Does Lucy Prove Evolution?
Last year was the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the Lucy skeleton, and Paul Garner and I recorded a two-part episode of Let's Talk Creation discussing the skeleton and its interpretation ( part 1 and part 2 ). In the second part, I tried to address the question of whether the Lucy skeleton constituted good evidence for human evolution, and even while I explained it to Paul, I thought, "This is not clear. I'm going to get flak for this." And sure enough, there were a few comments on the YouTube video that basically said my response was rubbish. Fair enough. Let's see if I can clarify my thoughts. My intention with that section of the video was first to notice that it's a massively loaded question. As a scientist, I think about evidence and models in ways that aren't like the average person. An average person hears "X is good evidence for a theory" as "X proves that theory is true." Evidence, in common conception, is...