1. It means that humans came from monkeys, or that a monkey literally gave birth to a human some time in the past.
People say "monkeys" but they really mean chimps. (The fact that chimps are apes rather than monkeys is not important for this answer.) Although some chimpanzee DNA is almost identical to our own, this doesn't mean that somewhere down the evolutionary trail that a chimp birthed a human or vice versa. Humans and chimps both came from a lower form of animal that developed in similar, yet diverging, directions. BUT, we did come from a monkey-like animal.
Pretend that your arm is a branch on the Tree of Life and your fingers are the small branches sprouting off that branch. Your pinky finger is monkeys, your ring finger is orangutans, your middle finger is gorillas, your pointing finger is chimps (our closest relative at 98.77% DNA similarity), and your thumb is us, humans. Now, saying that humans came from monkeys is like saying that your pinky finger came from your thumb. The thumb didn't come from any of the fingers. The thumb came from the same place as the fingers - your wrist. The wrist is where you will find the extinct species that came before the hand, the elbow is the species before the wrist, and so on. In between your elbow and wrist are tons of other species that are a little bit elbow and a little bit wrist. And between your wrist and each of your fingers are tons more species that are a little bit wrist and a little bit pinky, a little bit wrist and little bit ring finger, and so on. All of these species were born and buried over the course of four million years. Just think how much humans have changed in the last two hundred years.
We don't keep slaves, we don't burn witches, we don't think that the flu comes from demons. We've changed a lot. Maybe not physically, but we're capable of typing an e-mail, doing the finances, talking on the phone, instant messaging, making dinner, and watching the CNN newsticker all at the same time. This talent didn't appear overnight. Our technologies changed instead, and our minds adapted. Information is coming at us from all directions. Those that do not develop a filter to handle it all will not be fit to survive.
2. All transitional fossils have been proven to be fakes. There are no reliable fossils that show evolution happening.
The following examples have had their attacks, and a lot of examples have been proven to be fakes, but the following are just some of the survivors. If you come across an article that says these are fakes then get a second opinion from a more reputable source.
Archaeopteryx (a lizard creature with wings and feathers) has stood the tests of time since its discovery in the mid-19th Century. This was the first true specimen of a transitional fossil to be discovered and shows how dinosaurs evolved into birds. Another example would be the recently discovered Tiktaalik (a fish-like creature with arms and lungs).
But you don’t need fossils to show evolution! Just go to an aquarium in Australia! Lungfish have gills and lungs, like Tiktaalik. Please click on the "lungfish" link and prepare to be amazed, or better yet visit that Aussie aquarium and you’ll see the lungfish in action. If a lungfish enters shallow or unhealthy water it will rise to the surface and breathe with its mouth! Wow! There is also the Coelacanth, which is a prehistoric fish that gives birth to fully formed babies rather than laying eggs. This fish is living today and is available for questions…
On the human front: Scientists have found many different types of primate-like bones in varying parts of the world which cannot be classified as fully human, so it’s safe to assume that these creatures are rough drafts of ourselves.
People have no problem believing in cavemen (Neanderthals), but the fact of the matter is that cavemen didn’t look like Fred Flintstone. Neanderthals had flatter brain cases, prominent brow bones, and the head sat more ahead of the shoulders than modern humans. Their facial features were closer to the modern Australian Aborigine. On that note, another feature of the Neanderthal skull is what is known as the Occipital bun. (The back of the skull just above your collar is the Occipital bone section of the skull, and the Occipital “bun” is a small bump that juts out from the rest of the Occipital area of the skull.) This bump is prominent in Neanderthal skulls, but is rare in modern human skulls. This feature happens to appear in South African bushpeople, a small portion of people in Lancashire, England, and Australian Aborigines. I happen to have an Occipital bun. (I’m mainly Caucasian, so I’m assuming that mine is derived from my English relatives, but I don’t know much about my genealogy, so it could be that my Appalachian ancestors may have been of mixed races, which would have included African blood.)
None of this is proof that humans came from Neanderthals. In fact, it may mean that Neanderthals and humans evolved together and lived at the same period, possibly living amongst one another for many years and venturing into interspecies breeding. The sad truth in this is that full Neanderthals died out and it may have been by the hand of humans. We have no problem committing mass genocide and other massacres against our own species, so it only seems evident that wiping out a small population of Neanderthals would not be out of character for us. It may have just been the first of many “conquests” of native peoples who made for easy targets. Never fear, though, at least our minds are evolving…
3. Evolution destroys the hope that humans are special.
You can think that if you want, just like you could say that a non-belief in a supreme being would make someone amoral, but the evidence is to the contrary. Humans appear to be what evolution is striving to achieve! If you can find another creature on this planet that is currently studying evolution then perhaps you’re right, but right now only humans are capable of understanding the complexity of life and where they reside in it. As an example, humans used to own slaves, beat and sometimes kill their own children, and kill fellow human beings for the smallest of infractions. (Some humans still do!) A lot of humans didn’t actually condone these things, but no one was adamantly against them, so it’s safe to say that these activities were normal behavior in our past. I think we’ve come a long way! That being said, it appears that our human bodies haven’t evolved much for quite a while, but our minds have evolved exponentially. Our tools and technology have evolved instead – corrective lenses and laser eye surgery, for example.
I’m a full-time father. My wife provides for our family. Being that this is a new role for men, a position that has rarely existed in human history, it could be labeled evolution in action – a step forward, if you will. Let’s face it, men do not need to venture out and hunt down wild animals for food anymore, so it’s inevitable that our roles will change. I’ve gotten a head start, whereas most men have opted to be either unemployed or disappointed in their emasculating careers. Men used to feel useful, but if you’re stuck behind a computer doing work that will eventually be given to a machine, then chances are you don’t feel as special as past hunter-gatherers.
If women are better at thoughtful, multi-faceted tasks rather than brawny, macho, hunt and kill tasks, and the only jobs available are the thoughtful tasks, then chances are most men are going to be pushed out of the workforce. I wouldn’t call it survival of the fittest, because that argument does not relate to humans, but it’s definitely the survival of the male’s ability to contribute to society – from inside their house to the rest of humankind. And if males are looking for new brawny tasks that don’t require the bravery of soldiers or firefighters, then I suggest raising children full-time because as kids eat they get pretty heavy and carrying them around requires manly strength.
There was recently an article claiming that males may be extinct in 125,000 years or so. Of course, I thought. If you can make offspring without sperm, like any number of the animals that have been cloned in the past few years, eventually males are useless. Let's face it, guys, we're the cooking oil, but the ladies are the ovens. You can always substitute something for oil, but you can't bake your bread without an oven. And by "oven" I mean a uterus. So the best thing to do now, guys, is to make yourself look useful, and it starts by taking care of the kids.
4. Evolution was Hitler's reason for killing Jews, homosexuals, black people, gypsies, etc. Stalin and godless communism rely on evolutionary thinking!
Hitler may have mentioned something about the “survival of the fittest” and that only the strongest races will prevail, but how did he come to the conclusion that Jews and blacks were not strong races? At the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Jesse Owens (an African-American) won four gold medals! It is not delusional to think that maybe Hitler was not a Darwinist and that his idea of “the fittest” or the cleanest blood was a bit skewed by his upbringing. Hitler was merely a racist and megalomaniac. He was a Catholic, but this may or may not have influenced his hatred of Jews, blacks, other Christians, homosexuals, and the mentally-challenged – all of which he systemically “removed” from his Europe. But he did not do it alone, and this is where religion IS to blame.
What could convince the German people that he was right? How could Hitler get so many of those citizens to join him in his crusade? The answer lies in religion. Hitler was critical of religion, but he also relied on it, which is evidenced by his private letters that were recently published. Hitler is to blame for the Holocaust, but the German people of the early 20th Century were his accomplices. The Nazis wore a little badge on their uniforms that said “Got mit Uns,” which translates to “God with Us.” The Nazis interpreted the Bible to mean that the Aryans were the “chosen” people and that all others were to be removed from God’s land. This is still in action today…
If Hitler and the Nazis were Darwin-loving atheists then every member of the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Brotherhood, Skinheads, Neo-Nazis, or other White Nationalist groups are atheists, too. Go ahead, find yourself a Neo-Nazi Skinhead and call him an atheist Darwin-lover, I dare you. If anything is a dangerous idea it is living your life with the assumption that your religion is the true religion and that all others must die. The pretentious supremacy of the white race is the Nazi religion, with a few Christian principles to convince the sympathizers. And it is the religious attitude and gullibility to believe anything that gets moderate Christians to lead other humans into gas chambers.
As for atheistic communism, you’d be hard pressed to find an atheist Cuban. Most Cubans are Catholic. Most Chinese people claim to be non-religious, but this does not mean that they are free of dogma. China has large numbers of Buddhists and Taoists, and China as a whole is very much a “spiritual” country. The government finds these religions to be harmless toward the good of the State, so they remain. To China, religion is useful to keep the sheep within the fence. The danger is in atheism and free thought, which is why China has complete control over what its citizens can find on Google. The Catholic Church had a nice, long run of censorship before that darn Guttenberg printing press came along, then people started to actually read the Bible for themselves and the doubts started to set in.
The Soviet Union was not a nation of atheists either. These leaders may have tried to suppress religious worship, but only because they wanted their people to be faithful to only one deity – their leader. Why else would Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. have huge posters and statues of themselves put up all over their country? (Recent examples are Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il). They all want their citizens to know that their leader is watching them, in case God happens to look away or in case God doesn’t exist.
5. Evolution relies on random mutations and chance, so if something wants to see then it had better hope to mutate some eyes.
What is better, a fully-formed eye or a mutation of light-sensitive areas with a thin layer of skin covering them? The whole eye sounds better, of course, but you don’t magically get a fully-formed eye overnight. That "eye" has to start as an area on your body with a few light-sensitive cells covered by thin skin. (Worms have no eyes, but they do have the light-sensitive skin cells.) At this stage you can only distinguish light from dark. If you’re in a dark hole underground, then being able to locate a light source with your “eye” is better than nothing! Your offspring would also get the “eye” area, and that offspring would carry it on, and offspring after offspring will add their own mutations until eventually one of the babies is seeing for the first time! Wow! What that must have been like…
Not all mutations are good, though. Bad eyesight is a mutation. Do moles have eyes? They spend a lot of their time underground, in the dark, why do they need eyes? When rental increases rose beyond their monthly income, moles took to living underground and eventually their eyes de-evolved, or devolved. Greedy landlords began to dominate their environments and the only affordable housing was in the dirt. (Actually, it was probably the predators that wanted to eat them that drove them underground.) Moles do still have eyes, but they rarely open their eyelids, and some varieties have actually had their eyelids seal shut through random mutation. Getting dirt in their "eyes" doesn't really seem to bother them, so sealing their eyes doesn't appear to give one species an advantage over another, but the sealing does occur.
For humans, bad eyesight is simply a minor handicap until you get glasses, which is why “survival of the fittest” doesn’t mean much in the human world, but it is completely different for eagles in nature. Humans can rely on optometrists for assistance, but eagles are pretty much on their own. An eagle with bad eyesight is not going to catch anything to eat, is not going to live to find a mate, and is not going to produce offspring. This is natural selection. If humans didn’t have other humans to rely on it is safe to say that nearsightedness would have been bred out of existence. I (speaking as a nearsighted person) am thankful for the field of optometry. Makes you wonder why all those Nazis with glasses were given a free pass...
