Are we the decendents of monkeys ?

Question

I personally don't think so as Adam and Eve were humans -good looking beautiful humans. They say that there is adifference between religion and science and that we shouldn't mix the two together. I actually disagree with that as there is only one truth it can't be both. Tell me what you think ?

Answer 1

No. just cousins...........

Answer 2

No, we didn't evolve from monkeys or apes. We are thought to all come from a common ancestor that no longer exists. Genetically, we can determine how closely related to all of the primates we are. Still, there has never been found a missing ling, or a fossil that shows which of the early hominid species that we did evolve from, so I wouldn't go so far as to deny that some divine hand took charge because science can not prove that god does not exist, as much as science can't show exactly where humans came from. Learn a little something about "String Theory", ther is stong physical evidence of a concept god in that, and that is mixing science and spirituality.

Answer 3

No, monkeys have tails. But some say we are close cousins to the chimps, that we share 99% of the same genetic make-up. I know, it is not very flattering to us. Probably not to them either, lol.

Adam and Eve? Well... no offence, but I think they could be just a myth or a fable. Many things in the Bible appear to be just symbolic, so possibly that is one of them.

Religion and science deal with entirely different subjects. Some think they don't clash, while others believe they do. I think it all depends on how each person looks at it. Many facts we can figure out and know, but perhaps all truths are NOT discoverable and understandable by our tiny finite minds, at least not at our current state of evolutionary development. Maybe in another million years, if we are still around, our minds will have expanded to where we can comprehend more. But not now. Not yet.

Answer 4

Scientists have tried to prove for many years now that we came from monkeys and Intelligent Design is not a reality. Religion has tried convince everyone that we were created and not evolved. But they are both right to a certain extent.
Darwin claimed that random mutation and natural selection together brought on by naturally occurring patterns were the key elements in the evolution of not just human but all life on earth. These three elements make up the "survival of the fittest" thought. I.E. Fish needed to sprout legs and lungs in order to move to deeper water during re-occurring periods of low tides, thus becoming an all together different animal. Patterns occur in nature without the help of an intelligent outside influence. The science of Chaos proved this. So you don't need God to cause re-occuring low tides. And it doesn't take a higher power to see that the mutant fish with the legs and lungs are going to walk over to the deep water and breed more mutant fish while the others either die or develope their own mutations to cope. Darwins theory hits several road blocks here though. Patterns and mutations can happen without intelligent design, but codes cannot. When you break down that mutated fish into a molecular level you see that it is not a system of random patterns. DNA is a code. It is an information storage facility. Each strand of our being is like a miniature computer program running a factory full of assemblylines and employees performing the same function day in and day out. So you really have to look to science to prove science wrong. You have to learn about DNA and you will see that there had to be a hand in our coming to be human. Then there's the easy side to the debate. Whay aren't we seeing new species? Why are there still monkeys? If we truly do evolve into better, smarter species, why do we let the monkeys run the governments?

Answer 5

Well there are two different versions of were we humans came from the religous version being Adam and Eve were put on earth by God. Or the scientific version which is that humans started out as a from of monkey or ape and we slowly evolved over millions of years into what we are today. Even today people belive that we are still evolving so who knows what we may look like in the future.

Answer 6

In my opinion, we are a combination of descendant of monkey and man. Our earliest ancestors began in Africa and eventually migrated into the middle east and then into Europe and Asia. God created the heaven and the earth, and all the animals of the earth......including monkeys and apes. There is no referrence to how long each of the individual seven days was at that time....it could be several thousands or millions of years for each day. Monkeys or apes, through natural selection, could have branched off into separate species which eventually evolved into an upright walking being who eventually migrated out of Africa to the above mentioned areas. Adam and Eve were the true man creations of God....but Cain left the Garden of Eden and took a wife. Where would he find a wife if Adam and Eve were the only true examples of man on earth at that time? There were certainly other beings on the earth when God evicted Cain from Eden. Genesis 5:13, "For you have banished me from my farm and from you, and make me a fugitive and a tramp; and EVERYONE WHO SEES ME WILL TRY TO KILL ME." So, obviously there were other beings outside of Eden. So Cain took a wife, who probably was a neanderthal, a descendant of those who migrated out of Africa, and their descendants became the forbearers of what we are today. Time period is about 30,000 to 20,000 years sgo. So, in my opinion we are descendants of Adam and Eve and homo-erectus.

Answer 7

Humans share a recent common ancestor with the common chimpanzee, which is not a monkey, but a member of the Great Apes, as are humans. The common ancestor of humans and chimps llived 5-7 million years ago, which is when the two lineages branched off into their own lineage. Humans and true monkeys, i.e. primates with tails, don't have recent a common ancestor as do humans and chimps. The most recent common ancestor between monkeys and humans lived 20 million years ago. So we are much more closely related to chimpanzees, gorillas, and Oranutans, i.e, the Great Apes, than we are to monkeys.

Answer 8

Traci S put the most accurate, succinct answer.

Your question betrays a number of closed minded thought processes revealing you will be unacceptant of an unappreciated answer -- no matter how valid/verifiable -- so why bother?

1/ "I personally don't think so". No rationale, no justification, no valid arguement: just simple unsupported dogmatic opinion. Increasingly the scientific evidence mounts to support evolution. The likelyhood of evolution as being explanation for human origins far surpasses blind, unsubstaniated faith promoted by hypcritical self-serving power elites utilising spurious "evidence" to justify their cause.
The very nature of evolutionary mutation involves protracted incremental change -- not immediately observable -- so links between lost or emerging species will always be difficult (but not eventually impossible). A theory, like a jigsaw, does not fail to exist or be relevant because the last completing segment has not been installed in place.

2/ "Adam and Eve were humans -good looking humans." On what evidence is this statement based? Where is the incontrovertible proof, photos, references, fossil record? Were they humans as we now understand the term, or some mutatation precusor to that which we have become? "Good looking, beautiful", by whose or what standards, and how can it be judged?
How much credence can be placed in the veracity of an ancient text -- "The Bible" (a self contradictory plagued work) -- any more than any other similarly aged publication? That it is the "Word of God" it proclaims itself as, is its own self-congratulatory dubious claim, then it chooses to give itself credibility precedence over similar later and earlier records of other religous faiths. As an unassaillable record of "truth" it has undergone more evolution, mutations and changes via inaccurate original recording, language mistranslations, copying and publishing errors, political restatements, dogma and cant interpretations and shaded nuances than has the human species in its evolutionary development.

3/ "They say that there is a difference between religion and that we shouldn't mix the two together." Agreed, wholeheartedly. The two subjects are completely opposing disciplines as totally different as chalk and cheese.
Science depends on open enquiring minds to rationally proove a thesis with replicable evidence before acceptance as fact. It then encourages further examination for verification, modification or rejection.
Religion demands closed unquesting minds to emotionally accept stated arguable philosophies based of blind faith as fact. It then discourages further examination as heretical, with punitive purges, fundamentalist zealotry, ostracism and denial of other voices.

4/ "I actually disagree". Again no supporting reasoning.
Next:"there is only one truth, it cant be both". This on the face of it appears reasonable until questioned. For any given situation there can be many truths depending on the experience and interpretation of the allegor. "Truth" is a flexible personal concept that varies between people. Ask any group of witness' to an event, there will always be differences -- yet all may have stated truthfully their observation. It is only when "truths" merge with common elements that "fact" is established.

5/ "Tell me what you think?" I believe I have.
I also believe that the majority of religous philosophes have common tennets regarding prefered codes of behaviour and conduct, with similar penalties and rewards. As such therefore no one has any more "right" to supreme dominance, truth or credibility than another. I further believe that while most religions have laudable positive aspects their negative aspects are reprehensible and betray their origins as primitive social control agencies in few peoples best interests.

Answer 9

unassailed has given the best answer.

The great apes (of whom the hominids are a part) are descended from Old World monkeys. The current OW monkeys and humans are descendants of a common ancestor, who in turn share a common ancestor with the lemurs. Before that, we are ranked to the Euarchontoglires; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euarchontoglires

There are too many lysenkoist evangelicals on this board.

Answer 10

We are not descended from monkeys, at some point way back in time we had a common ancestor with present day monkeys, and as time went on we evolved into humans and monkeys evolved into their different species. To say that we evolved from monkeys assumes that monkeys are not going through evolution as well.

Answer 11

Wonderful what can happen with several million years of evolution. Oh there was an Eve -she was in Africa about a million years ago during one of the population bottlenecks - genetic research has determined we can all trace our roots back to her, and then most Europeans to another small group of people who migrated out of Africa later on.

Oh, and we are very closely related to chimpanzees - they are closer to us than they are to gorillas. There have been some studies to show there possibly was some hanky panky going on between early human ancestors and chimp ancestors right after they started diverging for about a million years and the hybrids figure in our genome.