The 3 September 2004 edition of the journal Science carried
a report of a special X-ray scanning study performed on Orrorin tugenensis
fossil unearthed in Kenya at the end of 2000. (1) The striking point in the
report was the way that words intended to give the impression that evolution
was a scientific fact were sprinkled among the sentences.
The report by Science regarding the study used the following
terms:
"Late Miocene fossils from the Lukeino Formation in Kenya's Tugen
Hills are assigned to Orrorin tugenensis. … One of these preserves an intact
head connected to the proximal shaft by an elongated neck. … [C]omputerized
tomography scans of the neck shaft junction of reveal that the cortex is markedly
thinner superiorly than inferiorly, differing from the approximately equal
cortical thicknesses observed in extant African apes, approaching the condition
in later hominids, and indicating that O. tugenensis was bipedal."
(1)
The claims in the article are depicted as being based on "scientific
authority:" scientists analyze a bone with very special and advanced techniques;
they observe that the bone belongs to an ape-like creature that walked on two
legs; as a result of this, scientists obtain allegedly definitive information
regarding the way that the progenitor of man walked on two legs...
That is the picture being presented. But could the average reader
be expected to seek and find any alternative idea in the face of that picture?
Of course not. It is impossible for the average newspaper reader to stand up
against "scientists" expert in their field, or the "scientific facts" obtained
by means of "advanced techniques!"
That report tells the reader nothing about the hidden agenda behind
the study in question, nor about what is assumption and what is fact. What it
does is to impose the message "evolution is a fact" under a scientific guise.
As we always seek to make clear, one frequently sees that resort
is made to "scientific authority" in the media's evolutionary propaganda. Yet
there is another situation encountered no less frequently: the scientific authority
based on the media does not actually rely on the scientific facts at all, but
"imaginary conjecture." In other words, evolutionist claims depicted as facts
supported by scientific authority actually consist of speculation in
the minds of those who have adopted evolution as a dogma.
For example, looked at a little more closely, it can be seen how
evolutionist speculation is presented as scientific fact in the above extract.
The fossil referred to in the report belongs to a living thing the size of a
chimpanzee. Research is conducted into whether it walked on two legs or not.
Yet man is then suddenly brought into the equation and we are told that it has
been established that "the progenitor of man walked on two legs..."
The following question may be asked here: "Why is a fossil the
size of a chimpanzee necessarily the progenitor of human beings? Since this
fossil belongs to a living thing the size of a chimpanzee, maybe it is
in reality nothing more than a chimpanzee, or the remain of a similar
but extinct species of ape.
There can be no doubt that this question is a perfectly justified
one. Yet there is a fact of which most readers are unaware. That question is
one, which the Darwinists in charge of scientific research do not permit
to be asked. Every fossil discovered has to be interpreted in a manner compatible
with the theory of evolution, otherwise it will be impossible for a scientist
to have his or her fossil findings published in any scientific journal. The
evolutionist claims regarding this bone are the product of just such a one-sided
and dogmatic perspective.
Naturally, society is not obliged to think along the lines imposed
by materialist philosophy, and every reader should evaluate statements regarding
scientific findings about the origin of life as he or she chooses. Therefore,
as we always seek to do, it is most important to reveal the evolutionary assumptions
made by scientists in the light of materialist philosophy and to show the reader
the findings obtained from such studies by "filtering out" such assumptions.
Let us now give the reader information regarding the facts obtained in the latest
study and compare this with the evolutionist interpretations in the report.
In the study in question, scientists who created a reconstruction
model of the femur belonging to Orrorin tugenensis at the Penn State
University Laboratory of Comparative Morphology and Mechanics discovered that
the femoral neck is thickened. That was the finding obtained in the study.
Thinking about it objectively, what can be said based on that finding?
That a living thing the size of a chimpanzee lived in the Tugen Hills of Kenya
6 million years ago. And that it was able to stand upright and walk to a certain
extent.
But what did the report tell you? That this was the progenitor
of human beings and that it has been definitively established to have walked
upright.
There is clearly a contradiction here. Let us explain:
This femur belongs to a creature that died in Kenya 6 million years
ago. In other words, this fossil represents a single, isolated period of time.
There is a giant gap of 6 million years between the fossil and our own day.
To say that this fossil is the ancestor of man means openly claiming that human
beings are descended from this fossil, which is an imaginary scenario, not a
conclusion arrived at by the scientific method. The palaeontologist Henry Gee,
editor of the scientific journal Nature, describes the position thus:
New fossil discoveries are fitted into this preexisting story.
We call these new discoveries 'missing links', as if the chain of ancestry
and descent were a real object for our contemplation, and not what it really
is: a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped to accord
with human prejudices. In reality, the physical record of human evolution
is more modest. Each fossil represents an isolated point, which no knowable
connection to any other given fossil, and all float around in an overwhelming
sea of gaps. (2)
In addition, even if we leave aside the error of making interpretations
regarding the descent of a fossil for one moment, there is still no consensus
even among evolutionists as to whether Orrorin tugenensis was a hominid
or not, or to its place on the fictitious evolutionary family tree. Kate Wong,
one of the editors of the American scientific journal Scientific American,
wrote the following about some newly discovered fossils among which this fossil
was also found in an article published in the January 2003 edition of the magazine:
Not surprisingly, they have also sparked vigorous debate. Indeed,
experts are deeply divided over where on the family tree the new species belong
and even what constitutes a hominid in the first place… (3)
Moreover, the method employed in this study is not regarded as
reliable by some evolutionists. Owen Lovejoy, a Kent State University in Ohio
anthropologist, comments: "I'm not sure the scans, which have some problems
with them, are very convincing." (4)
As we have seen, evolutionists' opinions with regard to Orrorin
tugenensis stem not from that fact that research into the fossil has strengthened
their theories, but from the fact they have adopted evolution as a dogma. The
theory of evolution is a dogma that everyone who believes in materialism needs
to adopt. And a scientist who accepts that dogma can certainly tell tall tales
of evolution and the transition to bipedalism by adapting the bones he finds
to that belief, yet those comments will still constitute no evidence for the
theory.
Conclusion:
We here call on Science editorial staff to be much more
careful in the future when preparing reports regarding the theory of evolution.
This report, prepared by writers either uninformed about or insensitive to the
theory of evolution, led to a storm of social misinformation and error. This
journal must know that reports about evolution, a dogma enjoying one-sided support,
conflict with the principle of objective news reporting, and it must not allow
itself to become a tool of evolutionary propaganda.
1. R. B. Eckhard, “External and Internal Morphology
of the BAR 1002’00 Orrorin tugenensis Femur, Science,
3rd September 2004, Vol. 305, pp. 1450-1452
2. Henry Gee, In Search of Deep Time, Beyond the Fossil Record to a New
History of Life, The Free Press, A Division fo Simon & Schuster, Inc.,
1999, p. 32
3. Kate Wong, “An Ancestor to Call Our Own”, Scientific American,
January 2003, pp. 54-63
4. Hillary Mayell, “Fossil Pushes Upright Walking Back 2 Million Years,
Study Says”, National Geographic News, 2nd September 2004
