We are not apes

Here is the Wash. Post science explainer:

Dear Science: Why are there no hominins left on Earth? If evolution is ongoing and species are always changing and adapting, shouldn't we see new human-like species evolving from apes, even if the old ones died out?

Here's what science has to say:

We hate to be the ones to break it to you, but you are an ape.

So were the Neanderthals, the Hobbits, Lucy the Australopithecus, the Taung child and Peking man. And while we're at it, so are orangutans, gorillas, bonobos and chimpanzees. All of us evolved from a common ancestor that lived about 14 million years ago, and together we make up the taxonomic family Hominidae. Also known as hominids. Also known as great apes.

And there are hominins left on Earth — us. "Hominin" is the the technical term for archaic and modern humans — that is, creatures that are more closely related to us than they are to gorillas and chimps. ...

Even if chimpanzees could suddenly develop the traits of an Australopithecus, they probably wouldn't want to.

It's easy to think about evolution as a linear, progressive drive toward greater and greater complexity, something that started with single-celled amoebas and ended with us. But evolution doesn't have a destination, and even if it did, humans are certainly not it. ...

"When we look at our ape relatives today, they're just fine being ape-y," Jablonski said. "They're doing their chimp stuff, their orangutan stuff, their gorilla stuff; they don't need to be more human-like because they're surviving perfectly."

This is the standard line of the leftist-atheist-evolutionists, but it is not a satisfactory explanation.

Humans excel at language, intelligence, tools, social skills, consciousness, and future time orientation. Humans have prospered thruout the Earth. Apes live in particular habitats and are going nowhere.

No one wants to say that humans are distinctive because they have souls. But whatever you call it, humans have advanced in a way that apes and other species have not.

There is currently no accepted scientific theory for this advance. The best they can do is to deny that humans are humans, or to mumble something about adaptation and climate change.

The aquatic ape hypothesis tries to explain some of these things, but it is not accepted.

There is also no accepted explanation for the evolution of white people. Some say that it had to do with UV light, but that is hotly disputed. Nor is there any excepted explanation of what combination of characteristics made civilization possible.

If any layman asks any of these questions, he will be lectured on how he is anti-science for rejecting the modern fact that humans are no better than any other life form.