Scientists Discover New Human Ancestor, Creationists Lose Last Remaining Brain Cell Freaking Out

[ashling]

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/09/10/scientists-discover-new-human-ancestor-creationists-lose-last-remaining-brain-cell-freaking-out/

http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/newly-discovered-human-ancestor-likely-ritualistically-disposed-its-dead

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/10/africa/homo-naledi-human-relative-species/index.html

[Fred Sanders]

1. What an embarrassment the American RW "Christians" and Fox are to the country and the world.

"Denying a new leap forward in the quest to understand humanity’s origins is less than surprising. In sharp contrast to the rest of the Western world, Americans still struggle to accept the existence of evolution. In a recent Gallup poll, nearly half of Americans reported believing God created humans in their current form just 10,000 years ago. The continued belief in creationism may explain why just acknowledging evolution can be considered “controversial.” Just last year, an ESPN reporter was suspended by the sports network for tweeting about the overwhelming evidence in favor of natural selection.

Watching creationists work themselves up into a frenzy over a new scientific discovery that contradicts their ideology demonstrates just how important scientific literacy is if our society hopes to maintain its technological and educational lead on other countries. Nobody should graduate high school in the United States unable to understand that the combined scientific support for evolution amounts to being unable to tell the difference between a human being and a shaved chimp. What an embarrassment."

[hifiguy]

2. Amazing, isn't it?

People around the world must laugh themselves into stomach cramps and incontinence when they read about just how bone-deep stupid most Americans are.

Like George Carlin said - "just think about how dumb the average person is, and remember that half the population is even dumber than that.
"

[gratuitous]

10. An embarrassment, to be sure

But it's not accidental. There has been a relentless program executed over the last four decades or more to make our country and its citizens more ignorant. Inadequately funded schools and a dedicated program of demeaning teachers are just two elements of this campaign. It has long been a staple of juvenile life to mock intelligence, particularly by the more physically gifted (nerds vs. jocks), but that high school rivalry has graduated and become writ large in our society. Learning and knowing things isn't valued, but being loud and wrong is valued.

[Stargazer09]

3. Evolution is still happening

There appears to be a new species of human developing in America, Homo foxaddicticus. Due to an extreme lack of genetic diversity, and a surprising amount of ignorance about family planning, the new species is out-breeding the more advanced Homo sapiens.

[GoneFishin]

7. yeah, I understand that there is controversy among scientists as to whether or not the can

breed faster than they can accidentally shoot themselves and their family members trying to "defend" them.

[MisterP]

4. and an ANC MP, too

http://www.enca.com/south-africa/homo-naledi-promotes-africans-subhuman-mothole-motshekga
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Its-pseudo-science-Motshekga-stands-by-his-views-on-Homo-naledi-20150911
http://citizen.co.za/744186/homo-naledi-an-attempt-to-link-black-ancestors-to-baboons/

the people he's shaking his finger at *know* they're more than a little Neanderthal

Kemal, the Tamils, Ceausescu, have all claimed their groups preceded the cosmos and founded all civilization and arts and spread them to its world empire

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

5. I doubt more "facts" are going to influence the Creationists.

They seem to be more than capable of ignoring those annoying little things.

[beam me up scottie]

6. From your first link:

Anthropologists in South Africa announced the fascinating discovery of a never-before-seen human ancestor that has turned everything we know about the origins of our own species on its ear. Thought to be millions of years old, the species dubbed Homo naledi was a mixture of modern humans (slender arms and legs) and much more ancient extinct ancestors (like a very small brain cavity). Even more astonishing, scientists believe that despite the relatively small brains, this species buried their dead.

“I think it’s going to take generations to get over that,” Berger said. “Even for us now. You’re faced with a remarkable situation of a small-brained primitive hominid that is almost certainly deliberately disposing of its dead in a sort of repeated ritualized fashion, in an underground chamber. That alone is remarkable. The fact is, it almost certainly would have been risky to get to this chamber. So they are not only secreting these bodies away to an area where nothing could get to them, they were taking risks in doing that. Only humans do that.”

Fascinating, right?

Not for modern day America’s own primitive man known as the Fox News audience. After the Fox website published a straight-forward account of the new discovery, the conservative network’s creationist readers took to Facebook to slam the scientists, the discovery, evolution, and even Fox News for talking about it. The backlash says less about the validity of the science, and more about the willful ignorance of conservative America.

Great op, thanks for posting it!

[brooklynite]

8. I've heard plenty of creationists dispute the accuracy of carbon-dating...

...won't be anything new this time.

[awoke_in_2003]

9. "If humans evolved from apes, why are there still apes?"

That is one sentence that never fails to make me want to bang my head into a wall. K&R