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Evolution Encyclopedia Vol. 1 

Chapter 15 Appendix

SPECIES  EVOLUTION

 1 - ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES UNKNOWN

Where DID the species come from? The evolutionists have no idea. After years of study into the matter, they have drawn a blank. Much more information on this topic will be found in the appendix of chapter 17 (Fossils and Strata), in the section entitled, "Searching for Transitions. "

*Goldschmidt tells us there is nothing none about the origin (ancestry) of any species.

"The facts fail to give any information regarding the origin of actual species, not to mention the higher categories." —*Richard Goldschmidt, The Natural Basis of Evolution, p. 165.

 Taxonomists are the ones who decide which species are related to which. They are the ones who construct the plant and animal "family trees." But *Mayr tells us the taxonomists do not know what those relationships really are.

"It comes as rather a surprise to most non-taxonomists how uncertain our understanding of degrees of relationship among organisms still is today. For instance, it is still unknown for most orders of birds which other order is a given order's nearest relative. The same is true for many mammalian families and genera, for instance the Lagomorpha, Tubulidentata, Xenarthra, and Tupaia.

"Honesty compels us to admit that our ignorance concerning these relationships is still great, not to say overwhelming." —*Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought (1982), pp. 217-218.

 *Gould says it even more clearly: Darwin and his followers recognized that there ought to be a lengthy gradation of creatures linking each species to their ancestor species. But modern biologists have abandoned the notion, for they know that the gradations do not exist.

"To Darwin speciation entailed the same expectation as phyletic evolution: a long and insensibly graded chain of intermediate forms. Our presets texts have not abandoned this view, although modern biology has." —*Stephen Jay Gould, Evolution's Erratic Pace, Natural History, May 1977, p. 14.

 Only the species is natural, only it is real. All the other classifications (with the exception of some genera which should be listed as species) are artificial category labels.

"Higher categories (genera, families, orders, due, phyla, and even kingdoms), though they do represent greater levels of evolutionary divergence, are still artificial groupings made by humans for convenience in taxonomic work. They are not natural groups the way the species are." —*W. Stansfield, The Science of Evolution (1977), pp.510-511

 Only the species really counts for anything.

"The species is the supreme unit in nature, and not an artificial product of the taxonomist nor an evolutionary widening of a continuous stream of variations. As a sphere of variation the species is constant." —*H. Nilsson, Synthetisce Artbildung (Synthetic Speculation), p. 1186.

 Genetics has provided no information regarding the origins of the various species.

"It is an irony of evolutionary genetics that, although it is a fusion of Mendelism and Darwinism, it has made no direct contribution to what Darwin obviously saw as the fundamental problem: the origin of the species . . We know virtually nothing about the genetic changes that occur in species formation." —*R. Lewontin, The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change (1974), p. 159.

Each species is walled into its own structure and traits; transmutation from one to another just does not occur.

"Increase of knowledge about biology has tended to emphasize the extreme rigidity of type, and more and more to discount the idea of transmutation from one type to another—the essential basis of Darwinism." —*McNair Wilson, "The Witness of Science," in the Oxford Medical Publications (1942).

The defects in evolutionary theory are serious, and more obvious with the passing of time.

"The theory of evolution suffers from grave defects, which are more and more apparent as time advances. It can no longer square with practical scientific knowledge." —*Albert Fleishmann, Zoologist.

Saying that one thing can turn into another doesn't make it so.

"Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else." —*G.K. Chesterton (1925).

 *Kerkut surveys the field:

"These assumptions by their nature are not capable of experimental verification . . It is therefore a matter of faith on the part of the biologist that biogenesis (spontaneous generation) did occur and he can choose whatever method of biogenesis happens to suit him personally. . From our limited experience it is clear that the biochemical systems within protoplasm are not uniform, i.e. there is no established biochemical unity. .

"We have as yet no definite evidence about the way in which the Viruses, Bacteria or Protozoa are interrelated . . The precise relationship of the four classes of Protozoa is uncertain . . The Viruses, Rickettsiae, Bacteria and Protozoa are all quite distinct from one another and their interrelationship is anything but clear and certain . .

"What conclusion can be drawn concerning the possible relationship between the Protozoa and Metazoa? The only thing that is certain is that at present we do not know this relationship . . We can, if we like, believe that one or other of the various theories is the more correct, but we have no real evidence. . they do indicate that the difference between the coelenterates and the sponges are quite considerable and basic. It is thus doubtful if there is any close relationship between these two groups. It is also impossible to state whether the sponges arose earlier than the coelenterates. . Our conclusion, therefore, is that the situation is not at all clear . .

"It is difficult to tell which are the most primitive from amongst the Porifera, Mesozoa, Coelenterata, Ctenophora or Platyhelminthia and it is not possible to decide the precise interrelationship of these groups . . Thus though one can arrange a series. . there is no historical justification for either such series . .

"We still know very little about the primitive anthozoans but it requires a lot of imagination to bridge the gap between the Antipatharia and the Protozoa. . There is no clear indication that the ctenophores either gave rise to or were derived from the Turbellaria . . It would appear that the relationship between the various invertebrate phyla is a very tenuous one . .

"Though it is useful to consider that the relationships determined by comparative anatomy and embryology give proof of a monophyletic origin of the major phyla, this can only be done by leaving out much of the available information . .

"It is a matter of faith that the textbook pictures [ horse evolution] are true, or even that they are the best representations of the truth that are available to us at the present time. . In effect, much of the evolution of the major groups of animals has to be taken on trust . .

"Of course one can say that the small observable changes in modern species may be the sort d thing that lead to all the major changes, but what right have we to make such an extrapolation? . , it is premature, not to say arrogant, on our part if we make any dogmatic assertion as to the mode of evolution of the major branches of the animal kingdom . .

"I think that the attempt to explain all living forms in terms of an evolution from a unique source, though a brave and valid attempt, is one that is premature and not satisfactorily supported by present-day evidence." —*G. Kerkut, Implications of Evolution (1960).

 Evolutionary theory is at a loss to explain the several million varied species, and all their distinctive features.

"Although natural selection theory fails to explain the origin of evolutionary novelties, its greatest shortcoming in terms of evolutionary theory is it fails to explain evolutionary diversity." —*D. Rosen, "Darwin's Demon," in Systematic Zoology 27 (1978), p. 372.

 If evolution were true, the biological world ought to be like living ropes; instead it is like living marbles. Instead of continuous transitions, there are only discrete species; each one different than the next.

"If we assemble as many individuals living at a given time as we can, we notice at once that the observed variation does not form any kind d continuous distribution. Instead, a multitude of separate, discrete distributions are found. In other words the living world is not a single array of individuals in which any two variants are connected by unbroken series of intergrade, but an array of more or less distinctly separate arrays, intermediates between which are absent or at least rare." —*T. Dobzhansky, Genetics and the Origin of Species, (1941), p. 3.

 Not once has any scientist ever found an instance in which one species produced another.

"Within the period of human history we do not know of a single instance of the transformation of one species into another. . It many be claimed that the theory of descent is lacking, therefore, in the most essential feature that it needs to place the theory on a scientific basis." —*T.H. Morgan, Evolution and Adaptation, p. 42 .

 *Darwin considered it "a very obvious difficulty." Well, so much for Darwin.

" . . the distinctions of specific forms and their not being blended together by innumerable transitional links, is a very obvious difficulty." —*Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, (6th ed., 1927), p. 322.

 It is no new discovery that species are distinctly different from one another.

"Indeed, the isolation and distinctness of different types of organisms and the existence of clear discontinuities in nature have been self-evident for centuries, even to non-biologists." —*Michael Denton, Evolution: Theory in Crisis (1985), p. 105.

 One of the four leading evolutionary spokesmen in the mid-20th century said this:

"Professor Haldane stated at a (December 1951) conference of the Biology council held in Birmingham, that Natural Selection weeds out extremes of all kinds, especially those caused by mutations which are very different from the normal. He said, 'I regret to have to inform you that Natural Selection has not been observed to cause evolutionary change.' During the same talk Professor Haldane gave it as his opinion that when two mutually sterile offspring had been bred from a common ancestor, as was done in the case of Drosophila, it could not be claimed that these were two new species. According to him the geneticists have not yet succeeded in breeding a new species of Drosophilia." —H. Enoch, Evolution or Creation (1966), pp. 75-76.

 Neither natural selection nor the geneticists have been able to produce new species.

" . . Nobody has ever succeeded in producing a new species, not to mention the higher categories, by selection of micromutations." —*Richard Goldschmidt, Theoretical Genetics.

 It is impossible and illogical, but it happened anyway.

"The birth both of the species and of the individual are equally parts of that grand sequence of events which our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance. The understanding revolts at such a conclusion." —*Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (2nd Ed.), chap. 21.

 There is no such thing as species in the process of changing from one to another.

"Microevolution does not lead beyond the confines of the species, and the typical products of microevolution, the geographic races, are not incipient species. There is no such category as incipient species." —*Richard B. Goldschmidt, The Material Basis of Evolution (1960), p. 396. ["Incipient" = the early, initial stages of something new.]

"One species does not grow from the seed of another species." —*Sir Gavin de Beer, Charles Darwin: Evolution by Natural Selection (1964), p. 1.

 The gap between species never has been bridged, is not bridged today, and never will be bridged.

"Nowhere have the limits of the species been transgressed, and these limits are separated from the limits of the next good species by the unbridged gap, which also includes sterility." —*Richard B. Goldschmidt, The Material Basis of Evolution (1960), p. 168.

 Darwinian proofs of species evolution are no proofs at all, for each of the proofs (such as the darker color of certain moth subspecies) requires only simple gene reshuffling and no actual DNA changes.

"Neo-Darwinist textbooks on evolution keep citing the same comparatively few examples: industrial melanism [peppered moths], sickle cell anaemia, DDT resistance. All are comparatively minor evolutionary changes; all involve variations in which a large and obvious selective advantage can be obtained by a single allele substitution." —*P. Saunders and *M. Ho, "Is Neo-Darwinism Falsifiable?—And Does It Matter?," in Nature and System (1982), p. 191.

 Chesterton said it well:

"Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else." —G.K. Chesterton (1925).

 Geneticists still cannot figure out how new species could be produced. The DNA barrier is an impossible one to cross.

"The origin of the genetic basis of species differentiation is an important unsolved problem of evolutionary biology." —*H. L Carson, "Genetics of Speciation at the Diploid Level," in American Naturalist, 109(965):83-92.

 It took the miraculous to produce the species.

"If complex organisms ever did evolve from simpler ones, the process took place contrary to the laws of nature, and must have involved what may rightly be termed the miraculous." —*R. E. D. Clark, Victoria Institute 1943, p. 63.

 The only acceptable explanation is Creation.

"I think however that we must go further than this and admit that the only acceptable explanation is Creation. I know that this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it." —*H. J. Lipson, F. R. S., A Physicist Looks at Evolution, in Physics Bulletin 31, 1980, p. 138.

 Rather than new species appearing, the truth is that species have disappeared. Since there is no way to produce new ones, the total number in existence keeps shrinking.

"Natural selection not only brings new species into existence—if it does—but also eliminates species, and on a colossal scale. It is calculated that 99 per cent of all the species which have ever existed are now extinct. So perhaps it may be more instructive to discover why species vanish than why they appear. " —*G.R. Taylor, Great Evolution Mystery (1983), p. 86.

 2 - THE EXPERTS ARE PUZZLED

Among themselves, the experts argue back and forth over the relative merits of evolutionary theory. The Darwinists want to keep it, and the scientists want to throw it out. Here are some comments by some of these scientists. The wording may be technical but the concepts remain the same: evolutionary theory is not true.

 The purpose of Darwinism is to show how modern species evolved from other species, but all efforts have failed.

"Darwinism has failed in practice. The whole aim and purpose of Darwinism is to show how modern forms descended from ancient forms, that is, to construct reliable phylogenies [evolutionary family trees]. In this it has utterly failed." —*Norman Macbeth, American Biology Teacher, November 1976, p. 495.

 No transitional species are to be found. Species suddenly appear in the fossil record, with no way of explaining how they might have evolved from something else.

"The evolutionary origins of taxa [animal or plant units] in the higher categories are poorly known . . Most orders, classes, and phyla appear abruptly and commonly have already acquired all the characters that distinguish them." —*Francisco Ayala and *James Valentine, Evolving: The Theory and Process of Organic Evolution (1979), pp. 266-267.

 Evolutionists can assume that one species evolved from another one, but it is merely an assumption. And assumptions are not science. They do not take the place of hard facts.

"That a known fossil or recent species, or higher taxonomic group, however primitive it might appear, is an actual ancestor of some other species or group, is an assumption scientifically unjustifiable, for science never can simply assume that which it has the responsibility to demonstrate . . It is the burden of each of us to demonstrate the reasonableness of any hypothesis we might care to erect about ancestral conditions, keeping in mind that we have no ancestors alive today, that in all probability such ancestors have been dead for many tens of millions of years, and that even in the fossil record they are not accessible to us." —*Gareth V. Nelson, "Origin and Diversification of Teleostean Fishes," Annals, New York Academy of Sciences, 1971, p. 27.

 Men try so hard to see evolutionary development—which is not there—in plant and animal forms, that it results in faulty reasoning.

"The prime difficulty with the use of presumed ancestral-descendant sequences to express phylogeny [evolutionary ancestry] is that biostratigraphic [fossils-in-strata] data are often used in conjunction with morphology [outward appearance] in the initial evaluation of relationships, which leads to obvious circularity [circular reasoning]." —*B. Schaeffer, *M.K. Hecht and *N. Eldredge, "Phylogeny and Paleontology, "Ch. 2 in Evolutionary Biology, Vol. 6 (edited by Dobzhansky, Hecht and Steere) 1972, p. 39.

 Many experts become confused by the phenotype/genotype problem, and as a result unnecessarily split species when classifying them.

"These phenotypic variations can fool taxonomists and one can imagine that they could fool paleontologists even more readily, but the reason I mention them is of more fundamental importance. How can natural selection act on a plant which has already assumed the form appropriate to its situation by its own efforts? No one knows. The fact that we have no idea how organisms make these adjustments does not help." —*G.R. Taylor, Great Evolution Mystery (1983), p. 146.

 Where a fossil is located in the geologic column provides no genuine evidence as to evolutionary ancestry.

"Three paleontologists (no less) conclude that stratigraphic position [vertical location in the geologic strata] is totally irrelevant to determination of phylogeny, and they almost say that no known taxon is derived from any other." —*L. Van Valen, Science 180:488 (1973).

 In reality, species suddenly appear with no indication of evolutionary transitions from some earlier life form.

"The facts of greatest general importance are the following. When a new phylum, class, or order appears, there follows a quick, explosive (in terms of geological time) diversification so that practically all orders or families known appear suddenly and without any apparent transitions." —*Richard B. Goldschmidt, American Scientist 40:97 (1952).

 Men put all the birds, etc., together and try to see which ones are the most alike. They call this "systematics." From this they try to theorize which one descended from which other one. "Leith says that is the closest they ever arrive at evolutionary evidence.

"As it turns out, all one can learn about the history of life is learned from systematics, from the groupings one finds in nature. The rest of it is story telling of one sort or another. We have access to the tips of the tree; the tree itself is theory, and people who pretend to know about the tree and to describe what went on it—how the branches came off and the twigs came off—are, I think, telling stories." —Brian Leith, The Listener,106:390 (1981). [Quoting *Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History in London,]

 One detail adding to the confusion in regard to identifying species is the phenotype and genotype problem. The same species can look different in different places!

"However, the concept of species is bedeviled by a more immediate phenomenon which provides a headache not only for taxonomists but for the biologists who try to account for the evolutionary process. Namely, that the phenotype or physical appearance of many species can vary widely in different circumstances, even though the genotype, or genetic constitution, remains constant. The first botanist to study this phenomenon scientifically was an Austrian, Anton Kerner. As long ago as 1894, he collected seeds from lowland plants and sowed them at a height of 7,200 feet in the Alps. The resulting plants, he found, had shorter stems, smaller leaves, fewer and smaller flowers; the flowers were borne nearer the ground and the plants were brighter in colour both in leaf and flower than the plants from which they came.

"Conversely, 'As soon as seeds collected in the Alpine region were again sown in the beds of the Innsbruck or Vienna Botanic Gardens, the plants raised from them immediately resumed the form and colour usual to that position . . In no instance was any permanent or hereditary modification in form or colour observed.'

"Just before the war a trio of American experimenters carried out a variation on this experiment. They dug up a plant of Potentilla glandulosa in the Californian coast ranges and brought it up in four different environments: dry and sunny, damp and sunny, dry and shady, moist and shady. It produced four strikingly different phenotypes. The plants grown in shade were taller and had broader leaves; the plants grown in moist conditions were more vigorous. Similarly, studies of black mustard show that it varies in at least ten respects according to whether it is grown in open or cultivated fields.

"Many animals change seasonally. Not only do Arctic haves and foxes change the colour of their coats from brown to white as summer changes to winter, but even the tiny Rotaria in the village pond change shape.

"The most striking example of phenotypic variation, I suppose, is the difference between the two sexes. There was a classic instance of how far this can go in the nineteenth century, when the king parrot which is brilliant red was classed as one species and the female, which is yellow, was classed as another. The taxonomist concerned was deeply embarrassed when the real relationship emerged. The ornithologist Ernst Mayr, who made an extensive study of birds in the Pacific, reported that the small whistler, the male of which species is normally coloured black, yellow, white and olive, while the females are a dull yellowish ochre, has lost its colour in the Rennell Islands and Norfolk Island and is indistinguishable from the female. He even found a race in the Solomon Islands and Samoa where the female had the brighter colours and general appearance of a male while the true males would have been taken by a casual observer as females." —*G.R. Taylor, Great Evolution Mystery (1983), pp. 144-145.

 Statement to the U.S. Supreme Court:

"And let us dispose of a common misconception. The complete transmutation of even one animal species into a different species has never been directly observed either in the laboratory or in the field." —*Dean H. Kenyon (Professor of Biology, San Francisco State University), affidavit presented to the U.S. Supreme Court, No. 85-1513, in Brief of Appellants prepared under the direction of William J. Gusto, Jr., Attorney General of the State of Louisiana, October 1985, p. A-16.

 *Clark, in 1928, was one of the first leading evolutionists to openly admit the problem:

"Thus so far as concerns the major groups of animals, the creationists seem to have the better of the argument. There is not the slightest evidence that any one of the major groups arose from any other. Each is a special animal complex related, more or less closely, to all the rest, and appearing, therefore, as a special and distinct creation." —*Austin H. Clark, "Animal Evolution," Quarterly Review of Biology, December 1928, p. 539.

 But, actually, *Darwin had admitted it also.

"When we descend to details, we can prove that no one species has changed; nor can we prove that the supposed changes are beneficial, which is the groundwork of the theory [of evolution]." —*Charles Darwin, in *Francis Darwin (Ed.), The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. 2 (1898), p. 210.

 Lots of sisters and cousins, but no ancestors.

"The fact that all the individual species must be stationed at the extreme periphery of such logic [evolutionary] trees merely emphasize the fact that the order of nature betrays no hint of natural evolutionary sequential arrangements, revealing species to be related as sisters or cousins but never as ancestors and descendants as is required by evolution." —*Michael Denton, Evolution: Theory in Crisis (1985), p. 132.

3 - CLASSIFYING THE PLANTS AND ANIMALS

The taxonomists are at the cutting edge of the matter. They are the ones who spend a lifetime deciding which species a given specimen belongs to. If any transitional species have been found, they would know about it.

Only the species has any real existence.

"I think nearly all biologists must share, the species is the only taxonomic category that has at least in more favorable examples a completely objective existence. Higher categories are all more or less a matter of opinion." —*O. Richards,"Book Review," Science 167 (1970), p. 1477.

 The bridge is so wide, we cannot see across the gap.

"Eighty years' study of Darwinian evolution has not taught us how birds descend from reptiles, mammals from earlier quadrupeds, quadrupeds from fishes, nor vertebrates from the invertebrate stock. The invertebrates themselves involve the selfsame difficulties... the breach between vertebrate and invertebrate, wok and coelenterate, coelenterate and protozoan... is so wide that we cannot see across the intervening gap at all. . We cross a boundary every time we pass from family to family, or group to group . .

"A 'principle of discontinuity,' then, is inherent in all our classifications... to seek for stepping stones across the gaps between is to seek in vain for ever." —*D'Aracy Thompson, On Growth and Form, pp. 1092-1094 (1943).

 The gaps between species is "a fundamental characteristic of organic diversity."

"No individual has ever been seen about which there could be a doubt as to whether it belongs to the species of cats (Felis domestics) or to the species of lions (Felis leo). The two species are discrete because of the absence of intermediates. Therefore, one may safely affirm that any cat is different from any lion...

"What had been said above with respect to the species Felis domestics and Felis leo holds for innumerable other pairs of species. Discrete groups are encountered among animals as well as plants, among structurally simple as well as among very complex ones. Formation of discrete groups is so nearly universal that it must be regarded as a fundamental characteristic of organic diversity. " —*Theodosius Dobzhansky, Genetics and the Origin of Species, p. 96 (1956). [Columbia University.]

 The facts fit special creation.

"The second kind of paleontological break is systematic. That is, it reflects a genuine deficiency of the record not dependent on insufficient collecting or chance factors of sedimentation. The earliest members of higher categories, phyla, classes, orders and super-families generally have most of the basic characteristics of those categories rather than dominantly ancestral characters. Thus, the higher categories tend to be separated sharply from other related groups with little or no tendency for intergradation. The meaning of this morphological isolation of higher categories has troubled students of the fossil record and was explained by Pre-Darwinian paleontologists as indicative of special creation." —*N.D. Newell, "The Nature of the Fossil Record," in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 103 (1959):267.

 After years of research, the basic classifications of separate speciation continue to hold true.

"The fact is that the classification of organisms that existed before the advent of evolutionary theories has undergone surprisingly little change in the times following it, and such changes as have been made have depended only to a trifling extent on the elucidation of the actual phylogenetic relationship through paleontological evidence. The phylogenetic interpretation has been simply superimposed on the existing classification; a rejection of the former fails to do any violence to the latter. The subdivisions of the animal and plant kingdoms established by Linnaeus are, with few exceptions, retained in the modern classification, and this despite the enormous number of new forms discovered since then. The new forms were either included in the Linnaean groups, or new groups have been created to accommodate them. There has been no necessity for a basic change in the classification." —*Ernst Mayr, Systematics and the Origin of Species (1942), p. 276.

 It is difficult to define "species" since there is such a wide variety of them, yet it is clear that each one is distinct and unlike the others.

"The nature of species is a question of considerable importance in general biology . . but despite its wide use its definition remains elusive . . An exact definition of the species concept has given zoologists much trouble." —*Article, "Species," in Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 20, p. 1149 (1967 ad.).

 The taxonomists make mistakes as do everyone else, but the species they seek to define were not made by man, nor by the species themselves.

"The business of taxonomy, a zoological classification (pigeon-holing), works well enough for coarse categories, such as losses . . orders . . and families. Like big business in the commercial world, it masquerades under a guise of efficiency and accuracy which proves to be illusory under closer examination. Formerly I was under the impression that taxonomic indiscretions were peculiar to anthropologists, but now I am convinced that a zoological dassi5cationist may be as dissolute and irresponsible as a lightning-rod salesman. Further, the more I inspect the family trees of man, so facilely constructed by students of human paleontology, including myself, the more I am inclined to agree with the poet that 'only God can make a tree.' " —*Earnest Albert Hooton, Apes, Men, and Morons (1970), pp. 115-116.

 The experts are not sure how to clump species together in groups, because they have varied theories as to which clump descended from which.

"Botanists still disagree widely on the proper grouping of many plants, but this is because they do not agree in their theories as to the origin of the differences which separate the groups." —*Paul Weatherwax, Plant Biology (1947, p. 257.

The species are there; no doubt about it. But where did they come from?

"It may not be exaggeration if 1 say that there probably are as many species concepts as there are thinking systematists and students of speciation." —*Ernst Mayr, Systematics and the Origin of Spades (1942), p. 115.

 Because of such a confusion of theories, the experts find it difficult to categorize the species into the families they belong to (and descended through).

"Even competent systematists do not always agree as to the delimitation of species." —*Julian Huxley, Evolution; The Modem Synthesis (1943), p. 157.

 Should the species be divided up or split apart?

"The battle of the 'splitters' and the 'lumpers' still continues." —*Julian Huxley, Evolution; The Modern Synthesis (1943), p. 402.

 Even if it be possible to arrange species into possible larger categories, that does not prove ancestry.

"The arrangement of the chemical elements . . is a true classification and so is the arrangement of geometric forms; yet no genealogical considerations are involved . . It we wish to erect a genealogical classification.. we must discover through what forms the existing organisms have actually descended. If these historical facts cannot be ascertained, then it is useless to seek for substitutes, and from the fact that a classification is possible we certainly cannot infer that it is genealogical and is in any sense a proof of evolution." —*W. R. Thompson, Introduction to *Charles Darwin, Origin of Species (1956 ed.).

*Savage declares that, although we now know much about changes within species (Mendelian genetics, which Savage calls "microevolution") and the identification of most species (speciation)—we still know next to nothing about how one species could possibly change into another one.

"The essential features of microevolution and speciation are now fairly well worked out by biologists, but the complex process that lead to evolution on a grander scale remain an area inviting investigation. At the present time we have only the most shadowy impressions of the forces contributing to the adaptive radiation and diversification of life. For example, can the evolution and diversity of the flowering plants be explained simply on the basis of microevolutionary change, or are other forces contributing to macro- and megaevolution?" —*Jay M. Savage, Evolution, p. 94.

 It is far easier to split species than to lump them, so the splitters usually win. As a result there are millions of classified species, when in reality there should be far fewer of them. *Taylor discusses the problem.

"The French taxonomist Locard classified the freshwater mussels of France into no fewer than 251 species on the basis of their shell forms and colours. Today all 251 are regarded as a single species. Another man recognised 200 species of snail in Hawaii in 1905, whereas a three-man team who went there seven years later put the number at forty-three. Darwin's finches themselves have been the subject of this treatment, having been classified into over thirty species by a taxonomist who commented later that he might as well have called them all one species.

"We should therefore perhaps take several grains of salt with the following figures, compiled by Verne Grant, which convey nevertheless an impression of the prolific way in which life has speciated. So far, some 8,600 species of birds have been described and about 3,700 mammals. But the number of fish listed is much higher, at 20,000 out of an estimated 40,000 believed to exist. Known insects number an amazing 850,000, but probably fewer than one-fifth of all those which actually exist have been described—maybe as few as one-tenth. Even worse are plants: the number of known flowering plants has been put at 286,000 and about 4,000 more are classified and described by taxonomists every year. Known fungi total over 40,000.

"Adding it all up, Grant arrives at a grand total, for organisms now extant, of 1.6 billion. But countless species which once existed are now extinct. Estimates of the total number of species which ever existed range from 1.6 billion to 16 billion.

"He comments 'The diversity of life is inconceivable.' But one could also say the opposite, for all these numerous species fall into some thirty main groups, the phyla, which seem to remain rather constant for indefinite periods." —*G.R. Taylor, Great Evolution Mystery (1983), p. 144.

 An excellent example of this is the fruit fly. Everyone knows a fruit fly when they see it, yet the experts have made the one into six hundred! *Dobzhansky cannot figure out why all those species should be similar.

"Professor Theodosius Dobzhansky, a leading expert on evolution and highly orthodox, nevertheless becomes quite plaintive on the subject. 'To use Drosophila as an illustration: the more than 600 known species of this genus III have three orbital bristles on either side of their heads, and the anterior of these bristles is always proclinate (bent forward) while the others are reclinate (bent backward). Now why should this character be retained so tenaciously in so many species? Is it really important for the flies of this genus to have one proclinate and two reclinate orbital bristles?' " —*G.R. Taylor, Great Evolution Mystery (1983), p. 143.

4 - MICRO AND MACRO

One of the very best of the few evidences evolutionary theory can present is "microevolution. " This is change within species, and therefore Is not evolution. Only change across species ("macroevolution ") is evolution.

Changes within species produce variety within species, but no new species.

"Microevolution by accumulation of micromutations.. leads to diversification strictly within the species. . Subspecies are actually, therefore, neither incipient species nor models for the origin of species.. Subspecies are actually, therefore, neither incipient species nor models for the origin of species. They are more or less diversified blind alleys within the species. The discovery step in evolution, the first step toward macroevolution, the step from one species to another, requires another evolutionary method than that of sheer accumulation of micromutations." —*Richard B. Goldschmidt, The Material Basis of Evolution (1960), p. 183.

 Many scientists have recognized this flaw in evolutionary theory: so-called "microevolution" does not prove that macroevolution could occur.

"The German zoologist, Bernhard Rensch [1959], was able to provide a long list of leading authorities who have been inclined to the view that macroevolution [changes across species] cannot be explained in terms of microevolutionary processes [changes within species], or any other currently known mechanisms. These dissenters cannot be dismissed as cranks, creationists, or vitalists, for among their ranks are many first-rate biologists." —*Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985), p. 86.

 The multitude of changes within species that we see all about us, only emphasizes the total lack of evidence for change across species.

"[Darwin's theory that all evolution is due to the gradual accumulation of small genetic changes] remains as unsubstantiated as it was one hundred and twenty years ago. The very success of the Darwinian model at a microevolutionary [subspecies] level . . only serves to highlight its failure at a macroevolutionary [above species] level." —*Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985), p. 344.

"The facts of microevolution [actual change within the species] do not suffice for an understanding of macroevolution [theorized change across species]." —*Richard Goldschmidt, Material Basis of Evolution (1940).

 Each species or type of plant and animal remains solidly in place; it does not change into another kind of plant or animal.

"Increase of knowledge about biology has tended to emphasize the extreme rigidity of type, and more and more to discount the idea of transmutation from one type to another—the essential basis of Darwinism." —*McNair Wilson, "The Witness of Science," in the Oxford Medical Publications (1942).

 After more than a hundred years of intensive search for a single example of macroevolution, Darwin's theory still remains very much in doubt.

"Now of course such claims are simply nonsense. For Darwin's model of evolution is still very much a theory and still very much in doubt when it comes to macroevolutionary phenomena. Furthermore being basically a theory of reconstruction, it is impossible to verify by experiment or direct observation as in normal in science." —*M. Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985), p. 75.

5 - POPULATION GENETICS FAILS TO PROVE EVOLUTION

Population genetics is the effort to prove evolution through the study of smaller groups (populations) of a species, here and there. Human races and tribes have been especially studied. It has been hoped that evidence of evolution would be found, but it has all proved to be a waste of time.

The leading experts in this field consider it foolishness, therefore it should not be taught in the colleges.

"If the leading authorities on population genetics confess to this dismal lack of achievement and even chuckle about it, it is altogether fitting and proper for the rank and file to take them at their word. Therefore it seems to follow that there is no need to teach population genetics." —*E. Saiff and *N. Macbeth, Population Genetics and Evolutionary Theory (1983), p. 72.

 How species changed into others is the great subject of concern, but population genetics has provided no help in the matter.

"Speciation is one of the most critical processes in nature, but we are a long way from describing the origin of species in the field or with methods of experimental population genetics." —*E. Spiess, Genes in Population (1977).

 So much data has been amassed by the population geneticists, but it all amounts to wasted paper.

"How can such a rich theoretical structure as population genetics fail so completely to cope with the body of fact? Are we simply missing some critical revolutionary insight?" —*R. Lewontin, The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change (1974), p. 267.

 There is no hope that it will ever succeed in providing evidence of evolution.

"To assert that population dynamics gives a picture of evolution in action is an unfounded opinion, or rather a postulate, that relies on not a single proved fact showing that transformations in the two kingdoms have been essentially linked to changes in the balance of genes in a population . . As for seeking in it proof of the formation of new species, there is no such hope." —*P. Grasse, The Evolution of Living Organisms (1977), p. 170.

 Population genetics is based on slow, small changes that are supposed to transform one species into another.

"The records of rocks do not indicate a smooth progression by minute stages up the ladder of complexity. They do not support the idea of 'gradualism' so much favored by the Victorians, which also underlies the mathematics of population genetics. The difficulties are so great that there is at present no general agreement amongst zoologists about the ancestors of any of the major invertebrate Phyla." —*Edmund J. Ambrose, The Nature and Origin of the Biological World (1982), pp. 117-118.

 Population genetics fails to put its facts together and come up with any type of evolutionary theory.

"The theory explains that a good deal of the structure of evolutionary genetics comes perilously close to being of this sort . . It somehow cannot transform into a finished product the great volume of raw material that has been provided. The entire relationship between the theory and the facts needs to be reconsidered." —*R. Lewontin, The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change (1974), p. 189.

 The whole thing is too much like circular reasoning: Study the theory to know what to look for; look for that which vindicates the theory.

"Like natural selection itself, [species selection through population genetics] comes close to being a tautology." —*W. Arthur, Theories of Life (1987), p. 164.

The remainder of this section directly applies to the species question, and is reprinted from chapter 27 (Geographic Distribution).

THE LEBZELTER PRINCIPLE—Two principles have been developed in relation to population genetic that should be considered here. Both are acclaimed by evolutionists as providing strong evidence of evolution. But, as usual, the evolutionists are overstating their case.

 In 1932, *Viktor Lebzelter suggested this rule:

"When man lives in large conglomerates, race tends to be stable while cultures become diversified; but where he lives in small isolated groups, culture is stable but diversified races evolve." —*Viktor Lebzelter, Rassengeschichte de Menscheit (1932), p. 27.

To put it into simpler words, when people live, socialize, and select mates from a large group, their racial characteristics are stabilized, while within the large group a variety of subcultures will develop. But when members only have a highly-restricted number of people to socialize with and intermarry among, their cultural patterns will tend to be the same throughout the small group, but racial oddities will develop. The cause, of course, is close interbreeding.

"The quickest way to expose lethal traits [in the genes] is by intensive and continual inbreeding." —*Willard Hollander, "Lethal Heredity, " in Scientific American, July 1952, p. 60.

"When a recessive gene arises by mutation, it will only after some time occur in an double dose by means of intermarriage—soonest by a marriage of cousins." —*G. Dahlberg, quoted in Ernst Mayr Animal Species and Evolution (1963), p. 518

The evolutionists tell us that this Lebzelter principle is another evidence of evolution, but we find it to be no evidence at all. Although this concept is indeed a useful one, it does not help the Darwinists. Evolutionists declare that it is the small, restricted groups (plants, animals, and people) which have produced the new species. But there is no evidence that that new species have been produced.

Yet the Lebzelter principle does have application to conditions just after the Creation and again at the end of the Flood. In the time of Adam and Eve, and again as the eight members of Noah's family left the Ark, there was only a small group and there would have been a decided tendency to produce a variety of racial stock. As the people scattered after the destruction of the Tower of Babel, they would have settled in new areas (China, Africa, India, etc.), thus producing many restricted groups, and these would have stabilized into distinct races, to the extent that they remained separate from other groups. But, in all of this, no NEW species were produced! Evolution had not occurred; only sub-species.

 THE HARDY-WEINBERG PRINCIPLE-The second concept was worked out by two scientists. It involves the use of a complex quadratic equation that is supposed to describe how populations of organisms change. Some states require that the Hardy-Weinberg principle be taught to high school students. The mathematics involved is difficult to grasp, but the desired impression is conveyed to the students—that evolution has been proven mathematically.

But, once again, we have an evidence which is no evidence. Here, in common language, is the Hardy-Weinberg principle:

If mating is random (natural breeding, not inbreeding or line breeding), and occurs in a large population, and no external limitations are applied, both the gene frequencies (percentage of occurrence of particular genes) and the genetic proportions in the population itself will remain constant from generation to generation. By definition, this is a stable population.

It is obvious that the Hardy-Weinberg principle is merely the Lebzelter principle placed in an algebraic formula; nothing less, nothing more. As with the Lebzelter principle, there is nothing in the Hardy-Weinberg principle which supports evolution to be correct. Both the Lebzelter and Hardy-Weinberg principles were developed through the study of sub-species variations (sub-species are called "races" in human beings).

But there is a far more powerful way to produce genetic problems than by in-breeding, and the scientists have been doing it for decades: applying heavy radiation to the reproductive genes. Fruit flies, other animals, and plants have been irradiated. At Heroshima, Nagasaki, and Chernobyl, large numbers of people, animals, and plants were strongly irradiated. If new species could have been produced, it should have been demonstrated on those occasions, but this did not happen. It never happens. The resulting mutations always weaken and damage the irradiated organism, and it or its offspring generally die out. But changes in species do not occur.

 6 - CLADISTS AGAINST EVOLUTION

Cladists are taxonomists who disgusted with the efforts of confirmed evolutionists to transform every area of scientific endeavor into one grand search for evolutionary proofs. For their part, they have decided to study plants and animals for their own sake, rather than as a means of proving evolutionary ancestry. The cladists declare that it is time that scientists push the evolutionists out the door—and return to the work they are paid to do.

Cladists have made the separation.

"Cladists have taken more or less extreme measures to sever their ties to evolutionary biology, and are at odds with evolutionary thinking." —*J. Beady, "Classes and Cladists," Systematic Zoology 32 (1983), p. 446.

 They have found that evolutionary theories do not help them in their work.

"But as the theory of cladistics had developed, it has been realized that more and more of the evolutionary framework is inessential, and may be dropped." —*Colin Patterson, "Cladistics, " Biologist 27 (1980), p. 239.

 They want to examine biological facts, without clouding them over with the fog of Darwin's theory.

"Indeed, as is well known, much modern taxonomy has abandoned its Darwinian, or genealogical approach, and has adopted a positivistic methodology based simply on an examination of observable morphological similarities and differences, and excluding attempted reconstructions of genealogies. This so-called cladistics is fundamentally a non-evolutionary classification. As such, it generates something very like the nineteenth-century typologies of authors such as Henri Milne-Edwards. Cladistics, which of course, an anathema to neo-Darwinians, is favoured by those who prefer not to transcend the observable data in their theorizing to 'speculate' about genealogical relationships." —*D. Oldroyd, "Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution: A Review of our Present Understanding," Biology and Philosophy (1986), p. 154.

 *Boyden declares that evolutionary theory greatly injures the efforts of systematists to properly understand the true facts about plant and animals.

"I want to use it to make another point about evolution being an antitheory that conveys antiknowledge. It is harmful to systematics." —*A. Boyden, Perspectives in Zoology (1973), p. 117.

 "Phylogenetics" is the effort to discover the origin of phylum; actually the family ancestry of species. But such activity results in changing the arrangements to fit the theory, and is just a waste of time.

"For nearly 200 years taxonomists have followed Linnaeus in arranging organisms in 'natural groups.' Darwin supplied a rationale for the existence of such groups, and in the minds of many workers the existence of groups and their probable cause have become inseparable. This has led to the so-called phylogenetic approach to taxonomy, in which, in the absence of satisfactory fossil records, taxonomic systems often are used as the basis for constructing phylogenetic trees. Unfortunately, these trees sometimes are then employed to alter the original taxonomic system. This circular procedure produces systems with predictive value and information content, although the process of creating these systems through repeated revision is time consuming and relatively inefficient." —*P. R. Ehrlich and *'R. W. Holm, "Patterns and Population," Science Vol. 137, August 31, 1962, p. 655.

 7 - MILLIONS OF YEARS FOR ONE SPECIES

Yes, that's right. Evolutionary theory maintains that it requires millions of years to produce just one new species. That is a fascinating thought and has several significant implications.

It takes a million years for just one new species to evolve.

"It takes a million years to evolve a new species, ten million for a new genus, one hundred million for a class, a billion for a phylum—and that's usually as far as your imagination goes.

"In a billion years [from now], it seems, intelligent life might be as different from humans as humans are from insects . . To change from a human being to a cloud may seem a big order, but it's the kind of change you'd expect over billions of years." —*Freeman Dyson, Statement made in 1986, quoted in Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations, p. 93. [American mathematician.]

That theoretical fact has serious implications. First, if it takes a million years to produce just one new species—there would not have been time for the millions of present species in the world to come into existence.

There just is not enough time for all those species changes to occur. Evolutionary dogma states that nothing was alive on Planet Earth over 2 billion years ago, and that all the evolving of life forms has occurred within that brief time span.

"[Evolution] is surmised to be of the order of two billion years. . from causes which now continue to be in operation, and which therefore can be studied experimentally." —*Theodosius Dobzhansky, Genetics and the Origin of Species (1951), pp. 3-11. [Columbia University.]

Two billion is only 2 thousand million. If it takes a million years to produce one species change, there would only be time for 2,000 new species. An evolutionist would reply that more than one species was changing at the same time in various parts of the world, and this is how all our present millions of species could evolve into existence in 2 billion years.

But that is an oversimplification. What about the theoretical stair-step pattern from the first single-celled creature that made itself out of sand and seawater to man? That single stair-step progression alone would require hundreds of thousands of major changes! Yet only "millions of years" are provided for all the changes to come about.

"Evolution, in very simple terms, means that life progressed from one-celled organisms to its highest state, the human being, by means of a series of biological changes taking place over millions of years." —*Houston Post, August 23, 1964, p. 6.

Billions of transitional species that would have to occur in order to climb the evolutionary stairs from amoeba to man. Those transitional forms simply do not exist; they never have existed. There are only gaps between the species. But the transitional forms would have had to be there in order for evolution to have occurred. It could not take place without them.

Even the evolutionists themselves avow that these cross-species changes take place so slowly, that they are not seen within a single lifetime:

"Evolution, at least in the sense that Darwin speaks of it, cannot be detected within the lifetime of a single observer." —*David G. Kitts, "Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory," Evolution, Vol. 28, September 1974, p. 466.

If the transitional changes occur that slowly, then there should be vast numbers of transitional species living today, as well as etched into the fossil record. But they are not to be found. They do not exist; they have never existed.

The above statement by * Kitts indicates that evolutionary cross-species changes cannot be seen within a single generation, but can be observed over a span of several generations, Why then do the hundreds of thousands of paintings from past centuries reveal man and animals to be just as they are today. We can go back thousands of years into the artwork of the past, and find no species change in man or animal. All of us have seen photographs of Egyptian tomb paintings and wall murals. The people, antelope, cattle, and plants on those paintings look just like their modern counterparts. No evolutionary changes are to be seen. Five thousand years divided by 25 years pet generation is 200 generations from our time to the earliest Egyptians (see chapter 35 for more or Egyptian dating). Five thousand years has produced no evolutionary change.

Why is it that scientists permit a theory, with absolutely no evidence supporting it, to be proclaimed as the grand foundation of modern scientific thought?

Yet we have only been speaking about the ladder from microbe to man. What about the hundreds of thousands of other ladders? Evolutionary theory requires that a ladder of progressive life forms has led to every other creature that has ever existed. This includes large numbers of extinct forms, found only in fossil remains, as well as all our present plant and animal species. For every one, a ladder of transitional forms leading up to it should be found.

Billions upon billions of transitional species should be engraved in the rock and in nature today. Yet we see none of this. Over a hundred years of frantic searching by evolutionists has not produced even one transitional form! The transitions cannot be found since they have never existed.

 8 - OUR FAMILY TREE

We are told much about "our family tree but actually it does not exist. Here are some facts about this mysterious tree.

When the various plants and animals were brought into existence, there were definite similarities between many of them. We find special shapes and functions running all through plants and animals. These are carefully thought—out designs that are so useful that they were used repeatedly for many different creatures. The mammalian system of nourishing young with milk would be one example. Some animals are rabbitlike; others are catlike.

Evolutionists take these similarities and form them into a "family tree," and then point to it and tell us solemnly that some animal phylum and families descended from others. But all this is rank speculation.

Chapter 17 (Fossils and Strata) makes it clear that, in not one instance, do we have any branches to the tree. All we have is twigs! Transitional creatures would be needed to provide us with the branches, and we do not find them in the modern world, nor are they apparent in the fossil record. The tree has no trunk nor branches, only twigs. Each twig is a separate true species. The trunk and branches are theory; the twigs are reality—both now and in the fossil record.

"In the Hall of Primates at the American Museum of Natural History [in New York City], a mural fills one end of the display room. It was created by Dr. Eldredge to show the family tree of man and the other primates. A three-color code is used to indicate where the tree is based on actual fossils and where it is based on speculation. portions of the tree shown in brown color represent reasonable guesses only. The tan portions are for 'no fossils known' and the yellow sections represent actual fossils. It is especially significant that, at every single fork in the tree, there is a brown and tan section indicating that it is based on guesses only without any actual fossil evidence." —Luther Sutherland, Darwin's Enigma (1988), p. 85.

*Dr. Niles Eldredge is a renowned paleontologist; so is *Dr. Colin Patterson, of the British Museum of Natural History, in London. Both are experts in the study of the fossil evidence. Dr. Patterson, in a comment on the sad condition of evolution, said this:

"As it turns out, all one can learn about the history of life is learned from systematics, from the groupings one finds in nature [plant and animal classification]. The rest of it is story-telling of one sort or another. We have access to the tips of the tree; the tree itself is theory, and people who pretend to know about the tree and to describe what went on in it—how the branches came off [branched off] and the twigs came off are, I think, telling stories." —*Colin Patterson, "Are the Reports of Darwin's Death Exaggerated?" on BBC Radio, October 2, 1981.

This imaginary "tree of life" has helped to convert many to evolutionary theory. But the tree is a fiction; it pretends to show the evolutionary relationships or ancestry of various species. All we find in the world are distinct species and their subspecies; nothing else.

"The tree of life consists of numerous major branches—there are about 25 major living subdivisions (phyla) of the animal kingdom alone, all with gaps between them that are not bridged by known intermediates. Most taxa [species] at these high levels appear abruptly in the fossil record." —*F. Ayala and *J. Valentine, Evolving: The Theory and Processes of Organic Evolution (1979), p. 258.

Anyone that took the time to really compare the imaginary tree with plants and animals in real life would discover the evolutionists' "trade secret:" Only the individual twigs at the ends of the branches have any real existence in nature. America's leading evolutionary spokesman of the 1980s says this:

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Yet Darwin was so wedded to gradualism that he wagered his entire theory on a denial of this literal record:

"[Darwin wrote:] The geological record is extremely imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps. He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory." —*Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History, May 1977, p. 14.

 *Denton speaks of these "logic trees" that have no real existence in nature.

"The fact that all the individual species must be stationed at the extreme periphery of such logic [evolutionary] trees merely emphasize the fact that the order of nature betrays no hint of natural evolutionary sequential arrangements, revealing species to be related as sisters or cousins but never as ancestors and descendants as is required by evolution." —*Michael Denton, Evolution: Theory in Crisis (1985), p. 132.

Concerned with the fact that there are only twigs—with no branches nor trunk in view, *Gould is now asking that the tree of life be changed into a bush of life! When you look at a bush, all you see is a mass of twigs, while the inner framework of branches is hardly visible. Gould has a pretty good idea: it is time we get the big branches and the trunk out of sight.

*Darwin was the first to use the "tree" metaphor to describe the evolution of plants and animals. His most zealous disciples have rigorously clung to it. It really is quite a tree: on the ends of the branches we find the species, and crawling all over the branches are the evolutionists searching for ancestors.

"Perhaps Darwin's most widely known metaphor is his depiction of evolutionary history as a tree of life branching from a broad common trunk to finer limbs, slender branches and delicate twigs. Stephen Jay Gould has slightly modified the metaphor into a branching bush to emphasize the fullness and bushiness of the delicate lineages and to minimize the inflexibility and straight directionality [one species evolving into another] of the trunk." —*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 303.

 If we lop off the imaginary parts, the trunk and branches, we see all about us delicate twigs. That is a true portrayal of nature.

"Delicate twigs, burgeoning in all directions, is closer to our current idea of evolutionary history." —*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 54.

 9 - THE CREATURE THAT FITS NO CATEGORY

Scientists try to figure out which animals descended from which, because of certain characteristics they have in common. All mammals have mammary glands and never lay eggs. All ducks have mouths like ducks. Birds make nests and set on the eggs. Mammals never have poison glands. Only creatures like dolphins have sonar for finding submerged food.

Well, that is simple enough. But consider an animal that does not fit any of the classifications. And, as with all other species, there are no transitional species leading up to it.

Behold the duck-billed platypus:

"So astounding is the combination of physical features in this animal that scientists in England, who first saw a dead specimen, believed that it had been sewn together by Chinese merchants to deceive the British. Their confusion was understandable. The platypus has a duck-like beak, five webbed toes, swims like a fish and lays eggs. Like a bird, it make a grass-lined nest and hatches its eggs by curling up on the nest and warming them. It must therefore be some kind of special bird.

"On the hand, the platypus has four legs, a fur hide, a large fat beaver-like tail and claws like many mammals. It must therefore be some kind of a special mammal.

"However, when it is small it has teeth which in the adults are replaced by horny plates, unique among mammals. Furthermore, it uses echo location like a bat or dolphin; a hollow spur on the inside of its heel connects with a poison-gland, making it the only venomous furred creature. Its legs are short as a reptile's but it has a large cheek pouches like a monkey or squirrel." —Michael Pitman, Adam and Evolution (1984), p. 210.

 

CLICK TO ENLARGE

 The hoax that wasn't one.

"When zoologists examined a platypus for the first time, some suspected a hoax, thinking that parts of different animals had been sewn together. The platypus has the fur of an otter, the tail of a beaver, the bill and feet of a duck, and the venomous Spurs of a fighting gamecock. Although the platypus is a mammal, it lays eggs and does not have nipples (milk oozes out of pore openings in the abdomen)." —*Asimov's Book of Facts (1979), p. 135.

 It even senses electrical fields around it!

"Duckbill Platypus: Found in Australia, it lays eggs like a reptile yet has milk glands like a mammal, swims like a duck but has the fur of a beaver. Now, in a recent issue of the British journal Nature, scientists report that the platypus is plugged in: it can [with its bill] sense electrical fields, the first higher vertebrate found to have that ability.

"The electrical receptors of the platypus are so different from [sharks, skates, and rays] that the curious mammal probably evolved its electrical sense independently." —*S. Begley, "A Plugged-in Platypus, " Newsweek February 17, 1986, p. 78.

 The key question is did the platypus in earlier ages evolve from another creature? The answer is No; "Platypus fossils are exactly the same as modern forms."

"There are several good reasons for rejecting the evolutionary interpretation of the origin of the platypus. A few of these reasons include:

1. Platypus fossils are exactly the same as modern forms.

2. The complex structures of the egg and milk glands [both of which are found in the platypus] are always fully developed and offer no solution as to the origin and development of the womb or the milk glands.

3. The more typical mammals are found in much lower strata than the egg-laying platypus.

"Thus the duck-billed platypus appears to be a distinct kind of animal in and of itself that has been specifically designed to include a mixture of traits." —Scoff M. Huse, Collapse of Evolution (1983), p. 110.

And here are still more oddities about the remarkable platypus:

It has a leathery bill, which is unlike that of any duck. It is different than all mammals, in that it has no nose or lips. It lays eggs, but they are leathery like those of snakes and turtles. When its young hatch, the female uses its tail to hold them close to its body so they can obtain milk. No mammal does this, because they have nipples. But in the case of the platypus, the milk flows out of pores and onto the hairs on its abdomen. It has unique front-foot webs which, in swimming, extend out past its claws; but, before digging, are folded back behind the claws. It uses its bill like a duck to find shellfish, worms, and water insects at the bottom of streams. Only the male has the poisonous spur on its hind foot.

When it is underwater, it cannot see or hear! This is because its eyes and ears are protected by a fold of skin that covers them when it is submerged. This is why it needs its underwater electrical-field sensory system to locate its food. If the platypus had wings it would have just about everything, and yet it is like no other creature anywhere in the world.

SPECIES EVOLUTION
CHAPTER 16

STUDY AND REVIEW QUESTIONS

1 - Thoroughly memorize the eight classification categories. They will come in handy all your life, to whatever extent you study or work in the natural sciences.

 2 - Discuss the several definitions by which a true species can be identified.

 3 - There are several names for a true species: species, Genesis kinds, baramins, biological species. Which one or ones do you consider best? Why?

 4 - By the evolutionists' definition of it, why is so-called microevolution not evolution at all?

5 - Explain the difference between "lumpers" and "splitters." Which of the two do you think causes the most confusion for those who are trying to identify the true species?

 6 - Explain the sentence: "There is not an evolutionary tree; there are only twigs."

 7 - Explain why gene depletion would make it impossible for evolution to occur. Include a discussion of de Wit's comments on it.

 8 - Why is selective breeding of no use as evidence in favor of evolution? why is it definite evidence against evolution?

 9 - Why is genetic drift an inadequate evidence for evolution?

 10 - What is the position of the cladists?

 11 - Since new sub-species are continually being made, why do we find no new species as a result?

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APPENDIX 15 
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CHAPTER 16- THE CREATOR'S HANDIWORK: THE INVERTEBRATES