The bible refers to both angels and giants why would yet another non-human people be shattering to those who believe?
Young-Earth Creationists, by my understanding, believe the earth was created by God some eight millennia ago. They’re therefore going to reject these fossils out of hand, based on their age: obviously they’re either a plant by God or by Satan, or else the scientists are just being shoddy again, mistaking a child’s skeleton for an adult’s or something. Jesus himself could come down from the heavens and say, “Look, thou idiots, thine earth is billions of years old!” and they’d close their eyes and call it a Darwinist plot.
On the other hand, if the hobbits are killing God, it makes me wonder about that Ring the that Pope wears.
Daniel
“What… does god need with a Ring of Power?”
I doubt this will make any difference to evolution deniers. They probably think this is all a conspiracy anyway, so in that sense no evidence is indisputable.
I keep hearing about these Creationists who insist that fossils were planted by God or the Devil. I’ve read lots of Young-Earth Creation stuff over the years & I’ve only heard such a view from anti-Creationists.
Name one Creationist who isn’t considered a loony by other Creationists who teaches this.
hobbits killed Jesus?
Somebody better tell Mel Gibson.
My point was that there is so much misinformation about human evolution out there that some people will probably believe these WERE hobbits. Anyway, the nickname will probably stick.
Leaving aside the “local folklore”, it is interested to speculate how recently this species did survive. Assuming the date of 18k years ago holds, one has to assume that they survived much longer than that. Into historical times? Who knows. Dwarf mammoths survived on an arctic island until about 4k years ago.
Wow, it’s already in Wikipedia!
What species is he?
How long will it be before someone claims this is Orang Pendek?
I find the fact that this jibes with local legends about “little people” to be especially intiguing. It may show that other similar legends may be rooted in ancient memories of other hominids.
I’m disappointed with the name, though. Homo Floresiensis? Meh. This species is obviously Homo hobbitus.
You might want to look into Creation Science, Dr. Dino, the Creation Explanation or The Creation Science Association For Mid-America. There are hundreds of more examples, but these are just a few to get you started. All of them propose non-evolutionary mechanisms to explain the fossil records, most of which boil down to, “God put them there.”
I guess if you wanted to be really pedantic, you could argue they should be called homo kudukus, as “hobbit” is a “made up” word (of a “translation” into OE of made up word, which is a worn-down version of another made up word…)
Well, it’s common practice for the species name to come from a local geographic term, but if want to get fancy, Homo frodoensis might be the way to go. 
Here comes the pedantry…
The -is ending in Homo Floresiensis is a genetive indicating a “place from.” Since Flores is a place name, Homo Floresiensis means “Man of Flores.”
In the case of Frodo, you would need a nominative ending. This species is not from Frodo, after all (especially since all indications are that Frodo ranked somewhere in the upper numbers of the Kinsey scale). In this case you want a simple nominative adjective to modify homo rather than describe where it comes from (as in homos sapiens for “wise man”). Since Frodo’s nominative Latin name is still Frodo (continuing after that to decline as Frodonis, Frodene, Frodonem…) the we are left with the simple, yet unfortunate construction of Homo Frodo. Frodo has to contend with enough rumors as it is. 
Evolution beliving Christian here. I see no reason that Homo floresiensis should be a threat to my faith. I’m going to keep an eye on Jack Chick’s site to see if he updates his tract Big Daddy to include this find. The bones must have shrunk from being so wet. 
For some reason this new species makes me think of Dr. Mephisto’s creature Kevin from South Park.
Now, Diogenes, he and Sam were just good friends; I have that on the authority of some conservative Christian Tolkien fans, and surely you wouldn’t doubt them?!
I’ll See Your Pedantry and Raise You 10 Dept.: If a personal name is used as the trivial name in binomial nomenclature, the custom is to Latinize it and then put it in the genitive – so it would be Homo frodonis if you were to name it after Frodo. However, as you point out, it’s after the island Flores – and the ending is -ensis, not merely -is, with the approximate meaning of “native to, belonging to the fauna of” whatever the suffix is attached to. Before being reassigned, Heidelberg Man was Homo heidelbergensis, and Neanderthal is still either Homo sapiens neanderthalensis or Homo neanderthalensis, according as how you consider it a subspecies or a full species (that’s still somewhat in dispute, although the full-species classification is more common).
John Mace said:
Fuddy duddy. Spoilsport. Party pooper. Even the guys who actually found them are calling them hobbits:
True but we don’t appear to have any stories or mythologies from the period when they co-existed with us. Thus it is easy for creationists to claim that the Neaderthals never really existed - because we have no evidence of them apart from the fossil record.
With the hobbits, though, we have both archeological evidence and corroborating stories. Thus we have greater evidence that the hobbits lived alongside the homo sapiens. Thus it is much harder for the young-earth creationists to claim that God put the bones there.
With the Neanderthals, it’s easy for them to claim this since no one remembers them. With the hobbits though, there is a whole new layer of evidence - personal memory (or at least the group memory of the islanders).
Padeye said:
Do the hobbits have souls? Can they go to Heaven? Do you think they have any concept of God? If they haven’t, do you think they should be proselytised (assuming we find some)? What if a sexual union occurred between a human and a hobbit and a child-hobbit emerged, would that creature have a soul?
Descending from the heavens, a great, bearded man, with a big glowing golden halo over his head, and a gigadecibel, voice booming across the land, could proclaim “Jesus was a Hobbit!” and the fundies would still argue with you. Time to let that evidence thing go, as far as the discussion at hand is concerned.
After all these years of searching for a “Big” human like creature, and then this.
Man I’m pissed!