WHY DO YOU BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION?

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	“The idea of feathered dinosaurs and the theropod origin of birds is being actively promulgated by a cadre of zealous scientists in concert with certain editors at Nature and National Geographic who themselves have become outspoken and highly biased proselytizers of the faith." —Storrs Olson Ornithologist and curator of Birds at the Smithsonian in a November 1, 1999 letter to Dr. Peter Raven at the National Geographic Society. (National Geographic featured a fossil on their front cover along with a lengthy article that ending up being nothing but a hoax.) http://www.answersingenesis. org/docs/4159.asp

Fossil Evidence

What Does the Fossil Record Actually Reflect?

• Immediate complexity and abrupt appearance of almost all classes of plants
  and animals (Cambrian Explosion – See PDF).
  “Earth's first animal was the ocean-drifting comb jelly, not the simple sponge, according to a new find that has shocked scientists who didn't imagine the earliest critter could be so complex.”
  http://www.livescience.com/animals/080410-first-animal.html
  “The Cambrian explosion in animal evolution during which all the diverse body plans appear to have emerged almost in a geological instant is a highly publicized enigma. Although molecular clock analysis has been invoked to propose that the Cambrian explosion is an artifact of the fossil record whereas the actual divergence occurred much earlier, the reliability of these estimates appears to be questionable. In an already familiar pattern, the relationship between the animal phyla remains controversial and elusive.”
  “The Biological Big Bang model for the major transitions in evolution,” Eugene V Koonin, National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, in Biology Direct 2007, 2:21.
  http://www.biology-direct.com/content/2/1/21
  “The Cambrian “explosion” is a unique episode in Earth history, when essentially all the animal phyla first appear in the fossil record.”
  http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.earth.33.031504.103001
  
• Stasis, or lack of any substantial change.
  “Stasis is now abundantly well documented as the preeminent paleontological pattern in the evolutionary history of species.”
  Dr. Niles Eldredge, Evolutionist and Curator-in-Chief of the permanent exhibition “Hall of Biodiversity” at the American Museum of Natural History, ‘Reinventing Darwin: The Great Evolutionary Debate’ Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1995, p.77
• Fossils are always found fully formed, having no partially formed features.
  “Most of the animal phyla that are represented in the fossil record first appear, ‘fully formed,’ in the Cambrian some 550 million years ago...The fossil record is therefore of no help with respect to the origin and early diversification of the various animal phyla."
  Richard S K Barnes, Peter Calow, Peter J. W. Olive, David W. Golding and John Spicer, ‘The Invertebrates: A New Synthesis’ (textbook), Updated 2000, Blackwell Publishing

Punctuated Equilibrium

Because the fossil record doesn’t accommodate the slow gradual process expected by Darwinism, an alternative explanation called Punctuated Equilibrium was offered to explain the sudden appearances of organisms.
Punctuated Equilibrium explains the process of speciation ONLY, which is when small populations can adapt by slight variations over a very short period of time. But these variations and adaptations have never been observed in nature or recorded in the fossil record to advance beyond just producing another specie of the parent ‘kind.’
Punctuated Equilibrium does, however, bode well for Evolutionists because it doesn’t require any fossil evidence to substantiate that evolution perpetually continues on to produce UNLIMITED CHANGE.
“Punctuated equilibrium helped to explain why many transitional forms apparently were missing from the fossil record. According to the hypothesis of punctuated equilibrium, transitional forms existed for brief periods of time, and so were unlikely to become fossils.”
Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History/Department of Paleobiology
http://paleobiology.si.edu/geotime/main/foundation_life3.html

But regardless of how brief each incremental change lasted, wouldn’t we expect to find JUST ONE fossil that reflects 1/10th, 1/4th, 1/2, 3/4th, or 9/10th of an actual transition in an existing feature? Examples would be:

• Fins evolving into legs
• Mouths evolving into beaks
• Legs evolving into wings
• Nostrils evolving into blowholes
• Legs evolving into flippers

Homology and Dating

Looking at the appearance and geological placements of the fossils, Evolutionists point to the seemingly 'natural progression’ that they claim proves evolution to be true. However, lining up fossils by appearance and sediment has long been proven to be unscientific. (See quote to the right.)

…And the geologic column is NOT the gradual accumulation of sediment most people have been led to believe it is:
"I hope I have convinced you that the sedimentary record is largely a record of episodic events rather than being uniformly continuous. My message is that episodicity is the rule, not the exception…. We need to shed those lingering subconscious constraints of old uniformitarian thinking."
(Emeritus) Professor Robert Dott, Sedimentary Geology, UW Madison, "The Rule", Presidential Address To Society of Economic Paleontologists & Mineralogists, Geotimes, Nov. 1982, p.16 Dott is a co-author of a leading textbook of earth history, Evolution of the Earth (McGraw-Hill), which is now in its 7th edition. In 1995, he received the Geological Society of America's History of Geology Division Award.

Genetic Analysis

It was anticipated that once genetic testing could produce fossil dating, the fossil evidence for evolution would be overwhelmingly convincing. The exact opposite is now true:
“Therefore, we conclude that dating ages of origin of taxa with molecular phylogenetic trees where fossils are used as calibration points, is, at best, ambiguous (e.g, Sanderson 1997: Thorne & Kishino 2002).” (See PDF)
“Temporal paralogy, cladograms, and the quality of the fossil record” Publications Scientifiques du Museum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris, Geodiversitas, 2004, 26 (3)

Evolutionists Admit to Lack of Fossil Evidence

Some Evolutionists do acknowledge that the fossil record is a disaster for their theory so they just go on to more interesting ways to deny the truth:
“Students may very well wonder why the fossil record has so many seeming holes in it. If so, the opportunity should be seized to show the value of mathematics.”
The American Association for the Advancement of Science, Educational Benchmarks, (F) Evolution of Life
http://www.project2061.org/publications/bsl/online/ch5/ch5.htm#F

The Infamous ‘Lucy’ Isn’t Your Relative After All!

How many of you have been led to believe that “Lucy’ (Australopithecus afarensis) was ‘almost’ fully human?
“Tel Aviv University anthropologists say they have disproven the theory that "Lucy" - the world-famous 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found in Ethiopia 33 years ago - is the last ancestor common to humans and another branch of the great apes family known as the "Robust hominids."
"The presence of the morphology in both the latter and Australopithecus afarensis and its absence in modern humans cast doubt on the role of [Lucy] as a common ancestor." …
Rak and his colleagues also wrote that the structure of Lucy's mandibular ramus closely matches that of gorillas, which was "unexpected" because chimpanzees are the closest living relatives of humans, and not gorillas.”
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1176152801536&pagename=
JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Never missing a chance to indoctrinate the reader, evolutionists even resort to calling an immature offspring a “girl” and “child.”
“The stunningly complete skeleton of a three-year-old girl who lived 3.3 million years ago has been uncovered in Ethiopia. The child belongs to the species Australopithecus afarensis like the famous "Lucy", who was discovered in 1974. The young age of the so-called Dikika child promises new insights into the growth of early humans.”
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19125703.300&feedId=human-evolution_rss20

Something to Ask an Evolutionist

Can you give an example of JUST ONE fossil that display organisms with features ‘in transition' instead of fossils that appear to have a natural progression? Examples would be fossils that have PARTIALLY FORMED leaves, flowers, fins, feathers, beaks, legs, hands, fingers, etc., NOT just different sizes and shapes of leaves, flowers, fins, feathers, beaks, legs, hands, fingers, etc.

For more information about the fossil record:

Geologic Column
http://www.trueorigin.org/geocolumn.asp
http://www.detectingdesign.com/geologiccolumn.html
Cambrian Explosion
http://naturalselection.0catch.com/Files/fossilrecord.html
http://www.grisda.org/origins/23068.htm
http://www.origins.org/articles/chien_explosionoflife.html
Homology (descent based on structural similarity)
http://www.trueorigin.org/homology.asp
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v14/i1/fossils.asp
Punctuated Equilibrium
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1232
Human Origins
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0606454104v1
http://www.answersingenesis.org/Docs/263.asp?vPrint=1
http://www.icr.org/article/823/
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2006/0417ethiopian.asp?vPrint=1
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2006/1002time.asp?vPrint=1
Transitional Fossils
http://www.trueorigin.org/isakrbtl.asp (Scroll to ‘There Are No Transitional Fossils')
http://www.trueorigin.org/birdevo.asp
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v17/i1/bird.asp
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v21/i3/horse.asp

	"Paleontologists had long been aware of a seeming contradiction between Darwin's postulate of gradualism, confirmed by the work or population genetics and the actual findings of paleontology. Following phyletic lines through time seemed to reveal only minimal, gradual changes but no clear evidence for any change of a species into a different genus or for the gradual origin of an evolutionary novelty. Anything truly novel always seemed to appear quite abrubtly in the fossil record." —Ernst Mayr Emeritus Professor of Zoology, Harvard University. Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist, Harvard University Press: Cabridge, MA, 1988, pp. 529-530. "On December 9, archaeologist and paleo-anthropologist, Mary Leakey died at age 83. Although Leakey was convinced that man had evolved from ape-like ancestors, she was equally convinced that scientists will never be able to prove a particular scenario of human evolution. Three months before her death, she said in an interview: 'All these trees of life with their branches of our ancestors, that's a lot of nonsense.'" —Associated Press (AP) December 10, 1996 "…one outstanding fact of the fossil record that many of you may not be aware of; that since the so-called Cambrian explosion…during which essentially all the anatomical designs of modern multicellular life made their first appearance in the fossil record, no new Phyla of animals have entered the fossil record." —Steven J. Gould Evolutionary biologist and Professor of Geology and Zoology at Harvard University, Speech at SMU, Oct. 2, 1990. “I admit that an awful lot of that has gotten into the textbooks as though it were true. For instance, the most famous example still on exhibit downstairs (in the American Museum) is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps 50 years ago. That has been presented as literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that that is lamentable, particularly because the people who propose these kinds of stories themselves may be aware of the speculative nature of some of the stuff. But by the time it filters down to the textbooks, we’ve got science as truth and we’ve got a problem.” —Dr. Niles Eldredge Evolutionist and Curator-in-Chief of the permanent exhibition “Hall of Biodiversity” at the American Museum of Natural History, in a recorded interview with Luther Sunderland, published in Darwin’s Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems, Master Books, El Cajon, California, USA.