BookTalk.org

10th in the series is the video which caught my attention in the first place, and was the genesis of the
"Yes. Evolution." thread.

http://www.booktalk.org/yes-evolution-t8939.html

Part 10 is listed below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MXTBGcyNuc

I have commented extensively on this video in the "Yes. Evolution." thread.

I find this to be a compelling and interesting bit of knowledge. Why don't they teach us this stuff in school? haha.

This is exactly the argument you would have to have with someone who doesn't believe in our common ancestry with animals.

"My grammy wern't no dernd monkey!"

"Well, here's how we prove that she was. Was she alive?"

"She were! Afore she upndied!"

"That means she was of the class biota. Meaning all things that live. One comparison of shared traits she had with all living things on the planet, our most intrinsic relationship, and damning evidence that she shared at least that much in common with monkeys, though the correct terminology is apes."

"SHE WERNT NO APE NUTHER!"

"She had differentiated cell structures, though. That made her eukaryotic. Just like all her ancestors, all the way back to this point in the chain, she was also an opisthacant. She reproduced and the gamete cell involved had a single posterior flaggelum. That's the sperm cell."

"So!"

"Well, that means she is related to all animals who share that trait. there are many others with entirely different plans that have flagellum at the head and pull themselves through material, or along the sides and do sort of a rowing motion.

She had to eat in order to live, correct? She didn't photo-synthesize?"

"Of course!'

"That's the definition of metazoa. The animal kingdom. Animals must ingest and digest other organisms in order to survive. Your grandmother was an animal. And because your mother was her descendant, and in turn you are your mother's descendant, you too are an animal. You do that trick with a tubular internal digestive tract, which makes you a colemate. She was also bilaterally symetrical. As in, her right side was a mirror image of her left side, as opposed to radially symetrical organisms like trees."

"... yeah."

"She had a spinal chord, skull, backbones and a jaw?"

"Yuh."

"that categorically makes her a chordate, craniad, vertebrate, gnathostome, which means she shares heredity not only with apes, which have all of this, but also fish of most variety. At least she wasn't an arthropod. Those are disgusting."

"Nuh-uh! She didn't have no fins, or gills!"

"She had structures in her fetal development that were indistinguishable from gills in fetal fish. They went away as she developed, but they were there. No, she wouldn't have fins, because the kinds of fish she was related to were sarcopterygii. The kinds of fish that had lobe-like extrusions on their bodies. These lobey extrusions were proto-limbs which would one day come in handy to get themselves out of the water. Using a base of four of those, just like your grandmother some of those organisms became tetrapods, or four limbed creatures.

Do you see where i'm going with this? I am describing the cellular basis of your grandmother all the way up to the structure of her limbs and that is refining, and refining her description until we eventually get to Ape, which is irrefutably on the end of this list.

Denying that your grandmother was an ape is as futile as denying that she was a tetrapod. Humans are categorically apes. That's what it means to be human."

I could and would follow this progression all the way to our the utter explanation of every detail of our anatomy, but the point should have been made by then.

Nicely laid out… however no matter how far you follow this logic, there are still some people who will remain “blind” to what you are saying.

Later

of course you are right, Frank. As we have seen on this website there are people who cannot be swayed by logic, reason, or the evidence all around them, no matter how abundant.

It is a good tool for those who deny out of ignorance, though, rather than blind devotion to a previous postion.

Johnson
It is a good tool for those who deny out of ignorance, though, rather than blind devotion to a previous position.

Absolutely… I love just how coherent the logic of that topic really is… You just need to know your facts and its slam dunk city!

It really is irrefutable and only ignorance or unreasonable willful blindness to the facts can leave a person unconvinced.

Later