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The Bone Peddlers: Selling Evolution
1 HARDCOVER BOOK WITH DUST COVER
337 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1984
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March 21, 2023
A WIDELY CITED (BUT MISAPPLIED) BOOK ABOUT EVOLUTION
William R. Fix (b. 1941) is an occultist (Edgar Cayce, Pyramids, etc.) wrote in the Introduction to this 1984 book, “I began my deeper researches into the question of evolution in a position I described as ‘middle of the road.’ I was generally inclined to believe there might be some truth in both creationism and evolution, and so do I now. But… So far as the evolution of man is concerned, the direct evidence from the fossil record is even weaker than I had thought, and what there is is much distorted by wishful thinking and… wild extrapolation. The indirect evidence (such as evolution in species other than man) is in certain instances stronger than I had expected… almost every ancestor of man ever proposed suffers from disqualifying liabilities that are not widely publicized… My general thesis is that much of the current hyperbole about man’s origins is being emitted by people who have specialized in such tiny cacks of the Grand Canyon of life that they have lost all perspective… To give schoolchildren… the impression that that only scientific way to explain man is by slow evolution from the animal kingdom is totally unwarranted by the positive facts… it is thoroughly possible to doubt the man-from-animal theory without being either misinformed or a rock-bottom fundamentalist.” (Pg. xxiv-xxvii)
The first half of the book (the part most popular with creationists) is devoted to extensive quotations from mainstream scientists, expressing contradictory views about the reality and direction of human evolution. (Donald Johanson and the Leakeys often have contradictory views, for example.)
He states, “If… some of the evidence regarding africanus could be argued either way, it is also a fair comment that the vast majority of writing paleontologists … chose the most speculative of these options… Typically, this conclusion then served as a foundation for yet more speculations… based on inferences drawn from the behavior of chimpanzees and the hunting and gathering peoples of Africa.” (Pg. 49)
He suggests, “The question that must be asked … is whether this ape-man was acquiring human characteristics and evolving toward man… or whether it was acquiring simian characteristics and evolving toward the apes. The .. paleontological evidence indicates that … the owners of U-shaped jaws had already specialized in directions that did not lead to men and were moving away from the human condition, not toward it.” (Pg. 79-80)
He recounts, “I was so surprised that [Donald] Johanson overlooked the difficulties raised by these specializations that when the opportunity to meet him arose, I used the occasion to ask him about these problems. He in turn was surprised by my questions and had no clear answer regarding the jaws. As for Lucy’s extra-long arm, he said that bipedal expert Owen Lovejoy was now putting out the idea that it is not so much a case of long arms as of short femurs… This, however, merely restates and confirms the problem rather than solving it.” (Pg. 85)
He acknowledges, “There are problems with [the 1470 skull], but if one is not inclined to dismiss the possibility of human evolution on principle, this is about as good an evolutionary candidate as one could hope for… with all the discredited ancestral candidates... and a bumper crop of hyperbole in this field, it is important not to overlook the instance of at least one conspicuous success.” (Pg. 146)
He observes, “The horribly ambiguous truth is that human evolution is still a reasonable possibility. We should do everything we can to find out the truth of the matter. We should have ten or twenty ties the number of excavations we have at present… there should certainly be major, professional excavations along the Paluxy River…It really is not impossible that giant human footprints and dinosaur prints in the same strata could be genuine. This discovery would not mean that the earth is only ten thousand years old, but that is the conclusion some will draw if scientists take the a priori position that it is impossible and creationists assert the contrary.” (Pg. 151-152)
He admits of the horse sequence, “It may well be that the evidence has been oversimplified and exaggerated. Still, in its general architecture the skull of the modern horse so closely resembles Hyracotherium that any reasonable person would grant their possible relatedness… the transition from three toes to one is biologically more significant than the variations in beaks and feathers in the Galapagos finches. Hyracotherium also provides an example of a creature that can be seen as a true missing link.’ (Pg. 161)
He points out some problems with the creationist interpretation of Genesis: “Although [John Whitcomb and Henry Morris] quote practically every other line in the first two chapters of Genesis somewhere in ‘The Genesis Flood,’ they give the incriminating portion of Genesis 2:5 a total miss… there are often two or more mentions of many details, and the editor… did not have the temerity to reconcile their differences. For example… Noah is told in one place to take seven pairs of all clean animals … and a single pair of all unclean animals… a few lines later… reference is made to only a single pair of all animals, clean and unclean…” (Pg. 225-226)
He states, “one of the great arguments against attributing the various productions of nature to a single supreme Creator is that to do so invites the question, ‘Did God goof? Not only do we live in a world where there are poisonous snakes, noisome insects, and numerous diseases, but it is also a world where an estimated 95 to 99 percent of all species that have ever lived are not extinct. Many people still ask why… an all-knowing Deity apparently ‘blundered’ when nineteen species out of every twenty now seem to0 have been false starts.” (Pg. 249)
He recounts purported evidence from parapsychology, and concludes, “So there is hard evidence, if not of the soul itself, then at least of the ethereal covering of the soul… Considering that traditional belief that the soul is immortal and the many indications in ancient cosmologies that the soul was created first, before the development of the physical body, one would think these developments might influence current speculations on the nature of man’s emergence on earth.” (Pg. 264)
He then presents his own theory, of Psychogenesis: “It might be an oversimplification to say that mind and spirit are the same thing; it is perhaps better to say that mind is one of the aspects or manifestations of spirit… We are now very close to having all the basic elements of an entirely logical solution to the origin of man’s body… We have the fact that the existence of a spiritual element or ‘body’ in man (or associated with man) has been verified experimentally and empirically.” (Pg. 283-284) He continues, “This theory might be called ‘psychogenesis,’ meaning ‘the initiation of a novel form of creatures through the activity of a psychic---that is a mental or spiritual---agency.’” (Pg. 287)
He asserts, “the theory of psychogenesis does enable us to account for a great deal of the data relevant to the origin of man, and it solves a host of evolutionary problems along the way. It accounts for why we share skeletal and biochemical structures with the primates, and with certain hominids in particular… It accounts for the sudden appearance of man in the fossil record… we have an inkling of why the products of nature are replete with pattern and seem to be the work of designing intelligence. It enables us to … testify that there is a spiritual dimension to man and the universe… in this hypothesis there never was a time when man was an animal, with purely animal passions and instincts… psychogenesis is a perfect compromise between evolution and creation, retaining the best features of both… Psychogenesis enables us to affirm the spiritual nature of man while also affirming the validity of the concept of evolution… it profoundly extends the concept of evolution to apply to the human spirit) itself… And if we entertain the possibility of reincarnation, it is possible to see this spiritual evolution as an ongoing and dynamic process that is very much alive and continuing in the world today.” (Pg. 289)
The quotations in the first half of this are popular to quote by some creationists; but Fix’s own position is more ‘Metaphysical/New Age’ than ‘Biblical.’
William R. Fix (b. 1941) is an occultist (Edgar Cayce, Pyramids, etc.) wrote in the Introduction to this 1984 book, “I began my deeper researches into the question of evolution in a position I described as ‘middle of the road.’ I was generally inclined to believe there might be some truth in both creationism and evolution, and so do I now. But… So far as the evolution of man is concerned, the direct evidence from the fossil record is even weaker than I had thought, and what there is is much distorted by wishful thinking and… wild extrapolation. The indirect evidence (such as evolution in species other than man) is in certain instances stronger than I had expected… almost every ancestor of man ever proposed suffers from disqualifying liabilities that are not widely publicized… My general thesis is that much of the current hyperbole about man’s origins is being emitted by people who have specialized in such tiny cacks of the Grand Canyon of life that they have lost all perspective… To give schoolchildren… the impression that that only scientific way to explain man is by slow evolution from the animal kingdom is totally unwarranted by the positive facts… it is thoroughly possible to doubt the man-from-animal theory without being either misinformed or a rock-bottom fundamentalist.” (Pg. xxiv-xxvii)
The first half of the book (the part most popular with creationists) is devoted to extensive quotations from mainstream scientists, expressing contradictory views about the reality and direction of human evolution. (Donald Johanson and the Leakeys often have contradictory views, for example.)
He states, “If… some of the evidence regarding africanus could be argued either way, it is also a fair comment that the vast majority of writing paleontologists … chose the most speculative of these options… Typically, this conclusion then served as a foundation for yet more speculations… based on inferences drawn from the behavior of chimpanzees and the hunting and gathering peoples of Africa.” (Pg. 49)
He suggests, “The question that must be asked … is whether this ape-man was acquiring human characteristics and evolving toward man… or whether it was acquiring simian characteristics and evolving toward the apes. The .. paleontological evidence indicates that … the owners of U-shaped jaws had already specialized in directions that did not lead to men and were moving away from the human condition, not toward it.” (Pg. 79-80)
He recounts, “I was so surprised that [Donald] Johanson overlooked the difficulties raised by these specializations that when the opportunity to meet him arose, I used the occasion to ask him about these problems. He in turn was surprised by my questions and had no clear answer regarding the jaws. As for Lucy’s extra-long arm, he said that bipedal expert Owen Lovejoy was now putting out the idea that it is not so much a case of long arms as of short femurs… This, however, merely restates and confirms the problem rather than solving it.” (Pg. 85)
He acknowledges, “There are problems with [the 1470 skull], but if one is not inclined to dismiss the possibility of human evolution on principle, this is about as good an evolutionary candidate as one could hope for… with all the discredited ancestral candidates... and a bumper crop of hyperbole in this field, it is important not to overlook the instance of at least one conspicuous success.” (Pg. 146)
He observes, “The horribly ambiguous truth is that human evolution is still a reasonable possibility. We should do everything we can to find out the truth of the matter. We should have ten or twenty ties the number of excavations we have at present… there should certainly be major, professional excavations along the Paluxy River…It really is not impossible that giant human footprints and dinosaur prints in the same strata could be genuine. This discovery would not mean that the earth is only ten thousand years old, but that is the conclusion some will draw if scientists take the a priori position that it is impossible and creationists assert the contrary.” (Pg. 151-152)
He admits of the horse sequence, “It may well be that the evidence has been oversimplified and exaggerated. Still, in its general architecture the skull of the modern horse so closely resembles Hyracotherium that any reasonable person would grant their possible relatedness… the transition from three toes to one is biologically more significant than the variations in beaks and feathers in the Galapagos finches. Hyracotherium also provides an example of a creature that can be seen as a true missing link.’ (Pg. 161)
He points out some problems with the creationist interpretation of Genesis: “Although [John Whitcomb and Henry Morris] quote practically every other line in the first two chapters of Genesis somewhere in ‘The Genesis Flood,’ they give the incriminating portion of Genesis 2:5 a total miss… there are often two or more mentions of many details, and the editor… did not have the temerity to reconcile their differences. For example… Noah is told in one place to take seven pairs of all clean animals … and a single pair of all unclean animals… a few lines later… reference is made to only a single pair of all animals, clean and unclean…” (Pg. 225-226)
He states, “one of the great arguments against attributing the various productions of nature to a single supreme Creator is that to do so invites the question, ‘Did God goof? Not only do we live in a world where there are poisonous snakes, noisome insects, and numerous diseases, but it is also a world where an estimated 95 to 99 percent of all species that have ever lived are not extinct. Many people still ask why… an all-knowing Deity apparently ‘blundered’ when nineteen species out of every twenty now seem to0 have been false starts.” (Pg. 249)
He recounts purported evidence from parapsychology, and concludes, “So there is hard evidence, if not of the soul itself, then at least of the ethereal covering of the soul… Considering that traditional belief that the soul is immortal and the many indications in ancient cosmologies that the soul was created first, before the development of the physical body, one would think these developments might influence current speculations on the nature of man’s emergence on earth.” (Pg. 264)
He then presents his own theory, of Psychogenesis: “It might be an oversimplification to say that mind and spirit are the same thing; it is perhaps better to say that mind is one of the aspects or manifestations of spirit… We are now very close to having all the basic elements of an entirely logical solution to the origin of man’s body… We have the fact that the existence of a spiritual element or ‘body’ in man (or associated with man) has been verified experimentally and empirically.” (Pg. 283-284) He continues, “This theory might be called ‘psychogenesis,’ meaning ‘the initiation of a novel form of creatures through the activity of a psychic---that is a mental or spiritual---agency.’” (Pg. 287)
He asserts, “the theory of psychogenesis does enable us to account for a great deal of the data relevant to the origin of man, and it solves a host of evolutionary problems along the way. It accounts for why we share skeletal and biochemical structures with the primates, and with certain hominids in particular… It accounts for the sudden appearance of man in the fossil record… we have an inkling of why the products of nature are replete with pattern and seem to be the work of designing intelligence. It enables us to … testify that there is a spiritual dimension to man and the universe… in this hypothesis there never was a time when man was an animal, with purely animal passions and instincts… psychogenesis is a perfect compromise between evolution and creation, retaining the best features of both… Psychogenesis enables us to affirm the spiritual nature of man while also affirming the validity of the concept of evolution… it profoundly extends the concept of evolution to apply to the human spirit) itself… And if we entertain the possibility of reincarnation, it is possible to see this spiritual evolution as an ongoing and dynamic process that is very much alive and continuing in the world today.” (Pg. 289)
The quotations in the first half of this are popular to quote by some creationists; but Fix’s own position is more ‘Metaphysical/New Age’ than ‘Biblical.’
April 7, 2020
"We live in interesting times. From a vantage point a few centuries in the future, certainly one of the most hilarious aspects of our era will be the current belief of some of our scientists that we can learn more about man/woman by studying chimpanzees than we can from the ancient writings of our ancestors."
October 28, 2019
Most books are rated related to their usefulness and contributions to my research.
Overall, a good book for the researcher and enthusiast.
Read for personal research
- found this book's contents helpful and inspiring - number rating relates to the book's contribution to my needs.
Overall, a good book for the researcher and enthusiast.
Read for personal research
- found this book's contents helpful and inspiring - number rating relates to the book's contribution to my needs.
June 25, 2017
I'm a 6day creationist and the author is not--but I still thought it was totally wonderful.
September 9, 2012
Fascinating and well-articulated...
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews