If Humans Evolved from Apes, Why Do Apes Still Exist?

I have heard that non-sense so many time I have lost track… it is sad that people come out of school with such ideas.

This statement, “It’s both funny and sad when you realize the person who is the most ignorant about evolution is the person who appears to be the most confident in his knowledge of it.” puts me in mind of an important lesson I learned once.
When I was in college, I learned the difference between being sure and being right through a costly mistake on a theatre set build.
Too many people, both theists and atheists, don’t seem to understand that being sure, being certain of something doesn’t necessarily mean it is an accurate view of reality.
History gives us example after example of things that everyone “knew” were correct; e.g., the earth is flat; the earth is the center of the universe; no one could run a sub-four minute mile. Time and again those “truths” were proved false.
I think embracing the notion that being sure doesn’t mean you are correct is something scary and dangerous to most theists, because faith is rather enmeshed with the idea that certainty=correctness.
As atheists, most of us have a healthy skepticism, so it’s a bit easier to accept the notion that what we’re sure of today may be proved false tomorrow.

Aww no, it’s blocked in the UK by Channel 4. The sods!

Yo Baldwin: Since I am descended from Germans, why are there still Germans?

Apes still exist because you don’t understand evolution.

Alex Baldwin doesnt exist.

There is an Alec Baldwin though.

It’s quite embarrassing to think that Baldwin and Darwin share a surname syllable!

I had a very nice and very smart roommate in college who was majoring in biology and who didn’t believe in evolution. I don’t understand that. I know some people might argue that she wasn’t smart, but she made great grades and worked as a tutor and later got a job in the lab.

Don’t count on her still having those beliefs today. Most people who enter college religious leave it less so, and there’s some evidence showing that biologists are the least religious of scientists, themselves the least religious in society. In addition if she works in a lab as a researcher she will be bombarded every day with the reality of evolution, so unless her cognitive dissonance is made of very thick titanium she’ll probably have at the very least accepted evolution and inserted a “but God guides it” for her own comfort.

Yeah, I used to hear that “argument” from my dad when I grew up, and mind you he wasn’t religious. He had the attitude: if he didn’t understand it, it must be BS.

At the same time, he took me to the library from the time I was very young.

Now-a-days, I simply refuse to talk to people who make such idiotic statements; I just don’t need the irritation. It is easy for me to isolate as I am in a university mathematics department. But among others, I mostly keep conversations at a “how about them Bears” level. If something like evolution comes up from someone else, I point out that this is what science departments and laboratories research and teach, and that creationism has yet to deliver a single discovery whereas science has delivered technology, medicine, etc. and just leave it at that.

The problem isn’t really about the difference between “descended from apes” and “descended from a common ancestor.” The problem is this: that the way people tend to understand evolution is by representing a species in their mind with a single individual.

This is a standard method of operation for the human brain, and leads to things like scope insensitivity and other cognitive errors. So I don’t blame people for that particular fault.

The proper explanation, I think, is to point out that there were hundreds or thousands of animals that were sort of like chimps and sort of like humans, and they weren’t all in the same place.

I think this alone would subvert their original picture of things and help them understand, but you could continue and point out how (environmental or other) factors in one population caused animals who were born with chimpanzee-like traits to be more likely to reproduce, while factors in the other population caused animals who were born with human-like traits to be more likely to reproduce.

It’s not an easy jump to make from “evolution means an animal changes during its lifetime from something into something else” to the proper understanding (and I’d say even most people who believe in evolution are still representing it in their mind with the improper explanation), but I believe that’s the issue here.

It is amusing that the initial post closed with the statement:
“It’s both funny and sad when you realize the person who is the most ignorant about evolution is the person who appears to be the most confident in his knowledge of it.”

I guess if they are so (voluntarily?) ignorant of Darwin, they might not have been familiar with his most appropriate (and personal favorite) quote for these situations:

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.” – Charles Darwin

Tyler, you can still enjoy Biodome. It’s just that now, you have to realize that at least for Stephen, he wasn’t acting. He really is that stooopid. Sad to believe that Pauly Shore might be a genius in that duo!

The funny thing is, AiG even says not to use that argument. Notwithstanding the other half-truths and idiocy on that webpage, it’s pretty telling when a Creationist society has the knowledge ‘yeah, we don’t use that argument anymore.’

I’m alive, so why do my cousins still exist?!?!

I like the way some of the other people in the clip do agree with him, but seem uncomfortable and confused because they know he’s an idiot.

PYGMIES + DWARFS, people…PYGMIES + DWARFS.

Actually the thing that amused me the most was the “Meet Atheist Singles Now” ad at the bottom of the video.

It’s both funny and sad when you realize the person who is the most ignorant about evolution is the person who appears to be the most confident in his knowledge of it.

I’ve found that Dunning-Kruger explains this all too well – re: evolution or indeed almost anything.

D-K is summed up in the Wikipedia article thusly: “people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it”.

Put otherwise: people are too incompetent to realize they’re incompetent.

(D-K also leads to the perverse effect whereby the least competent persons are most confident in their belief, as originally quoted.)

If god exists everywhere, why does everything else still exist?

So if Americans come from Europeans why are there still Australians?

This actually sums it up better than anything else I’ve read.

@ Siamang and Darwin’s Dagger, according to howmanyofme.com, there are approximately 53 Alex Baldwins in the United States, just fyi. 🙂

If smart comes from stupid, how come there’s still stupid?

Stephen Baldwin is a Born Again Christian, closed minded, ignorant, uneducated and stupid. What else is there to say on this subject?

If Humans Evolved from Apes, Why Do Apes Still Exist?

For the same reason someone as smart as Stephen Hawking and someone as ignorant as Stephen Baldwin still exist.

I’m going to say “metacognitive” to a believer and watch his head implode. 😉