The Other Side of Evolution: Its Effects and Fallacy

by Alexander Patterson

FACTS OPPOSING EVOLUTION OF SPECIES.

A theory to be proven must meet the facts and account for them. The theory in question fails lamentably in this. There are countless facts not only unaccounted for but diametrically opposed to it and antagonizing it. We cite some of these:

1. Degeneration in nature. Nature shows a constant tendency downward. Prof. E. D. Cope, an eminent evolutionist, writes: "The retrogradation in nature is as well or nearly as well established as evolution." The wild varieties of plants and animals are far inferior to the cultivated kinds. The older species are far superior to the present. The saber-toothed tiger is far superior to the present animal. So also is the Mammoth as compared with the elephant. Plants show degeneration in colors. The order of superiority is from yellow, the lowest, to white, pink, red, purple and blue, the highest. When they drop from blue to yellow, it is degeneration. Some now having green flowers once had colored blossoms. Progress is not seen to be upward in the flowers. So also parasitism is degeneration both in plants and animals. The course of nature is not, as it has not been, constant development upward. The scripture statement "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain," describes accurately the condition of nature (Ro. 8:22.)

2. Continued unchanged species for ages. The crustacea, for example in Lake Tanganyika, Africa, remain as the receding ocean left them ages ago.

3. Species instead of increasing in number have decreased. There were 500 species of trilobites. They have all disappeared. There were 900 species of ammonites; all are gone. Of the 450 species of nautilus, only three remain. Indeed whole families have become obliterated. All this is antagonistic to Evolution.

4. Species continue the same under the most diverse environments. Environment is claimed as a cause of the changes demanded by Evolution. But the same species exist in the most diverse regions, e. g., mosquitoes, whales and oaks.

5. Adaptation of one species to another. Darwin says that a single case of the adaptation of one species to another would be fatal to his theory. Yet he himself gives the data for hundreds of such adaptations. He adduces the fact that a hundred head of red clover produced 2,700 seeds. A similar number protected from insects produced none. The fertilization of plants by insects is well known. The Smyrna fig is said to owe its value to its fertilization by the piercing of an insect. Some of these insects have been introduced into California for that purpose. There is an orchid which can be fertilized only by an insect falling into a cup of liquid which the flower has, and escaping through a side opening in which it touches the pollen.

Dr. Andrew Wilson writes: The colors of flowers—nay, even the little splashes of a hue or tint seen on a petal—are intended to attract insects that they may carry off the fertilizing dust, or pollen, to other flowers. It is to this end also that your flowers are many of them sweet-scented. The perfume is another kind of invitation to the insect world. The honey they secrete forms a third attraction—the most practical of all.

6. Complex adjustments of nature. Evolution in vain attempts to account for the wonderful complex adjustments we see in nature, such as the mimicry of animals and plants; the walking stick so closely resembles a twig that it deceives the closest observer. The withered leaf butterfly, with spots and wrinkles, is exactly like the thing it imitates. This is true also of the leaf butterfly and of another which exactly resembles a bird's dropping. Evolution cannot account for the ventriloquism of insects, such as the cricket and tree toad; the battery of the electric eel; the beauty of insects and fish and shells and birds and flowers, especially the harmony of their colors. Edible insects are plainly colored, the poisonous kinds highly colored. Some butterflies have "scare-heads" on their wings, exactly resembling an owl's head, and other insects have similar frightful appearances which they thrust out when attacked. All this tells of design and interest and often has the appearance of humor in the creation of these numerous creatures.