Evolution: The forbidden Love Triangle Between Faith, Science and Charles Darwin

An article well written! Thank you. This article came highly recommended through Mike’s father. As we sat at dinner tonight in Malibu, the mere mention of this article excited me to run home and read it. And the irony comes further in that as I read this article, I watch the ending of Da Vinci Code. Thanks for the great article.

Jake

I am currently a student at University of San Diego which is a Catholic university and have to take religion courses. When someone makes statements like this author it intrigues and angers me. I do not believe in the creation stories in the bible and nor does the catholic church if you read the statements they make at the beginning of the bible. To sum it up they tell you the Bible is not a history book and should not be read like one. I am just angered at the way this article was written because of the way he stereotypes and portrays Christians. I wish he will write me or anyone else wants to contact me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) to just converse about the topic because I am interested in what others have to say on this article. I agree with the author on evolution but am not happy with his bias brought with him into writing the article.

As a Christian myself, I don’t have any problem with evolution and I don’t contest it.  There are mathematical and chemical reasons for the way things evolve, just like there are reasons why mankind has grown more intelligent with time.  With only one hundred years of history we have proof of our technological evolution, as well as evidence of physiological evolution in many species.

  The point about creation that I’d like to make is that you can deconstruct where we came from so far and you still cannot comprehend a “beginning”.  You can go further back than the “big bang” and discuss what caused the thing that caused the thing that might have caused the “big bang”.  It doesn’t change the fact that no one will ever know the infinite beginning and end of time.  I don’t have any issue with literal translation of the bible, it even says that to God a day can be as a thousand years.  Why not ten million?  Twenty?  What if his seven days was a totally different measurement of time, simplified for the benefit of understanding? 

    Christianity appears to be the target of your article but my life experiences raise questions that are not answered by evolution.  I’ve seen healing and miracles with my own eyes and been directly effected by it.  Try going into a mental institution where people suffer from radical psychological issues and bring the name of Jesus with you in any culture in the world.  Oddly enough, there is nothing that has the same impact, including the name of any other Deity known to man.  In that instance it is the only name that outrages a spirit within a person and the only one capable of truly setting anyone free, even beyond the capabilities of science or spiritual witch doctors.  I am aware of the scientific explanations for mental illnesses on a chemical level, but there are supernatural subjects that science can’t even begin to explain.

    In the end, if evolution is the only constant truth in the universe, then we’re all going to the same place anyway; Nowhere.
  If there is truth in the “Word of God” then we’re all going somewhere.  Life is short, so we’re all going to find out really soon.

Romans 14:11: For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.  So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.

Please read: this is an article from our preacher, the presiding minister of Church of God International.

As I travel to different places of the world, I noticed not only the difference in skin colors, but also, the shape of nose, the shape of the eyes, the height, and the hair of people in four continents of the earth that I have reached.

I am a man of many questions in my mind because I am a keen observer of almost everything that I have been privileged to see. I believe my curiosity is one of the factors that led me to a deeper search of truth that I satisfactorily found in the Bible.

If the entire human race came from one family, why is it possible that there are races that stand taller than others having eyes, noses, and hair very much different from another?

The answer to these questions is very well elucidated both in the Bible and in Science. Biblically, the ordinary human can produce ‘giants’.

(Genesis 6:2-4) That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

The cross-breeding of the sons of God with the daughters of men produced these giants!

Scientifically, giants or men of extra-ordinary height and size can be caused by what is called pituitary growth hormone excess, also known as “pituitary gigantism”.

The human body is an adaptable organism. It can adapt even to extremes in the environment. This ability to adapt itself to a given environment helps in the ‘shaping’ of his physical body. It can be noted that there are places where natives are noticeably with long protruding noses, while the opposite is very much apparent in other places of the globe.

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Quick Facts:

Climate clearly has put its imprint on the tint of our skin, the size of our noses, and other physical traits…

…Amid such discussions, however, a consensus exists that climate has influenced the evolution of the human physique.

Skin color, for example, is determined largely by the amount of melanin, a dark pigment, in the outer layer of the skin. (Carotene imparts a yellow tint.) In sunny climates close to the Equator, natural selection has favored dark, melanin-rich skin, which protects its owner by absorbing harmful ultraviolet rays before they penetrate to lower layers. But some ultraviolet light must penetrate the skin so that the body can produce Vitamin D. Thus, at higher latitudes, where sunlight is less intense, pale skin with little melanin is the norm.

Among dark-skinned people, moreover, there are great variations in skin color. The drawback of dark skin is that, like dark cloth, it absorbs more heat from the sun than does lighter skin. In prehistory, anthropologists explain, those who roamed the savannah “traded off” some protection from ultraviolet rays for the reduced heat retention of lighter skin. For forest-dwellers, living in less extreme heat, a darker complexion was an evolutionary advantage.

Melanin also determines eye color. The human eye appears blue when there is no melanin in the outer iris, and turns darker as melanin increases. In the iris, as in the skin, melanin absorbs light, protecting the eye from glare. Thus, dark eyes are generally favored by nature. In Europe, however, almost 50 percent of the population has blue, green, or gray irises, Such people may see further in dim light, but scientists still do not fathom the evolutionary logic of blue eyes – or blond hair, for that matter. The eyes of the Chinese, Japanese, Eskimos, and other people of Mongoloid descent – one third of the world’s population – are protected by epicanthic folds. These folds, composed of fatty tissue, probably evolved among their forebears inhabiting the Arctic in order to insulate the eye against freezing, and to provide an additional shield against glare from snow and ice. Even the human nose adapts to climate.

Inside the nose, a series of wet, mucus-lined air chambers “conditions” inhaled air before it reaches the throat and the delicate air sacs of the lungs, warming it to about 95 degrees Fahrenheit and raising its relative humidity to 95 percent. Humans in cold climates – or in hot, dry ones – thus have the greatest need to condition the air they breathe. Natural selection in such climes generally favors larger noses with more mucus lining: flattened, to protect against frostbite, in frigid environments; long and narrow in arid regions. In a like manner, the size and shape of the human form help the body regulate internal temperature. Over thousands of years, cooler climates tend to produce larger people. The reason: Their extra mass helps them retain heat. Although large people also have more skin surface from which heat can escape, the tradeoff still works to their advantage. As the body grows larger, mass becomes greater relative to skin area. The Alakaluf Indians on the frigid southern tip of South America, for example, are 25 percent taller than the Ituri Pygmies of Central Africa. Yet, the Alakalufs are more than two times heavier – and thus store much more body heat. Variations in body shape complicate the picture. A tall, skinny man has more surface area – and heat loss – than does a shorter, huskier man of the same weight. Thus, cold territories closest to the North and South Poles tend to be populated by stocky folk. In southern Africa, Pygmies, the world’s shortest people, dwell very near the Nilotic tribes (e.g., the Dinka), the tallest. But the Nilotic tribes live in the dry, open savannahs, the Pygmies, in the shaded forests. The Nilotics’ environment puts a premium on having more skin surface to release heat, thus their extremely tall, slender build. And, occasionally, there appear uniquely adapted humans, A notable example: the Khoikhoi women of the open African savannah, who have thin torsos suited to the hot climate, but also protruding buttocks (steatopygia) containing storehouses of fat to draw upon in times of famine. Just as it is difficult to prove a correlation between past climatic change, and, say, the demise of an ancient civilization, so today’s anthropologists are not certain that all their inferences about climate and human evolution are well founded. Very few of the world’s peoples in all their variety now inhabit the same territories where, long ago, their ancestors presumably developed certain characteristics in response to climate. Often, notes Grover Krantz, anthropologists resort to “pulling people out of areas where their… traits don’t fit the environment and putting them back where they do fit”. http://eng.1september.ru/2003/29/1.htm

The information that was written in the Bible that the human race came from only one family is very much scientifically true. The scattering abroad of the family of Noah in different places of the habitable earth eventually and gradually produced different physical features among them depending on the kind of environment they settled to live.

(Acts 17:26) And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation…

Many theories including the infamous Darwinian Theory of Evolution was taught and believed even by reputed scientists; but a fact remains — that we were created by a great God, from the first man and woman; we came from one family (not from apes); with only one language and tongue, which was later confounded by God, for His will to populate the earth with humans be fulfilled.

(Genesis 3:20) And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

God is not the author of confusion, but is a God of order and truth.

(1 Corinthians 14:40) Let all things be done decently and in order.

To believe in the theory of evolution is to believe in accidents, for the theory of evolution can only be explained by accidents that allegedly happened in nature, and perhaps in the brains and minds of evolutionists!

the above article can be found at http:esoriano.wordpress.com

The evolution phenomenon is not an accident. It is nature’s way of adapting to change. Do you agree that changes in the environment is constant? Do you acknowledge the fact that there really are changes since the beginning of time? If yes, then you should comprehend and accept that nature is adapting to these changes. How? By way of Evolution and Natural Selection. How could adapting to change be a mistake, an accident?? How could it be a form of disorder? It is in fact a process leading to order.

My biggest concern for our planet and our country is a society that never asks why.
Great article, and I would like to say three things.
One, not everything has to have a reason.
Two, Science can’t ever proove anything, only support it with hundreds of years of scientific, theoretical, and emperical Evidence, and it is not infallible but it is the best we have.
Thirdly,Faith and science have their distinct place.  Science tells us how, faith, can some times let us know as to why, or sometimes assign the meaning of such happenings to our souls.

People have the right to believe what they choose, but humanity has an obligation of truth and understanding.

I only wish that more of humanity would live up to that obligation.

First of all, great article.. Einziger and Miller are two great minds in this world.

I think people in the western world turn to religion because we as a culture are obsessed with having an answer. Who’s to say that time doesn’t go back infinitely? Why does there have to be a defined beginning? But most people are uncomfortable with the idea of the unknown so since the beginning of human existence there has been an “answer” in the form of religion and god.

That’s all well and good until the question of god’s origin arises. The most common answer is that god manifested himself.

Really? Is that honestly the best explanation you can come up with? Scientists back up the big bang theory with centuries of evidence, and are humble enough to also admit that there are some things that we just don’t know and may not ever know.

But that an entity can manifest itself? It defies the law of physics!! Matter can be neither created or destroyed! It boggles my mind that so many people can accept this idea that a being can magically create itself. I mean, where are the unicorns, seriously? To me, that idea is something that should be disregarded with the ideas of fairies and santa claus.

These discussions always relate back to one’s own personal philosophy.  I admire Mike as a musician and respect him as an individual.  I, however, do not agree with the tone this article seems to portray.  The commentary below is pleasing in that it is good to hear people think for themselves (even if you reference the Bible).  Mike, keep up the awesome guitar playing, I will always read what you have to say.

Great work, Ken and Mike, it’s always awesome to realise and discover that there are people out there that think. I study theology full-time as an atheist. I don’t have anything against faith, but religions have a tendency of locking people in. Faith is always more fluid. I think the important thing to remember is that no, the Creation Story is not meant to be taken as a literal account. And as Brent Maxfield said before me, the Catholic Church does not endorse it as such. But how often do you find this happening in the Catholic Churches? Catholics have better things to worry about. You tend to find creationism in a lot of Baptist and evangelical churches that take the Bible as literal truth. Good for them. If that’s what they feel, then more power to them. But they DO NOT have the right to decide whether their point of view is the only correct one, nor to force it upon the willing minds of children. It is so simple to reconcile faith with science, but unfortunately, so few people in this day and age are willing to let go of their prejudices to do so. And that to me is STUPIDITY of the highest form. How can any person who claims to be morally upright reject an idea that helps us to understand who and what we are.
It is not inconceivable that we are children of a God, and simultaneously the product of thousands of years of evolution.

I linked to this article from Make Yourself Foundation’s home page.  The organization is part of Incubus’ (and consequently, Mike’s) efforts to make a positive impact on social and environmental issues.  Check it out: http://www.makeyourselffoundation.org.

I really enjoyed reading this discussion and I have plans to check out Miller’s lectures on YouTube.  I have a couple of comments that I would like to share as well:

Several years ago I met a young man who was taking pre-med classes with the hopes of eventually attending med school.  He was raised in a strict Christian family and was home-schooled until he reached high school age.  He was a very, very bright young man and always received stellar grades in all of his classes.  Something that was very interesting to me was his conscious separation, but the inevitable clashing of his religious beliefs and the science which he studied.  Something about him that has always stuck with me was his standing belief that the HIV virus was literally “created” by homosexual men.  This was something he was taught in his church growing up and he never questioned the theory because to him, it came from a credible source.  It baffled me to see such a brilliant mind road-blocked by a theory that, proven by science, has no grounds whatsoever.  This is very similar to the interference of religion in classrooms nationwide and sermons being taught in churches around the globe.  Children are unknowingly being forced to think inside of the box of creationism.  They’re not given the opportunity to explore the other options this world presents to us simply because their schools and churches are actively omitting the truth, giving children a disadvantage.  Instead, they should be empowering them with the knowledge to be well-rounded individuals with a healthy curiosity about the world and the tools to question their reality and “truth”.  The kids don’t know there are other choices to explore!  How can you understand, believe or even question evolution theory if you don’t even know that it’s a valid idea that’s worth consideration?

Secondly, it’s very clear that genetic mutations are the driving force of evolution.  The human race is approaching hair-pin turns at lightning speed as we continue to wreak havoc on our environment.  Scientists are conducting studies and publishing theories as to where our planet will be in the next 50 to 200 years.  Who knows what earthly conditions will be like in 1,000 or even 5,000 years (especially going at the rate we’re going now), but one thing is for sure: those little imperfections and mutations will help our species evolve to survive whatever may arise.  I’m not saying we’re going to grow gills and live like they did in the movie Water World, but nature will continue to produce minds with the ability to innovate, while we rely heavily upon the knowledge we already have.  Maybe suburban sprawl will slow or halt due to increased fuel prices … Maybe our skin will eventually darken to accommodate more severe sun exposure …  Maybe our societies will migrate to cooler areas … Regardless, all of these changes (whether they be internal or external) will not occur over night.  We will continue to evolve.  If God had created a perfect human being, there would be no mutations and significant progress would never occur.

Joffe: Thank you for such a well-written article and for transcribing a very interesting conversation.

Miller: Students who have the pleasure of learning about the wonders of the world from you are very fortunate.  I wish I had stumbled across a professor like you whilst getting my degree.

Mike: Thank you for not only make phenomenal music, but also continuing to use your celebrity for a good cause.  I have learned about and become involved with so many organizations that I would have never known existed if it we’re for MYF.

Thanks,
Erika

The philosophy is right (we are def. not mistakes), but my problem is with the evidence.  When it comes down to it fact is fact and while sometimes people are led astray everything should point in the same general direction… towards truth.  It shouldn’t be a debate.  The thing that gets me is the lack of what should be an abundant and overflowing fossil record.  If that existed there would be no question and everyone would know it, Christians, Atheists, etc.  Where is the concrete evidence??!!

I understand that to a certain extent, evolution holds weight in the form of natural selection/adaptation.  I accredit that to the amazing genius of God, however I do believe species have always remained separate, at least humans from the rest.  Not because I’m afraid to be an ape, but because we created in the image of God (of course this holds no weight unless you have discovered credibility in the Bible).  How else could we have DNA nearly identical to chimps yet be so extremely different.  The Bible I will say is rather vague in the area of creation in that it doesn’t give every detail, but it does give the important ones.  We may never know everything, but everything we need to know can be found in the Bible.  I can settle with letting God retain the knowledge of the big stuff.  All of Lee Strobel’s books are fascinating. Check em out.

Interesting artical, I read it because I Love Incubus’s Music.
I am also a musican and I like to think of myself as an intellectual thinker. SO PLEASE READ!

I believe that we as humans adapt and evolve as the world changes…. But I also believe in Genesis. You might think Im an idiot but its not really my place to judge you back,(even though i already am).
I believe “God” created us, the moon, the earth, sun, solar system, and everything else in such a way that everything could adapt & evolve over time as needed.. the human body is an amazing thing and too say that it developed from and Ape, seems kinda crazy! Dont get me wrong, for the Apes out there reading i think you guys are an amazing spieces, just not quit as amazing as us Homosapians. & If this is so, apes evolving into Humans, then why arn’t ape’s still evolving into humans out in the amazon somewhere? I mean… Ya’ll dont think those Cavemen from the Geico commercials are real, right?? (I Hope i didn’t just ruin Christmas). To say we are 98% alike has to been some biased skued percentage… & even if we were 99% alike..(example).. a condom works 99% of the time but there still gonna be somebody who got knocked up using a condom! if its not a 100% its not 100%. I believe God made similarities in spieces for a reason…

LAST BUT NOT LEAST.

to those who dont Believe in GOD.

HOW DOES SOMETHING COME FROM NOTHING ??

A MIGRATION
HEADACHE….
For Evolutionists

Birds, fish, whales, butterflies and frogs all have something in common. Hundreds of species of them migrate. They move from north to south, from east to west, up and down, back and forth. Golden plovers and Arctic terns navigate thousands of miles—from Arctic to Antarctica—twenty-two thousand miles round trip, in the case of the Arctic tern. They fly by day or by night, over featureless seas, oftentimes out of sight of land, and above cloud layers. HOW? When did the very first bird or other creature migrate? The migration of these creatures leaves evolutionists utterly lost—wandering endlessly in a sea of bewildered funk—totally confused.

by Garner Ted Armstrong   [printer-friendly]    [pdf format]

“Twin Cessna seven zero five, five golf.” The call sign crackled in my ears from the speaker over my head, clearly heard over the drone of our engines. I reached for the hand-held microphone mounted beneath the control pedestal below my right knee, pressed the button, spoke into the mike, “Five, five golf—go ahead.”

“Five, five golf, it appears you’ll need to correct about, uh, thirty degrees to your left to make good a track for Dalhart; you’ve drifted south of course.”

“Five, five golf—roger.” The call was from Albuquerque Center, keeping track of our flight aboard a twin Cessna 421, a pressurized, cabin-class twin, as we flew our IFR (instrument flight rules) flight from Montrose, Colorado, to Tyler, Texas. We were cruising at twenty-five thousand feet, over four miles above the earth. On autopilot, I had been steering with the heading “bug” in our directional gyro, mounted in the exact center of the primary flight instruments on the panel.

Immediately above it was the artificial horizon, showing a field of blue representing the sky, and covering lines painted on dull brown representing the earth beneath, and the distant horizon. Superimposed on this interesting little portrayal of the physical elements were little orange slashes, representing our wings, and an orange dot, representing the fuselage. If they were out of line with the painted horizon, it meant we were in a bank. Below the horizon, and we were heading down; above, with only the blue of the painted sky showing beyond the artificial airplane in the instrument, and we were climbing. The degrees above and below the horizon were clearly marked.

To the left was my airspeed indicator, and to the right, the altimeter. The RMI (radio magnetic indicator), with its two needles, a fat one for my primary (number one) VOR (very high frequency, omnidirectional radio range), and a thin one for my ADF (automatic directional finder), was to the left of my DG, or directional gyro, and on the right was the instrument that told me, in the number of feet per minute, whether I was ascending or descending.

Scanning these and other instruments, like the electric “turn and bank” indicator (that most pilots call the “needle-ball” instrument), all appeared normal. Thirty degrees off course? But how could this be?

Mounted on the metal frame separating the two sections of windshield was our magnetic compass. This instrument, of all the others in the airplane, was the one absolutely incapable of lying to us; a “compass correction card” displays each individual compass’ peculiarities perhaps a degree or two of variation due to various factors; the metals in the airplane, position of mounting, or the instrument itself. But after these are established (before the airplane is sold), the only thing which can affect the compass is some irregularity in the mineral deposits in the earth. Charts far north, or over the Mesabi Iron Range, for example, have notices, “Compass readings unreliable in this area.”

How embarrassing.

Here I was, a pilot of nearly six thousand hours’ experience—having flown in about sixty-eight kinds of airplanes, and eleven kinds of jets—an instrument rating on my license saying I am qualified to fly in solid cloud or in stygian night, depending on my instruments alone to bring me safely to my destination. Yet, the anonymous voice from the controller, probably sitting hunched over a circular radar screen down there perhaps at Alamosa, Colorado, yet connected by his computers and cables to Albuquerque Center, the controlling facility along our assigned route of flight—had seen the tiny blue-green “blip” that was our twin engined airplane steadily progressing along a portion of the sky we had no business occupying. Thirty degrees. The longer we flew with that error, the wider the margin by which we missed our destination. Instead of Tyler, Texas, we would probably have made it to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. A rather wide margin of error! But we would have run out of fuel far short of such a destination. It was comforting to know we were over land—if the rugged mountains of south-central Colorado—for if our destination was but a tiny dot on the chart, like it had been for me so many times when I crossed the Atlantic in the Falcon Jet, landing at Santa Maria in the Azores, or Tenerife, in the Canaries, such an error in steering would mean our last flight, if it went undetected, and uncorrected.

Obediently, I reached up, turned the heading bug to 070 degrees—begrudging the movement and subsequent banking of the airplane as the autopilot immediately sensed its new command and turned to the new heading—for the instrument before me now told me confidently we were heading twenty degrees north of east—and from our position in southern Colorado, that was hardly the route to Tyler, Texas.

And then, as Benny Sharp and I both scanned the instruments in the cockpit, we looked at the magnetic compass and again checked it with our directional gyro. They were thirty degrees off!

Chagrined, betrayed, I punched off the autopilot, hand-flew the airplane as I pushed in on the “caging” button on the directional gyro, spun it back around to conform to the magnetic compass. This was not possible, and would not be accurate, unless we were in level, steady flight. The compass requires time to settle down after each turn.

As I turned the directional gyro to conform to the magnetic compass, I watched the RMI spin obediently in the same direction.

“Something wrong with the slaving mechanism,” Benny muttered. The “slaving” mechanism is a feature of all flight director systems, whereby an electric signal is fed into the gyros serving the DG and RMI to immediately indicate the exact magnetic compass heading of the airplane when they spin themselves erect once energized.

Now that we had a suspect, we watched the slow creep of the gyro throughout the remainder of the flight. It was so slight that no discernible banking of the wings occurred. The “ball” in the turn and bank indicator remained in the exact center, so far as we could tell, and with autopilot engaged, and the yaw damper on, we supposed we were in steady, level flight. Yet, about every ten to fifteen minutes, our airplane would be heading five or six degrees to the south of our intended track. Toward the end of the flight, we suspected the malfunction was in the RMI. “We’ll have to squawk the RMI—have them pull it out and bench-check it,” we agreed. Tedium. Problem. No adequate avionics shop existed in Tyler. The problem meant “down time” for the airplane. It meant a flight back to Dallas where adequate service could be obtained to correct the problem. It meant money.

Far below us, as we flew, were thousands of creatures. Rabbits, snakes, frogs, armadillos. Birds—Aucks and geese—gabbled happily on tens of thousands of farm ponds dozens of rivers and lakes, or flew in their neat, V-shaped echelons, following their leader to some predetermined destination.

Poor creatures. They aren’t equipped with tens of thousands of dollar’s worth of electric and magnetic instruments. No gyros, or artificial horizons. No turn and bank indicators, no RMI’S, and no ADF’s or autopilots. or flight directors. No props. Their wings and props are the same thing.

Only difference was—they weren’t thirty degrees off. They knew exactly where they were.

The ludicrousness of fumbling human beings, dependent on various sophisticated directional devices reminds me of the inebriate who, staggering down a street in Brooklyn, encountered a small sapling. With his head pressed against the tiny tree, his hands grasping its slim trunk, he commenced to walk around and around the tree—keeping his nose pressed against the bark. At length, he slid to the pavement, still grasping the tree, and cried out, “LOSHT! Losht and alone in an impenetrable foresht!!”

Many is the student pilot—or supposedly professional one—who has been lost. Some of them become lost almost over their home fields, for, believe it or not (and this is especially true in the flatlands), everything begins to look the same when you’re high in the air.

How many grizzled instructors have tiredly calmed the fears, stopped the flow of clammy perspiration and the quaking of suddenly feeble knees by sourly pointing below and behind and saying, “It’s over there”?

A few years ago, a Cessna Citation (a small, corporate jet) landed at Gregg County Airport. A good friend, Royce Barnwell (“Barney” to his friends—Barney, who amassed more hours in B26’s than any living man) operates Gregg County Aviation. Sensing a possible fuel sale, he walked to the ramp, waved his arms, and indicated where the taxiing aircraft might park.

The engines’ scream became a tired whine and stopped. The door opened. Two Mexican nationals exited. One of them looked about, curiously, and said, “Donde esta’ Monterrey?”

I almost collapsed, laughing, when Barney told me the story. The two had been to Wichita to take delivery of a brand-new Citation. They were taking it to its proud owner in Monterrey, Mexico. Almost. Except they became lost, and landed in Gregg County, Texas, near Longview—only about sixty miles from Louisiana!

Finding Your Way

How good are you at directions? You probably fancy yourself a reasonably intelligent human being. Surely, you are infinitely smarter than, say, an albatross. But have you ever flown in a commercial airplane, looked out the window at the monotonous sameness of the terrain below, and wondered where you were? Ever landed in a strange airport at night, been taken to a hotel in a taxi, and awakened without the slightest concept of which way was north?

When you last packed the family car and set out on a cross-country trip, didn’t you have to consult a map often? Follow the marked road signs? Perhaps ask directions at gas stations?

We human beings may be intelligent in many ways. But we have no built-in sense of direction. Spin us around, convey us about in the dark, take us for a lengthy ride in the back seat of an automobile, and we may become hopelessly lost. Many are the chilling stories of disaster or barest survival from hunters, hikers, or seafarers who became disoriented.

Not so for the tiniest of birds. Not only are they perfectly equipped to do what they do—to build nests, obtain food; to survive—many of them migrate over vast distances, under the harshest of weather conditions, Out of sight of land! How? Can evolution explain it?

Bird Migration

Many species of birds migrate—some of them for only a few hundred miles, some of them for thousands of miles. Wilson’s petrel, for example, makes the trip from Antarctica to the North Atlantic every year, a one-way trip of nine thousand miles. The little Kirtland warbler flies each year from the Great Lakes region to the Bahamas, about 1,200 miles.

The golden plover manages an eight thousand mile trip; the bobolink seven thousand; the Arctic tern from fourteen to twenty-two thousand miles, round trip!

Surely, you have heard the mournful distant honking and calling of wild geese in flight. Each year, vast numbers of ducks and geese leave their summer feeding grounds far in the north, in Canada, or Alaska, and wing their way south. Millions of them winter in south Texas and other gulf-coast states. Many go on to Central or South America.

But, WHY?

Well, weather is the answer. It takes no great “scientific” observation to realize that, with winter arriving, the sun’s rays become longer. Shorter days, longer nights, and bitter cold invade the northern hemisphere.

In the hostile, winter environment, food would be unobtainable. The rivers, ponds, and lakes freeze over, so millions of waterfowl couldn’t dive for their aquatic food, or feed on water plants, small fish, and insects. The tundra freezes; heavy snowfalls cover even the mosses and lichens upon which some birds feed; the frozen north becomes a bleak, barren, frigid, silent, seemingly lifeless wasteland.

Yet, evolutionists cannot answer the mysteries of bird migration merely through observing that weather changes force the birds to look elsewhere for food. Why? For the simple reason that the birds begin their journey just when their food supplies are at an absolute peak—BEFORE the storms of winter begin to fall upon them!

Evolutionists speak of the “mystery” of bird migration. So much for that. “It’s just another one of those ‘mysteries,’ ” they say—and then go confidently ahead, teaching evolution. Unfortunately, the entirety of evolutionary thought is a “mystery”—and it is a mystery how any thinking, intelligent human being could believe it, when presented with the real facts.

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Animal Life says, “There is no more fascinating way of arousing interest in flight than having your child catch sight of migrating birds—perhaps a flight of geese in military formation, or a close-massed flock of grackles racing like a dark, wind-blown cloud. Even after years of research and experiment, scientists speak of the ‘mystery’ of bird migration, for they still do not completely understand it” (Vol. 1, page 17, emphasis mine).

“. . . the real mystery is still unsolved,” says Robert Allen, in his book, Birds, page 9. “The greatest mystery about bird migration is the ability of many birds to move over the same route, year after year, arriving each spring in the same nesting locality and spending each winter in the same place”(emphasis mine).

Not only birds migrate. Such tiny creatures as ladybird beetles migrate. So do monarch butterflies, bats, eels, elephants, horseshoe crabs, king salmon, turtles, plankton, locusts, lemmings, frogs, whales, tuna, and dozens of other species!

But how? Why? When did the very first bird migration take place? What strange, built-in instinct, or compulsion, causes these creatures to know when it is time to depart? What guidance system leads them unerringly across featureless seas for thousands of miles in the darkness of night? How can a tiny insect, like a colorful ladybird beetle, with a “brain” virtually microscopic in size, migrate over vast (to him—or her!) distances?

Let’s turn to the prestigious book by Wesley Lanyon, called Biology of Birds. After all, it’s a collegiate-grade, well-done, thoroughly-researched textbook on bird biology. Whatever we want to know about birds, especially bird migration, we ought to find here! Pages 68, 69, the index says. Here it is. “One of the questions most frequently asked of an ornithologist is, ‘Why do birds migrate?’ “—Hey! GREAT! That is exactly the question WE wanted to ask when we turned to Lanyon’s book! His answer?

“WE CAN ONLY SPECULATE as to what these factors may have been, for it is IMPOSSIBLE to substantiate these theories with experimentation” (emphasis mine).

Well. So evolutionists aren’t going to be much help, after all. They only call it a “mystery,” say “We can only speculate,” or tell us they “do not completely understand it.”

Can Science “Explain”?

Some experimentation has been conducted. Unfortunately, the experiments only serve to further confuse the befuddle scientists, so long as they cling, stubbornly, to their evolutionary theories, their belief that there IS NO GOD who designed these myriad creatures and set within them these miraculous instincts!

It was found, for example, that young swallows, nesting on the European continent slightly south of the latitude of London, flew all the way to Africa to winter. But they flew only to the northern and equatorial parts—like Morrocco, Libya, Chad, etc. Yet, strangely, the exact same kind of birds, same species—same colorings, habits, nests, appearance; same kind of birds which were nesting in England—further north than their cousins in Europe, flew all the way to South Africa—distance TWICE AS FAR as their European counterparts.

WHY? Wouldn’t there have been enough food to go around in England?

Do all birds leave England each winter? No. Dozens and dozens of species stay in all winter. Especially the crows and sparrows! England may have bad winters—but surely they’re not all that bad. But the swallows migrate. Since evolutionists say it’s all a matter of the survival of the fittest, of strange compulsions having to do with food-getting, mating, nesting—you know, with SURVIVING—and since the sparrows survive quite nicely in England, why didn’t the swallows just swallow their pride, and decide to become sparrows? Why not just stay in England?

But no, they migrate—thousands and thousands of miles.

In one experiment, a migrating swallow was observed to return to build a nest on the same beam of a barn in Pennyslvania for three successive years.

There was an experiment involving the tiny, breathtakingly beautiful ruby-throated hummingbirds. We have them all around our house in Texas during the summers. They disappear every winter. I remember a neighbor lady cautioning others to “take down your feeding stations every winter, or the birds will stay around too long, and winter will catch them, and they’ll die.”

She need not have worried. Those plastic feeding stations you can hang outside your windows so you can watch the beautiful, tiny little creatures hover as they drink in the honey and water would never overcome the built-in migratory instincts of hummingbirds. They will leave just when their food supply is at the most abundant—whenever their built-in “migratory clock” tells them it’s time to go!

In the experiment, three tiny babies (about as big as your thumbnail) were banded by scientists. They grew up, fed around the neighborhood where their parents had nested, and disappeared with the other hummingbirds as fall drew on. They flew about five thousand miles, to the tropics of South America. Of course, no one saw them go—for within a moment of darting flight the little creatures are but a speck, and soon swallowed up in the distance. The next year, astoundingly, those same three birds, with the bands clearly in place on their tiny legs, were using the same feeding station their parents had used the year before. It was within thirty feet of where they had been hatched!

Hummingbirds have perhaps the most rapid metabolism among all living creatures, for their busy flight requires that they eat the equivalent of their own weight each day! Think of applying that kind of a diet to human beings, or elephants!

Ornithologists have determined that the tiny rubythroated hummingbirds fly completely cross the Gulf of Mexico to the Yucutan Peninsula, and down into southern Mexico and Central America for the winter.

Yet, the diminutive birds cannot find any food en route; not a single island, or branch of a tree upon which to rest. How do they suddenly leave their rich source of nectar in Texas, and, unable to eat the equivalent of their own body weight each day, sustain flight for many, many hours?

Some strange “genetic urge” begins to trigger the deposit of increased fat—like stored energy—in the bird’s bodies some weeks before they begin to migrate! But how? Remember, the very first migration from Texas to Central America had to be successful. But long, long ago, in the evolutionary scheme of things, when the very first ruby throated hummingbird “decided” to migrate across the vast, trackless waters of the Gulf, the little bird didn’t “know” that its body needed to begin collecting much more nectar than for daily sustenance. There was no “genetic urge” to begin depositing body fats around the breast muscle for long-range flight!

So when the very first hummingbirds attempted the very first migration, naturally, they “ran out of fuel” about twenty miles out over the Gulf, fell into the water, exhausted, and drowned. Therefore, since there was no hummingbirds left to “experience” the benefits of migration, there was no need to migrate. Since they all died, there are none left today.

But there are tiny rubythroats today, and they successfully migrate each winter.

Evolutionists might suppose, “Perhaps they tried to migrate, and failed, turning around just as they tired, and made it safely back to land.” Then, they might surmise, “perhaps succeeding generations attempted flights further and further, ‘gradually’ adding to their body fat to sustain prolonged flight without food supply.”

Why? Why, when not a single one of these increasingly prolonged flights netted a single drop of nectar? Are we to assume the tiny birds kept at it for thousands, perhaps millions of years, failing each time, until finally the first pair succeeded? And, since they had to turn back, and there were no flowers blooming during all those millions of winters, and they starved to death the very first winter, then there are no rubythroated hummingbirds in Texas.

But there are.

Confusing, isn’t it?

It is confusing if you cling to the concept of evolution to somehow explain the fabulous intricacy of God’s great creation; His amazing design of His creation; His awesome mind which thought out, planned, and brought into being each of His amazing living creatures.

The only way to understand the “strange genetic urge” which causes the little rubythroats to begin storing body fat instead of burning it up each day; which causes them to leave Texas just when their food supply is at its peak; which causes them to fly unerringly across the vast Gulf of Mexico, hundreds of miles, and navigate perfectly to their desired landfall, is to understand God built into them that instinct; God caused that genetic urge—they did not “evolve” it!

The Amazing Golden Plover

And then there is the marvelous story of the golden plovers. They nest along the coastlands of the Arctic Ocean—in the faraway land of permafrost, muskeg, seals, white whales and polar bears.

After raising their young, feeding them all through the summer until the young are able to fly with the parents, the golden plovers somehow feel a strange compulsion to leave the hospitable, friendly environment of their nests, where ample food supplies are readily available, and begin one of the most awe-inspiring migrations in the bird world.

Unerringly, they point their beaks southward, flying an elliptical course along routes only they seem to know, covering more than sixteen thousand miles!

Observers in Labrador, on the tip of Nova Scotia, see them flying through. They completely bypass the lower forty-eight states, winging their way over the trackless Atlantic, perhaps first sighting land again along the tip of Cuba or Haiti. Their next landfall is undoubtedly somewhere near Guyana or Venezuela. Across the famous rain forest of the Amazon, the “Matogrosso” of Brazil they fly, until arriving at their wintering area located in southern Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina.

There, while frigid winter storms howl across the frozen tundra they had departed, they happily feed and spend their days in the sunshine of summer in these southern latitudes.

Again, just as their food supply is at it’s peak, and before there is any discernible reason for them to depart, they begin a northward migration. But they do not retrace their mysterious track across the open Atlantic! Instead, they point their beaks northwest, cross the towering Andes range (with its peaks such as Aconcagua, higher than twenty-two thousand feet!), reach the Isthmus of Panama and Central America, fly across the Yucatan Peninsula and the Gulf, reaching a landfall somewhere around south Texas and Louisiana, wing their way up the Mississippi Valley, across the northern states flanking the Great Lakes region, into Canada, and onward to their home in the remote Arctic!

What a trip!

It would be a laborious, virtually impossible trip for me even if the Cessna 421 had an inexhaustible fuel supply without special over-the-water navigational equipment. It would be a comparatively easy trip in a modern, sophisticated jet aircraft with more than three thousand nautical mile range, equipped with inertial navigation systems.

However, even these super-sophisticated systems (the type computers which took men to the moon) may be as much as one-half mile off at the end of a three hour flight! They certainly could not take me to the same beam in an individual barn, or to the same gravelly bank along a tiny creek where a parent’s nest might be found!

Remember, the golden plovers leave their nesting area when their available food supply reaches its peak. All of their foods, tiny crustaceans, arctic plants, insects, etc., are in the greatest abundance at this time.

Evolution supposes there are various compulsions somehow built into these birds which cause them to go in search of greater food supply!

But how can evolution explain them leaving when their food supply is so adequate?

No, “weather” is not the compulsion which causes migration in every case.

Species after species leave Canada and the northern states in the contiguous forty-eight in mid-summer, in the HOTTEST time of the year, long before there is any hint of autumn, let alone winter!

By the way, there are many other cases of migration back and forth within the tropic zones, having nothing whatsoever to do with weather!

Can you believe it? Some have actually proposed that birds began migrating, anciently, in the face of “advancing glaciers” during the Pleistocene “ice age”! Think about it. Just how fast does a glacier advance? It may move a few feet, or even a few hundred yards in a year! But it moves far more ponderously and more slowly than a three-toed sloth, or than the proverbial molasses in January!

Further, there are penguins in Antarctica! Other birds depart, mysteriously, winging their way up across Africa, into Europe, or along South America up to the United States and Canada!

Yet, the penguins remain where they are!

Why didn’t the terns, anciently, simply turn into penguins? There they are, with the very richest oceans of the world all around them! Scientists know that the extremely cold seas around Antarctica are the feeding grounds of many species of the great whale; that many types of seals and other huge creatures are at the top of the food chain in this region. “Krill,” or plankton, crustaceans, small fish, and sea life are abundant in Antarctica!

This sea life is the basis of the penguin’s food supply!

Can evolution have it both ways?

Can they confidently tell us that the vast number of birds spending their summers on Antarctica but which mysteriously leave just when their food supply is at its peak do so because, anciently, some compulsion caused them to LEAVE Antarctica to go back to the north (where summer would soon be coming on) in order to SURVIVE? Then, are they going to tell us that the penguins GRADUALLY evolved their wings into flippers; evolved the sack into which to deposit their eggs so it could be incubated away from the cold; evolved their big, webbed feet, and powerful beaks for catching fish—evolved their thick, protective winter “Coats” and took to diving after krill in order to survive?

Stimulation for Change

Evolution tells us the stimuli for adaptation or survival are a wide variety of food-getting techniques, nest building, egg laying, feeding of the young, coloration and camouflage, protective armor (as in the case of porcupines and armadillos), etc., etc.

Thus, as you look closely at each creature, whether penguin, Arctic tern or golden plover, you see fully-formed perfectly-functioning methods for food getting, egg laying and incubation, feeding of the young; in short, astounding techniques for survival. BUT HOW? WHEN? In order for each of these species to have such intricately-functioning food getting and survival techniques, each species had to be successful on THE VERY FIRST TRY!

If not, if for some reason their food-getting and survival techniques were inferior—if they failed in the distant past, then they DIED! They didn’t survive. If they didn’t survive, then they aren’t here, today! But here they are, in all their amazing splendor, with their mind-boggling proclivities which science cannot explain.

The Arctic Tern

Most people, seeing an Arctic tern in flight, would believe they were looking at a seagull. The terns nest in the extreme north, along Hudson Bay, across the northern territories of Canada, and along the west coast of Greenland. Some may nest as far south as New England.

The annual migratory pattern of millions of these birds is so vast, so impossibly complex, that it presents a great MYSTERY to ornithologists and evolutionists.

For example, the terns nesting in the Cape Cod area (and this is the southern-most nesting area for the terns) depart just when their food supply is at its peak, fly across the Atlantic Ocean to offshore Spain, then continue along the west coast of Africa to cross the Atlantic again until they reach the easternmost tip of South America!

Then, they follow the South American coastline to Antarctica! Why? Some of the birds flying such a tortuous route actually cover as much as twenty-two thousand miles! Unerringly, they return from far away Antarctica back to the very same nest; the same rocky shore, inlet, creek, gravel bed or sand pit that they departed!

Scientists have speculated that the birds migrate by the stars.

Stellar Navigation

Some ornithologists have conducted experiments with captured birds, introducing “fake sunlight” or artificial stars into their environment, and have been amazed to see the birds line up in appropriate direction, according to the travel of these fake sources of light. In absolutely black, featureless “skies” the birds were completely disoriented. Some naturalists believe birds may be able to determine where they are from the slant of the sun exactly the way a navigator may take his noon sight with a sextant! According to one biologist, the calculations involved for a bird to do this are so enormous that they “involve so much mathematical calculation that you would think only an IBM machine on wings could get anywhere with such a shifting point of reference. Nevertheless he is convinced that the migrating and homing birds are equipped by instinct for such a feat” (Our Amazing World of Nature; Its Marvels and Mysteries, G.V.T. Matthews).

E.G.F. Sauer of the University of Freiburg, Germany, conducted an exhaustive study of warblers which migrate over vast distances—mostly at night. If you have ever been to a planetarium, you may have witnessed an artificial reproduction of the heavens, wherein one sits in a theater, and watches the movements of the heavenly bodies as the world rotates. Dr. Sauer placed the warblers under such a dome—where they could only see an artificial reproduction of the night sky. If he rotated the artificial sky in a wrong direction, the little birds were completely disoriented—that is, they aligned themselves according to the false position of stars in a fake environment! Yet, when he rotated the planetarium sky correctly the warblers lined up exactly in accordance to the direction of their intended migration!

The Very First Migration

Since evolutionists claim we are the result of blind chance, of gradual evolutionary processes brought about by external stimuli (survival) over vast epochs of time, would it not be logical to assume that we, as the very PRODUCT of evolutionary processes, should be able to understand the processes by which we came to BE?

Why not apply, pragmatically, the presumptions of evolutionists to bird migration?

Let’s imagine an Arctic tern up in the extreme north of Canada, nearly to the Arctic ice cap, sitting on its nest. Never mind, for the moment, what the bird is doing there (we will have to remind ourselves again and again in this exercise not to ask embarrassing questions!)

Our beautiful black and white tern doesn’t know he is a tern. He is only a “creature” of some sort, surviving quite nicely as August and then September pass.

All around him, the Arctic tundra is rich with insects, crustaceans, soggy bogs and marshes wherein myriad aquatic forms thrive. The nearby bays and estuaries teem with tiny fish.

He walks along the bogs, pecking at insects and tiny crabs. He flies to the nearby shores, eating small fish.

The weather begins to chill. Winds howl, storms blow in. Snow begins falling, and one night in late September, the water in his favorite bog freezes.

He stretches out his wings, flaps them several times. Nothing. He flaps them again! What? He isn’t moving. He looks down in disgust. His feet are frozen in solid ice! All around him are other terrified terns, trying to tear their tiny toes from the freezing grip of the ice. But all are stuck fast. They mournfully call to each other as the next storm, and the next, descend with the madness of winter’s fury. All die. None survive. Terns do not exist. The first terns didn’t have the instinct to leave when their food supply was at its maximum—to avoid being trapped by winter. They waited until the weather forced them to leave, because they hadn’t yet “evolved” this amazing instinct, this sixth sense of timing—hadn’t yet passed it on, genetically, to their progeny. So they all died. None lived.

But we’ll suppose, somewhere, a few terns decided the first chilling nights signaled them they should leave. Of course, they knew nothing of the jet streams; they didn’t know that it could be warmer here, sometimes, than it could be in Florida! But they decided to go south, like any thoughtful tern.

The further south they flew, the colder it got. In Minnesota, they saw hundreds of species of small birds, hopping about on the snow. Some drilled their funny-looking beaks into tree trunks, shot out a long, barbed and sticky tongue, and ate larvae that attack trees. The terns decided to try this. Several died of a broken neck. One caught his beak in a crack, and was frozen solid, unable to move. Several flew dizzily around in circles, a powerful headache throbbing in their tiny brains. Others, not having “evolved” the ice-tong-like feet of a woodpecker, could only flap uselessly at the tree trunks, making a feeble peck here and there—bending their beaks, failing to penetrate the hard bark. But the woodpeckers kept on tattooing the trees—happily surviving.

Beneath, rustling about in the leaves from the autumn, were thrushes, larks, grackles, chickadees, and several other species. This appeared easier than banging their heads against bark, so the terns stayed in Minnesota, and gradually “terned” into tiny tanagers! So there aren’t any terns, today. But there are.

Well, let’s speculate that the first truly successful migrators simply flew out to sea, intending to cross the Atlantic (how did they know it was there? How did they know the world is round? How did they know they wouldn’t fly off the edge, be sucked into a terrible vortex of intergalactic wind, and have all their feathers stripped off?—but we’re not supposed to ask such questions!). They fly for a couple thousand miles, or so. Then, they begin to become disoriented. None of them had ever paid the slightest attention to the sky before. What are all those tiny, blue-white lights up above? They didn’t know. Oh, they might have wondered about the big, white disk that seemed to change shape as the months passed but you could never depend on it. It moved around crazily in the skies. It would be on one horizon, and then the other, looking like a sliver of white, or a big yellow orb, squatting on the horizon.

Now, they were flying along, two thousand, seven hundred miles south, southeast of Labrador—underneath an overcast. They flew in circles. Gradually (for everything always happens “gradually” in evolution), they ran out of gas—body fat, to the uninitiated.

You see, they can only remain in flight so long as they have energy to fly. But they are leaving the far north only because their food supply has been covered up under tons of snow and ice! We won’t wonder about how long they lost weight, tried to peck a hole in the ice and go ice fishing, or eat snow, or…

And so, as their body fat is used up, one by one they let out a squawk, drifted down in crazy, random (everything in evolution always happens randomly) patterns, and fell into the sea. None survive. Terns don’t exist.

But let’s imagine some few terns made it to the coast of Spain. There, in sunny Spain, were hundreds of bird species. All along the rocky coastlands over which they flew were gulls, cormorants, several species of ducks, falcons, pigeons—further inland were warblers, blackbirds, finches, Wrens, thrushes, sparrows; dozens of other species, including ravens! So they stayed in Spain, and evolved into sparrows! There aren’t any terns.

But there are!

Somehow. those first migrating birds who left at the exact moment; who didn’t become disoriented; who knew solar and stellar navigation; who had accumulated enough body fat, somehow knew they should pass by Spain—that they must not begin fishing in the rich waters of Portugal, or stop in the Canary Islands, and become a you-know-what!

On to the coast of Africa they flew.

Birds don’t sweat, or ooze, like their “closest living relatives—the crocodiles!” (That’s right! That’s what evolutionists believe!) But these birds were winging their way in the late September right along the equator! It was hot! Furthermore, in the jungles below them, in Senegal (they didn’t know it would someday be called that—but then they didn’t know this was Africa, either!) were millions of tasty creatures; small mice, rats, grubs, worms, beetles, bugs, moths, weird-looking fish, crustaceans; a veritable banquet of edible bird food. Did they stop? No way. No tern was going to “tern” into Africa and become a crocodile again—they had had it with crawling about on their stomachs in swamps. Nosiree! These terns were going first class—they were going to fly!

And so they flew out across the Atlantic again—and died in a tropical heat wave. Now, our nonexistent, non-surviving, completely lost, hopelessly confused, starving terns (which don’t exist, for they could never have survived—not knowing navigation, where they were, where they came from, where they were going), are really in trouble, for, ahead of them, lined up like so many huge medieval castles, are thunderstorms whose tops tower up to seventy thousand feet! But they don’t know this. They think these huge things are mashed potatoes, or heads of cauliflower. Or snow. So they fly to the edge of the first big thunderstorm, and try to land. They are at only six hundred feet. Suddenly, they are sucked up into a violent updraft that carries them to twenty-thousand feet! Around them are grapefruit-sized hailstones. Lightning flashes, thunder rolls. They all die from lack of oxygen. Some are pelleted to death. Others have every feather ripped off by the winds. Still others fight their way to lower altitudes, evolve a genetic distrust of thunderstorms (this being the first one they have experienced) and decide to pass on the information to their young—whenever they next nest.

The survivors (but there aren’t any) cross the Atlantic once again, arriving at the mouth of the Amazon. Below them are myriad birds; macaws, parrots, finches, warblers, red-winged blackbirds; the rivers are teeming with juicy bird food. In the tropics, hundreds of exciting-colored birds survive. They perch on branches above the ugly snouts of alligators. Some even pick insects from the backs of alligators. Some even evolved into alligator toothpicks, choosing to pick the teeth of alligators, who like to lie around in the sun, opening their mouths to tiny birds, who eat food scraps from the alligators’ mouths.

The thoughtful terns toss this tantalizing possibility around in their minds.

Nope. Better not. If they stopped here, could they be an “Arctic” tern? No. Like Benedict Arnold, they might be called a “terncoat”!

So, on to the south Atlantic they fly. Past Uruguay, with its teeming forests, rich rivers and lakes—over thousands and thousands of miles of rich foods, hundreds of other species, millions of fish—they fly. Why? Who knows? They just “do”! But, wasn’t their initial “instinct,” or whatever, because they needed food? And haven’t they disdained a billion tons of food—from the east coast of the USA to Spain and Portugal; from Africa to Brazil? Yes—but we’re not supposed to ask such questions, remember?

On to Antarctica they fly—arriving there in the Antarctic “summer.”

All around them are penguins. The penguins look, curiously, at the terns, who turn, tiredly, in tortuous circles, to land on rocks, sprawl in the sun, and die from exhaustion. Actually, none arrived—they all died much, much earlier.

But the penguins begin to discuss it.

They decide the terns are foolish. Much better to simply evolve into a penguin, and dive for krill.

But they didn’t. Instead, they remained there during the Antarctic “summer,” happily surviving on the available foods. But since they had not yet developed the genetic “clock” that would warn them to leave long before the Antarctic winter arrived; since they could look all about them at various species of gulls, penguins, and other creatures, like seals, who were merely lying about, sunning themselves as if they hadn’t a care in the world, the terns stayed where they were.

Hadn’t they battled the elements, died by the thousands, struggled in the snows of Minnesota, and fought the thunderstorms of the equator to get here?

And so the Antarctic winter howled upon them with sudden intensity, and they all died. None survived. There aren’t any terns.

But there are.

So here we go again. Now, we’ve got to “imagine” the terns somehow “knew” when it was time to depart—“knew” which route to take, “knew” they should fly over billions of tons of tantalizing tern food, disdaining to remain there and evolve into a macaw or a red-winged blackbird, and wing their way up to the far north once again.

And if you believe all this just “evolved,” then I’ve got some great lakefront property in the Sahara I’d like to tell you about…

Evolutionists are Mixed Up

Ever pick an evolutionary textbook off the library shelf? Ever look through the introductory material; the first chapter?

If you do, you will run across expressions such as these:

“Out of man’s grasp,” “said to be,” “mystery,” “according to the theory,” “other ornithologists believe,” “no single solution,” “other theories proposed,” and “no adequate answer.”

Speaking of the “mystery of bird migration,” one “authority” came up with a truly classic line, “All theories fail when offered as the one solution to all migration” (Science News Letter, p. 19 1, September, 1962, emphasis mine).

Remember, “natural selection” and “survival of the fittest” absolutely require that various food-getting techniques have proved successful—and that those very techniques have contributed to the development and “evolution” of the species!

But evolutionists are rendered dizzy by the study of terns, plovers, warblers, hummingbirds, or, for that matter, any migrating species, from tuna to turtles, and from ladybird beetles to monarch butterflies!

One evolutionist must not have known what he was saying when he wrote, “If natural selection has been responsible for the evolution of the adaptedness of behavior in an animal, then the way that animal is behaving right now must obviously contribute to its survival” (Animal Behavior, Niko Tinbergen, Life Nature Library, p. 174, emphasis mine).

And that is the whole point.

They survive today by doing what they do. And they migrate. So, they had to MIGRATE to SURVIVE! And the very first migration had to be successful!

Undaunted, this source completed the quote by saying, “This is why studies of the survival value of behavior are not only important in their own right but are also required for an understanding of evolution” (ibid).

Oh. So we must understand “evolution” by understanding the complete “mystery” they claim they cannot understand?

Evolutionists tell us that there was a time when birds did not exist—except as disgruntled reptiles.

Well, now, let’s suppose there were no birds? Could this earth survive? Let a scientist tell us.

“Today, a countryside without birds would be unimaginable. And this is as it should be, for without birds HUMANITY WOULD FACE DISASTER.

“We have only to note how many different kinds of injurious insects are being continuously and tirelessly destroyed by birds, to see what part the latter play in saving our field and orchard crops from destruction, as so many kinds of birds are entirely insectivores.

“Equally effective is the help of birds in man’s fight against moles, mice, rats and other rodents which not only destroy the harvest in the fields, but also constitute a danger to human health as carriers of infectious diseases. These are only a few of the helpful roles played by birds in maintaining NATURE’S EQUILIBRIUM” (Strange and Beautiful Birds, Josef Seget, page 5, emphasis mine).

But notice what scientists tell us about the arrival time of birds and insects.

“Flying insects became a reality about fifty million years BEFORE the reptiles and birds took to the air, and for those fifty million years the only flying creatures were insects” (Insects, Ross Hutchins, pages 3, 4, emphasis mine).

But could the earth survive?

Let’s say it was only fifty million years, perhaps twenty-five million years, maybe five million years of difference. How about a thousand years? Would you believe a hundred?

Let’s see what would happen to a “birdless” earth!

“The descendants of a PAIR of houseflies, if they all lived and did well from April to August, would total 190,000,000,000,000,000,000 individuals. Fortunately, the balance of nature, in the form of natural controls, limits such population explosions among insects just as it does among other animals and among plants” (Insects, Ross Hutchins, page 9, emphasis mine).

Granted that insects eat other insects. Perhaps the earth would not be covered with forty feet of insects in one year.

But be sure that the earth COULD NOT SURVIVE unless birds and insects were CREATED TOGETHER to form that fantastic balance in nature, that man is just coming to understand.

Why don’t evolutionists think about the ecological implications of their theories for a change?

No, evolution has no answer for bird migration or how birds came to be such awe-inspiring creatures—just as they have no answer for the origin of MATTER, or the origin of LIFE!

It’s time you saw the real fallacies of evolution—time you faced squarely the ONLY ALTERNATIVE, that God DOES EXIST, and you can prove it!

There are thousands of similar problems for evolution. Regardless of sensational articles of the new “Scope’s Trail” in Arkansas a few years ago; of claims by scientists that evolution is true, when you take a really close look at the theory; when you apply plain common sense to their claims, you can see great flaws.

It’s no wonder evolutionists suffer a migration headache when it comes to bird migration.

“UPSIDE DOWN”
— The Distorted Theory of Evolution

Evolution stands exposed as a myth; a fanciful theory where so-called “fact”

is built upon assumption; where theory replaces data; where guesswork replaces

logic; where anti-supernaturalistic bias reigns supreme. Evolution is built on the

house of cards called “The Geologic Succession Of Strata,” which assumes

that the “oldest rocks” containing the “simplest forms of fossil life” are always

beneath “younger” rocks. Here, you will discover the astonishing truth about

evolution’s big lie!

  There are literally thousands of proofs that a Creator God exists. The Bible says we can know much about our Creator by looking at the things He has made! Paul wrote, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;

“Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them [evident to them; plain to see, right before their eyes!] ; for God hath showed it unto them.

“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world [by looking at the creation itself] are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

“Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened” (Romans 1:18-21).

We know a house had an architect and a builder. We know an automobile had a manufacturer. We know a child had parents. We know a watch had a maker. We know that an airplane was designed by aeronautical engineers, and that crystals form the same way every time, according to their properties. We know that mosquitos hatch from larvae, which were laid by adult mosquitos, which were hatched from larvae, just as we know chickens were hatched from eggs, which were laid by adult hens, which were hatched from eggs. We know that all life exists in a cycle, and that life comes only from pre-existing life. Further, life comes only from pre-existing life of the same kind.

These are absolutes. They are inexorable, immutable, unchanging.

It is important to remember, however, that there is such a thing as “micro-evolution,”  almost limitless variety within a Genesis kind; almost limitless adaptation. Hundreds of examples are instantly evident; moths which adapt to their environment, becoming virtually invisible as they take on the texture and color of plants and trees so as to conceal themselves from predators; the many hundreds of breeds of dogs (resulting, in the main, from man’s selective breeding); the incredible variety within the human race, from pygmies in the Ituri Forest in Africa to a Swede who is seven feet tall; from tiny Shetlands and miniature horses to the huge Percheron and Clydesdale; the myriad species of birds.

Evolutionists are fond of pointing to ‘micro-evolution,’ meaning the many varieties within a kind, and applying it to their theory that a kind evolved into a different kind!  This is utterly untrue. Whether pygmy or gigantic Swede, they are both human beings, and inter-fertile. A snowshoe rabbit, which is white in the winter and brown in the summer is still a snowshoe rabbit, and is not in process of becoming a whale, or a horse, or a monkey. A chameleon which is green on a green leaf and brown on a brown leaf is still a chameleon, and will give birth to other chameleons, not to a different species.  Actually, the very fact of such marvelous adaptation, such as the camouflage of certain birds, insects, animals and fish, is another proof of a Great Designer and Creator. 

All around us are proofs of God. The closer we look into the marvels of what men refer to as “Mother Nature” (interesting they refuse to call it “Father”), the more awesome, the more law-abiding, the more intricate, the more perfectly designed.

We know much about the Creator by looking at His creation. Creation means all that is; all that exists. That means the entire universe; all the stars and their planetary systems; all laws, all energy, all matter.

    We know that matter is energy arranged in intricate, law‑abiding ways. Matter is anything that has weight and occupies space. Even air is “matter.” Air consists of different kinds of gases, mostly oxygen, hydrogen and carbon dioxide, and suspended particulate matter. Where did it come from? What was before it? Oxygen in air is the result of the action of living plants and diatoms in the sea. Carbon dioxide results from humans and animals’s extracting oxygen, and giving off carbon dioxide. There is no “air” on the moon, or the other plants. Some of the planets are surrounded by thick, gaseous mantles which would be poisonous to life. 

    Obviously, a study of only a part of creation would require enough books to fill a very large library. Every conceivable physical science would be involved: Astronomy, Biology,  Geology and all the subdivisions of such fields, such as historical and dynamic geology, microbiology and genetics‑‑a vast field of special disciplines involving every aspect of the material universe would be involved in such a study. You should do yourself a favor, and, limiting your study to only one subject of the myriad number available, go to a public library, and study the articles in an encyclopedia about such mundane, taken-for-granted things as “air,” or “water,” or “light.” I promise you, you will be fascinated for the simple reason that most quit studying such things the moment they graduated from high school.

          “Terra Firma,” The Rocks Beneath Our Feet

Nothing is more immediately obvious when thinking of “the creation,” than the rocks beneath our feet. To illustrate only a few of these thousands of challenges to the vain theory of evolution, let’s investigate the so‑called “geologic succession of strata.” This phrase suggests there is an orderly succession in the rocks of our earth; that the most ancient rocks are always on the “bottom”, and that the younger rocks, containing much more “recent” forms of fossil life, are always on top.

Are the “oldest” rocks always on the bottom? In a sense, this is an irrelevant question, for the “geologic succession of strata,” having used a false system of measurement, has labeled so-called “older” rocks which they claim are atop so-called “younger” rocks, and then tried to explain away this anomaly by devious means.

As you will see, according to their false system of labeling strata, evolutionists have erroneously labeled the rocks. The terms “older” and “younger” are applied, not because of the order of the rocks; the depth at which they are found, or which layer is atop another, but because of the kind of fossil life forms found within the rocks!

As you will see, this is reasoning in a circle, and not true science at all. Evolutionary geology is built around the presupposition that our earth consists of layers of rock found in succession as they were deposited over aeons of time; that the very oldest rocks, containing no fossils, are at the bottom; that the “Archeozoic” and “Proterozoic” (“before life”) rocks contain no fossil remains; that the early “Paleozoic” rocks contain only “simple” life forms; that “Mesozoic” rocks contain ever more complex life forms until one arrives at the most “recent” strata, such as the ice ages (Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Recent), where one finds mammoths and man.

Further, evolutionary hypotheses are based upon the supposition that all these rocks were laid down over vast aeons of time; that the fossil record shows the passage of billions of years; that the fossils in the rocks were not laid down suddenly, as a result of great catastrophes, like a world‑wide flood! Yet, the Bible not only asserts that the flood of Noah was global, but allows, in the first verses of Genesis, for any number of submergences of the continental land masses beneath the waters of the seas. Any geologist knows that fossil sea shells are found atop the highest mountains on earth; from the Rockies to the Himalayas, from the Atlas to the Alps.

Evolutionists are fond of arranging the fossils as they are allegedly found in the rocks in museums, and in illustrations in textbooks. Yet, most laymen have assumed that only the deepest, most “ancient,” strata contain these “primitive” fossil forms. This, in spite of the fact that fossil dinosaurs are found on or near the surface in places from China to Colorado. Evolutionists established a theory long ago, and have built an incredibly warped, shaky, unstable superstructure atop it. They date the strata by the fossils found in them, and then date the fossils by the supposed age of the strata.

As one collegiate‑grade text asserts, “All fossil evidence has some significance in determining the geologic time of deposition of strata. Thus in the case of man the correlation of artifacts with the bones of extinct Pleistocene mammals is the chief reliance in dating stone age man with regard to the various glacial and interglacial stages of that epoch.”

Did you notice the important admission here? The author is asserting that “stone age man” is assigned a certain date because of “correlation of artifacts with the bones of extinct Pleistocene mammals.”

Once this false concept is assumed, it leads to incredible errors in dating fossil life. The author continued, “Again, any strata that contain dinosaur bones must be Mesozoic; those with vertebrate remains must be later than Ordovician, and trilobite fossils mean Paleozoic time” (“Geology,” by von Engeln and Caster, p. 435, emphasis mine).

Talk about dogma. Note that well. “Any strata that contain dinosaur bones must be Mesozoic.”  While this is simply not so, it sounds like a pronouncement issued by an individual that claims infallibility.  A kind of evolutionary pope, speaking from the holy see of erudition and anti-God evolution, issuing an infallible edict which all are required to accept.

There are insurmountable difficulties with the so‑called “Geologic Succession of Strata,” Let’s take a look at some of them.

              The “Geologic Succession Of Strata” Is False!

First, there is no place on earth where the entire Geologic Succession of Strata can be found. Obviously, the concept of the earth’s sedimentary rocks being found in orderly form, from most ancient to most recent is impossible to begin with. Where did the rocks come from? Rocks are either sedimentary (water deposited), metamorphic (formed by changes caused by faulting and pressure) or igneous (volcanic). Since there are no fossils in igneous rocks, and since there are virtually no fossils in metamorphic rocks, scientists are limited to investigating the water‑borne deposits, such as various kinds of marbles, sandstone, limestone and shale, to establish an age for the strata.

The strata are dated according to the fossils found in them. The fossils are dated according to the strata in which they are found. Does that sound rather arbitrary? It is. As we shall see, evolutionary geology immediately discards data; facts — evidence in the amount of billions of tons of rock; whole mountain ranges, mammoth regions of the earth, where the fossils found in the rocks contradict their theories.

True science always alters a given theory to admit proven facts. Not so with evolution. To illustrate this point, let’s get right to one of the most poignant and embarrassing, proofs. An important one is the ridiculous attempt by geologists to claim that whenever the fossils are “out of order” according to their “geologic succession of strata,” there is something wrong with the rocks!  They say in many cases the rocks are upside down — completely out of order!

When you walk into your bedroom and see the bed made, you probably suppose your wife spread the sheet on the bed prior to the cover, and the cover prior to the bedspread. She would look a little silly putting the bedspread on first, and then burrowing beneath it, attempting to spread the sheet. If she had done so out of caprice, there would probably be evidence pointing to the fact, for it would be virtually impossible to do a neat job unless she once again straightened the bedspread.

When you view layers of rock as exposed in highway cuts, canyons (like the Grand Canyon of Arizona) and river banks, and you see massive layers, sometimes twenty, thirty feet thick, seemingly as smooth and cohesive as if they had been mixed in a blender, lying conformably atop each other in orderly succession, it is logical to assume the layers on the bottom (if no evidence of faulting, such as tilted, folded, or fractured strata: isoclines, synclines, etc., is present) were deposited first; then the ones immediately above them, and, lastly, the layer on the top, like a chef would make a layer cake.

You would be quite correct, of course. However, evolutionists often tell us we are wrong to assume the younger strata are always atop older strata. Why? Because the fossils found in so‑called “younger” strata are often found beneath so‑called “older” strata.

When this occurs, as it quite frequently does, evolutionists become incredibly inventive. In order to tenaciously cling to their theories, in many regions, including large areas of significant mountain ranges, they seek to explain away the arrangement of millions of tons of rocks; miles upon miles of rocks where the fossils are out of proper order; sometimes “upside down.” Not that they are really “upside own,” please note, but that it appears “older” fossils are found in rocks above “younger” fossils, when these “older” fossils were supposedly extinct for millions of years! Yet, the layers appear undisturbed!

Problem! The rocks appear to have been smoothly laid down; are conformable to each other, showing no evidence of massive faulting, overthrusts, or any other activity. What a headache! What a problem for evolutionists!  If they admit what their eyes plainly tell them, they would be admitting their entire scheme of the “geologic succession of strata” is wrong; admitting that the supposed younger fossils did not evolve from supposed older, simpler ones!

But such an admission would be disastrous to evolutionists!

So, presto!  Forget the evidence.  Claim the rocks are “upside down!” Those rocks just have no right to be sitting there, mute, weighing billions of tons, in a ridiculous posture, containing the wrong kind of fossils!  Like many a clever defense attorney, just because the defendant was standing there, holding the gun, with the smoke still issuing forth, doesn’t mean he was the one who pulled the trigger!       

What kind of force would be required to superimpose massive layers of rock, weighing millions of tons, atop other layers? The kind of forces which caused mountain‑building; overthrusts, isoclines, synclines and geosynclines. When one sees twisted, tilted, and folded strata, which is clearly visible throughout the Swiss Alps, many other major mountain ranges, and in highway cuts in Southern California, one is seeing evidence of massive earthquakes on a scale never experienced in the history of mankind. Whenever a “younger” layer of rock is allegedly found beneath an “older” layer of rock, there is inescapable physical evidence which demonstrates how such an unusual phenomenon could have occurred.

To be sure, there are cases where such things can and do occur.  Such vast movement of massive regions of land would cause grinding, crushing destruction of the rocks closest to the moving layers, reforming them into “metamorphic” rocks, destroying all fossils.  Certainly, there could not have survived such delicate fossil forms as worm tracks, ferns and leafs, ripple marks, and the like after such catastrophic crushing and grinding. Any layman can look at two layers of rock, and determine if “slickensides,” the polished rocks formed at the place where faulting and slippage of the rocks occurred, is present. But what if the layer of rock (stratum) containing the so‑called “older” fossils, and the stratum containing the so‑called “younger” fossils beneath it show absolutely no evidence of any twisting, faulting, or movement? What if there is perfect conformity between them?

Obviously, they were deposited just as you view them. Therefore, assertions that fossils beneath other fossils are younger than the fossils atop them—perhaps by countless millions of years—are simply false. Though evolutionists may claim they are somehow “out of order,” or that we are viewing “deceptive conformity,” we are actually seeing the fossils in their respective layers of rock reposing in the exact order in which they were deposited.

You and I know that when mud is deposited by flooding, then gradually hardens, it begins to crack. Then, it erodes. Animals walk about upon it. Wind blows. Summer storms come along. In other words, any deposits of alluvial soil, slowly drying as the water which carried it there recedes, will show obvious evidence of the passage of time.  Especially when that time is assumed to be measured in the millions or even billions of years!

When any two layers containing so‑called “upside down” fossils record are lying perfectly, smoothly, uninterruptedly together, as if the tide of mud which had deposited the bottom layer had no sooner receded when another flow of different mud, containing different forms of life, came from another direction and was deposited immediately, it is obvious that the evolutionists have made a serious error in their dating theories.

The rocks are not in error. Evolutionists are. When one cannot slip a thin knife between two smoothly‑mixed layers of sandstone; when there is absolutely no evidence of any erosion, or overthrust faulting (which would crush the rock, grind it, metamorphose it, and cause a completely different kind of rock structure), then one must assume the rocks were deposited exactly as they appear—-  the older on the bottom, and the younger on the top, like your sheet and your bedspread.

Of course, what you are looking at when you see such strata piled atop each other so uniformly is in itself evidence of a massive catastrophe; floods on unimaginable scale which held vast amounts of silts and muds in dissolution, and which came flowing over the recently‑deposited mud of a previous tide. That huge amounts of the rocks in the earth’s surface were deposited suddenly is anathema to evolutionists, for they detest the word “catastrophism,” a word which means much of the geologic formations on the earth were the result of gigantic catastrophes, such as huge floods, giant earthquakes, and the unimaginable movement of the tectonic plates. 

Their false theories require vast amounts of time! Time for birds to evolve from dinosaurs; for four-footed quadrupeds to climb down from trees, enter the oceans, and gradually have their nostrils move from their nose to their foreheads; their hairy bodies become sleek skin, until they become toothed whales and dolphins!

Evolutionists simply will not admit that different layers of strata, containing vastly different species, could have lived contemporaneously. Once having insisted that their supposed “geologic succession of strata” is correct, they stolidly refuse to alter the theory to suit the facts.

  “Rock Bottom” — Where Is It? Which Layer Is “On The Bottom?”

Which stratum is the oldest of all fossil‑bearing rock, and therefore (according to evolution) contains the “earliest” and “simplest” of all life forms?  Long ago, evolutionary theory accepted as fact that primitive, simple life forms are invariably found at the “bottom” of the layers of rocks; that, as one progresses through layer after layer toward the “top,” the life forms become ever more complex. This is a given. Virtually every high school graduate who has been introduced to only a little sample of geology, or history, or biology, has been told repeatedly that this is so. But it is not so.

Long ago, evolutionists used the order of fossils found in a few regions in Western Europe and New York state to establish their evolutionary column. They have assumed that fossil forms of ancient life are invariably found in the same order all over the world. Such is not the case. In fact, evolutionary geologists have not yet determined, with any degree of certainty,  which layer of rock is the “bottom” insofar as the fossil record is concerned.

As one eminent geologist says, “For any given limited locality, where stratigraphy can be followed out, the lowest beds are certainly the oldest. But we can make no progress by such a method when we come to deal with the world at large, for actual stratigraphical relationships can be proved over only very limited areas.

“These beds may be the lowest in this locality, may rest on the granite or crystalline schists, and have every appearance of antiquity. But other beds containing very different fossils, are in precisely this position elsewhere, and where stratigraphical order can no more prove the relative age of their fossils than the overlap of scales on a fish proves those at the tail to be older than those at the head” (Evolutionary Geology And The New Catastrophism, by Price: p. 78, emphasis mine).

Price goes on to show how “...any kind of fossiliferous rock whatever, even ‘young’ Tertiary rocks, may rest upon the Archaean or Azoic series, or may themselves be almost wholly metamorphosed or crystalline, thus resembling in position and outward appearance the so‑called ‘oldest’ rocks” (ibid. p. 79).

In his chapter on “finding bottom,” Price concludes, “...I see no escape from the acknowledgment that the doctrine of any particular fossils’ being essentially older than others is a pure invention, with absolutely nothing in nature to support it” (ibid. p. 87).

Evolutionary geology operates on a false assumption that the layers of rock on the earth are invariably found in the same order, like the layers of an onion. Obviously the whole world is not like an onion, with the oldest rocks on the bottom, progressing upward until arriving at the most “recent” rocks, for the earth is round, after all, and each layer of sedimentary rock was water borne, and had to come from some other area, where the materials the water carried were scoured by massive floods; tides, rivers, and so‑on. Logically, the area so scoured is now absent the exact amount of materials which were deposited elsewhere.

Bottom, or the lowest rocks next to the liquid magma upon which the tectonic plates “float” is naturally where there are no fossils in evidence, according to evolutionary theory. Bottom means, usually, “bedrock” of granite and various schists; metamorphic rock, atop which one finds sedimentary rock, containing various fossil forms. But, as Price proves, “Since the life‑succession theory [evolution] rests logically and historically on the biological form of Werner’s onion‑coat notion that only certain kinds of rocks (fossils) are to be found at the ‘bottom,’ or next to the Archaean, or Primitive, and it is now acknowledged everywhere that any kind of rocks whatever may be thus situated [including Tertiary rocks, containing fossils of mammoths and men!], it is as clear as sunlight that the life‑succession theory rests logically and historically on a myth, and that there is no way of proving what kind of fossil was buried first”(ibid. p. 87).

In spite of such overwhelming evidence, evolutionists cling to their false theory. Students who intend entering the teaching field in the subjects of anthropology or paleontology are not taught from books such as those by Nelson, Price, Whitcomb and Morris, and a host of others. They are never told about such books, which are dismissed by evolutionary geologists; completely ignored.

Yet, there are many studious works which completely dismantle the evolutionary theory. Outstanding examples are “Darwin On Trial,” by Phillip E. Johnson, published by Regnery Gateway, Washington, D.C., and “Evolution‑‑Possible or Impossible?” by James F. Coppedge, published by Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and “The Bone Peddlers‑‑Selling Evolution,” by William R. Fix, published by Macmillan. Two excellent and very recent books are those by James Perloff, “Tornado in a Junkyard,” published in 1999, and “The Case Against Darwin,” published in 2002.

Price conclusively shows, most of the rocks of our earth prove great catastrophes occurred in the past; and most of the sedimentary rocks, including miles and miles of coal beds show very recent “catastrophes,” such as massive floods. Since God’s word speaks of a global flood, and the rocks cry out in a great roaring voice that “A massive flood caused this,” only a fool would ignore the obvious message of the rocks. It requires on the average about a forty foot thick layer of vegetation ripped up, and water borne to then be crushed beneath subsequent layers of muds to form a seam of coal only one foot thick. Coal beds prove gargantuan catastrophes in the past, as do many, many other strata, such as marbles, which are sometimes formed from solid masses of sea bottom life.

All such evidence completely destroys the theory that it required vast aeons of time for various forms of life to “evolve” into other, remarkably different forms of life; that men eventually evolved from “simple, one-celled animals” like amoeba. 

To assume that our continents and islands; the massive mountain ranges of our earth, and all topographical features of the land are the result of “uniformity;” that we are viewing the results of a very slow, gradual process which required billions of years is sheer nonsense.

Our present river systems and deltas portray only a very recent development. In the North American continent are hundreds of dry lake beds, vast areas where ancient inland sea shores are clearly visible. The Great Salt Lake is but a tiny puddle remaining from massive “Lake Bonneville,” which was a massive inland sea at one time. The Mississippi River is but a tiny trickle when compared with the monstrous drainage basin that once surged toward the South, carrying untold amounts of silts and sediments that were deposited across many states. When the North American continent was thrust upward from the seas which covered it, the buckling of the tectonic plates beneath caused the massive mountain building that is evident by looking at the great Rocky Mountains; the Cascades, and the Sierra Madre mountains. In the river valleys one discovers deep layers of sedimentary rocks. Along the spines of the mountains, one sees the ancient granites and schists; upthrusts of “bedrock” that soar as high as 14,000 feet in the continental United States, and above 22,000 feet in Chile.

Here and there, at incredibly high elevations, one discovers fossils which could only have existed in the seas; fossils preserved, not through the process of gradual change, but uprooted, sorted by alluvial action, and deposited by the millions, suddenly.

The vast San Juaquin Valley of California was once a gigantic bay, teeming with sea life. At its southern end, around Bakersfield, are supposedly some of the “oldest” mountains found on the North American continent. Why the so-called oldest? Because paleontologists have found fossilized sharks there, and, since the kinds of sharks found “belong” to a certain stratum found elsewhere, and therefore must be of a certain “age,” that same age is assigned to the hills around Bakersfield.

Among these rolling, yet steep and gravely hills is “Shark Tooth Mountain.” Actually, it is not just one mountain, but a number of ridges and ravines; smaller hills, which contain countless hundreds of thousands of sharks teeth and bones.

Many years ago, it proved one of the most exciting “classes” of the year when I would arrange a field trip for my college students to go to “Shark’s Tooth Mountain.” We would take wire mesh baskets with wooden frames, into which we would shovel the gravely soil. By shaking the loose soil rapidly, like a winnowing process, the dirt and smaller pieces would fall through the mesh, and, with surprising regularity, we would discover shark’s teeth of various sizes. Some were found right on the surface.

Our field trips proved to us that, at some time perhaps many thousands of years ago, a vast inland basin, or bay, had existed in central California, of which San Francisco Bay is but a tiny remnant. Further, that this shallow inland basin, or sea, contained countless fish and sharks. Further, that some great catastrophe had suddenly killed all that sea life. Further, that, due to the sorting action of water, and massive tides flowing this way and that as the former inland sea drained, the decaying bodies of millions of fish and sharks were mangled and torn; that there were so many of them, that hundreds of thousands of teeth were deposited in one small region. A study of specific gravity; the density of various bodies in water and how they are “sorted” by fluvial action is all that is necessary to understand the process.

“Reading” the rocks by noting the kinds of fossil forms found within them; the shape and texture of the rocks; the accompanying rocks above, below, and all around them, is not difficult. These rounded, yet steep hills had obviously been deposited by massive tides and waves which had sluiced back and forth for many years, as what had once been a salt water basin was being raised above the level of the Pacific, and the millions of creatures which lived in it were trapped, died, were torn apart; their remains being “sorted” so that they were deposited as we found them.

The entire journey was a fascinating study in paleontology and geology, for in the highway cuts between the mountains, we could see plain evidence of massive faulting, folding, twisting of the strata. Of course, we drove right through the famous “San Andreas” fault, where mind-boggling earthquakes have occurred in the past.

Perhaps those who live on the plains, or in farming states like Iowa or Illinois, are not quite so aware of how great catastrophes formed and shaped our continent. Yet, they have only to look at the rich black soil of Iowa, note its depth, determine which kinds of rocks lie beneath it, and so-on, to appreciate how America’s richest soil was formed by the fluvial action of water, many thousands of years ago. It is ludicrous to assume, for example, that the Grand Canyon of Arizona is the result of the slow, gradual scouring action of today’s Colorado River! One only has to journey downstream for a few hundred miles, to the dams along the Colorado River system along the border with California, to see “conglomerates” and other sedimentary deposits which show immediate evidence of massive river flows in the past.

When you see huge stones, as large as automobiles, lying mixed among rocks of every conceivable size and shape, as well as gravels and sand—when those rocks, no matter how large, or how small, are rounded; many of them smoothed off, so as to have very few jagged edges, it means they were rolled and tumbled along for many, many miles together.

The operative word is “together.” It requires massive flows of water to tumble rocks that are as large as a house! Only by river flows that are hundreds of times larger than the present flow of the Colorado could those rocks have been deposited together, obviously at the same time.

Evolutionists may not like the word “catastrophe” being applied to geology and paleontology, but it is the only word applicable when one looks at the plain chapter and verse of the rocks themselves. Only a casual study of the Grand Canyon tells us of at least two of the most massive floods imaginable: the first, when the huge layers of sedimentary rock were deposited all over the southwest—layers which lie smoothly mixed, perfectly conformable to each other, for many, many miles. The second, when those water-deposited layers were scoured to the depth of one mile, carving out the most awesome, massive canyon on earth, and depositing billions of tons of rock in jumbled profusion for hundreds of miles.

“Uniform” flows of the Colorado did not deposit the gigantic layers of sandstone, many of them 60 to 80 feet thick, mixed as smoothly as if in a giant blender, which are visible along the rim of the Grand Canyon. Neither did “uniform” flow of the river, even including seasonal variations due to flooding, accomplish the scouring of the entire Grand Canyon.

Your eyes and camera which can record such awesome sights, and which does not lie, tell you, “this was a massive catastrophe” at some ancient time in the past, not the result of gradual processes; not the result of the deposition of sands and silts along a single river bank.     

“Evolutionary Geology And The ‘New Catastrophism,’” by George M. Price (Pacific Press) is a book I highly recommend to serious students of the question of whether evolution is true, or whether God exists. It is replete with examples from all over the world like that mentioned above; geologic evidence of “catastrophes,” which occurred suddenly which are simply irrefutable. Unfortunately, it may be out of print, although it might be possible for one of the large Internet book sellers to find a copy, or it might be found in a used book store.

As David said, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Psalm 14:1).

There are many educated fools in this world.

If humans and all of their behaviors and emotions, including those that give us spiritual feelings, evolved from natural selection, what would have been the fitness advantage and reason for why humans evolved these traits, in particular spirituality? The fitness advantage to a reasoning and problem solving mind is obvious, but what advantage did a spiritual mind have? If it had no fitness advantage, why did it arise? The argument that it is just a side product from the gradual evolution of our highly evolved minds just does not sit well with me. If humans are spiritual enough to create their own religions and fight wars over who’s religion is correct, the spiritual side of the human mind could not be a simple side product. Our spirituality would have to be a highly evolved trait, after all no other animal in the universe has a spiritual side. Without an actual fitness advantage how could such an intricate human emotion arise? Does anyone understand what I am trying to get at? I know I have a lot of questions but I want to see what people think about this. Any thoughts?

Hi scott…Interesting point you have. I’ll do my best to give my own personal opinion on how our spirituality could have evolved, since u asked for other people’s opinions on here. I think there is great evolutionary significance to spirituality. Mainly, in that through spirituality we form alliances with other people, and this creates solidarity and obvious advantages in survival. There is a great amount of mystery in the world. and our desire to know things, and to organize them helps in our ability to survive. By making discoveries in science and technology we prolong our lives, retain our health, cure/treat diseases. Sprituality seems to me to be part of this curiosity we humans have for figuring things out.

As I read the article above I kept asking myself, “why does it have to be one or the other?”.  Why do we constantly have to debate or search for an ultimate truth by suggesting that one theory is the “right” theory.  At the risk of sounding Forrest-Gumpish, maybe it’s both.  Why not?  Who knows, maybe when God “created” man our interpretation is entirely wrong.  Maybe (for those of you who believe in God) He created us as simple organisms with the intention of our evolution.  Open your mind and ponder that.

I maybe fairly unique but I was taught in three public school systems in three states in the mid-west. I was never given any alternatives to the system of creation known as “evolution” through out my education. I don’t expect any sympathy though for my position as it seems that the patrons of this article would feel I’ve been blessed. Though I do believe in the Judeo-Christian theory of creationism in general; I don’t feel that denying anyone all the information available is fair or just. Had I of been taught in the same spirit of the Romans or Greeks I believe I would have been more equipped to tackle more immediate social concerns like the crisis in Darfur ,rampant teen pregnancy, or the inherent problem of over populations in China. Let’s not kid ourselves we all have an agenda. Let us at least instruct others in a way that allows them to establish there own.

no one has to belive in god he believes in you
and one day we will all see his glory and power
not to slander anyone who doesnt agree
im glad you picked a side
because we all have free will
i just pray you come to see the truth that satan has hid you from

“one day we will all see his glory and power”......
then what’s the problem if you are so certain of this Kalvin? Belief is a very personal thing, and to say that because someone doesn’t necessarily share in your concept of God that they cannot see the truth because it was hidden from them by satan? wow.

I think a good thing would be for people to stop trying to ‘save’ everyone else’s souls. If we all just worry about being good people to ourselves and others, and stop passing judgement on those around us…everything will be just fine. To believe that there is only one solitary pathway to achieving salvation in this life is blatantly ignorant.

Okay, I see alot of your guys’ opinions and I respect your opinions, but the big bang theory I see it as pointless. I mean how does someone jus automatically appear with as detailed as we are? Don’t diss people’s religions or lack there of for the people that have. I’m Christian, but my ex boyfriend is Muslim and I find judging people because of religion totally and completely wrong. Just because they don’t believe what you do doesn’t make them stupid. It’s for God to judge not people. Get your bible straight people. I personally believe in creationism but I won’t hate someone who doesn’t agree with me and it’s not my job to judge.

I read the article because my favorite band in the whole wide wide wide world is Incubus and Mike is one of my personal knights in shining armor, including the rest of the band.
In my personal opinion I believe in the theory of evolution- I think that creation and evolution should be discussed, however people shouldn’t fight over it. In the grand scheme of things it’s not truly a big deal. Sure there’s all sorts of evidence of evolution- fossils, biochemistry, geology, etc., but then again creation can’t be disproven, which is the beauty of the whole situation. It’s important to know where we’ve come from and what our history is, but trying to untie and shoot down something that has fueled much of humanity to continue is evil. Believe what you want it doesn’t matter, but respect other people for their beliefs and realize that the fact that neither Evolution or Creation can be disproven is something so beautiful that it has given many a reason to continue.

actually, Creationism is disprovable, and has very effectively been disproven by science. Creationism (the religious assertion that God created everything in the universe IN IT’S PRESENT-DAY FORM.) Is just flat-out wrong. The good news for anyone who believes in God (as I do) is that this does not disprove God whatsoever. There is NO issue between Evolution and belief in God, not at all.  However, the conservative Christians that support Creationism are trying their hardest to   manufacture a controversy…and i think that is what this article is about. and as for disproving evolution, that would be easy. If someone dug up a skeleton with the characteristics of a modern human that dated back to millions of years ago, evolution would fall apart. But this has yet to happen, or show any signs of happening.

Technically in current physics something can come from nothing, due to vacuum fluctuations. The conservation of energy is not everything. Now about evolution, I used to believe it, now I am cautious. I have heard that there is wooly thinking about the fossil record, and that radio-carbon dating assumes a lot stays constant. So now I’m keeping an open mind unless it turns out to be important. But regardless, biblically, randomness and God are the same, because he is totally fair but unpredictable, and proverbs says he controls all the “lots” which are random trials. So mutation is a gift of God in that sense. Now the moment I say that the thing comes up, “Well why do horrible things happen then?” because by rejecting Gods meaning for ourselves, we ask for a world without meaning, and that is what he has given us, to a degree at least; if he totally gave us what we asked for we’d be dead. The only way to fully restore meaning is to follow him. I have seen examples of healing before, though not as many as I’d like, as well as transformation of peoples personalities, and I am confident that those who follow him get access to a better deal. We then get to share that good deal as wide as possible, producing a tree that can shelter all the birds and animals, meaning the environment and physical world, as well as those people who have not yet accepted him. But its better on the inside!

Miller’s analogy between a simplified mousetrap and tie clip couldn’t be more flawed. He neglects to include himself within the analogy as the energy input and loading mechanism. He also conveniently leaves out the mechanism used for holding the potential energy stored within the now loaded spring. Without these all important components of the overall system, no mice can be caught by a mousetrap in which the above said elements are non existent. The system remains irreducibly complex.

Josh, you missed the entire point that Ken miller made, which was to signify that the individual parts of the mousetrap have useful purposes outside of being part of the mousetrap alone. Yes, you are right that no mice can be caught, but the point is that the parts can have purposes useful for things OTHER than just catching mice. This is obvious throughout all of biology, that proteins can serve many different purposes, and thus the theory of irreducible complexity fails miserably. Any wonder why irreducible complexity is not considered a ‘significant’ theory by all working biologists at the tops of their fields? Because it is a bogus theory that makes no predictions, and is completely useless for studying nature. If one can deduce that anything is ‘irreducibly complex’, does that mean it’s time to stop researching? and just say ‘this was magically created’? That’s what the ID’ers want, and that’s nothing but crappy science.

This was a wonderful article.  I must admit that I was simply looking for something to pass the time while working a night security job, but this was well worth the time which is most often wasted.  I am a fan of Incubus and was reading their blog when the title of your article acted as the hook.  I was well pleased to see your inventive writing continued in your introduction to a slightly one-sided, but altogether edifying discussion. Sadly there is one thing that does bother me about evolution, and it is that many people assume that because of evolution we orginated from chimpanzees—the poop tossing, loud screeching, adorable little animals that bear an uncanny resemblance to human teenagers. I always believed and understood that it is not that we evolved from that direct image but that from a common ancestor we both began to evolve into our seperate niches. I am right? am I not?

resist, unlearn, defy…

have faith!

As a Catholic, I, like Ken Miller, have reconciled my acceptance of evolution with my faith. I do not disagree that misconceptions exist within the various churches regarding evolution, but I do submit that there also exist misconceptions and misunderstandings outside the faith community regarding its position, or more accurately, positions, on evolution.

First of all, a wide variety of doctrinal and theological differences can be found between the branches of Christianity. Therefore no one can legitimately lump together all Christians or insinuate that we all have a common canon, even though there are core beliefs that we all embrace. For the same reason I won’t presume to argue from a Protestant perspective, but only from my own Catholic point of view.

I was educated in a Catholic school where I was *taught*, yes taught, the theory of evolution and presented with its evidence. There was no conspiracy to teach creationism as it is presented in this article or to contradict solid science. This held true into high school as well, where again, I attended a Catholic institution. Einziger is correct in his assertion that not all churches misrepresent evolution, however, the point is almost lost in the article.

As the author quite rightly points out, faith and science are not mutually exclusive. An honest, reasonable, open mind would not rule out the possibility that evolution is in fact, part of a Creator’s “intelligent design” and that what Ken Miller refers to as a feature of nature is in fact a feature of his God’s will. That is my position, but I am not revealing it for the purpose of convincing anyone. I only mention it to convey to any readers that even evolution and a reasonable interpretation of intelligent design are not mutually exclusive. Science, as any scientist will readily admit, answers “what” and “how” questions much better than “why” questions. I turn to faith for my “why”, and so do billions of reasonable people across the globe. I doubt those people appreciate being lumped in with the minority who reject science.

Now to the minority who reject the evidence for evolution. Scientists should be cautious in discarding their opinions and, more importantly, tune down the thinly veiled hostility when doing so. After all, skepticism is a pillar of science. Not that I agree with a rejection of evolution, but I do agree with respect. I mean this generally, perhaps not pertaining specifically to this interview or its subjects.

Neither Genesis nor my teachers have ever prevented me from embracing evolution as true science, nor made the acceptance in the least bit difficult. I acknowledge that the author’s introduction and the subsequent interview did make mention that such situations exist. I must object, however, that the author writes with an apparent bias against “church” in general, without drawing clear distinctions between the institutions that word represents or acknowledging that at least within the Catholic Church an overwhelming majority of scientifically minded believers accept both evolution and science in a larger context.

In conclusion, kudos to the author for an insightful article on the whole, and to Miller and Einziger for their participation and continuing work in science. Looking forward to more discussion of this important issue and music from Incubus. I’m a fan of both.

@Gods Warrior

really nice and intresting comment
respect

We should every night call ourselves to an account; What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abort of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

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Good point. Jus what was needed

It is very important to know what literary form a writhe uses to convey his message. Is it a history, a poem, a figure of speech, a parable? If you don not know, you may misunderstand the writer’s message.

Great theoretical true ideas. The revolutionary inductive hypothesis of Charles Darwin late in the 19th century led to the reactionary, evolutionary vision that there was no evidence of beneficial design of any kind.

Great theoretical and true ideas.The revolutionary inductive hypothesis of Charles Darwin late in the 19th century led to the reactionary, evolutionary vision that there was no evidence of beneficial design of any kind.

Historic and mysterious ideas and theory. Sometimes its tough enough to be relate the evolution and the triangle.

Historical, mysterious theoretical ideas. Sometimes it becomes tough to relate the evolution and triangle.

Thanks for the historical lesson.

Thanks for the historical lesson. <a >cleaner reviews</a>