Atheists more evolved?

I read this article on National Geographic telling that Liberals, Atheists are more evolved. Having studied evolution quite a lot for a layman, I can tell immediately that at least the person behind the title doesn't know what evolution is and that no one is more evolved than anyone else. Of course I could let the atheist inside me shine in the light, but...

First and foremost, evolution doesn't have a direction. It doesn't steadily go towards a conclusion as that would require some intelligence to plan forehand the play. Evolution is an eliminative process, pointing always only towards current moment, letting only those who are right there and then having some kind of an advantage in procreating.

Even those that appear as living fossils like platypus or Coelacanth have had exactly the same time to evolve. Platypuses appear as less evolved than other mammals as they

  1. lay eggs instead of give birth to living babies
  2. don't have nipples, but secrete milky substance straight on the skin
  3. have a beak instead of a nose

How about its evolved traits like electrolocation that is so sensitive that it can locate a shrimp by the electric signal shrimp's muscles transmit when contracting? Or that platypuses are the only (known) poisonous mammals?

And for all of those who ever have heard that "I can't believe that we humans evolved from chimpanzees": it's all true. We didn't. We branched from common ancestors and we really aren't any more evolved than chimps, only different. Chimps and bonobos aren't our parents, they are our cousins.

Second, changes in genes and in appearance do not correlate. Genetic changes can be very subtle and small but still have dramatic effects (e.g. comparing Homo Sapiens to Chimps) or they can be very big while phenotype remains apparently unchanged (platypus compared to any other mammal group, according to genetic sequencing). There are numerous factors that can alter the phenotype while keeping the genes relatively unchanged, like pedomorphosis (changing the time when species becomes fertile) in Axolotls.

P.S. This all reminds me of a very educating and entertaining video that tells what really makes us different from any other animal: Robert Sapolsky on the Uniqueness of Humans.

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