This is a brief overview of the basics of Darwin’s theory and how it works. This is what drives the process of evolution and how it is supposed to work. This is not an in-depth study.
Survival of the fittest or natural selection is the main driving force for the evolutionary theory. It is an idea similar to the concept of breeding animals, but naturally occurring not intelligence driven. A mutation occurs, to an orgasm, that is beneficial and is then adopted by the life form because it is better suited to thrive or survive. It is then carried on through the population. This natural selection is driven by a constant struggle for survival based on food sources, predators, and environment. Studies have actually shown that there is not really a struggle for survival. That animals and plants generally will seek a natural balance in their own environment. After Mount St Hellene’s exploded a great many deer and elk were killed. It suddenly became usual for the females to have twins to repopulate the area. This was very unusual for these animals. Many plant and animal species will limit or slow reproduction if overpopulation or food becomes a problem.
Where do the changes have to happen to create evolutionary progression?
The changes need to be made at a genetic level to be carried through to the next generation. It must be made at a reproducible level to be communicated to the next generation. A change at any level outside of DNA is going to be an individual change that would not be passed on to future generations.
“It is not just evolution, it is”, as Richard Dawkins phrased it, “a way to produce the appearance of design without design.”
Richard Dawkins talks a bit about the complexity of the eye and outlines how he believes it could evolve by accident. He starts with a light sensitive spot on the skin, like that on a starfish. This light sensitive skin forms a concave which makes it more directional sensitive. Eventually a lens is formed over the opening and it is filled with fluid. Over time muscles form to turn and direct the eye. His description was much more elaborate and detailed, but this is not important in this situation. His starting point was an already functional mechanism. Even though it may not be a super complex mechanism, it still involves light receptors, a way to transmit information, a way to interpret the information, all installed in the DNA with instructions on how and where to build the components, completely by accident.
Can you see how this might make sense to someone? If you break designs down in little steps it seems to be a viable explanation for evolution. It makes some logical sense, it is more palatable. Small changes are not that hard, and that is how evolution is supposed to work. But frequently what appears to be a small change on the outside is not really a small change. Many small changes are totally useless by themselves. Any of the parts missing for the starfish and it doesn’t work. They are all needed to function, but that is not how evolution works. If we look at the eye, the cornea is constructed of cells. The lens in your eye is constructed of proteins. These proteins are transparent. A new protein design is required. These proteins are arranged in a particular structure and shape to create function. They are placed in a specific location. One is designed to cover and protect the other. The protection device, or cornea, is located in the right spot to provide protection. They are not a glob. They are not spread out randomly across a surface. They are not mixed in a surface. All this information needs to be installed in the DNA. The muscles that control and focus the lens have to know where to form. The iris that controls the light entering the eye needs to form in the right location. The muscles that control the opening and closing the iris need to be in the right location. The information that is processed to control the focus and the light needs to be interpreted and processed to create function. The gelatin like fluid that fills the eye and retains its shape. Some method to transport the information to the brain is required. Some part of the brain needs know how to process the new information that is being acquired.
So why is it more palatable? What makes it more believable is we do not realize the complexity of the changes. They are made to appear simple.
There are two reasons for this. One is because you do not realize just how complex the small changes are. That part is left out. The main reason is because you have an intelligence input. You can see where you are going. You can see little steps required to get you there. You can take something apart and visualize the process it takes to make.
Now let us consider this in another way. You have no intelligence input. You have no idea where you are going because you cannot think. You have no idea what light is or what it does. You are just an undirected random accident, yet you are going to create an eye to process something you do not even know exists. Trying to remove an intelligent point of view from an analytical situation is almost impossible.
So, let us consider the starfish for a second. We cannot actually start here. This is actually a developed functional animal which has light receptors, some method of conducting this information to the brain, and some part of the brain for processing this information. Where we need to start is with some sort of def, dumb, and blind, form of life. Now let us consider this for just a moment. What we have is a creature which has no concept of light, no need for light, and no understanding of light, and no ability to think or plan. What possible need would it have to develop a use for light that it does not even know exists. The processing of light takes more than a minor change in one cell. It is going to take a change of many different things at the same time for it to function at all. How do we get the change of multiple components at the same time to process something that it does not even know exists? For it to do this requires a goal of some type. The creation of a goal requires an intelligence input. To proceed to a more advanced state without any knowledge of its existence is a scientific process of intelligence. People are created to think, to explore their world. To theorize about how things work, to discover and prove them, to design with them, perhaps make use of them. There needs to be goal, a desire to learn, expand, and develop. To look back on product that is designed and take it apart and consider the steps required for it to happen can greatly simplify the process. But if you look back on the steps and try to create it with an undirected process it suddenly becomes impossible. By looking at a finished product it is easy to skip over the design process that requires an intelligent input. And now I am even going to make it worse. This is a totally undirected process. There is no more chance that the organism that is trying to create the eye, is going to develop all the components. It is just as possible that the random protein to create the lens is developed in another organism. And, the lens design in the DNA in another organism. There is no driving force for all these changes to happen in one specific organism. For this reason, we should see evolution running rampant. All organisms should be processing multiple new mutations all the time in order for one to eventually achieve all the changes necessary to create one complex design. But, this isn’t happening. There are no examples of increasing complexity in the 150 plus years since Darwin wrote his book. In Mr Dawkins illustration, the light sensitive patch on a starfish becomes a concave which gives it some direction sensitivity. I could see this happening by accident and even being adopted in life. But this is still light sensitivity. How, by accident do you form a lens to focus the light. There is no knowledge that light is anything more than light and dark. There is no knowledge that the refraction of light could produce anything useful. This would be an intelligent input. Someone, something, somehow had to know there is some usable, process-able, image that could be obtained from the refracting of light that could help survival. I see no way around this being an intelligent input. Some may claim that photosynthesis developed first, and then created the perception of light. Well unfortunately, photosynthesis itself is an extremely complicated chemical reaction that we, as of yet, cannot even duplicate. Plants make their own food directly from sunlight. In this process they also produce oxygen, O2. This just happens to be essential for all us air breathing animals. So, photosynthesis is rather important, and if we could duplicate it we could probably solve all our energy and many of our pollution problems. But as of yet chemists cannot compete with plants. Yet these simple plants have no perception of imagery or any use of it. All that is required is sunlight, light. And if this was the starting point for light perception shouldn’t the trees have evolved eyes by now. After all, it is just a random process.
This is also a major stumbling block for the hearing of sound. Many components are again required for it to function. Having no knowledge of the existence of sound or use for it would not create the existence of a way, or a need, to perceive sound. Having no knowledge makes it even tougher. If you do not even know it exists, why would need it. You can claim that vibration was the first perception of sound. But without sound vibration is just vibration. It may vary, but it is still just vibration. So, if sound does not exist why would you need to perceive it. Why would you need to develop a way to emit something, receive something, that does not exist. What good would vocal chords be to something that is def, dumb, and blind. To try to create these things without knowledge of the existence of sound and how to perceive it is pointless. Either the created life form would require some sort of thought process, to seek out and explore strange new worlds, (sorry about the Star Trek quote) or there would have to be a designing agent. I am not sure how you get past this. And this is not even one of the bigger complications of the evolutionary theory.
Algorithms are sometimes used as evidence of random creation of protein sequences. The claim is that these show that it is possible to accidentally create a functioning protein. Richard Dawkins claims that this is very feasible. His claim is, it is not hard to create a 50-amino acid protein. He looks at it like a 50-number combination lock, with each cylinder having 20 numbers. This represents the 20 amino acids used in life. When you get the correct number in one of the locations it is locked in. Suddenly creating the whole string does not seem so hard. But there are several problems with this. The Dawkins theory, the first problem is it’s not 20 numbers for each location it is 40. This represents the 20 amino acids used in life being left handed. Amino acids form both left and right handed and we can only use left handed. But wait, there are actually more than 20 amino acids, there are just 20 used in life. So maybe we need to change this number to twice the number of known amino acids there actually are. This number should be around 240 totals. But there are still other problems. To lock numbers in place creates a goal oriented situation. There is no reason why these numbers would lock in place without a predestined goal. This also applies to algorithms and Mr. Dawkins theory. The creation of a goal is an intelligent input, something you are trying to obtain. But supposedly we do not have that. So where did it come from.
By the way the accidental odds of creating a 50-amino acid protein from the 20 amino acids used in life, in a random soup of left and right-hand configurations, is ten raised to the 128th power. This, by the way, is a very conservative estimate. Ten raised to the 80th power is the number of atoms in the universe. A 50-amino acid protein is a small protein. Some are over 2000 amino acids long. That would make it a lot tougher, but we will get more into this when we get to microbiology. There is an effort to try to diminish this problem by trying to reduce the complexity of life. The smallest estimated number of proteins types needed to produce life in a cell is around 500 protein types. The least complex known life form is around 1500 protein types. The transcription process, the process of reading and copying information and reading and producing new products from the information, requires between 100 and 150 proteins at a minimum. They are all carefully designed to work together. All the proteins in the cell are designed to work together. If the don’t, you don’t have life. Thus, the complexity still exists so somehow, we still have to achieve it.
The whole point of this is that to have a goal requires an intelligence input. To try to remove an intelligent input when attempting to understand the creation of something is very difficult. You would have to remove your understanding of what is trying to be achieved and remove any plan as to what the next required step would be. This makes it difficult to conceive from an analytical point of view. Any step that does not create an immediately useful, functional change, becomes an intelligent goal required for the final destination. Multiple steps at the same time to function are basically impossible by random undirected chance. Random chance to create things to function with inputs from non-existing sources become even more impossible. Like I said I am not sure how you get past this.
Horse story;
This is a bit of a sidetrack, but, for some reason, every time I hear the comment, “the appearance of design without design,” I think of this story. It has to do with seeing design;
I was driving home from a friend’s house one afternoon, heading north by Loan Hagler reservoir, when a group of horses came running out of a driveway onto the road in front of me. Right off I knew something was amiss. I was pretty sure this was not correct behavior for these animals. So, I followed them down the road, and they soon turned left into another driveway. They stopped next to a house, so I got out of the car and knocked on the door to see if perhaps they owned the horses. The lady informed me they were not her horses, and about that time some people came up in a car with ropes to collect the horses. They walked up to the horses and tossed the ropes over their necks so they could lead them back home. There were three young people there and one that I would assume was their mother. I walked up to the largest horse with the mom, who was not very tall. This must have been the lead horse because it was some sort of monster horse. She told me it was some kind of show horse. I think it was some kind of giant scary horse. So now if you can picture, being like short in height and small in stature and throwing a rope around the neck of a monster horse, well, that is what it looked like. So, I am looking at this horse, it has hooves like cast iron frying pans, I would have to reach up to touch it’s back, and I am six foot tall. It was riled up and snorting, tossing its head up and down, which is all above my head by the way, and it has veins the size of my fingers running down its legs, which you can literally see the blood pumping through them, but she was not concerned about this. I give her kudo’s on her bravery. She fastened the rope and gave it a pull, and of course, the horse did not seem to notice. So, I grabbed the rope and helped her pull the horse, and to my amazement, the horse did come along. I did not tell her if this horse decides to run I am letting go, because I have seen those videos on the World’s Funniest Videos. We walked the horse back down to the driveway, she took the rope off, whacked it on the side and it ran back to its pasture, where someone closed the gate. This horse was a beautiful, amazing animal. It scared the crap out of me! If you cannot see design in God’s creation you are trying not to see it!
This might be a weird comparison, but compare this to a humming bird. It’s little wing flapping 80 times a second, heart beating 10 times a second, daytime temperature around 100 degrees. It burns energy so fast that it cannot go for two hours without food or it will die. Yet it can still sleep through a night. It does this by dropping its temperature to 48 degrees, and its heart slows to one beat a second. Richard Dawkins says when he meets an All-Mighty Creator, he will ask, “Why did you hide?” I don’t think God is hiding. How do you attribute these things to accidents? I think you will see what you want to see.
Job 12:7-12 says;
“But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
or the birds of the sky, and they will tell you:
or speak to the Earth, and it will teach you,
or let the fish in the sea inform you.
Which of these does not know
that the hand of the Lord has done this?
In his hand is the life of every creature
and the breath of mankind.
Does not the ear test words
as the tongue tastes foods?
Is not wisdom found among the aged?
Does not life bring understanding?
The idea Darwin started with has been pushed way past the realm of what is possible, into more than a theory, it is now accepted as fact, though completely lacking proof. The claimed proof is changes within genus, and theoretical transitions. A sufficient, reliable driving force to create these transitions seems to be lacking, however. The whale transition chart, for example, requires massive changes in a relatively short time and way beyond any Darwinian possibility. There were other, so called, evidences for evolution but most of these have been shown false. Vestigial organs and junk DNA for example, among others. When I was a kid, I was taught that about half the organs in the human body were vestigial. What they meant by this, was useless remnants from a previous life form. Today there are not many left that are proclaimed to be vestigial. The appendix and the tail bone are the common ones you may still see. What the appendix does is slowly coming to light. The tail bone is a functional item that is used for muscle attachments. If you don’t believe me, have your tail bone removed and see how well you stand and move around. Because you can live without an organ does not make it useless. You can live better with it, than without it. So, when you see the term vestigial, think, ‘we don’t know yet what it does’. Nothing more. Also when I was young it was thought that DNA was over 70% useless remnants of previous forms. The ENCODE project has shown that DNA is over 95% utilized. Not much junk. I believe that percentage will increase with time and further study. And, yes I do realize there are some lifeforms with incredibly long redundant DNA strands. These appear to be due to past copying errors, not junk DNA. Oddly, some of these lifeforms have some unique abilities fro these problems.
There seems to be a desire to avoid the responsibilities involved in a higher power of God or a creator. It does not necessarily promote bad moral values but it is capable of doing this based on the ‘right for me philosophy,’ or the ‘survival of the fittest philosophy.’ Now before I get attacked on this I do realize there are many bad people of faith too. In ‘faith’ I mean people who believe in a higher power, because you actually need more faith to believe you are here by accident then to believe you were created. We will explain that much further as we move along. The evidence does not support that we are here by accident.
Darwin’s book The Origin of Species was published in 1859. This is over 150 years ago. It surprises me with all the research they still have no better solution for what we see in this world. At the time a cell was considered to be a simple structure. What was known was a membrane with a nucleus and some protoplasm and some theorized complexity. It was an extremely basic understanding. There was no knowledge of the incredible complexity that existed, although there were some theories. No knowledge of DNA. No concept of entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, as to how it affected life too.
The theory predicts a cone of increasing diversity, starting with the first living organism and progressing into many varieties-Tree of Life. Darwin’s tree shows angling branches to various types of lifeforms, a punctuated equilibrium tree, shows horizontal transitions and then vertical lines to life forms.
It anticipated a vast discovery of fossils; Darwin said, “if my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking most closely all the species of the same group together must assuredly have existed…Consequently evidence of their former existence could be found only amongst fossil remains.” Now I know I am going to take some heat here for arguing there is little evidence for transitional forms, but there is not much evidence for transitional forms. Darwin recognized conflicting existing information; “…why, if species have descended from other species by fine graduations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion…”? This is the point of view I support, there are not countless innumerable transitional forms, and I will explain later as we move along.
Darwin also recognized some issues with complexity; “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” These issues are overwhelming to the evolutionary theory. The more research that is done, the more is discovered. There are constant and innumerable great leaps required for evolution to happen. Darwin wrote the book expecting future discoveries to support or break his theory. As we go along, I am going to try and show some of these problems have become overwhelming.
Most every one of these conflicting problems has in some way been glossed over to keep this theory being taught as fact. Supporters will claim that evolution is a fact. And to a certain extent the proof used is fact. But unfortunately, the evidence that is used is dramatically misrepresented.
Here is an example of one of the proofs used to substantiate the theory by Darwin himself. This would be, Darwin’s finches. A Noble Prize-winning book was actually written showing evolution in these finches. It has since been shown that the fluctuations in size and beaks and body size is normal based on climate and food supply. This is variation is within the realm and variety of the genus. No matter how hard you try to breed finches you get finches You cannot breed finches and come up with a squirrel, or a bat, or a dinosaur. On a side note, one of current theories actually claims that dinosaurs came from birds, not the other way around. I am not exactly sure how you show evolution when you start with a finch and end with a finch. Therein lies the problem. The proof that always used is the so called Micro-evolution not the Macro-evolution. I fully support the existence of micro-evolution, although I do not like the term. The term has been coined by evolutionists to gain support for their concept, it implies that evolution does exist, when natural fluctuations do not actually support evolution theory. A more accurate description would be diversity or variation.
Diversity or variety in a life form can be a pretty broad term. The range of diversity in a type of animal can be pretty dramatic.
For Example:
- The wolf is the father of all dogs; A wolf to a dachshund or a pug is a pretty big difference.
- Lions, tigers, cheetahs, house cats; A tiger to sphynx cat (hairless) again is a pretty big range.
- Horse, mule, donkey, zebra; Horses can range from over 6 feet to 18 inches
- Llama, camel; They do share some and facial and other characteristics.
- Pigs, one of my favorites, can change from an upturned nose hairless, pink pig, to straight nosed bristly haired pig, in one generation based on being raised in captivity or the wild.
- When you consider this concept it greatly reduces what Noah would have to carry in the ark. Two wolves could equate all dogs. The concept of variety is, however, diminishing with entropy over time.
- You see it in humans too, in skin colors (black, white, yellow, olive) hair types, skeletal structures (pigmy, Aborigine, Malaysian islander, African, European, Indian) cranial shapes, but all are human.
- The more isolated a group becomes the greater the similar characteristics and sometimes the differences from the rest of the population. This is where the punctuated equilibrium theory came from.
- These variations can also be forced for example in breeding dogs and cats. There is a pretty big difference between a bull dog and a wolf, or a hairless cat and a tiger. However, the more characteristic the breeding, the more you lose the diversity or variety of the original. It is doubtful you could breed basset’s and produce a wolf. But at some time, you could have bred wolves and produced a basset.
This problem is referred to as entropy. It is the second law of thermodynamics. It implies that organized matter over time will go to randomness. This is why your car rusts, buildings fall apart, nothing gets better. This is also why we age and die. By the time you are 70 your skin cells can contain over 30,000 bad mutations. To make it worse we pass on more problems to the following generation. This would be one of the problems of genetic entropy. The loss of DNA information you once had. Our DNA is breaking down, not getting better. For evolution to work, the opposite must happen. New things need to develop. The evolution theory claims a long slow process over time with small changes develop new features. Almost all of these small changes are transparent or detrimental. So, when a new beneficial change occurs it cannot stand up to the landslide of deterioration already occurring. The chances of the new improvement being adopted are slim to none. Interestingly, the fact that our DNA is deteriorating also implies that at one time it was perfect, or at least, much better. Where did that perfect DNA come from. Evolutionary theory cannot answer this question. For evolution to work we need to be getting better, not worse.
Darwin observed the variety from breeders found in life and decided that this process could produce anything. A mammal that lived on the shore that swam in the water would eventually adapt to aquatic life and become a whale. By his theory small changes in adaption would be favored and the organism would, given enough time, gradually become something else. The term for this became natural selection. A favorable mutation would occur, thus increasing the survivability of the animal and then be passed along to others. Thus, the appearance of design without design. These problems exist.
- This process cannot be forced.
- It is purely a random chance occurrence. Thus, the chances of these things happening to this mammal hanging out on the shore, or any other mammal in the middle of the African savanna is pretty much identical.
- Getting strong arms and being able to hang from trees does not produce a genetic change that gives you kids that have strong arms.
- But if by accidental genetic mutation you have stronger arms and survive for that reason, this is then favored.
- Unfortunately for evolution, most of these claimed changes are limited by the diversity or variety of the type of genus. Making a long-haired sheep is within the realm of the genus, but making a pig or a dolphin from a sheep is not.
- There is only so far this progression can go.
- If this process existed, it should have produced countless fossils of transitional animals. In fact, the only way for this to work is for everything to be a transitional form. Everything should always be changing and improving.
- So, what a transitional fossil should be, or a transitional animal, is something with partly formed parts. A forming kidney, a forming lung, a step between an avian bronchial tube and a lung, for example, a partial skeletal structure.
- What we find is completely formed, functional, working parts. Nothing in transition. Everything we find is completely functional in the environment it existed in.
- This was recognized by Darwin when he published his book. He expected the fossil record to support his theory and realized the existing lack of support currently in the fossil record.
- Each favored small change should show up in a massive group of fossils, because they are slow gradual changes. Instead of finding animals existing in the same form over long periods of time, we should see continuous gradual change.
- The number of transitional fossils should easily outnumber the animal in its final form.
- And actually, why would it have a final form, shouldn’t it always be a transitional form in constant state of change.
This is actually the answer that evolutionist’s have recently come up with. All fossils are actually transitional forms. The problem with this answer is for example a horseshoe crab, a shrimp, a coelacanth, etc. These are ancient animals that are completely unchanged for 350 million years. Why do fossils appear in a single form and stay in that form until they disappear again? If we are all in transformation why can it not be observed. The coelacanth disappeared from fossil records for 60 million years. One of the claimed answers for the coelacanth is that it is not the same fish. Another fish evolved into a similar fish at a later date. This, however, just opens a whole new can of worms for evolution on convergent evolution. It does not help the problem it just makes it worse. The problem with the tree of life is the tree is missing. A more accurate description of the tree would be the ‘patch of grass of life.”
I just want to make a point about what I mentioned a minute ago-this cannot be forced. A lot of examples in text books present narrations like this,
“Just when fish started to creep on land, fins gradually became feet”
Even Ali Demirsoy, one of the foremost authorities on evolution said,
“Maybe the fins of lunged fish changed into amphibian feet as they crept through muddy water”
Have you ever read anything like that? Remember examples like this?
These references imply that evolution can be a forced process. This is called the Lamarckian rational. Named after its creator. This philosophy has been completely proven to be inaccurate.
- No matter what you do differently in your life it does not force a genetic change
- The complete realm of your diversity is limited by your genes. What you are or what you can become is limited.
- Whatever you do in your life does no proceed back into your cells, into the nucleus, and rewrite your DNA.
- DNA is a sugar-phosphate backbone with a nucleotide code. It uses a nucleotide on each side-so two per ladder step. It would be similar to binary, but a four-code chemical structure. It is located inside nucleus of cells. The code in a human cell is about 3 billion digits long.
- It does not matter what you encounter, if it is environmental, needed for survival, or just wanted, it does not force a change in DNA.
- Darwin assumed that given time small accidental changes in the DNA would allow a fish to adapt to land. So, there is an entire ocean of fish. There is no more chance that the fish, that is shallow water fish close to the shore, is going to get these changes, then there is that a deep-water fish, with no use for them would.
- So, theoretically, all the fish had to do was hang out around the shore for millions of years and wait for the accidental formation of feet.
- Oh, and by the way the accidental transformation of skeletal and muscular systems, and excretory system too.
- Lungs and kidneys are kind of important, and skin that will hold water inside the body, change in digestive system, etc.
- These are not small steps.
- For any of this to work would require some sort of preadaptation.
- These parts necessary for survival on land would need to form while they were still in the water.
- Therefore, their ability to survive in an aquatic environment would be diminished and thus by Darwin’s own theory they would be probably be eliminated. Trying to swim rapidly with limbs instead of fins to escape a predator would not work well.
- If you go into your computer program and start randomly making small changes how long do you think it will be before your computer starts running better and improving.
- DNA is your program. Random small changes seldom produce a benefit to the program.
- Lastly, most all of the evolutionary changes are not small changes. Many are completely redesigned systems that require full design instruction, direction and order of construction, new proteins, etc. This is not a small change to your DNA.
“To God belong wisdom and power:
counsel and understanding are his.
Job 12:13
Punctuated Equilibrium;
Due to the problems associated with the long slow process of evolution, other theories have emerged. The most prominent one being called Punctuated Equilibrium, or Hopeful Monster. In this theory smaller isolated groups of animals produce more mutations quickly due to problems associated with in-breeding. Some of these mutations are good and produce the new varieties. The tree of life becomes a vertical tree with horizontal connections because the changes are rapid. This also is a way of removing the requirements for transitions in the fossil records. All evidence to date shows the opposite of a good effect being produced, in these situations. When small groups of animals or people are isolated, good mutations are not produced. All observed changes are detrimental in nature. New improved genetic code is not produced.
Transitional animals:
One of the most common of the, so called, transitional animals is the lungfish. It has fins, gills and intestines like any fish. It, however, has the lungs, heart, and larval stages of an amphibian. Although it displays collection of traits of both amphibians and fish, none of these traits are in any way transitional. They are either completely fish or amphibian. There is nothing that is part fish and part amphibian in its development. One of the biggest problems that I see is that the lungfish exists in fossils from the Devonian age 385 million years old. So, if it is still a lungfish how is this transitional?
Another common so called transitional animal group are the monotremes, of which the platypus is a member. Here they are reptilian in their reproductive system and the structure of their eggs. They are mammals in structure and possession of hair or fur. All their traits are either fully reptilian or fully mammalian. There is nothing that contains parts of both, or that appears in transition. Of course, the platypus also has that unusual duck bill and similar looking webbed feet. Did you know that the platypus has the most developed electroreception of any of the monotremes? Monotremes and at least one species of dolphin have these. There are electroreceptors located in rows across the bill. These sensors connect to electro sensory part of the cerebral cortex of the brain. There are also mechanoreceptors that detect touch located in the bill. These make the bill a very sensitive receptor. The electro sensors detect tiny electric currents generated by muscular contractions of its prey. It feeds without sight or smell, closing it eyes and nose when it swims. It digs through the mud on the bottom of streams and can detect the electric charges of the movement of its prey to catch it. This is a highly complex system requiring many parts to function. To call this carefully designed animal a transitional animal is taking a pretty big leap of faith. (slide 28) Once again these animals have been around for about 100 million years in the same form. Some estimate as much as 250 million years.
One more animal that is considered transitional is a small caterpillar like organism called Peripatus. It is considered transitional between annelid worms and arthropods. Here, once again we see to completely different systems. The circulatory and respiratory systems are arthropod. Its nervous and excretory systems are annelid worm. Here again, is nothing in transition. Just an unusual mosaic of combined features.
Although these animals display unusual collections of features, they can only be called transitional in the weakest sense. Some of the features they possess are highly developed and unique to these animals. This makes calling them transitional even more difficult. The variety of so called transitional is extremely small, when in reality, these should be everywhere. Even if there were some truly transitional species discovered, this would not be enough to validate the evolutionary theory. This would require thousands, everywhere, in various stages of transition, to see the smooth transition from one type to another. But, not even a few good examples exist.
Fruit Flies;
An example of this would be the work done with fruit flies. Scientists have spent 60 years trying to force the mutation of fruit flies. Fruit flies were used because they have an eleven day life span. This creates a lot of generations of fruit flies. They have subjected them to harsh environments, radiation, major temperature changes, anything they can think of to force changes. They have produced many mutations, but none that can actually be considered good. They are also all still fruit flies.
One variation they try to proclaim as good is the four-winged fruit fly. This fly grew a second set of non-functioning wings. It no longer can fly well, basically cannot fly at all, and other fruit flies will not reproduce with it. I guess the evolutionist need something to hold on to. This situation happens when there is a mistake in transcribing the DNA, and a section is transcribed twice and inserted into the program. It is not that uncommon. You see it sometimes in people with things like six fingers or toes. Sometimes the appendages are functional, most of the times they are not. Most of the times they are just a deformity. Thus, the term hopeful monster. It is not the creation of new information. It is the overproduction of existing information. Nothing new is actually created which is required for evolution.
You know, in retrospect, when I look back on this again, it seemed to make sense to me when I was younger. When I was taught this, it was presented that to a certain extent it could be need driven. When I now look at it and realize that it is a purely random chance event that produces evolution it seems rather comical. For evolution to provide a source for change we should see constant changes in living organisms occurring on a daily basis. Anything that is not useful would be eliminated and all the useful improvements maintained. To say it is a slow process would not remove the requirement of the constant changes to provide an eventual improvement. There are over 11 million varieties of species in this constant state of transition. We also have to consider the immense number of existing creatures in these 11 million varieties. Why do we not find any newly develop features in the 150 years since the writing of this book. Many adverse changes would need to be eliminated to produce the few surviving improvements. The changes would need to be commonplace to cause beneficial side effects to take be produced. Yet finding a good accidental genetic improvement is practically impossible. When I say practically impossible, I am referring over 99.9999 percent being bad. So even with constant change the process is going to be very slow. When you realize that the process is not need driven, and cannot be need driven, it quickly becomes impractical. It is frequently taught in that fashion which makes it more believable. But in reality, when you consider the example of the fish becoming a land animal. You create a creature swimming around poorly with feet waiting for the skeletal structure to support its weight, or skin that retains water, or lungs, or whatever else it needs to become a land animal. To consider that all these accidental changes occurred at the same time is quite a leap of faith, and has no supporting evidence. To support Darwinism requires more faith than to believe in an All-Mighty Creator. So, in my opinion, the odd thing about this theory is that in order to remove faith from the equation, they have created their own faith. Seems kind of ironic.
On a side note, Darwin’s book, The Origin of Species has no theory for the origin of life. How life came about was purely speculation. But you have no need to worry because I have the answer right here.
In order to create a beginning of life without God, seeding by aliens is now the viable option. The term for this is panspermia and it has many complications to, which we will cover later. I am not actually sure how this is not intelligent design.
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God or gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and engaged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.”
Romans 1:18-23
Evolution or Design 