Wisdom | |
Michael Shermer
Oct 2006 Interview www.americanscientist.org Evolution Humans |
There are a few myths that have to be debunked. The most common one is that this is all an accident, that evolution is random. It isn't. Richard Dawkins's definition of evolution is a useful one... "random mutations plus nonrandom cumulative selection."...If it was random, the creationists are right, we wouldn't be here. But it's not random, and no one ever said it was. It's just one of those urban legends that gets passed along by word of mouth. Related to that is the myth that we came from monkeys or great apes. We didn't come from monkeys or great apes. The great apes, monkeys and humans all came from a common ancestor millions of years ago. It's that "ladder of progress" concept that goes from bacteria at the bottom to us at the top, and it's completely wrong. It's a richly branching bush, not a ladder. |
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