24 July 2001
POINTS OF ORIGINS: Another Missing Link?
by Dr. Glenn Jackson
Glenn,
I enjoy your columns in the paper. I am curious as to your take on the
fossils found recently in Ethiopia that are the oldest links to humans. I am
a Christian; just wondering what your thoughts were.
Thanks so much,
Garry from Alcoa
Dear Garry,
The news you've heard about the latest "missing link" fossil is just more
evolution propaganda. Let me to tell you what they really found and how they
came to their conclusions. You can check the facts in the July 12 issue of
Nature magazine, and also the July 14 issue of Science News.
The pieces of bones and teeth of Ardipithecus, could all fit in palms of
your hands cupped together. That's not very much evidence, but it's all we
found. Also, we know that the bones did not all come from the same creature.
They are a collection from at least five different individuals. This sort
of mix-and-match bone collecting has led to many mistakes with fossils
before. Remember the brontosaurus? It never existed. Somebody took a bunch
of bones from different dinosaurs and put the wrong head on the wrong body.
Oops. For another example, three years ago I watched evolutionists explain
on every major TV network news program that night, how they had found the
"missing link" between dinosaurs and birds. (Yes, many of them do believe
that humming birds evolved from dinosaurs!) Soon after, it was discovered
that somebody had glued a little dinosaur tail onto the body of a bird
fossil. Why didn't that discovery make the network news? Hmm.
The Ethiopian fossil is supposed to be over five million years old. How
do they know? The potassium-argon method was used. This measures the amount
of argon gas found trapped in ancient lava rock near the fossil. The more
argon, the older the fossil ... or so the story goes. "This gas accumulates at
a known rate in rocks and minerals." (Science News, 7/14/01, page 20). This
rate is not known. It is assumed. This assumption is based upon other
evolutionary assumptions (see past articles on radiometric dating). Also, it
is now known that fresh lava comes out of volcanoes with argon already in it.
This is a fact of science; and it means that argon dating is messed up.
They also used magnetic readings to date the Ardipithecus bone pieces. This
method only works if you already believe the evolutionary story of the
earth's magnetic field. Are you seeing a pattern?
Here's another problem with Ardipithecus for paleontologists (scientists
who study fossils) who believe the evolution story. From one of the toe
bones, they have decided that this creature walked upright like a human,
instead of like a chimpanzee. Other evidence shows that this area was a
forest when Ardipithecus lived there. This is a problem, because the
evolution story says that the monkey-like creatures we came from started
walking upright after the forest started to turn into grassland. The story
goes that since we couldn't swing in the trees anymore, we needed to stand up
in order to get around. It also says that we needed to stand up to be able
to keep an eye out for lions and tigers and bears that might be sneaking up
on us in the tall grass.
Really, all of this is only enough to convince somebody who already
believes in the evolution story. The bones they found are the same size as
the bones in chimpanzees that live today. Ardipithecus is just a handful of
monkey bones. Think about it.
Dr. Glenn Jackson holds four degrees in science and education from George
Mason University and University of Virginia. He has taught elementary
through college level sciences for over twenty years and in four states. He
is a lifetime member of both American Mensa and the Creation Research Society.
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