A report on the msnbc.com news portal web site dated 5 March, 2005, dealt with an extinct species of ape. This report is a standard propaganda text prepared to sustain the theory of evolution, a great falsehood persisted in despite countless scientific findings working against it.

Earliest walking human ancestor found?

Scientists estimate fossil remains up to 4 million years old

A report on the msnbc.com news portal web site dated 5 March, 2005, dealt with an extinct species of ape. This report is a standard propaganda text prepared to sustain the theory of evolution, a great falsehood persisted in despite countless scientific findings working against it.

In order to unveil this propaganda and analyse the subject with scientific findings, let us first examine the picture and main caption on the ntvmsnbc.com web site:

The photograph shows a fossilised bone. The msnbc.com headline and subcaption contain a Darwinist claim and suggest that the bone in question belongs to the so-called ancestor of man who first walked upright.

Before moving on to the claims indicated it will first be of use to shed a little light on the psychological influences acting on the persons doing the indicating.

Factors influencing palaeo-anthropologists’ ideas regarding fossils

Palaeo-anthropologists need funding in order to be able to finance their excavations. That finance comes from various individuals and institutions that fund scientific researches. These select the scientific research they will fund from among many applications. Therefore, the funding to be given to a team of scientists is directly related to how much the findings promised by the research will satisfy the expectations of the provider of the funding.

In palaeo-anthropological excavations the measure of that satisfaction is the hominid remains popularised as the “missing link” and alleged to belong to man’s so-called evolutionary ancestor. Evolutionist individuals and institutions are not keen to back research they think will provide no evidence for their theory and that will produce unimportant fossils that will attract no-one’s interest.

This is an important “direction indicator” for palaeo-anthropologists who have hitched their careers and future to the success of such research. The words of the palaeo-anthropologist Donald Johanson are noteworthy in this regard. (Johanson was one of the leaders of the team that discovered Lucy, popularised for decades as the so-called ancestor of man. The following quotation concerns that finding):

In October 1973, we arrived at Hadar with nine other French and American scientists, prepared for a two-month stay. By this time I had left Chicago and taken a job teaching anthropology at Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland. With these credentials, I had managed to get some funding for my first expedition as a co-leader. I knew, though, that I had to prove myself by finding some hominids or the money would dry up. (1)

In addition, a small fragment of bone dug out of the ground may lead to the name of the palaeo-anthropologist who found it appearing in headlines all over the world, and in his or her career taking a great leap forward. For that reason, palaeo-anthropologists feel a powerful urge to interpret most of the bones they find in a way that will bring them career success and fame.

Dr. Greg Kirby, a member of the Flinders University teaching staff who has given classes in population biology, has said this on the subject:

"... I don’t want to pour too much scorn on paleontologists, but if you were to spend your life picking up bones and finding little fragments of head, and little fragments of jaw, there’s a strong desire there to exaggerate the importance of those fragments.” (2)

As a general principle, it will be advantageous to bear the above in mind in order to come to a healthy evaluation of palaeo-anthropologists’ giant claims about tiny bones. However, it must be agreed that the psychological impulses behind a claim say nothing about that claim’s degree of veracity. Therefore, the veracity of those claims needs to be evaluated separately. We can now move on to the details of the discovery and respond to evolutionists’ claims in the light of the scientific facts.

An evolutionary tall tale about the new finding

The fossils dealt with in the msnbc.com report consist of bones unearthed in the Afar region of Ethiopia. The discovery was made last February by a team of American and Ethiopian scientists. The bones, estimated at between 3.8 and 4 million years old, include a complete tibia from the lower part of the leg, parts of the thighbone or femur, ribs, vertebrae, a collarbone, pelvis and a complete shoulder blade Bruce Latimer, one of the leaders of the team and the director of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Ohio, suggested on the basis of the way the ankle bone was joined to the shin bone that the owner of the findings walked upright. The area where the discovery was made was some 60 km (40 miles) distant from the region where the famous fossil Lucy was unearthed in 1974. (This fossil, given the name Australopithecus afarensis, was for many years depicted as the long-sought missing link in the human evolution scenario. Recently, however, evolutionists agreed that Australopithecus could not be regarded as an ancestor of man.)

No scientific publication has as yet been published and reviewed by independent researchers regarding the new fossil in question found in the Afar region. Neither has any name been given to it. However, Latimer insists in his evolutionist claim that the creature in question is Lucy’s ancestor.

The following evolutionary tall tale regarding the finding was carried in the words of Latimer in the msnbc.com report:

“… This new discovery will give us a picture of how walking upright occurred.”

To summarise, it is claimed in the picture presented by msnbc.com that the living thing whose bones have been discovered was the ancestor of Lucy and, according to the scenario of human evolution, therefore also the ancestor of humans. However, this is all a myth propagated for ideological reasons. Because;

1. The assumption that the living thing whose bones were found is the ancestor of Lucy and of human  beings is not scientific

Bruce Latimer claims that the bone buried in the earth belongs to the ancestor of Lucy and of human beings. In other words, he is suggesting a line of descent of “Bones > Lucy > Human being.” Henry Gee, editor of Nature, one of the best known scientific journals in the world, states that interpretations based upon such concepts are of no scientific value, and are a “lullaby” made up in line with preconceptions. In his book In Search of Deep Time, Gee writes:

From our vantage point in the present, we arrange fossils in an order that reflects gradual acquisition of what we see in ourselves. We do not seek the truth, we create it after the fact, to suit our own prejudices... To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story-amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.

These words of Gee’s, from a later part of the book, give the lie to msnbc.com’s evolutionary propaganda in a single sentence:

We know that it is impossible, when confronted with a fossil, to be certain whether it is your ancestor, or the ancestor of anything else, even another fossil.

2. The claim regarding walking upright is making a tool for evolution by unscientific means

Evolutionists maintain that this creature whose bones were discovered was the ancestor of human beings because they estimate, despite the ape-like features in its anatomy, that it walked upright. Evolutionists accept an ape as descendant of humans just because they assume that it walked upright. Let us consider the invalidity of this from the logical point of view. Accepting the existence of an ape-like human guessed to have walked on two legs is a perspective founded on a biased and false logic. Let us examine Bruce Latimer’s words as quoted below in order to demonstrate this.

Latimer describes why he regards this creature as the ancestor of modern humans:

“Right now we can say this is the world’s oldest bipedal (an animal walking on two feet) and what makes this significant is because what makes us human is walking upright,”

It is most thought provoking that such words should have been uttered by a scientist. On what logical grounds can man be reduced to the ability to walk upright? Can a logic along the lines of “man is man because he walks on two legs” be sustained in the light of the following abilities unique to human beings?

• possession of a superior intellect
• the ability to produce works of art
• taking pleasure from music
• building civilisations
• exploring the universe
• developing technologies …

This erroneous way of looking at human being of evolutionists who think like Latimer is exceedingly thought provoking.

However, not all evolutionists think along these lines. The falsity of this perspective is openly admitted by some evolutionists. In the words “all birds have wings, but not all creatures with wings are birds," the well known anatomist Bernard Wood indicates the hollowness of the logic that regards walking on two legs as a defining characteristic of being human. (6)

The story of one ape that preoccupied the media recently will better enable us to see the invalidity of Latimer’s perspective. The ape in the picture to the left is walking on two legs. Yet the interesting thing about this ape, named Natasha, is that she began to walk upright after suffering from a disease. The five-year-old Natasha, who lived on a Safari Park near Tel Aviv, caught a severe stomach illness and was treated by the zoo vet. Recovering after an intensive course of treatment, Natasha surprised everyone by starting to walk upright after her discharge. Igal Horowitz, one of the zoo vets, estimated that brain damage caused by the disease might have led to this situation. (7)

Even young children visiting the zoo also can see that Natasha is an ape although she walks on two legs. However, if the logic of Latimer’s “scientific” theory regarding bipedalism (walking on two legs) is applied to Natasha, then an entirely different picture emerges. According to Latimer’s logic, he who says that it is walking upright that makes man, man, Natasha must now be regarded as human!

Walking on two legs does not make a living thing human, of course. Natasha is a concrete example of this. Since Latimer has been conditioned to interpret every discovery according to the theory of evolution, he is blind to this simple and easily comprehensible logic.

3. Lucy has become a myth in the face of the latest findings

We have already revealed the truth about Lucy many times. Let us briefly sum up: the living thing in question is an extinct species of ape (A. afarensis), bearing a close resemblance to modern chimpanzees in terms of criteria such as skeleton, brain volume and skull structure. The only grounds on which evolutionists try to construct an evolutionary link between this species and human being is the claim that, like us, Lucy walked upright. However, there is important evidence that this claim is untrue.

1. Despite Lucy’s being declared to be bipedal immediately after her discovery in 1974, two world renowned evolutionist anatomists, Solly Zuckerman and Charles Oxnard, who studied the fossil in those years rejected that claim and stressed that the creature’s gait did not resemble that of human beings.
   
   
2. New findings confirm Zuckerman and Oxnard’s opinion. The latest research on the Australopithecus’ pelvic bone in 2000 shows that the bone is very different to its counterpart in humans and that the creature did not have a human-like gait. (8)
   
   
3. An investigation of Lucy’s fore arms, carried out the same year, showed that her hands had the anatomy of a classic “knuckle-walker.” (9) This term describes the way in which apes touch the ground with their knuckles as they walk, and is a definition of apes that walk on four feet.
   
4. Investigation of the balance system in the inner ear canals of Lucy and of all Australopithecus ape species has proved that these creatures did not have a balance system appropriate for walking upright, as humans do. (10)

The real body blow for Lucy came with the discovery of Kenyanthropus platyops. This fossil, which consisted of a skull, as was described in 2001, belongs to the same period as Lucy but has a more modern appearance than her in terms of evolutionary criteria. K. platyops made defending the evolutionary family tree impossible. In the face of this development the well known researcher into human evolution Richard Potts had to recommend that Lucy be removed from the family tree. (11)

Conclusion:

Evolutionist claims regarding this latest fossil finding offer no scientific support for Darwinism. The evolutionary propaganda behind attempts to equate the fossils, Lucy and human being is invalid. The scenario of human evolution is now merely a myth in the face of modern scientific discoveries. Evolutionists hope that fossils discovered subsequently will reinforce their family tree, though even they have to admit that after these latest findings, which have unearthed brand new inconsistencies, their family tree has assumed the appearance of a complicated shrub. Attempts to set fossil findings out in such a way as to reflect evolutionist prejudice are now bankrupt, and the above expression is a covert admission of that bankruptcy.

Darwinist circles are trying to cover up that bankruptcy by the use of unscientific propaganda. The msnbc.com report is one instance of this. A scientist’s analysing a photograph taken of him indicating a fossil he discovered in a field in the light of evolutionist fairy tales, and this being submitted to news agencies as evidence, are sufficient to trigger off a wave of propaganda all over the world. Darwinist media organisations such as msnbc.com immediately use these baseless claims as a propaganda tool by portraying them as facts revealed by scientists.

We call on ntvmsnbc.com to abandon such propaganda in which it engages in order cover up the bankruptcy of Darwinism. It is unscientific to tell evolutionist fairy tales while indicating bone fragments, and the Turkish public will not be deceived by such tales. With his mind and body, man is a perfect entity. His origins lie in intelligent design, in other words creation, not in the coincidences on which the theory of evolution rests. Almighty God created man from nothing, using His knowledge and might. In one verse of the Qur’an God reveals:

""Do you then disbelieve in Him [God] Who created you from dust, then from a drop of sperm, and then formed you as a man? He is, however, God, my Lord, and I will not associate anyone with my Lord."" (Qur’an, 18:37-38)

1 Donald Johanson, “Ancestors”, 1994, Villard Books, p. 51
2 Greg Kirby, Senior Lecturer at Flinders University in Population Biology, from a lecture to the Biology Teachers Association in South Australia, 1976.
3 Henry Gee, IN SEARCH OF DEEP TIME, Beyond the Fossil Record to a New Hıstory of Life, The Free Press, A Division fo Simon & Schuster, Inc. , 1999, pp. 114, 117
4 Ibid, p. 127
5 “Earliest walking human ancestor found?”, The Associated Press, 5 March 2005, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7100805/
6 Michael D. Lemonick and Andrea Dorfman, “One Giant Step For Mankind”, Time, 23 July 2001
7   http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5479501/ 
8  F. Marchal, "A New Morphometric Analysis of the Hominid Pelvic Bone," Journal of Human Evolution, 38:347-365 (2000)
9  M. Collard, L. C. Aiello, , “From forelimbs to two legs,” Nature, 404:339-340 (March 23, 2000
10  F. Spoor, B. Wood, F. Zonneveld,  "Implications of early hominid labyrinthine morphology for evolution of human bipedal locomotion," Nature, 369:645-648 (June 23, 1994)
11 Tim Friend, “Discovery rocks human-origin theories”, 21 March 2003: http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/2001-03-21-skull.htm