As Bible-believing Christians, we are constantly accused of being unscientific and of blindly clinging to dogmatic beliefs while ignoring evidence that debunks our views. In fact, in my recent studies I visited a forum where one member posted a question asking his fellow Bible-haters how to answer a Christian friend of his who had pointed out evidence that supports the Biblical account of creation. I read pretty far down the responses, and not one of them was able to refute the evidence. Instead, they all berated Christians as ignorant and closed-minded. As was demonstrated on that forum, it is not Christians who close our eyes to evidence and cling to our beliefs despite the evidence. As is the case with all of creation, the fossil record bears the marks of its Creator and proclaims the glory of the one God. Evolutionists would have us believe, by a tremendous amount of faith mind you, that dinosaurs died out around 65 million years ago. However, in 2007 paleontologist Mary Schweitzer discovered soft tissue in a dinosaur bone, in the form of red blood cells. Schweitzer said, "I looked at this and I looked at this and I thought, this can’t be. Red blood cells don’t preserve.” She showed her findings to her mentor, world-renowned paleontologist Jack Horner, who replied, "Now see if you can find some evidence to show that that’s not what they are" (Lyons).
Schweitzer set out to do just that, but in her attempts to refute the Bible and uphold the religious beliefs of the anti-Bible pseudo-scientific establishment, she found further confirmation that it was in fact soft tissue. What she found was traces of hemoglobin in the bone specimen. Since then, many other soft tissue samples have been recovered from dinosaur bones presumed by some to be in excess of 65 million years old. University of Maryland paleontologist Thomas Holtz Jr. said that "The reason it hasn’t been discovered before is no right-thinking paleontologist would do what Mary did with her specimens. We don’t go to all this effort to dig this stuff out of the ground to then destroy it in acid…It’s great science” (Lyons). Schweitzer has, herself, discovered other Tyrannosaurus Rex and mammoth bones containing blood vessels and connective tissue, neither of which can be preserved for millions of years.
Demonstrating an impressive height of willful ignorance, Holtz declared that Schweitzer's discoveries are "showing us we really don't understand decay" (Lyons). I'm no scientist, but I feel confident in saying that we have a pretty solid understanding of how things decompose. I think that soft tissue surviving even a few hundred years is impressive. Holtz's comment is very telling of the mind that rebels against God.
MSNBC senior science editor, Alan Boyle, pointed out that “Today, paleontologists are still stunned-not only to find material that looks like dinosaur cartilage, blood vessels, blood cells, and bone cells, but to see the stuff in so many different specimens.” And Macalester College paleontologist Kristi Rogers asserted that "It’s not just a fluke occurrence…It’s something that’s more pervasive in the fossil record" (Fields).
Even more heartbreaking is a response that Schweitzer received from one of her peers who reviewed her findings. Schweitzer recounts: “I had one reviewer tell me that he didn’t care what the data said, he knew that what I was finding wasn’t possible,’ says Schweitzer. ‘I wrote back and said, “Well, what data would convince you?” And he said, “None”’ (Fields).
Another instance that shows humanity's desire to embrace any belief that excuses us from the acknowledgement of God is the work of Charles Lyell. Lyell (1797-1875) was a geologist and a lawyer who popularized the notion that geology refuted the Biblical account of the age of the Earth. Lyell's personal correspondence reveals that he had an agenda behind his work. In an 1829 letter Lyell characterized his own work as "anti-Mosiacal." In another letter a year later, he stated that his work would "free the science from Moses." In the same letter he discussed the progress he had made in lobbying with prominent clergymen to give his ideas public support.
Lyell's main focus was to use sediments to push the idea that the earth was much older than the age recorded in the Bible. His claims are roundly rejected today even by secular scientists. Warren D. Allman, Director of Paleontological Research Institution at Ithaca, NY and Adjunct Associate Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University, said that Lyell "sold geology some snake oil. He convinced geologists that…all past processes acted at essentially their current rates (that is, those observed in historical time). This extreme gradualism has led to numerous unfortunate consequences, including the rejection of sudden or catastrophic events in the face of positive evidence for them, for no reason other than that they were not gradual" (Allmon).
Even though Lyell's claims are recognized today for what they are, the damage has been done. His work opened doors for Darwin's On the Origin of Species.
The existence of sexual reproduction, especially in what evolutionists claim are more advanced species, is another devastating piece of evidence that contradicts evolution. Darwinian evolution is based upon the idea that all life evolves toward increasing complexity in order to ensure the survival of its genetics. In other words, evolutionists believe that more "primitive" organisms either died out or evolved into more "complex" organisms to increase their chances of proliferation as a species. Species that Darwinian evolutionists consider to be more "primitive" reproduce asexually (with one parent). Some examples are starfish, coral, some non-flowering plants, sea anemones, fungi, bacteria, and amoebas. Asexual reproduction yields far more offspring than sexual reproduction, which begs the question, "Why would more complex and fit organisms evolve to a much less efficient method of reproduction?"
As if that weren't enough, in order for sexual reproduction to have evolved, the necessary organs would have had to evolve in both form and function within the lifespans of not one, but two individual specimens simultaneously. The male and the female would have had to evolve fully functioning reproductive organs at the same time. If either had died without having reproduced, then sexual reproduction within the species would also have died. The probability of the evolution of sexual reproduction is non-existent, and to believe it (without evidence, mind you) requires an impressive amount of faith. Remember that Occam's Razor dictates that simpler explanations are to be given precedence over more complex ones. Also, remember that atheist crusader Carl Sagan said that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Interesting.
Polystrate fossils are another sign that the earth is not as old as evolutionists would have us believe. They also indicate a catastrophic flood (not unlike the one described in the Bible). Sedimentary strata are believed by Darwinian evolutionists to represent a cross-section of time over millions of years, even though we have observed stratification taking place in a matter of days, in the 1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption for example. However, there are many instances in existence of individual fossilized specimens which span what are purportedly millions of years of sediment. There are tree trunks that would have either had to stand there and wait millions of years to be buried and fossilized, or they were buried rapidly; you make the call. There are also fossils of trilobites where the individual trilobite was fossilized in a layer of sediment that is supposed to be millions of years older than the layers below it...which display his fossilized tracks...awkward.
The final piece of evidence (or notable absence of evidence) we will outline here is that of transitional forms. One of my favorite discussions of transitional species is found in a letter from British Museum of Natural History senior paleontologist, the late, Dr. Colin Patterson, and Luther Sunderland, author of Darwin's Enigma. Dr. Patterson had published his book Evolution and had received a letter from Sunderland asking why he had not included any pictures of transitional species, or "missing links," as they are often called. Transitional forms are the creatures whose fossils we should be tripping over, by Darwin's own admission, that represent the evolutionary transitions from species to species.
Dr. Patterson responded:
“I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I know of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualize such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic licence, would that not mislead the reader?”
He went on to say:
“Yet Gould [Harvard paleontology professor Stephen Gould] and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils…You say that I should at least ‘show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.’ I will lay it on the line-there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.”
Now there have been many "discoveries" of such transitional species, but each has only had a shelf life of a few years before it was debunked, and quietly swept under the rug (again, awkward).
One notable example is the Piltdown Man. The Piltdown man was heralded around the world as one of the most important discoveries of all-time, a missing link between ape and man. However, the Piltdown Man turned out to be the skull of a man paired with the jaw of an orangutan, whose teeth had been doctored with a file.
Another more recent example is that of feathered dinosaurs. In the desperate quest for missing links, theropod dinosaurs have been attributed “proto-feathers” and said to have transitioned into birds. The November 1999 issue of National Geographic featured an article by Senior Assistant Editor Christopher Sloan which stated that “we can now say that birds are theropods just as confidently as we say that humans are mammals.”
Alan Feduccia, author of the encyclopedic work The Origin and Evolution of Birds, professor emeritus paleo-ornithologist at University of North Carolina (and an evolutionist), demolished the idea that theropods evolved into birds, most notably by pointing out, among other things, that theropods have the worst possible anatomy for developing flight (large tails and hindlimbs and short forelimbs), and that the supposed feathered theropods are dated by evolutionists millions of years after the appearance of actual birds (reeeeeeeally awkward). Someone at National Geographic, who shall remain nameless (but his initials are Christopher Sloan), didn't do his homework.
Another heavy hitter in the field of ornithology, Storrs Olson, Curator of Birds at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution, wrote a scathing open letter to publications who were pushing the story. In the letter, Olson said:
“National Geographic has reached an all-time low for engaging in sensationalistic, unsubstantiated, tabloid journalism…The idea of feathered dinosaurs and the theropod origin of birds is being actively promulgated by a cadre of zealous scientists acting in concert with certain editors at Nature and National Geographic who themselves have become outspoken and highly biased proselytizers of the faith. Truth and careful scientific weighing of evidence have been among the first casualties in their program, which is now fast becoming one of the grander scientific hoaxes of our age…”
He also pointed out that "none of the structures illustrated in Sloan’s article that are claimed to be feathers have actually been proven to be feathers. Saying that they are is little more than wishful thinking that has been presented as fact.”
Harvard paleontologist Stephen Gould, who was mentioned above in Dr. Patterson's letter, admitted that "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…in any local area, a species does not arise gradually but by the gradual transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and ‘fully formed.'"
Dr. Patterson wrote in his letter that “it is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favored by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test.”
Patterson revealed all of this to Sunderland because he was writing under the impression that Sunderland shared his views. He even made one very telling confession in the letter: “I seem fated continually to make a fool of my self with creationists…I hope that by now I have learned to be more circumspect in dealing with creationists, cryptic or overt. But I still maintain that skepticism is the scientists’ duty, however much the stance may expose us to ridicule.” Before Patterson passed away he completely fell out of the good graces of evolutionists when he publicly admitted that he no longer believed in Darwinian evolution. The entire text of the letter is published in Sunderland's work Darwin's Enigma.
Brothers and sisters, as you read the drop in the bucket that is written here, understand that the fossil record points to its Creator. It tells the story of His creation, His flood, and the fact that we are here to witness it tells of His mercy. The fossil record is not the enemy of the Bible. It, and all other truth, is the enemy of rebellious human nature, which the Bible calls "the flesh." He has called us to carry His Word to all the world so that they can be set free from their bondage to the flesh, sin and death, just like someone else did for us.
Allmon, W.D. Post Gradualism, Science 262:122–123, October 1, 1993. Warren Allmon, Director of the Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, NY, and Adjunct Associate Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University, was reviewing Ager, D., The New Catastrophism: The Importance of the Rare Event in Geological History, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1993.
Fields, Helen. "Dinosaur Shocker." Smithsonian Magazine. The Smithsonian Institution, May 2006. Web. 7 July 2016. <http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinosaur-shocker-115306469/?no-ist=&=&=&onsite_source=relatedarticles&page=3>.
Lyons, Eric. "More Soft Dinosaur Tissue." Apologetics Press. Apologetics Press, 2007. Web. 7 July 2016. <http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=9&article=1422>.
Olson, Storrs L. Letter to Dr. Peter Raven. 1 Nov. 1999. MS. National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
Sunderland, Luther D. Darwin's Enigma: Ebbing the Tide of Naturalism. Green Forest, AR: Master, 1998. Print.