Stop the presses. No, wait. Geologist and fossil digger Casey Luskin offers some thoughts on William Lane Craig’s In Quest of the Historical Adam:
Evangelical intellectuals often assume that challenging evolution is what brings disrepute upon the church. Even some evangelical leaders push this view, hoping to bully evangelicals into staying silent about doubts about Darwin. But recent debates over Adam and Eve have turned this stereotype on its head. Over the past decade it has been evangelical scientists who embraced mainstream evolutionary ideas and told the church that they must reject 2,000-year-old doctrines on Adam and Eve, that got the science wrong. This led to nearly a decade of leading theistic evolutionists wrongly pushing the idea that Adam and Eve as historical individuals are false. Only after Darwin-doubting scientists in the intelligent design camp were willing to challenge the status quo did the truth become clear that science has not refuted Adam and Eve.
Evangelical Christians who continue to embrace evolutionary ideas in the absence of confirming evidence continue to bet on the wrong horse, and threaten to repeat these mistakes. This is the moral of the story over recent debates over Adam and Eve — and it isn’t emphasized by Craig because he still thinks it is unwise to challenge biological evolution. Indeed, Craig continues to rely upon BioLogos arguments that pseudogenes are “broken” and non-functional junk DNA that we share with apes, thereby demonstrating our common ancestry. Those arguments are increasingly contradicted by evidence presented in highly authoritative scientific papers which find that pseudogenes are commonly functional, and they ought not be assumed to be genetic “junk.” In relying upon dubious evolutionary arguments that are increasingly refuted by the technical literature, Craig may be repeating the very mistake that led previous evangelicals to think Adam and Eve did not exist.
Casey Luskin, “Coming Attraction: My Review of William Lane Craig’s In Quest of the Historical Adam” at Big Think (November 9, 2021)
Luskin intends a multi-part series on the topic.
Some of us definitely believe in the Historical Adam. Who else, we ask you, could possibly be the ancestor of the Historical Jesus?
There is something VERY fishy in the purported evidence for human evolution, (and the supposed falsification of Adam and Eve as real historical figures).
Namely, when one looks at the ‘big picture’ evidence from the entire fossil record, (and the entire genetic data), it does not line up with what Darwinists claim to be the unassailable ‘small picture’ evidence from the fossil record and genetics that purports to support the narrative that humans evolved from some chimp-like ancestor.
First I will address the fossil record.
It is not as if we do not have more than sufficient reason to doubt the narratives that are offered by Darwinists when it comes to their claims about human evolution. The entire fossil record, when viewed in its entirety, instead of just piecemeal and with a heavy Darwinian bias as it is with human fossils, is VERY antagonistic to the entire Darwinian narrative.
From the Cambrian explosion onward, the entire fossil record simply refuses to conform to Darwinian expectations. In fact, as the following study found, the fossil record is upside-down to what Darwin himself had predicted,
Here are a few more notes that dispel the notion that the fossil record somehow supports evolution.
Thus, given the fact that the entire fossil record simply does not conform to Darwinian expectations, then we have more than sufficient reason to be VERY suspicious of the claims from Darwinists that the fossil record for human evolution is supposedly a ‘slam dunk’.
And indeed, when we zoom-in on the fossil evidence that purports to ‘unquestionably’ establish that humans evolved from some chimp-like ancestor, we find that things are not nearly as neat and tidy as Darwinists have falsely portrayed them to be to the general public.
Since teeth are, by far, the most complete fossil evidence that we can have for testing the Darwinian claims for human origins,,,,
Since teeth are, by far, the most complete fossil evidence that we can have for testing the Darwinian claims for human origins, I consider the following study to be a fairly compelling piece of empirical evidence that undermines the entire Darwinian ‘narrative’ for human evolution.
As well, John Sanford and Chris Rupe spent four years carefully examining the scientific literature on the fossil record that purports to support human evolution and found that “It is very clear that the general public has been deceived regarding the credibility and significance of the reputed hominin fossils.”
Likewise, Casey Luskin also did a deep dive into the peer-reviewed literature and found that, “multiple authorities recognize that our genus Homo appears in the fossil record abruptly with a complex suite of characteristics never-before-seen in any hominin.”
Also see “Apes as Ancestors (2020)” by Jerry Bergman, Peter Line, and Jeffrey Tomkins, which also, via a deep dive into the peer reviewed literature itself, finds the fossil evidence for supposed human evolution to be far different than what Darwinists portray to the general public..
Likewise, Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig has collected a fairly impressive list of damning quotes from leading Darwinists themselves in regards to undermining the entire ‘narrative’ of human evolution that is told by Darwinists.
Even Ian Tattersall himself, emeritus curator of the American Museum of Natural History, (and who believes human evolution to be true), stated that, “Homo sapiens appears as distinctive and unprecedented…there is certainly no evidence to support the notion that we gradually became who we inherently are over an extended period, in either the physical or the intellectual sense.”
Thus, it readily appears that the ‘narrative’ of human evolution that is constantly told by Darwinists is built far more on unrestrained imagination and story telling than it is on any actual fossil evidence.
No less than Stephen Jay Gould and Ernst Mayr themselves admitted as much,
Moreover, last May, no less than the American Museum of Natural History itself, made the same exact point as Gould and Mayr did,
Specifically, they came out with an article that stated, “Humans are storytellers: Theories of human evolution often resemble “anthropogenic narratives” that borrow the structure of a hero’s journey to explain essential aspects such as the origins of erect posture, the freeing of the hands, or brain enlargement (166). Intriguingly, such narratives have not drastically changed since Darwin (166). We must be aware of confirmation biases and ad hoc interpretations by researchers aiming to confer their new fossil the starring role within a preexisting narrative. Evolutionary scenarios are appealing because they provide plausible explanations based on current knowledge, but unless grounded in testable hypotheses, they are no more than “just-so stories” (167).”. As well “Sergio Almécija, a senior research scientist at the American Museum of Natural History, is also quoted as offering this remarkable admission: “When you look at the narrative for hominin origins, it’s just a big mess”,,,
Needless to say, having a senior research scientist at the American Museum of Natural History say, “When you look at the narrative for hominin origins, it’s just a big mess”, then that certainly does not bode well for any Darwinist who tries to claim that the fossil record for human evolution is beyond all dispute.
Thus in conclusion, the fossil record in its entirety, from the Cambrian explosion onward, certainly does not support Darwinian evolution. Moreover, when the fossil evidence for the ‘narrative’ of human evolution is scrutinized in detail, we find that the purported fossil record for human evolution falls apart under scrutiny. i.e. The ‘narrative’ of human evolution is apparently held together far more by evolutionary bias, imaginary ‘just so stories’, and ‘artistic reconstruction’ of fossils, than it is by any real fossil evidence.
No less that Henry Gee, editor at Nature, makes, pretty much, the same exact point.
Any thoughts about why William Lane Craig would put so much faith in the human evolution data presented to him while researching the book? He seems convinced that human beings descended from Heidelberg Man (Homo heidelbergensis) who existed around 700,000 years ago.
Like the entire fossil evidence, the ‘big picture’ genetic evidence also simply does not line up with what Darwinists predicted. Thus, like the fossil record, we have more than sufficient reason to also regard the genetic evidence that Darwinists offer for human evolution with more than just a little suspicion.
As the following article explains, “In 1965 one of the most important scientists of the last century, Linus Pauling, and biologist Emil Zuckerkandl, considered by some as the father of molecular biology, suggested a way that macroevolution could be tested and proved: If the comparison of anatomical and DNA sequences led to the same family tree of organisms, this would be strong evidence for macroevolution.7 According to them, only evolution would explain the convergence of these two independent chains of evidence. By implication, the opposite finding would count against macroevolution.“
So what were the results? Over the past twenty-eight years, experimental evidence has revealed that family trees based on anatomical features contradict family trees based on molecular similarities, and at many points. They do not converge.”
The genetic evidence simply does not fall into a ‘tree-like’ pattern like Darwinists predicted.
And this falsification of Darwinian expectations, (i.e. expectations for how the genetic evidence should line up in a tree like pattern), as Winston Ewert has now shown, has been a ‘hard falsification’ of Darwinian expectations, and by no means is it to be considered a ‘soft falsification’ of Darwinian expectations.
As Cornelius Hunter explained, the intelligent design model falsified the Darwinist’s common descent model by 10,064, 40,967 and 515,450 bits respectfully, and this is where 6.6 bits is considered to provide “decisive” evidence for a model.
Thus, given the fact that the ‘big picture’ genetic evidence has, rather dramatically, falsified Darwinian expectations, we have more than sufficient reason to be more than a little suspicious of their claims that the ‘small picture’ genetic evidence establishes human evolution as a undeniable fact.
And indeed, when we zoom-in on the ‘small picture’ genetic evidence we find much reason to be skeptical of Darwinian claims.
And indeed we do.
According to a Darwinist, who studied the methodology of how one of the original 98.5% Chimp-Human DNA similarity comparisons was derived, stated that the comparison “needs to be treated like nuclear waste: bury it safely and forget about it for a million years”,,,
Likewise, and to further highlight the shady methodology of Darwinists, previously Darwinists have used the human genome as a ‘scaffold and/or reference’ to assemble the chimp genome before comparing the genomes to one another. (Can anyone say ‘built-in confirmation bias’?)
As mentioned in Jefferey Tomkins article, from the best evidence we now have, the genetic similarity figure is turning out to be around 85% which is far less than the highly misleading 98.5% figure that has been used by Darwinists for years to make it seem as if the genetic evidence for human evolution was a ‘slam dunk’.
As was also mentioned, Dr. Richard Buggs came up with a very similar figure to Dr. Tomkins’s figure,
Moreover, although some may try to argue that 85% genetic similarity is still a pretty high degree of genetic similarity, it turns out, directly contrary to Darwinian thought, that genetic similarity has very little, if anything to do with overall morphological similarity.
As James Le Fanu explains, “Contrary to all expectations, many DNA sequences involved in embryo development are remarkably similar across the vast spectrum of organismic complexity, from a millimeter-long worm to ourselves.7 There is, in short, nothing in the genomes of fly and man to explain why the fly should have six legs, a pair of wings, and a dot-sized brain and we should have two arms, two legs, and a mind capable of comprehending that overarching history of our universe.”
To drive this point home, Dolphins, Kangaroos, frogs, etc.. etc… although being very different morphologically from humans, are, ‘unexpectedly’, found to have very similar DNA sequences to humans.
Genetic similarity simply does not line up with morphological similarity as is presupposed in the Darwinian claim that genetic evidence supports human evolution.
Where differences are greatest between chimps and humans, (and between all other creatures), are not in the genetic sequences, but are instead found in alternative splicing patterns.
As the following paper states, “A major question in vertebrate evolutionary biology is “how do physical and behavioral differences arise if we have a very similar set of genes to that of the mouse, chicken, or frog?”,,, the papers show that most alternative splicing events differ widely between even closely related species. “The alternative splicing patterns are very different even between humans and chimpanzees,”
In fact, due to alternative splicing, “Alternatively spliced isoforms,,, appear to behave as if encoded by distinct genes rather than as minor variants of each other.,,,” and “As many as 100,000 distinct isoform transcripts could be produced from the 20,000 human protein-coding genes (Pan et al., 2008), collectively leading to perhaps over a million distinct polypeptides obtained by post-translational modification of products of all possible transcript isoforms,,”
This finding of “perhaps a million distinct polypeptides obtained by post-translational modification”
is simply completely devastating to the ‘bottom up’ reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinists.
As Stephen Meyer stated in the following interview, “it has become increasingly clear that the non-coding regions, the crucial operating systems in effect, of the chimp and human genomes are species specific. That is, they are strikingly different in the two species.,,, I see nothing from a genetic point of view that challenges the idea that humans originated independently from primates,”
The evidence from genetics, directly contrary to what Darwinists claim, simply does not support the Darwinian ‘narrative’.
Moreover, even if the genetic similarity were as close as Darwinists have falsely claimed it to be for years (98.5%), (and even if the ‘operating systems’ were not ‘species specific’), Darwinists would still have no empirical evidence that it is possible to change one creature into a brand new creature by mutating DNA alone.
As Jonathan Wells states in the following article, “Studies using saturation mutagenesis in the embryos of fruit flies, roundworms, zebrafish and mice also provide evidence against the idea that DNA specifies the basic form of an organism. Biologists can mutate (and indeed have mutated) a fruit fly embryo in every possible way, and they have invariably observed only three possible outcomes: a normal fruit fly, a defective fruit fly, or a dead fruit fly.”
And starting around the 15:00 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Wells reveals that the central dogma of Darwinian evolution, (which simply stated is “DNA makes RNA makes protein makes us”), has been shown to be incorrect at every step.
Darwinists simply have no evidence that morphology, and/or biological form, is reducible to DNA.
As the following 2020 article states, “At present, the problem of biological form remains unsolved.”
Perhaps the best evidence that ‘biological form’ is forever beyond the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinists is the following.
The following article notes that ‘a brief time-lapse video can teach more about embryonic development than any amount of reading.” And further notes that “it is hard not to be impressed how a repeatable form reliably emerges despite considerable variation in both genes and environment.’
To further drive to point home that the biological form of any particular organism is not reducible to mutations to DNA. nor reducible to any other material particulars of an organism, in the following article it is noted that, Richard Lewontin once described how you can excise the developing limb bud from an amphibian embryo, shake the cells loose from each other, allow them to reaggregate into a random lump, and then replace the lump in the embryo. A normal leg develops. Somehow the form of the limb as a whole is the ruling factor, redefining the parts according to the larger pattern.
Moreover, this failure of the reactive materialistic explanations of Darwinists to account for biological form occur at a much lower level than DNA itself.
In the following article entitled ‘Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics’, which studied the derivation of macroscopic properties from a complete microscopic description, the researchers remark that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.”
And indeed, advances in quantum biology have now shown that Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, are not even on the correct theoretical foundation in order to properly understand biological life in the first place:
Moreover, even if biological form was not an irresolvable dilemma for the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinists, and even if DNA were 98.5% similar instead of being 85% similar as it it is turning out to be, the mathematics of population genetics, (which is supposedly a strong suit for Darwinists), would still prove that the supposed ‘designer substitute’ of Natural Selection is grossly inadequate to account that 1.5% genetic difference.
Moreover, Dr. John Sanford has also done yeoman’s work showing exactly how the mathematics of population genetics falsifies Darwinian evolution rather than confirming it.
Specifically, Dr. Sanford has now also shown that. when realistic rates of detrimental to beneficial mutations are taken into consideration, then the mathematics of populations genetics also falsifies Fisher’s erroneous assumption that fitness must always increase:
Dr. John Sanford, whose credentials in genetics are impeccable, has analyzed the mathematics of population genetic inside and out, and, time and time again, Dr. Sanford and company have found that the mathematics of population genetics, (coupled with real time empirical evidence), falsifies Darwin’s theory rather than confirming it.
Thus, the evidence from genetics, (and the mathematics of population genetics), when viewed in its entirety, instead of just piecemeal as Darwinists are prone to do, actually falsifies, instead of supports, the Darwinian claim that humans evolved some chimp-like ancestor.
And although the evidence from the fossil record, genetics, and population genetics, is far more damning to Darwinian ‘narratives’ of human evolution than Darwinists are willing to honestly admit to the general public, the one place that even leading Darwinists themselves honestly admit that they have no clue how a particularly unique human trait could have possibly evolved is with human language.
In 2014, an impressive who’s who list and leading Darwinian scientists, who specialize in this area of language research, issued a paper in which they honestly admitted that they have “essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved.,,,”
The reason why this honest confession by leading Darwinian scientists is so interesting to look at is that it is language in and of itself, which is profoundly ‘abstract’ in its foundational essence, that allows humans to communicate their ‘abstract’ thoughts to one another.
Yet it is abstract thought, in and of itself, that demonstrates that, as Dr. Egnor puts it, “We are more different from apes than apes are from viruses.,,,”
Moreover, it is this unique human ability to understand, communicate, create, and more specifically, to infuse immaterial information into material substates, that has allowed humans, (directly contrary to the ‘red in tooth and claw’ thinking of Darwinists), to become ‘masters of the planet’.
That humans should master the planet due to his unique ability to communicate information is completely contrary to the ‘survival of the fittest’ thinking that undergirds Darwinian thought.
Although humans are fairly defenseless creatures in the wild compared to other creatures, such as lions, bears, sharks, etc.., nonetheless, humans have, completely contrary to Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ thinking, managed to become masters of the planet, not via brute force, but simply by our unique ability to create and communicate immaterial information and also to, more specifically, infuse immaterial information into material substrates in order to create, i.e. intelligently design, objects that are extremely useful for our defense, basic survival in procuring food, furtherance of our knowledge, and also merely for our pleasure.
What is more interesting still about the fact that humans have a unique ability to understand and create information, and have come to ‘master the planet’ through the ‘top-down’ infusion of immaterial information into material substrates, is the fact that, due to advances in science, both the universe and life itself, are now found to be ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis.
It is hard to imagine a more convincing scientific proof that we are ‘made in the image of God’, than finding that both the universe and life itself are ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis, and that we, of all the creatures on earth, uniquely possess an ability to understand and create information, and have come to ‘master the planet’, not via brute force as is presupposed in Darwinian thought, but precisely because of our ability to infuse immaterial information into material substrates.
Perhaps a more convincing proof that we are made in the image of God could be if God Himself became a man, walked on water, healed the sick, raised the dead, and then defeated death on a cross.
And that just so happens to be precisely the proof that is claimed within Christianity.
Verse:
Supplemental note: besides Darwinists trying to undermine the Theistic belief in human exceptionalism with their false ‘narrative’ of human evolution, the second place that Darwinists try to undermine human exceptionalism is with the Copernican Principle. Yet, the Copernican principle is now shown, from our very best scientific theories, to be a false assumption.
BA77 — good to see you.