March-April 1999
The F-A-C-E
That Demonstrates the Farce of Evolution
by Hank Hanegraaff
I'll never forget the day I first saw the face that demonstrates the farce of evolution. It virtually leapt off the page of my textbook. It had a sharply receding forehead that cascaded abruptly into a heavy brow ridge. Its mouth was jutted open, revealing ape-like teeth. Its eyes were deep-set and pensive. They were the eyes of a philosopher with a slightly worried look as though he'd just seen his tax accountant.
If ever a picture was worth a thousand words, this was it. Even at my tender age, I understood exactly what it meant. This monkey was man in the making! My earliest ancestor was not Adam but an ape. The Bible was based on fiction. "In the beginning God created..." simply started a fairy tale.
Almost 20 years passed before I realized I'd been duped. The face that stared back at me from the pages of my textbook was a farce. Pithecanthropus erectus -- not Genesis -- was the figment of a fertile imagination.
For generations, the "face" of Pithecanthropus erectus has been used to covertly communicate the notion that evolution is based on fact. In my new book, I use F-A-C-E as an acronym to demonstrate that evolution is a fairy tale for adults.
Fossil Follies
The fossil record is an embarrassment to evolutionists. It demonstrates that transitional forms from one species to another are purely mythological. While the general public seems blithely unaware of the fact that no bona fide transitions from one species to another exist, it is common knowledge among paleontologists. As noted by Harvard's Stephen Jay Gould, "The extreme rarity of transitional forms persists as the trade secret of paleontology." 1
Ape-men
Nowhere is there more anti-knowledge than in the fiction, fraud and fantasy surrounding ape-men. In the world premiere of Ape Man: The Story of Human Evolution, Walter Cronkite called monkeys his "new found cousins." He went on to say: "If you go back far enough, we and the chimps share a common ancestor. My father's father's father's father, going back maybe a half-million generations -- about 5 million years -- was an ape." 2 The truth, however, is that no matter how many years the evolutionist postulates, chance operating on natural processes can no more create a chimp than it could create a cell.
Chance
Noted theologian R.C. Sproul calls chance "the magic wand to make not only rabbits but entire universes appear out of nothing." 3 Chance in this sense refers to that which happens without cause. It implies the absence of both a design and a designer. Imagine having the temerity to suggest that Christopher Wren had nothing to do with the design of St. Paul's Cathedral. Imagine asserting that the majestic Messiah composed itself apart from Handel. Or imagine that the Last Supper painted itself without da Vinci. Now consider an even more egregious notion -- that an eye in all of its vast complexity came into existence by blind chance. Darwin himself found it hard to swallow the notion that an eye could be the product of blind evolutionary chance. In his landmark publication, The Origin of Species, he wrote, "To suppose that the eye...could have been formed by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree possible." 4
Empirical Science
Go to the classics section of any video store, and you will find a propaganda piece starring Spencer Tracy and Gene Kelly titled Inherit the Wind. It features a fictionalized account of the 1925 "Scopes Trial," in which a teacher is jailed for violating a state law prohibiting the teaching of evolution. Creationists are portrayed as bigoted ignoramuses, while evolutionists are pictured as benevolent intellectuals. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Some of the greatest intellects the world has ever known -- including Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle, the father of modern chemistry, were defenders of a creation view of origins. Following their intellectual integrity, we would do well to test the theory of evolution in light of the laws of science, instead of trying it in the court of public opinion.
It is not enough to use F-A-C-E as an acronym to demonstrate the farce of evolution. It is crucial that you are also equipped to use your well-reasoned answer as a springboard or an opportunity for communicating that the God who created us desires fellowship with us as well. You can equip yourself to sensitively and effectively communicate your faith.
Footnotes
1) Stephen Jay Gould, Natural History, May 1977, p. 13.
2) Ape Man: The Story of Human Evolution, hosted by Walter Cronkite, Arts and Entertainment network, 4 September 1994.
3) R.C. Sproul, Not a Chance, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1994, p. 9.
4) Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection, chap. VI, "Difficulties of the Theory," sect. "Organs of Extreme Perfection and Complication," in Robert Maynard Hutchins, ed., Great Books of the Western World, vol. 49, Darwin Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952, p. 85.
Hank Hanegraaff, radio's Bible Answer Man, can be contacted at telephone number (949) 858-6100 or internet site www.equip.org.