The truth is the bible has never been wrong about anything even when it comes to proving science so far, Gods word never changes! the bible always has said in the old testament quoted in a verse that earth was round, but scientist today as dumb as they are think thats all coincidence. The chances of 8 prophecies coming true are exactly 10 000 000 000 000 000 00, thats 17 0’s. Jesus alone prophesied 300 and most of them have come to pass and yet to be coming!

Dont you evolutionist try to preach your garbage when the bible already told us the truth from the beginning and in the end you tend to realise 4000 years late! And if the bible has been right so far then isnt it logical to believe that mankind is only 6000 years old! sad thing is our belief system has no logic and wants to go against anything to do with gods laws and teachings. In the end it’s a reason to pay taxes, the government just wants the money coming in and evolution is a great way to back it up.

God said man will never find the answer until the day he arrives to judge the world. Some things are better not known just like you cant figure out the human brain, its beyond our level of understanding.

So you evolutionists keep digging and ripping us off but you wont find anything, and while your still alive why don’t you try researching and obeying something that really exists who has left laws for us to follow otherwise you and your evolution theories are all going down under and the world will follow. Its so sad we have the truth right in front of us for thousands of years but you choose to believe we evolved from apes and the earth was billions of years old garbage, If that was true the earth today wouldn’t be so perfect.

Oh please. Yeah, it’s a big conspiracy. You can’t openly flaunt the IRS and expect to get away with it. It doesn’t matter who you are. Al Capone was busted for tax evasion too.

My answer:

Apes didn’t fail to become human. They succeeded in becoming modern apes.

Evolution happens by means of random mutations. The ones that offer selective advantage are passed on by the success of the animals that possess them. Deleterious ones get eliminated pretty quickly; ones that confer no advantage we just call “quirks.”

There is no necessity that evolution of a species will continue to some “higher plane,” whatever that is. Mutations just happen (or not); if they’re beneficial, that just happens too.

BTW: I see self-awareness as just another trait, like the fangs of the sabertooth. No certainty that’s working for us, or that it’ll save us from the sabertooth’s fate.

Furthermore, as yetanotheroldfossil rightly points out, absolute brain size is largely irrelevant to questions of intelligence. It is much more important to take into account the relation of brain size to body mass and the relative encephalization.

And, as an archaeologist working on the evolution of hominids and hominid intelligence, and having a close colleague who works on the origin of textiles, I would question your statement that Neanderthals produced woven textiles. That evidence does not exist (although it is not inconceivable that Neanderthals could produce such material).

It is strange to me that some people here are more willing to accept ‘facts’ posted on extremely fringe websites than the scientific consensus of the overwhelming majority of experts in a field. There is a vast difference between having an open mind and disbelieving all mainstream science in favour of any old idea that someone, often with little understanding of the subject, thinks up. While scientists often are too dismissive of anomalous data, there is not some grand conspiracy whereby everything scientists say is a deceit and everything everyone else says is the truth. For one thing, most scientists I know typically have difficulty getting dressed in the morning, let alone coordinating some global conspiracy.

As for the question regarding ’super intelligent talking dogs’: I just wish people who question the theory of evolution would take the time to actually bother to understand what it says before they try and critique it.

Having said all that, and despite being a confirmed atheist, I admit that evolution is not incompatible with at least some ideas of god.

RE pictographs, etc.: Maybe ancient humans came across fossilized dinosaur skeletons and, not knowing that they had been dead millions of years, freaked out and thought such things were really wandering the planet with them. The first known contact with dinosaur skeletons was in the 19th century, but it’s always possible that ancient humans uncovered them too. If they did, they could have easily depicted them in their cave drawings. I’ve always thought that that’s where stories about dragons likely came from.