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Two Worldviews in Conflict
What do thousands of scientists believe about creation and evolution?
Ape-Man
- Australopithecus is one of the best-known ape-man fossil
creatures. Evolutionists believe the creature walked upright
and showed many characteristics intermediate between ape
and man. The Encyclopedia Britannica, taking an evolutionary
viewpoint, describes: “Many creatures intermediate between
living apes and humans have been found as fossils. Australopithecus, a hominid that lived 3,000,000 or 4,000,000
years ago, had an upright human stance but a cranial capacity
of less than 500 cubic centimeters — comparable to that of a
gorilla or chimpanzee and just about one-third that of humans.
Its head displayed an odd mixture of ape and human
characteristics: a low forehead and a long, ape-like face, but
with teeth proportioned like those of humans.”[]
- Although this view held by the Encyclopedia is prevalent
amongst evolutionists, it has become significantly disputed
by some experts, and thus cannot be held as undisputed evidence
for human evolution. In fact, some prominent evolutionists
themselves strongly doubt that Australopithecus was
intermediate between ape and man.
- Lord Solly Zuckerman, for many years the head of the
department of anatomy at the University of Birmingham and
chief scientific adviser to the British government, was knighted
in 1964, awarded the Order of Merit in 1968, and elevated to
a life peerage in 1971 in recognition of his distinguished career
as a research scientist.[] After more than 15 years of research
on the subject, with a team that rarely included less
than four scientists, Lord Zuckerman concluded that
Australopithecus did not walk upright, and was not intermediate
between ape and man, but was merely an anthropoid ape.
Lord Zuckerman, although not a creationist, believed there
was very little, if any, science in the search for man’s fossil
ancestry. Lord Zuckerman has written, based on a lifetime of
investigation, that if man has evolved from an ape-like creature,
he seemed to do so without leaving any trace of the transformation
in the fossil record.[]
- “Lucy” is the popular name given to one of the most
well-known australopithecine fossils ever found. American
anthropologist Donald Johanson found this famous fossil skeleton
in 1974 in Ethiopia. But according to Richard Leakey,
who along with Johanson are probably the best-known fossil- anthropologists in the world, Lucy’s skull is so incomplete
that most of it is “imagination made of plaster,” thus making
it impossible to draw any firm conclusion about what species
Lucy belonged to.[]
- Evolutionist Dr. Charles Oxnard (professor of anatomy
and human biology at the University of Western Australia)
completed one of the most sophisticated computer analyses
of australopithecine fossils ever undertaken, and concluded
that they have nothing to do with the ancestry of man, and
are simply an extinct form of ape. “It is now recognized widely
that the australopithecines are not structurally closely similar
to humans.”[] Moreover, the world-renowned Richard Leakey
has stated, “Biologists would dearly like to know how modern
apes, modern humans, and the various ancestral hominids
have evolved from a common ancestor. Unfortunately,
the fossil record is somewhat incomplete as far as the hominids
are concerned, and it is all but blank for the apes. . . .
David Pilbeam (a well-known expert in human evolution)
comments wryly, ‘If you brought in a smart scientist from
another discipline and showed him the meager evidence we’ve
got he’d surely say, ‘forget it: there isn’t enough to go on.’ ”[]
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