Skullkid4187 said:
Well for starters, if evolution did occur(1) then why aren't all apes human?(2) Our skeletal systems are different,(3) they lack the ability to learn,(4) their hands and feet are very different from ours.(5) Simple facts.(6)
Numbers in parentheses added by me.
1. Evolution not only did occur, but is proceeding as we speak. Much like continental drift, the process is, in most cases, too gradual to perceive, since each gradual step of the process takes, and is, a generation.
2. Despite the popular image, evolution is not a "march of progress" from out of the sea and ever upward into glorious, perfect humanity. It's survival of... well, not necessarily the fittest. More like survival of the adequate. Whatever lived long enough to breed (or undergo mitosis, or bud, or whatever,) must've been doing something right, so its genes are passed onto its offspring. A few base pairs may be repeated, omitted, inserted, or otherwise altered, and this mutation might lead to something that does an even better job of not dying. Repeat this process several billion times or so, and you have the present state of biodiversity.
As for the specific question of why apes aren't human, it's because they don't need to be. The simian body works just fine for what the ape in question needs in its given environment, and it's a stable niche in that environment. It's the same reason all fish haven't moved out of the sea, or all microbes haven't become multicellular: They're fine where they are.
And before you ask, the need for our ancestors to adapt to new circumstances was the Ice Age. As more and more water became locked up in glaciers, the forests of the Serengeti thinned out into grasslands, stranding the hapless austrolopithecenes in unfamiliar territory with nothing but their teeth, their wits, and each other. The rest, as they say is (pre)history.
3.
Seriously, if you can't see how these could have both developed from the same recent starting point, I'm calling willful ignorance. (Note: By "recent starting point," I mean the last common human-ape ancestor, not a creation event dated younger than some pottery shards.)
4. Koko [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_(gorilla)], what do you think of this assertion?
5. That apes have hands and feet at all kind of defeats your last point. Look at the variety of extremities in mammals alone. Hooves, paws, flippers, fins, wings, duck feet (oh, platypi...), the list goes on. And, again, this is taxonomical family, not species. No one's demanding indistinguishability. The last common human-chimp ancestor, for example, dates back at least five million years ago. There's going to be a bit of divergence, but not nearly the same degree as between a man and a dog, or that man and a gecko, or that man and a cockroach, and that divergence gradient is precisely what can be seen.
