Creation/Evolution: The Fossil Record
John Doughty
May 31, 2015
- Predictions of the Fossil Record:
Creation: The abrupt appearance of living things. Characteristics complete in first representatives. No transitional forms. Variation limited within each kind.
Evolution: A Slow gradual sequence of evolutionary course. Transitional forms expected. All forms genetically related.
- The Fossil Record Should Prove Evolution, if Evolution is True.
-slow gradual process occurring through time.
“Naturalists must remember that the process of evolution is revealed only through fossil forms… only paleontology can provide them with the evidence of evolution and reveal its course or mechanisms.” Pierre P. Grassé, Evolution of Living Organisms, Academic Press, New York, 1977, p. 82.
III. There is no Evolution in Fossil Record
Cambrian Explosion
-Trilobites
-Brachiopods
Amphibian to Reptile
Archaeopteryx
- Supposed Evidence from Anthropology
Nebraska Man
Piltdown Man
Java Man (Homo erectus)
Ramapithecus
Lucy (Australopithecus Afarensis)
Neanderthal Man
- Quotes by Evolutionists on the Nature of the Fossil Record:
“This is true of all thirty-two orders of mammals… The earliest and most primitive known members of every order already have the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous sequence from one order to another known. In most cases, the break is so sharp and the gap so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed… This regular absence of transitional forms is not confined to mammals, but is an almost universal phenomenon, as has long been noted by paleontologists. It is true of almost all classes of animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate… it is true of the classes, and of the major animal phyla, and it is apparently also true of analogous categories of plants.” George G., Simpson, Tempo and Mode in Evolution, New York: Columbia University Press, 1944, pp. 105, 107.
“It remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of families, appear in the [fossil] record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences.“ George G. Simpson, The Major Features of Evolution, New York: Columbia University Press, 1953, p. 360.
“…the gradual change of fossil species has never been part of the evidence for evolution…Darwin showed that the record was useless for testing between evolution and special creation because it has great gaps in it. The same argument still applies… In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuations, uses the fossil record as evidence in favor of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation.” Mark Ridley, “Who Doubts Evolution?” New Scientist (vol. 90; June 25, 1981), p. 831. Dr. Ridley is Professor of Zoology at Oxford University.
“From the almost total absence of fossil evidence relative to the origin of the phyla, it follows that any explanation of the mechanism in the creative evolution of the fundamental structure plans is heavily burdened with hypothesis. This should appear as an epigraph to every book on evolution. The lack of direct evidence leads to the formulation of pure conjecture as to the genesis of the phyla; we do not even have a basis to determine the extent to which these opinions are correct.” P.P. Grasse, Evolution of Living Organism, New York: Academic Press (English Translation 1977), p. 31
“The transition to the first mammal . . . is still an enigma.” Roger Lewin, “Bones of Mammals, Ancestors Fleshed Out,” Science, Vol. 212, June 26, 1981, p. 1492.
“I concede the fossil record as containing no evidence for evolution; our knowledge of evolution comes only through the study of living things.” Vincent Sarich, Debate with Duane Gish at James Madison University, January 22, 2001.
“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.” Gould, Stephen Jay, “Evolution’s Erratic Pace,” Natural History, vol. 86 (May 1977), p.14.
“Paleontologists have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin’s argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.” Gould, Stephen Jay, “Evolution’s Erratic Pace,” Natural History, vol. 86 (May 1977), p 14.