EVOLUTION, WHAT DO THE FOSSILS SAY?
People who attempt to uphold the theory of evolution agree that the basic and strongest evidence in support of their position comes from a study of paleontology, or the fossil remains, J.S. Huxley wrote: "Primary and direct evidence in favor of evolution can be furnished only by paleontology."
Many evolutionists would like us to believe that there is a gradual connection of continuous fossil remains from the most remote primitive life forms right on up to the most complex types of today. Of course, this would be necessary to establish the truth of evolution. Gary Lane, Professor of Paleontology at Indiana University wrote: "This sequence of fossils, well-documented from numerous sites around the world, provide convincing evidence for the orderly and sequential evolution of life." All too many people take a statement like this as fact without raising a question or checking it out with care. The sad part is that Dr. Lane's statement simply will not stand up under careful scientific scrutiny. Even George Gaylord Simpson admits this, and he is one of the most ardent living supporters of organic evolution today. Hear him: "Fossils are abundant only from the Cambrian onward . . . Precambrian fossils are, however, widely scattered in place and time and do not constitute a continuous or, as yet, even a particularly enlightening record. Equally scattered, but rather numerous animals have been reported from the Precambrian, but all are in serious doubt. There is in every reported instance question as to whether the claimed fossils really are organic, or are animals, or are truly Precambrian age." Dr. Simpson declares the evidence from the Precambrian period is extremely doubtful. But now observe what he says about the following period in the geologic time table.
"Then with the beginning of the Cambrian, unquestionable, abundant, and quite varied fossil animals appear. The suddenness can be exaggerated, for the various major groups straggle in through the Cambrian, a period of some 75 million years, and the following Ordovician. There is also some question whether the beds defined as the base of the Cambrians, just because they do not contain varied animal remains, are everywhere synchronous. Nevertheless, the change is great and abrupt. That is not only the most puzzling feature of the whole fossil record but also its greatest apparent inadequacy." He further states: "Darwin was aware of this problem, even more striking in his day than in ours, when it is still striking enough." These quotations are taken from Simpson's book, The History of Life, published 1960,
Pages 143,144. Notice that Simpson admits that there is abundant, varied fossil evidence clearly defined in the Cambrian period in terms of the major classifications of animals. He calls this the greatest apparent inadequacy of the fossil record, and rightly SO.
Here is Darwin, the originator of evolution and Simpson, a strong supporter of the theory today, both admitting that there is a complete absence of gradual, connected, and continuos fossil remains from primitive life forms right on up to the most complex types of today, all of which would be needed for evolution to be true.
Edwin K. Gedney, a recognized scholar in the field of Geology comments as follows on the sudden appearance of the various types of fossils: "All the invertebrate phyla appear contemporaneously with marked suddenness in the Cambrian, differentiated into phyla, classes, and orders, with no clear indication of how they developed into this condition if they developed at all." This quotation comes from Modern Science and the Christian Faith, published 1950, p. 31. He further adds: "It is at the crucial transitional points, where one of these classes is said to have changed into another by some evolutionary process that evidence is wholly lacking." p. 35.
Duane T. Gish, in his book, Evolution the Fossils Say NO!, published 1973, writes on Page 51, "It can be said that the fossil record reveals an explosive appearance of highly complex forms of life without evidence of evolutionary ancestors. This fact is a great mystery to evolutionists: but creationists ask, what greater proof for creation could the rocks give than this sudden outburst of highly complex forms of life?" You would do well to read this biochemists book, especially the 87
Pages dealing with the fossil record beginning with chapter four. The facts are that the fossil record supports Genesis Chapter 1, when it reads: "And God said, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so." Then verse 21 reads: "And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good."