What About Origins? (CreationPoints)

by Dr A J Monty White

  Not a trace of a transitional intermediate form between fish and amphibians has been found in the fossil record. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that such a transitional form never existed. This is in complete accord with what the Bible teaches: that God created the fish and the amphibians separately—one did not evolve into the other.

  Likewise, the evolution of amphibians into reptiles is not substantiated in the fossil record: no transitional forms linking amphibians to reptiles have been found. Reptiles, including flying reptiles, marine reptiles, gliding reptiles, snakes, turtles and dinosaurs, all appear in the fossil record but with no trace of any transitional forms linking them to amphibians.23 The transitional forms between amphibians and reptiles simply do not exist.

  However, the most significant difference between amphibians and reptiles concerns their eggs. Amphibians lay their eggs in water; reptiles lay their eggs in moist-free surroundings, because their eggs are equipped with extra-embryonic membranes. The amniotic egg of a reptile is much more complex than the egg of an amphibian. The egg of a reptile contains a membrane, called the amnion, which provides a sac within which the developing embryo can float. The yolk sac contains a food supply for the developing embryo and the allantois, a membrane in the egg that acts as a reservoir for the waste products that are produced by the developing embryo. The egg is surrounded by a porous shell that allows oxygen to be absorbed into the egg and carbon dioxide to be passed out of the egg. How the simple gelatinous amphibian egg designed for incubation in water could have gradually evolved into the complex amniotic reptile egg designed for incubation in air is a real problem for evolutionists. There is no satisfactory explanation and no fossil evidence for this change.

  The evolution of reptiles into mammals is also fraught with problems, as pointed out by Dr Gish:

  Another fundamental difference between reptiles and mammals is the fact that all reptiles, living or fossil, have a single bone in the ear, a rod-like bone known as the columella. Mammals possess three bones in the ear, the stapes, malleus, and incus. Evolutionists maintain that the stapes corresponds to the columella and that the quadrate and articular bones of the reptile somehow moved into the ear to become, respectively, the incus and malleus bones of the mammalian ear. No explanation is given how the intermediates managed to hear while this was going on.24

  Thousands of fossil reptiles have been found, and they all possess a single ear-bone and multiple jaw-bones. Similarly, thousands of fossil mammals have been found that possess three ear-bones and a single jaw-bone. But not a single creature has been found (fossilized or living) representing a reptilian–mammalian transitional form showing, for instance, three jaw-bones or two ear-bones. The idea of bones gradually migrating from the jaw into the ear is also difficult to imagine. Furthermore, how a transitional form would have managed to chew while its jaw was being unhinged and rearticulated is also difficult to imagine. As pointed out by Dr Gish in the above quote, so also is how it managed to hear while its jaw-bones were migrating to its ears!

  The absence of transitional forms linking reptiles with the more peculiar kinds of mammals is also very striking. For example, no known transitional forms are known for the marine mammals (whales, dolphins, porpoises, manatees, dugongs, sea cows, sea lions, seals, walruses, turtles and so on), or for the flying mammals (for example, bats), or for the marsupials (for example, kangaroos). In each case, these groups of mammals are found in the fossil record, but no trace of their evolution is found. Their evolutionary origins are represented by missing links and speculations.

  Yet, despite the fossil evidence to the contrary, George Gamow and Martynas Ycas gave the following vivid account of the evolution of reptiles into mammals:

  The animals changed too. Some of the reptiles in the colder regions began to develop a method of keeping their bodies warm. Their heat output increased when it was cold and their heat loss was cut down when scales became smaller and more pointed, and evolved into fur. Sweating was also an adaptation to regulate the body temperature, a device to cool the body when necessary by evaporation of water. But incidentally the young of these reptiles began to lick the sweat of the mother for nourishment. Certain sweat glands began to secrete a richer and richer secretion, which eventually became milk. Thus the young of these early mammals had a better start in life.25

  There is absolutely no proof in the fossil record, or anywhere else for that matter, to substantiate such speculations. Such a story is made up of mountains of speculation without a molehill of fact, and is actually the product of the figments of these authors’ imaginations. This story about how reptiles changed into mammals is mere fiction—it is not based on scientific fact!

  It cannot be overemphasized that, when we look at the fossil record, we find there is no evidence that one kind of plant or animal has changed into another kind of plant or animal. Put simply, in the fossil record we do not find preserved the transitional forms required by Darwin’s theory. Darwin himself was actually well aware of this and drew attention to it in On the Origin of Species when he 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.’26 He then suggested that ‘The explanation lies, I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record’. Over 150 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species, the situation has still not changed, despite the billions of fossils that have been found since then. We do not find the ‘graduated organic chain’ linking one kind to another. The missing links are still missing!

  But there is another problem with the fossil record. Evolutionists maintain that the gradual development of living things occurred so that so-called ‘living fossils’ should not occur. But they do! And their existence puzzles evolutionists, who must be able to explain why these continue in their old, placid ways without either changing or becoming extinct. In the hundreds of millions of years which the evolutionists allow for evolution to have occurred, ‘living fossils’ have stubbornly refused to evolve despite changes in climate, environment, enemies, parasites and diseases. Examples of such ‘living fossils’ are the duck-billed platypus, the little brachiopod called Lingula, the opossum, the ginkgo tree, the Australian lungfish and the coelacanth.

  We can therefore see from the fossil record that evolution has not been observed in the past. But what about the present? On 3 December 2003, Professor Richard Dawkins was interviewed by Bill Moyers. In the interview, Moyers asked Dawkins, ‘Is evolution a theory, not a fact?’, to which Dawkins replied, ‘Evolution has been observed’ and then continued, ‘It’s just that it hasn’t been observed while it’s happening.’27 So evolution has not been observed happening in the past or in the present.

  Dinosaurs, birds and evolution

  Many people, particularly the young, are fascinated by dinosaurs, perhaps because of their large sizes. When I am invited to speak about these monsters that lived in the past, I have great fun explaining that not all dinosaurs were large, and that one very small dinosaur that has been found was the size of a mouse and is called Mussaurus, ‘mouse lizard’. However, there is speculation that this small dinosaur was a juvenile and that it could possibly have reached three metres in length and weighed as much as 70 kg when fully grown.28 It has to be recognized, however, that the average size of a dinosaur was that of a sheep or goat.

  It seems reasonable to assume that dinosaurs have become extinct since we do not have them living on the earth today. The question that we therefore need to ask, and to which we need to try to get an answer, is: What happened to the dinosaurs? When my wife and I visited the Natural History Museum in London in March 2007, there was a panel in the section about dinosaurs that stated, ‘There are over one hundred published theories about the extinction of the dinosaurs, ranging from the fascinating to the absurd.’ Among the more humorous theories put forward is the one
to which I was introduced when I was studying Geology as an undergraduate in the mid-1960s—that the dinosaurs died out because the food they ate caused them to be constipated! Some of the more bizarre explanations include their dying out because of sunburn; as a result of being infected with diseases spread by mosquitoes, mites and ticks; or because they were getting the wrong sort of sleep! The most popular (although not necessarily correct) explanation for the fact that dinosaurs are no longer on the earth is that a huge meteor crashed onto the earth and brought the age of the dinosaurs to an abrupt end.

  However, some evolutionists maintain that dinosaurs have not become extinct but have evolved into birds. Among them is Dr Mark Norell, Chairman of the Division of Palaeontology and Curator of the ‘Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries’ exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in New York from 14 May 2005 to 8 January 2006. He is on record stating that ‘I would consider that living birds are not only derived from dinosaurs—they are dinosaurs’.29

  This proposal that birds evolved from dinosaurs and might well be some type of modified dinosaur is simply not substantiated by the fossil record—not a single transitional form linking dinosaurs to birds has been found. The famous fossil bird Archaeopteryx is, however, offered as a transitional form by some evolutionists because it possesses some reptilian features. But in fact it is not a transitional form. It is a bird—a true bird with wings, feathers identical to those of living flying birds, and a sternum to which the powerful flight muscles were attached.30 The possession of such features means that Archaeopteryx could fly, which means that it was a bird. Although some evolutionists point out that Archaeopteryx had reptilian features, so too do some modern living birds (for example, the hoatzin and the Touraco corythaix), yet no zoologist considers these two modern birds to be transitional forms.

  Furthermore, the feathers of birds are thought to have developed slowly from reptile scales, although this too is unsupported by fossil evidence. Again, no transitional form with part-way feathers has been found in the fossil record, as pointed out by Dr Walter J. Bock, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Columbia University: ‘… we lack completely fossils of all intermediate stages between reptilian scales and the most primitive feather.’31

  There have been reports, however, of fossils of what appear to be dinosaurs with rudimentary or primitive feathers being found in China. Dr Alan Feduccia and his colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have shown that the fossilized patterns that resemble feathers are in fact bits of decomposed skin and supporting tissues.32 Feathered dinosaurs have not been found in the fossil record, and any feathers that are seen on dinosaur reconstructions have either been painted on or stuck on with glue!

  It cannot be overemphasized that the difference between a scale and a feather is enormous. Scales are flat, horny plates and can be thought of as folds of skin; feathers, on the other hand, are very complex in structure and consist of a central shaft, the rachis, from which radiate barbs and, from them, barbules. The anterior barbules have tiny hooks at their ends and these lock onto the ends of the posterior barbules, resulting in the formation of a flat, strong, flexible vane. The differences continue. Scales and feathers arise from different layers of skin: feathers develop from follicles and are protected by a horny sheath and form around a bloody, conical, inductive dermal core.

  One of the problems that evolutionists have about such transformations concerns genetics. Where does the new genetic information come from in order to change a dinosaur’s scale into the complex feather of a bird? Where does the new genetic information come from in order to create something so delicate and yet so strong as a flight feather? Where does the new genetic information come from in order to create the rachis of a feather with its two veins, which are composed of hundreds of barbs? Where does the new genetic information come from to create the hundreds of barbules that are found on each barb? Where does the new genetic information come from in order to create the hooks that are found on the anterior barbules and which hook over the posterior barbules to enable the whole feather to be ‘zipped up’ and form something so incredibly light and strong? It is difficult to imagine the origin of the new genetic information required to cause such a transformation and, as we have seen, there is no evidence for such a transformation in the fossil record. Any explanation that evolutionists give regarding such a transformation should be regarded as being what Dr Gish calls ‘nothing more than empty rhetoric without a shred of empirical content’.33 Yet, when those who believe Genesis suggest that feathers have been designed by Almighty God, this is ridiculed and is not considered to be a valid hypothesis. The reason for this has been explained by the immunologist Professor Scott Todd of Kansas State University in a letter to Nature: ‘Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.’34

  This helps to explain why there can be no dialogue between creationists and evolutionists. The evolutionists require a natural explanation for everything and will not permit any supernatural explanation when it comes to discussing origins.

  But let us return to the demise of the dinosaurs. There appears to be evidence that dinosaurs did not become extinct a long time ago, but that they were around in more recent times.

  The first piece of evidence is found in the Bible. In the book of Job, which dates back to the second millennium BC, there is mention of the huge animal ‘behemoth’ in Job 40 (v. 15). ‘Behemoth’ is simply a transliteration of the Hebrew word used there. Although this animal is not given any other name, its description implies that it is the largest and most powerful animal ever to have existed. One interesting feature of this animal is that, according to Job 40:17, it has a tail like a cedar tree. The only animal that matches such a description is a sauropod dinosaur, such as a brachiosaur, and all the other features of behemoth described in Job 40 confirms this. This could therefore indicate that brachiosaur dinosaurs were alive in Job’s day, that is, less than 4,000 years ago.

  The second piece of evidence comes from rock-carvings (petroglyphs) found at the Natural Bridges National Monument in the south-east corner of the state of Utah, USA.35 These petroglyphs, which were made by the Anasazi Indians 500 to 1,500 years ago, show various animals, humans and even hand-prints. Some of these stone carvings depict creatures that are indisputable brachiosaur dinosaurs. This means that dinosaurs were living in south-east Utah between 500 and 1,500 years ago.

  The third piece of evidence that dinosaurs were living recently is found at the temple at Angkor Wat in Cambodia.36 Here, there is a stone carving of what is indisputably a stegosaurus dinosaur, showing clearly the upright plates on its back that are characteristic of this dinosaur. No other animals had these plates on their backs, and this carving, which dates from the early twelfth century, clearly shows these plates. This therefore presents clear evidence that the stegosaurus dinosaur was living in Cambodia about 900 years ago.

  The fourth piece of evidence that dinosaurs were living recently comes from a tomb found in Carlisle Cathedral in north-west England.37 In the floor of the cathedral, in the gangway between the choir stalls, lies the tombstone of Bishop Richard Bell, who lived from 1410 to 1496. The tomb is almost three metres long and has an inlaid brass carving of the bishop in a gothic canopy, dressed in his full vestments, wearing a mitre (his bishop’s hat) and holding a crosier (the hooked staff of a bishop). Around the edge of the tomb is an inlaid brass fillet with carvings of different animals—various fish, an eel, a dog, a pig, a bird and a weasel/stoat. Among the animals is one creature that looks totally out of place—an animal that looks for all the world like a brachiosaurus dinosaur! The most remarkable thing about these carvings is the accurate portrayal of their limbs. When dinosaur fossils were first discovered, it was thought that the animals from which they were descended were reptilian; when they were reconstructed they were therefore shown with their limbs sticking out from the sides of their bodies, like crocodiles or lizards.
It was only when some dinosaurs were found fossilized in mud that it was realized that their limbs came from beneath their bodies. And this is how the dinosaurs on Bishop Bell’s tomb are depicted—with their legs on the underside of their bodies. Here is further evidence that the sauropod dinosaurs lived, this time in England, at the end of the fifteenth century.

  The fifth and final piece of evidence that dinosaurs were living recently comes mainly from the discoveries made by Dr Mary Schweitzer, a palaeontologist at the North Carolina State University. Since the early 1990s, she has found soft-tissue cell-like microstructures, flexible and fibrous bone material, transparent and pliable blood vessels and red blood cells in a Tyrannosaurus rex bone dug out of sandstone from the fossil-rich Hell Creek Formation in Montana, USA. Her findings were published by the prestigious Royal Society in January 2007.38 Since then, she and her colleagues have recovered protein fragments from the fossilized remains of the duck-billed dinosaur, Brachylophosaurus canadensis.39 These finds alone confirm that the dinosaurs lived recently, as it is impossible for proteins, blood cells and other cellular structures to survive without being degraded or fossilized for the sixty-five-plus million years demanded by evolutionists.

  Evolutionists ignore the evidence given above that dinosaurs lived recently. Instead, they cling on to the idea that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago and that they evolved into birds, even though, as we have seen, there is no evidence for this supposed evolution.

  Conclusion

  At the beginning of this chapter, we reviewed briefly the life and beliefs of Charles Darwin and saw that he was deluded, especially about what the Bible teaches about the origin of species within kinds. We saw that, in actual fact, his observations of the finches on the Galápagos Islands confirmed the Genesis account of creation—that plants and animals reproduce after their own kinds. Having seen the shortcomings of both natural selection and the survival of the fittest as mechanisms for the origin of all the different plants and animals that we find on the earth today and also in the fossil record, we have to conclude that Darwin was mistaken about the mechanism of the origin of species.