On the Origin of Evolution by Means of Distortion and Lies By Keith Howland

And God said, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.” And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.” And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. And God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind”: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good. And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” So God created man in his [own] image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which [is] upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which [is] the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein [there is] life, [I have given] every green herb for meat”: and it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, [it was] very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day” (Genesis 1:1, 20-31, KJV)

This is the truth, conveyed to us in God’s Word, the Bible, about the origin of life on earth. The truth is that God created all living things, each according to its “kind” (herbs, plants, whales, fish, fowl, cattle, “creeping things” etc.), and that man was the pinnacle of His Creation, especially made in His image and given dominion over all other life.

God created heaven and earth for His glory and pleasure, a fact that is confirmed many times throughout Scripture (Psalm 104, Isaiah 45, Revelation 4, and many others) and is plainly evident to all people, because Creation bears the unmistakable marks of its Creator (cf. Romans 1:20). But such is the sinfulness of man since his fall (Genesis 3), that he “changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator” (Romans 1:25). And so it was that Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

Charles Darwin was born to a wealthy, influential family on February 12, 1809 in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. As a young man, he studied medicine at Edinburgh University, and later studied divinity at Cambridge. In 1831, he joined a five-year scientific expedition aboard the HMS Beagle.

While aboard the Beagle, Darwin read Principles of Geology by Charles Lyell (published in 1830), which posited that animal fossils discovered in rocks were evidence that animals had lived perhaps millions of years ago. Thus Darwin began to question the seven-day Creation account in the Bible—which he already had cause to doubt because he rejected the concept of eternal damnation for those who disbelieve the gospel; a notion that he (ironically) called a “damnable doctrine” [“Darwin’s real message: have you missed it?”, Creation 14(4) 16-19, 1992].

Also while on the Beagle expedition, Darwin made a breakthrough observation on the Galapagos Islands, five hundred miles west of South America: that on different islands the same type of bird (a finch) had different features. Their beaks were of particular interest, because they seemed to vary in size according to the types of feed they pecked.

Upon completing his expedition, Darwin returned to England in 1836, where he attempted to make sense of his observations from a naturalistic perspective. In October 1838, he read Essay on Population by Thomas Malthus, from which he gleaned the concept of “natural selection”—that is, “favorable variations” in animal physiology (i.e., those that are useful for survival) are preserved, while “unfavorable variations” (those that are not useful for survival) are destroyed. In the case of the finches, those with larger beaks were those that ate on tougher seeds, because the larger beaks were more practical for applying the greater force necessary to crack them. The larger-beaked finches would be more likely to thrive and survive, thus their genetic trait of larger beaks would be passed to their offspring. Darwin extended this observation of physical variation based on natural selection to propose a “theory” of evolution, such that natural selection could be used to produce such extensive variation and adaptation in an animal that a new species would result. He postulated that this would occur over many generations and a long period of time, since numerous small adaptations would need to occur to result in a different species.

Darwin worked to refine his theory for twenty years. During this time, he learned that another naturalist, Alfred Russell Wallace, had developed similar ideas, so he and Wallace produced a joint announcement of their discovery in 1858. However, Darwin saw a rival in Wallace, so he was keen to publish a book on his theory first, which he did in 1859 with the publication of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

The Origin of Species was very popular and controversial, because the logical conclusion of Darwin’s theory was that man was simply another animal, having evolved from primates. Of course this contradicts Scripture, which states that man is a special creation, set apart from the animals, made in God’s image.

There is much that is faulty with Darwin’s hypothesis in The Origin of Species. He admitted to some of its faults, and years of subsequent scientific discovery have exposed its absurdity much more. Chief among the problems of the evolutionary hypothesis are that it utterly fails to (1) explain the origin of life (despite its lofty title), and (2) account for the extraordinary complexity of living organs that must function in every facet in order to work at all.

The first problem is often ignored by adherents of evolutionary theory, who typically are concerned with biology (not physics) and simply presume that there was some initial form of life that either always existed or came into being by some random accident billions of years ago. Of course, neither concept can be substantiated by observation, but the concept of matter (and therefore life) always existing, without origin, is refuted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, which requires that time, matter, and space had a beginning. Along with this, the First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy and matter cannot be created or destroyed. Thus, if all time, matter, and space had a beginning, yet the physical laws of the universe disallow either the creation or destruction of matter, then how can there be a satisfactory natural explanation for the origin of matter? There cannot be; but there is a satisfactory supernatural explanation (“In the beginning, God created…”). Einstein himself endeavored to rationalize an alternative to the inevitable conclusion of his theory—that there is a Creator—but he could not escape its implications. [Ralph O. Muncaster, Creation vs. Evolution (2000), Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon, pp. 17, 30-31.]

Darwin was acutely aware of the second problem—that living organs are too complex to evolve by gradual change from different organs. It is one thing to speak of a finch’s beak changing its size and shape over progressive generations. It is quite another to speak of a finch turning into a human being, no matter how many generations it takes. An ape may bear some surface resemblance to a human being, but the constituent organs, tissues and cells of an ape are significantly different than that of a human’s. At its most basic level, an ape and a human have a different DNA structure (the genetic code that determines a life form’s characteristics, which is contained in every one of its cells).

Darwin recognized that change from one species to another was beyond the bounds of the simple adaptation he observed in nature; and he realized that it could not reasonably be explained by the mere mechanism of natural selection. So he proposed that “mutations” at the cellular level occurred in just the right amounts and in just the right sequence—gradually over time—to produce new organs of different but similar form and function. Thus, after many years and many generations, an arm could form where once there was a wing, or a nose could form where once there was a beak.

But Darwin realized that even this hypothesis was tenuous and could readily be undone if the building-blocks of living organisms turned out to be more complex than he realized. He wrote: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down” [The Origin of Species, 6^th edition (1988), New York University Press, New York, p. 154]. Since this was written 150 years ago, each successive generation of scientists has continued to discover that the organs of the body are far more complex than Darwin imagined. One such example is the eye.

Charles Darwin himself realized that it seemed incredible that evolutionary processes had to explain human vision. He said [in The Origin of Species]:

“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”

Yet, later on in the same chapter of his book, he explained how he believed it evolved anyway and that the “absurdity” was illusory. Had Darwin had the knowledge about the eye and its associated systems that man has today (which is a great deal more than what it was in his time), he may have given up his naturalistic theory on the origin of living things.

One fascinating discovery in the study of modern ophthalmology (eye science) is that, aside from what Darwin was able to observe, there are three almost imperceptibly tiny eye movements. These three, referred to as “tremors, drifts and saccades,” are caused by minute contractions in the six muscles attached to the outside of each of your eyes. Every fraction of a second they very slightly shift the position of your eyeball, automatically, without conscious effort on your part, making sight as you know it possible.

Tremors—the tiniest and probably the most intriguing of these movements, continuously and rapidly wobble your eyeball about its center in a circular fashion. They cause the cornea and retina (front and back) of your eyes to move in circles with incredibly minute diameters of approximately 1/1000 (.001) of a millimeter, or .00004 inch.

This size is about 70 times smaller than the thickness of a piece of paper. Carefully look at a piece of paper, edge on, then try to imagine 70 circles of the same diameter (OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO) touching and placed in a row straight across the thickness of the paper. If you can do that, you will have a feel for the minuscule nature of the tremors along with some appreciation for the Creator who has demonstrated His capacity for designing such a thing. [“Darwin vs. the Eye” Creation Ex Nihilo 16(4): 10-13, 1994.]

The eye (along with countless other bodily organs) is a specifically-attuned system of interrelated parts that all must function correctly and in tandem to work properly as a whole. If any constituent part of the organ fails to function, the entire organ fails to function. Biochemist Michael Behe, in his book Darwin’s Black Box, calls this concept “irreducible complexity.” Consider what happens if the timing belt breaks on your car. It is just one component of an engine comprising many components, but if it breaks the entire engine will fail and the car will not function. Darwinian evolution requires gradual adaptation, one part of an organ at a time, until a new, different (and improved) organ has developed. For one species to evolve into another, all of its organs must undergo some change at some time. But gradual change in any one organ is insufficient to maintain life. If any part of a system fails to work in tandem with another, the organism will not survive, let alone improve.

This problem of irreducibly-complex systems is compounded by the fact that nowhere in nature has anything resembling a benevolent mutation ever been observed. For one life-form to evolve into another—not simply to adapt its color or the size of its beak, but to become another species—Darwinian evolution requires cellular mutation to occur so that the cells are no longer of one kind (to use the biblical term), but of another; e.g., for the cells to be no longer that of a chicken but of a turkey (or buffalo, or human, if you want to stretch it to its ultimate conclusion). But every mutation ever observed in “nature” is only ever an aberration of an organism’s proper condition. Mutations do not improve function, but disrupt and cripple it.

Most simply, there is no evidence. No “missing link.” No “transitional life form” has ever been observed. Evolutionists have attempted to explain the lack of any missing link from one species to another with the concept of “punctuated equilibrium”—that is, that suddenly one species gives birth to another, with no transitional form appearing between the two. But this is counterintuitive, to say the least. A cat has never given birth to anything but a cat; a human has never given birth to anything but a human, and so forth.

Without something akin to “punctuated equilibrium,” evolutionists must yet hope in “missing links”; and indeed they often claim that they have been found, but these are invariably exposed as wishful thinking or downright hoaxes. At best, they are unfounded (the “Nebraska Man” and his whole family were imagined from a single tooth that turned out to be from a pig); at worst, they are purposely fraudulent (the “Piltdown Man” consisted of an ape jaw attached to a human skull, artificially stained to look old). [See Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells, which exposes the fallacies of many of the best-known and oft-perpetuated evolutionary teachings.]

In the end, scientific argument is insufficient to defend the theory of evolution or explain its adherents’ dogmatic defense of it. Evolution is, quite simply, bad science. It is easily disproved from simple observation and intuition, let alone serious scientific study. Further, the ramifications of evolutionary theory have had deleterious effects on our society since its inception, because it substantiates all manner of immoral acts and deviant behavior. (If there is no Creator of life, there is no Judge of life; if we are all animals, there is no call to act like anything other than animals; etc.) And therein lies the explanation behind its inception and perpetuation: belief in evolution is not strictly scientific, but spiritual. It is an atheistic religion, which substitutes the worship of God for the worship of “naturalism” (i.e., biological processes that occur by chance). Again, as the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write, 1800 years before Darwin’s fateful book, “[man] changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator” (Romans 1:25).

In Eden, the serpent tempted the woman, saying, “Hath God said…?” and then twisted God’s revelation to create doubt in the woman; doubt that led to sin (Genesis 3). Now the serpent says, “There is no God,” and twists God’s revelation to create doubt in people; doubt that leads to sin. The words are craftier, yet the lie is the same. But one day the seed of the woman will trample on the head of the serpent, and—once and for all—sin will be banished from God’s new Creation, where His revelation will be unveiled for all eternity. Amen.

Only the evolutionist is stumped by the riddle, “Which came first—the chicken or the egg?” The answer is simple: the chicken. It was created on the sixth day.