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Human Evolution. Looking for Evidence. If the evolution of humans from an ape-like ancestor is true there should be two proof evidences:. The fossil record A mechanism for change. If these evidences are absent, then the only alternative is special creation by God. History of Man.
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Looking for Evidence If the evolution of humans from an ape-like ancestor is true there should be two proof evidences: • The fossil record • A mechanism for change If these evidences are absent, then the only alternative is special creation by God
History of Man Evolution begins with the assumption that man has evolved from ape-like creatures or a common ancestor with the apes Pick your relative!
Charles Darwin“The Descent of Man” “The most meaningful result in this book, that man descended from a lowly organized life form, will be a stumbling block for many. I regret that. But there can hardly be any doubts about our descent from savages. According to current evolutionary teachings, man’s genealogy not only reaches back into the animal kingdom, but right back to simple inorganic molecules: Primeval soup, primitive slime, primeval cell; single-celled organisms then became multi-cellular: worms, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, primitive primates, apes, ape-men, hominids, man.”
Our buddy, Mr. Dawkins wrote about Darwin in 1989: • He stated that Darwin shocked “the vanity of our species” by showing that we are “close cousins to…monkeys and apes”, thus proving that “we too are animals.”
Nobel prize winner Jacques Monod regards our existence as a necessary consequence of a game of chance! “The universe was not pregnant with life nor the biosphere with man. Our number came up in the Monte Carlo game. Is it surprising that, like the person who has just made a million at the casino, we should feel strange and a little unreal?”
Rupert Riedl also emphasizes the purposelessness of human existence “Man was not planned. In fact, the causal chain of events leading up to man was coincidental”.
Arizona State University anthroplolgist Geoffrey Clark said in 1997: • “Scientists have been trying to arrive at a consensus about modern human origins for more than a century. Why haven’t they been successful?” • In his opinion it is because they all proceed from such different “biases, preconceptions and assumptions”. • The models of human evolution “are little more than a house of cards-remove one card…and the whole structure of inference is threatened with collapse”
Some Basic Questions • So let’s look at some basic questions first about some of the so called evidence used to support the evolution of man. • We have to think deeply about what evolution claims about the origin of man. We should question everything. Because of the implications of human evolution, this is of extreme importance. As we examine the claimed evolutionary evidence for this progression that lead up to humans, one by one, there are a few questions we should keep in mind:
(1) Why is it that, each time, only one specimen is found? • Why not hundreds or thousands or even more of them? • Remember when we talked about population statistics? • It’s hard to imagine that given the shear number of them that would have to have lived since evolution is an extremely slow process we would find evidence of their remains everywhere.
(2) Given that, why are only little pieces of bone found for each specimen--never a complete skeleton? • Is this not reading a lot into almost no evidence? • Or is it possible that the less found, the easier it is to try to make unfounded claims for it?
(3) Although bones decay in a few years in damper regions, and in a few centuries in very dry regions, why is it that these few special bones did not decay even though they are supposed to be "a million years old"? • The very possibility that these "million-year bones" are not supposed to have decayed, makes it all the more certain that there ought to be millions of other bones lying around belonging to our ancestors!
(4) How could "million-year bones" possibly be found in damp earth (not encased within solid rock and preserved as fossils) • These “million-year-old bones” are found in Indonesia, China, and England and other places in the world.
(5) Where are the transitional fossils? The Links are missing! • There should be incredible numbers of transitional fossils (fossils between kinds, including humans), but they never are found!
Dr. Colin Patterson: • “I fully agree with your comments about the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them… I will lay it on the line – there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument”. • C. Patterson, letter to Luther D. Sutherland, April 10, 1979.
Stephen Jay Gould: • “The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradalistic accounts of evolution”. • S.J. Gould, in Evolution Now: A Century After Darwin, 1980, p. 140.
Roger Lewin wrote this: • "Perhaps more than any other science, human prehistory is a highly personalized pursuit, the whole atmosphere reverberating with the repeated collisions of oversized egos. The reasons are not difficult to discover. For a start, the topic under scrutiny--human origins--is highly emotional, and there are reputations to be made and public acclaim to be savoured for people who unearth ever older putative human ancestors. But the major problem has been the pitifully small number of hominid fossils on which prehistorians exercise their imaginative talents." • *Roger Lewin, "A New Focus for African Prehistory, " in New Scientist, September 29, 1977, p. 793.
The problem is that much of this is based on assumptions due to an absolute commitment to materialism, just like many other parts of evolution!
What they found What they drew Ramapithecus 1930s
Ramapithecus The claim: 14 million year old intermediate between ape-like creatures and humans • In 1970 a baboon living in Ethiopia was discovered. • Same dental structure • Similar morphological features found on Ramapithecus The truth
Taught as unquestionable fact in public schools • What is interesting though is that even in relatively recent times Ramapithecus was widely considered an evolutionary link between apes and man. This opinion was strongly held and taught as unquestionable fact in public schools for many years, and is still being taught in some places based on what is now thought to be, not so many years later, very poor evidence. Such is the power of a prevailing paradigm to make one believe in just about any story that "fits" regardless of the quality of the evidence presented.
Ramapithecus The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001. “An extinct group of primates that lived from about 12 to 14 million years ago, …. Although it was generally an apelike creature, Ramapithecus was considered a possible human ancestor on the basis of the reconstructed jaw and dental characteristics of fragmentary fossils. A complete jaw discovered in 1976 was clearly nonhominid, however, and Ramapithecus is now regarded … to be an ancestor of the orangutan.”
