They must be joking!
by David Catchpoole
16 August 2006
Evolutionary biologists claim to have traced the origins of laughter to around four million years ago.1
At that time, they say, pre-humans were slipping and stumbling in their first faltering attempts to walk on two legs. When the pre-humans saw a member of their group lose their footing they would laugh as a sign to each other that the slip-up wasn’t too serious.
The One enthroned in heaven laughs
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According to Matthew Gervais and David Sloan Wilson, the authors of the study published in the Quarterly Review of Biology,2 language as a means of communication did not appear for another 2 million years or so after the first laugh. They say that laughter functioned ‘as a medium for playful emotional contagion’, helping to bind group members together, especially important ‘during the fleeting periods of safety and satiation that characterized early bipedal life’.
What a story. The Bible says there is a time for laughter, but it certainly wasn’t millions of years ago. Given these evolutionists are apparently serious, it’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry (Ecclesiastes 3:4).
Of such godless schemes the Bible says: ‘The One enthroned in heaven laughs’ (Psalm 2:4, 37:13, 59:8).
References
- Dobson, R., Sorry old Bean, the apes got there first, The Sunday Times (UK), 30 April 2006, 8 June 2006.
- Gervais, M. and Wilson, D.S., The evolution and functions of laughter and humor: A synthetic approach, The Quarterly Review of Biology 80(4):395–430, December 2005.
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