Did we or did we not evolve from apes?

HowStuffWorks "Are humans really descended from apes?"

Since Charles Darwin published the theory of evolution by means of natural selection in 1859, myths and misinterpretations have eroded public understanding of his ideas. For example, some people continue to argue that evolution isn't a valid scientific theory because it can't be tested. This, of course, isn't true. Scientists have successfully run numerous laboratory tests that support the major tenets of evolution. And field scientists have been able to use the fossil record to answer important questions about natural selection and how organisms change over time.

Still, the evolution-is-not-falsifiable myth remains popular. So does this one: The second law of thermodynamics, which says an orderly system will always become disorderly, makes evolution impossible. This myth reflects a general misunderstanding of entropy, the term used by physicists to describe randomness or disorder.

Yes and no. The reason this is confusing is because we did evolve from apes - or at least something very ape-like. However, we did not evolve from apes in the way fundamentalist christians use the word. When christians (or muslims, jews etc.) try to argue against the theory of evolution, they usually accuse evolutionists of claiming that we evolved from the type of apes that are alive today, such as chimpanzees. In other words, by "apes", christians understand monkeys that are living at this moment. This is why they often ask the question: "how come we evolved from apes but apes are still here?". Obviously, we did NOT evolve from the animals that you can visit in the zoos these days. And we also did NOT evolve from animals that looked the same as the ones from the zoo. We're not the children of chimpanzees (we're their cousins). However, humans and other, contemporary apes do share common ancestors that could be called apes. Just like humans did not evolve from mice and humans don't look like mice but humans and mice have common ancestor (rats and other small mammals were some of the only animals that survived the meteor impact that killed the dinosaurs).

Here's a neat, short explanation by Richard Dawkins that might help you understand the relationship between humans and apes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh0F4FBLJRE

By the way: evolution is not something you should "believe" in. That's like believing in gravitation... it's a bit silly to phrase it like that. Evolution is a simple fact, an observation of natural processes that can be studied and understood. People who "don't believe in it" usually don't bother to study it. Thus, they don't understand it.

Yes. Just not any of the apes or monkey that exist today.

Humans did not evolve from apes. Humans and apes both evolved from a common ancestor that was neither.

Yes. Our common ancestor was arboreal (lived in the trees), so monkey would pretty much be correct.

if we evolved why are their not any stage of evolved people going on today if the bible is not real how could any one back then know what our body's are made of