What i can't understand about evolution....

The answer depends on what you mean by ape and ape-man. If by ape you mean modern living apes (arbitrarily excluding humans), and by ape-man you mean Australopithecus, then the ape-man came first! But if by ape you mean the common ancestor of all living apes, then apes came first. the problem here is that "ape" is not an officially adopted terminology. You must define your terms so we can make sure we are talking about the same thing. Again, you have to define your terms. what criteria do you use to decide which forms are more advanced?

Because evolution doesn't care how life began, it could've been any way you can think of. God could've done it, it could've been chemical processes, but so far we don't know, and for evolution, it doesn't matter. We do have some indication that chemical processes could be responsible, but not yet a fully developed theory. So for now, I'm sticking with: "I don't know". Ok, good. That's a very important step. I have no idea. Nor is it important for evolution. It's likely we will never know what came before, but that we're going to find out how it could've happened. But for now, a definitive answer is lacking. This however does not mean that you can discard evolution any more then you can discard nuclear physics, gravity and a whole bunch of other scientific theories that don't explain the origins of the things rthey are describing, but do describe how these things work.

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I hunt for the truth

Peg, others have pointed this out, but let me give my take.Your approach to this whole issue, somehow refusing to accept insights from the ToE because its 'starting point' remains unknown and fuzzy, can be generalized as reducing every (scientific) question to "Explain to me ALL AND EVERYTHING AT ONCE, or I will not accept ANYTHING AT ALL". This doesn't work and doesn't get you anywhere (you will remain stuck in the starting blocks forever)!Science is a cummulative process, it's not like an all-encompassing revelation that provides absolute total explanation for everything. The Giant-All-Answering-Rabbit that you would presumably want to pull out of your hat, doesn't actually exist. So science basically has to start from nothing, and then slowly builds up and accumulates. There's only one practical way to achieve this, and that is by chopping reality into "digestible chunks", and explaining those chunks one-by-one. Slowly putting pieces of the puzzle together.What you should understand is that a theory (and they ALL have this limitation) which only considers a limited "chunk" of reality seperately (like the ToE is concerned with the diversity of life, but not the origin), is not somehow inferior or less valid because of this. It's not like we have somehow first isolated the part of reality that we are investigating (like the diversity of life), from Reality As A Whole (which would include the origin of life). No, while we investigated it, it remained embedded in the grander scheme of things all the while, subjected to any influences that other parts of reality could have on it. So if we end up with certain conclusions about that sub-area of reality, they are not just valid for that particular area that we are investigating, but simply "valid" altogether, within reality as a whole. It is not necessary to know Everything about Everything before we can start answering sub-questions.The future might see a theory that encompasses more of reality at once(we can envision a more general "imperfect replicators" theory in the future which might encompass both abiogenesis and evolution), but this wouldn't invalidate the more limited previous theory. The conclusions of that more limited theory would still stand, because they would still fit the evidence.So to apply this to the ToE: the Theory of Evolution is what it is because it fits the available evidence this way. It fits that evidence at this moment, while the question of the origin of life is still open, and it will still fit this evidence in a possible future where the origin of life will be understood (after all the world itself remains the same, whether we understand more of it, or not). It will still do so, because even though we don't know the details behind the origin right now, whatever its implications are for evolution, they are already having their impact on the available evidence right now.Hope this helps.Annafan

I don't know who this "Pery" is, but he sounds like a pretty astute guy! Repeating what I suggested in Message 301, SeekingFirstTheKingdom wasted a lot of message space, so while the message count is now above 300, that's not indicative of how much opportunity there has been for productive discussion.Despite the rather broad thread title we've settled in on just a few related themes and are making good progress, but the line of discussion with Peg and Wardog25 feels fragile and I'd rather not risk losing it because of a thread restart. I think the participants would be grateful if we could keep the thread open for a while longer, taking another status check around 400 messages or so.--Percy

You keep referring to evolutionary progression and advancing up the evolutionary scale, but there's no such thing. Evolution is not a progression from less advanced to more advanced. It's a progression from less adapted to better adapted, and the requirements of adaptation do not include becoming more advanced, which is an ambiguous and highly relative term best avoided in discussions about evolution.Creatures successfully adapted to their environment are not more advanced than creatures poorly adapted to that same environment. Drop a man naked into the water around Antarctica and see how well he competes with the penguins. Does his quick demise mean he is less advanced than the penguins? No, of course not, and it doesn't even make sense to ask the question. It merely means he is less well adapted to that environment.It's perfectly reasonably to ask questions about creatures like which is faster, which is stronger, which has sharper teeth, which is more intelligent, and so forth, but being faster or stronger or smarter doesn't mean more advanced. All that counts is how well adapted creatures are to their environment. As others have told you, humans are apes, but the question you're asking is still pretty clear. Here's a table from Wikipedia's article on human evolution. The acronym mya stands for millions of years ago. Homo sapiens sapiens is 3rd from the bottom.

Comparative table of Homo species

Species	Lived when (mya)	Lived where	Adult height	Adult mass	Brain volume (cm)	Fossil record	Discovery / publication of name
H. habilis	2.2 - 1.6	Africa	1.0-1.5 m (3.3-4.9 ft)	33-55 kg (73-120 lb)	660	many	1960/1964
H. erectus	2 - 0.03	Africa, Eurasia (Java, China, Caucasus)	1.8 m (5.9 ft)	60 kg (130 lb)	850 (early) - 1100 (late)	many	1891/1892
H. rudolfensis	1.9	Kenya				1 skull	1972/1986
H. georgicus	1.8	Republic of Georgia			600	few	1999/2002
H. ergaster	1.9 - 1.4	E. and S. Africa	1.9 m (6.2 ft)		700-850	many	1975
H. antecessor	1.2 - 0.8	Spain	1.75 m (5.7 ft)	90 kg (200 lb)	1000	2 sites	1997
H. cepranensis	0.9 - 0.8?	Italy			1000	1 skull cap	1994/2003
H. heidelbergensis	0.6 - 0.25	Europe, Africa, China	1.8 m (5.9 ft)	60 kg (130 lb)	1100-1400	many	1908
H. neanderthalensis	0.35 - 0.03	Europe, W. Asia	1.6 m (5.2 ft)	55-70 kg (120-150 lb) (heavily built)	1200-1700	many	(1829)/1864
H. rhodesiensis	0.3 - 0.12	Zambia			1300	very few	1921
H. sapiens sapiens	0.2 - present	worldwide	1.4-1.9 m (4.6-6.2 ft)	50-100 kg (110-220 lb)	1000-1850	still living	”/1758
H. sapiens idaltu	0.16 - 0.15	Ethiopia			1450	3 craniums	1997/2003
H. floresiensis	0.10 - 0.012	Indonesia	1.0 m (3.3 ft)	25 kg (55 lb)	400	7 individuals	2003/2004

An actual evolutionary tree would be harder to produce since there are many disagreements about the order and structure of descent.--Percy

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if the ape men were supposed to have evolved into a more advanced form of previous ape, then how is it that those lower apes, survived and the more advanced apes did not?

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Others here have commented quite cogently oh your misuse of the terms "more advanced" and "lower." I would like to run you through a quick explanation of how the parent population may well remain the same as the daughter population changes. (Please note that these are the currently accepted terms to use for the different groups of organisms, parent and daughter, rather than lower and more advanced.)Assume there is a parent population of organisms that has reached an approximate stasis relative to the environment such that there is very little change from generation to generation. Next, assume that that population gets divided somehow, such that one portion is isolated from the other for a long period of time, then subjected to environmental pressures different from the parent population. After many generations, the daughter population can become so different from the parent population that the two will not longer be able to interbreed, but both will exist at the same time.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

Apes. Again I ask you the question - how are you measuring 'lower', 'higher' or 'more advanced'? Can you name one of these 'lower' apes and one of these 'advanced' apes. How would we measure which ones are better at surviving than others?I'd suggest that the species that survive are on average, those that are best at surviving. Some exceptions probably exist, lucky species and unlucky ones and so on. Can we agree that the measure of survival is in the surviving?And so, the 'advanced apes' that went extinct, weren't - on average - so great at surviving. Indeed - maybe the ones that have so far just got lucky. They are mostly doing poorly at surviving right now.Why? Well - because 'advanced' is a word that doesn't mean anything - I suspect it exists predominantly in your head and is a result of the hubris of 19th and early 20th Century Biologists who kept falling into the trap of believing that humans were the pinnacle of evolution which is just self-centredness.Alternatively - if we are sticking with the word 'advanced', then all present life forms are equally advanced. Gazelle are as advanced as lions. Lions are advanced as whales. Whales are advanced as Gorillas. Gorillas are as advanced as Lemurs. Lemurs are advanced as humans and humans are advanced as bacteria.

Hi Peg. I know you're getting nearly assaulted by replies and that I'm adding to the pile-up, but I really hope some of these replies are helping. Honestly, I couldn't care less if you actually accept evolution as an accurate explanation for the diversity of life, but I'd really, really like to debate a Creationist who understands what the Theory of Evolution actually says and so can argue without resorting to strawman arguments.A large number of responses have been generated over your usage of the terms "more advanced" and "lower." This is because such terms are honestly meaningless for what we're discussing.You're thinking in terms of "positive" and "negative" mutations, and that the organism with the most "positive" mutations is the most "advanced."That's not the way it works. A mutation can be positive or negative, but such a judgment is almost completely dependent on the environment, which we know can change. For example, a camel's hump helps it survive in a desert, but it's not much of a positive adaptation in an area with plenty of water like a rain forest. A camel is neither "higher" nor "lower" than a donkey or a horse.The so-called "evolutionary ladder" is not a term used in science. It's a creation of the media used to try to explain the concept to non-scientists, and as usual such watered-down explanations create far more misconceptions than they dispel. There is no such thing as "more evolved" or "less evolved."As such, there are no "lower apes." We are apes, as were what you call the "ape men." We are the eventual descendants of a variety of species of other apes. Other modern apes are also the eventual descendants of a variety of species of other apes. At some point in the past, our ancestors and their ancestors join together on a gargantuan family tree - the common ancestor. It's a population of that common ancestor species that split into two (or more) groups - perhaps the population was too large and one group migrated to a new area, or perhaps there was a disaster that forced them to spread out. In any case, the separation allowed the two populations of that species to develop independently and adapt to now-different environments without sharing genetic information. As has already been discussed, this eventually lead the two populations to be different species. This happened several more times for each population, eventually resulting in the various ape species (including us) we see today.The other apes continue to exist because they are able to survive just fine in their environment. "Survival of the fittest" doesn't necessarily mean that parent populations die out when a new daughter species forms. But mroe than that, this also means that the other apes we see today are not the same apes that we evolved from. They are just as much the product of evolution that we are - they simply evolved differently after our common ancestors branched off. So humans didn't evolve from chimpanzees or gorillas - rather, humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas all evolved from a common ancestor that branched out into two or more separate populations.Our intelligence may be better than theirs, but that doesn't make us a "higher" species, or make the other apes "less evolved." Evolution is less "survival of the fittest" and more "survival of the fit enough with favor to the most fit and adaptable." That's just too long for a tag line.

by ape-man i mean the 'ape-men' who came before us...i dont know their scientific namebut this image explains perfectly what i mean. the question i asked was why we still have lower forms of ape existing today. Please forgive me everyone else who has replied, i havnt read them all yet.Incidently, why is it assumed that the ape-men who came before us, had little hair??? Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

As was pointed out the term "lower" is wrong. As for why they aren't here anymore, they weren't suited to survive in the environment they were in.

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I hunt for the truth

thank you huntard, i agree with what you are saying, hence, as i've said before, i accept evolution to a point...to the point of where one species begins and endsI think it is also fair that evolutionists should not be so quick as to rule out completely the idea of a universal God/Creatorif as you say, a definitive answer to the origin of life is lacking, then we cannot rule out an intelligent designer altogether.

granted, 'lower' is a bad use of wording ....all life is complicated and amazing.I should have asked why gorillas and orangutans and monkeys are still around today....why didn't they all evolve?

No problem, here to help and all. But speciation has been observed to happen, both in the wild and in a lab. By speciation, I mean that descendants from a parent population are unable to breed with other descendants from the same parent population and that they vary genetically. Speciation in bacteria is measured somewhat differently I believe, but I don't know a lot about that. Perhaps not, but the problem is that there is no evidence for such a being existing. As the first cause for the original life, no, we can't (yet ). As a cause for every single species, yes, we can.

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I hunt for the truth

Because they were perfectly suited to survive in the environment they were in, just like crocodiles, who didn't evolve much either for millions of years.

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I hunt for the truth

imagine the a 50 story building. Where do they start the work of building it...at the top? No, it all begins with the foundations.it seems that evolution is working its way down, then it gets stuck in the mud when it comes to how the life that they are examining, actually came into existence in the first place.I'll tell you why they cant explain it... because they refuse to accept that an intelligent designer may have actually been its source.