I don't see why a skeleton on or gene make-up that is simply similar to ours means we are related. As I mentioned with the Dodo. It didn't leave improved ancestors.
Extinct animals fail and hence don't leave ancestors. Such as the soon to be extinct Panda.
The panda will perhaps leave no
descendants, but it has
ancestors going back millions then billions or years. You seem to be confusing the two terms.
My point is that humans are created apparently by millions of mutations so at some stage we would have had less functional, knees, backs, language etc. What kind of mutation could lead to our knee with out us being initially crippled.
Bad subject: I've been on crutches for two months with a ruined knee.
But lets look at things realistically--at every stage of evolution the populations, and all individuals therein, had functioning knees. Those knees changed over time, but at each species level, and for each individual and each population, the knee was fully functional. It is a common error of creationists to think of organisms being half formed or crippled. They weren't.
But as I mentioned by refering to "complete species", recreations of transitional species like elephants with half a trunk look half formed intuitively. Only something like a Duck billed platypus gives that illusion of transition.
"Intuitively" is not a meaningful term. An elephant with a trunk half as long was fully formed and fully functional. Perhaps a longer trunk was better, but it is a mistake to think of earlier forms as "half formed."
I have absolutely no problem with being related to apes or pigs or an amoeba. But I am not going to form my sense of identity based on who I am allegedly descended from.
Science provides evidence of relationships, but your sense of identity is something only you can develop. But wouldn't it be more sensible to base your sense of identity on reality rather than fiction? Perhaps you should try to reconcile the two.
But there appears to be no intermediated between humans and mokeys and Goriillas. I don't see why every intermediate stage would fail.
There are a lot of intermediates between monkeys, gorillas, and humans.
Many of them are on the direct line between an original ancestor, an early ape/monkey, and modern monkeys, gorillas, and humans. These species did not fail--they evolved into new species and successfully transitioned into modern monkeys, gorillas, and humans.
Another way to phrase this: these populations persisted through millions of years, but they changed as they went. Can you call this a failure for any one of those species? I wouldn't call it that.
Others species split off from those direct lines and did become extinct. They should not be confused with intermediate or transitional species. You could call them failures because they died out, but that has nothing to do with those species whose lines were successful and are still flourishing.
Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
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