Why are there no human apes alive today?

No one here has said this except you. No evolutionist is claiming chimps and humans are the same. They share a set of characteristics, but they are not the same. If they were the same then they'd be the same species. Chimps, gorillas, orangutans and humans are all in separate categories at the species level. Humans even have a genus all to themselves - how about that for being special!Whales, squirrels, horses, chimps and humans are all considered mammals because of certain shared characteristics, such as bearing live young. You don't object to this classification, right?In the same way, chimps, gorillas, orangutans and humans are all considered apes because of certain shared characteristics, such as opposable thumbs and no tail. Why do you object to this classification and not the other?--Percy

--delete double post--Edited by Percy, : Delete.

Hi Mazzy,You didn't respond to anything I said. This seems to be yet another repeat of your claim that evolution is false and in a horrendous mess.When you click on a message's reply button there's a kind of expectation that you'll be replying to the contents of that message, but good for you for thinking out of the box! --Percy

You keep repeating stuff like this, but that's all you ever do is repeat the same assertions over and over again. When it comes to actually supporting those assertions, meh! Maybe you could try explaining what those links have to do with the classification of humans as apes.Why is it that the classification of humans as animals, vertebrates, mammals and primates, just like chimps, gorillas and orangutans, doesn't bother you, but including humans in the ape family drives you crazy?--Percy

I guess not. Could you explain the implications, please? In your own words instead of just links? As I've said a number of times, I'm talking about classification based upon shared characteristics, not ancestry. Since any mention of ancestry or descent sends you off on another tirade about the "assumption of ancestry" I've been avoiding such terms. The Linnaean system is based upon structure, not ancestry as you've mistakenly stated at least a couple times, and that system works pretty well for the categories of life we've been talking about. So it's the name you object to? It's just the "ape" label that drives you crazy? What's in a name? Why do you care? That gorillas, chimps, orangutans and humans all bear live young, have teats, have opposable thumbs, etc., is a fact, and these shared characteristics require that at some level of classification they be in the same group. It just so happens that that group is called Hominidae, or more popularly, apes. I get that you post links you never explain. You may as well give up the practice in replies to me because I checked out a few of them early on and they didn't seem to support your position at all. Requests that you explain how they proved your point were ignored, so I gave up looking at your links a long time ago.By the way, what you're doing is covered in the Forum Guidelines:

5. Bare links with no supporting discussion should be avoided. Make the argument in your own words and use links as supporting references.

All you do is make an assertion with no supporting evidence or argument, followed by a link. You never describe any evidence or state any rational chain of reasoning or argument. You might find it illuminating trying to construct effective arguments from the information in your links.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Add additional sentence at the end.

What you've established is a definite impression in the minds of the other participants, but it has nothing to do with common sense or evolution. All this one sentence post does is add yet another unsupported assertion to your long list. To help move the discussion forward you should respond to one of the messages about classification with the evidence and rationale for your position. Or to one of the messages about the fossil evidence for human ancestry. Or to one of the messages about classification of fossils. Or to one of the messages inquiring how your links support your position.--Percy

Are you making a religious or a scientific statement?If you're making a religious statement then save it for church.If you're making a scientific statement then where's the evidence of God and of how he created the kinds? You never provided any evidence or rationale for any contradiction in the definition of species. All you did was make empty and unsupported assertions. If debate only required making baseless assertions then you'd be doing fine, but it requires evidence and a explanation of how the evidence fits within a framework of understanding. When? Where? On this we agree. You should have led with this. This is your opinion about the topic of this thread, but you have never given any indication of interest in discussing any evidence that might support your opinion. You just make declarative statements left and right: "That's an ape, that's a human." But evidence and rationale? Never.How about you turn over new leaf and respond to the evidence against your exceedingly odd claim that Homo erectus is an ape and Turkana boy is a human. Here are the three skulls yet again, with Homo erecuts on the left, Turkana boy in the middle, and a human skull on the right: --Percy

A common theme emerging in messages from those debating with you is that you lie. I object to this characterization on two grounds. First, it would be extremely rare and unusual for someone to lie on this scale for such a lengthy period. I think you sincerely believe your position is correct. Second, it's against the Forum Guidelines that request civility and courtesy, without which debates descend into acrimony and name calling.But what is one to make of the way you continually mischaracterize what people say (to mention just one example, claiming that the evolutionists were stating that chimps and humans were the same), the way you ignore most arguments, and especially the way you spew a veritable torrent of false information? It's almost as if you believe that anything that pops into your head is true as long as it supports your beliefs. You say "let's remember" about the human skull as if we had discussed it before, but it is a fact that I had to post those images three times before you responded, and that this is the first time you responded. There's nothing to remember because we haven't discussed this before.As is typical you managed to compress an incredible number of errors into a small number of words, for that sentence continues on to assert that the skull was "chosen by your researchers." How do you know where that skull image came from? You obviously have no idea where it came from. You didn't even check the link, because if you had then you would have known it comes from a novelty shop, not my "researchers."That image was not "carefully chosen." I found the image myself by typing "human skulls" into a Google image search. You can do the same thing and find dozens of skull images that look pretty much just like that one. Here are some images that include many human skulls: Your link (Turkana Boygetting past the propaganda by Daniel Anderson, a creationist pseudonym) told you that Turkana boy fits within the normal human range of variation. Here are the Homo erectus and Turkana boy skulls again - do either of them look even remotely like any of the human skulls above? It is undeniably true that there is an enormous range of human variation, so here's the skull of an Australian aborigine and a male African: And if you poke about on the Internet you can find skulls with a wide range of unusual attributes, but the skull image I originally posted is fairly typical of modern images.Egad, I just ran into the image limit (it made sense 10 years ago, does it still make sense?). I'll continue this in my next post.--Percy

Hi Mazzy,This continues my previous reply that I had to cut short because of the number of images.More importantly, the images I provided of Homo erectus is fairly typical. Here are a bunch more images of Homo erectus that I tracked down using the Wikipedia article listing primate and hominin fossils. The first one is Turkana boy: What we don't find any skulls of the age of Homo erectus that resemble modern human skulls. Homo erectus skulls lie far outside the range of normal human variation, and human skulls lie far outside the range of variation we find in Homo erectus. If you think that's not so then don't just make up some objections or quote someone else's made up objections. This time actually post the images and describe in your own words the features in those images that leads you to the conclusion that the normal range of variation of Homo erectus and humans skulls overlaps.Let me conclude with the categorization issue that you keep avoiding. It appears that it's the "ape" label that drives you crazy, but why does the name matter to you? Why do you care what a particular categorization group is called? That gorillas, chimps, orangutans and humans all bear live young, have teats, have opposable thumbs, etc., is a fact, and these shared characteristics require that at some level of classification they be in the same group. It just so happens that that group is called Hominidae, or more popularly, apes.Sorry you got suspended, see you in a couple days.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

Science is driven by data and evidence, not revelation. So you're saying that your conservative Christian religious beliefs based upon Biblical revelation are a sufficient basis for questioning real world findings. Interesting.I think few here would argue that we're certain of any specific evolutionary pathways from the common ancestor we shared with chimps to modern humans. The difficulty telling cousins from direct ancestors has been mentioned in this thread at least several times. We *are* apes. You never responded to my Message 596 and Message 621.By the way, where you said this: There was no "link below", but you also made no attempt to summarize the evidence and arguments from that link in your own words. If you do decide to supply the link then it would help a great deal if you would describe the evidence and arguments from it that you feel support your opinion, using the link only as a reference.AbE: Mazzy edited his post after I replied, not everything I quoted is still there.--PercyEdited by Percy, : AbE.

Hi Mazzy,I can't tell what I wrote that you're responding to, and your post appears to be just a repeat of the same unsupported assertions you've been making throughout your time in this thread. Maybe if I have time I'll come back and look at your post again later.If I could make a comment, it would help a great deal if you could quote what you're replying to. You might find it helpful to yourself also - you might find it easier to keep your response focused on what was actually said. Could you read the blinking announcement at the top of the page (at least it blinks in most browsers)? The one about quote boxes? Probably put there for you? It explains how to do it. There's additional help in the link to the left of the message box that you type into when you're replying - it's the "help" for dBCodes.--Percy

Actually, they have lots of ideas, but regarding the specific path of our ancestral history there is insufficient evidence for deciding conclusively among them. And maybe no current theories are correct. We can be certain that more hominid fossil surprises are buried in the ground waiting to be discovered. This is not an accurate characterization. They agree on quite a bit. What particular differences are you thinking of. Please describe them in your own words. I think what you're trying to say is that researchers create a mathematical model, and then they assign variables the values needed to get the necessary answers. Can you describe, in your own words, an example of this? I think that using the Bible as a reference source for matters of science pretty conclusively identifies you as a creationist and evangelical Christian, whether you care to be honest about it or not. You had said this: So if you're actually making a scientific statement then you need:

1. Evidence of God.
2. Evidence of how he created.
3. A method for identifying kinds based upon evidence.

Good question. Laypeople tend to think of species as completely independent of each other and unable to interbreed, but we have many examples of interbreeding species. Lions can breed with tigers (ligers), the domestic cat can breed with Asian leopard cats (the bengal breed of domestic cat), horses can breed with zebras (zorses), and so on. Evolution is a slow process, and two separate populations of the same species will gradually become more different from one another. The more different they become the less capable they will be of interbreeding.There is never any single instant in time when the two populations become different species. Species is a human construct that is insufficiently nuanced for accurately describing breeding compatibility. Suffice to say that the definition of species does not rule out interbreeding - what would be the point of defining species in a way that ignores what we can see happening? Certainly all members of the same species are capable of interbreeding, but the definition of species makes no comment about the interbreeding compatibility with other species.So when you say this: This is the definition you're accusing us of having, not the definition we actually use, which isn't simple. The way you're defining species is only true to a first approximation. As you can see just by examining a list of species that can interbreed, the real world is more complicated than that. If you can be specific about what you see as contradictions then we could discuss them, but in the absence of any examples I can only respond generally, and that would be to repeat what I said before. The real world resists neat categorization. Species is a very useful concept, but there is much detail that it doesn't capture. It is true that there are multiple ways to measure genetic similarity or distance. In a world of metric/English, Fahrenheit/Celsius, and PHP/HTML/CSS/Perl/Ruby/C#/C++/etc., it should come as no surprise that that there should be more than one way to measure genetic similarity. As long as one only compares values from the same method, what's the problem? And yet people work with bits and pieces of things all the time and are able to figure out what they are. From forensic experts at crime scenes to archaeologists reassembling ancient ceramics to researchers reconstructing the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are many examples of people figuring out and putting back together what has been torn apart, and that includes anthropologists and paleontologists. This is a bare assertion with no supporting argument. Your link is just a general article about Homo erectus, and it calls Homo erectus human. That link alone provides no support for your position whatsoever, and this is true of almost all your links. If you think a link supports your view then you have to describe how. Said the evangelical Christian creationist.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Clarify about whose definition of speciation Mazzy is using.

No, you're actually saying something quite different, that differences in some areas invalidate the consensus and agreement that exists in other areas.As has been explained many times, our uncertainty concerning the specific pathways of human evolution has no impact on the certainty that we do share a common ancestor with chimps, indeed, with all life. Our confidence in evolution as the explanation for the diversity of life does not derive or depend upon our ability to tease out specific evolutionary pathways of the human line. The evidence for evolution extends across all of life, both extant and extinct, either fossilized or the morphology and genetics of existing life. If you can spell out these disagreements then we can discuss them, but these non-specific accusations you keep making are too vague to respond to. They're just your unsupported assertions.--Percy

This is rule 5 from the Forum Guidelines:

5. Bare links with no supporting discussion should be avoided. Make the argument in your own words and use links as supporting references.

Those links which I have followed did not support your point in any discernible way, so if you think they support your point of view then it is incumbent upon you to explain how. What kind of discussion would it be if everyone just posted links? It might look like this: So please, include the evidence supporting your position in your messages and construct your own arguments around that evidence, using links only as references. Look in the mirror much? You just pegged the board's irony meter.We're not really having a discussion here. Every message you get launches you on another repeat of your unsupported accusations against evolution and evolutionists. We can't have a discussion, a back and forth, if you're not going to respond to what people say. Please start using quote boxes (cut-n-paste the text into your post, then put a [qs] in front and a [/qs] at the end), and then comment, critique and rebut what was actually said.--Percy

Actually, what I'm going to do is demonstrate that you have once again simply asserted a position rather than supported it with evidence. I will also show that you selectively ignored key passages in the New Scientist article (The twist that shows Lucy wasn't flat-footed). Here's your statement of your position: Now let's examine the evidence and rationale you submitted for this position. This is how the article describes it: The article uses the word "similar," so your argument is that similar bones mean same species. The human body has around 200 bones, and I'm sure that you could find at least a few that are similar to bones in the chimpanzee, and so by your logic each similar bone is evidence that chimps are human. Obviously you need more rigorous criteria.Also helpful in making an assessment are these images of the 4th metatarsal of chimps, gorillas, humans and A. afarensis (click to grow the image): Notice that the human and A. afarensis tarsals are much more similar to each other than to the chimp and gorilla tarsals, but they're only similar. The A. afarensis tarsal is not a match for the human tarsal. And as I said before, if this degree of similarity in a single bone is all you're going to require to judge two specimens to be the same species then humans must be the same species as chimps, and probably the same as many other creatures, too. Can you explain your logic that concludes that the absence of evidence constitutes "scientific support" for your position? Drawing conclusions in the absence of evidence seems the very opposite of any scientific logic. You're also ignoring that A. afarensis was, in the words of the article, "the only hominin known to have been present in the area at the time." On the contrary, you have used the very opposite of science to reach your conclusions, relying primarily upon illogic and the absence of evidence.Your post goes on to introduce yet another argument about FOX2P genes, but as many have suggested in this thread, it would be better to keep the focus on one thing at a time.--Percy