The Bible teaches that God created man on the sixth day of the creation week, and so it is not the case that man descended from apes or ape-like creatures (Genesis 1:26-27). On the other hand, if Darwinian evolution were true, we would expect the paleontological record to have turned up many fossils of “transitional forms,” or “missing links,” remains that would document the large-scale change between various kinds of animals. And yet, the fossil record has been totally silent in this regard. Jerry Adler wrote in a 1980 issue of Newsweek,
“The more scientists have searched for the transitional forms … the more they have been frustrated. . . . Evidence from fossils now points overwhelmingly away from the classical Darwinism which most Americans learned in high school: that new species evolve out of existing ones by the gradual accumulation of small changes” (emp. added).
It still is the case the paleontologists have not found fossil evidence that demonstrates a progression from ape-like creatures to humans. Despite claims on behalf of fossils allegedly representing “Piltdown Man,” “Nebraska Man,” “Flipper Man,” and others, there is no verified intermediate form. Often the reconstructions of such creatures are almost entirely conjectural, based only on a few bones. Consider the following examples:
- Java man (1891) was constructed hypothetically from a human leg bone, human teeth, and a giant gibbon’s skull cap.
- Rhodesian man (1921) was constructed hypothetically from the bones of three or four modern humans.
- Lucy (1974) was merely a chimipanzee-like creature.
- Orce man (1982) was constructed hypothetically from what probably is the skull cap of a six-month-old donkey.
- Hobbit man (2004), still a controversial figure, was simply a small human.
- Homo naledi (2013) apparently was constructed from a variety of ape-like species and human bones.
The evolutionary community is desperate to get people to believe that the evidence for Neo-Darwinism is overwhelming. Such is not the case. The Christian has nothing to fear from true paleontology.