Some of you may think this is me just being a science nerd and nit picking but I see people making statements like this all the time and it bums me out. People have known about evolution for a long, long time and known about the process of natural selection since Darwin and still, still educated people say things that display a gross misunderstanding of the processes involved.

While reading the morning news, a fluff science piece about life in space caught my eye (link). In the article an astronaut is quoted as follows:

If we push back boundaries far enough, I'm sure eventually we'll find something out there," said Mike Foreman, a mission specialist on the Endeavour, which returned to Earth in March.

"Maybe not as evolved as we are, but it's hard to believe that there is not life somewhere else in this great universe,"

Do you see it too? Is your blood pressure rising like mine?

If I said the phrase 'evolutionary ladder' how would you feel?

Let me give you a hint, it makes my blood boil.

Okay enough with setup, here's part that bugs me:

"Maybe not as evolved as we are".

I know people say stuff like this all the time but they are all wrong. Humans are more intelligent than a giant clam but they are no more evolved. All living things are at the tips of their evolutionary tree. Intelligence is a strategy for survival we humans adopted, it is not the 'goal' of evolution. Things that are intelligent are not 'more evolved' by the fact that their species utilized that strategy. The folks at Berkeley explain this better than I will so follow this link for a good explanation: Trees, Not Ladders.