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CREATIONISM VS EVOLUTIONISM
III) SCRIPTURAL TESTIMONY & PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF A DESIGNED AND ORCHESTRATED CREATION, (cont.)
4) VARIATIONS IN LIFEFORMS MICRO VARIATION NOT MACRO EVOLUTION - A DESIGN WITHIN EACH SPECIES - GOD'S DESIGN, NOT EVOLUTION:
[Dr. John D. Morris states, (Impact periodical, published by the Institute For Creation Research, El Cajon, Ca, 1994, article entitled "DOES 'THE BEAK OF THE FINCH' PROVE DARWIN RIGHT?"]:
"The two scholars, Drs. Peter and Rosemary Grant observed how, under drought conditions, birds with larger beaks were better adapted than others, thus their percentage increased. But this trend reversed when the cyclical conditions reversed. Furthermore, in times of drought, the normally separate species were observed to cross-breed. They are related after all. Darwin was right!
But is this really evolution? Even after the changes there is still the same array of beak sizes and shapes. This is variation and adaptation, not evolution.
Actually, de-evolution has occurred; the observation is that there are larger groupings of species into what may be more reminiscent of the originally created kind.
Creation agrees with Darwin's observations and with the newer observations, but evolution doesn't, even though the Grants interpret this as rapid evolution. Wonderful study, great data, wrong interpretation."
[Dr. Don R. Patton, video tape #1 entitled, 'What is Creation Science? Overview of Evidence' 'CREATION/EVOLUTION SEMINAR']:
"We need to remember that variation does not prove the general theory of evolution. The creationist would predict variation, but there would be limits to that variation...
We want to begin by looking at the evidence that was observed by Charles Darwin. What did he see that cause him to conclude that the evidence favored evolution as an explanation of origins? Charles Darwin made a trip as a naturalist on the ship the Beagle around the world and particularly the Galapagos Islands. [He] was able to observe things that he thought supported evolution. He observed that finches on some of the islands had large beaks adapted for breaking the seeds. Finches on other islands had different beaks that were adapted for reaching into the bark and to get insects. And on varying islands there were varying finches. I think he observed variation, but they were still finches. They didn't change from one thing to another. Another line of evidence that he pointed to was the pepper moth which before the industrial revolution... with the trees still clean [of factory soot was] somewhat camouflaged [and] lighter colored... [On the other hand] whereas the black colored pepper moth stuck out like a sore thumb. If you are a bird looking for supper, and you eat pepper moths then obviously the black ones are in trouble. However, after the industrial revolution, the black ones are now camouflaged, the light colored ones stick out like sore thumbs, and lo and behold the numbers did shift. [Of] course we observed that there were black ones before and light ones before also. There were light ones and black ones afterwards. Nothing came about that was new. There was a shift in relative numbers of the population only. And that's all that we see when we look at the pepper moth. We don't see anything new. They didn't become eagles or they didn't become birds or anything of that nature.
[Compare Dr. Morris' article of April 1999 in the Back to Genesis brochure # 124, 'What About the Peppered Moth?', Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, Ca]:
"Perhaps the classic 'proof' of evolution has been the observed color shift in the population of England's peppered moths. Pictures of dark and light peppered moths on various tree trunks have appeared in every biology textbook. It's on the tip of the tongues of evolutionary spokesmen worldwide.
Here's the well-told scenario. In the early 1800s, nearly all of the individual peppered moths (Biston betularia) were of a light grey, speckled, color. Active mostly at night, they needed to hide by day from predatory birds. Since trees and rocks were typically covered with mottled light green, gray lichens, the moths were effectively camouflaged. A rare peppered moth exhibited a dark color and was easily seen by birds; thus they seldom survived. On average, over 98% of all the species were of the light variety, yet ... both dark and light were of the same species and were fully interfertile.
Then came the industrial revolution and the air filled with soot, covering the trees and rocks with a toxic film, killing the lichens and darkening the trees. Soon the light variety of moth was easily seen while the darker were camouflaged. By the turn of the century, 9% of the moths were dark. When English medical doctor Bernard Kettlewell studied the phenomena in the 1950s, it became 'Darwin's Missing Evidence' - natural selection in action.
Creationists were never concerned with this population shift. In fact, they were amused as evolutionists made such a big fuss over it. If this is the best 'proof' of evolution, then evolution is without proof.
Remember that both varieties were present at the start, with the mix of genes producing lights favored over the mix of genes producing darks. As the environment changed, the dark variety had greater opportunity to pass on their genetic mix, and percentages changed. All the while, the two types were interfertile. No new genes were produced, and certainly no new species resulted. This is natural selection in action, but not evolution. Adaptation happens, but the changes are limited.
The textbooks seldom point out that in recent decades, as England has cleaned its atmosphere, the shift has reversed and now the lights are the more common form once again. Remember, this shift and shift back again have nothing whatsoever to do with the origin of moths, or how moths and people could share a common ancestor.
And now comes the revelation that Kettlewell's compelling argument has not been verified by other investigators (Nature, vol. 396, November 5, 1998, pp. 35, 36). Furthermore, we now know that neither dark nor light moths ever spend their days on exposed tree trunks or rocks as depicted in the famous textbook pictures. His original associates have even admitted that the photographs were faked, that the moths were glued onto the tree. Thus the star witness for evolution has perjured itself, and knowledgable evolutionists are recommending it not be used .
What a wonderful time to be a creationist, when even the supposed best proof of evolution in action is so flimsy that it cannot stand the test of truth."
[Dr. Don R. Patton, cont., video tape #1 entitled, 'What is Creation Science? Overview of Evidence' 'CREATION/EVOLUTION SEMINAR']:
Of course the assumption is that these things will add up to become greater changes. Small changes you can see over millions of years that you can't see will accumulate. Well, do they accumulate? That's an assumption we don't observe. And science is, of course, what we observe....
Can we test that [assumption]? I think we can. We look, for example, at drosophila and bacteria which multiply extremely rapidly. The drosophila... has a new generation every two weeks, whereas bacteria [have] a new generation every twenty minutes. And so we observe billions of generations of bacteria. Did they change? Not really, they're still drosophila, they're still three... kinds of bacteria that were observed... 300 years ago. [There is] some variation, yes - curly winged drosophila, different colored eyes. some variation observed in bacteria, certainly, but still three types and still a fruit fly. And we have a [relatively] long time that intervenes. Notice the statement by Michel Delsol, professor of biology at the University of Lyons writing in the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE LIFE SCIENCES, 'If mutation were a variation of value to the species, then the evolution of drosophila should have proceeded with extreme rapidity. Yet the facts entirely contradict the validity of this theoretical deduction...
[And it is obviously theoretical - we don't observe it]
...for we have seen that the Drosophila type has been known since the beginning of the Tertiary period, that is for about fifty million years, and it has not been modified in any way during that time.'
Every two weeks, a new generation. Fifty million years according to them. Of course, I disagree with their time system.... But playing the game their way to see how it comes out, we say fifty million years and a new generation every two weeks - no change in any way. I think we see a challenge to that secondary assumption that says, 'Given enough time and enough generations it will add up [to a new species].'
[MICHEL DELSOL, Professor of Biology, University of Lyons, ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE LIFE SCIENCES, Volume II, p. 34]
The generations involved here would be the equivalent of billions of years of generations for humans, but he says, 'No change of any kind.'
Likewise with bacteria, notice the statement with Dr. Braun in his book, 'Bacterial Genetics,' 'That is the potential mutations of a given biotype are normally limited... else we should have been able to observe drastic evolutionary changes in laboratory studies with bacteria. Despite the rapid rate of propagation and the enormous size of attainable populations, changes within initially homogeneous bacterial populations apparently do not not progress beyond certain boundaries under experimental conditions.'
Now here is another observation... We see, not just variation, but we see boundaries to that variation. And that observation is often ignored.
[Compare a quotation by Colin Patterson, British Museum of Natural History from CLADISTICS, BBC, March 4, 1982 as quoted in Dr. Patton's notes accompanying the video tapes]:
'No one has ever produced a species by mechanisms of natural selection. No one has ever gotten near it and most of the current argument in neo-Darwinism is about this question.']
We hear, though, a lot about the variation of bacteria. And that's often presented as evidence for evolution. Interesting information has come to light recently from the Medical Tribune. Notice the article which says, 'It may be time to rethink our thoughts about the mechanisms for antibiotic-resistance patterns... the anaerobic bacteria, from the bowels of three members of an 1845 Arctic expedition, have survived 140 years and are showing resistance patterns to modern antibiotics. Current theories suggest that antibiotic resistance is linked to long-term exposure to antibiotics...
[In other words, this is a major portion of the evidence for evolution. We see bacteria becoming resistant]
Needless to say, antibiotics were not developed until long after these 19th century bacteria and their host had been buried in the Arctic permafrost.'
Compare what John D. Morris states, [Back to Genesis brochure #118, Oct. '98, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, Ca. 92021, 'Do Bacteria 'Evolve' Resistant to Antibiotics?]:
"Often the claim is made in biology classes that evolution has been observed in certain microbes - germs that over time have developed a resistance to antibiotics. For instance, penicillin is generally now less effective than before. Stronger and more focused drugs have been developed, each with initial benefits, but which must continue to be replaced with something stronger. Now, 'super germs' defy treatment.
One might ask, have these single-celled germs 'evolved'? And does this prove that single-celled organisms evolved into plants and people?
As is frequently the case, we must first distinguish between variation, adaptation, and recombination of existing traits (i.e., microevolution) and the appearance of new and different genes, body parts, and traits (i.e., macroevolution). Does this acquired resistance to antibiotics, this population shift, this dominant exhibition of a previously minority trait point to macroevolution? Since each species of germ remained that same species and nothing new was produced, the answer is no!
Here's how it works. In a given population of bacteria, many genes are present which express themselves in a variety of ways. In a natural environment, the genes (and traits) are freely mixed. When exposed to an antibiotic, most of the microbes die. But some, through a fortuitous genetic recombination, possess a resistance to the antibiotic. They are the only ones to reproduce, and their descendants inherit the same genetic resistance. Over time, virtually all possess this resistance. Thus the population has lost the ability to produce individuals with a sensitivity to the antibiotic. No new genetic information was produced; indeed, genetic information was lost.
A new line of research has produced tantalizing results. Evidently, when stressed, some microbes go into a mutation mode, rapidly producing a variety of strains, thereby increasing the odds that some will survive the stress. This has produced some interesting areas for speculation by creationists, but it still mitigates against evolution. There is a tremendous scope of genetic potential already present in a cell, but E. coli bacteria before stress and mutation remain E. coli. Minor change has taken place, but not true evolution.
Furthermore, it has been proven that resistance to many modern antibiotics was present was present decades before their discovery. In 1845, sailors on an ill-fated Arctic expedition were buried in the permafrost and remained deeply frozen until bodies were exhumed in 1986. Preservation was so complete that six strains of nineteenth-century bacteria found dormant in the contents of the sailors' intestines were able to be revived! When tested, these bacteria were found to possess resistance to several modern-day antibiotics, including penicillin. Such traits were obviously present prior to penicillin's discovery, and thus could not be an evolutionary development.
Here's
the point. Mutations, adaptation, variation, diversity, population shifts,
et., all occur, but, these are not macroevolutionary changes."
[Patton, cont.]:
[Medical Tribune, 12/29/88, p. 23]
It wasn't the penicillin that caused these things to change. They changed long before the penicillin came on the scene. And so obviously, that's not the explanation for it. The explanation is [that] there are some of those bacteria [which are antibiotic resistant] that naturally occur and you kill off everything else. That's all that's left. Well, so goes the evidence that is supposed to prove the point. We want to emphasize... that there are two observation. We see variation. We would call it horizontal because it doesn't lead to a totally different kind. There is also observed variation boundaries. Bacteria: three kinds since 300 years ago. Likewise, with drosophilus, still drosophila, even after - according to them - [50 million] years... Now the first variation would fit one model as well as the other. The second observation fits and serves only one model. So as we evaluate the evidence from variation, we see an advantage for the creation position when we acknowledge all of the evidence.... Unfortunately, a good bit of that evidence is often camouflaged or hidden from the students of evolution.
Scientists have begun to recognize these boundaries and the problems of adding up the small changes to the big ones. Notice article upon science just in 1980 under the heading in Science, 'Evolutionary Theory Under Fire'... 'An historic conference in Chicago challenges the four-decade long dominance of the Modern Synthesis.....
[The Modern Synthesis is the modern evolutionary theory which synthesizes... Darwin's view of change with [the modern theory regarding genetic inheritance].... But, putting that together - synthesizing the two ideas, we have the modern theory of evolution]
'The central question of the Chicago conference was whether mechanisms underlying micro-evolution...
[That is... variation] can be extrapolated to explain the phenomenon of macroevolution...
[Or big changes, change from one kind to another kind]
At the risk of doing violence to the positions of some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No...'
Now, that's interesting. The leading scientists in the world say, 'Can little ones add up to the big ones?' And when they look at the evidence that we see, the boundaries that we talked about as well as evidence in paleontology which shows they don't change... You'd have to say, 'No, they don't add up to something else.' In fact they quote Francisco Ayala as they describe him, 'a major figure in propounding the Modern Synthesis in the United States,' said, 'We would not have predicted stasis...
[Now, stasis is staying the same, that's status or status quo... not change - the opposite of evolution]
...but I am now convinced from what paleontologists say that small changes do not accumulate.'
[Science. V. 210, Nov. 21, 1980]
'Do not accumulate': Well, that's the foundation of Darwin's conclusions. He saw the changes - the small changes.... will add up to become big change But they don't accumulate. We see that from the fossil record and we see it from also the living world around us. In fact, notice the statement by S. M. Stanley when he says. 'Natural selection, long viewed as the process guiding evolutionary change, cannot play a significant role in determining the overall course of evolution. Macroevolution... [the big changes] is decoupled from microevolution."
[S.M. STANLEY, Johns Hopkins U., Pro. N.A.S., v72, p. 648]
[Compare another S. M. STANLEY quotation from Dr. Patton's notes]:
'Once established, an average species of animal or plant will not change enough to be regarded as a new species, even after surviving for some-thing like a hundred thousand, or a million, or even ten million generations. ...Something tends to prevent the wholesale restructuring of a species, once it has become well established on earth.'
[S. M. STANLEY, Johns Hopkins Univ., Johns Hopkins Magazine, p. 6, June, 1982]
Now we do see the microevolution, but that is not connected to macro which is different. And since it is different, the little ones don't add up. Natural selection can't have played a part. And not only do we see natural selection eliminated by leading evolutionists, we see, likewise, mutations no longer part of the evolutionary picture. [This is] even attested to by Stephen Gould of Harvard, perhaps the best known evolutionist in the country. He says, 'A mutation doesn't produce major new raw material.
You don't make a new species by mutating the species... That's a common idea people have; that evolution is due to random mutations. A mutation is NOT the cause of evolutionary change.'
[STEPHEN J. GOULD, Harvard, Lecture at Hobart and William Smith College, 14/2/1980]
[Compare another quotation by Stephen J. Gould, Natural History, 2/82, p. 22,23 from Dr. Patton's notes]:
'We can tell tales of improvement for some groups, but in honest moments we must admit that the history of complex life is more a story of multifarious variation about a set of basic designs than a saga of accumulating excellence.']
Now, if mutations don't do it, if natural selection doesn't do it, you see the problem with Darwin's view of evolution: these variants that he observed don't really play a role... They fit best into the concept of creation... A benevolent Creator would create a capacity to vary, to adapt to different circumstances. But the question is, 'Do they change to a different kind?' The evidence is that they do not do that. Stephen Gould makes this conclusion in Paleobiology in 1980, 'I well remember how the synthetic theory beguiled me with its unifying power when I was a graduate student in the mid-60's. Since then I have been watching it slowly unravel as a universal description of evolution... I have been reluctant to admit it - since beguiling is often forever - but if Mayr's characterization of the synthetic theory is accurate, that theory, as a general proposition, is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy.'
[STEPHEN J. GOULD, Harvard, Paleobiology, Vol. 6, 1980, p. 120]
What's in our textbooks according to Gould is not right...."
5) SIMILARITIES INDICATE A COMMON DESIGN NOT A COMMON ANCESTRY
[Dr. Don Patton, op. cit., tape #3, cont.]:
"Well, Dott and Batten, authors of one of the major geology textbooks... commonly used in colleges around the country, called EVOLUTION OF THE EARTH, tell us, 'We have arranged the groups in a traditional way with the '''simplest''' forms first, and progressively more complex groups following...
[How did they get that way? Not because of the fossil record. 'We arranged them,' they say]:
This particular arrangement is arbitrary and depends on what definition of '''complexity''' you wish to choose...
[Well, they arranged them based on their evolutionary assumptions which they acknowledge in spite of what the fossil record tells us... ]
...things are alike because they are related, and the less they look alike, the further removed they are from their common ancestor.'
[R. H. DOTT, University of Wisconsin & R. L. BATTEN, Columbia University, A.M.N.H., EVOLUTION OF THE EARTH, p. 602]
[So] the basic assumption [of the evolutionist] is that similarities indicate a common genetic relationship. And so on the basis of [certain selected] similarities [ignoring marked differences] they have arranged the [fossil] tree... But [common genetic relationship] is not the only explanation and any explanation is unproved if there is an alternative. You must eliminate all other alternatives to have proof and similarity has a number of possible explanations... We look, for example, at [a] row of houses... in a subdivision... we see the similarity in the houses... How would you interpret the similarity? ...They [are] genetically related? [No] They have no genetics. They're similar because of common design. They had a common designer. And we look at the various... structures in the living world today and likewise we see similarities... They would... be similar if they were created by a common Designer. Wouldn't a common Designer create similar forms for similar functions?... And furthermore... when we look at the genetics of [different but 'similar' organisms]... we find that they do NOT come from common genetics... For example, in the newt we find that the hand develops from segments 2 through 5, in the lizard [it develops] from segments 6 through 9, and in man [it develops] from segments 13 through. Totally different genetics account for this similarity....
We look at... [the] reptile Ichthyosaurus [which is very similar to the] dolphin... or porpoise... not a fish type [but] a mammal, [it] has to breathe... A reptile and a mammal [which both] look like a fish... [And] sometimes the porpoise... is confused for the shark [which is a fish] they're so similar...
Consider the statement by J. Z. Young, professor of Anatomy at Oxford. He refers to this phenomenon as variations on a series of themes...
[From Dr. Patton's notes:
'...similar features repeatedly appear in distinct lines. ...Parallel evolution is so common that it is almost a rule that detailed study of any group produces a confused taxonomy. Investigators are unable to distinguish populations that are parallel new developments from those truly descended from each other.'
[J. Z. YOUNG, Professor of Anatomy, Oxford, LIFE OF THE VERTEBRATES, p. 779]:
'If, then, it can be established beyond dispute that similarity or even identity of the same character in different species is not always to be interpreted to mean that both have arisen from a common ancestor, the whole argument from comparative anatomy seems to tumble in ruins.'
[T. H. MORGAN, Professor of Zoology, Columbia University, SCIENCE MONTHLY, 16; 3; 237, p. 216]
'It is now clear that the pride with which it was assumed that the inheritance of homologous structures from a common ancestor explained homology was misplaced; for such inheritance cannot be ascribed to identity of genes. The attempt to find homologous genes has been given up as hopeless.'
[SIR GAVIN DEBEER, Professor Embryology, University of London, Director BMNH, Oxford Biology Reader, p. 16, HOMOLOGY AN UNSOLVED PROBLEM]
What accounts for variations on a series of themes?... [This] would sound more like a Designer, wouldn't it? [Young] says, 'Perhaps even more remarkable are the duck bills of animals that sift small invertebrates from the mud..' He says, 'There is a distinct similarity in the structures used for this purpose by the polydon, by the ducks... by the platypus... With fish and with reptiles, with the platypus, with the birds, you find duckbills.... We look, for example, at the platypus... we see.. the duckbill... the toe sticking up [which] functions much like a fang, it injects poison... [it] also lays leathery eggs like a reptile... [it has] the webbed feet and the birdlike duckbill, [it has] the beaver fur, [it has] the mammary glands...
We're often pointed to the blood serum similarities between the chimpanzee and the human... But if we compare milk chemistry instead of blood serum, it's not the chimpanzee that's the closest [to human's]... it's the donkey that has milk chemistry almost exactly like mother's milk... We see distinct similarity with the garter snake [relative to cholesterol]... Likewise, foot structure: the closest [to humans] is the glacial bear, not the chimpanzee, not the ape... Regarding [the] tear enzyme, we find [that] the chicken has the same chemistry in the egg to kill bacteria that we have in our eyes to kill bacteria. When it comes to blood antigen A... the butterbean [is most similar to humans]... The cockroach [has a similar] brain hormone... Notice a statement that appeared in DISCOVER MAGAZINE, the year before last. It says... the cockroach and man... shares a common brain hormone...
Well, what we're pointing out here are the variations on a theme. And the similarities that we see are not similarities developed gradually and branch outward that would explain... common ancestors but [these similarities instead are] randomly spaced throughout the animal kingdom: one Antigen A in the butterbean and us, cholesterol in us and also in the garter snake, and similar blood serum with the chimpanzee. But what we're seeing is not this gradual developing, branching pattern; but rather what we're seeing is the mosaic - like the artist who puts the blue tile here when he needs it and puts the blue tile there when he needs it, randomly dispersed for similar functions throughout the living world. Now that is the picture that's seen when we look at similarities. They don't come from common genetic origin... They don't fit the branching pattern... They fit the picture of a common Designer Who uses... the various forms... like a composer... variations on [a] theme, if you please.
Stephen J. Gould makes this point in NATURAL HISTORY [2/82, p. 22] when he says, 'We can tell tales of improvement...
[Telling tales involves not basing it on the evidence, but telling a story. But he says]
...in honest moments we must admit that the history of complex life is more a story of multifarious variation about a set of basic designs than a saga of accumulating excellence...
[Now, that's what we see in the fossil record. We see sudden complex beginning... We see variation about a set of... (Gould is saying): basic designs...] ...I regard the failure to find a clear '''vector of progress''' in life's history as the most puzzling fact of the fossil record. ...we gave sought to impose a pattern that we hoped to find on a world that does not really display it.'
[Compare from Dr. Patton's notes]:
'Every paleontologist knows that most species don't change. That's bothersome... brings terrible distress... They may get a little bigger of bumpier but they remain the same species and that's not due to imperfection and gaps but stasis. And yet this remarkable stasis has generally been ignored as not data. If they don't change, its not evolution so you don't talk about it.'
I think we can summarize it this way...
The evidence... shows us that there is a sudden and complex and diverse beginning. Continuing from that [beginning] we see variation [of] basic designs... [and not an evolving from one species into another]. Yes, there are trees in the biology textbooks, but they're not from the fossil record, they're in spite of it..."
SCIENTIFIC ROADBLOCKS TO WHALE EVOLUTION
BY FRANK SHERWIN
[Impact brochure, Oct 1998, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, Ca]
Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius: By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.
Hamlet: Me thinks it is like a weasel.
Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet: Or like a whale?
Polonius: Very like a whale.
INTRODUCTION
The American public - including young people in our tax-supported public schools - is constantly indoctrinated with the curious idea that people (and whales) have come from bacteria.
One legitimate answer to the question 'What is life' is 'bacteria.' Any organism, if not itself a live bacterium, is then a descendant - one way or another - of a bacterium or, more likely, mergers of several kinds of bacteria.1
Naturalists shroud such whimsical statements with the mantle of science. Indeed, one encounters many bizarre explanations for the origin of the species when such strange fiction grips biology. A popular contemporary 'just so' story tells how land mammals ventured back into the ancient seas and became whales. The idea was first presented by Darwin in the first edition of his book, Origin of Species. The naturalist stated: 'I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale.' Interestingly, Darwin retracted this example in all later editions of his book.
This has not stopped later evolutionists. For example, the ancient ancestors of whales, writes the late Sir Gavin de Beer, '...had dentitions enabling them to feed on large animals, but some took to preying on fish and rapidly evolved teeth like sharks... Next, some whales preyed on small cuttlefish and evolved a reduced dentition. Finally the whalebone whales, having taken to feeding on enormous numbers of small shrimps, also evolved rapidly. 2
This imaginary tale explains nothing. No one was there to observe, measure, or take notes regarding the above process. Thus, it is idle speculation and should not be considered science.
When we investigate whale evolution from a non-whale ancestor, the problems seem as enormous as the creatures themselves. In 1982, a British science writer and evolutionist said:
The problem for Darwinians is in trying to find an explanation for the immense number of adaptations and mutations needed to change a small and primitive earthbound mammal, living alongside and dominated by dinosaurs, into a huge animal with a body uniquely shaped so as to be able to swim deep in the oceans, a vast environment previously unknown to mammals... all this had to evolve in at most five to ten million years - about the same time as the relatively trivial evolution of the first upright walking apes into ourselves.3
Evolutionist Michael Denton described the problem of such a fantastic transition by saying: '...we must suppose the existence of innumerable collateral branches leading to many unknown types... one is inclined to think in terms of possibly hundreds, even thousands of transitional species on the most direct path between a hypothetical land ancestor and the common ancestor of modern whales ...we are forced to admit with Darwin that in terms of gradual evolution, considering all the collateral branches that must have existed in the crossing of such gaps, the number of transitional species must have been inconceivably great.4
It is no wonder that '...the evolutionary origin of whales remains controversial among zoologists.' 5
THE PHYSIOLOGY PROBLEM
A number of land animals have been proposed as the whale's ancestor, including Darwin's bear, grazing ungulates, wolf-like carnivores (Mesonyx), and the hippopotamus. In each case the morphological differences are significant. If whales (cetaceans) did devolve from land mammals, they did so at an unbelievable rate, accruing an amazing number of 'beneficial' mutations and adaptations.
The skeletal features would need to change radically, as well as the physiology (the collective functions of an organism). For example, the supposed early 'whale,' Ambulocetus, drank fresh water probably throughout its life '50 million years ago,' and Indocetus was a saltwater drinker '48 million years ago,' This means that in perhaps three million years there had to be an extreme change in the physiology of these creatures.6
These 'proto-whales' would have had to mutate in a beneficial manner to produce the above physiological adaptations. However, science shows that organisms don't survive a rapid rate of mutation. Additionally, a popular encyclopedia recently stated: 'Presumably, various physiological mechanisms for handling oxygen debt and lactic acid buildup, as well as the development of blubber for fat storage and for temperature regulation, evolved early, though evident of the evolutionary history is unavailable.'7
Less obvious essential design features would ensure the cetaceans against hypothermia. Mammals are warmblooded creatures designed by the Creator to function at a constant body temperature higher than fish, reptiles, or amphibians.
Maintaining a core body temperature while being bathed in an ocean of cold water would be a definite problem for the cetaceans. However, whale fins have fascinating biological structures called countercurrent heat exchangers to conserve heat. Also, zoologists have recently discovered exchangers located at the base of the massive tongue of grey whales.8 These exchangers are a series of blood vessels arranged so that they too function as heat exchangers to minimize heat loss. The grey whale would otherwise lose much body heat through the tongue's extensive vascularization.
Macroevolutionists cannot appeal to natural selection to produce amazing structures like the countercurrent system, although comparative physiologists present countercurrent exchange found in the gills and kidneys as structures that repeatedly evolved. Indeed, no known process can turn a four-legged land creature into a blue whale: 'Natural selection can act only on those biologic properties that already exist; it cannot create properties in order to meet adaptational needs.' 9 Specifically, natural selection cannot produce new structures as is often stated in evolutionary just-so stories; it can only preserve the best-adapted varieties which occur by other means.
Problems from Head to Tail
Gould10 proclaims the long and slim Basilosaurus as '...the 'standard' and best-known early whale.' However, evolutionist Barbara J. Stahl states: 'The serpentine form of the body and the peculiar serrated cheek teeth make it plain that these archaeocetes [i.e., Basilosaurus and related creatures] could not possibly have been ancestral to any of the modern whales.'11 Today there are two major groups of cetaceans: the baleen whales, called the mysticeti with double blowholes; and the toothed whales, odontoceti with a single blowhole. Stahl presents irritating morphological facts such as: '...the structure of the skull in the odontocete and mysticete forms shows a strange modification not present, even in a rudimentary way, in Basilosaurus and its smaller relatives...' She also describes sperm whales (odontocete) which have an asymmetric arrangement of bones that for the skull, while mysticeans have a symmetrical arrangement.
None of the suggested whale's terrestrial ancestors (ungulates or carnivores) have a vertical tail movement. However, whales (and an alleged link, Ambulocetus) do have a spinal up-and-down undulation. When did this happen? Where are all the fossils documenting how the side-to-side movement of the land mammal's tail changed to the down and up movement of Ambulocetus (and the whales)? This is quite significant! The land ancestor of the whale would have to gradually eliminate its pelvis, replacing it with a very different skeletal structure and associated musculature that would support a massive, flat tail (with flukes). Pure undirected chance would have to simultaneously produce these horizontal tail flukes independently, diminish the pelvis, and allow the deformed land creature to continue to live and even flourish in the sea.
The Problem of Molecular Biology
At the 1997 keynote lecture of Darwin Day at the University of Tennessee, Douglas Futuyma stated that '..the molecular revolution in biology has furnished us with mountains of information that not only attests to the history of evolution, but also sheds even more light on evolutionary processes. A far different evaluation was given the same year by three evolutionary biologists who stated: '...even with the appropriate genes, the molecular tree of life is difficult to interpret.'12 Few systematists (biologists who study taxonomy and are involved in reconstructing phylogenetic, or evolutionary, history) would say that morphological patterns of form line up with the molecular evidence.
Regarding the supposed relationship between terrestrial and aquatic mammals, one publication reported: 'These results reveal a large discordance between morphological and molecular measures of similarity. Rats and mice are classified in the same family, while cows and whales are classified in different orders. Perhaps molecular sequences are not necessarily giving us an accurate picture of ancestry.'13
Zoologist John Gatesy reports competing interpretations of whale origins using phylogenetic analyses of a blood-clotting protein gene from cetaceans, artiodactls (pigs, hippopotamuses, ruminants, and camels), perissodactlyls (rhinos and horses), and carnivores. He says that in combination with published DNA sequences, the data of this clotting protein '...unambiguously support a hippo/whale clade and are inconsistent with the paleontological perspective.'14
Ever since Darwin we have seen that neither natural selection nor random mutations could possibly serve as remotely sufficient mechanisms of change that would turn terrestrial tetrapods into whales. Molecular biology, physiology, and morphology present impenetrable roadblocks for tracing a common ancestry from tetrapods to archaeocetes to modern whales."
References
1. Margulis and Sagan, What is Life? (New York: Simon & Schuster 1995), p. 53.
2. Atlas of Evolution (1964)
3. F. Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe (Ticknor & Fields, New Haven & New York, 1982), p/ 90.
4. M. Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Adler & Adler, 1985), p. 174.
5. Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia (1996).
6. J. Thewissen, et al., 'Evolution of Cetacean Osmoregulation,' Nature, 381: 379-380 (1996).
7. Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia (1996).
8. J. Heyning and J. Mead, 'Thermoregulation in the Mouths of Feeding Gray Whales,' Science, 278:1138-39 (1997).
9. Noble, et al., Parasitology, 6th ed. (Lea & Febiger, 1989), p. 516.
10. S. J. Gould, 'Hooking Leviathan by Its Past, 'Natural History (May 1994), pp. 8-15.
11. B. J. Stahl, Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution (Dover Publications, Inc., 1985), p. 489.
12. Erwin, Valentine and Jablonski, American Scientist, 85:127 (1997).
13. 'The Marsupial Mitochondrial Genome and the Evolution of Placental Mammals,' Genetics, 137:243-256 (1994).
14. J. Gatesy, 'More DNA Support for a Cetacea/Hippopotamidae Clade...' Molecular Biological Evolution 14(5):537-543 (1997)."
