LIVING FOSSILS

Jerry Bergman

(Investigator 210, 2023 May)


Evolution Suppresses Nature's Testimony of Design
    
Volumes have been written about the complex and intriguing lives and worlds of plants and animals. Many biologists remain fascinated with the wonders of the natural world throughout their entire career. One regularly reads their exclamations of wonder, awe, and amazement which often seeps through their writings. The original motivation of many young people for entering the life-science field is the sense of awe that they first experienced in its study. This experience can motivate a lifelong exploration of the natural world.
    
When science is presented in an intriguing fashion, such as common in children's science books and movies, this drive can easily be stimulated. The now dated Walt Disney and Bell Telephone film series are good examples. The  Bell System Science Series (1956-1964) is what first made me interested in science, a motivation that has remained with me for over 70 years. The Disneynature Film studio division of Walt Disney included The Living Desert (1953) The Vanishing Prairie (1954), The African Lion (1955) and many others.
    
Harvard-trained attorney, Norman Macbeth, observed "Who can fail to be impressed by [the biological world] and to admire the patience and diligence of field workers who discovered and described [these wonders]. They are the glory of the profession." Macbeth related that many biologists remain fascinated by "the wonders of nature, especially the extraordinary complexities, adjustments, and inventions that are commonly spoken of as 'adaptations’...[which] all unite in wonder at the works of nature" throughout their career. This observation is a major reason people give for believing in God. As Leon Pijparet observed "In 1831 when Charles Darwin was 22  years old, most people believed that a Divine Creator made all organisms" that could not change into other new organisms. This view drastically changed with Darwin.
    
The goal of evolution is not science but something very different. In the words of University of Chicago evolutionist Jerry Coyne: "Charles Darwin's 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species was the greatest scripture-killer ever penned. The [Origin] book demolished … an entire series of biblical claims by demonstrating that purely naturalistic processes—evolution and natural selection—could explain patterns in nature previously explainable only by invoking a Great Designer” who Christians call God.
    
As atheist Richard Dawkins notes, the problem in accepting evolution “is that of complex design” which appears to prove intelligent design. This problem of what is obvious to most people is solved by claiming that what is obvious is wrong because it "is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism, and to find it hard to believe" that chance ultimately turned nothing into everything."  Most people accept the evidence for design in the natural world because the world looks very much like it is designed.


Why Darwin Developed His Evolution Theory

Darwin's openly stated goal was to murder God by destroying the reason people believe in God, namely the evidence of their senses demanding a Creator.  He thus wrote his so-called "one long argument" for the purpose of disproving creation including intelligent design. His Origin of Species was openly an anti-Paley, anti-design argument. William Paley authored the book arguing for God on the basis of the design existing everywhere in the natural world. Darwin was required to carefully study Paley in college. Paley impressed Darwin greatly, and Darwin realized that to murder God he had to refute Paley. His theory of evolution was how he refuted Paley. No need exists to invoke God any longer because evolution explains how life got here without Him. No Creator God was needed. Evolution is now regarded as the creator. In the end, Darwin was enormously successful. As has been well-documented, due to Darwin's affront undermining the Biblical account of creation, the majority of eminent scientists today are atheists.
    
Most people accept design in the natural world because the world actually looks like it is designed. As Professor Stewart-Williams wrote: "most people would agree that certain parts of the natural world look as though they were designed. Before Darwin, philosophers thought there were two possible explanations for this: either they [the natural parts] were designed or [they] came about through chance alone. The idea that they came about through chance alone stretches credulity to [the] breaking point, and thus we are left with design."  
    
Stewart-Williams added, Darwin provided a third way, namely "a mindless natural process [today called evolution] could create the illusion of design."  After noting that “Darwin’s theory provided an alternative way to account for this design… God is not needed to explain the design in nature (which was generally considered the best evidence for a designer), then maybe God does not exist."


Life Found Only on Earth
    
Why are planets very similar to the Earth, such as Venus and Mars, as well as the many moons in our solar system, totally void of even simple life—after all, they are at least as old as the Earth? If life appeared here fairly soon, almost from its beginning as evolutionists claim, consequently the eons of time available would have given these other worlds more than enough time to evolve some type of simple living organism.
    
Yet, life exists only on the Earth, and not on even one of the over 1,160 known other worlds in our solar system (8 major planets and their 207 moons, 5 dwarf planets and their 9 moons, and 457 minor planets/asteroids and their 477 moons), even though scientists estimate billions of years are available for life to evolve in these places. The explanation evolutionists give is all of these other planets are too hostile for life to have evolved there.
    
The fact is the total lack of evidence for the evolution of life called abiogenesis produces not a reason but an excuse. Certain life forms exist on Earth that a few years ago were felt to be impossible to survive in enormously hostile environments.  Environments hot enough to boil water, environments containing deadly highly toxic poisons and environments lacking both oxygen and sunlight. However, if life did indeed evolve on Earth, at least one unequivocal piece of evidence must exist. It does not. Only excuses exist. However, if life exists on Earth in such hostile environments, surely it could have evolved elsewhere in these hostile environments.
    
In view of the incredible complexity of bacteria-like organisms, some scientists reason that life, to have evolved, must have existed on Earth during the vast majority of its four billion year existence. This fact raises many questions relative to evolution. Not the least of which is “how did such complex organisms evolve so extremely rapidly so very early in the Earth’s history, and then so incredibly slowly ever since?” This question is a result of the finding that no matter how far back in time we go, most life-forms look very much like they look today. An example is "Magnolia trees just like the ones that grace our lawns lived on earth at the time of the dinosaurs… Ginkgo trees, which now shade many city streets, were growing on earth 50 million years before the first dinosaurs existed. And cockroaches ran about in forests 50 million years before the ginkgoes appeared."  
    
Because evolution requires a longtime to evolve, these examples must have first evolved hundreds of millions of years ago, then, for some unknown reason, stopped evolving. The explanation evolutionists offer is that life evolved rapidly until it stopped because by then it was well-adapted to its environment, so ceased evolving. The problem with this explanation is no small number of life-forms have become extinct. The many dinosaur kinds that have become extinct is the most well-known example. The fact is, from the known evidence, life did not evolve. If biological evolution was true we should see some evidence (fossil or otherwise) of major anatomical change among living creatures in the natural world, not stasis (form stability) which is, by far, the norm.


Much of Nature Cannot Be Explained by Natural Selection
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In contrast to Darwinism, much of what exists in the natural world seems to have little to do with the process of natural selection or even survival. The tree shape which facilitates survival for all trees is that which maximizes its leaf exposure to sunlight.  Increased sunlight intake facilitates utilizing more of the existing sunlight, resulting in increased photosynthesis, thus more energy, food, and growth. The genetically programmed shapes of most trees, though, does not always fully maximize its exposure to sunlight, and therefore selection would not seem to explain or have caused this important genetic-based taxonomic aid. A tree type can often be determined by its overall profile or shape. Viewed from a distance, most tree experts can tell a cypress (tall and pointed) from a maple (very roughly ball shaped) from an elm (tends to fan out at the top). It is unlikely that these small, identifying shape differences, while they are of enormous help in identifying tree types, have anything to do with selection or survival.
    
In addition, many plant leaves grow out from the stem in pairs, one leaf of each pair facing east, for example, and the other west. The set directly above is rotated 180 degrees. If one of the pairs faces north, the other will face south. This would not seem to be the most optimal arrangement relative to maximizing sunlight exposure, but it may have other advantages not necessarily related to survival. The "stair-case" pattern, if supported by a strong stem and leaf support, would absorb far more sunlight than this arrangement. The existing pattern is determined by the enzymes and the biochemical factors in the plant, but this explains only the mechanism behind its development; the full why of this arrangement seems to be forthcoming.  This problem is common in the plant world.


Summary

The evolution-as-creator notion has failed to be supported scientifically, but in America one is not allowed to give the other side. In essence, American schools indoctrinate its citizenry into the Darwinian worldview and this is why it is widely believed as the accepted answer to the origins if the universe, the solar system, and life.



i Macbeth, Norman. 1971. Darwin Retried: an Appeal to Reason. Boston, MA: Gambit.

ii Pijparet, Leon. 2002. How to Study Biology. Long Beach, CA. Students First Publishing Co. P. 73.

iii Dawkins, Richard. 1986. The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, pp. ix, xi.

iv Bergman, Jerry. 2012. Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview: How the Nazi Eugenic Crusade for a Superior Race Caused the Greatest Holocaust in World History. Kitchener, Ontario, Canada: Joshua Press; Bergman, Jerry. 2011. The Dark Side of Charles Darwin. Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Press.

v Stewart-Williams, Steve. 2010. Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, p. 50.

vi Stewart-Williams, 2010, p. 50; emphasis mine.

vii Stewart-Williams, 2010, p. 51.

viii Smith, Howard. 1982. Living Fossils. New York, NY: Dodd, Mead & Company, p. 10.


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