“Why I am Not an Evolutionist
…”
The Science
Lecture Class Handout
By Andy Carmichael ©
2003
Creation School Online
with Andy Carmichael is hosted
at the website www.SloppyNoodle.com/ev.html
Andy_Ally@hotmail.com
11. The many theories of evolution
Evolution theory is about
origins – where did everything come from ? Evolution
theory is thousands of years old and predates Christ.
“Change over time” is entropy,
not evolution. “Survival”, “survival of the fittest”
and “survival of the luckiest” are not evolution
– you may survive to your 70th birthday but
does this mean you have evolved ? Clearly not. Death is
not evolution. Extinction is not evolution.
Variation within a kind or species is not evolution
– such as in the 200 very different types of dog that
have been bred by intelligent human beings for their different
looks. Or the varieties of Galapagos Island finches and
tortoises that Charles Darwin saw on his travels. Or the
“industrial melanism” example of the peppered moth. Peppered
moths breeding peppered moths is not evolution.
Galapagos Island finches breeding more finches is not
evolution. Dogs breeding dogs is not evolution.
No breeder has ever bred two dogs and got a litter of
kittens, yet this is what the theories of evolution predict
: that one kind of animal or plant will gradually
(or rapidly) turn into a different kind of animal
or plant. In other words, that an amoeba will turn into
a man and that a frog will gradually (or rapidly) turn
into a prince ...
Evolutionism is the
belief in a hypothetical process that all
living things and all matter somehow increase in complexity
of their own accord.
The theories of evolution,
in contrast to the theory of Biblical scientific creation,
claim that the universe, the solar system, the earth and
every living creature appeared as the result of a theorised
cosmic explosion, nick-named the “big bang”, around (an
assumed) 17 to 20 billion years ago. Hydrogen –
a colourless, odourless gas – is believed to have resulted
from the theorised explosion, somehow condensed into the
stars, the solar system, the earth and the other eight
known planets in the universe, and (by an unknown mechanism)
other chemicals (somehow) formed on earth and became a
theorised, hypothetical “primeval soup” – literally a
toxic sea of chemicals – and is thought to have gradually
(somehow) produced a cell with 100% operative DNA.
This theorised first cell
(somehow) came to life, gradually improved itself and
(somehow) over an assumed 2 billion years turned itself
into every living and extinct type of plant, animal and
human being, including you. Hence, the evolutionist believes
that “nothing exploded and became everything all on its
own”. Or “nobody x nothing = everything”. Or “if compacted
enough, nothing will explode and become everything.” The
theories of evolution are thus unscientific and
can be summarised as follows :
“Hydrogen is a colourless,
odourless gas, which, given enough time, turns into people.”
· The
15 theories of evolution
There is no such thing as
“the theory of evolution”. There are many theories
of evolution (about 15) and as a result, evolutionists
are always attacking one another which makes for very
interesting reading :
1.
Pre-Darwinian theories of evolution
The early Greek philosophers
(Thales of Miletus in 620 BC) were the first recorded
as thinking of evolution theory. Aristotle had ideas similar
to Charles Darwin. Many of the ancient Greeks believed
in vast ages of history – Plato claimed there were 20
million years between the global Flood and his day.
Evolutionist ideas can be
traced through the philosophies of many nations, including
the Chinese, Hindu, Egyptian, Babylonian and Assyrian.
The Egyptians long believed in the spontaneous generation
of frogs after the Nile had flooded and the Chinese thought
that insects appeared from nothing on the leaves of plants.
2.
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution
“Time + random natural
selection by survival of the fittest = everything in the
universe”
Evolution theory is medieval
superstition, not science. Contrary to the title of
his book, Darwin never actually discussed or showed the
evolutionary origin of any species in his book
or anywhere else in his works :
“Darwin did not invent, or
discover, evolution; it was in the air at the time … He
caught the mood, made it popular and gave it credibility.
The problem was that he had no real evidence to support
the change of one kind into another.”
(Graham Fisher, creationist
scientist, geology and geography teacher, 1998
[30] )
“Darwin never really did
discuss the origin of the species in his Origin of
Species.”
(Dr Niles Eldredge, evolutionist,
paleontologist and Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology
at the American Museum of Natural History, 1985 [31] )
“The only trouble was that,
as Darwin himself was at least partly aware, it [Darwin’s
theory] was full of colossal holes ... A book which has
become famous for explaining the origin of species in
fact does nothing of the kind.”
(Christopher Booker, The
Times, 19 April 1982)
“Darwin’s book – On the
Origin of Species – I find quite unsatisfactory :
it says nothing about the origin of species; it
is written very tentatively, with a special chapter on
‘Difficulties on theory’; and it includes a great deal
of discussion on why evidence for natural selection does
not exist in the fossil record … As a scientist,
I am not happy with these ideas.”
(Professor H.S. Lipson,
Professor of Physics at University of Manchester, 1981
[32] )
Charles Darwin thought that
natural selection by survival of the fittest would cause
a slow, irresistible “evolution” of life onwards and upwards
from one kind of plant or animal to another, culminating
in apes becoming people. But as a supposed mechanism for
evolution, natural selection (also known as random destruction)
is simply an illogical tautology and is therefore not
a scientific mechanism for any kind of onward and
upward improvement. (As will be shown, natural selection
simply means random destruction or differential survival.)
Charles Darwin himself was
the first doubting Darwinist. He admitted that his own
theory was “grievously hypothetical” [33] and he wrote, “The eye to this day gives
me a cold shudder”
[34] . He said that even trying to account for something
as comparatively simple as a peacock’s feather “makes
me sick” [35] :
“To suppose that the eye
with all its inimitable contrivances ... could have been
formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess,
absurd in the highest possible degree.”
(Charles Darwin, evolutionist,
Origin of Species [36] )
“Not one change of species
into another is on record ... we cannot prove that a single
species has been changed.”
(Charles Darwin, evolutionist,
My Life and Letters)
3. Neo-Darwinian (or synthetic theory) of evolution
“Time + random natural
selection by survival of the fittest + random genetic
mutations = everything in the universe.”
In the 1940s, neo-Darwinian
evolutionists simply added the words “plus random genetic
mutations” to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Darwin’s theory
of evolution was dying a rapid death for lack of supporting
scientific evidence and for lack of a scientific
mechanism of self-creation and universal onward-and-upward
self-improvement. However, natural selection and genetic
mutations are both mechanisms of destruction only
and not mechanisms of creating new things or improving
them :
“In the meantime, the educated
public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all
the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutation
plus natural selection – quite unaware of the fact that
random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural
selection a tautology.”
(Arthur Koestler, 1978
[37] )
“But in all the reading I’ve
done in the life-sciences literature, I’ve never found
a mutation that added information ... All point mutations
that have been studied on the molecular level turn out
to reduce the genetic information and not to increase
it. … The essential biological difference between a human
and a bacterium is in the information they contain. All
other biological differences follow from that. The human
genome has much more information than does the bacterial
genome. Information cannot be built up by mutations that
lose it. A business can’t make money by losing it a little
at a time.”
(Dr Lee Spetner, scientist
in information and communication theory at Johns Hopkins
University, Not By Chance [38] )
4. Richard Goldschmidt’s “hopeful monsters” theory
of evolution
In the 1940s, evolutionist
and world-famous geneticist, Professor Richard Goldschmidt
of the University of California at Berkeley, became so
disenchanted with Darwinism’s explanation for the origins
of new structures that he was driven to propose his “hopeful
monsters” theory. He thought that, occasionally, large
changes might somehow occur just by “chance” – perhaps
a reptile laid an egg once, say, and a bird or a “brown
furry thing” hatched out of it.
He proposed that every once
in a while an offspring was produced that was a monster
grossly different from its parents. For example, perhaps
two rabbits produced a male bear cub and, by coincidence,
just over the hill two other rabbits produced a female
bear cub. Both baby bears were able to get enough milk
from their mother rabbits so that they grew to maturity
and reproduced and gave rise to all the bears in the world.
That would be how bears got their start in life according
to “hopeful monsters” evolution theory. According to Professor
Goldschmidt, that is pretty much how every kind of living
and extinct plant, animal and person came into existence
:
“He [Goldschmidt] noted that
paleontologists had searched for a hundred years since
the time of Darwin for transitional forms in the fossil
record without finding any. Obviously, none were ever
going to be found, and if evolutionists were going to
keep the faith, they needed a new theory. So he proposed
the ‘hopeful monster theory’.
… Needless to say, Goldschmidt’s
hopeful monster theory was met with much derision. Critics
said that there was not a shred of evidence to support
his theory. He responded that this was unfair criticism
because neither was there a shred of evidence for slow
and gradual evolution.”
(Luther Sunderland, Darwin’s Enigma, 1998)
All that the Darwinian and
neo-Darwinian evolutionists could do was to ridicule Goldschmidt
and wish he would disappear. His hopeful monsters theory
did not catch on then, but it re-emerged several decades
later in the form of the “punctuated equilibria” theory
of evolution.
5. The Eldredge / Gould
punctuated equilibria (“punk eek”) (or saltation) theory
of evolution
This is just a minor variation
of neo-Darwinian and “hopeful monsters” evolutionist theories
also with no fossil evidence. This theory of evolution
postulates two things : that for long periods most species
undergo little observable change; and that when it does
occur, change is rapid and concentrated in small, isolated
populations hence fossil intermediates (i.e. missing links)
are hard to find. They claim that evolution took place
in short bursts, with long periods of rest in between.
For 50,000 years or so, there will be no change (an “equilibrium”
without any evolution) and then suddenly (in a rare “punctuation”)
two totally different life forms will (somehow) “appear”.
By sheerest chance, one will be male and the other a female
and coincidentally, they will always appear at the same
time in history and less than a few miles apart so they
can breed and continue the new species … Evolutionists
can give no scientific explanation for how or why this
could happen. They also claim that this “punctuated equilibria
evolution” process is (conveniently) not happening today
so we can’t observe or test it.
Richard Goldschmidt called
them “hopeful monsters”, Stephen Jay Gould renamed the
idea “punctuated equilibria” and Steven Stanley renamed
it “quantum speciation” evolution :
“The theory of punctuated
equilibria is causing much turmoil among evolutionists.
They know that there is no actual mechanism that would
explain large rapid jumps from one species to another
[i.e. hopeful monsters], and yet they also know the fossil
record does not support gradualism [i.e. neo-Darwinism].
They are left on the horns of a dilemma.”
(Luther Sunderland, Darwin’s
Enigma, 1998
[39] )
What do other evolutionists
think about replacing the Darwinian and neo-Darwinian
theories of gradual evolution with Gould’s theory of instant
(“punctuated equilibria”) evolution ? Harvard evolutionist,
Dr Ernst Mayr, calls such hypothetical evolutionary entities
not “hopeful” but “hopeless” and says that the “hopeful
monsters” theory “is equivalent to believing in miracles”
[40]
.
6. Lynn Margulis’ bacterial theory of evolution
7. Stuart Kauffman’s “complexity theory” of evolution
8. The theories of “panspermia” and “directed
panspermia” evolution (life from outer space)
9. Cairns-Smith’s clay-based mineral origin of
life theory of evolution
10. Corliss’ hydrothermal-vents-on-the-sea-floor
theory of evolution
11. Wachterhauser’s
“metabolism first” theory of evolution
12. De Duve’s “metabolism
first” theory of evolution
13. Prigogine’s “self-organisation-in-nature”
theory of evolution
14. Eigen’s “hypercycle”
theory of evolution
15. The theory of
theistic evolution (“theistic atheism”)
The theory of theistic evolution
is sloppy, lazy thinking and is unbiblical and unscientific.
The theory of theistic evolution (or “theistic atheism”)
is nothing more than a combination of one or more of the
above theories of evolution with the words “plus God”
tacked on to the end. “Theistic evolution” theory includes
the unbiblical ideas that perhaps God somehow used a big
bang plus evolution and that the Earth and the universe
are millions or billions of years old. Beware of evolution-contaminated
theology and evolution-contaminated thinking, especially
in churches today …
The theory of theistic evolution
has no Biblical or scientific support. The theory of
theistic evolution also contradicts every book
in the Bible and not just the book of Genesis.
“Theistic evolution may be
defined as an anesthetic which deadens the patient’s pain
while atheism removes his religion.”
(William Jennings Bryan,
US statesman and creationist, 1922 [41] )
