Natural selection and evolution
In his book about the origin of species, Darwin proposed that natural selection was the mechanism for producing, from a single ancestor, all the different species of plants and animals that we find living on the earth today, as well as those found preserved in the fossil record. What, then, is natural selection? It is quite a shock to learn that Darwin did not even define ‘natural selection’ in his book. After a thorough study of Darwin’s book, Harvard-trained lawyer Norman Macbeth argued that Darwin saw natural selection as differential mortality—that, for various reasons, among all individuals produced in nature, some die soon and some die late.8 Natural selection is now thought of as differential reproduction, which is associated with reproductive success, or leaving the most offspring. However, as argued by Norman Macbeth, this is tautology:
If we say that evolution is accomplished largely by natural selection and that natural selection consists of differential reproduction, what have we done? Differential reproduction means that some species multiply by leaving more offspring than one-for-one, while others leave one-for-one and remain stable, and others leave less than one-for-one and dwindle or die out. Thus we have as Question: Why do some multiply, while others remain stable, dwindle, or die out? To which is offered as Answer: Because some multiply, while others remain stable, dwindle, or die out. The two sides of the equation are the same. We have a tautology. The definition is meaningless.9
Not only is natural selection meaningless, but it is also invisible—its operations, real or imagined, are not observed by the human eye, as pointed out by Professor George Gaylord Simpson, who was perhaps the most influential palaeontologist of the twentieth century and a major participant in the modern evolutionary synthesis. When discussing a hypothetical case in which animals with trait A survive one time more frequently in 10,000 cases than animals with trait B, he observed, ‘By present techniques, it would be quite impossible to observe such weak selection either in the laboratory or in nature … selection may be highly effective although quite beyond our powers of observation.’10
Furthermore, natural selection cannot be quantified—it is impossible to determine the intensity of its action, as pointed out again by Professor Simpson: ‘The determination of intensity of selection is in itself a problem to which there is apparently no direct approach and one which it is very difficult to treat practically.’11
Natural selection as a mechanism of evolution is therefore fraught with difficulties. It is full of tautology; it is meaningless; it is invisible; and it is non-quantifiable. Yet, in spite of this, biologists still maintain that natural selection is a mechanism of evolution.
Evolutionists believe that what causes any organism to evolve is a change in its genetic make-up. Changes in the gene itself can occur and such changes are called ‘mutations’. Mutations do occur in nature and they have been produced in laboratory experiments by the use of high-energy radiation, heat and certain chemicals. However, most mutations are harmful, although some may be advantageous in unusual environments. It is more than likely, however, that a mutation that does cause a change that is considered advantageous in some unusual environment will generally have an injurious physiological effect that will weaken the individual and will therefore be bad.
Mutations, however, are not a mechanism for evolution, as pointed out in the influential biology textbook Biology: A Search for Order in Complexity that was used in many Christian schools and universities in the USA in the 1970s and 1980s:
No one has observed mutations taking place that would change one class of animal into a more complex type of organism: for instance the beginning of a milk gland upon the breast of a reptile, changing it into a mammal; or a feather starting instead of a scale, changing it into a bird. On the other hand, those changes that have been observed are harmful and often involve loss in some physical trait.12
We have already seen that careful domestic breeding of plants and animals has achieved some remarkable things. Cross-breeding and selection within a species, such as the common Wild Mustard (Brassica oleracea) or a large circle of closely related species, such as wheat, or within a kind, such as the wolf–dog kind or the finch kind, can improve quality and/or diversity. But Brassica is still Brassica, and not, for example, carrots; wheat is still wheat, and not, for instance, grapefruit; dogs are still dogs and not cats; and finches are still finches and not budgerigars! We can no more grow wings on pigs than we can breed hens that lay cube-shaped eggs!
The full title of Darwin’s book is On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. We must not forget that Darwin knew nothing of the laws of genetics when he wrote his book. He proposed that natural selection was the cause of evolution. Indeed, it has been maintained by evolutionary biologist Sir Julian Huxley that, ‘So far as we now know, not only is Natural Selection inevitable, not only is it an effective agency of evolution, but it is the only effective agency of evolution’.13
Factors other than natural selection are involved in causing the enormous variation within a kind (which evolutionists maintain is evolution). These factors include mutations, recombinations of genes and gene flow, fluctuations of population, processes of isolation, as well as processes of selection. Variability, the rate and the character of mutations, the length of generations, and the size of populations also play their part.
The variation in the colour of populations of the peppered moth (Biston betularia) is often cited as an example of natural selection and evolution. The peppered moth exists in two different varieties—a light-coloured variety with dark-coloured splotches and spots; and a dark-coloured variety. To see if natural selection could have caused the colour change in the peppered-moth populations, British ecologist H. B. D. Kettlewell performed an experiment during the late 1950s. He maintained that his experiments showed that the light-coloured moth could hardly be seen when resting on the unpolluted light-grey bark of trees, and so any bird would only be able to see the dark variety. As a result, he maintained that the birds would eat the dark variety and leave the light-coloured one alone. Such selection, he believed, would result in the population of peppered moths being predominantly light-coloured. During the Industrial Revolution, however, soot from industry turned the light-coloured bark of trees nearly black; Kettlewell claimed that the population of the dark-coloured variety then increased—because the dark-coloured variety would be camouflaged and, as a result, birds would only see and therefore eat the light-coloured moths.
This seemed a reasonable explanation, and it was hailed by evolutionists as the example of natural selection and of evolution occurring within our lifetime, as stated by Dr Jerry Coyne, Professor of Biology at the University of Chicago: ‘Until now, however, the prize horse in our stable of examples [of natural selection] has been the evolution of “industrial melanism” in the peppered moth, Biston betularia, presented by most teachers and textbooks as the paradigm of natural selection and evolution occurring within a human lifetime.’14 However, a thorough review of Kettlewell’s work conducted in the late 1990s revealed that the most serious problem with his research is that the peppered moth does not normally rest on tree trunks; precisely two moths were seen in such a position in more than forty years of intensive searches!15 Their natural resting spots are, in fact, a mystery. This alone invalidates Kettlewell’s release–recapture experiments. Kettlewell released moths, placing them directly onto tree trunks, where they were highly visible to bird predators. Furthermore, he released his moths during the day, while the moths normally choose resting places at night. Hence Kettlewell’s experiments, and consequently his results, are flawed. What is not in doubt, however, is the fact that the peppered moth variations are not the result of evolution. Interestingly, the peppered moth also lives in North America and exhibits dark forms there despite the absence of any darkening of the trees by industrial pollution. However, it cannot be overstated that the different-coloured moths are still m
oths of the same species. They are different colours—that is all. This is not evolution—it is a case of variation within the same kind, or, in this case, within the same species. To suggest that such variation can cause fish to evolve into amphibians, then into reptiles and then into mammals is just wishful thinking and is not scientific.
Another mechanism by which evolution is thought to proceed is by ‘the survival of the fittest’—a phrase first coined by Herbert Spencer in his 1864 Principles of Biology. Darwin first used this phrase in the fifth edition of On the Origin of Species published in 1869. This phrase is, however, as meaningless as natural selection: a species survives because it is the fittest, and it is the fittest because it survives. This is circular reasoning—nothing has been explained. It is a metaphor, not a scientific description, and it is misleading.
Having seen the shortcomings of both natural selection and the survival of the fittest as mechanisms for the origin of species, we have to conclude that Darwin was mistaken about the mechanism of the origin of species. As stated above, one of Darwin’s other mistakes was to accept what he had been taught at Cambridge about Genesis teaching the fixity of species. His observations demonstrated that there are variations within what he considered to be ‘species’ (but which are really ‘kinds’); as a result, he came to the conclusion that what the Bible taught about the fixity of species was not true. Although it cannot be denied that Charles Darwin was a good observer, what he concluded from his observations—that all plants and animals have descended from a common ancestor—was simply a step too far. Darwin concluded that the small changes he observed (for example, the variation in the size and shape of the beaks of the finches on the Galápagos Islands) add up over eons into big changes that could, for example, change a dinosaur into a bird. This was yet another of his mistakes, demonstrating just how deluded Darwin really was.
Darwin was also deluded about the cause of sin and suffering in the world. He lost the remains of his faith when his ten-year-old daughter Annie died; in a bizarre twist of logic that so many exhibit, he blamed God for all the suffering and death that is in the world and so stopped believing in God! Had he read the Bible, he would have understood that death, disease and suffering came about as the result of Adam’s sin. In spite of his loss of faith and professed ‘agnosticism’, Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey in London. I personally find it very odd that the established church honoured such a man who was not a Christian and who has caused so many people to become deluded and reject the Scriptures and the God of the Scriptures, as Darwin himself did. Even more bizarre, however, is the fact that in September 2008, the Church of England used its website to issue an apology addressed directly to Darwin some 125 years after his death. The Anglican Church (which originally rejected Darwin’s teaching) apologized for misunderstanding his theory, for getting its first reaction wrong, and for having encouraged others to misunderstand his ideas.
Fossils and evolution
Let us now turn our attention to the fossil record—the record of life preserved in the sedimentary rocks on the earth—and see what it teaches about evolution. Dr Duane Gish, former Senior Vice-President at the Institute of Creation Research, first wrote about evolution and the fossil record in 1973 in Evolution: The Fossils Say No!, a book which has undergone a number of revisions up to the 1995 completely re-written and updated Evolution: the Fossils Still Say No! Dr Henry Morris, writing in the Preface to the 1995 edition, had this to say concerning the fossil record:
The fossil record must provide the critical evidence for or against evolution, since no other scientific evidence can possibly throw light on the actual history of living things … The time scale of human observation is far too short to permit documentation of real evolutionary change from lower to higher kinds of organisms at the present time. The vital question, therefore, is: ‘Does the record of past ages, now preserved in the form of fossils, show that such changes have occurred?’16
In this section we will look at the fossil record to see if it shows whether evolution has occurred or not.
In the last chapter we saw that, despite evidence to the contrary, evolutionists maintain that the first living cell evolved from lifeless chemicals, and that this took place over a period of about one billion years some 4,500 to 3,500 million years ago. There is absolutely no fossil evidence that such a cell existed, and there is no fossil evidence for the evolution of the first living cell into multi-cellular organisms, or for the evolution of multi-cellular organisms into invertebrates—that is, animals without backbones. Millions upon millions of fossils representing every major invertebrate life form are found in the fossil record—brachiopods, trilobites, gastropods, sponges, crustaceans, worms, jellyfish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, sea lilies and so on. These animals are highly complex and their evolution is said to have taken almost 3,000 million years. However, their forerunners are nowhere to be found in the fossil record; not a single fossil of an intermediate that documents the evolution of the invertebrates graces any museum display cabinet, for none exist.
In many cases, many thick (over 1.5 km) sections of sedimentary rock lie in unbroken succession below the strata containing the fossilized remains of these invertebrates, and although the sediments were apparently suitable for the preservation of fossils, because they are often identical with the overlying rocks which are fossiliferous (that is, containing fossils), no fossils are found in them. In 1958 Dr Daniel Axelrod, former Professor of Geology and Botany at the University of California, Los Angeles, called this ‘one of the major unsolved problems of geology and evolution’.17 Some thirty-five years later, in 1993, Professor Simon Conway Morris, who at the time of writing is Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge, called the emergence of these animals ‘the salient mystery in the history of life’.18 Despite evolutionists’ continued searches, the situation has not changed, as noted by Richa Arora in The Encyclopaedia of Evolutionary Biology published in March 2004: ‘Although there is a good fossil record of the major groups that have well-preserved mineralized skeletons, the origin and evolution of the metazoan phyla cannot be documented from fossil evidence.’19 The reason why fossils showing the evolution of the invertebrates have not been found is because they simply do not exist!
Commenting on the absence of the ancestors of these creatures, Dr Duane Gish draws the following conclusion:
But creation scientists say, what greater evidence for creation could the rocks give than this abrupt appearance of a great variety of complex creatures without a trace of ancestors? Thus we see, right from the beginning, on the basis of an evolutionary scenario, the evidence is directly contradictory to predictions based on evolution but is remarkably in accord with predictions based on creation. This evidence alone is sufficient to establish the fact that evolution has not occurred on the earth.20
In other words, the invertebrates that we find in the fossil record have no evolutionary history. There are no fossils that are considered to be transitional for any of the major groups of invertebrates that are found in the fossil record. Put simply, there is no fossil evidence that the highly complex and varied invertebrate animals found in the sedimentary rocks evolved from a common ancestor.
The absence of transitional forms is a truth that we encounter over and over again as we consider the origin of the various life forms that we find preserved as fossils in the sedimentary rocks on the earth. According to evolutionists, the invertebrates evolved into vertebrates, that is animals with backbones. Evolutionists believe that the first vertebrates were fish. However, the fossil record does not show any such evolution, as pointed out by anti-creationist Dr Arthur Strahler, emeritus Professor of Geomorphology at the Department of Geology at Columbia University; he admitted that ‘the origin of vertebrates is obscure—there is no fossil record preceding the occurrence of fishes’.21 There are no transitional forms between the invertebrates and fish—vertebrates appear suddenly in the fossil record without any ev
olutionary history. Furthermore, there is a total absence of ancestors and transitional forms for each major class of fish.
In the same way, there is no fossil evidence for the evolution of fish into amphibians, amphibians into reptiles, and reptiles into mammals. The rock strata have, for example, been searched in vain for a series of fossils showing the evolution of fish into amphibians, but no such series has been found. It used to be argued that the amphibians evolved from the coelacanth fish, which evolutionists believed to have become extinct some eighty million years ago. This idea, however, had to be abandoned in 1938 when some fishermen caught a live specimen of a coelacanth fish off the east coast of South Africa.
In all fish, living or fossil, the pelvic-bones are small and loosely embedded in muscle. In all amphibians, living or fossil, the pelvic-bones are large and firmly attached to the vertebral column. There is not a single transitional form that bridges this basic difference in the anatomy of fish and amphibians. Dr Gish points out that
All the fish cited as being the most likely ancestors of amphibians are 100% fish which were required to spend all of their time in the water, while all of the so-called descendant amphibians were 100% amphibians with the basic amphibian limbs, feet, and legs. No one has succeeded in finding a single transitional form with part fins and part feet.22
What About Origins? (CreationPoints) Page 19
