Theory of Evolution

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by bearer_of_truth, Sep 9, 2016.

  1. bearer_of_truth Registered Senior Member

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    If we evolved from apes, than why are apes still around?

    [Moderator Note:

    This is a long-used talking point that indicates merely that the speaker doesn't have a background in even the definitions of evolutionary biology.

    Answers in Genesis (hardly a scientific site, or a friend of evolution) agrees:
    Source: https://answersingenesis.org/creationism/arguments-to-avoid/
    More details: https://answersingenesis.org/creati...ns-evolved-from-apes-why-do-apes-exist-today/

    For a scientific source, see:
    Source: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/faqs.html#apes

    ]
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 17, 2016
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  3. bearer_of_truth Registered Senior Member

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    Theoretically, apes should be extinct.
     
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  5. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    The idea is more that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestral population. Presumably that was because the two lineages found themselves in different environmental conditions or because they started to specialize in different manners of life.

    Why do apes exist? Because they are well adapted to the lives they lead. They are good at what they do.

    Don't think of evolution as an ascent leading inexorably to man: fish, ampibian, reptile, mammal, ape, ape-man, man - in which earlier 'precursor' forms are replaced and rendered redundant by subsequent forms.

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    Think of phylogeny as an adaptive radiation, with life spreading like a fractal into all kinds of (just terrestrial?) environments, ecological niches and manners of life. This phylogentic tree of life shows about 90,000 species out of many millions on Earth (emphasizing animals, but there's just as much diversity among the plants and even more among the bacteria), so it just gives a taste (perhaps 1%) of how life on Earth has elaborated since its still-mysterious origin.

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    Last edited: Sep 9, 2016
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  7. bearer_of_truth Registered Senior Member

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    The theory clearly states that man evolved from apes. If this was true. Why are there still apes? Apes would have been extinct long ago.
     
  8. ajanta Registered Senior Member

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    Hmmm. And there are many types of.............

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    The difference between great apes and lesser apes is general size. There are two types of lesser apes: gibbons (SE Asia) and siamangs (SE Asia). There are four types of great apes: gorillas (Africa), bonobos (Africa), orangutans (SE Asia), and chimpanzees (Africa).
     
  9. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    5,902
    Technically speaking, humans are apes. We seem to be most closely related to today's chimpanzees but our line and theirs diverged from a common ancestor millions of years ago. It isn't clear when this happened, sometime between 13 million and 4 million years ago. (Genetic evidence suggests that there may have been lots of interbreeding back and forth in the early days, so the divergence seems to have been gradual.)

    You might want to read this:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ape

    and this

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee–human_last_common_ancestor

    Why should they be extinct? You haven't given a reason.

    If they are well adapted to the lives they lead, there would be no reason for them to be extinct.
     
    Last edited: Sep 9, 2016
  10. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    If the goldfish in a particular aquarium develop a green pigmentation, would that magically cause all the other isolated bowls of goldfish across town to turn green, too?

    Just because a single pocket of individuals pass on a persisting mutation to their offspring does not miraculously change all members of that species spread across their applicable habitat.
     
  11. bearer_of_truth Registered Senior Member

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    The theory of evolution clearly states that we evolved from apes. not I nor one of my ancestors look ant thing like an ape.

    If we had fully evolved from apes, than apes would no longer be around.
     
  12. bearer_of_truth Registered Senior Member

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    You have an interesting point. Is is true to this case? We do not know. Personally, I choose to believe in creationism.
     
  13. bearer_of_truth Registered Senior Member

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    116
  14. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    3,512
    If Protestantism evolved from Catholicism, why do we still have Catholics?

    Troll.
     
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  15. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    12,413
    No shit, Sherlock!
     
  16. bearer_of_truth Registered Senior Member

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    Humans did not evolved from apes. It is only a theory and is neither fact nor truth. Grow up.
     
  17. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Well, creationists could take the extreme (or meds deprived?) Philip K Dick route below and declare that the contemporary world and all its discoveries / developments of science is a grand illusion (deception of Old Scratch in Christian context). That we're actually still living in the Roman Empire or the Judean world / history conceptions of that era.

    But that wouldn't cause the "illusion" to disappear. One still has to contend with the deceptive reality's own internal story of how it functions and how the cosmos and life physically developed over time. Either way, to manipulate this reality (valid or fake) you have to investigate and learn the story it adheres to. Save or deal with that alternative Biblical account after death, the 2nd Coming, or whatever when its version of the world would return with a makeover (Revelation: "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the former heaven and the former earth had passed away"). Because such lacks evidence / support in the current, manifested tale of the universe which creationists find themselves embedded in.

    - - - - - - - - - - -

    PDK: [...] some of these basic categories of perception that we have, like time and space, are not only difficult to define -- time being very difficult to define -- but maybe illusory. I mean change may be illusory, you know, it may be A.D. 70. It may be that we're still living in the Roman Empire. It may be just that we keep pasting more and more layers of gingerbread to disguise it, so that we think, you know, that there's been these successive changes, and actually there hasn't been, and so on.

    If somebody were to take that new book of mine and say, "How much of this book is fact, and how much of this book is fiction?" I wouldn't be able to tell them. I really wouldn't be able to tell them. And when my Bantam editor comes out here, he's going to there's a lot of questions he wants to know, because he's beginning to get the uneasy impression that I believe a lot of what I say in my new book. And when he talks to me, he's going to get an even uneasier impression when I say, "I have a very strong feeling that we're in a kind of maze that has been built for us. And we're being tested, and run through the maze, and evaluated, and hindered from time to time, and notes are being taken." And I always feel that we're being timed. We are being timed. But I really have that feeling very strongly, and so nothing would really surprise me.

    I feel as if causality itself has ceased to be. Ever since Hume demonstrated so beautifully that causality is merely custom. Ever since I read the book -- not necessarily since he wrote it, but ever since I read it -- I have had the feeling that perhaps much of what we take to be ironclad chains of events are nothing but mere custom, mere sequence, mere progression, and are not so ironclad.

    I remember that I read in ROLLING STONE one time that the Brahmin goes through two cycles: during one part of its cycle, it sleeps, and during one part of its cycle, it dances. We all think we're in the part of the cycle where Brahmin is awake and dancing. In actuality, we're in the part of the cycle where Brahmin is asleep, but, Brahmin is waking up. And when Brahmin wakes up, this world that Brahmin is dreaming, will disappear.

    And when I read that, I thought, "Well, that just about expresses my basic view, in my books, although I hadn't known that.

    SFR: They're all dealing with the point where Brahmin is waking up.

    DICK: Right, right. This is a very crucial stage now, because Brahmin is not completely asleep. Brahmin is waking up. And when it wakes, this dream world will disappear -- parts of it will begin to vanish right before our eyes, as it begins to wake up. Brahmin is not dancing, Brahmin is sleeping, but soon it will dance.

    I think we've reached the most crucial time in 2,000 years. I think that there has already begun, some titanic process of revelation to man, of what man is, where he came from, what his role is, and that is very much connected with Brahmin waking up. Because if Brahmin is asleep, we, too, are asleep. That everything is asleep, because there is nothing that is not Brahmin. And as we wake up, we remember -- it's a form of remembering -- and we remember suddenly who we really are, where we came from, and...

    I really believe in this, and it's in my new book, and I know that Bantam editor is going to want all that taken out. He's going to say, "Phil, I don't know. I think you really believe all this stuff, don't you?" And I'm going to have to say to him, "Well, when the white man says jump, I jumps."
    --AN INTERVIEW WITH PHILIP K. DICK; by Daniel DePerez; Science Fiction Review, No. 19, Vol. 5, no. 3, August 1976
     
    Last edited: Sep 9, 2016
  18. bearer_of_truth Registered Senior Member

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    First of all, I apologize for not reading it all. I am one of the those people who saw Jesus when I was a child. I have heard the Father speak of "the battle against good and evil has been here since the beginning of time'. God battles evil by delivering souls through His Son, Jesus Christ. I have seen the Holy Spirit. I have talked to angels, demons and the dead.
     
  19. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    5,902
    I'm not convinced that you know very much about biological evolution.

    Sure you do. Two arms, two legs, fingers and toes, two eyes, a nose below them and a mouth below that, two ears on the side that appear rather similar to theirs, hair all over your body (though not as thick as the other apes), very similar skeletal anatomy, very similar fetal development, on and on.

    You share upwards of 90% of your genes with chimpanzees, which is very strong evidence of distant family relationship. Much of the difference between us lies in how the same genes are expressed. The same genes are involved with brain development in humans and chimps, except that those genes are expressed longer and more intensely in humans.

    http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/per...ing-our-past/dna-comparing-humans-and-chimps/

    Why wouldn't they be around?

    Making the same assertion over and over in post after post isn't an explanation of why you think that your assertion is true or why your readers should agree with you.
     
  20. sweetpea Valued Senior Member

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    1,329
    So, these forums must seem a little boring after that? What did you gab about?
     
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  21. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    4,885
    I have not read every Post to this Thread & apologize if the following is similar to some other Post.

    From Bearer_of_Truth Post #8
    First: I think that Homo Sapiens & apes evolved from a common ancestor.

    Second: I do not think it that our evolving from apes requires that apes cease to exist.

    It seems possible that two populations of apes geographically separated could result in one group evolving into Homo Sapiens while the other group does not.

    I wonder if there are any examples of evolutionary descendants & their predecessors co-existing.
     
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  22. bearer_of_truth Registered Senior Member

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    I do not know about your family. But I have seen photographs of some of my late ancestors and know from the way they look that they did not act like apes or monkeys. You can choose to speak of your ancestors that way, but I do not.

    Where are the water creatures that we first supposedly had come from. Now, I am suppose to believe that I came from slimy fish as well?

    And I am not convinced that you know much about Creationism either.

    WE were created in God images and the lowers angel look just like us and talk like us as well. The would even have similar fingerprints not unlike anyone elses. Although they look just like us, they are a different creature and we did not come from them.

    Am I suppose to believe that a "Big Bang" is what created our beautiful children?
     
    Last edited: Sep 9, 2016
  23. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    Humans are a species of ape. We are very closely related to the two species of chimpanzees, the two species of gorillas, and the two species of orangutan--known collectively as "the Great Apes."

    There is also another clade called "the Lesser Apes." These are the seventeen species of gibbons.

    When a new species comes into existence, it is by no means certain that its ancestral species will become extinct. For example, dogs are descended from wolves--having made their debut more than 30,000 years ago. But wolves are still thriving. Each species has its place. Wolves keep the population of grazing animals down, so the environment is not destroyed. During the years when we eliminated all the wolves from Yellowstone, the elk population exploded. They ate all the bark off the trees and very nearly destroyed the region's entire ecosystem. (Most biologists consider the dog to be merely a subspecies of wolf, but some still insist that they are separate species.)

    All life on earth is descended from primitive one-cell creatures that arose about 3 billion years ago. Most of the oldest forms of life have been extinct for a long time, but there are others that have survived and continued to thrive for millions of years.

    The first primate that broke off from the evolutionary line of the chimpanzees was Ardipithecus, which first came into existence about 7MYA. Its fossils were discovered in Africa just a few years ago. Ardi had several anatomical features that made her (the first fossil specimen was a female) that clearly set her off on a new evolutionary line. Most prominently, she did not have the five prehensile toes on each foot that allow all of the other apes to behave like Olympic athletes when climbing through the trees. She has only one prehensile toe, the hallux or "big toe." This allowed her to escape from predators, but not to be an acrobat. Instead, her feet are a lot like ours. She could walk bipedally, allowing the males to gather huge armloads of food and bring it back to camp, where the females waited with their young, ready to spring into the trees if predators appeared.

    Chimpanzees and all the other older species of apes are still in existence. But Homo sapiens, the descendants of Ardipithecus, still thrives.
     
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