Fossils—Do They Prove Evolution?
EVOLUTIONISTS offer a variety of arguments in favor of their theory. Most of the evidence they cite is from living organisms. They point to similarities in skeletal structure of different animals as proof that such animals are related, if not by direct descent, at least by descent from a common ancestor. They point out that in the early stages of development from the egg cell, the embryos of “higher” animals resemble those of “lower” ones. They analyze the blood plasma or the chemical structure of hemoglobin and on that basis classify different species as being close or more distant relatives.
They claim that such comparisons lead inevitably to the conclusion that all animals have a common ancestry. They say they cannot conceive of any other explanation. Of course, having first ruled out the possibility that all have the same Designer and Maker, they cannot accept that as an alternative explanation. But in the textbook Man and the Biological World the authors admit that such proof is not complete: “The existence of homologous resemblances, of parallelisms in embryonic development, and of graded degrees of chemical relationship between organisms does not in itself prove that evolution has occurred.”
For proof that evolution really did take place, they fall back on paleontology. As stated in Outlines of Historical Geology: “Although the comparative study of living animals and plants may give very convincing circumstantial evidence, fossils provide the only historical, documentary evidence that life has evolved from simpler to more and more complex forms.”
A Look at the Fossil Record
Thus we are told to go to the fossil record for final, conclusive proof that evolution really did take place. You might imagine we would find a succession of fossils, for example, starting with shellfish, in which the hard shell gradually turns into a covering of scales, while part of it turns inside and grows into a backbone. At the same time, successive fossils would be developing a pair of eyes and a pair of gills at one end and a finny tail at the other. Finally, lo and behold, we would have a fish!
But a fish would not stay a fish. Coming on up in the geologic column of sediments, we would expect to find fish changing their fins into legs, with feet and toes growing out of them, and their gills into lungs. Higher up, we would no longer find their fossilized remains in old seabeds but buried in dry land deposits. And in other fish, their forefins would be changing into wings and their back ones into legs with claws. Their scales would change to feathers and they would grow a horny beak around their mouth. And, presto! the magic of evolution would have given us reptiles and birds. So we could line up intermediate forms exhibiting transitional features between every ancestral species and each type of their progeny.
Is that what we really find? Of course not! That would be an evolutionist’s dream. Darwin himself was the first to bemoan the extreme imperfection of the fossil record. But he was hopeful that time would supply the transitional forms between species—missing links, they came to be called. These would vindicate his faith in the process of evolution by natural selection.
But these hopes have not been realized. What does the record actually show? Each new kind of plant or animal—fern, shrub, tree, fish, reptile, insect, bird, or mammal—appears suddenly in the geologic column. Beginning immediately above the lifeless sediments of the Azoic era, the Cambrian layer carries an abundance of fossil crustaceans and shellfish, in great variety, already fully developed. Plants with woody stems appear suddenly in the mid-Paleozoic. Fossil wood has not been found in lower strata but is abundant in all later ages. Large collections of insect fossils have been found in upper Paleozoic rocks, fully developed and in great diversity, but none have been found in earlier strata. Early in the Cenozoic era, modern types of mammals make a sudden appearance; there is no record of their evolution from earlier types.
This is the repeated testimony of the fossil record: Sudden appearance of new kinds of plants and animals—no precursors. Does this not suggest, to the unprejudiced observer, the creation of these new kinds in successive ages, rather than continuous evolution?
Permanence of Species
Biologists have devised an elaborate system for classifying different species. Naturalists continue to find species that are different from those already classified, and those are fitted in between the others. Extinct species, represented by fossils, also have been assigned places in the classification. Different fossils continue to turn up that have to be put between others in the system. The evolutionists call these transitional species, a word that implies a temporary existence, during which it falls between an older species and a new one that is to appear. Even calling them transitional reveals a bias in logic. A neutral expression would be “intermediate” forms.
Much emphasis is put on the search for these “transitional” forms. As an example they point to the lungfish, which has gills for taking in oxygen when in water and also a bladder that serves as a lung for breathing when out of water. This is supposed to have marked a stage in evolution between fish and reptile. But there is a snag in the logic. The lungfish did not change into a reptile. It is still living today, the same fish that is found in the ancient fossils. Rather than a stage in evolution, is it not more reasonable to call it a separate creation, one that has not become extinct?
The fossil record gives another important kind of evidence that belies evolution. The process of evolution is described as “the constant change of living things.” But innumerable fossils are found in ancient strata that, like the lungfish, are identifiable with modern species. Imprints of leaves of oak, walnut, hickory, grape, magnolia, palm, and many other trees and shrubs, left on rocks of Mesozoic age and since, are not different from those leaves today. The millions of years, as estimated by geologists, since they first appeared have left them without any evolutionary change. Likewise, hundreds of insects left their mark in Mesozoic rocks. These imprints show them to have been quite similar to species of the same insects we have now. As the evolutionist puts it, “Insect evolution had been essentially completed by the end of the Mesozoic”—the era in which they first appeared.
Can such fossil evidence honestly be claimed to support the theory that environmental pressures bring about a continual change in species and produce new ones? Or does it not rather give the strongest support to the principle that each species, once created, brings forth only its own kind? Yes, and it has continued to do so generation after generation throughout all the millenniums of time.
Evolutionists now admit that the fossil record does not support the theories they have long championed. “The pattern that we were told to find for the last 120 years does not exist,” a paleontologist told a conference of evolutionists in Chicago in 1980. The picture of small changes accumulating to form new species is false. Instead, “For millions of years species remain unchanged in the fossil record, and they then abruptly disappear, to be replaced by something that is substantially different but clearly related,” a Harvard professor of geology said. Individual species in the fossil record are characterized by stability, not by change.
So now a new school has emerged, describing evolution as following a course of “punctuated equilibrium.” They say a certain species goes along unchanged for millions of years, and then, in just a few thousand years, it quickly changes into a new species. They call it macroevolution. It happens so fast there is no chance to leave a fossil memento of the transition. However, an older school, which holds to microevolution, remains unconverted to the new doctrine.
All this controversy and floundering about among the evolutionists cannot help but leave the layman confused and more and more doubtful about whether evolution really occurred. To one who is not emotionally committed to the cause, this talk about macroevolution and punctuated equilibrium betrays some uneasy misgivings. Perhaps they fear that the congenital defects in the evolution theory may shortly prove lethal. Their effort to cover these up with grandiloquent gobbledygook falls only a little short of admitting that creation is the only answer.
Since the growing scientific evidence gives ever less support to evolution and more to creation, why is it that creation does not get more attention in the teaching of biology? How do evolutionists still manage to hold such tight screws on what is taught in science courses in public schools? Attempts to loosen their grip, even by laws enacted under religious pressure, have been thwarted in the courts.
These questions will be examined in the next issue, in the article entitled “Creationism—Is It Scientific?”
[Picture on page 18]
The lungfish did not change. It is the same today as in ancient fossils