Is Creationism Science?

A debate between Duane Gish and Frank Zindler

Aired during the evening of January 11, 1990 on "Night Talk" A program hosted by Jim Bleikamp, WTVN 610-AM Radio, Columbus, Ohio

This page contains only the portions of this debate which are relevant to the Monkey Quote web page at this site.

A full transcript of the debate can be found at http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/frank_zindler/gish-zindler/

Duane Gish:

Let me, let me make one comment, Jim, on what Frank just said. If those people in Columbus had invited the Institute for Creation Research and our scientists to sit down with them, we could have provided them with a wealth of information.

Frank Zindler:

Well they looked through your literature, but they couldn't find... you've never published any of this, Dr. Gish.

Duane Gish:

No, do you know that's not true.

Frank Zindler:

Well, there is no positive evidence for creationism.

Duane Gish:

Now Frank, now Frank, you said that I had distorted science or quoted out of context when I said the Australopithecine skulls were ape-like... [48]

Frank Zindler:

No, no, no, Sinanthropus...

Duane Gish:

What?

Frank Zindler:

Sinanthropus, not Australopithecus.

Duane Gish:

That was a statement by ah, what's his name? The, ah, ah... the fellow in France. [49]

Frank Zindler:

Yes.

Duane Gish:

A well known ah...

Frank Zindler:

Right.

Duane Gish:

... ah, evolutionary paleontologist who made that statement.

Frank Zindler:

But it wasn't there in the original French, Dr. Gish.

Duane Gish:

He said if you looked at the skull, for example Java man was the same as Sinanthropus... said if you looked at that skull you would say ape, if you looked at the...

Frank Zindler:

Whoa, whoa.

Duane Gish:

... femur you would say human.

Frank Zindler:

Wait a minute, you're shifting ground again here. What you wrote in The Fossil's Say No was that Boule called these skulls monkey-like. I wrote about this in an American Atheist article. [50] It's interesting, in later editions of your book, you deleted that passage.

Duane Gish:

I deleted because I quoted a secondary source... [51 ]

Frank Zindler:

I know.

Duane Gish:

... I have not been able to locate the French, but I do know, I do know, what Boule said about Java man, which is equivalent, and you know it's equivalent, to Sinanthropus. They're now in the same species.

Frank Zindler:

Sure.

Duane Gish:

He said that skull, if you look at the skull you would say ape. Now that's what he said. [52]

Frank Zindler:

But, he knew that it was a larger brain capacity. [53 ]

Duane Gish:

(unintelligible)

Jim Bleikamp:

I gotta take a break Duane, I'm overdue for a break.[Commercial]

Footnotes (by Frank Zindler)

[48] Surely, Gish had just heard me say 'Sinanthropus' and 'monkey-like.' Is it possible that he doesn't realize the Australopithecines were more primitive than Sinanthropus (i.e., Homo erectus)? Is it possible he still doesn't understand that there is a difference between apes and monkeys?

[49] On page 123 of Evolution? The Fossils Say No! (Public School Edition, Creation-Life Publishers, San Diego, 1978), Duane Gish says "In a 1937 publication, Boule referred to the Sinanthropus skulls as 'monkey-like' (36)." The reference to this quote reads "36. M. Boule, L'anthropologie, 1937, p. 21." Following up on the "monkey-like" motif, Gish writes on page 129:

"In an article published in 1937 in L'Anthropologie (p. 21), Boule wrote: 'To this fantastic hypothesis [of Abbe Breuil and Fr. Teilhard de Chardin], that the owners of the monkey-like skulls were the authors of the large-scale industry, I tak e the liberty of preferring an opinion more in conformity with the conclusions from my own studies, which is that the hunter (who battered the skulls) was a real man and that the cut stones, etc., were his handiwork [the nature of this stone industry will be discussed later].'"

Examination of page 21 of the Boule article shows nothing like this quotation. Nothing about monkeys is to be found. Moreover, the complete quotation is not to be found anywhere in the entire article, although on page 20 we do find a portion of the text in question: "To this hypothesis, as fantastic as it is ingenious, I may be permitted to prefer one which seems to me to be just as satisfactory, being simpler and more in conformity with the totality of what we know: the hunter was a true man, whose stone industry has been found and who made Sinanthropus his victim!"

The "monkey-like skulls" business appears to have been invented by Gish to make paleoanthropologists look dumber than the fundamentalists who swallow his line of creationist clap-trap.

[50] My article, "Maculate Deception: The 'Science' of Creationism," appeared in the March, 1985 issue of The American Atheist, and can be obtained from American Atheists, P.O. Box 8457, Columbus, OH 43201.

[51] After my article appeared, Gish re-issued his book under a new title, Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record. [Creation-Life Publishers, Master Books Division, El Cajon, California, 1985] The false quotation from Boule about "monkey-like skulls" is gone, and it becomes clear that Gish got his monkey idea from a Catholic priest named Patrick O'Connell. According to Gish, O'Connell was in China during the period that Peking Man ( Sinanthropus) was being excavated. Although O'Connell had never been to the excavation site, he decided (and Gish readily agrees) that Peking Man was a hoax. According to Gish (page 199), "O'Connell concludes that Sinanthropus consisted of the skulls of either large macaques (large monkeys) or large baboons killed and eaten by workers at an ancient quarry." Gish seems not to realize how incompetent such a claim is. Even a high school biology student can readily distinguish between a baboon skull and the skulls shown in photographs of the Peking remains or the accurate casts (Gish misleadingly refers to the casts as "models") which were made of the remains and sent to various museums around the world. The actual bones excavated during the 1920's and 1930's disappeared when the American marines to whom they were entrusted for safe-keeping were captured by the invading Japanese.

[52] It is unclear whether Gish here is simply confessing that Boule described the skulls as "ape-like" - not monkey-like - or whether he is actually trying to misrepresent Peking Man as having been judged actually to have been an ape.

[53] Homo erectus, of which both Sinanthropus and Pithecanthropus (Java Man) were examples, had a brain capacity approximately intermediate between that of African apes or Australopithecines such as Australopithecus africanus on the one side and Homo sapiens on the other. Homo erectus is as perfect a "connecting link" as one could wish between modern humans and creatures neurologically on par with the apes. (The brain of modern human is approximately three times the size of the ape brain .) Generally speaking, the earliest examples of H. erectus had brains smaller than two-thirds that of modern humans; brains of late examples (such as some at Peking) were larger than two-thirds, some even slightly overlapping in size the smallest known modern brains. It is understandable that creationists would want to be able to sweep away so wonderful an evidence of human evolution, by claiming the many examples all to have been hoaxes!

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