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Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I see there is a great deal of interest this evening in our discussion. I feel as though I'm transported back a century to a meeting of the British Association in June of eighteen sixty when the creationists and the evolutionists met nose to nose. At that moment in time, the creationists had a larger following than the evolutionists did. We'll see what happens tonight. I'm asked to make two announcements. One, smoking is not allowed in this auditorium, and two, what if...
And two, there is a book available written by Dr. Gish, which normally sells for about two dollars, that is available now tonight because of a subsidy from some benefactor for fifty cents to students, faculty, and others. Let me give you an idea of our format tonight so you know how we're going to proceed. I gather that the question tonight is resolved. Creationism better explains the scientific facts for the status of beings on this earth than does evolution. Hence, the affirmative will be from the gentlemen who are sitting to my right.
Those who believe in creation, scientific creation, will be speaking afterwards for the same amount of time, which will be sixty minutes. We will be therefore going sixty minutes with the affirmative position, which is that creationism is a better explanation of the facts, and then sixty minutes rebuttal by the gentlemen who are sitting at my left. If I were to enumerate their credentials, it would take me that two hours because they are distinguished men, not just men who believe in a particular ideology, but men of science. The gentlemen who are sitting at my right, Dr.
Morris, has a PhD from the University of Minnesota, and Dr. Gish has a PhD in biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley. And the gentlemen to my right, some of you have taken their courses, uh, one of them is Doctor uh, Marion Bickford, who has his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana, and Doctor Wiley, who has his uh, PhD from the City University of New York. The majority of people on the stage tonight have Phi Beta Kappas, and they have a long keys, and they have a long list of publications in science, and in the case of the gentleman to my right, they have publications in other areas as well.
I think what they have to say will be fascinating to you, and after we have had our sixty minutes of affirmative and negative statements, we will have rebuttals. Ten minutes from one side, ten minutes from the other side, another ten minutes from one side, and then a final ten minutes. And then, if we've all made it to that, we will have a session of questions from the audience, and we hope that, uh, you will ask questions and not give us lectures, because we will have our lectures first. Without further commentary, allow me to introduce the two gentlemen who will speak to the affirmative side, Dr.
Morris and Dr. Dish. Thank you, Dr. McKinney. Well, we certainly appreciate the, uh, extremely encouraging display of interest in this subject exhibited by this very large audience. Appreciate your presence here and trust it'll be a profitable evening for you. We're also grateful for the opportunity of discussing this subject with two such outstanding scientists as Dr. Bickford and Dr. Wiley, and we hope that this will be a very stimulating evening as we proceed into it.
We're going to, from our point of view, try to show that scientific creationism is a better explanation for the facts of science and of human existence than is evolution. We're not going to be dealing with theological or biblical matters, but strictly with the scientific evidence, and I trust you'll evaluate it on that basis. I think it's good to define our terms, first of all. What do we mean by evolution and creation in the sense that we're debating tonight? And it's important especially that we understand what's meant by evolution, because we want to stress that we're not discussing the, what we might call horizontal changes, that is changes within the kind at the same level of complexity, such as the shift in coloration of the moth or the, uh, ability of the insects to resist DDT and so on.
Rather, we're talking about vertical change from one level of order and complexity and information to a higher level over the ages. This is the framework of evolution that we are debating. And so with that in mind, I'd like to define the evolution model, as we would call it, in the words of Sir Julian Huxley, who is certainly one of the leading evolutionists of our generation. Uh, Sir Julian defined it this way. He says, evolution can be defined as a directional and essentially irreversible process occurring in time, which in its course gives rise to an increase of variety and an increasingly high level of organization in its products. Our present knowledge indeed forces us to the view that the whole of reality is evolution, a single process of self-transformation.
And note several words in particular there. He's talking about not horizontal change, but vertical change toward higher levels of organization. He's talking about an irreversible process through time. He's talking about a self-contained process, not one which is directed by any external supernatural agent or anything of that sort, but rather it's a process of self-transformation. The universe is transforming itself through its own properties and laws and processes into these higher levels of organization and variety. And furthermore, it's a total picture. He says the whole of reality is evolution, and the picture, of course, is that billions of years ago there were nothing, perhaps, but some sort of random particles or matter in some form, which gradually developed into particles and molecules and then planets and galaxies.
And on this planet, maybe several billions of years ago, the inorganic chemicals evolved into replicating chemicals, and life began. And then the first simple forms of life gradually evolved into more and more complex forms of life. This is the picture of total evolution, as he says, the whole of reality is evolution, a single process of self-transformation. Now, in contrast to that, the creation model says that we can never really explain the world that way, by continuing processes such as occur today. It says that we must postulate a period of special creation sometime in the past, not saying when, but there must have been a period of creation in which there were, there were supernatural processes, that is, processes that are not natural to the present order, and that these processes were creative and brought into existence the basic categories of nature, such as the laws of nature, the basic structures of the universe, and certainly the basic kinds of plants and animals, and especially to mankind, so that these basic systems were brought into existence by special processes which are not continuing in the present.
One says that we can explain all things in terms of continuing natural processes, the other that we must postulate a period of completed supernatural processes to explain the basic systems in nature. Now, this is the, uh, these are the definitions of the two models, at least as Dr. Gish and I will view them this evening, and we're, uh, undertaking to show that the creation model explains the facts better. Now, you should understand, of course, that neither model, neither creation or evolution, can be proved scientifically, nor can it be disproved scientifically, either one of them. For the simple reason we cannot repeat history, and the essence of science, the scientific method is repeatability, observation, experimentation, what we see and can observe and measure, that's science, and we can't do that with past history.
We can't bring that into the laboratory, we can't reproduce creation in the laboratory. And as far as evolution is concerned, in the vertical sense, we can't do that either because, as David Kitz says, quoting from, uh, Dr. Kitz in the journal Evolution, September nineteen seventy four, he says evolution in the sense that Darwin speaks of it, that's the sense that we speak of it, cannot be detected within the lifetime of a single observer. If evolution is taking place from one level to a higher level, it takes millions of years, and we can't look at that in the laboratory either. So neither is within the scope of true experimental science, so in the last analysis, one must, uh, finally decide which he wants to believe, which is a more reasonable model, although he must recognize that he cannot prove either one.
Now, let me emphasize this just a bit so that we really understand this point. This is very important, and this, you see, is why we think it is proper to have a dialogue on this issue. Instead of teaching on the only the one model of evolution, as is so often true, we think both should be taught because both are reasonable models that can be made to fit the facts. And incidentally, we're not so much concerned, you see, I say dialogue, we're not so much concerned to win debates as we are to win a hearing for the creation model, because for the most part, most people have not heard the evidence that we'll try to cite tonight. Dr. Paul Ehrlich at Stanford, in an article in Nature magazine a few years ago, said this: Our theory of evolution has become one which cannot be refuted by any possible observations. Every conceivable observation can be fitted into it.
And of course, at first, that might sound like what makes it a very good theory if everything fits it, but no, that's what makes it a bad theory. It's so flexible that everything can be made to fit it, therefore there's no way to test it. And he goes on to say that. He says, it is thus outside of empirical science, but not necessarily false. No one can think of ways in which to test it. It would be good if somebody could devise an experiment that you could set up and run and measure, and on the basis of that test, decide whether evolution or creation had been true, but there's no way to do that because you can't reproduce this in the lab. So he says, ideas either without basis or based on a few laboratory experiments carried out in extremely simplified systems have attained currency far beyond their validity. They have become part of an evolutionary dogma accepted by most of us as part of our training.
Evolutionary dogma. Now, dogma, you see, is not a scientific term. That's really a religious term. There must be faith exercised finally in evolution. Dr. Matthews, in the foreword to the latest edition of Darwin's Origin of Species, Dr. Matthews, a British biologist, evolutionist, fellow of the Royal Society, says this: Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation. Both are concepts which believers know to be true, but neither is capable of proof. And he also says, the theory of evolution is so plausible that we accept it as though it were a proven fact. It forms a satisfactory faith on which to base our interpretation of nature.
Evolution is a faith, a belief, a dogma. Well, these are religious terms. In other words, we're really talking about two faiths, ultimately, in creation or evolution. That doesn't mean we can't discuss them scientifically, however, in terms of the, the ability of these two faiths to correlate the facts of science. A more recent paper by C. Leon Harris, nineteen seventy five, on the axiomatic nature of evolution, particularly the neo-Darwinian theory. He says, recognizing that these are axiomatic places the debate between evolutionists and creationists in a new perspective. Evolutionists have often challenged creationists to provide experimental proof that species have been fashioned out of nothing, and of course we can't do that. Creationists have often demanded that evolutionists show how chance mutations can lead to adaptability, or to explain why natural selection has favored some species but not others with special adaptations, or why natural selection ap- allows apparently detrimental organs to persist.
Now, if this theory is axioma- axiomatic, as he says, which is what he maintains, it is not valid for creationists to demand proof of the axioms. Neither is it valid for evolutionists to dismiss special creation as unproved, so long as it's stated as an axiom. So these models, axioms, faiths, systems, whatever you wish, we cannot ultimately prove or disprove, but what we should do is to define the models in the simplest term, use them as vehicles for predicting and correlating the facts of science, see which one does the best job with the smallest number of modifications to make them fit the difficulties. Now, you can always make either model fit the facts by expanding the model to make it explain all the particular problems and, uh, special cases, but the one which will fit the facts in the simplest form with the smaller number of the secondary modifications is more likely to be the correct model, although we cannot ultimate- ultimately prove it.
Now, with this preliminary, let me, uh, give you an example or two of what I mean as to why we say that the creation model fits the facts more easily and directly than does the evolution model. Take, for example, one of the primary evidences that we think favors creation, that is the extreme evidence of design complexity in nature. Now, evolutionists think that design, or what appears to be design, can be explained by natural selection or some other means, but sometimes these complexities and interrelationships are so marvelous that it just boggles the imagination to think how this could have happened by any kind of natural random process, and in particular, the living organism is so complex.
Take the human body, for example. You've heard people say, well, the human body really is not all that, uh, special after all. If it were all broken down into its components, the carbon and oxygen and hydrogen and nitrogen and so on, it would only be worth a few cents. A recent article, perhaps you saw in Science News just last month, the author referring to this says high school textbooks used to make a big point about the materials that make up the human body being worth about ninety seven cents. Yale molecular biologist Harold J. Morawetz, of course, has been active in the space program and the search for life in outer space. He says he got out a biochemical company's catalog and added up the cost of the synthesized materials, such as hemoglobin and the other materials, not just carbon and hydrogen, you see, our bodies are not made up just of that, but of very complex compounds of these substances.
And so with that approach, getting out the catalog and seeing what these would cost, he came up with the cost of six million dollars, fifty— six million and fifteen dollars and forty four cents as the cost of a human body. So you see, we're all six million dollar men. But that isn't the whole story, because these chemicals that you can buy out of a biochemical company's catalog, of course, are not really living things. And he goes on to estimate that if it were possible to take the chemicals and synthesize and build them up into the actual organelle level in the living cell, it would probably cost many trillions of dollars, if we could do it at all.
Now that, uh, points up the extreme complexity of the living system. And when you get to the point of a, even just a living cell, sometimes people talk about the simple cell, the first cell that evolved in the primeval soup or something. Well, a simple cell is not really very simple. It's an extremely complex system, all sorts of interrelationships and components, and the human body is made up of trillions of cells, and even the cerebral cortex in the brain has perhaps ten billion cells all interwoven together, and each cell is intricately complex in itself. A book by Dr. Green at the University of Wisconsin, David Green and Dr. Goldberger, called Molecular Insights into the Living Process, says this: The popular concept of primitive cells as a starting point for the origin of species is really erroneous.
There's nothing functionally, functionally primitive about such cells. They contain basically the same biochemical equipment as do, as do their modern counterparts. How then did the precursor cell arise? The only answer, he says, to this question is that we don't know. People think that it's all been solved, how life began, but it isn't so. And he goes on to discuss the di- different stages in the possible evolution of life, and then he finally says, when you get to the macromolecule to cell transition, that's a jump of fantastic dimensions, which lies beyond the range of testable hypothesis. In this area, all is conjecture. The available facts do not provide us a basis for postulating that cells ever arose on this planet. These men are evolutionists, but they recognize the real problem in trying to explain the origin of life by any random chance natural process.
The creationist, of course, does not have that problem. He postulates an omniscient, omnipotent creator who has life, therefore can create life. And he would expect, therefore, he would predict in his creation model that we would not see life arising out of non-life on this planet because life was a product of the creation period, and the fact is we don't see it exactly as the creation model predicts. Evolution model has a hard time explaining why, if it ever happened in the past, it couldn't be happening in the present, and why we don't find it in outer space and so on. But the creation model is not embarrassed by these problems. Now, if you try to quantify this, uh, problem of the complexity of a living system in terms of the actual amount of information required to design a living system, a replicating molecule of some sort, then you can get an idea of the extreme, uh, unlikelihood of this ever happening by chance.
Dr. Marcel Golay, an information scientist, tried to do just that several years ago, and Dr. Marwitsch has tried to do the same thing, and various others in the NASA program. And Dr. Golay approaches it this way. He says, suppose we want to build a machine capable of reaching into bins for all of its parts, capable of assembling from these parts a second machine like itself. What is the minimum amount of structure or information that should be built into the first machine? Answer comes out to be of the order of one thousand five hundred bits, that is one thousand five hundred choices between alternatives, which the machine should be able to decide. This answer is very suggestive because one thousand five hundred bits happens to be also the order of magnitude of the amount of structure contained in the simplest large protein molecule, which, immersed in a bath of nutrients, could induce the assembly of those nutrients into another large protein molecule like itself, and then separate itself from it.
Now, this does not require, you see, all these chemicals coming together at once, but allows it to gradually come together over the ages, or whatever it would take, one step at a time, but it says in, in effect, it would require, uh, something that could make fifteen hundred successive choices, building up from one part to two parts and so on, each time, uh, able to survive in the natural environment and to continue to grow until finally it gets to the stage where it can reproduce itself. Now, the probability of each stage is one half, one out of two choices between alternatives, he says. So the probability of fifteen hundred successive correct choices is one half to the fifteen hundredth power, or one out of two to the fifteen hundredth. or if you want to check this out on your pocket calculator, it's one out of ten to the four hundred and fiftieth power.
One chance out of ten to the four hundred and fiftieth power that you could ever have even the simplest large protein molecule which could reproduce itself arise by chance. Without somebody to design it and plan it and see that it work together and built up like it should be, it would be one chance out of ten to the four hundred and fiftieth. and of course, that's a, a replicating protein molecule, and there is no such thing. This is far from being a living cell. But if you can imagine a replicating protein molecule in the primeval soup, that would, that's what it would take, and of course, that's an awfully small number, one out of ten to the four hundred and fiftieth. But maybe you don't appreciate how small it is. Of course, the number is represented by one with four hundred and fifty zeros, one chance out of that number. But, uh, many evolutionists would say, well, that's no problem because, after all, we have billions of years of time, and even though it may not happen the first time as these particles try to come together, why, they can keep on trying over and over again, and in billions of years, why, it's bound to happen sooner or later.
That's the idea that people have, that anything can happen if you have enough time. Like Huxley used to say, you let monkeys peck away at typewriter keys long enough, they'll finally pick out the works of Shakespeare. Anything can happen if you wait long enough. Well, okay, let's, uh, let's just assume that. Of course, that's not really true, but let's assume that this is potentially possible. How long would you have to wait? The Earth, say, is five billion years, life is three billion years old, if you accept the figures, but the universe may be older than that, maybe it's thirty billion years, and maybe life evolved in outer space somewhere, so say it's thirty billion years long, or even to be generous, let's say it's three thousand billion years long, One hundred times the estimate that the astronomers have currently.
In three thousand billion years, you can calculate there would be ten to the twentieth seconds, ten raised to the twentieth power seconds, and in the entire universe, five billion light years in radius. Now, we don't know that's the size of the universe, but it, at least if evolution took place, it took place in the universe within five billion light years. So if we say that's the size of the universe, five billion light years radius, and you divide that by the number of electrons that could be held in the universe without any empty space, electron being the smallest particle we know, you could get ten to the one hundred and thirtieth power electrons in the universe. Now, if we let each one of these infinitesimal particles take place, and of course, each one of these has to, or or some of these have to participate in all the events, all the processes and structures and everything in all the universe has to be composed of these particles.
So if we say that each of these particles takes place, can can take a part in, say, a billion billion, ten to the eighteenth, let's say ten to the twentieth— events every second. A billion billion times a hundred, a hundred billion billion events every second for each particle. And then we can say that the total number of events that could ever occur in all the universe in all time would be ten to the twentieth times 10 to the 20th times 10 to the 130th, which is ten to the hundred and seventieth power events that could ever take place in all the universe in all time. Now, the probability that one of those events or any series of those events would lead to this replicating molecule, then, is already we've seen one out of ten to the four hundred and fiftieth.
Now, the probability, therefore, that one of these events would be the event which produces the replicating molecule, or any series of of the events, would be ten to the hundred and seventieth divided by ten to the four hundred and fiftieth, or one chance out of ten to the two hundred and eightieth one chance out of ten to the two hundred and eightyth that life could evolve in its very simplest form in all the universe in all time. And that's a very small number. As a matter of fact, once you get to a number bel- beyond the sky- size or, or smaller than the size of the number of events that could ever happen, and that'd be, say, ten to the hundredth, and about ten to the hundredth, or ten to the hundred and thirtieth, then you'd call it absolute zero. The laws of probability don't apply anymore. Absolute zero in the law of large numbers.
So, for all practical purposes, there is no chance whatever that life could evolve out of non-life. And that's only the first stage in evolution. Now, as you go up in, in complexity towards higher and higher levels of complexity, as a population of worms evolves over the ages into, say, a population of crocodiles, and finally into a population of people, every stage involves a, a tremendously increased scope of complexity, and the probabilities become less and less as you go along, and I would suggest it requires a certain element of faith to believe that that's what happened. Now, we think that the creator, this is not just an item of raw credulous faith, you have to have faith either way, but at least the creator, who is omniscient and omnipotent and, and personal, is able to produce these effects, whereas chance seems completely unable in terms of anything we know about probability or chemistry or thermodynamics.
Now, of course, this is all just really, all this probability discussion is really just, uh, a way in which we can express a basic law of the universe known as the second law of thermodynamics, or the law of increasing entropy. Entropy is a term meaning turning inwardness. It's a measure of disorder, and for the past hundred years or more, it's been known that the two basic laws of science, the laws that govern all other processes within the universe, are these first and second laws of thermodynamics. First law is the law of conservation of matter and energy. It says that no energy is being created or destroyed, and energy includes matter, so nothing is now being created nor annihilated. The second law says that although none is being annihilated, it's going down towards lower availability in the universe.
Or another way of putting it is that every system tends to go from order to disorder, or tends to go toward a state of higher entropy, or greater disorder, or randomness. The information in the system becomes garbled, and it's, uh, to some extent fails to be transmitted. Everything is going downhill. There's a universal law of decay, and of course everybody knows that. That's why things wear out and run down and disintegrate and die. Everything becomes disordered if you just let it go. You let your room go, it gets disordered. You let your body go, it runs down. You let your automobile go, everything runs down if you just let things do what comes naturally. Now, there's a universal principle then, this is a scientific principle, it's proved as well as any law of science has been, that every system tends to go downhill towards disorder, towards randomness, towards unavailability for further work, and so on.
Now, I said tends to go. Not every system does go down, but every system tends to go down, and it can only be forced up under certain very special conditions. Now, let me just confirm this by referring to a statement from Harold Blum, who is a biochemist and an evolutionist. He's defining this, and note, as I read this, the exact contrast to the definition of evolution given by Huxley that I referred to a while ago. He says a major consequence of the second law of thermodynamics is that all real processes, all real processes, everything, in other words, as Huxley said, all the whole of reality is evolution. Blum says all real processes go toward a condition of greater probability. The probability function generally used in thermodynamics is entropy.
Orderliness is associated with low entropy, randomness with high entropy. The second law of thermodynamics says that, left to itself, any isolated system will go toward greater entropy, which means greater randomness and greater likelihood. Any system, if it's left to do what will come naturally, will go towards greater probability, greater randomness, greater disorder, greater entropy, runs down, wears out, goes down. Every system tends to do that. Now, it does seem like to us that, that here's a problem for the evolution model. The evolution model says that the whole of reality is evolution going towards higher levels of organization. Second law of thermodynamics says that the whole of reality is going down towards lower levels of organization. These are universal principles, supposedly.
One goes up, the other goes down. How can language mean anything if both are true as universal principles? Each is the converse of the other. Now, we think that this is a problem for the evolution model, but the evolutionist usually sort of passes that off as irrelevant because he says this only applies under certain conditions, and you need to understand it applies to physical processes or chemical, doesn't apply to biology, or it applies to closed systems and not to open systems or something else. But now, as I've quoted, and let me quote also from Asimov, Isaac Asimov, maybe you'll accept his word. He says, as far as we know, all changes are in the direction of increasing entropy, of increasing disorder, of increasing randomness, of running down.
All changes are in that direction. Whether it's a living system or a non-living system, an open system or a closed system, all systems tend to go down towards disorder. Now, it is true, of course, that under certain special conditions in open systems, you can force them up towards a higher level of order under certain very special conditions. A seed, for example, will grow up into a tree with lots of seeds, or an embryo will grow up into an adult animal, or a pile of bricks and girders and and wood and so on will grow up into a building under certain conditions. You see, there is possible, it is possible that under certain very special conditions, systems can increase in order, provided they're open systems and certain other criteria are satisfied.
But they don't automatically do that without these conditions being satisfied, because normally all systems will tend to go downhill by the second law of thermodynamics. Now then, what are the criteria that have to be satisfied to force systems uphill? The evolutionist usually passes this off by saying, well, now the laws of thermodynamics apply to closed, isolated systems, and the Earth is an open system, and it's open to the energy of the sun, and the sun's energy is sufficient to sustain the evolutionary process over geologic time, even though eventually the sun may burn out and the universe will die, and then it'll stop, then maybe start somewhere else in the universe or something. But, uh, it, the argument doesn't apply because the Earth is an open system.
Yeah, but you see, that argument doesn't apply. That argument is irrelevant, and I want you to understand what I'm saying now, because don't suggest later that this second law doesn't apply because the Earth is an open system. I'm talking about that. I'm talking about the Earth as an open system, and the second law of thermodynamics does apply to the Earth as an open system and to any other system, because every system is an open system. There's no such thing in nature as a closed system. That's an ideal concept, which is, which is a circle you draw on a blackboard. You say that's a closed system, but that doesn't happen in the real world. Every system is open, and furthermore, every system is open to the energy of the sun on the Earth, because all of Earth's processes get their energy ultimately from the sun, either directly or indirectly. So in order for the system to go up, you've got to have more than the system open to the energy of the sun.
Every system is open to the energy of the sun, so that's a vacuous statement, doesn't say anything. It isn't true of everything. Every system is an open system, open to the energy of the sun. Now you've got to have more than that, you see, so that isn't a sufficient answer. What else do you have to have to make the system go up? You have to have two additional criteria at least, and you stop and analyze whether you're thinking about a seed growing into a tree or the, uh, crystallization out of a solution or animal growing or building growing, you always have to have two additional criteria satisfied. One is that there must be a program to direct the growth. There must be a source of the information, because if the system is going to increase in order, information is going to increase in that system, and you have to have some source of the information to, uh, transfer into that system to make it increase in complexity.
Complexity and order and information are essentially synonymous. Complexity and order and information are essentially synonymous. And as a system grows in complexity, the information has to be available to make it grow or to direct its growth. There must be a program, a template, a pattern, a blueprint of some sort. In the case of a building, of course, you have the blueprint, the plan. If you didn't have that, if you just let the workman pile the bricks any old which way, you'd get a blob, not a building. Same thing would be true to this cell in the primeval soup. If it just grew without a program, it'd just be a blob, just like, uh, Dr. Fox's proteinoid blobs that he developed in the laboratory don't have any specific structure or function or anything. Now you've got to have a program to direct it, and in addition to that, you must have a mechanism to energize it, some sort of a motor or converter or membrane to take the raw energy from the environment and store it and rework it and transform it and give it out in just the right form to do the specific work of building up the complexity of the structure.
In the case of the seed, you have the marvelous mechanism of photosynthesis and the marvelous information program, the genetic code in the living cell and the other information systems there, and therefore the seed is able to grow into a tree. But if it didn't have that marvelous information system already available to it, and no one has any idea where that came from, it certainly couldn't produce itself by chance, it's far too complex for that. And if it didn't have the marvelously complex mechanism of photosynthesis, no matter how much energy bathed that seed on the concrete sidewalk, it'd never become a tree, you see. It's got to have these two criteria satisfied, and the same is true with every other system that we know anything about in which there's an increase of order and complexity. Now then, what, you see, is the mechanism and what is the program that directs the growth of the evolutionary biosphere over geologic time?
There must be some kind of a marvelous blueprint or program way back in the beginning to tell this ran- these random particles how to evolve into a population of worms and then into a population of people. There's no such thing. Nobody has ever known what such a program is. Nobody's ever seen one. Furthermore, there must be some kind of a mechanism to take the sun's energy and convert it into the specific work of building up the complexity of the biosphere. Mutation and natural selection won't do that. Mutation is not a code, it's a random process. Natural selection doesn't convert any energy, it just waits for the mutations to come along so it can sieve them out and keep the species as they are. It can't specify the increase in complexity of a system. Now, it does seem like evolution has no code nor nor mechanism, so far as we know, and until evolutionists can not only speculate but demonstrate that there is such a thing, the second law says evolution on any significant scale is impossible.
Now, it may be someday evolutionists will be able to design or point to a possible program and mechanism which will do this. Some people are trying to do it, trying to explain how information can increase at the same time that entropy increases. So far, they're not able to do that, but maybe someday they will. And some scientists, some evolutionists are concerned enough about it to do some study on it, but so far it's not solved. Let me read what Charles Smith says in Biosystems, nineteen seventy five. He says, talking about this very question, thermodynamics and open systems, he says, Bertalanffy called this relation between irreversible thermodynamics and information theory one of the most fundamental unsolved problems in biology.
The problem is not yet solved. There is no answer yet. Evolution contradicts the second law of thermodynamics as of now. Now, maybe someday they'll be able to work this out. If they do, then what they will have done is to show how evolution can be harmonized with the second law of thermodynamics. It still won't be as good as the creation model. Creation model doesn't have to explain the second law of thermodynamics. The creation model predicts the second law of thermodynamics because the creation was perfect to start with, and it predicts, therefore, that any changes, vertical changes, will be down towards this order. So it predicts the second law, and we find that the basic laws of science confirm explicitly the prediction of the creation model.
So we commend this to you as a good scientific model to explain the laws of science as they really exist in the real world. Thank you. Let me express my pleasure to have this opportunity this evening to join with Dr. Morris to present the scientific case for creation. Dr.
Morris has outlined the evidence why we feel that the theory of evolution is impossible, it could not have happened. But now I want to bring to your attention some of the evidence that in- that demonstrates that indeed evolution has not occurred on this planet. Now, Doctor Morris has described our creation model and the evolution model. He says, according to the creation model, we believe that there is a God, a creator external to and independent of the natural universe, who is responsible for creating our universe and all that it contains.
We believe that God created certain basic categories of plants and animals. In other words, certain kinds or basic types of both plants and animals were created in the beginning. Now, since the creation, there has been a limited variation within the circumscribed boundaries of the kind. There is, there is a potential variation among the dogs. Quite obviously, this man started with the mongrel dog and was able from that mongrel population to derive the many varieties of dogs we have today. And since the dog Canis familiaris does and can interbreed with Canis lupus, the wolf, and with coyotes, also the genus Canis, it is most likely, we feel, that these creatures have arisen from the original created kind, which we might call the dog kind.
But we believe that the potential was there in the beginning, the genetic potential, the gene pool sufficient to permit this limited variation was there in that original created kind. But what we are saying that now in the present world, nor in the world of the past, do we have any evidence, for example, that cats and dogs have arisen from a common ancestor. We believe that the evidence clearly indicates, say, among the reptiles, that turtles, snakes, lizards, and crocodiles were each separately and directly created. They have always been separate. There have been no origin of these reptiles from a common source.
Now, the evolution model, on the other hand, I think Dr. Morris has made clear we are referring to the general model or the general theory of creation, I'm sorry, of evolution, the particles to people theory, the molecules to man theory of evolution, or as I sometimes call it, the fish to geesh theory of evolution. Now, we we want to make sure that you understand that we're talking about those kind of changes, not merely these horizontal variations within the varieties or the limits of the kind. The question is then, how did tigers come to be tigers and horses come to be hor- horses, and not why some tigers produce more tigers than others, or some horses produce more horses than others.
So we're speaking of this kind of a theory. Now, let us ask ourselves, what would we expect to find in the fossil record first if creation is true? And then let us consider for a moment what we'd expect to find in the fossil record if evolution were true. Well, if creation were true, we would expect the fossil record to begin with very complex forms of life, plants and animals, for which we could find no evolutionary ancestor. We'd expect the fossil record to show the abrupt appearance of the fossils of each one of the kinds, without intermediate forms or transitional forms between these kinds.
For example, we would not expect to find transitional forms between the invertebrates and the vertebrates. It's assumed that the fishes, evolutionists assume that the fishes were the first vertebrates. But we would not expect to find any intermediate forms between the invertebrates and the vertebrates, or the different kinds of invertebrates, the brachiopods, the sea urchins, the trilobites, the sponges and corals, and so forth. We would not expect to find transitional forms between fishes and amphibians, between reptiles and birds, between apes and men. There would be a systematic absence of transitional forms or half bet- halfway forms or in between forms.
Now, what we would, what would we expect the fossil record to show if evolution were true? Well, if this modern neo-Darwinian theory of evolution were true, which tells us that all of these evolutionary changes are very slow and gradual, requiring, say, a hundred million years for a vertebrate or a fish to evolve from an invertebrate, and for thirty million years for the fish to evolve into the amphibian, the intermediate, the intermediate stages being almost innumerable and varying or changing only slightly from the preceding form.
That's the modern theory of evolution that is accepted by practically all evolutionists. There are some exceptions, but this is accepted by ninety nine point nine nine percent, or perhaps more, of all evolution. Now, on the basis of that theory, then, we would expect and predict that the rocks, the oldest rocks which contain fossils, that is, and let's, let's work on the assumptions of the evolutionists as far as dating and ages as to what. We don't make those assumptions necessarily, but let's use this assumption. We have to use these assumptions if we're going to talk about the evolution model. Let us assume then, in this case, that the oldest rocks which contain fossils would contain fossils of the most primitive form of life capable of leaving a fossil record.
And then, as we search out what we believe, what the evolutionist believes to be younger and younger strata, we'd expect to find a slow, gradual change of simple forms into more and more complex forms of life. And as life diverged into the millions of species which now exist and have existed, of course, the number of intermediate forms would number in the billions times billions times billions. Just think the evolution of the fish into the amphibian, for example, believed to have required nearly thirty million years. Why, if you would number the intermediate forms that actually lived and died during all that thirty million years, indeed, they would number billions times billions, and perhaps times a billion again.
Now, in order to document, then, the theory of evolution, actually, all we have to find is three or four of these transitional forms as fossils scattered through time, and that would be sufficient to document evolution. But as a matter of fact, our museums should be full of transitional forms. There should be no problem with transitional forms. There'd be so many transitional forms, as a matter of fact, it'd be difficult, if not impossible, to put any animal into a distinct category. There'd be so many transitional forms, there would be no discussion, no argument, no question, no problem with transitional forms. If you dig down in the earth and if you bring up a fossil, now you might, it just might happen, of course, that you would bring up a fossil of the terminal stage.
Perhaps it's got to the amphibian stage, now it's a complete amphibian. But as you bring up other fossils from that same strata, which evolutionists believe represent a certain time span in history, of course, there were hundreds and thousands of other species eve- in the process of evolution at this time. So as you bring up fossils from this strata, you would of necessity produce some intermediate forms. And so our museums should be full of transitional forms, if evolution were true. The predictions now, based upon the evolution model and the creation model, as far as this fossil record is concerned, you see it's very clear-cut, almost as different as nice n- night and day.
The evidence, therefore, should be examined, and it should be a relatively simple matter then to look at the evidence and decide which seems to be the more reasonable explanation, the more credible model, which model should enjoy greater credibility. Now, when that is done, we are convinced that this evidence is in clear contradiction of predictions based upon evolution, but on the other hand, can be remarkably correlated and explained by the concept of direct spatial creation. Let's take a look now at the actual fossil record. Now, in doing so, I want, first of all, to quote from several publications by evolutionists.
All of the people that I will be quoting from tonight are evolutionists. They are not willing to accept the creation alternative, but these men have been candid, honest, and frank enough to admit the true s- uh, nature of the actual record. This is critically important, you see, because they are evolutionists. But they said, now look, fellas, here is the way it really is. First of all, concerning the record of plants, fossil plants, Dr. E. J. H. Corner, professor of botany or a botanist at Cambridge University, when he published this article or chapter, which appeared in the book Contemporary Botanical Thought, published by Quadrangle Books in nineteen sixty one.
Dr. Corner is a plant scientist, he is an evolutionist, but on page ninety seven of that book, in his chapter, we find the following statement, quote, much evidence can be adduced in favor of the theory of evolution from biology, biogeography, and paleontology, but I still think that to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of spatial creation, unquote. So this evolution says, frankly, the fossil record of plants is not in favor of evolution, but it's in favor of creation. Why does he say this? Because the major plant kinds do appear in the fossil record abruptly, without ancestors and without transitional forms.
For example, Darwin called the origin of flowering plants that abominable mystery. Forty nine families of flowering plants appear in the fossil record without ancestors and without transitional forms. Today, to evolutionists, the origin of flowering plants is still that abominable mystery, because we cannot, we have not found the transitional or an- ancestral forms to flowering plants, and that's true of the major plant kind. Now, as far as the general nature of the fossil record is concerned, both plants and animals, let me quote from an article published by Dr.
David B. Kitz, professor of geology at the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Kitz is an evolutionist. He, in fact, he published this article in the journal Evolution, volume twenty eight, nineteen seventy four. On page four hundred and sixty seven, Dr. Kitz makes the following statement. By the way, he's an evolutionary paleontologist in the Department of Geology there. His article was entitled Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory. In other words, the fossil record and evolutionary theory. On page hundred and sixty seven, Dr. Kitt says, quote, despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of seeing evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of gaps in the fossil record.
Evolution requires intermediate forms between species, and paleontology does not provide them, unquote. So this evolutionist, in of all places, the journal Evolution says that evolution requires intermediate forms, but the fossil record does not provide them. Now, I can see no reason why Kitz should ever have made such a statement unless he felt that statement was absolutely true, and he is a qualified evolutionary paleontologist. Now, finally, I want to quote from an article published by Richard B.
Goldschmidt. Dr. Goldschmidt was one of the most rabid evolutionists I've ever read. Here in this article published in American Scientist, volume forty, January of nineteen fifty two, Dr. Goldschmidt said, evolution is a fact for which no further proof is needed. And then he simply proceeds to demolish the theory of evolution because Dr. Goldschmidt did not accept the neo-Darwinian interpretation of evolution, that is the idea of very, very slow and gradual evolution, the theory that is accepted by practically all evolutionists. Dr. Goldschmidt says, now look, fellas, the gaps in the fossil record are systematic. The major plant kinds and the major animal types do appear instantaneously without transitional forms.
Now he says that just doesn't fit this idea of slow and gradual. Well, Goldschmidt was not about to give up the faith and become a creationist, so he suggested an alternative mechanism for evolution, which he called the hopeful monster mechanism. Dr. Goldschmidt suggested, for example, at one time a reptile laid an egg and a bird was hatched from the egg. And Dr. Goldschmidt says, now every time you see one of these gaps, that's what happened. Something laid an egg and something else got born. This was his hopeful monster mechanism. Now Schindewolf, the German paleontologist, had a theory practically identical to this.
Now, may I suggest, first of all, by the way, what a tremendous shock that must have been to mama reptile. I mean, in all good faith, you lay a good reptilian egg and some strange critter comes corning out of it. Of course, it'd probably have been a greater shock to pop a reptile. I think he would have sued her for divorce, claiming infidelity. Well, the neo-Darwinists, they don't believe that Goldschmidt had a better idea either. They prefer to believe that he's the one that laid the egg. And they say there's not a shred of evidence to support this hopeful monster mechanism. Well, Goldschmidt said, yes, that's right. No one has ever seen anything like this happen, but he says that's cheap criticism because neither has anyone ever seen one animal slowly and gradually evolve into another.
No one has ever seen that happen either. Well, of course, no one has actually ever seen any kind of evolution, but Dr. Goldschmidt was an evolutionist. He did want to find transitional forms. He would have been delighted to have museums full of transitional form. He says, but concerning the fossil record, listen to what this very prominent evolutionary geneticist scientist had to say about that fossil record. He said, this is on page ninety seven— quote, the facts of greatest general importance are the following. When a new phylum, class, or order appears, there follows a quick explosive, in terms of geological time, diversification, so that, now listen carefully, so that practically all orders or families known appear suddenly and without any apparent transition, unquote.
So Dr. Goldschmidt says phyla, classes, orders, and down to including practically every family have appeared in the fossil record abruptly without any apparent transitional form. Now that is the description of the actual fossil record by this evolutionist, and I submit that that is a very excellent description of the fossil record predicted on the basis of spatial or direct creation. It is certainly not what we'd expect on the basis of evolutionary theory, unless you could accept Dr. Goldschmidt's hopeful monster mechanism, or if you have some other mechanism whereby you have all of this evolution with no intermediate form.
A little later on that page, Dr. Goldschmidt goes on to say, moreover, within the slowly evolving series, like the famous horse series, the decisive steps are abrupt, without transition, unquote. So we have three-toed horses, one-toed horses, browsing horses, grazing horses, but we do not have those intermediate types. These types, Dr. Goldschmidt claims, then have appeared abruptly without transition. Now, what we find here in the general record as far as the plants and animals also applies to man. Man, you know, is within the order primates. The primates of what is one of the thirty two orders of mammals. By the way, George Gaylord Simpson, that famous evolution, says that in every case, every one of the thirty two orders of mammals have appeared with their basic characteristics already complete.
In no case can you trace that order back to its ancestral order through a series of transitional forms. The primates, of course, is the same. The first primates, according to the evolutionary reconstruction of things, were the prosimians, or the lemur-like creatures. Now, what about this supposed transition of the insectivores into primates? Because evolutionists believe primates came from insectivores. In modern insectivores are moles and hedgehogs and things like that. Is, do we have an actual fossil record on which this supposition is based? Or upon what is this idea based?
Listen to what Dr. A. J. Kelso says in the book Physical Anthropology, second edition, published by Lippincott in nineteen seventy four. Dr. Kelso is an evolutionist. On page one hundred and forty two, Dr. Kelso says, the transition from insectivore to primate is not documented by fossils. The basis of knowledge about the transition is by inference from living forms, unquote. So there is that great big gap again. There are no fossils, no transitional forms to support this idea that insectivores gave rise to primates.
What about monkeys? Well, on page one hundred and fifty, Dr. Kelso the de- says the details of the evolutionary background of the New World monkeys, the Platerini, would doubtless be informative and interesting, but unfortunately we know very little about them, unquote. As a matter of fact, we know nothing about them. There are the old world monkeys, or the, I'm sorry, the new world monkeys have appeared abruptly without ancestors. What about the old world monkeys? On page one hundred and fifty one, Dr. Kelso says, quote, clearly the fossil documentation of the emergence of the old world monkeys could provide key insights into the general evolutionary picture of the primates, but in fact, this record simply does not exist, unquote.
So again, the old world monkeys, the narrow-nosed monkeys have appeared abruptly without any fossil evidence of their ancestors. Now, the same is true of apes and of man, in spite of the highly imaginative transitional forms which have been constructed for our ancestors, which have included such things as Nebraska Man, which turned out to be a pig's tooth, and the same was true for Piltdown Man, which turned out to be a doctored up ape's jaw and a recent human skull. Over five hundred books and pamphlets were written on Piltdown Man. Now, today we are told that we had a, an ape-like ancestor called Australopithecus about two million years ago.
It has been claimed, and is still being claimed in most universities, that Australopithecus walked upright and that it was intermediate between ape and man. Now, this creature is the so-called East Africa Man, or Zinjanthopus, Dr. Louis Leakey. He finally admitted that his so-called Gingantopus was just another variety of Australopithecus. But most evolutionists still maintain that Australopithecus was our ape-like ancestor about two million years ago. And then in more recent, oh, now let me say this about Australopithecus. Sir Solly Zuckerman, a very famous British anatomist, an article published in January nineteen sixty six, in the Journal of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, said that after fifteen years of research by himself and his scientific team, every answer they got indicated that Australopithecus did not walk upright, that he was not intermediate between ape and man, that he was strictly an ape.
Essentially the same has been said in more recent times by Dr. C. E. Oxnard of Chicago University in Nature, December fourth, nineteen seventy five. According to his analysis, he said this creature did not walk upright. He was not intermediate between ape and man. But all right, they say here was our ape-like ancestor two million years ago. Then we had supposedly more man-like ancestor, Homo Erectus, or the Java man, Peking man, about a half a million years or so ago. And finally, we have modern man, including Neanderthal. By the way, the museum here labels Neanderthal as Homo Neanderthalensis. This classification has been abandoned by practically all anthropologists.
Neanderthal man is now classified Homo sapiens, human. Neano- Homo sapiens Neanderthalensis, in other words, the Neanderthal race of humans, like you and I. The so-called primitive features of Neanderthal man turned to be, turned out to be due to rickets, vitamin D deficiency causing softening of the bone, and arthritis and other conditions like this. He is now classified modern man, or at least Homo sapiens. But now, some very startling evidence has come to our attention in recent days, recent years. Now, Richard Leakey, the son of the famous Dr.
Louis Leakey, claims that he has found the fossils of what he calls man, three million years old. That is, according to the dating method which he feels comfortable, according to the evaluation he has placed upon this creature, and of these dating methods, he says this creature is three million years old, but he says that he is man, more modern, much more modern than Java man, and even of Neanderthal man and his general features. Richard Leakey says now that he has man older than all of our assumed ancestors. You see, we have a real problem for in- evolutionary anthropologists, because the parents cannot be younger than the children.
But Rick Leakey says he has man older than all of our assumed ancestors. I heard Leakey lecture in San Diego, and he says, what I have found simply demolishes all current theories on the origin of man, and he says, I have nothing to put in their place. Now, he doesn't mean he's a creationist. What he's saying, these creatures that we have assumed to be our ancestors cannot be our ancestors, and I have no other ancestors to supply. Well, I think this evidence simply indicates that man, monkeys, and apes were separately and directly created, that one did not arise from the other. Now, it's interesting to see the reaction of evolutionary scientists to this evidence. One particularly, uh, is of particular interest, the reaction of Dr.
Jeffrey Bourne, director of the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center at Emory University. Doctor Bourne, if you look him up in who's who in science, you find that he is a very prominent scientist, very well recognized, finally now well recognized for his work in primates. Doctor Bourne says, fellas, we've been wrong all along. Ever since Darwin, we have been saying that man evolved from an ape-like creature. He says we had it all wrong. He says he believes now that monkeys, apes, and lower primates actually evolved from man. That's what we, that's what the evidence indicates.
He said it's just the other way around. Well, as one fellow said when he heard that, well, I'll be a monkey's uncle. And I guess we would be if Dr. Bourne is true. But... Now, this man is serious, and he was quoted correctly. This is in Modern People, April eighteenth, nineteen seventy six, on page eleven. My son wrote to Dr. Bourne. I had my son do the writing. I didn't want to prejudice his reply.