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"Nobel Prize winner Dr. Francis Crick (co-discoverer of one of the most important discoveries of 20th century biology) arrived at the theory that life could never have evolved by chance on planet earth."
»  Chapter Introduction
»  The Experts Say What?
»  Life from Non-Life
»  Mutations - Evolution's Raw Material
»  Fossils
»  Ape-Man
»  Radio Dating
»  Starlight
»  The Creation Model
»  Dinosaurs
»  Odds & Complexity
»  Chance Design?

Chapter 3:
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.”[61]

  • 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.[62] 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.[63]

  • “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.[64]

  • 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.”[65] 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.’ ”[66]

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