Creation vs. Evolution: Part 5- "Bones of Contention"

(Taken from the AiG website...)

Z: Fossils and common descent. This is one of the most controversial topics, whether they prove or disprove evolution. “When objections are raised about ‘evolution,’ the object of concern is nearly always the concept of common descent. Common descent is the proposal that all organisms, living and extinct, are connected by an unbroken series of ancestor-descendent relationships to a single ancestral life form by a process of descent with modification. 

 
All life is genetically related such that it can be pictured as a branching tree or bush. The term ‘macro-evolution’ has been coined to refer to this large-scale pattern, and to the various mechanisms that have been proposed to generate the observed patterns of branching and extinction recorded in the fossil record. There is much confusion in the popular literature about the evidence for macro-evolution change in the fossil record. Unfortunately, the discussion of evolution within part of the Christian community has been greatly influenced by inaccurate presentations of the fossil data…. The view of much evangelical Christian commentary on macro-evolution is that the major taxonomic groups of living things remain clearly distinct entities throughout their history and were as morphologically distinct from each other at their first appearance as they are today. There is a clear interest in showing the history of life as discontinuous, and any suggestion of transition in the fossil record is met with great skepticism.”

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The above part in bold is true.

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“The fossil record provides persuasive evidence for Macro-evolutionary change and common descent.

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This is not true! There has NEVER been an intermediate fossilized life form found in the fossil record. There are a few things that evolutionary scientists like use to try to prove that there are, but these have always been shown to have simply been an animal that is now extinct. For example; the Archaeopyeryx (pronounced ark-ee-op-ter-iks), was a toothed bird with claws on its wings, which I’m sure you are familiar with. This extinct creature was thought by many evolutionists to be one of the many missing links in the evolutionary tree. However, a world authority on birds, Alan Feduccia, who is an evolutionist, settled the question as to whether this critter was a bird or dinobird. I quote him here: “Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopyeryx into an earth-bound, feathered, dinosaur. But it’s not. It’s a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of “paleobabble” is going to change that.” Remember, he is an evolutionist. Also, at least two other species of birds alive today in South America have claws on their wings to hold on to trees with. And many extinct birds had teeth, yet they are not claimed as “missing links”.

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Fossils provide windows into the anatomy and ecology of long-extinct species.

These preserved remains of ancient form enable us to reconstruct the evolutionary pathways that led to our diverse living biota.” (Perspectives on an Evolving Creation, p. 153)

If you were to actually read all of that instead of just skimming after the first few lines, you might get what I am trying to say. You see, there is proof that we did evolve from apes and chimps.

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I have never seen or heard of any fossils that were indisputably intermediate forms of life. If there are so many, why don’t the “big scientists” show them to us? There has never been a single shred of clear, proven, evidence that we evolved from apes.

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I think that it was that God had just found a good DNA pattern. He used evolution to pass on that DNA and made a small change. In fact, we share about 99% common genomes with chimps and where the last genome is in chimps, it is simply broken off in the humans DNA sequence. Scientists have shown that the broken genome fits exactly into the missing place in the humans.

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I have heard that there was a three percent difference between humans and chimps, but not one percent. Still, in my opinion that is no evidence that we evolved from monkeys. A 1 % DNA difference isn’t small- it’s huge! Did you know that the information in a piece of DNA the size of a pin head would, if written in books, make a stack that would reach to the moon and back again 500 times? And the DNA from one person is about 2-3 meters long, if placed in a straight line. Think about how much information that is! Even a 1 % difference is huge! And you can’t expect people to be totally different from any other land-dwelling organism on Earth, especially mammals. There have to be common denominators such as- we all breath air, and all have skin, blood, and must remain hydrated, usually by drinking water. Also, a monkey would need something like hands in order to have greater facility in climbing trees. It also has hair, drinks water, gives birth to live young, and feeds its babies milk, just like any other mammal. So do dogs. And cats. And horses. Yet no one says that we came from dogs, cats, or horses. In fact the only major similarities with people, and difference from other mammals, are its hands and walking somewhat upright. Because of these superficial things, evolutionists have come to the conclusion that we must have come from apes.

Here’s an interesting thing for you to look at:

“What of the 97% (or 98% or 99%!) similarity claimed between humans and chimps? The figures published do not mean quite what is claimed in the popular publications (and even some respectable science journals). DNA contains its information in the sequence of four chemical compounds known as nucleotides, abbreviated C,G,A,T. Groups of three of these at a time are “read” by complex translation machinery in the cell to determine the sequence of 20 different types of amino acids to be incorporated into proteins. The human DNA has at least 3,000,000,000 nucleotides in sequence. A proper comparison has not been made. Chimp DNA has not been fully sequenced.

Where did the “97% similarity” come from then? It was inferred from a fairly crude technique called DNA hybridization where small parts of human DNA are split into single strands and

allowed to re-form double strands (duplex) with chimp DNA [2]. However, there are various reasons why DNA does or does not hybridize, only one of which is degree of similarity (homology) [3]. Consequently, this somewhat arbitrary figure is not used by those working in molecular homology (other parameters, derived from the shape of the “melting” curve, are used). Why has the 97% figure been popularized then? One can only guess that it served the purpose of evolutionary indoctrination of the scientifically illiterate.” Here’s something else: “What if human and chimp DNA was even 96% homologous? What would that mean? Would it mean that humans could have 'evolved' from a common ancestor with chimps? Not at all! The amount of information in the 3 billion base pairs in the DNA in every human cell has been estimated to be equivalent to that in 1,000 books of encyclopedia size [6]. If humans were 'only' 4% different this still amounts to 120 million base pairs, equivalent to approximately 12 million words, or 40 large books of information. This is surely an impossible barrier for mutations (random changes) to cross [7]. Does a high degree of similarity mean that two DNA sequences have the same meaning or function? No, not necessarily. Compare the following sentences:

There are many scientists today who question the evolutionary paradigm and its atheistic philosophical implications.

There are not many scientists today who question the evolutionary paradigm and its atheistic philosophical implications.

These sentences have 97% homology and yet have almost opposite meanings! There is a strong analogy here to the way in which large DNA sequences can be turned on or off by relatively small control sequences.

The DNA similarity data does NOT quite mean what the evolutionary popularizers claim! You should read this article, it isn’t too long. Here’s the link:

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c018.html#f1

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In fact, “Plenty of fossils of intermediate forms have been found. Intermediate forms are also studied today by molecular evolution, which shows that all organisms may be ‘intermediate forms.’” (Thomas H. Jukes, Professor of Biophysics at the University of California, Berkley) I hope you understand now.

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If you believe that there are “plenty of fossils of intermediate forms” then you have bought a lie. For example, in the famous Scopes “monkey” trial there were four intermediate “ape/man” fossils presented. Of these four, two were fully formed human, one was an ape, and one was a fraud. This last was “Piltdown man”. They had deliberately fitted an orangutan’s jaw on a fully-formed human skull. This was discovered 40 years later! Yet although the evolutionary “scientists” knew the entire time that it was a hoax, the “Piltdown man” fossil was used in school-books as a proof of common descent for quite some time. If there were so many real intermediate fossils, then why did they fail to present one that was real? And why in the world would they deliberately “doctor” some fossils to make an “ape/man”? They couldn’t help but know that it would look really bad if it was discovered. Even if there were real fossils, they would know that people would say “If there are real “ape/men”, then why would they make a fake one and say it was real?” This would be a major blow to the trust of the people in the scientists. They would say: “They told us that this was a real intermediate fossil when they knew it wasn’t. How do we know that anything else they tell us is true?” If they had real fossils, why didn’t they present one of them, instead of giving people cause to doubt them?

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I’ll end with a quote from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and a then another of the Pope. “The exact formula is Creation and evolution because both respond to different questions. The account of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, does not in fact tell us how man originated. It tells us that it is man. It speaks to us of his most profound origin, illustrates the plan that is behind him. Vice versa, the theory of evolution tries to define and describe biological processes. However, it does not succeed in explaining the origin of the ‘project’ man, to explain his interior provenance and his essence. We are faced therefore with two questions that complement, not exclude each other.” (Ten Commandments for the Environment, p. 43) The Pope’s quote. “Some have interpreted Biblical passages such as this (Psalm 8) to mean not only that humans are superior to the rest of Creation, but that humans and the rest of Creation have little in common, and certainly do not share a common origin. Beginning with Darwin, however, science has began to assemble an almost unassailable body of evidence indicating that humans did, indeed, share a common ancestry with the rest of live on the planet.

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The part in bold is a lie. I’m assailing it right now, and many others have done so with great success, in fact, many evolutionary scientists have rejected it, and become young earth creationists because the evidence against the theory of evolution was so overwhelming. Man is far superior to the rest of creation- in fact, we are God’s crowning glory of it! The Bible says that God made us just “a little lower than the angels”. The evolutionary worldview- that man is just a glorified monkey- is atheistic in its origins, and came purely from man not wanting to accountable to the his Creator. If we view human life as just an accident, then there would be absolutely nothing wrong with anyone taking a gun, and shooting anyone else. If we’re just the result of an accidental chain of mutations, then human life is valueless! There is nothing wrong with abortion, or lying, cheating, stealing, murder, homosexuality, adultery, and anything else that is considered wrong. Even if God guided evolution, this would still hold true.

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The mechanics of gene mutation, natural selection, and species change over time were being supported by various new and old disciplines including archeology, biology, and genetics. It was becoming evident to most scientists that some form of evolution hand been and was still taking place.” (Ten Commandments for the environment, p. 42)

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Mutations are taking place. I suppose that this is a form of evolution, because the word simply means to move or change. However, mutations never add information, since the ability to mutate is already present in the animal’s genes. For one animal to change into another would require massive amounts of information to be added to its DNA, but actually, mutations take away information. I’ve already mentioned the difference between humans and chimps, and of course there are even greater differences between one species and another and between different phyla.