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The Imaginary Piltdown Man by Randy J. Guliuzza, P.E., M.D. * Evidence for Creation Focused and vividly imagining his next move, the young boy is filled with determination as his mind pictures the football soaring. He runs, positions his legs, and says aloud, “This time I’m gonna kick that ball!” On his back a moment later, a dazed and embarrassed Charlie Brown stares up at Lucy gleefully holding the football and wonders why he fell for her ploy yet again. His oft-repeated blunder over the almost 50 years Charles Schulz produced the Peanuts cartoon evidently connected with people who empathized...

When one debates creationists (admittedly a questionable, yet often very satisfying, habit), one is bound to run up against the infamous Piltdown forgery. This is the case of an alleged missing link between humans and so-called lower primates, that was found in England (near Piltdown, in fact) and announced to the world on December 18, 1912. The announcement was made by Arthur Smith Woodward, a paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History, and Charles Dawson, a local amateur paleontologist, the actual discoverer of the fossils. The problem is-as creadonists never tire to point out-that the "Dawn Man of Piltdown"...

As scientific hoaxes go, few have matched it. Sometime early in the 20th century, someone -- it is still unclear who -- "salted" a gravel pit near the town of Piltdown, England, with what were purported to be the 500,000-year-old fossil remains of a human ancestor -- half human, half ape. The timing couldn't have been better. Darwin's "Origin of Species" was barely 50 years old, the French and Germans had found Neanderthals, and the race was on to discover the storied "missing link" in the evolution from apes to humans. "In Britain we had some early modern humans, but...