Episode Transcript
Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Dr. John Ashton.
I'm sure most of us have seen the sort of cartoon or illustration of human ever Lucian from apes, where there will be a picture of an apelike sort of animal, and that's sort of crouching down. And then gradually this animal stands up, becomes more erect, and it loses hair. There's less and less hair, and slowly more human features are drawn in this series of cartoons.
And eventually you have an upright human man, sort of with a very good physique standing there. And this is meant to illustrate the gradual evolution of humans. And, of course, this directly contradicts the biblical account where God revealed to Moses the origin.
And we know that to the human generations, passed down, would have passed down the record of Adam and Eve, the first humans that God created. And we know that the Bible gives an account of creation, that the world and life on it was created in six literal days. And on the 6th day, humans were created.
And before then, of course, there were the plants and animals. And this makes a whole lot of sense in many ways, because we understand now from our study of biology that so much of our environment is interdependent, that there are all sorts of biological cycles that are involved, that involve plants, animals, insects, all these sort of things. They all play a role in providing a living system together.
And also the concept that humans were made as God took, as the Bible reveals, in the image of God, we have a mind where we can discern and understand nature. The evidence that we have is that the animals, the insects, the flowers and these sort of things, they're not so much aware that they're alive. They can't do research and understand nature.
So they can hunt for food, they can hunt, or they can move around to find a mate and reproduce and so forth. But these are basic operations. Whereas the human mind is such that we can understand the workings of nature, we can learn as well about nature.
And so, obviously, science has evolved, and look at the technology that we have now. We have made huge advances in medicine, in developing medicines and surgical procedures that can save life, interventions where we can do heart bypasses and so forth, we can do particular organ transplants of kidneys and so forth and save lives. And we've developed massive amount of technology, the mobile phone, the computer systems that we have now that can store vast amount of information, the communication systems that we have, the development of all different types of technology.
And all this is through the study. All this is developed through the mind, the ability to create. And, of course, we understand so much more about nature too.
And we can do research. We've built telescopes and radio telescopes to study the universe about us. And so this is something where our minds really have unique features, the human mind, and we can be very creative.
The amazing works of art as well. And language. We can communicate in language and write in language.
The human brain is quite distinct in its ability. And although people have done different experiments with apes and chimpanzee and so forth, to try and teach them things, and we can teach dogs and whales and so forth, certain behaviour patterns often bribe with food or some sort of reward system. Again, these other animals can't in invent things to the same degree, anywhere near the degree that human can, that the human brain can.
And of course, evolutionists who have tried to particularly promote the theory as an alternative to creation in so many areas, as I've talked about in the past, we have major, major problems. Major problems. The genetic code, the DNA code, is so complex, the language involved to arise by chance, chemical mutations, we know is absolutely impossible.
There are major problems everywhere. And yet we continue to teach the theory of evolution rather than creation. And yet the story of creation makes so much sense.
God creating humans with superior brains and this ability to be like God. And of course, God is described as a loving person, and humans have this capacity to love. The Bible also, of course, talks about evil, a rebellion that occurred in heaven with a heavenly being, Lucifer, who's also known as Satan, sort of rebelling, and hence the problem of evil.
And so much of this, the Bible account in these terms makes sense, as opposed to an evolutionary explanation. But yet the theory of evolution continues to be taught in our schools. It continues to be taught that we evolve from monkeys, well, some apelike ancestor in the past.
And I think it was May 7, 2021, in the prestigious journal Science, which is one of the top research journals in the world. Science and Nature are probably the two leading science journals in terms of publishing frontier work. There was a very interesting paper published and it was called Fossil Apes and human evolution.
Now, this paper really has provided some really valuable insights into the evidence for human evolution. Now, about eleven years earlier, just over eleven years earlier, in February 2010, the Israeli education minister, chief scientist Dr. Gavriel Avital, sparked a fury among local university academics when the newspaper Haaretz, that's a Jewish newspaper, reported him encouraging students to critically examine evolutionary teaching imposed on him.
Dr. Avital, and so, remember, he was the chief scientist in the Israeli education ministry. He's quoted as saying, if textbooks state explicitly that human beings origins are to be found with monkeys.
I would want students to pursue and grapple with other opinions. There are many people who don't believe the evolutionary account is correct, and of course, I'm one of them. There are many leading scientists, and of course, this isn't getting through to students.
Now, it's interesting, in an earlier interview, Dr. Avital also expressed, another scientific field that is problematic is biology or the life sciences. And when your doctrine is based on Darwin's theory of evolution and its implications, you are standing on unreliable foundations.
Now, of course, that making those statements when he was interviewed caused such a furore. At the time that he was sacked, Dr. Avital was sacked.
And we can see, and I think this should ring alarm bells for people listening to see that there's massive censorship within our education system. So you have a leading scientist, Dr. Gavriel Avital, who was selected for that position because of his brilliant scientific work and obviously a brilliant mind, and he recognised their major problems.
But then, as soon as he speaks out about it, he is then forced to resign. And there is a certain scientist spoke up and sort of said, such statements should never be made. We can't have a scientist like that in such a position.
Our education department will make us a laughingstock, all these sort of statements. And so, of course, he was forced to resign, but this should ring alarm bells. This is censorship.
This isn't based. This isn't teaching science based on scientific research. This is teaching science based on a religious view.
It's teaching science based on the religious view that there is no God. It's a view of faith. It's a faith view that there is no God in front of the overwhelming evidence that we have that evolution is impossible and that there is a creator God.
Now, as I was talking about earlier, it's very interesting, this paper that was published in the journal Science in May 2021, with scientists that the authors and the lead author from the division of anthropology in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and they also work, and other researchers work, at the New York Consortium in evolutionary primatology at the American Museum of Natural History. And other researchers are from the Department of Anatomy, the New York Institute of Technology. And so there was quite a lot of work in this, really top scientists put out this paper, and they were looking at the fossils that are found about fossil apes.
Essentially, what their paper said was that we find a whole lot of fossils. Over the past 150 years, there's been more or less a spate of so called continuous discoveries about human origin remains. And the problem is that when they found a huge number of fossils.
But the problem is that they're not finding so much an articulated skeleton. They're not finding a skeleton all joined together. They're finding little bits of a skull, little bit of a finger or a hand or an arm or a leg or a backbone.
They find little bits and pieces, and of course, of these different skeletons. And the major problem is that I think when people or when palaeontologists find these particular bones, they're very keen to find human fossil remains as opposed to ape fossil remains, because that's not going to earn so much startling find and newspaper reports and publicity and this sort of thing. If you just find some remains of a gorilla or a baboon or some other sort of type of ape.
But if it's something that you can associate with the evolution of human beings, well, this is really going to draw attention. And of course, all the time they've been trying to put together a picture of human evolution. And of course, the claims are that human evolution began about 6 million years ago and so forth, or this begin to change from this apelike creature and the ape separated about then.
But it's interesting that when you consider the large number of fossils attributed to the human lineage, there's a striking absence of such fossils for the great African ape lineages. And it's surprising and it raises an obvious suspicion. And this is something that one of the reviewers, Günter Bechly, in writing in evolutionnews.org.
So that's quite an interesting website people might be interested to go to. It's evolutionnews, all one word. And Günter Bechly, who is a german trained palaeontologist, he works at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany. And he serves as a curator in one of the sections of palaeontology at the State Museum of Natural History. And he has his doctorate in geosciences from the Eckhart Karls University in Tübingen, Germany. And so he writes that could it be that the larger number of fossils that are attributed to the human lineage is because of the greater fame associated with the discovery of human fossils? And so the authors of the paper published in Science.
So as I said, Günter Bechly, that's his comments in an article on evolution News. And it's interesting that the article published in Science, those authors also realised the conflicting evidence in the data and the biassed approaches of the scientists studying this evidence. And they point out that the major problem is that the fragmentary fossil record is just very confusing.
There's no set pattern to it. And what I think is very revealing is that a press release from the American Museum of Natural History published in 2021, just after the May 7 Science article was published on May 7, they summarised this major review of the fossil evidence that was done, and this is what they say most human origin stories are not compatible with known fossils. The number of species in the human family tree has exploded, but so has the level of dispute concerning early human evolution.
However, many of these fossils show mosaic combinations of features that do not match expectations for ancient representatives of the modern ape and human lineages. As a consequence, there is no scientific consensus on the evolutionary role played by these fossil apes. Overall, the researchers found that most stories of human origins are not compatible with the fossils that we have today.
I think I'll read that again. This is mind blowing. This is essentially what this article published in Science on the 7 May 2021 titled Fossil Apes and Human Evolution, is essentially saying that when we look at the fossil evidence, which is the only evidence that we have for human evolution, it doesn't fit the stories that are being presented in the textbooks that are being taught to our students.
That's the bottom line. Let me read it again. The official press release from the American Museum of Natural History in 2021.
This is what it says. Most human origin stories are not compatible with known fossils. Now that's very straightforward, isn't it? I'll read again.
Most human origin stories are not compatible with known fossils. They go on a bit later, the number of species in the human family tree is exploded, but so has the level of dispute concerning human evolution. And then they go on bit further.
However, many of these fossils show mosaic combinations of features that do not match expectations for ancient representatives of the modern ape and human lineages. As a consequence, there is no scientific consensus on the evolutionary role played by these fossil apes. Let me read that again.
As a consequence, there is no scientific consensus on the evolutionary role played by these fossil apes. And that's a very, very important point to bring out, and they go on a bit further. Overall, the researchers found that most stories of human origins are not compatible with the fossils that we have today.
And so to build a case for human evolution on the basis of fossils doesn't work. And I think this points out that the Bible account is a realistic account. It fits the evidence we just now have, more evidence that the evolutionary account for humans is not supported by the fossil record.
But how long is it going to take for this to get into schools? How long is it going to be before the textbooks start teaching this to our children? My intuition is that it won't happen. They'll keep teaching that, because the other alternative, of course, is God created us. We were made in the image of God.
And that's why this message is so important to get out. And I hope that folk that are listening to this can put links to this programme, that can put links to evolutionnews.org and so forth up on their social media pages themselves, on their own Facebook or Twitter, and get the message out, get the message out that the evidence to substantiate the evolution is seriously lacking.
And I'll read out some of the references so that people, for example, S Amalicia, a S Hammond Ne, Thompson KD, Pew, S Moya Solar and DM Alba, they're the names of the editors. 2021 Fossil Apes and Human Evolution Science, volume 372. And as I said, that was published on the 7 May there's another report, the American Museum of Natural History Publication 2021 review. It's titled American Museum of Natural History 2021 review. Most human origin stories are not compatible with known fossils. That was published in Physics May 6, 2021.
And then there's in Evolution News, October 23, 2017. Günther Bechly published an article, fossil footprints from Crete, deepened controversy on human origins. That was in Evolution News on September 6, 2017.
And another one was published, as I mentioned earlier, on October 23, 2017, on the website Evolution News. So there's quite a few articles on that website, evolution news.
So this is the very important to make people aware that the evolutionary account is, they're just stories. The biblical account, when we look at the biblical account, it makes a whole lot of sense.
The timescales make a whole lot of sense in terms of human population data. If really we've been evolving over millions of years, the earth's population should have been much, much larger of humans. All these sort of data points to the biblical account.
But the Bible also has prophecies where God said, look, I'm giving you evidence that I am God, that I am outside space and time. I am going to give you and reveal the future in different places. And this is done particularly in the book of Daniel and other prophecies in Isaiah.
The prophecies related to Jesus coming as our messiah and saviour, they're there. There's so many of them. I have at home an Encyclopaedia of biblical prophecy published by Princeton University Press.
And there's hundreds of prophecies that were given in the Bible that were fulfilled, and some of them are yet to be fulfilled, like the second coming of Jesus. And this is why it's so important that people become aware that the story, the scientific understanding of human origins research, is a big mess. It's just a mess. The data is so conflicting, there's no clear picture. And this is a very important point to understand. It's the same when we look at the origin of life, as I've talked about in articles on programmes before, my talks before that, scientists really don't have a clue on how first life started.
The chemistry required is so impossible to arrive by chance. But what happens is that the academy itself, the education departments themselves, have not really kept pace or haven't really understood the chemistry involved. And they've just bluntly taught that it's possible, whereas we now know from the complex of the biochemistry involved, it's absolutely impossible.
So this is very important. It's very important to make people aware. There are a lot of very good sites out there now that have this information, like evolutionnews.org.
There's creation.com. That's a very good website as well. And if you go on to that website and do a search for In Six Days, my book, In Six Days, Why 50 Scientists Choose To Believe In Creation comes up and there's 50 scientists there, you can look up their names and go down and read why they choose to believe in creation.
And then, of course, there's my book, Evolution Impossible, that is available in many forms online, where I set out and link with links to the peer reviewed literature out there.
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