Do you think human beings evolved from apes or were they created from God?

Question

Do you think human beings evolved from apes or were they created from God?

Answer 1

With that "or," this question is really a two parter, therefore...

"Do you think human beings evolved from apes...?"

No.  Humans and apes both evolved from a common ancestor which may have been similar to modern apes but was by no means the same as modern apes.  For instance, my cousin and I may share a common ancestor, but I would never say that I am descended from my cousin.

There is no question, however, that homo sapiens did evolve from some earlier form.  Evolution is like the law of gravity: it is a fact that it exists -- the evidence for both gravity and evolution as natural forces is overwhelming -- but scientists are still exploring its mechanisms.  In the case of gravity, we have relativity to explain the mechanism, but no one has yet been able to reconcile relativity with quantum mechanics, so there are obviously some aspects of gravity that aren't entirely understood.  Similarly, natural selection and adaptation are fairly well-understood mechanisms of evolution, but they are complex processes and scientists are constantly refining our understanding of the details, as well as proposing other processes that might be at work.

Many people don't have even a fundamental grasp of how evolution works.  Because they know only enough to be confusing, rather than enlightening, such people often reject evolution out of hand.  These people are merely ignorant, often by no fault of their own.  Some others reject evolution because they put no stake in empirical observation of reality and would rather rely on either their intuition or on some preferred dogma.  These are valid beliefs, but they should not be confused with science or fact.

"... or were they created from God?"

While the first part of the question was scientific, this second part is completely metaphysical.  It still baffles me that people insist on pairing them together like this.

Evolution does not deny God.  It simply denies the existence of a debased, unimaginitive, and overly anthropomorphic view of God, such as the one described by Pluto.

If God exists, and He is omnipotent and omniscient, and He created the universe, then, yes, of course God created humans.  Did God intend humanity as some end result of evolution?  I'd rather not ascribe intentions and human qualities like "wanting" to a being who can hold the entire universe in His mind from beginning to end -- who the h**l am I to say what God "intended?"  Followers of so-called "Intelligent Design" claim they can descern the hand of God in evolution, but not only is this not science since it presupposes the existence of a being for which there is no scientific evidence, it is also incredibly arrogant.  How could you spot the seems in the creation of a God who is supposed to be all-powerful?  Doesn't that call God's handiwork into question as shoddy and second-rate, thereby denying the whole premise of such a God?

Personally, I don't believe that God created humans.  But, if you do believe in God, AND you are convinced of the factual validity of evolution, then by definition you must believe that God created humans.

Answer 2

Man did create God in his image, or was it the Apes ? because someone realsed even then that they needed someone to believe in and to worship, and still, need a god to talk to when there is nowhere else to turn.

Answer 3

We are going to have god believers for some years to come.

A genuine education requires years and lots of effort. It is much less effort to glom onto some belief system and be done with it.

I don't have a problem with this approach so long as none of the individuals who prefer easy (incorrect) answers to the questions of life are...

not in charge of making decisions which effect other people.

I support personal choice and the individuals right to believe anything they so choose. I do not support such individuals being in charge of anything involving innocent people.

It is one thing to delude oneself and quite another to abuse someone else because of it.

Many people like simple answers. The cave man wanted answers and so, invented religion. He didn't know he was inventing something; he just did it.

When we have a situation where in an individual arrives at some conclusion that may appear correct but is abjectly incorrect...and the individual embraces this bad idea and refuses to consider other options as an explanation.............we have a religion.

You will note, even here in responses to your question, that true believers try to adjust religious claims to fit modern knowledge. Now we see true believers claiming that their favorite god didn't just invent the world (earth) and everything in it, as plainly denoted in the bible; The god, conveniently adjusted for recent information,  invented the...Universe.

This correction to the original claim is unauthorized and ridiculous.

The original writer of the book which eventually became the final version of the Hebrew bible didn't have a concept of what we know as the Universe. Therefore, she (scholars have come down in favor of the writer’s gender as being female) did not claim its invention by her favorite god.

Some true believer in the 21st century has no authority to expand the original claim which claim, by the way, is prima facie false to an educated reader.

Answer 4

God. If not how come there are still apes?

Answer 5

Pluto's answer proves beyond any shadow of doubt that we evolved from apes. For some of us the journey was a short one. (since I posted Pluto seems to have disappeared. Back to the jungle, no doubt).

Answer 6

God created all creatures, which ever way we came to be here. He doesn't f***k about with microscopes and intravenous injections and other stuff. He says,  "let it be done" and it's done. He says, "you come" and you are snuffed like a candle.

Pluto.

Answer 7

If you get right down to it, humans are the last of the bipedal apes.  Hominids were essentially apes that walked on two legs & their brains were about the size of a chimp's.  These hominids shared a common ancestor with other great apes.  Some 5 million yrs ago several species of bipedal apes existed, along with a large number of apes that knuckle walked or walked on all fours. Chimps & Bonobos evolved from those with a lessor ability for bipedal walking.  Bonobos split off from Chimps about 2 million yrs ago.

The Homo Sapien chromosome #2 is almost identical to 2 fused Chimp Chromosomes... it is uncertain just how long ago these chromosomes fused (or perhaps split) to create a new species.

Answer 8

Apes and humans have ancestors in common.

Edit - Pluto: He says "you come" and you're snuffed like a candle?

You're saying God makes snuff films?

That makes an odd sort of sense, actually.

Answer 9

Well, religion and evolution are not in contrast with each other unless you're a fundamentalist Christian, which isn't really a religion as much as it is a mental deficit. There are plenty of commonalities in the creation story and in human evolution. Start with being thrown from the garden of Eden and then look at the climate changes that occurred that lead to intelligent humans. Intelligence is another, think 'tree of knowledge' here. You may also be curious about upright walking as it is the reason for painful childbirth ;) I do believe that human beings evolved from apes and once further, if there is a creator God and man has been created in his image, I'm sure that God looks like an early hominid! Hehehe.

Answer 10

they have nothing to do with eachother.  the theory of modern human origins is a science.  creation is a religion.  they dont mix, they never will mix, and for the love of god when will people stop arguing about it?

Answer 11

If there is creation, it must be a creator, and this creator must possess super intellect.

Evolution can be accepted, but not that the forms of the species are changing. The bodies are all already there, but the soul is evolving by changing bodies and by transmigrating from one body to another. I have evolved from my childhood body to my adult body, and now my childhood body is extinct. But there are many other children. Similarly, all the species are now existing simultaneously, and they were all there in the past.

For example, if you are traveling in a train, you find first class, second class, third class; they are all existing. If you pay a higher fare and enter the first-class carriage, you cannot say, "Now the first class is created." It was always existing. So the defect of the evolutionists is that they have no information of the soul. The soul is evolving, transmigrating, from one compartment to another compartment, simply changing place. The Padma Puräna says that there are 8,400,000 species of life, and the soul evolves through them. This evolutionary process we accept: the soul evolves from aquatics to plants, to insects, to birds, to animals, and then to the human forms. But all these forms are already there. They do not change. One does not become extinct and another survive. All of them are existing simultaneously.

At the present moment we see both the human species, with its advanced intelligence, and the foolish ***. Why do both these entities exist simultaneously? Why hasn't the *** form simply evolved into a higher species and thus become extinct?

Answer 12

I believe man evolving from apes to be a good likely hood.  I do not think it is as simple as man came from apes, but there is a genetic commonality remaining to be linked.  There are infinite genetic combinations that result in new species.  I cannot understand why man will accept this for other species but not ourselves, what truly makes us that special that we did not evolve like the rest of them?  We did not exist at the beginning of the Earth's creation, but were a result of it later on.  It does not seem feasible to me that "God" just cut us in at some point, but more that we were created from the creation, just as we create ourselves.  If you think the Earth is God then yes we were created from God and as we create we are also God.

Answer 13

god u dont see any apes turning into humans in zoo's do ya?!?!?!

Answer 14

god    created   us    in   his   image      and    to   put   to   rest   the    evolution    theory   myth      we    did   not    evolve    from    apes     as    charles    darwin    wanted    people     to     believe

Answer 15

I agree with modern science that the human race evolved from earlier forms. Common ancestry yes, but not directly related to modern apes.

The belief in a higher being is how early cultures answered questions to which they had no answers. Mythology was ancient religion, but was replaced as humans learned to understand more about their environment. Religion today is more about allegorical semblance with in the scriptures, then it is an actual belief in miracles and a damning god.

The god of lore did not create the human race, however the belief in a god's presence has given hope and answers for mankind for thousands of years.

Answer 16

Maybe there is no difference. Maybe the reason that  the big bang happened and we evolved from the simpler organisms that were obviously present in the distant past is God. The whole thing could also have been blind chance too.after all there are limitless numbers of planets on which life could evolve. On this planet alone there are Billions of species of living organisms. With numbers like that pure chance seems like a fairly obvious conclusion.

Answer 17

What I can tell you:

The evolution of the horse had many intermediates.  The intermediates are no longer in existence: therefore, if people evolved from apes why are there still apes?

Secondly, the mitochondrial DNA is different from each race.  The Asiatic and Native Americans have there own Mitochondrial DNA, Africans have their own, Semetic people have their own and the Europeans have yet another set of mitochondrial DNA.  Therefore, if we had one common ancestor from which all humans developed, how did the mitochondrial DNA get in there?

Answer 18

I think humans evolved; the proof for this may not be certain but there is much more evidence for that than for the existence of God. In fact, I would say it's the other way round - God was created by humans. There is some kind of force or energy that balances the lives of all beings, but I don't think it creates, it just guides.