1. Introduction
2. Reason 1 Genetics is not Evolution's Friend
2a Were Darwin's
Galapagos Finches Evolution?
2c Population Genetics
Factors
2d Beneficial verses
Positive Mutations
2e Molecular Biology and Irreducible Complexity
2f Do
Hox (Homeotic) Genes Save Evolution?
2g Evolution Fails to Predict Genetic
Complexity
3. Reason 2 Statistics is not Evolution's Friend
3a A Short Primer on
Probability
4. Reason 3 Biochemistry is not Evolution's Friend
4d Outer Space?
5. Reason 4 Information Theory is not Evolution's Friend
5a Complex Life Information verses Simple Information
6. Reason 5 Physics is not Evolution's Friend
7. Reason 6 Astronomy is not Evolution's Friend
7b Strange Quasar -
Galaxy Connections
7c What do Extra Solar
Planets Tell us?
7e What do the Planets in
our Solar System tell us?
7f The Oort cloud and the
Kuiper belt
8. Reason Number 7 Paleontology is not Evolution’s Friend
8b Problems with the
Fossil Record
8c Those Pesky Transitional
Fossils
8e Tetrapod Evolution
Fact or Fancy
8h Hominid Evolution or
Paleoanthropology
8j Recent Finds or is Lucy
Really a Lady?
9. Reason Number 8 Radiometric Dating is
not Evolution’s Friend
9a What is Radiometric Dating?
10. Reason Number 9 Evolutionists are not Evolution's Friends
10a Neo-Darwinism
10b Paleontology
10c Ernst Haeckel -
Apostle of Deceit
11. Reason Number 10 Morality is not Evolution's Friend
11a Is Evolution Science
or Philosophy?
11b So What if Evolution
is an Atheistic Philosophy?
11c The Cartesian Divide
and The Kantian Contradiction
11d The Blood Drenched
Century of Evolution
11g What About Mao?
12. More
Issues - Under Construction
A note in end of section comments: These
comments are for Christians who read this document. I am attempting to remind
them to treat all people as the Lord says we should. For you evolutionists who
read those and suffer apoplexy - JUST CHILL! Don't read them if you don't like
it dudes! Oh and they are not proof the rest is wrong either.
Before we take on the ten reasons evolution is wrong we must first define what we are talking about. Evolutionists will say the word evolution to you and you may think you know what they are saying, but you probably don’t. There are at least five concepts of evolution that the evolutionist speaks of as one. They are:
As creationists we may not agree with all these as being evolution and so it helps to understand what we are saying. In this article I agree that microevolution occurs, but the other four are imminently debatable.
Now another issue needs to be face before we go on. Evolutionists are fond of talking down and attacking creationists as being less “scientific” than they. They use ad-hominen attacks and accuse creationists as being stupid and unable to understand their “science”. We need to understand what science is and how our arguments fit in its’ framework.
Science. According to the Oxford Dictionary science is "A branch of study which is concerned either with a connected body of demonstrated truths or with observed facts systematically classified and more or less colligated by being brought under general laws, and which includes trustworthy methods for the discovery of new truth within its own domain."
The process is for a postulate to be first formulated and then announced. Then there are three things about this postulate that must be true before it can be considered a theory.
When you talk with evolutionists make sure you have these points covered. They will talk circles around you and call you stupid if you don’t know what they are talking about. As Evolutionists have never observed any of the first four supposed evolutions they assume are true, they only talk about the last microevolution and try to define it as all five! The constantly point out microevolution as being the proof of all the other four. The sooner we creationists figure this out the sooner we can win this debate.
From the points given above is shows us that both evolution and creation are postulates. Neither have much of a chance of becoming a theory because of the difficulty of observing events that happened in the distant past and trying to have those events become repeatable. When evolutionists become dogmatic in their speech as if evolution had been proven beyond any shadow of a doubt, they are talking about microevolution and they are bluffing because the lack real proof.
What we are left to do then is look forensically into such things as fossils, microbiology, biochemistry, information theory, etc. to try and see if we can catch the process in its’ act. We will talk about all these things in this article.
We now need to define carefully the concept of microevolution as we and the evolutionists both understand it differently. Microevolution to the creationist is the limited variation that can be expressed by the genome of a “species’ or family of plants or animals. It is the variation in the alleles of a genome as they are expressed in sexual reproduction and the mixing of alleles that occurs. These alleles are mostly not the product of mutations, but rather reside in the total genome of a population. See the genetics section for a further treatment of alleles in a genome.
The Evolutionist sees microevolution as the cornerstone of evolutionary theory. They believe that it is billions of microevolution mutations in the genome, creating new alleles, and natural selection preserving those changes that is the process of evolution.
Creationists do not see microevolution as being able to drive the massive information gain that needs to occur for evolution to be possible, that is the amoeba to man evolution concept. Microevolution changes mainly occur through the practice of selective breeding. There are no “mutations” in selective breeding or in genome adaptation to the environment. The complex changes that occur are already in the genome and are merely being brought out from human or environmental pressure.
For instance sugar beets in the early 1800’s had a 6% sugar content, by selective breeding that sugar content had risen to 17% by 1878. That was as far as the breeders were able to stretch the genome and they certainly didn’t create a potato from the sugar beet.
Another instance of microevolution is the English peppered
moth (Biston betularia). In
pre-industrial
Other microevolution issues we look at are selective breeding in dogs, cats or cows for example. If we let these all breed together they would all fall back to some common denominator animal. But you can see how far the genome will stretch when you look at a teacup poodle and a Rottweiler. But they never created another species.
In fact evolutionists are experimenting with microevolution experiments to see if mutations, a cornerstone in their postulate, will really cause enough positive changes to move one species to another. Since 1910 there have been accelerated mutation experiments with the fruit fly. To date no success. Since about 1950 there have been accelerated mutation experiments with bacteria and again not much success. Come to think of it these would be really good falsifiability experiments too wouldn’t they?
So with all that said we are now ready to begin our ten reasons evolution is wrong.
Genetics is Not Evolution’s
Friend
As we stated before evolution depends on beneficial mutation, natural selection and enormous amount of time for it to occur. Therefore we will now look at genetics and see if this is true.
But first let us look at the comments of an amateur evolutionist.
“EVOLUTION IS NOT RANDOM, FOR (probably not) THE LAST TIME. Variety is there because evolution causes random mutation, hence the variety.” From a debate on talkorigins.org
Ummm a little double talk. Well it also appears this is perilously close to evolution being an intelligent designer. But it is also a tautology or circular reasoning to say that “evolution causes random mutation” because evolutionists say random mutation causes evolution.
But to be correct, evolution is a philosophy that masquerades as a science . So evolution isn’t necessarily any more random than the person’s thoughts and it certainly cannot be some kind of force driving the random mutation. Nor can it cause mutations random or otherwise.
Mutation and natural selection are the engine of evolution. Creationists believe in natural selection but we doubt the role mutations play in evolution and know if we can show that mutations cannot be part of the engine, then evolution will have lost its power.
Genetics and evolution have been enemies from the beginning. Gregor Mendel and Charles Darwin were contemporaries. Mendel is the father of modern genetics and Darwin is the father of evolution. In Darwin’s day genetics was just starting and Darwin knew really very little about how genetics worked. His idea of change in species was based on erroneous and untested ideas of inheritance. Mendel’s ideas were based on careful experimentation and showed that individual characteristics were surprisingly resilient and constant.
Darwin believed in the idea that variations caused by environment could be inherited. Thus the giraffe’s long neck was a result of the “inherited effects of the increased use of parts”. The Origin of Species, 6th ed, London 1902, p 278. Darwin believed that if parent giraffes strained their necks to reach the top leaves then the progeny would inherit longer necks. While even evolutionists today would see this a patently false, they still accept with apparent ease the change in the genetic structure it represents and throw that change to the magic of mutation. It wasn’t until much later that mutations were used as the change agent in evolution because it became apparent this idea of Darwin didn’t work.
In reality there are multiple mutation processes that can impact a genome but evolutionists only choose one. I will explain why in a bit. First the types of mutations:
1. Duplication or Amplification of a segment of DNA
2. Inversion of a segment of DNA
3. Deletion of a segment of DNA
4. Insertion of a segment of DNA
5. Transposition of a segment of DNA from one place to another.
6. Point Mutation of a single nucleotide.
The first five are interesting genetic processes. Each is a complex and precise process that has much biochemical signaling and purpose. We don’t really know much about why the genes do this as we are still very weak in our knowledge of how our genome works. But none of these processes can add any data to the genome, they just move data around. I must add another point here: some evolutionists place recombination in this list, but recombination is sexual mixing and once again cannot add any data to the genome. Recombination just takes the genome and mixes what is there. There are tens of maybe hundreds or trillions of combinations in our genome to recombine. We are wonderfully and fearfully made.
The type of mutations called point mutations are the only genetic processes that can actually add information to the genome and that is why evolutionists have chosen point mutations as the mutational driver of evolution. We will hereafter call point mutations simply mutations to simplify the writing.
Were Darwin's Galapagos Finches Evolution?
What does happen in a population as the genome reacts to the environment? Darwin looks at the finches on the Galapagos Islands and notices variations in beak size. He thought that the harder seed in the dry time was causing the beaks of the finches to grow stouter from the use of the part. But what was happening was that natural selection or a long term drought in the islands was causing the seed cases to harden. The heavier beaked finch allele in the genome was favored and the lighter beaked finch allele was not. The heavier beaked finch became more dominant because it passed on the heavy beak alleles. The heavy beak was not the result of a mutation! It was already an allele in the genome and was just brought out as a result of the environment. When the rains came back the lighter beak became the more efficient beak and the number of heavy beaks reduced. This is microevolution at its best. But there was no change in the genome of the finch and certainly no new species has arisen from this. The genome expresses its variety by recombination of the alleles and causing the phenotype to show its wonderful God given types.
But what about mutations then? What are they and how can they be beneficial? Mutations are mistakes in the genetic copying process. They effect one nucleotide base at a time and are called point mutations. Once in every 10,000 to 100,000 copies there is a mistake made. Our bodies have a compare – correct process that is very efficient. In fact it is 1016 times better than the best computer code, but once in every 1,000,000,000 or 10,000,000,000 copies a mutation “gets out” so to speak. That is equal to a professional typist making a mistake in 50,000,000 pages of typescript. You see mutations are predominately bad and the cell tries to make sure they don’t happen.
The Neo-Darwinists made random mutations the engine of evolution. They claim that many very small mutations are the basis of the “goo to you” hypothesis of evolution. For mutations to be the driver of the massive amount of information there must be two things true of those mutations.
1. The mutations must be positive and allow the organism to procreate and pass them on.
2. The mutations must add information to the genome of the organism.
To date no evolutionist has pointed out such a mutation and if they exist they must be exceedingly rare.
The smallness of the point mutation is also in question. Dawkins seems to think that the mutation can be as small as needed to make the hypothesis work, but it appears that one nucleotide base is as small as you can get. So a positive mutation cannot add but a single bit of information to the genome or one nucleotide’s worth. But is that enough? And if that truly does occur will natural selection grab and go with it?
Population Genetics show that a positive mutation in a population has a poor chance of surviving the “noise” of random events in the population. In a stable population of organisms each organism must reproduce one of itself to keep the stability of the population. But we see in nature that animals must produce many more than one for themselves because of the randomness of death. Even elephants produce 5 to 10 offspring to overcome this random noise factor. Some organisms produce thousands or even millions to assure replacing themselves. Evolutionists want many mutations to occur so positive mutations can be captured by natural selection but a high mutation rate for a population is not good as the overwhelming number of mutations can destroy a population.
But let’s say that one point mutation occurs and gives an individual a positive value of 0.1 percent for survival and passing on that positive gene. Let us also say that this population needs 5 offspring to keep the population stable or 20 percent growth. The survival rate increase would be 20.02 for the mutation. Sir Ronald Fisher was a mathematician and one of the world’s experts on the mathematics of evolution and one of the founders of the field of population genetics. He was also one of the architects of the Neo Darwinian Theory. He calculated that most mutations with positive survival values would not survive, and he believed that the answer was many positive mutations. He said: “A mutation, even if favorable, will have only a very small chance of establishing itself in the species if it occurs once only.” Fisher R.A. (1958). The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, Oxford, Second revised edition, New York: Dover.
Let us continue our example above with Fisher’s calculations. Our organism with a 0.1% survival factor would have one chance in 500 of surviving. If there were 500 organisms with the mutation their odds would be about 5 out of 8. With 1000 with the same mutation their odds would be about 6 out of 7 and with 2500 organisms with the same mutation the odds are about even. What are the odds of 2500 organisms having the same point mutation (it has to be the same for that particular information to get into the genome) in a population? The chances that 500 organisms would have the very same point mutation in the very same nucleotide is 1 in 3.6 x 102,738. Lee M. Spentner, Not By Chance – Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution, The Judica Press, New York, p. 103.
A mutation almost always involves a loss of information or just a copy of information. They have never added new information to the genome, so it appears that they can never bring that genome added complexity. Are there beneficial mutations? Yes there are for certain environments. Blind cave catfishes are the result of the mutation that lost the information of an eye. This mutation caused the eye, which was useless and prone to disease and injury in the cave to be lost and it actually helped the catfish survive in the cave. But the catfish genome did not have any new information added for it to become a perch genome or any other genome. In fact the eye genes were lost to the genome. If that blind fish were to be swept out of the cave by a flood, and that does happen, it won’t survive to pass on those no eye alleles. So natural selection, working in the cave worked to keep the eyeless catfish going, outside the cave it will quickly die. The important thing to keep in mind is that we all along were only working with the genome of the catfish and at no point was there any new information to change that genome to another. Genomes are like rubber bands that you can stretch out very far, but they will always snap back to the original when released.
If we look at the accelerated fruit fly experiments that used radiation to accelerate the copying errors of DNA to try to produce another species, we have only seen fruit flies with parts missing or dead flies or flies too crippled to pass on its genes. They never got a house fly out of the deal. Why? Because the mutation lost information in the fruit fly genome and did not add the information to become a house fly.
Beneficial verses Positive Mutations
How do we define “beneficial” mutations? It is interesting that a mutation such as an orange without seeds is considered useful, that is to orange eaters like me, but to oranges it is not such a good idea, for the seedless orange cannot pass on its genes. It is a useful mutation, but not a positive mutation. A positive mutation would enable the species to pass on its genes more efficiently and would add information to the genome. Evolutionists get this definition confused too.
Another problem is that evolutionists confuse mutations with recombination and alleles. They are not the same. Some variant alleles in a genome are the result of mutation, but most are from recombination and were there at the beginning of that species. All alleles that arise from mutation are either neutral or excessively deleterious. There are not really any positive mutations in literature today, even evolution literature. In one instance the single nucleotide substation in a genome was responsible for the resistance to a weed herbicide. This herbicide was made to attach and deactivate a protein needed by the weed. A single change in the genetic code for this protein, in the sector used for defining the herbicide attachment, deprived the herbicide of its attachment point and nullified its effectiveness.
Was this a positive mutation? We have no way of knowing if this was the result of a mutated allele or the expression of an allele in the genome that was already there. It may have been a very rare, neutral mutation of an allele that had been in the genome too. But it was specific to the man-made herbicide and had no selective value outside of that. It did not create another function and did not help the weed to adapt any other way. It added no information to the genome and thus no new complexity. There was no evolution here.
So you see, mutations can produce an allele of a gene that is neutral (rarely) or produce alleles that are dangerous, but cannot be the driver of massive amount of change that needs to occur to change one species into another. Most people don’t appreciate the massive amount of point change that must occur. For that to occur we should be seeing many positive mutations in the population. Instead we are seeing massive information loss mutations in the population. The X-Men just couldn’t happen outside of the movies.
Molecular Biology and Irreducible Complexity
Even molecular biology has not helped as the evolutionists have hoped. Molecular genetics have found that genomes have supported Taxonomy and not Phylogeny. It has also been found in molecular genetics that genomes have multiple copies of genes or of non-coding sequences that are very homogeneous within species, but heterogeneous between species. Such ‘repeats’ could not have been formed by random mutations acting on a common genome of a postulated ancestor. Evolutionists suggest an unexplained ‘molecular drive’ to account for these copies. It is simpler to assume there is no common ancestral genome.
Michael Behe in his book “
There have been arguments from evolutionists that the parts of the mousetrap could be used for other uses, like fish hooks or paperweights, but that is missing the point entirely. That cellular systems are useful in other places does not say they would be useful in the cell by them selves, just as a paperweight won't catch a mouse! It is a MOUSETRAP we are interested in, not a paperweight! One even said that a simple spring could catch a mouse. Ummmm yeah, right!
Do Hox (Homeotic) Genes Save Evolution?
Another microbiological issue is the Hox gene that seemed to fit in the “punctuated equilibrium” of Gould, because a small mutation in a Hox gene could have a profound effect on the organism. But further research on the Hox gene proved this not to be Evolution’s Savior. Dr. Christian Schwabe, a non-creationist critic of Darwinian evolution said this:
“Control genes like homeotic genes may be the target of mutations that would conceivably change phenotypes, but one must remember that the more central one makes changes in a complex system, the more severe the peripheral consequences become. … Homeotic changes induced in Drosophila genes have led only to monstrosities, and most experimenters do not expect to see a bee arise from their Drosophila constructs.” (Mini Review: Schwabe, C., 1994. Theoretical limitations of molecular phyolgenetics and the evolution of relaxins. Comp. Biochem. Physiol. 107B: 167-177
In the eleven years since this quote research has born out this quote. Changes to homeotic genes cause monstrosities; they do not change an amphibian into a reptile. And the mutations do not add any information; they just cause the existing information to be misdirected to create fruit fly legs where fruit fly antenna needs to be for instance.
Do not be misled by the Evolutionists. They constantly try to find the mutation that is positive (I don’t blame them either) and try to find the new thing that supports their theory. I have concerned Christians coming to me all the time with a newspaper article saying what about this?! I just tell them not to panic and wait because it too will fall and be found as nothing. Truly God is in control and all striving will cease. Pray for your evolutionist friends, don’t get into a mad argument with them, and love them as Christ called us to. Don’t call them names and don’t talk about them in bad ways, that is not Jesus in you.
Remember Evolution is a philosophy masquerading as a science. You are talking with someone who thinks “science” is totally on their side, but don’t really know it isn’t. They don’t believe in Creation because that would make them have to answer to God.
Evolution Fails to Predict
the Genetic Complexity
Any scientific theory, which evolution is purported to be, has to be able to predict to be a good theory. But evolution in its’ need to connect mutation in the genome to the massive change needed for evolution incorrectly predicted the direct gene to morphology connection. Only with this connection can small mutations actually have the ability to make massive morphological changes necessary for evolution to be plausible.
The
One gene – One Protein – One Function
But we are learning more about the genetic package and are finding that contrary to the evolutionist’s wish’s the genetic structure has always been surprisingly resilient. I must mention again the accelerated fruit fly experiments and the extraordinary resilience of the fruit fly genome. I believe that this would be a great falsifiability test for evolution.
What evolutionist say is that evolution is a theory that can absorb all new data and take it in and make it part of the theory. When they say that, they are not describing a scientific theory, but a philosophy.
We have recently discovered the incredible complexity of the genome and how it reacts and moves its’ instructions to create the morphology or the phenotype of the organism. It is not a one to one correlation, but the complexity is much beyond that.
Bent Proteins
Statistics are not Evolution’s Friend
Statistics and probability are great enemies of Evolution. Because Evolution utilizes random mutations as the main engine of their postulate, we can then use the laws of probability to exam their claims. Many evolutionists cry foul here, but they have no reason to do so as they also use probability to lay out their claims.
Here is another quote from an amateur evolutionist.
“All this complexity can easily come about through evolution, as is explained in ‘The Blind Watchmaker’ (a book by neo-Darwinist Richard Dawkins). This is because it is often cumulative, and so more likely and more efficient. . . . Nothing betrays a lack of understanding of natural selection quite like saying that the chance (of Evolution being correct) is too small. Natural selection is an algorithmic process, it the complete OPPOSITE of chance. The author states that there hasn’t been enough time. This is all too human thought of our own significance. The Earth was formed; it is estimated, around 4,600,000,000 years ago. In comparison, Homo Sapiens are thought to have emerged around 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. Four and a half billion years ago seems more than enough.”
I am really intrigued by evolutionist’s ideas of natural selection. As we discussed above natural selection cannot operate on something that is not there. It has no intelligence to drive anything. It is a predator, it is a storm, it is a drought, it is a thousand other things that will either destroy an animal that has the wrong alleles in its phenotype or allow a "superior" animal to thrive. In fact natural selection is not algorithmic but it is digital. Either alive or dead. Natural selection is not the opposite of chance, it just makes sure the good alleles last and the bad ones disappear, that is all. But natural selection is also blind and may also just snuff out a really good allele that had its head down at the water hole too long. As we spoke above in the genetics section the mutations are decidedly bad and lose information and lead to bad alleles, so natural selection usually limits their existence in a population. But natural selection is also "noise" in a population that doesn't allow a single point mutation a very good set of odds for surviving and passing on those genes. Evolutionist speak of natural selection like it is intelligent or something and can spot a mutation that it needs to save. That is utter nonsense.
Now we will look at the “cumulative” idea and see if that is a go or not. For Evolution to be true there has to be a large amount of cumulative organization of positive mutations. In fact Evolution says that all life came out of prior non-life. Darwin’s warm pond or the lightning charged primordial soup of other evolutionists. Could that really happen? What do statistics say?
The amateur evolutionist above thinks that four and a half billion years seems to be enough, but is it?
We will give him not the 4.6 billion years for life but the whole supposed age of the universe of 20 billion. We will even assume that ALL of the 20 billion years are good and that all the precursors to life are in some warm primordial soup (we will discuss this in the Biochemistry section below) somewhere just waiting to do their thing.
Let’s talk briefly about probability which is a subset of Statistics. What is the chance if you toss a coin you get heads? Assuming the coin is equally weighted, and not a trick coin, it is 1/2. On a die the probability of rolling a six is 1/6. The probability of tossing a coin and getting heads and rolling a die and getting a six is 1/2 x 1/6 = 1/12. Now this doesn’t mean that in twelve tosses and throws you will get simultaneously a head and a six, it means that if you throw long enough 1/12 of all throws will have both a head and a six.
Now let us get a little more complicated. Let’s figure the odds or probability of randomly spelling the phrase “the theory of evolution”. There are 26 letters and one space possible adding to 27 possible selections. There are 20 letters in the phrase and 3 spaces. Therefore the odds, on the average, spell out the phrase correctly only once in 2723 outcomes! That is only one success in 8.3 quadrillion, quadrillion attempts or 8.3 x 1032. Now suppose ‘chance’ uses a machine which removes, records and replaces all the letters randomly at the fantastic speed of one billion per microsecond (one quadrillion per second). On the average the phrase would happen once in 25 billion years by this method.
Whoops! We ran out of time just trying to randomly recombine correctly a 23 letter and space phrase. You see the probability multiplication rule is not so kind to the randomness of evolution thought.
But let’s look at biological beginnings. You see in that warm pond or primal soup we just assume that there were amino acids there and we will assume that there were all the L type necessary for life. We will look later at Biochemistry and see it those assumptions are safe, but for now we will just assume them. One thing we will have to turn off is natural selection, because natural selection won’t work here. We are just trying to polymerize a self replicating organic structure like a DNA or RNA molecule, and natural selection assumes that a good allele will be safe and a bad allele won’t, and we don’t have any good or bad alleles yet. We are just trying to get the genes now in the right sequence. If they are not in the right sequence they won’t work and if they are, they will. And there is no way for evolution or natural selection or whatever other magic driver the evolutionists can come up with to know if the sequence is right until it replicates. There is no cumulative process here as a partially correct complex molecule won’t work and would be discarded until one does.
The odds of forming a chain of 124 specifically sequenced proteins of 400 amino acid bases is 1 x 1064,489! Now that is just one complex molecule and life requires much, much more. Mycoplasma genitalium has the smallest known genome of the free living organisms, containing 482 genes comprising 580,000 bases. A human DNA molecule can contain three billion amino acid bases. That is not counting all the other enzymes, proteins, hormones and other life chemistry needed. These odds are utterly impossible and shows that evolution being the source of life’s beginning is not even remotely possible.
Fred Hoyle stated this: “Two thousand different and very complex enzymes are required for a living organism to exist. And random shuffling processes could not form a single one of these even in 20 billion years. I don’t know how long it is going to be before astronomers generally recognize that the arrangement of not even one of the many thousand of biopolymers (Life molecules) on which life depends could have been arrived at by natural processes here on earth.
“Astronomers will have little difficulty in understanding this because they will be assured by biologists that it is not so; the biologists having been assured in their turn by others that it is not so. The ‘others’ are groups of persons who believe, quite openly, in mathematical miracles.
“They advocate the belief that, tucked away in nature outside of normal physics, there is a law which performs miracles (provided the miracles are in the aid of biology). The curious situation sits oddly on a profession that for long has been dedicated to coming up with logical explanations. . . The modern miracle workers are always found to be living in the twilight fringes of thermodynamics.”
Fred Hoyle, “The Big Bang in Astronomy,” in New Scientist, November 19, 1981, pp 521-527
We will now look briefly at a case of weaseling by a master weasel Richard Dawkins of “The Blind Watchmaker” and “The Selfish Gene” etc. (Yes I have read them both!). Richard Dawkins is a neo–Darwinist who has championed the Evolution of random mutations and natural selection which was falling awry in evolutionary thought in recent years. Mr. Dawkins in “The Blind Watchmaker” developed a program on computer to generate the phrase “methinks it is like a weasel” in about 164 supposedly random iterations. This computer program was quite a novelty in the early 80’s when it was written, but today it is quite primitive.
But the program has some problems.
1. The outcome is known and targeted, whereas in life chemistry there is no target, there is only something that may work when the sequence is right and there is no way of knowing it might work until you get it complete. No near guesses allowed.
2. Correct guesses are saved. In life chemistry there is no way of knowing if any iteration has protein sequences that will be useful later as the only way of knowing they are right is when the whole complex molecule works.
3. It is a computer program with the parameters carefully chosen by Dawkins to make sure the outcome is what he wanted. If the parameters are tweaked another way the real probability comes back normally. Dawkins sped up the random mutation rate to accelerate the evolution rate and tried to use these figures to prove evolution could happen with a mutation rate that would destroy a population. Weak thinking in a Weasely mind.
Remember to love those evolutionists out there whom you know, and do not use this to just to whack them. Lovingly query them and even if they revile you as a cretin in science, pray for them.
Biochemistry is not Evolution’s Friend
Words you may need to know.
Chirality
6. Homochirality – All having the same handedness
7. Heterochirality – Having a mixture of handedness, also called “racemic”.
8. Enantiomers – Having a 50/50 mixture of handedness, or having mirror image oppositeness.
You remember the warm little pond of
What do the evolutionists need in a primitive atmosphere to have life generate from non-life. Remember if we cannot do this step the rest of Evolution is kind of moot. Mutations and natural selection don’t work on non-life chemicals.
Evolutionists tell us our planet was spun of from some kind of collision, or was some kind of rocky collapse or something spun out of the sun. Pick your favorite. And they say the earth was molten for millions and millions of years. This should have sterilized the early earth of just about anything organic. So where did the organic substances come from. Evolutionists believe they came from spontaneous generation maybe, or maybe outer space! We’ll just see if any of these make any sense.
Some evolutionists say that amino acids just formed out of seawater. If they did then mass action would have wiped them out. Richard E. Dickerson said:
“It is therefore hard to see how polymerization could have proceeded in the aqueous environment of the primitive ocean, since the presence of water favors depolymerization rather than polymerization.” Richard E. Dickerson, “Chemical Evolution and the Origen of Life.” Scientific American, September 1978, p. 75
Another problem with the primitive atmosphere is the presence of oxygen. Oxygen would destroy much of the organic compounds so the evolutionists came up with a reducing atmosphere or one without O2 and with CH4 as the main carbon carrier.
The trouble with this primitive atmosphere concept is that once life did occur, the reducing atmosphere would kill it as life needs oxygen. Evolutionists try to say that plants produced the oxygen, but plants need oxygen for respiration. There would have to been a very rapid change from reducing to oxidizing atmosphere once life appeared for life to have occurred in this manner. There is no mechanism or process that could do that quickly. The current plant oxygenizing of the atmosphere today couldn’t do that in less than 5000 years. Primitive life would not have even the capability as there wouldn’t be nearly as many of the plants in the brand new world.
Harold Urey admitted “that the non-oxygen atmosphere is just an assumption – a flight of imagination – in a effort to accommodate the theory.”
Harold Urey, “On the
Early Chemical History of the Earth and the Origin of Life,” in Proceedings of
the
Stanley Miller, who was a pioneer in the laboratory synthesis of non-living amino acids in bottles created in a reducing atmosphere, said that the theory that the earth once had no oxygen is just “speculation”.
Stanley Miller, “Production
of Some Organic Compounds under Possible Primitive Conditions,” in Journal of
the American Chemical society, 7, 1955, p. 2351.
A recent Scientific American summary article on the origin of life admits that:
Do they then consider that the supernatural or miraculous (that is, creation) could have been involved? Not at all, says Stanley Miller. ‘I think we just haven’t learnt the right tricks yet.’
John Horgan, ‘Trends in Evolution: In the Beginning…’, Scientific American, February 1991, p. 100-109.
Now let us look at the problem of Chirality or handedness of organic compounds. Many important molecules of life exist in two forms. These two forms are non-super imposable mirror images of each other. Nearly all biological life requires the biological polymers to be homochiral or the same handedness. That would be no problem of they could be produced chemically that way, but chemically there are produced in a racemic mixture, or with a mixture of both handedness.
“Synthesis of chiral compounds from achiral reagents always yields the ‘racemic modification’ and ‘Optically inactive reagents yield optically inactive products’”
Morrison, R.T. and Boyd R.N., 1987. Organic Chemistry, 5th ed. Allyn & Bacon Inc. p. 150.
So if the organic compounds were formed somehow in a primitive atmosphere they would be racemic. And that would present some major problems in polymerization of complex organic compounds such as large proteins, RNA, DNA etc. A wrong handed amino acid would cause the stopping of the polymerization of the more complex compound and effectively kill the process. Random organization of complex organic compounds would be drastically effected for the worse. All amino acids in proteins are ‘left-handed’, while all sugars in DNA, RNA and in the metabolic pathways are ‘right-handed’.
Another problem with Chirality is that homochiral biological substances racemize in time. This is the basis of amino acid racemization dating method. This method is not very reliable because of the variables such as temperature and pH and the particular amino acid. Racemization is a big problem during peptide synthesis and hydrolysis for it shows that the tendency of undirected chemistry is towards death, not life. This presents enormous problems for chemical evolution ideas as well.
Chirality can have tragic consequences. Thalidomide was prescribed in the early 60’s for women suffering from morning sickness. The left-handed form is a powerful tranquillizer, but the right-handed form can disrupt fetal development, resulting in the severe birth defects. The synthesis of the drug produced a racemate, as would be expected, but the wrong homochiral was not removed before the drug was marketed.
Evolutionists had no idea how Chirality came about in the biochemistry of the origin of life and to date have no real answer to the severe problems it represents in their postulate.
They have come up with some ideas that all are weak and I will list them here but not go into depth. If you want to know more, just e-mail me and I will explain why these cannot explain Chirality.
So with all the problems on earth of creating even the substances out of which life could occur scientists looked to space. There has been much hoopla where scientists zapped impure ice, supposedly matching interstellar compositions with ultraviolet light and forming amino acids. The ice contained a high amount of ammonia, methanol and hydrogen cyanide. This study was published in Nature on 28th of March 2002.
The paper said in part:
“How life originated is one of the earliest and most intriguing for humanity. Early experiments on the processing of a gas mixture simulating the primitive earth conditions assumed a reducing atmosphere with methane as the carbon containing molecule. Several amino acids were formed under these conditions as the products of spark discharge, photo processing or heat. It is now believed, however, that the Earth’s early atmosphere was rather non-reducing, with CO2 as the main carbon carrier. Processing of these alternative gas mixtures under experimental conditions leads to the formation of, at most, traces of amino acids.”
People, let me translate for you. What they are saying is this: “All our best guesses about how life started on earth are busted. But, we by faith believe in evolution so we must look to space as the place where life chemistry started.”
If is couldn’t start here, what makes them think it started out there?
God Bless each of you who are believers and may God use you in spreading the truth. Remember to treat with love and kindness those who differ from you.
Information Theory is
not Evolution’s Friend
Information is the stuff of life. We see it every day in multiple ways. This paper is complex information. There are 26 letters, spaces, periods, commas, etc. all arranged (hopefully more correct than not!) to give out information. This did not come from random chance and no one would even begin to think so. That is unless one is an evolutionist.
Here is a quote from another amateur evolutionist. The quote is really about entropy which we will look at in the next section, but has some interesting stuff on information we can look at here.
“. . . However, not only is life irrelevant to the 2nd law, but order from disorder is common in non-living systems, too. Snowflakes, sand dunes, tornadoes, stalactites, graded river beds, and lightening are just a few examples of order coming from disorder in nature; none require an intelligent program to achieve that order. In any nontrivial system with lots of energy flowing through it, you are almost certain to find order arising somewhere in the system. If order from disorder is supposed to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, why is it ubiquitous in nature?”
We won’t discuss the 2nd law of thermodynamics in this section but in the next. Right now we want to look at the nature in information that is given in the example above and compare it to biological information and see if the analogy given is valid.
Complex Life Information verses Simple Information
What we have here is a misunderstanding of what is true
complex information and what is just information. What the amateur evolutionists above is
looking at is simple information inherent in the laws of physics. We will look at snowflakes and stalactites
first because they are both crystallization scenarios that evolutionists like
to use. They also like to use salt
crystallization from a warm salt laden fluid too. The crystal is not complex and it repeated
over and over. If you break a crystal
into two pieces you have two crystals.
Abcabcabcabcabcabc
Where the life polymer would look like this”
The purpose of life is to love the Lord
If you break this apart you will lose the meaning and if you break apart the life polymer you will not have a smaller protein, you will destroy the protein.
Another issue is that crystallization is a process inherent in the substances them selves when the right environment occurs. There is no information given them to do this and they are very poor in information themselves. To try and say that this information as complex as DNA is absurd. They are waving their hands and bluffing in this.
Now if you saw a doily on the ground that was crocheted into a snowflake design you would instantly know some intelligence made it because you inherently know that the cotton fibers do not have a physical propensity to form that way no matter what the physical characteristics of their environment.
Graded river beds and sand dunes are just the remnants of the action of wind and water, the grading and dunes are because a certain velocity of wind or water will only carry particles of a certain size and down. As the wind or water velocity varies so to the particle sizes and thus you have a grading of particles. Extremely low complexity in these two examples. Just physics in action I’m afraid.
But if you saw 500,000 sand particles all lined up in a row you would suspect intelligent design, because wind can carve and grade a dune but it won’t line up the particles.
Now we can look at tornadoes and lightening. Wow, some people who experienced a tornado might not consider them so orderly. But all that aside they are much like the other examples as just particles obeying the laws of physics. Differential high and low pressure systems, caused by heat, moisture etc. These systems are more complex than the last two but still no cigar as to overall complexity and nowhere remotely near the complexity of a single small chain of amino acids.
This order from disorder is a chimera for there is only physical nature obeying the physical laws. In fact the non-theist physicist Paul Davies admits: “There is no law of physics able to create information from nothing.”
What is important here is the difference from “order” and information. Information is “specific complexity”. Specific complexity is needed to drive life, order is just interesting phenomena.
Information in the printed page is not in the paper nor the ink, but in the pattern of the characters and in the mind that understands and made them. Information in sound is not in the sound waves themselves nor in the storage devices, but in the modulation and words understood by the mind understands and made them.
Information in all living things is encoded in a kind of book called DNA. This information describes the complexity of a sequence and it doesn’t depend on the matter in the sequence. As in the above concepts the DNA molecule also appears to be understood by our cells and have been made by a higher intelligence that can ‘read’ the message as well as ‘create’ the message.
The DNA in one cell can carry the information of 3-4 30 copy volumes of encyclopedia Britannia. DNA is the most information dense medium known to man. The number of paperback books that could be stored in the DNA that would fit on the head of a pin is equivalent to a stack of books 500 times taller than the distance to the moon and each with unique and specific content. This information so overshadows the poor information in crystals, sand piles and weather systems that I cannot understand how anyone could think that this order sprang out of non-living disorder.
For an in-depth look at information theory and creation go here.
Rich specific information to create all the life we see today is what evolutionists try to say came from non-life. We will see in the next section that the laws of physics also dictate that this won’t work.
God Bless you all in all you do, in all your going in and going out.
Physics is not Evolution’s
Friend
Much has been said of the laws of Thermodynamics in creationist literature and evolutionist literature, and it has been misunderstood by both sides.
Let’s look again at the quote from the amateur evolutionist and see what he is saying on this topic
“Simply incorrect science (creationist view that entropy is valid in an open system as well) Life is not a closed system. I quote from talkorigins.org
“However they (creationists) neglect the fact that life in not a closed system. The sun provides more than enough energy to drive things. If a mature tomato plant can have more useable energy than the seed it grew from, why should anyone expect the next generation of tomato plants have more useable energy still? Creationists try to get around this by claiming that the information carried on my living things lets them create order. However, not only is life irrelevant to the 2nd law, but order from disorder is common in non-living systems, too. Snowflakes, sand dunes, tornadoes, stalactites, graded river beds, and lightening are just a few examples of order coming from disorder in nature; none require an intelligent program to achieve that order. In any nontrivial system with lots of energy flowing through it, you are almost certain to find order arising somewhere in the system. If order from disorder is supposed to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, why is it ubiquitous in nature?”
Thermodynamics
1st law – Matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Also called the law of conservation.
2nd law – Matter and energy tend to disorder and less useable energy. Also called the law of entropy.
There are other ways to understand the 2nd law with is the one the most argument is about.
Classical Thermodynamics
The energy available for useful work in a functioning system tends to decrease, even though the total energy remains constant.
Statistical Thermodynamics
The organized complexity (order) of a structured system tends to become disorganized and random (disorder).
Informational Thermodynamics
The information conveyed by a communicating system tends to become distorted and incomplete.
Now let us look at the different types of systems as the person in the quote discussed an open verses a closed system.
Types of systems
Many evolutionists say that the 2nd law of thermodynamics doesn’t apply to open systems but that is simply not true.
Dr. John Ross of
. . . there are no known violations of the second law of
thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second
law is stated for isolated systems, but the second law applies equally well to
open systems. . . There is somehow associated with the field of
far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics the notion that that the second law fails
for such systems. It is important to make
sure that this error does not perpetuate itself.” John Ross, Chemical
and Engineering News, July 27, 1980, p. 40;
Now what we have in our open system is a tendency for energy to be lost as heat and for organized matter to be come disorganized. That is not to say that entropy reversals are not possible and do happen. The total entropy for the system must increase so for every decrease in entropy there must be a concomitant increase somewhere else.
In the examples in the above quote we can see this very well. When water freezes, heat as entropy gain is released. The same happens in the calcium carbonate in the stalactite. Graded river beds reduce velocity is streams and dunes reduce velocity of the wind. Storms release heat energy and create disorder and increase entropy.
The tomato plant is another order of specified complexity because it is life and has life chemistry driving it. The DNA in the seed has all the information to create the plant and that process is a temporary entropy reversal as suggested above. It is not getting ‘around’ the topic that creationists say this, it is true.
But can we expect continuing energy increases in the tomato plants in succeeding generations. That is questionable at best. I assume the useable energy is the fruit of the plant, tomato. Tomatoes are highly hybridized plants and the seeds may not be fertile (that old loss of information when information is changed) but we can experiment with this idea. Take some seeds from the tomato plant and propagate them. Follow this down several generations and what you will end up with is a very sorry plant with very little fruit. Entropy rules over all. You will need to get hybridized seedlings or seeds to get those yummy tomatos back and no you cannot get more energy every generation. That is a little exuberant misunderstanding of thermodynamics.
Now what does thermodynamics really say about Evolution? It says that while temporary entropy decreased are possible there must be compensating entropy increases in all systems to make the total system tend to entropy increase.
So what we have is the need for massive disorder to order, massive positive mutations, needed to have life as we see that. Entropy does not preclude those things absolutely happening it just pushes real hard at it not happening. It is like a 1000 lb weight on the back of a man climbing the mountain. I really decreases his odds at making the top.
Another concept brought up by the laws is the concept of useful energy. Evolutionists are fond of saying that the sun provides more than enough energy to drive their postulate. But does it? Is the energy useful to their postulate?
Raw energy from the sun, if not for the ability of living things to convert it to useful energy such as sugars, proteins etc. would be a destroyer of life. In many of the scenarios of primitive life the UV radiation is looked as the driver of the mutations need for evolution, but it conversely would destroy the organism as well if not protected. In fact the mutation rate being very slow and the energy being very fast the destruction would be very many times faster than the creation.
Raw energy from the sun, cannot create the specified complexity needed for life. It can only cause complexity to be lost in mutations. In the labs scientists use sophisticated equipment to polymerize proteins in the right way. If sunlight were to enter this process it would destroy the proteins.
OK all you Evolutionists that claim I am so stupid and don't know my Thermodynamics here is the more technical page for you.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength and love your neighbor (that evolutionist) as yourself.
Astronomy is not Evolution’s
Friend
As I explained in the very first part of this paper, the evolutionists like to lump all their theories together. The talk about their cosmology, stellar evolution and planetary evolution as if they are one and the same with biological evolution and they are not. In fact they don’t line up with evolution very well either. We will look at all their postulates in this section going from the cosmos to the planets.
The Big Bang a Big Bust?
The Big Bang has lots of problems. In fact there was a recent article in New Scientist where hundreds of scientists, astrophysicists, engineers and researchers signed an open letter to the scientific community. It is so cogent I am quoting it here:
“An Open Letter to the Scientific Community
cosmologystatement.org
(Published in New
Scientist, May 22,
2004)
The big bang today relies on a growing
number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed--
inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without
them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by
astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of
physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted
as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the
least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory.
But the big bang theory can't survive
without these fudge factors. Without the hypothetical inflation field, the big
bang does not predict the smooth, isotropic cosmic background radiation that is
observed, because there would be no way for parts of the universe that are now
more than a few degrees away in the sky to come to the same temperature and
thus emit the same amount of microwave radiation.
Without some kind of dark matter, unlike any
that we have observed on Earth despite 20 years of experiments, big-bang theory
makes contradictory predictions for the density of matter in the universe.
Inflation requires a density 20 times larger than that implied by big bang
nucleosynthesis, the theory's explanation of the origin of the light elements.
And without dark energy, the theory predicts that the universe is only about 8
billion years old, which is billions of years younger than the age of many
stars in our galaxy.
What is more, the big bang theory can boast
of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by
observation. The successes claimed by the theory's supporters consist of its
ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of
adjustable parameters, just as the old Earth-centered cosmology of Ptolemy
needed layer upon layer of epicycles.
Yet the big bang is not the only framework
available for understanding the history of the universe. Plasma cosmology and
the steady-state model both hypothesize an evolving universe without beginning
or end. These and other alternative approaches can also explain the basic
phenomena of the cosmos, including the abundances of light elements, the
generation of large-scale structure, the cosmic background radiation, and how
the redshift of far-away galaxies increases with distance. They have even
predicted new phenomena that were subsequently observed, something the big bang
has failed to do.
Supporters of the big bang theory may retort
that these theories do not explain every cosmological observation. But that is
scarcely surprising, as their development has been severely hampered by a
complete lack of funding. Indeed, such questions and alternatives cannot even
now be freely discussed and examined. An open exchange of ideas is lacking in
most mainstream conferences. Whereas Richard Feynman could say that
"science is the culture of doubt", in cosmology today doubt and
dissent are not tolerated, and young scientists learn to remain silent if they
have something negative to say about the standard big bang model. Those who
doubt the big bang fear that saying so will cost them their funding.
Even observations are now interpreted
through this biased filter, judged right or wrong depending on whether or not
they support the big bang. So discordant data on red shifts, lithium and helium
abundances, and galaxy distribution, among other topics, are ignored or ridiculed.
This reflects a growing dogmatic mindset that is alien to the spirit of free
scientific inquiry.
Today, virtually all financial and
experimental resources in cosmology are devoted to big bang studies. Funding
comes from only a few sources, and all the peer-review committees that control
them are dominated by supporters of the big bang. As a result, the dominance of
the big bang within the field has become self-sustaining, irrespective of the
scientific validity of the theory.
Giving support only to projects within the
big bang framework undermines a fundamental element of the scientific method --
the constant testing of theory against observation. Such a restriction makes
unbiased discussion and research impossible. To redress this, we urge those agencies
that fund work in cosmology to set aside a significant fraction of their
funding for investigations into alternative theories and observational
contradictions of the big bang. To avoid bias, the peer review committee that
allocates such funds could be composed of astronomers and physicists from
outside the field of cosmology.
Allocating funding to investigations into
the big bang's validity, and its alternatives, would allow the scientific
process to determine our most accurate model of the history of the
universe.”
While the plasma or the steady state cosmologies also have their problems, especially with the transverse across the infinite problem, I will not address them here and concentrate on just the Big Bang.
What this open letter shows is the bias that is in science today and the dogma that is held about evolution. If you are outside the mainstream evolutionary postulate in science you won’t get funding, you not may gain the doctorate you are working on, you won’t get published in peer reviewed scientific magazines and you will be mocked and reviled. Usually name calling or an ad-hominen attack is proof the attacker has lost the argument anyway.
Some of the big bang problems are:
There is a conundrum about the distance of stars and galaxies. Evolutionists speculate a universe of about 20 billion light years. They point out to the redshift of nearly all stars and galaxies as proof the universe is expanding and the stars and galaxies are moving away from us. Which also points out another conundrum on this expansion as if space itself is expanding then atoms would also be expanding as well as everything else. That is obviously not happening so we are left with questions. The stars and galaxies are not all within 7000 light years either as we would fry with the energy density if that was so.
So what is the answer?
Paul Davies the non-theist physicist recently published an article called “Black holes constrain varying constants, Nature418(6898):602-603, 8 August 2002. The gist of the article is this:
1. Already known: the fine structure constant a = 2ne 2 / hc, where e is the electronic charge and h is Planck’s Constant. Last year, there was a claim that a is increasing over time.
2. So if a is increasing is it due to and increasing e or a decreasing c?
3. The second law of thermodynamics is in force. The entropy of a black hole increases with the area of its event horizon (that’s if the standard formula applies with either varying c or e). Therefore the area cannot decrease unless the black hole’s environment has a corresponding entropy increase.
4. The key point: an increase in e would mean a reduction in the black hole’s area which would seem to violate the second law under the current formula. Increasing e would also lead to an increase of a black hole’s electric charge above the threshold value where the event horizon disappears and we are left with a naked singularity, and this would violate what is known as the cosmic censorship hypothesis.
5. But a decrease of c over time would lead to an increase in a black hole’s area, which is in line with the second law. So by process of elimination based on this theory about black hole thermodynamics, a tiny decrease in c is the right explanation for the tiny increase that was previously claimed for a over time.
Well that caused some consternation in physics circles, because the invariant c has become an icon and that icon is beginning to crack.
Barry
Setterfield has a theory that time is slowing down since creation and has
enormous implications for creation thought. Instead of me relating his theories
to you, I’ll let you go to his site and see for yourself. Here it is, enjoy.
Evolutionists need lots and lots of time for their scenario to at least have a remote chance. As we saw in the probability section even 20 billion years isn’t really enough. But is the Universe even 20 billion years old? There are lots if anomalies out there that question that very thing.
The missing Supernova Remnants.
I have taken this section out as I have found out the data was incorrect.
Strange Quasar – Galaxy Connections
According to the Big Bang theory quasars are super-luminous black holes at the very edge of the universe. They are a million or a hundred million times more massive than our sun and supposedly have a disk of surrounding material constantly falling into them releasing enormous energy in the process.
There is a ULX or ultra luminous X-ray quasar embedded in galaxy NGC 7319. The galaxy is 360 million light years away according to Hubble’s law of redshift. However the quasar is 100 times farther according to the same law. But according to the team of Geoffery Burbridge and Halton Arp the two are connected unmistakably together. Burbridge and Arp say that the galaxy is ejecting the quasar and there is a luminous cloud between them.
The Galaxy NGC 4319 and the quasar Markarian 205 are also connected in the same way. NGC 4319 is 107 million light yeas away and Markarian 205 is 12 times further. But they are also connected with a gas bridge.
Seyfert NGC 7319 and it ULX and NGC 4319 and Markarian 205 are two anomalies that we cannot ignore. The ejection from galaxies is rejected by the big bang community. This is because it hammers their key assumptions of the genesis of all matter at the big bang. It also calls into question many redshift distances determined by quasar redshifts.
Arp, H. Seeing red, redshifts, cosmology, and academic science, Aperion, Montreal, 1998; Arp, H. Quasars, redshifts and controversies, Interstellar Media, p. 34, Cambridge University Press, Berkeley, California, 1987; Arp, H. Companion galaxies: a test of the assumption that velocities can be inferred from redshift, Ap j 430: 74-82, 1994; Arp, H. The distribution of high-redshift (z>2) quasars near galaxies, ap j 525: 594 – 602, 1999; Arp, H. Catalogue of discordant Redshift Associations, Aperion, Montreal, 2003
What to Extrasolar Planets Tell us About Our Solar System?
About 100 planets orbiting other stars have been documented. Much hope has been pinned in finding another earth like planet orbiting another sun like star because then the evolutionists imaginations could run amuck with life appearing everywhere. But do these planets hold out any hope for the imaginations of the evolutionists? Hardly.
Sky & Telescope reported; “The new discoveries, like most of the previously know exoplanets, generally follow eccentric (enlongated) orbits and are closer to their stars than the gas giants in our solar system are to the sun.”
NewsNotes, The first exo-Jupiters, Sky & Telescope 104(3):20, 2002.
A statistical analysis of the Extrasolar planets verses our solar system will open our eyes. Some of the averages for the Extrasolar planets are:
The average values for our solar system are:
The Extrasolar planets have much larger masses than our gas giants, they orbit much closer to the sun and greater orbital eccentricity that our planets. In fact they orbit much like a binary star system.
This raises the question of our solar system and its forming. According to the current theory the rocky inner planets were formed because the inner solar nebula was hot, while the outer regions of the solar system were cold, forming the gas giants.
It appears that the solar system is unique, though I know evolutionists will say, ‘we just haven’t found it yet”
Rapid Star Change Baffles Scientists
Evolutionary astronomers claim that normal stars like the sun evolve over millions or billions of years.
But Bengt Gustafsson at McDonald Observatory in Texas and Martin Saplund of the Uppsala Observatory in Sweden have observed a star called Sakurai’s Object in the constellation of Sagittarius.
In only a few years Sakurai’s Object has changed from a white dwarf about the size of the earth to a bright yellow supergiant 80 times wider than the sun. The diameter has expanded by a factor of 8000 and the volume by a factor of 500,000 million. The astronomers expressed great surprise at the speed at which this change occurred.
New Scientist 154 (2085):17, 7
June 1997: referring to Astronomy
& Astrophysics 321:
l17, 1997.
Atheists and evolutionists are fond of dismissing the sun as just a run-of-the-mill star, in a not-too-special place in the arm of a hum-drum galaxy. But nothing further from the truth could be imagined.
Our Special Star the Sun
The sun is in the top 10% (by mass) of stars in its neighborhood and is actually an ideal size to support life on earth. A red giant like Betelgeuse would have all the inner planets in it diameter. A blue white supergiant like Rigel would cook us with radiation 25,000 times as much as the sun. A much smaller star would not have enough energy to support life on earth and if the earth had to be closer to gain the needed energy, dangerous gravitational tides would exist.
The sun is a single star, whereas most stars are in multiple star formations. A planet in such a system would suffer from gravitational tides as well as wildly fluctuating temperatures. The sun’s position in our spiral galaxy is quite ideal. Its orbit is nearly circular, which keeps it from getting too near the galactic center where supernovas are more common. It also orbits almost parallel to plane, which keeps it from crossing the galactic plane which would be disruptive. Also the sun is ideal distance from the galactic center called the co-rotation radius. Only here does the star’s orbital speed match that of the spiral arms and thus keep it from crossing the arms and exposing it to supernovas. Chown, M., What a Star! New Scientist162(2192): 17, 1999.
Our sun is very powerful and throws out flares every few years, usually around sunspot maximum. Other violent ejections called coronal mass ejections cause huge electric currents in the earth’s upper atmosphere and can disrupt power grids and satellites. In fact in 1989, one disrupted a power grid in northern Quebec. But the sun is an exceptionally stable star. Three astronomers recently studied single stars of the same size, brightness and composition as the sun. Almost all of them erupt about once a century in superflares 100 to 100 million times more powerful than the one that blacked out Quebec. If the sun were to erupt in such a superflare it would destroy the ozone layer with catastrophic results for life. Siefe, C., Thank our lucky star, New Scientist161(2168): 15, 1999
Also life in globular or disk galaxies would not be possible for the energy densities in those galaxies would be too strong. Spiral galaxies are the only galactic shape where the sun could be in the arm as mentioned above and be able to sustain life. About 5% of the galaxies are spiral. Some speculate that there are quadrillions of planets out there where life could have started. They do this to try to increase the odds of life occurring somehow. If it is so remote on earth, they reason, then maybe with many more planets we can increase the chance.
First the though that there are quadrillions of planets out there is pure speculation. We have only seen about 200 extra solar planets and they are all gas giants, orbiting much too close to their suns. Knowing the narrow band of where life could exist in the universe would certainly limit the amount of planets out there that could support life.
Second the speculation that there are other planets where life could occur and thus increase the odds of life in the universe is a fundamental misunderstanding of probability. In statistics each probability has to stand on its own. If you flip a coin the chances are 50% to land a head and it is the same each time you flip. It doesn’t change. If the probability for life to occur is remote here it will be just as remote on some other planet. You cannot save evolution with such weak arguments as this.
The Faint Young Sun Paradox
Nuclear reactions power the sun. As the nuclear fuel is spent the sun’s core will shrink which would allow the reactions to occur more readily and thus cause the sun to shine more brightly over time.
But if the sun has been around the 3.8 to 4.6 billion years the evolutionists tell us then the sun should have been much fainter and cooler back then. In fact according to what we know now the sun should be about 25% brighter today than then. If that were true the earth would have been frozen at – 3 o C. But paleontologists say the earth was much warmer back then. The only way around this problem is to speculate on some massive greenhouse effect back then with about 1000 times more CO 2 in the atmosphere than today.
What Do the Planets in Our Solar System Tell Us?
Mercury the small planet with big problems, at least for evolution. Mercury is the closest planet to the sun and one of the smallest. Pluto is smaller and Ganeymede of Jupiter and Titan of Saturn are both larger.
The side of the Mercury that faces the sun reaches a scorching temperature of 430 o C (hot enough to melt lead) and the dark side is a frigid -170 o. Mercury revolves around the sun every 88 days and rotates on its axis exactly three times for every to complete orbits.
So what is the “thing” about Mercury? One thing is that Mercury is that it has the highest density of all planets with the exception of Earth. It is so dense that it is thought that it has an iron core that occupies about 75% of its diameter. Evolutionary models say Mercury cannot be near as dense as it is. They assume a catastrophic event where another body his Mercury so hard that it blew off most of the lighter density material, leaving the heavy density iron core. They admit that if this or some other assumption did not occur Mercury disproves the long slow hypothesis of solar system formation. Taylor, S.R., Solar System Evolution: A New Perspective, Cambridge University Press, New York, p 194, 1992
Mercury has something else that the evolutionists wish it didn’t have. It has a magnetic field. But the iron core is frozen solid and according to the dynamo theory of planetary magnetic fields Mercury shouldn’t have one. So evolutionists have speculated that the core is iron sulfide that presumably would not be solid by now. Taylor, S.R., Destiny or Chance: our solar system and its place in the cosmos, Cambridge University Press, New York, p. 163, 1998.
But a core with high concentrations of sulfur so close to the sun undermines the nebular hypothesis of the evolutionists.
Venus also gives evolutionists headaches. Venus is the next planet to Mercury and Earth. It most like earth is size and composition but more closely resembles the middle ages description of hell.
Venus also pushes against the nebular hypothesis in that its nearly circular orbit is retrograde with all the other planets. Evolutionists tried to explain this away by saying Venus rotated prograde at first but had a “bulge” on which the gravitational tidal forces of Earth could act and turn the rotation around. Aside that the tidal forces decrease with the cube of the distance it is now known the Venus is even rounder than Earth and has no bulge.
The vastly different chemistry of the inner planets also speak difficulties into the nebular hypothesis in that the chemistry of the nebula would be very different if very small areas relatively speaking.
Venus has a magnetic field that is 25,000 times weaker than Earth, which is explained by evolutionists and their dynamo theory by saying that it much slower rotation of 243 days for one rotation. But Mercury rotates slowly (58.82 days) and has a magnetic field if nearly 5 times stronger than Venus. Mars rotates almost as fast as Earth and has a magnetic field that is less than 1/10,000 th of Earth’s.
Dr. Russell Humphreys, a creationist physicist, explains the magnetic fields this way. When all the planets were formed, they started off with a magnetic field produced by a decaying electrical current. The smaller the core and the poorer electrical conductor its material was, the faster the field would decay. Humphreys, D.R.., The earth’s magnetic field: Evidence that the Earth is young, Creation 21(3):140-149, 1984
Venus also has some surface features that point out a young surface. Mt. Maxwell is 36,000 feet above mean surface level. There are shield volcanoes, rift valleys including one 5,600 miles long, steep slopes, smooth plains. There are only 935 circular structures thought to be craters, far fewer that predicted by evolutionary time. Evolutionists propose that the whole surface has been worked over by plate tectonics and volcanic activity and ended some 300 -800 million years ago, yet 84% of the craters show no modifications. The evidence supports a much shorter time for the existence of Venus.
What about those gas giants out there?
Saturn’s rings have been seen as beautifully intricate, with rings within rings within rings. Their sharp edges and intricacies indicate they haven’t been around long.
Jupiter has enormous winds generated by energy from within. It is a mystery how Jupiter has retained this heat all these billions of years. Neptune even farter out has high winds generated by internal heat.
There are two moons of Saturn that do a very strange dance. Janus and Epimetheus orbit exceedingly close to each other. One moon gradually catches up to the other about every four years and when it does, they go through a brief period where the orbit each other and then trade orbits! This requires a very unlikely delicate relationship between mass, speed and distance. This relationship could not have gone on billions of years as the energy loss on each pass would eventually allow the moons to fall into Saturn.
There are many other things out there that make us scratch our heads. In fact Planetary Physicist David Stevenson, from Caltech said: “The most striking outcome of planetary exploration is the diversity of the planets” Another scientist said: “I’m surprised at the versatility of nature . . . you put together the same basic materials and get startling different results. No two are alike; it is like a zoo.” One planetary geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey said: “I wish it were not so, but I’m some what skeptical that we’re going to learn an awful lot about Earth by looking at other planetary bodies. The more we look at the different planets, the more each one seems unique.” Richard A. Kerr, ‘The Solar System’s New Diversity’, Science 265:1360, September 2, 1994.
The Oort cloud and the Kuiper belt
What to comets tell us about the age of the
solar system? Two kinds of comet come into our solar system, short period (less
than 200 years) and long period (greater than 200 years). If there is no way to
keep feeding into both of these types of comets the solar system would have run
out many years ago if the solar system is 4.6 billion years old.
To answer this conundrum for the old solar
system the evolutionist astronomers have proposed two scenarios. The first is
the Oort cloud which is a speculative cloud that lies outside of Pluto’s
orbit to the distance of from 50,000 AU to 100,000 AU (1 AU is the distance
from the Earth to the Sun). The Oort cloud supplies all the long term comets
that come into our solar system. It has been proposed that this cloud contains
many billions of comet nuclei that are pushed out of the Oort cloud by the
gravity of a passing star or some gravity tide and move into the inner solar
system to eventually melt away.
But does the Oort cloud even exist? We
don’t know and right now we have no way of knowing it is real. It is pure
speculation. Many papers have been written about the Oort cloud and how it came
into being, how it evolved etc. This is problematical that people would write
such on a “speculative” subject. But let’s assume the Oort
cloud does exist and assume that it started with the billions of comet nuclei.
A recent study has revealed a new problem with this situation. During the
formation of the solar system the comet nuclei were sent out to the Oort cloud
region by the gravity of the newly formed planets. The new study took into
account the collisions between the nuclei and found that most of the comets
would have been destroyed by the collisions and only left a mass of nuclei of
about one Earth rather than the 40 Earths originally speculated. The
researchers desperately postulated some escape holes, but could only come up
with enough nuclei for 3.5 Earths.
Sagan, C. and Druyan, A., Comets, Random House, New York, p. 201,
1985. Stern, S.A. and Weismann, P.R., Rapid collisional evolution of comets
during the formation of the Oort cloud, Nature409(6820):589-591, 2001.
The Kuiper belt is the place from where all
the short period comets are thought to be replaced. It lies about 30 AU to 100
AU out just beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is thought that the planetary
gravitational interactions from the planets cause them to leave the belt and
wander into the inner solar system to die.
Astronomers have discovered a number of
small objects beyond Neptune and have claimed to have discovered the Kuiper
Belt. They are called Kuiper Belt Objects appropriately or KBO. The first of
these were discovered in 1992 and many more have been discovered since then. We
creationists are not surprised that more objects have been found from Neptune
to beyond the orbit of Pluto. But to date only several hundred of the KBO have
been discovered, but there should be several billion of these objects if the
solar system is very old.
It should be noted that the KBO discovered
are many times larger than a comet nuclei, on the order of 100 to 500 times
larger. This calls into question if these are actually KBO. Indeed many
astronomers call them TNO or Trans Neptune Objects. Many of these TNO are
binary orbiting objects and even Pluto and its moon Charon may be just TNO.
The question of the comets is still out for
debate
Beatty, J.K., Asteroid Chasers are Seeing
Double, Sky and Telescope.
Psalms 19:1
1 The heavens are
telling of the glory of God;
And their expanse is
declaring the work of His hands.
Well we now come to an end of the Astronomy
section. I simple could not write all I researched but I think I brought enough
questions. Creation scientists are working to do predictive science based on
their work and that is very good.
Remember to always speak through truth,
grace and love.
Paleontology is not Evolution’s Friend
One of the most important areas to look forensically for evidence of
evolution or creation is the fossil record. We have had over 150 years
since Darwin proposed his theory. What has the record shown?
How important do the evolutionists think the fossil record is?
So it appears that the evolutionists think that the fossil record is
pretty important and that it actually shows the footsteps of evolution so to speak.
Well, let us look at the fossil record and see it this be true.
The nature of the fossil record that has been found
Now don’t get me wrong, we have found millions of fossils, but of
those we would consider more that just a curiosity we have very few.
Especially troublesome to the evolutionists are the gaps and holes in the
fossil record that they cannot explain.
The Cambrian Explosion is
“Evolutionary biology’s deepest paradox” is what professor
Levinton said in Scientific American in his article “The Big Bang of
Animal Evolution. Scientific American, November, 1992, pp.52-59.
Cambrian rocks are a system
of fossil bearing rocks thought to be nearly 600 million years to about 500
million years. This is considered by the evolutionist to be the first system of
multicelled organisms that proliferated. The only multicelled organism in
the Precambrian is the Ediacaran group which are considered an evolutionary
dead end. The only other organisms in the Precambrian are single celled
organisms.
But in the Cambrian there
was an “explosion” of life. In fact every phyla represented
today are in the Cambrian. There were 26 phyla in the Cambrian and all
those phyla have not changed at all to this date. The Echinoderma, the
Mollusca, the Arthropoda and the Chordata are no different today than there
were in the Cambrian rocks.
Creationists have long
pointed out that a major issue for evolution is that all the major groups or
phyla of life which we know today appear in the Cambrian with no evolutionary
ancestors. They all seem to have appeared suddenly and simultaneously.
However the deepest
conundrum that professor Levinton mentions in the above article is that in the
rock layers above the Cambrian there are no new or different body plans
appearing. What we have in the Cambrian appears to be fixed through all
the succeeding layers of rock. This fact supports the creation model far
better than the evolution model. According to the evolutionary theory
there should be innumerable new body plans appearing in the fossil records as
enormous and radical changes are needed for the amoeba to man postulate to be
true.
Professor Leviton, a
professor of Ecology and Evolution at the State University, is amazed that the
fossil record does not show evolution in the light of his experiments of
supposed rapid evolutionary change in aquatic worms resistance to toxic cadmium
in “only” three generations.
But once you take off the evolutionary presuppositions the supposed paradox
vanishes. This is one of the fundamental misunderstandings between
creationists and evolutionists. I spoke about it in the introduction as
well. Microevolution is not evolution! Many who do not understand
simple genetics think that billions of microevolution changes eventually add up
to a macro evolutionary change and that is not true.
What the experiment was:
Worms from a cadmium free site were exposed to a site with cadmium laden
sediments. Some worms survived and they were bred with other survivors
and in three generation they had a worm population that was cadmium resistant.
But the only worms that
survived the site with the cadmium laden sediments were worms that
already had a resistant allele.
They bred those together and reinforced the resistant allele and created a
population of worms all with the resistant allele. That is not
evolution! The allele already existed in the genome and was merely
selected out. We do the same with dogs and cats etc. in selected
breeding. This type of breeding does not add any new information to the
genome that is not already there. This is
not a new species of worm!
Problems
with the Fossil Record
If the fossils are a true
record of the evolutionary process then they ought to reflect that
process. There should be a clear increase of complexity and plenty of
fossils that show transition between species. But does the fossil record
show that?
The fossil record does not
show an increasing complexity. Evolutionist Dan McShea of the University
of Michigan had approached this question in a detailed study of the backbones
of creatures that evolutionists believe represent ancestor – descendant
pairs. He wanted to see if the ‘descendant’ was more complex than
the ‘ancestor’ on the average for each case. What he found
was no trend at all. Other scientists studied the shells of ammonoids, a
spiral shelled creature, to see if apparently related types got more complex
higher in the rock strata and found there was absolutely no trend.
Creationists would expect this result of these studies. McShea said:
“Everybody knows that organisms get more complex as they evolve.
The only trouble with what everyone knows is that there is no evidence it’s
true.” L. Oliwenstein, ‘Onward and Upward?’, Discover magazine, June 1993, p 22 ff.
Those
Pesky Transitional Fossils
Charles Darwin worried that
the fossil record did not show what his postulate predicted when he stated:
“Why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such
intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely
– graduated organic chain; and this is the most obvious and serious
objection which can be urged against the theory.” C. Darwin, Origin of
Species, 6th ed. 1872 (London: John Murray, 1902), p 413
The late Stephen J. Gould,
an ardent evolutionist and Marxist, said this about the fossil record:
“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists
as the trade secret of paleontology.” S.J. Gould, Evolution’s
Erratic Pace, Natural History 86(5): 14, 1977.
Gould later stated: “The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary
states between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even
in our imagination, to construct functional intermediated in many cases, has
been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of
evolution.” S.J. Gould, in Evolution Now: A Century after Darwin,
ed. John Maynard Smith, (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1982)
Again Gould said: “I regard the failure to find a clear ‘vector of
progress’ in life’s history as the most puzzling fact of the fossil
record.” S.J. Gould, The Ediacaran Experiment, Natural History 93(2): 14-23, Feb. 1984
The late Dr. Colin
Patterson, senior paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History,
wrote a book, Evolution.
A reader sent him a letter questioning him why he had not presented any
transitional forms and in reply he wrote: “I fully agree with your
comments about the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in
my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have
included them …. I will lay it on the line – there is not one
fossil which one could make a watertight argument.” C. Paterson,
letter to Luther D. Sutherland, 10 April 1979, as published in Darwin’s
Enigma (Green Forest AR: Master Books, 4th ed. 1988), p. 89
But evolutionists bravely
persist in saying that there a many examples of transitional fossils.
“Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils intermediate
in form between various taxonomic groups” (Scientific American 1983)
What transitional fossils
are they talking about? Well they consistently point our all the same old
tired examples.
Probably the most famous
fossil in bird evolution is Archaeopteryx which according to evolutionists
combined feathers and skeletal features of dinosaurs. But was
Archaeopteryx an intermediate or just a bird?
Archaeopteryx had fully formed flying feathers (including asymmetric vanes and
ventral reinforcing furrows as in modern flying birds. It had a large
wishbone for attachment of muscles responsible for the down stroke of
wings.
Its brain was essentially that of a flying bird with a large cerebellum and
visual cortex.
The fact that it had teeth is irrelevant to its alleged transitional status as
a number of extinct birds had teeth, while many reptiles do not.
Furthermore, like other birds, both it maxilla (upper jaw) and mandible (lower
jaw) moved. In most vertebrates including reptiles, only the mandible
moves.
Finally Archaeopteryx skeleton has pneumatized vertebrae and pelvis. This
indicates the presence of both a cervical and abdominal air sac, or at least
two of the five sacs present in modern birds. The air sacs in turn
indicate that the unique avian lung design was already present in what most
evolutionists claim is the earliest bird. A. Fedduccia, Evidence from
Claw Geometry Indicating Arboreal Habits of Archaeopteryx, Science 259(5096):
790 – 703, 5th February 1993. P. Christiansen and N. Bonde, Axial
and Appendicular Pheumaticity in Archaeopteryx, Proceedings of the Royal
Society of London, Series B. 267:2501 – 2505, 2000.
“Paleontologists have
tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth – bound, feathered
dinosaur. But it’s not. It is a bird, a perching bird.
And no amount of ‘paleobabble’ is going to change
that.” Cited in V. Morell, Archaeopteryx: Early Bird Catches a Can
of Worms, Science 259(5069): 764 – 65, 5 February
1993.
More trouble for dinosaur
– bird evolution.
Scientific American
published a 10 page cover story in the March 2003 edition, pages 83 –
93. In it the authors Richard Prum and Alan Brush propose a new paradigm
for bird evolution and propose abandoning the problem racked dinosaur – bird
evolution. They state in the opening two paragraphs: “How did these
incredibly strong, wonderfully lightweight, amazingly intricate appendages
evolve? . . . Although evolutionary theory provides a robust explanation for
the appearance of minor variations in the size and shape of creatures and their
component parts, it does not yet give as much guidance for understanding the
emergence of entirely new structures, including digits, limbs, eyes and
feathers.”
Well some honesty at last,
this is what creationists have been saying for years. Evolutionists have
made such dogmatic claims of the absolute proof of evolution and now they say,
well it may be a little more complex than we thought.
They say that the feathers
from scales paradigm is false. They said that they believe evolutionists
had made a false ‘assumption that the primitive feather evolved by
elongation and division of the reptilian scale.’ But the say they
have ‘a new appreciation’ of what the modern feather is and how it
develops.
The feather is a skin
appendage, like hair, that grows as a unique hollow tube from a follicle by the
controlled proliferation of cells in a ring. Pennaceous (rigid, non-downy)
feathers have an even more complex development, where barb ridges grow
helically (spirally) inside the follicle, and meet to form the rachis (shaft)
ridge. Then the feather emerges from the sheath and unfurls to its planar
shape. And to make the barbs lock together, each barb has a branching pattern
very similar to the rachis and barbs. That is, the main shaft of the barb, the
ramus, has a branching pattern of barbules (‘little barbs’). In
turn, the tips of the barbules have a tiny hooklets that fit into grooves on
adjacent barbules. This enables the feather to form a stiff vane, and if it is
ruffled, the bird merely has to preen it and it will lock back into shape.
Obviously this has no similarity to scales, and so early evolutionary theorists
were hampered by the ‘lack of primitive fossil feathers,’ at least
until some of the more recent finds since Archaeopteryx.
Bush refutes the scales to feathers transition in his article
“On the origin of feathers, Journal
of Evolutionary Biology 9:
131 – 142, 1996.
This debunking of
evolutionists views should be an embarrassment but the authors blithely move on
to their thesis called evolutionary developmental biology or
‘evo-devo’. According to ‘evo-devo’ ‘the
complex mechanisms by which an individual organism grows to its full size and
form can provide a window into the evolution of a species anatomy.’
In other words they say, that by looking at the stages of feather development
in a bird today, we can look for ‘ancient’ dinosaurs that had
feathers similar to that stage of development. They say that
‘Feathers originated and diversified in carnivorous, bipedal theropod
dinosaurs before the origin of birds or the origin of flight.’ That
is their ‘revolutionary’ answer to the feather question.
Humm! Looks like we made a circle back to the beginning.
Anyway their theory has
many ungrounded assumptions and unsupported conclusions.
The author admit that their approach raises basic questions about the
definition of birds and feathers to begin with. They really don’t
answer any of those questions either.
Tetrapod
Evolution Fact or Fancy?
The Tetrapod according to
evolution thought is the first fish to walking and land dwelling
organisms. The Tetrapod is thought to have been forced out of its
ecological niche in the Devonian area in the classic “warm pond”
idea. It is thought that the red rocks, rich in iron oxides, portrayed a
time of drought and desertification. Thus the Tetrapods were forced out
of the pond and out onto the surface of the land. They
“developed” legs and hands with fingers and became land dwellers.
In the increasing dryness the air-bladder of the fish became the new lungs of
the Tetrapod and the gills atrophied and disappeared. The lobed fins of
certain fished became legs with feet and digits to better travel between the
warm ponds.
That makes for interesting
reading and most people of a lay or semi scientific background would say
“sounds good to me!” Notwithstanding the incredible about of
new information that needed to come through random mutations and the massive
amount of time for that to occur. Well it is not exactly true and the
fossil record simply does not support such a story.
The lobed finned fish from
which the Tetrapods supposedly came included the Coelacanths (who are still
hanging around today) Sauripteris, Osteolepis and Eusthenopteron.
Eventually the Eusthenopteron won out but the substantial discontinuity between
it an Ichthyostega Tetrapod was huge. Evolutionists began looking for other Tetrapods
and the missing links. But the evolutionist R.L. Carroll wrote: “We
have not found any fossils that are intermediate between such terrestrial
animals and the strictly aquatic rhipidistians described in the previous
chapter.” R.L. Carroll, Vertebrate
Paleontology and Evolution, W.H. Freeman and Company, New York,
p.158, 1988
The Taxons Pederpes, Sinostega, Tulerpeton, Vantastega, Acantostega,
Hynerpeton, Densighathus, Metaxygnathus, Elginerpeton, and Obruchevichtys were
added to the lists, but the drying ponds concept was meeting with though
times. The final blow to the drying pond hypothesis was when it was
realized that the Devonian Tetrapods were predominately aquatic in
nature.
This was found out when new
Ichthyostegid material, including a well preserved articulated hind limb.
The hind foot was found to have seven digits that were very flattened and with
an inflexible ankle bone. The hind foot resembled the paddle of an
elephant seal that a terrestrial walker. Acanthostega fossils were found
also throwing this former terrestrial Tetrapod back into the pond.
The drying pond also
collapsed from the understanding that the red beds were not necessarily due to
arid climates but could also be of a monsoonal climate like the lower Amazon
River basin.
Not to one to give up the
evolutionists dropped the Eusthenopteron and focused on two more obscure lobed
finned fish, Panderichtys and Elpistostege. Both of these fish exhibited
characteristics of Tetrapods. In fact they looked more like a “mosaic”
animal than a link. Stephen Gould’s term is “mosaic
forms’ or ‘chimeras’ while Kurt Wise calls them
‘chimeromorphs’. But they are animals like the duck-billed
platypus that has characteristics of both mammals and reptiles.
In fact the lobed finned
fish and the Tetrapods are both ‘mosaic forms’ and don’t
really posses the right combination of characters to be considered part of an
evolutionary lineage. The fish both have some unique characteristics
(such as design of the vertebrae) that rule them out as a Tetrapod ancestor.
Other Tetrapod Evolution
Problems
1. The fossil record
imposes a tight constraint on the timing of the supposed transition.
“Panderichthys and
Elpistostege flourished in the early Frasnian and are to of the nearest
neighbors of Tetrapods. But Tetrapods appear only about 5 – 10
million years later in the late Frasnian, by which time they were widely
distributed and had evolved into several groups, including the lineage leading
to the Tetrapods of the Famennian. This suggests that the transition
from fish to Tetrapod occurred rapidly within this restricted time span.”
Clack, J.A., Gaining Ground: The
Origin and Evolution of Tetrapods, Indiana University Press,
Bloomington, p. 96, 2002
2. The key morphological
transitions, such as the purported change from paired fins to limbs with
digits, remain undocumented in the fossil record. This is just one of the
morphological transitions that must be documented.
3. There are severe
functional challenges to the Darwinian interpretations as well. For an
example in fish the head, shoulder girdle, and circulatory systems for a single
mechanical unit. But in the amphibians the head is not attached to the
shoulder girdle in order to allow terrestrial feeding and locomotion.
Evolutionists must suppose how the head became detached in increments
from the shoulder girdle with functional intermediated all along the way, and
not with just minimally functional but highly functional, otherwise no gene
transfer. Evolutionists have of course not been able to answer this
question.
Much discussion about a whale with
legs out of Pakistan has hit the airwaves and magazines. But the
evolutionary whale hypothesis is probably one of the more fanciful stories and
an interesting read. Supposedly a four legged that looked like a long
snouted leopard called the Mesonychid decided to take to the water for
food. In that process his back legs atrophied and his front legs shrank a
bit and gained webbed feet and became an Ambulocetus. Further streamlining
and atrophying the Rodhocetus came into being and sometime further down the
road a very whale like Basilosaurus started swimming around.
Here is a picture of the sequence that is used to teach this story of
schools. But the picture and story fails to show the serious problems
with this series. One problem is Basilosaurus is about 10 times longer
than the Amblulocetus. Another problem is that the Basilosaurus cannot be
the ancestor to modern whales because of body shape, skull structure and tooth
shape.
Thewissen, Hassain, and
Arif in the article “Fossil evidence for the origin of aquatic locomotion
if Archeocete whales” claims to have found evidence that the Ambulocetus
was a walking whale. And what was that evidence? A very partial
skeleton with a partial skull and lover mandible, six cervical and upper
thoracic vertebrae four ribs, a fore arm with digits, and a foot with digits
were all found in one level. In another level five meters above a mid
thoracic vertebra, one caudal vertebra and one femur. From the Thewissen
and the others concluded that the Ambulocetus was a “walking”
whale. Notice there was no scapula and no pelvic girdle and not enough
caudal vertebrae to determine proper muscle attachment. More fanciful thinking
from the world of wonder of the Paleontologist. Science 263:210 – 212, 1994.
There are five suggested
features to unite whales:
1.
All
incisors parallel with the tooth row – not preserved in Ambulocetes
2.
Medial
lambdoidal crest semicircular - not preserved in Ambulocetes
3.
Nasals
retracted – rostrum (snout) not preserved in Ambulocetes
4.
Protocones
small (features of teeth)
5.
Accessory
cusps large (features of teeth)
Prothero, D.,
Manning, E.M. and Fischer, M., 1988, In: The
Phylogeny and Classification of Tetrapods, M.J. Benton (ed),
Clarendon, Oxford, Vol. 2,
pp. 201 – 234.
As can be seen we firstly
don’t know if Ambulocetes was truly ambulatory and second we don’t
even know if Ambulocetes was even a whale or even an ancestor to a whale.
Now through another
Paleontologist we can see that another creature called the Pakicetus is a
walking whale. Gingerich discovered the cranial bones of a wolf like
creature in Pakistan that he claimed had an inner ear like a whale. That
conclusion is at best questionable, but there were not any more post cranial
bones found and we don’t know how this creature got around. But
that didn’t stop Gingerich from publishing an article showing his
creature splashing into the sea and swimming to catch fish.
P. Gingerich, The Whales of Tethys, Natural
History (April 1994)” p. 86.
But now molecular
scientists have entered the fray and said that following the molecules that
there is a very different ancestor to the whale. “Until now
paleontologists thought whales had evolved from Mesonychians, and extinct
group of land-dwelling carnivores, while molecular scientists studying DNA were
convinced they descended from artiodactyls (even towed ungulates).
Gingerich said ‘The Paleontologists, and I am one of them, were
wrong.’” Fossil Finds Show Whales Related to Early Pigs,
Reuters, 19 September 2001,
<www,spectrum.ieee.org/news/cahce/RuetersOnlineScience/09_19_2001.romta1708-story-bcsciencessciencewhalesdc.html
It is amazing where
presupposition will lead you when you don’t even know it.
In books and museums there is almost always portrayed one of the supposed “key” proofs of evolution the horse series. In a beautifully laid out picture showing the tiny Eohippus or the ‘dawn horse’ with a larger creature like the three toed Mesohippus and then to a larger still Merychippus, which has two toes and then finally to the modern Equus with one toe. There are also diagrams showing trends in tooth changes, showing an increasing hypsondonty (high-crowned teeth) to supposedly show a change in browse from bushes to grasslands. But is it all true and as clear as the pictures and diagrams show?
Hardly!
The ‘Dawn Horse’ or Eohippus was discovered in 1841 by Richard Owen, one of the leading paleontologists of the day. Owen saw no relation to the horse but thought the creature was more like the modern day hyrax or rock badger or coney, so he named it Hyracotherium. In 1879 the American paleontologist O.C. Marsh and T.H. Huxley (known as Darwin’s bulldog) put the Hyracotherium in the horse series as the Eohippus and established the whole horse series as a ‘proof’ of evolution.
The biologist Heribert-Nilsson said, “The family tree of the horse is beautiful and continuous only in the textbooks”. Heribert-Nilsson, Synthetische Artbildung, Gleerup, Sweden, Lund University 1954; cited in Luther Sunderland, Darwin’s Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems, 4th Ed., Master Books, Santee, CA, p. 81, 1988.
As stated above the horse fossils are not so linear in the fossil record. For instance the three toed Neohipparion and the one toed Pliohippus were found in the same strata in north-eastern Oregon indicating they were living at the same time. S. Nevins, Creation Research Society Quarterly 10:196, 1974
In North America the three toed and the one toed horses lived together at the same time. In Nebraska there is a remarkable deposit of fossils where over 200 nearly complete fossils were found. Voorhies, the paleontologist who made the find believed they all died at the same time in the ash cloud from a volcano. Among other fossils there were five species of horse: Pseudhipparion gratum, Cormohipparion occidentale, Protohippus supremus, Astrohipus, Neohipparion, and Dinohippus. The Dinohippus varieties included a mix of tridactyl and monodactyl horses. McFadden said: “The discovery of an exquisitely preserved population of primitive Dinohippus (Pliohippus of Voorhies 1981) from Ashfall Fossil Beds in northeastern Nebraska . . . suggests that some individuals were tridactyl, whereas others were monodactyl (Voorhies 1981). Although that also may have been the case for other primitive equine species previously though to have been exclusively monodactyl.”
“Thus there were at least three different adaptive groups of fossil horses with diverse postcranial morphologies that coexisted during the middle and the late Miocene. The architeres retained the primitive tridactyl foot structure, including the digital pad. The advanced three toed horses evolved the unguligrade foot that in many ways was adaptively similar to the monodactyl forms. Finally, the monodactyl horses arose during that time, with locomotory complex that also occurred later in Equus.” M. Voorhies and J.R. Themasson, Science 206:331-333 (1979): Bruce J. McFadden, Fossil Horses (Cambridge University Press, 1992) p. 73, 255, 257.
So we have a ‘primitive’ three toed horse, an ‘advanced’ three toed horse and a one toed horse all in the same bed having died together. Yet the horse series purports to inform us that the primitive three toed horse evolved into the advanced three toed horse who then evolved into the one toed horse. Seems a little out of sync doesn’t it. The fossil record as we find more and more does not support the horse evolution series.
Hominid Evolution or Paleoanthropology
Hominid evolution has been the most fanciful and most rife with hoaxes and scams of all the hypothesis presented before. Paleontology in hominid evolution pulls out all the stops and tries to stuff the proverbial fifteen pounds of manure into the ten pound bag.
One of the main issues facing paleoanthropologists today is the paucity of hominid fossils. Many researchers have never seen an actual fossil, but have only seen copies or even copies of copies or even worse had to rely on descriptions in literature. Casts of the fossils are available for researchers to examine, but the cast process leaves much to be desired as when in the 1984 American Museum exhibition of original fossils, the casts were used to prepare the mounts for the fossils to be exhibited. But when they attempted to mount the original fossils to the mounts most didn’t fit and the mounts had to be reworked. Thus paleoanthropologists are a group of scientists who are removed from their subject matter by several iterations.
Paleoanthropologists are masters at the “begging the question” modus operendi of evolutionists. They assume evolution, and thus make the evidence fit it. For instance they are prone to line up skulls in an “evolutionary” sequence. But that doesn’t prove anything. It doesn’t prove that one skull was the ancestor of any other skull. Those are facts we simply have no way of knowing.
Neanderthal Man
Marcellin Boule in 1908 discovered a nearly complete skeleton of Neanderthal type that was buried ritualistically in the floor of a small cave near the village of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France. Boule examined the skeleton and made the following observations.
Boule ignored the pathological features in the bones that showed a severe case of deformed bones due to arthritis and rickets. In fact if the man were to try to walk in the way Boule arranged the bones he would have fallen on his face because his center of gravity was place so far forward. Boule also ignored the cranial capacity of Neanderthal was 200 cc greater that modern Homo Sapiens.
Today Boule’s assertions seem out of place with the tall, erect Neanderthals that are in Museums today. But Boule was world renown for his abilities and his assertions were fully in line with evolutionary thought of his day and today. During Boule’s time the ‘brutish” caveman was widely being used to prove evolution. The supposed “self correcting” feature of evolutionary though took a bit long to correct here.
Piltdown Man
Charles Dawson was an amateur geologist and solicitor for the Crown in England. Digging in a gravel pit in 1911 a worker discovered a human skull (parietal) and gave it to Dawson. Dawson showed the skull to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin the pantheistic evolutionary theology initiator and they both went fossil hunting in the pit. A elephant molar was found then the lower jaw of Piltdown man was found. The skull was modern and well formed and the jaw was primitive. This caused quite a stir in evolutionary circles and quite a debate raged and even many evolutionists were skeptical. But in 1915 in another pit (location still unknown I believe) exact pieces came to light that confirmed the authenticity of Piltdown man.
It wasn’t until 1953 that the hoax was discovered. The skull was a modern skull and the jaw was an orangutan jaw bone that had been placed in the pit and darkened to make it look old. In fact the jaw had been extensively modified to make it look more human with file marks readily visible. Some stone tools, purported to belong to Piltdown man were also late arrivals and darkened to look old. Self-correcting science finally found the hoax, but only after Piltdown man lead the evolutionary charge for 38 years.
We won’t go into Nebraska man, nor Java man nor Peking man as all are shameful hoaxes that were not corrected at the time of the hoax, but used to rally the faithful and pronounce the supposed “truth” of evolution for many years.
Recent Finds or is Lucy Really a Lady?
You remember all the hype, Australopithecus afarensis, dear old Lucy was said to be the “missing link” of human evolution. Bones scattered miles apart became the latest scheme to boost the concept of evolution. Lucy was thought to have walked upright, despite the evidence from CAT scans of the organ of balance that indicated it did not. Now there is molecular evidence that show Australopithecines are not human ancestors but chimp ancestors! That means that man came from upright walking and ground living and into the trees with chimp walking.
New Scientist 153(2075:18, 29 March 1997.
It now turns out that a new “missing link” has removed Lucy from her perch, or maybe moved her into her perch rather. It is Kenyanthropus platyops. His name is KNM-WT 40000, not to romantic, but who cares as he can now be the new savior of hominid evolution that has really taken in on the chin recently. What about this “upright walking” specimen of virility? Oops, well maybe he doesn’t exactly walk upright and has the cranial capacity of a chimpanzee, but because of the driving evolutionary pressure Kenyanthropus would just be another skeleton of a dead chimpanzee.
Well the Australopithecines are all now in discredit and are now just monkeys and Kenyanthropicines, just more of the same, are ruling. You see Paleoanthropologists make assumption on top of assumptions. They have no diagnostic tools, no methodological formula and not genetic technique to make the assumption that all these monkey bones are human ancestor, they just wish it so and viola it is.
Dr. David Pilbeam in an article he wrote for Nature Magazine, June 1978, entitled ‘Rearranging Our Family Tree’, stated that discoveries since 1976 had shaken his view of human origins and force a change in ideas of man’s early ancestors. He stated that he no longer believed he would be able to hit upon the true or correct story of the origin of man. He repeated several times that our theories have clearly reflected our current ideologies instead of the actual data. Too often they have reflected only what we expected of them.
Paleontology and especially Anthropaleontology are rife with fuzzy thinking and this story wins the prize for evolutionary fiction. Paleontologist Dan Gebo of Northern Illinois University reported the finding of a “missing link” between lower and higher primates. They reported their research in the Journal of Human Evolution (London) April, 2000.
They found the fossil in tons of muddy rubbish from a limestone quarry 100 miles west of Shanghai. The limestone was dated as Triassic rock some 220 million years old. This was much too old for primates as it was supposed to be right at the age of the beginning of the dinosaurs, so they assigned the fossil to a more acceptable 45 million years because the limestone had some “fissures” that dated to that age.
The article “Researchers Discover Fossils of Tiny, Thumb – Length Primates?” goes on to quote: “The researchers say the tiny primates were tree dwellers that relied on a steady diet of insects, fruit and nectar to fuel their high metabolisms. Unlike contemporary higher primates, the tiny primates were nocturnal and solitary creatures.”
“The implications are staggering’ Gebo said. ‘You would think that early higher primates would have a lot of characteristics of later higher primates, which were social creatures that occupied a daytime niche. It probably means we’re getting close to the transition between higher and lower primates.’”
The bones the researchers were excited about were a few heel bones of the primates that were about the size of a grain of rice. What is truly staggering here is the fantasy made up by Gebo based on such flimsy evidence. This is wishful thinking on a flight of fancy. How did he “know” all this evidence? He wanted it to be so to support his evolutionary ideas and he looked at it all through his evolutionary glasses.
This is not an isolated incident. Paleontology is rife with such leaps of logic, false deductions and wishful thinking.
Radiometric Dating is
not Evolution’s Friend
Radiometric dating is a very plausible and understandable
premise. In fact many good dates can come from it if the data is
interpreted correctly. But with some technical issues and the evolution
world view pressure radiometric dating is part of the propaganda of the
evolutionists that is not friendly to evolution.
Radiometric dating is based on the premise that there are radioactive isotopes in nature that decay at a regular rate from the parent element to the daughter element. If we know three things we can use them to date items that contain those isotopes.
For instance all living things contain carbon-14, or 14C, or radio carbon that decays to normal carbon 12C. 14C decays to 12C at a particular rate defined as half-life. One half-life of 14C is 5,730 years or half of the 14C is 12C in that amount of time. In 11,460 years another half will be gone leaving only a quarter of the 14C and so on. Because of the speed of 14C decay rate the range of dates that can be derived before any detectable 14C is left, is about 50,000 years. Anything over that has a bit of speculation built in.
There are other radiometric dating methods too. For example potassium-40 decays to argon-40; uranium-238 decays to lead-206 via other elements like radium; uranium-235 decays to lead-207; rubidium-87 decays to strontium-87; etc. All these methods are used in igneous rocks and are normally given as the time since solidification.
But these methods are not as infallible as the evolutionists would have us think. Let us look again at the three things we need to know to set a date.
But evidence proves that all these assumption are fraught with error. It is well know that argon gas does intrude into igneous rock and skew dates in the most popular K-Ar dating method. In fact all the parent and daughter elements are water soluble and are known to leach into and out of igneous rocks thus potentially skewing the dates derived from their ratios.
Evolutionists do play with the figures at times too. When a radiometric “date” is out of line with their premise it is rejected and another found. For instance, researchers applied posterior reasoning to the dating of Australopithecus ramidus fossils. Most samples of basalt closest to the fossil bearing strata give dates of 23 Ma or 23 million years by the argon-argon method. The authors decided that was ‘too old’, according to their beliefs about the place of fossils in their evolutionary scheme. So they looked at some basalt further removed from the fossils and selected 17 of 26 samples to get a more acceptable maximum age of 4.4 Ma. The other samples gave much older dates but the authors decided they must have been contaminated and discarded them.
G. Wolde Gabriel et al., ‘Ecological and Temporal Placement of Early Pliocene Hominids at Aramis, Ethiopia,’ Nature, 371:330-333, 1994
One could question their assumptions and ask if the 17 samples they used for the dates they wanted were the compromised samples and the ones the discarded because they had the ‘wrong’ dates were actually the ‘good’ dates. It is form of tautology to get a fossil you assume to be at 4.4 Ma and then select a radiometric date that corresponds to the date you want and then claim the date your assumed is true from the radiometric data!
There is a similar story around the primate skull known as KNM-ER 1470. The radiometric dates from surrounding basalt started with an initial 212 to 230 Ma, which according to the fossils was far off the mark as “humans weren’t around then’. After various attempts to find rock that would yield lower dates a date of 2.9 Ma was accepted due to an agreement between several different published studies although those studies also had ‘good’ and ‘bad’ dates just like the original study of KNM-ER 1470.
Later from some work with some pig fossils in Africa, evolutionists became convinced that the 2.9 Ma for KNM-ER 1470 was too ‘old’. Further studies of the rocks brought the age down to 1.9 Ma and those studies now ‘confirmed’ the new dates. Circular reasoning at its best my friends!
M. Lubenow, The Pigs Took It All, Creation 17(3):36-38, 1995
But you have to say that the evolutionists are not really conscience that they are involved in a tight tautology here, they are letting their presumptions lead them rather than the data. This is very common in radiometric dating methods and paleontology.
Mt. Ngauruhoe in New Zealand’s northern Island is the most active volcano in New Zealand. It is thought to have been active for at least 2,500 years, with more than 70 eruptive periods since 1839. In 1948 and 49 Mt. Ngauruhoe went through a strong eruptive phase with lava flows and then again in 1954 and 55 another strong eruptive phase with lave flows of about 280 million cubic feet.
Eleven samples were taken from the slopes of the mountain, two each from the 11 February 1949, 4 June 1954, and 14 July 1954 flows and from the 19 February 1975 avalanche deposits, and three from the 30 June 1954 flow. All the samples were sent to Geochron Laboratories in Cambridge, Boston for whole rock K-Ar dating – first a piece of one sample from each flow, then a piece of the second from each flow after the first set of results was received, and finally a piece of the third sample from the 30 June 1954 flow. To also test the consistency of results within the samples, second pieces of the two 30 June 1954 lave samples were also sent. The samples were also describes as young with little argon so as to require extra care in sampling. Geochron is a respected commercial laboratory. The results are in the following table.
Flow Date |
Sample |
Lab Code |
K-Ar “Age” Millions of years |
11 February 1949 |
A |
R-11714 |
<0.27 |
|
B |
R-11511 |
1.0 +/- 0.2 |
4 June 1954 |
A |
R-11715 |
<0,27 |
|
B |
R-11512 |
1,5 +/- 0.1 |
30 June 1954 |
A #1 |
R-11718 |
<0.27 |
|
A #2 |
R-12106 |
1.3 +/- 0.3 |
|
B #1 |
R-12003 |
3.5 +/- 0.2 |
|
B #2 |
R-12107 |
0.8 +/- 0.2 |
|
C |
R-11513 |
1.2 +/- 0.2 |
14 July 1954 |
A |
R-11509 |
1.0 +/- 0.2 |
|
B |
R-11716 |
< 0.29 |
19 February |
A |
R-11510 |
1.0 +/- 0.2 |
|
B |
R-11717 |
< 0.27 |
Potassium-argon ‘dates’ of recent Mt. Ngauruhoe lava flows.
As you can see from the ‘dates’ in the above table the lava flows that were less than 55 years old were given dates from 267,000 years to 3.5 million plus or minus 20 thousand years.
Carbon dating fares a little better but is still not very accurate. In 1984 Hansruedi Stutz found some sandstone with fossilized mussels in it and with fragments of coalified wood. The sandstone described as coming from Magenwil, Switzerland is said to be 20 million years old and thus the coalified wood found in the sandstone along side the mussels could be at the approximate same age. Mr. Stutz sent samples to the Physikalisches Institute of the University of Bern, Switzerland. This is a very prestigious laboratory and could be counted on in processing the samples with utmost care to eliminate any contamination. Given the ‘assumed’ date of the sandstone the 14C reading in the wood, assuming it was the same age, should read as an infinite age as all perceptible 14C would have been converted to 12C in around 100,000 years.
Instead the laboratory gave the date of 36,440 years +/- 330 years. That all the 14C is not gone shows that the sandstone is probably not near the date ‘assumed’ either.
The decay rate is limited by the light constant c and if c has changed over the years as Barry Setterfield (in physics section above) says then past decay rate could have been much substantially faster.
But some recent experiments in beta decay of ionized atoms have been accelerated up to a billion fold. During experimentation 163Dy, a stable nuclide under normal earth conditions would found to decay to 163Ho in 47 days when the conditions were bare nucleus of the completely ionized state. That is 1400 times the normal half life in the 163Dy - 163Ho decay rate. In the rhenium – osmium dating system, which is an isotopic clock used by evolutionists, the 187Re decays to 187Os with a half life of only 33 years. The experiment involved the fully ionized 187Re in a storage ring which were found to decay at a rate of almost a billion times faster than normal decay. The normal 187Re – 187Ho half life is 42 billion years.
Bosch, F. et al., Observation of bound-state b– decay of fully ionized 187Re, Physical Review Letters 77(26)5190–5193, 1996. For further discussion of this experiment, see: Kienle, P., Beta-decay experiments and astrophysical implications, in: Prantzos, N. and Harissopulus, S., Proceedings, Nuclei in the Cosmos, pp. 181–186, 1999.
We will now leave radiometric dating. I could put much more, but I believe I have shown the problems in the dating game played by the evolutionists and their circular way of thinking.
Evolutionists are not
Evolution's Friend (Or with a theory this broken, why don't they get a new
one?)
Much of the problem is that neo-Darwinism appears completely invincible to falsification by observations or by experiments, so much so that many doubt if it is a scientific theory at all. Partly, the stochastic nature of evolutionary changes must demand that there should be an unique explanation for each event, so that any difficulty raised by observations could be explained or explained away with ease, and partly, the practitioners of neo-Darwinism exhibit a great power of assimilation, incorporating any opposing viewpoint as yet another “mechanism” in the grand “synthesis”. But a real synthesis should begin by identifying conflicting elements in the theory, rather than in accommodating contradictions as quickly as they arise. “Beyond neo- Darwinism - An Epigenetic Approach to Evolution” Journal of Theoretical Biology Vol. 78, 1979 p.574
It is now approximately half a century since the neo-Darwinian synthesis was formulated. A great deal of research has been carried on within the paradigm it defines. Yet the successes of the theory are limited to the interpretation of the minutiae of evolution, such as the adaptive change in coloration of moths; while it has remarkably little to say on the questions which interest us most, such as how there came to be moths in the first place. Beyond Neo-Darwinism: An Introduction to the New Evolutionary Paradigm (1984) p.ix
George Gaylord Simpson (1902 – 84) Alexander Agassiz Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology at Harvard
A telescope, a telephone, or a typewriter is a complex mechanism serving a particular function. Obviously, its manufacturer had a purpose in mind, and the machine was designed and built in order to serve that purpose. An eye, an ear, or a hand is also a complex mechanism serving a particular function. It, too, looks as if it had been made for a purpose. This appearance of purposefulness is pervading in nature, in the general structure of animals and plants, in the mechanisms of their various organs, and in the give and take of their relationships with each other. Accounting for this apparent purposefulness is a basic problem for any system of philosophy or of science. ''The problem of plan and purpose in Nature" Scientific Monthly June 1947 p. 481
The origin of life was necessarily the beginning of organic evolution and it is among the greatest of all evolutionary problems. The Meaning of Evolution (1949) p.14
Francis Crick (1916–2004) Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, Nobel laureate 1962, Professor at the Salk Institute
Biologists must constantly
keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved. It might
be thought, therefore, that evolutionary arguments would play a large part in
guiding biological research, but this is far from the case. It is difficult
enough to study what is happening now. To figure out exactly what happened in
evolution is even more difficult. Thus evolutionary achievements can be used as
hints to suggest possible lines of research, but it is highly dangerous to trust
them too much. What Mad Pursuit (1988) pp.138-139
An honest man, armed with all
the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the
origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the
conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.
Life Itself
(1981) p.88
Every time I write a paper on
the origin of life, I determine I will never write another one, because there is
too much speculation running after too few facts. Life Itself (1981) p.153
Richard Dawkins (b. 1941) Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University
The account of the origin of life that I shall give is necessarily speculative; by definition, nobody was around to see what happened. The Selfish Gene (1989) p.14
It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that). “Put Your Money on Evolution” The New York Times (April 9, 1989) section VII p.35
Evolution is very possibly not, in actual fact, always gradual. But it must be gradual when it is being used to explain the coming into existence of complicated, apparently designed objects, like eyes. For if it is not gradual in these cases, it ceases to have any explanatory power at all. Without gradualness in these cases, we are back to miracle, which is simply a synonym for the total absence of explanation. River out of Eden (1995) p.83
Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose. The Blind Watchmaker
It is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism, and to find it hard to believe. The Blind Watchmaker (1996) p.316
As an
academic scientist I am a passionate Darwinian, believing that natural selection
is, if not the only driving force in evolution, certainly the only known force
capable of producing the illusion of purpose which so strikes all who
contemplate nature. The Devil's Chaplain (2003) p.10
It is forever true that DNA is a double helix, true that if you are a chimpanzee (or an octopus or a kangaroo) trace your ancestors back far enough you will eventually hit a shared ancestor. To a pedant, these are still hypotheses which might be falsified tomorrow. But they never will be. The Devil's Chaplain (2003) pp.17-18
The world is divided into things that look designed (like birds and airliners) and things that don't (rocks and mountains). Things that look designed are divided into those that really are designed (submarines and tin openers) and those that aren't (sharks and hedgehogs). The diagnostic of things that look (or are) designed is that their parts are assembled in ways that are statistically improbable in a functional direction. They do something well: for instance, fly.
Darwinian natural selection
can produce an uncanny illusion of design. An engineer would be hard put to
decide whether a bird or a plane was the more aerodynamically elegant. So
powerful is the illusion of design, it took humanity until the mid-19th century
to realize that it is an illusion. NewScientist September 17 2005
p.33
I should have been talking about the combined probability of life's originating on a planet and leading, eventually, to the evolution of intelligent beings capable of anthropic reflection. It could be that the chemical origin of a self-replicating molecule (the necessary trigger for the origin of natural selection) was a relatively probable event but later steps in the evolution of intelligent life were highly improbable. Intelligent Thought (2006) p. 95-6
Stephen Jay Gould (1941 – 2002) Professor of Zoology and Geology at Harvard University
I can understand such an attitude directed toward photographs of objects -- through opportunities for subtle manipulation are legion even here. But many of our pictures are incarnations of concepts masquerading as neutral descriptions of nature. These are the most potent sources of conformity, since ideas passing as descriptions lead us to equate the tentative with the unambiguously factual. Suggestions for the organization of thought are transformed to established patterns in nature. Guesses and hunches become things. Wonderful Life (1991) p.28
These shortest-term studies are elegant and important, but they cannot represent the general mode for building patterns in the history of life. The reason strikes most people as deeply paradoxical, even funny-but the argument truly cannot be gainsaid. Evolutionary rates of a moment, as measured for guppies and lizards, are vastly too rapid to represent the general modes of change that build life’s history through geological ages. ... These measured changes over years and decades are too fast by several orders of magnitude to build the history of life by simple cumulation. Reznick’s guppy rates range from 3,700 to 45,000 darwins (a standard metric for evolution, expressed as change in units of standard deviation-a measure of variation around the mean value of a trait in a population-per million years). By contrast, rates for major trends in the fossil record generally range from 0.1 to 1.0 darwins. Reznick himself states that “the estimated rates [for guppies] are...four to seven orders of magnitude greater than those observed in the fossil record” (that is, ten thousand to ten million times faster!). “The Paradox of the Visibly Irrelevant”
Pierre Grasse (1895
- 1985) Editor
of the 28-volume "Traite de Zoologie" Chair of Evolution at Sorbonne
University
Any living thing possesses an enormous amount of
'intelligence'... Today, this 'intelligence' is called 'information,' but it is
still the same thing... This 'intelligence' is the sine qua non of life. If
absent, no living being is imaginable. Where does it come from? This is a
problem which concerns both biologists and philosophers, and, at present,
science seems incapable of solving it. Evolution of Living Organisms
(1977) p.2
Zoologists and botanists are nearly unanimous in
considering evolution as a fact and not a hypothesis. I agree with this position
and base it primarily on documents provided by paleontology, i.e., the history
of the living world. Evolution of Living Organisms
(1977) p.3
Through use and abuse of hidden postulates, of bold, often
ill-founded extrapolations, a pseudoscience has been created. It is taking root
in the very heart of biology and is leading astray many biochemists and
biologists, who sincerely believe that the accuracy of fundamental concepts has
been demonstrated, which is not the case. Evolution
of Living Organisms (1977) p.6
Today, our duty is to destroy the myth of evolution,
considered as a simple, understood, and explained phenomenon which keeps rapidly
unfolding before us. Biologists must be encouraged to think about the weaknesses
of the interpretations and extrapolations that theoreticians put forward or lay
down as established truths. The deceit is sometimes unconscious, but not always,
since some people, owing to their sectarianism, purposely overlook reality and
refuse to acknowledge the inadequacies and the falsity of their beliefs. Evolution of Living Organisms
(1977) p.8
It follows that any explanation of the mechanism in
creative evolution of the fundamental structural plans is heavily burdened with
hypotheses. This should appear as an epigraph to every book on evolution. The
lack of direct evidence leads to the formation of pure conjectures as to the
genesis of the phyla; we do not even have a basis to determine the extent to
which these opinions are correct. Evolution of Living
Organisms (1977) p.31
What is the use of their unceasing mutations, if they do
not change? In sum, the mutations of bacteria and viruses are merely hereditary
fluctuations around a median position; a swing to the right, a swing to the
left, but no final evolutionary effect. Evolution
of Living Organisms (1977) p.87
Bacteria, the study of which has formed a great part of the foundation
of genetics and molecular biology, are the organisms which, because of their
huge numbers, produce the most mutants. This is why they gave rise to an
infinite variety of species, called strains, which can be revealed by breeding
or tests. Like Erophila verna, bacteria, despite their great production of
intraspecific varieties, exhibit a great fidelity to their species. The
bacillus Escherichia coli, whose mutants have been studied very carefully, is
the best example. The reader will agree that it is surprising, to say the
least, to want to prove evolution and to discover its mechanisms and then to
choose as a material for this study a being which practically stabilized a
billion years ago! Evolution of Living
Organisms (1977) p.87
Some contemporary biologists, as soon as they observe a
mutation, talk about evolution. They are implicitly supporting the following
syllogism: mutations are the only evolutionary variations, all living beings
undergo mutations, therefore all living beings evolve. This logical scheme is,
however, unacceptable: first, because its major premise is neither obvious nor
general; second, because its conclusion does not agree with the facts. No matter
how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution.
Evolution of Living Organisms (1977) p.88
Once one has noticed micro variations (on the one hand) and specific
stability (on the other), it seems very difficult to conclude that the former
(micro variation) comes into play in the evolutionary process.
Evolution of Living Organisms (1977) p.88
Although everything is not as it should
be, the living world is not at all chaotic and life results from a very
well-defined order. As soon as some disorder, even slight, appears in an
organized being, sickness, then death follow. There is no possible compromise
between the phenomenon of life and anarchy. Evolution
of Living Organisms (1977) p.98
The opportune appearance of mutations permitting animals
and plants to meet their needs seems hard to believe. Yet the Darwinian theory
is even more demanding: a single plant, a single animal would require thousands
and thousands of lucky, appropriate events. Thus, miracles would become the
rule: events with an infinitesimal probability could not fail to occur.
Evolution of Living Organisms (1977) p.103
There is no law against day dreaming, but science must not
indulge in it. Evolution of Living Organisms
(1977) p.104
The genetic differences noted between separate populations of the same
species that are so often presented as evidence of ongoing evolution are, above
all, a case of the adjustment of a population to its habitat and of the effects
of genetic drift. The fruit fly (drosophila melanogaster), the favorite pet
insect of the geneticists, whose geographical, biotropical, urban, and rural
genotypes are now known inside out, seems not to have changed since the
remotest times. Evolution of Living
Organisms (1977) p.130
Fred Hoyle (1915 – 2001) Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge University
If you wanted to produce carbon and oxygen in roughly equal quantities
by stellar nucleosynthesis, these are the two levels you would have to fix, and
your fixing would have to be just about where these levels are actually found
to be... A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a
superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and
biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The
numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this
conclusion almost beyond question.
To press the matter further, if there were a basic
principle of matter which somehow drove organic systems toward life, its
existence should easily be demonstrable in the laboratory. One could, for
instance, take a swimming bath to represent the primordial soup. Fill it with
any chemicals of a non- biological nature you please. Pump any gases over it, or
through it, you please, and shine any kind of radiation on it that takes your
fancy. Let the experiment proceed for a year and see how many of those 2,000
enzymes have appeared in the bath. I will give the answer, and so save the time
and trouble and expense of actually doing the experiment. You would find nothing
at all, except possibly for a tarry sludge composed of amino acids and other
simple organic chemicals. How can I be so confident of this statement? Well, if
it were otherwise, the experiment would long since have been done and would be
well known and famous throughout the world. The cost of it would be trivial
compared to the cost of landing a man on the Moon... In short there is not a
shred of objective evidence to support the hypothesis that life began in an
organic soup here on Earth. The
Intelligent Universe (1983) pp.20-21, 23
At all events, anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with the Rubik
cube will concede the near-impossibility of a solution being obtained by a
blind person moving the cube faces at random. Now imagine 1050 blind persons
each with a scrambled Rubik cube, and try to conceive of the chance of them all
simultaneously arriving at the solved form. You then have the chance of
arriving by random shuffling of just one of the many biopolymers on which life
depends. The notion that not only the biopolymers but the operating programme
of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup
here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order. "The
Big Bang in Astronomy" New Scientist November 19, 1981
pp.521-527
The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in
this way is comparable with the chance that 'a tornado sweeping through a junk
yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein'. "Hoyle
on Evolution" Nature November 12, 1981 p.105
Robert Jastrow (b. 1925) PhD Theoretical Physics recipient of NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement (Agnostic)
At present, science has no satisfactory answer to the
question of the origin of life on the earth. Perhaps the appearance of life on
the earth is a miracle. Scientists are reluctant to accept that view, but their
choices are limited; either life was created on the earth by the will of a being
outside the grasp of scientific understanding, or it evolved on our planet
spontaneously, through chemical reactions occurring in nonliving matter lying on
the surface of the planet. The first theory places the question of the origin of
life beyond the reach of scientific inquiry. It is a statement of faith in the
power of a Supreme Being not subject to the laws of science. The second theory
is also an act of faith. The act of faith consists in assuming that the
scientific view of the origin of life is correct, without having concrete
evidence to support that belief. Until
the Sun Dies (1977) pp. 62-63
The details differ, but the essential elements in the
astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events
leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a
flash of light and energy ... For the scientist who has lived by his faith in
the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain
of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over
the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting
there for centuries. God and the
Astronomers (1992) pp.106-107
Roger Lewin PhD Biochemistry News Editor of Science Magazine
The central question of the Chicago conference was whether
the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the
phenomena of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the positions of
some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear No. Science November 21
1980 p. 883
The key issue is the ability correctly to infer a genetic
relationship between two species on the basis of a similarity in appearance, at
gross and detailed levels of anatomy. Sometimes this approach...can be
deceptive, partly because similarity does not necessarily imply an identical
genetic heritage: a shark (which is a fish) and a porpoise (which is a mammal)
look similar. Bones of Contention
(1987) p.123
Richard Lewontin (b. 1929) PhD Zoology Alexander Agassiz Research Professor at Harvard University
Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection in particular is hopelessly metaphysical, according to the rules of etiquette laid down in the Logic of Scientific Inquiry and widely believed in by practicing scientists who bother to think about the problem. The first rule for any scientific hypothesis ought to be that it is at least possible to conceive of an observation that would contradict the theory. For what good is a theory that is guaranteed by its internal logical structure to agree with all conceivable observations, irrespective of the real structure of the world? If scientists are going to use logically unbeatable theories about the world, they might as well give up natural science and take up religion. Yet is that not exactly the situation with regard to Darwinism? The theory of evolution by natural selection states that changes in the inherited characters of species occur, giving rise to differentiation in space and time, because different genetical types leave different numbers of offspring in different environments... Such a theory can never be falsified, for it asserts that some environmental difference created the conditions for natural selection of a new character. It is existentially quantified so that the failure to find the environmental factor proves nothing, except that one has not looked hard enough. Can one really imagine observations about nature that would disprove natural selection as a cause of the difference in bill size? The theory of natural selection is then revealed as metaphysical rather than scientific. Natural selection explains nothing because it explains everything. “Testing the Theory of Natural Selection” Nature March 24, 1972 p.181
It is the great irony of modern evolutionary genetics that the spirit of explanation has moved more and more towards optimal adaptation, while the technical developments of population genetics of the past 30 years have been increasingly to show the efficacy of non adaptive forces in evolution. "A natural selection" Nature May 11,1989 p.107
As to assertions without adequate evidence, the literature of science is filled with them, especially the literature of popular science writing. Carl Sagan's list of the "best contemporary science-popularizers" includes E.O. Wilson, Lewis Thomas, and Richard Dawkins, each of whom has put unsubstantiated assertions or counterfactual claims at the very center of the stories they have retailed in the market. "Billions and Billions of Demons"
It is said that there is no place for an argument from authority from science. The community of science is constantly self-critical ... It is certainly true that within each narrowly defined scientific field there is constant challenge to new technical claims and to old wisdom. ... But when scientists transgress the bounds of their own specialty they have no choice but to accept the claims of authority, even though they do not know how solid the grounds of those claims may be. Who am I to believe that quantum physics if not Steven Weinberg, or about the solar system if not Carl Sagan? What worries me is that they may believe what Dawkins and Wilson tell them about evolution. "Billions and Billions of Demons"
Ernst Mayr (1904 – 2005) Professor of Zoology at Harvard University
The basic framework of the theory is that evolution is a
two-stage phenomenon the production of variation and the sorting of the variants
by natural selection. Yet agreement on this basic thesis does not mean that the
work of the evolutionist is completed. The basic theory is in many instances
hardly more than a postulate and its application raises numerous questions in
almost every concrete case. Populations,
Species and Evolution (1970) p. 6
The occurrence of genetic monstrosities by mutation, for instance the
homeotic mutant in Drosophila, is well substantiated, but they are such
evident freaks that these monsters can be designated only as 'hopeless.' They
are so utterly unbalanced that they would not have the slightest chance of
escaping elimination through stabilizing selection. Giving a thrush the wings
of a falcon does not make it a better flier. Indeed, having all the other
equipment of a thrush, it would probably hardly be able to fly at all. It is a
general rule, of which every geneticist and breeder can give numerous examples,
that the more drastically a mutation affects the phenotype, the more likely it
is to reduce fitness. To believe that such a drastic mutation would produce a
viable new type, capable of occupying a new adaptive zone, is equivalent to
believing in miracles.
The finding of a suitable mate for the 'hopeless monster'
and the establishment of reproductive isolation from the normal members of the
parental population seem to me insurmountable difficulties. Populations,
Species, and Evolution (1970) p.253
Colin
Patterson (1933 – 1998)
Senior Palaeontologist at British Museum of Natural
History
Just as pre-Darwinian biology was carried out by people
whose faith was in the Creator and His plan, post-Darwinian biology is being
carried out by people whose faith is in, almost, the deity of Darwin. They've
seen their task as to elaborate his theory and to fill the gaps in it, to fill
the trunk and twigs of the tree. But it seems to me that the theoretical
framework has very little impact on the actual progress of the work in
biological research. In a way some aspects of Darwinism and of neo-Darwinism
seem to me to have held back the progress of science. The
Listener October 8, 1981 p.392
So what about the tree here and the numbers on the
branches? As Steve said, it is produced by a program. Those numbers don't pop
out of the data in any way, so I suppose those come from massaging the data with
evolutionary theory. It is a program that assumes evolution to be true and tells
the computer to find a tree. So my question will be: What is the tree telling us
about? Is it telling us something about nature or something about evolutionary
theory? "Evolutionism and
Creationism" November 5, 1981 p.10
One of the reasons I started taking
this anti-evolutionary view, or let's call it a non- evolutionary view, was
last year I had a sudden realization for over twenty years I had thought I was
working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up and something had
happened in the night and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff
for twenty years and there was not one thing I knew about it. That's quite a
shock to learn that one can be so misled so long. Either there was something
wrong with me or there was something wrong with evolutionary theory. Naturally,
I know there is nothing wrong with me, so for the last few weeks I've tried
putting a simple question to various people and groups of people.
Question is: Can you tell me anything
you know about evolution, any one thing, that is true? I tried that question on
the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I
got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology
Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists,
and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said,
"I do know one thing - it ought not to be taught in high school." "Evolutionism and Creationism" November 5, 1981 p.1
1 2 3
Michael Ruse (b. 1940) Editor of the
Cambridge University Press Series in the Philosophy of Biology
But we did talk much more about the whole question of metaphysics, the whole question of philosophical bases. And what Johnson was arguing was that, at a certain level, the kind of position of a person like myself, an evolutionist, is metaphysically based at some level, just as much as the kind of position of let us say somebody, some creationist, someone like Gish or somebody like that. Speech at 'The New Antievolutionism' symposium February 13,1993
I think that we should recognize, both historically and perhaps philosophically, certainly that the science side has certain metaphysical assumptions built into doing science, which -- it may not be a good thing to admit in a court of law -- but I think that in honesty that we should recognize, and that we should be thinking about some of these sorts of things. Speech at 'The New Antievolutionism' symposium February 13,1993
W.R. Thompson (1887 - ?) Entomologist and Director of the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control, Ottawa, Canada
Darwin considered that the doctrine of origin of living forms by descent with modification, even if well founded, would be unsatisfactory unless the causes at work were correctly identified, so his theory of modification by natural selection was, for him, of absolutely major importance. Since he had at the time the Origin was published no body of experimental evidence to support his theory, he fell back on speculative arguments. The argumentation used by evolutionists. Said de Quatrefages, makes the discussion of their ideas extremely difficult. Personal convictions, simple possibilities, are presented as if they were proofs, or at least valid arguments in favour of the theory. As an example de Quatrefages cited Darwin’s explanation of the manner in which the titmouse might become transformed into the nutcracker, by the accumulation of small changes in structure and instinct owing to the effect of natural selection; and then proceeded to show that it is just as easy to transform the nutcracker in to the titmouse. The demonstration can be modified without difficulty to fit any conceivable case. It is without scientific value, since it cannot be verified; but since the imagination has free rein, it is easy to convey the impression that a concrete example of real transmutation has been given. This is the more appealing because of the extreme fundamental simplicity of the Darwinian explanation. The reader may be completely ignorant of the biological processes yet he feels that he really understands and in a sense dominates the machinery by which the marvelous variety of living forms has been produced. Introduction to The Origin of Species 6th Edition (1956) p. xi
As we know, there is a great divergence of opinion among biologists, not only about the causes of evolution but even about the actual process. This divergence exists because the evidence is unsatisfactory and does not permit any certain conclusion. It is therefore right and proper to draw the attention of the non-scientific public to the disagreements about evolution. But some recent remarks of evolutionists show that they think this unreasonable. This situation, where scientific men rally to the defence of a doctrine they are unable to define scientifically, much less demonstrate with scientific rigour, attempting to maintain its credit with the public by the suppression of criticism and the elimination of difficulties, is abnormal and undesirable in science. Introduction to The Origin of Species 6th Edition (1956) p.xxii
George Wald (1906 - 1997) Professor of
Biology at Harvard University Nobel Laureate
The reasonable view was to believe in spontaneous generation; the only alternative, to believe in a single, primary act of supernatural creation. There is no third position. For this reason many scientists a century ago chose to regard the belief in spontaneous generation as a "philosophical necessity." It is a symptom of the philosophical poverty of our time that this necessity is no longer appreciated. Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing. "The origin of life" Scientific American August 1954 p.46
One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation. "The origin of life" Scientific American August 1954 p.46
George Gaylord Simpson (1902 – 84) Alexander Agassiz Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology at Harvard
This regular absence of transitional forms is not confined to mammals, but is an almost universal phenomenon, as has long been noted by paleontologists. It is true of almost all orders of all classes of animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate. A fortiori, it is also true of the classes, and of the major animal phyla, and it is apparently also true of analogous categories of plants. Tempo and Mode in Evolution (1944) p. 107
Richard Dawkins (b. 1941) Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University
In the Cambrian strata of rocks, vintage about 600 million years (evolutionists are now dating the beginning of the Cambrian at about 530 million years), are the oldest in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. The Blind Watchmaker (1996) p.229
Niles Eldredge (b. 1943) Chief Curator at The American Museum Of Natural History
Darwin's prediction of rampant, albeit gradual, change
affecting all lineages through time is refuted. The record is there, and the
record speaks for tremendous anatomical conservatism. Change in the manner
Darwin expected is just not found in the fossil record. The
Myths of Human Evolution (1982) p.45-46
There seems to have been almost no change in any part we
can compare between the living organism and its fossilized progenitors of the
remote geological past. Living fossils embody the theme of evolutionary
stability to an extreme degree...We have not completely solved the riddle of
living fossils. Fossils (1991) p.101, 108
As a paleontologist, I readily concede that my long dead
fossils, lacking any traces of their soft anatomies or behaviors, are totally
mute on the subject of reproduction and transmission of genetic information. And
this is, I acknowledge, a major limitation to our data.
Reinventing Darwin (1995) p.2
Simple extrapolation does not work. I found that out back
in the 1960s as I tried in vain to document examples of the kind of slow, steady
directional change we all thought ought to be there, ever since Darwin told us
that natural selection should leave precisely such a telltale signal as we
collect our fossils up cliff faces. I found instead, that once species appear in
the fossil record, they tend not to change much at all . Species remain
imperturbably, implacably resistant to chance as a matter of course.
Reinventing Darwin (1995) p.3
Stasis is now abundantly well documented as the preeminent
paleontological pattern in the evolutionary
history of species. Reinventing
Darwin (1995) p.77
No wonder paleontologists shied away form evolution for so
long. It seems never to happen. Assiduous collecting of cliff faces yields
zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of
change -- over millions of years, at a rate too slow to really account for all
the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history. When we do see
the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang and
often with no firm evidence that the organisms did not evolve elsewhere!
Evolution cannot forever be going on someplace else. Yet that's how the fossil
record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about
evolution. Reinventing
Darwin (1995) p.95
But we saw -- as did several paleontological contemporaries of Darwin --
that if you do collect a series of fossils up through a sequence of sedimentary
rock, and if you don't see much evidence of anatomical change through that
series, that is indeed evidence that substantial gradual evolutionary change
has not occurred within that species lineage, no matter how gappy the record
may be. That's why the evidence for stasis now appears so
overwhelming. Reinventing Darwin
(1995) p.96
The persistent pattern of nonchange within samples, coupled with the
abrupt appearance of new species -- organisms marked with anatomical
innovations -- had to be telling us something about the way the evolutionary
process works. Reinventing
Darwin (1995) p.97
I needed to explain why evolution leaves and entirely
different sort of pattern in the rock record than Darwin -- and his long string
of successors, including many paleontologists -- had supposed.
Reinventing Darwin (1995) p.97
Scientists, being as a rule more or less human beings,
passionately stick up for their ideas, their pet theories. It's up to someone
else to show you are wrong. Reinventing Darwin
(1995) p.221
Stephen Jay Gould (1941 – 2002) Professor of Zoology and Geology at Harvard University
In fact, the catastrophists were much more empirically minded than Lyell. The geologic record does seem to record catastrophes: rocks are fractured and contorted; whole faunas are wiped out (see my column of October, 1974). To circumvent this literal appearance, Lyell imposed his imagination upon the evidence. The geologic record, he argued, is extremely imperfect and we must interpolate into it what we can reasonably infer but cannot see. The catastrophists were the hardnosed empiricists of their day, not the blinded theological apologists. Natural History February 1975 pp.16-17
The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless. 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'. “Evolution’s Erratic Pace” Natural History May 1977 p.14
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 and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. “Evolution’s erratic pace” Natural History May 1977 p.14
Gradualism, the idea that all change must be smooth, slow, and steady, was never read from the rocks. It was primarily a prejudice of nineteenth-century liberalism facing a world in revolution. But it continues to color our supposedly objective reading of life’s history. Natural History February 1978 p.24
The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution. “Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?” Paleobiology January 1980 p.127
Sediments between 4 and 10 million years in age are potential guardians of the Holy Grail of human evolution--the period when our lineage began its separate end run to later domination, and a time for which no fossil evidence exists at all. "Empire of the Apes" Natural History May 1987 p.24
Darwin invoked his standard
argument to resolve this uncomfortable problem: the fossil record is so
imperfect that we do not have evidence for most events of life's history. But
even Darwin acknowledged that his favorite ploy was wearing a bit thin in this
case. His argument could easily account for a missing stage in a single linage,
but could the agencies of imperfection really obliterate absolutely all evidence
for positively every creature during most of life's history? Darwin admitted:
"The case as present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid
argument against the views here entertained." (1859, p.308) Knowledge
Science and Relativism (1999) p.187
Darwin has been vindicated by a rich Precambrian record, all discovered in the past thirty years. Yet the peculiar character of this evidence has not matched Darwin's prediction of a continuous rise in complexity toward Cambrian life, and the problem of the Cambrian explosion has remained as stubborn as ever -- if not more so, since our confusion now rests on knowledge, rather than ignorance about the nature of Precambrian life. Wonderful Life (1991) p.57
The opposite truth has been affirmed by innumerable cases of measurable evolution at this minimal scale-but, to be visible at all over so short a span, evolution must be far too rapid (and transient) to serve as the basis for major transformations in geological time. Hence, the “paradox of the visibly irrelevant”-or, if you can see it at all, it’s too fast to matter in the long run. “The Paradox of the Visibly Irrelevant” Natural History December 1997 p.15
Moreover, and with complete generality-the “paradox of the visibly irrelevant” in my title we may say that any change measurable at all over the few years of an ordinary scientific study must be occurring far too rapidly to represent ordinary rates of evolution in the fossil record. The culprit of this paradox, as so often, is the vastness of time (a concept that we can appreciate “in our heads” but seem quite unable to get into the guts of our intuition). The key principle, however ironic, requires such a visceral understanding of earthly time: if evolution is fast enough to be discerned by our instruments in just a few years- that is, substantial enough to stand out as a genuine and directional effect above the random fluctuations of nature’s stable variation and our inevitable errors of measurement-then such evolution is far too fast to serve as an atom of steady incrementation in a paleontological trend. Thus, if we can measure it at all (in a few years), it is too powerful to be the stuff of life’s history. If large-scale evolution proceeded by stacking Trinidad guppy rates end to end, any evolutionary trend would be completed in a geological moment, not over the many million years actually observed. “Our face from fish to man,” to cite the title of a famous old account of evolution for popular audiences, would run its course within a single geological formation, not over more than 400 million years, as our fossil record demonstrates. “The Paradox of the Visibly Irrelevant” Natural History December 1997
Anatomy may fluctuate over time, but the last remnants of a species usually look pretty much like the first representatives. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (2002) p.749
Pierre
Grasse (1895
- 1985) Editor of the 28-volume "Traite
de Zoologie" Chair of Evolution at Sorbonne University
Zoologists and botanists are
nearly unanimous in considering evolution as a fact and not a hypothesis. I
agree with this position and base it primarily on documents provided by
paleontology, i.e., the history of the living world. Evolution of Living Organisms
(1977) p.3
Naturalists must remember that
the process of evolution is revealed only through fossil forms. A knowledge of
paleontology is, therefore, a prerequisite; only paleontology can provide them
with the evidence of evolution and reveal its course or mechanisms. Neither the
examination of present beings, nor imagination, nor theories can serve as a
substitute for paleontological documents. If they ignore them, biologists, the
philosophers of nature, indulge in numerous commentaries and can only come up
with hypotheses. That is why we constantly have recourse to paleontology, the
only true science of evolution. From it we learn how to interpret present
occurrences cautiously; it reveals that certain hypotheses considered
certainties by their authors are in fact questionable or even illegitimate. Evolution of Living Organisms (1977) p.4
Richard
Leakey
(b. 1944) High School Drop-Out
Isolated teeth, single bones,
fragments of skulls: for the most part, these are the clues from which the story
of human prehistory must be reconstructed. The Origin of Humankind
(1994) p. ix
The task of inferring an
evolutionary link based on extremely fragmentary evidence is more difficult
than most people realize, and there are many traps for the unwary. Simons and
Pilbeam had been ensnared in one of these traps: anatomical similarity does not
unequivocally imply evolutionary relatedness. The Origin of Humankind
(1994) p. 8
Ernst
Mayr (1904 – 2005) Professor of Zoology at Harvard
University
Anything truly novel always
seemed to appear quite abruptly in the fossil record. Toward a New Philosophy of
Biology (1988) pp.529-530
Colin
Patterson
(1933 – 1998)
Senior Palaeontologist
at British Museum of Natural History
These gaps might be due to
failure in fossilization, or to mistakes in the genealogy, or to wrongly
identified fossils; or they could be (and have been) taken to show that the
theory of evolution is wrong. Evolution (1978) p.133
Darwin devoted two chapters
of The Origin of Species to
fossils, but spent the whole of the first in saying how imperfect the
geological record of life is. It seemed obvious to him that, if his theory of
evolution is correct, fossils ought to provide incontrovertible proof of it,
because each stratum should contain links between the species of earlier and
later strata, and if sufficient fossils were collected, it would be possible to
arrange them in ancestor descendent sequences and so build up a precise picture
of the course of evolution. This was not so in Darwin's time, and today, after
more than another hundred years of assiduous fossil collecting, the picture
still has extensive gaps. Evolution (1999) p.106
But there are still great gaps
in the fossil record. 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. Evolution (1999) p.109
Fossils may tell us many
things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of
anything else. Evolution (1999) p.109
W.R. Thompson (1887 - ?) Entomologist and Director of the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control, Ottawa, Canada
Evolution, if it has occurred, can in a rather loose sense be called a historical process; and therefore to show that it has occurred historical evidence is required. History in the strict sense is dependent on human testimony. Since this is not available with respect to the development of the world of life we must be satisfied with something less satisfactory. The only evidence available is that provided by the fossils. It has been pointed out by both supporters and opponents of the evolutionary doctrine, that even if we can demonstrate the chronological succession of certain organisms, this is not proof of descent. This may seem like a quibble. If we put a pair of house-flies in a cage and let them breed, we do not doubt that the live flies we find there in a month’s time are the descendants of the original pair. Similarly, if in an apparently undisturbed geological formation we find snail shells at an upper level very similar to those at a lower level, we may reasonably conclude that there is some genealogical connection between the two groups, though we cannot trace the descent from individual to individual as is required in a true family tree. Therefore we found in the geological strata a series of fossils showing gradual transition from simple to complex forms, and could be sure that they correspond to a true time-sequence, then we should be inclined to feel that Darwinian evolution has occurred, even though its mechanism remained unknown. This is certainly what Darwin would have like to report but of course he was unable to do so. What the available data indicated was a remarkable absence of the many intermediate types that should have existed in the strata regarded as the most ancient; the absence of the principle taxonomic groups. Against these difficulties he could only suggest that the geological record is imperfect, but that if it had been perfect it would have provided evidence for his views. It is clear therefore that the paleontological evidence at his disposal, since it had not led competent naturalists acquainted with it to a belief in evolution, could only justify a suspense of judgment. The condition of fossil material is, of course unsatisfactory since soft tissues usually disappear, leaving only skeletal structures, frequently much distorted . The fossil insects of the group which I am best acquainted cannot be accurately determined, even to genera. It is evident that any organisms now extinct existed in the past but we can never know them as we know living forms. The chronological succession of the fossils is also open to doubt, for it appears generally speaking, that the age of the rocks is not determined by their intrinsic characteristics but by the fossils they contain while the succession of the fossils is determined by the succession of the strata. It was thought also that the fossils should appear in a certain order, corresponding roughly to the stage in embryological development. In fact the strata, and therefore the fossils they contain, do not always occur in the accepted order. In some areas of the world, for example, the Cambrian strata, which are regarded as the oldest fossiliferous formations, rest on the Crestaceous which are regarded as relatively recent; in other, Crestaceous or Tertiary beds appear instead of the Cambrian, on the granite. Sometimes the character of the deposits would lead to the belief that they were chronologically continuous since they can be separated only by the fossils they contain. Various hypotheses have been proposed to explain these departures from accepted theory, and thought they are often the subject of controversy among geologists I do not suggest that the problems to which they relate are insoluble.
On
the other hand, it does appear to me, in the first place, that Darwin in the Origin was not able to produce
paleontological evidence sufficient to prove his views but that the evidence he
did produce was adverse to them; and I may note that the position is not
notably different to-day. The modern Darwinian paleontologists are obliged,
just like their predecessors and like Darwin, to water down the facts with
subsidiary hypotheses which, however plausible, are in the nature of things
unverifiable. Introduction to The Origin of Species 6th Edition (1956) pp.
xvii-xix
Ernst Haeckel Apostle of Deceit
Ernst Haeckel was known as ‘Darwin’s bulldog on the Continent’ and ‘the Huxley of Germany’ for his now notorious support of evolution. He is today known as a scientist who perpetrated fraud upon fraud to promote evolution.
“He became Darwin’s chief European apostle proclaiming the gospel of evolution with evangelist fervor, not only to the university intelligentsia but to the common man by popular books and to the working classes by lecture in rented halls.” Ian Taylor, In the Minds of Men, TFE Publishing, Toronto, 1984, p. 184, who cites Peter Klemm, Der Ketzer von Jena, Urania Press, Leipzig, 1968
Haeckel’s enthusiasm for the theory of evolution caused him to fraudulently manufacture ‘evidence to bolster his views. He was the first person to draw an evolutionary ‘family tree’ for mankind. To fill in the gap in the tree between inorganic non-living matter and the first living bacteria, he invented a series of minute protoplasmic organisms which he called Monera. Of these he said:
‘not composed of any organs at all, but consist entirely of shapeless simple homogeneous matter . . . nothing more than a shapeless, mobile, little lump of mucus or slime, consisting of albuminous combination of carbon.” Ernst Haeckel, The History of Creation, translated by E. Ray Lankester, Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., London, 1883, 3rd ed., Vol. 1, p. 184.
No Monera existed or ever existed and Haeckel knew that yet persisted in using and even creating species and subspecies of this genus. In 1868, a prestigious German scientific journal published 73 pages of his speculations with more than 30 drawings of these imaginary Monera, as well as scientific names as Protamoeba primitivia, and the process of fission by which they allegedly reproduced. Ernst Haeckel, ‘Monographie der Moneren’ Jenaische Zeitschrift fur Medizin und Naturwissinschaft, Leipzig 4:64, 1868
Haeckel didn’t just stop there, he also created a non-existent speechless Ape-man called Pithecanthropus alalus and even had an artist, Gabriel Max, draw up the imagined creature even though there was not one iota such a creature ever existed. Yet the Dutch scientist, Professor G.H.R. von Koenigswald, described the drawing: ‘Under a woman with long lank hair sits cross-legged suckling a child. Her nose is flat, her lips thick, her feet large, with the big toe set considerable lower that the rest. Beside her stands her husband, fat bellied and low browed, his back thickly covered with hair. He looks at the spectator good-naturedly and unintelligently, with the suspicious expression of the inveterate toper (habitual drinker). It must have been a happy marriage; his wife could not contradict him, for neither of them could speak.” Herbert Wendt, From Ape to Adam, Thames and Hudson Ltd, London, 1971, p.82
But Haeckel’s biggest fraud by far was his totally erroneous theory that the human embryo is initially identical with that of other mammals and then goes through a series of stages where it has gills like a fish or a tail like a monkey, etc. This theory is sometimes called ‘The Law of Recapitulation’ or has Haeckel called it ‘The biogenetic law’. Later this idea as it moved into mainstream evolutionary thought was called: ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’ which means the development of the individual embryo repeats it alleged evolutionary history. This fraudulent idea is still in evolutionary thought today in many guises. For instance E. G. Raymond Hawkey’s three dimensional book, Evolution, Michael Joseph Ltd, London, 1986, which states on the front cover that is was ‘produced in collaboration with British Museum (Natural History)’ and on the back cover, ‘Like many other animals, human beings retrace much of their evolutionary past in the womb . . .By the time it (the human embryo) is 28 days old it resembles our earliest vertebrate ancestor, the fish. Like a fish it has . . . what appear to four gill slits.’ Those supposed ‘gill slits’ have nothing to do with breathing but are where the ear and the jaw area are formed.
Haeckel then proceeded to draw pictures of embryos of human and other animals showing the similarities which were not ever there. He completely forged pictures from his imagination to fill in the data he wanted.
Professor Wilhelm His, Sr. (1831 – 1904) a famous comparative embryologist of the day and professor of anatomy at the University of Leipzig, finally uncovered the fraud. He showed that in 1874 Haeckel had added 3.5 mm to the head of Bischoff’s dog embryo, taken 2 mm off the head of Ecker’s human embryo, doubled the length of the human posterior, and substantially altered the details of the human eye. He sarcastically pointed out that Haeckel taught Jena, home of the then finest optical equipment available, and so had no excuse for inaccuracy. He concluded that anyone who engaged in such blatant fraud had forfeited all respect and that Haeckel had eliminated himself from the ranks of scientific research workers of any stature. Ian Taylor, In the Minds of Men, TFE Publishing, Toronto, 1984, pp. 276, 475.
Haeckel even had to publicly rescind his fraudulent ideas, but interestingly enough he remained wildly popular in Germany and his ideas were still incorporated into evolutionary thought for around 100 years. His evolutionary ideas are incorporated in abortion where the doctor will tell a young lady that the baby in her womb is just a ‘fish’ and of no matter or consequence.
Haeckel’s evolutionary ideas were also used to create a unique from of social Darwinism and racism that became the German national ethos under Hitler’s National Socialism. Daniel Gasman, The Scientific Origins of National Socialism: Social Darwinism in Ernst Haeckel and the German Monist League, American Elsevier, New Yord, 1971, pp. xvi, xvii. ‘Biological Sciences and the Roots of Nazism, American Scientist 76:56, January – February 1988.
Here is what others say:
Jane
Oppenheimer Professor of Biology and History of Science
It was a failing of
Haeckel as a would-be scientist that his hand as an artist
altered what he saw with what should have been the eye of a more
accurate beholder. He was more than once, often justifiably, accused
of scientific falsification, by Wilhelm His and by many others. For
only two examples, in "Anthropogenie" he drew the developing brain of
a fish as curved, because that of reptiles, birds, and mammals is bent.
But the vesicles of a fish brain always form in a straight line. He
drew the embryonic membranes of man as including a small sac-like
allantois, an embryonic organ characteristic of and larger in
reptiles, birds, and some nonhuman mammals. The human embryo has no
sac-like allantois at all. Only its narrow solid stock remains to
conduct the umbilical blood vessels between embryo and placenta. Examples
could be multiplied significantly. "Haeckel's Variations on Darwin"
The blind adoption of
Haeckel's doctrines by such workers in bordering fields, and their infection
with his faith that "Development is now the magic word by means of which
we shall solve the riddles by which we are surrounded", is less reprehensible
than their uncritical acceptance by the professional embryologists who
swallowed them with as much gullibility, and who remained utterly unperturbed
by the fact that Haeckel himself was never in any sense a professional
embryologist. The seduction of embryology by a fanatic who expresses himself
even metaphorically in terms of magic represents a darker chapter in its
history.
Essays in the history of Embryology and Biology (1967) pp. 153-154
Michael
Richardson Embryologist at St. George’s Medical School
This is one of the worst cases
of scientific fraud. It's shocking to find that somebody one thought was a great
scientist was deliberately misleading. It makes me angry. What Haeckel did was
to take a human embryo and copy it, pretending that the salamander and the pig
and all the others looked the same at the same stage of development. They don't.
These are fakes. "An Embryonic Liar"
The London Times August 11, 1997 p.14
Our survey seriously
undermines the credibility of Haeckel's drawings.
It looks like it's
(Haeckel’s embryos) turning out to be one of he famous fakes in
biology.
Morality is not Evolution’s
Friend
Now I will change my course a bit here and touch in something closer to the bone. I will drop the gloves and go bare knuckle for I think this is the core issue in the Creationist – Evolution debate. All above have been fundamentally scientific and can be debated on that premise. From here on out philosophy and logic rule and will be the thing that will make many evolutionist very angry.
I will attempt to prove that evolution and atheism are synonymous. I will show how our society has and is paying a heavy debt to the atheistic evolutionary philosophy that has poisoned out thought for over 150 years. But I will also demonstrate the superiority of Christianity and why it is superior to atheistic evolution.
For you see we have not just a scientific debate we also have a worldview debate, we have a debate about the very premises we interpret the world from, the assumptions that under gird our reality, how we interpret data and deduce logic.
Is Evolution Science or Philosophy?
Dr. Richard Lewontin, a geneticist, (a self proclaimed Marxist) , is a renowned champion of neo-“Darwinism and one of the world’s leaders in evolutionary biology. He wrote the following comment. (Italics were in the original)
“We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997.
Dr. Lewontin makes it very clear “science” (evolution) may not be the best option, but it is the only option for no other option will be allowed. That is not a scientific statement, but a philosophical statement. In fact, this statement says that the philosophy of materialism or atheism is at the basis of science or evolution. I thought ‘scientists’ were to be objective about the data and just follow the figures to the truth, whatever that was? But Dr. Lewontin says that is not the truth, that there is a bigger truth than science and that is materialism or atheism.
“Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented. Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent.” William Provine "Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life” 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address
So from the quotes above we can see that materialism – atheism is the core philosophy of evolution, indeed the very fabric of the prime assumptions. Evolution like a philosophy has metaphysical assumptions, it claims that no gods worth having exists, no life after death exists, no ultimate foundation for ethics exists, no ultimate meaning in life exists and human free will is nonexistent. That sounds much like atheism.
So what if Evolution is an Atheistic Philosophy?
Now another word from an amateur evolutionist.
“The author states evolution has moral consequences. That's true. That makes it no less true. "Blaming" it for Nazism is like blaming hurricanes for looting that happens after it. The author then worries that it "devalues" human life. He's right. It does! Welcome to the real world, Evan Wiggs. We are just the same as a worm. Sorry if this makes you feel somehow insignificant, but we really are just another animal. Time to take yourself off the pedestal. The sooner we get these specieist judgments out the way the better. “ From a debate on talkorigins.org
You see ideas have consequences. This young evolutionist has bought in body, mind and soul into the utter emptiness of the materialist atheist philosophy of evolution. You can see that the fuzzy thinking present is the result of confusion about some of the consequences of evolutionary thought. I have some salient question for this young person or anyone who thinks the same.
1. You seem to be confusing ideas with acts of nature. Please tell me which of these don’t belong in the list. A. Nazism, B. Communism, C. Atheism, D. Hurricanes.
2. If no ultimate meaning in life exists then why should I think your comments are salient and important and not just part of all this meaninglessness? Why should I pay any attention to them at all?
3. If no ultimate foundation for ethics or morals exists, why are you outraged morally at my views that evolution is a bunch of bunk?
4. How can you use the term ‘specieist judgments’ when it is all tooth and claw and survival of the fittest? Shouldn’t I try to push my species forward and higher? Why shouldn’t I be specieist anyway? Is it morally wrong?
5. Do you really believe you are no different than the worm? Are you bravely typing that on your computer and hoping against hope that the rest of the world doesn’t really believe that and act on it? You see, you might be one of the ‘weak’ ones that the ‘strong’ will squash like a worm. How would you feel about that? Would you believe that an act like that would be morally wrong like murder? Why?
The Cartesian Divide and The Kantian Contradiction
It will be necessary to discuss some of the division between science and philosophy that occurred in the past, In the middle ages the world was much different than to day in how people thought about nature and about God. There was an interconnected two tier world where God lived in the upper tier, but directly impacted the lower tier.
About the time of the enlightenment, scientific knowledge seemed to be pointing out that the universe was a clockwork - like machine. Newton showed that all the planets moved in precision around the sun according to predetermined laws and really seemed to not need a God. From this idea Deism grew in popularity. Science began to occupy the lower tier and theology, philosophy began to occupy the upper tier. The Romantics tried to gain the upper tier for the mind and beauty, and accede the lower tier of nature to science.
Immanuel Kant tried to prove that morals and ethics could be logically deduced without resorting to God as the ultimate moral giver. He saw the upper tier as the level of Freedom and The Autonomous Self and the lower tier as Nature and The Newtonian World Machine.
Kant wanted the upper tier for be a place where one was only influenced by one’s own moral will. This was a radical thought because before this realm was supposed to be God’s territory. Kant had made reason into God. He worked for the rest of his life trying to make this philosophy iron out. Many times atheists will throw out the Kant idea of morality being the function of reason. But is it really that?
It is crucial to see that the two sides of Kant’s dichotomy are not just independent, but outright contradictory. For if nature is really the deterministic machine of Newtonian physics, then how is freedom possible. Even Kant admitted that this was a paradox that he never succeeded in solving. The trick, according to Kant, was to somehow think of ourselves in both ways at once. One the one hand, we operate in a physical world completely determined by physical laws; and at the same time, we participate in a conceptual world where we conceive of ourselves as free moral agents.
This upper tier is the tier the evolutionists are trying to force people of faith.
See this quote from Richard Dawkins:
In any case, the belief that religion and science occupy separate magesteria is dishonest. It founders on the undeniable fact that religions still make claims about the world which, on analysis; turn out to be scientific claims. Moreover, religious apologists try to have it both ways, to eat their cake and have it. When talking to intellectuals, they carefully keep off science's turf, safe inside the separate and invulnerable religious magesterium. But when talking to a non-intellectual mass audience they make wanton use of miracle stories, which are blatant intrusions into scientific territory. The Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, The Raising of Lazarus, the manifestations of Mary and the Saints around the Catholic world. Even the Old Testament miracles, all are freely used for religious propaganda, and very effective they are with an audience of unsophisticates and children. Even on of these miracle amounts to a scientific claim, a violation of the normal running of the natural world. Theologians, if they want to remain honest, should make a choice. You can claim your own magesterium, separate from science's but still deserving of respect. But in that case you have to renounce miracles. Or you can keep your Lourdes and your miracles, and enjoy their huge recruiting potential among the uneducated. But then you must kiss goodbye to separate magesteria and your high-minded aspiration to converge on science. The Devil's Chaplain (2003) p.150
Here Dawkins says that both science and religion make claims that reside in the Nature lower tier, but really science alone belongs there. He calls those religions people who unrightly make claims that are on science’s turf as “non-intellectual”, “unsophisticates and children”. He says that we can claim our own “magesterium”, separate from science, but don’t bring in miracles into the science “magesterium” for that is for the sophisticates and intellectuals.
Well evolution has enough faith and miracles on its own and Dawkins doesn’t understand that the battle for worldview we are waging will not allow the serious Christian to retreat into any magesterium, but lock into mortal combat to win this war. God has outlived the pall bearers of many a premature burial and will continue to do so. In fact I will make a prediction here. I believe that within my lifetime evolution will become a joke to look back on and laugh, or perhaps cry.
Now we will look at the consequences of ideas, the consequences of the atheistic thought that is the basis of evolution and the impact it had on the world.
The Blood Drenched Century of Evolution
One thing that defines our times in the west is the persistent cry of emptiness from the heart of affluent men. It seems that money and fame and stuff do not fill the void in man. Nihilism rules the land and:
Cat’s foot iron claw
Neurosurgeons scream for more
From paranoia’s poison door
Twenty first century schizoid man.
King Crimson “Twenty first century schizoid man”
Christianity has hidden herself in the church buildings and no longer ventures out, while humanism’s bizarre experiments keep growing unchecked. Professors and students on campuses across the country mock religion and mock specifically Christianity. They like to speak about the thousands killed in the name of religion, but fail to speak of the tens of millions killed in the name of atheism. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. killed some 130 million people in the name of atheism and evolution in this century. This doesn’t even include the tens of millions of children have been ripped from the womb, because they were just a “product of conception” or just an embryo in fish stage.
What they fail to apprehend is that those who killed in the name of religion, killed against the principles of that very religion. But those who killed in the name of evolution and atheism killed in the very principles of that religion. That doesn’t mean that every atheist or evolutionist is a murder or even thinks that way, but they cannot deny that a religion that takes away all moral underpinning will ultimately lead to genocide when brought to its ultimate logical conclusion.
On a wall of Auschwitz is this quote from Hitler:
“I freed Germany from the stupid and degrading fallacies of conscience and morality. . . We will train young people before whom the world will tremble. I want young people capable of violence – imperious, relentless and cruel.”
Inside Auschwitz are displays of thousands of pounds of human hair, made into a commodity by the Nazi exterminators. More rooms filled with pictures of abused and castrated children, clothing and toiletries stacked to the ceilings give a funeral hue to the visitor. How could such an enormous evil come about in one of the most educated peoples of the world at that time?
Viktor Frankl was a survivor of Auschwitz and had this to say:
“If we present man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present him as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drive and reactions, as a mere product of heredity and environment, we feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case prone. I became acquainted with the last stage of corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment – or as the Nazis liked to say, ‘of blood and soil.’ I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in lecture halls of nihilistic scientist and philosphers.”
Viktor Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul: Introduction to Logotherapy (New York: Knopf, 1982), xxi
This is what evolution and its materialistic – atheistic roots brought out. I will not spend an extensive time here proving Hitler was an evolutionist, which is done in other places very well; I will only pull some material together to show the correlation is strong. Here are some of the “nihilistic” scientists.
Leonard
Darwin (1850–1943) Son of
Charles Chairman of Eugenic Society
It is quite certain that no
existing democratic government would go so far as we Eugenicists think right in
the direction of limiting the liberty of the subject for the sake of the racial
qualities of future generations. Eugenics Review February 1912
Dedicated to the memory of
MY FATHER. For if I had not believed that he would have wished me to give such
help as I could toward making his life's work of service to mankind, I should
never have been led to write this book. The Need for Eugenic Reform
(1926) Dedication
In considering whether any
method of selecting the better types for multiplication, or the worse types for
elimination, can from a practical basis for eugenic reform, those eugenicists
who, like myself, are hoping to be able to utilize the methods which have been
effective in organic evolution, are inevitably led to consider what guidance
can be obtained from a study of the action of natural selection. The Need for Eugenic
Reform (1926) p.112
Of all the problems which will
have to be faced in the future, in my opinion, the most difficult will be those
concerning the treatment of the inferior races of mankind. Birth Control Review April 1930 p.112
It is true that I am
generally opposed to anything in the nature of a controversy in any papers on
scientific subjects. My Father always used to rejoice that Lyell had given him
the advice to avoid such controversies and that he had always followed it. Letter to R.A. Fisher
October 21, 1930
Francis Galton (1822 – 1911) Founder of Eugenics Cousin of Charles Darwin
Eugenics is the study of
the agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial
qualities of future generations either physically or mentally.
The feeble nations of the
world are necessarily giving way before the nobler varieties of mankind. "Hereditary Character and Talent" MacMillan's Magazine
November 1864
(Eugenics) must be introduced
into the national conscience, like a new religion. It has, indeed, strong claim
to become an orthodox religious tenet for the future, for Eugenics co-operates
with the workings of Nature by securing that humanity shall be represented by
the fittest races. What Nature does blindly, slowly and ruthlessly, man must do
providently, quickly and kindly. Essays in Eugenics
(1985) p.42
The creed of Eugenics is
founded upon the idea of evolution. Essays in Eugenics
(1985) p.68
Eugenics was the creed of the “final solution” of the Nazis, of the “mowing the grass” of Stalin, of “The Great Leap Forward” of Mao and “The Killing Fields” of Pol Pot. It is the polar opposite of Christianity and its creed of love and mercy.
Arthur Keith (1866 — 1955) Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons
Evolution is unproved and
improvable. We believe it only because the only alternative is special
creation, and that is unthinkable.
The leader of Germany is an
evolutionist not only in theory, but, as millions know to their cost, in the
rigor of its practice.
Evolution and Ethics (1947) p.10
Meantime let me say that the
conclusion I have come to is this: the law of Christ is incompatible with the
law of evolution as far as the law of evolution has worked hitherto. Nay, the
two laws are at war with each other; the law of Christ can never prevail until
the law of evolution is destroyed. Evolution and Ethics
(1947) p.15
To see evolutionary measures
and tribal morality being applied rigorously to the affairs of a great modern
nation we must turn again to Germany of 1942. We see Hitler devoutly convinced
that evolution provides the only real basis for a national policy.
Evolution and Ethics (1947) p. 27
Christianity makes no
distinction of race or of color; it seeks to break down all racial barriers. In
this respect the hand of Christianity is against that of Nature, for are not the
races of mankind the evolutionary harvest which Nature has toiled through long
ages to produce? May we not say, then, that Christianity is anti-evolutionary in
its aim? Evolution and Ethics
(1947) p.72
The German Fuhrer, as I have
consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make
the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution. Evolution and Ethics (1947) p.230
What
does Hitler say about himself?
Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945)
Decisive is the power that the peoples have within them; it turns out that the stronger before God and the world has the right to impose its will. From history one sees that the right by itself is completely useless, if a mighty power does not stand behind it. Right alone is of no use to whomever does not have the power to impose his right. The strong has always triumphed… All of nature is a constant struggle between power and weakness, a constant triumph of the strong over the weak. Speech April 13, 1923
If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile. Mein Kamph
The present teaching in schools permits the following absurdity: at 10 a.m. the pupils attend a lesson in the catechism, at which the creation of the world is presented to them in accordance with the teachings of the Bible; and at 11 a.m. they attend a lesson in natural science, at which they are taught the theory of evolution. Yet the two doctrines are in complete contradiction. As a child, I suffered from this contradiction, and ran my head against a wall. Often I complained to one or another of my teachers against what I had been taught an hour before -- and I remember I drove them to despair. Hitler's Secret Conversations October 24, 1941
Joseph Stalin (1878 – 1953)
I began to speak of God,
Joseph heard me out, and after a moment's silence, said:
'You know, they are fooling us, there is no God. . . .'
I was astonished at these words, I had never heard anything like it before.
'How can you say such things, Soso?' I exclaimed.
'I'll lend you a book to read; it will show you that the world and all living
things are quite different from what you imagine, and all this talk about God
is sheer nonsense,' Joseph said.
'What book is that?' I enquired.
'Darwin. You must read it,' Joseph impressed on me. G. Glurdjidze in The Life of
Joseph Stalin (1940) p.8-9
This butcher killed around 15 million of his people liking to just mowing the grass. He was a master at holding those around him in terror. Soviet Novelist Chingiz Aitmatov retold the following story:
“On one occasion, so it was narrated, Stalin called for a live chicken and proceeded to use it to make an unforgettable point before some of his henchmen. Forcefully clutching the chicken in one had, with the other he began to systematically pluck out its feathers. As the chicken struggled in vain to escape, he continued with the painful denuding until the bird was completely stripped. ‘Now you watch,’ Stalin said as he placed the chicken on the floor and walked away with some bread crumbs in his hand. Incredibly the fear-crazed chicken hobbled toward him and clung to the legs of his trousers. Stalin threw a handful of grain to the bird and it began to follow him around the room, he turned to his dumbfounded colleagues and said quietly, ‘This is the way to rule people. Did you see how that chicken followed me for food, even though I had caused it such torture? People are like that chicken. If you inflict inordinate pain on them they will follow you for food the rest of their lives.” Joyce Barnathan and Steven Strasser, “Exorcising a Soviet Ghost,” Newsweek, 27 June, 1988.
Stalin reduced people to the level of animals and became drunk with the power his terror brought him. He cruelly murdered millions of his countrymen and several members of his family committed suicide. Such was this practitioner of evolution on this most gory practice of his religion.
What about that famous killer Mao Tse-tung? What does he say?
Mao Tse-tung (1893 – 1976)
Chinese socialism is founded upon Darwin and the theory of evolution. Kampf um Mao's Erbe (1977)
Ideas have consequences. The confused young evolutionist above says:
“The author states evolution has moral consequences. That's true. That makes it no less true. "Blaming" it for Nazism is like blaming hurricanes for looting that happens after it. The author then worries that it "devalues" human life. He's right. It does! Welcome to the real world, Evan Wiggs. We are just the same as a worm. Sorry if this makes you feel somehow insignificant, but we really are just another animal. Time to take yourself off the pedestal. The sooner we get these specieist judgments out the way the better. “ From a debate on talkorigins.org
Do those words sound a bit different now? Don’t they sound more like someone whistling past the graveyard? Atheists cast into the world they believe in their minds, of no morals, no absolute truth may speak this forth with bravery, but they live their lives like absolute morals and truths really do exist. They accuse Christians of hypocrisy all the while living out their very own hypocrisy before the world.
Yes it is a worldview battle, we look at the world through different assumptions and glasses. I for one will not believe a religion that says man and worm are the same and that only the strong have the right to rule. I want a world with compassion, love, mercy and grace.
Other Problems with
Evolution
under construction