Cool assertions, bro. Watch this:
They existed.
The claim that there was “never” anything pre-human or a distinct species on an evolutionary trajectory is not made from the fossils or the genetic sequences. It is an inference required by a prior commitment to taking the text of the bible literally and denying millions of years and common ancestry.
See what I did there?
You’re attempting to appeal to areas of scientific inquiry to lend credibility to your statements when, really, none of these fields support your contentions. And it’s a dishonest appeal on your part because the fact is that no matter what evidence any scientific field has produced or might produce, when it is presented to you, you will always deny it in favor of your reading of bible, i.e. what you take the bible to be saying will always take precedence, categorically. So why not just say this? Here’s why: Because doing so undermines your ability to lead people, and perhaps even yourself, to believe that your epistemology is empirical or scientific when it’s actually not at all.
This is why people don’t respect religion, this kind of shit. It’s one thing to point out that the caricatures of Neanderthals represent them as having been very different physiologically from Homo Sapiens (they weren’t overall), but it’s another to say that they never existed. That’s just ridiculous and stupid. Not only this, but it’s incredibly easy to accommodate these scientific facts with a nuanced reading of Genesis, as many very religious commentators have done. It is pure assumption that Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, and Seth were the only humans on earth for the authors of Genesis, especially if you are familiar with the original Hebrew text. In fact, the most reasonable reading of the biblical text is that the author of Genesis didn’t think that the only humans in the world were in the garden of Eden, but that there were already others outside of where Adam and Eve and their children were. In any case, arguing that there were no Neanderthals because they’re not in Genesis is like arguing that there were never any dinosaurs because they’re not in Genesis either. It’s a stupid, stupid hill to fight on (let alone die on).
It’s a generation of people who assume that there is some secret underlying ‘truth’ that ultimately makes the reality they readily observe and are part of (which they hate because it won’t just bend to their whims) ‘false’ and unreal, so they are susceptible to delusional levels of pareidolia. Not only this, but they have been taught to anchor their epistemologies in categorical thinking where the ‘oppressed’ are de facto good, and so on. We basically have a generation of people whose truth and knowledge systems are completely toxified and unable to produce either. As such, they’re… well, morons.
Brian Shapiro is a serial dipshit. Every time I hear him speak, he’s aggressively stupid. It’s clear that he’s both infatuated with the perception of his own supposed intelligence and entirely incapable of the self-awareness required to understand how much of a moron he truly is. He probably thinks logic is some grift that Republicans made up to confuse him.