Bex, it is getting a little tiresome reiterating information to you when you could follow any of the links I gave, or do research of your own (on Wikipedia for example) and find out what we know about these fossils. It seems clear here that you are not interested in doing this but instead are keen to make generalisations founded on ignorance of the physical evidence and current scientific knowledge and consensus. I don't see the sense in devoting much more time to this conversation if you are unwilling to discuss the evidence in any kind of educated way.

For example. You said:



How do you define the "origin belief"? No serious scientist is in doubt that these hominid fossils belong on our ancestral tree, though we are not directly related to them all. Scientists are unsure about whether our own species originated in Africa, like others seem to have done, or whether evolution occurred independently in different places, as bipedalism seems to have done. This is an interesting puzzle, not evidence against evolution itself, and we've already discussed this curious idea that you seem to expect scientists to be in 100% agreement about everything, or the entire concept is somehow invalidated.



Again, it's curious that you think this kind of disagreement puts the entire theory of evolution into doubt. Are you aware of the specific disagreements about specific fossils? Did you look at the link I provided about the fossil feet, and the cladograms showing where disputes lie about where to place some hominids on our family tree? The answer is obvious: no.



Because if you took the time to study the fossil evidence, which you are clearly unwilling to do, you will see that the patterns of similarities and differences show them to have some characteristics of one species, some characteristicts of the other. You also look at dating evidence. This is one way of establishing transitional fossils: those things you don't want to learn about so you can keep denying their existence. Do you have anything to offer here other than arguments from ignorance?



We have discussed this and I have given numerous links about brain size. Have you looked at any of them? The most recent one shows very clearly why Turkana Boy's cranial capacity, and that of homo erectus, puts it in a different species category from us. I have also given links which explain other ways in which he is different from us. I don't expect you to refute entire websites but I do expect you'll do some reading up so that you are able to discuss the evidence with me, rather than repeating the same assertions over and over.

You're giving the neandertal in armour PRATT here? Oh good heavens Bex, do a Google and educate yourself. I'm going to search through the rest of your post for a comment which isn't a repetitious argument from ignorance or incredulity ("no evidence . . . never happened").

Again, claiming that fossils like Turkana Boy are not different from us and that disease states, etc can account for the differences. Bex these are PRATTs in the most classic sense. Creationist leaders have tried saying this and their claims do not fit the physical evidence. Look it up and learn. Read about how different these fossils are from us. They can be seen to be in transition, changing gradually back to the point where they were very similar to an ape. So where do you personally draw the line, if you feel so sure that Turkana Boy is human? Homo habilis? The species homo erectusitself is so classically transitional that scientists have trouble delineating where it differs from habilis and again where it differs from archaic sapiens because the fossils show such continual, gradual change.



What else do you expect me to say? Would you like me to say, "God created human beings as they are, with the capacity for speech?" There are some problems with this. Firstly, what is the nature of all those hominid fossils we've been discussing? Which of them spoke? Did the "human" ones speak and the "ape" ones not? Which are human and which are ape? If you've got a better explanation that fits the evidence then you're welcome to present it.



Nice one: "we can't learn anything from an incomplete fossil." There are paleoanthropologists who spend their lives studying them and publishing papers on them -- which you know nothing about, because you refuse to learn. That site talks about why those skulls are classified the way they are and how one is transitional between the others to either side. Did you read anything about those skulls and the species they are from before you made your guesses? I'll thank you making comments at least, which is more than any other creationist here has been willing to do.

Next you are justifying the practice of quote mines . . . I quote mined a few people here once, and they didn't like it. Nothing is stopping you from doing it of course, but the people who read them and look up their provenance and relevance to current scientific understanding are going to see them for the dishonest nonsense that they are. No scientist has any need to quote mine creationists, which speaks for itself. I've also pointed out before that giving a quote from someone without backing it up with evidence is a logical fallacy called "argument from authority" -- in other words, "it's true because this person said so." Scientists don't engage in logical fallacies such as this, they present evidence for what they say.

I think most of this post is flogging a dead horse really: you have more or less made all of these points before and seem to think that they will gain validity if you repeat them. Why don't you learn a bit about an individual fossil such as Lucy, or the real science behind Turkana Boy, and we can have an educated conversation?