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Did “Pre-Adamic” Men Exist?
Fred
Flintstone and Barney Rubble aside, were there really any cavemen? To be more serious, has the theory of evolution
shown that there were “pre-Adamic men.”
The core issue here is the reliability of the dates derived from
radiocarbon dating relative to the teachings of the Bible when interpreted in a
literal or straightforward manner.
The
Bible reveals that Adam was the first man.
Genesis 2:8, 18-25 are clear on this point, which includes the creation
of Eve as well. Reinforcing this
conclusion is Paul’s statement in I Cor. 15:45: “So also it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living
soul. The last Adam [i.e., Jesus]
became a life-giving spirit.” So then,
if radiocarbon dating indicates that there are human bones older than roughly
6,000 years old, does that mean Scripture is wrong? Alternatively, does this mean that the Bible’s genealogies, which
include Christ’s in Luke 3, are wrong?
Could Jesus have died for the sins of other men who weren’t descendants
of Adam and Eve?
Now,
it’s necessary to back up and examine the issues related to the age of the
earth, which are the ultimate background for the questions that you have
raised. This is the premise behind the theory of evolution’s claims that the
earth is much older than 4004 b.c., the date for the earth traditionally
attributed to Usher’s chronology. Is it reasonable
to think the earth is much younger than around 4.5 billion years old? The
scientific creationists of the “young earth” school, such as the late Henry
Morris and Duane Gish, have argued that the earth is around 10,000 years old or
so. What kind of arguments do they use for this belief that aren't based
on the Bible? Should we be open-minded
enough to examine them?
First
of all, does the Bible necessarily teach that the earth is a few thousand years
old? Likely there was a long gap between Gen. 1:1 and Gen. 1:2, as
implied by the word in Hebrew translated "was" in the beginning of v.
2, which can also be translated "became." The terms vaguely
translated in verse 2 as “without form, and void” really should be translated
more like “waste and empty.” So then the earth became waste and
empty. How did that happen? Did God make the world a mess (cf. Isaiah
45:18) and then have to clean it up?
That’s hardly plausible.
Scofield's reference Bible popularized the gap theory roughly a century
ago, but it has a history older than that. We can’t know how long this
gap is, but it allows us to sidestep the evolutionists’ attacks on the Bible’s
scientific accuracy on issues of evolutionary dating.
However,
it could be the earth is much younger than 4.5 billion years while being older
than 10,000 years old. Let’s take some examples of geological processes
that use the same kind of assumptions (i.e., there is no change in rate, the
amount of the parent element is 100% of the total material, etc.) as used in
the radioactive decay sequences, yet yield much younger ages for the
earth. The earth’s magnetic field has been weakening at a rate with a
half-life (i.e., 50% loss) of 1,400 years. If we assume it will reverse
itself, and grow stronger, that contradicts the uniformitarian assumption that
“the key to the past is the present,” that major rates of change in geological
processes don’t happen, which was the traditional assumption of geology for
many decades. Likewise, over the eons, meteoritic dust should have
produced a layer roughly 182 feet thick on the earth and the moon as it slowly
accumulated over the years. But the moon has only a very thin layer, and
there’s no evidence so much dust accumulated on the earth and then mixed into
its crust, since its iron and especially nickel are very distinctive
elements. Interestingly the earth’s rotation is gradually slowing
down. If it had existed for billions of years, it would have stopped or
be much slower than it now is. If the moon were 4.5 billion years old, it
should be orbiting much further away from the earth than it now is (i.e., the
recession of the moon). Helium is escaping into the earth’s atmosphere at
a rate that indicates the earth is much younger than evolutionists
believe. Unlike hydrogen, this gas can’t easily escape into outer space
as it is slowly produced from radioactive decay of rocks like uranium and
thorium. If the earth’s atmosphere was millions and billions of years
old, the concentration of helium should be much higher than 1 part in
200,000. Another interesting proof of instantaneous creation is what are
called pleochroic halos in rocks produced by the radioactive element polonium
218. The marking produced by polonium in mica and fluorite rocks
indicates they had no parents (surprisingly enough) to decay from and
that the period for decay was very short, since this element has only a 3
minute half life. (These examples are taken from Scott M. Huse, “The
Collapse of Evolution,” pp. 20-207) Other geological processes could be
cited, such as the deposition of salt in the oceans and the build-up of what’s
called juvenile water from volcanoes, which indicate the earth is much younger
that 4.5 billions years old. Although these processes don’t prove
necessarily that the earth is 10,000 years old, they do call into question any
theory that believes speciation that created new life forms occurred gradually
over millions of years.
Next,
let’s zero in on radiocarbon dating, which is used for dating objects less than
100,000 years old. (Potassium-argon and
other methods are used for dating dinosaur bones). Radiocarbon dating is not a reliable as evolutionists think it
is. It’s based on assumptions that are
decidedly shaky for anything over three or four thousand years old. Let’s
give some examples of C-14 dating at work. Henry Morris once
reported that the shells of living mollusks (seashells) have given
radiocarbon date up to 2,300 years old.. In northern Iraq, a prehistoric
village named Jarmo has given radiocarbon dates for over a 6000-year range, yet
according to the archeological evidence, was occupied for only about 500
years. The same antler was dated by Yale University three different
times, and it gave three different ages: 5,340 years, 9,310 years, and
10,320 years. The University of Chicago and the University of Michigan
dated the same piece of bark at ages varying from 1,168 to 2,200 years.
The reason for such obvious dating problems results from the flawed assumptions
of radiocarbon dating, such as the belief the amount of radiocarbon in the atmosphere
hasn’t been increasing. For the specific evidence on these points, see
Henry Morris, ed., Scientific Creationism (San Diego, Calif.: Creation-Life Publishers, 1974), p. 162;
Josh McDowell and Don Steward, Reasons
Skeptics Should Consider Christianity (San Bernardino, Calif.: Here’s Life Publishers, 1981), pp. 115-117;
Morris, Scientific Creationism, pp. 161-167; Harold S. Slusher, Critique
of Radiometric Dating (San
Diego: Institute for Creation Research,
1973), pp. 34-41; Walter E. Lammerts, ed., Why Not Creation? (Nutley,
N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed
Publishing, 1970), pp. 80-105.
Concerning
purported pre-Adamic men themselves, all Christians may need concede is that
various monkeys or apes lived prior to the disaster spoken of in Gen. 1:2. Such creatures as propliopithecus,
dryopithecus, ramapithecus, oreopithecus, and even the various
australopithhecines, are all far more like monkeys than men. Even the latter had a brain size of only 500
c.c., which is close to a gorilla, and is about one third of modern men. (See Duane T. Gish, Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record (El
Cajon, Calif.: Master Books, 1985), p.
145). It does appear that the
australopithecines could not walk upright, or did so no more than
gorillas do today. (See the discussion of Oxnard and Zukerman’s research in
Gish, pp. 148-151). It has been claimed
that the famous fossil “Lucy,” which is a member of the australopithecine
family, could walk upright (was bipedal) when it lived. However, the key joint bone in the leg used
to argue for this came from an area significantly distant from the rest of the
skeleton, and most likely shouldn’t be considered as part of the rest of the
skeleton. (This is like the Java man
problem, which had two key bones put together which weren’t close to each
other). Anatomist Solly Lord Zuckerman maintains: “Our findings leave little doubt that . . . Australopithecus resembles not Homo sapiens
but the living monkeys and apes.”
Concerning the famous australopithecine skeleton called “Lucy,” the
magazine New Scientist said it had a skull “very much like a
chimpanzee’s.” (As quoted in Life:
How Did It Get Here?, p. 94).
By
contrast, the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons are very similar to present-day men,
and should be seen as descendants of Adam.
A Neanderthal is so much like Homo sapiens that: “It has been said that if he were given a
shave, a haircut and a bath and dressed in a business suit, and were to talk
down one of our city streets, he would be given no more attention than any other
individual.” (As per Gish, Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record, p.
204.) Cro-Magnons (which are the race
of men who made the famous wall drawings found in a cave in southern France)
are classified as modern humans. All we
Christians need to do is maintain these bones of “hominids” are either those of
monkeys and apes on the one hand, or modern men (homo sapiens) on the other,
without any obvious transitional forms in-between, which is easy to do.
A
particularly useful book in this regard is the detailed research found in
Marvin L. Lubenow’s Bones of Contention
A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1992). Lubenow brilliantly lays waste evolutionist
speculations on the subject of human evolution, particularly by pointing out
the known diversity of the shapes and sizes of human beings, which
evolutionists have ended up categorizing as different species. For more on this subject, see Gish, Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record, pp.
130-228, who deals with the austropithecines, unlike Lubenow. Additional sources are: Evan Shute, Flaws in the Theory of
Evolution (London, Ontario: Temside
Press, 1961), pp. 206227; R.L. Wysong, The Creation-Evolution Controversy
(East Lansing, Mich.: Inquiry Press,
1976), pp. 295-300; and Life: How
Did It Get Here?, pp. 83-98.
Finally,
much evidence exists for geological strata to be analyzed from the point of
view of catastrophism as opposed to uniformitarianism. Catastrophism
maintains the fossil record and geological strata was largely laid down by
disasters and rapid geological processes such as massive flood(s) which can’t
be currently observed, while uniformitarianism says these were laid down by
slow, gradual processes such as erosion, wind, rainfall, etc. which can be
currently observed. The strata aren’t as orderly as we may like to
think. Dr. David Raup, an evolutionist and curator of geology at the
Field Museum of National History (Chicago), was willing to say: “The
fossil record of evolution is amenable to a wide variety of models ranging from
completely deterministic (i.e. compatible with evolution) to completely
stochastic (i.e. random in order).” He was also willing to say in another
place: ‘so the geological time scale and the basic facts of biological
change over time are totally independent of evolutionary theory. . . . One of
the ironies of the evolution-creation debate is the creationists have accepted
the mistaken notion that the fossil record shows a detailed and orderly progression
and they have gone to great lengths to accommodate this “fact” in their flood
geology.”
While
in reply the likes of Van Til and company in Science Held Hostage dwell
on the Grand Canyon in one chapter in this book, they totally ignore the many,
many more anomalies that exist for any thorough-going uniformitarianism.
For example, there is the “Lewis overthrust” of Montana, which includes Glacier
National Park, in which ancient pre-Cambrian rock sits directly on top of (much
more recent) Cretaceous rock in apparent conformity. This formation is
around 330 miles long by 35 miles wide and six miles thick. There is
every reason to believe the (supposedly) nearly billion years old rock was
formed in situ over the (allegedly) hundred million years old rock layer
underneath, which constitutes a particularly troublesome anomaly to
uniformitarianism. Many, many other anomalies could be cited, but I’ll
leave them to my references: Derek V. Ager, The Nature of the
Stratigraphical Record (New York: Macmillian, 1981); Whitcomb and
Morris, The Genesis Flood,; Immanuel Velikovsky, Earth in Upheaval (New
York: Dell Publishing, 1955); Reginald Daly, Earth’s Most Challenging
Mysteries (The Craig Press, 1972). Suffice it to say, we should stick
with the views of the Seventh-day Adventist geologist George McCready Price and
other creationist scholars, instead of embracing uniformitarianism, which even
some secular scientists seriously question (such as Derek Ager). A few
evolutionists agree that their theory faces a problem with circular reasoning
as it uses fossils to order the strata, and then uses the strata’s order to
fossils to “prove” evolution. As evolutionist Tom Kemp conceded: “A
circular argument arises: Interpret the fossil record in the terms of a
particular theory of evolution, inspect the interpretation, and note that it
confirms the theory. Well, it would, wouldn’t it?”
In
conclusion, we shouldn’t assume that radiocarbon’s dates are reliable nor
concede that any “men” lived before Adam.
The fossil record, such as it is, allows us to make an obvious
distinction between what we would call “monkeys” or “apes” as opposed to modern
men (and women).
Eric
Snow
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Why does God Allow Evil?
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