In fact, for that very reason I chose not to get involved in the debate on evolution, as I felt it to be a distraction from the main point, that a universe so complex in design, and a world that would not sustain life if any one of a trillion necessary ingredients for life were missing, does not come into being in and of itself.
Although I had recently concluded a debate with atheists on evolution, a roughly written but highly detailed transcript of which can be found at
creationistsearcher.wordpress.com, I felt that delving into the scientific reasons against evolution would detract from the main theme of the column, that no matter how you believe the universe was designed, it had to have been done so intelligently. (As a side note, the above referenced debate touches on a number of pertinent issues and should be of value to the reader).
Nonetheless, many chose to attack the column from a scientific standpoint, not by bringing specific examples, but because of the lack thereof. While they entirely missed the meaning of the column, I would still like to address their issues.
To begin with, not only is evolution far from proven science, in fact there are gaping holes in its theory.
One central problem with the theory of evolution is that it dictates that life formed from non-life. This is not plausible. Furthermore, for there to be a rich enough variance in DNA/RNA this would have had to happen millions of times, separately. DNA and RNA are also both needed to reproduce a single cell.
A much larger problem with evolution is the lack of transitional fossils, fossils that show a gradual change from one form of species to the next. This isn’t an arbitrary problem. It is inconceivable that if man transitioned from ape, over time, that on the one hand we’d find a plethora of human fossils as well as a plethora of ape ones, but none in between that document such a slow and gradual change.
No one believes that such a transformation could have been sudden. If it had happened we’d have as many transitional fossils as there are human and as there are ape fossils. It also isn’t logical to suppose that reptiles formed into mammals when we have a plethora of both reptilian and mammalian fossils, but none that show a clear transition between one form and the next.
Darwin was aware of this and thought that future fossils would be discovered. But in the past 150 years, thousands of fossils were excavated and no conclusively transitional ones were found. He recognized that it isn’t logical that we’d have a plethora of human and of ape fossils but no transitional ones. The late Harvard Professor Steven J. Gould also had to admit that, quote, “the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology.”
Given the amount of fossils excavated and the utter lack conclusively transitional ones (and the scarceness of any that scientists can even claim to be possibly transition), it’s entirely possible that Darwin himself would reject the theory of evolution today.
Proponents of evolution incorrectly cite the Archaeopteryx, a fossil that had feathers and scales, as a transitional form. In fact, it has fully developed feathers and fully developed scales. This doesn’t prove transition at all as nothing points to any transformation from scale to feather, like a half-scale for example.
The same is true of the oft-miscited duck-billed platypus. It has features that are reptilian and some mammalian, but none that show a transition from one to the other. Its reptilian, mammalian and other characteristics are each fully formed and do not show any transition of one to the other. In fact, all of its characteristics are perfectly suited to its unique climate. Furthermore, there’s no difference between modern day platypuses and those found in fossils.
The same is true of the hominids, the supposed ape to human transitional forms. Of the 12 hominids cited by evolutionists, 9 have been documented to be extinct species of ape/monkey with no human characteristics at all. The other 3 are modern day humans with no animal characteristics. A true half human half ape fossil has never been found.
But none of this was the point of the original column. Its central point was that no matter how the universe was formed, no one can plausibly argue that it happened by itself. How one can argue that both RNA and DNA came into existence, by chance, at the exact same time (because if not, no cell would reproduce, and it’s unfeasible that they developed separately and then joined together, as they are not found outside of the cellular form) is also unattainable. And we can go on and on about the trillions of coincidences needed for the evolutionist to deny a conscious Creator.
I would encourage those who disagree to give these columns fair consideration. The fact that some chose to misread the last column to the extent that they did seems ingenuous, just as those who chose to mistake the meaning of “spontaneous” as it was featured (the point there being that even the theory of evolution necessitates far too many and too complex random coincidences, trillions of them, for it to plausibly have occurred without a conscious designer) did so by reading the column in a way that differed from its obvious and intended meaning. Some even mistook “elements of life” to refer to the Periodic Table of Elements, which was an absurd interpretation and showed a lack of ability to openly think over the points of the column. Please treat the matter with fair consideration. I believe that you will gain from the experience.
