Hello, and welcome to Part 2 of Human Evolution, the fall of Darwin's last icon.
Here we will cover six important topics that supplement the main presentation in Part 1.
During the 20 years in which I have been studying human evolution, I have observed
a repeating pattern when Catholics and others who have long accepted evolutionary claims
see the hominins covered in Part 1 so strongly discredited.
The repeating pattern is to take the position that surely other viable transitional fossils
must exist and besides there are bound to be new discoveries forthcoming to support
human evolution.
A similar response is also heard from the evolutionary establishment and so based on
the information presented in Part 1, viewers should ponder how they would react if a well-known
evolutionist made a comment such as the following.
It is obvious that in the Part 1 critique, the episode selectively omitted a number of
recent and very important finds.
These finds, as it turns out, offer an alternative and viable pathway leading to Homo sapiens
through the Australopithecines.
There are a number of Australopithecine species not even addressed in Part 1, including Australopithecus
garhi, Australopithecus aethiopicus, and Australopithecus sediba.
Any of these species could form a pathway linking Homo with earlier finds such as Ardipithecus
ramidus who, despite the criticism mentioned in Part 1, most evolutionists regard as an
important transitional form.
In addition, Part 1 fails to acknowledge that there is now a possible evolutionary
pathway that completely omits the Australopithecines.
This pathway involves the very intriguing find Caneanthropus platyops, which is dated
to the same period as many of the Australopithecines.
In response to these potential statements, several important points should be made.
First, the transitional forms discredited in Part 1 comprise the key links in virtually
all evolutionary sequences found in textbooks and in scientific literature.
While it is true that other claimed transitional forms exist, there is good reason why the
candidates mentioned above were not specifically discussed in Part 1.
For example, Australopithecus sediba.
This find was proposed in 2010 by Lee Berger.
Sediba dates less than 2 million years ago, which means that it is not a serious candidate
for the direct ancestor to Homo erectus or Homo sapiens when erectus is sunk.
Even Berger conceded that sediba dates too late to be a direct human ancestor.
Also, it is possible that sediba is a mixture of human and Australopithecine fossils.
In 2014, New Scientist featured an article entitled Human, Missing Link Fossils May Be
Jumble of Species, and explained,
"...the fossils of sediba, which promise to rewrite the story of human evolution, may
actually be the remains of two species."
Specifically, it appears that the fossilized vertebrae and foot bones attributed to sediba
consist of human and australopithecine remains, which would make sediba an invalid taxon.
Sediba follows a series of australopithecine species that were announced starting in the
1990s.
Other proposed species include Australopithecus garhi, which dated to 2.5 million years ago,
and was notable because it was placed on the cover of Time magazine in 1999, just when
the science standards controversy was raging in the state of Kansas.
However, even most evolutionists have been underwhelmed by Australopithecus garhi, which
is a contemporary of other australopithecines.
Australopithecus garhi was described in U.S. News & World Report as having
"...a brain but a third the size of modern humans, a projecting lower face like a chimp
or Lucy, and immense teeth with broad incisors and molars."
A science editorial concluded,
"...Australopithecus garhi has few traits that definitively link it to Homo, and like
other hominids from the same period, it may simply be an evolutionary dead end."
Paleoanthropologist Fred Grein concluded,
"...it's a possible candidate for Homo ancestry, but no better than Africanus."
If it is not a better candidate than Africanus, then it is really no candidate at all.
Australopithecus aethiopichus dates to approximately 2.5 million years ago.
Based on the extremely primitive shape of its most famous member, the black skull, Australopithecus
aethiopichus is usually considered most closely related to the robust australopithecines,
which no one places on the path to Homo.
Cuneanthropus platyops was proposed by Meave Leahy in 2001.
Dating to 3.5 million years ago, this proposed new genus and species could possibly provide
an alternative to the australopithecines as the predecessor of Homo.
However, the reconstructed skull leading to this proposed taxon was pieced together
from not 10, not 110, but 1,100 bone fragments.
Many evolutionists have rejected the new classification and attribute any unique features of the specimen
to deformation that can occur when so many pieces are involved in reconstruction.
Tim White, who suspects the specimen is merely a variant of Australopithecus afarensis, rejects
the proposed new classification because of the specimen's
extensive deformation and the known cranial variation in early hominid species and among
modern apes and humans.
In other words, Cuneanthropus platyops fits within the variation among known species and
therefore does not justify a new classification.
There are also many fossils once claimed to be on man's evolutionary pathway, but that
are no longer seen in this light, even by the evolutionists.
This includes the Piltdown Man fraud, in which Pierre Teilhard de Chardin participated.
This forgery dates to 1908, when amateur geologist Charles Dawson was given part of a human skull
by a worker from the gravel pit at Piltdown, England.
This led to excavations in 1912, which produced a lower jaw and tooth.
In 1953, it was realized that this claimed transitional form, which was declared to be
proof of man's evolutionary past for 40 years, was a mixture of a human skull and an orangutan
jaw and tooth.
In fact, the jawbone and teeth had been stained to give the appearance of antiquity, and the
teeth and the jawbone had been filed to look non-human.
There is also the famous Nebraska Man, which made headlines around the world as proof of
man's evolutionary past, even though this claim was based on a tooth that later turned
out to belong to an extinct pig.
As seen in the discussion of these additional claimed hominins, evolutionists have no shortage
of fossils they can drag out of the closet when useful.
But at some point, shouldn't it become apparent to everyone that there simply is no truth
to be found in the claims made by the bone peddlers, by the evolutionary biologists of
the NAS, and by Kenneth Miller, who assured us that the fossil evidence for human evolution
was remarkably strong?
The final point to be made is that if you continue to place trust in the claims of paleoanthropologists,
who have deceived the world for more than a century, while not producing a single claimed
hominin that withstands scrutiny, I hope you are at least honest enough to consider that
Catholic or not, you are under the influence of a serious philosophical error.
This error can be called scientism, naturalism, materialism, modernism or neo-modernism, but
all are rooted in the Cartesian-Darwinian narrative that mandates origins to be the
proper subject of natural science, not historical theology.
This requires a blind faith that is counter to the scientific evidence and cannot be reconciled
with God's revealed truth about human origins.
Tragically, as the last three episodes of the series will testify, the lie of human
evolution has had devastating historical consequences in the secular world and also in the Catholic
Church.
These deadly and eternal consequences will continue as long as the lie of human evolution
persists.
FALSE CLAIMS
Viewers may be wondering why so many mistakes and false claims have been made in the field
of paleoanthropology.
Certainly, philosophical commitment and the desire for fame and funding are partly to
blame.
The consequence is that, as Sir Sully Zuckerman stated, the interpretation of man's fossil
history is little more than
a presumed biological science where to the faithful anything is possible, and where the
ardent believer is sometimes able to believe several contradictory things at the same time.
In this kind of biology, personal attitudes to inquiry and understanding become as dominating
as are the facts to which they are related, where fashion and what can now only be called
pop science become a far more potent force than scientific criticism.
But there are also methodological difficulties involved with fossil interpretation.
Specifically, because fossil teeth are, by far, the most common fossils recovered, many
species have been launched on the slimmest of fossil teeth evidence, even though the
scientific literature makes it clear that this can result in grievous errors.
An article in the Journal of Human Evolution comparing the morphology of molars among six
primate species found that the predicted evolutionary relationships were in no way congruent with
what is known of hominoid biomolecular affinities.
In other words, the results from the study of fossil teeth do not agree with the conclusions
from molecular or genetic studies.
The article also pointed out that fossil studies erroneously assume that features shared
by humans and orangutans—low cusps, shallow intercuspal notches, etc.—are indicative
of a recent common ancestry, when in fact these are probably only signs of similar diet.
In short, although study of molar morphology may yield substantial insights into diets
of fossil hominoid primates, there may be severe limitations to their suitability for
phylogenetic or evolutionary history inference.
Another revealing article in Scientific American explained that problems also arise because
the taxonomic position of any new fossil is determined by exquisitely detailed morphological
studies of isolated specimens, usually on fossil jaws and teeth, most likely to be preserved.
What this procedure tends to ignore is that among such living hominoids as chimpanzees,
the jaws and teeth exhibit a high degree of morphological variability.
There is no reason to believe the same was not true of hominoids.
Further, while species assignments are often based on the number, position, and size of
cusps on a tooth, in position of tooth crests, a study in Nature evaluating the influence
of gene expression during tooth development found that
With increasing expression level of this one gene, ectodysplacin, the number of cusps increases,
cusp shapes and positions change, longitudinal crests form, and number of teeth increases.
These differences can be traced to a small difference in the formation of an early signaling
center at the onset of tooth-crown formation.
The study concluded that variation caused by small differences in expression of this
single gene may, if not taken into account, obscure evolutionary histories.
Another problem is that estimating the age of fossil specimen at death is closely linked
to the size and emergence of teeth, and estimating the overall size that the specimen would have
reached at maturity are then made.
However, studies have shown extreme variation in the age of the emergence of teeth among primates.
A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that
Emergence of the permanent teeth in wild chimpanzees is consistently later than 90% of the captive
individuals.
In many cases, emergence times are completely outside the known range recorded for captive
chimpanzees.
Thus, the assumed age of fossil specimens at death and the resulting estimate of body
size at adulthood may be in substantial error if the potential for variation in tooth emergence
is not factored in.
Yet there is little understanding of the factors that could affect emergence, or how to factor
them into evolutionary studies.
Also, although enamel thickness has been used to project fossil, ape, and human phylogeny
over the past century, a study in the Journal of Human Evolution recently found that
Yet, general characterizations of hominins as having thick enamel oversimplify a surprisingly
variable craniodental trait and may bias evolutionary reconstructions if the variation is not taken
into account.
Finally, it is humorous to read the far-ranging speculations about human evolution and social
behavior arising from evolutionist study of fossil teeth.
Owen Lovejoy suggests that small tooth size in hominids is an indication of monogamy as
males with small teeth would not need to compete effectively with other males for the control
of multiple females.
As another example, for nearly 20 years, David Pilbeam of Harvard University claimed toolmaking
and bipedal status for the small tooth 10 million years ago Ramipithecus before concluding
it was an extinct primate most closely related to the orangutan.
He explained.
Later Pilbeam reflected on the rush to interpret the fossil evidence.
His admissions are surprisingly candid.
In the course of rethinking my ideas about human evolution, I have changed somewhat as
a scientist.
I am aware of the prevalence of implicit assumptions and try harder to dig them out of my own thinking.
In paleoanthropology, data are still so sparse that theory heavily influences interpretations.
Theories have in the past clearly reflected our current ideologies instead of the actual
data.
We should not promise too much.
In my newly reflective state, I am more sober than I once was about what the unwritten past
can tell us.
Too often, it has reflected back only what we expect of it.
The problematic reliance on fossil teeth is only one of many methodological problems
plaguing paleoanthropology.
In fact, viewers may have noticed a number of reoccurring errors associated with the
hominins previously discussed.
When I began studying the hominin record closely in the 1990s, I quickly realized that behind
every hominin claim is the violation of one or more logical principles that non-specialists
can readily understand and use to assess claims.
Since it is certain that new claimed hominins will continue to be forthcoming, four key
principles are now set forth to serve as a future guide.
Principle number one.
It is inappropriate to combine homo fossils with australopithecine fossils and to then
claim that the result is a new species displaying a mosaic of ancient and modern features or
to average the measurements of such fossils and assert that the fossils are transitional
between the australopithecines and homo.
This principle needs little discussion as it would result in what is called an invalid
taxon.
Unfortunately, the violation of this principle is suggested in the scientific literature
for many claimed hominins including homo habilis, australopithecus sediba, and australopithecus
animensis.
Principle number two.
A fossil that is morphologically indistinguishable from homo sapiens or that most closely aligns
with homo sapiens, also an artifact that is best attributed to homo sapiens, should be
assigned to homo sapiens regardless of the estimated age of the fossil or artifact.
This logical principle dates back to the first claimed transitional form of Javaman and the
objection that the femur cannot be considered as belonging to any species other than homo
sapiens since the femur was indistinguishable from that of modern man.
This was also the case with the KP271 arm bone and the Laetoli footprints and shows
how powerful is the influence of one's preconceived evolutionary sequences.
Principle number three.
If there are two existing groups, homo sapiens and the orangutan and a third fossil group
that is now extinct called the australopithecines, it is inappropriate to assume that the australopithecines
gave rise to or are most closely related to homo sapiens, if in fact detailed studies
conclude that the australopithecines are more closely related to the orangutan or that the
australopithecines were uniquely different from both groups in fundamental ways that
eliminate it as an evolutionary ancestor of homo sapiens.
The violation of this principle has occurred so often that evolutionists no longer even
question whether or not the australopithecines are closely related in form and function to
homo.
But based on the work of Charles Oxnard, we have seen that the australopithecines are
clearly not closely similar to homo, but instead are generally closer to the orangutan, although
some of its features are completely unique.
Therefore, if the australopithecines did evolve into anything, it would be most logical to
conclude that they evolved into the orangutan, not modern man.
Principle number 4.
New species designations should be avoided unless fossils fall outside the limits of
normal variation for established species, and the possibility of genetic defects arising
from inbreeding should also be considered before new species are designated.
To explain this principle, realize that every evolutionist making a fossil find must make
an evaluation as to whether the find justifies launching a new species, or whether it is
close enough in morphology to established species, and does not justify the claim of
a new species.
One of the common maneuvers taken by those anxious to establish new species is the comparison
of a fossil's morphology against the average measurements for existing species, rather
than comparing the fossil to the range of normal variation found within established
species, or to only compare selected characteristics against those of established species.
While there is enormous fame and funding to be gained from launching a new species, it
is clear that time and again new species have been claimed only to be questioned even among
other evolutionists to the violation of this principle.
This is the case for Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Neanderthal man, Homo heidelbergensis,
and Cuneanthropus platyops among many other claimed hominins.
As new finds that violate these basic principles are announced, look for the confusion to increase
not decrease over the already enormous state of confusion that now exists within paleoanthropology.
Perhaps this is why the extensively published evolutionist and paleoanthropologist Bernard
Wood has told his college students, I'm sorry, but I don't know how to distinguish the earliest
hominid from the earliest chimp ancestor anymore.
The conclusions reached thus far regarding the lack of fossil evidence for human evolution,
and for that matter, any sort of evolution, are not new and are not particularly controversial
to many evolutionists.
For decades, the lack of transitional forms has been acknowledged in the scientific literature,
and in turn, various methods have been proposed to explain why fossil evidence is lacking,
or to establish evolutionary relationships in the absence of the so-called missing links.
Two concepts will be discussed in this series.
One concept is called punctuated equilibrium, and the failure of this concept to save Darwinism
will be explained in episode 9.
Here we discuss a method of analysis that attempts to establish evolutionary relationships
without relying on transitional forms or missing links that is as now acknowledged by many
evolutionists may never be found.
This method of analysis is called cladistics.
When critics of Darwinism point out that there are no viable transitional forms demonstrating
evolution, it is common for evolutionists to dismiss criticisms as coming from those
who do not understand cladistics.
For this reason, it is important to answer the following.
What is cladistics?
And is cladistics a sound means of confirming that evolution occurred and of establishing
evolutionary relationships?
Cladistics is defined as a statistical method for analyzing correlations between traits
across species.
Cladistics rose to prominence in the 1970s and 1980s due to the efforts of a small group
of paleontologists led by Colin Patterson who conceded that the fossil evidence was
so weak that the evolutionary history of any species can never be established.
In a well-known speech given at the American Museum of Natural History, Patterson proclaimed
in 1981.
Can you tell me anything you know about evolution?
Any one thing that is true?
I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and
the only answer I got was silence.
Patterson, who was a paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, also explained
in an interview.
No one has ever produced a species by mechanisms of natural selection.
No one has ever gotten near.
All one can learn about the history of life is learned from systematics, from groupings
one finds in nature.
The rest of it is storytelling of one sort or another.
We have access to the tips of a tree.
The tree itself is theory and people who pretend to know about the tree and to describe
what went on with it, how the branches came off and the twigs came off, are, I think,
telling stories.
In abandoning the hope of ever finding transitional forms for any evolutionary sequence, cladistics
assumes that even if no transitional fossils or common ancestors are found, two species
sharing a large number of derived characteristics must be closely related in an evolutionary
sense because the only alternative is special creation, but this is not allowed in naturalistic
philosophy.
Since evolution must be true, all that is needed to establish evolutionary relationships
is to tally the derived characteristics shared between two species and, if there are more
common characteristics between these two species than other species, the two species must have
a close evolutionary relationship.
This relationship can be demonstrated using cladograms that look somewhat like an evolutionary
tree, but are not intended to imply an exact chronological sequence.
In this manner, no transitional fossils are needed to actually establish the presumed
close evolutionary relationship between two or more species.
Paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Henry Gee explains in his book In Search of
Deep Time,
Once we realize that deep time can never support narratives of evolution, we are forced to
accept that virtually everything we thought we knew about evolution is wrong.
If we can never know for certain that any fossil we unearth is our direct ancestor,
it is similarly invalid to pluck a string of fossils from deep time, arrange these fossils
in chronological order, and assert that this arrangement represents a sequence of evolutionary
ancestry and descent.
To complicate matters further, such sequences are justified after the fact by tales of inevitable
progressive improvement.
For example, the evolution of man is said to have been driven by improvements in posture,
brain size, etc., but such scenarios are subjective.
They can never be tested by experiment, and so they are unscientific.
They rely for their currency not on scientific text, but on assertion and the authority of
their presentation.
In cladistics, presumptions about particular courses of ancestry and descent are abandoned
as unprovable or unknowable.
It is a formal way of investigating the order in which organisms are cousins by examining
the possible alternatives.
Cladograms are statements of collateral relationship of greater or lesser extent.
Given that, they sidestep the question of whether any fossil is the ancestor of any
other because the answer to these questions can never be known.
In other words, cladistics acknowledges the discontinuities of deep time and, by acknowledging
them, transcends them.
But the power of cladistics does not stop there, for it allows evolutionists to ignore
the fact that the dates of many fossils do not fit the long-proposed evolutionary relationships.
Consider for example the fact that Archaeopteryx, which nearly all evolutionists now admit was
a flying bird, is dated to 150 million years ago and is tens of millions of years older
than several theropod dinosaurs that many evolutionists insist were the predecessor
of modern birds.
How can this be argued given the fossil dates?
The reasoning used in cladistics is as follows.
A. Archaeopteryx is a modern bird dating to 150 million years ago.
B. Theropod dinosaur fossil finds dating much younger than Archaeopteryx resemble what evolutionists
theorize a dinosaur-to-bird ancestor living before Archaeopteryx may have looked like.
C. Since evolution is true, if studies comparing characteristics between Archaeopteryx and
the more recent theropods conclude that the younger fossils share more derived characteristics
with Archaeopteryx than with other taxons, then Archaeopteryx and the more recent theropod
fossils must have shared a common ancestor, even if fossils supporting this conclusion
and dating to older than 150 million years ago are never found.
D. The common ancestor likely resembled the more primitive but more recently dated theropods
than it resembled Archaeopteryx, which is possible if the line of descent leading to
the more recently dated theropods did not evolve as quickly as did the line of descent
leading to older Archaeopteryx.
E. Given the shared characteristics between Archaeopteryx and the theropods, the fossil
dates do not matter and neither do the fossils.
It is not necessary to find the common ancestor or transitional forms between Archaeopteryx
and theropods to conclude that a chicken is a feathered dinosaur.
So powerful is the magic of cladistics that it is even used to change the classification
of existing hominin fossils when a change helps a favored evolutionary sequence.
This has been seen for example with the fossils attributed to Homo rudolfensis which date
to 2.3 million years ago and are older than some of the australopithecines that supposedly
transitioned to Homo.
Here is how it can be done.
1.
Group the Homo rudolfensis fossils with Homo habilis fossils and just call the combined
group Early Homo.
2.
Then select a group of fossils from Early Homo that are to be compared to the australopithecines
and Homo erectus, but make sure that australopithecine fossils misclassified as Homo habilis are
among those selected for study.
3.
Next, compare selected features from the fossil group that support one's intended findings
and conclude that as a whole, the cladistic analysis shows that the Early Homo fossil
group aligns more closely with the australopithecines than with Homo erectus.
4.
Propose that Homo rudolfensis and other fossils combined into Early Homo be placed into Australopithecus
and that, if the rudolfensis name is retained, it should be renamed Australopithecus rudolfensis.
This avoids the awkward admission that human-like fossils appear in the fossil record at the
same time or before some of the key australopithecines that are claimed to have evolved into Homo.
While such a reassignment has been argued in the scientific literature, even many evolutionists
have rejected the reclassification of the rudolfensis fossils because it would violate
established criteria for classifying fossils.
This would include the practice of assigning specimens with a cranial capacity of more
than 600 cc to Homo.
This would be violated with the skulls KNM-ER 1470 and 1590 that have capacities in the
range of 750 to 775, as well as the practice of assigning fossil skulls with indications
that the individual was capable of speech to Homo, as with KNM-ER 1470.
Nevertheless, when trying to deflect criticism of human evolution, many evolutionists will
deny the human-like morphology of rudolfensis and explain that a number of their colleagues
believe the fossils should be classified as australopithecines.
Although cladistics is a clever route taken to bypass contemporary status issues and the
lack of fossil evidence, many problems plague the method.
First, it should be realized that cladistics arose out of an admission by evolutionists
that the fossil record has not revealed the needed transitional forms and does not provide
direct evidence for evolution.
Second, cladistics does not establish that evolution has occurred, it merely assumes
that evolution has occurred, and then arranges groups in a way that may illustrate plausible
evolutionary relationships.
Henry Gee illustrates this basic assumption, writing that
Even if we can never know what actually happened, we do know that fossils A and B are somehow
related through a shared common heritage, because such a relationship must be true for
any pair of organisms.
Such thinking ignores the fact that if evolution did not occur, if similarities are the result
of creation, then cladistics is a meaningless exercise.
Third, cladistics has raised as many questions as it has solved because conclusions often
differ from those of other methodologies and leads to contention even among evolutionists,
as cladists tend to rely on their results exclusively.
One common source of conflict is between the conclusions of cladists and the results of
molecular or genetic studies.
But this is just the beginning.
An American zoologist, Peter Dodson, remarks
Cladistics systematically excludes data from stratigraphy, embryology, ecology, and biogeography
that could otherwise be employed to bring maximum evolutionary coherence to biological
data.
Darwin would have convinced no one if he had been so restrictive in his theory of evolution.
In the area of human evolution, it is revealing that evolutionary relationships predicted
through cladistic analysis differs from the relationships suggested by molecular studies,
according to two leading evolutionists published in the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences, who conclude
Craniodental data can return impressive levels of statistical support, e.g. 97% for phylogenetic
relationships that are most likely incorrect.
In other words, cladistic analyses of higher primate craniodental morphology may yield
not only false positive results, but false positive results that pass, by a substantial
margin, the statistical tests favored by many researchers.
Fourth, the fact that cladistics ignores fossil dates does not mean that dating issues disappear
altogether.
For example, given the current theropod fossil record, the relative dating issues between
Archaeopteryx and theropod dinosaurs remains a real one, even in the minds of evolutionists.
As evolutionist and critic of the dinosaur-to-bird theory, Alan Fiducia states
The stratigraphic sequence of bird-like theropods has been almost the reversal of the expected
evolutionary sequence leading to birds.
He further calls it a paradox, to allude to the fact that the most truly bird-like dinosaurs
occur some 60-80 million years after the earliest known bird, Archaeopteryx.
If birds are derived from theropods, then one would expect to see bird-like dinosaurs
abundant in the fossil record prior to the late Jurassic Archaeopteryx.
No such specimens have been described.
Fifth, cladograms are based on the number of derived evolutionary characteristics between
groups.
But this is not always easy to determine.
A cladogram would be in error if it were constructed assuming that similar characteristics
were derived and indicated common ancestry, when, in fact, these similarities were the
result of convergent evolution, the independent evolution of similar features in evolutionary
distant groups.
Cambridge professor Simon Conway Morris concedes that
At the moment, it is still very difficult to decide between characters that are of genuine
use in determining evolutionary relationships as against those that have arisen by convergence
from unrelated ancestors.
Cladists reply that error is minimized by using the principle of parsimony, in which
evolutionary relationships are assumed to be closest between groups requiring the fewest
evolutionary changes from an assumed common ancestor.
However, Darwinism is said to be a random directionless process, and so there is no
reason to assume that evolution operates efficiently by the principle of parsimony.
If evolutionists accept convergence, then the principle of parsimony can be violated.
When discussing human evolution, a commonly encountered claim is that human DNA is 98%
similar to that of chimpanzees.
The implication is that if humans and chimps are only 2% different, we must have a clear
and close evolutionary relationship.
But this is yet another evolution story, based on fiction, not fact.
Several initial studies of human and chimp genetic similarities were reported in Nature
and in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the early 2000s.
These studies estimated a human-chimp genetic dissimilarity in the range of 3.9% to 13%.
Even at the lower end of such estimates, the difference is a staggering 117 million nucleotide
differences.
To put that in a different perspective, the average 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper can hold
about 4,000 letters.
It would take 29,250 pages to record all the differences between humans and chimps at only
a 3.9% difference and nearly 100,000 pages to record a 13% difference.
Given evolutionary estimates of the divergence between humans and chimps approximately 300,000
generations ago, that's an estimated 390 to 1,300 mutations per generation.
And those mutations have to occur in the germline, a very specific subset of cells, or they will
not be passed on to the next generation.
According to a 2016 paper in Genetics, the average mutation rate in the germ cell line
in humans, including both single substitutions as well as insertions, deletions, and large
structural changes is only 100 base pairs per generation.
The rate of mutation in chimps is similar.
When taken both together, they only account for half to less than one-sixth of the differences
actually observed between humans and chimps.
And that is assuming the evolutionists are correct in thinking they had 7 million years
for these mutations to accumulate.
What is even more important to consider is that the early reported similarities that
have found their way into the textbooks and into colloquial jargon were highly inflated.
This was due to the original draft of the chimpanzee genome being assembled using the
already established human genome as a framework.
In other words, the human genome was assembled using a tedious shotgun method of aligning
bits of disconnected human DNA sequences against each other with no template for reference.
But the chimpanzee genome was aligned by first comparing it to the human sequence and then
assembling it into a published genome.
This means that many observed similarities in early studies are more likely to be artifacts
of the experimental method than true similarities.
An improved chimpanzee genome draft was published in 2018, though parts of the sequence are
still not fully assembled.
Comparisons of this new draft to the human genome sequence suggest a minimum of 16% dissimilarity,
or 480 million base pair differences.
To make matters even worse, a paper in Nature Genetics in 2018 reported that the published
human genome sequence, which is currently being used for comparative research, may be
missing 296,485,284 base pairs.
This finding means that the actual dissimilarity could be as high as 24%.
While some of the undocumented human sequence may prove to be similar to chimp sequence,
the discovery of these additional sequences is highly likely to decrease our overall similarity.
Dr. Kevin Mark will now review some of the important points made in this segment.
When the real genetic differences between humans and chimps are evaluated, evolutionary
claims are shown to be aggrandized yet again, as the actual data supports much more modest
similarities.
The actual data is fully compatible with the traditional interpretation of the special
creation of man directly by God.
What is even more important to take into consideration is that these differences and similarities
really only matter if the sequences being examined are truly independent of one another.
The human genome was indeed sequenced independently over a period of about 10 years, using only
directly obtained data from whole genome libraries.
This was done using what was called the shotgun method of identifying overlapping areas of
sequence between different fragments in the library, and painstakingly organized these
overlaps into the full sequence.
Unfortunately, due to the assumptions of evolutionists and a desire to save time and taxpayer dollars,
the chimpanzee genome was not sequenced in the same way.
Instead, the genome libraries that were created were compiled into the sequence using the
already established human genome as a framework.
This means that any observed similarities may be due to actual sequence similarity in
the two species, but are equally likely, if not more likely, to be simply artifacts of
the experimental method.
In other words, the sequences are similar because one was assembled using the other
as a template.
The Great Apes
Since evolution argues that we share a common ancestor with the great apes, it has to account
for the genetic differences between man and ape.
One notable difference concerns chromosomes, which are thread-like structures in the nucleus
of most cells that carry information in the form of genes.
Genes have 23 pairs of chromosomes while apes have 24 pairs, and so the question arises
how this could be if the two have a close evolutionary relationship.
According to biologist Ken Miller, two possibilities could account for the so-called missing chromosome
in man.
Either one chromosome pair was lost after man branched off from the great apes, or two
chromosomes fused together in an early ape-like hominid that later evolved into man.
Miller dismisses the first option, however, as the loss of that much genetic information
would result in severe abnormalities or even infant mortality, and so he defends the alternative
fusion explanation.
Chromosomal fusion was first proposed based on similar banding patterns observed in human
and chimp chromosomes.
Chromosome bands are produced by staining chromosomes with dyes that result in a characteristic
pattern of bright and dark stripes that can be used to identify certain chromosomal characteristics.
Methods of chromosome banding were developed in 1969-1970, and it was shortly after this,
in 1974, that the discrepancy in chromosome number between apes and man was first attributed
to a fusion of two chromosomes after the purported split from the apes.
Thus, the supposed new evidence for common ancestry between humans and apes is 45 years
old.
Only more details have been added.
But do the details really support the fusion claim?
Ken Miller points out that a potential fusion should have two main characteristics.
The presence of telomere sequences, or repetitive DNA elements that are normally found at the
end of chromosomes in the middle of the chromosome, and an inactivated centromere, or DNA element
that is involved in the proper regulation of cell division and should occur only once
per chromosome.
Miller then asserts that both of these telltale signs have now been identified at sites on
chromosome 2 in humans that match up perfectly with two chimp chromosomes, which have subsequently
been named 2A and 2B.
While evolutionary biologists such as Miller proclaim that the added evidence is one of
the strongest, if not the strongest, current argument for common descent, the truth is
that the fusion claim faces a number of serious problems that continue to increase as more
research is published.
First, initial reports of DNA sequence at the fusion site showed a number of telomere
repeats and a head-to-head arrangement that, if it was the product of a fusion event, would
indicate a telomere-to-telomere fusion.
The reports failed to mention that if human chromosome 2 was actually the product of a
fusion event, it would be the first fusion of this kind identified in mammals.
The fusions that have been identified in mammals are always either telomere-to-satellite
DNA or satellite DNA-to-satellite DNA, not telomere-to-telomere.
According to Dr. Jeffrey Tompkins,
The absence of documented end-to-end telomere fusions in living mammals is largely due to
the fact that telomeres contain a highly specialized endcap called the shelterin protein complex
that protects them from fusion.
Thus, to propose a telomere-to-telomere fusion is to propose a biological novelty that places
the fusion story on shaky grounds from the start.
Second, if the site is the result of a telomere-to-telomere fusion, there should be a large number of
telomere repeat sequences present at the site.
Instead, evolutionary biologists have noted the incredible scarcity of telomeric repeats
around the supposed fusion site.
While IJDO reported approximately 1,900 bases of repeats, most of which are degenerate in
some way, Bergman and Tompkins make the case that only 800 bases of this region reasonably
aligned with true telomeric DNA.
Both sets of researchers acknowledge that this is a significantly less repetitive sequence
than one would expect to see if a telomere-to-telomere fusion really occurred.
Third, researchers writing in Nature in the Journal of Molecular Biology allow for the
possibility that the actual observed sequences could be due to a random small duplication
and inversion.
This is a type of mutation that could be reasonably attributed to the inaccuracy of the enzyme
DNA polymerase.
While this DNA-building enzyme has extremely high average accuracy, making about one mistake
every billion base pairs, it has been observed that occasionally the enzyme will dissociate
from the DNA strand it is using as the template and re-associate at the wrong place, thus
re-reading a bit of the template strand that it already copied and producing a second copy
of the same sequence.
This slippage results in tandem repeats or multiple copies of the same sequence next
to each other in the DNA, and these repeated sequences have been observed experimentally
under a variety of different circumstances.
The slippage sequences are in fact very similar to the putative fusion site, much more so
than other documented fusions to which it has been compared.
Thus, the observable evidence suggests that the site is not actually the result of a fusion,
but of mutational events.
It is interesting to note that while the original authors of the comparative genome studies
concede that there is an alternative naturalistic explanation for the proposed fusion site,
Ken Miller asserts that if ancestral fusion did not occur, the only possible explanation
is that God made it look that way in order to deceive us.
Thus, Miller relies upon weak philosophical and theological arguments to support his forced
conclusion, while better scientific explanations are ignored.
Now, of course few in his audience have the technical knowledge and have done the research
to understand that there are other scientific explanations that better account for the data,
and they must trust that Miller is looking at the evidence objectively, which is not the case.
It is the same approach used by Darwin, Huxley, and other peddlers of the evolutionary hypothesis.
Fourth, evidence of a second cryptic centromere site is even less clear.
Initial research using DNA hybridization techniques identified a region in human chromosome 2
that contained at least two alphoid sequences in an area outside of the chromosome's functional centromere.
These sequences are a type of satellite DNA that is always present in centromeres and
were initially thought to be evidence of a degenerate centromere that had been inactivated
after the supposed fusion event.
Alphoid sequences are generally repeated an average of 17 to 18 times in most human centromeres.
The article that characterized the initial cryptic alphoid sequences in human chromosome 2
did not comment on their scarcity, nor did it mention that alphoid sequences can be found
scattered throughout the length of many chromosomes and not just in centromere sites.
Tompkins and Bergman point out that alphoid DNA sequences are commonly found in hundreds
of non-centromere sites.
Both the fact that this type of sequence is found in many places throughout the genome
and the fact that only one-ninth of the alphoid sequence that should be present is even presumably
identifiable are evidence that it is not at all certain that what is presumed to be an
inactivated centromere was ever actually a centromere region at all.
Fifth, there is very little similarity between chimp and human alphoid sequences and the
specific sequences located at the putative second centromere site do not match either
the centromere on chimp chromosome 2a or 2b or match anything in the chimpanzee genome
at all.
In fact, a study as far back as 1995 used hybridization experiments to compare human
and chimp alphoid sequences and found that very few of the probes actually matched their
corresponding homologous chromosome, a surprising conclusion that did not and still does not
fit with the evolutionary narrative.
Sixth, the problem of non-matching sequence data is compounded as more sequences are studied.
Additional research on the purported second centromere site led to identification of 184
significant sequences of mini-satellite DNA that were also thought to potentially be indicative
of an inactivated centromere.
The researchers reporting on the mini-satellite DNA noted that less than half of the sequences
shared significant sequence similarity with chimp sequences in a genome-wide search.
Interestingly, the researchers' data indicated a higher similarity between humans and chimps
than between Neanderthals or Denisovans and chimps.
This finding is difficult to reconcile with an evolutionary view as it would require that
some of the mutations that arose as the lineages separated spontaneously converted back to
the original human-chimp ancestor sequence.
Such reversions back to an original ancestral sequence are not generally accepted in evolutionary
theory.
Finally, the fusion site rests in the first intron of the recently characterized DDX11L2
gene and has been reported by ENCODE to be a site of attachment for transcription factors,
or proteins that turn genes on and off, as well as being marked by histones, special
proteins that bind DNA in the nucleus in a way that is normally associated with actively
transcribed genes.
DDX11L2 is also co-expressed in multiple tissue types with genes that have a similar sequence,
suggesting it may play a regulatory role in the expression of those genes.
Taken together, all of this data strongly suggests that far from being a relic, the
purported fusion site may be actively involved in regulation of genes within the DDX11L family
and is certainly being actively transcribed at a level consistent with a regulatory function.
Not surprisingly, the initial research that characterized the gene at the fusion site
has not been followed up.
Evolutionists are seriously hampering advances in scientific knowledge by assigning the elements
around the purported fusion site an identity as functionless relics of a supposed human-chimp
split.
Taken together, it seems that there are many reasons for doubting Miller's claims of
chromosome 2 fusion as outstanding proof of human and ape common ancestry.
Again, it is not surprising that he has resorted to such a sophisticated argument as one would
need to be a specialist to decipher the problems surrounding the fusion claim.
Even so, this introductory discussion serves to illustrate that there are ample reasons
to add this recent icon to the pile of rejected evolutionary claims that continue to be a
source of embarrassment for evolutionary scientists.
So many statements of doubt about human evolution have been expressed by those who have studied
the evidence that it is difficult to identify the best summary of just how poorly evolutionists
have made their case.
Two of the most telling statements follow.
The first was written by Malcolm Muggeridge in The End of Christendom.
I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it's been
applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books in the future.
Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted
with the incredible credulity that it has.
The second statement is by Søren Loftrup in Darwinism, the refutation of a myth.
I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the
history of science.
When this happens, many people will pose the question, how did this ever happen?
The one thing from these statements that I would call attention to is the presumption
that evolution will someday be rejected, because it raises the question, how will this
presumed rejection of Darwinism come about?
Clearly it will not come about through the evolutionary establishment, and those who
insist that science is self-correcting simply fail to acknowledge that evolution is not
science, but part of a false and deadly philosophy that is religiously held by those who control
the reins of science.
How then will the restoration of truth about origins occur?
I believe that despite the current view toward evolution in many Catholic circles, the restoration
must and will involve the Catholic Church.
In the short term, the movement toward restoration will heavily rely on the Catholic laity.
Eventually, I believe that the restoration will involve formal declarations by the Magisterium
before or during a future church council that will rid the faith of many errors.
Such a council has been foretold by a number of authentic mystics, including the Venerable
Bartholomew Holzhauser, who lived from 1613 to 1658, at the very time that Cartesian rationalism
was infecting the Western world.
Venerable Holzhauser prophesied,
No one will be able to pervert the word of God, since there will be an ecumenical council
which will be the greatest of all councils.
By the grace of God, atheism and every heresy will be banished from the earth.
The council will define the true sense of Holy Scripture, and this will be believed
and accepted by everyone.
Whether the full restoration of truth about origins in the Church and society occurs before,
during, or after this future council, it is vital for Catholics who are not currently
under the spell of evolution to work diligently now.
For it is in the darkest part of the night that the light of truth is needed most.
This work will not be easy, because as explained in a Catholic assessment of evolution theory,
At the present time, the field of paleoanthropology is largely immune from objective outside criticism
because few other than the self-deceived and self-promoting understand the terminology
and methods used.
Only they have direct access to the evidence, and their unfounded conclusions are welcomed
by like-minded educators who seek to indoctrinate children.
Meanwhile, men of goodwill outside of the field, and this includes many Catholic clergy
and apologists, must either presume that there is real science behind the claims for evolution,
or express uncertainty about the fact of human evolution at the risk of being ridiculed
as biblical literalists, ignorant, and opposed to science.
In turn, those Catholics who presume that there is real science behind evolutionary
claims often buy into the accompanying rhetoric and may also denounce criticisms of evolution.
The evolutionists are only too glad to use such men when it helps hide the many shortfalls
in their story, which are readily evident and even admitted to in the scientific literature.
When evolutionists and trusting men of faith join to discourage or shout down the opposition,
the case for human evolution is never called to the witness stand, so to speak, where even
basic exercises in logic expose the story as untenable.
And so with a full understanding of how difficult the task before us is, we end this episode
with an encouragement and challenge from the closing words of Repairing the Breach.
These words are an echo of Thomas Huxley's 1860 impassioned plea to England's men of
science that helped bring about the evolution revolution.
In this case, however, the plea for action is made to those Catholics and other viewers
who have not elevated evolutionary claims to a first principle.
The evolutionary and rationalistic worldviews flowing from false science and false philosophy
are not the first and will not be the last of the great challenges facing the Catholic
Church that pleads for attention from this generation.
But to those who watch the signs of the times, it seems plain that it will be the most important
as it lies at the basis of the moral collapse and internal dissension in the Church in the
past century, as well as the events and crises about to unfold.
Through what trials and sore contests the Church will have to pass in the course of
helping to rid the Christian faith of these false views, who can tell?
But we verily believe that the part which the Catholic Church may play in the battle
is a grand and a noble one.
Will the Catholic Church play this part?
That depends upon how you, the Catholic clergy, her faithful men of philosophy and science,
and the Catholic laity deal with the call to stand for truth.
Cherish truth.
Venerate truth.
Follow truth to the degree directed in the Holy Scriptures, in your doctrine, and by
your doctors Aquinas and Magnus, faithfully and implicitly in the application to all branches
of human thought.
And the future of this Church and her faithful will be greater than the past.
Listen to those who would silence the Catholic Church and crush her through the teaching
of materialistic science, false philosophy, and liberal theology, and we fair your children
will see the glory of the Catholic Church fade, like Arthur in the mist.