How the Anti-Evolution Debate Has Evolved

In this last month of the year, when many Americans' thoughts are turning to holidays -- and what to call them -- we may miss another large story about the intersections of religion and public life. Last week a federal appeals court in Atlanta listened to oral arguments about a sticker pasted, and now removed, from suburban Cobb County, Georgia’s high school science textbooks warning that evolution is a "theory, not a fact." The three-judge panel will take their time deciding the complex issues in the case. But on Tuesday, a federal district court in Pennsylvania ruled the Dover Area ( Penn.) School Board’s oral disclaimers about scientific evolution to be an unconstitutional establishment of religion. The school district's statement to students and parents directed them to an "alternative" theory, that of Intelligent Design (ID); the court ruled found "that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism." (Kitzmiller opinion, p. 31.) Apparently in a case about evolution, genealogical metaphors are unavoidable.

Seemingly every news story about the modern trials feels it necessary to refer to the 1925 Tennessee Monkey Trial, the clash of the larger-than-life legal and political personalities of William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow in the prosecution of high school teacher John Scopes for teaching evolution in violation of state law. As an historian who has written about evolution, education, and the era of the Scopes trial, I will admit the continuities between 1925 and today can seem striking. But, these continuities are deceiving. Though the modern court challenges still pit scientists supporting evolution against some parents, churches, and others opposing its unchallenged place in public school curriculum; the changes in the last eighty years seem even stronger evidence for a form of legal or cultural evolution.

First, the continuities. In the late 19th century religious commentators like the southern Methodist editor and professor Thomas O. Summers, Sr. loved to repeat a little ditty: "When doctors disagree,/ disciples then are free" to believe what they wanted about science and the natural world. Modern anti-evolutionists, most prominently under the sponsorship of Seattle's Discovery Institute, urge school boards to "teach the controversy" about evolution, purposefully inflating disagreements among scientists about the particulars of evolutionary biology into specious claims that evolutionary biology is a house of cards ready to fall at any time. The court in the Dover case concluded that although there were some scientific disagreements about evolutionary theory, ID is "an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion" not science. In a second continuity, supporters of ID reach back, even before Darwin, to the 19th century theology of William Paley, who pointed to intricate structures like the human eye as proof of God's design of humans and the world. Though many ID supporters are circumspect about the exact identity of the intelligent designer, it seems unlikely that the legions of conservative Christian supporters of ID are assuming that Martians, time-travelers, or extra-terrestrial meatballs could be behind the creation and complexity of their world.

While these issues suggest that the Scopes Trial is still relevant and would seem to offer support for the statement most often quoted to me by first year history students on why they should study history -- because it repeats itself -- this new act in the drama shows some remarkable changes. Arguing that a majority of parents in any given state, acting through legislatures, could outlaw evolution because it contradicted their religious beliefs, William Jennings Bryan campaigned successfully in Tennessee and several other states to ban the teaching of evolution and to strike it from state-adopted textbooks.

Legal challenges to the Tennessee law never made it to the federal courts, but the constitutional hurdles for anti-evolutionists grew higher in 1968, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas. that an Arkansas law very similar to the Tennessee statute was an unconstitutional establishment of religion. The law's purpose, the court found, was expressly religious. So anti-evolution was forced to evolve, seeking a new form more likely to pass constitutional muster. Enter Creation Science, a movement that added scientific language to the book of Genesis, and demanded that schools provide "equal time" to both Creation Science and biological evolution. Creation Science is an important transitional fossil of the anti-evolution movement, demonstrating two adaptations: first, the adoption of scientific language sought to shield the religious purpose of the statute and second, the appeal to an American sense of fairness in teaching both sides of an apparent controversy. The Supreme Court in 1987 found this new evolution constitutionally unfit, overturning a Louisiana law (Edwards v. Aguillard).

Since the 1987 Edwards v Aguillard decision, the anti-evolution movement has attempted several new adaptations, all of which show direct ties to previous forms. The appeal to public opinion has grown: recent national opinion polls reveal that nearly two-thirds of Americans (and even higher numbers of Alabamians) support teaching both scientific evolution and creationism in public schools. School board elections and textbook adoption battles show the strength of these arguments in a democratic society. The new variants have been far more successful at clothing themselves in the language -- but not the methods -- of science. Whether by rewriting state school standards to teach criticisms of scientific evolution (as in Ohio or Kansas) or in written disclaimers to be placed in school textbooks (as in Alabama or Cobb County, Georgia) or in the now discredited oral disclaimers of the Dover Area School Board, the religious goal has been the same: by casting doubt on scientific evolution, they hope to open room to wedge religion back into public school curricula. [Discovery Institute's "Wedge Project".] But as the court in yesterday's Dover case correctly concluded, Intelligent Design is "an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion" not science. Old arguments of a religious majority, though still potent in public debate, have again proven constitutionally unfit; Creationists and other anti-evolutionists will now have to evolve new arguments to survive constitutional tests.

Or, better yet...

Let's turn to the origin of man, and specifically, the fossil record of `Man'. Many people believe we have `proof' of evolution through the fossil record, yet is this true? What is the facts surrounding fossils that are presumed to portray man?

Ramapithicus, often pictured as walking erect, has been degrade to the status of extinct ape. It's teeth and dental characteristics are similar to the gelada gibbon.(Richard Leaky/Roger Lewin Origins P.68). It has also been declared to be part of orangutan lineage.(Science News Vol 121 #5 Jan 30, 1982 P.84)

Australopithecine: not a missing link, but an extinct ape. Dr. Charles Oxnard, U. of Chicago says, " These fossils clearly differ more from both humans and African apes, than these two living groups from each other. "The Australopithecines are unique." (Fossils, Teeth, and Sex: New Perspectives on human evolution; Seattle U. of Wash Press)

Lucy has been compared to modem pygmy chimpanzees. Paleontologist Adrienne Zihlman, Univ. of Cal at Santa Cruz:( Lucy's fossil remains match up remarkably well with the bones of a pygmy chimp,(although there are some differences)). Adrienne Zihlman, "Pygmy chimps and pundits", New Scientist Vol 104 #1430 Nov 15, 1984 P.39-40

Homo habilis was once called a missing link between Australopithecus and homo erectus, and a missing link between ape and man. Current conclusions are a chimpanzee, orangutan, or an Australopithecine. (Albert W. Mehlert, "Homo Habilis Dethroned", Contrast: The creation evolution controversy Vol 6 #6)

Sianthropus, or Peking Man, was found in China in the 20's and 30's. Originally, the evidence consisted of a single tooth which was declared to have characteristics similar to human and ape, and was named Sianthropus Pekinesis. Later, a skull cap was dug out of rock that the finder, Davidson Black declared that the skull size was about 960 cc, just between ape and human, and therefore a missing link. However, visiting scientists such as Grafton Elliot Smith, Marcellin Boule, and von Koenigswald believed that that size was much too large and that the skull was that of an ape. Additional evidence discovered through blasting included broken, shattered skulls with the base of the skulls broken off numbering no more than 14 total skulls, jawbones, portions of thigh bones, two upper arm bones, a wristbone, and 147 teeth and thousands of bones of animals including elephant and deer. Moreso, the skulls were mixed in with the animal bones inside the rock and showed no progression, no change over time even though the depth of the excavation was 150 feet vertically. Unfortunately, the human remains were lost during W.W.II. Clear evidence at the same site showed true man along with a 23 ft. deep ash pile and a limestone mine. All of the skulls of Sianthropus were broken in the same manner as those of monkeys who are eaten for their brains.(Ian Taylor, "In the Minds of Men: Darwin and the World Order", Toronto Canada, TFE pub. 1984 p. 234-241) Among the interesting facts surrounding these site, is that for the most part, only Skulls were found, not complete skeletons, until the finding of 6 almost complete fully human skeletons. Other evidences existed for fully human interaction at the site, for there were numerous other animal bones there inside the ash pit. The ash pit was used to a degree that minerals on the sides of the pit were fused due to the heat of the pit.

Pithecanthropus, or Java Man, is based solely on the evidence of a skull cap dug up in 1891 on the banks of the Solo River in Java and a femur that was dug up 50 feet away and year later. It is claimed that the finder, Eugene Dubois, admitted the skull cap was from a gibbon like ape.(Eugene Dubois, "On the gibbon like appearance of Pithecanthropus Erectus", Koniklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen Vol 38 Amsterdam Koninklijke Akademie 1935 P.578). Additional questions arise from Dubois calculations. The date chosen by Dubois is suspect, for Dubois was a doctor, a self described anatomist, yet it is he that claimed the 500,000 year old date to make his fossil the missing link.
"Dubois claimed that the skull cap and femur came from a rock stratum known as the Trinil layer, named after a nearby village in central Java. He believed that these rocks were below what is known as the Pleistocene-Pliocene (Tertiary) boundary. Dubois was convinced that `real' humans evolved later in the Middle Pleistocene. Hence, his dating of Java Man was quite appropriate for a missing link. however, his interpretation was not exactly straightforward, as the man who later found other `Java Men' G.H.R. von Koenigswald, tells us:
"When Dubois issued his first description of the fossil Javanese fauna he designated it Pleistocene. But no sooner had he discovered his Pithecanthropus than the fauna had suddenly to become Tertiary. He did everything in his power to diminish the Pleistocene character of the fauna..."

"The criterion was no longer to be the fauna as a whole, but only his Pithecanthropus . Such a primitive form belonged to the Tertiary!"
"Dubois view...did not go uncontested. But there was no getting at him until he had described his whole collection and laid all his cards on the table. That was why we all had to wait for a study of his finds, and to wait in vain." (G.H.R. von Koenigswald, Meeting Prehistoric Man, Michael Bullock, Trans. , New York, Harper and Brothers, 1956. 38-39).
Not all scientists at the time of Java man agreed that this was a transitional form of any kind, but truly human. "Sir Arthur Kent, the famed Cambridge University anatomist was asked to comment on Dubois paper. He replied that the chief question to be settled on was whether or not the skull cap was human. In answering that question, one had to determine the criterion of a human skull versus an ape skull. To his mind, there were two basic differences: first, the very large cranial capacity of human skulls as compared to ape skulls, and second, the large muscular ridges and processes, connected with the chewing apparatus, which ape skulls have compared to human skulls. On both points Keith declared that the Java man skull cap was distinctly human. (Alan Houghton Brodrick, Early Man, London, Hutchinson's Scientific and Technical Publications, 1948, p85). The cranial capacity of the anthropoid apes never exceeds 600cc and averages 500cc. On the other hand, the cranial capacity of Dubois' Java Man was estimated at 1000cc, which is well within the range of humans living today."
"In 1938, Franz Weidenreich described several femoral fragments of Peking Man. (Both Peking Man and Java Man are now called Homo Erectus). Whereas the skulls of Peking Man and Java Man were quite similar, the Peking Man femora differed from the Java Man femur in the very places where the Java Man femur was similar to modern humans. Since the association of the Peking Man skulls and femora was undisputed, Weidenreich concluded that the Java Man femur was not a true Homo Erectus femur but was instead a modern one. (Bert Theunissen, Eugene Dubois and the Ape Man from Java, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989, p121)."
"The most recent assessment of the Java Man Femur comes to the same conclusion. Michael Day and T.I. Molleson compared the Java Man femur, the Peking femora, and the femur known as Olduvai Hominid 28 (OH-28) found by Louis Leaky in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, in unquestioned association with other homo erectus material. They state that OH-28 and the Peking Man femora, although truly human, are much more similar to each other than either is to the Java femur. Their conclusion is that OH-28 and Peking Man represents a Homo Erectus anatomy, whereas the Java femur is more modern."
"Here then, is the problem faced by evolutionist paleoanthropology. If the Java skull cap and femur actually belong together, then it is difficult to maintain a species difference between homo Erectus and Homo Sapiens. The distinction would be an imaginary one, and it would compromise these fossils as evidence for human evolution. If, on the other hand, the skull cap belongs to Homo Erectus, and the femur belongs to Homo Sapiens, it shows that these two forms likely lived together as contemporaries. It likewise removes these fossils as evidence for human evolution, because fluorine analysis indicates that the fossils are both the same age."(Koenigswald, p34)(Marvin Lubenow, Bones of Contention, 1992)

Nebraska Man was a local fossil, the entire evidence consisting of a single tooth. Nebraska Man was pictured on the front page of Life magazine in a hunter-gatherer mode. During the famous Scopes Monkey Trial, Nebraska Man was labeled a genuine missing link. The tooth turned out to be a tooth of a pig. (Henry Fairfield Osborne, Hesperopithicus Haroldcookii, the first anthropoid primate found in North America, Science Vol 60 #1427 May 3, 1922 P.463)(William K. Gregory, "Hesperopithecus apparently not ape or man" Science Vol 66 #17209 Dec 16, 1927)

Piltdown Man, a deliberate hoax some blame on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, had people fooled for years and even had its picture on Life Magazine.(Joseph Wiener "The Piltdown Forgery" London Oxford U. Press)

Neanderthal Man was found in Neanderthal Valley in West Germany. Long accepted as a missing link, Neanderthal man has been proven to be human, very similar to Europeans today, yet with proven diseases such as rickets, syphilis, and arthritis.(Carl Hodge "Neanderthal Traits Extant, Group Told" The Arizona Republic Vol 99 #186 P. B-5)

There is no proof that man evolved from an ape like creature. In fact, many fossils of man have been found, dated to coincide with the ages of these extinct apes:

Petralona Man, found in a stalagmite 700 thousand years old.(Current Anthropology Vol 22 #3 June 1981 P.287)

Human Jawbone found in China in Yangtze River dated 2 million years old.(Java Man is only 500 thousand)(Mesa Tribune Mesa Arizona Nov 20 1988)

Also, there are some findings that contradict all known science:

Human skeleton found 1. 6 million years old, by Richard Leaky( Wash. Post Oct 19, 1984)

Evolutionists themselves disagree on just what the fossils mean and just how old they are. Consider the following:

RUINED FAMILY TREE: "either we toss out this [skull 11470] or we toss out our theories of early man," asserts anthropologist Richard Leakey of this 2.8 million year old fossil, which he has tentatively identified as belonging to our own genus. "It simply fits no previous models of human beginnings." The author, son of famed anthropologist Louis S.B. Leakey, believes that the skull's surprisingly large braincase "leaves in ruins the notion that all early fossils can be arranged to an orderly sequence of evolutionary change." NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, June 1973, p.819

HUMAN BRAIN: "Leakey further describes the whole shape of the brain case [skull 11470] as remarkably reminiscent of modern man, lacking the heavy and protruding eyebrow ridges and thick bone characteristics of Homo Erectus." SCIENCE NEWS, April 3, 1972, p. 324

"OLD" MODERN MAN: Louis Leakey, "In 1933 I published on a small fragment of jaw we call Homo Kanamens 1s, and I said categorically that this is not a near-man or ape, this is a true member of genus Homo. There were stone tools with it too. The age was probably around 2.5 to 3 million years. It was promptly put upon a shelf by my colleagues, except for two of them. The rest said it must be placed in a "suspense account". Now, 36 years later, we have proved I was right." Quoted in Bones of Contention, p.156

THE OLDEST MAN: "[African footprints]... they belonged to the genus Homo (or true man), rather than to man-apes (like Australopithecus, who was once thought to be the forerunner of Man but is now regarded as a possible evolutionary dead end)... they were 3.35 to 3.75 million years old... they would, in Mary Leakey's words, be people 'not unlike ourselves'" TIME, Nov. 10, 1975, p.93

TOO HUMAN TOO OLD: Russell H Tuttle, Professor of Anthropology, University of Chicago, Affiliate Scientist, Primate Research Center, Emory University, "In sum, the 3.5 million year old footprint trails at Laetoli site G resemble those of habitually unshod modern Humans... If the G footprints were not known to be so old, we would readily conclude that they were made by a member of our genus... in any case, we should shelve the loose assumption that the Laetoli footprints were made by Lucy's kind..." NATURAL HISTORY, March 1990, p. 64

Human footprints, dated 3.75 million years old at Latolil (Nature Vol28 #5702 Mar 22.1979, P.317-323)

MODERN AND TALL: Richard Leakey, "... the boy from Tukana was surprisingly large compared with modern boys his age... he would probably go unnoticed in a crowd today. This find combines with previous discoveries of Homo Erectus to contradict a long held idea that humans have grown larger over the millennia," NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, Nov. 1985, p. 629

MAN EVEN BEFORE "LUCY": Charles E. Oxnard, Dean, Grad School, Professor Biology and Anatomy, USC, "...earlier finds, for instance, at Kanapoi, existed at the same time as, and probably even earlier than, the original gracile Australopithecines... almost indistinguishable in shape from that of modern Humans at four and a half million years..." AMERICAN BIOLOGY TEACHER, Vol. 41, May 1979, p.274

HENRY M. MCHENRY, U of C, DAVIS, "The results show that the Kanapoi specimen, which is 4 to 4.5 million years old, is indistinguishable from modern Homo Sapiens..." SCIENCE, Vol. 190, p.28

WILLIAM HOWELLS, HARVARD, "With a date of about 4.4 million years, [KP 2711] could not be distinguished from Homo Sapiens morphologically or by multivariate analysis by Patterson or myself in 1967 (or by much searching analysis by others since then). We suggested that it might represent Australopithecus because at the time, time allocation to Homo seemed preposterous, although it would be the correct one without the time element." HOMO ERECTUS, 1981, pp. 79-80

What do evolutionists and other well respected scientists say about evolution? Evolutionists themselves disagree, and those with scientific backgrounds often deny the evidence of evolution. Consider these sources:

The Dissidents No less an authority than the world-renowned paleontologist (with Dr. Colin Patterson) for the British Museum of Natural History, Dr. N. Etheridge, has remarked: "Nine tenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by facts. This museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their views. In all this great museum, their is not a particle of evidence of the transmutation of species." (quoted by Lindsay Gordon, Evolution - The Incredible Hoax, 1977)

Sir Ernest Chain, 1945 Nobel Prize winner for developing penicillin, in D.T. Rosevear's Scientists critical of Evolution, July 1980, p.4: "To postulate that the development and survival of the fittest is entirely a consequence of chance mutations seems to me a hypothesis based on no evidence and irreconcilable with the facts."

Dr. Werner von Braun, one of the leading scientists in NASA's Apollo project (many of you interested in space exploration know the name), wrote the following in a letter to the California State Board of Education, September 14, 1972: "To be forced to believe only one conclusion - that everything in the universe happened by chance - would violate the very objectivity of science itself. Certainly there are those who argue that the universe evolved out of a random process, but what random process could produce the brain of man or the system of the human eye?... We in NASA were often asked what the real reason was for the amazing string of successes we had with our Apollo flights to the Moon. I think the only honest answer we could give was that we tried to never overlook anything. It is in that same sense of scientific honesty that I endorse the presentation of alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life, and man in the science classroom, It would be an error to overlook the possibility that the universe was planned rather than happened by chance."

Dr. Pierre P. Grasse, editor of the twenty-eight volumes of "Traite de Zoologie" and ex-president of the Academie des Sciences is considered to be the most distinguished of French zoologists. His conclusions? "The explanatory doctrines of biological evolution do not stand up to an in-depth criticism." (The Evolution of Living Organisms)

P. Lemoine, a president of the Geologic Society of France, editor of the Encyclopedie Francaise, and director of the Natural History Museum in Paris, has concluded: "The theories of evolution, with which our studious youth have been deceived, constitute actually a dogma that all the world continues to teach; but each, in his specialty, the zoologist or the botanist, ascertains that none of the explanations furnished is adequate.... It results from this summary, that the theory of evolution, is impossible." (Introduction: De L'Evolution? in 5 Encyclopedie Francaise)

Dr. Hubert P. Yockey, A Calculation of the Probability of Spontaneous Biogenesis bt Information Theory, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 1977, Vol. 67, p.398: "One must conclude that, contrary to the established and current wisdom, a scenario describing the genesis of life on earth by chance and natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact and not faith has not yet been written."

Dr. Derek V. Ager, Geologist, Imperial College, London, Proceedings of the Geological Association, Vol. 87, 1976, pp.132 - 133: "It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student... have now been debunked."

Dr. Michael Denton, Molecular Biologist, evolutionist, concludes his 1986 book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, thus: "Ultimately, the Darwinian theory of evolution is no more or less than the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century.... The truth is that despite the prestige of evolutionary theory and the tremendous intellectual effort directed towards reducing living systems to the confines of Darwinian thought, nature refuses to be imprisoned. The "mystery of mysteries" - the origin of new beings on earth - is still largely as enigmatic as when Darwin set sail on the Beagle".

Finally, the aforementioned Dr. Colin Patterson, a senior paleontologist at the British Natural History Museum, remarked in a 1981 lecture at the American Museum of Natural History: "Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing... that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology seminar at the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, "I do know one thing - it ought not be taught in high school."

Have there been any strange findings that disagree with evolutionary thought about how old mankind is?

Gold Chains found in coal.(Morrisonville Times, Morrisonville M Jun 11 1891)

Metal bell shaped vessel found in solid rock.(Scientific American Vol7 June 1851 P 298-299)

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