Creation Facts of Life (23 page)

The Missing Link That Wasn't

The
National Geographic
debacle should encourage scientific skepticism for several reasons. First, evolutionists are human beings, and all human beings make mistakes. Second, even if it's given a scientific sounding name (like "Archaeoraptor"), a discovery announced in the news is not really scientific until other scientists have checked it out thoroughly. It only took a few weeks for scientists to disprove both
Geographic
's claims about its "dinosaur-bird" and the news report that a NASA team had found fossils in Martian rock, but it took over 40 years to prove that "Piltdown Man" ("Eoanthropus dawsoni") was a hoax, and
Archaeopteryx
has remained in textbooks long after it was scientifically discredited as a reptile-bird link.

When you hear another fossil from China is claimed as a dino-bird link (and I'm sure you will), check out the "rest of the story" on a major creationist website such as answersingenesis.org or icr.org. Furthermore, the fossils from China currently promoted in the press are in the
wrong place
to include the ancestors of birds, because fossil birds have already been found in lower layers. By the evolutionist's own definition, a fossil qualifies as a missing link or transitional form in an
evolutionary series
IF AND ONLY IF it is found in
both
a morphologic series
and
a stratigraphic series, i.e., it must show gradation in structural features such as a "sceather" stage between scales and feathers (
morphologic series
), and these gradations must occur from lower to higher in a series of rock strata
(stratigraphic series)
.
⁸³

Although the Chinese fossils currently hyped are too high in the stratigraphic series, some evolutionists say the same form could one day be found in a lower layer. That's true, but it's an
act of faith, not a fact of science!

The whole search for missing links demonstrates that evolution is really a very strong
faith-based belief system
or world view, not a strictly scientific theory. An empirical scientist would survey fossil discoveries looking for patterns of order;
an evolutionist begins with belief in Darwin's belief, and then goes looking for the evidence to support that belief,
evidence that Darwin said was missing. When I was an evolutionist, I hoped that I might one day become an "evolution hero" by finding a missing link. Fossil support for the evolutionist's "tree of life" would require finding
thousands upon thousands of missing links,
and only a handful have even been proposed. (Problems are exposed in the evolutionist's beliefs about the railroad worm, ammonites, fish-amphibian transitions, horses, and whales in books by Gish
⁸⁴
, Parker,
⁸⁵
and Bliss, Parker, and Gish,
⁸⁶
and at icr.org and answersingenesis.org, and the platypus has already been discussed).
No scientist building up a theory from the fossil evidence would ever come up with the concept of evolution guided by mutation-selection.

Figure 26. When they were known only from fossil remains, bones in the fins of the coelacanth were imagined to have joints at the wrist and elbow and to have a shoulder attachment strong enough for walking on land. Then the coelacanth was found alive and well, a fisherman's favorite deep in the Indian Ocean, having fins without wrists or elbows, designed for swimming not walking. Once again evolutionists were forced to abandon a presumed "missing link" used for decades to "prove evolution." The new evidence supported instead the creationist prediction that differences between fossil fish and amphibians would be like those between living members of these groups.

Despite phenomenal fossil failure, faith in evolution remains unbounded. Evolutionists who admit that science has falsified
the neo-Darwinian interpretation
⁸⁷
of evolution don't usually turn to creation; they just propose different kinds of evolution.

A few evolutionists make it unnecessary to hunt for dino-bird links, for example, by simply saying that "birds
are
dinosaurs." A sign at the Cincinnati Zoo (1997) put it this way: "Dinosaurs went extinct millions of years go — or did they? No — birds are essentially modern short-tailed feathered dinosaurs." A nature encyclopedia
⁸⁸
included this interesting tidbit: "The smallest dinosaur is the bee hummingbird…." According to the view of this small minority, you could order "Kentucky-fried dinosaur," or point to a hummingbird and say "What a cute little dinosaur."

A more serious
post-neo-Darwinian
theory did spark considerable scientific discussion. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, a group of evolutionists led by Harvard's Stephen Gould tried to resurrect the idea that evolution happened in big jumps — "The Return of Hopeful Monsters" Gould called it.
⁸⁹
The hopeful-monster idea (variously expressed as
punctuated equilibrium
, saltatory evolution, or quantum speciation) was proposed to explain why the links required by gradual evolution have never been found.
⁹⁰
"Big jumpers" argued that mutations in embryonic regulator genes could effect major changes in multiple systems simultaneously, but known examples produced only hopeless monstrosities (like four-winged flies that couldn't fly), never hopeful monsters! Nor could "big jumpers" answer this crucial question about the first appearance of any hopeful-monster:
with what would it mate?

At least the creationist and the post-neo-Darwinian punctuationalist
agree that the missing links are missing.
What is the scientific difference between saying that the missing links can never be found (the "new" evolution) and saying that they never existed at all (creation)?

Sometimes it's kind of fun to be a creationist. The "rear-guard" neo-Darwinian evolutionists like to point out the apparent absurdity of hopeful-monster evolution and claim that
evolution could not happen fast.
The punctuational evolutionists point to genetic limits and the fossil evidence to show that
evolution did not happen slowly.
The creationist simply agrees with both sides: Evolution couldn't happen fast, and it didn't happen slowly — because evolution can't and didn't happen at all! In terms of the kind of variation that
can
and
did
occur, the creation concept seems to be the far more logical inference from our observations.

At least the hopeful monster concept avoids the problem of missing links. But notice: this alternate concept of
evolution
is based on the fossils we
don't find
and on genetic mechanisms that have
never been observed.
The case for
creation
is based on thousands of tons of fossils that we
have found
and on genetic mechanisms (variation within kind) that we
do observe
and see occurring every day. As a scientist, I prefer a model that's based on what we
do
see and
can
explain (creation), rather than one that's based on what we
don't
see and
cannot
explain (evolution).

Human Beings

What about ourselves? What can we infer from the fossil evidence regarding the origin of human beings? Evolutionists now give us two choices. Either human beings are the result of time, chance, struggle, and death, or else we began as "a hopeful monster whose star was a bit more benevolent than most."
⁹¹
According to creationists, the evidence suggests, instead, that we are here by the plan, purpose, and special creative acts of God.

I was part of a television program on creation-evolution produced by the
secular
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
⁹²
The program opened with a medieval princess wandering in a castle garden, apparently looking for something. Then the camera panned over to a rock ledge around a pond. There it was, big bulging eyes and all: a frog. Right before our incredulous eyes, the princess leaned over and kissed the frog. Stars sparkled across the TV screen, then a handsome prince appeared. As the prince and princess embraced, the narrator stepped into the scene with this introduction: If you believe a frog turns into a prince instantly, that's a fairy tale; if you believe a frog turns into a prince in 300 million years, that's evolution.

When I believed and taught evolution, I would not have put it that way, of course. As I look back, I realize
that
story reflects what I really was teaching. According to evolution, if you simply wait long enough, time, chance, struggle, and death (mutation and selection) will gradually turn some amphibians, like that frog, into reptiles, mammals, apes, and finally man, like that prince. Clearly the
burden of proof lies with the evolutionist
to find a series of fossils suggesting the change from frog to prince, or at least ape to man.

The first fossils proposed as links between apes and mankind were the "cave men" called Neanderthals. The Neanderthal was originally portrayed as a "beetle-browed, barrel-chested, bow-legged brute" (a suitable ancestor for a mugger, if nothing else!). The creationists in those days responded, "Hey, wait a minute. Neanderthals are just plain people, some of whom suffered bone diseases." The first Neanderthals discovered came from harsh inland environments in Europe, where they could easily have suffered skeletal abnormalities, especially from lack of seafood with iodine in the diet and from shortage during the long winters of sun-induced vitamin D necessary for calcium absorption.