Whole Counsel of God

For the Whole World

Even Darwin Knew

Even Charles Darwin knew that the fossil record did not support his doctrine. He said, "In the sixth chapter I enumerated the chief objections which might be justly urged against the views maintained in this volume … One, namely, the distinctness of specific forms and their not being blended together innumerable, transitional links, is a very obvious difficulty." (Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, A.L. Burt Company, pages 312-313.)

In the foregoing, Darwin had reference to the "distinctness of specific forms" in the fossil record. In this same book, Darwin devoted Chapter Twelve to the fact of the lack of evidence in the fossil record to support his evolutionary doctrine.

Darwin also recognized that the presence of fossils of animals and plants that were fully developed in the "oldest" fossil bearing rocks was a serious problem for his views. He said, "There is another and allied difficulty which is more serious. I allude to the manner in which species belonging to several of the main divisions of the animal kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest [same as the oldest to evolutionists, B.O.] known fossilferous rocks. To the question why we do not find rich fossilferous deposits belonging to those assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer." (Ibid., 38-39.)

Darwin thus admitted that there were no fossils of any ancestors or predecessors of those forms that appear abundantly in the Cambrian rock, which according to evolutionists, is the "oldest" rock containing fossils. The big question for evolutionists is, therefore: From whence came the life forms represented in such great abundance in the Cambrian or "oldest" fossil bearing rock? If their doctrine is true, these forms had to gradually develop over a very long period of time. Where is the record of such a process of such gradual development? The record certainly has not been found in the rocks!

To this scribe, it is reasonable to believe that the greater part of the fossil record was made by the catastrophic action of the flooding, shifting, changing earth during the great flood of Noah's time, and during a long readjustment period following the deluge. Scholars say that the original language of Genesis 7:11 indicates that such action occurred during the flood. The flood waters did not all come from falling rain, but "the fountains of the great deep were broken up" and evidently the waters from the great deep helped to turn the earth into a shoreless sea.

Instead of containing evidence that organic evolution has occurred, the fossil record indicates that a multiplicity of life forms made by God Almighty were living together and were suddenly engulfed in the catastrophic action of that great flood. For, if we do not relate the origin of the fossil record to that great flood, we cannot relate it to any event, because there is no record of any other historical event to which we can relate it, (pages 68-70).

When Charles Darwin published his views, paleontology (the study of fossils) was in the beginning stages. He hoped that new fossil evidence would be discovered that would support his evolutionary views. He hoped that all around the world, fossil evidence would be unearthed and the "missing links" would be discovered to support his assumptions that evolution had occurred. His hope was vain, because it has been about 140 years since he expressed his hope, and thousands of tons of fossils have been found by digging all around the world, and now evolutionists use even fewer fossils to try to support Darwin's views than they did soon after he published his views. Dr. David Raup says this. He is the curator of the world famous Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. In that museum are nearly one fourth of all the fossils that have been found in all the world. This information is in an article by him in the January 1972 issue of the Field Museum Bulletin.

The Fossils Say No!

Several years ago, I had the blessing and privilege of hearing Dr. Duane T. Gish lecture in Huntsville, AL. It was a great pleasure to me to talk with him and to give him one of my books.

Dr. Gish's Ph.D. is in Biochemistry from the University of California in Berkley. He spent 18 years in biochemical and biomedical research at Cornell University Medical College, the Virus Laboratory of Berkley University of California and the Upjohn Company in Kalamazoo, MI. He has written many books and articles. He is a popular lecturer on the creation versus evolution issue. He has had many debates with evolutionists on campuses of many prestigious colleges and universities. I admire and appreciate him for all the great work he has done to refute the evolutionary hypothesis and to defend the doctrine of creation by Almighty God.

Evolutionists attempt to explain the absence of "transitional links" in the fossil record by saying there are imperfections in the record. Dr. Gish says the following on this matter.

It seems clear then, that after 150 years of intense searching, a large number of obvious transitional forms would have been discovered if the predictions of evolution theory are valid. We have, for example, discovered literally billions of fossils of ancient invertebrates, and many fossils of ancient fishes. The transition of invertebrate into vertebrate is believed to have required many millions of years. Populations are supposed to constitute the units of evolution and, of course, only successful populations survive. It seems obvious, then, that if we find fossils of the invertebrates which were supposed to have been ancestral to fishes, and if we find fossils of the fishes, we surely ought to find the fossils of the transitional forms. If fish evolved into amphibia, as evolutionists believe, then we would predict that we would find transitional forms showing the gradual transition of fins into feet and legs. Of course, many other alterations in the anatomy and physiology of fishes would have to occur to change an animal adapted to living its entire life span in water to one which spends most of its life outside of water. The fin to feet transition would be an easily traceable transition, however. If reptiles gave rise to birds, then we would expect to find transitional forms in the fossil record showing the gradual transition of the forelimbs of the ancestral reptile into the wings of a bird, and the gradual transition of some structure of the reptile into the feathers of a bird. These again are obvious transitions that could be easily traced in the fossil record. Of course, many other changes would have been taking place at the same time, such as the conversion of the hindfeet of the reptile into the perching feet of the bird, reptilian skull into birdlike skull, etc. (Evolution, The Fossils Say No, by Dr. Duane Gish, pages 32-33.)

R.B. Goldschmidt is one of the most prominent evolutionists even though he does not agree with the doctrine that all evolutionary changes took place very slowly by many thousands of slight changes. Instead, he proposed that major changes were sudden. He called this "the hopeful monster mechanism." Dr. Gish commented on this as follows.

He proposed, for instance, that at one time a reptile laid an egg and a bird was hatched from the egg! All major gaps in the fossil record were accounted for, according to Goldschmidt, by similar events something laid an egg, and something else got born! Neo-Darwinists prefer to believe that Goldschmidt is the one who laid the egg, maintaining that there is not a shred of evidence to support his "hopeful monster" mechanism. Goldschmidt insists just as strongly that there is no evidence for the postulated neo-Darwinian mechanism (major transformations by the accumulation of micro mutations). Creationists agree with both the neo-Darwinists and Goldschmidt there is no evidence for either type of evolution! Goldschmidt's publications do offer cogent arguments against the neo-Darwinian view of evolution, from both the field of genetics and the field of paleontology. (Ibid., page 119.)

Evolutionists leave the impression that surely no one would deny that evolution is a scientific fact if he looks at the fossil record. This is a specious psychological trick that deceives multitudes who "assume that fossils and evolution go hand in hand. Some people even seem to think that 'believing' in fossils is almost the same as 'believing' in evolution." (What is Creation Science? by Dr. Henry Morris and Dr. Gary Parker, page 96.)