Well being moderator of Psychology myspace is always an education.  We can have the most profound discussions, quite heated at times, but then we can have the most silly ones too.  Of course with a large social networking site like myspace, and a group like Psychology, you never know what kind of people are in there posting.  It is a large group of 17,500+ members but regular posters probably number in the region of 10 to 30. 

So usual morning...log onto myspace...go check out the board for a couple of minutes.  A routine task.  A post from someone on evolution was a classic.  Made me laugh so much.

I always suspected this. In fact the theory of human evolution through a gradual decent from trees causing our brains to evolve from the extra proteins of meat relatively makes less sense then aliens modifying our chimp brains. There are so many references in the bible about U.F.O’s.

http://www.bibleufo.com/index.htm

In fact I believe all great messiahs (Jesus, moses, allah...) they were all aliens. Human ignorance failed to interpret the extraterrestrials for what they really are so we made up categories for what we didn’t understand(Religion).

I was going to go online and post a large scientific rebuttle, gently guide the person with some seminal pieces of work like Selfish Gene.  That is the teacher in me, but where on Earth!! (forgive the pun) do you start with someone who has such views.  So I decided to sit and laugh instead. 

So this is what delighted me about this post....

• The irony that someone would rather believe we descended from Aliens than the facts of evolution is fantastic. 
  
• Also I really like the thoughtful addition of the bible and ufo website for the rest of the members to look up for themselves this theory of life.
• The 'gradual descent from trees' classic quote, in fact I can see that quote becoming one of my talking points when I teach evolution this year to my classes.  In fact I may take the post in its entirety and get my students to disect the whole thing themselves and write their own counter post....I could set up a fake myspace forum just based around that post.  Hours of fun with my kids.
  
• I thought the education system in the UK was bad and that kids in this country did not have a good scientific basis to their education.  Well it seems, anecdotally that there are individuals in the US where scientific basics have past them by.

Well I was so happy with this post I posted a thank you comment at the bottom of the discussion thread.  What a biologists dream, I can do so much with this one little snippet of someone's mind.

And there's more.....the reply to my comment is below....

Well Joanne I haven’t even read your theory on evolution, I mean you do have 1 right? Offcurse it pains me to see that you probably doubt your so well cherished evolutionary theory, that you’re scared to deviate and admit to other posibilities for human evolution. Please tell me more about this selfish gene. And yes everybody knows that meteorites are probably the answer to how bacteria generated on earth, but what does that have to do how we went from monkeys to humans.

First to clarify...I had mentioned that I had read  the theories of meteorites and the recent ideas around alien life coming from the cosmos.  It seems if there is anyway of being taken out of context on myspace it is jumped on..... the classic quote has to be though...

'what does that have to do how we went from monkeys to humans.' 

Beautiful!!! From trees....to monkeys...to humans....