The Watchtower Society's View of Creation and Evolution

Alan Feuerbacher

Index:

• Part 1: Disagreements About Evolution
• Part 2: The Genesis Account
• Part 3: The Fossil Record
  • Part 4: The Transformation of Species
  • Part 5: The Gulf Between Reptiles and Birds
  • Part 6: The Gulf Between Reptiles and Mammals
  • Part 7: Summary of Fossil Creatures
  • Part 8: What the Creation Book Says About the Evolution of Man
• Part 9: The Society's View of Science and Evolution
• Part 10: Conclusion

Part 1: Disagreements About Evolution

Introduction

Throughout its history the Watchtower Society has published material on creation and evolution. It has printed two books, several booklets and numerous magazine articles giving its interpretation of the Genesis creation account and attempting to reconcile this account with scientific knowledge. Since The Watchtower magazine began to be published in 1879, the Society's views have changed drastically,¹ often in response to new and indisputable scientific discoveries that have become common knowledge.

The common thread in these changing views, of course, has been that God created everything in the universe in the manner that Genesis describes, and therefore that the theory of evolution must be a false explanation of how life on earth arose. The Society's latest book on the subject, Life-How Did It Get Here? By Evolution or by Creation?² attempts to show how a body of knowledge the Society calls "true science" agrees with the Genesis account and with the Bible generally. The book will generally be referred to here as "Creation." While it sets forth a number good arguments for creation and against evolution, many of the arguments do not show what they claim or they neglect relevant facts.³ On page 9 the book states a fine principle of argument:

In considering questions related to the origin of life, popular opinion or emotion sway many. To avoid this and to reach accurate conclusions, we need to consider the evidence with an open mind.

To consider the evidence with an open mind, one must consider all the evidence. One cannot argue as if one is doing literary criticism, picking and choosing "among facts and theories for ones that support a preexisting point of view... and either twisting whatever does not fit, or simply discarding it."⁴ As this essay makes clear, the Society, and the Creation book in particular, often argue as literary critics. Creation makes few statements that are completely incorrect, but very many that are sort of half-correct. It is full of cleverly worded passages, subtle errors and phrasings which lead the reader to form invalid conclusions or wrong opinions.

The following dissection of many of the arguments in Creation may seem rather petty or nit-picky, and the explanation of them may be difficult to follow, but the collective effect on a reader of page after page of these distortions is serious enough to require it. Many readers of Creation consider its publisher, the Watch Tower Society, to be literally "God's channel of communication" to mankind. They must be virtually drowned in evidence before they will listen to criticism of it.

This essay does not attempt to answer the question of whether evolution or creation is the "true" explanation of the origin of life. Instead it explores some areas of how well the Bible and science agree on these questions, and touches on questions regarding the development of life after its origin. Especially it shows how the Society often fails to present relevant evidence when attempting to prove its position, such as that the Bible's creation account is historical, or some other point on how the Bible and science agree. For example, the essay presents geological data showing how Genesis and science do not agree on the order of creation events, and it shows how scientific research publications and information from the fossil record often differ from what the Society claims about them.

In general, Creation presents an incomplete and distorted picture of geologists' findings and of what evolutionists say. A journal that reviewed the book said that⁵

the anonymous author or authors... of this book not only quote out of context but also fail to show the reader that words, phrases and clauses have been omitted from quotations.

It commented further that

one additional distinction between The Society's book and Scientific Creationism [Henry Morris, Institute for Creation Research] is worthy of criticism. As noted above we find that quotations from scholars in the various scientific disciplines are routinely taken out of context. The result is that scientists such as Eldredge, Gould, Jastrow, Johanson, Mayr, Ruse, Stanley, and Wald, to name a few, appear to the naive reader to reject all aspects of evolutionary theory. The pattern of treatment is like that of Morris; however, The Society goes one step further. It is not unusual for words or phrases to be omitted without the use of ellipses to indicate such changes.

In essence, Creation attempts to convert scientists' arguments about the pattern and process of evolutionary change into arguments about the very existence of change. Many other Watchtower publications are equally deficient in adherence to the facts or to the intent of the author they are quoting. Interestingly, the 1967 book Did Man Get Here By Evolution Or By Creation? distorted scientists' comments much less than does the Creation book. It is sad that the older book's higher standards have not been followed.

Disagreements About Evolution

From its very beginning the Creation book improperly slants the material it quotes from other references. In chapter 1, page 9, paragraph 6, it quotes from Charles Darwin:

It is interesting to note, too, that even evolution's best-known advocate, Charles Darwin, indicated an awareness of his theory's limitations. In his conclusion to The Origin of Species, he wrote of the grandeur of the "view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one," thus making it evident that the subject of origins was open to further examination.

This quotation seems innocent enough, but it completely misrepresents what Darwin had in mind. The way Darwin is quoted, it sounds like he was praising the grandeur of life, when actually he was praising the grandeur of the evolutionary view of life. This is readily apparent from the full quotation:⁶

It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.

Creation's quotation makes it appear that Darwin had reservations about his theory, when in fact, he was simply being careful not to overstate his theory based on the data he had been able to collect. This is evident from earlier statements in the chapter quoted from.

By quoting from numerous scientists chapter 2 of Creation attempts to show that "evolution" is not a fact, and is being seriously challenged by many scientists. For example, the preface quotes a presumed biologist as saying:⁷

As we know, there is a great divergence of opinion among biologists, not only about the causes of evolution but even about the actual process. This divergence exists because the evidence is unsatisfactory and does not permit any certain conclusion. It is therefore right and proper to draw the attention of the non-scientific public to the disagreements about evolution.

Notice that the speaker did not say biologists' opinions differed on whether evolution took place or not. The differing opinions were only about the causes and the process -- in other words, how it happened, not whether it happened. There are few scientists who question whether evolution occurred, despite what Creation implies.

Beginning on page 15, under the sub-title "Evolution Under Assault," paragraphs 4 through 9 present a variety of quotations which are intended to make the reader believe that the theory of evolution is invalid, and that that is why it is "under assault." It is strongly implied that evolution, therefore, never actually occurred. While it is certainly true that Darwin's mechanism for evolution is being strongly questioned, that mechanism is only one of many that have been proposed to explain what nearly all scientists agree is the fact of evolution, i.e., that the array of life forms that existed at any one time has gradually changed. Again, the debate is about how, not whether. Later we will discuss this at length.

Creation's tactic is clearly shown by the treatment paragraph 4 gives to a quotation from Discover magazine:⁸

The scientific magazine Discover put the situation this way: "Evolution... is not only under attack by fundamentalist Christians, but is also being questioned by reputable scientists. Among paleontologists, scientists who study the fossil record, there is growing dissent."⁹

But Discover is not saying that evolution is in question. As has been pointed out above, many scientists are coming to question the mechanism of natural selection, i.e., Darwinism, as a major explanation for evolution, not the general concept of evolution itself, and that is what Discover is talking about. The full quotation shows this clearly:

Charles Darwin's brilliant theory of evolution, published in 1859, had a stunning impact on scientific and religious thought and forever changed man's perception of himself. Now that hallowed theory is not only under attack by fundamentalist Christians, but is also being questioned by reputable scientists.

Among paleontologists, scientists who study the fossil record, there is growing dissent from the prevailing view of Darwinism...

Most of the debate will center on one key question: Does the three-billion-year-old process of evolution creep at a steady pace, or is it marked by long periods of inactivity punctuated by short bursts of rapid change? Is Evolution a tortoise or a hare? Darwin's widely accepted view -- that evolution proceeds steadily, at a crawl -- favors the tortoise. But two paleontologists, Niles Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural History and Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard, are putting their bets on the hare.

In its attempt to obscure the distinction between evolution and Darwinism, paragraph 4 next quotes from one Francis Hitching, "an evolutionist and author of the book The Neck of the Giraffe," that "For all its acceptance in the scientific world as the great unifying principle of biology, Darwinism, after a century and a quarter, is in a surprising amount of trouble."¹⁰

Had Creation also quoted the paragraph in Hitching's book immediately after the one it did quote, a very different impression would have been given to the reader:¹¹

Evolution and Darwinism are often taken to mean the same thing. But they don't. Evolution of life over a very long period of time is a fact, if we are to believe evidence gathered during the last two centuries from geology, paleontology, molecular biology and many other scientific disciplines. Despite the many believers in Divine creation who dispute this..., the probability that evolution has occurred approaches certainty in scientific terms... On the other hand Darwinism (or neo-Darwinism, its modern version) is a theory that seeks to explain evolution. It has not, contrary to general belief, and despite very great efforts, been proved.

It is difficult to believe that the author of the Creation book could have actually read Hitching and missed this very next paragraph. To present Hitching as rejecting evolution is dishonest. While a later edition of Creation did amend the above statement from Discover, (see above footnote) the continued misrepresentation of what Hitching said shows that the author wanted to retain the overall view that evolution, and not just Darwinism, is under attack by many scientists. Otherwise the amended edition would have changed the sub-section title on page 15, "Evolution Under Assault," to "Darwinism Under Assault," and would have amended several other quotations in the sub-section.

The quotation from Hitching illustrates another problem to which Creation is prone: quoting from authors who have no scientific standing as if they were authorities. We will meet Hitching again later, since Creation quotes him at least thirteen times. The book actually quotes him a few other times but without attribution. Hitching's book nowhere touts his scientific credentials, and a bit of research shows that he has none. He claimed to be a member of the Royal Archaeological Institute, but an inquiry of that institute showed he was not. He implied in the "Acknowledgments" of The Neck of the Giraffe that paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould had helped in the writing of the book, but upon inquiry Gould said he did not know him and had no information about him. Zoologist Richard Dawkins of the University of Oxford was also implied to have had a hand in writing the book, but upon inquiry he stated: "I know nothing at all about Francis Hitching. If you are uncovering the fact that he is a charlatan, good for you. His book, The Neck of the Giraffe, is one of the silliest and most ignorant I have read for years." Creation's writers seem not to have discovered Hitching's credentials, as they refer to him as "evolutionist Hitching."

We have seen what Francis Hitching is not, but who is he? It turns out that he is a writer, and believes in the paranormal. He has written on Mayan pyramid energy and for some "In Search Of..." episodes on BBC television (similar to the sensational "Unsolved Mysteries" on American television). He apparently accepts evolution, but believes it to be directed by some sort of cosmic force. The reference work Contemporary Authors, Vol. 103, page 208, lists him as a member of the Society for Psychical Research, the British Society of Dowsers and the American Society of Dowsers. His writings include: Earth Magic; Dowsing: The Psi Connection; Mysterious World: An Atlas of the Unexplained; Fraud, Mischief, and the Supernatural and Instead of Darwin.

The Neck of the Giraffe spends much of its time attacking Darwinian evolution, borrowing heavily and uncritically from young-earth creationist (they believe in six literal days for the Genesis creation account) arguments. It will become apparent that several of Hitching's "references" are lifted from six-literal-day creationist literature rather than being quoted directly from their original sources. This is apparent because Hitching made exactly the same errors as did the creationists from whom he got his material (see an example below). One magazine had this to say about Hitching:¹²

Speaking of the Biblical Creation Society, there was an interesting letter in the January 1983 issue of their journal Biblical Creation (p. 74) concerning a review of Francis Hitching's 1982 book The Neck of the Giraffe. Hitching's book is strongly anti-Darwinist, and is enthusiastically hailed by most creationists (though he also pokes fun at fundamentalist creationists). The letter, by creationist Malcolm Bowden (author of The Rise of the Evolution Fraud), points out that Hitching simply "culled his information from the creationist literature." This is indeed the case: many creationist works are cited favorably (Anderson, Coffin, Clark, Daly, Davidheiser, Dewar, Gish, Morris, Segraves, Whitcomb, and Wysong, plus various anti-Darwinists). Hitching does cite Bowden's earlier book Ape-Men -- Fact or Fallacy?, but Bowden accuses Hitching of "lifting" several passages and illustrations from his book without acknowledgment: in other words, plagiarism. "Hitchin's [sic] book is largely an exposition of the creationists [sic] viewpoint from the beginning to almost the end," Bowden points out... Hitching is also a paranormalist, an advocate of psychic evolution... [Hitching's book] Earth Magic is a wild, extremely entertaining and thoroughly psychic interpretation of megalithic structures... Hitching also includes in his scheme cosmic cataclysms, Atlantis, pyramidology, dowsing, ESP, miraculous healing, and astrology.

When Creation quotes Francis Hitching, let the reader beware.

Creation next devotes two whole paragraphs, 7 and 8, to the opinions of a newspaper writer. The writer presents no quotations from scientists, and so his opinions are of no more value than any other non-specialist's. Paragraph 9 again quotes Francis Hitching, who applies his usual TV style. The paragraph then quotes a science magazine to the effect that Darwin's theory, not evolution, is in trouble.

Paragraphs 10 through 13 quote astronomer Robert Jastrow several times, in such a way that it appears Jastrow has serious doubts about evolution. Paragraphs 11 and 12 speak about the difficulties in accounting for the evolution of the eye, and then paragraphs 12 and 13 say:

Thus Jastrow said: "The eye appears to have been designed; no designer of telescopes could have done better.

If this is so of the eye, what, then, of the human brain? Since even a simple machine does not evolve by chance, how can it be a fact that the infinitely more complex brain did? Jastrow concluded: "It is hard to accept the evolution of the human eye as a product of chance; it is even harder to accept the evolution of human intelligence as the product of random disruptions in the brain cells of our ancestors."

But the reader is not told that, while Jastrow expresses certain philosophical reservations about the mechanism of evolution and even about some fundamental questions such as the origin and purpose of life, he has not the slightest doubt that evolution of some sort did occur. The following gives some flavor of Jastrow's discussion. Commenting on Darwin's discussion of the eye, he wrote:¹³

Many people in Darwin's day agreed with theologian William Paley, who commented, "There cannot be a design without a designer."... The fossil record indicates that when the dinosaurs disappeared, the small mammals evolved into whales, elephants and many other kinds of creatures, but no one has ever seen a tiny animal metamorphose into a whale or an elephant. The evidence for these extraordinary transformations is indirect, and buried in the fossil record... And finally, there is the role of chance. If Darwin was correct, man has arisen on the earth as the product of a succession of chance events occurring during the last four billion years. Can that be true? Is it possible that man, with his remarkable powers of intellect and spirit, has been formed from the dust of the earth by chance alone? It is hard to accept the evolution of the human eye as a product of chance; it is even harder to accept the evolution of human intelligence as the product of random disruptions in the brain cells of our ancestors...

My own views on this question remain agnostic, and close to those of Darwin... Can this history of events leading to man, with its clear direction, yet be undirected? Scientists tend to feel that they know the answer to that question, but their confidence in the completeness of their knowledge may not be justified.

On the other hand, scientific faith in the proofs of evolution seems warranted. The fossil evidence in support of evolution is now fairly complete... As with all historical evidence, the proof of man's animal origins is circumstantial, but its cumulative impact is overwhelming. The fact of evolution is not in doubt.

Whether this long process, culminating in man, is the expression of a plan or purpose in the Universe seems to me to be a question beyond the reach of human understanding, or at least beyond the reach of science. Scientists have an interesting story to tell about the flow of events leading from the creation to man, but, as with questions of beginning and end in the Universe, to these larger questions of plan and purpose, science has no answer.

Paragraph 12 also gives a false impression about what Darwin said about the evolution of the eye:

Darwin acknowledged this as a problem. For example, he wrote: "To suppose that the eye ... could have been formed by [evolution], seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.

What Darwin meant was that, while comprehension of how the eye could have evolved seems difficult, his theory could still account for it:¹⁴

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory.

This might be compared to trying to explain the flight of an airliner to a group of Romans. It is ridiculous to think that a Boeing 747, weighing more than half a million pounds, could ever get off the ground supported by nothing but thin air, and moreover, that it accomplishes this unbelievable feat by sucking air in one hole and blowing it out another! After the laughter died down they would either throw you to the lions or cart you away to a lunatic asylum. This type of argument is commonly known as "disproof by lack of imagination."

The above material indicates that, while scientists disagree on the mechanisms of evolution, they agree that evolution, in a general sense, did indeed occur. The mechanism of natural selection is not the same thing as evolution. However, Creation is determined that its readers not know the difference. Paragraphs 14 and 15 quote David M. Raup, curator of geology at the Chicago Field Museum, writing in its Bulletin:

Millions of bones and other evidence of past life have been unearthed by scientists, and these are called fossils. If evolution were a fact, surely in all of this there should be ample evidence of one kind of living thing evolving into another kind. But the Bulletin of Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History commented: "Darwin's theory of [evolution] has always been closely linked to evidence from fossils, and probably most people assume that fossils provide a very important part of the general argument that is made in favor of darwinian interpretations of the history of life. Unfortunately, this is not strictly true."

This is a blatant and deliberate misrepresentation of what Raup said. Note that the word "[evolution]" was inserted into the quotation. The original words here were: "Darwin's theory of natural selection has always been closely linked to evidence from fossils..." Creation is clearly making it appear as if Raup's statements concerning the mechanism of natural selection actually apply to evolution in the general sense. Immediately after the above quoted statement, Raup's article said:¹⁵

We must distinguish between the fact of evolution -- defined as change in organisms over time -- and the explanation of this change. Darwin's contribution, through his theory of natural selection, was to suggest how the evolutionary change took place. The evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be. Darwin was completely aware of this. He was embarrassed by the fossil record because it didn't look the way he predicted it would and, as a result, he devoted a long section of his Origin of Species to an attempt to explain and rationalize the differences. There were several problems, but the principle one was that the geologic record did not then and still does not yield a finely graduated chain of slow and progressive evolution. In other words, there are not enough intermediates.

Paragraph 15 quoted part of this, but only enough to give the impression that there are no intermediates. But Raup went on to say:

There are very few cases where one can find a gradual transition from one species to another and very few cases where one can look at a part of the fossil record and actually see that organisms were improving in the sense of becoming better adapted.

Notice that Raup did not say there are no cases, but that there are very few cases. We will cover this material more extensively later. For now, Raup's further statements are sufficient:¹⁶

Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin's time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record...

What Raup means here is, again, that, while there are very few examples of gradual change, there are still some. That is very different from Creation's implication. Some examples will be given later in this essay.

Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information -- what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. So Darwin's problem has not been alleviated in the last 120 years and we still have a record which does show change but one that can hardly be looked upon as the most reasonable consequence of natural selection. Also the major extinctions such as those of the dinosaurs and trilobites are still very puzzling.

Comparing Raup's statements against Creation's partial citation of them in the latter half of paragraph 15 shows further distortion of what Raup said.

A letter was written to David Raup to get his opinion of the way Creation quoted him. Here is his response:

Thanks for sending the xeroxes from the Watchtower tract highlighting the quotes from my 1979 article in the Field Museum Bulletin.

The Watchtower treatment sounds rather impressive -- but only if you don't see the trick. The critical element is the assertion on page 19, which says:

"If evolution were a fact, surely in all of this there should be ample evidence of one kind of living thing evolving into another kind."

If one accepts this statement as true, then the small number of transitional forms in the fossil record is surely a problem and Watchtower's line of argument is valid. But the statement quoted above is patently false and Watchtower's logic falls. Watchtower's argument is based on the false assumption that evolution moves slowly enough for the transitional forms to be seen in a highly fragmented geological record. It is perfectly possible (and probable) that the evolution of new species occurs too rapidly to be seen in the rock record, a record in which depositional rates are too low to record changes that occur in a short time. As an analogy, it would be impossible to observe the progress of a football game if we only had photographs taken 30 minutes apart.

To put the foregoing in a broader context, it is important to note that the creationists are devoted to their "two-model approach." They assert that there are only two alternatives to understanding the history of life: (1) the Biblical story and (2) Darwin's formulation in the middle of the 19th century. And Darwin did, of course, predict that we should find lots of transitional fossils. We have not found them and the creationists conclude that the Biblical alternative must, therefore, be the correct one. The tragedy of this is that it ignores all the other ideas about the problem that have been proposed and tested since Darwin's time. There are obviously more than two "models" available.

In a yet broader context, my statement at the end of page 22 of the Field Museum article is important. I noted the importance of distinguishing the "fact" of evolution from the "explanation" of evolution. There is lots of evidence, completely apart from the fossil record, that animals have changed over time. Darwin was only trying to explain how the changes took place. Darwin could be completely wrong but this would not challenge the "fact" of evolution. As Gould once wrote, "... physicists argue about gravity but apples continue to fall ..." In other words, we can accept that something happens even though we may not be sure how it happens.

Creation misrepresented David Raup in another way. On page 20, Creation shows three animal pictures with X's through them, with a caption taken from Raup's article. The complete caption is quoted above. The impression given is that Raup discussed the animals in his article and dismissed them as examples of transitional fossils. But as the above quotation shows, Raup only discussed the evolution of the horse and only as it applied to North America. He did not discuss the other two animals at all. Much other material shows, in fact, that the evolutionary picture of the three animals illustrated has indeed been modified, but by no means discarded. Raup's letter commented on this misrepresentation, too:

I should also note that the caption under the pictures on page 20 of the Watchtower tract is very misleading. Although I am quoted in the caption, I certainly did not suggest that Eohippus did not exist -- because, of course, it did. Also, I did not discuss evolutionary transitions in birds or lungfish, as is implied.

With all the foregoing information in hand, it should be easy to see how the quotations in paragraph 15 of page 20 lead to a reader's getting a very wrong impression. This is one of the few places where Creation honestly mentions that the quotations are dealing with the "failure of the fossil evidence to support gradual evolution." Most references are made to appear to say that the fossil record does not support evolution at all, even though they are really talking about gradual evolution versus the rapid, jerky evolution posited by a theory such as punctuated equilibrium. But most readers are not sophisticated enough to know whether Creation is talking about a theory that postulates gradual change versus one that postulates jerky change, or is simply adding the descriptive term "gradual" to the term "evolution." Most readers will assume that the scientists quoted are saying that there is no evidence for what they claim to be the "fact" of evolution.

This is clearly shown by the way Creation, in paragraph 16, made a substitution in a quotation from paleontologist Steven Stanley: "The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with [slow evolution]." "Slow evolution" was substituted for "gradualism," so that the sense of the sentence is substantially altered into something like: "The fossil record is not in accord with evolution (which is a slow process)."

Paragraphs 17 through 20 describe the theory of "punctuated equilibrium," and how it has been attacked. But note that the quotations in paragraphs 14 through 20 deal primarily with controversies about how evolution occurred, not about whether it occurred. Specifically, the controversies are about the rate of change between species. Semantics is a problem here because in a discussion about evolution a "sudden" change might imply a period of 500,000 years.

Paragraph 21 implies that there are no intermediate fossils linking animals together, and that there are no intermediates among living animals. This is thoroughly misleading, as we will consider later in some detail. Semantics is a problem here, too, because there are many fossils whose physical structure is intermediate between others', but it cannot be proven with absolute certainty that they were transitional links. For example, a large number of intermediates were found in the horse family, requiring the major change in its evolutionary picture mentioned above. There are so many intermediates that classification is a real problem for paleontologists.

Paragraph 23 quotes from the popular Harper's magazine, from writer Tom Bethell, to the effect that Darwin's theory is on the verge of collapse. The impression given, as usual, is that this refers to the entire notion of evolution, rather than Darwin's idea of the mechanism. It should be noted that Tom Bethell is not a scientist but is a six-literal-day creationist, so what he says is hardly authoritative.

Paragraph 24 again quotes paranormalist Francis Hitching: "The fossil record reveals a pattern of evolutionary leaps rather than gradual change," which seems to imply that the fossil record does not show continuous evolutionary change. This is only partly true since, while there are relatively few examples where continuous change is recorded, they do exist, as we will see later in this essay. Hitching also says that "genes are a powerful stabilizing mechanism whose main function is to prevent new forms evolving." This is again only partly true, and Hitching is wrong on two counts. Genes do perform a stabilizing function, but (1) their main purpose is to carry the hereditary characteristics which control the development of an organism, and (2) while some self repair abilities are built into DNA, they are not sufficient to prevent mutations from occurring.

In paragraph 25 Hitching is again quoted, and he shows his ignorance clearly. Although he knows better, as shown above, he inconsistently equates Darwinism with evolution, implying that scientists have said that it is "the great unifying principle of biology." They have certainly said that about the "fact" of evolution, but not about the mechanism Darwin proposed. Hitching faults Darwin's theory for not explaining "how lifeless chemicals came alive, what rules of grammar lie behind the genetic code, how genes shape the form of living things." Of course it couldn't explain them, because molecular biology was unknown in the 19th century. Darwin never tried to explain the chemical origin of life, but simply postulated a beginning by a creator, as the quotation above shows. Only in later years, when the techniques of chemistry permitted study of life at the molecular level, did scientists propose a theory of evolution that encompassed Darwin's theory and tried to account for the chemical origin of life. This theory is called Neo-Darwinism. Nothing was known about the genetic code until 1866, when Gregor Mendel published his work, and even that didn't become generally known until after the turn of the century. Nevertheless, Hitching is still wrong, because the genetic code began to be deciphered by Watson and Crick in the early 1950s, many gene functions have been mapped, and there is even now a large project to map the entire human genetic code.

Paragraph 26 goes back to mixing up the "fact" of evolution with the mechanisms proposed for it. It concludes that any controversy about the mechanisms are much more than simply "arguing over details." But there are very few scientists who consider the controversies as anything more than that. The bottom line is that the fossil record shows unequivocally that early life consisted of one-celled forms, and progressively more advanced forms tend to show up as time progresses. In several cases, the fossil record shows a finely graduated and continuous evolutionary sequence. Creation should have spent some time talking about well established things like these, rather than denying that they exist.

The rest of the Creation book does no better with respect to evolution and how evolutionists view the theory. In paragraph 5 on page 143 Creation cites an article in Scientific American¹⁷ by zoologist Richard Lewontin, a noted evolutionary theorist. He is supposed to have "said that organisms 'appear to have been carefully and artfully designed.' He views them as 'the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer.'"

The question at the bottom of the page further emphasized Lewontin's purported view: "What recognition does a zoologist give to design and to its originator?" Now, picture the answer a typical reader at a bookstudy would give to the question: "Well, as the paragraph shows, Richard Lewontin views the design of organisms as evidence for their being created."

A check of the Scientific American article shows that Lewontin said something very different from what Creation claims. In saying the above things he is alluding, not to his own viewpoint, but to the general viewpoint scientists in the 19th century had about nature. After describing what had been the general view of how the great variety of life forms came about, and stating that Darwin had tried to account for both its "diversity and fitness," Lewontin said:

Life forms are more than simply multiple and diverse, however. Organisms fit remarkably well into the external world in which they live. They have morphologies, physiologies and behaviors that appear to have been carefully and artfully designed to enable each organism to appropriate the world around it for its own life.

Lewontin's point was that organisms only appear or seem to have been carefully designed. Clearly referring to the 19th century view, he said:

It was the marvelous fit of organisms to the environment, much more than the great diversity of forms, that was the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer. Darwin realized that if a naturalistic theory of evolution was to be successful, it would have to explain the apparent perfection of organisms and not simply their variation. [italics added]

The rest of the article shows that Lewontin considers the viewpoint highlighted in the above quotation as erroneous, and that it has been corrected by the work of Darwin and his successors in the 20th century. In fact, the article is devoted entirely to demonstrating how the adaptation of an organism to its environment can be explained by natural, not supernatural, mechanisms. The abstract for the article is quite clear: "The manifest fit between organisms and their environment is a major outcome of evolution."

This complete misrepresentation is similar to what Creation did with a quotation from Popular Science magazine -- see below. Lewontin specifically complained about this practice:

Partly through honest confusion, but also partly through a conscious attempt to confuse others, creationists have muddled the disputes about evolutionary theory with the accepted fact of evolution to claim that even scientists call evolution into question. By melding our knowledge of what has happened in evolution with our doubts about how this has happened into a single "theory of evolution," creationists hope to challenge evolution with evolutionists' own words. Sometimes creationists plunge more deeply into dishonesty by taking statements of evolutionists out of context to make them say the opposite of what was intended. For example, when, in an article on adaptation, I described the outmoded nineteenth-century belief that the perfection of creation was the best evidence of a creator, this description was taken into creationist literature as evidence for my own rejection of evolution. Such deliberate misuse of the literature of evolutionary biology, and the transparent subterfuge of passing off the Old Testament myth of creation as if it were creation "science" rather than the belief of a particular religion, has convinced most evolutionists that creationism is nothing but an ill-willed attempt to suppress truth in the interest of propping up a failing institution. But such a view badly oversimplifies the situation and misses the deep social and political roots of creationism.¹⁸

Lewontin also complained about the practice of misquoting scientists, in the magazine Creation/Evolution, Fall 1981, on page 35:

Modern expressions of creationism and especially so-called "scientific" creationism are making extensive use of the tactic of selective quotation in order to make it appear that numerous biologists doubt the reality of evolution. The creationists take advantage of the fact that evolutionary biology is a living science containing disagreements about certain details of the evolutionary process by taking quotations about such details out of context in an attempt to support the creationists' antievolutionary stand. Sometimes they simply take biologists' descriptions of creationism and then ascribe these views to the biologists themselves! These patently dishonest practices of misquotation give us a right to question even the sincerity of creationists.

It is one thing to cite and describe opposing viewpoints. It is something else again to repeatedly attribute those opposing views to an author or to a publication that merely describes them, especially when it is evident that the description is for the purpose of dismissing it.

On a final note, it is likely that Creation got Lewontin's statement wrong via poor scholarship rather than dishonesty. Apparently the author was too lazy to do his own research, or he might not have mangled the quotation so badly. Lewontin's statement was apparently lifted from paranormalist Francis Hitching's book The Neck of the Giraffe, page 84 (page 65 paperback). Hitching's quotation of Lewontin is identical to Creation's, but his book was published in 1982, whereas Creation was published in 1985. Hitching apparently in turn lifted this from the creationist publication Impact, No. 88, October, 1980, from the article "Creation, Selection, and Variation" by Gary E. Parker, a well-known creationist. On page 2 Parker wrote:

As Harvard's Richard Lewontin recently summarized it, organisms "... appear to have been carefully and artfully designed." He calls the "perfection of organisms" both a challenge to Darwinism and, on a more positive note, "the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer."

See the magazine Creation/Evolution, Fall 1981, pages 35-44 for more details.

In 1993, at an International Creation Conference where Parker was a main speaker, after a main lecture, he was approached and asked about his alleged misquotation. He said that he did not really misquote Lewontin -- at least that that was not his intention when he wrote the Impact article -- but he was unable to give an explanation. He appeared somewhat embarrassed by the question.

Francis Hitching has also lifted arguments from creationists without attribution (see above). Impact is a monthly publication of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) in El Cajon, California. The institute is a six-literal-day creationist, trinitarian organization, which would ordinarily be condemned in Watchtower Society publications. In one instance, on page 180, footnote 3, Creation took its information directly from Impact. Arguing that many evolutionists use "the weight of authority" of scientists to get people to believe evolution, Creation said:

An example typical of views that often intimidate laymen is this assertion by Richard Dawkins: "Darwin's theory is now supported by all the available relevant evidence, and its truth is not doubted by any serious modern biologist." But is this actually the case? Not at all. A little research will reveal that many scientists, including 'serious modern biologists,' not only doubt evolution but do not believe it.³ They believe that the evidence for creation is far, far stronger.

Checking footnote 3 we find that it refers to Impact, September 1981, p. ii., which contained an article by Henry M. Morris complaining about Isaac Asimov's treatment of six-literal-day creationism. It said:

The "prophet" Isaac never mentions the fact that most of the great founding fathers of modern science (e.g., Newton, Pascal, Kelvin, Faraday, Galileo, Kepler, etc.) were theistic creationists, nor that thousands of fully qualified scientists today have repudiated the evolutionary indoctrination of their school days in favor of the much stronger scientific evidences for creation.

So Creation uses what is essentially a trinitarian religious magazine to make its point. It should be noted that Impact did not mention any specific evidence for its claim in the material Creation referred to. On page iv, however, it said:

Asimov also makes the arrogant charge that creationist scientists "have not made any mark as scientists." The fact is that a cross-section of the records of the scientists on the ICR staff, for example, or of the Creation Research Society, would compare quite favorably with those of most secular colleges and universities (including Asimov's own record).

This statement is misleading at best. Many investigators have found that few creation scientists have done any serious scientific work after becoming associated with the "scientific creationists." A background check of so-called "creation scientists" shows that many of them have degrees from 'diploma mills' or from organizations like the ICR. They often become engrossed, like physicist Robert Gentry, in trying to prove the earth is only six thousand years old. We will meet him later in this essay. Outfits like the Institute for Creation Research have often misrepresented the credentials of "scientists" on its staff in order to make them look more authoritative than they really are. In actual fact, there are extremely few scientists or serious biologists who do not "believe in evolution." So Creation's last statement is not true and is based on a statement by prominent member of "Christendom," which has been demonstrated to misrepresent the credentials of its staff.

There is far too much information on these so-called creationist's scientific credentials to present here, but it is clear that the Creation book's reference is itself merely an appeal to authority rather than evidence -- an authority the Watchtower Society normally rejects, at that.

The above material shows that many of Creation's arguments came from Francis Hitching or six-literal-day creationists without attribution. Many of Hitching's arguments certainly came directly from six-literal-day creationists, which Creation has borrowed in turn. How many Jehovah's Witnesses are aware of this connection?

Part 2: The Genesis Account

Let us now consider how Creation handles Genesis' description of creation. Chapter 3 explains the account. It gives details of each creative day, and assigns to them "long periods of time -- millenniums." Paragraph 32 draws the conclusion:

From what we have considered, the Genesis creation account emerges as a scientifically sound document.¹⁹

The trouble is, up to this point chapter 3 has considered nothing that leads to this conclusion. The only things it has covered are descriptions of Genesis' creative days and certain obvious facts, i.e., light exists, night and day exist, there is dry land, the sun and moon can be seen in the sky, there are seasons and there are many forms of life. Only in the discussion that follows paragraph 32 does the writer touch upon the idea that Genesis is scientifically sound. Paragraph 33 continues:

All the knowledge of the wise men of Egypt could not have furnished Moses, the writer of Genesis, any clue to the process of creation... Where, then, did Moses learn all these things? Apparently from someone who was there.

Note here that the writer has already assumed Genesis to have been proven scientifically sound, even though he has not yet done so, and he says explicitly he is about to prove such by his next argument, in paragraph 34, which states:

The science of mathematical probability offers striking proof that the Genesis creation account must have come from a source with knowledge of the events. The account lists 10 major stages in this order: (1) a beginning; (2) a primitive earth in darkness and enshrouded in heavy gases and water; (3) light; (4) an expanse or atmosphere; (5) large areas of dry land; (6) land plants; (7) sun, moon and stars discernible in the expanse, and seasons beginning; (8) sea monsters and flying creatures; (9) wild and tame beasts, mammals; (10) man. Science agrees that these stages occurred in this general order. What are the chances that the writer of Genesis just guessed this order? The same as if you picked at random the numbers 1 to 10 from a box, and drew them in consecutive order. The chances of doing this on your first try are 1 in 3,628,800! So, to say the writer just happened to list the foregoing events in the right order without getting the facts from somewhere is not realistic.

The key point claimed is that science agrees that the stages of creation occurred in the general order stated in Genesis, and therefore God must have informed Moses of them.²⁰ How does the writer show the order in which science says the stages occurred? He does not do so in the main text. However, in a side box not referenced in the main text he says the following:

A well-known geologist said this about the Genesis creation account:

"If I as a geologist were called upon to explain briefly our modern ideas of the origin of the earth and the development of life on it to a simple, pastoral people, such as the tribes to whom the Book of Genesis was addressed, I could hardly do better than follow rather closely much of the language of the first chapter of Genesis." This geologist, Wallace Pratt, also noted that the order of events -- from the origin of the oceans, to the emergence of land, to the appearance of marine life, and then to birds and mammals -- is essentially the sequence of the principle divisions of geologic time.

So Creation supports its key point with a quotation from a single geologist. It provides no geological data, and no references to geology texts or any other science reference material. The author apparently assumes the reader will read the sidebox, and from that single anecdotal reference draw the conclusion that geology supports Genesis. Likewise, from this one quotation and the list of ten creation events, the author draws the conclusion that there is next to no chance that the writer of Genesis just guessed the right order of creation. But is the key "fact" correct, namely, is it really true that science agrees that the stages of creation occurred in the same general order as presented in Genesis? The following is a summary of what most geology books say. Note that what science says concerning the early universe and earth is highly speculative because of the scarcity of data from those early periods. This is widely acknowledged by geology texts.

The most recent theory on the origin of the universe postulates that everything began in a sort of explosion called the "Big Bang." Science can make no statement about what existed prior to the Big Bang because the physics are not understood.^20a So science and Genesis may agree that there was a beginning, but the details are radically different. This eliminates agreement with point (1) above.

What was the primitive earth like? Again science cannot say with any certainty. Many theories have been advanced, but almost all are acknowledged to be speculative because there is no conclusive evidence. One category of theory postulates that the early earth was extremely hot because of the gravitational energy released by matter falling onto it as it condensed from the primordial nebula from which the solar system formed. The earth then slowly cooled, releasing the gases that formed the atmosphere and the water vapor that eventually condensed to form the oceans. Another category of theory postulates that the early earth was relatively cool at first, and the interior gradually heated up to its current state because of radioactive elements it contained.²¹ The gradual heating released the various gases during volcanic eruptions. So the composition and evolution of the early atmosphere is poorly understood, as is the mode of formation of the oceans. What is agreed upon is that a solid surface existed before any oceans accumulated upon it. These things eliminate agreement with points (2), (3), (4), (5), and (7) above.

Creation's author is aware that science does not say anything conclusive about the early atmosphere, because on page 41 he says:

The fact is, any attempt to establish the nature of earth's primitive atmosphere can only be based on guesswork or assumption. No one knows for sure what it was like.

Apparently by page 41 he has forgotten the above points, because if no one knows for sure what the atmosphere was like there can be no real agreement on what it was like. It is evident the author claims that science and Genesis agree on the state of the primitive atmosphere when it suits his purpose, but later he claims science really knows nothing about the early atmosphere when it suits a different purpose. This choosing among "facts" to suit preexisting notions is inappropriate in a book published by an organization that claims to be interested in truth.

What about the order of creation of life? The geological record of the rocks is much clearer on this than on the early history of the earth. Due to the scarcity of evidence, much is speculative about early one-celled forms of life, but there is a great deal of evidence regarding life after hard-shelled forms appeared. According to most geological source references, first came one-celled organisms called prokaryotes, which do not contain a nucleus. They appeared at first in the form of anaerobic bacteria, then in the form of photosynthetic bacteria, next aerobic bacteria, and finally blue-green algae. Next came one celled organisms called eukaryotes, which contain a nucleus. Finally came multicellular organisms in great variety.

The multicellular organisms were at first marine invertebrates of various types. Then fish and higher marine plants appeared. Next came land plants, amphibians, and insects. Next reptiles, then birds and mammals, and finally man. Note especially that science says fish came before land plants, and some land animals such as amphibians and scorpions came before any flying creatures, including flying insects. If Genesis were correct, whales in particular would have come before dinosaurs, and so would birds, because the simple pastoral Israelites would have understood "the great sea monsters" to include whales, and the "flying creatures" to include birds. The fossil record shows there were both swimming and flying dinosaurs that often were built along the same lines as their mammalian and avian counterparts. But this was unknown to the Israelites. These things show that (6) above is out of order, and (6), (8), and (9) are mixed up. The only thing that is entirely in agreement with science in the above list is that man came last.

If one has to massage Genesis and mangle the scientific data, such as claiming some plants were created very early and others were created much later, when all of the plants mentioned by name in Genesis such as grass and fruit trees show up much later, one can hardly claim the two accounts agree with each other. Creation's statement that the Genesis stages of creation agree with science is true in only the loosest sense.

Furthermore, if you consider Genesis' saying that the universe had a beginning is significant, then other primitive creation stories must be just as significant, as virtually all of them say there was a beginning. So what is the extent of the agreement between science and Genesis?

After a beginning, life forms appeared, among which man was last.

That's it.

There is no agreement in the details. Therefore Creation's claim that the Genesis account came from a source with knowledge of the events has not been shown. In fact, where science makes a definite statement, it disagrees with the Genesis account in almost every detail.

It should be clear why the Creation book refers to no geological data to prove its point, because the data disprove it. Instead, it has to resort to quoting a single geologist, who, not surprisingly, was a creationist who believed the earth was created in six literal days. This is typical of the Society's arguments with respect to science and the Bible. When there is no support in scientific publications the Society quotes other religious or creationist writings without telling the reader the nature of the source.

So what is the probability that the Genesis writer got his knowledge of the order of creation from God, based on its "agreement" with what science says?

Zero.

Note that this conclusion does not depend on whether the "facts" of science are correct. It depends only on the fact that science and the Genesis account do not agree. Whether the "facts" of science are correct is another matter entirely.

The Creation book's quotation of geologist Wallace Pratt, as mentioned above, is an example of how the Society fails to include significant points about a reference, even though the points left out can make a decisive difference in the reader's judgment of the subject. Wallace Pratt was a geologist and an executive for Humble Oil Company and Standard Oil Company (Exxon) at various times in his career. Here is the full context of Creation's quotation of him.²² Let the reader make his own judgment.

Pratt is as much at home in the worlds of literature and philosophy as he is in those of science and industry. He is intrigued by the power of poetic expression. In "Sermons in Stones," a lecture which he gave in 1928, he said, "If I as a geologist were called upon to explain briefly our modern ideas of the origin of the earth and the development of life on it to a simple, pastoral people, such as the tribes to whom the Book of Genesis was addressed, I could hardly do better than follow rather closely much of the language of the first chapter of Genesis." He noted that the order of events -- from the origin of the oceans, to the emergence of land, to the appearance of marine life and then of birds and mammals -- is essentially the sequence of the principle divisions of geologic time from the Cosmic Era to the Psychozoic. He was undisturbed by the way Genesis compresses millions of geologic years into six days, for "Are we not assured, indeed, that with the Creator, 'a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day?'"

Many of the theories of the origin of the earth to which scientists gave credence in 1928 have been sharply modified in the light of new discoveries in geology and astronomy, but not enough, Pratt feels, to disrupt the parallelism with Genesis. "Science is like that," he says. "No scientific theory is sacrosanct. Somebody has said that the great glory of science is that its truths of today are its absurdities of tomorrow. And that is so. New facts always inspire scientists to devise new hypotheses and to demolish old ones."

Note two important points from this: (1) Pratt was a creationist who believed the earth was created in six literal days, and (2) Creation's reference was to a lecture he gave in 1928. Creation is silent on these points because they deflate its argument, in spite of comments from Pratt. Here again the Society withholds information that could help a reader evaluate its argument.

An interesting point about Pratt was his religious belief that the earth was created in six literal days. Pratt was legendary for his ability to find oil fields based on the geology of an area. He regularly used the idea that oil bearing strata were laid down over a long period of time, so that the strata had a certain consistency he was able to discern so as to pick out likely oil fields with great success. How was he able to reconcile the two conflicting sets of beliefs?

The above information showing that Genesis and science do not agree on the order of creation of life is not new. An article in the column "This View of Life" in Natural History²³ described a series of articles written in 1885-1896 by onetime British premier W. E. Gladstone and paleontologist T. H. Huxley concerning the Genesis creation account. Gladstone had

written an article on the scientific truth of the book of Genesis... Thomas Henry Huxley ... read Gladstone's effort with disgust and wrote a response to initiate one of the most raucous, if forgotten, free-for-alls of late nineteenth century rhetoric... [Concerning the Genesis account,] isn't the general order and story consistent with modern science, from the big bang to Darwinian theory? After all, plants come first in Genesis, then creatures of the sea, then land animals, and finally humans. Well, isn't this right? And, if so, then isn't Genesis true in the broad sense? And if true, especially since the scribes of Genesis could not have understood the geological evidence, must not the words be divinely inspired? This sequence of claims is the precise focus of Gladstone's article. Huxley's words therefore deserve a resurrection.

Huxley's rebuttal is no different from the argument that most intellectuals -- scientists and theologians alike -- make today. First, while the broadest brush of the Genesis sequence might be correct -- plants first, people last -- many details are dead wrong by the testimony of geological evidence from the fossil record. Second, this lack of correlation has nothing whatever negative to say about the power and purpose of religion or its relationship with the sciences. Genesis is not a treatise on natural history...

Gladstone... insisted that [the major acts of creation] conform precisely to the order best specified by modern science -- the cosmological events of the first four days to Laplace's "nebular hypothesis" for the origin of the sun and planets, and the biological events of "days" five and six to the geological record of fossils and Darwin's theory of evolution. He placed special emphasis on a fourfold sequence in the appearance of animals: the "water population" followed by the "air population" on the fifth day, and the "land population" and its "consummation in man" on the sixth day...

Gladstone then caps his argument with the claim still echoed by modern reconcilers: this order, too good to be guessed by writers ignorant of geological evidence, must have been revealed by God to the scribes of Genesis:

Then, I ask, how came ... the author of the first chapter of Genesis to know that order, to possess knowledge which natural science has only within the present century for the first time dug out of the bowels of the earth? It is surely impossible to avoid the conclusion, first, that either this writer was gifted with faculties passing all human experience, or else his knowledge was divine.

Huxley arranged his critique by citing four arguments against Gladstone's insistence that Genesis specified an accurate "fourfold order" of creation -- water population, air population, land population, and man. Huxley wrote:

If I know anything at all about the results attained by the natural sciences of our time, it is a demonstrated conclusion and established fact that the fourfold order given by Mr. Gladstone is not that in which the evidence at our disposal tends to show that the water, air and land populations of the globe have made their appearance... The facts which demolish his whole argument are of the commonest notoriety. [Huxley uses "notoriety" not in its current, pejorative meaning, but in the old sense of "easily and evidently known to all."]

He then presents his arguments in sequence:

1. Direct geological evidence shows that land animals arose before flying creatures. This reversal of biblical sequence is true whether we view the Genesis text as referring only to vertebrates (for terrestrial amphibians and reptiles long preceded birds) or to all animals (for such terrestrial arthropods as scorpions arise before flying insects).

2. Even if we didn't know, or chose not to trust, the geological sequence, we could deduce on purely anatomical grounds that flying creatures must have evolved from preexisting terrestrial ancestors. Structures used in flight are derived modifications of terrestrial features...

3. Whatever the order of first appearances, new species within all groups -- water, air, and land dwellers -- have continued to arise throughout subsequent time, whereas Genesis implies that God made all the sea creatures, then all the denizens of the air, and so on.

4. However we may wish to quibble about the order of animals, Gladstone should not so conveniently excise plants from his discussion. Genesis pushes the origin back to the third day, before the origin of any animal. But plants do not precede animals in the fossil record; and the terrestrial flowering plants specifically mentioned in Genesis (grass and fruit tree) arise very late, long after the first mammals...

(Much of the fun in reading through this debate lies not in the forcefulness of arguments or in the mastery of prose by both combatants, but in the sallying and posturing of two old gamecocks... pulling out every trick from the rhetorical bag -- the musty and almost shameful, the tried and true, and even a novel flourish here and there.) ...

... when Gladstone got down to business, he could muster only a feeble response to Huxley's particulars. He did effectively combat Huxley's one weak argument -- the third charge that all groups continue to generate new species, whatever the sequence of their initial appearance. Genesis, Gladstone replies, only discusses the order of origin, not the patterns of subsequent history:

If we arrange the schools of Greek philosophy in numerical order, according to the dates of their inception, we do not mean that one expired before another was founded. If the archaeologist describes to us as successive in time the ages of stone, bronze and iron, he certainly does not mean that no kinds of stone implement were invented after bronze began.

But Gladstone was stuck on his major claim, the veracity of the Genesis sequence: water population, air population, land population, and humans. So he took refuge in the oldest ploy of debate. He made an end run around his disproved argument and changed the terms of discussion. Genesis doesn't refer to all animals, but "only to the formation of the objects and creatures with which early man was conversant." Therefore, toss out all invertebrates (although I cannot believe that cockroaches had no foothold, even in the Garden of Eden) and redefine the sequence of water, air, land, and mentality as fish, bird, mammal, and man. At least this sequence is geologically correct. But every attempt at redefinition brings new problems. How can the land population of the sixth day -- "every living thing that creepeth upon the earth" -- refer to mammals alone and exclude the reptiles that not only arose long before birds but also provided the dinosaurian lineage of their ancestry. This problem backed Gladstone into a corner, and he responded with the weak rejoinder that reptiles are disgusting and degenerate things, destined only for our inattention (despite Eve and the serpent): "Reptiles are a family fallen from greatness; instead of stamping on a great period of life its leading character, they merely skulked upon the earth." Yet Gladstone sensed his difficulty and admitted that while reptiles didn't disprove his story, they certainly didn't help him either: "However this case may be regarded, of course I cannot draw from it any support to my general contention."

Huxley, smelling victory, moved in for the kill. He derided Gladstone's slithery argument about reptiles and continued to highlight the evident discrepancies of Genesis, read literally, with geology ("Mr. Gladstone and Genesis," The Nineteenth Century, 1896):

However reprehensible, and indeed contemptible, terrestrial reptiles may be, the only question which appears to me to be relevant to my argument is whether these creatures are or are not comprised under the denomination of "everything that creepeth upon the ground."

Contrasting the approved tactics of Parliament and science, Huxley obliquely suggested that Gladstone might emulate the wise cobbler and stick to his last. Invoking reptiles once again, he wrote:

Still, the wretched creatures stand there, importunately demanding notice; and, however different may be the practice in that contentious atmosphere with which Mr. Gladstone expresses and laments his familiarity, in the atmosphere of science it really is of no avail whatever to shut one's eyes to facts, or to try to bury them out of sight under a tumulus of rhetoric.

Gladstone's new sequence of fish, bird, mammal, and man performs no better than his first attempt in reconciling Genesis and geology. The entire enterprise, Huxley asserts, is misguided, wrong, and useless: "Natural science appears to me to decline to have anything to do with either [of Gladstone's two sequences]; they are as wrong in detail as they are mistaken in principle." Genesis is a great work of literature and morality, not a treatise on natural history.

There is nothing new under the sun. The old argument the Creation book revives is no better than it was one hundred years ago. The same mistakes of fact are made. Therefore, Creation's key argument in Chapter 3, that science and Genesis agree on the order of creation, which it bases on a statement by a geologist with six-literal-day creationist beliefs, is incorrect. When the details are examined, it is evident that Genesis cannot be reconciled with the fossil record, just as Thomas Huxley pointed out one hundred years ago.

Let us briefly touch on the validity of current scientist's interpretation of the fossil record. It is true that much of what is said is poorly understood, poorly known or speculative. However, there are some basic aspects of geology that are so close to simple observation and measurement that scientists can claim to be right:

In particular, geologic dating (both relative and absolute) is on extremely firm ground. To challenge the basic chronology of life forms would be like claiming that the sun is only ten thousand miles from the earth or that the earth is flat. In effect, we can "see" the geologic time scale.²⁴

If the fossil record showed clear discrepancies -- such as the early appearance of fossils of animals or plants that, according to current scientific understanding, appeared late in the fossil record -- excellent arguments could be made that the fossil record is too poorly understood to make firm conclusions, and that there is no basis for questioning the Bible's statements that conflict with the fossil record. But there are no such anomalies. It is apparent therefore, that claims that the Bible is accurate when it touches on scientific matters such as the order of creation, rest almost entirely on rejection of evidence to the contrary, rather than an impartial examination of all evidence. In any case the bottom line is: science and Genesis do not agree on the order of creation.

The June 8, 1991 Awake! article, "Did Each Creative Day Always Finish What It Started?" is a good illustration of the Society's misunderstanding of geological information. The Awake! article, like the Creation book, contains many statements that the Genesis creation account is historical and agrees with science. The following discussion examines the article's viewpoint on this question.

First note that Creation and Awake! do not agree with each other on whether science and Genesis agree on the order of creation events. On page 37 Creation lists ten events of creation and says:

Science agrees that these stages occurred in this general order.

However the Awake! article says on page 12:

From time to time, Jehovah's Witnesses receive questions about the order of creation as presented in [the Creation] book... Some of these questions point to a difference between the order in the book and the order claimed for these events by most geologists.

The last paragraph on page 14 says:

The geologic record is incomplete and subject to interpretation according to the theoretical leanings of those seeking to unravel its tangled skeins.

Following the Society's rule that the latest information it publishes is its official position, Awake!'s statements seem to mean that the basic theme of Creation's third chapter, namely, that science and Genesis agree on the order of creation, is no longer held by the Society. Is the Society admitting that science and Genesis do not actually agree on the order of creation?

Next note that Awake! is pointing out nothing not already known to a student of the fossil record when it argues that the creation of life was a gradual, progressive activity. The fossil record shows clearly that life has changed progressively through the ages, with species often appearing suddenly in rapid series of "explosions," and sometimes disappearing even more suddenly in massive extinctions. The dramatic disappearance of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago and subsequent rapid appearance of a huge variety of mammals is the classic case. It has been estimated that more than 99% of all species that ever lived are extinct. What is new in the Awake! article is the Society's acknowledgment that new life forms have appeared from time to time, and especially that Genesis supports this notion. No other fundamentalist organization seems to take this position.

The Genesis account's statements regarding the order of creation raise the question of whether land animals or flying creatures came first. Awake! points out that Genesis does not speak of just birds when it uses the Hebrew word 'ohph, but that all kinds of flying creatures were created on the fifth day. Similarly it is clear that Genesis speaks of all kinds of land animals, not just mammals, as being created on the sixth day. Awake! makes a serious error by turning this general question into the narrow one of whether mammals came before birds or other flying creatures, and then ignoring the general question. The article is, in fact, an excellent illustration of the use of the "straw man" style of argument. The "straw man" is the question of whether birds or mammals were created first. This is discussed and then substituted for the real issue of whether flying creatures or land animals came first. The straw man is easily knocked down, leaving the real issue untouched and casual readers with the impression the question has been settled.

Why is the question of whether mammals or birds came first not important to this discussion? Simply because science has no clear answer to it. There are so many fossils that show a skeletal structure intermediate in form between reptiles and mammals that scientists are hard put to decide what was the first true mammal. The earliest fossil bird yet found, the famous Archaeopteryx, has skeletal features intermediate in form between reptiles and modern birds. Archaeopteryx appears in the fossil record about 140 to 150 million years ago, about the same time the first indisputable true mammals appear. It is not known if Archaeopteryx was truly early in the line of birds, or if it belonged to a peculiar side-family that existed alongside more conventional birds. There is simply too little fossil evidence. Traces of mammal-like creatures show up as far back as 215 million years ago, and one highly disputed fossil whose finder thinks it was a bird appears as much as 225 million years ago. Therefore, the argument about whether birds came before mammals is moot, and a discussion of Genesis focusing on birds and mammals misses the essential point about land animals versus flying creatures. The fossil record is unequivocal that land animals show up long before flying creatures of any sort. Sea creatures show up far earlier than either. But Awake! discusses none of this, nor does Creation. What is more, Creation and Awake! carefully avoid discussing any geological data, but speak only in sweeping generalities.

Not only does Awake! miss the point about land animals and flying creatures versus mammals and birds, it doesn't get its facts straight when referring to what scientists believe about mammals and birds. It says on page 12:

Interestingly, while many geologists feel that birds came after mammals, others believe that mammals appeared after birds. An example of the latter case is found in the book Evolution, by Colin Patterson, page 132. This indicates that the evidence from the fossil record is not conclusive.

It is certainly true that evidence from the fossil record is not conclusive on the origin of birds. It is also true that some paleontologists believe that mammals appeared after birds, but Colin Patterson is not one of them. The example from page 132 of Patterson's book is actually a chart showing his idea of the genealogical relationships of existing vertebrate groups. The chart is a typical evolutionary tree showing when various groups of vertebrates split from ancestral stock, but it is incomplete in that it does not explicitly show large groups of extinct animals such as the dinosaurs. These extinct groups are represented implicitly in the lines showing ancestral relationships. Unfortunately this chart cannot be reproduced here, but the relevant points are that it shows lines representing the ancestors of the group containing turtles, snakes, lizards, crocodiles and birds, and the ancestors of the group containing the egg-laying, marsupial and placental mammals, splitting apart about 315 million years ago. This is actually the split between two major subgroups of reptiles: the conventional reptiles known as diapsids, which included dinosaurs, lizards and snakes, and the less conventional synapsids (therapsids) or mammal-like reptiles.²⁵ The chart shows the bird and crocodile lines splitting apart at 215 million years ago, but this is actually the split between dinosaurs and crocodile-like animals. Here Patterson implicitly includes birds among the dinosaur lineage. The chart also shows the egg-laying mammals splitting apart from the marsupials/placentals at 190 million years, which was about 25 million years after the first possible traces of mammals appear and shortly before the last of the synapsids appeared. In others words, the chart shows the line that led to mammals splitting at 315 million years from the line that led to reptiles, dinosaurs and birds. Awake! misinterprets the chart by comparing the point at which birds and crocodiles split, 215 million years, with the point at which egg-laying and marsupial/placental mammals split, 190 million years, and claiming that these points are when Patterson says that birds and mammals arose. The chart shows precisely the opposite of what Awake! claims.

With regard to the creation of plants, the Genesis account is straightforward. In the New World Translation, Genesis 1:11, 12 specifically states that grass and fruit trees were made before the end of the third creative day. However, many other translations say "vegetation" rather than "grass," as the original Hebrew word can be rendered either way. So if Genesis really means general vegetation, and not grass, there is no conflict. In any case, it was not until the fifth day that sea creatures began to be created, and animals like dinosaurs were not created until the sixth. However, the fossil record shows unequivocally that sea creatures and plants appeared long before land plants of any sort, at least 200 million years earlier. Fruit trees did not appear until about 110 million years ago in the middle of the age of dinosaurs, and grasses not until 60 million years ago at the beginning of the age of mammals, whereas the earliest land animals, including insects, appear in the fossil record about 450 million years ago. The fossil evidence for this sequence is extremely strong and has been known for at least 150 years. The appearance of flowering plants, including fruit trees, is, in fact, like the Cambrian explosion of life with hard parts, one of the striking "explosions" of new types of life forms that evolutionists have such difficulty explaining. Moreover, Genesis 1:21 clearly says that God proceeded to create every living soul in the sea and every winged flying creature according to its kind before the end of the fifth creative day. The language is unambiguous and leaves no room for Awake!'s speculation that the creation sequences spanned several creative days.

Awake! points to Genesis 2:19 as evidence that there may have been a progressive creation of flying creatures, as well as other animals, but does not discuss the fact that Genesis 1:21 explicitly states that every (Heb. kol every, every one, the whole, all, of all kinds, every sort) flying creature was created before the start of the sixth day. Many biblical scholars use this difference to show that Genesis is a compilation of two contradictory creation accounts. This argument is well known to the Society, but is not mentioned. Instead, Awake! uses a textual argument on verse 19 that attempts to show that creation was progressive. Keeping in mind Awake!'s claim that "Genesis chapter 1 indicates that creation involved ongoing activity by God," let us examine parts of Genesis, taking into account relevant aspects of the Hebrew language.

Typical of most translations, The New English Bible renders Genesis 2:19 as:

So God formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of heaven. He brought them to the man to see what he would call them.

The New World Translation reads:

Now Jehovah God was forming from the ground every wild beast of the field and every flying creature of the heavens, and he began bringing them to the man to see what he would call each one.

The word translated above as "formed" or "was forming" is from the Hebrew wayuitser (root: yatsar; to form, fashion), which is composed of the conjunction waw (and, but, then, now, for, so, etc.) and the imperfect verb form of yatsar (Kal future [=imperfect] 3rd person singular masculine, defective & with conversive waw; p. 339, The Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon by Benjamin Davidson, Samuel Bagster & Sons, 1967 reprint), which denotes incomplete action, past, present or future. The 3rd person imperfect form can be translated as "he forms, he will form, may form, was forming, might form, has been forming, had been forming, would have been forming," etc. The above lexicon mentions that the "conversive waw," "prefixed to the forms of the Future, gives to them the sense of the Imperfect; hence called by grammarians Conversive Vav, e.g., yiqtol he will slay, wa-yuiqtol he slew." Apparently, terminology is not entirely standard among grammarians, but what this means is that prefixing waw to a future (=imperfect) form can turn it into what looks like a past tense in English. So there is grammatical precedent for rendering Gen. 2:19 as "And God formed...," although the sense might be rendered in a number of other ways. So the Society's rendering "God was forming" probably more accurately depicts the thought of the verse, and translating it as "God formed" is grammatically acceptable but less accurate.

Awake! argues on page 13, paragraph 2, that "the imperfect state of the Hebrew verbs used in Genesis chapter 1 indicates that creation involved ongoing activity by God." It cited two Bible translations in support, which give the idea that "progressive creative activity is indicated by the use of the word 'gradually'," which was used in the translation by J. W. Watts. Watt's translation rendered Genesis 2:19 as:

Yahweh God continued to form from the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the heavens and to bring them to the man to see what he would call them.

(italics added in above scriptural citations).

This argument may be true, but the August 15, 1968 Watchtower, pp. 499-500, gives the real reason the Society makes a point of what the proper rendering for Genesis 2:19 should be. After admitting that Genesis contains two separate historical documents, The Watchtower said:

Hence we have two separate accounts of creation from slightly different points of view. In the second of these accounts, in Genesis 2:19, the original Hebrew verb translated "was forming" is in the progressive imperfect form. This does not mean that the animals and birds were created after Adam was created. Genesis 1:20-28 shows it does not mean that. So, in order to avoid contradiction between chapter one and chapter two, Genesis 2:19, 20 must be only a parenthetical remark thrown in to explain the need for creating a 'helper' for man. So the progressive Hebrew verb form could also be rendered as 'had been forming.' -- See Rotherham's translation (Ro), also Leeser's (Le).

The point is that the Society endeavors to translate in such a manner that the first two chapters of Genesis do not contradict each other. The textual evidence from the Hebrew is really not the point. Written Hebrew is an extremely vague language in a certain sense, because of the lack of verb forms indicating precise location in time. The original Hebrew was written in a terse manner, with no vowels. In the course of time, as Hebrew became a nearly dead language, the original pronunciations were lost, and about the sixth century the Masoretes added vowel points to help. It is certain, however, that not all of these were added correctly, and so it is not certain how some words are to be translated. Let's examine a few examples from Genesis to illustrate.

First, as shown above and contrary to what the Society claims, its rendering of Hebrew verbs in Genesis in the imperfect tense is not required by the structure of the language. There is no specific tense corresponding to past, present or future. Hebrew has a verb structure uniquely its own, and instead of the tenses of English, it has two major forms that can be rendered in various ways depending on the translator's understanding of the context. Either of these forms can refer to past, present or future. The NIV Interlinear Hebrew-English Old Testament avoided addressing these textual versus contextual issues, and in the introduction explained how it handled the renderings:

Because the two major tenses, or aspects -- perfect and imperfect -- overlap so greatly in both time orientation and function, they are not distinguished in [this] translation.²⁶

The perfect tense expresses completed action, while the imperfect tense expresses incomplete or continuing action. Since either tense can refer to past, present or future, the appropriate English rendering must be derived from the context. The Society's reference Bible says:²⁷

In Hebrew, action that took place in the past could be indicated by verbs in the imperfect state if that action is viewed as incomplete, while action taking place in the future could be indicated by verbs in the perfect state if that action is viewed as complete.

While this explanation is incomplete itself, note that it says the action could be indicated by the perfect or imperfect forms, not that there is anything inherent in the forms which requires indicating the quality of the action. Also, the one doing the "viewing" must be the translator. This is clearly seen by using an interlinear translation along with an analytical lexicon that lists all the verb forms used in the Hebrew scriptures.

Genesis 1 provides an excellent illustration of the way all this works. There are many sequences of the form "and [imperfect action verb]" followed by "[perfect action verb]". Here are rendered verses 3 through 5, with imperfect verbs in italics and perfect verbs in bold.

3 And God says, "there is light," and there is light. 4 And God is seeing the light, that [it is] good, and God is separating between the light and the darkness. 5 And God is calling the light Day and the darkness he called night, and there is evening and there is morning, a first day.

Note the flow in the narrative, which carries the reader quickly along. Also note that the verb "there is" is the same in all four places in the Hebrew. Finally, note the use of "God is calling" and "he called" in verse 5. The New World Translation renders these as "God began calling" and "he called," respectively. The original Hebrew in Genesis 1 mixes the tenses freely, and the NWT translates the whole verse as "And God began calling the light Day, but the darkness he called Night." If the original Hebrew was rendered "And God began calling the light Day, but the darkness he began calling Night," it would still make perfect sense and its meaning would not be changed. Conversely, The New International Version renders it "God called the light 'day' and the darkness he called 'night'," which still makes perfect sense and retains the same meaning. Apparently the writer of Genesis did not consider the exact word use important.

The same mixing of tenses in one verse can be seen with respect to the words "began calling" and "called" in Gen. 1:10. Further, Gen. 1:10, 1:12, 1:18, etc., use the imperfect tense for the word "saw," which the NWT renders in the past tense: "God saw that it was good." Would it make sense to say "God gradually saw that it was good"? Hardly, but it makes good sense in terms of the continuing narrative style of Genesis 1, i.e., "and God is seeing that [it is] good."

Is the New World Translation inconsistent when it sometimes renders the Hebrew imperfect tense as the English past tense, and sometimes uses a continuing sense? Not really. It merely illustrates that the rendering depends entirely on the translator's understanding of the context. Awake!'s argument about gradual creative activity is certainly allowed by the Hebrew text, but is not required and certainly is not a proof of anything at all. It is the same with respect to Gen. 2:19. This shows that Awake!'s statement on page 13, paragraph 2, is misleading.

Barnes Notes on the Old Testament attempted to explain the difficulty with Gen. 2:19. First it presented its own translation of the verse: "And Yahweh God molded out of the ground all the wild beasts of the field..." Then it commented:²⁸

Without any emphasis on the sequence of acts the account here records the making of the various creatures and the bringing of them to man. That in reality they had been made prior to the creation of man is so entirely apparent from chapter one as not to require explanation. But the reminder that God had "molded" them makes obvious His power to bring them to man and so is quite appropriately mentioned here. It would not, in our estimation, be wrong to translate yatsar as a pluperfect in this instance: "He had molded."

Aside from the obvious fact that Barnes Notes' explanation relies on its prior assumption that the Bible is inspired to explain why there is no difficulty with Gen. 2:19, we have here an example where a translator decided that, based his understanding of the context, a Hebrew verb in the imperfect state should be rendered in the pluperfect tense: "had molded," rather than "molded" or "was molding." This further illustrates that Hebrew to English translation is inexact and depends upon the translator's understanding of the context.

The above information sheds light on why virtually all modern translations render passages such as Gen. 2:19 with the verb "formed," rather than "was forming." It is simply a matter of judgment and understanding of context among Hebrew scholars. The author of Genesis may well have had in mind a progressive creation, but there is no support in the original Hebrew language for conclusive statements either way. Therefore, the conclusions Awake! makes are conjectural, since they are neither supported nor refuted by the Hebrew text. Here again, the Society makes dogmatic statements to support its contentions, leaving out much information that might support a different view.

Based on the above discussion, it is easy to see that Awake!'s statements on page 12, to the effect that flying creatures began to be created before mammals appeared, misdirect the reader and do not address the real issues. The many arguments that Genesis is speaking of a gradual creation do not address the fact that specific life forms, such as fruit trees, are specifically stated by Genesis to have been created before the end of a particular creative day, and that every kind in a category was created before the end of the day. The only way to reconcile this is to claim that when Genesis says "every" it does not mean what it says.

Creation makes a point concerning the heavenly luminaries. On the fourth creative day Genesis says these luminaries, i.e., the sun, moon and stars, came to be in the heavens. Creation says on page 31:

On the first "day" diffused light evidently penetrated the swaddling bands, but the sources of that light could not have been seen by an earthly observer because of the cloud layers still enveloping the earth. Now, on this fourth "day," things apparently changed... Now, had there been an earthly observer, he would be able to discern the sun, moon and stars.

Later on the Bible describes the Flood of Noah's day, and implies that one source of the water was the "swaddling bands" mentioned here. This layer of water must have been thousands of feet thick to flood all the "high mountains" of the world, and it would have been an impediment to light reaching the surface of the earth. Is it reasonable believe that the stars would have been visible through a layer of water thousands of feet thick, or through the equivalent amount of water vapor? This is entirely apart from the difficulties related to the existence of such a layer^28a in the first place.

Various dating methods show that life has existed on the earth for hundreds of millions of years. The Society has always objected to these findings, insisting that the Genesis account requires six creative days of 7,000 years each. Interestingly, to support the notion of fixity of species Creation is forced to admit that life has existed for much longer than the Society has so far been willing to admit. Under the subheading "Continued Sudden Appearances, Little Change" on pages 63-64, several interesting quotations appear:

"The record now reveals that species typically survive for a hundred thousand generations, or even a million or more, without evolving very much... After their origins, most species undergo little evolution before becoming extinct."

"In 40 million years of struggling up the evolutionary ladder, [insects] have made almost no discernible progress."

"The horseshoe crab... has existed on earth virtually unchanged for 200 million years."

Unfortunately, in using the above quotations, the author seems to have forgotten that he said on page 27 that these things are included in the Genesis creation account, and took place over "long periods of time -- millenniums." Using the word "millenniums" in this context is like saying that human life spans are many minutes long -- true, but completely misleading.

Interestingly, the Insight book,²⁹ Vol. 1, under the subject "Creation," is not willing to assign a definite length to the creative days, but the January 1, 1987 Watchtower states that

a study of Bible prophecy and of our location in the stream of time strongly indicates that each of the creative days... is 7,000 [not 7,001 or 6,999] years long.

All of the above, plus the things I've said elsewhere in these essays about geologic dating methods, make it evident that the Society ought to rethink its position that the creative days were 7,000 years long. The seventh creative day may well be about 7,000 years long, but the others must surely be much longer.

Because Insight was published in 1988, after the above mentioned Watchtower article, it must be asked if the Society has already changed its official position on this matter, but decided not to made it generally known.

How does Genesis fit in with the creation myths of ancient peoples other than the Jews? The Creation book says the Genesis account is not drawn from the creation myths of ancient peoples. On page 35 a side box describes the

... Babylonian creation myth that is claimed by some to be a basis for the Genesis creation account: ... Does it seem to you that this type of tale bears any similarity to the Genesis creation narrative?

The side box uses information from the Aid³⁰ book. The Aid book further points out some of the differences between the Babylonian and Genesis accounts, and says:

While some have pointed to what seemed to them to be similarities between the Babylonian epic and the Genesis account of creation, it is readily apparent from the preceding consideration of the Biblical creation narrative and the foregoing epitome of the Babylonian myth that they are not really similar. Therefore, a detailed analysis of them side by side is unnecessary.

The Aid book uses quotations from several sources who are obviously fundamentalists of the six-literal-day creationist school, who point out the obvious differences between the two accounts. It should be noted that six-literal-day creationists are notoriously loose with the truth when it comes to proving the Bible inspired. Aid further states:

The account preserved in the Scriptures was written down and originally possessed by Adam. By means of preservation by faithful patriarchs of ancient times it came into the possession of Moses, who, under divine inspiration, used it when compiling Genesis.^30a

Upon further research it became clear that Aid's statements about the most ancient creation accounts are not proven facts, but are the Society's assumptions made only because there is no other evidence for its position.

The reader should check Aid's entire discussion of the subject of creation myths and Genesis, as well as a condensed version of this description in the Insight³¹ book, under the subject "Creation." The evident similarities between the Babylonian and Genesis creation accounts are not discussed; in fact, as shown above, Aid specifically discounts the necessity to do so and instead relies on the testimony of six-literal-day creationists that the accounts are not similar. In considering the merit of any argument that quotes from other source references it pays to go to those sources and see for yourself what they say. From the following, which contains a list of the similarities between the two accounts, it should be evident to the reader why Aid does not want to burden its readers with such unnecessary detail.

Concerning the origin of the Genesis account the book Genesis from The Anchor Bible series says:³²

The practice of tracing history back to antediluvian times is at least as old as the Sumerian king list... Biblical tradition had ample reason to be familiar with Mesopotamian cultural norms. Indeed, the Primeval History is largely Mesopotamian in substance, implicitly for the most part, but also explicitly in such instances as the Garden of Eden or the Tower of Babel. Thus biblical authors were indebted to Mesopotamian models for these early chapters not only in matters of arrangement but also in some of the subject matter.

Is the treatment of creation in Genesis a case of such indebtedness? We have two separate accounts of this theme, the present section which stems from P, and the one following which goes back to J, as was indicated above. Yet neither source could have borrowed directly from the other, since each dwells on different details. Accordingly, both must derive from a body of antecedent traditions. It follows that the present version of P should have connections with old Mesopotamian material. This premise is borne out of actual facts.

The designations P and J refer to the so-called Priestly and Jahwist sources of Genesis, according to the so-called Documentary Theory of the origins of Genesis. Versions of this theory are widely held among non-fundamentalist biblical scholars. The Anchor Bible Genesis continues:

Mesopotamia's canonical version of cosmic origins is found in the so-called Babylonian Creation Epic, or Enuma elis "When on High"... The numerous points of contact between it and the opening section of Genesis have long been noted. There is not only a striking correspondence in various details, but -- what is even more significant -- the order of events is the same, which is enough to preclude any likelihood of coincidence. The relationship is duly recognized by all informed students, no matter how orthodox their personal beliefs may be. I cite as an example the tabulation given by Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis, p. 129:

Enuma elish	Genesis
Divine spirit and cosmic matter are coexistent and coeternal	Divine spirit creates cosmic matter and exists independently of it
Primeval chaos; Ti'amat enveloped in darkness	The earth a desolate waste, with darkness covering the deep (tehom)
Light emanating from the gods	Light created
The creation of the firmament	The creation of the firmament
The creation of dry land	The creation of dry land
The creation of luminaries	The creation of luminaries
The creation of man	The creation of man
The gods rest and celebrate	The gods rest and celebrate

Except for incidental differences of opinion in regard to the exact meaning of the first entry in each column..., the validity of this listing is not open to question. What, then, are the conclusions that may be drawn from these and other relevant data?

It is ironic that the same probability argument the Creation book uses on pages 36-37 can be used with the above table to offer "striking proof" that the Genesis and Babylonian creation accounts must have a common origin. Because essentially the same eight events are listed in the same order in the above table, we may conclude that the chance these accounts are unrelated is one in 40,320.

The Anchor Bible Genesis continues:

It is clear that the biblical approach to creation as reflected in P is closely related to traditional Mesopotamian beliefs. It may be safely posited, moreover, that the Babylonians did not take over these views from the Hebrews, since the cuneiform accounts -- among which Enuma elis is but one, and a relatively stereotyped, formulation -- antedate in substance the biblical statements on the subject. Nor is there the slightest basis in fact for assuming some unidentified ultimate source from which both the Mesopotamian and the Hebrews could have derived their views about creation. It would thus appear that P's opening account goes back to Babylonian prototypes, and it is immaterial whether the transmission was accomplished directly or through some intermediate channel; in any case, J cannot have served as a link in this particular instance...

Derivation from Mesopotamia in this instance means no more and no less than that on the subject of creation biblical tradition aligned itself with the traditional tenets of Babylonian "science." The reasons should not be far to seek. For one thing, Mesopotamia's achievements in that field were highly advanced, respected, and influential. And for another, the patriarchs constituted a direct link between early Hebrews and Mesopotamia, and the cultural effects of that start persisted long thereafter.

In ancient times, however, science often blended into religion; and the two could not be separated in such issues as cosmogony and the origin of man. To that extent, therefore, "scientific" conclusions were bound to be guided by underlying religious beliefs. And since the religion of the Hebrews diverged sharply from Mesopotamian norms, we should expect a corresponding departure in regard to beliefs about creation. This expectation is fully borne out. While we have before us incontestable similarities in detail, the difference in over-all approach is no less prominent. The Babylonian creation story features a succession of various rival deities. The biblical version, on the other hand, is dominated by the monotheistic concept in the absolute sense of the term. Thus the two are both genetically related and yet poles apart. In common with other portions of the Primeval History, the biblical account of creation displays at one and the same time a recognition of pertinent Babylonian sources as well as a critical position toward them.

A book on the archaeology of the Bible presented material much the same as above, and commented:³³

On the whole, however, it must be recognized that the differences between Enuma elish and the Old Testament are far more important than the similarities. The Babylonian creation story is mythological and polytheistic while the accounts in Genesis are elevated and strictly monotheistic. Doubtless certain features of the biblical narrative of creation are derived from the Babylonian myth, or at least back of both Israelite and Babylonian thought are certain common sources. But the dignity and exaltation of the words of the Bible are unparalleled.

The above discussions are the most reasonable I've read concerning the Babylonian and Genesis creation accounts' differences and similarities. It says nothing about whether the Bible is inspired. It merely shows what some of the differences and similarities are, and draws some conclusions. There is a big difference between this treatment, and that by the Society. The Society first assumes that Genesis is the true account, and then suppresses all evidence that might bear against that assumption. It should be emphasized that the question of the Bible's inspiration has absolutely nothing to do with any of the above. Moses or whoever wrote Genesis could have gotten his basic material from the same ancient sources as did the Babylonians, and then God put his stamp of approval on it.

All this is clear evidence that the Society is interested, not in presenting all the facts to its readers, but in promoting its own agenda.

In case the reader doubts that the above table comparing the Babylonian and Genesis creation accounts is a good summary of what the Babylonian account actually says, note the following comparison of the opening verses of Genesis with the Mesopotamian account:³⁴

Though the parallel is not exact in every detail, these verses may be aptly compared with the opening lines of Enuma elish, the Sumero-Babylonian creation hymn that was ritually recited during the annual new year's festival in Mesopotamia:

When on high the heaven had not yet been named, firm ground below had not yet been called by name, naught but primordial Apsu,^34a their begetter, and Mummu-Tiamat,^34b she who bore them all, their waters commingling as a single body; no reed hut had been matted, no marsh land had appeared, when no gods whatever had been brought into being, uncalled by name, their destinies undetermined: then it was that the gods were formed within them...

The Babylonian hymn is a theogony, a recital of the birth of the gods, which has no counterpart in the Genesis story. First the gods, then the heavens and earth and underworld, and only at the end man, who is to serve the gods -- such is the structure of the Babylonian myth. The similarity to Genesis is nevertheless apparent, just as is its similarity to other ancient creation stories, Greek and Roman as well as Semitic. At the beginning of all there is a vision simply of unformed chaos, with no attempt made to account for its presence. The myth of creation, in other words, does not speculate about the origin of matter; it rather attempts to account for the emergence of an ordered, livable universe.

Clearly the Creation book's author has researched the question of the similarity of the Genesis and Babylonian accounts merely by looking into other Watchtower publications, and has again argued as a literary critic.

Part 3: The Fossil Record

The Creation book devotes chapters 4-7 to examining the fossil record. It will be shown how these chapters, as well as other Watchtower publications, do not offer the reader a complete picture of what has been found in the fossil record. In support of this, extensive specific examples will be used to present a fair picture of what technical publications say. This is necessary because: (1) most people do not have the necessary background, (2) most would not take the time to look up the technical references, and (3) Watchtower publications never contain the necessary material.

The fossil record indicates a long history of extensive change in life forms. Typical statements by geologists about these changes are:

[There is an] enormous amount of evidence which supports the general notion of evolution: the fact that living things on the earth were different in the past, and that as time led to the present, the kinds of animals and plants on this planet changed (evolved) into those we see today.³⁵

Our knowledge of the evolution of plants and animals is based on a factual set of observations. We have a large number of facts (fossils) on which to draw, and these fossils paint an enormous, elaborate, and consistent picture of change and orderly succession among living things up to the present time.³⁶

... the fossil record not only documents evolution, but... it was the fossil record itself which forced natural scientists to abandon their idea of the fixity of species and look instead for a plausible mechanism of change, a mechanism of evolution. The fossil record not only demonstrates evolution in extravagant detail, but it dashes all claims of the scientific creationists concerning the origin of living organisms... Jawed fishes did not appear until 400 million years before the present, land plants did not appear until 375 million years ago, land animals 350 million years ago, insects 350 million years, mammals 150 million years, flowering plants 135 million years, primate mammals 25 million years; and our own species, Homo sapiens, did not appear until 2 to 4 million years ago (depending upon which of many fossil intermediates one first begins to classify as human).³⁷

Contrary to what evolutionists claim, the above items do not prove that evolution occurred, i.e., evolution in the sense that one form of life gradually changed into another. But the evidence incontrovertibly shows a tremendous change through the geological ages in the types of animals that existed at any given time. This author thinks the change is better accounted for by creation, although the evidence is^37a consistent with either position. The debate is really about the mechanism of the changes, not whether the changes actually occurred.

One of the more difficult problems for evolutionists is to find a reasonable explanation for the phenomenon they term "convergent evolution." Convergent evolution supposedly occurs when two distinct lines of creatures evolve structures that are outwardly similar or identical in function. For example, the shape of porpoises is very much like the shape of the extinct marine reptile Ichthyosaur. The Tasmanian wolf of Australia is nearly identical to the true wolf of Eurasia and the Americas, even though the one is a marsupial and the other is a placental mammal, and the two have been separated for more than 60 million years.³⁸ It is difficult to see how evolution, driven by random mutation and unpredictable environmental factors, could possibly result in creatures so nearly the same.

The most extensive changes in life forms occurred during major episodes of extinction where, in relatively brief intervals of time, entire communities of animals and plants vanished, only to be replaced by a new set. As the book Extinction says:³⁹

Mass extinctions -- global crises that have repeatedly swept away most species of animal life on earth -- are now basic facts of geology. Each great crisis has "reset" the global biological system, in the sense that important groups of organisms have disappeared, making way for the expansion of others.

The Permian extinction wiped out at least 75% of all animal species, both on land and in the oceans.^{40, 41} The Late Cretaceous extinction eliminated at least 60% of all animal species, including all the dinosaurs.⁴²

Smaller episodes of extinction occurred in between the largest. For example the Mesozoic Era, the so-called Age of Dinosaurs, had two. They defined the end of the Triassic and Jurassic Periods. These Periods themselves contained even smaller episodes of extinction. During the Cretaceous Period, a minor extinction coincided with the beginning of the rise of flowering plants.⁴³

National Geographic Magazine contains a very clear chart showing the general outline of extinctions from the Cambrian Period to the present.⁴⁴

The mass extinctions have a number of features in common. Animal life both on the land and in the sea was hit. Plant life was not affected nearly as much as animal life, and tropical animals tended to be particularly hard hit. Certain groups of animals tended to be hit in every episode.⁴⁵ After an extinction a new set of animals would replace the old set in a geologically short time span. Just prior to an extinction the number of varieties of animals often decreased.⁴⁶

There is much debate within the scientific community as to exactly what caused the extinctions, but the fact that extinctions occurred is merely an observation from the fossil record, and it is a fact that patterns can be observed in the extinctions. The fossil record shows that life forms came into being suddenly, lived a long time with virtually no change, and then died out. Often they were replaced by similar animals of different species. This evidence, that species remain fixed for long periods of time and are suddenly replaced, has within the last twenty years given rise to a theory called "punctuated equilibrium." The comments of paleontologist Robert Bakker about his own discoveries with regard to this general sequence, in the strata of the Morrison Formation of the Como Bluff and Sheep Creek areas in Wyoming, are notable:⁴⁷

The Sheep Creek Brontosaurus stands in the museum at the University of Wyoming. It is a splendid skeleton from the lake limestones close to the very bottom of the Morrison Beds. I surveyed every square inch of it for my notes so as to compare it with Yale's Brontosaurus from a quarry high up on Como Bluff, and with the New York Museum of Natural History's Brontosaurus from Nine-Mile-Crossing, a quarry in an in-between layer. My final notes contained a record of Brontosaurus through hundreds of thousands of breeding generations, spanning many major environmental shifts and climatic changes. Therein was contained absolutely no evidence for continuous evolutionary change. Brontosaurus had remained fixed in its adaptation through a million years.

Not only did Brontosaurus remain static in form for a very long time, but when it did change, it seemed to jump forward with a quick evolutionary spurt... But in Colorado, in beds laid down a bit later than those at the top of Como Bluff, much larger brontosaurs are found... Long epochs had passed without change, followed by the sudden appearance of a new, larger species.

Brontosaurs were not the only dinosaurs from Como to support the concept of punctuated equilibrium. Allosaurus, the contemporary predator, remained fixed at one adult size... through the entire span of strata from the lower Morrison Beds right up to near the top of the formation on the Bluff. But in Colorado, in those same beds that yield giant brontosaurs, are also found giant allosaurs... Another brontosaur, Camarasaurus, seems to have followed the same pattern.

Bakker took note of the speed with which new animals appeared in the fossil record after extinction events. Concerning the appearance of duckbill dinosaurs, he said:⁴⁸

The first of them appeared fifteen million years before the end of the Cretaceous. Within the next ten million years they had expanded so quickly that seven distinct genera can be found in one small outcrop of the Judith River Formation [of Montana and Alberta]. Horned dinosaurs [such as the Triceratops family] also exhibited such aggressive expansion during the same period and produced five or six genera in the Formation. These are rates of expansion every bit as fast as those clocked by the big mammalian families during the Age of Mammals.

Concerning the theory of punctuated equilibrium paleontologist Roger Lewin wrote:⁴⁹

When he wrote the Origin of Species, Darwin argued that the reason that 'intermediate forms' were rare in the fossil record was the extreme incompleteness of the record: brief snapshots at long-separated intervals through time. The theory of punctuated equilibrium, while not denying that the record is incomplete, gives another interpretation: namely, that evolutionary shifts are concentrated in geologically brief periods of time and in small, peripheral populations. There is therefore little opportunity for such populations to be incorporated in the record. In other words, the pattern seen in the record -- species persisting in one form, then abruptly changing to another -- is a reflection of reality, not an artifact of the record itself.

Early Life, Creation and Evolution

Creation's chapter 4 is entitled "Could Life Originate By Chance?" I won't spend much time on it, because most of the arguments rapidly become too technical.

On page 38, paragraphs 1 and 2 discuss the spontaneous generation of life. A paraphrasing of what a reader might think after reading paragraph 2 might be: "Respected scientists in the 17th century believed in spontaneous generation of life. Louis Pasteur proved them wrong in the 19th century. Ignoring this proof, scientists continue to assume spontaneous generation occurred because it is necessary for the validity of evolutionary theory."

What is wrong with the paragraph? For one thing, the experiments which Pasteur performed did not prove that life could not generate spontaneously. He only showed that spoilage of food products and infections in living organisms were caused by the invasion of microscopic organisms. A second problem is that paragraph 2 assumes that spontaneous generation is required for evolution to be valid. This is true for some versions of the theory, but others, such as Darwin's original version, postulate the creation of an original life form by means outside the bounds of the theory and go on from there. A third problem is that paragraph 2 speaks of the spontaneous generation of life as believed in the 17th through the 19th centuries as if it were the same spontaneous generation which is spoken of today with regard to evolution. It is not. The first concept of spontaneous generation referred to the growth of organisms such as mold or maggots in a short period of time from no apparent source. Spontaneous generation as applied to evolution refers to a process which occurred billions of years ago under special circumstances over an extremely long period of time. The term "spontaneous generation" applies to both situations, but with entirely different meanings.

Paragraphs 3 through 5 discuss the speculations of evolutionist Richard Dawkins on the origin of life. After saying that the "organic soup" model is extremely improbable, and that Dawkins admits this, paragraph 5 on page 39 says:

At this point a reader may begin to understand Dawkins' comment in the preface to his book: "This book should be read almost as though it were science fiction."

Creation is clearly attempting to imply to the reader that Dawkins 'knows' he is being unrealistic and has no good arguments to make in favor of his position. But Dawkins certainly doesn't think he is unrealistic, because the preface to his book said:⁵⁰

This book should be read almost as though it were science fiction. It is designed to appeal to the imagination. But it is not science fiction: it is science. Cliche or not, "stranger than fiction" expresses exactly how I feel about the truth.

The rest of chapter 4 is suspect because it relies heavily on the writings of paranormalist Francis Hitching, who has already been shown to have borrowed heavily from six-literal-day creationists. Here is a case in point. On page 44, paragraph 18 states:

The proteins needed for life have very complex molecules. What is the chance of even a simple protein molecule forming at random in an organic soup? Evolutionists acknowledge it to be only one in 10¹¹³ (1 followed by 113 zeros). But any event that has one chance in just 10⁵⁰ is dismissed by mathematicians as never happening. An idea of the odds, or probability, involved is seen in the fact that the number 10¹¹³ is larger than the estimated total number of all the atoms in the universe!

This is misleading for several reasons. For one thing, no direct reference is given showing how this number was obtained, who derived it, what the conditions were, how long the time period was, etc. It turns out that it was taken from pages 67, 70-71 (pp. 50, 52-53 paperback) of Francis Hitching's book The Neck of the Giraffe, in a panel entitled "Can Life Form by Chance?" That is why Creation says that "evolutionists acknowledge" the probability to be only one in 10¹¹³ -- Creation calls Hitching an evolutionist because the author couldn't find his credentials. The argument, of course, is not attributed to anyone in particular, even though it is lifted from Hitching.

It gets worse. Hitching was merely quoting someone else's argument, which he reproduced in some detail with full attribution. The panel quotes Dr. Jean Sloat Morton, apparently a six-literal-day creationist, writing in Impact, December 1980, number 90. Impact is a publication of the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, and is quoted elsewhere in Creation. Hitching's quotation said:

... let us consider a simple protein containing only 100 amino acids. There are 20 different kinds of L-amino acids in proteins, and each can be used repeatedly in chains of 100. Therefore, they could be arranged in 20¹⁰⁰ or 10¹³⁰ different ways. Even if a hundred million billion (10¹⁷) of these combinations could function for a given purpose, there is only one chance in 10¹¹³ of getting one of these required amino acid sequences in a small protein consisting of 100 amino acids.

Creation is really plagiarizing the work of a young-earth creationist in the ICR pamphlet Impact, via Hitching. Note also that in the aforementioned paragraph, Creation claims that "Evolutionists acknowledge the chances to be 1 in 10¹¹³." That is an outright lie. It is not an evolutionist who is making the claim, it is a creationist.

In any case, this is a commonly used creationist argument, and is based on incorrect assumptions such as life must have originated completely in a form that we recognize today with DNA, RNA, enzymes, etc. No one today knows enough about biology to make even an estimate of the probability of proteins arising by chance, much less that for life itself.

Even in minor ways, Creation manages to distort what the original author of the Impact article said. The statement that "mathematicians usually consider 1 chance in 10⁵⁰ as negligible" is turned into "any event that has one chance in just 10⁵⁰ is dismissed by mathematicians as never happening." The statement that "Sir Arthur Eddington has estimated there are no more than 10⁸⁰ (or 3,145 x 10⁷⁹) particles in the universe" is turned into "an idea of the odds, or probability, involved is seen in the fact that the number 10¹¹³ is larger than the estimated total number of all the atoms in the universe." There is an obvious migration from tentative statements to authoritative, and a "dumbing down." The author of Creation has no idea what he is talking about and is clearly dishonest.

The Watchtower Society has long taken the position that the earliest forms of life appeared suddenly, at the beginning of the so-called "Cambrian explosion" of life.

However, life has existed far longer than the six hundred million years since the Cambrian Period began. We will examine the Society's position on this.

The Creation book, in Chapter 5, on pages 59-63, under the sub-heading "Life Appears Suddenly," gives its readers the false impression that no fossils of multi-celled creatures from earlier than the Cambrian Period have ever been found, and that the beginning of this era corresponds with the beginning of the Genesis account of the creation of life. It also glosses over the fact that many fossils from the three billion years prior to the Cambrian have been found. On page 60 Creation states:

From this [one-celled] beginning, can any evidence at all be found to verify that one-celled organisms evolved into many-celled ones? "The fossil record contains no trace of these preliminary stages in the development of many-celled organisms," says [Robert] Jastrow. Instead, he states: "The record of the rocks contains very little, other than bacteria and one-celled plants until, about a billion years ago, after some three billion years of invisible progress, a major breakthrough occurred. The first many-celled creatures appeared on earth."

Note that Jastrow says clearly that the first many-celled creatures appeared on earth "after some three billion years of invisible progress," during which bacteria and one-celled plants lived. One celled life is still life. Jastrow also does not state that many-celled life appeared at the beginning of the Cambrian Period, but instead mentions a time "about a billion years ago." The Cambrian began about 600 million years ago, so there is a difference of some 400 million years between the time Jastrow is speaking about and the start of the Cambrian Period. But Creation's author thinks that the two time periods are the same, since immediately after the above paragraph he says:

Thus, at the start of what is called the Cambrian period, the fossil record takes an unexplained dramatic turn. A great variety of fully developed, complex sea creatures, many with hard outer shells, appear so suddenly that this time is often called an "explosion" of living things.

It is difficult to see how the author of Creation arrived at this conclusion. About what happened at the beginning of the "explosion" of hard shelled creatures he is thoroughly confused. There is so much information available about the time table of the history of life that it is clear the author of Creation does not understand his subject. If he had read the entire paragraph from which he took his first quotation from Jastrow he would have found that fossils consist not only of animal remains, but of the tracks they made. After describing the assumed early development of many-celled life from single-celled life, Jastrow says:⁵¹

The fossil record contains no trace of these preliminary stages in the development of many-celled organisms. The first clues to the existence of relatively advanced forms of life consist of a few barely discernible tracks, presumably made in the primeval slime by soft, wriggling, wormlike animals. These are found in rocks about one billion years old. Somewhat later, well-defined worm burrows appear in the record. These meager remains are the earliest traces of many-celled animal life on the planet.

Furthermore, if Creation's author had read the paragraphs immediately after the one from which he took his second quotation from Jastrow he would have found the following:⁵²

The fossil record contains the remains of these many-celled creatures. These were primitive, soft-bodied animals; nonetheless, they were a great advance over single cells like the bacterium... During the next half billion years or so, very little happened; at least, little that is preserved in the fossil record. Then 600 million years ago, another great advance occurred. The fossil record shows that at that time the first hard-bodied creatures -- animals with external skeletons -- appeared on the earth. These were the ancestors of the clam, the starfish, the lobster, and the insect.

So the "Cambrian explosion" records the first appearance in the fossil record of multicellular animals with hard parts. This is one of the concentrated episodes of diversification of life seen so many times afterward. Precambrian life was exclusively soft-bodied and so was not likely to be preserved.

Thus it is clear that the Creation book tries to make it appear that the start of the Cambrian Period saw the beginning of complex life. The author continues to be confused about these points on page 61:

Are there fossil links between this outburst of life and what went before it? In Darwin's time such links did not exist. He admitted: "To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer." Today, has the situation changed? Paleontologist Alfred S. Romer noted Darwin's statement about "the abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear" and wrote: "Below this [Cambrian period], there are vast thicknesses of sediments in which the progenitors of the Cambrian forms would be expected. But we do not find them; these older beds are almost barren of evidence of life, and the general picture could reasonably be said to be consistent with the idea of special creation at the beginning of Cambrian times. 'To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system,' said Darwin, 'I can give no satisfactory answer.' Nor can we today," said Romer.

Romer's paper from which Creation quotes was published in 1959. In 1989 Stephen Jay Gould, concerning the earliest life, said there is⁵³

a rich Precambrian record, all discovered in the past thirty years... Our Precambrian record now stretches back to the earliest rocks that could contain life... morphological remains are... as old as they could possibly be. Both stromatolites (mats of sediment trapped and bound by bacteria and blue-green algae) and actual cells have been found in the earth's oldest unmetamorphosed sediments, dating to 3.5-3.6 billion years in Africa and Australia... The Precambrian record does contain one fauna of multicellular animals preceding the Cambrian explosion, the Ediacara fauna, named for a locality in Australia but now known from rocks throughout the world. But this fauna... is barely Precambrian in age. These animals are found exclusively in rocks just predating the explosion, probably no more than 700 million years old and perhaps younger... the Ediacara creatures are soft-bodied, and they are not confined to some odd enclave stuck away in a peculiar Australian environment; they represent a world-wide fauna.

This information was available in many scientific publications at the time Creation was published. Paleontologists continue to publish new findings about Precambrian life every year.

Romer's paper was correct at the time it was written, but has become outdated because of more recent discoveries. Legend has it that in the mid-nineteenth century the physicist Lord Kelvin calculated that powered flight was impossible. The Creation book would do as well to quote Kelvin to prove the impossibility of air travel as to quote Romer or Darwin on Precambrian discoveries in the fossil record. Good scholarship requires one to use the latest information on any subject.

Scientific American reported some very recent findings on the Ediacaran animals:⁵⁴

We now know that the Ediacaran radiation was indeed abrupt and that the geologic floor to the animal fossil record is both real and sharp.

The article points out evidence that one-celled life has existed on earth for at least 3.5 billion years, that the "explosion" of animal life is relatively recent (about 700 million years ago), and the Cambrian "explosion" of hard-shelled animals is later still.

The section of Creation starting on page 59, under the subheading "Life Appears Suddenly," manages to disprove its own point. Paragraph 16 describes how life appeared sometime within the first billion years of the earth's history. Paragraph 17 makes the point that that first life was not so simple, as even "simple" cells are already extremely complicated compared to non-living matter. Paragraph 18 points out that it was another three billion years before multicellular life appeared. Paragraph 19 then describes the Cambrian explosion of complex sea life. Paragraph 20 says there are no links between the Cambrian life and that which came before. The remaining paragraphs then try to make the point that there was no Precambrian life at all! It should be quite obvious that if it took three billion years for life to get from one-celled to many-celled forms, it can by no stretch of the imagination be said that life appeared suddenly, which is the premise and title of the section. Quite apart from whether the evidence marshaled by Creation in this subheading is true, the evidence presented is contrary to the point being made.

The final paragraphs of Chapter 5 of the Creation book conclude that the theory of evolution is not supported by^54a the fossil record, and to a great extent, it surely isn't. Instead the record can be regarded as supporting either creation or evolution, depending on one's starting assumptions. What these last paragraphs fail to note, however, is that the fossil record does not support the Genesis account either, according to the evidence presented in the previous section of this essay. As shown, Chapter 3 of Creation provides no support for Genesis. Creation errs in assuming that showing the fossil record inconsistent with evolution as it is currently envisaged automatically proves Genesis. A quotation from page 62 proves this is the author's intent:

"The creation account in Genesis and the theory of evolution could not be reconciled. One must be right and the other wrong."

There are a number of other possibilities that come to mind, not the least of which is that no one, including those who believe in Genesis, has any idea what really happened. The mere fact that major parts of the theory of evolution are in serious need of revision, and might be scrapped, does not support the creationist position. Francis Hitching, taking this view, asks:⁵⁵

Why is the creationist argument, evidently plausible, open to suspicion? First, because it is quite wrong to present creation v. evolution as if they were the only two ways of looking at the problem -- as if they were two sides of the same coin. The current explanations of evolution may be scientifically puzzling or unsatisfactory, but this is not to say that evolution has not occurred. The evidence from every scientific discipline that has touched on the subject shows consistently that the earth is old, is part of an even older universe, and that evolution explains why we have so many kinds of organisms and why they look so different. Radiometric dating methods confirm Earth's antiquity. Geology shows how there were different epochs with different life forms that ran their span and became extinct. Genetics shows how living things are related to one another, and have the potential for change.

These patient researchers do not 'prove' evolution (strictly speaking, proof can be obtained only in logic and mathematics). But taken together, coming as they do from so many different viewpoints, they make an overwhelming case. Also, the way that Darwinism was found to be mistaken in various ways and replaced by neo-Darwinism, which in turn is due for demolition, says something positive about scientific method. Scientists may get stubborn about their theories, hold on to them long after their writ is run, and even conspire to present their theories as if there was nothing to be said on the other side. But history shows that in the end, as facts accumulate, a change of thinking is inevitable.

Another author comments:⁵⁶

The fundamentalists who still argue for "scientific" creationism are not arguing for anything scientific at all. Their approach is to attack the foundations of evolutionary theory, and their claim is that when evolutionary theory crumbles, creation will somehow stand confirmed in its place -- not creation in general but the particular account of creation that appears in the Bible.

A third author said regarding the question of "creation-science" versus creation:⁵⁷

Chandra Wickramasinghe and Fred Hoyle^57a of University College in Cardiff, Wales, have

... concluded that the 10 or 15 billion-year age suggested for the universe does not allow enough time for evolution of the genetic codes found in living cells. Wickramasinghe has colorfully compared the probability of life arising from inanimate matter to the probability that "a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747." These authors have therefore argued that such improbabilities point toward an intentional and intelligent creation of living organisms.

Jacques Monod and Francis Crick, both Nobel laureates, have also argued that the enormous complexity of living cells makes prospects for their development from nonliving matter simply too slim to be worth considering. In each case, the distinguished scientist finds himself at one with the idea that life was either created by a supreme being or transported to this world from another...

... we do not have anything resembling the fossil record which would show us that the steps of chemical evolution have in fact occurred, and the suggestion that the first living cell may have been created is entirely proper. However, I do not agree with the suggestion that such a process is so improbable that it could not have happened. I am reminded of Lord Kelvin's calculations demonstrating the impossibility of powered flight and would suggest that perhaps we would do well to learn a little more about the genetic apparatus and chemical evolution before we go on to apply a final label of impossibility on the evolution of the first living cell. However, speculation such as this is entirely reasonable (however much one may disagree with the specifics), and science must make clear to the general public that the first cause of life on this planet is neither factually established, nor is it wedded to the process of biological evolution in any way.

A similar statement can be made about the origin of the universe. Our understanding of astrophysics is too primitive to permit us to put a meaningful answer to the question of why there is a universe to begin with. Some scientists even suggest that the fortunate "choice" of physical constants for atomic and subatomic particles makes life itself possible and therefore implies conscious choice of these constants by a clever and powerful creator. Fair enough. What we know about the origin of life and the origin of the universe, therefore, is certainly consistent with the existence of a creator. We would be very foolish to maintain that our advancing understanding of the cosmos and the biological world in any way argues against the existence of God. I, like many other scientists, therefore see no conflict between my religious beliefs and the work of science. This is a point worth making to all who teach and write about science...

I am somewhat saddened by the proofs advanced by the likes of Wickramasinghe and Hoyle for the existence of a creator, because their argument is based on something so tenuous in an empirical sense. Because we cannot explain how life might have originated (it looks too improbable), there must be a creator, or so they argue. One could have made the same argument 50 years ago and argued that because we cannot find (or even imagine) a chemical basis for heredity, this proves that there is a vital principle in living things traceable only to a creator and beyond our understanding in chemistry and physics. Today, thanks in large measure to the likes of Monod and Crick, we know that there is no such vital principle, and we understand a great deal about the chemical nature of heredity. If 30 more years of scientific work show that chemical evolution from nonliving matter is in fact possible, must we now conclude that God does not exist? I think not. We must therefore be very careful if we claim that our inability to understand or imagine a natural process proves creation (God's existence). Why? Because in the not too distant future we may understand that natural process all too completely and wind up as hopelessly confused as, say, Lord Kelvin being offered a ride in a Boeing 747.

So there are other valid viewpoints that the Creation book does not take into account. As expressed above, the fossil record is consistent in a broad sense with evolution or creation. However, the evidence presented in this essay forces the conclusion that the Genesis creation account is highly improbable.

Part 4: The Transformation of Species

Chapter 6 of the Creation book does a creditable job showing the improbability of the transformation between invertebrate and fish, fish and amphibian, amphibian and reptile. But on the transformation from reptile to bird and reptile to mammal the book goes completely astray. To show this we shall need to present quite a bit of information. This will also provide the background for other comments about certain other of Creation's arguments.

First, note the difference between the terms "transitional form" and "intermediate form." The former implies change while the latter implies difference. Evolutionists often use the terms interchangeably because of their belief that the one implies the other, but this implication is only their opinion. We have tried to be careful in this essay to make a distinction between the two terms if it is not clear from the context. Unfortunately Creation does not recognize the distinction and so goes to great lengths to show that because certain animals are not really intermediate in form between two major kinds of animals, such as reptiles and birds, neither are they transitional. We will show that the fossil record really does contain intermediate forms. Whether these forms are also transitional is the point of the creation/evolution controversy, and there seems little reason to take a stand on it.

One of the difficulties of Darwin's theory of evolution, and its successor, the so-called synthetic theory, is the proposed mechanism driving the change from one life form into another, namely, natural selection. Chapters 4 through 8 of Creation attempt to show this difficulty. The book presents much good evidence, but makes many misstatements and leaves gaps in the reader's understanding of the issues. We will here point out some of these problems.

First, the following quotation summarizes the scientific consensus on transitional life forms.⁵⁸ Keep in mind that creationists claim no transitional species have ever been found.

... it is worth noting how the various vertebrate classes actually appear in the fossil record. As noted, the first amphibian is the most fishlike of all amphibians. The first true reptiles? These can be seen in a group where amphibian and reptilian characteristics are mixed, known as Seymouria. Here again, the first known reptiles are remarkably amphibian in character. The pattern is repeated in the development of birds, where the first known complete skeletons, including the remarkable fossils of Archaeopteryx, are completely intermediate in character, and some specimens would in fact actually have been classified as reptiles but for the lucky fact that certain fossils were found with preserved feather impressions.

'Indeed, if feather impressions had not been preserved, all Archaeopteryx specimens would have been identified as coelurosaurian dinosaurs. The only reasonable conclusion is that Archaeopteryx must have been derived from an early or mid-Jurassic theropod.' [J. H. Ostrom, Nature, 242(1973):136]

Finally, there is a remarkable evolutionary series of fossils connecting reptiles and mammals. Is this final series represented by a single intermediate which the creationist may insist is not quite intermediate enough? Not at all:

'... the mammals almost universally offer sharp and obvious contrasts to the reptiles. But in the Permo-Triassic sequence of fossils the contrasts were established only slowly and gradually through groups of intermediates, and became indefinite in the earlier members of the theromorphs so that "what is a mammal and what is not a mammal is pretty much an academic question..."' [T. N. George, Sci. Prog. Ox, 189(1960):13.]

The transition between reptiles and mammals is filled by nearly a dozen intermediates, and the case for evolution is stronger with every new fossil discovered in the rocks of this period. Here we have the first and most direct response to the creationist criticism of the fossil record. Intermediate forms do exist, there are thousands of them, and we can tell the public what they are, why they are "intermediate," and show that however bold the creationist attacks are, they are totally wrong at the level of the fossil record itself. However, there is a more telling point to be made here, and this point has to do with the alternative theory the creationists are attempting to establish.

If we were to accept creationist criticism of the fossil record at its face value, what scheme could we then propose for the natural history of this planet? Accepting the premise of divine creation and the impossibility of evolution, we would have to suggest that a creator formed the first jawless vertebrates some 600 million years ago by an act of special creation, so that these animals appeared suddenly and without ancestors. Nearly all these jawless forms died out shortly after being created, and those that do survive are quite different. Some in fact survive by parasitizing species of fish that did not appear until some 200 million years after the jawless fishes were specially created, a curious fact indeed. Then, nearly 100 million years later the creator made bony fishes, somewhat like the kinds which now occupy the oceans. Later he specially created primitive amphibians, stepping in again and again over the next 50 million years to create the many amphibian groups which appear and then disappear in the fossil record. Still later, he formed primitive birds and primitive mammals, intervening again and again to carry out a series of special creation events so closely graded that the scientists of the present would misinterpret these progressive appearances and disappearances as the result of evolutionary change and extinction. Is this scheme of a progressive creator acting over millions of years the alternative explanation of natural history which the creationists would like to open our minds to? Not at all.

Another book commented on creationist's statements that no transitional fossils have ever been found:⁵⁹

We have found clear evidence of transitional links between major vertebrate groups ... We have found sources in Pre-Cambrian rocks for the famous Cambrian explosion of multicellular life forms... We have found primitive antecedents of the flowering plants -- links between the angiosperms and the gymnosperms that dominated the land before angiosperms appeared sometime in the Cretaceous... We have found links between modern humans and fossil apes... In many cases, the problem is not a lack of intermediates but the existence of so many closely related intermediate forms that it is notoriously difficult to decipher true ancestral-descendant relationships. In a very real sense, the fossil record is far better testimony to evolutionary change than Darwin, in his later years, probably imagined possible.

So the general scientific consensus is that there are definitely transitional forms in the fossil record. Whether they really are transitional or not, they are definitely intermediate, in that they show characteristics of two kinds of creatures. Such creatures are termed mosaics.

In view of the above statements from scientists concerning transitional forms, which we will call intermediate forms, Creation's statements in paragraphs 14 and 15 on page 59 are incomplete and misleading:

What has confounded such scientists is the fact that the massive fossil evidence now available reveals the very same thing that it did in Darwin's day: Basic kinds of living things appeared suddenly and did not change appreciably for long periods of time. No transitional links between one major kind of living thing and another have ever been found. So what the fossil record says is just the opposite of what was expected.

Swedish botanist Heribert Nilsson described the situation this way, after 40 years of his own research: "It is not even possible to make a caricature of an evolution out of palaeobiological facts. The fossil material is now so complete that... the lack of transitional series cannot be explained as due to the scarcity of material. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled."

Creation quoted Heribert Nilsson's 1953 book. Much fossil evidence has been found since 1953 that makes his statements out of date. We will shortly show examples of this.

This quotation seems to be another example where Creation got its reference from Francis Hitching's The Neck of the Giraffe, although here, at least, the quotation actually seems to have been checked against the original source. The quotation is identical to that in Hitching (p. 11 paperback) except for the ellipses, which Hitching left out. Hitching's reference for the publishing date for Nilsson's book is 1954, and he gives no page number, whereas Creation does give the page.

Now let's get down to specifics. The section of Creation beginning on page 64, "No Transitional Features," clearly shows how Creation leaves out or obscures pertinent information. Paragraph 29 says:

New Scientist noted that evolution "predicts that a complete fossil record would consist of lineages of organisms showing gradual change continuously over long periods of time." But it admitted: "Unfortunately, the fossil record does not meet this expectation, for individual species of fossils are rarely connected to one another by known intermediate forms... known fossil species do indeed appear not to evolve even over millions of years."

Note carefully that New Scientist noted that species are rarely connected by intermediate forms. This is quite different from never connected. Paragraph 29 from Creation continues:

And geneticist Stebbins writes: "No transitional forms are known between any of the major phyla of animals or plants." He speaks of "the large gaps which exist between many major categories of organisms."

Creation is here speaking of transitional forms between species and transitional forms between phyla as if they were equivalent. Its author does not seem to know the difference between a phylum and a species. A phylum is a major subdivision within the plant or animal kingdoms. For example, arthropods (crustaceans, insects, spiders) are one phylum and chordates (animals with spinal cords) are another. Since the first discoveries of early Cambrian fossils it has been evident that these phyla have been distinct since their origins, and evolutionists do not state otherwise. A species is a narrowly defined category of animal. A wolf is classed as a different species from a dog, for example, even though sometimes the distinction is not clear.

The context of the quotation from Stebbins shows that what he said regarding what he called transitional forms between, and the origin of, various categories of animals, is exactly opposite to what is implied by Creation:⁶⁰

If categories become well defined because forms intermediate between them become extinct, then in the history of groups having a good fossil record we should be able to find periods when categories which are now well defined were connected by transitional forms. If we analyze the fossil record of vertebrates, this is exactly what we see. Among modern animals, the dog and bear families are regarded as definitely related to each other, but even when all contemporary members of the two families are considered, nobody has any difficulty in distinguishing bears from dogs, foxes, and coyotes. In the Miocene and early Pliocene epochs, however, the situation was different. At that time, animals intermediate between dogs and bears were common, so that paleontologists have great difficulty in deciding just when the dog and bear families became distinct from each other...

Going farther back in the fossil record, we learn that in the latter part of the Eocene epoch, primitive animals which are now clearly recognized as forerunners of the principle families of carnivores: dogs, cats, weasels, civets, and their relatives, were linked together by a complex network of resemblances...

There are... many differences between modern reptiles and amphibia in the structure of their skeletons, and these have been used by paleontologists for recognizing the first reptiles to appear. An eminent paleontologist, A. S. Romer, remarks of these animals: "Primitive Paleozoic reptiles and some of the earliest amphibians were so similar in their skeletons that it is almost impossible to tell when we have crossed the boundary between the two classes."...

In respect to the early evolution of mammals, the same situation exists. The distinctive characteristics of modern mammals; warm blood, hair, and the ability to suckle their young, cannot be determined in fossils. In respect to their skeletons, however, modern reptiles are, and the dinosaurs were, very different from modern mammals. On the other hand, the animals which dominated the land in the later Permian and early Triassic Periods, before the dinosaurs appeared, were the mammal-like reptiles or therapsids, which in both their skulls and teeth were almost halfway between typical reptiles and primitive mammals...

During the Triassic Period, the therapsids gave rise to several groups of rather small, light-boned and active reptiles, which because of their specialized teeth were known as the "dog tooths" (cynodonts)... These animals existed for more than twenty million years during the latter half of the Triassic Period. Their skeletons were mammal-like in most respects, except that they had not yet acquired the three mammalian ear bones... the counterparts of two of them (quadrate and articular) were still part of the lower jaw... Recently discovered skulls indicate that the shift from jaw to ear bones took place gradually. Commenting on this situation, an eminent paleontologist, E. H. Colbert, remarks: "All of which indicates how academic is the question of where the reptiles leave off and the mammals begin."...

The first true mammals appeared in the late Triassic Period, about the time when the cynodonts were becoming extinct. The age of dinosaurs began later, during the Jurassic Period. During the entire period when the earth was dominated by these reptilian giants, small active mammals existed side by side with dinosaurs.

These facts tell us that the transition from reptiles to mammals was very gradual, taking place over a period of approximately 100 million years. It took place simultaneously with the beginning of the major adaptive radiation of the reptiles themselves. Mammals are simply a further extension, through directional evolution, of one particular radiant line of reptiles.

The transition from reptiles to birds is more poorly documented than are the other transitions between classes of vertebrates. Nevertheless, many of the smaller reptiles in the group ancestral to dinosaurs and crocodiles had light skeletons from which those of birds could have arisen, and moreover walked exclusively on their hind legs, as do birds. Furthermore, the earliest fossil birds, from Jurassic deposits of Germany, had jaws containing teeth and forelimbs with well developed fingers... We classify them as birds because feathers are preserved with their skeletons; but if their preservation had been somewhat poorer and the feathers were not present, these animals might well have been classified as reptiles.

Thus the fossil record of vertebrates strongly suggests that the characteristics which distinguish the modern higher categories appeared first as distinctive features of certain species or genera. They became characteristics of families, orders, and classes only after descendants of the animals which first possessed them developed them further, radiated into numerous adaptive niches, and became separated from other groups by extinction of intermediate forms. In other groups of organisms such as insects and higher plants, in which the fossil record is far more fragmentary, profound gaps exist between many orders, suborders, and classes. Furthermore, no transitional forms are known between any of the major phyla of animals or plants. In view of the incompleteness and biased nature of the fossil record in all of these groups, and the extremely long time, measured in hundreds of millions of years, since the various phyla of organisms evolved, the large gaps which exist between many major categories of organisms aside from the vertebrates are most reasonably ascribed to known imperfections in the fossil record...

A further point must be emphasized in connection with the evolution of families, orders, and classes. This is its "mosaic" character. As pointed out in connection with both the evolution of amphibia from fishes and of mammals from reptiles, the various characteristics which now distinguish the more evolved class probably evolved separately, some relatively early, others much later, at periods of evolutionary time which in some instances were separated from each other by millions of years...

Consequently, we cannot speak of any single "step" in the evolution of mammals from reptiles. In some instances, such as the change in position of the jaw bones to the ear, a relatively small number of genetic changes may have triggered off the evolution and establishment of a new adaptive complex with respect to that particular character... These changes would however, have occurred at the level of subspecies or closely related species. A contemporary taxonomist, transported to the Mesozoic era and not knowing anything about the evolutionary future, would probably have classified the first population bearing all three bones; hammer, anvil and stirrup, in its middle ear, as an aberrant species belonging to the then widespread group of therapsid reptiles. As stated above, this group probably already possessed a mixture of characters which we now associate on the one hand with reptiles and on the other with mammals.

So Stebbins actually said, with regard to what Creation quoted, that in contrast with the fairly complete record of vertebrate evolution, which shows numerous intermediate forms, the fossil record of transitional forms between major categories (phyla) of animals and plants is very poor and often shows nothing. This is not at all the same as what Creation implies, which is that no intermediate forms exist at all. Again the author of Creation argues as does a literary critic.

The fact that Creation's author is confused about the difference between phyla and species is further shown by the fact that, immediately after he quotes Stebbins about phyla and major categories of animals, paragraph 29 says:

"In fact," The New Evolutionary Timetable acknowledges, "the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another. Furthermore, species lasted for astoundingly long periods of time."

This is again a quotation out of context. The New Evolutionary Timetable was talking about fossil finds in the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming, when it said:⁶¹

Superb fossil data have recently been gathered from deposits of early Cenozoic Age in the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming. These deposits represent the first part of the Eocene Epoch, a critical interval when many types of modern mammals came into being. The Bighorn Basin, in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, received large volumes of sediment from the Rockies when they were being uplifted, early in the Age of Mammals. In its remarkable degree of completeness, the fossil record here for the Early Eocene is unmatched by contemporary deposits exposed elsewhere in the world. The deposits of the Big Horn Basin provide a nearly continuous local depositional record for this interval, which lasted some five million years. It used to be assumed that certain populations of the basin could be linked together in such a way as to illustrate continuous evolution. Careful collecting has now shown otherwise. Species that were once thought to have turned into others have been found to overlap in time with these alleged descendants. In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another. Furthermore, species lasted for astoundingly long periods of time. David M. Schankler has recently gathered data for about eighty mammal species that are known from more than two stratigraphic levels in the Big Horn Basin. Very few of these species existed for less than half a million years, and their average duration was greater than a million years.

This is all said within the framework of author Steven M. Stanley's attempt to show that the "punctuated equilibrium" model of evolution is correct, rather than the traditional gradualist model. The fact that there are serious difficulties with either theory does not change the fact that Creation has incorrectly applied the quotation to the fossil record as a whole, when the context so clearly limits its application to the Big Horn Basin. That Stanley's intent is so limited is shown by his later statement:⁶²

A frequent claim of creationists is that the fossil record contradicts [the] concept of evolution. One argument here is that there are no transitional forms between distinctive groups of animals or plants. This is not true, and what is most important is that evolutionists do not need dozens of examples to make their case... Quoting certain scientists who have claimed Archaeopteryx to be fully birdlike, creationists have dismissed this interesting form as meaningless, but they are only telling a half-truth. Other scientists have claimed Archaeopteryx to be remarkably dinosaurian -- to be a dinosaur with a wishbone and feathers! This disagreement is no embarrassment to evolution. Quite the reverse. It underscores the transitional character of the famous fossil. Archaeopteryx represents a single intermediate form. Elsewhere, despite the punctuational nature of many transitions, we have available series of forms that more fully represent steps in the origins of certain major groups.

A statement by the "dean of American Paleontologists," George Gaylord Simpson, well sums up the state of knowledge of the fossil record as of 1961:⁶³

The record already acquired is amazingly good. It provides us with many detailed examples of a great variety of evolutionary phenomena on lower and intermediate levels and with rather abundant data that can be used either by controlled extrapolation or on a statistical sampling basis for inferences as to phenomena on all levels up to the highest. Among the examples are many in which, beyond the slightest doubt, a species or a genus has been gradually transformed into another. Such gradual transformation is also fairly well exemplified for subfamilies and occasionally for families, as the groups are commonly ranked... In spite of these examples, it remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families and that nearly all new categories above the level of families appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences.

Again it is evident that although most new forms of life appear suddenly in the fossil record, there are many examples of what appear to be gradual transitions. Any discussion leaving out this information is incomplete and misleading.

Creation again quotes out of context and misapplies what an author said in paragraph 37, on page 70:

"The concept of evolution cannot be considered a strong scientific explanation for the presence of the diverse forms of life," concludes evolutionist Edmund Samuel in his book Order: In Life. Why not? He adds: "No fine analysis of biogeographic distribution or of the fossil record can directly support evolution."

What Samuel was discussing was more subtle than the author of Creation realized. He was discussing how humans can bring order to general systems of thought, and discussing the fact that some systems can be shown to be self-consistent in a logically strong or logically weak sense. His use of "strong," therefore, is not in the absolute sense implied by Creation, but rather in the sense used by philosophers in evaluating logical arguments. Logical arguments may have bearing on reality or may not. Certain arguments in mathematics may have little or no present bearing on reality but can be evaluated rigorously by logical methods. Reconstructing the scene of a crime is a very different sort of logical process, and is the sort Samuel is talking about with respect to evolution. Here is a more complete version of what he said:⁶⁴

... on the whole, evolution has been extremely beneficial in ordering our thoughts. On the other hand, the concept of evolution cannot be considered a strong scientific explanation for the presence of the diverse forms of life in space and time. It must remain as a rather low level explanation to any purist. This is because the data must be used circumstantially and no fine analysis of biogeographic distribution or of the fossil record can directly support evolution. Biogeographic data are so complex that even with island studies only the rough generalities similar to those Darwin found for Galapagos can be stated. The fossil record is very uneven and so scarce that fine points regarding the pathways of evolution remain obscure...

If there is no regularity in these historical records, what is their meaning and where are they going? Are there any characteristics that somehow influence the directions of change? One can say that in general the biomass has increased, the numbers and kinds of species have increased, organisms have increased in complexity in terms of number and diversity of cell types, and food-webs have become more complex. There are always those cases, however, that violate each of these general statements, e.g., extinction, degeneracy, and man's cultivated fields...

Perhaps the greatest contribution of the fossil record to the support of the concept evolution is the absence of negative observations. If a mammal could be dated with certainty at 500 million years, the concept would suffer considerably. The weakness of the concept (as a scientific explanation) makes it extremely vulnerable. The fact that exceptions of this sort have not held up under careful scrutiny, and the fact that there is a tremendous amount of circumstantial evidence that is consistent within itself means that the explanation is still a good one though it may not satisfy the purists...

... With all due respect for [Darwin's] attempt [to provide a logical mechanism for evolution], and even in spite of the fact that natural selection has been successfully tested as a means to modify species, there remains a major difficulty for our search. Even if natural selection is proved to be a way in which evolution could have occurred, it does not prove that it was the way or the only way that it did occur. No mechanism can stand alone without applying it in a test to the actual phenomenon the mechanism is supposed to produce. This is impossible to do and so the mechanism itself must remain as circumstantial evidence -- to the purist.

My point is that apparently different explanations can have different values. Evolution and natural selection may not explain in a certain way the presence of diverse living and fossil forms of life, but it is still a good explanation, at least until something better comes along.

What all this means is that since no human was there to observe and record the history of life, any explanation based on the fossil record, of how life came about, will always be based on circumstantial evidence. This is because there can always be more than one reasonable explanation that fits circumstantial evidence. This sort of philosophical problem does not prevent police from solving crimes or prevent anyone from making many valid conclusions based on circumstantial evidence. Creation's author entirely misses the point.

From the above examples it is clear that Creation constantly uses out-of-context quotations to support its contention that no intermediate or transitional life forms are found in the fossil record. Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould said about this practice:⁶⁵

Faced with these facts of evolution and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position, creationists continually rely upon distortion and innuendo to buttress their rhetorical claim. If I sound sharp or bitter, indeed I am -- for I have become a major target of these practices...

I count myself among the evolutionists who argue for a jerky or episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, change of pace. In 1972, my colleague Niles Eldredge and I developed the theory of punctuated equilibrium... We proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium largely to provide a different explanation for pervasive trends in the fossil record. Trends, we argued, cannot be attributed to gradual transformation within lineages... Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists -- whether through design or stupidity, I do not know -- as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. The punctuations occur at the level of species; directional trends... are rife at the higher level of transitions within major groups. Yet a pamphlet entitled: "Harvard Scientists Agree Evolution Is a Hoax" states: "The facts of punctuated equilibrium which Gould and Eldredge... are forcing Darwinists to swallow fit the picture that Bryan insisted on, and which God has revealed to us in the Bible."

Continuing the distortion, several creationists have equated the theory of punctuated equilibrium with a caricature of Goldschmidt's belief that major transitions are also accomplished suddenly by means of "hopeful monsters."

Anthropologist Laurie R. Godfrey had this to say about the usual style of argument of creationists:⁶⁶

Field or laboratory research represents a very minor charge of scientific creationists. Most efforts are directed toward rewriting the discoveries and interpretations of evolutionists. In this endeavor, numerous evolutionists are portrayed as scientists who have all the evidence to disprove evolution (and support creation) at their fingertips, but who are either too stubborn or too deeply indoctrinated in evolutionary dogma to appreciate it. Arguments of anthropologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, astronomers, physicists, and engineers are reinterpreted or taken out of context. In this way, as I will show below, creationists manage, among other things, to convert arguments about the pattern and process of evolutionary change into arguments about the existence of change.

The primary tactic of the scientific creationists is to find controversy, disagreement, and weakness in evolutionary theory -- by no means a difficult task. Having demonstrated problems with various aspects of evolutionary theory (some fabricated, some real), the creationists then conclude that we must accept the Judeo-Christian biblical account of creation as the only possible, logical alternative. Thus scientific creationism proceeds by constructing an artificial dichotomy between two models -- evolution and creation -- both incorrectly represented as monolithic...

Creationists are decidedly uninterested in the merits of any of these arguments [about evolutionary mechanisms] and, indeed, in the issues themselves. But they are interested in convincing the public that the concept of evolution is utterly bankrupt. By citing and falsely reinterpreting excerpts from a vast and complex scientific literature, they have built for their constituency a false (though superficially plausible) picture of what the issues really are. Furthermore, since most laypersons equate Darwinism with evolution, critics of neo-Darwinism are especially vulnerable to misrepresentation. But the non-Darwinian arguments so often cited by creationists can hardly be taken as support for creationism by anyone who bothers to discover what they are really about.

The Creation book well illustrates the style of argument described above. Although the Society adamantly insists it is not among the ranks of scientific creationists, Godfrey has well described how its publications often argue. As we've shown above it is clear its writers have not bothered to find out what the arguments really are about with regard to transitional forms of life. Godfrey continues:⁶⁷

[Stephen Jay] Gould and his colleagues are widely cited by creationists in their effort to establish that the fossil record documents "no transitions." To creationists this is taken to mean that there are no evolutionary links between "created kinds." But Gould, Eldredge and Stanley are talking about the failure of the fossil record to document fine-scale transitions between pairs of species, and its dramatic documentation of rapid evolutionary bursts involving multiple speciation events -- so-called adaptive radiations. They are not talking about any failure of the fossil record to document the existence of intermediate forms (to the contrary, there are so many intermediates for many well-preserved taxa that it is notoriously difficult to identify true ancestors even when the fossil record is very complete). Nor are Gould, Eldredge, and Stanley talking about any failure of the fossil record to document large-scale trends, which do exist, however jerky they may be. Furthermore, fine-scale transitions are not absent from the fossil record but are merely underrepresented. Eldredge, Gould, and Stanley reason that this is the unsurprising consequence of known mechanisms of speciation. Additionally, certain ecological conditions may favor speciation and rapid evolution, so new taxa may appear abruptly in the fossil record in association with adaptive radiation. Since creationists acknowledge that fine-scale transitions (including those resulting in reproductive isolation) exist, and since the fossil record clearly documents large-scale "transitions," it would seem that the creationists have no case. Indeed, they do not. Their case is an artifact of misrepresentation to the lay public of exactly what the fossil record fails to document.

What does the fossil record actually show with regard to how gradual or abrupt the change of life forms is through time? It shows both gradual and abrupt change. For example, an extensive fossil bed related to the famous Olduvai Gorge in Africa yielded a great deal of information:⁶⁸

In 1967 there commenced a large-scale international investigation of the highly fossiliferous deposits along the Omo River in southern Ethiopia. Over 50 tonnes of fossils were collected from a sequence of deposits over 1000 metres thick and covering the time-span from 4 million years ago, almost to the present day -- completely bridging the time gap between Olduvai and Lateoli. The mammalian faunas show a striking change during this time, though this appears to be predominantly a gentle transformation resulting from progressive evolution, with no real faunal breaks. Interesting mammals in the lowest levels are Anancus (a mastodon), Stegodon and Hexaprotodon, a hippopotamus with six (three pairs of) incisors in the upper and lower jaws. The hippopotamus in the later part of the sequence is H. gorgops, already noticed at Olduvai, which is of different ancestral stock and which has two pairs of incisors in the upper jaw and only one in the lower. Several of the groups of mammals, most notably the horses and rhinoceroses, show a trend from the earlier to later strata towards more high-crowned teeth, interpreted, with other lines of evidence, as an indication of a change of climate from wet to less wet and of the ecological setting from bush and scrub and of tall grass to more open savannah and shorter grass. Important hominid finds include an australopithecine of gracile appearance in the lower part of the sequence and a robust australopithecine appearing about two million years ago.

Regarding many more specific details of what has been found, an article by paleontologist Roger J. Cuffey said:⁶⁹

... we can examine the fossils entombed in chronologically successive rock layers, and thereby learn what organisms inhabited this planet during successive intervals of past geologic time. When we do this, we find that the fossils naturally form sequences showing gradual and continuous morphologic changes from earlier forms to later forms of life, sequences which make evolutionary interpretations ultimately inescapable.

As working paleontologists interested in the history of particular organisms, we locate for detailed study a relatively thick succession of fossil-bearing rock layers whose observable physical features indicate continuous and uninterrupted deposition over a comparatively long time interval. We next examine those layers for the fossils in which we are interested. We initially find a few fossils, scattered widely among the different layers. Studying these specimens usually shows noticeable morphological differences between ones from various geologic ages, differences which we recognize formally in progress reports by referring the specimens to different species, genera, etc., depending upon the magnitude of those differences. Continued field collecting from the rock strata intervening between any two successive forms thus described frequently produces a series of fossils which begin with the earlier form, change in morphology gradually and continuously as we proceed upward, and end up with the later form. Because these new fossils demonstrate a morphological and parallel chronological transition from the earlier form to the later form, they are termed "transitional fossils."

If we read the paleontologic literature (especially if with the background of professional paleontologic training and experience...), we find that the fossil record contains many examples of such transitional fossils. These connect both low-rank taxa (like different species) and high-rank taxa (like different classes), in spite of the record's imperfections and in spite of the relatively small total number of practicing paleontologists. Because of the critical role which transitional fossils played in convincing scientists of the occurrence of organic evolution, paleontologists have been appalled that many otherwise well-informed persons have repeated the grossly misinformed assertion that transitional fossils do not exist. Consequently, after a relatively brief and non-exhaustive search of the literature immediately available to me, I compiled the examples of transitional fossils presented here. At least enough of these can be readily examined by anyone seriously interested in this topic that he can be convinced of their implications, I believe; collectively, they (and the many other similar ones which more extended search would find) comprise a massive body of evidence which cannot be ignored or explained away.

Although the broad patterns and many details in the history of life are well known, many other details remain to be learned. Because of the unevenness of our knowledge, therefore, we can conveniently distinguish several different types of transitional-fossil situations. Let us consider these now, starting with that situation where our knowledge is most complete, and proceeding through situations in which knowledge is progressively less complete.

First, some groups have been so thoroughly studied that we know sequences of transitional fossils which grade continuously from one species to another without break (Table 1), sometimes linking several successive species which cross from one higher taxon into another (Table 2). We can say that situations of this kind display transitional individuals. Among the many available examples of transitional individuals, some particularly convincing examples can be noted. These involve:

The author then lists, with source references: corals, gastropods, pelecypods, and echinoids. In Table 1, "Examples of transitional individuals grading continuously between successive species within the same higher taxon (genus)", he lists algae, angiosperms, foraminiferans, corals, bryozoans, brachiopods, gastropods, pelecypods, ammonoids, trilobites, echinoids, conodonts, and mammals. In Table 2, "Examples of transitional individuals grading continuously between successive species, and crossing from one higher taxon into another", he lists ginkgophytes, angiosperms, foraminiferans, brachiopods, pelecypods, ammonoids, conodonts, mammals, and hominids.

Second, other fossil groups have been well enough studied that we know sequences of transitional fossils comprising a series of chronologically successive species grading from an early form to a later form (Table 3), again sometimes crossing boundaries separating different higher taxa (Table 4). This type of situation can be termed successive species. Published descriptions of successive species lack explicit discussion of individuals transitional between the species, although frequently such exist in the author's collection but are not discussed because they are not directly pertinent to his purposes. Again, some especially persuasive examples of successive species can be seen, among:

Cuffey then lists, with source references: foraminiferans, brachiopods, pelecypods, and ammonoids. In Table 3, "Examples of successive species within the same higher taxon (genus)", Cuffey lists angiosperms, foraminiferans, brachiopods, gastropods, pelecypods, trilobites, crustaceans, carpoids, blastoids, graptolites, fishes, amphibians, and mammals. In Table 4, "Examples of successive species crossing from one higher taxon into another", he lists ginkgophytes, foraminiferans, bryozoans, gastropods, pelecypods, nautiloids, ammonoids, crustaceans, crinoids, echinoids, reptiles, reptile-mammal transition, and mammals.

Cuffey goes on to provide much more information on examples of transitional forms and other things pertinent to this essay. Cuffey's article should be read by anyone attempting to discuss the existence of transitional forms, as it provides much information not normally available to those outside the paleontological profession.

As shown above, in some cases a series of fossils is found that is consistent with the continuous gradual change that Charles Darwin predicted in his theory of evolution, but species much more often remain stable for long periods of time. Many evolutionists are coming to grips with the fact that the evidence for Darwin's theory of progressive gradual change of one species into another is not generally found in the fossil record. Darwin also realized this and postulated that the fossil record was too poor to show the transitional forms he expected. He predicted that ultimately these forms would be found.

Within the last two decades many evolutionists have given credence to the theory of punctuated equilibrium. This theory was first advanced in 1972 by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, in an attempt to account for the lack of evidence of gradual change while retaining the basic notion that evolution had occurred and could be explained. Niles Eldredge, in The Myths of Human Evolution, said of the search for these forms since Darwin's time:⁷⁰

Paleontologists just were not seeing the expected changes in their fossils as they pursued them up through the rock record. Instead, collections of nearly identical specimens, separated in some cases by 5 million years, suggested that the overwhelming majority of animal and plant species were tremendously conservative throughout their histories... it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction was wrong.

The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor's new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin's predicted pattern, simply looked the other way. Rather than challenge well-entrenched evolutionary theory, paleontologists tacitly agreed with their zoological colleagues that the fossil record was too poor to do much with beyond supporting, in a general sort of way, the basic thesis that life had evolved. Only recently has a substantial number of paleontologists blown the whistle and started to look at the evolutionary implications of the marked pattern of nonchange -- of stability -- within species so dominant in the fossil record of life.

... in the vast majority of cases... [species] have remained substantially unchanged through monumentally long periods of time. Species, in other words, seem to be relatively static. There is frequently more variation throughout the geographic spread of a species at any one point in time than will be accrued through a span of 5 million or 10 million years.

This observation has two simple consequences, both of tremendous importance to evolutionary theory. First, Darwin's prediction of rampant, albeit gradual, change affecting all lineages through time is refuted. The record is there, and the record speaks for tremendous anatomical conservatism. Change in the manner Darwin expected is just not found in the fossil record.

The second simple consequence is the observation that species are stable and remain discrete, in time as well as space. They are individuals in the true sense of the word: they have beginnings, histories, and, ultimately, ends.

So species themselves tend to remain stable, but what about all the change that is supposed to have occurred? The Myths of Human Evolution says:⁷¹

... the overall picture presented by the fossil record confirms the most basic predictions we can make to test the very notion of evolution: if all organisms are related by a process of ancestry and descent, older rocks should contain more primitive members of a group than younger rocks. We should be able to document progressively more advanced forms as we look in correspondingly younger rocks. This is what we find.

But this very confirmation of the most basic of evolutionary predictions has led us astray. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the usual conception casts evolution as a gradual, steady process of adaptive change. And we have already seen that the fossil record conflicts with that view. Now let's look at the fossil record to see what patterns of evolutionary change are actually there. The general agreement that older rocks produce more primitive fossils and that as we look in younger rocks we usually find more advanced members of an evolving lineage has been taken as sufficient evidence that the evolution of life is fundamentally a process of gradual, progressive, adaptive change. But when we take a second, harder look at the fossil record we begin to see the truly mythic qualities of this story. For the gross patterns of evolutionary change so abundantly documented in the fossil record could have been produced in a number of different ways. We are faced more with a great leap of faith -- that gradual, progressive, adaptive change underlies the general pattern of evolutionary change we see in the rocks -- than any hard evidence. In fact, a closer look at the fossil record shows that another view, centering around the evolution, stability, and death of individual species, predicts a pattern of change that fits the facts of the fossil record much more closely.

The notion of gradual, progressive change collides head-on with the stability seen in most fossil species, for the general progressive sequence of life's evolutionary history seen in the fossil record has always been taken as confirmation of the underlying assumption that all change comes from progressive generation-by-generation modification of species. What the record is really telling us is that evolution, as suspected, has occurred. But we have greatly erred in predicting what the pattern of change should look like in the fossil record. Rather than taking the record literally, we have dismissed the lack of change within species as merely the artifacts of an imperfect record. But the time has come to ask, instead, if the record isn't telling us something that our theories ought to be able to explain -- rather than explain away.

Summarizing Eldredge's statements, the fossil record shows clear trends from species to species, but little evidence of change within species. Eldredge proposes that the theory of punctuated equilibrium accounts for the observations.

Some creationists misrepresent Eldredge and Gould's theory by claiming that they now reject evolution, or that their work shows no transitional forms have been found in the fossil record. Anthropologist Laurie Godfrey showed this is not the case:⁷²

In 1972 Niles Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural History and Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould launched their new theory of evolution by "punctuated equilibria" in an attempt to explain the rarity, not absence, of transitional forms at the species level. Evolution, they said, commonly proceeds in fits and starts punctuating relatively long periods of evolutionary stasis. Ironically, Eldredge (1971) first arrived at his notion of punctuated equilibria while studying Devonian trilobites whose excellent fossil record includes intermediates at this fine level of evolutionary change. Gould (1969) similarly studied an excellent record of spatial and temporal variation in a Pleistocene land snail from Bermuda, Poecilozonites. It was the restricted temporal and geographic distribution of morphological intermediates and the pattern of occurrence of morphological innovations that convinced first Eldredge and then Gould that Darwin had been wrong in one important aspect of his theory of evolutionary change: his pervasive gradualism... Eldredge and Gould posited a biological explanation of gaps in the fossil record, the strength of which lay in its ability to simultaneously account for two prominent features of the fossil record: (1) relatively long periods of stasis in some well-documented fossil species; and (2) intermittent interruptions of stasis by brief intervals of rapid evolution (often represented by gaps in the fossil record). Both stasis and rapid evolution, they reasoned, could be explained by the notion, already current in the neontological literature, that rapid morphological innovations occur in small "founder" populations often in conjunction with the evolution of reproductive barriers separating the founder populations from the parent populations. If successful, these innovations can lead to the growth and establishment of a "daughter" species or even to the eventual replacement of the mother species by the daughter species. This idea is decidedly non-Darwinian. That splitting of lineage (or "speciation") contributes significantly to morphological evolutionary change can be found nowhere in Darwin's work...

Eldredge and Gould (1972) agreed that a perfect fossil record would document morphological intermediates between species, but they suggested that many of these would exhibit relatively brief and geographically limited existences. Indeed, Eldredge had such a near perfect record of the evolution of the Devonian trilobite Phacops. It was a record of stepwise evolutionary change in only two brief intervals during a span of eight million years! One such interval was recorded in a single easy-to-miss quarry in New York State. This quarry contained perfect intermediates between the geographically widespread mother and daughter species. In effect, due to the realities of an imperfect fossil record, most such intermediates will simply not be sampled.

Punctuated equilibrium has problems, however, since it does not explain the mechanism of the larger scale changes, but in essence, merely acknowledges that this sort of change exists.

From the preceding quotations about what the fossil record shows, it should be evident that a clear consensus does not exist on the details of what changes in life forms occurred. Sometimes the changes appear abrupt and sometimes they appear gradual. However, a consensus does exist that there is much change evident in the record, and that intermediate forms exist.

The impression can be gotten that there is available to the Society's writers a file of short quotations on evolution, from a large variety of sources, many probably sent in by readers. A good speculation would be that the quotations are short excerpts of material that can be interpreted as critical of various aspects of evolution. They are probably often too short for the writers to get the sense of what the references actually say. The writers would be unable, even if they were willing, to use the quotations properly. The problem becomes especially acute when old, out-of-date sources are used without checking the current state of knowledge.

Part 5: The Gulf Between Reptiles and Birds

What about the supposed transition from reptiles to birds? At first glance the argument against this transition appears quite simple, as the Creation book explains. On page 75, under the subheading "The Gulf Between Reptile and Bird," paragraph 11 says:

Reptiles are cold-blooded animals, meaning that their internal temperature will either increase or decrease depending upon the outside temperature. Birds, on the other hand, are warm-blooded; their bodies maintain a relatively constant internal temperature regardless of the temperature outside. To solve the puzzle of how warm-blooded birds came from cold-blooded reptiles, some evolutionists now say that some of the dinosaurs (which were reptiles) were warm-blooded. But the general view is still as Robert Jastrow observes: "Dinosaurs, like all reptiles were cold-blooded animals."

The quote from Jastrow was from 1979; since then the general view has changed. The idea that dinosaurs were warm-blooded came from many considerations other than simply trying to show bird ancestry. A great deal information has appeared within the last twenty five years about the warm-bloodedness of dinosaurs, which is only lately becoming widely accepted among scientists, and which may not have been so readily available when Creation was published in 1985. One of the best and most comprehensive books on this subject is The Dinosaur Heresies,⁷³ published in 1986. The author, Robert T. Bakker, has been involved in the search for clues about the dinosaurs' lives for many years. A reviewer's comment from the back cover well describes the book:

Reading The Dinosaur Heresies was sheer joy. Bakker explodes old myths and presents us, instead, with a dynamic panorama which seems so much more true to life. This points the way to a fuller understanding of the long reign of the dinosaurs. Soon most of the heresies will be heresies no longer.

Bakker says concerning the key scientific papers that have been published recently on the topic of warm-blooded dinosaurs:⁷⁴

The two milestone volumes are: 1) the AAAS Select Symposium 28, Westview Press, 1980...; and 2) the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History Special Colloquium Dinosaurs Past and Present, LACM Press (1986). Nearly every important paper about warm-bloodedness, pro and con, are cited in these two volumes. The difference in tone between the two is remarkable. The 1980 AAAS book was unapologetically skeptical -- even the title Cold Look at the Warm-Blooded Dinosaurs suggested that belief in warm-blooded Dinosauria was rash and beyond the boundaries of level-headed science. But the LACM volume contains articles by those who reconstruct dinosaurs and their world, and, with few exceptions the artists, anatomists, and paleontologists accord the dinosaurs a much, much higher level of locomotor energetics than was widely believed six years ago. Sylvia Czerkas, the editor and organizer of the LACM colloquium, said to me after the conference, "You must be feeling pretty good, seeing your ideas vindicated more and more." Maybe so. At least the general attitude is shifting away from the view that dinosaurs must be assumed to be cold-blooded in all points and any contrary evidence dismissed with a "harrumph."

Typical of the information coming out of recent research on dinosaurs is an article in Scientific American, April, 1991, "How Dinosaurs Ran," which concluded that dinosaurs were generally about as athletic as modern day mammals that are built according to similar body plans. Brontosaurus, up to about 50 tons, was about as athletic as an elephant. Triceratops, about the size of an elephant but with a relatively much stronger bone structure, must have been about as athletic as a rhinoceros. This strongly points to warm-bloodedness.

What does the fossil record show about animals that might have been warm-blooded? In the early Triassic Period, a group of mammal-like reptiles called therapsids (synapsids) appeared in the fossil record. Somewhat later there appeared a group of animals called thecodonts, which are said to have been ancestral to the dinosaurs. About the same time as thecodonts, the first mammal-like animals, turtles, crocodilians and frogs appeared.⁷⁵ There are a great number of questions with regard to this early life, one of which is whether it was warm-blooded. Based on many considerations, Robert Bakker and others have argued that both therapsids and the dinosaurs were warm-blooded. Bakker also calls the therapsids protomammals, and says of them:⁷⁶

They definitely included the immediate ancestors of genuine mammals -- and the advanced protomammals showed many signs of mammal-style adaptations in their body and skull. Most paleontologists therefore are willing to believe these later protomammals had already developed some degree of warm-bloodedness. Now, if they were warm-blooded, it is very strange indeed that they subsequently lost their dominant position to the supposedly cold-blooded dinosaurs.

The book Extinction says:⁷⁷

It is puzzling that the therapsid mammal-like reptiles had a considerable head start on the dinosaurs, and yet the dinosaurs expanded to dominate terrestrial habitats of the Mesozoic Era. Robert Bakker of The University of Colorado Natural History Museum has argued persuasively that this fact attests to the inherent superiority of the dinosaurs -- and, in fact, of the thecodonts. These dinosaur ancestors, even before the dinosaurs themselves, seem to have begun to displace the therapsids. Even the early mammals were left behind, failing to undergo their great adaptive radiation until nearly 200 million years later, after the dinosaurs' demise. Bakker has viewed the dinosaurs' ecological dominance as offering strong testimony that they were endothermic ("warm-blooded"). Reptiles, which depend on external sources of heat energy, are unable to sustain high levels of activity for long intervals of time, whereas mammals, with their continuously high metabolism, can remain active for hours. The question is, if dinosaurs were saddled with a reptilian physiology, how could they have maintained ecological superiority over mammals? Even stronger evidence that dinosaurs were to a considerable degree endothermic comes from predator/prey ratios. In a community of mammals, which are of course endothermic, there is a relatively small number of predators compared to the number of herbivores. The reason for this is that the predators, being endothermic, need a great deal of fuel to stoke their metabolic furnaces. An example is the small number of lions, cheetahs, hyenas, and wild dogs on an African savannah compared to the huge herds of wildebeests, zebras, gazelles, and other herbivores that serve as prey. In contrast, carnivorous reptiles tend to be relatively abundant within their communities. Being ectothermic, they require little food. Bakker has shown that in dinosaur communities, predator/prey ratios were consistently very low, resembling those of mammals -- strong evidence that dinosaurs were endothermic.

Bakker has given the following additional evidence that dinosaurs were warm-blooded:

1. Histological studies show dinosaur bone microtexture is much closer to mammal and bird bone than to ancient reptile bone. This implies fast growth rates, which requires warm-bloodedness. This type of bone texture is seen in all size dinosaurs, from 5 pounds to 70 tons adult weight.⁷⁸

2. Many dinosaurs had hollow vertebrae, like most birds do. In birds the hollows are intimately connected to the lungs and a system of air sacs, which are required to support their generally high level of activity. No ancient reptile had hollow bones and no living reptile has either hollow bones or air sacs.⁷⁹

3. Dinosaurs apparently had gizzards, as do birds and most reptiles. This would have allowed them to eat whatever quantity of food necessary to sustain internal body temperature, as the gizzard system of digestion is more efficient than that of any mammalian system.⁸⁰

More and more paleontologists are coming around to Bakker's point of view that dinosaurs were warm-blooded, but since the scientific community suffers from a great deal of inertia, as do all human institutions, the shift is slow. Nor has this information filtered significantly into popular consciousness. This change in overall viewpoint appears to be one of the large "paradigm shifts" that science undergoes from time to time, like the revolution in the earth sciences of the 1960s to 1970s. Bakker sums up his view that dinosaur classifications should be changed thus:⁸¹

Most taxonomists... have viewed such new terminology as dangerously destabilizing to the traditional and well-known scheme that has been with us since the time of Baron Cuvier. I cannot see any benefit to be gained by refusing to remove the dinosaurs (and the therapsids) from the confines of the Reptilia. Classification is a type of scientific definition, and definitions should help express our perceptions of nature, not hinder them. As long as textbooks and museum labels unreflectively repeat the message "Dinosaurs are reptiles," it will be difficult to establish an intelligent debate about the true nature of the dinosaurs' adaptations. Some of the orthodox paleontologists act as though the dinosaurs must be assumed cold-blooded until their warm-bloodedness is proved beyond any reasonable doubt. That is at least highly unscientific. And it certainly represents "argument by definition" -- dinosaurs are reptiles, reptiles are cold-blooded, therefore dinosaurs were cold-blooded.

A truly scientific skeptic would start by assuming neither cold-bloodedness nor warm-bloodedness, and then reevaluate the evidence without prior terminological bias. So long as the Dinosauria remain stuck in the Class Reptilia, this type of analysis is nearly impossible. Let dinosaurs be dinosaurs. Let the Dinosauria stand proudly alone, a Class by itself.

Did dinosaurs care for their young? Apparently they did. Extinction describes the fossil evidence.⁸²

Dinosaur fossils offer evidence of relatively advanced reproductive behavior as well. In Cretaceous rocks of Mongolia and the western United States, eggs can be found arrayed in rings, as if they were very precisely buried. The eggs were tapered toward one end, this end having been thrust into the ground by the mother. Even more revealing is the discovery... of nests of baby dinosaurs in rocks of late Cretaceous age in Montana. The first to be found was a cluster of skeletons, each about a meter... long, surrounded by broken eggshells in a depression on top of an ancient hill. The nests demonstrate that dinosaurs cared for their young after they hatched.

Were dinosaurs like birds? Creation puts dinosaurs in the reptile class, and then proceeds to show how different are modern birds from modern reptiles. As the above quotation says, this is "argument by definition." What do the fossils show?

One late Triassic dinosaur was discovered in New Mexico by Ned Colbert of the American Museum. A whole quarry full of complete and partial skeletons was found:⁸³

Colbert's splendid skeletons seem to belong to the same genus Cope had named from fragments in 1880: Coelophysis, roughly translated as "hollow-boned beast." Hollow it indeed was -- all of the major limb bones and vertebrae were constructed like those of birds, with an outer shell of dense bone rind surrounding an empty core. So perfect are Colbert's skeletons that no guesswork is required to reconstruct these bodies. Coelophysis was small compared to its Jurassic nephews Allosaurus and Ceratosaurus; the fully adult length was only six feet, half of which was tail. Compared to those Jurassic predators, Coelophysis was long and slender in the torso and very long in the neck -- the neck, body, and tail all seem to flow into one another to create an unusually smooth profile. Although it appeared early in dinosaur history, Coelophysis was already a birdlike biped with wide upper hip bones and deep lower hip bones, the whole design providing for ample thigh muscles and quick thrusts of the hind leg. The vertebrae in the neck were angled, producing a natural S-shaped curve, so the head was carried high above the shoulder as a bird's would be.

An entire group of flying creatures (not classified as dinosaurs) called pterosaurs and pterodactyls existed. They ranged from robin size to airplane size -- up to forty foot wing spans. They were as exquisitely built for flight as any modern bird:⁸⁴

Pterodactyls... were equipped to fine-tune the shape and camber of their wings... the deep keel of the breastbone showed that the "white meat" muscles were as large relative to the body's size as are those of many flying birds today... In fact... pterodactyls were more fully committed to an active aerial way of life than any modern bird or bat, with the possible exception of swifts or hummingbirds... The pterodactyl's entire torso was highly compact from front to rear and the whole was reinforced by two rigid bony girders... these shoulder and hip braces made the pterodactyl's torso a light but incredibly strong boxwork of bony struts, exceeding in strength the body of the most modern birds...

Bird skeletons delighted medieval anatomists because of their lightness and economy. The bones of most flying birds are of a tubular-strut design. All the major limbs are cast in a thin-walled, hollow construction. Just so were the pterodactyl's bones designed. Even the apparently massive upper arm bone (humerus) of the gigantic Texas pterodactyl had only an outer shell of very hard bone a few millimeters thick. And just as avian bones achieve their greatest lightness by being filled not by marrow but by a core of air sacs connected to the lungs, likewise the pterodactyl's bones are constructed to contain air-sac liners. Though lung tissue itself is never preserved in fossils, the presence of air sacs can be detected from the characteristic pores in the bony walls which provided entrance for the air canals.

So hollow bones are not unique to birds. Even some very large dinosaurs had hollow bones:⁸⁵

Many dinosaurs had hollow cavities in their vertebrae. A single bone of a Brontosaurus's spine is so full of holes and indentations that the actual bony tissue is reduced to thin partitions, often a few millimeters thick, folded and convoluted many times to produce the major structural contours. Allosaurus and other meat-eaters also had such hollowed-out vertebrae, though to a lesser extent than in the brontosaurs. What filled the vertebral holes and hollows is not difficult to see because very similar hollow backbones can be found in today's bird's. In them, the hollows are filled by air sacs connected by tubes to the lungs.

At least some of these pterodactyls even had a hair-like covering:⁸⁶

... most paleontologists have assumed, since pterodactyls were classified as "reptiles," that they had a naked, scaly skin. Such images certainly dominated the restorations of pterodactyls until 1970, when a startling report arrived from a Russian paleontologist: Hairy pterodactyls had been found in Russia. Professor Sharov had been engaged in separating the slabs of Jurassic lake beds which preserved delicate leaves and insects. In one split slab lay a pterodactyl -- not unusual in itself. But highly unusual was the near-perfect preservation of the pterodactyl's body covering -- a dense coat of long, hairlike scales... Other specimens have confirmed Sharov's discovery. Flying dragons as a group seem to have been insulated. Were they alive today, it is very much to be doubted whether biologists would place them in Class Reptilia.

The flying "reptiles" are actually one of the best evidences against evolution, even though evolutionists explain them as products of greatly speeded up evolution:⁸⁷

Flying dragons seem to burst into the world like Athena from the mind of Zeus, fully formed. Even the earliest skeletons of pterodactyls already display fully developed wings and the specialized torso and hips so characteristic of the entire order. Cases like this in paleontology -- and there are many more -- persuade many scholars that evolution doesn't work slowly and continuously at one even pace. Instead, there appear to be times when evolution speeds up and suddenly produces totally new adaptive configurations. Pterodactyls must have emerged in one of these creative spurts of the evolutionary process.

Keeping in mind everything said above, reflect on Creation's statement on page 77. Note that Creation speaks of reptile bones rather than dinosaur bones:

Consider further the design of the bird for flight. The bird's bones are thin and hollow, unlike the reptile's solid ones. Yet strength is required for flight, so inside the bird's bones there are struts...

Next note what a recent article had to say about experiments to determine the ability of birds to cool off due to strenuous exercise:⁸⁸

... many fully feathered modern birds also dissipate heat by high rates of cutaneous evaporation across feathered skin... experimentally heat-stressed sand grouse... radiate heat (via evaporation) from their feathered skin at about 80% the rate of heat loss from naked skin... Similarly, during sustained flight in white-necked ravens... evaporative cutaneous heat loss accounts for about 8 times the magnitude of heat loss dissipated from respiratory surfaces.

The author of Creation is totally unaware of this aspect of bird physiology, since he continues:

This design of the bones serves another purpose: It helps to explain another exclusive marvel of birds -- their respiratory system.

Muscular wings beating for hours or even days in flight generate much heat, yet, without sweat glands for cooling, the bird copes with the problem -- it has an air-cooled engine... A system of air sacs reach into almost every important part of the body, even into the hollow bones, and body heat is relieved by this internal circulation of air.

It is a continual source of amazement as to where Creation's author gets his information.

In light of the above evidence from the fossil record it should be clear that Creation's statements that dinosaurs are reptiles and therefore birds must be very different from dinosaurs, birds and dinosaurs have no common characteristics, and similar things based on the difference between present day reptiles and birds, are wrong.

While the evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs is relatively sparse, there is far more evidence than presented above that birds were similar to certain dinosaurs, and that bears on whether birds evolved from reptiles. The most famous and controversial single example is an early form of bird called Archaeopteryx, which had teeth and a long bony tail, and is the most ancient bird yet found.^88a We now present detailed information on Archaeopteryx and show the cavalier manner in which Creation dismisses all this evidence. Here is a summary of current scientific opinion of Archaeopteryx:⁸⁹

The first skeleton of this creature was found in 1861. The 140-million-year-old (Late Jurassic) lithographic limestone in which it was found also contained the skeletons of small carnivorous dinosaurs known as Compsognathus longipes. What made Archaeopteryx so strikingly different from these dinosaurs was the unmistakable impressions of feathers, the hallmark of birds. It displayed a few other features otherwise found only in birds, but most of its anatomy was reptilian and very similar to that of the small running dinosaurs with which it was found... In fact, another skeleton of Archaeopteryx collected in 1855 was not recognised as such until 1970 because, lacking clear impressions of feathers, it had been assumed to be another skeleton of Compsognathus.

The five skeletons of Archaeopteryx now known have been the subject of many detailed anatomical studies. The conclusions are always the same; this is an animal that belongs in the structural and temporal gap between reptiles and birds. It would be difficult to imagine a more perfect link. If there has been any significant debate among palaeontologists about the evolutionary significance of Archaeopteryx, it is not about its intermediate position between birds and reptiles but rather about the particular group of reptiles to which it is most closely related.

The remarkable resemblance between the skeletons of Archaeopteryx and Compsognathus can be seen in a drawing in one of the books from the Scientific American Library.⁹⁰

Fossil birds from times later than Archaeopteryx have been discovered. Some of them also had teeth, but were much more like modern birds in other respects, so there is no controversy about whether they could be called birds. About 1885 professor Marsh of Yale University discovered the fossils of two toothed birds in Late Cretaceous deposits in Kansas, and called them Odontornithes ("toothed birds"):⁹¹

Marsh's fossils had undeniably been birds -- the smaller ones, Ichthyornis ("fish-bird"), possessed powerful wings constructed nearly exactly according to the plan found in living avian species. Marsh's bigger bird, Hesperornis ("western bird"), had clearly been flightless -- only the remnants of wing bones remained -- but its vertebral column and hind legs were of typically avian architecture. Hesperornis had clearly swum like a loon... But both Ichthyornis and Hesperornis had had teeth set in their jaws -- sharply pointed, curved teeth with big roots, just like those of crocodiles. And Marsh detected other more subtle remnants of reptilian ancestry: the upper wing bone (humerus) of Ichthyornis featured a wide crest for supporting the flight muscles, and this bony crest more resembled the one along a dinosaur's arm bone than the structure found in any modern birds. Ichthyornis also had simple dinosaur-style joints between its neck vertebrae -- the vertebral bones met at flat bony surfaces, unlike the strongly involuted, saddle-shaped joints of all modern birds...

In 1861, the lithographic limestones in Bavarian quarries yielded a fossilized bird from the Jurassic Period, Archaeopteryx (ancient wing). The Bavarian discovery consisted of a nearly complete skeleton of a dinosaurlike animal, strongly resembling Ornitholestes,^91a with long hind legs and a very long tail. But there, on the carefully chipped-out limestone slabs, impressed into the fine limy mud before it had hardened, were also the unmistakable impressions of long flight feathers attached to the forearm and wrist and big tail feathers trailing behind... At first, the details of Archaeopteryx's skull and jaws remained obscure, because the head was the worst preserved part of the skeleton... in 1877, the Bavarian quarries yielded a second Archaeopteryx skeleton, and detailed analysis uncovered the startling pro-Darwinian evidence: Archaeopteryx too had had teeth, and everywhere the structure of its joints and muscle processes had been much less birdlike and far more primitive than those of the Odontornithes of the Cretaceous... truly modern birds without teeth made their debut at the very end of the Cretaceous and the beginning of the next epoch, the Paleocene.

Several other animals have been found that have been called links in the chain between reptiles and birds:⁹²

There is much more that is fascinating about the early evolutionary record of birds in terms of our present interest in 'links'... for example, the Middle Cretaceous toothed birds (such as Ichthyornis dispar) represent a structural link between the Jurassic Archaeopteryx and the modern orders of birds, most of which made their first appearance in the Early Tertiary. These Cretaceous toothed birds display more avian features than did Archaeopteryx including a shortened tail, a synsacrum, a tarsometatarsus and uncinate processes on the ribs (see Table 6.1 for a brief definition of terms).

Recently, a fascinating fossil bird that is intermediate in time between Archaeopteryx and the Middle and late Cretaceous palaeognathous toothed birds has been described. Ambiortus dementjevi, an Early Cretaceous bird from Mongolia, is known from associated parts of a wing, shoulder girdle and vertebrae. Its pectoral apparatus shows features that are more like those of modern birds than the comparable conditions in the Late Jurassic Archaeopteryx while in other respects it closely resembles primitive palaeognathous birds recently discovered in the Paleocene and Eocene of North America and England...

There is even a fossil record of feathers that demonstrates a structural gradient between simple reptilian scales and the complex feathers of Archaeopteryx... This fossil scale-to-feather transition is supported by studies of the embryology of the scales of living reptiles and the feathers of living birds. Feathers are a very specialised type of reptilian scale.

The meat-eating dinosaurs such as Allosaur, Coelophysis, Compsognathus, and Ornitholestes were similar to birds in ways originally elucidated by Thomas Huxley in the 19th century:⁹³

Huxley's case was impressive in documentation, persuasive in argument: (1) Only in dinosaurs did he find the distinctive bird type of ankle joint, where movement had been concentrated into a single hinge running between the two rows of ankle bones. (2) Only in dinosaurs had he found the great expansion of the upper hip bone (the ilium) so characteristic of all birds. (3) Only in some dinosaurs had the hind foot been arranged in a birdlike fashion where the inner toe turned backward and the three main toes pointed forward to produce the unmistakable footprint of birds. In fact, some dinosaur tracks were so birdlike that they had been mistaken for bird tracks when discovered in 1830. (4) Only advanced dinosaurs displayed the compact bipedal body fundamental to avian anatomy -- the very short torso, massively braced hips, long and highly mobile neck, and long hind legs. (5) Only in dinosaurs and pterodactyls had Huxley noted holes in the vertebral bones for the air sacs which connected to avian-style lungs, and the pterodactyls had been far less birdlike than advanced dinosaurs in most other regards. (6) Only in some dinosaurs had the pubic bone been turned backward exactly as in birds.

Another dinosaur called Deinonychus existed at the same time as Archaeopteryx, and except for size, the skeletons of the two were much alike:⁹⁴

Some large dinosaurs obviously were most unbirdlike, Diplodocus or Triceratops, for example. But the bipedal predators were very avian in structure. And the small, advanced predators like Deinonychus were so close to Archaeopteryx in nearly every detail that Archaeopteryx might be called a flying Deinonychus, and Deinonychus, a flightless Archaeopteryx. There simply was no great anatomical gulf separating birds from dinosaurs.

Here are more details on the two animals:⁹⁵

In 1964, John Ostrom at Yale discovered the very advanced predatory dinosaur Deinonychus, a long-armed Early Cretaceous carnivore with a cruel-looking killing claw on its hind foot... Biomechanical analysis applied to Deinonychus's bodily configuration yielded evidence for exceptionally high levels of locomotive activity: both running speed and maneuverability. Quite clearly, Deinonychus had had a great deal of birdness built into its limbs, a birdness that would have expressed itself in life by a daily metabolic regime more fitting for a ground bird such as a cassowary than for the orthodox view of any cold-blooded dinosaur... in a Dutch museum [Ostrom] found a set of bony fingers on a limestone slab out of those famous Bavarian quarries... He recognized the bony hands with their three long, clawed fingers as belonging to Archaeopteryx. But he also recognized in that hand a miniature version of Deinonychus's. Archaeopteryx had been pigeon-sized, its hand four inches long; Deinonychus had been as heavy as an average man and could stretch its hand a full nine inches. Yet the small bird hand and the dinosaur hand were virtually identical in shape. Each finger and wrist bone had been molded to the same peculiar biomechanical pattern, an adaptive plan totally unknown anywhere in the animal kingdom outside the Dinosauria... Between Archaeopteryx and Deinonychus the long bony fingers were not the only things identical. So was nearly every detail of their shoulder, hip, thigh, and ankle... And in its wrist Deinonychus's similarities to birds were nothing short of astounding...

So according to the fossil record, there are similarities between the dinosaur family and the bird family, and between particular dinosaurs and particular ancient birds.

Why is Archaeopteryx such an important fossil? John H. Ostrom of Yale's Peabody Museum explains:⁹⁶

Possibly no other zoological specimens, fossil or Recent, are considered so important as are those of Archaeopteryx lithographica... Certainly few other specimens have generated such widespread interest or provoked as much speculation and controversy. The reasons are several: these specimens are the oldest... known fossil bird remains; they are extremely rare, only five specimens... are known at present; several of these preserve remarkably detailed impressions of feathers and an extraordinary mixture of reptilian and avian characters; and most important of all, because of the last fact, out of all presently known fossil and living organisms, these specimens are widely recognized as constituting the best example of an organism perfectly intermediate between two higher taxonomic categories -- representing an ideal transitional stage between ancestral and descendant stocks. Archaeopteryx may well be the most impressive fossil evidence of the fact of organic evolution.

A Scientific American article said:⁹⁷

With its reptilian body and tail yet undeniably birdlike wings and feathers, Archaeopteryx provides paleontologists with their most conclusive evidence for the evolution of birds from reptiles.

Those arguing against the theory of evolution understand these points very well; that is why virtually all creationist publications contain strong statements that Archaeopteryx was a bird and was not a transitional form. There exists much information about Archaeopteryx's body structure relative to modern birds and to dinosaurs. The following material summarizes the differences and similarities.

These are the ways in which Archaeopteryx was similar to most modern birds:

1. It had feathers and a wing shape virtually identical to those of modern birds.⁹⁸

2. It could fly, but probably not very well.^{99, 100, 101}

3. It had hollow bones.^{102, 103}

4. It had a wishbone.^{104, 105}

5. It had feet and claws similar to those of modern birds.¹⁰⁶

6. Its quadrate bone (which attaches the neck to the head), was similar to modern birds.^{107, 108}

These are the ways in which Archaeopteryx was different from all modern birds:

1. It had teeth and a tail.¹⁰⁹

2. It had no sternum (breastbone).^{110, 111}

3. It had abdominal ribs.^{112, 113, 114}

4. It had no air sac openings in its bones.^{115, 116}

5. Its vertebrae lack the saddle-shaped articulations that are characteristic of modern birds.¹¹⁷

6. It appears to have had no attachment points in its skeleton for its feathers (quill nodes), but instead they were attached to the skin.¹¹⁸

7. The structure of its upper chest and shoulder bones was different from modern birds.¹¹⁹

These are the ways in which Archaeopteryx was different from most modern birds:

1. It had poorly developed muscle attachment points for the wings.¹²⁰

2. Its pelvis had both avian and reptilian characteristics.^{121, 122, 123}

3. Its feet were similar to those of modern birds, although noticeably different. There seems to be some controversy about exactly what the feet were designed to do -- were they better suited for perching on tree branches or for running on the ground?^{124, 125}

4. It had three clawed fingers on its wings, which were quite similar to those of certain small dinosaurs.^{126, 127, 128}

5. Parts of the upper arm structure were different from modern birds'.^{129, 130}

Based on the above considerations, Archaeopteryx was probably not a good flier.¹³¹

This picture of Archaeopteryx as a poor flyer seems to be a bone of contention with creationists. There doesn't seem to be any real problem here; many birds today don't fly well or at all. The South American hoatzin has some characteristics that seem much like those of Archaeopteryx, especially with regard to flying ability. Refer to the characteristics of the hoatzin chick, as described by Robert Bakker in footnote 125 and footnote 128 of this essay, for more information on the hoatzin. The July 8, 1986 Awake! also described the hoatzin's flying ability:

[The] crop is so large that there is little room in the chest for strong muscles. The result? Hoatzin is a poor flyer. Admittedly, when you hear the loud, whirring sound of this bird in flight, you imagine him to be the picture of grace. But not so. Oh, he tries hard enough -- flailing his wings strenuously, going all out but hardly moving. Actually, he looks more like a helicopter taking off than a sleek airplane. During a short flight of about a hundred meters, he screeches protestingly with every tiring beat of his wings, eager to touch down as soon as possible.

After describing why the shape of Archaeopteryx's wing feathers show that it could fly, The Dinosaur Heresies said:¹³²

Therefore Archaeopteryx very probably did indulge in powered flight, even though it must have been a noisy, slow, and inelegant performer in the air.

This is exactly Awake!'s description of the hoatzin's flight.

These are the characteristics in which Archaeopteryx was similar to most dinosaurs:

1. It had teeth and a tail.

2. It had no sternum.

3. It had gastral ribs.

4. It had no air sac openings in its bones.

These are the characteristics in which Archaeopteryx was similar to a few dinosaurs:

1. It had a wishbone.¹³³

2. It had hollow bones.¹³⁴

3. It had three clawed fingers on its wings.¹³⁵

4. Its pelvis had both avian and reptilian characteristics.

Overall, the skeleton of Archaeopteryx was so similar to that of other small dinosaurs that one authority stated:

It has been stated (Colbert, 1969) that if it were not for the impressions of feathers, it is unlikely that the London and Berlin specimens of Archaeopteryx would have been identified as "bird" remains, but instead would have been labeled reptilian. (Recall the early debate about feathered reptile versus reptilian bird.) I would go even further than that. Were it not for those remarkable feather imprints, today both specimens would be identified unquestionably as coelurosaurian theropods.¹³⁶

... the question must still be asked: How would those [Archaeopteryx] fossil remains have been identified -- indeed, how would they now be classified, if no feather imprints had been preserved in any of those specimens? The skeletal anatomy of Archaeopteryx, as I have demonstrated, is almost entirely coelurosaurian... and includes only one exclusively avian character -- the furcula. In fact, it is only because of the distinct feather impressions preserved in two of the specimens of Archaeopteryx that we now have any knowledge at all about Jurassic birds or about the origin of birds. In the absence of those feather impressions, I do not believe that any of the specimens of Archaeopteryx would ever have been recognized as avian, or even as remotely related to birds.¹³⁷

The above was published in 1976. By that time several previously misidentified Archaeopteryx fossils had already come to light:¹³⁸

The fifth specimen, too, was misidentified at first... It was found... in 1951... it was initially taken to be a small reptile similar the chicken-size Compsognathus. Not until 1971 was it recognized as an Archaeopteryx... when [a worker] illuminated the fossil from the side to reveal the faint impressions of wing and tail plumage.

Another specimen was identified in 1987:¹³⁹

The sixth and most recently discovered specimen of Archaeopteryx came to the world's attention in 1987, when Gunter Viohl, the curator of the Jura Museum... spotted the prehistoric bird in a collection of fossils belonging to... [the] former mayor of Solnhofen. No imprints of feathers were apparent, and most of the skull had been lost. Because of its long, strong hind legs and long tail, the fossil was initially mistaken for that of a Compsognathus... This Archaeopteryx was fully the size of a modern chicken.

The resemblance to certain small dinosaurs was the basis for a charge the Archaeopteryx fossil in the British Museum of Natural History was a fake. In 1985 British astronomers Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe claimed that¹⁴⁰

a forger had created the specimen by first applying a thin layer of binding material mixed with pulverized rock to the fossilized skeleton of Compsognathus -- a type of small dinosaur called a theropod -- and then making impressions of feathers in it... Ironically, the features that Hoyle saw as proof of the fossil's inauthenticity -- its mixture of Compsognathus-like bones and modern feathers -- are some of the most important clues that paleontologists have for understanding how birds and bird flight evolved. Its combination of anatomical characteristics from two distinct classes of animals make Archaeopteryx, the oldest-known bird, a textbook example of a transitional form between reptiles and modern birds.

Not all references agree with John Ostrom's conclusion that Archaeopteryx would have been classified as a small theropod.¹⁴¹

In the above pages we have contested this last viewpoint and presented evidence that the sister group (of Ostrom) or ancestral relationship between coelurosaurs and birds was based only on general similarity and not on synapomorphies.

Ostrom has stated that the skeleton of Archaeopteryx is essentially identical with that of some small theropod dinosaurs... We think that many of these "coelurosaurian" features are incorrectly identified.

The very fact that a number of competent paleontologists disagree on minor details of Archaeopteryx's anatomy should convince any reader that there are significant similarities between it and the small dinosaurs mentioned above. It is not justified to conclude that Archaeopteryx was "just another bird, and that's all that needs to be said." All a reader has to do to convince himself of what has been said up to this point is look at photographs and drawings of the fossils in question. Good comparative diagrams of Archaeopteryx, the small dinosaurs to which its skeleton was similar, and modern birds are found in Scientific American,¹⁴² the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society,¹⁴³ and National Geographic Magazine.¹⁴⁴

Francis Hitching, who we have met before, disputes the hypothesis that Archaeopteryx represents a transitional form.¹⁴⁵ But he ignores evidence such as presented above, and misstates other evidence, with respect to its being an intermediate:

... is the case for Archaeopteryx quite so unambiguous as these claims make out? Apparently not. Every one of its supposed reptilian features can be found in various species of undoubted birds.

1 It had a long bony tail, like a reptile's on which feathers grew.

While it is generally true that reptiles have tails, and birds appear not to, the detailed position is more complex. In embryo, some living birds have more tail vertebrae than Archaeopteryx does, which later fuse to become an upstanding bone called the pygostyle. The bone and feather arrangement on a present-day swan shows striking similarities to Archaeopteryx. According to one authority, there is no difference in principle between the ancient and modern forms: 'the difference lies only in the fact that the caudal vertebrae are greatly prolonged. But this does not make a reptile'.

Hitching provides no source references for this discussion, an inexcusable omission. In any case the above argument is silly. Although a swan has many tail vertebrae, have you ever heard of a swan with a tail as long as its body, as Archaeopteryx had? As for there being no difference in principle between a long and a short tail, monkeys have long tails, but humans have tails where all the bones fuse together during fetal development so that the "tail" is entirely internal. Does this argue that monkeys and humans are no different "in principle"? The same argument could be used to "prove" all vertebrates are the same "in principle" because they have backbones.

2 It had claws on its feet and on its feathered forelimbs.

But so do some modern birds, such as the hoatzin in South America and the touraco in Africa. The ostrich of today, which also has three claws on its wings, has been suggested by some experts to have more supposed reptilian features than Archaeopteryx -- but nobody, of course, considers the ostrich a transitional form.

Claws on its feet? This is hardly a controversial point. The hoatzin has wing claws only during the hatchling stage, as already mentioned in the above discussions. The adult wing is the same as other bird wings -- the claws have fused into a solid bony structure. This is quite different from Archaeopteryx.

3 It had bony jaws lined with teeth.

Modern birds do not have teeth. But many ancient birds did, particularly those in the Mesozoic, and there is no suggestion that these are intermediates. It is just as convincing to argue that Archaeopteryx was an early bird with teeth.

The fact that Mesozoic birds had teeth and modern birds do not is precisely what evolutionists argue is evidence of the gradual change from exclusively reptilian to exclusively birdlike features. Archaeopteryx, which is the earliest bird that has been clearly identified as such, has teeth as well as other anatomical features, that except for the feathers, make it much more like certain dinosaurs than like chickens. The later Mesozoic birds, such as the Hesperornis and Ichthyornis referred to earlier, are anatomically much closer to modern birds. This succession in time is what evolutionists interpret as a succession of evolutionary forms. Hitching totally ignores this point.

4 It had a shallow breastbone that would have given it a feeble wing beat and poor flight.

Modern woodcreepers such as the hoatzin have similarly shallow breastbones, and this does not disqualify them from being classified as birds. And there are, of course, many species of bird, now and in the past, which are incapable of flight.

Where does Hitching get his information? As shown above, the fossil record indicates, not a shallow breastbone, but no breastbone in Archaeopteryx. There may have been a cartilaginous breastbone, but there is no fossil evidence for this. There are no birds besides Archaeopteryx, either modern or in the fossil record, that entirely lack a breastbone. Hitching's argument strikes out again.

5 Its bones were solid, like a reptiles's, not thin or hollow, like a bird's.

Another idea that has been drastically revised. The long bones of Archaeopteryx (wings, legs) are known now to have been both thin and hollow. It is still debated whether they were 'pneumatized' like a bird's, i.e. containing an air sac.

At last, one entirely correct statement.

6 It predates the general arrival of birds by sixty million years.

Until 1977, Archaeopteryx was uniquely early in the fossil record. But in that year, archaeologists from Brigham Young University discovered, in western Colorado, a fossil of an unequivocal bird, in rocks of the same period as Archaeopteryx. Professor John H. Ostrom of Yale University, who positively identified the specimen, commented: 'It is obvious we must now look for the ancestors of flying birds in a period of time much earlier than that in which Archaeopteryx lived.'

This discovery much weakens the case for Archaeopteryx as an intermediate, and makes it that much more likely that the creature was just one of a number of strange birds living at that time. Professor Heribert-Nilsson commented forcefully that 'they are no more reptiles than the present day penguins with their wing-fins are transitional forms to fish'.

The 1977 discovery by Dr. James Jensen of Brigham Young University of the fossil that Hitching says looked to be the femur of a Jurassic bird, was described by professor Ostrom in the August, 1978 National Geographic Magazine, on page 167. Contrary to Hitching's claim that it was "an unequivocal bird," and that Ostrom "positively identified the specimen," Ostrom said:

I visited Jim at the quarry to have a look at his find and was impressed with its birdlike form: a hollow bone about two inches long that appeared to be part of a thighbone... Jim and I debated the creature's identity: bird? pterosaur? mammal? dinosaur?... But all we had was a fragment. Birdlike as it appeared, it could not be certified... Recently another small birdlike bone has come to light, but its identity has not yet been established.

The fossils later turned out to be from a dinosaur, as was confirmed in a personal communication with Professor John Ruben^145a of Oregon State University. These fossils have not been mentioned in any technical literature since 1977. So Hitching, having published his book in 1982, was using out of date and incorrect material to prove his point. Hitching also uses an out of date quotation from professor Heribert-Nilsson -- from 1954, long before the recent paleontological work described above. So again, Hitching's argument, on close examination, falls to pieces. He neglects to mention a key point -- although each of the reptilian features he mentions can be found in other birds or bird fossils, Archaeopteryx is the only one in which all of them are found.

Hitching's final conclusion is not bad. He says:

The further point might be made that even if Archaeopteryx is in fact a half-way form from reptiles to birds, it is still not very enlightening about the process of evolution, nor in any way evidence of Darwin's hoped-for gradual transitions. For that, we would have to see in the fossil record the slow development of feathers (perhaps from scales, perhaps from some other origin) and the hierarchical change of amphibian dinosaurs into delicate, light- boned creatures that could soar above the Earth. And here, characteristically, the rocks are mute.

Actually, later discoveries of ancient birds partially salvaged Hitching's point number six. Science News, October 20, 1990, on page 246 reported the discovery in China of a 135 million year old bird fossil:

The sparrow-sized specimen is the earliest known example of a bird with modernized flying ability, reports Paul C. Sereno of the University of Chicago... The still-unnamed Chinese bird is about 10 million to 15 million years younger than the oldest known bird, Archaeopteryx, and displays several flight features that the crow-sized Archaeopteryx lacked. "This is the first bird with the capacity for a modern flight stroke," says Sereno... The fossil shows an intriguing mix of modern avian features and primitive characteristics retained from reptilian ancestors. The bird had flight-specialized shoulders and a distinctly avian adaptation called the pygostyle... The Chinese specimen... displays adaptations for tree life. The claws of its feet were long and curved, allowing the bird to perch on a branch better than Archaeopteryx, says Sereno. The "hand" bones in the wings had a shrunken first digit and an enlarged second digit, an arrangement resembling that seen in modern birds. The fossil also shows many characteristics lacking in modern birds, such as stomach ribs, unfused hand bones and a primitive pubic bone... The Chinese bird joins several slightly younger fossils found in Spain... as the only known birds from this crucial phase in avian history. Some of its primitive features, including stomach ribs, do not appear in the Spanish fossils.

Another account of the discovery, in New Scientist, November 3, 1990, in an article "Fossil birds force an evolutionary re-think," page 28, said:

The small bird... sported a breastbone, which could have anchored strong flight muscles. Sereno believes that the bird would have looked much like a modern bird... The Chinese bird retained some primitive traits, however. Its wings reveal small remnants of claws and fingers, and the bird may have had teeth. It also had stomach ribs... these are present in Archaeopteryx and carnivorous dinosaurs, but not in modern birds... fossils of perching birds 125 million years old have been found in Spain and Mongolia, but the next oldest bird fossils are about 50 million years younger.

The above mentioned Spanish fossil was reported in Science News, February 13, 1988, on page 102:

Found in the Las Hoyas limestone outcrop in Cuenca, Spain, the fossil dates back to the early Cretaceous period, approximately 120 million to 130 million years ago. The oldest bird known from the fossil record is Archaeopteryx, which has been found in 150-million-year-old formations. "The new fossil, reported here, represents a previously unknown level in the organization of birds, intermediate between Archaeopteryx and later birds," according to the discoverers of the Las Hoyas bird... Although the fossil lacks a skull, the rest of the specimen is relatively complete. The bird had primitive pelvic bones and hind limbs, but displays some more modern adaptations that are particularly important in flight. Most notable of these characteristics is a bird-like coracoid -- a bone in the shoulder that helps translate muscular force into the power stroke of a wing. And at the end of the vertebrate column, the fossil has a bone called a pygostyle, which is the skeletal basis of an avian tail. Because it combines primitive and modern characteristics, say the researchers, "the new fossil suggests that the early evolution of birds was firmly and rapidly influenced by the requirements of flight."

Discover of January, 1989, on page 63 additionally said about this fossil:

... the collarbone is strongly connected to the breastbone and is built like an airplane strut to keep the shoulders braced during flight.

The latest information on Archaeopteryx available as of this writing is from the journal Evolution. The article said:¹⁴⁶

Although Archaeopteryx lived almost 140 million years ago (Late Jurassic Period), its avian nature is immediately evident -- several specimens are at least partially cloaked in a set of flight and contour feathers that are surprisingly similar to those of many extant birds... However, another attribute of Archaeopteryx is equally obvious: much of its skeleton is reptilian, bearing striking resemblance to a number of late Mesozoic, small bipedal dinosaurs, the coelurosaurid theropods... Interpretation of Archaeopteryx' capacity for powered flight and general mode of life has historically been the source of continuous, sharp disagreement... With a view toward reevaluation of these (and other) issues, the 1984 International Archaeopteryx Conference was convened in Eichstatt, Germany... The following scenario emerged from their debates: Archaeopteryx was an active, cursorial predator and was also facultatively arboreal; it was a glider and a feebly powered, or flapping flyer. Finally, it was incapable of takeoff and flight from the ground upward.

Because Archaeopteryx had fully developed feathers and modern-looking wings, the author disagrees with the conclusion that it was not a great flier. He proposes that it was cold-blooded, in line with its skeleton:

A new hypothesis is offered here: If Archaeopteryx retained a reptilian, rather than an avian physiology, the flight-support capacities of various internal and external structures appear far less disparate.

We have already considered most of these physical structures.

Moreover, it would have been fully capable of standstill takeoff and powered flight from the ground upward, as well as from the trees down... Just as fossilized plumage clearly signals the avian nature of Archaeopteryx' surface anatomy, a reptilian internal anatomy is suggested by its reptilian skeleton. However, in spite of its mosaic, reptilian/avian morphology, conventional wisdom holds that Archaeopteryx was functionally avian, rather than reptilian in any significant respect.

The author presents a very good explanation of the various special physical structures that birds have for flight. His main conclusion is that reptilian muscle can actually produce about twice the power per pound as compared to modern bird muscle, and therefore if Archaeopteryx had a reptilian physiology it would have been quite capable of good flight over short distances, but would lack the endurance of modern birds:

There is, however, reason to suspect that although Archaeopteryx was capable of powered flight, nevertheless, it lacked the stamina and locomotory endurance of extant birds... During "burst-level" activity, major locomotory muscles of a number of active terrestrial squamate reptiles generate at least twice the power (watts kg^-1 muscle tissue) as that of birds and mammals... Utilization of high-power, reptile-type flight-muscle to support powered flight seems consistent with Archaeopteryx' relatively reduced pectoral surface area... its flight muscles would have generated comparable power, but these muscles would have required far less skeletal area for their origin. This argument would resolve much of the apparent discrepancy between external and internal flight apparatus in Archaeopteryx... Based on the metabolic physiology of a number of active modern reptiles, an ectothermic, mostly anaerobically powered Archaeopteryx would have been capable of nonstop, flapping flight ranging to distances of at least 1.5 km... This is not remarkably different from the locomotor capacity of Varanus komodoensis [the Komodo Dragon of Indonesia], which is reportedly capable of nonstop, one-kilometer sprints at speeds approaching 30 km h^-1 ...

... [Reptilian physiology] would have enabled Archaeopteryx to attain powered flight and ground-upward takeoff with less than one-half the relative volume of flight musculature of modern birds. This could account for the apparent disparity between Archaeopteryx' highly developed, aerodynamic exterior, and the absence of a correspondingly developed internal skeleton typical of modern birds.

In view of all the above evidence, it is safe to summarize the knowledge relating to early birds: Archaeopteryx was an ancient bird, it could fly, and it had many reptilian anatomical features. Whether it was warm or cold-blooded is not known. Bird fossils found in later deposits show anatomical features part way between Archaeopteryx and modern birds. Archaeopteryx was intermediate in skeletal structure between dinosaurs and modern birds, and later birds were intermediate between Archaeopteryx and modern birds. No fossils of birds that had feathers of intermediate form have ever been found. This is a serious difficulty for evolutionists. Was Archaeopteryx a link between reptiles and birds -- a transitional form? The fossil evidence provides no basis for a firm conclusion.

These considerations lead to one of the most astounding aspects of life -- throwbacks. Here is what The Dinosaur Heresies had to say:¹⁴⁷

Both Archaeopteryx and [Deinonychus] had had three fingers only -- not the five found in primitive dinosaurs. And the proportions of the fingers had been the same: A short, stout thumb and two longer outer fingers, with the outermost of the three very slender, bowed outward, and closely bound by ligaments to the middle finger. This unique pattern can still be recognized in a modern bird's wing; the three fingers are all firmly fused together in an adult bird, but in an unhatched chick, the bones are not yet fused. In a chick the separate wrist and hand bones are clearly discerned, exactly as they had been in Deinonychus and Archaeopteryx.

There exists today one species of bird that retains its finger bones unfused and flexible into the first weeks of life in the nest. This bird, the hoatzin of South America, allows us to surmise how the Archaeopteryx worked. As birds go, an adult hoatzin exhibits nothing special in the anatomy of its wing. But the young nestling is a genuine evolutionary throwback, an ugly little chick that climbs through the vegetation by grasping with its three-fingered, claw-tipped hands designed to the Archaeopteryx blueprint...

Hoatzin chicks also force a rethinking of the idea that there could be no big reversals in the evolution of birds. Evolutionary reversals unquestionably were necessary to make a hoatzin. Hoatzin's relatives all have much weaker wing claws in the chick stages of life than hoatzins themselves have. Most ornithologists therefore conclude that hoatzins evolved from some ancestor with the "normal" pattern of growth in which the chick never possesses strong, flexible, unfused fingers for climbing. According to this view, the hoatzin chick evolved by means of a Darwinian U-turn -- the strong, Archaeopteryx-like flexible fingers were recalled from genetic storage.

Genetic storage is a nuance of evolution too often ignored. Many paleontologists believe that when a bone disappears in evolution, the genetic blueprint for that bone is also erased... But in fact evolution does not occur in this fashion. Hoatzin's ancestors never lost the genetic blueprint for producing Archaeopteryx-style clawed fingers. In essence, they merely turned off the physiological switch that ordered genes to produce organs according to the encoded information. Recent advances in genetic research reveal that most species carry such blueprints that are "switched off" and can't express their code as fully formed tissue. In other words, when an organ has been "lost," most of the time its blueprint is still there, in genetic storage. Hoatzin's ancestors were "normal" modern birds that employed a modern blueprint to produce a wing in their nestlings that was like a chicken's, with stiff, fused fingers. Hoatzins evolved their distinctive Archaeopteryx-like clawed fingers by the process of turning off that blueprint for its nestling and turning back to the older one to reexpress itself.

A wealth of evidence supports this theory of reexpression by genes that have been turned off for millions of years. Most of it occurs in throwbacks (what nineteenth-century scientists called atavisms), the rare appearance of ancient organs in species that, as a whole, had lost the anatomical features millions of generations earlier. A good example is multi-toed horses. Modern horses belong to the same general group as tapirs, and tapirs have four toes on each forefoot. The single-toed modern horse evolved from a four-toed ancestor. Every so often a healthy, normal, single-toed mare gives birth to a colt that has little extra toes sticking out beside the big main toe. Zoologists point to this multi-toed foal as a case where natural processes allow a bit of the ancestral blueprint to show through, letting ancient ancestral traits reexpress themselves.

Whales offer a more spectacular case. Modern whales have no hind legs at all, and even when all the blubber and muscle are flensed from the hip region, there is no remnant of the hip bones except a small splint representing the ilium. Even the oldest-known fossil whales display only slightly enlarged hip bones and some remnants of thigh and knee. But way back in their ancestry whales did have big hind legs, at a stage when they were land-living predators. And every once in a while a modern whale is hauled in with a hind leg, complete with thigh and knee muscles, sticking out of its side.^147a These atavistic hind limbs are nothing less than throwbacks to a totally pre-whale stage of their existence, some fifty million years old.

Such throwbacks even occur in human infants. Hospitals occasionally register an entirely modern-looking baby characterized by all the expected organs, plus an unexpected tail, a long, caudal appendage protruding beyond the buttocks for two or three inches. Some of these tails are even bigger than the average caudal remnant displayed by our close kin, the chimps, gorillas, and orangutans.

Genetic experiments have revealed that these throwbacks are controlled by suppressor genes. We now know that most complex pieces of anatomy -- such as the clavicle and its muscles -- are controlled directly and indirectly by scores of genes that interact and can suppress each other. We also know that the full genetic blueprint in any single species is rarely, if ever, fully expressed. Instead, much of the genetic information is stored in the "inactive file," genes that don't produce their potential impact because some other gene prevents them from turning on. When an anatomical feature disappears during evolution, its genetic blueprint is not erased. Some new combination of genes has evolved to suppress the still-present blueprint.

Birds with teeth may have appeared ridiculous to creationists, but in point of fact modern birds do carry the ancestral genetic code for making teeth tucked away in their inactive file. No living species of bird manufactures teeth. But recent surgical manipulations of bird embryos demonstrate clearly that the potential is still there. In 1983, experimenters transplanted tissue from the inner jaw (dental lamina) of an unhatched chick to an area of the body tissue, where the graft could grow. In the transplanted position, the chick's dental lamina started to produce tooth buds! Birds with teeth could grow right in the twentieth century.

Consider the above information carefully. If things like teeth can be produced in a bird embryo by simply transplanting jaw tissue to another part of the embryo, doesn't that show conclusively that the genes to produce teeth are in the embryo's chromosomes? And if whales can produce a leg, complete with muscles, in the place one would expect a leg to be if there was going to be a leg, where normally there is no leg at all, isn't that compelling evidence that the whale possesses genes for legs? And if horses every so often produce a three-toed colt, isn't that proof positive that genes for three toes are still in the horse, just as the fossil record seems to indicate? Don't these things indicate there must be something fundamental the fossil record is telling us?

In this vein The Panda's Thumb said:¹⁴⁸

... why should the fetus of a whale make teeth in its mother's womb only to resorb them later and live a life sifting krill on a whalebone filter, unless its ancestors had functional teeth and these teeth survive as a remnant during a stage when they do no harm?

If creation really occurred, the creator may well have reused much genetic material via a mechanism like suppressor genes. It is almost as if the creator were tinkering and experimenting with life forms. After a category of animal existed for awhile, he wiped it out and started a new one, reusing some of the old parts and inventing new ones. This would explain the great variety that explodes onto the scene after each wave of extinction. It would also explain all the intermediate life forms observed in the fossil record, such as three-toed horses and birds that have reptilian skeletons and modern feathers. If these things seem too ridiculous to consider ascribing to a creator, note that apparently-reused-parts are a major reason evolutionists believe the way they do.

At this point we return to our discussion of the Creation book's treatment of the question of the change from reptile to bird. All the preceding information should allow the reader to see how poor the argument of Chapter 6, paragraph 21, is:

At one time evolutionists believed that Archaeopteryx, meaning "ancient wing" or "ancient bird," was a link between reptile and bird. But now, many do not. Its fossilized remains reveal perfectly formed feathers on aerodynamically designed wings capable of flight. Its wing and leg bones were thin and hollow. Its supposed reptilian features are found in birds today. And it does not predate birds, because fossils of other birds have been found in rocks of the same period as Archaeopteryx.¹²

Note the footnote number "12" at the end of the paragraph. Looking this up on page 253 of Creation we find two references. One is to an article, "Feathers of Archaeopteryx: Asymmetric Vanes Indicate Aerodynamic Function" in Science, March 9, 1979, pp. 1021, 1022. This article concluded that

the shape and general proportions of the wing and wing feathers in Archaeopteryx are essentially like those of modern birds. The fact that the basic pattern and proportions of the modern avian wing were present in Archaeopteryx and have remained essentially unchanged for approximately 150 million years (since late Jurassic time), and that the individual flight feathers showed the asymmetry characteristic of airfoils seems to show that Archaeopteryx had an aerodynamically designed wing and was capable of at least gliding. Any argument that Archaeopteryx was flightless must explain selection for asymmetry in the wing feathers in some context other than flight.

The other reference is to The Neck of the Giraffe by Francis Hitching, pages 34-35. We have already considered this reference at length. We will not insult the reader's intelligence by pointing out which details of Creation's argument are based entirely on Hitching's and are therefore irrelevant or incorrect. This is another example where the author of Creation either has not done his homework, or has avoided considering relevant evidence, and as a result has led the reader astray.

As we have already shown, the author of Creation has borrowed much material from The Neck of the Giraffe besides that on Archaeopteryx. He has also borrowed much from the "scientific creationists." It is easy to tell, because the errors in logic or in data are the same. For example, on the question of rich Precambrian fossiliferous deposits, on page 27 of his book Hitching quotes three scientists, from material published prior to 1961, as saying that there are none. Creation makes the same error. On the above question of jawbone and earbone evolution, Creation's argument is nearly the same as Hitching's, which is nearly the same as creationist author Duane Gish's in Evolution? The Fossils Say No! All err in being ignorant of the fossil evidence.

The Society leads its readers to incorrect conclusions in other articles mentioning Archaeopteryx. The July 22, 1987 Awake! has a picture on page 12 of a brontosaur and a bird, with the caption: "'Dinosaurs evolve into birds'? Consider: Birds are warm-blooded, reptiles cold..." From the information presented above, it should be evident that this presentation is a gross simplification of the actual situation and is completely misleading. It is doubtful that anyone has ever claimed brontosaurs evolved into birds.

Regarding Archaeopteryx, the January 22, 1978 Awake! said on page 24 that the "relative proportions of the head and brain case are those of a bird and are quite different from those of reptiles. So, Archaeopteryx did not evolve from a reptile to a bird." A glance at the skeletal drawings in the references mentioned above will dispel the idea that the head and brain case are very different from the dinosaurs from which birds are claimed to have evolved.

The lack of attention to detail apparent in Creation, with regard to the fossil record of the structural similarities between reptiles and early birds, is well illustrated by the two pages of quotations on pages 68-69, under the title "What the Fossil Evidence Says... about the Origin of Living Things." Under the sub-title "On Reptiles Becoming Birds" the following is cited:

"The transition from reptiles to birds is more poorly documented." -- Processes of Organic Evolution

On the face of it this quotation is taken out of context -- the transition is "more poorly documented" than what? The full context is reproduced on Part 04 of this essay, but here is one paragraph:¹⁴⁹

The transition from reptiles to birds is more poorly documented than are the other transitions between classes of vertebrates. Nevertheless, many of the smaller reptiles in the group ancestral to dinosaurs and crocodiles had light skeletons from which those of birds could have arisen, and moreover walked exclusively on their hind legs, as do birds. Furthermore, the earliest fossil birds, from Jurassic deposits of Germany, had jaws containing teeth and forelimbs with well developed fingers... We classify them as birds because feathers are preserved with their skeletons; but if their preservation had been somewhat poorer and the feathers were not present, these animals might well have been classified as reptiles.

So the reference is not saying that the transition between reptiles and birds is poorly documented in an absolute sense, even though a strong argument can be made that it is, but that in contrast to the wealth of fossils showing the transition between reptiles and mammals, the reptile-bird transition is more poorly documented. As shown on page Part 04 of this essay, Stebbins had spent several previous pages explaining that these other transitions are quite well understood. This is not at all what Creation implies.

The other quotation under the sub-title "On Reptiles Becoming Birds" is:

"No fossil of any such birdlike reptile has yet been found." -- The World Book Encyclopedia

What "such birdlike reptile" is The World Book Encyclopedia speaking of? By putting this quotation immediately after the above cited quotation, Creation implies that it means any transitional form. The context of the quotation shows something quite different:¹⁵⁰

Most scientists believe that birds and mammals both evolved (developed gradually) from reptiles. However, scientists know far more about the evolution of mammals. Scientists learn about the development of animals by studying fossils, especially the remains of bones. Mammals have relatively hard bones and so have left behind many well-preserved fossils. The bones of birds, however, are extremely fragile. As a result, fewer bird fossils have been preserved. This section discusses the theory that most scientists believe best describes the development of birds.

The first known birds. At some point in the evolution of birds from reptiles, there must have been various kinds of birdlike reptiles. Such creatures would have been covered with featherlike scales, rather than with recognizable scales or feathers. However, no fossil of any such birdlike reptile has yet been found.

The earliest bird fossils belong to a genus (group) called Archaeopteryx. Archaeopteryx lived about 150 to 130 million years ago. It resembled a reptile in many respects. However, it was covered with feathers and so is classed as a bird.

World Book is not saying transitional forms have not been found, but is clearly saying that fossils of birdlike reptiles with featherlike scales have not been found. Again a reference says something different from what Creation indicates.

Part 6: The Gulf Between Reptiles and Mammals

Beginning on page 80 the Creation book speaks of the gulf between reptiles and mammals. It explains some ways reptiles and mammals are different from one another, and implies they have always been different. But here again it treats the fossil record inaccurately. The record shows that in late Permian times a group of animals called therapsids (synapsids), which had many mammal-like characteristics, appeared rather suddenly, flourished for about ten million years, and then died out in a wave of mass extinction.¹⁵¹ Then, at the beginning of the Triassic Period, another group of therapsid "protomammals" appeared in the fossil record for a few million years, and were extinguished. Then another group appeared. A group of animals called thecodonts appeared about the same time as the third wave of therapsids, and as the Triassic Period wore on the therapsids diminished in number and the thecodonts increased. At the end of the Triassic, and the beginning of the Jurassic Period, most of the therapsids and thecodonts disappeared in another great wave of extinction. True dinosaurs then appeared. They experienced several waves of flowering and extinction, with the greatest extinction closing the Jurassic Period. During the following Cretaceous Period, birds appeared in the fossil record. At the end of the Cretaceous, dinosaurs became extinct, birds became far more numerous, and the Age of Mammals began.¹⁵²

A scientist, L. Beverly Halstead, said concerning the intermediate forms between mammals and reptiles:¹⁵³

There are two aspects of the theory of evolution which are all too frequently, and one suspects deliberately, confused: evidence of the processes by which it took place, the how of evolution, and the historical evidence of it actually having taken place...

Regarding the transition from reptile to mammal, [creationist author Duane] Gish writes:

'The two most easily distinguishable osteological differences between reptiles and mammals, however, have never been bridged by transitional series. All mammals, living or fossil, have a single bone, the dentary, on each side of the lower jaw, and all mammals, living or fossil, have three auditory ossicles or ear bones, the malleus, incus, and stapes. In some fossil reptiles the number and size of the bones of the lower jaw are reduced compared to living reptiles. Every reptile, living or fossil, however, has at least four bones in the lower jaw and only one auditory ossicle, the stapes.'

'There are no transitional forms showing, for instance, three or two jaw bones, or two ear bones. No-one has explained yet, for that matter, how the transitional form would have managed to chew while his jaw was being unhinged and rearticulated, or how he would hear while dragging two of his jaw bones up into his ear.'

That is very good, quite amusing, but this transition is in fact very well known; the functional reasons for it were worked out in the early 1960s by Professor A. W. Crompton of Yale University. The splitting of the main jaw-closing muscles into two blocks, the masseter and temporalis, had the effect of reducing the pressure on the jaw joint, and in consequence the bones became reduced in size. In the early growth stages these bones were loose in the region of the ear apparatus, and Dr. J. Hopson in 1966 showed exactly how this process of the jaw bones becoming incorporated as sound-amplifying bones in the middle ear took place.

This same process can actually be seen today taking place in kangaroos and hedgehogs during their embryological development. The exact transition between the reptilian and mammalian jaw joint was described some years ago by Professor Romer from new fossils discovered in the Argentine. The new jaw articulation was already functioning while the other was becoming defunct.

Another author, Michael Archer,¹⁵⁴ gives extensive evidence for the existence of intermediate forms between mammals and reptiles. His discussion is extremely detailed, and contains clear illustrations of the fossils that are being discussed. Particularly striking are the illustrations of the fossils showing the intermediate structures in the jaw and ear of a series of animals said to show the transition between reptile and mammal. Please take careful note of the fossil evidence:

Table 6.2 shows character pairs which separate modern mammals from modern reptiles. All of the structures listed, except the last six, involve parts of the skeleton and might, as a result, be expected to have some sort of fossil record. That being the case, if the evolutionary concept includes, as it does, the hypothesis that mammals evolved from reptiles (a hypothesis that was originally developed from study of living animals only), we might expect some evidence from the fossil record for transitional forms. Are they known? In grand abundance.

The fossil record shows evidence for a transition between reptiles and mammals. The evidence is based on detailed studies of jaw articulation in reptiles and mammals (both living and fossil) and the development of the bones of the mammalian middle ear, three of which appear to be the same as bones that help to articulate the reptilian jaw.

Soon after the 'true' (rather than transitional) reptiles had made their appearance, two distinctive subgroups of reptiles began to dominate the ecosystems of the day: the more conventional reptilian forms known as diapsids (such as dinosaurs, lizards and snakes) and the somewhat less conventional synapsids or mammal-like reptiles.

The oldest synapsids known are from the Carboniferous (i.e. about 315,000,000 years in age). They were small (50 cm) reptiles distinguished from others of their day most conspicuously by the presence of a temporal space in the cheek region of the skull. The subsequent 100 million years of synapsid evolution is represented by many thousands of fossils that document a number of different evolutionary trends within the group. Synapsids declined at the end of the Triassic, about 215 million years ago, at about the same time that primitive mammals made their first appearance in the fossil record. One synapsid group, however, survived until the Middle Jurassic. With extinction of this group the synapsids as such disappeared, although there is incontrovertible evidence from the fossil record that the first mammals were their descendants.

We can trace the development of mammalian characteristics in the synapsids by examining the skulls and other skeletal parts found at stratigraphic levels corresponding to successively younger times...

Synapsids from the Late Triassic such as Oligokyphus major had strikingly mammalian skeletons. Their features are so mammal-like that there has been debate as to whether they should be regarded as reptiles or mammals.

All of these features found in synapsids are standard equipment in living mammals but unknown in living reptiles. In other features, such as the relatively small brain and poor differentiation of the cheek teeth row into molars as well as premolars, synapsids are more reptile-like than mammal-like. This mixture of mammalian and reptilian features in synapsids is precisely what one would expect to find in a group of organisms transitional between reptiles and mammals.

The history of synapsids demonstrates very plainly that they were a group of reptiles that, for the first time, was experimenting with mammalian features. From their beginnings in the Carboniferous, they display ever-increasing degrees of 'mammal-ness' until, by the end of the Triassic, some lineages were clearly on the borderline between more advanced synapsids and primitive mammals (Figure 6.5).

In fact, the questions being debated now amongst vertebrate palaeontologists are not whether or not mammal-like reptiles were structural and temporal intermediates between reptiles and mammals but rather which particular group of synapsids gave rise to mammals. And even here, debates... are not any wider than the choice between [three types], all Middle-to-Late Triassic synapsids which were alive and kicking before the first primitive mammals appeared...

As noted above, the modern reptilian and mammalian jaw articulation systems are radically different. In the former, the articular bone of the lower jaw hinges with the quadrate bone of the skull. In modern mammals, the lower jaw consists of one bone, the dentary, which hinges against the squamosal bone of the skull. Skulls showing the synapsid-to-early mammal transition demonstrate that the mammalian condition was gradually acquired by posterior enlargement of the dentary bone until it contacted the squamosal bone (Figure 6.6).

The posterior extension of the dentary developed around the outside of the articular-quadrate system and (as the fossil record of synapsids and early mammals demonstrates), as the dentary-squamosal articulation enlarged, the articular-quadrate system diminished.

Archer then describes the fossils that show the changes from the reptile style jaw-earbone system to the mammalian.

Clearly, the first mammals to be recognized as such... are only marginally distinct from the structurally more primitive synapsids. Because of the fossil record, it is clear that the boundary between reptiles and mammals has no significant qualitative borderlines. There is a continuum of fossil forms from basically primitive reptiles, to primitive synapsid reptiles, to advanced mammal-like reptiles, to primitive reptile-like mammals, to advanced mammals of the kind that survive today. The fossil record clearly supports the predictions of the evolutionary model that intermediates between reptiles and mammals would be found.

By the Middle Jurassic (approximately 175 million years ago),... [all] three surviving groups of mammals, the monotremes, the marsupials and the placentals, lack postdentary bones attached to the dentary but have four small 'free' bones [which make up the mammalian middle ear]... These sound-transmitting middle-ear bones are adjacent to the posterior edge of the dentary in exactly the same relationship as the synapsid and primitive mammalian angular, articular, quadrate and incus (Figure 6.8). That they are the same four bones, performing in part the same function of sound transmission, is an inescapable conclusion.

In this regard, studies of the embryological development of the modern mammal jaw articulation system and middle ear are very interesting. Palmer (1913) followed their development in a bandicoot... When the young are born they are in effect two-week-old embryos. At this stage the young has a functional quadrate-articular jaw joint -- a normal reptilian system -- and uses it to open its tiny mouth very wide to grasp a teat in the pouch (Figure 6.8c). As the embryonic bandicoot develops in the pouch, the embryonic articular and quadrate become the malleus and incus of the middle ear. The angular matures between the articular and the dentary to become the ectotympanic for support of the developing tympanic membrane. The dentary develops posteriorly and the squamosal bone 'overgrows' the small malleus and incus to make contact with the dentary. By the time (less than sixty days later) that the young bandicoot first releases its grip on the teat it has, like all living mammals (Figure 6.8b) and most fossil mammals since the Middle Jurassic, a fully functional dentary-squamosal jaw articulation system and four 'free' bones in its middle ear.

While it is inappropriate to interpret ancestral adult conditions from the embryological conditions of descendants..., this embryological evidence strongly suggests that there is in living mammals an intimate developmental relationship between the jaw articulation system and the bones of the middle ear. This developmental relationship is precisely mirrored by what one finds in the fossil record of the reptile-to-mammal transition.

To recapitulate, from the fossil record there is clear evidence that the transition from the reptilian to the mammalian jaw articulation system was gradual and that it went bone-in-bone, as it were, with simultaneous changes in the middle ear. The net effect, from the modern mammal point of view, was that the dentary and squamosal replaced the articular and quadrate as the bones involved in articulation of the lower jaw to the skull. The replacement was gradual and involved an intermediate condition, represented by some of the most advanced synapsids as well as by some of the most primitive mammals, in which both sets of bones simultaneously provided support for the lower jaw. Three postdentary bones, the angular and articular of the lower jaw and the quadrate of the upper jaw, functioned simultaneously as transmitters of sound to the stapes which then passed the vibrations on to the inner ear. As the postdentary bones reduced in size and lost their commitment to jaw support, their capacity to transmit high-frequency sounds increased. Subsequent evolution amongst later mammals resulted in eventual confinement of the angular (as the ectotympanic which supports the tympanic membrane), the articular (as the malleus or 'hammer'), the quadrate (as the incus or 'anvil') and the stapes (the 'stirrup') to the middle ear in a position just behind the posterior end of the dentary. The embryological development of the jaw articulation system and the middle-ear region in modern mammals indicates the intimate developmental relationship between the bones which articulate the lower jaw and those which transmit sound, a relationship that is essentially the same as that demonstrated by advanced synapsids.

Clearly, the fossil record most definitely provides evidence in support of the existence of former 'links' between what are today significantly different kinds of organisms. In this case, the Triassic synapsids and morganucodontids firmly bridge two otherwise quite distinct classes of vertebrates, the reptiles and the mammals.

Now note what Creation said concerning the "evolution" of the mammalian jawbone-earbone assemblage, on page 80, in paragraph 24:

Mammals also have three bones in their ears, while reptiles have only one. Where did the two "extras" come from? Evolutionary theory attempts to explain it as follows: Reptiles have at least four bones in the lower jaw, whereas mammals have only one; so, when reptiles became mammals there was supposedly a reshuffling of bones; some from the reptile's lower jaw moved to the mammal's middle ear to make the three bones there and, in the process, left only one for the mammal's lower jaw. However, the problem with this line of reasoning is that there is no fossil evidence whatsoever to support it. [italics added] It is merely wishful conjecture.

Creation claims there is no fossil evidence for the reshuffling of the bones. Yet the above references cite many examples from the fossil record showing a sequence in time of animals that had bones that looked like they were in the process of being reshuffled. Some of this information goes back to the mid-1960s, yet Creation was published in 1985. Is the author of Creation really not aware of the fossil record? Who is really guilty of wishful conjecture?

In case the reader wishes to see for himself the graphic fossil evidence for all this change, he may consult the article "The Mammal-like Reptiles." This article, by the above referenced Dr. J. Hopson, contains many drawings showing how the skeletal structure of the mammal-like reptiles changed through time, as discussed above. In particular, it illustrates the changes from the fully reptilian jaw-earbone system to the fully mammalian. It seems incredible that such odd structures existed in animals, but they are in the fossil record for all to see. Typical of the information presented are Hopson's comments about above mentioned creationist author Duane Gish:¹⁵⁵

... Gish (1973) argues that fossils have never been found showing an intermediate stage between the reptilian many-boned lower jaw and single-boned middle ear and the mammalian single-boned jaw and three-boned ear. He writes: "There are no transitional forms showing, for instance, three or two jaw bones or two ear bones"... In this he is correct, of course; intermediates such as he describes never did exist. But his argument is a "red herring," intended, it would seem, to mislead the uninformed. As we have seen, the four reptilian jaw bones were incorporated into the mammalian middle ear mechanism as a unit.

Gish further objects to this proposed evolutionary transition because: "no one has explained yet,... how the transitional form would have managed to chew while its jaw was being unhinged and rearticulated or how it would hear while dragging its jaw bones up into its ear"... His tactic here is to discredit the idea of an evolutionary transformation by emphasizing the adaptive improbability or impossibility of the intermediate stages. But to do this he grossly misrepresents how the transformation actually occurred. As I have shown above, the lower jaw never was "unhinged"; it went from having one hinge (reptilian) to two hinges lying side-by-side (reptilian plus mammalian) back to a single hinge (this time, mammalian). Likewise, the post-dentary bones of the lower jaw were already connected to the stapes via the quadrate even in the earliest mammal-like reptiles...

In all the comings and goings of animal species, two things stand out: most of the time new animals that show up in the fossil record are not terribly different from those which came immediately before, and almost never are any fossils found where individual features appear to have been in some sort of transition state. So evolutionists have a major problem in explaining how novel structures come about, because they have very little evidence for it, yet new animals keep appearing in the fossil record, slightly different from those previous, giving an "appearance" of evolution. The Creation book, as well as all other Watchtower publications, denies there is a more or less continuous sequence of animal groups, one after the other, in the fossil record. In reading Creation, one gets the impression that everything paleontologists say about succession in the fossil record is spurious merely because they can't explain how new animals come about. In the section "The Gulf Between Reptile and Mammal" there is not one word about this succession. It is as if the Society does not want readers who are ignorant of the facts of paleontology to find out that there really was a succession of animals. At any rate, Creation's contention that no transitional links between major kinds of living things have ever been found in the fossil record (page 59) is merely a rhetorical device that obscures the real issues. That the book often quotes out-of-date reference material in support substantiates this contention.

The ignorance apparent in Creation with regard to the fossil record of the structural similarities between reptiles and early mammals is well illustrated by the two pages of quotations on pages 68-69, under the title "What the Fossil Evidence Says... about the Origin of Living Things." Under the sub-title "On Reptiles Becoming Mammals" the following is cited:

"There is no missing link [that connects] mammals and reptiles." -- The Reptiles

This quotation implies clearly, within the context of Creation's argument, that there are no intermediate forms between reptiles and mammals. But the context of the quotation shows something quite different. After talking about how clearly the ancient bird Archaeopteryx, shows a structure intermediate between reptiles and birds, The Reptiles says:¹⁵⁶

The record of the derivation of mammals from reptiles is both far longer and far more detailed than the history of birds -- and also, unfortunately, it is far less clear. It begins with the pelycosaurs of the late Carboniferous -- a group not far removed from the old stem reptiles. From these there radiated a great array of types known as mammal-like reptiles, and during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic these creatures were the dominant vertebrates on the land.

There is no missing link between mammals and reptiles, nor any single fossil type which, as Archaeopteryx does for birds, stands out clearly as half reptile, half mammal. If each mammalian feature could be traced to its point of origin, we might hope to put a finger on the first mammals. As it is, the case rests mostly on bones and teeth, and relying on such skeletal characters alone, we only see the ancestral forms slowly acquiring the skeleton and dentition that today we associate with mammals. We can only deduce the scheduling of the less solid attributes not susceptible to preservation in the rocks.

What The Reptiles actually says is consistent with the information on transitional forms presented in the last few pages -- there are so many intermediate forms that no single one can be assigned as a "missing link." This is opposite to what Creation says, and is consistent with what evolutionists have said all along -- there was a progression of life forms from reptile to mammal. Furthermore, The Reptiles was written in 1963, and from what we have seen previously, many more "intermediate forms" have been discovered since then.

The other quotation under the sub-title "On Reptiles Becoming Mammals" further shows how Creation's quoting out of context is misleading. It quotes the following:

"Fossils, unfortunately, reveal very little about the creatures which we consider the first true mammals." -- The Mammals

Speaking about the various forms of life that show skeletal structure intermediate between reptiles and mammals, The Mammals actually says:¹⁵⁷

Evolution works by infinitely slow stages, so there is no one point where we can say that, as if at the blowing of a trumpet, mammals were born from the parent reptile stock. An important early approach to mammalian structure was taken by lizardlike creatures known as pelycosaurs, which date back 280 million years or more -- long before the appearance of true mammals...

Related to the pelycosaurs was a group of even more mammal-like reptiles called therapsids, most of which were aggressive meat eaters. These had skulls and teeth which in many ways were quite similar to those of mammals, and limbs which were shifting from the sprawling "out-to-the-side" position of early amphibian and some land-dwelling reptiles to the fore-and-aft position of typical mammals...

The structure of the teeth, among other features, shows that pelycosaurs and therapsids, although not necessarily the direct ancestors of mammals, may certainly be regarded as their ancient uncles and aunts. The fossil record does not tell us whether therapsids were warm-blooded, whether they had hair instead of scales and whether they nursed their young. But judging from the progressive modifications of their hard parts, they may possibly have been developing these typically mammalian characteristics.

Fossils, unfortunately, reveal very little about the creatures which we consider the first true mammals. From the few remains which have been discovered -- mainly teeth and jaws -- we know that they were mostly tiny animals no bigger than rats and mice...

So Creation's quotation from The Mammals, which was written in 1963, is speaking of animals that could be considered the first true mammals -- animals that clearly display fully mammalian features, with no hint of "reptile-ness." This is quite different from what Creation implies. Again the full context of the quotation, and up-to-date information, says the opposite of what Creation does.

The Evolution of Man

The question of man's origin has been a controversial subject ever since Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859. The Society presents its views on the evolution of man in the seventh chapter of the Creation book, "'Ape-Men' -- What Were They?" The book discusses several topics: the small quantity of fossil bone bearing on the evolution of man, the claim that there are no "missing links," the difficulties paleoanthropologists have in reconstructing man's "family tree," how the interpretation of fossil evidence has changed in the course of time, what sort of creatures the various primate and hominid fossils really represent, and how dating methods conflict with the Society's interpretation of Genesis. Creation's seventh chapter clearly illustrates the Society's ignorance of what science really says and shows how the Society only presents evidence that supports its views, while suppressing negative information. To prove this we will look at the current state of knowledge of human evolution, and then discuss how the Creation book ignores or misinterprets the evidence bearing on this knowledge.

First, it must be stated that while paleoanthropologists do not agree on many details of human evolution, they do agree that man evolved from an apelike ancestor. This disagreement on details has not been made generally known to people outside the profession, although there have been some excellent books written about some of the difficulties.^{158, 159} Many books have been written by non-professionals, with varying degrees of competence.^{160, 161, 162} A common theme in the non-professional books is that the ancestry of man in evolutionary terms cannot be proven rigorously. They mean in the sense of being able to perform repeatable experiments, or to prove in the sense of a court trial, and few evolutionists would disagree. But in the same way, the ancestry of man in the Biblical view cannot be proven. The reader should keep these particular notions of proof in mind, because many creationists, as well as the Creation book, avoid defining what they mean by "proof." While there is much about the supposed evolution of man that cannot be satisfactorily explained, there is a great deal of circumstantial evidence that is consistent with it and that creationists have not dealt with satisfactorily. It is this sort of evidence that Creation fails to give due credence and generally misrepresents.

Second, it must be stated that many people become emotionally involved in questions regarding human origins, and for very good reasons. This has caused many paleontologists to go astray or become overly dogmatic about current theories. This emotionalism is at the heart of the evolution/creation controversy. Roger Lewin, a paleontologist and science writer, put it nicely:¹⁶³

Given the exquisite sensitivity of the topic, it is perhaps not surprising that the study of human origins, palaeoanthropology, is more emotional, more intense, and more given to flights of fancy than are most sciences. Although no science is the cool objective Baconian pursuit often idealistically portrayed, palaeoanthropology has been characterized by a distinctly greater-than-average level of eccentricity and private and public squabbles. And, just as any science reflects to some extent the current interests of the society in which it is being practised, so too has palaeoanthropology manifested passing fashions that can be traced to societal fads.

The latest thinking about the evolution of man is based on a combination of fossil and molecular evidence. Fossil evidence consists of bones, footprints, tools and such. Molecular evidence comes from studying the differences among the proteins and DNA of living animals and using this to catalog the "genetic distance" between various types of animals. As Blueprints said:¹⁶⁴

The best current knowledge of how we evolved depends on a blend of fossil and molecular evidence. It produces a better understanding of our ancestry than either could have done by itself. There is a bone story to be told; then it must be edited by molecules.

The fossil and molecular evidence are fairly consistent with one another in pointing to evolutionary relationships among fossil and living animal groups,¹⁶⁵ although molecular studies have revealed some surprises. The evidence can be interpreted as consistent with a creator who reused genetic material, albeit one who worked very differently from what fundamentalists infer from the Bible.

Part 7: Summary of Fossil Creatures

Overview:

• Increase of Brain Size
• Dental Eruption Patterns
• Bipedalism
• Toolmaking
• Excavation of a Campsite
• The Molecular Clock
• Geology, Climate and the Appearance of New Species

Much of the fossil material that will now be discussed can be seen in photos in the National Geographic article "The Search for Our Ancestors."¹⁶⁶

Anthropoids (humans, apes and monkeys) and prosimians (lemurs and tarsiers) are classed as primates. "Anthropoid" means manlike and "prosimian" means premonkey. Prosimians are said to be the earliest form of primates and the stem from which the anthropoids evolved. The prosimians arose in the early Cenozoic Era about 60 million years ago from a certain class of small insectivores resembling Asian tree shrews of today. In Oligocene time, about 30 million years ago, the prosimians gave rise to three primate groups: the New World monkeys, the Old World monkeys, and primitive apelike hominoids. This evolution is poorly documented in the fossil record. What does show up is a pattern gradually leading to the physical structure of modern apes and humans: the development of binocular vision, the big toe and opposable thumb, a large increase in brain size relative to body size, and a tendency to hold the body erect.

The earliest humanlike, or hominid, fossils come from East Africa. These have generally been lumped into a species called Australopithecus afarensis, although not all paleontologists agree they belong to the same creature. The Hadar region of Ethiopia has yielded several hundred fossil fragments, including the 40% complete skeleton known as "Lucy." Other fossil fragments have been found at Laetoli and in Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. Laetoli is noted for the 3.6 million year old trail of footprints two hominids left in volcanic ash that has since hardened and been buried. These have been attributed to A. afarensis. The finds range from 2.9 to 3.7 million years old according to potassium-argon dating.¹⁶⁷ A. afarensis has both humanlike and apelike features. Many paleontologists agree that the pelvic and overall skeletal structure show it habitually walked erect, although the skeleton was not quite like a modern human and was in some respects somewhat apelike. The fossil bones are consistent with the fossil footprints of Laetoli, and together these provide strong evidence for upright walking. The angle between the upper and lower leg bones, the femur and the tibia, is similar to that in humans but different from that in most apes, possibly indicating bipedality. The footbones have the platform style of modern humans and lack the opposable big toe of apes. Some researchers feel that the overall skeletal structure is compatible with both bipedality and arboreality, and feel that A. afarensis walked with a bent-hip, bent-knee gait, somewhat like the modern gibbon. The hand bones look more apelike than human. The arms were somewhat longer and the legs somewhat shorter compared to overall body size than in modern humans. The brain size was in the range of a modern chimpanzee, about 400 cm³, but the skull is quite different from a chimp's.¹⁶⁸ A. afarensis had a ratio of brain to body size significantly higher than apes. The position of the foramen magnum, the aperture through which the spinal cord leaves the skull, is positioned midway between that of a chimp and a human, indicating a more or less upright posture.¹⁶⁹ The upper dental arcade shows features like both humans and apes, but has its own unique features as well. The canine teeth are small, as in humans, in contrast with the large ones of chimps, gorillas and fossil apes. Tooth wear patterns suggest that it ate mostly fruit. Adult weights ranged from about 50 to 120 pounds, and it appears to have stood three to five feet tall. The overall impression from a photo of the Lucy skeleton is of an ape's head on top of a humanlike body. Lucy stood about three to three and a half feet tall.¹⁷⁰ There is broad agreement that A. afarensis was ancestral, or at least a close cousin to the ancestor, of later hominids.¹⁷¹ This is, of course, disputed by some paleontologists.

The next hominids in the fossil sequence seem to consist of several varieties of australopithecines. They showed up between two and three million years ago, and disappeared about one million years ago. They had brain sizes somewhat larger than A. afarensis, about 450 to 550 cm³ (within the range of gorillas) and were somewhat larger overall, up to about 150 pounds in the larger robust specimens. The position of the foramen magnum, the spinal cord aperture in the skull, is located more toward the front of the skull than in A. afarensis, again indicating an upright posture. The angle between the femur and the tibia is similar to that in humans, again indicating bipedality, and the overall skeleton is much like A. afarensis. The hands were much more humanlike than those of A. afarensis.¹⁷² Tooth wear patterns again suggest a diet of fruit. The dental arcade is similar to that in humans and is quite different from A. afarensis. There apparently were several forms of australopithecines, which included the lightly built, or gracile form called A. africanus, and forms that had a more robust skeleton and skull, which are called A. robustus and A. boisei. There is some disagreement as to whether these represent different species or are large variations between male and female in a single species. Paleontologists do not agree on whether A. afarensis was an ancestor of A. africanus,¹⁷³ although the 1985 discovery at West Turkana of a nearly complete skull, which has been termed the "Black Skull," seems to have features of both A. boisei and A. afarensis^{174, 175} and has been termed an intermediate between them. The australopithecines as a whole have been described as "essentially bipedal apes with modified dentition."¹⁷⁶

A third category of hominid is called Homo habilis. It had a cranial capacity of about 650 to 800 cm³ and is the first creature whose skull looks more human than apelike to non-specialists. Its remains are the most fragmentary of all the hominid categories, and so are the most in dispute. A 1986 find of leg and arm bones, in addition to some cranial parts, suggests that it was about the size of A. afarensis and A. africanus,¹⁷⁷ although some paleontologists would assign the find to other species.¹⁷⁸ H. habilis appeared in the fossil record from about two million years to 1.8 million years ago and is not generally considered a descendant of A. africanus. It was contemporary with one of the australopithecines, A. boisei, which lived until about one million years ago. It walked upright, but its hand, leg and foot bones had somewhat apelike characteristics as well. It apparently ate mostly fruit, but may have scavenged carcasses for bone^178a marrow. While some paleoanthropologists have considered that H. habilis may have been a variety or descendant of A. africanus, this view seems to have been dropped by the late 1980s. Coincident with the appearance of H. habilis in the fossil record is the beginning of the archaeological record: crude stone tools are often found in association with its remains, sometimes in association with animal bones.^{179, 180} C. Loring Brace said that stone tools were "found in association with the partially butchered skeleton of an extinct hippopotamus all silted over in the deposits of an ancient river delta."¹⁸¹

A fourth category of hominid is called Homo erectus, which first showed up in the fossil record about 1.6 million years ago and disappeared about 200,000 years ago. Its cranial capacity apparently ranged from 800 to 900 cm³ in some specimens from the Zoukoutien Cave in China to 1200 cm³ in other populations. By comparison, modern humans have an extreme range of 1000 to 2000 cm³, with an average of about 1360 cm³. The jaw was robust and had no prominent chin, unlike modern humans. The forehead was extremely low and sloping, and above the eyes were large brow ridges. Below the neck its skeleton was similar to modern humans, except usually much more massive in the limbs and muscle attachment points. During the time H. erectus existed, there appeared a number of important "firsts," including evidence of systematic and cooperative hunting, use of fire, systematic toolmaking, firm evidence of frequently formed and seasonal home bases and camp sites, evidence of habitation outside Africa, reduction of sexual dimorphism, and evidence of extended childhood. The use of fire is documented at Zoukoutien Cave, with an ash accumulation at one hearth site 20 feet thick. The sophistication of stone tools and campsites, and evidence of systematic hunting and butchering of animals, increases through time.¹⁸² As evidenced by tooth wear patterns H. erectus apparently ate a variety of foods, including meat and underground tubers, in contrast to the australopithecines and H. habilis, who were fruit eaters.¹⁸³ They seem to have practiced cannibalism,¹⁸⁴ although this is disputed.

A fifth category of hominid is Neanderthal man, who was very similar to fully modern humans and is usually classed as a variety of Homo sapiens. Neanderthals were, on average, much more robustly built, but still fall in the upper limit of the modern range. The cranial size averaged slightly larger than in modern humans, about 1400 cm³. The skull tended to be longer and flatter than modern ones, with a low, sloping forehead and prominent brow ridges, even though the height of the top of the skull above the eyes was often the same. The impression is of a massive, long head atop a bull neck. The overall skeletal structure has features much like H. erectus. This has given rise to continuing debate about whether Neanderthals were their descendants. Neanderthals show up in the fossil record from about 150,000 years to 32,000 years ago. According to last appearances in the fossil record, they disappeared in a wave flowing east to west, between 45,000 and 32,000 years ago.¹⁸⁵ They apparently buried their dead. Some paleoanthropologists speculate that Neanderthals may have been an odd variant of man local to Europe and the Middle East, where most of the remains have been found.^{186, 187} See Scientific American¹⁸⁸ for a good discussion of Neanderthals, with photos of several skulls.

Fully modern humans first appear in the fossil record about 40,000 years ago, in Cro-Magnon, France, although recent interpretations of some fossils and molecular biological evidence push that back to over 100,000 years.¹⁸⁹ Art forms first appear in association with their remains, as does a tool complex that rapidly increases in sophistication. Included among modern humans are forms called archaic Homo sapiens, but there is good reason to believe that this categorization is in error. As a result, there is much speculation about the nature of the sequence of creatures from Homo erectus to modern humans, but that an overall sequence can be seen in the fossil record is clear. Starting about 500,000 years ago, more modern cranial features show up with increasing frequency in the fossil specimens. The difficulty for classification is that these specimens have many clearly modern human features but have other features that are far outside the norm for modern humans.¹⁹⁰ A living person who had these ancient skull features would be considered deformed. Various species of sabretooth cats, which became extinct about one million years ago, as well as many other extinct animals, were contemporary with all the hominids except modern man.¹⁹¹ For a slightly out of date overview of the above material see "The Descent of Hominoids and Hominids" in Scientific American.¹⁹²

Overall, the views of hominid evolution are not very clear, and are subject to revision as new fossil evidence forces new interpretations. However, there is a pattern to be seen in the dating of the fossils. This pattern can be clearly seen in a chart in Human Evolution: An Illustrated Introduction, Second Edition,¹⁹³ which shows the overlap in time of some species and the discontinuity in time between others. The view is that the fossils that have been found represent only a small subset of the total number of species that existed, and that the evolutionary history is "bushy." As Roger Lewin said:¹⁹⁴

The typical evolutionary pattern is that, once a new lineage is established there follows a quite rapid radiation of species: in other words, the group, or clade, is bushy from the beginning, not just half way through.

This is one of the ideas of "punctuated equilibrium."

Let us now consider some specific areas relevant to human evolution that Creation ignores.

Increase of Brain Size

Humans are obviously by far the most intelligent creatures on earth. Evolutionists see a progression in intelligence, as measured by brain size, from the earliest hominids to man. Human Evolution: An Illustrated Introduction¹⁹⁵ describes the evidence and conclusions:

A major question about hominid history is why we became so very intelligent, particularly over the past two million years. The primate order as a whole is the most generously endowed of all animal orders as far as brain capacity relative to body size is concerned. And within the order there is, in general, an ascending scale of relative brain capacity that runs from the prosimians through the monkeys to the apes. The human brain is three times as big as an ape's would be if it had the same body size.

Increase in brain size is a persistent theme of evolutionary history in two particular respects. First, the progression through more and more advanced animal groups -- from amphibians through reptiles to mammals -- is marked at each step by a substantial leap in the degree of encephalization displayed by each group as a whole. These stepwise mental increments between the major animal classes reflect gestalt jumps in the complexity of neural processing involved in the animal's daily lives. Each increment has been accompanied by an ever greater learning capacity as opposed to genetically determined fixed action patterns.

The second pattern of brain size increase in evolution is seen within individual lineages through time. This, typically, is associated with a parallel tendency for an increase in body size through evolutionary time. Some of the growth in brain size from around 400 cm³ in the earliest hominids to an average of 1360 cm³ today can be accounted for in terms of an increase in the size of the body, but most cannot. There was a real and dramatic enhancement of encephalization in hominids that is not matched, nor even approached, by any other animal lineage.

Science and Earth History¹⁹⁶ presents a graph which plots the average body weight versus average brain size for the great apes, the australopithecines, and Homo, i.e., the Pygmy chimpanzee, chimpanzee, orangutan, gorilla, A. africanus, A. robustus, A. boisei, H. habilis, H. erectus and H. sapiens. The result is that a straight line can be drawn through the points for each of the three classes, with the line for the australopithecines intersecting the line for Homo at A. africanus, and the great apes on a line by itself. This means that the brains of australopithecines are always larger relative to body size than the apes. The same holds true for Homo with respect to the australopithecines and the apes, except that the rate of increase of brain size with body size within the group is much faster. This graph shows relationships similar to what have been inferred from comparative anatomy, and is interpreted as strongly suggestive of evolutionary relationships.

Another area of comparison is in the gross organization of the brain. The brain has various lobes (frontal, parietal, occipital, etc.) that perform special functions such as vision, motor control and the higher mental functions, and which leave an impression on the inside of the skull. The impression can be seen in an inside cast (endocast) of the skull. It is relatively easy to compare this overall organization in man and the apes, but it can only be done using endocasts in fossil creatures. This work has been done for the australopithecines, and Science and Earth History describes the results:¹⁹⁷

Anthropologist Ralph L. Holloway made a comprehensive comparative study of the endocasts of all available fossil hominid brains (1974). Of special interest to us are his findings on the brain of Australopithecus, which is classified by mainstream paleontology as a hominid, but considered an ape by the creationists... Holloway's conclusion is highly positive:

Fortunately, no matter what controversy may surround the question of how these early African hominids are related to one another it has very little bearing on the question of their neurological development. The reason is that in each instance where an endocast is available, whether the skull is less than a million years old or more than two million years old, the brain shows the distinctive pattern of hominid neurological organization. (p. 109)

Holloway's description of the differences in the two brains is quite technical in spots, but he notes that the australopithecine frontal lobe is larger and more convoluted than in pongid endocasts. Brain height and form of the temporal lobes show the hominid configuration. The lunate sulcus, when it can be found, lies in the human position... the australopiths had brains much like those of modern humans, but unlike those of pongids. Creationists take note! This is strong corroborative evidence contrary to your assertions that the australopiths were actually apes.

Holloway's conclusions have, of course, been disputed by some paleontologists:¹⁹⁸

Just recently Holloway's conclusions have been challenged by Dean Falk of Purdue University. Although she agrees with Holloway that brains of Homo species are reorganized in the human direction, she contends that australopithecine brains are essentially apelike. The precise location of some of the key fissures and divisions between lobes is often very difficult and open to interpretation. In this case the differences of opinion continue unresolved.

Dental Eruption Patterns

Teeth in apes and humans erupt from the gums in a distinctive order that is different in each species. The following information from Human Evolution: An Illustrated Introduction, Second Edition,¹⁹⁹ shows the significance of this pattern:

The pattern of eruption of permanent teeth in modern apes and humans is distinctive, as is the overall timing. Just recently anthropologists have been debating this aspect of hominoid dentition, specifically asking how early hominids fit in: were they more like humans or more like apes? Although the issue remains to be fully resolved, there are indications that until rather late in hominid history, dental development was in many ways rather apelike, particularly in its overall timing...

University of Michigan anthropologist Holly Smith recently analyzed tooth eruption patterns in a series of fossil hominids and concluded that most of the early species were distinctly apelike. For Homo erectus, which lived from 1.5 million until about 400,000 years ago, the results were somewhat equivocal, but with strong apish overtones. The human pattern was apparent in a Neanderthal child who died about 60,000 years ago...

If Smith and [others] are correct, it seems that until relatively recently in evolutionary history, hominids followed a distinctly apelike pattern of dental development. This is important for its implication about the period of infant care. Once infant care becomes prolonged, which becomes necessary when postnatal brain growth is significant (see unit 27), then social life becomes greatly intensified. The dental evidence indicates that this prolongation may have begun with Homo erectus, which is in accord with data on increased brain size.

Bipedalism

Almost all paleontologists agree that early hominids were bipedal, or walked erect. They disagree, however, on exactly how they walked -- whether they were fully erect, in the manner of modern humans, or walked in a bent-leg, bent-hip style. The flavor of the disagreement on australopithecine locomotion is illustrated by the following, from Science and Earth History:²⁰⁰

But not all the experts agree that A. afarensis had forsaken the forest for open ground. Anthropologist Randall L. Susman and anatomist Jack Stern interpret Lucy's bone structure as indicating good adaptation for climbing but that she also had developed efficient locomotion... In rebuttal to Susman and Stern, C. Owen Lovejoy, an anatomist, argues that Lucy's hip is "beautifully adapted for bipedality and poorly adapted for climbing."

At the Institute of Human Origins a conference called "The Evolution of Human Locomotion" was held in 1983, where a group of scientists compared notes. An interesting account appears in Lucy's Child²⁰¹ of the argument between Susman and Stern, and Lovejoy, and shows how when Susman and Stern were presented with unpublished information at the conference they conceded that that they had "much reduced faith" in some of their conclusions. They had used casts of the Lucy pelvis and other bones to do their evaluations, whereas Lovejoy had the original fossils. The consensus of the conference was that a form of bipedality was the major mode of locomotion, but there remained a number of unanswered questions.

Another book described the results of a later symposium:²⁰²

In a recent symposium on the fossil record of hominoids (Delson, 1985) there was a lot of discussion about Australopithecus afarensis. It was generally (but not unanimously) concluded that the fossil material presently referred to as A. afarensis did in fact represent a single variable species. Further, it appears on the basis of detailed study of nearly complete skeletons to have been a species that '...spent a significant amount of time in the trees without being as adept as an ape and that also lived on the ground without being as quick and agile on two legs as are humans' (Susman et al., 1985: 189). In sum, its features (within single skeletons) are intermediate between those of apes and humans.

A National Geographic article²⁰³ showed side by side photos of the femoral condyle (bottom end of the femur) of a chimpanzee, Lucy and a modern human. According to the caption, the chimpanzee's rounded condyle is not specially adapted to any single leg position, while Lucy's and the modern human's show a much larger surface that reduces pressure on the knee when the leg is extended. Interestingly, the extended surface in Lucy's femur is significantly smaller and more rounded than in the modern human's, and looks structurally intermediate between the chimp's and the human's.

Lovejoy published an article in Scientific American in 1988 explaining his opinion on why some of Lucy's anatomical features showed she was indeed bipedal.²⁰⁴ The accompanying photographs and drawings comparing human and chimpanzee pelvises and other bones with those of Lucy are most enlightening. Here are some excerpts:

[Lucy's] pelvis bears all the hallmarks of bipedality seen in our own. Its ilia are much shorter than those in the pelvis of an ape. The shortening would have lowered the trunk's center of mass and made it easier to keep upright. The ilia have also become bent around to provide lateral attachment for the abductor muscles that stabilize the bipedal pelvis when it is supported on one leg. The attachment points for the gluteus maximus, abductors and quadricepts can be seen, and they indicated that in Lucy these muscles had attained a size and disposition remarkably similar to our own arrangement... In one respect Lucy seems to have been even better designed for bipedality than we are. Her ilia flare outward more sharply than those of a modern pelvis and her femoral necks are longer. Her abductor muscles thus enjoyed a greater mechanical advantage than these muscles do in modern females...

Why should a three-million-year-old hominid have had this mechanical advantage over her descendants? The answer lies in the accelerated growth of the human brain during the past three million years. Lucy's pelvis was almost singularly designed for bipedality. The flairing ilia and long femoral necks increased her abductors' lever arm, but they yielded a pelvis that in top view was markedly elliptical, resulting in a birth canal that was wide but short from front to back. The constriction was tolerable because Lucy predated the dramatic expansion of the brain; her infant's cranium would have been slightly more complex than in an ape, but much easier than the modern human birth process... As human ancestors evolved a larger brain, the pelvic opening had to become rounder. The pelvis had to expand from front to back, but at the same time it contracted slightly from side to side. In the process the flare of the ilia was reduced, leaving us with a somewhat shorter abductor lever arm than Lucy's...

The close resemblance of Lucy's pelvis to that of a modern human and its dramatic contrast to the pelvis of a chimpanzee make it clear that she walked fully upright. But was her bipedal progression truly habitual? Had she forsaken all other kinds of locomotion? The muscular rearrangements that enabled her to walk upright would not have allowed efficient quadrupedal movement on the ground. Perhaps, however, she often took to the trees and climbed, as most primates do, using all four limbs... For natural selection to have so thoroughly modified for bipedality the skeleton Lucy inherited, her ancestors must already have spent most of their time on the ground, walking upright. Analysis of the Lucy fossil, however, can yield more direct evidence.

The analysis focuses on the neck of the femur, where much of the stress of locomotion is concentrated. When the leg is bearing weight, the hip joint transmits the weight of the torso to the femoral neck. The neck acts as a cantilevered beam: a beam that is anchored at one end to a supporting structure (the shaft of the femur) and carries a load at the other end. Cantilevering results in high bending stresses at the beam's anchorage -- compression along the bottom of the beam and tension along the top -- and the stresses increase with the length of the beam. A long femoral neck such as Lucy's reduces pressure on the hip joint by improving the leverage of the abductors, but the neck itself is subject to higher bending stresses.

The femoral neck of the chimpanzee is much shorter than the modern human one; nonetheless, it is robustly engineered to withstand the loads imposed by the animal's terrestrial and arboreal acrobatics. A cross section of the bone reveals a central marrow-filled channel surrounded by a thick layer of dense bone. Dense bone is weaker under tension than it is under compression, and so the upper surface of the structure, which will be subjected to tension when the neck is bent, carries a markedly thicker layer of bone. With this ridge of thick bone (a bone "spike" in cross section), the chimpanzee femoral neck imitates the principle of an I beam: material is placed where it can best resist bending stresses.

Because the human femoral neck is longer than the chimpanzee's and must resist the combined force of body weight and abductor contraction, one would expect it to be even more robustly constructed. A cross section of the human bone reveals a surprise: the outer ring of solid bone is thick only at the bottom, and the rest of the neck is bounded by a thin shell of bone and filled in by a lattice of fine bone plates called trabeculae. Such porous bone, as one might expect, is weaker than solid material. The upper part of the femoral neck, where tensile stresses are presumably the highest, actually contains less bone than any other part of the structure. How can our femoral neck survive the greater stresses imposed by its length and function when it seems so much less sturdy than the femoral neck of the chimpanzee?

The answer lies in the action of muscles that operate only in bipedal locomotion: the abductors. These muscles have lines of action that are not vertical but are sharply inclined, which makes them roughly parallel to the femoral neck. When they contract, they push the femoral neck into the hip socket, compressing the neck along its length. This compressive stress combines with the stresses that result from bending (tension on the top of the femoral neck and compression on the bottom). The effect is to eliminate tension at the top of the femoral neck and create a gradient of increasing stress running from the top of the femoral neck, where stress is now minimal, to the bottom, where stress is very high but purely compressive. The bottom of the human femoral neck has a robust layer of solid bone, and even the porous bone that fills in the rest of the section is reasonably strong as long as it remains under compression.

Other muscles work with the abductors to keep the femoral neck under compression when it is loaded. The most important of them is the piriformis, which originates on the front of the sacrum and extends to the outer end of the femoral neck. That orientation enables the muscle to increase the femoral neck's level of compression. The synchronized action of all these muscles when body weight is supported on one leg makes it possible for this seemingly fragile bone to cope with its load.

Because of its distribution of bone, however, the femoral neck is indeed vulnerable if the abductors and other muscles do not act in the proper synchrony. The femoral neck is a primary site of fracture in old age, and not just because bone quality is reduced in old people. These "broken hips" are also a product of reduced muscular coordination. Thus the design of the human femoral neck requires the muscular action of bipedal walking. The bone is poorly engineered for climbing and arboreal acrobatics, where it would be frequently subjected to bending stresses without being compressed at the same time by the abductors.

The femoral neck in Australopithecus, because it was even longer than that of modern humans, was subject to even greater bending stresses. If these human ancestors had often taken to the trees, stressing their femoral neck without coordinated compression by the abductors, the bone would have had to have been even more robust than it is in the apes. Was it? The same site where Lucy was found also yielded several femurs that had broken during their long burial, affording a view of the neck's internal structure. Each specimen clearly shows the human feature of thin bone on the upper part of the femoral neck. Lucy's femoral neck, then, was suited exclusively for bipedality. She was not just capable of walking upright; it had become her only choice.

Lovejoy then lists the other skeletal characteristics he feels favor bipedality and rule out other modes of locomotion.

Concerning the outcome of the above mentioned 1983 conference Donald Johanson, finder of Lucy and coauthor of Lucy's Child said:²⁰⁵

I was convinced that Lovejoy and Co. had made a convincing case, at least with respect to anatomy below the waist. When it came to upper-body adaptations, I was not quite so sure. What bothered me were Lucy's long arms and strong, curved fingers. Both would be a big advantage in moving about in the trees, regardless of whatever commitments a species had made toward bipedality from the waist down. On the other hand, Lucy's long arms and curved fingers might be examples of what Lovejoy calls "evolutionary baggage" -- traits left over from a more distant ancestor, not yet lost but no longer needed. I, for one, cannot imagine long arms somehow being a disadvantage to a full bipedal hominid.

A good summary of the arguments among scientists about australopithecine bipedality can be found in Human Evolution: An Illustrated Introduction, Second Edition.²⁰⁶ It points up the arguments of many scientists who disagree with parts of Lovejoy's analysis. It said:

Superficially, A. afarensis does indeed appear to be essentially apelike above the neck and essentially humanlike below the neck. This is a good example of mosaic evolution, in which different parts of the body change at different rates and at different times. In fact, mosaicism is even more pervasive and detailed in this species, because, throughout the postcranial skeleton, anatomy associated with bipedal locomotion is developed to different degrees in different places. One of the continuing debates over this species concerns the interpretation of the various primitive aspects of the postcranial anatomy: do they imply that, like most hominoids, A. afarensis still spent a significant amount of time in the trees? Or, were these primitive aspects of the anatomy simply genetic holdovers from an earlier adaptation, having no particular behavioral significance in A. afarensis? And while individuals were on the ground, was their bipedalism significantly different from or essentially the same as that in modern humans?...

The differences of opinion in the A. afarensis locomotor debate stem partly from a lack of agreement over what exactly the anatomy is in certain instances, and differences in functional interpretation of other aspects of the anatomy. The opposing views were aired on an equal footing at a scientific symposium organized by the Institute of Human Origins in Berkeley in 1983. Since that time most publications have favored the partially arboreal, bent-hip, bent-knee bipedal locomotor posture.

The question of australopithecine bipedality has been discussed at length by creationist authors such as Duane Gish,²⁰⁷ who typically cite only references saying australopithecines did not walk erect. The issue is important to creationists because they cannot resolve the problem of why God would create species that hardly differed at all from modern man except in body size and the size and shape of the skull. They must discredit fossil interpretations because they cannot dispute that bipedality seems to be an exclusively human characteristic. If they admitted that the australopithecines could have walked on two legs they would have to admit that these might well be an example of the dreaded apeman or "missing link." For some reason they do not seem to like the other alternative -- that australopithecines were bipedal apes but had nothing to do with man's ancestry. The Watchtower Society generally has an attitude similar to that of the creationists, but rather than discussing the issue straightforwardly, it treats it as it does all other difficult issues -- it ignores it.

Toolmaking

A wide variety of stone tools has been discovered from as far back as 2.5 million years. The fossil record of tools is strongly biased toward stone because tools made from animal or plant materials are perishable. Human Evolution: An Illustrated Introduction gives a description of the findings:²⁰⁸

The earliest putative stone artifacts discovered so far come from Ethiopia and are dated at around 2.5 million years. They are a collection of extremely crude scrapers, choppers and flakes, each the product of a very few blows with a hammerstone. In archaeological terms, they are described as an example of the Oldowan industry. Looking forward through time from this earliest example of toolmaking, one gains two powerful impressions.

First, there is a striking continuity through vast tracks of time. Tools such as these earliest artifacts represent the dominant form of stone tool technology for more than a million years. About 1.5 million years ago a new industry emerges, which is known as the Acheulian. This industry represents only a modest advance over the Oldowan, and is characterized by the presence of tear-drop shaped handaxes. The Acheulian did not replace the Oldowan immediately, but merely accompanied it through half a million years of human history, after which it became the dominant form. Even so, tools that can be described as Oldowan in type were still to be found in Eastern Asia right up to 200,000 years ago and less. In Africa and Europe the Acheulian continued as the main tool industry, until it too began to be replaced around 150,000 years ago.

The second powerful impression of stone tool technologies up to about 150,000 years ago is their essentially opportunistic nature. Although there is a gradual imposition of form and style through that great swath of time, it is really rather minimal. Only after 150,000 years ago is there a strong sense of stylistic order.

The characteristics of the Oldowan technology have been meticulously studied by Mary Leakey through her many decades of excavation at Olduvai Gorge, the site after which the industry is named. It is a collection of perhaps half a dozen main forms in which the so-called pebble chopper predominates. Discoids, spheroids, polyhedrons, core scrapers, flake scrapers and hammerstones are some of the items in the industry, together of course with a large representation of debitage, which includes small sharp flakes. Mary Leakey is careful to point out that debitage does not necessarily mean useless waste, as the small flakes very probably were deliberately struck as stone 'knives'. The principal raw material was lava cobbles, although chert and other similar rocks were sometimes used.

The oldest levels at Olduvai date back to almost two million years ago, and it is here that the Oldowan industry begins. The industry continues for one million years and more, but becomes a little more refined, adding a few more tool categories, such as awls and protobifaces. These advances, which appear about 1.5 million years ago, are recognized as the Developed Oldowan. At about the same time, a new industry, the Acheulian, appears in the record. The handaxe, as has been noted, is the hallmark of this new industry, and it represents the first tool in which a predetermined shape has been imposed on a piece of raw material.

The principle invention of early stone tool technologies was that of concoidal fracture: strike a core at an angle and a flake, large or small, is removed. The resultant tool is very much determined by the shape of the starting material. However, the bifacial symmetry of the handaxe, with its two sharp converging edges, required the shape to be 'seen' within the lump of stone, which is then worked towards with a series of careful striking actions.

Some handaxes of later times were aesthetically pleasing products of hours of skilled labour. Exactly what they were used for is still something of a mystery, but the combination of a long sharp edge with bulk and weight makes them exceedingly efficient at slicing through even the toughest hide, including that of elephants and rhinoceroses. Cleavers, which were also part of the Acheulian technology, had similar properties, but are cruder, less elegant implements.

The Acheulian industry, which had about ten principle implements, continued for more than a million years, before it was replaced by the wide range of much more refined tools of the Mousterian culture: the products of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. During that long period of time the best examples of the Acheulian technology became increasingly more elegant, but throughout this time there were crude examples, similar to those from the beginning of the record.

Glynn Isaac points out that from the very beginning of stone tool-making the range of implements produced does not increase significantly. What does change through time, however, is the degree of standardization, the frequency of producing certain forms against a background of 'noise'. Ad hoc stone knapping gives way to deliberate imposition of preconceived order.

The duration of the Acheulian saw certain idiosyncratic expression, for example in details of the shape of tools and their size. Differences in availability of suitable stone, different specific technological needs and an element of individual style would have contributed to this. There was, however, a certain homogeneity at any particular time. There was, in a sense, just one Acheulian culture. From 150,000 years onwards, this pattern of culture began to change, at an ever accelerating pace. It is, as Isaac says, as if some threshold was passed: 'a critical threshold in information capacity and precision of expression.'

Between 250,000 and 150,000 years ago the pace of change of tool technologies began to accelerate. Whereas continuity was the hallmark of tool-making prior to this turning point, change began to dominate thereafter. Moreover, each succeeding culture contained a larger array of finer implements than the last. Bone, antler and ivory became increasingly important raw materials for tool-making, particularly for fine, flexible and sharp implements. And, most striking of all, there began to emerge a previously unseen degree of variability in the form of tool-kits found in neighboring sites, a variability that has been explained variously as discrete functional differentiation or cultural expression through style.

The major post-Acheulian tool culture was the Mousterian, associated with the origin of archaic Homo sapiens: this was known in Europe as the Middle Palaeolithic. The Mousterian continued through to around 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, which coincided with the emergence of fully modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens. The 100,000 year tenure of the Mousterian was overtaken by a succession of tool-kits, known as the Upper Palaeolithic, that displayed the ever increasing virtuosity of the tool-makers, so much so that some implements lost any function they might have had and instead assumed some kind of abstract symbolism. (In Africa the equivalent periods are called the Middle Stone Age and the later Stone Age.)

Towards the end of the Acheulian era, some 100,000 years ago, there arose in South Africa a new technique for the production of large flakes that was to foreshadow later developments in tool technology. Known as the Levallois technique, this new development involved a much more intensive preparation of a core than had hitherto been the practice. Virtually complete flakes could then be struck from the core at a single blow, although they were typically retouched to give the final desired shape. It was principally a refinement and development of the Levallois technique that formed the basis of Mousterian tool technology of the Middle Palaeolithic.

One immediate practical consequence of careful core preparation is a greater efficiency in the use of raw materials. For example, the basic Acheulian method yielded just 5.1-20.3 cm of cutting edge from 0.45 kg of flint, whereas a Mousterian tool-maker could strike 10.2 m of cutting edge from the same amount of starting material. This trajectory of greater efficiency soared following the origin of modern humans, 40,000 years ago, who could manufacture 12 m of cutting edge from 0.45 kg of flint, struck in the form of long sharp blades.

The book then goes on to describe details of the tools of the later paleolithic tool industries. It is clear that evidence of ancient toolmaking provides a much broader base for evolutionary claims than does the evidence based on skeletal remains alone. It also provides a basis for claims that the evolution of man was continuous, as the following from anthropologist C. Loring Brace shows:²⁰⁹

Once stone tools appear in the prehistoric strata 2 million years ago, they continue to provide us with an unbroken record of the activities of our ancestors. The chances of fossilization and preservation of any given individual of a creature who lived at such a low population density as the early hominids are pretty small, and it is not surprising that hominid fossils are such rare and spotty phenomena. Stone tools, however, are made of imperishable materials, and once they become a regular part of the hominid cultural repertoire, the archaeologists who study them can trace those activities to which they pertain and tell us what regions of the world their makers were occupying and what changes they made in their way of life through time.

The occasional glimpses we get of the fossilized fragments of the makers of that unbroken cultural tradition enable us to check on the course of human evolution with the conviction that the earlier fossil hominids are indeed the ancestors of the ones who come later and show those modifications that foretell the emergence of modern form. The unbroken continuity of stone tools from the levels at the bottom of Bed I in Olduvai Gorge to the time five to six thousand years ago when written accounts begin to provide us with an articulate picture of human doings serves as an abundant check and confirmation of the anatomical continuity provided by the interrupted sequence visible in the course of the fossil record.

There is another side to the story. One author, after describing the well known fact that chimpanzees use a sort of tool by using a twig to extract termites from rotting logs, says:²¹⁰

It is even more interesting to hear what orangutans can do with a little instruction. They have been taught in an hour or two to make crude stonecutting tools like those attributed to man's "ancestors." Although apes have never been observed making stonecutters by themselves in the wild, the experience does show that a specialized primate of their limited cranial capacity (350-400 cubic centimeters) can manage this task. And it raises the distinct possibility that over the last few million years there could well have been slightly brainier apes not ancestral to man who had learned to chip a few flakes off a stone without human instruction. Toolmaking remains an important indicator of man, but with the simplest stone and bone implements it is well not to assume too much.

Excavation of a Campsite

The following are some excerpts from a description of the excavation of a 1.5 million year old African campsite designated Site 50:²¹¹

... what evidence is there that hominids 1.5 million years ago transported bones and stones to a favoured location where both would be processed, the stone to provide tools and the bones food?

When hominids were living in the area, Site 50 was located in the middle of a large floodplain on the eastern shore of Lake Turkana. The landscape was typical open savannah, with short Acacia and Commiphera trees scattered over the terrain, while thicker groves of taller trees lined the water course that laced the floodplain. Plains animals such as giraffe, zebra, antelope and baboons, lived there. Site 50 was formed on a sandy bank in the crook of a winding river, a location that would have offered access to water, shade from the sun, a supply of fruit and berries from nearby bushes, and ready access to lava cobbles suitable for tool-making.

During the two-year long excavation, 1405 stone fragments and 2100 pieces of bone were recovered, distributed in a thin layer over an area of about 200 m². The density of bones and stones within the site was more than ten times higher than outside the putative campsite area. Bones and stones within this area were concentrated into two distinct spots, suggesting two locations of particular activity.

Less than one-half of the bone fragments could be positively identified, but it was clear from those that could be that a wide range of animals was represented at the site, albeit by just a few bones in most cases. Remains of every major group apart from carnivores, rhinoceroses and elephants were present. One particularly interesting specimen was the shattered shaft of a leg bone (humerus) of an eland-sized antelope, Megalotragus. By careful reconstruction, Henry Bunn was able to fit seven large fragments together, which revealed fracture damage of the sort inflicted by hunter-gatherers when in search of marrow from long bones. Moreover, Bunn found that the end of a leg bone from the same type of animal (and possibly the same individual) bore a set of short narrow marks such as would be made by a sharp instrument used to deflesh the bone. Experiments with sharp stone flakes and modern bones, together with microscopy of the fossil bones, confirmed the presence of 'cut marks' on at least half a dozen major bones at Site 50...

Among the putative stone artifacts were 59 items that, according to traditional classification, would be labelled choppers, polyhedrons, discoids, core scrapers, scrapers or flakes and flaked core/cobble fragments. In addition, there were more than 1300 flakes and flake fragments. Although the numbers sound large, a practised stone knapper could have produced this type of assemblage in about an hour...

Another member of the research team... spent many patient hours trying to fit fragments of stone back together, a project rewarded by the assembly of 53 sets of two or more pieces [p. 62 illustrates the reassembly of six fragments]. The conjoining of a series of flakes, sometimes together with the core from which they were struck, sometimes without, gave an important coherence to an otherwise apparently jumbled heap of broken stones. The distribution of the conjoining sets and their concentration into two distinct activity areas is strong testimony to deliberate hominid activity.

The natural presumption is that the stones were gathered nearby, taken to the site and then struck in order to produce sharp flakes with which to process the pieces of carcass that were also brought to the river bank site. In a few instances, this presumption has been confirmed about as strongly as it could be with present techniques. [Two workers] have examined the sharp edges of some of the flakes and they detect on two of them the unmistakable evidence of meat-slicing. Both of these flakes had been found within a metre of the cut-marked leg bone. Moreover, another flake from the site shows evidence of use on soft plant tissue, which is a rare signal of the presumed common use of vegetable foods by early hominids.

The size and material accumulation of the site indicated it was used by a small group of individuals for a relatively short time, perhaps just a few days. It is a reasonable conclusion from the data accumulated in the excavation and their subsequent analyses that the hominids of the time were transporting stones, parts of carcasses and plant foods to the site, where they were then processed. The range of bones on the site indicated scavenging rather than hunting as the primary source of meat for these hominids.

A photograph of cut marks on fossil bone can be seen on page 32 of the book from which this quotation was taken.

The Molecular Clock

Molecular biology seems to provide strong evidence for a close relation between apes and man. It has been used as a sort of clock to try to determine when various species branched apart from one another in the evolutionary sequence. Human Evolution: An Illustrated Introduction describes the general idea and presents some conclusions:²¹²

The idea of using molecules as phylogenetic clocks rests on one simple assumption: once two species separate in evolution the genetic material (DNA) in the two lines accumulates changes or mutations. The longer the separation time, the greater will be the sum of accumulated mutations. If the rate of accumulation remains steady through the ages -- and there is a good deal of discussion on this point -- a measure of the biochemical differences between the two species can be converted into a measure of the time since they derived from a common ancestor.

Morris Goodman, of Wayne State University, kindled modern interest in molecular clocks when in 1962 he published data on the immunological properties of the protein albumin, which showed chimpanzees, gorillas and humans to be closely related to each other while the gibbon and orangutan were more distant cousins from this trio. According to the comparison of albumin from these three species, humans are as close genetically to chimpanzees and gorillas as these two apes are to each other. This was quite a shock, as chimpanzees and gorillas are morphologically rather similar to each other and to the orangutan, whereas humans seem unquestionably distinct from them.

Two biochemists at the University of California at Berkeley, Vincent Sarich and Allan Wilson, then published a landmark paper in 1967 that put a date on the chimpanzee-gorilla-human divergence. Again, using immunological properties to measure the differences in structure between the same protein from the three species, Sarich and Wilson concluded that the African great apes and humans last shared a common ancestor five million years ago. The resolution allowed by the technique was insufficient to determine whether the divergence was a three-way split or, for example, the two apes shared a common ancestor briefly following the separation of the hominid line.

Sarich and Wilson's conclusion was not embraced with enthusiasm by the palaeoanthropological community. At the time, the community's favourite candidate for the first hominid in the fossil record was Ramapithecus, specimens of which from Asia, Europe and Africa showed that it lived at least 14 million years ago. A divergence between apes and humans just five million years ago, as Wilson and Sarich contended, was therefore considered far too recent.

In the 15 years following the publication of Wilson and Sarich's provocative paper, immunological data on at least six independent proteins has been accumulated, and each appears to tell the same story. Many new potential clock techniques have been developed over the years, some in the Berkeley laboratory, others elsewhere. Some, such as the analysis of the nucleotide sequence of segments of DNA, have the advantage of giving a much greater resolution of genetic differences than is possible from the gross protein structure techniques of the original immunological methods. Others, such as the physical matching of one strand of DNA with a counterpart from another species (DNA hybridization), attempt to average out complicating differences that arise from the exceedingly complex nature of genes and other genetic elements in the DNA.

The simple assumption of a regularly ticking molecular clock turns out to be an over-simplification. A species' DNA is a patchwork of many different types of sequences, each of which might be susceptible to change in different ways. Ironically, however, in spite of this tremendous complication there are clock-like features in genetic change through time, even though they cannot yet be explained or modelled. The clock may be sloppy, but it tells the time nevertheless. The upshot of all this is that there remains the expectation that the molecules will be able to pinpoint the branch times in human history, but there is still a degree of disagreement over the data that are already available and their interpretation.

Wilson and Sarich, for example, argue that the conclusions from all the various molecular techniques consistently indicate five million years (plus or minus one million years) as the ape-human branch point. Others point to the DNA hybridization data in particular and claim a somewhat earlier divergence, between ten and seven million years. There is, however, consensus on the overall sequence of events: the gibbon diverged first, followed quickly by the orangutan; much later, the gorilla-chimpanzee-human split occurred. With the greater time resolution allowed by the modern molecular clock techniques it is now beginning to seem more than likely that the gorilla and chimpanzee briefly shared a common ancestor after the hominid line split off.

Meanwhile, the palaeoanthropological community has been reassessing its position. Fossil finds of recent years have dislodged Ramapithecus from its status as the putative first hominid and much more recent divergence data -- close to Sarich and Wilson's original five million year figure -- are now being considered.

The small degree of genetic distance that separates Homo sapiens from the African apes -- just one per cent in the genes that code for proteins -- is the same as that often recognized in sibling species, that is, species that are barely separate in evolutionary terms. And yet humans and apes are assigned to different families, a much higher taxonomic division than species or even genera. Pressure is rising to address this issue and to recognize that, in many ways, Homo sapiens is really just a rather unusual African ape.

It is interesting how the evidence from molecular biology is generally consistent with the relationships between apes and man earlier derived from morphology, i.e., they are closely related, and all are much less closely related to other kinds of animals. Blueprints has some comments about this:²¹³

When Sarich got around to making further comparisons, that assumption [that evolution is responsible for the serum albumin difference between humans and chimps] also turned out to be true. Since then hundreds of cross matchings have been made and the evolutionary distance between many species calculated. Now the difference measurement that was begun between men, apes, and monkeys has been extended to include dogs, sheep, camels, elephants, and goes on to birds, amphibians, fishes, and insects. This is an absolutely astounding development. It means that a worker sitting in a laboratory, surrounded by a hundred unlabeled samples of serum albumin from a hundred different animals, can sort them out into sensible relationships without knowing what they are. If enough cross-checks, simple measurements of the amount of difference between the samples are made, a web of relationships that can fit logically in only one framework will result. If those relationships -- those positions in the web -- are marked down on a large sheet of paper, they will fall together into what emerges as a family tree. Only then -- after it is done -- need the investigator look at the names of the animals whose serum has been used, to see how closely that tree resembles one made by study of the animals themselves.

It is at this point that paleontologists must sit up and take notice, for the family tree drawn by serum albumin studies is a virtually exact match with one that would have been made by examining the bones, skin, size, shape, and behavior of living animals.

The tree drawn from molecular evidence differs from that drawn by paleontologists only in that it is more precise. It is able to tell us things that they cannot. Are humans more closely related to mice or rabbits? Paleontologists cannot say for sure, but the molecules can. The answer is mice. The molecules also tell us that pigs are more closely related to whales than they are to horses -- and so on. What is more, those relationships hold up when other molecular measuring methods are used.

There are problems with interpreting the results, and no one really knows why it works. The book Evolution: A Theory In Crisis²¹⁴ gives an interesting description of the difficulties, although many biologists have strongly disputed the author's thesis.

Geology, Climate and the Appearance of New Species

Much interdisciplinary research has been done in the last thirty years attempting to correlate the sciences of geology, climate and paleontology. Paleontologist Roger Lewin describes what has been going on:²¹⁵

Geologists, climatologists, and paleontologists have combined their different datasets -- and are beginning to see a distinct pattern emerge from the points. Briefly, that pattern indicates that episodes of significant global cooling are accompanied by pulses of extinctions and speciations among the world's biota. And it appears that hominids are no exception to this evolutionary pattern.

NeoDarwinism has always held the environment to be central to evolutionary change: different environments demand different adaptations. A species' environment is basically of two kinds: the physical world and the resources within it; and other species with which it interacts, specifically with which it competes in 'the struggle for existence' (Darwin's phrase)... Most investigators regard the physical environment as an important -- if not the prime -- engine initiating evolutionary change.

Changes in physical environment has influenced the history of life on at least three levels of scale, some of which are interlinked: extraterrestrial, global geography, and local climate.

Geologists have long known that Earth history is punctuated by mass extinction, the biggest being the Permian extinction 220 million years ago, when about 95 per cent of all species apparently perished. Five such mass dyings are known, together with a series of somewhat smaller ones... In recent years the scientific community has taken very seriously the suggestion that the Cretaceous/Tertiary extinction 65 million years ago, which drew an end to the age of dinosaurs, may have been caused by the impact of a comet or asteroid with the earth.

Lewin next discusses plate tectonics, which has been discussed in the essay "The Flood" in this series. He describes some of the tectonic effects seen in the fossil record:

On the next level of scale is tectonics, the constant movement of the dozen or so major plates that constitute the earth's crust and upon which the continents ride. Biotas that were once united have been divided, and previously independent biota have been brought together...

Whenever landmasses become isolated as a result of plate tectonics, the environment -- and therefore the evolutionary fate -- of the indigenous species was influenced simply by the fact of isolation. More dramatic, however, was the effect of uniting previously separated landmasses, because it brought a combination of new opportunities and the hazard of new competition to the biotas. Some groups diversified in these circumstances, as did the apes as they spread out of Africa, while others succumbed to extinction, the fate of many South American mammals during the Great American Interchange.

In addition to influencing evolution by shuffling landmasses, plate tectonics can also modify the environment within continents, a prime example of which occurred in Africa. Crudely speaking, 20 million years ago the continent was carpeted west to east with tropical forest. Today, however, East Africa is a mosaic of savannah and open woodland, separated from the still continuous forest to the west by the Great Rift Valley.

A minor tectonic plate margin runs south to north under East Africa, the first consequence of which was 'doming' that began 15 million years ago, producing tremendous lava-driven uplifts reaching 1000 meters high and centered near Nairobi in Kenya and Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. Then, weakened by the separating plates, the continental rock collapsed in a long, vertical fault, snaking several thousand kilometers from Tanzania in the south to Ethiopia in the north. The effect of all this was to throw the eastern part of the continent into rain shadow, thus dramatically altering the vegetation. These tectonic processes were accompanied by episodes of global cooling, which accentuated the replacement of forest by more open environments. The combination must have been key to early hominid evolution, which appears to have taken place there.

Climate represents a third level of scale influencing species environment. Clearly, the nutrient resources exploited by a species will be influenced by the prevailing climate, and any change may affect a species' ability to survive in a particular locality. But, in terms of major evolutionary change, more important than resources is the integrity of the species' habitat as a whole. Specifically, any fragmentation of a species' habitat range as a result of significant climate shift may lead to speciation in some cases and extinction in others... This, briefly stated, is the basis of the 'turnover-pulse' hypothesis advanced by Elisabeth Vrba, of Yale University.

The most common response of a species to changing climate is to migrate, following the conditions to which it is adapted: in the northern hemisphere, southward during times of cooling, and northward when conditions warm up. However, migration is not always possible, being prevented by physical barriers such as mountain ranges and rivers, or biological barriers, such as the absence of food resources and water. In such cases, populations may become fragmented and perhaps subject to different prevailing conditions. Too great a change, and extinction is likely. Moderate change, and speciation is possible.

Because episodes of significant cooling are likely to make northern latitudes less habitable, speciations will be concentrated in equatorial zones during such times. African lineages are therefore likely to enjoy a higher rate of speciation than those in Eurasia, because of the continent's equatorial location. 'Modern global patterns of species diversity in Bovidae are in accord with this prediction', notes Vrba. 'Subsaharan Africa alone has roughly twice as many endemic species as all of Eurasia.' Other considerations aside, Africa was therefore statistically more likely to have been the 'cradle of mankind' than was any other continent, simply by virtue of its position on the globe.

The turnover-pulse hypothesis states, therefore, that when lineages experience extinctions and speciations, they will do so synchronously and in coincidence with major climatic change, particularly cooling episodes. The hypothesis is still being tested, but so far the results appear to support it. The task is to identify major climatic shifts; to look for pulses of extinctions and speciations in the fossil record; and if such pulses exist, to see if they coincide with the climatic episodes. Because of the nature of the fossil record the best data come from marine sediments, while continental sequences lamentably are still fragmentary.

First, the climatic record, which centers on the formation of the polar ice caps as an indication of cooling episodes. During the first half of the Cenozoic period (65 million years ago to the present), which encompasses the history of the primate order, the globe appears to have been consistently free of significant polar ice. The first appearance of polar ice was the formation of the East Antarctic ice sheet a little after 35 million years ago, the Arctic remaining ice-free. The next climatic step was the formation of the West Antarctic ice sheet, beginning soon after 15 million years ago.

Antarctic ice appears to have been a permanent global feature after this point, although it fluctuated in extent, with major advances at around 5 million and 2.4 million years, the latter being brief but massive. Significantly, 2.4 million years ago was also the date of the first appearance of Arctic ice. Another climatic pulse occurred 0.9 million years ago, which set in train the main Pleistocene glaciations.

Probably the best dataset of continental vertebrates is that of the African bovids (various kinds of antelope), much of which has been collected by Vrba. Although the data are not suitable to test the 15 million year climatic pulse, they clearly show spikes of extinctions and speciations at 5 million, 2.4 million, and something less than 1 million. The 2.4 million year spike is especially pronounced, and there are mammalian fossil data from Europe and Asia that also reflect what apparently was an extreme climatic episode.

Note that between 5 and 6 million years ago the Mediterranean Sea dried up a number of times, when the African continent moved northward and blocked the Strait of Gibraltar. This would have had a tremendous effect on the surrounding climate. Also, the Pleistocene Ice Age began between 2.5 and 3.0 million years ago, with alternating cycles of cold and warm about every hundred thousand years. Both of these sets of events are recorded in marine sediments. Lewin continues:

What of the hominoids, including human ancestors? The 15 million year climatic episode does appear to coincide with a diversification of hominoids in Africa and Eurasia. But this expansion of species diversity also coincided with an expansion of geographic range following the joining of Africa with Eurasia. This one is therefore difficult to call. Towards the Late Miocene -- 8 to 5 million years ago -- hominoids became extinct in Eurasia, coinciding both with local indications of changing environments and with the onset of the West Antarctic ice sheet advance. This was also the period during which, according to molecular biological evidence, the chimpanzee and hominid lineages differentiated.

The 2.4 million year event is close to the point of origin of pygmy chimpanzees, but is right on the mark for some people's estimate for the beginning of the genus Homo, and possibly the origin of two lineages of robust australopithecine. The robust australopithecines became extinct about a million years ago, which is close to the 0.9 million year climatic event, as too is the first expansion of hominids out of Africa.

The turnover-pulse hypothesis clearly cannot be tested by data from hominid history, because for that one needs speciose groups, such as the antelopes. But, inasmuch as certain climatic events appear to be real and appear to be tracked by speciations and extinctions in some mammalian groups, some light can be thrown on the initiation of speciation within the hominid group. Of the data available so far, some degree of confidence can be placed in the 2.4 million year event, both in climatic and evolutionary terms. In decreasing degrees of confidence come the events at 5, 0.9 and 15 million years.

Paleontologist Donald Johanson added a few interesting details about the climate event at 2.5 million years ago:²¹⁶

I've talked about the changes wrought upon Africa by the global temperature plunge in the late Miocene. Recently, Elisabeth Vrba drew my attention to a rash of new evidence pointing toward another climatic catastrophe later on. Deep-sea sediment cores record a surge in polar ice between 2.5 and 2.4 million years, perhaps marking the first glacial advance in the Northern Hemisphere. Pollen studies on land deposits tell the same story: In Holland, palm forests give way to open steppes; in Colombia mountain forests wither into plain. Pollen samples from the Omo in Ethiopia show an abrupt shift from woody plants to grasses and low shrubs. The Omo's record of microfauna -- rodents and the like -- neatly parallels the vegetative switch, with forest-living forms giving way to arid-adapted types between 2.5 and 2.4 million years ago. Most recently, deep-sea cores from the ocean off West Africa are coming up full of dust at the same point in time. From modern studies, we know that dust settles in the ocean where there is desert on the adjacent land.

Elisabeth's own work on African bovids comes up with the same conclusion, and in spades. Bovids are especially good indicators of evolutionary change in Africa simply because there are so many of them. Two and a half million years ago, the bovid family underwent an explosion of new species well adapted to savanna conditions: the hartebeest and wildebeest, the gazelles, impala, springbok, and similar forms.

"All the continents are saying the same thing," Elisabeth told me, with obvious delight. "The climate is changing in some places, with dramatic force. The cause of the change is not clear -- perhaps tectonic movements closed the Isthmus of Panama, reshuffling the circulation of currents in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, which in turn affected temperature and precipitation patterns. But that it did happen is almost beyond doubt."

According to her "turnover-pulse" theory, this sudden shift in the global climate might have sent a surge of extinction and speciation through the food chain. The pulse would hit the early hominids too, possibly triggering the appearance of Homo. We do not have any direct evidence for Homo that early in the fossil record -- not yet -- but we do have the next best thing. The discovery of those very primitive stone tools near Hadar matches the date exactly. Equally important is the absence of tools any earlier. Stone tools are not time-fragile like fossils. If we look for them, and we can't find them, then they probably weren't there to begin with. If Elisabeth Vrba is right, and I think she is, the Homo emerged in East Africa some 2.5 million years ago, one among many species struggling to adapt to radically altered conditions.

Clearly something major happened to climate at various times in the past. It is recorded in marine sediments and in the fossil record of animals. All creationist publications seem to ignore the findings.

Part 8: What the Creation Book Says About the Evolution of Man

The Creation book ignores or misrepresents much of the evidence that bears on human evolution. The following discussion points out where in the seventh chapter this occurs.

Paragraphs 1 and 2 discuss whether the supposed ancestors of man should be called apes or not. Paleontologists use the term "ape" in a technical sense that includes not only today's gibbons, orangutans, chimpanzees and gorillas, but fossil apelike forms as well.

Creation's author considers the point whether the supposed ancestors of man could be called apes to be very important. He realizes that evolutionists generally take pains to say that man evolved from an apelike ancestor, not a modern ape, because the apes of several million years ago were not the apes of today and no one knows for certain what any supposed relationships are. In other words, evolutionists do not say that man evolved from gibbons, orangutans, chimpanzees or gorillas, but that they all have common, but unknown, apelike ancestors. In support of the author's contention, paragraph 2 says:

True, some evolutionists do not feel that these theoretical ancestors of man should rightly be called "apes." Even so, some of their colleagues are not so exacting.²

Which particular colleagues is Creation referring to? Superscript 2 in the quotation refers to the book Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind, p. 31, which describes the experiences of Eugene Dubois, who went to Java and in 1891 found the first Homo erectus, which became known as Java Man. The author, Donald Johanson, said:

What Dubois hoped to find was a "missing link." Like many of his contemporaries with a certain amount of scientific curiosity, he had read Darwin but had gotten some of Darwin's ideas wrong. If men were descended from apes, as Darwin and Huxley had suggested, then the way to prove it was to find a creature that stood halfway between the two, something that presumably was a blend of man and orangutan or man and chimpanzee.

The above contains the "not so exacting" statements by some "colleagues" that show that some evolutionists call the theoretical ancestors of man "apes," namely, "if men were descended from apes, as Darwin and Huxley had suggested..." However, Johanson did not mean to say that early human ancestors could be called apes, nor did he specifically say that any nineteenth century scientists said so. Instead, it was Dubois's misunderstanding of what Darwin and Huxley said that led him to believe they had suggested men were descended from apes. This is clearly evident from Johanson's next statement:

Darwin's idea, of course, was quite different. He was not thinking of parallel linkages but of vertical ones, of chains of relationships connected through time. To Darwin, the close affinities of man and ape did not suggest the existence of an in-between type. Rather, they meant that man and ape had a common ancestor to which each was connected by separate links of its own. What that ancestor might have looked like, neither Darwin nor Huxley was prepared to say. Still, the missing-link concept became widely popular, and it was on the strength of it that Dubois, against the urgings of his family and his professional colleagues, gave up his teaching career and went to the Dutch East Indies.

Creation has completely reversed the meaning of what the author of Lucy actually said. Nevertheless, many 19th century scientists did claim that man evolved from apes. Creation's author just doesn't know which ones.

Paragraph 2 quotes Stephen Jay Gould to show that some evolutionists say that man evolved from "apes."

"People... evolved from apelike ancestors."

Note that Gould does not say "apes," he says "ape like ancestors." This does not support Creation's argument.

In support of its contention that man's theoretical ancestors were "apes," paragraph 2 next quotes George Gaylord Simpson, from p. 27 of Lucy:

The common ancestor would certainly be called an ape or a monkey in popular speech by anybody who saw it. Since the terms ape and monkey are defined by popular usage, man's ancestors were apes or monkeys.

However, the full context of Simpson's statement shows that his intent was to get rid of the distinction between the technical and common speech usages of "ape":

Apologists emphasize that man cannot be a descendant of any living ape -- a statement that is obvious to the verge of imbecility -- and go on to state or imply that man is not really descended from any ape or monkey at all, but from an earlier common ancestor. In fact, the common ancestor would certainly be called an ape or a monkey in popular speech by anybody who saw it. Since the terms ape and monkey are defined by popular usage, man's ancestors were apes or monkeys (or successively both). It is pusillanimous if not dishonest for an informed investigator to say otherwise.

So Simpson was talking about semantics. He did not imply that one can say ancient apelike creatures and modern apes are the same thing.

Why is Creation's author concerned about whether man's supposed ancestors can be called apes? Paragraph 3 and succeeding paragraphs show that his intent really is to set up an "argument by definition," i.e., that since apelike ancestors can be called apes by common usage, and man today is clearly separated from apes by a huge gulf, then there must have been a huge gulf between fossil apes and man, which would have been impossible to cross. Then, since all the fossil forms are "apes" by definition, he can "prove" these forms were apes in actuality. Clearly this is to avoid directly addressing the evidence for the relation between fossil apelike creatures and man. An example where this technique of argument is used is found in paragraph 32, which dismisses the australopithecine fossil skeleton called "Lucy" with:

Obviously, it too was simply an "ape."

Paragraph 3 attempts to argue that the lack of living links between man and ape is good evidence against the evolution of man, and therefore evolutionists are forced resort to the fossil record for evidence. It says:

Why is the fossil record so important in the effort to document the existence of ape-like ancestors for humankind? Because today's living world has nothing in it to support the idea.

This is nothing more than what evolutionists have been saying all along. Somehow, Creation's author thinks this is a good argument against evolution, but his posing the question shows his complete lack of understanding of the theory of evolution. The reasoning is like claiming that the authenticity of the miracles recorded in the Bible is diminished by the fact that such miracles do not occur today and Christians are therefore forced into the poor position of having to look into the historical record of the Bible.

Many people believe that evolution is always supposed to be progressive. Biologist Stephen Jay Gould commented:²¹⁷

No misunderstanding of evolution is more widespread than the assumption that it inevitably leads to a progressive improvement of life.

For a long time evolutionists held the notion that evolution is always progressive, later life forms being of necessity better in an absolute sense than earlier ones. This idea was picked up, grossly exaggerated, and misapplied in a philosophy that became known as Social Darwinism, which was rooted partly in the Victorian notion of the cultural progression of man that culminated with the white European. While the fossil record shows that life has progressed in complexity and sophistication in an overall sense since its beginning, evolutionists for a long time have found that life forms did not always progress linearly up some evolutionary ladder, but that changes of all types occurred. They have begun to realize that ancient creatures were just as suited to their environments as modern ones, and that much of what they call evolutionary change was neutral in terms of fitness, or cannot be interpreted one way or the other. What the theory actually claims is that life evolves toward maximum suitability for a particular environment. Evolutionary development is said to be like a bush, where many branches arise, most die off, and a few are left. At any one time there will be few branches in existence, so that trying to demonstrate relationships through living animals is futile. The direction of evolution on the "bush" is driven partly by random factors and partly by what is most suitable for the current environment. If the environment changes, an organism may become unsuited for it and die off. There are also random factors in extinction.

One book commented along these lines:²¹⁸

Another important feature of evolutionary expectations is that they do not call for a smoothly graded series of forms, or transitions, leading from the common ancestor to the modern creatures. This expectation is incorrectly attributed to the evolutionary perspective by creationists, who then seek to knock down their straw man with the conviction that this will undermine human evolution as a whole. Paleoanthropologists (and others who share their perspective) have long recognized that evolution often proceeds along erratic lines, now emphasizing one part of the anatomy and now another, so that there are no theoretical grounds for expecting a smoothly graded series of transitional forms in the human fossil record.

Paragraph 4 knows nothing of this, but repeats the popular misconception, saying: "as animals progressed up the evolutionary scale, they became more capable of surviving." It then concludes that there is a contradiction between the fact that "inferior" apes still exist, and supposedly "superior" ape-men do not.

The first sub-section of Creation's chapter seven is titled "How Much Fossil Evidence?" It contains many gross distortions.

Paragraphs 5 and 6 give the impression that Charles Darwin formulated his theory of evolution in order to explain the existence of man. He did nothing of the kind. Darwin's theory had to do with the general problem of evolution, and it presented a great deal of evidence for evolution in plants and animals. Darwin was actually afraid of mentioning his ideas on man's evolution, as explained by Donald Johanson:²¹⁹

The trouble with old human bones was that at first there weren't any. When the Origin of Species was published in 1859 the human fossil cupboard was empty. This caused problems for Darwin, who had mountains of fossil evidence from plants and animals to shore up his theory, but not one trace of a fossil human. That lack, plus his reluctance to toss humans on the hot fire that he knew his book would ignite, forced him to limit his speculations about mankind to one tepid sentence, and we repeat, "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history." For someone like Darwin, who required evidence, the evidence was not there.

So by juxtaposing quotations from various sources Creation gives the impression that Darwin formulated his theory based on non-existent evidence for human evolution. With this in mind, note what paragraph 5 says:

... surely there must be abundant evidence that humans evolved from apelike creatures. Is this really so? For instance, what fossil evidence was there of this in Darwin's day? Was it such evidence that encouraged him to formulate his theory?

Paragraph 6 then says:

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists informs us: "The early theories of human evolution are really very odd... there were either so few fossils that they exerted no influence on the theory, or there were no fossils at all. So between man's supposed closest relatives and the early human fossils, there was only the imagination of nineteenth century scientists." This scientific publication shows why: "People wanted to believe in evolution, human evolution, and this affected the results of their work.

So the quotation in paragraph 6 actually refers to "nineteenth century scientists" after Darwin had formulated his theory, but paragraph 5 makes it appear that Darwin was included in the description quoted in paragraph 6. While it is true that in the nineteenth century there was no direct evidence for human evolution, this is not in dispute, and Creation is arguing a non-issue. Also, no theory explains everything, nor should one be expected to. If scientists avoided putting out a theory that explained some things very well, just because it did not explain everything, no theories would ever be advanced.

Paragraphs 7 through 9 argue that the fossil evidence for man is extremely small in quantity. That is true of skeletal remains, but note that there is still some evidence and this is quite different from no evidence. It has been observed about these remains:²²⁰

Such finds are rare, for men are generally too smart to become fossils. It is, so to speak, the bungler who risks becoming a fossil. He may get caught in quicksand or fall down a pothole; he may come too close to the undercut bank of a river swollen in flood; he may get his head taken off by a rival tribe, his brain eaten and his skull thrown in the refuse heap. This is how men, and the ancestors of men, became fossils -- up to the time when deliberate preservation by burial became a custom. Thus the remains of man-like beings are few, and in general they are also late in geological time.

Creation completely ignores the great amount of evidence from the stone tools that have been found in association with and dated contemporaneous to the skeletal remains. Also, as noted above, 3.6 million year old humanlike footprints have been found, there is the evidence of the molecular clock, and there is much other circumstantial evidence. Creation conveniently leaves out all of this.

Paragraph 10 says that modern-type humans appeared suddenly in the fossil record. One may say this if one is careless about what one calls a modern-type human. Completely modern looking fossils of Homo sapiens do appear in the fossil record between 35,000 and 50,000 years ago, but what have been classified as archaic Homo sapiens appear as much as 500,000 years ago. These fossils have many characteristics of both modern humans and Homo erectus, and so how to best classify them is disputed. Clearly, Creation oversimplifies to the point of absurdity.

The next section of Creation, "Where Are the 'Links'?" is another exercise in obfuscation. The argument rests on the author's nebulous use of "missing link." He never defines what a "missing link" is, but instead relies on his intended audience's misconceptions. The term "missing link" is a technically obsolete term left over from the late nineteenth century, and is today used mostly by the popular press, which is usually badly informed and oversimplifies matters. The idea presupposed that there would be found some creature definitely classifiable as the intermediate between ape and man. Evolutionists today say that since evolutionary history is more like a bush than a linear progression, it would be difficult if not impossible to classify any particular fossil with certainty as an ancestor of man. Careful workers, therefore, draw conclusions like "it is probable this particular creature was man's ancestor or was closely related to man's ancestor." The problem is that for any creature claimed to be an intermediate, someone could well argue that it is not "intermediate enough" to be colloquially called a "missing link." Creation always uses "missing link" so as to be able to make this claim.

The book Confronting Creationism: Defending Darwin has some good points to make about general creationist arguments with respect to transitional forms.²²¹ While the Watchtower Society does not endorse some of the beliefs of the "creation scientists" mentioned, it does endorse others, and argues in virtually the same way.

Are there or are there not links between kinds of organisms? Creation 'Scientists' say no; evolutionists say yes. Although the fossil record most definitely does provide evidence of intermediate forms (Chapter 6), Creation 'Scientists' struggle valiantly to convince themselves and others by sophistry that it does not. Their published reasons for discounting known transitional forms as links depend in large part on their redefinitions (or, more commonly, on their refusal to accept current understanding) of critical terms such as 'links' and 'kinds' of organisms. By keeping both of these concepts nebulous, Creation 'Scientists' have built around themselves an almost impregnable fortress of semantics.

The concept of 'kind' among Creation 'Scientists' has steadily evolved in a transparent effort to ensure that no evidence from the real world can threaten the literal word of Genesis (Awbrey, 1981; Cracraft, 1983; Ruse, 1982). Most Creation 'Scientists' will 'allow' post-Creation week development (they dislike the term evolution) within created 'kinds'. They know, by faith in the literal truth of the Genesis account, that none of the created 'kinds' could have arisen from any other because they were created as fully formed 'kinds'. To Creation 'Scientists', there cannot be links between the Biblical 'kinds' of organisms because the literal word of the Bible is infallible...

What Creation 'Scientists' are attempting to achieve here is a definition so broad that any demonstration from the fossil record of structurally intermediate forms as evidence for evolution can be dismissed. This is because they can declare the intermediate to be either an indication that the two otherwise dissimilar linked forms are in fact one previously unrecognised created 'kind' or a member of one of the two previously recognised 'kinds' which it appears to link. Either way, the newly discovered intermediate comes to serve merely as a demonstration of 'variation within a single kind'.

An example of this is the way Creation 'Scientists' treat the rich fossil record of hominines. This is a particularly critical example because all Creation 'Scientists' believe that God created human beings. So what do they do with the transitional sequences in time (see Figure 6.10) from Australopithecus to Homo sapiens?

[Creationist author Duane] Gish simply declares the species of Australopithecus and Homo habilis and H. erectus to be apes (Gish, 1979: 104-146). The only significant contribution Gish permits the fossil record to make to the early history of Homo sapiens is neanderthal man which no modern biologist or anthropologist considers represents anything other than an isolated early population of H. sapiens. To the committed Creation 'Scientist', the rich fossil record of man-like primates can be no threat to Biblical Creation because, as biochemist Gish points out to anthropologists, it contains just peculiar apes and modern man; there are no transitional forms linking modern humans to any other kind of creature. Obviously, no matter how clear the fossil record is for evolutionary transitions, Creation 'Scientists' cannot accept it because they must preserve the infallibility of the Book of Genesis as they understand it...

As long as Creationists refuse to be specific as to what are (or to give any guidelines for determining what are) different 'kinds' of organisms, a 'kind' can be anything a Creationist says it is. This is how they can exorcise embarrassments such as Homo erectus. They make it impossible to demonstrate evolution because, by playing fast and loose with the facts, any such demonstration is promptly declared an example of variation within a created 'kind'...

Using yet another semantic barricade, Creation 'Scientists' have ensured that it is still impossible to test their concept. This semantic obstacle is their refusal to define 'link' or 'transitional form' (Cracraft, 1983).

Failure to indicate precisely what it is that constitutes a 'link' between 'kinds' of organisms enables Creation 'Scientists' to declare that there are no such things. Gish (1979: 49) even says: 'As a matter of fact, the discovery of only five or six of the transitional forms scattered through time would be sufficient to document evolution.' Despite Gish's own awareness of transitional forms between reptiles and birds and between reptiles and mammals (Gish, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1985), he can make this statement because he knows that without defining what would constitute a 'link' he will not have to recognise any of the many intermediate fossil forms as 'links'.

What sort of organism or group of organisms should qualify as transitional forms or links? The Macquarie Dictionary defines link as: '1, one of the rings or separate pieces of which a chain is composed...anything serving to connect one part or thing with another...'. In an evolutionary sense, a link would be any organism or group of organisms that demonstrates structurally intermediate or transitional conditions between two other dissimilar organisms or groups of organisms.

Creation 'Scientists' dismiss all organisms that demonstrate intermediate structural conditions as merely unrecognised variation within one of the two 'kinds' they appear to link. In this way they reassure themselves that the gaps between created 'kinds' are impossible, by definition, to fill and that, therefore, there are no such things as 'links'.

There is a further problem with the concept of 'links' which often leaves evolutionists in a no-win situation. 'Links', by their nature, fit in gaps between 'kinds'. Creation 'Scientists' make as much of these gaps as they do of the supposed lack of transitional forms which define them. As a result, it is an ironic fact that each time a transitional form is discovered, no matter how its significance is dismissed by Creation 'Scientists', it automatically means recognition of two albeit smaller gaps where previously there was just one!

If we cut through the semantic armour used by Creation 'Scientists' to protect their beliefs, the fossil record presents unmistakable evidence for evolutionary transition between organisms at almost all taxonomic levels (see Chapter 6). From intermediates between the species in our own subfamily to intermediates between the classes of vertebrates, such as between reptiles and birds and between reptiles and mammals, the fossil record provides excellent support for the concepts and predictions of evolution. Conversely, it provides no support for the Creation 'Scientists'' hypothesis that all 'kinds' of organisms were made out of nothing 6000 to 20 000 years ago because the record does contain transitional forms between kinds of organisms which range from a few thousand to many millions of years in age.

There is no doubt that the field of human evolution is not solidly established in all its details, at least in the sense that many other fields of science are, but that does not show that all conclusions from the field must be thrown out. It merely means that the science is in its infancy, so that some conclusions must often change, and many conclusions must be taken with a large grain of salt. However, there are some conclusions that are extremely well established, and the evidence for them will not go away, even if publications like Creation persist in ignoring it.

The field of evolutionary knowledge is rapidly changing. The theory of punctuated equilibrium, advanced by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge in 1972, was at first rejected by many evolutionists because they thought that evolution had to be gradual. But more paleontologists are coming to see that the history of life was indeed "jumpy," and Gould and Eldredge's theory is gaining wide acceptance. Other scientists have proposed similar theories. The major point of difficulty with "punctuation" type theories is the lack of a satisfactory mechanism to drive the rapid development of novel features, but Creation discusses none of this.

Paragraph 13 makes much of the lack of a "missing link," but as discussed earlier, any creature whatsoever that someone might advance to fill that role would be said by creationists to be a full fledged creature in its own right, and not a "missing link" at all. Then they would ask, Where are the "missing links" before it and after it?

The next section of Creation discusses "Man's 'Family Tree'." Without informing the reader that it has not defined "missing link," the section marshals quotations that guaranteed "missing links" have not been identified, and melds them into the idea that no linking creatures ever existed. This again misrepresents the evidence and the statements of paleontologists, as shown below.

Paragraphs 14 and 15 make much of the fact that many "links" have eventually been shown not to be such, and that details of the theory of evolution have often had to be revised. But no reputable scientist claims these theories are cast in stone. As new knowledge becomes available, theories based on incomplete knowledge (and what theory isn't?) must be revised. The Watchtower Society has, in fact, institutionalized revision of its doctrines by using a Bible verse that says "the light gets brighter and brighter," even while claiming to be the "channel of communication between God and men." Revision of understanding should be acceptable to Creation's author if he wants to be fair.

Paragraph 16 quotes from a review of the book The Myths of Human Evolution:

"Eldredge and Tattersall insist that man searches for his ancestry in vain... If the evidence were there, they contend, 'one could confidently expect that as more hominid fossils were found the story of human evolution would become clearer. Whereas, if anything, the opposite has occurred.'"

Had Creation's author read the book and not just its review, he would have found that Eldredge and Tattersall were not saying that there never were any ancestors, but that because evolution works in a punctuated manner, is very bushy, and the fossil record is poor, the likelihood of finding ancestors is so remote as to be in vain. Paragraph 17's quotation from Discover makes a similar error.

Paragraph 18 claims that

the fossil record reveals a distinct, separate origin for apes and for humans. That is why fossil evidence of man's link to apelike beasts is nonexistent. The links really have never been there.

For the same reason that no one can "prove" the existence of true transitional forms in the fossil record, the above statement is false. The fossil record reveals evidence that is consistent with either evolution or special creation. Creation's author is unaware of this.

The section "What Did They Look Like?" discusses the irrelevant issue that no one can be sure exactly what fossil men looked like, so that attempts to draw them are bound to be wrong. The same can be said of drawings of dinosaurs, but so what? Some drawings are quite good and make Neanderthals look dignified -- see for example Time-Life's Ice Ages, pages 25-27. It is true that drawings may be unfairly biased to gain popular support for evolution, but this has nothing to do with the underlying evidence for the theory.

Paragraph 20 quotes from the book Lucy²²² as follows: "'No one can be sure just what any extinct hominid looked like.'" The quotation stands as if the full sentence was cited, but this is misleading, because Lucy actually said: "'No one can be sure just what any extinct hominid looked like with its skin and hair on,'" which means something very different. Creation here is merely trying to set the stage for the main point of its argument, which is covered below in the discussion of paragraph 23.

This section also trots out the two most famous fiascos in the history of human evolutionary thought, the fraudulent Piltdown Man and the mistaken Nebraska Man, to serve as object lessons and cast doubt on the whole of evolutionary thought. But Creation fails to point out that these were uncovered by evolutionists themselves because they did not fit with other evidence. In fact, the supposed fossil tooth of Nebraska Man was found to be mistaken within five years because more evidence became available to the paleontologist who presented it in the first place. All this really says is that evolutionary scientists are human and make mistakes, especially when they have some preconceived notions. As paleontologist Donald Johanson said:²²³

The story of human evolution has been told by finding bones. It's been a long hard trip because the bones have been so scarce. We've made some horrible mistakes along the way. We'll make many more.

Anthropologist Loren Eiseley summed up the Piltdown situation thus:²²⁴

The amount of subjective speculation indulged in for years over the Piltdown "fossil," and to which many leading authorities contributed, can now be viewed historically as a remarkable case history in self-deception. It should serve as an everlasting warning to science that it is not the theologian alone who may exhibit irrational bias or give allegiance to theories with only the most tenuous basis in fact. That scientists in the early years of a new discipline should have been easily deceived is not nearly so embarrassing as the rapidity with which they embraced the specimen solely because it fell in with preconceived wishes and could be used to support all manner of convenient hypotheses. The enormous bibliography in several languages which grew up around the skull is an ample indication, also, of how much breath can be expended fruitlessly upon ambiguous or dubious materials.

What these things show is that many evolutionary scientists were too eager too accept something that supported their preconceived ideas, and in making their interpretations threw caution to the wind. The Watchtower Society has experience with this, too. It predicted the end of the world for 1914 and 1925, and all but did so for 1975. When these predictions failed to materialize, the Society justified them with the excuse that, in their eagerness to promote God's word, some writers may have gone a little overboard. Why does the Society not openly admit its major mistakes, as did Eiseley and many other evolutionists?

Donald Johanson also makes a point about the "maturing" of the science of paleoanthropology.²²⁵ Writing in 1989, he said:

In the last decade especially, paleoanthropology has hardened itself as a science, developing ever-more-precise methods and greatly expanding the mass of evidence that lies at its roots. In the process, a rigorous skepticism has put into shadow the liberally subjective methods that once epitomized the field. The more we know about our origins, the more we must question assumptions long regarded as fact. This critical caution has sometimes been misinterpreted by the so-called "creation scientists" to be a sign of weakening of conviction among paleoanthropologists in the conclusions of evolution science. Just the opposite is the case. It is a sign that paleoanthropology is at last coming of age.

Creation's next major section, "What Were They?", discusses just two creatures in the fossil lineup of primate ancestors, although the title would suggest that much more would be discussed. Again using the poorly defined notion of "missing link," the section claims that no links have ever been found. By omitting discussion of the complete evidence it again misrepresents what scientists have said.

Paragraph 23 is downright deceptive, and shows why Creation's author tried to establish in the previous section why drawings of "ape-men" were important to his argument. It first asks:

If "ape-man" reconstructions are not valid, then what were those ancient creatures whose fossil bones have been found? One of these earliest mammals claimed to be in the line of man is a small, rodentlike animal said to have lived about 70 million years ago.

Creation attempts to use the fact that one cannot be certain that artist's conceptions of ape-men (showing flesh, hair, skin color, form of features, aspect of the face, etc.) are correct, to show that general "reconstructions" of all supposed ancestors must be incorrect -- even those that were never claimed to be in the hominid line. It deceives the reader by generalizing the concept of "drawing" into the concept of "reconstruction."

Paragraph 23 also claims that no transitional stages have ever linked the earliest supposed ancestors with later animals. It says:

One of these earliest mammals claimed to be in the line of man is a small, rodentlike animal said to have lived about 70 million years ago. In their book Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind, Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey wrote: "They were insect-eating quadrupeds about the size and shape of squirrels." Richard Leakey called the mammal a "rat-like primate." But is there any solid evidence that these tiny animals were the ancestors of humans? No, instead only wishful speculation. No transitional stages have ever linked them with anything except what they were: small, rodentlike mammals.

No evidence whatsoever has been presented up to this point to support these conclusions. As far as linking forms go, earlier paragraphs referred to links between apes and man, but not to the early primates. So Creation again makes claims it has not substantiated.

What evidence in the fossil record bears on the question brought up in paragraph 23? For a much more detailed description, let us again refer to Science and Earth History.²²⁶ Here are presented some excerpts showing that Creation left out much evidence from possible consideration by its readers.

On the question of what the earliest primates were like, Strahler quotes paleontologist Edwin H. Colbert:

A glimpse of the most ancient primates can be obtained by looking at the modern tree shrews, Tupaia, Ptilocerus, and their relatives, that live in the Orient. These interesting mammals have been the subject of much study, and their relationships have been a matter of debate for many years. They are now commonly regarded as insectivores, but many authorities have believed that they more properly should be included among the primates. Morphologically the tree shrews are so close to the line of demarcation between insectivores and primates that, even if they are included in the former mammalian order, they, nevertheless, give us some insight into the adaptations that were leading from primate eutherian (placental) mammals toward the first primates...

[Colbert observed] that, as in the primates, the thumb and great toe of the tree shrews are set somewhat apart from the other toes...

As to the fossil record linking the insectivores with primates, remains of primitive forms of the latter are by no means lacking from strata of Paleocene and early Eocene age. Colbert has something to say on this subject, and although rather technical in places, it should be entered here:

Turning now to the fossil record, we find in the Paleocene deposits of North America and Europe three groups of eutherians (placental mammals) that can be regarded as very primitive primates -- namely, the paromomyids, the carpolestids, and the plesiadapids... These fossils, most of which are very fragmentary indeed, show us some very small primates... they appear to have been on a lateral rather than on the direct line of evolution to the later lemurs and tarsier.

The groups referred to above can be regarded as "cousins" to the early Cenozoic lemurs, as groups sharing a common ancestor among the insectivores. In this sense, they are true intermediates, even though not in the direct line of descent...

In recent years, attention has focused on the early Eocene primate Cantius [trigonodus] as a candidate for ancestry of all modern primates... A fossil foot of this primitive primate shows it to have had a strong grasping toe, suited to tree climbing, and eyes facing forward for close-range stereoscopic vision. [Paleontologist Robert T.] Bakker considers the acquisition of this tree-climbing facility to be the major evolutionary advance in early primate evolution... An interesting feature of C. trigonodus is that its teeth were very primitive and had not adapted to a diet of tree fruits. In other words, we have here an excellent example of mosaic evolution, making C. trigonodus a true intermediate between ground-dwelling placental mammals and the prosimian primates...

Another intermediate form that fills the gap between the Paleocene primates and the later Lemuroidea (lemurs) is an Eocene lemur, Notharctus... Complete skeletons of this genus have been found in Western North America... Notharctus was well adapted to tree climbing; the digits of the hands and feet... were long and slender, with thumb and first toe shortened and angled out from the other digits.

Gingerich also made a study of the evolution of Notharctus, which traced the rise of that genus from an older genus, Pelycodus (1976). His raw data consisted of fossils of 255 individuals distributed through a total thickness of some 500 m of early Eocene strata in the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming. His completed study provides a small window of information showing how forms closely related to the insectivores gradually evolved into forms definitely of primate affinity.

C. Loring Brace, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and an authority on human evolution comments on this transition:

The spectrum of living primates runs from that most modified and aberrant species, Homo sapiens, to prosimian forms that are so little different from non-primate insectivores that scientists have been arguing for a century about their correct classification... The important thing, in reality, is not the "correct" pigeonhole but the fact that they represent a condition intermediate between the two orders and suggest to us the kind of evolutionary change by which primates could have diverged from the generalized mammalian stem.

Brace also adds:²²⁷

The fossil record confirms this since the earliest primates to appear are prosimians only (Clark 1960; Simons 1972). The gradual change through time and identifiable diversification has been shown with admirable clarity by Gingerich whose plot of molar [tooth] dimensions is reproduced in figure 1 (1976, p. 16). Whether the rate of change through time follows the fits-and-starts expectations of the proposers of the "punctuated equilibria" model of evolutionary change (Eldredge and Gould 1972; Gould and Eldredge 1977) or the path of "evolutionary gradualism" (Gingerich 1976) or a combination of the two (Brace 1981), the demonstrable steps show how microevolutionary changes accumulate to produce macroevolutionary results.

The book Confronting Creationism: Defending Darwin presents the same figure Brace did, and describes what it means:²²⁸

When samples of particular species, such as those belonging to the genus Cantius, were measured and the results plotted against stratigraphic position a distinct pattern emerged (Figure 6.1) that strongly suggests progressive phyletic evolution through time. For example, C. mckennai clearly merges, through small changes in size and shape, into C. trigonodus, the next species represented higher in the stratigraphic sequence. Similar transitions occur further up the succession. Towards the top of the sequence there is indication of a separation where ancestral populations descended from C. abditus underwent sufficient change to be recognised as species of a different genus, Pelycodus. This in turn appears to have been the ancestral stock that evolved into the species of the yet younger genus Notharctus.

The importance of this stratigraphic sequence is that, without a detailed knowledge of the fossil record, the named forms shown at the right of Figure 6.1 would appear to have been distinct species, lacking intermediate forms to demonstrate their origins. With a detailed knowledge of the fossil record, however, it becomes clear that populations intermediate in morphology occupy intermediate stratigraphic positions between the named forms. It is precisely the sort of example that Darwin predicted the fossil record would reveal, one in which species boundaries in time could only be defined by use of arbitrary distinctions.

Now back to Science and Earth History:

Perhaps from among the early Eocene fossils, found as recently as 1984 in the Wind River Basin of Wyoming..., new evidence on the ancestry of the primates will come forth. The new report of these fossil finds makes mention of an important find in the form of "the partial skull of a monkey-like creature, known as shoshonius, that may have been the ancestor of the tarsier, a primate now living in southeast Asia. Five other skulls belong to ancient primate relatives of living monkeys, lemurs, and tarsiers"... Far from being broken by great information gaps, as the creationists claim, the existing record of evolution of the primates already displays abundant fossil evidence of transitions from insectivores to prosimians.

The close evolutionary connections between prosimians, monkeys, and anthropoids are supported by studies in molecular biology. A phylogeny of the globin genes based on the estimated numbers of nucleotide replacements locates the human adjacent or very close to Old World monkeys and the slow loris, all much closer to the human than the mouse, dog, and other placental mammals...

As to the question of how many early primates have been identified in the fossil record, the Encyclopedia Britannica Macropaedia said, under the subject "Evolution, Human":²²⁹

During the Paleocene epoch... there were many primates in existence; 60 genera have been recognized and grouped into eight families.

It is evident that Creation ignores much fossil evidence.

Paragraph 24 discusses the next fossil in the hominoid line:

Next on the generally accepted list, with an admitted gap of about 40 million years, are fossils found in Egypt and named Aegyptopithecus -- Egypt ape. This creature is said to have lived about 30 million years ago... But where are the links between it and the rodent before it? Where are the links to what is placed after it in the evolutionary lineup? None have been found.

The above information shows that there were indeed fossil animals that could be termed "links." Although Creation's author never defines what a "link" is, he knows that whatever paleontologists claim is a link, is not a link. Also note that Aegyptopithecus is not the only fossil of its type, but merely the best documented.²³⁰ As to what Aegyptopithecus was and what is placed after it in the evolutionary lineup, again here are some excerpts from Science and Earth History:²³¹

Evolution of the hominoids began in Oligocene time with the appearance of Aegyptopithecus... An important difference from the Eocene primates we have already described is seen in the dentition of Aegyptopithecus:

Molar tooth crowns, unlike the earlier Paleocene and Eocene primates, were low and rounded like those of recent fruit-eating primates. All of this is completely monkeylike, but when one looks at the patterns of cusp arrangement on the molar teeth, they are quite different from those of modern monkeys but absolutely indistinguishable from those of modern anthropoid apes -- and human beings. (Brace, pp. 246-48)

... the existence of a true intermediate is put strongly on the record by Brace, who states that although the teeth of Aegyptopithecus are those of an ape, its body plan was that of a monkey: i.e., "it was an orthodox arboreal quadruped"... And finally, this significant conclusion by Brace: "All told, it provides a splendid representation of the ancestral condition from which modern apes -- and humans -- descended"... Again, we find a case of mosaic evolution that is the mark of a genuine transitional form...

An earlier member of the [gibbon] family, Pliopithecus, is found in Miocene and Pliocene time; it resembled the living gibbon in cranial structure but had not yet developed the long arms of today's gibbon. A link between Pliopithecus and Aegyptopithecus may exist in a possible intermediate of late Oligocene and early Miocene time called Micropithecus...

Dryopithecus and the closely related African genus Proconsul include early hominoid species generally designated as the common ancestor of all great apes and hominids. They appear in the late Oligocene and extend into the Miocene for a duration of about 10 m.y... By middle Miocene time, Dryopithecus had given rise to three important genera of great apes; the four genera are collectively called dryopithecines (Brace, 1983, p. 249). One genus, Gigantopithecus, was a huge ape... The other two genera, Sivapithecus and Ramapithecus, are so similar that they are often considered as equivalent and representing a single genus. Interpreted as such, we might want to refer to them jointly as Siva/Ramapithecus, but they are commonly referred to simply as "ramamorphs." Ramamorphs were more apelike than Dryopithecus (Proconsul), with longer limbs attached to a relatively shorter body. More importantly, the ramamorphs had large cheek teeth covered by thick enamel and set in a robust jaw; this tooth/jaw characteristic was interpreted as a distinctly hominid feature and led to Ramapithecus being first assigned to the hominids...

Paleontologist Roger Lewin describes some features of Proconsul:²³²

Proconsul is a curious mixture of monkey and ape characteristics. Its relatively long trunk is monkey-like, so are its arm and hand bones; its shoulder and elbow regions are ape-like. Strikingly ape-like, too, is the head, which is large in relation to the diminutive 11 kg body, and the dentition, which includes small molar teeth and large projecting canines.

Lewin further said:²³³

Proconsul is a very good example of the 'mosaic' nature of the early apes... This anatomical confection implies a mix of ape and monkey components of locomotion, a combination of quadrupedal running and leaping with vertical climbing and arm swinging. The confection also offers a salutary warning against sweeping interpretation based on limited fossil evidence: if the arm and hand bones were all that was known of Proconsul, then it would be thought to be a monkey; similarly, analysis based only on the foot and lower leg would imply ape, as would the shoulder and elbow.

Science and Earth History further states:

New fossil discoveries announced in 1986 by Richard and Maeve Leakey may have provided intermediates to fill the Miocene gap (Bower, 1986, p. 324). The fossil hominoids, found in the Lake Turkana locality of northern Kenya, are in sediments thought to be in the age-range of 16 to 18 m.y. They are of two distinct genera, named Afropithecus and Turkanopithecus... It looks as if these and similar fossil finds yet to come may successfully fill the void created by discreditation of Ramapithecus as the hominid ancestor of middle Miocene time.

Human Evolution: An Illustrated Introduction, Second Edition, has a chart on page 62 showing the earlier view and current view of hominoid ancestry, going back to Aegyptopithecus, with the caption:

Changing ideas on hominoid ancestry: Earlier views on hominoid ancestry envisaged ladderlike progressions, with Ramapithecus branching off as the first hominid at least 15 million years ago. A large gap was placed between the hominids and the apes. Hominoid history, like the history of most animal groups, is now seen as a much more intricate bushlike structure. Ramapithecus is no longer thought of as the first hominid, and the gap between hominids and apes, particularly the African apes, has been closed.

Even though this chart shows many gaps between supposed ancestors and descendants, the gaps are gradually being filled.

It is clear from the above descriptions of fossils said to be in the hominoid line that the later in time they occur in the fossil record, the more they show the characteristics of modern apes and humans, and the less they show of monkeys. It is also clear that the fossil record is incomplete, since new fossils are continually being found that shed light on old interpretations or force new ones. Although it can never be possible to pin down for certain a specific ancestor-descendant line, the fossil evidence is suggestive. Creation ignores all of it.

Creation's next section, "The Rise and Fall of 'Ape-Men'," discusses three types of fossils -- Ramapithecus, Australopithecus, and Homo erectus. It first shows that a fossil ape called Ramapithecus was found to be not in man's ancestry, and implies that this throws much doubt on the rest of human evolution. Ramapithecus did indeed turn out to be a false trail, although it was accepted for years as being in the lineage of man as one of the connecting links between the Dryopithecines and the Australopithecines. Today it is widely acknowledged that no fossils from about 5 to 15 million years ago have ever been found connecting them. But this may be because hardly any fossil-bearing deposits of any kind have been found in Africa for that period of time.²³⁴ Of course, Creation is silent about this.

Next, the section discusses the australopithecines, but leaves out a great deal of information about these creatures. Paragraph 28 says that when it was first found it

was pictured as walking on two limbs, stooped over, hairy and apish looking.

The generally accepted picture today is that it walked on two limbs, more or less fully erect, as described earlier in this essay. The relevance of early descriptions to today's is difficult to see, except as a reminder that new data brings new conclusions. The Creation book treats the issue by ignoring it.

Paragraphs 30 and 31 of Creation contain another thoroughly misleading set of quotations. Not only on the face of it do most of the quotations not show what the author claims, but he uses them out of context or misleadingly. Paragraph 30 sets up the claim that there is next to no evidence, or that scientists have even resorted to deception when interpreting the evidence, that the australopithecines were ancestors of man, so that many past examples of presumed "ape-men" have come to nought. Paragraph 31 then says:

So, too, with Australopithecus. More research has disclosed that its skull "differed from that of humans in more ways than its smaller brain capacity."

Clearly the quotation says nothing about ancestry. All it says is that Australopithecus was different from humans, which is obvious, and should be the case if it were a transitional form. Evolutionists do not argue that it was human, but that it had characteristics intermediate between apelike creatures and humans. The Creation book persists in arguing that because various hominids were not fully human they could not have been in the line leading to humans. The logic of this is not apparent. The quotation is out of context because its author describes the differences and similarities between Australopithecus and humans specifically to show that it was a transitional form. For example, surrounding the above quote, he says:²³⁵

A particularly human aspect of its skeleton was its dentition... The brain capacity... averaged slightly less than 500 cubic centimeters, approximating that of a gorilla... Because a gorilla is a much larger animal... we may infer that Australopithecus africanus may have been smarter... The skull of Australopithecus africanus differed from that of humans in more ways than its smaller brain capacity. The cheek bones of the slender australopithecine projected, flangelike, from the sides of the skull, and its very long face sloped forward to a larger jaw... Australopithecus africanus, like our species, was a fully upright creature. This we can see from various skeletal features, but most especially from its basketlike pelvis -- a pelvis built along human lines to support the body above the legs.

Next, paragraph 31 quotes anatomist Lord Solly Zuckerman:

"When compared with human and simian [ape] skulls, the Australopithecine skull is in appearance overwhelmingly simian -- not human. The contrary proposition could be equated to an assertion that black is white."

Again, this says nothing about ancestry, although Zuckerman did make some relevant comments Creation could have used. Also note that this was written in 1966, before a large number of new fossils were found in Africa, one of which, the famous Lucy skeleton, was far more complete than anything that had been found up to then. Creation also fails to note that Zuckerman's position on human evolution was that humans evolved from an ancestor that had been separated from the apes for 25 million years,²³⁶ even though there was even less evidence for that position than for the one he was opposing, so he may have been less than completely objective in making certain statements.

Paragraph 31 next quotes from Zuckerman's 1970 book Beyond the Ivory Tower, that:

"Our findings leave little doubt that... Australopithecus resembles not Homo sapiens but the living monkeys and apes."

The full context of this quotation is:²³⁷

Our findings leave little doubt that, in this respect, Australopithecus resembles not Homo sapiens but the living monkeys and apes. [emphasis added]

Zuckerman's immediate discussion was with respect to the structure of the pelvis and of the muscles attached to it and to the legs. It was not in the sense that Creation's use of ellipses distorted it into seeming, although in the same chapter Zuckerman does strongly argue that in other ways, such as skull characteristics, there is more resemblance to apes. Here again Creation edits quotations into saying what they do not.

This distortion of what Zuckerman said is more clearly seen in his further discussion of australopithecine pelvises in the larger context of locomotion:²³⁸

These [pelvic] measures are related to the way the weight of the trunk is transmitted to the legs in the bipedal or quadrupedal positions. In some of this group of characters Australopithecus agrees with Homo sapiens and differs from monkeys and apes. In others it falls in a position intermediate between man and the subhuman Primates... In [another] feature, Australopithecus is completely unlike man, and identical with monkeys and apes.

Zuckerman further discusses many measures by which the pelvic features of the australopithecines are similar to man or to apes, different from either or intermediate between them. Like the Creation book, most creationist writings seem to ignore everything Zuckerman said except what supports their position.

Note that Zuckerman's book was published in 1970. In 1974 the "Lucy" skeleton was found, which was later named Australopithecus afarensis, and which had much of the pelvis intact, as well as a complete femur and much of a tibia. See the book Lucy for a photo of the skeleton.²³⁹ Then in 1975, several hundred fossils of A. afarensis, comprising at least thirteen individuals, were found in the Hadar region of Ethiopia, and they provided a much larger base for anatomical analysis. These fossils made Zuckerman's analysis obsolete.

There is more to be said about Lord Zuckerman's objections. Another famous English anatomist, Wilfred Le Gros Clark, had a running battle with Zuckerman for many years over the nature of the australopithecines. The book Lucy sheds some interesting light on their arguments. Zuckerman was regularly publishing material about how his biometric studies had shown that australopithecines were fairly close to apes, so that²⁴⁰

Le Gros Clark thought it appropriate to challenge him to produce a full set of chimpanzee teeth that bore any resemblance to a set of australopithecine teeth. Zuckerman could not. He ignored the challenge and continued to fire off statistical salvos until professional statisticians began pointing out that his figures had not been calculated properly...

To give Zuckerman his due, there were resemblances between ape skulls and australopithecine skulls. The brains were approximately the same size, both had prognathous (long, jutting) jaws, and so on. What Zuckerman missed was the importance of some traits that australopithecines had in common with men. Charles A. Reed of the University of Illinois has summarized Zuckerman's misunderstandings neatly in a review of the australopithecine controversy: "No matter that Zuckerman wrote of such characters as being 'often inconspicuous'; the important point was the presence of several such incipient characters in functional combinations. This latter point of view was one which, in my opinion, Zuckerman and his co-workers failed to grasp, even while they stated they did. Their approach ... was extremely static in that they essentially demanded that a fossil, to be considered by them to show any evidence of evolving toward living humans, must have essentially arrived at the latter status before they would regard it as having begun the evolutionary journey." In other words: if it wasn't already substantially human, it could not be considered to be on the way to becoming human.

Is this not what Creation is arguing?

It was that prejudice of Zuckerman's which Le Gros Clark was determined to dispose of with his comparison study. When Zuckerman was finally subdued by questions about the validity of his statistical approach, Le Gros Clark got down to the really important business of his analysis. He checked the australopithecine data against his list of ape-human differences and found that in virtually every respect they resembled the human model and not the ape model.

Zuckerman repeatedly claimed, with good reason, that his biometrical methods of analysis of the australopithecine fossils, using multivariate statistical techniques, were more objective than those used by most other scientists. Concerning this, paleontologist Roger Lewin said:²⁴¹

A species' morphology is composed of a large suite of anatomical characters: shapes of bones, patterns of muscular attachments, skin color, and so on. Numerical taxonomy proceeds by comparing as wide a range of characters as possible between a group of species, the results of which are known as a multivariate cluster statistics, effectively an average of all the comparisons. The more characters that are included, the more objective the technique is said to be, automatically spitting out a phenetic hierarchy from the assembled cluster statistics. In fact, practitioners frequently have to make choices among several possible patterns, betraying the fact that the method is less objective than is often claimed.

In other words, strict statistical interpretations are impossible and subjective judgments will always be necessary in interpreting fossils.

Roger Lewin points out²⁴² how quickly Zuckerman accepted another fossil find, the partial skull known as KNM-ER 1470 assigned to Homo habilis, when it matched his notions of human evolution. This skull is the most complete habilis skull ever found, and its large cranial volume forced a major rethinking among evolutionists about the course of human evolution. At a 1972 meeting associated with the Royal Zoological Society in London, Richard Leakey presented the skull for the first time, and Lewin said of Zuckerman's reaction:

One of the ironies of this occasion, which is usually little mentioned, was the surprising haste with which Zuckerman was prepared to accept Leakey's presentation. His Lordship's scorn for the level of competence he sees displayed by paleoanthropologists is legendary, exceeded only by the force of his dismissal of the australopithecines as having anything at all to do with human evolution: "They are just bloody apes," he is reputed to have observed on examining the australopithecine remains in South Africa.

Since his emigration to England from South Africa in 1926, Zuckerman had become extremely powerful in British science, being an adviser to the government up to the highest level. During the 1940s and '50s, however, while at Oxford and then Birmingham universities, he had vigorously pursued a metrical and statistical approach to studying the anatomy of fossil hominids. No secure inference could be drawn without such an analytical approach, he urged, and it was on this basis that he underpinned his lifelong rejection of the australopithecines as human ancestors. His reception of 1470, however, was different.

"[Had] today's discovery been reported in this Society when the Australopithecus skull first rested on the speaker's bench in our old meeting room, any amount of time would have been saved," he observed after Leakey's presentation. "People would not have been turning themselves inside out ... in order to establish anatomical conclusions which were nonsensical. You may not have intended to, but you have demolished all that with your skull." To which Leakey replied, "I am quite pleased I have."

Later, during a lecture at the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, Zuckerman said, "[Leakey's 1470 skull] shunted the australopithecines to the sidelines, where they have always belonged." About Richard Leakey's interpretation of 1470 as Homo, Zuckerman said, "I accept his statement, although Mr. Leakey is no anatomist." Zuckerman apparently required no metrical analysis to see that Leakey's new fossil supported his view of human origins.

Note that, except in the skull, H. habilis is not very different from the australopithecines, as pointed out elsewhere in this essay. It is clear that Lord Solly Zuckerman had his own ax to grind, that his are only one in a field of many competing opinions, and that he was not as objective as some creationists would like to believe.

For an interesting presentation of Zuckerman's arguments, see Darwin On Trial,²⁴³ pages 81-83 and 175-177. This book leaves out important information about the battle between Zuckerman and Le Gros Clark, to bolster its thesis that evolution is unproved, just as Creation does.

Zuckerman's notion that the genus Homo is very ancient is echoed by some other notable evolutionists, such as Richard Leakey and Charles Oxnard. Oxnard was an anatomist at the University of Southern California Medical School. Science and Earth History quotes Oxnard as saying:²⁴⁴

"The genus Homo may, in fact, be so ancient as to parallel entirely the genus Australopithecus thus denying the latter a direct place in the human lineage..."

Science and Earth History further says:

In the part of his Nature paper describing the results of multivariate analysis of bone fragments of australopithecines in comparison with corresponding bones of other primates, including modern humans, Oxnard finds a uniqueness of the australopithecines such that he considers that group most unlikely as being a direct part of the human ancestry... Further analysis that includes australopithecine fossils seems to reinforce the conclusion that modern humans, living apes, and australopithecines are uniquely different from one another in terms of foot bones... Clearly, Oxnard at no point in his writings abandons the generally accepted basic principles of evolution, nor does he throw out the reconstruction of the mosaic evolution of humans from hominoid ancestors. The thrust of his argument is aimed more to a rejection of direct linear evolution using the fossils as links in a single chain. In taking this viewpoint, Oxnard is certainly in good company among mainstream anthropologists and paleontologists.

Another evolutionist, C. Loring Brace, gave his opinions on the relation between the australopithecines A. afarensis and A. africanus:²⁴⁵

Our disagreement is merely a matter of the assignment of names. This is based on judgment of individual scholars and is a trivial matter, but it does point up an issue of fundamental significance. In an evolutionary continuum, change occurs more or less gradually through time. At the early and late ends of such change, everyone agrees that different names are justified, but when one form slowly transforms into another without break, the point where the change of name is to be applied is a completely arbitrary matter imposed by the namers for their convenience only -- it is not something compelled by the data.

Paragraph 31 next quotes Donald Johanson, the finder of the Lucy skeleton, that "Australopithecines ... were not men." No argument here. What Johanson actually said was that "Australopithecines were early hominids that were not men," i.e., they were not modern humans, but they were in the human family, hominids. Johanson then said:²⁴⁶

A couple of million years ago, there were types walking about in Africa that were so primitive and had such queer teeth and such small brains that they could not qualify as humans. The big question was: were they ancestors or cousins?

Johanson could not have made it any clearer. His saying that they were not humans does nothing for Creation's argument that they were not ancestors of humans.

A good summary of modern opinions about the australopithecines in this respect was given in 1983 by C. Loring Brace in the article "Humans in Time and Space."²⁴⁷ This would have been available to Creation's author.

The direct evidence, then, gives us a picture of Australopithecus as a terrestrial biped with an ape-sized brain and possessing ape-sized teeth that, however, occlude in a completely human fashion. The locomotor adaptation is so different from that of a typical pongid -- ape -- that the creature is placed in the same family, the Hominidae, with modern human beings, and referred to informally as a hominid. However, this does not make it a human being. With a brain that is only one-third the capacity of the modern human average and teeth that are double the bulk, the Australopithecines warrant separate generic designation -- Australopithecus. The implications of the anatomical, ecological, and archaeological evidence have all been weighed and considered with care [references are given], and despite the differences of opinion among those who have studied the original material, no one doubts the fact that the Australopithecines present that "mosaic of advanced and ancestral characters" that "always" characterizes an evolutionary intermediate (Mayr 1971, p. 50). Within the spectrum of the Australopithecines, then, we find a picture of an intermediate between the pongid and the hominid condition that is just as convincing as that provided by Archaeopteryx of an intermediate between the reptilian and the avian condition.

Brace comments further on how creationists treat the evidence:

Contrast this with the cavalier treatment accorded by creationists, based only on hearsay evidence, secondary sources, and without any firsthand familiarity with the original specimens -- "these creatures were nothing but apes" (Gish 1974, p. 16). The "scientific" creationist account, referring to the same unreliable sources, concludes with unwarranted conviction that Australopithecus was a "long-armed, short-legged, knuckle-walker." Finally, "Australopithecus not only had a brain like an ape, but he also looked like an ape and walked like an ape. He, the same as Ramapithecus, is no doubt simply an extinct ape" (Morris 1974, p. 173).

We have to wonder if the Watchtower Society got its material for the Creation book from some of the scientific creationist sources such as Duane Gish or Henry Morris.

Paragraph 31 finally offers a quotation that refers to ancestors, from Richard Leakey writing in Origins:^247a

Similarly Richard Leakey called it "unlikely that our direct ancestors are evolutionary descendants of the australopithecines."

This quotation leaves out a tremendous amount of background material. Richard Leakey, with his father Louis Leakey, believed that the origin of the Homo line went back much further in time than most other paleoanthropologists did. They did so not because of the evidence, but because of a "gut feel," nothing more. This feeling can be traced back at least as far as the early 20th century anatomists who influenced Louis Leakey and taught Lord Zuckerman. Speaking about a Homo habilis skull he discovered in 1972 that became known as KNM-ER 1470, he said:²⁴⁸

This remarkable skull confirmed two things. First, that the human ancestral line, Homo, originated much earlier than most people suspected, earlier perhaps by as much as a million years. Second, because the history of Homo goes back that far, it means that these individuals were living at the same time as some of the earliest australopithecines, making it unlikely that our direct ancestors are evolutionary descendants of the australopithecines -- cousins, yes, but descendants, no.

Leakey believed that this skull was 2.9 million years old, but it was later dated at less than 2.0 million years, which partly negated his argument. He also believed that Ramapithecus was an ancestor of man,²⁴⁹ which was the accepted wisdom when he wrote in 1977, but Ramapithecus was shown not to be such in the early 1980s. Because the Creation book was published in 1985, and the above material is taken from the same sources that Creation used, this should have been evident to its author.

With regard to the question of transitional fossils, Blueprints commented about the similarities of a fossil called the Black Skull (see below) to both the earlier A. afarensis and the later A. boisei:²⁵⁰

It fits right between afarensis and boisei. It shares unique features with each. It's a perfect transitional form. It's what you would expect to find if you were trying to get from one to the other... It's a case of what is called mosaic evolution.

C. Loring Brace made some comments that show how the similarity of Homo habilis to the australopithecines may be interpreted as due to the one gradually evolving into the other:

... the field work conducted by the Leakey family has led to the discovery of hominid fossils in that time span between 2 and 1.5 million years ago. These display just that mosaic of primitive and advanced features that Ernst Mayr has predicted should occur in evolutionary intermediates... Not unexpectedly this has given rise to a cloud of terminological confusion. The first such specimen to be discovered was by the Leakeys, early in the 1960s... the assemblage was given the label of Homo habilis in a burst of somewhat premature enthusiasm... No definitive description of this specimen has yet been published, nor has the required careful morphological and quantitative analysis yet been done, and it would appear that the assignation of the new species name was improperly proposed...

The jaw and its teeth are completely indistinguishable from a typical specimen of A. africanus. The crushed adolescent cranial bones, however, according to several considered efforts at reconstruction, indicate a brain size that was either at the small end of the H. erectus (Holloway 1980) or the large end of the Australopithecine range of variation...

Then, in 1972, at the site of Koobi Fora in the East Turkana region of northern Kenya, Richard Leakey's group discovered a skull and facial skeleton, given the number ER 1470, that has been the center of conflicting claims and controversy ever since... Its discoverers hailed it as proof that "true Homo" existed nearly 3 million years ago (R. E. F. Leakey 1973; Leakey and Lewin 1977) and therefore as proof that Australopithecus and possibly even H. erectus could not have been our ancestors. This was a theme that Louis Leakey had been pursuing since early in the 1930s, long before Olduvai Gorge had begun to yield its fossil treasures..., and it has been hailed with satisfaction by the creationist whose preconceptions lead them to rejoice in anything that would confound the picture of an orderly course of human evolution...

As it happens, there are flaws in the claims concerning both the date and the anatomical significance of the specimen. Elements in the fauna at the Koobi Fora site are present at other well-dated African sites at an age of between 1.6 and 1.8 million years..., and when tuff specimens from Koobi Fora were reanalyzed with the application of proper laboratory procedures, it became clear that the original figure for ER 1470 was incorrect; its true age was also between 1.6 and 1.8 million years... In addition, the "true Homo" status of the skull also was claimed with somewhat more enthusiasm than a careful appraisal of the evidence would support. As it happens, the long, somewhat "dish-shaped" face and the enormous molar root sockets look perfectly Australopithecine. The brain case itself also looks Australopithecine in form, but, at 750+ cc., it is exactly in-between Australopithecus and Homo...

It is taking nothing away from the significance of ER 1470 to say that it does not support the contentions of its finders. It does fit between two major categories -- the creationists would say "kinds" -- of hominid, and it provides a gratifying picture of one of the steps by which Australopithecus became transformed into Homo. Because it shows such a mixture of features, it is not surprising that the authorities who have studied it have been unable to agree on a named pigeonhole for its assignment. According to one respected authority, it is best called Australopithecus habilis (Walker 1980). Another recognized that it really belongs to the Australopithecine grade of organization, but nevertheless assigned it to genus Homo... Nor is ER 1470 alone in its intermediate status. Other specimens such as ER 1813 and OH 16 also show evidence on the one hand of a reduction in tooth size and on the other of an expansion of brain size that make positive categorical assignment an uncertain thing. All of this, however, is just what one would expect at the time when one genus was in the course of developing into another.

The 1986 find of leg and arm bones, in addition to some cranial parts, which were assigned to H. habilis suggests that it was about the size of A. afarensis and A. africanus, and had a skeleton almost identical to them.^{251, 252} This further supports Brace's argument.

Paragraph 32 says that

if any australopithecines were found alive today, they would be put in zoos with other apes. No one would call them "ape-men."

It may well be true they would be put in zoos, but they would not be classed with apes. They would be in a class by themselves. From the descriptions above it is clear that any creature with a head very like a chimpanzee's but with a body very like a man's would be considered most unusual. This brings up an interesting question: If the theory of evolution is wrong, and these creatures were the products of a creator, what could that creator have had in mind when making them?

It should be noted that Creation makes no mention of Homo habilis.

Paragraph 33 discusses the creature called Homo erectus. The paragraph is distinguished more by what it does not say than by what it does. For example:

Its brain size and shape do fall into the lower range of modern man's.

While true, this statement leaves out a number of significant points. The cranial capacity of H. erectus skulls averaged about three quarters that of modern man. The shape of the skull was very different. The skull was so different that no one would mistake its skull for that of a modern human. The skull bones were much thicker, it had huge brow ridges, the face was much more massive, and the dome of the skull was much smaller. One has only to examine a series of photos of skulls to see this. See for example, National Geographic,²⁵³ for a comparison of Australopithecine and Homo skulls. It does not take an expert to see a structural sequence from H. habilis to H. erectus to archaic H. sapiens and Neanderthal to the modern form of skull. See also Human Evolution: An Illustrated Introduction,²⁵⁴ pages 47, 53, 56, 71, 75-77, and compare the gross differences in skull shape among the above fossils. See also the drawings of skulls in The Myths of Human Evolution,²⁵⁵ on pages 70, 84, 107, 110, 138, 147-149, and 153. Also see any Encyclopedia Britannica after about 1980, under the subjects "Homo erectus" and "Evolution, Human." Creation does not mention the gross differences in skull shape between H. erectus and modern man.

Next, paragraph 33 refers to Encyclopedia Britannica, which said that

"the limb bones thus far discovered have been indistinguishable from those of H[omo] sapiens."

As shown above, this assessment has been superseded by newer information. By comparison with other species, the skeleton is very much like modern man's. But it was much more massive and had far more substantial muscle attachment points. Blueprints²⁵⁶ commented that

these were extremely powerful people, if indeed they were people. They made the brutish Neanderthalers seem positively effete by comparison.

It is interesting to note that Creation used the 1976 Encyclopedia Britannica for the above quotation, rather than the latest edition available before Creation's 1985 publication date. The following parallel quotation from a similar article appearing in the 1984 edition shows why. Note that the 1981 through 1985 edition articles were identical. Under the subject "Homo Erectus" it said:²⁵⁷

the limb bones thus far discovered have been similar to (although more robust than) those of H. sapiens.

Note that the quotation Creation used said the limb bones were indistinguishable from, rather than similar to those of H. sapiens. We were not able to locate a 1976 Britannica, but a 1974 edition^257a said the same thing as quoted in Creation. The article was virtually identical to the 1984 article, except for the above quotation. Very little had changed between 1974 and 1984 concerning H. erectus except the assessment of the limb bones, and Creation used a quotation from the edition that happened to be the most advantageous to its argument. Is this not yet another example of selective use of quotations and of arguing as a literary critic to support a preexisting point of view?

The 1992 Britannica said much the same as the 1984 edition. Under the subject "Homo erectus" it said:²⁵⁸

Most of the anatomical differences between H. erectus and H. sapiens concern the skulls and teeth. The limb bones of H. erectus that have been found so far have been similar to H. sapiens, leading to the inference that H. erectus was a creature of medium stature who walked upright.

What did Britannica mean when it said the limb bones were similar? The 1992 edition Macropaedia, Vol. 18, expanded upon this under the subject "Evolution, Human" on pages 827-828:

The form of these [femur] bones resembles that of modern humans, and H. erectus must have walked upright efficiently. On the other hand, the construction of the bones is robust, a condition also seen in other skeletal members. This robusticity suggests that the life-style of Homo erectus was physically demanding... The total pattern of the bodily structure of H. erectus, as preserved in the bones, is rather different from that of H. sapiens. Parts of the postcranial skeleton are robust but otherwise generally comparable to those of modern humans. The brain is relatively small, though not so small as that of Australopithecus and H. habilis. In addition, in this hominid's thick skull bones and extraordinarily developed eyebrow ridges and occipital torus, some investigators say they see unique, specialized features, not characteristic either of its presumed ancestors or of apes and not pointing to H. sapiens as the direction of subsequent evolution...

Britannica then discussed various theories of descent from early hominids through H. erectus to modern man, showing there is much evidence that is difficult to interpret, and there are several possibilities for reasonable explanations, including one that H. erectus was an evolutionary side branch that did not lead to modern man. It comments that much work needs to be done to sort out all the evidence. Finally it says:

In the meantime, another hypothesis that meets most of the available evidence is that H. erectus was in the process of evolving from pre-Homo erectus -- probably Australopithecus and Homo habilis -- to post-Homo erectus; that is, to Homo sapiens. In most details, the bodily structure of H. erectus fulfills what might have been predicted for an intermediate between Australopithecus and H. sapiens.

The Myths of Human Evolution gave an alternative view:²⁵⁹

In sum, during the period that lasted from about 1.6 million to 0.4 or 0.5 million B.P., nonrobust hominids [referring to A. robustus] seem to be represented by a single species which is both geographically and locally variable, but which has an instantly recognizable gestalt. The major cranial characteristics of this species, Homo erectus, have already been enumerated, and postcranially it is clear that Homo erectus was robust but an erect biped in the manner of ourselves. What many have found remarkable is that over this long span of time, well over a million years and perhaps as long as 1.2 million, Homo erectus shows virtually no change; local and geographical variations are at least as striking as differences between older and younger members of the lineage. Some scholars have suggested that brain size does show an increase over time, pointing to the fact that ER-3733 had a brain of under 900 cc., while the largest of the late Choukoutien population had a brain volume of over 1,200 cc. One should point out, however, that after the East Turkana specimens the oldest firmly dated Homo erectus is the Olduvai skullcap, dated at about 1.2 million years and which has a capacity of almost 1,100 cc., larger than all but two of the Choukoutien specimens, which are the best part of a million years younger. Indeed, a recent attempt to quantify variation in Homo erectus over time has failed to show significant trends that would convincingly suggest that the species was undergoing any gradual transformation.

Paragraph 33 next says of H. erectus:

However, it is unclear whether it was human or not.

This is only in the judgment of Creation's author. He leaves it vague only because the Society does not want to commit itself on evidence that so clearly could cause difficulties for the traditional Biblical viewpoint. The Society probably feels the chances of getting burned are too great. Paleontologists judge that it was not a modern human, but was a member of the human family. This is fairly well confirmed by the presence of cultural artifacts, such as tools and the remains of hearths found in association with H. erectus.^259a The point is whether H. erectus was a member of the human family, since it is obvious that it was not a modern human. That it was not quite fully human is suggested by the fact that no remains have been found in an obvious burial, in contrast with the later Neanderthals.

As the expression says, a picture is worth a thousand words. National Geographic contains a picture of a skeleton discovered in 1984, of a Homo erectus boy about twelve years old at the time of death 1.6 million years ago.²⁶⁰ It is the most complete H. erectus skeleton ever unearthed. The skeleton is virtually human, but the skull is something else again. The accompanying article comments:

This spectacular find dramatically confirms the antiquity of the human form. In its parts and proportion only the skull of the Lake Turkana boy would look odd to someone untrained in anatomy. The rest of his skeleton, essentially human, differs only subtly from that of a modern boy.

And too, because it is a youth's skeleton and so complete, it offers us a unique glimpse of growth and development in early humans. At five feet four inches tall, the boy from Turkana was surprisingly large compared with modern boys his age; he could well have grown to six feet. Suitably clothed and with a cap to obscure his low forehead and beetle brow, he would probably go unnoticed in a crowd today.

A later report on this find said:²⁶¹

In 1985 Richard Leakey and his colleagues reported the recovery of the remains of a remarkably complete skeleton of an approximately 12-year-old Homo erectus youth, which revealed some surprising anatomy. For instance, in the cervical and thoracic vertebrae, the hole through which the spinal cord runs is significantly smaller than in modern humans -- presumably indicating a smaller demand for nerve signal traffic. In addition, the spines on all the vertebrae are longer and do not point as far back as in modern humans, the significance of which is puzzling.

The thigh bone is unusual, in that the femoral neck is relatively long while the femoral head -- which is part of the ball-and-socket joint with the pelvis -- is large. This combination is something of a mix between modern human and australopithecine anatomy: modern humans have a short femoral neck attached to a large head, while in australopithecines the neck is long and the head is small.

The pelvis itself indicates that the birth canal was smaller than in modern humans, which implies that infants born to Homo erectus mothers would have needed to continue fetal growth rates after birth. This so-called secondary altricial condition means that a more extended period of child care was inevitable, which might well have had important social consequences.

The Homo erectus youth, which came from 1.6 million-year-old deposits on the west side of Lake Turkana in Kenya, is 'the first [early fossil hominid] in which brain and body size can be measured accurately on the same individual', note Leakey and his colleagues.

After paragraph 33 says that it is unclear whether Homo erectus was human or not, we finally read:

If so, then it was merely a branch of the human family and died off.

This statement is so absurdly obvious as to be disingenuous, since Homo erectus is clearly not alive today. It is reminiscent of a statement made in 1799 by one Charles White, a British physician. He tried to show the gradation of life forms inherent in the "Great Chain of Being" concept popular at the time. In describing this idea Roger Lewin quoted him and said:²⁶²

"Ascending the line of gradation, we come at last to the white European; who being most removed from the brute creation, may, on that account, be considered as the most beautiful of the human race," opined Charles White... White concluded a panegyric on the supposedly superior qualities of the European form with the following: "Where, except on the bosom of the European woman, [can one find] two such plump and snow white hemispheres, tipt with vermillian?" Quite so.

The next subtitle in the Creation book is "The Human Family." It first describes the mistakes made initially in identifying and reconstructing Neanderthal man, then judges that they were fully modern humans. Here again, Creation selectively emphasizes the similarities and ignores the differences, because that suits the author's purpose. In contrast, the section describing the australopithecines emphasizes the differences and ignores the similarities.

The section completely leaves out a class of fossils that has long confused the paleontological community, i.e., what have been called archaic Homo sapiens. The fossils are often only partial skulls, and display a mix of features reminiscent of Homo erectus, the Neanderthals and modern humans. Concerning the postulated evolution of H. erectus into H. sapiens the 1992 Encyclopedia Britannica, Macropaedia, Vol. 18, under the subject "Evolution, Human," on pages 827-828, discussed the time span during which H. erectus existed, and said that

there is a group of later specimens that show some features of H. erectus but are commonly regarded as transitional forms or as members of H. sapiens; these include later Middle Pleistocene specimens from Europe (discovered at sites such as Bilzingsleben, Petralona, and Montmaurin), from northwestern Africa (Sale, Sidi 'Abd ar-Rahman, and Rabat), and from Asia (the Ta-li find of 1978). Other later forms suggest that H. erectus had given rise to several regionally distinct forms, or sub-species, of archaic H. sapiens, represented by late Middle Pleistocene or early Late Pleistocene fossils from Africa (Kabwe/Broken Hill, Elandsfontein [Hopefield/Saldanha], Cave of Hearths, Lake Ndutu, Omo, Bodo) and Europe (Swanscombe, Steinheim, Biache, Ehringsdorf, La Chaise). Thus, the problem of recognizing populations as belonging to H. erectus becomes more difficult; the boundaries of the species become blurred. These are the transitional zones in which a predecessor species seems to have been grading imperceptibly into its evolutionary product, H. erectus, and in which H. erectus apparently was undergoing further evolutionary change into its descendant species, H. sapiens, to which modern humans belong.

A similar picture of confusion in attempting to classify many fossils that are now called archaic Homo sapiens is found in The Myths of Human Evolution. After discussing certain problems some paleontologists had in trying to classify some fossils, it said:²⁶³

A similar sort of reasoning seems to have applied in studies of the gray area into which we move after leaving behind forms that are clearly recognizable as Homo erectus. Following about 0.4 million B.P. we have a sampling of hominids from many parts of the world that are clearly not Homo erectus but yet do not resemble modern Homo sapiens either. And even though a very solid case can be made for saying that if one had to choose between placing them in Homo erectus or in Homo sapiens the obvious choice for these hominids with their big faces, heavy browridges, and long crania is the former, they are instead conventionally classified as Homo sapiens. In deference to the profound differences between these fossil forms and modern men, however, they are referred to as "archaic Homo sapiens." This is quite evidently not a very helpful or constructive stance to take in any attempt to understand these hominids, but it does have the advantage of eliminating the necessity of figuring out how many species are represented in the overall fossil assemblage, and of what to call them -- no small bonus.

Another book, in discussing the debate about how many species are actually represented in Homo erectus, archaic Homo sapiens, and modern man, had this to say:²⁶⁴

Although there is debate about whether or not more than one species should be recognised among this material, there is agreement that all of these erectus-like populations represent the same grade of hominid, one structurally and temporally intermediate between the older H. habilis and the younger H. sapiens.

In terms of our interest in the capacity of the fossil record to demonstrate links, H. erectus is of particular interest because it was clearly the one that eventually gave rise to our own species, H. sapiens. A recent study of all known H. erectus specimens demonstrates a continuous change in morphology throughout the time span of the species from the more 'classic' erectus-type features of the older African (Turkana) and Indonesian (Sangiran) populations to the more sapiens-like features of the populations from Ngandong (Wolpoff, 1984).

The overall transition from erectus-type morphologies to sapiens-type morphologies is so well documented that some populations intermediate in morphology and age simply cannot be placed definitely in either species. For example, the skulls from deposits along the Solo river at Ngandong, Java, estimated to be about 120 000 years old, represent perfectly intermediate morphologies and appear to represent populations living at the time when the erectus-sapiens transition was taking place (Brace, 1983).

Some anthropologists who have studied the H. erectus and early H. sapiens material suggest that because it demonstrates such a gradual transition, there is no point in even trying to distinguish H. erectus from H. sapiens. They suggest that we should regard them simply as ancestral and descendent phases of one species, H. sapiens. Other anthropologists (e.g. Rightmire, 1985) who have looked at this transitional sequence, suggest that there are a few features that can be used to separate the sequence into two forms. However, all anthropologists who have recently studied this material agree that there can be no other conclusion than that H. sapiens developed from H. erectus, whatever taxonomic distinction is given to the H. erectus material.

Because erectus-type morphology grades into sapiens-type morphology, it is difficult to say precisely when H. sapiens made its first appearance in the fossil record. Among the structurally intermediate populations whose taxonomic position is unclear there are many 'archaic' types of H. sapiens, some as old as about 0.3 million years. Less controversial early sapiens material ranges in age from about 75 000 to 150 000 years.

At this point it should be clear that the picture of fossil man is far more complicated than Creation is willing to admit. Despite this, Creation concludes:

Thus, the evidence is clear that belief in "ape-men" is unfounded. Instead, humans have all the earmarks of being created -- separate and distinct from any animal... Any apelike creatures that lived in the past were just that -- apes, or monkeys -- not humans. And fossils of ancient humans that differ slightly from humans of today simply demonstrated variety within the human family, just as today we have many varieties living side by side.

Creation's conclusion may well be true, but it is not based on any evidence it has presented. Instead, it is based on a set of misrepresentations and half-truths, designed only to "prove" its version of special creation to people ignorant of all the facts. Creation's argument is identical to that of the scientific creationists in claiming that whatever fossils are found are merely varieties of a created kind.

Beginning on page 96, Creation's next section presents an argument that the geological dating methods used to date fossil remains are completely wrong. This material has been covered extensively elsewhere in these essays, but the points related to this discussion will again be presented. While it may well be true that dating methods are not as reliable as some scientists would like to believe, they have certainly been verified far better than creationists would like to admit.

Before considering what Creation said about geological dating, let's note what a prior Watchtower publication said about radioactive dating. The 1967 book Did Man Get Here By Evolution Or By Creation? said on pages 99-100:

What is often ignored, too, is the fact that there was a much greater shielding of the atmosphere from cosmic rays about 4,300 years ago. The Bible explains that prior to that time a vast water canopy was suspended high above the earth, and that its fall caused a global deluge in the days of the man Noah, who wrote an eyewitness account of the event. (Psalm 104:6, 7; Genesis 1:6, 7; 7:11, 12) This water canopy shielded the atmosphere from cosmic rays to a greater extent than is true today, thus reducing the formation of radiocarbon. That is why objects dated from before that time appear older than they really are, for they did not absorb as much C-14 as objects have absorbed since then.

One person who read the book commented:

I am particularly impressed by the number of mistakes squeezed into 4 sentences. Let us count them, no?

1) Variation in carbon influx is accounted for, calibration tables have been made by use of tree rings.

2) The variation is probably not due to shielding but due to variation in the density of interstellar dust.

3) There is no evidence for any severe reduction 4,300 years ago.

4) The bible makes no reference to such a canopy, this has been read into accounts due to the ancient world view that the universe was surrounded by water (not the earth).

5) There is no known mechanism for keeping a mass of water suspended above the earth (friction would bring it down in a matter of months if not days).

6) The fall of a mass of water from space would raise its temperature to well over the boiling point.

7) Noah did not write an eyewitness account of the flood, and no record of anything he wrote still exists.

8) Psalms were written during the time of David and Solomon. While the psalm in question may be based on the event, it was no more written by Noah than "Julius Caesar" was written by Brutus.

9) Even traditionally Genesis was written by Moses, not Noah. A careful analysis suggests it is the combination of the written records of three different types, not a single person.

10) Water of thickness even a few yards would prevent cosmic rays from entering at all, not "reduce" them.

Much research has taken place since 1967, so that the argument has very little weight; so little that Creation doesn't use it. Continuing with the Creation book, in the section "What About the Dates?" on page 96 it said:

Biblical chronology indicates that a period of about 6,000 years has passed since the creation of humans. Why, then, does one often read about far longer periods of time since acknowledged human types of fossils appeared?

A more accurate statement is that Watchtower Society chronology says that 6000 years have passed since the creation of humans. Many Biblical scholars say that there is good reason to question the practice of simply adding up the lifespans Genesis gives for the patriarchs, so it is unwarranted to dogmatically claim that man was created almost exactly 6000 years ago. Next, Creation says:

Before concluding that Bible chronology is in error, consider that radioactive dating methods have come under sharp criticism by some scientists. A scientific journal reported on studies showing that "dates determined by radioactive decay may be off -- not only by a few years, but by orders of magnitude." It said: "Man, instead of having walked the earth for 3.6 million years, may have been around for only a few thousand."

These statements are extremely misleading on several counts. First, the reference is to Popular Science magazine, which is by no stretch of the imagination a "scientific journal." One might just as well refer to The National Enquirer as a news journal. Referring to Popular Science in this way is an attempt to lend "scientific authority" to a publication that has none. Second, the Popular Science article is mostly about the success of various dating methods, and only in the last few paragraphs is space given to the views of a single physicist, Robert Gentry, who dissents from the usual view. Third, the fact that the dissenter is a young-earth creationist who believes the universe was created in six literal days is not made clear. Statements from six-literal-day creationists regarding the accuracy of radioactive dating ought to be viewed like comments from Richard Nixon that politicians never lie. Fourth, the article's statement that man "may have been around for only a few thousand years" is merely a conclusion the article points out can be drawn from the views of Robert Gentry. It is not a conclusion the magazine itself, using its editorial voice, is making -- but Creation makes it appear it is. The reader gets the impression the article presents much scientific evidence showing radioactive dating is on shaky ground. But simply reading the Popular Science article shows that is not what it's about. Here are some excerpts from the article. Judge for yourself whether Creation gives a correct view to its readers. Better yet, read the article yourself.²⁶⁵

So, today, everything -- human artifacts, animal remains, ancient rocks -- can be dated fairly accurately. The dates may be off a little, but that's mainly a matter of impurities in the sample or need to refine techniques, say the scientists involved.

Yet major mysteries and curious anomalies remain -- the odd speculations advanced by Columbia Union College's Robert Gentry, for instance.

Physicist Gentry believes that all of the dates determined by radioactive decay may be off -- not only by a few years, but by orders of magnitude.

His theory revolves around "halos," tiny, ringlike discolorations found within coalified wood (wood on its way to becoming coal) and mica, often in the proximity of radioactive uranium or thorium. Some halos can be explained in terms of conventional radioactive decay. Others, known as giant halos, cannot. They're simply too big to be caused by alpha particles thrown off by known isotopes, and they don't fit into any accepted theory. If the theory of radioactive decay is weak in one spot, says Gentry, doubt is cast on whatever answers isotopes give you.

Further, when Gentry studies halos in coalified wood, he finds that the uranium/lead ratios are often not at all what they should be. "Since the coalified wood was obtained from deposits supposedly at least tens of millions of years old," he says, "the ratio between uranium-238 and lead-206 should be low." They're not. They're so high, in fact, that "presently accepted ages may be too high by a factor of thousands." And man, instead of having walked the earth for 3.6 million years, may have been around for only a few thousand. "The possibility of reducing the 4.5-billion-year history of earth by a factor of a thousand," he says with some ire, "has not yet been seriously considered."

Most scientists simply dismiss the idea. As one physicist told me, "You can believe it or not; I don't."

"I realize it's difficult to believe," counters Gentry. "It would invalidate the whole underlying principle of radioactive dating: that the rates of decay are forever unvarying -- an untestable assumption."

Some research on Robert Gentry turned up the following:²⁶⁶

Mr. Gentry's findings were published almost ten years ago and have been the subject of some discussion in the scientific community. The discoveries have not, however, led to the formulation of any scientific hypothesis or theory which would explain a relatively recent inception of the earth or a worldwide flood. Gentry's discovery has been treated as a minor mystery which will eventually be explained. It may deserve further investigation, but the National Science Foundation has not deemed it to be of sufficient import to support further funding.

Here are some other comments, from physicist and professor of science history, Stephen G. Brush, concerning a number of points of scientific creationist criticism, including Robert Gentry's, of radioactive dating:²⁶⁷

7. The existence of primordial polonium 218 halos in minerals indicates that the earth was not formed gradually over a long period of time but was created in a few hours "by Fiat nearly 6 millenia ago" (see Gentry 1979).

According to Gentry, the halos he has observed in certain minerals were produced by the decay of primordial polonium 218, an isotope with a half life of only three minutes. If his interpretation were correct, it would imply that the earth was created in a few minutes, but Gentry presents no basis for a quantitative estimate of when this event occurred. While he has attempted to cast doubt on the long time scale based on radioactive dating, I have not found in any of his publications a criticism specific enough to call for a reply. There are alternative explanations for the halos that he attributes to primordial polonium (York 1979). In particular, Hashemi-Nezhad et al. (1979) showed experimentally that the diffusion of lead in mica can be rapid enough to explain the anomalous polonium halos. According to one of the experimenters in this group, "the haloes are inconsistent with creation less than tens to hundreds of millions of years ago unless one invents two easily observable but unobserved lead isomers of quite improbable characteristics" (Fremlin 1981).

Gentry does not claim that his results lead directly to a specific age for the earth, but he argues that the ratios of uranium 238 to lead 206 found in coalified wood from the Colorado Plateau could be explained by an infiltration of uranium a few thousand years ago (Gentry et al. 1976b, and telephone conversation, 16 September 1981). To accept his view that the infiltration event was associated with the creation of the earth would require discarding theories based on a large amount of data from many areas of science in order to explain a single isolated type of observation. It does not seem sensible to throw out well-established principles of science without having alternative principles that could explain at least most of the same observations, and no such alternative exists (Damon 1979; York 1979). This is a good illustration of the fact that no scientific theory can or must explain all observations and that a theory that is able to give satisfactory explanation of most observations will not be replaced unless a better one is available. Gentry's postulate of recent creation of the earth is contradicted by so many other facts that it has gained no support from other scientists who are familiar with this field. (See Dalrymple 1982a for further details on problems in Gentry and other creationists' critiques of radioactive dating.)

It should be evident by now that the Popular Science article's reference to "the odd speculations advanced by... Robert Gentry" means precisely that. The Creation book's quotation misrepresents the article.

To round out the discussion on Robert Gentry, Gentry wrote a book in 1986 entitled Creation's Tiny Mystery, in which he discussed his work on polonium halos. In it he repeated his theory that the granite "basement rocks" of the earth are "the primordial Genesis rocks," from Precambrian times, and were created instantaneously about six thousand years ago, "by divine fiat." This is consistent with his religious view as a 7^th-Day Adventist, which religion teaches that the earth was created in six literal 24-hour days. A review of this book²⁶⁸ showed Gentry's gross misunderstanding of geology in general. He misidentified calcite rocks as granites and claimed that metamorphism had not occurred in rock samples that were clearly metamorphic. He claimed that granite intrusions cutting across already existing metamorphic rock, which was originally sedimentary rock that had been itself intruded by gabbro rock, were primordial. The Precambrian Canadian Shield is a complex geological area that has been shown by over one hundred years of geological field work to consist of a very large number of diverse kinds of rock, igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary, most of which has undergone subsequent metamorphism. Some of the sedimentary rock even contained stromatolites -- ancient algal mats that are very rare today. Gentry claimed that the entire mass was created in one day, and God created it to have only the appearance of age, thereby fooling thousands of geologists. It is clear that Gentry will interpret scientific data in whatever way lends support to his preconceived notion of six-literal-day creation. Does this procedure sound familiar?

Based on information presented elsewhere in these essays, it is clear that independent evidence, in the form of ancient coral growth rings and the slowing of the earth's rate of rotation, in the form of ice cores, and in the correlation between paleomagnetic reversals on land and in ocean-bottom sediment cores, confirms the general validity of radioactive dating methods. To convincingly show these dating methods to be invalid, one must show how radioactive dating consistently shows errors, and show how independent methods that point to similar conclusions are also invalid. In particular it must be shown how two or more invalid methods can be consistent with one another. It is not sufficient to argue that "men make mistakes, so all scientific methods may be wrong," as the Watchtower Society invariably does, and has done in Creation's section "What About the Dates?"

As an example of how the correlation of paleomagnetic reversals and ocean-bottom sediment cores shed light on the dating of fossils in Olduvai Gorge, note the following.²⁶⁹ In the 1960s three geologists found that

the indelible magnetic record of the earth fell neatly into four "polarity epochs," punctuated by much shorter periods of reversed polarity, which they called "events." The first one of these quick-shot reversals to come to light is called the Olduvai Event, named after a busy little canyon cut on the edge of the Serengeti Plain. Discovered by Hay and Gromme in 1963, the Olduvai Event is a period of normal, northward polarity [of the earth's magnetic field] in an upside-down time called the Matuyama Epoch. Hay and Gromme found that the reversal in polarity lasted through the whole of Bed I times, on up into the lower part of Bed II. There is nothing intrinsically "datable" about a particular paleomagnetic flip-flop: All you know is that it happened before some flips, and after other flops. But since the order of events is consistent, if you can pin an absolute age on an event at one location by some other means, then you've got a date for that event that applies the world over. In 1972 geologist Neil Opdyke analyzed the magnetic orientation of some deep-sea cores from the ocean bed at several different locations around the world. He found the Olduvai Event clearly and consistently recorded. By comparing the paleomagnetic data with known rates of sedimentation of the sea bottom, Opdyke figured out that the Olduvai Event lasted from approximately 1.85 to roughly 1.7 million years ago, a period of 150,000 years.

That evidence from paleomagnetism fit very nicely with the potassium-argon date of 1.8 million for Olduvai Tuff IB, which is found near the bottom of the Olduvai Event at the Gorge itself. It also gave some muscle to estimates for the rest of Bed I -- including Tuff IF at the top, and IC and ID sandwiched between.

The Society's claim that man has been on earth for only 6000 years has a serious implication with respect to all the fossils that have been unearthed that are definitely in the human family. The fossils have been found in all sorts of geological settings, some of which have undergone a tremendous amount of alteration by geological processes since the fossils were laid down. See, for example, a discussion in Scientific American of the extensive geological changes over the last four million years in the Laetoli region of Tanzania, where many hominid fossils have been found.²⁷⁰ It is simply not possible to compress all that geological activity into just 6000 years. How do all these hominid fossils fit in with the Bible's Flood account? Do we assign all fully modern humans to post-Flood times and everything else to pre-Flood?

The alternative hardly seems better. If we postulate that the human family contains only the Neanderthals and fully modern humans but not Homo erectus or archaic Homo sapiens, the dating problem is much less severe, but we then have the question, What were those ancient creatures? They had skeletons nearly the same as modern humans, their skulls were different enough to be the source of much controversy over classifying them even while having brain capacities identical to modern humans in the case of archaic H. sapiens, stone tools have definitely been found in association with them, etc. They had nearly the same physical form as humans and left cultural remains that are indistinguishable from those of some modern human populations. Where does that leave one who believes that God created man uniquely? Were those "near humans" almost but not quite intelligent? How does this fit in with the Adam and Eve story, with its implications for the doctrine of original sin? Clearly the problems with either view are immense.

Paragraph 40 of Creation says:

Keep in mind that truly reliable evidence of man's activity on earth is given, not in millions of years, but in thousands.

By "reliable evidence," Creation really means "what is written in the Bible as interpreted by the Watchtower Society," although the Society does accept some other written history as valid. By this statement, Creation is claiming that only written history is reliable, and that all non-written historical sciences are invalid. That other means of determining evidence of man's activity are valid can be seen in certain very clear geological discoveries.

For example, deposits of windblown sediment called loess cover extensive parts of the world. These deposits sometimes span many hundreds of thousands of years of deposition, and in them can be seen cycles of climate change corresponding to the roughly 100,000 year glacial cycles of the last couple of million years. See our essay on The Flood for more information. One loess area contains evidence of human activity buried under as much as 200 feet of loess, corresponding to several cycles of glaciation. The excavations are described in Scientific American:²⁷¹

Recently archaeological sites have been discovered in the Soviet Central Asian republic of Tadzhikistan that are covered by more than 60 meters of windblown loess. Several lines of evidence date these traces of human activity to approximately a quarter of a million years ago, a time that falls in the later Lower Paleolithic. In addition to their archaeological content the loess deposits of Tadzhikistan have revealed much else of interest. They contain evidence of an apparently continuous sequence of warm-to-cold climatic oscillations that span the past two million years -- the entire Pleistocene epoch. The combination of the archaeological and the climatic information stored in the loess provides a glimpse of early human adaptations to a continental, highland environment in Lower Paleolithic times...

The age of the deposits is being assessed by the paleomagnetic dating of fine particles of the iron ore magnetite in the loess, by the thermoluminescence dating of particles of quartz (a major constituent of the loess) and by stratigraphic correlation. Archaeologists and paleontologists are also studying the artifacts and fossil remains that have been uncovered...

One immediately apparent feature of the Tadzhikistan loess exposures is the alternation of thick layers of unaltered loess and distinct "horizons" of soil. The soil horizons were formed when the surface of the loess was altered in periods of relatively moist and warm climate. In many places the soil structure is complex, and two or even three horizons overlap, reflecting the dynamic interaction of two simultaneous processes: sedimentation and soil formation. Typically the soils buried in the loess are reddish brown, contrasting with the yellow of the loess; they are three to five meters thick and have a heavy crust of calcium carbonate near the base. The most intense zone of weathering is usually in the 1.5 meters of soil above the crust.

The physical and chemical properties of the buried soils are analogous to the "chestnut" soils... that are formed under semiarid steppe conditions today. The plant pollen and snail species found in the loess, however, indicate that it accumulated when the climate was considerably cooler and drier than it is today. Thus the alternating layers of loess and soil are evidence of major climatic oscillations in the region. It is assumed these oscillations reflect the climatic changes that in more northerly latitudes controlled the advance and retreat of the continental ice sheets throughout the Pleistocene...

Various paleomagnetic events are detectable in the loess of Tadzhikistan, the most important one being the transition some 690,000 years ago between the Matuyama magnetic period, when the earth's magnetic polarity was the opposite of what it is now, and the Brunhes period of today... In the six sections [currently being studied] where the Matuyama-Brunhes boundary has been detected... nine of the soil complexes consistently lie above it. The number of soil complexes above the Matuyama-Brunhes boundary in Tadzhikistan corresponds fairly closely to the number above the boundary in the loess of central Europe. The number of soil complexes is also in agreement with the record of climatic oscillations preserved in deep-sea sediments...

Note the interlocking correspondence of various types of evidence from all over the globe.

The stone tools that demonstrate man's presence in the area are all associated with buried soils that lie above the Matuyama-Brunhes paleomagnetic boundary. Specifically they have been found in the fifth, sixth and seventh soil complexes (counting from the surface down). Their position above the boundary means that the tools are less than 690,000 years old. But how much less? Fortunately another paleomagnetic datum, the Blake event, helps to narrow the possible range. The Blake event, a brief reversal of the Brunhes polarity, occurred about 110,000 years ago; evidence of it is present in the loess above the fifth buried soil complex at three of the 12 soil exposures where tools have been found. Clearly a substantial length of time was needed for the successive accumulations of loess and the development of the soils that lie between the seventh and the fifth buried soil complexes. It therefore seems reasonable, if not conservative, to estimate the age of the three soil complexes where tools are found as being somewhere between the late Middle Pleistocene and the early Upper Pleistocene. In terms of absolute chronology that would be between 250,000 and 130,000 years ago...

Thermoluminescence dating is based on the fact that a number of crystalline solids, such as the quartz particles of the Tadzhikistan loesses, store energy from background ionizing radiation after they are buried and release it in the form of light when they are heated. The intensity of the light they emit is proportional to the length of time they have been buried. Such solids do not store energy while they are exposed to the sun's ultraviolet radiation at the surface; they are therefore set at zero, so to speak, until they are buried...

The thermoluminescence dates relating to the stone tools (that is, the dates indicating the age of loess deposits above or below the buried soils where the tools have been found) range from a minimum of 110,000 ± 13,000 (loess above and therefore younger than Soil No. 5 at the site Khonako II) to a maximum of 280,000 ± 48,000 (loess below and therefore older than Soil No. 7 at Khonako I).

Two of the 12 locations where the buried soils have been found to contain stone tools, Lakhuti I and Karatau, have been excavated... At both of the excavated sites the tools were within a soil horizon; the same is true of the other 10 locations. At the excavated sites they were found mainly in the 1.5-meter zone of most intense weathering that lies above the carbonate horizon. This position indicates that hunter-gatherers occupied the sites only at times of optimum climate, when conditions both of temperature and of precipitation were most favorable for plants and animals. The tools were made out of metamorphic rock that had been worn into pebbles and cobbles in stream beds...

The stone tools found Lakhuti I and at Karatau are very simple; some prehistorians might even describe them as crude or primitive. Their presence in Tadzhikistan some 250,000 years ago, however, is incontrovertible evidence that a simple core-and-flake assemblage of tools was sufficient to meet the adaptive requirements of a demanding habitat.

The last paragraph in chapter seven of Creation quotes English author Malcolm Muggeridge on the lack of evidence for evolution. What Creation fails to point out, as it has in so many other cases, is that Muggeridge was advancing his religious views. He was not a scientist but was an acid-tongued popular journalist and British television personality, and he has no more credentials than any other non-specialist. Muggeridge was, in fact, a zealous convert from atheism to Catholicism, and became one of the foremost Catholic apologists of the last two decades.

By this point it should be evident that the field of human evolution is extremely confusing. It should also be evident that the Society is not interested in seeing that its followers are presented with complete information about the fossil record of man. It is interested only in presenting a slanted view of that record to bolster its claim that the Bible gives the only historical account of man's creation. Many other religious organizations have parallel goals. As C. Loring Brace wrote in 1983, when the scientific creationist movement was succeeding in getting laws passed restricting the teaching of evolution:²⁷²

Recently, the proponents of a view that they label "scientific creationism" have argued that "the creation-cataclysm model of earth history fits all the known facts of man's history much better than the evolution model and it recognizes that man's agriculture and other basic technologies are essentially as old as man himself" (Morris 1975, p. 152; Morris 1974, pp. 171-201). Such a view can only be maintained, however, by either ignoring or denying virtually all of the data and their implications accumulated by biologists, paleontologists, archaeologists, and anthropologists as a result of a century and more of increasingly carefully checked and substantiated work.

The creationists have complained that it is unfair for a teacher to present only the scientific evidence for evolution. To do this, they claim, is "a process of indoctrination, and the school degenerates into a hatchery of parrots" (Morris 1974, p. 178). But the scientific evidence for evolution can be examined, questioned, and tested -- as the creationists themselves have been doing for over a century in the effort to discredit it -- which is a splendid demonstration of just how science works. Creation, on the other hand, as its own supporters freely grant, is "inaccessible to the scientific method." No "scientific experiment" can be devised to test it since "the Creator does not create at the whim of a scientist" (Morris 1974, p. 5). It is creation and not evolution, then, that is "indoctrination," and if students are required to spend equal time learning it in the public schools, these institutions would indeed degenerate into "a hatchery of parrots."

The one aspect of science that creationists will allow is the predictions that they claim for their model. But when students of the human prehistoric record produce evidence that shows such things as the gradual transformation of nonhuman to human form and the very late appearance of agriculture in the spectrum of human existence, the creationists either ignore the facts or deny that they can be assessed by the verifiable techniques of current science. Of course, they have every right to do and believe as they wish, but they do not have the right to enforce the teaching of their religiously based convictions in the public schools under the name of science.

While the Watchtower Society does not endorse "scientific creationism" in the sense described above, it uses the same techniques of denying facts, denying scientist's interpretations, and formulating specious arguments as do the scientific creationists. It has quoted from and even plagiarized their material. Its knowledge of the "truth" and its position as "God's channel of communication" to mankind justify such behavior.

In conclusion, a statement by author William Fix seems appropriate. He wrote about many difficulties evolutionists face in defending the theory, and showed how poor the evidence is in many cases for things that are claimed to be rock solid:²⁷³

There is one conclusion I would emphasize. To give school-children or anyone else the impression that the only scientific way to explain man is by slow evolution from the animal kingdom is totally unwarranted by the positive facts and a serious abuse of the public trust. It is also a disservice to the scientific enterprise. I hasten to add, if it is not already clear, that I am not promoting a literal reading of the first chapters of Genesis. Indeed, I am convinced that the emergence of man is a far deeper mystery than either creationists or evolutionists contend.

Part 9: The Society's View of Science and Evolution

It is evident that the Society's writers have only a superficial understanding of science. Therefore they often present arguments that are biased and incomplete. Nowhere is this more evident than when the Society publishes material on the theory of evolution. Often their difficulty manifests itself in the presentation of incomplete data, or in a series of partial quotations, as illustrated above. At other times their difficulty is with their overall understanding or their reasoning process. This is well illustrated by the Society's statements about whether various aspects of evolution are "facts" or are "theories." In this section we will examine these difficulties of understanding.

First let's establish precisely what we mean when we call something a fact or a theory. We will do this by examining how the Society handles the difference between fact and theory. Concerning the theory of evolution, the July 22, 1987 Awake! said in the article "When a Fact Is Not a Fact":

A fact is something that exists beyond question. It is an actuality, an objective reality. It is established by solid evidence.

A theory is something unproved but at times assumed true for the sake of argument. It has yet to be proved as factual. Nonetheless, sometimes something is declared to be a fact that is only a theory.

The theory of organic evolution falls into this category.

Scientists often use what is called "the scientific method" in their work. Understanding the scientific method requires understanding how facts and theories are related. The Creation book describes its version of the scientific method on page 50:

This has been described as follows: Observe what happens; based on those observations, form a theory as to what may be true; test the theory by further observations and by experiments; and watch to see if the predictions based on the theory are fulfilled.

These statements are true but incomplete. The implication is that if the predictions are fulfilled the theory may then be classed as fact. However, the statements show the lack of understanding Watchtower writers have of more general scientific methods, and in particular of how these methods apply to the theory of evolution. The problem is that they do not understand the difference between the historical and the experimental sciences. A few quotations from scientists show that the distinction between fact and theory is not nearly so clear as implied in the above simplistic explanation.

[A core principle of science] is the observer's independence from any commitment to a preconceived idea. The modern scientist does not work blindly, but he or she must be always prepared to modify or even abandon a hypothesis that doesn't jibe with experimental or natural observations.^273a

Science uses multiple working hypotheses, choosing the one that best explains the greatest number of observations... A fact is a generally accepted observation, not an eternally unalterable truth. (The observation that the sun goes around the earth was a fact for thousands of years, until astronomers made additional observations that would not fit this hypothesis.)²⁷⁴

A "fact is a generally accepted observation," or as Webster's²⁷⁵ says, "a piece of information presented as having objective reality." This means that not everyone accepts all "facts" as true. No matter the evidence for some point of view, some will remain unconvinced. There are always some who oppose the generally accepted view. Also there are degrees of certainty about "facts." Some people today believe the earth is flat. This belief, they claim, is based on the Bible. As for all those photos from space, NASA is playing a carnie game. Here are some amusing comments about the Flat Earth Society:²⁷⁶

Charles K. Johnson, president of the fifteen-hundred-member International Flat Earth Research Society, makes it very plain that the aim of the Bible is a "one world, flat-Earth society, for honesty and decency and that sort of thing."... As far as science goes, he can offer many seemingly clear evidences to support his position. For example, anyone can see that water in a tub is flat. Therefore, if you expand on what you see right in front of you, you can only conclude that the whole earth has to be flat as well! The earth is a disc-shaped plane, Johnson argues, and there is even experimental evidence for this conclusion. In Columbus's famous 1492 test, three ships sailed the seas to the New World. Did Columbus fall off the earth? Not at all, which demonstrates conclusively that the earth cannot be a globe! Nonetheless, even the best of experiments must be repeatable, so Johnson's wife Marjory sailed to America from Australia and later swore in an affidavit that she never "hung by her feet in Australia," did not get on the ship upside down, and "did not sail straight up." She sailed directly across the ocean. Johnson considers this a very important proof. If it sounds absurd to the rest of us, it is probably because we have been raised on the globular hypothesis without ever getting the chance to hear the scientific evidences in favor of his view.

The point is that all "facts" must remain generally accepted observations, rather than "absolutely true" chunks of knowledge, because no one has a direct line to an absolute authority that has the final word.

The preceding quotation from Creation shows how poorly the Society understands what the scientific method entails. In reading that passage one gets the impression that the scientific method means nothing more than starting an experiment, then standing back and watching what happens. There is much of that in science, but the scientific method entails much more:

A ... serious deficiency in the scientific method used by the creationists is their repeated insistence on experimental evidence and their insistence that there be no exceptions. The creationists are fond of claiming that for something to be scientifically demonstrable, it must be amenable to proof by experiment and it must be without exceptions. These requirements are probably valid in certain areas of science, particularly in parts of physics and chemistry and in certain areas of engineering. What the creationists seem to miss is the fact that geology and paleontology are historical sciences, and therefore experimental testing of predictions is difficult, and that these sciences rely largely on statistical inference -- that is, on the building of a general case that accepts exceptions as tolerable, especially when there is a highly plausible explanation of those exceptions. In this context, the kind of inference made by geologists and paleontologists is not unlike that made in clinical medicine where both diagnosis and treatment are inexact and individual decisions may depend upon assessment of probabilities and predictions that may, in some cases, turn out to be incorrect.²⁷⁷

The theory of evolution falls in the category of historical science. Unfortunately Creation's author has exactly the same misunderstanding of the scientific method as most other creationists. There are many scientific theories other than evolution that have similar limitations in not being amenable to the "start, stand back and watch" type of experiment. But that does not mean there is no value in pursuing them, as there are often many ways to verify truth. This is shown clearly by the illustration given by paleontologist Steven M. Stanley:²⁷⁸

Creationists' opposition to evolution raises the question of whether evolution is a fact -- whether it has been proven. Most evolutionists would argue that it is almost certainly a real phenomenon, and a phenomenon powerful enough to be responsible for the varied forms of life we see around us. Absolute proof is another matter. Many of us adhere to the idea that science never proves anything. It provides no more than a very high degree of certainty. The connection between cigarette smoking and cancer offers a familiar example.

An enormous body of circumstantial evidence points to smoking as a cause of lung cancer. Statistical treatment of the incidence of lung cancer in smokers and in nonsmokers shows that there is only the slimmest of chances that smoking is not linked to cancer. Statistical treatments never offer proof, however; they simply give estimates of probability. So high is the probability in the smoking example that it would be hard to find an unbiased scientist who, after viewing the available data, would not bet on the presence of a connection.

The inherent lack of absolutes in statistical analysis offers the tobacco companies an escape, however. They can claim that no causal connection is proven. They are on safe ground on two counts. Only the first has to do with the impossibility of statistical proof. Here they simply avoid telling us that the probability of no connection is a tiny fraction of 1 percent. The tobacco industry's second escape route has to do with causality. Even strong evidence of connection does not establish an explanation... In short, if they choose to hide behind the requirement for absolute certainty, tobacco companies will always be able to make their present claim that, despite what the Surgeon General may say, smoking has not been proven harmful to your health.

Many students of biological systems are even more certain that evolution has occurred than that smoking causes cancer, but because they believe that science does not prove theories, they are barred from claiming absolute proof. The classic example of our inability to prove in science relates to the process we call induction -- the extraction of general principles or theories from bodies of data. A common cliche here is that we do not know with absolute certainty that the sun will appear in the East tomorrow. Throughout recorded history, the sun has shown in the East every morning. This means that it almost certainly will make an appearance tomorrow, but we have no proof: we cannot generalize that the sun will always appear in the East. Still, who would wager that the sun will not rise tomorrow?

Recognizing that absolute proof is not a legitimate issue, we then ask ourselves how many biologists untouched by religious fundamentalism do not consider evolution a near certainty. The answer, of course, is "very few." How has this verdict been reached?

Although science does not prove, it does disprove. When a theory with many implications has withstood the threat of disproof for many years, it is granted a very high probability of being valid: it gains general acceptance, if not proof. There are two ways that a theory can be refuted. One is by the discovery of direct evidence opposing it. The second is by refutation of its corollaries or predictions... For more than a century, [evolution] has offered an enormous variety of testable predictions, yet none of these has been called into question to the degree that evolution has lost general support... There is an infinite variety of ways in which, since 1859, the general concept of evolution might have been demolished... The general concept of evolution has not merely resisted refutation, it has gathered strength from new developments. As we have seen, fossil evidence that once seemed to indicate the almost instantaneous appearance of diverse groups (of the earliest marine life of the Cambrian, for example) has given way to more detailed fossil information that documents intervals of diversification... The historical enrichment of the general theory of evolution is also evident in the growth of modern genetics, which swept aside the temporary obstacle of blending inheritance and went on to offer new levels of evolutionary understanding.

Zoologist Colin Patterson makes an excellent presentation of these issues as they relate to the theory of evolution, in the chapter "Proof and disproof" in the book Evolution. Patterson says:²⁷⁹

Is the theory of evolution by natural selection proved? After so many pages of fact and argument, some may be disconcerted by a negative answer, and to read that certainty can no more be found in science than in any other way of thought. These ideas come from Sir Karl Popper, the great philosopher of science. Popper shows that proof, or certainty, exists only in mathematics and in logic, where it is trivial in the sense that the proven conclusions were already hidden in the premises. He thinks that science is distinguished from non-science (not nonsense), or metaphysics, or myth, not by proof, but by the possibility of disproof. The only characteristic of scientific theories is that they have consequences which might be falsified by observation or experiment, and a scientist is a person who is willing to relinquish his theory when it is falsified or refuted. Pseudo-scientific or metaphysical theories do not expose themselves to disproof in this way...

The theory of evolution is... neither fully scientific, like physics, for example, nor unscientific, like history. Although it has no laws, it does have rules, and it does make general predictions about the properties of organisms. It therefore lays itself open to disproof. Darwin cited several sorts of observations which would, in his view, destroy his theory. In this he was certainly more candid than his opponents...

Darwin's potential tests may strike the reader as pretty feeble, or as tests of natural selection rather than evolution. But many discoveries, not foreseen by Darwin, provide more severe tests of the theory. These include Mendelian genetics; the real age of the earth; the universality of DNA and the genetic code; and the evidence of protein biochemistry. Evolution has survived all these with flying colours...

Using Popper's criterion, we must conclude that evolutionary theory is not testable in the same way as a theory in physics, or chemistry, or genetics, by experiments designed to falsify it. But the essence of scientific method is not testing a single theory to destruction; it is testing two (or more) rival theories, like Newton's and Einstein's, and accepting the one that passes more or stricter tests until a better theory turns up. So we must look at evolution theory and natural selection theory in terms of their performance against their competitors.

I will deal with evolution first, the belief that all organisms are related by descent and have diverged through a natural, historical process. This theory has only one main competitor, creation theory, though there are different stories of how the Creator went about His work. All creation theories are purely metaphysical. They make no predictions about the activities of the Creator, except that life as we know it is the result of His plan. Since we do not know the plan, no observation can be inconsistent with it. At one extreme there is the fundamentalist view that evidence of evolution, such as fossils, was built into the newly-created rocks to tempt us or test our faith. At the other extreme is the person to whom evidence of evolution only pushes the activity of the Creator further and further into the past. Both these modifications of the original creation myths are typical evasive moves, avoiding refutation or confrontation by modifying the original theory, or erecting subsidiary defensive theories around it...

At present, we are left with neo-Darwinian theory: that evolution has occurred, and has been directed mainly by natural selection, with random contributions from genetic drift, and perhaps the occasional hopeful monster. In this form, the theory is not scientific by Popper's standards. Indeed, Popper calls the theory of evolution not a scientific theory but 'a metaphysical research programme'. He means that though the theory is closer to metaphysics than to science, accepting it as true gives us a research programme, a new way of looking at and investigating the world. And through this research programme we can make progress in understanding the world...

Yet Popper warns of a danger: 'A theory, even a scientific theory, may become an intellectual fashion, a substitute for religion, an entrenched dogma.' This has certainly been true of evolutionary theory...

The Darwinian revolution triumphed [over creation based theories]. Following it, we can recognize a series of subsidiary revolutions... No doubt other revolutions are in store, and whether we choose to follow Popper's or [philosopher Thomas] Kuhn's understanding of science, the one lesson we can learn from both these thinkers is that today's theory of evolution is unlikely to be the whole truth. Yet today's neo-Darwinian theory, with all its faults, is still the best that we have. It is a fruitful theory, a stimulus to thought and research, and we should accept it until someone thinks of a better one.

While many scientists become excited or emotional about their fields, and may therefore say something is definitely proved when it isn't, most have reflective moments when they admit they don't have all the answers. Popularizers often do a disservice to science by oversimplifying. We see this in the news media constantly, with "sound bites" on television, oversimplified reporting, and so forth. Introductory textbooks often present a subject as if it were well established, even if it isn't nearly as well established as others. To a certain extent this is an unavoidable consequence of teaching. Basic material has to be covered first, so that a student gets the general idea, and only later can the difficulties be addressed. If the difficulties are presented before, or along with the main material, students can become sidetracked. Not to be overlooked is the fact that people get defensive when they perceive their personal interests are being attacked. The Society is a good institutional example of this -- it abhors criticism in any form. Most scientists would probably agree with the following:

Could the evolutionists be wrong? It would be folly for evolutionists to claim that they have a complete and accurate understanding of the history of life and of the processes that produced that history. Too many major paradigms in science have been overturned for any statement of such absolute confidence to be wise. We should consider alternatives and we should consider the possibility that we might be wrong in at least some parts of the basic framework of evolutionary thinking. And this consideration of alternatives is, in fact, going on in the 1980s with challenges from within evolutionary biology itself to the neo-Darwinian model as it is applied to macroevolution (Lewin 1980).

There are some basic aspects of evolution, however, that are so close to being simple observation and measurement that evolutionists can claim to be right. In particular, geologic dating (both relative and absolute) is on extremely firm ground. To challenge the basic chronology of life forms would be like claiming that the sun is only ten thousand miles from the earth or that the earth is flat. In effect, we can "see" the geologic time scale. If organic evolution is defined as change in the biological makeup of life on earth over time then we certainly do have evolution and can "see" the fossil record of that process... Deducing the mechanisms of evolution is quite a different matter... the scientific creationists are totally wrong in their so-called two model approach -- the claim that if the Darwinian model is discredited, the only alternative is the creation model.²⁸⁰

Nevertheless, many evolutionists do overstep their speculative bounds and present currently proposed mechanisms of biological evolution as established fact. One author critical of these speculations observed:²⁸¹

Evolution is very far from demonstrated as the sole explanation for all other species. This is not to say there is no evidence whatever for evolution; there is a great deal of it as a matter of fact, but almost entirely of a certain kind... It is well to point out that the word evolution has different meanings in different contexts. It has first of all an historical meaning. People sometimes use the word simply to indicate that there has been a succession of varying life-forms on this planet, without offering or implying an explanation as to their origins and extinctions. In this sense, evolution is beyond dispute. The dinosaurs, mammoths, and saber-toothed tigers are no longer extant. Virtually no one still defends the notion, formerly advanced by clerical apologists, that the fossils of these and other creatures were created with the earth and are thus not the remains of once-living animals.

Evolution in the sense in dispute implies that the earth's life-forms are biologically related by physical descent. For most scientists, historical evolution implies biological evolution.

The Society never discusses the ideas presented above. From the material presented thus far it should be evident that there is much more to the theory of evolution than the simple assertion that life evolved from inanimate matter. In its most broad sense "evolution" is defined by Webster's Dictionary as "a process of change in a certain direction." This broad usage is appropriate for many things; the Society's application of the idea that "the light gets brighter and brighter" is the evolution of doctrine. In this broad sense the "biological makeup" of life on earth can be said to have evolved because of, and only because of, the changes observed in the fossil record. These observations are entirely separate from theories about the way in which the changes came about.

As a concrete example of these ideas, it is an observation that something called "gravity" exists. Isaac Newton was the first to propose a set of laws that mathematically describe how gravity affects matter, and from his laws calculations can be made that predict objects will behave in a certain manner. At first, the laws accurately predicted everything that was observed. One major verification occurred when the planet Neptune was discovered in the mid-nineteenth century as a result of astronomers' finding the reason the orbit of Jupiter didn't follow the predictions of Newton's laws. Later, scientists found there were physical phenomena that contradicted Newton's laws. Einstein proposed the Theory of Relativity to explain some of the contradictions. To date the theory has proven extremely successful. But no scientist actually claims to understand gravity -- the theories only provide a lot of sophisticated mathematics that describe the observations. The math in no sense explains the underlying physical phenomena.

It is similar with the Quantum Theory, the most successful scientific theory of all time. It provides a mathematical basis for calculating all phenomena aside from gravity external to, and most internal to, the atom. All the practical uses of "the atom" are made possible by the mathematics of the Quantum Theory. Its predictions have^281a been verified better than any other scientific theory, even when they are completely at odds with scientists' intuition. One of the greatest mysteries of science is why the universe behaves in a manner that can be described by mathematics at all, which is, after all, only an exercise of the mind.

Is the theory of relativity or quantum theory the last word on the subjects? No scientist with any sense of history would think so. An arrogant scientist of the late nineteenth century, Lord Kelvin, said in 1895 that he thought scientists such as himself had pretty well wrapped up all there was to know about the world. Later that year radioactivity was discovered, and the many fundamental discoveries since show how silly Kelvin's assertion was. As each new theory came along, the old was not usually abandoned but incorporated within the new. The new theory had to explain everything the old did as well the new things. Newton's laws were seen to be special cases of relativity -- for low velocities Einstein's equations reduce to Newton's. The point is that truth does not change but human explanations of it does.

There are many scientists today who claim that current theories on the mechanisms of evolution are as solidly based as relativity or quantum theory -- are "factual" -- when in reality it is only evolution in the broad sense mentioned above that has such a solid basis. They fall prey to what has been described as the "best in field fallacy" -- assuming that "the best currently proposed explanation is by the mere fact of being better than the others also necessarily the correct explanation."²⁸² Even if, as is almost certain, Darwinian based theories of the mechanism of evolution are radically revised, it does not seem likely all the observations from the fossil record showing the broad evolution of life will become outdated. The mere fact scientists cannot now explain the workings of gravity, but can only describe them, did not limit NASA's ability to send Voyager spacecraft to the edge of the solar system. Similarly, even if scientists abandoned all hope of ever explaining the mechanisms of evolution, the observations from the fossil record would still hold. It is simple observation that dinosaurs were once abundant but are now extinct.

As for explaining the means by which the changes in life forms through time came about, either the changes happened because of the actions of an intelligent creator or they did not. This has no bearing on the observation that changes occurred, no matter how important the issue may be of itself.

The Society never really discusses the above issues, even though they are fundamental to achieving an understanding of the world in which we live. Instead the issues are oversimplified to the point that a reader gets no real understanding.

The July 22, 1987 Awake! article mentioned previously illustrates this perfectly. In its opening paragraphs, which talk about facts and theories, a "fact" is spoken of as if it were something that is absolute. But "facts" are defined by the majority of people who speak of them, as discussed above. Some may argue about which things are the "facts," and they may be correct in the absolute sense, but one can never be sure one knows absolute truth except by revelation from something considered an ultimate authority. And different people accept different ultimate authorities. Also, one never knows if one has gathered all the relevant information. So "facts" in an operational sense are the things that almost everybody accepts, and what is fact today may be fable tomorrow. The Society's doctrinal changes down through the years well illustrate this.

The Society is free to declare that God is the ultimate authority and that he has made known certain absolute "facts" in the Bible. Such a position is unassailable. But when the Society claims that its argument is based on rules other than this declaration, namely, normal everyday reasoning or the so-called "scientific method," it commits itself to arguing using sound rules of evidence. Using various rhetorical devices just to "win" the argument does no justice to truth. The above Awake! article violates these rules by using only the narrow senses of the ideas of "facts" and "theories." I quote these again for convenience:

A fact is something that exists beyond question. It is an actuality, an objective reality. It is established by solid evidence.

A theory is something unproved but at times assumed true for the sake of argument. It has yet to be proved as factual.

Here is an interesting comment about this sort of reasoning:

Science cannot prove anything, except on the assumption of certain postulates or axioms. For example, if we accept the correctness of gravitational theory (either the Newtonian or Einsteinian version), which has, after all, been impressively successful in predicting new planets and in guiding the Voyager spacecraft through and about the rings and satellites of Saturn, then it follows logically that the earth must revolve about the sun, and not vice versa. But perhaps some other theory can be found that will allow all known gravitational phenomena and yet have the earth at rest. It is not hard to think up such a theory: the reality of the universe might all be a dream, for example... [science,]... while not providing absolute truths, does find systematic order and develops models that allow us to understand nature and her behavior. Moreover, the method of science -- observation, hypothesis, and test -- leads to new knowledge and deeper understanding... Most scientists take for granted that these models, at least the extremely well tested ones, do describe reality -- that is, that the earth really is round, does turn on its axis, and does go around the sun. This acceptance is really a religious one, and, if challenged, those same scientists will usually agree that technically no truth can be proven by science to be absolute.²⁸³

According to these broad views virtually everything that is not specifically revelation is theory, as it could always in principle be falsified. How does one personally know that gravity is real? One accepts the word of scientists. Prior to Newton the concept of gravity didn't even exist. If gravity is described by mathematical rules called "gravitational theory," does this mean that the notion is not well established, and therefore not a "fact"?

Keeping the above discussion in mind, note the Awake! article's main premise, which is that the theory of evolution is not a "fact" because it is a "theory":

Nonetheless, sometimes something is declared to be a fact that is only a theory. The theory of organic evolution falls into this category.

As we discussed above, the fact that the general notion of evolution is also described by a theory by the same name, that attempts to describe its mechanisms, is no basis for arguing that the general notion is not a "fact". To show that general evolution did not occur requires arguments that the observations from the fossil record are incorrect. Showing that the proposed mechanisms are implausible and are not demonstrated in the fossil record is necessary but not sufficient. One must argue with evidence, not labels. Interestingly, the Society tacitly admits that much of the fossil record is correct when it argues that the lack of observation of true transitional forms proves gradual Darwinian evolution did not occur.

An article by Stephen Jay Gould in Science and Creationism²⁸⁴ provides another point of view on fact and theory:

In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect fact" -- part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus the power of the creationist argument: evolution is "only" a theory and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory. If evolution is worse than a fact, and scientists can't even make up their minds about the theory, then what confidence can we have in it? Indeed, President Reagan echoed this argument before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in what I devoutly hope was campaign rhetoric): "Well it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science -- that is, not believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was."

Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.

Moreover, "fact" doesn't mean "absolute certainty"; there ain't no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Whether or not one agrees with Gould's statement that humans evolved from apelike ancestors, he makes valid points about the distinction between fact and theory.

Isaac Asimov made some observations about how creationists confuse fact and theory:²⁸⁵

Creationists frequently stress the fact that evolution is "only a theory," giving the impression that a theory is an idle guess. A scientist, one gathers, arising one morning with nothing particular to do, decides that perhaps the moon is made of Roquefort cheese and instantly advances the Roquefort-cheese theory.

In the history of science, it must be admitted, something like this has happened many times.

A theory (as the word is used by scientists) is a detailed description of some facet of the universe's workings that is based on long observation and where possible, experiment. It is the result of careful reasoning from those observations and experiments and has survived the critical study of scientists generally.

Here is another point of view:²⁸⁶

Using actual practice as the basis for definition, we can define "science" simply as the attempt to understand natural phenomena more completely by means of repeatable or verifiable observations of natural phenomena. (This is broader than the rigid, prediction or experiment-oriented definitions developed by some philosophers not actively engaged in scientific work.) Also, unlike mathematics or logic, science does not deal in formally rigorous certainties, but instead strives for conclusions which are at best highly probable. Failure to understand this has made extensive, philosophically based discussions -- by anti-evolutionists, among others -- irrelevant.

Throughout the July 22, 1987 Awake! article, the general notion of evolution is thoroughly confused with the specific mechanisms of Darwinian evolution. It is unfortunately true that many scientists claim that all of evolutionary theory is perfectly well established, but it is also true that the Awake! article oversimplifies the situation. Much of the quoted material is oversimplified as well. The problem becomes compounded when the article uses many out-of-context and half-quotations and inaccurate statements to bolster its argument.

The article in the July 22, 1987 Awake! magazine uses the statements in a New York Times article, by Irving Kristol, a professor of social thought at New York University's graduate school of business,²⁸⁷ to show that evolution is a theory and not a proven fact. Kristol puts forth a number of good arguments complaining about that, but he misses the major point about the difference between what are considered facts and what scientists consider conjectural mechanisms of evolution, and lumps everything together in a confused whole. The Awake! article then uses an article by paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould that appeared in Discover,²⁸⁸ to further show how evolution is an unproved theory rather than a fact. Gould shows how Kristol was partly in error, and presents a number of examples to prove his point. All in all, this Awake! article is an excellent example of the subtle half-truths so often seen in the Society's writings. None of Gould's major supporting explanations are set forth in detail, only some of his premises, which the Awake! article dispatches with half-quotations from other sources. We here present what the various players said. As before, let the reader be the judge of the truth. Keep in mind the above discussion of fact versus theory, and also that what is observed in the fossil record shows a general pattern of extensive change in life -- evolution in the broad sense -- down through time.

Awake! stated on page 10, paragraph 1:

On September 30, 1986, The New York Times published an article by a New York University professor, Irving Kristol. His contention is that if evolution were taught in the public schools as the theory it is rather than as the fact it isn't, there would not be the controversy that now rages between evolution and creationism. Kristol stated: "There is also little doubt that it is this pseudoscientific dogmatism that has provoked the current religious reaction."

Here is Gould's answer to Kristol:

Kristol, who is no fundamentalist, accuses evolutionary biologists of bringing their troubles with creationists upon themselves by too zealous an insistence upon the truths of Darwin's world...

Kristol needs a history lesson if he thinks that current creationism is a product of scientific intransigence. Creationism, as a political movement against evolution, has been a continually powerful force since the days of the Scopes trial. Rather than using evolution to crusade against religion in their texts, scientists have been lucky to get anything at all about evolution into books for high school students ever since Scopes's trial in 1925. My own high school biology text, used in the liberal constituency of New York City in 1956, didn't even mention the word evolution. The laws that were used against Scopes and cowed textbook publishers into submission weren't overturned by the Supreme Court until 1968...

Gould is correct. In schools in New York in the 1960s there was no mention of evolution whatsoever in most biology texts or course materials. The only place some regularly heard about evolution was in Watchtower publications.

Note in the following, which continues Awake!'s quotation of Kristol, how Kristol misses the distinction between evolution in the broad sense as established by the fossil record, and the mechanisms proposed for the theory of how that evolution occurred. Had he spoken about Darwinian evolutionary theory his remarks would have been correct. Awake! also misses the point.

The fact that many scientists including Gould also miss this point, is unfortunate and is really what Kristol should be complaining about. The whole mess is one great example of unclear thinking.

"Though this theory is usually taught as an established scientific truth," Kristol said, "it is nothing of the sort. It has too many lacunae [gaps]. Geological evidence does not provide us with the spectrum of intermediate species we would expect. Moreover, laboratory experiments reveal how close to impossible it is for one species to evolve into another, even allowing for selective breeding and some genetic mutation... The gradual transformation of the population of one species into another is a biological hypothesis, not a biological fact."

The article touched a raw nerve in Harvard professor Stephen Jay Gould, a fervent defender of evolution as a fact, not just a theory. His rebuttal of Kristol's article was published in a popularized science magazine, Discover, January 1987 issue. It revealed the very dogmatism Kristol deplored.

Kristol's above statement revealed his partial ignorance of science, and Gould addressed the problem:

Charles Darwin, who was, perhaps, the most incisive thinker among the great minds of history, clearly divided his life's work into two claims of different character: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory (natural selection) for the mechanism of evolutionary change. He also expressed, and with equal clarity, his judgment about their different status: confidence in the facts of transmutation and genealogical connection among all organisms, and appropriate caution about his unproved theory of natural selection...

Gould should be less dogmatic about "the fact of transmutation." The fossil record shows change in life forms, sometimes gradual. This does not prove transmutation, except by the a priori discarding of the notion of an intelligent creator who worked gradually.

... Evolutionary biologists have honored [Darwin's] fundamental distinction between fact and theory ever since. Facts are the world's data; theories are explanations proposed to interpret and coordinate facts. The fact of evolution is as well established as anything in science (as secure as the revolution of the earth about the sun), though absolute certainty has no place in our lexicon. Theories, or statements about the causes of documented evolutionary change, are now in a period of intense debate -- a good mark of science in its healthiest state. Facts don't disappear while scientists debate theories. As I wrote in an early issue of this magazine... "Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome."...

In this period of vigorous pluralism and intense debate among evolutionary biologists, I am greatly saddened to note that some distinguished commentators among non-scientists, in particular Irving Kristol..., so egregiously misunderstand the character of our discipline and continue to confuse this central distinction between secure fact and healthy debate about theory.

I don't speak of the militant fundamentalists who label themselves with the oxymoron "scientific creationists," and try to sneak their Genesis literalism into high school classrooms under the guise of scientific dissent. I'm used to their rhetoric, their dishonest mis- and half-quotations, their constant repetition of "useful" arguments that even they must recognize as nonsense... Our struggle with these ideologues is political, not intellectual. I speak instead of our allies among people committed to reason and honorable argument.

But what about Kristol's major charge -- anti-religious prejudice and one-dimensional dogmatism about evolution in modern textbooks? Now we come to the heart of what makes me so sad about Kristol's charges and others in a similar vein. I don't deny that some texts have simplified, even distorted, in failing to cover the spectrum of modern debates; this, I fear, is a limitation of the genre itself (and the reason why I, though more of a writer than most scientists, have never chosen to compose a text). But what evidence can Kristol or anyone else provide to demonstrate that evolutionists have been worse than scientists from other fields in glossing over legitimate debate within their textbooks?...

Speaking of dogmatism, the Society is dogmatic about many doctrinal points, in spite of the fact they can't be proved, and some have even been thoroughly disproved. To name a few: the Bible is the inspired word of God, the Watchtower Society is God's channel of communication between God and man, the Genesis account is historical, the Genesis Flood occurred, Jerusalem fell in 607 B.C. rather than 587 B.C.

With regard to the simplification that occurs in basic texts, does the Society encourage Jehovah's Witnesses to speak with Bible students of the difficulties many Bible scholars have with major portions of the Bible, or of the difficulties in showing that the Bible's Flood and Genesis creation accounts are historical? Of course not. If these points are covered at all, it is not until later. Points of difficulty are hardly ever discussed unless they are of the "straw-man" variety.

Gould continues:

When we come to popular writing about evolution, I suppose that my own essays are as well read as any. I don't think that Kristol could include me among Darwinian dogmatists, for most of my essays focus upon my disagreements with the strict version of natural selection. I also doubt that Kristol would judge me anti-religious, since I have campaigned long and hard against the same silly dichotomy of science versus religion that he so rightly ridicules. I have written laudatory essays about several scientists (Burnet, Cuvier, Buckland, and Gosse, among others) branded as theological dogmatists during the nineteenth-century reaction; and, while I'm not a conventional believer, I don't consider myself irreligious.

Kristol's major error lies in his persistent confusion of fact with theory. He accuses us -- without giving a single concrete example, by the way -- of dogmatism about theory and sustains his charge by citing our confidence in the fact of transmutation. "It is reasonable to suppose that if evolution were taught more cautiously, as a conglomerate idea consisting of conflicting hypotheses rather than as an unchallengeable certainty, it would be far less controversial."

Well, Mr. Kristol, evolution (as theory) is indeed "a conglomerate idea consisting of conflicting hypotheses," and I and my colleagues teach it as such. But evolution is also a fact of nature, and so do we teach it as well, just as our geological colleagues describe the structure of silicate minerals, and astronomers the elliptical orbits of planets.

These paragraphs well illustrate several points. The boundary between what is well established and what isn't is often indistinct. As we've shown previously, the fossil record clearly shows a broad outline of change in life forms down through the ages. Evolutionists, with some justification, interpret this as proving the transmutation of life forms. Otherwise they would have to try to understand why the creator carried "out a series of special creation events so closely graded that the scientists of the present would misinterpret these progressive appearances and disappearances as the result of evolutionary change and extinction." (See Part 05 of this essay). This point is the key to the entire evolution/creation controversy, but the Society is unaware of it, and Gould makes the usual scientific assumption that a creator had no hand in the changes the fossil record so clearly shows.

Kristol shows his awareness of some of these issues, but says nothing about the impracticality of setting forth all the pros and cons of any scientific theory in basic texts:

Practically all biologists, when they engage in scientific discourse, assume that the earth's species were not created by divine command. As scientists, they could not make any other assumption. But they agree on little else -- a fact which our textbooks are careful to ignore, lest it give encouragement to the religious...

Kristol's point is very good. Even basic textbooks should have some discussion of the difficulties of evolution theory, even if it requires taking space from another discussion and even if it gives ammunition to the religious.

Gould continues:

Rather than castigate Mr. Kristol any further, I want to discuss the larger issue that underlies both this incident and the popular perception of evolution in general. If you will accept my premise that evolution is as well established as any scientific fact (I shall give the reasons in a moment), then why are we uniquely called upon to justify our chosen profession; and why are we alone subjected to such unwarranted infamy? To this central question of this essay, I suggest the following answer. We haven't received our due for two reason: (1) a general misunderstanding of the different methods used by all historical sciences (including evolution), for our modes of inference don't match stereotypes of "the scientific method"; and (2) a continuing but unjustified fear about the implication both of evolution itself and of Darwin's theory for its mechanism. With these two issues resolved, we can understand both the richness of science (in its pluralistic methods of inquiry) and the absence of any conflict, through lack of common content, between proper science and true religion.

With these points established, it should be clear from the above context how much the Awake! article oversimplifies and distorts Gould's arguments:

In his protesting essay, Gould repeated a dozen times his assertion that evolution is a fact. A few examples: Darwin established "the fact of evolution." "The fact of evolution is as well established as anything in science (as secure as the revolution of the earth around the sun)." By the time Darwin died, "nearly all thinking people came to accept the fact of evolution." "Evolution is as well established as any scientific fact (I shall give the reasons in a moment)." "The fact of evolution rests upon copious data that fall, roughly, into three great classes."

The Awake! article clearly gives the impression that Gould is merely stating that evolution is a fact without giving any supporting data, but from the context of some of his statements quoted above, it should be clear he provides as much support as can be given in the space of a magazine article.

Awake!'s next argument is the best in the article. It argues against the idea of transmutation of species and against scientists' interpretation of the evidence:

For the first of these "three great classes" of "copious data," Gould cites as "direct evidence" for evolution the small-scale changes within species of moths, fruit flies, and bacteria. But such variations within species are irrelevant to evolution. Evolution's problem is to change one species into another species. Gould extols Theodosius Dobzhansky as "the greatest evolutionist of our century," but it is Dobzhansky himself who dismisses Gould's argument above as irrelevant.

In spite of the excellent point about transmutation of species, this paragraph has two serious problems. First, small variations within species are not irrelevant to theories of the mechanism of evolution. They form the basis of the entire theory. Small variations do not prove the transmutation of species, but they are relevant to evolution. Second, Dobzhansky, as the following paragraph in Awake! shows, was unable to provide a precise mechanism for how small scale change becomes large scale, but Dobzhansky in no sense ever dismissed this argument as irrelevant. Awake! merely concludes this is so, and gives the impression this is also Dobzhansky's conclusion. As is so often the case with Watchtower publications, no source is given for Dobzhansky's quotation, but there is little no doubt the context of his statement would bear this out. We will give examples of this shortly from another of Dobzhansky's writings. Awake! continues:

Concerning the fruit flies of Gould's argument, Dobzhansky says mutations "usually show deterioration, breakdown, or disappearance of some organs... Many mutations are, in fact, lethal to their possessors. Mutants which equal the normal fly in vigor are a minority, and mutants that would make a major improvement of the normal organization in the normal environments are unknown."

That Dobzhansky would not agree with Awake!'s conclusion is evident from what he said in Evolution, Genetics, and Man:²⁸⁹

Evolution is a continuous process, composed, though, of small discontinuous mutation steps. From the continuity of evolution it follows, of course, that forms intermediate between the now-living organisms must have existed in the past.

Dobzhansky makes statements such as that quoted in Awake! to illustrate difficulties with the theory that remain to be solved, not to disprove the notion altogether. Awake! continues:

Science, the official magazine for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, also spiked Gould's argument: "Species do indeed have a capacity to undergo minor modifications in the physical and other characteristics, but this is limited and with a longer perspective it is reflected in an oscillation about a mean [a position about midway between extremes]." In both plants and animals, variations within a species will oscillate or move about like pellets shaken in a glass jar -- the variations are held within the boundaries of the species just as the pellets are confined within the jar. Just as the Bible's account of creation says, a plant or an animal may vary, yet it is restricted to reproduce "according to its kind."...

No reference is given for the quotation from Science, but it is again evident, given Science's general position on evolution, that it is only a partial quotation. As has been shown above, even though scientists have no good explanation for the mechanism of evolution, the fossil record shows very fine gradual changes in some species down through time. Because of this, one of the main problems evolutionists have is to explain why their experiments and observations with fruit flies and such don't seem to jibe with the fossil record of such gradual change. Evolutionists tend to miss the point that extrapolation from small changes to large is often unjustified, and just because the fossil record shows gradual change of species does not mean species gradually evolved. A creator could just as well have done it this way for his own reasons. Of course, this is not a scientific view. But the Society does not touch upon this in the Awake! article or anywhere else. Again, this point is the key to the entire dispute about evolution, but in the Awake! article the Society argues about other things. It uses incorrect arguments to boot.

Awake! continues:

For the second of his three classes, Gould offers big mutations: "We have direct evidence for large-scale changes, based upon sequences in the fossil record." By saying the changes were large scale, one species changing into another in a few big jumps, he goes from the frying pan into the fire.

This would be a good argument if that is what Gould actually said. But he did not. He mentions nothing about large-scale mutations, but talks instead of observed fossil sequences of large-scale changes:

Second, we have direct evidence for large-scale changes, based upon sequences in the fossil record. The nature of this evidence is often misunderstood by non-professionals who view evolution as a simple ladder of progress, and therefore expect a linear array of "missing links." But evolution is a copiously branching bush, not a ladder. Since our fossil record is so imperfect, we can't hope to find evidence for every tiny twiglet. (Sometimes, in rapidly evolving lineages of abundant organisms restricted to a small area and entombed in sediments with an excellent fossil record, we do discover an entire little bush -- but such examples are as rare as they are precious.) In the usual case, we may recover the remains of side branch number 5 from the bush's early history, then bough number 40 a bit later, then the full series of branches 156-161 in a well preserved sequence of younger rocks, and finally surviving twigs 250 and 287.

In other words, we usually find sequences of structural intermediates, not linear arrays of ancestors and descendants. Such sequences provide superb examples of temporally ordered evolutionary trends...

Gould does not advance any theory that large-scale mutations occur, but says that evolution speeds up greatly from time to time because the rate of small-scale mutation is speeded up under unusual conditions, for reasons not clearly understood. This is a point Awake! should attack, but the writer does not understand the issues.

Clearly, Awake! confuses Gould's statements about large-scale changes with Irving Kristol's statements about mutations. Kristol shows his ignorance of some of the above issues when he says concerning evolution:

Though this theory is usually taught as an established scientific truth, it is nothing of the sort. It has too many lacunae. Geological evidence does not provide us with the spectrum of intermediate species we would expect. Moreover, laboratory experiments reveal how close to impossible it is for one species to evolve into another, even allowing for selective breeding and some genetic mutation. There is unquestionably evolution within species: every animal breeder is engaged in exemplifying this enterprise. But the gradual transformation of the population of one species into another is a biological hypothesis, not a biological fact.

Moreover, today a significant minority of distinguished biologists and geneticists find this hypothesis incredible and insist that evolution must have proceeded by "quantum jumps," caused by radical genetic mutation. This copes with some of the problems generated by neo-Darwinist orthodoxy, but only to create others. We just don't know of any such "quantum jumps" that create new species, since most genetic mutations work against the survival of the individual. So this is another hypothesis -- no less plausible than the orthodox view, but still speculative.

And there are other speculations about evolution, some by Nobel prize-winning geneticists, that border on the bizarre -- for example, that life on earth was produced by spermatozoa from outer space. In addition, many younger biologists (the so-called "cladists") are persuaded that the differences among species -- including those that seem to be closely related -- are such as to make the very concept of evolution questionable.

Gould says concerning Kristol's above comments:

... biologists have reached a consensus, based on these kinds of data, about the fact of evolution. When honest critics like Irving Kristol misinterpret this agreement, they're either confusing our fruitful consonance about the fact of evolution with our vibrant dissonance about mechanisms of change, or they've misinterpreted part of our admittedly arcane technical literature.

One such misinterpretation has gained sufficient notoriety in the last year that we crave resolution both for its own sake and as an illustration of the frustrating confusion that can arise when scientists aren't clear and when commentators, as a result of hidden agendas, don't listen. Tom Bethell [a creationist] argued in Harper's (February 1985) that a group of young taxonomists called pattern cladists have begun to doubt the existence of evolution itself. This would be truly astounding news, since cladistics is a powerful method dedicated to reforming classification by using only the branching order of lineages on evolutionary trees... rather than vague notions of overall similarity in form or function...

Cladists use only the order of branching to construct their schemes of relationships... Cladism... is the purest of all genealogical systems for classification, since it works only with closeness of common ancestry in time. How preciously ironic then, that this most rigidly evolutionary of all taxonomic systems should become the subject of such extraordinary misunderstanding -- as devised by Bethell, and perpetuated by Kristol when he writes: "... many younger biologists (the so-called 'cladists') are persuaded that the differences among species -- including those that seem to be closely related -- are such as to make the very concept of evolution questionable."

This error arose for the following reason. A small splinter group of cladists (not all of them, as Kristol claims) -- "transformed" or "pattern" cladists by their own designation -- have adopted what is to me an ill-conceived definition of scientific procedure. They've decided, by misreading Karl Popper's philosophy, that patterns of branching can be established unambiguously as a fact of nature, but that processes causing events of branching, since they can't be observed directly, can't be known with certainty. Therefore, they say, we must talk only of pattern and rigidly exclude all discussion of process (hence "pattern cladistics").

This is where Bethell got everything arse-backwards and began the whole confusion. A philosophical choice to abjure all talk about process isn't the same thing as declaring that no reason for patterns of branching exists. Pattern cladists don't doubt that evolution is the cause behind branching; rather they've decided that our science shouldn't be discussing causes at all.

Now I happen to think that this philosophy is misguided; in unguarded moments I would even deem it absurd. Science, after all, is fundamentally about process; learning why and how things happen is the soul of our discipline...

This incident also raises the troubling issue of how myths become beliefs through adulterated repetition without proper documentation. Bethell began by misunderstanding pattern cladistics, but at least he reports the movement as a small splinter, and tries to reproduce their arguments. Then Kristol picks up the ball and recasts it as a single sentence of supposed fact -- and all cladists have now become doubters of evolution by proclamation.

So Kristol does not understand some of the real issues, and neither does the author of the Awake! article, since he simply repeats Kristol's argument. Awake!'s statements about large-scale mutations are not based on anything Gould said, but on Awake!'s own interpretation of what Irving Kristol said, who in turn based some of his statements on the misunderstanding of Tom Bethell. As we've said before, it pays to go back to original sources to get correct information.

With the above information in hand the reader should be able to see how Awake! has twisted Gould's argument about large-scale changes observed in the fossil record into one about the difficulties of large-scale mutations:

Kristol comments on this: "We just don't know of any such 'quantum jumps' that create new species, since most genetic mutations work against the survival of the individual." And Gould's "greatest evolutionist of our century," Theodosius Dobzhansky, agrees with Kristol. His statement about many mutations being lethal is especially true of large-scale, quantum-jump mutations; also significant are his words that 'mutations that make big improvements are unknown.' Lacking evidence for his large-scale changes, Gould falls back on the old timeworn dodge of evolutionists: 'Our fossil record is so imperfect.'

By reading the quotations, above and below, of what Gould actually wrote, you can see for yourself that Awake!'s statement -- that Gould's lack of evidence for large-scale changes forces him to fall back on the imperfection of the fossil record -- is thoroughly untrue. Gould offers many examples, and says, not simply "Our fossil record is so imperfect," but "Since our fossil record is so imperfect, we can't hope to find evidence for every tiny twiglet." [italics added]

As discussed earlier in this essay, there are plenty of fossils that are intermediate in form between reptiles and mammals. Gould says of some:

... consider another example with evidence of structurally intermediate stages -- the transition from reptiles to mammals. The lower jaw of mammals contains but a single bone, the dentary. Reptiles build their lower jaws of several bones. In perhaps the most fascinating of those quirky changes in function that make pathways of evolution, the two bones articulating the upper and lower jaws of reptiles migrate to the middle ear and become the malleus and incus (hammer and anvil) of mammals.

Creationists, ignorant of hard evidence in the fossil record, scoff at this tale. How could jaw bones become ear bones, they ask. What happened in between? An animal can't work with a jaw half disarticulated during the stressful time of transition.

The fossil record provides a direct answer. In an excellent series of temporally ordered structural intermediates, the reptilian dentary gets larger and larger, pushing back as the other bones of a reptile's lower jaw decrease in size. We've even found a transitional form with an elegant solution to the problem of remaking jaw bones into ear bones. This creature has a double articulation -- one between the two bones that become the mammalian hammer and anvil (the old reptilian joint), and a second between the squamosal and dentary bones (the modern mammalian condition). With this built-in redundancy, the emerging mammals could abandon one connection by moving two bones into the ear, while retaining the second linkage, which becomes the sole articulation of modern mammals.

Awake!'s contention about lack of evidence for large-scale changes should be seen for what it is: wishful thinking. The fossil record clearly shows large-scale changes. The fact that no one knows why things occurred as they did -- why one animal had a weird double jaw joint -- is irrelevant.

In the very next paragraph, Awake! admits that Gould does offer evidence of large-scale changes:

Gould does, however, offer as "direct evidence for large-scale changes" what he calls one of the "superb examples," namely, "human evolution in Africa." But evolutionists generally acknowledge that this field is far from superb. It is a hotbed of controversy, a battleground over teeth and bits of bone that evolutionists with vivid imaginations turn into hairy, stooped over, beetle-browed ape-men. Once again, Dobzhansky is not supportive of Gould: "Even this relatively recent history [from ape to man] is shot through with uncertainties; authorities are often at odds, both about fundamentals and about details."

The next section of Gould's essay shows in some detail just how much evidence there really is for the existence of man, or at least a creature that for all intents and purposes looked like man, more than a million years ago. There is far more evidence than a few "teeth and bits of bone," as shown in the previous section of this essay. There are nearly complete skeletons. It doesn't take a vivid imagination, once you've seen photos of these skeletons, to see that these were very much like modern men in some respects, but in other respects very different. See for example, National Geographic Magazine, November, 1985, page 629, which shows a photo of a 1.6 million year old Homo erectus boy.

As for Dobzhansky, we have not found Awake!'s source reference, but it is virtually certain that Awake!'s quotation is taken out of context, since one of Dobzhansky's books says:²⁹⁰

Man is a biological species, subject to the action of biological forces, and a product of a long evolutionary development. It does not matter whether the evolutionary origin of man is called an "hypothesis" or a "fact." Events which occurred before there were observers capable of recording and of transmitting their observations must of necessity be inferred from evidence now available for study. But the evidence shows conclusively that man arose from forebears who were not men, although we have only the most fragmentary information concerning the stages through which the process has passed. Nobody has seen that the earth is a sphere or that it revolves around the sun, rather than vice versa; nobody has caught a glimpse of atoms or of things within atoms. Are atoms, then, factual or hypothetical? The least that can be said is that in our activities we take the earth to be a sphere and treat atoms as though they were facts. For similar reasons, it is not a matter of personal taste whether or not we "believe in" evolution. The evidence for evolution is compelling. Moreover, human evolution is going on at present...

So is Dobzhansky generally supportive of Gould or not? You be the judge.

Notably, Dobzhansky said in 1955 that nobody had seen that the earth is a sphere, or caught a glimpse of atoms. The 1957 success of the Soviet satellite Sputnik provided the first direct "proof" that all the previous inferences about the earth's shape were true. Today most everyone has seen photos of the spherical earth. In the mid-1980s a device was developed called the scanning tunneling electron microscope. This device does let one "glimpse" atoms directly, and further developments of it and other devices are actually allowing scientists to directly manipulate individual atoms. These examples should be sufficient to convince anyone that scientific inference is a valid way to gain knowledge of the real world.

This is what Gould actually said about the evolution of man:

Consider the evidence for human evolution in Africa. What more could you ask from a record of rare creatures living in terrestrial environments that provide poor opportunity for fossilization? We have a temporal sequence displaying clear trends in a suite of features, including threefold increase of brain size and corresponding decrease of jaws and teeth. (We are missing direct evidence for an earlier transition to upright posture, but wide-ranging and unstudied sediments of the right age have been found in East Africa, and we have an excellent chance to fill in this part of our story.) What alternative can we suggest to evolution? Would God -- for some inscrutable reason, or merely to test our faith -- create five species, one after the other (Australopithecus afarensis, A. africanus, Homo habilis, H. erectus, and H. sapiens), to mimic a continuous trend of evolutionary change?

It would be interesting to see a direct comment from the Society on Gould's last question, without the side-stepping so evident in the Awake! article.

The last example of the Society's oversimplifying and leaving out crucial parts of evidence is from page 13 of the Awake! article. It comments on Gould's last of three great classes of evidence that show the mechanisms of evolution:

Gould's second example: "Why do the plants and animals of the Galapagos so closely resemble, but differ slightly from, the creatures of Ecuador, the nearest bit of land 600 miles to the east?... The similarities can only mean that Ecuadorian creatures colonized the Galapagos and then diverged by a natural process of evolution." What the similarities can and only do mean is variation within the species. The finches, for example, are still finches.

This last comment leaves out the most stringent test for whether animals are of the same kind or not: the test of interbreeding. The finches of the Galapagos are finches all right, but they do not interbreed with one another even when several varieties of them live in the same area. Hybridization among them is rarely, if ever, observed.²⁹¹ By usually accepted criteria, animals that do not interbreed are not of the same species, so it would seem that the finches really are an example of evolution in action. Somehow, it is very difficult to quite believe this, but we have no good argument against it. Neither has the Society, which characteristically ignores the problem.

There are much larger variations in the domestic dog family than in the finch family, but they freely interbreed. Therefore it is unquestioned that a two pound chihuahua is of the same species as a two hundred pound Saint Bernard. Wolves and dogs freely interbreed when given the opportunity, so they are generally considered closely related species. Foxes and dogs will not interbreed, but artificial insemination will produce hybrids. Therefore they are considered more distantly related species. Evolutionists use data like this to extrapolate over geologic time and propose that the basic mechanism of evolution entails more of the same. Of course, extrapolation is not always justified, and evolutionists should be more frank in discussing its limitations in any^291a general discussion of evolution. But the Society never discusses any of this. Its discussions almost always reduce to the same old thing: the proposed mechanisms for evolution, such as for the origin of life, are patently ridiculous and have never been demonstrated; therefore evolution did not occur (that the fossil record shows a tremendous amount of change is sometimes barely acknowledged, but is never directly discussed); therefore creation must have occurred; therefore the Genesis account is correct.

In technical papers evolutionists tend to be far more frank about problems with evolutionary theory than they are in articles intended for general consumption. This is entirely understandable for reasons discussed above, and also for the simple reason that no one likes to air his dirty laundry in public. The Society does not like to air its dirty laundry in public. As has been made clear in these essays there are many serious problems with the Bible itself, and with the Society's speculations on and interpretations of the Bible. The Society has never openly discussed those problems with the object of achieving understanding of the underlying issues. Instead it makes dogmatic statements or completely ignores the issues. Do you really believe that all the fossil record of life, recorded in miles thick sediments, most of which have turned to stone and many of which have been uplifted in mountain ranges up to five and one half miles high, accumulated in the 20,000 year time span allowed by the Society's interpretation of the length of the Genesis creative days? How can the Society justify practicing the same sort of obfuscation it accuses evolutionists of? As the scripture says, "remove the rafter first from your own eye."

In keeping with its general ignorance of the scientific community, the Society usually writes as if science were a monolithic enterprise. It is nothing of the kind, and is no more nor less organized than any other large category of human activity, such as religion or politics. One book makes pertinent comments:²⁹²

This self-checking aspect of science is a very vital part of the whole process. When Creation 'Scientists' suggest, as they often do, that scientists are involved in some sort of conspiracy to protect conventional scientific hypotheses from being falsified, they betray either their extreme naivety or deliberate refusal to understand what actually happens. In fact, I have never heard of a practising scientist, evolutionist or other, who at heart does not delight in discovering a rotten spot in the core of his research field. Such a discovery, if successfully defended in publications in refereed research journals, frequently leads to research money to explore further related aspects of the field. A perusal of any issue of Nature, for example, will reveal that almost as much space is devoted to the refutation of previous views (in evolutionary biology as well as other fields of science) as is devoted to the presentation of entirely new concepts.

That is not to say that the individuals who propose new hypotheses will as enthusiastically seek evidence to falsify them. It is, perhaps regrettably, human nature for the author of a hypothesis to defend it vigorously against all but the most devastating disproofs. But you can be absolutely certain that the colleagues of these authors will leap at the opportunity to falsify the hypothesis and will waste no time in publishing contradictory evidence if they can find it.

While the self-checking aspect of science sometimes breaks down in the short term, it always works in the long run. Eventually all roadblocks to progress are removed -- politically powerful scientists retire or evidence becomes overwhelming. The process has been demonstrated to work time and again.

Some final comments by Stephen Jay Gould from the above mentioned Discover article are pertinent to this essay:

When I ask myself why the evidence for evolution, so clear to all historical scientists, fails to impress intelligent nonscientists, I must believe that more than simple misinformation lies at the root of our difficulty with a man like Irving Kristol. I believe that the main problem centers upon a restrictive stereotype of scientific method accepted by most non-practitioners as the essential definition of all scientific work.

We learn in high school about the scientific method -- a cut-and-dried procedure of simplification to essential components, experiment in the controlled situation of a laboratory, prediction and replication. But the sciences of history -- not just evolution but a suite of fundamental disciplines ranging from geology, to cosmology, to linguistics -- can't operate by this stereotype. We are charged with explaining events of extraordinary complexity that occur but once in all their details. We try to understand the past, but don't pretend to predict the future. We can't see past processes directly, but learn to infer their operation from preserved results.

Science is a pluralistic enterprise with a rich panoply of methods appropriate for different kinds of problems. Past events of long duration don't lie outside the realm of science because we cannot make them happen in a month within our laboratory. Direct vision isn't the only, or even the usual, method of inference in science. We don't see electrons, or quarks, or chemical bonds, any more than we see small dinosaurs evolve into birds, or India crash into Asia to raise the Himalayas.

William Whewell, the great English philosopher of science during the early nineteenth century, argued that historical science can reach conclusions, as well confirmed as any derived from experiment and replication in laboratories, by a method he called "consilience" (literally "jumping together") of inductions. Since we can't see the past directly or manipulate its events, we must use the different tactic of meeting history's richness head on. We must gather its wondrously varied results and search for a coordinating cause that can make sense of disparate data otherwise isolated and uncoordinated. We must see if a set of results so diverse that no one had ever considered their potential coordination might jump together as the varied products of a single process. Thus plate tectonics can explain magnetic stripes on the sea floor, the rise and later erosion of the Appalachians, the earthquakes of Lisbon and San Francisco, the eruption of Mount St. Helens, the presence of large flightless ground birds only on continents once united as Gondwanaland, and the discovery of fossil coal in Antarctica.

A theme the Society sometimes touches upon is the fact that evolutionists do not see the need for God in explaining the history of life. The reason is simple: biological scientists come from a wide variety of backgrounds and religious beliefs. Some are atheists, some agnostics, some are Hindus, some are Christians. The religions of the world all have creation stories or explanations of how the world got to be as it is. Since mixing religion and science under these circumstances works no better than mixing religion and politics, scientists generally leave religious ideas to religion. As paleontologist Niles Eldredge said with regard to the mechanism of evolution, scientists "perforce must stick to the only naturalistic, materialistic explanation around: natural selection."²⁹³

It is not possible to prove, using the Society's concept of the scientific method, that the God of the Bible created the universe. What kind of test would one devise to demonstrate it? Neither is it possible to scientifically disprove it. Likewise, purely logical arguments run into difficulties. The argument from design seems reasonable, but ultimately reduces to the question, Who designed the Designer? The argument that the laws of the universe imply a lawgiver seems reasonable, but ultimately stems from a misunderstanding of what natural law really means. Mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell discussed problems with this argument some years ago:²⁹⁴

... there is a very common argument from natural law. That was a favorite argument all through the eighteenth century, especially under the influence of Sir Isaac Newton and his cosmogony. People observed the planets going around the sun according to the law of gravitation, and they thought that God had given a behest to these planets to move in that particular fashion, and that was why they did so. That was, of course, a convenient and simple explanation that saved them the trouble of looking any further for explanations of the law of gravitation. Nowadays we explain the law of gravitation in a somewhat complicated fashion that Einstein has introduced. I do not propose to give you a lecture on the law of gravitation, as interpreted by Einstein, because that again would take some time; at any rate, you no longer have the sort of natural law that you had in the Newtonian system, where, for some reason that nobody could understand, nature behaved in a uniform fashion. We now find that a great many things we thought were natural laws are really human conventions. You know that even in the remotest depths of stellar space there are still three feet to a yard. That is, no doubt, a very remarkable fact, but you would hardly call it a law of nature. And a great many things that have been regarded as laws of nature are of that kind. On the other hand, where you can get down to any knowledge of what atoms actually do [in quantum mechanics], you will find they are much less subject to law than people thought, and that the laws at which you arrive are statistical averages of just the sort that would emerge from chance. There is, as we all know, a law that if you throw dice you will get double sixes only about once in thirty-six times, and we do not regard that as evidence that the fall of the dice is regulated by design; on the contrary, if the double sixes came every time we should think that there was design. The laws of nature are of that sort as regards a great many of them. They are statistical averages such as would emerge from the laws of chance; and that makes this whole business of natural law much less impressive than it formerly was. Quite apart from that, which represents the momentary state of science that may change tomorrow, the whole idea that natural laws imply a lawgiver is due to a confusion between natural and human laws. Human laws are behests commanding you to behave a certain way, in which way you may choose to behave, or you may choose not to behave; but natural laws are a description of how things do in fact behave, and being a mere description of how things do in fact behave, and being a mere description of what they in fact do, you cannot argue that there must be somebody who told them to do that...

The author of the Creation book appears unfamiliar with the fact that what we call natural laws are merely descriptions of how things behave. On page 123, under the subtitle "Law Requires a Lawmaker," he says:

The entire universe, from atoms to galaxies, is governed by definite physical laws. There are laws for governing heat, light, sound and gravity, for example. As physicist Stephen W. Hawking said: "The more we examine the universe, we find it is not arbitrary at all but obeys certain well-defined laws that operate in different areas. It seems very reasonable to suppose that there may be some unifying principles, so that all laws are part of some bigger law."

No doubt this is true. The object of theoretical physics, of which Hawking is an able practitioner, is to find out what those unifying principles are. Hawking believes that they will eventually be able to be expressed in terms of mathematical equations that will be part of what he calls "the unification of physics,"²⁹⁵ which has been a sort of holy grail for physicists since Einstein first formulated the theory of relativity. However, whether these principles are also "behests" that the physical universe has to obey is another story. Creation's author thinks they are, as on page 124 he says:

When we think of laws, we acknowledge that they came from a lawmaking entity. A traffic sign that says "Stop" certainly has behind it some person or group of persons who originated the law. What, then, about the comprehensive laws that govern the material universe? Such brilliantly conceived laws surely bear witness to a supremely intelligent lawmaker.

The claim that the God of the Bible is the Creator of the universe is found only in the Bible itself. So why should any one religious idea get more of a hearing in science than any other? If one allowed religious ideas to become essential parts of science, discussions would reduce to religious debates. Contrary to what scientific creationists claim, it is not practical to try to separate the idea of God as creator from any one particular religion, as each has its own ideas about God. That does not stop individual scientists from entertaining any ideas they please about the origin and history of life. Nor does it bear on how the universe really came into existence -- there may well be a creator and he may well be the God of the Bible -- but scientists are not in a position to discuss such matters from a professional standpoint. It is unfortunate that many scientists do not acknowledge these things, although many do. Most people in scientific fields seem able to resolve such matters of conflict between their personal beliefs and their professional beliefs satisfactorily.

My own personal feeling at this time is simply that there is a creator, probably the God of the Bible, who has done lots of things for reasons that are simply not understandable to humans at present. Why would he have created so many species throughout geological history and later wiped them all out in great extinctions? Why are there so many sequences of animals that show slight changes in structure as one progresses through the fossil record? The sudden appearance of new animals and radically new structures in the fossil record testifies to a creator, but the continuing sequences of slightly different animal forms testifies to experimentation. Maybe the creator had other beings like himself do most of the work. Many people would jump at the chance to do biological engineering of that sort. One thing is certain -- the world is full of great mysteries. The more is found out about the universe the more seem true the words of Ecclesiastes 8:17:

And I saw all the work of the [true] God, how mankind are not able to find out the work that has been done under the sun; however much mankind keep working hard to see, yet they do not find out. And even if they should say they are wise enough to know, they would be unable to find out.

Part 10: Conclusion

From the evidence presented in this essay it is evident that the Watchtower Society does not understand science or how it is practiced. The Society constantly misrepresents issues and misquotes scientists, especially when it comes to evolution. It seems to feel that keeping its followers in ignorance about science issues that conflict with its agenda is the best way to keep them convinced of the truth of the Bible and of its claims to spiritual authority. Honest persons will not accept the Society's methods of argumentation.

The magazine Technology Review, February/March 1992, published an article on page 5, entitled "Looking for a Few Hungry Samurai." It gave general advice to moonlighting authors who might want to write articles for the magazine, and offered a few suggestions on how an author could make his writing a success:

Don't preach to the converted. Readers want to know your opinions, even those with strong political implications. But it's important to assume that readers are intelligent skeptics who don't already agree with you -- otherwise, why bother to write? -- yet who are willing to be convinced. The key is to present enough material, including a fair rendering of opposing viewpoints, so that readers can decide for themselves. "The best way I know of persuading you of anything," says MIT physicist Philip Morrison, "is not to plead with you to trust me, not to invoke authority in general, not even to call upon some expert, but to show you just what it is that persuaded me."

The Society's 1967 book Qualified To Be Ministers gave excellent advice on page 199:

Be very careful to be accurate in all statements you make. Use evidence honestly. In quotations, do not twist the meaning of a writer or speaker or use only partial quotations to give a different thought than the person intended. Also if you use statistics, use them properly. Statistics can often be used to give a distorted picture.

This is good advice for those writing on any topic, and should give food for thought to any who read the Society's writings on science. The Society has violated every piece of the above advice, in a way similar to that practiced by scientific creationists. Their methods have been well summarized:²⁹⁶

Louis Agassiz, one of the last great scientific creationists, wisely admonished his fellow scientists to "study nature, not books." The modern creationists, however, study books, not nature. Specifically, they study the Bible and the books of scientists; their research effort is devoted to making their beliefs about the empirical world consistent with the former and to searching the latter for appropriate quotations to use (or misuse) in their campaign against science and evolution. Creationist tracts and books never scientifically examine the nature of the creation in which they believe, for all they can state about creation and its results are fiat assertions and personal speculations. Instead, they claim that if evolution is false, then creation is true, and then try to demonstrate that evolution is false.

Scientists rarely analyze creationist publications for the purpose of correcting the errors and enlightening the public because of the time such activity takes away from their research, because of the necessity of being familiar with creationist arguments as well as science, and mainly because to answer every argument and correct each distortion would require the scientist to write much more and explain things in much greater detail than the creationist. The creationist relies to a large extent on the sheer volume of distortions, facile arguments, and superficial explanations to achieve the desired end of confusing the reader and on suggesting antiscientific implications that remain in the reader's memory, rather than on persuading the reader with convincing arguments and evidence. Lay readers are particularly vulnerable to this technique for they generally have an inadequate reference base to evaluate the claims, even if they are skeptical.

One journal that reviewed the Creation book said about Jehovah's Witnesses as individuals:²⁹⁷

What is unfortunate is that these nice, sincere individuals are usually not aware that their own literature, all published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Brooklyn, New York, frequently transgresses all the rules of honesty that individual Jehovah's Witnesses idealize. Indeed, an examination of their publications reveals that the Watchtower Society has a habit of misquoting or misrepresenting scientific, linguistic, and historical sources to an extent seldom seen among well-established sectarian groups. Most Jehovah's Witnesses do not have the time or the required scientific and scholarly training to verify each reference. The following are only a few of numerous examples of misrepresentation of scientific and scholarly sources.

It said that the Creation book "is one of the most consistently blatant misrepresenters of scientific viewpoints."

The December 15, 1991 Watchtower, on pages 22-24, discussed the situation faced by Galileo when he was up against the Catholic church. It said of the Catholic church hierarchy,

Galileo's new ideas... challenged their reputation and power... As biographer L. Geymonat points out in his book Galileo Galilei: "Narrow-minded theologians who wanted to limit science on the basis of biblical reasoning would do nothing but cast discredit upon the Bible itself." For selfish reasons stubborn men did exactly that.

Is it not evident that the Society wants to "limit science on the basis of biblical reasoning"? Is it not clear that the Society's misrepresentation of science casts "discredit upon the Bible itself"? Unless the Bible makes a direct statement on a "scientific" subject it would be wise to take scientists seriously, or risk taking on the position of Galileo's tormenters, looking foolish, or discrediting the Bible. Subscribing to certain Bible interpretations merely because they have become traditional does no one justice. Playing loose with truth, as the Creation book perfectly illustrates, opens the door to ridicule, as the following opinion by author Alan Rogerson shows:²⁹⁸

A long acquaintance with the literature of the Witnesses leads one to the conclusion that they live in the intellectual 'twilight zone.' That is, most of their members, even their leaders, are not well educated and not very intelligent. Whenever their literature strays onto the fields of philosophy, academic theology, science or any severe mental discipline their ideas at best mirror popular misconceptions, at worst they are completely nonsensical.

On a computer news network, one person, replying to a Witness who tried to explain that Creation did not mislead people, said:

The JWs and I simply have different notions of Christian responsibility toward truth. A Creationist who writes a book and quotes scientists has the responsibility to ensure that he does not misrepresent the quoted people. Some of the excerpts offered in this group have included strong protests from the quoted scientists, who were angered at the suggestion that they endorse the creationist ideas of the JWs.

I believe that Christianity includes a duty to insist on careful attention to all details, to ensure that all quotes and citations of authorities are accurate and in keeping with the intent of the authors -- in sum, to ensure that everything reasonable is done to prevent misleading people. It is clear to me from both official Watchtower publications and statements by JWs on the net that the JW religion has no such devotion to truth; instead of taking responsibility for misleading people, everybody denies that those quotes are misleading. Instead of offering people a chance to review intended quotes before publication, Watchtower writers chop quotes out of context and select only certain phrases.

No group of people will ever be 100% perfect in what they publish; but the reaction to some of the more glaring errors mentioned during the last few weeks speaks volumes. In some cases, it is claimed that there isn't really an error at all. In others, no response is given at all -- nothing.

I believe the actions of the Watchtower, and the reactions we've seen here (both refusing to accept blame for some problems, and complete silence on others) are not appropriate for Christians; this is one of my basic philosophical disagreements with the JWs. As it seems unlikely we can resolve our differing opinions about Christian responsibility, further discussion is probably worthless.

Another person on that computer news network said:

Concerning the JW book against evolution and for a literal Genesis creation: I have both the bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics, although neither is really needed to determine that just about every mathematical reference is the JW book is bogus. Some are just plain wrong, some are wrong because the author just didn't know what he was talking about, and some are wrong because of apparently deliberate deception.

In its back page advertisements, the Society's 1988 book Revelation -- Its Grand Climax At Hand!, describes the Creation book thus:

Life -- How Did It Get Here? By Evolution or by Creation? has been described as the finest science book for building appreciation for life and its complexities. It completely demolishes the teaching of evolution and irrefutably demonstrates the existence of an almighty Creator.

Compare the Society's boasting with the exchange that took place between a defender (not a native English speaker) of the Creation book and a critic:

"Have you read the little blue book Life -- How Did It Get Here, by Evolution or Creation?"

Do you consider this little disingenuous, flawed and deceptive piece of crap a scientific source? I think the JW tract you are referring to has been taken apart thoroughly in this forum already...

"It's a brief, comprehensive introduction to the evolutionary questions in an easy-to-read-form."

Read "it's a brief, sparse introduction to trumped-up, so-called evolutionary questions aimed at a scientifically illiterate audience."

"As such it doesn't go too far to individual cases, and thus successfully maintains the view to evolution in entirety."

And it tends to ignore significant details when they do not fit with the agenda of the writer(s)...

"How about that?"

It shows how little you understand. The pamphlet makes no meaningful statements about evolutionary theory. It presents a silly, bonehead caricature of the science and then rips that to shreds.

Many people believe that there are ways to harmonize Bible-based religious beliefs with science. For example:²⁹⁹

Dr David Ride, a highly respected evolutionist in the Australian scientific community... points out:

as a scientist and a Christian, I see no threat by science to Christianity but, rather, a challenge: a challenge to theologians to make known to scientists the position of modern theological scholarship on creation, and a challenge to scientists, like myself, to express the position of science on evolution in such a way that it is clear that it addresses questions that can be examined by scientific methods, but does not deny the reality of other issues and truths about which science says nothing...

Similarly, a Christian botanist recently asserted in the Uniting Church's journal 'A belief in god as creator, and an acceptance of evolution are in no way alternatives. I do not believe in evolution, nor in gravity. They are facts of life. I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. That is worth believing!'

Creation 'Scientists', a vocal minority of religious fundamentalists who believe that any scientific observation which appears to contradict a literal interpretation of the King James version of the Bible is in error, epitomise the worst sort of irrationality that can result from confusion of religious and scientific concepts. They cannot or will not see the differences between the material and spiritual components of the universe. Because the Bible, which they regard as representing the infallible word of God, appears to provide statements about the nature and time of origin of the material world, they (e.g. Morris, 1974a) declare that the truth of these statements is part of an all-or-nothing package involving belief in God. In other words, they hold that to accept the concepts of evolution (which they regard as a refutation of the Biblical account of Creation) automatically involves rejection of God.

In reality it means nothing of the kind. Because the concept of evolution is one of science, it can have no bearing on the reality of a spiritual God, miracles or any other supernatural phenomena.

As well as misusing the Bible, Creation 'Scientists' ' declaration that one either accepts the literal truth of every word of the Bible (as they interpret it) or one rejects God represents the worst possible sort of blackmail. The aim of this extraordinary threat is to intimidate Christians into blindly accepting Creation 'Science's' views as the only way to accept God. This kind of ideological threat would have been more at home during the thirteenth-century Inquisition than in the twentieth century. Surely people may find God in many different ways and as surely it is the right of no-one to deny to someone else acceptance of God simply because they do not like that person's understanding of science. The Creation 'Scientists' ' declaration is not only illogical; it is an intolerant and un-Christian point of view.

In any case, unlike the Creation 'Scientists' who have lost much of their grip on reality because of their sworn allegiance to accepting no evidence from the world that does not support the absolute inerrancy of the word of the Bible..., most Christians find no difficulty in accepting the concepts of evolution as well as the Genesis account. Their faith, unlike that of Creation 'Scientists', does not involve determining for God the limits of His powers. They acknowledge the possibility that God may have created and guided the evolutionary process. In this perfectly sensible view, evolution may well have been God's method of Creation. As many deeply religious people have pointed out, it says nowhere in the Genesis account precisely how God created and it would seem more than just a bit presumptuous to declare that God was not allowed to create life by whatever means He chose.

How, after all, if God did use an evolutionary process to bring about His Creation could he have explained to the human transcribers of the Bible the intricacies of molecular genetics as part of this creative process, even if he had wanted to? Neither the human transcribers nor the intended audience for the Bible had any of the vocabulary or any of the essential concepts to comprehend, let alone write down, even the most elementary description of cellular biochemistry, amino acid sequences, messenger RNA, self-replicating nucleic acids, population genetics and so forth. If God's method of Creation was the same complex evolutionary process which we are just beginning to understand (all of us that is except Creation 'Scientists'), the only thing God could have said that the people of the time would have understood was, 'I created life'. The important message being conveyed was that God was the Author of the Creation; that concept humans needed to understand and this was a perfectly adequate means of conveying that understanding. The 'how' and 'when' of Creation are by comparison trivial matters and, because of the complete lack of an adequate vocabulary, were probably best explained in mythical terms. Had the descriptions been literal, they could not have been written in any language known to men for the next 3000 years (the Yahwist account including the story of Adam and Eve was probably written in the time of Solomon (Hyers, 1983)). What then would have been the purpose of providing the Bible with a literal account of God's methods of Creation if it could not have been understood for another 3000 years?

Modern discovery of the mechanisms and reality of evolution could be our first real glimpse into the mechanisms devised by God to bring about His Creation. In this view, the phenomenal complexities involved in the evolution of life would be one of the most stunning manifestations of God's power rather than, as Creation 'Scientists' conclude, a refutation of the whole concept of God.

One author well described the mind set of fundamentalists where the Bible is concerned, and its results.³⁰⁰ "What is most singular about the creationist viewpoint is its superficiality and lack of scholarship." Because of its position on Genesis and the Bible as a whole, "biblical fundamentalism proceeds as if no one else had written anything about the Bible in the last 130 years..." In their self-righteousness fundamentalists pass judgment on everything in sight, trying to force others to accept their religious views. The authoritarian attitude they convey carries "associations reminding one of much terrible history. Little wonder that many evolutionists overreact, drop their scientific cover, and chant in unison, 'There is no doubt...' Little wonder that the alternative to evolution seems to be 'intellectual barbarism.'"

In view of the tremendous difficulties involved in harmonizing the findings of science with a literal interpretation of every word of Genesis, would it not be wiser for the Watchtower Society to humbly acknowledge ignorance of how God created, and concede that evolution or something that looks like evolution was God's method? This would be far better than attempting to distort evidence in at attempt to make it fit with ideas on which Genesis makes no explicit statements. When it comes right down to it, the evidence for either completely materialistic evolution or for fundamentalist style Biblical creation is so voluminous and so confusing that "belief" in either one is necessarily a matter of faith, and will be determined by other factors. In any case, it should be unacceptable to honest persons to know that they have been misinformed, or for them to misinform others. The Society's 1974 book Is This Life All There Is?, on page 46, gave good advice:

Knowing these things, what will you do? It is obvious that the true God, who is himself "the God of truth" and who hates lies, will not look with favor on persons who cling to organizations that teach falsehood. (Psalm 31:5; Proverbs 6:16-19; Revelation 21:8) And, really, would you want to be even associated with a religion that had not been honest with you?

The Bible says that its author is a God of truth, and it would seem that a passage from James Moffatt's translation of Job 13:7-12 is applicable to the Watchtower Society's methods of dealing with facts:

Will you bring unfair arguments for God? Will you tell lies on his behalf? Will you be sycophants of the Almighty? Will you be special pleaders for God? Will it be well when he probes you? Can you deceive him like a man? No, he will punish you, if you are sycophants of his in secret. Should not his majesty cause you to shudder? Should not the dread of him seize you? Your maxims crumble like mere ashes, your arguments collapse like mounds of clay.

Footnotes

¹ The Society used to promote Isaac Vail's theory of the Flood. See the Dec. 1, 1912 Watch Tower, p. 372 (p. 5140 Reprints); Creation, 1927, pp. 25-30; The Truth Shall Make You Free, 1943, pp. 57-62. It was referred to until the mid-1950s.

² Life-How Did It Get Here? By Evolution or by Creation?, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., Brooklyn, NY, 1985.

³ Critical reviews are in the journals Creation/Evolution Vol. 12 (No. 1, Summer 1992): 29-34 and Free Inquiry Vol. 12 (No. 2, Spring 1992): 28-31.

⁴ Ashley Montagu, ed., Science and Creationism, p. 345, Oxford University Press, New York, 1984.

⁵ Creation/Evolution, vol. 12, No. 1, p. 30, 33, National Center for Science Education, Berkeley, California, Summer, 1992.

⁶ Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, pp. 373-374, 1859.

⁷ Introduction by W. R. Thompson, The Origin of Species, p. xxii, 1956 edition.

⁸ James Gorman, "The Tortoise or the Hare?," Discover, p. 88, October, 1980.

⁹ A later edition of Creation amended the last sentence to "there is growing dissent from the prevailing view of Darwinism."

¹⁰ Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe, p. 12 (p. 4, paperback), Ticknor & Fields, New Haven, Connecticut, 1982.

¹¹ ibid.

¹² Creation/Evolution Newsletter, 7, No. 5, pp. 15-16, September/October 1987.

¹³ Robert Jastrow, The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe, pp. 97-101, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1981.

¹⁴ Charles Darwin, op cit, p. 133.

¹⁵ David M. Raup, "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, pp. 22-3, Chicago, January 1979.

¹⁶ ibid, p. 23, 25.

¹⁷ Richard Lewontin, "Adaptation," Scientific American, p. 213, New York, September, 1978.

¹⁸ Laurie R. Godfrey, Scientists Confront Creationism, p. xxiv, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1983.

¹⁹ The Society has been making this claim for many years. The Dec. 1881 Zion's Watch Tower, page 1 (p. 299 Reprints) said: "Many suppose, that the history of creation as given in the first chapter of Genesis, is utterly at variance with the teachings of Geology. This is not the case. Some of the most eminent Geologists believe 'that the word of God, properly interpreted, is in harmony with the teachings of their science.'" The other material in this article shows how little the Society's views on creation have changed in over 100 years. The Dec. 1, 1912 Watch Tower, page 372 (p. 5140 Reprints) said: "We hold that the Genesis account is in full accord with all the facts known to science." It referred approvingly to "the Vailian Theory," which was originated by Isaac N. Vail in 1874 to account for the Flood. An interesting account of the theory ("supported by the Scriptures," of course) is given in the 1927 book Creation, pages 25-30, and in the 1943 book The Truth Shall Make You Free, pages 57-62. These books show that the theory is pure fantasy and has about as much merit as Immanuel Velikovsky's works. Anyone entertaining it as truth has no understanding of science or physics whatsoever. The Society promulgated the theory until the mid-1950s.

²⁰ It is interesting to note that Creation says all this in the context of disproving evolution. The foregoing argument is able to prove scientists wrong about evolution only by assuming they are right about the sequence of life! The argument also does not inform the reader that most geologists do not agree with the Genesis sequence. It also assumes that none of the points could have been put into the correct sequence by informed guessing. If you had no knowledge of the Bible or science, and only knew what you had observed by living on the earth for 50 years, would you put item (1) "a beginning" someplace in the middle, or at the end? Would you put item (6) "land plants" ahead of item (5) "large areas of dry land"?

^20a A number of physicists have questioned the Big Bang theory, because of its inability to explain certain types of observations. The theory has also been said to suffer from too many ad-hoc patches. However, other evidence strongly supports it, and the majority of scientists accept it.

²¹ Stephen G. Brush, "Finding the Age of the Earth by Physics or by Faith?," Journal of Geological Education, vol. 30, p. 40, 1982.

²² W. L. Copithorne, "The Worlds of Wallace Pratt," The Lamp, vol. 53, pp. 11-14, Standard Oil, Fall, 1971.

²³ Stephen Jay Gould, "Genesis and Geology: Are you interested in the rock of ages, or the age of rocks?," Natural History, vol. 97, pp. 12-20, September, 1988.

²⁴ Laurie R. Godfrey, Scientists Confront Creationism, pp. 161-162, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1983.

²⁵ D. R. Selkirk and F. J. Burrows, editors, Confronting Creationism: Defending Darwin, p. 82, New South Wales University Press, Kensington NSW Australia, 1988.

²⁶ John R. Kohlenberger III, ed., The NIV Interlinear Hebrew-English Old Testament, p. xxv, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1987.

²⁷ New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures -- With References, p. 1572, 1984.

²⁸ H. C. Leupold, Barnes Notes on the Old Testament: Exposition of Genesis, pp. 130-131, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1960.

^28a See the sub-section "Where Did the Water Come From?" in my essay on "The Flood" for a discussion of the physical difficulties. See the sub-section "The Circle of the Earth" in my essay on "The Watchtower Society's View of Science," for a discussion of Genesis' mention of the "firmament" or "expanse."

²⁹ Insight on the Scriptures, Vol. 1, p. 545, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., Brooklyn, NY, 1988.

³⁰ Aid to Bible Understanding, pp. 392-393, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., Brooklyn, NY, 1971.

^30a The Society vehemently denies the existence of several documentary threads running through Genesis, which is the contention of the Documentary Theory of the so-called higher critics of Genesis. How is this idea in conflict with the Society's contention that Moses compiled Genesis from several sources? For a good summary of these ideas, see Isaac Asimov's In The Beginning, Crown Publishers, Inc., New York, 1981. The appendix contains the so-called P-document, extracted from Genesis and presented alone. This extracted story is far more coherent than Genesis itself. See also The Book of J, Harold Bloom and David Rosenberg, Grove Weidenfeld, New York, 1990; Genesis, in The Anchor Bible series, E. A. Speiser, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1981; The Noah's Ark Nonsense, Howard M. Teeple, Religion and Ethics Institute, Inc., Evanston, Illinois, 1978, pp. 41-52.

³¹ Insight on the Scriptures, Vol. 1, pp. 545-546, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., Brooklyn, NY, 1988.

³² E. A. Speiser, The Anchor Bible Genesis, pp. 9-10, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1981. Fourth Printing.

³³ Jack Finegan, Light from the Ancient Past, p. 65, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1946, 1959.

³⁴ Bruce Vawter, On Genesis: A New Reading, pp. 37-38, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1977.

^34a A personification of the primordial sea of sweet water.

^34b Personification of the primordial salt-water ocean.

³⁵ Ashley Montagu, Science and Creationism, p. 55, Oxford University Press, New York, 1984.

³⁶ ibid, p. 57.

³⁷ ibid, p. 49.

^37a A balanced view of what the fossil record contains and its relation to evolution and creation is presented in The Status of Evolution as a Scientific Theory, Robert C. Newman, et al, Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute, Hatfield, Pennsylvania, Research Report No. 37, 1990.

³⁸ Roger Lewin, Human Evolution: An Illustrated Introduction, Second Edition, p. 25, Blackwell Scientific Publications, Boston, 1989.

³⁹ Stephen M. Stanley, Extinction, p. ix, Scientific American Books, Inc., New York, 1987.

⁴⁰ ibid, p. 96.

⁴¹ Rick Gore, "Extinctions," National Geographic Magazine, p. 684, Washington, D.C., June, 1989.

⁴² ibid, p. 664.

⁴³ ibid, p. 689.

⁴⁴ ibid, pp. 669-671.

⁴⁵ Stanley, op cit, p. 17.

⁴⁶ Robert T. Bakker, The Dinosaur Heresies, pp. 406-424, 436-438, William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, 1986.

⁴⁷ ibid, pp. 399-401.

⁴⁸ ibid, p. 404.

⁴⁹ Roger Lewin, op cit, p. 16, 1989.

⁵⁰ Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, p. ix, 1976.

⁵¹ Robert Jastrow, Red Giants and White Dwarfs, p. 249, Warner Books, Inc., New York, 1979.

⁵² Robert Jastrow, The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe, p. 23, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1981.

⁵³ Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life, pp. 56-58, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1989.

⁵⁴ Andrew H. Knoll, "End of the Proterozoic Eon," Scientific American, pp. 64-73, New York, October, 1991.

^54a Paragraph 38 quotes "zoologist [Harold G.] Coffin" to say that the fossil record supports creation, not evolution. Coffin is a six-literal-day creationist. His words are quoted from the magazine Liberty, published by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. A warning flag that a reader should beware of Coffin's credentials as a zoologist is his statement beginning with "To secular scientists..." This is most curious, to see Jehovah's Witnesses quoting Seventh-Day Adventists on creation. The Society would never think of quoting them on strictly religious issues, and their insistence that the six creative days of Genesis were literal twenty four hour days would seem to disqualify them as a source reference on creation. The Society says the contention is unscriptural, in the July 22, 1987 Awake!, on page 13. As to the Society's devotion to truth, it is inexcusable that the Creation book quotes a six-literal-day creationist without telling its readers. Coffin is quoted elsewhere in the Creation book as a zoologist, with no mention that he is also a six-literal-day creationist.

Concerning Harold Coffin, Science and Creationism, (Montagu, op cit, pp. 292-293) said that he is a member of the Creation Research Society (CRS) of Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was called as a defense witness for the 1982 Arkansas law requiring "equal time" for the teaching of evolution and creation in schools: "Five of the State's witnesses defending Arkansas's Act 590 are members of CRS. The impossibility of such scientists conducting research objectively, rather than searching out data that support their biblically oriented hypothesis, was brought out when counsel Ennis cross-examined CRS scientist Harold Coffin, of the Geo-science Research Institute, Loma Linda University, California. The lack of scientific credibility of such scientists quickly became apparent:

Ennis: You have had only two articles in standard scientific journals since getting your Ph.D. in 1955, haven't you?

Coffin: That's correct.

Ennis: The Burgess Shale is said to be 500 million years old, but you think it is only 5,000 years old, don't you?

Coffin: Yes.

Ennis: You say that because of information from the Scriptures, don't you?

Coffin: Correct.

Ennis: If you didn't have the Bible you could believe the age of Earth to be many millions of years, couldn't you?

Coffin: Yes, without the Bible.

Ennis: Creation science is not falsifiable, is it?

Coffin: No, it is in the same category as evolution science.

Ennis: No further questions."

⁵⁵ Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe, pp. 117-120, Ticknor & Fields, New Haven, Connecticut, 1982.

Francis Hitching was discussed earlier in this essay. The Neck of the Giraffe has many interesting things to say, but it makes a number of grievous errors. Hitching seems to be ignorant of much of the latest information on the fossil record, even what was readily available prior to the 1982 publishing date. For example, he claims on page 22 that no fossils exist to indicate how the four bones in the reptile jaw were transformed into the single bone of mammals. But by 1982, many fossils intermediate in time and structure were known and thoroughly described in the technical literature. This point is addressed in some detail later in this essay.

⁵⁶ Steven M. Stanley, The New Evolutionary Timetable, p. 172, 1981.

⁵⁷ Ashley Montagu, ed., op cit, pp. 58-59.

^57a See also Life -- How Did It Get Here? By Evolution or by Creation?, p. 47.

⁵⁸ Ashley Montagu, ed., op cit, pp. 51-52.

⁵⁹ Laurie R. Godfrey, Scientists Confront Creationism, pp. 198-199, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1983.

⁶⁰ G. Ledyard Stebbins, Processes of Organic Evolution, pp. 142-148, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1971.

⁶¹ Steven M. Stanley, The New Evolutionary Timetable, p. 95, 1981.

⁶² ibid, pp. 174-176.

⁶³ George Gaylord Simpson, The Major Features of Evolution, pp. 359-360, Columbia University Press, New York, 1961.

⁶⁴ Edmund Samuel, Order: In Life, pp. 120-122, 1972.

⁶⁵ Ashley Montagu, ed., Science and Creationism, pp. 123-124, Oxford University Press, New York, 1984.

⁶⁶ ibid, pp. 170-171.

⁶⁷ ibid, pp. 177-178.

⁶⁸ Antony J. Sutcliffe, On The Track Of Ice Age Mammals, p. 163, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1985.

⁶⁹ Ashley Montagu, ed., Science and Creationism, pp. 256-265, Oxford University Press, New York, 1984.

⁷⁰ Niles Eldredge & Ian Tattersal, The Myths of Human Evolution, pp. 45-48, Columbia University Press, New York, 1982.

⁷¹ ibid, p. 57.

⁷² Laurie R. Godfrey, ed., op cit, p. 205.

⁷³ Robert T. Bakker, The Dinosaur Heresies, William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, 1986.

⁷⁴ ibid, p. 463.

⁷⁵ Stephen M. Stanley, Extinction, p. 112, Scientific American Books, Inc., New York, 1987.

⁷⁶ Bakker, op cit, pp. 406-407.

⁷⁷ Stanley, op cit, pp. 112-113.

⁷⁸ Bakker, op cit, p. 353.

⁷⁹ ibid, pp. 361-365.

⁸⁰ ibid, pp. 126-138.

⁸¹ ibid, p. 462.

⁸² Stanley, op cit, p. 114.

⁸³ Bakker, op cit, pp. 258-259.

⁸⁴ ibid, pp. 278-280.

⁸⁵ ibid, p. 363.

⁸⁶ ibid, p. 292.

⁸⁷ ibid, pp. 296-297.

⁸⁸ John Ruben, "Reptilian Physiology and the Flight Capacity of Archaeopteryx," Evolution, vol. 45, p. 6, February, 1991.

^88a Scientific American, May, 1990, page 72, said this could change: "Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Technical University in Lubbock has identified parts of fossil skeletons from much older Triassic strata in Texas as those of a bird that he calls Protoavis, but those skeletons are fragmentary and evidence for their avian nature has not yet been presented." Chatterjee published his findings in 1991, in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London: Biological Sciences 322, #1265, (June 29, 1991), pp. 277-346. He found the fossil he informally named Protoavis in 225 million year old strata, which is about 85 million years older than Archaeopteryx. He describes the fossil skeleton as very birdlike. Some paleontologists agree with him, while others strongly disagree, pointing out that the reconstructed skeleton probably contains a mixture of bones from several individuals and even possibly from two different creatures. Most agree that the fossil, as presented, has both dinosaur and birdlike features, and unique features of its own. Zoology professor John Ruben of Oregon State University said in a personal communication that Protoavis will probably turn out to be from some sort of early ostrich dinosaur, like Ornitholestes, just as happened with fossils found by James Jensen in Utah in 1977. A discussion of Protoavis and a photo of the fossil can be found in Kings of Creation, Don Lessem, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1992, pp. 79-101.

⁸⁹ D. R. Selkirk and F. J. Burrows, editors, Confronting Creationism: Defending Darwin, p. 79, New South Wales University Press, Kensington NSW Australia, 1988.

⁹⁰ George Gaylord Simpson, Fossils and the History of Life, p. 180, Scientific American Books, 1983.

⁹¹ Bakker, op cit, pp. 301-303.

^91a Ornitholestes was a twenty pound birdlike dinosaur built along the same lines as the better known Allosaur.

⁹² D. R. Selkirk and F. J. Burrows, eds., op cit, pp. 80-82.

⁹³ Bakker, op cit, p. 305.

⁹⁴ ibid, p. 458.

⁹⁵ ibid, pp. 311-313.

⁹⁶ John H. Ostrom, "Archaeopteryx and the origin of birds," Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, vol. 8, No. 2, p. 93, June, 1976.

⁹⁷ Peter Wellnhofer, "Archaeopteryx," Scientific American, p. 70, New York, May, 1990.

⁹⁸ ibid, p. 73.

⁹⁹ Alan Feduccia and Harrison B. Tordoff, "Feathers of Archaeopteryx: Asymmetric Vanes Indicate Aerodynamic Function," Science, vol. 203, p. 1021, 1022, March 9, 1979.

¹⁰⁰ Wellnhofer, op cit, p. 75.

¹⁰¹ Jeff Hecht, "Fossil birds force an evolutionary re-think," New Scientist, vol. 128, p. 26, November 3, 1990.

¹⁰² Wellnhofer, op cit, p. 74.

¹⁰³ Samuel Tarsitano and Max K. Hecht, "A reconsideration of the reptilian relationships of Archaeopteryx," Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, vol. 69, p. 152, 157, June, 1980.

¹⁰⁴ Wellnhofer, op cit, p. 75.

'... Archaeopteryx did have a furcula [wishbone] like that of today's birds. In modern birds some of the pectoral muscles attach to that structure; Archaeopteryx may therefore also have had a small area of attachment for those muscles on its furcula. Its ability to fly, however, would have been rather limited.'

¹⁰⁵ Tarsitano and Hecht, op cit, p. 152.

¹⁰⁶ Wellnhofer, op cit, pp. 75-76.

¹⁰⁷ ibid, p. 73.

¹⁰⁸ Tarsitano and Hecht, op cit, p. 160.

¹⁰⁹ Wellnhofer, op cit, p. 73, 77.

¹¹⁰ ibid, p. 74.

'The sternum of modern birds is a wide, arched shelf of bone that often extends from the chest to the pelvic area and serves as a protective, supportive bowl for the internal organs during flight. In the middle of the outer side of the sternum is a crest that acts as an anchoring point for the pectoral muscles. Compared with the rest of the body, the size of modern birds' pectoral muscles is unmatched by any other animal; these enormous muscles enable birds to fly by flapping their wings. There are no indications that Archaeopteryx had similarly developed pectoral muscles.'

¹¹¹ John H. Ostrom, "Bird Flight: How Did It Begin?," American Scientist, vol. 67, p. 50, Jan.-Feb. 1979.

'... there is no sternum... preserved in any of the specimens... Presumably, a sternum was present in Archaeopteryx, at least in a cartilaginous state, but there is no evidence of that. What does this indicate about the size and power of the flight muscles? Perhaps nothing. After all, in bats the sternum is quite small and often lacks a keel. But the ventral flight muscle... of bats is small, comprising less than 10% of total body weight, as compared with birds, in which it typically equals 15% to 20% of body weight... Thus, the absence of a sternum in Archaeopteryx seems important -- and perhaps indicates weak pectoral muscles.'

¹¹² ibid, p. 75.

'Instead of a sternum [Archaeopteryx] had gastral (abdominal) ribs, just as its saurian ancestors did. Gastral ribs are thin, fishbonelike braces in the abdominal area that are not fixed to the rest of the skeleton. They are found today in lizards and crocodiles and were relatively common in early reptiles and amphibious animals. The gastral ribs may have protected the abdominal area and helped to support the internal organs of Archaeopteryx, but they could not have served as points of attachment for the pectoral muscles.'

¹¹³ John H. Ostrom, "Archaeopteryx and the origin of birds," Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, vol. 8, No. 2, p. 140, June, 1976.

¹¹⁴ Tarsitano and Hecht, op cit, p. 151.

¹¹⁵ Wellnhofer, op cit, p. 75.

'In modern birds, air bags extend from the lungs into the body and reach into the bones through small openings that are usually found at the top end of the upper-arm bone. These air bags enhance the capacity to breathe and help the bird to meet its heavy oxygen requirements during flight. Archaeopteryx lacks openings for air bags in its bones; therefore, it is questionable whether the animal had birdlike lungs.'

¹¹⁶ Tarsitano and Hecht, op cit, p. 157.

'It is unknown whether the bones of Archaeopteryx were pneumatic.'

¹¹⁷ Ostrom, op cit, p. 135.

¹¹⁸ Wellnhofer, op cit, p. 75.

'The largest feathers of the manus [hand] originate from only the middle finger; the largest feathers of the arm come from the ulna, the largest bone of the lower arm. Yet the ulna is smooth, in contrast to that of modern birds, which has small knobs where the main feathers are anchored firmly to the bone by ligaments. It therefore seems that the main feathers of Archaeopteryx were not anchored in the skeleton.'

¹¹⁹ John H. Ostrom, "Bird Flight: How Did It Begin?," American Scientist, vol. 67, p. 50, Jan.-Feb. 1979.

'Another surprising feature of the skeletal "flight apparatus" of Archaeopteryx is the shape and thin sheetlike construction of the coracoids -- the robust strutlike bones in modern birds that brace the shoulder against the breast bone. This coracoid brace is critical in flying birds, because it immobilizes the shoulder socket so that the full contractile force of the flight muscles is applied to the power stroke of the wing, and there is no loss of muscular force by downward displacement of the shoulder. In Archaeopteryx the coracoids are thin, half-moon-shaped sheets of bone -- short in length and not at all robust -- fragile "braces" (?) between the shoulder and the sternum. This too suggests that the pectoral region was subject to relatively weak stresses resulting from relatively small "flight" muscles.

'Even more interesting is the absence of the triosseal canal..., the pulleylike structure of the shoulder skeleton in modern birds that reverses the action of the suprocoracoideus muscle so that it powers the wing recovery stroke, rather than adding to the downward power stroke. Without that canal, this muscle could not possibly have functioned to elevate the wing in Archaeopteryx, and the recovery stroke must have been powered by the relatively weak and mechanically less efficient dorsal muscles, such as the deltoids.'

¹²⁰ Wellnhofer, op cit, p. 75.

'... the bones in the manus [hand] of Archaeopteryx are not fused to support the wing as they are in modern birds. Its fingers could move independently of one another and were equipped with strong, pointed claws.'

¹²¹ ibid, p. 75.

¹²² Ostrom, op cit, pp. 124-130.

¹²³ Tarsitano and Hecht, op cit, p. 171.

'... Archaeopteryx depicts a mosaic of advanced bird-like muscular features and primitive archosaurian attachment points.'

¹²⁴ Wellnhofer, op cit, pp. 75-76.

'The foot of Archaeopteryx is definitely adapted to running and has features intermediate between those of reptiles and modern birds. In reptiles the metatarsal bones in the foot are separate; in modern birds these bones have fused into a single bone. Overall, the foot structure of Archaeopteryx, like that of its theropod ancestors, is birdlike, with three long toes and a short backward-facing toe. The sharp, bent claw on the backward facing toe suggests this prehistoric bird might have been able to grasp objects with its feet and perch on a tree branch.'

¹²⁵ Bakker, op cit, p. 319.

'[John Ostrom] had observed that Archaeopteryx's foot couldn't get the same grip on a branch as can modern birds. Climbing birds have an inner toe that faces backward and flexes forward to grasp a branch against the other three toes. For the most efficient performance, all four of these toes must be long and their base joint must be at the same level, located at the very bottom of the long ankle bones (metatarsals). Archaeopteryx's foot was not so built. The toe facing rearward was too short and too high up on the ankle, so that its grip on a branch wouldn't be anywhere near as effective as a modern bird's... even though Archaeopteryx's foot didn't have as precise a grip as the most specialized modern perching birds do, it did have as much grasping power as many modern birds that climb adequately. And Archaeopteryx wouldn't have had to rely on its hind feet alone for effective climbing because its wings also had hooklike claws. Archaeopteryx certainly could have clambered through the ancient Bavarian vegetation as efficiently as any hoatzin chick. Finally, if Archaeopteryx were a ground jogger, its hind claws would have been blunt like those of a modern ground bird. In fact, the Archaeopteryx's feet ended in needle-sharp claws. And if it had run about on such pointed hind claws, it would have worn down their horny outer sheath. Yet the fossils display hardly any wear even on the delicate points of the claws.'

¹²⁶ Wellnhofer, op cit, p. 72.

¹²⁷ Ostrom, op cit, p. 109.

See photos and drawings on pages 110 and 115. Page 109 states: 'Although sometimes described as "bird-like", the hand and forelimb of Archaeopteryx actually are not like those of modern birds at all, but they are remarkably similar in a number of details to those of certain small theropods, namely Ornitholestes, Deinonychus, Velociraptor...'

¹²⁸ Bakker, op cit, pp. 312-316.

Compare the drawings of the hands of the hoatzin adult, hoatzin hatchling, Archaeopteryx, and Deinonychus on page 313. The July 8, 1986 Awake!, page 23, said about the unusual hoatzin: 'If the adult hoatzin is unusual, baby hoatzin is even more singular. When hatched, out comes a naked chick armed with a strong beak and oversize feet. But puzzle for a moment at the well-developed claws, or "fingers," at the bend of each wing, much like our thumb and forefinger. E. A. Brigham, who studied them a century ago, exclaimed: "From an egg laid by a bird with two feet and two wings comes an animal with four feet."... On all fours they scramble among the branches and vines, using their parrotlike jointed beak, big clawed feet, and powerful wing hooks. Good climbers, all right! But the "hands" also make effective "paddles."'

¹²⁹ Tarsitano and Hecht, op cit, p. 163.

'The similarity of the humerus and its deltoid ridge in Archaeopteryx and theropods is not a synapomorphy but the plesiomorphic condition found in most archosaurian reptiles, such as crocodilians and thecodonts. The avian humerus is characterized by the axis of the capitellum and trochlea being almost at right angles to the long axis of the head of the humerus. The condition in Archaeopteryx is primitive and non-avian.'

¹³⁰ Ostrom, 1979, op cit, p. 50.

'... the humerus lacks all the other processes and tubercles that are prominently developed in modern flying birds and that are the sites of attachment of the special muscles that fold the wing compactly against the back and flanks.'

¹³¹ Wellnhofer, op cit, p. 75.

'The underdeveloped pectoral muscles, the reptilian lungs and the lack of firm anchoring for the main feathers all paint a picture of Archaeopteryx as a poor flier. Nevertheless, the perfectly developed plumage of Archaeopteryx makes it certain that the animal did fly. No other vertebrates besides birds are equipped with real feathers...'

¹³² Bakker, op cit, p. 319.

¹³³ Wellnhofer, op cit, p. 72.

¹³⁴ Bakker, op cit, pp. 258-259, 363.

¹³⁵ Tarsitano and Hecht, op cit, p. 162.

This reference agrees that the hand and wrist structure of Archaeopteryx was quite similar to that of various small theropod dinosaurs, as described above, but attributes them to "parallel evolution" rather than direct descent.

¹³⁶ Ostrom, 1976, op cit, p. 109.

¹³⁷ ibid, p. 170.

¹³⁸ Wellnhofer, op cit, pp. 73-74.

¹³⁹ ibid, pp. 73-74.

¹⁴⁰ ibid, p. 70.

One person commented:

Neither Fred Hoyle nor Chandra Wickramasinghe has a clue about biology (their acknowledged fields are astronomy and mathematics respectively). Note that the origin of life on earth is completely separate from the evolution of life (the latter obviously presupposes life exists but does not even try to say anything about how life started).

Fred Hoyle created a recent flap by claiming that Archaeopteryx was a forgery (his claim has since been shown to be false and based on an abysmal ignorance about fossils). Creationists actually flew Chandra Wickramasinghe to the 1982 "Balanced Treatment of Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act" trial held in Little Rock Arkansas (as their star witness!). Unfortunately, their moronic scheme back-fired in a very large and humorous way. When cross-examined about the young earth creationist notion that the universe was 10,000 years old, his reply was "one would have to be crazy to believe that". Could any rational scientist believe that the earth's geology can be explained by a single catastrophe? "No." Could any rational scientist believe that the earth is less than one million years old? "No." Wickramasinghe's firm understanding of biology was brought forth by asking him to read a passage from [Hoyle and Wickramasinghe's book] Evolution From Space which claimed that insects are in fact smarter than humans but are being very careful to not let on. These statements ended up completely undermining the case of the team who paid his air fare. Judge Overton expressed confusion as to why the defense recruited Wickramasinghe; he ended up assuming that it must have been because Wickramasinghe was critical of both evolution and the scientific community.

¹⁴¹ Tarsitano and Hecht, op cit, p. 177.

¹⁴² Wellnhofer, op cit, pp. 74-75.

¹⁴³ Ostrom, op cit, p. 170.

¹⁴⁴ John H. Ostrom, "A New Look At Dinosaurs," National Geographic Magazine, vol. 154, No. 2, p. 168, Washington, D.C., August, 1978.

¹⁴⁵ Hitching, op cit, pp. 34-36.

^145a Professor Ruben published an article "Reptilian physiology and the flight capacity of Archaeopteryx" in Evolution, vol. 45, pp. 1-17, February, 1991. Ruben said in a telephone conversation April 22, 1991 that Professor Jensen's find "was a joke, it was probably from one of the ostrich dinosaurs and was certainly not an early bird."

¹⁴⁶ John Ruben, "Reptilian Physiology and the Flight Capacity of Archaeopteryx," Evolution, vol. 45, pp. 1-17, February, 1991.

¹⁴⁷ Robert T. Bakker, The Dinosaur Heresies, pp. 314-316, William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, 1986.

^147a Science magazine, 13 July 1990, Vol. 249, pp. 154,156, in an article "Hind Limbs of Eocene Basilosaurus: Evidence of Feet in Whales," said: "Hind limb buds have long been known in embryonic cetaceans up to 32-mm crown-rump length (6), and adults with externally projecting rudiments are also known (7)." Reference (7) said: "The rudimentary limb described by [R. C.] Andrews [in 1921] was said to include a femur, tibia, tarsus, and metatarsus; only two were ossified, and these are best interpreted as a femur and tibia with intervening connective cartilage. Tarsal and metatarsal bones are not found in extant whales." In other words, the limb contained upper and lower leg bones, and cartilage corresponding to partially formed feet and toes.

¹⁴⁸ Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb, p. 29, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1980.

¹⁴⁹ G. Ledyard Stebbins, Processes of Organic Evolution, p. 146, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1971.

¹⁵⁰ The World Book Encyclopedia, Vol. 2, p. 369, 1990.

¹⁵¹ Bakker, op cit, pp. 406-414.

¹⁵² ibid, pp. 415-424.

¹⁵³ Ashley Montagu, ed., Science and Creationism, p. 247, Oxford University Press, New York, 1984.

¹⁵⁴ D. R. Selkirk and F. J. Burrows, editors, Confronting Creationism: Defending Darwin, pp. 82-92, New South Wales University Press, Kensington NSW Australia, 1988.

¹⁵⁵ James A. Hopson, "The Mammal-like Reptiles: A Study of Transitional Fossils," The American Biology Teacher, vol. 49, no. 1, p. 25, January, 1987.

¹⁵⁶ Archie Carr, The Reptiles, pp. 40-41, Time-Life Books, 1963.

¹⁵⁷ Richard Carrington, The Mammals, pp. 36-37, Time- Life Books, 1963.

¹⁵⁸ Niles Eldredge & Ian Tattersal, The Myths of Human Evolution, Columbia University Press, New York, 1982.

¹⁵⁹ Roger Lewin, Bones of Contention, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1987.

¹⁶⁰ William R. Fix, The Bone Peddlers: Selling Evolution, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1984.

¹⁶¹ Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin On Trial, Regnery Gateway, Washington, DC, 1991.

¹⁶² Marvin L. Lubenow, Bones of Contention, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1992.

¹⁶³ Roger Lewin, Human Evolution: An Illustrated Introduction, p. 25, W. H. Freeman and Company, New York, 1984.

¹⁶⁴ Maitland A. Edey and Donald C. Johanson, Blueprints, p. 325, Penguin Books, New York, 1989.

¹⁶⁵ ibid, p. 358.

¹⁶⁶ National Geographic Magazine, p. 593, Washington, D.C., November, 1985.

¹⁶⁷ Roger Lewin, Human Evolution: An Illustrated Introduction, Second Edition, p. 74, Blackwell Scientific Publications, Boston, 1989.

¹⁶⁸ Roger Lewin, op cit, pp. 38-41, 1984.

¹⁶⁹ Arthur N. Strahler, Science and Earth History -- The Evolution/Creation Controversy, p. 484, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York, 1987.

¹⁷⁰ Roger Lewin, op cit, pp. 38-41, 1984.

¹⁷¹ Roger Lewin, op cit, p. 92, 1989.

¹⁷² ibid, p. 83.

¹⁷³ Roger Lewin, op cit, pp. 44-46, 1984.

¹⁷⁴ Donald Johanson & James Shreeve, Lucy's Child, p. 130, Avon Books, New York, 1989.

¹⁷⁵ Roger Lewin, op cit, p. 84, 93, 1989.

¹⁷⁶ ibid, p. 80.

¹⁷⁷ Johanson & Shreeve, op cit, p. 208.

¹⁷⁸ Roger Lewin, op cit, p. 88, 1989.

^178a See C. Loring Brace, "Humans in Time and Space," pp. 245-282, in Scientists Confront Creationism, edited by Laurie R. Godfrey, referenced elsewhere in this document.

¹⁷⁹ Roger Lewin, op cit, pp. 23, 47-46, 1984.

¹⁸⁰ Edey and Johanson, op cit, pp. 348-353.

¹⁸¹ Laurie R. Godfrey, Scientists Confront Creationism, p. 261, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1983.

¹⁸² Roger Lewin, op cit, pp. 53-56, 72, 1984.

¹⁸³ ibid, p. 31.

¹⁸⁴ Bjorn Kurten, Not From the Apes, p. 109, Vintage Books, New York, 1972.

¹⁸⁵ Roger Lewin, op cit, p. 105, 1989.

¹⁸⁶ Roger Lewin, op cit, pp. 71-73, 1984.

¹⁸⁷ Edey and Johanson, op cit, p. 328.

¹⁸⁸ Erik Trinkaus and William W. Howells, "The Neanderthals," Scientific American, pp. 118-133, New York, December, 1979.

¹⁸⁹ Roger Lewin, op cit, p. 104, 1989.

¹⁹⁰ Roger Lewin, op cit, pp. 74-77, 1984.

¹⁹¹ ibid, p. 51.

¹⁹² David Pilbeam, "The Descent of Hominoids and Hominids," Scientific American, pp. 84-96, New York, March, 1984.

¹⁹³ Roger Lewin, op cit, p. 89, 1989.

¹⁹⁴ ibid, p. 91.

¹⁹⁵ Roger Lewin, op cit, pp. 81-83, 1984.

¹⁹⁶ Arthur N. Strahler, op cit, p. 492.

¹⁹⁷ ibid, pp. 490-491.

¹⁹⁸ Roger Lewin, op cit, p. 128, 1989.

¹⁹⁹ ibid, pp. 70-71.

²⁰⁰ Arthur N. Strahler, op cit, p. 485.

²⁰¹ Johanson & Shreeve, op cit, pp. 195-201.

²⁰² D. R. Selkirk and F. J. Burrows, editors, Confronting Creationism: Defending Darwin, p. 95, New South Wales University Press, Kensington NSW Australia, 1988.

²⁰³ "The Search for Our Ancestors," National Geographic Magazine, p. 593, Washington, D.C., November, 1985.

²⁰⁴ C. Owen Lovejoy, "Evolution of Human Walking," Scientific American, pp. 118-125, New York.

²⁰⁵ Johanson & Shreeve, op cit, p. 200.

²⁰⁶ Roger Lewin, op cit, pp. 75-79, 1989.

²⁰⁷ Duane T. Gish, Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record, pp. 154-163, Creation-Life Publishers, El Cajon, California, 1985.

²⁰⁸ Roger Lewin, op cit, pp. 74-70, 1984.

²⁰⁹ Laurie R. Godfrey, Scientists Confront Creationism, p. 263, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1983.

²¹⁰ William R. Fix, The Bone Peddlers: Selling Evolution, p. 7, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1984.

²¹¹ Roger Lewin, op cit, pp. 60-63, 1984.

²¹² Roger Lewin, op cit, pp. 18-21, 1984.

²¹³ Edey and Johanson, op cit, p. 358.

²¹⁴ Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory In Crisis, Adler & Adler, Publisher, Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, 1985.

²¹⁵ Roger Lewin, op cit, pp. 19-23, 1989.

²¹⁶ Donald Johanson & James Shreeve, Lucy's Child, p. 259, Avon Books, New York, 1989.

²¹⁷ Roger Lewin, Human Evolution: An Illustrated Introduction, Second Edition, p. 15, Blackwell Scientific Publications, Boston, 1989.

²¹⁸ David B. Wilson, Did the Devil Make Darwin Do It?, p. 118, The Iowa State Press, Ames, Iowa, 1983.

²¹⁹ Maitland A. Edey and Donald C. Johanson, Blueprints, p. 326, Penguin Books, New York, 1989.

²²⁰ Bjorn Kurten, Not From the Apes, p. 3, Vintage Books, New York, 1972.

²²¹ D. R. Selkirk and F. J. Burrows, editors, Confronting Creationism: Defending Darwin, pp. 118-123, New South Wales University Press, Kensington NSW Australia, 1988.

²²² Donald C. Johanson and Maitland A. Edey, Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind, p. 286, Touchstone, New York, 1981.

²²³ Edey and Johanson, op cit, p. 326.

²²⁴ William R. Fix, op cit, p. 13.

²²⁵ Johanson & Shreeve, op cit, p. 31.

²²⁶ Arthur N. Strahler, Science and Earth History -- The Evolution/Creation Controversy, pp. 474-479, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York, 1987.

²²⁷ Laurie R. Godfrey, op cit, p. 246.

²²⁸ D. R. Selkirk and F. J. Burrows, eds., op cit, pp. 73-75.

²²⁹ Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 18, p. 810, 1992.

²³⁰ Laurie R. Godfrey, op cit, p. 247.

²³¹ Arthur N. Strahler, op cit, pp. 477-478.

²³² Roger Lewin, op cit, p. 36, 1984.

²³³ Roger Lewin, op cit, pp. 58-59, 1989.

²³⁴ Steven M. Stanley, The New Evolutionary Timetable, p. 142, 1981.

²³⁵ ibid, p. 142.

²³⁶ Roger Lewin, Bones of Contention, p. 82, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1987.

²³⁷ Solly Zuckerman, Beyond the Ivory Tower, p. 90, Taplinger Publishing Company, New York, 1970.

²³⁸ ibid, p. 90.

²³⁹ Donald C. Johanson and Maitland A. Edey, Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind, p. 23, Touchstone, New York, 1981.

²⁴⁰ ibid, pp. 76-77.

²⁴¹ Roger Lewin, op cit, p. 25, 1989.

²⁴² Roger Lewin, Bones of Contention, p. 165, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1987.

²⁴³ Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin On Trial, Regnery Gateway, Washington, DC, 1991.

²⁴⁴ Arthur N. Strahler, op cit, p. 482.

²⁴⁵ Laurie R. Godfrey, op cit, pp. 254-255.

²⁴⁶ ibid, p. 38.

²⁴⁷ Laurie R. Godfrey, op cit, p. 251.

^247a Page 86 of 1977 Origins in hardcover, page 77 of 1982 unillustrated paperback.

²⁴⁸ Richard E. Leakey and Roger Lewin, Origins, p. 86 (p. 77 paperback), E. P. Dutton, New York, 1977, 1979, 1982.

²⁴⁹ ibid, p. 108 (p. 99 paperback).

²⁵⁰ Edey and Johanson, op cit, pp. 350-351.

²⁵¹ Johanson & Shreeve, op cit, p. 208.

²⁵² Roger Lewin, op cit, p. 88, 1989.

²⁵³ "The Search for Our Ancestors," National Geographic Magazine, pp. 568-573, Washington, D.C., November, 1985.

²⁵⁴ Roger Lewin, op cit, 1984.

²⁵⁵ Niles Eldredge & Ian Tattersal, The Myths of Human Evolution, Columbia University Press, New York, 1982.

²⁵⁶ Edey and Johanson, op cit, p. 329.

²⁵⁷ Encyclopedia Britannica, Macropaedia, Vol. 8, p. 1032, 1984.

^257a Encyclopedia Britannica, 1974, Macropaedia, Vol. 8, p. 1032.

²⁵⁸ Encyclopedia Britannica, Micropaedia, Vol. 6, p. 27, 1992.

²⁵⁹ Niles Eldredge & Ian Tattersall, op cit, pp. 144-145.

^259a Some people have attributed the cultural artifacts to modern men that lived alongside H. erectus and hunted it, but whose fossil remains have never been found. See, for example, The Bone Peddlers: Selling Evolution, by William Fix, 1984, pp. 117-122 and Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record, by Duane T. Gish, 1985, pp. 180-204. These books must be taken with a large grain of salt because they leave out whatever evidence does not support their ideas.

²⁶⁰ "Homo erectus Unearthed," National Geographic Magazine, p. 629, Washington, D.C., November, 1985.

²⁶¹ Roger Lewin, op cit, pp. 99-100, 1989.

²⁶² Roger Lewin, Bones of Contention, pp. 303-304, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1987.

²⁶³ Niles Eldredge & Ian Tattersall, op cit, p. 146.

²⁶⁴ D. R. Selkirk and F. J. Burrows, eds., op cit, pp. 97-98.

²⁶⁵ Robert Gannon, "How Old Is It?," Popular Science, p. 81, November, 1979.

²⁶⁶ David B. Wilson, Did the Devil Make Darwin Do It?, p. 216, The Iowa State Press, Ames, Iowa, 1983.

²⁶⁷ Laurie R. Godfrey, op cit, pp. 71-72.

²⁶⁸ Creation/Evolution, vol. 22, Winter 1987-1988, pp. 13-33, National Center for Science Education, Berkeley, California.

²⁶⁹ Johanson & Shreeve, op cit, p. 173.

²⁷⁰ Richard L. Hay and Mary D. Leakey, "The Fossil Footprints of Laetoli," Scientific American, New York, February, 1982.

²⁷¹ Richard S. Davis, Vadim A. Ranov and Andrey E. Dodonov, "Early Man in Soviet Central Asia," Scientific American, pp. 130-137, New York, December, 1980.

²⁷² Laurie R. Godfrey, op cit, pp. 276-277.

²⁷³ William R. Fix, op cit, p. xxvi.

^273a The reader may say that evolutionists hold the preconceived notion of evolution. But an idea is often called "preconceived" by those who disagree with it. Anyone who believes in the literal truth of the Genesis creation account will say that most scientists hold preconceived notions about how everything came to be, namely, no God was involved. But with just as much justification one can call the ideas of those believers preconceived. Indeed, many Christians agree with Jesus' statement to the doubting Thomas: "Happy are those who do not see and yet believe."

Like all humans, scientists are loath to abandon an idea they have long held, unless something overwhelmingly better comes along. As Michael Denton said in Evolution: A Theory In Crisis, p. 356, (Adler & Adler, Bethesda, MD, 1985), about certain old theories abandoned hundreds of years ago: "... it was more than anything else the absence of conceivable alternatives which guaranteed their continued defense, even when this necessitated increasingly implausible rationalizations. The final abandonment of a theory has invariably required the development of an alternative. As Kuhn points out: '... a scientific theory is declared invalid only if an alternative candidate is available to take its place. No process yet disclosed by the historical study of scientific development at all resembles the methodological stereotype of falsification by direct comparison with nature... the act of judgment that leads scientists to reject a previously accepted theory is always based upon more than a comparison of that theory with the world. The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the decision to accept another, and the judgment leading to that decision involves the comparison of both paradigms with nature and with each other.'"

Hence, all scientists have some preconceived notions, within whose framework they interpret what they see, so that they are not working blindly. They do not want to abandon an idea that has no good replacement and become, as it were, blind. This explains some of the resistance of evolutionists to considering that some intelligent creator, not even necessarily the God of the Bible, made all living creatures. Explanations of "why" would reduce to explaining the subjective whims of a person, and no one can do that even for simple human creatures, much less for a powerful creator.

²⁷⁴ Laurie R. Godfrey, Scientists Confront Creationism, p. 10, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1983.

²⁷⁵ Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Co., Springfield, Mass., 1979.

²⁷⁶ Laurie R. Godfrey, ed., op cit, p. 309.

²⁷⁷ ibid, p. 160.

²⁷⁸ Steven M. Stanley, The New Evolutionary Timetable, pp. 169-172, 1981.

²⁷⁹ Colin Patterson, Evolution, pp. 144-151, British Museum, London, 1978.

²⁸⁰ ibid, pp. 161-162.

²⁸¹ William R. Fix, The Bone Peddlers: Selling Evolution, p. 158, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1984.

^281a Certain predictions have been verified to an accuracy equivalent to measuring the width of the United States to within the thickness of a human hair.

²⁸² William R. Fix, op cit, p. 194.

²⁸³ ibid, p. 34.

²⁸⁴ Ashley Montagu, ed., op cit, pp. 118-119.

²⁸⁵ ibid, p. 185.

²⁸⁶ ibid, p. 269.

²⁸⁷ Walter Sullivan, Room for Darwin And the Bible, Times Books, New York, NY, September 30, 1986.

²⁸⁸ Discover, pp. 64-70, January, 1987.

²⁸⁹ Theodosius Dobzhansky, Evolution, Genetics, and Man, p. 285, 1955.

²⁹⁰ Theodosius Dobzhansky, Evolution, Genetics, and Man, p. 319, 1955.

²⁹¹ Laurie R. Godfrey, Scientists Confront Creationism, pp. 167-169, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1983.

^291a One of the best discussions of extrapolating too far is found in Evolution: A Theory In Crisis, Michael Denton, Adler & Adler, Bethesda, MD, 1985.

²⁹² D. R. Selkirk and F. J. Burrows, editors, Confronting Creationism: Defending Darwin, p. 24, New South Wales University Press, Kensington NSW Australia, 1988.

²⁹³ Niles Eldredge, Time Frames, p. 142, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1985.

²⁹⁴ Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian, pp. 7-8, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1957.

²⁹⁵ Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 155, Bantam Books, New York, 1990.

²⁹⁶ Laurie R. Godfrey, ed., op cit, p. 220.

²⁹⁷ Free Inquiry, vol. 12, No. 2, p. 28, Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism, Buffalo, New York, Spring, 1992.

²⁹⁸ Alan Rogerson, Millions Now Living Will Never Die: A Study of Jehovah's Witnesses, p. 116, Constable, London, 1969.

²⁹⁹ D. R. Selkirk and F. J. Burrows, editors, Confronting Creationism: Defending Darwin, pp. 15-16, New South Wales University Press, Kensington NSW Australia, 1988.

³⁰⁰ William R. Fix, op cit, p. 225.