Friday, July 28, 2006

Making a monkey out of me

A professor of psychology at the University of Washington has published an op-ed in the LA Times riffing off the belief on the part of some scientists that "pre-humans" and "pre-chimps" once produced what I suppose was a "pre-human/pre-chimp hybrid." Professor David Barash apparently wants to go back in the future, saying that he "looks forward to the day when there will be there will be hybrids, or some other mixed human-animal genetic composite, in our future."

I would certainly be suspicious if we catch this guy sending a glass of chardonnay over to the "that little hottie hanging from a branch" at Monkey Island.

The inestimable Wesley Smith responds to this bit of silliness as well as I ever could. The degree of similar genetic material between humans and any other animal does nothing to prove the more expansive claims of neo-Darwinian materialism nor does it have much to do with the uniqueness of human life.

The idea, shared by this silly academic, that the notion that man is created in the image of God is a force for evil in the world is about as wrong as you can get. We get in trouble when we abandon, or refuse to accept the implications of, the recognition of imago Deo in all human beings.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

" The degree of similar genetic material between humans and any other animal does nothing to prove the more expansive claims of neo-Darwinian materialism"

I think you're pushing it a little here, Rick.

After all, if it turned out that human DNA was completely unlike every other animal's on the planet, I think that would make for pretty good evidence against evolution.

Anonymous said...

Don't tell me the Shark doesn't believe in evolution! And I thought he was an educated man....

Rick Esenberg said...

I do not claim to know whether the mechanisms of change and selection can fully explain life as we know it. I do believe that there is a process called evolution.