The Theory of Evolution
By Dr Henry M. Morris
The creation-evolution question is certainly the most important area of
apparent conflict between the Bible and science. It is a great mistake for
Christians to compromise on this issue or, perhaps even worse, to ignore
it. Although our nation was founded on creationist principles and all the
early schools in our country taught creation, evolution has now become the
dominant philosophy and for several generations has been taught as fact in
practically all our schools, from elementary schools to university graduate
schools. Evolutionary assumptions also dominate the news media and all our
public institutions. It has probably contributed more to the prevalent
secularistic and materialistic philosophy of the world today than any other
influence. It seems obvious that an issue that is so vitally significant
ought to be seriously studied by all thinking men and women.
EVOLUTION VERSUS THE BIBLE
Evolution is not really a science at all; it is a philosophy or an attitude
of mind. Evolutionists admit that no one has ever seen any real evolution
(from one kind of creature to a more complex kind of creature) take place.
Many animals have become extinct within the few thousand years of written
records that we have, but no new kinds of animals have evolved during that
period. Although evolutionists believe these great evolutionary changes
must have taken place over the hundreds of millions of years of supposed
earth history, none of these speculations can be proved or even tested. No
man was present to observe and record them, so such ideas are entirely
outside the scope of real science. Evolution must be believed, not
observed. It is a matter of faith, not science.
The Bible, of course, teaches that the work of creation was all
accomplished and completed in the six days of the creation week, as
outlined in Genesis 1, whereas evolutionists contend that the process of
"creation" (meaning evolution) has been going on for billions of years in
the past and is still going on in the present. Scripture could hardly be
more definite on this point: "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished,
and all the host of them. . . . And God blessed the seventh day, and
sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God
created and made" (Genesis 2:1, 3). Similarly in the New Testament,
whenever God's work of creating the universe and all its creatures is
mentioned, it is always in the past tense (e.g., Colossians 1:16: "For by
him were all things created."). Note also Hebrews 4:3: "[God's] works were
finished from the foundation of the world." This biblical revelation is, of
course, in accord with the basic laws of science as discussed in the
preceding chapter. By the conservation principle, nothing is now being
created, just as Genesis says. By the entropy principle, there must have
been a creation in the past, just as Genesis says. There is no such process
going on today, just as Genesis says.
Although this is the most basic point of conflict between evolution and the
Bible, there are numerous others. Most evolutionary biochemists think that
living organisms first evolved out of nonliving chemicals in the primeval
"soup" perhaps 3 billion years ago, although there is another school of
thought that believes life evolved from clay minerals in the primeval
lands. Then, perhaps a billion years ago, multicelled invertebrate marine
animals somehow evolved from one-celled organisms in the ocean. Eventually
marine vertebrates (fish) developed, then amphibians, reptiles, mammals,
and birds, in order. Finally, perhaps 2 million years ago, man (at the
stage of the genus Homo) evolved from some as-yet-uncertain "hominid"
ancestor. This account is essentially the current evolutionary scenario
advocated by most evolutionary biologists and paleontologists today.
But that order of events does not correspond at all to the order in
Genesis. The latter indicates that all land plants, including even fruit
trees, were made on the third day, whereas marine organisms were not
created until the fifth day of creation week. (Evolutionists say that land
plants, especially fruit trees, evolved long after fish and other marine
animals.) The Bible also states that the birds were made at the same time
as the fish. According to Scripture, the "creeping things" (a term that
includes insects according to Leviticus 11:20-23) were among the last
things created (Genesis 1:25) just before man; but insects evolved very
early according to evolutionary paleontologists.
The sun and moon, according to Genesis, were not made until the fourth day,
halfway through the creation period. Not only is that contrary to
evolutionary geology, but such an order would be completely lethal to the
vegetation created on the third day, if the days were longer than
twenty-four hours. There are many other contradictions between the order of
creation in Genesis and the order of evolution in historical geology.
The so-called "day-age theory" attempts to equate the geological ages with
the creation week of Genesis, but there are too many flagrant
contradictions between the two for any such device to be acceptable to one
who has not already placed an unyielding faith in these geological ages.
Although the Hebrew word for "day" (yom) can occasionally mean a time of
indefinite length if the context requires, such usage is rare, and the word
almost always does mean a literal day (i.e., either a twenty-four-hour
period or the daylight portion of that period). In Genesis, the context
actually precludes any sort of indefinite meaning. The use of a numeral
with day ("first day," and so on) or the use of boundary terms ("evening
and morning") are usages that elsewhere in the Pentateuch invariably
require the literal meaning of "day."
Conclusive proof that the "days" of Genesis are to be understood as literal
days is found in the Ten Commandments. The fourth commandment says:
"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and
do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in
it thou shalt not do any work. . . . For in six days the Lord made heaven
and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day"
(Exodus 20:8-11).
It is clear from the strong wording that God used in this commandment
(written with His own finger on a table of stone, according to Exodus
31:18) that the "days" of God's week are exactly equivalent to the days of
man's week. Furthermore, the word twice translated "days" in this passage
(Heb., yam im) occurs more than seven hundred times elsewhere in the Old
Testament and always means literal days. It is well to note also that there
is at least one good word (Heb., olam) that means ~ or ''long, indefinite
time,~ ' and this word should have been used in Genesis 1 and Exodus 20 if
that were the writer's intended meaning. The fact that He used the words
"day" and "days" without any hint in the context of a nonliteral meaning,
makes it evident that He intended the literal meaning. If the creation days
were literal days, of course, then evolution would be completely out of the
question.
There is still another important biblical emphasis that completely
precludes any real evolution. The phrase "after its kind(s)" is used no
less than ten times in the first chapter of Genesis. Every created "kind"
(Heb., mm) was to reproduce after its own kind and not to generate some new
kind. This does not preclude "horizontal" variation within limits (e.g.,
the different varieties of dogs or cats or people), but it does prohibit
"vertical" variation from one kind to some higher kind (e.g., monkeys to
men). This truth is also stressed again in the New Testament (e.g., 1
Corinthians 15:38-39).
A person therefore is compelled to make a choice, either to believe the
Bible or to believe in evolution. It is impossible really to believe in
both, because each fully contradicts the other.
THEISM VERSUS EVOLUTION
There are, of course, many people who do not believe in biblical inerrancy
(and who, therefore, would not be swayed by anti-evolutionary statements in
the Bible) but who do believe in God and who believe that God somehow used
evolution as His method of creation.
However, regardless of what the Bible says, those who seek to honor God
should realize that evolution is naturalistic and materialistic by its very
nature. It is merely an attempt to explain the origin of things without
God. Naturalism and chance constitute the very essence of evolution.
Evolution is also in conflict with the teachings of Christ. He should not
have healed the lame and the sick if progress is measured by the "survival
of the fittest." He taught self-sacrifice, but evolution is necessarily
based on self-preservation in the struggle for existence.
Evolution is also the most inefficient and cruel method for creating man
that could be conceived. If God is a God of love and wisdom and power (as
the Bible teaches), then how could He ever be guilty of devising such a
scheme as evolution? What possible reason could there have been for such
flesh-eating monsters as Tyrannosaurus Rex, for example, to rule the earth
for 100 million years, only to die out about seventy million years before
man evolved? If the geological ages really took place and if man was not
merely the end but in fact the goal of the evolutionary process as
"theistic evolutionists" believe, then multiplied billions of animals have
suffered and died for no apparent reason. The account of creation in
Genesis ends with the conclusion that everything God had made was, in His
judgment, "very good" (Genesis 1:31). Surely God could not possibly have
viewed the fossilized remains of billions upon billions of His creatures in
the rocks of the earth's crust as "very good" if such fossils really marked
the end of His "creation" period. The Bible says that death only entered
the world as a result of man's sin (Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 15:21) and
will be removed once sin is removed (Revelation 21:4, 27), but evolution
requires suffering and death as an integral part of the very process that
brought man into the world. Thus theistic evolution is a contradiction in
terms. If one wishes to believe in evolution, he is free to make that
choice, but he certainly should not associate a wise, powerful, loving God
with such a monstrous system.
Furthermore, the antitheistic character of the doctrine of evolution is
evidenced in the multitude of anti-Christian social philosophies and
anti-moral social practices the system has spawned. On one hand, evolution
has been claimed as the scientific rationale for socialism, communism,
anarchism, and many other "left-wing" movements. On the other hand,
philosophers of the so-called "right-wing" have taken the Darwinian
concepts of "struggle" and "survival of the fittest" and used them to
justify many harmful systems such as Nazism, racism, imperialism, and
laissez-faire capitalism. Marx, Lenin, and Stalin were ardent evolutionists
but so were Haeckel, Nietzsche, and Hitler. The first two tenets of secular
humanism (as expressed in the famous 1933 Humanist Manifesto) dealt with
the assumed evolution of the universe and mankind. Any form of atheism or
pantheism or occultism must necessarily be based on evolution. Determinism,
existentialism, behaviorism, Freudianism, and other such amoral
psychological systems are grounded in evolutionary theory.
Modern evolutionary scientists often vigorously protest when these facts
are called to the attention of lay audiences. Nevertheless, they are facts,
as can easily be documented from the writings of the founders and leaders
of each of the above systems.
Furthermore, evolutionism is profoundly philosophical and religious-not
scientific. It is amazing that educators can decry creationism and get it
banned from public institutions on the grounds of separation of church and
state when evolutionism itself has, in effect, become institutionalized as
the one and only state religion, both in capitalistic and noncapitalistic
societies.
Evolution, in fact, is not only the basic premise of all atheistic and
humanistic religions but also of the various pantheistic religions, occult
religions, and animistic religions. The great ethnic religions-Taoism,
Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, and other such faiths-are all essentially
based on some form of evolution, accepting the space-time cosmos as the
only ultimate and eternal reality and denying any real transcendent Creator
of the cosmos. Even those religions that are basically creationist
(Judaism, Christianity, Islam) have liberal wings committed to
evolutionism, which now dominate the teaching in most main-line seminaries
and religious colleges.
Not only is evolutionary philosophy basic in most anti-Christian social,
economic, and religious philosophies, but it is also the pseudo-scientific
rationale of the host of antisocial immoral practices that are devastating
the world today (abortion, the drug culture, homosexual activism,
animalistic amorality, and so on). By the very fact of goodness and beauty
in the world, it would seem that such a harmful and godless theory of
origins as evolutionism could not possibly be true.
Of course, if science had actually proved evolution to be true, we would
have to accept it no matter how much it contradicts the Bible and
undermines the concepts of God and true morality. The fact is, however,
that it also contradicts true science. All the real facts of science
support special creation- not evolution. The evidence for this truth will
be outlined in the remaining sections of this chapter.
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
The theory of evolution has a fatal flaw right at the beginning: it is
impossible to account for the origin of life in the first place. The
popular notion of spontaneous generation was demolished by Louis Pasteur
and others back in the nineteenth century, yet evolutionists still cling to
the idea of "abiogenesis," the imaginary gradual development of complex
molecules from basic elements until they finally become replicating
molecules, which are then assumed to be living.
Despite much media-induced misunderstanding on this point, no replicating
molecule has ever yet been synthesized from nonliving chemicals in the
laboratory, despite multitudes of costly experiments attempting to do so.
Yet evolutionists imagine that what cannot be accomplished by trained
scientists with costly equipment in artificially-controlled environments
somehow occurred by blind chance a billion years ago. Some unknown process
operating in an unknown liquid mixture beneath an unknown type of
atmosphere somehow generated unknown primitive life forms from unknown
chemicals, and that's how life began!
However, life even at the simplest imaginary level is so complex that the
chance for this to happen by accident is infinitesimally small. The famous
mathematical astrophysicist, Sir Fred Hoyle, recently argued that the
probability this could have happened even once in the entire history of the
universe is roughly equivalent to the probability that a tornado sweeping
through a junkyard would assemble a Boeing 747.
Living organisms are known to be structured around a remarkable system
called the DNA molecule (deoxyribonucleic acid), in which is encoded all
the information necessary to direct the growth of the complete organism
from the germ cell. Although the variational potential in the DNA molecule
is extremely large, allowing a wide range of variation in any given type of
plant or animal, it also serves to insure that such variation will be
within the fixed limits represented in the genetic systems of the parents.
The tremendous amount of ordered information in even the simplest living
organism is so great that it is almost impossible to imagine that
scientists could ever synthesize it from elemental chemicals, no matter how
long they took, and even more inconceivable that it could ever happen by
chance.
Even if a genetic code centered in the DNA molecule could ever arise by
chance, it certainly could never happen more than once. Yet it has recently
been found that there are several different genetic codes present in
certain organisms, and all evidence indicates that each must have had a
separate origin.
The intensive search for even the slightest traces of life on other planets
or in interplanetary space reflects the wistful hope that evolutionary
theory will be vindicated by evidence that life has also developed
somewhere else in the universe. As yet, despite the space probes, giant
telescopes, and even the UFO furor, the idea of extraterrestrial life
remains science fiction and nothing more. There is not the slightest
evidence of biological life as we understand it anywhere else in the
universe.
The fact that almost all living flesh is composed of the same basic type of
molecule (DNA), made up in turn of the same basic elements (carbon,
hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and so on) found in the earth is of course a
definite confirmation of Scripture. The Bible states plainly that both
plants (Genesis 1:11-12) and animals (Genesis 1:20, 24) were "brought
forth" from the earth and its waters, and that even man's body was formed
of "the dust of the ground" (Genesis 2:7). However, the fact that there was
a life principle that was not inherent in these basic substances is also
stressed in the case of both animals ("living creatures," Genesis 1:24) and
man ("living soul," 2:7), and there is not the slightest evidence that
future scientists will ever be able to synthesize anything corresponding to
a "living soul," nor that natural processes ever accomplished any such
thing in the past.
Of course, from the standpoint of the evolutionists, it is necessary to
postulate some form of spontaneous generation or abiogenesis, for otherwise
they would have to assume a creator. Thus, they continue to believe in a
naturalistic origin of life by sheer blind faith and against infinite odds,
not by scientific evidence at all.
ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES
More than one hundred years ago, Charles Darwin achieved lasting fame by
publishing The Origin of the Species. Yet it is now recognized that, in
that book, he never gave one specific example of the origin of any new
species of plant or animal. He discussed numerous examples of "variation"
within species and indulged in many speculations as to how different
organisms might have evolved in the past, along with various notions as to
possible relationships deduced from similarities, but he never gave any
real proof of genuine vertical evolution. Yet, his speculative theory of
unlimited variation and gradual accumulation of favorable variations by
natural selection was soon accepted the world over as proof that all things
had come into being by evolution.
It is now known, of course, that all such Darwinian "variations" occur
within fixed limits, following in general the mathematical laws of heredity
described by Darwin's contemporary, Gregor Mendel. Numerous types of
"genes," controlling in a complex and not-yet-understood way the various
physical characteristics of the organism, can combine and "recombine in
various ways to generate a great variety of individual features, so that no
two individuals are ever exactly alike. This process is not "evolution,"
however-merely variation-and creationists regard this process as part of
the creative plan of God. Not only does it account for the important
phenomenon of individuality, but it also allows plants and animals to adapt
to changing environments without becoming extinct. Mere variation, however,
is nothing but horizontal change at the same level of organizational
complexity, and it always seems to be confined within definite limits.
There is no evidence whatever that such limited horizontal changes ever
become the unlimited vertical changes required for real evolution to take
place. "Microevolution," as some call this type of change, has no
demonstrated connection with "macroevolution," at least as far as any
actual physical evidence goes. Within all human history, there has never
been documented one single example of any kind of organism evolving into a
more complex kind of organism or even into a truly new "species" at the
same level. By contrast, there have been thousands of examples of plants
and animals that have become extinct during human history. If "the present
is the key to the past," as naturalistic scientists like to imagine, then
the universal law of biological science would seem to be deterioration and
extinction rather than evolution.
It is significant that, even at this late date, well over a century after
Darwin and despite the lifelong efforts of thousands of scientists and
untold millions of dollars spent on elaborate studies and experiments,
evolutionists still have never experimentally observed the evolution of a
single new species, nor do they have any certain knowledge of the mechanism
by which evolution works. This is an amazing situation for a phenomenon
that is widely promoted as one of the verities of modem science. There is
certainly no parallel to this situation anywhere else in science.
As to evolutionary mechanisms, there has been no dearth of suggestions.
Among the more prominent have been the acquired characteristics theory of
Lamarck, the Darwinian theory of natural selection, the mutation theory of
De Vries, various theories of vitalistic orthogenesis (emergent evolution,
nomogenesis, and so on), various "saltational" theories (e.g.,
Goldschmidt's "hopeful monster" theory), and finally the currently
competing theories (as of 1986) of neo-Darwinism (or the "modern
evolutionary synthesis," as constructed by such men as Julian Huxley, Ernst
Mayr, George Gaylord Simpson, and Theodosius Dobzhansky) and the
still-more-recent theory of "punctuated equilibrium" (vigorously promoted
by Niles Eldredge, Stephen Jay Gould, and many of the younger school of
"revolutionary evolutionists").
There is neither the space nor the need to discuss any of these or other
evolutionary theories in detail here. The significant point is their
variety and the intense intra-establishment quarreling among their
respective proponents. It is clear that no one has yet acquired any
understanding of how evolution really works.
It is known, of course, that distinctly new characteristics can be
generated in a plant or animal by the phenomenon of mutation. Variations
represent mere recombinations of genetic factors already present, whereas
mutations seem to involve something altogether new. An accumulation of
beneficial mutations, preserved in the population by the phenomenon of
natural selection, could then in principle eventually develop new species,
so the argument goes.
The problem is that there are no beneficial mutations. All known mutations
so far have been either lethal, harmful, neutral, or even reversible. In
terms of the "genetic code," a mutation is essentially a "mistake" in
transmission of hereditary information caused by one or more random changes
in the DNA molecular structure. Most laboratory mutations have been induced
artificially by chemicals, heat, radiation, or other such disturbing
influences. Otherwise, mutations in nature are quite rare, and, when they
do occur, they usually tend to disappear rather quickly, being neutral or
pathologic rather than helpful in the assumed "struggle for existence." If
they survive at all, they build up a "genetic load" in the population,
reducing its over-all viability. Evolutionists continue to believe in
beneficial mutations (they almost have to in order to believe in
evolution), but they never see any. The few that are occasionally cited
(e.g., the color change in the peppered moth and the resistance to DDT
developed by certain insects) have, of course, long since been recognized
by geneticists as mere recombinations of genetic factors already
present-not true mutations at all. Some so-called mutations are predictable
or even reversible, but these could just as well be considered a form of
recombination.
The reason that actual mutations are harmful is simply because they
represent random restructuring of the very complex, highly organized
replicating systems of the living cell. When any complex system undergoes a
random change, it will become less organized and therefore less functional.
Increased organization requires an input of organizing information, not a
random reshuffling caused by the entrance of an extraneous force from
outside (like, say, a tornado in a junkyard or a bull in a china shop).
Mutations may contribute to extinction of the species or to deterioration
of the species, but it is impossible to see how they could ever bring about
the origin of species. It is no wonder, therefore, that evolutionists have
never been able to see new species evolve, or that they have never been
able to find any mechanism by which evolution might work.
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCES
The fact that most biologists continue to believe in evolution, despite the
massively negative experimental evidence, is
presumably because of certain circumstantial evidences that they cite in
support of it.
Similarities between organisms (homologies) are appealed to, for one thing.
Resemblances between different species are analyzed in terms of comparative
anatomy, comparative embryology, comparative biochemistry, comparative
behaviors, and other such factors and then used to measure the hypothetical
closeness of ancestral relationships. The fact that men and apes have
certain features in common, for example, is supposed to indicate that they
have a common ancestor. The general classification system (species, genera,
families, orders, classes, phyla, kingdoms) that has been set up to
distinguish different kinds of plants and animals is assumed then to
correspond approximately to an actual family tree representing the
evolutionary ancestry of all organisms.
But this type of evidence is evidence of nothing whatever except the
ability of its inventor to arrange a conglomeration of objects into
"nested" objects of similar sizes and shapes. One could do the same thing
with the automobiles on a used-car lot or the tools in a machine shop or
any other collection of similar but heterogeneous objects.
As a matter of fact, the structural and physiological differences between
organisms are more significant than their similarities. If all organisms
really had a common ancestor, there should be a continuity between them
rather than clear-cut gaps. It should not even be possible to arrange a
classification system at all. One could never tell where the "cats" stop
and the ''dogs'' begin with all the intermediate ''dats'' and ''cogs''
running around. Where did the differences come from?
These special differences, of course, are best explained by special
creation. Similarities and homologies might be attributable to evolution
from a common ancestor, but they are even better explained in terms of
creation by a common Designer. Thus, similarities and differences as a
whole constitute powerful evidence for special creation, with similar
structures created for similar functions and different structures for
different functions, all planned in accord with the creative handiwork of
an omniscient Creator. Every normal structure in every organism is evidence
of design for a specific purpose and cannot be explained by chance.
The old circumstantial argument from vestigial organs is still mentioned
occasionally in evolutionary textbooks. According to this idea, certain
supposedly useless organs in man (tonsils, appendix, coccyx, and so on) are
atrophied vestiges of useful organs in certain of man's animal ancestors.
At one time, there were supposed to be 180 such vestigial organs in man.
The list is now itself a vestige, with almost all of its entries gradually
deleted as medical science discovered the very essential physiological
roles still being played by these "useless" organs. However, a similar
argument is now being advanced by modem advocates of the
punctuated-equilibrium concept, to the effect that evolution is not
evidenced by the beautiful "adaptations" in nature (these can be better
explained by creative design, as noted above) but by nature's
"imperfections' '-that is, organs that don't work as well as they could if
they were better designed.
This type of argument has been advanced by S. J. Gould and other
punctuationists who would play down the role of gradual evolution by
natural selection, with survival of the fittest, or best adapted, in favor
of the more sudden, random changes suggested by nature's "gaps" and
discontinuities. However, this argument from imperfections, like the
argument from vestigial organs, is nothing but unconfessed ignorance of
their real functions. Furthermore, if there are any vestigial organs or
imperfect adaptations in nature, they are better explained as evidence of
deterioration rather than improvement, just as mutations are.
Another important circumstantial evidence offered for evolution, at least
when the theory first was being developed in its modern form, was the
recapitulation theory, which taught that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny'
'-that is, that the embryologic development of any organism was a condensed
recapitulation of the past evolutionary development of that organism. This
theory, first vigorously advocated in Germany by Ernst Haeckel (whose
philosophy greatly influenced Adolf Hitler toward pantheism, racism, and
imperialism), has been thoroughly discredited scientifically by modern
embryologists but is still widely believed. Its application in science has
wrought untold harm for more than a hundred years.
In the first place, it spawned much embryological study for the purpose of
building up supposed evolutionary histories for different kinds of animals,
and from them, fossil sequences that later would constitute the geologic
column. This fossil "record" originally built up, not from actual field
evidence in paleontology but mostly from studies of comparative embryology
and morphology, is often now presented as the main "evidence" for
evolution. The fossil evidence will be discussed shortly in more detail,
but its questionable background via the falsified theory of recapitulation
is worth noting here.
Another bitter fruit of the recapitulation theory was its use as a supposed
scientific justification for racism and abortion. Each human embryo was
alleged by Haeckel and his followers to be repeating the evolutionary
history of its ancestors, starting as a one-celled organism in a liquid
environment, then becoming a multicelled invertebrate, then a fish with
gill slits, later a monkey with a tail, and eventually a human being. Even
then, the story was not finished, as a Caucasian human infant had to
develop through stages corresponding to the "lower" human races (hence, the
origin of the term "mongolism") before becoming a full-fledged member of
the "master" race.
As bizarre as such ideas may appear to us today, this sort of thinking was
common among nineteenth-century evolutionary scientists. Not only Haeckel
but a whole generation of these scientists, including Darwin and his
"bulldog," Thomas Huxley, were white racists, and they used evolutionary
philosophy to justify their position. As far as the modern abortion
epidemic is concerned, whenever anyone tries to offer a scientific
rationale for this practice today, it is on the premise that the fetus has
not yet developed into its "human" stage; it is no great sin to kill a fish
or a monkey. As a matter of fact, many people today seem more concerned
about the lives of monkeys or other animals than those of unborn children.
The fact is, of course, that every stage in the development of every embryo
that has been so studied is necessary to the most efficient development of
that particular kind of creature. The marvelous embryonic growth of all
living creatures at every step, instead of supporting evolution, is
actually testimony to a Designer and Creator.
THE FOSSIL RECORD
Most evolutionists believe that fossils provide the best evidence for
evolution, even though it is also a strictly circumstantial type of
evidence. Evolutionists generally admit, as we have seen, that there is no
evidence whatever that "vertical" evolution is occurring at present, so
they argue that this type of evolution (that is, real
evolution-macroevolution) requires millions of years. So they claim that
evolution has occurred in the past, even though it progresses too slowly to
be seen in the present. For evidence of that, they must appeal to the
fossil record.
The fossil remains of formerly living plants and animals are found in great
numbers in the sedimentary rocks of the earth's crust. These have been
organized into a standard "geologic column," representing the various
supposed geological ages of the past. In this standard column, only simple
and unspecialized forms of life are found in the lower strata (therefore,
the "older" ages). Then, as the surface is approached, increasingly high
and complex types appear. This gradual increase in size and complexity of
the fossils has, in fact, served as the main basis of identifying the
various geologic strata and correlating them from place to place. The time
during which these strata have been deposited is believed to extend over
hundreds of millions of years. All of this is considered to be strong
evidence that evolution has occurred in the past, even though we cannot see
it occurring in the present.
There are a number of serious difficulties with this geological time scale
and the evolutionary interpretation of its fossil record. Some of these
problems will be considered in the next chapter, and a different
interpretation will be suggested. However, if we temporarily assume that
the geological ages actually occurred and the geological time scale is
trustworthy, there are still several important facts in the fossil record
that argue convincingly against evolution.
In the first place, out of the billions of fossils that have been shown to
exist in the mile-deep graveyard extending around the earth, there are no
fossils of true evolutionary transitional forms. Every one of the great
phyla, orders, classes, and families, as well as most genera and species,
appear quite suddenly in the fossil record, with no preliminary or
intermediate forms leading up to them. This has long been a serious problem
for those evolutionists who take such data seriously, not merely
attributing them to the "incompleteness" of the fossil record. It is the
main reason for the sudden popularity of the current ''punctuated
equilibrium'' theory, which has been developed in an attempt to provide a
rationale for these universal gaps in the fossil record. There are no
transitional sequences from one species to another species, let alone
transitions between genera, families, and higher categories in the
classification scheme.
This is a strange situation if evolution really took place in the past. It
is reasonable to expect that, out of the multitudes of fossils that have
been preserved, at least a few should have been found with transitional
features. This follows directly from statistical sampling theory. It seems
necessary to conclude, therefore, that the real reason transitional fossils
have never been found is because transitional animals never existed.
A second problem is that many species-not to mention genera and the higher
categories-have remained essentially unchanged throughout all the supposed
geological ages since they first appeared. Even more of these unchanged
forms would be recognized except for the practice that paleontologists have
of giving new names to fossilized species regardless of how closely they
resemble living species. Among the creatures that have remained unchanged
throughout the course of evolutionary history are the very protozoa with
which evolution is supposed to have begun. This is difficult to understand
if evolutionary change actually is the universal law of nature.
A third problem in reference to the fossil record is that a great many
modem kinds of animals are evidently degenerate, rather than higher, forms
of those that are found as fossils. These would include practically all
mammals-elephants, tigers, wolves, rhino, hippos, bears, beavers, and
others. It is also true of multitudes of plants of all kinds, as well as
insects (giant ants, giant cockroaches, giant dragonflies, and so on),
birds, fish, amphibians, and reptiles.
SUPPOSED TRANSITIONAL FOSSILS
There have been, however, a few well-publicized fossils that are
occasionally cited as possible transitional forms. These require a closer
look. The most frequently cited example is Archaeopteryx, the supposed
half-reptile/half-bird that is supposed to prove that reptiles evolved into
birds. This peculiar creature seems to have had teeth and claws like a
reptile and wings and feathers like a bird.
However, at the very most, Archaeopteryx was a "mosaic" form, not a
transitional form. That is, each of its attributes was fully developed and
functional, not incipient or atrophying. Its wings and feathers were
complete and perfect, not half-legs or half-scales in the process of
evolving into wings and feathers.
Furthermore, fossils of true birds have been found in strata at least as
"old" as those in which Archaeopteryx fossils have been found, so that the
latter, whatever it was, could not have been the "first bird" as
evolutionists have claimed. Still further, in 1984, a number of leading
scientists found significant evidence that the only two complete
Archaeopteryx fossils had been artificially constructed and "planted" by a
clever hoaxer shortly after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species.
At this writing (1986) this possibility is still under investigation, but
even if Archaeopteryx was a real animal, it was simply a toothed bird, now
extinct, just like dinosaurs and pterodactyls. It was not an evolutionary
transition at all.
There is also the famous horse series, which is supposed to show the
gradual evolution of the horse from a small three-toed animal, Eohippus,
through several intermediate stages to the modern, large, one-toed horse,
Equus. This "series" is a common museum and textbook illustration of
evolution.
The fact is, however, that this supposed series is quite artificial, with
the chronological relationships between its members resembling a bush more
than a tree or ladder. All these animals are said to have lived in the
Tertiary period, late in geologic time. They are found near the surface, in
the relatively unconsolidated Tertiary deposits. The different forms are
not found superimposed over one another but at widely separated localities,
sometimes continents apart. No gradual transitions are evident between the
different forms with transitional structural features but only sudden jumps
at best. The different supposed evolutionary stages of the horse in many
cases overlap each other in their respective geological "ages," and yet
there are no transitions (i.e., with transitional, half-developed
structures) between any two of these stages.
At the very most, this assumed horse pedigree would not involve major
changes but only variation within the biological family of the horses.
There is a possibility that, in some cases at least, the created "kind" of
Genesis may correspond to the family. Within each kind, God has created a
genetic system that allows a wide range of horizontal variation, enabling
the particular kind to adapt to a wide range of environments. This is not
evolution, however, since there is no vertical change toward a different,
more complex kind.
In the case of the "horses," all are quite similar to each other with the
exception of Eohippus, the so-called "dawn horse," and this animal should
probably not even be included in the series at all. The original name
assigned to Eohippus was Hyracotherium because of its obvious similarity to
the modern animal called the hyrax. This name has now come into common use
again, and it is probable that Eohippus is really an extinct variety of
hyrax, with no genealogical connection to the horse at all.
Thus, with the exception of Hyracotherium, who was probably a hyrax, or at
least a separate now-extinct animal, it seems plausible to say that each of
the several horse genera (Pliohippus, Merychippus, and so on) may have been
living simultaneously, perhaps as variants of the originally created horse
kind, and that they, in common with many other zoological inhabitants of a
former age, have since become extinct.
Even if one of these forms turns out to be the ancestor of the modern Equus
(and this is not yet proved, by any means), the loss of one or more toes is
hardly an advance. In common with other known mutations, this is a
deterioration, giving no information as to how the three or four toes
evolved in the first place. The variant sizes are irrelevant, as there are
both midget horses and giant horses living today, all interfertile.
Similar objections could be lodged against the so-called evolutionary
pedigrees of the camel, the elephant, and other animals. Other supposed
fossil transitional forms, such as the mammal-like reptiles, were
successful mosaic forms; not transitional forms, each with no known
evolutionary connection either to any reptile or to any mammal or to any of
the other mammal-like reptiles.
THE APE-MEN
There still remains the problem of the fossils that have been classed as
ape-human intermediates, the "hominid" forms. The evolutionary
reconstructions one sees in museums and textbooks sometimes seem quite
impressive, but they are highly imaginative and speculative.
The fossils of these supposed hominids are fragmentary and questionable.
Since many fossils of true apes and true men have been found, the very
scarcity of fossils that could even be considered as possible intermediate
forms between apes and men is alone enough to discredit the theory of man's
apelike ancestry. Only a few bone fragments have been found that have been
imaginatively construed as some sort of lower species of man. This is a
strange situation in view of the multiplied millions of "ape-men" that must
have lived and died during the hypothetical million-year transition from
the first apelike ancestor to man.
The few fossils offered as evidence by paleoanthropologists have mostly
been discredited by evolutionary anthropologists themselves. The three
hominids that were being promoted most vigorously by evolutionists when I
was going to college were Java man, Peking man, and Piltdown man. The bones
of the original Java man (Pithecanthropus erectus) have since been
recognized as belonging to two different creatures-the skull to a gibbon,
the femur to a man. The fossils of the original Peking man were quite
controversial from the beginning but in any case were lost during World War
II. Piltdown man, of course, is now universally acknowledged to be a
hoax-but a hoax that fooled the world's leading anthropologists for
decades.
Other fossils considered in the same category as these, however, have been
found later and are now generally grouped in a genus named Homo erectus.
These have all been very incomplete skeletons, however, and their
chronology also is doubtful. The most nearly complete such skeleton thus
far was found in Kenya and announced to the public only in 1985. Its aspect
was distinctly human in size and posture, and even the skull looked much
like that of Neanderthal man, except for its relatively small cranial
capacity. The latter, together with its supposed great antiquity, was
supposed to have required a Homo erectus identification. However, while it
is true that the skull size was smaller than the 1,500 cubic centimeter
average of modern Homo sapiens, it was nevertheless within the range of the
latter, so might very well have been from a true human being. As far as the
dating of Homo erectus is concerned, certain of these fossils have been
dated as recent, within the time of modern man; others have been dated as
very old, at least as old as many fossils of Austraiopithecus, a supposed
ancestor of Homo erectus. In any case, Homo erectus is acknowledged to be
in the same genus as modern Homo sapiens, and at least some of these
specimens were probably no more different from modern man than modern men
are from each other.
In recent years great attention has been centered on Australopithecus, a
supposed hominid represented by a number of fossils found in South Africa
by Raymond Dart, Louis Lea-key, Richard Leakey, Carl Johanson, and others.
Anthropologists have been bitterly divided over the evolutionary status of
these australopithecines. Some think they were practically identical with
the modern pygmy chimpanzee; some think they were erect walkers, while
others insist they were knuckle-walkers or tree-swingers. Their chronology
overlaps with that of Homo erectus. Some are convinced that these were the
direct apelike ancestors of modern man, whereas others argue that they were
true apes that in turn were descended from a manlike ancestor. The famous
footprints found by Mary Leakey in Tanzania have been attributed to
Australopithecus, but they were virtually identical with modern human
footprints and probably were not made by Australopithecus at all. At best,
the status of Australopithecus is equivocal, but the high probability is
that this creature was an extinct ape, with no evolutionary relation to
man.
The past sixty or so years have even witnessed a number of noteworthy
scientific blunders by evolutionists. In addition to the famous Piltdown
hoax, there was the case of Hesperopithecus, a tooth found in 1922 in
Nebraska and promoted by Henry Fairfield Osborn of the American Museum of
Natural History as an ape-man. Osborn was even ready to introduce it at the
1925 Scopes trial as evidence for human evolution. Two years later,
however, the complete skeleton was found, and it proved to have belonged to
an extinct pig. There have been many other such instances, but they have
all been ignored and quickly forgotten by evolutionists.
The Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon tribes of cavemen were originally thought to
be ape-men but are now universally accepted as true men, Homo sapiens. A
number of fossils of men have also been found in ancient strata, supposedly
laid down before man evolved. These include the Calaveras skull, Petralona
man, the Wadjak skulls, Castenodolo and Olno skulls, and others, but
evolutionists commonly try to explain these away as hoaxes, geologically
reworked, or by various other devices.
In view of the chaotic state of modem paleoanthropology, there is nothing
to refute the creationist point of view that apes were created as apes and
people as people. Many of the supposed "hominid" fossils (e.g.,
Australopithecus, Ramapithecus) are extinct apes, where others (e.g.,
Neanderthal) clearly represent extinct tribes of men. Such extinct tribes,
or "races," as some would call them, are best explained as descendants of
families that emigrated from Babel after the "confusion of tongues." As a
result of isolation, inbreeding, and (perhaps) mutations, they gradually
deteriorated in strength and intelligence and eventually became extinct.
EVOLUTION VERSUS ENTROPY
These indications add emphasis to a principle already alluded to several
times, namely, that deterioration or degeneration rather than developmental
evolution is the universal law of biology. As we have seen, there is no
real evidence at all for progressive evolution but much evidence for
disintegration and extinction or, at best, biologic stability.
We have already seen in the previous chapter that this law of degeneration,
or entropy increase, is universally operative throughout the physical and
chemical realms; it now seems also to pervade the biologic realm. In fact,
this truth is beginning so to disturb evolutionists that a number of books
and papers have been published in recent years attempting to "harmonize"
the concept of evolution (increasing complexity) with the entropy principle
(decreasing complexity).
These attempts have been futile. It is not possible to equate deterioration
with development. Evolution and entropy are both supposed to represent
universal laws of change, but each is the opposite of the other, so they
cannot both be true. Entropy represents a law of science, to the extent
there is such a thing, whereas evolution represents the wishful thinking of
those trying to explain the existence of life apart from God and has no
scientific basis at all.
More and more it appears that there is a degenerative principle pervading
all nature. Some have called this the "law of morpholysis" (which means
"breaking-down of structure"), but the Bible explains it as the great curse
placed on the ground because of Adam's sin (Genesis 3:17-20). According to
this principle, "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain
together until now" under "the bondage of corruption (or 'decay')" (Romans
8:22, 21). There is a universal tendency from the highly organized to the
disorganized. Never is there an inherent, natural, undirected, unaided
trend toward an increase of organized complexity. The natural tendency is
always degenerative. Prior to the curse, entropy, like energy, was
"conserved" with decay processes balanced by growth processes. Now,
however, decay prevails.
In biology, an important example is found in the agencies supposed to bring
about evolution; that is, gene mutations. All such changes are harmful (or
neutral at best), because they represent a breaking down of the highly
structured arrangement of the genes in the germ cell. This most likely
accounts for the fact that most of the living creatures of the present are
represented in the fossil record of the past by larger, more highly
developed members of the same kind. It probably also accounts for the
extinction of many former kinds of living things, as well as for the
various "imperfect adaptations" and "vestigial organs" (to the extent there
really are any such imperfections and vestiges), which evolutionists still
cite (unrealistically) as evidence for evolution.
Evolutionists still may insist that the law of increasing entropy does not
preclude evolution since biological systems are "open" systems and can draw
enough energy from the sun to support an upward evolution. That is
nonsense, however, since the equations of thermodynamics clearly show that
an influx of raw heat energy (as from the sun) into any open system (say,
like the earth) will increase the entropy (or decay) of that system more
rapidly than if it were an isolated system.
Under certain special conditions (not available to evolution, as far as all
evidence goes), the organization of an open system may be increased for a
time by the entrance of external ordering energy, or information. Examples
would be the growth of a plant from a seed or the construction of a
building from various structural components. Any such growth process,
however, must have a directing program (such as the genetic code in the DNA
of the seed or the blueprint for the building), as well as an energy
conversion mechanism of some sort to convert the raw energy of the solar
heat into the specific work of building up the structure (such as the
amazingly complex mechanism of photosynthesis for the seed, or the
machinery, fuels, muscles, and minds of the builders in the case of the
building). The imaginary evolutionary growth of complex plants and animals
from a primeval cell (and that from nonliving chemicals in a hypothetical
primordial soup), however, has neither a directing program nor conversion
mechanism to accomplish this. It must rely on time and chance, but time and
chance break things down-they don't build them up.
No one has ever seen anything evolve, no one knows how evolution works, the
fossil record shows no evolutionary transitions taking place, and the basic
laws of science show it to be impossible. Yet evolutionists insist that
this is "science" and should be taught as proved fact to schoolchildren.