The Other Side of Evolution: Its Effects and Fallacy

by Alexander Patterson

THE MORPHOLOGICAL ARGUMENT.

The comparative study of plants and animals presents another argument for Evolution. It is found, for example, that there is a similarity of plan in the fin of the fish, the wing of the bird, the flipper of the whale, the leg of the animal and the arm of the man. So also in a measure with all other corresponding parts. This Evolution says, shows that all these animals are genetically connected and all came from the same ancestors.

Huxley himself replies to this argument in these words, "No amount of purely morphological evidence can suffice to prove that things came into existence in one way rather than another." (Study of Zoology, p. 86.) Another great scientist, Prof. Quatrefages, professor of anthropology in the Museum of Natural Sciences, Paris, writes on this as follows: "Without leaving domain of facts, and only judging from what we know, we can say, that morphology itself justifies the conclusion that one species has never produced another by derivation." Prof. Conn admits, after going through the whole subject with the latest facts, that unless some further explanation can be found, homology does not prove descent. (Evolution of To-day, p. 76.)

This resemblance of parts is just what we should expect in things originating from one intelligent operator, whether Creator or manufacturer. It is found in every factory. The wheel is the same in the wheelbarrow, the cart, carriage and locomotive. In fact, uniformity of plan proves unity in the cause, and not the diversity of chance causes claimed by Evolution. If Evolution were true, there would be as much diversity among organs as there is among the forms of organs. If the operation of chance conditions has resulted in radical changes in the forms of organs, why then is there not this similar diversity among the organs themselves? Evolution has no reply. Creation has such reply; God is one and his plan one. Why should not the forms of all these things be alike, seeing they are to live in the same climates, eat the same food and propagate in the same manner?

The rudimentary, abortive and discarded parts found in some animals form one of the strongest arguments Evolution advances. The favorite instance it presents is found in the horse. The horse walks on one toe and has splints further up the leg, which they tell us are the remains of the other toes, and the callosities on the leg are the remains of thumbs. The remains have been found of an animal as large as a dog which resembles the horse and has two toes, and another older animal, as large as a fox, which has four toes. Putting these side by side, Evolution calls them all horses, and says the one-toed animal came from the two-toed, and he from the four-toed, and that this proves the evolution of the horse from the Eohippus (Old Horse) as it is called.

1. Bearing in mind that this conclusion is pure assumption, and only inference at best, let us remark that it violates the primal law of evolution laid down by Spencer, that of evolution from the simple to the complex. It should have shown first the one-toed horse, then his development into a two-toed animal, and so on up to a horse having five toes. This would be evolution. As it is, we see the opposite of evolution, degradation, which often occurs in nature, and we see few if any instances of any subsequent restoration to primal conditions.

2. Besides all this, that most necessary thing to a good horse, a pedigree, is wanting. The connecting links are all missing in his ancestral tree. For the ancestors of that first of horses are unknown. But he is not alone in this, for even his owner has the same sad want of proven descent, as we will see later. Just how the horse lost his appendages, and why he dropped toe after toe in this extraordinary manner the story leaves untold.

3. But another great objection exists. It takes time to breed horses. It required all of the Tertiary period to produce the one-toed animal from the four-toed ancestor and much longer time was required to develop him from a totally different animal, where more than a mere question of toes comes in. For we have to face the difficulty, and the time necessary, to develop a good horse, say from an alligator, and the still greater task of producing him from an animal without toes at all, or even legs, or anything to hang legs on, and simply a bag of jelly-like substance, which the evolutionist assures us was the ancestor of all horses and their riders. If it appears to the reader that life is too short for such business we can say the geologist agrees with him, for he tells us the age of the old earth itself was not one tenth long enough to produce Evolution's horses, and still less their riders.

Another instance of Evolution's proofs is the swim-bladder of fishes. This Evolution sometimes states is an incipient lung, and that the fish learned in a drought to breathe air. Sometimes, as the need of the theory demands, the swim-bladder is claimed as the relic of a discarded lung. These however are two different and opposing claims. Either as a prophecy or a relic the swim-bladder is fatal to the claims of Evolution. If it is an incipient lung, then here is intention, which Evolution rejects. If a relic, here is retrogression, the opposite of evolution. The abortive organ is one of the difficulties of the theory which Darwin admitted, and Prof. Conn tells us, is not yet answered. Prof. Huxley said, "Either these rudiments are of no use to the animal, in which case they ought to have disappeared, or they are of some use to the animal, in which case they are arguments for teleology." (Darwinism, p. 151.)