Is The Boskop Species of Mankind Evidence Against Evolution?

originally posted by: cooperton

originally posted by: Barcs

You blindly deny all of them over a handful of mistakes, when there are COUNTLESS CONFIRMED SPECIMENS.

I hate to ruin your mythology, but there are no complete skulls of supposed "missing links". Definitely not "countless confirmed specimens". Which was my point. Your evolution religion is faith based because there are no complete samples to demonstrate its validity. Show me otherwise.

Wrong again.

Little Foot, the 3.6-Million-Year-Old Human Ancestor Unveiled to Public
anthropology.net...

originally posted by: Phantom423

Little Foot, the 3.6-Million-Year-Old Human Ancestor Unveiled to Public

A flattering angle that deceives people into thinking its skull is mostly intact, but it is not:



Most of its skull is missing. Again, just like the "Boskop species", they are jumping to conclusions without sufficient evidence. They estimate (because there is insufficient evidence to even know for sure) little foot's cranial capacity to be about 408 cubic centimeters. The average human is around 1300 cubic centimeters. Obviously "little foot" is nowhere near being the imaginary transition fossil that scientists have hoped for. Again, the evolutionary theorists are grasping at straws based on insufficient evidence.

a reply to: cooperton

Lucy isn't the only Australopithecus Afarensis found.

originally posted by: Barcs
a reply to: cooperton

Lucy isn't the only Australopithecus Afarensis found.

Brother, you’re barking up the wrong tree here. I’ve tried to explain countless times before and again in this thread, that when you have multiple exemplars of a particular species, you don’t need a single set of remains to demonstrate a complete crania because comparative anatomy gives us an excellent birds eye view of what an average individual from that species would look like.

The response is always the same... no complete specimen/crania, so there’s no way to know for sure therefore it’s all assumption and then some tirade about missing links which as you know all too well is little more than a distraction doused in the flames of confirmation bias. Meanwhile they pretend to have some magical knowledge of Evolutionary Biology that is far in excess of those who actually study these topics and have built careers on these studies.

The logic says a lot more about those in dissent than it does the proven science involved.

Intelligence is not necessarily a trait that allows for long-term survival. And in our case, it's our intelligence combined with our emotionality that will probably be the end of us either with replacement by a more suitable "creature" (sentient electronic intelligence) or with us tinkering with our DNA so much we split into dozens of genetically incompatible dead-end species.

We got a lot of fancy ideas, but most are either no help or actively detrimental to our survival.

a reply to: Blue Shift

Felines will one day rule the world. Humans make themselves extinct, a few million years of evolution, and you have intelligent felines showing us how it's really done as they search through our primitive artifacts.

originally posted by: ElectricUniverse
After all we are told that mankind evolved from apes.

Don't know who told you that, but it's not right. Humans did not evolve from apes. We share a common ancestor as we are related, but we did not evolve from apes.

I am confused by your leap of faith. Why does Boskop's man disprove evolution?

a reply to: ElectricUniverse
Those who start off with wrong assumptions motivated by the marketing and promotion concerns for evolutionary philosophies/ideas end up with the wrong conclusions and go down the wrong path of thinking and reasoning.

DETERMINING INTELLIGENCE BY BRAIN SIZE

Fact: The brain size of a presumed ancestor of humans is one of the main ways by which evolutionists determine how closely or distantly the creature is supposed to be related to humans.

Question: Is brain size a reliable indicator of intelligence?

Answer: No. One group of researchers who used brain size to speculate which extinct creatures were more closely related to man admitted that in doing so they “often feel on shaky ground.”48 Why? Consider the statement made in 2008 in Scientific American Mind: “Scientists have failed to find a correlation between absolute or relative brain size and acumen among humans and other animal species. Neither have they been able to discern a parallel between wits and the size or existence of specific regions of the brain, excepting perhaps Broca’s area, which governs speech in people.”49

What do you think? Why do scientists line up the fossils used in the “ape-to-man” chain according to brain size when it is known that brain size is not a reliable measure of intelligence? Are they forcing the evidence to fit their theory? And why are researchers constantly debating which fossils should be included in the human “family tree”? Could it be that the fossils they study are just what they appear to be, extinct forms of apes?
...
48. The Human Fossil Record​—Volume Three, by Ralph L. Holloway, Douglas C. Broadfield, and Michael S. Yuan, 2004, Preface xvi.

49. Scientific American Mind, “Intelligence Evolved,” by Ursula Dicke and Gerhard Roth, August/​September 2008, p. 72.

Source: Question 4: Has All Life Descended From a Common Ancestor? (The Origin of Life​—Five Questions Worth Asking)

The debate referred to in one of those questions at the end is supported or demonstrated by further citations earlier in the article. But I was focussing on the other subject of brain size. More info:

Does Brain Size Matter? - Scientific American
Fact or Fiction: When It Comes to Intelligence, Does Brain Size Matter? - Scientific American
Why Brain Size Doesn't Correlate With Intelligence | Science | Smithsonian

Somehow I feel the articles above won't mention anything about evolutionists having made a major boo-boo regarding this subject, one of many. Or they won't raise the question:

Why do scientists line up the fossils used in the “ape-to-man”* chain according to brain size when it is known that brain size is not a reliable measure of intelligence? Are they forcing the evidence to fit their theory? (*: as explained earlier in the article this stands for apelike creature-to-man; since that red herring whether it's OK to say “ape” or have to specify that the latest version of the storylines have actually changed that to “apelike creature”, just came up again in this thread preceding my comment. Anyway, the pictures still start with apes on the left, the picture used in the article starts with an ape walking upright)

And the fans of evolutionary philosophies here are inclined to just quickly switch to the supposed 'genetic evidence'-card that supposedly trumps the 'old' method of lining up the fossils used in the “ape-to-man” chain. Which it doesn't cause people get different “family trees” from studying different genomic data and analyzing it differently than their collegues. They also get different “family trees” from studying different genes, which they call “gene tree discordance”. Which is a major problem for the claim or way of presenting these sort of studies as evidence for what the “family tree” is supposedly like. As demonstrated by the false impression that Dawkins gives that you get the same “family tree” with every gene, in the video below at 2:34 (he doesn't spell it out that way, because he knows it's a false impression that he's trying to leave behind, so he actually says something a little different, which he then can more easily argue isn't entirely false, too much detail about what he's doing there? You figure it out how to describe his cunning way of talking about the subject and making no mention of gene tree discordance at all cause it undermines his argument there if the hearer is aware of that particular reality/certainty/fact/truth*):

Gene tree discordance, phylogenetic inference and the multispecies coalescent. - PubMed - NCBI

*: They sift the facts, exploiting the useful ones and concealing the others. They also distort and twist facts, specializing in lies and half-truths. Your emotions, not your logical thinking abilities, are their target.

The propagandist makes sure that his message appears to be the right and moral one and that it gives you a sense of importance and belonging if you follow it. You are one of the smart ones, you are not alone, you are comfortable and secure—so they say.

originally posted by: paraphi

originally posted by: ElectricUniverse
After all we are told that mankind evolved from apes.

Don't know who told you that, but it's not right. Humans did not evolve from apes. We share a common ancestor as we are related, but we did not evolve from apes.

Science 81, “How Ape Became Man,” by Donald C. Johanson and Maitland A. Edey, April 1981, p. 45.

The storylines keep on changing don't they? Has “apelike creature” been discarded and replaced by some people as well already (see previous comment concerning that red herring debate about the correct way of describing the evolutionary storyline for human evolution)?

The pictures and animations that are heavily promoted still start with what appears to be apes, or at least more apelike than humanlike, and then progress to more humanlike forms, implying and instilling the impression of an ape-to-man chain in the eye of the impressionable beholder.

“Ape-Men”​—What Were They?

FOR many years there have been reports that the fossil remains of apelike humans have been found. Scientific literature abounds with artists’ renderings of such creatures. Are these the evolutionary transitions between beast and man? Are “ape-men” our ancestors? Evolutionary scientists claim that they are. That is why we often read expressions such as this article title in a science magazine: “How Ape Became Man.”⁠1

True, some evolutionists do not feel that these theoretical ancestors of man should rightly be called “apes.” Even so, some of their colleagues are not so exacting.⁠2 Stephen Jay Gould says: “People . . . evolved from apelike ancestors.”⁠3 And George Gaylord Simpson stated: “The common ancestor would certainly be called an ape or a monkey in popular speech by anybody who saw it. Since the terms ape and monkey are defined by popular usage, man’s ancestors were apes or monkeys.”⁠4

Why is the fossil record so important in the effort to document the existence of apelike ancestors for humankind? Because today’s living world has nothing in it to support the idea. As shown in Chapter 6, there is an enormous gulf between humans and any animals existing today, including the ape family. Hence, since the living world does not provide a link between man and ape, it was hoped that the fossil record would.
...
From the accounts in scientific literature, in museum displays and on television, it would seem that surely there must be abundant evidence that humans evolved from apelike creatures. Is this really so? For instance, what fossil evidence was there of this in Darwin’s day? Was it such evidence that encouraged him to formulate his theory?

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists informs us: “The early theories of human evolution are really very odd, if one stops to look at them. David Pilbeam has described the early theories as ‘fossil-free.’ That is, here were theories about human evolution that one would think would require some fossil evidence, but in fact there were either so few fossils that they exerted no influence on the theory, or there were no fossils at all. So between man’s supposed closest relatives and the early human fossils, there was only the imagination of nineteenth century scientists.” This scientific publication shows why: “People wanted to believe in evolution, human evolution, and this affected the results of their work.”⁠5
...
1. Science 81, “How Ape Became Man,” by Donald C. Johanson and Maitland A. Edey, April 1981, p. 45.

2. Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind, by Donald C. Johanson and Maitland A. Edey, 1981, p. 31.

3. Boston Magazine, “Stephen Jay Gould: Defending Darwin,” by Carl Oglesby, February 1981, p. 52.

4. Lucy, p. 27.

5. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “Fifty Years of Studies on Human Evolution,” by Sherwood Washburn, May 1982, pp. 37, 41.

After more than a century of searching, how much fossil evidence is there of “ape-men”? Richard Leakey stated: “Those working in this field have so little evidence upon which to base their conclusions that it is necessary for them frequently to change their conclusions.” ( Spectator, The University of Iowa, April 1973, p. 4.) New Scientist commented: “Judged by the amount of evidence upon which it is based, the study of fossil man hardly deserves to be more than a sub-discipline of palaeontology or anthropology. . . . the collection is so tantalisingly incomplete, and the specimens themselves often so fragmentary and inconclusive.”⁠ ( New Scientist, “Whatever Happened to Zinjanthropus?” by John Reader, March 26, 1981, p. 802.)

Similarly, the book Origins admits: “As we move farther along the path of evolution towards humans the going becomes distinctly uncertain, again owing to the paucity of fossil evidence.” ( Origins, by Richard E. Leakey and Roger Lewin, 1977, p. 55.) Science magazine adds: “The primary scientific evidence is a pitifully small array of bones from which to construct man’s evolutionary history. One anthropologist has compared the task to that of reconstructing the plot of War and Peace with 13 randomly selected pages.” (Science, “The Politics of Paleoanthropology,” by Constance Holden, August 14, 1981, p. 737.)

The situation remains the same, more claims regarding new fossil finds, sure, plenty of those. But they become increasingly more dubious regarding the topic of scientific integrity (mixing human and ape remains and referring to it as 1 hominid* species for example). *: The term “hominid” is used to describe what evolutionary researchers feel make up the human family and prehistoric humanlike species.

Here are 2 examples of "a mixture of human and ape" remains claimed to be a single species related to hominids in some way or brought up as supposed evidence for human evolution. Starting at 3:06, then A.sediba is discussed in more detail at 13:41 regarding the evidence supporting the conclusion that this is such a mixture, with the most interesting stuff between 16:00 - 21:12: