On 28-12-2011 9:18, Warp wrote:
> Patrick Elliott<sel### [at] npgcablecom>  wrote:
>> On 12/27/2011 4:55 PM, Cousin Ricky wrote:
>>> Some questions earned the pinnacle status of double-drink question.  Examples:
>>> "Why do atheists come to the Religion section?"  "Why do Catholics worship
>>> Mary?"  "If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?"  That last
>>> question really belongs in the Biology room, but young-Earth creationists aren't
>>> known for keeping their domains straight.  Bottoms up twice!
>>>
>> Yeah, its right up there in the logic level with, "If motorcycles where
>> based on bicycles, why are their still bicycles?", and similar
>> stupidities. Not just wrong category, but just.. like why they hell not?
>> Just because some of them got smarter meant that somehow the original
>> niche they filled disappeared? Brainless...
>
>    It's actually it's wronger than that. According to cladistics(*) humans
> did not "evolve from monkeys". Instead, humans and monkeys have a common
> ancestor species. This ancestor species probably looked more like a monkey
> than a human, but was still relatively different from either.

it is a bit more complicated than that. the set of all monkeys *and* 
homo is a clade. monkeys as a group are not. though the new world 
monkeys are. monkeys are all simians except humans. so what was the last 
common ancestor of man and chimps? that was not a member of the genus 
homo, so i think that by the definition of monkey it was a monkey (and 
an ape and a great ape). i am not sure if apes are considered monkeys. 
(in the netherlands we don't have a distinct name for ape, a monkey is 
an 'aap' and an ape is a 'mensaap' (mens==human). so here monkeys 
include apes.) if apes are not monkeys we have another cladistic 
problem. doesn't matter for the argument, just apply twice (or trice if 
great apes are not apes).

i prefer a more cladistic definition of monkey, which implies that i did 
not evolve from a monkey, but that i am a monkey and an ape and a great 
ape. ook.

>    (Also, apes are more closely related to humans than monkeys. It seems that
> creationists and other people who want to mock the theory of evolution
> deliberately use the more distantly related monkeys more as a mockery than
> anything else. According to cladistics humans and apes have a common ancestor
> species, which in turn has a common ancestor species with monkeys.)

funny that if they take it a bit further and try to mock the idea that 
we descend from mammals many more people would get the absurdity. otoh 
it might give a clue why creationists are in general allergic to breasts 
in public. perhaps they don't want to be confronted with things that 
point to their fallacy*.

> (*) Unlike most creationists and many other people think, the theory of
> evolution does not say what species humans evolved from. The theory of
> evolution describes the mechanism, not the history of evolution. For the
> history you need to turn to paleontology and cladistics.
>

*) insert your own pun here
-- 
tip: do not run in an unknown place when it is too dark to see the floor.

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