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De-Humanizing Neanderthals: A Darwinist Dog that Won’t Hunt

Image credit: Neanderthal-Museum, Mettmann, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

The latest Science Uprising video covers human evolution, and features geologist Casey Luskin and biologist Jonathan Wells:

For more on a specific issue touched on in the episode, check out a classic ID the Future podcast with Dr. Luskin. He tackles a neo-Darwinian assertion that theistic evolutionists Francis Collins and Karl Giberson make in The Language of Science and Faith. Giberson and Collins capitalize on the popular notion of Neanderthals as pre-human, cavemen-like beasts in order to bolster their claims for common ancestry. But what sort of common ancestry? And do experts even agree that Neanderthals were drastically different from Homo sapiens? Luskin explores the connection between Neanderthals and humans and points to the growing evidence that Neanderthals interbred with our species, buried their dead, employed technology, had a brain size equal to or even slightly larger than that of Homo sapiens, and were essentially just another race of humans. Some have attempted to use Neanderthals to help bridge the enormous gulf between humans and ape-like predecessors, but it’s increasingly clear that that dog won’t hunt. Download the podcast or listen to it here.