Human evolution Mind News

A conversion to reality

Posted on Author NewsComments(9)
Spread the love

While we’re here anyway, a friend lobbed this at me from a forthcoming edition of Harper’s,. It may as well go in here as somewhere else, as there’s no link, just a footnote:

I believe that realizing we are apes is a crucial part of enlightenment. Until we see the extent to which our behavior, institutions, culture, and ethics are the product of ape biology, we can have no true understanding of ourselves. I am fascinated by how political the lives of chimps are, and how much they are defined by tyranny and revolt. When a leader or a bully exerts relentless force over a group, the group lives in fear. There is submission but also constant deceit and subterfuge among those trying to find some small satisfaction behind the back of the alpha. – Colin McAdam, “Memoir,” Harper’s Magazine, Feb. 2014

Some people seem deadly serious in believing that ape biology, not a tendency to do things we know are wrong, is our problem.

And on the face of it, which of the two explanations is more logical? Apes have ape biology yet can’t do wrong because they don’t recognize the concept. Would we behave better if we had had, say squid biology? Or insect biology?

The friend tells me that a friend of his was converted to Christianity by experiencing actual apes, afer years of fancying himself one. It’s happened elsewhere too.

A conversion to Christianity? Doubtless, but not so fast.

I call it a conversion to reality first. One can only consider the claims of a coherent philosophy or religion if one is prepared to see oneself and one’s life as it is. At one time, people imagined themselves to be gods, saints, or heroes, and conversion meant getting over that. But times change, and it can’t be a good change that they imagine themselves an ape. – O’Leary for News

9 Replies to “A conversion to reality”

  1. 1
    Querius says:
    January 26, 2014 at 7:08 pm

    To “realize” that we’re “only” apes is a denigration of everything that makes us uniquely human. Obviously, we’re not satisfied with crashing about in forests, munching on fruit and the occasional infant monkey, and mating or defecating whenever and wherever the urge to do so strikes.

    So what could possibly be the purpose of this scholarly enlightenment? Is it to promote the idea that humans are nothing special and will not be held accountable for our actions and attitudes?

    -Q

  2. 2
    Mark Frank says:
    January 27, 2014 at 12:51 am

    Some people seem deadly serious in believing that ape biology, not a tendency to do things we know are wrong, is our problem.

    “News” (which I guess in this case is Denyse) what makes you think that they are mutually exclusive? We do things wrong – one of the many reasons is that we are apes and share some behaviour traits with other apes. Yet again an IDist is confusing the cause of moral behaviour with the justification. Is it so very hard to understand?

  3. 3
    bornagain77 says:
    January 27, 2014 at 6:12 am

    Mr. Frank, and, other than you presonal druthers, exactly why is a Darwinist throwing ad hominem feces at anyone who disagrees with them morally wrong, whereas a chimp throwing actually feces at people not morally wrong?

    Casey Luskin points out that the following anti-ID philosopher even goes so far as to publish a peer-reviewed paper saying that the bullying tactics of neo-Darwinists are justified since many ID proponents happen to be Christian:

    Anti-ID Philosopher: “Ad hominem” Arguments “Justified” When Attacking Intelligent Design Proponents – Casey Luskin – June 4, 2012
    http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....60381.html

    She (a Journalist) said she was a creationist. Then the firestorm began. – December 27, 2013
    Excerpt: Q: What adjectives would you use to describe the reaction?
    Angry, defensive, fearful, histrionic, sometimes misogynistic, hazing. Something more than an academic argument about cosmology and consciousness was at stake.,,,
    http://www.al.com/living/index.....onist.html

    Darwinists protesting too much (Over “Darwin’s Doubt) – Telling signs of a worldview in trouble – By Subby Szterszky | July 23, 2013
    Excerpt: “Their online followers echo the disrespect in even harsher tones; any rare voice of dissent in support of Meyer is promptly browbeaten into silence. The attitude is not unlike a bunch of insecure schoolyard bullies, closing ranks and reassuring each other by trading insults aimed at the uncool kid across the yard.”
    http://www.focusinsights.org/a.....g-too-much

    “In the last few years I have seen a saddening progression at several institutions. I have witnessed unfair treatment upon scientists that do not accept macroevolutionary arguments and for their having signed the above-referenced statement regarding the examination of Darwinism. (Dissent from Darwinism list)(I will comment no further regarding the specifics of the actions taken upon the skeptics; I love and honor my colleagues too much for that.) I never thought that science would have evolved like this. I deeply value the academy; teaching, professing and research in the university are my privileges and joys… ”
    Professor James M. Tour – one of the ten most cited chemists in the world

    Top Ten Most Cited Chemist in the World Knows That Evolution Doesn’t Work – James Tour, Phd. – video
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCyAOCesHv0

  4. 4
    Joe says:
    January 27, 2014 at 7:47 am

    Why do humans want to be related to apes? To me that is the strangest part of being an evolutionist- they actually want to be related to apes. I say that because the “evidence” that we are related is directly proportioanl to that want.

  5. 5
    bornagain77 says:
    January 27, 2014 at 8:14 am

    Well Joe, according to the latest evolutionary pig/chimp (PIMP) hypothesis, based on comparative anatomy, and many women would probably tend to agree at least for men, humans are more closely related to pigs than to monkeys,, 🙂

    A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans? – July 3, 2013
    Excerpt: Dr. Eugene McCarthy,, has amassed an impressive body of evidence suggesting that human origins can be best explained by hybridization between pigs and chimpanzees. Extraordinary theories require extraordinary evidence and McCarthy does not disappoint. Rather than relying on genetic sequence comparisons, he instead offers extensive anatomical comparisons, each of which may be individually assailable, but startling when taken together.,,,
    The list of anatomical specializations we may have gained from porcine philandering is too long to detail here. Suffice it to say, similarities in the face, skin and organ microstructure alone is hard to explain away. A short list of differential features, for example, would include, multipyramidal kidney structure, presence of dermal melanocytes, melanoma, absence of a primate baculum (penis bone), surface lipid and carbohydrate composition of cell membranes, vocal cord structure, laryngeal sacs, diverticuli of the fetal stomach, intestinal “valves of Kerkring,” heart chamber symmetry, skin and cranial vasculature and method of cooling, and tooth structure. Other features occasionally seen in humans, like bicornuate uteruses and supernumerary nipples, would also be difficult to incorporate into a purely primate tree.
    http://phys.org/news/2013-07-c.....umans.html

    Moreover, Physorg published a subsequent article showing that the pig-chimp (PIMP) hybrid theory for human origins is much harder to shoot down than neo-Darwinists had first supposed it would be:

    Human hybrids: a closer look at the theory and evidence – July 25, 2013
    Excerpt: There was considerable fallout, both positive and negative, from our first story covering the radical pig-chimp hybrid theory put forth by Dr. Eugene McCarthy,,,By and large, those coming out against the theory had surprisingly little science to offer in their sometimes personal attacks against McCarthy.
    ,,,Under the alternative hypothesis (humans are not pig-chimp hybrids), the assumption is that humans and chimpanzees are equally distant from pigs. You would therefore expect chimp traits not seen in humans to be present in pigs at about the same rate as are human traits not found in chimps. However, when he searched the literature for traits that distinguish humans and chimps, and compiled a lengthy list of such traits, he found that it was always humans who were similar to pigs with respect to these traits. This finding is inconsistent with the possibility that humans are not pig-chimp hybrids, that is, it rejects that hypothesis.,,,
    http://phys.org/news/2013-07-h.....dence.html

    Supplemental notes:

    Mona Lisa smile: The morphological enigma of human and great ape evolution – 2006
    Excerpt: The quality and scope of published documentation and verification of morphological features suggests there is very little in morphology to support a unique common ancestor for humans and chimpanzees.,,,
    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.....7/abstract

    The Red Ape – Cornelius Hunter – August 2009
    Excerpt: “There remains, however, a paradoxical problem lurking within the wealth of DNA data: our morphology and physiology have very little, if anything, uniquely in common with chimpanzees to corroborate a unique common ancestor. Most of the characters we do share with chimpanzees also occur in other primates, and in sexual biology and reproduction we could hardly be more different. It would be an understatement to think of this as an evolutionary puzzle.”
    http://darwins-god.blogspot.co.....d-ape.html

    “The molecular similarity between chimpanzees and humans is extraordinary because they differ far more than sibling species in anatomy and way of life. Although humans and chimpanzees are rather similar in the structure of the thorax and arms, they differ substantially not only in brain size but also in the anatomy of the pelvis, foot, and jaws, as well as in relative lengths of limbs and digits (38).
    Humans and chimpanzees also differ significantly in many other anatomical respects, to the extent that nearly every bone in the body of a chimpanzee is readily distinguishable in shape or size from its human counterpart (38).
    Associated with these anatomical differences there are, of course, major differences in posture (see cover picture), mode of locomotion, methods of procuring food, and means of communication. Because of these major differences in anatomy and way of life, biologists place the two species not just in separate genera but in separate families (39). So it appears that molecular and organismal methods of evaluating the chimpanzee human difference yield quite different conclusions (40).”

    King and Wilson went on to suggest that the morphological and behavioral between humans and apes,, must be due to variations in their genomic regulatory systems.
    David Berlinski – The Devil’s Delusion – Page 162&163
    Evolution at Two Levels in Humans and Chimpanzees Mary-Claire King; A. C. Wilson – 1975

    Human Origins and the Fossil Record: What Does the Evidence Say? – Casey Luskin – July 2012
    Excerpt: Indeed, far from supplying “a nice clean example” of “gradualistic evolutionary change,” the record reveals a dramatic discontinuity between ape-like and human-like fossils. Human-like fossils appear abruptly in the record, without clear evolutionary precursors, making the case for human evolution based on fossils highly speculative.
    http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....61771.html

    Comprehensive Analysis of Chimpanzee and Human Chromosomes Reveals Average DNA Similarity of 70% – by Jeffrey P. Tomkins – February 20, 2013
    Excerpt: For the chimp autosomes, the amount of optimally aligned DNA sequence provided similarities between 66 and 76%, depending on the chromosome. In general, the smaller and more gene-dense the chromosomes, the higher the DNA similarity—although there were several notable exceptions defying this trend. Only 69% of the chimpanzee X chromosome was similar to human and only 43% of the Y chromosome. Genome-wide, only 70% of the chimpanzee DNA was similar to human under the most optimal sequence-slice conditions. While, chimpanzees and humans share many localized protein-coding regions of high similarity, the overall extreme discontinuity between the two genomes defies evolutionary timescales and dogmatic presuppositions about a common ancestor.
    http://www.answersingenesis.or.....chromosome

    Human Origins(?) by Brian Thomas, M.S. – December 20, 2013
    Excerpt: Three major pillars supporting a human-chimp link crashed in 2013.
    1. Genetic similarity (70% instead of 98%)
    2. beta-globin pseudogene (functional instead of leftover junk)
    3. Chromosome 2 fusion site (encodes a functional feature within an important gene instead of a being a fusion site)
    All three key genetic pillars of human evolution (for Darwinists) turned out to be specious—overstatements based on ignorance of genetic function.
    http://www.icr.org/article/7867/

  6. 6
    Mapou says:
    January 27, 2014 at 9:53 am

    We are related to apes in the design and engineering sense. This is why apes and humans have so much genetic material in common. Why should the designers reinvent a huge genetic design database from scratch? Reuse is a mark of both intelligence and design.

  7. 7
    tjguy says:
    January 27, 2014 at 5:05 pm

    This is a great quote:

    I believe that realizing we are apes is a crucial part of enlightenment. Until we see the extent to which our behavior, institutions, culture, and ethics are the product of ape biology, we can have no true understanding of ourselves.

    I love it. Gotta save that and use it again.

    What an irresponsible and even silly claim.

    But you have to remember this:

    It comes from a man who actually believes he is an ape.

    That explains it all!

  8. 8
    CentralScrutinizer says:
    January 27, 2014 at 5:23 pm

    Comparing us to apes only insults the apes.

    Mapou: We are related to apes in the design and engineering sense. This is why apes and humans have so much genetic material in common. Why should the designers reinvent a huge genetic design database from scratch? Reuse is a mark of both intelligence and design.

    Of course, you are spot on.

  9. 9
    Querius says:
    January 27, 2014 at 11:14 pm

    bornagain77 mentioned that

    Some people think that

    . . . humans are more closely related to pigs than to monkeys

    Apparently, we even taste like pork according to informed sources.

    -Q

Leave a Reply