Friday, March 30, 2012

Give Credit Where Credit is Due: This Powerful Prediction by Darwin Came True (And We Have it on Film)

As evolutionists will tell you, it may seem like all the evidence is against evolution, but when you put them all together, and keep on repeating to yourself that evolution is true, then it makes sense. Well here’s one incredible example of just that. As insiders know there were some, little known, bizarre aspects of the seemingly normal television show Little House on the Prairie. For instance there was the incredible increase in intelligence of the cast. This became particularly obvious by the final season when Michael Landon was teaching the little girls quantum mechanics on an Etch-a Sketch.




Now here, in a Darwin’s-God exclusive, our internal research staff now explains this seemingly bizarre phenomenon. We quote from the historian sharp-shooter, none other than Peter Bowler:

To explain human intelligence, Darwin could have called on the progressionists' assumption that this was an advantage that would be boosted by natural selection. But he realized that this assumption begged an important question: why had the human branch of evolution been able to exploit this advantage while the apes had not? He theorized that the difference was brought about by an adaptive change involving a transition from a forest environment to the open plains. Our ancestors had moved out onto the plains and had become fully upright because this was now the best means of locomotion. This had freed their hands from playing a role in locomotion among the trees; thus the hand, with its fully opposable thumb, had developed a much more precise ability to grasp objects, and this consequence of the adjustment to bipedalism indirectly had favored selection for increased intelligence. Our ancestors had developed bigger brains because their hands allowed them to make use of sticks and stones as primitive tools. The apes had stayed in the trees, where their hands continued to be used mainly for grasping branches, and thus had not had the need for additional intelligence. [Evolution: The History of an Idea, p. 213]

Incredible. Darwin was such a genius. Of course, bipedalism is the key. And how did bipedalism come about? By the prairie of course. Rather than being stick-in-the-muds like their ape friends, those venture-some pioneers moved out of the jungles and into the prairies where they became, naturally, fully-upright and much smarter. The rest, as they say, is history. It is all so obvious when you think about it. How brilliant.

The great irony here is that about the time Darwin was putting his brilliant thoughts to paper, Michael Landon and family were actually migrating out of the forest and out onto the prairie. It’s amazing how ironic evolution is—everything just works.

17 comments:

  1. As evolutionists will tell you, it may seem like all the evidence is against evolution, but when you put them all together, and keep on repeating to yourself that evolution is true, then it makes sense.

    Starting off your piece with such a transparent lie isn't really a very effective rhetorical strategy. But it is consistent with your other posts.

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  2. Jeffrey Shallit, instead of engaging in shallow rhetoric, let's pursue this topic of human intelligence a bit further shall we? Now I find bipedalism to be extremely poor as to a proposed causal factor of intelligence as I do all other proposed mechanisms for intelligence from neo-Darwinism. But Dr. Plantinga has taken this line of criticism a step further and shown that naturalistic evolution is epistimically self-defeating:

    Should You Trust the Monkey Mind? - Joe Carter
    Excerpt: Evolutionary naturalism assumes that our noetic equipment developed as it did because it had some survival value or reproductive advantage. Unguided evolution does not select for belief except insofar as the belief improves the chances of survival. The truth of a belief is irrelevant, as long as it produces an evolutionary advantage. This equipment could have developed at least four different kinds of belief that are compatible with evolutionary naturalism, none of which necessarily produce true and trustworthy cognitive faculties.
    http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/09/should-you-trust-the-monkey-mind

    What is the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism? ('inconsistent identity' of cause leads to failure of absolute truth claims for materialists) (Alvin Plantinga) - video
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yNg4MJgTFw

    Jeffery, in defense against this devastating criticism, against a evolutionary origin of our intelligence, a atheist responded that:

    'W v O Quine has the best answer to Plantinga's EAAN: 'Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind.''

    Yet Jeffery we find,,,

    'Believers' gene' will spread religion , says academic - January 2011
    Excerpt: The World Values Survey, which covered 82 nations from 1981 to 2004, found that adults who attended religious services more than once a week had 2.5 children on average; while those who went once a month had two; and those who never attended had 1.67.
    Prof Rowthorn wrote: "The more devout people are, the more children they are likely to have."
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8252939/Believers-gene-will-spread-religion-says-academic.html

    Thus either the citation, the atheist offered, is right and evolution is producing a true belief, and that true belief is Theism, since atheists have a 'praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind', or Dr. Plantinga is right and there is no guarantee that the results of Darwinian evolution produce true beliefs about reality! Which is it Jeffery?

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    1. Moreover Jeffery, I find that Theism offers a far more coherent causal reason for why man has intelligence, especially when compared to 'bipedalism' as a causal factor.

      Why should the human mind be able to comprehend reality so deeply?
      https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qGvbg_212biTtvMschSGZ_9kYSqhooRN4OUW_Pw-w0E/edit

      Moreover this 'Theistic' causal reason for why we have conscious intelligence, unlike the bipedalism of neo-Darwinism, can be directly linked empirically:

      1. Consciousness either preceded all of material reality or is a 'epi-phenomena' of material reality.
      2. If consciousness is a 'epi-phenomena' of material reality then consciousness will be found to have no special position within material reality. Whereas conversely, if consciousness precedes material reality then consciousness will be found to have a special position within material reality.
      3. Consciousness is found to have a special, even central, position within material reality.
      4. Therefore, consciousness is found to precede material reality.

      Three intersecting lines of experimental evidence from quantum mechanics that shows that consciousness precedes material reality
      https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G_Fi50ljF5w_XyJHfmSIZsOcPFhgoAZ3PRc_ktY8cFo/edit

      Quantum Entanglement and Teleportation (Implications discussed in description) - video
      Excerpt from description: Now, I find the preceding to be absolutely fascinating! A photon, in its quantum wave state, is found to be mathematically defined as a ‘infinite-dimensional’ state, which ‘requires an infinite amount of information’ to describe it properly , can be encoded with information in its 'infinite dimensional' state, and this ‘infinite dimensional’ photon is found to collapse, instantaneously, and thus ‘non-locally’, to just a ’1 or 0′ state, out of a infinite number of possibilities that the photon could have collapsed to instead! Moreover, consciousness is found to precede the collapse of the wavefunction to its particle state. Now my question to materialistic atheists is this, "Exactly what ’cause’ has been postulated throughout history to be completely independent of any space-time constraints, as well as possessing infinite knowledge, so as to be the ‘sufficient cause’ to explain what we see in the quantum wave collapse of a photon???

      John 1:1-5
      In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
      http://vimeo.com/38463906

      And of course Jeffery there is the fact that Material processes do not generate functional information (Abel; Null Hypothesis), whereas every time anyone writes a few sentences on a sheet of paper they exceed the probabilistic resources of the entire material universe to generate function information!

      Now Jeffery, as to explaining why man has intelligence from empirical evidence, this is about as sweet as it can get as to confirming the Theistic presuppositions and disconfirming the materialistic presuppostions!

      Delete
    2. But Dr. Plantinga has taken this line of criticism a step further and shown that naturalistic evolution is epistimically self-defeating...

      No, he has not, as argued cogently here and in the previous linked articles.

      Should You Trust the Monkey Mind? - Joe Carter
      Excerpt: Evolutionary naturalism assumes that our noetic equipment developed as it did because it had some survival value or reproductive advantage. Unguided evolution does not select for belief except insofar as the belief improves the chances of survival. The truth of a belief is irrelevant, as long as it produces an evolutionary advantage.


      This is a silly argument. Let's suppose two groups of our distant ancestors acquired two different beliefs. The first group believed that going to a waterhole in the evening was dangerous because lions tended to lie in wait there ready to pounce on the unwary going for a drink. The second group believed that the same time was best to go to the waterhole to kneel and pray to the god of water to look favorably on them. Assuming that predators did lie in wait at waterholes, which of the two groups was more likely to get eaten? Evolution can select for beliefs that have a sound empirical basis.

      Jeffery, in defense against this devastating criticism, against a evolutionary origin of our intelligence, a atheist responded that:

      'W v O Quine has the best answer to Plantinga's EAAN: 'Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind.''

      Yet Jeffery we find,,,

      'Believers' gene' will spread religion , says academic - January 2011
      Excerpt: The World Values Survey, which covered 82 nations from 1981 to 2004, found that adults who attended religious services more than once a week had 2.5 children on average; while those who went once a month had two; and those who never attended had 1.67.
      Prof Rowthorn wrote: "The more devout people are, the more children they are likely to have."
      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8252939/Believers-gene-will-spread-religion-says-academic.html

      Thus either the citation, the atheist offered, is right and evolution is producing a true belief, and that true belief is Theism, since atheists have a 'praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind', or Dr. Plantinga is right and there is no guarantee that the results of Darwinian evolution produce true beliefs about reality! Which is it Jeffery?


      Neither, actually. As John Wilkins writes in the post I linked to above:

      In fact, as I argued in the first post on the EAAN, evolution provides a good reason to dismiss all metaphysical beliefs as not truth tracking, including (and especially) about the existence of gods and the supernatural. There is no fitness value to tracking such arcane entities and propositions as “there are universals” or “supernatural beings exist” apart from their social value. This means that, in the absence of any other source of reliable information, belief in gods is contrary to evolved cognition and so there is a defeater, in Plantinga’s terminology, for theism, not atheism.

      Delete
    3. Then if you are right natural selection would select between humans believers that life is evolved and believers life is designed.
      The best fitted people will survive no matter who is right.

      Delete
  3. Say what???

    'In fact, as I argued in the first post on the EAAN, evolution provides a good reason to dismiss all metaphysical beliefs as not truth tracking,'

    Perhaps your source should realize that atheistic materialism is a metaphysical belief in itself before he dismisses all metaphysical beliefs as not 'truth tracking'?

    The whole paragraph of his is completely incoherent as to having a rigid basis. for instance this completely unfounded statement of his;

    'belief in gods is contrary to evolved cognition'

    yet we find:

    Children are born believers in God, academic claims
    "The preponderance of scientific evidence for the past 10 years or so has shown that a lot more seems to be built into the natural development of children's minds than we once thought, including a predisposition to see the natural world as designed and purposeful and that some kind of intelligent being is behind that purpose,"
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/3512686/Children-are-born-believers-in-God-academic-claims.html

    Thus either belief in God is compatible to evolved cognition and evolution produces true belief, or Plantinga argument stands as to the inability of evolutionary naturalism to produce true beliefs! Either way the atheist loses the argument!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I would love to know how natural selection or any other process caused humans to develop far more intellectual capacity than any have ever used.

    It's a bit like saying that females preferred stronger males, and that's why they evolved the capacity to juggle 500lb rocks. And now we walk around with 36-inch arms marveling our ability to lift heavier objects than we have ever lifted or ever will.

    What exactly were our ancestors doing 10,000 years or more ago that developed and fixed the capacity to speak seven languages, split an atom, and land on the moon?

    This isn't using sexual selection to explain a peacock's tail. This is using sexual selection to explain a peacock's tail with the strength of steel or some other excessive capacity beyond what ever might have tested it.

    It's the same capacity that enables us to recognize nonsense when we hear it, and that said nonsense is supported, not by a shred of empirical evidence, but by preposterous just-so stories that one could only believe if possessed by an a priori commitment to the conclusion they supposedly support.

    If the emperor is naked then he's naked. Don't ever let anyone, even a majority, make you feel foolish for seeing the obvious and refusing to confirm their delusion.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If the emperor is naked then he's naked. Don't ever let anyone, even a majority, make you feel foolish for seeing the obvious and refusing to confirm their delusion.

      It all becomes rather obvious when you see the dogma and bluster of evolutionists, declaring and insisting that evolution is an established fact. Where there's dogma, there's religion.

      Delete
  5. Cornelius Hunter

    Where there's dogma, there's religion.


    Where there is a Creationist being paid by the Discovery Institute to lie about science, there are lies about science.

    ReplyDelete
  6. As I've posted elsewhere

    If the brain evolved to control movement, then memory would play an integral part in that task. This is because we make extensive use of memory in how we move, apply force, etc.

    See the following TED talk for details: Daniel Wolpert: The real reason for brains.

    If this is the case, memory would represent a pre-adaptation in regards to how we, as human beings utilize it for additional purposes.


    New, complex forms of movement require additional memory and mental circuitry to perform fine grained hand movements. Specifically, the more adept you are at movement, the more memory and mental circuitry you need.

    Nor would having a genius IQ help if you cannot move, as fine grained movement control is a key factor for communication of any form, including speech, writing, etc. And memory is key when it comes to problem solving.

    Despite having posted this several times, Cornelius has yet to actually present any sort of criticism of it. Rather he keeps posting comments as if he's blissfully unaware of it.

    As such, the OP is a perfect example of a parochial argument make from a parochial world view.

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    1. Cats, dogs and small monkeys are far more precise than us in his movements. Why none of them developed our brain?

      Delete
    2. First, you mean brains like ours, right? After all, If they had our brains, they wouldn't be "like" human beings, they would BE human beings.

      And, last time I checked, evolutionary theory suggests cats, dogs and small monkeys shared a common ancestor with human beings. So they did eventually develop our brains

      Second, human beings are capable of more precise movements across a wider range, such as painting, drawing, dancing, etc.

      Did you actually watch the video?

      Delete
    3. These following studies highlight the difficulty materialists have in fitting our mental abilities into any plausible evolutionary scenario:

      Humans Evolved from Dogs (Dogs shown to be smarter than chimps) - February 2012
      Excerpt: Birds are actually smarter than dogs, and dolphins than birds. So we have to update our earlier report that humans evolved from pigeons. The new evolutionary tree is: chimps begat dogs, who begat birds, who begat dolphins, who begat people. Hydrogen begat everything; or was it nothing that begat everything?
      http://crev.info/2012/02/humans-evolved-from-dogs/

      New Caledonian Crows Exceed Apes/Chimps at Trap-tube Experiment - video
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M52ZVtmPE9g

      Origin of Soulish Animals:
      Excerpt: Bolhuis and Wynne contrast the cognitive capacities of birds and primates.,,, Evidently, certain bird species exhibit greater powers of the mind than do apes.
      http://www.reasons.org/OriginofSoulishAnimals

      further notes:

      Darwin’s mistake: Explaining the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds:
      Excerpt: There is a profound functional discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. We argue that this discontinuity pervades nearly every domain of cognition and runs much deeper than even the spectacular scaffolding provided by language or culture can explain. We hypothesize that the cognitive discontinuity between human and nonhuman animals is largely due to the degree to which human and nonhuman minds are able to approximate the higher-order, systematic, relational capabilities of a physical symbol system.
      http://www.mendeley.com/research/darwins-mistake-explaining-discontinuity-between-human-nonhuman-minds-1/

      Origin of the Mind: Marc Hauser - Scientific American - April 2009
      Excerpt: "Researchers have found some of the building blocks of human cognition in other species. But these building blocks make up only the cement footprint of the skyscraper that is the human mind",,,
      http://www.wjh.harvard.edu​/~mnkylab/publications/rec​ent/mindSciAm.pdf

      Earliest humans not so different from us, research suggests - February 2011
      Excerpt: Shea argues that comparing the behavior of our most ancient ancestors to Upper Paleolithic Europeans holistically and ranking them in terms of their "behavioral modernity" is a waste of time. There are no such things as modern humans, Shea argues, just Homo sapiens populations with a wide range of behavioral variability.
      http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-earliest-humans.html

      Geometric Principles Appear Universal in Our Minds - May 2011
      Excerpt: Villagers belonging to an Amazonian group called the MundurucĂș intuitively grasp abstract geometric principles despite having no formal math education,,, MundurucĂș adults and 7- to 13-year-olds demonstrate as firm an understanding of the properties of points, lines and surfaces as adults and school-age children in the United States and France,,,
      http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/universal-geometry/

      Delete
    4. The following video is far more direct in establishing the 'spiritual' link to man's ability to learn new information, in that it shows that the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores for students showed a steady decline, for seventeen years from the top spot or near the top spot in the world, after the removal of prayer from the public classroom by the Supreme Court, not by public decree, in 1963. Whereas the SAT scores for private Christian schools have consistently remained at the top, or near the top, spot in the world:

      The Real Reason American Education Has Slipped – David Barton – video
      http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4318930

      Bruce Charlton's Miscellany - October 2011
      Excerpt: I had discovered that over the same period of the twentieth century that the US had risen to scientific eminence it had undergone a significant Christian revival. ,,,The point I put to (Richard) Dawkins was that the USA was simultaneously by-far the most dominant scientific nation in the world (I knew this from various scientometic studies I was doing at the time) and by-far the most religious (Christian) nation in the world. How, I asked, could this be - if Christianity was culturally inimical to science?
      http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/10/meeting-richard-dawkins-and-his-wife.html

      Delete
    5. Scott:
      "as human beings utilize it for additional purposes."

      You said brains and memory appears because is needed for movements.
      So any animal moving has brains and memory.
      (cephalopods too).
      Why only us used the memory for additional purposes? Why hominids that started to paint or/and dance were selected and do not monkeys or dogs that started to paint/dance were not selected?

      Delete
    6. Born, I'll repeat, did you actually watch the video? Do you have any criticism of it?

      For example, you're response suggests that you did not watch it and have no real criticism of it as this was addressed in detail.

      Delete
  7. Baboons live on the plains as well. Why didn't they develop bipedalism and greater intelligence?

    ReplyDelete