Tuesday, April 17, 2007

The title says it all

"Chimps More Evolved than Humans"

Oh.

[Genetics researchers at the University of Michigan] found that substantially more genes in chimps evolved in ways that were beneficial than was the case with human genes.

You know, it became apparent during my recent flights to Florida and New York both the amazing technological skills and aspirations of the human race. I rode, for a small price, in a vehicle whose basic technology is barely a hundred years old that uses the atmosphere and physics to propel itself at hundreds of miles per hour through the sky from one destination to another.

I'm not sure if you've ever been in a plane as it flew through a thunderstorm, but it is another amazing experience. From the window I could see flashes of lighting: enormous discharges of static electricity that turn air into plasma that explodes in an instant causing a huge boom. This storm is capable of creating winds greater than any known force on Earth. It can cause rain to move up and down within the storm itself hundreds of time to form ice balls the size of a melon. A storm like this can also swat such an amazing piece of technology like an airplane out of the sky in a minute, which is why pilots and air traffic controllers avoid them.

The human innovation of flight is utterly under the constraints of nature, and of God. Not to mention the divine inspiration of humankind towards such an amazing idea as powered flight.

But it's good to think that scientists out there think that their theory of evolution means that humans are less "evolved" than an animal whose greatest technological aspirations are limited to poking a stick into an anthill. Next time the thunder rolls, remember your creator and the amazing things he has done. Or you can listen to the geneticists and hope that we still have more "evolving" to do.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Seriously? Come on Radar, did you read the article? They were talking about variations in genetic structure that benefited the organism, chimp or human. According to the article, the chimp has significantly more genes that have done so. Now, admittedly, the article's title and introduction were poorly written. They chose inflammatory words that don't really represent what the article was about. But still. The research didn't prove that chimps were smarter then people. That's not what the word "evolved" means.

Kurt said...

Come on Elliot, did you read my post? If chimps did receive evolutionary genetic changes that were "more beneficial" than humans what exactly does that mean? Does it mean that they are intelligent? That they can create machines? If the theory of evolution claims that chimps have received more "beneficial" changes than humans, how does evolution define "beneficial?" I'm merely pointing out the absurdity of the article and the research, regardless of the piece's title. I would hope that any theory of evolution would point to humankind's genetic evolution as the most "beneficial."

Unknown said...

I would assume that they mean benficial in terms of subtle advances in the genetic structure. For example, longer fingers to pick out nits. Their definition of "beneficial" is pretty shady. I wouldn't go so far as to say the research itself is absurd - so little is still known about genetics that we probably shouldn't say "don't study that." It could be useful in the future. But, perhaps in the future they shouldn't write such crap articles about it.