God: Fact or Fiction?: Exploring the Relationship Between Science Religion and the Origin of Life

by Brendan Roberts

  But the problems facing neo-Darwinists escalate. Author Percival Davis, once a staunch supporter of neo-Darwinism explains that even highly bred organisms’ offspring quickly revert to their original form when allowed to breed freely. Moreover recombination does not produce endless, vertical change as required by evolution but reshuffles existing genes. He also explains how new genetic material enters the gene pool:

  The only known means of introducing genuinely new genetic material into the gene pool is by mutation, a change in the DNA structure. Gene mutations occur when individual genes are damaged from exposure to heat, chemicals, or radiation. Chromosome mutations occur when sections of the DNA are duplicated, inverted, lost, or moved to another place in the DNA molecule.21

  Davis summarises by saying, ‘Mutations do not create new structures. They merely alter existing ones.’22 While genetic variation gives us a wonderful variety within a species there are limits for which some species can actually change. For example, cats will always be cats and dogs will always be dogs. Offspring of a highly bred organism revert to their original form and changes stay within definite limits. There is no endless change shown as is necessary for neo-Darwinists.

  Neil Broom understands why many origin of life scientists believe that certain molecules were most likely for the first living system. But he sees a conspiracy of molecular proportions in their reasoning:

  We are also confronted with a cunning molecular conspiracy of ‘aiding and abetting’ between these different molecular species – to make proteins we need proteins to be already in existence. To make DNA and RNA we need proteins, and to make proteins we need DNA and RNA. It is a genuine ‘chicken and egg’ problem and it continues to pose major conceptual difficulties for those committed to a hard-line naturalism.23

  Therefore irreducible complexity is evident in the relationship between the proteins, DNA and RNA. Broom highlights the flaws of macroevolution in relation to the genetic code: ‘Thus any mechanism for evolution that depends ultimately on random changes to the genetic code as a source of biological novelty would appear to be largely incompatible with what we know about complex information systems.’24

  As you have learnt information systems are highly specified or structured. A genetic code is a blueprint and can’t be messed with. The specific order of the information is paramount, otherwise the cell will not be able to replicate and fight diseases.

  Atheistic macroevolution raises many questions. The first one that it can’t answer is how life was generated from non-living matter. Others include: Where did such intricate laws such as photosynthesis come from? Why are there only beneficial mutations if they are merely random? Another problem with random variation excluding a Creator is the need for evolution to work on both males and females of a specific species. Sometimes this would be required at each level of evolution by more than one male or female. Therefore the odds of this happening increase exponentially.

  Summary Humans have forgotten that a fine tuned cosmos has come from apparent chaos, i.e. the Big Bang; life has emerged from the creation of space, time, matter and energy; and virtue shows itself when we could be just looking out for ourselves.

  Systems left on their own will move from order to disorder. Why did order come out of the Big Bang? How can Natural Selection work in only upward change?

  Mankind has forgotten that science can’t disprove the existence of a Creator, and therefore someone bursts forth with an absurd statement like saying monkeys, typewriters and time = creativity and intellect! Remember that even the likelihood of getting a Shakespearean sonnet is more than the protons in the universe. Moreover chance can’t answer why we have thought, purpose, meaning, creativity, love, etc. The answer is that a Creator is needed.

  Miller’s experiments are Intelligent Design – controlled Intelligent Design. He controlled the experiments to get the outcome he wanted. Then surprise surprise, he recants on those very experiments. Furthermore many scientists agree that there is no proof for the pre-biotic soup theory – life did not evolve from such a conglomeration.

  These are only a snippet of Clutching at Straws examples. Now we move onto the evidence within the fossil record.

  Notes

  1. www.cnn.com/TECH/science/9806/23/feathered.dinosaur/ [posted 24 June 1998].

  2. Denton, A Theory in Crisis, pp. 210-11.

  3. TIME, May 25, 1953, p. 82.

  4. Norman Geisler and Ron Brooks. When Skeptics Ask (Illinois: Victor Books, 1990), p. 223.

  5. Collins Pocket English Dictionary (London: Collins, 1986), p. 286.

  6. Keane, Creation Rediscovered, p. 130.

  7. Ibid.

  8. O’Reilly, Sean. Bioethics and the Limits of Science (Front Royal; Virginia: Christendom Publications, 1980), pp. 56-7.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Neil Broom. How Blind is the Watchmaker? Theism or atheism: should science decide? (Hampshire; England: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 1998), pp. 120-121.

  11. Thomas Watters. Planets: A Smithsonian Guide (Indiana: MacMillan, 1995), p. 71.

  12. Sir James Jeans. The Mysterious Universe (New York: MacMillan, 1930), p. 4.

  13. Present Concerns: Essays by C.S. Lewis. “Modern Man and His Categories of Thought, 1946.”

  14. D. Attenborough. Life on Earth (London: Collins and BBC, 1979), p. 19.

  15. Broom, How Blind is the Watchmaker?, p. 96.

  16. N. Oreskes, K. Shrader-Frechette and K. Belitz. Science Vol. 263, 1994, pp. 641-646.

  17. Scientific American, December, 1992, p. 48.

  18. B. Küppers. “The Prior Probability of the Existence of Life”, L. Krüger, G. Gigerenzer and M.S. Morgan, eds. The Probabilistic Revolution (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987) p. 366.

  19. Behe, Dembski and Meyer, Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe, pp. 80-1.

  20. Richard Dawkins. The Blind Watchmaker (New York: Norton, 1986), pp. 47-8.

  21. Percival Davis et al., Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins (Dallas: Haughton Publishing Company, 1989), p. 11.

  22. Broom, How Blind is the Watchmaker?, pp. 117-118.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Ibid., p. 165.

  CHAPTER 8

  UNCOVERING TRANSITIONAL SPECIES? When we think of fossils, images of crustaceans painstakingly dug out of the ground might come to mind. Alternatively some may think of their parents or grandparents as living fossils. Seriously though, paleontologists (geologists who deal with prehistoric life through the study of fossils) have discovered remnants of plants, organisms, humans and animals to name just a few. However before we enter into this area of science we must be aware of the flaw that Michael Denton exposes in relation to the discovery of transitional fossil skeletons. It is insufficient to use one or two types of organisms of doubtful kinship and with a skeletal basis attribute it to a relatively intermediate position between other groups. He says that the biological affinity of a fossil organism can never be established with any degree of certainty because 99% of the biology of any organism resides in its soft anatomy, which is not usually accessible in a fossil.1

  This type of argument leads us to question whether what we have been taught to believe, e.g. man evolving from apes, or apelike creatures is in fact true. For every fossil discovery it is very important to note whether Paleontologists have recovered an entire specimen, or merely fragments. Soft anatomy is not usually accessible in a fossil. So how can scientists know what the animal/ human even looked like from mere skeleton fragments? Yet in most science textbooks there are illustrations depicting the Neanderthal and its transitionary relatives as if obvious they had a certain texture, colour and length of hair. Why is there apparent evidence of a transitional species of man which is ape-like, and yet little or no evidence of other transitional or intermediary species?

  Dr Duane Gish, Biochemist and author reveals the plethora of fossils discovered and the rapidity with which the animals were struck down. First he recalls the vast Tibetan Plateau with 75,000 square miles of sedimen
tary deposits and many thousands of feet in thickness. What he reveals next is truly mind-boggling:

  The Karoo formation of Africa, which has been estimated by Robert Broom to contain the fossils of 800 billion vertebrate animals; the herring fossil bed in the Miocene shales of California, containing evidence that a billion fish died within a four-square mile area, and the Cumberland Bone Cave of Maryland, containing fossilized remains of dozens of species of mammals, from bats to mastodons, along with the fossils of some reptiles and birds.2

  He concludes that the fossil record is not a record of transformation but a ‘record of mass destruction, death, and burial by water and its contained sediments’.3

  Evidence of Transitional Species? Darwin sought a mass of evidence from the fossil record. He gave paramount importance to the future discovery of intermediate fossils. He believed that the ‘number of intermediate and transitional links, between all living and extinct species, must have been inconceivably great. But assuredly, if this theory be true, such have lived upon the earth’.4

  Denton details the alarming amount of conversion needed for one species to evolve into another. It’s important to note here that Darwin stressed that Natural Selection works very slowly. Yet where is the evidence for these thousands of transitional species? One must take into consideration the necessary modifications for macroevolution, for example, for the conversion of a land mammal into a whale would need ‘forelimb modifications, the evolution of tail flukes, the streamlining, reduction of hind limbs, modifications of skull to bring nostrils to the top of the head, modification of trachea, modifications of behaviour patterns, specialised nipples so that the young could feed underwater (a complete list would be enormous)’.5 He believes there would have to be possibly hundreds or even thousands of transitional species needed for the hypothetical land ancestor to evolve into the common ancestor of modern whales.6

  The obstacles facing neo-Darwinists are piling up and one can now see a city of skyscrapers blocking the way. The claim is that a land mammal eventually evolved into a whale. But the changes needed go even beyond what Denton has illustrated. They include changes to their thermal insulation (you try and stay hundreds of feet underwater), breathing, sight (ability to see underwater and in the dark), hearing (it’s difficult for you to hear anything clearly underwater and yet whales communicate to each other) and their ability to navigate. A complete list of changes needed for the land mammal to change into a whale would be enormous. Gish uncovers more evidence:

  Every reptile, living or fossil, however, has at least four bones in the lower jaw and one auditory ossicle, the stapes. There are no transitional forms showing, for instance, three or two jaw bones, or two ear bones. No one has explained yet, for that matter, how the transitional form would have managed to chew while his jaw was being unhinged and rearticulated, or how he would hear while dragging two of this jaw bones up into his ear.7

  Keane deals a serious challenge to the theory that fish evolved into reptiles without a Creator – this can also be used to refute that land mammals evolved by chance into whales: ‘In all fishes, living or fossil, the pelvic bones are small and loosely embedded in muscle. There is no connection between the pelvic bones and the vertebral column. None is needed. The pelvic bones do not and could not support the weight of the body.’8

  There is a sudden appearance of the first members of each major group of the vertebrate fossils within the fossil record. They are unlinked to other groups as they lack transitional or intermediate forms.9

  From about 400 million years ago a high proportion of known fish groups, including many extinct fish groups, and many representatives of modern fish forms (e.g. lungfish, coelacanths and sturgeons), appear in the fossil record. Fossils are highly specialised, quite distinct and isolated from earlier fish groups. Concerning cartilaginous fish – the sharks and rays, which appear 50 million years later than most fish groups, are also highly specialised, distinct, and isolated from other fish groups. Denton says, ‘No fish group known to vertebrate paleontology can be classed as an ancestor of another; all are related as sister groups, never as ancestors and descendants.’10

  He claims a similar pattern repeating itself about 350 million years ago, with each group being distinct. Therefore no fish group known to vertebrate paleontology can be rightly classed as the ancestor of any other group. All are related as sister groups, never as ancestors and descendants. The complete absence of intermediate and ancestral forms from the fossil record is widely recognised today by many leading paleontologists.

  One excuse neo-Darwinists use is that the gaps in the fossil record could and would be filled when rock strata of prehistoric life were found. However geologists have discovered rock layers of all divisions going back 500 million years and of all the species they have uncovered, no transitional forms have been found. Biologist and paleontologist Preston Cloud knows colleagues who have searched through some 55 tons of hard quartzite by having it quarried, and seven tons of selected blocks carefully split into thin slabs for investigation. While they have searched at many different locations for ‘unequivocal metazoan fossils through thousands of feet of sediments’11 they have uncovered no transitional species.

  Prehistoric Fish Found Alive In 1938 fishermen made a fascinating discovery in the Indian Ocean. Their astounding catch included a species, the coelacanth, believed to have been extinct for 100 million years. Dr Peter Forey researcher of fossil fishes in the Department of Palaeontology in the British Museum, explains in Latimeria: A Paradoxical Fish that there have been many fossil coelacanths. Due to osteological features they were classed as close relatives with the extinct rhipidistians which became part of ‘evolutionary fact’ perpetuated even today in textbooks. Latimeria is a rhipidistian derivative and rhipidistians are the nearest relatives of tetrapods (species with four legs).

  Expectations were high that much would be revealed by the study of the soft anatomy and physiology of what is believed to be the tetrapod ancestor. It was hoped insights would be gained into the rhipidistians.12

  Many macroevolutionists racked their brains to discover how the coelacanth could have survived outside of water and hence evolved into a tetrapod. But the results proved very disheartening. Evolutionary biologist, Barbara Stahl explains that the soft anatomy revealed that there was no evidence of the coelacanth having internal organs preadapted for use in a land and water environment:

  The outpocketing of the gut that serves as a lung in land animals is present but vestigial in Latimeria. The vein that drains its wall returns blood not to the left side of the heart as it does in all tetrapods [though expected to] but to the sinus venosus at the back of the heart as it does directly or indirectly in all osteichthyans except lungfishes. The heart is characteristically fish-like in showing no sign of division into left and right sides, and the gut, with its spiral-valved intestine, is of a type common to all fishes except the most advanced ray-fins.13

  Hence the soft anatomy, especially that of the heart, intestine and brain was unexpected of a tetrapod ancestor. A discovery like this illustrates that not all creatures in fact evolve as much as the neoDarwinists claim. Many would say that over these 400 million years the coelacanth would have evolved much further and the less adapted fish would expect to be supplanted by other evolved species. They have already claimed that it evolved from the tetrapod but the results are in fact to the contrary.

  Fossil discoveries have also disproved another element of macroevolution, that millions of years ago the ancestors of today’s species were much more basic. It was proved that the creatures unearthed were in fact already highly complex.

  Let us return to the gaps in the fossil record. Paleontologist, Schindewolf highlights the lack of evidence as demonstrating ‘clearly the incorrectness of Darwinian gradualism as an explanation of evolutionary change’.14

  Summary For a species to evolve into another, such as a land mammal into a whale, there would have to be many successive modifications. This includes modification of
the forelimbs, reduction of existing limbs, and not to forget a major overhaul of the heart and every other component such as blood vessels, the brain, and the formation of gills. Such an overhaul of a species would take hundreds, if not thousands of transitional species. Contrary to what Darwin claimed should exist, paleontologists have revealed that no such evidence has ever been discovered amongst the billions of fossils discovered.

  If there were no transitory species and macroevolution was involved, then would there not have to be an evolutionary leap with many simultaneous changes to the male and female forms of the species? Wouldn’t the leap of evolution need a Creator to cause it? How could such a major evolutionary change be effected when a species is supposed to have evolved a number of attributing organs needed to have evolved at the same time, such as the organs of the Giraffe if it indeed evolved from the short necked species? Remember that the different fish groups known to vertebrate paleontology are sister groups, not ancestors or descendants.

  Evolution theory with God’s institution of the laws of nature in fact seems more plausible than an atheistic view of macroevolution. How could there be such a leap of evolution? It is believed that evolution can be traced back to bacteria and then bacteria evolved to archaea. The tree of evolution15 depicts the tree branching from archaea to Eukaryotes, then to plants, fungi, corals, protostomes, Echinoderms, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and thus mammals. Thus not only are we believed to have come from apes, but even from amphibians and fish. If this is true, how could this happen without the intention of a Creator?

  The discovery of a fish (a coelacanth) believed to have been extinct for 100 million years has dealt a blow to the belief that all life evolved merely by chance; the comparison with many fossil coelacanth proved that the fish had not evolved over the millions of years as neo-Darwinists would have wanted. In fact there was no proof that it had evolved from the land, though many macroevolutionists claimed this.