Evolution
Well I’ll be a monkeys uncle…
I’m sure the caption phrase has more meaning for evolutionists than creationists, but I recently read an interesting story that may have serious repercussions for the argument of evolution:
Never mind that TV show that asks if you’re smarter than a fifth-grader. Is your memory better than a young chimp’s? Maybe not. Japanese researchers pitted young chimps against human adults in two tests of short-term memory, and overall, the chimps won. – [Yahoo/AP]
As if that weren’t enough, researchers at Duke University made a similarly in truguing discovery:
Chimps performed about as well as college students at mental addition, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a finding that suggests non-verbal math skills are not unique to humans. – [Yahoo/Reuters]
LOL, not only are these young chips memories better than humans, they are now on par with us in arithmetic?! HA! Evolution rears its speculative head at last! Are chimps finally evolving into more intelligent creatures? Or are humans devolving? I have to admit, given some of the events of the last few centuries, I find the latter more likely…
Perhaps believing in creation isn’t such a bad idea after all. 
Young chimp beats college students – [Yahoo/AP]
Chimps and college students as good at mental math – [Yahoo/Reuters]
Hi! I’m Troglodyte. Folks call me Trog…
I read an interesting article that kinda attempts to explain the source of a few of the common “politically incorrect” stereotypes of human nature:
“our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are produced not only by our individual experiences and environment in our own lifetime but also by what happened to our ancestors millions of years ago. ” – [Slashdot/Psychology Today]
Ok. So in essence we are basically all still cave people. How interesting. Anyhoo, much of the article deals with stereotypes. I’m not one to stereotype, however there is a big difference between predicting the behavior of the average member of a culture or race based on statistics, and attempting to predict the behavior of an individual member of the demographic in question by applying the statistics to that specific individual.
You can’t. But it’s a mistake I see people make daily. Anyone can tell you that any fairly symmetrical coin, if tossed in the air 100 times, should statistically land 50 times tails up and 50 times heads up. However nobody can guarantee which side will come up on the 50th toss. Or for any toss for that matter. It’s impossible. Stereotypes are the same.
Stereotypes are not pointless. A stereotype can actually be statistically accurate, and may be useful for situations where a gross generalization is needed. However it is a mistake to attempt to apply such generalizations at an individual level, since an individuals behavior can vary widely from the general parameters upon which the stereotype is based. So don’t do it.
All that aside, I found myself agreeing with most of what the article says, and though I found some if it rather surprising, it still made sense in a weird, instinctual way… Perhaps my inner caveman was nodding his head vigorously and going “Uh Huh! True Dat!”. Either way, take a gander, it’s a pretty good read, and it makes a lot of sense if you think about it objectively, even if some of it ostensibly flies in the face of “political correctness”.
Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature – [Slashdot/Psychology Today]
Unscientific Science.
Yet another interesting article from the “scientific” community. Apparently there are some who have taken the altruistic actions of some chimpanzees as “scientific” evidence to support the idea of human evolution:
new experimental evidence that chimpanzees act altruistically toward genetically unrelated members of the same species suggests that this psychological trait may not be unique to humans. – [Gizmag]
Apparently there is the belief that this may support the idea of the similar evolutionary roots between chimps and man. I dunno about all that. They seem to have conveniently ignored the altruistic actions of many other creatures in nature, or that of nature in general. Ants will throw themselves into a pool until it’s full in order to allow the rest to cross. Dogs have been known to pull people out of burning buildings and frozen lakes without regard to their own safety.
Examples of this kind abound in nature, not just in chimps and humans, so as far as I can tell, this neither proves nor disproves either evolution or creationism. Sometimes I think scientists often get blinded by their need to have their findings fit into whatever big picture they are working with, and start looking for fact to fit their theories, rather than the changing their theories to fit the facts. That is not good science. True science is objective, systematic and thorough. But being the humans that we are, we often find a way to introduce our flaws into the process.
Helpful Chimpanzees Shed Light on Human Evolution – [Gizmag]
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