Creation: Darwinian Evolutionary Frauds Pt. IX
A Sunday guest post by my brilliant husband, Gregg.
Every Sunday, my clever husband offers me a “day of rest” by writing posts on the subject of his primary ministry. The topic, Creationism vs. Darwinism, is a subject that has broad reaching scientific, social, and metaphysical implications and is gaining more and more attention in our modern culture.
For believers and non-believers alike, the primary purpose is to present scientific, historical, logical, and/or sociological data in an empirical fashion, as much as possible written in layman’s terms, and in a format suitable for supplementing any homeschool curriculum whether you choose to believe the Biblical account — or secular guesses — about the origins of human life on earth.
FACT OF THE DAY
It is a fact that Darwinists eagerly desire evidence that man descended from a monkey-like ancestor. So great is this vain hope that they often manufacture evidence. The fact is that more than a century and a half of searching has not demonstrated this faith-based monkey to man descent to be the case, even though millions of fossils have been dug up out of the ground and examined by some of the brightest minds on planet earth.
It is a faith based hope that defies simple logic. Logic dictates that if races of so-called primitive “hominids” existed in the form of intermediate or transitional forms between monkeys and man, we should be up to our earlobes in fairly incontrovertible fossil evidence.
For example, so-called Neanderthals — in addition to wearing jewelry and using musical instruments — buried their dead. Why is it, then, that we have so much trouble finding good Neanderthal fossils?
Common dates for Neanderthals are between 130,000 to 30,000 years ago and they supposedly existed for about 2,500 generations. Logic dictates that more than 50 billion Neanderthals should have lived throughout those thousands of generations by any math you choose to employ.
Simply put, if mankind had indeed descended from another creature millions of years ago, there should be abundant fossil evidence. It simply is not there. It does not exist. In the case of Neanderthal, what fossils we do find are often disallowed as legitimate specimens and discounted as some kind of error because the “Caveman” in question is inconveniently wearing chain mail, or has a bullet hole in his skull, or something along those lines.
It is worth noting that at every site where so-called “Neanderthals” are unearthed, they are buried alongside human beings, even though they according to the Darwinist myth the two were entirely separate species.
While it is true that questions arise whenever Darwinists perpetrate frauds, such as Piltdown Man or Nebraska Man, or Orce Man or Flipperithicus, the fact is that the majority of specimens touted as “missing links” in textbooks today are either clearly monkey, clearly man, or never actually existed in the first place.
NUTCRACKER MAN
Louis Leakey was born in Africa, the son of a missionary. He and his wife, Mary, both held doctorates. After his death, his son Richard, who never obtained a doctorate, continued bone hunting with his mother.
Olduvai Gorge is located in East Africa, about 100 miles [160.9 km] west of Mount Kilimanjaro. It consists of a 300-foot [91 m] gorge that has cut through five main horizontal beds. Nutcracker Man was found in 1959 by Louis Leakey in the Olduvai Gorge in East Africa, and is classified as an Australopithecine just as is the more famous “Lucy.”
In 1913, a complete and fully human skeleton was discovered by the German anthropologist Hans Reck just above the location of the later Nutcracker Man find. There was much discussion of these remains and Louis Leakey had personally examined the bones in the 1930s.
Louis Leakey called his 1959 find Zinjanthropus boisei, and even though that is a very authoritative and scientific sounding name, the press called it “Nutcracker Man” because it had a jaw much larger than the skull. The find is also known as East Africa Man. The jawbone was rather fragmented as was the top of the skull and they were found about 25 feet apart. In other words, this was probably another case of mismatched skull fragments.
By everyone’s admission, the Nutcracker Man skull when assembled looked extremely apelike; but some rudimentary tools were unearthed nearby as well, so based upon that very slim evidence alone, Leakey decided that the jawbone and the remainder of the skull parts went together and that the creature had to have been half-human/half-ape.
When he first announced his find, Leakey declared that it was the earliest man ever discovered, and was 600,000 years old. Leakey also announced that he had found “hand bones” not far away which were curved in an odd way, clearly demonstrating the transitional nature of his find.
Although the age was (big surprise) a total guess, it coincidentally came just as funds from his benefactor, Mr. Charles Boise, ran out. Louis needed a new sponsor with deep pockets, and once again the National Geographic Society stepped in just as they had with Peking Man, and the National Geographic Society has funded the Leakeys ever since. What a stroke of luck.
Interestingly enough, in his 1959 press announcement, Leakey made absolutely no mention of the human bones found above his find by Hans Reck. After all, doing so would have ruined his chance at fame — and funding.
C-14 tests on the human skull that Reck found (the rest of the skeleton had disappeared from the Munich museum) were made in 1974 and yielded a date of 16,920 years, or just a little bit older than a freshly killed sea lion (14,800 years old).
In 1961, one fragment of the skull of Nutcracker Man was dated by the notoriously inaccurate potassium-argon dating method at 1.75 million years. That story really sold newspapers.
In 1964, another skull — this one belonging to a human being — was uncovered very near those very same tools that Leakey had found back in 1959.
Then, in 1968, the same material that had been dated using potassium-argon was dated by Carbon 14, which, although also highly inaccurate, is far less unreliable than potassium-argon dating. The C-14 dating of Nutcracker Man showed the bones as merely 10,100 years, or just a few thousand years older than the C-14 age of a living snail (8,600 years old).
Although radiocarbon dating based on Carbon 14 can obviously demonstrate a wide margin of error, it still must be said that 16,920 years is far different from 1.75 million years (16,920 x 103.42_ = +/- 1.75 million).
Later that year, one of Nutcracker Man’s oddly curved “hand bones” was found to be a fragment of a human rib bone. Eventually, Leakey conceded that Nutcracker Man was just another ape skull, like Dart’s Taung Man.
Today, this find has been reclassified as a member of Australopithecus, an extinct family of ape. It is widely recognized that this is not an ancestor of man although you may have trouble finding that data anywhere other than Creationist sources.
SKULL 1470
The official name of this find is KNM-ER 1470, but it is commonly known as “Skull 1470.” In 1972, Richard Leakey announced what he thought to be a human-like fossil skull, and dazzled the world when he gave it an astonishing date of 2.8 million years. Again, it was pieced together from several fragments. Both Leakey and other hominid experts think it looks essentially like a modern small-brained person.
This caused much concern among Darwinists. After all, if this were actually a fully human skull of that great age, then it would predate all the so-called half-human/half-ape bones said to be its ancestors.
Here was Leakey’s original announcement in regard to this skull:
“Either we toss out this skull or we toss out our theories of early man … [It] leaves in ruins the notion that all early fossils can be arranged in an orderly sequence of evolutionary change — Richard E. Leakey, “Skull 1470,” National Geographic, June 1973, p. 819.
Note that modern, living, small-brained (750 cc.) human beings have existed and exist today, so finding of a 750 cc. Skull 1470 is no reason to think it is a “subhuman” ancestor of mankind.
“Human qualities of mind, Keith proclaimed, can only appear when brain volume is at least 750 cubic centimeters, a point nicknamed ‘Keith’s rubicon’ (dividing line) . . How did he arrive at the ‘magic’ number of 750 cc.? It was the smallest functioning modern human brain anatomists had seen at the time [when Sir Arthur Keith, one of those involved in the Piltdown hoax, was alive earlier in this century].” — R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 249.
After considering the implications of the situation, Skull 1470 was thoughtfully and carefully “redated,” lest it be thought that human beings had lived 2.8 million years ago. The experts did not want Skull 1470 to predate its primate ancestors.
“The 1470 Skull discovered by Richard Leakey in 1972 was originally ‘dated’ at 2.6 million years. However, many anthropologists objected because then the more modern 1470 Skull would predate all its supposed ancestors. Thus 1470 was ‘redated’ until a more ‘acceptable’ estimate of 1.8 million years was adopted.”— John N. Moore, “Teaching About Origin Questions: Origin of Human Beings”
If you think critically, this brings a few questions to mind. For example, by what means did Darwinists justify the subtraction of nearly a million years? That seems a very valid question. One might imagine that they dated the skull somehow with potassium-argon or carbon-14 and concluded that the initial estimated age was wildly incorrect. One might imagine that they consulted the so-called “geologic column” and referenced some so-called “index fossils” to ascertain the more youthful skull. Many possibilities come to mind.
But no. None of that. Darwinian anthropologists felt that Skull 1470 was simply ‘too modern-looking’ to be as ancient as Leakey had at first claimed and therefore refused to acknowledge the find as “legitimate” until Leakey adjusted the date to a more recent one.
In other words, they simply cherry picked a date that better fit the preconceived notion that Darwinian evolution is true and its tenets are to held as sacrosanct. Evidence that might contradict holy Darwinism must not be countenanced and therefore the evidence must be altered to fit the model. Do you feel this is a rather sweeping accusation on my part?
“The 1470 skull was pieced together by Richard Leakey’s wife Meave and several anatomists from dozens of fragments — a jig jaw puzzle that took six weeks to assemble. [Now] Dated at 1.89 million years old, with a cranial capacity of 750 cc., Leakey believes it is the oldest fossil of a true human ancestor. In his view, the australopithecines and other hominid fossils were sidebranches.
“Leakey fought hard to win a place for his 1470 (along with the previous habiline fragments found at Olduvai) because most anthropologists thought the skull was simply ‘too modern-looking’ to be as ancient as he at first claimed.” — R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 217.
The bottom line is that this skull may have been that of a completely human microcephalic person, a completely human teenager, or — most likely — an immature ape or species of ape that is now extinct. And, the interpretation could easily change depending upon how the fragments were assembled, of course.
It is significant that the lower jaw of Skull 1470 was never found. The mandible would have revealed a great deal. Leakey and his wife spent a great deal of time and care “reconstructing” the skull, filling in the numerous missing sections with hand carved wood. The way the Leakeys artfully put the skull together, the face of the skull, below the eyes, protrudes forward in the manner of apes. The jaw and molars are somewhat larger than the average modern human. There appears to be a lack of bony support beneath the nostrils, such as is found in gorillas.
Facial skeletons are relatively larger in apes than the braincase size. Skull 1470 is about midway in this category, and thus not like that of humans. It also has a long upper lip area, such as apes have.
In a New Scientist article, Bromage pointed out that the views about early hominids have swung widely over the decades. Sometimes their ape-like qualities are emphasized, while at other times their human-like aspects. Bromage expected to find that the face of the famous Taung ‘child’ and Skull 1470 would have a bone surface pattern more like that of humans, but to his astonishment, he found both were typical of monkeys and apes.
The Truth
A few conclusions: First, for whatever reason, Darwinists have a radically different world view than those who know and understand the truth according to the Christian world view. Darwinists can isolate a single fact and ignore dozens of other facts and any evidence that refutes their interpretation of that single fact. They can successfully cling to a single thought and ignore every argument that leads up to or follows from that thought.
I just cannot bring myself to do that. I much prefer dealing with actual reality, actual science, and actual facts — ALL of them — and with an open mind.
Second, and emphatically, we should not tolerate being lied to by anyone. And as parents, most emphatically, we must not tolerate anyone lying to our children. So much hope is placed in the Darwinian model, so much faith, that at best the religious practice of social Darwinism leads to unsupported conclusions based on a preconceived religious bias — such as arranging bone fragments and doctoring dates to better suit the Darwinian model — and at worst it leads to outright fraud in support of the big lie.
The truth is that there is no fraud contained in God’s word. No deception, no guile. God does not need to lie or perpetrate fraud in order to convince anyone of what He is or what He has done.
God Bless you and yours.
Gregg
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Additional Posts dealing with Creation and Darwinism
“It is a fact that Darwinists eagerly desire evidence that man descended from a monkey-like ancestor. ”
Of course biologists desire evidence. They want to understand as much as possible about all living forms and their evolutionary history. And the history of the evolution of humans is definitely interesting.
But the way you have stated it – that biologists ‘desire evidence that man descended from a monkey-like ancestor – implies to me that you’re suggesting that biologists need evidence to support an idea that would otherwise be without basis. That is not the way it is. In biology, the evidence for evolution in general for all life-forms to have evolved from ancestral life-forms is so strong that there has not been any doubt about for a long time. Humans are animals, humans are mammals, humans are primates, and even if there were no fossil evidence at all, it follows that humans evolved from earlier primates. This is how biological systems work. The bone structure, the organs, and especially the DNA show the close relationships humans have to other primates. The DNA shows good examples of evolution – the vitamin C example is one of them. That humans evolved from ancestral primates is not a question at this point in evolutionary biology. (It might not be convincing to you, but it is overwhelmingly convincing to biologists.) It might have been a question a hundred years ago, but it is not a question now. It would take an amazingly strong unexpected collection of evidence to the contrary to make this an issue again.
Of course biologists want more details and more fossils – that’s the fascination of science, to always look for more detail in understanding the world. But biologists don’t need more fossils to valiudate the evolution of humans from ancestral primates – there is evidence for that already. Is there detailed information for every single mutation and adaptation that happened? No. But that kind of precise detail is not necessary to make a strong case for human evolution.
You might think everything I just wrote is wrong and deluded. But the point I’m trying to make is that when you portray biologists as frantically trying to find some fossil as if the idea of human evolution is in danger without it, your portrayal is just not true. To an evolutionary biologist, evolution is rock-solid at this time – it is long past being questioned, not because of blind faith but because of the accumulation of so many lines of interconnecting evidence. Of course they want to make discoveries, not because they think there’s no evidence, but because they want to fill in the details. This idea of the biologists desperately trying to manufacture or stretch evidence to cover some gaping hole is not reality. It’s false.
I don’t think you are deluded, I simply disagree. I believe the entire thing is still dependent upon a pretty gigantic ASSUMPTION.
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I have NO ARGUMENT with the fact that man has descended from a common ancestor. A pair of them, actually, and I even think I know their names. They were human. I believe in common ancestors within kinds.
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My argument is with the ASSUMPTION that man came from monkey. And there isn’t any fossil evidence that such a thing ever took place.
I’m so glad you’re putting this up here! I never really understood how “they” got the theory of evolution out of the bones that they showed in text books- it wasn’t until I started learning about creationism that it made sense. The theory came first, then they tried to get the bones to do what they wanted.
Yes, there are a lot of similarities between living species, due to us all coming from the same creator :)
Hi Gregg,
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You wrote:
“Today, this find has been reclassified as a member of Australopithecus, an extinct family of ape. It is widely recognized that this is not an ancestor of man although you may have trouble finding that data anywhere other than Creationist sources.”
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I had no trouble at all. I found it on both talkorigins.org and Wikipedia. Neither of those can be described as Creationist sources and Wikipedia is the second hit in a Google search for “Nutcracker man”.
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May peace be with you,
Neil.
Okay, I checked. As I said, neither one of those sites states that it is widely recognized that Australopithecus is not an ancestor of man.
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What was it you were trying to say?
Hi Gregg,
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Okay, I made a mistake. I’m not quite sure what I was thinking now. The wikipedia page doesn’t make that statement like I thought it did. The talk.origins page does make that statement, but not where I directed you to. In the summary, it says:
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May peace be with you,
Neil.