More Evidence from the world of Science that Creation is the Answer, and Explanation of Life.
This article is from the Book “In six days” why fifty scientists choose to believe in creation edited by john f. ashton PhD… I suggest you buy the book: it will reveal to you that science is not supporting evolution as you might think.
Ariel A. Roth (born 1927) is a zoologist and creationist who was born in Geneva, Switzerland, and now lives in the United States. He is a leading figure in the field of flood geology, having been involved and published extensively on the creation–evolution controversy.
- Former professor and chairman of Biology at Emmanuel Missionary College,
- Now Andrews University and at Loma Linda University.
- Former director of the Seventh-day Adventist run Geoscience Research Institute at Loma Linda University.
- Editor of the journal Origins for 23 years.
- After receiving his PhD in Biology at the University of Michigan,
- Roth pursued research in invertebrate zoology and on fossil and living coral reefs funded by NOAA, the National Institutes of Health, and other government agencies.
- Additional training to facilitate his research in radiation biology, geology and mathematics at various campuses of the University of California.
- Longtime member of the Geological Society of America and the Society for Sedimentary Geology.
- Published many articles in both scientific and popular journals and lectured worldwide[ii].
It is sometimes suggested that belief in creation is a matter of faith, while science, which usually endorses evolution, is considered to be more in the realm of reason. What concepts of faith and reason are different to evaluate and quantify[iii] we generally recognize that we have to exercise a degree of faith to believe in anything, be it science, evolution, creation, or the Bible. However, there are many good reasons to believe in creation by God in six days in fact, it seems to me that it takes a greater degree of blind faith (where there is no evidence) to believe in evolution than in the creation model of the Bible. The same problem applies to intermediate views between evolution and creation, such as theistic evolution or progressive creation, which have little support from either the data of nature or the Bible[iv].
The origin of life
Probably the most baffling problem which evolution faces is a question of the origin of life. How could living organisms which, even in their simplest forms, are extremely complex arise by themselves? The severity of the problem is well acknowledged by many competent scientists and need not be dwelt upon here.
The problem of complexity
The presence of complexity– interdependent parts that do not function unless other parts are also present– pose another major problem for evolution. For instance, a muscle is useless without a nerve going to the muscle to direct its contracting activity. But both the muscle and the nerve are useless without a complicated control mechanism in their brain to direct the contracting activity of the muscle and correlate its activity with that of other muscles. Without these three essential components, we have only useless parts. In a process of gradual evolutionary changes, how does complexity evolve?
Interdependent parts, which represent most of the components of living organisms, would not be expected from random, Undirected changes (mutations) as is proposed for evolutionary advancement.
How could these develop without the foresight of a plan for a working system? Can order arise from the turmoil of mixed- up, undirected changes? For complicated organs that involve many necessary changes, the chances are implausibly small.
Without the foresight of a plan, we would expect that the random evolutionary changes would attempt all kinds of useless combinations of parts while trying to provide for a successful evolutionary advancement. Yet as we look at living organisms over the world, we do not seem to see any of these random combinations. In nature, it appears that we are dealing largely, if not exclusively, with purposeful parts. Furthermore, if evolution is really an ongoing process, why don’t we find new developing complex organs and organisms that lack them? We would expect to find developing legs, eyes, livers, and new unknown kinds of organs, providing for evolutionary advancement in organisms that lack desirable advantages. This absence is a serious indictment against any proposed un-directed evolutionary process, and favors the concept that what we see represents the work of an intelligent creator.
The simple example of a muscle, mentioned above, pales into insignificance when we consider more complicated organs such as the eye or the brain. Each contain many interdependent systems composed of parts that would be useless without the presence of all the other necessary parts. In these systems, nothing works until all the necessary components are present and working. The eye has an automatic focusing system that adjusts the lens so as to permit us to clearly see close and distant objects. We do not fully understand how it works, but a part of the brain analyzes data from the eye and controls the muscles in the eye that change the shape of the lens. The system that controls the size of the pupil so as to adjust to light intensity and to reduce spherical lens aberration also illustrates interdependent parts. There are the 100 million light- sensitive cells in the human eye that send information to the brain through some one million nerve fibers of the optic nerve. In the brain this information is sorted into various components such as color, movement, form, and depth. It is then analyzed and combined into an intelligible picture. This involves an extremely complex array of interdependent parts. But the visual process is only part of our complex brains, which contains some 100 billion nerve cells connected by some 400,000 kilometers (about 248548.48 mi) of nerve fibers. It is estimated that there are around 100 billion connections between nerve cells in the human brain. That we can think straight (we hope most of us do!) is a witness to a marvelous, ordered complex of interdependent parts that challenges suggestions of an origin by random evolutionary changes. How could such complicated organs develop by an unplanned process?
The Search for an Evolutionary Mechanism
Movements of all kinds of things in nature tend to mix things up, be they molecules, huge boulders, or polluting substances poured into the ocean. This inexorable tendency runs counter to evolution, where organisms are supposed to have become more and more organized, from disorganized components, as the complexities of organisms evolved. How did evolution from simple to complex counter the tendency towards randomness that is so prevalent in nature? For two centuries evolutionists have been searching for a mechanism that would explain the origin of complexity, but so far this has been a virtual futile search.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the French naturalist la marque proposed that usage of an organ- caused evolutionary advancement, such as a neck becoming longer due to usage. His views have been largely rejected. About half a century later, Charles Darwin and England proposed a system of natural selection. In this process very small variations between organisms would be subject to the competition between organisms. This would result in the survival of the more advanced forms, while the weaker ones would be eliminated. Over long periods of time, this process would gradually evolve the advanced forms of life on earth.
While Darwin’s model of natural selection is the one usually presented in basic textbooks of biology, it has been much criticized recently for a variety of reasons. It has a fatal flaw when it comes to the question of the gradual development of biological systems with interdependent parts, and this is the case for most if not all biological systems. The problem is the very system of natural selection which Darwin proposed will tend to eliminate the interdependent parts of complex systems as these systems develop. The parts do not function until all the interdependent parts are present and the system works and provides some survival value to the Organism. These non- functioning parts will tend to be eliminated by a natural selection process that should give preference to organisms that are not encumbered with extra useless parts. For instance, in our simple example of an evolving muscle- nerve- control interdependent system: if we are at the stage where we have evolved only a muscle, that muscle would be a useless encumbrance until the nerve and control mechanisms have evolved. Until that time, natural selection would tend to eliminate those organisms with non- functioning parts of developing interdependent systems, and thus would interfere with evolutionary progress.
Half a century after Darwin proposed his views, the Dutch biologist de Vries vigorously challenged the idea that the small variations proposed by Darwin could have any significant evolutionary effect. He proposed much larger changes, called mutations. Unfortunately, his prime example, the dwarfing of the evening primrose plant around Amsterdam, turned out to be only the recombination of traits already present in the plants and not a new mutation. The same applies to the most commonly used example of evolution: the darkening of the English peppered moth. This darkening protected the moths from predators by making them less visible as the environment darkened during the industrial revolution. The moth has again become lighter as the environment has become lighter. These changes, which are sometimes called mutations[v], are now acknowledged as representing only a fluctuation in different kinds of genes already present, and as such do not represent the novel changes of a real mutation[vi]. However, mutations, which represent more or less permanent genetic changes, were soon found in fruit flies and other organisms. But mutations are not a great breakthrough for evolution. They are almost always detrimental, and as such are more representative of a mechanism for degeneration rather than for advancement. One useful mutation out of 1000 is being generous to evolution.
In the middle of the 20th century, leading evolutionists proposed the “modern synthesis.” Held as the final evolutionary model, it incorporated Darwin’s natural selection, de Vries mutations, and studies in population genetics. At the same time, other evolutionists were calling for much larger sudden changes than those noted for mutations.
These larger changes were needed because of major gaps between groups of organisms and assumed evolutionary lineages, as seen in the fossil record, and also because of the inadequacy of the survival value of small evolutionary changes while developing complex systems with interdependent parts[vii]. The term “hopeful monster” was suggested for these proposed suddenly appearing new forms. But they would need matching mates to be able to breed with, and as one commented, “who will breed with a monster, hopeful or otherwise?”[viii]
The modern synthesis did not remain as the dominant evolutionary mechanisms for very long, although many leading evolutionists still defend the model. One evolutionist comments, “and today the modern synthesis– neo- Darwinism– is not a theory, but a range of opinions which, each in his own way, tries to overcome the difficulties presented by the world of facts.”[ix] We are now in a period of diverse evolutionary opinions. A variety of new ideas and controversies have appeared. They revolve around such questions as: (1) can one really identify the evolutionary relationships of organisms? (2) are evolutionary changes gradual or sudden? (3) is natural selection important to the evolutionary process? (4) how does complexity evolve without the advantage of foresight? Computer programs attempting to answer this have been only remotely related to the complexity of the real biological world. Many scientists who do not believe in creation are criticizing the evolutionary model.[x]
We are thus faced with the fact that after two centuries of conjecture, a workable mechanism for evolution has not been found.[xi] While the perseverance of evolutionists is commendable, it was seem that by now it is time for science to give serious consideration to other alternatives of origins, such as creation.
The evidence from the fossils
The fossils which represent past life on earth should have much to say about how that life originated. Some consider the fossil record that we find in the rock layers of the earth to be the strongest evidence for evolution, because there is an increase from simple to complex, as one ascends through the rock layers. However, if these layers were laid down by the great flood described in the Bible, one would also expect some sort of ascending complexity as the flood gradually destroyed the biological realms of the world that existed before it. On our present earth, we have simple life in the deep rocks, more complex life in the oceans and the most complex on land. Destruction of these realms by rising flood activity would result in a general increase in complexity.[xii] More important to the question of origins are two aspects of the fossil record that pose serious problems for the evolutionary scenario. One is the great scarcity of intermediate forms; the other is the lack of geologic time for the major evolutionary changes postulated.
If evolution has proceeded over the eons of time postulated, we should expect a great number of intermediates between the major types of organisms, but we can scarcely find any. Charles Darwin was fully aware of the problem and openly admitted to it in his origin of species, stating, “why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate lengths? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such fine graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection that can be urged against my theory.”[xiii] Darwin then attributed the problem to the “extreme imperfection” of the fossil record. We have found millions of fossils since Darwin’s time, and the lack of intermediates remains a major problem for evolution. The paleontologist David B. Kits[xiv], at the University of Oklahoma, points out, “despite the bright promise of paleontology provides a means of ‘seeing’ evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of ‘gaps’ in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them.” A very few missing links, like Archaeopteryx, which is considered to be intermediate between reptiles and birds, have been described, but these few examples do little to satisfy the many thousands expected there.
Some evolutionists have postulated that evolution proceeds by occasional rapid jumps (punctuated equilibria[xv]), but these small jumps do not solve the problem at all. The problem for evolution is that it is between the major groups of plants and animals (phyla and divisions) that we would expect the greatest number of intermediates, and this is precisely where these intermediates are virtually absent. Any gradual process would be expected to leave all kinds of fossils between major groups as major changes evolve. It does not appear that evolution has taken place.
As one examines the details of the fossil record, it soon becomes apparent that if evolution took place, it had to proceed at a highly erratic rate of change. The model of a slow, gradual advancing evolutionary process is not supported by the fossil record as evolutionists interpret it. For instance, the simplest forms of life are assumed to have evolved around 3,500 million years ago. Yet almost 3,000 million years later, the fossil record shows little evidence of any evolutionary advancement. We are still virtually in the one- cell stage of life forms for the first five sixths of evolutionary time period then less than 100 million years later ( 1/35 of evolutionary time), virtually all the animal phyla have evolved. Some evolutionists suggest only 5-10 million years (1/ 350 of evolutionary time) for most of this.[xvi]
Evolutionists refer to this very brief period for the evolution of most animal phyla as the “Cambrian explosion.” Samuel Bowring of the Massachusetts Institute of technology comments, “and what I like to ask my biologist friends is: how fast can evolution get before they start feeling uncomfortable?”[xvii] The phenomenon of the Cambrian explosion fits remarkably well with a model of the biblical flood which postulates that this part of the fossil record represents the level of the Seas before the flood where most of the animal phyla would be expected. Above the Cambrian explosion we have other smaller “explosions.” for instance, evolutionists propose that most mammalian orders evolved in a mere 12 million years and living orders of birds in 5-10 million years. The fossil record as interpreted by evolutionists shows that the thousands of millions of years proposed for advancement are not there. Evolution needs all the time it can get, and the improbabilities it faces indicate that geologic time is far too short to accommodate those advancements. The rapid rates of evolution that would be required to accommodate the fossil record significantly reduce that time and accentuate even more the improbability problem of evolution.
[i] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-nov-24-la-oe-masci24-2009nov24-story.html#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20survey%20of%20members%20of%20the,higher%20power%2C%20while%2041%25%20say%20they%20do%20not.
[ii] Introduction From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[iii] A.A. Roth, “Do We Need To Turn Off Our Brains, When We Enter A Church? close origins 23 (1996 ): P. 63-65.
[iv] For a detailed discussion of these various points see A.A. Roth, Origins: Linking Science And Scripture (Hagerstown, MA review and Herald Pub. Assoc., 1998).
[v] For example: Carl Sagan, the Dragons of Eden: Speculations On The Evolution Of Human Intelligence (New York: Ballantine books, 1997 ), P. 28.
[vi] For example: T. H. Jakes, “Responses Of Critics,” and P. E. Johnson, Evolution As Dogma: The Establishment Of Naturalism (Dallas, TX: Houghton Publishing Co., 1990 ), P. 26-28.
[vii] Richard Benedict Goldschmidt, The Material Basis Of Evolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University press, 1940).
[viii] C. Patterson, Evolution (London: British Museum and Ithaca, and NY: Cornell University press, 1978), P. 143.
[ix] Soren Luvtrup, Darwinism: the refutation of a myth (New York: Croom Helm, 1987 ), P. 352.
[x] For a listing of nine books by non- creationist that challenge evolution or Darwinism, CP. 140-141 and Roth, origins: linking science and scripture.
[xi] More details, see chapters 5 and eight in Roth, Origins: Linking Science And Scripture.
[xii] This is discussed further in Roth, Origins: Linking Science And Scripture, chapter 10.
[xiii] Charles Darwin, The Origin Of Species By Means Of Natural Selection, Or The Preservation Of Favored Races In The Struggle For Life (London: John Murray 1859), in the reprinted edition: J. W. Burrow, editor (Penguin Books, London and NY, 1968), P. 292.
[xiv] D. B. Kits, “Paleontology And Evolutionary Theory,” Evolution 28 (1974 ),: P. 458-472.
[xv] N. Eldridge and S.J. Gould, “Punctuated Equilibria: An Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism,” in T.J.M. Schopf, editor, Models of Paleobiology (San Francisco, CA: Freeman, Cooper, and Co, 1972), p. 82-115.
[xvi] S.A. Bowring, J. P. Grotzinger, C. E. Isachsen, A.H. Knoll, S.M. Pelechaty, P. Kolosov,”Calibrating Rates of Early Cambrian Evolution, “ Science 261 (1993): p. 1293-1298.
[xvii] As quoted an M. Nash, “when life exploded,” time 146 (23 ) (1995), P. 66-74.
