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The Fossil Record Refutes Evolution
According to the theory of evolution, every living species has sprung
from a predecessor. A previously-existing species turned into something
else in time and all species have come into being in this way. According
to the theory, this transformation proceeds gradually over millions of
years.
If this was the case, then numerous intermediary species should have
existed and lived within this long transformation period.
For instance, some half-fish/half-reptiles should have lived in the past
which had acquired some reptilian traits in addition to the fish traits
they already had. Or there should have existed some reptile-birds, which
acquired some bird traits in addition to the reptilian traits they already
had. Evolutionists refer to these imaginary creatures, which they believe
to have lived in the past, as "transitional forms".
If such animals had really existed, there should be millions and even
billions of them in number and variety. More importantly, the remains
of these strange creatures should be present in the fossil record. The
number of these transitional forms should have been even greater than
the present animal species and their remains should be found all over
the world. In The Origin of Species, Darwin explained:
If my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking most
closely all of the species of the same group together must assuredly
have existed... Consequently evidence of their former existence could
be found only amongst fossil remains.13
Even Darwin himself was aware of the absence of such transitional forms.
It was his hope that they would be found in the future. Despite his hopefulness,
he realised that the biggest stumbling-block in his theory was the missing
transitional forms. Therefore in his book The Origin of Species he wrote
the following in the chapter "Difficulties of the Theory":
Why, if species have descended from other species by 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? But, 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? But in the intermediate region,
having intermediate conditions of life, why do we not now find closely-linking
intermediate varieties? This difficulty for a long time quite confounded
me.14
The single explanation Darwin could come up with to counter this objection
was the argument that the fossil record uncovered so far was inadequate.
He asserted that when the fossil record had been studied in detail, the
missing links would be found.
Believing in Darwin's prophecy, evolutionists have been searching for
fossils and digging for missing links since the middle of the 19th century
all over the world. Despite their best efforts, no transitional forms
have yet been uncovered. All the fossils unearthed in excavations
showed that contrary to the beliefs of evolutionists, life appeared on
earth all of a sudden and fully-formed. Trying to prove their theory,
the evolutionists have instead unwittingly caused it to collapse.
A famous British paleontologist, Derek V. Ager, admits this fact even
though he is an evolutionist:
The point emerges that if we examine the fossil record in detail, whether
at the level of orders or of species, we find-over and over again-not
gradual evolution, but the sudden explosion of one group at the expense
of another.15
Another evolutionist paleontologist Mark Czarnecki comments as follows:
A major problem in proving the theory has been the fossil record; the
imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth's geological formations.
This record has never revealed traces of Darwin's hypothetical intermediate
variants - instead species appear and disappear abruptly, and this
anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created
by God.16
They have also had to deal with the futility of waiting for "missing"
transitional forms to appear in the future, as explained by a professor
of paleontology from Glasgow University, T. Neville George:
There is no need to apologise any longer for the poverty of the fossil
record. In some ways, it has become almost unmanageably rich and discovery
is outpacing integration The fossil record nevertheless continues
to be composed mainly of gaps.17
Life Emerged on Earth Suddenly and in Complex Forms
When terrestrial strata and the fossil record are examined, it is to
be seen that all living organisms appeared simultaneously. The oldest
stratum of the earth in which fossils of living creatures have been found
is that of the Cambrian, which has an estimated age of 500-550 million
years.
The living creatures found in the strata belonging to the Cambrian period
emerged all of a sudden in the fossil record-there are no pre-existing
ancestors. The fossils found in the Cambrian rocks belonged to snails,
trilobites, sponges, earthworms, jellyfish, sea hedgehogs, and other complex
invertebrates. This wide mosaic of living organisms made up of such a
great number of complex creatures emerged so suddenly that this miraculous
event is referred to as the "Cambrian Explosion" in geological literature.
Most of the life forms found in this strata have complex systems like
eyes, gills, circulatory system, and advanced physiological structures
no different from their modern counterparts. For instance, the double-lensed,
combed eye structure of trilobites is a wonder of design. David Raup,
a professor of geology in Harvard, Rochester, and Chicago Universities,
says: "the trilobites used an optimal design which would require a
well trained and imaginative optical engineer to develop today".18
These complex invertebrates emerged suddenly and completely without having
any link or any transitional form between them and the unicellular organisms,
which were the only life forms on earth prior to them.
Richard Monastersky, the editor of Earth Sciences, which is one of the
popular publications of evolutionist literature, states the following
about the "Cambrian Explosion" which came as a total surprise to evolutionists:
A half-billion years ago, the remarkably complex forms of animals we
see today suddenly appeared. This moment, right at the start of Earth's
Cambrian Period, some 550 million years ago, marks the evolutionary
explosion that filled the seas with the world's first complex creatures.
The large animal phyla of today were present already in the early
Cambrian and they were as distinct from each other as they are today.19
How the earth came to overflow with such a great number of animal species
all of a sudden and how these distinct types of species with no common
ancestors could have emerged is a question that remains unanswered by
evolutionists. The Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins, one of the foremost
advocates of evolutionist thought in the world, comments on this reality
that invalidates the very roots of all the arguments he has been defending:
For example the Cambrian strata of rocks, vintage about 600 million
years, are the oldest ones in which we find most of the major invertebrate
groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution,
the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted
there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance
of sudden planting has delighted creationists.20
As Dawkins is forced to acknowledge, the Cambrian Explosion is strong
evidence for creation, because creation is the only way to explain the
fully-formed emergence of life on earth. Douglas Futuyma, a prominent
evolutionist biologist admits this fact and states: "Organisms either
appeared on the earth fully developed or they did not. If they did not,
they must have developed from preexisting species by some process of modification.
If they did appear in a fully developed state, they must indeed have
been created by some omnipotent intelligence."21
Darwin himself recognised the possibility of this when
he wrote: "If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families,
have really started into life all at once, the fact would be fatal
to the theory of descent with slow modification through natural selection."22
The Cambrian Period is nothing more or less than Darwin's "fatal stroke".
This is why the Swiss evolutionist paleoanthropologist Stefan Bengston
confesses the lack of transitional links while he describes the Cambrian
Period and says "Baffling (and embarrasing) to Darwin, this event still
dazzles us".23
As may be seen, the fossil record indicates that living things did not
evolve from primitive to the advanced forms, but instead emerged all of
a sudden and in a perfect state. In short, living beings did not come
into existence by evolution, they were created.
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A Creation Miracle That Confounds
Evolution
T R I L O B I T E -E Y E S
The trilobites that appeared in the Cambrian period all of a
sudden have an extremely complex eye structure. Consisting of
millions of honeycomb-shaped tiny particles and a double-lens
system, this eye "has an optimal design which would require a
well-trained and imaginative optical engineer to develop today"
in the words of David Raup, a professor of geology.
This eye emerged 530 million years ago in a perfect state. No
doubt, the sudden appearance of such a wondrous design cannot
be explained by evolution and it proves the actuality of creation.
Moreover, the honeycomb eye structure of the trilobite has survived
to our own day without a single change. Some insects such as bees
and dragon flies have the same eye structure as did the trilobite.*
This situation disproves the evolutionary thesis that living things
evolved progressively from the primitive to the complex.
(*) R.L.Gregory, Eye and Brain: The Physiology of Seeing, Oxford University
Press, 1995, p.31 |
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