Expert: Rev. Stuart Woodward - 2/22/2005

Question
I do believe that God created everything but what about the skeletal remains archaeologists find all over the world?  Scientists believe in evolution and people came from Homo afarensis to Homo habilis to Homo erectus to Homo sapiens sapiens blah blah blah.  Can you clarify to me if God created man as we are now, what are those other things and why did He create them?

Answer
Hello Adrian,
Thank you for your question. I think at the root of my answer lies the fundamental question of what separates human beings out from the rest of creation and of course the answer to that one is that we, uniquely, were made in the image of God.
There is little doubt that if pygmies had become extinct many hundreds of years ago and modern scientists had dug up remains, they would have classified them as not being human in the modern sense. In reality they are human beings who do not grow tall. I suspect the same principle would have been true of tall Amazon women.
Thus with regard to skeletal remains there are two clear possibilities. They can be of human beings who, like the pygmy, were different to what we see today as the norm. On the other hand there are many animals that have become extinct That some of them resembled the human form should not surprise us. Many still do, but they are not human in that they were not made in the image of God.
One further caution comes to mind. I am always uneasy when great certainties are decided on the basis of one skeleton. There are many people walking the earth today whose physical abnormalities are considerable. For someone to dig them up in a few thousand years and assume that they were representative of a whole race would be foolish and wrong.
I certainly don't have all the answers but I hope the comments I have made are of some help to you. I wish you well.
Stuart Woodward