point the Scientific Revolution rested upon
what the Bible teaches.
“Both Alfred North Whitehead and
J. Robert Oppenheimer have stressed that
modern science was born out of the Chris-
tian world view . . . As far as I know, nei-
ther of the two men were Christians . . .
Because the early scientists believed that
the world was created by a reasonable
God, they were not surprised to discover
that people could find out something true
about nature and the universe on the basis
of reason” (Schaeffer, pp. 132-133).
As this more biblically based science
expanded, ecclesiastical leaders had to
admit that some long-held positions were
wrong. With the esteemed position that the
earth was at the center of the universe
proven false, the church lost both prestige
and credibility to emerging science. As
time went on, scientific study grew
increasingly apart from the dominant reli-
gion, which was mired in its Greek and
medieval thought. This gap has only
widened with time.
Evolution’s early roots
Although evolution wasn’t popularized
until 1859 with the publication of Charles
Darwin’s Origin of Species, the roots of
the idea go much further back in history.
“The early Greek philosophers,”
explains British physicist Alan Hayward,
“were probably the first thinkers to toy
with the notion of evolution. Along with
many other ideas from ancient Greece it
reappeared in western Europe in the fif-
teenth and sixteenth centuries . . . But
one great difficulty stood in the way.
Nobody . . . could explain convincingly
how evolution could have taken place.
Each species seemed to be fixed. There
seemed no way in which one species
could give rise to another. . .
“Darwin changed all that with his the-
ory that the way evolution worked was by
‘natural selection.’He proposed that small
variations in each generation—the kind of
natural variations that enable breeders to
produce new varieties of dogs and cows
and apples and roses—would eventually
add up to very big differences, and thus,
over hundreds of millions of years, could
account for every species on earth”
(Creation and Evolution: Rethinking the
Evidence From Science and the Bible,
1985, pp. 4-5).
Thus, in the late 19th century, scientists
and educators were sidetracked from
discovering the truth about the origin
and meaning of life when they adopted
Darwin’s reasoning. Their widespread
acceptance of an alternative explanation
Science, the Bible and Wrong Assumptions 5
N
o one should assume that scien-
tists uniformly agree that there is
no God and that the world
around us is the product of a mindless
evolutionary process. Consider what
some scientists have to say about
creation and evolution:
“For I am well aware that scarcely a
single point is discussed in this volume
[Origin of Species] on which facts cannot
be adduced, often apparently leading to
conclusions directly opposite to those at
which I arrived.”
—Charles Darwin (1809-1882), British
naturalist who popularized the theory of
evolution through natural selection
“The more I study nature, the more
I stand amazed at the work of the Cre-
ator. Into his tiniest creatures, God has
placed extraordinary properties that
turn them into agents of destruction of
dead matter.”
“A bit of science distances one from
God, but much science nears one to Him.”
—Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), French
scientist, developer of pasteurization
process for milk and vaccines for anthrax,
chicken cholera and rabies, dean of the
faculty of sciences at Lille University
“Manned space flight is an amazing
achievement, but it has opened for
mankind thus far only a tiny door for
viewing the awesome reaches of space.
An outlook through this peephole at the
vast mysteries of the universe should only
confirm our belief in the certainty of
its Creator.”
“It is in scientific honesty that I en-
dorse the presentation of alternative the-
ories for the origin of the universe, life
and man in the science classroom. It
would be an error to overlook the possi-
bility that the universe was planned
rather than happening by chance.”
“Atheists all over the world have . . .
called upon science as their crown wit-
ness against the existence of God. But as
they try, with arrogant abuse of scientific
reasoning, to render proof there is no
God, the simple and enlightening truth
is that their arguments boomerang.
For one of the most fundamental laws
of natural science is that nothing in
the physical world ever happens without
a cause.
“There simply cannot be a creation
without some kind of Spiritual Creator . . .
In the world around us we can behold
the obvious manifestations of the Divine
plan of the Creator”
—Dr. Wernher von Braun (1912-1977),
NASA director and “father of the Ameri-
can Space Program”
“The theories of evolution, with
which our studious youth have been
deceived, constitute actually a dogma
that all the world continues to teach: but
each, in his specialty, the zoologist or the
botanist, ascertains that none of the
explanations furnished is adequate.”
“The theory of evolution is impossible.
At base, in spite of appearances, no one
any longer believes in it . . . Evolution is a
kind of dogma which the priests no
longer believe, but which they maintain
for their people.”
—Paul Lemoine (1878-1940), director
of the Paris Natural History Museum,
president of the Geological Society
of France and editor of Encyclopedie
Francaise
“To postulate that the development
and survival of the fittest is entirely a con-
sequence of chance mutations seems to
me a hypothesis based on no evidence
and irreconcilable with the facts. These
classical evolutionary theories are a gross
over-simplification of an immensely com-
plex and intricate mass of facts, and it
amazes me that they are swallowed so
uncritically and readily, and for such a
long time, by so many scientists without
a murmur of protest.”
—Sir Ernst Chain (1906-1979), co-
holder of the 1945 Nobel Prize for isolat-
ing and purifying penicillin, director of
Rome’s International Research Center for
Chemical Microbiology, professor of bio-
chemistry at Imperial College, University
of London
Scientists, Creation and Evolution
6 Creation or Evolution: Does It Really Matter What You Believe?
Scott Ashley
I
s the Genesis account only an ancient
myth, no better than tales originating
in other cultures over the millennia?
Many people obviously think so. Notice
what Richard Dawkins, professor of
zoology at Oxford University and pro-
fessed atheist, has to say about the
biblical account:
“Nearly all peoples have developed
their own creation myth, and the Genesis
story is just the one that happened to
have been adopted by one particular
tribe of Middle Eastern herders. It has no
more special status than the belief of a
particular West African tribe that the
world was created from the excrement
of ants” (Richard Dawkins, The Blind
Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of
Evolution Reveals a Universe Without
Design, 1986, p. 316).
But is Professor Dawkins’ assumption
true? Is the Genesis record a fairy tale
little different from those of other
ancient cultures?
Some 5,000 years ago, the Sumerians
of Mesopotamia left accounts of their
creation myths inscribed on cuneiform
tablets. The Sumerians conceived of the
earth as flat and the sky as a canopy of
clouds and stars. They believed earth
and sky were created by two gods: An,
the male sky god, and Ki, the female
earth god.
These two gave birth to a multitude of
other gods, each with a particular power
and responsibility over a part of the cre-
ation or physical phenomena (lightning,
trees, mountains, illness, etc.). They lived
in a kingly court in heaven, with An, the
supreme god, surrounded by four subor-
dinate creator gods. Below them were a
council of seven gods and, finally, the 50
remaining minor gods.
All physical occurrences could be
interpreted by the priests as the result of
the particular mood or whim of one of
these gods. They could be placated by
offerings and sacrifices. Although these
deities were considered immortal, their
supposed conduct was anything but
divine. They were depicted as often
fighting among themselves, full of petty
envies and lusts and subject to hunger
and even death.
A few centuries later the Babylonians
conquered the Sumerians and modified
these myths to exalt their own civilization.
Now it was the Babylonian god Marduk
who was in charge; he formed the heav-
ens and earth by killing a female god,
Tiamat. According to the Babylonian
creation account:
“The god Apsu and the goddess Tia-
mat made other gods. Later Apsu be-
came distressed with these gods and
tried to kill them, but instead he was
killed by the god Ea. Tiamat sought
revenge and tried to kill Ea, but instead
she was killed by Ea’s son Marduk. Mar-
duk split her body in half, and from one
half he made the sky and from the other
half he made the earth. Then Marduk,
with Ea’s aid, made mankind from the
blood of another god, Kingu” (Life: How
Did It Get Here?, 1985, p. 35).
Does this kind of bizarre tale bear any
resemblance to the biblical account of
creation? Not at all. The first civilizations
of the Fertile Crescent had similar cre-
ation accounts, but the only one free of
outrageous myth and with a moral and
perfect God is the biblical version.
In contrast to the crude polytheistic
struggles found in such ancient myths,
the Genesis account is smooth, system-
atic, rational and—yes—scientific.
Notice astrophysicist Hugh Ross’s reac-
tion on first reading the biblical account
of creation: “The [Bible’s] distinctives
struck me immediately. It was simple,
direct, and specific. I was amazed with
the quantity of historical and scientific
references and with the detail in them.
“It took me a whole evening just to
investigate the first chapter. Instead of
another bizarre creation myth, here was
a journal-like record of the earth’s initial
conditions—correctly described from
the standpoint of astrophysics and
geophysics—followed by a summary of
the sequence of changes through which
Earth came to be inhabited by living
things and ultimately by humans.
“The account was simple, elegant,
and scientifically accurate. From what I
understood to be the stated viewpoint
of an observer on Earth’s surface, both
the order and the description of cre-
ation events perfectly matched the
established record of nature. I was
amazed” (The Creator and the Cosmos,
1993, p. 15).
Consider an admission from The
Columbia History of the World: “Indeed,
our best current knowledge, lacking the
poetic magic of scripture, seems in a way
less believable than the account in the
Bible . . .” (John Garraty and Peter Gay,
editors, 1972, p. 3).
It is natural to conclude, as nations
gradually distanced themselves from
the true Creator God and sank into
immorality and polytheism, that their
understanding of the creation became
corrupted and eventually was used to
prop up their political, social, philosophical
and religious outlooks.
Vernon Blackmore and Andrew Page
write: “Today the difference between
Genesis and the Babylonian account is
evident. The first speaks of one God cre-
ating the world and mankind by his own
command; the other describes chaos and
war among many gods, after which one
god, Marduk, fashions humanity from
clay and blood. The spiritual depth and
dignity of Genesis far surpasses the poly-
theistic ideas of Babylon. Yet until the
complete story had been reconstructed,
incautious scholars talked of the Bible
account being a copy of that from Baby-
lonia. Certainly, they argued, Genesis
should be consigned to the category of
legend, and its writing was dated long
after Moses to the time Israel was held
captive in Babylon.
“Much of nineteenth-century liberal-
ism has now been shown as excessive.
The Old Testament is not a poor reflec-
tion of more ancient Babylonian or
Canaanite tales. There are more differ-
ences than similarities between the texts.
The opening chapters of Genesis stand
unique. Nevertheless, many scholars still
use the category of myth in relation to
some of the biblical material” (Evolution:
The Great Debate, 1989, p. 130).
Ancient Near-Eastern Concepts of Creation
The Babyloni-
ans recorded
their version of
earth’s creation
on this ancient
clay tablet, now
preserved in
the British
Museum. It
records a cele-
bration ban-
quet to honor
Marduk’s selec-
tion as cham-
pion of the
gods after he
defeated the
goddess Tia-
mat, from
whose body he
made the sky
and earth.
for the existence of man and the creation
apart from the account of Genesis soon led
to a general distrust of the Bible. This mas-
sive shift of thought has had far-reaching
consequences. “Darwinism,” says Dr.
Hayward, “begins to look more like a huge
maze without an exit, where the world has
wandered aimlessly for a century and a
half” (Hayward, p. 58).
Meanwhile the churches, having cen-
turies earlier incorporated unscientific,
unbiblical Greek philosophical concepts
into their views, could not adequately
explain and defend aspects of their
teachings. They, too, were ultimately
sidetracked by their mixing of pagan
philosophy with the Bible. Both science
and religion built their explanations on
wrong foundations.
Acceptance of evolution
Some of the reasons for the acceptance
of Darwin’s theory involved conditions of
the time. The 19th century was an era of
social and religious unrest. Science was rid-
ing a crest of popularity. Impressive discov-
eries and inventions appeared constantly.
Darwin himself had an impeccable rep-
utation as a dedicated naturalist, but the
length and tediousness of his book hid
many of the weaknesses of his theory (he
described his own book as “one long argu-
ment”). It was in this climate that Darwin’s
theory gained acceptance.
At the same time, the Roman church
was being affected by its own cumulative
mistakes about science as well as the
critics’onslaughts against its teachings
and the Bible. The church itself began
to accept supposedly scientific explana-
tions over divine ones. A bias against the
supernatural slowly crept in.
The momentum grew in the 20th cen-
tury until many Protestants and Catholics
accepted theistic evolution. This is the
belief that God occasionally intervenes
in a largely evolutionary process through
such steps as creating the first cell and then
permitting the whole process of evolution
to take place or by simply waiting for the
first man to appear from the gradual chain
of life and then providing him with a soul.
“Darwinian evolution to them,” says Dr.
Hayward, “is merely the method by which
God, keeping discreetly in the background,
created every living thing . . . The majority
of theistic evolutionists have a somewhat
liberal view of the Bible, and often regard
the early chapters of Genesis as a collection
of Hebrew myths” (Hayward, p. 8).
The implications for the trustworthiness
of the Bible are enormous. Is it the inspired
and infallible Word of God, or are parts of
it merely well-intentioned myths? Are sec-
tions of it simply inaccurate and unreli-
able? Were Jesus Christ and the apostles
wrong when they expressed their belief
that Adam and Eve were the first man
and woman, created directly by God?
(Matthew 19:4; 1 Corinthians 15:45).
Was Christ mistaken, and did He
mislead others? Is 2 Timothy 3:16 true,
that “all Scripture is given by inspiration
of God, and is profitable for doctrine
[teaching] . . .”? Clearly, the implications
for Christian faith and teaching are pro-
found (see “The Testimony of the New
Testament,” p. 4).
Perhaps the effects of his theory on Dar-
win’s own faith can illustrate the damage
it can do to religious convictions. Darwin
started as a theology student and a staunch
respecter of the Bible. But, as he formulated
his theories, he lost faith in the Old Testa-
ment. Later he could no longer believe in
the miracles of the New Testament.
A danger lies in following in Darwin’s
footsteps. We should remember the old
saying: If you teach a child he is only an
animal, don’t complain when he behaves
like one. Can we not lay part of the blame
for rampant immorality and crime on soci-
ety’s prevalent values and beliefs—derived
to a great extent from evolutionary theory?
Darwinism and morality
If there isn’t a just God to judge the
actions of men, isn’t it easier for man to
do as he pleases? Sir Julian Huxley admit-
ted why many quickly embraced evolu-
tion with such fervor: “I suppose the
reason we leaped at The Origin of Species
was because the idea of God interfered
with our sexual mores” (James Kennedy,
Why I Believe, 1999, p. 49).
He later wrote, “The sense of spiritual
relief which comes from rejecting the
idea of God as a super-human being
is enormous” (Essays of a Humanist,
1966, p. 223).
Could this perspective have something
to do with the immorality rampant in
so many schools and universities where
God is banned from the classroom and
evolutionary theory is accepted and
taught as fact?
Can the Genesis account be reconciled
with the idea of an ancient earth? What
about evolution? How strong is its case?
Let’s carefully weigh the evidence.
T
he ancient Greeks had no short-
age of creation myths, with many
elements taken from the Baby-
lonian model. Two poets, Homer and
Hesiod, described the Greek religious
system, with its national gods in
charge, while living in a royal court full
of intrigues and lusts.
In his version Hesiod saw the origin
of the universe as deriving from the
chaos, the vastness, of space that pro-
duced the first goddess, Gaea (earth).
She created Uranus (heaven), who
became her husband, and they pro-
duced many lesser gods. The division
between heaven and earth occurred
when one of their sons, Cronus, in a fit
of jealousy attacked his father, Uranus.
Zeus, the one who became the chief
god, was born from the irate Cronus
and his wife, Rhea.
Sadly, the only surviving writings
about Christianity from the first cen-
turies after the apostles come mainly
from men steeped in Greek thought
and philosophy. These were Justin
Martyr (110-165), Clement (160-220),
Origen (185-254) and Augustine (354-
430), all former disciples of the thinking
of Plato and Aristotle. In this way Greek
philosophy entered the Roman church
and formed much of its theology.
“The problem with Gentile Chris-
tians,” notes church historian Samuele
Bacchiocchi, “was not only their lack of
familiarity with Scripture, but also their
excessive fascination with their Greek
philosophical speculations, which con-
ditioned their understanding of Biblical
truths. While Jewish Christians often
erred in the direction of legalism, Gen-
tile Christians often erred in the direc-
tion of philosophical speculations
which sundered Christianity from its his-
torical roots” (God’s Festivals in Scrip-
ture and History, 1995, pp. 102-103).
In particular, Origen and Augustine
began to interpret much of the book of
Genesis as allegory. They viewed the
Genesis account as filled with symbolic
fictional figures representing truth,
human conduct or experience. Gradu-
ally, this allegorical method became
the norm in the Catholic understanding
of much of Genesis. These misconcep-
tions were to heavily influence church
authorities down through the years.
The Greek
Concept of
Creation
Science, the Bible and Wrong Assumptions 7
C
an the theory of evolution be
proven? After all, it is called the
theory of evolution in acknowl-
edgment that it is a hypothesis
rather than a confirmed scientific fact.
Where can we find evidence supporting
evolution as an explanation for the teeming
variety of life on earth?
Since evolutionists claim that the transi-
tion from one species to a new one takes
place in tiny, incremental changes over
millions of years, they acknowledge that
we cannot observe the process tak-
ing place today. Our lifespans sim-
ply are too short to directly observe
such a change. Instead, they say, we
have to look at the past—the fossil
record that shows the many life
forms that have existed over earth’s
history—to find transitions from
one species to another.
Darwin’s greatest challenge
When Charles Darwin proposed
his theory in the mid-19th century, he
was confident that fossil discoveries
would provide clear and convincing
evidence that his conjectures were
correct. His theory predicted that
countless transitional forms must
have existed, all gradually blending
almost imperceptibly from one tiny step to
the next, as species progressively evolved
to higher, better-adapted forms.
Indeed that would have to be the case.
Well in excess of a million species are alive
today. For all those to have evolved from
common ancestors, we should be able to
find millions if not hundreds of millions of
intermediate forms gradually evolving into
other species.
It was not only fossils of transitional
species between apes and humans that
would have to be discovered to prove Dar-
win’s theory. The gaps were enormous.
Science writer Richard Milton notes that
the missing links “included every part of
the animal kingdom: from whelks to
whales and from bacteria to bactrian
camels. Darwin and his successors envis-
aged a process that would begin with
simple marine organisms living in ancient
seas, progressing through fishes, to
amphibians—living partly in the sea and
partly on land—and hence on to reptiles,
mammals, and eventually the primates,
including humans” (Shattering the Myths
of Darwinism, 1997, p. 253).
However, even Darwin himself struggled
with the fact that the fossil record failed
to support his conclusions. “. . . Why, if
species have descended from other species
by fine gradations, do we not everywhere
see innumerable transitional forms? . . .
Why do we not find them imbedded in
countless numbers in the crust of the
earth?” (Origin of Species, 1958 Master-
pieces of Science edition, pp. 136-137).
“. . . The number of intermediate vari-
eties, which have formerly existed, [must] be
truly enormous,” he wrote. “Why then is not
every geological formation and every stra-
tum full of such intermediate links? Geology
assuredly does not reveal any such finely
graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps,
is the most obvious and serious objection
which can be urged against the theory [of
evolution]” (Darwin, pp. 260-261).
Darwin acknowledged that the fossil
record failed to support his conclusions.
But, since he thought his theory obviously
was the correct explanation for earth’s many
and varied forms of life, he and others
thought it only a matter of time before fos-
silized missing links would be found to fill
in the many gaps. His answer for the lack of
fossil evidence to support his theory was
that scientists hadn’t looked long enough
and hadn’t looked in the right places. Even-
tually they would find the predicted fossil
remains that would prove his view. “The
explanation lies, I believe, in the extreme
imperfection of the geological record,” he
wrote (p. 261).
He was convinced that later explo-
rations and discoveries would fill
in the abundant gaps where the
transitional species on which his
theory was based were missing.
But now, a century and a half later,
after literally hundreds of thou-
sands of fossil plants and animals
have been discovered and cata-
loged and with few corners of the
globe unexplored, what does the
fossil record show?
What the record reveals
David Raup is a firm believer
in evolution and a respected pale-
ontologist (scientist who studies
fossils) at the University of
Chicago and the Field Museum.
However, he admits that the fossil
record has been misinterpreted if not out-
right mischaracterized. He writes: “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 think-
ing involved. In the years after Darwin, his
advocates hoped to find predictable pro-
gressions. In general, these have not been
found—yet the optimism has died hard, and
some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks”
(Science,Vol. 213, p. 289, emphasis added).
Niles Eldredge, curator in the depart-
ment of invertebrates at the American
Museum of Natural History and adjunct
professor at the City University of New
8 Creation or Evolution: Does It Really Matter What You Believe?
© 2000 PhotoDisc, Inc.
What Does the
Fossil Record Show?
The fossil record contains many species, each perfectly
formed and well-suited to its environment. Paleontolo-
gists admit the finely graded transitional forms that
should exist if Darwinism were true cannot be found.
What Does the Fossil Record Show? 9
York, is another vigorous supporter of evo-
lution. But he finds himself forced to admit
that the fossil record fails to support the
traditional evolutionary view.
“No wonder paleontologists shied away
from evolution for so long,” he writes. “It
seems never to happen.Assiduous collect-
ing up cliff faces yields zigzags, minor
oscillations, and the very occasional slight
accumulation of change—over millions of
years, at a rate too slow to really account for
all the prodigious change that has occurred
in evolutionary history.
“When we do see the introduction of
evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up
with a bang, and often with no firm evi-
dence that the organisms did not evolve
elsewhere! Evolution cannot forever be
going on someplace else. Yet that’s how the
fossil record has struck many a forlorn pale-
ontologist looking to learn something about
evolution” (Reinventing Darwin: The Great
Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary
Theory, 1995, p. 95, emphasis added).
After an immense worldwide search by
geologists and paleontologists, the “missing
links” Darwin predicted would be found
to bolster his theory are still missing.
Harvard University paleontologist
Stephen Jay Gould is perhaps today’s best-
known popular writer on evolution. An
ardent evolutionist, he collaborated with
Professor Eldredge in proposing alterna-
tives to the traditional view of Darwinism.
Like Eldredge, he recognizes that the
fossil record fundamentally conflicts with
Darwin’s idea of gradualism.
“The history of most fossil species,” he
writes, “includes two features particularly
inconsistent with gradualism [gradual
evolution from one species to another]:
“[1] Stasis. Most species exhibit no
directional [evolutionary] change during
their tenure on earth. They appear in the
fossil record looking pretty much the same
as when they disappear; morphological
[anatomical or structural] change is usually
limited and directionless.
“[2] Sudden appearance. In any local
area, a species does not arise gradually by
the steady transformation of its ancestors:
it appears all at once and ‘fully formed’”
(Gould, “Evolution’s Erratic Pace,” Natural
History, May 1977, pp. 13-14).
Fossils missing in crucial places
Francis Hitching, member of the Royal
Archaeological Institute, the Prehistoric
Society and the Society for Physical
Research, also sees problems in using the
fossil record to support Darwinism.
“There are about 250,000 different
species of fossil plants and animals in the
world’s museums,” he writes. “This com-
pares with about 1.5 million species known
to be alive on Earth today. Given the known
rates of evolutionary turnover, it has been
estimated that at least 100 times more fossil
species have lived than have been discov-
ered . . . But the curious thing is that there is
a consistency about the fossil gaps: the fos-
sils go missing in all the important places.
“When you look for links between major
groups of animals, they simply aren’t there;
at least, not in enough numbers to put their
status beyond doubt. Either they don’t exist
at all, or they are so rare that endless argu-
ment goes on about whether a particular
fossil is, or isn’t, or might be, transitional
between this group and that.
“. . . There ought to be cabinets full of
intermediates—indeed, one would expect
the fossils to blend so gently into one
another that it would be difficult to tell
where the invertebrates ended and the
vertebrates began. But this isn’t the case.
Instead, groups of well-defined, easily
classifiable fish jump into the fossil record
seemingly from nowhere: mysteriously,
suddenly, full-formed, and in a most un-
Darwinian way. And before them are
maddening, illogical gaps where their
ancestors should be” (The Neck of the
Giraffe: Darwin, Evolution and the New
Biology, 1982, pp. 9-10, emphasis added).
Acknowledging that the fossil record
contradicts rather than supports Darwinism,
professors Eldredge and Gould have pro-
posed a radically different theory they call
“punctuated equilibrium”: that bursts of
evolution occurred in small, isolated popu-
lations that then became dominant and
showed no change over millions and mil-
lions of years. This, they say, is the only
way to explain the lack of evidence for
evolution in the fossil record.
As Newsweek explains: “In 1972 Gould
and Niles Eldredge collaborated on a paper
intended at the time merely to resolve a pro-
fessional embarrassment for paleontolo-
gists: their inability to find the fossils of
transitional forms between species, the so-
called ‘missing links.’Darwin, and most of
those who followed him, believed that the
work of evolution was slow, gradual and
continuous and that a complete lineage of
ancestors, shading imperceptibly one into
the next, could in theory be reconstructed
for all living animals . . . But a century of
digging since then has only made their
absence more glaring . . . It was Eldredge
and Gould’s notion to call off the search and
accept the evidence of the fossil record on
its own terms” (“Enigmas of Evolution,”
March 29, 1982, p. 39, emphasis added).
As some observers point out, this is an
inherently unprovable theory for which the
primary evidence to support it is lack of
evidence in the fossil record to support
transitional forms between species.
Fossil record no longer incomplete
The fossil record has been thoroughly
explored and documented. Darwin’s excuse
of “extreme imperfection of the geological
record” is no longer credible.
How complete is the fossil record?
Michael Denton is a medical doctor and
biological researcher. He writes that “when
estimates are made of the percentage of
[now-] living forms found as fossils, the
percentage turns out to be surprisingly high,
suggesting that the fossil record may not be
as bad as is often maintained” (Evolution:
A Theory in Crisis, 1985, p. 189).
He explains that “of the 329 living fami-
lies of terrestrial vertebrates [mammals,
birds, reptiles and amphibians] 261 or 79.1
percent have been found as fossils and,
when birds (which are poorly fossilized)
are excluded, the percentage rises to 87.8
percent” (Denton, p. 189).
In other words, almost 88 percent of
the varieties of mammals, reptiles and
amphibians populating earth have been
found in the fossil record. How many tran-
sitional forms, then, have been found?
“. . . Although each of these classes [fishes,
amphibians, reptiles, mammals and pri-
mates] is well represented in the fossil
record, as of yet no one has discovered a
fossil creature that is indisputably transi-
tional between one species and another
species. Not a single undisputed ‘missing
link’has been found in all the exposed
rocks of the Earth’s crust despite the most
careful and extensive searches” (Milton,
pp. 253-254, emphasis added).
If Darwin’s theory were true, transitional
creatures such as invertebrates with partially
developed backbones, fish with rudimen-
tary legs, reptiles with primitive wings and
innumerable creatures with semievolved
anatomical features should be the rule,
scattered throughout the fossil strata. But
they are nonexistent.
What about fossil proofs?
At times various fossil species have been
presented as firm proof of evolution at
10 Creation or Evolution: Does It Really Matter What You Believe?
work. Perhaps the most famous is the sup-
posed evolution of the horse as presented in
many biology textbooks. But is it what it is
claimed to be?
Notice what Professor Eldredge has to
say about this classic “proof” of evolution:
“George Gaylord Simpson spent a consid-
erable segment of his career on horse
evolution. His overall conclusion: Horse
evolution was by no means the simple, lin-
ear and straightforward affair it was made
out to be . . . Horse evolution did not pro-
ceed in one single series, from step A to
step B and so forth, culminating in modern,
single-toed large horses. Horse evolution, to
Simpson, seemed much more bushy, with
lots of species alive at any one time—
species that differed quite a bit from one
another, and which had variable numbers
of toes, size of teeth, and so forth.
“In other words, it is easy, and all too
tempting, to survey the fossil history of a
group and select examples that seem best
to exemplify linear change through time
. . . But picking out just those species that
exemplify intermediate stages along a
trend, while ignoring all other species that
don’t seem to fit in as well, is something
else again. The picture is distorted. The
actual evolutionary pattern isn’t fully
represented” (Niles Eldredge, The Great
Debate, p. 131).
Eldredge in effect admits that paleon-
tologists picked and chose which species
they thought fit best with their theory and
ignored the rest. George Gaylord Simpson
himself was more blunt: “The uniform con-
tinuous transformation of Hyracotherium
[a fossil species thought to be the ancestor
of the horse] into Equus [the modern horse],
so dear to the hearts of generations of text-
book writers, never happened in nature”
(Life of the Past, 1953, p. 119).
Professor Raup elaborates on the
problem paleontologists face in trying
I
n this publication we have only briefly
discussed some of the mounds of evi-
dence against the theory of evolution.
Many excellent books have been pub-
lished in recent years detailing scientific
findings and conclusions that com-
pellingly demonstrate the impossibility
of evolution as an explanation for the
existence of life on earth. It is helpful to
remember that evolution cannot offer
an explanation for the origin of our mag-
nificent universe; evolution seeks to
explain only how life might have begun
in a universe that already existed.
If you would like to dig more deeply
into the case against evolution, we rec-
ommend the following books, many
written by people with backgrounds in
the physical sciences:
• Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical
Challenge to Evolution, Michael Behe,
associate professor of biochemistry,
Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, 1996.
Demonstrates that the minute building
blocks of life—cells and their myriad
components—are far too complex for
their codependent parts and processes
to have evolved without an outside,
intelligent design at work.
• Mere Creation: Science, Faith &
Intelligent Design, edited by William
Dembski, 1998. A collection of academic
writings from the fields of physics, astro-
physics, biology, anthropology, biology,
mechanical engineering and mathemat-
ics that challenge Darwinism and offer
evidence supporting intelligent design in
the universe.
• Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Michael
Denton, senior research fellow, Univer-
sity of Otago, New Zealand, 1996. Exam-
ines features of the natural world that
mutation and natural selection cannot
explain and shows the impossibility of
transitional forms required for Darwinist
evolution to have taken place.
• Creation and Evolution: Rethinking
the Evidence From Science and the
Bible, Alan Hayward, 1985. Written by a
British physicist, an insightful book on
the pros and cons of the evolution-vs
science controversy.
• The Neck of the Giraffe: Where Dar-
win Went Wrong, Francis Hitching, 1982.
Points out many of the problems in the
traditional view of evolution.
• Darwin on Trial, Phillip Johnson, pro-
fessor of law, University of California,
Berkeley, 1993. Examines scientific detail
that argues convincingly against the
theory of evolution.
• Reason in the Balance: The Case
Against Naturalism in Science, Law &
Education, Phillip Johnson, 1995. Dis-
cusses the cultural implications of belief
in evolution; that is, that the philosophy
behind Darwinian evolution has become
in effect the dominant established
religion in many societies.
• Defeating Darwinism by Opening
Minds, Phillip Johnson, 1997. Written
specifically for older students and their
parents and teachers to prepare them for
the antireligion bias inherent in most
advanced education.
• Objections Sustained: Subversive
Essays on Evolution, Law & Culture,
Phillip Johnson, 1998. Compilation of
essays ranging from evolution and
culture to law and religion.
• Bones of Contention: A Creationist
Assessment of the Human Fossils, Marvin
Lubenow, 1992. Documents the serious
problems with the supposed links
between man and apes.
• What Is Creation Science?, Henry
Morris and Gary Parker, 1987. Two cre-
ation scientists provide a critical examina-
tion of the major arguments used to
support evolution.
• Shattering the Myths of Darwinism,
Richard Milton, 1997. Mr. Milton, a sci-
ence journalist and noncreationist,
reveals the circular reasoning Darwinists
must rely on for their arguments while
discussing data widely acknowledged in
scientific circles.
• Tornado in a Junkyard: The Relent-
less Myth of Darwinism, James Perloff,
1999. A self-professed former atheist
offers an easy-to-read view of evidence
contradicting Darwinism, including
many quotations from evolutionists and
creationists. (The title is taken from a
British astronomer’s assessment that the
likelihood of higher life forms emerging
through random mutation is compara-
ble to saying a tornado sweeping
through a junkyard could build a Boeing
747 airliner.)
• Not by Chance: Shattering the Mod-
ern Theory of Evolution, Lee Spetner,
Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technol-
ogy, 1998. Dr. Spetner shows that one
of the fundamental premises of neo-
Darwinism—that random mutation cre-
ated the kinds of variations that allowed
macroevolution to take place—is fatally
flawed and could never have happened
as Darwinists claim.
Although the publishers of this book-
let do not agree with every conclusion
presented in these books, we think they
present a persuasive and compelling
case that the theory of evolution is
fundamentally and fatally flawed.
The Case Against Evolution
to demonstrate evolution from the fossil
record: “. . . We are now about 120 years
after Darwin, and knowledge of the fossil
record has been greatly expanded. We now
have a quarter of a million fossil species but
the situation hasn’t changed much. The
record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky
and, ironically, we have even fewer exam-
ples of evolutionary transition than we had
in Darwin’s time.
“By this I mean that some of the classic
cases of Darwinian change in the fossil
record, such as the evolution of the horse in
North America, have had to be discarded
or modified as a result of more detailed
information—what appeared to be a nice
simple progression when relatively few
data were available now appears to be
much more complex and much less
gradualistic [evolutionary]” (“Conflicts
Between Darwin and Paleontology,”
Field Museum of Natural History
Bulletin 50, January 1979, pp. 22-25,
emphasis added).
Paleontology’s well-kept secret
What does all this mean? In plain lan-
guage, if evolution means the gradual
change of one kind of organism into
another kind, the outstanding characteristic
of the fossil record is the absence of evi-
dence for evolution—and abundant evi-
dence to the contrary. The only logical
place to find proof for evolutionary theory
is in the fossil record. But, rather than
showing slow, gradual change over eons,
with new species continually emerging, the
fossils show the opposite.
Professor Eldredge touched on the mag-
nitude of the problem when he admitted
that Darwin “essentially invented a new
field of scientific inquiry—what is now
called ‘taphonomy’—to explain why the
fossil record is so deficient, so full of gaps,
that the predicted patterns of gradual change
simply do not emerge” (Eldredge, pp. 95-
96, emphasis added).
Professor Gould similarly admits that
the “extreme rarity” of evidence for evolu-
tion in the fossil record is “the trade secret
of paleontology.” He goes on to acknowl-
edge that “the evolutionary trees that adorn
our textbooks have data only at the tips
and nodes of their branches; the rest is
inference, however reasonable, not the
evidence of fossils” (“Evolution’s Erratic
Pace,” Natural History, May 1977, p. 14,
emphasis added).
But do paleontologists share this trade
secret with others? Hardly. “Reading
popular or even textbook introductions to
evolution, . . . you might hardly guess that
they [fossil gaps] exist, so glibly and confi-
dently do most authors slide through them.
In the absence of fossil evidence, they write
what have been termed ‘just so’stories.
A suitable mutation just happened to take
place at the crucial moment, and hey
presto, a new stage of evolution was
reached” (Hitching, pp. 12-13).
Regarding this misrepresentation
of the evidence, Phillip John-
son writes:
“Just about everyone who took a college
biology course during the last sixty years
or so has been led to believe that the fossil
record was a bulwark of support for the
classic Darwinian thesis, not a liability that
had to be explained away . . .
“The fossil record shows a consistent
pattern of sudden appearance followed by
a stasis, that life’s history is more a story
of variation around a set of basic designs
than one of accumulating improvement,
that extinction has been predominantly
by catastrophe rather than gradual obsoles-
cence, and that orthodox interpretations
of the fossil record often owe more to
Darwinist preconception than to the evi-
dence itself. Paleontologists seem to have
thought it their duty to protect the rest of
us from the erroneous conclusions we
might have drawn if we had known the
actual state of the evidence” (Darwin
on Trial, 1993, pp. 58-59).
The secret evolutionists don’t want
revealed is that, even by their own inter-
pretations, the fossil record shows fully
formed species appearing for a time and
then disappearing with no change. Other
species appeared at other times before they,
too, disappeared with little or no change.
The fossil record simply does not support
the central thesis of Darwinism, that
species slowly and gradually evolved from
one form to another.
Fact or interesting speculation?
Professor Johnson notes that “Darwinists
consider evolution to be a fact, not just a
theory, because it provides a satisfying
explanation for the pattern of relationship
linking all living creatures—a pattern so
identified in their minds with what they
consider to be the necessary cause of
the pattern—descent with modifica-
tion—that, to them, biological relation-
ship means evolutionary relationship”
(Johnson, p. 63, emphasis in original).
The deceptive, smoke-and-mirror
language of evolution revolves largely
around the classification of living
species. Darwinists attempt to explain nat-
ural relationships they observe in the animal
and plant world by categorizing animal and
plant life according to physical similarities.
It could be said that Darwin’s theory is
nothing more than educated observance
of the obvious; that is, the conclusion that
most animals appear to be related to one
another because most animals have one
or more characteristics in common.
For instance, you might have a superfi-
cial classification of whales, penguins and
sharks in a group classified as aquatic ani-
mals. You might also have birds, bats and
bees grouped as flying creatures. These are
not the final classifications because there are
many other obvious differences. The Dar-
winist approach, however, is to use the obvi-
ous general similarities to show, not that
animals were alike in many ways, but that
they were related to each other by descent
from common ancestors.
Professor Johnson expresses it this way:
“Darwin proposed a naturalistic explana-
tion for the essentialist features of the living
world that was so stunning in its logical
appeal that it conquered the scientific world
even while doubts remained about some
important parts of his theory. He theorized
that the discontinuous groups of the living
world were the descendants of long-extinct
common ancestors. Relatively closely
related groups (like reptiles, birds, and
mammals) shared a relatively recent com-
mon ancestor; all vertebrates shared a more
ancient common ancestor; and all animals
shared a still more ancient common ances-
tor. He then proposed that the ancestors
What Does the Fossil Record Show? 11
Even the
earliest forms
of life found in the fossil
record, such as these trilobites, are extraor-
dinarily complex, far from the primitive
forms predicted by Darwinism.
© 2000 PhotoDisc, Inc.
12 Creation or Evolution: Does It Really Matter What You Believe?
Photos: Oxford Scientific Films (left), © 2000 PhotoDisc, Inc. (2)
T
he geologic column depicted in many
science textbooks and museums sup-
posedly shows which life forms existed
at any particular time in the history of our
planet. Trilobites, for example, are thought
to have lived during the Cambrian period
and later became extinct. Dinosaurs walked
the earth during what are called the Juras-
sic and Triassic periods and likewise later
became extinct.
According to traditional scientific think-
ing, such creatures should not be found on
earth today because the geologic column
shows they fell victim to extinction many
millions of years ago. However, several dis-
coveries of “living fossils” have cast doubt
on this long-accepted interpretation of the
fossil record.
An astounding catch
Perhaps the most
stunning—and
famous—of these
living fossils is the
coelacanth. Fossils of this
unusual fish first appear in strata from the
Devonian period, with an estimated age of
350 million years.
For years paleontologists thought the
coelacanth became extinct about
70 million years ago, since they
found no fossil remains of the fish
in deposits formed later than the
Cretaceous period.
At least they thought that was
the case until December 1938, when a fish-
ing trawler captured a living coelacanth off
the eastern coast of South Africa. Scientists
were stunned. After all, the discovery was
akin to finding a living dinosaur in a remote
patch of jungle!
Since that first shocking discovery, fish-
ermen and scientists have taken more
specimens, all near the Comoro Islands. Re-
searchers were dismayed to find that the
inhabitants of the islands had used coela-
canths as food for years, drying and salting
the rare fish’s meat.
The discovery of living coelacanths
proved to be a profound embarrassment
for those trying to use evolution to inter-
pret the geologic record. It was especially
embarrassing for those who, based on fos-
silized specimens, had earlier proposed the
coelacanth as a prime candidate for the
kind of fish that would have first crawled
out of the oceans to dwell on land. Yet the
discovery of a fish that was supposed to
have been extinct for millions of years, one
that some paleontologists had hoped was
a vital missing link in the supposed evolu-
tionary chain, hasn’t led many to question
their assumptions regarding the supposed
evolutionary timetable.
If coelacanths were the only creatures
found alive that were supposed to have
been long extinct, then we might accept
their discovery as an oddity that proved lit-
tle or nothing. But the list of such living fos-
sils has grown considerably in recent years.
A tree from the age of the dinosaurs
One such living fossil is a pine tree that,
according to the traditional interpretation
of the geologic column, was supposed to
have been extinct for more than 100 mil-
lion years. But that changed with a remark-
able 1994 discovery: “David Noble was out
on a holiday hike when he stepped off the
beaten path and into the prehistoric age.
Venturing into an isolated grove in a rain-
forest preserve 125 miles from Sydney, the
Parks and Wildlife Service officer suddenly
found himself in a real-life ‘Jurassic Park’—
standing amid trees thought to have dis-
appeared 150 million years ago . . . ‘The
discovery is the equivalent of finding a
small dinosaur still alive on Earth,’ said Car-
rick Chambers, director of the Royal
Botanic Gardens . . .
“The biggest tree towers 180 feet with
a 10-foot girth, indicating that it is at least
150 years old. The trees are covered in
dense, waxy foliage and have a knobby
bark that makes them look like they are
coated with bubbly chocolate . . . Barbara
Briggs, the botanic gardens’ scientific
director, hailed the find as one of Aus-
tralia’s most outstanding discoveries of the
century, comparable to the living fossil
finds of the dawn redwood tree in China in
1944 and the coelacanth fish off Madagas-
car in 1938 . . . The closest relatives of the
Wollemi Pines died out in the Jurassic
Period, 190 million to 135 million years
ago, and the Cretaceous Period, 140 mil-
lion to 65 million years ago” (Salt Lake City
Tribune, Dec. 15, 1994, p. A10).
Living fossils from long-dead worlds
Following is information about a few of
these living fossils that either have not
changed in time or were supposed
to be extinct.
A find similar to the
Australian discovery
took place a half
century earlier
when the
dawn red-
wood (species
Metasequoia
glyptostroboides)
was discovered in China in 1941. The
Encyclopaedia Britannica says of this
tree: “Discovered first as fossils in Miocene
(23.7 to 5.3 million years ago)
deposits, it was assumed to have
become extinct until it was dis-
covered growing in Szechwan
province in China. Its distribution
in the late Mesozoic and Tertiary
(66.4 to 1.6 million years ago) was through-
out the Northern Hemisphere” (Internet
version, 2000, “Gymnosperm”).
Another living fossil is the tuatara, a
lizardlike animal found only on several
islands off the coast of New Zealand.
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica,
this strange creature “has two pairs of
well-developed limbs and a scaly crest
down the neck and back. Unlike lizards, it
has a third eyelid, the nictitating mem-
brane, which closes horizontally, and a
pineal eye, an organ of doubtful function
between the two normal eyes. The tua-
tara also has a bony arch, low on the skull
behind the eyes, that is formed by the
presence of two large openings . . . in the
region of the temple.
“It is this bony arch, which is not found
in lizards, that has been cited as evidence
that tuataras are survivors of the other-
wise extinct order Rhynchocephalia and
are not lizards. And indeed, tuataras dif-
fer little from the closely related form
Out-of-Place Fossils
The coelacanth is one of science’s most startling discoveries.
So ancient that it was considered a candidate for the first
fish that supposedly crawled onto land, it was long consid-
ered extinct until found in a fisherman’s net in 1938.
What Does the Fossil Record Show? 13
Homeosaurus, which lived 150 million
years ago during the Jurassic Period”
(Internet version, “Tuatara”).
The Encyclopaedia Britannica adds that
the tuatara is “a reptile that has shown
little morphological evolution for nearly
200,000,000 years since the early Mesozoic”
(“Evolution”).
Another example is a marine mollusk
that goes by the scientific name Monopla-
cophoran. “In 1952 several live monopla-
cophorans were dredged from a depth of
3,570 m (about 11,700 feet) off the coast of
Costa Rica. Until then it was thought that
they had become extinct 400,000,000 years
ago” (Britannica, “Monoplacophoran”).
By no means are these the only examples
of living fossils. These are simply examples
of animals and plants that, based on where
they were found in the fossil record, scien-
tists had assumed had died out millions of
years ago. Other creatures, such as the nau-
tilus, brachiopod, horseshoe crab and even
the ubiquitous cockroach, are virtually
unchanged from fossils paleontologists
date to hundreds of millions of years ago.
Troubling questions for evolutionists
These discoveries show that evolution-
ists cannot adequately explain the fossil
record through evolutionary theory. Crucial
facts are missing from the interpretations
given to the general public.
Such discoveries bring up an important
question. According to the traditional evo-
lutionary interpretation of the fossil record,
man appears late (“late” is defined as in the
upper strata of the geologic column) while
trilobites and dinosaurs, appearing lower in
the geologic column, died out many mil-
lions of years ago. Yet the coelacanth—
obviously still alive and well—appears
nowhere in the fossil record for the last 70
million years.
What does this tell us about the fossil
record? Obviously that record is not as
clear-cut as we have been led to believe.
When it comes to human remains, and
those of creatures evolutionists claim as
distant ancestors of modern man, things
get especially murky.
Fossil “men” have been discovered in
strata in which nothing close to human is
supposed to have existed. Other species
thought to have been long-ago ancestors
of the human race have been dated to
quite recent years, much to the perplexity
of scientists.
For example, remains of Homo erectus—
supposedly an evolutionary ancestor of
modern man that lived 1.6 to .4 million
years ago—have been found in Australia
that have been dated to only a few hun-
dred to a few thousand years ago. Al-
though according to the evolutionary
timetable the species is said to have died out
several hundred thousand years ago, the
remains of at least 62 individuals have been
dated as less than 12,000 years old (Marvin
Lubenow, Bones of Contention, 1992, pp.
131-132, 153, 180).
Meanwhile, remains of anatomically
modern humans have been dated to strata
both well before and alongside fossil
remains of creatures that were supposed
evolutionary ancestors of modern humans
(Lubenow, pp. 56-58, 139-140, 170-171).
Not surprisingly, these discoveries are
rarely reported. Of course, such fossils are
hotly disputed and for the most part dis-
missed by evolutionists. Nonetheless these
unexpected finds show that the fossil
record, far from supporting the traditional
view of Darwinist evolution, in fact exposes
many inconsistencies and contradictions
within that view.
Although evolutionists are loath to
admit it, the dating methods used to sup-
port their evolutionary construct spanning
millions of years are themselves open to
question. To illustrate the gravity of the
problem, “in 1984 Science reported that the
shells of living snails in artesian springs in
Nevada were carbon-dated as 27,000 years
old” (James Perloff, Tornado in a Junkyard,
1999, p. 141).
Other dating methods have their prob-
lems too. Using the potassium-argon
method, Hawaiian lava from an eruption
two centuries ago was dated from 160 mil-
lion to three billion years old. In New
Zealand, lava dated 465,000 years old by
one method contained wood dated at less
than 1,000 years by another method (Mil-
ton, pp. 47-48). James Perloff notes that the
lava dome of Mount St. Helens, which
erupted in 1980, “has been radiometrically
dated at 2.8 million years” (Perloff, p. 146).
Science or wishful thinking?
Sir Solly Zuckerman, an anatomist at
England’s University of Birmingham, said
about the scientific study of man’s supposed
fossil evolutionary history:
“. . . No scientist could logically dispute
the proposition that man, without having
been involved in any act of divine creation,
evolved from some ape-like creature in a
very short space of time—speaking in geo-
logical terms—without leaving any fossil
traces of the steps of the transformation. As
I have already implied, students of fossil pri-
mates have not been distinguished for cau-
tion when working within the logical
constraints of their subject. The record is so
astonishing that it is legitimate to ask
whether much science is yet to be found in
this field at all. The story of the Piltdown
Man hoax provides a pretty good answer”
(Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Frontiers of
Public and Private Science, 1970, p. 64,
emphasis added).
The hoax to which he referred—
involving parts of a human skull and an
orangutan jaw chemically treated by a
forger to give the appearance of great
age—went undetected for 44 years from its
1912 discovery until 1956. During that time
many of the world’s
greatest anthropolo-
gists accepted the fake
fossil as a genuine
human ancestor.
“The remains were
acclaimed by anthro-
pologists to be about
500,000 years old . . . Over 500 doctoral dis-
sertations were performed on Piltdown
Man . . . [but] further critical investigation
revealed that the jawbone actually
belonged to an ape that had died only fifty
years previously. The teeth were filed down,
and both teeth and bones were discolored
with bichromate of potash to conceal their
true identity. And so, Piltdown Man was
built on a deception which completely
fooled all the ‘experts’ who promoted him
with the utmost confidence” (Huse, p. 137).
In spite of much wishful thinking on the
part of evolutionists, the fossil record does
not and cannot be made to agree with Dar-
winism. The question is, How does the fossil
record agree with the accounts found in the
Bible? This question, too, demands an
answer. To see which is best supported by
the fossil record—creation or evolution—
see the chart “What Does the Fossil Record
Show?” on page 14.
If evolution were true, why do
we see so many species in the
fossil record that remain
unchanged for millions of years
and are virtually unchanged
from species we see alive today?
must have been linked to their descendants
by long chains of transitional intermedi-
ates, also extinct” (Johnson, p. 64).
Evolutionists exercise selective percep-
tion when looking at the evidence—rather
like deciding whether to view half a glass
of water as half empty or half full. They
choose to dwell on similarities rather than
differences. By doing so they lead you away
from the truth of the matter: that similarities
are evidence of a common Designer behind
the structure and function of the life forms.
Each species of animal was created and
designed to exist and thrive in a particular
way. Darwin and the subsequent propo-
nents of the evolutionary view of life
focused on similarities within the major
classifications of animals and drew the
assumption that those similarities prove
that all animals are related to one another
through common ancestors.
However, there are major differences in
the life forms on earth. If, as evolution sup-
poses, all life forms had common ancestors
and chains of intermediates linking those
ancestors, the fossil record should overflow
with many such intermediate forms
between species. But, as we have seen
earlier, paleontologists themselves admit
it shows no such thing.
Simple life forms?
Since the fossil record does not support
the traditional evolutionary view, what does
it show?
We have already seen how several well-
known paleontologists admit that the fossil
record shows the sudden appearance of life
forms. As Stephen Jay Gould puts it: “In any
local area, a species does not arise gradually
by the steady transformation of its ancestors:
it appears all at once and ‘fully formed’”
(Gould, “Evolution’s Erratic Pace,” Natural
History, May 1977, pp. 13-14).
When we sweep away the evolutionary
bias inherent in most views, the fossil
record does not show a gradual ascent
from simple to complex. Some of the earli-
est fossils found are bacteria. What is inter-
esting about bacteria is that they are not
simple organisms at all.
In reality there are no simple life forms.
Modern technology has shown that even a
single cell is extraordinarily complex.
Michael Behe is associate professor of
biochemistry at Pennsylvania’s Lehigh
University. Noting scientists’changing per-
ceptions of the most elementary forms of
life, he writes: “We humans tend to have a
rather exalted opinion of ourselves, and that
attitude can color our perception of the bio-
logical world. In particular, our attitude
about what is higher and lower in biology,
what is an advanced organism and what is a
primitive organism, starts with the pre-
sumption that the pinnacle of nature is our-
selves . . . Nonetheless, other organisms, if
they could talk, could argue strongly for
their own superiority. This includes bacte-
ria, which we often think of as the rudest
forms of life” (Darwin’s Black Box, 1996,
pp. 69-70).
When Darwin wrote Origin of Species
almost a century and a half ago, scientists
did not know nearly as much about the cell
(and single-celled organisms) as we do
today. Darwin thought that single-celled
organisms were quite primitive. In fact, at
that time many still thought that life could
arise naturally from nonliving matter—for
example, that decaying meat spontaneously
produced flies.
Years passed before French scientist
Louis Pasteur convincingly demonstrated,
through a series of meticulous experiments,
the impossibility of the notion. Yet even
Pasteur had quite a battle with scientists of
his day convincing them that life came only
from preexisting life forms.
So Darwin’s idea—that single-celled
meant simple—was not questioned at the
time. Later discoveries have shown that
even the single-celled organisms found
early in the fossil record are far more
complex than Darwin and others could
have imagined.
An explosion of life forms
Paleontologists widely consider the
Cambrian period, one of the oldest in their
view, to be the earliest in which extensive
life forms are preserved. Since only the
remains of marine life are found in Cam-
brian strata, paleontologists interpret these
deposits as dating to a time before land
animals had evolved.
The Encarta Encyclopedia says of this
time: “By the beginning of the Paleozoic
Era, the steadily increasing oxygen content
of the atmosphere and oceans . . . had made
it possible for the marine environment to
support new forms of life that could derive
energy from respiration. Although life had
not yet invaded dry land or the air, the seas
of the Cambrian Period teemed with a great
variety of marine invertebrates, including
sponges, worms, bryozoans (‘moss ani-
mals’), hydrozoans, brachiopods, mollusks
(among them the gastropods and species
ancestral to the nautilus), primitive arthro-
pods such as the trilobite, and a few species
of stalked echinoderms.
“The only plant life of the time consisted
of marine algae. Because many of these
new organisms were relatively large, com-
plex marine invertebrates with hard shells
14 Creation or Evolution: Does It Really Matter What You Believe?
T
raditional evolutionary theory
predicts a fossil record that would
contain:
• Simple life forms gradually appear-
ing with similar predecessors.
• Simple life forms gradually chang-
ing over time into more-complex forms.
• Countless transitional links between
kinds of creatures.
• Beginnings of and partially com-
pleted features such as new limbs, bones
and organs.
The biblical account of creation pre-
dicts a fossil record that would contain:
• Complex life forms suddenly appear-
ing with no evolutionary predecessors.
• Complex life forms multiplying
“after their kinds” (Genesis 6:20), but
with limited variety within those kinds.
• No transitional links between kinds
of creatures.
• No partial features such as new
limbs, bones and organs; all parts are
complete and fully functional.
After years of study and research,
what does the fossil record show?
• Complex life forms suddenly appear-
ing with no evolutionary predecessors.
• Complex life forms multiplying
“after their kinds,” but with limited
variety within each species.
• No transitional links between kinds
of creatures.
• No partial features such as new
limbs, bones and organs; all parts are
complete and fully functional.
What Does the Fossil Record Show?
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