As Coyne notes on page 193, many people were very hesitant to accept that humans evolved from apes. They could swallow the fact that birds descended from reptiles, but the thought that humans, the supposed most advanced species on the planet, came from nothing more than apes was ludicrous to them. After all, we are the species that can think; we are the species that have made the world the way it is; we are the species that rule the world. Even Darwin’s mentor Charles Lyell refused to believe humans evolved from other organisms. Many humans are simply too arrogant to believe that they came from other animals.
Pretend for the time being that I believe in evolution in all organisms except for humans. How would you try to prove to me that humans were, in fact, products of evolution and natural selection, just like everything else? Discuss the evidence that Coyne outlines in the first part of “What About Us?”
I’ll note that this creationist idea of human superiority where humans are the absolute best species and no other species is somewhat of a recurring theme that has come up in our study of biology this year, especially in terms of the environment. Relate the human attitude of creationists to previous biological topics.
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Creationists believe that humans couldn't have evolved from apes because humans have something no other animal supposedly has which is thought. Humans are able to think, make decisions, and do hard things like calculus. According to many relgions, a higher being created us and we couldn't have evolved from animal that can't think for themselves like humans can.
ReplyDeleteEven though most creationists believe that its impossible for humans to have evolved from apes there is so much evidence proving humans did evolve from apes that theory must be true.
There is evidence in DNA sequencing and fossils that prove that humans did in fact evolve from apes (Coyne 192). There have been fossils of skulls in Africa that are similiar to the human skull and similiar to a chimpanzee skull. The skull isn't completely a human and isn't completly an ape. The skull is something that came from an ape and will slowly evolve into a human. The skull found in Africa was called the missing link because it proved that humans evolved from apes. The skull is the link between the chimpanzee and the human. The skull shows the continuity of the evolution record (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/03/0327_060327_skull.html). THere have been 20 different species found that show a link from the ape to the human which only proves more that humans did evolve from apes and didn't just appear out of no where (Coyne 197).
Another reason that the human couldn't have been created by a higher being is that the human body is not perfect. If someone had wanted humans to rule the world, they shouldn't have put so many flaws in the human body. For example the human body need vitamins in order to survive. If a god had made the human, god would have made sure that the human body would have been able to produce its own vitamins. Since the human body can't do that, humans have to fnd food rich in vitamins inorder to survive which is not an intelligent design(http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/watchmaker.htm). Another problem with the human body is that the two testicles in the male body are hanging in the scrotum (Campbell 1005).The testicels are open and completely exposed which is a flaw in the human and therefore the human body is not an intelligent design (http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/watchmaker.htm).