Scientists estimate fossil remains
up to 4 million years old
A report on the msnbc.com news portal web site dated 5 March, 2005, dealt
with an extinct species of ape. This report is a standard propaganda text prepared
to sustain the theory of evolution, a great falsehood persisted in despite
countless scientific findings working against it.
In order to unveil this propaganda and analyse the subject with scientific
findings, let us first examine the picture and main caption on the ntvmsnbc.com
web site:
The photograph shows a fossilised bone. The msnbc.com headline and subcaption
contain a Darwinist claim and suggest that the bone in question belongs to
the so-called ancestor of man who first walked upright.
Before moving on to the claims indicated it will first be of use to shed a
little light on the psychological influences acting on the persons doing the
indicating.
Palaeo-anthropologists need funding in order to be able to finance their
excavations. That finance comes from various individuals and institutions that
fund scientific researches. These select the scientific research they will
fund from among many applications. Therefore, the funding to be given to a
team of scientists is directly related to how much the findings promised by
the research will satisfy the expectations of the provider of the funding.
In palaeo-anthropological excavations the measure of that
satisfaction is the hominid remains popularised as the “missing link” and alleged
to belong to man’s so-called evolutionary ancestor. Evolutionist individuals
and institutions are not keen to back research they think will provide no evidence
for their theory and that will produce unimportant fossils that will attract
no-one’s interest.
This is an important “direction indicator” for
palaeo-anthropologists who have hitched their careers and future to the success
of such research. The words of the palaeo-anthropologist Donald Johanson
are noteworthy in this regard. (Johanson was one of the leaders of the team
that discovered Lucy, popularised for decades as the so-called ancestor of
man. The following quotation concerns that finding):
In October 1973, we arrived at Hadar with nine other French and American scientists,
prepared for a two-month stay. By this time I had left Chicago and taken a
job teaching anthropology at Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland.
With these credentials, I had managed to get some funding for my first expedition
as a co-leader. I knew, though, that I had to prove myself by finding
some hominids or the money would dry up. (1)
In addition, a small fragment of bone dug out of the ground may lead to the
name of the palaeo-anthropologist who found it appearing in headlines all over
the world, and in his or her career taking a great leap forward. For that reason,
palaeo-anthropologists feel a powerful urge to interpret most of the bones
they find in a way that will bring them career success and fame.
Dr. Greg Kirby, a member of the Flinders University teaching staff
who has given classes in population biology, has said this on the subject:
"...
I don’t want to pour too much scorn on paleontologists, but
if you were to spend your life picking up bones and finding little fragments
of head, and little fragments of jaw, there’s a strong desire there to
exaggerate the importance of those fragments.” (2)
As a general principle, it will be advantageous to bear
the above in mind in order to come to a healthy evaluation of palaeo-anthropologists’ giant
claims about tiny bones. However, it must be agreed that the psychological
impulses behind a claim say nothing about that claim’s degree of veracity.
Therefore, the veracity of those claims needs to be evaluated separately. We
can now move on to the details of the discovery and respond to evolutionists’ claims
in the light of the scientific facts.
An evolutionary tall tale about the new finding
The fossils dealt with in the msnbc.com report consist of bones unearthed
in the Afar region of Ethiopia. The discovery was made last February by a team
of American and Ethiopian scientists. The bones, estimated at between 3.8 and
4 million years old, include a complete tibia from the lower part of the leg,
parts of the thighbone or femur, ribs, vertebrae, a collarbone, pelvis and
a complete shoulder blade Bruce Latimer, one of the leaders of the team and
the director of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Ohio, suggested
on the basis of the way the ankle bone was joined to the shin bone that the
owner of the findings walked upright. The area where the discovery was made
was some 60 km (40 miles) distant from the region where the famous fossil Lucy
was unearthed in 1974. (This fossil, given the name Australopithecus afarensis,
was for many years depicted as the long-sought missing link in the human evolution
scenario. Recently, however, evolutionists agreed that Australopithecus could
not be regarded as an ancestor of man.)
No scientific publication has as yet been published and
reviewed by independent researchers regarding the new fossil in question
found in the Afar region. Neither has any name been given to it. However,
Latimer insists in his evolutionist claim that the creature in question is
Lucy’s ancestor.
The following evolutionary tall tale regarding the finding was carried in
the words of Latimer in the msnbc.com report:
“… This new discovery will give us a picture
of how walking upright occurred.”
To summarise, it is claimed in the picture presented by msnbc.com that the
living thing whose bones have been discovered was the ancestor of Lucy and,
according to the scenario of human evolution, therefore also the ancestor of
humans. However, this is all a myth propagated for ideological reasons. Because;
1. The assumption that the
living thing whose bones were found is the ancestor of Lucy and of human beings
is not scientific
Bruce Latimer claims that the bone buried in the earth belongs
to the ancestor of Lucy and of human beings. In other words, he is suggesting
a line of descent of “Bones > Lucy > Human being.” Henry
Gee, editor of Nature,
one of the best known scientific journals in the world, states that interpretations
based upon such concepts are of no scientific value, and are a “lullaby” made
up in line with preconceptions. In his book In Search of Deep Time,
Gee writes:
From our vantage point in the present, we arrange fossils in an order that
reflects gradual acquisition of what we see in ourselves. We do not seek the
truth, we create it after the fact, to suit our own prejudices...
To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a
scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the
same validity as a bedtime story-amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not
scientific.
These words of Gee’s, from a later part of the book, give the lie to
msnbc.com’s evolutionary propaganda in a single sentence:
We know that it is impossible, when confronted with a fossil, to be certain
whether it is your ancestor, or the ancestor of anything else, even another
fossil.
2. The claim regarding walking upright is making a
tool for evolution by unscientific means
Evolutionists maintain that this creature whose bones were
discovered was the ancestor of human beings because they estimate, despite
the ape-like features in its anatomy, that it walked upright. Evolutionists
accept an ape as descendant of humans just because they assume that it walked
upright. Let us consider the invalidity of this from the logical point of
view. Accepting the existence of an ape-like human guessed to have walked
on two legs is a perspective founded on a biased and false logic. Let us
examine Bruce Latimer’s words as
quoted below in order to demonstrate this.
Latimer describes why he regards this creature as the ancestor of modern humans:
“Right now we can say this is the world’s oldest
bipedal (an animal walking on two feet) and what makes this significant is
because what makes us human is walking upright,”
It is most thought provoking that such words should have
been uttered by a scientist. On what logical grounds can man be reduced to
the ability to walk upright? Can a logic along the lines of “man is man because he walks
on two legs” be sustained in the light of the following abilities unique
to human beings?
possession of a superior intellect
the ability to produce works of art
taking pleasure from music
building civilisations
exploring the universe
developing technologies …
This erroneous way of looking at human being of evolutionists who think like
Latimer is exceedingly thought provoking.
However, not all evolutionists think along these lines.
The falsity of this perspective is openly admitted by some evolutionists.
In the words “all
birds have wings, but not all creatures with wings are birds," the well
known anatomist Bernard Wood indicates the hollowness of the logic that regards
walking on two legs as a defining characteristic of being human. (6)
The story of one ape that preoccupied the media recently
will better enable us to see the invalidity of Latimer’s perspective.
The ape in the picture to the left is walking on two legs. Yet the interesting
thing about this ape, named Natasha, is that she began to walk upright after
suffering from a disease. The five-year-old Natasha, who lived on a Safari
Park near Tel Aviv, caught a severe stomach illness and was treated by the
zoo vet. Recovering after an intensive course of treatment, Natasha surprised
everyone by starting to walk upright after her discharge. Igal Horowitz,
one of the zoo vets, estimated that brain damage caused by the disease might
have led to this situation. (7)
Even young children visiting the zoo also can see that Natasha
is an ape although she walks on two legs. However, if the logic of Latimer’s “scientific” theory
regarding bipedalism (walking on two legs) is applied to Natasha, then an entirely
different picture emerges. According to Latimer’s logic, he who says
that it is walking upright that makes man, man, Natasha must now be regarded
as human!
Walking on two legs does not make a living thing human, of course. Natasha
is a concrete example of this. Since Latimer has been conditioned to interpret
every discovery according to the theory of evolution, he is blind to this simple
and easily comprehensible logic.
3. Lucy has become a myth in the face of the latest
findings
We have already revealed the truth about Lucy many times. Let us briefly sum
up: the living thing in question is an extinct species of ape (A. afarensis),
bearing a close resemblance to modern chimpanzees in terms of criteria such
as skeleton, brain volume and skull structure. The only grounds on which evolutionists
try to construct an evolutionary link between this species and human being
is the claim that, like us, Lucy walked upright. However, there is important
evidence that this claim is untrue.
Despite Lucy’s being declared to be bipedal immediately
after her discovery in 1974, two world renowned evolutionist anatomists,
Solly Zuckerman and Charles Oxnard, who studied the fossil in those years
rejected that claim and stressed that the creature’s gait did not
resemble that of human beings.
New findings confirm Zuckerman and Oxnard’s
opinion. The latest research on the Australopithecus’ pelvic
bone in 2000 shows that the bone is very different to its counterpart in
humans and that the creature did not have a human-like gait. (8)
An investigation of Lucy’s fore arms, carried out
the same year, showed that her hands had the anatomy of a classic “knuckle-walker.” (9)
This term describes the way in which apes touch the ground with their knuckles
as they walk, and is a definition of apes that walk on four feet.
Investigation of the balance system in the inner ear canals
of Lucy and of all Australopithecus ape species has proved that
these creatures did not have a balance system appropriate for walking upright,
as humans do. (10)
The real body blow for Lucy came with the discovery of Kenyanthropus platyops.
This fossil, which consisted of a skull, as was described in 2001, belongs
to the same period as Lucy but has a more modern appearance than her in terms
of evolutionary criteria. K. platyops made defending the evolutionary
family tree impossible. In the face of this development the well known researcher
into human evolution Richard Potts had to recommend that Lucy be removed from
the family tree. (11)
Conclusion:
Evolutionist claims regarding this latest fossil finding offer no scientific
support for Darwinism. The evolutionary propaganda behind attempts to equate
the fossils, Lucy and human being is invalid. The scenario of human evolution
is now merely a myth in the face of modern scientific discoveries. Evolutionists
hope that fossils discovered subsequently will reinforce their family tree,
though even they have to admit that after these latest findings, which have
unearthed brand new inconsistencies, their family tree has assumed the appearance
of a complicated shrub. Attempts to set fossil findings out in such a way as
to reflect evolutionist prejudice are now bankrupt, and the above expression
is a covert admission of that bankruptcy.
Darwinist circles are trying to cover up that bankruptcy
by the use of unscientific propaganda. The msnbc.com report is one instance
of this. A scientist’s
analysing a photograph taken of him indicating a fossil he discovered in a
field in the light of evolutionist fairy tales, and this being submitted to
news agencies as evidence, are sufficient to trigger off a wave of propaganda
all over the world. Darwinist media organisations such as msnbc.com immediately
use these baseless claims as a propaganda tool by portraying them as facts
revealed by scientists.
We call on ntvmsnbc.com to abandon such propaganda in which
it engages in order cover up the bankruptcy of Darwinism. It is unscientific
to tell evolutionist fairy tales while indicating bone fragments, and the
Turkish public will not be deceived by such tales. With his mind and body,
man is a perfect entity. His origins lie in intelligent design, in other
words creation, not in the coincidences on which the theory of evolution
rests. Almighty God created man from nothing, using His knowledge and might.
In one verse of the Qur’an
God reveals:
“Do you then disbelieve in Him [God] Who created you from dust,
then from a drop of sperm, and then formed you as a man? He is, however,
God, my Lord, and I will not associate anyone with my Lord.” (Qur’an,
18:37-38)
1 Donald Johanson, “Ancestors”, 1994, Villard
Books, p. 51
2 Greg Kirby, Senior Lecturer at Flinders University in Population Biology,
from a lecture to the Biology Teachers Association in South Australia, 1976.
3 Henry Gee, IN SEARCH OF DEEP TIME, Beyond the Fossil Record to a New
Hıstory of Life, The Free Press, A Division fo Simon & Schuster,
Inc. , 1999, pp. 114, 117
4 Ibid, p. 127
5 “Earliest walking human ancestor found?”, The Associated Press,
5 March 2005, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7100805/
6 Michael D. Lemonick and Andrea Dorfman, “One Giant Step For Mankind”, Time,
23 July 2001
7 http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5479501/
8 F. Marchal, "A New Morphometric Analysis
of the Hominid Pelvic Bone," Journal of Human Evolution, 38:347-365 (2000)
9 M. Collard, L. C. Aiello, , “From forelimbs to two legs,” Nature,
404:339-340 (March 23, 2000
10 F. Spoor, B. Wood, F. Zonneveld, "Implications of early
hominid labyrinthine morphology for evolution of human bipedal locomotion," Nature,
369:645-648 (June 23, 1994)
11 Tim Friend, “Discovery rocks human-origin theories”, 21 March
2003: http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/2001-03-21-skull.htm
A report on the msnbc.com news portal web site dated 5 March, 2005, dealt
with an extinct species of ape. This report is a standard propaganda text prepared
to sustain the theory of evolution, a great falsehood persisted in despite
countless scientific findings working against it.
However, not all evolutionists think along these lines.
The falsity of this perspective is openly admitted by some evolutionists.
In the words “all
birds have wings, but not all creatures with wings are birds," the well
known anatomist Bernard Wood indicates the hollowness of the logic that regards
walking on two legs as a defining characteristic of being human. (6)