I will end this subsection with an apt quote from biochemistry professor Michael Denton, which illustrates that not only are evolutionary mechanisms incapable of accounting for irreducibly complex systems, but they would even be unable to bring about any significant changes in such systems:
“In complex systems like a watch or living system, all the subsystems are intensely integrated. Engineering changes in such systems is complex because each change to any one subsystem must be compatible with the functioning of all the other subsystems. Any change beyond a trivial degree is bound to necessitate intelligently directed compensatory changes in many of the interacting subsystems. In this context, it is hard to understand how undirected evolution via a series of independent changes could ever produce radical redesign in any sort of system as complex as a living organism. It is precisely this integrated complexity which provides a major barrier to engineering radical change in living things from viruses to mammals.”
4: Numerous transitional fossils must exist:
Over the last 150 years of palaeontology, many hundreds of millions of fossils have been unearthed, representing 300,000 or so different species. The fossil record is indeed rich, and gives us a reasonably comprehensive record of life on our planet. The theory of evolution would predict a multitude of indeterminate species in the fossil record, linking species with their ancestors over millions of years. Large anatomical changes like those from fish to amphibians, or reptiles to mammals would require many tens of millions of years via a gradual process of random mutations aided by natural selection. The intermediate forms between the species should therefore be very well represented in the fossil record, outnumbering the well defined species. The larger the changes between species, the more transitional forms we should encounter.
Darwin’s Dilemma: Darwin himself put it like this:
“Firstly, why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?”
He also wrote:
“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 gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.”
150 years later, and Darwin’s objection still stands, solidified by hundreds of millions of fossils. The fossil record should be confused, overlapping and poorly defined, with species merging into other species, with partially formed systems and structures abound. Instead we find the absolute opposite. Two phenomena characterize the fossil record: Sudden emergence of new fully formed species, and stasis (lack of change).
Punctuated Equilibrium: The late Stephen Gould, professor of Palaeontology at Harvard and a leading evolutionist put it like this:
“The history of most fossil species includes two features 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... 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. 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.”
What is meant by inference? It is clear that evolutionary trees are drawn up by evolutionists on the basis of minimal information. The rest is extrapolated from what they would expect, given the fact of evolution. This is intellectual dishonesty at its worst.
In the face of this lack of evidence, Gould along with his colleague Eldredge formulated a new theory - Punctuated Equilibrium - in the 1970s, to try to reconcile the theory with the fossil evidence. They theorized that large evolutionary jumps occurred, rather than gradual changes. But the changes to the theory that palaeontology required, were completely rejected by geneticists. Large mutations in the genome will always cause deformity or death and could never account for new structures and body plans.
British Museum: The British museum of natural history boasts the largest collection of fossils in the world. Dr Colin Patterson, Senior Palaeontologist at the British museum and editor of a prestigious scientific journal is a well known expert with an intimate knowledge of the fossil record. When asked why he had not included a single photograph of a transitional fossil in his book ‘Evolution’, he responded:
“I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them...... As a palaeontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least “show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.” I will lay it on the line - there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.”
The Cambrian Explosion - the final nail in the coffin: The fossil record shows that from 4 billion years ago to 600 million years ago our ecology was virtually unchanged with single celled organisms. In the Ediacaran period up to 540 million years ago some simple soft bodied multicellular organisms appeared with no ancestors in the fossil record. The Cambrian period 540 to 480 million years ago is characterized by the sudden appearance of complex, fully formed organisms. Around 50 phyla (classes of living things) appeared very suddenly at the start of the Cambrian period, in a biological “big bang”, known as the Cambrian explosion. Considering that only 3 phyla existed in the Ediacaran period, with no complex organs, and that even today there are only 35 phyla, the significance of the Cambrian evidence cannot be overstated. Highly accurate Zircon dating has proved that the Cambrian explosion happened over just 5 million years, a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. In that timescale, a stunning variety emerged, with complex organs and structures never seen before. Eyes, gills, feet, feelers, stomachs, circulations, digestive systems, nervous systems, immunity as well as new physiological and developmental systems all emerged fully formed and in perfect harmony, with no ancestral fossils at all. So more structures emerged in the Cambrian than are present today, in a worldwide explosion of life that emerged extremely suddenly. The so called tree of life which suggests that all life diverged from the first living cell, becoming gradually more complex and wide-ranging, has been turned on its head by the sudden appearance of more classes of living things than exist today, 500 million years ago. Evolution can never explain this because each of these organisms that emerged were created perfectly and fully formed. In addition, a number of these complex Cambrian creatures are unchanged to this day, having resisted alleged evolutionary forces for over 500 million years despite environmental changes. The first eye appears in the Cambrian in the Trilobite, fully formed, each eye comprising over 3000 bifocal lenses and sharper vision than the arthropods of today, but with no precedents, i.e. no simpler eyes or half formed eyes in the fossil record previously. As with all of the other perfectly formed structures seen in the Cambrian, where are all the mutant forms in the fossil record that must have been produced with such radical, rapid, random change? Where are all the partially formed structures? Where are the transitional fossils? They simply don’t exist. Only creation can account for what we see here in the fossil record.
Sea of gaps: There is no continuous spectrum of barely distinguishable intermediates. The fossil record is a sea of gaps. Species never evolve into new species, but are replaced in the fossil record, one by another. Large transitions between for example fish and land dwelling animals would anyway be theoretically impossible. The fish would need to develop lungs, kidneys and weight bearing limbs to have a chance of survival on land, and it would need to do that in a single generation because none of these traits would be selected for in water dwelling fish. Similar problems can be found in any of the supposed evolutionary pathways. Bird wings for example along with the flight muscles, tendons, nerves and blood vessels needed for their function. How did these evolve? What use is quarter of a wing? The creature would have struggled to fly or run, with mutated forelimbs, and would never have survived. Why do all fossils show fully formed wings? Equally the structure of the bird lung with its unidirectional air flow is so different to that of its supposed ancestor, the reptile, that Darwinists are unable to come up with any hypothesis whatsoever, as there is no conceivable chain of events that could evolve the lung from the reptile form into the bird form, without the certain death of the organism, and the fossil record as usual offers up no intermediates.
Bedtime stories: All of these issues do not deter evolutionists who will see whatever they want to see in any structure. Henry Gee, an evolutionist, and a nature science writer, wrote in 1999:
“To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story - amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.”
Evolutionists can only postulate transition fossils, but with no certainty, and no evidence. Misleading reconstructions are assembled on the basis of fragments. There is no string of transitional fossils for any single assumed macroevolutionary event. Moreover ‘living fossils’ are all around us. 3.4 billion year old algae and bacterial fossils are identical to present forms. 500 million year old (myo) crustaceans, 450 myo scorpions, 450 myo crabs, 350 myo ferns, and countless other fossils are all identical to present forms. Species were created in stages by an omnipotent creator, and introduced at the perfect time when Allah had optimized the conditions for them. Every created organism established the correct balance for the next creation over long periods of time within a delicate ecosystem.
Bookmarks