The Evolution
of a
Creationist
5
ORANGUTANS,
MONKEYS AND MAN
When
studied at the level of molecules, cells, or fossil bones, the
evolutionary ancestors of people (ape-man or man-like-apes) are
not to
be found. In spite of this, elaborate attempts are made to
"prove" that
man evolved from early primates (ape-like creatures).
In the late sixties and early seventies, much of
the
scientific community ruled Ramapithecus (an ape-like creature)
ancestral
to the orangutan or to an ape, instead of its original position
as
ancestral to humans. When considering Ramapithecus in 1973, Alan Walker and Peter Andrews wrote
their belief
that the jaw of Ramapithecus was that of a true ape
(Nature, Vol.
244, 1973, p. 313).
Yet, in 1982, the son of Louis and Mary
Leakey, who are world famous pioneers in the study of
"prehistoric" man,
stated:
"Ramapithecines
are thought
to be the group from which our ancestors
evolved."
PILTDOWN MAN
If
Ramapithecus appears in school or college textbooks as part of
the
evolution of man, it can be discarded, as should the Piltdown
man, which
was shown to be a hoax in 1953. Piltdown's filed teeth
and bone
had been stained to make it appear to be ancient.
Fourteen years after Piltdown Man was proven by
the
evolutionary scientific community to be a total fake and bad
joke,
Harvard University Press published these words (admittedly this
is a
long quote, but I include it to display how far the evolutionary
community will go to support their insupportable claims even
years after
one of their "evidences" has been proven to be a fraud):
"Unlike all
other fossil men
is Eoanthropus,
known from a
fragmentary skull and the right half of a lower jaw with two
teeth, the
first and second molars, in place. The specimens were obtained
by Mr.
William Dawson from a small opening by the roadside at Piltdown,
Sussex,
England, and described by Sir Arthur Smith Woodward. It is
difficult to
determine their age, for fragments of mammals characteristic of
the
Pliocene and Pleistocene are mingled in the river-borne gravel.
If
contemporaneous with the most modern of them, Piltdown man was
probably
not more recent than the third interglacial stage, since Hippopotamus and other
subtropical animals occur with it.
The skull is so
fragmentary
that those who have studied it have been unable to agree as to
the
proper reconstruction: estimates of its cranial capacity have
varied
from 1079 cc. to 1500 cc. , and an intermediate figure of about
1300 cc.
has finally been reached. It is not at all of the Neanderthal
type, but
has a high forehead like that of modern man. Aside from the fact
that
the bones are exceedingly thick, it is not peculiar. The jaw,
however,
is admitted by all to be more like that of a chimpanzee than
like that
of any man, living or extinct. This was recognized in the
original
description. The two teeth are like human molars, but the
remainder of
the jaw affords too much space to be filled by ordinary teeth.
Hence, in
his restoration of the anterior part, Smith Woodward made the
canines
large, like those of a chimpanzee, and allowed for a small
diastema. The
correctness of his view was demonstrated in a striking way the
year
after publication, when Dawson and Father Teilhard de
Chardin, who were resifting the gravel at the spot where the jaw
was
found, found a large canine. It is twice as large as that of a
man and
almost exactly like that of a modern chimpanzee. This
association seemed
to many to be an unnatural one, so the jaw was attributed by
some to a
species of chimpanzee. The later finding of a few more fragments
at a
near-by site seems, however, to have convinced most of those
interested
that skull and jaw belong together. Eoanthropus dawsoni
(Piltdown
man), then is to some people the missing link between man and
the apes.
The forehead is high, the brow ridge insignificant, and the
brain large,
all features of man, but the chinless jaw has the big canines of
an
ape."
Thus as late as 1967, the prestigious Harvard
University
Press was still promoting the Piltdown Hoax as a possible
"...missing
link between man and the apes", when it had been proven a sham
nearly
fifteen years earlier.
NEBRASKA MAN
Nebraska man was formed from a single tooth
found in 1922.
In 1924, the skull was found and the tooth fit perfectly in the
empty
socket -- it was a pig's tooth!
NEANDERTHAL AND
CRO-MAGNON
We might also add that Neanderthal and
Cro-magnon man are
now believed to be normal European Homosapiens. Some of these
"prehistoric men" have a larger brain cavity than modern
man.
Dr. Percy E. Raymond of
Harvard
University, states in regard to Neanderthal:
"In actual
capacity, the
cranial cavity was larger than that of the average European,
some skulls
measuring l,600 cc."
Donald Johanson, one of the
world's
most recognized experts on "fossil man", writes:
"...Neanderthal
Man. He was
another Homo. Some
think he
was the same species as ourselves....
I consider
Neanderthal
nonspecific with sapiens,
with myself. One hears talk about putting him in a business suit
and
turning him loose in the subway. It is true; one could do it,
and he
would never be noticed. He was just a little heavier-boned than
people
of today, more primitive in a few facial features. But he was a
man. His
brain was as big as modern man's, but shaped in a slightly
different
way. Could he make change at the subway booth and recognize a
token? He
certainly could."
According to evolutionist Johanson, Neanderthal
is not
prehistoric man, not some ancient evolutionary ancestor, but
just like
us, modern man!
PEKING MAN
Peking Man has been categorized as Homo erectus.
He
disappeared during World War II. There is not a single bone left
of
Peking Man, although books have been written about the
international
search for the "bones".
An entertaining and readable book on the search
for Peking
Man was written by Christopher Janus with
William
Brashler, entitled, The Search for Peking Man. Mentioned
in the
book as one of the people who aided in the discovery of Peking
Man is Teilhard De Chardin -- one of the perpetrators
of the
Piltdown Man hoax!
Since De Chardin was implicated in the Piltdown hoax and managed
to
involve himself with Peking man as well, how can we be certain
that the
documentation we have of Peking man is reliable?
Janus records the total
number of
Peking Man fossil fragments before the Japanese invasion of
China:
"... they
labeled,
described, photographed and categorized the casts of the 175
fossil
fragments that had been collected"
Peking Man supposedly consisted of:
"...5 skulls,
about 150 jaw
fragments and teeth, 9 thigh bones and fragments, 2 upper arm
bones, a
collar bone, and a wrist bone"
All these bones have disappeared! Apparently,
the
evolutionary scientists cannot even agree on how many bones
represented
Peking Man. Johanson records:
"...5 skulls, 15
smaller
pieces of the skull or face, 14 lower jaws and 152
teeth."
So there is no hard evidence that Peking Man is
an
ancestor of Homo sapiens. Some photographs of Peking skulls
remain. The
skulls were broken into from the rear and most probably, the
brains
served as food for true Homo sapiens. It would hardly be likely
that the
ancient ancestor of man lived concurrently with man and that his
brains
would be considered a delicacy of his great-grandchildren, homo
sapiens.
As early as 1957, French paleontologist, Dr.
Marcellin
Boule, proposed that the people who made the tools that killed
Peking
Man were true Homo sapiens.
JAVA MAN
Dr. Eugene Dubois discovered another
creature in
the "Homo erectus" category, which he called "Java Man". Java
Man was a
skullcap and leg-bone. By the end of his life, Dubois recanted.
He
believed the leg-bone to belong to Homo sapiens and the skullcap
that of
a giant ape or gibbon.
HEIDELBERG
MAN
The other commonly
mentioned Homo
erectus is Heidelberg Man. Johanson writes:
"Heidelberg Man,
for
example, was named Homo heidelbergensis. His finder recognized
that he
was a man and, thus, belonged in the genus Homo, but decided to
put him
in a species of his own."
Heidelberg Man consists of a single fossil -- a
lower jaw
with teeth.
Heidelberg Man is imagination built around a
"jawbone"!
"LUCY" AND THE
AUSTRALOPITHECINES
Even Australopithecus is open to question. The
star of
this "human ancestor" is Donald Johanson's 3=BD foot tall
"Lucy".
Supposedly, Lucy was the first creature to walk on two feet
instead of
four feet, like other apes did (and still do). Lucy resembles
Homo
sapiens in three ways (theoretically): her knee, arm-leg length,
and
left pelvic bone. She has a human-like knee joint, but this
joint was
found sixty to eighty meters deeper in the rock strata and
almost a
mile away from the rest of the skeleton. To claim that
this knee
joint belonged to a partial skeleton found about a mile away is
as
logical as saying a chicken drum stick bone found in the parking
lot of
the local Kentucky Fried Chicken establishment was originally
the leg of
a chicken whose partial skeleton was found in your back yard.
There is
no way to prove the knee-joint is part of Lucy's skeleton.
Johanson
published Lucy's arm-leg length ratio to be 83.9%. In other
words her
arm bone was said to be 83.9% as long as her leg bone. This
would place
her about midway between ape (arm and leg of equal length) and
human
(arm about 75% of leg length). The 83.9% seems quite specific,
but the
leg-bone had been broken in two or more places and one end was
crushed.
The pieces do not fit perfectly together, so there is no way to
accurately measure it. The 83.9% sounds good, but it is a guess
(see
Ex Nihilo, Vol. 6, 1983, p. 5).
The other human-like bone is the left pelvic
bone. This
bone is complete and is used to prove Lucy walked upright. The
problem
is that this bone does not prove upright walking. Johanson
believes the
bone has been distorted by some means. And yet, there is no
other pelvic
bone with which to compare it. The bone as it stands, more
likely shows
Lucy to have walked on all fours!
According to another evolutionist, Dr.
Solly Zuckerman, Australopithecus is an ape and walked on all
fours like
an ape. Zuckerman evaluated the pelvic bone of the
Australopithecines
and he concluded that this telltale bone corresponded in one
type of
measurement to monkeys and baboons. Looking at it from another
angle, it
was "...completely unlike man, and identical with monkeys and
apes.
Fellow evolutionist
Dr. Charles Oxnard, believes Australopithecus walked in a
fashion
similar to a chimpanzee or
an orangutan. Oxnard writes:
"Let us now
return to our
original problem: the Australopithecine fossils. I shall not
burden you
with details of each and every study that we have made but...the
information...shows that whereas the conventional wisdom is that
the
Australopithecine fragments are generally rather similar to
humans and
when different deviate somewhat towards the condition in African
apes,
the new studies point to different conclusions. The new
investigations
suggest that the fossil fragments are usually uniquely different
from
any living form; when they do have similarities with living
species,
they are as often as not reminiscent of the
orangutan."
Lyall Watson is right.
There does not
appear to be enough bones from "true" fossil man, "...to fill a
single
coffin."
ANTHROPOLOGICAL
ART
Even the artwork typically used to depict these
creatures
is questionable. Those National Geographic-type pictures
of apes
gradually becoming more and more human until you finally see the
man on
the street (usually with an ape-like haircut and a beard) are
called
anthropological art.
"Unfortunately,
the vast
majority of artists' conceptions are based more on imagination,
than
evidence.... Much of the reconstruction, however, is guesswork.
Bones
say nothing about the fleshy parts of the nose, lips or ears.
Artists
must create something between an ape and a human being: the
older a
specimen is said to be, the more ape-like they make it....
Hairiness is
a matter of pure conjecture.
The guesswork
approach often
leads to errors."
How did the above words get into an evolutionary
magazine
like Science Digest? Those National Geographic
pictures of
"evolving" man are "artists' conceptions", "imagination", and
"guesswork". When is the last time you saw a bone with hair on
it? Or
how do the artists know what kind of ears or lips to put on
skull
fragments or even whole skulls? There are no lips on skull
bones. As
Science Digest confesses, it is the artists' imagination.
This is
not science!
Every bone or bone particle discovered so far
has been
classified, by one evolution expert or another, as ape, monkey,
or man
-- not ape-man or man-ape.
IS A
MONKEY ALMOST
A MAN?
There are other facts to be
considered
when attempting to prove that man had ape-like evolutionary
ancestors.
J. W. Klotz lists a few of the important differences between man
and the
primates. I
have edited Dr. Klotz's list of 31 major differences down to the
ten
most outstanding in my opinion. If man evolved from the
primates, then
everything in the right column (characteristics of primates)
would have
to somehow evolve into the characteristics of man in the left
column.
|
1.
Permanent
bipedal locomotion |
|
1.
Walks on
all fours |
|
2.
Great toe
in line with other toes |
|
2.
Great toe
like a thumb |
|
3.
Brain
larger |
|
3.
Brain
smaller |
|
4.
Head
balanced on top of the spinal column
|
|
4.
Head
hinged in front of spinal column
|
|
5.
Less
mature at birth |
|
5.
More
mature at birth |
|
6.
More
vertebrae |
|
6.
Less
vertebrae |
|
7.
Shorter
arms |
|
7.
Longer
arms |
|
8.
Longer
legs |
|
8.
Shorter
legs |
|
9.
One type
hand |
|
9.
Another
type hand |
|
10. 46
chromosomes
|
|
10. 48
chromosomes
|
These are real, basic differences between man
and the
primates. Let us examine three.
THE
GREAT
TOE
What would it take to evolve a great toe like
that on the
foot of a primate into a great toe like that on the foot of a
man? This
digit on a primate is located and functions like a thumb. With
its
thumb-like great toe, it can grab onto a tree limb.
And yet the great toe of man comes out the front
of his
foot in a line with his other toes. In reality, there is no
animal in
the supposed evolutionary family of man with a great toe
positioned
somewhere between man's "out the front" and primate's "more
toward the
rear and out the side". There are no living animals and no
fossil
animals that display a great toe migrating toward the front of
the foot.
Surely "survival of the fittest" would ensnare and destroy any
primate
that lost its ability to grab limbs with its "evolving higher"
great
toe! It would quickly become extinct and would not evolve on up
in the
"evolutionary chain" to man.
HEAD
PLACEMENT
The placement of the head is also quite
significant. A
human head is balanced on top of the spinal column to facilitate
walking
and running in the upright, two-legged position. Where is the
evidence
that the primates somehow managed to move their heads from being
hinged
in front of the spinal column (for ease of function on all
fours) to the
top of the spinal column as in humans? How could a creature
function,
whose head was placed halfway between the primate and man?
Obviously,
the "survival of the fittest" would catch up with it also. It
would
probably become extinct in one generation.
BABY HUMANS ARE
HELPLESS
Evolution seems to be going in reverse as you
look at the
ability of human babies to survive, compared to the primates.
Human
babies are totally helpless at birth and for months afterward.
Baby apes
are ready to run to safety or climb onto their mother's back for
a ride
soon after birth. How would those first human babies have
survived? And,
what is the probability that the last set of ape-parents would
give
birth to dizygotic twins (a male and female) which could not
only
survive as the first non-ape human babies, but could reproduce
offspring
(male and female) which could again reproduce and on and on?
And, why do
we still have so many species of apes and monkeys, if they are
evolving
into something else, perhaps even into people? Again may I
emphasize the
fact that what we see in real life today and over the span of
recorded
history are discrete, identifiable animals, plants and people;
not
intermediate, transitional life forms.
A
MASSIVE
POPULATION PROBLEM
If, as evolutionists
believe,
monkey-like creatures evolved into man about 1 million years
ago, (Lucy
is said to be around 2.8 million years old), we would anticipate
a
massive population problem. Dr. Henry Morris gives some
interesting
figures in his book, Biblical Cosmology and Modern
Science,
published in 1970. Assuming parents lived to the age of 35 and
had four
children, roughly 3 billion people would have been produced in
just the
first thousand years!
You
might say, "Well, that is too many children." Dr. Morris shows
the
figures for a family with three children, using the same
condition as
above. In roughly 2 thousand years the population of earth would
have
reached about 4 1/2 billion. With 2.5 children per family and
extending
the length of a generation to 43 years, in little more than 4
thousand
years 3 billion people would populate the earth. To quote Dr.
Morris
verbatim: "It begins to be glaringly evident that the human race
cannot
be very old!"
According to Dr. Morris, if the earth's
population started
with two people 4,300 years ago, it would only have to increase
at the
rate of 0.5% per year in order to reach the population of the
world of
1970. This 0.5% is significantly less than the 1970 population
growth
rate of about 2% per year. The farther back in history you go,
the
higher is the percentage of growth. Less industrialized people
have
bigger families on the average.
Dr. Morris states that the best secular estimate
of World
population at the time of Christ, is 200,000,000 people. Using
2.75
children per family, plus a 40-year generation and starting with
2
people in 2340 B.C., there would have been about 210 million
people
alive in A.D. 1. These figures would fit the Biblical time frame
nicely.
Bringing into consideration the effects of
disease and
wars on population growth, Dr. Morris says:
"But what about
the
possibility that the great plagues and wars of the past may have
served
to keep the population from growing at the indicated rates?
Could the
population have remained static for long ages and only in modern
times
have started to expand?
We are unable to
answer
these questions dogmatically, of course, since population data
are
unavailable for earlier times....
Furthermore,
there is really
no evidence that the growth of population has been retarded by
wars or
disease epidemics. The past century, which has experienced the
greatest
mushrooming of populations, has also witnessed the most
destructive wars
in all history, as well as the worst plagues and
famines."
Dr. Morris singles out the Jewish people as a
good example
of the accuracy of his population estimates. The Jewish people
had no
homeland for many years. They suffered persecution and the
holocaust.
Morris states that if the average Jewish family had 2.4 children
and a
43-year generation, that in 3,700 years (beginning about the
time of the
patriarch, Jacob) there should have been 13,900,000 Jewish
people alive
by 1970.
Man could not possibly have been here as man for
even
l,000,000 years. Using Morris' figures, l,000,000 years is over
28,600
generations, which would put the world population of 1970 at 10
to the
5,000th power! That is enough people to fill the entire
universe, and we
are not including rats and rabbits. As Dr. Morris said,
"It begins to be
glaringly
evident that the human race cannot be very old! ...the
assumption of the
evolutionists that man first appeared a million or more years
ago
becomes completely absurd when examined in the light of
population
statistics."
If man has been recognizable as man for 30
million years,
15 million years or even 500,000 years, there should be hundreds
of
billions of fossils scattered in huge piles all over the earth!
Where is
fossil man? Let's face it -- man has not been and cannot have
been on
earth for very much longer than a few thousand years! If studies
of
population statistics demand a short (few thousand years)
history of man
on earth, then evolution of man over thousands or millions of
years is,
most unlikely if not totally, impossible!
PREHISTORIC MAN IS
NOT PREHISTORIC
Could it be that "prehistoric" man was not
"before
history" after all? Job may have been referring to the type of
people
scientists call "cavemen" as he wrote:
"But now they that are younger than I have me in
derision,
whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs
of my
flock.
Yea, whereto might the strength of their
hands profit me, in whom old
age was
perished?
For want and famine they were solitary;
fleeing
into the wilderness in former time desolate and waste.
Who cut up mallows by the bushes, and juniper roots for their meat.
They were driven forth from among men, (they cried
after them
as after a thief;)
To dwell in the cliffs of the
valleys,
in caves of the
earth, and in
the rocks.
Among the bushes they brayed; under
the
nettles they were gathered together.
They were
children of fools,
yea, children of base men: they were viler than the earth."
(Job
30:l-8)
Perhaps "cavemen" were cast-offs from the
civilized
societies of their day. Possibly these were people given over to
a
reprobate mind due to their habitual sin and decadence. In any
event,they were not man's ancestors. They lived concurrently
with
man.
The God of the Bible says He created man after
His own
image from the dust of the earth:
"And the Lord God formed man of the dust from
the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man
became a
living soul." (Genesis 2:7)
God formed man from dust, not from some
prehistoric,
ape-like, hominid creature or the primordial ooze. The dust
became, by
God's creative design and power, a man; but the man had no life
until
God breathed life into him. Genesis 2:7 clearly shows that man's
emergence from some previous living creature is not true. He
came from
non-living dust which became, by God's creative design and
power, a man
-- a man which had no life until the living God breathed
life
into him. This means that man could not have evolved from some
more
primitive "LIVING" monkey-like creature. People were created by
God in
God's own image. There can be no compromise for the Christian as
to the
origin of man. We did not come from monkey-like creatures but
through
the indescribable, unfathomable, supernatural power of the God
of the
Bible.
THE ANTHROPIC
PRINCIPLE
God placed man, the pinnacle of His creation, in
a special
environment of delicately balanced systems. Scientists are now
calling
this balance of ecosystems (that support the life of man) the
"Anthropic
Principle". For our lives to be maintained we must have exactly
the
correct amounts of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, sunlight,
magnetic
field, speed of rotation and revolution of earth, distance from
the
moon, distance from the sun, ozone, water, gravity, etc., etc.,
etc. All
of these factors must be in the correct amounts, in the right
places, at
the right times, and in exact relationships with each other. For
instance, if our earth's gravity was weaker, our atmosphere
would thin
out and be unable to support life. If gravity was stronger,
undesirable
gases such as ammonia gas would be held in higher concentrations
and be
detrimental to life. That means our earth has to have been made
exactly
the right size to generate the perfect amount of gravity to
support our
atmosphere. But it also had to be the right size to hold our
moon in
orbit -- that means the moon had to be made the right size so it
wouldn't drift off into space or crash into earth -- and the
moon also
had to be the right size so that the ocean tides stay under
control. We
could go on and on with this, but the fact is the evolution
model as an
explanation for this incredible universe comes up grossly
lacking! God,
the God of the Bible, is to be praised and He, alone, is to
receive the
glory and the honor.
"It is a
good thing to give thanks to the Lord and to sing praises unto
thy name,
O most High." (Psalm 92:1)
Richard E.
Leakey, Human Origins,
Lodestar Books
(New York: E.P. Dutton, 1982), p. 20. For much information about
fossil-man from a creationist perspective please read: Bones
of
Contention by Marvin Lubenow (Baker Books: Grand Rapids)
1992. Also:
The Illustrated Origins Answer Book by Paul S. Taylor
(Eden
Productions, P.O. Box 41644 Mesa, AZ 85274-1644)
1992.
See The Hominid Gang: Behind
the Scenes
in the Search for Human Origins by Delta Willis, with an introduction
by Stephen
Jay Gould (New York: Viking Press, 1989), p. 24. See also The Piltdown Man by
Ronald
Millar (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1972), front cover
slip.
Percy E.
Raymond,
Prehistoric Life (Cambridge:
Harvard
University Press, 1969) pp. 282, 283.
See The
Hominid
Gang, p. 22. Also W. R. Bird's The Origin of Species
Revisited (Regency: Nashville) Vol. 1, pp. 227,228.
(1991).
Donald C.
Johanson
and Maitland A. Edey, Lucy: The Beginnings of
Humankind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981),
p. 20.
Christopher Janus,
The Search for Peking
Man
(New York: MacMillan Pub. Co., Inc., 1975), p.
31.
Johanson
and
Maitland, p. 34.
Marcellin
Boule, Fossil Men (Dryden
Press, 1957),
p. 535.
"It turned
out that
the angle of twist between the main plane of the ilium and the
ischio-pubic part of the innominate in the Australopithecine
cast corresponded to that in the four-footed macaque or
cercopitheque
monkeys and baboons,...Another dimension we have examined
describes the
length of the body of the ischium relative to the innominate as
a
whole...In this feature, Australopithecus is completely unlike
man, and
identical with monkeys and apes." Sir Solly Zuckerman, Beyond the Ivory Tower
(New
York: Taplinger Pub. Co., 1970), pp.
89,91.
Dr. Chas.
Oxnard,
"Human Fossils: New Views of Old Bones," American Biology
Teacher, Vol.
41, No. 5 (May, 1979), 264.
Author
unknown,
"Anthropological Art," Science
Digest, 89 No. 3 (April, 1981), 44.
J. W.
Klotz, Genes, Genesis, and
Evolution
(St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1972), pp.
332-336.
Henry M.
Morris, Biblical Cosmology and
Modern
Science (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1970), p.
75.
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