ATLAS OF CREATION
Volume III
|
INTRODUCTION
A fossil is the name given to the remains or traces of a plant or animal preserved in geologic strata since prehistoric times—or in some cases, remains preserved encased in amber. Fossils collected from all over the world are one of our most important sources of information about the organisms that have existed on Earth since the very earliest times, even hundreds of millions of years ago. Research into fossils enables us to learn about extinct plants and animals, as well as earlier forms of species still in existence today. Thanks to this information, we learn which life forms existed at what epochs in time, what these life forms' features were, and whether they resembled present-day species.
According to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution—whose scientific invalidity has been revealed by subsequent scientific discoveries—all living things are descended from one single common ancestor. Darwin and his followers claimed that very different life forms developed from one another as the result of small changes over long periods of time.
According to the theory's unsupported claims, random coincidences gave rise to the first living cells. Subsequently, those cells that had formed by chance combined together and over the course of millions of years, became marine invertebrates. Later still, they developed spinal cords and became fish. These fish subsequently emerged onto dry land and gave rise to reptiles, from which birds and mammals then supposedly evolved separately.
If this claim were true, then a great many "intermediate" forms showing the transition between different species should have once existed—and at least a few should have been fossilized. For example, if reptiles really had evolved into birds, then literally billions of half-bird, half-reptile creatures must once have existed. Similarly, there should have been large numbers of life forms that were part invertebrate and part fish, and half-fish, half-reptile. And these intermediate life forms must have had incomplete, partly-developed organs and structures. In addition, if such transitional species had really existed, then their numbers must have run into the hundreds of millions, or even billions, and their fossilized remains should be found all over the world.
Darwin referred to these conjectural creatures as "intermediate forms." He knew perfectly well that if his theory were to be proven, it was absolutely vital that the remains of at least a few of these intermediate forms be discovered. He explained why there must have been a large number of intermediate forms:
By the theory of natural selection all living species have been connected with the parent-species of each genus, by differences not greater than we see between the natural and domestic varieties of the same species at the present day... 1
Here, Darwin is saying that the differences between any "ancestor" and the "descendant" during the supposed process of evolution should be as small as the differences in the varieties of any particular living species (between a pedigreed spaniel and a mongrel, for instance). Therefore, if evolution had really taken place as Darwin claimed, it must have done so by way of very small, gradual changes.
Changes in any living thing subjected to mutation will be relatively small. In order for major changes to take place—such as forelegs developing into wings, gills into lungs, or fins into feet—millions of very small successive changes must have accumulated, again over millions of years. This process would necessarily give rise to millions of transitional intermediate forms.
Following his statement quoted above, Darwin arrived at this conclusion:
… the number of intermediate and transitional links, between all living and extinct species, must have been inconceivably great. 2
Darwin expressed the same point in other parts of his book On the Origin of Species:
If my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking most closely all of the species of the same group together must assuredly have existed... Consequently evidence of their former existence could be found only amongst fossil remains. 3
However, Darwin was well aware that no fossils of these intermediate forms had yet been found. He regarded this as a major difficulty for his theory. In one chapter of his book titled "Difficulties on Theory," he wrote:
Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?… But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?… Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. 4
Darwin's only explanation for this major dilemma was lack of evidence—insufficient fossil remains had been discovered at that time. He maintained that later, when the fossil record was examined in detail, the missing intermediate links would inevitably be found. Over the last 150 years, however, research has shown that the hopes of Darwin and his successors were all empty: Not a single intermediate form fossil has ever been encountered.
There are now roughly 100 million fossils in thousands of museums and collections all over the world. All of them are identifiable as species with their own unique structures, distinguished from one another by major anatomical differences. No fossil remains of any half-fish, half-amphibian, or half-dinosaur, half-bird, or half-ape, half-human—forms so eagerly awaited by evolutionists—have ever been discovered.
The paleontologist Niles Eldredge and the anthropologist Ian Tattersall, both from the American Museum of Natural History, state that the fossil record is perfectly adequate in order to understand the history of life—, and that this record in no way supports the theory of evolution:
That individual kinds of fossils remain recognizably the same throughout the length of their occurrence in the fossil record had been known to paleontologists long before Darwin published his Origin. Darwin himself, ... prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search ... One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction is wrong. 5
As these evolutionist scientists make clear, it is quite possible to see the true history of life in the fossil record—but there are no intermediate forms in that history.
Other scientists agree that no intermediate forms exist. For example, Rudolf A. Raff, director of the Indiana University Molecular Biology Institute, and the Indiana University researcher Thomas C. Kaufman have declared:
The lack of ancestral or intermediate forms between fossil species is not a bizarre peculiarity of early metazoan history. Gaps are general and prevalent throughout the fossil record. 6
The fossil record has even preserved the microscopic remains of bacteria that lived billions of years ago. Yet despite this, not a single fossil belonging to any of these fictitious transitional life forms have ever been found. There are fossils belonging to thousands of different life forms, from ants to bacteria, and from birds to flowering plants. Fossils belonging to extinct plants and animals have been preserved so perfectly that we can establish the structures of extinct life forms that we never see alive today. The absence of even one single intermediate-form specimen, despite the fossil record being so rich, does not indicate that the fossil record is lacking. Rather, it shows the invalidity of the theory of evolution.
EVOLUTIONISTS' INTERMEDIATE-FORM DILEMMA
As you have seen, evolutionists appeal to the fossil record to confirm their claims that living species evolved gradually from one another. Yet even though 99% of the fossil record has been unearthed and catalogued, they still do not have a single piece of evidence to support the claim of evolution. For that reason, some evolutionists have attempted to manufacture their own fossils as alleged evidence for their theories, though subsequently these "remains" have been exposed as either hoaxes or distorted misinterpretations.
Fossils in the Earth's strata confirm the fact that all life forms have existed in their original perfect state ever since they were first created. The Glasgow University professor of palaeontology T. Neville George expressed this many years ago:
There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil record. In some ways it has become almost unmanageably rich, and discovery is outpacing integration … The fossil record nevertheless continues to be composed mainly of gaps.7
The paleontologist Niles Eldredge describes the invalidity of Darwin's blaming the insufficient nature of the fossil record for why no intermediate forms had been found:
The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life's history-not the artifact of a poor fossil record.8
Many people have the mistaken impression that there is a positive correlation between the fossil record and Darwin's theory—a misconception that was explained in an article in Sciencemagazine:
A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks, semi-popular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general these have not been found yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks.9
The American palaeontologist S. M. Stanley describes how the truth revealed by the fossil record is ignored by the Darwinist mind-set that dominates the scientific world, which causes others to ignore it, as well:
The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with gradualism. What is remarkable is that, through a variety of historical circumstances, even the history of opposition has been obscured. ... as the biological historian William Coleman has recently written, 'The majority of paleontologists felt their evidence simply contradicted Darwin's stress on minute, slow, and cumulative changes leading to species transformation.' ... their story has been suppressed.10
CAMBRIAN FOSSILS AND THE CREATION OF SPECIES
The oldest of the Earth's strata in which the fossils of complex life forms appear were laid down in the Cambrian Period, estimated at between 543 and 490 million years ago. In strata older than the Cambrian, no fossils of living things are found, apart from single-celled organisms. In the Cambrian Period, however, a variety of distinctly different life forms suddenly appeared. More than 30 life forms, such as sea urchins, starfish, trilobites, snails and fish appeared in a single moment.
Furthermore, contrary to the assumptions of the theory of evolution, all of the life forms that appeared so suddenly possess highly complex physical structures, not simple "rudimentary" ones.
According to the erroneous theory of evolution, more sophisticated life forms must have evolved from other, more primitive ones. Yet there are no complex life forms at all prior to those of the Cambrian Period. These Cambrian life forms appeared all at once, with not a single earlier forerunner. The British zoologist Richard Dawkins, the best-known living proponent of the theory of evolution, admits that:
It is as though they [Cambrian creatures] were just planted there, without any evolutionary history.11
This fact definitively invalidates the theory of evolution. Because in The Origin of Species, Darwin wrote:
If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life all at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of descent with slow modification through natural selection.12
This lethal blow that Darwin so feared came from the Cambrian Period, at the very beginning of the fossil record.
New life forms also appeared suddenly and with complete, flawless structures in the ages after the Cambrian. Basic groups such as fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals each appeared on Earth in a single moment and in flawless forms. Not a single intermediate form of the kind hoped for by evolutionists exists among them.
This fact revealed by the fossil record proves that living things have not evolved from the simple to the more complex, neither functionally nor in terms of appearance, but were created by God. The evolutionist Mark Czarnecki admits as much:
A major problem in proving the theory has been the fossil record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth's geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin's hypothetical intermediate variants—instead species appear … abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created by God.13
"MISSING LINK DISCOVERED" HEADLINES ARE AN UNSCIENTIFIC DECEPTION
If you've ever read a newspaper headline announcing the discovery of a "missing link," then you can be certain that the report has no scientific value. Serious scientists long ago abandoned the idea of "missing links" and accepted that it is unscientific to make evolutionary conjectures based on fossils.
Henry Gee, a paleontologist and editor of the scientific journal Nature, writes this on the subject in his 1999 book In Search of Deep Time:
Given the ubiquitous chatter of journalists and headline writers about the search for ancestors, and the discovery of missing links, it may come as a surprise to learn that most professional palaeontologists do not think of the history of life in terms of scenarios or narratives, and that they rejected the storytelling mode of evolutionary history as unscientific more than thirty years ago.14
These persistent reports about missing links aim to give the impression that simply making a discovery will confirm the hypothesis that one species develops into another. Yet excavations over the last century and more have left totally unfounded the expectations that intermediate forms between species would be discovered. The eminent palaeontologist A. S. Romer admitted this as far back as 1963:
"Links" are missing just where we most fervently desire them [to point to a transition between species] and it is all too probable that many "links" will continue to be missing.15
Paleontologists have kept their missing links on the "missing list." Yet their own admissions run contrary to the impression that certain media outlets seek to give. For example, Niles Eldredge, and Ian Tattersall lack the media's positive air of expectation:
One of the most pervasive myths in all of paleontology...is the myth that the evolutionary histories of living beings are essentially a matter of discovery. … But if this were really so, one could confidently expect that as more hominid fossils were found the story of human evolution would become clearer. Whereas if anything, the opposite has occurred. 16
To sum up, the missing link is not a creature waiting to be discovered, but an idea that palaeontologists have long since abandoned, and which cannot be the subject of any truly scientific inquiry. Therefore, why is it the subject of so much insistent propaganda?
The answer to this question lies in the world-view espoused by the theory of evolution. Materialists and atheists have attempted to keep Darwin's theory alive ever since he first put it forward in the mid-19th century. Because although the theory is based on a completely imaginary scenario, materialists seized on it as a supposedly scientific hypothesis.
The evolutionist thinker Mary Midgley expresses this:
It [the theory of evolution] is, and cannot help being, also a powerful folk-tale about human origins. … Suggestions about how we were made and where we come from are bound to engage our imagination, to shape our views of what we now are, and so to affect our lives. 17
At the end of his biology text book Life on Earth, the Darwinist biologist Edward O. Wilson makes this admission on the subject of evolutionist claims:
Every generation needs its own creation myths, and these are ours. 18
"Missing link" propaganda is therefore a deception intended to keep the evolutionary myth about the origins alive and influential. Evolutionary propaganda is the most important vehicle materialists have for spreading their views. The concept of the "missing link" is key in terms of Darwin's fictitious idea of all species being traceable to common ancestors. Therefore, the more that evolutionists can keep their concept in the spotlight, the more support they hope to muster for their materialist views. That is behind all their efforts to distract the public from the collapse of Darwinism by means of "missing link" headlines.
 Despite the evolutionist media's best endeavors, the fossils they describe are not missing links, and neither can anything about them confirm Darwin's theory. These "news" reports consist solely of unscientific speculation regarding newly discovered fossils of extinct species. Yet this unscientific propaganda will not alter the fact that evolutionist scientists themselves admit that there is no scientific basis to the concept of the missing link, nor is there any trace of intermediate forms in the fossil record. The reality that the fossil record reveals is that evolution never occurred.
As in the previous two volumes of the Atlas of Creation series, in the following pages of this book, Volume 3, you will see fossils belonging to life forms that existed tens, or even hundreds of millions of years ago, matched together with their present-day counterparts. You can see for yourself these "living fossils"—of which there are countless examples. Yet they are seldom reported in evolutionary publications, which instead resort to reports regarding "missing links," which are simply products of highly prejudiced propaganda. You will be able to understand that efforts to disguise various hoaxes and unscientific claims as scientific developments are the products of the materialist mindset.
At the same time, you will discover how life forms have existed for millions of years complete with all their perfect and complex features and have survived with no changes in structure or appearance—and how each one is indisputable proof of the fact of Creation.
DARWIN'S ILLOGICAL AND UNSCIENTIFIC FORMULA
When the subject of evolution comes up, many people imagine that this is a scientific problem—and that for anyone less knowledgeable than scientists, Darwinism is impossible to understand. They assume it's pointless to argue the issue, one way or the other. Indeed, Darwinists employ Latin words and scientific terms generally unfamiliar to the public in order to encourage this mistaken idea. They engage in complicated descriptions and frequently resort to demagoguery and hollow slogans in order to give the impression they are discussing a highly scientific matter.
In fact, however, Darwinism's basic claim is completely unscientific, and its logical poverty is so obvious that even primary school age children can see it. According to Darwinism, in some unexplained manner, the first cell supposedly formed in the Earth's primeval environment, in a pool of muddy water. And out of that single cell, a literally endless series of coincidences later gave rise to animals, plants, human beings and civilizations. In other words, all of mankind, as well as the entire plant and animal kingdoms, are supposedly the work of an ideal quantity of mud, a long period of time and plentiful coincidences.
According to Darwinists, who are suffering from an obvious logical deficiency, these materials, each one of which is unconscious, gave rise to human beings possessed of reason and conscience, who think, love, feel compassion, possess sound judgment, produce paintings and statues, compose symphonies, write novels, build skyscrapers, construct nuclear reactors, discover the causes of diseases and manufacture drugs to cure them, or engage in politics. They claim that when sufficient time had passed, lions, tigers, rabbits, deer, elephants, cats, dogs, moths, flies, crocodiles and birds all evolved by chance from muddy water. A whole range of fruits and vegetables, with their own unique tastes and smells—oranges, strawberries, bananas, apples, grapes, tomatoes, peppers—flowers with their matchless appearances and other plants all emerged from that same mud.
In short, ever since Darwin's time, countless articles, papers, films, newspaper reports, magazine articles and television programs have repeated the evolutionist scenario in which all of life emerged by chance from mud. In other words, if you ask a Darwinist "How did our civilization arise?" or, "How did such a wide range of life forms come into being?" or, "How did mankind come into existence?" the essential answer you will receive is this: Coincidences gave rise to all these things from mud, over the course of time.
One would doubtless need to be devoid of reason or lack any facility for understanding in order to believe such a tale. Yet surprisingly, that very irrational and illogical theory has had its adherents for many years and is still being propagated constantly under a scientific guise.
The Lies of Darwinism Have Been Unmasked
The theory of evolution, first proposed under the primitive conditions of the 19th century, has been disproved by advances in science and technology. It has been recognized that Darwin's claims are totally unrealistic: Natural selection and mutations, cited as the mechanisms that drive the process of evolution, have no effects of the kind envisaged by Darwinists. In short, it is impossible for them to give rise to new species.
The final death blow to Darwinism was dealt by the fossil record. Darwin claimed that all the millions of different life forms had come into being through descent from a supposed single common ancestor. In order for his claim to be verified, there should be traces in the fossil record—an irrefutable document of natural history—of this supposed primitive ancestor and of the various life forms that developed from it. For example, if all mammals were descended from reptiles, as evolutionists maintain, then there would have to be fossil remains of a series of half-mammalian, half-reptilian life forms. To date, millions of fossils, belonging to a great many species, have been unearthed during excavations. Yet not a single one showing a transition between species has ever been found. Every fossil ever found shows that each living thing emerged suddenly, with all its characteristics complete. In other words, every species of plant and animal was created.
Confronted by this fact, evolutionists have resorted to various falsehoods. They have produced hoaxes—counterfeit, artificial fossils that have come to be regarded as disgraces to paleontology. They have tried to deceive the lay public by tampering with genuine fossils of extinct life forms and inventing a series of imaginary scenarios.
One of the best known of them is the so-called "evolution of the horse." Fossils belonging to entirely different species that once lived in India, South America, North America and Europe were arranged in order of size—from small to large—in the light of evolutionist imaginations. So far, different researchers have come up with more than 20 different equine evolution scenarios.
There is no agreement among them regarding all these completely different family trees. The one point they commonly agree upon is their belief that a dog-like creature known as Eohippus (or Hyracotherium) that lived in the Eocene epoch (54 to 37 million years ago) was the very first ancestor of today's horses. However, Eohippus—portrayed as the ancestor of the horse and that became extinct millions of years ago—is almost identical to the present-day animal known as the hyrax, which looks nothing like a horse and is totally unrelated to that species. 19
Moreover, it has been established that breeds of horse living today have also been discovered in the same rock strata as Eohippus. 20 This means that the horse and its supposed ancestor were both living at the same time, which proves that the horse never underwent any such process as evolution.
The invalidity of the "equine series" proposed by evolutionists also applies to birds, fish, reptiles and mammals, in short, to all living things, to their supposedly common ancestors and supposed family trees. It has been determined that every fossil species suggested as being the ancestor of some other living thing either belongs to an independent extinct life form or is the result of evolutionists tampering with fossils of the species in question.
Satan's Game Has Been Exposed
Darwinism has been exposed as the most wide-ranging and astonishing deception in the world's history. That millions have been taken in by this deception, as if hypnotized, and have been influenced by all of Darwinism's illogical claims, is truly miraculous. The support lent to the theory of evolution and the acceptance it has enjoyed up to now are the result of tricks played on mankind by satan, who urges vast numbers of people towards Darwinism.
Until recently, no one had the courage to unmask this ruse of satan's and to publicize the true facts. But in the present century, the response to this deception has finally been laid out in full detail, and the public has been made fully aware of the state of affairs. By the will of God, the collapse of Darwinism has advanced beyond any point of recovery. Indeed, that is the fundamental reason for the panic in the Darwinian global empire.
|
Charles Doolittle Walcott
No comments:
Post a Comment