Hat or Answer?

As Take That Darwin notes, this man chose hat.

Ruben Bolling does it again

I follow 'Take That Darwin' on Twitter and s/he is able to find variations on the "If humans came from apes..." argument everyday.  Today's Tom the Dancing Bug comic describes what creationists seem to think should happen when they use this argument. To encourage people to see the original, I have shrunk the image and cropped it significantly.

I also moved the 'Tom the Dancing Bug' title to the right so it would be in the cropped image.  Ah, if anyone reads this, have I gone too far in my 'I'm not stealing this image' routine?  Or not far enough?

Why are there still apes?

Blogpost from a science teacher in Kansas on the subject.

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My answer to the question on Quora.

As others have told you, the problem appears to be in your understanding. An evolutionist* would tell you that humans and other apes currently alive are descendants of a now extinct ape or hominid. Humans evolved from a species of ape and so did currently living species of apes. If it helps, recall that there are at least three species of great ape besides us: orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees. In this analogy, apes are not my grandparents but my cousins.
A month ago, I would spoken less sympathetically about who is 'smartest' and 'dumbest'. However, I have considered the problem further since then and think you might be confused by some of the analogies normally used. The typical rebuttal by analogy goes, "If Americans are descended from Europeans, why are there still Europeans." Modern formulations would add Asia, Africa, ... and all the wide variety of places people have left to become Americans. The problem with the analogy is that people today change from European to American, while apes are not currently changing into humans.
So why did some apes become human while others did not? I'm going to use another analogy and ask a question. What are the most successful animals on Earth today? let's look at success as a combination of numbers and mass. There are around eight billion humans and we average forty kg (88 lb). Well, chickens have similar numbers - around 24 billion though much lighter. E-coli bacteria in total would have similar mass. Ants, though not a single species, would also be in the running.
The point is, there are many routes to success. There is no reason to believe that the evolutionary line that led to humans immediately jumped to the success we have now. As I understand it, our line became more savanna based while other apes moved deeper into the forest.
In short, there is no reason to expect that all apes would evolve into humans nor that our evolutionary line was successful right away.
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*I am an evolution proponent. An evolutionist would be a scientist who studies evolution and would be under the greater umbrella of 'biologist'. I have a degree in biology but do not work in that field.

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And, "Will Chimps evolve into Humans?"

No.
Randomness is an oft-misunderstood pillar of evolution. In natural selection, a number of mutations occur in random locations that may cause difference in how the animal looks, acts or lives. Ones that benefit the animal -in longer lifespan and/or increased number of offspring - are more likely to be 'selected' and passed on to those offspring. It might be possible to backtrack one beneficial mutation, for evolution to reverse one position - but more likely if such a reversal were selected, the gene would be broken. I've written it very abstractly so here is a sort of example. When a group of fish in Mexico began living their whole lives in caves, having eyes actually became a liability (as a entry point for infection with no sensory value). The eyes did not vanish but were covered over with flesh. The eyes are still there, just covered over and broken.
Once two groups take a few steps away from each other, neither one can retreat to the original intersection and follow the other's path. As Ariel Williams (another responder to this question) noted, chimps might become more intelligent and capable of swimming and long distance running but still would not be human - they not look much like humans either

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Reactions to the Ham vs Nye debate

This post is not finished but I don't know when that will be.  I watched the opening of the debate live, then stopped and drove to my in-laws and watched the last hour or so.  Then I began watching again and have made it to one hour, thirty-nine minutes.  I do plan to see the fifteen or twenty minute gap.

A friend described those who found Nye the clear winner to be displaying confirmation bias.  I had made similar, but less eloquent, statements so I was pleased to see my own conclusion reinforced.  Still, Nye did a lot right.

I guess I need to give some specifics at the start.  On Feb 4, Ken Ham defended the proposition that Creation is the most viable model of origins in today's modern, scientific era against Bill Nye, who defended evolution.  The video is available at a few locations but I don't know for how long: try here, here and here.

My own impressions:

Ham is getting mileage from his previous debate -at Harvard in the '90s.

Ham has a degree in applied science -emphasis in environmental biology.

five minute intro: Ham begins the attack and offers scientists who accept creationism but do science. Of course, they don't appear to use creation science in their work. Then, he gets into his personal division of science into observational and historic focuses.

Nye takes his time to gain some acceptance by telling a pretty good, but long, joke.  Then he uses the example of CSI to tear down the idea of two kinds of science.  

Billions of people are religious but not creationists.

thirty minute talks.

Ham: More professional scientist claiming they are creationists without any appearance of using creationism in their work.

Ham and one of his scientist discusses Lenski's work: The ability to grow on citrate is not complex new ability.

Andrew Fabich: E-coli supposably evolving.  The information is already there - it's just a switch that's turned on and off.  There's nothing new. ... Later, Dr Lenski and his student read Fabich's claim in horror and have responded 1, 2, 3.  I have excerpted a few paragraphs from the third link below in my notes of reactions to the debate. (More about Dr Lenski.)

"Darwin was racist." From a book -not necessarily by Darwin - "The highest race of all, the Caucasians..." Everyone from the 1800's would appear racist to us today. Australians, Ham's own nationality, had some racist image problems even just a few decades ago.

I just remembered how to do screen shots: 

In discussing the difference between observational and historic science, Ham showed a video of Nye talking about creationists accepting many scientific wonders -including smoke detectors - while yet not accepting evolution.  Ham emphasized a few such wonders -including smoke detectors - and called then observational science.  And yet, I think smoke detectors use the half-life of radioactive elements and this must remain unchanged through history or the detector's results would be meaningless.

Nye:

Deep time. - ice cores.

Nine thousand year old tree.

"Your claim, for me, is not satisfactory." An elegant statement but not a thrilling one.

Nye on Ham's need for incredible speed in evolution to suit creationism's short time line:

Noah's ark and modern shipbuilding.

Around 1:20, Nye talks about the Big Bang Theory. This is important stuff and you need to explain the small details, but it takes a lot of time and comes off as a little dry at a debate.  I hope creationists were listening.

First 5:00 minute rebuttal
Ham:
"You can't observe the age of the Earth"
Radioactive decay - Uranium to lead, etc.

"The point is, there's a problem." - Yes, there is. The radiocarbon dating used on the wood can only give results up to around 50,000 years so a result in that range is equal to a pegged needle.  To suggest otherwise is dishonest. This claim can also be found at creation.com  and the original source, 'research' by Andrew Snelling is at the same site.   Gondwana Research looks into a similar claim here.

The more I think about this, the more impressed I am with Ham's daring, with his cajones (it seems less crude in a foreign language).  If Nye had understood how radiometric dating worked -and why didn't he, this was an obvious direction for a Young Earther to go? -he could have exposed clear dishonesty on Ham's part.

Dr Steve Austin used Potassium-Argon dating on a lava flow from Mt St. Helens.  The results varied greatly.

There is a big problem.  From Wikipedia: "Due to the long half-life, the technique is most applicable for dating minerals and rocks more than 100,000 years old. For shorter timescales, it is likely that not enough Argon 40 will have had time to accumulate in order to be accurately measurable."

slides from 1:32:00 - get them while on Windows computer.

Nye:
Didn't understand about radiocarbon dating - dang it!!! Attempted a rebuttal and moved on.
"Were the fish sinners?"
On Ham's claim that you cannot see the past, "but that's what astronomers do."

2nd rebuttal
Ham:
"What is a kind? ...  Predicted less than a thousand kinds on Noah's ark."
1:42 - planes in the ice on Greenland. Wow!  and Wow!
Bears have teeth very much like a lion or tiger.  Look at a panda's teeth - it looks like it should be a savage carnivore.
      Okay, I just searched with Google images for lion, bear, panda bear and Australian fruit bat teeth.  All have big scary canines.  The bears and bat all have grinding molars and the lion has only cutting teeth.  I guess he figures Nye can't do the search in time for his next turn to talk.

"The Chinese and the Egyptians built big boats. Research shows some had three layers interlocking so they wouldn't twist like that (like the Nye discussed a giant American wooden ship had twisted and leaked)."  Right, except the only place i can find news of three interlocking layers is at Creationist websites and there is substantial disagreement about whether the giant Chinese ships were actually built (some claim they were and did sail to India and elsewhere, others say they only floated in a sheltered lake, others say they may have existed on land and finally some say they were never built).

Horizon problem. Light and the expanding universe.

Nye:
1000 kinds makes Nye's criticism even stronger - instead of needing 11 new species to appear every day, now we need 35!
Nye claims some knowledge of shipbuilding and is skeptical that Noah could build the Ark with seven others.
"...explain to us why we should accept your word for it that natural law changed 4000 years ago, completely, and there's no record of it.  You know, there are pyramids that are older than that."
It is not reasonable to me to believe that everything changed 4000 years ago: species, the surface of the Earth, the stars in the sky and the relationships of all the other things on Earth to humans.

Evolution is not exclusively atheistic.

We need scientists and engineers.
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Questions from the audience
1st question - Nye asks ham if he can predict something
2nd What was before the Big Bang?  Nye: I don't know - it is wonderful!
Ham: "There is a book..."
3rd dating techniques
Ham:....appendix is very important to the immune system -
...I did make predictions....one race, God made kinds
4th question - how did consciousness come from matter
Nye: "Don't know.  It's a great mystery. ...The joy of discovery."
Ham: There is a book" .. debaters both beyond debate subject....  Ham: after you die, you are gone, why bother with discovery?
5th question "What would change your mind?"
Ham:  long answer  "No one's ever going to convince me that the word of God is not true."
The model of the flood is subject to change but the fact of the flood is not subject to change.
Nye: We would need evidence. Bring on any of those things and you would change me immediately.
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6th question: radiometric dating
Nye the science is strong on radiometric dating
Ham: showed slide from before "Hundreds of physical processes..."
This is a form of the Gish Gallop.  I know the coral reef claim is wrong and I'm pretty sure the meteor dust one is, too.  Note that Ham doesn't even try to defend any of them so what is Nye to do, attack 50+ in his next turn.  And even if he did, from the little info Ham offered, Ham could say, "No, I meant a different form of meteor dust buildup" or the like.

7th Question for Ham: Compare the rate of continental plates today to the rate 6000 years ago.
Ham: There was a catastrophic breakup.  Historic V observational science.
Nye: It must have been easier for you to explain this a hundred years ago.  The evidence of reversed magnetic fields supports old age slow plate movement evidence.

8th:  Favorite colour

9th: 2nd law of thermodynamics
Nye: Earth is not a closed system.We receive energy from the sun.
Ham: Energy or matter will never produce life.

10th: Could you be convinced the world is older than c10,000 years.
Ham: No
Nye: You want us all to take your claim based on nothing.  What can you predict?

11th: Is there room for God in science?
Nye: yes.
Ham: God is necessary for science.  observational v historic science. We assume laws of logic, nature the uniformity of nature. Where does that (as I've written it, "Where do they come from) come from?

12: Mr Ham, do you take everything in the Bible literally? Should we stone pig-touchers? Should men marry many wives?
Ham: Define literally.  If it's history, like Genesis, take it as literal.  The Bible shows marriage to multiple women causes trouble.
Nye: You pick and choose what to take literally.

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stopped at 2:28

Fascinating human evolution discoveries of 2013

From Scientific American.  A few excerpts.
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• Analysis of the shape of the braincase of seven-million-year-old Sahelanthropus tchadensis from Chad supports the claim that it is the oldest human ancestor on record.

• The femur of Orrorin tugenensis, a putative human ancestor that lived six million years ago in Kenya, has a shape that is intermediate between that of fossil apes and early members of the human lineage—a finding that confirms previous claims thatthe creature walked upright.

• Tiny, rarely preserved middle-ear bones from two of our ancient relatives that lived millions of years ago exhibit modern features, which may indicate an early shift in hearing ability.

• The latest round of studies of Australopithecus sediba, a nearly two-million-year-old relative of ours from South Africa, reveals a previously unknown form of upright walking and decidedly humanlike jaws and teeth. But is it the ancestor of our genus, Homo? Not so fast.

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Not really related: American political parties and evolution/creation, a takedown.

Why are there still creationists?

The following creationist argument is not one used by my (now ex-) coworker.  He is more sophisticated in his debating.  Still, the following rhetorical point is and has been used again and again, so here is my attempt at a comprehensive response.

Here is the point:  If humans came from monkeys why are there still monkeys?

A common alternate is: If humans came from apes, why are there still apes?

Stephen Baldwin "If we are from apes, why are the apes still here?"

Here is a similar formulation (March 16, 2012):

This is where Kern began to argue that evolution - at least macroevolution - doesn't make sense because "viruses are still viruses" and other organisms are still what they have always been ... "You're talking about adaptation here," he told her.
Smith went on to talk further about viruses, while Kern sat there with a sour look on his face, coming back to tell her that "You go back and viruses are viruses ... they may have adapted ... they are still viruses."
When Kern asked where the virus fossils are, Smith responded that viruses are too small to fossilize.

The short answer is clear and simple.

Apes are not, evolutionarily speaking, our ancestors but our cousins.  We both evolved from a common ancestor.

The viruses that exist today may or may not be similar to ancient ones but they too have evolved.  It is possible that a virus was the first sorta-lifeform and more complex animals evolved from it, although I have not heard that claim stated anywhere.  Still, viruses today are distant relatives, not ancestors.

Done.

There is a  larger question and it could be stated as "If humans are so superior, why do any other animals exist?" or "If humans are so successful, why do other animals exist?"

Dawkins discussed primitive and advanced animals in The Ancestor's Tale:

...Darwin's advice to himself would serve us all: 'Never use the words higher and lower'.
   Lancelets are live creatures, our exact contemporaries.  They are modern animals who have had exactly the same time as we have in which to evolve.  Another telltale phrase is 'a side branch, off the main line of evolution.'  All living animals are side branches.  No line of evolution is more 'main' than any other, except with the conceit of hindsight.  (Page 365 of First Mariner Books edition, 2005, The Ancestor's Tale.  This is the third or fourth paragraph from the start of the Lancelet chapter)

From the Wikipedia article on The Ancestor's Tale.

But lancelets are not primitive nor our remote ancestor. They are as modern as all other members in the pilgrimage. The Lancelet's Tale continues to develop the theme introduced in The Duckbill's Tale, that all living animals have had equal time to evolve since the first concestor, and that no living animal should be described as either lower or more primitive.

Perhaps an example from the military will help.  I have no background in the military but I think this metaphor works.  In the ocean, the most powerful vessel is the aircraft carrier.  And yet, this does not mean that the only military vessels used today are aircraft carriers.  Missile launching and countering vessels are needed as are mine sweepers and submarines.  A vessel, or an animal, can be very strong and successful and yet not be supreme in all areas.

Below is the beginning of a list I started looking at successful animals.  I count success as a combination of numbers and total mass.  Ants are on the list as they outnumber us by so much that their total mass is similar to ours.  Although a recent discussion of viruses encouraged me to write this post, I did not add microscopic animals to the list.

chickens: "More than 50 billion chickens are raised annually" 

sheep: 1.078 billion 

rats:

There are around 5 billion rats here on earth, which makes them arguably the second most successful mammal. After humans, of course. An average rat weighs around 450 grams. That makes for almost 5 billion pounds of rat. They are about 25 centimeters long, or 10 inches. That makes 1 and a quarter million kilometers of rat.
Blue whales are the biggest animal that has ever existed on this planet. They weigh almost 400 thousand pounds each. There are approximates 12000 blue whales on this planet. The weight of all the blue whales, is almost 200 million pounds less than the weight of all the rats.

ants:

It has been estimated that the total ant population is around 10 quadrillion, or 10,000,000,000,000,000. That’s a lot of ants. It’s more than 1.4 million ants for every person.
An average ant weighs about 20 milligrams, which is almost nothing. But that means all of them together weigh around 440,924,524,000 pounds. So do they outweigh humans? Unless the weight of an average human is only 63 pounds, then no. But let’s look at it another way.
Ants aren’t very good at being heavy. One thing they are good at though, is lifting a lot of weight. An ant can lift around 50 times its own body weight. So every ant in the world combined could lift more than 22 trillion pounds. If the human population wanted to lift that much, we’d each need to lift more than 3000 pounds. Which is more than 6 times the world record for weight lifting.

So my list, rather unimaginatively, consists of only two groups, human food items and detritivores with two examples of each.  I am so ignorant of ocean ecology that I feel unable even to suggest a fish to search online for.  Krill could also be on this list, I guess.

The lesson could be: there are a variety of ways of being successful.  Being small and having many offspring appears to work the best.  With this in mind, why are there still humans?