When I checked my email the other day, I found creationist nonsense. As usual; a friend simply insists on sending me "Creation Moments" daily drivel. Each post makes some argument about how evolution is a) evil b) silly c) unable to explain the complexity of the biological world or d) all of the above. Some of them make me smile with their simple-minded caricatures of what the young-earth creationists seem to think evolution is. Others make me shake my head in wonder. The most recent email belongs firmly in the second category.
The author argues that we only believe that "fossilized apes" are relatives because it nicely fits our pre-existing story and has nothing to do with actual evidence. This person makes the argument that if we believed humans to have evolved from birds and found a fossilized bird we would claim it as an ancestor. The hit-piece goes on to argue that science "has made up a lot of stories," as though science were based on ideas scientists think up after smoking peyote rather than being based in the real world. There is, to put is mildly, one reason why the argument fails. Evidence. That's right, evidence. Because evolution, unlike what creationists would have you think, is based on evidence found in the real world, and not only fossils. We do find fossilized ancestors of humans, and many of them are quite ape-like. But the creationists have it exactly backwards; evolution holds that humans descended from ape-like ancestors because the evidence demanded it, not the other way around.
And it isn't as though all of evolution hinges on some fossilized hominids. We have similar DNA, we have similar body-structures. These are some of the reasons why science tells us that humans descended from ape-like ancestors. This isn't merely a story (though it is an incredible story); it is reality. It is a story that has the benefit of being true, which is more than one can say about the floating Arks and talking snakes that the creationists seem to think is the real, literal history of humanity.
One wonders, often enough, when reading creationist literature whether they ever actually read anything about evolution that wasn't written by other creationists. I think that question answers itself.
The author argues that we only believe that "fossilized apes" are relatives because it nicely fits our pre-existing story and has nothing to do with actual evidence. This person makes the argument that if we believed humans to have evolved from birds and found a fossilized bird we would claim it as an ancestor. The hit-piece goes on to argue that science "has made up a lot of stories," as though science were based on ideas scientists think up after smoking peyote rather than being based in the real world. There is, to put is mildly, one reason why the argument fails. Evidence. That's right, evidence. Because evolution, unlike what creationists would have you think, is based on evidence found in the real world, and not only fossils. We do find fossilized ancestors of humans, and many of them are quite ape-like. But the creationists have it exactly backwards; evolution holds that humans descended from ape-like ancestors because the evidence demanded it, not the other way around.
And it isn't as though all of evolution hinges on some fossilized hominids. We have similar DNA, we have similar body-structures. These are some of the reasons why science tells us that humans descended from ape-like ancestors. This isn't merely a story (though it is an incredible story); it is reality. It is a story that has the benefit of being true, which is more than one can say about the floating Arks and talking snakes that the creationists seem to think is the real, literal history of humanity.
One wonders, often enough, when reading creationist literature whether they ever actually read anything about evolution that wasn't written by other creationists. I think that question answers itself.
Agree with your last.
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