Many scientists boast that their perceptions of life and the universe are based solely on scientific evidence and draw nothing on faith. The chief reason that this cannot be true is based mostly upon the fact that evolutionary and Creation scientists study the exact same bones, fossils, and evidence, yet they draw completely different conclusions. The Creationist studies from the worldview that the Bible is the defining, authoritative Word of God, and the evolutionist has his own personal genesis story that is being written and re-written daily based upon improvable scientific claims. The core beliefs of a human being define their interpretation of the evidence. One steep contrast involves the question, “Who is Neanderthal Man?”
The Evolutionary Perception:
Neanderthals are easily identified by their protruding jaw, nose, and facial bones. Evolutionists believe that Neanderthal Man lived 30,000 to 200,000 years ago which should have yielded a huge fossil record with thousands of generations, but it did not. It is believed that mankind is not a direct descendant of Neanderthal Man, but rather, Neanderthal Man is an offshoot from the evolutionary tree that eventually died out and became extinct. Because of this and their evolutionary timeline, they do not believe that modern day humans and Neanderthals lived at the same time, intermixed, nor intermarried. They believed he lived a very primitive life inside of caves and had a part in some of the cave drawings. They believe that Neanderthals had culture and religious beliefs since they did ceremoniously bury their dead and made musical instruments. They believe that he had rudimentary speech and was not very intelligent despite his large cranial size. Due to the believed harsh lifestyle he faced, the remains dated him to be in his forties at the time of his death. Since his children look no different from our children, they believe that within that forty year lifespan, his facial bones underwent “precocious bone growth” in order for him to get the protruding brow, facial bones, and jaw. They do find it odd how so often the teeth of a Neanderthal will appear to be much younger than the skull it is resting in? For instance, the skull of a child will appear to be of a six year old, while the examination of the teeth shows someone to be three years old. This leads to the belief that Neanderthals give birth to large children and therefore the women must have very large pelvic bones to birth a child that is practically the size of a toddler.
The Creationists Perception:
When a person reaches maturity, they reach a stopping point as far as bone growth. However, this is not true for some of the bones in the human head. This is known as Allometric Bone Growth (ABG). Every thirty years, the human facial bones and the back of the human head is known to have grown outward by 5% or more. Throughout your lifetime, everything from your chin to your brow is growing outward and the back of your skull which contributes to your cranial capacity grows out as well. The same is also true in apes and monkeys, but their growth rate is twice the rate of ours or more. In other words, ape-babies have flat faces much like human-babies, but when apes grow up, their face grows outward faster giving them a jaw and a face that juts out. When taking this into consideration along with the incredibly long lifetimes of hundreds of years or more as recorded in the Bible, a completely different conclusion can be drawn about who Neanderthal Man really is. Before the Fall, mankind could have lived forever and never known death by living in obedience to God and enjoying the fruits of His presence. Since the fall, mankind has been in a downward spiral, and our days have been numbered to not normally exceed 120 years. This numbering of 120 years (which coincides with the amount of time that human cells can continuously replace themselves under ideal conditions) did not take hold right away with Adam, but it took place in a gradual state of decay over many generations. So, when we look at a Neanderthal skull, the question should be, “Is this what I would look like if I lived to be as old as Adam, Methuselah, or Noah?” So Neanderthal is not a missing link or an evolutionary offshoot, but he is no different from a modern day human being who had the privilege to live to a very old age. This explains why in some cases, Neanderthals and Modern Day Humans share the same burial grounds. In fact on Mount Carmel in
It is also believed that the long living humans matured at a slower rate. In the case of the six year old child with a three year old’s equivalent of teeth, the teeth came in later in life than what they do now. Children today have teeth appearing months before their first birthday, but a study based upon dental charts from the 3rd British Museum on children under the age of 12 months during the years of 1759 to 1859 showed that none of them had teeth eruptions. Another dental record study compared dental charts from the years 1883, 1939, and 1963, and they all showed that humans matured at a faster rate today than they did in the past. Young girls would reach their first menstruation at age 16 in the year 1860, yet over the decades, the average menstruation age changed to 14 in the 1920s, and it continuously becomes younger today. Often times the x-rayed remains of Royal Egyptian Mummies appear to be much younger than their historically recorded age. In contrast, Neanderthal Man is someone who lived a long life with a very slow maturity rate which was common in the days of the early portion of Genesis.
When you take into account the differences in facial features, genetics, and bone structure of all of the different races of mankind: Caucasian, African, Oriental, etc. and compare them, you will see a greater difference between them than you will between the average modern man and a Neanderthal. Forensic efforts from Japan have reconstructed a face from skull remains and revealed how they do indeed appear to be like the average person. Creationists believe that he is one of us blessed with a long life and a very slow maturity rate. His large cranium embodies a brain that has lifetimes of experience. It is believed that he had very good manual dexterity because some of them had carvings on their teeth, whether this was a tattoo or an early form of dental work is unknown, but it does show the use of hands and tools completing very precise tasks. It is also known that among their cave paintings, there was one with a mammoth and a dinosaur fighting each other. This part of the cave was closed to public viewing in that it upset the evolutionary model.
In Conclusion:
Theoretical scientific claims do not come from their evidence alone. Scientists have an idea or a theory, and they are setting out in hopes to prove it. Evolutionists have their own “genesis” story that depends upon a vast amount of time and chaotic, random events coming together to create a higher order. They start out with a created paradigm that has been accredited by the scientific community. Any hopes in adding to that “established” paradigm gives them fame, fortune, and a remembrance that could go beyond their death. They look to the grave to find the meaning of life and all they find is a small, limited fossil record made up of a few bone fragments often proclaiming, “We'll just have to dig more and try to find better fossils.” When one of their hoaxes get exposed, they declare, "I just wanted to show what it would have looked like.” It is creative story telling at its most deceptive, yet passed off as science. Yet, they miss the point that the Tomb is Empty.
Creationists believe that Jesus is the Creator and that He is God. If Moses was wrong about something in Genesis, then Jesus would have been running around correcting him rather than quoting him all of the time. All of the preconceived notions about life and the universe for a Creationist comes from the Bible. With the Bible defining their core beliefs and their world view, they can look at the Neanderthal evidence and see how it coincides with basic medical knowledge of bone growth and come up with something so profound.
Next time, we will examine some of the history of the different Neanderthal findings and compare the number of birthdays that evolutionists say they had with what Creationists have to say when they take into account for Allometrical Bone Growth. This is probably the only case when you would have a Creationist arguing for an older age.
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