Little to add to what has been offered already, other than to offer that “gap” theory will always appeal to true believers. In actuality, there are countless “gaps” in the fossil record, simply because of the fragmentary nature of that record.
Moreover, even if a “transitional” species were identified to fill the “gap” your boyfriend posits, rather than resolving things to his satisfaction, he would likely point out that there were now two gaps, one on either side of the newly identified species.
Well, that’s not quite right. Humans didn’t evolve from any extant ape, but we most certainly did evolve from an extinct ape (and we are still apes today, by any reasonable definition of the term “ape”).
Building a cladogram of the great apes, starting with humans and our closest relatives, you have:
The clade including chimps, bonobos and humans.
The clade including chimps, bonobos, humans and gorillas (all species lumped together)
The clade including chimps, bonobos, humans, gorillas, and orangutans (all species lumped together.
Given the relatively recent divergence of humans in that clade (only about 5-6M years ago) compared to the much older divergence of orangs (about 13M years), it’s hard to call everything else an “ape” and not call us an ape as well.
Now, there are lots of paraphyletic groupings out there*, and you could create a separate non-ape classification for humans, but most biologists do not.
*The term “monkey” is paraphyletic, since old world monkeys are more closely related to apes than they are to new world monkeys.
It’s funny how Creationists think that’s a weak point in the science, when it actually proves the exact opposite. Creationism is all about doctrine and not questioning that doctrine in any way. Science is all about questioning everything.
As someone alluded in another thread, lack of an explanation or concensus for any aspect of evolution theory somehow automatically validates creationism. Go figure.
Well, math and science are two different animals. Theorems and proofs (math) are about truth, whereas science is about understanding the physical world. Usually lumped in with the sciences, I believe that most theoretical mathematicians would not call themselves “scientists”, but rather think of what they do as more akin to philosophy.
Yeah thanks. LOL i *am * trying to be polite… hence the “belief in evolution” because there are many people who don’t and I didn’t want to say “i know evolution is real” and then start a whole debate with religous nuts that had nothing to do with my original question. So thank you for that. I appreciate it.
You don’t need to worry about that here. We may have one or two Creationists hanging around now and again, but you’ll find more Bush supporters* here than Creationists!
*If you didn’t know, this is a very anti-Bush message board.
There are probably more tinfoil 9/11 CT folks than Creationists on this board. Not sure if John is right about Bush supporters though…I think there are more Creationists than supporters of Bush.
I know what you’re saying, but this is more difficult to explain than what I said. When you’re talking to someone who’s knowledge of evolution consists of ‘man came from monkeys’ and ‘the priest guy said it was bad’ then you have to pick your arguments carefully. Just getting them to understand that they don’t understand is hard enough, but if you can do it it’s a good first step.
[ ironic nitpick ]
In the U.S., all the significant groups that employ priest guys are quite comfortable with the scientific theory of evolution.
[ /ironic nitpick ]
