What evidence is there for evolution? One common narrative is, “The proof is in the bones.” But, when we examine the evidence, we find that’s just not true.

Dr. John Sanford, a Cornell University professor and inventor of the ‘Gene Gun’, hosted the session, Contested Bones at the 2018 Creation Superconference, and this was one of my favorites. Dr. Sanford is a geneticist, but he was also formerly an atheist and staunch evolutionist.

I read the book Bones of Contention by Marvin Lubenow (I’d highly recommend it), which was published in 2004, and while the book has been revised, there’s much more evidence refuting evolution since then, and Dr. Sanford provides provides the latest updates in his book, Contested Bones.

Evolutionists claim that ape-to-man evolution provides some of the best evidence for evolution because, we’re told, the fossils prove this transition. But there are major problems with these claims.

The slow, gradual evolutionary process we’ve seen in museums has changed. The images of a monkey slowly becoming human was supposed to prove human evolution, but this iconic image has been rejected by the paleoanthropology community for more than a decade. According to J.J. Hublin of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, “The once-popular fresco showing a single file of marching hominids becoming ever more vertical, tall, and hairless now appears to be fiction.”

Evolutionist Bernard Wood concurs: “There is a popular image of human evolution that you’ll find all over the place … On the left of the picture there’s an ape … On the right, a man … Between the two is a succession of figures that become ever more like humans … 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.”

Another evolutionist, Meredith Small, makes similar claims: “The straight line has blossomed into a spreading, rather uncontrolled bush and we don’t like it. We want our history to be nice and neat, but the fossils keep messing us up.”

According to these and other evolutionists, human evolution remains “as fuzzy as ever” with fossils being “haphazardly assigned to the species of Homo,” with “no convincing hypothesis”, forcing evolutionists to “start from the beginning.”

According to Dr. Sanford, the evidence for human evolution is scant, jumbled, shallow, fragmented and scattered, and in some cases we find a mix of human and animal bones. And of the early human ancestors, Neanderthal is one we have plenty of evidence for, and he was fully human.

Other human fossils that are agreed upon include Homo floresiensis (the Hobbit) and Homo erectus, while examples of extinct apes include the Australopithecines- like Lucy and Sediba. All the specimens found are bone- not mineralized, and contain extractable DNA, so they can’t be very old. No digging is required for these fossils because they’re found on the surface.

It’s also been well documented that some paleoanthropologists, in an effort to make a name for themselves, will go to great lengths to add a new species to the line of human evolution despite evidence against it. Other evolutionary tricks include artists drawing apes to look more human, and humans to look more ape-like. Sanford also points out that everything in paleontology is contested. While one person claims to have found a transitional species, others disagree.

All this is powerful evidence that human evolution is a false narrative. But there’s more… genetic data also confirms this. According to Dr. Sanford, evolution is “going the wrong way.” Humans are devolving, and that partly has to do with early inbreeding among different tribes of people. From one generation to the next we can observe reductive evolution, where humans are losing function as they adapt to new environments; this type of change is the opposite of what is expected if evolution were true.

What we observe is completely different from what students and the public are led to believe, and it’s a shame that many people have been convinced that we’re not special- or at least not any more special than a worm or fish.

On the other hand, the evidence fits perfectly with a Biblical worldview. We expect humans to be devolving due to sin, but we also have purpose because we were made by God in his image. This is good news indeed!

I’ve ordered the book, Contested Bones (by Dr. John Sanford and Christopher Rupe), and hope to provide an actual review after I finish. If you want solid information and a current understanding regarding human evolution, check it out for yourself.