The Origin of Life

—So I’m flipping through a book in my office subtitled, “Sensational Highlights of the Bible and Archaeology,” and on p. 17 I see what looks like a monkey’s skull that the author described quite matter-of-factly as an australopithecine. The opening two sentences of the accompanying paragraph read, “This and similar skulls should not be regarded as human. Many such ‘transitional forms’ eventually prove to be animals, not men.” Well, I must confess that I hadn’t for one second thought that the monkey skull in the picture was from anything other than … well, a monkey, but evidently others have hailed it as a “transitional form,” what during my younger years they used to call a “missing link.”

—So began my quest. I searched for “australopithecines” in Wikipedia for a quick review, but the language was so technical that I didn’t make any progress there. Next I pulled some books off my shelves that might help me, and finally the picture became more clear. According to standard evolutionary theory, man belongs to the genus Homo sapien (finally a familiar term), which evolved from Homo erectus (widely considered a transitional form between man and ape), which in turn evolved from a species of Australopithecus that also shows characteristics of both man (walking on two legs) and ape (marked by a small brain, a cone-shaped rib cage and large chewing teeth).

—Even among the evolutionists, however, there are dissenters who believe that australopithecine fossils most likely belong to an extinct form of ape based on the size of their cranial capacity and the structure of their hands, feet, fingers and toes. But any who question the prevailing conventional wisdom that australopithecines walked upright are (along with any creationists who might cite them) quickly ushered out the back door of scholarship. The conclusions of such scientists are subsequently branded as incomplete, flawed or questionable at best and pseudo-science at worst.

—Yet given the evolutionists’ assertions that we should expect to find an unbroken progression of change leading from man’s ape-like ancestors to modern man himself, shouldn’t we also expect to find countless examples of indisputable transitional forms. If we did it would certainly quiet any naysayers and settle all reasonable debate, yet evolutionists themselves (who have a vested interest in matching the fossil evidence to their theory) still cannot find common ground on this question whereas creationists like myself simply look at the attached picture of a monkey skull and see … well, a monkey.

—I feel a little at times like the boy whose been told by his blind uncle that the sky is green whereas all I have to do is look up to see that it’s really a lovely shade of blue.

—Daniel McCabe