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Are Humans Still Evolving?
How to debate an evolution denier and other musings on the state of human evolution.
Quora is a website where people can ask questions and crowd-source answers. Some questions about biological evolution gravitate towards the absurd. Some examples are, has anyone ever witnessed an ape evolving into a human being? If humans evolved from monkeys, what happened to the other monkeys? Why are apes not evolving anymore? There are many more versions of this line of “thinking.”
These questions indicate a basic misunderstanding of evolution. Many of the people who misconstrue the process of evolution do so intentionally for religious reasons. Many are Christians. These evolution deniers (EDs) see a conflict between the Bible’s Genesis story and the theory of evolution. For most religious people who embrace the literal Bible, the problem arises because God created all living creatures essentially simultaneously and fully formed. Gradual evolution and the creation of new species contradicts Genesis.
Those who pose these types of questions on Quora and elsewhere are repeating what they’ve been told, whether in church groups or by other…
