ancient man

[basics]

Being seventyeight years of age I have the problem of cutting my nails especially the ones on my toes. I have to use wire cutters because scissors just don't make the cut. Thinking why this should be I thought what the heck did the so-called cavemen do all these thousands of years ago if we believe the evolutionary story. I mean did they use flintstone and if so how did they use it? Really I can imagine these poor beggars hobbling around with huge nails protruding in all directions from both feet and hand which on further thinking how did they get anywhere or get anything done? It's a simple question for a bothersome problem which as one gets older gets even more bothersome. So, all you evolutionists out there please give us your comments?

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

Perhaps there is some rudimentary device, but I imagine filing would be one method.

[Septentrionalis]

I am not so much of an evolutionist as someone who believes that if God decides to create a universe in which things come to be through processes (e.g. star formation, geological processes, biological evolution), then that is what God does and my opinion does not carry much weight.

However, I sympathize with that problem you have, and I bet wire cutters and having to apply a lot of force carries a risk of injury. Do you have these in Scotland? Here I think most people use these nail cutters that serve no other purpose but serve that purpose really well. You put your nail in between the two curved little blades press down the handle. It's almost impossible to cut yourself with that. The handle turns around and folds in for easier transport. Try to see if any stores in your area carry these or consider ordering online.

[Cyclops]

I use little electrician's wire clippers, short and very sharp. Clipped pieces fly across the bathroom like shrapnel as the younger members of the household duck for cover. The toenails of old men are not to be trifled with!

Pretty sure the Bible states circumcisions must be carried out with flint tools, that's clearly a scriptural directive regarding all cutting the body of the godly. Very disappointed to read that a good Christian should stray from the Bible in such an egregious way!

[enoch]

If we are speaking prehistory 78 was likely very very old but even so have you considered other members of the group probably cut them for the old. Teeth maybe.

[Abdülmecid I]

Not an expert on biological matters, but I think long nails are a problem only in sedentary societies. When you run barefoot, climb, scratch, cut, punch, kick etc., your finger and toe nails are getting "naturally" worn out. That certainly applies to equines (thanks thesaurus!), for example. Not trimming your donkey's/horse's hooves is usually considered animal abuse, because overgrown hooves can be extremely painful and basically prevent the animal from walking. Wild horses, however, gallop enough in the countryside, so that their hooves wear down and cause no suffering. I imagine something similar applies to humans as well.

[Septentrionalis]

Not an expert on biological matters, but I think long nails are a problem only in sedentary societies. When you run barefoot, climb, scratch, cut, punch, kick etc., your finger and toe nails are getting "naturally" worn out. That certainly applies to equines (thanks thesaurus!), for example. Not trimming your donkey's/horse's hooves is usually considered animal abuse, because overgrown hooves can be extremely painful and basically prevent the animal from walking. Wild horses, however, gallop enough in the countryside, so that their hooves wear down and cause no suffering. I imagine something similar applies to humans as well.

Interesting stuff. I am not an expert on biological matters either but as long as I have given the subject any thought, I have just assumed that our fingernails are vestigial from earlier times when claws were key to survival. For us, being able to grasp and manipulate items is much more important than clawing at something.

It is noteworthy that other primates have fingernails not unlike humans, so we do not even have to speculate on cavemen. There are beings more primitive to us with a remarkably similar hand anatomy. I did a quick check online and beings such as chimpanzees bite their nails like many humans do (fingernails) or just let them break as they are quite brittle in the end. So maybe they do not wear out as much as just break and fall off.

[antaeus]

Perhaps they're like sharks teeth.

We should be searching ancient plains for discarded toe nails, wrenched off bed and all...

[basics]

That's the problem inasmuch as we take for granted why we have such things as toe and fingernails. You see I believe that every part of us was designed specifically for a purpose but I cannot come to terms that any creature had the capacity to do that off their own bat. I've read a little about nails on primate man but where in that man's brain did he devise the need to have long nails and even if he had how did he do it? No, I'm sorry guys but design beats evolution hands down.

[Cyclops]

...old chap you're saying the fact that our fingernails need to be trimmed to function properly instead of growing precisely the right length proves we were intelligently designed?

The theory of evolution is weird changes happen and if a change helps you reproduce (or at least doesn't prevent reprodcution) it can become a new trait in descendants. However old traits can remain so long as they don't hurt you, so This allows for weird stuff with no real reason to exist (like appendixes, foetal tails, and the House of Lords) to hang around. Intelligent design posits that God gives babies tails during gestation and then makes them atrophy because...?

With fingernails I believe the stiff keratin serves to plump out the pads of your fingers and toes making them better for various grades of gripping. As mentioned we trim them with our teeth as do chimps (another tool using primate with fingernails).

Seriously mate, why do foetuses grow tails, and then lose them? Is that intelligent?

[antaeus]

But bananas!

[Septentrionalis]

No, I'm sorry guys but design beats evolution hands down.

As something of an engineer, I would like to agree. However, we do not have much evidence that design participates in the competition actively at the moment.

I think that you have been duped into believing weird human interpretations of human writings. If we accept that the Scripture has been at least inspired by a divine revelation, even then Genesis itself does not contradict evolution but conforms to the present scientific consensus of evolution. Perhaps better than any other creation myth in human history.

The Genesis can easily be read as an approximation of what we now understand as natural history. First star formation (creation of light and subsequent separation of light from darkness), planetary formation, creation of plant life, then marine organisms, then birds (that include dinosaurs), then mammals, and only finally and very recently humans. The fact that the Hebrew text calls these unfathomably long phases days should not confuse you. We now have names for those eras, but we do not really understand much better today what something like 200 million years feels like.

My point is that even the Scriptures do not imply that God just quickly created everything that we see today and hid some dinosaur fossils in rock just to mess with our heads. You should be content with the idea that God's design in nature is the design of an intricate system of energy, matter, and physical laws that allow for wondrous things such as stars, planets, oceans, and even thinking beings to eventually come into existence. The universe is a perfect machine as it is, and we have only recently become aware of how reliably and flawlessly some of its fundamental pieces operate. We could never design a better one.

Please do not allow yourself to go astray by thinking that someone with a poor understanding of philology and sciences can just interpret an ancient text and calculate the time of creation from there. If God has anything of a consciousness the way us mortals understand it, He certainly knew that humans and possibly a good number of other sentient beings would come about when He put the wheels of material universe into motion.

You should rather consider that we have been given reason through that divine plan to figure out the wonders of creation through scientific inquiry. And morality to improve ourselves and the human condition. There is no virtue in making up stories of a mischievous god faking the world so that it looks old without really being old. And, as I said, not even the Scripture suggests that.

[enoch]

Upon a rethink there were no cavemen. The earth is only 4000 or so years old. But back when men rode dinosaurs they probably used raptor claws to trim nails. The Bible doesn’t say it though. So flaw.

[conon394]

No, I'm sorry guys but design beats evolution hands down.

No it really does not. No intelligent designer with a grade over Fail would invent the Vas deferens system for men it is crap that evolution predicts just good enough.

-----

In any case the to trim you nails is rather an affect of the modern world of not hard labor. I think I mentioned my wife is a plant geneticist. Between forgetting to don gloves and doing her personal gardening barefoot she uses nail trimmers quite not at all as long as I have known her for some 25 years aside to deal with a broken nail. My guess is that files would be used by the very ancient and then clippers (later) if you had got to shoes and thus occasionally needed to deal with feet. One assumes some family or band member would help if flexibility failed else they would not be feeding you any more.

[enoch]

Intelligent Design is not considered science by anyone but creationists. As theology however it is as valid a discussion as any other. Faith is irrational and theology is by definition philosophy of divinity.

[basics]

I am not so much of an evolutionist as someone who believes that if God decides to create a universe in which things come to be through processes (e.g. star formation, geological processes, biological evolution), then that is what God does and my opinion does not carry much weight.

However, I sympathize with that problem you have, and I bet wire cutters and having to apply a lot of force carries a risk of injury. Do you have these in Scotland? Here I think most people use these nail cutters that serve no other purpose but serve that purpose really well. You put your nail in between the two curved little blades press down the handle. It's almost impossible to cut yourself with that. The handle turns around and folds in for easier transport. Try to see if any stores in your area carry these or consider ordering online.

Septentrionalis,

We do actually have one of these but I'm afraid I find the cutters far more successful. Funny, but when I took a set up to the payment desk at Debenhalms the lass right out of the blue said, " For your toe nails?"

Cyclops,

Please tell me then where it says flint tools were to be used in circumcision?

[Gromovnik]

Not even that banana guy from New Zealand would think of an argument as brilliant as this one. Bravo, maestro!

[basics]

Not even that banana guy from New Zealand would think of an argument as brilliant as this one. Bravo, maestro!

Gromovnik,

Just thinking one day when cutting my nails I wondered how in the evolutionary pattern we went from amoeba to fish and from there to land animals with finger and toe nails especially with no method of cutting them. So, as all hobbled about with long nails hands and feet someone across the creation divide said why not bite them off? That's science at work even in primitive man. Of course it had to take billions of years for that to come about but that's alright because science is never wrong. Isn't it funny though that despite science we have never developed a method where we don't have to trim our nails?

[enoch]

We didn’t. God made everything in a few days. Read your Bible dude.

[Cyclops]

Cyclops,

Please tell me then where it says flint tools were to be used in circumcision?

Old chap I'm not here to teach you Christianity, you're here claiming to be Christian without knowing scripture. In Genesis alone there are multiple instances: Abraham was circumcised with flint, as was Moses and his son, and in Joshua a large number of foreskins are slit with flint. The idea you would use metal to sever a body part when scripture is so unambiguously in favour of flint beggars belief.

Its a very old collection of books and the strain you put on them with these frankly childish claims about "the Bible" amounts almost to elder abuse.

You know other Christians took the weight off the older books in the Bible by writing new ones. Maybe you could do the same? The "Book of Toenails" perhaps, authorising the use of clippers.

Gromovnik,

Just thinking one day when cutting my nails I wondered how in the evolutionary pattern we went from amoeba to fish and from there to land animals with finger and toe nails especially with no method of cutting them. So, as all hobbled about with long nails hands and feet someone across the creation divide said why not bite them off? That's science at work even in primitive man. Of course it had to take billions of years for that to come about but that's alright because science is never wrong. Isn't it funny though that despite science we have never developed a method where we don't have to trim our nails?

Beloved only idiots claim "science is never wrong". Scientists are often wrong and its not called heresy, its called progress. They don;t have to pretend their books aren;t rewritten either, its actually a point of honour to do so

People also claim that "the Bible is never wrong". Some even go so far as to claim it contains all wisdom. We can test that scientifically and religiously if you like.

The religious test will be I will change a word in my Bible, and we see if all the curses in the Apocalypse of John (Revelations 22:18 "If any man add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are in this book") happen to me. If all the curses do not manifest within say one year, then its a lie.

The scientific test is we both agree to seek medical help form "our side". You will only receive medical attention and services from people who have read nothing but the Bible (so no one who has studied scientific medicine) and only procedures and medicine mentioned in the Bible, and I will only receive medical attendance of a scientific nature from non-Christians (and no blessings, sacraments or other religious services), and we will see who lives longer.