did someone say intelligent hands moved the lizards?
JUST KIDDING, i'm not really going there.
ok, so i went ahead and read that offsite debate carico was involved in and i'm quite thankful driewerf sent me there because i think i understand her much better now. perhaps she failed to see what people were trying to explain to her about what an ape is as it relates to superfamilies, but i think everyone failed to catch something in this transaction:
humans are distinguished from "apes" as well as other animals very early on in their education, most often before evolution as a concept is ever introduced. this has nothing to do with religious upbringing. this classification presents new information which challenges previously understood "truths" especially if the subject did have a religious upbringing which challenges or contradicts evolution. can you cut a little slack for this reason? ok, furthermore you ask her to accept concepts about classification and say she must do this in order to understand the idea as a whole. but that wouldn't be anything like asking an atheist to accept biblical concepts in order to understand christianity, would it? i know its already been stated (yet to be proven or even a reasonable argument presented for) that non-creationists understand the bible and that secular theologians are the best authorities, but i have to wonder when i read things like "god sends people to hell for their sexual positions." and no, i won't stick with generalization and would be happy to, given the chance to talk to individuals, help dismantle their own misconceptions about the bible.
on the subject of classification itself, can we agree that criteria for classifications have changed a lot and that changes are ongoing? i hope this isn't challenged because a little honesty shouldn't hurt the theory of evolution (of which i do have a lot of respect for by the way). i wouldn't say that classifications are arbitrary, but given that the criteria has changed often one could easily see why someone could come to such conclusions or how it may appear as if facts are fitted to support theories. a certain cartoon lampooning creationists springs quickly to my mind.
getting back to carico, i think the idea that humans are apes (in the context of just giving a name to something) was simply too offensive to her to get beyond. one could easily have said, "we'll put all the lizards and frogs, etc over here and call them Doodads and we'll put all the gorillas and humans over here and call them Dittybops," merely as a means of classifying different living creatures. certainly participants in this thread care enough to try to educate and she should learn about something before trying to refute it. how many christians have you honestly heard say, "well, they were just too stupid to learn the gospel, so we ridiculed them out of the room?"