One of the best books reagerding evolution is the Biotic Message (below contents): I would also recommend other publications available from the creation research society: http://www.creationresearch.org
Preface
1. Evolution vs. the Biotic Message
- Introduces the issues and major themes of the book
- Evolutionists do not fully understand their own theory and its incredible flexibility.
- Evolutionary theory is a structureless smorgasbord.
- Many evolutionary illusions are created by evolutionists remaining silent on key issues.
- Introduces a new creationist theory — Message Theory — to replace evolution.
- Introduces the argument from imperfection — Stephen Gould's "Panda Principle" — and gives the first of several key reasons to overturn it. Unordinary designs (so called "imperfect" designs) are the expected result of a designer who is sending a message. They also form a unique style, which, like handwriting, allows us to identify that life had only one author.
2. Naturalism vs. Science
- Covers issues in the philosophy of science.
- Explains the difference between scientific and non-scientific theories, particularly the key role of testability.
- Documents that evolutionists themselves have thoroughly endorsed testability as the criterion of science in all the key creation/evolution court cases.
The book later argues that evolution is not science — using the evolutionist's own criterion of testability. Some evolutionary leaders are quoted essentially admitting that. The book argues that the new creation theory is testable science, and evolution is not. This role reversal is noteworthy since it engages the debate on the evolutionists' terms using their own criterion of science. It is also a departure from previous creationist positions.
- Debunks the evolutionists' attempts to define creation out of science:
- Identifies cases where evolutionists use a double standard — one standard for creation theory, and a lesser one for evolution.
- Shows that theories involving an intelligent designer are already accepted by evolutionists as testable science. Therefore, evolutionists cannot claim such theories are inherently unscientific.
- Debunks the evolutionist's assault on the argument from design. Shows that the argument from design can be thoroughly convincing. For example, we often show that someone's death was not accidental, that it was designed — and we show it so compellingly that we execute the 'designer'.
- Shows that some statements about the supernatural can be testable science. The key is that science must remain self-consistent, it cannot be allowed to contradict itself, and this sometimes forces us to accept some element of the supernatural. Gödel's Theorem (from the logic of mathematics) is discussed as a precedent setting example. This is a contribution to the wider philosophy of science as well as the origins debate.
- Shows the anthropic principle is not testable, and so not science by evolutionists' own criterion. It reveals an illusion involving a three-shell game ruse, much like is later revealed for natural selection.
3. The Origin of Life
- Traces the downfall of naturalistic origin-of-life theories, including the recent setbacks on the Earth's "primitive atmosphere" and "primordial soup".
- Debunks the evolutionist's misuses of probability.
- "Biologic universals" at the biochemical level have often been claimed as major evidence for evolution. That notion is debunked by showing that evolutionists have been forced (by the data) to reject all known biologic universals from the first conceivable life forms — biologic universals are not even remotely predicted by evolution, and make better evidence against it than for it.
The next three chapters examine natural selection, each one exploring successively deeper layers of evolutionary illusion. 4. Survival of the Fittest
Evolutionists create the illusion that natural selection is a testable theory, and the illusion begins at the most fundamental level — at survival of the fittest. This chapter reveals the ruse behind the theory. Like a three-shell game at the carnival, evolutionists shift their theory back-and-forth, to evade whichever single line of criticism you naively point to. The classic tautology (shown to popular audiences by Norman Macbeth and Tom Bethell many years ago) is merely one 'shell' of several. This chapter documents all the shells and moves, and shows how evolutionists use the ruse to maximal effect.
5. Inventive Natural Selection
The 'survival of the fittest' three-shell game is only the most basic illusion. This chapter reveals additional levels of intrigue (and untestability) in the evolutionist's central theory. The three-shell game applies at many levels, and even between levels, and even requires the active participation of harmful processes. This chapter dismantles inventive natural selection, to show it is without structure, and is not a testable theory.
6. Darwinian Scenarios
Since natural selection theory is structureless, its proponents tell all manner of stories, called "Darwinian scenarios". Many examples of contradictory stories are examined here.
For example, no multicellular animals make the enzymes necessary to digest cellulose, yet it is perhaps the world's most abundant food source. Evolutionists claim this is "bad" design and use it as evidence against a designer. This chapter shows they have it backwards. In reality, the cellulose situation is strong evidence against evolution, and fits well with the claim that a key goal of life's design is to thwart evolutionary explanation. Moreover, the situation is good system design, because it brings ecological stability to the system of life. Natural selection can only benefit the individual or perhaps small groups, but cannot look ahead to benefit the entire system of life. Like so many in this book, this argument is new.
The next three chapters form a suite on population genetics, the Queen of evolutionary theory. They are the most technically challenging chapters, but written in a style that maximizes their accessibility to ordinary folks while remaining true to the essential issues. Finer technical details are removed to appendices. These three chapters can stand by themselves, they can be skipped or skimmed without serious loss of continuity. 7. Population Genetics
- Evolutionists use population genetics to create the illusion that natural selection is scientific. This chapter shows that population genetics can accomplish all its science without ever mentioning natural selection — the two are separate. Population genetics is testable science, and natural selection theory is not.
- Evolutionists use Fisher's "Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection" to lend an air of science and mathematical precision to natural selection. Yet the Theorem could hardly be less useful to them. When the Theorem applies, it predicts evolution inevitably slows to a halt.
- Evolutionists say sickle-cell anemia is evidence in their favor. But the truth is seldom told. This classic field case actually shows something different:
- The presence of a serious genetic disease is actively maintained in the population.
- New beneficial alleles are actively prevented from entering the population.
- Shows the serious problems that evolutionists have with:
- The origin and preservation of sexual reproduction
- The origin of traits that involve many genes
- The relative weakness of group selection
8. Haldane's Dilemma
Forty years ago the evolutionary geneticist J.B.S. Haldane discovered this problem that now bears his name. It was never solved, though evolutionists obscured it and brushed it aside. The problem and its so-called solutions are almost always absent from evolution books, even evolutionary genetics textbooks. Few advanced students are aware of the seriousness of the problem.
Haldane discovered that higher vertebrates such as mammals (organisms with low reproduction) cannot have plausibly evolved within the available time. In particular, he discovered that a rapid turnover (or substitution) of mutations into a population incurs a cost that must be paid by the reproduction of the species. Species with low reproduction cannot plausibly pay this cost fast enough to drive evolution at the high rates claimed by evolutionists.
Using Haldane's published analyses it is easy to show that the evolution of humans from their presumed ape-like ancestors 10 million years ago, could incorporate at most 1,667 beneficial nucleotides. Yet no evolutionist in the intervening forty years published any such a figure. It says too loudly that they have serious explaining to do.
This chapter illuminates the problem and debunks the evolutionists' various attempts to solve it. The evolutionist's dilemma cannot be solved by the standard model of evolutionary genetics, the one model prominent in all evolution books. This should have been visible to evolutionary geneticists forty years ago. Yet the standard model continues to be sold (and Haldane's Dilemma ignored) because it is easier to sell the evolutionary program that way.
A Haldane "cost of substitution" is mechanical and unavoidable. It even applies to computer simulations of evolution, such as Richard Dawkins's simulation from The Blind Watchmaker. His simulation is dismantled to show its illusion. Using Dawkins's simulation, running on your computer, you can see how low reproduction dramatically limits the speed of substitutions.
Two related issues are illuminated:
- Rapid evolution in small populations would require an implausibly high ratio of beneficial to harmful mutations. This recounts an argument made by evolutionary geneticist Motoo Kimura.
- Error catastrophe is when genetic errors accumulate in a population faster than they can be rid of. Using data supplied by evolutionists themselves, and their own standard model of evolutionary genetics, one can show that humans are within or precariously close to error catastrophe — even if we give the evolutionary model the incredible advantage of assuming that a full 97% of the human genome is completely inert and unavailable to suffer harmful mutation.
9. The Neutral Theory of Evolution
Just as the cost of substitution has been confused by evolutionists, so has the supposed solution posed by the neutral theory. They claimed neutral substitutions incurred no cost. This chapter untangles the confusions. The rule is: All substitutions incur a cost, even neutral substitutions. This chapter shows the novel way the cost is paid by neutral mutations, and why this does not ease Haldane's Dilemma. It also shows how the evolutionists' focus on genetic load obscured the problems, rather than revealed them.
Using straightforward data and theory supplied by Motoo Kimura himself (the author of the neutral theory), this chapter shows that in ten million years a human-like population could, at best, substitute 25,000 expressed neutral mutations. That amounts to 0.0007 percent of the genome, and is not remotely enough to solve Haldane's Dilemma or explain human evolution.
Yet another problem with evolutionary genetics is revealed — the highly inert genome. In an attempt to escape the problems posed by error catastrophe, various evolutionists hint that a large portion of the genome is inert — without expression or function — and therefore unaffected by harmful mutation. Yet a highly inert genome is not credible today, if it ever was.
Several interrelated issues now impinge on the standard model of evolutionary genetics and show it to be implausible:
- Haldane's Dilemma — limits to the speed of selective evolution
- Limits to the speed of neutral evolution
- Error catastrophe
- The highly inert genome
- Implausible rates (and ratios) of beneficial and harmful mutations
- The origin and maintenance of sexual reproduction.
In other words, the standard model of evolutionary genetics fails to give a coherent picture of how evolution occurs at the genetic level.
10. Gradual Intergradations and Phylogeny
What would be sufficient to establish evolution substantially as a fact? Unlike previous creationist treatments (or evolutionist treatments for that matter), this book emphasizes that there are two completely independent ways possible:
- Gradual intergradations — when gaps between organisms (fossil or living) are small compared with our experimental demonstrations of biological change.
- Phylogeny — a pattern of clear-cut ancestors and lineages.
Either pattern, on a sufficiently large and widespread scale, would be enough to establish evolution as a fact. The book later documents — in evolutionists' own words — that both patterns are systematically absent from the data, these patterns are rare and piecemeal at best. 11. Modern Systematic Methods
This chapter gives a tutorial with novel insights into the methods of studying biological patterns.
12. Evolutionary Illusions
This chapter examines the many methods whereby the illusions of evolution are created.
- Many illusions involve misuses of keywords. Virtually every keyword of the origins debate is misused to create evolutionary illusions, such words, as: ancestral, primitive, advanced, derived, intermediate, transitional, lineage, phylogeny, and evolution. Evolutionists redfined these terms so that no ancestors ever need by identified. These words are used to convey the sound and imagery of evolution, without supplying the evidence.
- Some illusions involve misuses of systematic methods, such as: nested supraspecific groups, paraphyletic groups, "convergent" characters, "lost" characters, ignoring inconvenient data, and tree-structured imagery such as cladograms, phenograms.
An understanding of evolutionary illusions is necessary before you can fruitfully interpret the fossil record. 13. The Fossil Record
This chapter documents — in evolutionists' own words — how the fossil record fails to support Darwinian expectations.
The next two chapters trace the punctuationists and their theories. The grim realities of the fossil record have become clear, even to evolutionists. (1) The key features of Darwinian evolution — gradual intergradations and phylogeny — are systematically absent. (2) Evolutionists can no longer plausibly blame this situation on an "incomplete" fossil record. These are serious setbacks for evolutionists. The punctuationists recognized these problems, and sought to 'explain' it within evolution. Their theory of punctuated equilibria is intricately constructed for that purpose. Their theory 'predicts' a pattern that could hardly look less like evolution. 14. Punctuated Equilibria
Most students know that punctuated equilibria is constructed to explain the large gaps between species. However, few know it is also constructed to destroy lineages. This was the reason for the theory's peculiar emphasis on speciation. Punctuationists needed a way to 'explain' the observed absence of clear ancestors and lineages, and their theory is specially constructed to "explain" that absence.
15. Hierarchy Theory
Because of the above setbacks of the fossil record, evolutionists needed a way to put the best face on evolution. So they fell back to their key evidence — the nested pattern of life, also known as a nested hierarchy. Evolutionists sought to emphasize this evidence, and "hierarchy theory" was developed (primarily by the punctuationists) as a way to accomplish that emphasis.
16. Nested Hierarchy and Convergence
Though evolutionists created the illusions of lineage and gradualism to supplement their position, life's nested hierarchy is (and always was) their central evidence. All the classical evidences — such as embryology, vestigial organs, fossil sequence, "imperfections", morphological and biomolecular patterns — are mere versions of the nested hierarchy argument. Evolutionists now claim the nested hierarchy as evolution's "central prediction".
This chapter dismantles that illusion, and shows that evolutionary theory does notpredict a nested hierarchy. It never was evidence for evolution, because evolution never predicted it. Evolutionists merely accommodated that pattern and used it as evidence against a creator. They asked, "Why would a creator design life to look like it evolved?"
This chapter overturns their argument in the most startling and ironic possible way: The nested hierarchy is the result of a design plan that includes making life look unlike the result of evolution. As one of its central design goals, life was intentionally designed to resist alltheories of evolution, not just Darwin's or Lamarck's theories. There exist other evolutionary explanations that evolutionists embrace — such as transposition mechanisms, and the masking and unmasking of genetic libraries (known as genetic throwbacks) — which are exceedingly potent, simple, and plausible. Those "explanations" had to be defeated, and were defeated (uniformly at the morphological, embryological, and biochemical levels) by life's nested hierarchy, while simultaneously displaying life as the unified product of one designer.
The observed abundance of so-called "convergence" is also explained with the self-same theory. These abundant features serve the ends of the biotic message — they help unify life as the product of one designer, yet they cannot be explained by common descent, nor by transposition, nor by atavism. Evolutionists are left with their least plausible explanation, that these similar designs happened to converge from highly diverse beginnings.
17. Embryology
This chapter recounts the rise and fall of Recapitulation Theory, the notion (of Ernst Haeckel) that embryos retrace the development of their distant ancestors. New insight is given into Haeckel's ideas: His theory could have been conceived in an armchair, with no knowledge of embryology other than von Baer's laws and a desire to re-interpret them to put the best light on evolution. That can explain everything about Haeckel's theory, including its reliance on bizarre and fictitious mechanisms (terminal addition and telescoping acceleration), and Haeckel's fudging of the embryological data to make it conform to the expectations of those fictitious mechanisms.
Von Baer's laws of embryology remain our best and most general descriptions of embryology. They are in fact an evolutionary enigma, (especially the sequence described in von Baer's laws). Recapitulation theory was an implicit attempt to reinterpret them, and with its downfall evolutionists haven't even tried to explain them. Evolutionists possess no coherent explanation of von Baer's laws. They merely attempt to use it as evidence against a designer.
Yet the patterns of embryology nicely convey the biotic message. The incredible similarities between embryos of humans, chickens, sharks, and turtles, for example, were visible to the naked of eye of ancient greeks thousands of years ago. They correctly interpreted this as evidence that life came from only one source, one designer. The patterns of embryology speak of one designer, while simultaneously being awkward for evolutionists to explain in a coherent way.
The claim of human "gill-slits" is also debunked.
18. Vestigial Organs
The argument from vestigial organs used to be a huge part of the evolutionist's arsenal. But it has suffered badly through the years, as more and more functions were found for these supposedly "functionless" organs. The once long list of vestigial organs has dwindled to near zero. And evolutionists now try to revive it be redefining the concept of vestigial organ. This chapter documents these matters, and debunks the notion of "human babies with tails" as evidence of evolution.
19. Molecular Evolution
Biomolecules form a fairly good nested pattern, as displayed in phenograms and cladograms. But just like phenograms and cladograms at the morphological and embryological levels, the molecular versions are essential evidence against evolution's simplest, most plausible, most powerful explanations — transposition processes, and the masking and unmasking of genetic libraries (known as genetic throwbacks). Evolutionists have shown they are perfectly willing to invoke these mechanisms, and virtually the only thing preventing them is — the biomolecular phenograms and cladograms! In other words, these are key evidence against evolution. The molecules of life show the same consistent design strategy we see elsewhere. Life is incredibly unified, as the work of one designer. Yet life simultaneously thwarts all evolutionary explanations.
The next two chapters focus on the fossil sequence (a different issue from the fossil's themselves). 20. Illusions of Fossil Sequence
This chapter shows how evolutionary illusions are created by evolutionists' claims about the fossil sequence. They have adopted powerful devices for explaining away out-of-sequence fossils and making their theory immune to the fossil sequence. Chief among these is their refusal to identify ancestors.
21. Fossil Sequence and Message Theory
This chapter shows how the fossil sequence fits the expectations of biotic message theory. In particular, the fossil sequence has a special structure that pursues the unending task of compelling observers to accept the substantial 'completeness' of the fossil record. In other words, the fossil record contains a special pattern that authenticates itself as substantially complete, complete enough to use as evidence against evolution. That is an interesting feat in itself, and it is essential to making life look unlike the result of evolution.
22. Biogeography
Biogeography was once claimed as important evidence of evolution. Yet it has dwindled to the point where few evolutionists raise it as serious evidence for large scale evolution. Some evolutionists openly admit that it supplies no such evidence. This short chapter documents what has become of this short issue.
23. Cosmological Issues
The biotic message is first and foremost a biological theory, yet this chapter briefly examines how geological and cosmological evidences add additional support. Chief among these is the rather curious situation that the fossil record — mostly of marine organisms in sedimentary rocks — is stacked up high and dry on land starring at us. This record is unavoidable, even on the highest mountains. That is a curious and unexpected situation for a natural planet. Yet this fortuitous situation is absolutely essential for the success of the biotic message.
The next two chapters focus on a new methodology of systematics. Previously creationists got into trouble in identifying a "Kind" (or "created kind" or "baramin" or some such equivalent word). The problem arose because creationists were trying to use that one term for many distinctly different meanings, and confusion was the result. Anti-creationists understandably attacked the confusion. 24. Discontinuity Systematics
This chapter offers a new systematic method, the only one known for studying the boundaries of continuity (and discontinuity). Other methodologies (such as phenetics or cladistics) do not study continuity, if anything they assume it. Discontinuity Systematics focuses precisely on a pattern of life that is unstudied by any other method. Like various types of film (infrared, ultraviolet, and x-ray film), these different methods study different patterns of nature. Discontinuity Systematics studies the central issue of the creation-evolution debate, especially the absence (or not) of clear-cut lineages.
Discontinuity Systematics is defined in a neutral way that makes it useful to all sides of the origins debate for studying nature, and debating the results.
The method defines four key terms that are interrelated in a special way for easy study of nature and communication of the results. It also provides a straightforward method of knowledge construction, where the results of two separate researchers can be compiled into greater knowledge by a third researcher, and so forth.
25. Systematics and the Origins Debate
This short chapter explains how the new systematic method impacts creation theory and the origins debate.
26. Conclusions
- This chapter draws together the various themes of the book.
- The two-model approach — Evolutionists often complain about the "two-model approach" adopted by creationists. Yet it was evolutionists (such as Darwin) who invented the two-model approach and still use it. All the key "evidences for evolution" are not predicted by evolution, rather they are used explicitly as arguments against a creator. Examples are: biogeography, vestigial, organs, embryology, homologies, "imperfect" designs, and the nested hierarchy of life.
- Many evolutionary illusions were allowed to propagate for decades after evolutionary experts themselves knew them to be false. Silence played a key role in maintaining the illusions.
- The major arguments and evidences of the book are recounted.
The appendices contain extra details for the advanced student. They are located at the end of the book to increase readability of the chapters. Appendix to Survival of the Fittest
- Documented here are many specialized versions of the evolutionists' carnival shell game on survival of the fittest, including some phony "derivations" of natural selection.
- Several evolutionists here receive extended attention for their approaches: Michael Ruse, Ernst Mayr, and Elliot Sober.
- The case of Sir Karl Popper is examined. He publicly claimed that "Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory". Whereupon he received enormous outrage from evolutionists worldwide, and years later he recanted. His recantation has become an issue in the origins debate. The appendix here takes the novel step of showing that Popper's recantation does not stand — because it drastically misapplies his own criterion of testability.
- A final leg of the evolutionists' defense is documented — the direct assault on the philosophy of science itself.
Appendix to Population Genetics
- This appendix shows that terms like "fitness", "relative fitness", and "Darwinian fitness" when applied in population genetics are nothing more than measures of growth rates. These terms cause confusion, because they pretend to be something they are not. They are central to many evolutionary illusions. Population genetics can be rid of these terms without any loss of science. More appropriate terminology is already in place.
- Evolutionary genetics texts use Fisher's (misnamed) "Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection" to create the illusion that natural selection is science. Using approximations, they give awkward derivations that shoehorn the theorem into various genetic models. They further embed the theorem in discussions of fitness, natural selection, and genetic minutiae. This creates the impression that the theorem is genetical, biological, and evolutionary, and that natural selection is scientific. Their treatment confuses students about the true nature of the theorem, Fisher's theorem is actually quite simple, and can easily be derived by first quarter calculus students without any knowledge of genetics, biology, evolution, or natural selection. This appendix shows how! The chapter itself shows how evolutionists misrepresent the theorem.
Appendix to Haldane's Dilemma
- The more mathematical issues in Haldane's Dilemma are covered here in the appendix, such as: the formula for the cost of recessive substitutions, the Super-gene scenario, and gene dominance.
- This appendix derives the fundamental formula for the cost of substitution. Unlike evolutionists' treatments, this derivation avoids the many confusion factors that they needlessly interject. The formula is derived in a manner that completely avoids genetics, selection, and the environment. The derivation focuses on the key issues, the survivors and their reproductive capacity. By so doing, the cost of substitution is shown to be simple in concept, and unavoidable.
Appendix to Discontinuity Systematics
References
The book relies on evolutionists and anti-creationists for documentation of all key points. Thirteen pages of references just for material cited in the book — small-print, single-spaced, double-column. That includes over a page of references on Stephen Gould's material cited within the book. Gould's writings were covered at length in researching this book.
Index
Eleven pages of comprehensive index — small-print, single-spaced, triple-column. Stephen Gould is cited so frequently he is included in the index.
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The next three chapters form a suite on population genetics, the Queen of evolutionary theory. They are the most technically challenging chapters, but written in a style that maximizes their accessibility to ordinary folks while remaining true to the essential issues. Finer technical details are removed to appendices. These three chapters can stand by themselves, they can be skipped or skimmed without serious loss of continuity.