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The Hobbit Human?
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2009 4:29 am
by WConn
Not trying to be difficult here but I read the God and Science page about the discovery of a (Hobbit Human) and found the conclusion somewhat difficult. It reads as follows:
"The unexpected discovery of a hobbit-sized hominid in the islands of Southeast Asia present a quandary for evolutionists, since its primitive morphology and yet recent appearance does not fit with any known evolutionary ancestors. Recent reports have even speculated that the species evolved from an as yet undiscovered ancestor, since it doesn't fit the evolutionary paradigm. Did Homo floresiensis evolve or was it specially created by God. Stay tuned for the continuing saga..."
There are many "missing links" in the evolutionary model. One cannot expect in our life time to be able to connect all the dots, even if the dots exist. That being said it would appear that evolution is dismissed in this conclusion and it is suggested that perhaps this hobbit human was CREATED by God. Well why isn't this form of human mentioned by God's inspired words in the Bible? I guess I will have to stay tuned for the continuing saga, as must we all.
Any Archaeology/anthropology types want to weigh in on this one? Again, just trying to be fair and balance and understand.
W
Re: The Hobbit Human?
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2009 1:10 pm
by ageofknowledge
Re: The Hobbit Human?
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2009 1:28 pm
by WConn
I read the link. What is an RTB?
W
Re: The Hobbit Human?
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2009 2:06 pm
by cslewislover
From what I get out of the end of Rich's article is that he's saying it's a primate species that God created, and is not human.
In the linked article, it's referring to their own site's articles (Reasons to Believe). Hmmm. I read the RTB article, and I'd need more info on their behavior to really agree. If there was evidence, instead, that the hobbits were killed by the humans and that the other remains were from human activity too, I'd think differently for sure. I guess I need to look into the references given, and other sources.
Re: The Hobbit Human?
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2009 6:03 pm
by ageofknowledge
WConn wrote:
I read the link. What is an RTB?
W
RTB=Reasons To Believe... a creation based science organization of scientists, researchers, educators, and even laypeople with competencies that have built a testable creation model to go head to head, using scientific methodology, with naturalistic evolutionary ones.
Re: The Hobbit Human?
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2009 9:43 pm
by cslewislover
Ok. So maybe I'm not up on what makes a human a human when looking at "ancestors" or closely related species. I just read this today, in Can A Smart Person Believe in God? (by Michael Guillen, 2004, pp123-126).
The Bible claims faith is precious and progressive, something that grows stronger with spiritual maturity. Hebrews 11:6 teaches that faith is as necessary to our having a meaningful relationship with God as logic is to our having one with geometry: "Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him."
Intellectual Cyclopes . . . think of faith as being inferior to reason. For them, faith is valueless and subhuman, a shameful vestige of our benighted past. For centuries, science appeared to be on their side. Textbooks taught that what truly separates us from other animals, what qualifies us to be at the top of the food chain, is our ability to reason.
Dolphins have language, birds make music, otters use tools, ants and bees elect leaders and operate well-run societies, beavers reengineer the landscape, butterflies navigate across vast distances, frogs have patience, ducks show love, chimps make war. But at the end of the day, science texts maintained, we alone have the ability to think logically; to put two and two together and come up with four. Hence science's name for us: Homo sapiens, Latin for "wise man."
But that analysis is changing radically. In recent decades, we've learned a great deal about what constitutes intelligence and how we should measure it; as a result, we've begun to theorize that other animals have far more smarts that we once thought. I did a segment on Good Morning America about a scientist who's even gone so far as to create an IQ test for dogs!
Now don't misunderstand me. Our incomparable intelligence still does set us apart in the world--other animals have gray matter, but not of a quality and quantity (relative to body size) as ours. It's just that we can no longer claim that having the ability to reason is what makes us unique.
What does? This is where the story becomes particularly intriguing.
According to the latest evidence alleged by paleoanthropologists, humans as we know them appeared suddenly and mysteriously only a very, very short while ago. (See, for example, Becoming Human: Evolution and Human Uniqueness, by Ian Tattersall.) By most scientific estimates, our appearance happened less than 80,000 years ago, a mere blink of the eye in geological terms.
In his book The Third Chimpanzee, the highly regarded UCLA physiologist Jared Diamond refers to our abrupt and enigmatic appearance as "The Great Leap Forward." Its cause? Says Diamond, "some magic twist."
In other words, scientists have yet to reach anything resembling a common explanation for how and why we happened on the scene. All they're pretty sure about is this: "That twist," says Diamond, "produced innovative, fully modern people who proceeded to spread westward from the Near East into Europe."
And therein lies the answer to our question. The Great Leap Forward (other scientists call it The Creative Explosion) was momentous because we humans suddenly appeared on the earth with traits never before seen in the animal kingdom--not even in any supposed protohuman species. And what exactly were these traits that make us unique? All the things that encompass what most of us would call the human soul: art, culture, and religion.
That's right. In a revelation that I believe ranks as one of the most intriguing of the twentieth century, science now seems to have evidence that what makes us positively unique is our spirituality. We Homo sapiens appear to be the only species on the planet with the unambiguous capacity and desire to believe in the supernatural--most notably, in an afterlife.
Nearly everywhere that paleontologists find early human remains--from western Europe to Siberia to the New World--they find evidence of our religiousness: cave paintings; carved fertility gods; dead bodies decorated with red paint, decked out in their Sunday best, and accompanied by so-called "burial goods," which include personal items such as food, weapons, and flowers.
Elephants are known to grieve for their dead and even to inter them on the spot, but contrary to legend, there are no known centralized, ceremonial elephant "graveyards." We alone appear to be creatures with a measurable SQ [Spiritual Quotient].
Never mind your personal views on evolution, the all-important point here is this: even though they're still leagues apart in many crucial ways, science and religion now agree on two nontrivial issues, which previously they did not: (1) religion, not reason, appears to be what makes us unique; and (2) our spirituality--our singular ability to perceive God--far from being the vestige of some benighted past, appears to be a prominent feature of a very recent creative explosion or great leap forward in the history of the world.
I wonder how this applies to the hobbits; that I'll try to post on next.
Re: The Hobbit Human?
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2009 11:30 pm
by ageofknowledge
Hobbits (e.g. homo Holbytla) are said to have descended from the river people that once inhabited the valley of Anduin near the mouth of the great river of Wilderlandrivers between the Green Forest and the Misty Mountains. They lived in holes.
Re: The Hobbit Human?
Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2009 6:23 am
by jlay
Hobbits (e.g. homo Holbytla) are said to have descended from the river people that once inhabited the valley of Anduin near the mouth of the great river of Wilderlandrivers between the Green Forest and the Misty Mountains. They lived in holes.
And they are lovers of ale and pipe weed.
Re: The Hobbit Human?
Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2009 10:26 pm
by cslewislover
So far from what I've read from recent science articles, they are not considered to be modern humans at all. I've seen extremely little regarding their behavior, but I'd still like to investigate that more.