Theory of evolution: Fact or fairy tale?

By Dr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld

Back in 1987 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a 1981 Louisiana law which mandated a balanced treatment in teaching evolution and creation in the public schools. The court decided that the intent of the law "was clearly to advance the religious viewpoint that a supernatural being created humankind," and therefore violated the First Amendment's prohibition on a government establishment of religion. In other words, the court adopted the atheist position that creation is a religious myth.

In speaking for the majority, Justice William J. Brennan wrote, "The legislative history documents that the act's primary purpose was to change the science curriculum of public schools in order to provide an advantage to a particular religious doctrine that rejects the factual basis of evolution in its entirety."

It is surprising that no one saw fit to remind Justice Brennan that some of the world's greatest scientists were and are devout Christians and that atheism is actually destroying true science. And we are surprised that no one on the Louisiana side informed the justice that there is no "factual basis of evolution." It is all theory and speculation, and each year the theory becomes less and less tenable in the light of new scientific evidence.

In the light of the court's decision, it is important for us to do what the court failed to do: review the theory of evolution and determine exactly what are the "facts."

First, what exactly is the theory of evolution? For the answer, we must go to the source: Charles Darwin's famous book, "The Origin of Species," published in 1859. Darwin claimed that the thousands of different species of animals, insects and plants that exist on earth were not the works of a Divine Creator who made each species in its present immutable form, as described in Genesis, but were the products of a very long natural process of development from simpler organic forms to more complex organic forms.

Thus, according to Darwin, species continue to change, or "evolve," through a process of natural selection in which nature's harsh conditions permit only the fittest to survive in more adaptable forms.

These views, of course, had considerable moral and religious implications. Ronald Clark, in his biography of Darwin, writes,

While Darwin was proud of his theory of natural selection, his most important single contribution to the evolutionary argument, he saw as one of its main virtues the fact that it provided a counterblow to the idea of creation.

Darwin also believed that all life originated from a single source -- a kind of primeval slime in which the first living organisms formed spontaneously out of non-living matter through a random process. These organisms are supposed to have branched off into different forms -- plants, insects and animals.

Evolutionists have worked out all sorts of fascinating genealogical diagrams purporting to show the descent and relationship of one species to another. But what they don't tell the public is that all of the connections in these family trees are based on pure speculation and conjecture. Sir Fred Hoyle writes,

"It has been through the device of presenting such diagrams with the presumed connections drawn in firm solid lines that the general scientific world has been bamboozled into believing that evolution has been proved. Nothing could be further from the truth. ... The absence from the fossil record of the intermediate forms required by the usual evolutionary theory shows that if terrestrial life-forms have evolved from a common stock, the major branchings must have developed very quickly. And the major branchings, if they occurred were accompanied by genetic changes that were not small."

Probably the most controversial aspect of Darwin's theory concerns man's place in the evolutionary scheme. In his book, "The Descent of Man," published in 1870, Darwin contended that man and ape were evolutionary cousins with a common ancestor. When it came to the mind, to intelligence, the gap between man and the other animals, Darwin believed, was one of degree.

But the fossil record, revealing the different stages of man's evolution from apelike creature to homo sapiens, has not been found. Paleoanthropologists have hunted high and low for the missing link or links. But not only have they not found them, they are now pretty sure that such links do not exist. So instead of admitting defeat, they've proclaimed victory! According to David Pilbeam, a paleoanthropologist at Harvard, "We should no longer say that we are descended from apes. We are apes."

All of which means that some scientists are willing to accept a bigger lie if the smaller one cannot be proven true. Apparently, to some scientists, any lie is preferable to accepting the possibility that a Creator had something to do with everything that exists.

The simple fact is that no proof whatever has been found indicating that one species evolves into another. The fossil record is simply a series of still pictures of species that existed at one time. They do not show how one species evolves into another. Transitional fossils have not been found. The fossil record shows new species appearing suddenly without any ancestors. What scientific investigation indicates is that the species are immutable and that when mutations occur they do not become new species. For example, evolutionists have been experimenting with fruit flies for years in the hope of demonstrating evolution at work. But the fruit flies have stubbornly refused to develop into anything but more fruit flies, despite all kinds of stimuli, including radiation. Some mutations have occurred, but nothing to suggest the beginnings of a new species.

Even Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, a passionate defender of evolution, has written, "The fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual change." As Darwin wrote in "The Origin of Species,"

the geological record is extremely imperfect ... and (this fact) will to a large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps. He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory.

As for the theory that life originated by accident in some sort of chemical soup, it was Louis Pasteur who proved that spontaneous generation is impossible. He contended that every generation of every living creature had to be derived from a preceding generation. Life could not have started spontaneously from inorganic matter.

In other words, the spontaneous generation-of-life idea is just wishful thinking on the part of evolutionists. Dr. Fred Hoyle has calculated that such an accident had one chance in 10 to the power of 40,000 of occurring, making it beyond possibility. And now that we know of the enormous complexity of the DNA genetic code and that the information content of a simple cell has been estimated at around 10 to the power of 12 bits, we know that random development of living matter is an impossibility.

Consider this fact: there are 2,000 complex enzymes required for a living organism, but not a single one of them could have formed accidentally. As Fred Hoyle has put it, "The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this (accidental) way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein."

To sum it all up: the fossil record does not support the idea of gradual evolution; it supports creation. Orthodox evolutionists call it "punctuated equilibrium." Nor does the fossil record support the idea of a common accidental source of all life. Evidences of common ancestry have not been found. In addition, Louis Pasteur debunked the idea of spontaneous generation of living organic matter from non-living, inanimate matter.

Also, the recent revelations of the Human Genome Project have shown that man is programmed from conception to death to go through physical and hormonal changes that would have required evolution to be able to predict what an organism would be doing 50 years after birth. And all of this predictable programming would have had to be neatly packaged in millions of genetic capsules in perfect sequence, all invisible to the eye. In short, the more we learn about the complexity of life, the less is the likelihood that it all came about by accident, with no purpose, and no Creator.

Is the theory of evolution fact or fairy tale? You be the judge