The Great Ape Debate: Chromosomes, Evolution, and Our Monkey Business

Hey there, fellow primates! 🐵Yeah, I'm talking to you. Ever wondered why we humans, with all our fancy tech, sophisticated lattes, and love for bacon, mocha chocolate lattes, and avocado toast, have fewer chromosomes than our ape cousins? Or why, if we evolved from apes, there are still apes swinging from trees, munching on bananas, and throwing feces at you when you visit them in a Zoo? Let's dive deep into these hairy questions and unravel the mysteries of our evolutionary tree. 🌳

The Chromosome Shuffle 🧬

First up, the chromosome conundrum. Humans strut around with 46 chromosomes, while our ape family, like chimps, gorillas, and orangutans, rock 48. 

But here's the twist: we've got the "Chromosome Two-Step" going on. Think of chromosomes as episodes of your fave TV show. Now, imagine two episodes got mashed up into a double-feature special. That's what happened with our chromosome 2—it's a mash-up of two chimp chromosomes, 2A and 2B. In other words, two chromosomes fused with each other. We know this because our number two chromosome has 2 end markers and only one beginning marker. So, while we're rocking fewer chromosomes, we didn't lose any of the juicy plotlines. It's like "The Office" having fewer seasons than "Grey's Anatomy," but still delivering the laughs.

This is the only difference between human and ape base pairs. That's it! We are one fused chromosome away from having severe bad hair days and wanting banana-flavored frappuccinos. 

Why the Chromosome Mash-Up? 🤷‍♀️

Ah, the billion-base-pair question! Some think this fusion gave us an evolutionary VIP pass, like unlocking a secret level in a game. Others reckon it was just a fluke, like finding a $20 bill in an old pair of jeans. 🤑
Size Doesn't Always Matter 📏

And for those wondering if more base pairs mean you're the king of the evolutionary jungle? Nah. If that were the case, the marbled lungfish, with its mind-blowing 130 billion base pairs, would be ruling the world. But it's just chilling, doing its fishy thing.

The Ape Escape: Why Are There Still Apes? 🐒

Now, onto the biggie: if we evolved from apes, why are there still apes around? Here's the tea: we didn't evolve from modern apes; we share a common ancestor. Think of it like a family tree. You and your third cousin twice removed didn't evolve from each other—you both have a shared great-great-grandma. Similarly, all apes, including us, branched off from a common ancestor:

Orangutans were the early birds, branching off around 12-16 million years ago.
Gorillas joined the party next, around 7-9 million years ago.
Chimpanzees and humans? We're the late bloomers, going our separate ways about 5-7 million years ago.

We didn't evolve from ANY OF THEM! We were the last ones to branch off from our common ancestor. 

Once more for the creationists in the back, we did not evolve from the other apes. We shared a common ancestor. 

Newsflash: We're All Apes! 🚨

Plot twist: humans are apes. Yep, we're in the same club as chimps, gorillas, and orangutans. So, next time someone throws the evolution question at you, just smirk and say, "Evolution made a monkey out of you!" 🙊
The Evolutionary Journey 🌍

Our evolutionary journey is a tale as old as time. From our early ancestors who roamed the African savannahs to the modern Homo sapiens who can't resist a good meme, we've come a long way. And while we might have fewer chromosomes, we've got a rich history that's full of twists, turns, and surprises. So, the next time someone asks you about our evolutionary past, just remember: it's not about the number of chromosomes, but the journey that got us here.

Ready to swing into more evolutionary debates or just wanna share your favorite banana bread recipe? Drop a comment below and let's get the jungle party started! 🍌🎉

Extremophiles in the Goldilocks Zone

I'm not a science guy...

Let me reiterate that, I am not a science guy.  I wish I was,  but I am a truck driver in West Texas. There are no PHDs after my name. Scientific knowledge has nothing to do with why I am an Atheist. Nothing!

Evolution and adaptation via natural selection, while the best explanation we currently have for life on this planet, had nothing to do with me becoming an Atheist. I read the Bible and realized it did not comport to reality in any meaningful way. It's also not what this blog post is about. 

I am not an expert on the big bang, abiogenesis, genetics, DNA, RNA, or any other scientific gobbelty gook.  I don't know what existed before the big bang if anything. I don't really care either. If you come at me with that old, "How did something come from nothing"?"nonsense, I'm going to be like, bro... first show there was nothing, and even if you show me there was nothing then my answer would still be, I don't know. I'm not arguing about that. Not even worried about it right now, maybe later, probably not. Talk to someone like Aron Ra if you want to fight about that! If don't know who that is, find out!

Argue with me about science? You might as well be arguing with Beaker!

Some sciency guy that does have PHDs is welcome to correct all the mistakes I make in this post. Christian apologists are also welcome to tell me I'm wrong. Bring evidence though, it's more convincing that way.

This post is a refutation, based on my understanding, of one creationist claim by looking at the way the world actually works, and it's only a refutation of that one claim. 

The claim goes something like this: the Earth is at the exact correct distance to support life, and all of the various universal laws and constants have had to work together in planned harmony in order for life to arise anywhere and therefore a creator must have put it there. What they really mean though, is life as WE know it! It's called the Fine-Tuned Universe Argument. The universe is fine-tuned --- therefore God.

The Earth specific part of the claim is what I want to address here. I have also seen some making the additional claim that if the universe had been just 10%, or 5% or even 1% different in its orbit (some even say 10ft) closer or farther away we would either burn up or freeze to death or never have existed in the first place.

Just one of the many fine-tuning arguments!

My response is... nuh-uh! There ya go, completely refuted. Nuh-uh should literally put a stop to that shit. But just in case it doesn't let's talk about a couple more things.

Firstly, Eath's orbit varies wildly. It has an elliptical orbit that changes by millions of miles during the year. It can be as close as 91 million miles or as far away as 94 million miles. Maybe 3 million miles doesn't sound like a lot, but the Earth is less than 8000 miles across. which means you could fit 3750 Earth's end to end in that space. Not exactly a nice circular orbit.

See how that's not a circle? None of them are...

By the way, this assumes the reader understands and accepts the reality of a heliocentric universe. If your a flat Earther or otherwise don't understand that we live on a sphere that rotates a sun and not the other way around (like your holy books say) then I can't help you, bro.

A big part of the argument comes the fact Earth is in what is called the Goldilocks Zone (kind of like the Twilight Zone.. but gold?) Basically it is the area in a solar system in which liquid water can survive, and thus life as we know it can form and be sustained. Life as WE know it is an important thing to remember there.

An important thing to understand though is that at the time (in the 70s) that scientists started defining what was a habitable area they made certain assumptions. They thought life couldn't survive in anything colder than Antarctica or hotter than scalding water, they assumed that life as we know it is all the life that can be. 

What we now know though is that life adapts to its environment over time and if the environment changes the animal either adapts or dies. In other words, the world was not created for life, life adapted to the world.

Like Captain America at the end of the First Avenger!

For Flat Earthers reading this... that was a joke.

The very idea that this world was made for us is silly. This world has millions of ways to kill us. Most of it is completely uninhabitable by humans and our primate ancestors. However, as time has gone by we have discovered that life is about a million times more diverse than those scientists in the 70s assumed when they decided what was a habitable zone. There are diverse forms of life living in just about every part of this world in the most extreme conditions. They live in environments that would quickly kill you and I. We call these creatures Extremophiles. Which the Oxford Dictionary defines as a microorganism, especially an archaean, that lives in conditions of extreme temperature, acidity, alkalinity, or chemical concentration.
 

This is a Tardigrade, also called a Water Bear

If extremophiles have a king, it's this guy!

About a millimeter long, the tardigrade is a polyextremophile. They can withstand temperatures from -328 °F (200 °C) up to 304 °F (151 °C), lack of oxygen and water, and a thousand times the radiation we can take.

They survive is by going into a state of suspended animation, in which body functions temporarily shut down until conditions improve. They can even survive space. Researchers sent a group of living tardigrades to orbit the earth on the outside of a rocket for 10 days. 68% lived through that.

But Extromphiles are micro-organisms you say, they don't really count in your opinion? You still think this goldilocks thing is the real deal. While these are not extremophiles here are some critters that have adapted to extreme environments in order to survive.

This is the Sailfin Plunderfish. It's what is known as a notothenioid fish (not gonna lie, I just learned that word for this blog). Notothenioid fish basically have anti-freeze proteins called glycoproteins that keep them from freezing to death in the cold Antarctic Waters.  There are over a hundred different species of notothenioid fish and they have been around since before the global cooling off led to the mass extinction of most other species around 42 million years ago.
 

There are literally thousands of other examples of animals who have adapted to environments outside what we once considered survivable. From animals that freeze almost solid in the winter to micro-organisms living in acid and boiling water... 

In my mind, these animals with their obvious adaptations are one hundred percent the best arguments against the fine-tuned universe. It just didn't happen that way.

Tell me why I'm right or wrong in the comments... thanks!