Human Evolution - Fiction?

[Abstroose]

Well we all would like to believe we hail from apes and monkeys, and there could be some truth to it, but it is strange that no one thought of the possibility that we as the human race, may not have originated from this planet originally. The very fact that there are other Solar Systems and universes, mean that there is the possibility and probability of life on other planets. People may think it is impossible, but perhaps the games we play these days are not so far fetched from what could have happened or explained how the human race came to be.

Some scientists believe that we originate from Mars because a meteorite may have crashed on Earth that came from Mars and from there the bacteria multiplied and eventually Man came to be.

Here is a video explaining what they think of this theory:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6xcMwJ9Yq8

There could be a good explanation for us being on Earth and that is that we started as a colony on this planet and the origin of our forefather may have been lost over time. People forget and move on and from there spiritual belief systems have sprung up all over. Hence why our planet has such a high diversity of religions. It is possible that we are slowly evolving and one day we may yet meet other species like us that have decided to not engage in the evolution of Earth.

The most notable point in a fictional movie 'War of the Worlds' is when the speaker explains that we as humans has earned the right to live in this planet along with all the other species. It might be near impossible for another race to approach is, let alone live on this planet as every solar system that may have a planet that is far enough from a sun to sustain life, may not have the same density, water, or atmosphere as our planet Earth. They may look very different in relation to us. It's well worth your while to look into other theories, instead of taking what scientists say as gospel truth.

[ryuken]

Evolution is more probable than those "from mars" theories. There is lot of empirical evidence for evolution : Understanding Evolution

[AntonM]

There's a lot of holes in the evolution theory, that does not automatically mean that we are aliens as there's no concrete proof of it but it makes you question what we are being taught about evolution. If you interested have a read through this Debunking Evolution - problems, errors, and lies of evolution exposed as false and wrong

[Sophie]

From what I saw, they're only proving that bacteria survived after the explosion. In fact, they're not proving anything, because we all know bacteria can grow at 100+ C degrees and also resist at -20C, also can be preserved in liquid nitrogen. So it resists in pretty harsh environment. The only thing that can be destroyed is the rock itself where the bacteria was injected. Their experiment is so pointless.

In my opinion, this panspermia hypothesis is open to doubt for several reasons. They're saying that water existed on Mars once, but that doesn't prove that there has been life there, nor that life can be sustained. all organic matter is composed of carbon, so every living thing on earth contains carbon. As far as I know, meteorites contained organic matter, including amino-acids, which are the building blocks of proteins (cells ARE proteins, basically). So yeah, so far, so good. Meteorites contain organic matter, but carbon-based compounds don't mean life.

Keep in mind that life on earth has started 3 or 4 billion years ago(they could be wrong, tho), how would they know for sure how organic matter came to be ? Thing that pisses me off @ science channels is that some scientists make money based on recognition. They can't wait to find something new so they can show off with their oh so brilliant move. I'm not sayin this theory sucks, but im laughing @ the documentary itself.

[ryuken]

There's a lot of holes in the evolution theory, that does not automatically mean that we are aliens as there's no concrete proof of it but it makes you question what we are being taught about evolution. If you interested have a read through this Debunking Evolution - problems, errors, and lies of evolution exposed as false and wrong

Hmm, that PDF source is not looking authentic to me.

[AntonM]

Hmm, that PDF source is not looking authentic to me.

What does it matter about the presentation of the website? Read the content of it! Seriously have a read through all of it then form your own opinion on it. There's load of other websites about this i just found that one to be easy enough to understand.

[Curious]

I don’t think based on the scientific explanation and fact presentation; I’m fully convinced and will buy into the idea. Somehow, I believe that the theory is an unconfirmed assumption that so-happened comes together with all the supported facts that coincidentally tallies to it.

[Astaroth]

Think about it.

Evolution has been established as a continuing process. From wriggly-type organisms to the early neanderthals to the modern homo sapiens that we are today.

Does this therefore imply that we are still set to evolve into another form sometime in the future ?

[BlueEew]

The thing I have always thought about is, if we evolved from Monkeys. How come them same Monkeys are not evolving like we was meant to of all those years ago.

[therottenapple]

The thing I have always thought about is, if we evolved from Monkeys. How come them same Monkeys are not evolving like we was meant to of all those years ago.

LOL to this. It has a point though, if we evolved from monkeys then why some of the monkeys and apes haven't developed all these years? Now that's a hardcore question to evolutionists.

[ikkarus1999]

LOL to this. It has a point though, if we evolved from monkeys then why some of the monkeys and apes haven't developed all these years? Now that's a hardcore question to evolutionists.

As an evolutionist, let me respond:

We did not evolve from monkeys. We and the great apes share a common ancestor. All of those following from that lineage have been continuously evolving. The chimps of today (our closest living relatives) have evolved, just as we have. Monkeys, likewise share a common ancestor with us, just a much older one, therefore all extant "monkey" species have evolved (and continue to evolve) from that more distant ancestor.

So, your "hardcore" question to the evolutionist is answered trivially. You have misunderstood evolution, or at the very least the time scales that evolution generally works over. Natural selection has no goal, there is no "perfect" creature, just creatures with adaptations increasingly fine-tuned over millennia to their environments. Monkeys have evolved and continue to evolve, apes have evolved and continue to evolve, humans have evolved and continue to evolve. To put it more generally, all life has evolved and continues to evolve. Occasionally there will be splits in the branches of the tree of life, then over time the differences between those two branches will become amplified as the two branches exploit their niches in the environment.

The whole panspermia hypothesis is, to put it nicely, a long shot (and not a new idea at all). Ironically. it does nothing to defeat or even challenge evolutionary biology (which is the obvious agenda of those sponsoring panspermia's reemergence as a hypothesis). All it does is move the point of origin to someplace else. There is no reason whatsoever that life could not (in principle) evolve on Mars. It is, however, much more likely that life on Earth evolved on Earth as the Earth is a much more hospitable place. Again, regardless of where life began, it still evolved from humble creatures to more complex creatures following the laws of physics, chemistry and natural selection.

May I recommend you all take a Biology 101 course?

Think about it.

Evolution has been established as a continuing process. From wriggly-type organisms to the early neanderthals to the modern homo sapiens that we are today.

Does this therefore imply that we are still set to evolve into another form sometime in the future ?

Simply, yes! In fact, we (as a species) are evolving NOW. All species alive are evolving NOW. It just happens very, very, very, very, very, very, very slowly.

[Astaroth]

So how do you now suppose we'd all look like after all human beings evolve into something else in the future?

[ikkarus1999]

So how do you now suppose we'd all look like after all human beings evolve into something else in the future?

This is, of course, all speculation, but I would suppose that the evolutionary trends of the last 100,000 years would continue. Our brains will continue to get bigger (though there are limits on that--mainly the size of the birth canal), we will become less hairy (everyone becomes bald), our finger dexterity will continue to improve (longer more supple fingers), we will become physically weaker (less muscle mass), some of the defects introduced by walking upright will become less pronounced (hip problems, not being able to swallow and breath at the same time, spinal problems, hernia problems, foot problems), we will become even more social (even more hive culture--resistance is futile), our life expectancy will continue to increase, our ability to smell will continue to decrease, our eyesight will continue to decrease though color vision will probably become better, we will continue to lose skin pigmentation. And, for better or worse, sexual selection will continue to run amok--both sexes will be better "endowed" (think of the peacock's tail feathers).

In short, we (our distant descendants that is) will kind of look like the "grays" of science fiction and UFO abduction scenarios. LOL.

[Abstroose]

ikkarus1999, what are your views regarding natural selection and a speculated lack of survival rate for an organism to have a non-fuctional organ, such as half a wing? For example, in order for birds to have emerged from a Darwinist process of selection of the fittest from reptiles, non-functional wings would have played a part part of the evolution. I don't understand how there is a survival advantage for a reptile to have a small, non-functional wing which would not allow it to fly, but would rather cause the reptile to expend more energy.

Also, do you not agree that there is an extreme improbability that new functional proteins or organelles would emerge by random processes?

I am not disagreeing with Darwinism or natural selection, but I'm very curious to hear your opinions.

[ikkarus1999]

ikkarus1999, what are your views regarding natural selection and a speculated lack of survival rate for an organism to have a non-fuctional organ, such as half a wing? For example, in order for birds to have emerged from a Darwinist process of selection of the fittest from reptiles, non-functional wings would have played a part part of the evolution. I don't understand how there is a survival advantage for a reptile to have a small, non-functional wing which would not allow it to fly, but would rather cause the reptile to expend more energy.

Also, do you not agree that there is an extreme improbability that new functional proteins or organelles would emerge by random processes?

I am not disagreeing with Darwinism or natural selection, but I'm very curious to hear your opinions.

(I am not a biologist per se, so the details might be wrong, be gentle with me...)

This has been a common question to the "evolution" camp, usually phrased, "of what use is half a wing?" As it turns out, it is a subtly difficult question to answer. There have been two responses to it: the glider model and the runner model (referred to typically as the arboreal model and the cursorial model). The arboreal model proposes that small dinosaurs moved up into the trees and began to see the natural variation in flaps of skin between their limbs and torsos as selected advantages allowing longer leaps between branches. Over time these flaps turned into wings. The cursorial model proposes that small, quick dinosaurs used these developing flaps to assist them in their running which would then be selected. There are extensive arguments and evidence for both of these models. As far as feathers go, the common theory is that they evolved initially as thermal barriers, being much more efficient in retaining heat than flat scales. The structure and composition of feathers versus scales strongly supports this idea.

A new model has been proposed by a team at the University of Montana which avoids many of the problems of the two traditional hypotheses. It proposes that the front wings (most "dinosaur birds" actually had four wings, evolving on both the front and hind legs) were used mainly to rapidly scramble up steep inclines while the emerging flaps of skin aided in slowing their decent from those inclines. The line of argument, morphological and ontogenetic evidence and physical studies are quite compelling (which I won't go into here--google it!)

What is important to remember when viewing something that appears very designed and very functionally complete is that it is made of many, many components, many of which are far from optimal in design or function. It is the system that matters in the end, with each component adding or subtracting a slight amount of advantage. While it is difficult to envision intermediate steps, many of those steps have been found. Simply because there are holes in the fossil record does not challenge evolution as a theory, but rather our ability to interpolate between the data points. This may seem like a place to attack evolution and often is. But, NO competing theory is or has been as resilient when new evidence appears. I challenge Intelligent Design aficionados to explain why there are so many parts to any creature that are clearly not "perfect"... but I digress.

As for protein ontogenesis... well, it's actually not that uncommon for new proteins to arise. Many of our genetic diseases are exactly that--evolutionary failures as it were--these are, of course, what are referred to as mutations. Most of these mutations are going to be bad--it's much more probable that a change in either primary, secondary or tertiary protein structure will be harmful (if not deadly) to the organism. That said, Nature rolls the genetic dice at both a furious pace and over an incredibly long period of time, and every now and then a creature wins the DNA lottery, most of the time it's just a small payout, but sometimes it's the big jackpot. We marvel at the big jackpots, ignoring the small payouts, which if tallied up would swamp the big jackpots many times over. I won't go into this further as the process of protein evolution is fairly well understood.

As for organelles, there are several competing theories (depending highly on which organelle you are talking about). The poster child for organelle "creation" is the mitochondria, the energy producing (ATP) powerhouse of the cell. The theory, which is more or less universally accepted within the microbiology community, is that they arose as organelles basically through a process of "kidnapping". That is to say, a bacterium was captured by a cell, probably while it was trying to eat that bacterium, but the bacterium survived and became part of its host, propagating within the host and then spreading to daughter cells during cytokinesis (cell division). The genetic pedigree of mitochondrial DNA strongly supports this theory. Most eukaryotic cells share a common, potentially single, ancestor and the DNA of the mitochondria is similar in form to that of bacteria (they are in the ring form rather than the double helix form). Other organelles may have arisen using more conventional evolutionary divergences, but a fair number of the bodies we see within our cells appear to have started their journey with us as either parasites or hostages.

[AntonM]

ikkarus1999 here's something to consider about evolution:

The problem for evolution is that we never see the shifting between shapes in the fossil record. All fossils are of complete animals and plants, not works in progress "under construction". That is why we can give each distinct plant or animal a name. If evolution's continuous morphing were really going on, every fossil would show change underway throughout the creature, with parts in various stages of completion. For every successful change there should be many more that lead to nothing. The whole process is random trial and error, without direction. So every plant and animal, living or fossil, should be covered inside and out with useless growths and have parts under construction. It is a grotesque image, and just what the theory of evolution really predicts. Even Charles Darwin had a glimpse of the problem in his day. He wrote in his book On the Origin of Species: "The number of intermediate varieties which have formerly existed on Earth must be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory." The more fossils that are found, the better sense we have of what lived in the past. Since Darwin's day, the number of fossils that have been collected has grown tremendously, so we now have a pretty accurate picture. The gradual morphing of one type of creature to another that evolution predicts is nowhere to be found. There should have been millions of transitional creatures if evolution was true. In the "tree of life" that evolutionists have dreamed up, gaps in the fossil record are especially huge between single-cell creatures, complex invertebrates (such as snails, jellyfish, trilobites, clams, and sponges), and what evolutionists claim were the first vertebrates, fish. In fact, there are no fossil ancestors at all for complex invertebrates or fish. That alone is fatal to the theory of evolution. The fossil record shows that evolution never happened.

[ikkarus1999]

ikkarus1999 here's something to consider about evolution:

The problem for evolution is that we never see the shifting between shapes in the fossil record. All fossils are of complete animals and plants, not works in progress "under construction". That is why we can give each distinct plant or animal a name. If evolution's continuous morphing were really going on, every fossil would show change underway throughout the creature, with parts in various stages of completion. For every successful change there should be many more that lead to nothing. The whole process is random trial and error, without direction. So every plant and animal, living or fossil, should be covered inside and out with useless growths and have parts under construction. It is a grotesque image, and just what the theory of evolution really predicts. Even Charles Darwin had a glimpse of the problem in his day. He wrote in his book On the Origin of Species: "The number of intermediate varieties which have formerly existed on Earth must be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory." The more fossils that are found, the better sense we have of what lived in the past. Since Darwin's day, the number of fossils that have been collected has grown tremendously, so we now have a pretty accurate picture. The gradual morphing of one type of creature to another that evolution predicts is nowhere to be found. There should have been millions of transitional creatures if evolution was true. In the "tree of life" that evolutionists have dreamed up, gaps in the fossil record are especially huge between single-cell creatures, complex invertebrates (such as snails, jellyfish, trilobites, clams, and sponges), and what evolutionists claim were the first vertebrates, fish. In fact, there are no fossil ancestors at all for complex invertebrates or fish. That alone is fatal to the theory of evolution. The fossil record shows that evolution never happened.

Well, I'm sorry but I pretty much completely disagree with **almost** all of what you say.

First of all, we do see intermediate forms. It just depends on what you are willing to say is an intermediate form--Archaeopteryx is an intermediate form between dinosaur and bird.

Secondly, the fossil record will never, ever, ever provide us the level of detail you require as proof. The chances of an individual creature being fossilized and then discovered are astronomically small. It is amazing we have the record we have. As far as invertebrates go, by their very nature they are unlikely to find their way into the record. More importantly, the fossil record is not even necessary to "prove" evolution (see next item.) And from a philosphical point of view, as a scientist, my goal is not to prove evolution but to disprove it. I've tried. I can't. Owing to the so-called problem of induction I can never PROVE evolution, only disprove it, but that's a topic in and of itself.

Thirdly, we do witness evolution in action NOW, with our own (albeit magnified) eyes. Drug resistant bacteria ARE evolution at work. There is no other plausible explanation I know of for that phenomena. You can quibble that it's not natural selection, but antibiotics aside, the principles of Darwinian selection are not harmed one iota.

Fourthly, evolution is not simply a random process. It is a highly constrained random process with heavy positive feedback mechanisms and that is how order comes from chaos, how complexity arises from simplicity. (Emergent behavior theory might be something for you to look into.)

Fifthly, about your zoo of bizarre forms... have you ever been to a natural history museum? Have you seen some of the fantastical "solutions" Nature have come up with? Just about anything I can imagine as far as viable lifeforms has been experimented with by natural selection. A quick look at pond water under a microscope will absolutely confirm the strangeness and creativity of Mama Nature. But let it be said that the zoo of life is still constrained. Not everything is possible because not everything will be viable. In fact most of Nature's tinkerings will end in doom (for that individual). But over vast periods of time and over vast numbers of individuals, the possible viable variation is truly stagering.

[ikkarus1999]

AntonM:

Another little note. I'm not sure if you're saying there are no single cell fossils, no invertebrate fossils or no fish fossils... There are actually quite a few of all of those. If you are talking about the transitional forms between those, well... just because we do not have a transitional form does not mean there was not one. And again, it depends on what you are willing to admit as a intermediate.

Furthermore, we do not see forms "under construction" because there is no such thing as a creature "under construction". Each individual is complete. Evolution doesn't happen during a creature's life, only at its conception. Giraffes don't evolve by stretching their necks over their lives (an old discredited idea known as Lamarckian inheritance), they evolve longer necks (as a species) because giraffes that are born with longer necks tend to have more children than ones with shorter necks.

Correct me if I've misunderstood you.

[ikkarus1999]

There's a lot of holes in the evolution theory, that does not automatically mean that we are aliens as there's no concrete proof of it but it makes you question what we are being taught about evolution. If you interested have a read through this Debunking Evolution - problems, errors, and lies of evolution exposed as false and wrong

OK. I've now fully read your link. I now understand where you are getting ALL of your information from. If you'd like I will take that post apart sentence by sentence. That person is at the very least misrepresenting "evolution" but with just enough "fact" to make it plausible. You have fallen for it. I'm sorry but I don't know what else to do but laugh. I'm open to new ideas. I'm open to helping people understand my position. It appears you have looked at one source and made your decision.

Comment?

[AntonM]

ikkarus1999 thats the reason i asked you i don't know much about evolution hence i wanted someone to answer what i found on the net! I haven't made my opinion yet about evolution as when you search for information on the net there so much argument both ways that i simply don't have time to read through! I posted that web link as i thought it had some interesting points in it, do you completely disagree with everything it offers?

So like i said im not here to argue, just want to learn