Does the theory of evolution have a scientific basis? (full)
A Scientific Examination of Evolution
(As this article is long, we are posting a summary at the start. Those readers who have come to this article after reading the separate article that contains only the summary can skip the summary and go to the full article starting after the summary.
A. Relevance: : Vision Determines Mission
Why is analyzing the truth regarding evolution important? The apparently scientific nature of the theory of evolution has led to the widespread acceptance of an atheistic, materialistic worldview. So to establish that a spiritual worldview with God as the intelligent designer is not unscientific, the claim that evolution is a proven science needs to be examined.
B. Fossil Evidences
Scientists claim that evolution happened in the past, but does the record of the past as seen in the fossils support this? Not at all.
i. No Supporting Evidence: There are no fossil records to support the claim of transition of one species to another.
ii. Suppressed contradictory evidences: There are many anomalous fossils that contradict the picture of gradual development of life on earth painted by evolution.
iii. False Evidences:
Although many so-called proofs of evolution have been disproved by scientists themselves, science textbooks worldwide keep publishing those proofs, thus misleading innocent students.
- Life in a bottle – Miller’s Experiment
- Imagination in full form -Darwin’s Tree of Life
- Look-alike illusions – Homology in Vertebrate Limbs
- Glue-fixed pictures – Peppered Moths
- Beaks and birds –Darwin’s Finches
- Apemen or Conmen – Javaman Thighbone
iv. Misinterpreted proofs:
Many proofs are offered for evolution, which on closer examination, don’t prove evolution at all.
- Similarity of DNA
- Vestigial organs
- Breeding
- Playing God to disprove God
- Extinction of species
C. Mechanisms for Evolution
i. Natural Selection and mutation: All the mechanisms that are claimed to cause evolution – natural selection, mutation and chance – can at best cause variation within species, not variation from one species to another.
ii. Irreducible complexity: Modern biochemical research has confirmedDarwin’s worst fear of the existence of organs that cannot have evolved upwards step-by-step and has effectively debunked his theory.
iii. Origin of life: Evolution theory has no explanation, either theoretical or experimental, as to how life originated in the first place.
D. Conclusion:
The notion of evolution does not stand up to the standard of science; there is neither a clear, detailed theory about it, nor are there any unambiguous evidences to prove it. Therefore school education about evolution is not scientific education; it is state-sponsored indoctrination into atheism.
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(The full article begins from here)
A. Relevance: Vision Determines Mission
Today many people accept without question the idea that man arose from lower species by the process of evolution. Others feel that whether humans had a chemical origin or a divine origin doesn’t really matter; their conflicts at work, at home and in their minds appear to be of far greater importance. But could it be that most of the problems that plague us today are caused by a blunder at this first step? Our understanding of how we came about determines our goals, values and attitudes. Nobel Laureate neurobiologist Roger Sperry puts it well, “Beliefs concerning the ultimate purposes and meaning of life and the accompanying worldview perspectives that mould beliefs of right and wrong are critically dependent…on concepts regarding the conscious self.”
Worldview Resulting From Evolutionary Ideas: “If I am a product of matter, there is nothing higher to life than material enjoyment. And because my predecessors survived and prospered only due to their expertise in savage competition and warfare, I too have to do the same to succeed in life.”
Worldview Resulting From Spiritual Perspectives: “If my identity is spiritual and God is my eternal loving Parent, going back to His kingdom becomes the goal of my life. And I should therefore curb the animalistic instincts within me and be caring, virtuous, magnanimous and devoted to God.”
Biologist Michael Denton in his book ‘Evolution: Theory in Crisis’ explains the far-reaching consequences of the theory of evolution, “It was because Darwinian theory broke man’s link with God and set him adrift in a cosmos without purpose or end that its impact was so fundamental. No other intellectual revolution in modern times… so profoundly affected the way men viewed themselves and their place in the universe.” Once the link with God was broken, evolutionary thought set the stage for man to take the place of God, to try to become the controller of the material world or, in short, become a materialist. Biologist Douglas Futuyma’s Evolutionary Biology states that “it wasDarwin’s theory of evolution,” together with Marx’s theory of history and Freud’s theory of human nature, “that provided a crucial plank to the platform of mechanism and materialism” that has since been “the stage of most Western thought.”
A. The Theory
Darwinis credited with first proposing a plausible physical mechanism that would explain the variety of life forms we observe in the world around us. Evolution, as he explained it, is based on the twin principles of variation and natural selection. When members of a species reproduce, he reasoned, there is variation among individual representatives of the species. Some of these are better equipped to survive in their particular environment, and therefore their qualities are selected and passed on to their descendants. Over the passage of time, these changes in organisms are sufficient, according to evolutionary theory, to result in changes of species.
Since Darwin’s time, the concept of variation has undergone some changes. Modern evolutionists believe that mutations in genes produce the variations that natural forces select for survival. (Darwindid not know about genetics.) Evolutionists have considered a number of types of genetic variations—point mutation, genetic recombination, and random genetic drift, for example—but these all fall under the broad heading of random variation. And to this day the only principle accepted as giving direction to the evolutionary process is natural selection. SoDarwin’s basic principles of random variation and natural selection are still the foundations of evolutionary thought.
Let’s examine whether the theory of evolution is scientifically true.
B. The Evidences
i. Missing Fossil Evidences
According to Darwinists, the first undisputed fossil evidence for life on earth goes back about 2 billion years. They say the first apes and monkeys appeared about 40-50 million years ago. The first ape-men (called Australopithecus) appeared about 4 million years ago. These were followed by other apemen called Homo habilis, Homo erectus, and Neanderthal man. The first human beings of modern type (Homo sapiens sapiens) appeared only 100,000 or 200,000 years ago. Civilization, according to modern scientists, is less than 10,000 years old.
However, whatDarwinoffered was basically “one long argument” with no proof whatsoever. He attacked the fossil record as being inaccurate, to an extreme degree and prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search. But has the diligent search of modern paleontologists fulfilled his prophesy?
Here are just a few of many quotes by eminent evoloutionists about the lack of evidence supporting evolution in the fossil record.
1. Record proves prediction wrong
“One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part ofDarwin’s predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction is wrong. …The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor’s new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yieldDarwin’s predicted pattern, simply looked the other way.”
Reference: Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 45-46
2. Not a single example
“But fossil species remain unchanged throughout most of their history and the record fails to contain a single example of a significant transition.”
Reference: – Woodroff, D.S., Science, vol. 208, 1980, p. 716
3. Links wanted; links missing
“Links are missing just where we most fervently desire them, and it is all too probable that many ‘links’ will continue to be missing.”
Reference: Jepsen, L. Glenn; Mayr, Ernst; Simpson George Gaylord. Genetics, Paleontology, and Evolution,New York, Athenaeum, 1963, p. 114
4. Consistently missing
“The curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps; the fossils are missing in all the important places.”
Reference: Hitching, Francis, Where Darwin Went Wrong, Penguin Books, 1982, p.19
5. Cambrian explosion disproves darwinism
(The Cambrian explosion is the rapid appearance of most major groups of complex animals around 530 million years ago, as evidenced by the fossil record. This sudden appearance of species in the fossil record has been since the time ofDarwinone of the main objections to his theory that different species evolve gradually by natural selection.)
“Paleontologists are traditionally famous (or infamous) for reconstructing whole animals from the debris of death. Mostly they cheat. … Baffling (and embarrassing) to Darwin, this event still dazzles us and stands as a major biological revolution on a par with the invention of self-replication and the origin of the eukaryotic cell. The animal phyla emerged out of the Precambrian mists with most of the attributes of their modern descendants.”
Reference: Bengtson, Stefan, The Solution to a Jigsaw Puzzle, Nature, vol. 345 (June 28, 1990), p. 765-766
6. Choose – theory or evidence?
“Paleontologists have paid an enormous price forDarwin’s argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we almost never see the very process we profess to study. The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:
1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological 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.'”
Reference: Gould, Stephen J. The Panda’s Thumb, 1980, p. 181-182
What is special about all the above quotes is that they are from evolutionists; the verdict of the fossil record is so overwhelmingly clear that even they are forced, despite their belief in evolution, to admit the utter lack of evidence for it.
The problem is so difficult to overcome that one school of evolutionists, headed by Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldredge, felt compelled to come up with a new evolutionary theory to account for the gaps. They propose “punctuated equilibrium” as an explanation.
The punctuated equilibrium theory makes evolution invisible in the fossil record. A supposed change from species A to species B would take place in a small population in an isolated geographic location within a geological microsecond—a period too short to allow for fossils of intermediate forms to be deposited. Then the new species B would move from its isolated place of origin and expand throughout the entire range of the old species A. On a scale of millions of years the fossils of B would suddenly replace the fossils of A, giving the impression that B had emerged without intermediate forms. According to punctuated equilibrium advocates, this lack of transitional fossils is exactly what would be expected, and therefore they can claim that any given species has in fact evolved from an ancestral form without offering any proof from the fossil record. But a theory that allows no proving or disproving on the basis of physical evidence hardly qualifies as an adequate scientific explanation.
Further, other evolutionists have pointed out the fallacious circular reasoning inherent in the model:
“The Eldredge-Gould concept of punctuated equilibria has gained wide acceptance among paleontologists. It attempts to account for the following paradox: Within continuously sampled lineages, one rarely finds the gradual morphological trends predicted by Darwinian evolution; rather, change occurs with the sudden appearance of new, well-differentiated species. Eldredge and Gould equate such appearances with speciation, although the details of these events are not preserved. The punctuated equilibrium model has been widely accepted, not because it has a compelling theoretical basis but because it appears to resolve a dilemma. Apart from the obvious sampling problems inherent to the observations that stimulated the model, and apart from its intrinsic circularity (one could argue that speciation can occur only when phyletic change is rapid, not vice versa), the model is more ad hoc explanation than theory, and it rests on shaky ground.”
Reference: Ricklefs, Robert E., “Paleontologists Confronting Macroevolution,“ Science, vol. 199, 1978, p. 59
ii. Suppressed Contradictory Evidence
In their book Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race, Michael A Cremo and Richard L Thompson present scores of suppressed fossil evidences that suggest that humans have been on the earth for millions of years, in contradiction with the evolutionary idea that humans appeared only some 40,000 years ago. Here we give a few samples of their findings:
1. Ancient Skulls and Bones:
1.1 Reck’s Skeleton
The first significant African discovery related to human origins occurred in 1913 when Pro fessor Hans Reck, ofBerlinUniversity, found a human skeleton in the upper part of Bed II atOlduvai Gorge,Tanzania. Modern dating methods give a late Early Pleistocene date of around 1.15 million years for this site. Reck said, “The bed in which the human remains were found….showed no sign of disturbance.”
The skeleton was distorted by compression from the weight of substantial accumulation of sediment in the overlying strata. W. O. Dietrich, writing in 1933, stated that this feature of the skeleton argued against its being a recent, shallow burial. George Grant MacCurdy, a leading anthropologist fromYaleUniversity, considered Reck’s discovery to be genuine. [pp. 630-631, Forbidden Archeology]
1.2 Castenedolo Skull
This anatomically modern human skull (Sergi 1884, plate 1) was found in 1880 atCastenedolo,Italy. The stratum from which it was taken is assigned to the Astian stage of the Pliocene (Oakley 1980, p. 46). According to modern authorities (Harland et al, 1982, p. 110), the Astian belongs to the Middle Pliocene, wihch would give the skull an age of 3-4 million years. [p. 424, Forbidden Archeology]
2. Anomalous Artifacts
2.1 Grooved Sphere from South Africa
A metallic sphere fromSouth Africawith three parallel grooves around its equator (photo courtesy of Roelf Marx). The sphere was found in a Precambrian mineral deposit, said to be 2.8 billion years old. [p. 813, Forbidden Archeology]
2.2 Mysterious Letters from a Quarry
Raised letterlike shapes found inside a block of marble from a quarry nearPhiladelphia,Pennsylvania(Corliss 1978, p. 657; American Journal of Science 1831, vol. 19, p. 361). The block of marble came from a depth of 60-70 feet in strata dated 500-600 million years old. [p. 797, Forbidden Archeology]
iii. False Evidences
Consider the following five examples adapted from the article “Survival of the fakest” by Jonathan Wells published in the leading American magazine The American Spectator – December 2000 / January 2001
1. Life in a Bottle: Miller’s experiment
Anyone old enough in 1953 to understand the import of the news remembers how shocking, and to many, exhilarating, it was. Scientists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey had succeeded in creating “the building blocks” of life in a flask. Mimicking what were believed to be the natural conditions of the early Earth’s atmosphere, and then sending an electric spark through it, Miller and Urey had formed simple amino acids. As amino acids are the “building blocks” of life, it was thought just a matter of time before scientists could themselves create living organisms. At the time, it appeared a dramatic confirmation of evolutionary theory. Life wasn’t a “miracle.” No outside agency or divine intelligence was necessary. Put the right gasses together, add electricity, and life is bound to happen. It’s a common event. Carl Sagan could thus confidently predict on PBS that the planets orbiting those “billions and billions” of stars out there must be just teeming with life.
There were problems, however. Scientists were never able to get beyond the simplest amino acids in their simulated primordial environment, and the creation of proteins began to seem not a small step or couple of steps, but a great, perhaps impassable, divide.
The telling blow to the Miller-Urey experiment, however, came in the 1970’s, when scientists began to conclude that the Earth’s early atmosphere was nothing like the mixture of gasses used by Miller and Urey. Instead of being what scientists call a “reducing,” or hydrogen-rich environment, the Earth’s early atmosphere probably consisted of gasses released by volcanoes. Today there is a near consensus among geochemists on this point. But put those volcanic gasses in the Miller-Urey apparatus, and the experiment doesn’t work – in other words, no “building blocks” of life. What do textbooks do with this inconvenient fact? By and large, they ignore it and continue to use the Miller- Urey experiment to convince students that scientists have demonstrated an important first step in the origin of life. This includes the above-mentioned Molecular Biology of the Cell, co-authored by the National Academy of Sciences president, Bruce Alberts. Most textbooks also go on to tell students that origin-of-life researchers have found a wealth of other evidence to explain how life originated spontaneously – but they don’t tell students that the researchers themselves now acknowledge that the explanation still eludes them.
2. Imagination in Full Form: Darwin’s Tree of Life
Darwin’s theory claims to account for the origin of new species – in fact, for every species since the first cells emerged from the primordial ooze. This theory does have the virtue of making a prediction: If all living things are gradually modified descendants of one or a few original forms, then the history of life should resemble a branching tree. Unfortunately, despite official pronouncements, this prediction has in some important respects turned out to be wrong. The fossil record shows the major groups of animals appearing fully formed at about the same time in a “Cambrian explosion,” rather than diverging from a common ancestor.Darwinknew this, and considered it a serious objection to his theory. But he attributed it to the imperfection of the fossil record, and he thought that future research would supply the missing ancestors. But a century and a half of continued fossil collecting has only aggravated the problem. Instead of slight differences appearing first, then greater differences emerging later, the greatest differences appear right at the start. Some fossil experts describe this as “top-down evolution,” and note that it contradicts the “bottom-up” pattern predicted byDarwin’s theory. Yet most current biology textbooks don’t even mention the Cambrian explosion, much less point out the challenge it poses for Darwinian evolution. Then came the evidence from molecular biology. Biologists in the 1970’s began testingDarwin’s branching tree pattern by comparing molecules in various species. The more similar the molecules in two different species are, the more closely related they are presumed to be. At first this approach seemed to confirmDarwin’s tree of life. But as scientists compared more and more molecules, they found that different molecules yield conflicting results. The branching-tree pattern inferred from one molecule often contradicts the pattern obtained from another. Canadian molecular biologist W. Ford Doolittle doesn’t think the problem will go away. Maybe scientists “have failed to find the ‘true tree’,” he wrote in 1999, “not because their methods are inadequate or because they have chosen the wrong genes, but because the history of life cannot properly be represented as a tree.” Leading evolutionist Stephen J Gould admitted, “The evolution tree that adorns our text books have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches, the rest is all inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.”
Nevertheless, biology textbooks continue to assure students thatDarwin’s Tree of Life is a scientific fact overwhelmingly confirmed by evidence. Judging from the real fossil and molecular evidence, however, it is an unsubstantiated hypothesis masquerading as a fact.
3. Look-alike Illusions: Homology
Most introductory biology textbooks carry drawings of vertebrate limbs showing similarities in their bone structures. Biologists beforeDarwinhad noticed this sort of similarity and called it “homology,” and they attributed it to construction on a common archetype or design. In The Origin of Species, however,Darwinargued that the best explanation for homology is descent with modification, and he considered it evidence for his theory.Darwin’s followers rely on homologies to arrange fossils in branching trees that supposedly show ancestor descendant relationships. In his 1990 book, Evolution and the Myth of Creationism, biologist Tim Berra compared the fossil record to a series of Corvette models: “If you compare a 1953 and a 1954 Corvette, side by side, then a 1954 and a 1955 model, and so on, the descent with modification is overwhelmingly obvious.” But Berra forgot to consider a crucial, and obvious, point: Corvettes, so far as anyone has yet been able to determine, don’t give birth to little Corvettes. They, like all automobiles, are designed by people working for auto companies, or in other words, designed by an outside intelligence. So although Berra believed he was supporting Darwinian evolution rather than the pre-Darwinian explanation, he unwittingly showed that the fossil evidence is compatible with either. Law professor (and critic of Darwinism) Phillip E. Johnson dubbed this : “Berra’s Blunder.” The lesson of Berra’s Blunder is that we need to specify a natural mechanism before we can scientifically exclude designed construction as the cause of homology. Darwinian biologists have proposed two mechanisms: developmental pathways and genetic programs. According to the first, homologous features arise from similar cells and processes in the embryo; according to the second, homologous features are programmed by similar genes. But biologists have known for a hundred years that homologous structures are often not produced by similar developmental pathways. And they have known for thirty years that they are often not produced by similar genes, either. So there is no empirically demonstrated mechanism to establish that homologies are due to common ancestry rather than common design. Without a mechanism, modern Darwinists have simply defined homology to mean similarity due to common ancestry. According to Ernst Mayr, one of the principal architects of modern neo-Darwinism: “After 1859 there has been only one definition of homologous that makes biological sense: Attributes of two organisms are homologous when they are derived from an equivalent characteristic of the common ancestor.” This is a classic case of circular reasoning.Darwinsaw evolution as a theory, and homology as its evidence.Darwin’s followers assume evolution is independently established, and homology is its result. But you can’t then use homology as evidence for evolution except by reasoning in a circle: Similarity due to common ancestry demonstrates common ancestry. Philosophers of biology have been criticizing this approach for decades. As Ronald Brady wrote in 1985: “By making our explanation into the definition of the condition to be explained, we express not scientific hypothesis but belief. We are so convinced that our explanation is true that we no longer see any need to distinguish it from the situation we were trying to explain. Dogmatic endeavors of this kind must eventually leave the realm of science.” So how do the textbooks treat this controversy? Once again, they ignore it. In fact, they give students the impression that it makes sense to define homology in terms of common ancestry and then turn around and use it as evidence for common ancestry.
4. Glue-fixed Pictures: The Peppered Moths
Darwin was convinced that in the course of evolution, “Natural Selection has been the most important, but not the exclusive means of modification,” but he had no direct evidence of this. The best he could do in The Origin of Species was give “one or two imaginary illustrations.” In the 1950’s, however, British physician Bernard Kettlewell provided what seemed to be conclusive evidence of natural selection. During the previous century, peppered moths inEnglandhad gone from being predominantly light-colored to being predominantly dark-colored. It was thought that the change occurred because dark moths are better camouflaged on pollution-darkened tree trunks, and thus less likely to be eaten by predatory birds. To test this hypothesis experimentally, Kettlewell released light and dark moths onto nearby tree trunks in polluted and unpolluted woodlands, then watched as birds ate the more conspicuous moths. As expected, birds ate more light moths in the polluted woodland, and more dark moths in the unpolluted one. In an article written for Scientific American, Kettlewell called this “Darwin’s missing evidence.” Peppered moths soon became the classic example of natural selection in action, and the story is still retold in most introductory biology textbooks, accompanied by photographs of the moths on tree trunks. In the 1980’s, however, researchers discovered evidence that the official story was flawed – including the pertinent fact that peppered moths don’t normally rest on tree trunks. Instead, they fly by night and apparently hide under upper branches during the day. By releasing moths onto nearby tree trunks in daylight, Kettlewell had created an artificial situation that does not exist in nature. Many biologists now consider his results invalid, and some even question whether natural selection was responsible for the observed changes. So where did all those textbook photos of peppered moths on tree trunks come from? They were all staged. To expedite things, some photographers even glued dead moths to trees. Of course, the people who staged them before the 1980’s thought they were accurately representing the true situation, but we now know they were mistaken. Yet a glance at almost any current biology textbook reveals that they are all still being used as evidence for natural selection.
5. Beaks and Birds:Darwin’s Finches
A quarter of a century beforeDarwinpublished The Origin of Species, he was formulating his ideas as a naturalist aboard the British survey ship H.M.S. Beagle . When the Beagle visited the Galapagos Islands in 1835,Darwincollected specimens of the local wildlife, including some finches. Though the finches had little in fact to do withDarwin’s development of evolutionary theory, they have attracted considerable attention from modern evolutionary biologists as further evidence of natural selection. In the 1970’s, Peter and Rosemary Grant and their colleagues noted a 5 percent increase in beak size after a severe drought, because the finches were left with only hard-to crack seeds. The change, though significant, was small; yet some Darwinists claim it explains how finch species originated in the first place. A 1999 booklet published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences describesDarwin’s finches as “a particularly compelling example” of the origin of species. The booklet cites the Grants’ work, and explains how “a single year of drought on the islands can drive evolutionary changes in the finches.” The booklet also calculates that “if droughts occur about once every 10 years on the islands, a new species of finch might arise in only about 200 years.” But the booklet fails to point out that the finches’ beaks returned to normal after the rains returned. No net evolution occurred. In fact, several finch species now appear to be merging through hybridization, rather than diverging through natural selection asDarwin’s theory requires. Withholding evidence in order to give the impression thatDarwin’s finches confirm evolutionary theory borders on scientific misconduct. According to Harvard biologist Louis Guenin (writing in Nature in 1999),U.S.securities laws provide “our richest source of experiential guidance” in defining what constitutes scientific misconduct. But a stock promoter who tells his clients that a particular stock can be expected to double in value in twenty years because it went up 5 percent in 1998, while concealing the fact that the same stock declined 5 percent in 1999, might well be charged with fraud. AsBerkeleylaw professor Phillip E. Johnson wrote in The Wall Street Journal in 1999: “When our leading scientists have to resort to the sort of distortion that would land a stock promoter in jail, you know they are in trouble.”
Here is one more example from Forbidden Archaeology
6. Apemen or Conmen – Javaman Thighbone
In August 1892, Eugene Dubois discovered a fossilized humanlike femur on the bank of theSoloRiverin central Java, near thevillageofTrinil. 45 feet from this location he found a skullcap and molars. Dubois believed the molars, skull, and femur all came from the same being. However, the fact that these bones were found 45 feet from the place where the skull was unearthed, in a stratum containing hundreds of other animal bones makes doubtful the claim that both the thighbone and the skull actually belonged to the same creature or even the same species. In 1895 Dubois presented his findings to the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology, and Prehistory. The president of the society, Dr. Virchow declared that the femur was human and the skull belonged to an ape. Late in his life, Dubois concluded that the skullcap belonged to a large gibbon, an ape not considered by evolutionists to be closely related to humans. But this concept of the “missing link” is still widely promoted today! [pp. 464-465, Forbidden Archeology]
Sheer Speculation
The extent of speculation especially regarding human origins is evident from the following statement by a leading archaeologist, “I shall discuss the broad patterns of hominoid evolution, an exercise made enjoyable by the need to integrate diverse kinds of information, and use that as a vehicle to speculate about hominid origins, an event for which there is no recognized fossil record. Hence, an opportunity to exercise some imagination.” [American Anthropologist, Distinguished Lecture; Hominoid Evolution and Hominoid Origins, by David Pilbeam. Vol. 88, No. 2 June 1986. p. 295.]
According to paleoanthropologist Misia Landau, theories of human origins “far exceed what can be inferred from the study of fossils alone and in fact place a heavy burden of interpretation on the fossil record – a burden which is relieved by placing fossils into pre-existing narrative structures.” In 1996,AmericanMuseumof Natural History Curator Ian Tattersall acknowledged that “in paleoanthropology, the patterns we perceive are as likely to result from our unconscious mindsets as from the evidence itself.”ArizonaStateUniversityanthropologist Geoffrey Clark echoed this view in 1997 when he wrote: “We select among alternative sets of research conclusions in accordance with our biases and preconceptions.”Clarksuggested that “paleoanthropology has the form but not the substance of science.” Biology students and the general public are rarely informed of the deep-seated uncertainty about human origins that is reflected in these statements by scientific experts.
Instead, they are simply fed the latest speculation as though it were a fact. And the speculation is typically illustrated with fanciful drawings of cave men, or pictures of human actors wearing heavy make-up.
iv. Misinterpreted Evidences
Let’s analyze some other common examples of evidence that people uncritically assume to be supporting the idea of evolution. (The following section is adapted from the Origins magazine published by BBT Science):
1. Similarity of DNA
In recent years, geneticists have discovered that in species of similar form the DNA and other proteins have similar molecular structures. So just as evolutionists have deduced ancestral relationships among species from similarities in physical form, some of them now deduce such relationships from the genetic similarities. It is not, however, very surprising that similar species would have similar genetic materials. But the main point is that such similarities show nothing definite about how the organisms originated and cannot be used as proof of Darwinian-style evolution.
Further, talks about genetic similarities can be quite deceptive, considering the level of complexity of genetic structures. For example, some evolutionists argue that since humans and chimps have 98.4% similar DNA, it’s clear that they have an evolutionary linkage. But Dr. Barnay Maddox, leading genome and genetic researcher, points out that the 1.6% difference in DNA amounts to a difference of 48 million nucleotides. And a difference of only 3 nucleotides proves fatal to an animal.
2. Vestigial Organs
It can be reasonably argued that vestigial organs may be the result of design rather than evolution. The embryo of the baleen whale, for example, is said to possess what appear to be vestigial teeth. In the process of embryonic development, these are reabsorbed and replaced in the adult form by baleen (long, fringed structures in the mouth of the whale used to strain tiny organisms from seawater for food). Evolutionists take the vestigial teeth as evidence that the baleen whale evolved from a whale species that had teeth.
But there is another possible explanation. Let us suppose that an intelligent creator wanted to design a large number of whalelike forms in the most efficient way. He might start with genetic coding for a basic body plan that included teeth. When he arrived at the plan for the body of the baleen whale, he could alter the genes to suppress the growth of teeth and add genetic information to cause the growth of the baleen strainers. In this version, you would also expect to see embryonic teeth. Altogether the design hypothesis is as reasonable as the evolutionary hypothesis, and perhaps even more so, because the evolutionists have no step-by-step explanation for the origin of baleen. They can only assert that it happened by a kind of evolutionary magic. Despite all this they reject outright any argument in favor of design, a possibility they refuse to consider because it violates their unproven belief that everything in the universe can be explained by unaided physical laws and processes.
3. Breeding
Ever since the time ofDarwin, the changes resulting from breeding have been put forward as evidence for evolution. If man can produce limited changes in plants and animals over a few generations, then just imagine the possibilities of change over the course of millions of years. So goes the reasoning.
But evolution by natural selection and inducing changes in plants and animals by breeding are not at all comparable. In breeding there is a deliberate intent to obtain specific results—a bigger apple, a cow that produces more milk—but in the process of natural selection there is no intelligent directing plan.
Also, all available evidence shows that there are limits to the changes that can be brought about by breeding. The French zoologist Pierre-P. Grassi points out in his book Evolution of Living Organisms, “The changes brought about in the genetic stock [by breeding] affect appearances much more than fundamental structures and functions. In spite of the intense pressure applied by artificial selection (eliminating any parent not answering the criterion of choice) over whole millenia, no new species are born. … Ten thousands years of mutations, crossbreeding, and selection have mixed the inheritance of the canine species in innumerable ways without its losing its chemical and cytological [cellular] unity. The same is observed of all domestic animals: the ox (at least 4,000 years old), the fowl (4,000), the sheep (6,000), etc.”
The process of breeding is something like stretching a rubber band. It stretches only so far—and then it either breaks or snaps back. For example, during the nineteenth century, domesticated rabbits were brought intoAustralia, where there were no native rabbits. When some of these domesticated rabbits escaped, they bred freely among themselves, and very quickly their descendants reverted to the original, wild type.
In short, it may be possible to induce changes in the existing form by breeding (making the creature smaller or bigger, for example), but it does not appear possible to generate entirely new complex structures in the organism in this way. If this cannot happen by man’s conscious efforts, why should we assume it could happen by blind natural processes?
4. Playing God To Disprove God
As we have many times suggested, this leaves open the possibility of an intelligent designer. Yet many evolutionists feel that the particular way organisms are structured rules out such an intelligent designer. Harvard paleontologist Stephen J. Gould writes, “Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution—paths that a sensible God would never tread.” As an example, he cites the Panda’s thumb. The Panda bear has a thumb it can use to grasp the bamboo shoots that form the mainstay of its diet. This thumb, however, is not one of the five fingers of the normal mammalian paw. Rather this extra digit is constructed from a modified wrist bone, with appropriate rearrangement of the musculature.
In essence Gould claims, “God would not have done it that way. Therefore it must have happened by evolution.” But this negative theological reasoning is invalid on many counts. The first point is that it is inappropriate for the evolutionists to introduce in their favor a concept they have completely excluded from their account of reality—namely God. Secondly, we might ask from where they have obtained such explicit information about how God would or would not create things if He existed? How do they know He might not produce new features in organisms by modifying existing ones?
In the case of the Panda’s thumb, we note that although Gould rejects design by God as an explanation, he fails to provide an adequate explanation by evolutionary processes. He simply states that a single change in a regulatory gene, which controls the action of many structural genes, was responsible for the whole complex development of bone and muscle. But he does not specify which regulatory gene changed, nor does he explain how a change in the regulatory gene would orchestrate this remarkable transformation. He offers nothing more than the traditional vague magic-wand explanation.
5. Extinction of Species
Sometimes, the extinction of species like dinosaurs is presented as the proof of the working of natural selection as an evolutionary agent.
Extinction of species due to a hostile environment or some similar external cause does nothing to prove evolution’s claim that one species changes into another just by natural selection. Some bacteria can be killed by antibiotics, but that doesn’t prove that bacteria evolved into different species.
Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould refers to this impasse of natural selection as follows, “The essence of Darwinism lies in a single phrase: natural selection is the creative force of evolutionary change. No one denies that selection will play a negative role in eliminating the unfit. Darwinian theories require that it create the fit as well.”
That requirement of Darwinian evolution – to create new fit species – is not proven at all by the extinction of dinosaurs.
Sometimes fossils like those of Archaeopteryx, a dinosaur that had feathered wings, like birds as well as teeth, which no bird has, are portrayed as showing that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Let’s see what scientist Luther D. Sunderland (1984) has to say on this in his bookDarwin’s Enigma, “Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: There is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favored by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test.”
This “evidence” doesn’t at all prove that species can change – and it certainly doesn’t prove that natural selection can cause that change of species. All that it proves is that a particular creature that existed in the past no longer exists – and nothing more, and certainly not evolution. As is rightly said, survival (or non-survival) of species doesn’t explain arrival of species.
C. Mechanisms for Evolution
i. Natural Selection:
Natural selection, a process originally proposed byDarwin, favors (selects) organisms with traits that best enable them to cope with the struggle for existence amidst the pressures exerted by the environment. In this struggle, the strongest organisms, the ones most suited to natural conditions, survive. For example, in a herd of deer under threat from predators, the deer that can run fastest will naturally survive. Consequently, the herd of deer will eventually consist of only fast-running individuals.
Evolutionists like to ascribe almost mystical powers to natural selection and they claim that it has resulted in the “illusion of design” (Richard Dawkins) that we see all around the world. Indeed, natural selection is the evolutionists’s substitute for God. But observation as well as logic shows that natural selection has its limits.
Continuing with the deer example, no matter how long natural selection continues, it will not transform deer into another species. The weak deer will perish, the strong will survive, but, since no alteration in their genetic data takes place, no transformation of a species occurs.
The same applies for all species. Natural selection does not produce new species, new genetic information, or new organs. That is, it cannot cause anything to evolve.
The Problem of Incipient Stages of Organs
Stephen Gould points out in Natural History, October, 1985, that among the difficulties of Darwinian theory “one point stands high above the rest: the dilemma of incipient stages.” He further explains, “We can readily understand how complex and full developed structures work and owe their maintenance and preservation to natural selection—a wing, an eye, the resemblance of a bittern to a branch or of an insect to a stick or dead leaf. But how do you get from nothing to such an elaborate something if evolution must proceed through a long sequence of intermediate stages, each favored by natural selection? You can’t fly with 2% of a wing or gain much protection from an iota’s similarity with a potentially concealing piece of vegetation. How, in other words, can natural selection explain these incipient stages of structures that can only be used (as we now observe them) in much more elaborated form?”
The Problem at microbiological level
Genetics (which Darwin knew nothing about as that branch of science was not developed at his time) further exposes the impracticality of natural selection. as seen from the following quote: “No matter what phraseology one generates, the basic fact remains the same: any physical change of any size, shape or form is strictly the result of purposeful alignment of billions of nucleotides (in the DNA). Nature or species do not have the capacity for rearranging them, nor adding to them. Consequently no leap (saltation) can occur from one species to another. The only way we know for a DNA to be altered is through a meaningful intervention from an outside source of intelligence: one who knows what it is doing, such as our genetic engineers are now performing in their laboratories.” – Cohen, I.L. (1984), Darwin Was Wrong: A Study in Probabilities
Darwin himself admitted the limitation of natural selection, “Natural selection can do nothing until favorable individual differences or variations occur.” Neo-Darwinism tries to deal with this problem by adding mutation as the mechanism genetic information to the concept of natural selection.
Radiation and chemical effects result in breakages and dislocations in the DNA molecule, carrying genetic data, that’s located in the cell nucleus. Mutations are accidental and either damage the nucleotides that make up DNA or else dislocate them. They typically give rise to irreparable damage and alterations in the cell. For that reason, the mutations that evolutionists depend on for biological development are not, as is popularly thought, some magic wand that transports living things to a more advanced and perfect state. A few mutations may be beneficial – they may lead to slight improvement within a species, like increased immunity from a particular disease. But their net effects are harmful and they have never led to the formation of anything close to a new species.
Prof. Richard Goldschmidt, a zoologist at theUniversityofCalifornia, admits, “It is true that nobody thus far has produced a new species or genus, etc., by macromutation [a combination of many mutations]; it is equally true that nobody has produced even a species by the selection of micromutations [one or only a few mutations]. In the best-known organisms, like Drosophila, innumerable mutants are known. If we were able to combine a thousand or more of such mutants in a single individual, this still would have no resemblance whatsoever to any type known as a [new] species in nature.”
Stephen Jay Gould, evolutionary theorist at Harvard University, admits even more bluntly, “You don’t make new species by mutating the species. . . . A mutation is not the cause of evolutionary change.”
ii. Irreducible Complexity
Michael Behe in 1996 in his book Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution explains, “By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.”
Natural selection has no intelligence. It does not possess a will that can decide what is good and what is bad for living things. As a result, natural selection cannot explain biological systems and organs that possess the feature of “irreducible complexity.” These systems and organs are composed of a great number of parts cooperating together, and are of no use if even one of these parts is missing or defective. (For example, the human eye does not function unless it exists with all its components intact).
Therefore, the will that brings all these parts together should be able to foresee the future and aim directly at the advantage that is to be acquired at the final stage. Since natural selection has no consciousness or will, it can do no such thing. This fact, which demolishes the foundations of the theory of evolution, also worried Darwin, who wrote: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”
iii. Origin of life
Darwin stated that the original life was breathed into one or a few forms by the creator, but neo-darwinists claim that the first living molecule originated spontaneously from chemicals.
Concerning the question of the origin of such a molecule, Biologist Andy Pross said, “. . . one might facetiously rephrase the question as follows: given an effectively unknown reaction mixture, under effectively unknown reaction conditions, reacting to give unknown products by unknown mechanisms, could a particular product with a specific characteristic . . . have been included amongst the reaction products?” (Pross Addy. 2004. Causation and the origin of life. Metabolism or replication first? Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biospheres 34:308)
In Evolution from Space, noted British astronomers Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe assert that the chances of life’s arising from some ancient random mixing of chemicals are so “outrageously small” as to be absurd “even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.” The incensed authors are amazed that although the situation is well known to geneticists, evolutionists, and paleoanthropologists, nobody seems concerned enough to “blow the whistle decisively on the false theories.”
Nonetheless, Richard Dawkins (1986, pp. 47-49), in his book The Blind Watchmaker, still proposes that chance and natural selection (represented by a simple computer algorithm) can yield biological complexity. To demonstrate that the process is workable, he programmed a computer to generate random combination of letters and compare them to a target sequence that forms an intelligible grammatically correct sentence. Those combination of letters that come closest to the meaningful target sequence are preserved, whereas those that depart from the target sequence are rejected. After a certain number of runs, the computer produces a target sequence. Dawkins takes this as proof that random combination of chemicals could by natural selection gradually produce biologically functional proteins. The reasoning is, however, faulty. First, Dawkin assumes the existence of a complex computer, which we do not find in nature. Second, he assumes the presence of a target sequence. In nature there is no target sequence of amino acids that is specified in advance, and to which random sequences of amino acids can be compared. Third, the trial sequences of letters that are selected by the computer do not themselves have any linguistically functional advantage over other sequences, other than that they are one letter closer to the target sequence. For the analogy between the computer algorithm and real life to hold, each sequence of letter chosen by the computer should itself have some meaning. In real life, an amino acid leading up to a complex protein with specific function should itself have some function. If it has no function, which can be tested for fitness by natural selection, there is nothing on which natural selection can operate. Meyer (1998, p. 128) says, “ In Dawkin’s simulation, not a single English word appears until after the tenth iteration…. Yet to make distinctions on the basis of function among sequences that have no function whatsoever would seem quite impossible? Such determinations can only be made if considerations of proximity to possible future functions are allowed, but this requires foresight that molecules do not have.” In other words, Dawkin’s result can only be obtained because of the element of intelligent design embedded in the whole experiment.
(The above refutation of chance is adapted from Human Devolution)
D. Conclusion
Thus, if the evidence is objectively examined, there is practically no proof for the theory of evolution in the fossil record. Worse still, fossils that contradict the theory, despite being present in significant numbers, have been systematically neglected and suppressed by a process of knowledge filtration. Worst of all, evolutionists, desperate to present some proof for their faith in evolution, foist on gullible school students all over the world evidences that have long been disproved.
Not only is there no clear evidence, but there is also no clear mechanism explaining how evolution could have taken place. This utter absence of any scientific basis for the theory of evolution is what made British author Malcolm Muggeridge write in his book The End of Christendom. “I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it’s been applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books in the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has.”
Once the facts become clear to us, not only posterity, but even we will be prompted to marvel at how such a dubious theory has gained such widespread acceptance in our times. The answer is: propaganada. Adolf Hitler expressed this mechanism of making lies appear truths, “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” Evolution has gained acceptance only due to the misleading propaganda of the evolutionists, among the people who are not very well-versed about the intricacies of science, but are impressed by the technological wizardry accomplished by science. The extent of unquestioning faith people have in science was pointed out by Albert Einstein when he said, “”Tell a man that there are 300 billion stars in the universe, and he’ll believe you…. Tell him that a bench has wet paint upon it and he’ll have to touch it to be sure.” Evolutionists abuse this scientific credibility to assert their baseless claims about their theory.
No wonder that Dr W R Thompson, former Director of the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control,Ottawa, stated:
“The success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity.” (Thomson WR “Introduction,” Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin (Dutton: Everyman’s Library, 1956, p. xxii.))
The extent to which scientific integrity declined is quite shocking and is documented in the movie Expelled: Intelligence not allowed. (Visit expelled.com for more info) In their desperation to protect their pet theory, evolutionists have:
- Suppressed contradicting evidence
- Persecuted scientists opposing evolution
- Censored papers presenting problems in evolution from being published in scientific journals
- Use bombastic word jugglery to make evolution appear ‘scientific’.
By actions like these, evolutionists stand convicted of the same crime that they accuse religionists – being fanatical about one’s own views and intolerant about opposing views.
This religious nature of evolution was noted by physicist HS Lipson, “Evolution became in a sense a scientific religion. Almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to ‘bend’ their observations to fit in with it. To my mind the theory does not stand up at all.” (Lipson HS, “A Physicist Looks at Evolution” Physics Bulletin, vol. 31 (May 1980), p. 138.)
Harvard Paleontologist Richard Lewontin’s statement reveals the bias toward atheism that is inherent in the modern scientific mindset, “We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to Materialism [naturalism]. Materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.” (Harvard Paleontologist Richard Lewontin, Quoted in “Billions and Billions of Demons,” The N.Y. Review of Books, January 9, 1997)
Thus evolution is not science; it is a religion, an unproven, unreasonable, absolutist religion. Everyone has a right to believe in one’s own religion. So evolutionists too can believe in their religion if they choose. But they have no right to impose it on others as if it were scientific education. An irrational faith that makes absolute claims and has absolutely no evidences cannot be allowed to masquerade as science, especially when that masquerade misinforms and misleads entire generations into godlessness and immorality. Abraham Lincoln stated poignantly the crucial role of education in shaping the future, “The philosophy of the classroom in one generation becomes the philosophy of the government in the next.”
Fortunately for the future of the world, there are still scientists with intelligence and integrity, scientists who are ready to fight against this atheistic tyranny of thought. For example, Dr. Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History and editor of its journal, as well as author of the book Evolution, explains how he came out of the spell cast by evolutionary ideas, “Question is: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing that is true? I tried this question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. – – Then I woke up and realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way.” – Dr. Colin Patterson, Evolution and Creationism, Speech at the American Museum of Natural History, New York (November 5, 1981), pp. 1,2.
Dr Patterson is far from being the only scientist opposing evolution. As of June 2008, over 700 scientists from all over the world, all with doctorate degrees in science, have made a joint declaration entitled ‘A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism’, with the statement: “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of natural selection and random mutation to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.” (The list of scientists with their degrees and designations is available at www.dissentfromdarwin.com) The intelligent design movement, an international group of scientists, is increasingly challenging and exposing the dogma of evolutionists.
Srila Prabhupada, the founder of ISKCON, was among the pioneer spiritual leaders in pointing out the fallacies of the theory of evolution. Not only did he himself speak strongly against it and inspire his followers to counter it in the language of science, but he also presented the Vedic alternative to evolution. One of Srila Prabhupada’s leading scientist-disciples, Dr Michael Cremo, has scientifically postulated this alternative in his book, ‘Human Devolution: The Vedic alternative to Darwinian Evolution.’ He explains that human beings comprise of matter, mind and consciousness and we as conscious beings have devolved down from the realm of pure consciousness (the spiritual world) to the material realm. He concludes that the real evolution is not of bodily form, but of consciousness, and that evolution of consciousness back to the spiritual realm can be affected by the sonic technology of mantra meditation. (More information is available at www.humandevolution.com)
As vision determines mission, we hope that this article will help share the vision that evolution is far from a scientific truth and that an alternate explanation is seriously needed, which is offered competently by the authoritative Vedic texts.