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VII. BIOLOGY The term “biology” refers to the study of life and living organisms. Humans have been studying “life” for millennia. King Solomon (970-930 B.C.) studied animal life (1Kings 4:32), as did the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle (4th century B.C.). Ancient people studied the human body and did a lot with medicine and surgery than many modern folks appreciate. How did life originate and diversify into all of its extinct and existing forms? To begin with, we can dismiss the popular myth that the choice is between a “scientific / reason / evidence” story (evolution) versus a “religious / irrational faith / no evidence” (Biblical Creation) story. Why, because traditional (and valid) science is based on observation and testing, which is not available to either story, as the evolutionist author of my college biology text asserted, All science begins with observation, the first step of the scientific method. At once this delimits the scientific domain; something that cannot be observed cannot be investigated by science. . . . it is necessary, furthermore, that an observation be repeatable, actually or potentially. . . One time events on earth are outside science. . . . That is also a major reason why one-time, unrepeatable events normally cannot be science. [1] Without observation, ultimate origins stories are not “scientific” but are really some kind of plausible philosophical/religious story that we adopt “by faith” for personal and/or social reasons. We adopt one of these “faith stories” for a variety of reasons: it is the only view available, alternatives are ridiculed and will cost you socially, it was presented in a convincing manner, etc. However, we are still left with a “faith-story” that we adopt for a lot more reasons than just “reason & evidence.” No human observer saw God create major kinds of life within a few days (Genesis 1:20-28), but neither has any human observer ever seen life arise from inanimate chemicals by natural processes or evidence that any major group of life forms arose by transformation from any other major group/kind. By all means, competing stories should be continually “tested” against the growing body of available credible evidence so as to demonstrate how well they accord with reality. However, even stories that become “dominant paradigms” in society need to be critically examined and their arguments and evidence interpretations re-evaluated from time to time, because stories can be accepted as true in the minds of the public upon “evidence/arguments” that do not hold up very well over time. Conclusions/stories based on faulty proofs should not be retained just because they have attained “orthodoxy” status. If the proofs used to establish a story turn out to be faulty, then the truth of the story should be re-evaluated. It is my belief that biological evolution (chemicals to people) is a philosophical story that became the “orthodox” story upon a collection of “proofs” that were over-stated, misrepresented, or fraudulent. I believe this is why: (1) there has been a continual controversy surrounding evolution, (2) a growing “Intelligent Design” movement amongst intellectuals against it, (3) and a growing tendency to defend evolution by ridiculing alternatives/skeptics and political maneuvering to protect their educational monopoly rather than face the problems. Having been an evolutionist, I now believe that the “true” elements of Darwinism are restricted to the area of “variation” within the major “kind” groupings that God created. This is why evolutionary scientists have not observed and cannot duplicate (even with their manipulation) the “life from non-life” scenario that their materialistic philosophy requires and they are embarrassed by the fossil record (the Cambrian Explosion) because it looks more like the sudden and simultaneous origin of many original major kinds of life (Genesis 1) than the gradually branching tree of Darwinism. How then can I present the evolutionary “house of cards” that I had to re-evaluate as I studied my way out of this materialistic-naturalistic myth? In this paper we will review the gradual build-up of evidences that have been put forward as “proof” for the story, adding, as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.” The Presentation of Darwinism Darwinism appeared in Europe in 1859, with the publication of Charles Darwin’s On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. However, this was not some new notion, but a formalized portrait of how biological species might have developed being presented in a particular cultural setting. Ever since the Roman Catholic “scholastics” (ca. 900-1200 A.D.) had blended Plato and Aristotle’s view of the total fixity of species from the beginning (“The Great Chain of Being”), this was part of the European worldview. The French Enlightenment (1689-1789) had made the break with Catholicism and the Bible, so they naturally moved toward the pre-Christian Greek materialism and naturalism (i.e. evolution) of Anaximander and Empedocles - life originated in the sea and then evolved through adaptations to new environments, nature makes many trials and experiments and, when the combination works, it survives and perpetuates its kind. The men of the Enlightenment were brilliant skeptics and they began the retooling with all they had - speculations rooted in materialistic and naturalistic philosophy. The belief that life developed from non-life, with God not in the picture, needed a believable “mechanism” and this is what Darwin provided in 1859 - a plausible mechanism for biological variation. So let’s begin with Darwin and then move up to our time as we survey the evidences that have been put forward. Charles Darwin Materialistic beliefs about life arising from matter by natural processes go back as far as a handful of skeptical Greek philosophers around 600 B.C. and this approach was “re-born” in the skepticism of the French Enlightenment (1689-1789). A plausible explanation for how life developed by natural means was presented to the Western World in 1859 by Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. Whereas Aristotle had opted for “static” species that do not change, Darwin could see that variation was taking place in the biological world. Darwin offered many examples of change and his major contribution was in suggesting a plausible mechanism for accomplishing this change. This mechanism came in several key ideas.
Genetic mutation & Natural Selection - The approach of Darwinism that has become the default or “orthodox” view in Western science involves a combination of mutations and natural selection. Mutations are alterations (mistakes in gene replication) in the reproductive cells. Darwinism asserts that beneficial mutations would render a creature more fit and better able to compete, survive and produce offspring. It remains true to say that we know of no way other than random mutation by which new hereditary variation comes into being.[2] Natural selection is the belief that the best-adapted specimen in a species will be more successful at competing for food, mates, and reproducing its kind. Hence, the lifeforms that are most successful at adapting to their environment or inherit beneficial mutations will become more successful in the struggle for survival. Examples of Natural Selection
British Grey Peppered Moth - One of the classic proofs offered for evolution has been the British Peppered Moth. In 1850, prior to the industrial revolution in England, the lighter gray version was the more plentiful in because it better blended in with gray lichen on trees, but by 1950 the air pollution had killed the lichen and the darker variety became the more numerous. This has been a standard evidence of “natural selection.”
Bacteria - scientists also have noted that some bacteria become immune to antibiotics Viruses - A virus is, essentially, nucleic acids within a mantle of protein. They are not cells, living organisms, or independent self-sustaining lifeforms. They are very simple parasites that need a living host to function. They can carry bits of DNA between bacteria and they can mutate into more dangerous varieties, which is another evidence offered in support of evolution, Anyone who supposes that evolution doesn't happen, or doesn't matter, should spare a thought for H5N1, the virus causing avian flu. If we're unlucky, this virus will give us a nasty demonstration of evolution in action.[3] Sickle Cell Anemia - Over the years, scientists have identified some situations in which mutations take place and appear to offer some beneficial characteristics, such as Africans with sickle-cell anemia seem to be more resistant to malaria. The Rest of the Story Unless evolutionists are controlling the “card-stacking,” the evidences they present usually leave a portion of the story untold. Looking back on my time as an evolutionist and then reconsidering it from a more critical approach, it seems to me that evolution is promoted with a lot half-truths and confident assertions. Acquired Adaptation - This notion has been discarded, because now it is known that inheritance is limited to genetic material, not learned behavior or acquired characteristics - the children of a man crippled by injury won't inherit his limp and African tribes which distort their bodies (stretch the neck) have to keep doing the same “stretching” procedure to each new generation. It was another case of an argument being useful for supporting the acceptance of the evolutionary scenario and discarding the creationist view, but after the academic community embraced evolution the argument was found to be erroneous. Mutation - The problem here lies in the fact that genetic systems work to maintain a species, not improve it. When mutations do happen, they are rare and when they do happen they almost always harmful and the reproductive system is often damaged so that even a beneficial mutation (extremely unlikely and rare) could not be transmitted. Because evolutionists are almost desperate for a mechanism, they don’t want to face the theoretical probability connected with “beneficial mutations,” but the odds are very, very slim that such could have happened. Julian Huxley, a staunch defender of evolution, estimated that at the known rate of helpful mutations over the known time scale the odds against evolution happening by chance alone were 3,000,000 zeros to one (15 pages of zeros). Even so, Huxley still felt that mutation and natural selection was the process that produced the present biological world.[4] Those poor fruit flies that were blasted with x-rays showed a number of variations, but the problem was that they were not rendered not good ones. Natural Selection - there is probably some solid truth that the best or at least better adapted and fit will tend to win when there is a competition for resources and mates. However, the question about “natural selection” was well-stated by Stephen Jay Gould, The essense of Darwinism lies in a single phrase: natural selection is the creative force of evolutionary change. No one denies that natural selection will play a negative role in eliminating the unfit. Darwinian theories require that it create the fit as well.[5] Examples - The Peppered Moth example failed to offer any support for the notion of “change,” except in the relative population size of two color varieties. Both color varieties were already present and all that happened was that changed conditions caused one color variety to become more numerous for a while and then the other. There was no structural change taking place, not even the emergence of a new color variety. And this was a “classic proof” of Darwinism? The Galapagos Finches at least offer some evidence of change, but it is evidence for variation rather than transformation. Today, there are fourteen species or varieties of finches on the Galapagos Islands and they do vary in size, plumage, and beak morphology (form). Two recent researchers, Peter and Rosemary Grant (from Princeton University) have found that the beak sizes and shapes of the Galapagos finches seem to vary or cycle within well-defined limits depending on the conditions.[6] However, what seems to be missed is that variations in food supply bring on this cycling of beak types and the same varieties keep coming and going as needed, but all you have is “finches” – not finches turning into hawks, eagles, or hummingbirds! The Fruit Flies have been worked over pretty hard as evolutionary proofs. Those poor fruit flies bombarded with x-rays did produce some wild variations, but the results were bizarre and much less fit than normal healthy fruit flies. Immunity to insecticide certainly is a “survival advantage,” but still fails to offer any support for morphological/body structure change and this is the real issue that is disputed. As for heralding a slight change in size as a “major confirmation” of Darwinism, as when it was reported[7] that female fruit flies in northern areas of Europe and North America have wings about 4% longer than those in southern climates – big deal – regardless of a slight variation in wing-length they are still fruit flies! Bacteria that develop immunity to antibiotics are still bacteria, just like fruit flies immune to insecticide are still fruit flies! Viruses - So, in response to the quotation in the earlier discussion of viruses, just what might H5N1 do that offers proof that “evolution happens”? It very well might mutate into a different and more dangerous virus. Whoopee! However, a virus mutating into another type of virus is only “evolution” in the sense of variation, but it offers no evidence that a virus ever “evolved” in the sense of turning into something other than a virus (transformation), such as “evolve” into algae, fungi, slime mold, bacteria, etc. The only “evolution” that a virus is going to do is change a little, but here is the big letdown for evolutionists - it will still be a virus! Viruses have been around a long time, but they are still viruses. Only in the imagination of optimistic evolutionists do viruses somehow fit into a picture of the kind of large-scale transformation that they believe in. The “Just So” story that evolutionary biology textbooks offer might go something like this, “in the earliest cells, nucleic acids were probably suspended in cell material, but then may have escaped from the cell into the ocean, floated around awhile, then entered another cell somehow and got involved in that cell’s activity.” That is a paraphrase of the explanation that appeared in the biology textbook I used in college[8] - throw in a few biology terms between a lot of “maybe . . . perhaps . . . probably . . . must have . . could have. . . .“ and you have what evolutionists call a “scientific explanation” for another element of their imaginative materialistic story. Sickle-cell anemia - African’s with sickle-cell anemia might be more resistant to malaria, but “anemia” is hardly an overall benefit, because most of the people with this disease (anemia is a disease, a pathological condition) have other very serious health problems. Conclusion - Ok, so some moth color varieties survive better in certain conditions, finch beaks vary somewhat according to the climate and food supply, fruit flies can survive insecticide or get a little bigger under some conditions, bacteria sometimes becomes immune to antibiotics, and viruses can mutate into more dangerous viruses. Which of these “proofs” for evolution is supposed to make me think that chemicals turned into people? These are evidence that moths, finches, fruit flies, bacteria, and virus are capable of adapting to their environment to some degree, but peppered moths are still peppered moths, finches are still finches, fruit flies are still fruit flies, bacteria are still bacteria, and viruses are still viruses! The issue is “where is proof for the kind of body structure change required to turn protozoa into people?” All of these “proofs” are for variation within lifeform types and are far from convincing that any kind of lifeform changed into any other kind. Earnst Haeckel (1874) Although evidence of transitional forms (the evolutionary “in-between”) was not available in the fossil record of Darwin’s day, it wasn’t long before a German zoologist named Earnst Haeckel offered a different kind of “evidence” for evolutionary transformation.
This genealogy is based on the comparison of man's anatomy with that of other vertebrated animals, and it is confirmed by the curious phases through which his body passes before birth. For he begins as if he were to be a fish, with gill-slits and a fish-like heart and kidney, he passes through phases that recall the amphibian and reptile, and, then he recapitulates lower mammalian structures. He has for a time a tail. He does not begin human, even in his individual development; he struggles through to humanity. In a score of small things of no advantage to him, in the hair and the direction of the hair upon his limbs, for example, he recalls the ape.[9] Tim Berra, in his 1990 book against the “myth of creationism” also cited Haeckel’s recapitulation theory and his drawings as proof for evolution, The early embryos of all vertebrate classes (fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) resemble one another markedly (Figure 5). The embryos of vertebrates that do not respire by means of gills (reptiles, birds, and mammals) nevertheless pass through a gill-slit stage complete with aortic arches and a two-chambered heart, like those of a fish. The passage through a fishlike stage by the embryos of the higher vertebrates is not explained by creation, but is readily accounted for as an evolutionary relic.[10] The 1992 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica also cited Haeckel’s theory and that human embryos pass through a “fish stage” with “gill slits” because we descended from fish, Darwin and his followers found support for evolution in the comparative study of embryology-the science that investigates the development of organisms from fertilized egg to time of birth or hatching. Vertebrates, from fishes through lizards to humans, develop in ways that are remarkably similar during early stages . . . Human and other nonaquatic embryos exhibit gill slits even though they never breathe through gills. These slits are found in the embryos of all vertebrates because they share as common ancestors the fish in which these structures first evolved.[11] Earnst Haeckel - Evolutionary Baloney Salesman
The presence of gills and tails in the early stage of all vertebrate embryos supports evidence from the fossil record that aquatic, gill-breathing vertebrates preceded air-breathing, terrestrial species.[12] Homology
Objection - I won’t argue that there isn’t an apparent similarity amongst many of these features, but I do question whether or not “common ancestry” is the only and best explanation for this reality. While similarity can be explained by “common ancestry,” it is not proven. It even becomes questionable if predictions from this explanation are not born out and other reasonable options exist.
Similarity does not really “prove” common ancestry, for unless a fossil trail exists to document the alleged “transformation” process from common ancestor to all of the later recipients, then this is just another speculative explanation. An equally reasonable answer would be that certain basic structures simply “work” and would be reused in various forms by a designer. As an example, automobiles worldwide have an obvious structural similarity, but that doesn’t mean there is only one car designer and manufacturer operating. Building contractors have a few basic structural formats they use, simply because these function well. Noting structural similarity does not explain or prove “how” forearms/legs became wings. Following Darwinian logic, most of the “in between” developmental stages (from forearm/leg to wing) would have meant that a creature had an appendage that was no longer as good for running and not yet a usable wing and “natural selection” should have eliminated it! Similar structures could just as well be a proof of a designer employing a basic, practical system in numerous different creatures. Paleontology We have already discussed the fossil issue, but a few comments will summarize what we learned. Darwinism speculated that all of life had evolved from primitive, single-celled life (protozoa). Thus, life is portrayed as a gradually branching “tree,” with major groups of lifeforms emerging from earlier major groups. This is what is portrayed in the countless taxonomic “tree” illustrations that adorn our textbooks – later forms branching off and developing from earlier forms. It was long asserted that fossils are the only real record of what happened and are the basis for all beliefs about evolutionary relationships. “Fortunately there is a science which is able to observe the progress of evolution through the history of our earth. Geology traces the rocky strata of our earth, deposited one upon another in the past geological epochs through hundreds of millions of years, and finds out their order and timing and reveals organisms which lived in all these periods. Paleontology, which studies the fossil remains, is thus enabled to present organic evolution as a visible fact . . .”[13] “The most direct evidence for evolution comes from the actual remains of past organisms buried in the sentiments.”[14] “Although the comparative study of living plants and animals may give very convincing circumstantial evidence, fossils provide the only historical, documentary evidence that life has evolved from simpler to more complex forms.”[15] “In dealing with fossil material, the functional aspect of form can be known only indirectly through inference. For this reason, paleontologists commonly base their interpretations on the one thing they can readily measure and observe – the structure of fossils. This approach is, of course, necessary, and indeed has yielded virtually everything known about the evolutionary histories of modern plants and animals, but it has its dangers, particularly when conclusions are reached on very little evidence.”[16] “Naturalists must remember that the process of evolution is revealed only through fossil forms. A knowledge of paleontology is, therefore, a pre-requisite; only paleontology can provide them with the evidence and reveal its course or mechanisms.”[17] You can imagine my consternation when I began reading articles by Stephen Jay Gould in Natural History magazine and noting repeated comments to the effect that the fossil record did not demonstrate evolutionary relationships at all – that the evolutionary “trees” portrayed in textbooks had real data only at the tips of the branches, but no hard fossil evidence to connect these to the protozoan trunk and that “gradual” evolutionary change had never been observed in the rocks/fossils, “The fossil record offered no support for gradual change: . . . New species almost always appeared suddenly in the fossil record with no intermediate links to ancestors in older rocks of the same region. . . . The extreme rarity of transitional forms persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. . . Darwin's argument still persists as the favored escape of most paleontologists from the embarrassment of a record that seems to show so little of evolution. . . I wish only to point out that it was never "seen" in the rocks. . . yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.”[18] “All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt.”[19] When evolutionists are trying to discredit the Biblical concept of creation in public discussions, they increasingly refuse to discuss the origin of life and the Cambrian Explosion. The following quotations will demonstrate what Gould was honestly referring to and why the Cambrian Explosion and the fossil evidence is so unpleasant for them. . . . Most of evolution's dramatic leaps occurred rather abruptly and soon after multicellular organisms first evolved, nearly 600 million years ago during a period called tile Cambrian. The body plans that evolved in the Cambrian by and large served as the blueprints for those seen today. Few new major body plans have appeared since that time. Just as all automobiles are fundamentally modeled after the first four-wheel vehicles, all the evolutionary changes since the Cambrian period have been mere variations on those basic themes. . . . Evolutionary biology's deepest paradox concerns this strange discontinuity. Why haven't new animal body plans continued to crawl out of the evolutionary cauldron during the past hundreds of millions of years? Why are the ancient body plans so stable?[20] . . . For the Cambrian is a period distinguished by the abrupt appearance of an astonishing array of multicelled animals- animals that are the ancestors of virtually all the creatures that now swim, fly and crawl through the visible world (p. 67). . . Then . . . in the early Cambrian, . . . creatures with teeth and tentacles and claws and jaws materialized with the suddenness of apparitions. In a burst of creativity like nothing before or since, nature appears to have sketched out the blueprints for virtually the whole of the animal kingdom. This explosion of biological diversity is described by scientists as biology's Big Bang. . . . Since 1987, discoveries of major fossil beds in Greenland, in China, in Siberia, and now in Namibia have shown that the period of biological innovation occurred at virtually the same instant in geologic time all around the world. (p. 68) . . . For it was during the Cambrian (and perhaps only during the Cambrian) that nature invented the animal body plans that define the broad biological groupings known as phyla, which encompass everything from classes and orders to families, genera and species (p. 70).[21] The less I listened to evolutionary propaganda and the more I learned about the actual fossil record (from honest evolutionary paleontologists), the better Genesis 1:20ff sounded. Taxonomy
Be Careful - The first thing that needs to be said is that the taxonomic tree is another example of the logical fallacy called begging the question (assuming the very thing you are trying to prove)! The taxonomic trees were assembled upon the assumption of evolutionary relationships, then put forward as proof of it. You identify some similarities between creatures, then organize them into a hypothetical grouping and “lineage,” and then present your picture of “proof” for what you assumed in creating it. Present-day taxonomy is entirely based on the assumption of evolutionary change.[22] That a known fossil or recent species, or higher taxonomic group, however primitive it might appear, is an actual ancestor of some other species or group, is an assumption scientifically unjustifiable, for science never can simply assume that which it has the responsibility to demonstrate.[23] We are used to seeing evolution portrayed visually in the form of a genealogical "tree," with single-celled life at the base of the trunk and then a series of branches radiating out with recognizable forms portrayed at the ends of each branch. Again we find a "proof" of evolution that is based, assembled, and artistically presented on the assumption that evolution is true.
The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips. . . of their branches; the rest is inference, . . . not the evidence of fossils . . . in any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed.[24] With the emphasis in evolutionary biology shifting to DNA as the key to evolutionary relationships, the classical “taxonomic trees” (based on structural similarities) are being chain-sawed down. Vestigial Organs Assuming the evolutionary scenario to be true, scientists began to identify "vestiges" of ancestral forms remaining in modern specimen in an unused form. For the human body alone, there once was a list of about 180 "vestigial organs" that, allegedly, no longer served the purpose they once did in our biological ancestry and were still “disappearing." Ignorance of purpose - Evolutionary apologists are often guilty of the logical fallacy of "begging the question" - assuming the very point at issue! The question of whether or not something is a "vestige" of one's evolutionary ancestry begins by assuming the evolutionary scenario and that these items are "vestiges" of something that is gradually disappearing and not currently functional. Evolutionists once had a list of 180 vestigial organs in the human body, but that has continued to shrink as the present function of organs once thought to be useless "leftovers" is discovered, such as the thymus gland, pineal gland, tonsils, coccyx, and appendix. An analysis of the difficulties in unambiguously identifying functionless structures . . . leads to the conclusion that "vestigial organs" provide no evidence for evolutionary theory.[25] Punctuated Equilibrium In the 1930-40's, Europe's top paleontologist, O.H. Schindewolf, and geneticist R. B. Goldschmitt came to the same conclusion that T. H. Huxley had reached - Darwinism was a good way of explaining the minor variations that occur in living things, but the suggested accumulation of many small mutations was not a very likely vehicle for large-scale evolution. So, Goldschmitt proposed that the evolution of new types of animals must have occurred through major mutations, or "saltation" (leaping/jumping). Thus, a massive mutation in one generation might simply overleap many alleged "transitionary forms" (thus explaining the general absence of meaningful transitional fossils). Stephen J. Gould proposed resurrecting this idea[26] in 1977, but the furious response of traditional Darwinian gradualists made him back-track and reword his suggestion. While mutations are rarely “positive” and any conceivable “massive mutation” would almost certainly be destructive to the organism, such a suggestion indicates to me that naturalists are desperate for an evolutionary "mechanism" to maintain their naturalistic explanation for origins while avoiding the embarrassing lack of transitional fossils. The Eldredge-Gould concept of punctuated equilibria has gained wide acceptance among paleontologists .... The model is more ad hoc explanation than theory, and it rests on shaky ground. Paleontologists seem to be enthralled by small populations . . . . I hasten to point out that ecologists and geneticists have not elucidated macroevolutionary patterns: the gap has not been bridged from either side.[27] In a recent book, evolutionary biologist and atheist Jeffrey Schwartz[28] asserted that the “missing links” connecting major kinds of life would never be found, because they never existed. While following a “big jumps” viewpoint dismissed by the majority of “gradualist” evolutionists, Schwartz is another example of those who recognize the problem with the fossil record and the Darwinian story. Of course, the gradualists are equally logical in asserting the implausibility of massive, beneficial, one-generation macro-mutations in terms of genetic mechanisms. In fact, evolutionists have a tremendous problem on their hands –they are philosophically committed to a “grand transformation” story and the evidence in the real world doesn’t really support either version of the “mechanics” they have developed for explaining how it happened. A student of mine suggested another problem with the “saltation” explanation. Let’s assume that a new species did arise from a massive mutation - what would this first “jumper” mate with? For this to work, wouldn’t the massive mutation in question have to successfully occur twice at the same time and location, so that both male and female versions were present to perpetuate the new species? And Genesis 1 is hard to believe? While neither of the two options for explaining the alleged “evolution” of life from simpler forms (slow accumulation of positive mutations & natural selection vs. saltation) accomplishes their task in explaining reality, they are a handy set of defensive tools for evolutionists when they are put on the spot. If someone asks “why don’t we see evolution occurring right now,” they can invoke gradualism and say “because it happens so slowly.” If someone asks “why are there virtually no transitional fossil sequences as evidence of new species arising by slow/gradual transformation from another in the past,” the evolutionist can endorse saltation and simply say “it happened so fast that there are no transitional fossil forms to find!” And yet, those who believe all of this double-talk have the unmitigated gall to accuse Christians of being “gullible,” naive, and ignorant! An article in Time Magazine on “How Life Began”[29] led to an insightful response from one reader when he said, Scientists have never seen a mutation create new information, but they know it does. They’ve never found a half-evolved fossil, but they are sure it must have existed. They believe without question that their dating systems are accurate. Some scientists have more faith than right-wing Fundamentalists.[30] I am struck by the similarity between what this gentleman was describing amongst evolutionary scientists and the description of “faith” contained in the book of Hebrews, Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1, NAS) Origin of Life Did life accidentally evolve from non-living chemicals - really? If such really happened by accident, you would think that brilliant scientists working in multi-million dollar laboratories could whip up some life easily. However, such a feat has continued to elude those who believe this is where life came from. This is one of the unwanted "elephants in the room" that evolutionists wish would go away. Darwin’s “Warm Little Pond” Charles Darwin’s emphasis was on developing his theory of how animal life have changed over time rather than the origin of life. However, it was impossible for this issue to be ignored and he did make a comment in a letter to J.D. Hooker about the issue. A footnote mentions the phrase “warm little pond” as coming from Charles Darwin as a possible place of origin for life on earth.[31] Miller-Urey Experiment (1953)
Before we go any further, I want the reader to stop for a second and consider what is going on here. The purpose of this experiment was to add credibility to the idea that life could have originated by purely natural means, without intelligent design or divine intervention into a purely “natural” universe. So, what was demonstrated? Nothing “natural” occurred here – an intelligent scientist built some very unnatural “equipment,” collected and manipulated materials inside his contraption, and then intervened to “trap off” the desired products so the very environment that created them would not destroy them. The ability of evolutionary scientists to act as the “intelligent designer/manipulator/intervener” in experiments like these, but then “edit themselves out of the picture” as they try to portray such a contrived event as “how life arose without any intelligence or intervention” would be a hoot, if they weren’t so serious about it. Eventually, scientists came to doubt that the chemical environment Miller used was representative of primitive earth conditions. Whether Miller’s mixture of gases represented the early earth or not, nothing “alive” was produced in this experiment. Miller’s scenario, which seemed to support the “life from non-life” myth for those already believing such occurred for awhile, has not stood the test of time very well, Now this textbook picture of how life originated, so familiar to college students just a generation ago, is under serious attack.[32] Miller’s scenario held that amino acids form in an alkaline environment, but such an environment is detrimental to sugars and these are also essential to living organisms. Also, amino acids come in two varieties, “L” (levorotary) and “D” (dextrorotary) varieties, distinguished by how the molecules rotate a plane of polarized light. Living organisms seem to almost exclusively have the “L” form, but amino acids synthesized in the laboratory turn out in equal amounts of both forms. How did a “primitive soup” with, presumably, an equal mixture of both forms give rise to living organisms with only the “L” type?[33] There are increasing doubts amongst some biochemists and molecular biologists that a Darwinian explanation for the basis of life will ever be satisfactory, It was once expected that the basis of life would be exceedingly simple. That expectation has been smashed. . . . the elements and complexity of biological systems at the molecular level have paralyzed science's attempt to explain their origins. . . . Many scientists have gamely asserted that explanations are already in hand, or will be sooner or later, but no support for such assertions can be found in the professional science literature...there are compelling reasons - based on the structure of the systems themselves - to think that a Darwinian explanation for the mechanisms of life will forever prove elusive.[34] Textbooks Assert “Life from non-life” Although Charles Darwin did use the phrase “warm little pond” in reference to a naturalistic origin of life from non-living chemicals, no evolutionary scientist has ever observed life arising from non-life by natural processes nor have they been able to manipulate anything like this happening under laboratory conditions. Such observation or laboratory evidence would seemingly be required before abiogenesis (life from non-life by natural processes) could be taught as “science.” However, this is not the case and abiogenesis is taught as the only possible explanation for the origin of life in our now strictly secular (i.e. atheistic) education system. What appears in textbooks to explain the origin of life? Students are given secular “Just So” stories that begin with an assumed starting place long ago and the current reality, with a plausible fictional story concocted to explain what may have happened in between. Often, biology textbooks offer little more than “well, we can’t let the supernatural into the ‘science” story, for philosophical and/or political reasons, so we are going to believe that the spontaneous generation of life from non-life must have happened, because here we are.” Or, you might encounter the claim that “science can explain the origin of life in terms of chemistry and physics.” Well I can concoct all kinds of explanation for things to, but that doesn’t prove that any of my “explanations” have any proof supporting them! Here are some examples, . . . life too must be a result of physical and chemical events only.[35] Science today can account for living properties in purely mechanistic terms.[36] As already indicated, life is believed to have originated through a series of events which raised the organization of inanimate matter to successively higher levels . . . . The details of these processes are at present known only partly. . . . backward projections . . . deduce . . . may have . . . All this, supplemented here and there by reasonable speculation, today enables us to give a fairly plausible account of living origins.[37] There is every reason to believe that living things owe their origin entirely to certain physical and chemical properties of the ancient earth. Nothing supernatural appeared to be involved – only time and natural and physical laws operating within the peculiarly suitable earthly environment. . . . once the earth had originated in its ancient form, with particular chemical and physical properties, it was then virtually inevitable that life would later originate on it also.[38] . . . life might be a product of nonliving matter. This is the explanation offered by modern science.[39] Since life evolved from non-living matter, at some point we must arbitrarily draw a line and say that everything past that point is alive.[40] Origin of Life - the Rest of the Story Notions of spontaneous generation, life arising from non-living matter by natural processes, have been imagined by materialist philosophers for centuries, at least as early as the Ionian Greek evolutionary philosophers (c. 600 B.C.). For committed non-theists, some kind of imagined leap from inanimate to animate is essential to their story, or else they have to believe in a living Creator or that matter itself is already inherently alive and this is how some of the Greeks handled the problem. (Isn’t imagination a wonderful thing? Materialists and naturalists can use it to minimize their theoretical problems as easily as any of the religious folks they portray as “superstitious”). Due to their philosophical commitments, many materialistic and naturalistic scientists still confidently cling to the notion of “spontaneous generation,” despite the fact that reality continues to elude them. In the 17th century, people believed that maggots and flies arose spontaneously from decaying food and that rats materialized from the right ingredients placed in a damp, dark room for a sufficient length of time. The French Enlightenment philosopher, Julien Offroy de La Mettrie (1748), confidently spun Plato’s “Great Chain of Being” into a tale of biological transformation, but balked at the problem of bridging the gap between inorganic and organic. As did Lucretius before him and materialists since, he imagined some kind of a “Just so”[41] story to explain “what might have happened” and didn’t let the problems with such a story trouble him further.[42] However, the 18th-19th century scientific work of William Harvey, Francesco Redi, Lazzaro Spallanzani, and Louis Pasteur demonstrated that all living things come from living things and eggs and do not arise spontaneously from non-living matter. Recent studies in microbiology have shown that even a single cell is immensely complex and orderly - the distance between chemicals and a singe-celled lifeform is immense! Ironically, Kelso and Trevathan admit the contradiction which “spontaneous generation” forces upon the scientists who hold a materialistic viewpoint, requiring them to deny or ignore what has been experimentally verified in order to hold on to their naturalistic presuppositions, Paradoxically, it was science which disproved the popular notion of spontaneous generation and it is science which today maintains that the first life arose from nonliving matter. . . . All these experiments (Redi, Spallanzoni, Pasteur) pointed to exactly the same conclusion: Life does not originate from non-living matter, or more precisely, life does not emerge spontaneously today. Yet now science views the origin of life as an event which emerged at least once out of conditions which existed billions of years ago—conditions very different from those existing today and far more favorable to the buildup of organic molecules out of simpler protobiological compounds. . . . The origin of life is perhaps a unique event in earth's history, yet as natural an event as the origin of granite. . . . The evidence for the view that life originated gradually and sequentially as proposed here, is by no means conclusive. No one has proved that this is the way it happened, and no one ever will.[43] Perhaps the philosophical commitment of “evolutionary science” comes closest to the surface on this issue – materialistic explanations are faithfully upheld as “the only reasonable/scientific viewpoint” even when scientific investigation refutes them! Was early life “simple”? Another assumption that evolutionists make, and it is logical to do so, is that the first life must have been very simple. This is because the difficulty of bridging the animate/inanimate divide seems more palatable when you make it appear to be a small ditch rather than a giant gorge. If the first cell was just a simple membrane with a little bit of biochemistry going on within, then it isn’t too hard to imagine. Michael Behe says this is exactly how the idea began, but the ongoing investigation has raised even more questions for this approach, It was once expected that the basis of life would be exceedingly simple. That expectation has been smashed. ...the elements and complexity of biological systems at the molecular level have paralyzed science's attempt to explain their origins.... Many scientists have gamely asserted that explanations are already in hand, or will be sooner or later, but no support for such assertions can be found in the professional science literature...there are compelling reasons - based on the structure of the systems themselves - to think that a Darwinian explanation for the mechanisms of life will forever prove elusive.[44] Not only are cells very complex, they are also filled with information - where in the world did all of that DNA coded information come from? How did such complex information systems accidentally spring from inanimate chemicals? Could the constituent parts of the first cell have developed independently and then somehow all gotten together at the right time and place to make “life” just happen? Would not chemicals tend to mix and disperse in the ocean? Yet, evolutionists imagine the fortunate accident and downplay the difficulties so as to maintain their faith in a materialistic origin for life. If you are philosophical materialist, such a series of events may not be hard to believe, but the odds and the inability of scientists to manipulate the same thing into happening ought to tell us something about what really did/did not happen. Time As Weisz stated above, the materialistic explanation for the origins of life combine “natural and physical laws” plus lots of “time” for non-intelligent “nature” to experiment until the right combination just “happens.” And this happening was not statistically improbable – it was “inevitable” (or so materialists would have us believe)! However, without intelligent manipulation, one would certainly assume that lots of time must have been necessary, for nature to blunder through countless “failed” combinations before the right one occurred. Evolutionists speculate that the 4.6 billion-year-old molten earth would not have been cool enough for life to form until at least 3.8 billion years ago, at which time the accidental chemical-combination experiments could begin. As for the “inevitable” nature of life forming spontaneously from matter if you just have “enough time,” Stephen Jay Gould mentioned in one of his articles what one of his teachers, George Wald, had taught about this, In Wald’s view, the spontaneous origin of life was a virtually inevitable consequence of the earths atmosphere and crust, and of its favorable size and position in the solar system. Still, life is so staggeringly complex that its origin from simple chemicals must have consumed an immense amount of time -- probably more time than its entire subsequent evolution from DNA molecule to advanced beetles (or whatever you choose to place atop the subjective ladder). Thousands of steps, each requiring the one before; each improbable in itself. Only the immensity of time guaranteed the result, for time converts the improbable to the inevitable -- give me a million years and I'll flip a hundred heads in a row more than once. Wald wrote in 1954: Time is in fact the hero of the plot. The time with which we have to deal is the order of two billion years...Given so much time, the impossible becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles.[45] So, “God the Creator” is removed for the sake of “reason” only to be replaced by “Immense Time – the Miracle-Worker.” With a new “miracle-worker” in place, suddenly the origin of life becomes “inevitable” in our thinking – easy, no problem! The main concern of Gould’s article was how little time was needed, for Gould was concerned about the fact that evidence of well-developed life, with complex photosynthesis mechanisms, was being found closer and closer to that “beginning point” when the rocks would have cooled enough to allow for it to begin. The 3.8 billion year starting point was now being assaulted by life showing up in rock 3.4 billion years old. The “quicker” life appears, the less it looks like natural accidents caused it and that raises another problem for the “time + natural processes” thinkers. Panspermia For those evolutionists who recognize the magnitude of problems surrounding trying to explain life on earth spontaneously generating out of non-living matter, another option has arisen and it seems to be most popular amongst the folks who focus on outer space. The answer for them is “panspermia” – seeds of life floated in from outer space. Life on the Mar’s Rock? - “Life on Mars” was the title of a 1996 article in Time Magazine[46] and a topic of discussion for several weeks. A team of NASA and university scientists held a televised press conference in Washington D.C. to announce that this 4.2 pound rock provides the “first tangible evidence that we are not alone in the universe.” A number of others soon chirped in to add their hopes that this would turn out to be evidence for their belief that life is common throughout the universe and can crop up wherever the conditions are right. Of course, there were other scientists who thought the optimism was unwarranted on the basis of what was actually known about the rock. Time Magazine was able to milk a seven-page article, filled with speculations about life in the universe, out of this simple announcement.
As time has rolled on, the general consensus has come to conclude that this is yet another evolutionary false alarm. Identical structures have been found in lunar materials and claims that these items were fossils of “filamentous bacteria” just weren’t justified.[48] The “probably not” verdict was also sounded, somewhat quietly, in the pages of the National Geographic Magazine (January 2000, p. 36). What many failed to note was that the big 1996 announcement by NASA came at a time when their major funding was under review and this tipped the scale in favor of them getting the money they sought. “Mission to Mars” - This same notion - life floating in from Mars - was the theme of the movie “Mission to Mars”[49] (2000) in which astronauts land on Mars and, eventually, find a recorded message in a huge monument left by the advanced civilization that used to inhabit Mars. The message includes a media production in which they see Mars hit by an asteroid and all but one of the Martian escape craft heads off to another galaxy. The one remaining craft received a strand of DNA from the holographic Martian directing the program and then it heads to earth and dives into the ocean, where the “seed of life” is planted and eventually evolves into land animals and humans. After seeing this media program, the astronauts hold hands with the Martian and declare “they’re us, we’re them.” When you have an idea and no real proof, just lay our your idea as the way it is and get Hollywood involved and a myth is well on its way to becoming the new belief. Expedition to Mars (2004) - With the Mars Rock used to throw out the idea of life from Mars and then a fictitious movie employing great special effects used to drive it home emotionally, the next thing was to go to Mars and try to find some actual scientific evidence to support the belief that life evolved on Mars. Indeed, the very central purpose of expending massive amounts of research money on sending probes to Mars (2003-4) was the desire of materialistic science to find evidence of water and evolving primitive life on Mars, thus supporting their contention that this is how life arose on earth. The goal of Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, . . . . is to search for signs that Mars once had liquid water long enough for life forms to develop.[50] So, in 2004, a great deal of taxpayer’s money was spent to land a craft on the surface of Mars and then send out a couple of little vehicles to look for signs of life, or at least water. There was a big spread in the news media when the craft landed and the little vehicles started crawling around, but then silence - they couldn’t find any evidence of life on Mars. Don’t worry about the disappointed evolutionists, they will come through this ok. For years they have been accusing creationists of continuing to believe something for which there is no evidence and I’m sure they can continue to do the same thing. Molecular Biology As some of the traditional “proofs” for evolution (fossils, embryonic recapitulation, etc.) were losing their luster, evolutionists hailed the evidence from “molecular biology” as the new proof area for their claims. Prior to the 1950’s, little was known about the molecular basis of life, except that the impression was given that the step between chemicals and a living cell was a small one and that a cell was pretty simple. In 1953, Watson and Crick published their article about the double helical structure of deoxyribonucleic acid – DNA – and a whole new area of study began. Research has shown that protein molecules are the basic “stuff” of life and each cell is a factory, with a long chain-like molecule composed of a linear sequence of amino acids. Only about twenty of the known amino acids are used in living systems. There are two types of nucleic acids – DNA is found only in the cell nucleus, with RNA (ribonucleic acid) carrying information to other parts of the cell. The “genetic code” for each type of living system is the particular order of elements in a strand of DNA, unique to each form, but similar in varying amounts to other lifeforms. Molecular biology has discovered that the basic design of the cell is very similar for all lifeforms, from bacteria to mammals. Evolutionists have been forced to abandon the notion that they could find “primitive” and advanced types of cells, for a single cell of any lifeform has turned out to be a very complex little factory. The search for “life” on other planets was inspired by the belief that cells were simple “bags of chemicals” and all that was needed for the “possibility” of life evolving elsewhere was to discover water, oxygen, and a few basic chemicals. That search has been frustrating, for no evidence of primitive cellular life has yet been discovered anywhere else in the universe. Darwin’s belief that life originated in a “warm, little pond” somewhere when the right chemicals got together has been basic to evolutionary materialism for a long time. It was long believed that this lengthy “trial & error” process of getting the right little “pond” situation would have consumed a great deal of time, but fossil evidence revealed that the first life appeared almost immediately as soon as the earth would have cooled enough to allow it. Soon, scientists concluded that the origin of life from simple chemicals was “inevitable.”[51] Stanley Miller’s “spark chamber” (1953) seemed to give the appearance that the building blocks of life could have formed by natural processes on the early earth, but this has turned out to be unlikely.
A recent article in U.S. News & World Report summarized the new viewpoint. The new “taxonomic tree,” based on DNA looks like the graphic (right). Essentially, the new view is that life should be divided into three groups: bacteria, archaea, and eucara (plants, fungus, fish, mammals). Of course, placing all of their eggs in the DNA basket and moving away from structural similarities is “turning up some unlikely relatives” – whales and hippos, fungus is closer to animals than to plants, reptiles are closer to mammals than to amphibians, starfish are closer to animals than to shellfish, yet the traditional evolutionary belief continues that “We are all fish.”[52] A major topic of discussion has been the similarity of DNA between chimpanzees and humans (reported to be 98-99 similar) – of course this is hailed as “clear proof” that one evolved from the other. I am in no position to question the percentage of DNA similarity, but I do wonder if it means what evolutionists hope it means. Why is there, obviously, more than 1-2% difference between humans and chimps in appearance, size, hair covering, intelligence, speech, foot structure, etc.? Nobody has any trouble distinguishing chimps and humans walking down the street (which chimps should be doing if there is only 1% difference between us? If the genetic difference between chimps and humans is only 1-2% - then it must be admitted that it is a very significant 1-2%! Those interested in pursuing what is being forgotten in this discussion of human-chimp DNA should read Jonathon Marks’ presentation at the 1999 Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association.[53] In 2002, Roy Britten, a biologist at the California Institute of Technology, reported that a new way of comparing the genes shows that the human and chimp genetic similarity is only about 95 percent.[54] The confusion increases as one studies this issue. Wildman and others concluded that human-chimp DNA shows that they are closer to each other than either is to other apes. A study of the cyctochrome C amino acid sequences revealed that human and monkey sequences were the same but a big question surfaced with the discovery of a difference in their base sequence. What evolutionists, who are pushing the ape-human connection, don’t want to admit is that the molecular evidence did not indicate any kind of “sequential arrangements” in nature, such as the traditional cyclostome -> fish -> amphibian -> reptile -> mammal sequence. Humans are as close to lamprey eels as are fish.[55] Similarly, while truly close relatives should have the same number of chromosomes, the public rarely hears that humans have 46 and apes have 48.[56] The chromosome issue has long raised a question in my mind - it would be logical to think that the number of chromosome “should” (according to evolutionary assumptions) relate to evolutionary advancement, with the simplest creatures having the fewest and the “most advanced” having the most. But humans are “way down” on the chromosome ladder – humans have 46 and chimps have 48, but algae can have up to 140 and protozoa up to 800. Is “evolution” a good explanation for this? No, that’s why the topic rarely comes up for discussion in the creation/evolution context.[57] Traditional taxonomy grouped rabbits, hares, and pikas into a mammalian order called Lagomorpha. Evolutionists believe that when two different groups of animals have descended from a common ancestors, the earlier fossil versions generally look more alike than the later ones. However, with these animals the reverse is true – earlier versions look less alike than the later ones. Male rabbits have features that make them unique among placental animals. Now, DNA studies suggest that rabbits are not related to rodents, but are closer to whales, cattle, cats, and dogs than to rodents. Rabbits turned out to be most closely related to humans - so, was Hugh Hefner right with his bunny-human association???[58] Just kidding! The assumed family relationship of aquatic birds is also being reshaped upon DNA. The National Science Foundation funded research that has discovered that “the genes of aquatic birds have revealed a family tree dramatically different from traditional relationship groupings based on the bird’s body structure.” The closest living relative of the flamingo, according to DNA, is the squat grebe, with short legs for diving. Their DNA is similar even though they have no outward resemblance.[59] Another question arose with the discovery of a “new species” of salamander in an isolated range of hills in southeastern Mexico. There is a soil-dwelling salamander that is found several hundred miles away that is outwardly identical to the one discovered in the hills – experts cannot tell them apart. However, their DNA is so different that researchers want to label them as separate species.[60] Back in 1996, following the completion of the DNA sequencing of yeast, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Center for Human Genome Research, announced that “The yeast genome is closer to the human genome than anything completely sequenced so far.”[61]
Finally, after all of the effort that has been expended in studying mitachondrial DNA to establish evolutionary links, Richard Puff (Duke University Medical Center) released a report in which he claimed that this whole method may be so flawed that it may have erroneously linked very different animals.[64] Thus, the “surprising” discoveries that accompany the switch from structure-based taxonomy to DNA-similarity taxonomy may turn out to be more foolishness confidently presented to a gullible public willing to believe whatever the evolutionary experts proclaim as “truth” (at least for now).
DNA & Typing Monkeys - Richard Dawkins is, perhaps, the leading
defender of Neo-Darwinian theory today. The essence of Neo-Darwinism is
that accidental changes during DNA copying can be
Could a roomful of monkeys randomly pecking at their typewriters eventually write a Shakespearean sonnet? This question has been used to challenge the idea that life arose by chance. The odds that a hundred monkeys typing away for a million years could accidentally produce such a work of art are vanishingly small. But if we impose some rules of evolution on this random process, as evolution does on random genetic variation, we can see how nature increases the chance of success - indeed, how it makes success inevitable.[65] This textbook goes on to add pre-programmed word-processors to keep the successful combinations of letters and discard the bad, sort out words, code sentences into the computer, and eventually produce poetry - interesting all of the “intelligent” guiding and sorting that they add to make this totally unguided/chance” process even plausible.
The issue of information and how it could have accumulated by some unguided naturalistic means is a major issue. Dr. Lee Spetner is a Jewish scientist and an expert in information and communication theory. In his book, Not By Chance: Shattering the Modern theory of Evolution (Brooklyn, NY: Judaica Press, 1997), Spetner argues that Neo-Darwinian theory is still an empty hope for one simple reason - mutations and natural selection cannot create the new information required for an "improved" lifeform. Since grand-scale evolution requires a massive increase in genetic information over time, then mutations must somehow supply it. What Spetner demonstrates is that mutations cannot do it, for they represent "losses" in information. He says that anyone who thinks that an accumulation of mutations can bring about macroevolution is "like the merchant who lost a little money on every sale but thought he could make it up on volume."[67] Bats I have been asked about “bat evolution,” as this is, apparently, a current “hot topic” among evolutionists. Just for fun, I went back to Zimmer’s companion book for the PBS video series on evolution and did some searching on the Internet to see what articles might be out there for this issue. What a letdown. Zimmer did little more than mention the word “bat” in sweeping statements assuming that everything had evolved, but offering no proof, evidence, or even a “just So” story for where bats came from in the first place. The closest thing I found to a discussion of “bat evolution” was on page 165, Bats evolved from shrewlike tree dwellers into hundreds of species . . .[68] A BBC Science News release early in 2005 stated, This warming is linked to an explosion in the diversity of other mammals, but little was known about bat evolution.[69] Conclusion Having studied the creation/evolution struggle for over 30 years, there are several things that continue to be characteristic of this discussion. First of all, evolutionists seem obsessed with using logical devices of persuasion to maintain control - “All real scientists believe in evolution”; “evolutionists are educated, rational, and only deal with evidence, while creationists are all uneducated and irrational Bible-thumpers that have no idea what evidence exists;” “evolution is science but everything else is religion and must be kept out of the secular public arena because of the Constitution.” Second, evolutionists have based a large part of their tactics on ignoring the distinction between variation from transformation. I think they do this because they want everyone to embrace their philosophical/religious viewpoint - materialism and naturalism (matter is the only reality and natural processes the only shaper of matter). Thus, they passionately believe in “Evolution” as the large-scale, materialistic process by which inanimate chemicals gradually transformed themselves into the first life and then diversified into all extinct and current lifeforms. On the other hand, the only real evidence they have is for “evolution” in the sense of adaptation and variation of existing types of life. So, they put forward examples of variation within existing kinds of life with the inference that, given enough time (and lots of time is the magical element that makes transformation plausible), such small changes could also accumulate and turn fish fins/flippers into arms/hands/fingers or wings. To make this proposition more palatable, they tend to falsely represent creationists as believing that God created all species at the beginning and that there has been no biological change at all over time, believing in a flat earth, etc. I don’t know of any creationist who rejects the evidence that viruses mutate, that insects can develop immunity to pesticides, or that bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics. However, (1) viruses mutate into a different VIRUS; (2) whether antibiotic-resistant or not bacteria remain bacteria, and (3) whether pesticide-resistant or not, fruit flies are still fruit flies!!!!!!!! Are we also supposed to believe that people who take pain medicine until it has little or no effect on them or who become allergic to some food or medicine have somehow “evolved” into some other kind of lifeform? This is the real issue - variation within a kind/type is NOT evidence for transformation into some other kind of lifeform. Evolutionists have used this “shell-game” for far too long - cite evidence of variation and then imply that if this same kind of “gradual change” went on over a long enough period of time (remember that evolutionists do not invoke the supernatural in “science” - instead they invoke “immense time” as their miracle-worker), then chemicals could gradually turn into people. What really takes place over a long period of time is that viruses may change in a number of ways, but they remain viruses. A lot of varieties of birds may appear in a particular geographical area, but they came from birds and remain birds.
Why do evolutionists have to resort to equivocation and misrepresentation to make their case? Essentially, it is because they are committed to a materialistic “transformation” scenario and the only kind of evidence they can come up with portrays variation. It was Greek philosophy from Plato and Aristotle (not the Bible) that argued for totally “fixed” species. Although, in a way Aristotle was also right to some degree, because the fossil and observational evidence indicates that the basic morphological structures do seem to be pretty stable and fixed, ever since the Cambrian Explosion. Only by massive commitment to a preconceived philosophical scenario and then faithful imagination do evolutionists see something like a coyote gradually turning into killer whales, big dinosaurs turning into birds, finch beak/size variations or developed chemical immunities as “evidence” for protozoa turning into fish, amphibians, reptiles, tree shrews, and people! “Natural selection” offers a credible argument when applied to minor variations within a basic body form and already present genetic potentials, but how can it credibly account for major changes and new structures? How and, logically “why” would a perfectly good arm/foreleg have ever developed into a wing, since an arm/leg developing into a wing would be an increasingly less useful leg, an unusable wing, and a severe disadvantage through most of its in-between stages? And where did the necessary new and improved genetic information come from? I remember when I used to believe in the large-scale evolutionary story and at times it would save me some social stress to still believe in it. The problem is that, in my 20’s, I did take a serious look at the evidence and logic behind that story and realized that I could no longer muster enough imagination and faith to do so! Notes [1] Paul B. Weisz, Elements of Biology, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), p. 4. [2] C. H. Waddington, The Nature of Life (New York: Anthenium, 1962), p. 98. [3] Olivia Judson “Evolution Is in the Air” New York Times (November 6, 2005), internet version. [4] Julian Huxley, Evolution in Action (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1953), p. 46. [5] Stephen Jay Gould, "The Return of the Hopeful Monsters," Natural History, Vol. LXXXVI, (June-July 1977), p. 28. [6] Philip E. Johnson, Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law & Education (Downers Grove,IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), pp. 71-72; Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Bethesda, Maryland: Adler & Adler, 1985), pp. 29-33. [7] Tim Appenzeller, “Darwin fit as ever: Evolution in action” U.S. News & World Report (January 24, 2000), p. 49. [8] Paul B. Weisz, Elements of Biology, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), p. 58. [9] H. G. Wells, The Outline of History, New and Revised Edition (Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing Company, 1931), p. 63. [10] Tim Berra, Evolution and the Myth of Creationism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), p. 22. [11] Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th edition, 1992; vol. 18, s.v. "Evolution, The Theory of," p. 861. [12] Biology - The Dynamics of Life (Westerville, OH: McGraw-Hill/Glencoe, 1998), p. 433. [13] Richard B. Goldschmidt, “An Introduction to a Popularized Symposium on Evolution,” Scientific Monthly, Vol. 77, October 1953, p. 184. [14] The Encyclopedia Britannica, (1956), vol. 8, p. 920. [15] Carl O. Dunbar, Historical Geology, (New York: John Wiley and sons, 1960), p. 47. 2nd edition. [16] A. J. Kelso, Physical Anthropology: An Introduction, 2nd Edition (New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1974), p. 124. [17] P. Grasse, Evolution of Living Organisms (New York: Academic Press, 1977), p. 4. [18] Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History 86 No. 5 (May 1977), pp. 12,14,16. [19] Stephen Jay Gould, "The Return of Hopeful Monsters," Natural History, Vol. LXXXVI (June-July 1977), p. 24. [20] Jeffrey S. Levinton, “The Big Bang of Animal Evolution” Scientific American (November 1992), p. 84. [21] J. Madeline Nash, “When Life Exploded,” Time Magazine (December 4, 1995), pp. 66-74 [22] Etkin, Devlin, and Bouffard, A Biology of Human Concern, p. 105. [23] Gareth V. Nelson, "Origin and Diversification of Teleostean Fishes," Annals (New York Academy of Sciences, 1971), p. 27. [24] Stephen Jay Gould, “Evolutions Erratic Pace,” Natural History 86, No. 5 (May 1977): p. 14. [25] S. R. Scadding, "Do 'Vestigial Organs' Provide Evidence for Evolution?" Evolutionary Theory 5 (May 1981), p. 173. [26] Stephen Jay Gould, “Return of the Hopeful Monsters” Natural History LXXXVI (June-July 1977), pp. 22,24,28,30. [27] Robert E. Ricklets, "Paleontologists Confronting Macroevolution," Science, Vol. 199 (6 January 1978), p. 59. [28] Jeffrey Schwartz, Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species. See also: Scientific American, September 1999, p. 90. [29] J. Madeleine Nash, “How Did Life Begin” Time (11 October, 1993), pp. 68-74. [30] letter to the editor from Dan Hughes, Time (1 November 1993), p. 9. [31] the notion of life arising from the right combination of chemicals in a “warm little pond” somewhere was little more than a comment in a footnote of a letter that Charles Darwin wrote to J. D. Hooker, dated March 29, 1863. [32] J. Madeleine Nash, “How Did Life Begin” Time (11 October 1993), p. 71. [33] Ariel A. Roth, Origins: Linking Science and Scripture (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Publishing, 1998), p. 67 [34] Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, p. x. [35] Paul B. Weisz, Elements of Biology, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), p. 11. [36] Paul B. Weisz, Elements of Biology, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), p. 12. [37] Paul B. Weisz, Elements of Biology, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), p. 42. [38] Paul B. Weisz, Elements of Biology, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), p. 43. [39] A. J. Kelso & Wenda Travathan, Physical Anthropology, 3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), p. 143. [40] Tim M. Berra, Evolution and the Myth of Evolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), p. 75. [41] “Just So” stories come from Rudyard Kiplings collection of tales by which things are explained to children by means of fictional, imaginative stories that provide a plausible explanation for the observed current realities. [42] Will Durant, The Story of Civilization (New York: MJF Books, 1965), vol. IX, Age of Voltaire, p. 619. [43] Kelso & Trevathan, p. 145. |
Acquired Adaptation - Both Lamarck and Darwin theorized that
traits developed by parents could be inherited by their offspring. This
"use/disuse" scenario sounds logical, especially for explaining
something like the giraffe's neck. As short-necked giraffes stretched
higher and higher for leaves, they passed on more neck "pangenes" (and
slightly longer necks) to their offspring. With time, the necks slowly
got longer and longer and were better able to survive and mate so
natural selection favored giraffes with longer necks and eliminated
those with shorter ones. 
Since Darwin’s time, a
number of examples for this mechanism of biological change have been put
forward.
Darwin’s Finches -
While on his tour with the Beagle, Darwin noticed finches in the
Galapagos Islands with a variety of beak shapes (left). While he did
not make as much of this as did others later, the idea is that this
variation in finch beaks demonstrates that they are slowly evolving,
possible into something else.
Fruit flies - Experiments were done on fruit flies in which they
were exposed to x-rays and a number of variations occurred - things like
growing a second set of wings. More recent research has found that some
fruit flies have become immune to insecticide, and that other fruit
flies have developed longer wings in different climates (right). 
Sadly, the whole notion of embryonic recapitulation is as faulty as Haeckel’s drawings. Haeckel was so devoted to materialism, naturalism,
and Darwinism that he intentionally falsified his artwork to support the
belief – he removed dissimilar structures and changed the scale of some
drawings so as to make them look more similar. His fraudulent drawings
were detected the same year (1874) by another embryologist, personally
admitted by Haeckel in a German science journal (Jan. 9, 1909), the
notion of embryonic recapitulation was logically demolished by Ludwig
von Bertalanffyn (1933), admitted as probably being nonsense by John
Tyler Bonner of Princeton University (1961), discredited by Stephen Jay
Gould (1980), and the drawings were clearly refuted with photographic
evidence by Dr. Michael Richardson (1997 - left). However, Haeckel’s
embryo drawings and the idea of human embryos passing through a
fish/gill slit stage continues to appear in some biology textbooks and
science classes right up to the present time - the following quotation
came from a public school textbook published in 1998,
The term "homology"
refers to parts of different kinds of life that are corresponding in
type of structure. A classical “proof” for evolution is presented with
artwork that demonstrates comparative skeletal systems, such as arms and
hands (right). The similarity is easy to see and the implication is
made that similarity in structure indicates common ancestry. The
reasoning is that similar structures must indicate ancestral
relationship, with a particular gene common to all creatures that
possess similar structures.
First problem - if all of
these structures are similar because of “common ancestry,” then I would
expect that a common gene would be responsible in each similar
structure. However, that is not the case. Sometimes very similar
structures arise from very different genes or combinations of genes and
that raises a question in my mind about the “common ancestor”
explanation.
The science of
classification, taxonomy, is often cited as evidence for evolutionary
theory. Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) established the
modern classification system for plants and animals, although it was his
intention to show that the "created types" could be rationally grouped
in a hierarchical pattern reflecting themes and variations in God's
mind. On the basis of body types and comparison of body parts, a system
of organization was produced which resembles a tree. In the hands of
evolutionists, the organization of body types and parts is placed on an
evolutionary basis, with common ancestry leading upward to various
evolutionary subdivisions in the upper branches. Linneaus emphasized
the actual groups of creatures that existed, while evolutionists
emphasize the non-existent transitional forms they believe developed
between them.
What is often missed is
the fact that the only thing really connecting the "lower" forms and
those existing in the present is a lot of ink, because fossil evidence
for the transitional forms that allegedly connect the "lower" and
"higher" forms is, generally, non-existent. The taxonomic tree is a
combination of real data and an imaginary picture of life arising and
differentiating from primordial simple life. However, the trunk and
branches are evolutionary belief, not the result of fossil evidences.
When the artistic trunk and limb links, representing evolutionary
"belief" that these groups all developed from primordial protozoa, are
removed, all you really have are a number of separate "kinds" of
creatures out at the ends of the branches, just as Genesis 1 indicates.
This is what Stephen Jay. Gould was referring to,
Stanley Miller's 1953
"spark chamber" experiment (right) demonstrated that some of the basic
building blocks of life (amino acids, sugars, and nitrogen bases) could
be produced from a mixture of water vapor, methane, ammonia, and
hydrogen if radiant or electrical energy was applied. However, oxygen
was lethal to these biomonomers and Miller had to trap and remove the
desired products immediately or the very conditions in which they were
produced would quickly destroy them! While it is, necessarily, assumed
that no oxygen was present in the primitive atmosphere, the experiment
showed that the very environment that was to have produced these
building blocks was also hostile and lethal to them.
The rock, supposedly,
traveled in space for millions of years, crashed into Antarctic Ice
13,000 years ago, and was discovered in 1984. Deep within the rock
(right) are what was claimed to be “the chemical and fossil remains of
microscopic organisms that lived on Mars 3.6 billion years ago.” Only
time and critical investigation could determine the final scientific
view of this rock. However, a similar find and announcement back in
1961 turned out to be a case of optimistic overstatement.
The current fascination
with DNA amongst evolutionists is rooted in their expectation that DNA
sequences will reveal evolutionary relationships. In other words, the
more similar the sequences, the closer the evolutionary relationship is
assumed to be. Accordingly, the whole structure of taxonomy (discussed
above) is in the process of being shifted to follow DNA rather than
structural similarities that were originally used to classify and group
lifeforms.
In 2001, 95% of mouse DNA
was mapped out and researchers found that 90% of the 4,000 genes in a
mouse are also present in humans. They expected to find 85-90%
similarities in gene sequences, with similarities between the two
ranging between 60-90%.
inherited and, if a
large number of these accumulate, theoretically, they could turn a
microbe into a microbiologist. Dawkins is so bold as to regard any who don't buy his "Blind Watchmaker" explanation as being intellectually
retarded or insane. To account for a gradual evolutionary build-up of
DNA material and information, Dawkins picked up the “typing monkeys”
analogy (which goes back to the early 1900’s) and encouraged the notion
that enough monkeys typing randomly for a long enough period could
eventually reproduce a Shakespearian sonnet. How could such a feat be
accomplished? Evolutionists defend the notion by claiming that “nature”
(a semi-mystical personified guide for evolutionary progress) selects
and collects the good combinations and eliminates the bad ones. Here is
how a 2001 textbook (left) for public schools handled the problem of
progressive stages of increasing complexity in the origin of life,
Ok, that’s the evolutionary fairy tale for those already disposed to
believe such nonsense. Now for the hard evidence. What happened when
monkeys actually were turned loose with a computer? Well this was tried
in 2003 as a computer was left in the monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo
in southwest England. Six Sulawesi crested macaques then went to work.
One of the first things that happened was the lead male got a stone and
started bashing it. They also seemed to really enjoy defecating and
urinating on the keyboard. Eventually, the monkeys produced five pages
of text, mostly using the letter “S” with a few other letters creeping
in - A, J, L and M.