JOHN SANFORD, GENETICS AND HUMAN EVOLUTION

Geneticist and research scientist at Cornell, John Sanford, had been an evolutionist until he began asking questions at age 50:

·       I was fully persuaded that ape-to-man evolution was a simple and obvious fact of science. But I did not hold that view based upon careful examination of the evidence. Since I only had a superficial understanding of the topic, where did my certainty come from? Like any other scientist who is outside of their field of expertise, I was primarily persuaded by the pervasive “group-think,” which is especially strong within the academic community…my certainty in human evolution was derived from my faith in the experts in the field. I assumed there was no ideological agenda, I assumed the researchers were in agreement regarding the evidence, and I assumed the experts must actually have ways to know for certain what happened in the very distant past. (Contested Stones; “Personal Prologue”)

Sanford admits that even in his own field of genetics, he had blindly assumed that there was an accepted body of knowledge to prove human evolution:

·       It turns out that the mutation/selection process cannot even begin to create the large networks of new information that would be required for the genetic transformation of ape to man. Even more surprising, there is evidence that human evolution is going backward, because good mutations are extremely rare while bad mutations are occurring much more quickly than natural selection can select them away…There is now strong genetic evidence against ape to man evolution.

Sanford insists that these problems are widely accepted among geneticists. Why then do they still believe that they can add valuable pieces to the evolution puzzle? Some are convinced that the fossil record has already established evolution. Therefore, their job is  to complete in the picture by filling in the gaps. However, Sanford’s book argues against the idea that ape to man evolution has been established by the fossil record:

·       The raw data (the bones themselves) do not show what is widely claimed. Furthermore, it is clear that most of the workers in the field sharply disagree about the key discoveries.

In support of his claim, Sanford offers the testimony of many noted evolutionary paleontologists. Bernard Wood, George Washington University, has written:

·       Our progress from ape to human looks so smooth, so tidy. It’s such a beguiling image that even the experts are loath to let it go. But it is an illusion. (“Who are We?”, New Scientist 2366:44, 2002)

Harvard evolutionary biologist, Ernst Mayr, has even criticized evolutionary paleontology as unscientific:

·       Evolutionary biology, in contrast with physics and chemistry, is a historical science—the evolutionist attempts to explain events and processes that have already taken place. Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques for the explication of such events and processes. Instead one constructs a historical narrative, consisting of a tentative reconstruction of the particular scenario that led to the events one is trying to explain. (“Darwin’s Influence on Modern Thought,” Scientific American, Nov. 24, 2009)

According to Sanford, instead of the evidence of the fossils shaping the theory, the theory of evolution has shaped the evidence, conforming the fossils to fit the theory:

·       The ape-to-man narrative was constructed during the time of Darwin, 150 years ago. It was accepted as a fact long before any significant hominin fossils were found to validate the theory. This evolutionary narrative has consistently influenced how the bones have been interpreted. The bones have always been interpreted in light of the widely accepted ape-to-man story. This is very significant—it means that the science of paleoanthropology is not merely a matter of digging up fossils and describing what they look like. Speculations, assumptions, and inferences about the unverifiable past play a pivotal role in how the hominin bones are interpreted…taxonomists have a great deal of “artistic” license. (14)

However, the fossils do speak persuasively about the absence of transitional forms. Darwin viewed this as a great problem:

·       Why then is not every geological stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory. (Origin of Species; Barnes & Noble Books, New York, p. 227, 2004)

An absence of evidence is a serious objection. However, Darwin’s problem has not been alleviated. The late Harvard paleontologist, Stephen J. Gould, had written:

·       The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. (Natural History 86:14, 1977)

Even the “transitional forms” are questionable. Perhaps instead they merely represent variations within a species or their abnormal members. Sanford remarks that:

·       New discoveries in the field of genetics make ape-to-man evolution virtually impossible. Furthermore, there is strong evidence that the deviant forms within the Homo genus appear to manifest various pathologies. These deviant forms do not necessarily reflect pre-humans, but rather seen to reflect genetic degeneration associated with inbreeding and accelerated mutation accumulation. (19)

If humanity had evolved, the fossil finds should have demonstrated this. However, Bernard Wood declared in Nature (2014):

·       Even with the fossil evidence and analytical techniques form the past 50 years, a convincing hypothesis for the origin of Homo remains elusive. (24)

The curator of the American Museum of Natural History, Ian Tattersall, adds:

·       Even allowing for the poor record we have of our close extinct kin, Homo Sapiens appears as distinctive and unprecedented…there is certainly no evidence to support the notion that we gradually became who we inherently are over an extended period, in either the physical or the intellectual sense. (“Masters of the Planet: The Search for our Human Origins,” Palgrave MacMillan, New York)

Paleoanthropologists Niles Eldridge and Ian Tattersall have also confessed that:

• …One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm part of Darwin’s prediction… (“The Myths of Human Evolution,” Columbia University Press, New York, pg. 45-46, 1982)

Sanford concludes:

·       The traditional straight-line view of human evolution is officially dead……The human fossil record does not in any way reveal a linear evolutionary progression, as the experts in the field freely confess. (19)

·       All the major paleoanthropological claims from the last 50 years are now in doubt. The modern theory is clearly in a state of disarray and confusion. (26)

However, their confusion and exasperation does not filter down to the public or even to the textbooks. Sanford rhetorically asks, “Why doesn’t the public hear about the controversies…?” There is just too much at stake. To abandon the naturalistic theory of evolution is to once again be confronted with the judgments of both their peers and God.