AustinG writes:
Obviously, a discovery of a living population of Homo erectus would stir up the EvC debate. My question is, would this be the smoking gun of evolution for creationists? If not, what arguments could be made in defense of creationism?
That Noah and the people who built the tower of Babel were Erectus, not Sapiens. This is already known to smart creationists like Kurt Wise, on the basis that Erectus is found on three continents, and therefore must be part of the scattering of tribes (Neanderthal too)!
http://
EvC Forum: Did Homo Erectus build the Tower of Babel? -->
EvC Forum: Did Homo Erectus build the Tower of Babel?
Another example of the anti-science and anti-rational approach creationists take in order to try to justify their beliefs.
They propose these wild "what ifs" without any thought to what the consequences of those "what ifs" might be.
Scientists see the change from
Home erectus to modern man taking place over some two million years. Creationists generally balk at the idea that evolution can produce new kinds in two million years--or at all--but now are proposing that such change
can occur in a couple of thousand years.
But that's not the best example of creation "science!"
Creationists Lubenow and Woodmorappe
write that
Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, and
Homo neanderthalensis can best be understood as racial variants of modern man--all descended from Adam and Eve, and most likely arising after the separation of people groups after Babel.
If this was the case, the change from modern man, i.e., Adam and Eve, to these four species of fossil man took place since the Babel incident, which is usually placed after the global flood and in the range of 4,000 to 5,300 years ago. The change from modern man to
Homo ergaster would require a rate of evolution on the order of several hundred times faster than scientists posit for the change from
Homo ergaster to modern man! This is in spite of the fact that most creationists deny evolution occurs on this scale at all; now they have not only proposed such a change themselves, but see it
several hundreds of times faster and in reverse!
And they wonder that we call them anti-science, eh?
Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.