Creationist Lies
Out of context: Reply #199
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Transitional Fossils
--------------------------In the first place, objective paleontologists concede that one’s interpretation of the fossil record will invariably be influenced by one’s presuppositions (in the case of the evolutionists, the presumption that evolution has taken place), and that everything must therefore be forced to somehow fit into that framework.
Steven Stanley, highly-respected authority from Johns Hopkins, has this to say on the lack of a transitional fossil record:
“Established species are evolving so slowly that major transitions between genera and higher taxa must be occurring within small rapidly evolving populations that leave NO LEGIBLE FOSSIL RECORD.”
If that weren’t enough to raise some doubts, Stanley, an affirmed evolutionist, is also objective enough to point out:
“The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that a gradualistic model can be valid.”
George Gaylord Simpson, another leading evolutionist, sees this characteristic in practically the whole range of taxonomic categories:
"...Every paleontologist knows that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of family appear in the record SUDDENLY and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences.”
Evolutionist E. R. Leach offers no help, observing only that:
“Missing links in the sequence of fossil evidence were a worry to Darwin. He felt sure they would eventually turn up, but they are still missing and seem likely to remain so.”
Among the most well-known proponents of evolution (and a fierce opponent of Creationism), even Steven Jay Gould admits:
“At the higher level of evolutionary transition between basic morphological designs, gradualism has always been in trouble, though it remains the “official” position of most Western evolutionists. Smooth intermediates between Baupläne are almost impossible to construct, even in thought experiments; there is certainly no evidence for them in the fossil record (curious mosaics like Archaeopteryx do not count).”
Gould goes on...
“The extreme rarity of transitional forms is the trade secret of paleontology... 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’.”
What the fossil record shows in reality, even granted the evolutionary ‘dating’ methods, is that this clear-cut progression exists only in the minds of evolutionary popularists. Marvin Lubenow, in his book Bones of Contention, shows that the various alleged ‘ape-men’ do not form a smooth sequence in evolutionary ‘ages’, but overlap considerably. For example, the time-span of Homo sapiens fossils contains the time-span of the fossils of Homo erectus, supposedly our ancestor. Also, when the various fossils are analysed in depth, they turn out to not be transitional or even mosaic.
Bird Transitions?
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One of the most famous fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers and skeletal structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs. This hardly qualifies for a fossil ‘intermediate in form’; it is more like a mosaic or chimera like the platypus. Alan Feduccia, a world authority on birds at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an evolutionist himself, says:
“Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it’s not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of ‘paleobabble’ is going to change that.”
Archaeopteryx had fully-formed flying feathers (including asymmetric vanes and ventral, reinforcing furrows as in modern flying birds), the classical elliptical wings of modern woodland birds, and a large wishbone for attachment of muscles responsible for the down stroke of the wings. Its brain was essentially that of a flying bird, with a large cerebellum and visual cortex. The fact that it had teeth is irrelevant to its alleged transitional status—a number of extinct birds had teeth, while many reptiles do not. Furthermore, like other birds, both its maxilla (upper jaw) and mandible (lower jaw) moved. In most vertebrates, including reptiles, only the mandible moves. Finally, Archaeopteryx skeletons had pneumatized vertebrae and pelvis. This indicates the presence of both a cervical and abdominal air sac, i.e., at least two of the five sacs present in modern birds. This in turn indicates that the unique avian lung design was already present in what most evolutionists claim is the earliest bird.Horse Transitions?
------------------------Even informed evolutionists regard horse evolution as a bush rather than a sequence. But the so-called Eohippus is properly called Hyracotherium, and has little that could connect it with horses at all. The other animals in the ‘sequence’ actually show hardly any more variation between them than that within horses today. One non-horse and many varieties of the true horse kind does not a sequence make.
The Role of DNA
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DNA comparisons are just a subset of the homology argument, which makes just as much sense in a biblical framework. A common Designer is another interpretation that makes sense of the same data. An architect commonly uses the same building material for different buildings, and a car maker commonly uses the same parts in different cars. So we shouldn’t be surprised if a Designer for life used the same biochemistry and structures in many different creatures. Conversely, if all living organisms were totally different, this might look like there were many designers instead of one.Since DNA codes for structures and biochemical molecules, we should expect the most similar creatures to have the most similar DNA. Apes and humans are both mammals, with similar shapes, so both have similar DNA. We should expect humans to have more DNA similarities with another mammal like a pig than with a reptile like a rattlesnake. And this is so. Humans are very different from yeast but they have some biochemistry in common, so we should expect human DNA to differ more from yeast DNA than from ape DNA.
So the general pattern of similarities need not be explained by common-ancestry (evolution). Rather, an efficient designer. Furthermore, there are some puzzling anomalies for an evolutionary explanation—similarities between organisms that evolutionists don’t believe are closely related. For example, hemoglobin, the complex molecule that carries oxygen in blood and results in its red color, is found in vertebrates. But it is also found in some earthworms, starfish, crustaceans, mollusks, and even in some bacteria. An antigen receptor protein has the same unusual single chain structure in camels and nurse sharks, but this cannot be explained by a common ancestor of sharks and camels. And there are many other examples of similarities that cannot be due to evolution.
Conclusion: The fossil record presents a dismal failure in supporting macroevolution. The scientific evidence supports this conclusion.
Stay tuned for more fun facts as I find the time. :)