The Clever Badger I'm not dead yet!

Humans, Apes, and Stephen Baldwin

John Loftus posted a video over at Debunking Creationism featuring Stephen Baldwin (the less well-known brother of Alec, Daniel, and William) rattling off the tired old line "if evolution says that man came from apes, then why are there still apes?"¹

(I included the video here, just for completeness.)

The video segues into biologist Richard Dawkins giving an eloquent and easy to follow explanation of why Baldwin's question is so far off the mark that it's not even wrong. Briefly:

1. Evolution doesn't claim that man came from apes.
2. Evolution does assert that humans share a common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos.
3. Evolution does assert that the group (humans + chimpanzees + bonobos) shares a common ancestor with gorillas.
4. Evolution does assert that the group (humans + chimpanzees + bonobos + gorillas) shares a common ancestor with orangutans.

Note that none of the assertions requires any population of modern apes to transform into modern humans.  Baldwin's rhetoric proceeds from a misinterpretation of evolution, so it's broken from the very start.  It may be helpful to consider a typical human extended family:

1. You share common ancestors with your first cousins.²
2. The group (you + your first cousins) shares common ancestors with your second cousins.
3. The group (you + your first cousins + your second cousins) shares common ancestors with your third cousins.

None of these relationships require any of your cousins to transform into you, nor do they require your grandparents (or great grandparents, or great great grandparents...) to transform into you.

I'm not going to spend any more time picking on Baldwin - Dawkins³ does it better in the video - but I am going to spend a little time looking more closely at the question itself.

The basic question "if man evolved from apes, then why are there still apes?" can take on numerous derivative forms (one particularly interesting one I've seen goes something like "if evolution says that chimps are the closest relatives of humans, then why is <some gene> in chickens almost identical to a human gene?"), but they all collapse into a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of common descent.

Absent some background in biology in general and evolution in particular, it isn't really a stupid question at all - it's a very natural one.⁴

One reason that this is the case, I suspect, is because our practical experience is that organisms don't seem to change from generation to generation - our cats always have kittens, so to speak.  The kittens may have some odd markings in their fur, or an extra toe on each paw, but they're fundamentally still cats, and nobody makes much of it because everyone knows that there is a considerable amount of variation present in cats.  When you look at things like lions and tigers, it's fairly obvious to most people that those animals are essentially much larger versions of housecats, and if you see a reconstruction of a sabre-toothed cat in a museum, it's cat-like enough to pass muster.  There is enough essential cat-ness to these animals that their relatedness is readily apparent.⁵

What aren't as readily apparent to the average person are the minute differences between individuals - a slightly thicker coat, slightly longer legs, and so forth - that selection pressures can act on over many, many generations.

It can be a bit difficult to accept the idea that minute, almost imperceptible differences can accumulate over time to the extent that one branch of descent could lead to chimpanzees and one branch to humans, but if you really think it through it makes a lot of sense.⁶

The point here is that questions like Baldwin's aren't intrinsically stupid questions.  If they're asked sincerely by someone who is genuinely curious, they're very useful questions, because they can lead to informative, constructive dialog.⁷

I think that in the end, that's what works best.

-Jay

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¹Baldwin's words were slightly different, but went to the same point.

²Those ancestors are your grandparents, just in case that isn't obvious.

³I may as well throw this in here. There are a lot of folks who dismiss Dawkins out of hand because he is, among other things, a vocal atheist. Big deal. He also happens to be one of the most gifted science writers on the planet.  Dismissing Dawkins qua science writer because of his position on religion makes no more sense than dismissing him because he wears glasses.

⁴That said, when high-profile creationist personalities continue to toss this question out even after they've been offered repeated explanations and clarifications, one begins to wonder what their motivation really is...

⁵I do not intend to suggest by this example that domestic cats are descended from tigers. Or smilodons.

⁶It's a bit like those word puzzles where you start with one word, and with each step you change one letter (subject to the constraint that each step is, itself, a valid word), you end up with a much different word than the one you started with.

⁷Personally, I'd rather talk through the concept of common descent a hundred times with someone who really wants to understand it than talk through it once with someone who is content simply to parrot arguments that they read in a Ray Comfort book.

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