossil ******* have also been found dating from 16-18 million and 12 million years ago. This means there is an unexplained gap in the fossil record of many millions of years between the latest ******* and the earliest hominids.

  One major issue is why and how did bigger brained, tool-using **** evolve from a group of apelike beings such as Australopithecus? One popular hypothesis is the impact of environment and climate. Between 2 and 3 million years ago the drier African climate shrank the rainforest-like areas in which these early creatures lived, partly on the ground and partly in the trees. Open savanna land was increasingly dangerous to the relatively defenseless Australopithecus, who consequently died out. But a small group, under tremendous pressure for increase of intelligence, adapted and survived by their wits, a process reflected in the increasing brainsize found in **** habilis. This punctuational, abrupt divergence is believed plausible because of the lack of intermediate fossils between Australopithecus africanus and Homohabilis, and the absence of stone tools older than half a million years. Christopher Stringer, a defender of the Out of Africa Model, admits that the exact cause and timing of the evolutionary split of those apes who elected to remain in trees (the ancestors of modern gorillas and chimpanzees) from those who chose life on the plains and evolved into hominids remains a mystery. That environment and changing climate can force species to move to different areas or cause their extinction is one thing. That this change might induce species to become more intelligent and then turn into another species may be too big a step.

• 354.TASSIES:
  7 Sep 2012, 22:49 pm

  @Heavens Game-351: just pulling your collective chains HG. It’s my way of copping out of a conversation way above my level of intellect. A cheap smokescreen if you like.

• 355.cab:
  7 Sep 2012, 22:49 pm

  No tassies – was just talking kak with a few other kakpraaters – didn’t realise we overtaking the board with inordinate amounts of kak but it soon unravels.

  You reckon the Boks going to win or lose tom?

• 356.Heavens Game:
  7 Sep 2012, 22:49 pm

  “The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment.”

  Bernard d’Espagnat…Physicist. Templeton Prize winner 2009

  “If we ask about the cause of the universe we should ask about the cause of mathematical laws. By doing so we are back in the great blueprint of God’s thinking about the universe; the question on ultimate causality: why is there something rather than nothing? When asking this question, we are not asking about a cause like all other causes. We are asking about the root of all possible causes. Science is but a collective effort of the human mind to read the mind of God from question marks out of which we and the world around us seem to be made.”

  The Rev. Micha? Heller. Physicist, Philosopher. Templeton Prize Winner 2008

• 357.TASSIES:
  7 Sep 2012, 22:52 pm

  and here goes Skop. Clearly warming to the subject. Enjoy

• 358.katman:
  7 Sep 2012, 22:54 pm

  @fitz1ella-353: That could be three pages from the telephone directory, old chum. But as long as it adds to the illusion of you knowing your gluteus from your humerus.

• 359.cab:
  7 Sep 2012, 22:55 pm

  Easy peasy.

  Who am i? You are ou doos, a hairless ape, a species of which we all a member.
  Where u come from? Springs by way of mama, which is where we all come from.
  Where u going? Sherbet your mind takes u but ultimately to the grave to where we all will go.
  I and u are hairless apes, u go by the name of ou doos.

• 360.TASSIES:
  7 Sep 2012, 22:59 pm

  @cab-355: Cabbie I’m usually wrong on my predictions but here goes. I don’t give us a prayer’s chance tomorrow. We tick all the boxes for a defeat. Sure the guys will give it the usual ‘guts for jersey’ attitude but the stars tell me this wont bring the bacon. Average to below average front row. Inexperienced second row. No fetcher = imbalanced back row. Second rate half-back pairing. Centre pairing not firing. Hougardt not brimming with his usualy confidence after a kak performance at 9. And a mediocre 15. Say no more.

• 361.TASSIES:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:00 pm

  @katman-358:

• 362.katman:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:01 pm

  @TASSIES-360: Aussies not looking very hot in a number of positions too. And I reckon Naas is right – if you think our guys are under pressure, you ain’t seen pressure yet.

• 363.cab:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:03 pm

  Tassies
  think u might be right / so maybe we watch tomorrow with a heavy expectation and it can hopefully only get positive – that 1st half is going to thunderous from both sides.

• 364.TASSIES:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:04 pm

  and what did PW say? “It’s a total conslaught”….if we think we have this on covered. Dream. I’ll support but I wont expect.

• 365.katman:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:05 pm

  Anyway, I need to catch some shuteye. Been a long week.

  Enjoy the games.

  Go Lions.

• 366.fitz1ella:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:06 pm

  How reliable are paleoanthropological finds and their interpretations? There are limitations to this kind of research. Discoveries are fairly rare and have often been made under questionable circumstances, especially in the early days. As soon as something is dug up and taken elsewhere, essential elements — such as its exact position in the strata — are destroyed and afterwards one is dependent on the testimony of the discoverers. Sometimes early field research methods were extremely unscientific, but the resulting finds were taken seriously. Modern chemical and radiometric dating also is not without its limitations. Contamination may influence the results, or preliminary calculated dates are sometimes rejected or accepted on the basis of arguments not always clearly stated or published. When a certain discovery fits the currently ruling theory or is expected on theoretical grounds, it will be accepted without much scrutiny. If something does not fit the pattern, it is either ignored or attacked and rejected, but not always on valid grounds.

  The reconstruction of skeletons and skulls has often led to misinterpretations. How can scientists reconstruct a skeleton from fragments when no one knows what the original looked like? There is much prejudice and expectation in this field, and its history tells us more about the preconceived ideas of researchers than about the prehistoric people themselves — witness the inaccurate image of a stooping, brutish Neandertal. Lewis Binford, among others, has challenged many of paleoanthropology’s assumptions and forced his fellow scientists to look at their own prejudice. For instance, in the site at Zoukoudien Homoerectus remains, bones of extinct animals, and charcoal were found in layers, and the bones showed signs of being chewed on. Conclusion: the hominids made fire, hunted and ate the animals, and perhaps a few of their fellows. Binford points out that perhaps the fire was natural, and the animals ate other animals and a few hominids as well. One cannot easily assume one or the other conclusion without very thorough research.

  Considering humanity as a level of evolving consciousness, humanity does not descend from ape ancestors but forms the main stock from which all terrestrial beings are derived. Today’s anthropoid apes are seen as the descendants of these hybrids. The results of certain chimpanzee research indicates that chimpanzees were much more like hominids in the past and that their presently restricted distribution and behavior are a result of competition with more successful humans. An evolutionary descent of this nature would explain why the human skull, nasal bones, tongue, feet, hands, and other physical features are relatively primitive compared to mammals and anthropoid apes, which show a higher degree of specialization. It turns out that Australopithecus, Homohabilis, and early Homoerectus have traits that are more apelike, while the patterns in later Homoerectus, Neandertals, and Homosapiens are human.

  Could the early hominids be the mixed forms of humans and apelike beings? If so, then perhaps the search for the first apeman who stood up and behaved like a human is irrelevant. What if man is his own ancestor? Let us compare these hypotheses with the fossil record. According to certain ideas ******* came into being about 20-25 million years ago. The fossil record shows fossil ******* of 12 and 16-18 million years ago. Then there is a large gap. Humans and chimpanzees are supposed to have split about 5 million years ago. After that the fossil record shows apelike beings with human traits — the first Australopithecus. These alternate ideas also suggest that more or less modern humans as they look now came into being approximately one million years ago. Since then several fossil men have been found, such as later **** erectus, **** Heidelbergensis, Neandertal, Cro-Magnon, as well as fully modern man.

  Scientists base the theory of an African origin for modern man on genetic research, especially mitochondrial DNA. Stringer points out in African Exodus that African people have slightly more mitochondrial DNA mutations compared to non-Africans, implying that their roots are older. Also humans in general are biologically highly homogeneous, and the interpretation is that mankind only recently evolved from one tight little group and as such is a very young species. The mitochondrial DNA of an Eskimo and an Australian Aborigine are more genetically alike than that of two unrelated gorillas from the same forest. Stringer also remarks that it remains unclear whether Africa’s greater variation of human populations is a reflection of its deeper antiquity or of its earlier recovery in numbers from a bottleneck which preceded the global spread of modern humans. Alan Templeton has warned against the assumption that a gene tree is the same as a population tree. The former reflects the evolutionary history of a particular piece of DNA, while the latter indicates the movements of individuals and all the genes these groups carry. Thus there is certainly room for other hypotheses.

  It has been generally scientifically accepted that over time large continents have shifted, emerged, and submerged. Before our present continental structure, a continental system existed in the area of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans; before that a large continental system existed in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. When the Atlantean continents began to sink millions of years ago, many inhabitants perished, but some escaped to lands that are part of the current continental arrangement. Its also concluded that people of post-Atlantean days were isolated in several parts of the world for nearly 700,000 years, without any fresh infusion. They therefore had ample time to branch off into the most heterogeneous and diversified types. This is what appears to have happened in Africa: nowhere else does such a great variability of types exist, and this is attributed to their prolonged isolation. Africans did not leave their continent for several hundred thousands of years. Could this explain the greater genetic variability in Africa?

  Until recently the only known prehistoric men were Neandertals and Cro-Magnons in Europe. Apparently the Paleolithic men of the European quaternary epoch were the outcome of immigration — Africo-Atlantean and Atlantean stocks. The Atlantean connection is supported by the discovery of fossil skulls in Europe reverting directly to the West Caribbean and ancient Peruvian type. The Cro-Magnon, the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and the Basques are also of the same type. African tribes themselves are supposed to be diverging offshoots of Atlanteans modified by climate and condition. It is interesting that one point of these hypotheses is corroborated by Milford Wolpoff, a defender of the Multiregional Model, in his college textbook Human Evolution (1996). He states that Neandertal contemporaries (such as Cro-Magnon) do not look European — they lack diagnostic Caucasian features.

  In the search for human ancestors, scientists focus on factors that supposedly show whether the remains are human or not. But bipedalism, brainsize, toolmaking, and language do not give a full explanation, and scientists have not fully defined what Homosapiens is.

  Perhaps our division of the world into mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms is less than adequate. Moreover, can we consider ourselves fully human? Generally we claim reflective self-consciousness as exclusively human, but what if self-consciousness is not our fully-evolved state?

  Suppose being human involves a universal consciousness beyond self-consciousness: an awareness of our intimate connection with all life. That is the part of us that seems to be evolving now. What if all of nature’s kingdoms have some degree of evolving awareness? Could humanity’s true origin be the evolving awareness inherent in nature itself? This philosophic idea points out that an all-pervasive consciousness is the fabric of the universe and connects every living thing. Perhaps the fact that human beings can sense their interconnectedness with life implies that instead of subjugating and abusing other life forms because we have the power to do so, our task is to work with all beings in nature in their aspiration to higher forms and consciousness.

  Ultimately, most of what makes us human is invisible. We will not find it in the excavated forms of the past. In the development of paleoanthropology with its evolution theory, there is something essential that scientists are not considering: the consciousness of our fundamental connection with all life — a fully human consciousness that is totally humane. Without it we will never understand our own past nor know which way to go in the future.

• 367.victoriabok:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:06 pm

  @TASSIES-364:

  Don’t mention PW, you’ll have Extraball here in a flash, or should we call him Pluimbal from now on?

• 368.TASSIES:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:07 pm

  @katman-362: sure Deans is under pressure. Pretty much cancels out Meyer’s pressure. But at least he has a backline to cause a few anxious flutters from the opposition. Ours hasn’t shown me a thing to get excited about. Our forwards wont/can’t dominate. Their backline will.

• 369.TASSIES:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:08 pm

  @katman-365: cheers K. Grab it while you can.

• 370.cab:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:10 pm

  Night katman – I’m also out

• 371.TASSIES:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:10 pm

  @victoriabok-367: speaking of which…..I’m not sure sometimes, who I have less respect for; PW, Showerhead or ET. We are often presented with very difficult choices in this world.

• 372.fitz1ella:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:10 pm

  @Heavens Game-356: Rev. Micha? Heller

  I like the sound of that dudes name.. it has a ring of familiarity about it.. I reckon he probably knows wtf he’s on about.

• 373.TASSIES:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:11 pm

  @cab-370: sounds the sensible thing to do. Cheers ourns.

• 374.fitz1ella:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:20 pm

  so called ‘scientists’ don’t wanna stretch their imaginations or the relevance to who they actually are..

  that why they are actually pseudo scientists.. they certainly are NOT interested in discovering anything relative to their human existence.. the more deluded by ignorance and scholastic entrenched dogma the more blindly blissful in such ignorance they remain.

• 375.rangerman:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:23 pm

  @fitz1ella-374: i have chatted to lee berger and visited dachau but no one can copy and paste like you.

• 376.fitz1ella:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:36 pm

  here some more copy and paste to awaken your humdrum existence before the great escapist episode about to descend upon your closed minded life at around 12 noon tomorrow.

  Intelligent Design?

  Behind and underlying any discussion of evolution and creation is a question that takes us to philosophy’s very heart: Why is there a universe at all? Certainly our answers both reflect and define the meaning and direction of our lives; and they are important because our beliefs affect the lives of others as well — profoundly so. Creation and evolution are fundamentally about our origins and ancestry, and about who we are and where we’re going. Although many people see no basic incompatibility, creation and evolution have come to represent two antagonistic, mutually exclusive worldviews, largely because of restrictive definitions, either/or reasoning, and tacitly-held assumptions. Evolution is generally equated with Darwinism, creation with biblical creationism; one is physics, the other metaphysics, and never the twain should meet. This thinking has become so habitual that we may not realize how much it narrows our perception and understanding; nor does rejection of one imply adoption of the other. As mathematician and Darwin critic David Berlinski wrote, “It is not necessary to choose between doctrines. The rational alternative to Darwin’s theory is intelligent uncertainty” (“The Deniable Darwin,” Letters, 1996).

  Other reasonable alternatives also exist, reminding us of Allan Bloom’s perceptive remark in The Closing of the American Mind: “The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable.” Modern media, public education, and the internet have massively diminished the power of the old tyrannies; but challenges to reigning orthodoxies will always remain unwelcome. Such is true of the new intelligent design movement which makes a persuasive case against Darwinian explanations of how we came to be. Because it has originated with competent, well-credentialed scientists, many critics — wary of theological intrusions — label it “stealth creationism,” and what could be a mutually beneficial collaboration has once again become adversarial.

  While the concept of intelligent design is nothing new — it is found in ancient philosophy* and virtually every spiritual tradition — modern writers often point to British clergyman William Paley, who in 1802 gave impressive intellectual force to the argument. Just as we infer from the complexity of a watch found in the forest that it was designed and fabricated by an intelligent someone who had a clear purpose in mind, so may we likewise infer design and purpose from many examples of complex structure and function in nature. Design implies an intelligent designer, Paley argued, and since no animal or man can design itself, which would mean acting before existing, who then could the universal designer be but God?. This remains a compelling argument for many; but because Paley burdened it with questionable theological assumptions and some poor examples from nature, the argument was criticized and eventually fell out of favor. For example, if God is proven good by the beneficial nature of his contrivances, it is reasonable to ask why imperfections and “suboptimal designs” exist in nature. Why create a world which produces disease, deformity, and death in a ferociously competitive struggle for life?

• 377.rangerman:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:37 pm

  @fitz1ella-376: wake up.

• 378.fitz1ella:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:41 pm

  @rangerman-377: nope you the doos who is fast asleep.. wake up you archaic dead beat moron

  see the reality for what it is

• 379.Humphrey:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:43 pm

  Keo has a new Cut and Paste King, it seems.

• 380.Humphrey:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:44 pm

  I love how fitzy tried to pass it off as his own stuff…. but then the lingo just didn’t add up… skoppiefitzy speak is rather unique.

• 381.fitz1ella:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:46 pm

  “Is beauty just Darwin’s bad dream?”

  Often it is argued . . . that Darwin’s theory should be left to the biologists to be examined, that it is purely a matter of empirical, secondary knowledge that should be left to the experts. But it occurs to me that Darwin’s theory clashes with a central precept embraced by Western civilization, Socrates’ trinity, the belief in the essential unity of the good, the beautiful and the true, and, if this is true, it clashes with a concept which has been received as wisdom, the domain of primary knowledge, open to all, and the responsibility of all to cultivate and not merely the domain of a specialized class of craftsman. —

  This raises an important question: does Darwin’s theory reveal a fundamental conflict between the good and beautiful against the true? To clarify this, he excerpts a paragraph from the Origin of Species on the subject of beauty in the natural world, where Darwin comments on the “protest lately made by some naturalists,”

  against the utilitarian doctrine that every detail of structure has been produced for the good of its possessor. They believe that many structures have been created for the sake of beauty, to delight man or the Creator (but this latter point is beyond the scope of scientific discussion), or for the sake of mere variety, a view already discussed. Such doctrines, if true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory. I fully admit that many structures are now of no direct use to their possessors, and may never have been of any use to their progenitors; but this does not prove that they were formed solely for beauty or variety. — pp. 249-50 (6th ed.)

  In other words, Darwin’s theory excludes doctrines which assert that much of nature’s beauty reflects metaphysical or divine intent. Darwin accordingly defines a species’ “good” in terms of its survival and reproduction; “beauty for beauty’s sake” is but a factor in sexual selection; natural selection “cannot possibly produce any modification in a species exclusively for the good of another species”; and he concludes that, with some exceptions, “the structure of every living creature either now is, or was formerly, of some direct or indirect use to its possessor” (ibid., pp. 251-3). In contra view, Darwin’s theory reduces beauty to a utilitarian notion that masks its transcendent function and distracts one from recognizing it. He suggests, moreover, that the theory amounts to a materialist worldview which increasingly influenced Darwin’s personal experience of beauty, as recorded in his autobiography:

• 382.fitz1ella:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:48 pm

  nobody tried passing anything off as ‘his own stuff’ its all out there for anyone who ever wanna catch an overdue wake up .. schmuckaluck

• 383.Mostofyou:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:50 pm

  So having been out for the night with friends I am back and all I find is reeems and reems of copied and pasted seeming facts of what is one person’s view of purported evolution(a subject he has no aptitude for).
  It amounts to nothing more than unorganised, unsystematic,disjointed stolen ideas of others(who may know something)presented as ones own and that is just dishonesty in the extreme. Plagiarism is a crime and leaves the offender still knowing f o k k o l.

  But that is your lot as I have some responses to make before I wake up for the epic games of Sept. rugby.

• 384.Mostofyou:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:52 pm

  Where are the quotation marks then?
  Now go to hell and leave the science for those who know, and that is not you.

• 385.fitz1ella:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:52 pm

  This application of Socrates’ “trinity” to the current intelligent design debate is especially interesting because the principal discussion of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in Plato’s Dialogues centers around the identical conflict between the materialistic and transcendental worldviews: Is the universe the product of blind chance or is it intelligently designed? While Plato clearly upholds design, his main concern is to explore a deeper — in fact the central — question of all his Dialogues: What is the Good? And what is good for man? That is, what is the “state or condition of the soul which renders the life of every man happy”: a life of pure pleasure or a life of mind and wisdom? Plato’s “answer” may surprise us.

  The dialogue in which this discussion occurs (Philebus) was written relatively late in Plato’s life, and therefore reflects his mature thought. Embodying Pythagorean concepts and some lengthy analytical sections, it presupposes acquaintance with his earlier works; but the principal comments on intelligent design and the Good are quite clear and fairly easy to follow. As in all his Dialogues, Plato seeks not so much to prove a theory as to focus our thought on issues of importance, helping us to clarify our own views. Socrates opens the discussion by saying:

  Well, Philebus says that the good for all animate beings consists in enjoyment, pleasure, delight, and whatever can be classed as consonant therewith: whereas our contention is that the good is not that, but that thought, intelligence, memory, and all things akin to these, right opinion and true reasoning, prove better and more valuable than pleasure for all such beings as can participate in them; . . . and that nothing in the world is more profitable than so to participate. — §11

• 386.fitz1ella:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:54 pm

  @Mostofyou-384: get fucked fuckwit.. you don’t know the beginning of science.. or which kind of orangutan you evolved out of…

  quotation marks… are you that fucked in the head that you need quotation marks to determine whether anything pertains to being true or not?

• 387.rangerman:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:57 pm

  @fitz1ella-385: you seem a bit confused.

  wake up.

• 388.fitz1ella:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:57 pm

  What is the relation of the One to the many, and the finite to the infinite?

  This question could be phrased in modern scientific terms by asking how a seemingly featureless singularity evolved into the manifold universe? Anchoring the discussion to the foundations of physics and metaphysics, Socrates then suggests that there is a point of conjunction between all dualities that is often overlooked or disregarded. Just so with wisdom and pleasure: the good life cannot consist exclusively of either. There must be a mixture of both, a third possibility which transcends this particular duality, soon shown to be a false opposition (as in today’s debate which pits intelligent design against evolution rather than the Darwinian explanation of it). As Socrates had said previously, the recognition of intermediates “makes all the difference between a philosophical and a contentious discussion.” But, he asks, which of these components is the primary cause of the mixture being good?

  How the question is to be answered depends upon which of the competing theories, materialism or intelligent design, informs one’s fundamental worldview. Socrates intimates that neither had been proved given the present state of ignorance, even though “all philosophers agree (whereby they really exalt themselves) that Nous [mind] is the king of heaven and earth.” Pursuing the inquiry, he asks:

  Are we to say that the sum of things, or what we call this universe, is controlled by a power that is irrational and blind, and by mere chance; or on the contrary, as our forefathers said, is ordered and directed by intelligence and a marvellous wisdom?

• 389.Mostofyou:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:58 pm

  @Robzim-242:

  Thanks for confirming in you typical ‘boeremag’ fashion, specifically here the ‘verkrampte’ Jimmy Kruger. Biko’s demise also left him cold and now he too is a frozen decomposed morsel. how far is your time?
  You would probably like to claim you did so deliberately but that novelty has now been usurped.

• 390.Mostofyou:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:59 pm

  386:

  You clearly less than that FRAUD.

• 391.fitz1ella:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:59 pm

  @rangerman-387: nope fuckwit.. not in the least confused…

  you the one dimensional moron who is absolutely and totally confused.. like you dunno if you an evolved orangutan or a photon beam from outa space .. do you now?

• 392.rangerman:
  7 Sep 2012, 23:59 pm

  @fitz1ella-386: you need to ingest the accumulated knowlege of others and try to explain it in your own words.

  otherwise you are simply plagiarising or trying to pass off someone elses’ hard work as your own.

  wake up.

• 393.rangerman:
  8 Sep 2012, 00:01 am

  @fitz1ella-391: you have problems.

  wake up.

• 394.fitz1ella:
  8 Sep 2012, 00:02 am

  @Mostofyou-390: fraud Maud you dunno fuckall yet you so convinced you occupying a seat of intelligent civilization in your self deluded ignorant backward thinking mind…

• 395.fitz1ella:
  8 Sep 2012, 00:05 am

  @rangerman-392: read the content you stupid ignoramus doos… what difference does it make ‘who’ said ‘what’

  the fundamental reality of what exists from what is delusion is for YOU to connect the dots..

  the copy and paste exercise is SIMPLY to get you to READ the realizable cognition as given you by OTHERS as long ago as Socrates or Plato so that YOU can WAKE the fck UP.. Schmuckaluck..

• 396.victoriabok:
  8 Sep 2012, 00:06 am

  @Mostofyou-389:

  Ja ou Pluimbal, dit laat ons koud, net soos die feit dat baie beter sportmanne en vroue as jy ook nie ‘n kans gekry het weens politiek nie, ouens soos Danie Gerber, Carel du Plessis, Zola Budd, Evette de Klerk, Charmaine Gale, Naas, Uli Schmidt, Divan Serfontein, Schalk Burger se pa, Bruce Fordyce en vele ander

• 397.rangerman:
  8 Sep 2012, 00:07 am

  @fitz1ella-395: i read loads of it.

  for a postgraduate degree.

  regurgitating it on keo proves nothing.

  wake up.

• 398.Mostofyou:
  8 Sep 2012, 00:08 am

  No wonder this poor planet is totally messed up because you, only to yourself, know it all.

  You need to drink some pure green coffee bean extract to try to develpe the remnants of your unevolved muscle you mistake for a ‘brain’.
  You exist only to be mocked and insulted.

• 399.rangerman:
  8 Sep 2012, 00:10 am

  @fitz1ella-395: the day you manage to get anyone to connect a few dots is the day before they are committed.

  seriously, just relax, i simply cannot take you seriously ok?

• 400.Mostofyou:
  8 Sep 2012, 00:10 am

  Since when does a mere Honour’s candidate read much of anything?
  How delusional does those who are being dispossessed become?

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