A Long, Hard Look at Mr. Quammen’s

“Evidence” for Evolution In his National Geographic article, David Quammen remarked: Evolution is both a beautiful concept, and an important one�. The essential points are slightly more complicated than most people assume, but not so complicated that they can’t be comprehended by any attentive person. Furthermore, the supporting evidence is abundant, various, ever increasing, solidly interconnected, and easily available in museums, popular books, textbooks, and a mountainous accumulation of peer-reviewed scientific studies (p. 8). So what is the evidence that is self-evident to “any attentive person”? Mr. Quammen summarized it in two distinct parts—the evolution of species, and natural selection. As corroborating evidence, he listed four main areas: biogeography, paleontology, embryology, and morphology. Fair enough. Let’s examine the evidence he provided in his article, and see if his assertion that evolution is a “fact” can be supported by the available evidence. As a rebuttal to the information contained in David Quammen’s article in the November 2004 issue of National Geographic, we offer the following. Natural Selection Mr. Quammen, in commenting on how evolution is supposed to work, commented: “Two big ideas, not just one, are at issue: the evolution of all species, as a historical phenomenon, and natural selection, as the main mechanism causing that phenomenon. The first is a question of what happened. The second is a question of how” (p. 8, emp. added). Quammen went to explain how natural selection works as a mechanism of evolution. The gist of the concept is that small, random, heritable changes among individuals result in difference chances of survival and reproduction—success for some, death without offspring for others—and that this natural culling leads to significant changes in shape, size, strength, chemistry, and behavior among the descendants. Excess population growth drives the competitive struggle. Because less successful competitors produce fewer surviving offspring, the useless or negative variations tend to disappear, whereas the useful variations tend to be perpetuated and gradually magnified throughout a population (p. 8). Conspicuously missing from the National Geographic article, of course, was any reference to the many evolutionists who have stated that natural selection is, in essence, little more than a tautology (viz., it is based on circular reasoning). The truth is, Mr. Quammen’s evolutionary cohorts have been acknowledging this obvious fact for years. T.H. Morgan, the eminent geneticist and pioneer of fruit-fly research, seems to have been one of the first to spot the problem. He wrote early in the twentieth century: “For it may be little more than a truism to state that the individuals that are best adapted to survive have a better chance of surviving than those not so well adapted to survive” (as quoted in Bethell, 1976). British evolutionist Francis Hitching observed that “Darwinism, as Darwin wrote it, could be simply but nonsensically stated: survivors survive. Which is certainly a tautology; and tells us nothing about how species originate, as even Darwin’s supporters admit” (1982, p. 84, emp. added). Dr. Hitching even went so far as to note that “a tautology (or truism) is a self-evident, circular statement empty of meaning, such as ‘Darwin was a man,’ or ‘biology is studied by biologists.’ The trouble with natural selection (and survival of the fittest) is that it seems to fall into this category” (p. 84, parenthetical items in orig.). Some well-known evolutionists have been trying for years to get their own colleagues to concede that natural selection is a tautology. Somehow, natural selection is supposed to ensure the “survival of the fittest,” but the only pragmatic way to define the “fittest” is (you guessed it!) “those that survive.” At a professional symposium on Neo-Darwinism, geneticist C.H. Waddington of Edinburgh University opined: The theory of neo-Darwinism is a theory of the evolution of the changing of the population in respect to leaving offspring and not in respect to anything else. Nothing else is mentioned in the mathematical theory of neo-Darwinism. It is smuggled in, and everybody has in the back of his mind that the animals that leave the largest number of offspring are going to be those best adapted also for eating peculiar vegetation, or something of this sort; but this is not explicit in the theory. All that is explicit is that they will leave more offspring. There, you do come to what is, in effect, a vacuous statement: Natural selection is that some things leave more offspring than others; and you ask, which leave more offspring than others; and it is those that leave more offspring; and there is nothing more to it than that. The whole guts of evolution—which is, how do you come to have horses and tigers and things—is outside the mathematical theory (as quoted in Moorhead and Kaplan, 1967, p. 14, emp. added). Waddington is not alone in his assessment of the serious problems facing evolution as a result of natural selection having been shown to be a circular argument. G.A. Peseley joined the ranks of those criticizing natural selection as evolution’s mechanism when he stated: One of the most frequent objections against the theory of natural selection is that it is a sophisticated tautology. Most evolutionary biologists seem unconcerned about the charge and make only a token effort to explain the tautology away. The remainder, such as Professors Waddington and Simpson, will simply concede the fact. For them, natural selection is a tautology which states a heretofore unrecognized relation: the fittest—defined as those who will leave the most offspring—will leave the most offspring. What is most unsettling is that some evolutionary biologists have no qualms about proposing tautologies as explanations. One would immediately reject any lexicographer who tried to define a word by the same word, or a thinker who merely restated his proposition, or any other instance of gross redundancy; yet no one seems scandalized that men of science should be satisfied with a major principle which is no more than a tautology (1982, 38:74). Arthur Koestler, vitalist philosopher and author, incisively described the tautology of natural selection in these words: Once upon a time, it all looked so simple. Nature rewarded the fit with the carrot of survival and punished the unfit with the stick of extinction. The trouble only started when it came to defining fitness.... Thus natural selection looks after the survival and reproduction of the fittest, and the fittest are those which have the highest rate of reproduction.... We are caught in a circular argument which completely begs the question of what makes evolution evolve (1978, p. 170). Yet, as Harvard-trained lawyer Norman MacBeth observed: “In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutations plus natural selection—quite unaware of the fact that random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection a tautology” (1982, 2:18). James E. Lloyd, editor of the Florida Entomologist, condemned evolution with faint praise (while simultaneously attempting to prop up its alleged factuality) when he wrote: Natural selection, though it may be tautological and philosophically a poor theory in the various ways it is usually stated (e.g., “survival of the fittest”), and perhaps not even capable of being falsified, is nevertheless profound and axiomatic. It provides the most useful insight for problem solving that biological science has, and is the heart and soul of behavioral ecology (1982, 65:1, emp. added). The problem for natural selection, however, does not end there. In fact, it gets even more serious. As Stephen J. Gould observed: “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” (1977b, p. 28). Unfortunately, creating the fit is the one thing natural selection cannot do. As the famous Dutch botanist Hugo deVries put it: “Natural selection may explain the survival of the fittest, but it cannot explain the arrival of the fittest” (1905, pp. 825-826). The late English paleontologist Colin Patterson placed the matter in its proper focus when he commented that “�most of the current argument in neo-Darwinism is about this question: how a species originates. And it is there that natural selection seems to be fading out, and chance mechanisms of one sort or another are being invoked” (1982). National Geographic’s Quammen, like a skilled magician, employed natural selection as a mechanism for macroevolutionary processes, and then with a convenient sleight-of-hand trick, proceeded to offer as “proof” examples of microevolution. With impressive, full-color photographs (provided by Rob Clark), Quammen used the tired old argument of Darwin’s finches (pp. 26-27,30) as a demonstration of natural selection, citing specifically the well-known scientific studies of Peter Grant from Princeton University who, with his wife Rosemary, has spent the past several decades observing changes in finches’ beaks on the Gal�pagos Islands (p. 30). In the end, all that the Grants discovered was that finches’ beaks change. The finches, however, always remained finches. They did not turn into something else. Quammen also referred to variation among dogs (pp. 16-17). If this is the best the evolutionists have to offer, then their theory is in far worse trouble than even they seem to realize. Creationists never have objected to the idea of natural selection as a mechanism for eliminating the unfit, non-adapted organisms. As a matter of fact, creationists long before Darwin were advocating natural selection as a conservation principle. Few people are aware, apparently, that natural selection was not Charles Darwin’s discovery. A creationist zoologist/chemist by the name of Edward Blyth (1810-1873) wrote about it in the years between 1835 and 1837, well before Darwin. Some evolutionists, like the late Loren Eiseley (Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History of Science at the University of Pennsylvania), even have gone so far as to question the incredible similarity between Blyth’s essays and those of Charles Darwin (1959), hinting at plagiarism on Darwin’s part. Eiseley wrote that “the leading tenets of Darwin’s work—the struggle for existence, variation, natural selection, and sexual selection—are all fully expressed in a paper written by Blyth in 1835” (1979, p. 55). That fact has not been lost on creationists. Ian Taylor, in his book, In the Minds of Men, discussed Darwin’s reading of Patrick Matthew’s 1831 essay, Naval Timber and Arboriculture, which in its appendix contained the phrase “this natural process of selection”—a phrase that Darwin changed slightly to “natural means of selection” and incorporated into his very first essay, published in 1842 (1984, p. 125). As a screening device for eliminating the unfit, natural selection represents the Creator’s plan for preventing harmful mutations from affecting and even destroying the entire species. Further, to employ an old adage, that which says too much says nothing at all. The long neck of the giraffe and the short neck of the hippopotamus are both explicable by natural selection, as are both the dull coloration of the peppered moth and the brilliant colors of the bird of paradise. Natural selection “explains” everything, and therefore really explains nothing. It cannot create new genera, families, phyla, etc. It cannot explain adaptation. The fact that an organism is adapted to its environment tells us absolutely nothing about how it came to be adapted. Any organisms not so adapted would not have survived, but this constitutes no proof that those organisms that did survive possessed adaptations produced by evolution. Yet Gould has admitted that natural selection must be able to “create the fit” if it is to be deemed successful in an evolutionary scenario. This, it cannot do. And it certainly cannot explain the vast complexity of life around us. Tautologous arguments are not equipped with the power to “explain” such, much less “create” such. As Swedish biologist S�ren L�vtrup wrote (mincing no words!): After this step-wise elimination, only one possibility remains: the Darwinian theory of natural selection, whether or not coupled with Mendelism, is false. I have already shown that the arguments advanced by the early champions were not very compelling, and that there are now considerable numbers of empirical facts which do not fit with the theory. Hence, to all intents and purposes the theory has been falsified, so why has it not been abandoned? I think the answer is that current evolutionists follow Darwin’s example—they refuse to accept falsifying evidence (p. 352, emp. added). Enough said! Biogeography As one of his supporting pieces of “evidence,” Quammen leaned heavily on biogeography—a branch of science that attempts to document and understand spatial patterns of biodiversity among plants and animals. In speaking of Darwin, Mr. Quammen commented: Biogeography, for instance, offered a great pageant of peculiar facts and patterns. Anyone who considers the biogeographical data, Darwin wrote, must be struck by the mysterious clustering pattern among what he called “closely allied” species—that is, similar creatures sharing roughly the same body plan. Such closely allied species tend to be found on the same continent (several species of Zebra in Africa) or within the same group of oceanic islands (dozens of species of honeycreepers in Hawaii, thirteen species of Gal�pagos finch), despite their species-by-species preferences for different habitats, food sources, or conditions of climate�. Why should “closely allied” species inhabit neighboring patches of habitat? And why should similar habitat on different continents be occupied by species that aren’t so closely allied? “We see in these facts some deep organic bond,” Darwin wrote. “This bond, on my theory, is simply inheritance.” Similar species occur nearby in space because they have descended from common ancestors (pp. 9-10, parenthetical items in orig, emp. added). So there you have it. Because certain plants or animals share “roughly the same body plan” and “tend to be found on the same continent,” they therefore are genetically related, and have come from a common ancestor. Evolutionists suggest that only evolution can explain why there are certain creatures in one location (like kangaroos in Australia), but not in another location. One thing Mr. Quammen apparently “forgot” to mention as he was discussing his “evidence” is that biogeography is usually not even an “experimental” science. It is mostly a comparative observational branch, due to the fact that the spatial and temporal scales are commonly too large for true experimentation. Thus, this field speculates about what determines where a species to lives, and what prevents it from colonizing in other areas. Most biogeographers try to evaluate three processes in explaining what is found in nature: evolution; extinction; and dispersal. Obviously, however, formulating theories and predictions while having already accepted evolution as a “fact,” will grossly bias any interpretation of the scientific data. For instance, we know today that many species have suspicious resemblances to supposedly different species that “just happen” to live nearby. They appear this way, even though another species—designed differently—would seem to be a better fit. For example, the trees on the remote island of St. Helena are unlike the trees anywhere else on Earth. Sunflowers appear to be the “closest relative” to the strange gumwood tree and to the native cabbage-trees. And, the most closely related sunflower is the local sunflower. The scientific explanation is that this volcanic island originally was formed far away from any continent, and therefore started out with no land plants. Eventually, some sunflower seeds managed to get there. Since nothing else was filling the role of “tree,” these sunflowers filled that role. Transformed by time, competition, and the demands of their role, they now look like trees. The only problem with this explanation is that no macroevolution has occurred. Sunflowers are still sunflowers. Examples like this can be found on almost every remote island, and evolutionists are quick to try and use such examples as proof for their theory. In the Gal�pagos Islands, the absence of woodpeckers has caused some finches—which obtain their food in a manner similar to woodpeckers—to fit into the “woodpecker” niche. Most scientists today suspect that finches were one of the only “land birds” to occupy the Gal�pagos, and as such, the birds have modified beaks that allow them to take advantage of various food sources. Moving to the North American continent, we now know that birds are the same on both sides of the Grand Canyon, yet there are different rodents on each side. The obvious explanation is that the canyon isolates groups of rodents, but does not isolate birds. Such differences permit us to speculate on what allows a species to live where it does, but they do not tell us anything about how the species got there in the first place! Explaining such things as the origin of Australia’s marsupial population is just as difficult for evolutionists as they claim it is for creationists. Marsupials like kangaroos, opossums, wallabies, and koalas seem unusual, but monotremes (i.e., the echidna and the platypus) are even more puzzling. The main difference between marsupials and most other mammals centers on the reproductive system. Marsupials give birth prematurely, and allow the fetus to develop in an external pouch. In other mammals, (excluding the monotremes, which lay eggs), the fetus develops within the uterus and is attached to, and nourished by, the placenta. Neither biogeography nor evolution can explain why animals sharing the same tree, reproduce using an internal uterus (e.g., squirrels) as opposed to an external pouch (e.g., opossums). One of the most interesting facts about marsupials is that they nearly all have non-marsupial equivalents in other parts of the world (see Dobzhansky, et al., 1977, Figure 9.3, p. 267). The kangaroo has a similar role to the antelope that roams the African savanna. The wombat resembles a badger, and even has a backward-pointing pouch so that it will not fill with dirt while burrowing! There also are many small marsupials that have rodent counterparts. Evolutionists, of course, are forced to attribute such similarities to “parallel evolution” in both homology (being alike in form) and analogy (occupying a corresponding niche). That is, they believe that these marsupials and their placental peers developed independently—while they share similar characteristics, they took different paths to get there (see Simpson and Beck, 1965, pp. 499-501). A common ancestry, combined with similar forces of natural selection, evolutionists assert, will result in the same sort of changes through time. This common ancestor is thought to be the opossum because it is a marsupial, and is found in other areas of the world apart from Australia. According to evolutionary theory, the opossum was a primitive mammal living 200 million years ago on a single southern land mass called Gondwanaland. When parts of this supercontinent divided into what are now Australia and South America, the opossums were separated geographically. Over eons of time, so the story goes, the Australian descendants of the opossum developed into the various types of marsupials seen today. But in South America, they “evolved” placentas and eventually migrated to North America and Eurasia. These evolutionary theories, however, suffer from a number of problems. (1) There are no intermediate fossils (“transitional forms”) showing the development of the marsupials from an opossum or opossum-like ancestor. Furthermore, to suggest that one type of mammal could arise by supposed evolutionary mechanisms is incredible enough, but the probability of having both placental and non-placental forms evolve in the same way, at the same time, and in different regions, is remote, to say the least. (2) The humble opossum has been nominated as the ancestor of all mammals because it is supposed to be so “primitive,” having a relatively small brain and no “specialized” characteristics. But the opossum has thrived virtually unchanged in many parts of the world. In general, marsupials are often considered less “advanced” because they lack the complex internal reproductive system of placental mammals. However, they possess many other characteristics that could give them an edge over their placental counterparts. For instance, a female kangaroo can nourish two young ones of different ages at the same time, providing the appropriate formula from each teat. Unlike placental mammals, marsupials can suspend or abort the embryo deliberately if adverse conditions arise. And, of course, the pouch provides a superior place of protection for the young marsupial. Yes, marsupials are different, but they are not inferior. (3) The distribution of marsupials is not well answered by evolutionary theories. According to Michael Pitman, “the most diverse fossil assemblies have been obtained from South America and, later (Pliocene), Australia” (1984, p. 206, parenthetical item in orig.). That is, according to the fossil record, the marsupials already were well defined as a distinct group before the alleged separation of Australia from other continents. Thus, geographic separation cannot be as significant to their development as evolutionists like to think (or as they would like everyone else to think). There also are numerous other puzzles in regard to the distribution of living (and/or fossil) organisms. For example, evolutionists are forced to admit that marsupials once lived in Europe, Asia, and in abundance in North America, yet now are largely absent (except for opossums in the Americas). Consider the following revealing admission from two evolutionists: Living marsupials are restricted to Australia and South America (which were part of the supercontinent Gondwana); North American opossums are recent immigrants to the continent. In contrast, metatherian fossils from the Late Cretaceous are exclusively from Eurasia and North America (which formed the supercontinent Laurasia). This geographical switch remains unexplained (Cifelli and Davis, 2003, 301:1899-1902, emp. added). Closely related species in a certain geographical area (like the thirteen species of finches in the Gal�pagos Islands that Quammen mentioned—species which, by the way, are now known to be interbreeding!)—may well have arisen from a single, original species (a.k.a., a “common ancestor”). But that says nothing about where that single original species came from. “A finch ‘changing’ into a finch” does not offer any explanation whatsoever as to how finches originated in the first place. Such instances are textbook examples of sorting already-present genetic information (and far more rapidly than evolutionists would expect!). But they are not examples of generating new information. Furthermore, studies have now shown that many changes are actually the result of a built-in capacity to respond (i.e., adapt) to cyclically changing climates. For example, while a drought might result in a slight alteration in the specific size of a finch’s beak, whatever changes take place during such a period of stress rarely are permanent. The finch’s beak generally returns to the original condition once the drought ends. This same type of argumentation applies to the other examples (anoles, mole rats, ants, pigeons, and fruit flies) that Quammen employed in his National Geographic article. Ascribing evolutionary interpretations to events we find in nature does not make those events the product of organic evolution. Regardless of what David Quammen thinks, and contrary to what his November 2004 National Geographic article implies, creationists have no problem whatsoever with the production of new species—which are the end result of the reshuffling (or loss) of the genetic information in the original created kinds of organisms. The disagreement in science today between evolutionists and creationists is not about the production of new species. Rather, it is about the production of those groupings beyond the species level (genus, family, class, order, or phylum). Instances from biogeography of “closely allied” species says nothing whatsoever about how one kind of organism was able to “evolve” into another kind of organism. When Darwin said that he saw in the facts of biogeography “some deep organic bond,” he was seeing exactly what he wanted to see, not what the data themselves revealed. And when David Quammen, 145 years later, said that “similar species occur nearby in space because they have descended from common ancestors,” he was doing exactly the same. The facts are one thing; the interpretation of the facts is something else entirely. Paleontology In a section of his article that is an inexcusable gaffe on his part, and one that surely must represent a terrible embarrassment to his evolutionary colleagues, Quammen resurrected the long-dead concept of “horse evolution.” Several decades ago, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City assembled a famous exhibit of fossil horses, from Eohippus (now known as Hyracotherium) to modern Equus. This exhibit was presented as powerful evidence for Darwinism, with Equus being the ultimate “goal” of equine evolution. Soon thereafter, this story of the horse family was included in practically all biology textbooks—from which no doubt, Mr. Quammen obtained his outdated information. He wrote: In North America, for example, a vaguely horselike creature known as Hyracotherium was succeeded by Orohippus, then Epihippus, then Mesohippus, which in turn were succeeded by a variety of horsey American critters. Some of them even galloped across the Bering land bridge into Asia, then onward to Europe and Africa. By five million years ago they had nearly all disappeared, leaving behind Dinohippus, which was succeeded by Equus, the modern genus of horse (p. 12). Interestingly, another editor of a well-known magazine tried this tact several years earlier, and ended up being publicly scolded for it. John Rennie, editor of Scientific American, wrote in the July 2002 issue of that publication: “Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils intermediate in form between various taxonomic groups�. A sequence of fossils spans the evolution of modern horses from the tiny Eohippus” (2002, 287[1]:83). The alleged evolutionary tree that depicts the rise of modern-day horses Evolutionists themselves long ago abandoned horse evolution as an example of transitional forms, since they no longer believe the fossil record represents anything like a straightforward progression, but instead a bush with many varying branches. As Heribert Nilsson correctly pointed out as long ago as 1954: The family tree of the horse is beautiful and continuous only in the textbooks. In the reality provided by the results of research it is put together from three parts, of which only the last can be described as including horses. The forms of the first part are just as much little horses as the present day damans are horses. The construction of the horse is therefore a very artificial one, since it is put together from non-equivalent parts, and cannot therefore be a continuous transformation series (pp. 551-552, emp. added). Mr. Quammen apparently does not realize that as far back as the 1950s, scientists already had cast aside the false notion of horse evolution via classic Darwinian changes. [In fact, the vast majority of textbooks (including ones published by National Geographic!) have abandoned the horse in favor of the camel—a species they believe can paint the same picture but that has not been so publicly ridiculed.] David Raup of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois, acknowledged: Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin, and knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded.... Ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information—what appeared to be a nice, simple progression when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and much less gradualistic (1979, pp. 24,25). The late eminent paleontologist of Harvard, George Gaylord Simpson, summed it up well when he wrote: “The uniform, continuous transformation of Hyracotherium into Equus, so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers, never happened in nature” (1953, p. 125, emp. added). Another scientist from Harvard—and a man for whom Dr. Simpson served as mentor—Stephen J. Gould, bemoaned the continued use of what he termed “misinformation” such as horse evolution. He wrote. Once ensconced in textbooks, misinformation becomes cocooned and effectively permanent, because, as stated above, textbooks copy from previous texts. (I have written two essays on this lamentable practice: one on the amusingly perennial description of the eohippus, or “dawn horse,” as the size of a fox terrier, even though most authors, including yours truly, have no idea of the dimensions or appearance of this breed�) [2000, 109[2]:45; to read his exposure of the fallacy of horse evolution, see Gould, 1991, pp. 155-167]. Creationist Jonathan Sarfati wrote along these lines: Even informed evolutionists regard horse evolution as a bush rather than a sequence. But the so-called Eohippus is properly called Hyracotherium, and has little that could connect it with horses at all. The other animals in the “sequence” actually show hardly any more variation between them than that within horses today. One non-horse and many varieties of the true horse kind does not a sequence make (2002a). Truer words were never spoken: “One non-horse and many varieties of the true horse kind does not a sequence make.” It will require much better evidence than this from evolutionists if they hope to convince knowledgeable people that their theory is correct (much less a “fact” of science). Apparently, however, they have no better evidence, as was evident from Mr. Quammen’s next feeble attempt to produce an intermediate form in the fossil record. Alleged Reptile-to-Bird Evolution As if Quammen’s horse-evolution gaffe were not bad enough, he then resurrected the long-defunct idea of Archaeopteryx as some sort of reptile-to-bird transitional form. [Interestingly, Scientific American’s John Rennie tried using it, too. He wrote: “One of the most famous fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers and skeletal structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs” (2002, 287[1]:83).] Both men, as it turns out, are wrong—as many of their own evolutionary colleagues have long admitted. For over 100 years, evolutionists considered a creature known as Archaeopteryx to be the best example of a transitional form between land-dwelling animals and birds. In 1860, a single refined, asymmetrical feather was discovered in the Solnhofen Limestone (named after the small town of Solnhofen, Germany). This discovery provided the ultimate gift of the evolutionary gods to scientists of the day who were searching diligently for something (anything!) in the fossil record that portrayed the combined traits of two distinct classes of animals. The animal from which the feather was alleged to have come eventually was named Archaeopteryx lithographica, a creature that must have had a considerable impact on a society that already was discussing Darwin’s intriguing proposals regarding the theory of evolution. This “missing link” was the first real evidence that Darwinists felt supported their position of a transition from land-dwelling animals into birds. Evolutionists used to consider Archaeopteryx as the transitional form that allowed land-dwelling animals finally to get off the ground. In the past, practically all evolution-based science textbooks contained a breathtaking photographic reproduction, and equally fascinating description, of Archaeopteryx, with genealogical lines showing the descent of modern birds from this ancient “intermediate.” According to paleontologists, the available fossils of Archaeopteryx reveal that it was a crow-sized animal that may have been able to fly, but probably not very far. Archaeopteryx had a wingspan of about 1.5 feet, was approximately 1 foot long from beak to tail, and likely weighed around 11 to 18 ounces. However, this one “missing link”—which was supposed to revolutionize mankind’s understanding of bird evolution—ultimately created more problems than solutions for evolutionists. An ongoing debate as to whether or not this animal was merely a bird, or a true intermediate, continued nonstop for over a century. The famous American dinosaur hunter Othniel C. Marsh once said: “He is certainly a wise man who today can tell a bird from a reptile, with only the fragments of an ancient form before him” (1890). Two years after German paleontologist Herman von Meyer published his description of Archaeopteryx, Sir Richard Owen, the curator of the British Museum of Natural History, published his own description. As far as Owen was concerned, Archaeopteryx was unequivocally a bird—a peculiar and distinctive bird, but a bird nevertheless. So what is it about this famous fossil that has some people seeing birds and others seeing dinosaurs? The urgency of needing to find some sort of “intermediate,” caused evolutionists to concentrate on as many features of Archaeopteryx as possible in order to discover “combined” traits. According to Niles Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural History, Archaeopteryx had “advanced characteristics of birds and retained a tremendous amount of ‘primitive’ characteristics, like teeth” (as quoted in Sunderland, 1988, p. 78). However, some fish have teeth, some do not. Some amphibians have teeth, some do not. How can a scientist look at the presence of teeth and simply assume that this animal evolved from something else? Many scientists point out things like an opposable hallux (big toe), the furcula (wishbone), which is formed by two clavicles that have fused in the midline, and an elongated pubis directed backwards—and see nothing but a bird. Evolutionist Alan Feduccia stated: “Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it’s not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of ‘paleobabble’ is going to change that” (as quoted in Morell, 1993, 259:764, emp. added). A more recent fossil bird from Mongolia—Mononychus—had hands and arms like those of digging animals (as well as teeth), and is dated at only half as old as Archaeopteryx. Writing for Science News, Richard Monastersky observed: Mongolian and U.S. researchers have found a 75-million-year-old, bird-like creature with a hand so strange it has left paleontologists grasping for an explanation.... Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago notes that Mononychus had arms built much like those of digging animals. Because moles and other diggers have keeled sternums and wrists reminiscent of birds, the classification of Mononychus becomes difficult, he says (1993, 143:245). Thus, evolutionists now are faced with the possibility that birds may have evolved from moles instead of reptiles! Consequently, scientists are trying to discern how it is that animals that normally burrow in the ground suddenly decided to abandon their usual environment and “just fly away.” [We imagine that a goodly number of farmers would be interested in learning how to get these pesky creatures to abandon their fields and “just fly away”!] So what is the truth about Archaeopteryx? Perhaps the late Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, summed it up best when he stated that Archaeopteryx has simply become a patsy for wishful thinking. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not a part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test (as quoted in Sunderland, 1988, p. 102). The story surrounding Archaeopteryx has been complicated by another discovery that has left evolutionists scratching their heads in regard to where, exactly, the creature actually fits in the evolutionary scheme of things. In 1986, Sankar Chatterjee and colleagues at Texas Tech University discovered the fossilized remains of two crow-sized birds allegedly 75 million years older than Archaeopteryx (i.e., approximately 225 million years old according to evolutionary dating schemes) [see Beardsley, 1986; Chatterjee, 1991]. Chatterjee named the find Protoavis texensis (“first bird from Texas”), and has reported that the skull of Protoavis has 23 features that are fundamentally bird-like. In commenting on this, one author wrote in Science concerning Chatterjee’s work: “His reconstruction also shows a flexible neck, large brain, binocular vision, and, crucially, portals running from the rear of the skull to the eye socket—a feature seen in modern birds but not dinosaurs” (Anderson, 1991, 253:35). Archaeopteryx lithographica All of this has caused evolutionists severe problems because Protoavis appeared at the time of the earliest dinosaurs, which means that if it is accepted as genuine, then birds obviously could not have evolved from dinosaurs, and Archaeopteryx could not be the ancestor of modern birds. After looking at the evidence for Protoavis, Kansas University paleontologist Larry Martin suggested: “There’s going to be a lot of people with Archaeopteryx eggs on their face” (as quoted in Anderson, 253:35). For more than a century, the approach of some evolutionists has been to find some supporting evidence, tout it as “proof” of evolution, and then ignore conflicting theories or data. But what do the actual facts reveal about creatures such as Archaeopteryx? In reality, the story that scientists have attempted to weave in regard to this ancient “missing link” is unraveling before their very eyes. Scientific data have shown colossal differences in reptilian and bird lungs, scales as opposed to feathers, and the embryological hand development of dinosaurs versus birds. It may well be that we are witnessing the last gasps of a dying hypothesis about how birds evolved from dinosaurs! Faced with such overwhelming evidence against true evolutionary descent, it would be unrealistic to accept the position that Archaeopteryx lithographica is anything like the missing link that evolutionists once claimed it was. Colin Patterson admitted in his 1999 book, Evolution: “Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else” (p. 109). Henry Gee, the chief science writer for Nature, confirmed that point in his 1999 book, In Search of Deep Time, when he admitted: We know that it is impossible when confronted with a fossil, to be certain whether it is your ancestor, or the ancestor of anything else, even another fossil. We also know that adaptive scenarios are simply justifications for particular arrangements of fossils made after the fact, and which relay for their justification on authority rather than on testable hypotheses (p. 127). While the “Piltdown Man” hoax was able to fool evolutionists for more than forty years, the Archaeopteryx hoax appears to have lasted far longer—and continues in some quarters to this very day, in spite of such admissions as this one from evolutionary ornithologist Allan Feduccia who wrote in Science almost a decade ago: I conclude that Archaeopteryx was arboreal and volant [i.e., possessing extended wings for flight— BT/BH ], considerably advanced aerodynamically, and probably capable of flapping, powered flight to at least some degree. Archaeopteryx...was, in the modern sense, a bird (1993, 259:792). And so, once again, it is not merely the “link” that’s missing in evolutionary theory—it’s the entire chain! Given all the facts about the origin of birds, it is little wonder that Charles Darwin remarked in a letter to his American friend, Asa Gray, on April 3, 1860: “[T]rifling particulars of structure often make me very uncomfortable. The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!” (as quoted in MacBeth, 1971, p. 101). Mr. Darwin, considering the paucity of the fossil record, and the elegance of the design inherent in a single feather (see “Words of a Feather” for evidence regarding the intricate design of feathers), we certainly can understand why. [For a complete discussion on Archaeopteryx and the dinosaurs-to-birds theory, see our two-part series, “Archaeopteryx, Archaeoraptor, and the ‘Dinosaurs-to-Birds’ Theory.”] Cows (or Antelopes?) to Whales? As Quammen continued his (by now) greatly weakened defense of evolution, he dug still deeper into his bag of alleged evolutionary intermediate forms, bringing to the reader’s attention the work of Philip Gingerich of the University of Michigan. Gingerich, a paleontologist, is well known in evolutionary circles for his work on whale evolution. Falling back on his own field of literature, Quammen wove a tale about being in Gingerich’s office and having him “put a small lump of petrified bone, no larger than a lug nut, into my hand. It was the famous astragalus, from the species he had eventually named Artiocetus clavis. It felt solid and heavy as truth” (p. 31). This, from a man whose experience in biology amounts to walking through rain forests and talking to biologists! What Quammen forgot to share with his readers was the fact that this “solid” heavy truth (the astragalus) was discovered down a slope, over 2 meters away from the embedded fossils that were identified as Artiocetus. In the original report, Gingerich admitted: “No other mammalian specimens were found in the vicinity” (Gingerich, et al., 2001, 293:2240). Nevertheless, this “solid” evidence was assumed to be a part of a fossil (found in a different location) that “proved” whale evolution. This appears to be the modus operandi for those who promote whale evolution. Find a bit of a jaw or skull, have an artist draw a four-legged creature, call a press conference, and offer up unprovable speculations about how whales evolved from land mammals. The origin of whales has dominated media headlines over the past several years as scientists have wrestled with why aquatic creatures would grow legs, walk the Earth, and then inexplicably decide to return to the water (thus explaining the differences between fish and aquatic mammals such as dolphins and whales). Scientific American’s editor, John Rennie, in his now-infamous July 2002 issue, concluded: “Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus helped to make that transition” (2002, 287[1]:83). Daryl Domning, a paleontologist at Howard University, stated: “We essentially have every stage now from a terrestrial animal to one that is fully aquatic” (Mayell, 2001). That bold declaration was made in National Geographic News on-line, October 10, 2001, after a sea-cow skeleton was found in Seven Rivers, Jamaica. Evolutionists contend that this find, which they have labeled an entirely new genus and species, played an important role in helping terrestrial animals make the transition from land to water. In 1859, Darwin suggested that whales arose from bears, sketching a scenario in which selective pressures might cause bears to ultimately evolve into whales. But, embarrassed by criticism (and, we might add, rightly so!), he removed his hypothetical “swimming bears” from later editions of the Origin of Species (see Gould, 1995, p. 359). Evolutionists were unsure how to proceed, since they knew that whales were different from fish; thus, a different evolutionary account was required. Whales are warm-blooded vertebrates that regulate their internal temperature via heat generated by a high metabolism. Like most mammals (the exception being the duck-billed platypus), female whales bear live young, which are nursed by mammary glands. While adult whales are not covered in hair or fur, they do acquire body hair temporarily as fetuses. These features make whales unequivocally mammalian—a fact that poses a mountainous hurdle for evolutionists. The November 2001 issue of National Geographic presented additional propaganda in an article titled “Evolution of Whales.” While the official scientific names and full-color reconstructions contained in the article appear quite impressive, the data are far from it. A closer examination of two alleged whale predecessors—Pakicetus and Ambulocetus—reveals that these creatures had little in common with whales, and thus do not represent the animals’ ancient ancestors. [Remember our earlier statement that “November is not a very good month for National Geographic”? The fraudulent Archaeoraptor creature appeared in November 1999. Two years later, in November 2001, the whale-evolution gaffe was published. Then, three years later, in November 2004, Quammen’s pitiful defense of evolution—using such erroneous examples as horse evolution and Archaeopteryx—appeared. You would think that Bill Allen, the editor of National Geographic, would learn something from these repeated embarrassing failures. Apparently not. Surely, there’s a message of some kind here.] Pakicetus was discovered in 1983 by Gingerich, who claimed the find as a primitive whale—even though he found only a jaw and skull fragments (see Gingerich, 1994, 2001). So what makes National Geographic so sure this creature is the long-lost “walking” ancestor of modern whales? Douglas Chadwick (author of the November 2001 article) stated: What causes scientists to declare the creature a whale? Subtle clues in combination—the arrangement of cups on the molar teeth, a folding in a bone of the middle ear, and the positioning of the ear bones within the skull—are absent in other land animals but a signature of later Eocene whales (2001, 200:68). Artist’s rendition of an “aquatic” Pakicetus So, from mere dimples in teeth and folded ear bones, this animal somehow “qualifies” as a walking whale? Interestingly, prominent whale expert J.G.M. Thewissen and his colleagues later unearthed additional bones of Pakicetus (Thewissen, et al., 2001). The skeletons of Pakicetus published by Thewissen, et al. do not look anything like the swimming creature featured in either Gingerich’s original article or in National Geographic. In fact, in a commentary in the same issue of Nature in which the article by Thewissen, et al. was published, the following statement appeared: “All the postcranial bones indicate that pakicetids were land mammals, and�indicate that the animals were runners, with only their feet touching the ground” (see de Muizon, 2001, 413:260). National Geographic, however, deceptively chose to display the Pakicetus in a swimming position, obviously trying to sway the reader into believing that Gingerich’s fossilized jawbone and skull fragments represented some type of aquatic creature—which they do not. The next alleged ancestor, Ambulocetus natans, was proposed as a whale long before the dust settled from its fossilized remains. The name itself, “Ambulocetus natans,” comes from the Latin words “ambulare” (to walk), “cetus” (whale), and “natans” (swimming), meaning quite literally a walking, swimming whale. The scientists who discovered and subsequently named this fossil screamed “walking whale” well in advance of a complete analysis, and the illustrator for National Geographic exercised a vast amount of “artistic license” in assigning webbed feet to the creature. While such feet definitely make the creature look more aquatic, it is impossible to come to any such conclusion from a study of the fossils themselves. Soft tissues (such as webbed feet) normally do not fossilize well. There is no evidence this creature ever spent any amount of time in the water—yet the drawing shows an animal with rear legs that appear to be built for an aquatic environment. An examination of the actual skeleton (see Carroll, 1998, p. 335) quickly dispels the notion that the rear legs performed as obligatory fins. The legs on Ambulocetus were not fins at all, but rather legs made for walking and supporting weight. While artists make the transition appear easy, the logistics of going from a terrestrial environment to an aquatic one would be incredibly complex. Evolutionist Anthony Martin admitted: “Principally it meant developing a new mode of locomotion (from walking to swimming), a physiology to cope with a dense medium (water rather than air), new methods of detecting and catching prey, and a means of breathing efficiently at the sea surface” (1990, p. 12, parenthetical items in orig.). Martin’s analysis did not even address the metabolic, neuronal, reproductive, and cellular changes required for such animals to live underwater. Duane Gish summed it up well when he stated: It is quite entertaining, starting with cows, pigs, or buffaloes, to attempt to visualize what the intermediates may have looked like. Starting with a cow, one could even imagine one line of descent which prematurely became extinct, due to what might be called an “udder failure” (1995, p. 198). Udder failure indeed! Yet in his National Geographic article, David Quammen related the story of Philip Gingerich’s find of additional fossils that “challenged the prevailing view in paleontology.” According to Quammen, It was half of a pulley-shaped anklebone, known as an astragalus, belonging to another new species of whale. A Pakistani colleague found the other half. When Gingerich fitted the two pieces together, he had a moment of humbling recognition�. Here was an anklebone, from a four-legged whale dating back to 47 million years, that closely resembled the homologous anklebone in an artiodactyls. Suddenly he realized how closely whales are related to antelopes (p. 31, emp. added). Is this not the most fascinating “tale of a whale” you’ve ever heard? Gingerich finds two pieces of bone, fits them together, suggests that they look like the anklebone of an artiodactyl (a hoofed land animal, like an antelope), and then leaps from that to the statement: “Here was an anklebone, from a four-legged whale!” If this were not so serious, it would be laughable. Terry Mortensen, in a review of the November 2004 issue of National Geographic that he authored, hinted at this when he wrote: Hold on! When was the last time you saw a “four-legged whale”? Evolutionists are playing language games to call the fins and tail of a whale “legs.” But if, as National Geographic says, the fossil “closely resembled” the anklebone in artiodactyls, then how on earth could this “single piece of fossil evidence” be interpreted as being in any way related to whales? (2004) ALLEGED WHALE EVOLUTION

Top left: Gingerich’s first reconstruction

Bottom left: what he actually found

Top right: more complete skeleton

Bottom right: more reasonable reconstruction



(courtesy of Answers in Genesis; used by permission) Good question. Why would anyone think that antelopes and whales are somehow related? The answer, of course, has to do with homology and its use as a “proof” in evolutionary theory. One argument frequently brought out as the “big gun” in support of the evolution has to do with what are known as the “comparative” sciences (comparative anatomy, comparative embryology, comparative physiology, comparative cytology, comparative biochemistry, etc.). As scientists have worked in these related fields, and have learned to compare one organism with another, basic similarities have arisen among, and between, various groups. When making comparisons of parts of organisms, scientists commonly speak of homologous structures, suggesting that these particular structures go through similar stages of development, have similar attachments, etc. In discussing these comparative arguments and homology, R.L. Wysong noted: Much of the case for amoeba to man evolution is built upon arguments from similarity. Evolutionists argue that if similarity can be shown between organisms through comparative anatomy, embryology, vestigial organs, cytology, blood chemistry, protein and DNA biochemistry, then evolutionary relationship can be proven (1976, p. 393). Michael Denton, in his text, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, devoted a large portion of the book to such arguments and wrote: “Since 1859 the phenomenon of homology has been traditionally cited by evolutionary biologists as providing one of the most powerful lines of evidence for the concept of organic evolution” (1985, p. 143). Denton is correct in his assessment. Charles Darwin himself thought of the argument from homology as one of the greatest single proofs of his theory. Denton commented that “homology provided Darwin with apparently positive evidence that organisms had undergone descent from a common ancestor” (p. 143). Darwin stated as much in The Origin of Species when he wrote: “We have seen that the members of the same class, independently of their habits of life, resemble each other in the general plan of their organization.... Is it not powerfully suggestive of true relationship, of inheritance from a common ancestor?” (1962, pp. 434-435). Denton therefore observed: “The phenomenon of homology has remained the mainstay of the argument for evolution right down to the present day” (p. 144). Strausburg and Weimer, in their text, General Biology, suggested: “The greater the similarity of structure, the closer the relationship, and, wherever close relationship is found, a common ancestry is indicated” (1947, p. 629). That statement was made in 1947. Decades later, the same kind of thinking is still standard fare. For example, the 1981 edition of the respected Encyclopaedia Britannica gave pride of place to the argument from homology in discussing the evidence for evolution: The indirect evidence for evolution is based primarily on the significance of similarities found in different organisms.... The similarity of plan is easily explicable if all descended with modification from a common ancestor, by evolution, and the term homologous is used to denote corresponding structures formed in this way.... Invertebrate animals, the skeleton of the forelimb is a splendid example of homology, in the bones of the upper arm, forearm, wrist, hand, and fingers, all of which can be matched, bone for bone, in rat, dog, horse, bat, mole, porpoise, or man. The example is all the more telling because the bones have become modified in adaptation to different modes of life but have retained the same fundamental plan of structure, inherited from a common ancestor (1981, 7:8). Denton acknowledged the importance of such thinking within the evolutionary camp, and showed why such thinking is so necessary, when he observed that “without underlying homologous resemblance in the fundamental design of dissimilar organisms and organ systems then evolution would have nothing to explain and comparative anatomy nothing to contribute to evolutionary theory” (1985, p. 145). The late biochemist, Isaac Asimov, one of America’s most prolific science writers, suggested that our ability to classify plants and animals on a groups-within-groups hierarchical basis virtually forces scientists to treat evolution as a “fact” (1981, 89[9]:85-87). What is the creationist’s response to all of this? Do similarities exist? And if so, is the evolutionist’s explanation the correct, or the only, explanation that fits the facts of the case? First, let us note how the creationist does not respond to this argument. Creationists do not deny the existing similarities; similarities do exist. Creationists are not ignorant of the existence of such facts of science. It is here, however, that we can learn an extremely valuable lesson in the creation/evolution controversy. That lesson is this: rarely is it the data that are in dispute—it is the interpretation placed on the data that is in dispute. In the cases of basic similarities, whether at the anatomical or biochemical level, denying that such similarities exist serves no good purpose. Creationists and evolutionists both have access to the same data. The evolutionist, however, looks at the data and says that similarity is proof of common ancestry. The creationist, on the other hand, examines the exact same data and suggests that similarity is evidence of creation according to a common design. In essence, a stalemate exists. Both sides have an answer to the data at hand. And in many instances, either explanation might appear legitimate. Second, however, the evolutionists’ argument works only if certain portions of the data on homology are presented. If all the available data are allowed full exposure, then the evidence from homology fails. Many years ago, T.H. Morgan of Columbia University, himself a committed evolutionist, candidly admitted what many evolutionists do not want to become common knowledge: “If, then, it can be established beyond dispute that similarity or even identity of the same character in different species is not always to be interpreted that both have arisen from a common ancestor, the whole argument from comparative anatomy seems to tumble in ruins” (1923, p. 246). Or, as Wysong wrote: “If the law of similarity can be used to show evolutionary relationships, then dissimilarities can be used to show a lack of relationship” (1976, pp. 393-394). Evolution is a complete cosmogony. It must explain both similarities and differences within its own framework. It is not the similarities that present the problem; it is the numerous differences. As Sir Alistair Hardy, former professor of zoology at Oxford University, wrote: “The concept of homology is fundamental to what we are talking about when we speak of evolution, yet in truth we cannot explain it all in terms of present-day biological theory” (1965, p. 211). What did Dr. Hardy mean when he said, more than thirty-five years ago, that “we cannot explain it all in terms of present-day biological theory”? He meant simply this: only when evolutionists are allowed to “pick and choose” similarities that fit their theory, can the argument from homology be made to work. When evolutionists are forced to use all the data—including those documenting dissimilarity—the argument from homology utterly fails. His point is well taken—even today. It is a documented fact that evolutionists are guilty of filtering the data to make it appear as if homology supports evolutionary theory. Now, however, that “picking and choosing” method has been exposed, as Lester and Bohlin have observed. Another problem is that from the raw data alone, not one single phylogeny emerges, but several. The one that agrees most closely with the traditional phylogeny is assumed to be the most “correct.” This hardly demonstrates the independent confirmation of evolutionary relationships. The combining of several phylogenies from different proteins combines not only strengths but also weaknesses (1984, p. 173, emp. in orig.). Vincent Demoulin likewise pointed out the fallacy inherent in this kind of “pick and choose” game when he noted that “the composite evolutionary tree encompasses all the weaknesses of the individual trees” (1979). That is to say, adding up all the available data from homology studies makes for an even weaker argument than already is present when examining just a few of the data on this topic. But there is no need to take any creationist’s word on the subject. Evolutionist Michael Denton stated quite succinctly just how valuable all this “proof” from similarity studies really is. Invariably, as biological knowledge has grown, common geneology as an explanation for similarity has tended to grow ever more tenuous. Clearly, such a trend carried to the extreme would hold calamitous consequences for evolution, as homologous resemblance is the very raison d’�tre of evolution theory. Without the phenomenon of homology—the modification of similar structures to different ends—there would be little need for a theory of descent with modification.... Like so much of the other circumstantial “evidence” for evolution, that drawn from homology is not convincing because it entails too many anomalies, too many counter-instances, far too many phenomena which simply do not fit easily into the orthodox picture. The failure of homology to substantiate evolutionary claims has not been as widely publicized as have the problems in paleontology. The discussion in the past three chapters indicates that the facts of comparative anatomy and the pattern of nature they reveal provide nothing like the overwhelming testimony to the Darwinian model of evolution that is often claimed. Simpson’s claim that “the facts simply do not make sense unless evolution is true,” or Dobzhansky’s that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” are simply not true if by the term evolution we mean a gradual process of biological change directed by natural selection.... In the last analysis the facts of comparative anatomy provide no evidence for evolution in the way conceived by Darwin, and even if we were to construe with the eye of faith some “evidence” in the pattern of diversity for the Darwinian model of evolution, this could only be seen, at best, as indirect or circumstantial.... ...the same hierarchic pattern which may be explained in terms of a theory of common descent, also, by its very nature, implies the existence of deep divisions in the order of nature. The same facts of comparative anatomy which proclaim unity also proclaim division; while resemblance suggests evolution, division, especially where it appears profound, is counter-evidence against the whole notion of transmutation (1985, pp. 154-155). What did Denton mean when he said that the “evidence” for evolution from homology studies “entails too many anomalies, too many counter-instances, far too many phenomena which simply do not fit easily into the orthodox picture”? The answer to that lies in an examination of the data that have become available during the past several years. For example, Wysong provided an extensive list of such data, among which were the following examples: The octopus eye, pig heart, Pekingese dog’s face, milk of the ass, and the pronator quadratus muscle of the Japanese salamander are all very similar to analogous human structures. Do these similarities show evolutionary relationships? The weight of the brain in proportion to body weight is greater in the dwarf monkey of South America, the marmoset, than in man. Since this proportion is used to show relationship between primates and man, is the marmoset, therefore, more evolved than man? The plague bacterium (Pasteurella pestis [now designated as Yersinia pestis— BT/BH ]) afflicts only man and rodent. Does this similarity show close relationship? Plant nettle stings contain acetylcholine, 5-hydroxytryptamine and histamine. These chemicals are also found in man. Are man and plant closely related? The root nodules of certain leguminous plants and the crustacean, Daphnia, contain hemoglobin, the blood pigment found in man. Are these organisms closely related to man? If certain specific gravity tests are run on the blood of various animals, the frog and snake are found to be more similar to man than the monkey is to man. If the concentration of red blood cells in animals is compared (millions per cubic millimeter of blood), man is more similar to frogs, fish, and birds than he is to sheep. Since bones are often used to show relationships, bone chemistry should be useful in this regard. If the calcium/phosphorus ratio is plotted against bone carbonate, man proves to be close to the turtle and elephant, the monkey close to the goose, and the dog close to the horse but distant from the cat. The tetrapyrole chemical ring is found in plant chlorophyll, in hemoglobin and other animal respiratory pigments, sporadically as a coloring pigment in molluscan shells, and also in the feathers of some bird species. How does tetrapyrole similarity speak for relationships (1976, pp. 394-395). After examining examples such as these, it is easy to understand Denton’s point when he said that there are too many “anomalies,” too many “counter-instances,” and “too many phenomena which simply do not fit easily into the orthodox picture.” Homology does not prove common ancestry. When someone—like Philip Gingerich—picks up two bones, concludes that they very likely came from an organism like an antelope, and then assigns them to a “four-legged whale,” that is not homology at work. Nor is it good science at work. It is sheer imagination and wishful thinking! Four-legged whales indeed! Embryology In a continuing attempt to locate some type of scientific evidence that “proves” evolution to be a fact, David Quammen turned to the field of embryology, and in doing so, invoked the long-ago-discarded concept of embryonic recapitulation. He wrote: Embryology too involved patterns that couldn’t be explained by coincidence. Why does the embryo of a mammal pass through stages resembling stages of the embryo of a reptile? Why is one of the larval forms of a barnacle, before metamorphosis, so similar to the larval form of a shrimp? Why do the larvae of moths, flies, and beetles resemble one another more than any of them resemble their respective adults? Because, Darwin wrote, “the embryo is the animal in its less modified state” and that state “reveals the structure of its progenitor” (p. 13). Embryology, as its name implies, is the study of the embryo. In The Origin of Species (1859), Darwin did indeed employ embryology. In fact, he asserted (in a discussion occupying no less than twelve pages) that similarity among the various embryos of animals and man was a primary proof of the theory of evolution. In fact, he called it “second to none” in importance. In The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin devoted the entire first chapter to this line of evidence, stressing how critical it was to the success of his theory. Then, along came Ernst Heinrich Haeckel (1834-1919), a German biologist who was such a devoted follower of Darwin that he was dubbed “the apostle of Darwinism in Germany.” He taught at the University of Jena, and became famous for his popularization of the so-called “theory of embryonic recapitulation” (or, as he referred to it, the great “Biogenetic Law”). [ NOTE : Haeckel’s “Biogenetic Law” should not be confused with the Law of Biogenesis, which correctly states that all life comes from previous life of its kind.] Haeckel suggested that the successive stages of human embryonic development repeat the evolutionary stages of our animal ancestry. The catch-phrase he developed to popularize this idea was that “ontogeny [the development of one] recapitulates [repeats] phylogeny [the development of the race].” In other words, the human embryo passes through all stages representing its ancestors—from the one-celled stage to the human. Seeing a human embryo grow would therefore be like watching a silent, moving picture of all our ancestral history. Today, we recognize that this argument is specious, and those who keep up with the scientific literature no longer use it. Why? To quote the late George Gaylord Simpson of Harvard: “It is now firmly established that ontogeny does not repeat phylogeny” (Simpson, et al., 1965, p. 352). Over seventy years ago, Sir Arthur Keith bluntly stated: It was expected that the embryo would recapitulate the features of its ancestors from the lowest to the highest forms in the animal kingdom. Now that the appearances of the embryo at all stages are known, the general feeling is one of disappointment; the human embryo at no stage is anthropoid in appearance. The embryo of the mammal never resembles the worm, the fish, or the reptile. Embryology provides no support whatsoever for the evolutionary hypothesis (1932, p. 94, emp. added). A word of explanation is in order. Haeckel was an accomplished artist who used his artistic talent to falsify certain of the drawings that accompanied his scientific articles. One writer summarized the matter as follows: To support his theory, however, Haeckel, whose knowledge of embryology was self-taught, faked some of his evidence. He not only altered his illustrations of embryos, but also printed the same plate of an embryo three times, and labeled one a human, the second a dog and the third a rabbit to show their similarity (Bowden, 1977, p. 128). Haeckel even went so far as to alter the drawings of some of his colleagues, including the famous embryologist, professor L. Rutimeyer of Basel University, and professor Arnold Bass. The two university professors, after realizing what Haeckel had done, publicly condemned his actions. In the end, as H.H. Newman of the University of Chicago put it, Haeckel’s works “did more harm than good to Darwinism” (1932, p. 30). Haeckel’s falsified drawings were published around 1866. One of the major points stressed by Haeckel in his “research”—and one of the items that has remained ensconced in the evolutionary literature to this very day—is the idea that the human embryo possesses gill slits that are leftovers from its past fish-like ancestor stage. Evolutionist Irvin Adler, in his book, How Life Began, wrote: The embryo of each species seems to repeat the main steps by which the species developed from the common ancestor of all living things. All mammal embryos, for example, pass through a stage in which they have gills like a fish, showing that mammals are descended from fishlike ancestors (1957, p. 22). Fast-forward almost fifty years to the twenty-first century. In an educational program produced in 2001 by the University of Chicago for its Newton Electronic Community division, the following statement appeared: “All mammals have gill slits in their very early fetal development” (Myron, 2001, p. 1). We have known for almost 150 years that the “Biogenetic Law” is not correct, and that human embryos do not possess gill slits (see Assmuth and Hull, 1915; Grigg, 1996, 1998; Pennisi, 1997; Richardson, 1997a, 1997b; Youngson, 1998). Even though it was common knowledge by the end of the 1920s that Haeckel’s concepts, to use Stephen Jay Gould’s words, had “utterly collapsed” (1977a, p. 216), Haeckel’s drawings and ideas still continue to turn up in modern biology texts and instructional tools as a “proof” of evolution. Modern editions of most high school and college textbooks rarely present the latest evolutionary ideas on embryology, but instead remain content to rest their case on century-old woodcuts and misnamed “gill slits.” As incredible as it seems, even today the “Biogenetic Law” still is being taught as a scientific fact in many public schools and universities. Of fifteen high school biology textbooks being considered for adoption by the Indiana State Board of Education as late as 1980, nine offered embryonic recapitulation as evidence for evolution. But advance almost two decades—to 1998. It was in that year that George Johnson and Peter Raven published their popular, Biology: Principles and Explorations, which presents the pictures of Haeckel’s embryos—without even so much as a hint to the student that they are fraudulent (and have been known to be so for more than a century)! Three years later, the eminent professor emeritus and taxonomist of Harvard, Ernst Mayr, published his book, What Evolution Is, and on page 28, used Haeckel’s original drawings—again, with no mention to the reader that they are deceptive as they are fraudulent. Interestingly, the same year that the Johnson/Raven book was published, researcher Michael Richardson, in a letter to the editor of Science that appeared in the August 28, 1998 issue of that journal, lamented: “Sadly, it is the discredited 1874 drawings that are used in so many British and American biology textbooks” (281:1289). Yes, sadly, it is. Stephen J. Gould lamented: “We should not therefore be surprised that Haeckel’s drawings entered nineteenth-century textbooks. But we do, I think, have the right to be both astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of those drawings in a large number, if not a majority, of modern textbooks” (2000, 109[2]:44, emp. added). One would assume that a well-known publication like National Geographic would possess the ability to internally review and check such basic tenets, in an effort to present only the truth to its readers. Yet, that same long-discredited material—which even prominent evolutionists admit makes them “ashamed”—is exactly what David Quammen attempted to portray in the November 2004 issue of National Geographic as a “proof” of evolution. The question is: Why is the use of such material—which is known to be fraudulent—allowed to continue? Evolutionists themselves have been forced to concede that the idea of embryonic recapitulation apparently has become so deeply rooted in evolutionary dogma and textbook production that it simply cannot be “weeded out.” Paul Ehrlich observed: “Its shortcomings have been almost universally pointed out by modern authors, but the idea still has a prominent place in biological mythology” (1963, p. 66). Indeed it does! Gould once wrote that embryonic recapitulation is “an evolutionary notion exceeded only by natural selection itself for impact upon popular culture” (2000, 109[2]:44). The evidence of such an assessment is obvious when one looks at just how far-reaching Haeckel’s drawings have become. America’s famous “baby doctor,” Benjamin Spock, perpetuated Haeckel’s recapitulation myth in his well-known book, Baby and Child Care. Spock confidently assured expectant mothers that each child as he develops is retracing the whole history of mankind, physically and spiritually, step by step. A baby starts off in the womb as a single tiny cell, just the way the first living thing appeared in the ocean. Weeks later, as he lies in the amniotic fluid of the womb, he has gills like a fish (1998, p. 223). Such imagery persists in the popular media, too. As an example, consider the position of the late atheist Carl Sagan and his third wife, Ann Druyan. In an article on “The Question of Abortion” that they co-authored for Parade magazine, these two humanists contended for the ethical permissibility of human abortion on the grounds that the fetus, growing within a woman’s body for several months following conception, is not a human being. Sagan and Druyan stated that the embryo begins as “a kind of parasite” that eventually looks like a “segmented worm.” Further alterations, they wrote, reveal “gill arches” like that of a “fish or amphibian.” Supposedly, “reptilian” features emerge, which later give rise to “mammalian...pig-like” traits. By the end of two months, according to these two authors, the creature resembles a “primate but is still not quite human” (Sagan and Druyan, 1990, p. 6). Although they never mentioned Haeckel by name, their point was clear: abortion in the first few months of pregnancy is acceptable because the embryo or fetus is a lower form of life during this period. Their conclusion, therefore, was that the killing of this tiny creature is not murder. And what was the basis for this assertion? Sagan and Druyan argued their case by subtly employing the concept known as “embryonic recapitulation.” When, three years later, USA Today published an article on genetic similarities as proof for evolution, the author’s analogy and sole illustration invoked the icons of comparative embryology (Friend, 1993). The cover story of the November 11, 2002 issue of Time magazine detailed what were at the time the latest findings in human fetal development. Juxtaposed between the illustrations and the article were photo-captions that contained throwbacks to the outdated concept of embryonic recapitulation theory: “32 days: ...The brain is a labyrinth of cell-lined cavities, while the emerging arms and legs still resemble flipper-like paddles. 40 days: At this point, a human embryo looks no different from that of a pig, chick or elephant. All have a tail, a yolk sac and rudimentary gills” (Nash, 2002, 160[20]:71). The article itself presented a “marvelous,” seemingly “miraculous,” and “vastly complicated” embryonic process. But the glossy pictures that accompanied the article—the ones that people tend to remember—had captions that painted an entirely different picture. The scientific community has known for decades that Ernst Haeckel—the man responsible for conjuring up this theory and then falsifying drawings to support it—purposely misled the public during the late 1800s. Embryologist Erich Blechschmidt regarded Haeckel’s “Great Biogenetic Law” as one of the most egregious errors in the history of biology. In his book, The Beginnings of Human Life, he minced no words in repudiating Haeckel’s fraudulent forgeries: “The so-called basic law of biogenetics is wrong. No buts or ifs can mitigate this fact. It is not even a tiny bit correct or correct in a different form. It is totally wrong” (1977, p. 32). Biologist James W. Leach of Ohio State University bluntly commented: The undeniable tendency of a complex animal to pass through some developmental stages reminiscent of the adult conditions of a selected and graduated series of lower forms has long been described as the “Biogenetic Law.” But as “law” inscribed by nature it is perhaps more full of “loopholes” and “bypasses” than any law thus far inscribed by man (1961, p. 44). In their widely used high school biology textbook, Life: An Introduction to Biology, George Gaylord Simpson and William Beck included a footnote to their student readers on this point. They wrote: “The human embryo does not have any differentiated gill tissue, and the gill-like pouches do not have open gill slits as in fishes. Fins are lacking. The tail is not at all like any fish’s tail. Indeed, the resemblance to an adult fish is vague and superficial” (1965, p. 240). Simpson and Beck went on to conclude: “It is now firmly established that ontogeny does not recapitulate phylogeny” (p. 241, emp. in orig.). Haeckel’s drawings of embryos at three different stages for (from left to right): fish, salamander, tortoise,

chick, hog, calf, rabbit and man (from 1876, Plates VI-VII). The supposed “gill-slits” are shown in red. Why, then, does the concept of embryonic recapitulation persist? Perhaps John Tyler Bonner, former head of the biology department at Princeton University, explained it best when he admitted: “We may have known for almost a hundred years that Haeckel’s blastaea-gastraea theory of the origin of the metazoa is probably nonsense, but it is so clear-cut, so simple, so easy to hand full-blown to the student” (1961, p. 240). Yes, it is. But is it right? No, it is not. In fact, recognition of Haeckel’s falsehoods still appears in scientific journals from time to time, as was evident in a letter to the editor in the May 15, 1998 issue of Science. The seven authors of the letter pointed out (correctly) that Haeckel was overzealous, and purposely gave incorrect details in his embryonic drawings (Richardson, et al., 1998). In her book, Essays in the History of Embryology and Biology, Jane Oppenheimer observed that Haeckel’s work “was the culmination of the extremes of exaggeration which followed Darwin” (1967, p. 150). She lamented: “Haeckel’s doctrines were blindly and uncritically accepted” and “delayed the course of embryological progress.” Almost thirty years earlier, W.D. Matthew, former chairman of the geology department at the University of California, had acknowledged the fact that, sadly, some doctrines are “blindly and uncritically accepted.” He wrote: “Many a false theory gets crystallized by time and absorbed into the body of scientific doctrine through lack of adequate criticism when it is formulated” (1939, p. 159). Never was there a more blatant case of such, than Haeckel’s “Biogenetic Law” with its catch-phrase of “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” In fact, it is so blatant that Harvard’s late renowned paleontologist, Stephen J. Gould, devoted one of his articles in Natural History (the magazine for which he wrote a column each month for twenty-five years) to the fraud. He titled it “Abscheulich!,” which is a word from a German dialect meaning “atrocious!” The subtitle of the article was “Haeckel’s distortions did not help Darwin.” No, fraudulent to the core as they are, they certainly did not. Yet that did not stop National Geographic’s David Quammen from resurrecting embryonic recapitulation as a proof of evolution. In his “Abscheulich!” article, Dr. Gould concluded by saying: “But Haeckel’s High Victorian (or should I say Bismarckian) misdeeds provide no fodder to foes of Darwin or evolution” (p. 48). Excuse us for asking, but “Why not?!” If fraud in the name of science does not provide such fodder, what would? The proof from embryology that Darwin claimed was “second to none” in proving evolution true turned out to be worthless at best, and fraudulent at worst. So what, then, should be the creationist’s response to embryology as an alleged proof of evolution? Our response—if, indeed, any is needed in light of the startling facts presented above—is exactly the same as that offered by the eminent Canadian biologist, W.R. Thompson, in the “Introduction” he authored for the 1956 edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species. He wrote: “The ‘Biogenetic Law’ as a proof of evolution is valueless” (1956, p. xvi). Biologist Aaron Wasserman observed that the mammalian embryo “can in no sense be called a fish; it never actually develops functional gills and is at all times a mammal” (1973, p. 497). Jonathan Sarfati noted: “A human embryo never looks reptilian or pig-like. A human embryo is always a human embryo, from the moment of conception; it is never anything else. It does not become human sometime after eight weeks” (2002b, p. 202, emp. in orig.). Indeed, embryology no longer can be offered as a legitimate proof of evolution. Although Haeckel’s theory has fallen into disfavor, embryonic recapitulation is attempting to survive in a newly modified form. Why, evolutionists ask (as Quammen did in National Geographic), “do larval forms of a barnacle, before metamorphosis, so similar to the larval form of a shrimp? Why do the larvae of moths, flies, and beetles resemble one another more than any of them resemble their respective adults?” (p. 13). In the current version of embryology as a proof of evolution, adherents argue that similar “patterns of embryo development” in different animals establish their common descent. For example, the neck folds in human embryos (which Haeckel labeled as “gill slits”) eventually give rise to the jaw. These folds develop from a similar area of the vertebrate column, and are controlled by similar gene sequences, as the gill arches of fish embryos (e.g., Gould, 1990, p. 16; cf. also Gould 2000, p. 49). The evolutionist concludes from this that fish and humans had a common ancestor. However, this similarity also is evidence of common design. Mice, men, and pigs have four appendages and a head, and therefore it is not surprising that embryos should follow a similar path of development. Indeed, the ability of embryos to form in such perfection demands something more than evolution. Natural selection works primarily on organisms exposed to the environment or competition. Yet the embryo is isolated from the outside world. Evolutionary processes are at a loss to explain the origin of the mechanism that causes a fertilized egg to develop into a young version of the adult. Life’s startling complexity—complete with DNA -coded instruction causing each embryo to be totally different from all others—is compelling evidence of a masterful plan of design inherent in the system. As one writer put it: ...in terms of DNA and protein, right at conception each of these types of life is as totally different chemically as each will ever be structurally.... Embryonic development is not even analogous to evolution, which is meant to indicate a progressive increase in potential. The right Greek word instead would be entelechy, which means an unfolding of potential present right from the beginning. That’s the kind of development that so clearly requires creative design (Morris, 1982, p. 34, italics in orig.). What could be clearer? From DNA to the organs of the body, evidence of design is everywhere, while gradualistic development is countered by the perpetual discontinuity seen in nature. There is nothing—either in the proposed mechanisms, or by direct observation—to show that Darwin’s theory of general evolution is a “fact” of science.