Answers to my Evolutionist Friends Evolution Is Built on Whoppers and Bloopers by Thomas F. Heinze

     “You stupid ignorant liar!” the email shouted!

Emails like that used to surprise me. The senders are so convinced that the theory of evolution is TRUTH, that when I disagree at some point, they see me speaking out against TRUTH. When I opened this particular email, an idea came to me. “Why not write a little booklet full of the whoppers and bloopers that are used as the main evidences to sell evolution to our students."

If the theory of evolution is supported by real science, why do evolutionists hide it by using whoppers and bloopers to convince our kids? This small, rapidly read booklet shines a light on the wide use of deception to reap new crops of students for the cause of evolution.

Jesus said, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” so here are many of the standard textbook arguments that have been most effectively convincing students of evolution. Each one is either a whopper (an impressive fib) or a blooper (mistake).
 

The story that a first living cell was produced by dead chemicals coming together is now called “abiogenesis”. It was inspired by Stanley Miller’s 1953 experiment, that produced some of the amino acid building blocks of proteins, the principle ingredients or cells. Scientists later abandoned proteins as “ the path to life” because it was found that:

• Only left handed amino acids will work in living things. The amino acids Miller produced were useless because half were right and half left handed.

•  A trap was essential to keep them from being destroyed by the next spark.

•  The chemical reactions linking amino acids into single stranded proteins never happen in nature except in already living cells.

The school books abandoned proteins in favor of:
 

RNA turned out to be even harder to make than protein. In fact, RNA, DNA, proteins and some other ingredients of living things are so complex that the only things in nature that can make them are already living cells. Once formed, they start breaking down so giving them millions of years would solve nothing. {For details and references see my books: How Life Began, The Vanishing Proofs of Evolution, p. 61-87, and my booklet, In the beginning … Soup?} Researchers have worked for years to develop a simple RNA that could replicate itself in a natural setting, but can’t make that either. The difficulties have caused some scientists to give up on RNA, suggesting that:

• The “first life” must have formed from a much simpler substance.

•  Life must have come to earth from outer space.

No evidence for any non created origin of life exists. The speculations are only supported by imagination and words like “perhaps.”
 

In 1866, using an imaginative series of pen and ink drawings, Ernst Haeckel showed that the human embryo at various ages looked like the embryos of the animals it is claimed to have evolved from. The hoax was exposed shortly after they were drawn in 1874. Haeckel’s response was essentially: “It’s OK, everybody shades the truth occasionally.”

We are not the only generation to be taken in by Haeckel. Darwin, who had read Haeckel, wrote that the facts of embryology were: “by far the strongest single class of facts” supporting his theory. {Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, chapter 13 or 14 depending on the edition}

Because Haeckel’s drawings have been so successfull at convincing students of evolution, textbooks still use them, and from time to time honest evolutionists who have been taken in by them rediscover the hoax and expose it again. For example, M. K. Richardson wrote in the journal Science:

“Haeckel’s drawings of 1874 are substantially fabricated. In support of this view, I note that his oldest ‘fish’ image is made up of bits and pieces from different animals–some of them mythical. It is not unreasonable to characterize this as ‘faking.’ Later editions of Haeckel’s drawings were somewhat more accurate…. Sadly, it is the discredited 1874 drawings that are used in so many British and American biology textbooks today.” {Michael K. Richardson, Science, Vol. 281, Aug. 28 1998}.

The famous gill slits of the month old human embryo come from Haeckel’s whopper. Many, convinced that at this stage the baby was mostly fish decided abortion did not destroy human life. Actually, the gill slits are neither gills nor slits, but tissue that is gradually developing into the jaw, neck, etc. A baby’s development is controlled by human DNA from the moment of conception.

After Haeckel’s faked drawings had advanced the cause of evolution with great success for 140 years, Ann Coulter wrote that in 2005 even the New York Times said, “Enough is enough!” Here is her comment: “You’re probably asking yourself, Why would the New York Times be printing the truth? … the fakery was helping intelligent design proponents who were screaming from the rooftops about the long-running hoax. As the Times said, ‘Intelligent design has helped its cause by publicizing some embarrassing mistakes in leading biology textbooks.’” {Ann Coulter, Godless, 2006, p. 240}

Why have modern textbooks promoted this ancient whopper? It still convinces students. Why did the Times advise textbooks to quit using it? Now that it is known to be false, its use may help intelligent design!
 

    Moths on tree trunks:

“… became the most celebrated experiment ever in evolutionary biology. By the 1960s the moths had conquered all the textbooks, influencing the minds of four decades of biology students. It is the slam dunk of natural selection, the paradigmatic story that converts high school and college students to Darwinism, the thundering left hook to the jaw of creationism.” {Judith Hooper, Of Moths and Men: an Evolutionary Tail, 2002, p. XVii}

Before the industrial revolution, most peppered moths in England looked very similar to the white lichens that covered many tree trunks. Then, with the coming of the industrial revolution, the lichens died and the trunks became dark with the smoke of industry. The average color become darker as light colored moths really did lack protective coloration, but did the birds see them resting on the trunks and catch them there as textbooks claimed and the pictures implied? No! Craig Holdrege, a biology teacher who used the moths to convince his students of evolution, was struck by these words while reading an English peppered moth researcher and friend of Kettlewell: “In 25 years we have found only two betularia [peppered moths] on the tree trunks …”  {Judith Hooper, Of Moths and Men: an Evolutionary Tail, 2002, p. XViii} Holdrege realized that what he had been teaching for years was not really true. Peppered moths almost never rested on tree trunks during the day. They are active at night, and rest on shady branches up in the trees during the day. {Hooper, p. 260, 262, 265-256.} The convincing pictures in the textbooks were staged! The findings were artificial. Setting out large numbers of moths on a few tree trunks taught birds to come there to find food.

Jerry Coyne a University of Chicago Professor, wrote in a review for the journal Nature: "My own reaction resembles the dismay attending my discovery, at the age of six, that it was my father and not Santa who brought the presents at Christmas eve." {Jerry Coyne, “Not Black and White,” a review of Michael Majerus’s Melanism: Evolution in Action, Nature 396, 1998, p. 35-36, reported in Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution, Science or Myth? 2002, p. 157. See also Hooper p. 283-286.}

Even worse, nothing new had evolved. The “best evidence” for evolution only shows that peppered moths, like the “proofs” of evolution, can come in darker and lighter shades of grey.
 

    Eyes

Evolutionists believe that accumulated copying mistakes (called mutations), made when handing DNA down to the offspring, wrote the instructions to build everything we have that a one celled animal lacks: legs, heads, eyes, etc. Individuals with harmful errors were eliminated by natural selection, while those with helpful errors lived. Evolutionists don’t have evidence that errors can add information that builds complexity, so textbooks promoting evolution tell us about fish that lose their eyesight after living for many generations in dark caves!

Mutations, which are random mistakes really can cause blindness, but textbook authors seem blind to the fact that fish going blind don’t show that eyes evolved. It would take a great deal of new information coded into new genes to produce eyes, and evidence of evolution producing complexity is lacking. Textbooks that use the loss of sight to convince us of evolution are really examples of the blind leading the blind.

What designed and built the eyes in the first place? Many textbooks claim that eyes evolved from dark spots on the skin. The sequence from dark spot to completed eye is not found in the fossils. Instead, the most perfect fossilized eye lenses ever found are on the eyes of fossilized trilobites, sea animals found in deposits from the Cambrian period, also known as the Cambrian explosion because all at once, with no evidence of any near ancestors, fossils representing every phylum were suddenly present. The trilobites, dated by evolutionists among the very oldest of Cambrian fossils were used as index fossils to identify the Cambrian period. How good were their eyes?

Atheist evolutionist Niles Eldredge, paleontologist of the American Museum of Natural History marvels:

“… We can be justifiably amazed that these trilobites, very early in the history of life on Earth, hit upon the best possible lens design that optical physics has ever been able to formulate.”{Quoted from Reason and Revelation, Apologetics Press, Oct. 03 which quotes from Ellis, Richard (2001), Aquagenesis (New York: Viking)”}

Julian adds another amazing aspect: “Also, a trilobite's eyes contain the only known lenses in the biological world that correct for focusing problems resulting from non-flexible lenses.” {http://www.unm.edu/~quantum/quantum_spring_2000/littlemen.html Bob Julyan explaining Thomas P. Caudell, professor in UNM's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.}

The creator saved the best for first. The very best lenses ever were abundant in fossil layers dated older than all of their supposed evolutionary predecessors. That’s enough to invalidate the theory.
 

    Vestigial Organs

Evolutionists say that the existence of organs with no known function shows that they once had a function but lost it. Because mutations are copying errors, they can easily cause loss of function. That, however, proceeds in the opposite direction of the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution claims that one celled animals evolved to form all the complex life today, and that it was done by millions of upward mutations which wrote new and better code leading to increased complexity. Evolutionists can’t find any, so their examples of evolution go backwards from complex to simple.
 

    Horse

A series of horse fossils was for many years the most powerful fossil evidence for evolution. These fossils were claimed to show the stages through which a primitive horse with three and four toes passed as its foot lost toes and became more simple. Modern horses have but one toe on each foot. Had the horse lost enough parts, it could eventually have become a one celled animal, but evolutionists believe one celled animals became horses.

As more fossils were found, they revealed that the apparently neat evolutionary progression never existed. With the revelation of this blooper the horse lost its place as the best evidence of an evolutionary transition and Archaeopteryx took its place.
 

    Archaeopteryx, and the fossil reccord

Gould, an atheist and anti creationist, stirred up a hornets nest when he publicly proclaimed that the fossils don’t show the slow gradual evolution that evolutionists had been claiming: “… the vast majority of species appear fully formed in the fossil record and do not change substantially during the long period of their later existence.” {Stephan Jay Gould, Opus 200, Natural History; Aug. 1991, Vol. 100 Issue 8, p. 12-16} He had a new evolutionary solution as to why the fossil record misses the periods of evolution. Gould claimed that the transitional fossils that should show one group evolving from another were lacking because evolution must have occurred in isolated groups so small that they left no fossils. He called this theory “punctuated equilibrium:”

Most evolutionists object and prefer to pretend one or the other of two whoppers:

•  Transitional fossils are not lacking,

•  Gradual transitions happened but their fossils are still to be found.

Gould did not claim that fossils showed no transitions at all, but stated: "Archaeopteryx, the first bird, is as pretty an intermediate as paleontology could ever hope to find." {Stephen Gould, Bully for Brontosaurus, 1991, p. 144-145} Archaeopteryx was an extinct fossil bird with teeth in its beak and claws on the elbows of its wings. It is the same example that those who believe in gradual evolution claim as their best transitional fossil. None of the seven or eight fossils of Archaeopteryx that have been found were more or less evolved than the others. All are fossils of the same odd bird. These fossils show no evolution at all. Evolutionists just speculate that it evolved from one dinosaur or another, but since they date Archaeopteryx as old as the oldest dinosaurs, they seem to always choose a dinosaur that they date younger than Archaeopteryx. If they had fossils that really do show evolution, wouldn’t they use them as examples?

Some claim both slow evolution and punctuated equilibrium but punctuated equilibrium was invented because the fossils don’t show slow gradual evolution. Brett wrote:

“Did life on Earth change steadily and gradually through time? The fossil record emphatically says ‘no.’” {Carlton E. Brett, “Stasis: Life in the Balance.” Geotimes, vol. 40, Mar. 1995, p. 18}.

The fossils show distinct groups that are fully formed when they first turn up and stay that way until they become extinct, giving the idea that God created distinct kinds of living things.
 

    Comparative Anatomy (Homology)

You look like a monkey! While this is not completely true, there are some real similarities. You both have two arms, two legs, and one head. Obviously there are also many differences, but because of the resemblance, evolutionists usually say that either man evolved from the monkey or that both had a common ancestor. They also point out the similarity between the bones in your arms and those in flippers and in wings.

Similarities really can indicate family relationships. You probably resemble your father. But they can also indicate something completely different. In front of me as I write is a set of books on the shelves. All are almost identical. It would be possible to conclude that the thick one had evolved from the thin one. Actually the publisher designed a particular style that he is using for all the books which he puts in this series.

A common designer also explains some similarities that are difficult to explain by evolution. The ability to fly is found in birds, bats, insects, and some dinosaurs. Evolutionists ask us to believe that each evolved this ability separately. This not only seems impossible, but neither are evolutionary steps leading to flight found in the fossils.

Flying squirrels, and birds that can’t fly are used as examples of how flight may have evolved. They obviously had nothing to do with the evolution of flight, because both are alive today, rather than when flight was supposedly evolving.

Airplane designers don’t wait for Ford to make enough random mistakes on it’s cars to work up to an airplane. Intelligent designers use common design features for both. The fact that birds, bats, and bugs have have no evolutionary relationship, but do have common design features is evidence that they were all designed by the same creator.
 

    Piltdown Man

Piltdown man, for years the second most important evidence for human evolution, convinced experts and students alike. Incredibly, even though the file marks that fit the lower teeth fit to the uppers were visible, for 40 years this whopper of a premeditated hoax was used to convince the students of the world that human evolution was true. The skull was human, probably several hundred years old. The jaw bone was from an orangutan with the teeth filed down, and stained to match the skull. Only in 1953 did someone notice the file marks on the teeth.
 

    Hesperopithecus

Also called Nebraska Man, this fossil link between man and his apelike ancestors, consisted of only one tooth. Two years after its discovery, more digging turned up the rest of the skeleton which turned out to be that of an extinct pig!

Why waste time on an obvious blooper? Hesperopithecus’ tooth was found shortly before the famous Scopes “monkey trial” in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925. The town was overflowing with reporters who spread the news around the world. {The Bone Peddlers, Selling Evolution, Macmillan, 1984, p.11}

By the time the rest of the pig from which the tooth came had been uncovered, the trial was over and the reporters were gone. You and I are among the few who know the rest of the story.
 

    Ramapithecus

David Piltbeam, a Harvard scientist popularized his discovery of our “ancestor” Ramapithicus. Later new evidence changed his mind. He apologized for the mistake in his 1978 book:

“Theory shapes the way we think about, even perceive data ... In the course of rethinking my ideas about human evolution, I have changed somewhat as a scientist. I am aware of the prevalence of implicit assumptions, and try harder to dig them out of my own thinking ... Theories have, in the past, clearly reflected our current ideologies instead of the actual data....” (David Piltbeam, “Rearranging Our Family Tree,” Human Nature, June 1978, p.40, 45. Quoted in Lubenow, Bones of Contention).

The influence of Piltbeam’s blooper continues on. An 1994 eighth grade science text book stated:

“The first hominid, called Ramapithecus must have evolved from an obscure common ancestor about 15 million years ago. It was apelike in appearance, … and upright posture.”

It is also the first image that walks upright in the series of images from ape to man walking one behind another.

While we can forgive Piltbeam for his blooper, those who are still using it to convert unknowing creationists 30 or 40 years after Piltbeam gave his apology are changing his blooper into their whopper.
 

Living things look like they were designed. The noted atheist Richard Dawkins wrote, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” {Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 1996, p. 1} Wherever you look, the processes of life look designed. When a cell makes a protein, for example, RNA caries instructions from  DNA to a molecular machine with actual moving parts that makes the protein, adds an address tag, and sends it off to the location where it will do its specific job. On the way, it folds into the proper shape so when it arrives it will fit with the other parts and function properly. Creationists and evolutionists alike realize such complex processes appear to have been designed on purpose to do what they do. However, like Dawkins, many evolutionists don’t believe they were designed. They believe that mutations and natural selection do such a fine job that instead of looking evolved, living things look like they were designed.

Creationists and evolutionists both agree that over time some change happens: The strength and size of the beaks of Darwin’s finches vary as periods of dry weather producing harder seeds alternate with good growing seasons producing softer easier to eat seeds. Creationists accept the amount of variation that the evidence actually shows, while evolutionists put their faith in the speculation that bacteria evolved into biologists.

I may have missed some of the “proofs” or examples of evolution that convinced you. If I did, think through them and check them out. Does the evidence that convinced you show actual uphill evolution? That is, does it show mutations actually adding information to the DNA that when preserved by natural selection will produce more and more complex animals and plants? Or are they examples of sideways, downhill, or trivial changes?
 

Many evolutionists have been convinced that evolution is true and creation is false. Most creationists believe the Bible, so evolutionists frequently speculate that the Bible contains false statements and thus can’t be trusted when it states that God created. The most commonly used “proof” that the Bible is false is the charge that some of Adam and Eve’s sons had wives when it would have been impossible for them to have married anyone because the only woman who existed was their mother. It is true that in Genesis chapters three and four where three sons of Adam and Eve are specifically named, no daughters are mentioned but if one reads just a few verses farther, the problem is solved. Genesis 5:4 says of Adam: “...and he begat sons and daughters.” The problem is not that the Bible does not speak of other females, but that people who want the Bible to be wrong accept the false accusations of the critics without studying the Bible for themselves.

Men don’t marry their sisters now because the children would inherit the same mutations from both father and mother. Since mutations are usually recessive, when the same mutations are inherited from both father and mother they cause genetic diseases. Since mutations are caused by copying errors, they accumulated gradually. Adam’s family, could marry close relatives without the problems caused by inbreeding. Don’t accept the skeptic’s accusations without finding out if they have been answered. There are good answers to almost all of them.
 

•   It contains many prophesies of very specific events which were off in the future at the time they were written. For example, hundreds of years before His birth, the Old Testament stated that Christ would be a descendent of David (Isaiah 9:6-7, Jeremiah 33:15-16), that He would be born in the little town of Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), that he would die with his hands and feet pierced, and that the soldiers would divide up his clothes and gamble to see who would get his coat (Psalm 22:16,18).

•   The Bible contains 66 books written by various authors over a period of more than a thousand years, yet its books agree with each other and fit together so well that we often consider it as one book. Choose any branch of learning you wish, and try to find 66 books written over even just 100 years with that kind of agreement!

•   The Bible says that people who trust in Christ will be saved from their sins and go to heaven, but it also gives us a way to verify this. It says that the lives of people who trust in Christ will be changed in the here and now. In fact, alcoholic wife abusers leave alcohol and treat their wives with love and respect after coming to Christ. Thieves trust Christ and stop stealing. Drug addicts are freed from their addiction. It’s not always fast, and you can find exceptions, but every city has rescue missions that present salvation in Christ to the worst of the worst because God changes lives.

If you are looking for a way to criticize these facts, remember, the Bible is the world’s all time best seller. Huge numbers of people read it over time after time. These people who are in the best position to know believe that it is the word of God. Do you think they are all fools, and only the critics who have never read it know the truth?

I asked Christ into my heart to take away my sins when I was in college because I saw the exemplary lives of my room mate and some other real Christians. From the moment I trusted Christ, my life was radically changed for the better, just as the Bible said it would be.

The fact that God changes lives has always frustrated people who hate the Bible, so throughout history it has been ripped up and burned more than any other book, but it is right and its critics are wrong. The Bible is God’s word.Trust it with your life!

The theory of evolution, though relatively recent, has already been shown to be wrong in most of the major arguments used to convince students. In spite of this, it has become as firmly entrenched as the tooth fairy. Why? Because evidence that God created is kept out of the schools? Yes, but there may also be another reason. If you evolved from pond scum, the only solid basis for morality that exists is that which is inherited from pond scum. Girls who have been convinced of this are easier marks.

Evolution is now protected and promoted by laws, the media, the ACLU and teacher’s unions. You may not be able to find evidence for creation in a public school or university, but somehow this little booklet has gotten into your hands, and it is gnawing at you. You can hate it. You can trash it. You can trash me. You can smother the message by reading its critics. But you can never again accept whoppers and bloopers as evidence for evolution with quite the same blind faith as before. Watch out! That tiny doubt may continue to gnaw on you. You may someday examine the evidence for yourself and come to Him who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one cometh to the Father but by me.” He who is the truth loves you and is calling you.