Richard Dawkins' The Ancestors Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life is an accessible account of evolutionary biology and goes to great lengths to disabuse even a sloppy reader of the popular [pre-genetic sequencing] notions of "missing links."
Evolution suggests that creatures in similar environments are somewhat likely to develop similar adaptations without one species being the ancestor of the other. From a scientific standpoint the claim that modern fish are descendents of the extinct Placoderms is neither falsifiable nor for practical purposes verifiable - DNA simply does not survive that long.
Sparrows and bats have a common ancestor but it is improbable that it had wings.
Or to put it another way, the rationalist's notion of a missing link as expounded in the headline is as dependent upon the logic of the Great Chain of Being as that of an Ussherian creationist - their disagreement is large, but mainly resides in what constitutes the relevant details of a teleological account and the criteria for acceptance is the plausibility of the account to the individual and the intellectual communities to which they belong.
Is the term "Missing link" actually useful? Seems to me that what we keep doing is create more "missing links" with each discovery in the chain. We are sort of filling in gaps created each time we, er, find more missing links. In a 1000 years, we'll still be finding missing links until the whole thing is perfectly mapped out, if that is possible.
We do this thing quite a lot actually. Most news articles that are positive will try to have some tie in with Australia to make it relevant to the readers. Maybe the bolts used to tie together the worlds highest balloon ride are made by an Australian company; they literally get as tenuous as that at times.
I'll skip another 'Welcome to journalism' comment, and instead observe that an Australian scientist may actually be surprising news under the new government there!
> the fossil's jaw looks a lot like those of modern fish... She says this shows the Placoderm to be the ancestors of modern fish.
Admittedly skeptical layman here... but is that really enough evidence to draw that conclusion with that much certainty? Or is there more unreported context?
No matter how many "missing links" are found, the die-hard fundamentalists will find a way to ask for more. I've grown up in that environment. There are discrete jumps in fossils; unless you can find a complete lineage from "a rock to a walking-talking human", no True Christian will even waver for a minute.
On top of that, I hate the term "missing link" because it immediately means that science is catering to these fundamentalists. It's another fossil, it fills in some previously extrapolated part of the graph. Great! But let's not play on religious turf, because there's no way to win there.
Aha, but they haven't found any fossils that bridge the missing link between this new Placoderm and the ones we already knew about. If evolution were true, we'd have found those fossils as well! All science can do is continually and conclusively prove that science doesn't have all the answers.
My holy book has the correct answers, I know because the book tells me it does. Therefore it trumps science.
Sadly, there will be millions of people who will think exactly this.
The last thing I want to do is start a flame war, but I don't see anyone on here criticizing you for putting your faith in science.
I would like to have thought that the Hacker News community would be above unwarranted comments such as this.
This was discovered in Yunnan, the southwesternmost province of China that is already well known for its fossil record, both in terms of early ocean life and humans. Just last year they discovered what appears to be an entirely new species of hominid[1]. I lived in Yunnan for 5 years and really fell in love with the place, which is surrounded by Tibet, Burma, Laos and Vietnam and is China's most biologically, climatically, culturally, historically and linguistically diverse province. Despite a near total lack of credentials, I'm currently writing a long form history of Yunnan for a general audience from prehistory through near-present in English, as a fun long term side project. I'm also an Australian. Australians have been involved in many other studies in the area, such as historical water level studies of the region's impressively large alpine lakes. Kew Gardens in London also collaborate with the province on a shared long term global seed bank project.
It is unfortunate that biology news has the capacity to cause such a shitstorm. Imagine if this sort of thing happened every time there was a new article about NASA discovering some new property of Saturn or something.
I guess we should be thankful that most religious have only chosen biology as a good place for a last stand in defense of a "God of the Gaps". Science discussion would be far shittier if they did this to every biology and chemistry discussion...
It looks like a 'shurtle': The product of breeding a shark with a turtle.
I can see the ad campaign right there: "Darwin's Whiskey, one night stands before it was cool". Or "Influencing evolution since way back". (With a picture of a shark and a turtle the morning after, with a "What have I done" expression).
It resolves a missing link in the history of life, not evolution. The latter term is often used to mean the former, but I think that's a bad idea. It's confusing to people without a good understanding of the distinction.
Evolution, the scientific theory of how life changes over time, does not depend on the fossil record for its validity. It's trivially easy to study with living animals; thousands of undergraduates do it every semester with fruit flies.
Pretty much any religion is compatible with evolution. Some of them have needed (appropriately enough) to adapt a bit, but there are (e.g.) lots and lots and lots of people who accept both Christianity and evolution.
(The US is very unusual in having so much creationism despite a reasonable overall level of scientific literacy.)
But could we please not turn this thread into an argument about religion? There are plenty of those on the internet already. The science is interesting enough in its own right.
I'll assume your question was not meant to sound condescending (because I don't think it was).
Christianity, in its purest form, is not compatible with evolution. Christianity believes that the Bible is the infallible word of God and therefore is complete truth. The Bible says the world and everything in it was created in 6 days and so is incompatible with evolution. That being said, there are lots of denominations of Christianity that have accepted evolution by "reading between the lines" of the creation story and assuming things that are not there. Catholicism, for example has made an official statement (by the Pope) that there are no incompatibilities between the two.
But, your question and the statement that follows are not related. I am not a Christian because I don't believe in evolution. The converse is also true; the reason I don't believe in evolution is not because I am a Christian. I am a Christian simply because I believe there has to be something more to this life. I am a Christian because having hope that someday everything that has happened here on Earth will someday be worth it is what makes me get out of bed in the morning. I couldn't imagine going through life believing that this is all there is. IMO it would be a miserable and mundane existence if there was no purpose to life.
(And yes, I do consider myself an intelligent developer)
Evolution is too general a term. Everyone believes in natural selection, because that is scientifically observable. Where many Christians (I can't speak for other religions) disagree with the scientific orthodoxy is whether or not natural selection is sufficient to change one species into another. We've observed finches turning into finches (with different beaks), moths turning into (different-colored) moths, but we've never observed a lizard turning into a bird. We've seen fossils that look like a lizard-bird, but that is not proof of the mechanism that created them.
I think Islam is compatible with evolution, though many Muslims would beg to differ. There is some notion of God having a hand in designing humans, but that is worked around easily enough by assuming either extremely high precision in initial conditions of the universe or allowing for strategically placed genetic mutations and such. Clearly unfalsifiable, but it this isn't science, or any sort of proof, but just a lack of contradiction with science.
Note, this doesn't mean I believe everything in Islam is the one and only truth.
All you guys are developers and you know how hard it is to develop a computer system. Our body has multiple systems running in perfect harmony. And all the animals has it too. The solar system with all the massive planets spinning with an unbelievable precision that we can calculate where a planet will be in 10.000 years from now. And they are travelling around the universe and you think now body is in charge? Somebody very very intelligent designed all this. And most of you hope that God does not exists because He left commandments that we not follow and He will judge each and everyone of us and because of that men hate God.
[+] [-] brudgers|12 years ago|reply
Evolution suggests that creatures in similar environments are somewhat likely to develop similar adaptations without one species being the ancestor of the other. From a scientific standpoint the claim that modern fish are descendents of the extinct Placoderms is neither falsifiable nor for practical purposes verifiable - DNA simply does not survive that long.
Sparrows and bats have a common ancestor but it is improbable that it had wings.
Or to put it another way, the rationalist's notion of a missing link as expounded in the headline is as dependent upon the logic of the Great Chain of Being as that of an Ussherian creationist - their disagreement is large, but mainly resides in what constitutes the relevant details of a teleological account and the criteria for acceptance is the plausibility of the account to the individual and the intellectual communities to which they belong.
[+] [-] alan_cx|12 years ago|reply
Is the term "Missing link" actually useful? Seems to me that what we keep doing is create more "missing links" with each discovery in the chain. We are sort of filling in gaps created each time we, er, find more missing links. In a 1000 years, we'll still be finding missing links until the whole thing is perfectly mapped out, if that is possible.
[+] [-] onion2k|12 years ago|reply
Thank you. I'm here all week. Try the placoderm.
[+] [-] millerm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redact207|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] easytiger|12 years ago|reply
Crikey, an Australian scientist. Whatever next
[+] [-] nwh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mambodog|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agilebyte|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JacobAldridge|12 years ago|reply
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/09/20/tony_abbo...
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] erre|12 years ago|reply
But upvote, because LOL :D
[+] [-] joshuahedlund|12 years ago|reply
Admittedly skeptical layman here... but is that really enough evidence to draw that conclusion with that much certainty? Or is there more unreported context?
[+] [-] sigzero|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] papa_bear|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mcguire|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JonFish85|12 years ago|reply
On top of that, I hate the term "missing link" because it immediately means that science is catering to these fundamentalists. It's another fossil, it fills in some previously extrapolated part of the graph. Great! But let's not play on religious turf, because there's no way to win there.
[+] [-] sjwright|12 years ago|reply
My holy book has the correct answers, I know because the book tells me it does. Therefore it trumps science.
Sadly, there will be millions of people who will think exactly this.
[+] [-] bigfoot13442|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lostlogin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] contingencies|12 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Deer_Cave_people
[+] [-] leokun|12 years ago|reply
Wonderful.
[+] [-] jlgreco|12 years ago|reply
I guess we should be thankful that most religious have only chosen biology as a good place for a last stand in defense of a "God of the Gaps". Science discussion would be far shittier if they did this to every biology and chemistry discussion...
[+] [-] Jugurtha|12 years ago|reply
I can see the ad campaign right there: "Darwin's Whiskey, one night stands before it was cool". Or "Influencing evolution since way back". (With a picture of a shark and a turtle the morning after, with a "What have I done" expression).
[+] [-] celias|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snowwrestler|12 years ago|reply
Evolution, the scientific theory of how life changes over time, does not depend on the fossil record for its validity. It's trivially easy to study with living animals; thousands of undergraduates do it every semester with fruit flies.
[+] [-] twox|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gjm11|12 years ago|reply
(The US is very unusual in having so much creationism despite a reasonable overall level of scientific literacy.)
But could we please not turn this thread into an argument about religion? There are plenty of those on the internet already. The science is interesting enough in its own right.
[+] [-] bigfoot13442|12 years ago|reply
Christianity, in its purest form, is not compatible with evolution. Christianity believes that the Bible is the infallible word of God and therefore is complete truth. The Bible says the world and everything in it was created in 6 days and so is incompatible with evolution. That being said, there are lots of denominations of Christianity that have accepted evolution by "reading between the lines" of the creation story and assuming things that are not there. Catholicism, for example has made an official statement (by the Pope) that there are no incompatibilities between the two.
But, your question and the statement that follows are not related. I am not a Christian because I don't believe in evolution. The converse is also true; the reason I don't believe in evolution is not because I am a Christian. I am a Christian simply because I believe there has to be something more to this life. I am a Christian because having hope that someday everything that has happened here on Earth will someday be worth it is what makes me get out of bed in the morning. I couldn't imagine going through life believing that this is all there is. IMO it would be a miserable and mundane existence if there was no purpose to life.
(And yes, I do consider myself an intelligent developer)
[+] [-] hnal943|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ehsanu1|12 years ago|reply
Note, this doesn't mean I believe everything in Islam is the one and only truth.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] _of|12 years ago|reply
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...
[+] [-] jcmoscon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] narfquat|12 years ago|reply
Awesome.
[+] [-] cclogg|12 years ago|reply
(It'll be in 3D too)
[+] [-] username42|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tetha|12 years ago|reply
"We fixed that bug, yay!"
"But now theres 5 bugs instead of one, what the hell?!"
"Well those are different bugs. Do you want them fixed, too?"
"AAAAAaah."
[+] [-] taybin|12 years ago|reply