So you are saying that it is in effect a matter of god versus science? No middle ground, no accepting the scientific known while also accepting the idea that god might or does exist?

To each his own. Me I accept evolution,the 4.5 billion age of Earth, the 14 billion year age of the universe and I accept that the "big bang" is still a mystery and that if time and space spread out from that bang faster than light then obviously we don't know everything. I accept that god may exist and that faith can have a place alongside science if just to give some people hope. I also accept that some people see UFOs and therefore UFOs are real. As to what they are or where they come from, still waiting to see.

A mind is a terrible thing to shut off.

As someone who is both Religious and Scientific, the President's answer was neither pandering or rejecting science. His answer is an incorporation of the two ideas, and is actually a quit common answer for those of us, who do not take the Bible as literal.

A lot of people who are both Christians and Scientific, will give you roughly the same answer. One day for God, to me isn't the same as a day for us. Even in the George Burns "Oh God" movies, the little girl asked him the question if he really did create the world in six days. His answer was" My days are not the same as yours. When I woke up this morning Cesare was still ruling Rome."

"The idea that the Biblical days of creation are really epochs that can be tied to the geological record is a well-worn fudge that has no basis in fact."

Really? How can you say that so definitively? Have you actually ever READ Genesis? In the beginning, God created mass, without form. And then there was light, which sounds an awful lot like the Big Bang to me. Then God differentiates the mass, which resonates with the idea of an expanding galaxy. Only then does God form the lands (continents). You really think this doesn't match geological records? Then God creates vegetation (though there is an anachronistic mention of fruit trees at this early stage) and aligns the Earth in a way that sounds a lot like the reversal of the magnetic poles.

I will admit that the orderly procession breaks down with the evolution of animal life. God begins with fish (which is correct) and birds (which is incorrect). Then there is creation of mammals and reptiles/amphibians mixed together, which is rather messy. But at the end of it all is man, which is roughly accurate though it doesn't acknowledge the fact that evolution did not magically cease at that point.

When you consider that the Bible was written thousands of years before there was any understanding of geological, astronomical, or biological sciences, I'd say the writers did a pretty good job. You don't agree obviously, and I'm not expecting to convince you, but your automatic rejection of a hypothesis that postulates that God might have been the motivating agent in the creation of the universe and our expanding galaxy is pretty darn dogmatic. I don't see how Christian fundamentalists and literalists are any more blind and inflexible than your unquestioning devotion to science as a created deity.

The role of religion is not to give us hope. This is the "religion is a crutch" line of thought that people of faith find condescending, insulting, and at its base deeply spiritually naive. Like a child throwing rocks at the house of someone they have grown to hate, not knowing the lady living their is kind and deeply wise. That is the way many people of faith regard rude atheists on the Left. They simply have no idea the depths of life that they believe in their hubris they understand better than anyone else, but in their personal lives demonstrate that they are utterly clueless- a level of life they simply do not have even the most rudimentary spiritual tools to fathom or grapple with.

People on the atheist left have some trouble reconciling their respect for Obama's intelligence and his professed faith in God. As a person of faith, I don't have the slightest bit of trouble reconciling them. To me, his actions and ability to reach the achievements he has springs from his faith. Do atheists believe he checks his brains at the door on Sunday, or do they believe that he is secretly is an atheist like them and cynically made the political move to ape a Christian belief for the purposes of winning elections? Neither of these work. The Right believes the latter- that he is not really a Christian. Yet the former theory is also a Right wing meme- believes him to be a teleprompter simpleton.

So a little more thought is required if someone on the atheist/agnostic left would like to understand the President's statements on faith. No, it is not the faithy hopey thing.

The trouble theologically that Obama and many on the religious Left struggle with- and this is true whether you are Jew, Muslim, Hindu or Christian- is the authority of scripture. If the scripture- whether it is the Torah, Koran, Gita or Bible- is that for the written record to have authority on moral matters, there must be ontological weight behind it. Progressive Christians will say "It is the inspired word of God.". Unlike the fundamentalists in the world religions, there is a "...BUT", following that.

Many rationalism fundametalists like Dawkins and Sam Harris observe with great glee the dance that progressive people of faith make with that "But.." part. It is true that there is a lot of sloppy thinking among people of faith, and personally, I find Obama's final statement baffling.

His final statement about "not presuming to know", is in my view a cop out and where I differ in what I tell my children. Here is how my "dance" goes. If you had a clear vision of the big bang, coalescence of the local nebula, the ignition of the Sun's hydrogen fuel and so on, a person without any understanding of current science might write it down as a 7 year creation. In the oral traditions existent in the period prior to the written tradition among the primitive tribes prior to Abraham, the retelling easily could be mangled.

So the question for my children is. If the understanding you take from the biblical account that God measures his days according to how long our earth rotates at this current time, and it happened with instantaneous generation of species exactly as they are today with no mention of species changing slowly over time, then why would God create all this evidence everywhere we look that the world evolved extremely slowly?

The emergence of the idea of a lawful God was primary to why early science was often conducted by the very religious. To know his creation was to know his works and to know God's works was to know more about God.

So if we think that the word as recorded by human interpreters is literally no different that the words that God would utter them to us today, then we have a huge problem.

Because a multitude of questions boil down to this:

Why would God create a world with fossils in it? Is he a joker trying to pull our legs?

Science tells us what is. It doesn't tell us anything about what it should be, or who we should be. Of everything that is important in the world, those lovely intangibles that Mr Bailey talks about in "Miracle on 34th Street" are the only things that matter. And that is what the good books of the world's religions attempt to convey.

The stuff that matters. Science is important because it tells about the universe as it is. More important is to understand life as it should be.

About that question, the books of Science are silent.

There is no evidence for any god, as defined by theists. They are not talking about aliens, or simply powerful beings, they are talking about a entity that created the universe. To claim that one can have a god and have reality that shows no evidence *anywhere* for one (and people have been looking for millenia) is simply an attempt to move the goalposts by people who simply cannot bring themselves to realize that they are not special snowflakes.

Now, if you do think you have evidence for whatever god you worship, please present it, to me and to everyone else. Then tell me how can I tell it from all of the other religions who claim the exact same things. If you can't, think about why you can't.

John, you say "More important is to understand life as it should be." Just who is the arbiter on how life "should be"? Christians claim one thing, Buddhist another, etc ad infinitum. Each claims some magical knowledge about this and none have any more evidence that their version is correct than the next. Indeed, these religions directly contradict each other. Why should religion have any impact on people when it's all smoke and mirrors?

Velkyn- by your silence I presume you acknowlege that Science has nothing to say about life as it should be. The premise of your argument seems to be that since questions of what "should be" cannot be known with certainty, then they are meaningless constructs with no weight.

Is that the drift of your critique?

The answer is that there is an immense amount of common ground between people of the world's faiths and atheists on moral questions. In the social world, our the struggle of governance is to embody those common values in legislation.

So your question about certainty is politically speaking irrelevant. Philosophically, it is at best a shaky proposition, but this is not a philosophical forum, so that line of discussion is out of scope, and will probably bore people to tears. But if enough people want to have at it, then I am game.

Life as it should be? Utopia? Only man would seek the "meaning of life" only dreamers talk of "life as it should be" . Right and wrong are philosophical tenants that even atheists contribute to. Life is what comes between birth and death. We live in communities tightly woven and that requires certain restraints to avoid the demise of the whole. The individual must accept those constraints or suffer the wrath of his peers.

I appreciate that you believe as you do but I see religions as the worst form of moral arbitration. Religions push dogma that is designed to propagate the chosen religion.

I am sorry if you find my opinions offensive but then I find it offensive when people of faith get indignant over that faith.

By the way john-you are still one of my favorite posters and I hope my drivel has not truly offended you.

John- the reason there is an immense amount of common ground between people of faith and atheists on moral questions is that morality has nothing whatsoever to do with religion or faith. If your faith were to disappear today (along with your morality) would you immediately start to steal, lie, covet, murder? Of course not. I know too many religious people who think that the only thing keeping that from happening is our "God-given morality". Our morality is nothing more than a sense of community, of seeking the best for all of us rather than just the individual. It's respecting the rights of those who are not you. It's a survival instinct bred into us since we climbed out of the trees. Morality is not something we aspire to; it's part of our being, and the reason we are not extinct. We survive because we unite, and our "morality" is simply a description of the glue that holds us together.

Shelley- have you actually read Genesis? There are two accounts of the creation which don't agree with each other in Genesis. In addition, the story of Noah is also a creation story. Attempting to match the Big Bang, the formation of galaxies, the cooling of the Earth and its populating with the "days" mentioned in Genesis is ridiculous. Genesis is quite explicit that "days" meant 24 hour days.

How many people believe that God created the Earth exactly as it says in Genesis? Apparently, quite a few. But which Genesis story? Even you say that some things were accurate (fish before birds) and some were inaccurate. So the Bible made an error? And if some things in the Bible are inaccurate, why should we expect anything to be accurate? If we can explain scientifically how amino acids formed, how cells were created, and how life evolved (and is still evolving) why do we need to say that God did it? Just because we don't know how the Universe started, doesn't mean that we don't know how our galaxy, planet and solar system formed. We have a pretty good idea of how life started (although we can't recreate that in a lab because we lack the 3.6 billion years of time as part of the ingredients).

The Bible is not science. It is not history. It's filled with contradictions. It's not even original. Creation myths abound in other religions throughout the middle east, and preceding the OT by thousands of years. By the way, who was there to observe the Creation, and then write about it? Because according to the Bible, God wiped out everybody but Noah and his family. The first five books of the Bible were supposedly written by Moses (including Genesis). Did you ever wonder where he got his information, because there's nothing in the Bible where he received that info from God.

In an age of information we argue about the accuracy of events 100 years ago. In an age of ignorance, why would we believe anyone making absolute statements of accuracy about something happening thousands of years earlier?

Well thanks Paul. I think that these discussions need to be had, and in particular need to be had where it really reaches people. There are plenty of people around the thanksgiving table who are birthers- some with nothing to be thankful about, many progressives thankful that the Supreme Court has a won a reprieve from a more radical shift to the right.

We don't have these conversations among the people we care for because we are emotionally are unable or unwilling to maintain good will towards those who hold views that are in many cases reprehensible to us. So we hide and don't talk except among like minded people.

The truth be told, when many Christians read theologians in my neck of the woods where Paul Tillich hangs out, they conclude what I believe is not Christianity at all or belief in God at all. Personally, I think they have it backwards, that they are actually the atheists, but I won't bore you with positions that mean nothing outside of Christian theological debates. Anyway, it can be seen as closely associated with the problem of consciousness and the first poem of the Tao Te Ching, or Buddhist ideas about Being- the union of existence and inexistence prior even the notion of One. It is the question of the pupil to the master that when all things are reduced to the One, to what is the One reduced? It might be nonsensical from your perspective on ontology for a person to claim they do not believe in existence. I would not be at all surprised that when we got down to the details of our two ontologies that our principle difference has to do with the tokens we use to describe Being. And fast forwarding, you might object- but there is no consciousness there- No old white guy intervening in human affairs. And I would assert that consciousness, and the principles of moral actions are timeless and spontaneously re-introduce themselves throughout the cosmos, universally in time and space, in existences that may have existed prior to our local universe, or might currently exist outside it. So that universal timeless consciousness doing the same moral things over and over. You want to call that an emergent property of the physical universe, then fine. I use the term God, and Buddhists refer to a nirvanic consciousness that Hindus regard as union with the Brahman.

rwsgate- I agree there is no essential requirement that moral systems be based on some religion. However, you have not dispensed with the need for an ontology from which you derive whatever "the Good" is in your moral system. Those ontological views are in the same category as the spiritually based ontologies we sometimes use the word "religion" to describe. Perhaps you think I have erred one of the statements in this sequence? If not, we have no important difference of opinion and I am simply using different systems of tokens to describe our thoughts. But if I have erred, show me where and I'd be happy to explore it with you.

John- first, let me say that I totally enjoy your comments. I was not picking on you but simply reacting to the idea that morality was, by necessity, a religious concept. Our cave man ancestors didn't have religion, but they did know enough to realize that five people with lances were stronger than one. By banding together they were stronger. I don't believe that we derive "Good" from any religious book. I do believe, to the bane of religious thought. in the concept of "relative" morality. Our culture, our beliefs, are derived from our necessity to survive.

I really only have one thing which I truly believe is a universal morality. It's in the Bible (Matthew) and virtually every other religion (and non-religion) has a version of it. Do not unto others that you would not have done unto you. Everything derives from that statement. We don't kill, steal, covet, lie, abuse, not because it is religious dictate, but because no society could survive that allowed the unrestrained exercise of any of those. We imprison people who murder and steal; we shun those who covet, lie and abuse. We do it all because that is what constitutes our "morality", and what ensures our survival.

Obama gave a pandering answer and he's being called on it.

Actually not, Barry gave the only answer that makes sense.

.

Rwsgate- Sure. We agree it does not necessarily require a religion to underpin it. My point was that if we are going to have a proper discussion of "our moralities", there is a language for discussing and analyzing them. I'm not trying to high hat you, I am just pointing out that there are good tools for discussing this, and the truth of the matter is that all moralities are based on ontological premises that cannot be proven.

From your language, you appear to believe in a kind of utilitarian consequationalist evaluation. It has a great deal of appeal for americans because it has a no nonsense pragmatic feel to it. Emotionally, it resonates well with engineers because it emanates from a ontological view of existence as machine.

The interesting observation about this is from the perspective of how things were experienced by individuals in different historical periods, for all intents and purposes, they actually lived in worlds where trees spoke and animals turned into people. Those worlds have evolved in a different way than biological evolution. This are familiar ideas from a well traveled road of phenomenology that philosophers have examined for the last two centuries. What is new is that it is no longer conjecture- we have mountains of hard science about perception. Previously, it was a matter of philosophical debate whether the perceived phenomenal world that others moved within actually was any different than the perceived world that others moved in. With fmri imaging of the brain we can confirm that some sense data is actually not perceived by some individuals. And that is not really all that surprising when we examine what happens when we have data that cannot be fit into our perceptual mental model. It is discarded. The citydweller on the hike does not see the Raccoon spoor at their feet- they think it is dirt. Nor do they see the different groupings or sizes, nor so the rough marks on the saplings nearby register to their consciousness- they are just seeing masses of green stems. To a backwoodsperson, that scene is quite different. You can see the passage of a Raccoon mother and her family just as clearly as you could read a description of them in a book. Yet that existence is invisible to the city dweller. Similarly, there is an elaborate system of signs associated with the Weltanschuang of an neolithic native american indian who would sincerely tell you they hear voices of the trees speaking messages to them.

To our modern ears, we construct elaborate psychological mixtures of waking and dreaming states to account for these auditory and visual hallucinations. We congratulate ourselves that though we know our perceptual world is also really just a mental model, that ours is superior- that our perceptions of objects are more accurate to "what they really are like". I am not so much interested in which is better, I am interested in the idea that for all intents and purposes, even though we know that our mental models are not same as the things in themselves, we very quickly forget the distinction and submerge back into a style of thinking that regards the two as identical.

Nothing is particularly startling about this until you realize the centrality of religion in what you might regard to be as more primitive mental models of the world. Abraham could have been in a mental space where he sincerely perceived God speaking to him from a burning bush.

The neuroscience says that Abraham had a mental model that assigned intentionality to existence- it was an ordering principle for all that he perceived. So even though to our minds that "God" was a fiction, the neuroscience reality was that that construct was integral to his phenomenal world. So it is not inaccurate to say that Yahweh created that world.

It is also not inaccurate to say that living entity existing within the minds of Abraham and his brethren is a living entity that has evolved and mutated. Dawkins might consider it a viral mental disease, but whether or not it is a helper organism or a pathological life form is a matter of philosophical debate.

There are two Genesis stories and I often ask people which one they believe in the most. The answers can be quite enlightening. The first story is really about Creationism from the energy of Thought, Intention, Imagination. Even Adam and Eve were created together - at the same time, and God had no second thoughts about making them in the "image" of the gods - where they too could Create with the energy of Thought, Intention, Imagination.

The second story is about Evolution, especially when it comes to the Homo Sapien. God used Clay to make the male and he breathed in Life. He used a bone to make females. In the second story, homo sapiens were manufactured from raw substances already in the environment - which is Evolution.

When people ask me if I believe in Creationism or Evolution, I tell them both, for they are both presented in Genesis and both are needed to manifest energy into physicality and physicality into energy. To the same question from me to them it is either one story or the other - fundamentalists often cite the second story while others (often gnostics/more thoughtful Christians) will cite the first. Either answer usually garners some very interesting (sometimes heated) discussions

I really enjoyed reading this discussion. Thank You.

rwsgate -- Yes, I do know that there are multiple versions of creation in Genesis. I will freely admit that I cherry-picked the one that seems to best integrate with our current understanding of science. (And yes, I condemn cherry-pickers myself. This is a Very Bad Thing To Do (TM). I will accept that I deserve to be scolded, but I don't apologize since this is the version that remains the most meaningful to me.) And yes, the Bible does use days in a literal sense, even though I personally find it to be incredibly presumptious to think that God views time in the same way that we do. I suspect that "days" is the attempt of a limited human to try and recreate God's sense of time even though there is no textual evidence to back me up on this. Other places in the Bible do, however, suggest that God's sense of time is very different from that of humans, so I maintain that I'm not entirely making things up here.

With those mea culpas out of the way, there are still a few statements that I disagree with. 1) "And if some things in the Bible are inaccurate, why should we expect anything to be accurate?" Most scholars would hold that the Bible has multiple authors, thus suggesting that humans actually wrote it. Whether you believe that these humans were divinely inspired, or whether they were taking dictation, the reality is that fallible beings were transcribing realities far beyond their understanding. If you've ever played "Telephone," you know how easily people get confused when repeating something that they don't understand; does that necessarily mean that every child who plays this game is a liar? Perhaps you might think so, but I don't. I think mistakes born of misunderstanding are different from deliberate attempts to mislead. 2) You admit that we don't understand how the universe began. Why can't I use God as a working hypothesis for that precipitating factor? Science can explain most of the "how" for the creation of the universe, but it has no explanation as to the why. Given the lack of opposing theories, I don't see how it harms anyone to postulate an overarching intelligence. I'm not expecting to convince anyone, but I do get a bit tired of being told that I'm wrong when no alternate hypothesis is put forward. 3) "The Bible is not science. It is not history. It's filled with contradictions." We don't actually disagree here. (Well, I would disagree that the later portions of the Bible are not historical given the corroboratory evidence from other Near Eastern sources, but certainly the historical evidence for Genesis is minimal if not non-existent.) My original point, which I obviously failed to make, is that the Bible was written by imperfect beings trying to make sense of an intelligence far beyond their own. Given the lack of scientific understanding at the time the Bible was written, the order given by the primitive writers is astounding to me. The fact that it can fit within theories that wouldn't be developed until thousands of years later blows my mind, but if you don't see it, I guess you don't. Still, for me, I do not see a fundamental disconnect between science and faith. We can agree to disagree, and I'm fine with that, but the original poster suggested that anyone who tries to claim a belief in both science and religion is disingenuous if not outright lying, and I will object to that. 4) If other cultures also touched upon elements of the Biblical Creation myth, could it not be because they also were touched by the divine? I fail to see how an understanding of the universe that was shared by both the Israelites and the Egyptians is necessarily invalidated unless you're assuming that different Gods spoke to different peoples. That goes beyond any theological claims that I would care to make myself.... *grin*

I agree with Bloix, it was a pandering answer by Obama. There is too much playing around with words and nuanced undertones to try to arm wrestle a confident distinction between what Obama said in that one instance with what Rubio said. And, to me, it is not really a "legitimate debate" in the Christian community, of which I am also a part. Having said that, I do see Obama as vastly more pro-science than the average Republican politician with the possible exception of John Huntsman.

For today's argument he needs to be Christian.

He'll be a godless atheist Muslim again tomorrow when the White House Christmas card doesn't have baby Jeebus on it.

I don't see how he can be a Muslim when he drinks beer and eats BBQ pork ;^)

"Conflation titillates the simple mind "

Yes, and it is always aimed at "Teh Idiotocracy", who,- due to a weak gene pool,- are having trouble reproducing.

Slate: that part of the conservative entertainment complex for the only-half-crazy.

Shelly- Science can often explain "why" something happens. We know that certain chemical reactions produce certain results. Why do they do that? Science can explain that. Why is the sky blue? Science can explain that, too.

Part of the problem is that people conflate "why" and "how", and assume they mean pretty much the same thing. Maybe there is no "why" as to the Big Bang happening, only a how. "Why" is a search for a reason, and there are many things which have no reason. "Why" did the first cells divide? This is assuming that the first cells had a choice in the matter, and could decide for themselves. "How" they divided is a question for science.

Why is religion the only vehicle for answering "why" questions? What makes it the default when we don't (as of yet) know the answer to something? Can't we just admit we don't know the answer and we may never know it, or maybe there is no answer at all? There doesn't have to be a reason for everything.

"Why" implies a conscious decision, as opposed to "how" which explains a process. "Why" is editorializing: "how, what, when , and where" are vehicles of explanation.

I never claimed that religion was the only vehicle for answering "why" questions, just that it was an excellent one for answering questions that are not subject to empirical proof. Excellent, but not solitary. If your faith in science is sufficient for you to simply accept the unknowable and unprovable, I don't see how that is significantly different from a faith in an organized religion. I'm not satisfied with obviating the need for asking questions myself, but everyone approaches the universe differently.

Ah. I just re-read my first comment, wherein I said why questions are "most properly" answered by religion. I can understand how you took from that that it was the only one. I apologize. I'm not sure why I said that because it isn't actually what I believe.

Fundies are guilty of the sin of Hubris - that those morons presume they are the ones who can know the will of God.

I'm not religious in the organized sense, but back when I was in the Navy and could stretch out on deck a thousand miles from any land, and look up and truly see the universe (the stars are so many and so bright that even on a moonless night it is bright out), and consider what I was looking at and realize that I had some small understanding, some comprehension of the beauty and the vastness of creation, it came to me: a small insignificant being on a small insignificant planet traveling around a small insignificant sun at the edge of a small insignificant galaxy, can look up and see what is there and want to understand it. That is what Whatever Created The Universe wants from us. We weren't made the "thinking animal" to turn our brains off and become morons. To me, a religion that promotes that is a religion that has been created by the Dark Force of the Universe. Understanding what is there to be seen, discovering the underlying laws of how it works, and our place in it, that is what makes us what we're supposed to become. What happens when you do that is, you discover the beauty of what's there. Beauty, not ignorance, is a sign of whatever is divine, at least to me.

Organized religion is the proof there is a Devil.

Missy and TC- Sorry, I can only "like" you one time. TC, I know exactly what you're saying about our insignificance. I had the same experience in the Navy that you related, and also the terror of knowing that the Earth is absolutely indifferent to existence. Being on an aircraft carrier, with 120 mile an hour winds, waves breaking over the flight deck, and rolling through 30 degrees in the most stable ship in the Navy is sort of a gut check. I've never been a believer, but I've always been a questioner.

Missy- It's hard for evangelicals to admit that the Bible is not history because to do so would require recognizing that most of the tenets of their faith have no basis in reality. If it is not really history, not really science, not really the absolute, inerrant truth, then why should it be important? If one part of the Bible is wrong (or mythological), who determines what part of the Bible is right? Or is any of it right? Evangelicals cannot challenge it's inerrancy because to do so would require them to challenge their faith.

Oookay... now some body's done it. Are you having fun? Dragging the subjective across the line and all over the backside of the objective? And the nerve to question my parenting sk.... I mean... the President's parental approach!

Day, be suspicious of your Secret Santa. No body knows who really does Santa's shopping.

Solomon- not to be picky, but perhaps you could refresh my thinking on just what innovations in law/governance/inter-personal responsibility were introduced by the Bible. What broad ideas? Slavery was condoned in both the OT and the NT. Stoning children for speaking back to their parents. Child sacrifice, genocide, lying, hatred of the "other". These broad ideas? Governance: the divine right of Kings as opposed to the Greek idea of polis and democracy.

Personally, I can do without the so called broad ideas of religion (any religion). I say this as someone who has read the Bible several times. It is a book filled with misogyny, murder, human sacrifice, slaughter, slavery, myth and magic, written by people (over a period of 900 years) who were largely ignorant, illiterate, and superstitious. What broad ideas should I be looking for in the Bible? Anyone who can't acknowledge what I've just said has never read the Bible, or thought about it's implications.

If we want to believe in an all powerful being, let's believe in Santa Claus. After all, he watches everything we do, makes a list of rights and wrongs and awards us appropriately, hears our pleas for "goodies", created a home at the North Pole which can't be seen by anyone, and as far as I know, he hasn't killed anyone for not worshiping him. Who could ask for more?

That is factually incorrect. By including Lucy, your sense of "human ancestry" means hominids that existed on the evolutionary line from the common ancestor where we diverged from the line that went to the closest non human primate- chimpanzees.

That line goes back about 6 million years. Actually, there is an almost fully human ancestor individual one million years prior to Lucy. Her name is Ardi. There are earlier species of that genus which date to 5.6 million years. I fleshed out more detail of the structure of current paleoanthropology in this TRMS note. It does differ with the thinking about a decade ago, when Australopithecines like Lucy were regarded as the earliest human genus. There were two problems with that. The first is that the rate of genome mutation is now known, and our divergence from other primates was much earlier than Australopithecus. There is a huge gap between 6 million years and Hominids like Lucy. This brings us to the second body of evidence. The fossil record places a different older genus prior to Australopithecus, and it happens to be with the right dates. Some paleoanthropologists might still argue that this was not a branch to led to us, but for us to believe that, then we would have to see some earlier fossils of Australopithecus, and so far we haven't. Tim White's advocacy of Ardipithecus as the first human genus appears to have won the day.

Thanks for the anthropology lesson.

I did not know that.

there is an almost fully human ancestor individual one million years prior

ugh. Full was meant to be associated with the completeness of the skeletal remains of the individual named ardi. She was hardly fully human- her brain size was about that of a chimp, there is no evidence of tool use any more complicated than that of apes. But she was a step towards us, with a foot suitable not for grasping, but bipedalism.

It was very sloppy proofing. I re-edit and mess up my tenses, or have two incomplete sentences merged into one- really a nightmare, but this was an awful mangling of my intended meaning.

To quote a famous candidate,

Oops.