Reality check - evolution is a fact

I read an interesting article today in the paper about how scientists have discovered that the ancestor to HIV is millions of years older than previously believed.  The finding that it evolved in primitive primates millions of years ago is a huge leap forward towards understanding the virus and hopefully even coming up with a cure for it.

I couldn't help but wonder, what do creationists do when they read something like this, assuming that they even do read something like this?  Not just creationists, but what do the people who say things like, "I have my doubts about evolution.  I don't believed that we came from monkeys."  (Of course, I'm compelled to point out that evolution has nothing to do with us "coming from monkeys", rather, we share an ancestor with apes (and monkeys too, but you have to go further back than that.  If you go back far enough, you and your dog and cat are distant cousins - VERY distant.)

I mean, how many of these scientists do you suppose are creationists?  How many of them doubt that we share an ancestor with apes?  I think it's pretty safe to say zero and none.

The thing is, when it comes to finding cures for diseases, it's the field of evolutionary biology where we'll find our answers.  Nobody who believes that Jesus walked around with dinosaurs is ever going to make any headway into the field - mainly because it uses evolution as the very foundation for research.

Perhaps what we need is a serious plague to break out - one that decimates the population, and then people will see the necessity for accepting that evolution is a proveable fact.  Let's hope that it doesn't come to that.

Oh, and here's a copy of the article.