Did humans really evolve from ape-like creatures? No.
gabriel
when they reject the glorious truth of God the Almighty, our
heavenly Father and our Lord, Jesus Christ, and instead believe
in their own version of a god (which is idolatry), or that
nothing created everything. Protect your children from the
indoctrination of such dishonesty - a relative morality as it
were where murdering your own baby in the name of convenience
(over 50 million murdered since 1973) is seen as a good thing.
Romans 1:17-23 KJVR For therein is the righteousness of God
revealed from faith to faith: as it is written. The just shall
live by faith. 18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the
truth in unrighteousness; 19 Because that which may be known of
God is manifest in them; for God hath showed it unto them. 20
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world
are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,
even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without
excuse: 21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him
not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their
imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 And
changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made
like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and
creeping things.
www.answersingenesis.org/articles/wow/did-humans-really-evolve
Television documentaries on human evolution abound. Some of the
more popular in recent years have been Walking with Cavemen
(2003) produced by BBC and aired on the Discovery Channel, The
Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey (2003), produced by National
Geographic and Survivor: The Mystery of Us (2005), also by
National Geographic. All of these shows present as fact the story
of human evolution from apelike creatures over the past several
million years. They claim that anthropologists have found links
in the human evolutionary chain and that scientists have "proven"
evolution happens through DNA and other studies. But what is the
real evidence for human evolution? What evidence are we not
hearing? In this chapter, we will examine how anthropologists
either make a man out of a monkey or make monkeys out of men. And
once again, we'll conclude that the evidence points to the fact
that man is a unique creation, made in the image of God.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perhaps the most bitter pill to swallow for any Christian who
attempts to "make peace" with Darwin is the presumed ape ancestry
of man. Even many Christians who uncritically accept evolution as
"God's way of creating" try to somehow elevate the origin of man,
or at least his soul, above that of the beasts. Evolutionists
attempt to soften the blow by assuring us that man didn't exactly
evolve from apes (tailless monkeys) but rather from apelike
creatures. This is mere semantics, however, as many of the
presumed apelike ancestors of man are apes and have scientific
names, which include the word pithecus (derived from the Greek
meaning "ape"). The much-touted "human ancestor" commonly known
as "Lucy," for example, has the scientific name Australopithecus
afarensis (meaning "southern ape from the Afar triangle of
Ethiopia"). But what does the Bible say about the origin of man,
and what exactly is the scientific evidence that evolutionists
claim for our ape ancestry?
Biblical starting assumptions
God tells us that on the same day He made all animals that walk
on the earth (the sixth day), He created man separately in His
own image with the intent that man would have dominion over every
other living thing on Earth (Genesis 1:26-28). From this it is
clear that there is no animal that is man's equal, and certainly
none his ancestor.
Thus when God paraded the animals by Adam for him to name, He
observed that "for Adam there was not found an help meet for him"
(Genesis 2:20). Jesus confirmed this uniqueness of men and women
when He declared that marriage is to be between a man and a woman
because "from the beginning of the creation God made them male
and female" (Mark 10:6). This leaves no room for prehumans or for
billions of years of cosmic evolution prior to man's appearance
on the earth. Adam chose the very name "Eve" for his wife because
he recognized that she would be "the mother of all living"
(Genesis 3:20). The Apostle Paul stated clearly that man is not
an animal: "All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one
kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes,
and another of birds" (1 Corinthians 15:39).
Evolutionary starting assumptions
While Bible-believing Christians begin with the assumption that
God's Word is true and that man's ancestry goes back only to a
fully human Adam and Eve, evolutionists begin with the assumption
that man has, in fact, evolved from apes. No paleoanthropologists
(those who study the fossil evidence for man's origin) would dare
to seriously raise the question, "Did man evolve from apes?" The
only permissible question is "From which apes did man evolve?"
Since evolutionists generally do not believe that man evolved
from any ape that is now living, they look to fossils of humans
and apes to provide them with their desired evidence.
Specifically, they look for any anatomical feature that looks
"intermediate" (between that of apes and man). Fossil apes having
such features are declared to be ancestral to man (or at least
collateral relatives) and are called hominids. Living apes, on
the other hand, are not considered to be hominids, but rather are
called hominoids because they are only similar to humans but did
not evolve into them. Nonetheless, evolutionists are willing to
accept mere similarities between the fossilized bones of extinct
apes and the bones of living men as "proof" of our ape ancestry.
What is the evidence for human evolution?
Though many similarities may be cited between living apes and
humans, the only historical evidence that could support the ape
ancestry of man must come from fossils. Unfortunately, the fossil
record of man and apes is very sparse. Approximately 95% of all
known fossils are marine invertebrates, about 4.7% are algae and
plants, about 0.2% are insects and other invertebrates and only
about 0.1% are vertebrates (animals with bones). Finally, only
the smallest imaginable fraction of vertebrate fossils consists
of primates (humans, apes, monkeys and lemurs).
Because of the rarity of fossil hominids, even many of those who
specialize in the evolution of man have never actually seen an
original hominid fossil, and far fewer have ever had the
opportunity to handle or study one. Most scientific papers on
human evolution are based on casts of original specimens (or even
on published photos, measurements and descriptions of them).
Access to original fossil hominids is strictly limited by those
who discovered them and is often confined to a few favored
evolutionists who agree with the discoverers' interpretation of
the fossil.
Since there is much more prestige in finding an ancestor of man
than an ancestor of living apes (or worse yet, merely an extinct
ape), there is immense pressure on paleoanthropologists to
declare almost any ape fossil to be a "hominid." As a result, the
living apes have pretty much been left to find their own
ancestors.
Many students in our schools are taught human evolution (often in
the social studies class!) by teachers having little knowledge of
human anatomy, to say nothing of ape anatomy. But it is useless
to consider the fossil evidence for the evolution of man from
apes without first understanding the basic anatomical and
functional differences between human and ape skeletons.
Jaws and teeth
Because of their relative hardness, teeth and jaw fragments are
the most frequently found primate fossils. Thus, much of the
evidence for the ape ancestry of man is based on similarities of
teeth and jaws.
In contrast to man, apes tend to have incisor and canine teeth
that are relatively larger than their molars. Ape teeth usually
have thin enamel (the hardest surface layer of the tooth), while
humans generally have thicker enamel. Finally, the jaws tend to
be more U-shaped in apes and more parabolic in man.
The problem in declaring a fossil ape to be a human ancestor
(i.e., a hominid) on the basis of certain humanlike features of
the teeth is that some living apes have these same features and
they are not considered to be ancestors of man. Some species of
modern baboons, for example, have relatively small canines and
incisors and relatively large molars. While most apes do have
thin enamel, some apes such as the orangutans have relatively
thick enamel. Clearly, teeth tell us more about an animal's diet
and feeding habits than its supposed evolution. Nonetheless,
thick enamel is one of the most commonly cited criteria for
declaring an ape fossil to be a hominid.
Artistic imagination has been used to illustrate entire "apemen"
from nothing more than a single tooth. In the early 1920s, the
"apeman" Hesperopithecus (which consisted of a single tooth) was
pictured in the London Illustrated News complete with the tooth's
wife, children, domestic animals, and cave! Experts used this
tooth, known as "Nebraska man," as proof for human evolution
during the Scopes trial in 1925. In 1927 parts of the skeleton
were discovered together with the teeth, and Nebraska man was
found to really be an extinct peccary (wild pig)!
Skulls
Skulls are perhaps the most interesting primate fossils because
they house the brain and give us an opportunity, with the help of
imaginative artists, to look our presumed ancestors in the face.
The human skull is easily distinguished from all living apes,
though there are, of course, similarities.
The vault of the skull is large in humans because of their
relatively large brain compared to apes. Even so, the size of the
normal adult human brain varies over nearly a threefold range.
These differences in size in the human brain do not correlate
with intelligence. Adult apes have brains that are generally
smaller than even the smallest of adult human brains and, of
course, are not even remotely comparable in intelligence.
Perhaps the best way to distinguish an ape skull from a human
skull is to examine it from a side view. From this perspective,
the face of the human is nearly vertical, while that of the ape
slopes forward from its upper face to its chin.
From a side view, the bony socket of the eye (the orbit) of an
ape is obscured by its broad flat upper face. Humans, on the
other hand, have a more curved upper face and forehead, clearly
revealing the orbit of the eye from a side view.
Leg bones
The most eagerly sought-after evidence in fossil hominids is any
anatomical feature that might suggest bipedality (the ability to
walk on two legs). Since humans walk on two legs, any evidence of
bipedality in fossil apes is considered by evolutionists to be
compelling evidence for human ancestry. But we should bear in
mind that the way an ape walks on two legs is entirely different
from the way man walks on two legs. The distinctive human gait
requires the complex integration of many skeletal and muscular
features in our hips, legs and feet. Thus, evolutionists closely
examine the hipbones (pelvis), thighbones (femur), leg bones
(tibia and fibula) and foot bones of fossil apes in an effort to
detect any anatomical features that might suggest bipedality.
Evolutionists are particularly interested in the angle at which
the femur and the tibia meet at the knee (called the carrying
angle). Humans are able to keep their weight over their feet
while walking because their femurs converge toward the knees,
forming a carrying angle of approximately 9 degrees with the
tibia (in other words, we're sort of knock-kneed). In contrast,
chimps and gorillas have widely separated straight legs with a
carrying angle of essentially 0 degrees. These animals manage to
keep their weight over their feet when walking by swinging their
body from side to side in the familiar "ape walk."
Evolutionists assume that fossil apes with a high carrying angle
(humanlike) were bipedal and thus evolving into man. Certain
australopithecines (an apelike creature) are considered to have
walked like us and thus to be our ancestors largely because they
had a high carrying angle. But high carrying angles are not
confined to humans-they are also found on some modern apes that
walk gracefully on tree limbs and only clumsily on the ground.
Living apes with a high carrying angle (values comparable to man)
include such apes as the orangutan and spider monkey-both adept
tree climbers and capable of only an apelike bipedal gait on the
ground. The point is that there are living tree-dwelling apes and
monkeys with some of the same anatomical features that
evolutionists consider to be definitive evidence for bipedality,
yet none of these animals walks like man and no one suggests they
are our ancestors or descendants.
Foot bones
The human foot is unique and not even close to the appearance or
function of the ape foot. The big toe of the human foot is inline
with the foot and does not jut out to the side like apes. Human
toe bones are relatively straight rather than curved and grasping
like ape toes.
While walking, the heel of the human foot first hits the ground,
then the weight distribution spreads from the heel along the
outer margin of the foot up to the base of the little toe. From
the little toe it spreads inward across the base of the toes and
finally pushes off from the big toe. No ape has a foot or
push-off like that of a human; and thus, no ape is capable of
walking with our distinctive human stride, or of making human
footprints.
Hipbones
The pelvis (hipbones) plays a critically important role in
walking, and the characteristic human gait requires a pelvis that
is distinctly different from that of the apes. Indeed, one only
has to examine the pelvis to determine if an ape has the ability
to walk like a man.
The part of the hipbones that we can feel just under our belt is
called the iliac blade. Viewed from above, these blades are
curved forward like the handles of a steering yolk on an
airplane. The iliac blades of the ape, in contrast, project
straight out to the side like the handlebars of a scooter. It is
simply not possible to walk like a human with an apelike pelvis.
On this feature alone one can easily distinguish apes from
humans.
Only three ways to make an "apeman"
Knowing from Scripture that God didn't create any apemen, there
are only three ways for the evolutionist to create one.
Combine ape fossil bones with human fossilbones and declare the
two to be one individual-a real "apeman."
Emphasize certain humanlike qualities of fossilized ape bones,
and with imagination upgrade apes to be more humanlike.
Emphasize certain apelike qualities of fossilized human bones,
and with imagination downgrade humans to be more apelike.
These three approaches account for all of the attempts by
evolutionists to fill the unbridgeable gap between apes and men
with fossil apemen.
Combining men and apes
The most famous example of an apeman proven to be a combination
of ape and human bones is Piltdown man. In 1912, Charles Dawson,
a medical doctor and an amateur paleontologist, discovered a
mandible (lower jawbone) and part of a skull in a gravel pit near
Piltdown, England. The jawbone was apelike but had teeth that
showed wear similar to the human pattern. The skull, on the other
hand, was very humanlike. These two specimens were combined to
form what was called "Dawn man," which was calculated to be
500,000 years old.
The whole thing turned out to be an elaborate hoax. The skull was
indeed human (about 500 years old), while the jaw was that of a
modern female orangutan whose teeth had been obviously filed to
crudely resemble the human wear pattern. Indeed, the long ape
canine tooth was filed down so far that it exposed the pulp
chamber, which was then filled in to hide the mischief. It would
seem that any competent scientist examining this tooth would have
concluded that it was either a hoax or the world's first root
canal! The success of this hoax for over 50 years, in spite of
the careful scrutiny of the best authorities in the world, led
the human evolutionist Sir Solly Zuckerman to declare: "It is
doubtful if there is any science at all in the search for man's
fossil ancestry."1
Making man out of apes
Many apemen are merely apes that evolutionists have attempted to
upscale to fill the gap between apes and men. These include all
the australopithecines, as well as a host of other extinct apes
such as Ardipithecus, Orrorin, Sahelanthropus and Kenyanthropus.
All have obviously ape skulls, ape pelvises and ape hands and
feet. Nevertheless, australopithecines (especially
Australopithecus afarensis) are often portrayed as having hands
and feet identical to modern man, a ramrod-straight, upright
posture and a human gait.
The best-known specimen of A. afarensis is the fossil commonly
known as "Lucy." A life-like mannequin of "Lucy" in the Living
World exhibit at the St. Louis Zoo shows a hairy humanlike female
body with human hands and feet but with an obviously apelike
head. The three-foot-tall Lucy stands erect in a deeply pensive
pose with her right forefinger curled under her chin, her eyes
gazing off into the distance as if she were contemplating the
mind of Newton.
Few visitors are aware that this is a gross misrepresentation of
what is known about the fossil ape Australopithecus afarensis.
These apes are known to be long-armed knuckle-walkers with
locking wrists. Both the hands and feet of this creature are
clearly apelike. Paleoanthropologists Jack Stern and Randall
Sussman2 have reported that the hands of this species are
"surprisingly similar to hands found in the small end of the
pygmy chimpanzee-common chimpanzee range." They report that the
feet, like the hands, are "long, curved and heavily muscled" much
like those of living tree-dwelling primates. The authors conclude
that no living primate has such hands and feet "for any purpose
other than to meet the demands of full or part-time arboreal
(tree-dwelling) life."
Despite evidence to the contrary, evolutionists and museums
continue to portray Lucy (A. Afarensis) with virtually human feet
(though some are finally showing the hands with long curved
fingers).
Making apes out of man
In an effort to fill the gap between apes and men, certain fossil
men have been declared to be "apelike" and thus, ancestral to at
least "modern" man. You might say this latter effort seeks to
make a "monkey" out of man. Human fossils that are claimed to be
"apemen" are generally classified under the genus Homo (meaning
"self"). These include Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis and
Homo neanderthalensis.
The best-known human fossils are of Cro-Magnon man (whose
marvelous paintings are found on the walls of caves in France)
and Neandertal man. Both are clearly human and have long been
classified as Homo sapiens. In recent years, however, Neandertal
man has been downgraded to a different species-Homo
neanderthalensis.
Neandertal man was first discovered in 1856 by workmen digging in
a limestone cave in the Neander valley near Dusseldorf, Germany.
The fossil bones were examined by an anatomist (professor
Schaafhausen) who concluded that they were human.
At first, not much attention was given to these finds, but with
the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, the search
began for the imagined "apelike ancestors" of man. Darwinians
argued that Neandertal man was an apelike creature, while many
critical of Darwin (like the great anatomist Rudolph Virchow)
argued that Neandertals were human in every respect, though some
appeared to be suffering from rickets or arthritis.
Over 300 Neandertal specimens have now been found scattered
throughout most of the world, including Belgium, China, Central
and North Africa, Iraq, the Czech republic, Hungary, Greece,
northwestern Europe, and the Middle East. This race of men was
characterized by prominent eyebrow ridges (like modern Australian
Aborigines), a low forehead, a long narrow skull, a protruding
upper jaw and a strong lower jaw with a short chin. They were
deep-chested, large-boned individuals with a powerful build. It
should be emphasized, however, that none of these features fall
outside the range of normal human anatomy. Interestingly, the
brain size (based on cranial capacity) of Neandertal man was
actually larger than average for that of modern man, though this
is rarely emphasized.
Most of the misconceptions about Neandertal man resulted from the
claims of the Frenchman Marcelin Boule who, in 1908, studied two
Neandertal skeletons that were found in France (LeMoustier and La
Chapelle-aux-Saints). Boule declared Neandertal men to be
anatomically and intellectually inferior brutes who were more
closely related to apes than humans. He asserted that they had a
slumped posture, a "monkey-like" arrangement of certain spinal
vertebrae and even claimed that their feet were of a "grasping
type" (like those of gorillas and chimpanzees). Boule concluded
that Neandertal man could not have walked erectly, but rather
must have walked in a clumsy fashion. These highly biased and
inaccurate views prevailed and were even expanded by many other
evolutionists up to the mid-1950s.
In 1957, the anatomists William Straus and A. J. Cave examined
one of the French Neandertals (La Chapelle-aux-Saints) and
determined that the individual suffered from severe arthritis (as
suggested by Virchow nearly 100 years earlier), which had
affected the vertebrae and bent the posture. The jaw also had
been affected. These observations are consistent with the Ice Age
climate in which Neandertals had lived. They may well have sought
shelter in caves and this, together with poor diet and lack of
sunlight, could easily have lead to diseases that affect the
bones, such as rickets.
In addition to anatomical evidence, there is a growing body of
cultural evidence for the fully human status of Neandertals. They
buried their dead and had elaborate funeral customs that included
arranging the body and covering it with flowers. They made a
variety of stone tools and worked with skins and leather. A wood
flute was recently discovered among Neandertal remains. There is
even evidence that suggests that he engaged in medical care. Some
Neandertal specimens show evidence of survival to old age despite
numerous wounds, broken bones, blindness and disease. This
suggests that these individuals were cared for and nurtured by
others who showed human compassion.
Still, efforts continue to be made to somehow dehumanize
Neandertal man. Many evolutionists now even insist that
Neanderthal man is not even directly related to modern man
because of some differences in a small fragment of DNA! There is,
in fact, nothing about Neandertals that is in any way inferior to
modern man. One of the world's foremost authorities on Neandertal
man, Erik Trinkaus, concludes: "Detailed comparisons of
Neanderthal skeletal remains with those of modern humans have
shown that there is nothing in Neanderthal anatomy that
conclusively indicates locomotor, manipulative, intellectual or
linguistic abilities inferior to those of modern humans."3
Conclusion
Why then are there continued efforts to make apes out of man and
man out of apes? In one of the most remarkably frank and candid
assessments of the whole subject and methodology of
paleoanthropology, Dr. David Pilbeam (a distinguished professor
of anthropology) suggested the following:
Perhaps generations of students of human evolution, including
myself, have been flailing about in the dark; that our data base
is too sparse, too slippery, for it to be able to mold our
theories. Rather the theories are more statements about us and
ideology than about the past. Paleoanthropology reveals more
about how humans view themselves than it does about how humans
came about. But that is heresy.4
Oh, that these heretical words were printed as a warning on every
textbook, magazine, newspaper article and statue that presumes to
deal with the bestial origin of man!
No, we are not descended from apes. Rather, God created man as
the crown of His creation on Day Six. We are a special creation
of God, made in His image, to bring Him glory. What a revolution
this truth would make, if our evolutionized culture truly
understood it!
Juan M
bullshit...
gabriel
<juanmSP...@hotmail.com> wrote:
: If you can't dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your
: bullshit...
:
Or if you can't refute what's claimed, ignore it all and attack
the author.
Wild Bill
"gabriel" <gabriel...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:0kqme5hp1pun7u9vf...@4ax.com...
ancestor. We are actually closer relatives to chimpanzees than any other
life species.
Juan M
"Wild Bill" <bils...@daytonwa.net> wrote in message
news:hci83c$tk$1...@news.parasun.com...
gabriel
<bils...@daytonwa.net> wrote:
:
: "gabriel" <gabriel...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
: news:0kqme5hp1pun7u9vf...@4ax.com...
: > On Fri, 9 Oct 2009 18:21:31 -0700, "Juan M"
: > <juanmSP...@hotmail.com> wrote:
: >
: > : If you can't dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your
: > : bullshit...
: > :
: >
: > Or if you can't refute what's claimed, ignore it all and attack
: > the author.
: Well, all science is saying is that we humans evolved from a common
: ancestor.
Science isn't say that, as that claim is not observable, not
testable and not verifiable, hence that claim cannot be called
science.
: We are actually closer relatives to chimpanzees than any other
: life species.
No, they believe we are because of tests they believe show this,
but the belief it shows this is not observable, not testable, not
verifiable - one can only believe the results of their tests show
what they believe it shows.
Meanwhile, no one has ever in the entire recorded history of the
human race observed [chimpanzees] evolving over generations into
animals that are clearly no longer [chimpanzees] at all, no
matter how much their allele frequencies change. Same holds true
for any animal alive you replace with [chimpanzees] in that
sentence. Hence this belief is not science. It's that simple.
:
Bob LeChevalier
>: > Or if you can't refute what's claimed, ignore it all and attack
>: > the author.
>: Well, all science is saying is that we humans evolved from a common
>: ancestor.
>
>Science isn't say that, as that claim is not observable, not
>testable and not verifiable, hence that claim cannot be called
>science.
It is testable and verifiable. That is where you are WRONG.
>: We are actually closer relatives to chimpanzees than any other
>: life species.
>
>No, they believe we are because of tests they believe show this,
That is where the word "testable" comes in. They made predictions of
what would be the case if chimpanzees were closer to us than any other
life species, and EVERY SINGLE PREDICTION has been observed.
That is not "belief", but is "verification"
>but the belief it shows this is not observable, not testable, not
>verifiable
You are WRONG.
>one can only believe the results of their tests show
>what they believe it shows.
You don't know what the word "testable" means if you say that.
You don't have a clue what science is.
You are an ignorant idiot who remains proud of your ignorance.
You have lost: you are a loser.
Give it up.
lojbab
---
Bob LeChevalier - artificial linguist; genealogist
loj...@lojban.org Lojban language www.lojban.org