Not only do we share the same social structures and traits like empathy, grief, and altruism, and moral codes, but we share the same muscle configuration, brain structure, rows of teeth, hair, fingerprints, and DNA. A 98.8% match. We are closer to the chimpanzee and gibbon than they are to the gorilla.
Evangelicals will accept that a tiger and a lion are related. True they are both cats, but the tiger and lion DNA is farther separated than chimp and human. Where and why do they draw the line? We are their kinfolk no doubt about it.
If tigers and lions are linked by evolution, man is as much a monkey as a tiger is a lion. We have most of their traits and share the same social structures. That is one possible reason patriarchal religion is so powerful—it’s rooted in evolution.
DNA Paternity tests use a dumb-down version of the advanced version (and even that it is admissible in court) so at what point do evangelicals draw the line with evolution?
On another note, if evangélicas can accept a paternity test as accurate, by all accounts the more advanced methods of testing should be a shoe-in. Why all the resistance? Does it spoil your adoption into the tribe of god, or does it not? Remember, your adopted in through faith. You’re more related to a monkey than to a god.
We like to think we’re more advanced than that, somehow special. But reality dictates these are our people. We are their monkeys, as evidenced also by the patriarchal order of church and government. To survive we’re going to have to transcend those limitations.
TheCommonAtheist 
When was the last time a chimpanzee built a skyscraper or wrote a college text book on physics? This post completely neglects the vast chasm of intellect that separates man from beast.
We know from COVID-19 variants that minuscule changes in genes that code for proteins makes all the difference in the world. The Delta variant cast itself upon humanity like a bat out of hell. However, the subsequent Omicron variant is a natural vaccine.
Similarly, the small difference in human and chimp DNA is huge because no other animal can reason, has free will, produce art and build save, secure habitats for themselves.
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you forgot build atomic bombs to blow up other groups, and burn people for holding an opposing belief. that takes immense intellect!
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Making war takes immense intellect that is true. But war is the misapplication of the intellect and free will.
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Making war takes no special intellect. That much is obvious.
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Jim, Making war is a special subset of knowledge. Just as musicians have a special intellectual power, so do the men that make war. Not everyone can do it.
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It is part of natures dance. Every species does this to some extent. It is not strictly human by any means, but how nature operates. Hitler is as natural a phenomenon as a tsunami. So is fighting it.
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Don’t bait the evangelicals. We took that evolutionary intellectual leap in cognitive development thanks to the Anunnaki transplanting their DNA into Apes when they visited our planet. I’ll be addressing this in my blog soon. And, yes, the Anunnaki will return!
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Comment here and post the link if you like George. Always enjoy your stuff.
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Thanks. It’s brewing but sure, I’ll post the link for you. Always enjoy having you as a reader and reading your comments. I’m being a bit snarky about the Annunaki DNA thing, but…who knows? LOL!
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We are not monkeys. We have a vertical spinal column and six chakras alined where subtle energies flow, culminating in the crown chakra that opens to universal consciousness.
Due to this, only man has the innate ability for awakening.
Why buddhists say “You can never meet the Buddha with a hunched back”
No, straighten up that back and lift up your chin, you were not made to jump from branch to branch!
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Nah, my rabbit is enlightened. She’s even more silent than Maharshi was.
So only drive while doubled over.
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poor buddha! either case, he’s in trouble
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Speciescentrism at its finest, monica. If you are right in any way that only humans have the innate ability for awakening, WHICH I HIGHLY DISAGREE WITH, I think you have to complete your thought with the word “YET.” But I am pretty sure you are wrong. All living beings have the ability to “awaken.” Didn’t you just read what Jim said about how close our DNA is to that of a gibbon or a chimpanzee. That was evolution. And if you trace DNA back far enough, all species have bits of DNA that relate us all one to the other, each to all, and all to each. What abilities we have are latent, or possibly even active, in every other species. You just have no way to penetrate their minds to see what is going on inside them. All life is capable of awakening, as you call it. Anything else is fallacy.
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Since video recording has become so, so common, we are now seeing animals of every specie showing behaviors that we missed all along through our western influenced upbringing. For centuries we focused on animals and how they do kill and eat each other (part of the dance) but they are all extremely laden with all the traits we consider human only. If nothing else, being an animal is part of the path. My next life I want to be born a deer next to a busy highway, just to see the look on the face of that driver who hits me. Talk about awakening! All these events are linked to someone’s experience and you never know how.
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just google ‘kundalini’. yoga is a system going back 5,000. what i’m sharing here is not “opinions”. but you chose to follow opinions. those, you’ll find galore!😅
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A lot to respond to, even in that short of a comment. I’ll choose to answer this way: The first cat I met about 63 years sgo or so did seem to be all about eating and sex, a true Tom named Red. Over the years I have watched as csts I have shared my life with have progressed in all sorts of ways. My present brood of feline friends are nothing like Red. They are true friends. They laugh with me when I am happy, cry with me ehen I am sad, but at the same time they do all sorts if cat things I can barely understand, things that Red would never have considered doing. They show an extreme amount of intelligence.
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Jim, spot on as the basis of the success of Christianity and Islam, that is that humans are special. The faithful cannot admit, believe or understand this. The can’t admit that humans came crawling out of filth to become beautiful and amazing creatures. Only gods can create such beauty, but sex is a sin. Wow. GROG
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Every order is constantly being replaced any another. It is impossible to recognize til after it happens. I wonder what future civilizations will think of us and our primitive (yes still) superstitions? The fact that Christianity and Islam have these moments in the past in an ever changing landscape shows how ridiculous that is. The only truth is change. Rolling with it we succeed most of the time. It’s what got us here.
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I wonder what future civilizations will think of us … . There are times when one can’t help but wonder if there will BE any “future civilizations.” In so many ways, ours seems to be regressing instead of progressing.
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Oh whatever happens I’d guess some humans will survive—the ones with bunkers full of food and guns. The great reset would turn into a redo—thank god I survived. Praise Jesus for another 3000 years of Religianity
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HA! Love that word — Religianity. Is that yours or stolen? In any case, it certainly is descriptive!
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It’s my very own neologism, although I’d be surprised if it is completely new, based on how perfect it is 😃
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Are you saying, like Rogan, that you’ve walked into planet of the apes?
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Haha. No. I would suggest that we are all still are modern primates.
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I was born in 1978, which makes me at the very least a Classic Primate. Like a Classic Car.
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Like a 1978 Renault Le Car? Or a Ford Fairmont?
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Like one of those ridiculously large Cadillacs with cattle horns on the hood!
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Isn’t it 3am in Kenya. Go to bed, Kenyan person!
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I’ve got some proto-primate jaws with teeth (from 55 million years ago) that i took to the dentist 😉the other day. (Possibly jaws of our distant ancestors. The creatures were the size of squirrels.)
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That is really cool.
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Well, yeah, but we also share 98.5% of our DNA with dolphins, 98% with pigs and over half our genome with bananas. OTOH we share less than 97% with orangutans.
Don’t get caught up in DNA commonality numbers games jim. They say very little that matters.
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I’m not caught in anything. The point is that it’s easy for humans to see the relationship of other animals that have a lesser match, but fail to see that relation between themselves and other primates that have a higher one. I suppose it’s universal—I would guess a deer and an elk have the same problem, though it’s easy for us to recognize it.
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It’s just another way of classifying stuff. Imposing meaning and significance where it doesn’t exist.
I could come up with another classification method that ‘proved’ I have more in common with the Statue of Liberty that with non-human primates. It would be just as meaningful.
BTW, much of my practical application of population genetics consisted of demonstrating to courts that they’d read too much significance into DNA similarities. Kept a few people out of prison that way, including an Aboriginal woman charged with ‘failing to prevent an act of incest’. Upon her.
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and 60% with a banana. but a ripe one!😂
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fact is, a large amount of the common DNA is the protein replication machinery. other exmples are structural proteins and metabolic proteins (enzymes).
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What’s more, the DNA of my brain is identical with the DNA of my arsehole.
Therefore … hang on a minute …
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I said it all in my answer to monica, but I would just like to reiterate, we have no way to penetrate the the minds of any other living beings, not even our fellow humans. We DO NOT KNOW what goes on in the minds of others, no matter how much we are like or unlike them.
Meanwhile, plant scientists have already proved that through using myceiium,or whatever those things ate called, trees communicate with other trees, bushes, and plants around them. (None of which surprises me!) To look at trees, we would never believe individual trees could communicate with anyone, even other trees. This just goes to show how speciescentrism is a product of our own minds, and has nothing to do with reality.
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Excellent comment! When I first read about that (very clever how she tested that theory) I was amazed, yet not surprised. What other connections are we not seeing?
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I would suggest it is more because we are not looking. We ARE the superior germ of life, after all. Why pay any attention to those who came before us. They haven’t progressed in millions of years!
Surprise, it is not them who have not progressed, it is our intentional blindness that prevents us from daring to look.
Thank you for the praise, Jim, but I really don’t deserve it. That goes to the LSD that opened my mind 53 years ago this summer. That is where my understanding and vision all come from.
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You may go ahead and consider yourself a monkey, but I’ll pass. I do grant that apes and humans have a common ancestor in the way-back. It’s true that we shortchange the intellect of non-human life, and even the individuality of same. One of our big blind spots. Especially true when we consider non-animal life, e.g. plants.
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You don’t have to consider yourself a monkey, but that may not change anything. 😁I wonder if other species that are closely related recognize it? I bet not. Maybe that’s one similarity we have, because we can’t either.
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hi
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