Home : Good to know

 email this page :  printer friendly page

Good to know

The Arguments for Evolution are Outdated and Often Illogical

The Arguments for Evolution are Outdated and Often Illogical
By: Prof. Dr. Walt Brown
This topic was selected from the Book “In The Beginning” of the Author

Life Sciences
Before considering how life began, we must first understand the term "organic evolution." Organic evolution, as theorized, is a naturally occurring, beneficial change that produces increasing and inheritable complexity. Increased complexity would be shown if the offspring of one form of life had a different and improved set of vital organs. This is sometimes called the molecules-to-man theory-or macroevolution. Microevolution, on the other hand, does not involve increasing complexity. It only involves minor chemical alterations or changes in size, shape, or color. Microevolution can be thought of as "horizontal" change, whereas macroevolution (if it were ever observed) would involve an "upward" and beneficial change in complexity. Notice that microevolution plus time will not produce macroevolution. [micro + time # macro]

Both creationists and evolutionists agree that microevolution occurs. Minor change has been observed since history began. Notice how often evolutionists give evidence for microevolution to support macroevolution. It is macroevolution, which requires new abilities and increasing complexity, that is at the center of the creation-evolution controversy. In this book, the term "organic evolution" will therefore mean macroevolution.

Organic Evolution Has Never Been Observed

1. The Law of Biogenesis
Spontaneous generation (the emergence of life from nonliving matter) has never been observed. All observations have shown that life comes only from life. This has been observed so consistently that it is called the law of biogenesis. The theory of evolution conflicts with this law by claiming that life came from nonliving matter through natural processes.

2. Acquired Characteristics
Acquired characteristics cannot be inherited.a For example, the long necks of giraffes did not result from their ancestors stretching their necks to reach high leaves. Nor can the large muscles acquired by a man in a weight lifting program be inherited by his child.

3. Mendel's Laws
Mendel's laws of genetics and their modem-day refinements explain almost all physical variations observed in living things. Mendel discovered that genes (the units of heredity) are merely reshuffled from one generation to another. Different combinations are formed, not different genes. The different combinations produce the many variations within each kind of life, such as in the dog family. A logical consequence of Mendel's laws is that there are limits to such variation.a Breeding experiments­ and common observations" have also confirmed these boundaries.

4. Bounded Variations
While Mendel's laws give a theoretical explanation for why variations are limited, there is broad experimental verification as well. For example, if evolution happened, organisms (such as bacteria) that quickly produce the most offspring should have the most variations and mutations. Natural selection would then select the more favorable changes, allowing them to survive, reproduce, and pass on their beneficial genes. Their offspring should tend to inherit short reproduction cycles and produce many "children." We see the opposite. In general, more complex organisms, such as humans, have fewer offspring and longer reproduction cycles.a Again, it appears that variations within existing kinds of organisms are bounded.

5. Natural Selection
Natural selection cannot produce new genes; it only selects among preexisting characteristics.a For example, many have mistakenly believed that resistances "evolved" in response to pesticides and antibiotics. Instead, a few resistant insects and bacteria were already present when the pesticides and antibiotics were first applied. The vulnerable insects and bacteria were killed, allowing resistant varieties, which then had less competition, to proliferate. While natural selection occurred, nothing evolved and, in fact, some biodiversity was lost.

The variations Darwin observed among finches on different Galapagos islands is another example of natural selection producing micro- (not macro-) evolution. In other words, while natural selection sometimes explains the survival of the fittest, it does not explain the origin of the fittest.c Actually, natural selection prevents major evolutionary changes.

6. Mutations
Mutations are the only known means by which new genetic material becomes available for evolution.a Rarely, if ever, is a mutation beneficial to an organism in its natural environment. Almost all observable mutations are harmful; some are meaningless; many are lethal.b No known mutation has ever produced a form of life having greater complexity and viability than its ancestors.

7. Fruit lies
More than ninety yearsa of fruit fly experiments, involving 3,000 consecutive generations, give absolutely no basis for believing that any natural or artificial process can cause an increase in complexity and viability. No clear genetic improvement has ever been observed in any form of life, despite the many unnatural efforts to increase mutation rates.

8. Complex Organs
There is no reason to believe that mutations or any natural process could ever produce any new organs-especially those as complex as the eyea, the ear, or the brainb. For example, an adult human brain contains over 1014 (a hundred thousand billion) electrical connectionsc, more than all the electrical connections in all the electrical appliances in the world. Just the human heart, a tenounce pump that will operate without maintenance or lubrication for about 75 years, is an engineering marvelled.

9. Fully-Developed Organs
All species appear completely developed, not partially developed. They show design.a There are no examples of half-developed feathers, eyesb, skin, tubes (arteries, veins, intestines, etc.), or any of thousands of other vital organs. Tubes that are not 100% complete are a liability; so are partially developed organs. For example, if a leg of a reptile were to evolve into a wing of a bird, it would become a bad leg long before it became a good wingc.

10. Distinct Types
If evolution happened, one would expect to see gradual transitions among many living things. For example, variations of dogs might blend in with variations of cats. Actually, some animals, such as the duckbilled platypus, have organs completely unrelated to their alleged evolutionary ancestors. The platypus has fur, is warm-blooded, and suckles its young like mammals. It lays leathery eggs, has a single ventral opening (for elimination, mating, and birth), and has claws and a shoulder girdle like most reptiles. The platypus can detect electrical currents (a.c. and d.c.) like some fish, and has a bill like a duck (a bird). It has webbed forefeet like an otter, a flat tail like a beaver, and the male can inject poisonous venom like a pit viper. Such "patchwork" animals and plants, called mosaics, have no logical place on the evolutionary tree.

There is no direct evidence that any major group of animals or plants arose from any other major groupa. Species are only observed going out of existence (extinctions), never coming into existence.

11. Altruism
Many animals, including humans, will endanger or even sacrifice their lives to save another—sometimes the life of a member of a completely different species a. According to evolution theory, natural selection, which supposedly explains all individual characteristics, should eliminate such altruistic, or sacrificial, behavior. How could risky behavior that only benefits another ever be inherited, since its possession tends to prevent the altruistic individual from passing on its genes for altruism?  If evolution is correct, selfish behavior should have completely eliminated unselfish behavior. Further, cheating and aggressiveness would have "weeded out" cooperation. Altruism contradicts evolution.

12. Extraterrestrial Life?
No verified form of extraterrestrial life of any kind has ever been observed, if evolution had occurred on earth, one would expect that at least simple forms of life, such as microbes, would have been found by the elaborate experiments sent to the moon and Mars.

13. Languages
Nonhumans communicate, but not with language. True language requires both vocabulary and grammar. With great effort, human trainers have taught some chimpanzees to recognize a few hundred spoken words, to point to up to 200 symbols, and to make limited hand signs. These impressive feats are sometimes exaggerated by capturing and editing the animals' successes on film. (Some early demonstrations were flawed by the trainer's hidden promptingsa.)

Chimpanzees have not demonstrated these skills in the wild and do not pass their skills on to other chimpanzees. When a trained chimp dies, so does the trainer's investment. Also, trained chimps have essentially no grammatical ability. Only with grammar can a few words express many ideas. No evidence exists that language evolves in nonhumans.

Did language evolve in humans? Charles Darwin claimed it did. If so, the earliest languages should be the simplest. On the contrary, language studies reveal that the more ancient the language (for example: Latin, 200 B.C.; Greek, 800 B.C.; and Vedic Sanskrit, 1500 B.C.), the more complex it is with respect to syntax, case, gender, mood, voice, tense, and verb form. The best evidence indicates that languages devolve; that is, they become simpler rather than more complex. Most linguists reject the idea that simple languages evolve into complex languages.

14. Speech
Speech is uniquely human a. Furthermore, studies of 36 documented cases of children raised without human contact (feral children) show that speech appears to be learned only from other humans. Apparently, humans do not automatically speak. If this is so, the first humans must have been endowed with a speaking ability. There is no evidence that speech has evolved.

15. Codes and Programs
In our experience, codes are produced only by intelligence, not by natural processes or chance. A code is a set of rules for converting information from one useful form to another. Examples include the Morse Code and Braille. The genetic material that controls the physical processes of life is coded information. It also is accompanied by elaborate transmission, translation, and duplication systems, without which the genetic material would be useless, and life would cease. Therefore, it seems most reasonable to conclude that the genetic code, the accompanying transmission, translation, and duplication systems, and all living organisms were produced by an extremely high level of intelligence using nonnatural (or supernatural) processes.

Likewise, no natural process has ever been observed to produce a program. A program is a planned sequence of steps to accomplish some goal. Computer programs are common examples. The information stored in the genetic material of all life is a complex program. Since programs are not produced by chance or natural processes, the most probable conclusion is that some intelligent, super- natural source developed these programs.

16. Information
All isolated systems contain specific, but perishable, amounts of informationa. No isolated, nontrivial system has ever been observed to spontaneously increase its information content. Natural processes, without exception, destroy information. Only outside intelligence can increase the information content of an otherwise isolated system. All scientific observations are consistent with this generalization, which has three corollaries or consequences:

The Arguments for Evolution Are Outdated and Often Illogical

17. A Common Designer
It is illogical to maintain that similarities between different forms of life always imply a common ancestor;a they may imply a common designer. In fact, in cases where experiments have shown that similar structures are controlled by different genesb or developed from different parts of embryosc, a common designer is the more likely explanation.

18. Vestigial Organs
The existence of human organs whose function is unknown does not imply that they are vestiges of organs inherited from our evolutionary ancestors a. As medical knowledge has increased, at least some functions of all organs have been discovered b. For example, the human appendix was once thought to be a useless remnant from our evolutionary past. Today it is known that the appendix plays a role in antibody production and protects part of the intestine from infections. Its removal also increases a person's susceptibility to leukemia, Hodgkin's disease, cancer of the colon, and cancer of the ovaries. Indeed, the absence of true vestigial organs implies that evolution never happened.

19. Two-Celled Life?
Many single-celled forms of life exist, but there are no known forms of animal life with 2, 3, 4, or 5 cells a. Even the forms of life with 6-20 cells are parasites. They must have a complex animal as a host to provide such functions as digestion and respiration. If macroevolution happened, one should find many forms of life with 2-20 cells as transitional forms between one-celled and many-celled organisms.

20. Embryology
As an embryo develops, it does not repeat an evolutionary sequence. Embryologists no longer consider the superficial similarities that exist between a few embryos and the adult forms of simpler animals as evidence for evolutiona. It is now known that Ernst Haeckel, who popularized this incorrect but widespread belief, deliberately falsified his drawings.

21. Rapid Burial
Fossils all over the world show evidences of rapid burial. Many fossils, such as fossilized jellyfish,a show by the details of their soft, fleshy portionsb that they were buried rapidly, before they could decay. Many other animals, buried in mass graves and in twisted and contorted positions, suggest violent and rapid burials over large areasc. These observations, together with the occurrence of compressed fossils and fossils that cut across two or more layers of sedimentary rock, are strong evidence that the sediments encasing these fossils were deposited rapidly-not over hundreds of millions of years. Further more, almost all sediments were sorted by water. The worldwide fossil record is, therefore, evidence of the rapid death and burial of animal and plant life by a worldwide, catastrophic flood. The fossil record is not evidence of slow change.

22. Parallel Strata
The earth's sedimentary layers typically lie parallel to adjacent layers. Such uniform layers are seen, for example, in the Grand Canyon and in road cuts in mountainous terrain. Had these parallel layers been deposited slowly over thousands of years, erosion would have cut many channels in the topmost layers. Their subsequent burial by other sediments would produce nonparallel patterns. Since parallel layers are the general rule, and the earth's surface erodes rapidly, one can conclude that almost all sedimentary layers were deposited rapidly relative to the local erosion rate-not over long periods of time.

23. Fossil Gaps
If evolution happened, the fossil record should show continuous and gradual changes from the bottom to the top layers. Actually, many gaps or discontinuities appear throughout the fossil record a. Fossil links are missing between numerous plantsb, between single-celled forms of life and invertebrates, between invertebrates and vertebratesc between fish and amphibiansd between amphibians and reptilese between reptiles and mammals,f between reptiles and birds,g between primates and other mammals,h and between apes and other primates.i The fossil record has been studied so thoroughly that it is safe to conclude that these gaps are real; they will never be filled.

24. Missing Trunk
The evolutionary tree has no trunk. In the earliest part of the fossil record (generally the Cambrian sedimentary rock layers), life appears suddenly, full-blown, complex, diversified,a and dispersed.b Complex species, such as fish,c worms, corals, trilobites, jellyfish,d sponges, mollusks, and brachiopods appear suddenly, with no known sign anywhere on earth of gradual development from simpler forms. These layers contain representatives of all plant and animal phyla, including flowering plants, e vascular plants,f and vertebrates (animals with backbones)g Insects, a class comprising four-fifths of all known animals (living and extinct), have no evolutionary ancestors.h The fossil record does not support evolution.

25. Out-of-Place Fossils
The vertical sequencing of fossils is frequently not in the assumed evolutionary order.a For example, in Uzbekistan, 86 consecutive hoofprints of horses were found in rocks dating back to the dinosaurs.b Dinosaur and humanlike footprints have been found together in Turkmeniac and in Arizona.d Sometimes, land animals, flying animals, and marine animals are fossilized side-by-side in the same rocke Dinosaur, whale, elephant, horse, and many other fossils, plus crude human tools, have reportedly been found in the phosphate beds of South Carolina.f In the Grand Canyon,g in Venezuela, and in Guyana,h spores of ferns and pollen from flowering plants are found in Precambrian rocks-rocks deposited before life supposedly evolved. Coal beds contain round, black lumps called coat balls, some of which contain flowering plants which allegedly evolved 100 million years after the coal bed was formed.i A leading authority on the Grand Canyon even published photographs of horselike hoof-prints visible in rocks that, according to the theory of evolution, predate hoofed animals by more than a hundred million years.j Similar hoofprints are alongside 1000 dinosaur footprints in Virginia.

Petrified trees in the petrified forest of Arizona contain fossilized nests of bees and cocoons of wasps. The petrified forests are supposedly 220 million years old, while bees (and flowering plants which bees require) supposedly evolved 140 million years later.l Evolutionists and textbooks systematically ignore discoveries which conflict with the evolutionary time scale.

26. Ape-Men?
Stories claiming that fossils of primitive, apelike men have been found are overstated.

It is now universally acknowledged that Piltdown man was a hoax, and yet, it was in textbooks for more than forty years.

Prior to 1978, the evidence for Ramapithecus consisted of a mere handful of teeth and jaw fragments. It is now known that these fragments were pieced together incorrectly by Louis Leakey" and others in a form resembling part of the human jaw.c Ramapithe-cus was just an ape.

The only evidence for Nebraska man turned out to be a pig's tooth.

Eugene Dubois conceded forty years after he discovered Java "man" that it was just a large gibbon. Dubois also admitted that he had withheld parts of four other thigh bones of apes, found in the same area, which supported that conclusion.

The skulls of Peking man are considered by many experts to be the remains of apes that were systematically decapitated and exploited for food by true man.f The classification Homo erectus is considered by most experts to be a category that should never have been created.

The first confirmed limb bones of Homo habilis have recently been discovered. They show that this animal clearly had apelike proportionsh and should never have been classified as manlike (Homo).

The Australopithecines, which were made famous by Louis and Mary Leakey, are quite distinct from humans. Several detailed computer studies of the Australopithecines have shown that their bodily proportions were not intermediate between man and living apes.i Another study of their inner ear bones, that were used to maintain balance, showed a striking similarity with those of chimpanzees and gorillas, but great differences with those of humans. One Australopithecine fossil—a 3 1/2-foot-tall, long-armed, 60-pound adult called Lucy—was initially presented as evidence that all Australopithecines walked upright in a human manner. However, studies of Lucy's entire anatomy, not just a knee joint, now show that this is very unlikely.' She probably swung from the trees' The Austraiopithecines are probably an extinct ape.

For about 100 years the world was led to believe that Neanderthal man was stooped and apelike. Recent studies show that this erroneous belief was based upon some Neanderthals who were crippled with bone diseases such as arthritis and rickets.m Neanderthal man, Heidelberg man, and Cro-Magnori man were completely human. Artists' depictions of them, especially of their fleshy portions, are often quite imaginative and are not supported by the evidence.

27. Fossil Man
Bones of many modern-looking humans have been found deep in rocks that, according to evolution, were formed long before man began to evolve. Examples include the Calaveras skull,a the Castenedolo skeletons,b" Reek's skeleton,c" and many othersd Other remains, such as the Swanscombe skull, the Steinheim fossil, and the Vertesszoilos fossil, present similar problemse These remains are almost always ignored by evolutionists.

Life Is So Complex That Chance Processes, Even With Billions of Years, Cannot Explain Its Origin

28. Chemical Elements of Life
The chemical evolution of life, as you will see in the next few pages, is ridiculously improbable. What could improve the odds? One should begin with an earth having high concentrations of the key elements comprising life, such as: carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen.a However, the closer one examines these elements, the more unlikely the evolution of life appears.

Carbon. The rocks that supposedly preceded life have very little carbon.b One must imagine a strange, almost unreasonably carbon-rich atmosphere to supply the needed carbon. For comparison, today's atmosphere only holds only 1/30,000th of the carbon that has been on the earth's surface since life first appeared.

Oxygen. Did the early earth have oxygen in its atmosphere? If it did, the compounds (called amino acids) needed for life to evolve would have been destroyed by oxidation. But if there had been no oxygen, there would have been no ozone in the upper atmosphere, since ozone is simply a form of oxygen. Without ozone to shield the earth, the sun's ultraviolet radiation would destroy life.c The only known way for both ozone and life to be here is for both to come into existence simultaneously—in other words, by creation.

Nitrogen. Nitrogen is easily absorbed by clay and various rocks. Had millions of years passed before life evolved, the sediments that preceded life should be filled with nitrogen. Searches have never located such sediments and Basic chemistry does not support the evolution of life.

29. Proteins
Living matter is composed largely of proteins—long chains of amino acids. Since 1930, it has been known that amino acids cannot join together if oxygen is present. In other words, proteins could not have evolved from chance chemical reactions if the atmosphere contained oxygen. However, the chemistry of the earth's rocks, both on land and below ancient seas shows that the earth had oxygen before the earliest fossils formed.a Even earlier, oxygen would have been produced by solar radiation breaking water vapor apart into oxygen and hydrogen. Then some hydrogen, the lightest of all chemical elements, would have escaped into outer space, leaving behind oxygen.

To form proteins, amino acids must also be highly concentrated. However, the early oceans or atmosphere would have diluted amino acids to the point where the required collisions between them would rarely have occurred. Besides, amino acids do not naturally link up to form proteins. Instead, proteins tend to break down into amino acids.c Furthermore, the proposed energy sources for forming proteins (the earth's heat, electrical discharges, or the sun's radiation) destroy the protein products thousands of times faster than they could have formed.d The many attempts to show how life might have arrived on earth have only demonstrated the futility of the effort, the immense complexity of even the simplest life, and the need for a vast intelligence to precede life.

30. The First Cell
If, despite the virtually impossible odds, proteins arose by chance processes, there is not the remotest reason to believe that they could ever form a membrane-encased, self-reproducing, metabolizing, living cell.a There is no evidence that there are any stable states between the assumed naturalistic formation of proteins and the formation of the first living cells. No scientist has ever advanced a testable procedure by which this fantastic jump in complexity could have occurred—even if the entire universe had been filled with proteins.

31. Barriers, Buffers, and Chemical Pathways
A typical living cell contains thousands of different chemicals, some acidic, others basic. Many chemicals would react with others were it not for an intricate system of chemical barriers and buffers. If living things evolved, these barriers and buffers must have also evolved—but at just the right time to prevent harmful chemical reactions. How could such precise, almost miraculous, events have happened for each of the many millions of species?

All living organisms are maintained by thousands of chemical pathways, each involving a long series of complex chemical reactions. For example, the clotting of blood, which involves twenty to thirty steps, is absolutely vital to help heal a wound. However, clotting could be fatal, if it happened inside the body. Omitting one of the many steps, inserting an unwanted step, or altering the timing of a step would probably cause death. If one thing goes wrong, all the other marvelous steps that were performed flawlessly were in vain. Apparently, these complex pathways were created as an intricate, highly integrated unit.

32. Genetic Distances
Techniques now exist for measuring the degree of similarity between forms of life. These "genetic distances" are calculated by taking a specific protein and examining the sequence of its components. The fewer changes required to convert a protein of one organism into the corresponding protein of another organism, supposedly the closer their relationship. Similar comparisons can now be made between the genetic material (DNA and RNA) of different organisms. The results of these studies seriously contradict the theory of evolutiona There is not a trace of evidence at the molecular level for the traditional evolutionary series: simple sea life—-fish-»amphibians-*reptiles—•mammals.b Each category of organism appears to be almost equally isolated.c One computer-based study, using cytochrome c, a protein used in energy production, compared 47 different forms of life. If evolution happened, this study should have found that, for example, the rattlesnake was most closely related to other reptiles. Instead, based on this one protein, the rattlesnake was most similar to man.d Since this study, hundreds of similar contradictions have been discovered.

33. Genetic Information
The genetic information contained in each cell of the human body is roughly equivalent to a library of 4,000 booksa The probability that mutations and natural selection produced this vast amount of information, even if matter and life somehow arose, is essentially zero.b It would be analogous to continuing the following procedure until 4,000 books have been produced:c
a. Start with a meaningful phrase.
b. Retype the phrase, but make some errors and insert some additional letters.
c. Examine the new phrase to see if it is meaningful.
d. If it is, replace the original phrase with it.
e. Return to step b.

To accumulate 4,000 books of meaningful information, this procedure would have to produce the equivalent of far more than 1040,0000 animal offspring. (Just to begin to understand how large 1040.000 is, realize that the visible universe has less than 1080 atoms in it.)

34. DNA Production
To produce DNA, a cell requires more than 75 different types of proteinsa But these proteins, in turn, are produced only at the direction of DNA.b Since each requires the other, a satisfactory explanation for the origin of one must also explain the origin of the other.c Apparently, this entire manufacturing system came into existence simultaneously. This implies creation.

35. Handedness: Left and Right
Genetic material, DNA and RNA, is composed of nucleotides. In living things, nucleotides are always "right-handed." (They were initially named "right-handed" because a beam of polarized light passing through them rotated like a right-handed screw.) Nucleotides rarely form outside of life, but when they do, half are left-handed, and half are right-handed. In other words, nucleotides that might have formed before life appeared on earth would be unsuitable for the evolution of life's genetic material.

Each type of amino acid, when found in nonliving material or when synthesized in the laboratory, comes in two chemically equivalent forms. Half are right-handed and half are left-handed—mirror images of each other. However, the amino acids in life, including plants, animals, bacteria, molds, and even viruses, are essentially all left-handed. No known natural process can isolate either the left-handed or the right-handed variety. The mathematical probability that chance processes could produce merely one tiny protein molecule with only left-handed amino acids is virtually zero.

A similar observation can be made concerning a special class of organic compounds called "sugars." In living systems, sugars are all right-handed. Based on our present understanding, natural processes produce equal proportions of left-handed and right-handed sugars. Since the sugars in living things are almost ail right-handed, our present understanding leads to the conclusion that random natural processes did not produce life.

If any living thing took in (or ate) amino acids or sugars that had the wrong handedness, the organism's body could not process it. Such food would be useless. Since evolution favors slight variations that enhance survivability and produce more offspring, consider just how advantageous a mutation might be that switched (or inverted) a plant's handedness. "Inverted" (or wrong-handed) trees would proliferate rapidly since they would no longer provide nourishment to bacteria, mold, or termites. "Inverted" forests would fill the continents. Other "inverted" plants and animals would also benefit and would overwhelm the balance of nature. Why do we not see such species with right-handed amino acids and left-handed sugars? Similarly, why are there not more poisonous plants? Why doesn't any beneficial mutation permit its carriers to swamp most other species? Apparently, beneficial mutations are rarer than evolutionists believe.

36. Improbabilities
The simplest conceivable form of life should have at least 600 different protein molecules. The mathematical probability that only one molecule could form by the chance arrangement of the proper sequence of amino acids is far less than 1 in 10450a~ (The magnitude of the number 10450 can begin to be appreciated by realizing that the visible universe is about 1028 inches in diameter.)

37. Symbiotic Relationships
Many different forms of life are completely dependent upon each other. Examples include fig trees and the fig gall wasp,a the yucca plant and the yucca moth,b many parasites and their hosts, and pollen-bearing plants and the honeybee. Even the members of the honeybee family, consisting of the queen, workers, and drones, are interdependent. If one member of each interdependent group evolved first (such as the plant before the animal, or one member of the honeybee family before the others), it could not have survived. Since all members of the group obviously have survived, they must have come into existence at essentially the same time. In other words, creation.

A few "stem cells" in your bone marrow produce more than 100 billion of these white blood cells a day, plus other types of blood cells. Each white blood cell moves at up to 30 microns (almost half the diameter of a human hair) each minute. So many white blood cells are in your body that their total distance traveled every day would circle the earth twice. © Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH; photo by Lennait Nilsson.

38. Sexual Reproduction
If sexual reproduction in plants, animals, and humans is a result of evolutionary sequences, an absolutely unbelievable series of chance events must have occurred at each stage.

a. The amazingly complex, radically different, yet complementary reproductive systems of the male and female must have completely and independently evolved at each stage at about the same time and place. Just a slight incompleteness in only one of the two would make both reproductive systems useless, and the organism would become extinct.

b. The physical, chemical, and emotional systems of the male and female would also need to be compatible.

c. The millions of complex products of the male reproductive system (pollen or sperm) must have an affinity for and a mechanical, chemical,a and electricalb compatibility with the eggs of the female reproductive system.

d. The many intricate processes occurring at the molecular level inside the fertilized egg would have o work with fantastic precision - processes that scientists can only describe in a general sense.

e. The environment of this fertilized egg, from conception through adulthood and until it also reproduced with another sexually capable adult (who also "accidentally" evolved), would have to be tightly controlled.

f. This remarkable string of accidents must have spread throughout millions of species.
Either this series of incredible and complementary events occurred by random, evolutionary processes, or else, an intelligent designer created sexual reproduction. Furthermore, evolutionary theory predicts that nature would elect asexual rather than sexual reproduction.c But if sexual reproduction (the splitting of an organism into two identical organisms) evolved before sexual reproduction, how did complex sexual diversity arise or survive? Evolution cannot explain it.

39. Immune Systems
How could immune systems of animals and plants have evolved? Each immune system can recognize invading bacteria, viruses, and toxins. Each system can quickly mobilize just the right type of defenders to search out and destroy these invaders. Each system has a memory and learns from every attack.

If the many instructions that direct an animal's or plant's immune system were not already programmed into the organism's genetic system when it first appeared on the earth, the first of thousands of potential infections would have destroyed the organism. This would have nullified any rare genetic improvements that might have accumulated. In other words, the large amount of genetic information governing the immune system could not have accumulated in a slow, evolutionary sensea Obviously, for the organism to have survived, and this information must have all been there from the beginning. Again, creation.

Many bacteria, such as Salmonella, Escherichia coli, and some Streptococci, propel themselves with a type of miniature motor. Speeds of up to 15 body-lengths per second are achieved." These extremely efficient, reversible motors rotate up to 100,000 revolutions per minute.d Each shaft rotates a bundle of whiplike flagella that act as a propeller. The motors, having rotors and stators, are similar in many respects to electrical motors.e The electrical charges come from a flow of protons. Several million dollars per year are being spent, primarily in Japan, trying to learn how these motors work. Since the bacteria can stop, start, and change directions and speeds, they probably have sophisticated sensors, switches, and control mechanisms. All of this is highly miniaturized. Eight million of these bacterial motors would fit in the cross-sectional area of an average human hair.' Evolutionary theory teaches that bacteria were one of the first forms of life to evolve, and therefore, they are simple. While bacteria are small, they are not simple.

40. The Validity of Thought
If life is ultimately the result of random processes or chance, then so is thought. Your thoughts-including what you are thinking now-would, in the final analysis, be a consequence of a long series of accidents. There- fore, your thoughts would have no validity, including the thought that life is a result of chance, or natural, processes' By destroying the validity of ideas, evolution undercuts even the idea of evolution.

We have all heard it said that humans use only a small fraction of their mental abilities. If this is true, how could such unused abilities have evolved? Certainly not by natural selection, since those capabilities are not used.

Life Science Conclusions
After Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, many came to believe that all forms of life had a common ancestor. Those who believed that over long periods of time molecules had turned into man thought there were only a few gaps in this "evolutionary tree"—gaps that would be filled as scientific knowledge increased. Just the opposite has happened. As science has progressed, the obvious "missing links" in this hypothetical tree have multiplied enormously, and the difficulties in "bridging" these gaps have become even more apparent. For example, in Darwin's day, all life fell into two categories (or kingdoms): animals and plants. Today we know that life fails into five radically different kingdoms, only two of which are animals and plants. This, of course, does not include viruses, which are complex and unique in their own way. In the 1800s, the animal kingdom was divided into four animal phyla; today there are about forty.

Darwin suggested that the first living creature evolved in a "warm little pond." Some recent writers have imagined that life arose in "organic soup"—a more sophisticated but equally vague version of Darwin's warm pond. We now know that the chance formation of the first living cell is a leap of gigantic proportions, vastly more improbable than the evolution of bacteria into humans. In Darwin's day, a cell was thought to be about as simple as a ping-pong ball. Even today most evolutionists think of bacteria as simple. However, we know that they are marvelously integrated and complex manufacturing plants with many mysteries, such as bacterial motors, yet to be understood.

Furthermore, ceils come in two radically different types - those with a nucleus and those without. The evolutionary leap from one to the other is staggering to imagine.

The more evolutionists learn about life, the greater complexity they find. A century ago there were no sophisticated microscopes. Consequently, the leaps from single to multiple-cell organisms were also underestimated. The development of the computer has also given us a partial appreciation of the vast electronics, extreme miniaturization, and storage capabilities of the brain. The human eye, which Darwin admitted made him shudder, was only a single jump in complexity. Yet it is now known that there are at least a dozen radically different kinds of eyes, each requiring similar jumps if evolution happened. Likewise, the literal leap that we call flight must have evolved not once, but on at least four different occasions: for certain birds, insects, mammals, and reptiles. Until recently, it was thought that sunlight provided the energy for all life. We now know that at widely separated locations on the dark ocean floor there are complex organisms that use only chemical and thermal energy. For one energy conversion system to evolve into another is analogous to slowly changing a house's heating system from gas to electricity by thousands of rare accidents. Furthermore, these accidents changed only one minor component each year, without the occupants freezing in the winter. In addition, this strange, unexplained process must happen several times' in two different oceans. Many other giant leaps must have also occurred if evolution happened: the first photosynthesis, cold-blooded to warm-blooded animals, floating marine plants to vascular plants, placental mammals to marsupials, egg-laying to viviparous animals, insect metamorphosis, the transition of mammals to the sea (whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals, sea lions, and sea cows), the transition of reptiles to the sea (plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs), and on and on.

The gaps in the fossil record are well known. A century ago evolutionists argued that these gaps would be filled as knowledge increased. Most paleontologists now admit that this prediction failed. Of course, the most famous "missing link" is that between man and apes. However, the term is deceiving. There should be not one intermediate link, but thousands, if the evolutionary tree connects man and apes with their many linguistic, social, mental, and physical differences.

Scientific advancements have shown us that evolution is even more ridiculous than it appeared to people in Darwin's day. It is a theory without a mechanism. Not even appeals to long periods of time will allow simple organisms to "jump gaps" and become more complex and viable. In fact, as will be seen in the next section, long periods of time make such leaps even less likely. All the breeding experiments, which many hoped would show macroevolution, have failed. The arguments used by Darwin and his followers are now discredited or, at best, in dispute, even among evolutionists. Finally, the research of the last several decades has shown that the requirements for life are incredibly complex. Just the design that thinking people can see around them obviously implies a designer. Nevertheless, evolutionists still argue against this design by, oddly enough, using arguments which they spent a great deal of time designing. The theory of organic evolution
certainly appears to be invalid.

As we leave the life sciences and examine the astronomical and physical sciences, we will see many other serious difficulties. If the earth, the solar system, our galaxy, or even the heavier chemical elements could not have evolved, as now appears to be the case, the organic evolution could never have even begun.

About Author
Dr. Walt Brown is a retired full colonel (Air Force) and a West Point graduate with a PhD in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At MIT he was a National Science Fellow. Dr. Brown has taught college courses in mathematics, physics, and computer sciences. While in the army, he was a paratrooper and ranger. His most recent assignments during his twenty-one years of military service were Chief of Science and Technology Studies at the Air War College, associate professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and Director of Benet Research, Development, and Engineering Laboratories in Albany, New York.

^ top of page

< back