Jenny, I have read through a few of these...ahem...misquotes, and you evolutionists are dead wrong to think that the quotes are taken out of context. Nowhere in what i have read so far on this page,
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/misquotes.html
shows me that creationists have taken out of context anything. They may not have used the entire paragraph, but the meaning of the entire paragraph still points out what the creationists said the quote said!
Walter Brown, in his book In the Beginning, says: "Eugene Dubois conceded forty years after he discovered Java "man" that it was just a large gibbon." In support of this statement, Brown gives the following quote: "Pithecanthropus [Java man] was not a man, but a gigantic genus allied to the Gibbons ..." Eugene Dubois, "On the Fossil Human Skulls Recently Discovered in Java and Pithecanthropus Erectus," Man, Vol. 37, January 1937, p. 4.
However Dubois' complete sentence was as follows: "Pithecanthropus was not a man, but a gigantic genus allied to the Gibbons, however superior to the gibbons on account of its exceedingly large brain volume and distinguished at the same time by its faculty of assuming an erect attitude and gait."
se do not sound like the words of a man who is dismissing Java Man as a mere ape that had nothing to do with human evolution. Indeed, Dubois, an exceptionally stubborn man, never ceased to believe that Java Man was a primitive human ancestor.
What is the problem here?? DuBois clearly said "Pithecanthropus was not a man, but a gigantic genus allied to the Gibbons, and if DuBois said it is not a man, why the arguement about it being a large Gibbon at all? It is not man, it is a large ape like creature, a Gibbon, the evidence was just a skull cap with a femur found 100 yards down stream with no evidence to tie it to the skull cap of this large Gibbon and the founder said it himself!!
I am going to look some more, I saw some earlier on this page, and you guys are really stretching things with the mis-quote statements, I have yet to see a point refuted made by the creationist point by including more of the evolutionist's paragraph!
It is not man, it is a large ape like creature, a Gibbon,...a gibbon that walked upright, had a large brain, and was ancestral to humans. Dubois is probably incorrect in linking homo erectus and gibbons, but let's assume he's correct in all his suppositions. How, then, does this quote support the creationist position and not the evolutionist position? It's one of the cornerstones of evolutionary theory that man evolved from ape-like creatures. Of course, if we look back far enough, there comes a point where we stop calling our ancestors men and begin calling them, for want of a better word, apes.
Jenny, I have read through a few of these...ahem...misquotes, and you evolutionists are dead wrong to think that the quotes are taken out of context. Nowhere in what i have read so far on this page, http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/misquotes.html shows me that creationists have taken out of context anything. ...
Java Man? Where was Java Man in incindiary's list of quotes? Eh, whatever. The point of the highly cropped quote was that Java Man, which was supposedly an ancestor of humans, turned out to be "just a gibbons" (nothing special - just a monkey like we see today). But the truth turned out to be that Dubois thought humans' ancestors were more closely related to modern gibbons than to modern chimpanzees, and
that part of his theory was wrong. Java Man was a Homo erectus. Keep searching talkorigins &
you'll come across this page:
The first photo is of the Java Man skullcap. Many creationists consider this an ape, including Gish, who says (Gish 1993): "Now we can see the skullcap is very apelike. Notice that it has no forehead, it's very flat, very typical of the ape. Notice the massive eyebrow ridges, very typical of the ape" ... "I would tend, quite strongly, to agree with Eugene Dubois and with Marcellin Boule that these creatures [Java Man and Peking Man] were giant primates of some kind."
and: "... it is very likely that Dubois' final assessment of his Pithecanthropus erectus may be the correct one - a very large primate of some kind within the generalized group called apes, possessing no genetic relationship to man whatsoever." (Gish 1995)
The second photo is of the skull of the Homo erectus specimen WT 15000 (the Turkana Boy). Gish (1985) accepts this as human, and suggests that it was placed in Homo erectus, rather than H. sapiens, only because of its age of 1.6 million years. In a later book, Gish says:
"The size and shape of the braincase and a few other characteristics of the postcranial skeleton were the only exceptions when the skeleton of this young boy was compared to those for modern humans." "...the features of the Nariokotome juvenile were remarkably human with few exceptions." (Gish 1995)
The third picture is a drawing of a modern human skull.
And later on in the page:
In spite of this remarkable similarity, Gish continues to claim that the Java Man is an ape, while the Turkana Boy is a modern human. In his words, they are "very apelike" and "remarkably human" respectively. If a "human" and an "ape" that look almost identical aren't transitional fossils, what would be?
Still that Walt Brown's tightly cropped quote that Java Man was "just a large gibbon" is an example of accurate, honest scholarship & isn't misleading in any meaningful way?