Evolution and Medicine

[fossten]

THAT is just a plain out LIE! And it's not very christian of you to lie...

I've factually refuted almost everything you've ever said, and still you keep talking...

LOL you are hilarious...

Keep trying.

 

[fossten]

Very good point(s).

Which I immediately refuted.

You really only read what you want to believe, don't you?

 

[TheDude]

Actually you're wrong. Darwin himself said so.

[

Darwin was a pioneer in the field, his theories like most theories in their infancy are not perfect, but that's science, you learn from your mistakes and you progress. He also was working on this back in the 1830's, science and technology are but a speck compared to today. We have the luxury of going off his work and all the preceded after him.

To say that evolution is impossible because of the complexity of the eye, ear or whatever is absurb. Evolution in itself is complex and not fully explained, Rome wasn't built in a day.

 

[TheDude]

Which I immediately refuted.

Not seeing your point here.

You really only read what you want to believe, don't you?

Lol... I read you're rebuttal, does that mean I have to agree with it?

 

[TheDude]

4. It DOES matter how God created us, because if you acknowledge that death happened before sin, then you eliminate sin as the cause of death, even though the Bible says the opposite. ("Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so
death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:" Romans 5:12) Evolution seeks to eliminate God from the equation so that man doesn't have to live by a set of morals nor account for his actions.

Im happy to know that at the moment of my birth, even before I took my first breath, I was sinner. Amazing.

Evolution does not seek to eliminate God, nor does it seek to validate God. Where do you get this from? I will say that the story about two people living in a magical garden with the lion, sheep and the T-Rex as friends makes no sense and in all probability is just a story to explain what was unexplainable thousands of years ago, just like the earth being flat was used to explain why the earth seemed flat. It worked until a more modern and scientific approach came along and disproved it. But in no way am I saying 'God does not exist' by these actions.

 

[fossten]

Darwin was a pioneer in the field, his theories like most theories in their infancy are not perfect, but that's science, you learn from your mistakes and you progress. He also was working on this back in the 1830's, science and technology are but a speck compared to today. We have the luxury of going off his work and all the preceded after him.

To say that evolution is impossible because of the complexity of the eye, ear or whatever is absurb. Evolution in itself is complex and not fully explained, Rome wasn't built in a day.

And yet the evolutionary community continues to refuse to learn from their mistakes. They insist that evolution MUST be true, so therefore they'll invent another theory to explain it. They're pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, using circular reasoning, and looking more and more foolish.

Darwin made a bunch of assumptions based upon rudimentary science back in the 1800's which don't hold up today. If evolution is so complex and not fully explained, then how do YOU know it's true?

Answer: You don't. You just believe it because that's what you were taught. You claim to believe in science, yet you haven't even done your own research to see if you're right or I'm right. You spend all your time making sarcastic, wild assertions, and little time actually reading the information I post. You aren't debating, you're trying to engage in a pssing contest.

Evolution does not seek to eliminate God, nor does it seek to validate God. Where do you get this from?

Ummm...If you actually read the above articles, you will see where I got this from.

Im happy to know that at the moment of my birth, even before I took my first breath, I was sinner. Amazing...

I will say that the story about two people living in a magical garden with the lion, sheep and the T-Rex as friends makes no sense and in all probability is just a story to explain what was unexplainable thousands of years ago, just like the earth being flat was used to explain why the earth seemed flat. It worked until a more modern and scientific approach came along and disproved it. But in no way am I saying 'God does not exist' by these actions.

You scoff at God and his Word and then misappropriate the articles posted. The truth is you don't know what to believe, so you're racing around in circles chasing your own tail. You use a faulty analogy to compare Adam & Eve to the theory about the Earth being flat. Totally unrelated. You have no way of disproving Creation while I can easily discredit evolution. You try to excuse your sarcasm by claiming that you aren't saying God doesn't exist, yet you mock everything said about God or the Bible.

 

[TheDude]

And yet the evolutionary community continues to refuse to learn from their mistakes. They insist that evolution MUST be true, so therefore they'll invent another theory to explain it. They're pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, using circular reasoning, and looking more and more foolish.

Darwin made a bunch of assumptions based upon rudimentary science back in the 1800's which don't hold up today. If evolution is so complex and not fully explained, then how do YOU know it's true?

Answer: You don't. You just believe it because that's what you were taught. You claim to believe in science, yet you haven't even done your own research to see if you're right or I'm right. You spend all your time making sarcastic, wild assertions, and little time actually reading the information I post. You aren't debating, you're trying to engage in a pssing contest..

And you have absolute proof that the act of Creation happened? Saying that is it written in the bible so it must be true isn't absolute proof. Man wrote the Bible and we know man is not without his faults, mand is not perfect. God himself did not come down and write the passages so who's to say that the prophets God spoke to interpreted God's word's correctly?

Ummm...If you actually read the above articles, you will see where I got this from...

I did read the article. Just because a pro-Creation / anti-Evolution article says that Evolutions goal is to eliminate God, doesn't make it so. Funny how you take your articles as infallible absolute proof, but anything that even slightly contradicts your beliefs has absolute zero validity.

You scoff at God and his Word and then misappropriate the articles posted. The truth is you don't know what to believe, so you're racing around in circles chasing your own tail. You use a faulty analogy to compare Adam & Eve to the theory about the Earth being flat. Totally unrelated. You have no way of disproving Creation while I can easily discredit evolution. You try to excuse your sarcasm by claiming that you aren't saying God doesn't exist, yet you mock everything said about God or the Bible.

How do I scoff at God's word? You said yourself that God said we are all born sinners. I just found that amazing. I do not see how I or anyone else for that matter could of sinned at the moment of my/their birth, that is more of a Hindu karma thing. Aren't all children born with a 'clean' soul and it is our actions through life that taint it? No, the analogy is not faulty. You think I mock God because I do not share your exact same beliefs. There is a difference.

 

[fossten]

And you have absolute proof that the act of Creation happened? Saying that is it written in the bible so it must be true isn't absolute proof. Man wrote the Bible and we know man is not without his faults, mand is not perfect. God himself did not come down and write the passages so who's to say that the prophets God spoke to interpreted God's word's correctly?

Your logic continues to be flawed, because you continue to attribute statements to me that I've never made. I challenge you to find one quote where I said "Creation is true because the Bible proves it." It's not there. Everything in this thread uses science to show that evolution is not true, yet you continue to respond defensively by misquoting me. A favorite tactic, but amateurish.

We know that you don't believe the Bible. But you obviously don't believe science either, because I've shown several examples (which you obviously haven't read) of scientific refutations of evolution in this thread. You simply ignore them and continue your illogical abstractions. You obviously cannot meet me head to head with science to back up your statements, so you have to try to change the subject.

As far as the sinner subject, I can discuss that with you if you can do it without being sarcastic and closed-minded. I doubt that you can. But I will say this: I NEVER claimed that you were born a sinner. You again misquoted me.

 

[TheDude]

Your logic continues to be flawed, because you continue to attribute statements to me that I've never made. I challenge you to find one quote where I said "Creation is true because the Bible proves it." It's not there. Everything in this thread uses science to show that evolution is not true, yet you continue to respond defensively by misquoting me. A favorite tactic, but amateurish..

You're saying that you believe Creation is true because of science and not because it is written in the Bible? If you really want me to go through countless threads where you quote the Bible to prove a point as a undeniable fact, I will.

We know that you don't believe the Bible. But you obviously don't believe science either, because I've shown several examples (which you obviously haven't read) of scientific refutations of evolution in this thread. You simply ignore them and continue your illogical abstractions. You obviously cannot meet me head to head with science to back up your statements, so you have to try to change the subject.

I have read every single Creationist view on disproving evolution you have posted, I simply do not agree with those points. I do not agree that dinosaurs existed with people as an example from your articles. They all go back to one source as a final disproval, 'The Bible says so'

As far as the sinner subject, I can discuss that with you if you can do it without being sarcastic and closed-minded. I doubt that you can. But I will say this: I NEVER claimed that you were born a sinner. You again misquoted me.

Then why do babies die? If death is due to the presence of sin. No sarcasm there.

"Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so
death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:" Romans 5:12

 

[fossten]

You're saying that you believe Creation is true because of science and not because it is written in the Bible? If you really want me to go through countless threads where you quote the Bible to prove a point as a undeniable fact, I will.

There you go, twisting my words, overgeneralizing. I never said I don't ever use the Bible to prove a point. What I said was that you can't find a single quote from me that says that Creation is true only because the Bible says so. Furthermore, I rarely use the Bible to prove a point other than that someone has misquoted or misread the Bible. The only other times I use the Bible are when someone asks about it.

I also pointed out that you haven't done any research, while I have. Your lack of credibility rests on the lack of effectiveness of your ad hominem attacks instead of on true scientific evidence.

I have read every single Creationist view on disproving evolution you have posted, I simply do not agree with those points. I do not agree that dinosaurs existed with people as an example from your articles. They all go back to one source as a final disproval, 'The Bible says so'

You ignore the fossil evidence that your own evolutionists can't even explain? You don't agree with SCIENCE. So what is the basis for your belief, if you don't believe the Bible OR science, hmmm? Blind stubbornness?

Then why do babies die? If death is due to the presence of sin. No sarcasm there.

"Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so
death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:" Romans 5:12

Here's an excerpt that should answer your question about babies dying. (I'm assuming you're not referring to abortions, as that would not need an explanation)

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the following excerpt will probably not agree with the opinions of Deville, nor should they, since he is not a Christian. Any representation by Deville that this is a religious excerpt and therefore not true should be taken in to that context.

http://answersingenesis.org/docs2002/death_suffering.asp

All right, so Adam’s Fall explains sorrow in general, but what about specific cases of ‘senseless suffering’?

The Bible teaches that suffering is part of the ‘big picture’ involving sin, but individual cases of suffering are not always correlated with particular sins of individuals.

God allowed the suffering of righteous Job.

A man named Job, who was the most righteous man on Earth at his time, suffered intensely—losing all his children, servants and possessions in a single day; then he was struck by a painful illness. The Lord never told Job the specific reasons for his suffering, but God lets every reader of the book of Job witness some extraordinary ‘behind-the-scenes’ events in Heaven, which Job never saw. The Lord had reasons for allowing Job’s suffering, but He never told Job these reasons, and He demanded that Job not question the decisions of his Maker.

Jesus was asked why a man was born blind.

When Jesus and His disciples passed by a blind man, His disciples asked Him whether the man’s blindness from birth was due to his own sin or the sin of his parents. Jesus explained that neither was the case. The man was born blind so that God could demonstrate His power (when Jesus healed him, John 9:1-7).

Jesus discussed why eighteen Jews died tragically when the tower of Siloam collapsed.

Jesus said something that is directly applicable to modern tragedies, such as the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the United States on September 11, 2001. Luke 13:4 records His words: ‘Those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were sinners above all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no!’ Suffering in our lives is not always related to our personal sin.

Note, however, that Jesus went on to say that ‘unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.’ Though this may have been referring to perishing physically in the coming downfall of Jerusalem, the bottom line is that no-one is innocent. All of us are sinners and therefore condemned to die. Thousands of people died in the World Trade Center catastrophe, but the hundreds of millions of people who saw and heard about this event will also die one day—in fact, thousands of them are dying every day—because all humans have been given the death penalty because of sin.

The account of the rich man and Lazarus is a key to understanding suffering.
The Bible is never embarrassed to talk about the question of suffering. God’s past judgments have included almost every type of suffering imaginable, and He repeatedly asserts His absolute power and authority over men’s lives. Yet in one of Christ’s most memorable teachings (Luke 16:19–31), the Son of God gives the key to understanding the apparent injustices of this world.

A wicked rich man lived in splendor, while a faithful beggar named Lazarus sat at the rich man’s gate, covered with sores and eating table scraps. But the story does not end here. There is an eternal world to come, where God will make all things right. The hope of a resurrection is the key to understanding our suffering.13

Once, the twentieth-century atheistic philosopher Bertrand Russell claimed that no-one could sit by the bedside of a child with a terminal disease and believe in a loving God. A minister who actually had experience with dying children (unlike Russell who never got his own hands dirty with such practical things) challenged Russell to explain what he could offer such a child. An atheist could only say, ‘Sorry, chap, you’ve had your chips, and that’s the end of everything for you.’ But the Christian has hope that this life is not the end.

The Apostle Paul found reasons to ‘glory in my infirmities.’

Paul’s ‘résumé of suffering’ included torture, beatings, imprisonment, stoning, shipwreck, robbery, infirmities, exhaustion, hunger, thirst, and cold. His letters show that Christ’s Resurrection was the key to his making sense of his suffering. Without the Resurrection, ‘then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain, … [and] we are of all men most miserable’ (1 Corinthians 15:14, 19).

Though sometimes we will never see in this life the reasons for some suffering, Paul’s letters contain practical reasons for the suffering of God’s children, even when they have done nothing wrong. For instance:

1. Suffering can ‘perfect’ us, or make us mature in the image of Christ. (Job 23:10, Hebrews 5:8–9).
2. Suffering can help some to come to know Christ.
3. Suffering can make us more able to comfort others who suffer .

Is God doing anything about death and suffering?

People who accuse God of sitting back and doing nothing are missing a vital truth. In reality, God has already done everything you would want a loving God to do—and infinitely more!
The Son of God became a man and endured both suffering and a horrible death on man’s behalf.

Adam’s sin left mankind in a terrible predicament. Even though our bodies die, we are made in the image of God, and thus we have souls that are immortal. Our conscious being is going to live forever. Unless God intervened, Adam’s sin meant that we would spend an eternity of suffering and separation from Him.

The only way for us to restore our life with God is if we are able to come to Him with the penalty paid for our sin. Leviticus 17:11 helps us to understand how this can be done. It says, ‘The life of the flesh is in the blood.’ Blood represents life. The New Testament explains that ‘without the shedding of blood there is no remission [of sins]’ (Hebrews 9:22). God makes it clear that, because we are creatures of flesh and blood, the only way to pay the penalty for our sin is if blood is shed to take away our sin.

In the Garden of Eden, God killed an animal and clothed Adam and Eve as a picture of a covering for our sin. A blood sacrifice was needed because of our sin. The Israelites sacrificed animals over and over again; however, because Adam’s blood does not flow in animals, animal blood, though it could temporarily cover our sin, could never take it away. The Hebrew word translated ‘atonement’ is kaphar, which means ‘cover.’

The solution was God’s plan to send His Son, the Second Person of the triune Godhead, the Lord Jesus Christ, to become a man—a perfect man—to be a sacrifice for sin. In the person of Jesus Christ, our Creator God stepped into history (John 1:1–14) to become a physical descendant of Adam, called ‘the last Adam’ (1 Corinthians 15:45), born of a virgin. Because the Holy Spirit overshadowed His mother (Luke 1:35), He was a perfect man, one without sin—despite having been tempted in every way that we are (Hebrews 4:15)—who thus could shed His blood on a cross for our sin.

Because mankind’s first representative head—Adam—was responsible for bringing sin and death into the world, the human race can now have a new representative—the ‘last Adam’—who paid the penalty for sin. No sinner could pay for the sins of others, but this last Adam—Jesus Christ—was a perfect man. God in human flesh was able to bear the sins and sorrows of the world.
The Son of God rose from the grave so that He could provide eternal life for all who believe (John 3:16).

After Christ’s suffering and death, He rose from the dead, showing He had ultimate power—power over death. He can now give eternal life to anyone who receives it by faith (John 1:12, Ephesians 2:8–9). The Bible teaches us that those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and believe that God has raised Him from the dead, and receive Him as Lord and Savior, will spend eternity with God (1 Corinthians 15:1–4).
The Son of God sympathizes with our sorrows.

Christ’s suffering and death mean that God Himself can personally empathize with our suffering, because He has experienced it. His followers have a High Priest—Jesus—who can be ‘touched with the feeling of our infirmities. … Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need’ (Hebrews 4:15–16).
How long will this suffering and death go on?

People who complain about the suffering on this Earth need to understand God’s perspective of time. God dwells in eternity, and He is lovingly preparing His people to spend an eternity with Him. As the Apostle Paul said, ‘I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us’ (Romans 8:18). The book of Hebrews says that Jesus Himself, ‘for the glory that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God’ (Hebrews 12:2).

The present suffering—intense as it can be at times—is so insignificant, in view of eternity, that it can’t even be compared to the glory to come.
God has prepared an eternal home where there will be no more death or suffering.

Those who put their trust in Christ as Savior have a wonderful hope—they can spend eternity with the Lord in a place where there will be no more death. ‘And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away’ (Revelation 21:4).

Indeed, death is really the path that opens the way to this wonderful place, called Heaven. If we lived forever, we would never have an opportunity to shed this sinful state. But God wants us to have a new body, and He wants us to dwell with Him forever. In fact, the Bible states that ‘precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints’ (Psalm 116:15). Death is ‘precious’ because sinners who have trusted Christ will enter into the presence of their Creator, in a place where righteousness dwells.

There is also a place of eternal separation from God.

The Bible warns that those who reject Christ will taste a ‘second death’—eternal separation from God (Revelation 21:8).

Most of us have heard about Hell, a place of fire and torment. None other than Jesus Christ warned of this place more than He spoke of Heaven. He also made it clear that the torment of the wicked was as eternal (Greek aionios) as the life of the blessed (Matthew 25:46). God does not delight in the death of the wicked. ‘Say unto them, As I live, said the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn, turn from your evil ways; for why will you die, O house of Israel?’ (Ezekiel 33:11). God takes no pleasure in the afflictions and calamities of people. He is a loving, merciful God—it is our fault that man is in the current state of suffering and death.

As we face horrible suffering, such as the tragedy at the World Trade Center, let it remind us that the ultimate cause of such calamity is our sin—our rebellion against God. Our loving God, despite our sinfulness, wants us to spend eternity with Him. Christians need to stretch forth a loving, comforting arm to those who are in need of comfort and strength during times of suffering. They can find strength in the arms of a loving Creator who hates Death—the enemy that will one day be thrown into the Lake of Fire (Revelation 20:14).

There is no conflict between the statements ‘God is all-powerful and loving’ and ‘the world is full of suffering and evil.’ For God to rid the world of evil would require ridding the world of us! Instead, God wants us to be saved from His wrath to come. One day, God will indeed rid the world of evil.

We have two options: separate from our sins by trusting in Christ, and dwell with God forever; or cling to our sins, in which case God will grant our wish and separate us from Himself for eternity. This is why Jesus on the Day of Judgment says to evildoers, ‘Depart from me …’ (Matthew 7:23, Luke 13:27).

When we understand the origin of death and the Gospel of Jesus Christ as proclaimed in the Bible, then we can understand why this world is the way it is and how there can be a loving God in the midst of tragedy, violence, suffering and death. Which view of death do you accept? Is it one that makes God an ogre responsible for millions of years of death, disease and suffering? Or is it one that places the blame on our sin, and pictures our Creator God as a loving, merciful Savior who wept over the city of Jerusalem, who wept at the tomb of His friend Lazarus, and who weeps for all of us?

 

[TheDude]

There you go, twisting my words, overgeneralizing. I never said I don't ever use the Bible to prove a point. What I said was that you can't find a single quote from me that says that Creation is true only because the Bible says so. Furthermore, I rarely use the Bible to prove a point other than that someone has misquoted or misread the Bible. The only other times I use the Bible are when someone asks about it.

If you believe in Creation then it came from the Bible. Where else does the teaching of Creation come from then? I don't think anyone ever read a book on evolution and came up with Creation by themselves. You do use the Bible to prove a point, the articles you post recite passages from the Bible to prove their point. If you post an article to prove a point, you stand by whats in the article.

I also pointed out that you haven't done any research, while I have. Your lack of credibility rests on the lack of effectiveness of your ad hominem attacks instead of on true scientific evidence.

I'm glad you know what I have or haven't done. I am not an evolutionay scientist, or an archeologist. I rely on what I read and research just like yourself I assume, then I weigh and compare and decide what sounds more logical and credible to me. I don't just pick up the Bible or any other book and say 'Ok, it's written in there, it must be true'

You ignore the fossil evidence that your own evolutionists can't even explain? You don't agree with SCIENCE. So what is the basis for your belief, if you don't believe the Bible OR science, hmmm? Blind stubbornness?.

Science can't explain every little thing right away, any scientist or researcher will tell you that. Evolution is extremely complex, it takes time. It isn't Creation where passages in the Bible sum it up nice and simple, Evolution isn't cut and dry like 'On the first day God created and ending with the great flood. Science takes time and patience, trial and error. You say I ignore the fossil evidence that evolution can't explain, yet you ignore the same evidence. Pretaining to your article, Creationist claim that dinosaurs existed side by side with man and that the great flood is why we have their extinction and why we have their fossils. Yet you dismiss that they are millions upon million of years older, the bones have been dated using the same technology that dates relics from the time of Jesus, so if the technology works for that, why is it so easy to dismiss because it conflicts with yor beliefs?

Here's an excerpt that should answer your question about babies dying. (I'm assuming you're not referring to abortions, as that would not need an explanation) .

No not really... "Because all humans have been given the death penalty because of sin." So therefore we are all born sinners? I don't see how you can be giving the 'death penalty' because of sin while not being a sinner.

The story of Job pretty much sums it up though, God does what he does no answers need given. So anyone can always resort to that.
[

 

[fossten]

Science can't explain every little thing right away, any scientist or researcher will tell you that. Evolution is extremely complex, it takes time. It isn't Creation where passages in the Bible sum it up nice and simple, Evolution isn't cut and dry like 'On the first day God created and ending with the great flood. Science takes time and patience, trial and error.

Right, but when evolutionists come up against a problem, like the "light-travel" problem, they just invent a new idea rather than accepting what science shows them. Totally biased viewpoint, twisting the facts to fit their worldview.

Light-travel time: a problem for the big bang
by Robert Newton

The ‘distant starlight problem’ is sometimes used as an argument against biblical creation. People who believe in billions of years often claim that light from the most distant galaxies could not possibly reach earth in only 6,000 years. However, the light-travel–time argument cannot be used to reject the Bible in favour of the big bang, with its billions of years. This is because the big bang model also has a light-travel–time problem.

The background
In 1964/5, Penzias and Wilson discovered that the earth was bathed in a faint microwave radiation, apparently coming from the most distant observable regions of the universe, and this earned them the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1978.1 This Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) comes from all directions in space and has a characteristic temperature.2,3 While the discovery of the CMB has been called a successful prediction of the big bang model,4 it is actually a problem for the big bang. This is because the precisely uniform temperature of the CMB creates a light-travel–time problem for big bang models of the origin of the universe.

The problem
The temperature of the CMB is essentially the same everywhere5—in all directions (to a precision of 1 part in 100,000).6 However (according to big bang theorists), in the early universe, the temperature of the CMB7 would have been very different at different places in space due to the random nature of the initial conditions. These different regions could come to the same temperature if they were in close contact. More distant regions would come to equilibrium by exchanging radiation (i.e. light8). The radiation would carry energy from warmer regions to cooler ones until they had the same temperature.


(1) Early in the alleged big bang, points A and B start out with different temperatures.
(2) Today, points A and B have the same temperature, yet there has not been enough time for them to exchange light.

The problem is this: even assuming the big bang timescale, there has not been enough time for light to travel between widely separated regions of space. So, how can the different regions of the current CMB have such precisely uniform temperatures if they have never communicated with each other?9 This is a light-travel–time problem.10

The big bang model assumes that the universe is many billions of years old. While this timescale is sufficient for light to travel from distant galaxies to earth, it does not provide enough time for light to travel from one side of the visible universe to the other. At the time the light was emitted, supposedly 300,000 years after the big bang, space already had a uniform temperature over a range at least ten times larger than the distance that light could have travelled (called the ‘horizon’)11 So, how can these regions look the same, i.e. have the same temperature? How can one side of the visible universe ‘know’ about the other side if there has not been enough time for the information to be exchanged? This is called the ‘horizon problem’.12 Secular astronomers have proposed many possible solutions to it, but no satisfactory one has emerged to date (see Attempts to overcome the big bang’s ‘light-travel–time problem’ below).

Summing up
The big bang requires that opposite regions of the visible universe must have exchanged energy by radiation, since these regions of space look the same in CMB maps. But there has not been enough time for light to travel this distance. Both biblical creationists and big bang supporters have proposed a variety of possible solutions to light-travel–time difficulties in their respective models. So big-bangers should not criticize creationists for hypothesizing potential solutions, since they do the same thing with their own model. The horizon problem remains a serious difficulty for big bang supporters, as evidenced by their many competing conjectures that attempt to solve it. Therefore, it is inconsistent for supporters of the big bang model to use light-travel time as an argument against biblical creation, since their own notion has an equivalent problem.

Attempts to overcome the big bang’s ‘light-travel–time problem’

Currently, the most popular idea is called ‘inflation’—a conjecture invented by Alan Guth in 1981. In this scenario, the expansion rate of the universe (i.e. space itself) was vastly accelerated in an ‘inflation phase’ early in the big bang. The different regions of the universe were in very close contact before this inflation took place. Thus, they were able to come to the same temperature by exchanging radiation before they were rapidly (faster than the speed of light1) pushed apart. According to inflation, even though distant regions of the universe are not in contact today, they were in contact before the inflation phase when the universe was small.

However, the inflation scenario is far from certain. There are many different inflation models, each with its set of difficulties. Moreover, there is no consensus on which (if any) inflation model is correct. A physical mechanism that could cause the inflation is not known, though there are many speculations. There are also difficulties on how to turn off the inflation once it starts—the ‘graceful exit’ problem.2 Many inflation models are known to be wrong—making predictions that are not consistent with observations,3 such as Guth’s original model.4 Also, many aspects of inflation models are currently unable to be tested.

Some astronomers do not accept inflationary models and have proposed other possible solutions to the horizon problem. These include: scenarios in which the gravitational constant varies with time,5 the ‘ekpyrotic model’ which involves a cyclic universe,6 scenarios in which light takes ‘shortcuts’ through extra (hypothetical) dimensions,7 ‘null-singularity’ models,8 and models in which the speed of light was much greater in the past.9,10 (Creationists have also pointed out that a changing speed of light may solve light-travel–time difficulties for biblical creation.11)

In light of this disagreement, it is safe to say that the horizon problem has not been decisively solved.

You say I ignore the fossil evidence that evolution can't explain, yet you ignore the same evidence. Pretaining to your article, Creationist claim that dinosaurs existed side by side with man and that the great flood is why we have their extinction and why we have their fossils. Yet you dismiss that they are millions upon million of years older, the bones have been dated using the same technology that dates relics from the time of Jesus, so if the technology works for that, why is it so easy to dismiss because it conflicts with yor beliefs?

Oh, you're referring to carbon dating methods? Oh good! I have a question for you then!

Can you explain to me WHY carbon-14 is found in coal, when the life of C-14 can only be about 11,460 years?

More Evidence Something is Wrong --
14C in Fossils Supposedly Millions of Years Old

Carbon Dating in many cases seriously embarrasses evolutionists by giving ages that are much younger than those expected from their model of early history. A specimen older than 50,000 years should have too little 14C to measure.

Laboratories that measure 14C would like a source of organic material with zero 14C to use as a blank to check that their lab procedures do not add 14C. Coal is an obvious candidate because the youngest coal is supposed to be millions of years old, and most of it is supposed to be tens or hundreds of millions of years old. Such old coal should be devoid of 14C. It isn't. No source of coal has been found that completely lacks 14C.

Fossil wood found in "Upper Permian" rock that is supposedly 250 Ma old still contained 14C.[23] Recently, a sample of wood found in rock classified as "middle Triassic," supposedly some 230 million years old, gave a 14C date of 33,720 years, plus or minus 430 years.[24] The accompanying checks showed that the 14C date was not due to contamination and that the "date" was valid, within the standard (long ages) understanding of this dating system.

It is an unsolved mystery to evolutionists as to why coal has 14C in it,[25], or wood supposedly millions of years old still has 14C present, but it makes perfect sense in a creationist world view. [But don't you worry, they'll invent something to explain it.]
Many Physical Evidences Contradict the "Billions of Years"

Of the methods that have been used to estimate the age of the earth, 90 percent point to an age far less than the billions of years asserted by evolutionists. A few of them follow.

Evidence for a rapid formation of geological strata, as in the biblical flood. Some of the evidences are: lack of erosion between rock layers supposedly separated in age by many millions of years; lack of disturbance of rock strata by biological activity (worms, roots, etc.); lack of soil layers; polystrate fossils (which traverse several rock layers vertically -- these could not have stood vertically for eons of time while they slowly got buried); thick layers of "rock" bent without fracturing, indicating that the rock was all soft when bent; and more. For more, see books by geologists Morris[26] and Austin.[27]

Red blood cells and hemoglobin have been found in some (unfossilized!) dinosaur bone. But these could not last more than a few thousand years -- certainly not the 65 Ma since the last dinosaurs lived, according to evolutionists.[28]

The earth's magnetic field has been decaying so fast that it looks like it is less than 10,000 years old. Rapid reversals during the flood year and fluctuations shortly after would have caused the field energy to drop even faster.[29]

Radioactive decay releases helium into the atmosphere, but not much is escaping. The total amount in the atmosphere is 1/2000th of that expected if the universe is really billions of years old. This helium originally escaped from rocks. This happens quite fast, yet so much helium is still in some rocks that it has not had time to escape -- certainly not billions of years.[30]

A supernova is an explosion of a massive star -- the explosion is so bright that it briefly outshines the rest of the galaxy. The supernova remnants (SNRs) should keep expanding for hundreds of thousands of years, according to physical equations. Yet there are no very old, widely expanded (Stage 3) SNRs, and few moderately old (Stage 1) ones in our galaxy, the Milky Way, or in its satellite galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds. This is just what we would expect for "young" galaxies that have not existed long enough for wide expansion.[31]

The moon is slowly receding for the earth at about 4 centimeters (1.5 inches) per year, and this rate would have been greater in the past. But even if the moon had started receding from being in contact with the earth, it would have taken only 1.37 billion years to reach its present distance from the earth. This gives a maximum age of the moon, not the actual age. This is far too young for evolutionists who claim the moon is 4.6 billion years old. It is also much younger than the radiometric "dates" assigned to moon rocks.[32]

Salt is entering the sea much faster than it is escaping. The sea is not nearly salty enough for this to have been happening for billions of years. Even granting generous assumptions to evolutionists, the sea could not be more than 62 Ma years old -- far younger than the billions of years believed by the evolutionists. Again, this indicates a maximum age, not the actual age.[33]
Dr. Russell Humphreys gives other processes inconsistent with billions of years in the pamphlet Evidence for a Young World.[34]

Creationists cannot prove the age of the earth using a particular scientific method, any more than evolutionists can. They realize that all science is tentative because we do not have all the data, especially when dealing with the past. This is true of both creationist and evolutionist scientific arguments -- evolutionists have had to abandon many "proofs" for evolution just as creationists have also had to modify their arguments. The atheistic evolutionist W.B. Provine admitted:

"Most of what I learned of the field [evolutionary biology] in graduate (1964-68) school is either wrong or significantly changed."[35]

Creationists understand the limitations of dating methods better than evolutionists who claim that they can use processes observed in the present to "prove" that the earth is billions of years old. In reality, all dating methods, including those that point to a young earth, rely on unprovable assumptions.

Creationists ultimately date the earth historically using the chronology of the Bible. This is because they believe that this is an accurate eyewitness account of world history, which bears the evidence within it that it is the Word of God, and therefore totally reliable and error-free. [snip]
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c007.html

No not really... "Because all humans have been given the death penalty because of sin." So therefore we are all born sinners? I don't see how you can be giving the 'death penalty' because of sin while not being a sinner.
[

What are you quoting? Not me, or the Bible.

The answer is that we are all born with a sin nature that makes it inevitable that we will all sin.

I do believe that children who have not reached an age where they understand right from wrong are actually innocent before God, but nevertheless they do sin. Haven't you ever heard of a 2-year-old disobeying his parents, or a 1-year-old crying for no reason although acting like she's hungry? That's called lying.

 

[TheDude]

Right, but when evolutionists come up against a problem, like the "light-travel" problem, they just invent a new idea rather than accepting what science shows them. Totally biased viewpoint, twisting the facts to fit their worldview.

Science is rarely; if ever correct on the first try. I do not know how many times I can tell you that. It is a long process where you learn by trial and error. If we were to give up on everything because it didn't perfectly fit or work the first time, guess what, we would be naked and living in mud huts still. How the universe came into existence is a bigger problem to solve than evolution by a infinite fold. The fact is no one really knows, S. Hawkins a few years back came up with his own that pretty much dismissed the 'Big Bang' theory, but he said himself that it isn't perfectly sound, technology to prove or disprove that has yet to be found. But should be just give up? Certainly not. Do you think Einstein came up with 'E=MC2' in just one day...

Oh, you're referring to carbon dating methods? Oh good! I have a question for you then! .

I haven't read up on the newest achievements of carbon dating in awhile, so I am a bit rusty... If you like I can do some research on the most current dating and post it. But just going off your article, it uses the words 'supposed to be' many times. Let's suppose that C-14 has a longer life span than presumed (11,460 years), suppose the youngest coal is far younger than being 10's of thousands of years old. Further research is needed, no one is saying "Ok, we solved it completely, here it is, it can't be refuted' You should be happy with the prospect of further research not fear it, you never know, science may dig up Noah's big boat one day.

What are you quoting? Not me, or the Bible..

I copy/pasted that quote off your article/post, I certainly didn't make it up since I do not believe it to be true. You can find it under 'Jesus discussed why eighteen Jews died tragically when the tower of Siloam collapsed.' of your post. (see below)

Note, however, that Jesus went on to say that ‘unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.’ Though this may have been referring to perishing physically in the coming downfall of Jerusalem, the bottom line is that no-one is innocent. All of us are sinners and therefore condemned to die. Thousands of people died in the World Trade Center catastrophe, but the hundreds of millions of people who saw and heard about this event will also die one day—in fact, thousands of them are dying every day—because all humans have been given the death penalty because of sin.

The answer is that we are all born with a sin nature that makes it inevitable that we will all sin.

I do believe that children who have not reached an age where they understand right from wrong are actually innocent before God, but nevertheless they do sin. Haven't you ever heard of a 2-year-old disobeying his parents, or a 1-year-old crying for no reason although acting like she's hungry? That's called lying.

I actually laughed out loud at your "1-year-old crying for no reason although acting like she's hungry." -That's called lying." Just because you don't know why a baby cries, doesn't mean the child is making it up or lying, unless you have psychic abilities and you can dwell into an infants mind. What if the baby is crying over gas pains, or a headache or anything else a baby couldn't be able to tell you about. That is just a ridiculous statement.

 

[fossten]

Science is rarely; if ever correct on the first try. I do not know how many times I can tell you that. It is a long process where you learn by trial and error. If we were to give up on everything because it didn't perfectly fit or work the first time, guess what, we would be naked and living in mud huts still. How the universe came into existence is a bigger problem to solve than evolution by a infinite fold.

Thank you. You've just acknowledged that I'm right.

The fact is no one really knows, S. Hawkins a few years back came up with his own that pretty much dismissed the 'Big Bang' theory, but he said himself that it isn't perfectly sound, technology to prove or disprove that has yet to be found. But should be just give up? Certainly not. Do you think Einstein came up with 'E=MC2' in just one day...

Evolution continues to be discredited, point by point. I've shown you clear evidence where scientists CANNOT reconcile evolution with scientific facts, no matter how hard they try to invent new ideas, yet they cling desperately to the theory because it just MUST BE TRUE. Laughable.

I haven't read up on the newest achievements of carbon dating in awhile, so I am a bit rusty... If you like I can do some research on the most current dating and post it. But just going off your article, it uses the words 'supposed to be' many times. Let's suppose that C-14 has a longer life span than presumed (11,460 years), suppose the youngest coal is far younger than being 10's of thousands of years old. Further research is needed, no one is saying "Ok, we solved it completely, here it is, it can't be refuted' You should be happy with the prospect of further research not fear it, you never know, science may dig up Noah's big boat one day.

Wrong. 'Supposed to be' is used in the article when referring to the billions of years that evolutionists claim. You can't suppose an older life-span for c14 than it actually has. It's not PRESUMED. It's scientifically documented. You're ignoring scientific findings in order to post a hypothesis. It would be like me saying "Let's suppose that the earth is flat. Okay, now that we've established that..." Ridiculous. You admit that evolution isn't sufficient, yet your scientists are afraid to even discuss creation or let it be taught in schools. What are they afraid of?

I actually laughed out loud at your "1-year-old crying for no reason although acting like she's hungry." -That's called lying." Just because you don't know why a baby cries, doesn't mean the child is making it up or lying, unless you have psychic abilities and you can dwell into an infants mind. What if the baby is crying over gas pains, or a headache or anything else a baby couldn't be able to tell you about. That is just a ridiculous statement.

Ha ha, I can tell by your post that you've never had kids. Either that or you're prevaricating just to make a point.

 

[TheDude]

Thank you. You've just acknowledged that I'm right..

Not sure how I did that? I think the part about not giving up because you fail the first time pretty much didn't acknowledge you were right. Think about it, if everything was abandoned because it failed the first attempt or second etc. etc. where would we be now?

Evolution continues to be discredited, point by point. I've shown you clear evidence where scientists CANNOT reconcile evolution with scientific facts, no matter how hard they try to invent new ideas, yet they cling desperately to the theory because it just MUST BE TRUE. Laughable.

I disagree, when you find yourself stuck, you take a step back and you look at it from a different angle. You don't just quit. You use science you discredit evolution, which is fine, you should, I applaud you for having a scientific mind. But you don't apply that same science to objectively look at Creation. Have you ever thought about Noah's arc in a scientific way? Or the human race spawning from just two people?

Wrong. 'Supposed to be' is used in the article when referring to the billions of years that evolutionists claim. You can't suppose an older life-span for c14 than it actually has. It's not PRESUMED. It's scientifically documented. You're ignoring scientific findings in order to post a hypothesis. It would be like me saying "Let's suppose that the earth is flat. Okay, now that we've established that..." Ridiculous. You admit that evolution isn't sufficient, yet your scientists are afraid to even discuss creation or let it be taught in schools. What are they afraid of?.

Not afraid to discuss Creation, it's just illogical. The teaching of it in schools is an entirely different matter. But let me ask you this, since you are for Creation being taught in schools, would you be pro of other religions dogma on how mankind came to be being taught in schools alongside Creation? Would you be ok with your child learning about Adam & Eve in class then after that lesson learning about the Hindu (or any other) view on mankinds creation? Because it differs completely from the Adam & Eve story.

Ha ha, I can tell by your post that you've never had kids. Either that or you're prevaricating just to make a point.

Ha ha, wrong. I have a one year old daughter and I can safely say that I do not know why she cries everytime, less now since she can communicate, but I won't assume that she must be lying because I can't figure out why she cries sometimes, especially when she was younger. I would be a fool to assume so.

 

[fossten]

Intelligent Design – A Scientific, Academic and Philosophical Controversy
Paul Weyrich
Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2005

Many Americans are focused on what should be taught in the schools regarding our universe and the Earth – how life as we know it has come to be. This has become a hot-button issue, igniting controversy in Kansas over what should be taught in the public schools and in Pennsylvania, where a high-profile trial is taking place over a local school board decision. Newsweek featured Charles Darwin on its cover and the current Smithsonian prints a story on Charles Darwin. The controversy is unlikely to fade soon, in large measure because a new school of thought is gaining increasing acceptance within scientific and academic circles.


Intelligent Design holds that nature shows more "design" than many academics in the sciences, education and philosophy are willing to acknowledge. Neo-Darwinists view changes in life forms as happenstance, dictated as much by changes in environment as serendipity.

A PBS television series, "Evolution," asserted that "all known scientific evidence supports [Darwinian] evolution" and that the scientific community was four-square in support of his theories. No doubt many scientists hold firm to their belief in Darwin, but it cannot be asserted credibly that there is only one school of thought – evolution – accepted by the scientific profession.


Many scientists are breaking from Darwinian orthodoxy. The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank, issued "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism" several years ago featuring this statement: "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."

Four hundred scientists now have expressed support for this statement, including Dr. Stanley Salthe, Visiting Scientist in Biological Sciences at Binghamton University and Associate Researcher for the Center for the Philosophy of Nature and Science Studies of the University of Copenhagen. Dr. Salthe had specialized in Darwinian evolutionary theory and now criticizes its reductionism, which essentially claims that all changes derive from the effects of competition.


Salthe does not appear to be a conventional conservative thinker. He states: "My opposition to [Darwinian evolutionary theory] is fundamentally to its sole reliance on competition as an explanatory principle (in a background of chance). Aside from being a bit thin in the face of complex systems, it has the disadvantage, in the mythological context of explaining where we come from, of reducing all evolution to the effects of competition." Salthe considers this to be a "myth" that is morally destructive but "congenial to capitalism."


Salthe is not the only scientist who takes exception to the no-questions-asked treatment of Darwinism. So does quantum chemist Henry Schaefer at the University of Georgia, a Nobel Prize nominee and recipient of prestigious scientific awards. Dr. Schaefer is a fellow at the Discovery Institute. Biochemist Michael Behe of Lehigh University, microbiologist Scott Minnich of the University of Idaho and mathematician William Dembski of Baylor University are other prominent supporters of Intelligent Design theory.


Dr. John G. West, Associate Director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, commented this summer that "The fact is that a significant number of scientists are extremely skeptical that Darwinian evolution can explain the origins of life. We expect that as scientists engage in the wider debate over materialist evolutionary theories, this list will continue to grow, and grow at an even more rapid pace than we've seen this past year."


The doubters of Darwinism are not confined to the scientific community.


Dr. Antony Flew, a famous philosopher who adhered to atheism, in his later years has come to accept the likelihood of Intelligent Design. He counts himself as a supporter of Darwinism in general but he sees something more compelling behind the creation of the universe. Flew, now more of a Deist, does not acknowledge God as having created the universe, but sees intelligence behind its formation. He is quoted in the Winter 2005 issue of Philosophia Christi (a publication of Biola University, in California): "It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design."


What is Intelligent Design?


Intelligent Design holds that the universe and its living things are not simply the product of random chance; an intelligent cause is behind their existence. Intelligent Design does not conflict with Darwinism's belief in evolution – that living organisms will change over time. It does run counter to the new school of Darwinism that holds random selection drives evolution. Chance mutations occur without reason. Intelligent Design challenges this direction head-on based upon its belief that changes occur due to a reason.


One useful definition of Intelligent Design can be found in the book "Darwinism, Design, and Public Education," edited by Stephen C. Meyer and John Angus Campbell. The definition presented in this book holds that Intelligent Design is "the theory that certain features of the physical universe and/or biological systems can be best explained by reference to an intelligent cause (that is, the conscious action of an intelligent agent), rather than an undirected natural process or a material mechanism."


It is too easy for undiscerning critics to lump Intelligent Design in with creationism. Analysts such as Charles Krauthammer, undoubtedly brilliant, have made that mistake. Krauthammer asserted that Intelligent Design is "today's tarted-up version of creationism."

There is a significant difference. Creationists view the Bible's word to be the equivalent of scientific text. Believers in Intelligent Design come to their conclusion by the evidence they find in nature. They understand the complexity of the cell; they see the vastness of the universe. Belief in Intelligent Design stems from reason, not revelation.

Christians can hold true to belief in God and Intelligent Design. The King James Bible in Romans 1:20 says: "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse." Intelligent Design can be accepted by an Antony Flew, who is not a believer in the Christian God.


Creationism has not been taught in most, possibly all, the public schools since the 1987 Supreme Court ruling in Edwards v. Aguillard. The decision held that creationism was not science and therefore had no place in the curriculums of public schools. Intelligent Design is quite different in that it is gaining increasing acceptance by scientists who view Darwinism as an insufficient explanation for how our universe was created and how life on Earth started and has developed.


The Discovery Institute takes an interesting position on what should be taught in the public schools. It advised the Dover School Board, now the focus of the court case in Pennsylvania, not to push the teaching of Intelligent Design. Discovery Institute maintains that it is more important that Intelligent Design gain acceptance within the scientific community and academia first.

The Institute argues that schools need to present a full picture of Darwinism, treating it as theory – one with noted flaws – rather than established fact. That is starting to occur, and if it continues, Intelligent Design should earn respectful treatment in school curricula.

It is not mixing apples and oranges to note the vituperation of the Darwinists who cannot stand having a competing theory discussed. One professor at the University of Kansas called Intelligent Design "mythology." The overheated reactions remind me of the slings and arrows faced by conservatives as we fought to have our ideas, the importance of traditional social values and a strong defense that included a space-based missile defense system, gain ascendancy in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

We prevailed in many cases based upon our persistence and the soundness of our ideas. Intelligent Design can stand on its merits despite the attempt by Darwin's true believers to label it as sheer creationism. Many scientists who study the universe or cellular biology are increasingly intrigued by their complex processes. It takes more than chance to create such complex systems. Remember it was Einstein who said, "God does not play dice with the universe."

Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation

 

[TheDude]

First you didn't answer my questions about not looking at Creation in all its aspects with a scientific mindset (ie The Arc, Adam&Eve) and how can you impose one religions view points in a public school room but be against other religions view points being taught alongside?

Secondly, 'Intelligent Design' is religion driven at its core, so that’s why it shouldn't be in public classrooms.

Intelligent Design holds that the universe and its living things are not simply the product of random chance; an intelligent cause is behind their existence. Intelligent Design does not conflict with Darwinism's belief in evolution – that living organisms will change over time. It does run counter to the new school of Darwinism that holds random selection drives evolution. Chance mutations occur without reason. Intelligent Design challenges this direction head-on based upon its belief that changes occur due to a reason.

What reason then I ask?

Christians can hold true to belief in God and Intelligent Design. The King James Bible in Romans 1:20 says: "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse."

A passage from the bible..............

I will say, I am happy to see that at least some scientic approach is being applied to Creation.

 

[fossten]

First you didn't answer my questions about not looking at Creation in all its aspects with a scientific mindset (ie The Arc, Adam&Eve) and how can you impose one religions view points in a public school room but be against other religions view points being taught alongside?

Secondly, 'Intelligent Design' is religion driven at its core, so that’s why it shouldn't be in public classrooms.

Intelligent Design holds that the universe and its living things are not simply the product of random chance; an intelligent cause is behind their existence. Intelligent Design does not conflict with Darwinism's belief in evolution – that living organisms will change over time. It does run counter to the new school of Darwinism that holds random selection drives evolution. Chance mutations occur without reason. Intelligent Design challenges this direction head-on based upon its belief that changes occur due to a reason.

What reason then I ask?

Christians can hold true to belief in God and Intelligent Design. The King James Bible in Romans 1:20 says: "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse."

A passage from the bible..............

I will say, I am happy to see that at least some scientic approach is being applied to Creation.

Read the article more carefully. Every part of your question was answered within.

 

[TheDude]

Read the article more carefully. Every part of your question was answered within.

If you say so...............

 

[fossten]

What you learned in school doesn't fly anymore...

What biology textbooks never told you about evolution

Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why much of what we teach about evolution is wrong
by Jonathan Wells
Regnery Publishing, Inc., Washington, 2000.
by Royal Truman

Why do many believe evolutionary theory is true? One is bombarded constantly with claims that all scientists believe in evolution; that science has demonstrated it; that evolution is based on empirical science. Many might remember ‘proofs’, which Dr Wells calls ‘Icons of Evolution’, learned in school or from popular science articles. The ten most common ‘icons’ used to back up evolution are reviewed and showed to be either fraudulent or irrelevant as evolutionary evidence. Amazingly, Wells documents that even some leading biology professors were unaware they were teaching nonsense. Had these false ‘icons’ never existed, perhaps evolutionary doctrine would not have taken such a hold.
Wells is a man with indisputable intellectual gifts who does not bow to intimidation. Having been opposed to serving with the American armed forces in Vietnam, he chose jail rather than compromise his convictions. He then went on to earn a Doctorate in Theology (Yale) and a second Doctorate in Molecular and Cell biology (Berkeley).

Icon 1: The Miller-Urey experiment
Wells sets the scene for this chapter by describing the 1920s Oparin/Haldane idea that lightning in the primitive atmosphere could have produced the chemical building blocks of life.

The hypothesis remained untested until 1953, when University of Chicago graduate student Stanley Miller reported an experiment in which methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water (thought to be the components of the ‘primitive’ atmosphere) were mixed in a closed glass apparatus. The water was heated and the gases circulated past a high-voltage electric spark to simulate lightning. This provided the energy to break the chemical bonds of the compounds present, and the resulting free radicals combined to form a mixture of simple organic compounds, including trace quantities of some amino acids.

Crucial to the success of the experiment was Miller’s water trap in which the amino acids generated could dissolve and thus be protected from subsequent destructive contact with the spark. But on the hypothesized primordial Earth with no oxygen (and therefore no ozone), the products would have been exposed to destructive ultraviolet rays. This is so even if they reached the oceans, because UV radiation can penetrate tens of metres of water.

Per se, this experiment does not pose difficulties to the creationist. With the most astute intelligent guidance, such an experimental set-up, which generates a multitude of interfering organic acids and bases (plus racemic and biologically useless amino acids) cannot produce a single biologically relevant protein strand. To claim this experiment as evidence for evolution would be akin to allowing water to flow over a bed of coal, and upon identifying a little ink-like substance, claiming the Encyclopaedia Britannica was produced by natural, random processes.

Oxygen, deliberately removed from Miller’s apparatus, destroys amino acids. But geological evidence indicates oxygen was always present on earth.1—7 It is produced by photolysis of water vapour in the atmosphere, where hydrogen escapes gravitation and oxygen thereby increases in concentration.

Currently, the most probable early atmosphere is deemed by evolutionists to have consisted of water, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and hydrogen, a very different composition than used by Miller. Hydrogen would have been present in small concentrations at most, because it could escape Earth’s gravity; ammonia and methane would have been destroyed by ultraviolet light. In 1983, Miller reported that if carbon monoxide is added to the more realistic mixture, plus a large proportion of free hydrogen, then only glycine, the simplest amino acid, could be produced, and in trace amounts only.

The experts know the experiments provide no support for an abiogenesis model. But nevertheless, biology textbooks and popular magazines like National Geographic continue to mislead the public into thinking that the Miller-Urey experiment is evidence for evolution.8 Wells concludes by citing one chemist’s acknowledgement that such publications are teaching ‘mythology rather than science’ (p. 27).

Icon 2: Darwin’s tree of life
Darwin believed characteristics acquired during an organism’s lifetime could be passed on to offspring, a concept proposed by Jean de Lamarck. Species would vary over vast periods of time until the divergence became great enough to produce new species. Separate phyla would eventually develop from a common ancestor.

Wells points out a large number of inconsistencies between the Darwinian ‘tree of life’ and the fossil record.

Fossils from the Burgess Shale in Canada; the Sirious Passet in northern Greenland; and the Chengjiang in southern China, dated as geologically contemporary, display a bewildering range of complex, fully developed organisms with no earlier ancestors. Uniformitarian dating places this Cambrian Explosion at around 530 million years ago, and it lasted a maximum of 5—10 million years. Furthermore, in all 32 mammal orders, even the ‘most primitive’ specimens:

‘already have the basic ordinal characteristics, and in no case is an approximately continuous sequence from one order to another known. In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap is so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed.’9

Plenty of suitable sedimentary deposits (i.e. in which organisms could have been preserved as fossils) exist within the late Precambrian and Cambrian strata. One cannot argue the ancestors might have not possessed preserved hard parts. In Africa and Australia, geologists have discovered sediments, dated by evolutionary conventions at over three billion years old, which contain fossilized single-celled organisms. The lack of intermediates where these should have been found lies in stark conflict with evolutionary predictions.

Another difficulty is the existence of ‘living fossils’. Some of the fossilized ancestors are allegedly hundreds of millions of years old, essentially identical to those alive, and yet many have left no fossil evidence during this supposed vast interval. The lack of evolutionary change, in spite of a constantly changing physical and ecological environment, is glaring.

Phylogenic trees based on DNA comparison contradict those derived from rRNA analysis. Protein phylogenies have merely added to the confusion.

‘A 1996 study using 88 protein sequences grouped rabbits with primates instead of rodents; a 1998 analysis of 13 genes in 19 animal species placed sea urchins among the chordates; and another 1998 study based on 12 proteins put cows closer to whales than to horses’ (p. 51).

Examples of molecular sequences incompatible with evolutionary theories are well known to creationists and anti-Darwinists.10 For example, antigen receptor proteins of sharks and the llama/camel family have the same unusual single chain structure, so this must be explained away as ‘convergence’.11

Nevertheless, a 1999 booklet published by the National Academy of Sciences (USA) claims:

‘As the ability to sequence … DNA has improved, it has also become possible to use genes to reconstruct the evolutionary history of organisms … . The evidence for evolution from molecular biology is overwhelming and is growing quickly.’12

Wells, however, shows such claims are without foundation.

However, this chapter has a major shortcoming. Not in what it says, but in what is left unsaid. Wells is content to show that the ‘Cambrian explosion’ in the fossil record contradicts the Darwinian ‘tree of life’. Though he emphasizes that ‘paradox’ repeatedly, Wells does not point out that the standard idea about the fossil record—i.e. that it is akin to a ‘tape-recording’ of millions of years—needs to be re-evaluated. (In reality, the fossil record is far better explained by a global Flood and some of its after-effects which buried a world of plants and animals, in a time sequence which did not involve millions of years.) This is a deficiency, and Wells’ apparent accommodation of ‘millions of years’ is gleefully exploited by sceptics in their mocking reviews of Wells’ book.13

Icon 3: Homology in vertebrate limbs
In this chapter, Wells exposes the circular reasoning error in textbooks which define homology as similarity due to common ancestry, and then claim that homology is evidence for common ancestry.

The bones in vertebrate limbs, whether bat, porpoise, horse or human, follow a similar pattern. Modern evolutionists use the word ‘homology’ for such similarities, but defined to mean inherited from a common ancestor. With this assumption already integral to the word’s meaning it is nonsense to then argue homology is evidence for evolution—it’s clearly a logical vicious circle.

However, evolutionists are inconsistent in applying this argument, as many features, such as the camera eyes of octopi and vertebrates, with strong similarities (albeit superficial in this case), are not claimed to have arisen from a common ancestor.

Had common motifs arisen from a common ancestor, the driving mechanisms, i.e. the biological information responsible for faithfully replicating those features in an offspring, would show a discernible pattern. This is not the case. Gavin de Beer is quoted as pointing out:

‘The fact is that correspondence between homologous structures cannot be pressed back to similarity of position of the cells in the embryo, or of the parts of the egg out of which the structures are ultimately composed, or of developmental mechanisms by which they are formed’ (p. 71).

Thus, the motifs could not have arisen by seamless divergence from a common ancestor. As an example,

‘In salamanders, development of the digits proceeds in the opposite direction, from head to tail. The difference is so striking that some biologists have argued that the evolutionary history of salamanders must have been different from all other vertebrates, including frogs’ (p. 72).

De Beer adds,

‘Because homology implies community of descent from … a common ancestor it might be thought that genetics would provide the key to the problem of homology. This is where the worst shock of all is encountered … [because] characters controlled by identical genes are not necessarily homologous … [and] homologous structures need not be controlled by identical genes’ (p. 73).

A telling point indeed.

When homology is convenient as an evolutionary argument, it is used. Inconvenient observations, such as morphologically similar marsupials and mammals, get lamely brushed off as due to ‘convergence’.

Wells highlights the flaw in the homology argument using this specific example: the gene Distal-less is involved in the development of appendages in organisms such as: mouse; spiny worm; butterfly; sea urchin (its limbs are tube feet underneath its body); and velvet worm (p. 75). The appendages are not homologous either in terms of structure nor by common ancestry.

Icon 4: Haeckel’s embryos
Darwin and others have reasoned that descendants along various evolutionary lineages would demonstrate similar embryonic morphologies during the earliest stages. Closely related organisms would show differences only during the latest stages, whereas distantly related ones should display ever widening differences as the embryo develops. Haeckel (1834—1919), a flamboyant German biologist, provided a series of drawings which conveniently demonstrated just this. These pictures appear even today in graduate-level biology textbooks, such as American Academy of Science president Bruce Alberts’ Molecular Biology of the Cell, with no statement that this evidence is a well-established blatant fraud, a shameless fake. Even Darwin, who called this his ‘strongest single class of facts’, was duped.

Photographs of the embryos Haeckel selected demonstrate virtually no resemblance with his drawings. Additionally, Haeckel did not draw the first stage of growth, where closest resemblance was predicted, but selected precisely the stages where five (out of the seven) carefully selected vertebrate classes are least different. For the amphibian class the natural choice would have been a frog, which looks, however, very different than the other four organisms used, so a salamander was used as (uh) representative (ahem) for this class. Apparently all this was not good enough for him. ‘In some cases, Haeckel used the same woodcut to print embryos that were supposedly from different classes’ (p. 91).

Although the embryos vary in size from less than 1 mm to almost 10 mm, Haeckel portrayed them the same size. Wells points out that the processes of cleavage (subdivision in many separate cells without overall growth) and gastrulation (movement and rearrangement of the cells to form organs and other structures) proceed before the point in time drawn by Haeckel. Here is where Darwin’s expectations should be tested, and there is ‘certainly not a pattern in which the earliest stages are the most similar and later stages are more different’ (p. 97). In fact, the evidence points clearly to unrelated lineages and not a common ancestor.

Another myth is the claim human embryos go through a fish-like stage and display gill slits. These pharyngeal folds are not gills.14 Ironically, they’re not even gills in pharyngula-stage fish embryos, although they do develop into these later, ‘but in a reptile, mammal, or bird they develop into other structures entirely (such as the inner ear and parathyroid gland)’ (p. 107). In reptiles, mammals, and birds they never resemble gills, and what is observed are merely some parallel lines in the neck region.

Professor Douglas Futuyma, author of the 1998 textbook Evolutionary Biology, responded in February 2000 via an internet forum to a critic who had accused him of lying by using Haeckel’s drawings as evidence for evolution. He admitted he had not been aware of Haeckel’s dishonesty, a rather staggering admission. It is important to always be sceptical of those endless, but transient ‘proofs’ for evolution. They reflect over-enthusiastic and selective use of data when it appears to support a pre-conceived evolutionary mind-set. Incidentally, Futuyma’s admission was not an example of ‘science’ correcting itself, but the result of a ‘creationist’ setting the record straight (p. 109).

Icon 5: Archaeopteryx: the missing link
When Archaeopteryx was discovered in 1861 (two years after Darwin had published his Origin of Species), it was widely heralded as a ‘missing link’ predicted by Darwin’s theory—intermediate between reptiles and birds.

However, as Wells points out, the position of Archaeopteryx as a transitional form is now very much in dispute, and in fact ‘its own ancestors are the subject of one of the most heated controversies in modern science’ (p. 112). Most paleontologists now agree this member of an extinct group of birds15 is not the ancestor of any group of modern birds, nor is it a link between reptiles and birds. Evolutionists conclude from cladistic studies (i.e. of shared common features) that bird-like dinosaurs would have lived in the Cretaceous period, which according to evolutionary dating methods was long after Archaeopteryx had supposedly become extinct. That leaves evolutionists back at square one: where are those countless missing links required by the theory, had birds evolved from reptiles?

Wells takes great delight in describing modern evolutionists’ failed attempts to find fossil ancestors of birds. He gives a potted history of the infamous 1999 Archaeoraptor fraud. National Geographic had announced the discovery of this feathered dinosaur fossil in a blaze of publicity, but was left embarrassed when it was discovered to be a composite—a dinosaur tail glued to the body of a bird. Wells also outlines how the subsequent claims about Bambiraptor, proclaimed by paleontologists to be a ‘remarkable missing link between birds and dinosaurs’ were found to be groundless, as ‘nothing remotely resembling feathers was found with the fossil’ (p. 128).

Wells also deals with the report that sequenced DNA supposedly extracted from a 65 million-year-old Triceratops resembled most closely that of birds. A little too closely, actually, being 100% identical to modern turkey DNA, even though Triceratops does not even belong to the dinosaur branch birds are claimed to have evolved from—ironically, birds are thought to have evolved from reptile-hipped dinosaurs rather than bird-hipped ones such as Triceratops. If this DNA had been only slightly contaminated (deliberately or accidentally) and from a better dinosaur candidate, the matter would have been declared settled.

To round off the dino-bird demolition, Wells shows he has a keen sense of humour in suggesting (p. 134) the following possible cartoon captions:

‘Dino-bird enthusiasts find fossils made to order.’
‘Cladistic mob tars and feathers defenseless dinosaur.’
‘Turkey sandwich proves birds evolved from Triceratops.’
Wells’ clever refutation of all the ‘missing link’ bird ancestor claims raise the following obvious consideration: the fossil record, with its absence of millions of generations of intermediates, justifies questioning his frequent references to ‘millions of years’. If, as I believe, merely thousands of years are involved then the data is statistically representative of the earth’s biological history.

Icon 6: Peppered Moths
The ‘classic’ textbook example of natural selection says that most peppered moths were light-coloured in the early 1800s. But with the Industrial Revolution, the proportion of ‘melanic’, or dark-coloured, increased near heavily polluted cities because they could now camouflage themselves on soot-covered tree trunks. As pollution reduction measures were introduced, the proportions reversed themselves. This has been used for years as the best example of natural selection in the wild.

During the 1950s Bernard Kettlewell released several hundred of both moth varieties onto polluted tree trunks and watched birds pick off the helpless creatures. He determined that percent-wise, about twice as many of the darker variety had survived. These results were confirmed by reversing the experiment using unpolluted trees the next time.

These experiments tell us nothing about where moths’ alternative colors come from, of course, let alone how a moth could have evolved from a non-moth. And the ‘facts’ of the story, repeated in countless biology textbooks, are badly flawed.

Moths in the wild are now known to be nocturnal fliers and virtually never remain exposed on tree trunks, but rather high in the trees on the underside of small branches where birds rarely seem to find them. Had the theory been correct, the light coloured varieties would have long since disappeared from heavily polluted areas such as Manchester, England. But this never happened. In regions with little industrial pollution, where the light-coloured ‘typicals’ seem better camouflaged, the melanic proportion unexpectedly reached 80%. And below the latitude 52°N melanism increased after pollution control measures were introduced. Furthermore, a decrease in pollution levels was matched by an increase in the proportion of melanics north of London but a decrease in the south. Although melanics seem better camouflaged in south Wales, they make up only about 20% of the population.

Although decreasing pollution allowed the light coloured lichens to cover tree trunks again, the increase in proportion of typicals preceded lichen growth, i.e. the hider recovered before the hiding places. Finally, a decline of the melanic proportion in the United States was independent of changes in the lichen cover.

Several factors may be involved here. R.C. Steward collected data from 165 sites in Britain and found a correlation between moth proportions and concentration of sulphur dioxide, which is a pollutant transported by air.

What is disturbing in this matter is that the photographs, showing camouflaged moths on tree trunks, found in virtually all standard biology textbooks, have been staged. Dead moths had been glued to tree trunks, or moths released in desired positions during daylight, when they are torpid and remain where they land. University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne discovered to his dismay the flaws in what he called this classical ‘prize horse in our stable of examples’ of evolution only in 1998. Badly flawed experiments such as these continue to be reported uncritically merely because the evidence for evolutionary notions is in such short supply.

Icon 7: Darwin’s finches
Fourteen species of finches were found on the Galápagos Islands, distinguished mainly by beaks adapted to different foods. We don’t know the genetic basis of these differences, and most creationists view this as an example of genetic variety present in an ancestor having been fragmented into sub-groups over time. Such changes remain within the original created kinds.

Peter and Rosemary Grant studied these finches in the 1970s. In 1977 a severe drought reduced the population to 15% of its former size on the small island of Daphne Major. It was determined that the average beak depth of medium ground finches increased about 5%. They attributed this to the ability of such birds to crack open the few remaining harder seeds once the softer ones had been eaten.16 They concluded it would take merely 20 such selection events to transform the medium ground finch into another species, easily within 200 to 2,000 years.

It’s important to note that rapid speciation is far from a problem to creationists; in fact, it is a prediction of the Creation/Flood/migration model. Creationists, quite reasonably, have even used the Grants’ work in support!17

Wells points out that, ‘After the 1982—1983 El Niño, with food once again plentiful, the average beak size in medium ground finches returned to its previous value’ (p. 168). This oscillation in population proportion does not justify extrapolations to explain how the 14 species arose. After this El Niño, several finch species on one island were found to be producing hybrids, and these were doing better than the parental species. The Grants concluded that if this process continued these species would merge completely. This further compounds the difficulty in explaining how a slow process of divergence, based on mutations and randomly fluctuating external conditions, could explain the origin of these species.

As a prize example of creating new species by natural selection, these finches leave very much to be desired. The data does not justify the view that natural selection would be able to produce ‘macro-evolutionary’ new structures and biological functions. Wells criticizes a 1999 USA National Academy of Sciences booklet which describes how the Grants and their colleagues showed ‘that a single year of drought on the island can drive evolutionary changes in the finches’. But the booklet did not even mention that the selection was reversed after the drought—there was no evolution (p. 174).

Surely science would be better served by offering the true facts as an intriguing challenge, instead of pretending another piece of evidence has been found in support of evolution. Extrapolation actually indicates a net convergence into fewer and interbreeding populations, precisely the opposite of what is being claimed. Referring to such devious practices,

‘Berkeley law professor and Darwin critic Phillip E. Johnson wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 1999: "When our leading scientists have to resort to the sort of distortion that would land a stock promoter in jail, you know they are in trouble"’ (p. 175).

Icon 8: Four-winged fruit flies
Geneticist Ed Lewis showed that three strains of laboratory mutant fruit flies could be interbred to produce four winged flies. The balancers or ‘halteres’ required for flight stability in the third thoracic segment were replaced by two new wings. The evolution-oriented textbooks use this to claim random mutations provide some useful changes on occasion, which natural selection then favours.

The exceeding unlikelihood of three such mutations, introduced in the laboratory, is never mentioned. More serious is that no muscles are attached to these wings and a hopelessly non-aerodynamic creature results, which could never survive nor mate in free nature. Duplicate organs may be interesting, but what is needed is evidence that novel functionality or organs can develop by random and unguided processes.

Ultrabithorax is a huge and very complex gene which is composed of several subunits, ‘most of which are involved in regulating when and where the gene is turned on in the embryo’ (p. 188). It regulates an integrated network of genes responsible for haltere development. ‘It is this entire hierarchy, and not just one gene, that had to evolve in order to convert wings into halteres’ (p. 188). The odds of a single, new gene arising by chance mutations is statistically negligible, far less a complete integrated network.

Ultrabithorax in a normal fruit fly is turned on in the third thoracic segment, allowing the necessary halteres to be produced instead of wings. By destroying the normal function, new non-functional wings are generated. Destruction of a genetic network cannot be construed as evidence for its evolution by chance any more than destruction of a house by earthquakes would demonstrate these had built the house in the first place.

Concurrent with Lewis’ research:

‘German geneticists Christian Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus were using a technique called "saturation mutagenesis" to search for every possible mutation involved in fruit fly development … . Their Herculean efforts earned them a Nobel Prize (which they shared with Lewis), but they did not turn up a single morphological mutation that would benefit a fly in the wild’ (p. 190).

Similar mutagenesis experiments on a tiny worm and on zebrafish have also failed to produce any beneficial mutations. It seems Prof. Behe’s concept of ‘irreducible complexity’18 provides insight into where the problem lies: intra- and inter-cellular biological processes invariably require that multiple components work together properly before any useful function is possible. The odds of these all falling into place by chance at the right time, place and concentration is just overwhelmingly small, even under accelerated and artificial laboratory conditions.

Icon 9: Fossil horses and directed evolution
Rather than simply calling this icon ‘horse evolution’ Wells has chosen instead to tackle the materialistic evolutionists’ position that the branching-tree pattern of horse fossils refutes the idea that evolution was ‘directed’. (Most evolutionists who were Darwin’s contemporaries apparently believed that evolution was ‘directed’. Wells explains that ‘Some regarded human beings as the divinely pre-ordained goal of the evolutionary process’ (p. 197)).

The problem here is that this chapter is marred not only by Wells’s neglect to quash the standard view of the fossil record (as in Icons 2 and 5), but also because in places it appears (at least, by implication) as though Wells might be defending (supernaturally) ‘directed evolution’. In saying that Darwin was in error because he rejected any possibility of ‘directed evolution’ on philosophical grounds rather than on empirical evidence, Wells goes uncomfortably close to espousing ‘theistic evolution’ as the alternative to ‘undirected evolution’.

The most interesting parts of this chapter are where Wells confronts evolutionists with the problem that their horse evolution model is contradicted by the fossil record. ‘For example, the trend toward larger size was not seen in all of the extinct side-branches, some of which actually reversed direction and became smaller’ (p. 199). Also, ‘Miohippus actually appears in the fossil record before Mesohippus, though it persists after it’ (p. 199).

Some of the trends can be explained by the action of gene switches turning on and off the information for extra toes, and this could have been a factor with tooth types as well.19 It is also likely that the development of high crowned teeth was the result of gene loss rather than adaptation to any diet.19

In the same way that dogs, dingoes, wolves, coyotes, and so on, descended from a single dog kind after the Flood, so too could all the various horse varieties, zebras, donkeys, etc., have originated from an original horse kind. Like Darwin’s finches, it is probable significant genetic variety had been designed in the original animal ‘kinds’, able to be fragmented quickly among descendants. There is simply no need to explain variation as the result of random mutations creating novelty, acted on by natural selection.

Icon 10: From ape to human
For over 40 years the Piltdown fraud had persuaded the leading scientists a missing link had confirmed man’s descent from ape-like ancestors. The skull belonged to a true human and the jaw fragment from a modern orang-utan. It turned out that the latter had been chemically treated to make it look like a fossil and its teeth had been deliberately filed down to make them look human. It took that long to discover this none-too-elaborate hoax because evolutionists thought they had evidence which they very much wished to believe.
Fossil fragments of various human races and monkeys have been found, in different locations and strata. Some appear to be extinct apes. The difficulty arises due to preconceptions, allowing the fragments to be reconstructed in many ways. Several palaeontologists recall discussing how drastically different the famous Kenyan ‘Skull 1470’ could be made to look, depending on where one chose to place the jaw with respect to the rest of the skull.

The subjectivity involved can be illustrated by four artist’s rendering of a female Homo habilis figure from casts of seven fossil bones, requested by National Geographic.20 It is apparent from the results that one could easily fit such a reconstruction anywhere in the ape-to-human sequence.

There is considerable interpretative freedom in the absence of qualitative and quantitative evidence. Dates are frequently re-evaluated. One can consider how diverse pygmies and two-meter-tall weight lifters are today. Include the effects of disease; harsh environmental conditions; jaw-muscle—demanding diets, and greater genetic variety in the past, to appreciate how subjectively the handful of fragments could be interpreted.

In a closing chapter entitled ‘Science or Myth?’, Wells discusses the fact that in America billions of taxpayer dollars are being spent annually without their consent to finance evolutionary origins research. Funds from NASA, the NIH (National Institute of Health) and NSF (National Science Foundation) fund research projects headed up by those already committed to an evolutionary mind-set21,22 and the resulting papers are used to gain professorship tenures. Students must buy evolution-oriented textbooks and attend schools and universities where only evolution is taught, presented as ‘science’, as ‘established fact’.

If all biology teachers and students were to digest a book like this, or Dr Jonathan Sarfati’s Refuting Evolution,15 and agree to throw out the 10 icons of evolution just examined, very little would be left to justify the claims we are bombarded with daily: ‘the evidence for evolution is overwhelming’; ‘no serious scientist questions the truth of evolution anymore’; ‘the creationists will destroy modern society with their opposition to science’, etc. Ironically, it is common to meet agnostics and atheists in countries like China and France who state candidly they are not willing to consider the possibility of a Creator, but acknowledge the materialist theories being taught in schools and universities don’t work.

Wells correctly recognises there is a battle going on, to control what is acceptable material for discussion in the schools; to manipulate who gets access to research funds; and who gets to join the ‘inside club’ of those claiming to speak with the authority of science to inform society where we come from and the role of humans in nature.

Alas, many skeptical reviews of Icon have refused to admit the main point, that students are being fed false information. Instead, they have raised red herrings such as ‘the scientific literature is the place for criticism, not popular books’, ‘disproving these icons doesn’t prove Creation’, ‘Wells ignores the "overwhelming evidence" for evolution [in which case, put this alleged evidence in the textbooks instead of the fallacies and frauds exposed in Icon!].’

The exciting challenge
Once a scientific theory has been shown to be inadequate, it opens a golden opportunity for novel avenues to be explored. The evidence does not support an evolutionary model whereby complex biological novelty arose over millions of years via random mutations. Wells could have made this book more effective by stating the need for a paradigm shift: multiple and unrelated lineages are found and do not originate from one common ancestor, in spite of sharing a common genetic code. Rich variety within independent classes is found but these have not produced new biological organs. The missing millions of transitional generations is inconsistent with random, natural processes and necessitates questioning all those notions derived from the flawed evolutionary framework.23,24