The Darwinius Affair Continues to Embarrass

 
Today's the day we get to see the global event of the century, or is it millennium?. Sometime this evening there will be a TV show on one of the cable channels. It will reveal the astonishing fossil find that proves once and for all that humans have evolved. (Or something like that.)

The Darwinius Affair continues to embarrass everyone, including the creationists.

A friend alerted me to an article in The Bapstist Press (don't ask): Experts: Fossil find exciting but lacks significance . The article quotes certain "experts" including Kurt Wise the creationist who was a graduate student of Stephen Jay Gould.

"It is always exciting to find a well-preserved fossil, especially of something as rarely preserved as a juvenile primate," Wise wrote in a statement to Baptist Press. "The Messel site has generated a large number of spectacular fossils. Although the sediments seem to have been from a lake, it is an unusual one, somehow allowing remarkable preservation of animals both of the lake and the land.

"The unusual conditions of the Messel lake were probably created by a combination of global warmth (a much warmer earth than that of the present day) and the presence of active supervolcanoes (much larger than any known today) -- both a consequence (I believe) of the earth recovering from the effects of Noah's Flood," Wise, professor of science and theology and director of the Center for Science and Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said.

There's more than enough embarrassment to go around, however, evolutionists should take heed when Answers in Genesis (AiG) says ....

The group also said the pitch of Ida as the missing link is "full-out sensationalism by people who are bypassing the scientific community with a direct-to-the-public appeal on behalf of Darwinism."

"All of this seems a departure from the normal turn of events, where researchers study their subject and publish their findings, and let the media chips fall where they may," AiG said.

I agree with Answers in Genesis.¹ We handed this to them on a golden platter and they are right to make it into a big deal. Shame, shame on all the scientists and media types who turned this minor, but interesting, discovery into a public-relations disaster.

---

1. Whew! I never thought I'd say that.

Franzen, J.L., Gingerich, P.D., Habersetzer, J., Hurum, J.H., von Koenigswald, W., et al. (2009) Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology. PLoS ONE 4(5): e5723. [doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005723]