Letter from Reasons to Believe

The following email was rec'd from REASONS TO BELIEVE

Date: May 23, 2006
From: Campbell Public Relations, LLC and Reasons to Believe
By: Kathleen Campbell

Human-Chimp Hybrid: A New Twist on Human Origins or Yet Another Problem
for Evolution?

Biochemist says recent human-chimpanzee genetic comparison muddles human
evolutionary scenarios and makes them less believable

A new highly publicized study by scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT
and Harvard indicates that humans and chimps underwent an evolutionary
split less than 5.4 million years ago, much more recently than previously
thought.

“This research suggests that modern humans descended from a chimp-human
hybrid raising significant questions about traditional evolutionary
explanations for human origins,” says biochemist Fazale ‘Fuz’ Rana, PhD,
a well-known origin-of-life researcher from the science/faith think-tank,
Reasons To Believe, www.reasons.org.

“Field studies demonstrate that hybrid populations die off. It’s hard to
imagine how chimp and human lineages could emerge out of a group of
fragile hybrids that should have become extinct,” adds Rana.

“A late split flat-out disagrees with the fossil record. This research
has the human and chimpanzee lineages separating nearly 2 million years
after the first hominids appear in the fossil record,” states Rana. “In
order for that premise to be correct, the split had to have happened
either before or at the same time as the first hominids, but not 2
million years after!”

Dr. Fazale ‘Fuz’ Rana is the author of the Amazon.com bestseller Who Was
Adam?: A Creation Model Approach to the Origin of Man, (NavPress). This
book details a number of other recent genetic studies which challenge the
notion of human evolution.

“Comparison of whole genomes indicates that humans and chimpanzees have a
genetic similarity that is less than 90 percent,” says Rana. “Prior to
these comparisons, evolutionary biologists thought humans and chimpanzees
were 98-99 percent genetically similar.

“Instead of adding clarity, the most recent human- chimp genetic
comparisons render human evolutionary models confused and contradictory,”
continues Rana. “This makes me skeptical of human evolutionary accounts,”

In Who Was Adam? Dr. Rana also presents genetic studies that indicate
modern humans originated only thousands of years ago, not millions of
years ago as espoused by traditional human evolutionary models.

According to Rana and a growing number of research scientists, genetic
diversity patterns of people groups around the world indicate that modern
humans exploded onto the scene recently from a small population in a
single location, the same area identified by most biblical scholars as
the physical location of the Garden of Eden.

“It is fascinating that in light of huge technological advances from the
late 20th to early 21st centuries, scientists now know that humanity
traces back, genetically speaking, to a single man and single woman,”
Rana concludes. “Belief in a literal and historical Adam and Eve as
recounted in the Bible has greater scientific credibility today than at
any other time in human history.”

Fazale ‘Fuz’ Rana, Ph.D.—Fazale ‘Fuz’ Rana did his undergraduate work in
chemistry at West Virginia State College. He then completed his post-
graduate studies at Ohio University and earned a Ph.D. in chemistry with
an emphasis in biochemistry. After completing postdoctoral fellowships at
the universities of Virginia and Georgia, he worked for seven years in
product development research for Procter & Gamble

Prior to joining the scholar team at Reasons To Believe in 1999, he
published more than 15 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals and
made more than 20 presentations at international scientific meetings. Dr.
Rana also coauthored a chapter on antimicrobial peptides for Biological
and Synthetic Membranes and he holds one patent.

Since joining Reasons To Believe he has chaired three conferences and has
written two books published by NavPress, Origins of Life: Biblical and
Evolutionary Models Face Off and Who Was Adam: A Creation Model Approach
to the Origin of Man. He has published numerous articles on the
apologetic significance of recent discoveries in the life sciences. He
appears each week on the live Web broadcast, Creation Update, and is a
highly popular and frequent guest on a wide variety of
nationally/internationally syndicated talk radio and television programs.

Burgy
Received on Wed May 24 13:28:33 2006