Letter: Facts support evolution of man

Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2005 | 10:01 a.m.

I was happy to see Ken Lucas' most recent letter. He has been an ardent opponent of the scientific fact of evolution, but seems now to have come out of the closet as an evolutionist. He admits that micro- evolution is an undisputed fact, but macroevolution and microevolution are exactly the same process, the only difference being the time scale involved.

In his tired arguments against evolution he again cites the fossil record by stating that there are only about 5,000 protohuman fossils. I find that number remarkable since fossilization is a rare event in nature, especially in the warm moist parts of the world in which human evolution occurred. I have the greatest admiration for the paleontologists and biologists who were able to uncover so many. On the other hand, if humans had arisen by some sort of divine creation, the number of protohuman fossils would be exactly zero.

In another effort to impugn the fossil record, he lists six fossils as being fraudulent or disputed. Four of the six are, in fact, undisputed and valuable parts of the fossil record, while the other two include a mistake and a fraud that were uncovered by, guess who: scientists.

Finally, he insults scientific evolutionists by saying that they believe that they are apes. Anyone with even a basic knowledge of evolution can only find that laughable. We are not apes; we are, however, closely related to apes as evidenced by the fact that more than 96 percent of our DNA is identical to that of chimpanzees.

WALLACE J. HENKELMAN