DARWINISTS REMAIN DARWINISTS

If macro-evolution (major changes including new organs) is an historical fact, there should be an historical record – the fossil record. However, according to many evolutionists, this is the very thing that we don’t find:

·       “What is missing [in the record] are the many intermediate forms hypothesized by Darwin, and the continual divergence of major lineages into the morphospace between distinct adaptive types.”  Robert L. Carroll, “Towards a New Evolutionary Synthesis,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 15 (2000): 27

·       “I wish only to point out that [gradualism] was never ‘seen’ in the rocks.”  Stephen Jay Gould, “Evolution’s Erratic Pace,” Natural History 86 (May 1977), 14

·       “Stasis [remaining the same] is now abundantly well documented as the preeminent paleontological pattern in the evolutionary history of species.”  (Niles Eldredge, “Reinventing Darwin: The Great Evolutionary Debate” (New York: John Wiley, 1995), 77) http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/denton-introduction/

Instead, the fossil record is damning to the theory of evolution. Instead of providing evidence for gradual Darwinian change over time, this record shows that frogs remain frogs, and apes remain apes, and Darwinists remain Darwinists.

ARE ORGANS IRREDUCIBLY COMPLEX, THEREBY DEFYING DARWINIAN GRADUALISM?

Irreducible complexity is a theory that argues in favor of an intelligent Designer by showing that random mutation and natural selection are unable to account for new organs or structures. Evolution must take place step-by-step and each step must confer a survival advantage. However, to confer this advantage, many new genes must be simultaneously in place to produce any beneficial structure. Richard Kleiss provides the example of blood clotting as an irreducibly complex process:

• Bleeding must be stopped. While the scab is forming…the blood below is making a completely different kind of clot out of blood platelets and protein…Your body increases the flow of blood enriched with white blood cells. These cells not only search out and kill germs, but clean the wound of damaged cellular tissues. Skins cells start to increase the rate at which they make new cells in order to bridge the cut with new skin. Underneath…cells called fibroblasts fill the wound to strengthen the tender new tissue, and then contract to pull the wound closed. Finally, blood vessels and nerves complete their repairs as the fibroblasts position themselves along the lines of stress to prevent further damage.” (A Closer Look at the Evidence)

Without any one of these processes, any cut could cause death. In fact, any structure is irreducibly complex. Atheist Richard Dawkins admits that:

• The creationists are right that, if genuinely irreducible complexity could be properly demonstrated, it would wreck Darwin’s theory. (The God Delusion, 125)

Darwin himself said as much:

• “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. But I can find no such case.”

Is there any evidence that new organs arise through “slight modifications?” Casey Luskin cites the late biologist, Lynn Margulis, member of the National Academy of Sciences: "new mutations don't create new species; they create offspring that are impaired.” She further explained in a 2011 interview:

• [N]eo-Darwinists say that new species emerge when mutations occur and modify an organism. I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to evolutionary change-led to new species. I believed it until I looked for evidence.

Is there any evidence? Apparently none! John C. Lennox quotes several evolutionists to this effect:

• John Maynard Smith, E. Szathmary: “There is no theoretical reason that would permit us to expect that evolutionary lines would increase in complexity with time; there is also no empirical evidence that this happens.” (God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God, 107)

• Siegfried Scherer: “In the whole experimentally accessible domain of microevolution (including research in artificial breeding and in species formation), all variations have certainly remained within the confines of basic types.” ()

• Cell biologist E.J. Ambrose of the University of London argued that it is unlikely that fewer than five genes could ever be involved in the formation of even the simplest new structure, previously unknown in the organism. He then points out that only one in 1,000 mutations is non-deleterious, so that the chance of five non-deleterious mutations [the minimum necessary for any new function] occurring is 1 in a million billion replications.

This means that every organism will probably die before it adds a new organ! But evolutionists assure us that, eventually, they will come up with a solution.

Intelligent Design vs. Evolution: It’s not a Toss-Up

The body is wondrously designed. Not only does it have the machinery for life, it also has the equipment to maintain life, and this equipment is incredibly complex. The Clotting Cascade involves 10 distinct chemical processes, culminating in a scab. Bruce Malone wrote:
                                               

• If one of these chemicals is missing or is in the wrong order, then a person would bleed to death. If the chemicals activate 20 minutes after the cut or if the clot does not cover the entire area, the result is again death. If the clotting continues without stopping, then the body’s blood system would clot up and the person would die. (Inspired Evidence)

This is only one of the thousands of processes of our life sustaining equipment that are irreducibly complex. This idea has recognized that all of the parts (chemicals) have to be present and connected for the system to work. This argues powerfully against Darwinian gradualism – the only mechanism the evolutionists have been able to propose to get us from A (the first form of life) to Z (us). Instead, irreducible complexity insists that gradualism cannot account for the development of any useful system.

Could other conceivable structures have performed the same vital function as the Clotting Cascade, as evolutions suggest? If they could, it doesn’t seem that they could do so as well. I had been taking Prilosec for acid reflux. I was assured that there wouldn’t be any side effects. The doctor spoke of this drug as if it represented an advancement over our original body design. I thought, “If only the body manufactured it’s own Prilosec and could automatically inject it into my troubled stomach as needed!”

However, it seems that every drug comes with its own set of side-effects – life-limiting characteristics. I subsequently found that this was also true of my “no-side-effects” Prilosec. Just today, the news announced that it has been found that all of those powerful antacids tend to cause vitamin B-12 deficiencies and even the early onset of dementia! Darn, but no surprise!

Perhaps then, God didn’t goof when He designed our body without a built-in Prilosec pump! Have we ever been able to make any improvement upon the healthy human body? Not as far as I can tell! This speaks loudly in favor of intelligent design. If we intelligent beings haven’t been able to improve upon the original design, perhaps the original had been even more intelligently designed than we have acknowledged!

As I grow older, I have been eagerly awaiting for just one of aging’s changes to improve my body. However, I’ve been repeatedly disappointed. My eyes, ears, sleep and even bowels are all beginning to fail me, bringing me back to thoughts about my former self – my original bio-chemical endowment. From my present partially-hobbled condition, I am more amazed than ever with what God hath done!

Irreducible Complexity, Gradualism, and Faith

The concept of “irreducible complexity” observes that many – or all - biological structures cannot suffer the loss of any one part and still function optimally. Each part is necessary. Loss never means improvement. Hardening of the arteries never gives a functional advantage.

In contrast, the engine of evolution – Darwinian gradualism - must explain how each incremental step, each additional building-block, in the development of an organ or a structure, gives the host organism a survival advantage, even before the organ, as we know it, is functional.

The pericardium of the heart is one such building-block. There first has to be a heart before the pericardium can provide any advantage. However, without the pericardium, the heart will quickly burn out. It seems that all the parts have to be present before the organ to function properly. Bruce Malone explains:

• A sac called the pericardium is a tough, thin, fibrous membrane which surrounds and protects the heart. Imagine it this way, your heart is in a plastic sandwich bag with another sandwich bag surrounding it, and between the two bags is an oily lubricating fluid. Your heart is essentially encased in this tough sac with the lubricant fluid between the heart and the sac…When the heart beats, it can now slide around in the fluid without creating friction…A heart without this marvelous sac would soon produce enough heat to kill us. (Inspired Evidence)

Some biologists argue that all functional structures – even the microscopic ones - are irreducibly complex. How then do evolutionists explain the evolution of such structures? Darwinian gradualism seems unable to explain, in any detailed way, how those many necessary parts can each confer a survival advantage as they are added gradually one-at-a-time.  Therefore, Malone concludes:

• These kinds of details are ignored by the evolution believers. They just wave a magic wand and say, “Evolution did it.”

Ah, the wisdom of evolution!

Why the Fossil Record is so Damning of the Theory of Evolution

 

(This relief of a stegasaurus rex was photographed on a 10th century AD temple at Angkor Wat. Seems like flesh-and-blood Dinosaurs were known to the Khmers.)

People ask me, “How do the evolutionists respond to the quotations you provide from other evolutionists claiming that the fossil record fails to provide evidence of macro-evolution?” Many call me a “liar” or claim that I am taking the quotes out of context – I’m “quote-mining.” However, never once have any of my opponents provided a context that undermines the weight of the quotation.

The more civilized challenge usually comes in this form: “Well, even if the fossil record fails to prove evolution, there are other lines of evidence that do!” However, this retort fails to grapple with the seriousness of their problem. It is not simply that the fossil record fails to support the claims of evolution, this evidence actually undermines these claims.

Let me give an example. If I claim that I went to Walmart on Saturday and bought a set of kitchen furniture, but there is not record of such a purchase, I don’t appear on their security system cameras, and Walmart claims that they don’t even sell such a set, my claims not only fail to receive the necessary support. They are actually contradicted by the evidence. My claim, then, that I have other supporting evidences becomes highly doubtful. Besides, it is contradicted by the Walmart evidence.

Evolutionary biologist Donald Prothero (Occidental College) also admitted this problem:

·        For the first decade after [Stephen Jay Gould’s] paper [on punctuated equilibrium] was published, it was the most controversial and hotly argued idea in all of paleontology. Soon the great debate among paleontologists boiled down to just a few central points, which Gould and Eldredge (1977) nicely summarized on the fifth anniversary of the paper’s release. The first major discovery was that stasis [species remaining unchanged], was much more prevalent in the fossil record than had been previously supposed. Many paleontologists came forward and pointed out that the geological literature was one vast monument to stasis with relatively few cases where anyone had observed gradual evolution…As Gould put it, it was the “dirty little secret” hidden in the paleontological closet. Most paleontologists were trained to focus on gradual evolution as the only pattern of interest, and ignored stasis as “not evolutionary change” and therefore uninteresting, to be overlooked or minimized. Once Eldredge and Gould had pointed out that stasis was equally important (“stasis is data” in Gould’s words), paleontologists all over the world saw that stasis was the general pattern, and that gradualism was rare—and that is still the consensus 40 years later. – (“Darwin’s Legacy,” eSkeptic , February 15, 2012)

Precisely where the fossil record should have revealed evidence for Darwinian gradualism, it failed to do so, according to Prothero:

·        In four of the biggest climatic-vegetational events of the last 50 million years, the mammals and birds show no noticeable change in response to changing climates. No matter how many presentations I give where I show these data, no one (including myself) has a good explanation yet for such widespread stasis despite the obvious selective pressures of changing climate. Rather than answers, we have more questions.

In light of this now common-place revelation, we have to remain skeptical of claims that evidence for evolution is to be found in other fields. My claim of a purchase should have been found in Walmart’s record of sales.

Now add to this the embarrassment that the fossil record repeatedly shows us that thousands of fully formed species suddenly appeared in the record without any antecedent (ancestral) forms. It’s as if I claimed that I just bought my kitchen set from a Walmarts, which had burned down ten years earlier.