Darwinism is no laughing matter

In this post I want to make a few comments on an article that pretends to give an evolutionary account of laughter and humor.

Quotes and comments;

1. 'From slime to smile in 200 million years: some Darwinists feel they have explained the evolution of laughter. In all seriousness, EurekAlert announced, “The first laugh: New study posits evolutionary origins of two distinct types of laughter.” The story is about a new hypothesis by Matthew Gervais and David Sloan Wilson. The origin of comedy, they explain, was no laughing matter:

- of course the 'emergence' of comedy was no laughing matter. It (like everything else) was a matter of survival. (i.e of the fittest.) Well; let's ask ourselves is laughter now a matter of survival? The answer is no. And here we see a pattern that gets repeated continually in E. studies. We will be told X developed in one way; but that X no longer operates this way now. This is evidence to me the theory is wrong. The past and the present just don't add up; not only that they're radically at odds. We're told (with a great show of confidence) that all creatures evolved.... but that none are evolving now. Oh really. Sounds a bit odd to me. We're told that in the past (where fortunately no one was there to document it) life evolved from inert matter. Now of course this doesn't happen anymore.... but it did back then. This pattern is repeated ad nauseum in E. literature. One wonders how this can be. (I wonder if it's a laughing matter :=)
- all this is like the braggart who claims he can lift 300 pounds; but when you challenge him to do it says he has a bad back, come again next week.

2. "Using empirical evidence from across disciplines, including theory and data from work on mirror neurons, evolutionary psychology, and multilevel selection theory, the researchers detail the evolutionary trajectory of laughter over the last 7 million years. Evolutionarily elaborated from ape play-panting sometime between 4 million years ago and 2 million years ago, laughter arising from non-serious social incongruity promoted community play during fleeting periods of safety. Such non-serious social incongruity, it is argued, is the evolutionary precursor to humor as we know it.''
- only someone with no sense of humor could have written such a thing.
- but while our authors have no sense of humor, they do have quite an imagination. Imagine coming up with such a story and having no observational evidence. Impressive, dudes. (I await your sf trilogy.)
- there's an obvious problem with stories about the E. emergence of humor. If (as theory mandates) there can be no discontinuities in evolution, all of nature and indeed all of matter must contain 'humor particles' as it were. Not only must lizards have a sense of humor, fish must have a sense of humor; as must one celled organisms as well as primordial slime... and it gets worse, even atoms and sub-atomic particles must be humor endowed.... in fact hydrogen gas must in some manner have a sense of humor. (Heh, I know, we could call it laughing gas :=)

3. "Around 2 million years ago, human ancestors evolved the capacity for willful control over facial motor systems. As a result, laughter was co-opted for a number of novel functions, including strategically punctuating conversation, and conveying feelings or ideas such as embarrassment and derision.''
- my friends, if you really believe that the joke is on you. In my humble opinion Darwinism will turn out to be the biggest joke in human history. (It is utterly false, utterly impossible. It amounts to saying a rock can turn into prof. Einstein simply by hanging in space for a few years.) And while we can be tempted to laugh at people so deluded, we really ought to pity them.
- what they're asking us to believe is that the intensely personal expression of humor came from the non-personal. (To simplify things; they're telling us rocks are comedians.)

Notes;
1. I came across this story at CreationEvolution Headlines; where D.C. (I assume) has an excellent commentary on it.
2. I've been informed the David Sloan Wilson is definitely not a dude. Apologies.