Early Earth Enigmas (Part 5)

 “Irreducible complexity.”

All organisms, from cells to humans, are “irreducibly complex” – all their basic components have to be in place before they can function. Thus, all species, extinct or extant, appear fully developed. There is no known partially-developed species.

Evolution, though, is believed to work through small, gradual steps, keeping new traits that it finds functional. Will it keep in reserve anything that does not work, even if potentially useful? There are no instances of half-developed appendages or organs in any fossilized or living organism – no budding eyes that could not see or partial wings that could not fly.

Blood clotting. Vital to healing wounds, blood-clotting in animals and man involves 20–30 complex chemical steps. Omission of one step, inclusion of an abnormal step, or alteration of the timing of a step will prevent blood from clotting and lead to death. If the first few of the many blood clotting factors were not immediately useful, the body would not have kept them, unaware that the rest of the factors would also form. How did such a complex, yet precise, process fully develop?

Charles Darwin had confessed in his famous book: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”⁶⁷

The eye. As a human embryo develops in its mother’s womb, some one million optic nerves start to grow from the back of each eye, simultaneous with a corresponding one million nerves from the brain. Each of the millions of nerves from both sides has to make its way through the tissues in between and connect to its counterpart – much like two work teams digging a tunnel from opposite sides of a mountain must meet precisely at the center according to the engineer’s plan.

Most animals, invertebrates as well as vertebrates, have eyes. Even the sea wasp, a jellyfish, has eyes. Among of the strangest are multiple-lensed, compound eyes found in fossilized worms!⁶⁸

Did the eye evolve? Darwin admitted the failure of his theory to explain the development of the eye. “To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”⁶⁹

Solomon understood the matter quite well. “The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the LORD hath made even both of them” (Prov 20:12).

In the sixth edition of his book, Darwin junked the idea of natural selection or “survival of the fittest” as the driving force behind the theory of evolution: “Natural selection is incompetent to account for the incipient stages of useful structures,” he said.⁷⁰

 

Genetic pre-programming.

How does evolution explain metamorphosis -- the form-changing stages in the life cycles of insects, amphibians, and crustaceans? Most of them hatch from eggs as larvae. Were they once all larvae before they evolved into more advanced forms? One may say larvae, just like some worms, reproduced sexually in the distant past. But there is no trace of reproductive organs in any type of larva. And, if a larva could not reproduce, how could it have evolved?

Some insect larvae pass through a cocoon stage when their brains, nerves, muscles, eyes, and other organs dissolve into goo. Does it mean some larvae evolved into goo before becoming, say, butterflies? How did they survive as goo for thousands or even millions of years?

Metamorphosis exemplifies genetic pre-programming. Similarly, ants and termites have the ability to grow wings in order to migrate when their colonies become overpopulated or destroyed. The insects use their wings for just one short flight, before shedding them to seek mates.⁷¹ Obviously, these are not cases of biological evolution.

 

The Cambrian “explosion.”

For nearly 3 billion years since life first appeared on earth, organisms remained microscopic in size: bacteria, protozoan, Ediacaran spheres and discs without mouths and appendages.⁷² Then, suddenly: the Cambrian “explosion.” Time magazine’s cover story in its Dec. 4, 1995, issue tells us in graphic terms: “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”⁷³

All anatomical designs. In a quantum leap, life advanced from microbial, amorphous organisms to complex multi-cellular life forms: rotifers, annelids (worms), arthropods, fish – equipped with jointed, food-gathering appendages, intestines, notochords, gills, eyes – all the anatomical designs found in the animal phyla existing today. Oddly, no new phylum has appeared since the Cambrian Explosion. Succeeding developments have been confined to variations within each phylum.⁷⁴

In fact, says Paul Chien, Biology Dept. Chair of the University of San Francisco, the number of phyla has even decreased! “A simple way of putting it is that currently we have about 38 phyla of different groups of animals, but the total number of phyla discovered during that period of time (Cambrian) adds up to over 50 phyla. That means more phyla in the very, very beginning, where we found the first fossils, than exist now… The theory of evolution implies that things get more complex and get more and more diverse from one single origin. But the whole thing turns out to be reversed -- we have more diverse groups in the very beginning, and in fact more and more of them die off over time, and we have less and less now.”⁷⁵

He adds: “Also, the animal explosion caught people’s attention when the Chinese confirmed they found a genus now called Yunnanzoon that was present in the very beginning. This genus is considered a chordate, and the phylum Chordata includes fish, mammals and man. An evolutionist would say the ancestor of humans was present then. Looked at more objectively, you could say the most complex animal group, the chordates, were represented at the beginning, and they did not go through a slow gradual evolution to become a chordate.”⁷⁶

No ancestors. For new life forms to appear, it would have taken hundreds of millions of years for the thousands of mutations needed to alter existing genes. Yet, the fossil record indicates that the Cambrian Explosion transpired in 5 million years or less.⁷⁷ Further, there is no evidence of mutational evolution within the 5-million-year span of the Cambrian explosion.^78,79 Colin Patterson (Evolution, 1978) avers: "Most of the major groups of animals (phyla) appear fully fledged in the early Cambrian rocks and we know of no fossil forms linking them."⁸⁰

Paleontologist Alfred S. Romer corroborates that: “Below this (Cambrian period), there are vast thicknesses of sediments in which the progenitors of the Cambrian forms would be expected. But we do not find them; these older beds are almost barren of evidence of life, and the general picture could reasonably be said to be consistent with the idea of a special creation at the beginning of Cambrian times.”⁸¹

Surprisingly, even staunch evolutionist Richard Dawkins seems to agree: “If progressive evolution, from simple to complex is correct, the ancestors of these full-blown creatures in the Cambrian should be found; but they have not been found and scientists admit there is little prospect of their ever being found. On the basis of the facts alone, on the basis of what is actually found in the earth, the theory of a sudden creative act in which the major forms of life were established fits best.”⁸²

Darwin had acknowledged the possibility of his theory’s demise: “If numerous species… have really started into life at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of evolution.”⁸³ 

Sudden entry and exit. Many scientists have arrived at that conclusion. David M. Raup (Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, January 1979): “Species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record.”⁸⁴ Steven M. Stanley (The New Evolutionary Timetable, 1981): “The record now reveals that species typically survive for a hundred thousand generations, or even a million or more, without evolving very much… After their origins, most species undergo little evolution before becoming extinct.”⁸⁵ Harvard University paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould (“Evolution’s Erratic Pace,” Natural History, May 1977): “The history of most fossils includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: (1) Stasis. Most species… appear in the fossil record looking pretty much the same as when they disappear… (2) Sudden appearance. 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’.”⁸⁶

George Sim Johnston (“An Evening with Darwin in New York,” Crisis, April 2006) sums it all up: “This is the verdict of modern paleontology: The record does not show gradual, Darwinian evolution. Otto Schindewolf, perhaps the leading paleontologist of the 20^th century, wrote that the fossils ‘directly contradict’ Darwin.”⁸⁷

Darwin confessed to fellow-scientists in his letters: “It (the theory of evolution) is a mere rage of a hypothesis with as many flaws and holes as sound parts…” He considered the possibility that, “I… have devoted my life to a fantasy.”⁸⁸

 

Unscientific theory.

C.F. Morgan (“Evolution Not Based on Fact,” 1998) points out that “true science is limited to observable phenomena. To be truly scientific, something must be observable, documentable, repeatable, experimentally verifiable, and testable, among other things. Conversely, evolution is a philosophical belief about the past based upon subjective interpretations and opinions of scientific data which exists in the present… Evolution is not a fact. It is not even a good theory. It has never been observed, and there is no direct evidence that it has ever occurred. It is no more than a religious or philosophical belief based upon choice, not science.”⁸⁹

Mathematician I.L. Cohen (Darwin Was Wrong: A Study in Probabilities, 1984) confirms that “every single concept advanced by the theory of evolution (and amended thereafter) is imaginary as it is not supported by the scientifically established facts of microbiology, fossils, and mathematical probability concepts. Darwin was wrong… The theory of evolution may be the worst mistake in science.”⁹⁰

Arthur L. Bruce (“Evolution Is a Creation Myth,” 1998) comments: “Actually, evolution is not even a scientific theory because it cannot be tested by the scientific method. It is an unscientific hypothesis or speculation about origins that contradicts the basic laws and facts of science. It is the ‘creation myth’ upon which the religion of secular humanism is founded. Its proper place for study in the public schools is not the science classroom but the social studies or humanities classroom where it should be examined in comparison with the classical myths and other religions of the world.”⁹¹ (In the late 1990s the states of Alabama, Arizona, and New Mexico declared that the subject of evolution can only be taught as one theory of origins and not as fact.)

Austin H. Clark (“Animal Evolution,” Quarterly Review of Biology, December 1928) concedes: “Thus so far as concerns the major groups of animals, the creationists seem to have the better of the argument. There is not the slightest evidence that any one of the major groups arose from any other. Each is a special animal complex related, more or less closely, to all the rest, and appearing, therefore, as a special and distinct creation.”⁹²

Sir Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe (Evolution from Space: A Theory of Cosmic Creationism, 1981) conclude: “The speculations of The Origin of Species turned out to be wrong… It is ironic that the scientific facts throw Darwin out…”⁹³

____________________

⁶⁷Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1859, p. 179

⁶⁸Donald G. Mikulic et al., “A Silurian Soft-Bodied Biota,” Science, 10 May 1985, pp. 715–717

⁶⁹Darwin, op. cit., pp. 146,175

⁷⁰Op. cit., Sixth Edition, The Modern Library, 1872, p. 66

⁷¹Termite, World Book 2005 (Deluxe)

⁷²Schroeder, op. cit. p. 94

⁷³Madeline Nash, “When Life Exploded,” Time, Dec. 4, 1995, p. 68

⁷⁴Schroeder, op. cit. pp. 92-93

⁷⁵Paul Chien, “Explosion of Life,” 30 June 1997 Interview, origins.org/articles/chien_explosionoflife.html, p. 2

⁷⁶Op. cit., p. 3

⁷⁷S. Bowring et al., “Calibrating Rates of Early Cambrian Evolution,” Science, 1993; cited by Schroeder, op. cit., pp. 116-117

⁷⁸R. Gore, “The Cambrian Explosion of Life,” National Geographic, October 1993

⁷⁹R. Kerr, “Evolution’s Big Bang Gets Even More Explosive,” Science, 1993

⁸⁰Colin Patterson, Evolution, 1978, p. 133

⁸¹Alfred S. Romer, “Darwin and the Fossil Record,” Natural History, October 1959, p. 466

⁸²Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 1976, p. 14

⁸³Charles Darwin, op. cit., 1902 edition, Part Two, p. 54

⁸⁴David M. Raup, “Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology,” Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, January 1979, p. 23

⁸⁵Steven M. Stanley, The New Evolutionary Timetable, 1981, p. xv

⁸⁶Stephen J. Gould, “Evolution’s Erratic Pace,” Natural History, May 1977, pp. 13-14

⁸⁷George Sim Johnston, “An Evening with Darwin in New York,” Crisis, April 2006, Internet

⁸⁸Adrian Desmond and J. Moore, Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist, 1991, pp. 475-477

⁸⁹C.F. (Frank) Morgan, “Evolution Not Based on Fact,” May 4, 1998, “Letters to the Editor,” National Institute for Inventors tract

⁹⁰I.L. Cohen, Darwin Was Wrong: A Study in Probabilities, 1984, p. 209-210

⁹¹Arthur L. Bruce, “Evolution Is a Creation Myth,” May 23, 1998, “Letters to the Editor,” National Institute for Inventors tract

⁹²Austin H. Clark, “Animal Evolution,” Quarterly Review of Biology, December 1928, p. 539

⁹³Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space: A Theory of Cosmic Creationism, 1981, pp. 96–97

 (Excerpted from Chapter 5, Early Earth Enigmas, THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD: A Primer on the Secrets of Heaven and Earth by M.M. Tauson, Amazon.com)