Re: The magic of evolution.

"On Thu, 9 Apr 2009 09:52:43 -0700 (PDT), in article
<2b324f1a-0a68-4b30-aa0b-4824dbed070d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Burkhard
stated..."

On 9 Apr, 16:51, TomS <TomS_mem...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"On Thu, 9 Apr 2009 07:36:10 -0700 (PDT), in article
<602a8b25-c02a-46d3-a296-70d95a8f9...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Burk=
hard
stated..."





On 9 Apr, 14:13, "[M]adman" <g...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Inez wrote:
On Apr 9, 5:57 am, "[M]adman" <g...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Inez wrote:
On Apr 9, 2:50 am, "[M]adman" <g...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The best evidence yet for the oldest life on Earth is found in
odd-shaped, rock-like mounds in Australia that are actually fossi=
ls
created by microbes
3.4 billion years ago, researchers report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/08/AR=
200=3D
...

The Western Australian greenstones, together with similar rocks
from Greenland and South Africa, are some of the oldest rocks on
Earth. In 1993, J. William Schopf, a professor of paleobiology at
the University of California at Los Angeles, published an article
interpreting microscopic structures found in 3.465-billion-year-o=
ld
Western Australian greenstones as the fossils of 11 species of
bacteria

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astrobio_paleontology_030407=
.ht=3D
ml

Well. If evolution is true, it seems we have evolved from bacteri=
a.

Not fish. How about THAT.

Or did evolution magically start at some latter point in the
earth's history?

--
It is all about the the magic of evolution with:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
=3DB7.=3DB8Adman=3DB8.=3DB7
^^^^^^^^^^^

I can't actually believe that you are this much of a fathead. Your
trolling is getting too obvious. We're supposed to believe you thi=
nk
that the ToE states that fish were the first life form, and that
they themselves didn't evolve from simpler organims? It's to far
over the top. Go back to Noah's flood or something.

Answer the question!

I'm really not that interested in your trolling. If you really are
this ignorant about what the ToE says, why don't you go read a book
and learn something?

Is bacteria our first common ancestor?

I don't believe you are seriously this stupid. Our first common
ancestor with what? Do you know what "common ancestor" means?

You obviously cannot answer.

NEXT!
Try this one here:
http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/poolepaper.html

Teaser:

"Looking down a microscope at a human cell (image A), there is not a
lot that it seems to share in common with a bacterial cell (image B).
But just as linguists have been able to establish that all human
languages have a common origin, so it turns out that all cellular life
has a common origin. The ancestor of all life on Earth today has been
dubbed LUCA, short for Last Universal Common Ancestor. The fact that
there must have been a LUCA was first made clear in the 1960s when the
genetic code was deciphered and found to be universal. Almost forty
years since the code was cracked, the emphasis is now on trying to
reconstruct LUCA, but the emerging picture is substantially
complicated by new insights into the evolutionary history of life."

I was unaware that linguists have established that all human
languages have a common origin.

--
---Tom S.
"As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the deman=
d."
attributed to Josh Billings

I'd agree that the author probably overstates the case.

It is one theory, but it is very contested and arguably at the moment
the minority opinion. . Alfredo Trombetti, in his 1905 L'unit=E0
d'origine del linguaggio is I think the first who proposed it as a
scientific theory. Monogenesis has been ever since one of the major
theories in historical linguistics. Morris Swadesh promoted the idea
and supported it with his research into "glottochronology". Joseph
Greenberg (think "Huxely of linguistics) developed a classification of
the world's languages which use the idea of a common origin, though he
never gave a specific argument for it as far as i know. (He is on the
books as saying however: The ultimate goal is a comprehensive
classification of what is very likely a single language family.)
Merritt Ruhlen is probably the most well known contemporary linguist
who upholds this view, see his 1994 "On the Origin of Languages:
Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy"

I'd say that at the moment, the majority of historical linguists
disagrees and proposes that there are a small number of independently
developed first languages. . The strongest proponents of linguistic
monogenesis ,unsurprisingly, come form people who are not primarily
linguistics, but biologists etc.

My guess is that a majority of the historical linguists are quite
conservative on this, and would say that there is are maybe a couple
of dozen of independent language families. I would say that, for
example, most Indo-Europeanists would not accept that Indo-European
is related to any non-IE language: That the evidence for Nostratic
is far too unconvincing. From what I've seen, there are very few
who accept the relatedness of Greenberg's Amerindian languages. My
impression is that Altaic family is disputed, even the relationship
between Mongolian and Turkic, or between Korean and Japanese, among
specialists in each of these. The Caucasian languages are often treated
as unrelated.


Cavalli-Sforza is probably the most important of these. His background
is in genetics, but he pretty much initiated the "gene-culture
coevolution", (cultural transmission) theory. His " Cultural
Transmission and Evolution: A Quantitative Approach (1981)" is also
used as an argument for linguistic monogenesis, using models from
population genetics to study culturally transmitted units. (he is of
course also important for any discussion on the alleged Racism of
Darwinism - something he debunked very convincingly)

John Wilkins might have to say something about this, but I always
found it interesting that the notion of language evolution and
scientific historical linguistics really took off at a similar time
as biological evolution, e.g. August Schleicher's "Tree of Language"
Theory - but without as far as I can see causing quite as much of a
fuss, even though their results contradict the bible (Babel story)
just as much.


What is generally considered the beginnings of Indo-European linguistics
is the lecture of Sir William Jones in 1786, which suggested that Latin,
Greek, Sanskrit, and other languages had a common origin. Somewhere
Darwin mentions the analogy between common descent with modification for
languages and species.


--
---Tom S.
"As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand."
attributed to Josh Billings

.

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