Creationism has long been stereotyped as a group of Bible thumpers who have no interest in science, or factual information. But, there is vast scientific data indicating that perhaps Earth and life did not come about through the random process of scientific law. Presented here is information in support of Creationism, and information suggesting the falseness of evolution.

Clarifications

The words "evolution" and "Darwinism" in the article indicate the idea that organisms undergo macromutations and subsequently change into different organisms over long periods of time, or the process by which this happens. Intelligent Design and Creationism are not considered the same things here. Intelligent Design Theory states that evolution could have happened, but only with an intelligent force guiding it. Creationism is the idea that there is a God who created the world without the assistance of mutating genes.

First, let us look at the alternative, popular theory, evolution.

What's Wrong with Evolution?

In 1859 Charles Darwin published his theory in the tome The Origin of the Species, and the outcry was almost immediate. Contrary to popular belief, though, this disgruntlement came mostly from geologists, not clergymen. The fossil record back then (and still today) was nearly totally void of transitional species. If species are continually mutating, never constant, why do we continually find several of the same, certain prehistoric creatures, but never any that appear to be in transition? In Darwin's own words, "Why, if species have descended by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of species being, as we see them, well defined?" It is an excellent question which he answers himself, "I can give no satisfactory answer."

Darwin assumed that within one hundred years the fossil record would fill out, validating his theory, but after nearly 150 years, it has only become worse for the cause of evolution. The most daunting example is the many fossils found from a period called the Cambrian explosion in which nearly all animal phyla ever came about within 1 million years. Darwin himself said of it, "The case at present must remain inexplicable, and may truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained," and just recently, Richard Dawkins, famous Darwin guru admitted, "It is as though [these species] were just planted there without any evolutionary history."

Let us examine the evolutionary history of vertebrates (animals with backbones) from the fish up to humans. Logically, this is the most abundantly fossilized group of organisms ever, so let us see if they fulfill their evolutionary requirements.

Fish to Amphibians

The story goes that certain fish species evolved the ability to crawl out of the water and then evolved the other amphibious characteristics. There is no specific fossil fish species yet identified as an amphibian ancestor, but an extinct order known as the rhipsodians are dubbed by Darwinists as the "ancestral group". Their skeletal features have certain characteristics that resemble early amphibians, but according to the textbook Vertebrate History by Barbara Stahl, "none of the known fishes is thought to be directly ancestral to the earliest land vertebrates. Most of them either lived after the first amphibians appeared, and those that came before show no evidence of developing the stout limbs and ribs that characterize the primitive tetrapods." There are other inconsistencies such as the major differences in the reproductive systems of fish and amphibians.

In 1938, a coelacanth, a fish thought to have been extinct for 70 million years was caught in the Indian ocean. Scientists thought that since it was a close relative of the rhipsodians, it would offer new information about the soft body parts of intermediate ancestors of amphibians and fish. But in the dissection, it's internal organs showed no sign of being preadapted to land, nor did it give any indication of how a fish becomes an amphibian. This suggests an examination of the soft body parts of rhipsodians would be equally disappointing to the theory of evolution.

Amphibians to Reptiles

This transition is currently the least explicable. To date there is no satisfactory candidate to document it. There are fossil amphibians called seymouria that have certain reptile characteristics in their skeletal structure, but recently, they have been relabeled true amphibians, and they appear far too late in the fossil record.

The most important differences between reptiles and amphibians involve the soft body parts, though. And these, of course cannot be fossilized. The main difficulty for Darwinists attempting to explain this transition is the vast differences in the reproductive system of these two kingdoms. Amphibian eggs are laid underwater, and the hatched larvae undergo a complex metamorphosis before they become adults, whereas reptiles have hard, shell-covered eggs on land and the young are perfect replicas of the adults. No Darwinian explanation yet exists as to how amphibians developed these reptilian reproductive processes.

Reptiles to Mammals

There are plenty of possible transitional species for this mutation, and at first a reptile to mammal transition seems quite plausible. There is a large reptilian order called therapsida, some of whose fossils have features intermediate between animal and reptile. A fossil is considered reptilian if it has more than one bone in it's jaw and if one particular jawbone, the articulator bone connects to the skull bone called the quadrate bone. Mammal fossils have one jawbone, the dentary bone which connects to the squamosal bone in the skull. Assuming this criterion, some therapsids have slight mammalian characteristics, and a few could reasonably be classified as either reptiles or mammals. Douglas Futuyuma writes, "The gradual transition from therapsids to mammals is so abundantly documented by scores of species in every stage of transition that it is impossible to tell which therapsid species were actual ancestors of modern mammals."

But Darwinian transformation requires a single line of descent, so large numbers of eligible candidates prove nothing. Furthermore, the therapsids do not come in the chronological order required of them by Darwinism. What this means is, therapsids fossils do not go from most reptilian jawbone to most mammalian jawbone in chronological order. As famous Darwin critic Philip Johnson puts it, "An artificial line of descent [between reptiles and mammals] can be constructed, but only by arbitrarily mixing species of different subgroups, and by arranging them out of chronological order. If [the evolutionary] hypothesis is that mammals evolved from therapsids only once...then most of the therapids with mammal-like characteristics were not part of a macroevolutionary transition. If most were not, perhaps all were not."

Besides, the only thing therapsids have in common with mammals is the ear and jaw bones. One realizes there is a great deal more explaining to do when one observes the vast differences in reptilian and mammalian reproductive systems and other soft body parts. If you go further, things get even trickier, especially trying to explain the mutations behind the diversity of mammals, a group that includes such varieties as monkeys, horses, platypuses, bats, whales, squirrels, polar bears, white tailed deer, etc. Again Philip Johnson is critical saying, "If mammals are a monophyletic [having one common ancestor] group, then the Darwinist model requires that every one of the groups have descended from a single, unidentified small land mammal. Huge numbers of intermediate species in the direct line of transition would have had to exist, but the fossil record fails to record them."

Reptile to Bird

Archaeopteryx is an approximately 145 million year old bird with skeletal features similar to a small dinosaur called Compsognathus. It is birdlike in that it has wings, feathers, and a wishbone, but it has a mouthful of teeth and claws on it's wings. The question here is whether Archaeopteyx is a direct link between reptiles and birds or just a peculiar misfit such as the modern platypus. Until recently, it was regarded as a misfit because the next oldest birds were aquatic divers, unlikely descendants of archaeopteyx. That changed when two fossil birds dated approximately 10 and 20 million years after archaeopteryx with certain reptilian features were found, one in China, one in Spain. There is little evidence that they are related to archaeopteryx, though. Whatever is concluded about archaeopteryx, questions still arise as to how feathered wings, the uniquely adapted avian lung, and other body parts evolved, not to mention the ability to fly. Similar to mammals, birds are a very diversified kingdom containing such species as the emu, the sparrow, and the penguin, and it is difficult to explain that they evolved from a single ancestor through viable intermediate stages.

Now, the authenticity of Archeopteryx has been questioned and may be a hoax, anyway.

Apes to Humans

Anthropology, the study of human origins, sometimes appears to have more evidence backing it because of its nomenclature. Nebraska man and Piltdown Man were discovered to be hoaxes, Neanderthals are considered as subspecies, not an ancestor, and Cro-Magnon man is simply modern man. That leaves us with four fossil species, Australopithecus arensis, A. africanus, Homo habilis, and Homo erectus. The first two, known as the australopithecines are apes, no more technologically or cerebrally developed than modern gorillas or chimpanzees, but supposedly walked upright. However, recently one of Britain's most prestigious primate experts, Solly Zuckerman performed biometric testing on them and concluded that, "the anatomical basis for the claim that [they] walked and ran upright like man is so much more flimsy than the evidence which points to the conclusions that their gait was some variant of what one sees in subhuman primates, that it remains unacceptable." Zuckerman sees the evolution of man from apes as self evident, but tends to see much of the fossil evidence as bunk. He compared it to parapsychology and claimed the amount of radical speculation "is so astonishing, that it is legitimate to ask whether much science is yet to be found in this field at all." Other experts in good standing claim that the Australopithecines were actually distinct species.

Homo habilis or "handy man" is an ape that was given status as a human ancestor because it was found near primitive tools that it was presumed to have used. But many prestigious anthropologists now deny that he ever existed, or that he ever used tools.

The currently popular hypothesis known as the "mitochondrial Eve" theory states that humans came from Africa less that 200,000 years ago disqualifies the current Homo erectus fossils which are older than 200,000 years, but it is still listed as a human ancestor.

Why is there so much confusion in this field? Well, emotions often run amok in studies of one's own ancestry. Robert Lewin, in his book Human Evolution, reports numerous examples of subjectivity. He states, "There is something inexpressibly moving about cradling in one's hands a cranium drawn from ones own ancestry." What a way to lower objectivity!

Most creationists do not deny the possibility that these four species might have existed, and therefore possible transitional steps between apes and humans, but not the smooth sequence of developments proclaimed by Darwinists.

Darwin's Great Hoaxes

Peppered Moths

Peppered moths have long been cited as proof of Darwin's theory. An English scientist named Kettlewell claimed that areas of England with high pollution caused black peppered moths to be more populous than white peppered moths because they were camouflaged on the soot colored birch trees. Likewise, said Kettlewell, white peppered moths were more plentiful in areas of little pollution. The truth is, Kettlewell had no hard data proving this. His famous photographs of these moths are also a hoax. He and his companions glued dead moths to trees and cited them as proof of their remarks! Peppered moths don't even rest on trees! They are ground moths.

Nebraska Man

One of the most important missing links in the evolutionary chain is Nebraska Man. One group of Darwinists claimed to have actually discovered the remains of a Nebraska Man. They created an entire way of life for him, a civilization, based on fossil evidence. They wrote reports on the food he ate, his tools, even his family life. Further inquiries led to the discovery that all their data was based on a mere tooth, which, after closer inspection turned out to be that of a large pig! In all fairness, fossils of human ancestors other than this species have been found. The point here is, you must beware of scientists who utilize falsehoods in support of any scientific theory, not just evolution.

Richard Dawkins and the Finches

Richard Dawkins came back from his recent trip to the Galapagos islands claiming that he had seen "evolution in action." He claimed that the size of the beaks on the finches living there increased, on average, 1 millimeter during a less rainy period. He was hailed as a hero by the Darwinist community, but what he omitted to explain was that the size of the beaks went back to their normal size after a good rain. This does not indicate that species have the ability to change from one to another, but rather, that they regress after evolving. Charles Darwin based much of his original theory on his studies of these same finches. The problem with these analyses is that they make no distinction between temporary, infinitesimal genetic deviations and macromutations from one species to another. They might as well say that a St. Bernard is not a dog.

These things have been pointed out not to label all evolution-believing scientists as liars. Hoaxes should not be attributed to those who did not concoct them. The vast majority of evolutionary scientists would never stoop to create a hoax. The problem is, school around the world still teach these hoaxes as facts. A legitimate scientific theory would not need false information to establish itself.

Prebiological Evolution

Mutations occur during what is called protein transcription and translation. It starts with DNA. DNA is described as a twisted ladder. Now try making a ladder with as many rungs as the Encyclopedia Britannica has letters! Furthermore, these letters, or bases must be in a set order according to what organsisms they are in. In short, DNA is like a book. A book cannot be made by throwing random letters of the alphabet together. The letters must be carefully selected by an intelligent source, or author. DNA then interacts with mRNA. mRNA is created base by base copying the opposite of DNA. Then this mRNA goes through a ribosome (or rRNA) and connects with tRNA. tRNA is a smaller version of mRNA which picks up complex organic compounds called amino acids. When tRNA and mRNA meet, they form a long chain of amino acids called a protein. You can see now how hard it is for these compounds to simply come together. The odds against these five compounds being randomly formed in a pool of muck just after the planet has cooled, and then to have then suddenly begin this cycle are astronomical, if not impossible, yet life according to evolution requires that this happen. In fact, life requires that this happen.

In 1953, a scientist named Stanley Miller mixed several chemicals is a glass tube and zapped them with electricity, and subsequently created the before-mentioned amino acids. This, he said, was probably what happened in that pool of muck billions of years ago to create life. Newspapers cited a breakthrough and subsequent experiments popped up, some using heat instead of electricity, others ultraviolet rays. But organisms only use a specific kinds of amino acids known as left handed. Miller's amino acids were of both kinds. There is no natural process that creates only left-handed, life-supporting amino acids.

Five years later, a chemist named Sidney Fox boiled already existing amino acids in water, and the some of them formed chains of protein-like amino acids. But life forms require that proteins are linked by peptide bonds. Fox's protein-like structures had all sorts of different kinds of bonds rendering them useless to a living organism. Also, a true protein has its amino acids linked in a particular order. Fox's protein-like structures were the equivalent of throwing Scrabble letters on the floor and calling it a sentence. Also, in both of these experiments, the products were put in tubes where they would be incapable of breaking down again. Why? Because as soon as these compounds were created, they would fall apart unless their environment were changed to a more suitable form. In short, the environment it takes for amino acids to be created is not the same as the environment that will keep them alive.

The Case for Creationism

The Big Bang

At this point, you have seen the problems with naturalistic theories of creation. But why should we believe that the universe was created by an intelligent force? The answer is in a surprising place: the big bang. Many ancient cultures believed that the universe is eternal or was, at least, created from some eternal substance. The science of the times echoed this concept, and the thesis was generally accepted until the last two centuries. Several scientific discoveries have discredited it, including the fact that, according to the general theory of relativity, the universe is expanding, and the discovery of stars that are exhibiting a red shift indicative of the fact that they are moving outward, thus expanding the universe. Also, according to the second law of thermodynamics, the universe is decaying, like a "wound up clock" and, therefore, must have been "wound up" or created in the first place. The first law of thermodynamics, or the law of conservation of matter, states that matter cannot be created or destroyed, suggesting that something external to the universe must caused its existence. These data led to what we call the "big bang" theory.

The idea of the big bang, a finite period of time in which the universe was created, is in accordance with creationist philosophy. However, it contradicts evolution because "naturalistic credo regards reality as an unbroken sequence of cause and effect...that can be traced back endlessly..." so says philosopher, Charles Colson, but, "the big bang represents a sudden discontinuity in the chain of cause and effect." Arthur Eddington, famous physicist, called the idea of an ultimate beginning of the universe "repugnant," and Albert Einstein tried unsuccessfully to disprove it mathematically.

Carl Sagan proposed that perhaps the universe is eternal after all and the explosion that caused our universe was one in a series. But this violates the basic laws of physics; the universe would use up it's energy after several explosions and cease to be eternal. Furthermore, the second law of thermodynamics, the law of decay, dismisses the idea of an eternal universe.

Some scientists cite the self-generating universe theory, which is an illogical contradiction. Charles Colson criticizes, "If the universe doesn't exist yet, there is no 'self' to do the generating." Stephen Hawking, probably the world's currently best known theoretical physicist proposed that the early universe was in "imaginary time," which is purely a philosophical fantasy. Quentin Smith, philosophy professor, cuts the chase and suggests the universe "came from nothing, by nothing, for nothing." This reduces science to ridiculous magic. Charles Colson concludes, "The big bang theory gives dramatic support to the biblical teaching that the universe had an ultimate beginning--that space, matter, and time itself are finite. Far from being a challenge to the Christian faith [a popular creationist viewpoint], the theory actually gives startling evidence for the faith."

Irreducible Complexity

Irreducible complexity is a concept that biochemistry professor, Michael Behe developed in his book, Darwin's Black Box. If something is made of interacting parts that all work together, then it is referred to as irreducibly complex. Behe uses a mousetrap as his example. A mousetrap cannot be assembled through gradual improvement. You cannot start with a wooden base, catching a few mice, then add a hammer, and catch more, then add a spring, improving it further. To even begin catching mice one must assemble all the components completely and with design and intent. Furthermore, if one of these parts changes or evolves independently, the entire thing will stop working. Likewise, many biological structures are, like mousetraps, irreducibly complex.

Bats are a well known example. They are said to have evolved from a small rodent whose front toes became wings. This presents a multitude of problems. As the front toes grow between them, the creature has limbs that are too long to run, or even walk well, yet too short to help it fly. There is no plausible way that a bat wing can evolve from a rodent's front toes. The fossil record supports this, because the first time bats are seen in the fossil record, they have completely developed wings and are virtually identical to modern bats.

Now consider the eye. Suppose that before animals had sight, one species decided it would be advantageous to be able to decrypt light rays. So, what do they evolve first? The retina? The iris? The eye is made of many tiny parts, each totally useless without the others. The probability that a genetic mutation that would create each of these at the same time in the same organism is zero. If, however one organism evolved just a retina, then the logic of Darwin suggests that the only solution is to rid oneself of useless traits replacing them with beneficial ones, so the idea of the eye evolving one segment at a time is bogus also.

Richard Dawkins gives the explanation that some one-celled protozoa have a light sensitive spot with a pigment screen behind it, and some multi-celled organisms have the same thing with cup-shaped cells, then there is the nautilus which has a pinhole eye with no lens, and the squid eye which incorporates the lens. But these types of eyes involve different types of structures rather than a series of similar structures becoming improved, and are thus not thought to have evolved from each other. Even the first step, a light sensitive spot, is considered irreducibly complex. This apparatus can only detect some shadows, but it requires a multitude of interrelated, complex chemical reactions to work. This excerpt from a book describes it: "A photon interacts with a molecule called 11-cis-retinal, which changes to trans-retinal, which forces a change in the shape of a protein called rhodosin, which sticks to another protein called transductin, which binds with another molecule..." As for those cup-shaped cells, there are dozens of proteins controlling cell structure and shape. All these would have to be spontaneously created for flat sensory cells to become cup-shaped.

Even if the eye did evolve, so many different kind of species have eyes, that according to Ernst Mayr, evolutionary biologist, the eye would have had to evolve over forty times to achieve its current popularity, a ridiculous idea, even for a Darwinist. A bird is another perfect example. A bird's entire body is built for flight. If even the slightest major mutation occurs, a bird becomes incapable of flight. If some prehistoric reptile felt the urge to fly evolving something even as complex as wings would do no good. In fact, it would be a disadvantage to lug those wings around.

The only plausible explanation for irreducibly complex biological tissue is an intelligent creator.

The Anthropic Principal

The Anthropic Principal states that the universe is the ideal place for life to exist, thus indicating a creative force behind the universe. Take the structure of atoms, for instance. The nucleus of an atom in made of two particles, protons and neutrons. Neutrons are just a very tiny bit more massive than protons (neutrons have a mass of 940 MeV and protons have a mass of 938 MeV). So when neutrons decay, they will become protons. This is desirable because if protons outweighed neutrons, this would cause free protons, also known as hydrogen, to decay into neutrons. Everything with hydrogen in it, including the sun, stars, water, alcohols, (in all approximately 74% of the universe) to melt away. What's more, there is no visible scientific reason for why neutrons are larger than protons. They just are.

Atoms also have electrical charges. Protons have a positive charge and the particles that orbit them, electrons, have a negative charge. Protons and electrons differ greatly in size (a proton is about 1,836 times the size of an electron) and have very different magnetic properties, but even so, they have exactly opposite electrical charges, thus balancing each other out. This renders most of the objects in the universe without an electrical charge. If either particle were even slightly more positive or negative, the atoms of the universe would repel each other and fly off in every direction causing the universe to explode. Again, there is no scientific reason why these particles have exactly opposite charges.

Water is another excellent example of the anthropic principal. It is the only known substance in the universe whose solid phase is less dense than its liquid stage. This enables marine life and fish to survive in winter.

Consider the Earth's orbit. It is the perfect distance from the sun, and unlike other planets, it does not travel in a dramatically elliptical orbit, deviating from then moving closer to the sun, but a more ir less circular orbit that stays within the perfect distance away from the sun.

The universe itself is an odd coincidence. The big bang must have exploded with the perfect velocity. Too much velocity and matter would have flown out to fast for particles to pull together and no galaxies, stars, or solar systems would have been created. Too little velocity and the universe would have collapsed in on itself. Physicist Paul Davies calculates that the force of gravity would have to have been accurate within 1 part of 10 to the 60th power.

The list of "coincidences" goes on. Humans have the ability to recognize products of design and products of nature. We can tell that the words "Mark loves Lucy" etched in sand are intelligently designed, and can likewise determine that ripples cause by waves in the sand are naturally caused. Mathematician William Dembski has created an "explanatory filter" for this intuition. Three explanations exist: chance, law, and design. Chance is "irregular, erratic, and unspecified." Law is "regular, repeatable, and predicable." Design is "irregular, yet highly specified." Using this filter to examine anthropic principal, we see that the universe is irregular (without natural law accounting for several things), yet highly specified (seemingly designed for living things). It seems the best inference to attribute the creation to an intelligent force.

Conclusions

So, with all this evidence, why are creationists still often viewed as idiots on a mission? It is partly because of stereotypes set by the museums of the world, textbooks, and the movie, Inherit the Wind. It is also partly because many creationists really do not know what they are talking about. Many simply accept it as undeniable fact. Likewise, many evolutionists fail to understand the concepts of the theory they believe in. Do creationists believe that evolution ought not be taught in schools? Most see no problem with it. But all the information, including that which supports the theory of an intelligent creator, must be laid down fairly and unbiased, for that is the way of science.