Evidence for God from Science

In May 2007, I attended a “Creation Forum” at a large evangelical church in my neighborhood. The speaker, a physics professor at a university in Maryland, gave a talk entitled “Icons of Evolution.” An important theme of the talk was the extent to which the work of scientists is allegedly influenced by naturalistic assumptions. The speaker expressed the opinion that evolutionary scientists and creationists each have assumed worldviews that exert strong influences on the answers they obtain to origin-related inquiries. (This argument, if accepted, would serve to put mainstream science and creationism on equal footings.)

During the question-and-answer session after the talk, it was asked how alleged human ancestors like “Lucy” fit into this framework. The speaker said he had seen a video in which a scientist (perhaps the discoverer of “Lucy”) “allowed himself to be filmed” using a rotary saw to modify the pelvis or femur of the fossil to make them fit together in a manner consistent with a bipedal posture. Although one attendee expressed surprise that the original fossil bones would be tampered with in this manner, the general sense in the room seemed to be that this was not too surprising, because scientific work is not really objective. These people had no trouble believing that, since the scientists assumed that “Lucy” was a human ancestor, they felt justified in modifying the evidence to conform to what they knew the answer “had to be.” As the speaker later wrote to me, “The assumption of naturalism and belief in the evolutionary model is the lens through which all evidence is examined and interpreted.”

My experience has given me a different perspective. Although scientists are human beings, I have found that they generally exercise high standards of intellectual integrity and professional ethics (with, of course, some lamentable exceptions). “Cooking evidence” is unacceptable, and forging evidence is career suicide. The self-correcting nature of scientific culture weeds out arguments based on faulty reasoning or evidence. I also found it inconceivable that the original “Lucy” fossils would be mutilated in the manner described. It was clear that this creationist physics professor had seen something and honestly believed what he was saying, but I was sure there was more to the story.

Eventually, I learned that this claim -- which turns out to be common among creationsts -- originated with a 1994 episode of the PBS Nova series, entitled “In Search of Human Origins.” The creationist speaker explained, “The clip shows Dr. [C. Owen] Lovejoy, an anthropologist from Kent State, using some kind of a power rotary saw … to alter a plaster cast of the Lucy pelvis (not the original fossil). Dr. Lovejoy claims that altering the pelvis actually returns it to its original condition and causes Lucy to fit into her proper place in the evolutionary chain of descent from ape-like ancestor to modern man.”

With this information, I was ready to get more information about the “Lucy” reconstruction process.

First, some background. “Lucy” is the popular name (derived from the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”) given to an unusually complete (40%) fossil of Australopithecus afarensis. It was discovered by Dr. Donald Johanson in 1974 in the Afar Depression in Ethiopia (the scientific designation for this fossil is A.L.-288-1). The fossil site yielded part of a thighbone, vertebrae, the sacrum and left side of the innomate pelvis bone, ribs, and pieces of jaw (for identification of the pelvic structures mentioned in this report, see Figure 1 at right).The fossils were dated by several independent radiometric techniques to the Pliocene Period, about 3.2 million years ago. Other notable A. afarensis fossils discovered in subsequent years include the “first family” (remains of 13 adult specimens discovered together near the “Lucy” site) and “baby Lucy” (the skeleton of a 3-year-old female comprising almost the entire skull and torso, and most parts of the limbs).

“Lucy” stood about 3.5 feet tall, identifying her as a female (male A. afarensis were considerably larger1 ). Based on her bones and slight indications of wear on her fully erupted wisdom teeth, “Lucy” is believed to have been a young adult when she died. Her skeleton showed no signs of extensive disturbance by scavengers, although one carnivore tooth puncture was observed on her pelvis.

Anatomically, A. afarensis displays a “mosaic” of apelike and humanoid features. Speaking very roughly, the top half of the species suggests a small-brained ape, whereas the lower half allegedly shows adaptations to a humanlike bipedal posture. The vast majority of paleoanthropologists have concluded that A. afarensis is a transitional species between apelike ancestors and humans.

In this report, I won't try to prove that A. afarensis was bipedal or an evolutionary ancestor of Homo sapiens. Although I have opinions on these matters, I am not an anthropologist and have nothing to say that isn't available in any mainstream anthropology textbook. Rather, I address the narrower question: why was the 288-1 pelvis cast cut up with a rotary saw and reassembled? In particular, was this the result of “evolutionary assumptions” as the creationist speaker said, or was it driven by objective scientific criteria? I do feel I have something to say about this because I've obtained information from the scientist who did the work, Dr. C. Owen Lovejoy.

Dr. Lovejoy is a professor of anthropology at Kent State University. He is also an adjunct professor of anatomy at the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine and a member of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Case Western University. He is a Technical Advisor to the Coroner's Office of Cuyahoga County (Cleveland); people's lives literally depend on the integrity and accuracy of his scientific analysis. He has published more than 100 articles in scientific publications, and was recently elected into the National Academy of Sciences, one of the top scientific honors in the nation.

I e-mailed Dr. Lovejoy with questions relating to the Creation Forum comments, and he responded with several detailed writeups and copies of published scientific papers. I am very grateful to Dr. Lovejoy for the time he has spent educating me on this issue. But before getting into Dr. Lovejoy's explanations, let's look at the relevant portions of the Nova episode:

DON JOHANSON: …The ape that stood up, it was a revolutionary idea. We needed Owen Lovejoy's expertise again, because the evidence wasn't quite adding up. The knee looked human, but the shape of her hip didn't. Superficially, her hip resembled a chimpanzee's, which meant that Lucy couldn't possibly have walked like a modern human. But Lovejoy noticed something odd about the way the bones had been fossilized.

OWEN LOVEJOY: When I put the two parts of the pelvis together that we had, this part of the pelvis has pressed so hard and so completely into this one, that it caused it to be broken into a series of individual pieces, which were then fused together in later fossilization.

DON JOHANSON: After Lucy died, some of her bones lying in the mud must have been crushed or broken, perhaps by animals browsing at the lake shore.

OWEN LOVEJOY: This has caused the two bones in fact to fit together so well that they're in an anatomically impossible position.

DON JOHANSON: The perfect fit was an [illusion] that made Lucy's hip bones seem to [flare] out like a chimp's. But all was not lost. Lovejoy decided he could restore the pelvis to its natural shape. He didn't want to tamper with the original, so he made a copy in plaster. He cut the damaged pieces out and put them back together the way they were before Lucy died. It was a tricky job, but after taking the kink out of the pelvis, it all fit together perfectly, like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. As a result, the angle of the hip looks nothing like a chimp's, but a lot like ours. Anatomically at least, Lucy could stand like a human. The case for our earliest ancestor walking upright was growing stronger...2
The work on the pelvis is described as a restoration of its original condition, as the creationist speaker said in his e-mail. But what evidence is there that the fossil, as discovered, was not in its original condition?

Figure 2 is a photograph taken from a paper3 forwarded to me by Dr. Lovejoy. It shows the 288-1 iliac pelvis bone in its original condition. The figure caption reads,

"While much of the iliac blade is well preserved, the posterior third has been crushed, crumpled, and bent anterolaterally almost exactly 90o (PSIS: posterior superior iliac spine). Since the dislodged portion includes the auricular surface, the anatomical structure and relations of the pelvis cannot be determined prior to restoration; indeed, if the sacrum and unrestored innominate are articulated and mirror-imaged, a gap of several centimeters occurs at the pubic symphysis. Therefore, analyses of the hip joint of A. afarensis that are based upon its unrestored condition must be disregarded in discussions of its locomotor behavior."
It doesn't take a Ph.D. in anatomy to see that the PSIS portion of the pelvis has been rotated through a 90o angle. Lovejoy also notes above that the fossil in its original condition was inconsistent with functionality when the condition of bilateral symmetry was used to infer the missing right half of the pelvis. The original configuration, he writes, was anatomically impossible because there was no space in the sacroiliac joint — the pelvis would have been immobilized. Lovejoy makes it clear that biomechanical studies of the functionality of the A. afarensis pelvis cannot be done with the original fossil. Reconstruction was necessary because the pelvis was obviously fractured into about forty pieces (Figure 3) and distorted. This is not an assumption; it is an objective fact, disputed by no knowledgeable person.

Lovejoy made multiple casts of the pelvis, cut the fractured pieces out, and reassembled them. The pieces didn't have to be reshaped because there was no plastic deformation of the fossil — only simple breakage. Johanson has described the procedure:

Lucy's left innominate [hip bone] had been bent out of shape and broken into about forty pieces while it was embedded in the ground. Owen X-rayed the fossil and discovered that the back of Lucy's pelvis, where the sacrum connects with the innominate, had smashed against a rock or another bone during burial, shattering and twisting the ilium. He then spent six months carefully outlining and numbering each fragment of ilium, casting each piece of the fossil in plaster, smoothing out the edges, and then reassembling them in a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Every fragment had to line up with adjoining pieces from both the front and the back side of the bone to convince Owen that he had overcome any distortion that occurred after the bone was damaged. Once Owen had restored the left side of the pelvis, he sculpted a mirror image of the right side in plaster and placed Lucy's sacrum in between to complete his masterpiece.4
Clearly, the reconstruction was not done cavalierly; it was, rather, guided by objective constraints of the most obvious sort — the pieces had to fit together! Lovejoy wrote to me:

Summary
As noted, this report is tightly focused on the specific question of the pelvis reconstruction. As originally stated, the impression was given that paleoanthropologists blithely alter fossil evidence to suit their own preconceptions. This misleading account of the pelvis reconstruction process has been featured in creationist films,5 publications and websites that mock the work of Dr. Lovejoy and sometimes even suggest that his and Dr. Johanson's scientific conclusions were distorted by a desire for additional grant money.6

Of course, no representation is made here that the scientists who study “Lucy” are infallible. Indeed, there has been some disagreement among anthropologists regarding certain anatomical aspects of “Lucy” and the locomotor capabilities of this species.7,8 The purpose here has been to judge whether Johanson and Lovejoy were intellectually competent and as honest as anyone (including creationists) should expect them to be. The conclusions are:

There was ample objective evidence that the pelvis of “Lucy” was fractured and distorted during the fossilization process.
Repair of the distortion was not only permissible, but necessary, in order for subsequent biomechanical analysis of the gait of A. afarensis to have any credibility.
The reconstruction of the pelvis was responsive to objective requirements that had nothing to do with “evolutionary assumptions.” The bones were not reshaped, but were taken apart and fit back together like a jigsaw puzzle. The “fit” of the pieces was determined by the shape of their surfaces. The requirement that the reconstructed pelvis have characteristics that would make it a functional part of a living organism placed tight constraints on the final result.

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Acknowledgments
I am very grateful to Dr. C. Owen Lovejoy for his patience with my questions and the fascinating information he provided during our e-mail exchanges. Although he graciously reviewed this report, he is, of course, not responsible for any errors it may contain. I am also grateful to Dr. Donald Johanson, Director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, for help with the early part of the research and for reviewing an earlier version of this report. I also acknowledge the effort the creationist speaker put into tracking down the Nova episode for me.

Claim: Proboscis monkeys use bipedalism more often than other primates and often walk bipedally as "merely an alternative locomotor mode of getting from A to B."

Fact: Morgan bases this claim on several seconds of film taken by Japanese filmmakers, which showed several proboscis monkeys walking bipedally. On this subject, I just (August 9, '01) watched a TV program, "The Secret World of the Proboscis Monkeys", and over the course of the hour, those obnoxious primates simply refused to do any bipedal walking. Perhaps it was because it was French filmmakers this time, or maybe the anthropological conspiracy quashed all the bipedal episodes. Or, just possibly, it's what years of observations by primatologists tell us: Proboscis monkeys don't walk bipedally more often than other primates (all primates use bipedalism occasionally).

(and you don't even understand that I refuted your claim).

Okaaay....

YOu made a claim that Lucy was grossly tampered with (with no sources), I provided a source refuting it...

YOu made a claim concerning the proboscis monkey (with no source), I provided a source refuting it...

I provided a source concerning the multitude of evidence for an Old Earth, you don't even touch it

anita wrote:pelvic area looks similar to a humans.

anita wrote: However, personally I believe that there is more evidence that supports a young earth than that of an old earth.

Instead of focusing ON the evidence, you focused on alleging that they messed with the evidence, which is a pretty strong allegation, especially with no support. You essentially accused somebody of lying and deceit without the evidence to back it up.

The recent discovery of one of the most complete skeletons of an australopithecine since "Lucy" has cast serious doubts on the current theories of human origins. The 2.6 million year old fossil of Australopithecus africanus is indisputably arboreal, although its 3.2 million year old ancestor, "Lucy" (Australopithecus afarensis), was bipedal. In addition, James Shreeve states, "the only two known partial skeletons of Homo Habilis, the earliest member of our genus, also have more apelike body proportions." In the April 1996 annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, Dr. Lee Berger stated, "One might say we are kicking Lucy out of the family tree."

Ever since the discovery of the skeletal remains of a female hominid several decades ago, “Lucy? has been widely publicized as a significant branch in the evolutionary tree of human ancestry. We've all seen the compelling textbook sketches and authoritative descriptions. However, new jaw-dropping evidence appears to have pushed Lucy out of her tree.

Fuz Rana reports in detail on Creation Update (and also provides a summary of the breakthrough in Today's New Reason To Believe, April 29) that Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy's Latin biological name) is now considered—at best—a dead end or side branch.

The evolutionary paradigm holds that A. afarensis lived about 3.3 million to 2.5 million years ago and gave rise to Homo habilus, from which modern humans ultimately emerged. Again, Fuz explains all the nomenclature—who gave rise to whom—but the point here is to note that a group called the robust australopithecines emerge as an evolutionary side branch from A. afarensis. In other words, the robust australopithecines are not part of the supposed human lineage.

The original Lucy specimen discovered in 1974 included 40% of a complete skeleton but not much of a jawbone. However, scientists recovered an A. afarensis jawbone in 2002 and recent analysis of the specimen shows that it resembles a gorilla rather than a human. Another way to say it is that this “derived? jawbone anatomy would be expected if the family belonged to the line that gave rise to the robust australopithecines—meaning that it's a dead end. Thus, the fossil record shows no evolutionary connection between Lucy (A. afarensis) and modern humans.

For evolution to be considered factual there must be an evolutionary pathway. Proposed transitional intermediate forms demonstrating such a pathway in the fossil record seem to disappear as science progresses. Where then is the human lineage? Do we need to wait around for more data? That might help but we already have models that attempt to explain nature's record. Which one best fits the facts?

It seems self-evident that when looking at a model comparison, scientific advance continues to hack away at the roots of the human evolutionary tree and, therefore, of its model. Conversely, such evidence fits a biblical creation model that places these creatures in the animal realm—remarkable in their own right but distinct from human beings who alone bear the image of their Creator.

Himantolophus, I really think this is just a test to try and insult my intelligence. Either that or you are just trying to pry information out of me for your own selfish self. Or maybe, you are just an evil troll.

Hmmm lets see… Nebraska man, Piltdown man, Swanscombe Cro-Magnon, Neanderthal, Pithecanthropus, Homo erectus, Lucy, and Australopithecines... The history of hominid paleontology is a history of shifting charts, shifting theories, and many uncertainties. Simply put, it doesn't fall neatly together into a nice evolutionary package. Many scientists spend their careers jousting over the proper interpretation of ancient teeth, bone chips and dust. In fact all the hominid bones in all the world wouldn't fill one large coffin, and the very best skeletons are only 40% complete. So we're really working with a lack of evidence.

Starting at Nebraska man… this whole reconstruction was based on one tooth that turned out to be the tooth of an extinct pig.

Piltdown Man… The skull was a human skull, a combination of a human and ape jaw, eight teeth were filled, and the bone was treated with iron salts to give the appearance of age.

Cro-Magnon Man, Neanderthal Man and Swanscombe Man… Now considered to be Homo sapiens - modern humans. Their brain capacity was actually larger than modern man. Their skeletal features are virtually indistinguishable from modern man. If you took any of these race of men, gave them a shave, dressed them up in a suit of clothes and walked them down Rodeo Drive, no one would take notice.

Now, one of the earliest of those transitional types was known as Pithecanthropus, or Homo erectus, also known as Java man, Heidelberg man and Peking man. The archeologist who have discovered these bones (actually only a ape skull fragment) have admitted that they were found within a few feet away from that of human skulls and bones and confided that the bones could have been mixed.

Following this is Ramapithecus… Consisting of only several teeth and jaw fragments, canine teeth. These are simply just apes.

Australopithecines africanus also known as Eoanthropus, Anamensis, Homo habilus or more popularly known as Lucy, … Said to have walked upright. However they determined this from just little bits and pieces of bones… Lucy's pelvis bone was altered to make it fit, and the knee bone was not even found with Lucy (it was found a mile away).

I'm not going to do the math for you since I feel at this point that you are just trolling for trouble. I did the research on the hominids for you, the rest you can muster up for yourself with a simple Google search.