Poetry :
Several years ago, a friend showed me an amazing card trick. To my disenchantment, what had appeared so real and seemed to require such skill was merely based on simple deception hiding a card.
There's another illusion that has been foisted upon an unsuspecting public, yet having far greater consequences on everything from science, to religion, to public policy. This grand illusion is the "Theory of Evolution" and many are no longer buying the act. It's time for the Darwinists and their fellow evolutionary travelers to answer some tough questions.
If the Theory of Evolution is the belief that all living organisms, including man, arose over billions of years from simpler organisms, which in turn, were created by a random intermingling of various chemical compounds, then, why don't we clearly and convincingly see that in the fossil record?
Since the time of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, millions of fossils have been discovered, yet, there is not one animal whose evolutionary history can be traced from its origin to its present state. NOT ONE!
Take, for example, turtles and bats. No one can prove how their shells or wings evolved because they appear abruptly in the record as turtles and bats. When faced with such dilemmas, the standard response is that there are gaps in the fossil record. That may have worked in Darwin's day, but the neo-Darwinists can only lean on that crutch so often. No matter how good the poker face, everyone eventually has to put up or shut up.
What, then, are their shining examples of evolution? Though we're told that there are many, we're treated to the same smattering, i.e., the evolution of horses or the popular...dinosaurs-to-birds theory. Let's look at the star attraction of the dino-to-bird theory, archaeopteryx. A strange bird, indeed, but proof of evolution?
When first discovered, archaeopteryx was immediately heralded as the missing link between reptiles and birds. Here was a bird-like creature that possessed reptilian characteristics like small teeth, a tail and claw-like fingers on its wings. When dissecting archaeopteryx, it's important to first note that the presence or absence of certain features, such as a tail, does not prove an evolutionary link. Some mammals, for example, have tails and fur, others don't. That doesn't make one any less mammalian.
There's even the pangolin and platypus. One is covered from head to toe with scales; the other has a penchant for laying eggs. So far, no lizards or birds are claiming familial relations. Nor, I might add, are evolutionists. Instead, they've devised another little theory for these kinds of walking contradictions --- convergent evolution.
This is when two species with no direct links have coincidentally evolved similar features. One might ask: Why then, is archaeopteryx touted as a missing link and not just another example of convergent evolution? But, there are other woes for those who have placed archaeopteryx on an evolutionary pedestal, including big trouble in China.
Recent discoveries are coming out of that country faster than museums can update their hokey-looking artist's renditions. One new creature, confuciusornis, which shares several primitive characteristics with archaeopteryx
has been found in the same deposits with an anatomically modern bird, liaoningornis. The obvious problem here is - if certain traits are supposed to signify an evolutionary precursor to others, why do we find them co-existing?
Finds like this are only fueling the hushed debate raging between the dino-to-bird evolutionists. In order to present a more unified front to the public, they've decided some skeletons are better left in the closet. Behind the scenes, however, the dino-to-bird theorists are challenging the radiometric dating which places the modern lianoingornis at a ripe 142 million years. Apparently, radiometric dates are only carved in stone when challenged by religious fundamentalists.
Before moving on, a point must be made about a subtle, yet, key tenant of evolution; this highly subjective notion of primitive and modern. What qualifies an organism for primitive status? The 380 million-year-old coelacanth was once cited as proof of fish evolution because of its primitive lobed fins. That theory was quickly sunk when a fisherman hooked one off of Madagascar in 1938. Not only had this creature brought its primitive baggage into the 20th century, but after all those millions of years, it was still no closer to taking its first baby steps onto land. The gist is that - all creatures, alive or extinct, from the smallest single cell to the mighty blue whale, are highly complex organisms.
Scientific disciplines that were unheard of in Darwin's day have opened up whole new worlds into this complexity. Biochemists have found the workings of certain enzymes and proteins so complex and independent as to label them irreducibly complex. The fact that certain organisms cannot function from the get-go without all their intricate parts working in unison has left Darwinists scrambling to support their slow, step-by-step process. The devout evolutionist Richard Dawkins, in his book River Out of Eden, feebly clings to this faith by suggesting that a plane that has lost even major pieces of equipment, like one or two of its engines, can still fly. Nice try, Mr. Dawkins, but you left out one vital piece of equipment: wings! No plane or bird can fly without fully formed, aerodynamically shaped wings.