Quote:
Originally posted by OnyxCougar (in the "God of the Bible" thread)
Growing up in a (mostly) agnostic household, I wasn't raised with any religion, per se, but my father didn't believe in evolution, either, because he felt if man evolved from apes, then we should still be evolving. The "missing link" shouldn't be missing, because apes are still here, and we are still here.
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No one believes that man evolved from apes. Evolution states that humans and apes have a <i>common ancestor</i>. That's a huge difference.
The whole idea of a "missing link" is very flawed. Imagine our ancestral line as a giant genealogical tree with a billion little branches. At what resolution would you like to see the tree in before you believe in evolution? We don't have fossils for every single creature that ever died. But we have enough from each time period to show a very nice, gradual progression, morphologically speaking. The problem is, to be able to truly see how perfect this gradual progression is, you have to have a thorough knowledge of skeletons.
Also, remember that evolution is a change in the gene pool of a population over time. People don't evolve -- populations do. And they usually do it over a very long period of time, so you can't "see" it happening.
Also, I thought you guys might find this chart of interest. It shows the most recent hominid fossil species that have been discovered, and how anthropologists think they are related. Solid lines signify a connection that they are sure of, and dotted lines signify a connection that they are in disagreement over. Even though they're not sure how some of them link up, though, they're so similar to other hominids that it's a sure bet that they link up somewhere in this time frame (otherwise, there wouldn't be so many similarites).
Oh, there is also fossil evidence along the line going way, way back, all the way to when we looked like little rodent creatures 65 million years ago. This chart just shows 5 mya and on. There were also recently two other hominid fossils discovered that are believed to be from 6mya and 7mya. Those are so recently discovered as to not yet be on this chart.
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