Did We Descend from a Common Ancestor?

gathering and classifying data about nature, formulating ideas about nature, usually in the form of testable universal statements, and then testing these ideas as rigorously as possible. Testing is very important in science, and any definition should include it. [My picture at the right is courtesy of one of the event organizers, Prof Paul Harris]The theory Darwin presents in his Origin of Species involves different parts: 1. Descent from a common ancestor, 2. Modification, and 3. Natural selection. The last two parts combine to provide the mechanism for evolution, which has its own limitations. Darwin observed finches with different beaks, but they never changed into anything else than a bird. Also, scientists experimenting with the fruit fly have produced different varieties, but they never changed into anything else than a fly.

However, the heart of the theory, the idea of descent from a common ancestor, is the controversial part. Besides common ancestor or parent (p.458 of Mayr's facsimile of the 1st ed.), Darwin also uses in his Origin of Species "descent from a primordial form," and, note what follows: "into which life was first breathed."(p.484) Was Darwin was for an Intelligent Designer? Sure enough, in another place he uses "Creator."(p.488) With his stress on origins, Darwin had to account for the origin of natural law and the beginning of life. The best way to handle this problem is with intelligent design or cause.

Let us go back to the idea of descent from a common ancestor, which

is depicted by this tree diagram. While we see natural selection in nature, we do not observe descent from a common ancestor happening today. That fact, taken by itself, makes the idea unscientific. Nevertheless, the idea of descent from a common ancestor does make testable predictions. These are: 1. Over time, life changes significantly. 2. The change is from simple to complex. 3. The change is from one ancestor to diverse offspring. 4. The change involves many transitional forms/intermediates. The best test of these predictions is the fossil record.Over time, life changes Significantly

Let us look at what change we see in the fossil record. The oldest fossils, stromatolites, are thought to be more than 3.5 billion years old.

One, from my fossil collection, is from Missouri. Other fossils are from Michigan, Minnesota, Arkansas, New York, and even under water in the Bahamas. Stomatolites were made by algae that were thought to be extinct. Then in the 1950s, a scientist found them alive at Shark Bay, Australia, where a high saline environment deters predators. These algae have remained unchanged over eons. They did not evolve. How about that? The oldest living beings we know about never changed!Living Fossils

The case of the stromatolites is not an isolated one. There are a large number of what are called living fossils. These are living beings whose appearance has changed little from

Cambrian period. The remarkable and detailed preservation of these ancient fossils enables scientists to examine important features, an example being the use of a scanning electron microscope on the eyes of Cambrian trilobites. This one, curling around my thumb, is from my fossil collection. Researchers conclude that the trilobite eye is a complex visual system, and was fully formed and was functional extremely early in the fossil record. The eye lens system even corrects for spherical aberration. This is just one example.All the Cambrian fossils abruptly appeared, complex and fully adapted to their

environment. This is the anomalocaris, which can grow up the six feet long. One of the animals it eats are trilobites. The authors of The Fossils of the Burgess Shale (Briggs, et al.) remind us that "the appearance of diverse shelly fossils near the base of the Cambrian remains abrupt and not simply an artifact of inadequate preservation."(p.40) Obviously, this complexity is not predicted by descent from a common ancestor, which says life began simple and became more complex.The Change Involved Many Transitional Forms/Intermediates

A problem about descent from a common ancestor is shown by the dotted lines in the chart on the right. These dotted lines represent predicted transitions. They are all in the past so again, the best test is the fossil record. Darwin predicted that there are innumerable transitional forms in the changes from fish to amphibians, amphibians to reptiles, and reptiles to mammals. However, the fossil record does not show his predicted innumerable transitional forms. For example, we have found millions, if not billions of fossil fish. Fossil Lake in Fossil Butte National Monument, Wyoming has an approximately 14 inch layer that contains millions of fish. Therefore, we should find billions of intermediate forms between fish and amphibians. Among these billions of transitional forms should be millions

of fish with legs and feet. This famous bumper sticker on the left shows the prediction, but paleontologists have not found one fish with feet, or any other indication of a transition from fish to amphibians, much less billions of them. Similarly, there are no large numbers of fossils giving evidence of amphibians evolving to reptiles, or of reptiles becoming mammals. [For a discussion of whether humans evolved, click here.]Darwin said this was a big problem for his theory, and he was right! In his Origin he asks: "Why then is not every geological formation and every strata full of intermediate links?"(p.280) He answers that the geological record is incomplete. But that was nearly 150 years ago. We have found billions of fossils all over the world since then. The prediction of innumerable transitional forms falls flat on its face, and, from a philosophy of science standpoint, the idea of descent from a common ancestor is falsified. It takes faith to stay with the theory, because at this point it is not science. We do have one more prediction to check.

The Change was from one Ancestor to Diverse Offspring

I have seen biologists write that evolution explains diversity,

but the evidence from the fossil record is just the opposite. As mentioned earlier, during the "Cambrian explosion of life" many different animals, like trilobites, abruptly appeared with no predecessors. The late Stephen J. Gould wrote a popular book, Wonderful Life, on the diversity of Cambrian fossils in the Burgess Shale. Gould points out that these Cambrian fossils include "a range of disparity in anatomical design never again equaled, and not matched today by all the creatures in the world's oceans."Further, these fossils contain some twenty to thirty kinds of arthropods that cannot be placed in any modern group. The modern arthropods, consisting of almost a million species, can all fit into four major groups. But "one quarry in British Columbia, representing the first explosion of multicellular life, reveals more than twenty additional arthropod designs." Today there are about 38 phyla in existence, but the Canadian, Chinese and other Cambrian sites reveal more than fifty phyla. Over time, there has been a decrease in diversity, not an increase in diversity. So, the branching tree diagrams used to promote descent from a common ancestor are fictions. They do not depict what really happened. [For more on the Cambrian Explosion of Life, click here.]

The branching tree diagram stands along with other famous evolutionary fictions such as Ernst Haeckel's faked embryo drawings, the Piltdown Man Forgery, Kettlewell's fraudulent Peppered Moth data, and National Geographic's phony Archeoraptor fossil. [For more on evolutionary deceptions clickhere.]Conclusion

We have tested four big predictions of the theory and none of the predictions fit the fossil record. Descent from a common ancestor is not science because it is not true; it has been tested and found wanting. Because the idea of descent from a common ancestor lies at the heart of the definition of evolution, we can also conclude that gradualistic evolution itself is discredited and not scientific. (Of course, studies of natural selection and genetics do fit our definition of science. But that does not mean evolution is scientific.) [For more on the lack of evidence for evolution, click here.]

What I have just presented are the facts; they are pretty hard to argue with. Next, I will give my opinions, which are very much open to argument.

Why?

I questioned evolutionary theory when I was not a Christian, but I did not understand why it had not been discarded already. Now that I have become a Christian. I understand - this is what I have concluded. It fits under the category "Why teach a discredited idea and/or call it science?"

The first reason why is religious belief or atheistic ideology. Religious Humanists

DNA for which they received the Nobel Prize. In his book, Life Itself, Francis Crick calculated that a polypeptide chain of modest length had a probability of 1 in 10²⁶⁰of forming. He compares this with the number of fundamental particles (atoms, speaking loosely) in the entire visible universe, which is estimated to be 10⁸⁰ He says that it is impossible for the great majority of protein sequences to have been synthesized at all, at any time.Crick states that this organized complexity "cannot have arisen by pure chance." He concludes that Intelligent Causation is the only option, and he gives some scientific arguments for it. Also, Crick signed Humanist Manifesto II. He is an atheist, so his Intelligent Designer is not God but rather, it is an advanced extraterrestrial civilization.

Another signer of Humanist Manifesto II is Antony Flew, who used to take the evolution side in these debates. Recently he became an advocate for Intelligent Design for scientific reasons. So Dr. Stullkin, be careful what you say, you might be over on my side next time.

The late Sir Fred Hoyle gives scientific reasons why life did not

begin on earth, and did not evolve here on earth. He also concludes that life and new genetic information is the result of an intelligent cause. However, he thinks that the cause is not from an advanced extraterrestrial civilization as Crick had, but is from the universe, as the title of one of his books states: The Intelligent Universe. This would make Hoyle a pantheist.Extraterrestrial Intelligence

The movie, Contact, is based on the late Carl Sagan's book by the same name. In the book, atheist Sagan gives an answer as to how we can recognize signals from an Extraterrestrial Intelligence. His presumption is that we can recognize an intelligent cause. Those involved in the search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence have tested this concept. Sagan is right, scientists can detect intelligent causes, and have built on the idea. Let me give the history of how we got to this point.

When radio astronomers started searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence in 1960, they had presumed they could recognize an intelligent cause, in this case, detecting signals from an Extraterrestrial Intelligence. But they did not test their idea, apparently they thought it was self-evident. This was probably because anyone dialing the turning knob of a shortwave receiver hears mostly natural signals, static. But everyone easily stops at an intelligent signal even if they do not know the language they hear being spoken or the music being played.The falsification test for recognizing intelligent signals turned out to be unplanned. Not long after they began searching the skies, radio astronomers detected an intelligent signal. They isolated and analyzed the signal. They finally figured it out. It was from a plane flying overhead!

They had not planned it, but this was a test of their theory. In the end, they did detect intelligence in all the static. Therefore, following our definition about testing ideas, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is scientific. Now, what if

God could send a message in the electromagnetic spectrum. Does this possibility mean that the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is religion? No. The identity of the Intelligent Cause does not matter. The concept of intelligent cause is the important thing, not what was behind the cause. The same reasoning applies to the Big Bang theory. God could be the cause of the Big Bang, but no one is saying that teaching the Big Bang is promoting religion.Intelligent Causation in biology and archeology has the same premise as radio astronomers and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Namely, can scientists recognize an intelligent cause in nature? Biochemists routinely design biochemical systems. They have experience recognizing intelligence in biochemical systems. Paleoanthropologists dig up artifacts all the time. By their experience, they recognize those that are the products of an intelligence. Scientists cannot only look for intelligent causes, but they are doing so, and in different disciplines. Thus, those who are attacking Intelligent Design/Causation are saying that Hoyle, Crick, radio astronomers, biochemists, and archaeologists are not doing science. This is not right. [For more on biochemistry and Intelligent Design, click here.]

Our DNA carries a large amount of extremely detailed genetic information. The DNA molecule is analogous to a computer, and the information it carries is analogous to the computer's software. Many scientists like Crick do not see how the DNA molecule could have come about by chance. Also, the genetic code operates only in the presence of ribosomes, activating enzymes, transfer RNA, etc. We would call it a miracle if a computer formed itself in nature by chance, and then programed itself with highly sophisticated software. We do not see this occurring in nature. Similarly, we can mix chemicals in the lab ala the Miller Experiment, but DNA does not happen. Where did all our genetic information, the software, come from? We do not see this occurring in nature either. It did not come about by natural selection - in the beginning there was nothing to select. Chemicals contain no genetic information, so there was nothing to vary either. [For more on the shortcomings of Chemical Evolution, click here.]Where are the laboratory experiments showing how extremely detailed genetic information pops into existence? There are none because, among other things, we are violating the second law of thermodynamics and also going against information theory. Nothing happens at all. Unless of course, the initial genetic information came from an intelligent cause, be it God, an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, or whatever.

Conclusion

Besides biochemistry, anthropology, and those searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, there are other disciplines that involve intelligent causes. Forensic science deals with them, as does artificial intelligence and cryptography.

So scientists use intelligent causes in several different disciplines. And why not? It is a tested concept. So what are the reasons for those opposing Intelligent Design/Causation? One answer is a commitment to a naturalistic world view, as we saw with the religious humanists. Other reasons for opposition to intelligent causation are similar to those given earlier for the continued promotion of descent from a common ancestor. Here, as earlier, I am giving my opinion as to why people are saying Intelligent Design/Causation is not scientific. Nevertheless, we saw that it is a tested concept, and that scientists have been working with intelligent causes for a long time.[Shown at the right is one of my students at the debate, Jeremy Myers. Another student there, but not shown, was Chris Nelson. Both also had friends of theirs present.]