What About Origins? (CreationPoints)

by Dr A J Monty White

  Lucy is always reconstructed as having feet similar to human feet, although if you look carefully at any photograph of the fossilized remains of Lucy’s skeleton, you will see that no bones from the feet are present because they were not found. The reason why anthropologists believe that Lucy walked upright is because unmistakably human footprints have been found in Laetoli in Tanzania. These human footprints, along with those of many animals (including hares, antelopes, gazelles, giraffes, elephants, rhinoceroses, pigs, hyenas and baboons) are well-preserved because the humans and the animals walked across a flat area where a layer of volcanic ash had recently been moistened by rain. The moist volcanic ash behaved like concrete: when it dried out, it became rock-hard and effectively preserved the footprints in stone. Evolutionists maintain that these footprints could not possibly have been made by humans—even though they look for all the world like ordinary human footprints that were made by a man and a woman—because humans had apparently not evolved when these footprints were made! The evolutionists therefore conclude that the ape-like australopithecines must have had human-like feet. It is interesting to note how the evolutionists reinterpret this footprint evidence to make it fit their evolutionary views, while the evidence fits perfectly with the biblical view without any reinterpretation necessary whatsoever.

  Evolutionists inform us that the australopithecines are our ancestors, and this is subtly imprinted on our minds by a number of factors. Often the australopithecines are referred to as being human, as we saw earlier. The name ‘Lucy’ is given to one of the australopithecines, and she is singled out as being the ancestor of all humans. Her supposed humanness is subtly imprinted on our minds by her human name. Her humanness is then further imprinted on our minds by calling a juvenile australopithecine ‘Lucy’s Baby’, which is often referred to as a child. In addition, Lucy’s supposed humanness is reinforced by the reconstructions showing Lucy walking upright, just like humans, and showing her giving her infant a human cuddle (rather than having her infant cling onto her, as infant apes do). Furthermore, drawings and paintings are made that deliberately show whites in the eyes of the Australopithecus afarensis species, even though apes do not have whites in their eyes.26 The humanness of Lucy is further subtly reinforced by referring to her and her mate and any offspring in any reconstructions as the ‘First Family’. Such anthropomorphic terms convey the notion of human-like status to Lucy and to other australopithecines, and this has been firmly established in our minds when, in fact, the australopithecines were nothing more than apes.

  There is much speculation about what happened to the australopithecines. The one thing that we can be sure about is that they are now extinct. Evolutionists believe that the australopithecines evolved into humans, but herein lies their predicament, for no half-australopithecine/half-human has ever been found. The attempt to understand exactly what creature is represented by the fossils that have been found in Africa is fraught with difficulties, one being the fact that, as we have seen, evolutionists deliberately give names that bestow humanness to the creatures from which the fossils have come, even when those creatures are manifestly nothing but apes.

  We find further examples of this when we investigate what evolutionists teach about the origin of humans. One example involves Paranthropus, meaning ‘beside man’. The fossil remains of this creature actually show it to be similar to an australopithecine but with a slightly broader face, slightly larger chewing teeth, and small incisors and canines. Its brain size is similar to that of Australopithecus africanus. No one can tell how the creature walked because no postcranial fossils have been found, so evolutionists can only guess about its posture and locomotion.27 It appears, then, that ‘beside man’ is really just a variant australopithecine and has nothing at all to do with the origin of humans.

  Another example is Homo habilis, a name that means ‘handy man’. In 1960, Louis and Mary Leakey made the first of a series of remarkable discoveries of bones that they thought belonged to a creature that was a human-like ape-man. As usual, they did not find a complete skeleton: they found some teeth, part of the top of a cranium, some hand-bones, and most of the left foot. The next year, the Leakeys found the incomplete skull of an adolescent, more cranial-bone fragments, a lower jaw and more teeth. Similar fossils have been found at other sites in East and southern Africa. Even today, scientists are debating whether these remains belonged to the transitional form suggested by the Leakeys or to an australopithecine. One reason for this is that the brain size for this creature ranged from 500 cc to 800 cc—the smaller measurement being similar to that of the australopithecines and the larger being only half the size of that of modern humans. Another reason is that their limb proportions make them indistinguishable from Australopithecus afarensis.28 In fact, there is little to distinguish Homo habilis from the australopithecines, despite the human name given to it. In other words, Homo habilis is nothing more than an ape!

  Humankind, past and present

  According to evolutionists, the australopithecines evolved into humans, but, as we have already noted, there is no proof of this because no half-australopithecine/half-human creature has been found in the fossil record. What has been found, however, are the fossilized remains of a number of different creatures that have all been assigned to the genus Homo and which all belong to the human kind. To understand this we must remember what we learned about the variations within kinds—for example, within the wolf–dog kind and within the Brassica kind. We shall see that there are a number of variations within the human kind, and it would be fair to say that we can see how one variety of humans has changed into another variety. The variations that we observe in modern humans living on the earth today are not confined to skin colour, but are also reflected in the physical differences that we see in the various races. These physical differences include height, body shape, head shape, nose shape and length, as well as the noses’ internal structures. Yet with all these differences, members of the different races of modern humans are capable of interbreeding, because they are all members of the human kind. We must realize, however, that the variations that we find in humans are not the result of evolution; they are just variations within a kind (in this case, the human kind) as taught in the Bible.

  One variety of humankind I want us to consider are the Homo erectus people. Although there is still discussion about what creatures should and should not be included in this variety of humankind, there are good, sound reasons for believing that some of the fossils that have been designated as being different species of humans (for example, Homo ergaster, Homo heidelbergensis and Boxgrove Man) should be included. The fossilized remains of Homo erectus people have been found in Africa (Kenya and Tanzania), Europe (England, Germany, Georgia, Spain and Turkey) and Asia (India, Indonesia, Vietnam and China).

  Members of this variety of humankind walked upright, stood at anywhere up to 1.8 metres tall and were much stronger than modern humans. They had a brain size of up to 1400 cc, although the average was slightly smaller but still well within the variations found in modern humans. They had a crude culture that involved the use of simple implements and weapons for hunting, and there is evidence that they were able to control fire. Perhaps the most amazing thing we know about these people is that they made very elegant double-edged, teardrop-shaped ‘hand axes’—at least, that is what they are called, although there is no firm agreement about their use. It has been suggested that they could have been cutting and chopping tools, digging implements, flake cores or used in animal traps, or that they had a purely ritual significance (e.g. as part of courting behaviour). The current majority scientific view, however, is that they were tools for some form of chopping or for general-purpose use, probably for cutting meat and extracting bone marrow (which would explain their pointed ends) and general hacking through bone and muscle fibre. The manufacture of these hand axes, however, indicates that these people used their brains in a similar way to how we use our brains today, as they had the ability to conceive a design for a s
tone tool and then to work a piece of flint until that design was achieved. This is known as ‘conceptualized thinking’; according to linguists, this is the type of thinking that we do when we speak a language. The manufacture of these hand axes therefore provides good evidence that the Homo erectus people were able to speak to one another. There is no reason for us to think that the Homo erectus people were anything other than fully human.

  The other variety of humankind I want us to consider is Homo sapiens. There are two varieties of humans within Homo sapiens. One of these is the Neanderthal people, which we have already discussed. As we have already noted, there is discussion as to whether the Neanderthals should be a separate species—Homo neanderthalensis—or whether they should be put into a sub-species of Homo sapiens—in which case they would be designated Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. If they were designated as a sub-species of Homo sapiens, the other sub-species, or variety, of Homo sapiens would be the modern human, who would then be designated Homo sapiens sapiens.

  Bernard Wood is Professor of Human Origins at George Washington University and Adjunct Senior Scientist in the Human Origins Programme at the National Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Institution. He is an evolutionist and has written extensively about human origins,29 yet, in an article published in New Scientist, he wrote the following concerning the well-known illustration of the supposed evolution of apes through ape-like transitions to humans:

  There is a popular image of human evolution that you’ll find all over the place … On the left of the picture there’s an ape … On the right, a man … Between the two is a succession of figures that become ever more like humans … Our progress from ape to human looks so smooth, so tidy. It’s such a beguiling image that even the experts are loath to let it go. But it is an illusion.30

  One of the world’s leading experts on human origins tells us that the popular image of human evolution that we see all over the place—the one showing the gradual smooth change from apes to three-quarter ape/one-quarter human, to half-ape/half-human, to three-quarter-human/one-quarter ape, to human—is an illusion! Actually, what we have seen in this chapter confirms that what Professor Wood said is correct. Evolutionists have found apes in the fossil record, and they have found humans. But they have still not found the elusive so-called missing links, for the simple reason that they are missing. This means that evolutionists still cannot use the fossil record to give us an evolutionary account of the origin of humans. This is exactly what we would expect, given the biblical account of creation and early history of the earth.

  Some people think that, if we accept what the Bible teaches about origins, there is a problem with the number of people that we find living on the earth in the twenty-first century. If we accept what the Bible teaches about there being only one human pair just a few thousand years ago, is it possible to reach the present human population on the earth in this short period of time? This question can be answered by constructing a population clock. Let us start with a single human pair—a man and a woman. Let them marry and have children, and let their children marry and have children and so on. Let us assume that the population doubles every 150 years—a very conservative figure, as the world human population doubled in the forty-year period between 1960 and 2000, from three billion to six billion.31 Our conservative figure allows for the population growth to be disrupted by famines, diseases, wars and natural disasters.

  Starting with just two people, then, after 150 years there will be four people; after another 150 years there will be eight people; after another 150 years there will be sixteen people and so on. After thirty-three doublings, the world population will have reached almost 8.5 billion people—that’s a couple of billion more than the estimated population of the earth in 2000. Now, thirty-three doublings would take place in only 4,950 years—not the millions of years that one might think would be necessary to reach the world’s present population. As one would expect, this figure is perfectly consistent with the biblical teaching that the creation of humans took place just a few thousand years ago. Such a conservative population clock also shows that humans could not possibly have been living on the earth for even tens of thousands of years, because within around 10,000 years there would be more people on the earth than the number of atoms in the universe. While I am fully aware that such a situation could not possibly occur, I simply use it to demonstrate that this simple conservative population clock demonstrates that humans could not have been around on the earth for anywhere near the time that evolutionists maintain. This is yet another nail in the coffin of human evolution.

  Atheism and evolution

  It is my experience that many people just cannot accept that evolution is a religion. Many will claim that Darwinism is a religion, but will argue that evolution is not a religion but scientific fact. This is strange, because many of the proponents of evolution argue that evolution is a religion. Dr Michael Ruse serves as Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. He is a philosopher of science and has written several books on evolutionary theory. In an article in the National Post, he wrote, ‘Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality … Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.’32

  Although the admission that evolution is more than ‘mere science’ and that it is a ‘secular religion’ is barely credible, it is to be expected. Professor Phillip E. Johnson is emeritus Professor of Law at Boalt School of Law at University of California, Berkeley. He has criticized evolution from the basis of his legal expertise, which is the evidence of evidence. In an interview in August 2003, he argued that ‘The whole point of Darwinism is to show that there is no need for a supernatural Creator, because nature can do the creating by itself’.33 In other words, Professor Johnson argues that, because evolution can account for the origin of everything, believing in evolution negates the need for believing in a Creator. In a bizarre twist, some evolutionists have argued that, during the evolution of humans, their brains evolved a belief in a supernatural god, so they argue that the Creator God of the Bible is a product of evolution! Is there no end to the depraved arguments that atheistic evolutionists will utilize in order to make an excuse for their not believing in God?

  Other influential evolutionists have similar views to those quoted above from Dr Michael Ruse. For example, in a debate with Professor Philip E. Johnson at Stanford University on 30 April 1994, William Provine, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University, said to his debating opponent and to the audience, ‘Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear—and these are basically Darwin’s views …’ When I read this, I expected this respected evolutionary scientist to share his understanding about the origin of life, or something insightful about natural selection, or something profound about the origin of species. But what he said next was incredible; he enlightened his audience by telling them that evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear that ‘There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either.’34

  It is obvious, therefore, that evolution is the theology of atheism. As we have seen above, according to its proponents evolution does not need any supernatural agent (that is, God) to make it work, and evolution, through natural processes, is responsible for everything. As a result, many people have been led to atheism because of the theory of evolution—one of these being the famous atheist Professor Richard Dawkins. He made this crystal clear in an interview given in 2005 when, in answer to the question ‘Is atheism the logical extension of believing in evolution?’ he responded by saying, ‘My personal feeli
ng is that understanding evolution led me to atheism’ (his emphasis).35 This is why the subject of origins is so important; belief in evolution has prevented many from trusting in the Creator God that we read about in the Bible.

  The idea that evolution leads to atheism was aptly demonstrated by Professor William Provine, when he wrote that ‘… belief in modern evolution makes atheists of people. One can have a religious view that is compatible with evolution only if the religious view is indistinguishable from atheism.’36

  There is no doubt that modern evolutionists are, in general, Darwinian fundamentalists who actively, and sometimes aggressively, promote their atheistic belief system. Their belief system has been accurately summed up with great understanding by the Roman Catholic journalist Paul Johnson as follows: ‘Nature does not distinguish between a range of mountains, like the Alps, or a stone, or a clever scientist like Professor Dawkins, because it is sightless, senseless and mindless, being a mere process operating according to rules which have not been designed but simply are.’37 Paul Johnson is actually referring to evolution when he uses the word ‘nature’, for he is referring to the supposed chance natural processes that were then sorted by natural selection over the eons in which the evolutionists believe. Evolutionists believe that everything has come about as a result of evolution. According to them, evolutionary processes are completely blind—there is no purpose to them, and the universe and everything in it, including me and you, just happen to be products of these processes. Evolution therefore teaches that there is no purpose to our existence. We just happen to be, and our only purpose is to pass on our genes to the next generation of humans. According to evolutionists, me, you, every plant and animal, the earth, the sun, the moon and all the stars in the universe, as well as the space–time continuum of the universe, are all the result, not of a powerful, supernatural Creator God, but of an initial explosion of nothing and its subsequent evolution.