Primate Brain Evolution

22 June 2009

Researchers from the University of Florida and the University of Winnipeg have performed a detailed CT scan on a fossil mammal brain from an Ignacius graybullianus that is a member of the primate order known as plesiadapiforms. According to evolutionary classifications plesiadapiforms are an early cousin of primates and humans that lived 54 million years ago. Despite the fact that Ignacius graybullianus was the size of a squirrel the researchers made some far reaching conclusions about how it and its relatives lived.

The presupposition exists that apes and humans are related. This leads some people to compare human brains and ape brains in an effort to determine how they may have evolved from a common ancestor. Instead of studying humans (that are observable and testable in the present) and apes (that are observable and testable in the present), this study has chosen to study a rodent like creature that no one alive today has ever seen or knows anything about.

Science deals with subjects we can test, study, observe, and repeat.

No one has ever seen a rodent like creature turn into apes or humans.

No one has ever seen a rodent like creature turn into anything but other rodent like creatures.

No one has ever seen a brain of an Ignacius to observe how it works.

“A large and complex brain has long been regarded as one of the major steps that sets primates apart from the rest of mammals,” said Florida Museum vertebrate paleontologist and study co-author Jonathan Bloch. “At our very humble beginnings, we weren’t so special. That happened over tens of millions of years.”

One of the ways atheism is inconsistent with its evolutionary world view is the conclusion that we are in someway special. If evolution is true and humans are related to apes, monkeys, and Ignacius graybullianus then there is nothing special about us. Your consciousness is only as valid as the random firing impulses in your brain make it to be. If we all evolved from the same soup as a mosquito then our decisions should be no more or no less important than a mosquito. If evolution is true than morality is determined by society. If morality is determined by society than no one has the right to say a persons actions are right or wrong. Is it wrong for a mosquito to steal your blood without your permission? Is it wrong for a person to steal your blood without permission? Why? Are we all not just leaves on this big bush we call evolution?

According to the Bible there is a special difference between you and the animals. Your conscience.

Con = Derived from the Latin: with

Science = First definition of science is: knowledge

Conscience = With knowledge

Every time you sin you do it with knowledge that what you are doing is wrong. Not only has God provided us with a moral law so we can know that coveting is wrong, lying is wrong, stealing is wrong, looking with lust is wrong, murder is wrong, dishonoring our parents is wrong, not setting aside time for God is wrong, blaspheming God's name by using it casually is wrong, making up a god that we like better than the God of the Bible is wrong, and not putting God first is wrong, but God has also given us a conscience so even if you have not heard the commandments you still have enough knowledge to know from nature that there is a God and that you have sinned against Him.

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. (Romans 5:8-9) For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10)

Romans 1 & 2

... For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law; (For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;) In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel. ...

Studying a fossil of a creature that you have never seen and determining how it lived and how its cousins evolved is like determining what someones occupation is by going to a junk yard and studying their brothers car.

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