Darwin

According to the theory of evolution, every living species has sprung from a predecessor. A previously existing species turned into something else in time and all species have come into being in this way. According to the theory, this transformation proceeds gradually over millions of years. If this was the case, then numerous intermediary species should have existed and lived within this long transformation period.

For instance, some half-fish/half-reptiles should have lived in the past, which had acquired some reptilian traits in addition to the fish traits they already had. Or there should have existed some reptile-birds, which acquired some bird traits in addition to the reptilian traits they already had. Evolutionists refer to these imaginary creatures, which they believe to have lived in the past, as "transitional forms".

If such animals had really existed, there should be millions and even billions of them in number and variety. More importantly, the remains of these strange creatures should be present in the fossil record. The number of these transitional forms should have been even greater than the present animal species and their remains should be found all over the world.

Even Darwin himself was aware of the absence of such transitional forms. It was his hope that they would be found in the future. Despite his hopefulness, he realised that the biggest stumbling block in his theory was the missing transitional forms. Therefore in his book The Origin of Species he wrote the following in the chapter "Difficulties of the Theory":

… Why, if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion, instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?… But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?… But in the intermediate region, having intermediate conditions of life, why do we not now find closely linking intermediate varieties? This difficulty for a long time quite confounded me¹.

The single explanation Darwin could come up with to counter this objection was the argument that the fossil record uncovered so far was inadequate. He asserted that when the fossil record had been studied in detail, the missing links would be found.

Believing in Darwin’s prophecy, evolutionists have been searching for fossils and digging for missing links since the middle of the 19th century all over the world. Despite their best efforts, no transitional forms have yet been uncovered. All the fossils unearthed in excavations showed that contrary to the beliefs of evolutionists, life appeared on earth all of a sudden and fully-formed. Trying to prove their theory, the evolutionists have instead unwittingly caused it to collapse.

Like many other evolutionists, the evolutionist palaeontologist Mark Czarnecki comments as follows:

A major problem in proving the theory has been the fossil record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth's geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin's hypothetical intermediate variants - instead species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fuelled the creationist argument that each species was created by God².

When terrestrial strata and the fossil record are examined, it is to be seen that all living organisms appeared simultaneously. The oldest stratum of the earth in which fossils of living creatures have been found is that of the Cambrian, which has an estimated age of 500-550 million years.

The living creatures found in the strata belonging to the Cambrian period emerged all of a sudden in the fossil record-there are no pre-existing ancestors. The fossils found in the Cambrian rocks belonged to snails, trilobites, sponges, earthworms, jellyfish, sea hedgehogs, and other complex invertebrates. This wide mosaic of living organisms made up of such a great number of complex creatures emerged so suddenly that this miraculous event is referred to as the "Cambrian Explosion" in geological literature.

Most of the life forms found in these strata have complex systems like eyes, gills, circulatory

systems, and advanced physiological structures no different from their modern counterparts. For instance, the double-lensed, combed eye structure of trilobites is a wonder of design. David Raup, a professor of geology in Harvard, Rochester, and Chicago Universities, says: "the trilobites used an optimal design which would require a well trained and imaginative optical engineer to develop today"³.

Deeper investigation into the Cambrian Explosion shows what a great dilemma it creates for the theory of evolution. Recent findings indicate that almost all phyla, the most basic animal divisions, emerged abruptly in the Cambrian period. An article published in Science magazine in 2001 says: "The beginning of the Cambrian period, some 545 million years ago, saw the sudden appearance in the fossil record of almost all the main types of animals (phyla) that still dominate the biota today"⁴. The same article notes that for such complex and distinct living groups to be explained according to the theory of evolution, very rich fossil beds showing a gradual developmental process should have been found, but this has not yet proved possible:

This differential evolution and dispersal, too, must have required a previous history of the group for which there is no fossil record. Furthermore, cladistic analyses of arthropod phylogeny revealed that trilobites, like eucrustaceans, are fairly advanced "twigs" on the arthropod tree. But fossils of these alleged ancestral arthropods are lacking… Even if evidence for an earlier origin is discovered, it remains a challenge to explain why so many animals should have increased in size and acquired shells within so short a time at the base of the Cambrian⁵.

How the earth came to overflow with such a great number of living groups all of a sudden and how these distinct creatures with no common ancestors could have emerged is a question that remains unanswered by evolutionists. The Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins, one of the foremost advocates of evolutionist thought in the world, comments on this reality that invalidates the very roots of all the arguments he has been defending:

For example the Cambrian strata of rocks, vintage about 600 million years, are the oldest ones in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists⁶.

As Dawkins is forced to acknowledge, the Cambrian Explosion is strong evidence for creation, because creation is the only way to explain the fully formed emergence of life on earth. Darwin himself recognised the possibility of this when he wrote: "If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life all at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of descent with slow modification through natural selection⁷." The Cambrian Period is nothing more or less than Darwin’s "fatal stroke". This is why the Swiss evolutionist paleoanthropologist Stefan Bengston confesses the lack of transitional links while he describes the Cambrian Period and says, "Baffling (and embarrassing) to Darwin, this event still dazzles us"⁸. As may be seen, the fossil record indicates that living things did not evolve from primitive to the advanced forms, but instead emerged all of a sudden and in a perfect state. In short, living beings did not come into existence by evolution, they were created.

Another fact that puts evolutionists into a deep quandary about the Cambrian Explosion is the comparisons between different living taxa. The results of these comparisons reveal that animal taxa considered to be “close relatives” by evolutionists until quite recently, are genetically very different, which puts the “intermediate form” hypothesis, that only exists theoretically, into an even greater quandary. An article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2000 reports that DNA analyses have displaced taxa that used to be considered “intermediate forms” in the past:

DNA sequence analysis dictates new interpretation of phylogenic trees. Taxa that were once thought to represent successive grades of complexity at the base of the metazoan tree are being displaced to much higher positions inside the tree. This leaves no evolutionary ‘‘intermediates’’ and forces us to rethink the genesis of bilaterian complexity⁹...

In the same article, evolutionist writers note that some taxa which were considered “intermediate” between groups such as sponges, cnidarians and ctenophores can no longer be considered as such because of new genetic findings, and that they have “lost hope” of constructing such evolutionary family trees.

(1) Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species: A Facsimile of the First Edition, Harvard University Press, 1964, pp. 172, 280.

(2) Mark Czarnecki, "The Revival of the Creationist Crusade", MacLean's, January 19, 1981, p. 56.

(3) David Raup, "Conflicts Between Darwin and Palaeontology", Bulletin, Field Museum of Natural History, Vol 50, January 1979, p. 24.

(4) Richard Fortey, "The Cambrian Explosion Exploded?” Science, vol 293, No 5529, 20 July 2001, p. 438-439.

(5) Richard Fortey, "The Cambrian Explosion Exploded?” Science, vol 293, No 5529, 20 July 2001, p. 438-439.

(6) Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, London: W. W. Norton 1986, p. 229..

(7) Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species: A Facsimile of the First Edition, Harvard University Press, 1964, p. 302.

(8) Stefan Bengston, Nature, Vol. 345, 1990, p. 765..

(9) The New Animal Phylogeny: Reliability And Implications, Proc. of Nat. Aca. of Sci., 25 April 2000, vol 97, No 9, p. 4453-4456.

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Harun Yahya: Adnan Oktar is a respected author who authored more than 150 books with the pen name Harun Yahya on faith-related topics, on the signs of Allah in the universe, on political issues concerning ummah, and research-based books on Freemasons. His articles are already regularly being published in many Turkish magazines/newspapers and foreign Islamic magazines/ papers in all the corners of the world. Many of his books, among which we can mention "The Evolution Deceit", "Perished Nations" and "For Men of Understanding", have been published in England in English and gained tremendous success.

You may obtain information about Harun Yahya books at: www.hyahya.org

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