I’m wondering if this is the kind of confusion that can be cleared up by tabooing the right words.
I believe it can be taken as obvious that the image in the muslim woman’s head upon hearing the phrase “monkey’s transformed into humans” isn’t at all similar to the image in the mind of someone who understands evolution, as even to my ear it comes across as, at best, misleading.
Thus my response would be more along the lines of:
I don’t believe monkeys can change into humans. I believe that both monkeys and humans belong to a larger category of creatures called apes, and it seems very suspicious to me that if a hypothetical omnipotent being created humans in His image, that the image would be just another species of ape rather than anything unique.
With greater time and preparation, I don’t think it would be too hard to demonstrate how a human body and a chimp body are almost the same machine, just shaped a little different. In the ‘explain in twenty minutes’ scenario, I think the critical insight is scope insensitivity. It is legitimately difficult to imagine the number of generations involved. You’d have to describe a family tree, point out how the less distance up you need to go to find a common ancestor, the more similar any two individuals will look, and then… zoom out, massively.
Even if your non-evolutionist then believes that family tree will eventually lead back to Adam and Eve or whoever, rather than connecting to the animal kindgom once you go far enough back, it moves the competing suppositions out of the realm of absurdity and creates an actual disagreement rather than merely a confusion.
It is hard to argue that magic was not involved in the origin of the human species when the other person cannot conceive of the possibility that humans could even exist or function without magic being involved. And that is not a trivial thing. Even many of today’s educated people, who pay lip-service to the idea that humans are biology and nothing else, still believe in souls-and-elanvital-by-another-name. There are modern martial arts that still believe in Ki. You can’t trip over your own feet without stumbling on “science” fiction that treats sentient thought as something ontologically fundamental. Likewise, “science” fiction where things like age can be disconnected from people and moved around. And just try to ask the Worm fandom what the difference between telepathy and precise telekinesis acting on the brain, is.
Agreed on all points; I’ve found it interesting in my conversations with anti-evolutionists that even doing the work of dispelling the straw man argument—“monkeys turning into humans”, “why are there still monkeys”, etc. - doesn’t seem to change even their conception of the evolution argument; they STILL think all the science and reason in the world can be summarized as “monkeys turned into humans”. Their degree of investment in opposing that argument may be too great for additional rationality to crack. When/if that becomes apparent, I’ve found the more-effective-yet-less-satisfying counter to be something along the lines of: “America grew out of England, yet England’s still a country.”. Not the most accurate metaphor, granted… but it seems to back their confidence level down from outright absoluteness.
Plus, it’s kinda fun to see their faces turn red. Whoever coined “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” must not have been a rationalist amongst children.
I believe that both monkeys and humans belong to a larger category of creatures called apes
Nitpick: humans are a subgroup of apes, apes are a subgroup of EDIT simians, and simians are a subgroup of primates; “monkey” refers to non-ape simians specifically and “ape” is often colloquially used to refer to non-human apes specifically, whereas I can’t remember anyone using “primate” to exclude humans (and BTW, I can’t recall “mammal” nor “vertebrate” ever being used to exclude humans either whereas “animal” often is; colloquial English¹ is weird).
BTW, in Italian there’s no common single word for apes EDIT nor one for monkeys, the word for “simian” basically never includes humans, whereas the same things I’ve said about English words for “primate”, “mammal”, “vertebrate” and “animal” apply.
apes are a subgroup of monkeys [...] colloquially “monkey” is often used to refer to non-ape monkeys specifically
That’s not how I learned it, nor how Wikipedia describes it. I understand “monkey” as a term describing a polyphyletic grouping consisting of the Old World monkeys (a family-level group, the Cercopithecidae) and the New World monkeys (five families), but not including the apes. Originally I expect the presence of a tail would have been the distinguishing factor.
“Simian” is the word for both, while “primate” also includes lemurs, tarsiers, and so forth. (Colloquially, “ape” is often taken to exclude humans, but that’s understood to be technically wrong by anyone that accepts evolution.)
If you reply “well, humans aren’t really descended from monkeys, they’re descended from _”, you’re just being pedantic. To an average person, being descended from “apes” or “non-human apes” or “non-human monkeys”, or “monkey-like creatures not exactly like any existing monkey”, or any other “correction” will have pretty much the same connotations as and be objectionable in exactly the same way as and to exactly the same extent as, being descended from monkeys.
It’s like someone complaining that all the computers in his house were stolen, and replying “well, in fact, your microwave oven contains a computer, so it’s not really true that all the computers in your house were stolen”.
Sure. Outside of a biology class I wouldn’t nitpick someone saying “humans are descended from monkeys”; it might be wrong by the formal definitions of those groups, but it’s not wrong in any way that the Muslim woman in the ancestor will care about, and if the last common ancestor of H. sapiens and, say, a spider monkey were alive today it’d probably be called a monkey in English.
OK. I was under the impression that in serious contexts everyone used monophyletic definitions of nearly everything by now, but it looks like “monkey” has retained the traditional meaning because there already is an unambiguous non-unwieldy word “simian” for the monophyletic meaning. I’m editing the grandparent accordingly. So, humans are descended from monkeys but are not themselves monkeys (and they are descended from fish but are not themselves fish, for that matter), but “both monkeys and humans belong to a larger category of creatures called apes” is still wrong (and even if you s/apes/simians/ it’s still irrelevant unless you also say that said category is monophyletic or otherwise carves reality at some relevant joint, both chickens and humans belong to a larger category of creatures called bipeds, yadda yadda yadda).
I’m wondering if this is the kind of confusion that can be cleared up by tabooing the right words.
I believe it can be taken as obvious that the image in the muslim woman’s head upon hearing the phrase “monkey’s transformed into humans” isn’t at all similar to the image in the mind of someone who understands evolution, as even to my ear it comes across as, at best, misleading.
Thus my response would be more along the lines of:
I don’t believe monkeys can change into humans. I believe that both monkeys and humans belong to a larger category of creatures called apes, and it seems very suspicious to me that if a hypothetical omnipotent being created humans in His image, that the image would be just another species of ape rather than anything unique.
With greater time and preparation, I don’t think it would be too hard to demonstrate how a human body and a chimp body are almost the same machine, just shaped a little different. In the ‘explain in twenty minutes’ scenario, I think the critical insight is scope insensitivity. It is legitimately difficult to imagine the number of generations involved. You’d have to describe a family tree, point out how the less distance up you need to go to find a common ancestor, the more similar any two individuals will look, and then… zoom out, massively.
Even if your non-evolutionist then believes that family tree will eventually lead back to Adam and Eve or whoever, rather than connecting to the animal kindgom once you go far enough back, it moves the competing suppositions out of the realm of absurdity and creates an actual disagreement rather than merely a confusion.
It is hard to argue that magic was not involved in the origin of the human species when the other person cannot conceive of the possibility that humans could even exist or function without magic being involved. And that is not a trivial thing. Even many of today’s educated people, who pay lip-service to the idea that humans are biology and nothing else, still believe in souls-and-elanvital-by-another-name. There are modern martial arts that still believe in Ki. You can’t trip over your own feet without stumbling on “science” fiction that treats sentient thought as something ontologically fundamental. Likewise, “science” fiction where things like age can be disconnected from people and moved around. And just try to ask the Worm fandom what the difference between telepathy and precise telekinesis acting on the brain, is.
Agreed on all points; I’ve found it interesting in my conversations with anti-evolutionists that even doing the work of dispelling the straw man argument—“monkeys turning into humans”, “why are there still monkeys”, etc. - doesn’t seem to change even their conception of the evolution argument; they STILL think all the science and reason in the world can be summarized as “monkeys turned into humans”. Their degree of investment in opposing that argument may be too great for additional rationality to crack. When/if that becomes apparent, I’ve found the more-effective-yet-less-satisfying counter to be something along the lines of: “America grew out of England, yet England’s still a country.”. Not the most accurate metaphor, granted… but it seems to back their confidence level down from outright absoluteness.
Plus, it’s kinda fun to see their faces turn red. Whoever coined “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” must not have been a rationalist amongst children.
Nitpick: humans are a subgroup of apes, apes are a subgroup of EDIT simians, and simians are a subgroup of primates; “monkey” refers to non-ape simians specifically and “ape” is often colloquially used to refer to non-human apes specifically, whereas I can’t remember anyone using “primate” to exclude humans (and BTW, I can’t recall “mammal” nor “vertebrate” ever being used to exclude humans either whereas “animal” often is; colloquial English¹ is weird).
BTW, in Italian there’s no common single word for apes EDIT nor one for monkeys, the word for “simian” basically never includes humans, whereas the same things I’ve said about English words for “primate”, “mammal”, “vertebrate” and “animal” apply.
That’s not how I learned it, nor how Wikipedia describes it. I understand “monkey” as a term describing a polyphyletic grouping consisting of the Old World monkeys (a family-level group, the Cercopithecidae) and the New World monkeys (five families), but not including the apes. Originally I expect the presence of a tail would have been the distinguishing factor.
“Simian” is the word for both, while “primate” also includes lemurs, tarsiers, and so forth. (Colloquially, “ape” is often taken to exclude humans, but that’s understood to be technically wrong by anyone that accepts evolution.)
Whatever.
If you reply “well, humans aren’t really descended from monkeys, they’re descended from _”, you’re just being pedantic. To an average person, being descended from “apes” or “non-human apes” or “non-human monkeys”, or “monkey-like creatures not exactly like any existing monkey”, or any other “correction” will have pretty much the same connotations as and be objectionable in exactly the same way as and to exactly the same extent as, being descended from monkeys.
It’s like someone complaining that all the computers in his house were stolen, and replying “well, in fact, your microwave oven contains a computer, so it’s not really true that all the computers in your house were stolen”.
Sure. Outside of a biology class I wouldn’t nitpick someone saying “humans are descended from monkeys”; it might be wrong by the formal definitions of those groups, but it’s not wrong in any way that the Muslim woman in the ancestor will care about, and if the last common ancestor of H. sapiens and, say, a spider monkey were alive today it’d probably be called a monkey in English.
(Not my downvote, by the way.)
OK. I was under the impression that in serious contexts everyone used monophyletic definitions of nearly everything by now, but it looks like “monkey” has retained the traditional meaning because there already is an unambiguous non-unwieldy word “simian” for the monophyletic meaning. I’m editing the grandparent accordingly. So, humans are descended from monkeys but are not themselves monkeys (and they are descended from fish but are not themselves fish, for that matter), but “both monkeys and humans belong to a larger category of creatures called apes” is still wrong (and even if you s/apes/simians/ it’s still irrelevant unless you also say that said category is monophyletic or otherwise carves reality at some relevant joint, both chickens and humans belong to a larger category of creatures called bipeds, yadda yadda yadda).