My Favorite Seafaring Raft Monkeys

Though I have touched on this before, the gift keeps on giving. Amusement aside, the topic captures what for decades I have been kvetching about in this column, and that is the absurdity of evolution, an absurdity matched, no, superseded, by the theistic kind, especially when the theos is supposed to be Jesus.

I’m writing about those salty-dog, seafaring “raft monkeys” of yesteryear (about 40 million yesteryears ago, or so we are told) because—besides revealing the surrealist extremes evolutionists need in order to cram/jam/ram nature into their creation myth—raft monkeys are, well, just so much fun.

Catarrhines and Platyrrhines

Here’s where we are. According to serious papers written by bona fide scientists in prestigious publications (Nature, Journal of Geophysical Research, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Tectonophysics, and more), between 130 million and 140 million years ago a land mass split into today’s Africa and South America.

Meanwhile, according to serious papers written by bona fide scientists in other prestigious publications (Systematic Biology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Journal of Human Evolution, and more), about 40 million years ago catarrhine monkeys in Africa split into another branch, called platyrrhines.

What, then, is the fuss about?

The fuss is about the platyrrhines in South America today, which would be like first opening Tutankhamun’s tomb and finding AirPods Pro snuggled in the old boy’s ears. How could this primate, who came into being 80 million years after the two continents split, be found in South America? After ruling out all other possibilities, scientists have hypothesized the only possible explanation: platyrrhine monkeys rafted across the Atlantic.

One Pregnant Platyrrhine Primate

Here are titles in scholarly publications on the amazing feat of the trans-Atlantic, seafaring monkeys of yesteryear. “Arrival and Diversification of Caviomorph Rodents and Platyrrhine Primates in South America”; “Floating Islands: A Mode of Long-Distance Dispersal for Small and Medium-Sized Terrestrial Vertebrates”; “From the Old World to the New World: A Molecular Chronicle of Mammal Colonization”; “The Origin of Platyrrhines: An Evaluation of the Rafting Hypothesis”; “Eocene Primates of South America and the African Origins of New World Monkeys.”

In more popular publications we find: “How Did Monkeys Get to South America? By Raft, Scientists Say.” “Ancient Monkeys May Have Rafted to South America.” “One Incredible Ocean Crossing May Have Made Human Evolution Possible.” “The Unlikely Survival of Ancient Monkeys, Swept Across the Atlantic Ocean.” “New Evidence Shows Monkeys Sailed From Africa to South America on Rafts Over 30 Million Years Ago.”

Based on numerous lines of research and experiment, including the study of Eocene ocean currents (who, possibly, could be skeptical about scientific speculations regarding ocean currents 40 million years ago?)—scientists conjecture that, at minimum, one pregnant platyrrhine primate had to make the 930-mile (1,500-kilometer) trip across the sea. Some evolutionists suggest that, perhaps, two to five monkeys made the voyage, including at least one female, all of whom garnered enough food and fresh water (and knowing not to drink from the sea) while drifting over the Mare Atlanticum for weeks (or longer). Besides surviving sharks, storms, exposure to sunlight, the beasts had to reach the shore in good enough shape to reproduce in the New World.

Whenever science speculates about supposed events billions of years beyond our reach, way too many Christians fall to their knees in intellectual obsequiousness, even if these speculations contradict crucial Bible doctrine.

Yet, somehow, those intrepid salty-dog seafaring primates—without a compass or astrolabe—crossed the Atlantic millions of years before Christopher Columbus, with both compass and astrolabe, did. And the monkeys did it while not knowing where they were going (neither did Columbus, but that’s another matter). And so Smithsonian magazine ran this article, a brilliant revelation of modern evolutionary science: “More Than 30 Million Years Ago, Monkeys Rafted Across the Atlantic to South America.”

Science Deniers?

How dare you laugh? What—are you a science denier or something? Didn’t I stress that these are the conclusions of science (science!), and the papers were written by bona fide scientists in scholarly journals? And I would bet that some of these papers were even peer-reviewed! And so who dares challenge peer-reviewed science in scholarly journals?

Also, speaking of science, even peer-reviewed science, did you know that whales once walked on land? Yup. According to serious papers written by bona fide scientists in authoritative journals (U.S. National Library of Medicine, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Springer Nature, and more )—whales once had feet and dashed around on terra firma like small deer. But, through the creative wonders of natural selection, survival of the fittest, and genetic mutation (the same phenomena that split platyrrhines from catarrhines)—these proto-whales took the plunge, shedding their fur, external ears, and hind legs, while evolving flippers, blowholes, and a thick layer of blubber. And not only did whales walk on land, they did so in Egypt, long before the pharaohs ruled, too (about 45 million years before, in fact). Why, none other than National Geographic itself (2011) published an article titled “When Whales Walked in Egypt.”

Of course, who am I to challenge science, even if it talks about walking whales in Egypt, though a recent London Times article (January 17, 2026) titled—“Science Journals Retract 500 Papers a Month. This Is Why It Matters”—show that just because something is “science,” even peer-reviewed, even published in renowned journals, that does not mean it’s true.

The article begins: “What would you think if you heard that a Nobel Prize winner at a top U.S. university had to retract 15 of his scientific papers? Or that a study of Alzheimer’s disease cited more than 2,000 times—an important line of inquiry upon which further research and even clinical trials were based—had been retracted because one of the authors manipulated key images?”

The article then talks about other examples of scientific malfeasance, such as when the esteemed Dana-Farber Cancer Institute paid $15 million to settle a lawsuit alleging falsified data. Besides the obscene fact that this malfeasance dealt with a deadly disease, there’s another issue. Disagreements ripple through science about what exists in the here and now—about what can be seen, X-rayed, dissected, CAT-scanned, MRI’d, analyzed (chemically, anatomically, molecularly)—such as cancer. Meanwhile, science still doesn’t have a clear definition of species, of life, of time, or even of consciousness (some argue that consciousness doesn’t even exist, but is merely an illusion).

Using Death to Create Life

And yet, whenever science speculates about supposed events billions of years beyond our reach, way too many Christians fall to their knees in intellectual obsequiousness, even if these speculations contradict crucial Bible doctrine.

Many Christians have incorporated this error (as they have Sundaykeeping and the immortality of the soul) into the faith, which—by making a mockery of biblical creation—makes a mockery of biblical redemption as well.

Take death. How much more explicit could Scripture be? Death is an enemy of humanity and is to be destroyed: “The last enemy that will be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15: 26). Death is to be “swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. 15:54). God will “swallow up death forever” (Isa. 25:8). We are also promised that “there shall be no more death” (Rev. 21:4) and that Jesus has “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10). Hebrews says that “through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14). Paul, meanwhile, wrote six times in Romans 5 alone that Adam, a man, brought death, a bad thing. “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12; see also verses 15-18, 21). Death is so bad that it took the sacrifice of God Himself, on the cross, to ultimately abolish it.

But none of this seems to matter to some—not when serious papers, written by bona fide scientists in prestigious publications (some of the same publications that taught us about raft monkeys) declare that billions of years of death is precisely what led to the creation of humanity itself. The Bible says death is the enemy of humanity; science (often peer-reviewed) says it was key in the creation of humanity. And yet, pew after pew of Christians fall right into line with the latter. After all, it’s science, and only Bible-toting yokels will deny science.

In other words, Jesus, as Creator (John 1:1-3, 10; Col. 1:15-17; Heb. 1:2, 3, 10; 1 Cor. 8:6), used billions of years of violence, suffering, and death in order to bring about humans, the same beings whom He, as Redeemer, died for—all in order to save them from violence, suffering, and death. That, of course, makes perfect sense.

If God used billions of years of evolution to create us, then I would pray: Lord, I’d rather be destroyed in the lake of fire than worship You, a deity so cruel that You not only used billions of years of suffering and death to create us, but then in Your Word You lied to us about it, feeding us goofy stories about origins and death that are not even close to reality—even telling us in Your, ahem, moral code, the Ten Commandments, that we should keep the seventh-day Sabbath because in six days You “made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them”—a crock. And worse, You waited until the A.D. 1800s to use Charles Dawin to, finally, reveal to us the truth? Thanks, but no thanks.

The concept of evolution, of life arising by unguided forces, sounds to me like myths from an age of ignorance, when people talked about “simple life” and “a warm little pond,” a time before electron microscopy, DNA sequencing, MRI, PET, and CAT scans keep revealing more complexities and mysteries about life than our imaginations can handle. If a cell, no, if a cell membrane, evolved, then my iPhone—including the music, photos, and text messages in it—could have as well. The more science reveals about life, the more absurd its theory of origins becomes. That this creation myth, first contrived in the nineteenth century, endures into the twenty-first, testifies to how ideology, even more than money, can corrupt the search for truth. However, and par usual, many Christians have incorporated this error (as they have Sundaykeeping and the immortality of the soul) into the faith, which—by making a mockery of biblical creation—makes a mockery of biblical redemption as well.

And Jan Hus shows why.

On the Resurrection of Jan Hus

Czech Reformer Jan Hus (c. 1369-1415) was burned at the stake by the Roman Church. After his body was reduced to ashes and a few small bones (supposedly those bones were then crushed), the man’s remains were thrown into the Rhine River, where they floated into oblivion. This happened almost 600 years ago.

Assuming that Hus died redeemed, then what? Jesus needed billions of years to evolve, say, a turnip (with a little artificial selection thrown in), and yet, “in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye,” Jan Hus and “the dead will be raised imperishable” (1 Cor. 15:52, NIV)? If, “in the twinkling of an eye,” Jesus will remake humans by the millions (maybe more), and remake them “imperishable” as well—why, in the original creation, did He need billions of years in order to make just one or, yes, two? If, at His return, Jesus can lift millions out of the ground, instantly, then the creation of Adam and Eve, on day six, should have been a breeze.

However, because science—the same science that gives us raft monkeys—says, No, the creation of human life took billions of years, many Christians go right along with it, even if it’s impossible to harmonize with Scripture, no matter how hard they try.

And, speaking of raft monkeys, it seems that the little seafaring simians did it—that is, float from Africa to South America—more than once. Finding fossil teeth where those fossil teeth should not be found, some scientists, speculating millions of years into antiquity, theorize that different kinds of monkeys made the voyage at different times. Two, three, maybe four separate times, monkeys crossed the Atlantic.

Laughing? How dare you?