Foreword

Anyone who seeks an answer to the question of how living things, including himself, came into existence, will encounter two distinct explanations. The first is "creation," the idea that all living things came into existence as a consequence of an intelligent design. The second explanation is the theory of "evolution," which asserts that living things are not the products of an intelligent design, but of coincidental causes and natural processes.

For a century and a half now, the theory of evolution has received extensive support from the scientific community. The science of biology is defined in terms of evolutionist concepts. That is why, between the two explanations of creation and evolution, the majority of people assume the evolutionist explanation to be scientific. Accordingly, they believe evolution to be a theory supported by the observational findings of science, while creation is thought to be a belief based on faith. As a matter of fact, however, scientific findings do not support the theory of evolution. Findings from the last two decades in particular openly contradict the basic assumptions of this theory. Many branches of science, such as paleontology, biochemistry, population genetics, comparative anatomy and biophysics, indicate that natural processes and coincidental effects cannot explain life, as the theory of evolution proposes.

In this website, we will analyze this scientific crisis faced by the theory of evolution. This work rests solely upon scientific findings. Those advocating the theory of evolution on behalf of scientific truth should confront these findings and question the presumptions they have so far held. Refusal to do this would mean openly accepting that their adherence to the theory of evolution is dogmatic rather than scientific.

A Short History

Despite having its roots in ancient Greece, the theory of evolution was first brought to the attention of the scientific world in the nineteenth century. The most thoroughly considered view of evolution was expressed by the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, in his Zoological Philosophy (1809). Lamarck thought that all living things were endowed with a vital force that drove them to evolve toward greater complexity. He also thought that organisms could pass on to their offspring traits acquired during their lifetimes. As an example of this line of reasoning, Lamarck suggested that the long neck of the giraffe evolved when a short-necked ancestor took to browsing on the leaves of trees instead of on grass.

This evolutionary model of Lamarck's was invalidated by the discovery of the laws of genetic inheritance. In the middle of the twentieth century, the discovery of the structure of DNA revealed that the nuclei of the cells of living organisms possess very special genetic information, and that this information could not be altered by "acquired traits." In other words, during its lifetime, even though a giraffe managed to make its neck a few centimeters longer by extending its neck to upper branches, this trait would not pass to its offspring. In brief, the Lamarckian view was simply refuted by scientific findings, and went down in history as a flawed assumption.

However, the evolutionary theory formulated by another natural scientist who lived a couple of generations after Lamarck proved to be more influential. This natural scientist was Charles Robert Darwin, and the theory he formulated is known as "Darwinism."

The Birth of Darwinism

Charles Darwin based his theory on various observations he made as a young naturalist on board the H.M.S Beagle, which sailed in late 1831 on a five-year official voyage around the world. Young Darwin was heavily influenced by the diversity of species he observed, especially of the different Galapagos Island finches. The differences in the beaks of these birds, Darwin thought, were a result of their adaptation to their different environments.

After this voyage, Darwin started to visit animal markets in England. He observed that breeders produced new breeds of cow by mating animals with different characteristics. This experience, together with the different finch species he observed in the Galapagos Islands, contributed to the formulation of his theory. In 1859, he published his views in his book The Origin of Species. In this book, he postulated that all species had descended from a single ancestor, evolving from one another over time by slight variations.

What made Darwin's theory different from Lamarck's was his emphasis on "natural selection." Darwin theorized that there is a struggle for survival in nature, and that natural selection is the survival of strong species, which can adapt to their environment. Darwin adopted the following line of reasoning:

Within a particular species, there are natural and coincidental variations. For instance some cows are bigger than others, while some have darker colors. Natural selection selects the favorable traits. The process of natural selection thus causes an increase of favorable genes within a population, which results in the features of that population being better adapted to local conditions. Over time these changes may be significant enough to cause a new species to arise.

Charles Darwin developed his theory when science was still in a primitive state. Under primitive microscopes like these, life appeared to have a very simple structure. This error formed the basis of Darwinism.

However, this "theory of evolution by natural selection" gave rise to doubts from the very first:

1- What were the "natural and coincidental variations" referred to by Darwin? It was true that some cows were bigger than others, while some had darker colors, yet how could these variations provide an explanation for the diversity in animal and plant species?

2- Darwin asserted that "Living beings evolved gradually." In this case, there should have lived millions of "transitional forms." Yet there was no trace of these theoretical creatures in the fossil record. Darwin gave considerable thought to this problem, and eventually arrived at the conclusion that "further research would provide these fossils."

3- How could natural selection explain complex organs, such as eyes, ears or wings? How can it be advocated that these organs evolved gradually, bearing in mind that they would fail to function if they had even a single part missing?

4- Before considering these questions, consider the following: How did the first organism, the so-called ancestor of all species according to Darwin, come into existence? Could natural processes give life to something which was originally inanimate?

Darwin was, at least, aware of some these questions, as can be seen from the chapter "Difficulties of the Theory." However, the answers he provided had no scientific validity. H.S. Lipson, a British physicist, makes the following comments about these "difficulties" of Darwin's:

On reading The Origin of Species, I found that Darwin was much less sure himself than he is often represented to be; the chapter entitled "Difficulties of the Theory" for example, shows considerable self-doubt. As a physicist, I was particularly intrigued by his comments on how the eye would have arisen.1

Darwin invested all his hopes in advanced scientific research, which he expected to dispel the "difficulties of the theory." However, contrary to his expectations, more recent scientific findings have merely increased these difficulties.

The Problem of the Origin of Life

In his book, Darwin never mentioned the origin of life. The primitive understanding of science in his time rested on the assumption that living things had very simple structures. Since mediaeval times, spontaneous generation, the theory that non-living matter could come together to form living organisms, had been widely accepted. It was believed that insects came into existence from leftover bits of food. It was further imagined that mice came into being from wheat. Interesting experiments were conducted to prove this theory. Some wheat was placed on a dirty piece of cloth, and it was believed that mice would emerge in due course.

Louis Pasteur destroyed the belief that life could be created from inanimate substances.

Similarly, the fact that maggots appeared in meat was believed to be evidence for spontaneous generation. However, it was only realized some time later that maggots did not appear in meat spontaneously, but were carried by flies in the form of larvae, invisible to the naked eye.

Even in the period when Darwin's Origin of Species was written, the belief that bacteria could come into existence from inanimate matter was widespread.

However, five years after the publication of Darwin's book, Louis Pasteur announced his results after long studies and experiments, which disproved spontaneous generation, a cornerstone of Darwin's theory. In his triumphal lecture at the Sorbonne in 1864, Pasteur said, "Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow struck by this simple experiment."2

Advocates of the theory of evolution refused to accept Pasteur's findings for a long time. However, as scientific progress revealed the complex structure of the cell, the idea that life could come into being coincidentally faced an even greater impasse. We shall consider this subject in some detail in this book.

The Problem of Genetics

Another subject that posed a quandary for Darwin's theory was inheritance. At the time when Darwin developed his theory, the question of how living beings transmitted their traits to other generations-that is, how inheritance took place-was not completely understood. That is why the naive belief that inheritance was transmitted through blood was commonly accepted.

Vague beliefs about inheritance led Darwin to base his theory on completely false grounds. Darwin assumed that natural selection was the "mechanism of evolution." Yet one question remained unanswered: How would these "useful traits" be selected and transmitted from one generation to the next? At this point, Darwin embraced the Lamarckian theory, that is, "the inheritance of acquired traits." In his book The Great Evolution Mystery, Gordon R. Taylor, a researcher advocating the theory of evolution, expresses the view that Darwin was heavily influenced by Lamarck:

Lamarckism... is known as the inheritance of acquired characteristics... Darwin himself, as a matter of fact, was inclined to believe that such inheritance occurred and cited the reported case of a man who had lost his fingers and bred sons without fingers... [Darwin] had not, he said, gained a single idea from Lamarck. This was doubly ironical, for Darwin repeatedly toyed with the idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics and, if it is so dreadful, it is Darwin who should be denigrated rather than Lamarck... In the 1859 edition of his work, Darwin refers to 'changes of external conditions' causing variation but subsequently these conditions are described as directing variation and cooperating with natural selection in directing it... Every year he attributed more and more to the agency of use or disuse... By 1868 when he published Varieties of Animals and Plants under Domestication he gave a whole series of examples of supposed Lamarckian inheritance: such as a man losing part of his little finger and all his sons being born with deformed little fingers, and boys born with foreskins much reduced in length as a result of generations of circumcision.3

However, Lamarck's thesis, as we have seen above, was disproved by the laws of genetic inheritance discovered by the Austrian monk and botanist, Gregor Mendel. The concept of "useful traits" was therefore left unsupported. Genetic laws showed that acquired traits are not passed on, and that genetic inheritance takes place according to certain unchanging laws. These laws supported the view that species remain unchanged. No matter how much the cows that Darwin saw in England's animal fairs bred, the species itself would never change: cows would always remain cows.

The genetic laws discovered by Mendel proved very damaging to the theory of evolution.

Gregor Mendel announced the laws of genetic inheritance that he discovered as a result of long experiment and observation in a scientific paper published in 1865. But this paper only attracted the attention of the scientific world towards the end of the century. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the truth of these laws had been accepted by the whole scientific community. This was a serious dead-end for Darwin's theory, which tried to base the concept of "useful traits" on Lamarck.

Here we must correct a general misapprehension: Mendel opposed not only Lamarck's model of evolution, but also Darwin's. As the article "Mendel's Opposition to Evolution and to Darwin," published in the Journal of Heredity, makes clear, "he [Mendel] was familiar with The Origin of Species ...and he was opposed to Darwin's theory; Darwin was arguing for descent with modification through natural selection, Mendel was in favor of the orthodox doctrine of special creation."4

The laws discovered by Mendel put Darwinism in a very difficult position. For these reasons, scientists who supported Darwinism tried to develop a different model of evolution in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Thus was born "neo-Darwinism."

The Efforts of Neo-Darwinism

A group of scientists who were determined to reconcile Darwinism with the science of genetics, in one way or another, came together at a meeting organized by the Geological Society of America in 1941. After long discussion, they agreed on ways to create a new interpretation of Darwinism and over the next few years, specialists produced a synthesis of their fields into a revised theory of evolution.

The scientists who participated in establishing the new theory included the geneticists G. Ledyard Stebbins and Theodosius Dobzhansky, the zoologists Ernst Mayr and Julian Huxley, the paleontologists George Gaylord Simpson and Glenn L. Jepsen, and the mathematical geneticists Sir Ronald A. Fisher and Sewall Wright.5

To counter the fact of "genetic stability" (genetic homeostasis), this group of scientists employed the concept of "mutation," which had been proposed by the Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries at the beginning of the 20^th century. Mutations were defects that occurred, for unknown reasons, in the inheritance mechanism of living things. Organisms undergoing mutation developed some unusual structures, which deviated from the genetic information they inherited from their parents. The concept of "random mutation" was supposed to provide the answer to the question of the origin of the advantageous variations which caused living organisms to evolve according to Darwin's theory-a phenomenon that Darwin himself was unable to explain, but simply tried to side-step by referring to Lamarck. The Geological Society of America group named this new theory, which was formulated by adding the concept of mutation to Darwin's natural selection thesis, the "synthetic theory of evolution" or the "modern synthesis". In a short time, this theory came to be known as "neo-Darwinism" and its supporters as "neo-Darwinists."

The architects of Neo-Darwinism: Theodosius Dobzhansky, Ernst Mayr, and Julian Huxley.

Yet there was a serious problem: It was true that mutations changed the genetic data of living organisms, yet this change always occurred to the detriment of the living thing concerned. All observed mutations ended up with disfigured, weak, or diseased individuals and, sometimes, led to the death of the organism. Hence, in an attempt to find examples of "useful mutations" which improve the genetic data in living organisms, neo-Darwinists conducted many experiments and observations. For decades, they conducted mutation experiments on fruit flies and various other species. However, in none of these experiments could a mutation which improved the genetic data in a living being be seen.

Today the issue of mutation is still a great impasse for Darwinism. Despite the fact that the theory of natural selection considers mutations to be the unique source of "useful changes," no mutations of any kind have been observed that are actually useful (that is, that improve the genetic information). In the following chapter, we will consider this issue in detail.

Another impasse for neo-Darwinists came from the fossil record. Even in Darwin's time, fossils were already posing an important obstacle to the theory. While Darwin himself accepted the lack of fossils of "intermediate species," he also predicted that further research would provide evidence of these lost transitional forms. However, despite all the paleontologists' efforts, the fossil record continued to remain a serious obstacle to the theory. One by one, concepts such as "vestigial organs," "embryological recapitulation" and "homology" lost all significance in the light of new scientific findings. All these issues are dealt with more fully in the remaining chapters of this book.

A Theory in Crisis

We have just reviewed in summary form the impasse Darwinism found itself in from the day it was first proposed. We will now start to analyze the enormous dimensions of this deadlock. In doing this, our intention is to show that the theory of evolution is not indisputable scientific truth, as many people assume or try to impose on others. On the contrary, there is a glaring contradiction when the theory of evolution is compared to scientific findings in such diverse fields as the origin of life, population genetics, comparative anatomy, paleontology, and biochemistry. In a word, evolution is a theory in "crisis."

Michael Denton

That is a description by Prof. Michael Denton, an Australian biochemist and a renowned critic of Darwinism. In his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985), Denton examined the theory in the light of different branches of science, and concluded that the theory of natural selection is very far from providing an explanation for life on earth.6 Denton's intention in offering his criticism was not to show the correctness of another view, but only to compare Darwinism with the scientific facts. During the last two decades, many other scientists have published significant works questioning the validity of Darwin's theory of evolution.

In this book, we will examine this crisis. No matter how much concrete evidence is provided, some readers may be unwilling to abandon their positions, and will continue to adhere to the theory of evolution. However, reading this book will still be of use to them, since it will help them to see the real situation of the theory they believe in, in the light of scientific findings.

The Mechanisms of Darwinism

According to the theory of evolution, living things came into existence by means of coincidences, and developed further as a consequence of coincidental effects. Approximately 3.8 billion years ago, when no living organisms existed on earth, the first simple single-celled organisms (prokaryotes) emerged. Over time, more complex cells (eukaryotes) and multicellular organisms came into being. In other words, according to Darwinism, the forces of nature built simple inanimate elements into highly complex and flawless designs.

In evaluating this claim, one should first consider whether such forces in fact exist in nature. More explicitly, are there really natural mechanisms which can accomplish evolution according to the Darwinian scenario?

The neo-Darwinist model, which we shall take as the mainstream theory of evolution today, argues that life has evolved through two natural mechanisms: natural selection and mutation. The theory basically asserts that natural selection and mutation are two complementary mechanisms. The origin of evolutionary modifications lies in random mutations that take place in the genetic structures of living things. The traits brought about by mutations are selected by the mechanism of natural selection, and by this means living things evolve. However, when we look further into this theory, we find that there is no such evolutionary mechanism. Neither natural selection nor mutations can cause different species to evolve into one another, and the claim that they can is completely unfounded.

Natural Selection

The concept of natural selection was the basis of Darwinism. This assertion is stressed even in the title of the book in which Darwin proposed his theory: The Origin of Species, by means of Natural Selection…

Natural selection is based on the assumption that in nature there is a constant struggle for survival. It favors organisms with traits that best enable them to cope with pressures exerted by the environment. At the end of this struggle, the strongest ones, the ones most suited to natural conditions, survive. For example, in a herd of deer under threat from predators, those individuals that can run fastest will naturally survive. As a consequence, the herd of deer will eventually consist of only fast-running individuals.

However, no matter how long this process goes on, it will not transform those deer into another species. The weak deer are eliminated, the strong survive, but, since no alteration in their genetic data takes place, no transformation of a species occurs. Despite the continuous processes of selection, deer continue to exist as deer.

The deer example is true for all species. In any population, natural selection only eliminates those weak, or unsuited individuals who are unable to adapt to the natural conditions in their habitat. It does not produce new species, new genetic information, or new organs. That is, it cannot cause anything to evolve. Darwin, too, accepted this fact, stating that "Natural selection can do nothing until favourable individual differences or variations occur."7 That is why neo-Darwinism had to add the mutation mechanism as a factor altering genetic information to the concept of natural selection.

We will deal with mutations next. But before proceeding, we need to further examine the concept of natural selection in order to see the contradictions inherent in it.

A Struggle for Survival?

Darwin had been influenced by Thomas Malthus when he developed his thesis of the struggle for life. But observations and experiments proved Malthus wrong.

The essential assumption of the theory of natural selection holds that there is a fierce struggle for survival in nature, and every living thing cares only for itself. At the time Darwin proposed this theory, the ideas of Thomas Malthus, the British classical economist, were an important influence on him. Malthus maintained that human beings were inevitably in a constant struggle for survival, basing his views on the fact that population, and hence the need for food resources, increases geometrically, while food resources themselves increase only arithmetically. The result is that population size is inevitably checked by factors in the environment, such as hunger and disease. Darwin adapted Malthus's vision of a fierce struggle for survival among human beings to nature at large, and claimed that "natural selection" is a consequence of this struggle.

Further research, however, revealed that there was no struggle for life in nature as Darwin had postulated. As a result of extensive research into animal groups in the 1960s and 1970s, V. C. Wynne-Edwards, a British zoologist, concluded that living things balance their population in an interesting way, which prevents competition for food. Animal groups were simply managing their population on the basis of their food resources. Population was regulated not by elimination of the weak through factors like epidemics or starvation, but by instinctive control mechanisms. In other words, animals controlled their numbers not by fierce competition, as Darwin suggested, but by limiting reproduction.8

Even plants exhibited examples of population control, which invalidated Darwin's suggestion of selection by means of competition. The botanist A. D. Bradshaw's observations indicated that during reproduction, plants behaved according to the "density" of the planting, and limited their reproduction if the area was highly populated with plants.9 On the other hand, examples of sacrifice observed in animals such as ants and bees display a model completely opposed to the Darwinist struggle for survival.

In recent years, research has revealed findings regarding self-sacrifice even in bacteria. These living things without brains or nervous systems, totally devoid of any capacity for thought, kill themselves to save other bacteria when they are invaded by viruses.10

These examples surely invalidate the basic assumption of natural selection-the absolute struggle for survival. It is true that there is competition in nature; however, there are clear models of self-sacrifice and solidarity, as well.

Observation and Experiments

Apart from the theoretical weaknesses mentioned above, the theory of evolution by natural selection comes up against a fundamental impasse when faced with concrete scientific findings. The scientific value of a theory must be assessed according to its success or failure in experiment and observation. Evolution by natural selection fails on both counts.

Since Darwin's time, there has not been a single shred of evidence put forward to show that natural selection causes living things to evolve. Colin Patterson, the senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History in London and a prominent evolutionist, stresses that natural selection has never been observed to have the ability to cause things to evolve:

No one has ever produced a species by the mechanisms of natural selection. No one has ever got near it, and most of the current argument in neo-Darwinism is about this question.11

Pierre-Paul Grassé, a well-known French zoologist and critic of Darwinism, has these words to say in "Evolution and Natural Selection," a chapter of his book The Evolution of Living Organisms.

The "evolution in action" of J. Huxley and other biologists is simply the observation of demographic facts, local fluctuations of genotypes, geographical distributions. Often the species concerned have remained practically unchanged for hundreds of centuries! Fluctuation as a result of circumstances, with prior modification of the genome, does not imply evolution, and we have tangible proof of this in many panchronic species [i.e. living fossils that remain unchanged for millions of years].12

A close look at a few "observed examples of natural selection" presented by biologists who advocate the theory of evolution, would reveal that, in reality, they do not provide any evidence for evolution.

The True Story of Industrial Melanism

When evolutionist sources are examined, one inevitably sees that the example of moths in England during the Industrial Revolution is cited as an example of evolution by natural selection. This is put forward as the most concrete example of evolution observed, in textbooks, magazines, and even academic sources. In actuality, though, that example has nothing to do with evolution at all.

Let us first recall what is actually said: According to this account, around the onset of the Industrial Revolution in England, the color of tree barks around Manchester was quite light. Because of this, dark-colored moths resting on those trees could easily be noticed by the birds that fed on them, and therefore they had very little chance of survival. Fifty years later, in woodlands where industrial pollution has killed the lichens, the bark of the trees had darkened, and now the light-colored moths became the most hunted, since they were the most easily noticed. As a result, the proportion of light-colored to dark-colored moths decreased. Evolutionists believe this to be a great piece of evidence for their theory. They take refuge and solace in window-dressing, showing how light-colored moths "evolved" into dark-colored ones.

The top picture shows trees with moths on them before the Industrial Revolution, and the bottom picture shows them at a later date. Because the trees had grown darker, birds were able catch light-colored moths more easily and their numbers decreased. However, this is not an example of "evolution," because no new species emerged; all that happened was that the ratio of the two already existing types in an already existing species changed.

However, although we believe these facts to be correct, it should be quite clear that they can in no way be used as evidence for the theory of evolution, since no new form arose that had not existed before. Dark colored moths had existed in the moth population before the Industrial Revolution. Only the relative proportions of the existing moth varieties in the population changed. The moths had not acquired a new trait or organ, which would cause "speciation."13 In order for one moth species to turn into another living species, a bird for example, new additions would have had to be made to its genes. That is, an entirely separate genetic program would have had to be loaded so as to include information about the physical traits of the bird.

This is the answer to be given to the evolutionist story of Industrial Melanism. However, there is a more interesting side to the story: Not just its interpretation, but the story itself is flawed. As molecular biologist Jonathan Wells explains in his book Icons of Evolution, the story of the peppered moths, which is included in every evolutionary biology book and has therefore, become an "icon" in this sense, does not reflect the truth. Wells discusses in his book how Bernard Kettlewell's experiment, which is known as the "experimental proof" of the story, is actually a scientific scandal. Some basic elements of this scandal are:

- Many experiments conducted after Kettlewell's revealed that only one type of these moths rested on tree trunks, and all other types preferred to rest beneath small, horizontal branches. Since 1980 it has become clear that peppered moths do not normally rest on tree trunks. In 25 years of fieldwork, many scientists such as Cyril Clarke and Rory Howlett, Michael Majerus, Tony Liebert, and Paul Brakefield concluded that in Kettlewell's experiment, moths were forced to act atypically, therefore, the test results could not be accepted as scientific.14

- Scientists who tested Kettlewell's conclusions came up with an even more interesting result: Although the number of light moths would be expected to be larger in the less polluted regions of England, the dark moths there numbered four times as many as the light ones. This meant that there was no correlation between the moth population and the tree trunks as claimed by Kettlewell and repeated by almost all evolutionist sources.

- As the research deepened, the scandal changed dimension: "The moths on tree trunks" photographed by Kettlewell, were actually dead moths. Kettlewell used dead specimens glued or pinned to tree trunks and then photographed them. In truth, there was little chance of taking such a picture as the moths rested not on tree trunks but underneath the leaves.15

These facts were uncovered by the scientific community only in the late 1990s. The collapse of the myth of Industrial Melanism, which had been one of the most treasured subjects in "Introduction to Evolution" courses in universities for decades, greatly disappointed evolutionists. One of them, Jerry Coyne, remarked:

My own reaction resembles the dismay attending my discovery, at the age of six, that it was my father and not Santa who brought the presents on Christmas Eve.16

Thus, "the most famous example of natural selection" was relegated to the trash-heap of history as a scientific scandal-which was inevitable, because natural selection is not an "evolutionary mechanism," contrary to what evolutionists claim.

In short, natural selection is capable neither of adding a new organ to a living organism, nor of removing one, nor of changing an organism of one species into that of another. The "greatest" evidence put forward since Darwin has been able to go no further than the "industrial melanism" of moths in England.

Why Natural Selection Can not Explain Complexity

As we showed at the beginning, the greatest problem for the theory of evolution by natural selection, is that it cannot enable new organs or traits to emerge in living things. Natural selection cannot develop a species' genetic data; therefore, it cannot be used to account for the emergence of new species. The greatest defender of the theory of punctuated equilibrium, Stephen Jay Gould, refers to this impasse of natural selection as follows;

The essence of Darwinism lies in a single phrase: natural selection is the creative force of evolutionary change. No one denies that selection will play a negative role in eliminating the unfit. Darwinian theories require that it create the fit as well.17

Another of the misleading methods that evolutionists employ on the issue of natural selection is their effort to present this mechanism as an intelligent designer. However,natural selection has no intelligence. It does not possess a will that can decide what is good and what is bad for living things. As a result, natural selection cannot explain biological systems and organs that possess the feature of "irreducible complexity". These systems and organs are composed of a great number of parts cooperating together, and are of no use if even one of these parts is missing or defective. (For example, the human eye does not function unless it exists with all its components intact).

Therefore, the will that brings all these parts together should be able to foresee the future and aim directly at the advantage that is to be acquired at the final stage. Since natural selection has no consciousness or will, it can do no such thing. This fact, which demolishes the foundations of the theory of evolution, also worried Darwin, who wrote: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."18

Mutations

A deformed foot, the product of mutation.

Mutations are defined as breaks or replacements taking place in the DNA molecule, which is found in the nuclei of the cells of a living organism and which contains all its genetic information. These breaks or replacements are the result of external effects such as radiation or chemical action. Every mutation is an "accident," and either damages the nucleotides making up the DNA or changes their locations. Most of the time, they cause so much damage and modification that the cell cannot repair them.

Mutation, which evolutionists frequently hide behind, is not a magic wand that transforms living organisms into a more advanced and perfect form. The direct effect of mutations is harmful. The changes effected by mutations can only be like those experienced by people in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Chernobyl: that is, death, disability, and freaks of nature…

The reason for this is very simple: DNA has a very complex structure, and random effects can only damage it. Biologist B. G. Ranganathan states:

First, genuine mutations are very rare in nature. Secondly, most mutations are harmful since they are random, rather than orderly changes in the structure of genes; any random change in a highly ordered system will be for the worse, not for the better. For example, if an earthquake were to shake a highly ordered structure such as a building, there would be a random change in the framework of the building, which, in all probability, would not be an improvement.19

Not surprisingly, no useful mutation has been so far observed. All mutations have proved to be harmful. The evolutionist scientist Warren Weaver comments on the report prepared by the Committee on Genetic Effects of Atomic Radiation, which had been formed to investigate mutations that might have been caused by the nuclear weapons used in the Second World War:

Many will be puzzled about the statement that practically all known mutant genes are harmful. For mutations are a necessary part of the process of evolution. How can a good effect-evolution to higher forms of life-result from mutations practically all of which are harmful?20

Every effort put into "generating a useful mutation" has resulted in failure. For decades, evolutionists carried out many experiments to produce mutations in fruit flies, as these insects reproduce very rapidly and so mutations would show up quickly. Generation upon generation of these flies were mutated, yet no useful mutation was ever observed. The evolutionist geneticist Gordon Taylor writes thus:

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, evolutionary biologists have sought examples of useful mutations by creating mutant flies. But these efforts have always resulted in sick and deformed creatures. The top picture shows the head of a normal fruit fly, and the picture on the right shows the head of fruit fly with legs coming out of it, the result of mutation.

It is a striking, but not much mentioned fact that, though geneticists have been breeding fruit-flies for sixty years or more in labs all round the world- flies which produce a new generation every eleven days-they have never yet seen the emergence of a new species or even a new enzyme.21

Mutant frogs born with crippled legs.

Another researcher, Michael Pitman, comments on the failure of the experiments carried out on fruit flies:

Morgan, Goldschmidt, Muller, and other geneticists have subjected generations of fruit flies to extreme conditions of heat, cold, light, dark, and treatment by chemicals and radiation. All sorts of mutations, practically all trivial or positively deleterious, have been produced. Man-made evolution? Not really: Few of the geneticists' monsters could have survived outside the bottles they were bred in. In practice mutants die, are sterile, or tend to revert to the wild type.22

The same holds true for man. All mutations that have been observed in human beings have had deleterious results. All mutations that take place in humans result in physical deformities, in infirmities such as mongolism, Down syndrome, albinism, dwarfism or cancer. Needless to say, a process that leaves people disabled or sick cannot be "an evolutionary mechanism"-evolution is supposed to produce forms that are better fitted to survive.

A mutant fly with deformed wings.

The American pathologist David A. Demick notes the following in a scientific article about mutations:

Literally thousands of human diseases associated with genetic mutations have been catalogued in recent years, with more being described continually. A recent reference book of medical genetics listed some 4,500 different genetic diseases. Some of the inherited syndromes characterized clinically in the days before molecular genetic analysis (such as Marfan's syndrome) are now being shown to be heterogeneous; that is, associated with many different mutations... With this array of human diseases that are caused by mutations, what of positive effects? With thousands of examples of harmful mutations readily available, surely it should be possible to describe some positive mutations if macroevolution is true. These would be needed not only for evolution to greater complexity, but also to offset the downward pull of the many harmful mutations. But, when it comes to identifying positive mutations, evolutionary scientists are strangely silent.23

The only instance evolutionary biologists give of "useful mutation" is the disease known as sickle cell anemia. In this, the hemoglobin molecule, which serves to carry oxygen in the blood, is damaged as a result of mutation, and undergoes a structural change. As a result of this, the hemoglobin molecule's ability to carry oxygen is seriously impaired. People with sickle cell anemia suffer increasing respiratory difficulties for this reason. However, this example of mutation, which is discussed under blood disorders in medical textbooks, is strangely evaluated by some evolutionary biologists as a "useful mutation."

The shape and functions of red corpuscles are compromised in sickle-cell anemia. For this reason, their oxygen-carrying capacities are weakened.

They say that the partial immunity to malaria by those with the illness is a "gift" of evolution. Using the same logic, one could say that, since people born with genetic leg paralysis are unable to walk and so are saved from being killed in traffic accidents, therefore genetic leg paralysis is a "useful genetic feature." This logic is clearly totally unfounded.

It is obvious that mutations are solely a destructive mechanism. Pierre-Paul Grassé, former president of the French Academy of Sciences, is quite clear on this point in a comment he made about mutations. Grassé compared mutations to "making mistakes in the letters when copying a written text." And as with mutations, letter mistakes cannot give rise to any information, but merely damage such information as already exists. Grassé explained this fact in this way:

Mutations, in time, occur incoherently. They are not complementary to one another, nor are they cumulative in successive generations toward a given direction. They modify what preexists, but they do so in disorder, no matter how…. As soon as some disorder, even slight, appears in an organized being, sickness, then death follow. There is no possible compromise between the phenomenon of life and anarchy.24

So for that reason, as Grassé puts it, "No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution."25

The Pleiotropic Effect

The most important proof that mutations lead only to damage, is the process of genetic coding. Almost all of the genes in a fully developed living thing carry more than one piece of information. For instance, one gene may control both the height and the eye color of that organism. Microbiologist Michael Denton explains this characteristic of genes in higher organisms such as human beings, in this way:

1. The wings do not develop. 2. The hind limbs reach full length, but the digits do not fully develop. 3. There is no soft fur covering 4. Although there is a respiratory passage, lungs and air sacs are absent. 5. The urinary tract does not grow, and does not induce the development of the kidney. On the left we can see the normal development of a domesticated fowl, and on the right the harmful effects of a mutation in the pleiotropic gene. Careful examination shows that a mutation in just one gene damages many different organs. Even if we hypothesize that mutation could have a beneficial effect, this "pleiotropic effect" would remove the advantage by damaging many more organs.

The effects of genes on development are often surprisingly diverse. In the house mouse, nearly every coat-colour gene has some effect on body size. Out of seventeen x-ray induced eye colour mutations in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, fourteen affected the shape of the sex organs of the female, a characteristic that one would have thought was quite unrelated to eye colour. Almost every gene that has been studied in higher organisms has been found to effect more than one organ system, a multiple effect which is known as pleiotropy. As Mayr argues in Population, Species and Evolution: "It is doubtful whether any genes that are not pleiotropic exist in higher organisms."26

Because of this characteristic of the genetic structure of living things, any coincidental change because of a mutation, in any gene in the DNA, will affect more than one organ. Consequently, this mutation will not be restricted to one part of the body, but will reveal more of its destructive impact. Even if one of these impacts turns out to be beneficial, as a result of a very rare coincidence, the unavoidable effects of the other damage it causes will more than outweigh those benefits.

To summarize, there are three main reasons why mutations cannot make evolution possible:

l- The direct effect of mutations is harmful: Since they occur randomly, they almost always damage the living organism that undergoes them. Reason tells us that unconscious intervention in a perfect and complex structure will not improve that structure, but will rather impair it. Indeed, no "useful mutation" has ever been observed.

2- Mutations add no new information to an organism's DNA: The particles making up the genetic information are either torn from their places, destroyed, or carried off to different places. Mutations cannot make a living thing acquire a new organ or a new trait. They only cause abnormalities like a leg sticking out of the back, or an ear from the abdomen.

3- In order for a mutation to be transferred to the subsequent generation, it has to have taken place in the reproductive cells of the organism: A random change that occurs in a cell or organ of the body cannot be transferred to the next generation. For example, a human eye altered by the effects of radiation, or by other causes, will not be passed on to subsequent generations.

The Escherichia coli bacterium is no different from specimens a billion years old. Countless mutations over this long period have not led to any structural changes.

All the explanations provided above indicate that natural selection and mutation have no evolutionary effect at all. So far, no observable example of "evolution" has been obtained by this method. Sometimes, evolutionary biologists claim that "they cannot observe the evolutionary effect of natural selection and mutation mechanisms since these mechanisms take place only over an extended period of time." However, this argument, which is just a way of making themselves feel better, is baseless, in the sense that it lacks any scientific foundation. During his lifetime, a scientist can observe thousands of generations of living things with short life spans such as fruit flies or bacteria, and still observe no "evolution." Pierre-Paul Grassé states the following about the unchanging nature of bacteria, a fact which invalidates evolution:

Bacteria ...are the organisms which, because of their huge numbers, produce the most mutants. [B]acteria ...exhibit a great fidelity to their species. The bacillus Escherichia coli, whose mutants have been studied very carefully, is the best example. The reader will agree that it is surprising, to say the least, to want to prove evolution and to discover its mechanisms and then to choose as a material for this study a being which practically stabilized a billion years ago! What is the use of their unceasing mutations, if they do not [produce evolutionary] change? In sum, the mutations of bacteria and viruses are merely hereditary fluctuations around a median position; a swing to the right, a swing to the left, but no final evolutionary effect. Cockroaches, which are one of the most venerable living insect groups, have remained more or less unchanged since the Permian, yet they have undergone as many mutations as Drosophila, a Tertiary insect. 27

Briefly, it is impossible for living beings to have evolved, because there exists no mechanism in nature that can cause evolution. Furthermore, this conclusion agrees with the evidence of the fossil record, which does not demonstrate the existence of a process of evolution, but rather just the contrary.

The True Origin of Species

When Darwin's The Origin of Species was published in 1859, it was believed that he had put forward a theory that could account for the extraordinary variety of living things. He had observed that there were different variations within the same species. For instance, while wandering through England's animal fairs, he noticed that there were many different breeds of cow, and that stockbreeders selectively mated them and produced new breeds. Taking that as his starting point, he continued with the logic that "living things can naturally diversify within themselves," which means that over a long period of time all living things could have descended from a common ancestor.

However, this assumption of Darwin's about "the origin of species" was not actually able to explain their origin at all. Thanks to developments in genetic science, it is now understood that increases in variety within one species can never lead to the emergence of another new species. What Darwin believed to be "evolution," was actually "variation."

The Meaning of Variations

Variation, a term used in genetics, refers to a genetic event that causes the individuals or groups of a certain type or species to possess different characteristics from one another. For example, all the people on earth carry basically the same genetic information, yet some have slanted eyes, some have red hair, some have long noses, and others are short of stature, all depending on the extent of the variation potential of this genetic information.

Variation does not constitute evidence for evolution because variations are but the outcomes of different combinations of already existing genetic information, and they do not add any new characteristic to the genetic information. The important thing for the theory of evolution, however, is the question of how brand-new information to make a brand-new species could come about.

Variation always takes place within the limits of genetic information. In the science of genetics, this limit is called the "gene pool." All of the characteristics present in the gene pool of a species may come to light in various ways due to variation. For example, as a result of variation, varieties that have relatively longer tails or shorter legs may appear in a certain species of reptile, since information for both long-legged and short-legged forms may exist in the gene pool of that species. However, variations do not transform reptiles into birds by adding wings or feathers to them, or by changing their metabolism. Such a change requires an increase in the genetic information of the living thing, which is certainly not possible through variations.

Darwin was not aware of this fact when he formulated his theory. He thought that there was no limit to variations. In an article he wrote in 1844 he stated:"That a limit to variation does exist in nature is assumed by most authors, though I am unable to discover a single fact on which this belief is grounded."28 In The Origin of Species he cited different examples of variations as the most important evidence for his theory.

For instance, according to Darwin, animal breeders who mated different varieties of cattle in order to bring about new varieties that produced more milk, were ultimately going to transform them into a different species. Darwin's notion of "unlimited variation" is best seen in the following sentence from The Origin of Species:

I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale.29

The reason Darwin cited such a far-fetched example was the primitive understanding of science in his day. Since then, in the 20^th century, science has posited the principle of "genetic stability" (genetic homeostasis), based on the results of experiments conducted on living things. This principle holds that, since all mating attempts carried out to transform a species into another have been inconclusive, there are strict barriers among different species of living things. This meant that it was absolutely impossible for animal breeders to convert cattle into a different species by mating different variations of them, as Darwin had postulated.

Norman Macbeth, who disproved Darwinism in his book Darwin Retried, states:

The heart of the problem is whether living things do indeed vary to an unlimited extent... The species look stable. We have all heard of disappointed breeders who carried their work to a certain point only to see the animals or plants revert to where they had started. Despite strenuous efforts for two or three centuries, it has never been possible to produce a blue rose or a black tulip.30

Luther Burbank, considered the most competent breeder of all time, expressed this fact when he said, "there are limits to the development possible, and these limits follow a law."31 In his article titled "Some Biological Problems With the Natural Selection Theory," Jerry Bergman comments by quoting from biologist Edward Deevey who explains that variations always take place within strict genetic boundaries:

Deevey concludes, "Remarkable things have been done by cross-breeding ... but wheat is still wheat, and not, for instance, grapefruit. We can no more grow wings on pigs than hens can make cylindrical eggs." A more contemporary example is the average increase in male height that has occurred the past century. Through better health care (and perhaps also some sexual selection, as some women prefer taller men as mates) males have reached a record adult height during the last century, but the increase is rapidly disappearing, indicating that we have reached our limit.32

In short, variations only bring about changes which remain within the boundaries of the genetic information of species; they can never add new genetic data to them. For this reason, no variation can be considered an example of evolution. No matter how often you mate different breeds of dogs or horses, the end result will still be dogs or horses, with no new species emerging. The Danish scientist W. L. Johannsen sums the matter up this way:

The variations upon which Darwin and Wallace placed their emphasis cannot be selectively pushed beyond a certain point, that such variability does not contain the secret of 'indefinite departure'.33

Confessions About "Microevolution"

As we have seen, genetic science has discovered that variations, which Darwin thought could account for "the origin of species," actually do no such thing. For this reason, evolutionary biologists were forced to distinguish between variation within species and the formation of new ones, and to propose two different concepts for these different phenomena. Diversity within a species-that is, variation-they called "microevolution," and the hypothesis of the development of new species was termed "macroevolution."

These two concepts have appeared in biology books for quite some time. But there is actually a deception going on here, because the examples of variation that evolutionary biologists have called "microevolution" actually have nothing to do with the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution proposes that living things can develop and take on new genetic data by the mechanisms of mutation and natural selection. However, as we have just seen, variations can never create new genetic information, and are thus unable to bring about "evolution." Giving variations the name of "microevolution" is actually an ideological preference on the part of evolutionary biologists.

The impression that evolutionary biologists have given by using the term "microevolution" is the false logic that over time variations can form brand new classes of living things. And many people who are not already well-informed on the subject come away with the superficial idea that "as it spreads, microevolution can turn into macroevolution." One can often see examples of that kind of thinking. Some "amateur" evolutionists put forward such examples of logic as the following: since human beings' average height has risen by two centimeters in just a century, this means that over millions of years any kind of evolution is possible. However, as has been shown above, all variations such as changes in average height happen within specific genetic bounds, and are trends that have nothing to do with evolution.

In fact, nowadays even evolutionist experts accept that the variations they call "microevolution" cannot lead to new classes of living things-in other words, to "macroevolution." In a 1996 article in the leading journal Developmental Biology, the evolutionary biologists S.F. Gilbert, J.M. Opitz, and R.A. Raff explained the matter this way:

Finch beaks, which Darwin saw in the Galapagos Islands and thought were evidence for his theory, are actually an example of genetic variation, and not evidence for macroevolution.

The Modern Synthesis is a remarkable achievement. However, starting in the 1970s, many biologists began questioning its adequacy in explaining evolution. Genetics might be adequate for explaining microevolution, but microevolutionary changes in gene frequency were not seen as able to turn a reptile into a mammal or to convert a fish into an amphibian. Microevolution looks at adaptations that concern only the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest. As Goodwin (1995) points out, "the origin of species- Darwin's problem-remains unsolved.34

The fact that "microevolution" cannot lead to "macroevolution," in other words that variations offer no explanation of the origin of species, has been accepted by other evolutionary biologists, as well. The noted author and science expert Roger Lewin describes the result of a four-day symposium held in November 1980 at the Chicago Museum of Natural History, in which 150 evolutionists participated:

The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. …The answer can be given as a clear, No.35

We can sum up the situation like this: Variations, which Darwinism has seen as "evidence of evolution" for some hundred years, actually have nothing to do with "the origin of species." Cows can be mated together for millions of years, and different breeds of cows may well emerge. But cows can never turn into a different species-giraffes or elephants for instance. In the same way, the different finches that Darwin saw on the Galapagos Islands are another example of variation that is no evidence for "evolution." Recent observations have revealed that the finches did not undergo an unlimited variation as Darwin's theory presupposed. Moreover, most of the different types of finches which Darwin thought represented 14 distinct species actually mated with one another, which means that they were variations that belonged to the same species. Scientific observation shows that the finch beaks, which have been mythicized in almost all evolutionist sources, are in fact an example of "variation"; therefore, they do not constitute evidence for the theory of evolution. For example, Peter and Rosemary Grant, who spent years observing the finch varieties in the Galapagos Islands looking for evidence for Darwinistic evolution, were forced to conclude that "the population, subjected to natural selection, is oscillating back and forth," a fact which implied that no "evolution" that leads to the emergence of new traits ever takes place there.36

So for these reasons, evolutionists are still unable to resolve Darwin's problem of the "origin of species."

The Origin of Species in the Fossil Record

The evolutionist assertion is that each species on earth came from a single common ancestor through minor changes. In other words, the theory considers life as a continuous phenomenon, without any preordained or fixed categories. However, the observation of nature clearly does not reveal such a continuous picture. What emerges from the living world is that life forms are strictly separated in very distinct categories. Robert Carroll, an evolutionist authority, admits this fact in his Patterns and Processes of Vertebrate Evolution:

Although an almost incomprehensible number of species inhabit Earth today, they do not form a continuous spectrum of barely distinguishable intermediates. Instead, nearly all species can be recognized as belonging to a relatively limited number of clearly distinct major groups, with very few illustrating intermediate structures or ways of life.37

Therefore, evolutionists assume that "intermediate" life forms that constitute links between living organisms have lived in the past. This is why it is considered that the fundamental science that can shed light on the matter is paleontology, the science of the study of fossils. Evolution is alleged to be a process that took place in the past, and the only scientific source that can provide us with information on the history of life is fossil discoveries. The well-known French paleontologist Pierre-Paul Grassé has this to say on the subject:

Naturalists must remember that the process of evolution is revealed only through fossil forms... only paleontology can provide them with the evidence of evolution and reveal its course or mechanisms.38

The most important branch of science for shedding light on the origin of life on earth is paleontology, the study of fossils. Fossil beds, studied with great intensity for the last two hundred years, reveal a picture totally at odds with Darwin's theory. Species did not emerge through small cumulative changes, they appeared quite suddenly, and fully-formed.

In order for the fossil record to shed any light on the subject, we shall have to compare the hypotheses of the theory of evolution with fossil discoveries.

According to the theory of evolution, every species has emerged from a predecessor. One species which existed previously turned into something else over 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 were the case, then innumerable intermediate species should have lived during the immense period of time when these transformations were supposedly occurring. For instance, there should have lived in the past some half-fish/half-reptile creatures which had acquired some reptilian traits in addition to the fish traits they already had. Or there should have existed some reptile/bird creatures, which had acquired some avian traits in addition to the reptilian traits they already possessed. 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 would have been millions, even billions, of them. More importantly, the remains of these creatures should be present in the fossil record. The number of these transitional forms should have been even greater than that of present animal species, and their remains should be found all over the world. In The Origin of Species, Darwin accepted this fact and 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.39

Even Darwin himself was aware of the absence of such transitional forms. He hoped that they would be found in the future. Despite his optimism, he realized that these missing intermediate forms were the biggest stumbling-block for his theory. That is why he wrote the following in the chapter of the The Origin of Species entitled "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.40

The only 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.

The Question of Transitional Forms and Stasis

Believing in Darwin's prophecy, evolutionary paleontologists have been digging up fossils and searching for missing links all over the world since the middle of the nineteenth century. Despite their best efforts, no transitional forms have yet been uncovered. All the fossils unearthed in excavations have shown that, contrary to the beliefs of evolutionists, life appeared on earth all of a sudden and fully-formed.

Robert Carroll, an expert on vertebrate paleontology and a committed evolutionist, comes to admit that the Darwinist hope has not been satisfied with fossil discoveries:

Despite more than a hundred years of intense collecting efforts since the time of Darwin's death, the fossil record still does not yield the picture of infinitely numerous transitional links that he expected.41

Another evolutionary paleontologist, K. S. Thomson, tells us that new groups of organisms appear very abruptly in the fossil record:

When a major group of organisms arises and first appears in the record, it seems to come fully equipped with a suite of new characters not seen in related, putatively ancestral groups. These radical changes in morphology and function appear to arise very quickly…42

Biologist Francis Hitching, in his book The Neck of the Giraffe: Where Darwin Went Wrong, states:

If we find fossils, and if Darwin's theory was right, we can predict what the rock should contain; finely graduated fossils leading from one group of creatures to another group of creatures at a higher level of complexity. The 'minor improvements' in successive generations should be as readily preserved as the species themselves. But this is hardly ever the case. In fact, the opposite holds true, as Darwin himself complained; "innumerable transitional forms must have existed, but why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?" Darwin felt though that the "extreme imperfection" of the fossil record was simply a matter of digging up more fossils. But as more and more fossils were dug up, it was found that almost all of them, without exception, were very close to current living animals.43

There is no gradual development in the fossil record such as Darwin had predicted. Different species emerged all at once, with their own peculiar bodily structures.

The fossil record reveals that species emerged suddenly, and with totally different structures, and remained exactly the same over the longest geological periods. Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard University paleontologist and well-known evolutionist, admitted this fact first in the late 70s:

The history of most fossil species include two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1) Stasis - most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless; 2) Sudden appearance - in any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed'.44

Further research only strengthened the facts of stasis and sudden appearance. Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge write in 1993 that "most species, during their geological history, either do not change in any appreciable way, or else they fluctuate mildly in morphology, with no apparent direction."45 Robert Carroll is forced to agree in 1997 that "Most major groups appear to originate and diversify over geologically very short durations, and to persist for much longer periods without major morphological or trophic change."46

At this point, it is necessary to clarify just what the concept of "transitional form" means. The intermediate forms predicted by the theory of evolution are living things falling between two species, but which possess deficient or semi-developed organs. But sometimes the concept of intermediate form is misunderstood, and living structures which do not possess the features of transitional forms are seen as actually doing so. For instance, if one group of living things possesses features which belong to another, this is not an intermediate form feature. The platypus, a mammal living in Australia, reproduces by laying eggs just like reptiles. In addition, it has a bill similar to that of a duck. Scientists describe such creatures as the platypus as "mosaic creatures." That mosaic creatures do not count as intermediate forms is also accepted by such foremost paleontologists as Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge.47

The Adequacy of the Fossil Record

Some 140 years ago Darwin put forward the following argument: "Right now there are no transitional forms, yet further research will uncover them." Is this argument still valid today? In other words, considering the conclusions from the entire fossil record, should we accept that transitional forms never existed, or should we wait for the results of new research?

The wealth of the existing fossil record will surely answer this question. When we look at the paleontological findings, we come across an abundance of fossils. Billions of fossils have been uncovered all around the world.48 Based on these fossils, 250,000 distinct species have been identified, and these bear striking similarities to the 1.5 million identified species currently living on earth.49 (Of these 1.5 million species, 1 million are insects.) Despite the abundance of fossil sources, not a single transitional form has been uncovered, and it is unlikely that any transitional forms will be found as a result of new excavations.

A professor of paleontology from Glasgow University, T. Neville George, admitted this fact years ago:

There is no need to apologize 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.50

And Niles Eldredge, the well-known paleontologist and curator of the American Museum of Natural History, expresses as follows the invalidity of Darwin's claim that the insufficiency of the fossil record is the reason why no transitional forms have been found:

The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life's history - not the artifact of a poor fossil record.51

Another American scholar, Robert Wesson, states in his 1991 book Beyond Natural Selection, that "the gaps in the fossil record are real and meaningful." He elaborates this claim in this way:

STASIS IN THE FOSSIL RECORD

If evolution had really happened, then living things should have emerged by gradual changes, and have continued to change over time, whereas the fossil record shows the exact opposite. Different groups of living things suddenly emerged with no similar ancestors behind them, and remained static for millions of years, undergoing no changes at all.

Horseshoe crab" fossil from the Ordovician Age. This 450-million-year-old fossil is no different from specimens living today.	100-150 million-year-old starfish fossil	Oyster fossils from the Ordovician Age, no different from modern oysters.

Ammonites emerged some 350 million years ago, and became extinct 65 million years ago. The structure seen in the fossil above never changed during the intervening 300 million years.	1.9-million-year-old fossil bacteria from Western Ontario in Canada. They have the same structures as bacteria living today.

The oldest known fossil scorpion, found in East Kirkton in Scotland. This species, known as Pulmonoscorpius kirktoniensis, is 320 million years old, and no different from today's scorpions.	An insect fossil in amber, some 170 million years old, found on the Baltic Sea coast. It is no different from its modern counterparts.

140-million-year-old dragonfly fossil found in Bavaria in Germany. It is identical to living dragonflies.	35-million-year-old flies. They have the same bodily structure as flies today.	170-million-year-old fossil shrimp from the Jurassic Age. It is no different from living shrimps.

The gaps in the record are real, however. The absence of a record of any important branching is quite phenomenal. Species are usually static, or nearly so, for long periods, species seldom and genera never show evolution into new species or genera but replacement of one by another, and change is more or less abrupt.52

This situation invalidates the above argument, which has been stated by Darwinism for 140 years. The fossil record is rich enough for us to understand the origins of life, and explicitly reveals that distinct species came into existence on earth all of a sudden, with all their distinct forms.

The Truth Revealed by the Fossil Record

But where does the "evolution-paleontology" relationship, which has taken subconscious root in society over many decades, actually stem from? Why do most people have the impression that there is a positive connection between Darwin's theory and the fossil record whenever the latter is mentioned? The answer to these questions is supplied in an article in the leading journal Science:

A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks, semipopular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general these have not been found yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks.

25-million-year-old termite fossils in amber. They are identical to termites living today.

N. Eldredge and I. Tattersall also make an important comment:

That individual kinds of fossils remain recognizably the same throughout the length of their occurrence in the fossil record had been known to paleontologists long before Darwin published his Origin. Darwin himself, ...prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search ...One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction is wrong.

The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor's new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin's predicted pattern, simply looked the other way.54

Likewise, the American paleontologist Steven M. Stanley describes how the Darwinist dogma, which dominates the world of science, has ignored this reality demonstrated by the fossil record:

The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with gradualism. What is remarkable is that, through a variety of historical circumstances, even the history of opposition has been obscured. ... 'The majority of paleontologists felt their evidence simply contradicted Darwin's stress on minute, slow, and cumulative changes leading to species transformation.' ... their story has been suppressed.55

Let us now examine the facts of the fossil record, which have been silenced for so long, in a bit more detail. In order to do this, we shall have to consider natural history from the most remote ages to the present, stage by stage.