GOD CREATOR – APE DECIMATOR
THEORIES concerning the evolution of life certainly did not begin with Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Many philosophers and observers of the natural world believed some fundamental force gave rise to the many diverse forms of life existing on earth. Ancient Greek savants proposed a theory, later to be termed spontaneous generation, whereby creatures arose from mud or putrefying organic material. Some alchemists of later ages thought heat or fire created living bodies from earthly substances. Jewish superstition believed a golem could be brought to life from an image. These beliefs held sway for many hundreds of years, persisting even when carefully designed (scientific) experiment disproved the notion.
Early Greek philosophers also thought the whole character of the parent was condensed into a single seed, the seed containing all the necessary messengers representing the whole of the mature body. Aristotle had doubts, and asked how it was the seed of a fruit, which developed on the plant that bore the fruit, was able to do so before the fruit itself became ripe. In much earlier time, Moses bore the message that the sins of the fathers would fall upon the children. Two thousand years ago Theophrastus said that good cultivation would turn the mild olive into the heavily cropping tree of the olive-yard. Lysenko (who received the Stalin Academy prize in 1948) revived the Lamarckian theory that bad environmental conditions turned one species into another.
Outmoded ideas still exist. Some dog breeders will destroy a bitch who (by misfortune) mates with a mongrel. Their view is that the pedigree bitch has been ‘spoiled’. If I marry a widow will her previous husband have any influence on future progeny.
Darwin’s theory (pangenesis) was that every cell of the body contributes gemmules to the germ-cells and so shares in the transmission of inherited characteristics. His theory started by assuming that the young progeny always differ in various small ways from their parents and that these differences will be passed on to future generations. Those future
generations possessing favourable variation will increase in number, while those having unfavourable variations (presumably in a favourable environment.VTW) will tend to die out. The strong would survive, the weak die out; thus certain variations will be selected for succession. By this process of selection, Darwin said, new species might eventually arise. Darwin ignored the fact that there already exist dominant or recessive ‘germ-cells’ that will appear fully or in part under normal fertilisation process depending on their recombination.
Darwin’s theory was finally published in The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859. Darwin himself firmly believed he was descended from an ape or monkey ancestor. In a letter to W.Graham, dated July, 3rd, 1881 he wrote the following (vide Francis Darwin. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol 1, pp. 315-316, reprinted 1962) .
“Nevertheless you have expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is not the result of chance. But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the conviction of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”
Charles Darwin died the year following that letter to W.Graham. There are a number of observations regarding Charles Darwin’s return to Biblical faith in the closing days of his life (vide The Ensign Message, VoI 10 No.2 April-June 2008 pp 36. Darwin Died a Christian. Extract from book by Dr.Oswald J.Smith).
Darwin himself observes that his theory developed principally from his observations in the Galapagos Islands although his studies continued for many years following his return to the UK. The Galapagos studies were limited in extent and did not cover a sufficiently wide spectrum of different species to encompass a statement covering the entire living creatures on planet earth. In 1860the scientific establishment was almost wholly against Darwin’s evolutionary theory. I am of the opinion that if this theory was presented today it would be considered of interest but would remain only a plausible hypothesis. However the evolutionary theory was given wide publicity and the Christian Church made a disastrous response. Doubtless, the Victorian era Churchmen were men of high integrity and faith, but they argued against their own misconception of Darwin’s theory. The
national Press ridiculed their reaction. “Apes have ousted the Churchmen”.
One famous cartoon depicted an ape, with the head of Darwin, preaching from the Church pulpit. Because some scientists and men of social standing and many who strenuously opposed the Church, supported Darwin, the impression given was that all academia and intelligentsia supported evolution and the theory soon became accepted as fact within ten years, man’s evolution from an ape became accepted as fact. Apemen did indeed walk the earth and were our ancestors.
In the nineteenth century objections against schools and colleges teaching apeman evolution as a proven fact was given forcible voice. Parents of schoolchildren and even some teachers protested and demanded that apeman evolution to present day humankind be presented simply and clearly as only a theory. This matter received considerable publicity in the UK and USA. In 1925, John Thomas Scopes was put on trial after confessing to teaching evolution in a biology class at a Tennessee (USA) secondary school. (Something that Tennessee had made illegal). Scopes was found guilty and the Americal Civil Liberties paid his 100 dollar fine. They hoped to appeal to the US Supreme Court in an effort to get such laws, like that of Tennessee, declared illegal. In the event it failed on a technicality. The trial, called ‘monkey trial’ was widely publicised in the USA media.
Although there were few efforts to follow up such legal attacks on Darwinism for the next three or four decades American public attention had been alerted by the trial. Even today many Americans still equate evolution with being anti-God. Many who have creationist ideas want to define evolution as being based on an atheistic religious viewpoint: (can an agnostic be a Darwinist?).
Creationist ideas have less impact on European society although some schools in the UK are introducing it into science classes.Emmanuel College (Gateshead. UK) teaches both evolution and creationism. More such schools will follow.
The US Supreme Court decided certain parameters which make it impossible to teach divine creation (creationism) as a science in state-funded schools; in response the creationists devised ‘intelligent design’ (ID) which is described as a scientific alternative to Darwinism. ID supporters state that science can be used to discover evidence of a designers hand or the discovery and understanding of a generic supernatural intelligence. ID say that whereas Darwinian theory postulates random mutations and natural selection for all evolution of life, arguing that evolution did not happen randomly but through purposeful design. The ID proponents say the odds against complex systems evolving through random or chance mutation are insurmountable. Many ID advocates are in the main professed Christians, and accept some aspects of natural selection and mutation, also that organisms came from a common ancestor, but insist that it is through a purposeful designer. They avoid saying exactly what or who the designer is.
Darwin’s Origin of Species was first published in 1859 but his theory (I prefer to call it hypothesis) blundered into an obstacle. The obstacle was a scientific paper by Mendel, whose work was based upon a true method of experiment that gave a sure foundation for genetic research and his work was statistically based. Gregor Johann Mendel (1822-1884) was a monk at the Monastery of Brunn (Moravia) becoming Abbot in 1868). His important experiments were made in the monastery gardens from 1857 to 1865.The results were communicated to the Natural History Society of Brihnn in 1865 and published in the Proceedings in 1866. Mendel’s paper was widely circulated at the time. The work lay undiscovered until about 1900 when three botanists, Hugo de Vries, Tschermak and Corres who were searching to find if anything similar had been done before, discovered Mendel’s paper. They realised the importance of Mendel’s work and the scientific community was informed. His findings on heredity (genetics) disproved Darwin’s most important assumptions and for a time Darwin’s evolution hypothesis suffered an eclipse until Darwinian evolutionary thinking reemerged in a slightly changed form which the
Darwinists said brought it in line with Mendel’s genetics, namely that genes could sometimes change to completely new forms. (vide Victor Walkley. “Man and God – or Man and Ape” Ensign Message, April- June 2000, pp 22-23) However the acceptance of mutation (which is what the gene change by the Darwinists really means) although scientifically proved, does not in itself bring about a change of species.
Mendel’s experiments were concerned with heredity and demonstrating that two characteristic elements (now termed genes) are present in every cell, a dominant and recessive character existing side by side and whatever is generated neither is changed. Thus inherited determinants create the character of the mature body but the character of the body has no effect on its heredity (genes remain unaltered whatever the recombination of future generations.) For further information on Mendel’s original paper see Arthur Rook, Origins and Growth of Biology. Penguin 1964.
This is not the end of a complex process. Reversion, when the offspring show characteristics not possessed by the parents but by a remote ancestor! a characteristic which remained dormant until a complimentary factor is introduced by crossing or the expression of a recessive character which has remained dormant for a very long time. Reversion is not to be confused with mutation. My earlier paper (Ensign Message, April-June 2000) expands this subject, Mutation is the sudden appearance of a new inheritable divergence from the ancestral type. Reversion is the appearance of a hitherto latent factor already present in the genes.
Promotion off Darwin’s theory concerning an apeman being ancestral to our own human evolution gives no hint that there is Biblical support for such development, but it does not give credibility to the existence of a twofold human population. One made in the Creator’s image, the other the prodigy of the fallen angels who ‘saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of ‘all they chose … There were giants in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of man, and they bare children to them.’ (Genesis 6:2 and 4). The sons of God being the fallen angels. Enoch (Book VI); also “angels which kept not their first estate” Jude 6.
Acceptance of Darwinism as is currently presented means the acceptance of a mindless universe and materialism. Systematic assumption of materialism is fundamental to science. Thus the present interest by scientists in considering the question of existence or non existence of God, and whether scientists can describe evolution of species or the fundamentals of the Creative line is a forlorn hope. Involving such questions as knowledge of good and evil, righteousness and sin whilst denying theism and proclaiming everything is energy and matter interacting with quantum space and time evades the question of Christian belief and its implications.
Since my early schooling in the 1920’s I remember reading in the national press this or that story “the missing link found by paleoanthropoligists”, awe-inspiring and dating an intermediate form of man’s evolution from ape ancestors nine to thirteen million years ago. In the event these proved as reliable as the Piltdown man (eoanthropus) hoax in 1912. The only overall impression in my view was that Biblical dates for humankind’s creation was nonsense. The “Lucy” skeleton; Sahelanthropus tchadensis specimen discovered in Chad; Peking man, a type of fossil man related to Java man, and other finds relating, so it is claimed, to evolution and the existence of ‘ape-men’ depend on little more than a handful of bones and teeth. The matter of their age in terms of earth-time is questionable; are physicists absolutely certain that earth-time (chronological scheme of time) has
remained the same since the creation of this planet earth? For reasons too long to express here I think chronological time has indeed shown variability. Are we expected to believe scientific theory when the written word and the recorded legends of our ancestors (the Bronze and Iron Age Celts for example) explain in simple language how time and gravity change in another dimension outside our own four dimension universe (three dimensions of space and one of time in a curved universe) which the Celts called ‘the Otherworld’.
When questioned as to their reaction regarding evolution in the Darwinian sense, the Eastern Orthodox Church gives straight forward reply in three words, ‘In the beginning …’ Because the state of humankind has been condensed into the ATCG code of DNA genetics, and that the FOXP2 gene which seems to play an important role in language is present in both humankind and chimpanzee genome does nothing to support Darwinist theory that humankind evolved from an ape or that the wonderful universe we see about us created itself entirely by chance which proves God does not exist (God in fact is a delusion).
The Channel 5 TV programme, Revealed – Sex and the Neanderthals (29 July 2008) revived interest that Neanderthal man interbred with homo sapiens, the implication being that humankind evolved in the Darwinian sense from the supposed ape ancestor of the Neanderthals. The programme gave some interesting detail of genome DNA study but quite inconclusive regarding the interbreeding question. Perhaps the palaeoanthropologists will ease up on their digging for reasons outlined in Victor T. Walkley, God and Man – or Man and Ape. Ensign Message, April-June 2000, pp 22-23.
The Eastern Orthodox Church reminds us that whereas angels are pure spirit, humankind are of a higher estate because they are made of both earthly material and spirit. ‘and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul’ (Genesis 2:7). We will not find the DNA code of a genome denoting our spirit essence, despite the implication by Richard Dawkins of ‘spiritons’ (Richard Dawkins. The God Delusion, Houghton Mifflin, 2006).
Darwinists place considerable emphasis onv’evolution’. This farmed the basic tenet of Darwin’s work and given prime place in the physical (material) evolution of creatures in his Galapagos studies. There is the later inclusion of ‘instinct’ (the natural impulse which guides creatures and is independent of reason or experience and an inheritable character). When presenting the theory that humankind evolved from an apeman Darwinists do not give proper place to the intelligence of hunankind, i.e. the mental knowledge acquired through thought or mental ideation. Surely this is an integral and essential heritable character of humankind. An ape does not look at the stars in the night sky and ask “Whence
came we and whither do we go?”
In Professor Richard Dawkins TV contribution (The Genius of Charles Darwin. Channel 4), Dawkins expresses the view that he dislikes the evolutionary notion of natural selection (survival of the fittest) because this implies suffering, pain (nature red in tooth and claw, so to speak) and the mindless brutality of nature. How then does he applaud
Darwin’s theory which holds natural selection as the key to evolution. Dawkins ‘proud to be an African ape’ might have to be revised! Dawkins also exresses a view that he equates animal cognition to that of humankind, Darwin had similar conviction. This is of course absolute nonsense. Animals (every living thing must be related) do not possess the ability to ‘know’ in its widest sense of emotion and consciousness of the human psyche
Despite Dawkin’s objection to the mindless brutality of nature (by way of natural selection and the survival of the fittest) he follows up his presumption that animals have cognition which equates with the psyche of humankind; he comments on the admirable and wonderful quality of altruism existing within the animal family group (acting and living for the interest of others). This is however a hereditary character preserving the species and not some esoteric gift.
If, as Darwinists declare, humankind are descended from an ape, the altruistic principle would survive within the one existing species of homo sapiens as it does in the larger animal kingdom. Homo sapiens has one major quality that is not manifest in the animal kingdom, namely that humankind have the ability to conceive and form in the mind a plan of action or a strategy which, when brought into effect will bring about devastating consequence to one or more people. Brute murder – for example to facilitate theft or other benefit; Dawkins refers to competition in business whereby the shareholders and workers will be deprived of benefits. All of this is a complete and total negation and reversal of altruism. Darwinists give an easy answer, it is an aberration, variation or mutation. But that avoids an answer because it is not a reversion to a hitherto recessive Darwinian gemmule (pangenesis) as it is not a pre-existing characteristic of an ape. At this point Darwinistic theory comes unstuck and we have to refer to the Bible for an explanation. Biblical text details the fact that the fallen angels (servants of Satan) ‘saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all they chose … There were giants in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of man, and they bare children to them”. These fallen angels were beings created by God who rebelled against Him and were cast out of heaven. The lord of these fallen angels is Satan, “and the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan … he was cast out into the earth and his angels were cast out with him” (Revelation 12:9).
When I was made
Did my Creator make me
Of nine formed faculties,
Of fruit of fruits
Of the fruit of the primordial God,
Of primroses and blossoms of the hill,
Of the flower of trees and shrubs,
Of earth, of an earthly substance
When I was formed.
