LordReed: To further my position, this is from John Hawks an associate professor of anthropology:

Humans are hominoids. Hominoidea is a
taxonomic group. Phylogenetic systematics
holds that taxonomic groups should be
monophyletic — meaning that they include all
the descendants of one ancestor, and don’t
leave any descendants out. Humans are closely
related to chimpanzees and bonobos, more
distantly to gorillas, then orangutans, then
gibbons. All these living creatures are crown
hominoids. The Hominoidea includes all these,
together with extinct animals
like Australopithecus , Proconsul , Dryopithecus,
and many others. Chimpanzees are apes.
Gorillas are apes, as are bonobos, orangutans,
and gibbons. We routinely differentiate the
“great apes” from the “lesser apes”, where the
latter are gibbons and siamangs. Humans are
not apes. Humans are hominoids, and all
hominoids are anthropoids. So are Old World
monkeys like baboons and New World monkeys
like marmosets. All of us anthropoids. But
humans aren’t monkeys.

SOURCE

This is exactly the type of mental gymnastics I was talking about. First you admit that phylogenetic groups should include all descendants; then you want to arbitrarily exclude one group of descendants, humans.

And you want to use the argument from authority to support this nonsense? So if an associate professor of mathematics says 1+1=3, you'll expect me to just accept it?

Worst of all is that you didn't even read and understand your own source. Your prof was making the (only slightly less stupìd argument) that ape wasn't a scientific term and therefore not subject to the rules of logic so he can gerrymander its meaning to exclude humans if he wants to. That's like saying a BMW is not a car, its an experience. Its a gaddem car, don't be silly.

EvilBrain1:

This is exactly the type of mental gymnastics I was talking about. First you admit that phylogenetic groups should include all descendants; then you want to arbitrarily exclude one group of descendants, humans.

And you want to use the argument from authority to support this nonsense? So if an associate professor of mathematics says 1+1=3, you'll expect me to just accept it?

Worst of all is that you didn't even read and understand your own source. Your prof was making the (only slightly less stupìd argument) that ape wasn't a scientific term and therefore not subject to the rules of logic so he can gerrymander its meaning to exclude humans if he wants to. That's like saying a BMW is not a car, its an experience. Its a gaddem car, don't be silly.

It is you who didn't understand the article. The full article is a rebuttal to John Hawks position so maybe you should read it again.

LordReed:

Where is the arrogance please?

I don't accept we are apes same way we are not bananas regardless that we shared a common ancestor. Speciation occurred far back enough for a whole new specie to emerge. If this is true for bananas and humans then I hold it true for apes and humans as well.

EDIT
To further clarify my position:

One of the most persistent myths, however,
concerns the relationship of humans to great
apes, a group of primates that includes the
gorilla, orangutan and chimpanzee. Someone
who believes the myth will say, "If evolution
exists, then humans must be descended directly
from apes. Apes must have changed, step by
step, into humans." This same person will often
follow up with this observation: "If apes 'turned
into' humans, then apes should no longer exist."
Although there are several ways to attack this
assertion, the bottom-line rebuttal is simple --
humans didn't descend from apes. That's not to
say humans and apes aren't related, but the
relationship can't be traced backward along a
direct line of descent, one form morphing into
another. It must be traced along two
independent lines, far back into time until the
two lines merge.
The intersection of the two lines represents
something special, what biologists refer to as a
common ancestor . This apelike ancestor, which
probably lived 5 to 11 million years ago in
Africa, gave rise to two distinct lineages, one
resulting in hominids -- humanlike species --
and the other resulting in the great ape species
living today. Or, to use a family tree analogy,
the common ancestor occupied a trunk, which
then divided into two branches. Hominids
developed along one branch, while the great
ape species developed along another branch.

SOURCE

I'm confused here, but mostly because you seem confused. Also, this is just half of the story, contorted in various ways to push an agenda. But I'll try to refrain from addressing every little niggle and focus on a key one.

You say humans didn't descend from apes, that speciation was far away, "enough for a whole new species (or family of species, which is what I think you mean) to appear". That's not exactly true.

It's already been pointed out to you that orangutangs diverged first, yes? Roughly 10-12 million years ago from an 'apelike' (but, according to you, not ape!) ancestor.

Orangutangs are apes, no? Goot. So, this species they diverged from, a direct ancestor of theirs, was not an ape? Yet orangutangs were? Do you know how evolution works?

Anyways, moving on, these other species, apelike but not apes, continued to evolve. Orangutangs by and large remained the same (I think, need to confirm). Gorrillas then spun off as well, from this same 'apelike but not apes' line. Gorillas are apes as well, no? But their direct ancestors, and immediate cousins to orangutans (and gorillas too, in a sense), were not? Curious.

After that, roughly 4-8 million years ago, these apelike creatures that were not apes, yet cousins to gorillas, then spun out chimps, bonobos and the 'homo' family. Yet, these homos are not apes, but chimps and bonobos are? Better yet, and again, the ancestors of these homos, despite being direct, immediate cousins to gorrillas and orangutangs, despite consistently spinning off other ape species, were not apes?

you seem to be saying that one that constantly gives birth to black kids, heck even his kids keep on birthing black kids, isn't black.

really?


When you use language like 'myth' in this context, even as you're just quoting, your intentions look pretty clear to me. and the convolted logic with donkeys sef....

Combine 'myths' and the fact that you make no sense and it seems rather clear that this is just hubris. "I can't be an ape because apes stoopid hurr durr". Simple.

Well, no. And thankfully science doesn't care about your opinions. Nor does nature, or facts etc, so meh

And are you sure what 'great apes' are scientifically speaking? How the classification and naming system, works? I'm not sure you do, but I won't get into that atm. Or the fact that wolves still exist today, not all wolves evolved to dogs, no? Can you see the implications of that with regards to some of the statements you've made? But, like I stated before, I'll ignore that for now. Enough said already it seems to me..

Randomly; video of feral kid. A homo(nin, I think) without language skills and socialization.

Looks mighty familiar I would say...

wiegraf:

I'm confused here, but mostly because you seem confused. Also, this is just half of the story, contorted in various ways to push an agenda. But I'll try to refrain from addressing every little niggle and focus on a key one.

You say humans didn't descend from apes, that speciation was far away, "enough for a whole new species (or family of species, which is what I think you mean) to appear". That's not exactly true.

It's already been pointed out to you that orangutangs diverged first, yes? Roughly 10-12 million years ago from an 'apelike' (but, according to you, not ape!) ancestor.

Orangutangs are apes, no? Goot. So, this species they diverged from, a direct ancestor of theirs, was not an ape? Yet orangutangs were? Do you know how evolution works?

Anyways, moving on, these other species, apelike but not apes, continued to evolve. Orangutangs by and large remained the same (I think, need to confirm). Gorrillas then spun off as well, from this same 'apelike but not apes' line. Gorillas are apes as well, no? But their direct ancestors, and immediate cousins to orangutans (and gorillas too, in a sense), were not? Curious.

After that, roughly 4-8 million years ago, these apelike creatures that were not apes, yet cousins to gorillas, then spun out chimps, bonobos and the 'homo' family. Yet, these homos are not apes, but chimps and bonobos are? Better yet, and again, the ancestors of these homos, despite being direct, immediate cousins to gorrillas and orangutangs, despite consistently spinning off other ape species, were not apes?

you seem to be saying that one that constantly gives birth to black kids, heck even his kids keep on birthing black kids, isn't black.

really?


When you use language like 'myth' in this context, even as you're just quoting, your intentions look pretty clear to me. and the convolted logic with donkeys sef....

Combine 'myths' and the fact that you make no sense and it seems rather clear that this is just hubris. "I can't be an ape because apes stoopid hurr durr". Simple.

Well, no. And thankfully science doesn't care about your opinions. Nor does nature, or facts etc, so meh

And are you sure what 'great apes' are scientifically speaking? How the classification and naming system, works? I'm not sure you do, but I won't get into that atm. Or the fact that wolves still exist today, not all wolves evolved to dogs, no? Can you see the implications of that with regards to some of the statements you've made? But, like I stated before, I'll ignore that for now. Enough said already it seems to me..

Randomly; video of feral kid. A homo(nin, I think) without language skills and socialization.

Looks mighty familiar I would say...

I don't know why so many people who accept and promote evolution have such a dim view of phylogenetic systematics.

How else to explain why I so often hear the canard, "Humans are apes"?

My children can tell what an ape is. I work very hard to tell them why apes are different than monkeys. When they see a chimpanzee in a zoo, and other parents are telling their kids, "Look at the monkey!", my children say, "That's not a monkey, it's an ape!"

Phylogeny is the relationship among different species. Phylogenetic systematics argues (among other things) that our taxonomy should reflect phylogeny. The result in anthropology is that we have rejected some taxonomic ideas. In the past, many anthropologists categorized chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans together as "pongids". Today, we recognize that these are not a natural group. Phylogenetically, humans are part of the group that includes orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas. Many anthropologists call this group "Hominidae", although others would put this at a different taxonomic level than the family level (the level implied by the "idae" ending).

None of this is especially controversial. We disagree about the taxonomic level -- some would retain "hominid" to refer to the human branch, and assign the great apes and humans to a higher-level taxonomic level. But the phylogeny is perfectly clear. Humans are hominoids, and hominids, and anthropoids, and primates.

Are we apes?

Today I read Jerry Coyne, writing about a silly column ("Washington Times denies that Richard Dawkins is an ape":

I believe it was William Jennings Bryan who denied during the Scopes trial that man was a mammal. That one statement laid him low, exposing his Bible-ridden ignorance for what it is. Of course we are mammals, and of course Richard is an ape. The Wikipedia definition is as good as any:

Apes are Old World anthropoid mammals, more specifically a clade of tailless catarrhine primates, belonging to the biological superfamily Hominoidea.
Last time I looked, I was also a tailless catarrhine primate, so that makes me an ape as well. The only thing Id take issue with is Richard [Dawkins]s statement that hes an African ape. Hes an ape who is descended from African apes, but hes currently an Oxford ape. (Richard was an African ape when he was growing up in Kenya.)
Holy moly! But I disagree with Coyne and Wikipedia. Apes are not a clade. (UPDATE 2012-03-18: My original post said something snarky about biologists relying on Wikipedia for their systematics. I later decided that the odds of me not consulting Wikipedia for fly taxonomy are statistically indistinguishable from zero.)

Jerry is far from alone in this -- many evolutionary biologists state as if it were an unquestionable fact that humans are apes. I disagree.

Humans are hominoids. Hominoidea is a taxonomic group. Phylogenetic systematics holds that taxonomic groups should be monophyletic -- meaning that they include all the descendants of one ancestor, and don't leave any descendants out. Humans are closely related to chimpanzees and bonobos, more distantly to gorillas, then orangutans, then gibbons. All these living creatures are crown hominoids. The Hominoidea includes all these, together with extinct animals like Australopithecus, Proconsul, Dryopithecus, and many others.

Chimpanzees are apes. Gorillas are apes, as are bonobos, orangutans, and gibbons. We routinely differentiate the "great apes" from the "lesser apes", where the latter are gibbons and siamangs. Humans are not apes. Humans are hominoids, and all hominoids are anthropoids. So are Old World monkeys like baboons and New World monkeys like marmosets. All of us anthropoids. But humans aren't monkeys.

What's the difference?

"Ape" is an English word. It is not a taxonomic term. English words do not need to be monophyletic. French, German, Russian, and other languages do not have to accord with English ways of splitting up animals. Taxonomy is international -- everywhere, we recognize that humans are hominoids.

In French, apes are singes. So are monkeys. In English we differentiate these terms. In both languages humans are different from other primates. Does that mean French is right and English wrong? Does it mean both languages are wrong?

No, it means that colloquial languages have no problem describing paraphyletic groups. It is useful to have languages that can make these distinctions.

If we must accept that humans are apes, then we must equally accept that chimpanzees are monkeys, and those awful parents at the zoo are right. I don't. I see value in precision about phylogeny, and for that purpose I have taxonomic terms. Humans are hominoids, and anthropoids, and haplorhines, and primates. And mammals.

We shouldn't smuggle taxonomic principles into everyday language to make a political argument. That's what "humans are apes" ultimately is -- it's an argument that we aren't as great as we think we are. Whether humans are special or not should be derived from biology; I don't think we need to make the argument by applying Orwellian coercion to the meanings of English words. Biologists control taxonomic terminology, and that's where science should aim. I don't think I'm being old-fashioned, nor am I promoting the idea that humans aren't part of the primate phylogeny. I'm only promoting the idea that we use taxonomy for its intended purpose, and not insist that English do the job instead.

We aren't apes. And it's OK to teach your children that chimpanzees are apes, not monkeys. Because that's what I do.

SOURCE

of course. yeah

This shit scares religious people away, because it contradicts their belief, lets just say 'we didnt evolve from apes, Human and apes have the same ancestry'.

Peterken05: This shit scares religious people away, because it contradicts their belief, lets just say 'we didnt evolve from apes, Human and apes have the same ancestry'.

Screw that! I'm not engaging in any semantic games just to spare religious people's feelings. Our ability to apply logic and reason is the main thing that differentiates us from chimpanzees and I will not compromise on it for anybody.

Once we allow ourselves to start pandering to religious people's sensibilities, we'll never be able to stop. That is a slippery slope that leads to a very bad place.

We are all apes and there is no way around it. Religious people may not want to hear that, but they'll just have to pull up their big boy trousers and deal with it.

EvilBrain1:

Screw that! I'm not engaging in any semantic games just to spare religious people's feelings. Our ability to apply logic and reason is the main thing that differentiates us from chimpanzees and I will not compromise on it for anybody.

Once we allow ourselves to start pandering to religious people's sensibilities, we'll never be able to stop. That is a slippery slope that leads to a very bad place.

We are all apes and there is no way around it. Religious people may not want to hear that, but they'll just have to pull up their big boy trousers and deal with it.

seconded

LordReed:

I don't know why so many people who accept and promote evolution have such a dim view of phylogenetic systematics.

How else to explain why I so often hear the canard, "Humans are apes"?

My children can tell what an ape is. I work very hard to tell them why apes are different than monkeys. When they see a chimpanzee in a zoo, and other parents are telling their kids, "Look at the monkey!", my children say, "That's not a monkey, it's an ape!"

Phylogeny is the relationship among different species. Phylogenetic systematics argues (among other things) that our taxonomy should reflect phylogeny. The result in anthropology is that we have rejected some taxonomic ideas. In the past, many anthropologists categorized chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans together as "pongids". Today, we recognize that these are not a natural group. Phylogenetically, humans are part of the group that includes orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas. Many anthropologists call this group "Hominidae", although others would put this at a different taxonomic level than the family level (the level implied by the "idae" ending).

None of this is especially controversial. We disagree about the taxonomic level -- some would retain "hominid" to refer to the human branch, and assign the great apes and humans to a higher-level taxonomic level. But the phylogeny is perfectly clear. Humans are hominoids, and hominids, and anthropoids, and primates.

Are we apes?

Today I read Jerry Coyne, writing about a silly column ("Washington Times denies that Richard Dawkins is an ape":

I believe it was William Jennings Bryan who denied during the Scopes trial that man was a mammal. That one statement laid him low, exposing his Bible-ridden ignorance for what it is. Of course we are mammals, and of course Richard is an ape. The Wikipedia definition is as good as any:

Apes are Old World anthropoid mammals, more specifically a clade of tailless catarrhine primates, belonging to the biological superfamily Hominoidea.
Last time I looked, I was also a tailless catarrhine primate, so that makes me an ape as well. The only thing Id take issue with is Richard [Dawkins]s statement that hes an African ape. Hes an ape who is descended from African apes, but hes currently an Oxford ape. (Richard was an African ape when he was growing up in Kenya.)
Holy moly! But I disagree with Coyne and Wikipedia. Apes are not a clade. (UPDATE 2012-03-18: My original post said something snarky about biologists relying on Wikipedia for their systematics. I later decided that the odds of me not consulting Wikipedia for fly taxonomy are statistically indistinguishable from zero.)

Jerry is far from alone in this -- many evolutionary biologists state as if it were an unquestionable fact that humans are apes. I disagree.

Humans are hominoids. Hominoidea is a taxonomic group. Phylogenetic systematics holds that taxonomic groups should be monophyletic -- meaning that they include all the descendants of one ancestor, and don't leave any descendants out. Humans are closely related to chimpanzees and bonobos, more distantly to gorillas, then orangutans, then gibbons. All these living creatures are crown hominoids. The Hominoidea includes all these, together with extinct animals like Australopithecus, Proconsul, Dryopithecus, and many others.

Chimpanzees are apes. Gorillas are apes, as are bonobos, orangutans, and gibbons. We routinely differentiate the "great apes" from the "lesser apes", where the latter are gibbons and siamangs. Humans are not apes. Humans are hominoids, and all hominoids are anthropoids. So are Old World monkeys like baboons and New World monkeys like marmosets. All of us anthropoids. But humans aren't monkeys.

What's the difference?

"Ape" is an English word. It is not a taxonomic term. English words do not need to be monophyletic. French, German, Russian, and other languages do not have to accord with English ways of splitting up animals. Taxonomy is international -- everywhere, we recognize that humans are hominoids.

In French, apes are singes. So are monkeys. In English we differentiate these terms. In both languages humans are different from other primates. Does that mean French is right and English wrong? Does it mean both languages are wrong?

No, it means that colloquial languages have no problem describing paraphyletic groups. It is useful to have languages that can make these distinctions.

If we must accept that humans are apes, then we must equally accept that chimpanzees are monkeys, and those awful parents at the zoo are right. I don't. I see value in precision about phylogeny, and for that purpose I have taxonomic terms. Humans are hominoids, and anthropoids, and haplorhines, and primates. And mammals.

We shouldn't smuggle taxonomic principles into everyday language to make a political argument. That's what "humans are apes" ultimately is -- it's an argument that we aren't as great as we think we are. Whether humans are special or not should be derived from biology; I don't think we need to make the argument by applying Orwellian coercion to the meanings of English words. Biologists control taxonomic terminology, and that's where science should aim. I don't think I'm being old-fashioned, nor am I promoting the idea that humans aren't part of the primate phylogeny. I'm only promoting the idea that we use taxonomy for its intended purpose, and not insist that English do the job instead.

We aren't apes. And it's OK to teach your children that chimpanzees are apes, not monkeys. Because that's what I do.

SOURCE

Not going to waste too much time atm.

You've already posted this before. It adds nothing new. It now just shows just how much of a farce this all is

He's studying DNA, no? Well then, here's a simple fact; chimps share more in common with us than they do with gorillas, let alone orangutans. Yet chimps remain apes, gorillas as well, but we? No.

Simple fact...

Please and please, tell me exactly how that makes sense without making a lame argument, especially one that is built solely around taxonomy? And even at that, it beggars belief, as the taxonomy in this case is extremely similar. He acknowledges that yet goes on to double speak about anthropoids? Really, that's all he's got? It's really, really ridiculous....

Listening to this dude, species that resemble each other, a la convergent evolution, would qualify as being under the same genus....

While I can stomach your case, you're simply a religious dude trying to inject GOD?!? into everything, this guy is supposedly a pro. Who's his oga? DavidDylan? [s]I doubt even he would resort to this folly, then again[/s]. It's f-ing inexcusable.

And if you're using him as an authority to appeal to, he at least mentions he's at odds with 2 others with greater reputations than his in this field; Coyne and Dawkins. So even if you resorted to that, though silly as evil brain points out, even if you resort to appeals to authority...

And that's all the time I've got today. Kudos

some may have, who knows.

The days of ignorance.

LordReed:
The days of ignorance.

So you were an apologist

Sabr1na:

So you were an apologist

A poor one I guess. LoL