The Bible Revisited: Genesis 2.0

griffynelvyncraft Says:

Nov 13, 2009 - Actually, both of your accounts are only half correct. To be specific, we are not monkeys nor apes. Humans, apes, monkeys the like are all hominids. Homo Sapiens just so happen to be the only bi pedal hominids currently proven to exist. Other than that, the rest of PlaguedMan Etimos' accounts are in deed correct.

dimbulb23 Says:

Nov 14, 2009 - Wrong. Only bipedal primates are hominids. This biological family includes our species, Homo sapiens. This family has also included Neanderthals and other forerunners of today's humans, such as Australopithecus, Homo erectus, and Homo habilis. Today's human beings are the only surviving hominids.

petphotog Says:

Nov 15, 2009 - Go multiply yourself. Bravo, Michael Shermer!

warren52nz Says:

Nov 16, 2009 - "Technically humans are still monkeys." No, Hominidae (which includes all the great apes) are on a separate branch of the Evolutionary tree from monkeys, I looked it up yesterday on Wikipedia. We have common ancestors with monkeys but we're no more monkeys than we are amphibians (which also share an ancestor with humans). Monkeys have tails for a start.

Etimos Says:

Nov 16, 2009 - First of all, I mean monkeys in the same sense that we are apes, even though we are not the same as the other great apes, because while we and the other great apes have a common proto-ape ancestor, we became specialized for bipedal locomotion at about the same time they reverted back to quadrupedalism. Second, Humans and other great apes have tailbones, which are a vestigial remnant of tails. We are as much monkeys as we are apes, because we have a common ancestor with both.

Etimos Says:

Nov 16, 2009 - I mean if you want to try to be technical with me, then I have to point out that we are not, by your reasoning, apes, since we only share a common ancestor with the other great apes, but are otherwise on a completely separate branch of the evolutionary tree (namely the fork where the proto-ape species diverged into those with specialized walking hands, and those with specialized walking feet). We are Hominina. Hominina are Hominidae. Hominidae are Hominoidea Hominoidea are PRIMATES (monkeys)

warren52nz Says:

Nov 17, 2009 - Oh well as I said elsewhere, I'm a Physicist not an Anthropologist so I'm not holding onto any position in particular. My comment was after a quick look through Wiki. Later I found conflicting info. If you're into the subject then I bow to your authori-tie (Cartman voice). 8^) Except if having a common ancestor is all we need to be called something then we're amphibians too if you catch my drift. So I still think there's a problem with calling us monkeys.... I think.

IsaacBickerstaffEsq Says:

Nov 17, 2009 - "if having a common ancestor is all we need to be called something" Do you have a last name?

Etimos Says:

Nov 17, 2009 - Well technically speaking we are amphibians, in a very loosely defined fashion. IN fact, technically we are still fish. That's where the majority of our organ systems and various functions come from. That's where we owe our limbs, just as it's to amphibians we owe our lungs and reptiles we owe our chambered heart. Realistically speaking, however, we can still be safely called monkeys because we have only lost one major physical feature that differentiates us from them (namely the tail).

Etimos Says:

Nov 17, 2009 - Indeed, just as the guy previous to me responded, if you are the son of a Mac Gregor, you are a Mac Gregor, and if you are the great great great great great great great great great grandson of a Nordo-Germanic Caucasoid hominid, you are still (racial purity willing) a Nordo-Germanic Caucasoid hominid, and if your nearest common ancestor with another species is a proto-ape, you are still an ape, and thereby still a monkey, for as long as you still retain the ancestral features of that group.

Etimos Says:

Nov 17, 2009 - Now as a physicist, I have a completely different question for you. If a machine is able to draw electrons from the ambient environment (namely earth, as a relatively closed system with a base static charge), concentrate those electrons into a functionally dense current, then reroute some of that current to power its own locomotion, is this a perpetual motion machine, even though the power source is technically outside the machine, and it is not a fully enclosed system?

Etimos Says:

Nov 17, 2009 - I ask this because I have a few ideas about how such a machine might function. I have found that it helps to think of the earth as a massive battery cell, with an immensely unbelievably huge current, but an extremely low voltage due to its diameter as a conductor, and a fairly high Ohm value since the constituents are not ideal conductors. Near as I can tell, magnetic generators work by 'leeching' electrons from the earth's magnetosphere as their own electrons are captured by induction coils.

Etimos Says:

Nov 17, 2009 - Thus, since the current is already there, but at an extremely low voltage, what is actually needed is to simply collect and condense that current into a higher, more usable voltage. Realistically, the current available to all of us on a day to day basis should probably be enough to run small items, except that the current is universal, so there is now flow from high to low voltage concentrations. Thus, this machine would function not so much as a generator but as a condenser, or amplifier.

warren52nz Says:

Nov 17, 2009 - " if you are the son of a Mac Gregor, you are a Mac Gregor..." The only problem I see with looking at it that way is that you lose the advantages of classification because that thinking makes us all bacteria. But anyway I think we've thrashed the subject to death. 8^)

warren52nz Says:

Nov 17, 2009 - You can start by knowing that perpetual motin machines (under the common definition) are impossible. Just as wind generators harness power from sun driven air flow, the movement of electrons under coercion from a positive charge would be analagous to magnets attracting each other and there would be no net exchange of energy. Ultimately all energy to do things like this comes from the sun (ignoring geothermal and local nuclear reactions which aren't relevant here). (cont)

warren52nz Says:

Nov 17, 2009 - When you concentrate electrons you get a voltage relative to the surrounding electron depleted area. If you create a path between those areas you'll get a flow of electrons (current). If there's any resistance in the path you will do "work". The machine you're talking about doesn't have any theoretical problems as far as I can tell but it's not true perpetual motion as it takes energy to concentrate the electrons. I've often thought about harnessing the energy of lightning but it's tricky 8^)

warren52nz Says:

Nov 17, 2009 - "Do you have a last name? " Yes but looking through my family tree, it's swamped by other last names in my ancestry. Eventually, it will seem meaningless for my descendants to keep that last name as an identifier with all the other more recent last names in their ancestry. Just as calling humans fish adds no information to what we are today. I suspect people in this field have a formal answer to how we identify species in this regard but I don't know personally.

Etimos Says:

Nov 17, 2009 - Well that's the thing about a nested heirarchy. Classifications go into indefinitely more and more detail to further and further define the various branches of what is essentially a single form of life (namely cellular). We are indeed hominina, but we are still fundamentally everything else that was before us. We are simply a deeper, more developed classification of that higher class ;) and yep, this subject is dead. *pokes dead horse with stick* Thanks for the other answer too.

IsaacBickerstaffEsq Says:

Nov 17, 2009 - "it will seem meaningless for my descendants to keep that last name" Unless one of the those last names transmitted a genetic disease to you. "calling humans fish adds no information" Certainly it adds information, just as calling you a mammal adds information. The question is whether the information is relevant at the scale you are interested in at the time. "people in this field have a formal answer" You are the current quanta of a descent process; and it is the line that is of interest.

warren52nz Says:

Nov 17, 2009 - OK, I get your point. Let's move on... 8^)

IsaacBickerstaffEsq Says:

Nov 17, 2009 - Take a simple function: n=n+1. The accountant is interested the current value of n. The physicist is interested in the FUNCTION. To the evolutionary biologist you are similarly just the current value of n; but it is the function he is interested in. In that sense you ARE a fish, but only to the degree the biologist even considers the term "fish" to be of value. It's an obsolescent term only used colloquially to simplify certain kinds of conversation.

IsaacBickerstaffEsq Says:

Nov 17, 2009 - "Let's move on..." You'll have to take THAT issue up with a female.

tifforo1 Says:

Nov 20, 2009 - dreametatron, if you're a Christian, you may want to reconsider calling people "fools." "But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire." Matthew 5:22.

Randomnormality Says:

Nov 21, 2009 - haha this made me lol!!!!

HIGHLANDERxMCLAMBIE Says:

Nov 21, 2009 - just comes to show how people think what god looks like! if god created man, hes not going to look like man! lmao!