Was the first man a baby or an adult?

[Cornelius]

I'm not bitter, really. No matter how many times both sides argue over this matter, it will get nowhere. Besides, haven't I given you enough explanations on my beliefs?

[john5746]

I'm not bitter, really. No matter how many times both sides argue over this matter, it will get nowhere. Besides, haven't I given you enough explanations on my beliefs?

 

Yes, you really shouldn't be in the evolution forum. It is entertaining for a few posts, but that's about it. I'm surprised it lasted this long.

[Cornelius]

I only posted because I thought I could answer the question. I mean logically speaking, no biblical influence involved, how could the first human be a baby? Would it be able to survive on it's own?

[Daecon]

Of the 668 supposed dinosaur genera, only 106 weighed more than ten tons when fully grown. The Bible does not say that the animals had to be fully grown. The largest animals were probably represented by ‘teenage’ or even younger specimens. The median size of all animals on the ark would actually have been that of a small rat, according to Woodmorappe‘s up-to-date tabulations, while only about 11 % would have been much larger than a sheep.

 

Isn't it obvious? Noah's ark was a transport vessel to store cryogenically frozen embryos - therefore he could take two of each creature's fertilised eggs and get around the size problem that way.

 

I'm sure the bible gives the specifications for a cryogenic tank, dosn't it?

[NPK]

Would Adam and Eve have had belly buttons?

[NPK]

How would Adam and Eve have communicated?

Language? If so, which language?

 

Adam lived to 930 years? There is a lot of bullshit in the Bible, but that would take the cake!

[atinymonkey]

Would Adam and Eve have had belly buttons?

No. Yes. Maybe. Nobody really cares.

 

How would Adam and Eve have communicated?

Language? If so' date=' which language?[/quote']

Prior to the Tower of Babel, there was only one language. Nobody remembers what it was, because of the whole 'Wrath of God' thing.

 

Adam lived to 930 years? There is a lot of bullshit in the Bible, but that would take the cake!

Not if there were no viruses/bacteria and Adam had to have been (genetically) the most perfect human to have ever existed.

[The Spith]

To the original message:

 

It's best not to think of things like "first human" as it implies that at some point one species suddenly turned into another

 

"Human" is simply a label we place on a group of organisms. Evolution should be thought of as a continous process.

 

Humans are not a product of evolution, or even a set point, we are just an arbitrary point on the chain of evolution that we decided to call human.

[NPK]

Not if there were no viruses/bacteria and Adam had to have been (genetically) the most perfect human to have ever existed.

 

I think there's more than enough evidence that bacteria were here a long time before eukaryotes were.

 

Also, no bacteria meant Adam would have had no normal flora at all! That in itself would have caused health problems!

[EL]

If God created man did he create a baby or a grown-up?

The correct answer is really very simple but demands courage.

God is a myth not a fact, therefore man was never created as either form.

 

Yet the question begs for modification, and it is; then how did man come to be?

Remember that a new species such as humans demands the existence of males and females of many anthropological traits, black, yellow, white, red and many hidden differences as well related to bone structure and etcetera. This means that it is illogical to think that one man held the genes of his woman and the rest of humanity.

The truth is that the chemical pool of deep sea was the origin of life around deep sea volcanoes.

It took extremely long time for life to erupt and be expelled out of the waters.

Mammals came last and several species went erectus occasionally.

Humans were too frail to compete without fangs and nails and they were expelled from the forests and jungles in which their heavy hair was absolutely essential to protect them from being scratched by the tree branches.

The fantastic and dramatic environmental factor was switching food to seafood and living in caves on seashores.

Shells taught humans to collect them, and keep an open half as a knife to open more and as a spoon to dig for the flesh. Shells made perfect dishes as well and fish inspired the creation of nets and spears.

Caves were dark, damp and cold, and fire came to the rescue.

Little by little men lost hair and became a naked ape, which increased sexuality but also increased the parenting as the cortex evolved to keep the infantile stage longer for more and longer learning processes.

The point here is that humans never came to be suddenly, but very gradually that it is impossible to claim a man to be the first man as described by the religions.

Religion started in Egypt to give a good cause for life and war, to worship the Pharaoh work for him and follow.

Then came the Greek Mythology and it mixed humans with Gods, where Hercules was the son of Zeus and a woman. The Jewish religion is the best preservation of the ancient Egyptian Religion including the rituals and the coffin as well as the temple and the holy of holies. The Christian religion then was started among the Jewish with a tint of Greek mythology, to make Jesus the son of Jehovah from Mary rather than Hercules the son of Zeus and a mortal woman. The concept of sacrifice is much more ancient and was born in war, where the elite warriors including the son of the king were the frontline and were usually sacrificed for all to win. However, that concept have evolved too and was reproduced in many varieties including extreme romance.

The final touches were made by the Romans and the Muslims later, and that included converting God into an abstract concept of the ultimate perfection of all human qualities.

That is why it is impossible to give an account in which only one man fathered all humanity, and the truth is that a parallel evolution caused many pre-humans to come to be before modern man could come out of them.

[Moopy]

nice history story..but the question remains.

how did humans come to be..i dont believe in god and i dont believe they just flashed there and existed.

u basicly told the story AFTER the humans were on the planet...but where did they come from?

personally i believe in a meteor with all kinds of bacteria and molecules that crashed in a fertile planet,(meaning atmoshpere and ocean)and those small samples of life multiplied as they are still in bacteria form...and slowly started to adapt and became bigger and started to change in all kinds of creatures depending on where they lived on the planet....

that basicly explains how humans came to earth...but not where the rock came from..perhaps an exploding star...i can go on untill we go to the big bang..wich i cannot explain what was before unless im using what i think happened with the big bang..you can find that story in the astronomy forums...

[Mokele]

Of the 668 supposed dinosaur genera, only 106 weighed more than ten tons when fully grown. The Bible does not say that the animals had to be fully grown. The largest animals were probably represented by ‘teenage’ or even younger specimens. The median size of all animals on the ark would actually have been that of a small rat, according to Woodmorappe‘s up-to-date tabulations, while only about 11 % would have been much larger than a sheep.

 

You do realize that, even if they were small, you *still* have to fit *ALL* of them on board. And food for them. Oh, and let's not forget that they'd not only have to deal with dinosaurs, but extinct mammals like baluchitherium (or whatever it got re-named). Imagine something 3 times the size of an elephant, and it was a *live-bearer*, so any young would have still been comparable to a horse in size.

 

And, since you're convinced these things survived a flood that never happened, care to elucidate what you think happened to them? Was it alien big-game hunters?

 

Hey it's a logical possibility.

 

No, it isn't. There are dimensions for the ark listed in the bible. Find them,. quote them, and tell me precisely how this could possible work.

 

No matter how many times both sides argue over this matter, it will get nowhere.

 

No, it's gone somewhere. That somewhere is called "Biology", which, firmly based in the *fact* of evolution, is proceding to actually advance. Meanwhile creationists like yourself, apparently oblivious to this, continue to use the same arguements they did 150 years ago, and act as if the past century-and-a-half of scientific progress never happened.

 

Besides, haven't I given you enough explanations on my beliefs?

 

Yes, enough for a nice long laugh.

 

I mean logically speaking, no biblical influence involved, how could the first human be a baby? Would it be able to survive on it's own?

 

I know they probably didn't cover this in Creationist Biology, so let's refresh: Babies do not come from storks or cabbage patches. They come from mothers and fathers. Often (4 times per individual according to a recent article in Nature), a baby is born with new, mutant genes. At some point in the past, a pair of nearly-human adults gave birth to a baby that would be, geneticly, human. However, as others have said, it's hard to establish a simple dividing line, and the process is very gradual.

 

and the truth is that a parallel evolution caused many pre-humans to come to be before modern man could come out of them.

 

Eh, I'm a bit skeptical of the multi-regionalism hypothesis. With such a large gene pool, it would take a very long time for traits to propagate through the gene pool, especially with so many bottlenecks caused by travel difficulties. I'm more in favor of the idea that an isolated population was exposed to a particular environment that allowed/necessitated the adaptations that distinguish sapiens from erectus, and then they emerged from isolation. You'd need enormous selective pressures to cause the emergence of "humans" over such a large population.

 

But I'm sure people more versed in hominid evolution than me have given the subject more in-depth consideration. After all, they're all just python-food to me...

 

Mokele

[EL]

Eh' date=' I'm a bit skeptical of the multi-regionalism hypothesis. With such a large gene pool, it would take a very long time for traits to propagate through the gene pool, especially with so many bottlenecks caused by travel difficulties. I'm more in favor of the idea that an isolated population was exposed to a particular environment that allowed/necessitated the adaptations that distinguish sapiens from erectus, and then they emerged from isolation. You'd need enormous selective pressures to cause the emergence of "humans" over such a large population.

 

But I'm sure people more versed in hominid evolution than me have given the subject more in-depth consideration. After all, they're all just python-food to me...

 

Mokele[/quote']

 

Scepticism is a healthy sign.

Let me elaborate a bit.

We need to understand that each life form is nothing more than a very complex chemical reaction.

It is a superior "Supramolecular Selectivity" that yields life.

However, a mole of acid plus a mole of alkali is expected to give as many molecules of salt and not just one.

That is why, this subject professionals consider each life habitat to be almost identical to a single amoeba that was split and must live in different space. A bacterial colony, or a colony of fungus forming spores carried by wind, how do they evolve separately if they survive for finding adequate chemical pools(?).

They evolve in parallel but they can develop different traits a bit variant from the ancestors.

Now such a random process holds equal probability dispersed geographically under a constant time factor.

Therefore in is not farfetched to assume that every delta of every river connected to salt water around the warm belt of the equator and equally wide to the north and south should have almost identically favoured environments for the same species to evolve into very similar but divergent new-species.

That is why parallel evolution is much more tenable than a single cell precursor of all life.

[Mokele]

That is why, this subject professionals consider each life habitat to be almost identical to a single amoeba that was split and must live in different space. A bacterial colony, or a colony of fungus forming spores carried by wind, how do they evolve separately if they survive for finding adequate chemical pools(?).

 

How can they evolve separately? Easy, because (aside from annoying things like conjugation in bacteria) they don't exchange genes, and will land in different environments that have different selective pressures.

 

Now such a random process holds equal probability dispersed geographically under a constant time factor.

 

Can you rephrase this? The grammar is so bad I can barely understand what you're trying to say. Is English not your first language?

 

Therefore in is not farfetched to assume that every delta of every river connected to salt water around the warm belt of the equator and equally wide to the north and south should have almost identically favoured environments for the same species to evolve into very similar but divergent new-species.

 

Will similar habitats produce similar animals? Sure. But not identical, nor will the *same* species arise in all of those habitats. There is a *lot* more going into what species show up than selective pressure, such as what species you start with, and random effects like founder effect and genetic drift.

 

Furthermore, this does *not* apply to hominid evolution. Hominids, as the fossil record clearly shows, occupied a diverse array of habitats, from southeast asian jungles to african savannahs to seashores. Different habitats lead to *different* selective pressures.

 

That is why parallel evolution is much more tenable than a single cell precursor of all life.

 

Say what?

 

1) This has *nothing* to do with the discussion at hand

2) From what I can understand of your garbled presentation of your hypothesis, it requires multiple organisms in multiple habits. Where, exactly, did those multiple organisms come from?

3) We have *very* strong evidence that all life arose from a common ancestor, such as the univeral codon translations.

 

Mokele

[EL]

Say what?

 

1) This has *nothing* to do with the discussion at hand

Do you mean that a common ancestral species is the same as a Biblical common ancestor' date=' Adam?

Or do you mean that correct theories about our origin are irrelevant to whether we were born naturally or Divine Created? Nice Joke, but I am not laughing.

 

2) From what I can understand of your garbled presentation of your hypothesis, it requires multiple organisms in multiple habits. Where, exactly, did those multiple organisms come from?

They evolved in parallel, along the chemical pool. Finally we evolved unequal and some of us have garbled comprehension while others have rude manners, etcetera (showing diversity).

 

3) We have *very* strong evidence that all life arose from a common ancestor' date=' such as the univeral codon translations.

 

Mokele[/quote']

 

A common ancestral species is NOT the same as a Biblical common ancestor. I cannot call any speculative theories as strong evidence. Unless we are talking past each other concerning that confusion between the meaning of common ancestor (individual) and a common ancestral species (the collective genetic pool of a species).

[Mokele]

Do you mean that a common ancestral species is the same as a Biblical common ancestor, Adam?

 

Oh *Hell* no. I'm referring to the original organism, the first microbe with DNA, etc.

 

Or do you mean that correct theories about our origin are irrelevant to whether we were born naturally or Divine Created? Nice Joke, but I am not laughing.

 

"Correct theories"? All you've mentioned is something called "parallel evolution", which I'm only familiar with as an archaic term for convergent evolution, in terms of the multiregionalist hypothesis of human origins. Then you said *something* about there not being a "single cell precursor to all life", which seems to have diddly-squat to do with this thread, since it deals with life as a whole, and the thread explicitly deals with human evolution.

 

My reply was basically that I don't buy the multiregionalist hypothesis of human origins, and instead support the theory that all humans arose from a population of H. erectus that became isolated and exposed to different selective pressures, like how most species form.

 

They evolved in parallel, along the chemical pool. Finally we evolved unequal and some of us have garbled comprehension while others have rude manners, etcetera (showing diversity).

 

"Along the chemical pool"? What are you talking about? There are no "chemical pools" guiding the progress of evolution. DNA may contain the information, but evolution is ruled by phenotypes and their interactions with the biotic and abiotic environments. If your "parellel evolution" is the same as convergent evolution, then organisms evolve towards similar forms *only* under identical or near-identical selective pressures, in similar niches.

 

A common ancestral species is NOT the same as a Biblical common ancestor. I cannot call any speculative theories as strong evidence. Unless we are talking past each other concerning that confusion between the meaning of common ancestor (individual) and a common ancestral species (the collective genetic pool of a species).

 

Biblical whatever has no place in this thread, ever. It belongs in the Psuedoscience forum.

 

That said, the problem is that you seem to never elucidate what you're talking about. First, you talk about human evolution, but then you make a claim about the ancestor of all life, completely out of the blue. Did you mean all *human* life? If so, that clears things up a bit.

 

I'm not sure what you're refering to as "speculative theories"; the fact that all life on earth (human or otherwise) evolved from a common ancestor is well established and well-supported.

 

Please, define your terms, since you seem to be using ones that don't correspond to a defintion I know, possibly due to a language barrier (guessing from your location).

 

Mokele

[EL]

This is fine, Mokele, at least I have realised that we were talking past each other due to a prejudice of comprehension rather than a language barrier, since I was brought up by the British and educated by the British in a Royal school called Victoria, which was for the socially elite.

*

You asked me to define my terms, which is a fair thing to ask indeed, in this case at least.

*

I was under the impression that it was you who promoted the mythical common ancestor of the Bible disguised in a scientific jargon. However, you seem to deny it and even attack it, which leaves me quite puzzled.

*

the fact that all life on earth (human or otherwise) evolved from a common ancestor is well established and well-supported.

*

Now It is me who should ask you to clarify this contradiction; how can you endorse a theory of evolution from a single common ancestor and deny it in the same time!

*

As a biochemist, I cannot accept any theory telling me that any reaction have yielded a single life form (a single cell) from which all life forms exploded, this is utterly mythical and speculative.

*

I can try to collect for you references (if you ask for such), to empirical research demonstrating that before cell-based life there was an open biochemical pool that evolved into cellular forms, and by such demonstration it is impossible to claim that a single cell was the ancestor of all life.

*

Now let us come back to humans before you accuse me of talking off topic, which seems to be your target to ban me legitimately according to your rules, but I think that you may do that right away and prejudicially saving the efforts.

*

I have a book in my library that you might find enlightening:

Origins of life on the earth and in the cosmos: (by) Geoffrey Zubay.

*

The term parallel evolution seems to be alien to you, so here is its definition:

Parallel evolution is happening right now, all over the earth, because humans are spread out over all continents and they must be still evolving. Do you think that any single individual is privileged to be the ancestor of all humans after ten thousand years from now or even a million years from now?

*

What makes you think that ten thousand years in the past, a single human or even a single tribe, was in any way privileged for becoming our modern ancestor!

*

Migration effects as a pressure for effecting diversity through temperature and food types and feeding habits will not cause mutational level evolution, and rather than assuming a single tribe to grow to a migrating size, we can also assume that many tribes were absolutely unrelated but growing in complexity naturally from the same chemical pool under similar climatic boundaries.

*

You should be aware that linguistic diversity is severed at multiple boundaries and we cannot pretend that all languages evolved from one single language. Especially when that language is not even written or have any written form.

*

Similar to the mystery of dinosaur extinction or evolution into birds, can we claim that all birds evolved from any one specific dinosaur species? Of course not, and so did the humans evolve in parallel from ancestral species under very similar pressures all over the globe. The biochemical complexity is a function of absolute time or age of earth as the source of the crust chemicals that interacted.

*

Therefore the answer to the title of the thread is that all humans and mammals and life forms are born first and grow next. The very slow and gradual evolution is certainly much more tenable than the magic of religions.

*

That is why I do not even endorse a single "chosen" tribe to be God's Chosen People from which all humans came. That assumption is very far from science.

 

Regards.

[Mokele]

Now It is me who should ask you to clarify this contradiction; how can you endorse a theory of evolution from a single common ancestor and deny it in the same time!

 

I never did, and please show me where you think I did. Your reading of my post was evidently in error.

 

As a biochemist, I cannot accept any theory telling me that any reaction have yielded a single life form (a single cell) from which all life forms exploded, this is utterly mythical and speculative.

*

I can try to collect for you references (if you ask for such), to empirical research demonstrating that before cell-based life there was an open biochemical pool that evolved into cellular forms, and by such demonstration it is impossible to claim that a single cell was the ancestor of all life.

 

There's a big difference between saying that life originated only once (which I also believe is unlikely) and that there is no single common ancestor.

 

Imagine early earth, with lots of newly formed life, all different. But one is a bit better than the others at competing and evolving. Over time, it occupies more niches, gains more resources, and eventually drives the others into extinction. This life form (or the original one of that highly successful lineage) would be the single common ancestor of all life. Other forms of life also probably appeared, but are now gone.

 

Saying that because life originated multiple times you cannot have a single common ancestor is like saying that snakes cannot all have arrisen from a single ancestral snake because there are numerous lineages of lizards.

 

The term parallel evolution seems to be alien to you, so here is its definition:

Parallel evolution is happening right now, all over the earth, because humans are spread out over all continents and they must be still evolving. Do you think that any single individual is privileged to be the ancestor of all humans after ten thousand years from now or even a million years from now?

 

Ahh, I guess I'm not familiar with the term because it's worthless and doesn't describe a real phenomenon of any significance. Sure, all the populations are evolving, but unless the selective pressures are the same (which, given environmental heterogeneity, they are not likely to be), they will *diverge* (unless there is sufficient gene flow to erase the differences).

 

As for one human within a population becoming the common ancestor, it's a fact. Google "Mitochondrial Eve" and "Y-chromosome Adam". You haven't kept up with even painfully obvious occurences in the field, and it shows.

 

Migration effects as a pressure for effecting diversity through temperature and food types and feeding habits will not cause mutational level evolution, and rather than assuming a single tribe to grow to a migrating size, we can also assume that many tribes were absolutely unrelated but growing in complexity naturally from the same chemical pool under similar climatic boundaries.

 

If you mean that gene flow will mitigate or erase the effects of selective pressure, yes, if there is enough of it. This also will cause a population to stagnate and go nowhere, evolutionarily speaking. The bigger a population, the longer it takes for a gene to reach fixation. Small populations evolve fast, simple as that. When you have a "super-population" composed of many populations linked by gene flow, you have a very large number of individuals, which is going to slow down the rate at which a gene moves to fixation. As a result, I find it *highly* unlikely, given how slowly our species reproduces, that such a large population could evolve into humans together as a whole.

 

You should be aware that linguistic diversity is severed at multiple boundaries and we cannot pretend that all languages evolved from one single language. Especially when that language is not even written or have any written form.

 

Again, your ignorance of modern research shows. This point has been explicitly disproven. I'll dig up the reference, if you want, when I get home.

 

In fact, the "linguistic phylogeny" almost perfectly matches the "out-of-africa" dispersal pattern from a single human origin in Africa.

 

Similar to the mystery of dinosaur extinction or evolution into birds, can we claim that all birds evolved from any one specific dinosaur species? Of course not,

 

Why not? Give me one good reason why not?

 

Your "theory" requires gene flow, and guess what? If two groups are different species, *there is no significant gene flow* by definition. Yes, it happens once in a while, but by an large most species are significantly different enough that they are reproductively isolated.

 

and so did the humans evolve in parallel from ancestral species under very similar pressures all over the globe.

 

Give me one scrap of evidence that the selection pressures on H. Erectus in Kenya were the same as those in Java. Savannah and jungle. How can you *possibly* argue for similar selection pressures in the face of such environmental heterogeneity?

 

That is why I do not even endorse a single "chosen" tribe to be God's Chosen People from which all humans came. That assumption is very far from science.

 

On the contrary, there is *evidence* for a single common ancestor, both of humans and of all life.

 

In contrast, I haven't seen a scrap of empirical evidence to support your theory. And without evidence, there is no science.

 

I seriously suggest that you familiarize yourself with the current literature in this subject. This is *far* from my field of expertise (snake biomechanics and evolution), and yet I'm *still* easily dismantling your 'theory'. Talk.origins has a lovely FAQ on fossil hominds, if you want.

 

Mokele

[Aardvark]

In fact' date=' the "linguistic phylogeny" almost perfectly matches the "out-of-africa" dispersal pattern from a single human origin in Africa.

[/quote']

 

This surprises me and interests me. As language would presumably evolve in a 'Lamark' rather than a 'Darwinian' fashion and would be subject to all manner of historical and cultural accidents of history i can not easily conceive of how language would show the same dispersal pattern as DNA.

 

I'd be grateful if you posted the reference or PMed me. You have succesfully intrigued me.

[zyncod]

Yes - I do not pretend to be a linguist of any sort but it is very difficult to get the 'phylogenies' of language on the timescale you're talking about. Even trying to get a picture of the proto-Indo-European language is difficult, and that postdates the out of Africa dispersal by thousands of years. If you're interested in this kind of stuff, Science had a great issue sometime last summer about all this.

 

But only cranks are really disputing the out of Africa hypothesis at this point.

[atinymonkey]

But only cranks are really disputing the out of Africa hypothesis at this point.

Not for the origin language. It's debatable that verbal communication came out of Africa, or indeed that language had a single source. It's the Holy Grail for linguists, and just as elusive and intangible as Gods socks.

[zyncod]

I know. I just meant the genetic out of Africa hypothesis. It would be my feeling, based upon my slight knowledge, that during the dispersal, humans had a rudimentary language, if any language at all. Although the aborigines that boated over to Australia ~40000 years ago were thought to have to have had some sort of language in order to plan a trip like that.

[Mokele]

This surprises me and interests me. As language would presumably evolve in a 'Lamark' rather than a 'Darwinian' fashion and would be subject to all manner of historical and cultural accidents of history i can not easily conceive of how language would show the same dispersal pattern as DNA.

 

I'd be grateful if you posted the reference or PMed me. You have succesfully intrigued me.

 

Iirc, it was a very, very broad "phylogeny" (like lumping most european languages together), so the lamarkian effect would probably be minimized.

 

I'll try to look up the reference tonight, but there's one small snafu: tommorrow at 7pm EST I fly to the UK for 3 weeks to visit my GF, leaving most of the references behind (including this one). I'll have a quickie look tonight while I'm packing, and if I can't find it, remind me on August 11th.

 

It's not in a very specialist reference though, iirc. It was something more for the general audience (albeit not *everyone*, think of the sort of book you'd find in Barnes and Nobles' science section), and on evolution as a whole, so if I can't find it in time, google might work better until I get back. A part of me wants to say that it was "Evolution" by Zimmer, but I'm really not sure.

 

I'll have a look when I can, though.

 

Although the aborigines that boated over to Australia ~40000 years ago were thought to have to have had some sort of language in order to plan a trip like that.

 

But wouldn't that be mostly island-hopping down through Indonesia? And once humans became established on Papua / New Guinea, AU is just a short trip, iirc. Or at least relatively short.

 

Now, the human colonization of Hawaii, *that* was a hell of a boat trip.

 

Mokele

[Skye]

But wouldn't that be mostly island-hopping down through Indonesia? And once humans became established on Papua / New Guinea, AU is just a short trip, iirc. Or at least relatively short.

AFAIK, most of Indonesia at that stage was a peninsular of SE Asia, the main water voyages would have been from this peninsular to the island of Timor, then to Australia/New Guinea, which was one land mass. The final trip would have been around 80 km.

[buzsaw]

for crying out loud?!?!

 

how much more proof' date='facts,evidence or common sense do you people need to be convinced that the dinosaurs died out over 64 million years ago...ruled the earth 256 million years WITHOUT humans and that the earth is not a few thousand years old![/quote']

 

How much common sense and logic does it take to understand that:

 

1. Why should only the dinosaur reptiles exclusively die out, every last one,, leaving their cousins the belly crawling reptiles surviving, nearly all of them? Maybe there's another explanation, like they were the Biblical pre-cursed reptile serpents which were not belly crawlers, but were cursed of God to have their descendendents become belly crawlers?

 

2. There were no eye witnesses 256 million years ago, nor even 20,000 years ago.

 

3. It's all based on theory with the credibility of dating methods in question by some scientists.

 

4. The preflood Biblical atmospheric conditions would have been such that atmospheric conditions likely would produce far different date readings than today's atmospheric conditions show.

 

5. The fossil record and other archeological data can be interpreted differently, depending on one's views.