GENETICISTS studying human and chimpanzee DNA have concluded that a few million years ago, pre-humans and pre-chimps produced hybrids between the two species. And in the American evolutionary wars, this is good news.Of course, the very idea of ancestral human beings and chimpanzees "exchanging genes" makes people squirm, because (let's face it) this means sexual intercourse between our ancient human and animal ancestors. It is hard enough to contemplate our parents copulating; to think of our very great-grandparents not only descended from "monkeys" but having sex with them is difficult to conceive. But conceive is what they evidently did.
There is, however, an even greater source of discomfort at work here; not simple squeamishness about sex but a deeper repugnance that goes to the heart of why so many Americans continue to be so resistant to the theory of evolution. And this is why I not only welcome the news that humans and chimpanzees commingled genes in the past, I also look forward to the possibility that, thanks to advances in reproductive technology, there will be hybrids, or some other mixed human-animal genetic composite, in our future.
Lots of zip wads have no respect for human life but practically worship apes, dolphins, and even trees. But perhaps popular opinion will disable the creation of these hybreds because it is unfair to the ape.
Poor Barash doesn't have a clue as to what made Adam different from the other humankind of his epoch ... that breathing the spirit into Adam so he became to a living soul is just too hard for the Barashes of the world to accept because it grants to God too much those have chosen to assume for themselves: "... it would be difficult and perhaps impossible for the special pleaders to maintain the fallacy that Homo sapiens is uniquely disconnected from the rest of life ..." Such energy wasted on raling against the Creator! Reminds me of one Nebuchadnezzar who ended up wandering in madness on the plains of Al Shamiya when he raled against the Most High.