Can You Believe Both the Bible and Evolution?

last SG · 2006-08-11T18:25:37+00:00

breytonhartge, Credibility has nothing to do with the viewpoint. It has to do with correct referencing and stating the facts as the way they are. Misreprese...

breytonhartge SG

interesting.... Wink but then how did the evolution occur? would not the mutation have taken place in the genes that formed the egg... so in that essence... the chicken came first... ?

breytonhartge SG

The Testimony of the New Testament
Many passages show us that Christ and the apostles fully accepted the Genesis account of the creation. Jesus talked about "the beginning of the creation which God created" (Mark 13:19; see also Matthew 24:21).

He once asked some who questioned Him: "Have you not read that He who made them [Adam and Eve] at the beginning 'made them male and female'?" (Matthew 19:4; Mark 10:6). Later the resurrected Christ referred to Himself as "the Beginning of the creation" (Revelation 3:14).

Many are surprised to learn that the Bible reveals Christ as the Creator! More than once the apostle Paul explained to early Christians that God had created all things by Jesus Christ (Ephesians 3:9; Colossians 1:16). Hebrews 1:2 tells us that God "has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, . . .through whom also He made the worlds."

Paul also told the Athenians that God made all nations "from one blood" (Acts 17:26); all are descendants of Adam and Eve. Paul believed all that was written in the Law and the Prophets (Acts 24:14), including the creation accounts.

Finally, both the specifics and the tenor of Peter's last letter tell us that he, too, believed in creation (see 2 Peter 3:4-7 in particular).

breytonhartge SG

Scientists, Creation and Evolution
No one should assume that scientists uniformly agree that there is no God and that the world around us is the product of a mindless evolutionary process. Consider what some scientists have to say about creation and evolution:

"For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume [Origin of Species] on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I arrived."

- Charles Darwin (1809-1882), British naturalist who popularized the theory of evolution through natural selection

"The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. Into his tiniest creatures, God has placed extraordinary properties that turn them into agents of destruction of dead matter."

"A bit of science distances one from God, but much science nears one to Him."

- Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), French scientist, developer of pasteurization process for milk and vaccines for anthrax, chicken cholera and rabies, dean of the faculty of sciences at Lille University

"Manned space flight is an amazing achievement, but it has opened for mankind thus far only a tiny door for viewing the awesome reaches of space. An outlook through this peephole at the vast mysteries of the universe should only confirm our belief in the certainty of its Creator."

"It is in scientific honesty that I endorse the presentation of alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life and man in the science classroom. It would be an error to overlook the possibility that the universe was planned rather than happening by chance."

"Atheists all over the world have . . . called upon science as their crown witness against the existence of God. But as they try, with arrogant abuse of scientific reasoning, to render proof there is no God, the simple and enlightening truth is that their arguments boomerang. For one of the most fundamental laws of natural science is that nothing in the physical world ever happens without a cause.

"There simply cannot be a creation without some kind of Spiritual Creator . . . In the world around us we can behold the obvious manifestations of the Divine plan of the Creator"

- Dr. Wernher von Braun (1912-1977), NASA director and "father of the American Space Program"

"The theories of evolution, with which our studious youth have been deceived, constitute actually a dogma that all the world continues to teach: but each, in his specialty, the zoologist or the botanist, ascertains that none of the explanations furnished is adequate."

"The theory of evolution is impossible. At base, in spite of appearances, no one any longer believes in it . . . Evolution is a kind of dogma which the priests no longer believe, but which they maintain for their people."

- Paul Lemoine (1878-1940), director of the Paris Natural History Museum, president of the Geological Society of France and editor of Encyclopedie Francaise

"To postulate that the development and survival of the fittest is entirely a consequence of chance mutations seems to me a hypothesis based on no evidence and irreconcilable with the facts. These classical evolutionary theories are a gross over-simplification of an immensely complex and intricate mass of facts, and it amazes me that they are swallowed so uncritically and readily, and for such a long time, by so many scientists without a murmur of protest."

- Sir Ernst Chain (1906-1979), co-holder of the 1945 Nobel Prize for isolating and purifying penicillin, director of Rome's International Research Center for Chemical Microbiology, professor of biochemistry at Imperial College, University of London

breytonhartge SG

Ancient Near-Eastern Concepts of Creation
Is the Genesis account only an ancient myth, no better than tales originating in other cultures over the millennia? Many people obviously think so. Notice what Richard Dawkins, professor of zoology at Oxford University and professed atheist, has to say about the biblical account:

"Nearly all peoples have developed their own creation myth, and the Genesis story is just the one that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle Eastern herders. It has no more special status than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the world was created from the excrement of ants" (Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, 1986, p. 316).

But is Professor Dawkins' assumption true? Is the Genesis record a fairy tale little different from those of other ancient cultures?

Some 5,000 years ago, the Sumerians of Mesopotamia left accounts of their creation myths inscribed on cuneiform tablets. The Sumerians conceived of the earth as flat and the sky as a canopy of clouds and stars. They believed earth and sky were created by two gods: An, the male sky god, and Ki, the female earth god.

These two gave birth to a multitude of other gods, each with a particular power and responsibility over a part of the creation or physical phenomena (lightning, trees, mountains, illness, etc.). They lived in a kingly court in heaven, with An, the supreme god, surrounded by four subordinate creator gods. Below them were a council of seven gods and, finally, the 50 remaining minor gods.

All physical occurrences could be interpreted by the priests as the result of the particular mood or whim of one of these gods. They could be placated by offerings and sacrifices. Although these deities were considered immortal, their supposed conduct was anything but divine. They were depicted as often fighting among themselves, full of petty envies and lusts and subject to hunger and even death.

A few centuries later the Babylonians conquered the Sumerians and modified these myths to exalt their own civilization. Now it was the Babylonian god Marduk who was in charge; he formed the heavens and earth by killing a female god, Tiamat. According to the Babylonian creation account:

"The god Apsu and the goddess Tiamat made other gods. Later Apsu became distressed with these gods and tried to kill them, but instead he was killed by the god Ea. Tiamat sought revenge and tried to kill Ea, but instead she was killed by Ea's son Marduk. Marduk split her body in half, and from one half he made the sky and from the other half he made the earth. Then Marduk, with Ea's aid, made mankind from the blood of another god, Kingu" (Life: How Did It Get Here?, 1985, p. 35).

Does this kind of bizarre tale bear any resemblance to the biblical account of creation? Not at all. The first civilizations of the Fertile Crescent had similar creation accounts, but the only one free of outrageous myth and with a moral and perfect God is the biblical version.

In contrast to the crude polytheistic struggles found in such ancient myths, the Genesis account is smooth, systematic, rational and-yes-scientific. Notice astrophysicist Hugh Ross's reaction on first reading the biblical account of creation: "The [Bible's] distinctives struck me immediately. It was simple, direct, and specific. I was amazed with the quantity of historical and scientific references and with the detail in them.

"It took me a whole evening just to investigate the first chapter. Instead of another bizarre creation myth, here was a journal-like record of the earth's initial conditions-correctly described from the standpoint of astrophysics and geophysics-followed by a summary of the sequence of changes through which Earth came to be inhabited by living things and ultimately by humans.

"The account was simple, elegant, and scientifically accurate. From what I understood to be the stated viewpoint of an observer on Earth's surface, both the order and the description of creation events perfectly matched the established record of nature. I was amazed" (The Creator and the Cosmos, 1993, p. 15).

Consider an admission from The Columbia History of the World: "Indeed, our best current knowledge, lacking the poetic magic of scripture, seems in a way less believable than the account in the Bible . . ." (John Garraty and Peter Gay, editors, 1972, p. 3).

It is natural to conclude, as nations gradually distanced themselves from the true Creator God and sank into immorality and polytheism, that their understanding of the creation became corrupted and eventually was used to prop up their political, social, philosophical and religious outlooks.

Vernon Blackmore and Andrew Page write: "Today the difference between Genesis and the Babylonian account is evident. The first speaks of one God creating the world and mankind by his own command; the other describes chaos and war among many gods, after which one god, Marduk, fashions humanity from clay and blood. The spiritual depth and dignity of Genesis far surpasses the polytheistic ideas of Babylon. Yet until the complete story had been reconstructed, incautious scholars talked of the Bible account being a copy of that from Babylonia. Certainly, they argued, Genesis should be consigned to the category of legend, and its writing was dated long after Moses to the time Israel was held captive in Babylon.

"Much of nineteenth-century liberalism has now been shown as excessive. The Old Testament is not a poor reflection of more ancient Babylonian or Canaanite tales. There are more differences than similarities between the texts. The opening chapters of Genesis stand unique. Nevertheless, many scholars still use the category of myth in relation to some of the biblical material" (Evolution: The Great Debate, 1989, p. 130).

breytonhartge SG

When you say much of the bible how much do you mean?? Care to clarify?

breytonhartge SG

The Greek Concept of Creation
The ancient Greeks had no shortage of creation myths, with many elements taken from the Babylonian model. Two poets, Homer and Hesiod, described the Greek religious system, with its national gods in charge, while living in a royal court full of intrigues and lusts.

In his version Hesiod saw the origin of the universe as deriving from the chaos, the vastness, of space that produced the first goddess, Gaea (earth). She created Uranus (heaven), who became her husband, and they produced many lesser gods. The division between heaven and earth occurred when one of their sons, Cronus, in a fit of jealousy attacked his father, Uranus. Zeus, the one who became the chief god, was born from the irate Cronus and his wife, Rhea.

Sadly, the only surviving writings about Christianity from the first centuries after the apostles come mainly from men steeped in Greek thought and philosophy. These were Justin Martyr (110-165), Clement (160-220), Origen (185-254) and Augustine (354-430), all former disciples of the thinking of Plato and Aristotle. In this way Greek philosophy entered the Roman church and formed much of its theology.

"The problem with Gentile Christians," notes church historian Samuele Bacchiocchi, "was not only their lack of familiarity with Scripture, but also their excessive fascination with their Greek philosophical speculations, which conditioned their understanding of Biblical truths. While Jewish Christians often erred in the direction of legalism, Gentile Christians often erred in the direction of philosophical speculations which sundered Christianity from its historical roots" (God's Festivals in Scripture and History, 1995, pp. 102-103).

In particular, Origen and Augustine began to interpret much of the book of Genesis as allegory. They viewed the Genesis account as filled with symbolic fictional figures representing truth, human conduct or experience. Gradually, this allegorical method became the norm in the Catholic understanding of much of Genesis. These misconceptions were to heavily influence church authorities down through the years.

laurence82 SG

No answer for this

But I am guessing the evolution is complete with the laying of the 'first' egg. Is our genes 100% transferred to our kids? And during birth process, usually some babies experience some form of mutations though

ben might wanna check with his colleagues from the medical school

breytonhartge SG

What Does the Fossil Record Show?
Can the theory of evolution be proven? After all, it is called the theory of evolution in acknowledgment that it is a hypothesis rather than a confirmed scientific fact.

Where can we find evidence supporting evolution as an explanation for the teeming variety of life on earth?

Since evolutionists claim that the transition from one species to a new one takes place in tiny, incremental changes over millions of years, they acknowledge that we cannot observe the process taking place today. Our lifespans simply are too short to directly observe such a change.

Instead, they say, we have to look at the past-the fossil record that shows the many life forms that have existed over earth's history-to find transitions from one species to another.

Darwin's greatest challenge

When Charles Darwin proposed his theory in the mid-19th century, he was confident that fossil discoveries would provide clear and convincing evidence that his conjectures were correct. His theory predicted that countless transitional forms must have existed, all gradually blending almost imperceptibly from one tiny step to the next, as species progressively evolved to higher, better-adapted forms.

Indeed that would have to be the case. Well in excess of a million species are alive today. For all those to have evolved from common ancestors, we should be able to find millions if not hundreds of millions of intermediate forms gradually evolving into other species.

It was not only fossils of transitional species between apes and humans that would have to be discovered to prove Darwin's theory. The gaps were enormous. Science writer Richard Milton notes that the missing links "included every part of the animal kingdom: from whelks to whales and from bacteria to bactrian camels. Darwin and his successors envisaged a process that would begin with simple marine organisms living in ancient seas, progressing through fishes, to amphibians-living partly in the sea and partly on land-and hence on to reptiles, mammals, and eventually the primates, including humans" (Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, 1997, p. 253).

However, even Darwin himself struggled with the fact that the fossil record failed to support his conclusions. ". . . Why, if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? . . . Why do we not find them imbedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?" (Origin of Species, 1958 Masterpieces of Science edition, pp. 136-137).

". . . The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed, [must] be truly enormous," he wrote. "Why then 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 serious objection which can be urged against the theory [of evolution]" (Darwin, pp. 260-261).

Darwin acknowledged that the fossil record failed to support his conclusions. But, since he thought his theory obviously was the correct explanation for earth's many and varied forms of life, he and others thought it only a matter of time before fossilized missing links would be found to fill in the many gaps. His answer for the lack of fossil evidence to support his theory was that scientists hadn't looked long enough and hadn't looked in the right places. Eventually they would find the predicted fossil remains that would prove his view. "The explanation lies, I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record," he wrote (p. 261).

He was convinced that later explorations and discoveries would fill in the abundant gaps where the transitional species on which his theory was based were missing. But now, a century and a half later, after literally hundreds of thousands of fossil plants and animals have been discovered and cataloged and with few corners of the globe unexplored, what does the fossil record show?

What the record reveals

David Raup is a firm believer in evolution and a respected paleontologist (scientist who studies fossils) at the University of Chicago and the Field Museum. However, he admits that the fossil record has been misinterpreted if not outright mischaracterized. He writes: "A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks, semi-popular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found-yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks" (Science, Vol. 213, p. 289, emphasis added).

Niles Eldredge, curator in the department of invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History and adjunct professor at the City University of New York, is another vigorous supporter of evolution. But he finds himself forced to admit that the fossil record fails to support the traditional evolutionary view.

"No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long," he writes. "It seems never to happen. Assiduous collecting up 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: The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory, 1995, p. 95, emphasis added).

After an immense worldwide search by geologists and paleontologists, the "missing links" Darwin predicted would be found to bolster his theory are still missing.

Harvard University paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould is perhaps today's best-known popular writer on evolution. An ardent evolutionist, he collaborated with Professor Eldredge in proposing alternatives to the traditional view of Darwinism. Like Eldredge, he recognizes that the fossil record fundamentally conflicts with Darwin's idea of gradualism.

"The history of most fossil species," he writes, "includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism [gradual evolution from one species to another]:

"[1] Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional [evolutionary] change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking pretty much the same as when they disappear; morphological [anatomical or structural] 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'" (Gould, "Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History, May 1977, pp. 13-14).

continued...

breytonhartge SG

What does the fossil record show? Part 2

Fossils missing in crucial places

Francis Hitching, member of the Royal Archaeological Institute, the Prehistoric Society and the Society for Physical Research, also sees problems in using the fossil record to support Darwinism.

"There are about 250,000 different species of fossil plants and animals in the world's museums," he writes. "This compares with about 1.5 million species known to be alive on Earth today. Given the known rates of evolutionary turnover, it has been estimated that at least 100 times more fossil species have lived than have been discovered . . . But the curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps: the fossils go missing in all the important places.

"When you look for links between major groups of animals, they simply aren't there; at least, not in enough numbers to put their status beyond doubt. Either they don't exist at all, or they are so rare that endless argument goes on about whether a particular fossil is, or isn't, or might be, transitional between this group and that.

". . . There ought to be cabinets full of intermediates-indeed, one would expect the fossils to blend so gently into one another that it would be difficult to tell where the invertebrates ended and the vertebrates began. But this isn't the case. Instead, groups of well-defined, easily classifiable fish jump into the fossil record seemingly from nowhere: mysteriously, suddenly, full-formed, and in a most un-Darwinian way. And before them are maddening, illogical gaps where their ancestors should be" (The Neck of the Giraffe: Darwin, Evolution and the New Biology, 1982, pp. 9-10, emphasis added).

Acknowledging that the fossil record contradicts rather than supports Darwinism, professors Eldredge and Gould have proposed a radically different theory they call "punctuated equilibrium": that bursts of evolution occurred in small, isolated populations that then became dominant and showed no change over millions and millions of years. This, they say, is the only way to explain the lack of evidence for evolution in the fossil record.

As Newsweek explains: "In 1972 Gould and Niles Eldredge collaborated on a paper intended at the time merely to resolve a professional embarrassment for paleontologists: their inability to find the fossils of transitional forms between species, the so-called 'missing links.' Darwin, and most of those who followed him, believed that the work of evolution was slow, gradual and continuous and that a complete lineage of ancestors, shading imperceptibly one into the next, could in theory be reconstructed for all living animals . . . But a century of digging since then has only made their absence more glaring . . . It was Eldredge and Gould's notion to call off the search and accept the evidence of the fossil record on its own terms" ("Enigmas of Evolution," March 29, 1982, p. 39, emphasis added).

As some observers point out, this is an inherently unprovable theory for which the primary evidence to support it is lack of evidence in the fossil record to support transitional forms between species.

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laurence82 SG

We are homo sapiens sapiens, Neanderthals is a different branch altogether, according to science...

>.<!

breytonhartge SG

What does the fossil record show part3

Fossil record no longer incomplete

The fossil record has been thoroughly explored and documented. Darwin's excuse of "extreme imperfection of the geological record" is no longer credible.

How complete is the fossil record? Michael Denton is a medical doctor and biological researcher. He writes that "when estimates are made of the percentage of [now-] living forms found as fossils, the percentage turns out to be surprisingly high, suggesting that the fossil record may not be as bad as is often maintained" (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 1985, p. 189).

He explains that "of the 329 living families of terrestrial vertebrates [mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians] 261 or 79.1 percent have been found as fossils and, when birds (which are poorly fossilized) are excluded, the percentage rises to 87.8 percent" (Denton, p. 189).

In other words, almost 88 percent of the varieties of mammals, reptiles and amphibians populating earth have been found in the fossil record. How many transitional forms, then, have been found? ". . . Although each of these classes [fishes, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and primates] is well represented in the fossil record, as of yet no one has discovered a fossil creature that is indisputably transitional between one species and another species. Not a single undisputed 'missing link' has been found in all the exposed rocks of the Earth's crust despite the most careful and extensive searches" (Milton, pp. 253-254, emphasis added).

If Darwin's theory were true, transitional creatures such as invertebrates with partially developed backbones, fish with rudimentary legs, reptiles with primitive wings and innumerable creatures with semievolved anatomical features should be the rule, scattered throughout the fossil strata. But they are nonexistent.

What about fossil proofs?

At times various fossil species have been presented as firm proof of evolution at work. Perhaps the most famous is the supposed evolution of the horse as presented in many biology textbooks. But is it what it is claimed to be?

Notice what Professor Eldredge has to say about this classic "proof" of evolution: "George Gaylord Simpson spent a considerable segment of his career on horse evolution. His overall conclusion: Horse evolution was by no means the simple, linear and straightforward affair it was made out to be ... Horse evolution did not proceed in one single series, from step A to step B and so forth, culminating in modern, single-toed large horses. Horse evolution, to Simpson, seemed much more bushy, with lots of species alive at any one time-species that differed quite a bit from one another, and which had variable numbers of toes, size of teeth, and so forth.

"In other words, it is easy, and all too tempting, to survey the fossil history of a group and select examples that seem best to exemplify linear change through time ... But picking out just those species that exemplify intermediate stages along a trend, while ignoring all other species that don't seem to fit in as well, is something else again. The picture is distorted. The actual evolutionary pattern isn't fully represented" (Niles Eldredge, The Great Debate, p. 131).

Eldredge in effect admits that paleontologists picked and chose which species they thought fit best with their theory and ignored the rest. George Gaylord Simpson himself was more blunt: "The uniform continuous transformation of Hyracotherium [a fossil species thought to be the ancestor of the horse] into Equus [the modern horse], so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers, never happened in nature" (Life of the Past, 1953, p. 119).

Professor Raup elaborates on the problem paleontologists face in trying to demonstrate evolution from the fossil record: ". . . 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, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information-what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and much less gradualistic [evolutionary]" ("Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin 50, January 1979, pp. 22-25, emphasis added).

Paleontology's well-kept secret

What does all this mean? In plain language, if evolution means the gradual change of one kind of organism into another kind, the outstanding characteristic of the fossil record is the absence of evidence for evolution-and abundant evidence to the contrary. The only logical place to find proof for evolutionary theory is in the fossil record. But, rather than showing slow, gradual change over eons, with new species continually emerging, the fossils show the opposite.

Professor Eldredge touched on the magnitude of the problem when he admitted that Darwin "essentially invented a new field of scientific inquiry-what is now called 'taphonomy'-to explain why the fossil record is so deficient, so full of gaps, that the predicted patterns of gradual change simply do not emerge" (Eldredge, pp. 95-96, emphasis added).

Professor Gould similarly admits that the "extreme rarity" of evidence for evolution in the fossil record is "the trade secret of paleontology." He goes on to acknowledge that "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, emphasis added).

But do paleontologists share this trade secret with others? Hardly. "Reading popular or even textbook introductions to evolution, . . . you might hardly guess that they [fossil gaps] exist, so glibly and confidently do most authors slide through them. In the absence of fossil evidence, they write what have been termed 'just so' stories. A suitable mutation just happened to take place at the crucial moment, and hey presto, a new stage of evolution was reached" (Hitching, pp. 12-13).

Regarding this misrepresentation of the evidence, Phillip Johnson writes: "Just about everyone who took a college biology course during the last sixty years or so has been led to believe that the fossil record was a bulwark of support for the classic Darwinian thesis, not a liability that had to be explained away . . .

"The fossil record shows a consistent pattern of sudden appearance followed by a stasis, that life's history is more a story of variation around a set of basic designs than one of accumulating improvement, that extinction has been predominantly by catastrophe rather than gradual obsolescence, and that orthodox interpretations of the fossil record often owe more to Darwinist preconception than to the evidence itself.

Paleontologists seem to have thought it their duty to protect the rest of us from the erroneous conclusions we might have drawn if we had known the actual state of the evidence" (Darwin on Trial, 1993, pp. 58-59).

The secret evolutionists don't want revealed is that, even by their own interpretations, the fossil record shows fully formed species appearing for a time and then disappearing with no change. Other species appeared at other times before they, too, disappeared with little or no change. The fossil record simply does not support the central thesis of Darwinism, that species slowly and gradually evolved from one form to another.

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breytonhartge SG

What does the fossil record show part4?

Fact or interesting speculation?

Professor Johnson notes that "Darwinists consider evolution to be a fact, not just a theory, because it provides a satisfying explanation for the pattern of relationship linking all living creatures-a pattern so identified in their minds with what they consider to be the necessary cause of the pattern-descent with modification-that, to them, biological relationship means evolutionary relationship" (Johnson, p. 63, emphasis in original). The deceptive, smoke-and-mirror language of evolution revolves largely around the classification of living species. Darwinists attempt to explain natural relationships they observe in the animal and plant world by categorizing animal and plant life according to physical similarities. It could be said that Darwin's theory is nothing more than educated observance of the obvious; that is, the conclusion that most animals appear to be related to one another because most animals have one or more characteristics in common.

For instance, you might have a superficial classification of whales, penguins and sharks in a group classified as aquatic animals. You might also have birds, bats and bees grouped as flying creatures. These are not the final classifications because there are many other obvious differences. The Darwinist approach, however, is to use the obvious general similarities to show, not that animals were alike in many ways, but that they were related to each other by descent from common ancestors.

Professor Johnson expresses it this way: "Darwin proposed a naturalistic explanation for the essentialist features of the living world that was so stunning in its logical appeal that it conquered the scientific world even while doubts remained about some important parts of his theory. He theorized that the discontinuous groups of the living world were the descendants of long-extinct common ancestors. Relatively closely related groups (like reptiles, birds, and mammals) shared a relatively recent common ancestor; all vertebrates shared a more ancient common ancestor; and all animals shared a still more ancient common ancestor. He then proposed that the ancestors must have been linked to their descendants by long chains of transitional intermediates, also extinct" (Johnson, p. 64).

Evolutionists exercise selective perception when looking at the evidence-rather like deciding whether to view half a glass of water as half empty or half full. They choose to dwell on similarities rather than differences. By doing so they lead you away from the truth of the matter: that similarities are evidence of a common Designer behind the structure and function of the life forms. Each species of animal was created and designed to exist and thrive in a particular way. Darwin and the subsequent proponents of the evolutionary view of life focused on similarities within the major classifications of animals and drew the assumption that those similarities prove that all animals are related to one another through common ancestors.

However, there are major differences in the life forms on earth. If, as evolution supposes, all life forms had common ancestors and chains of intermediates linking those ancestors, the fossil record should overflow with many such intermediate forms between species. But, as we have seen earlier, paleontologists themselves admit it shows no such thing.

Simple life forms?

Since the fossil record does not support the traditional evolutionary view, what does it show?

We have already seen how several well-known paleontologists admit that the fossil record shows the sudden appearance of life forms. As Stephen Jay Gould puts it: "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'" (Gould, "Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History, May 1977, pp. 13-14).

When we sweep away the evolutionary bias inherent in most views, the fossil record does not show a gradual ascent from simple to complex. Some of the earliest fossils found are bacteria. What is interesting about bacteria is that they are not simple organisms at all.

In reality there are no simple life forms. Modern technology has shown that even a single cell is extraordinarily complex.

Michael Behe is associate professor of biochemistry at Pennsylvania's Lehigh University. Noting scientists' changing perceptions of the most elementary forms of life, he writes: "We humans tend to have a rather exalted opinion of ourselves, and that attitude can color our perception of the biological world. In particular, our attitude about what is higher and lower in biology, what is an advanced organism and what is a primitive organism, starts with the presumption that the pinnacle of nature is ourselves . . . Nonetheless, other organisms, if they could talk, could argue strongly for their own superiority. This includes bacteria, which we often think of as the rudest forms of life" (Darwin's Black Box, 1996, pp. 69-70).

When Darwin wrote Origin of Species almost a century and a half ago, scientists did not know nearly as much about the cell (and single-celled organisms) as we do today. Darwin thought that single-celled organisms were quite primitive. In fact, at that time many still thought that life could arise naturally from nonliving matter-for example, that decaying meat spontaneously produced flies.

Years passed before French scientist Louis Pasteur convincingly demonstrated, through a series of meticulous experiments, the impossibility of the notion. Yet even Pasteur had quite a battle with scientists of his day convincing them that life came only from preexisting life forms. So Darwin's idea-that single-celled meant simple-was not questioned at the time. Later discoveries have shown that even the single-celled organisms found early in the fossil record are far more complex than Darwin and others could have imagined.

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breytonhartge SG

what does the fossil record show part 5

An explosion of life forms

Paleontologists widely consider the Cambrian period, one of the oldest in their view, to be the earliest in which extensive life forms are preserved. Since only the remains of marine life are found in Cambrian strata, paleontologists interpret these deposits as dating to a time before land animals had evolved.

The Encarta Encyclopedia says of this time: "By the beginning of the Paleozoic Era, the steadily increasing oxygen content of the atmosphere and oceans . . . had made it possible for the marine environment to support new forms of life that could derive energy from respiration. Although life had not yet invaded dry land or the air, the seas of the Cambrian Period teemed with a great variety of marine invertebrates, including sponges, worms, bryozoans ('moss animals'), hydrozoans, brachiopods, mollusks (among them the gastropods and species ancestral to the nautilus), primitive arthropods such as the trilobite, and a few species of stalked echinoderms.

"The only plant life of the time consisted of marine algae. Because many of these new organisms were relatively large, complex marine invertebrates with hard shells and skeletons of chitin or lime, they had a far better chance of fossil preservation than the soft-bodied creatures of the previous Precambrian Era" (1997, "Cambrian Period," emphasis added).

Notice that complex marine invertebrates are found in fossil deposits from the Cambrian period. Many don't realize it, but even paleontologists acknowledge that life does not start with only a few simple creatures. At the lowest levels of the geologic strata, the fossil record consists of complex creatures such as trilobites.

Time magazine said in a long cover story describing fossilized creatures found in Cambrian strata: "In a burst of creativity like nothing before or since, nature appears to have sketched out the blueprints for virtually the whole of the animal kingdom. This explosion of biological diversity is described by scientists as biology's Big Bang" (Madeleine Nash, "When Life Exploded," Dec. 4, 1995, p. 68 ).

Contrary to the assumptions of early evolutionists, life does not start with only a few rudimentary species. Even those who hold to the traditional interpretation of the fossil record admit that it begins with many life forms similar to those we find today. At the same time, they cannot explain such a vast "explosion" of life forms in such a short amount of geologic time, which evolutionary theory predicts would take far longer.

Unanswered questions

Supporters of evolution have had to back down from the claims of Darwin and others. "Over the decades, evolutionary theorists beginning with Charles Darwin have tried to argue that the appearance of multicelled animals during the Cambrian merely seemed sudden, and in fact had been preceded by a lengthy period of evolution for which the geological record was missing. But this explanation, while it patched over a hole in an otherwise masterly theory, now seems increasingly unsatisfactory" (Time, p. 68 ).

Again, the facts etched in stone do not match the assumptions and predictions of evolutionary thought. Even if we accept the evolutionists' interpretation of the fossil record, we see life beginning at the lowest levels with complex creatures, with elaborate organs and other features-but with no known ancestors. Life does not start as predicted by evolution, with simple forms gradually changing into more-complex species.

Although toeing the evolutionary line, the Time magazine article admits: "Of course, understanding what made the Cambrian explosion possible doesn't address the larger question of what made it happen so fast. Here scientists delicately slide across data-thin ice, suggesting scenarios that are based on intuition rather than solid evidence" (Time, p. 73).

Evolutionists have been known to pointedly criticize Christians because they don't have scientific proof of miracles recorded in the Bible. Yet here is a supremely important geological event with far-reaching implications for the theory of evolution-but one for which scientists have no explanation. Of course, they must assume that life came from nonlife-in violation of the laws of biogenesis. But don't their fundamental assumptions also amount to faith?

A reasonable explanation is that the life forms found in the Cambrian strata were created by God, who did not work by chance but by design. The fossil record is the only objective evidence we can examine to see whether evolution is true. But, rather than supporting Darwinism, it shows exceedingly complex organisms in what evolutionists interpret as the oldest fossil strata, no intermediate forms between species, little if any change in species over their entire span in the fossil record, and the sudden appearance of new life forms rather than the gradual change expected by Darwin and his followers.

If we look at the evidence objectively, we realize that the creation story in Genesis 1-describing the sudden appearance of life forms-is a credible explanation.

breytonhartge SG

Evolution: Fact or Fiction?
What have we learned since Charles Darwin's treatise on evolution, Origin of Species, was first published in 1859? Science has advanced greatly since those horse-and-buggy days. In addition to a thorough exploration of the fossil record, a vast amount of other information is readily available.

As we saw when discussing the fossil record, the controversy about evolution is increasing.

Francis Hitching gives a general view of the debate to date: "In April 1882, Charles Darwin died peacefully of a heart attack at his family home in Kent, England. His great theory, the basis of all modern biology teaching, had come to be accepted with a fervor close to reverence . . . Yet as 1982 approached, and with the centenary of his passing, change was in the wind. Feuds concerning the theory of evolution exploded rancorously in otherwise staid and decorous scientific journals.

"Entrenched positions, for and against, were established in high places, and insults lobbed like mortar bombs from either side. Meanwhile the doctrine of Divine creation, assumed by most scientists to have been relegated long ago to the pulpits of obscure fundamentalist sects, swept back into the classrooms of American schools. Darwinism is under assault on many fronts" (The Neck of the Giraffe, 1982, p. 7).

Why the confusion and contention? Simply put, as we saw with the fossil record, the increasing scientific evidence doesn't fit the Darwinist model-and evolutionists increasingly are finding themselves on the defensive.

How has this come about? It has happened mainly because the primary supposed proofs of the theory have not held up to further discovery and scrutiny.

What about natural selection?

After the fossil record, the second supposed proof of evolution offered by Darwinists is natural selection, which they hoped biologists would confirm. "Just as the breeders selected those individuals best suited to the breeder's needs to be the parents of the next generation," explained British philosopher Tom Bethell, "so, Darwin argued, nature selected those organisms that were best fitted to survive the struggle for existence. In that way evolution would inevitably occur. And so there it was: a sort of improving machine inevitably at work in nature, 'daily and hourly scrutinizing,' Darwin wrote, 'silently and insensibly working . . . at the improvement of each organic being.'

"In this way, Darwin thought, one type of organism could be transformed into another -for instance, he suggested, bears into whales. So that was how we came to have horses and tigers and things-by natural selection" (Tom Bethell, "Darwin's Mistake," The Craft of Prose, Robert Woodward and Wendell Smith, editors, 1977, p. 309).

Darwin saw natural selection as the major factor driving evolutionary change. But how has this second pillar of evolutionary theory fared since Darwin's day? In truth, it has been quietly discarded by an increasing number of theorists among the scientific community.

Darwin's idea that the survival of the fittest would explain how species evolved has been relegated to a redundant, self-evident statement.

Geneticist Conrad Waddington of Edinburgh University defines the fundamental problem of advocating natural selection as a proof of Darwinism: "Natural selection, . . . turns out on closer inspection to be a tautology, a statement of an inevitable although previously unrecognized relation. It states that the fittest individuals in a population ... will leave most offspring" (Bethell, p. 310).

In other words, what are the fittest? Why, those that survive, of course. And what survives? Why, naturally, the fittest. The problem is that circular reasoning doesn't point to any independent criteria that can evaluate whether the theory is true.

Selection doesn't change species

Darwin cited an example of the way natural selection was supposed to work: A wolf that had inherited the ability to run especially fast was better equipped to survive. His advantage in outrunning others in the pack when food was scarce meant he could eat better and thus survive longer. Yet the very changes that enabled the wolf to run faster could easily become a hindrance if other modifications of the body did not accompany the increased speed. For example, the additional exertion required to run faster would naturally place an added strain on the animal's heart, and eventually it could drop from a heart attack. The survival of the fittest would require that any biological or anatomical alterations would have to be in harmony and synchronized with other bodily modifications, or the changes would be of no benefit.

Natural selection, scientists have found, in reality deals only with the number of species, not the change of the species. It has to do with the survival and not the arrival of the species. Natural selection only preserves existing genetic information (DNA); it doesn't create genetic material that would allow an animal to sprout a new organ, limb or some other anatomical feature.

"Natural selection," said professor Waddington, "is that some things leave more offspring than others; and you ask, which leave more offspring than others? And it is those that leave more offspring; and there is nothing more to it than that. The whole guts of evolution-which is, how do you come to have horses and tigers and things-is outside the mathematical theory [of neo-Darwinism]" (Wistar Symposium, Moorehead and Kaplan, 1967, p. 14).

Tom Bethell gets to the heart of the problem with natural selection as the foundation of evolution: "This was no good at all. As T.H. Morgan [1933 Nobel Prize winner in medicine for his experiments with the Drosophila fruit fly] had remarked, with great clarity: 'Selection, then, has not produced anything new, but only more of certain kinds of individuals. Evolution, however, means producing new things, not more of what already exists' "(Bethell, pp. 311-312, emphasis added).

Bethell concludes: "Darwin's theory, I believe, is on the verge of collapse. In his famous book, [Origin of Species], Darwin made a mistake sufficiently serious to undermine his theory. And that mistake has only recently been recognized as such ... I have not been surprised to read . . . that in some of the latest evolutionary theories 'natural selection plays no role at all.' Darwin, I suggest, is in the process of being discarded, but perhaps in deference to the venerable old gentleman, . . . it is being done as discreetly and gently as possible, with a minimum of publicity" (Bethell, pp. 308, 313-314).

Sadly, the critical examination of natural selection has been undertaken so discreetly that most people are unaware of it-so the pervasive deception that began more than 140 years ago continues.

continued...

breytonhartge SG

Evolution Fact or Fiction... part2

A look at random mutation

If natural selection is not the answer, what about the third supposed proof-random mutation-as a cornerstone of evolution?

Curiously enough, Darwin himself was one of the first to discount beneficial effects from rare changes he noted in species. He did not even include them in his theory. "He did not consider them important," says Maurice Caullery in his book Genetics and Heredity, "because they nearly always represented an obvious disadvantage from the point of view of the struggle for existence; consequently they would most likely be rapidly eliminated in the wild state by the operation of natural selection" (1964, p. 10, emphasis added).

In Darwin's lifetime the principles of genetics were not clearly understood. Gregor Mendel had published his findings on genetic principles in 1866, but his work was overlooked at the time. Later, at the beginning of the 20th century, Hugo De Vries rediscovered these principles, which evolutionists quickly seized on to support evolution. Sir Julian Huxley, one of the principal spokesmen for evolutionary theory in the 20th century, commented on the unpredictability of mutations: "Mutation . . . provides the raw material of evolution; it is a random affair and takes place in all directions" (Evolution in Action, 1953, p. 3 Cool .

So, "shortly after the turn of the [19th to the 20th] century, Darwin's theory suddenly seemed plausible again," writes Hitching. "It was found that once in a while, absolutely at random (about once in ten million times during cell division, we now know) the genes make a copying mistake. These mistakes are known as mutations, and are mostly harmful. They lead to a weakened plant, or a sick or deformed creature. They do not persist within the species, because they are eliminated by natural selection . . .

"However, followers of Darwin have come to believe that it is the occasional beneficial mutation, rarely though it happens, which is what counts in evolution. They say these favorable mutations, together with sexual mixing, are sufficient to explain how the whole bewildering variety of life on Earth today originated from a common genetic source" (Hitching, p. 49, emphasis added).

Mutations: liability, not benefit

What has almost a century of research discovered? That mutations are pathological mistakes and not helpful changes in the genetic code.

C.P. Martin of McGill University in Montreal wrote, "Mutation is a pathological process which has had little or nothing to do with evolution" ("A Non-Geneticist Looks at Evolution," American Scientist, January 1953, p. 100). Professor Martin's investigations revealed mutations are overwhelmingly negative and never creative. He observed that an apparently beneficial mutation was likely only a correction of a previously deleterious one, similar to punching a man with a dislocated shoulder and inadvertently putting it back into place.

Science writer Milton explains the problem: "The results of such copying errors are tragically familiar. In body cells, faulty replication shows itself as cancer. Sunlight's mutagenic [mutation-inducing] power causes skin cancer; the cigarette's mutagenic power causes lung cancer. In sexual cells, faulty reproduction of whole chromosome number 21 results in a child with Down's syndrome" (Richard Milton, Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, 1997, p. 156). Yet evolutionists would have us believe that such genetic mistakes are not only not harmful to the afflicted creature but are helpful in the long run.

Phillip Johnson observes: "To suppose that such a random event could reconstruct even a single complex organ like a liver or kidney is about as reasonable as to suppose that an improved watch can be designed by throwing an old one against a wall" (Darwin on Trial, p. 37).

We can be thankful that mutations are extremely rare. An average of one mistake per 10 million correct copies occurs in the genetic code.

Whoever or whatever types 10 million letters with only one mistake would easily be the world's best typist and probably would not be human. Yet this is the astounding accuracy of our supposedly blind genetic code when it replicates itself.

If, however, these copying errors were to accumulate, a species, instead of improving, would eventually degenerate and perish. But geneticists have discovered a self-correcting system.

"The genetic code in each living thing has its own built-in limitations," says Hitching. "It seems designed to stop a plant or creature stepping too far away from the average . . . Every series of breeding experiments that has ever taken place has established a finite limit to breeding possibilities. Genes are a strong influence for conservatism, and allow only modest change. Left to their own devices, artificially bred species usually die out (because they are sterile or less robust) or quickly revert to the norm" (Hitching, pp. 54-55).

Some scientists reluctantly concede that mutations do not explain Darwin's proposed transition from one species to the next. Writing about zoologist Pierre-Paul Grassé, Hayward says: "In 1973 he published a major book on evolution . . . First and foremost, the book aims to expose Darwinism as a theory that does not work, because it clashes with so many experimental findings.

"As Grassé says in his introduction: 'Today our duty is to destroy the myth of evolution . . . Some people, owing to their sectarianism, purposely overlook reality and refuse to acknowledge the inadequacies and the falsity of their beliefs' . . .

"Take mutation first. Grassé has studied this extensively, both inside his laboratory and in nature. In all sorts of living things, from bacteria to plants and animals, he has observed that mutations do not take succeeding generations further and further from their starting point. Instead, the changes are like the flight of a butterfly in a green house, which travels for miles without moving more than a few feet from its starting point.

There are invisible but firmly fixed boundaries that mutations can never cross . . . He insists that mutations are only trivial changes; they are merely the result of slightly altered genes, whereas 'creative evolution . . . demands the genesis of new ones'" (Hayward, p. 25).

Embarrassingly for evolutionists, mutation is also not the answer. If anything, the self-correcting system to eliminate mutations shows that a great intelligence was at work when the overall genetic system was designed so that random mutations would not destroy the beneficial genes. Ironically, mutation shows the opposite of what evolutionism teaches: In real life random mutation is the villain and not the hero.

This takes us to one last point on mutations: the inability of evolution to explain the appearance of simple life and intricate organs.

continued...

breytonhartge SG

Evolution Fact of Fiction part3

The wondrous cell

Cells are marvelous and incredibly complicated living things. They are self-sufficient and function like miniature chemical factories. The closer we look at cells, the more we realize their incredible complexity.

For example, the cell wall is a wonder in itself. If it were too porous, harmful solutions would enter and cause the cell to burst. On the other hand, if the wall were too impervious, no nourishment could come in or waste products go out, and the cell would quickly die.

Biochemist Behe, the associate professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, summarizes one of the fundamental flaws of evolution as an explanation for any form of life. "Darwin's theory encounters its greatest difficulties when it comes to explaining the development of the cell. Many cellular systems are what I term 'irreducibly complex.' That means the system needs several components before it can work properly.

"An everyday example of irreducible complexity is a mousetrap, built of several pieces (platform, hammer, spring and so on). Such a system probably cannot be put together in a Darwinian manner, gradually improving its function. You can't catch a mouse with just the platform and then catch a few more by adding the spring. All the pieces have to be in place before you catch any mice."

Michael Behe's point is that a cell missing a tenth of its parts doesn't function only one tenth less as well as a complete cell; it doesn't function at all. He concludes: "The bottom line is that the cell-the very basis of life-is staggeringly complex. But doesn't science already have answers, or partial answers, for how these systems originated? No" ("Darwin Under the Microscope," New York Times, Oct. 29, 1996, p. A25).

Miniature technological marvel

Michael Denton, the microbiologist and senior research fellow at the University of Otago in New Zealand, contrasts how the cell was viewed in Darwin's day with what today's researchers can see. In Darwin's time the cell could be viewed at best at a magnification of several hundred times. Using the best technology of their day, when scientists viewed the cell they saw "a relatively disappointing spectacle appearing only as an ever-changing and apparently disordered pattern of blobs and particles which, under the influence of unseen turbulent forces, [were] continually tossed haphazardly in all directions" (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 1985, p. 32 Cool .

The years since then have brought astounding technological advancements. Now researchers can peer into the tiniest parts of cells. Do they still see only formless blobs, or do they witness something far more astounding?

"To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology," writes Dr. Denton, "we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometres in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design.

"On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity. We would see endless highly organized corridors and conduits branching in every direction away from the perimeter of the cell, some leading to the central memory bank in the nucleus and others to assembly plants and processing units.

"The nucleus itself would be a vast spherical chamber more than a kilometre in diameter, resembling a geodesic dome inside of which we would see, all neatly stacked together in ordered arrays, the miles of coiled chains of the DNA molecules ...

"We would wonder at the level of control implicit in the movement of so many objects down so many seemingly endless conduits, all in perfect unison. We would see all around us, in every direction we looked, all sorts of robot-like machines. We would notice that the simplest of the functional components of the cell, the protein molecules, were astonishingly, complex pieces of molecular machinery, each one consisting of about three thousand atoms arranged in highly organized 3-D spatial conformation.

"We would wonder even more as we watched the strangely purposeful activities of these weird molecular machines, particularly when we realized that, despite all our accumulated knowledge of physics and chemistry, the task of designing one such molecular machine-that is one single functional protein molecule-would be beyond our capacity . . . Yet the life of the cell depends on the integrated activities of thousands, certainly tens, and probably hundreds of thousands of different protein molecules" (Denton, pp. 328-329).

This is a microbiologist's description of one cell. The human body contains about 10 trillion (10,000,000,000,000) brain, nerve, muscle and other types of cells.

continued...

breytonhartge SG

Evolution Fact or Fiction Part 4

Did this come about by chance?

Yet, as complex as cells are, the smallest living things are even far more intricate. Sir James Gray, a Cambridge University professor of zoology, states: "Bacteria [are] far more complex than any inanimate system known to man. There is not a laboratory in the world which can compete with the biochemical activity of the smallest living organism" (Marshall and Sandra Hall, The Truth: God or Evolution?, 1974, p. 89).

How complex are the tiniest living things? Even the simplest cells must possess a staggering amount of genetic information to function. For instance, the bacterium R. coli is one of the tiniest unicellular creatures in nature. Scientists calculate it has some 2,000 genes, each with around 1,000 enzymes (organic catalysts, chemicals that speed up other chemical reactions). An enzyme is made up of a billion nucleotides, each of which amounts to a letter in the chemical alphabet, comparable to a byte in computer language. These enzymes instruct the organism how to function and reproduce. The DNA information in just this single tiny cell is "the approximate equivalent of 100 million pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica" (John Whitcomb, The Early Earth, 1972, p. 79).

What are the odds that the enzymes needed to produce the simplest living creature-with each enzyme performing a specific chemical function-could come together by chance? Astrophysicists Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe calculated the odds at one chance in 1040,000 (that is, 10 to the 40,000th power: mathematical shorthand for a 10 followed by 40,000 zeros, a number long enough to fill about seven pages of this publication).

Note that a probability of less than 1 in 1050 is considered by mathematicians to be a complete impossibility (Hayward, pp. 35-37). By comparison, Sir Arthur Eddington, another mathematician, estimates there are no more than 1080 atoms in the universe! (Hitching, p. 70).

As long as evolutionists keep their conceptions as vague abstractions, they can sound plausible. But, when rigorous mathematics are applied to their generalities, and their assertions are specifically quantified, the underpinnings of Darwinian evolution are exposed as so implausible and unrealistic as to be impossible.

Scientists' revealing reaction

Molecular biochemist Behe comments on the curious academic and scientific reaction to discoveries about the intricacy of the cell: "Over the past four decades modern biochemistry has uncovered the secrets of the cell. The progress has been hard won. It has required tens of thousands of people to dedicate the better parts of their lives to the tedious work of the laboratory . . .

"The results of these cumulative efforts to investigate the cell-to investigate life at the molecular level-is a loud, clear, piercing cry of 'design!' The result is so unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science. The discovery rivals those of Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schrödinger, Pasteur, and Darwin. The observation of the intelligent design of life is as momentous as the observation that the earth goes around the sun or that disease is caused by bacteria or that radiation is emitted in quanta.

"The magnitude of the victory, gained at such great cost through sustained effort over the course of decades, would be expected to send champagne corks flying in labs around the world. This triumph of science should evoke cries of 'Eureka!' from ten thousand throats, should occasion much hand-slapping and high-fiving, and perhaps even be an excuse to take the day off.

"But no bottles have been uncorked, no hands slapped. Instead a curious, embarrassed silence surrounds the stark complexity of the cell. When the subject comes up in public, feet start to shuffle, and breathing gets a bit labored. In private people are a bit more relaxed; many explicitly admit the obvious but then stare at the ground, shake their heads, and let it go at that.

"Why does the scientific community not greedily embrace its startling discovery? Why is the observation of design handled with intellectual gloves? The dilemma is that while one side of the elephant is labeled intelligent design, the other side might be labeled God" (Behe, pp. 232-233, original emphasis).

These discoveries reveal that the simplest living cell is so intricate and complex in its design that even the possibility of its coming into existence accidentally is unthinkable. It is clear evolutionists don't have a rational answer to how the first cells were formed. This is just one of their many problems in trying to explain a wondrous creation that they argue had to come together by chance.

breytonhartge SG

The Miracle of the Eye
Charles Darwin described the eye as one of the greatest challenges to his theory. How could he explain it? The eye, after all, is simply incompatible with evolution. "To suppose," he admitted, "that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances . . . could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree" (Origin of Species, p. 146).

Jesus said that "the lamp of the body is the eye" (Matthew 6:22). Jacob Bronowski wrote that, "if you compare a human being with even the most sharp-eyed of the great apes, say with a chimpanzee, our vision is incredibly more delicate . . . Their ability to discriminate fine detail (which can be tested in a very simple way) is not comparable with that of human beings" (The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination, 1978, pp. 12-13).

The human eye possesses 130 million light-sensitive rods and cones that convert light into chemical impulses. These signals travel at a rate of a billion per second to the brain.

The essential problem for Darwinists is how so many intricate components could have independently evolved to work together perfectly when, if a single component didn't function perfectly, nothing would work at all.

Think about it. Partial transitional structures are no aid to a creature's survival and may even be a hindrance. If they are a hindrance, no further gradual development would occur because the creature would, according to advocates of natural selection, be less apt to survive than the other creatures around him. What good is half a wing or an eye without a retina? Consequently, either such structures as feathered wings must have appeared all at once, either by absurdly implausible massive mutations ("hopeful monsters," as scientists refer to such hypothetical creatures) or by creation.

"Now it is quite evident," says Francis Hitching, "that if the slightest thing goes wrong en route-if the cornea is fuzzy, or the pupil fails to dilate, or the lens becomes opaque, or the focusing goes wrong-then a recognizable image is not formed. The eye either functions as a whole, or not at all.

"So how did it come to evolve by slow, steady, infinitesimally small Darwinian improvements? Is it really possible that thousands upon thousands of lucky chance mutations happened coincidentally so that the lens and the retina, which cannot work without each other, evolved in synchrony? What survival value can there be in an eye that doesn't see?

"Small wonder that it troubled Darwin. 'To this day the eye makes me shudder,' [Darwin] wrote to his botanist friend Asa Gray in February, 1860" (The Neck of the Giraffe, 1982, p. 86).

Incredible as the eye is, consider that we have not one but two of them. This matched pair, coupled with an interpretive center in the brain, allows us to determine distances to the objects we see. Our eyes also have the ability to focus automatically by elongating or compressing themselves. They are also inset beneath a bony brow that, along with automatic shutters in the form of eyelids, provide protection for these intricate and delicate organs.

Darwin should have considered two passages in the Bible. "The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the LORD has made them both," wrote King Solomon (Proverbs 20:12). Psalm 94:9 asks: "He who planted the ear, shall He not hear? He who formed the eye, shall He not see?"

The same can be said of the brain, nose, palate and dozens of other complex and highly developed organs in any human or animal. It would take a quantum leap of faith to think all this just evolved. Yet that is commonly taught and accepted.

After reviewing the improbability of such organs arising in nature from an evolutionary process, Professor H.S. Lipson, a member of the British Institute of Physics, wrote in 1980: ". . . We must go further than this and admit that the only acceptable explanation is creation. I know that this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it" (Physics Bulletin, Vol. 30, p. 140)

breytonhartge SG

Darwinism Not the Same as Evolution
A word of caution on the use of the term evolution: It can mean different things to different people. The dictionary first defines evolution as a process of change from a lower to a higher state and, second, as the theory Darwin advocated. But they are not the same. Evolution literally means simply the successive appearances of perfectly formed life without regard to how it got there. It does not have to refer to Darwinism, which is the doctrine that gradual change led to one species becoming another through the process of natural selection.

A species is generally defined as a living thing that can reproduce only after its own kind. So, although most scientists mean Darwinism when they use the term, the two definitions of the term are not synonymous and should be carefully defined by the context.

"Why is it," asks physicist Alan Hayward, "that the terms 'Darwinism' and 'evolution' are so often used (wrongly) as if they meant the same thing? Simply because it was Darwin who put the old idea of evolution on its feet. Before Darwin, evolution was regarded by most people as a wild, unbelievable notion. After Darwin, evolution seemed such a reasonable idea that the general public soon took it for granted.

"Many people since Darwin's day have tried to find an alternative explanation of evolution, but none has succeeded. Just as when he first proposed it, Darwin's appears the only conceivable method of evolution. It still seems that Darwinism and evolution must stand or fall together" (Creation and Evolution, 1985, p. 5).

This is a reason many Darwinists are so adamant about their theory. They know the implications if they fail: The alternative explanation of life on earth is a Creator God. Professor L.T. More has candidly admitted in his book The Dogma of Evolution: "Our faith in the doctrine of Evolution depends upon our reluctance to accept the antagonistic doctrine of special creation [creation by God]" (quoted by Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe, p. 109).

breytonhartge SG

Blood Clotting: A Biological Miracle
One relatively simple process necessary for animal life is the ability for blood to clot to seal a wound and prevent an injured animal (or person) from bleeding to death. Yet the only way this intricate system works is when many complicated chemical substances interact. If only one ingredient is missing or doesn't function in the right way-as in the genetic blood disorder hemophilia-the process fails, and the victim bleeds to death.

How can complex substances appear at just the right time in the right proportions and mix properly to clot blood and prevent death? Either they function flawlessly or clotting doesn't work at all.

At the same time, medical science is aware of clotting at the wrong time. Blood clots that cut off the flow of oxygen to the brain are a leading cause of strokes and often result in paralysis or death. When blood clots, either everything works perfectly or the likely outcome is death.

For evolution to have led to this astounding phenomenon, multiple mutations of just the right kind had to converge simultaneously or the mutations would be useless. Evolutionists can offer no realistic explanation of how this is possible.

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