Evolution

BOOK REVIEW OF “DARWIN’S CREATION MYTH” BY ALEXANDER MEBANE , PART 3

August 15, 2016 by Tom Shipley

In Parts 1 and 2 we reviewed evolutionist Alexander Mebane’s commentary on the “disconfirmations” of Darwinian evolution. We continue here beginning with #5 (a).

5a. First Taxonomic Disconfirmation: Cladistic Iconoclasm

In perusing the internet for definitions of “cladism” and “cladogenesis,” some of the definitions one will find are as follows:

the theory that cladistic methods based on shared characteristics of organisms yield their true evolutionary relationships and provide the basis for a natural biological classification;
Cladistics is an approach to biological classificationin which items are grouped together based on whether or not they have one or more shared unique characteristics that come from the group’s last common ancestor and are not present in more distant ancestors. …
noun, Biology 1.
the cladistic method of classification.
a method of classifying living organisms, often using computer techniques, based on the relationships between phylogenetic branching patterns from a common ancestor
Cladogenesis definition, evolutionary change by the branching off of new speciesfrom common ancestral type
Cladogenesis is an evolutionary splitting eventin a species in which each branch and its smaller branches forms a “Clade”, an evolutionary mechanism and a process of adaptive evolution that leads to the development of a greater variety of sister species.

This should be sufficient to inform the reader of the nature of this section of Mebane’s thesis. It would appear, then, that cladism is more or less the equivalent of “taxonomy” or “systematics.” This is a highly telling and significant section of Mebane’s book.

“Well, what is meant by taxonomy?…It is the classification of organisms in a biologically-realistic fashion, which historically goes back to Linnaeus (1707-1778)….Linnaeus concerned himself only with displaying the interrelationships between plants and animals now living but when fossil remains of many others now extinct began to be recognized, a need was felt to introduce the time dimension…Although Linnaeus had taken it for granted that [note well—T. S.] species are by nature ‘fixed’, evolutionists soon arose…who would deride that idea as a naïve old superstition…they declared that all present species are in fact only… ‘twigs’ of a single vast genealogical tree…the task of taxonomists was now to assign to every living or dead life form…its proper position on the great genealogical Tree of Life.” –pg. 29

Carolus Linnaeus by Hendrik Hollander 1853

Note well that Linnaeus, the founder of zoological taxonomy, believed in the biblical view of the “fixed” nature of living organisms. This deserves to be emphasized. This whole scenario is an example of what I mentioned at the beginning of this article about what is essentially a Judeo-Christian pursuit being highjacked by the priests of Secular Humanism. And it was never an honest endeavor to begin with–not on the part of Darwin nor on the part of many other evolutionists who were all fully aware that the existing evidence from paleontology and animal husbandry were contrary to their speculations. The “theory” of evolution was never about the actual evidence, it was always about the anticipated evidence that evolutionists hoped to find some time in the future. It has always been a theory in spite of the evidence.

Now to the focus of this section:

“(S)ince 1965 a vigorous ‘reform’ movement called ‘cladism’ has arisen, which argues that it is a logical mistake for a taxonomist to concern himself with ancestor-descendant relationships…and abstain altogether from genealogical speculation…But this inevitably led to the far more radical claim…that it is…impossible to discover genuine ancestor-descendant relations, for the very fundamental reason that the whole classic ‘Evolutionary Tree’ picture is an unreal and merely imaginary schema, none of which can be verified in the real world!…leading taxonomists, experts in their field…have become so totally iconoclastic as to expressly repudiate not only Darwin’s, but all theories of ‘natural evolution’.”—pg. 29

A couple pages later, Mebane observes:

“The sudden casting off of this old scheme looks, then, like a belated revolt of empirical facts against the dead hand of the Stalinistically-enforced orthodoxy, exactly as has happened in paleontology, where the old pretence that the evidence ‘supported Darwin’ was violently overthrown in Europe by Schindewolf in 1950, and in America by Gould and Eldredge in 1972.”—pg. 31

The reader should understand that this revolution has been done by the hand of the evolutionists themselves feeling the juggernaut-force of overwhelming empirical facts. Pretense can only be carried so far. There comes a point where taking pretense even further manifests oneself as a bald-faced liar, and this is something the taxonomists have been unwilling to do. This does not mean that the evolutionists are ready and willing to declare that all the available evidence points to the creation of life by the hand of an intelligent, omnipotent God (although the evidence certainly does precisely that). This is why you do not see these facts brought out, front-and-center, for public display. Don’t expect to see the next episode of “Nature” or “National Geographic” or “Nova” or “Discovery” trumpeting the fact that all existing theories of evolution are now known definitively to be false. This would require our academic and scientific establishments to muster up more honesty and integrity than they possess. This situation is, in essence, a test of the limits of their honesty.

Mebane says:

“The complete absence of verification of all of the necessary ancestors must inevitably lead to skepticism about the real historical existence of a ‘tree’ whose basic skeleton consists of deduced, but in fact unknown, taxonomic groupings.”—pg. 30

I have a question: what other field of “science” would be given a free pass on producing empirical evidence in its support? Yet, the paleontological and biological sciences have been given precisely that on the subject of evolution. I say bluntly it is high time (actually LONG PAST high time) to put up or shut up. 155 years of vain, baseless speculations which have proven false is ENOUGH! Way more than enough! Yet, since the underlying religious tenets of the prophets of the religion of Secular Humanism are at stake here, the lies and the falsehoods are given free reign to go on, year after year, decade after decade, without being called to account.

Mebane finishes up this section thusly:

“Why has this revolution remained a ‘quiet’ one, which has not been noised about and brought to public attention? My conjecture is that the iconoclasts have naturally been asked what ‘truer’ picture of biological history they would now put in the place of the rejected genealogical one, and have found that an exceeding awkward question to answer…but one can hardly blame the taxonomists if, rather than publicly affirm such a conclusion, they have preferred to say nothing at all.”—pg. 31

Translation: “The truer picture of biological history is that the biblical one of distinct species created by an omnipotent God is the only coherent picture conceivable, but we simply can’t concede this fact. Silence is better!” The taxonomists (or “cladists” or “systematicists”, or whatever term your prefer) understand quite well that a single word from a prominent evolutionist can forebode the end of their academic funding or career. Silence is literally gold! Silence is the price for the continuation of a taxpayer-funded paycheck and retirement pension.

5b. Second Taxonomic Disconfirmation: Observed Non-Genealogical Relationships

“There is also a continual reassignment of more closely studied organisms to new locations on the ‘phylogenetic tree’, because they are now realized to possess features incompatible with the earlier placement. And in this shifting about, it not uncommonly happens that insoluble dilemmas arise…What we are seeing…is abundant proof that cladists are right in calling genealogical trees imaginary schematizations, which cannot be fitted to the real facts of ‘Nature’…The fact is that taxonomists have been dutifully attempting to carry out an inherently impossible task.”—pgs. 32-33, emph. supp

We have all seen illustrations of these “phylogenetic trees” endlessly paraded before us, first when we were children in school textbooks, in popular books, on television programs, in trade publications, on internet sites, and in natural history museums as if these representations are the assured and final conclusions of paleontology and biology. Yet how many times have the purveyors of these representations alerted their readers, watchers and visitors that the taxonomists themselves do not believe in them? And that the specifics of these imaginary trees are continually shifted around? And that the vast gulf between one notch on the tree and the next notch is so vast that no academician hopes to ever fill the gaps? Until these facts are prominently highlighted to the general public, the charge of deliberate misrepresentation of the data must be levelled against all who publish and disseminate these phylogenetic representations.

Disconfirmation by Prohibitive Improbability of “Accidentally” Producing Observed Results
Mebane cites the mathematical computations of French physicist Lecomte Du Nouy regarding the chance possibilities of random chemical processes producing even the simplest of proteins. Suffice to say the possibility is so staggeringly and mind-boggling small that the odds against such chance occurrence are astronomically high and then some.

“This number is so invisibly tiny…that the natural formation…is thus demonstrated to be strictly impossible. This amounts to a proof that, even when making the most favorable assumptions conceivable, one is simply forbidden to take seriously the proposition that ‘Life on Earth must have arisen spontaneously, in some natural and unintentional way’.”—pg. 36

The reader should linger long over this consideration. Though arguments from mathematics are abstract to most people and lack the tangibility of rocks and fossils, the real world of atoms and elements and chemicals is completely subject to these mathematical limitations. And these mathematical limitations tell us that it is simply impossible for living organisms to originate by random, unintentional processes. This consideration by itself is completely sufficient to validate Divine, intelligent creation of life as a truly scientific theory.

This state of affairs can be looked at from a slightly different perspective as I did in another article, “The Search for ET” (to be posted here in the near future). In the real world of living organisms, even single-celled organisms consist of irreducibly complex components (as Michael Behe has pointed out). In other words, remove any one part of the structure and the organism dies. Or, starting from the bottom, add one of the parts to the organism without the others and the organism dies. This state of affairs virtually screams intelligent design. It also shouts of the power to manipulate the component parts in tandem with the intelligence to know what to do in order to create a living organism. The power by itself would be in vain without the knowledge of what is necessary to create a viable living organism. Conversely, the knowledge of what is required to create a living organism would be in vain without the power and ability to coordinate the components. When we look at the details of living organisms, myriads of irreducibly complex systems with a purpose, intelligent design and a staggeringly immense power both stare us in the face. Irreducible biological complexity, as with a watch or an automobile, is a hallmark of a powerful, intelligent, conscious creator. There is no other known source of irreducible complexity except intelligent manipulation. Blind, natural processes never produced trains, planes and automobiles—or living beings.

So what is the reaction of secularists to the reality of intelligent design of living organisms by some immensely powerful agency staring them in the face? Mebane observes:

“Shapiro discreetly refrains from drawing attention to the consequence of this disproof for the credibility of Darwinism: he calls, not for the necessity of intelligent design, but for the discovery of ‘some new natural principle’ (pg. 298) capable of simulating intelligent design (the same appeal made by Wesson in his Beyond Natural Selection…”—pg. 36

This is nothing less than the suppression of the truth. This may possibly be an example of sinking into a state of psychological denial. Both Shapiro and Wesson clearly recognize that living organisms are constituted in such a manner that they admit of no other known mechanism and explanation for their creation except that of intelligent design. So, instead of following the evidence and investigating the clear fact staring them in the face, they engage in subversion and sabotage of the truth. Like Darwin before them, relying on hoped-for intermediate forms to show up in the fossils in the future to refute the non-evolutionary picture actually there in the fossils, Shapiro and Wesson are relying on hoped-for evidence to be found in the future to refute the clear evidence actually before them in the present. Thus, the clear implications of the actual, real-world evidence that we actually possess is denied in favor of a flight of fancy.

How conscious is all of this on the part of evolutionists? Are they simply incapable of seeing the plain truth before them? Or, is their denial of the truth more calculated, deliberative, willful? I suppose it depends of which particular evolutionist is in question. I find it very hard to believe that the evolutionists who admit the failure of the evolutionary model in private but then present a different face in public do so inadvertently.

An example from Luther Sunderland’s book, Darwin’s Enigma, is illuminating. On pages 89-95, Sunderland relates an incident regarding Niles Eldredge. Niles Eldredge may properly be regarded, along with Stephen Jay Gould, as one of the two High Priests of the religion of Secular Humanism, being one of the two co-founders of the “punctuated equilibria” revolution. This is yet another example of evolutionists’ proclivity, from no less a personage than Niles Eldredge himself, to a knee-jerk resort to prevarication when the true status of the “theory” of evolution is in jeopardy of being disclosed to the general public. In 1979, Eldredge, as Curator of the American Museum of Natural History, went on record in an interview with Sunderland calling the famous horse evolution depictions “the best example of a lamentable imaginary story being presented as though it were literal truth,” and that, “I admit that an awful lot of that has gotten into the textbooks as though it were true.”—pg. 90

Then on February 14, 1981, during the Seagraves evolution textbook trial in California, Eldredge, on the ABC national television program “20/20,” being interviewd by Sylvia Chase, proclaimed before the world at large and 20 million viewers the horse evolution myth as evolutionary fact after already going on record calling the horse series “a lamentable imaginary story.” Eldredge was simply carrying on the Darwinian tradition here with this kind of deceit. Let me state the obvious: Eldredge is willing to twist and distort the facts of paleontology to the world at large when the chips are down (i.e., when influencing public opinion in favor of evolution), rather than plainly tell the truth that the fossils provide no evidence for evolution. But in doing so, he forfeits his own credibility and integrity.

That this was all cynical public posturing on Eldredge’s part is manifest on its face. Eldredge’s statements on ABC television have no more credibility—or integrity—than something we might hear from the U. S. President’s Press Secretary defending the President in the aftermath of some sex scandal. This is on the same level as President Clinton saying, “I did not have sex with that woman.” Eldredge should have been made to walk around with a scarlet “L” on his forehead for a year. This is Eldredge fornicating with Princess Prevarication.

But I digress.

Transmutation of one species into another by random processes is simply not possible. This has been well understood for a very long time now by evolutionary biologists, for well over a hundred years, ever since the fruit fly experiments of Thomas Hunt Morgan and others. It is not something that there is even any genuine debate about. Nor is there even a speck of empirical (or even theoretical) validity for the “theory” which has replaced it, Eldredge’s and Gould’s “punctuated equilibria,” which proposes (ironically) miracles of transformation, magic out of biological hats, naturalistic rapid evolution (note well) on the scale of divine creation, with not even a remotely-dreamed-of potential mechanism to accomplish the feat. We are asked by the evolutionists to accept their fairy tales by faith.

(Sensed) Aesthetic Disconfirmation

In this section, Mebane lists esthetic beauty in his list of disconfirmations of naturalistic, gradualistic, Darwinian evolution. In other words, would we not expect randomness to produce not beauty and form and symmetry, but ugliness or blandness and disorder? Yet the real world we occupy has “vast carpets of georgeous wildflowers of various hues” and “the quite unnecessary beauty…of birds like peacocks…the grace and beauty of cats” etc. which “ for utilitarian purposes would have been just as viable (…or even more viable) without them,” (pg. 44). Mebane goes on to cite the beauty of seashells and “the inhabitants of coral reefs” whose brilliant hues could never be seen by anyone until the scuba was invented by Jacques Cousteau.

“The explanation that this wonderful feast of naturally invisible colors was provided by some benign Designer expressly for the delectation of late twentieth century humans seems too absurd to take seriously—but even more absurd…is the Darwinist’s explanation that all of this amazing hidden beauty was produced unintentionally, purely by accident!…

“I cannot point to any ‘reasonable’ resolution of these misgivings; I believe that no one could; but, speaking for myself, the manifest presence of aesthetic beauty in ‘Nature’ is the only argument for the agency of a ‘God’ that I have ever been able to take seriously.”—pg. 45

Thus Mebane concludes his series of disconfirmations of Darwinistic evolution. Mebane asks:

“If Darwinism would seem to be the only scientific explanation of life’s history—but has nonetheless proven to be a thoroughly false one—what then?”—pg. 54

Yes, indeed, what then?

Mebane is hindered from the truth at this juncture because he has not yet discovered the fact that the academic establishments of Europe and the Americas have subverted truth for a very long time now, not only in regard to Darwinian evolution, but also in regard to many other related aspects of archaeology, geology, biology and—surprise!—biblical studies. The bogus “discipline” of “higher criticism” of the Bible reigns supreme (perhaps we should say runs rampant) throughout the religion departments of virtually every college and university in the developed world, and is just as rigidly dogmatic and (regrettably) pervasive in its reach as is the discipline of naturalistic evolution. Sad but true, the academic con-artists run the show. Mebane, unfortunately, is one of their unwitting victims. He may as well have never escaped the academics’ delusion-inducing Great Darwinian Propaganda Machine. He is still a prisoner chained to the wall in the dungeon of deceit.

The Bottom Line

So what is it all about? What are the underlying motivating factors that animate and motivate the evolutionists? Mebane should know because he remains one of them:

“It seems fairly safe to predict that the great majority of professionals will continue (at least in public) to pretend that ‘Darwin’s theory of evolution has been verified as true’, even if they are consciously aware that that asseveration is a lie—exactly as Thomas Huxley did more than a century ago…

“Two powerful pragmatic motivations exist for adhering to that seemingly ‘scandalous’ justification: one is political, the other psychological. In this country…any public admission that the history of life defies scientific explanation would simply open the floodgates to the zealots who would put the Bible back in the classroom….Anyone with the slightest inclination to critical thinking must turn cold at the thought of such a victory for the forces of overt irrationalism. That is the political motivation—a compelling one. The lie is a ‘lesser evil’ than the truth would prove to be.”—pg. 73, bold emphasis supplied

And, No, that is not your humble narrator putting words in someone else’s mouth. That is a verbatim quote. I could not have levelled the accusation any more pointedly myself.

Mebane concludes his book:

“Faced with so dismaying an alternative, thinkers on this topic will understandably continue to persuade themselves—just as Huxley did, so long ago now—that, ‘Even if Darwinism is not the correct answer, it is a scientific one; so we must hold onto it, as a stop-gap, until the true scientific solution finally comes to light.’ So far as I can see, this ‘psychologically necessary’ rationalization, having persisted for more than thirteen decades, may well persist forever.”—pg. 74

It cannot be stressed too strongly that the proponents of evolution tell willful, deliberate, conscious lies about the subject for the purpose of obstructing the truth of God. Let them consider the Word of God:

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools.—Romans 1:18-21

So where do things stand today? At the time of the writing of this review (2014), Darwinian gradualism is as dead as the dodo bird, as extinct as the tyrannosaurus. The “punctuated equilibria” of Gould and Eldredge has won the day among the faithful devotees of evolution and now prevails over the kingdom of Secularism. This is not what evolutionists had hoped for. They fought it tooth and nail for a century. But 100 plus years of ever-mounting and overwhelming disproofs of evolution have taken their toll and the retreating forces of Secular Humanism have retreated into what may very well be their last refuge, the sanctuary of “rapid evolutionary change.”

This shift away from the proposed gradualistic mechanism, however, comes with a very heavy price for them to pay: how does one explain this casting off of the old Darwinism when there is absolutely zero empirical evidence for the new punctuated equilibria hypothesis? This does not bode well for public relations even with the entire academic and media establishments on their side of the issue. It looks, even to the casual uninterested eye suspiciously like rationalization and a Last Ditch Attempt to avoid surrender to the forces of supernaturalism—whether that supernaturalism comes in the form of historic biblical creationism, or, alternately, the Vitalism of the pantheists. There is not even an inkling of any realistic theory about the biochemical basis for such rapid evolution. Moreover, punctuated equilibria differs in essence not one whit in kind from creationism. It proposes a miraculous transformation of living animals into new species. The new evolutionary orthodoxy has been forced to borrow from the creation model in order to maintain a touch of reality.

BOOK REVIEW OF “DARWIN’S CREATION MYTH” BY ALEXANDER MEBANE, PART 2

August 8, 2016 by Tom Shipley

In Part 1, we reviewed evolutionist Alexander Mebane’s commentary on the “disconfirmations” of Darwinian evolution. We resume here reviewing disconfirmations #2 – #4.

#2 First Paleontological Disconfirmation: Observed Non-Evolution

Says Mebane:

“But the paleontologists of (Darwin’s) time immediately raised objections to this Darwinian ‘scenario,’ saying that what they actually found did not conform at all to Darwin’s imaginary description…it was provably untrue that a species was ‘merely an ephemeral manifestation,’ since many species could be found unchanged throughout the whole thickness of a geological stratum that must have been deposited over very great stretches of time.”—pg. 8

Note well that this was PROVABLY untrue (based upon the premise of geologic strata representing great stretches of time), something of which Darwin was thoroughly aware.

Darwin’s response was: go back to the rocks and collect fossils for another hundred years and his thesis would be confirmed.

“Darwin’s word was taken as law for more than a century thereafter. Incredibly enough, when paleontologists actual findings persisted in ‘failing’ to confirm his prediction, it was not the prediction that suffered, but the paleontologists! Evolutionists began to vilify them as lazy fellows, mere ‘stamp collectors’ unworthy of the name ‘scientist’…Paleontology in England and America became a frustrating and unrewarded activity, in which publication of non-‘ideologically correct’ findings was often impossible.”—pg. 9, emphasis supplied

Such was the state of “open inquiry” in academia then (and now).

Mebane goes on to cite the example of German Paleontologist Otto Schindewolf who, in 1950, declared that the record of the rocks was clear—new life forms appeared suddenly, not by Darwin’s “insensible degrees” and then remain permanently static. This announcement made Schindewolf the object of ridicule by evolutionists. Says Mebane:

“The ‘normal evolutionary process’ existed only in the minds of evolutionists: in the real world, no species ‘evolves.’ It will remain unchanged for as long as it is able to survive.” –pg. 11

Such is the state of the understanding of paleontologists and biologists about the subject today. There are still some meager number of old-school Darwinists and neo-Darwinists persisting in the old fairy tales, but they have now been so totally discredited by the admitted lack of any intermediate forms in the fossil record that the pendulum will never swing back in their direction. Since the Stephen J. Gould/Niles Eldredge revolution of 1972, “Punctuated Equilibria” is the new orthodoxy. It’s domination of the academic establishment is nearly as thorough today as was the old Darwinism in the 1930’s. There can be no turning back.

The irony of this situation is that the average educated person is mostly ignorant of this revolution. They have no idea how fundamentally the old orthodoxy has been overturned, discarded and replaced. They still believe for the most part that the academic establishment believes in the magic formula of natural selection + random mutation + eons of time = the production of new species. They could not be more mistaken about the actual state of affairs.

Mebane concludes this section thusly:

“I hope it will not be thought unduly ‘cynical’ of me to remind the reader here that all varieties of evolutionary theory, no matter how else they might differ, were at least in agreement on onefundamental thesis: namely, that ‘the doctrine of the fixity of species’ was a baseless, now-outmoded old superstition.” –pg. 11

Knowing the extreme discomfort this admission must cause Mebane I suppose we can forgive him for not being as pointed and explicit in this admission as a creationist might be. As confessions from evolutionists go, this is not bad. This is far more candid than anything which ever came from Darwin. I’ll give Mebane a B+ and articulate in my own words what Mebane simply cannot bring himself to say: the biblical creationists were right, after all. Once a species comes into existence, it will not change. Of course, the “comes into existence” part of the equation is something that Mebane is not willing to concede to divine creation. He is still looking to existing species as the seedbed from which new species emerge. He is simply not expecting any natural process to do the job.

But, the reader will ask, if there is no natural cause for evolution, and Mebane will not allow for divine creation by an omniscient and omnipotent God, what else is there? I am jumping ahead of Mebane to his conclusory remarks at the end of his book: Mebane maintains two possibilities: 1) that of a less-than-omnipotent god or 2) what Mebane believes is the best theory to fit the known facts, “sporadic productions by subdivine designers (daemones),” the fashioning of new species from existing species by “invisible intelligent DNA designers.” –pg. 69-70

Before scoffing at Mebane, I will step in in his defense here to defend his logic. His conclusion is not bad—if you accept his premises. I just have problems with his premises. His view is premised upon the proposition of a four billion year old earth, and the belief that rocks and fossils can actually be reliably dated. Remove these propositions from Mebane’s premises and he winds up in a very different universe than he thinks he inhabits. He then winds up in—horror of horrors!—a universe in which there might actually be an omnipotent creator God. I’ll make a prediction: Mebane will not entertain the possibility that accepted dating techniques are fatally compromised by faulty presuppositions which skew the dating results.

#3 Historical Disconfirmation: Observed DNA Conservation

Mebane’s third disconfirmation of Darwinism and neo-Darwinism is the simple impossibility of chance, random mutations producing a new species as was empirically demonstrated in the fruit fly experiments of Thomas Hunt Morgan and of Richard Goldschmidt, which also revealed embedded mechanisms to restore the organism to its original form!!! The reason for this impossibility is so simple that even a child can grasp it. Reorganization of DNA on the scale necessary to create an actual new species would require, not single random point mutations in the DNA, but numerous, coordinated, and strategic (i.e., intelligently directed) mutations all in the proper places—and all simultaneously. This is a simple fact of biology and it is utterly devastating to any chance model of evolution. Even Darwin and the biologists of Darwin’s time understood this, though they had no idea of just how staggeringly complex living organisms really are. The difficulty of this problem for evolutionists has multiplied astronomically since then. Darwinism and neo-Darwinism are both thoroughly founded on the idea of random, chance mutations slowly building up over time and producing new species. That such extensive random occurrences will ever result in a viable organism is not only vastly improbable but logically impossible. Time, in fact, is a dis-organizing, dis-integrating factor making the possibility of evolution even more unlikely as time passes. If evolution is going to happen, it needs to happen fast. There is no escape for the evolutionists from this conundrum. This has long been known and understood by evolutionary scientists. They’ve just preferred to keep quiet about the fact. Says Mebane:

“It is now quite openly acknowledged by experts that this inherent immunity to Darwinian evolution is, in fact, characteristic of all forms of Earthly life. We have thus witnessed the independent confirmation, on the most sweeping scale possible, of the genetic ‘impotency principle’ that Goldschmidt had inferred from the observed impossibility of experimentally transmuting a tiny fruit fly into a new viable species.”—pg. 12

And:

“Even under the most favorable of all conditions—deliberate human attempts to bring it about—successful natural species-transmutation is an event that is simply unable to happen…these coordinated changes are just what accidental knocking-about is inherently unable to provide, because chance events are subject to stringent probability limitations.”—pg. 13-14

These stringent probability limitations are precisely what make big money for casinos and insurance companies. Mebane then goes on to do the math of these probabilities, from which I will spare the reader all but the conclusion: the odds of a successful string of random mutations (“successful” meaning resulting in a viable organism) are “one in 200 billion billion.” Mebane concludes:

“Darwin’s microevolutionary route to macroevolution is simply not a passable one.”—pg. 16

I’ll toss in Arthur Koestler’s observations from his book, Janus:

“Now according to the Darwinian schema, all these changes must have been gradual, each small step caused by a chance mutation. But it is obvious that each step, however small, required simultaneous, interdependent changes affecting all the factors….They are all interdependent within the organism—which is a functional whole, not a mosaic. The doctrine that the coming together of all requisite changes was due to a series of coincidences is an affront not only to common sense but to the basic principles of scientific explanation.” –pg. 176

For those not acquainted with Koestler, Koestler was also an evolutionist. What Koestler and hundreds of biologists could not seriously entertain was the untenable chance schema upon which the dogma was based. Koestler’s book, The Ghost in the Machine, published in 1965, was a kind of popular precursor to Gould’s and Eldredge’s theory of Punctuated Equilibria. Koestler’s book may very well be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back and made it thinkable for the Darwinian establishment to entertain alternate theories about the supposed mechanism of evolution.

The problem, of course, is not with the mechanism but with the fundamental proposition itself.

Second Paleontological Disconfirmation: Observed Absence of Intermediates

Mebane’s fourth disconfirmation is the trade secret of evolutionary paleontologists, namely, there are simply no transitional forms to be found among the fossils–zero. We certainly should have expected to have found transitional forms in vast abundance if the Darwinian schema were correct. In fact, it should be impossible to discern where one species leaves off and another begins. The fossil record (and, indeed, the living world) should be one great blur, a continuous spectrum. We have vast numbers of some species preserved in fossils covering all of the land area of the earth (95% of which are marine invertebrates…hmmm) but no “great chain of descent” to be found anywhere. Darwin predicted otherwise but his prediction has failed. Darwin himself said that if the fossils did not eventually produce the intermediate forms, then this would be the greatest proof possible that his theory was false. Darwin’s worshipful disciples are not willing to be so candid about the actual state of affairs. They are attempting to validate other mechanisms as a cause of evolution.

Enter Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldredge. Mebane says:

“Stephen Jay Gould has told us without equivocation, in his book, The Panda’s Thumb (p. 181) that ‘the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology’…and that, in fact, ‘the fossil record, with its abrupt transitions, offers no support for gradual change’.(Panda’s Thumb, p 188.) Darwin’s old rationalization, that the gaps were ‘due to extreme imperfection of the fossil record’, is by this time utterly untenable (ibid. p. 182) ‘The fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another’ (Stanley, New Timetable, p. 95). Eldredge has made the same flat statement: ‘No one has found any ‘in-between’ creatures: the fossil evidence has failed to turn upany ‘missing links’, and many scientists now share a growing conviction that these transitional forms never existed.’”—pg. 18

It appears to me that Gould’s statement about the “extreme rarity of transitional forms” is another example of the willful disingenuousness of evolutionists who simply cannot bring themselves to speak the truth plainly. It seems evident to me that Gould, by this phraseology, hopes to convey to the mind of the reader that there are in fact at least some proven transitional forms in the fossils, when, in fact, by “extreme rarity” he means zero! Yes, zero is extreme, indeed! Why not just plainly say so?

Educated laity need to disabuse themselves of the false notion of the objective scientific neutrality of evolutionary biologists and paleontologists. These scientists are NOT neutral. They are more aptly described as zealots on a fervent mission. They have an agenda. That agenda is to salvage the theory of evolution at all costs despite the fact that objective evaluation of the evidence points powerfully and overwhelmingly to intelligent Divine creation. That agenda is to persuade the general public that rocks and fossils can be reliably dated at billions and millions of years when there is plenty of evidence for a young earth, and empirical demonstrationof the unreliability of radiometric dating of rocks. That agenda is NOT to follow the scientific evidence wherever it might lead.

Secular scientists are committed to a faith, the faith of Secular Humanism (which the U. S. Supreme Court recognized as a religion in the Torcaso v Watkins case (367 US 488, 1961). In faith, they commit themselves to a materialistic, naturalistic view of reality. They are committed to unproven and unprovable presuppositionsabout the ultimate nature of reality. This faith preconditions what conclusions they are willing to entertain about scientific evidence. This faith determines what conclusions they are not willing to entertain about scientific evidence.

Arthur Koestler, in his book, Janus, published in 1978, states:

“One of the crumbling citadels of orthodoxy…is the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution…The contradictions and tautologies of the synthetic theory have actually been known even longer, as a kind of open secret, and yet the dogma has been and still is strenuously defended by the academic community, with the penalty of discreet but effective ostracism for heretics. The reason for this paradox seems to be twofold: firstly, commitment to scientific theory can be as charged with emotion as a religious credo—a subject much in evidence throughout the history of science; secondly, the absence of a coherent alternative to neo-Darwinism makes many biologists feel that a bad theory is better than no theory at all.”—pg. 165

Mebane goes on to cite the famous archaeopteryx, often touted as a transitional form, as “part bird and part dinosaur.” Mebane agrees with this description but argues that it is not comprehensible as any kind of transitional form, which, indeed, it is not, even if the description is correct. I don’t want to get too far off topic to debate Mebane’s classification of this animal; my focus in this section is on transitional forms. My own research has satisfied me that archaeopteryx was a true bird. There has been much ado over the fact that archaeopteryx had teeth, and claws on its wings. While there are no living birds with teeth, there are a few extinct species, indisputably birds, which had teeth and there are living birds with wing claws. Mebane sides with the view that archaeopteryx was flightless but I suspect this to be erroneous also as this view is based on the absence of a sternum—but archaeopteryx also had an especially strong furcula which provided the necessary support for a strong pectoralis muscle required for the downstroke in flight (see Evolution: the Challenge of the Fossil Record by Duane T. Gish, Ph.D.).

Mebane’s next statements regarding the “Cambrian Explosion” are significant:

“The manner in which complex life first appeared on this planet must surely be considered the most glaring of all refutations not only of Darwinism, but of all theories of evolution. Early in the Cambrian period…we suddenly find abundant fossils of practically all the marine life forms that have ever existed.”—pg. 22, emphasis supplied.

And a few pages later:

“Advances in paleontology have only served to prove—far more conclusively than was possible in Darwin’s day—that what happened in Cambrian times was in fact nothing less than a fresh creation of a world of new organisms that had no preexisting ancestors: an event that is totally irreconcilable with Darwin’s—or, for that matter with any sort of ‘evolutionary’—conceptions of what ‘really happens’ in this world.”—pg. 25-26, emphasis is Mebane’s

Let the reader note well that this evidence, once again, is precisely the same as the biblical claim. Why not, then, quite frankly admit that divine creation by an omnipotent God is just as much a scientific proposition as creation by “who-knows-what-or-whom”? Mebane himself admits a couple pages later that “this process was a good deal closer to a truly-saltatory or ‘Biblical’ one” (pg. 28), and defies any natural explanation.

We must at least give credit to evolutionist Mebane for his frank admissions here. This kind of forthrightness on the part of evolutionists is seldom put forward in a book intended for the general public.

We will resume in Part 3 with Mebane’s additional “disconfirmations” of Darwinism.

BOOK REVIEW OF “DARWIN’S CREATION MYTH” BY ALEXANDER MEBANE

August 1, 2016 by Tom Shipley

Part 1

“Even if Darwinism is false above the microevolutionary level, it is nevertheless the only scientific theory of cladogenesis now available; and that is more important than the question of truth or falsity.” –Thomas Henry Huxley, quote from pg. 73, “Darwin’s Creation Myth” by Alexander Mebane

Until the time of Charles Darwin and the publication of “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life,” scientific investigation had been essentially a Christian endeavor, conducted mainly by Christians within the context of a larger Judeo-Christian civilization. The heartbeat of scientific investigation had been the desire to know and understand the nature of God’s created order. Truth and facts were all-important. Secularists often distort this history. For example, the famous confrontation between Galileo and the Roman Catholic Church is routinely portrayed by the propagandists of secularism as a debate between Christianity and secularism–whereas the reality is Galileo was a Christian with a better understanding of the Bible and nature disputing with other Christians with a lesser understanding of the Bible and of nature. Galileo contended that heliocentrism was consistent with the Bible. The only real question in the matter of Galileo is which Christian perspective was the truer one. Secularism was entirely irrelevant to the dispute. Examples of such distortion by secularists can be multiplied ad infinitum. In reality, the situation with Galileo was considerably more complex: Galileo had both supporters and detractors both in the Church and in academia. You would never know this reading a typical treatment of Galileo by secular commentators.

With the advent of Darwin’s assertion of natural evolution as the source of living species, and the highjacking of scientific pursuits by the priests of the religion of Secular Humanism, something was introduced into scientific investigation which had not existed previously: falsification. Make that deliberate falsification. (I am using the term “falsification” here to denote either outright fabrication of evidence or misleading interpretation of the evidence.) In addition to his scientific legerdemain, Darwin also tried to take credit as the originator of the theory, which was far from the truth. Darwin’s own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was an evolutionist before Sir Charles. Erasmus Darwin’s influence on Charles Darwin is conspicuously absent in anything Charles Darwin ever wrote. Curious. Moreover, Michael Denton noted in Evolution: A Theory in Crisis that among the Greek philosophers Anaximander, Empendocles, Democritus and Epicurus “”the two basic concepts which underlie modern evolutionary thought [i.e., variation and natural selection–T.S.] had been clearly formulated,” (see Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, pg. 37-40). In a more contemporary setting, it is well-known that Darwin manipulated a “one-upmanship” upon Alfred Wallace when he learned that Wallace was about to put forward essentially an identical hypothesis as his own. In brief, Darwin’s actions and claims in regard to his place and role in the hypothesis are not altogether on the level.

Many people naively assume that falsification among evolutionists has occurred only in isolated examples such as the Piltdown Man hoax (which was promulgated as fact in school textbooks for 50 years), or Ernst Haeckel’s phony embryo depictions (which are, to this day, being utilized in some school textbooks) or the Midwife Toad hoax, or the Nebraska Man hoax. The simple fact of the matter is, nearly the entire cadre of secular evolutionists, animated by their faith in the religion of Secular Humanism, have strenuously endeavored to keep the general public in ignorance of the significance of the facts of paleontology, geology, biology, biochemistry, etc., pretty much right from the beginning, starting with Darwin himself. Deliberate misrepresentation of the evidence by evolutionary scientists goes far, far deeper than crude manufacturing of evidence such as Piltdown Man. It involves their handling of, and explication of, the facts of paleontology, geology, biochemistry, genetics, etc. to the general public, and their pervasive repression of any contrary evidence (see, for example, Jerry Bergman’s book, “The Criterion” and this video by Mike Fischer of the Geochronology Group, and this egregious example here.)

You do not have to take my word for it. There is a veritable cornucopia of admissions of this fact regarding many particulars on the part of the Secular Humanists themselves, as for example the quote at the head of this article by Thomas Huxley, adoringly known as “Darwin’s bulldog” by the zealots of this religion, and see Dr. Alan Feduccia’s remarks here. (Consult also, for example, “The Ghost in the Machine” or “Janus” by Arthur Koestler, for a candid perspective on this.) Additionally, arch-evolutionist Niles Eldredge indicted the entire profession of paleontology by making this amazing confession in his book, Time Frames:

“We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports that interpretation” (i.e., “the story of gradual adaptive change”) “ALL THE WHILE REALLY KNOWING THAT IT DOES NOT.”-pg. 144, emph. supp.

This is an utterly amazing admission, coming as it does from the very top of the evolutionary food chain, from Niles Eldredge, ardent evolutionist (who called for a “gloves off” treatment of creationists) and Curator of the American Museum of Natural History. Here Eldredge accuses the entire profession of paleontology of knowingly misrepresenting the facts of paleontology to the world in order to advance evolutionary claims. Eldredge may wish he had never published those words, but they are there in permanent written form for anyone to investigate.

Examine Thomas Huxley’s statement well and meditate upon it. To state the matter bluntly, what Huxley meant in plain terms is that he was willing to engage and entertain ANY proposition about the origin of life and the history of life on earth, no matter how preposterous the proposition might be–provided that a supernatural God and intelligent design were not included in the list of propositions. Truth or falsehood be damned! God and intelligent design were to be ruled out of court, a priori, as inadmissible conclusions no matter how strongly the evidence might point in that direction. Atheism and evolution (by any and all means) are the axioms of the disciples of Darwin, the guiding premises of all thought, the sacrosanct and unquestionable presuppositions of every proposition which it is heresy and blasphemy to call into question.

My task in this series is to review a short book by one of their own, “Darwin’s Creation Myth,” by Alexander Mebane.

Mebane begins his short treatise (80 pages, bibliography and all), making sure his readers don’t confuse him with those awful, primitive, knuckle-dragging, Bible-thumping Creationists. Speaking about “anti-evolution” writings, Mebane says:

“Almost 90% of such publications have based their arguments on the axiom that reliable information is to be found in the creation-myths of the ancient Hebrews. Let me make clear at once that this essay is not in that category!” –from the Prefatory Note

And, my dear hominid, don’t dare overlook Mebane’s exclamation point! Mebane cannot emphasize this point too strongly. I am glad Mebane takes pains to distance himself from the likes of poor warped, primitive me. No one can accuse Mebane of being a Bible thumper or seeking to advance the cause of (as some have called it) “fundamentalist creationism,” whatever that is. And that suits my purposes here quite well, thank you, Mr. Mebane.

Just so the reader knows, I was not raised in a Christian home with the Bible being “imprinted” on me by my parents. I was raised in a very secular home with a professing atheist for a father and a mother with zero interest in anything religious. I, myself, am a former atheist and believer in evolution who was somewhat zealous to promote the cause of atheism. The first chinks in my atheist armor began when I was in college. The University of Maryland, where I was a student, had hosted a debate between creationists and evolutionists which I attended. I was very unimpressed at the time with both sides, which motivated me to go look in the University of Maryland library and elsewhere for scientific papers or books on theories regarding the biochemical basis for evolution—and found out that such books and papers did not exist! After over a hundred years of fanatical devotion to the theory on the part of a massive army of secular scientists, you would have thought the shelves of libraries would be overflowing with books outlining plausible biochemical bases for evolution. I was disappointed, but did not attribute much significance to this lack of material on the subject (until much later). This was, as I say, the first chink in my atheist armor. It was also somewhat disconcerting to me at the time that “my” side of the debate did not end with a resounding demonstration of evolution’s superior credibility over the creationists.

In a footnote, Mebane parrots the mindlessly absurd claim of so-called “higher criticism” of the Bible to the effect that there are “two different creation stories” in Genesis, a ridiculous and moronic claim on its face. This is beyond the scope of this article, but as an aside, such an utterly naïve and uninformed statement makes it obvious why Mebane remains mired down in evolutionary speculations. He has yet to discover that he has been duped by the academic snake-oil merchants in other disciplines, though, commendably, he has managed to escape the grip of the Great Darwinian Propaganda Machine. He would do well to investigate what is called “higher criticism” of the Bible with the same focus with which he has focused on the Darwinian and neo-Darwinian evolutionary speculations. He will find, to his disappointment, that the claims of the “higher critics” of the Bible are as utterly devoid of merit as is the Darwinian and neo-Darwinian interpretations of paleontology and geology which he repudiates, if not more so. And while I am commending areas of focus, we should add “How valid are the methods used to determine the ages of rocks and fossils?” to the list. Want to make a guess where that line of investigation will lead?

Mebane goes on to say:

“Darwin’s theory of evolution has never been so acceptable as current popular writers would have you believe (emphasis supplied) …few eminent naturalists ever felt that Darwin’s suggestion had truly solved the problem. Even Wallace himself, the co-inventor of the theory, soon came to realize it could not be correct….Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s chief defender…felt sure that Darwin’s picture must…be a good deal closer to the truth than the ones given us by Moses, but he was by no means the starry-eyed convert that Darwinists like to portray. Well aware that paleontologists could show that real changes had not proceeded by Darwin’s ‘insensible degrees’, and that all breeders insisted that real changes could not proceed ‘indefinitely’, as Darwin required them to do, he explicitly stipulated that he would remain skeptical…until an example of its real operation had been experimentally demonstrated. (As we shall see, it has not yet passed Huxley’s test; and by this time, rather heroic faith would be required to believe that it will ever pass it.”—pg. 1

Note well Mebane’s point here: Wallace and Huxley were not convinced that Darwin got it right about the supposed mechanism of evolution, but they clung to the fundamental proposition of evolution for dear life anyway. Mebane goes on to point out that other prominent evolutionists had misgivings about Darwin’s proposed mechanism, including J. B. S. Haldane, George Gaylord Simpson, Dobzhansky, Gavin De Beer, and Ernst Mayr. They were acquainted enough with the facts to know that the magic formula of “natural selection + random mutations + eons of time = abracadabra, presto: new species evolve,” simply had no empirical support in any direction. Mebane points out that most professionals in the field rejected Darwin’s “accidental and undirected” process of evolution right up until the 1930’s, when Darwin’s proposed mechanism won the day by default. There was simply no other coherent alternative being articulated.

Mebane concludes his introduction by saying:

“After 135 years [now 157 years—T.S.] Darwin’s creation-myth can still claim nothing more than its original attraction of offering us a story less obviously preposterous than the tale of the Hebrews—because, in spite of its superficial plausibility, this story of Darwin’s has consistently and conspicuously failed all of the tests that were expected to demonstrate its validity.”—pg. 2

Mebane’s characterization is, if anything, a gross understatement.

Mebane goes on to point out eight areas of disproof (he calls them “disconfirmations”) of the Darwinian dogma:

Experimental Disconfirmation: Observed Non-transmutability
First Paleontological Disconfirmation: Observed Non-Evolution
Historical Disconfirmation: Observed DNA Conservation
Second Paleontological Disconfirmation: Observed Absence of Intermediates
a. First Taxonomic Disconfirmation; Cladistic Iconoclasm
Second Taxonomic Disconfirmation: Observed Non-Genealogical Relationships
Disconfirmation by Prohibitive Improbability of “Accidentally” Producing Observed Results (i.e., mathematical impossibility)
(Sensed) Aesthetic Disconfirmation

Experimental Disconfirmation: Observed Non-transmutability

Mebane begins with the famous experiments on the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster conducted by Thomas Hunt Morgan which began in 1909. (Arthur Koestler found these experiments to be very significant to the question also. See his “The Ghost in the Machine” and “Janus,” pg. 182-183, 198). The fruit fly was a very suitable creature to use because it was “easy to maintain and of short generation time” and “particularly easy to transmute” by subjecting the insect to “mutation-inducing radiations of different sorts, to chemicals known to be mutagenic.” Mebane says,

“ It appeared virtually certain that the long-drawn-out process of natural species transmutation could be speeded up to the point where an artificially generated new species could, after a few years be triumphantly exhibited to the world….A great many races of melanogaster, some of them weirdly modified, emerged from the experiments, but re-mutating them was most disappointing: the multiply-mutated flies, when viable at all, were either sterile or had reverted to something closer to the original form”!—pg. 6

Conclusion?

“Attempts to push a new genetic trait farther and farther always come up against natural limits to variation, beyond which the overstrained organism must become either sterile or non-viable. It cannot be altered indefinitely without any limit, as Darwin postulated.” –pg. 6, Mebane’s emphasis

“Natural limits to variation”–this is something breeders had known since ancient times. Now, after more than a hundred years later, no one has managed to succeed in producing any other outcome, despite ongoing experiments with the fruit fly and many other organisms. (The renowned geneticist, Richard Goldschmidt, for example, abandoned Darwinism in favor of the “hopeful monster” theory after his own experiments with the fruit fly.) There are built-in barriers inherent in living organisms which prevent transmutation. Neither Mebane nor any other evolutionist seems willing to mention the obvious, namely, that this state of affairs perfectly matches the biblical testimony of the creation of distinct species which produce offspring “after its kind.”

We will follow up in the next two installments with the rest of Mebane’s list and additional comment.

THE UN-FOSSILS – SOFT DINOSAUR TISSUE AND THE AGE OF THE EARTH

July 11, 2016 by Tom Shipley

How old is the earth? And how old are the fossil-bearing rock strata in the earth? The answer to the second question will have direct bearing upon the first question. If the fossil-bearing rock strata of the earth are much younger than the hundreds of millions, or billions, of years usually assigned to them by evolutionists, then the earth itself is much younger than claimed by our secular, Darwinist, evolutionary establishment.

One of the most compelling reasons that have come to light in recent decades to reject the Darwinian-Lyellian hypothesis of millions-of-years-old fossils is the fact of soft original organic tissue (i.e., UNfossilized) finds of dinosaurs and other extinct organisms in the rock of the earth! These original soft tissue finds utterly DISPROVE the evolutionary hypothesis that these creatures lived millions of years ago because organic tissue even under the most ideal conditions conceivable cannot survive even 100,000 years, to say nothing of a million years—to say nothing of the supposed 65 million years of time since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Proteins, for example, have a maximum possibility of about 40,000 years duration under perfect, ideal conditions for preservation. Collagen tissue, which is somewhat more durable, may last up to 100,000 years under absolutely ideal conditions. This is all established by the empirical, known science of chemical kinetics. (I will cite Mary Schweitzer to that effect below.)

Amazingly, these original soft tissue finds are also yielding significant Carbon-14 content in the original tissue, which is another impossibility if, in fact, the tissue is 65 million years old as claimed by evolutionists, as C-14 has a very short half-life of about 5,500 years. In addition, these soft original tissue finds of dinosaurs and other organisms are also yielding unracemized DNA, that is partly undegraded (still left-handed) DNA which rapidly randomizes (racemizes) after the death of the organism to a 50/50 ratio of left and right handed DNA, and then gradually disintegrates completely. DNA’s half-life is even shorter than C-14, maybe about 600 years at most. (DNA in ALL living organisms consists of exclusively left-handed DNA.)

This triad of facts, 1) extant original organic tissue, 2) significant Carbon-14 content in the original tissue, and 3) extant and unracemized DNA remains, is like a Molotov cocktail thrown into the gasoline tank of evolution. These things cannot possibly be if the tissue is millions of years old, and this is not conjecture but known established science. These finds have utterly and conclusively demolished the evolutionary pretensions of the Darwinists.

Unfortunately, the administrators of the Great Darwinian Propaganda Machine have no interest in educating the general public about the significance of these facts nor students attending our colleges and universities. In fact, they are quite determined to make sure the general public does NOT get educated about these things and are spoon-fed MISinformation about this subject. (After all, it is the general public from whom ultimately the floodgates of money and funding flow. Gotta protect the gold mine!) All we are getting from the Darwinian establishment now is special pleading after the fact, propaganda, in contradiction to all known and very well established science about organic tissue decay and chemical kinetics.

Mary Higby Schweitzer, more than anyone else, has been front and center in the theater of soft dinosaur tissue finds and investigation. Schweitzer is a paleontologist at North Carolina State University. She is also the protege of the famous Jack Horner who, according to Wikipedia, “is one of the best-known paleontologists in the United States. In addition to his many paleontological discoveries, Horner served as the technical advisor for all of the Jurassic Park films, and even served as partial inspiration for one of the lead characters, Dr. Alan Grant.”

Horner is reported saying to Schweitzer, upon learning of Schweitzer’s discoveries, “The creationists are going to love you.”

In public news media interviews, Schweitzer has said:

“It just doesn’t seem possible. But yes you can actually take the vessels [i.e. soft dinosaur blood vessels] and they do have internal components and so you can take a probe and kind of squeeze those things out into solution and the vessels are fine. It’s just…I can’t explain it to be honest.”

And:

“Well it is very amazing. It is utterly shocking, actually, because it flies in the face of everything that we understand about how tissues and cells degrade…the laws of chemistry and biology and everything else that we know say that it should be gone. It should be degraded completely.”

And:

“A lot of our science doesn’t allow for this. All of the chemistry and all of the molecular breakdown experiments that we’ve done don’t allow for this. So if this material turns out to be the actual remnants of the dinosaur then, yes, I think we will have to do some, certainly rethinking of some of the basics of the model of fossilization.”

That rethinking should start with the basic time assumption, that the dinosaur tissue under examination is millions of years old and that fossilization takes many hundreds of thousands or millions of years to occur (an assumption which is overwhelmingly contradicted by the internal evidence of many, many fossils). That would seem to be the logical and rational conclusion to make—but NO, that is simply not permitted because that would interfere with faith in evolution. Re-evaluation of the time assumption is simply not up even for discussion, to say nothing of serious consideration. No way, no how. VERBOTEN! Subsequent investigation has shown that the tissue being found is, in fact, original organic tissue, the remnants of the dinosaur.

Until very recently, I was under the impression that the very first soft dinosaur tissue finds were unearthed by Mary Schweitzer in 1997 until recently being informed better by Mark Armitage in a video. Apparently soft dinosaur tissue finds go all the way back to at least 1966! Roman Pawlicki of Jagiellonian University in Poland has apparently published at least fifteen scientific papers on his finds.

To judge from the things Mary Schweitzer has said publicly, Mary Schweitzer herself appears to have believed that she was the first scientist to discover soft dinosaur tissue. She was not. Apparently, the self-appointed Guardians of Evolutionary Dogma have not been very interested in spreading the word about Pawlicki’s findings. I ask, how is it possible that an educated scientist such as Mary Schweitzer could have been in ignorance of fifteen (15!) scientific papers spanning from 1966 to 1995 in her own specialty? Apparently, the Great Darwinian Propaganda Machine not only quarantines information from getting outside of academia but also within.

According to Mark Armitage, Mary Schweitzer’s first such discovery was in 1997 in the fossilized (?) bones of the most popular of all dinosaurs, the tyrannosaurus rex. Found there were soft blood vessels, proteins, various blood cells, collagen and even DNA sequences! I encourage the reader to investigate this information at the ICR website here, and Bob Enyart’s page from Real Science Radio.

Until these discoveries started to be unearthed in 1997 by Mary Schweitzer, there was universal agreement that soft organic tissue could survive at the outside maximum, under the best, most optimal of ideal conditions, for maybe up to an absolute maximum of 100,000 years and certainly not for multiple hundreds of thousands of years — to say nothing of millions of years. This is why fossils were never before investigated by scientists for soft tissue. It has just simply been assumed by the evolutionists that the dinosaur and other remains MUST be millions of years old—hence, it was not possible for them to contain soft tissue, and therefore there was no need to look for it. (Bob Enyart of Real Science Radio has asked a pertinent question: How much valuable scientific information has been lost forever over the last 150 years due to the false beliefs of the evolutionists?)

Organic tissue, which consists of complex molecules, rapidly degrades of itself after the death of the organism even absent any external influences. Organic tissue is unstable and degrades even from its own molecular motion of the constituent atoms and also from very slight temperature variations. Needless to say, the evolution-minded scientists have been scrambling to explain away the obvious significance of these finds. They are trying to concoct ad hoc explanations to advance the assertion that these soft tissue finds have survived for millions of years—despite their own previous universal agreement that such extant soft tissue was known to be impossible. This attempt smacks of special pleading after the fact to me, as the referenced ICR article also observes.

Secular paleontologists and geologists and biologists (that is to say, those who have faith in the religion of Naturalism) over the last 150 years have been so universally convinced that dinosaur fossils were so old (i.e., millions of years) that no one ever dreamed of attempting to find extant soft tissue in them. Dinosaur bones with extant soft tissue inside of them have been on display in museums around the world, all the while the curators of these museums being completely in ignorance of what they had in their possession. Extant soft tissue finds in dinosaur bones has utterly astonished the scientists. It certainly astonished Mary Schweitzer, according to her own testimony. Mary Schweitzer was so incredulous at the facts before her eyes that she tested the samples 17 times searching for laboratory error!!! The old-earth evolutionists’ minds are blinded by their religious faith (the religion of Naturalism) to the truth manifestly before their eyes, namely, that any surviving soft tissue conclusively proves that the specimen is only several thousand years old at most.

Conclusion: the entire age scheme of modern Lyellian geology and Darwinian evolution is now completely and definitively discredited and must be discarded in favor of a young earth model. The facts warrant this. (But, of course, admitting this self-evident fact to the general public could possibly cause very severe interruptions of the allocation of public money, and that is just unthinkable.)

The obvious and irrefutable conclusion to be made from all of these dinosaur (and other) soft tissue finds is that the unfossilized remains examined (and, therefore the rocks they are found in) are merely thousands of years old, not millions. The number of such finds keeps mounting up to the point where these soft tissue finds are now the norm. A few random citations include, 1) organic tissue found in a triceratops horn, 2) soft tissue found in a hadrosaur, 3) a supposedly 80 million year old mosasaur, 4) a supposedly 150 million year old archaeopteryx, 5) and, get this, soft tissue from supposedly 500 million year old pre-Cambrian beard worms!!! The evolutionists now want us to believe that organic tissue can survive for half a billion years! The known facts of empirically demonstrated science regarding organic tissue decomposition are simply ignored and dismissed.

These finds dramatically disprove the fundamental axiomatic, a priori age assumptions pre-loaded into virtually all archaeological, paleontological, and geological research of evolutionary academia. This issue constitutes a test of the honesty and integrity of our academicians. The scientists who have faith in the religion of Naturalism have simply been wrong about the age of the fossils (or in these cases, the unfossils) and, therefore, of the age of the earth, and it is time to admit it. They are now beginning to look very, very foolish, indeed, trying to defend the dogmas of the religion of Naturalism and its premier article of faith, evolution.

THE SPECIOUSNESS OF “THE ORIGIN”

June 27, 2016 by Tom Shipley

Welcome to Creation Chronicles! I am Tom Shipley.

Beginning with this article, I will be posting, God willing, weekly articles regarding the creation-evolution controversy. So who is Tom Shipley? I am a former atheist and evolutionist and a former believer in an old earth and an old universe in my college years, now a young earth creationist. I went through a short period of being an old-earth creationist many years ago. Funny what an open mind, and a willingness to follow the empirical data, and a diligent single-minded effort to discover truth for yourself will do to you!

This site will be dedicated in part to dispelling the systematic and pervasive censorship, and countering the “spin,” of the GDPM, the Great Darwinian Propaganda Machine, with the goal in mind of helping to also end the persecution of Darwin doubters which is pervasive throughout academia, government, and scientific research in any role even remotely touching upon the subject of evolution. (One of my “favorite” examples of censorship perpetrated by the GDPM may be found here.) I also have a YouTube page featuring a compilation of what I regard as some of the best videos on the subject. Those are all the works of other people. In that venue, I have tried to bring together in as short a compilation as possible some of the best and most informative videos on the subject. To date I have compiled 55 videos on the subject.

I have no delusions that I will single-handedly end the rampant censorship and persecution that exists. I, as an individual (with a little help from some friends) can only contribute my small humble part. What I can promise the follower of this site is that if you will follow along, read what I post, and follow up on the links provided, you will get a good education about this subject. I am not much one for inconsequential stuff, trivial and peripheral issues. I prefer the substantive and pivotal issues and information. There won’t be much “fluff and puff” here, maybe a smidgin of humor here and there.

I intend to be plain-spoken and pull no punches in this venue. “Professional deference” is all well and fine among scientists dealing with raw data and research, but in view of the rampant censorship and pervasive persecution perpetrated by the GDPM, the time is long past for treating veritable evildoers as if they are angels who have dropped down fresh from heaven.

On a technical note, the look of this website is going to be changing a bit as I go along and as I learn the particulars of how to manage the look and layout of this site. This site is essentially still under construction. Time constraints and lack of familiarity with the apps and programs at my disposal have prevented me from making this site as polished and professional as I would like, at least for now. I am more concerned about substantive CONTENT, and it is my prayer that the Lord God, the Creator of all things, will use my meager efforts here to lead you, my visitor, into the truths of His Creation.

The Speciousness of “The Origin”

In 1859 a now very famous book was published by Charles Darwin. Its title: “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.” Not many people are aware of the full title and evolutionists are embarrassed to highlight it.

Original Title page to "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life" by Charles Darwin — Original Title page to “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life” by Charles Darwin

The book was (and is) especially popular in England and America because it provided both a pseudo-scientific motivation and justification for British imperialism (upon which the sun never set) and American racism dealing with the slavery issue. It was also instantly absorbed into the political ideologies of Communism and Socialism which were expressions of the philosophy of dialectical materialism.

The Rev. Rousas J Rushdoony rightly observes:

“Two of the most interested readers of Darwin were Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. They wrote very happy letters one to another welcoming the publication of Darwin’s book. Their reason was very simple; with Darwin they felt socialism and communism had become inevitable. [00:05:57]
“While previously they were espousing a somewhat esoteric faith…they now felt and rightly so that with the adoption of Darwin’s theory as science, as the faith of modern man, socialism and communism were inevitable. They were right. Let us analyze why, because I think it is imperative for us to realize that there is no fighting socialism in all its forms, pagan or Marxist, unless we undercut the impact and the affect and the roots thereof, the theory of evolution. Now the theory of evolution teaches us that the world is a universe of chance, not of law. That natural selection or the survival of the fittest brings about the change of the species and the development of living things. In other words, it tells us that this is a dog eat dog universe, that its war between man and man, between species and species.”
http://www.pocketcollege.com/beta/index.php?title=The_Influence_of_Socialism_in_American_Education_(Q_and_A)_-_RR151A2#While_previously_they_were_espousing_a_somewhat_esoteric

In his book, “From Darwin to Hitler,” Richard Weikart notes:

“After reading Darwin’s Origin of Species, Karl Marx wrote to Friedrich Engels, ‘Although developed in a coarse English manner, this is the book that contains the foundation in natural history for our view’.”–pg.4, emph. supp.

When Lenin and the Communists of the USSR and China boasted of themselves as “scientific socialists,” and murdered scores of millions of people, it was Darwin’s “The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life” which they had in mind. When Hitler and his murderous National Socialist Party compatriots set their sights on creating the master race and exterminating or enslaving all other races, it was “The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life” that lay ominously in the background providing both the motivation and justification for their schemes. This claim incenses evolution’s modern devotees, but it is a simple historical fact.

Darwin himself maintained,

“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world.” This quote is from Darwin’s subsequent book, “The Descent of Man.”

It is my contention that the part Darwin’s book has played in sociology and politics has been far, far more influential than the part it has played in science. What tangible difference has Darwin’s theory of evolution actually made in the way that scientific research is done? As far as I can see, it has been utterly irrelevant or possibly obstructive. When academicians cite Darwin’s book, they virtually always abbreviate the title as simply “Origin,” or “The Origin,” or “The Origin of Species.” This present article is not about sociology, but about the natural sciences. However, the part Darwin’s book has played in sociology and politics should be always kept in mind by the reader. To that end, from now on, when I cite “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection OR The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life,” I shall abbreviate the title simply as “Favored Races,” or “The Preservation of Favored Races” to give the book its most appropriate emphasis.

Lest the secular reader object that I would, after all, maintain such a viewpoint being a biblical creationist, let me point out that Fred Hoyle, one of the most eminent scientists of the 20th century and hardly a biblical creationist, observed pretty much the same thing. Hoyle wrote:

“The modern point of view that survival is all has its roots in Darwin’s theory of biological evolution through natural selection. Harsh as it may seem, this is an open charter for any form of opportunistic behavior. Whenever it can be shown with reasonable plausibility that even cheating and murder would aid the survival either of ourselves personally or the community in which we happen to live, then orthodox logic enjoins us to adopt these practices, just because there is no morality except survival…

“…the nihilistic philosophy which so-called educated opinion chose to adopt following the publication of The Origin of Species committed mankind to a course of automatic self-destruction. A Doomsday machine was then set ticking.”–The Intelligent Universe, pg. 8-9

The evolutionary Doomsday machine is very much responsible for the attempted genocide and murder of six million Jews in Nazi Germany and the many tens of millions of others killed in World war II, tens of millions more under Soviet Communism and roughly 50 million Chinese butchered under Chinese Communism–all in the name of “scientific (read evolutionary) Socialism.”

Three Things Darwin Knew: (or why his book was and is specious)

1. When Charles Darwin published Favored Races, Darwin knew, and paleontologists reminded him, that not one single clear, intermediate form had ever been found in the fossils linking one kind of organism with another. There were simply no empirical connecting links, for example, between fish and amphibians, or anything else (although there was no shortage of proposed linkages; the famous coelacanth, supposed to be extinct for 70 million years, was proposed as such until living ones, 100% fish and 0% amphibian, started showing up live in the Indian Ocean). This problem of lack of clear chain of descent became more and more intensely acute over time culminating in the punctuated equilibria revolution of Stephen Jay Gould, Niles Eldredge and Steven Stanley who confessed publicly that the complete and total LACK of intermediate forms in the fossil record was “the trade secret of paleontology.” The cat is out of the bag and the jig is up!

2. When Darwin wrote Favored Races, Darwin knew of the empirical demonstration of the non-transmutability of species (kinds). Darwin was himself an avid breeder of pigeons and consulted other breeders of all sorts, maintaining copious notes, and was well aware that there were inherent limits (a “species barrier“) to what even intelligently guided selection by man could accomplish. Darwin knew that empirical science demonstrated that variation is an intra-species phenomenon; cats are always cats no matter how much variation exists among them, dogs are always dogs no matter how much variation exists among them, cattle are always cattle, horses are always horses, etc. (See Darwin Retried by Norman MacBeth, pg. 29-38). MacBeth observes:

“Despite strenuous efforts for two or three centuries, it has never been possible to produce a blue or black tulip. Darwin himself knew in 1844 that most authors assumed there were limits to variation, and he also knew that among pigeons the crossing of highly bred varieties was apt to provoke a reversion to ‘the ancient rock pigeon’.”—pg. 33, emph. supp.

In view of Darwin’s knowledge of the history of breeding experiments (which was considerable) Darwin’s famous citation of variations among finch beaks (which are all one species and whose varieties have been observed interbreeding) on the Galapagos Islands was simply baseless subterfuge—the utilization of an utterly trivial and irrelevant characteristic in relation to the hypothesis of macroevolution. Intraspecies variation should not even be called “evolution” except in the generic sense that “evolution” simply means change. Intraspecies variation certainly is not “evolution” in the common usage and understanding of the term which is essentially the idea of the common ancestry of all living beings.

3. When Darwin wrote Favored Races, Darwin knew of the irreducibly complex nature of the myriads of features of living organisms. This aspect of living organisms was, even in Darwin’s time, the chief objection that biologists had against Darwin’s proposed mechanism of evolution (see Koestler, Janus, pg. 165, etc.). Michael Behe may have popularized the phrase “irreducible complexity” in our time (see “Darwin’s Black Box“) but the concept and empirical observation of it has troubled biologists, especially evolutionists, from the first day that Darwin’s book rolled off the printing press. The idea is nothing new.

Living organisms consist of functionally interdependent components and a random mutation of one character would require a corresponding random mutation of multiple other characters at the same time to produce a living, functioning organism, and this is something that random chance simply cannot do—not in a thousand years, not in multiplied trillions of trillions of years. Time is, in fact, a dis-integrating and dis-organizing factor and makes evolution more and more unlikely with each passing moment due to the absolute necessity for simultaneous coordination of changes in interrelated systems. Yet Darwin’s hypothesis of random mutations accumulating to produce new species requires millions of years just to produce the number of mutations necessary. This is the proverbial “800 pound gorilla” that has been sitting in the Darwinist’s living room staring them in the face all along and with which they have steadfastly refused to come to terms. This metaphor of the 800 pound gorilla sitting in the evolutionists’ living room is more aptly switched to something much more immense—let’s say Mount Everest sitting on top of their house. This consideration, all by itself, formally and conclusively falsifies Darwin’s speculations.

These things that Darwin knew when he wrote Favored Races, and was very well acquainted with, are good justification for re-titling his book as The Speciousness of ‘The Origin’. It is my judgment that in the face of these things which Darwin knew he had no compelling justification whatsoever to promote his hypothesis as anything more than a very tentative musing. The wonder is that Darwin’s musings ever got off the ground to begin with. There were very compelling and formidable logical and scientific considerations weighing very heavily against it, even in his own day. The acuteness of these problems has multiplied exponentially since then—indeed, it is no exaggeration to say astronomically. Anyone who doubts this should read Michael Denton’s book, “Evolution: A Theory in Crisis,” and Richard Milton’s “Shattering the Myths of Darwinism,” and Stephen Meyer’s “Darwin’s Doubt.” (Neither Denton nor Milton are biblical creationists, by the way. Both are agnostics. Meyer, though a professing Christian, is neither a young earth creationist nor much of a Biblicist, as far as I can tell.)

Darwin certainly had no rational or scientific justification for regarding the hypothesis of evolution as anything other than a very tentative speculation or, in the words of Scrooge explaining the source of the apparition of the ghost of Christmas past, the result of “an undone potato, an undigested bit of beef” during a state of insomnia. It was the social forces of the times, especially the lure of a justification for the claim of racial superiority of the white man and of British imperialism, not scientific validity that catapulted Darwin’s hypothesis to the status of a golden calf to be bowed down to and worshipped. This is why Favored Races was so eagerly gobbled up in England and America. Oh…and one other reason: in the words of Aldous Huxley,

“For myself…the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation…We objected to morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.” (Quoted by Don Boys, Ph. D., in Evolution: Fact, Fraud or Faith?, pg. 53, from Huxley’s Ends and Means–pg. 312-315, 316.

Boys continues, “(O)n a television show when (Huxley) was asked why evolution was so readily accepted…replied that evolutionists accepted Darwinism even without proof because they didn’t want God to interfere with their sexual mores.”

I once saw D. James Kennedy from the pulpit report that he had seen the Huxley interview himself and reported exactly the same statement as Don Boys reports in his book.

Evolution is simply an idol, the graven image of the religion of Naturalism, which is little more than the modern version of the cult of Bacchus.

SCIENTIFICALLY, naturalistic evolution is as dead as the dodo bird, as extinct as the tyrannosaurus. Knowledgeable scientists know that the hypothesis of natural evolution has reached an impenetrable impasse. We are privileged to live at such a time to witness evolution’s demise. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. Evolution, as a “scientific” postulate, has not been able to withstand the relentless onslaught of scientific progress and knowledge (not that it ever had much to commend it to begin with). First, the debunking of spontaneous generation by Louis Pasteur laid to rest the idea of the natural ORIGIN of life; second, the empirical demonstration of the non-transmutability of species through natural means by the fruit fly experiments of T. H. Morgan and others beginning in 1909 proved false the idea of naturally-occurring mutations creating viable new species; third, the growing realization, culminating in the punctuated equilibria hypothesis of Gould and Eldredge, that no transitional forms would EVER be found in the fossil record or ever did exist; fourth, the unanswerable fact of irreducible complexity of living organisms showing intelligent design and creation of life; fifth, the explosion of knowledge in genetics in recent years revealing specified coded information has supercharged the manifestation of the reality of intelligent design of living organisms to the point of juggernaut status…and on and on and on it goes. Evolution has a rather impressive resume of failures guaranteed to grant anyone entrance into the U of L (University of Losers).

INSTITUTIONALLY, on the other hand, evolution hangs on like a brain-dead patient in the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital, sustained on life support by the vast taxpayer-funded revenues fueling the GDPM (Great Darwinian Propaganda Machine) of our government education system, and its ignorant dupes in the media who have been brainwashed by that same machine. The main purpose of the GDPM at this point in time is to CONCEAL from the general public the true status of evolution, TO SUPPRESS AND REPRESS INFORMATION (If you don’t believe me, just ask Mark Armitage.), or to create its own Public Relations spin on the information in those unfortunate circumstances where the information manages to attract popular interest and overflow out onto the streets. There is, after all, a lot of loot to be had, a lot of pillaged public money flowing in their direction to be protected, and that is perceived as justification enough for a few “white lies.” Evolution as a science is effectively dead and has become little more than a great con job and swindle.

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BOOK REVIEW OF “DARWIN’S CREATION MYTH” BY ALEXANDER MEBANE , PART 3

BOOK REVIEW OF “DARWIN’S CREATION MYTH” BY ALEXANDER MEBANE, PART 2

BOOK REVIEW OF “DARWIN’S CREATION MYTH” BY ALEXANDER MEBANE

THE UN-FOSSILS – SOFT DINOSAUR TISSUE AND THE AGE OF THE EARTH

THE SPECIOUSNESS OF “THE ORIGIN”

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