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ESSAYS ON ORIGINS:
If We Resemble Apes, Does That Mean We Evolved from Apes?
by Dr. David N. Menton, Ph.D.
This version copyright (c) 1994 by:
Missouri Association for Creation
_____________________________________________________________________
[No. 5 in a series] November 1993, Vol. 3, No. 11
_____________________________________________________________________
Anyone who has ever watched the monkeys and apes at a zoo, couldn't
help but notice their resemblance to humans. By comparison, the bears
in the zoo are not nearly as similar to humans as are the apes. Still,
bears are warm-blooded mammals and thus are more similar to humans than
are cold-blooded reptiles like the alligators. Alligators, however, do
have legs and true lungs and thus are more similar to humans than are
the fish. But even fish have bony vertebrae and thus are more similar
to human than are the insects. And even insects are made up of many
specialized cells and thus are more similar to humans than are the
bacteria. Finally, all living things, including bacteria, have
basically the same type of molecules that appear to be essential for
life itself and share a common genetic code mechanism for their
reproduction.
Clearly there is an underlying common theme to all of life.
Inquisitive people will naturally wonder why this is so. Until the time
of Darwin, over 130 years ago, most scientists considered the underlying
commonality of all living animals to be evidence of the handiwork of
their common Creator. It seemed quite reasonable to these great
pioneers who established the foundations of nearly every branch of
science, that God would use the same underlying principles to design and
create the various kinds of animals. After all, even human designers,
builders, and artists, tend to manifest their distinctive approach in
everything they create and build.
There are several possible reasons why certain animals are more
similar to one another than they are to others, permitting them to be
arranged into groups. Animals that live in a similar environment and
eat similar food would be expected to have structural and even chemical
similarities. Animals that live and move on land, for example, have a
certain class of similarities based on the restrictions imposed by the
natural terrain of our earth. Animals that live and swim in water have
certain similarities necessary for aquatic locomotion and feeding.
Animals that fly in the air have still other similarities dictated by
the severe demands of flight. In the same manner, man-made machines
designed to serve a common type of purpose share common features,
despite their many differences. Consider the various modes of
transportation designed by man. Most vehicles that run on land, from
roller skates to freight trains, share a class of similarities based on
wheels. Vehicles that move on water, from a canoe to a battle ship,
share basic similarities based on floatation. Vehicles that fly in the
air, from hang gliders to the space shuttle, have similarities that are
essential to flight.
Today, evolutionists insist that the underlying similarity of all
animals, including man, and our ability to arrange and classify them
into groups, is compelling evidence for their progressive evolution from
a common ancestor. They insist that there is simply no other thinkable
explanation for their similarities. Evolutionists argue further that
the degree of similarity between any two animals attests to their degree
of evolutionary "relatedness," and thus how recently they separated from
a common ancestor. They are quite certain, for example, that the
similarities between apes and humans prove they evolved from a common
ape-like ancestor "only" 2 or 3 million years ago. By comparison,
evolutionists say we are far more distantly "related" to our insect
"relatives." The Living World Exhibit at the St. Louis Zoo has a sign
by a dish of fruit flies that confidently declares: "humans and flies
had a common ancestor 630 million years ago." This hypothetical "common
ancestor" is not identified because no one has the slightest evidence
of what it looked like, or even if it existed at all!
This belief, that similarities between animals can only be understood
in terms of an evolutionary relationship, is the most fundamental axiom
of evolution -- almost all arguments for evolution depend upon it.
Evolutionists do not feel compelled to prove their claim that similarity
necessarily means common evolutionary ancestry -- they assume it.
Indeed, evolutionists _never_ question or investigate whether evolution
is true or not, rather they ask which animal evolved into which, and
their answer is generally based on similarity! No scientist would ever
succeed in getting funding from major federal or private sources to
investigate _if_ evolution has really occurred or not. The evolutionist
Richard Leaky approached the National Geographic Society to get funding
to look for the ape ancestors of man, not to investigate if man evolved
from apes. It is interesting to note that when the Society gave Leaky
his funds, he was warned: "If you find nothing you are never to come
begging at our door again." With this motivation, Leaky soon found 40
specimens of the "human ancestor," _Australopithecus_, whose very name,
by the way, means "Southern APE"! Most evolutionists are dead certain
that this very ape-like ape evolved into man because of certain arguable
similarities to man in its teeth and pelvic bones. Perhaps you heard
the story of the evolutionist who dug up a fossilized fragment of an
ape's jaw and promptly declared it to be an ancestor of man -- he was so
excited about the find he said, "I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't
believed it."
One of the problems with the similarity = evolutionary ancestry axiom
is that evolutionists ignore it whenever it doesn't fit their
evolutionary scenarios. There are many instances of remarkable
similarities between animals that evolutionists consider to be only
distantly related. The eye of the squid, for example, is strikingly
similar to the human eye. Sometimes almost the whole body and even the
behavior of animals are obviously similar and still evolutionists argue
they are not closely related! For example, many of the Australian
marsupials have strikingly similar counterparts to certain North
American placental mammals. There are both marsupial and placental
mammal versions of mice, moles, rabbits, wolves, and badgers. There is
even evidence that there once were both marsupial and placental
saber-toothed tigers! Yet evolutionists consider marsupials and
placental mammals to be only distantly related because their mechanism
of reproduction is so different. Evolutionists believe that the
primitive ancestors of marsupial and placental mammals split off from a
hypothetical common ancestor about 120 million years ago, long before
there were mice, moles, rabbits, wolves, and badgers, and have been
evolving separately ever since. How then did both these separate lines
manage to come up with such similar animals?
Incredibly, evolutionists explain away amazing similarities between
animals they consider to be only distantly related by simply invoking
"_convergent evolution_." Convergent evolution is the unobserved and
unexplained process whereby two very different animals _independently_
evolve into two very similar animals by an incredible run of countless
lucky mutational coincidences extending over tens of millions of years!
It seems that some folks will believe almost anything, as long as it
doesn't appear in the Bible.
_______________________________________________________________________
Dr. Menton received his Ph.D. in Biology from Brown University. He has
been involved in biomedical research and education for over 30 years.
Dr. Menton is President of the Missouri Association for Creation, Inc.
Originally published in:
St. Louis MetroVoice
PO Box 220010
St. Louis, MO 63122
_______________________________________________________________________
Corrections and revisions have been made by the
author from the original published essay.
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