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May 25th, 2009- Response to the Evolutionary "Missing Link" Primate Reveal Earlier This Week
In case you weren't following the media hoopla, scientists revealed
the discovery of a ancient fossil with apparent major modern consequence. In short,
A discovery of a 47 million-year-old fossil primate that is said to be a human ancestor was announced and unveiled Tuesday at a press conference in New York City.Please read further to update yourself. Below is a short, yet intelligent response my brother wrote in an email. So much so that I wanted to include it on EbbWorld. I may not agree personally on every sentiment 100%, but I'm pretty close to that. The last paragraph is the meat of it all. Seems like the media again has jumped on this find with a bit too much misinformed fanfare. Traditionally thee 'Missing Link' has referred to the common ancestor of man and ape/chimp. This find is a much more ancient 'ancestor' and would be the oldest common ancestor possibly of some/all modern primatea (man, ape, monkeys, lemurs.) But in fact Dr. Frazen, a member for the research team, says quote "She (Ida) belongs to the group from which higher primates and human beings developed but my impression is she is not on the direct line," Franzen conceded. So again…not direct line. More like an 'aunt' or 'uncle'. See the 'tree' at: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com. A true 'missing link' would be in direct descendent line. The actual scientific paper is at http://www.plosone.org/ One conclusion is very contentious: "Defining characters of Darwinius ally it with early haplorhines rather than strepsirrhines." Haplorhines include tasiers, monkeys, apes, man. Sterpsirrhines include lemurs. See this link on why this is not a cut and dry conclusion and how the media hype gets it wrong http://www.age-of-the-sage.org. Another blog exposing the hype: http://openpaleo.blogspot.com As far as evolution (naturalistic, theistic, direct creation of all species and somewhere in between) I think I lie on the 'in-between.' On one hand you have super-smart Christian scientists (i.e. Francis Collins - Human Genome Project) who is a theistic evolutionist; the notion that natural evolution could have happened over long period of time. And genetic evidence (and fossil evidence for the most part) supports this. However I believe he's looking at one part of the puzzle. I'm highly suspect that the driving natural forces of mutation, genetic drift and natural selection in the given time frame of life's history could produce the diversity we see in the fossil record and today. There is no direct proof these mechanisms would work. We just have results and obviously naturalists draw the only conclusion…they must have worked. Possibly God could have 'directed' these processes as sorta a divine genetic engineer. Direct creation of species also fits the bill because God could have used similar genetic plans/makeup. But this is somewhat a 'god of the gaps' explanation. The puzzle somewhat unfolds when you look at things as Keith mentioned the Cambrian Explosion and extinctions/speciation events. One way to 'disprove' naturalism is to put it in a 'time box' so small that there is undeniably no way naturalistic evolution could have occurred. Those types of boxes are out there...and evidence seems to be growing. But it's not conclusive…yet. It might be conclusively discovered or might not. I think as a Christians we can conclude that God has His hand in creation (Big Bang, origin of life, evolution/speciation, and design of earth/universe) but to what extent He dips His arm in and when/where He swirls is warmly debatable. Scripture can shed light on that too. Also most Christian scholars and scientists would agree man is a special creation (at minimum man's soul/nature not necessarily his body.) -Derek Wojciech |
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