Here’s the real bottom line on the fossil record: there has never been any substantiation of the Theory of Evolution by Darwin. [1]
In fact, as more and more and better and better fossils are discovered, the evidence for evolution is getting worse and worse.
Charles Darwin knew in 1859 when he proposed his theory in On The Origin Of Species that there were a lot of gaps and “missing links” in the fossil record. He assumed that over time and with new discoveries that there would be more evidence discovered for evolution, but in fact the opposite has happened.
Darwin said in his On The Origin of Species:
"Lastly, looking not to any one time, but to all time, if my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking closely together all the species of the same group, must assuredly have existed... " [2]
In order for higher species to have evolved from lower species, there must necessarily be many numerous intermediate stages of transformation. If you think about it, there should be more intermediate entities than just the first species and the last one. Astoundingly (if you believe in evolution) there is not even one of the proposed links in the fossil record. Zip. Zero. Nada.
Author Luther Sunderland interviewed five respected museum officials, recognized authorities in their individual fields of study, including representatives from the American Museum, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, and the British Museum of Natural History. None of the five officials were able to offer a single example of a transitional series of fossilized organisms that document the transformation of one Kind of plant or animal into another.
The British Museum of Natural History boasts the largest collection of fossils in the world. Among the five respected museum officials, Sunderland interviewed Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist at the British Museum and editor of a prestigious scientific journal. Patterson is a well known expert having an intimate knowledge of the fossil record. He was unable to give a single example of Macro-Evolutionary transition. In fact, Patterson wrote a book for the British Museum of Natural History entitled, "Evolution". When asked why he had not included a single photograph of a transitional fossil in his book, Patterson responded: "...I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them..." [3]
If evolution were true, there should be millions of fossils of the intermediate links between species along every branch of the tree. But there are none. Science needs to find a lot more than just one “missing link”. It needs to find millions. But there aren’t any to be had.
We keep finding better and better preserved fossils. The most recent discoveries in Chengjiang, China, are the most outstanding fossils ever found, but still no missing links. Since Darwin’s time, paleontologists have uncovered about 99.9% of our current fossil record, but still no missing links. [4] [5]
The second enormous problem with the fossil record for the Theory of Evolution is that the vast majority of species appear at about the same time in history, called the Cambrian Explosion.
Darwin predicted that slowly and gradually over time the higher forms evolved from the lower forms. But the fossil record indicates that almost all life forms “suddenly” appeared during the Cambrian Age which is about 2% of the time line of the life of the earth.
Here is a chart of the actual fossil record for the appearance of species. [6]
Do some research on your own. I suggest you look up “problems with the fossil record” or “Darwin and the fossil record.”
Isn’t it about time to junk the Theory of Evolution? Darwin said it himself, “ "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." [7]
There must be a God.
________________________________________
[1] The Theory of Evolution can take many forms. I am referring specifically in this case to the theory that humans evolved from single celled organisms and other common ancestors of other species through some process of mutation and natural selection which also included ape-like creatures.
[2] Darwin, The Origin of Species, Chapter Six: Absence or Rarity of Transitional Varieties.
[3] [Colin Patterson, personal communication. Luther Sunderland, Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems, 4th edition, 1988, 88-90.]
[4] Quote from the following website:
http://www.allaboutthejourney.org/problems-with-the-fossil-record.htm
"Australian scientist and medical doctor Michael Denton wrote Evolution: A Theory In Crisis. This is from pages 160-162."
"Since Darwin's time the search for missing links in the fossil record has continued on an ever-increasing scale. So vast has been the expansion of paleontological activity over the past one hundred years that probably 99.9% of all paleontological work has been carried out since 1860."
Denton further wrote:
"Despite the tremendous increase in geological activity in every corner of the globe and despite the discovery of many strange and hitherto unknown forms, the infinitude of connecting links has still not been discovered and the fossil record is about as discontinuous as it was when Darwin was writing the Origin. The intermediates have remained as elusive as ever and their absence remains, a century later, one of the most striking characteristics of the fossil record."
[5] DVD: Darwin’s Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record, Illustra Media, 2009 for information about Chinese discoveries.
[6] Icons of Evolution: Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution Is Wrong, by Jonathan Wells, Regnery Publishing, 2000, Figure 3-5, page 43.
[7] Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 1859, p. 158.
This proof is what I'm going to call a "piggyback proof". I propose that you accept the word of a really smart person who searched for the truth about God for his whole life in a very unusual way.
In 2004 after about 50 years as one of the world's leading and best known atheists, Antony Flew, came to the conclusion that there must be a God.
"After a lifetime of probing philosophical inquiry, this towering and courageous intellect has now concluded the evidence leads conclusively to God" [1]
"Antony Flew has been for most of his life a very well known philosophical champion of atheism." [5]
Other atheists were quick to call him senile and said that he was manipulated in his old age by certain Christians. He denied it and came out with a book called, There Is A God, How The World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind [9]. It tells his story and the arguments that convinced him. (There are videos on YouTube of his appearances if you search under Antony Flew.) [8]
"I now believe that the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence. I believe that this universe's intricate laws manifest what scientists have called the Mind of God. I believe that life and reproduction originate in a divine Source." [11]
"This is a fascinating and very readible account of how a distinguished philosopher who was a militant atheist for most of his working life came to believe in the intelligent design of the univers..." [2]
"A fascinating record of how one of our most prominent contemporary atheists was led to the conviction that God does exist." [3]
"A stellar philosophical mind ponders the latest scientific results. The conclusion: a God stands behind the rationality of nature." [4]
Flew was not your average atheist. He was considered a brilliant philosopher who at a very young age in 1950 published a paper called Theology and Falsification on atheism that is the most widely reprinted over the last 50 years and has been highly influencial in philosophy around the world.
He was always involved in the highest levels of the academic world, even having a professorship at Oxford. He kept up on the latest philosophical arguments for and against God as well as the latest scientific research into the origins of life and the universe.
One of his greatest virtues was his commitment to academic integrity and dedication to the Socratic Method of following the evidence wherever it might lead.
Ultimately, it was the developments in modern science that convinced him that there must be an intelligent source that designed and created the universe. The Big Bang Theory, namely that the universe had a beginning something like 13 billions years ago, does not allow for enough time in order for the complexity of life that we observe to have developed according to evolution. Also, research discoveries in micro-biology and DNA led him to the same conclusion, namely that there must have been an intelligent cause.
This man was one of the greatest and most respected philosophical minds of the 20th century. He debated far and wide those who believed in a God. For him to finally change his mind after 50 years of debating, believing, and researching is a monumental change, certainly not done lightly or easily.
His change completely negates the idea that only common people who are uneducated and haven't done the research can believe in a God.
Secondly, he must have known the incredible hatred that would be unleashed on him from the atheistic community if he betrayed their beliefs. He responded as ever with kindness and gentleness, which is all too evident in the book he wrote, There Is A God. In it he patiently spells out the philosophical journey he had taken in life and clearly what lead him to change his mind so all the world could know.
"When Antony Flew, in the spirit of free-thinking, followed the evidence where he thought it led, namely, to theism, he was roundly denounced by supposed free-thinkers in the severest of terms. He had, it seemed, committed the unpardonable sin." [6]
"Perhaps what provides the deepest satisfaction in reading this philosophical memoir is the author's transparent integrity, so habitual over a productive lifetime as to be, as Aristotle would have it, second nature. How shrill and self-absorbed are the opposing works of a Dawkins or a Dennett by comparison." [7]
This man understood all the arguments for atheism inside and out. In fact, he created some of those arguments himself. He was the author of 30 books. All his life he wanted to follow the evidence to find the truth and he ended up accepting that there must be a God.
"In fact, my two main antitheological books were both written long before either the development of the big-bang cosmology or the introduction of the fine-tuning argument from physical constants. But since the early 1980's, I had begun to reconsider. I confessed at that point that atheists have to be embarrassed by the contemporary cosmological consensus, for it seemed that the cosmologists were providing a scientific proof of what St. Thomas Aquinas contended could not be proved philosophically; namely, that the universe had a beginning." [10]
In 2007, Flew was interviewed by Benjamin Wiker. He said again that his deism was the result of his "growing empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe" and "my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself – which is far more complex than the physical Universe – can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source." [12]
You could do all the research yourself and study all the arguments for and against God. Or you could just take a short cut and check out what Antony Flew has to say. I enjoyed reading his book very much although at times the philosophy was over my head. He was clearly a brilliant thinker.
There must be a God.
____________________________________
[1] Francis S. Collins, author of The Language of God
[2] John Hick, professor and Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in Arts and Social Sciences, University of Birmingham
[3] Nicholas Wolterstorff, Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology, Yale University
[4] Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box and The Edge of Evolution
[5] Richard Swinburne, author of The Existence of God
[6] William Lane Craig, Research Professor, Talbot School of Theology
[7] Daniel N. Robinson, Philosophy Department, Oxford University
[8] YouTube video example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1e4FUhfHiU
[9] There Is A God, by Antony Flew, 2007, Harper Collins, New York, NY
[10] There Is A God, page 135.
[11] There Is A God, page 88
[12] Dr. Benjamin Wiker: Exclusive Flew Interview, 30 October 2007. http://www.tothesource.org/10_30_2007/10_30_2007.htm
There is way too much information on the brain for me to cover in a short blog post, but I want to give some convincing highlights (probably more that you want to read). Here is a quote that will get us started.
"Scientists claim that the most complicated and mysterious thing in the universe is the human brain. Scientists know more about stars exploding billions of light years away than they know about the brain." [1]
The brain is a vast mystery and our greatest scientists have not figured it out. That makes a great case for me that it must have been created by a higher intelligence than ours. To think that it happened accidentally when our greatest minds are very far from understanding it's complexity is preposterous. Accidents do not create order.
The human brain consists of approximately 100 billion neurons. That, by the way, is about how many stars there are in our Milky Way Galaxy. [3]
Each neuron has somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 synapses, equaling about 1 quadrillion synapses. [2]
Another source quotes up to 40,000 synapses per neuron. [3]
There are possibly as many connections in your brain as there are stars in the known universe.
If all the neurons in the human brain were lined up, they would stretch 600 miles. [2]
A piece of brain tissue the size of a grain of sand contains 100,000 neurons and 1 billion synapses, all "talking" to one another. [3]
Human brain's are comparable in computing power to the world's greatest computers, but fantastically better at almost every other task while fitting inside your skull and using only the power of a small lightbulb.
"The world’s most powerful supercomputer, the K from Fujitsu, computes four times faster and holds 10 times as much data. And of course, many more bits are coursing through the Internet at any moment. Yet the Internet’s servers worldwide would fill a small city, and the K sucks up enough electricity to power 10,000 homes. The incredibly efficient brain consumes less electricity than a dim lightbulb and fits nicely inside our head." [4]
A human brain is 75% water and has the consistency of tofu, custard, or gelatin.[5] You could cut it with a table knife [6].
Note also that the human brain accomplishes everything at a relatively slow speed, nothing like a computer. Impulses travel at only about 223.56 miles per hour.
"Axons, the long output connection from a cell, come in two types: myelinated and unmyelinated. Myelinated axons have an extra layer of "insulation," a fatty substance, which allows the impulse to travel about 10 to 100 meters per second. Unmyelinated axons only transmit at about 1 meter per second. When the signal reaches the end, it has to cross the synapse to influence the next cell, which adds about 5 ms. (10 meters per second = 22.356 mph and 100 meters per second = 223.561 mph.) As you can see it is a lot slower than the speed of light in a vacuum which is exactly 299,792,458 metres per second, or 186,000 miles per second, or 670,616,629 mph." [6]
A 20-year-old man has around 109,000 miles of myelinated axons in his brain, which is enough to wrap around the earth’s equator four-and-a-half times. [7]
Here is an amazing fact. 3 year old babies have twice as many connections in their brains as adults.
"Babies are born with around a 100 billion brain cells, but only a small number of neurons are actually connected. By three years of age a child's brain has formed about 1,000 trillion connections, about twice as many as adults have. At around 11 years, the brain begins to prune unused connections. Connections that are used repeatedly in the early years become permanent; those that are not are eliminated." [6]
There are more than 100,000 chemical reactions happening in the human brain every second.[7]
The human brain has around 100,000 miles of blood vessels.[7] 750-1000ml of blood flows through your brain every minute. That's enough to fill about 3 full soda cans. [12]
"Research indicates that men and women have different structures and wiring in the brain. For example, the frontal lobe—which is responsible for problem solving and decision making, and the limbic cortex—which is responsible for regulating emotion, are larger in women. Women also have about 10 times more white matter than men." [8,9]
Here is a quote from Jeff Hawkins about computers and brains in his 2004 book "On Intelligence."
"A human can perform significant tasks in much less time than a second. For example, I could show you a photograph and ask you to determine if there is cat in the image. Your job would be to push a button if there is a cat, but not if you see a bear or a warthog or a turnip. This task is difficult or impossible for a computer to perform today, yet a human can do it reliably in half a second or less. But neurons are slow, so in that half a second, the information entering your brain can only traverse a chain one hundred neurons long. That is, the brain 'computes' solutions to problems like this in one hundred steps or fewer, regardless of how many total neurons might be involved. From the time light enters your eye to the time you press the button, a chain no longer than one hundred neurons could be involved. A digital computer attempting to solve the same problem would take billions of steps. One hundred computer instructions are barely enough to move a single character on the computer's display, let alone do something interesting." [10]
Even if humans compete against single minded computers on a particular task, we have to remember the human brain is doing thousands if not millions of other things at the same time.
"However the computational power of the human brain is difficult to ascertain, as the human brain is not easily paralleled to the binary number processing of computers. For while the human brain is calculating a math problem, it is subconsciously processing data from millions of nerve cells that handle the visual input of the paper and surrounding area, the aural input from both ears, and the sensory input of millions of cells throughout the body. The brain is also regulating the heartbeat, monitoring oxygen levels, hunger and thirst requirements, breathing patterns and hundreds of other essential factors throughout the body. It is simultaneously comparing data from the eyes and the sensory cells in the arms and hands to keep track of the position of the pen and paper as the calculation is being performed." [6]
The more we discover about the brain, the more wondrous and awesome it is.
"The discovery of ventral and dorsal visual streams has only made our work more difficult because it is unclear how these streams fit into the functional architecture of the brain and which parts of the brain receive the resulting signals. Similar problems exist with memory processing. So far, no research team has been able to pinpoint where in the brain memory is and how it functions." [11]
Here is a little bit of information on how synapses work in the brain. This should leave you awestruck.
"Neural synapses in the human brain are extraordinarily complex structures. Responsible for relaying information between neurons, chemical synapses govern the release of over 100 different kinds of neurotransmitters, while electrical synapses deliver information via electricity for rapid-fire reflexes." [13]
"When a nerve impulse gets to the end of an axon, its message must cross the synapse if it is to continue. Messages do not “jump” across synapses. Instead, they are carried across by chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. These chemicals are packaged in tiny sacs, or vesicles, at the tip of the axon. When a nerve impulse arrives at the tip, it causes the sacs to release their contents into the synapse. The neurotransmitters diffuse across the synapse and bind to receptors in the membrane of the cell on the other side, passing the signal to that cell by causing special ion channels in the postsynaptic membrane to open. Because these channels open when stimulated by a chemical (in this case, a neurotransmitter) they are said to be chemically gated.
Why go to all this trouble? Why not just wire the neurons directly together? For the same reason that the wires of your house are not all connected but instead are separated by a host of switches. When you turn on one light switch, you don’t want every light in the house to go on, the toaster to start heating, and the television to come on! If every neuron in your body were connected to every other neuron, it would be impossible to move your hand without moving every other part of your body at the same time. Synapses are the control switches of the nervous system.
When a nerve impulse reaches the end of an axon, it releases a neurotransmitter into the synaptic space. The neurotransmitter molecules diffuse across the synapse and bind to receptors on the postsynaptic cell, a neuron in this case, passing the signal to that cell. Enzymes destroy the neurotransmitter molecules to prevent continuous stimulation of the postsynaptic cell." [14]
As you can imagine, I'm just getting started. Hundreds of books have been published on the brain and thousands more will be. I have even read where some people now believe that your memories are stored in all the cells of your body, not just inside your skull.
Our existence is a total and absolute miracle. Only a supernatural cause could possibly be an explanation for our existence. No materialistic cause, and certainly not a materialistic random accident, makes any rational sense what-so-ever.
There must be a God.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
References
[1] Newquist, H.P. 2004. The Great Brain Book. New York, NY: Scholastic Inc.
[2] Chudler, Eric. “Brain Facts and Figures.” November 1, 2011.
[3] http://smartnow.com/page/10570
[4] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=computers-vs-brains
[5] Juan, Stephen. 2011. The Odd Brain: Mysteries of Our Weird and Wonderful Brain Explained. Riverside, NJ: Andrews McMeel
Publishing.
[6] http://www.disabled-world.com/artman/publish/brain-facts.shtml
[7] Turkington, Carol. 1996. The Brain Encyclopedia. New York, NY: Checkmark Books.
[8] Cohen, Elizabeth. “Loving with All Your . . . Brain.” CNN. February 5, 2007. Accessed: November 17, 2011.
[9] Edmonds, Molly. “Do Men and Women Have Different Brains?” Discovery. 2011. Accessed: November 17, 2011.
[10] Hawkins, Jeff. "On Intelligence" 2004
[11] http://www.lucidpages.com/branco.html
[12] http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/health-and-human-body/human-body/brain-article/
[13] http://www.nextnature.net/2012/06/replacing-synapses-with-a-single-switch/
[14] http://www.txtwriter.com/backgrounders/Drugaddiction/drugs1.html
