The Evolution of a Creationist

Chapter 4 - "MISSING LINKS" ARE MISSING

As a college student I was convinced that evolution was true and that, in time, scientists would find the missing pieces. I thought science would ultimately provide us with an unbroken chain of evidence supporting the evolution and relationship of all things. Many scientists are still hoping for this evidence. However, Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology at Harvard, believes that the unbroken chain of evolutionary evidence will never be found -- that what we see in the fossils and in living creatures is more accurately explained with the creation model. Gould is still an evolutionist, but he writes:

"The birds of Massachusetts and the bugs in my backyard are unambiguous members of species recognized in the same way by all experienced observers.
This notion of species as "natural kinds"...fit splendidly with creationist tenets....
But how could a division of the organic world into discrete entities be justified by an evolutionary theory that proclaimed ceaseless change as the fundamental fact of nature?"[1]

Dr. Gould is making a statement about what we see as opposed to what evolution theorizes we ought to be seeing. We see discrete entities, distinct species. In the fossil record, there are fish, turtles and cockroaches. They are individually distinct, identifiable creatures. In life, we can also see fish, turtles and cockroaches. We can identify them. They are not l/2 fish and l/2 turtle or l/2 turtle and l/2 cockroach. We do not see elephants evolving fins or whales evolving wings. The discrete entities we see in the fossil record and in life are not "questionable" species. They are not transitional forms, as evolution would require. This is a problem for the evolutionist. If evolution is true, creatures should not be so easily identifiable. Every creature should be difficult to categorize, classify and name, if evolution is correct (and life is "evolving along"). Could it be that evolution is not correct? That each animal is easily identifiable (as giraffe or beetle or fish or turtle or cockroach) truly does "fit splendidly with creationist tenets." Ceaseless change in the fossils or living plants and animals does not appear to be "...the fundamental fact of nature".[2] (Emphasis added).

GOD CREATED KINDS

God tells us He created each plant and animal after its own kind (Genesis 1:11, 12, 21, 24, 25). Nothing evolved from some lower life form and nothing is presently evolving into a higher life form. From a creationist position, what we see in the fossil record and in life is exactly what we would expect to see. The lack of transitional forms is why evolutionists have the "missing link" problem, although some deny this. The "missing links" are missing. They are completely absent in the fossil record and in living organisms. They never will be found. God created each plant and animal after its own kind, therefore, you would not expect to see "missing links".

"MISSING LINKS" OR "UNBROKEN TIES"

The evolutionist's propaganda machine constantly barrages us through public TV, magazines and newspapers with broad ambiguities and undocumented claims supporting evolutionary theory. A letter in the Dallas Morning News by Drs. Alvin and Joel Taurog of Southwestern Medical School exemplifies this type of propaganda:

"Biological evolution asserts that all living organisms are interrelated by unbroken ties of genealogy. Although referred to as a theory, evolution is as much a fact as anything discovered by science, as well confirmed as the rotation of the planets around the sun or the roundness of the earth. The concept of evolution is central to biology and a massive body of evidence corroborates the evolutionary origin of all living organisms, including humans. While much remains to be learned regarding the mechanisms of evolution, the evolution of species is accepted by biologists as proven fact."[3]

Let us evaluate this paragraph of Drs. Taurog. If "...all living organisms are interrelated by unbroken ties of genealogy", then the leading evolutionary thinker of Harvard, Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, is wrong. Gould states:

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution."[4]

"Gradualistic evolution" means evolution of one creature into a more sophisticated and more complex creature over long periods of time. One creature gradually becomes another if given enough time. Gradualistic evolution, if true, should have evidence of transitional intermediate life forms in fossils and in living animals. Gould continues:

"All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt."[5]

What Gould is saying is that the missing links remain missing. There are no transitional (in-between) forms. No plant or animal is evolving into a higher form as far as the fossils can confirm.

"SUNRISE" OR "EARTH TURN"

Where are these "unbroken ties" referred to by Drs. Taurog? They present no scientific evidence to support their view. The evidence is only implied. They do appear to erect a "straw-man-creationist" and to take a few sideways swipes at him. In mentioning the "rotation of the planets around the sun or the roundness of the earth" as true science, are they implying that the Bible and creationists believe in the "sun rising on a flat earth"? How accurate are these doctors in the use of language? Do they say to a patient, "Did you see the beautiful sunrise this morning?" Or would they be scientifically accurate and ask "Did you see the beautiful earth turn this morning?" The Bible uses common, ordinary language. That the earth is not flat, but a sphere is taught in Isaiah 40:22: "It is He that sitteth upon (above) the circle of the earth..." (KJV). The Bible teaches that as God looks down upon earth, it appears as a sphere or circle. Psalm 19 (New American Standard Version) is a scripture that uses normal language and refers to the sun rising. The Bible is not inaccurate because it uses common figures of speech.

Where can we find the "massive body of evidence (that) corroborates the evolutionary origin of all living creatures, including humans" (as Drs. Taurog allege)? The "massive body of evidence" proving the evolution of man would not fill a single casket according to evolutionist and prolific author Dr. Lyall Watson:

"The fossils that decorate our family tree are so scarce that there are still more scientists than specimens. The remarkable fact is that all the physical evidence we have for human evolution can still be placed, with room to spare, inside a single coffin!"[6]

Drs. Alvin and Joel Taurog say still more:

"When religion and science come into conflict, it is generally in the realm of belief....Scientific belief is based solely upon evidence that is validated by observation, experiment and prediction; neither religious belief, nor any other belief system, is subject to these constraints."[7]

Apparently, Drs. Taurog believe that the evolution model of one cell to man is science and thus can be validated with the scientific method. Creation science is apparently religious belief in their view. They add, "The interrelationships among living organisms from microbes to man have never been clearer,..." It is not clear precisely what these doctors are referring to, but from the smallest life forms to the largest, from the simplest to the most complex, there is no scientific evidence to prove that they (small to large or simple to complex) are related as ancestors to or progeny from each other. Natural History of May 1977 (p. 14) published the words of Dr. Stephen Jay Gould:

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. 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... 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 never see the very process we profess to study."

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY DISPROVES EVOLUTION

Even at the level of molecules, evidence to support evolution is lacking. In chapter 2, we discussed the fact that at the cellular level of living creatures there are important differences that distinguish between basic kinds of flesh. For instance, the cells that make up the flesh of birds and fish are not the same. Scientists are studying even smaller entities than cells as they examine the molecules of the cell. This field of study is named Molecular Biology.

A book that every Christian family (and non-Christian, as well) should have is, Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins. Written by creationists as a supplemental high school biology textbook supporting the view that life demands a designer, this book deals with the molecular evidence for creation.

"The study of living things on the molecular level is a relatively new field. The information that scientists derive from molecular biology may be used to compare and categorize organisms, a field known as biochemical taxonomy. Biochemical analysis holds out the promise of making taxonomy a more precise science, because it allows differences between various organisms to be quantified and measured....
Proponents of intelligent design read similarity in structure as a reflection of similarity in function. All living organisms must survive in the same universe and must fit its ecological web. All must fit into a food chain. The need to function within a common universe puts common physical and chemical requirements on all organisms. It would be both logical and efficient for an intelligent agent to design living things with a common biochemical base....
The significant new contribution biochemistry offers is a mathematically quantifiable means of determining how similar classes of organisms are. But when several similarities are put side by side, the pattern that emerges contradicts all expectations based on evolution."[8] (Emphasis added).

Animals that evolutionists have always believed to be closely related in the evolutionary chain are now known to be unrelated when studied at the molecular level. Kenyon and Davis continue:

"To use classic evolutionary terminology, amphibians are intermediate between fish and the other land-dwelling vertebrates. Yet, analysis of their amino acids does not place amphibians in an intermediate position. This is true no matter what species of amphibian we choose for comparison. Based upon the evolutionary series, we would expect some amphibians to be closer to fish ("primitive" species) and others to be closer to reptiles ("advanced" species). But this is not the case. No matter which species are taken as the basis for comparison, the distance between amphibians and fish, or between amphibians and reptiles, is always the same....
The revolution in molecular biology has given us new, mathematically quantifiable data on the similarities in living things. But the data have served to support a picture of the organic world consistent with the theory of intelligent design."[9] (Emphasis added).

Author Michael Denton [Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Harper and Row, 1986)], a Ph.D. in molecular biology (who is not a creationist as far as I know), argues that evolution from one cell to man is not indicated at the level of the molecule. After looking at molecules for evidence for "missing links" between the different classes of creatures, Denton writes (p. 286):

"There is a total absence of partially inclusive or intermediate classes, and therefore none of the groups traditionally cited by evolutionary biologists as intermediate gives even the slightest hint of a supposedly transitional character."

Of course, if there is no evidence for evolutionary relationships at the level of molecules, which are the basic building blocks of nature, then the idea of evolution of enzymes, proteins, plasma and tissue is totally absurd. The Bible says:

For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens
(He is the God who formed the earth and made it,
He established it and did not create it a waste place,
But formed it to be inhabited).
I am the Lord, and there is none else...
And there is no other God besides Me,
A righteous God and a Savior;
There is none except Me. (Isaiah 45:18,21b)

Dr. Vincent Sarich, an evolutionist and Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, did a series of studies at the molecular level on the evolution of man. At first, his studies were scorned by his evolutionary colleagues. He had the audacity to announce in 1967 that Ramapithecus (proclaimed by Elwyn Simons and David Pilbeam of Yale to be one of the earliest ancestors of man) was not at all ancestral to man, but more probably an ancestor to the orangutan.

"The year was 1967. Sarich and his partner, Allan Wilson, were comparing blood proteins from human beings, chimpanzees and gorillas -- finding them remarkably similar. After analyzing the slight differences, they decided that the ancestors of human beings must have diverged from those of the African apes only about 5 million years ago, instead of the 20 million to 30 million years that fossil evidence seemed to suggest.
Their conclusion was regarded by many paleontologists as heresy. It was bad enough that Sarich and Wilson were challenging the conventional estimate of the age of the human line. Worse, they were doing it with test tubes and biochemistry -- all but ignoring the fossils on which so much evolutionary theory was based. Most experts then believed that human beings could trace their ancestry at least as far back as a 14 million-year-old creature called Ramapithecus, and paleontologist Elwyn Simons, then of Yale, spoke for many of his colleagues when he pronounced the Sarich-Wilson work "impossible to believe."
Times have changed. While Simons still thinks Ramapithecus may be a human ancestor, he has little company. New fossil discoveries have convinced many experts that the animal was ancestral to the orangutan."[10]
Molecular research is eliminating the supposed evolutionary ancestors of people, one by one.

[2] ibid.

[3] Drs. Alvin and Joel Taurog, Dallas Morning News,March 6, 1987, Letters to the Editor.

[4] Stephen Jay Gould, "Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?", Paleobiology, Vol. 6 (1), January, 1980, p. 127, as quoted in The Quote Book, p. 8.

[5] Stephen Jay Gould, "The Return of Hopeful Monsters," Natural History, Vol. LXXVI (6), June-July, 1977, p. 24. Quoted in The Quote Book p.8

[6] Dr. Lyall Watson, "The Water People," Science Digest, Vol. 90, May, 1982, p. 44.

[7] Drs. Alvin and Joel Taurog, Dallas Morning News, March 6, 1987, Letters to the Editor.

[8] Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon, Of Pandas and People (Dallas: Haughton Publishing Co., 1989), pp. 34-36.

[9] ibid, pp. 37,38.

[10] Kevin McKean, "Preaching the Molecular Gospel," Discover, Vol. 4 (7), July, 1983, p. 34.