Lucy and the Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes

Last Sunday I went to a lecture that defended the creation story of the Bible against evolution.

The evening was held in a beautiful new church with a state-of-the-art audiovisual set up. The speaker was David N. Menton (pictured at left), a PhD cell biologist and Associate Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri who is a renown critic of evolution and an proponent of creationism and Biblical literalism. Menton is in fact a “young earth” creationist which means that he believes the earth is only a few thousand years old, thus taking the Genesis story literally and tracing the generations forward through the Old Testament and Jesus Christ to the present. He eschews the science of carbon dating and radioisotope dating and believes that the dinosaurs walked the earth with Adam and Eve.

The presentation was prefaced with a 20-minute worship service that entailed several Christian songs accompanied by a keyboardist, which brought to mind the Voltaire quote about anything too stupid to be said must be sung, but that's a topic for a different day . The well-groomed congregation was attired in snappy-casual splendor, 99% Caucasian and respectfully quiet. The moderator welcomed visitors to the show and gave the floor over to a local cardiologist who is presumably a member of the church.

The cardiologist, who I know personally as a respected physician, introduced Dr. Menton with glowing praise, but not before relating his personal bias against the assumptions of evolution and his skepticism of certain tenets of the scientific community. The heart doctor reminded the congregation of the years of education that he himself has endured and also of his business and professional success in town, presumably to inject credibility to the proceedings.

Dr. Menton emerged on stage and began his polished Power Point presentation in earnest. His first of two lectures was about Lucy the hominid skeleton (at left), which by the way was named for the Beatles song, found in Africa in 1974 and considered by many paleontologists to be a 3.2 million year-old “missing link” in the evolution of ape-like creatures to modern Homo sapiens. Of course, Menton does not give any credence to such claims and goes on at length with several arguments finding fault with “evolutionist's claims.” He goes on without rebuttal about the technicalities of the shape of Lucy's pelvis, the anatomy of her hands, the carrying angle of her knee and morphology of her feet, and even that Lucy is not a she at all-- implying that assigning female gender was done in order to disarm creationist critics with political correctness. Menton, a non-tenured histologist, contends that a paleoanthropologist named Owen Lovejoy, featured on a PBS Nova documentary, doctored data to fit his theories about the fossil. I guess we'll just have to take David Menton's word for it.

Menton voiced dismay at the media's apparent bias in such matters, especially in their depiction of such lower ape-like lifeforms to have human characteristics. He feels this is done to promote an agenda that these are human-like and thus are done to give greater believability to the claims of evolutionists. He showed museum models and pictures of hominids with supposedly pensive countenances and implied some large conspiracy by the various curators and artisans. My response would be for Dr. Menton to go to the zoo and look at the primates; they have all manner of facial expression from pensive to jocular to even that Dick Cheney 60,000 mile stare.

Menton then tried to further discredit evolution by presenting quotes from various paleontologists that were supposedly indicative of their doubts about the basic tenets of evolution. An example is one quote from David Pilbeam, who was a protege of the venerable Richard Leakey, who said:

If you brought in a smart scientist from another discipline and showed him the meagre evidence we've got he'd surely say, "forget it; there isn't enough to go on."

What Menton left out, however, was the complete context, which is more esoteric. The quote was in reference to a discussion about the specific branching of hominoids that occurred previous to the Australopithecine era of Lucy, and was not meant as a broad indictment of evolution in general as Menton implied. Pilbeam said, and I quote at length because the issue is nuanced:

Of the primates, the chimpanzee is man's closest relative, while the two other great apes, the gorilla and orangutan, are slightly more distant evolutionary cousins. The apes and hominids are collectively known as the 'hominoids'. Biologists would dearly like to know how modern apes, modern humans and the various ancestral hominids have evolved from a common ancestor. Unfortunately, the fossil record is somewhat incomplete as far as the hominids are concerned, and it is all but blank for the apes. The best we can hope for is that more fossils will be found over the next few years which will fill the present gaps in the evidence. The major gap, often referred to as 'the fossil void', is between eight and four million years ago.
David Pilbeam comments wryly, 'If you brought in a smart scientist from another discipline and showed him the meagre evidence we've got he'd surely say, "forget it; there isn't enough to go on".' Neither David nor others involved in the search for mankind can take this advice, of course, but we remain fully aware of the dangers of drawing conclusions from the evidence that is so incomplete.... Fortunately, there is quite good evidence regarding the ape-like creatures that lived over fourteen million years ago [...]

The debate was about when chimps and humans branched from a common ancestor, not whether ape-like ancestors were present in both hominoids' lineage. As one writer points out: “A discussion follows [by Pilbeam] of the extensive fossil evidence of dryopithecinces and ramapithecines, biochemical estimates of the date of divergence of humans and chimps, a discussion of the rise of bi-pedalism, and David Pilbeam's estimates of the branching times for the various groups of hominoids. That's just chapter three ("Ape-Like Ancestors"). Chapter four ("The Early Hominids") picks up on the near side of the fossil gap referred to in the quote.” To paint Pilbeam as equivocating about evolutionary principles is disingenuous at best.

Menton chose Lucy as his foil for obvious reasons. The skeleton has been the subject of conjecture among paleontologists ever since its discovery 30 years ago. The controversies have surrounded nuances about the findings and their implications about the specifics of hominid evolution. Do scientists disagree on things-- sure. All of science is built on skepticism; hypotheses have to be run through the wringer again and again to see if they hold up. Lucy has presented us with a valuable addition to the admittedly scant hominoid fossil record, but Lucy certainly has not cast asunder the foundation of evolutionary science as Menton would have us believe.

The fossil record of plants and lower animals is replete with examples of gradual adaptation and even instances of frank speciation. Evolutionary principles have been corroborated repeatedly by evaluation of these specimens. The only other explanation for such phenomenon would be that a Supernatural Being laid all these fossils down in the various strata corresponding to different eras just to mess with us big-brained humans or perhaps to test our faith in the His Biblical account. Higher animals and especially apes and humans have the disadvantage of a less complete fossil record, and Lucy remains the creationists' target of choice because they try to make her emblematic for some form of fundamental rift in paleontology. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Menton quoted others throughout the talk, but most of these quotations are inaccessible because they were too old-- taken from publications more than 15 or 20 years old-- or esoteric enough to be hard to find. Menton doubts evolution-- fine, that's his prerogative-- but what flavor of ethical human being would knowingly twist someone else's words to fit his own agenda? This disgusting technique is expected from Karl Rove or Rush Limbaugh, and frankly, pisses all over whatever scant credibility Menton could graciously have been granted.

While Menton sounds authoritative, a few things need to be remembered. Firstly, Menton is not a paleontologist, and as far as I know the cardiologist is not a paleontologist either. In fact, no such authority was present in that church to support or rebuke Menton's radical arguments. What little reading I have done on Lucy, which granted comes mostly from popular scientific publications such as Scientific American and National Geographic, contends that many scientists disagree on several conclusions about the fossil, but no credible paleontologist agrees that the fossil is only 6,000 years old and no credible scientist views the fossil as a repudiation of the knowledge we have about evolution.

Secondly, Menton has an agenda. He is here to support his viewpoint that the Bible is literal history and anything that contradicts that worldview is to be discredited at all costs. Since the science of radioisotope geological dating is little understood by lay citizens, Menton's thesis gains credence in such a church setting. The Bible is revered for whatever reason by such a group as the sole Word of God, and if something as difficult to understand as quantum physics disagrees with it, then certainly it's not worth trying to figure out. Here comes a scientist with quasi-respectable credentials who agrees with their irrational worldview. Hallalujah!

Which brings us to the third thing to remember. Dr. Menton sells his half dozen videos, hawks children's media about Adam and Eve living with dinosaurs and has opened a young earth creationist museum near the Ohio-Kentucky border. Over 40 minutes of the 2 ½ hour evening was taken up with discussion of these business ventures and encouraging perusal and purchase. Menton encouraged the purchase of magazine subscriptions and visiting his website. After the formal lectures, the ante room, replete with stacks of DVD's, books and “educational” material, was opened up for the buyers. This evening program had a larger agenda for sure. Where's Matthew 21:12-17 when you need it?

The fact is that David Menton, although appearing in his late 50's or 60's, is not a tenured professor, and I'm sure he would say that he has been outcast from the scientific community because of their prejudice toward his radical views. Fine, that would be a reasonable excuse. Furthermore, Menton's background and entire professional career has been spent as a cell biologist, i.e., looking at cells and tissues under a microscope. Menton is not formally trained in paleontology, fossil records, or even gross anatomy of the pelvis, knee or hand morphology. Menton has as much recognized education in these issues as a gynecologist does in, say, economics-- and we know dangerous a little so-called knowledge can be.

If Menton's arguments are to be taken seriously, then the fossil record as recognized by thousands of apparently intelligent and trained scientists is a complete ruse. Thousands of paleontologists are either so piss-ignorant that they can't tell the difference between a metacarpal and mousetrap, or these same thousands of trained professionals are purposely misleading us all for some reason. And what could be the cynical motivation of these devious scientists? To make money and sell videos? Hmmm?

Menton is an articulate promoter for his cause, whatever it may be. His purpose may be to sell stuff to the unsophisticated masses who are searching not for truth but for some glimmer of hope for their increasingly untenable worldview-- or not. But this is America dammit, so more power to him. If he has found some way to legally detach hard-earned coin from the honest working class, then go for it. Only his conscience should stand in his way.

Menton could have slogged through an academic career, committing years of sweat to primary research, publishing papers in peer-reviewed journals, teaching snot-nosed hungover undergrads, and humping for tenure and the respect of his colleagues. But instead, Menton chose the short road to rock star status. He is a superstar in his circuit, a highly regarded “defender of the faith.” I have no doubt there is some genuine belief in Menton's presentation, but his argument has been terminally corrupted by his clinging to unfathomable assumptions. Even the Catholic Church, as backward as it may be, has accepted the several billion year age of the earth and the basic tenets of natural selection and speciation.

Menton, for all his faults, is correct on one big issue. If one is to believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible, then one also needs to discount the physics of rock dating and carbon dating. If Genesis is to be taken word for word, then Menton is correct to blow off these scientific principles. One Christian friend of mine, a professed Biblical literalist, has taken the view that God has created the earth and all the creatures in a week, but, and I quote, “Why can't God make a day that lasts a billion years?” Well then, I answer, wouldn't he have called it “a billion years” then and not “a day” when he sat down to pen his inerrant Word? If we are going to say the Bible is literal, then let's keep it literal. If “a day” is a metaphor for “a billion years”, then why can't the Virgin Birth or the Resurrection be metaphors as well? Admirably, Menton allows none of these niggling conflicts to interfere with his faith.

Overall the night was educational. These guys like Dr. David Menton are not that common so it was an honor to see one in action in his natural habitat. I sat quietly and drank in the ambiance of the evening. The world is a mysterious and frightful place. We all are looking for some beneficial reprieve to the existential death sentence we must endure. To me, Menton seems desperate to cling to a very narrow explanation in order to relieve his angst, and he feels that he has found a firm toe-hold.

Most religionists, and by that I mean theists, have not gone to such extreme lengths to defend their fear-based irrational belief systems as Menton has. Most paper over the contradictions between their faith and the revealed scientific world. Mainline Protestants are the most frustrating to me; they seem to be okay with all manner of watered down interpretation of Biblical myths and the Jesus story. They are like a moving target, never able to be pinned down-- some believe in evolution, others do not-- some see the whole of Christendom as based on a Resurrection that they admit is a metaphor. I would think it would be hard to get dressed on Sunday to attend a worship service for that. Roman Catholics are a little less frustrating because they rely on an infallible Pope to be interpreter of God's intent, so while change can occur in response to science and observation, it comes necessarily slowly and must be filtered inexplicably through the understanding of a senior citizen who wears red slippers. That's craziness I can begin to understand. At least the Catholic faithful can cling to some respectable manner of irrationality as dictated by the alleged peerage of St. Peter.

Menton, however, stands above the others as a stalwart, relishing his unwavering ignorance of scientific argument as it pertains to geology, physics and paleontology. His worldview is to be changed never-- ever. And for that Menton deserves credit. If you are going to embrace irrationality, then go all the way. What the heck, why not?

And go ahead and sell a few DVD's along the way.