A review of Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils, Revised Edition, by Marvin L. Lubenow, Baker Books, 2004.
I read the first edition of this book years ago and was impressed with the way that Lubenow used evolutionary data to debunk human evolution. That strength has not changed in this edition, and the bulk of the data presented in the book is, indeed, from evolutionists. Lubenow does an excellent job of separating his YEC (Young Earth Creationist) beliefs from his presentation of the data. One is never unaware of his position, but he makes it very clear that he doesn't need to fudge any data to support his case (indeed, the more data from evolutionists that he presents the stronger his case grows).
The goal of this book is to present the data available on human (or hominid) fossils and clarify the relationship of this data to actual history. Lubenow does this in an engaging fashion, using short chapters linked into longer sections to tell a range of historic vignets presenting the various hominid fossils in their broader context. His style is easy to read and engaging, unashamedly admitting his position and yet not being disparaging of any individual evolutionists (though he is certainly critical of their beliefs). Surrounding the rather dry data of hominid fossil discoveries with the very human stories of their discoverers and promoters both makes the material more engaging and also helps us to understand the true state of the data. For example, the story of Java Man involves an ego so huge that its own covered up a contemporaneous discovery of modern Homo sapiens fossils in order to solidify his Java Man's claim to missing link fame.
Throughout these accounts, Lubenow makes clear his doubts, but doesn't confuse matters by trying to introduce his own dating or theories. He reserves such until the final section of the book, which is almost entirely new to this edition, I believe. This final section contains evidence from recent creationist research on dating which undermines the already precarious assumptions of evolutionists' interpretations of radiological dating. He also contains interesting sections on the Noahic Flood Ice Age (as modelled by Baumgardner), and the theory of written transmission for the contents of Genesis.
The strength of this book is its thorough presentation and analysis of hominid fossil data purportedly supporting human evolution. The data is well referenced, clearly and engagingly presented, and explained with clarity and precision. Possibly new is Lubenow's analysis of the hopelessly flawed mtDNA analysis behind my of the African Eve theories -- he does an excellent job of clearly explaining this work and its weaknesses. Lubenow's previous work, which focused exclusively on the paleontological data, was so powerful that his updates, including creationist dating research, hardly adds any strength to his argument. What this revision does achieve, though, is a strong case against human evolution (and, indeed, cosmological evolution). Lubenow even presents a case that evolution is inherently racist, and that an attempt to minimise this inherent racism is driving a lot of evolutionary research nowdays.
One weakness of the work is that Lubenow's own interpretation of the hominid fossil data never seems to be fully explained. In the previous edition that was clearly beyond the scope of the work, but this new edition has a broader scope and this lack becomes obvious. Perhaps his comments are scattered throughout the book, but one never quite grasps exactly how he would explain all of the data that he presents. For example, he gives possible explanations for the Neandertal morphology exhibiting itself in Homo sapiens, but he never quite connects that into a coherent picture. He also never attempts to explain how the culture associated with the various finds fits into his YEC view. If Lubenow could further develop this type of content then this work, already very important, would be a seminal work on paleoanthropology.
Overall, a must-read book for anyone interested in human evolution.