BIBLE STUDY MANUALS: CREATIONISM VS EVOLUTION

CREATIONISM VS EVOLUTION, (CONT.)

III) SCRIPTURAL TESTIMONY & PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF A DESIGNED AND ORCHESTRATED CREATION, (cont.)

C) THE INCREDIBLY COMPLEX DESIGN OF ALL LIFEFORMS POINTS TO A SUPREME DESIGNER: THE GOD OF THE BIBLE

Dr Baugh, op cit. p. 15:

"We find an immediate conflict between the concepts of creation and evolution... ...We find information that shows all of life to be extremely complicated.....Scientists have been able to give an assimilative number to the amount of exponential bits of information contained in that total inorganic, non-living universe. It comes to two hundred thirty-five exponential bits of information. These bits are not to be confused with computer bits, but are a compound bit assimilation. Yet, the human cell has over twenty billion exponential bits of information. It is absolutely impossible for this inorganic universe to have produced one living cell of any structure in any biological observation. What this really means is that life had to be designed, and it appeared fully functional and fully operational."

[John D. Morris of the Institute for Creation Research makes the following statements in his article entitled "'Natural' Selection versus 'Supernatural' Design", (IMPACT periodical #223, Jan 1992)]:

"Christianity and evolution cannot both be true. Evolution is, at its very essence, an atheistic explanation of the world around us.

Consider the following oft-repeated quote from Sir Julian Huxley, who, until his recent death, was perhaps the world's leading spokesman for evolution:

'Darwin pointed out that no supernatural designer was needed; since natural selection could account for any known form of life, there was no room for a supernatural agency in its evolution... ...we can dismiss entirely all ideas of a supernatural overriding mind being responsible for the evolutionary process.'

On the other hand, Scripture, in many places and in many ways, identifies God as Creator, and claims that His creation was an act of forethought, of planning, of design. Supernatural processes were used to accomplish this design, not just natural processes. [Ps 19:1; Rev 4:11].

These two concepts, supernatural design versus natural processes operating by chance, represent the two views of origins, and are opposite. They cannot both be true. Nobel Prize-winning zoologist Jacques Monod said it this way: "...It necessarily follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation... Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution."

The recent edition of the authoritative Encyclopaedia Britannica informs us that:

"Darwin did two things: He showed that evolution was a fact contradicting literal interpretations of Scriptural legends of creation and that its cause, natural selection, was automatic with no room for divine guidance or design."

Many Christians believe in evolution, but they must come to realize that the evolutionary way of thinking, is a logical necessity [to believe], if, and only if, there has been no supernatural input in nature.

Furthermore, if evolution is true, the entire Christian faith is a sham. Dr. William Provine, Professor of History and Biology at Cornell University and author of many anti-creation articles wrote recently that Darwin recognized:

"...If natural selection explained adaptations, and evolution by descent were true, then the argument from design was dead and all that went with it, namely:

1) the existence of a personal God,

2) free will,

3) life after death

4) immutable [unchangeable] moral laws, and 5) ultimate meaning in life.

BUT EVOLUTION IS NOT A FACT!

Evolution is not even in a category of things that could ever be a scientific fact! It [SIMPLY] is a world view about the past - an historical reconstruction. It is a way to interpret scientific data, such as rocks, fossils, and complex living systems which exist in the present. It is a potential answer to the question, "What happened in the unobserved past to make the present get to be this way?"

As we have seen, this answer encompasses far more than merely a scientific proposal. As currently understood by leading evolutionists, it embraces strict naturalism, an anti-God philosophy, and results in a denial of the major doctrines of Scripture.

Darwin, in his writings, letters, and memoirs, promoted natural selection as a means by which the incredible design obvious in every living system could be derived through purely mechanistic, naturalistic processes. He devoted great energy to refuting the writings of William Paley, in which Paley reasoned that one can infer from the functional complexity of a system that intelligence was necessary in its formation. Just as a complex watch necessarily implies a watchmaker, so living systems, much more complex than a watch, demand that a Creator was involved in their origin. His position was eminently logical, but necessarily implied a Creator-God.

And this helps explain why Darwin and his modern disciples combat the concept of design with such vigor. If such a Creator exists, He has the authority to set the rules for His creation, and the authority to set the rules for breaking His rules. Accountability for our actions to a holy, Creator-God is not easily accepted by the natural man.

Jesus told Nicodemus, 'And this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil' (John 3:19).

If no supernatural agency has been at work throughout history, then creation is dead. But if evolutionists even allow a spark of supernatural design in history, then evolution is dead, for evolution necessarily relies on solely natural processes.

But design in living things is obvious. Even the single celled-organism is complex beyond the ability of scientists to understand, let alone duplicate. All of life is governed by the marvelously complex genetic code, which contains not only design and order, but what is equivalent to written information. This DNA code must not only be written correctly, [but] the rest of the cell must be able to read it and follow its instructions, if the cell is to metabolize its food, carry out the myriad of enzyme reactions, and, especially to reproduce. This code had to be present at the origin of life. How could it have written itself? And how could the various organelles [parts of the cell] learn how to read and obey it?

Carl Sagan, the modern-day evolutionary spokesman has admitted:

'The information content of a simple cell has been established at around 1012 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.'

And yet he believes the code wrote itself, by purely random natural processes, as non-living chemicals sprang to life!

Is this view really credible? Is it really scientific to ascribe to natural processes functions and products which clearly are the result of intelligent design? The Bible tells us that even 'the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse' (Romans 1:20).

A favorite example of obvious design has always been the human eye with its functioning parts - the lens, cornea, iris, etc., the controlling muscles, the sensitive rods and cones which translate light energy into chemical signals, the optic nerve which speeds these signals to a decoding center in the brain - and on and on.

The eye was unquestionably designed by an incredibly intelligent Designer Who had a complete grasp of optical physics.

Darwin was frustrated by the eye's complexity, even though he knew only a fraction of what scientists have now discovered about the eye. In his book 'Origin of Species' [p.133]. he included a section entitled 'Organs of Extreme Perfection and Complication', in which he declared: 'To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree'.

Yet in the next several pages, he discussed how he thought it might have happened.

One may wonder why Darwin was forced to adopt and defend what he admitted was an absurd conclusion. His reasoning is made plain in the following quote. Keep in mind that Darwin was raised in a nominally religious home, but whose extended family had a well established anti-Christian perspective. Darwin, himself, studied for the ministry, as was common in those days for individuals of a scholarly bent, but eventually rejected the Christian faith.

In a May 22, 1860 letter to Professor Asa Gray of Harvard, propagator of evolution on the American continent, Darwin wrote, evidently to answer Gray's advocacy of "theistic" evolution.

[Theistic Evolution = God created the universe and sat back and let it evolve]:

[Darwin wrote]:

"I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence (or goodness) on all sides of us. There seems to me to be too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the ichneumonidae (parasites) with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed (parenthesis added)."

Notice that Darwin was not looking at the eye and concluding an evolutionary origin. He looked at the pain, suffering, misery, and death in the world, and concluded that there must not be a God as revealed in the Bible. [Darwin further concluded that] if there was such a God, He wouldn't have created the world as we encounter it.

[What Darwin missed is that GOD DID CREATE A PERFECT WORLD WITHOUT SUFFERING MISERY AND DEATH EVERYWHERE...(Gen 1:1-2:25 and God saw that it was good Gen 1:18,21,25 and very good 1:31 until )! But what did the representative man Adam do? (Gen 3:1-7). Adam's disobedience caused the world to deteriorate into what it is today - all creation reflects this disobedience. Cp Gen 3:17-20; Ro 5:15-19).

And this perfect creation will be restored in everyone who trusted in Christ as Savior and in the whole universe of His creation by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Compare Isa 11:6-9; Romans 8:18-24].

[Dr Morris' article goes on to say - repeating his last comment]:

Notice that Darwin was not looking at the eye and concluding an evolutionary origin. He looked at the pain, suffering, misery, and death in the world, and concluded that there must not be a God as revealed in the Bible. If there was such a God, He wouldn't have created the world as we encounter it.

[Remember, God didn't create the world the way it is today but rather decreed that it would decay and devolve as a result of man's sin, (cp Gen 3:17-19). Adam, as the federal representative of mankind, sinned and therein all men sinned and are born into the world with a sin nature, (cp Ro 5:15-19)]

You see, Darwin had a theological problem. He had rejected the Biblical doctrine of the entrance of death into the world as a result of sin. Adam and Eve had rebelled against the Creator's authority, resulting in the distortion of God's original, deathless, "very good" creation [Gen 1:31]. Darwin rejected the doctrine that the Creator had, Himself, died to pay sin's penalty, and had conquered death by rising from the dead, one day to abolish pain and suffering and misery and death forever.

[Cp John 3all; Ro 3:21-26. This will happen in His sovereign time when all men have been given a chance to partake of this salvation. Cp Ro 8:18-25; 2 Pet 3:9-13].

[Dr. Morris goes on to write]:

Having rejected the God of the Bible and the possibility of supernatural input into the universe, all Darwin had to work with were natural processes. These led to [what Darwin admitted himself were]..absurd conclusions, but if there is no God, there remains no other choice. [only absurdity remains after God has been ruled out].

The existence of suffering and death has led many to abandon the concept of God. But to one who accepts the Bible's teachings on these foundational issues, there is no need to embrace solely natural processes as creator.

The following question and answer article appeared in The New American June 20, 1988, p 53-4:

[Article excerpts appear in this font]

Q. The gradualism of Darwinian evolution has come under fire recently. Punctuated equilibria, a more recent attempt to explain the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record, is presently being offered by such notables as Stephen Gould and Niles Eldredge. This theory postulates that evolution occurred rapidly, in small, isolated populations. No record was left of the evolutionary process in the fossil record because the changes were so rapid. How do the most recent theories square with known scientific fact?

A. [Dr John Morris] One of the biggest problems that evolutionists have always faced is that there are no transitional forms. There is no recorded change from one basic type of an animal into another. This was a major problem to Darwin. In his book, "The Origin of Species", he dedicated a good bit of space to the lack of transitional forms. He said that it was the most obvious and serious argument that could be martialed against his theory. Darwin assumed that all living things today had come from a common ancestor and proposed a possible scenario whereby that might happen.

Q. The failure to discover transitional fossils since Darwin's time has proved to be an embarassment to evolutionists, hasn't it?

A. The fossil record does not record any transitions from one basic type of animal into another basic type...

[NOTE: FROM ONE BASIC TYPE ANIMAL INTO ANOTHER BASIC TYPE ANIMAL]

...But, inspite of the lack of evidence from the fossil record, evolutionists insist that such transitions have taken place. It is their presupposition. They [THINK THEY] "know" that evolution has taken place. To these scientists who accept the theory of punctuated equilibria...

[Note that evolution, punctuated equilibria and creationism are not theories but models. Theories by definition have to be repeatable in order to be observable in order to beprovable. So evolution and creationism are models of what one surmises occurred.

...the lack of transitional forms proves [so the evolutionists of today say], then, that evolution took place rapidly, and left no transitional forms.

Q. Isn't that a rather broad assumption for some evolutionists to have made?

A. Their frustration comes from the fact that they have already assumed evolution to be true. It seems to me that the fossil record is much more in favor of the creation model. A creationist would predict that there would be no transitional forms in the fossil record because the Bible says clearly that God created the basic kinds of animals. They did not evolve from other types of animals. Since basic animal types did not come from other animals, no in-between animals ever existed to leave fossils, and the fossil record would contain these huge gaps. The creation model demands that the fossil record looks like it does.

But the evolutionists have assumed that creation is not to be considered, and so they are limiting their scope of investigation to these mechanisms within their own world view. In doing so , in my opinion, they have denied truth and are doomed to languish in empty speculations such as punctuated equilibria.

Q. So the lack of transitional forms is behind the need for "new" theories [models] to explain evolution?

A. If it is true that evolution has happened, then you must propose some kind of mechanism that allows evolution to take place without leaving transitional forms, for there are no transitional forms! The world's leading paleontologists [fossil scientists] all admit this! Punctuationalists presuppositionally hold that we all descended from a common ancestor and prove their brand of evolution from lack of data.The fact that we have no data proves punctuated equilibria in their minds. Their logic?

[PRESUPPOSED]Fact #1: Evolution has occurred.

[PRESUPPOSED]Fact #2: We have no transitional forms.

Therefore evolution occurred rapidly in isolated populations and left no transitional forms. Obviously, this is an argument from lack of data.

Q. Doesn't the "scientific method" demand that theories fit observable facts and evidence, and not the other way around?

A. Science deals with the present. We study chemical processes, biological life, fossils and so on, in the present. The only thing we have access to is the present. Scientists make measurements and observations in the present.

Now, when scientists want to talk about the past, they may study the present and make inferences about the past based on what they see. But, they cannot study the past. Every piece of data in the modern world has to be interpreted. But you cannot interpret it completely free of any bias. Scientists are all biased and prejudiced people, just like anyone else.

When scientists attempt to interpret the past, the scientific method doesn't apply. Who can observe or repeat the "Big Bang"? Who can repeat the origin of life? It just doesn't happen.

You can't do it. So it is outside the realm of empirical science. Scientists can believe, by faith, one way or the other; once you set up your world view, then you can study the present world and see if the present world fits the way your world view says that it ought to be.

Q. Why isn't creationism considered the stronger model since it fits the facts so well?

A. Creationism isn't even considered by many scientists. Scientists ought to be willing to investigate all possible solutions to a particular problem. Unfortunately, evolutionary scientists today have decided that anything that is of a supernatural nature is to be excluded from the realm of possibility. The definition of science used to be the search for truth, but these days it is the search for naturalistic explanations. In other words, the supernatural is presuppositionally excluded. Of course, a supernatural Creator implies a personal, thinking, transcendent God, a concept many refuse to accept. Many scientists, now faced with the overwhelming scientific objections to a completely naturalistic evolution, are turning to an "extra-natural," as opposed to a supernatural, explanation.

Consider Dr. Francis Crick, who won the Nobel prize for the discovery of DNA, who now claims it is impossible for life to have evolved here on earth given the natural laws that we observe. It couldn't have happened

[the way evolutionists say].

So Crick, a brilliant, world-class geneticist, now claims that life came here on a meteorite.

It came from outer space [he says].

Sir Fred Hoyle, the famous astronomer in Brittain, is now saying the same thing, as are many scientists. They call it "transpermia" - that life rode here on a meteorite or was brought here or that something "out there" has done it, but not God!

[The question is Who created the life on the meteorite?].

Q. In a recent ICR [Institute for Creation Research] newsletter, Henry Morris stated: "The neo-Darwinian religionists (Huxley, Dobzhansky, Dewey, etc.) thought that evolutionary gradualism would become the basis for the coming world humanistic religion. Evolutionists of the new generation, on the other hand, have increasingly turned to punctuationism - or revolutionary evolutionism - as the favored rationale, largely because of the scientific fallacies in gradualism increasingly exposed by creationists. This development has facilitated the amalgamation of Western scientism with Eastern mysticism." Do you also see this happening?

A. Naturalistic evolution just doesn't work. Evolutionists everywhere are beginning to recognize that and are beginning to look for other answers. Many are turning to the paranormal and to the cosmic and to other sources to salvage their theory of development, still without recourse to a personal Creator.

William P. Hoar states, (The New American, Nov 16, 1992, 'Evolution as Religion,' pp 32-33):

"The Guardian Weekly ....put it this way in 1978: 'In the last decade, ...geologists have found rock layers of all divisions of the last 500 million years and no transitional forms were contained in them.'...........

....There are even intriguing suspicions - expressed by some prominent evolutionists - that Jesuit philosopher and paleontologist Teilhard deChardin was culpably involved in the long-standing Piltdown Man hoax. Johnson recounts a supposed ancestor of homo sapiens found under Piltdown Commons in Sussex during 1908-1915, and not exposed as a hoax until 1953:

The pressure to find confirmation [of a missing link] was so great that it led to one spectacular fraud, Piltdown Man - which British Museum officials jealously protected from unfriendly inspection, allowing it to perform forty years of useful service in molding public opinion.........

........Using a famous metaphor by British astronomer Fred Hoyle, the author observes that the chance that a living organism would emerge from a 'prebiotic soup' is about as likely 'as a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.' Chance assembly, Johnson elucidates, is the way a naturalist says 'miracle.'

Indeed, Nobel Prize biochemist Francis Crick stated in his book Life Itself: 'An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many of the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.' So what has scientist Crick come up with as a possible explanation? He advances a theory which has also been raised as a possibility by the aforementioned astronomer Fred Hoyle and his colleague Chandra Wickramasinghe - that of 'directed panspermia' from an extraterrestrial civilization.

This passes for science, while those who believe in a Creator are mocked."

[Dr Carl Baugh, op. cit., p. 3]:

"The brain of man is the most sophisticated, complicated device ever observed in the entire physical universe."

2) THE IMMEDIATE EXISTENCE OF COMPLEX LIFE FORMS AND THE ABSENCE OF INTERMEDIATE LIFEFORMS SPELL A DESIGNED & ORCHESTRATED CREATION

[Dr Baugh, op cit, p. 19]:

"The trilobites [an extinct group of marine animal life having three lobes in its body structure]...appear immediately.... If they arrived here by time, chance, and natural circumstances [instead of immediately] nine-tenths of the geologic column is missing.

[i.e., there is a huge gap between this group of life and supposed and simpler lifeforms from which evolutionists say the trilobites evolved - there are innumerable missing 'links']

[Dr Baugh cont.] ...There has really been little change within life forms since then. The trilobites appear with complicated eyes. Paleontologists have admitted trilobites have eyes that are so sophisticated that modern cameras are designed paralleling the trilobite. However, trilobites appear immediately in the geologic column. It is absolutely impossible for this to have occurred if evolutionary processes had designed such complicated individual life forms.... Local students of paleontology immediately identified this creature as being a pterodactyl. This was all reported in The Illustrated London News, Fegruary 9, 1856, page 156. They examined the limestone from which the creature had been released and found there a cavity in the exact mold of the creature's body. If this is true, it is absolutely impossible for that creature to have lived more than a few thousand years in any form in hibernation.... The worldwide, Biblical Noahic flood explains this phenomenon far better than the evolutionary process."

[William P. Hoar states, (The New American, Nov 16, 1992, 'Evolution as Religion,' pp32-33)]:

This passes for science, while those who believe in a Creator are mocked."

[Dr. Patton, op. cit., Tape #1]:

"Let's move... to the beginning.... to the origin of life. Most of us have seen the diagram of the experiment proposed by Miller and by Ewing... that was performed by them, where water, ammonia, methane and hydrogen are circulated through a closed system, exposed to a spark and then trapped out. Well, first there is the assumption that water, ammonia and hydrogen constituted the early atmosphere. There is no evidence from geology that that's the case. In fact, strong evidence against it. The oldest rocks, the redbeds from Canada are red because [of] oxygen which is not in this recipe. In fact, [oxygen] would be devastating to the process. It wouldn't work. Furthermore, the formative process that we see, the spark, is more destructive than formative. So those things that are formed have to be trapped out or it would destroy more than it would form [the] next time around... But what you do form is... amino acids. Those are the building blocks of life. And when you have bricks you don't have buildings. And what we have here are really hardly analogous to bricks as opposed buildings of life with complex interworking systems... all of which are much more simple than the simplest living cell. Protein is a small component of a complex living cell analogous to.... a machine on the floor of the factory...

Jack Monod, a Nobel laureate in his book 'CHANCE AND NECESSITY' says, 'We have no idea what the structure of a primitive cell might have been. The simplest living system known to us, the bacterial cell...in...its overall chemical plan is the same as that of all other living beings. It employs the same genetic code and the same mechanism of translation as do, for example, human cells. Thus the simplest cells available to us for study have nothing 'primitive' about them...no vestiges of truly primitive structures are discernible.'

[JACK MONOD, CHANCE AND NECESSITY, p. 134]

There just is no such thing as that so called primitive cell. He says, 'The bacterial cell is like the human cell.' In the Encyclopedia Britannica, the article 'Life on Earth', we are told that 'The information content of a simple cell has been estimate around 1012 bits'.

[Carl Sagan, Cornell, Life, Vol. 10, p. 894]

1012 bits, that's incomprehensible. [Carl Sagan] uses an analogy in this article to illustrate: The simple cell that has 1012 bits, that's equivalent to the largest library in the world. Now that's a lot of information. The Library of Congress is mentioned as an illustration. You take all of the letters in all of the books in the largest library in the world and that's the information content of the simplest cell we know anything about. [Does] that sound primitive to you? That is astoundingly complex and not [in] the least bit primitive.

[Compare a quotation by Richard Dawkins, Oxford, The Blind Watchmaker, 1986, p. 116 taken from Dr. Patton's notes]:

'Some species of the unjustly called 'primitive' amoebas have as much information in their DNA [alone] as 1,000 Encyclopedia Britannicas.']

In that connection, consider a statement made by molecular biologist Michael Denton, who is not a creationist although he may sound like it here. He's not an evolutionist because he says the facts don't fit, but he's not willing to be a creationist either. He's an agnostic, he says.

He says, 'To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers 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 un-paralleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the portholes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out...

[And by the way, that is very selective, allowing the right things in and allowing the right things not to come in]

If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity...

[Now, that doesn't happen all by itself... natural selection can't be called upon [to accomplish this]

Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality, the smallest element of which - a functional protein or gene - is complex beyond our own creative capacities... [Is it really credible that the smallest element can just happen by random processes when it's more complex than what we create?] a reality which is the very antithesis of chance, which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence of man?'

[MICHAEL DENTON, Molecular Biologist (Agnostic), EVOLUTION, A THEORY IN CRISIS, 1985, pp. 327-8, 342]

He's talking about the extreme complexity then of that simple cell... When we evaluate that though, and we think about an airplane, which is not nearly so complex. You can describe it in much less than the Library of Congress. Compare that with a simple cell, we don't think that airplane happened by itself... Furthermore... one of the world's more famous scientists says the likelihood can be calculated and it's about like assuming that a tornado would go through a junkyard and produce a 747. That doesn't happen. The simple cell, so called, is much much more complex. But worse than just the complexity, much moreso than the airplane, it is interdependent complexity. An article, recently, in American Scientist, emphasized the interconnected nature of DNA and enzymes. The replication of DNA requires precise enzymes, the precise enzymes require DNA. How do you get these enzymes. That's a whole string precisely lined up in precise order, folded in a precise way... How do you get that order? Well, you have the DNA to tell you how to do it. Well, how do you get the DNA. You have to have the enzymes. Well, how do you get that naturally? Well, you don't. You see the problem of interconnectivity, and that's just a small portion of it. Because you have to have an information storage system... you have to have the reading system. You have to have the information duplicating system, the energy system, the membrane system and you don't have any of those systems without all of those systems. If you had all of that, but you didn't have the duplicating system, you'd be out of luck. If you had all of this without the membranes - semi-permeable membranes - it wouldn't work. If you had all of it without the energy system, it wouldn't [work]. Each system is incomprehensibly complex and interdependent on the other. And that reminds us that Mr. Darwin said.... 'If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.'

[CHARLES DARWIN, ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES, P. 183]

Well we see the problem here. Darwin says, 'If you can't lead up to it gradually, adding... a little bit more complexity and a little bit more, my theory won't work.' Well, here's an example. All of this intercomplexity must be extant at once or none of it works. There's no way to imagine that so-called simple cell...

Francis Crick, Nobel laureate, in his book LIFE ITSELF published in '81, [p. 88] says, 'An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.'

How do you explain it naturally? Well, you really can't explain it naturally... In terms of the very beginning of this horserace between evolution and creation, when you look at the actual facts: At the very beginning of the race, you ring the bell, you swing the gate open, and the [evolution] horse drops dead. It doesn't even get out of the gate. You can't get evolution started. Origin of life just looks not natural, it looks like a miracle. And when we depend on the facts, the evidence - honestly searching for the truth - you just have to say naturally [i.e., in the realm of the natural that] you can't explain it. It calls for another kind of explanation. A sudden, complex beginning without gradual development fits the facts best."

[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 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]

...We want to continue that consideration of the fossil record, looking at these attempts attempts to link up the various fossils to show this progressive continuum, this gradual progression, that would indicate evolution, which they should be able to do if evolution is actually reflected in the fossil record... We can begin that by looking at a statement by Stephen Gould of Harvard, writing in a recent artic article in natural history. He says, 'I will regard the failure to find a clear vector of progress in life's history as the most puzzling fact of the fossil record.... We have sought to impose a pattern that we hope to find on a world that does not really display it'

[STEPHEN GOULD, NATURAL HISTORY, 2/82, p. 22]

[Gould is stating that there is a failure in the attempt by evolutionists] ...to impose a pattern - the pattern of evolution - on the facts of the fossil record that does not display that conclusion.

Darwin recognized... that this was a problem and said that very plainly. In the book Origin of the Species, he said, regarding intermediate links - which of course are a requisite of his position: 'Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain, and this perhaps is the greatest objection which can be urged against my theory.'

[Compare the rest of this quotation taken from Dr. Patton's notes:

'...innumerable transitional forms must have existed but why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? ...Why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links?'

[STEPHEN GOULD, NATURAL HISTORY, 2/82, p. 22]

[The presumptuous and contrived linking up of fossils in order to force the model of evolution, Gould says, is objectionable - not at all valid. And he is one of the world's leading evolutionists]

[Compare] a quotation from David M Raup of the University of Chicago... He's curator of the Field Museum of Natural History, one of the leading authorities in the world. He says, referring to Darwin, that 'The evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be. Earwin was completely aware of this. He was embarrased by the fossil record because it didn't look the way he [Darwin] predicted it would. We are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species, but the situation [relative to finding compatibility with Darwin's theory] hasn't changed much... 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 the result of more detailed information.'

[DAVID M. RAUP, University of Chicago, Curator of the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History, F.M.O.N.H.B., Vol. 50, p. 35]

[Compare a quotation from Dr. Patton's notes:

'He [Darwin] prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search... One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record.; The fossil record simply shows that this prediction was wrong.'

[COLIN PATTERSON, Senior Paleontologist British Museum of Natural History, HARPER'S, p. 60, 1984]

Men like Raup understand that as more information becomes available, that [falsified information] should be discarded. And it is to their chagrin that [false information] is still in the textbooks.... [As] we get more information... we [end up with] fewer and fewer examples as more and more [examples] have been debunked - like the horse...

[Consider another quotation from Dr. Patton's notes:

'There have been an awful lot of stories, some more imaginative than others, about what the nature of that history [of life] really is. The most famous example, still on exhibit downstairs, is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps fifty years ago. That has been presented as the literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that that is lamentable, particularly when the people who propose those kinds of stories may themselves be aware of the speculative nature of some of that stuff.' [COLIN PATTERSON, Senior Paleontologist British Museum of Natural History, HARPER'S, p. 60, 1984]

Consider a similar statement by Professor Derek Ager. He, at the time this [statement] was made was president of the British Paleontological Association [and] one of the more prolific writers on statigraphy in Europe. He says, 'It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student... have now been '''debunked.''' Similarly, my own experience of more than twenty years looking for evolutionary lineages among the Mesozoic Brachiopoda has proved them equally elusive.' [DEREK AGER, Univeristy at Swansea, Wales, PROC. GEOL. ASSO., Vol. 87, p. 132]

Now, here are seashells. There are billions of them in the fossil record, perhaps more of them than anything else, an excellent opportunity to show evolution if it's there. He's been working at it [for] twenty years. That's his specialty. [And he says that finding evidence in his specialty which proved out evolution was] 'equally elusive.'

You do not have this evolutionary story that can be presented from the facts of the record. [The points maintained by evolutionists] have been debunked - one by one.

Perhaps the one [point that evolutionists make] that is used most often, [that is] certainly in all of the textbooks that talk about evolution - biology textbooks, and earth science and geology - is that of [the] archaeopteryx... We are told by some that this is the perfect missing link... that links up the reptiles with the birds - the perfect intermediate: half bird, half reptile. It's an amazing fossil that was found in [Bavaria, in the 'Solenhofen'] limestone - [a] very fine grain [of limestone] that preserves [the fossil in] amazing detail... We see very clear indications of feathers and feet that look like birds... We look at the wings and we see beautiful feathers. This is a singular fossil - [an asymmetric] feather that was found in the limestone. And we see [as a result of the asymetric feather] an asymmetric wing - that is [that] one side is broader than [other]. And that would indicate that [this asymmetric wing] was used for powered flying. It's an air foil. Birds that don't fly have symmetrical wings.... We notice also... that there are claws... on the wings. That's pointed out to be proof that this was a reptile bird, not just a bird. But [what] they often fail to acknowledge is [that] many birds today -modern birds have claws on their wings. For example, the beautiful... flying bird, hoatzin down in South America... together with the ostrich... and the cassowary... (a number of the non-flying birds), have claws, especially in the juvenile form. One of the things that we learned about archaeopteryx in the last year was that all of these forms - all of the six specimens of archaeopteryx - were juvenile forms. They weren't mature, which misled many of the researchers in a number of ways. We're also pointed [by evolutionists] to the teeth. And their bird teeth are supposed to prove that this makes him kin to the reptile and no longer a 'good bird.' However, we look especially in the fossil record and we see great birds - beautiful birds. Some of them are almost exactly like our modern tern - a great powered flyer... [with] ferocious looking teeth. Furthermore, when we examine the teeth, we find that these are not reptile teeth, not teeth like the therapod dinosaur which it's supposed to lead to. But these are teeth like other birds have. They're not serrated on the edges like the reptile's. [The teeth] have a constriction as they [protrude from the surface of the mouth] and they have expanded roots like birds [do]. [These are not] like reptile teeth... And so these [fossils] are... bird [fossils]...

So... each of these features.... of the archaeopteryx... prove the opposite [of the evolutionists' claim that it is a reptile and therefore not a bird]. The feathers are perfect feathers [for a bird]. The claws are like bird claws. The teeth are like bird teeth. The... wishbone, which is a requisite of a powered flyer is a perfectly good wishbone - very strong - in fact, larger than most. The sternum, which was supposed to be an indication that it couldn't fly - this small breast bone to which flight muscles... were to be attached was... small in archaeopteryx and when we find that juvenile forms do not have ossified sternums - that they become bone-like as they mature - then that's exactly what we would expect [in a immature bird]. The brain, we're told [by evolutionists] was very lizard like, but as they extracted the fossil from the matrix, they found that they'd misinterpreted the midline and thus misinterpreted the size of the brain. [So] now then, he has a bird-brain after all. He has bird legs, a jaw that articulates just like [birds] and not like the [reptiles]. [He has] ankles and feet again like the [birds] not like the [reptiles]... [and] bones... [which are just like] birds... And so all of these [features of the archaeopteryx] are the features of birds... But the real 'knock-out' punch regarding archaeopteryx... came just recently from... Texas Tech. Notice in NATURE... 1986 [Vol. 322, p. 677] 'Fossil remains claimed to be of two crow-sized birds 75 million years older than Archaeopteryx have been found... a paleontologist at Texas Tech University, who found the fossils, says they have advanced avian [i.e., bird] features... ...tends to confirm what many paleontologists have long suspected, that Archaeopteryx is not on the direct line to modern birds.'

Well, if they suspected it they sure did not let it leak into any of the textbooks; because all of the textbooks tell you this is a perfectly good missing link - it's the best there is... [Furthermore], how can Archaeopteryx have led to birds if the birds got there before he did?...

With all the information available we notice this statement by W. E. Swinton from Cambridge, one of the leading authorities on the subject of birds and bird fossils and [their] comparative physiology. He says, 'The origin of birds is largely a matter of deduction. There is no fossil evidence of the stages through which the remarkable change from reptile to bird was achieved.'

[W. E. SWINTON, BIOLOGY & COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGY OF BIRDS, Vol. 1, p. 1]

When you look at the difference between the reptile and the bird, the [physiology] is dramatically different from the lungs, [to] the heart... [to] the bone structure. It would take an amazing revolution to get [the reptile] off the ground and flying and there's no evidence [of this] in the fossil record that this is what occurred according to a leading authority from Cambridge...

And [this is] not just true with birds. Its true with the plants. It's true with... the whole realm [of beings]... All of the... [phyla] there to begin with - distinct and separate and no new ones since then. In fact the nature of the fossil record... is pretty well summarized for us in a statement by D.B. KITTS, University of Oklahoma... in EVOLUTION [Vol. 28, p. 467]... He tells us that, 'Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of '''seeing''' evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of '''gaps''' in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them... The '''fact that discontinuities are almost always and systematically present at the origin of really big categories''' is an item of genuinely historical knowledge.'

But it is knowledge that is kept from the students reading the textbooks: Regular systematic '''gaps''' that provide '''nasty difficulties''' to the evolutionist. That's not what... [is found in the textbooks]....

But inspite of the facts, [evolutionists] continue to believe [in evolution] with great faith. One of them... author of a number of textbooks... stated bluntly... 'The fossil species remain unchanged throughout most of their history and the record fails to contain a single example of a significant transition.'

[D.S. WOODROFF, University of California, San Diego, SCIENCE, Vol. 208, 1980, p. 716]

A.C. Seward, writing about plants... says, 'The theoretically primitive type eludes our grasp; our faith postulates its existence but the type fails to materialize.'

[A.C. SEWARD, Cambridge, PLANT LIFE THROUGH THE AGES, p. 561]

[Compare a quotation from Dr. Patton's notes:

'And it has been the paleontologist - my own breed - who have been most responsible for letting ideas dominate reality: ...We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports that interpretation [gradual adaptive change], all the while knowing that it does not.'

[NILES ELDREDGE, Columbia University, American Museum Of Natural History, TIME FRAMES, 1986, p. 144]

Because [the fossil record does not support the changes required for evolution, the evolutionists have come up with a scenario]... a story, an explanation of why [the fossil record does not reflect proposed evolutionary changes]... And it's called '''punctuated equilibrium'''. Notice a discussion of it in PALEOBIOLOGY by Gould & Eldredge [Vol. 3, p. 136]... 'In fact, most published commentary on punctuated equilibria has been favorable. We are especially pleased that several paleontologists now state with pride and biological confidence a conclusion that had previously been simply embarrassing...

'''all these years of work and I haven't found any evolution.''' (R.A. REYMENT Quoted) '''The occurrences of long sequences within species are common in boreholes and it is possible to exploit the statistical properties of such sequences in detailed biostatigraphy. It is noteworthy that gradual, directed transitions from one species to another do not seem to exist in borehole samples of microorganisms.''' (H.J. MACGILLAVRY Quoted) '''During my work as an oil paleontologist I had the opportunity to study sections meeting these rigid requirements. As an ardent student of evolution, moreover, I was continually on the watch for evidence of evolutionary change.. ...The great majority of species do not show any appreciable evolutionary change at all. These species appear in the section (first occurrence) without obvious ancestors in underlying beds, are stable once established.'''

What they're saying is that [the transition to a new species] went so fast that you don't see it and so you don't expect to find it in the fossil record. Now what's the evidence for that: the fact that you don't see it. Of course, that's not positive evidence by any means!

Notice the quotation from SCIENCE, [Vol 210, Nov 20] 1980, Gabriel Dover, [Cambridge University] quoting on his analysis of punctuated equilibrium. He said [that] he 'felt strongly enough to call species stasis the single most important feature of macro evolution'

Now, you talk about double talk. What is it that's the most important feature of big change? [Answer] Staying the same. [Now evolutionists are saying that they] ...know that it changed [but they] ...don't ever see it change... So what do [they] conclude? It must have changed so rapidly [that they] didn't see it...'

Notice the statement by Stanley in his new book NEW EVOLUTIONARY TIMETABLE. He says, 'The record now reveals that species typically survive for a hundred thousand generations, or even a million or more, without evolving very much. We seem forced to conclude that most evolution takes place rapidly...

[S.M. STANLEY, Johns Hopkins, University, pp. 77, 110, NEW EVOLUTIONARY TIMETABLE, 1981]

Now, you don't see any change. What does that prove? That you're wrong when you say [that] they changed? I think that would be reasonable. No. [They] never acknowledge that. Notice his conclusion: since [they] don't see a change:

' ...We seem forced to conclude that most evolution takes place rapidly... '

You've heard about the old shell game... 'Now you see it, now you don't.' Well, this is a little bit worse: 'You didn't see it then, you don't see it now, either; and you never will see it because it went so fast you never will.'... Now, it's not based on the evidence but the lack of it - a story to patch up and to tell why the evidence is not there....

The problem... that is facing them is really monumental because they don't have a mechanism to produce this great... rapid change...

Notice [Gould's] statement... from Hobart and [William] Smith College, 1980, regarding mechanisms. He says, 'A mutation doesn't produce major new raw material. Now that's the mechanism [which provides] in most of the textbooks - mutations. But he says, 'You don't make a new species by mutating the species. That's a common idea [that] people have: that evolution is due to random mutations. Mutation is not the cause of evolutionary change...

[Stanley goes on to say that life originated via]:

'A punctuational model of evolution... ...operated by a natural mechanism...

[That they don't know about]

...whose major effects are wrought exactly where we are least able to study them - small, localized, transitory populations...

The point here is that if the transition was typically rapid and the population small and localized, fossil evidence of the event would never be found.'

[S.M. STANLEY, Johns Hopkins, University, pp. 77, 110, NEW EVOLUTIONARY TIMETABLE, 1981]

...And from that [model proposed by Stanley]... where there are just a few [newly arrived species suddenly appearing]... off by themselves, [produced so quickly] so that you never would see... [anything happen] and [with] major effects [that] you never get to study... [therefore] ...you don't see the mechanism - you don't understand it. You don't have the fossils... [because] it went so fast. You've got a conclusion [which is not] based... on a mechanism which you can see and observe, [and furthermore, it is without] fossils. I don't think that's very good science... On the other hand, the creationists base their conclusions on mechanisms that [they] observe throughout biology constantly... and [on] the fossils that [they] see... by the millions all around the world that show a sudden complex beginning and distinct and separate kinds [with] systematic gaps between them...

[Punctuated equilibrium is] just a story to cover up. In fact, that's what Colin Patterson said, who is the senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History. He says, 'Well, it seems to me that they have accepted that the fossil record doesn't give them the support they would value so they searched around to find another model and found one... ...When you haven't got the evidence, you make up a story that will fit the lack of evidence.'

[COLIN PATTERSON, DARWIN'S ENIGMA, p. 100]

[Compare a quotations from Dr. Patton's notes:

'We conclude that... ...neither of the contending theories of evolutionary change at the species level, phyletic gradualism or punctuated equilibrium, seems applicable to the origin of new body plans.'

[Valentine, University of California & Erwin, Michigan State, DEVELOPMENT AS AN EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS, p. 96, 1987]

Notice D. B. Kitts again, [of the] University of Oklahoma, one of the more prolific [writers on the subject of paleontology in the nation], writing in the journal EVOLUTION [Vol. 28, p. 466]: 'The claim is made that paleontology provides a direct way to get at the major events of organic history and that, furthermore, it provides a means of testing evolutionary theories... [Indeed, that is the claim in the textbooks. That's the claim that Stanley made]

..the paleontologist can provide knowledge that cannot be provided by biological principles alone. But he cannot provide us with evolution.'

Mark Ridley goes... one step further, writing in NEW SCIENCE, 1981 [Oxford, June, p. 831]: 'A lot of people just do not know what evidence the theory of evolution stands upon. They think that the main evidence is the gradual descent of one species from another in the fossil record.. In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation.'

Well, I use [the fossil record] to show the superiority of special creation...

[Compare this with what] E.J.H. Corner says, from Cambridge University... He says, 'Much evidence [he believes] can be adduced in favor of the Theory of Evolution from Biology, Biogeography and Paleontology, but I still think that to the unprejudiced the fossil record of plants [and for that matter, all living things] is in favor of special creation.'

[CONTEMPORARY BOTANICAL THOUGHT, p. 61