Some claim the theory of evolution in its modern Neo-Darwinian form is 'a fact and not a theory.' The reality is rather more complicated. This web page was constructed to give you a flavor of some of the key points in the debate about the theory of evolution, sticking entirely to scientific criticisms of the theory of evolution, and avoiding any kind of appeal to religious authority. Right or wrong, I hope you find what I have to say to be interesting - most people do.

Absence of Intermediate Forms

Darwin in The Origin of Species wrote:-

'The number of intermediate varieties which have formerly existed on earth must be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links?..(this)…is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.'

There are no intermediate fossils of any significance in the fossil record. About a ¼ of a million fossil species exist in the museums of the world, and you can pretty much count on the fingers of one hand the number of fossils evolutionists are today seriously putting forward as intermediate forms – and even then the evidence is disputed. It is a common misconception that the fossil record is evidence for Darwinian evolution – it is not. All that is revealed by the fossils is that new species appear out of nowhere, fully formed, stay the same for huge periods of time, and then disappear. The absence of intermediate forms has been called a 'trade secret,' by the world famous scientist Stephan J. Gould, and is the main reason he developed the theory of 'punctuated equilibrium.' Evolutionary change because of its non-appearance in the fossil record must happen very fast in small isolated areas, as per Gould. However, as I shall explore later, this idea itself has several major flaws. The old argument that further research expeditions would turn up intermediates might have been valid 50 years ago, but can no longer be used today. Similar claims that the fossil record is incomplete are equally as spurious. For example, Denton has cited studies based upon modern species that suggest up to 85% of animals are preserved in the fossil record. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to assume the fossil record is anything other than a highly accurate and detailed account of the development of life on earth - which, frankly, scares the hell out of evolutionists, who rather lamely continue to spin the lie that the fossil record is in some way significantly incomplete. Today many fossil species are commodity items because they are so widely and easily available. You can buy a trilobite fossil for about $20, there are thousands perhaps tens of thousands of trilobite fossils in the world today, but none to show what trilobites evolved from, or what trilobites themselves might have evolved into. Similarly there is what is called the Cambrian explosion, when invertebrate life appeared with no clear ancestors. The arrival of almost all modern phyla of invertebrate life suddenly all at once, is a direct contradiction of the prediction made by Darwin's theory of gradual change and intermediate forms. The fossil record is unquestionably a clear and unambiguous falsification of this key prediction of Darwin's theory. Of course, normally when predictions made by scientific theories are falsified, the theories are rejected, but as you shall discover if you read on down this page, the Darwinian theory of evolution is and always has been a religion, which is why it somewhat inexplicably remains in text books, and is presented as some kind of 'fact.'

More on missing intermediate links.

Too Complicated

The organisms we observe in the world around us today are just too complicated to have evolved by any basically random process. For the theory of evolution the devil really is in the detail. When Darwin first proposed his theory cells were literally assumed to be no more than blobs of a few basic compounds. Now we know much better. Cells are entirely accurately likened to the world's best most advanced semi-conductor chip factories. There is a seemingly endless list of organs and microbiological systems you can quote to back this point up.

I am going to take the example of the dolphin's sonar. My local academic library has a well written book on it, so consequently this is not a second hand example. In terms of size, power consumption, reliability, and an outstanding ability to track small objects in noisy environments, the dolphins’ sonar is superior to anything we humans have built at the dawn of the 21st century. If you know little about sonar / radar design, I suggest you go to your local library and you should be able to find a book on crude radar design principles. Flick through it. Ask yourself if a system involving this kind of advanced physics can really evolve through the selection of random mutations, with each and every mutation without exception providing a small but clear survival advantage to the dolphin. But as I have stated, it is not just the fact the dolphin has a sonar system that is amazing, its the quality of the dolphin's engineering implementation that really astounds. For example, dolphins have the capability to see through up to about a meter of sand or mud using their astonishingly perfect sonar, and some speculative research suggests dolphins also have an acoustic ‘stun,’ ability, that varies according to the specific prey. And this incredible level of engineering perfection is repeated across the animal kingdom in countless other systems. The 'evolution,' of these systems, even if you do have millions of years, would appear to massively violate just about every known law of probability. The complexity issue is one reason why some wits have somewhat sarcastically suggested that the theory of evolution has become the most paranormal and superstitious creation myth ever invented in the entire history of all mankind – after all, it is the only one that insists upon repeated and massive violations of all the known laws of probability as a matter of everyday routine.

But it gets worse. It is not just a question of saying evolution on the micro-biological level is improbable, it is actually quite impossible in many cases. The reason is what has recently been dubbed 'irreducible complexity.' Which means these microbiological systems consist of a variety of critical system components. Take one away, and the whole system becomes useless. Imagine your Personal Computer for a moment. Without a graphics card you have no image. Without a monitor, you can not view the image. Without a keyboard and mouse, you can not interact with the PC. Without a hard drive, you can not store programs. Without a power supply, no part can even power up, its just inert silicon. A Personal Computer is irreducibly complex. It must have all the component parts - otherwise it will not function. Each part on its own is useless - okay maybe you could use a power supply as a door stop, but there is no reason for a doorstop to evolve advanced microscopic electrical control circuitry, and in fact a brick would be a much better door stop, and because of its greater evolutionary fitness could be expected to out compete the power supply. There really is no conceivable way any part of the modern PC could evolve on its own. It could only be designed, or come into being all at once, in line with the so called 'hopeful monster,' version of evolutionary theory. Very roughly in its modern form this suggests that in your unused junk DNA lie dormant genes, which for example describe a power supply. Through a massively improbable mutation, several of these dormant genes are simultaneously activated, and an irreducibly complex systems comes into existence, with a power supply, monitor, hard drive, etc. The flaw in this idea, apart from it just being plain absurd of course, is 1) The massive improbability of this happening 2) Empirical evidence it happens in anything like the way required 3) Accounting for how life got started in the first place with all these dormant genes and redundant systems.

Of course, the PC analogy goes further, in that uneducated people might think modern PCs just because they run old software are similar to older PCs in design. They are not. The reality is that every 5 years or so PCs are internally completely re-engineered from the ground up. A 2001 PC may run old software, but it has PCI slots instead of ISA slots, a Pentium III processor instead of a 486 processor, a 3D NVIDIA graphics card instead of a S3 2D card, etc. These new parts run upon different standards, are often made by different companies in different places, and in no way shape or form resemble the parts used 10 years previously, aside from the fact they are also based upon the use of electrical current and silicon, rather like all life uses the double helix to code DNA. Hence, while I'm sure most modern evolutionists if digging up PCs would swear modern PCs evolved from earlier ones citing remarkable similarities and compatibility, the reality is that this is emphatically not the case, and could never possibly be the case. If you wish to learn more about irreducible complexity without buying a book, click here and you can read a mini-essay from Behe.

Another interesting comment Darwin made in The Origin of Species which has already been answered several times over in my opinion, is the following:-

'If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.'

Darwin also famously once said the complexity of the eye made him 'shudder.' Actually, an eye is probably one of the simpler forms encoded in human DNA, with relatively wide tolerances in design execution. One can only speculate what Darwin would have said if someone had told him cells were not the simple blobs of half a dozen basic compounds that everyone assumed them to be at that time. Darwin also thought if bears spent enough time swimming about in the shallows, with a little bit of selection ( why not just say magic dust? ) they would become whales. Where does one start with a misconception that big? In general the question of the evolution of complex microbiological systems is ignored by evolutionists. Certainly they like to talk about how these systems have mutated once in place - plenty of literature exists on that subject, but not origins of the systems themselves. I produce two quotations, the first from Behe which is admittedly fussy in its wording, and the second from James Shapiro, a biochemist at the University of Chicago:-

'...the Journal of Molecular Evolution. JME is a journal that was begun specifically to deal with the topic of how evolution occurs on the molecular level. It has high scientific standards, and is edited by prominent figures in the field. In a recent issue of JME there were published eleven articles; of these, all eleven were concerned simply with the analysis of protein or DNA sequences. None of the papers discussed detailed models for intermediates in the development of complex biomolecular structures. In the past ten years JME has published 886 papers. Of these, 95 discussed the chemical synthesis of molecules thought to be necessary for the origin of life, 44 proposed mathematical models to improve sequence analysis, 20 concerned the evolutionary implications of current structures, and 719 were analyses of protein or polynucleotide sequences. There were zero papers discussing detailed models for intermediates in the development of complex biomolecular structures. This is not a peculiarity of JME. No papers are to be found that discuss detailed models for intermediates in the development of complex biomolecular structures in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Nature, Science, the Journal of Molecular Biology or, to my knowledge, any journal whatsoever.'

'There are no detailed Darwinian accounts for the evolution of any fundamental biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.'

When examining the history of evolutionary thought about micro-biology, it is hard to avoid the impression of a group of men desperately trying to make a theory fit the evidence, in spite of the facts, as the naive initial assumptions of evolutionists are debunked one by one. By way of example, we have the continuing difficulties in synthesizing proteins and enzymes. While not absolutely impossible, at this time there is still scant little evidence these things can be manufactured by the world's best scientists, let alone evolve by random chance. I think the misguided perceptions about the true complexity of life is extremely well illustrated by reference to the 1966 book Of Molecules and Men in which the co-discoverer of DNA Crick attacks 'vitalism,' for its stance that living organisms posses something inert chemicals do not possess, and states among other things:-

' It is true that at the moment nobody has synthesized an actual enzyme chemically, but we can see no difficulty in doing this in principle, and in fact I would predict quite confidently that it will be done within the next 5 to 10 years.'

Well, technically that challenge was met before that sentence was even written, a minor error on the part of the great man, but the whole process was absolute hell, and little advance has been made on the techniques used since. Hence the badly misguided expectation that synthesizing enzymes would be easy is there for all to see. What is the public response of evolutionists to this problem of complexity? Well, the usual actually. They used to ( and some still do ) make generalized statements such as ' lungs could have evolved as float bladders,' and ' feathers first evolved for insulation not flight,' statements which have long since been shown to be absurd. They then refuse to debate any specifics and retreat behind these extremely general statements, and say that you are being irrational and stupid. Dawkins exemplified this attitude recently when, as I recall, he turned down the opportunity to debate with Behe, presumably fearing his limited grasp of advanced microbiology would be exposed. Typical quotes dredged up to by evolutionists to disprove the irreducible complexity problem include the following:-

'Orgel's second rule: Evolution is cleverer than you are.'

'Never say, and never take seriously anyone who says, 'I cannot believe that so-and-so could have evolved by gradual selection.' I have dubbed this kind of fallacy 'the Argument from Personal Incredulity.' Time and again, it has proven the prelude to an intellectual banana-skin experience. Richard Dawkins - River out of Eden.'

Whether these quotes answer the challenge made by advocates of irreducible complexity such as Denton and Behe, is a question only you the reader can answer for yourself, but personally I think not. The Orgel quote sounds exactly like the classic 'God moves in mysterious ways,' quote if you ask me. In the talkorigins faqs, their particular answer seems to be to deliberately confuse irreducible complexity with chaos theory, when the two are entirely different. The further claim that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics ( true ) is apparently disproved because ' The 2nd law of thermodynamics applies only to closed systems. The Earth is not a closed system.' Right, so if I take a solution of simple chemicals, apply a blow torch, you get life and / or an increase in information? An interesting idea. But I wonder if there is really any experiment where information has been successfully increased with a clamp fixed blow torch? Anyway, if you disagree with what I have written here, because of this major gap in the evolutionary literature ( a missing link? ), there is real opportunity for you to make a name for yourself by solving some of these problems. Having written a 101 on evolution of complex systems, you could then make a lot of money with a popular science spin-off title. After all, 150 years after The Origin Species was published, I think this game of asserting macroevolution without explaining how it happens in detail, or even how it could in principal happen shall we say, is getting a little bit old and tired. 

The Mysterious Origins of Life

Abiogenesis, or the study of the origins of life. Some people got very excited about the Miller experiment in 1954 when amino acids were created in enclosed apparatus. Indeed, this debunked Icon of Evolution is still widely ( and in my opinion fraudulently ) used to sell evolution to the general public. Criticism has been leveled at the mild spark discharges as a simulation of lightening, and that is before we even get onto the question of accurate atmospheric simulation, and a comparison between the complexity of amino acids and the level of complexity the first replicating cell would have required. All the experiment really demonstrated was that the material to build cells *might* have been present. The experiment does not talk to us about how these chemicals could have spontaneously combined and formed a living cell. In short, 50 years on a solution seems further away than ever. In fact, it has become apparent that abiogenesis is such a hard problem, evolutionists have in effect walked away from the whole issue. That is why if you turn to the index of an evolution textbook, it is unlikely you will find the word abiogenesis. The bio-chemists say it is a problem for evolutionists, and the evolutionists say it is a problem for bio-chemists. It is true there are a number of theories about how life started, but when you peel back the thickly encrusted layers of rhetoric, you will find there is no real experimental evidence whatsoever to back any of them up. They really are nothing more than eloquent flights of fancy. Quite frankly you might as well say God did it. This abiogenesis sub page explores the issue in more detail, and provides an example calculation of the odds of life made by Robert Shapiro.

Haldane's Dilemma

Posed in 1957 by the early 1970s everyone had realized how damned hard the Dilemma was, and serious attempts to tackle the issue directly quickly died away. Basically Haldane pointed out the fairly obvious fundamental idea ( yet in precise mathematical language ) there is a ‘cost,’ to selection. Since most mutations are bad, if a species has too high a rate of mutation, so many offspring will be infertile, that the population / species will die. So a very clear limit is set upon the rate of evolutionary change and novelty, and it is one of the more common errors in modern evolutionary textbooks, especially those which deal with punk-eek, to claim no such limit exists. Crudely, the problem Haldane discovered with his quite brilliant and highly original mathematical formulation of this problem, was that you would need an Earth at least twice as old as is currently claimed for any remote chance of natural selection evolution being possible.

There are a number of amazingly bizarre 'solutions,' currently on offer, which are revealing in demonstrating just how much trouble evolutionists are in over this issue. For example, Matt Ridly has renamed it Haldane's Cost of Selection in order to make it sound less threatening in his well known textbook Evolution. In a disappointingly small section ( at least he mentions it, credit where it is due ), he basically argues that because random genetic drift is the main driving force in evolution, Haldane's Dilemma is no problem. There being no cost of substitution with genetic drift you see. However, that position is absolutely absurd. If what I have written is not quite clear enough for you, Ridly is arguing that billions upon billion of times over the millennia, the right mutations have happened exactly as required with no form of selection to filter them. In the case of avians for example ( birds ) – mutations for wings, beaks, claws, etc, just ‘happened,’ by magic exactly as required, in sequence, at just the right moment. Well, obviously, that's a form of creationism, which Ridly goes to great length to argue is both absurd and unscientific in his introduction!

I think this example from what is one of the world’s leading student textbooks on evolution, gives you an interesting insight into the confused nature of modern evolutionary theory. It also exposes the fact that despite what many people think, there is no such thing as the 'theory of evolution.' In fact evolutionists play what Walter Remine has called the fairground shell game. You have 3 shells in front of you, a blue bead is under one, and to win the prize you have to guess correctly. However, if you do guess correctly, the stand owner refuses to lift the shell, moves them around, and just makes you guess again. That's exactly what evolutionists do. They argue in public that evolution is about slow natural selection over billions of years, when you point out the gaps in the fossil record you get the punk-eek fast evolution in small groups message, if you mention Haldane's Dilemma, you often get insults / silence / claims its 'not relevant,' or like Ridly they just start talking complete non-sense, and hope you do not notice. Of course, Haldane also made another obscure cost calculation, and said no animal could have more than about 30,000 genes. Until recently evolutionists ridiculed this number and confidently told you humans had at least 100,000 genes - that was until the human genome was sequenced of course. It amuses me greatly that despite evolutionists being 100% wrong last time they attacked a Haldane cost calculation, they still have the arrogance / stupidity to attack the other major cost calculation Haldane made. Since evolutionists were trash talking last time, what faith do you put in them this time? Walter Remine has done us all a huge favor by highlighting this forgotten yet devastating issue in his book The Biotic Message. To read the Amazon reviews click here, official website here, To get a flavor of Haldane's Dilemma click here.

Have you Heard The One About Chimp to Man in 10 Million Years?

If you apply the Dilemma to the chimp to man in 10 million years idea, it looks even worse (as if it seemed possible). But indeed any kind of mathematical genetic analysis of the man ape split almost invariably produces absurd answers. David Plaisted provided one:

Now, apes and humans are thought to have split about 10 million years ago, and have about a 2 percent difference in DNA. The human genome has about 3 billion base pairs and about 300 million base pairs of functional DNA (assuming 10 percent of 3 billion base pairs are functional). Assuming that most of this 2 percent change is non-functional DNA, this implies a rate of evolution of one percent in 10 million years, which implies 3 million point mutations in 10 million years in the functional DNA. Two-thirds of these would be harmful, or, 2 million in 10 million years. This is about one point mutation in the functional DNA every five years, or about 6 every generation. Counting both parents, this gives 12 mutations per zygote, with a chance of only 1/(2.718 ^ 12) (less than 1 in 100,000) that a zygote will survive and be able to have offspring at equilibrium. Of course, this is ridiculous.

Basically, the genetic evidence suggests the split should have happened not 10 million years ago, but more like 100 million years ago. The best anyone in the mainstream community seems able to offer, is the suggestion we would have to sequence 100% of human and chimp genomes, before we could be sure it was a real problem. Which, given that Haldane's Dilemma has now been high profile for 7 years since Remine rediscovered it, is illuminating for showing that it has not been possible for even a half plausible solution, using unrealistically favorable assumptions, to be derived to solve the Dilemma. So we see genetics has in fact been a pretty devastating blow to the Darwinists, and once again we find the evidence very much against them. I continue to maintain that my theory of directed mutation is the only credible explanation for life, that unlike competing theories, fits all available data. 

Allegedly 'Proven,' Fossil Relationships Are Often Based Upon Highly Dubious Assumptions

The way Richard Milton puts it in his book The Facts of Life p 142 is a particular favorite of mine.

'One might suppose that the bathroom sponge and the loofah are related, since both are similar aids to scrubbing one's back commonly found in the bathroom. In fact, one is a vegetable which comes from an Indian tree, while the other is an animal which comes from the sea bottom.'

Two Distinct Types of Evolution; Microevolution and Macroevolution

Neo-Darwinists maintain that there is only one form of evolution. Since we can put microevolution in the laboratory, test it, and observe it, they say evolution is a confirmed scientific fact. However, while no-one today seriously challenges the reality of microevolution and the capacity for the phenotype ( outward appearance ) of organisms to change sometimes quite substantially through natural selection, skeptics such as myself, do not see that confirmation of microevolution proves a second type of evolution, named macroevolution, happens according to the same principals and fundamental mechanism. The main difference between the two mechanisms is that microevolution is a Newtonian system that generally leads to increased entropy and often devolves genomes reducing the amount of information within a species gene pool, whereas macroevolution uses an alternative system of physics, dramatically increasing the amount of information in genomes, creating wholly new and distinct genes, decreasing local entropy, and giving rise to irreducibly complex biological systems. The thought provoking and highly original panspermia.com faq, summarizes the current problem with the microevolution mechanisms that have been uncovered:

The theory that more organized forms of life on Earth evolved from less organized forms over about four billion years is well-established. But new genes are necessary for this process. The theory that new genes arise by random mutation of old genes and natural selection is not established. The result of every known mutation is either neutral or deleterious, except when the disabling of a gene is advantageous. It is possible that "gene duplication" followed by other mutations could have occasionally produced a closely related new gene with a function very similar to the original one. But a convincing account of even one wholly new gene with an unrelated specific new function, arising from mutations of an existing gene, or assembled from random strands of nucleotides, has not been given.

As stated, the only documented cases of 'evolution,' / population genetics, are better termed devolution, because of their total inability to generate new information. Do I have any ideas about how macroevolution might happen? Actually, yes I do, and I have writtne up some of my ideas down in a file you can read by clicking here. However, apart form the total inability to cite any evidence whatsoever that entropic Newtonian microevolution can generate new information, perhaps the most devastating disproof of the microevolution equals macroevolution argument, is the truly enormous mass of real world empirical evidence that organisms can only be bred a limited distance from their original forms. When you push a species too far you start to get a variety of problems, breathing difficulties for the bulldog, poor temperament, increased fragility and genetic errors. In all cases further experimentation is finally ended with the onset of sterility. I feel it important to emphasize this is not idle speculation, but very well observed and replicated scientific fact. The most heavily experimented upon organism on the face of the planet is probably the fruit fly, and no-one has ever got anything other than deformed fruit flies crawling out of their tubes. The point is, if microevolution really was the secret of life, you would not repeatedly run into such terrible breeding problems. 

On the right you can see 2 typical examples of the way microevolution is rather amusingly extrapolated to prove macroevolution in textbooks. They are scans I have taken from the 1954 text The Mechanism of Evolution by W.H. Dowdeswell. It basically shows that the line of arguments and type of 'proof,' used for evolution has not changed very much with time. In other words the evidence for Neo-Darwinism is as thin as ever. i.e. ignore the microevolution eventual sterility problem and claim because we can observe some relatively minor changes in the phenotype of organisms that this proves ( given enough time ) a single cell can evolve into an intelligent hominoid.

From the same book the famed industrial moths. The fact that there used to be more white ones around than black ones also 'proves,' evolution, apparently. Population genetics aside, Icons of Evolution also points out the moths never clung to tree trunks, and that the story is basically fake, as are the photos. Darwin's finches also grew longer breaks when drought struck according to Darwinian legend - of course after the drought ended their beaks went straight back to the same original size, which is not usually mentioned. So much for two examples widely considered to be among the best evidence for evolution. Worse still, sometimes evolutionists like to deliberately misunderstand the phrase 'intermediate fossil,' and palm off what few fossil examples of population genetics exist, as so called 'proof' of evolution. Other examples of microevolution are not very convincing. Bacteria gaining immunity to drugs, for example. Okay, so some bacteria have a gene that enables them to resist antibiotics, the ones without it die, and the ones with it live. That is quite clearly ( again ) population genetics, not evolution. As a point to note, I feel it reasonable to add that the information culling mechanism called microevolution, in its day-to-day operation actually promotes species stasis, by selecting against the vast majority of mutations. I find this somewhat ironic, in light of the way microevolution is presented in current textbooks. Microevolution is in general a force for stasis and devolution, not change and macroevolution. About the limit of what you will ever achieve with microevolution is a transition from, for example, dog to fox, or mouse to rat, that is about it. Microevolution gives us no insight whatsoever into how the major species transitions happen, which is the real crux of the evolutionary debate. 

Evidence Commonly Miscited by Ignorant / and or Stupid Evolutionists

Various computer simulations have been touted as proof of evolution. Now am I missing something here? But when one creates a computer program, and runs it on created computer hardware, running off generated electricity, how does that disprove the need for creation? Those objections aside one moment, none of these computer programs have ever generated new features within their own core code - all they do is  basically run preprogrammed fractal equations. The only documented way to create new information, is to sit a group of men down and ask them to create a new feature for you. I find the computer analogy in general fair, and the fact that teams of men / conscious minds is the only known way to create new features in software, seems to me to be telling us something about how macroevolution might work. Besides, other aspects of evolutionary theory such as Haldane's Dilemma can also be modeled on computers. Why does no-one want to talk about that?

Convergent evolution. The fact that separated species have developed the exact same DNA sequences is today widely quoted a 'proof,' of evolution. Okay, so lets take an example of recently documented convergent evolution. Texas A & M University have performed a genetic analysis of dolphins written up in Cytogenetics and Cell Genetics. Busbee of the team responsible for the work summarized the findings as follows, 'We've found that the dolphin genome and the human genome basically are the same.' Prof. Hameister of Medical genetics at Ulm University in Germany also commented,' Dolphins are marine mammals that swim in the ocean, and it was astonishing to learn that we have more in common with the dolphin than with land mammals.' Right, so the fact that dolphins and humans have the same basic genome is conclusive proof of Darwinian macroevolution. Is it me, or does anyone else find that interpretation of the data to be ridiculous? I fail to see how dolphin DNA being the same as human DNA proves Darwin was right. I can see it proves common ancestry, but I fail to see how the data speaks to us about the mechanism behind common ancestry. It is mute on that point. This is a commonplace intellectual disorder for evolutionists. They think evidence for common descent proves Darwinian macroevolution. In fact, evidence for common descent just provides evidence for common descent. How hard is that to understand? Rather remarkably, the researchers fully expect to be able to use the results of the human genome project to understand not only dolphin, but also whale and porpoise DNA. In my personal opinion, I see the constant reuse of identical DNA all over the planet in many different and isolated ecological niches, as the strongest possible supporting data for  my alternative perspectives on evolution. Convergent evolution is just the modern slant on the old chestnut of homology. Animals are similar because of common Darwinian descent. We think this because common Darwinian descent has been proved by similarity. It is a non-sensical circular argument, the type of which can be used to prove black is white, right is wrong, and night is day.

And in fact, if you have not already guessed by now, when one looks at the history of Neo-Darwinism we find a series of misconceptions, miscited evidence, and even blatant frauds, is all that has kept this comical theory alive on life support, despite a long list of fairly obvious and fundamental scientific flaws. In all honestly we only still have the theory because a large number of people desperately want it to be true, rather than because it is true. Which, to me is strange, because I do not personally find the pessimistic atheist theology of materialism and death to be very attractive as a life philosophy. Anyway, in this file I am starting to round up a further summary of many of these frauds for you, including the fraudulent claim that Archaeopteryx is an intermediate fossil. Actually as has been documented for some time, Archaeopteryx is a fully functional bird with all the main avian adaptations already in place, including modern flight feathers. The fact this recognizably modern bird has claws, teeth, and a bony tail, hinting at reptilian ancestry, makes it odd rather than intermediate, where I define intermediate as an animal that provides an insight into how a major class of wholly new organisms was created. It is also true that claw analysis suggests modern birds do not descend from Archaeopteryx, as well as the fact that Archaeopteryx is isolated and alone in the fossil record, with no intermediate connection between itself and any other creature. One professor with shockingly poor English skills uses the wonderful oxymoron 'isolated intermediate,' to describe Archy. Basically, rather than being the father of all modern avians as many poorly written textbooks still claim ( See Icons of Evolution,  by Jonathan Wells, for an excellent account of commonplace textbook errors ) Archaeopteryx was almost certainly an evolutionary dead end that died out. Even worse, it is not even the first bird, and the dinosaurs it allegedly evolved from, are now dated tens of millions of years after its appearance! Yet this tangled mess of an 'intermediate,' is according to Gould 'as perfect an intermediate as could be wished for.'  And I think a lot of gullible people believe Gould on that point. In fact in general it must be said over the last century none of the supposed 'evidence,' for evolution has stood the test of time. If anyone is aware of any genuine evidence for Darwinian macroevolution, you can read my list of hard questions. I used to take email feedback on that list, but since with one honorable exception, the only responses have been emails full of four letter words, 'you dumb ****, heheheheh' etc, I've decided to stop bothering. If there was an answer, I'm sure someone would have emailed it to me by now.

Punctuated Equilibrium ( punk-eek ) is Definitely Worse

This is Gould and Edlridges' attempt to get around the no intermediate fossils problem, since there is no doubt anymore that this is one huge problem that has to be addressed and explained by evolutionary theory. However I can not accept 'punk-eek,' is salvation for Neo-Darwinism, as even a few moments of casual thought reveals a number of very serious, deep, and fairly obvious  problems with the theory, both in terms of abstract principals of logic, and a violent clash with real world empirical fact. For example:

1. Firstly, what Gould does is assume Darwinian selection, state the obvious that there is no fossil support for this idea, and on the basis of these assumptions, deduce punk-eek Darwinian selection. However, this backwards approach to proof where the conclusion is part of the initial assumptions of the model, will get you a straight fail mark every time on any kind of maths course. Apparently a level of logic no mathematician in the world accept, is perfectly acceptable when discussing theories about the origins of life. 
2. Secondly, what proof does Gould cite to demonstrate evolution happens fast in small isolated groups? Answer: None. What he is actually doing is citing lack of evidence ( no fossils ), as evidence. Is citing absence of data, as data, a valid way to do real science?!?? What scientific theory was ever proved on the basis of no evidence?
3. Thirdly, this theory claims ( its implicit but not explicit in the theory ) inbreeding is the major source of genetic variation. Do I really have to spell out why that is just plain nuts?
4. Fourthly, this ridiculous theory also requires tiny groups of inbred specialist species to triumph over vastly larger groups of animals again and again and again for hundreds of millions of years. However in the real world we find it is adaptable animals that win out in the battle for survival, not specialist ones. One needs look no further than Australia and the havoc generalized rabbits have caused to specialist indigenous marsupial species for proof of this point. This theory directly contracts empirical fact.
5. Fifthly for several reasons you need a minimal population of any animal to be viable. A number of American species such as the heath hen became non-viable when their numbers were reduced to a few thousand; at that point, any stroke of bad luck at all, a hard winter, a skewered sex ratio in one generation, a disease of some sort, and it was all over. The heath hen was fine as long as it was spread out over the East coast of the U.S. The point at which it got penned into one of these ‘peripheral’ areas which Gould and Eldridge see as the salvation for Neo-Darwinism, it was all over. Again, observed empirical facts are clearly totally at odds with the theory.

6. The cheetah provides an excellent real world example of what happens when species get penned into the isolated ‘peripheral’ areas Gould thinks are so wonderful and start inbreeding. An excellent article on this process can be found on this web site, http://www.cheetah.org/genetic.htm.

   When geneticists looked at the amount of variation within the genes of the cheetah, they found that cheetahs exhibit much lower levels of variation than other mammals. In most species, related individuals share about 80 percent of the same genes. With cheetah, this figure rises to approximately 99 percent. The genetic inbreeding in cheetahs has led to low survivorship (a large number of animals dying), poor sperm quality, and greater susceptibility to disease. Inbred animals suffer from a lack of genetic diversity. This means cheetahs lack the ability to adjust to sudden changes in the environment, such as disease epidemics, and have unusually high susceptibility to certain viruses. For example, if a virus gets into a healthy population of leopards, not every animal dies; just some do, because leopards are genetically diverse. But if every animal is genetically the same, like the cheetah, and one gets infected, all of them may become infected and die off. 

   In other words, the cheetah provides present day proof that isolated populations engaged in inbreeding in ‘peripheral,’ areas which then re-conquer wide expanses of savannah, as is exactly what happened with the cheetah, are on a one way trip to oblivion. Basically, microevolution slowly devolves species over the millennia through mutation and natural selection, then kills off species in the blinking of a geological eye the moment they get penned into ‘peripheral,’ areas. Any break out from a 'peripheral,' area is doomed to failure because the resultant lack of genetic diversity caused by heavy inbreeding, makes each species sick, ill, and ultimately non-viable. Punk-eek speciation mangles DNA in a way that is ultimately fatal to a species. Observed empirical fact on which no argument is possible, once again directly contradicts Gould.

7. Finally, and probably worst of all, Haldane's Dilemma quite clearly shows evolution can in no way happen fast in small isolated groups if mutations occur only by undirected mechanistic processes. Gould says species spend 90% of their time in stasis, even assuming species spend 0% of their time in stasis and are in a constant state of rapid genetic change, no-one has come up with an answer. In other words, Haldane's Dilemma is an order of magnitudes worse for punk-eek than it is for gradualist Darwinian theory. The fact that Haldane's Dilemma dates from the 1950s, shows a remarkable ignorance on the part of Gould of existing mainstream scientific evolutionary literature. After all, it is not often that scientific theories are published when existing literature on the subject provides a hard mathematical disproof for said theory. Even worse, over 20 years on from the original punk-eek publication, I am still not aware of Gould directly addressing this huge issue in any of his writings. He must be aware of it. Frankly, I find the way evolutionists run away from the scientific issues in their own literature to be rather disturbing. This is pure juvenile pseudo-science at its worst, where one wishes something to be true, and sticks one's head in the sand and shouts 'la, la, la, la' every time a problem is pointed out. 

I've been pretty hard on Gould in the above, and the reason for this is that punk-eek is widely presented as a credible account of how macroevolution happens. If the theory were presented for what it is, i.e. a detailed, well observed, and insightful narrative of how microevolution and speciation can happen, I would have no problem with the theory. I reject punk-eek not because it is inherently wrong, but because of the exaggerated claims made for it. My summary would be right, but only in a limited sense, that offers no insights into the main evolutionary mechanism, whatever that might be. A subtle distinction.   

There seems to be a cart before the horse attitude i.e. evolution has occurred, that's a fact ( it is never stated who proved this fact ), therefore we just need to twist the evidence until it fits our pre-conceptions. Of course, science is supposed to look at the evidence, and then derive the theory, but as Karl Popper admitted, the theory of evolution has never been a scientific theory due to its lack of testability, so normal scientific standards do not and have never applied to the theory of evolution. It has always been an emotional issue and not a scientific one - on all sides it must be stated in fairness. The main difference is that the worshippers of mechanistic reductionist Newtonian materialism try to pretend they are objective, when in reality most of them are not. The following extract from Phillip Johnson's Darwin on Trial puts it quite nicely:-

It is likely that Darwinist gradualism is statistically just as unlikely as Goldschmidt's saltationism, once we give adequate attention to all the necessary elements. The advantageous micro mutations postulated by Neo-Darwinist genetics are tiny, usually too small to be noticed. This premise is important because, in the words of Richard Dawkins, "virtually all the mutations studied in genetics laboratories which are pretty macro because otherwise geneticists wouldn't notice them are deleterious to the animals possessing them." But if the necessary mutations are too small to be seen, there will have to be a great many of them (millions?) of the right type coming along when they are needed to carry on the long-term project of producing a complex organ.

The probability of Darwinist evolution depends upon the quantity of favorable micro mutations required to create complex organs and organisms, the frequency with which such favorable micro mutations occur just where and when they are needed, the efficacy of natural selection in preserving the slight improvements with sufficient consistency to permit the benefits to accumulate, and the time allowed by the fossil record for all this to have happened. Unless we can make calculations taking all these factors into account, we have no way of knowing whether evolution by micromutation is more or less improbable than evolution by macromutation.

Some mathematicians did try to make the calculations, and the result was a rather acrimonious confrontation between themselves and some of the leading Darwinists at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia in 1967. The report of the exchange is fascinating, not just because of the substance of the mathematical challenge, but even more because of the logic of the Darwinist response. For example, the mathematician D. S. Ulam argued that it was highly improbable that the eye could have evolved by the accumulation of small mutations, because the number of mutations would have to be so large and the time available was not nearly long enough for them to appear. Sir Peter Medawar and C. H. Waddington responded that Ulam was doing his science backwards; the fact was that the eye had evolved and therefore the mathematical difficulties must be only apparent. Ernst Mayr observed that Ulam's calculations were based on assumptions that might be unfounded, and concluded that "Somehow or other by adjusting these figures we will come out all right. We are comforted by the fact that evolution has occurred.

Confused? You should be. Basically the origins of life and species, despite protestations to the contrary, are still very mysterious. I do not think the biologists should feel so bad about this. Astronomers can not tell you where the moon came from or how the solar system formed ( if you do not believe me on those two points, look it up, I speak the truth ). Although in typical evolutionary style exaggeration, some of them claim to know exactly what happened just after the alleged ‘big bang,’ which some claim started the universe. In a way I can see where evolutionists are coming from. The fossils do clearly suggest some form of evolution, a 'trajectory,' or whatever particular form of words you wish to use. I am not debating that, what I am debating is the mechanism by which the major species transitions happen. What evolutionists do is look at the fossils, then look at physics textbooks, and try to make Newtonian physics fit their notions of evolution. Sadly, the flaw in this way of doing things, is that the physicists moved on from Newtonian science in the 1920s with the rise of quantum theory, and the biological community has not caught up. Modern physicists are quite happy to talk about the effect of the observer upon quantum experiments, the ability of consciousness to alter the results given out by random event generators, and the Matter Myth. Evolutionists ignore all this, and keep doggedly insisting simple 17th century Newtonian physics is all you need to produce life. Given the fact that as I outlined at the start of this page, animals possess technological systems clearly superior to anything we can design, the assumption that underlies all modern evolutionary thought that simple 17th century physics is all you need to explain life, seems to me to be extraordinarily naive and borderline plain stupid. I do not think 17th century physical law will ever explain life in its entirety, and the religious adherence to this unproven opinion prevalent among evolutionists is completely absurd. 

This web page went up in 1998, and as a result of firm exchange of views with an academic in early 2001, has recently been tidied up, with some minor errors fixed, and narrative tone altered. As a result of this I have had opportunity to reconsider the data presented, and put together a more considered alternative theory of evolution, which I have already mentioned above as having the potential to address many of the issues presented on this page. I am not against the idea of evolution itself, since the fossil record is overwhelming factual proof of some kind of evolution. The problem is that evolutionists seem absolutely convinced that there can only be one possible mechanism for evolution. If this one mechanism can be shown to have problems, they start hysterically wailing, predicting the end of science as we know it, and asserting the age of chaos is upon us. The fundamental stupidity of evolutionists lies in this unproven opinion that selection is the only way evolution could ever happen, and that if macroevolution by selection can be disproved ( fairly easy, since disproving something for which no actual proof exists is not difficult ), all notions of evolution are disproved. Is that point too subtle for you all? Anyway it really does not matter what you all think, consciously directed mutation is the way forward for evolutionary theory, and if you do not like it, then I am sure the next generation of students will. This web page is not going anywhere.

If you read the second edition of Origin of Species, which is just the one I have on hand, one of the concluding comments made is that selection accounts for the origin of species from one or several original forms. You must understand Darwin was conservative in the original wording in places, and taking account of the 'one or several,' qualification, it is hard to say this limited form of microevolution / population genetics has not been subsequently confirmed. One could say that this web site does not in any way argue against Darwin's Original Theory of Evolution, but rather against the bastard descendents of his original theory. I like to point this out because I get emails from people telling me I am disrespectful to Darwin - which is an overly simplistic statement. But, we should ( and I do )  keep in mind, is that such qualifications in Origin probably existed to avoid offending religious groups, and did not reflect Darwin's real opinions. Certainly I do not find the body text of Origin to be compatible with these qualifications, and in time Darwin unquestionably went well beyond his original theory, embroiling himself not only in poor science, but most disturbingly of all in The Descent of Man, gleeful exultations to acts of genocide against inferior races. Which were the great old man alive today, with the benefit of historical hindsight, I have no doubt would be his greatest regret, and a source of enormous personal remorse. Darwin may have thought black men were stupid, backward, primitive missing links, and successfully convinced many other people of his period that this was true, but thankfully men like me have won the argument in the last 50 years, and evolutionary racism has died the death this vile and disgusting form of discrimination deserves.

People new to this issue may be thinking, well you have to be careful, you can not believe everything you read on the internet. If everything this writer says is true, no scientist in the world would accept the theory. Actually a lot do not. And many who state they do, have many detailed reservations which amount to a rejection. My personal experience at University was that when you caught professors at ease in the bar and gently dropped a question into conversation, none of the smart ones seemed particularly willing to support the theory, although in a public lecture they would of course. The dumb ones did not seem to know their Haldane's Dilemma, from their irreducible complexity, from their lack of intermediate fossils, and basically thought it was true because lots of other people thought it was true. Which is not much of a reason really. You should read these quotations from mainstream scientists, for a fascinating insight into the legions of educated scientific doubting Thomasas that have spoken out over the years.

...A pseudo-science is something that pretends to be a science but does not obey the rules of good conduct common to all sciences. Thus such subjects are false sciences.

True science is a method of studying nature. It is a set of rules that prevents scientists from lying to each other or to themselves. Hypotheses must be open to testing and must be revised in the face of contradictory evidence. All evidence must be considered and all alternative hypotheses must be explored. The rules of good science are nothing more than the rules of good thinking that is, the rules of intellectual honesty.

From M. A. Seeds, HORIZONS Exploring the Universe, Wadsworth Publishing Company, Belmont, CA (1989), p.A5

Do you think all hypotheses as regards evolution are being 'revised in the face of contradictory evidence,' and that 'all alternative hypotheses,' are currently being rigorously explored?

Evolution A Theory in Crisis, Michael Denton, ( My favorite. Good all round balance of hard science and readability )
Darwin's Black Box, Hans Behe, ( Technical, odd error, but still devastating. Second best book. )
Icons of Evolution, Jonathan Wells, ( Describes in detail how mistaken fossil interpretations supportive of Neo-Darwinism seem to remain mysteriously entrenched in textbooks and talkorigins.org transitional faqs long after they have been thoroughly discredited. Very disturbing. )
The Biotic Message, Walter Remine, ( Tightly argued scientific treatise that rediscovered Haldane's Dilemma. Last essential read )
Mathematics of Evolution, Fred Hoyle, ( The discussion of Haldane's Dilemma is flawed, but otherwise this is good stuff )
www.panspermia.com, Did life originate in space? 
Darwin on Trial, Phillip Johnson, ( Prolific author. Lawyer’s text, useful introduction to issues )
Signs of Intelligence : Understanding Intelligent Design, A. Dembski (Editor), James M. Kushiner (Editor),
( Collection of essays from the big names. Some repetition of material, but a useful introduction anyway )
Bones of Contention : A Creationist Assessment of the Human Fossils, Marvin L.Lubenow,
( Interesting to read a detailed account of human fossils and the games palaeontologists like to play with their bones )
Origin of Species Revisited, Wendell Birds, Philosophical Library of New York, ( Presents the cases for both theories of Evolution and of Abrupt Appearance. The first volume deals with the scientific issues and arguments. The second deals with the moral and philosophical issues )
Darwin's Creation Myth, Alexander Mebane, ( Overview - The SourceBook Project, P.O. Box 107, Glen Arm, Md. 21057 )
How Evolutionists Indoctrinate Children, Article looking at 10 textbooks published since 1998, examining the many errors they contain, and demonstrating that almost all the 'proof,' offered for evolution has long since been falsified. High school Evolution textbooks should probably be classified as works of fiction, or maybe religion, but certainly not science. Available on-line in full.
Microevolution is Degeneration, On-line book fleshing out my microevolution arguments. Worth Reading.
Deceit of Evolution, Harun Yahya, ( Linked because it is kindly available on-line in full )
Theory of Evolution - The web's original site critical of evolution

Other Works of Interest

The Matter Myth, Paul Davies, ( See other works by author for insights into modern as opposed to Newtonian physics )
The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot, ( Asks the question fundamentally just how real is matter? )
Nature's Destiny : How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe, Michael Denton,
( Was the Universe designed for life? Denton argues for 'fine tuning.' I think both Denton and myself share the belief that consciously directed mutation is the answer to the riddles of evolution. Directed mutation is the emerging evolutionary consensus. )
A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization, Dean L. Overman, Wolfhart Pannenberg,
( Does complexity theory account for information development? )
Supernature, Lyall Watson, ( One of the first scientific texts exploring the non-physical side of life )
Origins: A Skeptics Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth, Robert Shapiro ( Abiogenesis issue )
Forbidden Archeology, Michael Cremo, ( Classic text that lists many of the fossils you do not see in 101 texts )
www.science-frontiers.com, ( Rounds up anomalies in the mainstream scientific literature )
The Darwin Awards : Evolution in Action, Wendy Northcutt, ( One of the best accounts of Darwinian selection :))

Email: Now removed. In 5 years and about 100,000 hits, no-one (professors included) has ever come up with anything other than minor errors (now fixed) on this site. The case rests. I see nothing further to discuss.