FRIDAY CHURCH NEWS NOTES
October 9, 2009, Volume 10, Issue 41
The Friday Church News Notes is designed for use in churches and is published by Way of Life Literature’s Fundamental Baptist Information Service. Unless otherwise stated, the Notes are written by David Cloud. Of necessity we quote from a wide variety of sources, but this does not imply an endorsement. For instructions on how to unsubscribe to this list or to change mailing addresses, please consult the information paragraph at the end.
NEW APE-MAN ANNOUNCED (Friday Church News Notes, October 9, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – Evolutionary paleoanthropologists have announced the discovery of a new ape-man they are calling Ardipithecus ramidus. Supposedly 4.4 million years old, the first fossils of this creature were found 15 years ago in Ethiopia. A partial skeleton dubbed “Ardi” has been presented to the public by its founders, which include Tim White, who was also involved in the “Lucy” discovery. Ardi has an ape head, ape arms, ape hands, ape legs and feet, and is no compelling reason to say it is anything other than an extinct ape other than the extreme evolutionary bias of modern paleoanthropologists. Having rejected the God of the Bible, they have been searching for the missing link for 150 years. This is in spite of the fact that evolutionary ape-men have repeatedly turned out to be either hoaxes or cases of mistaken identity (e.g., Neanderthal man, Java man, Piltdown man, Peking man, Nebraska man). As was the case with previous ape-men, Ardi has her own drawings. She is depicted as an upright creature that has an ape’s head and feet, but otherwise looking like a hairy woman. This is purely mythical. Ardi doubtless looked nothing like a human being. Its founders claim that she walked upright, but, as is the case with Lucy, this is disputed even by other evolutionary scientists. Ian Tattersall, curator of the American Museum of Natural History, admitted to National Public Radio that “some people are even suggesting there’s not much evidence of bipedality at all” (“Researchers Unearth A Hominid More Ancient Than Lucy,” NPR, Science Friday, Oct. 2, 2009). I have observed rhesus macaque monkeys in Kathmandu, Nepal, walking upright for considerable distances, but they are neither “bipedal” nor “missing links.” Seven years ago, Science magazine reported that “skeptic s argue that the published fossils [of Ardi] are so chimplike that they may represent the long-lost ancestor of the chimp, not human, lineage” (Ann Gibbons, “In Search of the First Hominids,” Science, February 15, 2002). Time magazine reported that “looking at the evidence, different paleoanthropologists may have different interpretations of how Ardi moved or what she reveals about the last common ancestor of humans and chimps” (Michael Lemonick and Andrea Dorfman, “Excavating Ardi: A New Piece for the Puzzle of Human Evolution,” Time, Oct. 1, 2009). It is important to understand that the pelvis of Ardi was “found crushed nearly to smithereens and needed extensive digital reconstruction” (Time, Oct. 1, 2009). We are reminded of the daring reconstruction of Lucy’s pelvis in such a fashion that it now wondrously fits its founder’s hypothesis that it was bipedal.
QUEEN OF ENGLAND HAS AFFINITY WITH THE POPE (Friday Church News Notes, October 9, 2009, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) – The following is excerpted from “Queen ‘Appalled’ at Church of England Moves,” London Telegraph, Oct. 3, 2009: “When Pope Benedict visits this country next year, he is expected to stay at Buckingham Palace as a guest of the Queen. The warmth of her welcome will come as no surprise to the Pontiff, if senior sources at the Vatican are to be believed. According to informants quoted in The Catholic Herald, the Queen has ‘grown increasingly sympathetic’ to the Catholic Church over the years while being ‘appalled’, along with the Prince of Wales, at developments in the Church of England. The usually well-informed newspaper adds that the Queen, who is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, ‘also said to have an affinity with the Holy Father, who is of her generation.’&rd quo; CONCLUDING NOTE: The Anglican Church broke away from the Pope in the 16th century under King Henry VIII, but it has always retained many aspects of Romanism and over the past century has been permeated with theological liberalism. In 1982, Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, said he was an agnostic as to why Jesus suffered on the cross (Sunday Times Weekly Review, London, April 11, 1982). (Billy Graham was one of the honored guests at Runcie’s ordination in 1980 and spoke highly of the heretical archbishop during his evangelistic crusades in England in 1984 and 1989.)
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