Incompatible!

 

Nothing is more incompatible than the polar opposites provided by explanations for creation. These divide into two camps. Modern Science holds the dominant position claiming evolutionary theory as the only possible plausible account of creation. The only competitor to Darwinism is God as Designer and Creator. There are of course attempts to bridge this gap which tend to attract Christian intellectuals attempting to escape what they believe to be an embarrassing dead end: namely the Genesis account found in the opening chapter of the Old Testament. This ancient account is largely ignored or treated with contempt. Why? because it assumes an almighty force above and beyond the bounds of nature. One which it is claimed is both unprovable and extremely unlikely. My answer to that accusation is compared to what? The only other explanation which is evolution should evoke a similar reaction since it has not been proved and arguably cannot be proved. Two hundred and fifty years plus since its appearance and it is seen to be still shot full of holes, as is roved by numerous quotes listed later in this article. It is also counter intuitive. Biological systems which at every level of their existence give the appearance of exquisite design are said to be without a single fraction of design. Purpose also is ruled out. Why? It cannot be ruled out on the basis of science. An oak tree dropping its seeds in season guarantees the propagation of the species. It is an act of faith to insist that this has no purpose in a greater scheme of things. That one biological act is linked to another in an endless circular chain of events which contribute to what we call the Eco System. The Eco System exists in another finely tuned environment, and that in another until we hit the foundational laws of physics and chemistry which rule everything from the earth to the outer edges of the universe; that is if there is a boundary to the universe. The denial of a higher purpose is an act of faith perhaps more closely linked to spitting into the wind. My view is that much of modern science is devoted to hypothetical assertions which are presented as established facts. This is not realised by most and is kept well under wraps by the many enthusiastic apologists for Darwinian explanations.

So, is Darwinism pseudo science? 

Here is a definition of Pseudo science: A collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as based on the scientific method. This Scientific Method is a systematic procedure that has characterised natural science since the 17th century, consisting of observation, measurement, and experiment, plus the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses. If Darwinism were a religion it would be pulled apart by critics largely because the explanations offered are incoherent. Designed objects and systems such as those found in nature do not just appear. According to the Scientific Method, which is set aside in the cause of Darwinism, evolutionary theory when applied to nature is unbelievable.

The greats of science, the fathers of most of its disciplines always applied the scientific method. Faraday, Clerk Maxwell, Mendel, Boyle, Newton etc. They observed, hypothesised, critically tested, and repeated their experiments and tests, thereby proving themselves. They were all bible believing Christians. They based their key assumptions on the belief that a rational God had created the universe. They were proved correct: it was discovered that mathematical principles and equations underpinned everything everywhere. Today we have the The Big Bang theory. One filled with fudge factors, including out of nothing came everything, inflation theory, the invention of dark matter and dark energy neither of which have ever been observed. The Multiverse theory, the belief in an infinity of universes can never be proved either true or false by the scientific method. And yet it has become an icon, a fixed belief lodged in some of the finest minds on the planet. Pseudo science reigns like a sovereign in all these areas. Another is evolution, a subject on which I have devoted a lot of time and space.

The reason I am going to give is heartfelt and personal. Darwinism and its explanation for life through evolution and millions of years has done more damage to the biblical accounts and caused more loss of those born to Christian parents than any other secular belief system bar none. I studied the matter and survived, perhaps only by the grace of God since I worked to understand the problem entirely alone. I was open to Darwinism or Lamarckism being the explanation and remember at the time favouring the latter. A theory making a bit of a comeback with the discovery of Epigenetics. I was just another unprepared innocent waiting to get suckered into what l now consider a myth without even a hint of science to back it up. In modern times upheld through constant reinforcement via the most powerful persuasive force on earth: the media. A regime producing non-stop streams of sophisticated presentations promoting hundreds of millions of years of evolution through mutations and natural selection. And the source of their information? Those propagating the myth.

The great majority of Christians will disagree, but in my estimation if this debate is forever lost nothing much will be left to defend. Why? Because God’s word throughout scripture, the goodness and truthfulness of his character and any pretence of divine knowledge re the universe and nature are gone beyond recovery. Modern science tells a story which contradicts scripture, and it is the evolutionary story which is now believed by the great majority. If you want an example of the effectiveness of indoctrination through media and the erasure of the only plausible alternative, then you need look no further than Darwin’s theory. Since the nineteen fifties, during which its acceptance became almost total among scientists, Darwinism has cast a long shadow over the bible. If scientific presuppositions were once influenced by religious convictions this no longer applies. The former experimental methods which demanded the possibility of a hypothesis being falsified are rarely applied to Darwinism. Every assumption made in areas of science where evolution is a factor assumes that evolution is a fact beyond doubt and questioning. Assumed to be true in the same way that God is assumed to be true by Christianity. Demonstrations of this bias are innumerable and can be heard or read in almost any media production relating to nature. The other side is rarely heard and never on an equal footing: PhD scientist against PhD scientist with each given equal time. You will never have heard such a debate on public broadcasting. The reasons are obvious to me, it is a shut out. God as a Creator of an instantaneous myriad of life forms, such as those that populate the oceans and seas and rivers is derided without good cause. The reason being, if an Almighty God such as that described in Genesis and throughout the Bible exists, and is true to his word, a hypothesis which can never be disproved, created all things then why think, act and speak as if it could not happen. This alternative is not to be heard because if it was it may prove unsettling to the consensus view: a Darwinian construct upheld for so long it would now be unwise to tug at its roots. The design / designer argument is strong and intellectually satisfying, but it is also dangerous because if given credence and a public airing it might provoke many to consider that evolutionary theory is counter intuitive. Worse than that, despite that fact that if it were true there should be a vast reservoir of slam dunk proofs in the fossil record. Transitions and intermediates should be numerous and obvious, since the change for instance between fish and tetrapods (four legged air-breathing mammals) should be traceable in the fossil record, and it is not. This problem is universal and it has not been solved even though you will read and see graphically demonstrated that this question has been solved many times over. This is bluster and lies. The examples of intermediate fossils become temporary icons that fade without any of the fanfare that heralded them. They sink into the conjecture that gave them temporary life. They were names that if recalled give rise to nothing but embarrassment. Here are a few: Coelecanth, Neanderthal, Ida, Ambulocetus, Tiktaalik to name just a few.

They hang on these for as long as possible, in human evolution the apelike Australopithecus named Lucy is presented in museum displays as a bright eyed, upright intermediate. Believe it if you must, but if Lucy and all the others promoted as the real deal are as suggested, proofs of evolution, then how can a list like the following be produced. A number of respected scientists who can see no evidence whatsoever? As far as I am aware all of these scientists accept evolutionary theory as being true; they just cannot find the evidence to prove their contention. This problem was known to Darwin and also to his great supporter Aldous Huxley who had well established motives which had nothing to do with science. Darwinism provided a get out clause for atheists. Huxley’s quote below relates directly to Darwin’s theory of evolution.

“The fact that a theory so vague, so insufficiently verifiable, and so far from the criteria otherwise applied in ‘hard’ science has become a dogma can only be explained on sociological grounds.” (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, biologist)  ‘I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. … For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.’ Aldous Huxley: Ends and Means, pp. 270 ff.

Darwin had this to say.

“There are two or three million species on earth. A sufficient field one might think for observation; but it must be said today that in spite of all the evidence of trained observers, not one change of the species to another is on record” (Life and Letters, vol. 3, p. 25). There is a small controversy about this quote. A section of it seems to have been inserted by his son Francis. However it is admitted this changes virtually nothing of what Darwin said. The defence of Darwin states the following. Before the semicolon, Francis Darwin editorially inserted a gloss in square brackets: “i.e. we cannot prove that a single species has changed.” So the actual words of the second half of the quotation aren’t Darwin’s, although the sentiment is. 

Many other evolutionary scientists have expressed similar disappointment and frustration.

Dr. Austin Clark of the U.S. National Museum wrote concerning the Cambrian fossils:

“Strange as it may seem … molluscs were molluscs just as unmistakably as they are now” (The New Evolution: Zoogenesis, p. 101).

Drs. Marshall Kay and Edwin Colbert of Columbia University marvelled over the problem in these words:

“Why should such complex organic forms be in rocks about 600 million years old and be absent or unrecognised in the records of the preceding two billion years? ….if there has been evolution of life, the absence of the requisite fossils in the rocks older than the Cambrian is puzzling.” ( Stratigraphy and Life History p. 102)

All of the following quotes are from the website Genesis Park.

“The cases in point include the origin of complex RNA molecules and protein folds; major groups of viruses; archaea and bacteria, and the principal lineages within each of these prokaryotic domains; eukaryotic super-groups; and animal phyla. In each of these pivotal nexuses in life’s history, the principal ‘types’ seem to appear rapidly and fully equipped with the signature features of the respective new level of biological organisation. No intermediate ‘grades’ or intermediate forms between different types are detectable.” (Koonin, Eugene, “The Biological Big Bang Model for the Major Transitions in Evolution,” Biology Direct, 2007, 2:21.)

“Gaps remain, of course, in the fossil records of many species, although a lot of them shrink each year as new fossils are discovered. These gaps do not indicate weakness in the theory of evolution itself. Rather, they point out uncertainties in our understanding of exactly how some species evolved.” (Miller, Kenneth, Levine, Joseph, Prentice Hall Biology, 2008, p. 383.)

“The fossil record is a unique source of evidence for important evolutionary phenomena such as transitions between major clades. Frustratingly, relevant fossils are still comparatively rare, most transitions have yet to be documented in detail and the mechanisms that underpin such events, typified by rapid large scale changes and for which microevolutionary processes seem insufficient, are still unclear….Normal microevolutionary processes seem insufficient to account for the rapid large scale changes that typify most transitions but, at the same time, the operation, or even existence, of alternative macroevolutionary processes is uncertain and controversial.” ( LüJunchang, Unwin, David M., Jin, Xingsheng, iu, Yongqing, Ji, Qiang, “Evidence for Modular Evolution in a Long-tailed Pterosaur with a Pterodactyloid Skull,” Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences, 277:1680.)

“It is as though they [fossils] were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. …Both schools of thought (Punctuationists and Gradualists) despise so-called scientific creationists equally, and both agree that the major gaps are real, that they are true imperfections in the fossil record. The only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation and (we) both reject this alternative.” (Dawkins, Richard, The Blind Watchmaker, 1996, pp. 229-230.)

“Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead, he or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series.” (Ernst Mayr-Professor Emeritus, Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, What Evolution Is, 2001, p.14.)

“The turtle body plan is evidently highly derived, indeed unique among tetrapods. The problem for an evolutionary biologist is to explain these transformations in the context of a gradualistic process. …Ribs can only be located either deep to, or superficial to, the scapula. There are no intermediates, and there is only one way to get from one condition to the other, which is the redirection of the migration, through the embryonic body, of the precursor cells that will form the ribs.” (Rieppel, Olivier, “Turtles as Hopeful Monsters,” BioEssays 23, 2001, p. 990-991.)

“All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt. Gradualists usually extract themselves from this dilemma by invoking the extreme imperfection of the fossil record.” (Gould, Stephen J. The Panda’s Thumb, 1980, p. 189.)

“What is missing are the many intermediate forms hypothesized by Darwin, and the continual divergence of major lineages into the morphospace between distinct adaptive types.” (Carroll, Robert L., “Towards a new evolutionary synthesis,” in Trends in Evolution and Ecology 15(1):27-32, 2000, p. 27.)

“Given that evolution, according to Darwin, was in a continual state of motion …it followed logically that the fossil record should be rife with examples of transitional forms leading from the less to more evolved. …Instead of filling the gaps in the fossil record with so-called missing links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational evolutionary intermediates between documented fossil species.” (Schwartz, Jeffrey H., Sudden Origins, 1999, p. 89.)

“He [Darwin] prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search….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.” (Eldridge, Niles, The Myths of Human Evolution, 1984, pp.45-46.)

“There is no need to apologise 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.” (George, T. Neville, “Fossils in Evolutionary Perspective,” Science Progress, vol. 48 January 1960, pp. 1-3.)

“Despite the bright promise – that palaeontology 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 palaeontology does not provide them. The gaps must therefore be a contingent feature of the record.” (Kitts, David B., “Palaeontology and Evolutionary Theory,” Evolution, vol. 28, 1974, p. 467.)

About 80% of all known fossils are marine animals, mostly various types of fish. Yet there is no evidence of intermediate forms. “The most common explanation for the total lack of fossil evidence for fish evolution is that few transitional fossils have been preserved. This is an incorrect conclusion because every major fish kind known today has been found in the fossil record, indicating the completeness of the existing known fossil record.” (Bergman, Jerry, “The Search for Evidence Concerning the Origin of Fish,” CRSQ, vol. 47, 2011, p. 291. ) “Absence of the transitional fossils in the gaps between each group of fishes and its ancestor is repeated in standard treatises on vertebrate evolution…. This is one count in the creationists’ charge that can only evoke in unison from the paleontologists a plea of nolo contendere” (Strahler, Arthur, Science and Earth History, 1987, p. 408.).

“It is interesting that all the cases of gradual evolution that we know about from the fossil record seem to involve smooth changes without the appearance of novel structures and functions.” (Wills, C.,Genetic Variability, 1989, p. 94-96.)

“So the creationist prediction of systematic gaps in the fossil record has no value in validating the creationist model, since the evolution theory makes precisely the same prediction.” (Weinberg, S.,Reviews of Thirty-one Creationist Books, 1984, p. 8.)

“We seem to have no choice but to invoke the rapid divergence of populations too small to leave legible fossil records.” (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 99.)

“For over a hundred years paleontologists have recognized the large number of gaps in the fossil record. Creationists make it seem like gaps are a deep, dark secret of paleontology…” (Cracraft, in Awbrey & Thwaites, Evolutionists Confront Creationists”, 1984.)

“Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin’s time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record. and it is not always clear, in fact it’s rarely clear, that the descendants were actually better adapted than their predecessors. In other words, biological improvement is hard to find.” (Raup, David M., “Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology,” Bulletin, Field Museum of Natural History, vol. 50, 1979, p. 23.)

Chicago Field Museum, Prof. of Geology, Univ. of Chicago, “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 probably 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…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 and orderly progression and they have gone to great lengths to accommodate this ‘fact’ in their Flood (Raup, David, “Geology” New Scientist, Vol. 90, p.832, 1981.)

“As we shall see when we take up the creationist position, there are all sorts of gaps: absence of graduationally intermediate ‘transitional’ forms between species, but also between larger groups — between say, families of carnivores, or the orders of mammals. In fact, the higher up the Linnaean hierarchy you look, the fewer transitional forms there seem to be.” (Eldredge, Niles, The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism, 1982, p. 65-66.)

“A persistent problem in evolutionary biology has been the absence of intermediate forms in the fossil record. Long term gradual transformations of single lineages are rare and generally involve simple size increase or trivial phenotypic effects. Typically, the record consists of successive ancestor-descendant lineages, morphologically invariant through time and unconnected by intermediates.” (Williamson, P.G., Palaeontological Documentation of Speciation in Cenozoic Molluscs from Turkana Basin, 1982, p. 163.)

“What one actually found was nothing but discontinuities: All species are separated from each other by bridgeless gaps; intermediates between species are not observed . . . The problem was even more serious at the level of the higher categories.” (Mayr, E., Animal Species and Evolution, 1982, p. 524.)

“The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with gradualism. What is remarkable is that, through a variety of historical circumstances, even the history of opposition has been obscured . . . ‘The majority of paleontologists felt their evidence simply contradicted Darwin’s stress on minute, slow, and cumulative changes leading to species transformation.’ . . . their story has been suppressed.” (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable, 1981, p. 71.)

“One must acknowledge that there are many, many gaps in the fossil record . . . There is no reason to think that all or most of these gaps will be bridged.” (Ruse, “Is There a Limit to Our Knowledge of Evolution,” 1984, p.101.)

“To explain discontinuities, Simpson relied, in part, upon the classical argument of an imperfect fossil record, but concluded that such an outstanding regularity could not be entirely artificial.” (Gould, Stephen J., “The Hardening of the Modern Synthesis,” 1983, p. 81.)

“The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life’s history – not the artifact of a poor fossil record.” (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 59.)

“The fossil record itself provided no documentation of continuity – of gradual transition from one animal or plant to another of quite different form.” (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 40.)

“The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.” (Gould, Stephen J., “Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?,” 1982, p. 140.)

“We have so many gaps in the evolutionary history of life, gaps in such key areas as the origin of the multicellular organisms, the origin of the vertebrates, not to mention the origins of most invertebrate groups.” (McGowan, C., In the Beginning . . . A Scientist Shows Why Creationists are Wrong, 1984, p. 95.)

“If life had evolved into its wondrous profusion of creatures little by little, Dr. Eldredge argues, then one would expect to find fossils of transitional creatures which were a bit like what went before them and a bit like what came after. But no one has yet found any evidence of such transitional creatures. This oddity has been attributed to gaps in the fossil record which gradualists expected to fill when rock strata of the proper age had been found. In the last decade, however, geologists have found rock layers of all divisions of the last 500 million years and no transitional forms were contained in them. If it is not the fossil record which is incomplete then it must be the theory.” (The Guardian Weekly, 26 Nov 1978, vol. 119, no 22, p. 1.)

“Well, 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 hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions 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 a result of more detailed information — what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appear to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. So Darwin’s problem has not been alleviated in the last 120 years and we still have a record which does show change but one that can hardly be looked upon as the most reasonable consequence of natural selection.” (Raup, David, “Conflicts between Darwin and Paleontology,” Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, Jan. 1979, Vol. 50 No. 1 p. 25.)’

So try this one out: an example from nature, a fish solves a design problem, one requiring a grasp of geometry. How could the following have come about through the processes proposed by Darwin’s theory. Maybe an aquatic mathematician with romance and reproduction in mind might think it up: but a small fish!

Watch it and remember all you have been taught. When you see a natural miracle, don’t be alarmed, just stir in a pinch of evolutionary theory and out pops the answer; time and purposeless, directionless processes enabled this fish to create a design somehow implanted into its consciousness. Causing the impulse to create a beautiful design out of sand, knowing in advance it would attract a female, thereby ensuring the propagation of the species.  You may think you do not not believe in miracles, but you do. You may think you do not have faith, but you do. I wonder if you can admit this to yourself.

 

 

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