Those who would assure you any of the many possibilities are 'for sure' are just trying to indoctrinate you into one religion or another.
Humans are not descended from monkeys. Millions of years ago humans shared a common ancestor with modern African apes. The species diverged into two separate lineages. One of these lineages ultimately evolved into gorillas and chimps,and the other evolved into early human ancestors called hominids.
The theory of evolution is supported by a wide range of observations throughout the fields of genetics, anatomy, ecology, animal behavior, paleontology and others. It's been tested and scrutinized for over 150 years and has come out the stronger for it.
Since Darwin's time, massive additional evidence has accumulated supporting evolution, that all living organisms present on earth today have arisen from earlier forms in the course of earth's long history. All of modern biology is an affirmation of this relatedness of the many species of living things and of their gradual divergence from one another over the course of time. Since the publication of The Origin of Species, the important question, scientifically speaking, about evolution has not been whether it has taken place. That is no longer an issue among the vast majority of biologists. Science has moved way past Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, which is nowadays included in a set of theories from a wide field of scientific study, called the Modern Synthesis, which collectively explain how evolution occurs.
In science, nothing is absolute, however there is as strong as strong a level of confidence supported by by the massive cross disciplinary evidence, observation and experimentation for the Theory of Evolution as there is for the General and Special Theories of Relativity and the Standard Model of Quantum Mechanics. That doesn’t mean we know every nuance of speciation over time, but the basic mechanism is well understood, highly predictive, and consistent with findings across the other disciplines of Science. While we still have more to learn, just as we do for the afore mentioned Theories, but a refutation of the General Theory is unlikely. That doesn’t mean there aren’t unanswered questions. But many of the questions I have seen in this forum, such as those posed by Spooky above are born from both a misunderstanding of the Theory, and ignorance of the work over the last 100 years... they aren’t challenging questions. By the way, that folks often refer the the Theory as Darwin’s Theory underscores the ignorance of how the Theory was developed and who contributed. Darwin’s publication was the one that began the popularization of the Theory, but his primary contribution was describing the underlying mechanism responsible for the variation in species, Natural Selection... a process that can accurately be applied far beyond the biological realm, in fact, well describes the underlying process for which Science advances our knowledge of the natural universe.
Yes, stupid people are making more babies. Smart people make fewer babies. That is what gave us trump. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence The lack of reproduction among the most intelligent people has come home to roost. Now we have a country where half the voters support a man who is clearly pathological and anti intelligence. It makes one wonder how far people will naturally devolve if science doesn't intervene.
You adequate education with intelligence. If some high level of education may require a high intelligence there is also many "stupideducates", people who just managed to adapt to throw back bit of informations but are stupid, or people that work in manual labors but are very smart. I was in a class of high IQ students in middle school and if IQ isn't intelligence as a whole, it definitively represent a part of it, and many students failed, often out of complete boredom. On a global manner, I remain skeptical about associating political adversaries with stupidity.
There is many types of sharks. Diversification of one subtype of animals is result of natural selections. Furthermore there is evolutive optimum : forms on which animals can thrive and so there isn't any selective pressure excepted to cast out disabilities or unviable forms. It's the ability to reproduce that command all. For instance, rats are so good at just existing that natural selection would just keep them in that very successfull shape.
For the sake of simplicity it seems reasonable to determine if such a division could occur. From there, guessing whether there were times that a population divided into several subgroups seems like a detail. The point with apes is that at one time our family tree and the family tree of apes came from one single precursor species. And, at some point that precursor species split by one or more of the various mechanisms that allows for that to happen.
I'm not so sure about that. Humans are pretty successful, too, yet humans are evolving - not very fast, but it is happening. In the last 20,000 years humans have gained blue eyes, have gained the ability to digest milk as adults (rather than just as babies), AND our brains have shrunk by about the size of a tennis ball. Even in a successful population there can be traits that allow for greater procreative success, for example. With humans, our brains are incredibly expensive for our bodies to keep nourished. It might be that smaller brains were an advantage in survival. And while brains don't fossilize, it appears likely that we made up for the loss in size by having our brains become more complex.
I suspect your education example has too many factors to be used to defend the outcomes you wan to defend. I agree with it being a mistake to consider ones adversaries stupid just out of the "pride goeth before a fall" hypothesis. But, we're seeing decisions today that are most definitely and profoundly stupid - such as rejecting medical science, or even rejecting science in general. It's just that while the behavior is certainly stupid, the individual may be making the mistake for reasons other than personal stupidity. As you point out, they may not have adequate education, or they may have other pressures of overriding concern and just haven't brought their intelligence to bear, etc., etc.
If things evolve to adapt to environment then how did one species evolve into two different ones, that would have to mean they were in different environments.
Things don't evolve to adapt. That's what the first evolution theory by Jean Baptiste Lamarck suggested and it was not considered as valid. Darwin wasn't the first to suggest that species evolve, however he suggested that the factor of evolution was the ability to survive and reproduce. Genetic change happen all the time, sometimes it give people genetic sickness, sometimes it's positive. Then it's the process of survival/sexual selection that will determine if the change is kept. The change of DNA is random however the process of selection of those change isn't.
Nothing just randomly happens. That's ridiculous especially in science. If that were true there would be like millions of different human species walking around, not just one. A guy could be walking down the street and his DNA just changes and he has Kids with four arms. That doesn't happen.
The number of different environmens is GIGANTIC when one considers even just the primary variables and the math of combinine those variables. And, there are many strategies for life to succeed as defined by surviving. A life form can win by being big, being smart, being fast, having different diets, etc. Today, biologists estimate that 85% of species are unknown to man - not having been found and catalogued. They all fit into an ecology of imense diversity, with each species having a plan that includes a survival strategy.
That's just not how genes are codded. Imeab it's not a computer variable with arms=2, simple things like arms are codded by thousands of different genes. There is 3 billions nucleotides that code our genes, much longer that any human codes. Furthermore for a mutation to be passed on the children, it has to happen on an ovule or spermatozoon not on a random skin cell. And again if genes mutation are randoms, the selection of them aren't. Natural selection isn't a random process, mutations are. And we observe in a daily life the effect of genetic mutation with cancers, genetic sickness or even new virus and bacteries.
