The Unseen Hand - Ralph Epperson |
The world of science has not escaped the attention of the conspiracy, and its interest has been spurred of late by the sudden increase in the research into a competing theory.
The basic foundation block of current scientific thought is the theory of evolution. So important is this theory that there are those who say that anyone finding fault with it is ignorant: "No informed persons doubt any more that the many animal types that inhabit the earth today are the results of a process of evolution."
This position is further strengthened by those who claim that evolution is no longer a theory: ". . . evolution is not a guess, it is an established theory that is fully proved by known facts."
The purpose of evolution, according to the Socialists, at least in a book entitled Evolution of Man, published by the Socialist Worker's Party, is clear: "Modern Socialism is closely allied to the modern scientific theory of evolution. If laborers understand science, they become socialists."
But the theory of evolution has another purpose, more pervasive than the desire to convert the reader to the theories of Socialism. Julian Huxley, a scientist, has explained that:
"Darwin pointed out that no supernatural designer was needed since natural selection could account for any known form of life. There was no room for a supernatural agency in its evolution."
So evolution has two direct, non-competing purposes: to convince the student that Socialism is the partner to evolution, and secondly that there is no creative force in the universe.
Huxley further went on to point out that:
"The supernatural is being swept out of the universe God can no longer be considered as the controller of the universe "Operationally, God is beginning to resemble, not a ruler, but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat."
The Masonic Order also places a strong emphasis on the theory of evolution, according to W.L. Wilmhurst's book entitled The Meaning of Masonry, which adds:
"This—the evolution of man into superman—was always the purpose of ancient mysteries. Man, who has sprung from the earth and developed through the lower kingdoms of nature, to his present rational state, has yet to complete his evolution by becoming a god-like being and unifying his conscience with the Omniscient."
So one of the purposes of Masonry is to assist man in the fulfillment of his evolutionary progress on the road to perfection.
But recently, especially in the latter half of the 20th century, a competing theory to evolution was being developed. It is important to understand this new theory and its effect on evolution and science.
The two competing theories may be defined as follows:
1. Organic Evolution: the theory that all living things have arisen by a materialistic, naturalistic evolutionary process from a single source which itself arose from a dead, inanimate world."
The Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. has defined evolution in this manner: "Evolution is the concept that species change through time. Over millions of years small changes accumulate to become large differences, new species arise, others die out. Rates of change vary greatly, and directions of change are unpredictable."
The competing theory is defined as:
2. Creationism: the theory that all basic animal and plant types were brought into existence by acts of a Creator using special processes which are not operative today."
Notice that both theories are just that: theories. Neither can be proved today in the scientific laboratory. Both attempt to explain the Earth and its inhabitants from the various facts existent in the world.
The creationists claim that there are two scientific laws that disprove evolution. These laws are called the Laws of Thermodynamics (Thermodynamics is defined as the science of heat exchange or heat transfer.)
These Laws are as follows:
One of the world's leading creationists. Dr. Henry Morris, has stated that: "The Second Law demonstrates that there must have been a beginning or otherwise the universe would already be dead. The First Law demonstrates that the universe could not have begun itself, since none of the processes creates anything."
Dr. Morris continued: "The real law of change, however, is one of decay, not of growth, a change 'down' instead of a change 'up.' Thus the laws of thermodynamics sharply conflict with the philosophy of evolution."
Both of these theories look at the universe and then attempt to explain its origin. These two theories are contrary to each other. Evolution theorizes that the earth created life through a gradual process when first lower forms of life were created and then the higher forms evolved from the earlier.
The second theory. Creationism, contends that all animal as well as human life was created at nearly the same moment. Neither theory can be reproduced in the laboratory, and neither is taking place now.
The evolutionists explain that the first cause of life was chance. The creationist explain it as the act of a Creator.
Perhaps a review of the creationist's arguments will assist those who have never examined these two theories side by side. There are at least nine strong arguments against the theories of the evolutionists.
1. CHANCE:—The evolutionists theorize that simple life originated from the creation of amino acids, which later combined in chains to form protein, all by the randomness of chance."
A simple protein would consist of a chain of about 100 simple amino acids. But not just any combination of these amino acids will give life. There is only one: all other combinations will not give life.
The chance of 100 amino acids aligning in exactly the right order is one chance in one followed by 158 zeroes.
"Astrophysicists estimate that there are no more than 10**80 infinitesimal "particles" in the universe (one followed by 80 zeros), and that the age of the universe in its present form is no greater than 10**18 seconds (30 billion years.)
"Assuming each particle can participate in a thousand billion 10**12 different events every second, (this is impossibly high, of course) then the greatest number of events that could ever happen (or trials that could ever be made) in all the universe throughout its entire history is only 10**80 x 10**18 x 10**12 or 10**110 (one followed by 110 zeroes.)
Any event with a probability of less than one chance in 10**110 therefore cannot occur. "Its probability becomes zero, at least in our known universe."
Thus, the above-suggested ordered arrangement of 100 components (100 amino adds forming in a chain to give simple life) has a zero probability. It could never happen by chance.
That enormous figure of 1 followed by 158 zeroes can be compared in its size with the estimate of today's scientists that there are only 1 followed by 22 zeroes stars in the universe.
If chaos cannot produce order of such miniscule proportions, how can it be expected to blindly generate all of the order that scientists find in the universe?
Edward Conklin, a biologist, has said that: "The probability of life originating from accident [or chance] is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a print shop."
This question of whether chaos could produce order was faced by two of England's most eminent scientists. They studied the probability of life occurring by chance. The two scientists, Professor Sir Fred Hoyle and Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, independently concluded that "the probability of life originating at random is so utterly miniscule as to make it absurd." Each found that the odds against the spark of life originating accidentally on earth was staggering—in mathematical jargon 10 to the power of 40,000. (The number 1 followed by 40,000 zeroes. That would be approximately 12 pages of typewritten zeroes of 55 lines of 60 spaces per page.)
They concluded that it became sensible that "the favorable properties of physics, on which life depends, are in every respect deliberate. There is no other way in which we can understand . . . life except to invoke the creations on a cosmic scale. We realize that the only logical answer to life is creation— and not accidental shuffling."
The article that reported on their conclusions, the August 14, 1981, London Daily Express, carried this headline: "There must be a God."
In other words, life starting by chance doesn't have a chance!
2. THE FOSSIL EVIDENCE:—The Arizona Daily Star of August 17. 1981, earned a picture of a recently deceased cow decaying on the desert. The picture revealed that there was nothing of the animal but some very bleached bones. There was no skin, hair, or internal organs left of the animal. These had been ravaged by the elements, by other animals, and by bacteria."
This decaying animal, soon to be little more than some badly decayed bones, raises an interesting question: how is a fossil made?
The longer the animal lies in the elements, the less there is to fossilize. Yet the scientists tell the world that it takes millions of years for the required amount of dust, mud or debris to cover the animal. Yet fossils have been found nearly intact, down to the skin and wrinkles (fossilized worms, for instance).
A fossilized worm, down to the little convolutions of its body, implies a sudden deposition of mud to cover it and then chemical exchange to make the animal hard enough to withstand the enormous pressure of the huge amounts of dirt above the fossil.
Clams have been found with their muscles intact, which implies a sudden deposition of debris over them, and then rapid chemical exchange, making the muscles inside the clam shell a hard fossil. It would be presumed that, if these clams had slowly decayed during the time it would take to slowly cover them up, the muscle would decay.
The problem of how the slow accumulation of dust covering up a carcass can account for the fossilization of a land animal is not the only problem for the evolutionists, however.
The same problem exists in the fossilization of animals in the water. One scientist indicated that: "when fish decay their bones disconnect in less than one week. [The scientist] said that means the presence of fish fossils in complete form is evidence of a catastrophe that covered the fish suddenly and locked their bones in place."
This problem of fossil creation is a problem for the evolutionists but not for the creationists who believe in a worldwide flood that had the ability to suddenly and quickly deposit huge amounts of mud and dirt on dead animals, both on the land and in the sea.
But this is not the only problem for the evolutionists. The theory demands numerous intermediate living things which can be hooked together in an attempt to show an evolutionary sequence.
"However, the fossil record reveals a profound change from reptilian host to mammals—and without any proven intermediaries" (Emphasis in original.)
The evolutionists theorize that the fossil record will show a step-by-step development of higher to lower forms of life, the deeper the scientist digs into the earth.
The creationists theorize that the fossil record will reveal the sudden appearance of life of high and low forms at the lowest strata with no evidence of lower forms changing to higher forms as the scientist moves upward through other strata of rock. This is because the creationist believes that all life arose spontaneously at roughly the same time.
The first identifiable life is found as fossil evidence in the Cambrian layer of rock, supposedly 500,000,000 (five hundred million) years old. There are no known fossil evidences in the two layers underneath. There have been billions of fossils found in this one layer alone and all have been of a highly complex nature. No one has found any fossil evidence of a development of life from a single cell, just as the creationists theorized.
One textbook agrees. Stansfield's Science of Evolution, published by Macmillan in 1977, says this about the Cambrian layer: "During the Cambrian Period, there suddenly appeared representatives of nearly all the major groups of animals now recognized. It was as if a giant curtain had been lifted to reveal a world teeming with life in fantastic diversity."
Creationists have also pointed out another problem with the reasonings of the evolutionists. They question their conclusions that the oldest fossils are always found in the oldest rocks. One creationist has written:
"The fossil evidence that life has evolved from simple to complex forms over the geological ages depends on the geological ages of the specific rocks in which these fossils are found.
"The rocks are assigned geological ages based on the fossil assemblages which they contain.
"The fossils, in turn, are arranged on the basis of their assumed evolutionary relationships.
"Thus, the main evidence for evolution is based on the assumption of evolution."
In other words, the reason the rocks are old is because the fossils in them are old. The reason the fossils are old is because the rocks they are contained in cure old. This is called circular reasoning.
Another problem for the evolutionist in the fossil record is that "anything approaching the complete geological column is never found at any one place on the Earth's surface "In fact, ". . . it is not at all unusual for strata to be found completely out of the approved order, with 'old' strata resting comfortably on top of 'young' strata."
"(Note: The geological column is a column that shows the various layers, one on top of another. The older layers cure supposed to be on the bottom, the newer layers on the top. Each layer was supposedly laid down on top of the layer just underneath. This process assumedly took billions of years.)
In addition to this insurmountable problem for the evolutionists, there is another. "It is now known that complex plants existed in the Cambrian Period, which, on the evolutionary time scale, is 200 million years or so before even simple land plants are supposed to have evolved."
And in Glacier Park, for example, "There are numerous localities around the world where supposedly older and simple fossils have been deposited in layers vertically above layers containing 'younger,' more complex, fossils."
But one of the most startling discrepancies in the fossil record came to light when a tuatara lizard was found alive on some islands off of New Zealand after the animal was supposedly extinct. Because the scientists have not found any fossil remains of the lizard in any rock supposedly younger than 135 million years old, they presumed that the lizard was extinct. In other words, the animal once lived 135 million years ago, but not between then and the present, as there have been no fossil remains of the lizard found in those layers of rock above those supposedly 135 million years old. Finding some living tuaturas on the surface of the earth really puzzled them. Where are the fossil remains of the lizard for the last 135 million years?
Don't ask the evolutionist. Only the creationist has the answer: the assumptions made in dating fossils is wrong.
Such anomalies are very common all over the world. For instance, one scientist became troubled when he was checking fossil remains in the Grand Canyon. He found a layer of rock containing a certain fossil. Above that layer was a thick barren layer, indicating that the fossil had become extinct. But the layer directly above the barren layer was a layer containing the fossil evidences again. "The evolutionary theory allows no backtracking, no renewal of a species, once it has become extinct."
The fossil record's inability to explain the basic tenet of evolution, that simple life evolved into complex life, has been noted by some prestigious scientists. One, David Raup of Chicago's famous Field Museum, has said this about the fossil record: "We are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. Ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, has had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information."
In spite of all of these problems, the evolutionists still continue to hold up the fossil record as the evidence proving their case. Perhaps the reason this is so lies in the rather interesting fact that "more than half of the geologists in the world work directly for oil companies, and the support for many geologists in academic [pursuits] and [in] government comes from petroleum."
3. MUTATIONS:—The Arizona Daily Star of April 4, 1981, carried a picture of a two-headed snake. The caption underneath the picture said that the associate professor of zoology at Arizona State University said that the snake "wouldn't last in the wild." The snake was a mutation and it would have difficulty surviving in nature.
Evolutionists claim that mutations are the changes that account for the changes in species, yet scientists know that about ninety-nine out of one hundred mutations produce inferior creatures, such as the two headed snake, that "wouldn't last in the wild." If this is true, then the fossilized remains of these ninety-nine unsuccessful mutations should be in the fossil record, as well as the successful ones found so abundantly. The fossil record reveals no fossil remains of known mutations.
4. TIME:—The evolutionists theorize that there have been millions, if not billions, of years in which man and the various animals have been able to evolve into higher forms of life. Certain species have died out and become extinct before other species, including man, evolved.
At a debate between an evolutionist and a creationist in Tucson, the evolutionist, a professor at the University of Arizona, claimed that, if ever fossil records of man could be found alongside fossil records of the dinosaur, this find would seriously weaken, but not destroy, the evolutionary theory.
He explained that this was because the dinosaurs had become extinct, according to the evolutionary theory, around sixty million years before the appearance of man on the earth.
One of the spectators at the debate hastened to point out to the scientist that such fossil evidence did indeed exist at the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas, south of Fort Worth. Apparently a flood in 1900 eroded away the top layer of the mud and exposed a limestone layer underneath it This limestone layer, supposedly 120 million years old, contained a rather startling discovery. The stone contained human footprints! Since it is theorized that man appeared on Earth about 1 million years ago, approximately 119 million years of dme had disappeared, at least if the rock was supposedly 120 million years old.
But there was even something more startling in the stone. The human footprints were side by side dinosaur footprints!
The theory is that the dinosaur died out about 60 million years ago. That means, according to the evolutionary theory, that it is impossible for man and the dinosaur to have been on the Earth at the same time.
The spectator asked the professor if he had an explanation. Did man and the dinosaur co-habitate the Earth at the same time? How could the rock be 120 million years old, the dinosaur footprints 60 million years old, and the man's footprints 1 million years old?
The scientist was quick to offer an explanation.
His position was that the rock was once soft, about 60 million years ago.
The dinosaur moved through the mud, leaving behind the evidence of his presence, his footprints. The mud became hard and then some 59 million years later, became soft once again. Man moved through the soft mud, leaving behind his footprints. Then, for some unexplained reason, the rock became hard again, leaving both the dinosaur and human footprints side by side.
When questioned as to why the dinosaur footprints didn't erode when the limestone became soft again, unless man's footprints were placed down in the soft mud precisely the same day the mud got soft and then hard again, the scientist had to admit that he had no answer.
Also, what mechanism did the professor know about that could cause rock to become hard, then soft, then hard, then soft, and then hard again? Once again, he had no answer. The scientist was unwilling to admit that the fossilized footprints "weakened, but didn't destroy" his evolutionary theory, even though that conclusion was his opening statement. He was bending the facts to explain his theory, rather than adjusting the theory to explain the facts. His evolutionary theory postulated that man and dinosaur couldn't have co-existed at the same time; therefore, the fossilized evidence must be incorrect or explained away. When confronted with the evidence, he approached the dilemma the only way he could: he had to deny the facts.
One scientist, when asked about some of the human footprints in the stone, while he was an observer to their uncovering at the site in about 1955, said that if the human footprints were alone in the rock, he would have to conclude that they were human. But since they were beside the dinosaur footprints, he wasn't sure.
To further complicate the problem for the professor at the debate, other scientists have carbon dated some plants in the limestone layer. They were found to be 38,000 to 39,000 years old, quite a bit earlier than the supposed age of the rock which is theorized to be 120,000,000 years old.
In addition, other scientists have found another problem for the evolution theory at this same site. They have found human footprints in rock layers below strata containing the footprints of the dinosaur.
All of these facts fit the creationist's theory that holds that man and the dinosaur lived at the same time, not millions of years apart, but thousands of years ago. This explains the footprints of both at the same site, in the same layer of limestone.
5. SEQUENCE:—The age-old question of "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" is an appropriate question to ask in the evolution versus creation debate. The world is full of examples of animals and plants that had to appear on the scene at precisely the same moment in the past.
For instance, the bee and the flower both had to appear at precisely the same time or the earlier would not be able to survive.
Another problem for the evolutionist is the question of when certain predators for certain animals evolved.
There is a naturally occurring balance of nature whereby the population of one species is kept in balance by another species, its natural predator. If the population of the hunted animal suddenly increases, the population of the second animal, the hunter, increases as well. As the population of the hunted animal decreases, so does the population of the second animal.
It is only when man artificially intervenes in the environment that this system gets out of balance.
Take, for example, the case of the rabbit in Australia. This animal is not native to this country and was reportedly brought there as a game animal to be hunted for sport. But since the rabbit has no natural predator in Australia and is a rapid breeder, the animal is increasing in numbers so quickly that it is starving other animals native to the land because it is consuming their share of the available food.
A similar problem is occurring in Oregon with the opposum. This animal is also not native to the area, having been brought to the Northwest by Southerners who came to build ships during World War II. After the war was over, the Southerners returned to the South and they released whatever animals they had on hand at the time. These animals breed rather rapidly and have spread all over the Northwest to the point where they are eating vital food needed by other animals. The opposum has no natural predators, and it is prospering to the detriment of other animals native to the area. (Some local wags have claimed that the only predator of the oppossum is the '55 Chevy! It seems that the automobile is the major predator of this little animal because it strikes so many of them at night as they cross the roads looking for food.) It has become a real problem for those living in the Northwest.
But these examples ask the question that the evolutionists have trouble answering: the hunted animal and its predator, the hunter, had to "evolve" at precisely the same time, or either the world would be over-populated by the hunted animal, if it "evolved" first, or with large quantities of fossils of the hunter if it "evolved" before its food supply "evolved."
Man's attempts to artificially induce an animal into the environment where there is no natural predator proves that both the hunted animal and its predator had to "evolve" precisely at the same time.
The existence of such a balance of nature strongly implies a designer.
6. MISSING LINKS:—One of the areas most open to question by the creationists is the area of the "missing links," the humans and near humans who supposedly link man and his ancestors.
A quick look at some of these "missing links," or early men, shows how weak this evidence is for the case of the evolutionists.
One can only speculate as to why the evolutionary scientist is so quick to grasp at anything that appears to be a link connecting man with the ape. Perhaps the question has been answered by the following statement:
The real reason why—after multitudes of fossil fragments have been examined and sorted by evolutionary anthropologists for over a hundred years—there is still no agreement as to man's evolutionary ancestry, is because he had no evolutionary ancestor! All of the real evidence indicates that man was true man right from the start.
Maybe this is why some evolutionists are now shifting away from the theory that man evolved from apes or monkeys. Unfortunately, their predetermined prejudices stay with them when they develop new theories. Take, for instance, the new theory postulated by Dr. Geoffrey Bourne, Director of Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center of Emory University. Dr. Bourne is an Australian bom, Oxford educated American cell biologist, anatomist, and now considered to be one of the world's leading primatologists.
He has declared his belief that "apes and monkeys are the evolutionary descendants of man!"
This scientist wants man to believe that the ape and monkey are man's grandchildren!
7. MALE AND FEMALE:—The obvious fact that so many animal spedes have evolved into male and female types is another thorny problem for the evolutionists.
Both sexes cure absolutely essential to the continued propagation of the animal species, and it is absolutely imperative that both evolved at precisely the same time. That means that, if one species of animal evolved a male into a higher form of life in the process of evolution, that animal had to have a female of exactly the same type evolve at precisely the same time, or the new male wouldn't have been able to reproduce itself.
8. THE AGE OF THE UNIVERSE:—It is claimed by the evolutionists that the Earth was created about 4.5 billion years ago. The creationists are now developing a very effective scientific argument that the Earth cannot be older than 10,000 years old.
Some of the arguments for a young Earth are as follows:
The scientists theorized that the moon had large quantities of dust on its surface because it was so old. They then concluded that the lunar landing device would sink in this dust when it landed. So they devised the disc-shaped feet on the landing device so that the feet would support its weight when it landed.
Their theories were in part supported by the theory of R.A. Lyttleton of Cambridge University. He theorized that Since there is no atmosphere on the moon, the moon's surface is exposed to direct radiation.
Thus, the strong ultra-violet light and x-rays can destroy the surface layers of exposed rocks and reduce them to dust at a rate of a few thousandths of an inch per year.
If a layer, say 0.0004 inch thick in pulverized matter, is formed per year, then, in 10,000 years a layer of about four inches in depth would be produced; in 100,000 years a layer of 40 inches; in 1,000,000 years a layer of 3.3 feet; in 1,000,000,000 years a layer of 6.3 miles; and in 4,500,000,000 years (4.5 billion years, the supposed age of the moon) a layer of about 28 miles in depth would be formed.
Yet when the lunar landing device landed on the moon, they measured the dust layer to be "1/4th inch to 3 inches in thickness."
So if Professor Lyttleton's theories are correct, the moon is no older than about 10,000 years, or less, and certainly not 4,500,000,000 years in age.
9. Symbiosis:—Symbiosis is defined as: "the intimate living together of two dissimilar organisms in a mutually beneficial relationship."
And the existence of several symbiotic relationships presents real problems for the evolutionists.
For instance, the Nile crocodile allows a small bird, called the Egyptian plover, to enter its mouth to clean its teeth of harmful bacteria. If the plover does not remove these intruders, the crocodile can be seriously harmed. The parasites are the Plover bird's sole source of nutrition.
In other words, the two animals need each other and had to occur at precisely the same time or one would not have been able to survive to wait for the other.
But symbiosis is not confined to the animal kingdom alone.
Frequently the plant and animal kingdoms join together in a symbiotic relationship, mutually beneficial to both parties. Such is the case of the yucca moth and the yucca plant The moth collects a ball of pollen, stuffs it into a seed chamber of the yucca plant, and then lays a few eggs inside the seed. Since the larvae that hatch can feed only on developing yucca seeds, their growth is provided for; and since some seeds are left and this yucca cannot otherwise pollinate itself, the plant also benefits.
Neither the plant nor the animal would have been able to survive if both didn't occur at precisely the same time.
The occurrence of such design demands a designer!
But even in view of such problems in the field of evolutionary science, the evolutionists persist in their theories. Why is it so important that the theory of evolution be defended in view of the enormous evidence against it? Does it have a purpose that demands its defense?
Several have attempted to answer that question.
One, the scientist Julian Huxley, already quoted on this subject, informs the student: "It is clear that the doctrine of evolution is directly antagonistic to that of creation . . . . Evolution, if consistently accepted, makes it impossible to believe in the Bible ."
The author of a book on the subject of Humanism, Claire Chambers, has stated the following in answer to this question: "Before man can be enslaved, his state of mind must be reduced from spirituality to carnality. He must learn to think of himself as basically an animal with no spiritual purpose. Once man is freed from his obligations to God, the way is cleared for his ultimate obedience to the Communist State as his master ."
Another, writer H.L. Mencken, an observer at the famous Scopes evolution trial that tested the right of the state to limit school curriculums, said this:
There is, it appears, a conspiracy of scientists afoot Their purpose is to break down religion, propagate immorality, and so reduce mankind to the level of the brutes.
They are the sworn and sinister agents of Beelzebub (the devil) who "yearns to conquer the world. . . ."