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CREATIONISM VS EVOLUTION, (CONT.)
II) SCRIPTURAL TESTIMONY & PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF A RECENT CREATION, (cont.)
B) SCRIPTURAL TESTIMONY & PHYSICAL EVIDENCE FROM EARTH WHICH TESTIFY TO A RECENT CREATION, (cont.)
5) PERIOD OF A WORLDWIDE FLOOD, (cont.)
c) PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF A WORLDWIDE FLOOD, (cont.)
5) PALEONTOLOGY = A STUDY OF FOSSILS RELATIVE TO THE ORIGIN OF LIFE POINTS TO A WORLDWIDE FLOOD
[Marvin L. Lubenow states, Bones of Contention, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1994, pp. 46-49]
"The 'survival of the fittest' has a flop side. It is the death of the less fit. For evolution to proceed, it is as essential that the less fit die as it is that the more fit survive. If the unfit survived indefinitely, they would continue to 'infect' the fit with their less fit genes. The result is that the more fit genes would be diluted and compromised by the less fit genes, and evolution could not take place. The concept of evolution demands death. Death is thus as natural to evolution as it is foreign to biblical creation. The Bible teaches that death is a 'foreigner,' a condition superimposed upon humans and nature after creation. Death is an enemy, Christ has conquered it, and He will eventually destroy it. Their respective attitudes toward death reveal how many light years separate the concept of evolution from biblical creationism.
It is possible to determine whether the concept of human evolution is a scientific theory or a philosophy. If it is a scientific theory, it must be capable of being falsified. Since human evolution is alleged to be an historic process, the evidence for it or the falsification of it must come from the fossil record. For instance, if Homo erectus people persisted long after they should have died out or changed into Homo sapiens, the concept of human evolution would be falsified. If one could show that fossils indistinguishable from modern humans existed long before they were supposed to exist (according to the process of evolution) this also would falsify the concept...
If human evolution is truly a scientific theory, the fossil record shows that it has been falsified. The fact that the evidence is ignored or disguised indicates that the concept of human evolution is a philosophy that is perpetuated in spite of and independent of the facts of the human fossil record."
[pp. 170-172]
"It may of course be granted that the principle of stratigraphic correlation [i.e., geologic timetable based on a presupposed idea of when living things once lived and then dating the rock formations that the fossils of those once-alive living things are contained in according to those presuppositions]
..."It may of course be granted that the principle of stratigraphic correlation by means of fossils, in terms of the accepted [presupposed] sequence, is supported by much evidence. Any theory [model] that could have obtained almost universal acceptance by geologists is obviously not founded solely on wishful thinking.
On the other hand, it is possible that some other theory may explain the same evidence more effectively. This process has often been true in the history of science, whenever a new generalization has been developed to incorporate within its frame work not only the fact supporting the previous theory but also those facts contradicting the previous theory.
And in spite of the general validity of the standard and accepted geologic stratigraphic succession, [i.e., the order of the fossils appearances in rock formations - BUT NOT THEIR AGES] there are many exceptions and contradictions to it, which have been very unsatisfactorily explained in terms of the accepted theory...
[Underlining mine]
...One prominent geologist says:
'Because of the sterility of its concepts, historical geology, which includes paleontology and stratigraphy, has become static and unreproductive. Current methods of delimiting intervals of time, which are the fundamental units of historical geology, and of establishing chronology are of dubious validity...
[And these methods used at the time of this quotation in 1948 are still used today and taught in our classrooms]
...Worse than that, the criteria of correlation - the attempt to equate in time, or synchronize, the geological history of one area with that of another [which almost always have irreconcilable differences] - are logically vulnerable. The findings of historical geology are suspect because the principles upon which they are based are either inadequate, in which case they should be reformulated, or false, in which case they should be discarded. Most of us refuse to discard or reformulate, and the result is the present deplorable state of our discipline.'
...When a fossil is found in a stratum to which it theoretically does not belong, several means of explaining the discrepancy are possible. If it is supposed to be older than the containing bed, it can be said to have been redeposited from an earlier eroded deposit or to indicate the survival of its particular species longer than had been previously believed. If it is supposed to be younger than its stratum, it can be again explained as due to the reworking and mixing of two originally distinct deposits or else as showing that the animal dates from earlier antiquity than previously thought. Often, discovery of such an anomalous fossil has been deemed sufficient justification for redating the entire formation, to conform to the supposed age of the particular fossil. With so many speculative devices conveniently at hand for reconciling these discrepancies, it is obvious that all but the most flagrant cases of mislocation can be quickly and easily explained [covered up?] in such a manner, it is still possible to ignore them, on the assumption that there must have been some mistake in the field evidence or its description.
When an entire formation seems out of place in the standard sequence, on the basis of either lithologic or paleontologic evidence, it is not so easy to conceive explanatory mechanisms. However, as we have seen, these cases are usually handled in terms of supposed great earth movements, faulting, folding, thrusting, etc., whether or not there is any actual physical evidence of such movement.
As already noted systems of rocks are quite often found with the intervening systems omitted. Even more paradoxically, formations are often found actually in reverse order, with presumed older rocks lying on top of younger rocks. In the first case, the missing rocks are [falsely] accounted for as periods of erosion; in the second, the theory of the thrust fault is commonly [and erroneously] advanced, according to which rocks which originally were flat-lying and contiguous [i.e., touching] were suddenly separated by a vertical or sloping fault, the rocks on one side of the fault rising with respect to those on the other. Then the upper rocks were thrust horizontally over the lower. In time, the top layers were eroded away, leaving then only the older rocks on the bottom of the faulted portion resting on top of the younger rocks over which they were supposed to move...
[Often this process would require more force in one place than is known possible. There has also never been found any evidence of the exertion of such a gigantic force, such as ground down rock pieces all along where the force was exerted to move gigantic - mountain range sized sections of rock]
...As we have already pointed out, if such phenomena as this have ever taken place on the earth, it is thereby proved that the principle of uniformity is invalid as a guiding geologic principle, since there are no demonstrably comparable phenomena now occurring.
But on the other hand, is it not possible that all of the many paradoxes and exceptions, with which the geological formations abound, can be better explained by means of some other principle than that of uniformity and evolution? Except for these philosophies, there is no reason to be greatly surprised when fossil is found out of place or even when an entire formation is out of place. The concept of catastrophe, which we have already seen to be necessary to account for many of the geologic formations, may quite possibly suffice not only to account for the deposition of the rocks and organisms in their usual sequences but also for occasional deposits in unusual orders.
For, in spite of all the devices which are available for harmonizing the contradictory cases with the accepted system, there still exist many examples which seem much more difficult to explain in terms of uniformity and evolution than in terms of creation and subsequent catastrophe(s).
[Robin S. Allen: "Geological Correlation and Paleoecology," Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, Vol 59, Jan '48, p. 2]
[pp. 128-130]
"Another Biblical implication [of the Flood account] is that great numbers of living creatures must have been entrapped and buried in the swirling sediments. Under ordinary processes of nature as now occurring, fossils (especially of land animals and even marine vertebrates) are very rarely formed. The only way they can be preserved long enough from the usual processes of decay, scavenging and disintegration is by means of quick burial in aqueous sediments. William J. Miller, Emeritus Professor of Geology at U.C.L.A., points this out:
'Comparatively few remains of organisms now inhabiting the earth are being deposited under conditions favorable for their preservation as fossils. ...It is, nevertheless, remarkable that so vast a number of fossils are embedded in the rocks...'
[William J. Miller: An Introduction to Historical Geology (6th Ed., New York, Van Nostrand, 1952), p. 12]
...That the rock formations of the earth are veritably rich in fossils is a fact hard to reconcile with the paucity of potential fossils being formed under present conditions. Geologists sometimes speak of the '''incompleteness of the fossil record,''' but this is only because of the absence of the anticipated missing links in the supposed evolutionary sequences of development. There is an abundance of fossils known of all kinds of creatures. Practically all modern families, and most genera, are represented in the fossil record, as well as great numbers of extinct creatures. An outstanding Swedish scientist, late Director of the Botanical Institute at Lund, Sweden, says:
'It has been argued that the series of paleontological finds is too intermittent, too full of '''missing links''' to serve as a convincing proof. If a postulated ancestral type is not found, it is simply stated that it has not so far been found. Darwin himself often used this argument and in his time it was perhaps justifiable. But it has lost its value through the immense advances of paleobiology in the twentieth century... The true situation is that those fossils have not been found which were expected. Just where new branches are supposed to fork off from the main stem it has been impossible to find the connecting types.'
[N. Heribert-Nilsson: Synthetische Artbildung (Verlag CWH Gleerup, 1953), p. 1188]
...The late Dr. Richard Goldschmidt, of the University of California, one of the world's outstanding geneticists, said in similar vein:
'In spite of the immense amount of the paleontologic material and the existence of long series of intact stratigraphic sequences with perfect records for the lower categories, transitions between the higher categories are missing.'
[Richard Goldschmidt: "Evolution, as Viewed by One Geneticist," American Scientist, Vol. 40, Jan. 1952, p. 98.]
...The point to be made here is that... [the fossil deposits] ...are very rich, both in numbers and variety, in spite of having yielded up very few, if any, forms that might be considered as transitional between distinct kinds of creatures, whether living or extinct. The richness of the deposits fits well with the Genesis record of the character and magnitude of the great Flood but accords very poorly with the uniformitarian notion that the relatively quiescent sedimentary processes of the present day, forming almost no fossils, can account for the extensive fossil-bearing strata.
It seems evident, therefore, that the major geological inferences that can be derived from the Biblical record of the Flood are in good agreement with the actual geological facts as seen in the field. But this does not mean, of course, that these facts have been thus interpreted. They have rather been fitted as well as possible into the uniformitarian scheme of historical geology. In fact, the sedimentary strata with their entombed fossils have been made the very basis of this system of interpretation. These rocks have been divided into chronologic sequences based on the types of fossils contained in them, the resulting [false] synthesis being the generally accepted 'geological ages,' with the fossil sequences supposedly demonstrating the evolutionary history of life on the earth."
[Dr. Don Patton, op. cit., tape #2]:
"Let's begin by looking at the geologic column, probably the most effective and persuasive argument made by evolutionists today. We're told that this is what you find when you dig down in the earth. Beginning with the Quaternary up near the top, you find the modern animals, man and mammals. As you come further down to the Cretaceous you find the dinosaurs... [at the] Triassic [& the] Permian you've got the reptiles, and Pennsylvanian, the amphibians and finally down to the bottom to the Cambrian which, according to the evolutionary prediction, should contain most of the single cell organisms when in fact [you] find virtually every animal phylum there, including the vertebrates... The biggest problem with this kind of representation is that you can't dig down into the earth and find it anywhere. You find it in the textbooks... but you don't find it... in its complete form anywhere.... Notice the statement... by Leet and Judson in their book PHYSICAL GEOLOGY, a textbook I was taught from at two different state universities: 'Because we cannot find sedimentary rocks representing all of earth time neatly in one convenient area, we must piece together the rock sequence from locality to locality....
[He affirms it's not in one place. It is a construct - pieced together...]
[Compare a quotation from Dr. Patton's notes:
'If a pile were to be made by using the greatest thickness of sedimentary beds of each geological age, it would be at least 100 miles high. ...It is, of course, impossible to have even a considerable fraction of this great pile available at any one place. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado, for example, is only one mile deep.'
[Von Engeln & Caster, GEOLOGY. p. 417]
The process of tying one rock sequence in one place to another in some other place is known as correlation, from the Latin for '''together'''; plus '''relate''' '
[I. DON LEET (Harvard) & SHELDON JUDSON (Princeton), PHYSICAL GEOLOGY, p. 181]
Now the process of correlation when it's based on rock [formations in] a local area works fairly well but when that's ignored and it's based on fossils ignoring the rock [formation] then we have some serious problems. Notice the statement by Derek Ager who is telling us how this correlation process works. He says, 'fossils have been and still are the best and most accurate method of dating and correlating the rocks in which they occur...
[When you're building this complete column from worldwide sampling of fossils, it's done as a result of looking at the fossils and ignoring the rock units. Many people think it's done by the radiometric dating systems - telling which is older and which is younger. He tells us very clearly that's not the case. Continuing, he says]
...I can think of no cases of radioactive decay being used to date fossils.'
[DEREK AGER, (Past President, British Geol. Assoc.), '''FOSSIL FRUSTRATIONS''' New Scientist, Nov. 10, 1982, p. 425]
[Compare a quotation from Dr. Patton's notes:
'A rock that had an early form of an organism was clearly older than rocks containing later forms. Furthermore, all rocks that had the early form, no matter how far apart those rocks were geographically, would have to be the same age. ...fossil successions made it possible today that the Cambrian rocks are older than the Ordovician rocks. In this way our geologic time table came into being.... Without the theory of evolution and the interdisciplinary science of paleontology, it could not exist.'
[PUTMAN AND BASSETT, GEOLOGY, p. 544]
[So the dating of the fossils is] ...done rather on the basis of the fossils themselves. Well, how do the fossils tell us whether or not they ought to be top or bottom? Well, that comes from the assumption of evolution. And you must begin with that assumption in order to build this complete column. I think we can see an obvious problem with the logic in this process as acknowledged by R. H. Rastal of Cambridge University in the Encylopedia Britannica. He says, 'It cannot be denied that from a strictly philosophical... [or logical] standpoint geologists are here arguing in a circle. The succession of organisms has been determined by a study of their remains embedded in the rocks, and the relative ages of the rocks are determined by the organisms that they contain.'
[F.H. RASTAL, Cambridge University, ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA, Vol. X, p. 168]
[Compare quotations from Dr. Patton's notes:
'And this poses something of a problem: If we date the rocks by their fossils, how can we then turn around and talk about patterns of evolutionary change through time in the fossil record'
[Niles Eldredge, Columbia University, TIME FRAMES 1985, p. 52]
'A circular argument arises: Interpret the fossil record in the terms of a particular theory of evolution, inspect the interpretation, and note that it confirms the theory. Well, it would, wouldn't it?'
[Tom Kemp, Oxford, NEW SCIENTIST, Vol. 108, Dec. 5, 1985, p. 67]
'The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning, if it insists on using only temporal concepts, because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales.'
[J.E. O'Rourke, AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, Vol. 276, p. 51]
'But the danger of circularity is still present... The temporal ordering of biological events beyond the local section may critically involve paleontological correlation... for almost all contemporary paleontologists it rests upon the acceptance of the evolutionary hypothesis.'
[D. B. Kitts, University of Oklahoma, EVOLUTION, Vol. 28, p. 466]
'The charge that the
construction of the geologic scale involves circularity has a certain
amount of validity... Thus, the procedure is far from ideal and the
geologic ranges are constantly being revised (usually extended) as new
occurrences are found.'
[David M. Raup, University of Chicago; Field Museum of New Hampshire, FMONH Bulletin, Vol. 54, Mar. 1983, p. 21]
In other words, someone says, 'We have a primitive fossil here. This goes at the bottom [of the geologic column]. Well, how do you know this is a primitive fossil. Well, because it's found in an old rock. But how do you know that this is an old rock. Well, that's because it's got a primitive fossil in it. And with that kind of a circular, round and round type logic, obviously you have proved nothing... When.. [you're] looking at the geologic column you see an illustration of the concept of evolution.
But to use it as proof is entirely invalid... [In order to force this column upon others as fact you] must begin with the assumption [that it is legitimate] to correlate worldwide the various strata that... [evolutionists presuppose form into] this column. [However,] it is not found anywhere on the face of the earth but in the textbooks and simply represents the assumption of evolution [and not fact]. How do we... test this? Well, we compare it with the facts to see if they fit as we would models or hypotheses. Notice the statement by Richard Dawkins, of Oxford University in his book THE FLYING WATCHMAKER, published in '86. He says, 'If a single, well verified, mammal skull were to turn up in 500 million year old rocks, our whole modern theory of evolution would be utterly destroyed.
[In other words, if you find something that should be at the top of the column actually down at the bottom, completely out of place, then it would refute this representation that we see in the geologic column. He goes on to say]
Incidentally, this is a sufficient answer to the canard put about by creationists and their journalistic fellow travelers, that the whole theory of evolution is an '''unfalsifiable''' tautology....
[Much of the argumentation made for evolution is just that - an unfalsifiable tautology. For example, we... hear arguments regarding the survival of the fittest. But when we define the fittest as those that survive then we're really only saying 'the survival of those that survive.' And that is a tautology. It's unfalsifiable and untestable. Much of the argumentation made for evolution is like that... But... if you find things out of sequence, things that should be at the top - in the middle - or the bottom - then you have a falsification... Continuing with the quotation, he says]
Ironically, it is also the reason why creationists are so keen on the fake human footprints, which were carved during the depression to fool tourists, in the dinosaur beds of Texas.'
[Richard Dawkins, Oxford, THE BLINDWATCHMAKER, 1986, p. 225]
Well, they've heard about our work at Glen Rose, all the way to Oxford. And they acknowledge the implications. This would be sufficient to falsify the modern theory of evolution - if these human footprints were true... We can demonstrate that that's not the case [i.e., they are in fact genuine footprints contemporary with that of the dinosaur]. But if you find bones, that's not nearly as important as finding the tracks. You see the tracks cannot be eroded and redeposited. Here we see bones that were found in the same formation as Dinosaur National Monument.... [in] the Dakota sandstone... many dinosaurs... beautifully preserved... and here [are two] modern human skeleton[s]... There's no question that that it's human and that it's modern. [They] 'shouldn't' be with the dinosaurs. [According to evolutionists] they should be something like 100 million years apart... But [evolutionists falsely claim without any evidence] that this was an intrusional burial... Automatically, it's assumed [by evolutionists] that this is an intrusional burial. [They claim without proof, in other words, that the humans] didn't originally die there [but were transferred there later by some unknown means.. [So] you see then the importance of the tracks. Let's go to Glen Rose Texas... Here in the Paluxy River, Dinosaur Valley State Park, we find many beautiful dinosaur tracks... But in addition to the... dinosaur tracks... we also have tracks.... that look very very humanlike... [A number of these] tracks [were found] which continued back up under the bank of the river... [which] would not [therefore] be [able to be] carved [as the evolutionist camp claims]. Stan Taylor found a sequence of at least six [human] tracks in a right-left pattern that did continue back up under the overburden... which was removed... Notice also the mud push-up surrounding... [the footprints which] argues strongly that this was not carved...
The dinosaur stepped there first. A portion of it, the forepart, filled in with other material, and then the human stepped in it, leaving the depression [of his foot] within the dinosaur track. Now the dinosaur, weighing a number of tons made the initial impression which was only an inch, inch and one-half deep. And then it was in that material which was not quite as resistant that the human stepped and left an impression. As some said, 'He just didn't carry enough weight to make a good impression with the normal substrate in the area, but let the dinosaur make the impression [in order to walk safely in the animal's tracks] and... [since] it infilled with... slushier type material, he left a good imprint there [also]... [So] in the Taylor trail, we have a double print. First the dinosaur stepping - the infill material accounting for the flush appearance of the dinosaur track, and then the human stepping within it, later. As we considered this... we got some unexpected help from an unexpected source. Mary Leakey discovered a series of tracks in Africa. A series a clear tracks... a double track... One individual was stepping in the tracks of the other...
[Note that fossilized
dinosaur footprints found all over the world are best explained by a
catastrophic worldwide flood, and not by slow-and-gradual geologic
processes over millions of years
]
Notice the statement by Russell Tuttle, who's professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago and with the primate research center at Emory University. He says, 'The third individual, G3, carefully walked in the footprints of the second...' He points out that 'The Gwi hunters of southern Africa follow in the footprints of the person ahead in order to minimize noise and to protect their feet... ' and says, 'Overprinting would be a prudent habit.'...
[R.H. TUTTLE, Professor of Anthropology, University of Chicago & Primate Research Center, Emory University, NATURAL HISTORY, 3/90, p. 64]
And so this is documented to be not that unusual of a feature. In fact, when we notice animals walking along - cows following each other - they step in each others' tracks...
When we looked at the entire sequence of tracks beginning down at the bottom, we see a right, a left, a right, a left, a right, a left, a right [etc].... on up the trail. They are consistent. The rights are where they're supposed to be. The lefts are where they're supposed to be... In each of the fourteen tracks we find at least a general human shape... Those shapes are very consistent in length... seven of them reveal individual toes. Now, none of Mary Leakey's showed the individual toes apart from the big toe. In twelve of them you can discern right from left... [The right/left pattern is] consistent all the way, every one of them - all fourteen of them from one end to the other... And each of them [is] where [it] ought to be... And in... the 110 million year old Glen Rose limestone.... On the same platform with literally hundreds of dinosaur tracks - stepping in and across them.... According to the evolutionary scenario, [it] couldn't be there. Well, Dawkins tells us the significance of that: It would totally falsify the modern theory of evolution...
[Richard Dawkins, Oxford, THE BLINDWATCHMAKER, 1986, p. 225]
The evidence points unmistakably to the fact that the evolutionary scenario will not fit with the facts...
Furthermore, there's a great deal of [additional] evidence [discovered at Glen Rose] that is accumulating...
The Burdick track, for example... that had been cut out of the river back in the late 30's - early 40's... It is a beautiful, almost perfect, human-looking footprint... Since this... had been cut out of the river [bed], we were able to section this, saw across it... at the heal... And then we were able to look under the surface of the track... We can see... the surface. And then under that surface we see the disturbed area that conforms to the shape of the track showing that this was not a carved track. This area of disturbed material of the rock directly under and conforming to the shape of the track proves beyond any shadow of a doubt [that] this [track] was not carved... We then sawed across the toes... we see that there are actually pressure indications under each of the toes, especially... under the great toe. There are obvious indications [of pressure which] follow the contour of that big toe in the rock proving that this was not a carved track, that... it was an actual track in the sediment... Some diehards continue to object saying, 'Well, the track is just too wide to be a human track... Dr. Tuttle of the University of Chicago and also of the Primate Research Center at Emory.... responded to the charge that ['Mary Leakey's tracks'] were too wide by using this illustration in his article in NATURAL HISTORY... His foot is seen on the left. On the right we see an Indian's foot that habitually goes barefoot. He points out that this habitually barefoot foot is much wider than his... A width to length comparison of this Indian's foot... found that it was approximately 48% width-to-length... We were able to look at the Burdick track and measure precisely and found... [that] the width-to-length ratio was 48%...
And so the illustration that Tuttle had chosen to refute the charge of 'too wide' regarding Mary Leakey's tracks likewise refuted that kind of an argument with the tracks that we found at Glen Rose...
[R.H. TUTTLE, Professor of Anthropology, University of Chicago & Primate Research Center, Emory University, NATURAL HISTORY, 3/90, p. 64]
The layer that the [Burdick] track came from [was found] in False Branch which is a tributary of the Paluxy.... We see here the front end of the track that we had [sawed] across. The toe end [is] now set on the host rock. And we can see now those... grape sized calcite inclusions both in the host rock and at the bottom of the Burdick track rock... We also did pin sections of the host rock and the matrix from the track and found that they matched perfectly. And so we find that it was not isolated from a different area, we know where it came from...
In Lamb and Whitman's book on soil mechanics we find diagrams that illustrate pressure structures that are formed when pressure is applied in a plastic medium... The structures that were in this Burdick track cross section were actually better than the actual ones they were able to form in the laboratory. We notice here in the illustration [in the textbook] where the load is bearing down, the resulting structures go down and out, somewhat like a mustache... In this cross section [of the Burdick track toes]... we notice directly under the second toe, especially concentrated under that inclusion where pressure would have been concentrated. The pressure goes down and out and back up. And then under [the toe] next to the little toe.. again we find a calcite inclusion - the pressure concentrate - [and] we find the mustache type structure... And so again, we find further confirmation: this is not carved, it was caused by pressure...
But that's not all of the evidence we see at Glen Rose. We also have this... cat track, nine inches across. This would have been made by a very large cat. And a large mammal [discovered] at the same time as the dinosaurs would be just as devastating to the theory [of evolution] and to the picture presented by the geologic column. We see the four toes and the pad of the cat beautifully preserved in the fossil. And so the response was, 'Well, this one was carved too.' We sawed it across one of the toes and notice that this one did have the striations that were deformed by the pressure... proving again that this was not carved....
And then we find this very dramatic fossil... [a human finger]... We see very clearly a finger nail type structure, and.. joints indicated... A number of anatomists have been astounded at the precise anatomical detail that we see in this beautiful three dimensional fossil... Some have suggested that three dimensional fossils are so rare that you wouldn't expect to find [such a fossil as this]. And yet, in Glen Rose, we find all kinds of three dimensional fossils. For example... [fossils of] hundreds of soft bodied... earthworms... completely three dimensional... We decided to section this [finger fossil]... and... we see the... bone structure... delineated from what would appear to be the flesh and... the epidermis on the outer edges... And so added to the [other fossils] is this beautiful three dimensional fossil finger...
And then we find this amazing fossil... further down toward London, Texas near Fredricksburg. Again in the Cretaceous, but this time in sandstone... the iron hammer... [which material proves out to be nonmagnetic - suggesting that it was formed while the canopy over the earth was intact - before the influence of outer space radiation]
[So what has so far been found at Glen Rose] completely falsifies the picture presented by the geologic column.... Notice the statement made by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, one of the more famous evolutionists of our time, in the Gish-Mayr Debate in Evansville, Indiana. And he said, 'Creationists have stated that humans and dinosaurs were contemporaries in time... Were this momentous statement true the names of its discoverers would thunder down the corridors of time as individuals who made one of the most outstanding discoveries of the twentieth century.'
The implications are [also] seen clearly by Steven M. Stanley, a prolific science writer, a paleontologist from Johns Hopkins University, in his recent book THE EVOLUTIONARY TIMETABLE. He said, 'There is an infinite variety of ways in which, since 1859, the general concept of evolution might have been demolished. Consider the fossil record - a little known resource in Darwin's day. The unequivocal discovery of a fossil population of horses in Precambrian rocks would disprove evolution. More generally, any topsy-turvy sequence of fossils would force us to rethink our theory, yet not a single one has come to light...
[And of course, it won't come to light as long as [their] eyes are closed and they refuse to see. When you have all the evidence that we summarized just a few moments ago, we have to ask, 'How much more would a reasonable person need? Beyond that, it gets to the point where they're just not going to see it. But, he continues saying]
As Darwin recognized, a single geographic inconsistency would have nearly the same power of destruction.'
[STEVEN M. STANLEY, Johns Hopkins University, THE NEW EVOLUTIONARY TIMETABLE, 1981, P. 171]
Now, these are his terms: 'demolish', 'disprove', 'destroy'... As Dawkins of Oxford said. 'It would falsify the theory if these tracks were together - supposed to be 100 million years apart.' And yet we demonstrate that they are together, that they're not falsified or carved, that they're original impressions in the sediment...
Well, if the geologic column, then, does not represent the accurate explanation of what we find, [then] how do we account for the fossil record - these billions of fossil forms - billions of dead things that are found in rocks laid down by water all over the world? [We find an] average of a mile to a mile and a half [of] sedimentary rock containing billions and billions of dead things... Those who founded the science[s] of geology and stratigraphy believe that this was done by a single catastrophic event - a great, year long catastrophic deluge involving many different depositional events, many different depositional environments but in one great, year long, catastrophic event.
Nicholas Steno is known as the father of modern stratigraphy. In the book I quoted from earlier by Dott and Batten, EVOLUTION OF THE EARTH, that I was taught from at Indiana University, we read [on p. 24] concerning Steno..., 'Besides correctly interpreting fossils, Steno drew some even more important conclusions about the strata in which they occur...
[And he was contemporary with Sir Isaac Newton, for example]
The result was formulation of most basic principles for analysis of earth history. Steno showed great insight... Steno's axioms provide the ultimate basis of practically all interpretations of earth history, so their importance can hardly be overemphasized.'
Now Steno was what's known as a flood geologist. He believed that this complete geologic record was produced as a result of a great catastrophic deluge. However, he wrote the rules that we use today to interpret the strata. Anyone who studies stratigraphy has to memorize his twelve axioms. That's the way to interpret it. And he understood it well enough from his perception that he could write the rules 300 years ago that they still use today. And they haven't really added to it. In other words, this concept [which presumes a worldwide flood] explains, it fits, it works. A very important book was written almost 30 years ago by Whitcomb and Morris called 'The Genesis Flood'. Building on Steno's work and the work of a number of others, they applied our modern knowledge of geology to this concept of explanation [i.e., a worldwide flood]. John C. McCampbell, who is professor and head of the department of geology at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, a well known geology school, wrote the foreword to this book. He is a uniformitarian evolutionary geologist and yet very... fairly evaluated the ideas suggested in this book. He says, 'The facts of geology fit this explanation.' He said, 'The authors have provided a very strong case for this as an explanation for the geologic record and a very serious challenge to the uniformitarian evolutionary explanation.'... Another way to say that more bluntly would be that my explanation doesn't work and yours does... [Dr. Campbell] acknowledges that the facts fit [the catastrophic flood view] better...
Notice the statement by David M. Raup, professor of geology from the University of Chicago and curator of the museum with the largest number of fossils in America, the Field Museum of Natural History. He says, 'Contemporary geologists and paleontologists now generally accept catastrophe as a 'way of life' although they may avoid the word catastrophe...
[It is almost comical to listen to them avoid that word because it tends to imply the catastrophe [of the Bible] that they don't like to talk about. Nevertheless, he says [that] this is the way of life of paleontologists today. He said,]
'The periods of relative quiet contribute only a small part of the record. The days are almost gone when a geologist looks at such a sequence, measures it thickness, estimates the total amount of elapsed time, and then divides one by the other to compute the rate of deposition in centimenters per thousand years. The nineteenth-century idea of uniformitarianism and gradualism still exist in popular treatments of geology, in some museum exhibits, and in lower level textbooks. ..one can hardly blame the creationists for having the idea that the conventional wisdom in geology is still a noncatastrophic one.'
[DAVID M. RAUP, Chicago Field Museum, Univ. of Chicago, Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, Vol. 54, March 1983, p. 21]
Likewise, notice a statement by Robert Dott [whom] we quoted from... earlier, the author of the textbook [that] I was taught from. In his presidential address to the Society of Economic Paleontologists & Mineralogists. He says, writing in Geotimes [Nov. 1982, p. 16], 'I hope I have convinced you that the sedimentary record is largely a record of episodic events rather than being uniformly continuous....'
[Now the term 'episodic' basically means catastrophic. 'Episodic' is just one of those examples, as Raup said, to avoid using that term. But we understand what he means: an [episodic] as opposed to... uniformly continuous explanation of the [geologic] record. He says]
'My message is that episodicity is the rule, not the exception. ...we need to shed those lingering subconscious constraints of old uniformitarian thinking.'
From these statements... you can see that... there has been a... change toward catastrophism... in the thinking of the geologists... A very dramatic illustration is seen in John Horner's book DIGGING DINOSAURS.. [1988. p. 131] He found thousands of dinosaur bones [up in Montana]. And he writes in this book, judging from the concentration of bones in various pits, 'There were 30 million fossil fragments in that area. At a conservative estimate, we had discovered the tomb of 10,000 dinosaurs'
'There was a flood [which Horner indicates was what placed the fossils the way he observed them]. This was no ordinary spring flood from one of the streams in the area but a catastrophic inundation.'
[Now, he is not talking about the Noahic Deluge. He is a firm, thorough-going evolutionist... ((He surmised that volcanic activity catastrophically killed and buried all those dinosaurs with a local flood coming along later on to deposit them as he observed them in place today))
But [when] we [look] at the rock record [in] this place and other places that he studied, it is obvious that it was a great... flood that produced this... ((not a local one)). When you find the bones oriented north and south and segregated small from large, it's very obvious [that] this was done by a large water flow. And when you have it over such a huge area, and you have 10,000 dinosaurs involved [in just one place in that area], you have a huge catastrophe. He continues, saying,]
'That's our best explanation. It seems to make the most sense, and on the basis of it we believe that this was a living, breathing group of dinosaurs destroyed in one catastrophic moment.'
Now, these are his terms, the terms of an evolutionist. And as we saw from Dott, this is not the exception, this is the rule. Now, they still cringe at thinking it was all done by one giant [flood]. It's too close to implications they want to avoid. But when we look at the evidence, we see more and more that it is imperative that we not place these layers [of rock] millions of years apart. That's part of the implications of the discoveries at Glen Rose - instead of [fossils] being millions of years apart, we find them together... Notice, for example, the implications of the evidence seen at the Grand Canyon. Here at the bottom... we find the Moave Limestone. Directly above it we find the Redwall Limestone. The Moave is the bottom layer of that geologic column [the Cambridge era]. Now, 200 million years above that we find the Mississippian [era]. You find the Cambridge [era] on the bottom [of the canyon and the geologic column. Then]. there are a number of intervening [eras and hence layers of rock] that are supposed to be there [according to evolutionists] but we are told that erosion occurred... throughout the canyon and that we go directly then to the [layer of] Redwall [limestone, i.e.], the Mississippian [era] - skipping almost 200 million years... [But] when you look at the interface [between the two layers of limestone that are supposed to be 200 million years apart], the line between [the] red and the lighter colored limestone is straight as an arrow and level for hundreds of miles. Now, we know what erosion does, even hundreds of years of erosion. It doesn't leave straight and level surfaces, [so much the more] 200 million years of erosion... But that's not the worst problem. As we examine the edge, we notice... the Moave, the Cambrian - but then a little layer of the Redwall and back to the Moave and then to the Redwall and then to the Moave and then to the Redwall and then to the Moave - some 6 times. How do you skip 200 million years six times? No. These are interbedded. Now, when you learn Steno's axioms you know that when you find layers that are interbedded, that they're not millions of years apart. They are contemporaneous. They had to be laid down together. There is no way to escape that conclusion... The entire column is one great catastrophic event. And that is the best explanation - it fits the facts...."
[Dr. Don Patton, op. cit., tape #3, cont]:
We're warned by David Raup about this when he says, 'One of the ironies of the creation-evolution debate is that the creationists have accepted the mistaken notion that the fossil record shows a detailed orderly progression. And they have gone to great lengths to accommodate this 'fact' into their Flood Geology.'
[DAVID M. RAUP, Chicago Field Museum, Prof. of Geology, Univ. of Chicago, NEW SCIENTIST, Vol. 90, p. 832, 1981]
He of course points out that there is no such thing. And you don't have to have an explanation for a detailed orderly progression [because] it does not exist.... He readily acknowledges that... It is a mistaken notion as he tells us...
[Compare the rest of this quotation from Dr. Patton's notes]:
'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 probable 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...'
[DAVID M. RAUP, University of Chicago, Chicago F. Museum of Natural History, F.M.O.N.H.B., Vol. 50, p. 35]
What we see when we look at the fossil record is billions and billions of dead things in rocks laid down all over the world. We're living on a veritable graveyard... billions of dead things in rocks laid down by water, all over the world... is eloquent testimony to the fact that there was a great catastrophe."
[Dr. Don Patton, op. cit., tape #3]:
"The millions of fossils that we see in the museums around the world and [in] the rocks provide convincing proof for creation, certainly evidence that would sustain that concept.... Let's begin with a... statement made by S. M. Stanley, paleontologist from Johns Hopkins University. He says, 'Its doubtful whether, in the absence of fossils, the idea of evolution would represent anything more than an outrageous hypothesis. ..The fossil record and only the fossil record provides direct evidence of major sequential changes in the Earth's biota.'
[S. M. STANLEY, Johns Hopkins Univ., NEW EVOLUTIONARY TIMETABLE, 1981, p. 72]
I hope you'll remember the statement that it's just 'an outrageous hypothesis' if you don't have the fossils. I think he's absolutely right and I think they [the evolutionists] don't... There is direct evidence for creation that's provided here...
If evolution is true then we should see the simple, slow beginning gradually increasing in complexity over time. On the other hand, if creation is true... then we should see a sudden and complex beginning and a wide variety of creatures from the start...
Let's begin as we look at what the facts are with a statement by Stephen J. Gould, perhaps the best known paleontologist in the United States today, writing in his recent book, WONDERFUL LIFE, [p. 64] published in '89. He says, 'In a geological moment near the beginning of the Cambrian...
[The Cambrian is that bottom layer at the bottom of the geological column]
...nearly all modern phyla made their first appearance. The 500 million subsequent years have produced no new phyla...
[When you get to that point which is a beginning, an explosion - as he calls it in the same article - you have nearly all of the modern, main divisions [of lifeforms] that we have in biology. And there've been no new phyla since then. Only twists and turns upon established designs', he says...
[So] we have the basic designs in place in a geological moment - in the beginning of the Cambrian, right at the bottom of the geological column...'
[Compare another quotation from Stephen Gould from Dr. Patton's notes]:
'One outstanding fact of the fossil record that many of you may not be aware of; that since the so called Cambrian explosion... during which essentially all the anatomical designs of modern multicellular life made their first appearance in the fossil record, no new Phyla of animals have entered the fossil record.'
[STEPHEN GOULD, Harvard, Speech at SMU, Oct. 2, 1990]
Consider the statement made by Preston Cloud & Martin Glaessner... authors of major textbooks in geology, writing in SCIENCE, [Aug. 27], 1982. They say, 'Ever since Darwin, the geologically abrupt appearance and rapid diversification of early animal life have fascinated biologist and students of Earth history alike...
[It's abrupt appearance, it's rapid diversification, in other words, many different, diverse kinds in the beginning...]
[Compare quotations from Dr. Patton's notes]:
''The remarkably complex forms of animals we see today suddenly appeared... ..This moment, right at the start of the Earth's Cambrian Period... marks the evolutionary explosion that filled the seas with the earth's first complex creatures... '''This is Genesis material,''' gushed one researcher... ...demonstrates that the large animal phyla of today were present already in the early Cambrian and that they were as distinct from each other as they are today... ...a menagerie of claim cousins, sponges, segmented worms, and other invertebrates that would seem vaguely familiar to any scuba diver.'
[RICHARD MONASTERSKY, Earth Science Editor, SCIENCE NEWS, DISCOVER, p. 40, 4/93]:
'And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists... .. the only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation...'
[RICHARD DAWKINS, Cambridge, THE BLIND WATCHMAKER, 1986, P. 229-230]:
This interval, plus Early Cambrian, was the time during which metazoan life [i.e., more than one cell] diversified into nearly all of the major phyla and most of the invertebrate classes and orders subsequently known.'
Not only do we have nearly all of the major divisions, but we have nearly all of the smaller divisions of classes and orders right from the early part of the Cambrian defined by them as the beginning of the major diversification of life. Now, prior to the Cambrian, we have some little green algae and some bacteria...
H. S. Ladd, University of California at Davis, put it this way. He said, 'Most paleontologists today give little thought to fossiliferous rocks older than the Cambrian, thus ignoring the most important missing link of all. Indeed the missing preCambrian record cannot properly be described as a link for it is in reality about nine tenths of the chain of life - the first nine-tenths.'
[H. S. LADD, UCLA, Geo. So. of Am. Mem., 1967, Vol. II, p. 7]
And his evaluation: nine-tenths of the evolution of life is already in place when you get to the Cambrian. Before that? Well, [according to evolutionists] the record is missing. That of course assumes that there was such. There's no evidence for it... They are both saying what the Creationist would predict: that when you start you have basically all of the kinds...
[John E. Repetski] points out that 'The oldest land plants now known are from the Early Cambrian... Approximately 60 Cambrian spore-genera now on record... represent 6 different groups of vascular plants...'
[John E. Repetski, U. S. Geological Survey, Evolution, Vol. 13, June '59, p. 264-275]
If you read your textbook, [it will] tell you that the Cambrian involved only shallow seas all over the world - that there were no land areas anywhere. But now then, we've got 60 spore-genera of land plants, 6 different groups of vascular plants. Those are plants that have wood... Well, then you've got land somewhere but they haven't bothered to change the textbooks. Furthermore, we notice from [Daniel I Axelrod, UCLA, Vol. 200, May 5, 1978, p. 529] writing in SCIENCE. He says, 'This report of fish material from Upper Cambrian rocks [States of Wy, Ok, Wa, Nv, Id, Ar] further extends the record of the vertebrates by approximately 40 million years.'
And this was published in 1978... this has been known.. a while. Yet it is not in the textbooks... The vertebrates are way on up the column. They're very complex organisms. They belong to the same [phylum] that we do, but we find them in the Cambrian with nearly all of the major phyla. In fact, the reason that most people say 'nearly all the major phyla' [is that] they don't acknowledge or perhaps don't know that the Cambrian also includes the vertebrates - supposedly the highest order - that we are a part of...
Notice... [the] statement by Percy E. Raymond of Harvard University... He said, 'It's evident that the oldest Cambrian fauna is diversified and not so simple, perhaps, as the evolutionists would hope to find it. Instead of being composed chiefly of protozoans...
[That's the single celled organism that's supposedly the most simple]
...it contains no representatives of that phylum but numerous members of seven higher groups are present, a fact which shows that the greater part of the major differentiation of animals had already taken place in those ancient times.
[PERCY E. RAYMOND, Professor of Paleontology, Harvard University, PREHISTORIC LIFE, 1967, p. 23]
Now, that [quotation] is somewhat dated, it was published in '67. But it shows the rarity of the protozoans. We've now found them in the Cambrian since then as virtually... all of the major [phyla]...
It is rather ironic that the protozoa are almost missing there [in the Cambrian] though they do exist. And so, when we look at [the Cambrian], we have... hundreds of species of Trilobites - well diversified, that is, many different kinds - right from the start. They're extremely complex organisms - well differentiated head and tail and thorax, very complex respiratory system, nervous system, eyes... more complex than our own... This is the most common representative... [form of life in] the Cambrian.... [Then we have represented in the Cambrian] most invertebrate classes and orders - nearly all the major phyla but... almost no protozoa...
Then we have land plants - 60 different genera... vascular, woody plants...
It looks.... like a sudden and complex beginning...
Stephen Gould points out another characteristic of the beginning of the fossil record when he says, 'Our modern phyla represent designs of great distinctness, yet our diverse world contains nothing in between sponges, corals, insects, snails, sea urchins, and fishes (to choose standard representatives of the most prominent phyla).'
[STEPHEN JAY GOULD, Harvard, Natural History, p. 15, Oct. 1990]
Instead of this gradual, progressive continuum that would not leave distinctive kinds, you have [represented by the fossil record] separate distinct kinds IN THE BEGINNING just like we see in the world today... - sudden and complex... kinds - right from the start. But then we look at the chart that's used to represent... [the fossil record] in our Biology textbooks. [The chart] tells us that we began at the bottom with a single cell organism and gradually [progressed] upward, becoming more and more complex as we go through time... But where did a representation like that come from? It doesn't come from the fossil record. In fact many [evolutionists] would acknowledge that. Notice for example a statement by Stephen Gould [Harvard University] from Natural History [ Vol. 86, p. 13]. He says, 'These 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 the fossils.'
Now, the point that we make here is not how you infer but is [the inference even] seen as evidence from the fossil record. And [Dr. Gould] said, 'Nope! It's not there.'...
But where do we get these trees [that are in the Cambrian]?
[Compare another quotation from Dr. Patton's notes]:
'You say I should at least '''show a photo of the fossil from which each type or organism was derived.''' I will lay it on the line - there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument... It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another... But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test... ...I don't think we shall ever have any access to any form of tree which we can call factual.'
[COLIN PATTERSON, Senior Paleontologist, British Museum of Natural History, HARPERS, Feb. 1984, p. 56]"