"Of Evolution"
"In the beginning."
Intelligent people have asked themselves many questions over
the millennia and continue to ask the same questions today. Two
are 1) How did life begin? 2) How did the universe begin?
In the first book of the Judaic Bible, which is accepted by
Jews, Christians and Muslims as authoritative, the first verse
begins with "In the beginning."
The sequence of creation is reasonably close to the sequence
deduced by science, particularly when one realizes that Genesis
was written 4000 years ago, and modern scientific methods are
only about 300 years old.
The table below shows the similarities and differences:
Genesis 1:1-2:3 Science
I. In the beginning God Big bang,
created the heaven & Explosion.
the earth Universe still
expanding. Created
stars, light,
planets, moons.
Created "light", day
and night
II. Created "firmament", i.e.
"Heaven" between water
above "Heaven" and water
below "Heaven"
III. Land appears from Land & vegetation
waters, vegetation
grows and reproduces
after its own kind
IV. Made stars, sun and
moon
V. Created fish, birds Fish & birds
and "every living
creature that moveth"
VI. Created land based "living" Land based animals
creatures after his/her
kind, i.e. species
Created man & woman Man & woman
in His own image
VII. Ended His work
(We leave it to the inerrant scholars to reconcile the differences in
the two Biblical creation stories, and the contradictions and
duplications in the first.)
The defining difference between the Biblical narrative and
the scientific explanation is the belief in God the Creator in
the first, and the absence of any intelligent being guiding an
evolutionary process in the second.
For me, the complexity, the variety, the nature, the
existence of human beings, demands the acceptance of a creator
God.
Note the difficulty in accepting an atheistic, purely scien-
tific thesis of how life on earth began.
Malcolm W. Browne, reporter for the New York Times , writing
on April 30, 1993, describes science's latest thoughts on
evolution based upon the finding in Australia of fossil
microorganisms embedded in tiny mineral grains, which themselves
were embedded in rock that the scientists judged was formed 3.485
billion years ago.
As scientists believe that the planet Earth solidified into
its present form about 4.6 billion years ago, and that the earth
was subject to meteorite bombardment until 3.9 billion years
back, thus preventing the start and continuation of life, this
means that the discovered life forms had only 400 million years
to evolve from the theorized soup of chemicals consisting of
amino acids and other carbon-based chemicals somewhere on
the
primordial Earth from which scientists presume life began by some
yet-to-be explained mechanism.
Just how complex this process can be would be to consider the
mechanism of a single living cell, the building block of all
plant and animal life.
A cell is composed of a central nucleus and an outer region
called the cytoplasm, together constituting protoplasm.
This cell is synthesizing 100 molecules per second of
proteins in a particular sequence of the amino acids under the
catalytic influence of enzymes, themselves a synthesis of
proteins under the direction of the sequences of bases in a
molecule of RNA (ribonucleic acid) transmitted from the nucleus
to the cytoplasm and produced by the nuclear DNA
(deoxyribonucleic acid), life's genetic code with
1,000,000,000,000 different combinations per cell, in a
particular sequence of bases.
Amino Acids
Put another way, the cell nucleus contains a trillion bits of
genetic information organized in 3 nucleotides per amino acid in
genes and chromosomes.
A gene capable of producing a complete protein must be
hundreds of nucleotides long, as proteins are at least comprised
of hundreds of amino acids, each three nucleotides long.
A mutation is the change of one nucleotide in a gene.
Is it any wonder that scientists - or Darwin - make no
attempt to explain how these amino acids came into being as part
of the primordial "soup".
Getting back to Malcolm W. Browne and the New York Times ,
complicating the riddle for the scientists, the single-celled
fossils resemble certain modern bacteria and cyano-bacteria which
are capable of photosynthesis. This would be a surprising
achievement for organisms that had so little time to evolve (from
the "soup").
Unable to explain this phenomenon, some scientists theorize
that life on Earth came from some other place in our galaxy, or
the universe (the Panspermia theory).
Some even go so far as to suggest that intelligent
extraterrestiral beings might have deliberately seeded the galaxy
with durable organisms such as spores or bacteria, known by them
to be capable of surviving eons of space travel in suspended
animation.
The bottom line for me is that "God" is the Creator of the
universe and of life on Earth, and that science is unraveling
His methodology.
(Anything to avoid contemplation that “God” might be this intelligent
creator of life)
The founding fathers of the United States also found
themselves accepting this view, even as they laid the foundation
of their nation in a basically secular Declaration of
Independence and subsequent Constitution.
In the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, mention
is made of "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" and "Men are
endowed by their Creator". But when it came to the drafting
of the Constitution of the United States in September 17, 1787,
there is no mention of God in its Articles.
This is quite unusual because, although most of them (the
founding fathers) resisted the literal Biblical view of creation
almost to a man, they agreed that God had created man.
"Here is my creed. I believe in one God, Creator of the
Universe. That He governs it by His providence. That He ought
to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render Him
is doing good to His other children".
"The Divine Author of life."
-- Benjamin Franklin.
"The whole rational creation of God."
-- John Adams.
"Well aware that Almighty God both created the mind free."
-- Thomas Jefferson.
"The duty which we owe to our CREATOR."
-- James Madison.
"The Supreme Being gave existence to man".
-- Alexander Hamilton.
"Render to the Creator and Preserver those acknowledgements
which
are due to Him for our being."
-- Samuel Adams.
"I consider myself in the Hands of my Creator."
-- Thomas Paine.
("In God we Trust", Chapter 1, by Norman Cousins)
On the other hand, countless thousands of otherwise
intelligent, logical human beings deny the existence of God, and
hence the Creator.
To these people I can only say, if you and mankind are so
ingenious, so clever at the end of the 20th century, make me life
out of inorganic material.
Or as the poet Walt Whitman said in "Leaves of Grass", all
creation is summed up in a blade of grass. Make me a blade of
grass.
Primeval Soup
It boggles my mind that some rational people can profess to
believe that "life" began millions of years ago in a unique,
"perfect mix" of primeval soup with ideal temperature conditions
that have never been duplicated since, and has evolved "upwards"
in complexity all on its own, without any intelligence to guide
it, culminating in Homo Sapiens.
The natural law of nature is to retrogress. Gardens, farms,
domestic animals all revert to the "wild" when human influence is
withdrawn.
Any science student, any scientist will attest to the
difficulty of conducting inorganic experiments that produce
results as they should.
Any organic scientist will attest to the difficulty of
preserving simple bacteria cultures in the lab.
And life happened on its own?
Humans
A curious scientific conundrum is the question of the
"missing link", the inexplicable gap in the evolutionary process
between apes, the Neanderthal Man, etc. and modern man.
Human hands were recently found in a French cave dated at
16,000 B.C.
But 50,000 years ago, skull, bone, and fossil evidence shows
a being, called humanoids for lack of a better term,
overwhelmingly different.
Bridging the gap of a mere 34,000 years by a miraculous
series of "mutations" is something even the most dedicated
scientist refuses to do. The best thing they can do to pose the
question, that a link is missing.
Charles Darwin (1859-1872), writing in the 19th century, has
had an enormous impact on the thinking of secular biologists and
scientists.
In his book "Origin of the Species", he proves himself to be
a very fair-minded person and scientist.
In addition to advocating his theory of natural selection as
an explanation for (a) progressive improvement in the charac-
teristics of members of a species, and (b) that slight variations
in members of a species could lead to creation of a new
species; he also sets forth in detail the intellectual
difficulties with his theory.
He candidly states that he is unable to explain how life
began, and that this is outside the scope of his book, the
"Origin of the Species" in the first place.
Darwin makes much of the variations people can achieve
through conscious manipulation and direction of the mating
process of domestic animals, and by implication posits that if
variations can be achieved by the conscious intervention of man,
then variations will occur by the accidental randomness of
nature.
But although he often alludes to the existence of God, he
does not advance the hypothesis that God could have used
evolution in the creation process.
(A personal observation on the idea of humans being descen-
dents of a lower form of life. In no other species is there such
a wide variation of characteristics; in size from dwarfs to
giants, in skin color, shape of facial features, body types, etc.
as is the case with Homo Sapiens.)
The window of evolutionary opportunity, too, is very, very
short, compared to the millions/billions of years given other
evolutionary developments.
The fossil record vs. ape man, "you could put all the fossils
on top of a single desk' says Elwyn Simons of Duke University."
( Newsweek ) "The known fossil remains of man's ancestors would
fit
on a billiard table. That makes a poor platform from which to
peer into the mists of the last few million years." ( The New York
Times )
Homo sapiens appeared in the fossil record some fifty
thousand years ago.
"The missing link between man and the apes... is merely the
most glamorous of a whole hierarchy of phantom creatures. In the
fossil record, missing links are the rule." ( Newsweek )
Early men of the Ice Age were neither brute beasts nor
semiapes nor cretins. Another fossil type is called Homo
Erectus-- upright man. Its brain size and shape do fall into the
lower range of modern man's... the limb bones have been
indistinguishable from those of homo sapiens.
Many Neanderthal fossils have been found... Another fossil
type is Cro-Magnon man, which is virtually indistinguishable from
those of today.
We are talking of 47,500 years between Homo Neanderthalensis
and early Mousterian Man (50,000 B.C.), and the statue of King
Mycerinus and his queen (2,530 B.C.) revealing all the facial and
body features of modern man and woman.
That something dramatic occurred about 4000-2500 B.C. is
apparent.
There are at least two striking physical differences between
all species of men and apes; one, the opposing thumb, and two,
the voice box.
And on the mental level, the creation and use of artifacts,
evolving into the industrialized civilization of today.
The earliest historic evidence of modern man in Egypt is
3100 B.C. with the First Dynasty; the earliest evidence in India
is 2500 B.C. with a well-preserved statue of a male torso from
Harappa in the West Punjab; the earliest evidence in Mesopotamia
dates from circa 3000 B.C.
------------
Darwin
We recommend to anyone trying to comprehend life in all its
many forms that they read Darwin's "Origin of the Species" from
cover to cover. 150 years after it was written, science has not
been able to shed any light on the difficulties to his theory
that he discusses.
We quote from his books, the "Origin of the Species" and "The
Descent or Origin of Man".
Chapter II
"Generally the term (species) includes the unknown element of
a distant act of creation".
Chapter III
"The causes which check the natural tendency of each species
to increase are most obscure". (Discussing natural selection and
survival of the fittest).
On the interaction of plants and animals "Nearly all orchids
absolutely require the visits of insects to fertilize them".
"Visits of bees are necessary for the fertilization of some
kinds of clover".
Chapter IV
"(Man) can neither originate varieties, nor prevent their
occurrence; he can preserve and accommodate such as do occur".
Chapter VI "Difficulties of the Theory"
"First, why 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?"
"Secondly, can we believe that natural selection could
produce, on the one hand, an organ of trifling importance, such
as the tail of a giraffe, which seems as a fly-flapper, and, on
the other hand, an organ so wonderful as the eye?"
"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances
for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting
different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical
and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural
selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest
degree".
"How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns
us more than how life itself originated".
"Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by intel-
lectual powers like those of man?"
"Thirdly, can instincts be acquired and modified through
natural selection?"
"If we are unable to account for the characteristic
differences of our several domestic breeds, which nevertheless
are generally admitted to have arisen through ordinary generation
from one or a few parent-stocks, we ought not to lay too much
stress on our ignorance of the precise cause of the slight
analogous differences between true species".
"(Some naturalists) believe that many structures have been
created for the sake of beauty, to delight man".
"Can we consider the sting of the bee as perfect, which, when
used against many kinds of enemies, cannot be withdrawn, owing to
the backward serratures, and thus inevitably causes the death of
the insect by tearing out his viscera?"
Chapter VII
"... asserted that the weakest part of my theory is, that I
consider all organic beings as imperfect: what I have really
said is, that all are not as perfect as they might have been in
relation to their conditions".
"Longevity is a great advantage to all species, so that he
who believes in natural selection (would believe) that all the
descendents have longer lives than their progenitors!"
"Why have some animals had their mental powers more highly
developed than others, as such development would be
advantageous
to all?"
Chapter VIII
"Many instincts are so wonderful that their development will
probably appear to the reader a difficulty sufficient to over-
throw my whole theory. I may here premise that I have nothing to
do with the origin of the mental powers, any more than I have
nothing to do with that of life itself.
Chapter X
On "innumerable intermediate links not now occurring
everywhere throughout nature."
The Fossil Record: "The living world is not a single
array.... connected by unbroken series of intergrades." Darwin
conceded that the "distinctness of specific (living) forms and
their not being blended together by innumerable transitional
links, is a very obvious difficulty."
Darwin admitted that "If numerous species.... have really
started into life at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory
of evolution."
"Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum
full of such intermediate links?.... the most obvious and serious
objection which can be urged against the theory."
"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".
Chapter XI
"Scarcely any palaeontological discovery is more striking
than the fact that the forms of life change almost simultaneously
throughout the world".
From "The Descent or Origin of Man"
"Many unfortunately are still opposed to evolution in every
form" (Experts in natural science).
"Human characteristics: erect, shape of skull, nakedness
(hairless except for head), absence of a tail, every individual
different except identical twins, opposing thumb, speech, smaller
canine teeth, color of skin".
Chapter II
"The Duke of Argyll, for instance, insists that, the human
frame has diverged from the structure of brutes, in the direction
of greater physical helplessness and weakness. That is to say,
it is a divergence which of all other is the most impossible to
ascribe to mere natural selection".
Chapter III
Universal belief in unseen of spirited agencies, or God.
Chapter IV
"I fully subscribe to the judgement of those writers who
maintain that of all the differences between man and the lower
animals, the moral sense of conscience is by far the most
important".
Chapter VI
"The great break in the organic chain between man and his
nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or
living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to
the belief that man is descended from some lower
form".
(The famous "missing link")
Chapter XXI
"Many of the views which have been advanced are highly
speculative, and some no doubt will prove erroneous".
"The high standard of our intellectual power and moral dispo-
sition is the greatest difficulty which presents itself".
"Man...has few or no special instincts."
"The idea of a universal and beneficient Creator does not
seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated by
long-continued culture".
"Man scans with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of
his horses, cattle and dogs before he matches them."
----------
"The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly
appear in certain formations has been urged by several
paleontologists as a fatal objection to the belief in the
transmutation of a species.... I allude to the manner in which
species belonging to several of the main divisions of the animal
kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous
rocks...."
It was assumed by Darwin that as time passed the missing
fossil links would surely be found.
The Fossil Record
There are a hundred million fossils, all catalogued and
identified, in museums around the world.
The fossil record is full of trends that paleontologists have
been unable to explain.
Swedish botanist Herbert Nilsson: "it is not even possible
to make a caricature of an evolution out of palaeobiological
facts. The fossil material is now so complete that... the lack of
transitional series cannot be explained as due to the scarcity of
material. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled."
The fossil record contains no trace of these preliminary
stages in the development of many-celled organisms. About a
billion years ago, after some three billion years of invisible
progress, a major breakthrough occurred. The first many-celled
creatures appeared on earth.
At the start of the Cambrian period, the fossil record takes
a unexplained dramatic turn. A great variety of fully developed,
complex sea creatures appear so suddenly that this time is often
called an "explosion" of living things.
In the layers above that Cambrian outburst of life, the
testimony of the fossil record is repeatedly the same: New kinds
of animals and new kinds of plants appear suddenly, with no
connection to anything that went before them. The record now
reveals that species typically survive for a hundred thousand
generations, or even a million or more, without evolving very
much.
To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous
deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the
Cambrian system, Darwin could give no satisfactory answer.
Geologists have discovered many unaltered Precambrian
sediments, and they contained no fossils of complex organisms.
Spontaneous Generation
It is hard to see how polymerization (linking together
smaller molecules to form bigger ones) could have proceeded in
the aqueous environment of the primitive ocean, since the
presence of water favors depolymerization (breaking up of big
molecules into simpler ones) rather than polymerization.
There would be no accumulation of organic soup. Wald believes
this to be "the most stubborn problem that confronts us
evolutionists."
It has not been possible to observe the spontaneous
generation of life.
Although there are more than 100 amino acids, only twenty are
needed for life's proteins. They come in two shapes - the left-
handed and the right-handed. All of the twenty used in producing
life's proteins are left-handed.
Add to the mysterious primordial formation of the amino acids
the question of how carbon, sulphur, nitrogen, hydrogen and
oxygen happened to come together to form amino acids in the first
place.
Inorganic carbon is quite rare, occuring only in diamonds and
graphite deposits.
As for atmospheric carbon dioxide, this is another mystery.
Plants use carbon dioxide for photosynthesis and give off oxygen.
Animals take in oxygen and give off carbon dioxide.
But plant life came first?
Astronomers have not detected free carbon dioxide in the
atmospheres of other celestial bodies.
So where did the carbon come from incorporated in the first
amino acids?
The old puzzle of the chicken and the egg rears its head
relative to proteins and DNA. Hitching says: "Proteins depend on
DNA for their formation. But DNA cannot form without pre-existing
protein."
The instructions within the DNA of a cell, "if written out,
would fill a thousand 600 page books," explains the National
Geographic. The nucleus that contains the chromosomal threads is
less that four ten thousandths of an inch in diameter.
The fertilized egg in the mother's womb contains all the
parts of the emerging human body "down in writing." The heart,
lungs, kidneys, the eyes and ears, the arms and legs, the brain--
these and all other parts were "written down" in the genetic code
of the fertilized egg in the mother's womb. Contained in this
code are internal timetables for the appearance of these parts,
each one in its proper order. This fact was recorded in the Bible
nearly 3000 years before modern science ever discovered the
genetic code.
Most of the biochemical complexity of life was present
already at the time the oldest surface rocks of the Earth were
formed.
Single celled animals can catch food, digest, get rid of
wastes, move around, build houses, engage in sexual activity, and
with no tissues, no organs, no hearts, no minds-- really have
everthing that we have got.
Diatoms... contain green chlorophyll. Their food value is in
the oil that diatoms make, which helps them bob on the surface
where their chlorophyll can bask in sunlight.
Photosynthesis happens in cell bodies called chloroplasts, so
small that 400,000 can fit into the period at the end of this
sentence. There are 70 separate chemical reactions involved in
this photosynthesis.
Photosynthesis: plants take in carbon dioxide and give off
oxygen, but this is not completely understood by scientists. This
is "a process that no one has yet been able to reproduce in a
test tube."
These Evolutionary Problems
The gulf between fish and amphibians: the backbone would
have had to undergo major modifications.... a pelvis added....
gills must change to lungs. Most toads and frogs have eardrums.
Tongues would also have had to change.
The gulf between amphibian and reptile: creatures before
reptiles had soft, jellylike eggs which were fertilized
externally.... shelled eggs require internal fertilization....
have blood vessels that pick up oxygen that passes through the
shell and conduct it to the embryo.
Embryos in fish and amphibian eggs release their wastes in
the water as soluble urea. But urea within the shelled eggs of
reptiles would kill the embryos.... shelled eggs have insoluble
uric acid. The egg yolk is food for the growing reptile, enabling
it to develop fully before emerging from the shell, unlike
amphibians which do not hatch in the adult form.
Gulf between reptile and bird: reptiles are cold-blooded,
birds are warm-blooded. Birds must incubate their eggs. Birds are
selfless, altruistic, considerate, and deliberately expose
themselves to danger for their young. Birds bones are thin and
hollow, unlike reptiles solid ones. A system of air sacs provide
internal circulation.
Reptiles have a three-chambered heart; a bird's heart has
four chambers. Beak: evolved by chance from the nose of a
reptile.
The gulf between reptile and mammal: existence of mammary
glands that give milk for the young which are born alive....
unlike baby reptiles, mammals have the instincts and the muscles
to suck the milk from the mother. Mammals need to maintain a
constant body temperature.
When the amphibian supposedly evolved into a reptile, the
wastes eliminated changed from urea to uric acid. But when the
reptile became a mammal there was a reversal. Mammals went
back
to the amphibian way, eliminating wastes as urea.
Termites: How do millions of blind workers coordinate their
efforts to build such ingeniously designed structures? They
exhibit something like a collective intelligence.
Clocks: diatoms come up to the wet beach sand when the tide
is out. When the tide is in, they burrow back into the sand. Even
in sand in the laboratory where there is no tidal ebb and flow,
their clocks still make them come up and go down in time with the
tides.
Homing pigeons, taken 625 miles away in any direction, have
returned to their home lofts in one day.
Man
Gulf to man: an enormously extended period of growth and
parental care.... power of abstract thought and speech, ability
to record accumulated knowledge... man also has moral and
spiritual values.
Ape men: Why then, is the "inferior" ape family still in
existence, but not a single one of the presumed intermediate
forms, which were supposed to be more advanced in evolution?
The human brain is easily the most mysterious part of the
human miracle. The key brain cells, the neurons, don't actually
touch one another. They are separated by synapses, tiny spaces
less than one millionth of an inch across. These gaps are bridged
by chemicals called neurotransmitters, 30 of which are known.
These chemical signals are received at one end of the neuron by a
maze of tiny filaments called dendrites. The signals are then
transmitted at the other end of the neuron by a nerve fiber
called an axon. In the neurons the signals are electrical, but
across the gaps they are chemical. Thus the transmission of nerve
signals is electrochemical in nature.
It is the cerebral cortex of the brain that sets man apart
from any animal. It is less than a quarter of an inch thick.
We must, by input from out surroundings, program the brain.
Without that immense infusion of experience, scarcely a trace of
intellect would appear. The human brain is genetically programmed
for language development.
The human brain could take any load of learning and memory
put on it now, and a billion times that. This is the only example
in existence where a species was provided with an organ that it
still has not learned how to use. Carl Sagan: "the brain is a
very big place in a very small space."
Conclusions
The success of Darwinism has been accompanied by a decline in
scientific integrity; the difficulties he describes have not been
resolved even 140 years later.
Although science textbooks always promote the evolutionary
viewpoint, arguments against evolution are rarely permitted in
schools. Evolution is a theory, but it is presented as a reality
to students.
The best that can be said is (1) there is life on earth, (2)
there are distinct species, (3) there are interesting
similarities in life forms.
- 30 -
"In the beginning."
Intelligent people have asked themselves many questions over
the millennia and continue to ask the same questions today. Two
are 1) How did life begin? 2) How did the universe begin?
In the first book of the Judaic Bible, which is accepted by
Jews, Christians and Muslims as authoritative, the first verse
begins with "In the beginning."
The sequence of creation is reasonably close to the sequence
deduced by science, particularly when one realizes that Genesis
was written 4000 years ago, and modern scientific methods are
only about 300 years old.
The table below shows the similarities and differences:
Genesis 1:1-2:3 Science
I. In the beginning God Big bang,
created the heaven & Explosion.
the earth Universe still
expanding. Created
stars, light,
planets, moons.
Created "light", day
and night
II. Created "firmament", i.e.
"Heaven" between water
above "Heaven" and water
below "Heaven"
III. Land appears from Land & vegetation
waters, vegetation
grows and reproduces
after its own kind
IV. Made stars, sun and
moon
V. Created fish, birds Fish & birds
and "every living
creature that moveth"
VI. Created land based "living" Land based animals
creatures after his/her
kind, i.e. species
Created man & woman Man & woman
in His own image
VII. Ended His work
(We leave it to the inerrant scholars to reconcile the differences in
the two Biblical creation stories, and the contradictions and
duplications in the first.)
The defining difference between the Biblical narrative and
the scientific explanation is the belief in God the Creator in
the first, and the absence of any intelligent being guiding an
evolutionary process in the second.
For me, the complexity, the variety, the nature, the
existence of human beings, demands the acceptance of a creator
God.
Note the difficulty in accepting an atheistic, purely scien-
tific thesis of how life on earth began.
Malcolm W. Browne, reporter for the New York Times , writing
on April 30, 1993, describes science's latest thoughts on
evolution based upon the finding in Australia of fossil
microorganisms embedded in tiny mineral grains, which themselves
were embedded in rock that the scientists judged was formed 3.485
billion years ago.
As scientists believe that the planet Earth solidified into
its present form about 4.6 billion years ago, and that the earth
was subject to meteorite bombardment until 3.9 billion years
back, thus preventing the start and continuation of life, this
means that the discovered life forms had only 400 million years
to evolve from the theorized soup of chemicals consisting of
amino acids and other carbon-based chemicals somewhere on
the
primordial Earth from which scientists presume life began by some
yet-to-be explained mechanism.
Just how complex this process can be would be to consider the
mechanism of a single living cell, the building block of all
plant and animal life.
A cell is composed of a central nucleus and an outer region
called the cytoplasm, together constituting protoplasm.
This cell is synthesizing 100 molecules per second of
proteins in a particular sequence of the amino acids under the
catalytic influence of enzymes, themselves a synthesis of
proteins under the direction of the sequences of bases in a
molecule of RNA (ribonucleic acid) transmitted from the nucleus
to the cytoplasm and produced by the nuclear DNA
(deoxyribonucleic acid), life's genetic code with
1,000,000,000,000 different combinations per cell, in a
particular sequence of bases.
Amino Acids
Put another way, the cell nucleus contains a trillion bits of
genetic information organized in 3 nucleotides per amino acid in
genes and chromosomes.
A gene capable of producing a complete protein must be
hundreds of nucleotides long, as proteins are at least comprised
of hundreds of amino acids, each three nucleotides long.
A mutation is the change of one nucleotide in a gene.
Is it any wonder that scientists - or Darwin - make no
attempt to explain how these amino acids came into being as part
of the primordial "soup".
Getting back to Malcolm W. Browne and the New York Times ,
complicating the riddle for the scientists, the single-celled
fossils resemble certain modern bacteria and cyano-bacteria which
are capable of photosynthesis. This would be a surprising
achievement for organisms that had so little time to evolve (from
the "soup").
Unable to explain this phenomenon, some scientists theorize
that life on Earth came from some other place in our galaxy, or
the universe (the Panspermia theory).
Some even go so far as to suggest that intelligent
extraterrestiral beings might have deliberately seeded the galaxy
with durable organisms such as spores or bacteria, known by them
to be capable of surviving eons of space travel in suspended
animation.
The bottom line for me is that "God" is the Creator of the
universe and of life on Earth, and that science is unraveling
His methodology.
(Anything to avoid contemplation that “God” might be this intelligent
creator of life)
The founding fathers of the United States also found
themselves accepting this view, even as they laid the foundation
of their nation in a basically secular Declaration of
Independence and subsequent Constitution.
In the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, mention
is made of "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" and "Men are
endowed by their Creator". But when it came to the drafting
of the Constitution of the United States in September 17, 1787,
there is no mention of God in its Articles.
This is quite unusual because, although most of them (the
founding fathers) resisted the literal Biblical view of creation
almost to a man, they agreed that God had created man.
"Here is my creed. I believe in one God, Creator of the
Universe. That He governs it by His providence. That He ought
to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render Him
is doing good to His other children".
"The Divine Author of life."
-- Benjamin Franklin.
"The whole rational creation of God."
-- John Adams.
"Well aware that Almighty God both created the mind free."
-- Thomas Jefferson.
"The duty which we owe to our CREATOR."
-- James Madison.
"The Supreme Being gave existence to man".
-- Alexander Hamilton.
"Render to the Creator and Preserver those acknowledgements
which
are due to Him for our being."
-- Samuel Adams.
"I consider myself in the Hands of my Creator."
-- Thomas Paine.
("In God we Trust", Chapter 1, by Norman Cousins)
On the other hand, countless thousands of otherwise
intelligent, logical human beings deny the existence of God, and
hence the Creator.
To these people I can only say, if you and mankind are so
ingenious, so clever at the end of the 20th century, make me life
out of inorganic material.
Or as the poet Walt Whitman said in "Leaves of Grass", all
creation is summed up in a blade of grass. Make me a blade of
grass.
Primeval Soup
It boggles my mind that some rational people can profess to
believe that "life" began millions of years ago in a unique,
"perfect mix" of primeval soup with ideal temperature conditions
that have never been duplicated since, and has evolved "upwards"
in complexity all on its own, without any intelligence to guide
it, culminating in Homo Sapiens.
The natural law of nature is to retrogress. Gardens, farms,
domestic animals all revert to the "wild" when human influence is
withdrawn.
Any science student, any scientist will attest to the
difficulty of conducting inorganic experiments that produce
results as they should.
Any organic scientist will attest to the difficulty of
preserving simple bacteria cultures in the lab.
And life happened on its own?
Humans
A curious scientific conundrum is the question of the
"missing link", the inexplicable gap in the evolutionary process
between apes, the Neanderthal Man, etc. and modern man.
Human hands were recently found in a French cave dated at
16,000 B.C.
But 50,000 years ago, skull, bone, and fossil evidence shows
a being, called humanoids for lack of a better term,
overwhelmingly different.
Bridging the gap of a mere 34,000 years by a miraculous
series of "mutations" is something even the most dedicated
scientist refuses to do. The best thing they can do to pose the
question, that a link is missing.
Charles Darwin (1859-1872), writing in the 19th century, has
had an enormous impact on the thinking of secular biologists and
scientists.
In his book "Origin of the Species", he proves himself to be
a very fair-minded person and scientist.
In addition to advocating his theory of natural selection as
an explanation for (a) progressive improvement in the charac-
teristics of members of a species, and (b) that slight variations
in members of a species could lead to creation of a new
species; he also sets forth in detail the intellectual
difficulties with his theory.
He candidly states that he is unable to explain how life
began, and that this is outside the scope of his book, the
"Origin of the Species" in the first place.
Darwin makes much of the variations people can achieve
through conscious manipulation and direction of the mating
process of domestic animals, and by implication posits that if
variations can be achieved by the conscious intervention of man,
then variations will occur by the accidental randomness of
nature.
But although he often alludes to the existence of God, he
does not advance the hypothesis that God could have used
evolution in the creation process.
(A personal observation on the idea of humans being descen-
dents of a lower form of life. In no other species is there such
a wide variation of characteristics; in size from dwarfs to
giants, in skin color, shape of facial features, body types, etc.
as is the case with Homo Sapiens.)
The window of evolutionary opportunity, too, is very, very
short, compared to the millions/billions of years given other
evolutionary developments.
The fossil record vs. ape man, "you could put all the fossils
on top of a single desk' says Elwyn Simons of Duke University."
( Newsweek ) "The known fossil remains of man's ancestors would
fit
on a billiard table. That makes a poor platform from which to
peer into the mists of the last few million years." ( The New York
Times )
Homo sapiens appeared in the fossil record some fifty
thousand years ago.
"The missing link between man and the apes... is merely the
most glamorous of a whole hierarchy of phantom creatures. In the
fossil record, missing links are the rule." ( Newsweek )
Early men of the Ice Age were neither brute beasts nor
semiapes nor cretins. Another fossil type is called Homo
Erectus-- upright man. Its brain size and shape do fall into the
lower range of modern man's... the limb bones have been
indistinguishable from those of homo sapiens.
Many Neanderthal fossils have been found... Another fossil
type is Cro-Magnon man, which is virtually indistinguishable from
those of today.
We are talking of 47,500 years between Homo Neanderthalensis
and early Mousterian Man (50,000 B.C.), and the statue of King
Mycerinus and his queen (2,530 B.C.) revealing all the facial and
body features of modern man and woman.
That something dramatic occurred about 4000-2500 B.C. is
apparent.
There are at least two striking physical differences between
all species of men and apes; one, the opposing thumb, and two,
the voice box.
And on the mental level, the creation and use of artifacts,
evolving into the industrialized civilization of today.
The earliest historic evidence of modern man in Egypt is
3100 B.C. with the First Dynasty; the earliest evidence in India
is 2500 B.C. with a well-preserved statue of a male torso from
Harappa in the West Punjab; the earliest evidence in Mesopotamia
dates from circa 3000 B.C.
------------
Darwin
We recommend to anyone trying to comprehend life in all its
many forms that they read Darwin's "Origin of the Species" from
cover to cover. 150 years after it was written, science has not
been able to shed any light on the difficulties to his theory
that he discusses.
We quote from his books, the "Origin of the Species" and "The
Descent or Origin of Man".
Chapter II
"Generally the term (species) includes the unknown element of
a distant act of creation".
Chapter III
"The causes which check the natural tendency of each species
to increase are most obscure". (Discussing natural selection and
survival of the fittest).
On the interaction of plants and animals "Nearly all orchids
absolutely require the visits of insects to fertilize them".
"Visits of bees are necessary for the fertilization of some
kinds of clover".
Chapter IV
"(Man) can neither originate varieties, nor prevent their
occurrence; he can preserve and accommodate such as do occur".
Chapter VI "Difficulties of the Theory"
"First, why 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?"
"Secondly, can we believe that natural selection could
produce, on the one hand, an organ of trifling importance, such
as the tail of a giraffe, which seems as a fly-flapper, and, on
the other hand, an organ so wonderful as the eye?"
"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances
for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting
different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical
and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural
selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest
degree".
"How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns
us more than how life itself originated".
"Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by intel-
lectual powers like those of man?"
"Thirdly, can instincts be acquired and modified through
natural selection?"
"If we are unable to account for the characteristic
differences of our several domestic breeds, which nevertheless
are generally admitted to have arisen through ordinary generation
from one or a few parent-stocks, we ought not to lay too much
stress on our ignorance of the precise cause of the slight
analogous differences between true species".
"(Some naturalists) believe that many structures have been
created for the sake of beauty, to delight man".
"Can we consider the sting of the bee as perfect, which, when
used against many kinds of enemies, cannot be withdrawn, owing to
the backward serratures, and thus inevitably causes the death of
the insect by tearing out his viscera?"
Chapter VII
"... asserted that the weakest part of my theory is, that I
consider all organic beings as imperfect: what I have really
said is, that all are not as perfect as they might have been in
relation to their conditions".
"Longevity is a great advantage to all species, so that he
who believes in natural selection (would believe) that all the
descendents have longer lives than their progenitors!"
"Why have some animals had their mental powers more highly
developed than others, as such development would be
advantageous
to all?"
Chapter VIII
"Many instincts are so wonderful that their development will
probably appear to the reader a difficulty sufficient to over-
throw my whole theory. I may here premise that I have nothing to
do with the origin of the mental powers, any more than I have
nothing to do with that of life itself.
Chapter X
On "innumerable intermediate links not now occurring
everywhere throughout nature."
The Fossil Record: "The living world is not a single
array.... connected by unbroken series of intergrades." Darwin
conceded that the "distinctness of specific (living) forms and
their not being blended together by innumerable transitional
links, is a very obvious difficulty."
Darwin admitted that "If numerous species.... have really
started into life at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory
of evolution."
"Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum
full of such intermediate links?.... the most obvious and serious
objection which can be urged against the theory."
"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".
Chapter XI
"Scarcely any palaeontological discovery is more striking
than the fact that the forms of life change almost simultaneously
throughout the world".
From "The Descent or Origin of Man"
"Many unfortunately are still opposed to evolution in every
form" (Experts in natural science).
"Human characteristics: erect, shape of skull, nakedness
(hairless except for head), absence of a tail, every individual
different except identical twins, opposing thumb, speech, smaller
canine teeth, color of skin".
Chapter II
"The Duke of Argyll, for instance, insists that, the human
frame has diverged from the structure of brutes, in the direction
of greater physical helplessness and weakness. That is to say,
it is a divergence which of all other is the most impossible to
ascribe to mere natural selection".
Chapter III
Universal belief in unseen of spirited agencies, or God.
Chapter IV
"I fully subscribe to the judgement of those writers who
maintain that of all the differences between man and the lower
animals, the moral sense of conscience is by far the most
important".
Chapter VI
"The great break in the organic chain between man and his
nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or
living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to
the belief that man is descended from some lower
form".
(The famous "missing link")
Chapter XXI
"Many of the views which have been advanced are highly
speculative, and some no doubt will prove erroneous".
"The high standard of our intellectual power and moral dispo-
sition is the greatest difficulty which presents itself".
"Man...has few or no special instincts."
"The idea of a universal and beneficient Creator does not
seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated by
long-continued culture".
"Man scans with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of
his horses, cattle and dogs before he matches them."
----------
"The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly
appear in certain formations has been urged by several
paleontologists as a fatal objection to the belief in the
transmutation of a species.... I allude to the manner in which
species belonging to several of the main divisions of the animal
kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous
rocks...."
It was assumed by Darwin that as time passed the missing
fossil links would surely be found.
The Fossil Record
There are a hundred million fossils, all catalogued and
identified, in museums around the world.
The fossil record is full of trends that paleontologists have
been unable to explain.
Swedish botanist Herbert Nilsson: "it is not even possible
to make a caricature of an evolution out of palaeobiological
facts. The fossil material is now so complete that... the lack of
transitional series cannot be explained as due to the scarcity of
material. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled."
The fossil record contains no trace of these preliminary
stages in the development of many-celled organisms. About a
billion years ago, after some three billion years of invisible
progress, a major breakthrough occurred. The first many-celled
creatures appeared on earth.
At the start of the Cambrian period, the fossil record takes
a unexplained dramatic turn. A great variety of fully developed,
complex sea creatures appear so suddenly that this time is often
called an "explosion" of living things.
In the layers above that Cambrian outburst of life, the
testimony of the fossil record is repeatedly the same: New kinds
of animals and new kinds of plants appear suddenly, with no
connection to anything that went before them. The record now
reveals that species typically survive for a hundred thousand
generations, or even a million or more, without evolving very
much.
To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous
deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the
Cambrian system, Darwin could give no satisfactory answer.
Geologists have discovered many unaltered Precambrian
sediments, and they contained no fossils of complex organisms.
Spontaneous Generation
It is hard to see how polymerization (linking together
smaller molecules to form bigger ones) could have proceeded in
the aqueous environment of the primitive ocean, since the
presence of water favors depolymerization (breaking up of big
molecules into simpler ones) rather than polymerization.
There would be no accumulation of organic soup. Wald believes
this to be "the most stubborn problem that confronts us
evolutionists."
It has not been possible to observe the spontaneous
generation of life.
Although there are more than 100 amino acids, only twenty are
needed for life's proteins. They come in two shapes - the left-
handed and the right-handed. All of the twenty used in producing
life's proteins are left-handed.
Add to the mysterious primordial formation of the amino acids
the question of how carbon, sulphur, nitrogen, hydrogen and
oxygen happened to come together to form amino acids in the first
place.
Inorganic carbon is quite rare, occuring only in diamonds and
graphite deposits.
As for atmospheric carbon dioxide, this is another mystery.
Plants use carbon dioxide for photosynthesis and give off oxygen.
Animals take in oxygen and give off carbon dioxide.
But plant life came first?
Astronomers have not detected free carbon dioxide in the
atmospheres of other celestial bodies.
So where did the carbon come from incorporated in the first
amino acids?
The old puzzle of the chicken and the egg rears its head
relative to proteins and DNA. Hitching says: "Proteins depend on
DNA for their formation. But DNA cannot form without pre-existing
protein."
The instructions within the DNA of a cell, "if written out,
would fill a thousand 600 page books," explains the National
Geographic. The nucleus that contains the chromosomal threads is
less that four ten thousandths of an inch in diameter.
The fertilized egg in the mother's womb contains all the
parts of the emerging human body "down in writing." The heart,
lungs, kidneys, the eyes and ears, the arms and legs, the brain--
these and all other parts were "written down" in the genetic code
of the fertilized egg in the mother's womb. Contained in this
code are internal timetables for the appearance of these parts,
each one in its proper order. This fact was recorded in the Bible
nearly 3000 years before modern science ever discovered the
genetic code.
Most of the biochemical complexity of life was present
already at the time the oldest surface rocks of the Earth were
formed.
Single celled animals can catch food, digest, get rid of
wastes, move around, build houses, engage in sexual activity, and
with no tissues, no organs, no hearts, no minds-- really have
everthing that we have got.
Diatoms... contain green chlorophyll. Their food value is in
the oil that diatoms make, which helps them bob on the surface
where their chlorophyll can bask in sunlight.
Photosynthesis happens in cell bodies called chloroplasts, so
small that 400,000 can fit into the period at the end of this
sentence. There are 70 separate chemical reactions involved in
this photosynthesis.
Photosynthesis: plants take in carbon dioxide and give off
oxygen, but this is not completely understood by scientists. This
is "a process that no one has yet been able to reproduce in a
test tube."
These Evolutionary Problems
The gulf between fish and amphibians: the backbone would
have had to undergo major modifications.... a pelvis added....
gills must change to lungs. Most toads and frogs have eardrums.
Tongues would also have had to change.
The gulf between amphibian and reptile: creatures before
reptiles had soft, jellylike eggs which were fertilized
externally.... shelled eggs require internal fertilization....
have blood vessels that pick up oxygen that passes through the
shell and conduct it to the embryo.
Embryos in fish and amphibian eggs release their wastes in
the water as soluble urea. But urea within the shelled eggs of
reptiles would kill the embryos.... shelled eggs have insoluble
uric acid. The egg yolk is food for the growing reptile, enabling
it to develop fully before emerging from the shell, unlike
amphibians which do not hatch in the adult form.
Gulf between reptile and bird: reptiles are cold-blooded,
birds are warm-blooded. Birds must incubate their eggs. Birds are
selfless, altruistic, considerate, and deliberately expose
themselves to danger for their young. Birds bones are thin and
hollow, unlike reptiles solid ones. A system of air sacs provide
internal circulation.
Reptiles have a three-chambered heart; a bird's heart has
four chambers. Beak: evolved by chance from the nose of a
reptile.
The gulf between reptile and mammal: existence of mammary
glands that give milk for the young which are born alive....
unlike baby reptiles, mammals have the instincts and the muscles
to suck the milk from the mother. Mammals need to maintain a
constant body temperature.
When the amphibian supposedly evolved into a reptile, the
wastes eliminated changed from urea to uric acid. But when the
reptile became a mammal there was a reversal. Mammals went
back
to the amphibian way, eliminating wastes as urea.
Termites: How do millions of blind workers coordinate their
efforts to build such ingeniously designed structures? They
exhibit something like a collective intelligence.
Clocks: diatoms come up to the wet beach sand when the tide
is out. When the tide is in, they burrow back into the sand. Even
in sand in the laboratory where there is no tidal ebb and flow,
their clocks still make them come up and go down in time with the
tides.
Homing pigeons, taken 625 miles away in any direction, have
returned to their home lofts in one day.
Man
Gulf to man: an enormously extended period of growth and
parental care.... power of abstract thought and speech, ability
to record accumulated knowledge... man also has moral and
spiritual values.
Ape men: Why then, is the "inferior" ape family still in
existence, but not a single one of the presumed intermediate
forms, which were supposed to be more advanced in evolution?
The human brain is easily the most mysterious part of the
human miracle. The key brain cells, the neurons, don't actually
touch one another. They are separated by synapses, tiny spaces
less than one millionth of an inch across. These gaps are bridged
by chemicals called neurotransmitters, 30 of which are known.
These chemical signals are received at one end of the neuron by a
maze of tiny filaments called dendrites. The signals are then
transmitted at the other end of the neuron by a nerve fiber
called an axon. In the neurons the signals are electrical, but
across the gaps they are chemical. Thus the transmission of nerve
signals is electrochemical in nature.
It is the cerebral cortex of the brain that sets man apart
from any animal. It is less than a quarter of an inch thick.
We must, by input from out surroundings, program the brain.
Without that immense infusion of experience, scarcely a trace of
intellect would appear. The human brain is genetically programmed
for language development.
The human brain could take any load of learning and memory
put on it now, and a billion times that. This is the only example
in existence where a species was provided with an organ that it
still has not learned how to use. Carl Sagan: "the brain is a
very big place in a very small space."
Conclusions
The success of Darwinism has been accompanied by a decline in
scientific integrity; the difficulties he describes have not been
resolved even 140 years later.
Although science textbooks always promote the evolutionary
viewpoint, arguments against evolution are rarely permitted in
schools. Evolution is a theory, but it is presented as a reality
to students.
The best that can be said is (1) there is life on earth, (2)
there are distinct species, (3) there are interesting
similarities in life forms.
- 30 -
| Evolution |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |