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Where are the “links”?
Science Digest speaks of “the lack of a missing link to explain the relatively sudden appearance of modern man.” (Science Digest, “Miracle Mutations,” by John Gliedman, February 1982, p. 91.) Newsweek observed: “The missing link between man and the apes . . . is merely the most glamorous of a whole hierarchy of phantom creatures. In the fossil record, missing links are the rule.” (Newsweek, “Is Man a Subtle Accident?” by Jerry Adler and John Carey, November 3, 1980, p. 95.)
Because there are no links, “phantom creatures” have to be fabricated from minimal evidence and passed off as though they had really existed. That explains why the following contradiction could occur, as reported by a science magazine: “Humans evolved in gradual steps from their apelike ancestors and not, as some scientists contend, in sudden jumps from one form to another. . . . But other anthropologists, working with much the same data, reportedly have reached exactly the opposite conclusion.” (Science 81, “Human Evolution: Smooth or Jumpy?” September 1981, p. 7.)
Thus we can better understand the observation of respected anatomist Solly Zuckerman who wrote in the Journal of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh: “The search for the proverbial ‘missing link’ in man’s evolution, that holy grail of a never dying sect of anatomists and biologists, allows speculation and myth to flourish as happily to-day as they did 50 years ago and more.” (Journal of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, “Myths and Methods in Anatomy,” by Solly Zuckerman, January 1966, p. 90.) He noted that, all too often, facts were ignored, and instead, what was currently popular was championed in spite of evidence to the contrary.
And nothing noteworthy has changed in the behaviour of those working in this field since then. ...
The theoretical family tree of human evolution is littered with the castoffs of previously accepted “links.” An editorial in The New York Times observed that evolutionary science “includes so much room for conjecture that theories of how man came to be tend to tell more about their author than their subject. . . . The finder of a new skull often seems to redraw the family tree of man, with his discovery on the center line that leads to man and everyone else’s skulls on side lines leading nowhere.” (The New York Times, October 4, 1982, p. A18.) (so nowadays they put everything on a side-line leading nowhere, so much for the evidence for Stephen Jay Gould's claim that: “People . . . evolved from apelike ancestors.” Boston Magazine, “Stephen Jay Gould: Defending Darwin,” by Carl Oglesby, February 1981, p. 52.)
In a book review of The Myths of Human Evolution written by evolutionists Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersall, Discover magazine observed that the authors eliminated any evolutionary family tree. Why? After noting that “the links that make up the ancestry of the human species can only be guessed at,” this publication stated: “Eldredge and Tattersall insist that man searches for his ancestry in vain. . . . If the evidence were there, they contend, ‘one could confidently expect that as more hominid fossils were found the story of human evolution would become clearer. Whereas, if anything, the opposite has occurred.’”
Discover concluded: “The human species, and all species, will remain orphans of a sort, the identities of their parents lost to the past.” (Discover, book review by James Gorman of The Myths of Human Evolution by Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersall, January 1983, pp. 83, 84.) Perhaps “lost” from the standpoint of evolutionary theory. But has not the Genesis alternative “found” our parents as they actually are in the fossil record—fully human, just as we are?
The fossil record reveals a distinct, separate origin for apes and for humans. That is why fossil evidence of man’s link to apelike beasts is nonexistent. The links really have never been there.
Gyula Gyenis, a researcher at the Department of Biological Anthropology, Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary, wrote in 2002: “The classification and the evolutionary place of hominid fossils has been under constant debate.” This author also states that the fossil evidence gathered so far brings us no closer to knowing exactly when, where, or how humans evolved from apelike creatures.(3)
...
3. Acta Biologica Szegediensis, Volume 46(1-2), “New Findings—New Problems in Classification of Hominids,” by Gyula Gyenis, 2002, pp. 57, 59.
The fossil record reveals a distinct, separate origin for apes and for humans. That is why fossil evidence of man’s link to apelike beasts is nonexistent. The links really have never been there.
originally posted by: whereislogic
a reply to: Xtrozero
I am very familiar with the change to the storyline, attempting to argue that everything is a link, yet if you put every species on a sidebranch or sideline leading nowhere, you have no evidence of a link between different categories of organisms, such as some mysterious unspecified apelike ancestor (no fossil has been specified as being this ancestor) that is supposed to be the ancestor of both apes and humans. Where is the evidence for the link between some apelike ancestor and humans that shows the gradual evolution from one to the other you speak of? For which you need a whole bunch of species and fossils along the line that is drawn in evolutionary trees, not only at the end of the line, then if you trace the line back, you come to an unspecified ancestor for which no fossil has been found or assigned. Where is the evidence for the line you have drawn, the storyline that one evolved from the other?
"What we see in the fossil record is a bunch of ape fossils and a bunch of human fossils, no evidence of any link between them.
It shows that many different kinds of living things suddenly appeared.
originally posted by: Xtrozero
The problem is that you do not accept anything.
originally posted by: whereislogic
I accept "what the fossil record really says", do you?
Such as the misrepresentation of DNA comparisons concerning humans, chimps and other ape species. Just another card that is played to distract from what the fossil record already so clearly shows.
...
If “ape-man” reconstructions are not valid, then what were those ancient creatures whose fossil bones have been found? One of these earliest mammals claimed to be in the line of man is a small, rodentlike animal said to have lived about 70 million years ago. In their book Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind, Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey wrote: “They were insect-eating quadrupeds about the size and shape of squirrels.”30 Richard Leakey called the mammal a “rat-like primate.”31 But is there any solid evidence that these tiny animals were the ancestors of humans? No, instead only wishful speculation. No transitional stages have ever linked them with anything except what they were: small, rodentlike mammals.
Next on the generally accepted list, with an admitted gap of about 40 million years, are fossils found in Egypt and named Aegyptopithecus—Egypt ape. This creature is said to have lived about 30 million years ago. Magazines, newspapers and books have displayed pictures of this small creature with headings such as: “Monkey-like creature was our ancestor.” (Time)32 “Monkeylike African Primate Called Common Ancestor of Man and Apes.” (The New York Times)33 “Aegyptopithecus is an ancestor which we share with living apes.” (Origins)34 But where are the links between it and the rodent before it? Where are the links to what is placed after it in the evolutionary lineup? None have been found. [whereislogic: solution? Put everything on a sideline again leading nowhere and coming from something unspecified for which no fossil was found, and for good measure, change the storyline to: 'well, the evolution of man was not a straight line from one species to the next'. So you end up with an evolutionary tree where nothing* is placed on either side of any species; *: generic nonspecific names of mythological common ancestors for which no fossil is presented for evaluation don't count as placing something before another species for which we do have a fossil, so that's still "nothing" as I used the word there.]
30. Lucy, p. 315.
31. Origins, p. 40.
32. Time, “Just a Nasty Little Thing,” February 18, 1980, p. 58.
33. The New York Times, “Monkeylike African Primate Called Common Ancestor of Man and Apes,” by Bayard Webster, February 7, 1980, p. A14; “Fossils Bolster a Theory on Man’s Earliest Ancestor,” by Bayard Webster, January 1, 1984, Section 1, p. 16.
34. Origins, p. 52.
...
Knowledge (gno'sis) is put in a very favorable light in the Christian Greek Scriptures. However, not all that men may call “knowledge” is to be sought, because philosophies and views exist that are “falsely called ‘knowledge.’” (1Ti 6:20) ...
... Thus Paul wrote about some who were learning (taking in knowledge) “yet never able to come to an accurate knowledge [...] of truth.” (2Ti 3:6, 7)
originally posted by: combativesdave
a reply to: Consvoli
It really does not matter where a fossil from 9 million odd years came from. The out of Africa Hypothesis is about Homo sapiens wandering out of Africa, and that Africa is where they evolved. All evidence points to that. We now know we bumped uglies with Neanderthals and Denisovans (and that they evolved not in Africa). We also know that Homo erectus had a similar out of Africa to Homo sapiens.
So some non human ancestor being somewhere other than Africa? That is not important.