While an upcoming U.S. museum tour featuring “Lucy,” the 3 million-year-old remains of a human ancestor, is generating controversy over whether to move the fragile artifacts, creationists see a controversy of a different sort: so-called “anti-creationist hype.” From the American Family Association’s AgapePress:
Creationists … are predicting that Lucy’s tour will be much more about promoting the theory of evolution than about expanding real scientific knowledge.
“When I see that they’re bringing the most famous of the supposed ‘human ancestor’ fossils to America, and they’re going to feature it across America, I can see this is a big push for evolution,” [Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis] observes.
“There’s a lot of evidence that goes against Lucy being upright and as a human ancestor and so on,” the Answers in Genesis spokesman says. However, he has no illusions about the likelihood of those facts being brought out during the tour.
“We’ll see Lucy portrayed in a particular way,” Ham says, with exhibitors “trying to tell the American public that this is your human ancestor and that this is fact. And they won’t put all the information in there that contradicts that.”
Ham’s protest signals that it is unlikely the “Lucy” tour will make a stop at Answers in Genesis’s Creation Museum in northern Kentucky, which will have its own fossil collection and “life-sized dinosaur models” when it opens as early as next year.
