And that is the point I was making to metis. The length of time he had been studying his craft did not translate into any type of authoritative knowledge.

Let's switch the subject to the odd notion of "gravity." It's part of another branch of the so-called "sciences." These scientists believe in some magical, mystical, invisible force -- they call it a property of mass or something -- which pulls mass towards itself.

What nonsense. Everybody knows that "properties" don't pull. Properties are just descriptions, and can't do anything!

I have it on very good authority, from a respected source in Middle Earth, that in fact what really explains this so-called phenomon is that there are invisible Goblins that try to pull everything down, and equally invisible Gremlins that try to pull everything up! And of course, as everyone knows (except those who have been fooled by the Great Gremlin, and who will therefore be banished to Heck), Goblins are stronger than Gremlins, and so they win every time. And that's why things fall down and not up!

And furthermore, if you want proof that Goblins are stronger than Gremlins, all you need do is think about this the other way around. If Goblins and Gremlins are pulling respectively down and up, and everything without exception falls down and not up, then that is proof positive that Goblins are stronger!

Properties pulling things. What will these stupid scientists think up next.

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evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.

My point was not so much about "time" as it was about the vast accumulation of information on apes, monkeys, and mammals in general. Most biologists have known now for around 50 years that many animals other than us humans can reason, and if there's reasoning, there's culture that goes beyond just instinct. Even though we would love to claim that humans have exclusive rights to reasoning and culture, we simply have to swallow our ego and face up to reality.

You might consider looking up the experiments with Washoe (I hope I spelled her name right) as just one example. She's a chimp that was taught sign language and learned how to use a simple computer, and what they found with her abilities was quite remarkable. Going back about two decades ago, National Geographic had a series of articles on her.

There are a great many other examples, such as the study of snow monkeys in Japan and how they have learned from each other ideas that were not characteristic of them in the past. Or look at the studies of bonobos, who may actually be our closest non-human ancestor.

One can simply enter these names in a search engine and go to the appropriate sources for information.

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

The earliest human evolution whereas we appear to have separated from the ape line occurs in central Africa since that's where we're finding the oldest human fossils, and this occurred long after the continents separated.

The Amerindians came out of s.e. Asia originally, appear to have moved north, and one way or the other either went across the Bering Strait. When this occurred is conjectural, but the limited evidence points to sometime before 20,000 b.p. The Inuit ("Eskimos") came across much later, probably by 4000 b.p., and they seem to have originated out of the Mongolia area, and they're related so much to the people from that region and eastern Siberia that they can and do communicate with each other.

As far as the Amerindians are concerned, we know they came originally from s.e. Asia based on their blood types and their language. Even though much time has elapsed since they came, many words, as compared to s.e. Asians, are the same or similar beyond the chances of mere coincidence.

There's no evidence to suggest that they, the Inuit, or any other group came from another planet or solar system. Although I had a blind date once...

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

I make no claim to be "authoritative", but only that I spent a great deal of time studying in this area since this is related to my main field of specialization. But let me just mention that I came from a fundamentalist Protestant background that denied the possibility of the evolution of species, but when I went to the natural history museums at the University of Michigan and the Smithsonian Institute, the information there began to challenge my beliefs. I had plans to go into the ministry, but when I asked my pastor if one could believe in evolution and the Bible, he said no.

This threw me into quite a quandry because he was asking me to believe that which I couldn't see (God) but expected me to not believe the evidence that I could see (evolution). I was confused as to what to do next but, needless to say, I put my intent to be a minister on hold. It wasn't until my junior year of college which, by that time, I had studied some theology outside of my denomination whereas I realized that one could be a Christian and also believe in evolution. Therefore, I decided to pursue biology and then, later, anthropology.

I point the above out because there are so many people, including myself, who essentially were and are brainwashed into rejecting evolution out of hand because of being told that it is incompatible with scripture. But, depending on how one interprets scripture, it isn't necessarily at conflict at all.

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

I don't know how you are defining reason. A lion on the prowl has to decide which gazelle to attack. Is that reasoning ability? Probably since a decision must be made. But this does not mean that the lion is able to change its diet as humans are able to do.

Washoe may be a wonderful specimen but the involvement of the human agent only demonstrates that the primate could be trained to do unique things. However, those are temporal changes since they cannot be passed on to its progeny through procreation.

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That's not necessarily reasoning. Reasoning goes beyond just making decisions that well could be instinctive. Reasoning involves going beyond just the physical and putting elements together that involve a cognitive level that deals with abstraction. For example, a chimp will eventually determine that what he sees in the mirror is actually a reflection of himself, whereas the vast majority of other animals think it's another animal.

Jane Goodall, undoubtedly the foremost expert on chimp behavior, witnesses a young adult male chimp go into mourning when his mother died. He actually starved to death. Instinct would tell him to eat, but death is something that most animals don't seem to understand, but chimps do.




I hate to say this but you have no idea what you're talking about. Sorry to sound so nasty, but there's no way I can sugar-coat it. Do the research and you'll see. Are you afraid to look? And, btw, the snow monkeys did pass on swimming and salting their food by rinsing it in salt water, which was not their tradition originally, to their progeny.

One final example. When untrained chimps have been put into a cage where a banana has been hung beyond their reach, but there happens to be a box in another area of the cage and a pole in another area of the cage, most adult chimps will eventually figure out that if they put the box by the bars nearest the banana, crawl on top of the box, and then take the pole and pull the suspended banana in, they can get it. Now, again, this is with untrained chimps who never have seen this combination.

And the above is abstract thought since it takes three unrelated items that go well beyond what they would normally find in their natural environment. No one could deduce that the behavior is somehow just instinctive.

Again, there's many books and websites dealing with these subjects.

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

just a slight interruption to share....

we had a raccoon here on the property that would come on time each evening and after it had eaten its cat food...we would hand it a cookie...he got to were he would not eat the cookie less he dipped it in the water bowl....animals to me seem to know much more then we credit it them for because we often wont think out of the box and allow possibilities of there being far more then we understand as humans....ok...will leave you alone now...

I don't know what you think I am am afraid of. It is great to meet an individual who always knows what he is talking about and also researches every subject on which he has even so much as a passing interest.

One of the most astounding examples of animal reasoning I have come across involves a bird (forget which species). The experimenters had put some food in a tube and place two wires, one straight and one hooked, by the tube. They wanted to see if the birds would correctly choose the hooked rather than the straight wire to get the food.

Unfortunately, as the male bird landed, it inadvertently knocked the hooked wire away so only the straight one was accessible. The female bird sized up the situation, bent the straight wire into a hook of the proper size and retrieved the food.