ALL Non-Africans Are Part Neanderthals

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The Neanderthal genome is not the same as Homo-sapiens…they were non-humans.

Mankind was able to mate and produce viable fertile off-spring with them.

This very strongly implies that we humans could most likely mate with as least one, or more, of the older Homo/hominid species we know have existed on earth.

This pretty much eliminates the need to search any further for the ‘missing link’.

This also completely and totally backs up the truth of evolution.

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Religion And The Mt. Toba Eruption

I was recently checking on one of the blogs that I follow and came upon this little excerpt from a scientific paper and it got me going on a hunt for more information.  See blog link below and thanks to Mathildas Anthropology blog for the brain jog. http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/

“The depositional position of the tephra in the Jurreru River Valley, together with new chronometric and geochemical evidence, indicates that the ash is a product of the 74,000 year old YTT event (Petraglia et al., 2007). The recovery of Middle Paleolithic assemblages in dated deposits below and above the ash provides the first firm archaeological association, helping to resolve some of the uncertainty about archaeological associations in India. The recovery of Middle Paleolithic industries without major technological changes after the ashfall, indicate that populations survived the super-eruption. We have suggested, based on a variety of datasets, that modern humans were present in the Indian sub continent before the super-eruption, and that these populations survived this event.”

Searching a little further I found this Paper from the University of Oxford

“An area of widespread speculation about the Toba super-eruption is that it nearly drove humanity to extinction. The fact that the Middle Palaeolithic tools of similar styles are found right before and after the Toba super-eruption, suggests that the people who survived the eruption were the same populations, using the same kinds of tools, says Dr Petraglia. The research agrees with evidence that other human ancestors, such as the Neanderthals in Europe and the small brained Hobbits in Southeastern Asia, continued to survive well after Toba.” University of Oxford, UK
http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_releases_for_journalists/100222_1.html

Continuing my search a bit more I found the following information on the dating of the YTT (Toba event), and for you Young Earth Creationist’s (YEC’s) who erroneously think that C-14 dating is wrong, you will notice it didn’t make use of this particular bit of science.

“Toba ash has been dated using the K-Ar, the ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar and oxygen isotope/biostratigraphic methods. The abrupt drop in sea water temperature was determined with the oxygen isotope (O¹⁸/O¹⁶) method. The diverse methods used on a variety of Toba materials are in rough agreement as to the dating of the event: it definitively took place sometime between 77,000 and 69,000 years ago.” George Weber @
http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/originals/Weber-Toba/textr.htm

Some research data was obtained from Science magazine @
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/317/5834/114 Subscription required for full article.

So basically what all of this stuff is saying is that modern type Homo sapiens were living in India sometime before about 75,000 years ago, and they were making tools and procreating and in general doing what humans do, and we have proof of this.  And then this same info is saying that after the Mt. Toba eruption—which is thought to have cooled off the earth and caused a 1000 year lengthening of a ongoing cold snap that the earth was undergoing at the time, and caused a human population bottleneck where breeding pairs, on earth, may have fallen to as low as 10,000 people.  In other words, near extinction of the human race—We were still around, albeit in smaller numbers.  Whew!

This is pretty reliable data and it shows once more that humans have been walking the earth for many tens of thousands of years and leaving evidence behind that men can find, research, and interpret to determine that we were not placed on a newly created earth by some sky-god only 6,000 or so years ago, and also confirms that the Adam and Eve story is just myth…they never existed.

Just sayin’…..
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The Bible and Neanderthals

A team of biologists led by Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany have concluded the first detailed analysis of the Neanderthal genetic sequence and determined that the Neanderthals did contribute to modern mans genes through interbreeding.  As many as 4% percent of modern humans in Europe, Asia and some other parts of the world have Neanderthals for distant relatives.

My question is how do you think this will affect the creation vs. evolution debates? The fact that “God’s People” have the blood of pre-humans that weren’t even thought of or explained in the Bible.  How does Christian apologetics reconcile an incredibly old (28,000 to +350,000 year old) race of people that could probably talk, as they had the requisite physiological parts, and we know they did make tools and bury their dead with personal items and flowers, and may have made jewelry, contributing to our gene pool.

So far it looks like the intermixing occurred in the Middle East about 50,000 to 80,000 years ago or maybe longer.  No indication yet of any mixing in Europe where modern humans entered about 45,000 years ago.  There is also no sign of mixing in any of Africa’s indigenous peoples. It is truly amazing what DNA science can tell us, don’t you think?

Someone locally ask me if I thought that the Neanderthal might be the Nephilim mentioned in the Bible and I told him I didn’t think so as the Neanderthals were short (5’2” to 5’ 4”) in stature.

Could this be the people that Cain drew his wife from?  No no no, just being silly, as we all know that Cain wasn’t real, and the last Neanderthal died out about 30,000 years ago.   🙂

Quote of the day

If we go back to the beginning, we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve their own interests. If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.  Baron D’Holbach

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Is Christianity Doomed?

Christians nowadays are in a very unstable position although they will deny it strongly.  Arguing philosophy and exegesis of the Bible is pretty much a waste of time now.  The thing that is killing religion in our times is science and the unstoppable uncovering of evidence that disproves most of the foundation of all religions. Judaism, Islam and Christianity are all irrevocably tied to the Bible. All that believers in Yahweh, Elohim, Jehovah, or Allah can do nowadays is say they don’t believe the sciences that contradict their theology.

The believers in God have to deny that we can accurately date tens of thousands of artifacts and human bones and artwork and structures that are scattered all over the earth and give live testimony to our civilizations verrry looong past.  The many evidences we have for our past are real and tangible and their provenance can be scientifically proven…and there is so much of it.  The followers of God and Allah sometimes say that it doesn’t matter what evidence there is, God is outside of the evidence and cannot be proven…or disproven.

Perhaps true.  But, what can be proven beyond a doubt, is that certain things that are described in the infallible ‘Word of God’ inspired Bible are not true and not infallible or factual and that a lot of the stories are not to be trusted as actually happening.  Another thing that stands out is the actual explanation of the supposedly unfolding drama is stupid. The most stupid part is that Satan knows he will fail because it’s part of the drama that God set up…preordained from the very beginning if you will.

If you believe the story of Gods plan you have to accept the fact that God actually created this WHOLE drama from the beginning. He created all Evil, Satan, the Demons, He set up the Fall, giving us Original Sin, He was the playwright, the creator of unimaginable human suffering and death. A loving God creates two humans and actually sets them up for failure and then kicks them out of his care and lets these poor people try to survive with nothing…that part of the story is both scary and a not very bright explanation of a Gods actions.  Wake up Christians…A true humane God would not do these things.

Some things to consider:

1.       We know that the flood described in the Bible never happened.

2.        We know that humans and civilizations were spread all over the earth in the time of the deluge and  Tower of Babel.

3.       We know that Neanderthals were walking the earth for tens of thousands of years before a supposed Adam and Eve were created.

4.       We know that Homo sapiens or ‘modern humans’ were walking the earth tens of thousands of years before the Biblical folklore was even thought of.

5.       We know that Moses did not write the Pentateuch.

6.       We know, although fundamentalists deny it, that there are many, many contradictions and falsehoods in the scripture.

7.       We know that the Hebrews conception of ‘God’ changed mightily over the years. They once had a pantheon of gods and worshiped idols at late as 500BCE.

8.       There is no evidence outside the Bible, in other historic documents or the archeological record, for a mass migration from Egypt involving hundreds of thousands of people.

9.       No evidence for Joshua’s knocking down of Jericho’s walls or destruction of Ai and other cities.

10.   Archeologists also have discovered that most of the large Canaanite towns that were supposedly destroyed by invading Israelites were either not destroyed at all or were destroyed by “Sea People”-Philistines, or others.

Just the first 4 things above are enough to prove the Bible false.

Religion is a construct of the human mind…its explanation of creation is a story from a very old tribe
of Sheep/Goat herders, in the language, and with the worldview, of the times it was written in.  The Old and New Testament scriptures are very different views of God, and how he treats and interacts with humans…they are not compatible…and not ‘Gods’ word.

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Humans Came Out of Africa

It is now pretty much accepted that Homo sapiens originated in Africa and spread north and east along the coasts of the Indian Ocean and then split into groups that migrated in every direction. Some went to Australia; some went north into the Asian steppes, thence into Europe, where they eventually displaced the Neanderthals. Evidence is primarily mutations in mitochondrial DNA found in the descendants not of a single woman, Eve, but rather a “core” of 2,000 to maybe 10,000 Africans who lived around 190,000 to 200,000 years ago. This puts science once again in the cross-hairs of the religious right or visa-versa. The religionists will thoroughly deny that the scientists know what they’re talking about, and continue to insist that the Biblical Adam and Eve were born 6,000+ years ago somewhere in the middle-east.

I suspect it’s really hard to be a Christian nowadays. As much as they would like to muzzle the continuing new knowledge that disproves their beliefs…they can’t. If they just ignores the news and don’t read anything but select Christian literature, they can keep their cores beliefs I suppose, but I would have to believe that it would make one rather one dimensional and boring to talk to. I mean the Bible stories have been passed around and talked about so much that you get tired of repeating the same thing over and over.

If you are one of the rare Christian birds that can somehow read and listen to the daily bombardment of advancing knowledge and somehow rationalize it as not applying to your faith, more power to you. I find it rather sad though that real knowledge is filtered out of your consciousness.

That leaves the even rarer Christian that hears and reads about the real world science going on and on and thinks he or she can somehow make their beliefs fit. Better yet, get a scientifically trained person who wimped out of real science because you actually have to prove and defend your position, and goes and gets a Doctor of Divinity degree, and writes books that sound scientifically plausible to the layman, but are thoroughly debunked by the practicing scientist. I have found so many Christian sites on the Internet that just lie to try to make their religious beliefs make sense in light of the real world knowledge out there.

I have talked in person to Christians who profess to believe in the inerrant Bible and they are really ignorant. They look surprised when you bring up facts to them. Don’t misunderstand me, I still respect them as unusually nice persons, but I can’t understand their being that uninvolved in the world. Christians without a doubt accept the science that underlies modern living…they believe in that and know it works. That’s as far as it goes though. Science is under the control of Satan if any of it impinges on their ‘beliefs.’

This is all well and good as long as these Christians are established and productive citizens, but as I wrote about yesterday, what happens to their children if those children are brought up believing that modern science is wrong and unacceptable to believe in? Some secular colleges are turning down Christian school graduates for not being able to think critically and logically enough to survive college teaching.

“Information is religion’s greatest enemy, and in an age when information is just a few keyboard strokes away from anyone with a computer, this is going to pose a greater threat to Christianity than anything it has yet ‘survived.‘ “–Farrell Till

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Teach Science and Religion Together?

So, do you think it would be ‘fair’ to teach religion, along with scientific subjects in your local middle-school or high school science classes?

A lot of people, including our current president George Bush, have said that would be alright with them. Picture me standing here with my jaw dropping to the floor. Why on earth would this even enter someone’s mind as a good thing to do? What reasonable thinking person thinks the two subjects should be taught together at the same time, in the same room?

You know the answer to this of course…they should not be taught together. Religion doesn’t even come close to having an intellectually honest explanation of our earth, the human race, our pre-historic past, things like Neanderthals, stratigraphy, bones of dinosaurs, archaeological records; you know those little things that show how little the human writers of the Bible in 1500 BCE- and later, knew about their world.

Come to think about it…God didn’t know much about our world either…that is if you think the Bible was the inspired ‘word’ from God. You would think the creator of everything in the universe could /would explain to his chosen people how things really work. After all, they were as intelligent as some people of today.

But I digress. So if you think religion should be taught in your local schools, so that our children can be balanced, and pick out what YOU or THEY want to believe in. Should we also teach Astrology and Astronomy together, so they can choose which one of those ‘sciences disciplines’ they wish to follow? Perhaps they could get a job forecasting the future for presidents…why not, Reagan had one.

Should we teach Alchemy…you know, how to change lead into gold, along with modern chemistry to give them a choice of careers to follow.

Perhaps witchcraft and modern medicine should be combined…after all a lot of people believe in the old medicine man. That might take care of the doctor shortage in some remote and small towns. We could bring back the sacrificial goats and lambs and show the medical/witchcraft students how to please God with the aroma of burning goat/lamb flesh…It’s an Old Testament thing.

Just yesterday I heard that the California University system has been fending off lawsuits (The UC just won the case 8.12.08) from graduates from Christian High Schools. They (the students) have contended that the Universities where denying them admittance because of religious teaching. The California University system says that the students from the Christian schools are not learning critical thinking and logical skills necessary to graduate from college, because they are using science(?) books that explain humans and earth and evolution in a religious context only. Another sign that teaching religion in public schools is a very baaad idea.

The religious right just has to get over it, and stop their assault on the truth of science. No matter how much you deny the truth…it is still there…and the only way it can be made to go away is disprove it. And so far they have only tried lying…to make the truth go away. Is that even Christian?

See story here: http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/news/2008/CA/782_victory_in_california_creation_8_12_2008.asp

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