We knew our story on a possible human ancestor called Australopithecus sediba would be controversial, but never expected more than 1,900 comments to come in.

The post generated some pretty intense discussions involving readers who do not believe these new findings - or any evidence of human evolution, for that matter - because of their religious beliefs.

blake

Maybe your ancestor, not mine. I was created in the image of God, not evolved from from some lifeless goo over billions of years. The accident of time and chance. I don't have enough faith to believe those kind of fantastical fairy tales.

Religious sentiments such as this received a lot of backlash from readers such as gary, who writes:

Evolution is fact. Deities and demons are pretend. Bible is folklore, myth, superstition and legend.

There's also a large contingent of readers who don't see a contradiction between accepting the facts of science and having religious faith. Judas Priest writes:

Excuse me, but why does believing in god mean denying the wonders of creation that you can see and touch and evaluate? How does accepting that the world is billions of years old, and the universe billions of years older still, deny god? How does observing that things change over time refute god in any way? Why must god, and god's creation, be small enough to be encompassed by your tiny little mind and your tiny little book?