Creationism and Human Evolution

The usual creationist response to hominid fossils is to claim that there are no intermediates; each one is either a human or an ape. It doesn't matter that some of the "humans" have a brain size well below the normal human range, heavy brow ridges, no chin, and teeth larger than modern ones set in a projecting jaw, or that some of the "apes" were bipedal, with very humanlike teeth, and brains larger than those of similar sized apes. There are some skulls which cannot be reliably assigned to either genus. (Willis 1989)

This is exactly what we would expect if evolution had occurred. If, on the other hand, creationism was true and there was a large gap between humans and apes, it should be easy to separate hominid fossils into humans and apes. This is not the case. As will be shown, creationists themselves cannot agree which fossils are humans and which are apes. It would not matter even if creationists could decide where to put the dividing line between humans and apes. No matter where it is placed, the humans just above the line and the apes just below it will be more similar to one another than they will be to other humans or other apes.

Although there are many variants of creationism, the following sections deal only with the arguments of young-earth creationists, who hold to a very rigid literal interpretation of the Bible. They typically believe that the earth was created less than 20,000 years ago, in the space of six 24-hour days. Old-earth creationists usually accept the age of the earth given by geologists (4.6 billion years), but differ considerably in their acceptance of the theory of evolution.

Debating creationists

This page is part of the Fossil Hominids FAQ at the talk.origins Archive.