The 10 Things You Should Know About the Creation vs. Evolution Debate (10 page)

During Charles Darwin's day (the 1860s), only a portion
of the fossil record in the various layers of the earth's crust had
been uncovered and studied-though some discoveries of fossils
in the Cambrian strata had been made. As scholar Michael
Denton said in his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis,

In Darwin's day only a tiny fraction of all fossil
bearing strata had been examined and the number of
professional paleontologists could practically be
counted on two hands. Huge areas of the globe had
never been explored and certainly not examined by
geologists and paleontologists. Large areas of the Soviet
Union, Australia, Africa and most of Asia were practically untouched.'

Based on the limited discoveries of his time, a troubled
Darwin wondered where all the fossil evidence was for his theory:

Why then is not every geological formation and
every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology
assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graduated
organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious
and serious objection which can be urged against the
theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme
imperfection of the geological record.10

Some of the scientists living in Darwin's day criticized his
theory for lack of evidence, but Darwin was able to temporarily disarm such criticism with his suggestion that the fossil record
was incomplete. His hope was that further paleontological studies would unveil intermediates in the fossil record, thereby proving the evolution of one species into another. But even if such
evidence failed to surface, Darwin suggested that it might be
lacking only because the fossils in the earlier strata in the earth's
crust might have been destroyed by heat and pressure."

Since Darwin's day, evolutionists have continued to argue
that the fossil record is imperfect. The late evolutionist Stephen
Jay Gould said "we must work with the strictly limited evidence
of a very imperfect fossil record."" Evolutionist Richard Dawkins
uses an analogy of a film to make his point: "It is as though we
had a cine film with most of the frames missing. We can, to be
sure, see movement of a kind when we project our film of fossils,
but it is more jerky than Charlie Chaplin, for even the oldest
and scratchiest Charlie Chaplin film hasn't completely lost ninetenths of its frames. "13

Today, however, over a century after Darwin's time, an abundance of fossils have been discovered-virtually billions of
them-more than enough to draw valid scientific conclusions,
and they show rather conclusively that no intermediate fossils
exist.14 Further, as for the claim that fossils in the earlier strata
in the earth's crust might have been destroyed by heat and pressure, fossil discoveries in the pre-Cambrian strata debunk this
idea. Indeed, fossil discoveries in this strata reveal single-celled
organisms that have not been destroyed-and if fossils of such
small organisms were not destroyed, one cannot reasonably argue
that fossils of larger organisms would have been destroyed.

The fossil record shows no evidence of simple life-forms transitioning into complex life-forms. Rather, the evidence reveals a virtual explosion of animal phyla (divisions or "types" of the
animal kingdom) appearing during the Cambrian era15 with no
true evolutionary ancestors in the Precambrian era and no truly
new groups appearing in post-Cambrian times. Moreover,
researchers have uncovered fossils of more than a hundred species
of soft-bodied animals, innumerable small shelled organisms,
and other life-forms." So astonishing is the explosion of lifeforms during the Cambrian period that some refer to it as "biology's big bang." Stephen Jay Gould explains it this way: "In one
of the most crucial and enigmatic episodes in the history of lifeand a challenge to the old and congenial idea that life has
progressed in a basically stately and linear manner through the
ages-nearly all animal phyla make their first appearance in the
fossil record at essentially the same time."" Many of the animal
types that appear in the Cambrian era continue to the present
day.'"

Some evolutionists, like Richard Dawkins, admit that these
fossils of life-forms seemingly "were just planted there, without any evolutionary history behind them."19 Honest evolutionists admit that this is a strike against Darwin's theory.20 Other
evolutionists seem not bothered, suggesting (without evidence)
that the Cambrian explosion simply points to a very large
(Precambrian) gap in the fossil record.21

An objective consideration of the Cambrian explosion reveals
no evolutionary descent of life-forms and no slow modifications
taking place in life-forms as a result of natural selection. Phillip
Johnson is right in saying that "the prevailing characteristic of
fossil species is stasis-the absence of change. There are numerous `living fossils' which are much the same today as they were
millions of years ago, at least as far as we can determine."22

Some evolutionists have tried to argue that the reason no
fossil precursors exist prior to Cambrian times is that they were
soft-bodied creatures and wouldn't have had any hard parts to
be fossilized. Ernst Mayr, for example, writes that "the absence of the ancestral types in Precambrian strata can be explained if
one assumes that the earliest multicellular animals were microscopically small and soft-bodied. "21 He argues that fossils showed
up in the Cambrian strata because the organisms developed skele-
tons.24 Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College
London, likewise writes that "the Cambrian Explosion, so called,
is a failure of the geological record rather than of the Darwinian
machine. Its radical new groups reflect not a set of exceptional
events, but something more banal: the first appearance of animals
with parts capable of preservation. Before then, there were soft
creatures that decayed as soon as they died. "2' However, as noted
previously, single-celled organisms have been discovered in the
Precambrian strata, and more than a hundred species of softbodied animals have been uncovered in the Cambrian (and later)
strata.2' This evidence shows that soft-bodied creatures could
have fossilized during Precambrian times.21

What does all this mean? It means that whether you are an
old-earth creationist who interprets this Cambrian explosion as
occurring between 525 and 550 million years ago28 or a youngearth creationist who interprets the explosion as occurring less
than 10,000 years ago, the end result is that the Cambrian
evidence deals evolution a severe blow. The reason that life-forms
appear to have been "just planted there" in the Cambrian era
is that they were planted there-by a divine Creator.

The more one studies the fossil records, the more one finds
a lack of evidence to support evolution. If evolution were true,
one would expect to see in the fossil records progressively
complex evolutionary forms, indicating transitions of one lifeform into another. We should see fish transitioning into reptiles
and some ancient ancestor life-form transitioning into apes and
humans. However, out of all the billions of fossils known and
documented in the rocks of the earth's crust, no such evidence exists.29 The British Museum of History alone contains some 60
million fossil specimens, yet not one is a transitional form showing one species evolving into another.30

Rather, the evidence reveals a sudden appearance of life-forms,
and each of them exhibits all the features that distinguish that
life-form-fully formed and fully functional-with no evolving
of body parts involved. We find no ancestors with stubs on their
lower bodies that gave rise to species with legs. We find no ancestors with stubs on their sides that gave rise to species with wings.
Such Darwinian "gradualism" is completely absent.

Stephen Jay Gould is an example of an evolutionist who has
conceded that the lack of transitional evidence in the fossil record
has been a problem for traditional evolutionism. He once
commented that "all paleontologists know that the fossil record
contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt."', He
said "the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record
persists as the trade secret of paleontology."32 He admitted that
"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. "33

Darwin had earnestly hoped for countless examples in the
fossil record showing transitions of one species into another. He
asked, "Why, if species have descended from other species by
insensibly fine graduations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms ?"3'To date, however, researchers have
not discovered one true transitional form.

Some evolutionists have claimed that a transitional form
in the fossil record is the archaeopteryx, which one will find
illustrated in many textbooks used in public schools.35 The archaeopteryx, discovered not long after Darwin published On
the Origin of Species, is an extinct primitive bird that allegedly
existed during the Jurassic period and had lizard-like characteristics such as teeth, claws on its wings, and a long bony tail,
but also had feathers.36 Evolutionists conclude that the
archaeopteryx is a transitional form between reptiles and birds.

Creationists believe evolutionists are making too much of
the archaeopteryx. One reason the archaeopteryx is not a true
transitional form is that all of its body parts are fully formed
and fully functional. Its wings are fully formed (perfectly suited
to flight), its tail is fully formed (it is not a mere stub), its claws
are fully formed (no sharp stubs), and nothing on the creature
indicates it is in the process of developing from one species into
another. It is simply a unique creature, perfectly compatible with
a creationist scenario. In other words, the archaeopteryx had
all these unique features because God created it that way.

Further, the evidence indicates that birds have been around
as long as or before the archaeopteryx, so the archaeopteryx
couldn't have been the ancient ancestor of birds that evolutionists
hope for.37 Indeed, researcher John Noble Wilford, based on a
discovery in northeastern China, concluded that "by the time
of archaeopteryx, another bird lineage with perhaps much more
ancient origins existed. That lineage seems to have led to modern
birds." Wilford says this new evidence of a sparrow-size bird
called the liaoningornis-a virtual contemporary of the
archaeopteryx-"casts serious doubt on the widely held theory
that birds are direct descendants of dinosaurs. "31

The fossil evidence argues against the evolutionary idea of
gradualism-the idea that over long periods of time, species
evolved into other species as a result of natural selection. In view
of this, evolutionists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould in
1972 proposed a theory known as "punctuated equilibrium."', This theory suggests that the fossil record may not be as imperfect as everyone thought. "Maybe the `gaps' are a true reflection of what really happened, rather than being the annoying
but inevitable consequences of an imperfect fossil record."40
According to this theory, the development of new species
occurred in spurts of major genetic alterations that punctuate
long periods of little change.41 "The long period of stasis is the
portion of the process referred to as the period of equilibrium,
and the interval characterized by rapid evolution is a punctuation-thus the term, punctuated equilibrium. `12

More precisely, this theory postulates that evolution is sometimes in stasis and no evolution occurs. When evolution does
occur, it happens in rapid spurts of major genetic alterations where
new species can arise. These rapid spurts punctuate (periodically
interrupt) long periods of time. These spurts of evolution are
typically followed by a long period of stasis.

According to this view, rapid spurts of evolution take place
as a result of specific creatures being geographically cut off from
other members of their species. In their struggle to survive in a
new inhospitable area (an area in which great "selective pressure"
is put upon them to change so they can adapt to their more difficult environment), the creatures quickly evolve (that is, over tens
of thousands of years), and their favorable variations are then
passed on to offspring.43 These newly evolved creatures eventually move back into more mainstream geological areas where they
die and become fossilized. This appears in the fossil record as
an abrupt change in species with new fully-formed features.44
This new species then dies off by extinction or proliferates into
a large population.

An obvious problem for the theory of punctuated equilibrium is that it calls loud attention to the utter lack of transitional
forms in the fossil record. It is like a giant neon sign pointing
to the fact that stasis (no change) is what we witness in the fossil
record. One strongly suspects that since no transitional forms have been found in the fossil record, this theory was formulated
to explain away the lack of evidence. Virtually no empirical
biological evidence for the theory exists. The evidence simply
reveals an explosion of animal phyla during the Cambrian era.

A second major problem with punctuated equilibrium is that
it goes against all that is known regarding mutations. Studies
in DNA and genetics indicate that a particular species has sufficient genetic potential to give rise to all kinds of variety within
that species but not to transform it into an entirely new species."
So, for example, variations have occurred within the "dog kind,"
but we never witness the dog evolving into another species.
Variations have occurred within the "cat kind," but we never
witness the cat evolving into another species. Should a dog be
isolated off from other dogs in an inhospitable area, it may change
in the microevolutionary sense (changes within the dog species)
but not in the macroevolutionary sense (with dogs evolving into
another species). Later in the book I discuss how typical mutations do not add information to the DNA but rather remove
information, making the organism weaker in some way.