From The Nebulous Hypothesis: A Study of the Philosophical and Historical Implications of Darwinian Theory © 1996 by James M. FoardEditor and Publisher James M. Foard.
The Darwin Papers may be freely copiedand distributed for non-profit and educational uses only provided acknowledgement is made for materialwritten by the author.
Read about Kathleen Hunt's incrediblestory in Talkorigins of how fish evolvedinto land animals from the famous Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ, or better named, The Mysterious Case of the Missing Transitional Vertebrate Fossils! HERE .We have seen in the previous chapters that Darwin did not even come close to proving his theory of evolution, thus the next logical step in any examination of the proof or lack thereof for evolutionary theory would be to see what kind of evidence has turned up since Darwin’s day to the present. In this chapter we shall look at various arguments used by current evolutionists, as well as investigate objections to The Darwin Papers by evolutionists as they come to light during the course of time. The evidence for the evolution of so-called "ape-men" and primitive human societies will be covered in two subsequent chapters.
A general definition of evolution was given in the beginning of Chapter Two, where we found out that evolution is a theory that proposes that all living species descended through adaptation to changing environments from a common set of ancestors, and that this process would continue back to a common ancestor of all life in some ancient tidal pool formed by random elements mixing together, and that the principle agencies evolutionists believe accounted for this were said to be natural selection, hybridization, inbreeding, and mutation. We have seen earlier that natural selection does not increase the gene pool, but diminishes it, thus working against Darwin’s theory, for we would go from a greater number of species to a lesser number, in other words, extinction, which is the opposite of the origin of species. Still, we will re-examine this along with hybridization, inbreeding and mutation, the four major processes that evolutionists stake their claims on.
In the previous chapter we also examined the fossil record and found that, despite the claims of evolutionists, genuine fossil evidence for evolution is non-existent. We will examine some of the arguments that evolutionists still use from the fossil record in detail in this chapter.
We have also looked at a few examples in previous chapters of present day evolutionist’s examples (i.e. Flank and Isaak) that they claim substantiates evolution and seen the frailty of their arguments when held up to logical and fair scrutiny. Another spurious claim made by evolutionists, which they continually use against their opponents, is that creationists take quotes out of context. Evolutionists make these charges but rarely if ever provide any proof of their allegations.
One difficulty in debating evolutionists and exposing their claims is that they are masters at the art of equivocation, which means to use misleading language and arguments in order to obfuscate the actual facts of the case. They do this in a variety of ways; from bringing in extraneous data and arguments that lend an air of polish and create the appearance of proof by the very amount of scientific verbiage, while clouding the issue at hand; repetition of the same argument over and over again, even after it has been refuted; bringing up false and tautologous arguments that in essence state nothing but are cleverly contrived to appear as though they are the result of a logical process; cleverly constructed fibs that are cloaked in scientific nomenclature that snare those unaware of their techniques; propagating the myth of Darwin that has been repeated ad nauseam for the past century; and sometimes by straight, old fashioned, bald faced lies and misrepresenting the position of their opposition.
Darwin of course was the master at this, but his disciples have continued his trade down through the years, and one good example would be from Donald Forsdyke’s Web page on evolution, where he states, in astoundingly vanishing evolutionist logic: “To really understand evolution we must first understand the historical development of ideas on evolution. But to really understand its history, we must first understand evolution .” !
Arguing against this type of Mad-Hatter logic can present difficulties for even the keenest logician in Alice’s evolutionary Wonderland.
Another amazing argument used by evolutionists, based mind you on the absolute lack of any kind of fossil evidence of evolution for proof of the evolutionary theory, would be Steven Jay Gould’s astounding concept of “punctuated equilibrium.” It is the theory that a bird can hatch from a lizard's egg, like Cinderella's mice turning into coachmen, and has also been called the "hopeful monster" theory by evolutionists.
Actually Gould's version is a bit slower than this, but essentially he is saying that evolution does not happen in a slow, gradual process, but in sudden spurts, and that is why there is not any fossil evidence of it having occurred.
This shows the desperate lengths that evolutionists will go to bolster support for their theory, since punctuated equilibrium states that the lack of transitional fossil forms is still evidence for evolution! It is like the two headed coin used by con artists that always comes up heads: If evolutionists had fossil evidence for evolution, they could say "We have fossil evidence for evolution, therefore it occurred." But because they have no fossil evidence for evolution, they say "We don't have fossil evidence for evolution, therefore it occurred."
Since evolution must have occurred, if there's no evidence of it, this is taken as evidence for evolution by evolutionists!
This is one of the boldest, most bald-faced evolutionary charades ever conducted in the history of science, and the fact that it has become the subject of intense scrutiny in scientific papers over the past twenty-five years shows the utter bankruptcy of evolutionary theory!
One has to wonder why Gould ever cooked up this theory in the first place and advance an argument so deficient in fact and logic. Perhaps to avoid the creationist’s principle argument: the scant evidence for evolution?
There actually are a couple of possibilities. Perhaps Gould was beginning to realize that the evidence for evolution was so inadequate that the genie was going to pop out of the bottle sooner or later. Perhaps the lack of evidence for evolution had produced the same change of mind that other scientists had experienced when they converted from evolution to creationism, but Gould simply didn’t have the fortitude to come out and admit it. After all, no one would relish being an academic pariah, or of being some over-the-hill reactionary against the unquestioned dogma of evolution. After all, Gould’s career and reputation is staked on maintaining the legend of Charles Darwin and his theory on center stage.
The other possibility, which I prefer, is that Gould simply ignored the implications of the lack of evidence for evolution because he was too steeped in his beliefs to honestly evaluate the facts presented before his very eyes. This explanation has profound and sadly evocative tones of certain of the false beliefs during the middle ages which people clung to, despite new scientific discoveries that contradicted those beliefs, simply because they were swayed by the overpowering psychological effects of the herd instinct.
As then, even today, despite their education and training, many academics are unable to divorce themselves from a mistaken scientific hypothesis that they were taught was true in the early days of their careers when their minds were impressionable by men whom they respected and to some degree adulated as nearly infallible. Thus from one generation to the next the evolution myth has been passed on by believing academics to students, who in turn become the next generation of academics, using the same flawed logic with unquestioning faith. (Those who read this and have read Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes by S. J. Gould will realize that this is in part a response to Mr. Gould’s utterly unprofessional and cruel trashing of the memory of the great Agassiz on pages 117-119 of his book.)
Returning to punctuated equilibrium, Patrick Marks has commented, "Creationists are flabbergasted. How can evolutionists brazenly attack creationism as unscientific nonsense while entertaining the notion of punctuated equilibrium as a scientific alternative. Punctuated equilibrium, by its own description, is an unprovable, unmeasurable, untestable idea.
Even by evolutionists' own admission, this theory does not have one shred of evidence to support it. Ted Holden has written: "It is a pure pseudo-science seeking to explain and actually be proved by a lack of evidence rather than by evidence (all the missing intermediate fossils). Similarly, Cotton Mather claimed that the fact that nobody had ever seen or heard a witch was proof they were there (if you could see or hear them, they wouldn't be witches...)”
Holden further wrote: “The best example of that sort of logic in fact that there ever was was Michael O'Donahue's parody of the Connecticut Yankee (New York Yankee in King Arthur's Court) which showed Reggie looking for a low outside fastball and then getting beaned cold by a high inside one, the people feeling Reggie's wrist for pulse, and Reggie back in Camelot, where they had him bound hand and foot. Some guy was shouting "Damned if e ain't black from ead to foot, if that ain't witchcraft I never saw it!!!", everybody was yelling "Witchcraft Trial!, Witchcraft Trial!!", and they were building a scaffold. Reggie looks at King Arthur and says "Hey man, isn't that just a tad premature, I mean we haven't even had the TRIAL yet!", and Arthur replies "You don't seem to understand, son, the hanging IS the trial; if you survive that, that means you're a witch and we gotta burn ya!!!"
Henry Morris has pointed out: "Can anyone seriously believe that the first bird really hatched out of a reptile egg? Actually, there would have to be at least two such hopeful monsters _ one male and one female _ occurring simultaneously in the same population, in order to assure survival of the new type. It would seem that one could as easily believe in a fairy godmother with a magic wand!" (The Modern Creation Trilogy. Master Books, 1996, Vol. 2. P. 105 )
David Menton, Ph.D. in cell biology from Brown University, has written of punctuated equilibrium:
"The absence of even a single example of a continuous fossil sequence showing the progressive stages of evolution of any plant or animal would certainly seem to be an insurmountable problem for evolutionism. Evolutionists have long been aware of this problem and have felt compelled to try to explain it away by any means possible, short of abandoning their faith in evolutionism itself . . . In the 1930s, paleontologist Otto Schindewolf concluded that the missing links in the fossil record were not really missing at all, but rather were never there in the first place! Schindewolf proposed that all the major evolutionary transformations must have occurred in single large steps. He proposed, for example, that at some point in evolutionary history, a reptile laid an egg from which a bird was hatched! This bizarre notion was championed in 1940 by the geneticist Richard Goldschmidt of the University of California at Berkeley. Like Schindewolf, Goldschmidt resigned himself to the fact that true transitional forms were not found despite over a hundred years of searching for them, and that evolutionary theory would simply have to accommodate this fact . . . Since there was not even the slightest shred of evidence to support the hopeful monster theory, it was dismissed with derision by almost all evolutionists of his time. But Goldschmidt was quick to point out to his critics that there wasn't the slightest evidence for their gradual evolution either! The hopeful monster theory would have joined the "recapitulation theory" in the scrap heap of abandoned evolutionary speculations, were it not for Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldredge. In 1972, these influential evolutionists resurrected the long discredited hopeful monster theory and gave it a more respectable name __ "punctuated equilibrium."
Now let's look at some of the interesting examples from talk.origins of evidence for evolution. Back in Chapter Two we dealt with Mark Isaak’s imaginary construction of the Bombardier Beetles evolutionary development. We have seen Lenny Flank’s lamentable explanation for the supposed evolution of the reptile heart.
One well known site among evolutionists would be the Talk.origins Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ by Kathleen Hunt.
Many evolutionists cite this as one of their best FAQ's providing evidence for evolution, but on closer inspection, instead of being called the Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ, a better name for it might be"The Mysterious Case of the Missing Transitional Vertebrate Fossils."
On her site Ms. Hunt states that she wrote the FAQ "as a reference for answering the 'there aren't any transitional fossils' statement that pops up on talk.origins several times each year."
Now it might seem that if all of those transitional fossils in the geologic record that evolutionists are always referring to really do exist, then they could just come right out and present them to the world and that would settle the question once and for all. It should be pretty easy to find loads of transitional fossils if evolution has really been occurring for millions of years. Ms. Hunt claims to have done just that. She claims to have answered those noisy creationist critics in her FAQ with evidence of transitional fossils.
So let us investigate Ms. Hunt’s Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ and see if it truly musters up to her claims.
As we begin our journey through the various geological ages in search of missing links, we will pass through the Cretaceous (stopping to smell the first flowering plants on the way), Jurassic, Triassic, and finally wind up in the Ordovician where evolutionists believe that the first fish evolved.
Unfortunately, before Ms. Hunt even finishes the second paragraph to the Introduction to her Transitional Fossils FAQ she admits that "few or none of the speciation events are preserved. Sometimes the individual specimens are not thought to be directly ancestral to the next-youngest fossils (i.e., they may be "cousins" or "uncles" rather than "parents")."
"For example, the Order Perissodactyla (horses, etc.) and the Order Cetacea (whales) can both be traced back to early Eocene animals that looked only marginally different from each other, and didn't look at all like horses or whales."
These fanciful whale and horse ancestors have as much real evidence to back them up as Grimm's fairy tales do. They not only don't bear the faintest resemblance to modern horses and whales, there is very little evidence that they had ever been ancestors to them either. The evidence for whale evolution has been vastly exaggerated and discredited even by evolutionists; see A Whale Fantasy From National Geographic; while the horse series is more the product of imagination than any hard evidence: The Non-Evolution of the Horse.
Ms. Hunt admits that often there is very little evidence for evolution from transitional forms, and laments the sad fact that "Many laypeople even have the (incorrect) impression that the situation is even worse, and that there are no known transitions at all. Why are there still gaps? And why do many people think that there are even more gaps than there really are?"
She confesses that the fossil record is in kind of a mess, and that it is not at all the nicely arranged, orderly, sequential series that we see in textbooks on the subject: "The first and most major reason for gaps is "stratigraphic discontinuities", meaning that fossil-bearing strata are not at all continuous . There are often large time breaks from one stratum to the next, and there are even some times for which no fossil strata have been found."
"For instance, the Aalenian (mid-Jurassic) has shown no known tetrapod fossils anywhere in the world, and other stratigraphic stages in the Carboniferous, Jurassic, and Cretaceous have produced only a few mangled tetrapods . . .To further complicate the picture, certain types of animals tend not to get fossilized -- terrestrial animals, small animals, fragile animals, and forest-dwellers are worst. And finally, fossils from very early times just don't survive the passage of eons very well, what with all the folding, crushing, and melting that goes on. Due to these facts of life and death, there will always be some major breaks in the fossil record."
It turns out that these "major breaks" are always right where those transitional fossils are supposed to be found.
If confession is good for the soul, Ms. Hunt must be in good company with the saints as she continues her shrive; having to admit, although not in a very penitential spirit, that those mountains of transitional fossil forms (most evolutionist letters to local newpapers always refer to the "tons and tons" of fossils that prove evolution; however lets be generous and simply ask the evolutionists to provide us with one, single valid example out of those tons of transitional forms) are well nigh non-existent: "Species-to-species transitions are even harder to document. To demonstrate anything about how a species arose, whether it arose gradually or suddenly, you need exceptionally complete strata, with many dead animals buried under constant, rapid sedimentation. [In this startling admission, Ms. Hunt is forced to concur with what creationists have been saying all along about how fossils were formed, which according to the Biblical account happened at the time of Noah's flood]. This is rare for terrestrial animals. Even the famous Clark's Fork (Wyoming) site, known for its fine Eocene mammal transitions, only has about one fossil per lineage about every 27,000 years."
So the picture gets bleaker by the minute: "Luckily, this is enough to record most episodes of evolutionary change (provided that they occurred at Clark's Fork Basin and not somewhere else), though it misses the rapidest evolutionary bursts [unluckily for Ms. Hunt and the rest of the evolutionists, these rapidest "evolutionary bursts" constitute "fast evolution", Gould's mythical scenario to explain the lack of transitional forms; they are totally non-existant and they constitute Ms. Hunt's last, best hope for validation for her theory]. In general, in order to document transitions between species, you (sic) specimens separated by only tens of thousands of years (e.g. every 20,000-80,000 years). If you have only one specimen for hundreds of thousands of years (e.g. every 500,000 years), you can usually determine the order of species, but not the transitions between species. If you have a specimen every million years, you can get the order of genera, but not which species were involved. And so on. These are rough estimates (from Gingerich, 1976, 1980) but should give an idea of the completeness required."
Now, if evolution were true then at least there should still be literally mounds of transitional forms laid down over the hundreds of thousands, and millions of years that life is supposed to have been evolving providing abundant evidence of it. In other words, most of the fossils should still be transitional forms, not well defined species. Transitional fossils should be the norm, but we have seen from the last chapter that the fossil record lacks any evidence that those transitional forms for evolution to have been a fact ever existed at all, by Darwin's own admission. We have seen that punctuated evolution, "fast evolution" leaves no evidence behind. What about "slow evolution"? Well, Ms. Hunt informs us that when an evolution event takes more than a hundred thousand years (really, not a very long time in evolutionist lingo), then we can't ever expect to find evidence of that having occured in the fossil record either! "Note that fossils separated by more than about a hundred thousand years cannot show anything about how a species arose. Think about it: there could have been a smooth transition, or the species could have appeared suddenly, but either way, if there aren't enough fossils, we can't tell which way it happened."
So in essence, evolution has either happened so fast, according to Gould, that we haven't been able to find evidence of it, or it is happening so slow, according to Ms. Hunt, that we haven't been able to find evidence of it either!
Now, if evolution were true, there should still be millions of living transitional organisms surrounding us today (after all, a genuine "law" of science wouldn't change over the course of paleontological time), but we have seen from the last chapter that we do not have any present, living examples of evolution, it all must come from the fossil record. Evolutionists have a pre-packaged ready explanation for the lack of any present day transitional forms though. You see, evolution is going on at such a slow pace over such a long period of time we just don't see it happening. (That's a remarkably clever excuse, one that even the most seasoned carnival barker might feel ashamed to use on a prospective "mark" - "Hold onto your wallet Lem, them evolutionists are a comin' to town next week") This brings us back to our original problem. With no present evidence for evolution, then we have to look for evidence of it from the past. This is the old bait and switch tactic used by conmen since time immemorial, used today by those plying the trade of selling the story of man's evolution. If you are a committed evolutionist this might not phase you in the slightest; evolutionists and UFO enthusiasts generally will not let any evidence or total lack of evidence sway them from their beliefs, so to belabour the point would be . . . pointless.To return now to our search for missing transitional fossils: Ms. Hunt brings us her second reason why those mysterious transitional fossils aren't found, and this is because - they aren't found! (I tried to figure this logic out too and had no success. By this time even Spock would be scratching his head): "The second reason for gaps is that most fossils undoubtedly have not been found." She makes the same excuse for not finding fossils that Darwin made over one hundred years ago, that we haven't searched enough and that the geologic record is so imperfect (The title of Darwin's tenth chapter of his Origin was On the Imperfection of the Fossil Record) The third reason why many people don't find out about transitional forms for evidence of evolution, according to Ms. Hunt, is because most evolutionists are so convinced about the fact of evolution that they don't think it is necessary to write down any of the proof of it in their books: "Why don't paleontologists bother to popularize the detailed lineages and species-to-species transitions? Because it is thought to be unnecessary detail . . . Paleontologists clearly consider the occurrence of evolution to be a settled question, so obvious as to be beyond rational dispute, so, they think, why waste valuable textbook space on such tedious detail." I find statements like this so fascinating when evolutionists accuse creationists of having blind faith! We dealt earlier with Gould's punctuated equilibrium. Ms. Hunt calls this “fast evolution” and informs the patient reader about the difference between slow evolution and fast evolution. The slow evolution is the kind that she has just stated there isn't much evidence for, while the fast evolution is the kind that, well, there's no evidence for either, because it just happened so fast somewhere back in time that there was never any fossil record left for it (hence Gould's devilish reasoning), thus they designated it "punctuated equilibrium." Ms. Hunt states that evolutionist's can't really figure out which of these processes of evolution happens more often, the slow one that there is no evidence for, or the fast one that leaves no evidence either. Ms Hunt admitted, "There's been a heated debate (among evolutionists) about which of these modes of evolution is most common, and this debate has been largely misquoted by laypeople, particularly creationists." Then in proper righteous indignation, Ms. Hunt refers to those rascally creationists who jump to the conclusion that since there's no evidence for punctuated equilibrium then it possibly never happened in the first place: "Virtually all of the quotes of paleontologists saying things like "the gaps in the fossil record are real" are taken out of context from this ongoing debate about punctuated equilibrium." And as far as "slow evolution" is concerned she says: "Actually, no paleontologist that I know of doubts that evolution has occurred [how could they, if they did they would lose their jobs in the evolutionist oriented academic communities where they work], and most agree that at least sometimes it occurs gradually" ["at least sometimes it occurs gradually"? Does this sound like overwhelming evidence for evolution?].But they (the evolutionists that can't agree with each other) aren't able to figure out when slow evolution occurs: "What they're arguing about is how often it occurs gradually," and she tells us "You can make up your own mind about that." That was nice of her, but I guess that probably wasn't meant to include creationists. Ted Holden has documented the impossibility and utter absurdity of "fast evolution", Punctuated Equilibrium (PE), ever having occurred: "PE amounts to a claim that inbreeding is the most major source of genetic advancement in the world. Apparently Steve Gould never saw Deliverance... PE requires these tiny peripheral groups to conquer vastly larger groups of animals millions if not billions of times, which is like requiring Custer to win at the little Big Horn every day, for millions of years. PE requires an eternal victory of animals specifically adapted to localized and parochial conditions over animals which are globally adapted, which never happens in real life. " Of course the main problem with it, as pointed out above, is that there is absolutely no evidence for it. Arguing about how Punctuated Equilbrium might have worked makes as much sense as arguing over what type of space drive the aliens used to get here from Alpha Centauri before they cloned the President and the Congress and put their doubles in to take over the world. The story of the Florida panther below shows that genetic isolation, one of the evolutionists' favorite gambles as a viable method for evolution, is not a very viable method in real life.Ms. Hunt lays some more groundwork for her thesis by giving us a creationist perspective and an evolutionist perspective, which I must confess in all fairness is a pretty honest evaluation of the two points of view, but she does not present any facts as yet for either side, merely pointing out what both views would predict should be found in the fossil record. Next she presents an evolutionists outline of the different time sequences that they believe the earth has gone through over the past (by evolutionary scales) 590 million years. That was the introduction to Ms. Hunt's proof of evolution. The rest of her FAQ is going to actually cover the fossil evidence for evolution. So after such a groundbreaking introduction, we are finally going to get to the meat, or more properly the bones of our study. Now we will go through her evidence for evolution: For the first item on our menu, Ms. Hunt informs us that we are about to find out about the “Transition from primitive Jawless fish to sharks, skates, and rays.” But as far as the actual evidence for this, she stated: "Note that these first, very old traces of shark-like animals are so fragmentary that we can't get much detailed information." So we don't know which jawless fish was the actual ancestor of early sharks. ! This is very interesting. Immediately after stating that she is going to provide us with the evidence for the evolutionary transition from jawless fish to sharks, Ms. Hunt informs us that we have no transitional fossil from jawless fish to shark ! Ms. Hunt does give us some examples of what she claims are early sharks, the Trystychius (early Mississippian), Ctenacanthus (late Devonian), and the Paleospinax, however the case for them being early sharks is highly dubious, since all of these species appear in the fossil record millions of years after sharks already existed (400mya), thus none of them could be considered ancestral transitional forms from non-sharks to sharks! Ms. Hunt mentioned the Cladoselache (late Devonian), however she informs us that they were “Probably not directly ancestral to sharks.” She also mentioned "A separate lineage leads from the ctenacanthids through Echinochimaera (late Mississippian) and Similihari (late Pennsylvanian) to the modern ratfish," (while leaving out the details), yet this still throws no light on the origin of sharks. So we are left with no evidence at all for her first claim of a transitional fossil. Next we come to the “Transition from primitive jawless fish to bony fish”. I hope that your appetite is not getting to whetted for fish, because Ms. Hunt again brings us nothing as evidence. She states: “ Once again, the traces are so fragmentary that the actual ancestor can’t be identified .”! Hmmmm. The first two bold headings in Ms. Hunt's Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ that unequivocally affirm the existence of transitional vertebrate fossils have turned up no transitional vertebrate fossils! (Ahah! The case is getting more complicated by the minute! Once again those mysterious missing fossils elude our intrepid heroine. Sacre bleu Monsieur! Things are looking rather bleak for Inspector Hunt so far, no? Let us follow along with her as she continues her dauntless search for the elusive missing links!) Much like in a lawyers contract, it pays to read the fine print hidden within evolutionist depositions. She informs us that in the Upper Silurian there are already fully developed fish with scales, but she hasn't gotten a clue as to what they evolved from, or if she does she is not sharing the information. So there are still no transitional forms, despite the bold assertions in the headings to her sections on fish. This is beginning to smell like a fish story. She does mention a whole group of fish that already have jaws, but not one transitional fish form from jawless to bony. She says that eels and sardines appeared in the late Jurassic, carp from the cretaceous, etc. but still gives no evidence of their transitional fossil forms or where they evolved from:"Eels & sardines date from the late Jurassic, salmonids from the Paleocene & Eocene, carp from the Cretaceous, and the great group of spiny teleosts from the Eocene." The eels and sardines and carp and teleosts just pop up out of nowhere, fully formed; and again, no transitional fossils for them. None. So despite the tite of her FAQ we are still left in the dark about transitional vertebrate fossils, and remember, by this time we have covered, in the evolutionists time scale, many hundreds of millions of years. Next we have Ms. Hunt's "Transition from primitive bony fish to amphibians".Here, she becomes a little bit confused while attempting to cover the mysterious transition from fish to amphibians. She mixed up Elginerpeton pancheni, which was found in 1991 in Scotland by Per Ahlberg, with Obruchevichthys, which was found in Latvia a few years earlier. This error has been in Ms. Hunt’s FAQ on Talk.origins for years, and they have either never noticed it or never bothered to change it. As far as Obruchevichthys being a transitional form, Ms. Hunt quotes Ahlberg, noting that it is "uncertain whether the appendage carried digits or a fin." There is a very good reason for this, because all that was ever found of the creature were fragments of the lower jaw! Eventually Obruchevichthys was reclassified from a fish to a tetrapod (four legged creature) by Ahlberg himself, although how this was done remains a mystery. Ms. Hunt indulges in more speculation: " If, however, tetrapod limbs evolved for aquatic rather than terrestrial locomotion, as recently suggested, such a morphology might be perfectly workable." Using such iron logic could anyone remain unconvinced that we have literally mountains of evidence for evolution? She proceeds: "Ideally, of course, we want an entire skeleton from the middle Late Devonian, not just limb fragments. Nobody's found one yet." Let's review one of her evidences for transitional forms between bony fish and amphibians before we move on, the Paleoniscoids. This is really important, because it truly demonstrates that all of her evidence of evolution is suppositional; she simply believes in evolution and that is the proof she uses in her reasoning for the evidence of evolution! Her belief is based just as much on a "faith" as the creationists whom she so vehemently criticises, except that the evidence-sudden appearance of unique forms in the fossil record, with no transitional forms- actually favors creationism, not evolution! Ms. Hunt: "These ancient bony fish probably gave rise both to modern ray-finned fish (mentioned above), and also to the lobe-finned fish." Probably, and not even to amphibians, which she claims in her earlier cited heading, but simply to another species of fish, maybe. No proof, all supposition. Now let me say this about Ms. Hunt. She is fully entitled to her opinion, as are we all; but when evolutionists parade those opinions as scientific fact, not because the scientific evidence supports their views, but in spite of the evidence that shows that their opinions are seriously wrong, and then they put those mistaken opinions into the textbooks that our schoolchildren are reading, and use those opinions to lampoon the faith of Christians through pseudo-scientific, decietful sophistry, then I believe it is time that they and their fraudulent methods need to be exposed! Even if there were certain skeletal similarities between some of the fish she mentioned and amphibians (but no fish with toes and no amphibians with fins), this does not at all connote a phylogenic (ancestor/descendant) relationship. Australian scientist Michael Denton mentioned convergence, an evolutionary concept that pretty much blows all of Ms. Hunt's nice little stories of fish becoming amphibians becoming reptiles out of the water: "Then there is the problem of convergence. Nature abounds in examples of convergence: the similarity in overall shape of whales, ichthyosaurs and fishes; the similarity in the bone structure of the flippers of a whale and an ichthyosaur; the similarity of the forelimbs of a mole and the insect, the mole cricket; the great similarity in the design of the eye in vertebrates and cephalopods and the profound parallelism between the cochlea in birds and mammals. In all the above cases the similarities, although very striking do not imply any close biological relationship." Denton mentioned the remarkable similarity between the thylacine and dogs. Both have an amazing skeletal similarity, yet in their soft anatomical reproductive systems there is a vast difference. Ms. Hunt reveals her inherent prejudice when discussing the problems of a fish to amphibian transition by using the assumption of evolution as evidence for evolution: "Eventually, of course, amphibians did move onto the land." And she lightly brushes over the anatomical difficulties of such a transition from a water dwelling animal to a terrestrial dwelling animal: "This involved attaching the pelvis more firmly to the spine, and separating the shoulder from the skull. Lungs were not a problem, since lungs are an ancient fish trait and were present already." "Lungs were not a problem, since lungs are an ancient fish trait and were present already."?Well, if you have ever wondered how it was that lungs evolved, now you know! Ms. Hunt has explained it all to us in her typically exhaustive manner, going into minute detail on every aspect of the evolution of these complex organs. Are there any more questions? Good! Class is dismissed. But how and when and where did lungs arrive on the scene as an ancient fish trait in the first place? Do we have a clue at all to any of this? Are there any transitional forms that might have had half-formed lungs? Why would such an incredibly complex set of double organs "evolve" through blind, random evolutionary circumstances? Ms. Hunt is silent on all of this. Actually lung fish are not considered by the vast majority of paleontologists as ancestral to amphibians, although this idea is making somewhat of a comeback because of the difficulties in the traditional evolutionary scheme. To make things worse for Ms. Hunt's imaginary story - "This involved attaching the pelvis more firmly to the spine, and separating the shoulder from the skull" - John Morris notes that in all the fish mentioned, the hard parts of the fins are loosely embedded in muscle and not even close to being attached by a pelvic arrangement to the vertebrate which would be necessary to support the weight of the body. (John Morris, BTG No. 91B, July, 1996) Morris also pointed out the improbability of all the right changes to happen by chance for a transition from water to land to occur: "Actually the skeletal differences are only one of the many problems encountered in trying to link fish and amphibian. The internal organs are quite different also. Major changes would have had to occur in just the right order to accomplish the transition. For instance, while the pelvic girdle is forming (by mutation), and the gills are mutating into true lungs, the ears and eyes must mutate to work in the dry air. How could any possible ancestor accomplish these and other simultaneous changes?" So, no amphibian fossils have ever been found with fins, and no fish, fossil or otherwise have ever been found with toes. Ms. Hunt has absolutely failed to deliver on her promise in her FAQ so far.
If you are a committed evolutionist this might not phase you in the slightest; evolutionists and UFO enthusiasts generally will not let any evidence or total lack of evidence sway them from their beliefs, so to belabour the point would be . . . pointless.To return now to our search for missing transitional fossils: Ms. Hunt brings us her second reason why those mysterious transitional fossils aren't found, and this is because - they aren't found! (I tried to figure this logic out too and had no success. By this time even Spock would be scratching his head): "The second reason for gaps is that most fossils undoubtedly have not been found." She makes the same excuse for not finding fossils that Darwin made over one hundred years ago, that we haven't searched enough and that the geologic record is so imperfect (The title of Darwin's tenth chapter of his Origin was On the Imperfection of the Fossil Record)
The third reason why many people don't find out about transitional forms for evidence of evolution, according to Ms. Hunt, is because most evolutionists are so convinced about the fact of evolution that they don't think it is necessary to write down any of the proof of it in their books: "Why don't paleontologists bother to popularize the detailed lineages and species-to-species transitions? Because it is thought to be unnecessary detail . . . Paleontologists clearly consider the occurrence of evolution to be a settled question, so obvious as to be beyond rational dispute, so, they think, why waste valuable textbook space on such tedious detail."
I find statements like this so fascinating when evolutionists accuse creationists of having blind faith!
We dealt earlier with Gould's punctuated equilibrium. Ms. Hunt calls this “fast evolution” and informs the patient reader about the difference between slow evolution and fast evolution. The slow evolution is the kind that she has just stated there isn't much evidence for, while the fast evolution is the kind that, well, there's no evidence for either, because it just happened so fast somewhere back in time that there was never any fossil record left for it (hence Gould's devilish reasoning), thus they designated it "punctuated equilibrium."
Ms. Hunt states that evolutionist's can't really figure out which of these processes of evolution happens more often, the slow one that there is no evidence for, or the fast one that leaves no evidence either. Ms Hunt admitted, "There's been a heated debate (among evolutionists) about which of these modes of evolution is most common, and this debate has been largely misquoted by laypeople, particularly creationists."
Then in proper righteous indignation, Ms. Hunt refers to those rascally creationists who jump to the conclusion that since there's no evidence for punctuated equilibrium then it possibly never happened in the first place: "Virtually all of the quotes of paleontologists saying things like "the gaps in the fossil record are real" are taken out of context from this ongoing debate about punctuated equilibrium."
And as far as "slow evolution" is concerned she says: "Actually, no paleontologist that I know of doubts that evolution has occurred [how could they, if they did they would lose their jobs in the evolutionist oriented academic communities where they work], and most agree that at least sometimes it occurs gradually" ["at least sometimes it occurs gradually"? Does this sound like overwhelming evidence for evolution?].But they (the evolutionists that can't agree with each other) aren't able to figure out when slow evolution occurs: "What they're arguing about is how often it occurs gradually," and she tells us "You can make up your own mind about that."
That was nice of her, but I guess that probably wasn't meant to include creationists. Ted Holden has documented the impossibility and utter absurdity of "fast evolution", Punctuated Equilibrium (PE), ever having occurred: "PE amounts to a claim that inbreeding is the most major source of genetic advancement in the world. Apparently Steve Gould never saw Deliverance... PE requires these tiny peripheral groups to conquer vastly larger groups of animals millions if not billions of times, which is like requiring Custer to win at the little Big Horn every day, for millions of years. PE requires an eternal victory of animals specifically adapted to localized and parochial conditions over animals which are globally adapted, which never happens in real life. " Of course the main problem with it, as pointed out above, is that there is absolutely no evidence for it. Arguing about how Punctuated Equilbrium might have worked makes as much sense as arguing over what type of space drive the aliens used to get here from Alpha Centauri before they cloned the President and the Congress and put their doubles in to take over the world. The story of the Florida panther below shows that genetic isolation, one of the evolutionists' favorite gambles as a viable method for evolution, is not a very viable method in real life.Ms. Hunt lays some more groundwork for her thesis by giving us a creationist perspective and an evolutionist perspective, which I must confess in all fairness is a pretty honest evaluation of the two points of view, but she does not present any facts as yet for either side, merely pointing out what both views would predict should be found in the fossil record. Next she presents an evolutionists outline of the different time sequences that they believe the earth has gone through over the past (by evolutionary scales) 590 million years.
That was the introduction to Ms. Hunt's proof of evolution. The rest of her FAQ is going to actually cover the fossil evidence for evolution.
So after such a groundbreaking introduction, we are finally going to get to the meat, or more properly the bones of our study.
Now we will go through her evidence for evolution:
For the first item on our menu, Ms. Hunt informs us that we are about to find out about the “Transition from primitive Jawless fish to sharks, skates, and rays.”
But as far as the actual evidence for this, she stated: "Note that these first, very old traces of shark-like animals are so fragmentary that we can't get much detailed information." So we don't know which jawless fish was the actual ancestor of early sharks. !
This is very interesting. Immediately after stating that she is going to provide us with the evidence for the evolutionary transition from jawless fish to sharks, Ms. Hunt informs us that we have no transitional fossil from jawless fish to shark !
Ms. Hunt does give us some examples of what she claims are early sharks, the Trystychius (early Mississippian), Ctenacanthus (late Devonian), and the Paleospinax, however the case for them being early sharks is highly dubious, since all of these species appear in the fossil record millions of years after sharks already existed (400mya), thus none of them could be considered ancestral transitional forms from non-sharks to sharks!
Ms. Hunt mentioned the Cladoselache (late Devonian), however she informs us that they were “Probably not directly ancestral to sharks.” She also mentioned "A separate lineage leads from the ctenacanthids through Echinochimaera (late Mississippian) and Similihari (late Pennsylvanian) to the modern ratfish," (while leaving out the details), yet this still throws no light on the origin of sharks.
So we are left with no evidence at all for her first claim of a transitional fossil.
Next we come to the “Transition from primitive jawless fish to bony fish”.
I hope that your appetite is not getting to whetted for fish, because Ms. Hunt again brings us nothing as evidence. She states: “ Once again, the traces are so fragmentary that the actual ancestor can’t be identified .”!
Hmmmm. The first two bold headings in Ms. Hunt's Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ that unequivocally affirm the existence of transitional vertebrate fossils have turned up no transitional vertebrate fossils! (Ahah! The case is getting more complicated by the minute! Once again those mysterious missing fossils elude our intrepid heroine. Sacre bleu Monsieur! Things are looking rather bleak for Inspector Hunt so far, no? Let us follow along with her as she continues her dauntless search for the elusive missing links!)
Much like in a lawyers contract, it pays to read the fine print hidden within evolutionist depositions.
She informs us that in the Upper Silurian there are already fully developed fish with scales, but she hasn't gotten a clue as to what they evolved from, or if she does she is not sharing the information.
So there are still no transitional forms, despite the bold assertions in the headings to her sections on fish. This is beginning to smell like a fish story.
She does mention a whole group of fish that already have jaws, but not one transitional fish form from jawless to bony.
She says that eels and sardines appeared in the late Jurassic, carp from the cretaceous, etc. but still gives no evidence of their transitional fossil forms or where they evolved from:"Eels & sardines date from the late Jurassic, salmonids from the Paleocene & Eocene, carp from the Cretaceous, and the great group of spiny teleosts from the Eocene."
The eels and sardines and carp and teleosts just pop up out of nowhere, fully formed; and again, no transitional fossils for them. None.
So despite the tite of her FAQ we are still left in the dark about transitional vertebrate fossils, and remember, by this time we have covered, in the evolutionists time scale, many hundreds of millions of years.
Next we have Ms. Hunt's "Transition from primitive bony fish to amphibians".Here, she becomes a little bit confused while attempting to cover the mysterious transition from fish to amphibians.
She mixed up Elginerpeton pancheni, which was found in 1991 in Scotland by Per Ahlberg, with Obruchevichthys, which was found in Latvia a few years earlier. This error has been in Ms. Hunt’s FAQ on Talk.origins for years, and they have either never noticed it or never bothered to change it.
As far as Obruchevichthys being a transitional form, Ms. Hunt quotes Ahlberg, noting that it is "uncertain whether the appendage carried digits or a fin."
There is a very good reason for this, because all that was ever found of the creature were fragments of the lower jaw! Eventually Obruchevichthys was reclassified from a fish to a tetrapod (four legged creature) by Ahlberg himself, although how this was done remains a mystery.
Ms. Hunt indulges in more speculation: " If, however, tetrapod limbs evolved for aquatic rather than terrestrial locomotion, as recently suggested, such a morphology might be perfectly workable."
Using such iron logic could anyone remain unconvinced that we have literally mountains of evidence for evolution? She proceeds: "Ideally, of course, we want an entire skeleton from the middle Late Devonian, not just limb fragments. Nobody's found one yet."
Let's review one of her evidences for transitional forms between bony fish and amphibians before we move on, the Paleoniscoids. This is really important, because it truly demonstrates that all of her evidence of evolution is suppositional; she simply believes in evolution and that is the proof she uses in her reasoning for the evidence of evolution! Her belief is based just as much on a "faith" as the creationists whom she so vehemently criticises, except that the evidence-sudden appearance of unique forms in the fossil record, with no transitional forms- actually favors creationism, not evolution!
Ms. Hunt: "These ancient bony fish probably gave rise both to modern ray-finned fish (mentioned above), and also to the lobe-finned fish."
Probably, and not even to amphibians, which she claims in her earlier cited heading, but simply to another species of fish, maybe. No proof, all supposition.
Now let me say this about Ms. Hunt. She is fully entitled to her opinion, as are we all; but when evolutionists parade those opinions as scientific fact, not because the scientific evidence supports their views, but in spite of the evidence that shows that their opinions are seriously wrong, and then they put those mistaken opinions into the textbooks that our schoolchildren are reading, and use those opinions to lampoon the faith of Christians through pseudo-scientific, decietful sophistry, then I believe it is time that they and their fraudulent methods need to be exposed!
Even if there were certain skeletal similarities between some of the fish she mentioned and amphibians (but no fish with toes and no amphibians with fins), this does not at all connote a phylogenic (ancestor/descendant) relationship. Australian scientist Michael Denton mentioned convergence, an evolutionary concept that pretty much blows all of Ms. Hunt's nice little stories of fish becoming amphibians becoming reptiles out of the water: "Then there is the problem of convergence. Nature abounds in examples of convergence: the similarity in overall shape of whales, ichthyosaurs and fishes; the similarity in the bone structure of the flippers of a whale and an ichthyosaur; the similarity of the forelimbs of a mole and the insect, the mole cricket; the great similarity in the design of the eye in vertebrates and cephalopods and the profound parallelism between the cochlea in birds and mammals. In all the above cases the similarities, although very striking do not imply any close biological relationship."
Denton mentioned the remarkable similarity between the thylacine and dogs. Both have an amazing skeletal similarity, yet in their soft anatomical reproductive systems there is a vast difference. Ms. Hunt reveals her inherent prejudice when discussing the problems of a fish to amphibian transition by using the assumption of evolution as evidence for evolution: "Eventually, of course, amphibians did move onto the land."
And she lightly brushes over the anatomical difficulties of such a transition from a water dwelling animal to a terrestrial dwelling animal: "This involved attaching the pelvis more firmly to the spine, and separating the shoulder from the skull. Lungs were not a problem, since lungs are an ancient fish trait and were present already."
"Lungs were not a problem, since lungs are an ancient fish trait and were present already."?Well, if you have ever wondered how it was that lungs evolved, now you know! Ms. Hunt has explained it all to us in her typically exhaustive manner, going into minute detail on every aspect of the evolution of these complex organs. Are there any more questions? Good! Class is dismissed.
But how and when and where did lungs arrive on the scene as an ancient fish trait in the first place? Do we have a clue at all to any of this? Are there any transitional forms that might have had half-formed lungs? Why would such an incredibly complex set of double organs "evolve" through blind, random evolutionary circumstances?
Ms. Hunt is silent on all of this.
Actually lung fish are not considered by the vast majority of paleontologists as ancestral to amphibians, although this idea is making somewhat of a comeback because of the difficulties in the traditional evolutionary scheme.
To make things worse for Ms. Hunt's imaginary story - "This involved attaching the pelvis more firmly to the spine, and separating the shoulder from the skull" - John Morris notes that in all the fish mentioned, the hard parts of the fins are loosely embedded in muscle and not even close to being attached by a pelvic arrangement to the vertebrate which would be necessary to support the weight of the body. (John Morris, BTG No. 91B, July, 1996)
Morris also pointed out the improbability of all the right changes to happen by chance for a transition from water to land to occur: "Actually the skeletal differences are only one of the many problems encountered in trying to link fish and amphibian. The internal organs are quite different also. Major changes would have had to occur in just the right order to accomplish the transition. For instance, while the pelvic girdle is forming (by mutation), and the gills are mutating into true lungs, the ears and eyes must mutate to work in the dry air. How could any possible ancestor accomplish these and other simultaneous changes?"
So, no amphibian fossils have ever been found with fins, and no fish, fossil or otherwise have ever been found with toes. Ms. Hunt has absolutely failed to deliver on her promise in her FAQ so far.
Next we have another gap in the fossil record, and when we touch ground again a few million years later we are on to Ms. Hunt's "Transitions among amphibians" She boldly goes where no frog has gone before as she attempts to explain how evolution produced transitions among the ancient amphibians, although it is unclear what the ancestral relationship is because she has to admit "Notice, though, that the times are out of order, though they are all from the Pennsylvanian and early Permian. Either some of the "Permian" genera arose earlier, in the Pennsylvanian (quite likely), and/or some of these genera are "cousins", not direct ancestors (also quite likely)." .
No true transitional forms have thus been found yet.
Ms. Hunt smoothly covers the final as yet unexplained transition from fish to tetrapod with: "A little later, the fin-to-foot transition was almost complete, and we have a set of early tetrapod fossils that clearly did have feet."
Well, that was easy! We have fish, then we have amphibians, but no fossil transition forms, only fish that are "supposed" to be in the lineage of amphibians. Thus we leap to Hynerpeton, Acanthostega, and Ichthyostega, and the Labyrinthodonts, all fully tetrapodal, none of them in the least mistaken for "half-fish half-tetrapod creatures.
She introduces us to Acanthostega. He is quite popular among many evolutionists as some sort of transitional form in our evolutionary tree, however Ms. Hunt makes this startling admission about Acanthostega and Ichthyostega: "Though they are probably not ancestral to later tetrapods, Acanthostega & Ichthyostega certainly show that the transition from fish to amphibian is feasible!"
Thus two out of three of her examples cited above were not even thought to have been links in any of the evolutionary trees for later life in the sequence of evolution!
Ms. Hunt continues her storytelling, filling in the details for us as though this has all been observed, when nothing could be further from the truth, she is simply making it all up: "In summary, the very first amphibians (presently known only from fragments) were probably almost totally aquatic, had both lungs and internal gills throughout life, and scudded around underwater with flipper-like, many-toed feet that didn't carry much weight. Different lineages of amphibians began to bend either the hind feet or front feet forward so that the feet carried weight. One line (Hynerpeton) bore weight on all four feet, developed strong limb girdles and muscles, and quickly became more terrestrial."
Essentially, Ms. Hunt is telling a story, making it up as she goes along and filling in the details for our benefit. We are not dealing with science at all, but with a myth, a creation myth with no more evidence to back it up than the myths of ancient Greece or Babylon.
Let us bring as a witness to this case Paula Weston, who noted in "Jeremiah Was Not a Bullfrog”, that evolutionist R.L. Carroll stated: ‘When they first appear in the fossil record, both frogs and salamanders appear essentially modern in their skeletal anatomy. … Despite these similarities, frogs, salamanders, and cæcilians are very different from one another in skeletal structure and ways of life, both now and throughout their known fossil record … we have found no fossil evidence of any possible antecedents that possessed the specialized features common to all three modern orders. … In the absence of fossil evidence that frogs, salamanders and cæcilians evolved from a close common ancestor, we must consider the possibility that each of the modern orders evolved from a distinct group of [unknown] Paleozoic [supposedly 200 million to 500 million years ago] amphibians.’" Creation Ex Nihilo 22(2):28–32 March–May 2000
"Evolutionists E.H. Colbert and M. Morales admit, ‘Despite these similarities, there is no evidence of any Paleozoic amphibians combining the characteristics that would be expected in a single common ancestor. The oldest known frogs, salamanders and cæcilians are very similar to their living descendants.’" (ibid) (Gish, D., Evolution: The Fossils Still Say No!, Institute for Creation Research, CA, USA, pp. 93–94, 1995.)
That was Part One A of Ms. Hunts Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ where she is practically falling over herself with reasons why there are no transitional fossils!
Let us move on to Part One B of Ms. Hunt's Transitional Fossils FAQ, and read more of her evidences for evolution. So far she has shown nothing; no more evidence for evolution than Darwin’s failed premise did in his own time. In their arguments, evolutionists will range from the ridiculous to the sublime as they fathom every possible aspect of human sophistry to try and arrange a fabric of suppositions and falsifications to make it appear as though evolution has some aspect of scientific verifiability.
First Ms. Hunt deals with the supposed transition from amphibians to reptiles, and in her usual manner she lightly brushes over the most serious and still unanswered objection, that of the transition from the soft gelatin like egg of the amphibian to the hard shelled amniotic egg of the reptile:"The major functional difference between the ancient, large amphibians and the first little reptiles is the amniotic egg."
That is all she says about it. It must just be some minor detail, something that we don't need to concern ourselves with, at least by the way that Ms. Hunt deals with it in one simple sentence.
Scientist Michael Denton elaborates on the difficulties with this supposed transition in a little more detail: "The amniotic egg of the reptile is vastly more complex and utterly different to that of an amphibian. There are hardly two eggs in the whole animal kingdom which differ more fundamentally."
He then lists some of the main distinguishing features between the amphibian egg and the amniotic reptile egg. The reptile egg has "the tough impervious shell, the two membranes, the amnion which encloses a small sack in which the embryo floats, and the allantois in which the waste products formed during the development of the embryo accumulate, and the yolk sack containing the food reserves in the form of the protein albumen. None of these features are found in the egg of any amphibian."
He goes on to state "The evolution of the amniotic [reptilian] egg is baffling. It was this decisive innovation which permitted for the first time genuinely terrestrial vertebrate life, freeing it from the necessity of embryological development in an aquatic environment. Altogether at least eight quite different innovations were combined to make the amniotic revolution possible: the formation of a tough impervious shell; the formation of the gelatinous egg white (albumen) and the secretion of a special acid to yield its water; the excretion of nitrogenous waste in the form of water in soluble uric acid; the formation of the amniotic cavity in which the embryo floats (This is surrounded by the amniotic membrane which is formed by an outgrowth of mesodermal tissue, Neither the amniotic cavity nor the membrane have any homologue [similar structure] in any amphibian); the formation of the allantois from the future floor of the hind gut as a container for waste products and later to serve the function of a respiratory organ; the development of a tooth or caruncle which the developed embryo can utilize to break out of the egg; a quantity of yolk sufficient for the needs of the embryo till hatching; changes in the urogenital system of the female permitting fertilization of the egg before the hardening of the shell." (Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, pp. 218-219)
Ms. Hunt mentions none of this as she breezes through her imaginary transition from amphibian to reptile.
Denton mentions a further difficulty in any transition from amphibian to reptile: the vast difference between the hearts of amphibians and the hearts of reptiles (Reptiles have differing hearts among different species, but none of the reptile hearts are anything like an amphibians heart, and a transitional heart would be nearly impossible to imagine. See The Darwin Papers, Chapter Two, Flank's Dilemma). Denton says: "Trying to work out, for example, how the heart and aortic arches of an amphibian could have been gradually converted to the reptilian and mammalian condition raises absolutely horrendous problems." (Denton, ibid)
These problems present no difficulty for Ms. Hunt, as she indulges in a bit of storytelling while briefly summarizing this incredibly difficult transition in a few short lines: "The ancestral amphibians had a rather weak skull and paired "aortas" (systemic arches). The first reptiles immediately split into two major lines which modified these traits in different ways. One line developed an aorta on the right side and strengthened the skull by swinging the quadrate bone down and forward, resulting in an enormous otic notch (and allowed the later development of good hearing without much further modification). "
If Ms. Hunt were the scriptwriter for a new movie version of War and Peace it might be ten minutes long after leaving the editing room.
So it "just happened" because after all, everybody knows that evolution is true and reptiles came from amphibians!
There are, also, a number of physical differences between reptiles and amphibians. Newborn reptiles are miniatures of the adult, however most amphibians go through a larval stage before reaching their adult body form. During this larval stage, amphibians are completely dependent upon water, living much like fish and even breathing through gills, thus some of the fossil amphibians discovered that evolutionists are so excited about because they show evidence of having gills might have only been the remains of a large amphibian in the later stages of adolescence In fact while most develop lungs, a few retain gills and are not thought of as transitional forms between fish and amphibians, as Ms. Hunt suggested). Reptiles are not as dependent on water and some rarely even drink water directly. Amphibian skin does not have hair or scales. Most amphibians use the skin on their bodies and mouth linings to breathe and absorb water (very few species have the ability to drink). If the skin dries out they cannot do either and will die. The nature of their skin makes amphibians very susceptible to dehydration.
In Part One of Ms. Hunt’s Transitional Fossils FAQ we found absolutely no transitional forms (all the sharks were fully sharks, all the bony fish were bony fish, all the amphibians were fully amphibians, and she merely listed a variety of types of amphibians without demonstrating any phylogenic [ancestral] relationships), despite her claims.
We also demonstrated the colossal problems in the egg of the amphibian evolving into the egg of a reptile, and we showed that the evolution of a reptilian heart would be virtually impossible, short of a miracle that is, and Ms. Hunt did not even come close to addressing the problems in these issues. On that alone her claims and the claims of other evolutionists for any amphibian to reptile transition should be cast into grave doubt.
In truth, despite the fact that Ms. Hunt attempts to give the impression that the amphibian to reptile transition has all been worked out and settled, within evolutionary circles there is fierce debate over which taxon belongs in what group, and the academics are now shaking the entire phylogenic tree with some taxon falling headlong out of the branches.
We have the introduction of various cladistic schemes that threatens to demolish the entire Linnaean system that has been the foundation of taxonomy for two centuries.
In the literature you find words to describe the current state of taxonomy like "mess", "reorganization", "confusing", "misnamed", "mistake", and within certain evolutionary circles names like "idiot" and worse pejoratives are flung around fairly often.
If you doubt what I'm saying, then go to any search engine (yahoo is a good one for this) and type in the two keywords "taxonomy, mess" and see how many sites pop up (last count was 440) hosted by academics in absolute frustration over the present chaotic state of evolutionary systematics.
In fact the designation tetrapod is in precarious straights at this moment, as can be seen by going to the website http://phylogeny.arizona.edu/tree/eukaryotes/animals/chordata/ichthyostega/tetrapod.lichen.html , where Jennifer Clack admits "There is currently a debate concerning the definition of the taxon Tetrapoda, which is part of a wider debate dealing with the definiton of phylogenetic groups."
Ms. Hunt mentions proterogyrinus as a possible link between amphibians and reptiles.
Let us take a look at one typical classification chart and find out exactly where proterogyrinus (Proterogyrinidae) fits in:
Local node of Evolution Hyper Chart
Tournaisian Visean Serpukhovian Late Carboniferous Permian
Baphetid = = = = Baphetidae (Loxommatidae) ancestor \\ ??? = = = = Proterogyrinidae \\ \\ ??? = = Seymouriamorph ancestor?= = = = = = = = = = = Seymouriamorpha \\ // / \\ // / ???= = Eoherpetontidae ???- - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - -- - - - - ? / \\ / \= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Gephyrostegidae / Suborder Gephyrostegida / ? Crassigyrinid ancestor \\ = = = = = Cassigyrinus
Smithson, T. R., "The morphology and relationships of the Carboniferous amphibian Eoherpeton watsoni Panchen", Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, vol.85, 1985, pp. 317-410 R. L. Carroll - Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution, p.174 (1988, W.H. Freeman & company)
Source: http://www.kheper.auz.com/gaia/biosphere/vertebrates/batrachosauria/Eoherpetonidae.htm
The question marks were in the original diagram.
Does that help any? The same can be said for the rest of Ms. Hunts supposed transitional forms between amphibians and reptiles, but again, quoting Ms. Hunt, "why waste valuable textbook space on such tedious detail?"
Ms. Hunt also ventures into dinosaur phylogeny (hypothetical evolutionary ancestral relationships) in her amazing FAQ, so I thought it might be appropriate to introduce some discussions on dinosaur taxonomy that I found recently on the Web:
Here is some information on the classification of dinosaurs from 1994, just one among many from the net that demonstrates some of the chaos in that field of enquiry, where we have this interesting posting:
Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. tholtz@geochange.er.usgs.govVertebrate
Paleontologist in Exile Phone: 703-648-5280U.S.
Geological Survey FAX: 703-648-5420Branch of Paleontology & StratigraphyMS 970 National CenterReston, VA 22092U.S.A. at http://www.cmnh.org/fun/dinosaur-archive/1994Dec/0072.html
Previous message: Tom Holtz: "Re: predators for large animals?"
“Does anyone have the latest classification in a form that could be posted? Or as a file that could be e-mailed? I realize these things are always in a state of flux, but I'm curious to see what some of the latest thinking is regarding dinosaur phylogeny (if that's the right term).”
The answer: "There is no consensus yet on all the ingroups of dinosaur phylogeny - in fact, it is one of the most hotly debated topics of current vertebrate paleontology."
At Barry University of Miami's Web page on Dinosaur classification(http://socrates.barry.edu/snhs-jmontague/courses/BIO%20300%20-%20Dinosaurs/lectures/dinolec04.htm ) we read:
“Ten years ago, Michael Benton published an official count of dinosaur species (see: Benton, M.J. 1990. Origin and interrelationships of dinosaurs. Chapter in: The Dinosauria [Weishampel, D.B., P. Dodson, and H. Osmolska, eds.]. University of California Press, Berkeley, California: pp. 11-30.). He recognized roughly 336 official species of dinosaurs in 1990. These were contained within 285 genera, which were themselves contained within 44 families. Benton's 1990 list resulted from a considerable pruning of older lists. Over 600 dinosaur species had once appeared in publication, some of them based on no more than one or several teeth .”
“The naming of fossil species is often an intellectual contest among so-called "splitters" and "lumpers." A "splitter" is an expert who tends to see a new species in each newly-discovered fossil; a "lumper" is a more conservative expert, and tends to see new fossils merely as varieties of previously named species. The fewer the pieces, the more contentious the arguments . Sometimes, a newly-published dinosaur taxon is challenged vigorously.”
“The naming of the sauropod dinosaur genus Apatosaurus ("deceptive-reptile"), known formerly by the delightful name Brontosaurus ("thunder-lizard") illustrates this point (see Lucas, p. 24). Brontosaurus excelsus was originally described by O.C. Marsh in 1879; his type specimen was assembled from a mixture of newly-discovered bone fragments and previously cataloged museum pieces (including some pelvic and vertebral fragments of an animal named Apatosaurus ajax). Several of the leg and foot bones of the B. excelsus type specimen were later discovered to belong to one of the Camarasurus sauropods. Marsh's mixture of bones was eventually and mistakenly topped off with the reconstructed skull of another Camarasurus specimen.”
“By the 1915 many anatomists had recognized the errors, but little effort was put forth to advertise the corrected the name; "Brontosaurus" had already become a world-famous icon (as well as the official product logo for the petroleum corporation Sinclair Oil). In 1986, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature formally approved the 1915 name change based upon precedence. Since the pelvis of the type specimen had been taken by Marsh from a previously described animal of the genus Apatosaurus, that became the official name for the genus. The whole "Brontosaurus" affair seems sometimes less a scientific dispute than a dispute over commercial trademarks.d.. The cladistical analyses of fossil vertebrate species has been controversial.”
And here's another fine mess they've gotten themselves into: This is a scientific correspondence from http://www.cmnh.org/fun/dinosaur-archive/1998Jun/msg00158.html
ALLOSAURS ARE A MESS
To: dinosaur@usc.edu
b. Subject: ALLOSAURS ARE A MESS
c.. From: darren.naish@port.ac.uk
d.. Date: Tue, 9 Jun 1998 14:28:01 GMT0BST
e.. Cc: darren.naish@port.ac.uk, mlb194@soton.ac.uk, twilliams@canr1.cag.uconn.edu f.. Reply-To: darren.naish@port.ac.uk g.. Sender: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu
“I have no definitive opinion on the taxonomy of _Allosaurus_ and its closest relatives - who has? - but with regard to what Tim Williams wrote... Bakker has not shown that these two species are distinct genera - at least not in any scientific publication. The name "Madsenius" was proposed for certain _Allosaurus_ specimens which he considered distinct from "true" _Allosaurus_. I've also heard that another.
Allosaurus_ specimen has been tagged as a new genus by Bakker, with the name "Wyomingraptor" proposed for this one. I thought 'Wyomingraptor' was a torvosaur.
No, I am not getting confused with _Brontoraptor_ (which almost certainly is a torvosaur).
With due respect, Bakker appears to contradict himself regarding the interrelationships of allosaurs. For example, when talking about successives waves of big theropod evolution and extinction (as in last year's SVP - see _JVP_ 17: 30A), he argues that allosaurs are a very closely knit group of species exhibiting very little diversification. The implication is that the differences observed in, say, the Como ?taxa, are indicative of recent speciation and characters differentiating populations are probably not worthy of generic status. Yet, as we all know, at the same time he sees very similar allosaurs apparently different enough to deserve their own genera.. _Creosaurus_ and _Epanterias.
Add to this that the type specimen for _Allosaurus fragilis_ is poorly described and hardly defined. I am not convinced by Smith's study and I still think _Saurophaganax_ is quite a different beast from _Allosaurus_. I personally don't think that _A. fragilis_ and_A. (DCreosaurus) atrox_ are the same species either.. but then what do I know. ”
These are correspondences among experts. These are the things that don't make it into the documentaries that are seen on The Discovery Channel, National Geographic, in Museums or school textbooks. Does this look like the classification of dinosaurs is anything like an exact science?
Ms. Hunt has spent some time on the “mammal-like reptiles” as evidence for the evolution of the mammals, however there are some major problems in this scenario as well. For one thing, she is apparently unaware of the fact that the therapsids have not been classified as reptiles for quite some time, at least by the University of California Museum of Paleontology at Berkeley California.
They flourished during the Permian and Triassic periods, from about 280 to 200 million years ago, at the beginning of the “Age of the Dinosaurs”.
Then they simply disappeared for 100 million years while dinosaurs tramped around on the earth, leaving almost no fossil evidence of their existence during this period!
Later, after the dinosaurs have pretty much left the scene, the true mammals show up, fully formed, starting at the beginning of the Cenozoic Era.
Biochemist Dr. Duane Gish has noted, with a touch of irony: “Since evolution is supposed to have involved natural selection, in which the more highly adapted creatures reproduce in larger numbers and thus gradually replace the less fit, we would now expect the mammals, triumphant at last, to flourish in vast numbers and to dominate the world. A very strange thing happened, however. For all practical purposes, the mammals disappeared from the scene for the next 100 million years! During this supposed vast stretch of time, the "reptile-like" reptiles, including dinosaurs and many other land-dwelling creatures, the marine reptiles, and the flying reptiles, swarmed over the earth. As far as the mammals were concerned, however, the "fittest" that replaced the mammal-like reptiles, they were almost nowhere to be found. Most of the fossil remains of mammals recovered to date from the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods, allegedly covering more than 100 million years, could be contained in two cupped hands. Most such mammals are represented by a few teeth. If evolution is supposed to involve survival of the fittest, and the fittest are defined as those that reproduce in larger numbers, the origin of mammals represents something very strange, indeed. Since they survived in very few numbers, evolution apparently occurred by survival of the unfit !”[2]
One more of Ms. Hunt’s transitional forms is just too good to pass up, and that would be Purgatorius, a supposed ancestral relative of man.
In Chapter Nine I deal with this strange little creature in some detail. A complete skeleton of purgatorius has never been found, but they have found teeth from which they have wonderfully reconstructed him, tail and all. There are four specimens of Purgatorius: Purgatorius unio; titutsi; janisae; and ceratops. He is supposed to have been approximately the size of a modern rat, and his anatomy is hypothesized to have been similar to a rat’s anatomy also.
All that was ever found of Purgatorius unio and P.ceratops were one single tooth each , and yet from these two teeth Ms. Hunt stated that they were “pointy-faced, small early mammals with mostly primitive teeth, and claws instead of nails [?]. But they show the first signs of primate-like teeth; lost an incisor and a premolar, and had relatively blunt-cusped, squarish molars.”
That is a remarkable evaluation from two teeth. Evolutionists assure us that purgatorius is where the human race had it’s beginnings.
Most descriptions of Purgatorius state that he was merely a generalized small animal, and in rare moments of honesty, again reading the fine print, some evolutionists admit that it might have been ancestral to man, but they are not sure.
Spending much more time with Ms. Hunt would be redundant. The rest of her FAQ has more of her bold claims of evidence for evolution with a paultry excuse for evidence. I would refer the reader to the previous chapter, The Fossil Record, where most of Ms. Hunt’s so-called transitional forms are refuted by referenced quotations, and to Chapter Nine of The Darwin Papers for more on the so-called ape-men.
As this site will be under continuous construction over the next year, more evidence showing Ms. Hunt’s fabrications will be added in due time, but for now these links should help to answer anyone who has more questions on transitional forms: Http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-102.htm; and http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/Index.htm
Let us look at another talk.origins FAQ with disastrous augury for the theory of evolution, Joseph Boxhorn’s FAQ, titled Observed Instances of Speciation.
According to the title, there are new species evolving right before our very eyes.
Not true.
Mr. Boxhorn's new species are merely variations within species, or hybrids of the type similar to when horses and donkeys mate to produce mules. No new genetic information is created, and the supposed "new" species were examples like this one:
“5.3.1 Drosophila paulistorum. Dobzhansky and Pavlovsky (1971) reported a speciation event that occurred in a laboratory culture of Drosophila paulistorum sometime between 1958 and 1963. The culture was descended from a single inseminated female that was captured in the Llanos of Colombia. In 1958 this strain produced fertile hybrids when crossed with conspecifics of different strains from Orinocan. From 1963 onward crosses with Orinocan strains produced only sterile males. Initially no assortative mating or behavioral isolation was seen between the Llanos strain and the Orinocan strains. Later on Dobzhansky produced assortative mating (Dobzhansky 1972). "
These new species barely deserve commenting on. Dobshansky's "speciation right before our eyes" were still Drosophila, still fruit flies. They started out as fruit flies and they ended up as fruit flies and were, like many of Boxhorn's examples, sterile, thus having little or no value in evolutionary reproductive terms.
In another of Boxhorn’s experiments on fruit flies "55 virgin males and 55 virgin females of both ebony body mutant flies and vestigial wing mutant flies (220 flies total) were put into a jar and allowed to mate for 20 hours"!
Whew! (Boxhorn did not personally carry out the experiment. I can imagine it would be a little hard on the eyes. How anyone figured out that they were virgins in the first place should have won a Nobel Prize)
This experiment was done to examine the courtship behavior of mutant fruit flies, since Boxhorn believed that one of the distinctions of a species was determined by how attracted certain members of the opposite sex were to each other. Perhaps this meant that ugly fruit flies were of a different species than handsome ones.
The first two examples of speciation in Boxhorn’s FAQ were the experiments of de Vries (1905) and Digby (1912) on the Primrose plant, but as long ago as 1922 the magazine Science reported: "Twenty years ago de Vries made what looked like a promising attempt to supply this (evidence for new species appearing among natural offspring) as far as Oenothera [Primrose] is concerned . . .but in application to that phenomenon the theory of mutation falls. We see novel forms appearing, but they are no new species of Oenothera. For that which comes out is no new creation." (Science, Jan. 20, 1922; from an address by Professor William Bateson addressing a group of scientists in Toronto)
So talk.origins is still using an experiment for evidence for evolution that was rejected by the scientific community as long ago as 1922.
Embryonic recapitulation has been disproved for over one hundred years now, and yet it is still used in evolutionist’s arguments and in biology texts as “proof” for evolution. We have dealt extensively with the history and expose’ of this pseudo-fact in the previous chapter on the fossil record, so it is unnecessary to repeat what has already been written on this subject (see Chapter Five).
Genetic and geographic isolation is another hypothesis that evolutionists attempt to use for their theory, however this idea has no grounding in fact either. Most evolutionary scenarios would have us believe that a small population of animals becoming isolated from the general population would develop through natural selection to produce a newer, hardier, more vigorous species better equipped to survive in nature. The problem with this is that natural selection reduces the gene pool, thus diminishing the survival value of the species in the long run.
A vivid example of this is the Florida panther, on the verge of extinction, plagued by health problems, sterility and heart murmurs. There has been an attempt to save this species by importing a related sub-species from Texas to interbreed with them. Tom Logan, chief of wildlife research for the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission reported on the experiment:
“‘We have a small, isolated population that has been inbreeding for 150 years, with an ever-increasingloss of genetic variation ,’ explained Logan. ‘And that’s the extinction process . . . In six to eight years we should have gone through a couple of generations of young, and we will have restored the genetic variation that’s been lost.’”[3]
Since Darwin seemed to be pretty much in over his head when attempting to come up with any real answers as to how species originated, let us see what he had to say about mutual co-existence among varied animals in nature. He was well known for his idea of the “struggle for survival” concept, that species are constantly engaged in continual warfare for the food supply, so the idea that species would co-operate with each other for mutual advantage was foreign to the idea of survival of the fittest, even though he was forced at times to admit examples of mutual co-existence and co-operation among certain species, contrary to his own theory.
Darwin wrote, "Natural selection cannot possibly produce any modification in a species exclusively for the good of another species . . . If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory."[11]
Here he has cleverly wrapped up a falsehood and inserted it inside of another falsehood, so if one were not careful, one might, in objecting to one of his ideas wind up defending another one equally as false. Natural selection, according to Howells, does not produce anything, it merely eliminates what is unfit, but there are indeed examples of altruistic behavior in the plant and animal kingdom. Some birds will stay in a field and sound a warning cry to birds of other species when a predator approaches. So although Darwin is wrong when he said that no species has an organ devoted to the welfare of another species, in raising objections to this part of his statement, one must be careful not to make the mistake of defending the first part by saying, "See, natural selection has produced organs in one species that benefit another," since natural selection produces nothing at all. There are cases of apparent altruistic behavior in the plant and animal world, but evolution fails to explain how these came about. Again, a key phrase that Darwin used was "for the exclusive good of another," which should make us careful about simply finding objections based on symbiosis.
Another example of altruistic behavior, which Darwin said would "annihilate" his theory, would be the "Dental offices” in certain parts of the sea, where large fish stop and open their mouths wide, while other small fish and shrimp dart in and clean the accumulated food particles from the larger fish's teeth. Sometimes the large fish even line up to have their mouths inspected and cleaned. After they are done, the small fish swim out of the larger fish’s mouth, and the large fish swims away, probably to feast on more small fish. These examples of helpful behavior, like the hitchhiking spider that hitches a ride on willing scorpions, conflict directly with the idea of a "struggle for survival."
There is combat, aggression, struggle for dominance, and killing going on perpetually in the wild, some chimpanzees even make war on other chimp clans and exterminate them, but these would be examples of a fallen world, not the original world that God had made in the beginning, before the curse of man’s sin affected every living being. Even in any one eco-system with a number of different animals, they do not all eat the same food, they are not all "struggling with each other" to survive.
There is definitely a "social etiquette" among animals that is carefully observed. Today scientists describe what has become known as the "balance of nature," where species co-exist in a delicate balance with each other, and in fact mark off distinct territories where strict rules are enforced and respected. Animals know when they are in the territory of another by scent, and they avoid confrontation with one another whenever possible.
There is also a problem with defining what “fittest” means. Does it mean those that were the biggest and strongest? The dinosaurs were the strongest land animals that ever lived, and they are extinct as far as modern science knows. Does it mean the smartest and most complex? The smallest creatures that have supposedly evolved the least, the bacteria and single celled amoeba, have been around the longest, again even outlasting the dinosaurs. Does it mean the swiftest? Some birds and species of large cats that are remarkably swift have come near to extinction over the last century. Does it mean the smartest? Turtles and sharks have been around (by evolutionists standards) for millions of years while other, supposedly smarter creatures, saber-toothed tigers, mammoths, extinct species of ape, the Tasmanian wolf, and various species of birds in recent eras, have gone by the wayside.
Often evolutionists will take a very general, well known, observable fact, that no one would contest, and then they will stretch that fact into a broad, sweeping statement to explain all of the diverse, intricate, existing phenomena in the organic realm from an evolutionist point of view.
A common example would be the concept of "change." No one in their right mind would dispute that the universe is subject to change, and no one would dispute that change, growth, variation (within limits) is observed in living systems. Yet in the chapter Our Changing World, in his book A New Look at the Dinosaurs , Alan Charig extrapolates this obvious fact of existence to imply that evolution has occurred, because “everything in the world is constantly changing” (Charig, pp.22). He wrote: “Nothing, but nothing, remains the same . . .” which is a true statement in certain aspects in the natural world, but Charig expands this obvious fact into a non-scientific pronouncement by making the assertion that: “Everything is evolving.”
Charig presents no evidence for any of this, he does say that there has been variation withinspecies, he also mentions that some species have become extinct (the opposite of a species originating!), but he presents no evidence of any series of animals evolving from one distinct species into a totally different species, nor does he come up with a mechanism that would explain how favorable, genetic material could appear in the DNA structures of living things.
He also takes a very patronizing, condescending approach to the Biblical view, equating (wrongly) evolution with the "scientific view " and regarding the religious view as a primitive, child-like interpretation of the universe: "The contents of this chapter must seem to be the very opposite of what is written in the Bible, in the first chapter of Genesis. There it tells how God created the earth, and then, in four days, all forms of plant and animal life (including man himself) just as we know them today.” (The Bible does not say that everything is just as we know them today, especially man, who originally would not have suffered old age and death. These kinds of misinterpolations are common fodder with evolutionary writers. There is room for variation and change within certain limits from an originally created pair; extinction of whole classes of animals would even be possible within the bounds of creationism, although this would not be the most preferred mechanism of “improvement” as with evolutionists. Charig’s criticism actually ignores one of the most obvious statements in Genesis, that the snake undoubtedly had a different physical structure after the fall, not from evolution, but from the effects of the curse.)
Charig continues: "Most people, however [marshaling the supposed “correct” opinion to his side, another common tactic, similar to "all scientists agree on evolution" etc. etc., a false presumption to bolster a failing argument, as we have seen from the earlier cited authorities who vehemently opposed evolutionary theory], no longer believe that the Biblical story of the Creation is literally true. They look upon it as a parable, an allegory (like many of the stories told by Jesus in the New Testament); in other words, it is a fictitious story which serves to illustrate a moral teaching that the earth and the living things upon it are constantly changing [This is what Charig sees as the main message of Genesis, that "things are constantly changing?" All things are changing might be the main message of Buddhism , which teaches that the phenomenal universe, known as samsara, or “great turning”, is in a state of flux, with no fixed elements having any permanent identity apart from accompanying “conditions” of existence, or Taoism with it’s Book of Changes, or some other philosophical systems, but the main message of Genesis is that a sovereign Creator, out of infinite love and wisdom, created the entire universe, the earth, and man and every other living thing on the earth, and that God is to be loved, worshipped, re verenced and obeyed.]
This type of mis-characterization of Christian thought by generalization and innuendo is very common with evolutionary writers. Others have stated that if we found life on other worlds, that it would disprove the idea that God had created all things, which seems to be a rather vague line of argument, since many Christians, among them quite a few in the Seventh Day Adventist movement, believe that this great universe might be full of diverse living systems, all of them created by God though, not having evolved by some nebulous process.
No one disputes that change does indeed occur, within limits. Taking this obvious fact and stretching it to contend that tree shrews became apes that became men has no verifiable evidence to back it up. Discussing the reasons for the gradual development of a new organ, Darwin wrote: "In many cases we are far too ignorant...” etc. [12] Since Darwin never even approached the fundamental question of the Origin of Species, let us see what some modern day scientists have to say about the situation.
Gordon Rattray Taylor wrote: “Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, which has stood as the one great biological law comparable with the law of physics for more than a century, is crumbling under attack. Biologists are discovering more and more features which it does not seem able to explain, and are holding meetings at which tempers often run high to discuss problems, some new, others which were discovered decades ago but quietly ignored.” [13]He further wrote: “In short, the dogma (Darwinism) which has dominated most biological thinking for more than a century is collapsing.”[14]
Michael Denton, an Australian medical doctor, evolutionist and scientist, on pp.358 of his earlier cited book, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, wrote: "The influence of evolutionary theory on fields far removed from biology is one of the most spectacular examples in history of how a highly speculative idea for which there is no really hard scientific evidence can come to fashion the thinking of a whole society and dominate the outlook of an age."[15]
Professor Louis Bounoure, former President of the Biological Society of Strasbourg and Director of the Strasbourg Zoological Museum, then Director of Research at the French National Centre of Scientific Research, said: "Evolutionism is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless."[16]
Dr. T.N. Tahmisian of the Atomic Energy Commission, USA, said in the Fresno Bee, August 20, 1959: "Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution, we do not have one iota of fact."
Biologist Jean Rostand informs us that even if a creature could acquire a characteristic to enable it to survive better, this would not be passed down through his progeny anyhow. Rostand wrote: “ . . . acquired characteristics cannot be transmitted from the ancestor to the descendant. . ."[17]
Thus the traditional stories of animals grasping things with their claws, then gradually developing hands, and fish struggling to survive out of the water and then developing arms and legs from their fins, is absolute science fiction. Science is defined as that which we can know, or can experimentally work with by direct observation and fact . In view of Darwin’s many admissions of ignorance and outright dumbfoundedness I am at a loss as to how he or anyone with a rational intelligence can call his nebulous theories fact.
Dispelling the myth of evolution will take time and education and patience, for it is and has being vigorously enforced and propagated by its adherents in academia and in the media for many years, and they have become entrenched in their positions of influence in universities, middle level and High Schools, and in the television, movie and publishing industries. In addition, this myth has been handed down for generations from believing professors to students, who then become the next generation of teachers, and they often mix science with myth through insinuating the theory of evolution into their interpretations of natural data. This mixing of fact and flawed theory can be unconscious or deliberate, but the sad results are the continual perversion of scientific research towards an agnostic or atheistic view of life, or at the very least the removal of God and His providence from our everyday lives and from our understanding of history, which has profound consequences on the way we view life, our interpretation of man’s role in creation, and our concept of our origin and destiny.
Next we shall look at the most well known aspect of paleontology, the extinction of the dinosaurs, and we will find out that there is a connection between their demise and one of the greatest events in the Bible, as we investigate the Flood of Noah in Chapter Seven of The Darwin Papers.
ENDNOTES
[1]1 Timothy 6:20, Holy Bible
There are some evolutionists, and unfortunately some creationists who have stirred up much confusion by taken issue with using this quote from the Bible, stating that: 1) This passage concerning heresy does not refer to evolution and 2) The original greek word translated as "science" was actually "gnosis", which meant secret or esoteric knowledge and thus Paul was not refering to the modern word "science" as we know it today.
There are some serious issues raised here, not the least of which is that we should not be majoring on the minors in our defense of creationism and causing unecessary controversy within creationist ranks, which the evolutionists are ever seeking to spot and exploit for their own ends. However, since I have had this quote up on my site and this has been brought up, it must now be addressed.
As far as claiming that this verse, where Paul is warning Timothy to beware of false teaching, supposedly does not refer to evolution, while this is true that it does not directly refer to evolution, one could also make the case that since it doesn't refer directly to gnosticism either, which they claim it does refer to, then it isn't refering to that or to any heresy at all.
Using this type of faulty argument to deny that it refers to evolution, one could also say that if a mother told her child not to cross the street without looking both ways, but since she didn't mention one particular street on the way to school, then it would be okay for the child to cross that street without looking both ways.
This verse is a general statement made by Paul to beware of false teaching, false doctrine, nothing more and nothing less. It is what is known as an inclusive statement, and while it doesn't specifically mention evolution, it was meant to embrace heresies in the general sense, and evolution would certainly fit into that category. This passage doesn't mention other more modern heretical ideas either, like space aliens interbreeding with humans, and I assume that Paul was not going to give Timothy an exhaustive list of all the many heresies floating around in that day and age, or the heresies that would come about in the future. Furthermore, this verse has been used throughout history as a defense against Arianism, Sabellianism, and many other heresies by apologists for the faith, so this argument seems to break down here.
The Bible states "All scripture is given by inspiration from God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works."
Of course to an evolutionist this verse would not apply to evolution, simply because of the fact that if you were to ask any heretic if their ideas were heresy they would say no, of course not. Heresy always makes perfectly good sense to the heretic.
It is also claimed that this verse must be taken in context, and that it refers exclusively to the gnostic teaching of secret, or esoteric knowledge as necessary to salvation. However if we are to do this, we find that Paul is saying absolutely nothing in this epistle about gnostics or secret doctrines. To take it in context, Paul is simply warning Timothy to beware of "vain philosophy" or false teaching, where he says in another passage that through it "some have erred and departed from the faith."
Gnosticism would be included in this warning, but it would not necessarily be the sole heresy referred to in this verse. In addition, one of the characteristics of gnostic teaching was the concept of aeons, or vast ages of the earth, a topic which young earth creationists would certainly take issue with and that would have nothing to do with mystical knowledge.
As far as the meaning of the word gnosis, this was used by the gnostics, but it was also a word that simply meant knowledge, or experience and could have been applied to mean "learning".
In fact, this same Greek word gnosis is used in many other parts of the New Testament and it is used in Luke 1:77 to mean knowledge of salvation.
Also in Luke 11:52, Rom. 11:33, and 1Cor 8:1 it is used to mean nearly the same thing as in Luke 1:77, knowledge of God, while in Rom. 15:14 we are commanded to befilledwith gnosis, so how can they claim that it is ipso facto being used in
1 Timothy only for gnosticism? Paul clearly was not referring to some gnostic experience when he was using this same word in these other passages, and it is clear that he was using it here to refer to what it plainly says: to beware of "false knowledge" or "science falsely so-called", and in the context that would surely, while not specifically mentioning evolution, embrace the teaching of evolution, along with gnosticism and other heresies.
Regarding the modern definition of the word science, it can and still is often used to mean knowledge, or "knowledge of" or "the study of", although it's meaning has been narrowed to include a specific discipline also. I think that to exclusively equate the word science with "the scientific method" is causing some of the confusion. They can be interchangeable at times, but one is not exclusively synonymous with the other.
In the New Testament Greek Lexicon this word gnosis means: 1. Knowledge, signifies in general intelligence, understanding
A. the general knowledge of Christian religion
B. the deeper more perfect and enlarged knowledge of this religion, such as belongs to the more advanced
C. esp. of things lawful and unlawful for Christians
D. moral wisdom, such as is seen in right livinghttp://www.studylight.org/lex/grk/view.cgi?number=1108
[2] Gish, Duane, Institute for Creation Research, Acts and Facts No. 102, December, 1981.
[3]Florida panthers are fond of their cousins from Texas, Medford Mail Tribune, pp.1,Nov, 24,1995, orig.from the Los Angeles Times report out of Big Cypress National Preserve.
[4]Denton, Michael, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, pp.249-250.
[5]Michael Pitman, Adam and Evolution, Baker Book House, 1984, pp.139.
[6]Wallace, King and Sanders, Biosphere, The Realm of Life, Scott, Foresman and Company, Glenview
Illinois, 1984, pp.276.
[7]Hoyle, Fred, The Intelligent Universe, London, Michael Joseph, 1983.
[8](ibid)
[9]Whickramasinghe, Chandra, Philosophical Transcripts of the Royal Society of London, 1988, Vol.325, pp.611
[10] Patterson, Colin, Evolution, Natural Museum, London, 1999, pp. 129-131, ( Henry Morris, Back to Genesis Acts and Facts, November 2000)
[11]Darwin, Origin, Chapter Six: Difficulties of the Theory: Utilitarian Doctrine.
[12]Darwin, Origin, pp.97.
[13]Taylor, Gordon Rattray, The Great Evolution Mystery, 1983, Harper and Rowe, Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10022, pp.1.
[14]Taylor, Evolution Mystery, pp.15.
[15]Denton, Michael, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 1985.
[16]The Advocate , March 8, 1984, pp.17
[17]The Orion Book of Evolution, Jean Rostand, The Orion Press, New York, 1960, pp.95.