Creation versus Evolution - Part 4

“The Truth…from the beginning”

Bottom Line:

Powerful evidence exists to support the belief that the universe was wonderfully designed and created by an awesome Creator.

Note: Check out www.dissentfromdarwin.org. Where hundreds of Ph.D./trained scientists have signed on to the site agreeing with this statement: “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”

3. The fossil record does not support evolution.

“The Cambrian Explosion of Life” – a huge problem for evolution that just keeps getting worse!

“The Cambrian Period which is very early in evolution’s geologic time line should not have had the sudden appearance of all the major phylas, but there they are.” There should have been a slow progression of life but that’s not what scientists have found but rather an explosion of all the major animal groups.”

“A half-billion years ago…the remarkably complex forms of animals we see today suddenly appeared. This moment, right at the start of Earth’s Cambrian Period, some 550 million years ago, marks the evolutionary explosion that filled the seas with the world’s first complex creatures.” (Sudden appearance of so many life forms doesn’t fit the theory of evolution.) (Richard Monastersky, staff writer, Science News magazine regarding the “Cambrian explosion”)

*“The fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual change….” *

(Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, famous Harvard Professor of Paleontology)

*“China says: ‘Evolution is a religion’.” *

(article in Boston Globe)

Following the announcement late last year of the discovery of the ‘earliest fossil fish’ in Cambrian strata (see ‘Slow fish in China’, Creation 22(3):38–39), scientists in China have attacked the Darwinian theory of evolution. They argue that neo-Darwinism cannot explain the sudden appearance of all the major animal groups in the fossil record—the so-called ‘Cambrian explosion.’ Incredibly, some Chinese officials contend that the theory of evolution is so politically charged in the West that researchers are reluctant to admit shortcomings for fear of giving support to those who believe the biblical account of creation. Pointing out that ‘Evolution is facing an extremely harsh challenge,’ the Communist Party’s Guang Ming Daily mocked Darwinian orthodoxy by declaring that ‘In the beginning, Darwinian evolution was a scientific theory…. In fact, evolution eventually changed into a religion.’ The Chinese researchers say that the evidence supports a post-Cambrian history of life that runs opposite to standard evolutionary tree diagrams, and suggest that biologists need to come up with entirely new mechanisms to explain the ‘Cambrian explosion’ enigma.

(The Boston Globe, May 30, 2000, p. E1).

4. There are no confirmed transitional fossils.

Make sure you clearly define what is meant by a transitional fossil. Transitional fossils are NOT fully functional biological organisms. For example, evolutionists will point to a chimp and say it’s a “transitional form.” A chimp is not what is typically considered a transitional form (some of the characteristics of species “A” mixed with some of species “B”). A chimp’s body is fully functional with no obvious transitional features present.

Transitional forms would be an organism that is clearly developing a new wing, or leg, or arm, etc. which is not fully functional as it progresses through a long,slow evolutionary process

(i.e. a fossil of a reptile with a developing wing that is not fully functional [a stub for example] as it clearly is in the process of losing its reptile features and gaining bird features).

There should be billions of these types of fossils in the fossil record but, to date, no clear transitional fossil has ever been discovered…just what a creationist would expect.

“Evolution would have filled the fossil record with billions of intermediary creatures, yet not one of these missing links has ever been located!” (Phillip Johnson, “Darwin on Trial”)

“Indeed, it is the chief frustration of the fossil record that we do not have empirical evidence for sustained trends in the evolution of most complex morphological adaptations.”

(Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldredge, ‘Species Selection: Its Range and Power,’ p. 19)

Mutations – do they prove evolution?

There is little debate about that fact that a majority of mutations are detrimental to an organism. If a mutation changes a protein produced by a gene, this will probably be harmful, with about 70 percent of these mutations having damaging effects, and the remainder being either neutral or weakly beneficial.

However, the key question is whether or not these mutations have added to the information in the organism’s DNA, thereby allowing it to be passed on to the offspring. The answer is that no information has ever been added to DNA.

‘We have yet to find a mutation that increases genetic information, even in those rare instances where the mutation confers an advantage.

“There is no chance (10 to the 1000th power) to see this mechanism [mutation-selection] appear spontaneously and, if it did, even less for it to remain….Thus, to conclude, we believe there is a considerable gap in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, and we believe this gap to be of such a nature that it cannot be bridged within the current conception of biology.”

(Marcel P. Schutzenberger, formerly with University of Paris in “Algorithms an the Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution” in “Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation”, pg. 75)