Updated August 3, 2004 (first published March 2, 1996) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

The following is from "An Open Letter to Professor Stephen Jay Gould," January 1996, by Dr. Bolton Davidheiser, and is reprinted from The Baptist Challenge, March 1996; Davidheiser is a biologist who specializes in genetics:

I have a Ph.D. in zoology and was an evolutionist till the age of thirty-two. My delay in becoming a creationist I attribute largely to the fact that everything I read of an anti-evolutionary nature was written by people who displayed ignorance of the subject and made obvious factual mistakes. But evolutionists also can display ignorance and be unwilling to acknowledge error when corrected. For example, it has been in print not infrequently that Darwin never said we evolved from monkeys or apes. Whenever I came across this I sent the author a copy of the first two statements printed below, written by Darwin in the sixth chapter of his Descent of Man, Revised Edition, and I never received an acknowledgment.

"But a naturalist would undoubtedly have ranked as an ape or a monkey, an ancient form which possessed many characters common to the Catarrhine and Platyrrhine monkeys, other characters in an intermediate condition, and some few, perhaps, distinct from those now found in either group. And as man from a genealogical point of view belongs to the Catarrhine or Old World stock, we must conclude, however much the conclusion may revolt our pride, that our early progenitors would have been properly thus designated" (Charles Darwin, Descent of Man, Revised Edition, Hurst and Co., p. 181).

"The Simiadae then branched off into two great stems, the New World and Old World monkeys; and from the latter, at a remote period, Man, the wonder and glory of the Universe, proceeded" (Darwin, ibid., p. 181).

Further, Darwin wrote in the same chapter:

"There can ... hardly be a doubt that man is an off-shoot from the Old World Simian stem, and that under a genealogical point of view, he must be classed with the Catarrhine division" (Darwin, ibid., p. 169).

"We may infer that some ancient member of the anthropomorphous sub-group [referring to the Catarrhine] gave birth to man" (Darwin, ibid., p. 170).

"We are far from knowing how long ago it was when man first diverged from the Catarrhine stock; but it may have occurred at an epoch as remote as the Eocene period. ..." (Darwin, ibid., p. 172).

"We have seen that man appears to have diverged from the Catarrhine Old World division of the Simiadae, after these had diverged from the New World division" (Darwin, ibid., p. 173).

One of my sons came home from junior college and said the head of the History Department told the class Darwin never said we came from monkeys or apes and he would give ten dollars to anyone who could show that Darwin did. I supplied the first two of these quotations and when I asked about the outcome I was told the teacher refused to accept them. Wondering why a person of that academic standing would not accept Darwin's own words, I wrote a letter of inquiry. No reply. I really wanted to know, so I took the drastic procedure of sending another inquiry, this time by certified mail. (I never mentioned the ten dollars.) After some uncomplimentary remarks about me personally, his reply was, "I am not interested in convincing you, your son, or anyone else, of anything. I simply present the facts and hope the logical, intelligent mind will reach it's [sic] own conclusion. I do not attempt to unlock closed minds." What stupid creationist could have displayed greater ignorance or bigotry?

On a Phil Donahue show a famous university professor was asked, "Did you teach your children that their great ancestors were monkeys?" The professor replied, "No, and neither does the Theory of Evolution. [Capitals in the transcript.] That's one of the mis-directed things. I get so tired of that. 'We descended from apes.' I challenge you to find that in one work of Charles Darwin or anyone else. That's one of those mythological things, that we came from apes."

The challenge to find that "we descended from apes" in the work "of anyone else" beside Darwin was an utterly shameless bluff. Anyone can easily do this in a short time in a public library. Could a creationist display greater ignorance?

As to the challenge to find it in any work of Charles Darwin, I sent the professor the first two quotes printed above from The Descent of Man, and I sent them by certified mail so I would know he received them. No reply.

Later at a conference where I was a speaker I met an atheist who goes to creation conferences to obtain information which he uses to combat creationism. In our conversation I mentioned the matter of the professor on the Donahue show.

"Oh," he said, "You sent it by certified mail, so he knows you're a kook."

"He won't think you're a kook," I replied, and suggested he write to the professor about it. Presently I received a reply confirming that the professor does not correspond with creationists.

"I cannot devote time refuting your self-conceived positions which you credit to me," he said. Actually, there were thousands in the television audience beside myself who heard what he said, and it was printed in the transcript. It was not a position self-conceived by me. He continued that forthe sake of the one with whom I had conversed he would deign reply. He wrote, "For example, your inclusion of so-called 'quotations' from the Descent of Man are erroneous. I have a photo reproduction of the 1871 edition of the Descent of Man published by John Murray in London. Your quote which you purport to have copied from page 171 is on page 198 of my edition and you have engaged in a deception. You have taken part of a sentence in the 12th line of the subject paragraph, rewritten it, and placed it at the head of your paragraph and have reworked the paragraph so that it no longer is a quote from Darwin, but a quote from Davidheiser. This deception is unacceptable as is your selective quotation from the paragraph."

It was Darwin, not I, who "reworked the paragraph." The professor has a copy of the first edition, published by Murray. I have the second, revised edition, published by Hurst and Co. Apparently the accounts have no significant differences but, if anything, the revised edition should be more authentic of Darwin's intention of the wording. In the days when I was an evolutionist, I would have considered it a complement indeed that I be given credit for writing done by Darwin!

I have traced back to Elbert Hubbard the saying that Darwin never wrote man evolved from monkeys or apes. (In Darwin's day there was not the clear distinction between monkeys and apes as today, but the Catarrhines and Platyrrhines are monkeys.) Was the rumor started here by someone who read Hubbard more than Darwin? Were evolutionists impressed by the rumor and neglected reading Darwin? Why are they reluctant to admit error when it is pointed out? At any rate, the error became widely dispersed that Darwin never wrote we evolved from monkeys or apes.

There was a time when a number of evolutionists were sensitive about ape-to-man evolution and denied that according to evolutionary theory man evolved from apes. When cornered, they said they meant we did not evolve from any living species of ape, hoping people would not think about the extinct species of apes n the alleged ancestry of human beings. But times have changed and now statements in articles and books about our ape ancestry are to common to need documentation. Desmond Morris wrote his popular book, The Naked Ape, that's us, in which he referred to people as apes no less than ninety-four times. Others have taken up this theme.

(From "An Open Letter to Professor Stephen Jay Gould," January 1996, by Bolton Davidheiser, The Baptist Challenge, March 1996, pp. 8,9; Dr. Davidheiser is a biologist specializing in genetics; at the time of this “Open Letter” he had taught twenty years on the college level and had worked on cancer research at Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health; he has lectured from coast to coast in the U.S.A. and Canada on the creation-evolution issue; he was one of five scientists who spoke in a Creation Seminar in the Central Baptist Church of Little Rock, Arkansas, in February 1967.)