This is an article borrowed from a booklet written about the Scopes Monkey trial.

THE DAYTON DECPTION BY JOHN MORRIS

The Scopes Trial can only be fully comprehended within a larger framework-the long war against God. Only when we see the creation/evolution conflict as the collision of two world views can we understand the utter hatred toward Christianity on display at the Scopes Trial.
Even though John Scopes was "convicted" of teaching evolution, in many ways the anti-creationists won a major victory, since "to the victor belongs the spoils." During the trial, Christians were depicted as ignorant, foolish, anti-intellectuals. And this image was portrayed to the world by the media. Evolutionists are still enjoying the incredible gains they made through the Scopes Trial, in society, in the courts, in politics-even in religious circles. Evolution has become known as "the central unifying concept" for all rational discussion. Creation, and to a large degree Christianity, have been ridiculed, ignored or legislated out of the public arena.

A Look at the Two world Views

The main difference between the two world views is in the origin of life.

Creation, on its face, presupposes a supernatural origin of all things, and a spiritual understanding of nature. There is no such thing as creation without a Creator. Acts of creation cannot be observed today, but by observing those things which do exist, creationists conclude life could not have come about by natural processes, but only by supernatural processes.
Evolution, at its core, is an attempt to understand all things as natural phenomena-the random, chance results of natural processes. Most evolutionists admit that evolution, in any meaningful sense, goes too slowly to observe, if it still occurs at all. Thus, it too is an idea about the nature of the unobserved past. This view colors every observation and reconstruction of history. Only natural processes are allowed, and the supernatural is excluded.

Obviously, both naturalism and supernaturalism are religious faith positions. The question, then, becomes: Which religious bias is the correct one? Since neither can be observed, the best we can do is to see which view of history fits the observable facts best, and that is the one that is more likely correct.
Let us briefly look at some major scientific observations. Consider the unimaginable complexity in living things. The complexity of even the simplest single-celled organism dwarfs that of the largest man-made computer.

Evolutionists think simple life originated one day from nonliving chemicals-all by chance.

Yet this life is far too complex for man to understand, let alone duplicate. If computers do not happen by chance, is it really credible to think that life, which is profoundly more complex, could generate spontaneously by chance?
When organisms reproduce today, their offspring look like their parents. No evidence exists to suggest that these organisms change into something else. Darwin proposed that the process of natural selection accomplished evolutionary changes. Later on, mutations were thought to produce the genetic material. But surprisingly, not one new and different species has ever been produced by natural selection, as far as observational science knows.

Natural selection works, but it just does not produce anything new. It works to conserve what already exists, and weed out any misfits. No mutation-not one truly beneficial or positive mutations ever been observed. While a few mutations have produced a trait in a plant or animal that was preferred by man, these changes have been harmful to the organism itself in a natural sense. Mutations should rightly be called birth defects. They will not produce positive evolutionary changes.

Today biologists speak of beneficial recombination of genes ;
some other factor, but at best all that is produced is a variety of, living type. The ultimate question is: How did the organism itself arise?

Better yet, from where did the original genetic code arise, and who coded it to contain such a wealth of information?

Leaders in evolutionary thought now argue that they are still searching for the mechanism of evolution, because all ideas proposed in the past have been shown to be impossible. A theory that claims to be responsible for everything that exists, and does not even have a mechanism, is weak indeed.

 

The weakest link in the evolutionary chain is the origin of life from nonlife.
If anything is impossible, this is it.

The problem here is so serious that some evolutionists have adopted the concept of "panspermia." Since life could not have arisen here on earth, it must have happened somewhere else, they say, out in outer space where the conditions were different and perhaps natural laws were different, coming here perhaps on a meteoroid. Some hold to this ridiculous idea, and yet claim that the origin of life could never have been the result of a supernatural Creator.

Fossils:

Surely if evolution occurred over billions of years it would be recorded in the fossil record. We should see evidence that some basic types of organism have changed into others. Such transitions may have taken millions of years, and we should be able to find some of the transitional, or in-between forms. Darwin was frustrated by the lack of clear examples in his day, but predicted that many would soon be found. However, as of today viable transitional fossil forms have not been uncovered. In the 1970's, evolutionists began to admit the lack of evolutionary transitions in the fossil record, and set about modifying the evolutionary theory to fit. Now, many teach that organisms remain the same for long periods of time, and then evolve so rapidly that they leave no fossils .

 

The two biggest gaps in the fossil record prove the point. Even if single-celled organisms did exist, how did they evolve into the vast array of ocean-bottom-dwelling invertebrates? This is called the Cambrian period-this explosion of life that has baffled evolutionists.

Clams, snails, brachiopods, corals, starfish, jellyfish, trilobites, and many other organisms appear in the fossil record with no ancestors at all.
The transition is thought to have taken some 3 billion years, yet not one transitional form has been found!

The next biggest gap in the fossil record is from marine invertebrates to vertebrate fish. Was a clam or a jellyfish the ancestor of fish? This transition is thought to have taken tens of millions of years. Again, nothing has been found which serves as a plausible ancestor for the fish.
If evolution cannot climb over these two hurdles, we can consider it to be, pardon the pun, dead in the water.

 

Changes are seen. People in America are taller on the average than they were 2000 years ago. But that is not evolution; it is due to better nutrition and medical care. Grasshopper populations grow resistant to DDT, but that is not evolution. A small percentage of grasshoppers have always been resistant to DDT, and the nonresistant ones have been killed without leaving offspring. The predominantly light variety of peppered moths in England was replaced by a darker variety during the smoggy industrial revolution. But that is not evolution; it was the same moth before and after, with differing proportions of dark and light moths alive at the time. This might be natural selection, but not evolution; nothing new was produced.

Small changes within a species (which are observed) do not prove the big changes into new types (which are not observed), no matter how often our evolutionary colleagues insist that it does. All the changes that we observe are variations within a species. There is no leaping from species to species-all changes occur within it: boundaries of species. Evolutionists should not just guess how evolution might have occurred: they should show that it did occur, and was responsible for life and its vast array of living forms.

In many ways, natural selection provides a barrier to evolution. If the forelimb of a walking reptile transformed into the wing of a bird, each evolutionary step would have to provide some advantage over its predecessor and thus be "selected" by nature (natural selection) for survival. But long before the forelimb was a good wing, with feathers rather than scales, hollow bones in place of solid, warm blooded instead of cold blooded, and so on, it would be a terrible leg and eliminated by natural selection. What benefit is half a wing?

To top it all off, even the basic laws of science forbid evolution. In particular, the "Second Law of Science," which has never been violated in all of observational science, shows that in any process the disorder of a system tends to increase. We know this to be true as we see things grow old, wear out, decay, and die.

Everything goes downhill, but evolutionist insist things have become more complex over time. They claim the law can be overcome by providing extra energy from the sun. However, the more uncontrolled energy added, the faster the system runs downhill. In order to build up in complexity, there must be a way to convert the incoming energy into useful forms. Solar energy, for example, is converted by photosynthesis into a plant, and applied in specific ways, through the DNA code in the plant seed. These features must preexist the energy, or the plant will die. The growth which does result is not evolution. No new genetic material was formed at all. Evolution is against this basic law of science.

 

The Evidence in 1925
If evolution is not well supported now, consider its state at the time of the Scopes Trial. Evolution had become rather popular among intellectuals, as is also true today, but a look at the scientific evidence presented reveals just how weak the case was.
The evidence had a particular slant. At stake was not just the theory of evolution; it was that men had evolved from apelike creatures. Almost all lines of evidence attempted to link man with the animals. Very little evidence for evolution was presented, but every possible argument for human evolution found its way into the trial and the media coverage surrounding the trial.
As we look back on this evidence now, we recognize that every argument presented for evolution at the Scopes Trial has been disproved. Two arguments from biology were aired, and four examples of supposed ape-men made their appearance. In each case, the arguments are no longer valid. Let us look briefly at each One.

Vestigial Organs
In the early 1900's, some scientists claimed that a number of human body parts were nonfunctional-such as the appendix or the tonsils-and they were thought to be useless leftovers from evolutionary ancestors. Such organs may have had a use in the past, they reasoned, but evolution had made them invalid. The useless leftovers were labeled "vestigial."
But in reality, what does this show? Does this really mean that the organs, muscles or glands have no function, or only that medical science has not yet discovered the function? As it turns out, the latter is correct. Uses for one after the other have been found. The list has decreased from almost 200 useless organs to zero.

It is true that some parts may not be necessary, but does this mean they are useless? We can live without a hand or a leg, but retaining them is preferable. Many people have had their tonsils or appendix removed, and suffer little. But it is now known that each plays a role in the body's immune system. It is better to keep these organs, even though one can live without them.

Some organs only contribute under extreme circumstances which are seldom faced, but their lack can prove deadly. A recent study in Japan showed that those who had their appendix survived radiation poisoning at a much higher rate than those without an appendix.
Some organs play an important role during infancy or even in the womb, only to become rather inoperative later in life. Without their early function, however, life would have ceased.

Today's scientists are following a similar route. By studying life's genetic code, scientists have observed that much of the DNA strand of coded information remains idle. Ten years ago scientists came to regard this "junk DNA" as from evolution leftovers. But now several functions have been discovered; some operate as backup, replacing damaged "working" parts; some provide a template to ensure accurate copying during reproduction; other sections provide three-dimensional spacing in the DNA coiled helix that is necessary for proper function; many sections operate during fetal development but not afterwards; and the functions for still others are just now being discovered. God's design of the human body and its myriad interdependent parts is exquisite.

Scientists need to learn humility from the lesson of vestigial organs. Only the height of arrogance would lead a fallible scientist, operating from lack of data and understanding, to pass judgment on God's design. How much better to acknowledge one's own inadequacies and adopt a wait-and-see attitude toward the mysteries which remain.

 

Embryonic Recapitulation
Once Darwin's book was published, it gathered a strange gallery of followers, but none more dubious than Emst Haeckel. A German biologist, he championed Darwin's theories on the European continent, much as Huxley did in England. Ideas of naturalism, racism and imperialism were already gaining in popularity in Germany, and Darwin's views-survival of the fittest, might makes right, and elimination of the less fit-provided the fertile seedbed for National Socialism.
Haeckel hated Christianity, and rightly saw evolution as incompatible with Christian doctrine. His teaching has come into disrepute, for in his later years he was found guilty in a university trial of fraudulently tampering with his data. Data he used with great effectiveness to validate and teach evolution.
Haeckel was the main advocate of the concept of embryonic recapitulation, that the human embryo recapitulates (or remembers) its evolutionary past.

Superficial resemblances can be seen between the embryos of various organisms. Obviously, even the human embryo starts out as a single cell, resembling a single-celled organism. According to Haeckel, as it develops, a sac is attached to the embryo, is like the yolk sac of a bird. At one point, the embryo has linear folds that he indicated look like "gill slits" in a fish embryo. Soon the embryo develops a taillike structure, which was a leftover from the animals. He even fudged his drawings to make the embryos look more alike, and it was for this he was tried and convicted.

We now know that in all cases of comparison and similarity he was wrong. The "yolk sac" supplies blood cells to the growing embryo, a very necessary function. The "gill slits" in the human turn out to be neither gills nor slits. Gills are used for breathing, but never do these folds open into the throat or lungs. Rather, they develop into essential parts of the human ear, and the parathyroid and thymus glands. The folds are the not-yet-finished displays of vital human parts. The "tail" develops into the human coccyx, or "tail bone." Far from being a useless or leftover vestige, the coccyx anchors the muscles of the hips and legs, attaching them to the spinal column, without which human posture and movements would be impossible.

In recent years, medical science has developed ways to monitor the growing embryo, and has concluded that every aspect of the human fetus, at every stage of its development, is distinctly and uniquely human. Today, Haeckel's theory has been totally discredited, however strongly it remains in the folklore of evolution.

 

more proof: AnswersInGenesis

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