Making Men out of Monkeys: Does the Bible teach that man evolved from monkeys?

Jared C. WellmanThis article originally posted at JaredWellman.com

A well-known American idiom is, “You’re making a monkey out of me!” It means to make someone look foolish. When it comes to the general belief of where humans come from, this idiom is, albeit flipped, standardly employed by our leading scientists. They make men out of monkeys. And, although it’s unpopular to say so, the idiom’s original meaning is applicable, too.As foolish as it is to “make a monkey out of a man,” it’s even more foolish to make a man out of a monkey, yet anyone who opposes the Bible’s description of the creation of man in favor of evolution does just this.WHAT THE BIBLE TEACHESThe Bible portrays man as being created on the sixth day of creation:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Gen 1:26-27).

By this stage, God had already created sea creatures and flying creatures, and, alongside man on the sixth day, he also created the land creatures such as “cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth” (Gen 1:24). Therefore, we have a biblical account for every kind of living creature on the earth. And of all these creatures, man is specifically unique.While many look at the fact that God created both man and land creatures on the same day as an indication that the two might be one-in-the-same, it’s important to note the emphatic distinction Moses, the author, offers mankind in comparison to the other land creatures. The land creatures were only generally mentioned, while man was set apart specifically. Man isn’t just one of the living land creatures, he is created in God’s image and is given domain over all of the other animals, which includes the sea and flying animals. Also, the passage says that “God blessed” man, which is an action not offered to any other living creature. This blessing is eventually described deeper in the context of marriage (Gen 2:23-25), something no other living creature received from God. Dr. David Menton writes,

From this it is clear that there is no animal that is man’s equal, and certainly none his ancestor. This leaves no room for prehumans or for billions of years of cosmic evolution prior to man’s appearance on the earth. [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=“yes” overflow=“visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=“1_1” background_position=“left top” background_color=“” border_size=“” border_color=“” border_style=“solid” spacing=“yes” background_image=“” background_repeat=“no-repeat” padding=“” margin_top=“0px” margin_bottom=“0px” class=“” id=“” animation_type=“” animation_speed=“0.3” animation_direction=“left” hide_on_mobile=“no” center_content=“no” min_height=“none”][1]

More importantly, the Bible corroborates this in saying,

Eve … the mother of all the living (Gen 3:20).

All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men, and another flesh of beasts, and another flesh of birds, and another of fish” (1 Cor 15:39).

From this it is clear that the Bible describes mankind far differently than it does any other living creature.WHAT SCIENCE TEACHESScience doesn’t consider what the Bible teaches concerning creation, or on anything for that matter. The Bible’s description of creation is not even considered a viable “theory” in the scientific realm. It’s a myth. Instead, science touts the theory of evolution, a theory propelled in the 1800’s by Charles Darwin in his book, On the Origin of the Species. In short, the theory suggests that man evolved over many years from an ape-like creature, leaving the idea of a Creator outside of the equation.This reveals that Creationism and Evolution are diametrically opposed to one another. One theory states that there is a God that, out of nothing, created mankind, and the other theory states that mankind evolved, without a Creator, from ape-like ancestors. Although many attempt to merge these two thoughts, it simply isn’t feasible. The Bible leaves no room for any kind of “theistic evolution,” and evolution’s goal is to explain a world without God.THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF BOTH BELIEFSIt’s important to identify the presuppositions of both beliefs. This is important because Evolutionists accuse Creationists of the presupposition that God’s Word is an accurate description of creation. And this is a fair accusation.However, it’s fair to accuse Evolutionists of having a presupposition of their own, which is that man evolved from apes. “[E]volutionists begin with the assumption that man has, in fact, evolved from apes. No paleoanthropologists (those who study the fossil evidence for man’s origin) would dare to seriously raise the question, “Did man evolve from apes?” The only permissible question is, “From which apes did man evolve?”[2]Dr. Menton writes,

Since evolutionists generally do not believe that man evolved from any ape that is now living, they look to fossils of humans and apes to provide them with their desired evidence. Specifically, they look for any anatomical feature that looks “intermediate” (between that of apes and man). Fossil apes having such features are declared to be ancestral to man (or at least collateral relatives) and are called hominids. Living apes, on the other hand, are not considered to be hominids, but rather are called hominoids because they are only similar to humans but did not evolve into them. Nonetheless, evolutionists are willing to accept mere similarities between the fossilized bones of extinct apes and the bones of living men as “proof ” of our ape ancestry.[3]

This presupposition leads to the question of evidence. A reasonable question is, “What kind of evidence do scientists use to produce this widely acclaimed idea that humans evolved from ape-like ancestors?” If the theory is as unquestionable as we are taught to believe, then the evidence should be categorically incontrovertible.THE EVIDENCEIf a Creationist is to take the full evidence touted by an Evolutionist, then this means that modern day apes cannot be specifically evaluated as evidence for mankind’s proposed evolution. Dr. Menton describes this well, and reveals some of the major complications the reality brings to the theory of evolution:

Though many similarities may be cited between living apes and humans, the only historical evidence that could support the ape ancestry of man must come from fossils. Unfortunately, the fossil record of man and apes is very sparse. Approximately 95 percent of all known fossils are marine invertebrates, about 4.7 percent are algae and plants, about 0.2 percent are insects and other invertebrates, and only about 0.1 percent are vertebrates (animals with bones). Finally, only the smallest imaginable fraction of vertebrate fossils consists of primates (humans, apes, monkeys, and lemurs).[4]

Of this small percentage of fossils, scientists specifically appraise bones like the jaws and teeth, skulls, leg bones, foot bones, and hipbones in order to determine whether or not some pattern of evolution is present. While scientists would like us to believe that the bones reveal an evolutionary process, they simply don’t. Consider the following attempt to bridge the gap between “ape-like ancestor” and man:

Artistic imagination has been used to illustrate entire “apemen” from nothing more than a single tooth. In the early 1920s, the “apeman”Hesperopithecus (which consisted of a single tooth) was pictured in theLondon Illustrated News complete with the tooth’s wife, children, domestic animals, and cave! Experts used this tooth, known as “Nebraska man,” as proof for human evolution during the Scopes trial in 1925. In 1927, parts of the skeleton were discovered together with the teeth, and Nebraska man was found to really be an extinct peccary (wild pig)![5]

In light of the questionable and non-existent evidence, Dr. Menton suggests that evolutionists must do a handful of things in order to solidify their theory, such as, emphasize certain humanlike qualities of fossilized ape bones (and with imagination upgrade apes to be more humanlike) and emphasize certain apelike qualities of fossilized human bones (and with imagination downgrade humans to be more apelike).[6]Menton writes, “These approaches account for the attempts by evolutionists to fill the unbridgeable gap between apes and men with fossil apemen.[7]And, unfortunately, this is exactly what has happened:

The most famous example of an apeman proven to be a combination of ape and human bones is Piltdown man. In 1912, Charles Dawson, a medical doctor and an amateur paleontologist, discovered a mandible (lower jawbone) and part of a skull in a gravel pit near Piltdown, England. The jawbone was apelike, but had teeth that showed wear similar to the human pattern. The skull, on the other hand, was very humanlike. These two specimens were combined to form what was called “Dawn man,” which was calculated to be 500,000 years old.The whole thing turned out to be an elaborate hoax. The skull was indeed human (about 500 years old), while the jaw was that of a modern female orangutan whose teeth had been obviously filed to crudely resemble the human wear pattern. Indeed, the long ape canine tooth was filed down so far that it exposed the pulp chamber, which was then filled in to hide the mischief. It would seem that any competent scientist examining this tooth would have concluded that it was either a hoax or the world’s first root canal! The success of this hoax for over 50 years.[8]

WHAT THE FOSSILS (AND LACK OF FOSSILS) REALLY SAYWhat’s interesting about fossils—the evidence scientists use to tout evolution—is that the very idea of fossils seems to support the Bible’s description of a Flood more than it does science’s description of a Big Bang.Ken Ham writes, “Fossil formation requires a sudden burial. When an animal dies, it usually gets eaten or decays until there is nothing left. To form a fossil, unique conditions are required to preserve the animal and replace it with minerals, etc.”Evolutionists once claimed that fossils were created slowly by the animal carcasses being gradually covered over by sediment. Recently they have acknowledged that dinosaur fossils, [to be specific], were instead created by a catastrophic process. In other words, to form the fossils that we now discover, they must have been buried quickly. This fits perfectly with the Bible’s description of a worldwide Flood that “destroyed from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life” (Gen 6:17), a flood that wreaked such havoc upon the world that it now “groans” because of the aftermath of it (Rom 8).But this brings up a good question concerning human fossils. If there was a worldwide Flood that drowned every person on the face of the earth, save Noah and his family, then why don’t we come across more human fossils? Wouldn’t this help solidify that the Flood happened?Dr. John Morris of ICR offers two helpful answers to this question. First, Morris discusses the nature of fossilization of human remains in writing,

Land creatures have what we call a “low-fossilization potential.” As land animals die in water, they bloat, float, and come apart. It is very difficult to trap a bloated animal under water, in order for it to be buried. Furthermore, scavengers readily devour both flesh and bone. Seawater and bacterial action destroy everything. The scouring ability of underwater mudflows, common during the Flood, would grind bone to powder.Conversely, what land fossils are found were mostly laid down during the Ice Age— a land-oriented event following the Flood, which had the ability to bury animals in land-derived deposits. (And, by the way, there are human fossils in those sediments.)But the purpose of Noah’s Flood was to destroy the land communities—not preserve them—especially humans. Some creationists even postulate the pre-Flood continents were subducted down into the mantle, totally annihilating all remnants of the civilizations. In any scenario, what land fossils were preserved would be buried late in the Flood, near the surface, and would have been subject to erosion and destruction once again as the Floodwaters rushed off the rising continents.[10]

Second, Morris discusses the amount of people living during the time of the Flood in comparison to the size of the planet. He writes,

For purposes of discussion, let us assume 300,000,000 people died in the Flood, and that each one was preserved as a fossil evenly distributed in the sedimentary record, which consists of about 300,000,000 cubic miles. The chances of such a fossil intersecting the earth’s surface, being found by someone, and then being properly and honestly identified is vanishingly small.[11]

Morris closes his thoughts with a pertinent question for evolutionary proponents: “On the other hand, if evolution is true, and humans have lived on Earth for three million years, many trillions have lived and died. Where are their fossils? This is the more vexing question.”[12]CONCLUSIONOne of the most important questions any person could ever answer is the one concerning from whence man came. The fact that there is something rather than nothing is a big deal, and the answer is that we either came from a Deity or that we didn’t. While scientists would like us to believe that the evidence for the latter of these options is incontrovertible, it simply isn’t. The theory of evolution is based on the foundation of a hypothetical ape-like creature that has no evidence of ever existing. God, on the other hand, has more than enough evidence of existing. Things like morality, the telos of the universe, and even biblical archaeology help support this thought.It’s more unreasonable, even scientifically speaking, to believe in evolution than it is to believe in creationism._____Works Cited[1] https://answersingenesis.org/human-evolution/ape-man/did-humans-really-evolve-from-apelike-creatures/[2] Ibid.[3] ibid.[4] ibid.[5] ibid.[6] ibid.[7] ibid.[8] ibid.[9] ibid.[10] http://www.icr.org/article/why-dont-we-find-more-human-fossils/[11] ibid.[12] ibid.[13] http://www.icr.org/article/if-apes-evolved-into-humans-why