In my previous post, I covered a few points about the documentary titled “Discovering Ardi” that aired on the Discovery Channel this past Sunday evening, October 11, 2009. In that post I gave a brief summary of the research that has taken place over the roughly 15 years since its discovery. The documentary was two hours in length and probably could have covered all of the information in about one hour. That aside, the first half of the documentary details out Ardi’s discovery and research while the second half is mainly devoted to Ardi’s public relations preparation.

The research team hired J.H. Matternes to sketch out Ardi’s skeleton. One problem here is that they don’t have a complete skeleton. They have a partial skeleton which lacks most of the central structure. The hands feet and skull comprise the majority of Ardi’s fossil remains. There is only part of the pelvis and essentially no upper torso fossil bones. This means that Mr. Matternes had to fill in the gaps when he was creating the sketch of Ardi’s skeleton. This is where some other statements in the documentary bothered me.

Owen Lovejoy, the project biologist made a statement concerning J.H. Matternes, which is as follows:

He is the equivalent of a super-computer, into which years and years of primate structure have been poured and recorded and out of which comes an almost perfect image.

Following this comment by Lovejoy, Matternes said, “My job is to interpolate from what is there and what is missing.” Then Lovejoy adds:

We can take something like a partial foot and describe and interact with him (Matternes), as to what’s present, what’s missing and then based on our joint anatomical knowledge, replace the missing part.

What really bothers me about this is that an hour was just spent describing how Ardi was completely astounding in physical structure, that she was unlike anything they had before seen. Matternes and Lovejoy may have years of familiarity with primate anatomy, but they are completely unfamiliar with what Ardi’s missing skeletal anatomy might have been. It seems to me that they assume too much in their ability to “fill in the gaps.” For example, if Ardi’s feet would not have been discovered, would they have sketched them the same? Almost certainly not. I understand their desire to try and complete the picture, but the statement that Matternes can produce “an almost perfect image” and that using their knowledge they can “replace the missing part” is going beyond what the evidence can bear.

Then there was an interesting point brought out towards the very end of the documentary. Owen Lovejoy stated:

As we track humans back through time into the fossil record and all of our individual special characteristics begin dropping out, when you get to the very bottom, it is simply bipedality that becomes the defining character of being human.

He also noted that bipedality “is a terrible form of locomotion.” Owen Lovejoy is most certainly correct that bipedality is not the fastest or most efficient method of locomotion. The documentary really emphasized bipedality as the defining characteristic of humans also. What really bothered me is the lack of honesty in this statement. Humans are not the only animal that walks upright on two legs. Therefore, the statement that bipedality is the only thing that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom is simply not the case. What about Ostriches. Do they not use bipedality as their form of locomotion? Emus, closely related to Ostriches also use bipedality as their method of locomotion. Kangaroos use bipedality as their primary form of locomotion. There are other animals that use bipedality at times, such as penguins when they are on land. Before someone comments on this, I also realize that humans are the only animals that walk completely upright, but we aren’t the only ones that use bipedality.

One question that I know many people are asking is why did it take them 15 years to release this information if it was so revealing and ground breaking? The answer is not extremely simple. One reason is the public relations campaign that had to be prepared. They couldn’t simply release the research. They needed accompanying sketches and digital renditions of Ardi in her habitat.

Another reason is the condition of the bones. They were so fragile that the researchers removed them with clumps of dirt in plaster molds. Then in the controlled setting of a lab, they slowly and carefully removed the fossil bones from the dirt. After they were removed from the dirt, they then had to be reconstructed because of the poor condition of the fossils. The article published in the 2 October 2009 edition of Science. written by Ann Gibbons noted this very problem:

It was the find of a lifetime. But the team's excitement was tempered by the skeleton's terrible condition. The bones literally crumbled when touched. White called it road kill. And parts of the skeleton had been trampled and scattered into more than 100 fragments; the skull was crushed to 4 centimeters in height. The researchers decided to remove entire blocks of sediment, covering the blocks in plaster and moving them to the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa to finish excavating the fossils.

In short, the fossils are in such bad condition that many researchers are skeptical that it can be claimed with any measure of confidence that Ardi walked bipedaly. Ann Gibbons notes this point too in her article, “However, several researchers aren't so sure about these inferences. Some are skeptical that the crushed pelvis really shows the anatomical details needed to demonstrate bipedality.” Who are these skeptical researchers? Paleoanthropologist Carol Ward of the University of Missouri, Columbia; Paleoanthropologist William Jungers of Stony Brook University in New York; Paleoanthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

If that’s not enough to make someone skeptical, then consider this tidbit also from the Science article:

By March of this year, Suwa was satisfied with his 10th reconstruction. Meanwhile in Ohio, Lovejoy made physical models of the pelvic pieces based on the original fossil and the CT scans, working closely with Suwa. He is also satisfied that the 14th version of the pelvis is accurate.

They went through 14 versions of the pelvis and then want everyone to believe they have solid evidence that Ardi represents the connection between humans and chimp/ape primates. I think Ardi is destined to go the way of Ida as far as sensational “missing link” claims are concerned.

I was finally able to sit down and watch the "Discovering Ardi" special last night. It was a very interesting documentary on the work that was accomplished over a period of more than a decade. There were several things which were discussed or stated in the documentary that I would like to address. Before I get into those things, a little background on this discovery is in order.

The full name of the fossil discovered is Ardipithecus Ramidus. It was discovered in Ethiopia in the Middle Awash area. They began discovering some teeth and small bone fragments from many different individuals. How they determined they were different individuals was not mentioned in the documentary. Then they began to discover fragments from the same individual. All of the bones were extremely fragmented and very delicate, to the point that the researchers cemented the bones together and lifted them out in plaster castes. Several years of excavation were conducted before recovering all of the bones which comprise the partial female skeleton that is the current topic of discussion. The researchers then began the painstaking work of removing the bones from the surrounding matrix (dirt) being careful not to damage the bones. They also transported the bones to Japan where they were scanned by a CT machine allowing them to create extremely accurate digital renderings of the bones. The researchers then hired J.H. Matternes to create full-scale reproductions of the fragments. Matternes then drew a complete skeleton followed by a skeleton covered with muscle and then skin, hair, etc. Owen Lovejoy, the project biologist then went to a company to have them create digital videos of how Ardi might have walked and moved through the terrain.

I must state that I think the researchers were very thorough in their work. From watching the documentary, it did not appear that this was hurried or that they were looking to make this “the missing link.” However, some statements made in the documentary caused me to question their conclusions. First, project paleontologist Tim White stated:

“Hominids are incredibly rare. They were rare on the landscape. They had very long life-spans, so few of them die and end up with carcasses on the landscape. They are very smart, smarter than most mammals so you don’t find very many of them trapped in the sediments. So they are extremely rare.”

Few of them die and end up with carcasses on the landscape. ..I don’t think he really thought through his statement here, because I’m sure that he would agree if I asked him if all animals eventually die. This puts one hole in his statement concerning why hominids are rare. They didn’t keep living forever or we would be finding them alive today. To be fair, I don’t think that is exactly what he meant. However, the point is still the same—it doesn’t matter if they lived 150 years or 50 years, they would all eventually die. He also claims that they were smarter than most mammals. The problem I have is that this is an assumption inferred back onto hominids because we as Homo sapiens are extremely intelligent and Tim believes that we evolved from hominids. Please hear me, I am not arguing against the point that we evolved from hominids, but I am arguing against this intelligence assumption. We don’t know how smart they were because it cannot simply be inferred from brain size.

The bones did not contain any material useful for dating the bones themselves. To explain how they dated Ardi to 4.4 million years ago, Yohannes Haile-Selassie a project paleontologist explained:

“We don’t really date the bones themselves, so we rely on geologists to give us dates for the rocks that are above and below the fossils that we are finding.”

How do they date these rocks? There were two volcanic rock bands, one above and one below the location they discovered the fossil. They then take samples from these bands and measure the amount of argon gas built up in the rocks. From this they can determine the age of the rocks. I am not familiar with this type of dating. It sounds very interesting and I will be researching this and learning more about it. One interesting point however, the two different tests came back to essentially the same date. At this point, I would think they might have asked to have the tests repeated because there was a lot of sediment between the two bands, several feet of sediment.

I will continue to make more posts on this documentary and fossil find. If you weren’t able to catch the special when it aired this past Sunday night (October 11, 2009), the Discovery Channel has the entirety of it on their website in small clips.

Click Here to Read Part 2

The Discovery Channel is going to be airing a program titled "Discovering Ardi" this Sunday evening at 9:00 PM ET. This is the latest fossil hailed as evidence shoring up evolution and one more piece of the puzzle from apes to upright bipedal humans.

Obviously I am not posting a critique of the show as it has not yet aired, but I wanted to make all of you aware of it in case you might be interested in watching it. I am recording the show to watch later that evening or Monday evening and I will post my own thoughts and reflections on it after I have a chance to watch it. Look forward to some possible discussion on it with all of you.

The last post in this series discussed the universe. Particularly, whether the universe is eternal or if it had a beginning. The evidence led to the conclusion that the universe did have a beginning. That left us with only two possible explanations as to what brought about that beginning: (1) It brought itself about and developed into what we see today, which is evolution or (2) it was created, which is intelligent design. It is to this point we turn in this post. Does the evidence support evolution or intelligent design?

Evolution is the theory that the origin of life and the progressive change of that life arrived through purely naturalistic means. The first and earliest requirement placed upon Darwin’s Theory of Evolution was by his colleagues. They deemed it necessary to provide empirical evidence to support the sequential pattern of nature proposed by Darwin. Even with all of the evolutionary work that has persisted since the nineteenth century, the hierarchal pattern of nature persists regardless of the infusion of the spirit of sequence and continuity. The argument has, therefore, come about that the hierarchal pattern of nature supports the evolutionary view. This simply is not the case. It is much easier to argue for organic evolution if nature presented itself in sequential patterns.

Another foundational evidence Darwin cited as support for his theory was homologous structures. Darwin defines this term in The Origin to avoid any confusion. The definition he gave is as follows: “The relationship between parts which results from their development from corresponding embryonic parts.” Genetic and embryological research has demonstrated that homologous structures arrive at the end result through different routes as discussed by Sir Gavin de Beer. This demonstrates that homologous structures are not what Darwin defined them to be. This deals a swift blow to the theory because the lack of homologous structures deems descent by modification unnecessary.

Darwin recognized one major area of weakness in his theory. This area of weakness was the fossil record. It could not be ignored that the lack of intermediate species in the fossil record was a flaw to evolution. However, Darwin and those that followed after him believed that the fossil record was not complete enough and that in the future it would bear out the evidence to support the theory. This is such an important area because it is the only physical evidence that will either lend support to the theory or provide evidence that it is indeed false.

A few considerations will reveal that the fossil record does not lend support to evolution currently or in the foreseeable future. First, looking at the total number of fossil species compared to the scarce number of morphological sequences (intermediates) contained therein reveals the lack of any convincing evidence of major transformations in the fossil record. Secondly, the fossil record is nearly complete. When one realizes that 261 of the 329 living terrestrial vertebrates occur as fossils, which yields 79.1% completeness of the fossil record, it becomes apparent that there is not a great disparity in the state of the fossil record. Furthermore, when birds are excluded from the above numbers, since they are poorly fossilized, the percentage rises to 87.8% completion of the fossil record. The argument that the fossil record is not complete enough to conclusively determine whether or not it supports evolution is merely wishful thinking.

Another area often used to support evolution’s claims is vestigial organs. This is the claim that there are organs in the human body that serve no function and can be removed without harm to the body. This argument fails at several points. To simply assume that the lack of harm from the removal of an organ indicates that it is useless neglects the possibility that other organs may compensate for the removal of that organ and that it simply is not feasible to measure any loss of function. Consider the kidneys. A person can have a kidney removed and not suffer serious loss, but they serve a function. In fact, one could actually argue that the loss of function of organs indicates devolving of life, which is the opposite of evolution.

Modern genetics research and the discovery of DNA pose another problem for evolution. Take this along with problems associated with abiogenesis (spontaneous generation), and evolution virtually becomes impossible to argue as a viable hypothesis. The prebiotic soup so often referred to as fact actually has no evidence to support it and in reality has much evidence opposing it. The conditions of earth’s early atmosphere did not consist of the correct elements to produce life and had several factors which led to a “catch 22” situation because if life did happen to arise spontaneously it would have almost immediately been destroyed. Furthermore, the laws of nature clearly define that life arises from life, not that living things arise from nonliving things going against the laws of nature and universal.

The DNA problem has actually caused one atheist to purport that “life in bacterial form may have been transmitted to this planet in a missile from some other part of space.” This does not solve the problem because it still begs the question: “Where did that life come from?” Evolution attempted to show how proteins, the building blocks of the cell and therefore life, arise from purely natural reactions. However, with the discovery of the role of DNA in producing those proteins in the cell, it is more necessary to determine the origin of the information contained in DNA than to determine the natural processes the DNA controls. This presents a conundrum to the evolutionists.

Evolutionists, in general, make the mistake of letting preconceived theories shape the evidence rather than letting the evidence shape the theory. In other words, they are like a fisherman who upon catching a large fish returned the fish to the pond. After watching this happen several times, an onlooker asked the man, “Why do you only keep the small fish and return the larger fish to the pond?” The man responded to the onlooker, “I only have an eight-inch frying pan, and so the larger ones won’t fit!” Simply put, the evidence that proponents of evolution cite does not support the conclusions that are drawn by the evolutionist, or the atheist for that matter.

The evidence does not necessarily prove intelligent design, but it does demonstrate that it better fits the evidence that we currently have about the beginning of the universe and the current state-of-affairs today. The only point left to discuss in this series is that of Jesus’ resurrection. The next post will tackle this topic.

Links to other posts in this series:

• Part 1: Three possibilities about God's existence
• Part 2: What is acceptable evidence?
• Part 3: Is the universe eternal?
• Part 5: What about the resurrection?
• Part 6: Where does the evidence lead?

The first post in this series introduced the theme and possible positions regarding the existence of God. The second post then determined what would be considered as acceptable scientific evidence. Through that process we discovered that to scientifically prove God’s existence one cannot necessarily give positive evidence because there must always exist the possibility of being proved incorrect. In other words, scientific proof is actually never 100% sure. Rather than fall into the trap of giving an endless list of evidence in support of the existence of God, it is more prudent to take up the task of looking at those things which would demonstrate that God could not exist. The first of these is the universe.

Turning to the universe, the first question to answer is whether or not the universe has always existed or if it had a beginning? There is no middle ground because the universe exists, so it either had a beginning or it does not have a beginning. The atheists does not typically view the universe as coming from nothing but that it is self-evident and eternally exists. The theists argues this is not possible, as it would create an infinite regress of causalities. Dawkins argues in his book, The God Delusion, that invoking God to terminate an infinite regress is “at best unhelpful and at worst perniciously misleading.” The problem is not Dawkins’ statement but his explanation of why it is the case that it is unhelpful or misleading. He explains if one were to cut gold into its smallest possible pieces, then one could only slice it to the atomic level. Anything smaller than this and it ceases to be gold. The atom, therefore, acts as a “natural terminator to the Crumboblious Cutlets type of regress.” Dawkins’ argument is flawed however, because the regress that he cites does not explain an infinite regress. Furthermore, it deals with division of matter and not causal events so his explanation is not sufficient to do away with the need for a first cause, and he offers no explanation of how it is possible to have an infinite regress of causalities.

Infinities are not a problem when one speaks of them as possibilities or potentials only. The problem arises from following an actual infinity to its logical conclusion. Without a beginning, then there must necessarily exist an actual infinite number of events in the past. Problems abound when one begins to apply this with reason to reality.

One popular example is known as Hilbert’s Hotel. Suppose that there exists a hotel with an infinite number of rooms and all of the rooms are full. Whenever a new guest arrives and requests a room, the desk clerk happily supplies a room because there are an infinite number of rooms. Now after the guest checks in, there are no more people in the rooms than before he checked in the hotel—there are still an infinite number. Assume that all of the guests in the odd numbered rooms decide to check out and leave the hotel. After they all leave, there will still be an infinite number of rooms people in those rooms. One asks, “How can that be when half of them checked out?” Because there still exists the same number of rooms and people—that is an infinite number of people and rooms.

Another example is that of the eternal counter. Imagine there is a person who counts from infinity past to infinity future, starting in the past. He counts each individual day as a single integer. Now if one were to go to him today and he reached zero, the most likely question that person would ask is “Why did the counter reach zero today? Why not yesterday? Why not tomorrow?” The answer is because for an actual infinite number of past events to exist there has to equally be an infinite number of possible future events, so the counter always reaches zero.

Therefore, at any given point in time, the counter will reach zero. Even if one goes tomorrow, the next day, or in a hundred years, the counter will reach zero. Why is this? It is because of the nature of infinity and not because of the amount of time given to the counter. These absurdities demonstrate the problems associated with an eternal universe.

Science provides evidence that the universe had a beginning and it is, therefore, not eternal. The first source of evidence that the universe had a beginning was in 1929 when Hubble discovered redshifting in the light from other galaxies, which indicated that the universe is expanding. The natural inference was then made that if the universe is expanding, it was together at some point. This gave way to the theory commonly known as the Big Bang, which is the theory that the universe exploded from an extremely dense volume.

Another popular alternative is that the universe is eternally oscillating, that it goes through a cyclical series of explosion, expansion, contraction, explosion, etc. The second law of thermodynamics makes this alternative unreasonable because it explains things in a system move toward disorder or entropy rather than order. Some will counter that the second law does not apply to the universe, as it is not a closed system. However, this is not the case because the universe consists of all energy and so it is not receiving energy from any external source and energy cannot be created. An external source or the creation of energy would be necessary for an oscillating universe. Another problem arises if by chance the universe did collapse, it would not expand once again due to the extreme gravitational forces that it would have to overcome.

The beginning of the universe has posed somewhat of a problem to the atheist stance. Carl Sagan expressed it so succinctly it deserves quoting in full.

There was much ado about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) last year. Last week the LHC was back in the news as the announcement was made that it would remain online through the winter months rather than shutting down.

This decision was made to hopefully allow the scientists to continue conducting research they hope will lead to the discovery of the Higgs boson, which deemed “the God particle.” This particle is believed to be what gives all of matter its mass. However, scientists really do not know a lot about this particle in the way of hard, factual evidence. That is what they are hoping to accomplish with the LHC.

There are a lot of scholars, pastors, and Christians who believe that God created man “to live forever.” That is to say when God created Adam and Eve he intended for them to live for all eternity with Him in the garden. But is this really the truth? Did God originally create mankind to live forever? It would appear that God did not create mankind to live forever, at least no without eating the fruit of the tree of life.

My question in this post is why did God create the tree of life? What was its purpose? If God had created man to live for eternity, then what was the need for the tree of life? What is important to remember is that God did not only create the tree of life, but he also created the tree of knowledge of good and evil. These two trees were placed alongside each other in the center of the garden. Both of these trees were important; they were both in the center of the garden. There placement in the garden demonstrates the central role they were to play in Adam and Eve’s lives.

After God had placed Adam and Eve in the garden, he gave them one restriction. He told them, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17, NIV). They were allowed to eat from any tree but one. God made it clear that eating from this tree had dire consequences—death. So from the very beginning of creation, there was the possibility of eternal life or death. The choice, however, was up to Adam and Eve. They could choose to be obedient and eat from any tree in the garden or they could choose to be disobedient and eat from the “forbidden” tree and suffer death. What is interesting to note is that God did not command to eat from the tree of life. Perhaps it was expected. Or does this mean my statement that God did not create man to live for eternity was wrong. Did God know they would live forever if they didn’t eat from the tree of life?

I think the tree of life was necessary. This is because of what God spoke in Genesis 3:22—The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever. God had made it clear that to choose disobedience would result in death. We read this account thousands of years removed and often times just gloss over it without thinking a whole lot about what happened. It would appear that God did not just give the restriction on the tree of knowledge and then Adam and Eve went out, encountered the Serpent, and ate from the tree. However, the Scriptures do not give us any indication as to how long of a time period there is between the end of chapter 2 and the beginning of chapter 3, where the serpent appears. It also does not tell us if Adam and Eve ever ate from the tree of life. Before the serpent appears, the Scripture seems to indicate that perhaps Adam and Eve had not only been obedient in not eating from the tree of knowledge, but that they had not even touched it (Gen. 3:3). I think Adam and Eve understood that the tree of life was necessary for them to live forever. If they didn’t, then why would God post angels to prevent them from gaining access to its fruit? It only makes sense that they knew what it did and had eaten from it.

Ultimately though, I think that God created the tree of life with the tree of knowledge of good and evil in mind. Placing them both in the center of the garden would force Adam and Eve to daily (or however often they ate from the tree of life) make a choice to choose obedience and life or disobedience and death.
I could probably write an entire book about the tree of life. What about you, why do you think that God created the tree of life?

Indeed, who are we? Watch this video clip to give you some perspective on just how big and important we are in creation. What is still amazing, is that even though we are so insignificant, we are the crowning glory of God's creation. Particularly, when we are glorifying him with our lives.

What about you, what does this video make you think about?