Clough Evolution Lesson 13

Problems of the Evolutionary Hypothesis (5) More Problems and Micro-Evolution

[long blank spot] …actually take in oxygen through the gills, so-called. No, they’re totally nonfunctional and they aren’t really gills anyway. So therefore it doesn’t really prove anything. The old slogan, ontology recapitulates phylogeny, which I learned in high school is a lot of nonsense, it doesn’t prove anything. If fact, if you want to really take it to the extreme, it’s very interesting that a monkey as he is growing in the embryo looks more like man than he does a monkey; he’s hairless and he has a very small eye ridge. And so therefore if embryology recapitulates phylogeny and that is that as an infant grows in the womb and passes through different stages of fetal growth, if this really is a reenactment of the drams of his evolutionary development, then what do you do about the monkey? Did the monkey evolve then from man, because the monkey in the monkey’s embryo at one point is hairless and has a small, very small eye ridge and looks very much like a man? Would we therefore conclude from watching the monkey’s embryonic development that monkey evolved from man? Of course not!

And I think Frair and Davis have an excellent illustration at this point of soap carving. Imagine if two people sat down at the table, each with a bar of soap and began to carve, one a turtle and the other an elephant; now as the carving started, would or would not the soap bars look similar? Well, they would look very similar. As the carving went on, analogous to the development of the embryo, as the carving went on the turtle and the elephant would look gradually less and less alike. In other words, the greatest degree of similarity would be found at the beginning of the carving sequence. And as the carving proceeded the likenesses would decrease. Now what is this saying? It’s simply saying that the reason why many embryos resemble each other from one animal to another is that you have the process of differentiation working. In other words, as the soap, in the case of the elephant and the turtle is carved, each time the knife is applied to the bar of soap and each time a chip of soap is removed, a differentiation has been made in the soap, and thus as the turtle and the elephant develop you have greater and greater differentiation. And so similarly, if you have an embryo in the womb of a monkey and the embryo in the womb of a woman, as the monkey embryo grows and as the man embryo goes there will be a time when they are going to be parallel, very much so, but not because they’re related, simply because it’s a geometrical problem, a problem of solid geometry. They are an undifferentiated mass of protoplasm at the beginning and then they gradually differentiate and as the differentiation process goes on the embryos diverge in their likeness. And this is nothing more than you would have the same thing if two people sat down at a table and began to soap carve.

Now a third argument from similarity is a biochemical argument from similarity of blood proteins. And we have, for example, the rabbit blood and human blood and monkey blood and so on and monkey blood is very close to man’s blood. But really, I don’t have to know the chemical analysis of monkey blood and man’s blood to know that monkeys are very close to men structurally. In other words, biochemical analysis of blood doesn’t prove anything either, except a common design. It does not prove, because again this whole argument is grounded on the initial assumption that we said that any common characteristic shared between one species and another is proof that the two species evolved from a common ancestor having that characteristic. And this is not so; this is the assumption, however, that’s made behind all these arguments. And they all flounder when you destroy this assumption, as we have when we have asserted that similarity does not prove common ancestry, similarity only proves common design.

Now the fourth argument is an old thing that’s been kicking around for many years and it’s the argument of vestigial organs, that we have certain organs in our body that are just types of organs that were once used in a prior stage of the evolutionary development of man and now no longer are used. For example, the thyroid gland, the thymus, the appendix and the coccyx, and these would be examples of the vestigial organs. The first question is: are they really vestigial, are they really nonessential. It turns out the thyroid is necessary for its hormones; the thymus gland is necessary for antibody development; the appendix is necessary for protection of the human body against infections and so on, and the coccyx, the little bone in the end of your spine, is an anchor for muscles, it’s not nonessential. If you ever pull a chair out from someone, a very dangerous thing to do, and that person goes down and injures the coccyx on the floor, they will tell you that the coccyx is very essential, very essential. And it won’t be like one grammar school teacher told one of the students that comes to Lubbock Bible Church, that when babies are born in the hospital the doctor cuts the tail off, a very snotty remark on the part of the teacher. Of course it’s this kind of nonsense that I am dogmatically opposed to and I fear that at times we must have a confrontation with the school authorities over such nonsense.

So these are the four arguments based on similarity and of course they all flounder when the assumption that similarity proves common ancestry, when this assumption is challenged and replaced by the other assumption we are making, that similarity proves common design; God was the same creator of them all.

Now we come to the second category of arguments used to substantiate macroevolution and that is the fossil arguments, and by far and away this is impressive category of argument. However I would like to criticize and direct criticism against this fossil data as proof that macroevolution has occurred. I would say there are four comeback arguments against the fossil data. The first argument is that when you go down the so-called earliest fossil layers, the Precambrian, Cambrian discontinuity and you begin to move from the Precambrian rock that has very, very little sign of life to the Cambrian rock which is the sedimentary rock laid down in the earliest stages of organic evolution, as you look at this boundary between the Precambrian and Cambrian layer, as you move from the Precambrian up to the Cambrian, you discover that there’s no gradual transition to living forms. In other words, all of a sudden living forms appear in the record; there’s just no gradual transition whatsoever and even more shocking than this is that 9 or 10 animal phyla appear all together in Cambrian rock.

Now this is surprising for the reason that if evolution occurred, then you would expect the gradual development of different kinds of living creatures over such a long time that you would have fossils from this time of gradual transition. In other words, if it took, say a million or so years to evolve, some living thing from inorganic material, why is it that we have no fossil record of that million years; nowhere do we have any transition forms. All of a sudden in the fossil record we’re greeted with 9 or 10 phyla already developed. This to me is a very crucial observation. There’s no gradual transition whatever.

Then we have the second argument that I would direct against macroevolution, drawing itself from fossil arguments, and that is that there are gaps in the fossil record which are no smaller than the gaps between living species. In other words, we have dogs and cats but we don’t have any half-dog-half-cats today. And when you go in the fossil record you find the same thing. You have dog fossils and cat fossils but no half-dog-half-cat fossils. So there is no change in the gaps in the records from the gaps that we find in existence today. And it’s rather troubling because if evolution really did occur, then you would expect a gradual smooth transition from one species to the next. And as we move in the evolutionary scale from one thing to the next you’d expect transition and yet we don’t have the transition.

Now Darwin recognized this when he wrote Origin of Species because he said this, and I’m quoting Darwin: “This argument is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.” In other words, Darwin said look, we find dogs and cats but no half-dog-half cats. Now of course I’m being facetious when I use the dog/cat illustration. I realize that there’s there no cross-evolution even hypothesized for this case, but I’m just using them as illustrations to show you that the…to give you an idea what we’re talking about when we talk about transition. And what Darwin said, well, the reason why we don’t have any of these half-dog-half cat forms is simply that we haven’t dug enough, we haven’t got enough fossil data. So he said it’s really troubling but the only explanation I have for it is that we just have an incomplete geological record and if we just dig some more we’re bound to find some transition forms. And yet today, over 100 years later, these transitional forms have not been found.

And Frair and Davis in their booklet mention on page 56, “On the whole the discontinuities have been emphasized with increasing collecting,” (end quote). Why? Because if I have ten fossils before me, obviously I’m going to have nine gaps or a gap between each fossil and if there is a serious gap between any of them, major gap between any of them, then I can always chalk it up to the fact that well, if I keep digging, sooner or later I’ll find some to fill in the gap. But if on the other hand, instead of ten fossils I have ten thousand fossils, and the gaps have not been filled in, after I’ve dug and dug and dug and collected and collected and collected, and laid out my fossils on the table and I still find the same gaps that I had when I had ten and now I have ten thousand, and the gaps are still there, the gaps become a lot more significant as the total number rises.

And some men have acknowledged this. Goldsmith, for example, and Simpson, have acknowledged this and have therefore propounded systems of quantum evolution, the idea that well, if there aren’t any gaps, if there aren’t any fossil records of these transition forms it means the transition forms never existed and therefore when evolution occurred it must have occurred by step function. It must have gone somewhat like Velikovsky’s where you have like as step, things go on for a while and all of a sudden jump, boom, you have sudden mutations and there are gaps because there are no transition forms, everything is sudden. Now in the biological textbooks they always like to show off the Archaeopteryx, sort of a half reptile half bird as at least one case where they do have a transitional form. And of course, this is rather debated and three cheers, if you have one form and you need about a thousand of these things it’s still not very impressive. And the Archaeopteryx has been genuinely attacked as a transitional form and many people think it belongs to…it’s not half reptile at all, it’s fully bird and just has some skull features resembling that of a reptile.

Now before we go to the third point I want to back up this statement that there are gaps in the fossil record and I want to do so by quoting two experts in the field. First is G. G. Simpson, in his book, Temple and Mode in Evolution, Columbia University Press, 1964, on pages 105-106, and the reason why this quote is so significant is because of who G. G. Simpson is. He’s one of the greatest paleontologists this country has ever had. And writing in his book he said: “On still higher levels, those of what is here called mega evolution,” and by this he meant our macroevolution, “essentially continuous transitional sequences are not merely rare but are virtually absent. Their absence is so nearly universal that it cannot offhand be imputed to Chance.” Now here’s a monumental statement by a leading paleontologist that these gaps do exist and cannot be explained away any more. Darwin, a hundred years ago in the absence of the diggings and the fossil data, was able to chalk it up to geological imperfections but not any more. This is a very significant argument.

Simpson continues, (quote): “The facts are that many species in genre, indeed the majority, do appear suddenly in the record, differing sharply and in many ways from any earlier group, and this appearance of discontinuity becomes more common the higher the level until it is virtually universal as regards order and all higher steps in the taxonomic hierarchy.” In other words, the point is that if you go from phyla down to, all the way to order and down on the way ultimately to species, when you reach the point of order you do have some transitional forms but once you go above order on up to phyla, bang, everything is gaps and there just is no evidence whatever of bridging.

Now that book I quoted from was written in 1944; however we have another book written in 1961 Contemporary Botanical Thought, editors are MacLeod and Cobley, by Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1961 under the article, Evolution. And this is a quotation from E. J. H. Corner of Cambridge Botany School and he makes this amazing statement: Much evidence can be induced in favor of the theory of evolution, from biology, biogeography and paleontology, but I still think to the unprejudiced the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation.” Now that’s an amazing statement, “the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation.” Mind you, this isn’t a crusading evangelist that’s saying this; this is a botany professor from Cambridge University.

So it’s very interesting that when you look at the fossil record you do run across these gaps, not only at the transition point between inorganic and organic, the very bottom of the geologic column, but all through the geologic column you have these tremendously unbridgeable gaps from one grouping to the other grouping.

Now the third argument against the fossil data is that not only are there gaps between species but we have out of place fossils. In other words, if evolution is true it’s very strange then that not only do we have gaps but we have fossils in the wrong place. I would cite, for example, the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas, just south of Fort Worth. Here we have man tracks on part of the Paluxy River Bank in the same strata where we have dinosaur tracks. Now admittedly the man tracks here in the Paluxy River are highly debated. In fact, several members of the Creation Research Society disbelieve that these really are man tracks, and yet one looking at the pictures certainly sees the big toe with the little toes and insitu, I mean these aren’t pictures of rocks taken out of the Paluxy River, this is still right in the Paluxy River, nobody has tampered with this thing, there they are.

And it’s not just at Paluxy, for example, Professor Ingalls, writing in Scientific American in January, 1940, page 14, his article, The Carboniferous Mystery, mentions that we have man tracks in rocks all over the American continent. And the point here is that dinosaurs, according to the theory of evolution were supposed to become extinct 70 million years before man appeared on the scene, and yet at many cites in America we have human footprints, or what seems to be human footprints, in the same strata where dinosaur footprints exist. Ingalls lists cites in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Arizona, California, New Mexico. Some of these man footprints are 5 to 50 inches long, normal size. Others are giant footprints, 18 to 24 inches long, and Ingalls writes, on page 14 of his article, “If man, or even his ape ancestor, or even that ape ancestor’s early mammalian ancestor existed as far back as the carboniferous period in any shape, then the whole science of geology is so completely wrong that all the geologists will resign their jobs and take up truck driving. Hence, for the present at least, science rejects the attractive explanation that man made those mysterious prints in the mud of the carboniferous period with his feet.”

Now it’s very interesting to notice this. Here we have, evidently, some actual raw data that has come to view, and yet because this raw data does not fit with the prevailing scheme of evolution, it’s rejected. My mind is made up, as the saying goes, don’t confuse me with facts. When Roland Berg, writing in the magazine, Natural History, May, 1939, page 257, spoke of the Paluxy finding and particular of the dinosaur tracks he did get one or two sentences off about these man tracks, and he says they must be false. Why? Simply because no man has ever existed in the age of reptiles. And here once again Dr. Berg’s thinking parallels that of Dr. Ingalls, because the data conflicts with the theory we throw out the data. And this is the kind of reasoning that really bothers one who is sensitive to this kind of thing. A sensitive person just can’t go helter-skelter like a bull in a china shop on these issues. Perhaps this really is solid date, but whether it is or not it seems to me important enough to warrant a major investigation and yet you can’t find a major investigation, no one is willing to investigate the thing. Such an important thing that has such a fantastic potential and yet people don’t do it. And it seems to me it’s a clear indication of some sort of subliminal commitment, an emotional commitment to the theory of evolution that transcends any purely scientific interest. Which of course is what Christians have said all along, that basically what we’re dealing with here is the religious spiritual problem, not a scientific problem.

So at least at Paluxy and at many other places across the North American continent you have these footprints, apparently of men, and yet co-existing at the time of dinosaurs. So therefore we would ask the proponents of evolution, who say that evolution is a fact because of the fossil record, what kind of evolution is a fact because of the fossil record? How come men coexist with dinosaurs when you turn around and tell me and assure me that man evolved 70 million years after the dinosaurs? It seems to me there’s something wrong here.

An even more startling find was reported in the Creative Research Society Journal of September, 1968 and last summer, June 1, 1968, a man by the name of Mr. Meister, discovered footprints in Cambrian strata neat Salt Lake City. This is remarkable because Cambrian strata is the oldest sedimentary rock; this rock was laid down in the earliest stages of evolution when we had the first primitive forms, and yet not only was this footprint unmistakably human, but the footprint was wearing a shoe which had a heel on it and the heel was worn. The footprint was ten and a half inches long, three and a half inches at the sole, three inches wide at the heel. And Mr. Meister tried to show it to the University of Utah geologists and they wouldn’t even take time to see it, which once again shows you, if they really, really truly are committed to scientific processes, then any such information is obviously important and any such information would obviously warrant time and a careful, careful study. And yet in a blasé fashion, in a cavalier manner, these men just pass it off, won’t even take time to study it.

Well, Meister was smart, and he got a geological consulting agency based in Salt Lake City to conduct a study and prove that this rock layer was Cambrian, which it did and he has the written statement. He also was smart enough to photograph these footprints and smart enough to call witnesses to the scene. These witness later discovered some half a dozen other tracks in this so-called Cambrian strata. So it’s very interesting that you this Cambrian footprint and here you don’t even have…this is even before the dinosaurs evolved and yet evidently some man didn’t know that he wasn’t supposed to have evolved yet so he went walking along anyway.

Later on some people went to the same cite of Meister, later on last summer, and discovered a barefoot print of a child and the only kind of intelligent response you get is from the curator of the Salt Lake Museum and he says hmm, there must be something…there is a problem there. It’s very gratuitous for him to say there’s a problem there. But if there’s a problem there how come more people aren’t interested in scientifically studying it? And basically he wouldn’t even have said that except Meister leaked the story to UPI on July 14^th last summer and then that forced some comment from the scientific establishment. Of course one would, as a Christian, it’s sort of amusing because you can imagine if a piece of evidence turned up that would disprove the Bible then it would be blasted all over the front pages, UPI, AP, all the scientific establishment, everything else would carry it and of course this is just part of the satanic world system, the inherent bias against anything that smacks of Biblical creationism.

So here we have at least two cases of misplaced fossils and we could go on and on and on and on showing one misplaced fossil after another. And so the fossil evidence on which the theory of evolution is based, that evidence is not necessarily proof of evolution. It’s a very funny kind of proof of evolution because it seems to prove that evolution didn’t occur, at least the way the evolutionists say it did, or else how do you explain the out of place fossils?

And then the fourth criticism I would have is the living fossils of the so-called extinct animals. And this somehow casts doubt upon the whole evolutionary sequence. For example, Morris and Whitcomb, in the book, The Genesis Flood, point out three cases where animals that were supposed to have been extinct for millions and millions of years are suddenly found and discovered very much alive today in certain parts of the earth. Now the significance of this is that evolutionists dogmatically concluded that these animals had become extinct because once again, for so-called millions and millions of years of geological record, not one of these animals was entrapped as a fossil, and so since none of them were entrapped, none of them ever showed up in the fossil record, it was assumed that they had become extinct, and yet we have the ironic feature that these animals are very much alive. So one concludes from these things that basically the fossil record, if anything, is incomplete and very unreliable to determine the evolution and extinction of animal and plant species.

The Genesis Flood lists, for example, the tuatara for 135 million years supposedly not one of these things has existed because for 135 million years of geological record we can’t find one fossil, and yet they’re living in New Zealand today. How come, then, for a so-called 135 million years of the fossil record we don’t have any fossil evidence of this animal? Why?

The coelacanth, here for 70 million years this fish, supposedly a missing link, incidentally, because it was supposedly a precursor of the type of fish that moved from the water unto the land as primitive amphibians, fossils, this hasn’t been found for 70 million years and yet one of these was recently fished up very much alive from the Indian Ocean. And the third living fossil was a primitive mollusk and we haven’t found any fossil evidence of these primitive types of mollusks for 280 million years and yet one was dredged up off Central America in 1956. So you see here we have cases where the fossil record is totally deceptive, very deceptive as to what really went on.

And our criticism at this point simply is that if the fossil record is so unreliable as not to catch these living fossils, and to give us a bum steer and thinking they’ve become extinct for so many millions of years, and if the fossil record is so discordant as to produce these out of order fossils then what kind of evidence is this of evolution. How do you build your concept of macroevolution on such kind of fossil evidence? You don’t have any transition across the gaps, you don’t have any transition between inorganic and organic, once you get into the fossil column you find misplaced fossils, and not only that, but you find some fossils supposedly becoming extinct and yet you find living animals running around today. Now what kinds of goings on is this; what kind of evidence is this to build a theory on.

So I would conclude this section dealing with some of the specific problems of macroevolution, showing that the major thrust behind…the major argument for macroevolution proceeds from fossil data and when you examine the fossil data you don’t find anything like what is suggested by the evolutionists themselves. And it seems to me the fossil data does not prove that evolution occurred.

Now we would pass to our last section under problems of evolutionary hypothesis having covered first the problems of Chance, then the problems of attempted alternative explanations to Chance, cataclysmic and mystical evolution; thirdly we covered some specific problems with cosmic evolution and then fourthly we just got through discussing specific problems with macroevolution.

Now we want to conclude and wind up the discussion with a short presentation of the Biblical fixity of times and micro evolution. Our concept begins from Genesis 1:11, 21, 24, and 25. In Genesis 1:11, “And God said, Let the earth bring forth vegetation, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. [12] And the earth brought forth vegetation, and herb yielding seed after its kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after its kind, and God saw that it was good.” Verse 21, “And God created great sea monsters, and every living creature that moves, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after its kind: and God saw that it was good.” And from this you get the very clear impression, also in verse 24, “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind. [25] And God made the beast of the earth after its kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creeps upon the earth after its kind: and God saw that it was good.”

So here you have all these creatures categorized by the Hebrew word min, or “kind.” Now the question is, what does min correspond to in our present scheme of biological classification? Does it correspond to species? Does it correspond to genus? Does it correspond to order? What does it correspond to? Well, a number of men have done careful word studies in the Hebrew word for min, one of them, Professor J. Barton Paine, now of Trinity Seminary, and he has found that the word min is used in the Old Testament to refer to species, to genus, and to order.

For an example, turn to Leviticus 11:14-22. By noting the animals listed here in Leviticus 11:14-22 one can ascertain how Moses, who incidentally evidently superintended the final writing of Genesis, how he intends to use min. Now Leviticus 11, reading from verses 14-22.

“And the kite, and the falcon after its kind; [15] Every raven after its kind; [16] And the ostrich, and the night hawk, and the sea gull, and the hawk after its kind, [17] And the white owl, and the cormorant, and the horned owl, [18] And the swan, and the pelican, and the carrion eagle, [19]And the stork, the heron after its kind, and the hoopoe, and the bat. [20] All winged insects, going upon all four, shall be an abomination unto you. [21] Yet these may ye eat of every winged insect that goes upon all four, which have legs above their feet, and which leap upon the earth; [22] Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind. [23] But all other winged insects, which have four feet, shall be an abomination unto you.” [Tape turns]

“…at the top of the paper and drew a family tree from that dot down to the bottom of the paper, a branching diagram, lines like a series of “V’s” with their apex at this point, and on down, that would represent evolution. If you want to represent the Bible’s picture you would plant three or four points just for the sake of illustration, actually there are a lot more points, but just to illustrate, just say arbitrarily three points across the top of your paper and now draw, branching diagrams from those points. So you have a series of inverted “V’s” each with their apex at this point or somewhere on the lines from this point. And labeling the three points as min’s, min number one, min number two, min number three, and that’s the picture the Bible that the Bible’s giving, that namely that God created certain basic categories in the animal and plant kingdom with high genetic potential for variability. Subsequently, in history animals and plants changed and adapted to various environments and so on, but never cross-boundary from one min to the other min, they stayed within this.

And Professor Marsh, a Christian biologist, has called these categories baramins, for created kinds. And he believes, as well as Frair and Davis in their book, The Case for Creation, that it is the job of the Christian biologist today to reclassify the biological kingdom on the basis of the baramin types. For example, to show you that baramins are not necessarily equal to species as Darwin was taught the Bible said, and I believe one reason why Darwin labeled his book Origin of Species to deliberately clash with the fixity of species that he thought the Bible said. How different it might have been had Darwin been taught correctly that the Bible allows much flexibility in this area.

Now Marsh, in his book, Life, Men and Time, put out from Mountain View California by the Pacific Press Publishing Association in 1957, he’s written many other articles too, points out that the baramins sometimes is equal to species, sometimes is equal to genus, sometimes is equal to order, and his test for determining the bounds would be the ability to cross-mate, the ability to have cross-fertilization in the laboratory under wholly artificial conditions if necessary. In other words, Marsh believes that many of the pieces of one min may now be unable to copulate with one another due to mutational destruction through history, so that basically if you can prove that animal A can cross with animal B you have proved definitely they are part of the same original kind. If you cannot show that animal A can cross successfully with animal B you have not necessarily shown that they are not part of the original kind because they may not be able to cross, not because they’re parts of two different mins but simply because in ensuing history they became gradually decadent and degenerate so that they lost their fruitfulness toward each other.

But Marsh does point out several interesting things. He says, for example, man cannot cross with an ape which means that the baramin, in this case, is equal to species, the species of man, homosapien. However, a dog and a wolf can cross, a certain kind of dog and a certain kind of wolf can cross, so this definitely proves that the dog and wolf both come from the same original “kind,” the same original baramin. But by modern classification criteria the dog and the wolf belong to different species, but the same genus. So therefore, at this point genus would be equal to the original baramin. Then you take the hen and the turkey, they can be crossed, certain type of hens with certain types of turkeys can be crossed, and since they belong not only to different species but to different genuses, it proves that the baramin in this case is equal to order. So it shows you that there is no hard and fast rule for translating what baramin means in terms of contemporary biological classification. And it is up, basically, to Christian biologists to determine this, both botanists and zoologists.

So let’s summarize what we have said that the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that there has been some evolution within boundaries. I would prefer not to call it evolution because it actually is not evolving new characteristics from old; it is basically only bringing out what originally was potential in the original baramin. So the Bible says that there was microevolution or diversification and there are four advantages, it seems to me, of a modern thinking Christian believing in microevolution and rejecting macroevolution.

First of course, it agrees with all of the Scripture. And this is very crucial if we are to believe in an inerrant Scripture and not to play some sort of word games with it, and to be honest and straightforward with the text.

The second advantage of believing in microevolution and rejecting macroevolution is that it fits all the data in the fossil record. It seems to me it blends very beautifully with the observation that there are these unbridgeable gaps which is just exactly what you’d expect had only microevolution or diversification occurred through time.

Thirdly, it needs no hypothetical mechanisms; we’re not shoved to the wall as our evolutionary colleagues are, to come up with some sort of fancified explanation for how evolution occurred. We can explain variations simply by adaptation to different environments and some mutations along the way and we don’t have to have all sorts of schemes to explain how we got there.

And the fourth thing, it still explains similarity which is one of the proofs for evolution but it does so now on the basis of a common design, not on the basis of a common ancestry. So for these four reasons I would urge that all Bible-believing Christians hold to some diversification but reject macroevolution.

One example that I’ve just recently ran across as a sort of illustration of what we mean by microevolution is diversified from macroevolution is an observation by Professor Tinkle of the Creation Research Society, when he notes the sugar beet sugar level. He notes that back in 1800 the best sugar beets had a maximum of 6% sugar in them. After 78 years of special inbreeding and cross-breeding and so on, in 1878 it turned out that the best sugar beets had 17% sugar in them. So by various cross-breeding and various types of breeding man was able to increase the sugar level, sugar content 11% in the best sugar beet. So the maximum sugar levels moved up from 6% in 1800 to 17% in 1878. However, in 1924, after even more continued breeding, still the sugar level in the maximum sugar beets was only 17%. In other words, you have three figures, 6% in 1800; 17% in 1878; 17% in 1924. What does it show? It shows that by 1878 the maximum level of sugar had been reached. In other words, taking advantage of all of God’s potential for the sugar beet had occurred by 1878 and any further breeding was wasted and could not bring more sugar than was potentially available in the sugar beet genetic structure.

Now this is an illustration of what Bible-believing Christians mean by microevolution as distinguished from macroevolution. And incidentally, we as Bible-believing Christians have to hold to microevolution for one very crucial problem: how did Noah get all the animals in the ark? We developed this further and showed that it’s not really a problem even when you consider species but it certainly helped out dear Noah if he didn’t have to take an animal pair from each kind, or ever little dinky kind but could just simply select out from each broad category a fertile pair that would then reproduce again the whole broad category. And it certainly helped Noah to be able to only, say, pick a couple of pairs out of each baramin, a couple of pairs out of each category instead of picking thousands out of each category, and letting them spread their genetic potential after the flood into the present situation.

So I would say that we are on sound scientific ground, we are on sound theological ground, we are on sound Scriptural ground to hold to diversification and yet at the same time dogmatically reject any concept of macroevolution. And we simply would challenge any other person to show us evidence that macroevolution has occurred; show us a transitional fossil sequence that would prove macroevolution has occurred; show us the biological mechanism that could be responsible for such change, just show us these things. You haven’t shown us a thing, not a thing, and yet you’re asking us to give up faith in God’s Word that when tested in other places by archeology and personal experience is always verified, you’re asking us to chuck the whole thing and accept by faith and purely on the basis of faith your theory.

So we conclude our section on the problems of the evolutionary hypothesis by this summary statement about the Biblical fixity of kinds and true evolution or microevolution, or what I prefer, diversification within limits. I would urge any person that’s troubled with this to take a long look at Frair and Davis’ book, The Case for Creation, a very smart volume to have and one I would highly recommend.