fbpx
37.4 F
Spokane
Thursday, March 28, 2024
HomeBeliefsAsk An Atheist: If evolution exists....

Ask An Atheist: If evolution exists….

Date:

Related stories

Now Hiring: Freelance Reporters

Now Hiring: Freelance Reporters SpokaneFāVS.com, an online publication covering religion...

Ask A Mormon: Can you be baptized after death?

Mormons believe that “God is no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34). He loves all of his children, regardless of when or where they were born. We also believe that baptism, and the covenants we make at baptism, are stepping stones on the path to salvation and exaltation.

Ask A Mormon: Do Mormons believe they will become gods?

Latter-day Saints believe that every life — our spirits, our souls, the essence of who we are — is eternal.

Ask A Mormon: Do Mormons stockpile goods?

Are Mormons Preppers? Why and where and for how long do they stockpile goods? Why is this, is there an eschatological reason?

Tripping to Peace at Salt Lake: Individual States or All New Kingdom?

We must, if we are to survive, see that our existence is vitally connected with the equally important existence of the other.

Our Sponsors

spot_img
spot_img

What do you want to Ask an Atheist? Submit your questions online or fill out the form below.

If your stupid evolution exists (no offense but it’s quite dumb) then why don’t monkeys give birth to humans?

SPO_House-ad_Ask-an-atheist_0425133This one is the first “with attitude” question and I am pleased as pumpkins to respond.

Evolution is indeed very “dumb”— just like geology or astrophysics. Did you ever try and ask a nebula a question, or a mountain range? Dumb as dirt.

But as for the natural processes generating those things, and how we featherless bipeds with big brains and occasionally even bigger mouths are concerned, that’s a different matter. First off, no species is ever going to give birth to something so radically different as the questioner is posing. That is not part of evolutionary doctrine, so flailing “evolution” for something that doesn’t happen that evolutionary theory doesn’t think should be happening, is not evolutionary theory’s problem. Never mind monkeys and people, peonies aren’t going to sprout oak trees either, or beetles into butterflies. All natural evolution involves exceedingly similar offshoots; it is only after lots and lots and lots of that do you notice that the descendant of a lineage has changed a lot from its ancestor (this is most easily seen in the origin of mammals, our own vertebrate class).  That is why no proper understanding of what evolution does or does not say, or whether it jibes with the evidence, can get along without a good understanding of the fossil record (the track of what actually did live in the past).

The common ancestors of modern monkeys and today’s humans lived over 50 million years ago, and resembled a bush baby or shrew (we have actual fossils of some of these wee critters, by the way, so this is not a hypothetical matter). The lines leading off into their descendants have big stories to tell, with groups spreading over continents and diverging ever so gently until you get what we have now. The ape lineage has only developed much more recently, in Africa, and the common ancestors of us, the chimps and gorillas, were living around 10 million years ago. They were still small, about the size of a typical monkey, arboreal a lot of the time. The important point about what evolutionary theory actually says (and not what some people’s misunderstandings think it says) is that if you track any individual lineage there will be no point where radically different things are appearing (poof!) without antecedents. Creationists often think that is what is happening in the fossil record, but none of them are working career paleontologists and the rest do not show particularly good familiarity with the details (the late Duane Gish comes to mind on the creationist side, and Casey Luskin is a comparable example over in the modern Intelligent Design movement).

Now the question of how did we get to be so different than monkeys or peonies is a matter of genetics and developmental biology, a very big subject that can hardly be covered in just a quickie question response.  But the short version is that the major genes governing body plans and appendages have been duplicated and mutated to play out at different times and positions in the developing body. In our own case, very few actual genes knocking around in our bodies are unique to humans, we just deploy our inherited (but modified) genetic tool kit in different ways than our cousins. For example, the FoxP2 gene that mammals use for a lot of basic biology has been co-opted for use in our brains and language processing (which similarly hitchhiked on the systems our primate cousins use for gesturing) so that mutations in those genes can at times produce strange lapses in grammar and speech.

Every gene and bone and muscle in our bodies has a story to tell about the long path our species has taken in the development of life, and modern evolutionary theory has (and continues to) peel back the layers to reveal more and more of that story.  Its an extraordinary history we have, and not “dumb” at all.

Jim Downard
Jim Downard
Jim Downard is a Spokane native (with a sojourn in Southern California back in the early 1960s) who was raised in a secular family, so says had no personal faith to lose. He's always been a history and science buff (getting a bachelor's in the former area at what was then Eastern Washington University in the early 1970s).

Our Sponsors

spot_img
spot_img
spot_img

8 COMMENTS

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
8 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Dennis
Dennis
10 years ago

Jim,

Too bad someone would ask that dumb a question, obviously not much thought going on there. I would like to hear your thoughts on the evolutionary explanation of the Cambrian fossil explosion, which according to what I’ve heard is exactly opposite of what evolutionary theory has predicted. Thanks.

Randy Myers
Randy Myers
10 years ago

I would encourage you to read “Signature in the Cell” or “Darwin’s Doubt” by Stephen Meyer. Macro-evolution does not work.

Dennis
Dennis
10 years ago

Jim,

One thing that was addressed that you seem to keep evading is the under layers of the Cambrian period. Apparently there are fossilized sponge embryos that are very soft bodied that are well preserved that disprove the idea of Darwin’s tree of life idea of simple to complex. Are you familiar with trained paleontologist Y.J. Chen and his opinion that his digs in the Cambrian layer in china turn the evolutionary tree of life on its head?

Dennis
Dennis
10 years ago

What this discussion proves to me as it “evolves” (microevolutionistically btw), is that nothing is proven, including evolution. Everyone has the right to their opinion, just don’t force it down everyone’s throat, as liberals and atheists are so fond of saying about religion. Listen to yourself in this regard.

Dennis
Dennis
10 years ago
Reply to  Jim Downard

Evolutionist should hardly be scolding about using one’s own facts. They have had a history of lyling and falsification to uphold their theories for decades, some of which still reside in mandatory text book material in the government schools. I’m not saying yours is, but the principle certainly applies to some of your atheist predecessors.

i heard the statement from Chen’s own mouth in a video clip I watched so it wasn’t hearsay.

I happen to be thrilled by learning more of the amazing processes involved in cell division, particle physics and just about everything else in this universe. But I thrill because I also believe it has come from an amazing and personal God, Who is over and above all of it. I ponder sometimes about how an atheist can marvel at something that is supposedly here by chance from a body that came from dirt and is going to dirt never to exist or have consciousness again. If it was true, which I don’t believe at all, I would echo the apostle Paul, who said that if our faith in Christ is for this life alone, we would be, of all men, most miserable. But I am not, and I have a joy that is not something I could work up on my own, but is evidence to me along with all that I continue to learn out of the scriptures, that God is indeed real, and personal.

Reading your depth of knowledge of evolutionist literature, I’m confindent that I will never win the debate with you, but that’s ok. We both have a faith position that will lead us somewhere so I’m willing to wait and see. I have also read enough to know that time has always proven scripture to win out over every skepticism that has ever been raised against it and am assured that it will be so in the future. To say that I don’t have all the answers now does not bother me, but I have one answer and that is the knowledge of my salvation through Jesus Christ, and that is enough. Bless you Jim.

spot_img
8
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x