Tuesday 16 June 2015

The "Why are there still monkeys?" Question

This post first appeared as a guest post on the WWJTD blog, here 

If evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?

It's a question we've all seen before. Sometimes it's asked genuinely. Really. 

If it is genuine, and it's often hard to tell, it should be answered genuinely. In and of itself, it's not a stupid question. It's a question that someone who accepts evolution needs to be able to answer. 

I answered it once by engaging the person who asked, sending him some links to some introductory evolution articles, and suggested he have a read.  

He tweeted back to me three days later, thanking me for the information and saying that he now accepted evolution because he now understood it. He still follows me on twitter to this day. He said it was hard, because he'd been raised as a creationist, but he wanted to learn. I call that a win for education. 

But it's not always like that. 

Often the 'why are there still monkeys' question is a slur. It's a 'gotcha' used to bring the theory of evolution to its knees. 

What I love about this is that people *actually* think this defeats evolution. I can't work out which of two things they're trying to highlight. 

Are they suggesting...
1: That biologists haven't noticed monkeys are still around?
2: Biologists *have* noticed that monkeys are still around, but are hoping no one else has? 

Imagine it, 150+ years worth of scientific study, thousands of people studying evolution right now, millions of papers written, millions of fossils analysed, and all this gets undone by some internet nong asking why there are still monkeys? Someone somewhere thinks this will happen. 

In case you need to know why there are still monkeys, this video is the best explanation I've seen: 

If you see the question - don't automatically call the person a fool or make fun of them. Ask them if they'd really like to know why there are still monkeys. If they would, explain it to them. You might be surprised by the result. 

Other Evolution posts:

Open letter to argumentative evolution deniers: http://mrozatheist.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/an-open-letter-to-argumentative.html

Scientific World in Shock! Evolution Proved False! http://mrozatheist.blogspot.com.au/2014/08/scientific-world-in-shock-evolution.html



1 comment:

  1. Just imagine that you are separating out of your parental home (remember you are not moving out but just seperating)... The first thing you probably would do while seperating is to find a new lock and key for your portion of that house...?



    That is what humans did exactly when they seperated out of the Chimpanzees, they got a new Lock & a Key and started stuffing their portion with new Valuables that never existed in the parental house...



    Remember now there is a seperated lock & key for we humans, so our new found Valuables (traits) could never be shared with by the parental house (ie, our parental species of  Chimps)...



    This is the reason why primitive Monkeys exist along side we developed Humans...!



    Experimental: The secure key & the lock that made all the difference is believed to be the IZUMO1 & JUNO protein pair, found on the surface of Sperm & Ovum respectively...



    More info:

    Just take a look at the protein (IZUMO1) on the surface of the sperm... It identifies itself to its counterpart in the Surface of Ovum (JUNO) telling that it belongs to the same species.... This protein pair is the first point of contact when a sperm enters a ovum... and it is species specific... A kind of Key and Lock security to prevent cross species fertilization...



    I did check the aa seqs of this pair among all the primates and they Do differ... Even Humans vs Chimps.... yet Human vs Neandertal match perfectly.... Surprisingly aa seq align of Donkeys match with Horses (no wonder there are Hybrids like Mule/Hinny)...



    Its my belief that changing the lock and key (aa seq of IZUMO1 & JUNO) did the trick of Speciating Humans away from Chimps and so happened among the different primates...



    Following speciation all the new traits that humans developed were never shared with monkeys (thanks to the security offered by IZUMO1 & JUNO)... So monkeys still remain as Monkeys...!



    Ref:http://www.lulu.com/.../rethi.../ebook/product-23017715.html

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