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

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

1. Dobson, R., Sorry old Bean, the apes got there first, The Sunday Times (UK), 30 April 2006, 8 June 2006.
2. 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.