Let us jump into the two major models by which we can extrapolate our (humanity’s) origins. Either we evolved, or we were created, period. As Douglas Futuyma stated in his anti-creationist book, Science On Trial,
“Creation and evolution, between them, exhaust the possible explanations for the origin of living things. Organisms either appeared on the earth fully developed, or they did not. If they did not, they must have developed from preexisting species by some process of modification. If they did appear in a fully developed state, they must indeed have been created by some omnipotent intelligence.”
Now, for those who say that this is a religious topic, e.g., religious creationism versus non-religious science, this next part is for you.
The religions of the world that say we evolved over a very long period by a slow evolutionary process are the following:
Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, Shintoism, Sikhism, Jainism, Animism, Spiritism, Occultism, Satanism, Theosophy, Bahaism, Mysticism, Liberal-Judaism, Liberal-Islam, Liberal-Christianity, Unitarianism, Religious Science, Unity, Humanism.
Of course there are differences in the subtleties of these religious belief systems, for example: in Hinduism the earth is balanced on the back of a turtle, who himself is on the back of another – larger – turtle. What we end up with is an infinite progression to an even larger turtle. Nevertheless, the point is, the Hindu believes that all life originally came from the simplest forms, and through millions of years of evolutionary change, we now have arrived at the current phoenix of evolution, man. The only religions that accept the literal, Biblical interpretation of origins are the following: Orthodox Judaism, Orthodox Islam, and Orthodox Christianity.
Is Evolution a Religion?
Huxley called evolution “religion without revelation.” H. S. Lipson, FRS, Professor of Physics, Univ. of Manchester, UK, states that
“In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to ‘bend’ their observations to fit in with it.”
Professor D. M. S. Watson, one of the leading biologists and science writers of his day, demonstrated the bias behind much of the evolutionary thinking when he wrote,
“evolution [is] a theory universally accepted not because it can be proven by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible.”
So it’s not a question of biased religious creationists versus objective scientific evolutionists; rather, it is the biases of the Christian religion versus the biases of the religion of secular humanism resulting in different interpretations of the same scientific data. As the anti-creationists science writer Boyce Rensberger admits:
“At this point, it is necessary to reveal a little inside information about scientists work, something the textbooks don’t usually tell you. The fact is that scientists are not really as objective and dispassionate in their work as they would like you to think. Most scientists first get their ideas about how the world works not through rigorously logical process but through hunches and wild guesses. As individuals, they often come to believe something to be true long before they assemble the hard evidence that will convince somebody else that it is. Motivated by faith in his own ideas and a desire for acceptance by his peers, a scientist will labor for years knowing in his heart that his is correct but devising experiment after experiment whose results he hopes will support his position.”
It’s not really a question of who is biased, but which bias is the correct bias with which to be biased! (Did you follow that?) Richard Lewontin, a geneticist and professor of biology at Harvard University, recently wrote this very revealing comment (I will underline where Lewontin originally italicized). It illustrates the implicit philosophical (dare I say religious) bias against creation – regardless of whether or not the facts support it:
“We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfil 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 priori 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 counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Now, a person does not have to be religious to see or comprehend the evidences for the creation model of our origins. One only has to be scientifically-minded-enough not to reject the evidence due to an “a priori” assumption, as the next example by Kansan State University immunologist, Scott Todd, in a correspondence to Nature magazine (Sept. 1999) shows: “Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.”
What this entails is the open-mindedness of an individual to view evidence, and, even if the evidence goes against his or her presupposed ideas or worldview, that said person, is willing to change their assumptions to fit the evidence, not changing the evidence to fit the assumptions. That being said, how can we know, or see, the past via our models of origins (creation or evolution)? Are there certain predictions or events the theories say we should see if that particular view of life is true? There certainly is! Lets see if we can sort a few of the major predictions made by the differing models and see where the evidence lies.
The Importance of the Fossil Record
Let us begin with the evolutionary view of life, and what the fossil record should show in accordance with the predicted event – which is, life changing over time from the simplest form (i.e., a single celled ameba) to the most complicated forms (i.e., volitional invertebrates, man). In other words, creationists and evolutionist have radically different ideas as to the kinds of life they expect to find as fossils, created or evolved.
Evolutionists should expect to clearly see, and in fact predicted over 120 years earlier, one type of animal or plant changing into another type. The prediction then is that the boundaries between kinds should blur as we look further and further back into time via their fossil history. Better put is this defining explanation by Dr. Henry Morris on the importance of the fossil record:
“The fossil record must provide the critical evidence for or against evolution, since no other scientific evidence can possibly throw light on the actual history of living things. All other evidence is circumstantial…. The time scale of human observation is far too short to permit documentation of real evolutionary change from lower to higher kinds of organisms at the present time. The vital question, therefore, is: ‘Does the record of past ages, now preserved in the form of fossils, show that such changes have occurred?’” (Dr. Morris is a creationist)
Dr. Duane Gish also states the importance of the fossil record:
“Much evidence could be drawn from the fields of cosmology, chemistry, thermodynamics, mathematics, molecular biology, and genetics in an attempt to decide which model offers a more plausible explanation for the origin of living things. In the final analysis, however, what actually did happen can only be decided, scientifically, by an examination of the historical record, that is, the fossil record.” (Dr. Gish is a creationist)
Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t include some quotes by evolutionists on this same subject, since I just quoted two well-known creation scientists. W. Le Gros Clark, the well-known British evolutionist, has said:
“That evolution actually did occur can only be scientifically established by the discovery of the fossilized remains of representative samples of those intermediate types which have been postulated on the basis of the indirect evidence. In other words, the really crucial evidence for evolution must be provided by the paleontologist whose business it is to study the evidence of the fossil record.”
Pierre Grasse, the most distinguished of all French zoologists, whose knowledge of the living world was said to be encyclopedic, said this:
“Naturalist 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 hypothesis. This is why we constantly have recourse to paleontology, the only true science of evolution…. The true course of evolution is and can only be revealed by paleontology.” Elsewhere he comments: “Thus evolution actually did occur can only be scientifically established by the discovery of the fossilized remains of representative samples of those intermediate types which have been postulated on the basis of the indirect evidence. In other words, the really crucial evidence for evolution must be provided by the paleontologist whose business it is to study the evidence of the fossil record.”
Sir Gavin de Beer, British biologist and of course, evolutionist, said: “The last word on the credibility and course of evolution lies with the paleontologist…” Glenister and Witzke, in their chapter in an anti-creationist book, state: “The fossil record affords an opportunity to choose between evolutionary and creationist models for the origin of the earth and its life forms.”
It would be sensible to assume then, that the fossil record is important, if not crucial, to this debate for the origins of humankind. Thus, the history of life may be traced through an examination of the fossilized remains of past forms of life entombed in the rocks. If life arose from an inanimate world through a mechanistic, naturalistic, evolutionary process and then diversified by a similar process via increasingly complex forms in to the millions of species that have existed and now exist; then the fossils actually found in the rocks should correspond to those predicted on the basis of such a process. On the other hand, if living things came into being by a process of special creation, the broad outlines of which are given in the first two chapters of Genesis, then predictions very different from those based on evolutionary theory should be made concerning the fossil record.
Creation Model
On the basis of the creation model, we would predict an explosive appearance in the fossil record of highly complex forms of life without evidence of ancestral forms. We would predict that all of the major types of life, that is, the basic plant and animal forms, would appear abruptly in the fossil record without evidence of transitional forms linking one basic kind to another. We would thus expect to find fossilized remains, for example, of cats, dogs, bears, elephants, cows, horses, bats, dinosaurs, crocodiles, monkeys, apes, and men without evidence of common ancestors. Each major kind at its earliest appearance in the fossil record would possess, fully developed, all the characteristics that are used to define that particular kind.
Evolution Model
On the basis of the evolution model, we would predict that the most ancient strata in which fossils are found would contain the most primitive forms of life capable of leaving a fossil record. As successively younger strata were searched, we would expect to see gradual transition of these relatively simple forms of life into more and more complex forms of life. As living forms diverged into the millions of species which have existed in the past and which exist today, we would expect to find a transition of one form into another.
We would predict that new types would not appear suddenly in the fossil record possessing all of the characteristics which are used to define that group but would retain characteristics used to define the ancestral group. Dr. Gish says,
“There should not be any difficulty in finding transitional forms. Hundreds of transitional forms should fill museum collections. If we find fossils at all, we ought to find transitional forms. As a matter of fact, difficulty in placing a fossil with a distinct category should be the rule rather than the exception.”
What Do the Evolutionists Say?
To better grasp what we are dealing with here, let us first see what some of the bigger names in the evolutionary field of geology and paleontology have to say about the fossil record and the evidence that it portrays. Charles Darwin, the man whose theory is the topic of this discussion, also realized the foundational importance of this matter to the life-blood of his theory, if you will:
“[Since] innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them imbedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? 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 perhaps is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.”
Again, Darwin:
“The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species appear in certain formations has been urged by several paleontologists… as a fatal objection to the belief of the transmutation of species. If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life at once, that fact would be fatal to the theory of evolution through natural selection. For the development by this means of a group of forms all of which are (according to the theory) descended from some one progenitor, must have been an extremely slow process; and the progenitors must have lived long before their modified descendants.”
Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s “bulldog,” also realized the importance of this issue when he wrote: “If it could be shown that this fact [gaps between widely distinct groups] had always existed, the fact would be fatal to the doctrine of evolution.”
Absence of transitional forms was a continuing problem for Darwin, as it is for paleontologists today. David Raup, curator of geology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, makes this abundantly clear with this statement:
“He [Darwin] was embarrassed by the fossil record because it didn’t look the way he predicted it would, and, as a result, he devoted a long section of his Origin of Species to an attempt to explain and rationalize the differences…. Darwin’s general solution to the incompatibility of fossil evidence and his theory was to say that the fossil record is a very incomplete one…. We are now about 120 years after Darwin, and knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America [still on display in the Los Angeles Natural History Museum], have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information.” [Archaeopteryx as well]
Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, probably evolution’s leading spokesperson today, has acknowledged: “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.”
Anthropologist Edmund R. Leach told the 1981 Annual Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science: “Missing links in the sequence of fossil evidence were a worry to Darwin. He felt sure they would eventually turn up, but they are still missing and seem likely to remain so.” George Gaylord Simpson, perhaps the twentieth century’s foremost paleontologist, said: “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.”
Dr. Steven Stanley of the department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, John Hopkins University, says:
“The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic [structural] transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid.”
Professor Heribert Nilsson, Director of the Botanical Institute at Lund University, Sweden, declared after forty years of study in this field:
“It may, therefore, be firmly maintained that it is not even possible to make a caricature of evolution out of paleobiological facts. The fossil material is now so complete that it has been possible to construct new classes and the lack of transitional series cannot be explained as due to the scarcity of the material. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled.”
Gareth J. Nelson, of the American Museum of Natural History: “It is a mistake to believe that even one fossil species or fossil ‘group’ can be demonstrated to have been ancestral to another. The ancestor-descendant relationship may only be assumed to have existed in the absence of evidence indicating otherwise.” Well known British zoologist Mark Ridley declares: “…no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favor of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation.”
Moreover, Newsweek reported:
“In the fossil record, missing links are the rule: the story of life is as disjointed as a silent newsreel, in which species succeed one another as abruptly as Balkan prime ministers. The more scientists have searched for the transitional forms between species, the more they have been frustrated.”
Lord Solly Zuckerman, M.A.,M.D.,D.Sc., famous British anatomist concurred:
“…if man evolved from an apelike creature he did so without leaving a trace of that evolution in the fossil record.” Dr. Derek V. Ager from the Department of Geology, Imperial College, London, at the Proceedings of the Geological Association said: “It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as student…have been debunked.”
Personal letter from Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History in London, to L. Sunderland:
“…I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustrations of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly would have included them…Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils…I will lay it on the line – there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.”
Again, Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the prestigious British Museum of Natural History, which houses the world’s largest fossil collection – sixty million specimens – said:
“For almost 20 years I thought I was working on evolution…. But there was not one thing I knew about it…. 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, any one thing that is true?’ [Fossils being included in this question of “Where’s the beef?”] 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, ‘Yes, I do know one thing -–it ought not to be taught in high school.’ … During the past few years… you have experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith…. Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge.”
So by using quotes and comments by evolutionists themselves on the subject of the fossil record and what evidences it provides, I have shown that as of yet, the evolutionary predictions made about the geological record have not been met. What does the fossil record show? Let us peer into just the first layer and see if this could shed light on the prediction made by the evolutionary model that we should find simpler life forms evolving into more complicated forms and fauna in the upper parts of the geological columns.
The Cambrian “Explosion”
In the Cambrian rocks are found a multitude of highly complex creatures with no ancestors. After vertebrates were found in the Cambrian, Science magazine placed every major animal phylum (group) in the Cambrian rocks. This information comes as a shock to most people for it is not discussed in school or university textbooks. Dr. Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural History said, “There is still a tremendous problem with the sudden diversification of multicellular life. There is no question about that. That’s a real phenomenon.” Noted evolutionist Dr. George Gaylord Simpson has called the sudden appearance of many types of complex life forms in the Cambrian rocks (around the entire globe) the “major mystery of the history of life.” He went on to say that two-thirds of evolution was already over by the time we found the fist fossils. Today, some scientists are saying 75 percent of the evolutionary process occurred before the first fossils were deposited.
Dr. David Raup, curator of geology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, and George Gaylord Simpson, the twentieth century’s foremost paleontologist, have both pointed to the fact that two-thirds of evolution was over by the time we found the first fossils. Creationists were saying that to an open-minded person (setting you’re “a priori” presuppositions aside), this would indicate agreement between the creation model and what is found in the fossil record. Eldredge goes on to say:
“Then there was something of an explosion. Beginning about six hundred million years ago and continuing for about ten to fifteen million years [Dr. Gould rates it about five million], the earliest known representatives of the major kinds of animals still populating today’s seas made a rather abrupt appearance. This rather protracted ‘event’ shows up graphically in the rock record…. Creationists have made much of this sudden development of a rich and varied fossil record where, just before, there was none…. Indeed, the sudden appearance of a varied, well-preserved array of fossils, which geologists have used to mark the beginnings of the Cambrian Period does pose a fascinating intellectual challenges.”
Science magazine had evolutionary scientist, Dr. David Woodruff, do a review of the book Macroevolution, Pattern and Process. Dr. Woodruff stated that the fossil record “fails to contain a single example of a significant transition.” Ichthyologist Dr. Donn Rosen, the late curator of fish at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, noted that evolution has been “unable to provide scientific data about the origin, diversity, and similarity of the two-million species that inhabit the earth and the estimated eight million others that once thrived.” Dr. Steven M. Stanley, professor of paleobiology at John Hopkins University, openly admits that “the known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic [gradual] evolution accomplishing a major morphological transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualist model can be valid.”
In the book Darwin’s Enigma, Luther Sunderland interviewed five top paleontologists at leading natural history museums around the world (some of which have been mentioned already), each having significant fossil collections. Those interviewed were Dr. David Pilbeam, former curator of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale, later professor of anthropology at Harvard; Dr. Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History; Dr. Niles Eldredge, curator of invertebrate paleontology at the American Museum in New York City; Dr. David M. Raup, curator of Geology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago; and Dr. Donald Fisher, state paleontologist at the New York State Natural History Museum. This is what Sunderland said after all the above men were interviewed:
“None of the five museum officials could offer a single example of a transitional series of fossilized organisms that would document the transformation of one basically different type to another.”
So, is the proof of evolution “wanting?” Dr. Eldredge when he confessed about our textbooks in the colleges and universities (and presumably television channels such as the Discovery Channel or The Learning Channel) also confessed to the lack of evidence about the theory of evolution that so permeates our society:
“I admit that an awful lot of [mis]information has gotten into the textbooks as though it were true…. Many statements about prehistoric time, or a presumed fossil record, partake of imaginative narratives.”
Is it any wonder then when philosophers and scientists say such things like, “Evolutionism is a fairy tale for grownups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless” ~ Professor Louis Bounoure, Former President of the Biological Society of Strasbourg and Director of the Strasbourg Zoological Museum, later Director of Research at the French National Center of Scientific Research. Or, that “I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution especially the extent to which it’s been applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has” — Malcolm Muggeridge, world famous journalist and philosopher.
These men are only commenting on the lack of any credible evidence that should be there if evolution were true. They are only commenting on the predictions made that are yet to be substantiated. To reject creation a priori and to defend a model that lacks any substance, whatsoever, is itself unscientific. Or, as the senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History puts it, “Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge.”
Dr. Gish remarks that,
“Eldredge admits that ‘The Cambrian evolutionary explosion is still shrouded in mystery.’ But creation scientists say, ‘what greater evidence for creation could the rocks give than this abrupt appearance of a great variety of complex creatures without trace of ancestors?’ Thus we see, right from the beginning, on the basis of an evolutionary scenario, the evidence is directly contradictory to predictions based on evolution but is remarkably in accord with predictions based on creation. This [Cambrian] evidence alone I sufficient to establish the fact that evolution has not occurred on the earth.”
To Conclude
When creationists look at evolution through the eyes of mathematical probabilities; the fossil record; information theory and the vast informational content in living things; the laws of thermodynamics, biogenesis and non-contradiction; comparative studies in physiology/anatomy/taxonomy/embryology/ morphology/genetics and biochemistry; and sciences such as anthropology, geology, and biology, they (we) find it hard to believe that anyone who fairly examines this issue could state that evolution is a fact – or even a credible theory. This is why creationists argue that any open-minded individual, scientist or layman, who will objectively evaluate all the evidence, will discover that such evidence comes down heavily on the side of creation.
As I have shown with the crux of the Darwinian theory, the fossil record. Where does the evidence lay?
“Perhaps the most obvious challenge is to demonstrate evolution empirically. There are, arguably, some two to ten million species on Earth. The fossil record shows that most species survive somewhere between three and five million years. In that case, we ought to be seeing small but significant numbers of originations and extinctions every decade. But, of course, we do not see that.” (One of the nation’s most eminent biologists, Keith Stewart Thompson, from the article, “Natural Selection and Evolution’s Gun,” American Scientist, Vol. 85, Nov/Dec 1997, p. 516)
