Saturday, 18 May 2013

Neanderthals place in the evoluton/creationism debate

I read a nice article this week from Nature magazine regarding the now extinct Neanderthals in Europe. nature Interestingly in the story there is still debate surrounding Neanderthals and how advanced they were compared to their Homo sapien counterparts. Which got me to thinking about what role the Neanderthals play in the whole creation/evolution argument. We should be aware that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens do not share the same part of the evolutionary tree according to DNA and fossil evidence. Although the evidence is their that we did interbreed with these species at some time in the past. Now as you read further please keep these things in mind.

So if we and Neanderthals came from different parts of the evolutionary tree and these Neanderthals had a cognitive ability that scientists are having to rethink at this point. Then I ask myself why would god have allowed one of his creations, that is very similar to humans, to die? This is an important question to ask, as we often have our religious beliefs because we feel we are more advanced (privileged) than other species. But if there was another species that also was developing these abilities then why were they allowed to disappear?

But for a moment lets say the creationists are going to doubt this claim, as they always do. The fact is that we Homo sapiens did interbreed with these Neanderthals! If this is the case then it proves the first point about them having  certain cognitive abilities which makes them another form of man that got wiped of the face of the earth by the all loving god.

So I come back to my original question. what part do the Neanderthals play in the evolution/creation debate? and my answer is simple, they settle the debate in favour of evolution. But they also settle the debate in the non existence of a caring and loving god.

You can disagree with the last point, but then your god is an evil god who erases his own creation from earth.