Evolution, Part 5

“The evolutionists seem to know everything about the missing link except the fact that it is missing.”

G.K. Chesterton

Kirk Cameron’s Comment

An evolutionist once asked why God would try to confuse us with the fossil record. But God is not trying to confuse anyone. The fossil record does not support Darwinian evolution. Rather, it casts serious doubt on the theory. The fossil record clearly indicates that there were no transitional forms between species. Even Charles Darwin himself stated in his writings that if the fossil record did not demonstrate the necessary transitional forms, his theory should be discarded.

Questions & Objections

Lesson

“Missing Link” Still Missing

In U.S. News & World Report (February 14, 2000), a writer asks: “Did dinos soar? Imaginations certainly took flight over Archaeoraptor Liaoningensis, a birdlike fossil with a meat-eater’s tail that was spirited out of northeastern China, ‘discovered’ at a Tucson, Arizona, gem and mineral show last year, and displayed at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C. Some 110,000 visitors saw the exhibit, which closed January 17; millions more read about the find in November’s National Geographic. Now, paleontologists are eating crow. Instead of ‘a true missing link’ connecting dinosaurs to birds, the specimen appears to be a composite, its unusual appendage likely tacked on by a Chinese farmer, not evolution.

“Archaeoraptor is hardly the first ‘missing link’ to snap under scrutiny. In 1912, fossil remains of an ancient hominid were found in England’s Piltdown quarries and quickly dubbed man’s ape-like ancestor. It took decades to reveal the hoax.”

Charles Darwin acknowledged that his theory of evolution was dependent on these “missing links”: “As by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? The number of intermediate links between all living and extinct species must have been inconceivably great!”

In The Signature of God, Grant R. Jeffery wrote, “Darwin admitted that millions of ‘missing links,’ transitional life forms, would have to be discovered in the fossil record to prove the accuracy of his theory that all species had gradually evolved by chance mutation into new species. Unfortunately for his theory, despite hundreds of millions spent on searching for fossils worldwide for more than a century, the scientists have failed to locate a single missing link out of the millions that must exist if their theory of evolution is to be vindicated.”

Time magazine reported, “Scientists concede that their most cherished theories are based on embarrassingly few fossil fragments and that huge gaps exist in the fossil record” (Nov. 7, 1977). According to David Berlinsky, “There are gaps in the fossil graveyard, places where there should be intermediate forms, but where there is nothing whatsoever instead. No paleontologist ... denies that this is so. It is simply a fact. Darwin’s theory and the fossil record are in conflict.”

While the fossil evidence does not support evolution, it does point to creation. Biochemist D.B. Gower said, “The creation account in Genesis and the theory of evolution could not be reconciled. One must be right and the other wrong. The story of the fossils agrees with the account of Genesis. In the oldest rocks we did not find a series of fossils covering the gradual changes from the most primitive creatures to developed forms but rather, in the oldest rocks, developed species suddenly appeared. Between every species there was a complete absence of intermediate fossils” (“Scientist Rejects Evolution,” Kentish Times).

Evolutionary Fraud

Our Times: The Illustrated History of the 20th Century details the fraud of an evolutionary “find”: “Charles Dawson, a British lawyer and amateur geologist, announced in 1912 his discovery of pieces of a human skull and an apelike jaw in a gravel pit near the town of Piltdown, England ... Dawson’s announcement stopped the scorn cold. Experts instantly declared Piltdown Man (estimated to be 300,000 to one million years old) the evolutionary find of the century. Darwin’s missing link had been identified.

“Or so it seemed for the next 40 or so years. Then, in the early fifties ... scientists began to suspect misattribution. In 1953, that suspicion gave way to a full-blown scandal: Piltdown Man was a hoax. Radiocarbon tests proved that its skull belonged to a 600-year-old woman, and its jaw to a 500-year-old orangutan from the East Indies.”

The Piltdown Man fraud wasn’t an isolated incident. The famed Nebraska Man was derived from a single tooth, which was later found to be from an extinct pig. Java Man, found in the early 20th century, was nothing more than a piece of skull, a fragment of a thigh bone, and three molar teeth. The rest came from the deeply fertile imaginations of plaster of Paris workers. Java Man is now regarded as fully human. Heidelberg Man came from a jawbone, a large chin section, and a few teeth. Most scientists reject the jawbone because it’s similar to that of modern man.

Still, many evolutionists believe that he’s 250,000 years old. No doubt they pinpointed his birthday with carbon dating. However, Time magazine (June 11, 1990) published a science article subtitled, “Geologists show that carbon dating can be way off.” (For example, Science magazine [vol.224, 1984] reported, “Shells from living snails were carbon dated as being 27,000 years old.”) And don’t look to Neanderthal Man for any evidence of evolution. He died of exposure. His skull was exposed as being fully human, not ape. Not only was his stooped posture found to be caused by disease, but he also spoke and was artistic and religious.

Evolution’s Circular Reasoning

According to Dr. Kent Hovind, “At least six different radiometric dating methods are available. The assumed age of the sample will dictate which dating method is used because each will give a different result.

“For example, when dinosaur bones containing carbon are found, they are not carbon dated because the result would be only a few thousand years. Because this would not match the assumed age based on the geologic column, scientists use another method of dating to give an age closer to the desired result. All radiometric results that do not match the preassigned ages of the geologic column are discarded.”

Ronald R. West, Ph.D., stated, “Contrary to what most scientists write, the fossil record does not support the Darwinian theory of evolution because it is this theory (there are several) which we use to interpret the fossil record. By doing so we are guilty of circular reasoning if we then say the fossil record supports this theory.”

Life’s Origins: The Ever-changing Mind of Science

According to an NBC News report in August 1999, there was a “remarkable” discovery in Australia. They reported that, according to the Journal of Science, scientists had found what they considered to be proof that life appeared on earth 2.7 billion years ago—a billion years earlier than previously thought. They now admit that they were wrong in their first estimate (a mere 1,000,000,000 years off), but with this discovery they are now sure that they have the truth ... until their next discovery. CBS News reported in October 1999 that discoveries were made of the bones of an unknown animal in Asia that may be as much as 40 million years old. This changed scientific minds as to where man first originated. Scientists once believed that primates evolved in Africa, but now they think they may be wrong, and that man’s ancestors may have originated in Asia. So they believe ... until the next discovery.

USA Today (March 21, 2001) reported, “Paleontologists have discovered a new skeleton in the closet of human ancestry that is likely to force science to revise, if not scrap, current theories of human origins.” Reuters reported that the discovery left “scientists of human evolution ... confused,” saying, “Lucy may not even be a direct human ancestor after all.”

Charles Spurgeon addressed this fallibility (and folly) of science: “We are invited, brethren, most earnestly to go away from the old-fashioned belief of our forefathers because of the supposed discoveries of science. What is science? The method by which man tries to hide his ignorance. It should not be so, but so it is. You are not to be dogmatical in theology, my brethren, it is wicked; but for scientific men it is the correct thing. You are never to assert anything very strongly; but scientists may boldly assert what they cannot prove, and may demand a faith far more credulous than any we possess. Forsooth, you and I are to take our Bibles and shape and mould our belief according to the ever-shifting teachings of so-called scientific men. What folly is this! Why, the march of science, falsely so called, through the world may be traced by exploded fallacies and abandoned theories. Former explorers once adored are now ridiculed; the continual wreckings of false hypotheses is a matter of universal notoriety. You may tell where the supposed learned have encamped by the debris left behind of suppositions and theories as plentiful as broken bottles.”

Arthur N. Field concluded, “What is [evolution] based upon? Upon nothing whatever but faith, upon belief in the reality of the unseen—belief in the fossils that cannot be produced, belief in the embryological experiments that refuse to come off. It is faith unjustified by works.”

Preacher’s Progress

A sample witnessing conversation, written in the style of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Words of Comfort

I liked Benson. He was a native Micronesian who was now a full-time missionary. He was one of those powerfully built men who looked like a grizzly bear but proved to be more cuddly than grizzly. In fact, Benson would laugh at almost everything I said.

It was good to see him again. I was the guest speaker at a camp, and I happened to be in the same tent as giggly Benson.

A short time after the light was turned out, Benson went outside the tent. During the night, I saw the shadow of a figure sit up, as though he were about to say something. So, with the usual tongue-in-cheek humor he seemed to appreciate so much, I said, “Shut up and go to sleep!” That normally would have made him chuckle, but instead, he immediately lay down and I never heard another sound from him.

In the morning, I learned to my horror that it wasn’t Benson who had been there, but another young man I had never seen before. The first words he heard from the guest speaker were, “Shut up and go to sleep!”

Questions

1. Could you explain where all the races come from?
2. How do transitional life forms prove or disprove the theory of evolution?
3. How does the fossil evidence point to creation?
4. Name some of the “missing links” between ape and man that have been proved fraudulent.
5. How reliable is carbon dating in establishing the age of fossils?

Answers to these review questions are provided in the back of the printed book / source PDF.

Memory Verse

“Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”

Romans 1:21, 22

Last Words

Charles Darwin (1809–1882), English naturalist and father of the “Evolutionary Theory”: “I am not the least afraid to die.”

Charles Darwin