Read Online The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Lee Strobel
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missing link,” Wells told me. “And, sure enough, the reconstructed animal on display had feathers or feather-like structures on it. The problem was that no feathers were ever found with the fossil! But because scientists said they should be there, they were added. And the dinosaur looked even more like a bird because the guy who did the reconstruction used the same artificial eyes that taxidermists put in stuffed eagles.” While there was a brief disclaimer, he added, it was rather cryptically written.
“Then a group of molecular biologists at the conference reported finding bird DNA in dinosaur bones that were sixty-five million years old. Now, that would be pretty exciting! They suggested that this was genetic evidence that birds are closely related to dinosaurs.
“The problem is that the bones from which the DNA was supposedly extracted are from a branch of dinosaurs that had nothing to do with bird ancestry. Furthermore, the DNA they found was not ninety or ninety-nine percent similar to birds—it was one-hundred-percent turkey DNA! Even chickens don’t have DNA that’s one hundred percent similar to turkey DNA. Only turkeys have one-hundred-percent turkey DNA.
“So these people said they found turkey DNA in a dinosaur bone—and it actually got published in Science magazine! This is just incredible to me! The headline in the magazine said with a straight face: ‘Dinos and Turkeys: Connected by DNA?’ ”
That last story begged the next question: “How in the world do you explain how the turkey DNA got in there?”
Shaking his head, Wells said, “Maybe somebody dropped a turkey sandwich in the dig or there was lab contamination. If I had reported something like this in my grad student research, I would have been laughed out of the room. They would have told me, ‘Go do the test again—it’s contaminated.’
“But for goodness sake, this was taken seriously enough to publish it in Science ! Even the scientist who reported the finding admitted he was ‘quite skeptical’ of his own work at this point—and yet people were willing to seize on it to support their belief in Darwinian theory.” 42
THE LEGEND OF JAVA MAN
I couldn’t end my conversation without touching on one more icon related to the fossil evidence: the pictures I’ve seen from time to time of a parade of ape-like creatures that morph into modern human beings. In fact, this illustration is emblazoned across the cover of a 1998 edition of The Origin of Species . 43 For many, this “ultimate icon” is not just a theory, but an established fact.
“If you go back far enough,” legendary newscaster Walter Cronkite intoned in a documentary on evolution, “we and the chimps share a common ancestor. My father’s father’s father’s father, going back maybe a half-million generations—about five million years ago—was an ape.” 44
That kind of certainty about human evolution was engendered in me as a youngster, when I would devour my World Book Encyclopedia . One of my favorite entries was “Prehistoric Man,” where I would linger for hours, fascinated by the part-ape, part-human nicknamed “Java man.” Apparently, I wasn’t the only member of this missing link’s fan club. Said the author of a book on paleoanthropology:
Java man is like an old friend. We learned about him in grade school. . . . In fact, the vast majority of people who believe in human evolution were probably first sold on it by this convincing salesman. Not only is he the best-known human fossil, he is one of the only human fossils most people know. 45
World Book ’s two-page spread highlighted a parade of prehistoric men. Second in line was a lifelike bust of Java man from the American Museum of Natural History, accompanied by an outline showing his profile. With his sloping forehead, heavy brow, jutting jaw, receding chin and bemused expression, he was exactly what a blend of ape and man should look like. For me, studying his face and looking into
“Then a group of molecular biologists at the conference reported finding bird DNA in dinosaur bones that were sixty-five million years old. Now, that would be pretty exciting! They suggested that this was genetic evidence that birds are closely related to dinosaurs.
“The problem is that the bones from which the DNA was supposedly extracted are from a branch of dinosaurs that had nothing to do with bird ancestry. Furthermore, the DNA they found was not ninety or ninety-nine percent similar to birds—it was one-hundred-percent turkey DNA! Even chickens don’t have DNA that’s one hundred percent similar to turkey DNA. Only turkeys have one-hundred-percent turkey DNA.
“So these people said they found turkey DNA in a dinosaur bone—and it actually got published in Science magazine! This is just incredible to me! The headline in the magazine said with a straight face: ‘Dinos and Turkeys: Connected by DNA?’ ”
That last story begged the next question: “How in the world do you explain how the turkey DNA got in there?”
Shaking his head, Wells said, “Maybe somebody dropped a turkey sandwich in the dig or there was lab contamination. If I had reported something like this in my grad student research, I would have been laughed out of the room. They would have told me, ‘Go do the test again—it’s contaminated.’
“But for goodness sake, this was taken seriously enough to publish it in Science ! Even the scientist who reported the finding admitted he was ‘quite skeptical’ of his own work at this point—and yet people were willing to seize on it to support their belief in Darwinian theory.” 42
THE LEGEND OF JAVA MAN
I couldn’t end my conversation without touching on one more icon related to the fossil evidence: the pictures I’ve seen from time to time of a parade of ape-like creatures that morph into modern human beings. In fact, this illustration is emblazoned across the cover of a 1998 edition of The Origin of Species . 43 For many, this “ultimate icon” is not just a theory, but an established fact.
“If you go back far enough,” legendary newscaster Walter Cronkite intoned in a documentary on evolution, “we and the chimps share a common ancestor. My father’s father’s father’s father, going back maybe a half-million generations—about five million years ago—was an ape.” 44
That kind of certainty about human evolution was engendered in me as a youngster, when I would devour my World Book Encyclopedia . One of my favorite entries was “Prehistoric Man,” where I would linger for hours, fascinated by the part-ape, part-human nicknamed “Java man.” Apparently, I wasn’t the only member of this missing link’s fan club. Said the author of a book on paleoanthropology:
Java man is like an old friend. We learned about him in grade school. . . . In fact, the vast majority of people who believe in human evolution were probably first sold on it by this convincing salesman. Not only is he the best-known human fossil, he is one of the only human fossils most people know. 45
World Book ’s two-page spread highlighted a parade of prehistoric men. Second in line was a lifelike bust of Java man from the American Museum of Natural History, accompanied by an outline showing his profile. With his sloping forehead, heavy brow, jutting jaw, receding chin and bemused expression, he was exactly what a blend of ape and man should look like. For me, studying his face and looking into
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