Lies Creationists Tell: The Julian Huxley Lie

Julian Huxley Lie

The short answer is that Julian Huxley never said “The reason we leaped at The Origin of Species was because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores.” Secondly, Aldous Huxley (Julian's brother) said something that cut both ways, since Aldous pointed out the selfish interest that Christian leaders had in controlling both politics and mores. Aldous also mentioned that “The Victorian passion for respectability was, however, so great that, during the period when they were formulated, neither Positivism nor Darwinism was used as a justification for sexual indulgence.”

To quote Aldous in context:

“No philosophy is completely disinterested. The pure love of truth is always mingle to some extent with the need, consciously or unconsciously felt by even the noblest and the most intelligent philosophers, to justify a given form of personal or social behavior, to rationalize the traditional prejudices of a given class or community. The philosopher who finds meaning in the world is concerned, not only to elucidate that meaning, but also to prove that is it most clearly expressed in some established religion, some accepted code of morals. The philosopher who find no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is not valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. The voluntary, as opposed to the intellectual, reasons for holding the doctrines of materialism, for examples, may be predominantly erotic, as they were in the case of Lamettrie (see his lyrical account of the pleasures of the bed in La Volupte and at the end of LʼHomme Machine [‘The Human Machine,’ a work of materialist philosophy]), or predominantly political, as they were in the case of Karl Marx. The desire to justify a particular form of political organization and, in some cases, of a personal will to power has played an equally large part in the formulation of philosophies postulating the existence of meaning in the world. Christian philosophers have found no difficulty in justifying imperialism, war, the capitalistic system, the use of torture, the censorship of the press, and ecclesiastical tyrannies of every sort from the tyranny of Rome to the tyrannies of [Calvinʼs] Geneva and [Puritan] New England. In all cases they have shown that the meaning of the world was such as to be compatible with, or actually most completely expressed by, the iniquities I have mentioned above — iniquities which happened, of course, to serve the personal or sectarian interests of the philosophers concerned. In due course, there arose philosophers who denied not only the right of Christian special pleaders to justify iniquity by an appeal to the meaning of the world, but even their right to find any such meaning whatsoever. In the circumstances, the fact was not surprising. One unscrupulous distortion of the truth tends to beget other and opposite distortions. Passions may be satisfied in the process; but the disinterested love of knowledge suffers eclipse.” [Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means, p. 314-316]

“For myself as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was an admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever… The men of the new Enlightenment, which occurred in the middle years of the nineteenth century, once again used meaninglessness as a weapon against the [conservative] reactionaries. The Victorian passion for respectability was, however, so great that, during the period when they were formulated, neither Positivism nor Darwinism was used as a justification for sexual indulgence. [Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means, p. 316-317]

For those who want to see my complete work and research on this topic, the question begins here, with this unsubstantiated creationist claim:

“Sir Julian Huxley, one of the worldʼs leading evolutionists, head of UNESCO, descendant of Thomas Huxley — Darwinʼs bulldog — said on a talk show, ‘I suppose the reason we leaped at The Origin of Species was because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores.’ (Henry M. Morris, The Troubled Waters of Evolution, Creation-Life Publishers, 1974, p. 58).” — D. James Kennedy, Why I Believe, originally published 1980 (revised in 1999)

Comment: The reference that Kennedy pointed to in Morrisʼ book above does not refer to “Julian” at all, but instead refers to his grandfather, “Thomas Henry Huxley,” and it has nothing to do with “sexual mores,” for it states, “He [Thomas Henry Huxley] had a work to do in England, a messianic purpose, and he dedicated to that purpose his tireless energy and his vast resources of knowledge and ability. And he did attain the success his heart desired, for Huxley was recognized as a prophet in his own country.” [Scientific Monthly, April, 1957, p.172 in an article on “Thomas Henry Huxley” by Charles S. Blinderman]


Seeking the Source of the “Julian Huxley” Quotation

Kennedyʼs organization, “Creation Studies” (mail@creationstudies.org), could not tell me which talk show, nor what year Julian Huxley uttered the quotation above. Instead, they piled lie upon lie and told me:

“That is not a lone opinion. Aldous Huxley, one of the great agnostic evolutionists of the twentieth century, said the same thing. He believed in the meaninglessness of the world, which Darwin taught, because, he said, ‘We objected to morality, because it interfered with our sexual freedom.’”

“I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics; he is also concerned to prove there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do… For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”

— Aldous Huxley, “Confessions of a Professed Atheist,” Report: Perspective on the News, Vol. 3, June, 1966, p.19. [Grandson of evolutionist Thomas Huxley, Aldous Huxley was one of the most influential writers and philosophers of the 20th century.]

The Inadequacy Of The Reply Above

Not only did “Creation Studies” fail to substantiate what the name of the alleged “talk show” was, nor the year it aired, but they added the lie that “Aldous Huxley said the same thing.” (He did not say “the same thing,” far from it, as I shall show below, based on reading the Aldous Huxley quotation in context.)

A Substantiated Remark from Julian Huxley on the Reason Why Darwinʼs Theory Gained Ground

Julian Huxley wrote and spoke a lot about the reasons why Darwinʼs theory gained ground in its day, but is never recorded as saying that people “leapt at Darwinʼs theory,” rather, it took twenty years before it gained widespread approval among scientists. Furthermore, Julian Huxley explained the reason for the success of Darwinʼs theory in words that are fully substantiated in numerous places in his writings, and he never once mentioned “sexual mores.” Below is part of a transcript of a TV interview with Julian Huxley that Dr. Kennedy apparently missed:

Julian Huxley: The theory of evolution was in the air… Asa Gray had got halfway; Lyell, a third of the way. It would have been formulated well before the end of the 1800s even if Darwin had died. [Alfred Russel Wallace arrived at nearly identical conclusions to Darwin and they presented their paper jointly to the Royal Society. — E.T.B.] But it would not have happened in the same decisive way [not without Darwin]. Darwin not only had this brilliant inspiration of natural selection but also collected a great volume of facts to buttress the idea of ‘transformation’ — which was what evolution was then generally called. [Keep in mind that back then, many scientists continued to resist the idea that a single species, any species, might “tranform” into a near identical species with uniquely different habits or diets. Tough crowd Iʼd say. — E.T.B.] And Darwin did what Wallace did not even try to do until much later: he deduced many consequences from the principle of natural selection, which you can still read with profit today…

Darwin [actor playing the role]: But the majority of scientists took twenty years after the book appeared before they accepted evolution…

Huxley: But the people who mattered did accept it immediately.

— Julian Huxley, “‘At Random’: A Television Preview” (transcript of a TV show aired on WBBM-TV, CBS, Chicago, on the evening of Nov. 21, 1959, just prior to Darwinʼs Centennial Celebration, where Julian was the key speaker), published in Issues in Evolution, Vol. III: The University of Chicago Centennial Discussions (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 63

Julian Huxleyʼs Personal “Sexual Mores”

And speaking of Julianʼs personal “sexual mores,” admittedly they were not perfect, but they functioned well enough to enable him to enjoy his Golden Wedding anniversary:

“In March 1969, Juliette and I celebrated our Golden Wedding anniversary. As a venue appropriate for this special Rite de Passage of ours, we chose the Fellowsʼ Restaurant at the Zoo and gave a party to as many of our friends as it could accommodate. It was a good party. Sir John Redcliffe-Maud gave one of his inimitable speeches and made us all laugh with his wit and audacious imitations. Lord Haloford, an old friend, bravely overcame a bad tooth-ache to second a vote of congratulations, which he did splendidly. Juliette and I moved in a euphoric dream, not quite believing that it was really ourselves who had worked our way through fifty years of married life, and were being feted by our many wonderful friends.

“We both resisted answering questions by reporters as to what we really though of such enduring marriage. Marriage poses as many problems as it solves: indeed, the flavor and essence of long-lasting marriage cannot be put into words.

“Probably, busy as I was with my many avocations, I took less account of the problems and adjustments involved; Juliette had to make the relevant adaptions and for this I give her every credit. She sometimes teases me by saying that had she known what she was in for when she accepted my proposal, she would have run for miles. But she willingly admits that, whatever the inevitable squalls we suffered, we have led a tremendously interesting life together, involving a great variety of experience with our different but complementary awarenesses.

“Perhaps the key to a good marriage is acceptance, which in its turn creates a capacity both for independent growth and for joint perception. One might say that there is no such thing as a ‘perfect’ marriage. But I can certainly affirm that our marriage has been fruitful and sustaining. How fortunate I was to be accepted by the lovely girl from Neuchatel whom I met at Garsington, fifty-three years ago — a girl who has retained her freshness in her maturity; a woman with many interests and a rare capacity for making friends and for enriching our joint existence!”

— Sir Julian Huxley, Memories II (New York: Harper and Row, 1973) p. 245-246

Seeking The Source Of The Aldous Huxley Quotation

Kennedyʼs “Creation Studies” organization, told me that the Aldous Huxley quotation came from an article titled, “Confessions of a Professed Atheist” published in Report: Perspective on the News, Vol. 3, June, 1966, p.19.

I have since discovered that the title of the journal was Report: News of the Month in Perspective, a somewhat conservative news-digest, and the Aldous Huxley quotation indeed lay on page 19 of the June 1966 issue, and there are words above the Huxley paragraph that the editor undoubtedly added (since Aldous Huxley had died three years earlier) that read, “Confessions of a Professed Atheist.” But that single paragraph by Aldous Huxley was merely part of a much longer article that stretched from pages 16 to 20, titled, “An Interview with God” by Dennis Helming.

Is it Possible that a lapse in Kennedyʼs Memory is to Blame for him Falsely Attributing the “Sexual Mores” Quotation to “Julian Huxley?”

Is it possible that Kennedy read Dennis Helmingʼs article, “Interview with God,” or a reprint of the article, or a reprint of just the page with Aldousʼs paragraph on it, and it stuck in Kennedyʼs mind that “Huxley” had mentioned that “we objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom?” If Kennedy read the quotation in Helmingʼs “Interview with God,” then the word, “interview,” might have stuck in Kennedyʼs mind, leaving him with the lasting impression that the quote was “said” in an “interview.” Kennedy may even have seen Julian Huxley on a “talk show” speaking of Darwinʼs “Origin,” but Kennedy might have later combined his memories of that paragraph by one “Huxley” with his memories of seeing the other “Huxley” on TV. The time needed for Kennedy to blend these two things together in his memory is also there since Aldous died in 1963 and Julian died in 1975, while Kennedy (so far as I have been able to determine) began promoting the story of “Julianʼs talk show remark” in 1980 in a book that was published seventeen years after Aldous had died and five years after Julian had died. So the possibily exists that Kennedyʼs memory might be to blame for the mix up.

Neither the “Institute for Creation Research,” nor, “Answers in Genesis” have posted Kennedyʼs “Julian” remark on their websites. However, they do quote the remark by Aldous Huxley: “We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.” Perhaps “ICR” and “AiG” have their own doubts concerning Kennedyʼs unsubstantiated memory? The fact remains that 24 years have passed since Kennedy began promoting the “Julian” remark in print, and no one else has stepped forth to substantiate Kennedyʼs memory. No one has found any newsman of Julianʼs era, nor biographers of Julian, mentioning such a remark. Kennedy remains the only person on record who claims to have heard “Julian” say it. So it would appear that Aldous is the main suspect. His quotation is the only one that has been substantiated. Though Aldousʼs remark does not even mean what Kennedy says it does, as we will see below!

Further Failed Searches for the Source of Kennedyʼs “Julian” Quotation

Six years after Dr. Kennedy introduced the “Julian Huxley” quotation into his books and sermons, it popped up, unsubstantiated and unreferenced, in a book written by another “doctor,” Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer (Senior Pastor of The Moody Church, and host of “Moody Church Hour”):

“Julian Huxley was once on a television program in which he responded to the question of why evolution was so readily accepted. He admitted, ‘The reason we accepted Darwinism even without proof, is because we didnʼt want God to interfere with our sexual mores.’”

— Dr. Lutzer, Erwin W., Exploding The Myths That Could Destroy America (Chicago : Moody Press, 1986)

Lutzer never claimed he personally heard Julian utter such a remark, and a friend I know emailed Dr. Lutzer at The Moody Church, asking him to please substantiate the quotation, and the Media Call Supervisor at the Moody Church, Joshua Hall (joshua.hall@moodychurch.org), responded: “I just Googled the actual quote and found out that it was actually Sir Julian Huxleyʼs brother, Aldous Huxley, who was an author.” [Email sent to Julie Johnson from Joshua Hall, Wed., Nov. 12, 2003 5:18 PM] At least the Media Call Supervisor at Lutzerʼs church had the humility to suggest that Lutzer had made an error in attributing it to “Julian Huxley,” which is more than what Kennedyʼs “Creation Studies” organization keeps doing. Since Lutzer repeated the “Julian” remark six years after Kennedy first wrote about it, Lutzer probably lifted it from one of Kennedyʼs writings or sermons, or it was shared with him by some Christian friends who were repeating the unsubstantiated remark.

Kennedyʼs “Julian” Quotation has Mutated!

Speaking of repeating unsubstantiated remarks, Christian internet sites are known for granting miraculous “angelʼs wings” to any and all remarks that may prove useful in their battle to embarrass the enemies of their sacred faith. And Kennedyʼs “Julian” remark has not only proven useful, but it has undergone a few mutations:

Mutation #1) One person on the internet has been bold (or foolish) enough to supply a date for the quotation: “FloridaFormula5” (an Evangelical Christian) wrote in the blob of Gloria Brame on April 3, 2004 that “Sir Julian Huxley said it best in a 1973 public television interview…” I wrote “FloridaFomula5” three times to find out where he came up with the date “1973,” which was more than Kennedy was able to do in his books or sermons over the past 24 years. “FloridaFormula5” has not responded.

Mutation #2) Kennedyʼs unsubstantiated “Julian” quotation has become fused with two substantiated quotations! Fusion has taken place!

“The concept of a Creator-God interferes with our sexual mores. Thus, we have rationalized God out of existence. To us, He has become nothing more than the faint and disappearing smile of the cosmic Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland.”

— Guest Feature Article At Chuck Colsonʼs “Prison Fellowship” website (pfm.org), “The Double Helix Meets the Bacterial Flagellum: An Argument for Intelligent Design” by Al Dobras, August 25, 2003

“It is because the concept of a Creator-God interferes with our sexual mores. Thus, we have rationalized God out of existence. To us, He has become nothing more than the faint and disappearing smile of the cosmic Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland.”

— “Quotations on Evolution,” Haven Free Will Baptist Church (havenfwbchurch.org)

The first half of the quotations above were apparently derived from Kennedyʼs “Julian” remark and remain unsubstantiated. Meanwhile, the latter half of the quotations come from the following two remarks by Julian Huxley:

“Darwinism removed the whole idea of God as the creator from the sphere of rational discussion.”

— Julian Huxley, “‘At Random’: A Television Preview” (transcript of a TV show aired on WBBM-TV, CBS, Chicago, on the evening of Nov. 21, 1959, just prior to Darwinʼs Centennial Celebration, where Julian was the key speaker), published in Issues in Evolution, Vol. III: The University of Chicago Centennial Discussions (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 45

“The god hypothesis is no longer of any pragmatic value for the interpretation or comprehension of nature, and indeed often stands in the way of better and truer interpretation. Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler, but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire Cat.”

— Julian Huxley, Religion Without Revelation (London: Max Parrish, 1957), p. 58

Having read the two articles where the two substantied quotations were found, I was unable to discover Kennedyʼs “Julian” quotation in either of those two articles.

What did Aldous Huxley really say and teach about “the Philosophy of Meaninglessness” and “Sexual Mores?”

As mentioned above, a conservative editor in 1966 printed a paragraph from Aldous Huxley on “the philosophy of meaninglessness” and “sexual mores,” and added a title above the paragraph that read, “Confessions of a Professed Atheist.” But what the editor failed to reveal to his readers was that Aldous was not an “atheist” when he wrote that paragraph, but was arguing against “atheism.” The paragraph itself was taken from Aldous Huxleyʼs book, Ends and Means, written in 1937 (chapter 14, the chapter on “Beliefs”), and he was not speaking about why people in Darwinʼs day “leaped at the Origin,” but speaking about the rise of the “philosophy of meaninglessness” and materialism among the “masses” after the First World War, the generation of the 1920s. And speaking of Aldousʼs generation in the 1920s and 30ʼs, John Derbyshire wrote:

“The second and third decades of the twentieth century were notoriously an age of failed gods and shattered conventions, to which many thoughtful people responded in obvious ways, retreating into nihilism, hedonism, and experimentalism. Literature became subjective, art became abstract, poetry abandoned its traditional forms. In the ‘low, dishonest decade’ that then followed, much of this negativism curdled into power-worship and escapism of various kinds. Aldous Huxley stood aside from these large general trends. Though no Victorian in habits or beliefs, he never entered whole-heartedly into the spirit of modernism. The evidence is all over the early volumes of these essays. James Joyceʼs ground breaking novel, Ulysses, he declares in 1925, is ‘one of the dullest books ever written,and one of the least significant.’ Jazz, he remarks two years later, is ‘drearily barbaric.’ Writing of Sir Christopher Wren in 1923, he quotes with approval Carlyleʼs remark that Chelsea Hospital, one of Wrenʼs creations, was ‘obviously the work of a gentleman.’ Wren, Huxley goes on to say, was indeed a great gentleman, ‘one who valued dignity and restraint and who, respecting himself, respected also humanity.’ In his thirties, in fact, Huxley comes across as something of a Young Fogey.”

— John Derbyshire, “What Happened to Aldous Huxley,” The New Criterion Vol. 21, No. 6 (February 2003)

In another chapter of Ends and Means (chapter 15, “Ethics”) Aldous, the “Young Fogey,” abhorred “sexual addictions,” or using sex as a means to achieving base ends. And Aldousʼ chapters on “Religious Practices,” “Beliefs,” and “Ethics” argued in favor of a meaningful cosmos and a universal spirituality that Aldous said was reflected in the works of certain Eastern mystics as well as some famous Christian mystics. Below is a series of quotations demonstrating what I have said above, all taken from Aldous Huxleyʼs Ends and Means: An Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals and into the Methods Employed for Their Realization (Harper and Brothers Publishers, New York and London, 1937, fifth edition).

Aldous Huxley Rebutts the “Philosophy of Meaninglessness”

“From the world we actually live in, the world that is given by our senses, our intuitions of beauty and goodness, our emotions and impulses, our moods and sentiments, the man of science abstracts a simplified private universe of things possessing only… elements which can be weighed, measured, numbered, or which lend themselves in any other way to mathematical treatment. By using this technique of simplification and abstraction, the scientist has succeeded to an astonishing degree in understanding and dominating the physical environment. The success was intoxicating and, with an illogicality which, in the circmstances, was doubtless pardonable, many scientists and philosophers came to imagine that this useful abstraction from reality was reality itself. Reality as actually experienced contains intuitions of value and significance, contain love, beauty, mystical ecstasy, intimations of godhead. Science did not and still does not possess intellectual instruments with which to deal with thses aspects of reality. Consquently it ignored them and concentrated its attention upon such aspects of the world as it could deal with by mean of arithmetic, geometry and the various branches of higher mathematics. Our conviction that the world is meaningless lend itself very effectively to furthering the ends of erotic or political passion; in part to a genuine intellectual error — the error of identifying the world of science, a world from which all meaning and value has been deliberately excluded, with ultimate reality.

“[The philosopher, Humeʼs, erroneous attitude was typical] Hume wrote, ‘If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstracts reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact or evidence? No. Commit it then to the flame; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.’ Hume mentions only divinity and school metaphysics; but his argument would apply just as cogently to poetry, music, painting, sculpture and all ethical and religious teaching. Hamlet contains no abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number and no experimental reason concerning evidence; nor does the Hamerklavier Sonata, nor Donatelloʼs David, nor the Tao Te Ching [book of Chinese philosophy and wisdom], nor the Following of Christ. Commit them therefore to the flames: for they can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

“We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather grisly morning-after… The contents of literature, art, music — even in some measure of divinity and school metaphysics — are not sophistry and illusion, but simply those elements of experience which scientists chose to leave out of account, for the good reason that they had no intellectual methods for dealing with them. In the arts, in philosophy, in religion, men are trying — to describe and explain the non-measurable, purely qualitative aspects of reality… [p. 308-310]

“In recent years, many men of science have come to realize that the scientific picture of the world is a partial one — the product of their special competence in mathematics and their special incompetence to deal systematically with aesthetic and moral values, religous experiences and intuitions of significance. Unhappily, novel ideas become acceptable to the less intelligent members of society only with a very considerable time-lag. Sixty or seventy years ago the majority of scientists believed — and the belief caused them considerable distress — that the product of their special incompetence was identical with reality as a whole. Today this belief has begun to give way, in scientific circles, to a different and obviously truer conception of the relation between science and total experience. The masses on the contrary, have just reached the point where the ancestors of todayʼs scientists were standing two generations back. They are convinced that the scientific picture of an arbitrary abstraction from reality is a picture of reality as a whole and that therefore the world is without meaning or value. But nobody likes living in such a world. To satisfy their hunger for meaning and value, they turn to such doctrines as nationalism, fascism and revolutionary communism. Philosophically and scientifically, these doctrines are absurd; but for the masses in every community, they have this great merit: they attribute the meaning and value that have been taken away from the world as a whole to the particular part of the world in which the believers happen to be living.

“These last considerations raise an important question, which must now be considered in some detail. Does the world as a whole possess the value and meaning that we constantly attribute to certain parts of it (such as human beings and their works); and, if so, what is the nature of that value and meaning? This is a question which, a few years ago, I should not even have posed. For, like so many of my contemporaries, I took it for granted that there was no meaning. This was partly due to the fact that I shared the common belief that the scientific picture of an abstraction from reality was a true picture of reality as a whole; partly also to other, non-intellectual reasons. I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption.

“Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We donʼt know because we donʼt want to know. It is our will that decides how and upon what subjects we shall use our intelligence. Those who detect no meaning in the world generally do so because, for one reason or another, it suits their books that the world should be meaningless.” [p. 311-312]

“No philosophy is completely disinterested. The pure love of truth is always mingle to some extent with the need, consciously or unconsciously felt by even the noblest and the most intelligent philosophers, to justify a given form of personal or social behavior, to rationalize the traditional prejudices of a given class or community. The philosopher who finds meaning in the world is concerned, not only to elucidate that meaning, but also to prove that is it most clearly expressed in some established religion, some accepted code of morals. The philosopher who find no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is not valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. The voluntary, as opposed to the intellectual, reasons for holding the doctrines of materialism, for examples, may be predominantly erotic, as they were in the case of Lamettrie (see his lyrical account of the pleasures of the bed in La Volupte and at the end of LʼHomme Machine [‘The Human Machine,’ a work of materialist philosophy]), or predominantly political, as they were in the case of Karl Marx. The desire to justify a particular form of political organization and, in some cases, of a personal will to power has played an equally large part in the formulation of philosophies postulating the existence of meaning in the world. Christian philosophers have found no difficulty in justifying imperialism, war, the capitalistic system, the use of torture, the censorship of the press, and ecclesiastical tyrannies of every sort from the tyranny of Rome to the tyrannies of [Calvinʼs] Geneva and [Puritan] New England. In all cases they have shown that the meaning of the world was such as to be compatible with, or actually most completely expressed by, the iniquities I have mentioned above — iniquities which happened, of course, to serve the personal or sectarian interests of the philosophers concerned. In due course, there arose philosophers who denied not only the right of Christian special pleaders to justify iniquity by an appeal to the meaning of the world, but even their right to find any such meaning whatsoever. In the circumstances, the fact was not surprising. One unscrupulous distortion of the truth tends to beget other and opposite distortions. Passions may be satisfied in the process; but the disinterested love of knowledge suffers eclipse. [p. 314-316]

“For myself as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was an admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever… The men of the new Enlightenment, which occurred in the middle years of the nineteenth century, once again used meaninglessness as a weapon against the [conservative] reactionaries. The Victorian passion for respectability was, however, so great that, during the period when they were formulated, neither Positivism nor Darwinism was used as a justification for sexual indulgence. [p. 316-317]

Aldous Huxleyʼs Warning against Sexual Addiction

“It is only when it takes the form of physical addiction that sex is evil. It is also evil when it manifests itself as a way of satisfying the lust for power or the climberʼs craving for position and social distinction.” [p. 358]

Aldous Huxley on Faith and Ethics

“There are some… who believe that no desirable ‘change of heart’ can be brought about without supernatural aid. There must be, they say, a return to religion. (Unhappily, they cannot agree on the religion to which the return should be made.)” [p. 2]

“In practice, Christianity, like Hinduism or Buddhism, is not one religion, but several religions, adapted to the needs of different types of human beings. A Christian church in Southern Spain, or Mexico, or Sicily is singularly like a Hindu temple. The eye is delighted by the same gaudy colors, the same tripe-like decorations, the same gesticulating statues; the nose inhales the same intoxicating smells; the ear and, along with it, the understanding, are lulled by the drone of the same incomprehensible incantations [in the old Catholic Latin mass tradition], roused by the same loud, impressive music.

“At the other end of the scale, consider the chapel of a Cistercian monastery and the meditation hall of a community of Zen Buddhists. They are equally bare; aids to devotion (in other words fetters holding back the soul from enlightenment) are conspicuously absent from either building. Here are two distinct religions for two distinct kinds of human beings.” [p. 262-263]

“In Christianity bhakti [or, loving devotion] towards a personal being has always been the most popular form of religious practice. Up to the time of the [Catholic] Counter-Reformation, however, the way of knowledge (“mystical knowledge” as it is called in Chrstian language) was accorded an honorable place beside the way of devotion. From the middle of the sixteenth century onwards the way of knowledge came to be neglected and even condemned. We are told by Dom John Chapman that “Mercurian, who was general of the society (of Jesus) from 1573 to 1580, forbade the use of the works of Tauler, Ruysbroek, Suso, Harphius, St. Gertrude, and St. Mechtilde.” Every effort was made by the [Catholic] Counter-Reformers to heighten the worshipperʼs devotion to a personal divinity. The literary content of Baroque art is hysterical, almost epileptic, in the violence of its emotionality. It even becomes necessary to call in physiology as an aid to feeling. The ecstasies of the saints are represented by seventeenth-century artists as being frankly sexual. Seventeenth-century drapery writhes like so much tripe. In the equivocal personage of Margaret Mary Alacocque, seventeenth-century piety pours over a bleeding and palpitating heart. From this orgy of emotionalism and sensationalism Catholic Christianity seems never completely to have recovered.” [p. 281-282]

“First Shakespeare sonnets seem meaningless; first Bach fugues, a bore; first differential equations, sheer torture. But training changes the nature of our spiritual experiences. In due course, contact with an obscurely beautiful poem, an elaborate piece of [musical] counterpoint or of mathematical reasoning, causes us to feel direct intuitions of beauty and significance. It is the same in the moral world. A man who has trained himself in goodness come to have certain direct intuitions about character, about the relations between human beings, about his own position in the world — intuitions that are quite different from the intuitions of the average sensual man… [p. 333]

“The ideal of non-attachment has been formulated and systematically preached again and again in the course of the last three thousand years. We find it (along with everything else) in Hinduism. It is at the very heart of the teachings of the Buddha. For Chinese readers the doctrine is formulated by Lao Tsu. A little later, in Greece, the ideal of non-attachment is proclaimed, albeit with a certain, pharisaic priggishness, by the Stoics. The Gospel of Jesus is essentially a gospel of non-attachment to “the things of this world,” and of attachment to God. Whatever may have been the aberrations of organized Christianity — and they range from extravagant asceticism to the most brutally cynical forms of realpolitik — there has been no lack of Christian philosophers to reaffirm the ideal of non-attachment. Here is John Tauler, for example, telling us that ‘freedom is complete purity and detachment which seeketh the Eternal…’ Here is the author of “The Imitation of Christ,” who bids us ‘pass through many cares as though without care; not after the manner of a sluggard, but by a certain prerogative of a free mind, which does not cleave with inordinate affection to any creature.’” [p. 5, 6]

“…as knowledge, sensibility and non-attachment increase, the contents of the judgments of value passed even by men belonging to dissimilar cultures, tend to approximate. The ethical doctrines taught in the Tao Te Ching, by Buddha and his followers, in the Sermon on the Mount, and by the best of the Christian saints, are not dissimilar.” [p. 327]

Aldous Huxley on the Influence of the Worst Aspects of the Bible on the History of Christianity

“Examples of reversion to barbarism through mere ignorance are unhappily abundant in the history of Christianity. The early Christians made the enormous mistake of burdening themselves with the Old Testament, which contains, along with much fine poetry and sound morality the history of the cruelties and treacheries of a Bronze-Age people, fighting for a place in the sun under the protection of its anthropomorphic tribal deity… Those whom it suited to be ignorant and, along with them, the innocent and uneducated could find in this treasure-house of barbarous stupidity justifications for every crime and folly. Texts to justify such abominations as religious wars, the persecution of heretics… could be found in the sacred books and were in fact used again and again throughout the whole history of the Christian Church. [p. 328]

“In this remarkable compendium of Bronze-Age literature, God is personal to the point of being almost sub-human. Too often the believer has felt justified in giving way to his worst passions by the reflection that, in doing so, he is basing his conduct on that of a God who feels jealousy and hatred… and behaves in general like a particularly ferocious oriental tyrant. The frequency with which men have identified the prompting of their own passions with the voice of an all too personal God is really appalling.” [p. 276-277]

“According to his very inadequate biographers, Jesus of Nazareth was never preoccupied with philosophy, art, music, or science and ignored almost completely the problems of politics, economics and sexual relations. It is also recorded of him that he blasted a fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season, that he scourged the shopkeepers in the temple precincts and caused a herd of swine to drown. Scrupulous devotion to and imitation of the person of Jesus have resulted only too frequently in a fatal tendency, on the part of earnest Christians, to despise artistic creation and philosophic thought; to disparage the inquiring intellect, to evade all long-range, large-scale problems of politics and economics, and to believe themselves justified in displaying anger, or as they would doubtless prefer to call it, ‘righteous indignation.’” [p. 275-276]

Stellar Evolution, Grand Canyon, Loch Ness Monster and Humans and Dinosaurs in Bible?

Stellar Evolution

Latest info on stellar evolution:

An amateur astronomer witnessed the birth of a new star. The new object had appeared alongside the well-known gas cloud known as Messier 78. The star came out of its enclosing cocoon over the past few weeks. An urgent appeal has gone out to astronomers to monitor the object which is now known as McNeilʼs nebula. Here is the story at BBC News Last Updated, Thursday, 12 February, 2004

Speaking of evolution, I like to start with the stars. Stellar evolution is about as close to undeniable evidence as you can get. I recently wrote a young creationist named Anna, who asked me some basic creationist questions that she thought were unanswerable and told her to read Astronomy and Sky and Telescope magazine. Star formation is being observed and measured right now, via satellite telescopes that are able to record radiation at different levels of the electro-magnetic spectrum, like x-ray radiation, and other types (visible light can be seen by the human eye but visible light is only a tiny portion of the entire range of radiation lying along the electro-magnetic spectrum). Such satellite measurements include measuring the speed of gasses rushing together toward a central point of gravitational collapse. Fu Orionus, a new star, was observed brightening the sky for the first time decades ago. There is a lot of data on star formation at present, and more is being gathered all the time. Stars form in cloudy nebulas (regions of high gas concentration). And the ages of the stars in those nebulas is youthful, the ages of such nebulas also fall along a particular spectrum of ages as expected by the current theories of star formation. Nothing unexpected there. In fact even creationist astronomers have remarked how good the evidence for stellar evolution is. See these quotations from Creationists:

Stellar Evolution

  • “…the theory of stellar structure appears to be founded on a good physical basis and…stellar evolution is intimately related to stellar structure…
  • “If creationists wish to scrap stellar evolution completely, then it is incumbent on us to rework stellar structure and/or physics in a convincing fashion…
  • “The standard observational tool used in studying stellar structure and evolution is the Hertzsprung-Russell (H-R) diagram… It consists of a plot of stellar luminosity increasing upward and temperature increasing to the left…Most stars are found on a roughly diagonal band called the main sequence (MS)…
  • “This agreement is quite impressive and the physical assumptions that go into it are so well founded it is doubtful that many creationists would have much to argue with in main sequence (MS) stellar structure. However, what is generally called post MS evolution is not far removed from the brief outline of stellar structure given above.
  • “The most massive stars may pass through successive steps of fusing helium nuclei with increasingly more massive nuclei up to iron…Note that these transitions have not actually been observed. However, they are based on physics principles and will naturally occur…
  • “The upshot is that the most massive stars have MS lifetimes of only a few hundred thousand years (of course, still much longer than young-age creationists would allow), while the lowest mass stars have MS lifetimes approaching 100 billion years…
  • “And evolutionary assumption concludes that the stars in a star cluster should form from a single cloud so that the members represent…a homogenous group. Different clusters should have different ages, and though they technically have different compositions, even large differences in composition do not seriously affect the overall appearance of an H-R diagram…
  • “The agreement of the theory [of stellar evolution] is quite impressive…
  • “[The expected evolutionary] trend between globular and open clusters is observed…
  • “Evidence [exists] that the formation of planetary nebulae and the evolution of white dwarfs are related…These two ages have a very good correlation…
  • “A similar relationship holds for neutron stars and supernova remnants. As with planetary nebulae, the expansion velocity and observed size of the remnant can be used to estimate the time since the explosion…Where a pulsar can be identified in a supernova remnant, the ages of the remnant and the pulsar are well correlated.
  • “Very brief discussions of stellar structure and evolution have been presented. Though it would seem that creationists would not have much with which to quarrel in the former, most would largely dismiss the latter. However, the two are intimately related, and one cannot be rejected without seriously calling into question the other. We are appealing to readers to give much attention to the study of stellar evolution…”

Danny R. Faulkner & Don B. De Young [young-universe creationists], “Toward a Creationist Astronomy,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 28, Dec. 1991, pp. 87-91

“Perhaps the most important remaining question [in astronomy] for [young- universe] creationists is the origin of the turnoff points in the H-R diagrams of different clusters. The stars are real physical objects and presumably follow physical laws; we would rather not take the easy way out by saying simply that ‘God made them that way.’ But if creationists take the position of rejecting stellar evolution, they should provide a feasible alternative.”
Paul Steidl [young-universe creationist], The Earth, the Stars, and the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979), p. 153—as quoted by Howard J. Van Till in The Fourth Day: What the Bible and the Heavens Are Telling Us about the Creation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), p. 239

Also google the Ph.D. astronomers “Hugh Ross” (at Reasons to Believe) and “Robert Newman” (as The Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute) on the internet because they are creationist Christians who both agree that the evidence for stellar evolution is overwhelming, and they have even debated their young-earth creationist brethren on that point.


The creationist I mentioned above, named Anna, was persistent, however, and continued asking me more questions, that I replied to…

Anna: Ok, so every about what 20 years we have a star expolde, right?

Edward: Hello again Anna. I donʼt know what the average number of stellar explosions is in the cosmos, and I sincerely doubt that astronomers know either. It would be impossible to keep track of every exploding star in the visible cosmos. First of all, do you know what a “galaxy” is? It is a conglomeration of about a billion stars. We live in a spiral-shaped galaxy called the Milky Way and our planet is found circling only one star that is found on one of the spiral arms, closer to the outward tip of the arm than toward the center of the galaxy as a whole. In the beginning of the last century, telescopes could only see the stars in our galaxy. In fact, with the visible eye, that is all you see when you look up into the sky, just the stars of the Milky Way Galaxy, and of those, you can only distinguish about 8000 stars at most with the unaided eye on a clear night. But there are about a billion stars in our galaxy alone, most of which we canʼt see with the unaided eye, and beyond those stars in our galaxy there lay even fainter white dots in the sky that only telescopes can see. Each of those faint white dots, upon closer examination, turns out to be other galaxies. But at the beginning of the last century, astronomers thought those faint white dots were just cloudy nebulas of hot gas. Better telescopes were invented and those blurry nebulas were found to be a multitude of spiral shaped galaxies like our own. Then even better telescopes were invented, telescopes that circle the earth, like the Hubble scope, and we found out that there were about 50 billion galaxies out there, and today, with the latest satellite telescopes we know there are over 100 billion galaxies out there. In other words, if you raise your fist to the nighttime sky, the area of the sky that your fist covers, contains about a 100 million galaxies in the depths of space and time. But you canʼt see them. So I doubt that astronomers are able to keep track of all the stars in a 100 billion galaxies or how often a star in each of those galaxies explodes. Or course if you were just looking at our own galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy, Iʼm sure they have some rough idea of how often such explosions occur just in our galaxy, and even where they occur most often. Recently, astronomers defined within our own galaxy, a “Galactic Habitable Zone” that has fewer cases of stars going nova than in other regions.


Anna: So why is there evidence that only about three hundred of them exploded?

Edward: I do not know where you got that number from, as I said, the cosmos is far too vast for astronomers to keep track of every exploding star. But there is one exploding star in particular that you should learn more about, since it provided some strong evidence in favor of an old-cosmos.


Anna: If the earth was indeed millions of years old woulnd there be more evidence of novas / super novas?

Edward: There is evidence of galaxies colliding in the present as well as in the past, there is evidence of stars still being born, and of stars exploding, and there are also some huge rings of matter that keep expanding from stellar explosions that took place in the distant past. Judging by the present measured speeds of the expansion of such huge rings of matter, their initial explosions had to have taken place long before the time when young-earth creationists say the world was created.


Anna: what are your thoughts on the Grand Canyon?

Edward: Are you asking whether I believe the Grand Canyon was formed by a single world-wide Flood? My answer would be no. And why is there only one Grand Canyon on the entire face of the earth? And why does it lay so far inland? Surely waters rushing off the continent during the months when the Flood subsided would have created canyons galore all along the ridges of the continents.


Anna: How do you belive it was created? Not by the river that runs through the bottom, i hope. It was made during the flood and all those layes of coal were to.

Edward: Steve Austinʼs Grand Canyon Erosion Argument: A Mathematical Sleight of Hand

A geologist reviews a creationist book on the Grand Canyon

Creation Walk Through the Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyonʼs geology, starting with the Cambrian, and going through several websites to a final conclusion, written by a geologist

The Entire Geological Column in North Dakota

A geologist (who is also a former young-earth creationist) reviews Answers In Genesisʼ attempt to defend Flood Geology

Assorted articles on Flood Geology, including a few on the Grand Canyon and one by me at the near end of the list.

Why Geology Shows Sedimentation to Be too Slow for a Global Flood, written by a former young-earther who is now a professional geologist


Anna: What are your theories on the Loch Ness Monster? Do you belive that its a living dinosoar?

Edward: The photograph that kicked off the craze for the supposed monster in Loch Ness, Scotland was taken in 1934. In 1994, one of the people involved in taking the original picture admitted it was a trick. The “monster” was created by attaching an artificial head to a toy submarine which was just over a foot long. Other evidence collected by scientists and skeptics over the years have exposed other photos as faked or misread. The claims that a huge monster exists in Loch Ness have also been debunked by research showing that such a creature could not survive on the food available in the loch; even less could a substantial colony of such creatures - necessary for the survival of individual creatures over the centuries - be supported. Furthermore, the lack of any credible physical evidence of a creature or a colony of creatures after six decades of intensive searching by numerous expeditions would seem to make Nessieʼs existence unlikely.


Anna: There has been proof of dinosoars living with humans and the bible talks about it to.

Edward: No it doesnʼt. The Bible in Job only speaks about Behemoth and Leviathan, two beasts of mythical proportions, perhaps modeled on some large animals, but mythically exaggerated. People in Jobʼs day didnʼt know what beasts existed in the world, all sorts of strange mythical beasts were invented, especially to live in the lands beyond the edges of the then known world. One of Jobʼs beasts even breathes fire. Why it didnʼt singe its own mouth, lips or nostrils is a good question. Why it didnʼt risk inhaling any of the fire into its lungs is another question since itʼs mouth and nostrils were filled with fire and smoke, and how it lit chemicals to produce flames is another question. No animal on earth produces flames (the bombardier beetle produces only hot liquid).

If you want to learn more about ancient mythical beasts in the ancient Near East and how the Bible came to also employ such stories in the book of Job, read, Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in the Biblical Tradition by Bernard F. Batto (Paperback - November 1992)

Related Links

Geology

Creationism and Human Evolution

Hominids

(From the Talk Origins Archive)
The usual creationist response to hominid fossils is to claim that there are no intermediates; each one is either a human or an ape. It doesnʼt matter that some of the “humans” have a brain size well below the normal human range, heavy brow ridges, no chin, and teeth larger than modern ones set in a projecting jaw, or that some of the “apes” were bipedal, with very humanlike teeth, and brains larger than those of similar sized apes. There are some skulls which cannot be reliably assigned to either genus.
(Willis 1989)
This is exactly what we would expect if evolution had occurred. If, on the other hand, creationism was true and there was a large gap between humans and apes, it should be easy to separate hominid fossils into humans and apes. This is not the case. As will be shown, creationists themselves cannot agree which fossils are humans and which are apes.

It would not matter even if creationists could decide where to put the dividing line between humans and apes. No matter where it is placed, the humans just above the line and the apes just below it will be more similar to one another than they will be to other humans or other apes.
Although there are many variants of creationism, the following sections deal only with the arguments of young-earth creationists, who hold to a very rigid literal interpretation of the Bible. They typically believe that the earth was created less than 20,000 years ago, in the space of six 24-hour days. Old-earth creationists usually accept the age of the earth given by geologists (4.6 billion years), but differ considerably in their acceptance of the theory of evolution.


Young Earth Creationists Admit Numerous Hominid Fossils Exist

“I was surprised to find that instead of enough fossils barely to fit into a coffin, as one evolutionist once stated [in 1982], there were over 4,000 hominid fossils as of 1976. Over 200 specimens have been classified as Neandertal and about one hundred as Homo erectus. More of these fossils have been found since 1976.”
— Michael J. Oard [creationist], in his review of the book, Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils, in the Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 30, March 1994, p. 222

“The current figures [circa 1994] are even more impressive: over 220 Homo erectus fossil individuals discovered to date, possibly as many as 80 archaic Homo sapiens fossil individuals discovered to date, and well over 300 Neandertal fossil individuals discovered to date.”
— Marvin L. Lubenow [creationist], author of Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils, in a letter to the editor of the Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 31, Sept. 1994, p. 70


The evidence from ape fossils primitve apes are not the same as modern apes in some ways primitive ape anatomy more closely resembles modern human anatomy than it resembles modern ape anatomy

Over 100 species of primitive apes are known to have existed during the Miocene period in Europe and Africa. Those primitive ape species appeared before the first human-like apes (Australopithecines). And the primitive apes all differ from modern great ape species in that the primitive apes were all relatively nearer to modern day human skeletal anatomy than todayʼs great apes are. For instance, the primitive apes all had small hands, and had legs and arms the same length; while modern great apes all have large hands with long fingers, and their arms are longer than their legs. The primitive apes also had no simian shelf in their jaws, again like modern humans; while the modern great apes all have a simian shelf in their jaws, unlike modern humans. [See David R. Begun, “Planet of the Apes,” Scientific American, August 2003] So the general skeletal anatomy of the earliest known apes were nearer to human than is the skeletal anatomy of modern apes that have diverged and gone in a separate anatomical direction.


Non-Fossil Evidence

Man and chimp are nearer each other genetically than either of them are to the other apes. One early estimate of the genetic distance between man and chimp was done in the 1970ʼs using the technique of pairing up the two halves of DNA strings from different species to see what percentage of the DNA stands would join together and what percentage did not. Humans and great apes were found to be no more dissimilar than sibling species of fruit flies:
“We have obtained estimates of genetic differentiation between humans and the great apes no greater than, say, those observed between morphologically indistinguishable (sibling) species of Drosophila flies (fruit flies).”
— Elizabeth J. Bruce & Francisco J. Ayala (Dept. of Genetics, Univ. of Calif.), “Humans and Apes Are Genetically Very Similar,” Nature, Nov. 16, 1978, Vol 276, p. 265.

“New genetic evidence demonstrates that lineages of chimps (currently Pan troglodytes) and humans (Homo sapiens) diverged so recently that chimps should be [reclassified] as Homo troglodytes. The move would make chimps full members of our genus Homo, along with Neandertals, and all other human-like fossil species. ‘We humans appear as only slightly remodeled chimpanzee-like apes,’ says the study… Within important sequence stretches of these functionally significant genes, humans and chimps share 99.4 percent identity. (Some previous DNA work remains controversial. It concentrated on genetic sequences that are not parts of genes and are less functionally important, said Goodman.)…”
“Chimps Belong on Human Branch of Family Tree, Study Says” John Pickrell in England for National Geographic News May 20, 2003

Lastly, if you were to compare the genetic distance not between man and chimp, but between man and their common ancestor, the genetic distance must be halved once again. So the genetic distance is not [unbridgeable] by any means. Even one of the founders of I.D., Michael Denton, has recognized the [bridgeable] nature of the genetic distance between species and has [abandoned] his former “anti-common-descent” views as a result:
“One of the most surprising discoveries which has arisen from DNA sequencing has been the remarkable finding that the genomes of all organisms are clustered very close together in a tiny region of DNA sequence space forming a tree of related sequences that can all be interconverted via a series of tiny incremental natural steps. So the sharp discontinuities, referred to above, between different organs and adaptations and different types of organisms, which have been the bedrock of antievolutionary arguments for the past century, have now greatly diminished at the DNA level. Organisms which seem very different at a morphological level can be very close together at the DNA level.”
— Michael Denton, Natureʼs Destiny (chapter 12, p. 276)

Some creationists try to counter the evidence of incredibly small differences between the human and chimp genomes with arguments such as this one:
“Humans have 3 billion ‘letters’ (base pairs) of DNA information in each cell, so a two percent difference [between human and chimp genomes] is actually 60 million ‘spelling errors!’ Of course, this is not ‘error’ but twenty 500-page books worth of new information that needs to be explained by mutation and selection.”
— Jonathan Sarfati [creationist], Refuting Evolution 2, p. 186

Response: “Sarfati is trying to classify every difference in the genomes of humans and chimps as ‘new information’ that would have to be introduced either into the human or the chimp genome since the last common ancestor of humans and chimps. What he neglects is the fact that the vast majority of those differences are single nucleotide differences in genes (or, more often, in stretches of noncoding DNA) that merely change one amino acid in a protein (with no change in function), or make no change to the protein at all, or occur in DNA sequences that make no protein. Others are stretches of DNA of which one species has more than one copy — to the other speciesʼ single copy of that same stretch of DNA (such duplications are common mutations in the genome) — or that have simply moved from place to place among the noncoding DNA, or similar differences. So the facts are not as Sarfati presents them, but rather the vast majority of differences between human and chimp DNA have been identified, and they are the most common sorts of changes that mutations have been observed to produce. Maybe there are some variant genes of a type that mutations have not been known to produce, but Sarfati does not make any such distinction, nor provide evidence of such a discovery. What we do see in the vast majority of cases are simple duplications, deletions, translocations, and point alterations of stretches in the other genome, all of which have been observed to occur naturally.”
— Steven J.


Chromosomal Evidence

Normally, each chromosome is shaped like a long hot dog wearing an extra-tight slimming girdling in the middle, and that tapered region in the center of each chromosome is where the “centromere” is located. Human Chromosome #2 contains remnants of a second centromere that would be expected if our chromosome was once two separate chromosomes each with their own centromere. In the great apes today they have two chromosomes, #2 & #3 whose banding patterns match up with the extra-long single Human Chromosome #2. In other words, Human Chromosome #2 appears to have resulted from the fusion of two ancestral chromosomes still found in all the living species of apes, and that explains why Human Chromosome #2 contains the remnant of a second centromere. Moreover, the chromosomal number and length and distinctive banding patterns of all the other chromosomes found in both humans and chimpanzees line up extremely well, as can be seen at the websites below that feature photos and diagrams.
See the article “Human Chromosome 2 is a fusion of two ancestral chromosomes” by Alec MacAndrew

as well as the article, “Comparison of the Human and Great Ape Chromosomes as Evidence for Common Ancestry”

For further Human and Chimpanzee chromosome comparisons see Beth Kramerʼs site.

Also click to sub-page
which provides a detailed matching of human and chimp chromosomes 1-4. Note how the chromosomal banding patterns on the second chromosome in humans lines up with those in two shorter chimp chromosomes, while all the other chromosomal numbers and banding patterns of chimp and human match up quite closely. For matchings on other chromosomes

Note: humans have 22 chromosomes (called autosomes), plus the X and Y.

For a beautiful image matching all the chromosomes of four hominids — human, chimpanzee, gorilla, and orangutan. Finally see the Hominoid Phylogeny (ancestral tree) based on these chromosome comparisons

The Paluxy Mantracks Story

The Paluxy Mantracks Story

The creationist book that jumpstarted the young-earth movement as Henry Morrisʼ, The Genesis Flood, published in the early 1960s. In that book he featured photographs of individual slabs of limestone that contained what looked like a giant human footprint in the middle of each slab. The slabs were allegedly dug up near the Paluxy river in Texas. The Paluxy river region soon became a Mecca (or holy pilgrimage site) for young-earth creationists (though some young-earthers like those at Loma Linda University, had cross-sectioned some of the original limestone slabs and wrote a report early on that said they were just carvings, not genuine human prints). By the mid-1980s the existence of “man tracks” in Paluxy was being questioned even by the two largest and most influential young-earth institutions, The Institute for Creation Research or ICR (that Henry Morris himself had founded), and Answers in Genesis or AiG. Recently, I digitized the color slides of Glen Kuban, who played a major role in convincing ICR that the Paluxy “mantracks” were not human. Glenʼs slides will soon be on the web.

John Morris Of ICR Speaking In 1986 On The Paluxy Data:

It would now be improper for creationists to continue to use the Paluxy data as evidence against evolution, in the light of these questions, there is still much that is not known about the tracks and continued research is in order.” (Jan. 1986)

AiGʼs Recent Comments On The Paluxy “Man Prints”:

Some prominent creationist promoters of these tracks have long since withdrawn their support. Some of the allegedly human tracks may be artefacts of erosion of dinosaur tracks obscuring the claw marks. There is a need for properly documented research on the tracks before we would use them to argue the coexistence of humans and dinosaurs.”

Snelling Of Aig Tried To Keep The Paluxy Data Alive Back In 1986:

“In order to discredit creationists, not long ago the evolutionists argued that many so-called human-like footprints were nothing but erosion marks, carvings, and “midnight chisel marks”. Ironically, these SAME footprints will probably now be claimed to be the footprints of an unknown dinosaur because of some perplexing stains! All of which is a sober reminder — none of us have ever seen dinosaurs make footprints.” (Creation (Ex Nihilo), Andrew Snelling, March, 1986, Vol. 8, No.2, p. 37)

E.T.B.ʼs Comment On Snellingʼs 1986 Remarks:

The “mantrack” discoveries were not all made at once. First, the well-defined carvings were found (being sold during the depression), one print per limestone slab, right in the middle of the slab. Thousands of loose limestone slabs of different sizes line the shores of the Paluxy. Anyone can one pick up and take it home to “work on.” Carl Baugh or Henry Morris or Burdick quoted an old-timer who said they “saw the print right in the rock,” but did they mean they saw such such prints in situ? A later interviewer went back to the same old-timer and asked them where they saw the rock, and the old-timer answered, “It was on the back of so-and-soʼs truck.” There are also confessions by carvers and their kin, how they used a loose limestone slab, a hammer and chisel, and acid on rags, to smooth out the carved human prints they created. The carvings were what the earliest tales of “man tracks” at Paluxy were based on, they also featured the most well-defined “prints” (though featuring amateurish anatomical errors). Several such limestone slabs featuring alleged human prints were purchased by Loma Linda (creationist 7th Day Adventist) University and cross-sectioned and declared to be nothing but carvings by YECs at Loma Linda who wrote a report on their findings and doubts.

But the carvings initiated more YEC interest, and soon some YECʼs visited Paluxy and made the film, “Footprints in Stone,” but for all of their searching and filming they never found any in situ man prints that resembled the carvings, they only found trails of indistinct oblong impressions that they claimed were made by humans and/or giant humans. (They also found isolated wearings in the rocks that were not part of any trail but that they claimed could be viewed as a “print” of a “human” sort.)

Glen Kuban pointed out in Origins Research (a creationist publication begun with ICR seed money), that there were nearby trackways in Paluxy that showed indistinct oblong track impressions, and in those trackways the oblong impressions were mixed with tridactyl impressions, and vice versa, as you followed the trackways along their full length. So, evolutionists have no trouble identifying the indistinct oblong trackways as dinosaurian in origin.

There are also many erosion features, shallow oblong holes, along both banks of the Paluxy river — these miniature potholes were carved out by water streaming in one direction down the river. They are of an extremely wide variety of sizes and shapes.

In some cases like the famous “Von Daniken print” (a single “human-foot shaped” feature in Paluxy that was featured in Von Danikenʼs film, “Chariots of the Gods,” and in creationist publications, including Weston-Smithʼs book, Manʼs Origin and Manʼs Destiny), both Von Daniken and later creationists left the gravel on one side of the feature, and even wetted it in, to make it look like the printʼs right side was as well defined as its left side, but in fact the “printʼs” right side does not exist at all, but is flush with the rock, and it only exists when you leave gravel there or “wet the print” to create a “right side of the foot” in your mindʼs imagination. (You can see how this works when you view photos taken from different angles with the print clean of gravel and not wetted.) Even John Morris noted his own doubts concerning the Von Daniken print. Morris admitted when it was first photographed it had only four “toes” (the first two being equal-sized in an anatomically abnormal fashion), but years later a fifth “toe” began appearing in photos, and even Morris suggests that the “fifth toe” was not originally in evidence, but probably resulted from later tampering.

The story of the Paluxy “manprints” debacle appeared in Creation/Evolution Journal in which Ronnie Hastingʼs published his daily journal of interactions with ICR researchers who came to look at what Kuban had found, and their reactions, at first, dismissal, then taking their own more careful second and third looks, and finally admitting they couldnʼt really see the “human-ness” of the trackways any more than Kuban could:

Kubanʼs photos and detailed site diagrams were also published in black and white in Origins Research, a creationist journal that originated with seed money from ICR. Copies of past issues of Origins Research are still available at the ARN website, for a price:

Origins Research Volume 9, Number 1 - Spring/Summer 1986
The Taylor Site “Man Tracks” Glen J Kuban
A Review of ICR Impact Article 151 Glen J Kuban
A Follow up on the Paluxy Mystery John Morris
A Footprints in Stone: The Current Situation Films for Christ Assoc.


Snellingʼs 1986 remarks on the “strange red-brown stains on the rocks”

“The unknown significance of hithertofore unexposed strange red-brown stains on the rocks in and around the footprints renders the need for caution until further research explains this occurrence.” (Creation (Ex Nihilo), Andrew Snelling, March, 1986, Vol. 8, No.2, p. 37)

E.T.B.ʼs Comment: The reddish “stain” revealing the tridactyl nature of the alleged “man tracks” can be seen even in the early YEC film, “Footprints in Stone,” long before Kuban ever arrived on the scene. Also, the “stains” are not superficial: Drill core samples taken at the edges of the stained surface showed that the reddish sediments curved with the impression of the dinosaurʼs foot beneath the surface, as Kuban showed via his drill core samples that he photographed.


AiGʼs Latest Claim: “Human and Dino Prints” Found Together in Russia

E.T.Bʼs Comment: AiG admits that it is best to remain skeptical of “magic bullet” stories that can allegedly overthrow an old-earth or evolution in one shot, especially if such stories are not thoroughly researched.

AiGʼs latest report of “human and dino prints” found together in Russia has not been researched, no photos, just a newspaper article. So by their own definition they ought to be skeptical about this new evidence, no?

Snelling at AiG has admitted that perhaps there will never be found any indisputably genuine pre-flood human fossils or pre-flood human artifacts or evidence of pre-flood dwellings (such as a series of small walls found in Cretaceous or earlier strata). Instead, Snelling has suggested that perhaps no evidence of pre-Flood human beings may ever be found: “When God pronounced judgment on the world, He said, ‘I will destroy [blot out] man whom I have created from the face of the earth’ (Gen. 6:7). Perhaps the lack of pre-flood human fossils is part of the fulfillment of this judgment?”


Answers in Genesisʼ Recent Comments on Carl Baughʼs Research

(Carl Baugh, Kent Hovind, and Ron Wyatt (deceased) are among the last remaining supporters of the Paluxy “manprints”):
“[We suggest creationists do not use…] many of Carl Baughʼs creation ‘evidences.’ Sorry to say, AiG thinks that heʼs well meaning but that he unfortunately uses a lot of material that is not sound scientifically. So we advise against relying on any ‘evidence’ he provides, unless supported by creationist organisations with reputations for Biblical and scientific rigor. Unfortunately, there are talented creationist speakers with reasonably orthodox understandings of Genesis (e.g. Kent Hovind) who continue to promote some of the Wyatt and Baugh ‘evidences’ despite being approached on the matter (Ed. note: see our Maintaining Creationist Integrity, our response to Hovindʼs reply to this article).”

Transcendental Argument for God's Existence

Aaron: TAG stands for the transcendental argument for Godʼs existence. Van Til and Bahnsen argue that science, logic, and morality all presuppose the existence of the Christian (read Calvinist) God. Amazingly enough, their attacks on science and logic seem to stem from the radical skepticism of David Hume. Hume argues that there is no rational basis for induction…in other words just because the sun comes up today doesnʼt mean that it necessarily will come up tomorrow. Still, science presupposes that induction works thus they presuppose the existence of God. In a nutshell, proponents of TAG argue that everybody, by their actions, demonstrate that they know that God exists. They presuppose that Christianity is true and the Bible is infallible. Thus, they maintain that all knowledge is contrary to scripture must be wrong. So, they hold that their worldview is internally consistant. At the same time, they argue that inconsistancies can be found in every other worldview.
Transcendental Argument for God's Existence

Edward: Naturalists point out the opposite, that the regularity of the universe appears to be natural and hence does not require Godʼs existence.

And of course, the history of modern day science, though it “began” among mono-theists, is now a discipline all on itʼs own, practiced by people of all faiths and non-faiths. So there is no proof that science requires monotheism. (The Greeks were reasoning their way toward new inventions and conducted some of the earliest scientific experiments long before Christian mono-theism arose, and of course, Christian mono-theism also was originally so supernaturally based that it also served to thwart many scientific investigations in favor of demonic and angelic explanations of the cosmosʼ behavior.)

And lastly Iʼve just read about the discovery of Omega numbers. Unpredictable numbers, and their discovery has thrown a further wrench in the belief that mathematics and/or logic are somehow “proven” disciplines. Itʼs always been a matter of discovering things, like biologists discover new species. Or like discovering that the sun rises again and again in very similar fashion.

All in all, the TAG argument is neither an argument nor “proof” of anything, but an interpretive outlook. I believe, having read Rushdooneyʼs The One And The Many, that Rushdooney thought even the Trinity could be “proved” if you began with the “right presuppositions.” Itʼs the presuppositions and interpretations that differ. There is no “proof” in presuppositional apologetics.

Or as Timothy Leary once put it, “I donʼt believe that the truth will set you free, because we all have such a tremendous ability to rationalize the truth.”

Science is no longer a search for *truth*?

Naturalism has captured science, such that science is no longer a search for *truth*, i.e. what *actually* happened, but the best explanation consistent with naturalistic philosophy, whether it is true or not.
Science is no longer a search for *truth*?

Edward: Correction, philosophy and theology are a search for *truth* Science is a search for knowledge.

Invoking miracles to explain how we get from “this to that,” adds nothing to human knowledge. Science is an attempt to build on the knowledge we have, to hypothesize and discover connections between things we know. Miracles have no connection except in the supernatural mind of God. They have no explanatory value, they cannot be compared one to another, since each miracle is unique and uniquely inexplicable.

I have explained in previous emails that the genetic “leap” from the common ancestor to both human and chimpanzee is quite small, especially concerning the essential functioning genes. And the “leap” lay within known mutation frequencies of genetic change over time.

If anyone wishes to believe that God kept dipping his finger in the brew over the five-million-year-time span lying between man and chimp and their common ancestor, that is their prerogative to believe thatʼs what God did. Neither is it up to science to prove a universal negative regarding any and all miracles.

But speaking of knowledge, scientific knowledge, what we DO know is that the evidence points to man and chimpanzee sharing a common ancestor approximately five million years ago. The genetic evidence is quite plain on that matter as he himself has pointed out concerning the shared lack of a gene to produce vitamin C and shared retroviral genes in homologous DNA locations in both human beings and chimpanzees. I would add to that the evidence of chromosomal fusion that can be seen in the human chromosome no.2 which certainly has left behind marks inside the chromosome itself of being a fusion of two chromosomes (that are still separate in the chimpanzee lineage).(Article on the Web on that topic, and also on several other pertinent molecular evolutionary biology topics.

We ALSO presently know of over a hundred species of primitive ape, all of whose arms were shorter than modern day apes, and who had some other features such as the lack of a simian shelf in their jaws, that means that modern day apes diverged from the primitive ape form (adding longer arms and a simian shelf in their jaws), while the extinct hominid species that lead in the general direction of man retained some of the basic characteristics of the primitive apes.

We ALSO know that all those species of primitive apes became extinct, as did all the species of hominids leading up to man, and even some varieties of human being became extinct as well, like the Neanderthal, (except of course for the one remaining human lineage which lives today).

In summation it seems to me that those who propound the “Design” must face up to the fact of retroviral and other junk in the DNA, thus the Designer does not “take out the garbage.” The Designerʼs “plan” also includes that of ALL his “Designed” primitive ape species, including ALL of his hominid species and even a sub-species of man (Neanderthal), ALL except the one lineage leading to modern man, becoming extinct.

The facts certainly seem to imply that we are dealing with either a “Divine Tinkerer,” or neo-Darwinism. And in the end, just how far apart is the “Divine Tinkerer” hypothesis from that of neo-Darwinism, and so what exactly is the “fuss” about, i.e., concerning the difference between “progressive creationism” and a “neo-Darwinistic evolutionary viewpoint?” There are fine-tuner Christians who see no “fuss” concerning the difference. In fact, fine-tuners agree that it would be more proof of “Design” not less, if life were found elsewhere in the cosmos, on other planets, in other words, if evolution was a cosmic phenomena, rather than say, limited to “progressive creation” on one tiny planet in the entire cosmos.

The view of fine-tuners is simply this, that a God who can design a cosmos that makes people out of billion year old carbon is more of a marvel maker than a God who has to keep pulling rabbits out of his hat and adjusting things. (Reminds me of the way folks, including Newton, used to invoke God as a cosmic repair man who they believed stepped in to set right any minor perturbations in the courses of planets and stars. But today nobody invokes God to do such a thing.)


Quotations From Recent Articles That Bear Directly On Everything I Wrote Above

Chimps Belong on Human Branch of Family Tree, Study Says
John Pickrell in England
for National Geographic News
May 20, 2003

Derek E. Wildman, Goodman, and other co-authors at Wayne State argue in their new study, published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that given the evidence, itʼs somewhat surprising that humans and chimps are still classified into different genera. Other mammalian genera often contain groups of species that diverged much earlier than chimps and humans did, said Goodman. “To be consistent, we need to revise our definition of the human branch of the tree of life,” he said.

Historically Flawed

Goodman and colleagues used computer methods to analyze the amount of similarity between 97 important human and chimp genes and as many of the same gene sequences as are currently available for less-studied gorillas, orangutans, and Old World monkeys. The results suggested that within important sequence stretches of these functionally significant genes, humans and chimps share 99.4 percent identity. (Some previous DNA work remains controversial. It concentrated on genetic sequences that are not parts of genes and are less functionally important, said Goodman.)

Using the DNA data, the researchers argue that humans and chimp lineages evolutionarily diverged from one another between five and six million years ago.


What does the mouse genome draft tell us about evolution?
by Alec MacAndrew

An astonishing 99% of mouse genes turn out to have analogues in humans. Not only that, but great tracts of code are syntenic—that means the genes appear in the same order in the two genomes.

The findings of the draft mouse genome are astonishingly powerful evidence for common ancestry, mutation and selection: in short for the Theory of Evolution. There is a list with links below for the key points within the paper which can only be explained by evolution. It is just not possible to explain what we see in the two genomes if they have only been in existence for 6500 years unless we invoke deliberate deceit on Godʼs part.

90.2% of the human genome and 93.3% of the mouse genome lie in conserved syntenic segments

The syntenic blocks have been re-arranged by chromosomal events over time The distribution of size of the syntenic blocks is consistent with a random mechanism for chromosomal rearrangements

It is possible to recognise the difference between repeat sequences that were added to the genomes before divergence of mouse and man lineages and those added after divergence

The measured mutation rate since divergence of mouse and man is ample to explain the divergence of the species

The rate of insertions of repeat sequences as a function of time can be measured for both man and mouse

Repeat sequences are tolerated in the same regions in mouse and man and in both cases insertion of repeat sequences is not tolerated in functionally critical regions such as the homeobox clusters

Two sorts of pseudogene exist in eukaryotes—processed and unprocessed—we know how they arise and it has taken millions of years for the pseudogenes we see in mouse and man to arise

Pseudogenes can be identified by the ratio of synonymous to non-synonymous mutations occurring over millions of years and by the fact they do not generally have a homologous gene in the same syntenic position in the other genome

99% of mouse genes have homologues in humans and 96% are in the same syntenic location

The fact that mouse and human are relatively closely related allows us to study orthologous genes—genes which have arisen and diverged from a common ancestor

12,845 orthologous gene pairs were found between man and mouse (homologous genes in the same syntenic location)

The Ka/Ks ratio (ratio of non-synonymous to synonymous mutations is = 1 in neutral regions and the median value is 0.115 in genes)—this can only be explained by common descent

Within genes, regions containing known domains have a lower Ka/Ks ratio than those that do not

The percentage of cases in mouse where the mouse gene matches the most common human allele at sites which have Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms is very close to the percentage of amino acid identity across the two genomes: very strong evidence for common ancestry

Expansion into gene families has occurred in cases where the family has important functionality specific to a lineage

The Ka/Ks ratio in lineage specific gene families is higher than average suggesting that they are undergoing more rapid evolution than the rest of the functional genome as evolution theory would predict

The percentage nucleotide alignment across the whole of the mouse and human genomes (about 40%) is compatible with what is known about the rate of DNA deletion in the two lineages since divergence

The rate of substitutions in ancestral repeat sequences in non-coding DNA is the same as the rate of substitution at four fold degenerate sites in functional regions—very strong evidence for mutation and selection over a long time

The detail of which parts of the genome are more highly conserved between the two species aligns well with functionality

Introns are conserved no more than background non-functional DNA and so do not appear to have functionality in their code

Gene structures—number of exons and coding length in exons—is strongly conserved across mouse and human genomes—very strong evidence for common ancestry

The difference in mutation rate (obtained by comparing mouse and human genomes) between X-chromosomes and autosomes can be explained by what we know about differences in mutation rate in male and female meiosis and relies on common ancestry and mutation over millions of years