Transcript S E E TATEMENTS of CIENCE and CRIPTURE XHIBITED XAMINED XPLAINED DUCATIONAL DIFYING VANGELICAL Presented by Dr Thomas J Kindell Founder & President of Reasons for Faith Ministries, Inc. “Be ready to give an answer to.

S
E
E
TATEMENTS of
CIENCE and
CRIPTURE
XHIBITED
XAMINED
XPLAINED
DUCATIONAL
DIFYING
VANGELICAL
Presented
by
Dr Thomas J Kindell
Founder & President of Reasons for Faith Ministries, Inc.
“Be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is
within you” I Peter 3:15
THE WITNESS
OF
THE FOSSIL
RECORD
If we were to expect to find
ancestors to, or intermediates
between, higher taxa. It would be
in the rocks of late Precambrian to
Ordovician times, when the bulk
of the world’s higher animal taxa
evolved. Yet transitional alliances
are unknown or unconfirmed
for any of the phyla or classes
appearing then.
J. W. Valentine & D. H. Erwin, “The Fossil Record,” in Development as an
Evolutionary Process
Below this (Cambrian strata) are
vast thicknesses of sediments in
which the progenitors...would be
expected. But we do not find
them; these older beds are
almost barren of life, and the
general picture could reasonably
be consistent with the idea of
special creation...
Alfred S. Romer, Natural History, October 1959
In a series of quotations from Romer
(1966), Gish finds all the confessions he
needs from the evolutionists that each of
these classes appears suddenly and with
no trace of ancestors. The absence of the
transitional fossils in the gaps between
each group of fishes and its ancestor is
repeated in standard treatises on
vertebrate evolution. Even Chris
McGowan’s 1984 anti-creationist work,
purporting to show “why the creationists
are wrong,”. . .
. . .makes no mention of Gish’s four
pages of text on the origin of the fish
classes. Knowing that McGowan is an
authority on vertebrate paleontology,
keen on faulting the creationists at every
opportunity, I must assume that I haven’t
missed anything important in this area.
This is one count in the creationists’
charge that can only evoke in unison
from the paleontologists a plea of nolo
contendere [guilty as charged].
A. N. Strahler, Science and Earth History-The Evolution/Creation
Controversy, op. cit., p. 408
New Species of Bumper Sticker
Excites Interest in U.S. Southwest
Bird-like Cranium
Birdlike Otic
Region
Bird-like
hollow
bones and
lungs
Bird-like
pubis
Bird-like
teeth and
jaws
Complete
wings,
feathers
and
furcula
Perching
feet
The origin of birds is largely a matter of
deduction. There is no fossil evidence of the
stages through which the remarkable change
from reptile to bird was achieved.
W. E. Swinton, Biology and Comparative Physiology of Birds, ed. by A. J.
Marshall, Academic Press, NY, Vol. 1, p. 11
Unfortunately, the intermediate stages hardly
ever seemed to exist in the fossil record
(Huxley’s later trumpeting about
Archaeopteryx notwithstanding).
M. Ridley, Nature, 286:444 (1980)
Smooth intermediates between Bauplane
[distinct design types] are almost impossible to
construct, even in thought experiments; there is
certainly no evidence for them in the fossil
record (curious mosaics like Archaeopteryx do
not count).
S. J. Gould and Niles Eldredge, Paleobiology 3:147 (1977)
Evolutionist Colin Patterson, a former senior
paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural
History, perhaps summed it up the best when he
admitted that Archaeopteryx “has simply
become a patsy for wishful thinking.”
C. Patterson, in Darwin’s Enigma by Luther D. Sunderland, p. 70, 1984
Archaeopteryx probably cannot tell us
much about the early origins of feathers
and flight in true protobirds because
Archaeopteryx was, in the modern sense,
a bird. . .
. . .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.
Alan Feduccia, Evidence from claw geometry indicating arboreal habits of
Archaeopteryx. Science 259 , February 3, 1993
At the morphological level feathers
are traditionally considered
homologous with reptilian scales.
However, in development,
morphogenesis [shape/form
generation], gene structure, protein
shape and sequence, and filament
formation and structure, feathers are
different.
A. H. Brush, “On the Origin of Feathers,” Journal of Evolutionary Biology,
9:131-142, 1996
INSIDE THE BIRD LUNG (Diagrammatic)
Airflow
Blood flow
Lung
Front
air sacs
(Parts are
inside the birds
hollow bones.)
Rear air sacs
Even though we have no direct
evidence for smooth transitions,
can we invent a reasonable
sequence of intermediate forms,
that is, viable, functioning
organisms, between ancestors and
descendents? Of what possible
use are the incipient stages of
useful structures? What good is
half a jaw or half a wing?
Stephen J. Gould, Natural History, Vol. 86, pp. 2-30
Flight evolved four separate times in
bats, birds, pterosaurs and flying insects?
A Brat
I admit that an awful lot of that [imaginary
stories] has gotten into the textbooks as
though it were true. For instance, the most
famous example on horse evolution prepared
perhaps fifty years ago. That has been
presented as literal truth in textbook after
textbook. Now I think that is lamentable,
particularly because the people who propose
these kinds of stories themselves may be
aware of the speculative nature of some of the
stuff. But by the time it filters down to the
textbooks, we’ve got science as truth and
we’ve got a problem.
Niles Eldredge interviewed in Darwin’s Enigma by Luther Sunderland, p. 78
The popularly told example of horse
evolution, suggesting a gradual
sequence of changes from four-toed foxsized creatures living nearly 50 million
years ago to today’s much larger onetoed horse, has long been known to be
wrong. Instead of gradual change,
fossils of each intermediate species
appear fully distinct, persist unchanged
and then become extinct. Transitional
forms are unknown.
The Houston Chronicle, Wednesday, November 5, 1980, section 4, page 15
P.36
Whale’s vestigial pelvis (Holt
Biology p.182 in suitcase)
Biology Curtis and Barnes 1989 p. 969
Glenco
BiologyLiving
Systems,
p. 311
1998
“In time and in its morphology, Pakicetus is perfectly
intermediate, a missing link between earlier land mammals
and later, full-fledged whales.”
P. Gingerich, “The Whales of Tethys,” Natural History, (April 1994), p. 86
Thewissen, et. al. - a “terrestrial cetacean”
Illustration: Carl Buell, www.neoucom.edu/Depts/Anat/Pakicetid.html>
“All the post cranial bones indicate that
pakicetids were land mammals, and. . .indicate
that the animals were runners, with only their feet
touching the ground. . .The first whales were fully
terrestrial, and were even efficient runners.”
J. G. M. Thewissen, E. M. Williams, L. J. Roe and S. T. Hussain, “Skeletons of Terrestrial
Cetaceans and the Relationship of Whales to Artiodactyls,” Nature, 9/20/01
C. de Muizon, “Walking with Whales,” Nature, 413:259-260, 9/20/01
Top: Ambulocetus skeleton, as drawn in K. Miller’s book.
Middle: Ambulocetus reconstruction, as drawn in K. Miller’s book.
Bottom: Actual bones found (shaded). Note missing pelvic girdle.
Over 15 feet higher
Carroll’s “Whale”
Thewissen’s “Whale”
Alleged sequence
of land mammal to
whale transition.
From Teaching
about Evolution
and the Nature of
Science
The serpentine form of the
body and the peculiar shape of
the cheek teeth make it plain
that these Archaeocetes [like
Basilosaurus] could not
possibly have been the
ancestor of modern whales.
Barbara J. Stahl, Vertebrate History: , Problems in Evolution, p. 489
All they did
have in its
entirety was:
A
SINGLE
MOLAR
TOOTH!
Full examination
results finally
published in
Scientific
American, Dec.
16, 1927.
Nebraska Man
turned out to be
neither an ape nor
a man. It actually
turned out to be:
A PIG!
From 1912 to
1953 Piltdown
Man reigned
supreme in our
textbooks and
museums.
Scores of books,
pamphets and
articles were
published about
Piltdown Man.
Piltdown Man is
now recognized
as one of the
most
spectacular and
longest
enduring frauds
in the history of
modern
science.
Ape-men have
been deduced
from bones
which actually
belonged to:
ALLIGATOR
HORSE
BEAR
DOLPHIN
DONKEY
ELEPHANT
From Ape-Men by M. Bowden
Using what I’ve seen, heard, and read,
I’ve assembled a brief history of
Archaeoraptor. It’s a tale of misguided
secrecy and misplaced confidence, of
rampant egos clashing, of selfaggrandizement, wishful thinking, naïve
assumptions, human error,
stubbornness, manipulation, backbiting,
lying, corruption and, most of all
abysmal communication. It’s a story in
which none of the characters look good.
Lewis M. Simons, Archaeoraptor Fossil Trail, National Geographic, Oct. 2000
Of course, there are many gaps in the
synapsid fossil record, with intermediate
forms between the various known groups
almost invariably unknown. (p. 3)
Gaps at a lower taxonomic level, species and
genera, are practically universal in the fossil
record of the mammal-like reptiles. In no
single adequately documented case is it
possible to trace a transition, species by
species, from one genus to another. (p. 319)
Thomas S. Kemp, Mammal-like Reptiles and the Origin of Mammals,
York: Academic Press, 1982
Long before the reader has arrived
at this part of my work, a crowd of
difficulties will have occurred to him.
Some of them are so serious that to
this day I can hardly reflect on them
without being in some degree
staggered...Why if species have
descended from other species by
find graduation, do not we
everywhere see innumerable
transitional forms?...
Why then is not every geological
formation and every stratum full
of such intermediate links?
Geology assuredly does not
reveal any such finely-graduated
organic chain and this perhaps,
is the most obvious and serious
objection which can be urged
against the theory...
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, pp. 292-293
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.
David Raup, Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology, Chicago
Field Museum Bulletin, January 1979
...I fully agree with your comments on
the lack of direct illustrations of
evolutionary transitions in my book. If I
knew of any, fossil or living, I would
certainly have included them...Yet Gould
and the American Museum people are
hard to contradict when they say there
are no transitional fossils...I will lay
it on the line - there is not one such
fossil for which one could make a
watertight argument.
Personal letter from Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist at the British
Museum of Natural History in London, to L. Sunderland
...the gradual change of fossil species
has never been part of the evidence for
evolution...Darwin showed that the
record was useless for testing between
evolution and special creation because it
has great gaps in it. The same argument
still applies...In any case, no real
evolutionist, whether gradualist or
punctuations, uses the fossil record as
evidence in favor of the theory of
evolution as opposed to special creation.
Mark Ridley, New Scientist, 90:930, 1981
Punctuated Equilibrium
In old
“The first bird hatched from a reptilian egg.”
Richard B. Gouldschmidt The Material Basis of Evolution Yale University Press 1940 p.
395.
Established species are
evolving so slowly that major
transitions between genera
and higher taxa must be
occurring within small
rapidly evolving populations
that leave no legible fossil
record.
S. M Stanley, Macroevolution: Pattern and Process, p. 39
Scientists develop and adhere
to theories for what are
ultimately subjective and even
irrational “reasons” and that
modern scientists can be
“…every bit the equal of
ancient myth-tellers,
troubadours and court jesters.”
Paul Feyerabend, in J. Horgan, “The Worst Enemy of Science,”
Scientific American, 268(5), p. 37
1. Darwinian evolution “impossible” to observe.
T. Dobzhansky
2. Mutation/Selection mechanism “effectively dead.”
S. Gould
3. No single “watertight” transitional fossil known.
C. Patterson
NO TRUNK
NO SEED
The extreme rarity of transitional
forms in the fossil record persists
as the trade secret of
paleontology, the evolutionary
trees that adorn our textbooks
have data only at the tips and
nodes of their branches; the rest
is inference, however reasonable,
not the evidence of fossils.
Stephen J. Gould, Natural History, Vol. 86, pgs 22, 30
NO CONNECTING
BRANCHES
NO TRUNK
NO SEED
NO CONNECTING
BRANCHES
NO TRUNK
NO SEED
NO CONNECTING
BRANCHES
NO TRUNK
NO SEED
NO CONNECTING
BRANCHES
NO TRUNK
NO SEED
Audio CD Albums