Science is hurting my faith.

[ArtGuy]

We are part of the ape family.

So mankind says...

Given that the whole taxonomical system is purely a man-made organizational system, then this has to be true by definition. Saying "we're part of the ape family" in this sense only means that the system of classifying animals that we have constructed for ease of discussion happens to place humans and other primates into a family called "Ape". Even if evolution was completely wrong, we'd still be in the ape family, because that is how the family is defined. Similarly, dogs and coyotes are in the same family, even though dogs and coyotes are very different. House cats and tigers are in the same family, even though they're vary different. We could, in theory, have defined "family" in such a way that dogs in cats were in the same family, but we chose not to. Instead, they're in the same "order", carnivora.

We also could've defined "family" in such a way that humans were in their own category, but this way makes more sense. Evolution or no, humans share many characteristics with other primates, included basis structure, diet, and so on. Because of this, it's often convenient to talk about all primates (another arbitrarily defined term) together, humans included.

Make sense?

edit: Upon re-reading, there's some sloppiness of terminology in there. Hopefully the main point is clear, though.

 

[Novum]

Argument from incredulity. I respect you Klee shay, and I think you should know better.

I respect you too Novum :D and yes I should know better. The picture book with mankind, monkeys and apes living side by side as family however, was worthy of an equally incredulous argument. :wink:

That I won't disagree with. ;)

If by moutains of evidence you mean "hypothetical" story books; then as a fellow skeptic you will understand if I'm not entirely convinced. What mountains of evidence do you believe points to our linkage with the ape family?

Literally everything in biology. No, I'm not making that up.

http://talkorigins.org/ is a good site; it contains pretty much everything the average reader would desire to know about evolution. I'd recommend it.

 

[Klee shay]

Make sense?

Yep! As always you're very articulate and easy to understand.

So maybe we can agree that "family" is for scientific classification only, rather than we shared the same gene pool at some point in time.

 

[Klee shay]

Literally everything in biology. No, I'm not making that up.

I know you're too much of a skeptic to make stuff up without supporting evidence. :wink: It's the context of that evidence which I question myself.

Biology is the study of all living things so there are bound to be many similarities mankind can discover, but we can only study the here and now. The "living" things we have today contain the substance of life which can be explored right down to the last molecule. The things of the past however are gone and while we can dig up the remains - there is no "living" substance we can study to compare with what we have now.

So it's relative conjecture on whether we came from the same gene pool millions of years ago. Until more evidence comes to hand, that is the relative context of the evidence as I understand it. Maybe I'm wrong - I can't prove that Im right. Therefore we are back to debating what we know against what we don't know.

Snap! :wink:

 

[Novum]

I know you're too much of a skeptic to make stuff up without supporting evidence. :wink: It's the context of that evidence which I question myself.

Biology is the study of all living things so there are bound to be many similarities mankind can discover, but we can only study the here and now. The "living" things we have today contain the substance of life which can be explored right down to the last molecule. The things of the past however are gone and while we can dig up the remains - there is no "living" substance we can study to compare with what we have now.

This is no barrier to modern biologists. We know what living things exist today - and largely how they work. We also know, through fossils and other geological data, what living things existed in the past, and, most likely, how they are related (via evolution) to things that exist today. Based on this understanding, we have drawn - and continue to draw - specific, accurate conclusions about life in the past.

So it's relative conjecture on whether we came from the same gene pool millions of years ago. Until more evidence comes to hand, that is the relative context of the evidence as I understand it. Maybe I'm wrong - I can't prove that Im right. Therefore we are back to debating what we know against what we don't know.

It's not conjecture at all. We have fossils of ape-like creatures that existed millions of years ago. We have fossils of a number of species that descended from this creature, and fossils of species that descended from those creatures, and so on. It is very easy and very straightforward to draw straight, uninterrupted "lines" from the homo sapiens and other primates of today straight back to that ape-like creature in the past. That is what biologists mean by "common ancestor".