Subject: Chapter 4: "Missing Links" are Missing!
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Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 21:07:55 -0500

The Evolution of a
Creationist

4  "MISSING LINKS" ARE
MISSING

As a college student I was convinced that evolution was
true and that, in time, scientists would find the missing pieces. I
thought science would ultimately provide us with an unbroken chain of
evidence supporting the evolution and relationship of all things. Many
scientists are still hoping for this evidence. However, Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and
Paleontology at Harvard, believes that the unbroken chain of
evolutionary evidence will never be found -- that what we see in the
fossils and in living creatures is more accurately explained with the
creation model. Gould is still an evolutionist, but he writes:

"The birds of Massachusetts
and the bugs in my backyard are unambiguous members of species
recognized in the same way by all experienced observers.

This notion of species as
"natural kinds"...fit splendidly with creationist tenets....

But how could a division of
the organic world into discrete entities be justified by an evolutionary
theory that proclaimed ceaseless change as the fundamental fact of
nature?" [1]

Dr. Gould is making a statement about what we see as
opposed to what evolution theorizes we ought to be seeing. We see
discrete entities, distinct species. In the fossil record, there are
fish, turtles and cockroaches. They are individually distinct,
identifiable creatures. In life, we can also see fish, turtles and
cockroaches. We can identify them. They are not l/2 fish and l/2 turtle
or l/2 turtle and l/2 cockroach. We do not see elephants evolving fins
or whales evolving wings. The discrete entities we see in the fossil
record and in life are not "questionable" species. They are not
transitional forms, as evolution would require. This is a problem for
the evolutionist. If evolution is true, creatures should not be so
easily identifiable. Every creature should be difficult to categorize,
classify and name, if evolution is correct (and life is "evolving
along"). Could it be that evolution is not correct? That each animal is
easily identifiable (as giraffe or beetle or fish or turtle or
cockroach) truly does "fit splendidly with creationist tenets."
Ceaseless change in the fossils or living plants and animals does not
appear to be "...the fundamental fact of nature".[2]
(Emphasis added).

GOD CREATED KINDS

God tells us He created each plant and animal after its
own kind (Genesis 1:11, 12, 21, 24, 25). Nothing evolved from some lower
life form and nothing is presently evolving into a higher life form.
From a creationist position, what we see in the fossil record and in
life is exactly what we would expect to see. The lack of transitional
forms is why evolutionists have the "missing link" problem, although
some deny this. The "missing links" are missing. They are
completely absent in the fossil record and in living organisms. They
never will be found. God created each plant and animal after its own
kind, therefore, you would not expect to see "missing links".

"MISSING LINKS" OR "UNBROKEN
TIES"

The evolutionist's propaganda machine constantly barrages
us through public TV, magazines and newspapers with broad ambiguities
and undocumented claims supporting evolutionary theory. A letter in the
Dallas Morning News by Drs. Alvin and Joel
Taurog of Southwestern Medical School exemplifies this type of
propaganda:

"Biological evolution
asserts that all living organisms are interrelated by unbroken ties of
genealogy. Although referred to as a theory, evolution is as much a fact
as anything discovered by science, as well confirmed as the rotation of
the planets around the sun or the roundness of the earth. The concept of
evolution is central to biology and a massive body of evidence
corroborates the evolutionary origin of all living organisms, including
humans. While much remains to be learned regarding the mechanisms of
evolution, the evolution of species is accepted by biologists as proven
fact." [3]

Let us evaluate this paragraph of Drs. Taurog. If "...all
living organisms are interrelated by unbroken ties of genealogy", then
the leading evolutionary thinker of Harvard, Dr.
Stephen Jay Gould, is wrong. Gould states:

"The absence of fossil
evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic
design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct
functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and
nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution." [4]

"Gradualistic evolution" means evolution of one creature
into a more sophisticated and more complex creature over long periods of
time. One creature gradually becomes another if given enough time.
Gradualistic evolution, if true, should have evidence of transitional
intermediate life forms in fossils and in living animals. Gould
continues:

"All paleontologists know
that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of
intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are
characteristically abrupt." [5]

What Gould is saying is that the missing links remain
missing. There are no transitional (in-between) forms. No plant or
animal is evolving into a higher form as far as the fossils can
confirm.

"SUNRISE" OR "EARTH
TURN"

Where are these "unbroken ties"
referred to by Drs. Taurog? They present no scientific evidence to
support their view. The evidence is only implied. They do appear to
erect a "straw-man-creationist" and to take a few sideways swipes at
him. In mentioning the "rotation of the planets around the sun or the
roundness of the earth" as true science, are they implying that the
Bible and creationists believe in the "sun rising on a flat earth"? How
accurate are these doctors in the use of language? Do they say to a
patient, "Did you see the beautiful sunrise this morning?" Or
would they be scientifically accurate and ask "Did you see the beautiful
earth turn this morning?" The Bible uses common, ordinary
language. That the earth is not flat, but a sphere is taught in Isaiah
40:22: "It is He that sitteth
upon (above) the circle of the earth..." (KJV). The Bible teaches
that as God looks down upon earth, it appears as a sphere or circle.
Psalm 19 (New American Standard Version) is a scripture that uses normal
language and refers to the sun rising. The Bible is not inaccurate
because it uses common figures of speech.

Where can we find the "massive body of evidence (that)
corroborates the evolutionary origin of all living creatures, including
humans" (as Drs. Taurog allege)? The "massive body of evidence" proving
the evolution of man would not fill a single casket according to
evolutionist and prolific author Dr. Lyall Watson:

"The fossils that decorate
our family tree are so scarce that there are still more scientists than
specimens. The remarkable fact is that all the physical evidence we have
for human evolution can still be placed, with room to spare, inside a
single coffin!" [6]

Drs. Alvin and Joel Taurog say still
more:

"When religion and science
come into conflict, it is generally in the realm of belief....Scientific
belief is based solely upon evidence that is validated by observation,
experiment and prediction; neither religious belief, nor any other
belief system, is subject to these constraints." [7]

Apparently, Drs. Taurog believe that the evolution model
of one cell to man is science and thus can be validated with the
scientific method. Creation science is apparently religious belief in
their view. They add, "The interrelationships among living organisms
from microbes to man have never been clearer,..." It is not clear
precisely what these doctors are referring to, but from the smallest
life forms to the largest, from the simplest to the most complex, there
is no scientific evidence to prove that they (small to large or simple
to complex) are related as ancestors to or progeny from each other.
Natural History of May 1977 (p. 14) published the words of Dr. Stephen Jay Gould:

"The extreme rarity of
transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of
paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data
only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference,
however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils... We fancy ourselves as
the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored
account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad
that we never see the very process we profess to
study."

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY DISPROVES
EVOLUTION

Even at the level of molecules, evidence to support
evolution is lacking. In chapter 2, we discussed the fact that at the
cellular level of living creatures there are important differences that
distinguish between basic kinds of flesh. For instance, the cells that
make up the flesh of birds and fish are not the same. Scientists are
studying even smaller entities than cells as they examine the molecules
of the cell. This field of study is named Molecular Biology.

A book that every Christian family (and non-Christian, as
well) should have is, Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of
Biological Origins. Written by creationists as a supplemental high
school biology textbook supporting the view that life demands a
designer, this book deals with the molecular evidence for creation.

"The study of living things
on the molecular level is a relatively new field. The information that
scientists derive from molecular biology may be used to compare and
categorize organisms, a field known as biochemical taxonomy.
Biochemical analysis holds out the promise of making taxonomy a more
precise science, because it allows differences between various organisms
to be quantified and measured....

Proponents of intelligent
design read similarity in structure as a reflection of similarity in
function. All living organisms must survive in the same universe and
must fit its ecological web. All must fit into a food chain. The need to
function within a common universe puts common physical and chemical
requirements on all organisms. It would be both logical and efficient
for an intelligent agent to design living things with a common
biochemical base....

The significant new
contribution biochemistry offers is a mathematically quantifiable means
of determining how similar classes of organisms are. But when several
similarities are put side by side, the pattern that emerges
contradicts all expectations based on evolution." [8]
(Emphasis added).

Animals that evolutionists have always believed to be
closely related in the evolutionary chain are now known to be unrelated
when studied at the molecular level. Kenyon and Davis continue:

"To use classic evolutionary
terminology, amphibians are intermediate between fish and the other
land-dwelling vertebrates. Yet, analysis of their amino acids does not
place amphibians in an intermediate position. This is true no matter
what species of amphibian we choose for comparison. Based upon the
evolutionary series, we would expect some amphibians to be closer to
fish ("primitive" species) and others to be closer to reptiles
("advanced" species). But this is not the case. No matter which species
are taken as the basis for comparison, the distance between amphibians
and fish, or between amphibians and reptiles, is always the
same....

The revolution in molecular
biology has given us new, mathematically quantifiable data on the
similarities in living things. But the data have served to support a
picture of the organic world consistent with the theory of intelligent
design." [9]
(Emphasis added).

Author Michael Denton [Evolution: A Theory in Crisis
(Harper and Row, 1986)], a Ph.D. in molecular biology (who is not a
creationist as far as I know), argues that evolution from one cell to
man is not indicated at the level of the molecule. After looking at
molecules for evidence for "missing links" between the different classes
of creatures, Denton writes (p. 286):

"There is a total absence of
partially inclusive or intermediate classes, and therefore none of the
groups traditionally cited by evolutionary biologists as intermediate
gives even the slightest hint of a supposedly transitional
character."

Of course, if there is no evidence for evolutionary
relationships at the level of molecules, which are the basic building
blocks of nature, then the idea of evolution of enzymes, proteins,
plasma and tissue is totally absurd. The Bible says:

For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens

(He is the God who formed the earth and made it,

He established it and did not create it a waste place,

But formed it to be
inhabited).
I am the Lord, and there is none else...

And there is no other God besides Me,
A
righteous God and a Savior;
There is none except Me.
(Isaiah 45:18,21b)

Dr. Vincent Sarich, an evolutionist and
Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, did a series of
studies at the molecular level on the evolution of man. At first, his
studies were scorned by his evolutionary colleagues. He had the audacity
to announce in 1967 that Ramapithecus (proclaimed by Elwyn Simons and David Pilbeam of Yale to be one
of the earliest ancestors of man) was not at all ancestral to man, but
more probably an ancestor to the orangutan.

"The year was 1967. Sarich
and his partner, Allan Wilson, were comparing blood proteins from human
beings, chimpanzees and gorillas -- finding them remarkably similar.
After analyzing the slight differences, they decided that the ancestors
of human beings must have diverged from those of the African apes only
about 5 million years ago, instead of the 20 million to 30 million years
that fossil evidence seemed to suggest.

Their conclusion was
regarded by many paleontologists as heresy. It was bad enough that
Sarich and Wilson were challenging the conventional estimate of the age
of the human line. Worse, they were doing it with test tubes and
biochemistry -- all but ignoring the fossils on which so much
evolutionary theory was based. Most experts then believed that human
beings could trace their ancestry at least as far back as a 14
million-year-old creature called Ramapithecus, and paleontologist Elwyn
Simons, then of Yale, spoke for many of his colleagues when he
pronounced the Sarich-Wilson work "impossible to believe."

Times have changed. While
Simons still thinks Ramapithecus may be a human ancestor, he has little
company. New fossil discoveries have convinced many experts that the
animal was ancestral to the orangutan." [10]

Molecular research is eliminating the supposed
evolutionary ancestors of people, one by one.

[1] Stephen Jay Gould,
"A Quahog is a Quahog," Natural
History, Vol. 88 (7), August-September, 1979, p.
18.

[2]
ibid.

[3]
Drs. Alvin
and Joel Taurog, Dallas Morning
News,March 6, 1987, Letters to the Editor.

[4] Stephen Jay Gould,
"Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?", Paleobiology, Vol. 6 (1),
January, 1980, p. 127, as quoted in The Quote Book, p.
8.

[5] Stephen Jay Gould,
"The Return of Hopeful Monsters," Natural History, Vol. LXXVI (6),
June-July, 1977, p. 24. Quoted in

The Quote
Book, p.
8.

[6] Dr. Lyall Watson, "The Water People," Science Digest, Vol. 90, May,
1982, p. 44.

[7] Drs. Alvin and Joel
Taurog, Dallas Morning News,
March 6, 1987, Letters to the Editor.

[8] Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon, Of Pandas and People (Dallas:
Haughton Publishing Co., 1989), pp. 34-36.

[9] ibid, pp.
37,38.

[10] Kevin McKean, "Preaching the Molecular Gospel," Discover, Vol. 4 (7), July,
1983, p. 34.

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