Sclera, Communication, Evolution, Bible

I am begging Creationists to Stop Saying This
Gutsick Gibbon, 8 Feb. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vNSN9EHA5k

3:00 From what I could see on the pictures, it's a question of exaggeration.

The white sclera exist, but the iris is so large they have to look sideways for the white sclera to show.

It is "sclerum, sclera"? If it was "sclera, sclerae" I put a singular as a plural!

Dialogue:

Hans Georg Lundahl

21 Aug 2014 we get the original article on CMI.

White sclera are a predominantly human characteristic.

Michael Tomasello is cited:

"In a recent experiment, our research team has shown that even infants—at around their first birthdays, before language acquisition has begun—tend to follow the direction of another person’s eyes, not their heads. Thus, when an adult looked to the ceiling with her eyes only, head remaining straight ahead, infants looked to the ceiling in turn. However, when the adult closed her eyes and pointed her head to the ceiling, infants did not very often follow. ... It has been repeatedly demonstrated that all great apes, including humans, follow the gaze direction of others. But in previous studies the head and eyes were always pointed in the same direction. Only when we made the head and eyes point in different directions did we find a species difference: humans are sensitive to the direction of the eyes specifically in a way that our nearest primate relatives are not. This is the first demonstration of an actual behavioral function for humans’ uniquely visible eyes."

So, Tomasello is some Creationist cook? Not really:

Michael Tomasello, then co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Leipzig is in former East Germany, it's a heavily Evolutionist place.

If you want to read the article with the most correct information on the topic, it's from 21 Aug 2014, The whites of their eyes, How Hollywood makes apes look human, by Warren Nunn

Note

The whites of their eyes
by Warren Nunn, Published: 21 August 2014
https://creation.com/ape-eye-whites

The Emperor

Doesn't matter if it is predominant in humans the point is it exists in other animals as well regardless of how they function. Even if the white sclera is hidden, they still have white sclera.

Hans Georg Lundahl

@The Emperor And so?

Just means that some overenthusiastic people have slightly misquoted Warren Nunn.

His point is still a valid one. We definitely do use white sclera for communications, apes don't.

The Emperor

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Yeah, why does that matter?

Hans Georg Lundahl

@The Emperor For one thing, it's about how planet of the apes portrays apes as more human than they are.

For another, it's an umpteenth difference between how apes and men communicate.

In any line of slowly changes done to genotype and phenotype, all the inbetweens need to be still functional - that goes for communication as well. This makes for one more hurdle for apes and men being involved as two ends in such a process.

The Emperor

@Hans-Georg Lundahl We can teach apes to do the same things we do and they can be exceptional at it or just mediocre but they do a few things we can do. Sign language is a great example. We can teach them and speak with them that way. They're more human like than you realize.

Hans Georg Lundahl

@The Emperor We can't teach apes to communicate with sclera.

We can't teach apes concepts.

I have looked into the stories.

An ape using sign language cannot make sentences in it, like a deaf person could.

I suggest you look up this article on CMI:

Has an ape learned to talk?
by Carl Wieland | This article is from
Creation 25(3):52–53, June 2003
https://creation.com/has-an-ape-learned-to-talk

Claims are circulating widely that Kanzi, a bonobo or pygmy chimpanzee, has done just this. In fact, the reality is far more mundane than all the evolutionary excitement would suggest.

It has been known for some years that Kanzi and others had been trained to use simple symbols to represent concepts like ‘banana’, ‘grapes’, ‘juice’ or ‘yes’. And now it has apparently been shown, from analyzing tapes, that this ape has used four distinct sounds to represent those four particular concepts. Whether any other ape or human was meant to ‘understand’ them is not presently clear. ....

Just quoting first two paragraphs.

The Emperor

@Hans-Georg Lundahl So? We can't teach them a lot of things, I am talking about what we can teach them. They show a few human characteristics, enough to tell we share a common ancestor.

Hans Georg Lundahl

@The Emperor The characteristics they have in common, show a common creator.

The Emperor

@Hans-Georg Lundahl That is nonsense.

Hans Georg Lundahl

@The Emperor An ape could not say any of this. Or see any difference between sense and nonsense.

The Emperor

@Hans-Georg Lundahl That doesn't matter. When comparing them to other species including ourselves, it's what we have in common that matters. That is how we know we have a common ancestor. There is no evidence that suggests there is a creator.

Hans Georg Lundahl

@The Emperor The fact we can reason suggests there is a creator.

The fact that Adam spoke to Him suggests that too.

The fact that apes can't reason, suggests there is no common ancestor (and the Bible gives no room for that evolution either).

The Emperor

@Hans-Georg Lundahl
We can use reasoning to tell there is no evidence of a creator. Having that ability doesn't lead to the conclusion that there is one.

The bible doesn't matter. It's just a book written by humans.

Hans Georg Lundahl

@The Emperor We can use our reason correctly, or as you just did abuse it.

The ability is not there in apes, and it cannot have developed.

If it's innate in anything, doesn't seem to be the kind of body stuff we share with apes. So, if we aren't the main repositories of reason, what is? An eternal reason, a k a God. How did we get it when we are not that eternal reason? God gave it - also known as God created.

In order to ditch the Bible, you seem keen on denigrating human reason, though ...

The Emperor

@Hans-Georg Lundahl That is more nonsense. You're not very keen on using reasoning when it comes to God or Evolution that is obvious.

Evolution happened and that is demonstrable. The bible was written by humans that is undeniable. No evidence has suggested otherwise.

Hans Georg Lundahl

@The Emperor Men recorded the Bible as they lived through the events.

Even with no God giving any verbal dictation about it, how does a man who is fully grown believe he was created a few hours ago, and then that his wife was created when he slept, and then that the God who did these things for him gave him a command, that his wife and then himself also broke, and were chased out of Eden into a world with no other inhabitants, if that is totally not what happened to him?

Or, if only someone came to believe this happened to his grandfather, how come someone believes it of his grandfather? Especially as the grandson of Adam, Enos, could live 495 years that his grandfather also lived:

3 And Adam lived two hundred and thirty years, and begot [a son] after his [own] form, and after his [own] image, and he called his name Seth. 4 And the days of Adam, which he lived after his begetting Seth, were seven hundred years; and he begot sons and daughters. 5 And all the days of Adam which he lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died. 6 Now Seth lived two hundred and five years, and begot Enos. 7 And Seth lived after his begetting Enos, seven hundred and seven years, and he begot sons and daughters. 8 And all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years, and he died. 9 And Enos lived an hundred and ninety years, and begot Cainan. 10 And Enos lived after his begetting Cainan, seven hundred and fifteen years, and he begot sons and daughters.

230 + 205 = 435
930 - 435 = 495

In order for the Bible to not be true history, it is very much not enough to assume it was "written by men and not by God" - it would involve very curious mistakes for men writing their history, if it were not the true one. That's why I said you have a very low assessment of human reason, in order to dismiss the Bible, and the historic evidence these people actually did meet God who actually sometimes spoke to them, and even otherwise took such care of them, that they did not make even normal mistakes in recording their history.

"Evolution happened and that is demonstrable."

From ape to man, that is demonstrably not true.

Saying that mud began to talk, because God omnipotent touched it, makes sense, or to some, it maybe doesn't, too bad for them.

But saying mud began to talk without any God so arranging it, or saying monkeys did so, is obvious nonsense.

The Emperor

@Hans-Georg Lundahl More nonsense. The bible is hearsay and most if not all events were written about years after they happened. No evidence was ever presented that God wrote it or appeared to anyone or influenced them. That was their imagination it isn't hard to understand that.

Evolution happened that is demonstrable. Pretending that we came from mud is stupid, no one has said that just you. If you think mud is talking because of God it makes sense you're insane that's about it. I'm really beginning to think you have little grasp on reality and how evidence works.

Hans Georg Lundahl

@The Emperor "The bible is hearsay and most if not all events were written about years after they happened."

Hearsay is a term used in courts. You can't witness in court against someone based on "a friend of a friend of a friend saw him do the killing, that's what I've been told in a phone call next day" ...

Tradition, and accepting eyewitness accounts, and writing down accounts that have been tradited orally, are all of them very different processes from the casual transmission and therefore plausible distortion of information that the courts term hearsay.

I do not think you have even clearly thought through what the terms mean.

"No evidence was ever presented that God wrote it or appeared to anyone or influenced them."

No one is saying God held the pen. For some passages, the context itself says there was a dictation from God. Audible to the writer. For other passages that is not the case, and God's authorship is involved in a more roundabout way, like protecting a researching chronicler (a k a a historian) from accepting a mistake as truth, or from omitting a truth God wanted told in that context.

But there actually are passages where you find "and God spoke to Moses and said" and there is obviously anyone who heard Jesus, if He claimed to be God and rose from the dead.

"That was their imagination it isn't hard to understand that."

Moses' imagination told him God wanted him to part the Red Sea with a gesture, and that just happened to coincide with a wind blowing a passage through some part of the Red Sea?

Joshua's imagination told him God would help him to stop the Sun and the Moon from moving away from lighting up the fight, and this just happened to coincide with an inexplicable retardation at the very least of earth's normal rotation?

In cases like these two and many others, it's actually extremely hard to accept the view that God wasn't involved, but their imagination just added "an invisible friend" to otherwise natural events. Extremely hard or rather impossible.

Given that tradition and legend don't distort as hearsay, and even hearsay would hardly distort non-miracles into miracles, the alternatives would be deliberate fraud or actual truth.

Deliberate fraud is in some cases hard to imagine because of the cost it would involve, and in other ones because of the difficulty in making it convincing.

I just took as an example, if you got hold of a man with amnesia, could you convince him, not just for days and weeks, maybe years, but durably, that you were God, and he was the first man you created? No, you could not.

If a boat survived a large regional flooding (and don't imagine end of the ice age as a good fit for such!) and the surviving crew came to conclude they were the only people left alive on earth, even if we grant it could have got stuck in the middle of the flooding and seen water on all sides around a small mountain top, how would it not change their minds to see other people later on who had survived outside the flooded area or in boats reaching the shore of it?

Not to mention, if you are stuck in the middle of a huge regional flooding, and water subsides around you, but you see no shore, you would need to be very lucky to actually survive, since it's unlikely all that water would disappear and leave you space to reach land.

"Evolution happened that is demonstrable."

As said, demonstrably not between ape and man.

"If you think mud is talking because of God it makes sense you're insane that's about it."

I didn't say it remained mud when it started to talk.

I did say, it couldn't have changed into a man and started talking without God. I also said, imagining an ape could start talking without God makes absolutely as little sense.

"I'm really beginning to think you have little grasp on reality and how evidence works."

I have concluded some time ago, you are a cultural Marxist, and as such a fan both of Evolution and of gaslighting with threats of psychiatry.

You have chosen your screename ill, you are not Emperor, thank God.

The Emperor

@Hans-Georg Lundahl The stories in the bible do not prove the bible's stories, that makes no sense. Try proving anything in the bible happened without using the bible.

Evolution is demonstrable. Including human evolution. If you don't understand that then you did no research. You're intellectually dishonest.

Hans Georg Lundahl

@The Emperor "Try proving anything in the bible happened without using the bible."

Try proving Julius Caesar basically conquered Gaul without using his Gallic Wars which we have from manuscripts starting 1000 years later than when he wrote it. On top of that from monasteries in France - a place where the Carolingian Renaissance was concerned with proving a Caesarian connection to the Basileis of Constantinople.

Historians still totally buy that the Gallic Wars are basically what happened, and what Caesar wrote about it. Do you know why? When you do, we can discuss how this applies to the Bible.

"Including human evolution."

I did research about the question of language origin. Enough to know that several theories from c. 100 years ago are already discarded and not really getting replaced with new ones (OK, perhaps "language from mating ritual" is the next new one, won't work either).

I also did enough research to know, all "human ancestors" either are clearly non-human in speech related anatomy (Australopithecus have ears unable to hear consonants, or at least front consonants, hyoids with hooks for the ape-like air bags, skull cups without any trace of Broca's area) or fully human (Neanderthals have fully human ears - erectus has mostly human ears - human hyoids, showing tear and wear of human speech when scanned, scull caps with traces of Broca's area, and the human version of the FOXP-2 gene). No clear inbetween has been found.