East African Apes

One common way to signal one’s high intelligence is to pepper one’s talk with mentions of evolution (meaning neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, not evolution generally-understood). Usually, one will say things like ”It is the result of us having evolved a brain that responds to screams by ?” Usually, those invocations of “evolution” are gratuitous, because the sentence makes just as much sense, indeed more sense, without the mention of evolution (Cf. “It is the result of us having a brain that responds to screams by ?”). Besides, the chant of “evolution” in such a case becomes mostly a pseudo-liturgical indulgence[1] to re-affirm to all in ear-shot that, no, I am not unsophisticated and uneducated. I am, in fact, fully cognisant of the fact that we are but East African apes, nothing more. Now, about that thing of “we are apes”. Well, the justification is that we are apes because we are thencefrom descended. After all, like bears like. But what are apes? Un-tailed East-African baboons? Un-tailed lemurs? Or, shall we say that all mammals are rodents, because they are all thencefrom descended? Where to draw the line? This here is Prof. Richard Dawkins: Aristotle was a distant cousin to a squid, a closer cousin to a monkey, a closer cousin still to an ape (strictly speaking, Aristotle was an ape, an African ape, a closer cousin to a chimpanzee than a chimp is to an orangutan). Or, we could all just be honest with ourselves and admit we are just bacteria—badly-mutated bacteria? Or, further still, we are just lumps of organic chemicals running about? When religious people, using their (um ?) evolved, spontaneous reaction to such logic and they say “Fuck, no! We are not apes! That means men are just animals—and we are not!” Don’t look at them and say “Ah, but The Infallible Scientist™ says so!” They understand, better than (modern, post-Bacon) scientists ever can, that humans are not just animals. Humans are not just East African apes. If you disagree, start by proving that humans are not just organic compounds. If you prove to yourself that organic compounds can be debating whether or not they are organic compounds, well ? I no speaka you language. [1] Or should that be “pseudo-liturgical penance”? Comments: 0