New Species of Homo Discovered: Homo naledi

Time to trot out Jim Foley's classic web page from 2008, Comparison of all skulls, part of his Fossil Hominids: The Evidence for Human Evolution FAQ (last updated May 2011) in the talkorigins archive.The point he makes is that while creationists are in complete agreement that there is a very definite and distinct line dividing humans and non-human apes, such that every fossil can be determined as being either 100% human or 100% ape with nothing in the middle, they cannot agree with each other or even with himself which fossil belongs in which group: some they do agree on, some they don't agree on with some creationists calling the fossil human and others calling it ape, and sometimes the same creationist will classify the fossil differently in different of his books.Similarly, one of my earliest encounters with creationists in 1982 was in a televised debate of sorts on CBN:

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I first saw creationists in action one night in 1982 on CBN. A Tennessean host would run various debates (I believe it was David Ankerberg). This particular night, a creationist was debating a scientist (kind of looked like Drs. Morris and Awbrey, though I cannot be sure since I didn't know of either of them at the time). I remember that the scientist showed several slides of hominid fossils, such as knee joints (to show evidence of developing bi-pedalism). Then he showed slides of a human pelvis and chimpanzee pelvis side-by-side. First from the side, then from the top, he pointed out two sets of characteristics that clearly distinguish the one from the other (i.e. whether viewed from the side or from the top, the pelvis could be positively identified as human or chimpanzee). Next he showed both views of a hominid pelvis. From one view it was definitely ape, from the other it was definitely human; thus demonstrating it to be a intermediate form. The creationist then proclaimed the hominid pelvis to be 100% ape and not the least bit human by completely ignoring the human characteristic (even when reminded of it repeatedly by his opponent) and concentrating solely on the view that displayed the ape characteristic. Of course, the host declared this to be a creationist victory and threw in the standard gross misinterpretation of punctuated equilibrium for good [?] measure.

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This event made a lasting impression on me. The creationist's steadfast ignoring of the blatantly obvious evidence that was repeatedly pointed out to him is a selective blindness that I have found to pervade much of the creationist literature.

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I started studying "creation science" circa 1981/1982. In the late 1980's on CompuServe, I was actively discussing and contributing.Circa 1990, there was that most rare of rarities: an honest creationist. Merle Hertzler was a dedicated creationist, but he was an honest one. Most creationists have been converted, so they are aware of the inherent problems of their position. IOW, most creationists know full well where their weaknesses lie and to keep well away from them.Instead, Merle would fearlessly research all leads. Which lead to this (http://www.oocities.org/questioningpage/Evolve2.html):

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An evolutionist disagreed with me. He told me that in the past there had been many intermediates. He said that there were animals that, for instance, had jaw and ear bones that were intermediate between reptiles and mammals. How did he know this? He gave a reference to an essay in Stephen Gould's Ten Little Piggies . I wrote back that since the local library had a large collection of children's book, I should be able to find that book. (I thought I was so funny). I borrowed the book, and found an interesting account of how bones in the reptile jaw evolved and changed through millions of years to become the mammals' ear. That sounded like such a clever tale. How could Gould believe it? Perhaps he made it up. But there was one little footnote, a footnote that would change my life. It said simply, "Allin, E. F. 1975. Evolution of the Mammalian Middle Ear. Journal of Morphology 147:403-38." That's it. That's all it said. But it was soon to have a huge impact on me. You see, I had developed this habit of looking things up, and had been making regular trips to the University of Pennsylvania library. I was getting involved in some serious discussions on the Internet, and was finding the scientific journals to be a reliable source of information. Well, I couldn't believe that a real scientific journal would take such a tale seriously, but, before I would declare victory, I needed to check it out.

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On my next trip to the university, I found my way to the biomedical library and located the journal archives. I retrieved the specified journal, and started to read. I could not believe my eyes. There were detailed descriptions of many intermediate fossils. The article described in detail how the bones evolved from reptiles to mammals through a long series of mammal-like reptiles. I paged through the volume in my hand. There were hundreds of pages, all loaded with information. I looked at other journals. I found page after page describing transitional fossils. More significantly, there were all of those troublesome dates. If one arranged the fossils according to date, he could see how the bones changed with time. Each fossil species was dated at a specific time range. It all fit together. I didn't know what to think. Could all of these fossil drawings be fakes? Could all of these dates be pulled out of a hat? Did these articles consist of thousands of lies? All seemed to indicate that life evolved over many millions of years. Were all of these thousands of "facts" actually guesses? I looked around me. The room was filled with many bookshelves; each was filled with hundreds of bound journals. Were all of these journals drenched with lies? Several medical students were doing research there. Perhaps some day they would need to operate on my heart or fight some disease. Was I to believe that these medical students were in this room filled with misinformation, and that they were diligentl

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Within a year, Merle Hertzler was a dedicated opponent of "creation science." Strictly from the evidence.

The point of my Message 151 was two-fold:

1. I am in general agreement with Coyote regarding creationist dishonesty. In fact, I'm dealing with a local creationist, Bill Morgan, whom I can only describe as a pathological liar. However, there are some honest creationists, such as Merle Hertzler was and Dr. Kurt Wise was (and might still be). The problem for honest creationists is that, since they will seek the truth and research claims, they don't usually remain creationists for long. Sorry, but that's just the nature of the beast.
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2. What Merle discovered is highly pertinent to this discussion: all that information is out there and is readily accessible by anyone who can enter a library.

And I would recommend to anyone wanting to respond to what Merle wrote that they please follow that link and read the entire page in order to get the full context.