by Conti, Gene;
Claudia added, “Evolution is supposed to be some kind of slow advancement through the millennia. But all of a sudden there is this enormous jump from protozoa and bacteria to the invertebrates from the pre-Cambrian to the Cambrian periods. It’s like leaping from a single brick to the Empire State Building, without any other structures of any other size in-between. Why didn’t we all see what was undeniably missing?”
“Dr. Lucci, I’d like to add another observation, if I may,” Claudia asked.
“Observe away, Claudia.”
“It appears to me that if the Deluge of Noah caused all this, wouldn’t we find sea creatures at the bottom layers of strata and land animals that could run from the rising waters of the flood toward the top layers?”
“A very canny discernment, Claudia.” I then addressed the class. “Why don’t you all transfer to your tablets that schematic of Lyell’s geologic column itself to see if Claudia’s assertion is correct?”
Several seconds later, the class was all abuzz. “Basically, Claudia’s correct,” Juan shouted out, his voice rising above the chatter.
The students were pouring over the schematics of the geologic column on their tablets and talking amongst themselves about what they saw.
Santi raised his hand, and I recognized him.
“If I now comprende this columna stuff; these estratos or layers of rock have to be either many millones or only thousands of years old. Correcto?”
“That right, Santi. We creationists believe it’s thousands— Noah’s Flood, which formed the ‘geologic column of death,’ was approximately 4400 years ago, which means death and suffering only came into the world after Adam.”
The class was reflecting on what I said without fully understanding this absolutely crucial point, when I saw Santi’s hand go up again.
“Dónde está … a … where is this grande columna?”
“Only in the textbooks. There is no place on earth that contains the entire geologic column. It would have to be one hundred miles high. Am I correct, Pete?”
“The Doc’s correct. The entire column, as one entity, only exists in textbooks. Even the Grand Canyon only contains a small part of the column. Oh, I see you’ve brought up an accurate quote on the Insta-Screen, Doc, and from an evolutionist.”
Quote/illustration on the geologic column by Edmund M. Spieker Google
Nate chimed in. “This is looking worse and worse for the evolutionists and their millions of years. But now I’ve got a question.”
“From what I’ve been checking out here on my tablet, the way the archeologists figure this, even today, is they determine how old a fossil is by the rock layer it is found in. However, the geologists determine how old a rock layer is by the fossil that is found in that rock layer. This sounds like circular reasoning to me, or am I nuts?”
“Huh?”
“What did he say?”
“Come again?” Many students were confused by what Nate had just said. Several responded immediately looking for clarification.
Leaning on my lab table, again my arms outstretched, I said, “Look, you guys will probably not believe me, but you may believe an evolutionist himself. Punch up on your tablets the American Journal of Science, Vol. 276, January 1976, p. 53.”
Pete was the first to bring it up and started waving his hand back and forth.
“Okay, Pete just give everyone a chance to find it. I want their eyeballs to see this at the same time you read it.”
Pete paused until he saw everyone nodding their heads around him. “Got it” and “found it,” echoed around the room.
“This statement is from J. E. O’Rourke, from his article “Pragmatism versus Materialism in Stratigraphy.” ‘The rocks do date the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot avoid this kind of reasoning if it insists on using only temporal concepts, because circularity is inherent in the derivation of time scales.’”
Nate was jovially pounding his fist on Pete’s back. “What kinda crap are they teaching you in geology? Rocks date fossils, but then fossils date the rocks!? This guy made that statement way back in 1976, and your colleagues and professors are still using this retarded circular reasoning? Are you kidding me?”
Pete turned around and tried to rebut Nate, but to no avail. All Pete could elicit was a bunch of incomprehensible utterances in defense of his chosen field, to the accompaniment of some jeers and heckles directed at him.
Nate then stood up and put his hand to his mouth, pretending to blow on a trumpet or bugle. “Da, da, da, dant, da, daaa!” Then, as if he was a ringside announcer, declared, “Round One goes to God and the young earth. Mother Gaia has taken some strong blows from Noah’s Flood and is weaving … um … sinking dangerously.”
“Santi wishes to add something before we go,” I noticed. His expression was somewhat serious, but he also had a leprechaun smile on his face. He stood and turned to his classmates.
“Creo que Dios … Juan help me.” Juan whispers to him. “Yes, I believe God had, and has, a sense of humor not to have created those ‘missing’ in-between animales. I think He just wanted to mess with the atheist’s cabezas’—heads. Mira, He even put the pink flamencos kneecaps on backwards.”
With that the class doubled over laughing, including Claudia. I even saw a slight giggle erupt from Jude. Even he couldn’t keep a straight face with that one.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
EXTRA CREDIT
I started to pack up, preparing to exit the room, when I noticed the students in a huddle having a hushed discussion. Pete seemed to be taking the lead. He stuck his head up from the group and stated, “Don’t leave yet, Doc.” He put his head down into the huddle again. I stopped what I was doing, wondering what’s up.
Shortly, the huddle broke up and Pete addressed me. “Doc, do you have any specific plans for this next hour?”
“No, nothing in particular. I’m meeting with Father Flanagan, but that’s not until noon for lunch.”
“Good,” he replied. “We want to do another class session.”
“Really?” I’m taken aback.
“None of us have any classes this period; and all of us want to continue the session.”
“All of you?” I’m astounded and flabbergasted.
“Even Jude?”
Jude stepped forward stating, “I’ve read the Art of War by Sun Tzu. His premise is that in military strategy one must understand ones enemy’s philosophy and tactics better than the enemy does himself in order to defeat him.”
“Well, Jude, I never considered myself and Christianity your enemy. But let me warn you, one of our tactics is to win over your heart and soul from the dark side.”
Matt, our adept sci-fi wiz, is enthralled with this. “Oh, way cool. The Matrix is the Dark Side versus Christianity, the Light. Is Mother Gaia the Death Star or should I say, Star-lette?” He laughed at his own joke.
The class booed Matt, and fake hissed at him while also laughing along with him.
“Actually, Matt, that’s not a bad analogy. Okay then, we’ll continue.”
Maggie raised her hand. I nodded in her direction.
Maggie looked at me, but then turned to address the class as a whole. “Just so we are all on the same page,” she said, pausing momentarily to look at me, “if I’m … we are to understand this Noah’s Flood thing, you are saying that the Flood buried all the animals and plants that were on the earth, many of which fossilized. Is that correct?”
“Correct,” I looked at Maggie, while speaking to all the students. “With the exception being those animals on the ark with Noah. That occurred about sixteen hundred years after God created Adam and Eve, or about forty-four hundred years ago.”
Jim finally grasped the precept and stated, “Therefore, if the Deluge in Genesis truly happened, all the fossil layers represent death after Adam, and Moses and the Bible are … a … vindicated!”
Nate added, “But if the fossil layers, which represent dead things occurred
millions of years ago, before man or Adam evolved, then the Bible is … a … Barbra Streisand from the get-go,” he said looking at Jude. “So why believe the rest of the book?”
“So, if I got this straight,” Jim said, thinking out loud, “those priests and theologians, who tell us we can believe the Bible together with the millions of years, don’t know what the H-E double hockey stick they are talking about.”
“And my former minister as well,” Maggie added.
“Now I understand why my dad and mom barely practiced Judaism,” Matt exclaimed, “with the exception of the tradition of the High Holy Days and Hanukkah. I know that my parents believe in ‘millions of years,’ my dad has told me as much. That’s the reason why they felt Moses, Genesis, and the Flood were all bunk,” Matt stated contritely as he reflected back on his childhood.
Matt was still looking down at his desk and continues to reminisce. “My parents had a ‘do your own thing’ philosophy with an open marriage, which ended in divorce. I now understand why.”
The class was silent. The wheels were turning in their heads, and I sensed they were taking a decisive introspective and contemplative turn in their thought processes. Wanting to bring Matt out of his doldrums, I teased him a bit. “So what was it you were saying on that first day of class about only wanting to memorize books and notes?”
“Huh?” Matt grunted still in deep thought. “Oh yeah, this is much more fun using your brains.” The stillness broken, several of the students around him started laughing.
“At the rate you guys are going, ICC will need to confer PhD’s and D. Div. degrees on all of you.”
Claudia raised her hand. “Dr. Lucci, I would like you to explain more about those layers of the geologic column from the viewpoint of the Flood, and how life was buried.”
“As most of you surmised from Claudia’s original observation, a world-wide flood would have covered the lowest and deepest animals and plants first—the sea life. That’s why it’s found in the bottom-most layers.”
“Evolution says,” Juan correctly determined, “that the next animals to evolve upward from those invertebrates of Pete’s were the vertebrate fishes.”
“Okay, Juan, can you give me an example of one, just one in-between animal found in the fossil layer—or alive, for that matter— that is transitioning or halfway evolving from an invertebrate to a vertebrate?”
Juan and the class remained silent.
“I see you’ve drawn a blank. How about between fish and amphibian?”
Silence.
“Amphibian to reptile?”
Silence.
“Reptile to bird? Bird to Mammal?”
Jude raised his hand. “What about archaeopteryx? The reptile becoming a bird?”
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
IF IT QUACKS LIKE A DUCK
“Ah, yes, the ol’ ‘dinosaurs have evolved into birds’ proposition,” I responded to Jude’s question about the missing link between reptiles and birds. “That archaeopteryx is the progenitor of the birds, the first to have evolved from the dinosaurian reptiles.”
I brought up a picture of archaeopteryx on the Insta-Screen.
Illustration of fossil Archaeopteryx. Shutterstock
Illustration of bird Archaeopteryx. Shutterstock
“It has teeth and claws.” Jude cried out.
“The ostrich and hoatzin and the touraco have claws on their wings. And extinct birds have been found with teeth. But let me ask you, does this bird have fully formed wings?”
“Yes.” Jude answered.
“Does it have flight feathers?”
“Yes.”
“Does it have an enlarged strong breastbone or sternum, which the flight muscles attach to?”
“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t this indicate a strong flyer?”
“Yes.”
“Then it was a bird, Jude, an extinct bird, but a complete real bird in every sense of the definition; not halfway between reptile and bird. If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck …”
“It’s a duck,” Tom laughed as he glanced at Jude.
“Oh, a tiny piece of information the evolutionists like to leave out.”
I stopped speaking to make sure I had 100 percent attention from the class. They were silent, looking and waiting for me to finish my thought.
“Modern bird fossils have been found in older deeper layers than archaeopteryx.”
The class became animated.
“Andy,” I announced, as I saw he wanted to contribute.
“Why don’t they tell us this stuff? We never hear about dissenting evidence. That was an absolutely vital piece of evidence I don’t think any of us have ever heard. What you have presented puts evolutionary theory … excuse me … the model, and the millions of years into serious jeopardy.”
I noticed Jim becoming very agitated in his seat. His hand shot up.
“Doc, what about all these fossils of birds and fish and whatever they dig up every few years that they use to claim evolution is true? Then, in the museums they take us to, we see drawings and models of this stuff. I don’t know what to believe anymore!”
“Jim,” I briefly looked in his direction, while still addressing the class. “Remember the first day of class I explained that the Matrix has cobbled together science, religion, and politics to brainwash you?”
The class nodded in one accord.
Thad, our reporter for the Veritas Beacon, raised his hand.
“Doc said he would have to dismantle each one to expose and destroy the Matrix. The science is really evolution. The religion is Mother Gaia, and the politics is socialism/communism, which are all linked and intertwined together. Right, Doc?”
“An excellent concise analysis, Thad. Mother Gaia and Socialism/Communism use one thing as their primary support. Without it they vaporize into oblivion. What is that one vital buttress?”
Santi’s hand was already up. I nodded at him.
“It’s evolución.”
“And the millions of years which give it that support,” Juan added, patting Santi on the back.
“Way to go, you two. And right now we are covering much of my planned demolition of that brace, which is actually very weak when you scrutinize it honestly.”
The class nodded in agreement again, with the only holdout being Jude.
“Now Jim has posed an important point about recently discovered fossils, and models and drawings in museums. Open any science journal, or newspaper, for that matter, and someone has discovered a new missing link for birds or reptiles or cavemen. The publication then has a photo or a drawing of it, with front page headlines.”
“Yeah,” Thad adamantly responded. “And six to twelve months later some other scientist is trashing the discovery as a fake or a hoax or just plain scientific baloney. I’ve followed a number of these ‘discoveries’ over the years, like Tikkalick, hoping to score a Pulitzer-winning article or even a book on one of these so-called discoveries. Check it out; several months later they are redacted or entirely retracted—quietly way back on page forty-seven.”
Jim then turned around to face Thad. “What about the museums where they have the models and drawings of this stuff. They show fish growing legs, like the Tikkalick thing you mentioned, and reptiles and dinosaurs growing wings to become birds.”
Philip slightly lifted his hand from his desk; then lowered it again momentarily, fighting with his conscience as whether to answer or not. I noticed from his eyes and strained facial expression that he had the answer.
“Philip!” I called in a commanding voice. He knew, I knew, he knew. The entire class turned and all eyes were focused on him.
“Okay, okay. These are museum models and drawings … if they had the real fossil, or even a replica of the fossil they claim proves a transitional organism or some provable aspect of evolution …” he took a deep breath, “wouldn’t they show it to you?”
“Models, drawings, fish growing legs, dinosaurs growing w
ings.” Jim smacked himself on the forehead and started to laugh. “I shoulda had a V-8.” The entire class broke into hysterics as they realized the con game, and they are the patsies.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
DINOSAUR TRICK
“Are any of you familiar with the British Museum of Natural History in London, England?”
Virtually all the hands went up. Pete then contributed, “That museum holds more fossils than any other museum in the world, I believe.”
“Pete, have you heard of Dr. Colin Patterson?”
“Yeah, one of my professors mentioned in a lecture that he was a head honcho there. He has since died.”
“Correct. Dr. Colin Patterson was senior paleontologist at the British Museum. Bring up on your tablets his personal letter written April 10, 1979, to Luther D. Sunderland. Patterson was one of the honest evolutionists.”
“Pete, after you find it, start with the part of the quote which begins with ‘I fully agree with…’”
“Got it.” He cleared his throat first.
“‘I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualize such transformations, but where would he get the information from. I could not honestly provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader?”’
Pete looked up and around at his classmates. They are just shaking their heads in disbelief.
Jude half mumbling, but audible enough for all to hear, muttered, “That’s just one guy’s opinion.”
Pete slowly stood up, and did not even bother turning to face Jude. “Just one guy’s opinion?” he said in a restrained tone. “Just one guy’s opinion?” he boomed. “Senior paleontologist at perhaps the most prestigious natural history museum in the world that has amassed, I don’t know, a million fossils? That was not an ignorant statement - that was just plain stupid!” He sat down quietly without ever turning to face Jude.