Many have taught that man was descended from an ape or monkey. Evolutionists, ashamed of a doctrine so repugnant to all reason and so revolting to mankind, vainly imagine they can escape the odium of such a view, by declaring that man is not descended from an ape or monkey, but that all the primates including all monkeys, apes, and man, sprang from a common ancestor. Of this alleged ancestor not a single fossil remains. Dr. Chapin, Social Evolution, page 39, says: “When the doctrine of the descent of man was first advanced, superficial and popular writers immediately jumped at the conclusion that naturalists believed that man was descended from the monkey. This, of course, is quite absurd, as man obviously could not be descended from a form of life now living. The ape and the monkey family, together with man are probably (?) descended from some generalized ape-like form long since perished from the earth.” Suppose this absurd and unsupported guess to be correct. Then the gorillas, chimpanzees, gibbons, orang-outangs and other apes; the baboons and other monkeys; and the lemurs and man were brothers and sisters, or otherwise closely related, and all were descended immediately or nearly so from a common ancestor lower than any. Where is the comfort or gain? Moreover, all the members of this primate family must have inter-breeded for ages, until, according to the theory, they became distinct species. Therefore, the ancestors of man, for ages, must have been descended from all these members of the primate family, and are thus the offspring of all these repulsive brutes, and the blood of them all is in our veins! In attempting to rescue us from the ape as our ancestor, they have shown that we are descendants of the whole monkey family and every species of ape and of many of their more disreputable relatives also. Great is evolution!
It certainly would be impossible for one single pair to have become the ancestors of the human race, without mixing and interbreeding with their kindred primates. Where are the descendants of these mongrel breeds, part monkey and part man? We would expect all gradations of mixed animals from monkey to man. “Two or three millions of years ago an enormous family of monkeys spread over Europe, Asia and Africa.” All related, many our ancestors.
Why did not some other species of the primates equal or excel man or advance part way between man and the brute? Why are they not now becoming human? It is plain to the sincere student that the evolution of man from the brute is only the product of the imagination of those who wish to deny special creation and exclude God from his universe.
The slight external resemblance between man and the ape family is more than offset by structural differences which deny kinship. Alfred McCann in his great book “God—or Gorilla” says, p. 24, “Man has 12 pairs of ribs; the gibbon and chimpanzee, 13; man has 12 dorsal vertebrae; the chimpanzee and gorilla, 13; the gibbon, 14. The gorilla has massive spines on the cervical vertebrae above the scapula”; and, like the other quadrumana (4-handed animals) has an opposable thumb on the hind foot. There are wide differences in the shape of the skull, thorax, femur, and even the liver. The skeleton of the brutes is much more massive. On the tips of the fingers and thumbs of the human hand are lines arranged in whorls, for identification. In monkeys, the lines are parallel on the finger tips, but whorls on the palm. Is it possible that man and such brutes came from the same parents?
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