Here’s an article from Sci Tech Daily promoting human evolution. However, instead of providing evidence in favor of evolution, this article fosters some welcome skepticism.

The first thing that jumps at me is the title: “Accurate Hominin Data: Getting the Fossil Record Right on Human Evolution”. We’re often told that evolution is a well understood scientific fact, making it the best explanation for life’s diversity, but when we examine the evidence, we find that’s a bunch of bluster. And the headline serves as a perfect example. If evolution were truly a scientific fact and so well understood, then the headline contradicts prevailing wisdom; it implies that scientists have not gotten the fossil record right in the first place, and this tells us that evolution is not so well understood after all.

The first paragraph sows more confusion on human evolution as the author states, “Uncovering the evolution of any set of living creatures is a complex and highly meticulous task for researchers, and various theories and approaches that may differ over time may indeed change the fossil record.” Huh? Again, if evolution is true and so well understood, then how can various theories and approaches “change the fossil record”? Evolution, we’re told, has multiple lines of evidence supporting it. But if the fossil record can be so easily changed by various theories and approaches, then it sure sounds like evolutionary theory can be manipulated to a desired outcome, and that should call the entire theory into question.

The author, therefore, encourages other researchers “to take caution on their findings”. Well said!

But it gets better. The peer reviewed paper provides “an important and foundational message.” What is that message? It says, “conclusions drawn from evolutionary models are only as good as the data upon which they are based.” Boom!

Creationists like myself have been trying to get this message out for decades. If the evolutionary models are wrong, then their conclusions will be wrong too. And if evolutionary theory is wrong, then so will their conclusions be wrong.

The article goes on to throw another monkey wrench into evolutionary theory. It says, “the research team proved that many of the fossil dates from the study were wrong”. Wow! Another thing we’re told is that dating techniques can be trusted because that’s ‘science’. But if scientists get “many of the fossil dates” wrong, then maybe dating techniques are not as accurate as some people allege.

According to Professor Carrie S. Mongle, researchers commonly propose new evolutionary ideas that overturn commonly held theories on human evolution, but she cautions that we can’t “make major claims based on piecemeal compilations of the fossil record and questionable data from literature.”

Agreed! I don’t doubt that Professor Mongle is an evolutionist, but she’s echoing exactly what creationists have been saying for decades. Much of the fossil record is incomplete and based on questionable data. Therefore, I’d argue that evolution should not be assumed.

The team who conducted the study did their own research and found that “the estimated timing of species divergences differed by as much as 300,000 years from the previously reported estimates.” This is a very big deal. Why should anyone have confidence in evolution when so many scientists are so demonstrably wrong? Mongle goes on to clarify: “When estimates are off by this much, it can completely change scientists’ interpretations of the evolutionary drivers that made us human.”

Again, this professor is not doubting evolution. But based on her team’s findings, she should. Sadly, she assumes evolution, and therefore, claims it’s just a matter of interpreting the data correctly. I agree that the data needs to be interpreted correctly, but as a creationist, I believe the data is better interpreted when we conclude that humans did not evolve from any other organism other than humans. There are no “evolutionary drivers” that made us human. It was the breath of God (Genesis 2:7) that made us human.