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CREATIONISM VS EVOLUTIONISM
V) CONCLUSION: CREATIONISM VS EVOLUTION
A) EVOLUTIONISTS' CLAIMS ARE SUSPECT EVEN AMONG EVOLUTIONISTS
[Henry M. Morris states, (Impact periodical #194, article entitled 'EVOLUTION - A HOUSE DIVIDED', 1989, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, Ca)]:
''' "If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand' (Mark 3:25). Evolutionists ardently defend their house against outsiders, but squabble vigorously with each other inside the house. In this article we present a collage of recent quotes from evolutionists attacking different aspects of their own basic theory. Lest we be accused of out-of-context quoting, we emphasize that each person quoted is a committed evolutionist, even though his remarks may make him sound like a creationist.
The standard evolutionary concept for the origin of the universe is the Big Bang theory, but many eminent astronomers flatly reject it.
"Both the 'Big Bang' model and the theoretical side of elementary particle physics rely on numerous highly speculative assumptions."1 "But if there was no Big Bang, how and when did the universe begin?... (Hannes) Alfven replies: 'It is only a myth that attempts to say how the universe came into being..."2
One argument for the Big Bang is the 'red shift,' but Halton Arp and other leading astronomers say 'no.'
"(Arp) maintains that quasars, for example, whose large red shifts suggest they are the most distant objects in the universe, are actually no more distant than galaxies..."3
2) EVOLUTION OF LIFE FROM NON-LIFE
It is commonly asserted that life evolved from non-living chemicals by purely naturalistic processes. However, a leading scientist in this field says:
"At present all discussions on principle theories and experiments in the field either end in stalemate or in a confession of ignorance.... The problem is that the principal evolutionary processes from prebiotic molecules to progenotes have not been proven by experimentation and that the environmental conditions under which these processes occurred are not known."4
The standard Darwinian and neo-Darwinian theories of evolution argue that new species are developed by natural selection of random variations to fit changing environments. Many evolutionists today, however, are rejecting Darwinism, even though they still cling to evolution. One such scientist is Kenneth Hsu.
"The law of natural selection is not, I will maintain, science. It is an ideology, and a wicked one, and it has as much interfered with our ability to perceive the history of life with clarity as it has interfered with our ability to see one another with tolerance.... The law of the survival of the fittest may be, therefore, a tautology in which fitness is defined by the fact of survival, not by independent criteria that would form the basis for prediction."5
Much ado has been made about the Laetoli fossil footprints in Tanqania, dated at 3.5 million years ago, supposedly proving that the australopithecine ancestors of man walked erect.
"But the first detailed study of the gaits and footprints of modern people who walk barefooted indicated the Laetoli prints are much like those of Homo sapiens and were probably not produced by Lucy's relatives, reports Russell H. Tuttle of the University of Chicago.6
It should be obvious that these footprints were made by true human beings; the only reason for rejecting this fact is the assumed 3.5-million-year age, a time long before man is supposed to have evolved.
The fossil record has traditionally been considered the best evidence for evolution, but the utter absence of true transitional forms continues to be an embarrassment.
"If we were to expect to find ancestors to or intermediates between higher taxa, it would be in the rocks of late Precambrian to Ordovician times, when the bulk of the world's higher animal taxa evolved. Yet transitional alliances are unknown or unconfirmed for any of the phyla or classes appearing then.7
"We conclude that... neither of the contending theories of evolutionary change at the species level, phyletic gradualism or punctuated equilibrium, seem applicable to the origin of new body plans."8
6) EXTINCTION VERSUS SPECIATION
Evolutionists seem unable to realize the anomaly in the slow rate of speciation versus the high rate of species extinction.
"Today's rate (of extinction) can be estimated through various analytical techniques to be a minimum of 1000, and possible several thousand species per year.... It normally takes tens of thousands of years for a new terrestrial vertebrate or a new plant species to emerge fully, and even species with rapid turnover rates, notably insects, usually require centuries, if not millennia, to generate a new species."9
So far as ever observed, no new species are now being formed. It seems that evolution, if there is such a thing, is going in the wrong direction!
Although the history of the earth and life has long been interpreted by the uniformitarian maxim, 'the present is the key to the past,' more and more geologists are returning to catastrophism.
"Our science is too encumbered with uniformitarian concepts that project the modern Earth/Life system as the primary model for interpretation of evolution and extinction patterns in ancient ecosystems. Detailed paleoenvironmental data tell us that the past is the key to the present, not vice versa."10
One of the key evidences for great age is the uniformitarian interpretation of 'evaporites,' but this very term is misleading.
"In referring to 'evaporite' ... the term begs the question as it implies desiccation. For clarity, geology needs a new term; namely 'precipitite,' rock created by precipitation. Hence rocks of the evaporitic facies could be... precipitites, deposited by precipitation from a supersaturated solution."11
Precipitation is, of course, a much more rapid process than evaporation.
[Thus canceling out the necessity for long ages of evaporation in favor of rapid - precipitation]
8) SOCIAL HARMFULNESS OF EVOLUTION
Evolutionists strongly complain when creationists point out the historically evil influence of evolutionism. Many evolutionists, however, do recognize this fact.
"...we were victims of a cruel social ideology that assumes that competition among individuals, classes, nations or races is the natural condition of life, and that it is also natural for the superior to dispossess the inferior. For the last century and more this ideology has been thought to be a natural law of science, the mechanism of evolution which was formulated most powerfully by Charles Darwin in 1859....12
(Robert Proctor) shows how the major German societies of physical anthropologists collaborated with the SS program of race hygiene, helping to make racial policy.... Eugene Fischer, the most distinguished of German physical anthropologists, regarded by many as the founder of human genetics, was particularly helpful in these efforts.... But surely American physical anthropologists spoke out clearly against the Nazi perversion of their science? They did not."13
Creationists are not the only ones who find it difficult to get a hearing from the scientific establishment. Even evolutionists who do not conform to the majority viewpoint in evolutionary dogma at a given time encounter this same bigotry, through the so-called 'peer review' process. One of the most distinguished modern astronomers is Nobel prize winner Hannes Alfven, who espouses an alternative cosmology to the Big Bang. Here is his testimony (even Nobel laureates must defer to the scientific establishment!).
"...it has given me a serious disadvantage. When I describe the phenomena according to this formalism, most referees do not understand what I say and turn down my papers."14
"But the argument 'all knowledgeable people agree that...' (with the tacit addition that by not agreeing you demonstrate that you are a crank) is not a valid argument in science. If scientific issues always were decided by Gallup polls and not by scientific arguments, science will very soon be petrified forever."15
For reasons of space, these quotes have been somewhat abbreviated, but they do represent quite fairly (if incompletely) the opinions of the respective authors. It is obvious that evolutionists argue vigorously among themselves, even though they present a solid front when arguing against creationists. Just possible, the combination of outside attack by creationists with the in-fighting among evolutionists will eventually cause the collapse of the straw house of evolution itself. After all, no one has ever seen real evolution in action, and no one knows how it works, so it foundation is very weak. One day it will be said: '...the winds blew, and bear upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it' (Matthew 7:27).
REFERENCES
1. R.L. Oldershaw, 'The Continuing Case for a Hierarchical Cosmology,' Astrophysics and Space (b. 92, 1983), p. 354.
2. E. J. Lerner, 'The Big Bang Never Happened,' Discover (v. 9, June 1988), p.78. Swedish astronomer Alfven, who has a Nobel Prize in Physics, maintains the universe has always been essentially the same. 3. John Horgan, 'Big Bang Bashers,' Scientific American (v. 257, September 1987), p. 22
4. Dose, Prof. Dr. Klaus, 'The Origin of Life; More Questions than Answers,' Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (v. 13, no. 4, 1988), p. 348. Dose is Director, Institute for Biochemistry, Gutenberg University, West Germany. 5. Kenneth J. Hsu, 'Is Darwinism Science?' Earthwatch (March 1989), p. 17. Hsu is Earth Science Head at the Swiss Institute of Earth Sciences.
6. Bruce Bower, 'A Walk Back through Evolution,' Science News (v. 135, April 22, 1989), p. 251.
7. J. W. Valentine and D. H. Erwin, 'The Fossil Record,' in Development as an Evolutionary Process (Lias, 1987), p. 84. 8. Ibid, p. 96 Valentine is a geologist at U.C. Santa Barbara, Erwin at Michigan State.
9. Norman Myers, 'Extinction Rates Past and Present,' Bioscience (v. 39, January 1989), p. 39.
10. Eric Kauffman, 'The Uniformitarian Albatross,' Palaios (v. 2, no. 6, 1987), p. 531.
11. Robert S. Dietz and Mitchell Woodhouse, 'Mediterranean Theory May Be All Wet,' Geotimes (v. 33, May 1988), p.4
12. Kenneth J. Hsu, op cit, p. 15.
13. Matt Cartmill, 'Misdeeds in Anthropopogy,' Review of Bones, Bodies, Behavior: Essays on Physical Anthropology (Wisconsin University Press, 1988). Science (v. 244, May 19, 1989), p. 858.
14. Hannes Alfven, 'Memoirs of a Dissident Scientist,' American Scientist (v. 76, May-June 1988), p. 250.
15. Ibid, p. 251.'''
1) BANKRUPTCY OF UNIFORMITARIANISM
[pp. 438-453]:
"The present widely accepted system of uniformitarianism in historical geology, its evolutionary basis and bias, has been shown to be utterly inadequate to explain most of the important geologic phenomena. Present rates and processes simply cannot account for the great bulk of the geologic data. Some form of catastrophism is clearly indicated by the fast evidences of volcanism, diastrophism, glaciation, coal and oil and mineral deposits, fossilization, vast beds of sediments, and most of the other dominant features of the earth's crust. When this fact is once recognized, it can then be seen that even the supposed evidences of great geologic age can be reinterpreted to correlate well with the much more impelling evidences of violent and rapid activity and formation.
But if present processes cannot be used to deduce the earth's past history (and this fact is proved not only by the failure of geological uniformity but even more by the impregnable laws of conservation and deterioration of energy), then the only way man can have certain knowledge of the nature of events on earth prior to the time of the beginning of human historical records, is by means of divine revelation. And this is why the bible record of Creation and the Flood immediately becomes tremendously pertinent to our understanding, not only of the early history of the earth but also of the purpose and destiny of the universe and of man.
We have, therefore, sought to show how the outline of earth history provided by the early chapters of Genesis, as well as by the related passages from other parts of the Bible, actually provides a scientifically accurate framework within which all the verified data of geology and geophysics fit together remarkably well. The great Deluge of Noah's day is seen to account for a large portion of the sedimentary rocks of the earth's crust and indirectly for the glacial and other surface deposits which resulted from the change in earth climates at the time of the Flood..."
[Lubenow, op. cit., pp. 57-58]:
According to the basic principles of the philosophy of science, a theory must be falsifiable if it is a legitimate scientific theory. How could the theory of evolution be falsified? Supposedly if fossils are found that are woefully out of order from what evolution would predict. Many such fossils have been found. KP 271 is just one of them.... ...However, evolutionists ignore the morphology of fossils that do not fall into the proper evolutionary time period. They wave their magic wand to change the taxon of these fossils. Thus, it is impossible to falsify the concept of human evolution. It is like trying to nail jelly to the wall. "That evolutionists resort to this manipulation of the evidence is a 'confession' on their part that the fossil evidence does not conform to evolutionary theory. It also reveals that the concept of human evolution is a philosophy, not science.
To the evolutionist there is but one primary fact in the universe: evolution. Everything else is just data. The value of this data does not depend upon its intrinsic quality but upon whether or not it supports evolution and its time scale. Good data is that which supports evolution. Bad data is that which does not fit evolution, and it is to be discarded. It is time to ask the paleontological community, 'At what point does philosophical bias in the interpretation of the human fossil material become intellectual dishonesty? The interpretation of KP 271 from Kanapoi justifies that question...
Evolution implies a naturalistic, mechanistic origin of things. That the oldest human fossil ever found - skimpy as it is - reveals that man was virtually the same 4.5 million years ago (on the evolutionist time scale) as he is today suggests that humans appeared on the scene suddenly and without evolutionary ancestors. Prior to 4.5 m.y.a. the hominid fossil record is a virtual blank for ten million years. This supports the idea that humans were created by a supreme being.
We are continually told how bad it is to mix religious implications with science. We don't mix them. Those implications are already there. Evolutionists act as if creationists have been trafficking in something very dark and sinister. How many young minds have we led astray by telling them that there is a Creator?
Just for the fun of it, let's grant the evolutionist his point. Let's assume that there is something very bad about telling a student that the oldest human fossil ever discovered supports Special Creation. As bad as that might be, I can think of something even worse. That would be to tell a student that the oldest human fossil ever discovered supports evolution. Because that would be a lie."
2) TWO MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE WORLD VIEWS: ONLY ONE IS RIGHT
[Lubenow, op. cit., p. 198]:
"The true difference between evolution and creation is best determined by the value each places on the individual human life. In evolution, the value of the individual human life is practically zero. In creation, the value of the individual human life is virtually infinite. It would not be stretching it too far to say that the difference between evolution and creation is the difference between zero and infinity. Our being created in the image of God - the very thing Darwin tried to erase - makes the difference.
There is a myth that the question of origins is not important. Even some Christians embrace this myth. It may be possible to study the world and life without considering origins, but it is not natural to study the world and life without considering origins. God himself has decided that the question of origins is important (Gen. 1-1; Rom. 1:18-20). In reality, the question of origins has a direct bearing on our nature, our destiny, our concept of God, and our philosophy of life. It is without question one of the most of the most profound matters an individual must face. It is the difference between zero and infinity."
[pp. 440]:
"There are really only two basic philosophies or religions among mankind. the one is oriented primarily with respect to God, the Creator, of Whom and by Whom and for Whom are all things. Man is a creature of God, among the highest of His creatures but nevertheless utterly dependent upon and responsible to Him. Man's disobedience to His Creator has resulted in universal loss of fellowship with God, and this condition manifests itself in all forms of sin and in pain and death, even being reflected in the inharmonious relationships in the rest of the animate and in the inanimate creation. Salvation from this lost condition of man and his world has required the direct intervention of God Himself, in the form of man in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, whose atoning death on the Cross of Calvary was the terrible price of redemption! But with the full price of redemption and regeneration and restoration thus provided by God in Christ, salvation then becomes available freely to all men to be received 'by grace through faith' entirely apart from man's works. This, of course, is the essence of Christianity...
...The Bible teaches a perfect Creation, followed by a Fall and subsequent deterioration, requiring the intervention of God Himself, in Christ, to bring about redemption and salvation...
[On the other hand]...Evolution postulates a gradual progress from crude beginnings through innate forces, to higher and higher levels of achievement and complexity..."
[Lubenow, op. cit., pp. 94-95]:
"It is not unusual for people to begin with a wrong idea of what the Bible teaches, reject that view, and then reject the entire Bible because 'the Bible is unscientific,' This is what Darwin did. Most people today believe that Darwin disproved biblical creationism and proved evolution. The Darwinian Revolution, one of the most significant revolutions of all time, is generally thought to be the establishment of the concept of evolution on a solid, empirical base. Not so. In the words of Harvard biologist Ernst Mayr, the Darwinian Revolution was actually a philosophical revolution from a theistic worldview to a worldview in which God was not involved in any way...
[Ref. Ernst Mayr, 'evolution and God,' Nature 248 (22 March 1974): 285-86]
Darwin did not reject biblical creation; he knew nothing about it. Even though he studied for the ministry at Cambridge, it is obvious from his writings that he did not have a clue as to what the Bible actually taught regarding Special Creation. Darwin heavily criticized Special Creation in The Origin of Species. He claimed that the imperfections of nature demonstrated that a wise and all-powerful God could not have done such a sloppy job. He seem oblivious to the fact that those imperfections of nature were the result of the Fall, and that the world is not now the way God originally made it.
Darwin's abysmal ignorance of what Genesis teaches is seen in that it was not until he was fifty-two years old, two years after he published the Origin, that he realized that he realized that the much ridiculed date of 4,000 B.C. for creation was not a part of the text of Genesis but was instead the work of Archbishop James Ussher, who lived from 1581 to 1656...
[Neal C. Gillespie, Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979), 137]
(Creationists no longer accept Ussher's date for creation.) Darwin first rejected an unbiblical, philosophical creationism and then rejected biblical creationism as well. It is a classic case of throwing out the baby with the bath water. The philosophy of nature he then developed had as its cardinal principle that it is 'unscientific' to believe in supernatural causation. Darwin's purpose was to 'ungod' the universe.
The concept of the Great Chain of Being by its very nature became a 'setup' for evolution. All one had to do was to change that static chain to a dynamic one, with the forms gradually evolving upward from one into another, and one had the basic evolutionary scenario. That philosophical preparation explains why evolution was accepted so rapidly after the publication of Darwin's Origin.
The Great Chain of Being was responsible for even more mischief. It allowed for the endorsement of slavery. When the nations of Africa and the East were opened up and world trade routes developed, western Europe learned about the many 'savage' tribes that inhabited large portions of the earth. The differences in culture and language of these 'savages' was proof to the cauvinistic western Europeans that these strange peoples were inferior races. The 'savages' were fitted into the Great Chain of Being above the apes and below the Europeans. There was no evolutionary significance in that placement. Europeans believed that the Almighty had created the 'savages' as true humans but as inferior races. Hence, since the Almighty had created them as inferior races, it was proper for the superior races of western Europe and the United States to deep them in their place; that had been ordained by the Almighty. Some even went so far as to claim that the Almighty created these inferior beings without souls, to be used by the superior races much as they would use domestic animals.
To justify this outrageous idea, some even appealed to the Bible. They claimed that there was a curse upon Ham, one of the sons of Noah, and that Ham was the father of the blacks (Gen. 9:25-27). However, even a superficial reading of those verses shows that God's judgment was not on Ham but on Canaan. Cush (Ethopia) is the biblical term for the black race. Mizraim is the common Hebrew word for Egypt. Put refers to Libya. Canaan was the father of the Canaanites who settled in Palestine and in North Africa around ancient Carthage. God's judgment was upon the Canaanites (who were white) and was subsequently carried out.; God has the right, as God, to judge nations as well as individuals. He has done so in the past and he will do so in the future, but it is done for deeds, not race. There is absolutely no basis in the Bible for racism. The Bible clearly declares that all humans are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26, 27; 9:6), and Paul declares that 'From one man he made every nation of men' (Acts 17:26).
It was against this background of the Great Chain of Being and its pagan idea of inerior races that the first Neandertal discoveries and Java Man were interpreted at the turn of the century. Many, if not most, in the anthropological community saw the Java Man skullcap as truly human...
[Bert Theunissen, Eugene Dubois and the Ape-Man from Java (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), 79-127]
...Those anthropologists did not know then of the tremendous genetic variability that exists in humans as we know it today. Yet, they did not consider Java Man to be a transitional form. They considered him to be truly human and able to reproduce with any other member of the human family. the only qualification was that they considered the owner or that skullcap as racially inferior, in the same way that they characterized Africans, Southeast Asians, and native Australians at that time..."
[pp. 440-451]:
"The other basic philosophy is oriented primarily with respect to man. This system, appearing in an almost infinite variety of forms, supposes that man is inherently capable of acquiring by his own efforts all he needs in this present life and in any possible life to come. The emphasis is always on man's own works or his reason or his religious duties or something else that he does to bring about his own improvement and ultimate salvation. The idea of God is perhaps accommodated somewhere in the system but always as a Being more or less limited in His activities or decisions. He is often conceived primarily in pantheistic terms, essentially identical with the universe and even with man himself as the highest entity thus far evolved.
And the underlying dynamic of this philosophy is the concept of evolution! The idea of development, of growth, of progress, of improvement appeals to man's pride and ambition and so finds abundant manifestation in all the many religious and philosophic systems of man, be these ancient idolatries or primitive animism or modern existentialism or atheistic communism! All of these center around man and his works, as do all other religions except Biblical Christianity! The idea of evolution did not originate with Charles Darwin, by any means; men have always conceived in some way or another the idea of man's identification with Nature and his dependence upon it for his own existence. Whatever gods there be have also been visualized as arising (evolving) out of some sort of primeval stuff or chaos. In early cosmologies this concept seems sometimes connected also with the competing concept of a divine Creator, indicating even in those times a conflict between the two fundamental systems...
...the morality of evolution, which assumes that progress and achievement and 'food' come about through such action as benefits the individual himself or the group of which he is a part to the detriment of others, is most obviously anti-Christian. The very essence of Christianity is unselfish sacrifice on behalf of others, motivated by the great sacrifice of Himself, dying in atonement for the sins of the whole world! It is highly unlikely, if not inconceivable, that an all-powerful, all-wise, all-holy God would institute two such fundamentally contradictory systems in the world...
...And the remarkable thing is that, despite its widespread acceptance as the scientific explanation of origins and processes, there is such a small amount of actual scientific evidence in favor of it! [Which evidence also supports and never disproves Creationism] There is certainly no evidence of any genuine evolution occurring in our present experience.
'Organic diversity is an observational fact more or less familiar to everyone... If we assemble as many individuals living at a given time as we can, we notice at once that the observed variation does not form any kind of continuous distribution. Instead, a multitude of separate discrete distributions are found. In other words, the living world is not a single array of individuals in which any two variants are connected by unbroken series of intergrades, but an array of more or less distinctly separate arrays, intermediates between which are absent or rare.'
[Actually the 'rare' is disallowed because not a single intermediate in all these hundreds of years has been discovered. But the author of this quotation is an evolutionist:
Th. Dobzhansky: Genetics and the Origin of Species (New York, Columbia University Press, 1951), pp. 3, 4]
And with respect to present processes of change, especially genetic mutations, we have already seen that these are practically always processes of deterioration and seldom if ever produce any real progress in evolution.
[Evolutionist Dobzhansky falsely imposes his viewpoint of evolution on this matter but nevertheless admits to the destructive effects of genetic mutations]:
'Although the living matter becomes adjusted to its environment through formation of superior genetic patterns from mutational components [Not proven and not true] the process of mutation itself is not adaptive. On the contrary, the mutants which arise are, with rare exceptions, [with NO exceptions - no mutations have been found which are an exception] deleterious to their carriers, at least in the environments which the species normally encounters. [Not supportable] Therefore the mutation process alone, not corrected [?] and guided by natural selection, [?] would result in degeneration and extinction.'
[Th. Dobzhansky: "On Methods of Evolutionary Biology and Anthropology," American Scientist, Vol. 45, December 1957, p. 385]
All the real evidence from present species and their variation supports perfectly the Biblical revelation that God created all living things 'after their kinds.' There is no evidence of present-day biological change, except within small limits [within a particular species].
And so evolutionists must say that, even though mutations are almost always harmful, the very few that may be helpful are acted upon by natural selection and preserved and that, in the course of the great ages of geologic time, these favorable changes gradually accumulate to bring about true progress in evolution...
The gymnastics of logic involved in this interpretation are perhaps unintentionally revealed by James F. Crow, when he says: 'The general picture of how evolution works is now clear. The basic raw material is the mutant gene. Among these mutants most will be deleterious, but a minority will be beneficial. These few will be retained by what Muller has called the sieve of natural selection. As the British statistician R. A. Fischer has said, natural selection is a 'mechanism for generating an exceedingly high level of improbability.'...
'There can be little doubt that man could be better off if he had a lower mutation rate. I would argue, in our present ignorance, that the ideal rate for the foreseeable future would be zero.'
[Maxwell, 'Ionizing Radiation and Evolution,' Scientific American, Vol. 201, September 1959, p. 160]
And for their proof that this [concept of genetic mutation into evolved species over great ages of time] is so, they point triumphantly to the fossil record of former life on the earth. The fossils are supposed to show the actual record of evolutionary change over the ages. Thus the geneticist Goldschmidt says in this vein:
'Fortunately there is a science which is able to observe the progress of evolution through the history of our earth. Geology traces the rocky strata of our earth, deposited one upon another in the past geological epochs through hundreds of millions of years, and finds out their order and timing and reveals organisms which lived in all these periods. Paleontology, which studies the fossil remains, is thus enabled to present organic evolution as a visible fact...'
[Richard B. Goldschmidt: "An Introduction to a Popularized Symposium on Scientific Monthly, Vol. 77, October 1953, p. 184]
But when one asks for details he is told, for example, by the paleontologist Simpson:
'In spite of these examples, it remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of families, appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences.'
[G. G. Simpson: The Major Features of Evolution (New York, Columbia U. Press, 1953), p. 360]
Dr. Dwight Davis, Curator of Vertebrate Anatomy in the Chicago Museum of Natural History, also recognizes these 'gaps' in the record.
'The sudden emergence of major adaptive types as seen in the abrupt appearance in the fossil record of families and orders, continues to give trouble. The phenomenon lay in the genetical no-man's land beyond the limits of experimentation. A few paleontologists even today cling to the idea that these gaps will be closed by further collecting... but most regard the observed discontinuities as real and have sought an explanation.'
[D. Dwight Davis: "Comparative Anatomy and the Evolution of Vertebrates" in Genetics, Paleontology and Evolution, ed. by Jepsen, Mayr and Simpson, (Princeton, N. J., Princeton University Press, 1949), p. 74]
...Darwin apologized for the weakness of the paleontological evidence for evolution in his day, hoping that these gaps would be closed by further field studies of fossils. But the gaps are still there, after another century of intensive paleontological investigations. The Professor of Geology at the University of Glasgow says: 'There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil record. In some ways it has become almost unmanageably rich, and discovery is out-pacing integration... The fossil record nevertheless continues to be composed mainly of gaps'
[T. N. George: "Fossils in Evolutionary Perspective," Science Progress, Vol. XLVIII, Jan. 1960, pp. 1, 3]
The 'explanations' are always highly speculative, involving concepts of 'explosive evolution,' continental migrations, macromutations, and the like. Davis is willing to admit:
'But the facts of paleontology conform equally well with other interpretations that have been discredited [sic] by neobiological work, e.g., divine creation, etc., and paleontology by itself can neither prove nor refute such ideas.'
[Ibid., p. 77]
Simpson and Davis were concerned primarily with gaps in the fossil record of animals. Regarding plant fossils, the paleobotanist Arnold says:
'It has long been hoped that extinct plants will ultimately reveal some of the stages through which existing groups have passed during the course of their development, but it must be freely admitted that this aspiration has been fulfilled to a very slight extent, even though paleobotanical research has been in progress for more than one hundred years. As yet we have not been able to trace the phylogenetic history of a single group of modern plants from its beginning to the present.'
[C. A. Arnold: An Intoduction to Paleobotany (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1947), p. 7]
Thus, the fossil record, no less than the present taxonomic classification system and the nature of genetic mutation mechanics, shows exactly what the Bible teaches - namely, clear-cut 'kinds' of organisms, each perhaps including numerous 'sub-kinds' with unbridged gaps between. But evolutionists persist in believing in evolution, since the only alternative is creation!..."
[pp. 440-451]
"And this is where the testimony of the Biblical deluge becomes so important! For if the Bible record is true, most of the strata could not have been deposited over long ages of time under uniformitarian conditions but were laid down in the course of a single year under catastrophic conditions. The last refuge of the case for evolution immediately vanishes away, and the record of the rocks becomes a tremendous witness, not to the operation of a naturalistic process of godless development and progress but rather to the holiness and justice and power of the living God of Creation!
And this is what the Flood was meant to be as far as its testimony to post-diluvian man is concerned. Jesus Christ pointed back to the great Flood as a reminder of God's power over the world and as a foreshadowing of His future great intervention in judgment on a sinful and rebellious world in the last days (Matthew 24:37-39). One may refer also to such passages as Luke 17:26,27, Hebrews 11:7, I Peter 3:20, and II Peter 2:5 for ample evidence that the New Testament writers regarded the Flood as a historical event of tremendous testimonial importance to modern man!
Especially pertinent and incisive is the remarkable passage found in II Peter 3:3-10 ...which we quote again, in entirety, because of its intense relevance to this situation:
(v. 3) 'Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts,
(v. 4) and saying, 'Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.'
(v. 5) For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water,
(v. 6) through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water.
(v. 7) But the present heavens and earth by His word are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
(v. 8) But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the LORD one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.
(v. 9) The LORD is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.
(v. 10) But the day of the LORD will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.'
Here again the Flood is used as a type and warning of the great coming worldwide destruction and judgment when the ''day of man' is over the 'day of the LORD' comes.' But the prophet is envisioning a time when, because of an apparent long delay, the 'promise of His coming' is no longer treated seriously. It is to become the object of crude scoffing and intellectual ridicule. It will be obvious to 'thinking men' in such a day that a great supernatural intervention of God in the world, as promised by Christ, is scientifically out of the question. That would be a miracle, and miracles contradict natural law!
And how do we know that miracles and divine intervention contradict natural law? Why, of course, because our experience shows and our philosophy postulates that 'all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation!' This is what we call our 'principle of uniformity,' which asserts that all things even from the earliest beginnings can be explained essentially in terms of present processes and rates. Even the Creation itself is basically no different from present conditions, since these processes are believed to have been operating since even the 'beginning of the creation.' There is no room for any miracle or divine intervention in our cosmology; therefore, the concept of a future coming of Christ in worldwide judgment and purgation is merely naive!
Or so they say. 'For...they willingly are ignorant of' two things! One is a real Creation. The heavens and earth were established 'by the word of God' not by uniformitarian processes! Second, this first heavens (that is, the atmospheric heavens) and the first earth perished, being 'overflowed with water.'
Recognition of these two great events of history would immediately brand as false the great system of evolutionary pantheism. These events proclaim as from a mountaintop the fact of a personal Creator-God, vitally and directly concerned with His creation, whose 'longsuffering' will one day be exhausted and who will then bring this present earth to a fiery end in atomic disintegration!
And as we have seen, the evidence of the reality of these great events, the Creation and the Deluge, is so powerful and clear that it is only 'willing ignorance' which is blind to it, according to Scripture!
Thus do the Creation (as attested to not only by Scripture but by the two great laws of thermodynamics) and the Genesis Flood as indelibly recorded in human histories and in the rocks of the earth constitute paramount scientific negation of all man-centered philosophy and religion for those who will accept it for what it is."