Absolutely no transitional forms either in the fossil record or in modern animal and plant life have been found. All appear fully formed and complete. The fossil record amply supplies us with representation of almost all species of animals and plants but none of the supposed links of plant to animal, fish to amphibian, amphibian to reptile, or reptile to birds and mammals are represented nor any transitional forms at all. There are essentially the same gaps between all the basic kinds in the fossil record as exists in plant and animal life today. There are literally a host of missing links in the fossil record and the modern world.
2. Natural selection (the supposed evolution mechanism, along with mutations) is incapable of advancing an organism to a "higher-order".
It can be noted that natural selection as a driving mechanism for evolution is totally inadequate. Natural selection (along with mutation) is said to have caused organisms to evolve from one basic kind (animals which can reproduce with one another) into another basic kind. This is prohibited genetically since all of the information for the development of an organism has already been encoded in DNA of its parent. Variation to organisms must remain within its basic kind. For example, genetically, a wide variety of dogs can come to exist, but a dog can never become anything other than a dog. It remains in its kind. It does not have the genetic ability to become anything more. Admitting this, evolutionists have tried to explain that natural selection happened in conjunction with mutations to the genetic code. This could not produce evolution, however, since mutations do not create new genetic potential, they just alter what is already there. Furthermore, mutations are small, random, and harmful alterations to the genetic code. This also makes evolution from mutations impossible. For example, a working wristwatch does not improve but is harmed when its inside parts are randomly altered. Natural selection also contradicts the second law of thermodynamics which states that, left to themselves, all things tend to deteriorate rather than develop, while evolution wants to go in the opposite direction. "Survival of the fittest" demonstrates only how an organism has survived, not how it has evolved.
3. Although evolutionists state that life resulted from non-life, matter resulted from nothing, and humans resulted from animals, each of these is an impossibility of science and the natural world.
Life is far too complex to have resulted from any chance happening. Even the simplest form of life consists of billions of parts working together and needed for the basic functioning of the organism. These could not have sprung into being at the same time and interrelating together by chance. Life coming from matter would violate the law of biogenesis and the cell principle which state that life must come only from life. Secondly, we find that the first matter could not simply have come into existence from nothing. This is a logical absurdity. Finally, we find that morality in humanity as well as our mental capacity and utter dominance of the physical world make humanity set apart by any reasonable means from the rest of the living world.
4. The supposed hominids (creatures in-between ape and human that evolutionists believe used to exist) bones and skull record used by evolutionists often consists of 'finds' which are thoroughly unrevealing and inconsistent. They are neither clear nor conclusive even though evolutionists present them as if they were.
Evolutionists present much of their finds as if they were compelling and factual explanations to human evolution. In fact, they base their conclusions on mere speculation and often the flimsiest of 'finds'. Many discoveries of supposed hominids consist of only a mouth fragment, a leg bone, a hip bone, or a knee joint. On this alone, they have considered it to be a hominid. They even name it, reconstruct what it looked like, and present it to the public as a fact. Some of these finds have turned out to be those of a pig, donkey, or the result of a hoax. One hoax consisted of someone placing a human skull with an ape's jaw. Evolutionists declared it to be a hominid for fifty years without having done an in depth study of it. Some finds consist of an assortment of fragments found miles apart and then placed together to look as though they came from the same individual. Sometimes rocks as simple as those found in any backyard are called tools of hominids and are pictured in books. Footprints that look identical to any person's today are sometimes declared in books and accepted those of hominids. The brow ridge that supposedly marked the hominid appears only in one skull.
5. Nine of the twelve popularly supposed hominids are actually extinct apes/monkeys and not part human at all.
The first nine of the twelve popularly regarded hominids put forth by evolutionists by bone and skull finds have been demonstrated as being extinct apes or monkeys and not part human at all. The discovery of extinct apes demonstrated some of the finds to be monkeys/apes. Close examination of the skulls and bones have caused experts to determine that none of the other skulls have any human characteristics either. The bones and skulls found could be any of the perhaps thousands of monkeys and apes that have existed in the past. These bones and skulls have never been found apart from where apes/monkeys live or have lives.
6. The final three supposed hominids put forth by evolutionists are actually modern human beings and not part monkey/ape at all. Therefore, all twelve of the supposed hominids can be explained as being either fully monkey/ape or fully modern human but not as being something in between.
The last three of the popular twelve hominids have been demonstrated as being modern human beings. Human skulls naturally vary in size and many other characteristics. They often also are misshappen by certain diseases such as rickets, arthritis, Paget's disease, congenital syphilis, and starvation. Skulls found with diseases or normal human variations could lead one to suppose that certain modern skulls are something less than human. This has been a great mistake by evolutionists who not only have failed to recognize variance in human skulls but also to make the public aware of it as well.
7. Natural selection can be seen to have insurmountable social and practical inconsistencies.
Socially, natural selection argues that the best and fittest society would be the one where its individuals look out for only themselves and would advance themselves, if possible, at the expense of others. It would even destroy others if possible. Thus barbarianism is demanded by natural selection with the destruction of the weak and the free domain of the powerful. It demands total annihilation of anything weaker than necessary and the ruling of anyone more powerful than others. People exhibit mercy, pity, and morality, all of which inhibit natural selection.
Practically, natural selection has the following and many other inconsistencies: (a.) The natural selection process could not have the forethought to allow an organism to become worse temporarily in order to ultimately form an eye, for example. (b.) Natural selection requires that o rganisms began as crude, yet an organism could not have survived without basic intricate functions such respiration and reproduction. These had to exist from the beginning of the organism. (c.) Our bodies depend on systems that run according to intricate order such as from DNA. A system dependent on order cannot be created by disorder.
8. Natural selection has severe logical inconsistencies.
Natural selection has these and many other logical inconsistencies: (a.) Although evolutionists say that organisms are suited for their environment because they evolved into it, being suited for the environment is much better explained by the fact that they were created for the environment rather than that they evolved into it. (b.) The fact that living things have similar patterns and design points to a common designer better than to a common ancestor. In fact, such variety in the world could not have been produced if we all come from the same ancestor. (c.) If we all come from the same ancestor, we would all be murderers and cannibals by the simple act of killing a cow. (d.) While small and underdeveloped things do become grown and developed (a baby to an adult, a seed to a tree) it is also true that the small and underdeveloped first come from the developed (a baby from its parents, a seed from a tree). The pattern of growth is circular not simply from the crude to the developed as natural selection proposes. (e.) Our needs exceed those of survival. Needs for love and friendship, for example, cannot be explained if all that we do is for survival. (f.) Order and interdependence in the world argues for a designed and against chance.
9. The rock strata finds (layers of buried fossils) are better explained by a universal flood than by evolution.
The Rock Strata is better explained by a universal flood than by gradual normal death of organisms over millions of years recorded in the rock as evolutionists assert. A large flood is necessary for the formation of fossils in the first place. Fossils require quick and tremendous pressure to be formed. Without this, a carcass not only could not form a fossil over time but would be eaten by scavengers or destroyed by bacteria. The circulating water of a flood (along with gravity) would cause smaller organisms to naturally bury lower and more mobile organisms, with ability to temporarily avoid the flood, would be buried close to the top for this reason. Such things as fish, which are already low in the sea, would also naturally be buried low. A universal flood has been well documented historically as having occurred. Evolutionists have used fossils in rock sediments to say that simpler organisms were at the bottom of the sediment and more complex ones were at the top. They have ignored the great inconsistencies in the finds for which a flood could account but not the evolutionary process. In fact, in some strata, a tree can be seen protruding through several layers which supposedly formed over millions of years.
10. Bias towards evolution.
Evolutionists often have come forth and admitted their own and their colleagues' extreme degree of bias in this matter. Some have admitted that their approach has not been scientific or objective at all. Many admit to the severe lack of evidence for evolution and that they have accepted their conclusions only because they are unwilling to accept that evolution never occurred. (And other final considerations.)
All this information can be found, annotated, at http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/top.htm.
Editor's Note: While this node has a hefty negative reputation, the items below it require this to make sense. Until Nafal or one of the God-types decides to kill the whole node, this should remain for clarity.
Rancid_Pickle
This was originally a C&P writeup by Nafal who has apparently left E2. Since the rest of the node hinges on the arguments here, I took on the responsibility of reauthoring it to the everyone account, and seeking permission from the original author to reproduce it here. I contacted the author (Doug LaPointe) in February 2005 with my request and info about E2. To date I haven't received a reply, but the work has been widely quoted and posted on other websites and, absent a response from the author, I'm insuring its presence in the database. If the author complains, we'll have to remove it immediately. For the time being, it's tentatively CST Approved
-GrouchyOldMan
1. There are no transitional links and intermediate forms in either the fossil record or the modern world. Therefore, there is no actual evidence that evolution has occurred either in the past or the present.
Ever been to a museum of any sort of ancient history? They have bone remains of our predecessors, as well as a number of other animals (Sabertooth tigers / Modern tigers) who have changed over time. Of course, nothing would be found in the modern world because the old ones are extinct. Duh. The closes can be found in Darwin's recording of the species by the Galapagos Islands. You go on to say that "...none of the supposed links of plant to animal, fish to amphibian, blah blah." Plant to animal: Sponges. They have survived as such, but continued to evolve into more complex creatures. Most of these transgressions have taken place in the ancient past on a multicellular level (Study the different Kingdoms, you'll hopefully understand.) Your problem seems to be that you refuse to acknowledge any entities but the ones currently on this world.
Again, you don't seem to know what you are talking about.
"This could not produce evolution, however, since mutations do not create new genetic potential, they just alter what is already there. Furthermore, mutations are small, random, and harmful alterations to the genetic code. This also makes evolution from mutations impossible. For example, a working wristwatch does not improve but is harmed when its inside parts are randomly altered." Mutations do create a LOT of "genetic potential," exactly BY altering what is already there. They are not neccessarily harmful, for example a seal that has a defect for a white coat might survive better in snowy regions and have more children with that gene. BTW: Wristwatches do not reproduce, therefore no evolution can take place. Also, if you had millions and millions of wristwatches and each was altered a slight bit, you might end up with a more efficient one. That one would have to reproduce, proving your allegory pointless as evolution can not apply to an object.
"Natural selection also contradicts the second law of thermodynamics which states that, left to themselves, all things tend to deteriorate rather than develop, while evolution wants to go in the opposite direction. "Survival of the fittest" demonstrates only how an organism has survived, not how it has evolved." The second law of thermodynamics applies only to closed systems. RTFM. By the way, it's reproduction of the fittest.
"Life coming from matter would violate the law of biogenesis and the cell principle which state that life must come only from life." Life coming from matter? I am assuming you're trying to say "Life coming from non-life." At this point we enter philosphy, but I think that the chances in an infinite universe for life to come to being are larger than god creating man and beast out of clay.
"Secondly, we find that the first matter could not simply have come into existence from nothing." No one ever said that matter came into existance from nothing. You're pulling this discussion from evolution to the big bang theory, if you knew your stuff you would be aware that these things are completely un-related. I happen to have done some reading on metaphysics, mainly just Steven Hawking's stuff, but - Where did God come from? - Right, that's rational.
From there on out he gets really wild, making opinionated claims and merely commenting on the finds without proper references. Highlights include: (On evolution:> "It demands total annihilation of anything weaker than necessary and the ruling of anyone more powerful than others. People exhibit mercy, pity, and morality, all of which inhibit natural selection." Man does not propel the machine of natural selection, nature itself does - In Africa, people with darker skin happened to get less sunstrokes, therefore they survived and had offspring. In the north, blond hair absorbed all natural sunlight, keeping the skull warm. People occasionally exhibit mercy, pity and morality because they feel a sense of kinship to their species / race / countrymen. "much better explained by the fact..." The last three points are basically substitutions of accepted scientific beliefs for religious "facts"... again without proper support. "If we all come from the same ancestor, we would all be murderers and cannibals by the simple act of killing a cow." If your definition of cannibalism includes the murder of a species whose closes ancestor is several million years away and looked like neither you nor the cow, yes.
There are few things in this world that piss me off. One is tailgating, the other is disguising an ill-supported opinion in "scientific" language to sell it to the gullible masses.
A key concept though is that plants and animals diverged at a very early point in the history of life. To hold a fossil of such a single celled thing, the rock grains must be smaller than the size of the thing. Over a billion or so years, these rocks have been distorted from their original form and lost much of their original information. To find a single good cell in a rock that is about a billion years old and has gone through metamorphic stresses is akin to finding a needle in a field of hay that has tossed about by a tractor.
For transitions between one species of animal to another - these are all around us. From fossils of ancient tetrapods which show fish leaving the water to modern horse shoe crabs. Darwin's finches on the Galapagos islands are all seperate species, yet they clearly all evolved from a single species of finch some time ago - that was a transition species. As such, every species alive today that does not become extinct will likely some day become a transition. Species are not the 'final product' but rather part of the process of life.
This can easily be demonstrated. Take a handful of marbles of different colors. Drop them on the ground. This assortment represents different populations with slight differences between them. Now, all the ones on one half, select for 'red-ish'. The ones on the other half, select for 'green-ish'. As the gene pools separate, their ability to have young that are fertile diminishes.
Today, the horse and the donkey can reproduce, however the offspring (known as a mule) are always infertile. There is no way to get the genes from the donkey population back into the horse population, or vice versa.
This is prohibited genetically since all of the information for the development of an organism has already been encoded in DNA of its parent.
Not all mutations are harmful. There are times when a mutation can be beneficial, helping an organism to adapt to its environment better. Consider the blind cave salamander. A distant ancestor of it could see, however some mutation took away its sight, which really didn't help it. If anything, not having to confuse the brain with constant darkness and spending energy keeping the eyes in top form could be considered a beneficial mutation.
Thermodynamics. It is indeed the case that entropy and disorder tend to a maximum. However, this does not mean that things cannot get better from this. There is a device called the hydraulic ram. This sits in a river running downhill, and uses the energy of disorder to force a small portion of water up. This in no way violates thermodynamics.
There are trillions of mutations, and billions of species. Many of these die out, but those few that do survive and pass on their genetic information have succeeded. This does not violate thermodynamics either.
BTW, what is a basic kind? And what basic kind is the platypus and spiny ant eater?
And what is this "first matter" stuff you're talking about? What is so absurd about it? Where is this logic you are talking about being absurd?
Morality in humanity? You imply that other creatures have no morals or feelings? Do not dolphins mourn the loss of companions? Or the other primates? Our mental capacity is dwarfed by that of whales. Why does our ability to dominate the environment (which we are not alone in, just the most obvious) set us apart from the rest of the world? Many other species use tools, yet we just happen to have the most free time on our manipulative appendages to come up with unique ways to throughly destroy the world we live in.
Feel free to read The Blind Watchmaker.
Yes, there have been hoaxes and misunderstandings in the past. A lot of research has been done in the past 50 years, and a greater understanding of what has actually happened has arisen.
Footprints that date back to before homo sapiens took its place in the evolutionary latter. Footprints of a being that walked upright. What other explanation could there be?
Now two years after the original node, a debate wages about if the chimpanze should be placed in the homo genius rather than the pan genius and thus quite literaly our cousins.
Once again, please read up on The Blind Watchmaker
The dogs and cats that we know and love as pets were originally much larger beasts that happened to settle down with people to get easy food by chasing away those that would steal it.
The lovely mule, and the liger (half lion, half tiger) are creatures that could not have originally been created, because they are infertile. There are several species of dolphins that also can breed to form hybrids. This extends also to the plant kingdom, where there are many breeds of corn that are infertile but better adapted to the environment than is found in nature.
The protuding tree. Picture a flood plain with trees on it. Each year the floods lay down a layer of dirt. These strata of dirt grow up around the tree. Eventually the tree dies. More layers of dirt cover it. This is a perfectly reasonable explanation for a fossil tree protuding from layers of sediment.
The flood recorded in the bible (and the Epic of Gilgamesh, and Greek mythology) was the flooding of the Black Sea after the Ice Age. There were no dinosaurs that got buried in this flood. It was not a global flood (though the people at the time had a rather small view of the world).
The law of gravity, while disputed by few, has failed to convince most people that it is our moral obligation to lie on the ground rather than standing, jumping, or climbing as we see fit.
