Early Earth Enigmas (Part 7)

Alternative theories

The absence in the fossil record of transitional forms that would prove the Theory of Evolution has led many frustrated evolutionists to consider alternative theories for the development of life forms on Earth.

 

Theistic Evolution.

In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, many Catholics and Protestants accepted Theistic Evolution, the belief that the process of biological evolution was divinely supervised. Theistic evolutionists believe that God created the first cell, then afterward allowed evolution to proceed, intervening only occasionally. He waited for primitive man to evolve into the first perfect human being before endowing him with a soul. The hybrid doctrine is a combination of divine creation and Darwinian evolution.

Botanist Asa Gray (d. 1888), one of Darwin's leading American disciples, embraced a variant of the concept. He argued that, only in special cases like those of human beings and complex organs such as the eye, did God carry out direct special creation.

Geologist Arnold Guyot, a staunch anti-Darwinist, advocated at least three interventions by the Creator: first, when He created matter; second, when He created life; and, third, when He created man.¹⁰²

 

Punctuated Equilibrium.

In an attempt to explain the absence of transitional forms, Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, American Museum of Natural History curator, jointly proposed the theory of Punctuated Equilibrium in several articles in scientific publications (Mammals in Paleontology, 1972; Nature, 1993; Paleontology, 2007).^103,104,105 Newsweek magazine reported on March 29, 1982: “In 1972 Gould and Niles Eldredge collaborated on a paper intended… to resolve a professional embarrassment for paleontologists: their inability to find the fossils of transitional forms between species, the so-called ‘missing links’.” Their concept: “Instead of changing gradually as one generation shades into the next, evolution as Gould sees it, proceeds in discrete leaps. According to the theory of punctuated equilibrium there are no transitional forms between species, and thus no missing links!”¹⁰⁶ 

Gould and Eldredge speculate that speciation (the change from an old species to a new one) usually occurs in small, isolated, peripheral groups rather than in the main populations of species, making their fossilized remains harder to find. Fossils of the general population are usually found, which creates the impression of the unchanging nature or stasis of most species over millions of years.¹⁰⁷

Panspermia (spores from space).

Sir Fred Hoyle mused that “life could not have originated here on the Earth. Nor does it look as though biological evolution can be explained from within an earth-bound theory of life.”¹⁰⁸ Earlier, in 1908, Svante Arrhenius theorized that spores could have drifted to Earth from other star systems. These gave rise to the first living cells that later evolved into more complex organisms.¹⁰⁹

Nobel laureate Francis Crick similarly proposed that “life on earth may have sprung from tiny organisms from a distant planet, sent here by space ship as part of a deliberate act of seeding”¹¹⁰ Crick gave the old theory, known as “panspermia” (from Greek pan, “of all,” and sperma, “seed”), a new twist: “directed panspermia.” Some people find this plausible. J. Horgan wrote in the Scientific American (February 1992): “Given the weaknesses of all theories of terrestrial genesis (the origin of life on Earth), directed panspermia (the deliberate planting of life on Earth) should still be considered a serious possibility.”¹¹¹

Panspermia, though, fails to answer the question of life’s origin. It merely takes the problem of creation out to space. Just how life arose on a planet many light years away is not explained.

 

Progressive Creation

In the 1930s Russell L. Mixter, a Wheaton College graduate, formed the concept that God created the universe and the various forms of life on earth gradually, over millions and billions of years. Creation was accomplished in progressive steps -- hence the name of the doctrine:  Progressive Creationism. In 1954 theologian Bernard Ramm wrote The Christian View of Science and Scripture, popularizing the idea which no longer demanded a young Earth and the recent creation of man.¹¹²

Progressive Creationism is thus a form of Old Earth creationism, accepting geological and cosmological estimates for the age of the Earth and the universe, while teaching that the successive species of plants and animals in the fossil record were the products of divine creation, not Darwinian evolution. As earlier organisms died off and became extinct, God created new species to replace them.

Most of God’s replacements were typically improved models. Each time, the basic forms or "templates" of previously existing life are used -- with just a few minor adjustments. For instance, the DNA of a gorilla has been found to be 97.8% similar to a man’s; the chimpanzee’s DNA resembles that of a human being by 98.2%.

The leading proponents of Progressive Creationism are Reasons To Believe, organized by astronomer Hugh Ross, and Answers in Creation, another organization set up in 2003 to publish rebuttals to Young Earth Creationists’ scientific claims, which are regarded as pseudoscience.¹¹³

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¹⁰²Theistic Evolution, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2004

¹⁰³“Punctuated Equilibria: An Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism,” Mammals in Paleontology, 1972, pp. 82-115

¹⁰⁴“Punctuated Equilibrium Comes of Age,” Nature 366, 1993, pp. 223-227

¹⁰⁵“Punctuated Equilibria: The Tempo and Mode of Evolution Reconsidered,” Paleontology, 2007, pp. 115-151

¹⁰⁶Enigmas of Evolution,” Newsweek, March 29, 1982, p. 39

¹⁰⁷Evolution, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2004

¹⁰⁸Fred Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe, 1983, p. 242

¹⁰⁹Cited by Gary Stearman, “Rael, Inc., “Cloning for Life,” Prophecy in the News, February 2003, p. 11

¹¹⁰Francis Crick, “Life Itself – Its Origin and Nature,” Futura, 1982; quoted by Mark Eastman and Chuck Missler, The Creator Beyond Time and Space, 1996, p. 62

¹¹¹J. Horgan, “Profile: Francis H.C. Crick,” Scientific American, February 1992; quoted by Schroeder, op. cit., p. 90

¹¹²Old Earth Creationism, Wikipedia, Internet

¹¹³Progressive Creationism, Wikipedia, Internet

 

(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)

 

Early Earth Enigmas (Part 6)

Divinely designed DNA?

When the cell of a bacterium divides, it becomes two bacteria, not two amoebae. Apple trees bear apples, not oranges. A smooth-coated Siamese cat cannot give birth to thick-furred Persian kittens, although they belong to the same feline family. All living species, as well as varieties within them, stay the same from one generation to the next.

The Creator had apparently intended it to be that way from the very beginning: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so” (Gen 1:24).

Physically responsible for this biological order is a chemical molecule called deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which forms part of threadlike chromosomes inside all living cells (except red blood cells and some viruses). In the form of two intertwined chains in a double helix (spiral), like a twisted ladder, each DNA comprises thousands of encoded genes that govern heredity, the transmission of physical characteristics from parent to offspring.

 

“Chicken or egg” paradox.

Proteins depend on DNA for their formation. Yet, DNA cannot form without pre-existing protein. Which came first?

Chemistry lecturer John C. Walton further lamented: “The origin of the genetic code presents formidable unsolved problems. The coded information in the nucleotide sequence is meaningless without the translation machinery, but the specification for this machinery is itself coded in the DNA. Thus without the machinery the information is meaningless, but without the coded information the machinery cannot be produced! This presents a paradox of the ‘chicken and egg’ variety, and attempts to solve it have so far been sterile.”⁹⁴

 

Stored genetic information.

DNA is stored information written in a genetic language with a four-letter (nucleotide) alphabet and grammatical rules, telling the cells how to function and reproduce. Despite having only four letters, through their various combinations DNA is able to maintain the distinctions not only among all species, but also between individuals of each species. The language components in the human gene are identical to that of other organisms, say, a snail. Only the sequence is different.⁹⁵

One of the tiniest one-celled organisms is the bacterium R. coli. Scientists estimate it has about 2,000 genes, with some 1,000 enzymes each. Every enzyme contains roughly one billion nucleotides or letters of the chemical alphabet, comparable to bytes in computer language.

Physicist Jonathan Sarfati reckons that the “amount of information that could be stored in a pinhead’s volume of DNA is equivalent to a pile of paperback books 500 times as high as the distance from Earth to the moon, each with a different, yet specific content. Putting it another way, while we think that our new 40 gigabyte hard drives are advanced technology, a pinhead of DNA could hold 100 million times more information.”⁹⁶

 

Information from intelligence.

Information is nonmaterial and, therefore, could not have originated from matter. Information can only come from intelligence. Co-authors L. Lester and R. Bohlin tell us: “Intelligence is a necessity in the origin of any informational code, including the genetic code…”⁹⁷ The vast amounts of information in the DNA can only have come from an intelligent source.

1962 Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA structure, had said that the more he studied the DNA double-helix, the more he became convinced that it could not have evolved by chance. In his book Life Itself, he wrote: “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that, in some sense, the origins of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle.”⁹⁸

On December 16, 2010, the History Channel aired interviews with scientists who admitted that evolution of the DNA molecule by chance or accident is totally impossible.⁹⁹

Designed on purpose. Biochemist Michael Behe of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania (Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, 1996) construes that “the straightforward conclusion is that many biochemical systems were designed. They were designed not by the laws of nature, not by chance and necessity; rather they were planned. The designer knew what the systems would look like when they were completed, then took steps to bring the systems about… Life on earth at its most fundamental level, in its most critical components, is the product of intelligent design.”¹⁰⁰

Natural processes, such as mutation, cannot alter the DNA. I.L. Cohen says that “any physical change of any size, shape or form is strictly the result of purposeful alignment of billions of nucleotides (in the DNA). Nature or species do not have the capacity to rearrange them nor to add to them… The only way we know for a DNA to be altered is through a meaningful intervention from an outside source of intelligence – one who knows what it is doing, such as our genetic engineers are now performing in the laboratories…”¹⁰¹

Every living cell (except a few highly specialized ones) carries in its DNA all the information needed reproduce a new, identical organism. To clone an entire human being, the scientist needs just one cell.

 ____________________

 

⁹⁴John C. Walton, “Organization and the Origin of Life,” Origins, 1977, pp. 30–31

⁹⁵Dawkins, op. cit., Oxford University Press 30^th Anniversary Edition, 2006, p. 2

⁹⁶Jonathan Sarfati, DNA: Marvelous Messages or Mostly Mess?, March 2003, Internet

⁹⁷L. Lester and R. Bohlin, The Natural Limits to Biological Change, 1989, p. 157

⁹⁸Francis Crick, Life Itself, p. 88; quoted by Gary Stearman, “Rael, Inc., “Cloning for Life,” Prophecy in the News, February 2003, p. 12

⁹⁹Jan Marcussen, Newsletter, Mid-January Y2K+11, p. 2

¹⁰⁰Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, 1996, p. 193

¹⁰¹Cohen, loc. cit.

 

(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)

 

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

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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)

 

Early Earth Enigmas (Part 4)

Problems with evolution

There were a few gaps in the “evolutionary tree” when Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. Believers in the theory expected these gaps to be filled as fossil finds increased.

We read in the Newsweek magazine issue of March 29, 1982: “Darwin, and most of those who followed him, believed that the work of evolution was slow, gradual and continuous and that a complete lineage of ancestors, shading imperceptibly one into the next, could in theory be reconstructed for all living animals… But a century of digging since then has only made their absence more glaring.”⁵¹

 

Evolutionary gaps.

David B. Kitts of the School of Geology and Geophysics, University of Oklahoma, said in the September 1974 issue of the journal Evolution: “Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of ‘seeing’ evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists the most notorious of which is the presence of ‘gaps’ in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them.”⁵²

Norman D. Newell, former Curator of Historical Geology at the American Museum of Natural History, wrote in Adventures in Earth History (1970) that “the gaps which separate the highest categories may never be bridged in the fossil record. Many of the discontinuities tend to be more and more emphasized with increased collecting.”⁵³

In Darwin’s time, all living things fell under two kingdoms: plant and animal. As science progressed and scientists recognized finer distinctions between organisms, the number of kingdoms rose to the five that we have today: Prokaryotae, Protista, Fungi, Plantae, and Animalia. As the groupings increased, the “missing links” multiplied.

 

No transitional forms.

Many one-celled life forms exist, but there are no known forms of life with 2, 3, 4, or 5 cells. Multi-celled organisms with 6–20 cells are parasites that depend on complex animals as hosts to perform functions such as respiration and digestion for them. If evolution is true, there should be transitional forms with 2–5 cells even as fossils.

Plants. Some 375,000 species of plants exist on earth today, and most have not changed from the way they first appeared as fossils. Geneticist Jerry Bergman notes in the Technical Journal (Internet): “A major problem for Neo-Darwinism is the complete lack of evidence for plant evolution in the fossil record. As a whole, the fossil evidence of prehistoric plants is actually very good, yet no convincing transitional forms have been discovered in the abundant fossil record.”⁵⁴

If plants evolved, nonvascular plants should have preceded vascular plants (with sap-carrying channels). However, there are no fossilized nonvascular plants in the rock layers formed before the earliest vascular plants appeared. Further, no traces of stages leading to the development of seeds and fruits have been found. Darwin wrote to his friend, botanist Joseph Hooker, that the sudden appearance of flowering plants in the fossil record was an “abominable mystery.”⁵⁵ 

Arthropods. Of creatures with jointed legs, the U.S. government handbook Insects states: “There is, however, no fossil evidence bearing on the question of insect origin; the oldest insects known show no transition to other arthropods”⁵⁶ like spiders, scorpions, centipedes, crustaceans, etc.

Vertebrates. A backbone distinguishes the fish, the first vertebrate, from invertebrates. For the fish to evolve into an amphibian, it had to develop a pelvic bone for legs to be attached to; but no fossil fish with an emergent pelvis has ever been found, not even the coelacanth. The fish has a heart with two chambers, an amphibian heart has three. The lungfish, which has gills plus a swim bladder it uses for breathing out of water, is often said to be the link between fish and amphibians. But the skull is entirely different. David Attenborough (Life on Earth, 1979) says that “the bones of their skulls are so different from those of the first fossil amphibians that one cannot be derived from the other.”⁵⁷ Apparently, neither the lungfish nor the coelacanth evolved into amphibians.

Richard Milton (Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, 1997) notes: “Although each of these classes (fishes, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and primates) is well represented in the fossil record, as of yet no one has discovered a fossil creature that is indisputably transitional between one species and another species. Not a single undisputed ‘missing link’ has been found in all the exposed rocks of the Earth’s crust despite the most careful and extensive searches.”⁵⁸

A “missing link”? Just a second. Have we not earlier seen the archaeopteryx, which looks like the link between reptiles and birds?

Some scientists believe birds evolved from theropods (dinosaurs that walked on hind legs). However, theropods had tiny “arms,” compared to the large wings of early birds. Moreover, their “hands” differed. Ann C. Burke and Alan Feduccia tell us in Science magazine (October 24, 1997): “Theropods have ‘fingers’ I, II, and III (having lost the ‘ring finger’ and little finger), while birds have fingers II, III, and IV.”⁵⁹ In the same issue, Richard Hinchliffe notes that “most theropod dinosaurs and in particular the birdlike dromaeosaurs are all very much later in the fossil record than Archaeopteryx (the supposed first bird).”⁶⁰ In a subsequent issue (November 14, 1997), John Ruben et. al. argue that “a transition from a crocodilian to a bird lung would be impossible, because the transitional animal would have a life-threatening hernia or hole in its diaphragm.”⁶¹

While the archaeopteryx appears like half-reptile and half-bird, no fossil remains look like an intermediate between a reptile and the archaeopteryx, or between the archaeopteryx and a true bird. W.E. Swinton (“The Origin of Birds,” Biology and Comparative Physiology of Birds, 1960) concluded: “The origin of birds is largely a matter of deduction. There is no fossil evidence of the stages through which the remarkable change from reptile to bird was achieved.”⁶²  

Hybrids? There are other creatures that look like crosses between species, but are not. Whales, porpoises, dolphins, and manatees live in the water and look like fish, but they are mammals that suckle their young. Of course, the most enigmatic hybrid-looking animal is the platypus. It has a bill like a duck, feeds underwater like a fish, and lays eggs like a bird or reptile, but is actually a mammal that produces milk for its offspring. The only member of the Ornithorhynchidae (“bird-snout”) family, the platypus has neither “evolutionary” ancestors nor descendants even vaguely resembling it.

Charles Darwin had agonized: “Why, if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms?... Why do we not find them imbedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?⁶³

And why, if evolution is true, does it seem to have stopped?

 

Vestigial organs?

Several seemingly useless parts of the human body, presumed to be evolutionary “leftovers,” are cited as proofs for the theory of evolution. Are they? Here are some of the best known.

Appendix. It is most often mentioned by evolutionists as one of the so-called “vestigial organs.” But it has been found that the appendix is part of the lymphatic system, which, especially in early life, produces antibodies that fight infections in the digestive system.⁶⁴

Tonsils (adenoids).These used to be removed from children when inflamed, but are now medically known to protect the nose and throat from infection against invading bacteria and viruses. They also filter out harmful substances that could pass into the digestive system. There are indications that people who have had their tonsils removed experience more problems in the upper respiratory tract..⁶⁵

Thymus. An organ in the chest cavity that shrinks from childhood until maturity, the thymus is now recognized as the control center of the body’s defense system against germs.

Coccyx. Better known as the “tailbone,” it supposedly shows man evolved from monkeys. However, patients who have had their tailbones removed have difficulty sitting. The coccyx also holds the muscles for bowel and childbirth movements, supports internal organs, and keeps the end of the alimentary canal closed. It anchors the gluteus maximus, the large muscle along the back of the thigh, which enables us to walk upright (something monkeys cannot do).

Writers Mario Seiglie et al. tell us in The Good News magazine (November-December 2006): “The list of what were once considered vestigial organs in our body has gone down from 100 in the early 20^th century to virtually zero…”⁶⁶                       

____________________

⁵¹Enigmas of Evolution,” Newsweek, March 29, 1982, p. 39

⁵²David B. Kitts, “Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory,” Evolution, September 1974, p. 467

⁵³Norman D. Newell, “The Nature of the Fossil Record,” Adventures in Earth History, 1970, pp. 644–645

⁵⁴“The Evolution of Plants: A Major Problem for Darwinists,” Technical Journal, 2002, Internet

⁵⁵Quoted in “What About Plant Evolution,” The Good News, November-December 2009, p. 13

⁵⁶Frank M. Carpenter, “Fossil Insects,” Insects, 1952, p. 18

⁵⁷David Attenborough, Life on Earth, 1979, p. 137

⁵⁸Richard Milton, Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, 1997, pp. 253-254

⁵⁹Ann C. Burke and Alan Feduccia, “Developmental Patterns and the Identification of Homologies in the Avian Hand,” Science, 24 October 1997, pp. 666–668

⁶⁰Richard Hinchliffe, “The Forward March of the Bird-Dinosaurs Halted?” Science, 24 October 1997, p. 597

⁶¹John A. Ruben et al., “Lung Structure and Ventilation in Theropod Dinosaurs and Early Birds, Science, pp. 1267–1270

⁶²W. E. Swinton, “The Origin of Birds,” Biology and Comparative Physiology of Birds, 1960, p. 1

⁶³Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, Masterpieces of Science edition, 1958, pp. 136-137

⁶⁴David Menton, “The Human Tail and Other Tales of Evolution,” St. Louis MetroVoice, January 1994

⁶⁵J.D. Ratcliff, Your Body and How It Works, 1974, p. 137

⁶⁶Mario Seiglie, Tom Robinson and Scott Ashley, “Evolution’s ‘vestigial organ’ argument debunked,” God, Science and the Bible, The Good News, November/December 2006, p. 11

 

(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)

 

 

Early Earth Enigmas (Part 3)

 The theory of evolution

The roots of the theory of evolution goes back many years before Charles Darwin. In the 17^th century, scientists like Francis Bacon and William Harvey recognized it. Darwin’s own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin (d. 1802), wrote about it. The French naturalist Chevalier de Lamarck proposed a similar theory in 1809. In 1835 and 1837, Edward Blyth, a creationist, published a treatise on natural selection.³⁶

In 1855, Alfred Russel Wallace published the theory of evolution in a brief note in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History. On March 9, 1858, he explained the theory in a letter to Charles Darwin.³⁷ Twenty months later, in 1859, Darwin published a more detailed version of the theory in his book that he had been at work on earlier: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. It became an instant sensation.

The Theory of Evolution posits that all living things changed through the ages into all the life forms today. From the first living cell, “simple” organisms evolved into fish, then into amphibians, then into reptiles, then into birds and mammals, then into primates and, eventually, man.

Darwin speculated that similarities in different species, such as the five digits of a man’s hand, a bat’s wing, and a dolphin’s flipper, which he called “homology,” constituted evidence for a common ancestry. He capitalized on the idea of “natural selection” or “survival of the fittest” – that is, nature selected the fittest organisms to survive. The “fittest” individuals supposedly had traits that enabled them to fare better than other members of their groups.

Darwin’s book led many Christians to abandon their belief in the Biblical creation by God. Almost all universities and public schools today teach Darwinian evolution, which holds that the ten million-plus species on earth evolved from a single cell that suddenly came to life around 3.5 billion years ago. We must give credit to Darwin for honesty, though, because he admitted that his theory needed to be proven.

 

“Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”?

Ernst Heinrich Haeckel helped spread Darwin's theory of evolution through lectures and books. He popularized the catchphrase “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” Accordingly, every animal’s embryonic stages (ontogeny) replicate in just a few weeks its species’ evolutionary history (phylogeny) which took millions of years. Thus, a human fetus begins life as a single cell, just like the first organisms on earth. Next, the cell multiplies as a hollow ball similar to sponges. The embryo then folds in to form a cuplike structure like jellyfish and corals. It afterward lengthens, passing through phases with gill slits, fin-like limbs, and a tail typical of fish and amphibians. The embryo then takes on a basic mammalian form, before finally assuming the shape of a primate.  

Haeckel, however, cheated. He altered illustrations to fit his theory when the similarity of embryos was not satisfactory. He was found out, charged with fraud, and convicted by a university court at Jena, Germany. Eventually, “The theory of recapitulation was destroyed in 1921 by Professor Walter Garstang in a famous paper. Since then no respectable biologist has ever used the theory of recapitulation, because it was utterly unsound, created by a Nazi-like preacher named Haeckel.”³⁸ Co-authors George Gaylord Simpson and William S. Beck (Life: An Introduction to Biology, 1965) confirm this: “It is now firmly established that ontogeny does not repeat phylogeny.”³⁹

Surprisingly, many modern textbooks still include the disproved idea as proof for evolution.

 

Mutation: engine of evolution?

Evolutionists claim that mutation, a change in the genetic material (DNA) inside the cells of plants and animals, is the engine of evolution. Mutational changes are said to be passed on to descendants – producing “improved” new members of the species, which gradually turn into a new distinct species.

Harmful, not helpful. For mutation to happen, new information has to be introduced in the genes of the organism. Yet, practically all mutations showed a loss, rather than a gain, of genetic information – resulting in missing eyes, limbs, wings, tails, etc. Author Lee Spetner (Not by Chance, 1996) reports:  “All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to reduce the genetic information and not to increase it.”⁴⁰

In any case, slight mutational changes are usually insignificant, but major genetic mutations, instead of producing improved organisms, are generally harmful to the species. Author Peo C. Koller (Chromosomes and Genes, 1971) tells us: “The greatest proportion of mutations are deleterious to the individual who carries the mutated gene. It was found in experiments that, for every successful or useful mutation, there are many thousands which are harmful.”⁴¹ The Encylopedia Americana says that “mutants illustrated in biology textbooks are a collection of freaks and monstrosities, and mutation seems to be a destructive rather than a constructive process.”⁴²

Author G. Ledyard Stebbins (Processes of Organic Evolution, 1971) relates that in laboratory experiments, mutated insects were kept with normal members of their species. “After a greater or lesser number of generations the mutants are eliminated.”⁴³ They were unable to compete and died off, because they had become less adapted for survival than their normal fellows.

Statistically improbable. Researchers often conduct experiments with fruit flies, chosen for their short life spans. Gordon Rattray Taylor, former chief science advisor of BBC TV (The Great Evolution Mystery, 1983), observed: “It is a striking, but not much mentioned fact that, though geneticists have been breeding fruit-flies for sixty years or more in labs all round the world -- flies which produce a new generation every eleven days -- they have never yet seen the emergence of a new species or even a new enzyme.”⁴⁴ Although fruit flies can be made to mutate into deformed specimens, they are all still fruit flies.

Co-authors P. Moorhead and M. Kaplan (“Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution,” 1967) report: “The Wistar Institute symposium in 1967 brought together leading biologists and mathematicians in what turned out to be a futile attempt to find a mathematically reasonable basis for the assumption that random mutations are the driving force behind evolution. Unfortunately, each time the mathematics showed the statistical improbability of a given assumption…”⁴⁵

Pierre-Paul Grasse, former French Academy of Sciences president and an evolutionist, admits: “No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution.”⁴⁶

 

Anti-mutation mechanisms.

Two British scientists, Dr. A.R. Fersht and Dr. G.R. Lambert, made an important “discovery that enzymes exist within living cells that have just one assignment in nature. They find and correct any errors in the genetic code. These errors can creep into the code because of radiation, some chemicals, or for other reasons. However, these enzymes faithfully correct any errors, preventing mutations.”⁴⁷ Francis Hitching (The Neck of the Giraffe, 1982) adds: “Genes are a powerful stabilizing mechanism whose main function is to prevent new forms evolving.”⁴⁸

The law of genetics dictates that the offspring of the parent organism shall be of the same species. This is exactly what the Bible teaches: “But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body. All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds” (1 Cor 15:38-39).

 

Microevolution vs. macroevolution

 

Pierre-Paul Grasse, a zoologist, observed that adaptations within species have nothing to do with evolution. They are just minor changes around a stable genotype. For example, there are no less than 200 breeds of dog today, descended from just a few ancient dogs and wolves. They range from tiny Chihuahuas to burly St. Bernards, from cuddly Pomeranians to vicious pit bulls. Yet, they are all still dogs. Citrus fruits vary greatly – from sweet nectarines to sour lemons, little limes to large pomelos -- but each one is still a citrus. They are examples of “microevolution.” What Darwin “discovered” – such as the variations in the beaks of finches in the Galapagos Islands -- were limited biological principles that govern microevolution (change within a species), not those governing “speciation” or “macroevolution” (change from one species to another).

In breeding experiments, scientists have tried to keep modifying selected plants and animals indefinitely by crossbreeding to see if they could develop new species. Result? “Breeders usually find that after a few generations, an optimum is reached beyond which further improvement is impossible, and there has been no new species formed… Breeding procedures, therefore, would seem to refute, rather than support evolution.”⁴⁹

Microevolution in reverse. In the 1930s brothers Heinz and Lutz Heck, Munich Zoo and Berlin Zoo directors, respectively, recreated extinct animals. First was the tarpan, a Stone Age horse whose drawings were on the walls of caves in France and the last of which died in captivity in 1887. They crossed stallions known to have descended from the tarpan with modern mares. After just two breedings, a foal with all the tarpan characteristics was born.

They had actually followed their father, who, while running the Berlin Zoo, crossed the ibex (a wild goat) with domesticated goats. The older Heck produced animals with the exact color of the bezoar, the Middle Eastern wild goat that was the progenitor of all goats today. 

The Heck brothers also recreated the auroch, the ancestor of modern cattle. The last of the huge auroch, which weighed up to a ton, died in a game preserve in Poland in 1627. After ten years of crossbreeding, they obtained a calf with all the traits of an auroch.⁵⁰

 ____________________

³⁶Loren C. Eiseley, Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X, 1979, pp. 45–80

³⁷Wallace, Alfred Russell, Encyclopaedia Britannica 2009 Student and Home Edition

³⁸Ashley Montagu, quoted by Luther D. Sunderland in Darwin’s Enigma, 1984, p. 119

³⁹George Gaylord Simpson and William S. Beck, Life: An Introduction to Biology, 1965, p. 241

⁴⁰Lee Spetner, Not by Chance, 1996, p. 138

⁴¹Peo C. Koller, Chromosomes and Genes, 1971, p. 127

⁴²Encyclopedia Americana, 1977, Vol. 10, p. 742

⁴³G. Ledyard Stebbins, Processes of Organic Evolution, 1971, pp. 24-25

⁴⁴Gordon Rattray Taylor, The Great Evolution Mystery, 1983, p. 48

⁴⁵P. Moorhead and M. Kaplan, “Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution,” Proceedings of the Symposium, Wistar Institute of Biology, 1967; cited by Schroeder, op. cit. p. 119

⁴⁶Pierre-Paul Grasse, Evolution of Living Organisms, 1977, pp. 88,103

⁴⁷Martin Hunter, “There’s a Lot of Holes in Evolutionary Theory,” May 12, 1998, tract

⁴⁸Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe, 1982, p. 103

⁴⁹On Call, July 3, 1972, pp. 8,9

⁵⁰“Turning Back Nature’s Clock,” Strange Stories, Amazing Facts, 1975, pp. 104-105

 

(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)