Spinning Ancient Webs of Deceit (or, Evolution: the Amazing Elastic Theory)

What is a living fossil?

Kirk Douglas??? Ernest Borgnine?


Very funny. No, they are not old movie stars (who, if wrinkles were dollars, they could pay off the national debt), no, living fossils are simply creatures that are living today that we find identical copies of fossilized in rocks all over the world. They are the same, un-modified, un-changed....ummm, un-evolved.

You see, living fossils (and there are hundreds of examples) are very embarrassing and completely destructive to traditional Darwinian evolution. According to Evolution 101, species are constantly changing, evolving, becoming "optimized" and eventually turn into other species. They claim that every type of living creature on the planet today, including giant redwood trees, tiny earthworms, flying fish, electric eels, poison ivy, zebras, butterflies, and even YOU have all descended (ascended?) from a simple, one-celled amoeba-like critter.

Creatures that have been found as fossils, unchanged.

Think about how many trillions and quadrillions of billions of changes are necessary to go from one cell, to a person. This is often referred to as molecules-to-man evolution. Not only does the fossil record not support this--but mathematics, probabilities, and what we know of biochemistry and genetics also deny it as a fairy tale.

But, I digress. The reason that living fossils (remember: creatures that are alive today that we also find identical copies of in the fossil record) are so destructive, is blatantly obvious for even the most casual of observers. For instance, there are aquatic species that are claimed to be hundreds of millions of years old, yet there are identical creatures living today, unchanged, unmodified, un-evolved. How could this be?

To put this into perspective, the current schools of thought preach to us that mankind (homo sapiens) evolved from a shrew-like mammal in roughly 65 million years. Think about it---from "shrew" to "you" in 65 million years.(Consider this-- scientists say that humans have only changed about 1% in the last 6 million years!) Yet, we find many species (living fossils) that are exactly the same as ancestors supposedly HUNDREDS of millions of years old.



Nearly zero change in hundreds of millions of years, yet from a tree-hugging shrew to a business-suit-clad Wall Street Analyst in a fraction of that time. 

Hmmmm...

The latest announcement that has caused a great stir is the discovery of an ancient spider. Predictably, the pundits are proclaiming that it is 165 million years old (though it is claimed that there are other, older spiders, a few over 300 million--I'm not kidding). It is so well preserved that they can identify the species, and, guess what, it's the same as "modern" orb-spinning arachnids today. Wow. I mean, in that same amount of time, supposedly all the dinosaurs evolved and were wiped out, and shrews supposedly evolved into the people reading this blog. Amazing how stable and predictable evolution is.





I call evolution the Amazing Elastic Theory. Think about it, you ask a Darwinist:

Question: "How could people have evolved from shrews in just 65 million years???"

Answer: "It's because evolution happens real fast!"

Question: "How come there are living fossils, with no changes over hundreds of millions of years???"

Answer: "It's because evolution happens real slow!"

Question: "How come the fossil record doesn't have evidence of the billions of transitional species that would have been necessary to account for all of the various types of creatures today???"

Answer: "Uh, um, well, evolution sometimes happens in big huge jumps (called Punctuated Equilibria) that don't have any transitions to leave behind."

Question: "How come scientific studies involving human-induced mutations of species with short lifespans (thereby simulating thousands and millions of years of "evolution") have failed to produce anything that bears any resemblance to Darwinian evolution (or even any real "change" for that matter)???"

Answer: "We have faith that eventually we will have an answer for that problem, though it does sound pretty conclusive at this time, uh, next topic please."

   A Fitting Analogy of Evolution

You see---the Amazing Elastic Theory. You can stretch it to fit over any set of conditions you want. Evolution is real fast (stretch), yet real slow (stretch), it leaves no traces of it's activity (stretch), yet it is the driving force of all organisms that have ever lived (stretch).

When tested in the lab (such as on bacteria, fruit flies, etc.) through multiplied mutations induced by intelligent scientists, it fails to produce change, but yet, it still MUST be true (stretch).

One of the requirements of a true scientific theory is that it must be FALSIFIABLE (in other words, there has to be a set of conditions that would prove it false or untrue if met/not met) But, with all of the caveats, exceptions, sub-paragraphs, and excuses for Darwinian Evolution, it is UN-falsifiable. It can't be disproved since it can explain any set of conditions, well, given enough faith, that is.

Take the famous "Tree of Life" illustration found in textbooks and museums all over the globe. It graphically portrays that all life has evolved from a single creature, and that it has branched out to every other type, whether tree, fish, flower, mammal, insect, bird, or even a Wal Mart shopper.


The big problem, of course, is that the "Tree of Life" ONLY exists in textbooks, NOT the fossil record. The fossil record would best be described as the "Bushes of Life." We find groups of similar species with branches that either die out (extinction) or survive til now...but no evolution, as traditionally believed.

Coelacanth fossil (above)
Living Coelacanth (below)

Simply put, this is exactly what we would expect to find in the creationist (God created life) model. We would predict that there have been species that have lived, and either died out, or survived until now, with only minimal variation within each "kind." Dogs are dogs, cats are cats, Coelacanth are Coelacanth (look it up), and people are people. There are short people, short dogs, and short cats,and there are tall people, bigger dogs, and some big cats----but dogs are not changing into lizards or birds or butterflies.

Insect Fossilized in Amber
"Millions"  of years old
Identical to living version (below)

 


"Once the lack of major transitions is acknowledged, one must face the fact that there is no tree of life because there are no roots, no trunk, no boughs, and no medium-sized branches. There are only mutually disjointed bushes, and even these consist exclusively of variation only within the kind, and this is almost invariably within the family unit of traditional taxonomy." (Woodmorappe, BA Biology, MA in Geology)

Dr. Niles Eldredge (American Museum of Natural History) made this observation about the so-called "Tree of Life":
"There have been an awful lot of stories, some more imaginative than others, about what the nature of that history [of life] really is. The most famous example, still on exhibit downstairs, is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps fifty years ago. That has been presented as the literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that is lamentable, particularly when the people who propose those kinds of stories may themselves be aware of the speculative nature of some of that stuff."

 Dr Joachim Scheven (zoologist/paleontologist, Ph.D University of Munich) wrote the following in a published journal:

"The overwhelming message of the fossil record is one of staying the same, not evolving. Of course, many types have gone extinct, and so are not found living. These types also show no sign of real evolution throughout their ‘stay’ in the record." 

It would appear, that with the much-touted discovery of this latest spider ancestor, that many are continuing to spin webs of mis-information.  They think that they are lacing together a beautifully intricate pattern of science that will ensnare unsuspecting visitors, but actually, they are only spinning the Emperor's New Clothes.