Guest Author - Diana Pederson

Marvin L. Lubenow. Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils. BakerBooks. 2004.

Lubenow has studied human fossils for 35 years. He is currently a Professor of Bible, Theology, and Apologetics at Southern California College and Seminary. His peers consider him a top quality creationist researcher.

Bones of Contention examines the “human fossil tree” in detail. In Section 1 (Chapters 1-5), he discusses how the anthropologists and geologists who discover these fossils allow their peers to examine them. One amazing thing I learned is that what we see as human fossils in museums are really only copies of them! The actual fossils are kept, quite literally, under lock and key by either their discoverers or the museum charged with their care.

Section II (Chapters 6-12) is called “Human Evolution: A House of Cards”. He shows how fossils, when properly dated, don’t give the reliable time line from Neandertal to Homo sapiens, today’s scientific name for man.

The next section, III, “Evolution and Racism: A Fatal Attraction” contains chapters 13-16. The author states:

CHARLES DARWIN WAS A RACIST. In all fairness to the man, we must state that about 98 percent of his fellow Englishmen were also racists—and about that same percentage of the Fre4nch and the Germans. In fact, Europeans have a grand and “noble” tradition of chauvinism towards all non-Europeans. That tradition came to full flower during the period of discovery and colonization—the very time when Darwin published his famous 1859 work. Most people are unfamiliar with the full title of that work. It is: The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.

Two things are obvious in the full title of Darwin’s book. First, since Darwin did not publish on human evolution until 1871, it is clear that he used the terms “species” and “race” interchangeably for all forms of life. Today, it is the custom to use the term “race” only for humans. Second, Darwin felt that the process of evolution was able to preserve those “favored races.” In fact, it was evolution that produced those favored races in the first place. [Page 137—permission is given by author to use brief quotes in reviews.]

Reading the introduction to Section III will help you understand that the whole concept of evolution is essentially racism. Racism assumes 3 things: First, it involves differences in population groups. Second, certain groups are assumed to be inherently superior to other groups and third, it involves prejudice and rejection. According to Lubenow, evolutionists didn’t try to hide the racism inherent in the evolution theory until after the horrors of Nazism in World War II.

Section IV, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” discusses the theory that all man came out of Africa. Read this section carefully before deciding that evolution proves creationism. The discovery of a cave full of ancient human bones in Northern Spain reviews the wide diversity in skull shape of a group living at roughly the same time period. This shows that the so-called skull differences between the different “early men” are nothing more than normal diversity within any group.

Section V: “Trashing Neandertals” shows that these ancient men coexisted with other groups of early men, debunking the progressive chart shown in many biology texts today! I find the information contained in Section VI: “The Creationist Dating Revolution” most interesting. Here you will read about “ancient rocks” being created by today’s volcanoes. He tells of lava from active volcanoes being sent for whole-rock potassium-argon dating to the Geochron Laboratories in Massachusetts, being given dates of 270,00 years or older even though their were eyewitnesses to the volcanic explosion that created the lava. Basically, the commonly used “scientific” dating of rocks is pure science fiction.

The author uses Section VII: Reality! To show a history of humans that is confirmed by scripture. He debunks the myth that primate fossils should ever be called part of human evolution.

Recommendation

This book includes scientific information to prove what its author states as fact. He discusses the hoaxes pulled with human fossils that are conveniently used to “prove” evolutionary theory as fact.

Frankly, the information in this book will make you doubt anything you have ever read about evolution. I suggest that every parent, Sunday School teacher, and Public School teacher read it. Check out the textbooks in your local schools. Are your children being taught the truth?

The book is easy to read. It is almost humorous as you read about the way fossils were manipulated and redated to comply with the theory of evolution. The author includes names of people whose findings help to debunk this scientific theory. I believe anyone taking this book and looking up all the scientific facts will come to the same conclusion—evolution is a very faulty scientific theory that should have been removed from our textbooks many years ago.