Taking the Plunge

CEngelbrecht

CEngelbrecht

Registered Senior Member
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16822664-300-taking-the-plunge/
New Scientist, 2000

“SMASHING a paradigm is rejuvenating,” says Phillip Tobias. He should know.
To mark his 70th birthday five years ago, Tobias urged his fellow
palaeoanthropologists to ditch one of the central dogmas of human
evolution—the notion that our ancestors made their first great advance
towards human form by swinging out of the forest and into the open savannah,
where they began walking upright. “Open the window, and throw out the savannah
hypothesis,” was Tobias’s rallying call.

Today, that paradigm has been so thoroughly bashed that some people argue it
never really existed. But Tobias isn’t finished yet. Although physically frail,
when he gets up on the podium he has the delivery and mental agility of a man
half his age. And this giant of palaeoanthropology is once again challenging his
audience. If humanity wasn’t born out of a move into Africa’s hot, open spaces,
then how? “It’s time to open our minds,” says Tobias, a professor at the
University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He wants the academic establishment
to consider the heretical idea that we were born of water.
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Listen can you hear it?

Listen hard

It's the sound of the world's smallest violin playing

"WE DON'T CARE"

:)
 
Michael 345 said:
Congratulations you just made Iggy in one bound
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Yeah, yeah, we all know the Earth is the center of the Universe.

None of you care about science, you just like the fantasy of monopoly on the truth. And ain't nobody gonna shake you out of that boat.
 
CEngelbrecht said:
Yeah, yeah, we all know the Earth is the center of the Universe.

None of you care about science, you just like the fantasy of monopoly on the truth. And ain't nobody gonna shake you out of that boat.
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WOW! :)

Thanks for all the info, my life is now complete.
 
exchemist said:
Recycling a 20 year old New Scientist article. How very topical.
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And you still refuse to listen to him. A man that dug up half the South African hominin archive, and you refuse to listen to him, only because you are too terrified to change your paradigm, as the panicky apes you all still are. The finest idea in free science the last half century, and you deny it out of primal hysteria. As much as creationists and oil tyrants, you too freely reject the scientific method in the face of an inconvenient truth.

We are old beach apes. That this obvious, fully Darwinian conclusion about human origin is still laughed at is a travesty of Galilean proportions. None of you care about free science!
 
CEngelbrecht said:
And you still refuse to listen to him. A man that dug up half the South African hominin archive, and you refuse to listen to him, only because you are too terrified to change your paradigm, as the panicky apes you all still are. The finest idea in free science the last half century, and you deny it out of primal hysteria. As much as creationists and oil tyrants, you too freely reject the scientific method in the face of an inconvenient truth.

We are old beach apes. That this obvious, fully Darwinian conclusion about human origin is still laughed at is a travesty of Galilean proportions. None of you care about free science!
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As I've said many times before, the impartial scientist is under no obligation to listen to the ravings of every nutter on the street corner.

Now you are just such a nutter. You have been banging on about this, obsessively, for literally years, on several science forums. In that time the arguments have ben amply aired - and as far as I am concerned, convincingly dismissed.

If you now have a reputation as a partially deranged monomaniac, it is entirely your own fault. Slightly cruelly I quite enjoy putting 50p in your slot from time to time and observing the lights starting to flash and the pinging noises. But nobody is listening any more.
 
exchemist said:
As I've said many times before, the impartial scientist is under no obligation to listen to the ravings of every nutter on the street corner.
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Which includes Phillip Tobias, obviously. And Desmond Morris. And Dan Dennett. And David Attenborough.

exchemist said:
Now you are just such a nutter. You have been banging on about this, obsessively, for literally years, on several science forums. In that time the arguments have ben amply aired - and as far as I am concerned, convincingly dismissed.
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Exactly, as far as you're concerned — 'cause you don't really have to read them heretical texts. It has never been convincingly dismissed. Never.

You ever had a discourse with a creationist? You ever been pissed down your back by people not knowing what they're talking about? For years? When not a single one of them is capable of giving you a straight answer as to why you're so obviously wrong? Ever been burned at the stake for reading banned volumes everyone thinks they know the content of, even though it's quite clear they don't?

How would you respond to such pigheaded ignorance? I've spent all my patience for human stupidity a long time ago.

exchemist said:
If you now have a reputation as a partially deranged monomaniac, it is entirely your own fault. Slightly cruelly I quite enjoy putting 50p in your slot from time to time and observing the lights starting to flash and the pinging noises. But nobody is listening any more.
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Exactly. We all know the Earth is the center of the Universe.

There is no free science. Only might makes right. And that's why creationists will win the long game and pull the West back into the Dark Ages. 'Cause our only weapon against their amassed front was the scientific method. And that is freely ignored by anthropology too in the face of inconvenient truths. Who really cares about human origin?
 
billvon said:
Nonsense! The aquatic ape theory is the center of the universe, and must be defended against all facts at every turn. Anyone who disagrees is a HERETIC! who hates science!
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Can you tell me, please, this obvious reason for why oh why it is such obvious nonsense to draw analogies between the traits that set Homo sapiens clearly apart from the other hominoids, its closest genetic cousins, and to traits observed in other mammalian aquatics? As dating back to Alister Hardy's original presentation in 1960.

I have been waiting for that answer for decades now. You could get the lasting impression, that that answer simply isn't out there. 'Cause Hardy's suggestion is probably true.

"My thesis is that a branch of this primitive ape-stock was forced by competition from life in the trees to feed on the sea-shores and to hunt for food, shell fish, sea-urchins etc., in the shallow waters off the coast. I suppose that they were forced into the water just as we have seen happen in so many other groups of terrestrial animals. I am imagining this happening in the warmer parts of the world, in the tropical seas where Man could stand being in the water for relatively long periods, that is, several hours at a stretch."
- Alister Hardy, 1960
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Don't worry. You don't really have to answer. You don't have to read them heretical studies about seafood and the human brain, about the biochemistry of human vs. hippo sweat, about human diving capability matching sea otters', about surfer's ear growth in Homo erectus skulls. We all know, the Earth is the center of the Universe. Go back to sleep and wait for the triumph of the creationists, 'cause in the real world, might does make right. Fuck that beach ape, this inconvenient truth for the cardinals. Piltdown ad nauseam!

johanson-l.jpg
 
CEngelbrecht said:
Can you tell me, please, this obvious reason for why oh why it is such obvious nonsense to draw analogies between the traits that set Homo sapiens clearly apart from the other hominoids, its closest genetic cousins, and to traits observed in other mammalian aquatics?
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It's not nonsense at all. Nor is it nonsense to draw analogies between man and the Gods of ancient literature, or man's immune system and computer virus prevention software, or man's brain and a computer, or man's evolution and the depictions of creation in the Bible.

However, it is quite possible to draw nonsense _conclusions_ from any of the above. Which many people (including you) have done.
 
CEngelbrecht said:
Which includes Phillip Tobias, obviously. And Desmond Morris. And Dan Dennett. And David Attenborough.



Exactly, as far as you're concerned — 'cause you don't really have to read them heretical texts. It has never been convincingly dismissed. Never.

You ever had a discourse with a creationist? You ever been pissed down your back by people not knowing what they're talking about? For years? When not a single one of them is capable of giving you a straight answer as to why you're so obviously wrong? Ever been burned at the stake for reading banned volumes everyone thinks they know the content of, even though it's quite clear they don't?

How would you respond to such pigheaded ignorance? I've spent all my patience for human stupidity a long time ago.



Exactly. We all know the Earth is the center of the Universe.

There is no free science. Only might makes right. And that's why creationists will win the long game and pull the West back into the Dark Ages. 'Cause our only weapon against their amassed front was the scientific method. And that is freely ignored by anthropology too in the face of inconvenient truths. Who really cares about human origin?
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Maybe find I different hobby, and I gotta' say, that was one cool rant.
 
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