Homo floresiensis skeletons were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores. They date to within the last 100,000 years but the consensus (though contraversial) is that they are not modern humans. One of the interesting features of this example of Homo is that its brain size is smaller than its predecessors, showing how selection pressures don't always push one way - even though the general drift towards an increase in capacity remains true.
The image above compares one of the specimen skulls with a modern human example.
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Interesting, thanks for posting.
ReplyDeleteBoth evolution and creation play a similar game. Evolution tries to explain life from a naturalistic perspective; creation tries to explain life from a super-natural view. Evolution says, "everything must have evolved, we just don't know the mechanisms." Creation says, "look at all this complexity, God must have done it." Both of them put the answer before the proof.
Evolution is at least trying to advance human knowledge. But Christianity has been anti-knowledge for some of its tenure on earth. The best you can say is that Christianity's contribution has been to try and advance human compassion ... maybe. (You'd have to ignore Christianity's atrocities).
Did you see this? She is Dikika, a tiny human-like infant of 3 years, complete with milk teeth, sharing much in common with us:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2006/11/dikika-baby/sloan-text
This is also interesting - researchers found dinosaur tissue and cells in fossilized bones. It doesn't change the age of the bones but it does alter how we understand decay. The article also includes some Christian/creationist responses to the discovery:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinosaur.html?c=y&page=1
F.
Hi Fred
ReplyDeleteYou're such a skeptic ;-) But I agree, both extremes of Creationism & Darwinism have to extrapolate beyond what is reasonable.
However, I think I can do better with regard to Christianity's contribution. For me there is most to be gained when the two strands (science & religion) are seen as co-operative fields. There is a rich history of this in examples like Faraday, or more recently Francis Collins - whose description of the sense of worship he felt when he first held the print out of the human genome is quite memorable.
And actually the dinosaur bones are quite relevant to this as their discoverer is herself a Christian!
Regards
Charles
In relation to Christianity and Christianity's relationship with science, perhaps you might find some of the articles on the following blog interesting, F.:
ReplyDeletehttp://bibleapologetics.wordpress.com/