The Creation/Evolution Debate

Bro. Chris Abraham

Answers in Genesis
www.AnswersInGenesis.org
 Topics
 What is critical thinking?
 10 logical fallacies
 An amazing case study in deception
 Amazing creatures
 Thinking About Thinking!
Critical thinking is the art of thinking
about your thinking while you are
thinking in order to make your
thinking better
What did
he say?
The Purpose of Critical Thinking
Critical thinking involves the use of
questioning or inquiry techniques
The purpose of critical thinking is to:
 Achieve understanding
 Evaluate view points
 Solve problems

This is why evolutionists do not want

critical thinking in the biology class
 PART 1

10 tactics and logical

fallacies used to
discredit creation and
promote evolutionism
1
Fuzzy Words
 We believe, we think
 Given enough time, it will happen
 Might work
 Must have…
“Those life forms must have evolved in
the absence of oxygen,…”
Biology, Miller and Levine, 2002, p. 426.

 Couldpossibly have been

 My guess is
 Seems like
2
Half Truth
 Halftrue and half false
 Often more effective than the
complete lie

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

only applies to isolated systems, so it
is not relevant to evolution, because
the earth is an open system.
3
Bandwagon
The appeal to “everyone agrees”

All scientists accept evolution

No real scientist accepts creation

www.AnswersInGenesis.org
www.ICR.org
4
Ridicule

Attempting to provoke a dislike against

a person or idea by name-calling

Creationists are troglodytes and

flat-earthers.
5
Either-Or Fallacy

Presenting only one possible solution

when others are justified

If we teach creation then we will have

to teach every other creation myth.
6
Analogy

Improperly drawing parallels while

ignoring pertinent differences

Evolution is a fact like digestion or

gravity.
7
Shifting the Burden of Proof

Forgetting that it is your responsibility

to prove a claim, not your opponents to
disprove it.

The claim that creation has no proof and

therefore should not be taught, when
evolution has never been proven or is
even capable of proof.
8
Equivocation
Confusing the issue by using vague
terms or changing the definitions of
words

Changing the definition of science to

support only evolution

Not defining terms such as natural

selection or microevolution
9
Bluffing

Appearing to know more than you do

Making the claim that the fossil record is

full of transitional fossils

Dinosaurs evolved into birds.

10
Appeasement

The appeal that we're not really so

different

Most religions don’t have a problem

with evolution.
 Lucy and the
Australopithecines
 Critical Thinking
What we see and read in textbooks is
not always what was found or real
 Pictures and Reality
Artistic conception
Australopithecus
africanus

What do you notice

about this picture?
Evolutionary Preconception
John Gurche, artist, National Geographic, March,
1996 p. 109.

“I wanted to get a human soul into

this ape-like face, to indicate
something about where he was
headed.”
 Lucy: Two Questions
 What was found?
 Did Lucy walk upright?

Note: Lucy is
our ancestor
 What Was Found?

 Lucy discovered in 1974

 About 40% of the fossil was found

 Claimed to be 3.5 million years old

 Claimed bipedal
 Lucy

No foot bones
 Did Lucy Walk Upright
To determine if Lucy walked upright three
areas of anatomy can be examined

1. The rib cage

2. The pelvis
3. Leg and foot bones
 Rib Cage
 Aperibs are conical shaped
 Human ribs are barrel-like

Human: Barrel-like Ape: Conical shape

 Lucy’s Rib Cage
Peter Schmid (paleontologist at the Anthropological Institute
in Zurich) Quoted from Origins reconsidered: In Search of
What Makes Us Human by Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin

“I noticed that the ribs [Lucy] were more round

in cross-section, more like what you see in
apes. Human ribs are flatter in cross-section.
But the shape of the rib cage itself was the
biggest surprise of all. The human rib cage is
barrel shaped, and I just couldn’t get Lucy’s
ribs to fit this kind of shape.”
 Lucy’s Rib Cage
Brad Harrub (Ph.D. Anatomy and Neurobiology)
and Bert Thompson (Ph.D. Microbiology), The
Truth About Human Origins, 2003, p. 47.

“In Lucy’s case, her ribs are

conical, like those found in apes.”
Human Lucy
Chimp vs. Human Pelvis

Chimp

Human
 Lucy’s Pelvis
J. Stern & R. Sussman, “American Journal of
Physical Anthropology,” 1983, pp. 291 & 292.

“The marked resemblance of AL 288-1

(Lucy) to the chimpanzee is equally
obvious…
It suggests to us that the mechanism of
lateral pelvic balance during bipedalism was
closer to that in apes than in humans.”
 Lucy’s pelvis is “wrong”
because it is very ape-like

PBS Nova Series; In Search of Human Origins

episode one 1994 (Dr. Owen Lovejoy)
“Fixing” Lucy with a power saw!

PBS Nova Series; In Search of Human Origins

episode one 1994 (Dr. Owen Lovejoy)
Knee Joint of A. afarensis
15° carrying
angle (valgus)
Human = 9°
Gorilla = 0°
Chimp = 0°

Critical Thinking
Orangutan = 9°
Spider monkey = 9°
Rib cage Lucy could NOT
Pelvis walk upright
Carrying angle

How Evolution Hinders

Critical Thinking and
Science
Footprints in History
Apes and Humans – a Test

Human

Which footprint is human?

 Laetoli Footprints
Footprints discovered in 1978 in Laetoli,
Tanzania. The footprints were dated at 3.5
million years old.

Who made these

footprints?
Ape and Human Footprints
Human Shape

Human Ape Laetoli footprint

(Lucy)
 Human Footprints
Tim White, “Evolutionary Implications of Pliocene
Hominid Footprints,” Science, April 1989, p. 175.

“The uneroded footprints show a total

morphological pattern like seen in
modern humans.”

Who made these

footprints?
 Lucy’s Feet
David Catchpoole, Ph.D., “New evidence:
Lucy was a knuckle-walker”,
www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4256news5-5-
2000.asp

“…anatomist Dr. Charles Oxnard has

shown that the big toe [Lucy’s] actually
sticks out as in chimpanzees.”
 A Dilemma
 The footprints in Tanzania are
human in shape
 Lucy’s feet are ape-like

 The footprints are 3.5 million years

old therefore they cannot be made
by humans

What will the evolutionists do?

Lucy: What Nice Feet You Have
Drawing from Life:
The Science of
Biology, Purves,
Orians, and Heller,
1992, p. 604.
Lucy: Saint Louis Museum

Human foot on Lucy

Evolution Rejects the Evidence
“Professor Betsy Schumann,
evolutionist expert, admits that the
statue's feet ‘probably are not
accurate’, but when asked whether the
statue should be changed, she says,

‘Absolutely not’.”
 Confusion about Lucy
Robert Boyd and Joan Silk, (professors of anthropology),
How Humans Evolved, 2000, pp. 331-334.

“Anatomical evidence indicates that A.

afarensis was bipedal…”
…some anthropologists are convinced
by the anatomical evidence that A.
afarensis was not a modern biped.”

Why the confusion?

Why aren’t students told about this?
 10 Unique Characteristics
1. Fine balance
2. Flat face
3. Upright skull
4. Straight back
5. Fully extendable hip joints
6. Angled femur bones
7. Fully extendable knee joints
8. Long legs
9. Arched feet
10.Strong big toes
 Textbooks and Accuracy
Eye socket 2 3 Flatter face

Teeth 1
Biology: The Web of Life, 1993
Amazing Creatures
That Defy Evolution
Giraffe
 Leviathan
Out of his mouth go burning lamps,
and sparks of fire leap out.
Job 41:19
Bombardier Beetle

Chemical
storage
chamber
Woodpecker

 Hard beak
 Special tail feathers
 Special cartilage
 Tongue
 Barbs
 Glue
 Long
Chuckwalla Lizard
Chuckwalla Table Manners
Pass the pepper
and chuckwalla
please

Chuckwalla and salt

 Chicken Egg
 Each shell has about 10,000 tiny holes
or pores
 Question: How does the chicken form
a shell around a soft, messy egg and
design the shell with pores?
 Blood vessels
 Chicken Egg
 Nineteenth day the chick is too big
 The “egg-tooth”
 Each step of the chicks development
defies evolutionary thinking
 True Science

The history of astronomy

The history of geology
The history of biology
The history of anthropology
Be a 1 Peter 3:15 Christian
AiG Web Address 00439

Over 1,000 Articles

 Tuning Up Our
Baloney Detector
Let’s go baloney
hunting

False information
Misleading information
Deception by omission
Pure baloney
 Biology: Visualizing Life, Holt, Rinehart,
and Winston, 1998, p. 221.

“Another important find was the

footprints of a group of bipedal animals…
They reveal small but very humanlike
feet,…”
Baloney Detector

Baloney
Biology: Principles and Explorations, Holt,
Rinehart, and Winston, 2001, p. 307.

“Lucy’s leg bones indicate that she

must have walked upright. She
stood about 1 m (3 ft) tall.”
Baloney Detector

Baloney
 Biology: Concepts and Connections,
2000, p. 404.
“Some 3.7 million years ago, several
bipedal (upright-walking) human
animals of the species Australopithecus
afarensis left footprints in damp volcanic
ash in what is now Tanzania in East
Africa.” Baloney Detector

Baloney
 Biology, Miller and Levine, Prentice Hall,
2000, p. 757.

“But all researchers agree on certain

basic facts. We know, for example, that
humans evolved from ancestors we
share with other living primates such as
chimpanzees and apes.”
Baloney Detector

Baloney
 Artist’s depiction of an
australopithecine family
Biology Concepts and
Connections, Campbell, Mitchell,
and Reece, 2000, p. 404.

Baloney Detector

Baloney
 Prentice hall, Science Explorer: Earth
Science, 2002
“An animal dies and sinks into shallow
water.”

Baloney Detector

Baloney
 UN- Scientific American, July, 2002
“… laying the foundation for cellular
biochemistry. Astrochemical analysis hint that
quantities of these compounds might have
originated in space and fallen to earth in
comets, a scenario that may solve the
problem of how these constituents arose
under the conditions that prevailed when our
planet was young.” Baloney Detector

Baloney
 Colossians 2:8
(A Warning)
Beware lest any man spoil you
through philosophy and vain
deceit, after the tradition of men,
after the rudiments of the world,
and not after Christ
 Heaven and earth shall pass
away: but my words shall not
pass away.

Matthew 24:35, Mark 13:31, Luke 21:33