The Other Side of Evolution: Its Effects and Fallacy

by Alexander Patterson

THE ARGUMENT FROM GEOLOGY.

The argument from this science is that the fossils appear in the strata of the earth in advancing order, the simplest first, and more complex afterwards. The assumption is that the higher came from the lower, by a chain of infinitesimal changes, through a long series of ages. Now the facts are not as claimed. We will show this later. But admitting that they are, the argument is wanting.

1. All this is pure assumption. No such changes are known in existing species to have ever taken place, and the assumption that these changes took place in geologic ages is wholly unwarranted. If it cannot be predicated of the animals we see and know, how can it be asserted of a period millenniums ago?

2. Mere succession is not evolution. The coming in orderly succession is evidence of some plan but not necessarily of evolution. An intelligent Creator would work in the same way, especially if he had intelligent beings to instruct thereby, at the time or afterwards.

3. Evolution in comparing the successive comings of the rocky strata and the fossil creatures, compares two kinds of things that cannot be made analogous. Rocks are not produced by evolution, the higher growing out of the lower, as is claimed of species. That certain species appeared with the lower rocks and strata, and higher orders with later rocks and strata only proves of one, as of the other, an advancing order of production but tells nothing of the cause of either.

4. We are supported in these doubts as to the value of Evolution's argument from Geology by the fact, that many of the most eminent geologists deny any proof of evolution in their chosen science.

Sir Roderick Murchison said, "I know as much of nature in her geologic ages as any living man, and I fearlessly say that our geologic record does not afford one syllable of evidence in support of Darwin's theory." The great Swiss geologist, Joachim Barrande states, "One cannot conceive why in all rocks whatever and in all countries upon the two continents, all relics of the intervening types should have vanished.... The discordances are so numerous and pronounced, that the composition of the real fauna seems to have been calculated by design for contradicting everything which the theories (of Evolution) teach us respecting the first appearance and primitive evolution of the forms of life upon the earth." (Quoted by Winchell, in Doctrine of Evolution, p. 142.)

Prof. Conn, an evolutionist, admits the presence of many facts disclosed by geology which oppose the theory of Evolution. He says, "In the earliest records geology discloses, we find not a few generalized types but well differentiated forms, nearly all the sub-kingdoms as they now exist, five-sixths of our orders, nearly an equal proportion of sub-orders, a great many families and some of our present species. All this is a surprise and an unexplained problem." Such a result, he says, is not what Evolution would lead us to expect. All the important classes of animals made their appearance without warning. (Evolution of To-day, pp. 6, 100, 103, 118.)

Haeckel writes, "We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that various groups have from the time of their first appearance, burst out into an exuberant growth of modification of form, size and members, with all possible, and one might almost say, impossible shapes, and they have done this within a comparatively short time, after which they have died out not less rapidly." (Last Link, p. 144.)

The testimony of geology, as adduced by geologists and even by evolutionists, is that it does not sustain the claims of Evolution. Species existed in present form from the earliest times. Geologic species came in suddenly and went out suddenly. Some of the simplest remain unchanged through all earth's transformations to the present time. (Dr. Robert Patterson, Errors of Evolution, p. 221.) The great fossil cemeteries show that the living creatures fell in serried ranks, overtaken by cataclysms, in every act of life. Le Conte tries to explain this by saying that there were "paroxysmal" eras, but what the paroxysms were, or whence they came, he does not say. The whole testimony is against Evolution and reverts to proof of the Bible story of Creation. Professor Adam Sedgwick says: "At succeeding epochs, new tribes of beings were called into existence, not merely as the progeny of those that had appeared before them, but as new and living proofs of creative interference."