THE "MITOCHONDRIAL EVE" DECEPTION ON THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL

THE "MITOCHONDRIAL EVE" DECEPTION ON THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL

The Discovery Channel recently broadcast a documentary called The Real Eve, in which imaginary scenarios were put forward regarding the spread of modern man, who allegedly emerged by means of evolution in Africa, to the rest of the world.

However, scientific discoveries show that the evolution of man is nothing but a fantasy, and that the claims made on The Discovery Channel are unfounded. This article reveals the scientific errors made by the channel.

The program begins with the claim that all human races in existence today are descended from one single woman who lived in Africa some 130,000 years ago, and that this woman was the first representative of Homo sapiens, who allegedly emerged through a process of evolution. Since these claims concerning this woman are based on analyses of mitochondrial DNA, this mythical female is known as "mitochondrial Eve."

It is suggested that these human beings, with their large brains, left the continent, maybe to find new resources, and began spreading to the rest of the world some 80,000 years ago. The likely migration routes of one small group of humans, shown wearing primitive clothing, and the incidents that may have taken place during their journey, are depicted. Such issues as climate changes, the relationship between Neanderthals and modern man, and a number of fossil discoveries are also discussed. The Darwinist message is that every person alive today is the product of evolution, and that the traces of this so-called evolution are to be found in our genes.

Paleontological methods based on the fossil record and biological methods based on mtDNA and Y-chromosome analyses yield extremely contradictory results about the dates of the human origins scenario. This is natural, because, neither on the anatomic level, nor on the molecular level, is any organism the "ancestor" of another.

Yet the genetic facts said to confirm these claims are not actually objective scientific discoveries at all, but rather facts interpreted in the light of evolutionist prejudices. In other words, such interpretations of genes have no realistic basis.

The clearest example of this is the concept of "mitochondrial DNA" (mtDNA), used as the springboard for the evolutionist claims in the program. Mitochondrial DNA analyses always take pride of place in the claims put forward on the program. The allegations that Homo sapiens emerged some 130,000 years ago in Africa and that the first Americans came to the continent 20,000 years ago, as well as the speculation regarding the migration routes taken by human beings as they spread out of Africa, are all based on mtDNA.

The fact is, however, that age analyses based on mitochondrial DNA have recently been scientifically disproved!

Until very recently, it was believed that mtDNA was passed on only by the mother, for which reason a woman's mtDNA could be followed down the generations. Evolutionary biologists frequently resorted to mtDNA analyses and used mtDNA to put forward speculation about the origin of life. Yet due to their attachment to evolution as a dogma they interpreted mtDNA in a one-sided manner, and imposed the precondition that the differences between the various examples of mtDNA they examined had to have come about by mutation.

However, a fact that emerged only last year has fundamentally undermined the credibility of these analyses. An article entitled "Mitochondria can be inherited from both parents" in the well-known magazine New Scientist described how 90% of the mitochondria in one Danish patient had been passed down from the individual's father. It thus emerged that all the mtDNA research employed to support imaginary evolutionary scenarios was actually meaningless. New Scientist confessed this fact in these words:

Evolutionists cannot reach an agreement even on the most basic topics regarding their theory such as when and where the first human beings emerged and how they spread around the world. The "out of Africa" theory (above left) holds that the first human beings emerged in Africa and then emigrated to all around the world. In contrast, some researchers such as Milford Wolpoff maintain that human beings evolved not only in Africa but simultaneously in Africa, Europe, and Asia (below left). These contradictory theses show one thing:that man never underwent an evolutionary process.

Evolutionary biologists often date the divergence of species by the differences in genetic sequences in mitochondrial DNA. Even if paternal DNA is inherited very rarely, it could invalidate many of their findings.1

For this reason, the "mitochondrial Eve" thesis put forward on The Discovery Channel has been totally invalidated by the above finding. Evolutionist sources such as The Discovery Channel interpret the genetic differences among the peoples of the world in the light of their own prejudices to reinforce their own theories. That is what invalidates the evolutionist claims based on genetic analyses.

Another research technique pointed to by evolutionists as supporting their "out of Africa" theories is Y-chromosome analysis, based on the study of the Y-chromosome, which can only be passed on by the father. Yet when Y-chromosome and mtDNA analyses are compared, the inconsistency of the evolutionist claims becomes even more obvious. Furthermore, a great many paleontologists fiercely oppose chronologies based on genetic analysis. The paleontological evidence is completely at odds with mtDNA and Y-chromosome analyses.

The researcher Spencer Wells, who studied the differences between the various human races using Y-chromosome analysis, suggests that all human beings are descended from a common ancestor living in Africa some 60,000 years ago. Paleontologist s basing their figures on the fossil record claim this happened some 40,000 years earlier. There is obviously an enormous difference between the dates proposed by genetic analysis and the fossil record. Alison Brooks, a paleontologist at George Washington University, says, "The dates don't compare well to the order or the geography of the migration patterns revealed by the fossil record."2 The difference between Y-chromosome and mtDNA analyses is even greater. Research based on the latter puts this departure back by 90,000 years, to 150,000 years ago.

It can be seen that evolutionists cannot even agree among themselves about the "out of Africa" theories discussed on The Discovery Channel. In fact, many evolutionist anthropologists and paleontologists completely oppose the "out of Africa" theory. One group of scientists led by such researchers as Alan Thorne and Milford Wolpoff defend the multi-region theory and put forward discoveries showing that the "mitochondrial Eve" thesis is a work of fantasy. The 68,000-year-old Mungo Man discovered in Australia by Alan Thorne has dealt a serious blow to the "out of Africa" theories, and of course to the "mitochondrial Eve" thesis.3

The reason why there are so many mutually conflicting theses is that the suggested process of evolutionary change is totally imaginary and unreal. Since there was no evolutionary process in the past, everyone comes up with his own individual scenario.

Mutation and the Molecular Clock Deception

The program on The Discovery Channel carries various pieces of speculation about when the first Americans might have reached the continent. This migration was first thought to have taken place 15,000 years ago. The program describes how following mtDNA analyses, the date was put back by another 5,000 years, to 20,000 years ago. One researcher whose views were reported says that a mutational difference had been identified between those people who crossed the Bering Strait to America and those who remained in Asia. He then goes on to comment on the "molecular clock," something that is frequently cited by evolutionist researchers, using the expression "if we assume that a mutation takes place once every 20,000 years …" Yet this interpretation is nothing but an evolutionist castle in the air, based on no scientific foundation: The concept of the molecular clock used in the identification of genetic mutations is a completely hollow concept, the result of prejudiced views.

It will now be useful to consider this concept, so frequently resorted to in the evolutionists' distortions of the genetic facts, in more depth.

The so-called molecular clock hypothesis assumes that the amino acids in the proteins of living things, or the nucleotides in their genes, change at a particular rate. The claim put forward on The Discovery Channel that human beings undergo a mutation once every 20,000 years is based on that hypothesis. Evolutionists examine the mitochondria of chimpanzees and human beings, who are assumed to have descended from a common ancestor, and identify different nucleotides within the analogous regions of the DNA. Assuming man and chimpanzees to have split apart some 6 million years ago, they divide that 6 million by the number of their different nucleotides, thus coming up with a kind of timetable of imaginary mutations.

Naturally, these claims are based on nothing more than evolutionist prejudice, and have no meaning whatsoever in the face of the scientific facts. (For further details, see Darwinism Refuted:How the Theory of Evolution Breaks Down in the Light of Modern Science by Harun Yahya, Goodword Books, 2003)

The "winding up" of this molecular clock rests entirely on evolutionist prejudice. In fact, the "clock" in question is not synchronized for that very reason: It was claimed in one article in the well-known journal Science that according to one new molecular clock "mitochondrial Eve" must have lived no more than 6,000 years ago.4

All this shows that the "mitochondrial Eve" thesis expressed on The Discovery Channel is actually quite meaningless. The essence of the theory is that evolutionists dazzled by the illusion of Darwinism naturally look at genes under the influence of that illusion, and see exactly what they want to see.

The Neanderthal Deception

In that section dealing with the "out of Africa" scenarios, we are told how modern human beings encountered Neanderthals when they reached Europe, and brief information regarding the Neanderthals is supplied. Despite the Neanderthals' being accepted as a human race, Neanderthal Man is still portrayed as a primitive species. The recreations portrayed by The Discovery Channel show Neanderthal Man as a human who screamed instead of using proper speech, a wild thing who howled like a wolf.

The fact is, however, that discoveries regarding Neanderthal anatomy and culture show that there was nothing primitive about Neanderthal Man at all, and prove that they were a human race who lived, thought and spoke, and enjoyed a culture and civilization just like modern man.

The evolutionist distortion in this regard goes back to the 19th century, to the discovery of the first Neanderthal fossil in 1856. The distortions in the skeletal reconstruction made by the French anatomist Marcelline Boule led to Neanderthal Man's being regarded as a brutish ape-man, who walked in a crouch and possessed no culture. In fact, the word "Neanderthal" even entered the English language as a synonym for "crude, ignorant." However, new findings regarding the Neanderthals have shown that this was utterly mistaken, and the idea that they were ape-men has now finally been abandoned.

The Discovery Channel is still serving as a tool for Darwinist propaganda in this area. Its attempt to portray Neanderthal Man as a product of evolution by describing him as "10 times closer to man than the chimpanzee" is a totally meaningless and fictitious comparison.

Conclusion

The "mitochondrial Eve" documentary shown on The Discovery Channel constitutes an enormous deception. The analyses used as evidence have no validity and do nothing more than reflect evolutionist prejudices. The Darwinist propaganda put forward by The Discovery Channel, totally ignoring the scientific facts, has utterly collapsed. Neither Homo sapiens sapiens (modern man) nor Neanderthal Man is an evolved species. Both are human, whom God created, with such superior abilities as the power of speech and thought.

 
 

TALES OF TRANSFORMATION FROM NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TELEVISION

TALES OF TRANSFORMATION FROM NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TELEVISION

National Geographic TV recently broadcast a documentary called Evolution -The Great Transformations. It mainly concentrated on the origin of whales, and devoted considerable space to evolutionist claims regarding their transition from the sea to the land, together with comments concerning at which stages such transitions might have come about. National Geographic TV's favored solution to the question of the origin of whales was an interesting one: It was proposed that dogs surviving by eating corpses on the sea shore decided to live in the sea in order to find a better supply of food. Over time their front legs turned into fins and they lost their back legs altogether, thus giving rise to whales. In these imaginary scenarios dreamed up by National Geographic TV accompanied by computer reconstructions, living things with completely different physical structures easily turned into other creatures: dogs into whales, for instance, or fish into land-dwellers. Yet what was related was totally based on imagination, and possessed no scientific significance or value. The drawings produced consisted of nothing more than the scenarios demanded by the Darwinist theory, which is entirely lacking in any scientific proof. In this article, we shall be explaining how the great transformations discussed on National Geographic TV never actually happened.

A Whale Story for the Very Young

The origin of whales, and of sea mammals in general, is a very important question from the point of view of the theory of evolution. The theory maintains that sea-dwelling creatures moved onto the land, where mammals evolved. This leads to an important question regarding the existence of marine mammals, one which is difficult to answer: If mammals evolved on land, how and why did they return to the sea?

Charles Darwin gave considerable thought to this question, which represented a serious dilemma for his theory, but failed to come up with a conclusion. On this point, which truly deadlocked his theory, he was forced to suggest a none-too-convincing ancestor. The animal Darwin suggested as the ancestor of whales was the bear. He said, "I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale."1

While applauding Darwin's imagination, evolutionists are now of the view that whales must have had some other ancestor. The latest creature suggested to fill this vacancy is a species of dog.

National Geographic magazine embarked on a campaign of whale propaganda in its November 2001 edition, publishing this inconsistent claim in a 14-page article, complete with illustrations. We published a detailed response to this "whale evolution" claim, revealing all its contradictions and inconsistencies, in a paper on our website, www.harunyahya.com. The whale story on the TV screens went no further than the scenarios in the magazine, and made no new claims.

For that reason, we shall not be going into scientific detail regarding those points, which invalidate these claims about the whale, recommending instead that our readers to turn to our original article. "A Whale Fantasy from National Geographic":
http://www.harunyahya.com/70national_geographic_sci29.php

The Problems with the Transition from Sea to Land and the Acanthostega Error

One of the so-called evolutionary transformations discussed on National Geographic TV had to do with the theory of the transition from the sea to the land. This theory suggests that fish emerged in the sea by means of evolution and moved onto the land some 370 million years ago. No scientific evidence can be produced to show how fish, whose organs and systems were completely suited to allowing them to live in the sea, could have survived on land, nor how they could have turned into other species. Instead of scientifically examining one of the fundamental dogmas of Darwinism, National Geographic TV glosses it over with a fairy-tale account.

The scale of the deception represented by this claim, so blindly defended by National Geographic TV, becomes even clearer upon examination of the fossil record.

According to Darwin, species evolved from a common ancestor, and this evolutionary process must have happened in stages. In the event of one species' evolving from another, there should be a great many intermediate forms between the two. The natural conclusion from this would be that the geological strata should be full of countless fossils displaying such intermediate characteristics. Yet, the situation in the fossil record is actually the exact opposite. Fossils appear to be divided into very clear categories, and species appear to have possessed their characteristic traits from the very beginning. New categories of living things always appear suddenly in the fossil record.

The efforts of evolutionist paleontologists all over the world have been fruitless, and the long-sought-for missing links have never been found. This demonstrates very clearly why no process such as evolution ever happened. National Geographic TV, on the other hand, covers up the dilemma that fossils pose for the theory and portrays the transition from sea to land as if it had actually happened. The TV channel refuses to accept the collapse of Darwinism, and therefore clings to the extinct species known as Acanthostega.

Acanthostega and What it Brings to Mind

When they only had fossils of Coelacanths, evolutionist paleontologists put forward a number of Darwinist assumptions regarding them;however, when living examples were found, all these assumptions were shattered.

Acanthostega is a sea creature with gills. Its age is estimated at some 360 million years. Jenny Clack, a paleontologist from Cambridge University, maintains that this fossil possesses a hand, and that on this hand there are eight fingers, for which reason it is an intermediate form between fish and tetrapods (four-footed land vertebrates). Taking this fossil as their starting point, evolutionists claim that instead of fish developing feet after moving onto the land, they first developed feet and then made that transition. Yet this claim is inconsistent. First of all, despite being an evolutionist, Clack clearly states that she does not know whether Acanthostega made the transition to the land or not. It is an error to regard a marine-dwelling creature with certain bone-like structures in its fins as a form that brought about the transition from sea to land. The fact that evolutionists are making this error shows how quickly they have forgotten their mistakes over the Coelacanth, which was discovered to be living up until 65 years ago.

Up until the end of 1930s, evolutionists portrayed the Coelacanth as an intermediate form. It was thought that the bones in the fins of this 200-million-year-old fossil turned into feet, which carried the creature when it moved onto the land. In 1938, however, they learnt to their great surprise that Coelacanth was still living. On close examination, it was revealed that these fish caught by fishermen off the coast of Madagascar had undergone no changes at all in the last 200 million years. Furthermore, the organ which evolutionists had believed to be a primitive lung turned out to be nothing but a fat-filled swimbladder. Moreover, a great many more Coelacanths were caught shortly afterwards, and evolutionists had to abandon forever the claim that the creature represented an intermediate form.

As can be seen from the Coelacanth example, as well as that of Acanthostega, marine creatures with bone-like structures are portrayed as intermediate forms, not because they might have been able to live on land, but because of evolutionists' prejudices.

Obstacles to the Transition from Water to Land

The profound physiological differences between land and marine mammals can be divided into five basic categories:

1. Weight-bearing: Sea-dwelling creatures have no problem in bearing their own weight in the sea. However, most land-dwelling creatures consume 40% of their energy just in carrying their bodies around. Creatures making the transition from water to land would at the same time have had to develop new muscular and skeletal systems (!) to meet this energy need, and this could not have come about by chance mutations.

2. Heat Retention: On land, the temperature can change quickly, and fluctuates over a wide range. Land-dwelling creatures possess a physical mechanism that can withstand such great temperature changes. However, in the sea, the temperature changes slowly and within a narrower range. A living organism with a body system regulated according to the constant temperature of the sea would need to acquire a protective system to ensure minimum harm from the temperature changes on land. It is preposterous to claim that fish acquired such a system by random mutations as soon as they stepped onto land.

God created every living (creature) from water. Some of them go on their bellies, some of them on two legs, and some on four. God creates whatever He wills. God has power over all things. (Qur'an, 24:45)

3. Water: Essential to metabolism, water needs to be used economically due to its relative scarcity on land. For instance, the skin has to be able to permit a certain amount of water loss, while also preventing excessive evaporation. That is why land-dwelling creatures experience thirst, something sea-dwelling creatures do not do. For this reason, the skin of sea-dwelling animals is not suitable for a non-aquatic habitat.

4. Kidneys: Sea-dwelling organisms discharge waste materials, especially ammonia, by means of their aquatic environment. On land, water has to be used economically. This is why these living beings have a kidney system.

Thanks to the kidneys, ammonia is stored by being converted into urea and the minimum amount of water is used during its excretion. In addition, new systems are needed to provide for the kidney's functioning. In short, in order for the passage from water to land to have occurred, living things without a kidney would have had to develop a kidney system all at once.

5. Respiratory system: Fish "breathe" by taking in oxygen dissolved in water, which they pass through their gills. They cannot live more than a few minutes out of water. In order to survive on land, they would have to acquire a perfect lung system all of a sudden.

It is most certainly impossible that all of these dramatic physiological changes could have happened in the same organism at the same time, and all by chance.

National Geographic TV is Reluctant to Tell the Truth About the Cambrian Explosion

The illustration and the fossils seen here include some of the living things with complex structures from the Cambrian age. The emergence of such different creatures with no preceding ancestors completely invalidates Darwinist theory.

One section at the beginning of the documentary "Evolution -The Great Transformations" is devoted to the Cambrian Period. This is when organisms with complex physical structures are first encountered in the fossil record. The most basic categories of living things are known as "phyla." And it is most interesting that just about all the phyla now living should have emerged in the Cambrian Period. Before that time, there were only a few phyla, whereas the fossil record shows the number of phyla emerging during the Cambrian to be around 100. This enormous leap in the variety of living things at that time is so impressive that it has been given the name "Cambrian Explosion" in the scientific literature. The Cambrian Explosion represents one of the most serious dilemmas facing the theory of evolution. The National Geographic TV channel is reluctant to make the facts regarding that period clear, offering an obscure account instead.

The facts concealed by National Geographic TV are expressed by the well-known evolutionist Richard Monastersky in these terms:

A half-billion years ago, . . . the remarkably complex forms of animals that we see today suddenly appeared. This moment, right at the start of Earth's Cambrian Period, some 550 million years ago, marks the evolutionary explosion that filled the seas with the world's first complex creatures.2

Jan Bergström, a paleontologist who studied the early Cambrian deposits also says:

The large animal phyla of today were present already in the early Cambrian and they were as distinct from each other then as they are today.3

No similar organism which evolutionists might be able to put forward as the "ancestor" of the living things which emerged in the Cambrian Explosion exists. The creatures of the Cambrian Explosion came into being instantaneously, with all their features perfectly formed. This, of course, indicates that creation lies at the root of the Cambrian Explosion.

Another aspect of the Cambrian Period explosion, which undermines evolution, is that there are considerably fewer phyla today than there were during the Cambrian. According to the theory of evolution, there should have been an increase over time in the number of categories of living things. Yet, the fossil record demonstrates the exact opposite. The number of phyla existing today is less than half the number that emerged during the Cambrian; the others have gradually become extinct.

One of the most important critics of Darwinism in the world today is the University of California Berkeley professor Phillip E. Johnson, who openly reveals the contradiction between these facts and Darwinism:

Darwinian theory predicts a "cone of increasing diversity," as the first living organism, or first animal species, gradually and continually diversified to create the higher levels of taxonomic order. The animal fossil record more resembles such a cone turned upside down, with the phyla present at the start and thereafter decreasing.4

There can be only one reason for the indirect way this is dealt with in the documentary screened by National Geographic: This explosion shows that life on Earth did not come about by chance, but emerged suddenly and perfectly formed-in other words, that it was created.

National Geographic TV's DNA Error

In a later part of the National Geographic TV documentary, another major error appears, when it is claimed that genetic similarities account for so-called evolutionary transformations. We are told how similar organs in organisms from different species are controlled by similar genes, and it is then suggested that small changes in the DNA which controls such similarities between organisms can give rise to new species. Yet, this claim is a total violation of all experiments and observations in the field of genetics: Chance alterations in the genes (mutations) have never been seen to develop living things or to increase their genetic information. For nearly a century, scientists studying the inheritance mechanisms by which physical features are encoded and passed on from generation to generation have obtained findings revealing that DNA is a most complex design directed by exceptional control mechanisms. Even a general overview of the structure of DNA will be sufficient to demonstrate that the claims of the Darwinists go no further than fantasy, and that these need to be distinguished from the science of genetics.

DNA: The Molecule Which Refutes Evolution

The DNA molecule is found in structures that are specially packaged in the form of chromosomes.

In the cell nucleus, far too small to be seen by the naked eye, are curled a total of 3 meters of DNA strings. These spiral DNA strings bound up in the chromosomes are divided up into the parts we know as "genes." Despite the tiny volume occupied by this packaging system, it possesses a huge information-storage capacity. It is calculated that there is enough information to fill around 1 million encyclopaedia pages in the nucleus of a single human cell.

Exceedingly complex systems allow this information to function. The functioning of the DNA molecule is of vital importance to a living thing's survival. Every stage of this functioning is controlled. Some stages in the functioning of the perfect system that is DNA are the following:

Encoding: Nucleotides are sequenced in the DNA string. There are four types of these; adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosine. Consecutively arranged, three-part nucleotide sequences are known as "codons." If we imagine the nucleotides as letters (A, T, C and G), then the codons are words (AAT, CAG, TCC, etc.).

Location: All the information describing all of a living thing's physical and biochemical structures is set out in the cell nucleus. However, cells in different structures will generally only require that part of the information for their own functioning. For that reason, the necessary information must be located within the huge information bank, which includes all the details of the body plan. This is done by means of enzymes: enzymes stand at specific points and open up the links which extend between the two spiral strings of the DNA, like a zipper. The points where the zipper begins and stops opening, are the borders of the relevant information. It is rather as if enzymes searched among the shelves of a giant library and took out the book they were looking for. This is a genuine miracle, because enzymes are nothing more than molecules made up of unconscious atoms.

The molecule known as Dna, which is found in the nucleus of each of the 100 trillion cells in our bodies, contains the complete blueprint for the construction of the human body. If we were to write down the information coded in DNA, then we would have the compile a giant library consisting of 900 volumes of 500 pages each. But the information this enormous library would hold is encoded inside the DNA molecules in the cell nucleus, which is far smaller than the 1/100 th-of-a-millimeter-long cell itself.

Reading: After the required section of DNA has been found, the special enzymes attached to this section begin to read the nucleotides, three by three. The reading of these triplet nucleotide strings, in which the information is encoded, is a very particular phenomenon. The enzyme, which carries out the reading process, separates the combined millions of nucleotides into the triplets. This process takes less than one second.

Translation: There are four types of nucleotides in DNA. The proteins, which will be used in the activities and development of the organism, however, emerge from amino acids, not from the nucleotides. Living things contain 20 amino acids. In essence, the language of DNA consists of four letters, but the language of proteins consists of 20. Thus, these letters are different from one another. Yet, a surprising "translation" takes place: the enzymes, which read the codons in the DNA, "understand" that this codon refers to an amino-acid, despite the fact that there are no amino acids in the codon. The nucleotide language in the DNA is translated into the amino-acid language in the protein. Unconscious enzymes thus work yet another miracle.

Repair: Cell multiplication in the development of the body is of vital importance. During this process, the DNA in the dividing cell is copied and reproduced in the new cell. During this replication, some 3.1 billion nucleotides need to be copied in exactly the same order. If just one nucleotide in a gene is missing, then the codons in the new nucleotide order will go wrong, resulting in the synthesis of totally different proteins, which may in turn result in the death of the organism. (With the missing nucleotide, all the triple-read codons will change.) There is a system in the cells which checks and repairs these mistakes (mutations). The copied nucleotide string is checked against the original, and any errors are restored to the original form. This repair process, known as "proofreading," takes place an average of 20,000 times a second in the human body.

The complex design of these systems in DNA makes the claims of genetic transformation put forward on National Geographic TV ridiculous. Random changes in DNA-mutations, in other words-damage the sensitive genetic code in living things and give rise to abnormal organs. As shown on National Geographic, embryos exposed to poison or radiation are born totally abnormal. Mutation experiments over nearly a century have not been seen to add any information to organisms' DNA. This fact reveals the invalidity of the claim that organisms evolved from simple to complex forms by chance mutations.

Beyond these scientific facts, we can also see the truth of this from our experiences in our daily lives. Random changes in complex designs do not turn these into other complex designs. For instance, taking a chip out of a jet airplane's electronic circuits does not turn that plane into a helicopter.

In short, the complex structure of DNA represents a great obstacle to the theory of evolution. National Geographic TV's claim that DNA possesses a structure which can facilitate so-called evolution rests on Darwinist prejudices, not on the scientific facts.

The Same Old Scenarios from National Geographic TV

In the last part of the program, the claim is made that man and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor. This part relies on an account by the evolutionist paleontologist Donald Johanson, and the methods of glossing over and distortion employed in the beginning of the program once again attract one's attention.

This diagram presents a summary of protein synthesis. All proteins in nature are produced by this complex and specially designed process. No protein comes about by "chance."

He created all things. That is God, your Lord. There is no deity but Him, the Creator of everything. So worship Him. He is responsible for everything. (Qur'an, 6:101-102)

Not a word is mentioned about recent fossil discoveries that have left the theory of evolution in tatters. The fact that National Geographic TV, which claims to be a channel of science and discovery, devotes no space to the fossil known as Sahelanthropus tchadensis, which has led to intense debates in the world of paleontology and which has hit evolutionist scenarios like an atom bomb, once again clearly reveals its blind devotion to Darwinism.

Another issue ignored in this section concerned the scenario of a genetic relationship between man and chimpanzees. The old tales of a genetic relationship were trotted out once more, while research, which has revealed that the genetic similarity between the two species has been overstated by up to three times the correct figure, was ignored.

Conclusion: There is no Transformation Between Species

No transformation between species ever happened. Species were created separately, together with their own genetic codes. Those species that have survived to the present day have never undergone any change. The Cambrian Explosion and the structure of DNA are proof of this. The stories about whales and the transition from water to the land supported by National Geographic TV are completely absurd. This channel, which supports nonsense of this kind in the face of modern scientific findings, is behaving in exactly the same way as those who once believed that the Earth was flat. It should give up these superstitions at once.

 

TALL TALES FROM THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CHANNEL

TALL TALES FROM THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CHANNEL

The documentary Humans: Who Are We?, one of the documentaries being broadcast on the National Geographic Channel (NGC), consists of the best-known scenarios of the myth of evolution. The scientific errors and deceptions in the documentary are explained below.

The NGC's Contradictions and the Larmarckian View of Evolution

In the documentary on the NGC, there is first of all an address by the anthropologist Ian Tattersall. Among his first statements is the idea, "Human evolution did not happen as the result of needs, it was entirely coincidental." Yet the needs which might have caused ape-men to evolve into human beings are then described several times in the minutes which follow. This is one of the most obvious contradictions in the whole program.

Actually, this is a contradiction experienced by many evolutionists, not just the NGC or Ian Tattersall. In order to shed more light on this subject, let us summarize the difference between the concepts of "evolution as a response to need" and "evolution as the result of chance alone" (even though both are in fact unscientific fairy tales).

Before Darwin, another important figure put forward an evolutionary model on the subject of the origin of living things: the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Lamarck's claim was rather different from the contemporary evolutionist view. In his opinion, requirements or needs gave rise to their own organs. Let us illustrate Lamarckism with the example of the giraffe's neck. According to this theory, the necks of the first giraffes were the same length as those of deer or gazelles. However, giraffes experiencing food shortages wanted to be able to reach the rich sources of food in the upper levels of trees. A need was thus born. As a result of that need, the necks of giraffes wishing to reach up into the tops of trees grew longer.

Lamarckism based this claim on the thesis of "inheritance of acquired traits." In other words, the giraffe which had tried to reach up to trees' highest levels throughout its life should be able to hand this characteristic on to its young. Yet, with the discovery of the laws of genetics, it was seen that acquired traits could not actually be inherited at all.

As a result, Lamarckism had been invalidated by science by the beginning of the twentieth century. Yet, evolutionists continued to put forward Lamarckian views between the lines. While fiercely criticizing Lamarckism on the one hand, their scenarios regarding the origins of living things still bore powerful traces of it. The myth of front legs' remaining free in order to make tools, making man a bipedal (two-footed) creature, the claim that Neanderthal man evolved in order to be able to live in cold climates, as put forward by the NGC, and that Australopithecus evolved in order to adapt to its environment as the thick forests thinned out-all of these rest on the assumption of evolution out of need.

The reason why evolutionists employ Lamarckian expressions, on the one hand, while fiercely criticizing the thesis, on the other, is this: According to the theory of evolution, in order for a monkey to be able to stand on two legs, for instance, it needs to be exposed to mutations that will bring about such a sensitive change in its skeleton, and which furthermore will not cause it any damage. This is in any case a scenario that cannot possibly happen. It would require a chance mutation to come about at just the very time when the living thing in question has need of it, and this would have to occur many times in individuals of the same species, bringing about a little more development each time. The impossibility of this scenario just reinforces the absurdity of the whole concept of evolution.

On the surface, evolutionists refuse to say, "there was evolution out of need," but underneath, they actually support that idea.

Australopithecus was a Species of Ape, and was not Bipedal

Right: Donald Johanson Left: Richard Leakey

According to the NGC, the species known as Australopithecus was the ancestor of the first man to walk upright. Yet that claim is not correct. All of the Australopithecus species are extinct apes that resemble the apes of today. Their cranial capacities are the same or smaller than those of the chimpanzees of our day. There are projecting parts in their hands and feet that they used to climb trees, just like in today's chimpanzees, and their feet are built for grasping to hold onto branches. Australopithecus specimens are short (130 cm, maximum) and, just as in modern apes, the males are much bigger than the females. Many other characteristics-such as the details in their skulls, the closeness of their eyes, their sharp molar teeth, their mandibular structure, their long arms, and their short legs-constitute evidence that these creatures were no different from today's apes.

NGC's claim that Australopithecus walked upright is a view that has been held by paleoanthropologists like Richard Leakey and Donald C. Johanson for decades. Yet many scientists who have carried out a great deal of research on the skeletal structures of Australopithecus have proved the invalidity of that argument. Extensive research done on various Australopithecus specimens by two world-renowned anatomists from England and the USA, Lord Solly Zuckerman and Prof. Charles Oxnard, showed that these creatures did not walk upright in the human manner, and had exactly the same movements as modern apes. Having studied the bones of these fossils for a period of 15 years thanks to grants from the British government, Lord Zuckerman and his team of five specialists reached the conclusion that Australopithecus was only an ordinary species of ape, and was definitely not bipedal-this even though Zuckerman is an evolutionist himself.1 Correspondingly, Charles E. Oxnard, who is another evolutionary anatomist famous for his research on the subject, also likened the skeletal structure of Australopithecus to that of modern orangutans.2

Many characteristics of the australopithecines' head, such as a low forehead, a large eyebrow ridge, a flat nose, and a jutting jaw constitute evidence that these creatures were no different from today's apes. Extensive research done on various Australopithecus specimens has shown that these creatures did not walk upright in human manner. In fact, it is impossible for them to have done so, because they had the anatomy of apes, which enabled them only to walk on all fours. The human skeleton, on the other hand, is designed to walk upright.

"GOODBYE, LUCY" Scientific discoveries have revealed evolutionist assumptions regarding "Lucy," once considered the most important example of the Australopithecus genus, as completely unfounded. Actually, each new discovery in paleontology causes evolutionists to redesign their tree of life, which is nothing but a figment of their imagination.

Probably the most important study demonstrating that Australopithecus could not have been bipedal came in 1994 from the research anatomist Fred Spoor and his team at the University of Liverpool, England. This group conducted studies in the inner ear of fossilized Australopithecus specimens. In the inner ears of human beings and other complex living beings, there is an organ named the "cochlea" that determines the position of the body in relation to the ground. The function of this organ, which maintains balance in human beings, is the same as the "gyroscope," which maintains correct flight attitude in airplanes. Fred Spoor investigated the involuntary balance mechanism found in this "snail-shell" like organ, and his findings showed conclusively that Australopithecus was quadrupedal (four legged).3

This means Australopithecus is an extinct ape species and has no relation with human beings.

That Australopithecus cannot be counted an ancestor of man has recently been accepted by evolutionist sources. The famous French popular-science magazine, Science et Vie, made the subject the cover of its May 1999 issue. Under the headline "Adieu Lucy" ("Goodbye, Lucy"-Lucy being the most important fossil example of the species Australopithecus afarensis), the magazine reported that apes of the species Australopithecus would have to be removed from the human family tree. In this article, based on the discovery of another Australopithecus fossil known simply as St W573, the following sentences appear:

A new theory states that the genus Australopithecus is not the root of the human race… The results arrived at by the only woman authorized to examine St W573 are different from the normal theories regarding mankind's ancestors: this destroys the hominid family tree. Large primates, considered the ancestors of man, have been removed from the equation of this family tree… Australopithecus and Homo [human] species do not appear on the same branch. Man's direct ancestors are still waiting to be discovered.4

Humans hold the upper body erect and walk upright on two feet. This is a very special form of locomotion. Apes, on the other hand, are knuckle-walkers, who walk with the upper body bent forward, using the arms to provide extra support. This is one of the unbridgeable anatomical gaps between men and apes which also invalidate the fiction of human evolution. There is a big anatomical difference between human and ape feet. Apes have longer toes and a divergent great toe, and lack the arch that gives spring to the human stride. As may be seen from these pictures, the ape hand lacks the long and mobile thumb, which is an essential feature of human hand. Without the current structure of the thumb, we would not be able to do many of the things that we do now.

Another important discovery concerning Australopithecus is the realization that this creature's hands were used for walking, just like those of present-day apes. Apes employ a four-legged mode of walking in which they lean on the knuckles of their fingers. Known as "knuckle walking," this is one of the major structural differences between apes and men. The skeletal studies performed in 2000 on Lucy by two evolutionist scientists called B. G. Richmond and D. S. Strait, resulted in a conclusion that astonished the two evolutionists: Lucy's hand possessed a four-legged "knuckle walking structure," just like those of the apes of today. Strait's comment in an interview regarding this discovery, the details of which were covered by the journal Nature, is striking: "I walked over to the cabinet, pulled out Lucy, and-shazam!-she had the morphology that was classic for knuckle walkers."5

Homo erectus was a Human Race, not an Ape-Man

As seen in this picture, there is no difference between the postcranial skeleton of modern man and that of Homo erectus. It is now an acknowledged fact in the scientific community that Homo erectus is a superfluous taxon, and that fossils assigned to the Homo erectus class are actually not so different from Homo sapiens as to be considered a different species. This thesis can be summarized as "Homo erectus is not a different species from Homo sapiens, but rather a race within Homo sapiens."

In the NGC documentary Homo erectus is portrayed as a half-ape, half-man creature which walked upright and tried to speak by making peculiar noises. The fact is, however, that Homo erectus was a human race, with no ape characteristics at all.

There is no difference between the Homo erectus skeleton and that of modern man. The primary reason for evolutionists' defining Homo erectus as "primitive" is the cranial capacity of its skull (900-1,100 cc), which is smaller than the average modern man, and its thick eyebrow projections. However, there are many people living today in the world who have the same cranial capacity as Homo erectus (pygmies, for instance) and other races have protruding eyebrows (Native Australians, for instance).

It is a commonly agreed-upon fact that differences in cranial capacity do not necessarily denote differences in intelligence or abilities. Intelligence depends on the internal organization of the brain, rather than on its volume.6

The fossils that have made Homo erectus known to the entire world are those of Peking man and Java man in Asia. However, in time it was realized that these two fossils are not reliable. Peking Man consists of some elements made of plaster whose originals have been lost, and Java Man is "composed" of a skull fragment plus a pelvic bone that was found meters away from it with no indication that these belonged to the same creature. This is why the Homo erectus fossils found in Africa have gained such increasing importance.

RichardLeakey (left) and Alan Walker, who studied the Turkana Boy fossil-the most complete known specimen of Homo erectus-concluded that it belonged to a 12-year-old boy 1.6 meters tall. The interesting thing is that there is no major difference between this 1.6 million-year-old fossil and people of our day. This situation reveals once again that Homo erectus was a genuine human race, with no "primitive" features.

The most famous of the Homo erectus specimens found in Africa is the fossil of the "Turkana Boy," which was found near Lake Turkana in Kenya. It is confirmed that the fossil was that of a 12-year-old boy, who would have been 1.83 meters tall in adolescence. The upright skeletal structure of the fossil is no different from that of modern man. The American paleoanthropologist Alan Walker said that he doubted that "the average pathologist could tell the difference between the fossil skeleton and that of a modern human." Concerning the skull, Walker wrote that he laughed when he saw it because "it looked so much like a Neanderthal."7 Since Neanderthals are a modern human race, Homo erectus is also a modern human race.

Even the evolutionist Richard Leakey states that the differences between Homo erectus and modern man are no more than racial variance:

One would also see differences in the shape of the skull, in the degree of protrusion of the face, the robustness of the brows and so on. These differences are probably no more pronounced than we see today between the separate geographical races of modern humans. Such biological variation arises when populations are geographically separated from each other for significant lengths of time.8

Professor William Laughlin from the University of Connecticut made extensive anatomical examinations of Inuits and the people living on the Aleutian islands, and noticed that these people were extraordinarily similar to Homo erectus. The conclusion Laughlin arrived at was that all these distinct races were in fact different races of Homo sapiens (modern man):

When we consider the vast differences that exist between remote groups such as Eskimos and Bushmen, who are known to belong to the single species of Homo sapiens, it seems justifiable to conclude that Sinanthropus [an erectus specimen] belongs within this same diverse species.9

There is a huge gap between Homo erectus, a human race, and the apes that preceded Homo erectus in the "human evolution" scenario (Australopithecus, Homo Habilis, and Homo rudolfensis). This means that the first men appeared in the fossil record suddenly and without any prior evolutionary history.

NGC Fairy Tales Appropriate for Bedtime Programs

The scientists expressing their views on NGC told the viewer stories, relying on their imaginations instead of scientific findings. Almost the entire length of the documentary consisted of such story-telling. The most striking example of this appeared in the section about Homo erectus' power of speech. People enjoying the status of scientists gave their views, in all seriousness, regarding what members of the Homo erectus species talked about amongst themselves. According to the anthropologist Dr. Steven Mithen, when Homo erectus spoke, they engaged in gossip! Another evolutionist scientist claimed that rather than gossiping, they talked about serving food!

Neither was this the limit of the stories related on NGC. These scientists were also somehow aware of a great many more details, such as what one migrating ape-man thought, and the fixed-thoughts possessed by yet another one. The odd thing is that these Darwinist mental gymnastics, devoid of any scientific foundations, were portrayed to the viewer as scientific fact.

The NGC's Visual Evolutionist Propaganda

Even if evolutionists are unsuccessful in finding scientific evidence to support their theories, they are very successful at one thing:propaganda. The most important element of this propaganda is the practice of creating false designs known as "reconstructions."

Throughout the documentary on NGC, images of half-ape, half-man creatures hunting on the African savannah, eating, and migrating were shown. Those who imagined the NGC to be a scientific institution would have been deceived into thinking that these creatures were based on scientific evidence. The fact is, however, that just like the information provided, these images had been prepared solely on the basis of evolutionists' imaginations and the abilities of various artists.

Reconstructions are one of evolutionists' most important propaganda tools. The ape-man models and drawings seen in such documentaries as this, and in evolutionist magazines and newspapers, are termed reconstructions. These are totally unscientific, and in no way reflect the truth, because it is impossible to obtain any information about a living thing's soft tissues on the basis of fossils. Reconstructions based on bone remains can only reveal the most general characteristics of the creature, since the really distinctive morphological features of any animal are soft tissues, which quickly vanish after death. Therefore, due to the speculative nature of the interpretation of the soft tissues, the reconstructed drawings or models become totally dependent on the imagination of the person producing them. Earnst A. Hooten from Harvard University explains the situation like this:

To Him belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth: It is He Who gives life and death: and He has Power over all things. (Qur'an, 57:2)

To attempt to restore the soft parts is an even more hazardous undertaking. The lips, the eyes, the ears, and the nasal tip leave no clues on the underlying bony parts. You can with equal facility model on a Neanderthaloid skull the features of a chimpanzee or the lineaments of a philosopher. These alleged restorations of ancient types of man have very little if any scientific value and are likely only to mislead the public … So put not your trust in reconstructions.10

In the NGC documentary, all kinds of details, such as living things' hair, eyes, lips, the expressions in their eyes, and the shape of their eyebrows, could be seen. In fact, since evolutionists are so caught up by their evolutionary fantasies as to debate what these imaginary creatures might have talked about, it comes as no surprise that they should also come up with models and drawings of them. This is not science, however. It could only be a part of a science fiction film. Evolutionists are not behaving like scientists. Like fortune-tellers engaging in prophecies, they produce scenarios about the past and future based on no evidence whatsoever.

Conclusion

NGC's documentary, which describes the so-called evolution of man, offering no evidence but supplying details which can never be known, is of absolutely no scientific value. The only place for this documentary is in a science fiction movie or a screenwriter's fantasies about human history. The way that the NGC broadcasts scenarios, which not even children could possibly find convincing, under the guise of science casts a shadow over the institution's credibility.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TV'S UNDERSEA FAIRY TALES

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TV'S UNDERSEA FAIRY TALES

A documentary called Built for the Kill has been screened on National Geographic TV. Its aim was twofold. On the one hand, the program described some of the techniques used by sea creatures to hunt or evade capture. On the other, it sent out a Darwinist message by describing some creatures as "programmed to kill" or "ruthless killers."

The flawless design in the creatures described in the documentary were portrayed as mechanisms "developed for survival," although no evidence of this was offered. This is a technique frequently encountered in broadcasts by National Geographic TV and similar Darwinist institutions. However, it is obvious that these descriptions lack any scientific basis, since looking at the features possessed by the creatures and saying "they developed these in order to survive" or sticking an evolutionary label on the design in living things is itself of no scientific value.

For instance, attempting to account for the shiny skin on the underside of the blue shark and the dark skin on the top by means of evolution, while failing to provide any evidence, merely reveals National Geographic TV's prejudices. Another fish, looking down, cannot make out the shark against the dark tones of the sea bottom thanks to the dark color of the shark's skin. The shark will similarly be camouflaged against the brightness of the sea surface stemming from the rays of the sun. If this is to be explained by evolution, then it must also be explained how the information for this camouflage design emerged by chance in the creature's DNA, and scientific proof must be given. Maintaining that this information came about by natural selection and random mutations, in the absence of any scientific evidence whatsoever, is merely Darwinist dogma.

On the other hand, this feature of the shark can be perfectly convincingly accounted for by intelligent design: the information regarding which areas of the shark's skin are to be which colors is present in its DNA. It is utterly rational and scientific to maintain that the encoding of this information came about not by chance but by conscious intervention.

The fundamental factor, which reveals the invalidity of the evolutionist claims put forward in the film, is the exceedingly complex nature of the design in the creatures discussed. The dolphin sonar dealt with in the documentary is one instance of this. Dolphins possess a special organ in their heads that allows them to send out sound waves and sense the echoes that reflect from physical bodies. These sound waves can penetrate some 30 cm beneath the sand and can be picked up in an amazing way by the dolphins as the environment changes (from water to sand and back from sand to water). In this way the dolphin plots a sort of map of what lies beneath the sand.

Another aspect indicative of the perfection in dolphin sonar is the way the U.S. Navy has imitated it in its own development of sonar. Since existing forms of sonar were unable to locate mines buried in the sand during the Gulf War, the U.S. fleet lost a number of ships. It then set out to use the dolphin wave range in the research it supported and to employ the dolphin's sensory technique in its own vessels.

Whitlow Au

The perfect sonar system in dolphins inspired many scientists and led them to make use of this system in marine technology. ASDIC, the first active sonar technology invented in World War II, was able to detect and track a submerged submarine at about 2,000 yards in good conditions. The sonar system, which humans only started to use in the twentieth century, has been used by dolphins for millions of years. All these perfect designs in nature are evidence for God's matchless artistry in creation.

Whitlow Au, a researcher from the Hawaii Marine Biology Institute in Kailua, together with his colleagues, managed to come up with such a sonar system four years ago. A computerized sonar device which monitored and decoded the echoes of the waves it sent was added to this artificial dolphin sonar. This sonar, developed by scientists, was subjected to a number of tests and produced very positive results, registering a 90% success rate in locating mines buried 40 cm under the sand.1

As we can see, an advanced computer needs to be used in order to imitate the action of dolphin sonar. This animal's sonar faculty, which does what an advanced computer can do but in an even more efficient manner, and which is also far more compact than a computer, is a miracle of engineering. To maintain that such an organ emerged by mutations-which evolution depends on-is just as illogical as maintaining that a computer could emerge from the soil as a result of natural phenomena such as wind and rain. No rational person would obviously ever believe such a claim. Yet National Geographic TV glosses over this complex organ during its account of dolphin sonar by calling it "a product of evolution," without offering the slightest evidence.

Another creature whose complex design leaves the theory of evolution floundering is the angelfish. Thanks to its flat body, this animal buries itself in the sand to wait for its prey, and keeps a lookout with two eyes which protrude like periscopes. One of the creature's most astonishing aspects is that it can also detect the approach of prey thanks to an organ which senses electrical signals. When the moment comes, it suddenly lunges out of its hiding place and swallows its prey in a single gulp.

National Geographic TV employed the expression "it developed a sixth sense" during its description of this sense possessed by the creature. This sensory system contains a most complex design: the animal possesses an organ that perceives electrical impulses, nerves which carry the signals received by that organ, and, most important of all, a brain capable of transforming these signals into a meaningful map. Highly effective connections transmit the signals between the nerve cells. These connections have been designed to prevent the signals from being lost or diminished in any way. In short, there is a very detailed design and organization in the sensory system. Since even a simple ammeter for measuring electric currents requires a specific design, it is clear that this much more complex sensory system was also intelligently designed.

After describing all these complex systems, National Geographic TV claimed that they all emerged "by evolution," without feeling the need to offer any evidence for this. Yet again, this shows how dogmatically devoted National Geographic TV is to the theory of evolution. It feels no need to test the foundations of the theory. On the contrary, it seeks to account for the whole of nature in the light of the theory after having swallowed it verbatim.

Nor do the descriptions of some creatures in the program as "ruthless killers" actually reflect the truth. This expression is employed to impose the Darwinist dogma that there is a ruthless struggle for survival in nature and that living things are aggressive, selfish, and ruthless. Yet, the hunting that goes on among living things is not "ruthless killing." Animals kill only for food or self-defense. The method they employ is usually the swiftest, and thus the method that inflicts the least suffering. (For instance, a lion kills its prey by biting its throat.)

Conclusion

The magnificent hunting mechanisms and camouflage skills in living things cannot have come about by evolution. The complex design in animals and all other organisms can only be accounted for by intelligent design. National Geographic TV merely repeats Darwinist shibboleths as it describes natural phenomena. If the channel really wants to defend the theory of evolution, it must account for the origin of complex organs in evolutionary terms. Indeed, the reason why it makes do with offering accounts full of Darwinist slogans is that it is impossible to offer such an explanation.

THE SMUGGLING INCIDENT NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TV DECLINED TO COVER

THE SMUGGLING INCIDENT
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TV DECLINED TO COVER

Two documentaries called Dinosaur Dealers have been broadcast on National Geographic TV. These dealt with the trade in fossils and fossil smuggling, and described the adventures of a paleontologist who followed in the tracks of a number of stolen fossils, or fossils smuggled out of Australia. The trail was followed detective-style, and the program showed the negotiations carried out in order to trap the smugglers. In this way, the impression wasgiven that National Geographic is an idealistic body, chasing hot on the heels of smugglers and striving with all its might to destroy this illegal trade. However, the TV channel failed to mention that just a few years ago it too was involved in smuggling an Archaeoraptor fossil (and the fraud that accompanied it). In fact, it said not a word about it.

Let us recall the details of that smuggling operation.

Archaeoraptor liaoningensis was a forged dino-bird fossil. The remains of the creature, alleged to be an evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds, had apparently been unearthed in the Liaoning area of China and were published in the November 1999 edition of National Geographic magazine.

Thus, the Archaeoraptor fossil is similar to the earlier Piltdown Man fraud committed by evolutionists. Archaeoraptor was even described under the headline "Piltdown Bird" in the well-known magazine New Scientist. The report states that Archaeoraptor was formed by adding the tail of a dromaeosaurus, a genuine dinosaur, to a bird fossil, and that this was a fraud perpetrated in the name of science. 1) Mix and match: Archaeoraptor seems to consist of the tail of a dromaeosaur, glued to a fossil bird's body (above).

Stephen Czerkas, an American museum administrator, had bought the fossil from the Chinese for $80,000, and then showed it to two scientists he had made contact with. Once the expected confirmation had been received, he wrote a report about the fossil. Yet Czerkas was no scientific researcher, nor did he hold a doctorate of any sort. He submitted his report to two famous scientific journals, Nature and Science, but they both declined to publish it unless it was first vetted by an independent commission of paleontologists.

Czerkas was determined to have this fantastical discovery published, and he next knocked at the door of National Geographic, known for its support of the theory of evolution.

Under Chinese law it was definitely forbidden to remove fossils unearthed within its borders from the country, and fossil-smuggling could be severely punished, even by death. Despite being well aware of this, National Geographic accepted this fossil which had been smuggled out of China. The fossil was presented to the media at a press conference staged in the National Geographic headquarters in October 1999. An illustrated seven-page article describing the dino-bird fairy tale formed the cover story in the November edition of National Geographic magazine. Moreover, the fossil was exhibited in the National Geographic museum, where it was presented to millions of people as definitive proof of the theory of evolution.

The truth emerged in March 2001: no such intermediate species as Achaeoraptor had ever existed. Computer tomography analyses of the fossil revealed that it consisted of parts of at least two different species. Archaeoraptor was thus dethroned, and took its place alongside all the other evolutionist frauds in history. Darwinism-whose claims have never been empirically verified in the past 150 years-was once more associated with specially manufactured fossil forgeries.

As we have seen, National Geographic was once party to that very fossil-smuggling which it now purports to oppose. Naturally, the fact that in its latest documentaries it devotes space to bringing fossil smuggling out into the open may be regarded as a positive sign that it will not tolerate similar abuses in the future. However, if the TV channel does oppose fossil-smuggling, then it must also deal with such well-known smuggling incidents as Archaeoraptor in its programs. No matter how much of a violation of its Darwinist broadcasting policy it might be, admitting its past mistakes and taking the side of the truth would be commendable behavior in the sight of all its viewers.

A SERIES OF BLUNDERS REGARDING MONKEY INTELLIGENCE

A SERIES OF BLUNDERS REGARDING MONKEY INTELLIGENCE

National Geographic TV broadcast two documentaries in April 2003 in its Europe edition. Called A Tale of Three Chimps and My Favorite Monkey, these documentaries bore clear similarities in terms of the message they sought to give. The consecutive broadcasting of these documentaries by National Geographic TV, their subject matter, and their timing indicated that deliberate evolutionist propaganda was going on. This channel, which in March 2003 brought us the fairy tales of "the dog that entered the sea and became a whale" and "the fish that left the sea and grew legs" in its Great Transformations, this time offered us another story and tried to inculcate the suggestion of the alleged evolution of man.

The documentary "A Tale of Three Chimps" dealt with chimpanzees working in a circus, and "My Favorite Monkey" was about the tailed macaque. Throughout both of these films frequent examples were given of what appeared to be intelligent behavior in monkeys, and the impression was given that since monkeys are so-called close relatives of man, their intelligence is correspondingly high. The aim of this article is to reveal the twisted Darwinist interpretations given in both documentaries.

Claims That Chimpanzees and Man are Brothers or Genetic Relatives are Untrue

Right at the beginning of the film there is talk of chimpanzees' being a "brother species" to man and it was said that scientists realized the similarities between the two species before their genetic proximity was confirmed.

National Geographic TV's view of monkeys as a "brother species" to man is nothing more than Darwinist prejudice and rests on no scientific findings. There is absolutely no evidence to support the claim that man and apes evolved from a common ancestor. In the face of the picture presented by the fossil record, evolutionist paleontologists admit that they have abandoned hope of finding a missing link between man and the chimpanzee.

The claim that a "genetic proximity" between man and ape has been confirmed is a deception, pure and simple. Genetic proximity is a scenario produced as the result of a distortion of data regarding human and chimpanzee DNA with the aim of supporting Darwinism. However, this scenario is rotten to the core, because it claims that DNA emerged by means of so-called random evolutionary mutations. The fact is, however, that the effects of mutations on organisms are inevitably harmful, and may even have fatal results. DNA contains meaningful information recorded in a special encoding system. Random mutations in genes cannot possibly add new information to the DNA of the organism and turn it into a new species. All experiments and observations on mutations demonstrate this.

Moreover, the invalidity of the figures put forward in this genetic proximity propaganda has also emerged in new scientific discoveries in recent months. The findings of a California Institute of Technology geneticist have revealed that the genetic difference between man and chimpanzee was three times greater than had been claimed.1 It was revealed that there is absolutely no scientific proof of a point that is so frequently stressed in evolutionist propaganda. (For more details about the scientific discoveries which have undermined the scenario of human evolution, see Darwinism Refuted, by Harun Yahya at www.harunyahya.com under the subtopic "Refutation of Darwinism.")

The National Geographic TV documentary, "My Favorite Monkey," states that man and apes possess a similar physiology, and this is portrayed as evidence of evolution. Space is devoted to the comments of a veterinarian regarding a monkey which was brought to him for treatment. The veterinarian states that some of the medicines he used for the monkey were actually human medicines, and cites this as evidence that the two species are related.

The fact, however, that medicines can prove to be effective in both species provides no evidence for the theory of evolution whatsoever. The comparison is merely one made in line with Darwinist prejudices. It is quite natural that similar chemicals should benefit both man and apes. Both species share the same biosphere and the same carbon-based organic molecules. This common structure applies not just to man and apes, but to the whole of nature. For instance, human beings produce medicine from the blood of the horseshoe crab. Yet this does not mean that man and the horseshoe crab are related. On the other hand, kidney transplants carried out from chimpanzees to human beings represent a serious blow to the claims of similar physiology. Dr. Keith Reemtsma of Tulane University carried out more than a dozen such transplants from chimpanzees to human beings in 1963, but all the patients died.2 That is because the chimpanzee metabolism worked faster, for which reason the cells in the tissue of the chimpanzee kidney rapidly consumed the water in the bodies of the human recipients.

National Geographic TV's Propaganda Tactics

The assumptions which evolutionists accept without really thinking about them are actually based on very weak foundations. Evolutionists feel enormous excitement at ape behavior which is similar to that of humans, yet ignore other creatures which display even more intelligent behavior than apes.

The propaganda tactic so often resorted to in documentaries on National Geographic TV consists of showing examples of intelligent behavior by apes and then drawing comparisons between them and human beings. This tactic can be seen in expressions like "they are intelligent animals," "their needs closely resemble those of human beings," and "like us, they feel the need for personal bonds and interpersonal relationships."

The commentary in My Favorite Monkey mentions that apes produce creative solutions in the face of problems in nature and that they are intelligent problem-solvers. It says the line between human and ape behavior may be very unclear.

In another narration, it is stated that they resemble us physically; we use them in space and medical research. Also, they resemble us socially, but we keep that to ourselves. Family life is very important among members of the macaque species and we are so closely related that …

According to evolutionists' own logic, it is possible to draw a comparison between bees, which build combs that are architectural marvels, or beavers, which construct dams, with civil engineers and say that they are our ancestors. That claim is as nonsensical as saying we are descended from apes.

Yet the inconsistency of constructing an evolutionary link between man and ape in respect of intelligence and interpersonal relationships is quite evident. There are other animals far superior to apes when it comes to intelligence and relationships. Bees, for instance, are able to employ the kind of architecture in building their combs that only a mathematician's calculations could match.3 A geometrical plan can be seen in the comb, one that allows the least possible material to be used in the construction but the greatest possible amount of area for storage. (In the identification of such an "optimal" design the area and circumferences of different geometrical shapes need to be calculated, and the geometric shape with the highest area/circumference ratio should be selected.)

In the same way, beavers are able to build their nests against the current in the middle of rivers, employing the kind of engineering abilities used by man in constructing dams.4 Termites build magnificent towers capable of comparison with our own skyscrapers, and set up air-conditioning systems, special storage chambers and agricultural areas inside them. The fact, of course, that they display a visibly sensitive mathematical and geometrical knowledge in their buildings and use engineering techniques does not imply that we are related to bees, beavers, or termites.

Neither is the fact that monkeys feel the need for interpersonal bonds and relationships evidence for evolution. Creatures that have no possible relation to human beings also enjoy similar bonds and relationships. Penguins, for example, raise families full of love and loyalty. Dogs are much more faithful and friendly in the relationships they establish with human beings. Doves enjoy close relations with their mates. Budgerigars exhibit enormous interest and devotion to one another, and also to human beings. Yet these features do not make penguins, doves, budgerigars, and dogs our relatives.

On the other hand, these animals do reveal the invalidity of the theory of evolution's claims regarding the origin of their intelligence and behavior. Despite the fact that the creatures we have just listed are located on branches of the imaginary evolutionary tree far more distant from man than are chimpanzees, they are still able to display behavior much closer to human intelligence than that of chimpanzees.

Honeybees reveal yet another contradiction which the theory of evolution is quite incapable of accounting for. The theory seeks to account for level of intelligence by the development of the nervous system. For instance, it links the fact that man is the most highly developed living thing to his having the highest brain/body ratio. According to this logic, chimpanzees, with a much more complex nervous system than that of bees, should be far superior to them. Yet the truth is actually the exact opposite. The fact that a creature much further away from man on the imaginary evolutionary tree than the chimpanzee is able to display the kind of complex behavior seen in man, despite its being a simple organism, - the way it calculates the surface area and circumference of the hexagon and measures internal angles, for instance - definitively invalidates the evolutionist claims with regard to ape intelligence.

Beware the Monkey Culture Distortion

In the documentary My Favorite Monkey it is suggested that the tailed monkey known as the macaque possesses the ability to develop complex behaviors, and to teach them to individuals and so hand them on to subsequent generations. This is described as a kind of "monkey culture," on the grounds that such learned behavior falls within the meaning of culture.

Due to the symbiosis of leaf cutter ants and fungi, the ants obtain the protein they need for nutrition from the mushroom buds they grow on leaves. Here we see a mushroom garden tended by ants. 1) Inside the nest, slightly smaller workers chop leaves into bits. 2)The next caste chews these bits into pulp and fertilizes them with deposits of enzyme-rich fecal fluid. 3) Other ants apply the fertile leaf paste over a base of dried leaves in new chambers. 4) Another caste hauls in bits of fungus from older chambers and plants them in the leaf paste. Bits of fungus spread on the leaf paste like frost. 5) A teeming caste of dwarfs cleans and weeds the garden, then harvests the fungus for others to eat.

It may be suggested that the behavior models peculiar to one living species are an indication of "culture." However, as we have stated above, "human-type" behavior or the demonstration of a "human-type" culture in certain aspects by a living being is again no evidence for the theory of evolution.

National Geographic TV engages in two major distortions here. First, the example is given of a macaque washing the sand off a potato in the sea before eating it. Second, an adult macaque is shown forcibly taking the stones a younger monkey is playing with out of its hand.

It is stated that the washing of the potato in water is behavior that was first developed by one macaque in the group and then taught to the others. This is taken to be a sign of culture. The taking away by the adult of the stone the younger macaques are playing with is compared to the way that children playing in a nursery take each other's toys. It is suggested here that the way the adult engages in a display of strength by taking it away from the younger animal shows that macaques imbue the stone with a kind of social significance.

The fact that a monkey engages in "humane" cleaning and displays a "toy" culture cannot be put forward as evidence for evolution. Evolutionists persistently fixate on monkey culture, and are accustomed to portray this as a whole entity, based on particular communication between monkeys. The aim here is to install the idea in people's minds that human culture is a phenomenon which emerged with evolution, and that among animals the nearest level to human culture is that exhibited by monkeys.

Yet the wild bee known as schwarzula or the leafcutter ant exhibit an even more complex culture - that of agriculture. Schwarzula engages in "livestock rearing" by making use of secretions from a species of larva it gathers up and collects in its nest. Leafcutter ants engage in "agriculture" by growing fungus.5 Another species of ant collects resin from trees and uses this as an antiseptic to purify its nest from germs. This is a sign of a "culture of medicine." The way that creatures which (according to evolutionists) are "simpler" than apes and much further removed from man than apes, are able to display such complex examples of culture is enough to invalidate the evolutionists' claims of a link between "monkey culture" and man.

As we have seen, National Geographic TV's distortions are insufficient to account, according to the theory of evolution, for behavior and culture among animals that are similar to those in man. Moreover, the examples we have cited of behavior and culture in bees, ants, beavers, dogs, and doves raise certain questions that can never be answered in terms of the theory of evolution: How did these creatures come by the necessary information to accomplish such complex behavior? How are they able to interpret such information? How is it that tiny insects are able to display more complex behavior than apes, alleged to be man's closest relatives?

You can ask these questions to the evolutionist of your choice. It is absolutely certain that the reply will demonstrate the total quandary they find themselves in. Those with rather more experience will try to gloss over the matter by saying such behavior depends on "instinct." Yet that fails to save the theory that is deadlocked. "Instinct" is nothing more than a name generated for this evolutionary quandary.

It is obvious that instinct does not stem from the living thing itself, but is inspired by a superior intelligence. It is God Who inspires the behavior in bees, beavers, dogs, doves, and chimpanzees. Every living thing displays the characteristics God set out for it. The fact that the chimpanzee is an animal, which man finds amusing and which is able to obey his commands, stems from the inspiration God places in it. The truth of this can be seen in the verse of the Qur'an; "Your Lord revealed to the bees…" (Qur'an, 16:68)

Monkey Blunders from National Geographic TV

The claims put forward in the comparisons between the tailed macaques and man in the documentary "My Favorite Monkey" are so utterly inconsistent that the film gives the impression of having been prepared as an entertainment for children. For instance:

The experimental monkeys sent into space are referred to as heroes, and we are told, had it not been for them man could never have taken the giant leap into space that he did. This is a totally baseless comment: The monkeys sent into space did not "succeed" in doing anything. The rockets they were placed into were controlled from earth, and the monkeys were just tightly strapped into the cabins and used as experimental subjects. Furthermore, even if we do allow a measure of heroism in the experimental animals used in space research, then rats and dogs must also be included, since these too were used in craft sent up into space.

It is also stated in My Favorite Monkey that apes have been of major use to man in the medical field. We are told how, as a result of research on rhesus monkeys, the Rh tests were developed. Obviously, though, the use of an animal in medical research does not make it a relative of man, in the same way that the use of bacteria in the development of antibiotics does not make them relatives of man.

In that same documentary, a comparison is made between the way that monkeys groom each other to remove fleas and parasites and the way that human beings go to the hairdresser, and it is suggested that going to the hairdresser is parallel social behavior to being groomed for fleas.

This claim must represent a "shining example" of the way in which National Geographic TV's Darwinist fantasies know no limits. Maybe in future programs this creative imagination could be used to engage in speculation regarding the origin of the human habit of going to the theatre by showing two groups of apes, the one watching the other group playing. That is, of course, if termites are not rediscovered with their construction abilities and put forward as man's nearest ancestors!

Macaques' jumping onto jet skis, skiing, or sitting and eating in restaurants with their owners does not make them relatives of man. It is clear that such behavior does not have its roots in ape etiquette or culture. Such behavior is the result of punishment and reward training, and has no more significance than a circus show. Indeed, dogs, birds, and dolphins are also used in such shows and demonstrate impressive abilities. National Geographic TV is using and distorting such images of monkeys to implant in people's minds the idea set out in evolution that the monkeys are man's closest relatives.

Conclusion

These documentaries broadcast on National Geographic TV once again show that the channel is a blind and dogmatic supporter of Darwinism. The claims put forward about animal behavior and intelligence make no scientific statement at all. This channel, which declares the apes sent into space to be heroes and tries to establish an evolutionary link between monkeys grooming each other and human beings going to the hairdresser, is trying to cover claims that even children would find laughable with a scientific veneer. We recommend that if the channel is to defend the theory of evolution, it should try to find more rational and logical arguments with which to do so.

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

Between early 2001 and the present day there have been a number of very interesting and important developments in the world of science. The advances made in such different scientific fields as palaeontology, molecular biology, anatomy and genetics have once again revealed the terrible scientific dilemma the theory of evolution finds itself in. The theory of evolution was proposed in its present form in the mid-19^th century by Charles Darwin and at that time provided enormous support for materialism. Such was that support that the present collapse of the theory is also resulting in the collapse of materialism itself.

Materialism is a most dangerous philosophy, which denies the existence of God, religion and the spiritual life and which regards matter as the only absolute and supports a selfish world view. The selfish, self-interested, combative and ruthless moral view which is still widespread in the world is the product of a materialist-Darwinist viewpoint.

It is therefore essential to inflict an intellectual defeat on the materialist world view, and to this end it is essential to reveal the scientific invalidity of Darwinism, which constitutes the basis of that view. This is an easy task, because Darwinism lacks any scientific foundation. Not one scientific proof to back up the theory of evolution has so far been found in any relevant branch of science. The findings which have been made all show that evolution never happened. All that evolutionists do is to distort certain biological phenomena, observations or the fossil record, none of which actually constitute any evidence for the theory of evolution, in a prejudiced manner, and sometimes even wage their propaganda campaign by engaging in scientific fraud.

In order for the true face of Darwinism to be revealed it is therefore essential that the effect of this propaganda be nullified and that the scientific facts be made available to as many people as possible. The subsequent chapters of this book therefore examine the new scientific findings which unmask the evolution deception as well as the invalidity of the one-sided reports which have appeared in evolutionist publications and media outlets in recent months.