Athiests, have a question for you.

[Czar]

Originally posted by: element®
And another thing, why didnt the apes evolve into humans? Why are they still apes? Note this is not a sarcastic comment, or a rhetorical question. I really would like to know if anyone can give a serious answer and or comment on this.

because apes and humans evolved from the same species, humans did not evolve from apes.

 

[notfred]

Originally posted by: B00ne
But u realize that atheism and evolution are absolutely not connected and that most (educated - off course) christian (religious in general) ppl think that the theory of evolution explains the development of the creatures on this planet best?

On a related note, Christianity and Creationism aren't necessarily connected. The fundamental principle of Christianity is that a man called Jesus Christ was actually a diety, and that he died (well, in physical form at least) in place of the people of the world so that they could live forever in heaven (as long as they acknowleged that he died for them). Creation really has nothing to do with this religion, but Christians have adopted it because it was packaged at the begining of the Bible, along with a lot of other stories from a pre-christian religion. The old testament is a book of Jewish stories, which aren't directly related to Christianity, except that the early Christians were previuosly Jews.

And about "if people evolved from apes, why are there still apes?" There were lots of Apes. Due to some strange condition in thier environment, a few apes gave birth to Human (or maybe Neandertal) offspring. However, 99% of Apes were still regular apes, giving birth to regular apes. The few human offspring congregated together, had more offspring, and evolved into a seperate society.

All apes did not spontaneousy turn into humans.

That's how the theory goes.

 

[jhu]

how many times do i have to repeat myself? i am your god. worship me.

 

[fatalbert]

well I believe that evolution is a good working theory that still needs some questions answered, but it is the best idea that is currently floating around.

 

[element]

Originally posted by: jhu
how many times do i have to repeat myself? i am your god. worship me.

If I've said it once I've said it a million times, stop exaggerating!

 

[jhu]

who's exaggerating?

 

[zod]

element -

Where humanity came from is no different that the rest of the evolutionary process.
As for where we came from, most of it is no longer a mystery to us, there are small gaps, and we aren't sure where some branches in our tree connect, but our history, in short, is this :

65 million years - Dinos die out. Mammals become the big cheese. Lots of species evolve to fill all the niches left by the dead dinos. Among these new mammals are Primates.

20 million years later, there are now anthropoids which later give rise to Monkeys and Hominoids (apes and humans).

Around 20 million years ago, the group that later will include apes and humans begin to diverge from other primates.

10 million years ago Orangutans begin to follow their own evolutionary path, seperate from other Apes and Humans.


6 million years ago, each Ape family- Gorilla, Human, and Chimp begin to evolve seperately.

So, 6 million years ago, there was a *common ancestor* of all three of these groups of animals. It wasn't a chimp, gorilla, bonobo, or human. The species that were alive then happen not to be alive now. They gave rise to the surviving species we see now.

To say that we evolved from chimps is just as incorrect as saying chimps evolved from us.

The reason why there are still animals like lemurs and monkeys around now is the same reason why your father and grandfather could be around now. Are you "better" than your father? Probably not, but you are different. And that's all evolution is... we arent better than a chimp or a dragonfly, we're just different.

And don't forget, life is billions of years old apes didn't arise out of the primordial soup, nucleuos-less single celled organisms did.

 

[zod]

oh, and notfred -

Decent explanation, but Neandertals are almost late to the party as modern humans are. Some line of Homo erectus probably gave rise to both Neandertals and modern humans. Neadertals died out VERY recently also, probably around 35,000 years ago, and they may have been able to interbreed with modern humans... so some of you may be carrying around some Neadertal genes with you (ok, who has a brow ridge? C'mon, feel above your eyes... is there a ridge?).

It'd be weird if there were many species of homonids walking around today, but for most of history, there were more than one human-like species on earth at the same time. It just happened that we were the only ones to survive.