If humans evolved from monkeys, how come monkeys still exist?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
First let me take a moment to say that “monkey” is a terrible term for what the creationists are using here.\u00a0 Monkey<\/a> is not a formal group.\u00a0 There are 260 odd species of monkey (both old world and new world monkeys), but this group specifically excludes apes<\/a> (including chimpanzees, humans, gorillas, gibbons, etc).<\/p>\n Let me ask this question a slightly different way and you’ll see one of the two problems with this question<\/p>\n “If you came from your dad, how come your dad still exists?”\u00a0 Yes, that is exactly what the question above is asking.\u00a0 If we go with the assumption that evolution is a linear progression (which is not true as we’ll see in a moment), then suggesting that parent organisms cannot survive once daughter organisms are born is obviously silly.<\/p>\n And with all due respect to Carl Sagan, this is something he got wrong in Cosmos.\u00a0 Evolution is not a ladder.\u00a0 It’s not a sequence of continually more advanced organisms.\u00a0 It’s not fish evolving into amphibians which evolve into reptiles which evolve into mammals, etc.<\/p>\n So what is it?<\/p>\n Let me ask another question that will help.\u00a0 “If you came from your dad, how come your cousin exists?”<\/p>\n You are your cousin exist at roughly the same time.\u00a0 You probably look a fair bit alike.\u00a0 So, how can he possible exist if evolution is true?<\/p>\n Because you and your cousin have a common ancestor.\u00a0 That is, your grandfather and grandmother.\u00a0 You and your cousin will continue to live, side-by-side (well, at least, contemporaneously), grow have your own offspring, etc.<\/p>\n Eventually, your family and your cousin’s families will be widely separated.\u00a0 You and your cousin’s great-great grandchildren probably won’t even realize that they are directly related through your grandfather.\u00a0 That happens, families drift apart, move, change attitudes, lifestyles, etc.<\/p>\n Pretty soon, you might not even realize that the two families (based on you and your cousin) are still closely related.<\/p>\n Hey look.\u00a0 I just described how evolution actually works.<\/p>\n Humans did not come from chimpanzees.\u00a0 Humans and chimpanzees had a common ancestor that was neither human nor chimpanzee.\u00a0 This creature lived about 6.5 million years ago.\u00a0 Using genetic clocks, we know that what would become modern gorillas split off from the human lineage, and then what would become chimpanzees did.<\/p>\n Fossil evidence is rare, because of the acidic nature of rainforest soils, but there are a few contenders.\u00a0 The most recent research (PDF<\/a> and PDF<\/a>) indicates that the various Australopithecus<\/a><\/em>\u00a0 <\/em>species may be a branch of the human line and not our direct ancestors. \u00a0That’s OK, science changes as new discoveries come to light.\u00a0 It’s not a problem.<\/p>\n I’ve shown these before, but let me give you a graphical view of the kind of relationship I’m talking about.<\/p>\n {click to make larger}<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is the family tree of humans… as far as we know.\u00a0 As I said, fossil evidence is sparse at best… but there is some.\u00a0 And it does fit nicely with what we know genetically and morphologically.<\/p>\n In the above diagram, lines that extend all the way to the names are extant species.\u00a0 Any line that stops before then represents an extinct species.\u00a0 The letters in blue circles show that everything connected to that blue circle is a member of that named group.\u00a0 The red lines indicate traits that all members after that red line share.<\/p>\n For example, every species on this tree that is to the left of Proconsul africanus<\/em> does not have a tail.\u00a0 The ones to the right, do have tails.<\/p>\n The question is, did the gorilla evolve into humans?\u00a0 The answer, of course, is no.\u00a0 This diagram shows that gorillas and humans had a common ancestor way back in time (4-8 million years).\u00a0 That common ancestor was also the common ancestor of chimpanzees and all the other hominids.\u00a0 A more recent common ancestor (point G) was the common ancestor of all members of genus Homo<\/em>.<\/p>\n BTW: In case it comes up.\u00a0 This chart isn’t the evidence for this.\u00a0 The cladogram displays the results of (literally) thousands of peer-reviewed papers that cover everything from fossils to modern genetic comparisons.\u00a0 A tiny bit of all that evidence is represented by the links below.<\/p>\n The creationist claim in this case, is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution.\u00a0 Of course, even without that misunderstanding, it’s still wrong.\u00a0 Which goes to show the kinds of problems that creationists have with actual science.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is an old claim from creationists who really don’t understand evolution… or apparently reproduction. I don’t consider it a ‘weakness’ of evolution, but it is an attack against it.<\/p>\n If humans evolved from monkeys, how come monkeys still exist?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,8,89],"tags":[939,938,330,937,286],"class_list":["post-649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creationism","category-evolution","category-research-2","tag-creationism","tag-evolution","tag-monkeys","tag-science","tag-weaknesses-of-evolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1948,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions\/1948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"14116_family_tree_cladogram\"](\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/files\/2013\/03\/14116_family_tree_cladogram-300x229.jpg\")
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