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Word Gems
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Darwinism is a theory of gradualism,
of slow, continuous, incremental
biological change over very long
periods of time. But the fossil
record does not support this view.
return to "Evolution Controversy" contents page
where are the “missing links,” the transitional life-forms, glaringly absent from the fossil record
Dr. Amit Goswami: “…according to Darwin’s theory, evolution is continuous and should produce a continuous fossil record of all evolution. Unfortunately, the fossil records show glaring gaps at many important junctures. In other words, evolution is not only continuous but discontinuous (Eldredge and Gould 1972). Evolution has been compared to punctuated prose: The punctuation marks are discontinuities in otherwise continuous text. Darwinism cannot provide a fully credible explanation of such discontinuity.”
Charles Darwin: “Geological research... has done scarcely anything in breaking the distinction between species, by connecting them together by numerous, fine, intermediate varieties; and this not having been affected, is probably the gravest and most obvious of all the many objections which can be raised against my views.”
Dr. David Raup: “Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin, and knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded... ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as the result of more detailed information.”
Jeffrey H. Schwartz: “...according to Darwin...the fossil record should be rife with examples of transitional forms leading from the less to more evolved... Instead of filling the gaps in the fossil record with so-called missing links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational intermediates between documented fossil species.”
Eugene V. Koonin: “Major transitions in biological evolution show...sudden emergence of diverse forms at a new level of complexity. The relationships between major groups... do not seem to fit the tree pattern that... remains the dominant description of biological evolution...In each of these pivotal nexuses in life's history, the principal ‘types’ seem to appear rapidly and fully equipped with the signature features of the respective new level of biological organization. No intermediate ‘grades’ or intermediate forms between different types are detectable.”
Dr. Jay L. Wile: “The Geological Column Used to be considered Great Evidence for Evolution, but... Charles Walcott’s discovery of every basic body plan in Cambrian rock has shown that this is a construct of human imagination, not the data! Walcott’s Fossils, 60,000 in all, demonstrate what evolutionists call the ‘Cambrian Explosion.’ It is a mystery in evolution. Walcott had uncovered data that was REVOLUTIONARY. The fossils demonstrated that invertebrates DID NOT evolve into vertebrates over a period of hundreds of millions of years. They show that the bottom five layers of the geological column are demonstrably false. What did he do with the data? He hid it in his lab for almost 80 years until it was rediscovered by a graduate student!”
Dr. Gerald L. Schroeder: “Authors of high school textbooks and even introductory courses in biology still ignore these data. In the college classes I teach, I regularly encounter students who are being taught the tale of invertebrates gradually evolving into vertebrates. At $15,000 per year tuition, that’s an expensive error.”
Dr. Amit Goswami: “Darwin himself knew of this problem [of fossil gaps], but he was optimistic, justifiably, that further investigation would turn up intermediaries to fill the gaps. Indeed, we do occasionally hear about discoveries of intermediates, but according to Darwin’s theory, thousands upon thousands of these intermediates should have been discovered by now. Such discoveries have not happened. So the fossil gaps raise legitimate doubts about the veracity of Darwinism… as a complete theory of evolution. In science, we must take data seriously, and by now much research should have been carried out replacing Darwinism. But this has not happened either. The challenge to Darwinism… within biology has been sporadic, and even these sporadic efforts, to a large extent, have been ignored… biologists in the main have been less than candid about this matter…”
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