> Michael Scotto <mfscotto at iris.uncg.edu> wrote:
> >
> > I was just surprised to find that there are
> > still people who have such faith in
> > evolution.
> >
> > After billions of dollars, years of research,
> > and busloads of fossils providing what one
> > eminent scientist referred to as less than a
> > coffin-full of "evidence", I would think you
> > people would have moved on by now.
Scotto is apparently thinking of Dr. Lyall Watson's statement that
"...all the physical evidence we have for human evolution can still be
placed, with room to spare, inside a single coffin!"(L. Watson, "The
water people". SCIENCE DIGEST, vol. 90, May 1982, p.44).
This statement is so obviously wrong (note that it was not made in a
refereed scientific journal -- it was simply a piece of sensationalistic
writing) that even creationists have admitted that it is not accurate.
Scotto might be interested in examining the following quotes before he
again uses Watson as a witness against human evolution:
"I was surprised to find that instead of enough fossils barely to fit
into a coffin, as one evolutionist once stated [in 1982], there were over
4,000 hominid fossils as of 1976. Over 200 specimens have been classified
as Neandertal and about one hundred as Home erectus. More of these
fossils have been found since 1976." (M.J. Oard [creationist], in his
review of the book, "Bones of Contention -- A Creationist Assessment of
Human Fossils", in the Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 30,
March 1994, p.222)
"The current figures [circa 1994] are even more impressive: over 220 Homo
erectus fossil infividuals discovered to date, possibly as many as 80
archaic Homo sapiens fossil individuals discovered to date, and well over
300 Neandertal fossil individuals discovered to date." (Marvin L. Lubenow
[creationist], author of "Bones of Contention -- A Creationist Assessment
of Human Fossils, in a letter to the editor of the Creation Research
Society Quarterly, Vol. 31, Sept. 1994, p. 70)
So much for creationists and the outdated, incorrect, and/or
out-of-context quotes they so commonly seek to use against
evolutionary theory.
Mark I. Vuletic
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact the National Center for Science Education at ncse at crl.com to find
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Consult the talk.origins archive at http://rumba.ics.uci.edu:8080/ for
extensive information on the creationism vs. evolution issue.
