Marvin Lubenow is professor of Bible, theology and apologetics at Southern California Seminary in El Cajun, California. He spent more than 35 years researching the human fossil issue and frequently speaks and writes to defend the creationist position. He holds a Master of Science in Anthropology from Eastern Michigan University, and Master of Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary.

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His first edition of “Bones of Contention” was published in 1992 as a critique of the human fossil record as evidence for evolution. This updated edition, published in 2004, contains updated developments in the field of human evolution and the latest fossil discoveries. This latest evidence demonstrates, according to Lubenow, that “the whole of evolution is dead.”

He also expounds on the use of Darwinian evolution in its earliest days of publication, when “scientific racism”, which claimed white Europeans were superior to other races, was heralded as scientific truth.

He also elaborates on how the racism that is inherent in evolution is being camouflaged today, claiming that the current model of choice, the “Out of Africa” or “African Eve” model for human evolution, although it lacks solid fossil evidence, is preferred by evolutionary scientists because it better hides the racism present in all evolutionary models.

This latest edition is broken into 7 sections:

1. Evolution: A Really Weird Science
2. Human Evolution: A House of Cards
3. Evolution and Racism: A Fatal Attraction
4. The Empire’s New Clothes
5. Trashing Neandertals
6. The Creationist Dating Revolution
7. Reality: The Human Fossil Record

SECTION 1: A REALLY WEIRD SCIENCE

1. Creationism itself is not what causes emotions to flare. The term “creationism” literally screams “God”! That’s why it is so emotional. And that’s why many people who do not personally know God embrace evolution (p. 16).
2. Darwin never saw any human fossils, although he published an entire book on human evolution in 1871 (p. 22).
3. The problem is not with the fossils. It is with the interpretation of the fossils (p. 25).
4. The myth in the minds of the public is that the human fossil material is readily available and is thoroughly studied by all who teach and write on the subject. The truth is that paleoanthropology is in the awkward position of being a science that is several steps removed from the very evidence upon which it claims to base its findings (p. 29).
5. Evolutionists readily admit that evolutionary processes work so slowly that they are not observable over the lifetime of one individual or even over the successive lifetimes of hundreds of generations. In other words, there are no direct observations or experiments that confirm the process of human evolution (p. 33).
6. “Question Begging”: evolutionists first assume that humans and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor. Then they use superficial similarities between humans and chimpanzees to prove their assumption (p. 33).
7. There is no evolutionist on the face of the earth who believes that modern humans evolved from modern chimpanzees (p. 41).
8. A grand total of 3,998 fossil hominid individuals have been discovered as of 1969-1976. That’s a surprising large amount of evidence dealing with human origins (p. 45).
9. In light of the richness of the hominid fossil record, it is difficult to understand why the public has been exposed to statements form authorities about the small number of hominid fossils that have been discovered (p. 46).
10. If human evolution is truly a scientific theory, the fossil record shows that it has been falsified. The fact that the evidence is ignored or disguised indicates that the concept of human evolution is a philosophy that is perpetuated in spite of and independent of the facts of the human fossil record (p. 63).
11. To the evolutionist, they start with evolution being true, and then interpret the fossils accordingly (p. 64).
12. How could the theory of evolution be falsified? Supposedly it would be falsified if fossils are found that are woefully out of order from what evolution would predict. Many such fossils have been found. KNM-KP 271 is just one of them (p. 69).

SECTION 2: HUMAN EVOLUTION – A HOUSE OF CARDS

13. When the first Neandertal was discovered, even “Darwin’s bulldog”, Thomas Huxley, recognized that Neandertal was fully human and not an evolutionary ancestor (p. 78).
14. It is impossible for the evolutionist to demonstrate that the Neandertal morphology was the result of mutation and natural selection (p. 83).
15. The original Neandertal fossils testify that the Neandertals were contemporaries with modern humans and were fully modern culturally as well (p. 85).
16. Most people today believe that Darwin disproved biblical creationism and proved evolution. The Darwinian Revolution, one of the most significant revolutions of all time, is generally thought to be the establishment of the concept of evolution on a solid, empirical basis. Not so. In the words of Harvard biologist Ernst Mayr, the Darwinian Revolution was actually a philosophical revolution from a theistic worldview to a worldview in which God was not involved in any way (p. 93).
17. For Homo Erectus to coexist with modern humans is not the way evolution is supposed to work. And for Homo Erectus, or any species, to exist for almost 2 million years without any significant evolutionary change is also not the way evolution is supposed to work (p. 117).
18. There are at least 78 Homo erectus fossil individuals dated more recently than 30,000 years ago, the youngest one being 6,000 years old. However, 6,000 years is not enough time for Homo erectus to evolve into modern humans. Therefore, evolutionists must ignore these fossils, challenge the date, challenge the morphology and claim they are Homo sapiens, or claim that they were in an evolutionary backwater and became extinct. But those 78 Homo erectus fossil individuals simply will not go away (p. 119).
19. If the fossil evidence at the far end of the Homo erectus spectrum shows no evidence of its having evolved from Homo habilis, the evidence at the near end of that spectrum shows no evidence of its having evolved into Homo sapiens (p. 121).

SECTION 3: EVOLUTION AND RACISM – A FATAL ATTRACTION

20. Charles Darwin was a racist. In all fairness to the man, we must state that about 98% of his fellow Englishmen were also racists – and about that same percentage of the French and the Germans (p. 137).
21. 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 (p. 137).
22. Racism centers on three elements: (1) racism always involves differences in population groups; (2) the crucial factor in racism is “inherent superiority”; (3) racism always involves prejudice and rejection (p. 138).
23. The sin of evolution, and I use that term literally, is that evolution gives humans an allegedly scientific justification for racism (p. 139).
24. The genocide of Tasmanian Aboriginals in the 1800’s is ne of the saddest chapters I human behavior (p. 147).
25. The scientific community wanted Tasmanian skulls and body parts for measurements to prove that the Tasmanians were “missing links”, or evidence for evolution. This racism on the part of the scientific community was the direct result of evolutionary thinking (p. 150).
26. The most astonishing aspect of the whole Nazi affair is the failure of the world to realize the motivation behind those gas chambers. It was evolution. Adolph Hitler was indeed a bad man, but he was not a mad man. He was an absolutely consistent evolutionist. He was wicked enough to drive evolution to its logical conclusion (p. 153).
27. The Nazi Holocaust brought the evils of scientific racism to public consciousness as nothing else had done. Now that we know the evils of racism, evolutionists are trying to make the elephant as invisible as possible (p.153).
28. Evolutionists today are not racist, but their theory is racist to the core. They are either denying or purposely ignoring the basic implications of their theory (p. 158).

SECTION 4: THE EMPIRE’S NEW CLOTHES

29. The parade of 15 figures used to demonstrate the alleged evolution of humans. This parade has become an almost universal icon for human evolution. It was of such incalculable propaganda value that I believe we would still see it if it were not for a deeper reason – the parade was incredibly and explosively racist. And racism is no longer politically correct (p. 168).
30. The Bible teaches that the original genetic barrier between kinds that was established at creation cannot be crossed. This can be demonstrated scientifically (p. 187).
31. In the past, evolution was a “natural” to prove racial inequalities. Noe evolution and genetics, via the “Out of Africa” model, are being used to “prove” human equality (p. 195).

SECTION 5: TRASHING NEANDERTALS

32. For many years, evolutionists claimed that smaller brains (the size of Homo erectus humans) meant inferior conceptual ability. We now know that is not true. It is rather humorous to see evolutionists now argue that the larger brains of the classic Neandertals also indicate inferior conceptual ability (p. 211).
33. It can now be said that virtually every type of evidence that we can reasonably expect from the fossil and archaeological record showing that the Neandertals were fully human has been discovered (p. 238).

SECTION 6: THE CREATIONIST DATING REVOLUTION

34. Without long ages, any concept of evolution would be impossible – and absurd (p. 274).

SECTION 7: REALITY

35. Nature248, March 22, 1974, p. 285: “Darwin produced embarrassingly little concrete evidence to back up some of his most important claims”. The evidence for evolution has never been strong. Nor is it strong today (p. 296).
36. Five facts of the human fossil record:
    1. Fossils that are indistinguishable from modern humans can be traced all the way back to 4.5 million years ago by the evolutionary time scale.
    2. The fossil record does not show Homo erectus evolving from something else or evolving into something else.
    3. Anatomically modern Homo sapiens, Neandertal, early Homo sapiens, and Homo erectus all lived as contemporaries at one time or another.
    4. All fossils ascribed to Homo habilis category are contemporary with Homo erectus. Thus, Homo habilis not only did not evolve into Homo erectus, but it could also not have evolved into Homo erectus.
    5. There are no fossils of Australopithecus or of any other primate stock in the proper time period to serve as evolutionary ancestors to humans. As far as we can tell from the fossil record, when humans first appeared in the fossil record, they are already human (p. 332-333).
37. The popular myth is that the hominid fossil evidence virtually proves human evolution. The reality is that this evidence has been a disappointment to evolutionists and is being de-emphasized. In actuality, the human fossil evidence falsifies the concept of human evolution (p. 334).