Evolution Cruncher Chapter 22
Evolutionary Science Fiction
Fabulous
fairy tales which only small children can believe
This chapter is based on
pp. 953-959 (Scientists Speak) of Other Evidence (Volume Three of our
three-volume Evolution Disproved Series). You will find many other
statements on our website: evolution-facts.org.
Here are quaint little
stories that only tiny tots should find of interest. But, surprisingly,
evolutionary theorists love them too.
1 - FAIRY
TALES FOR BIG PEOPLE
"Rudyard
Kipling, in addition to his journalism, adventure stories, and
chronicling of the British Raj in India, is remembered for a series of
charming children’s tales about the origins of animals. The
Just-So Stories (1902) are fanciful explanations of how . . the
camel got his hump (because he was always saying- Humph to everybody). Modeled on
the folktales of tribal peoples, they express humor, morality, or are
whimsy in ‘explaining’ how various animals gained their special
characteristics.
" ‘Not long
ago,’ writes science historian Michael Ghiselin, ‘biological
literature was full of ‘Just-So’ stories and pseudo-explanations
about structures that had developed ‘for the good of the species.’
Armchair biologists would construct logical, plausible explanations of
why a structure benefited a species or how it had been of value in
earlier stages."—*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution
(1990), p. 245.
Times have not changed;
in fact, things are getting worse. As many scientists are well-aware,
*Darwin’s book was full of Just-So explanations; and modern theorists
continue in the tradition of ignoring facts and laws as they search for
still more implausible theories about where stars, planets, and living
organisms came from.
When they are written
for little people, they are called fairy stories; but, when prepared for
big people, they are called "the frontiers of evolutionary
science."
Gather around. In this
section, we will read together from stories put together by Uncle
Charlie and Friends.
For purposes of comparison, the first and third stories will be by
Uncle Charlie, and the second will be one written by a well-known
fiction writer for very small children. See if you can tell the
difference:
2 - WHERE
THE WHALE CAME FROM
*Charles
Darwin, always ready to come up with a theory about everything, explains
how the "monstrous whale" originated:
"In North America
the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open
mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water. Even in so
extreme a case as this, if the supply of insects were constant, and if
better adapted competitors did not already exist in the country, I can
see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural
selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with
larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a
whale."—*Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859 and 1984
editions), p. 184.
3 - HOW
THE ELEPHANT GOT ITS LONG NOSE
We
have slipped one story in here that was written for children, not
for adults. But, really now, there isn’t much difference.
Once a baby elephant was
not staying close to his mama as he was supposed to. Wandering away, he
saw the bright, shiny river and stepped closer to investigate. There was
a bump sticking out of the water; and, wondering what it was, he leaned
forward to get a closer look. Suddenly that bump—with all that was
attached to it—jumped up and grabbed the nose of the poor little
elephant. Kipling continues the story:
" ‘Then the
elephant’s child sat back on his little haunches and pulled, and
pulled, and pulled, and his nose began to stretch. And the crocodile
floundered toward the bank, making the water all creamy with great
sweeps of his tail, and he pulled, and pulled, and pulled.’ "—Rudyard
Kipling, children’s story, quoted in Wayne Frair and Percival Davis,
Case for Creation (1983), p. 130.
And that is how the
elephant got its long nose.
4 - HOW
THE GIRAFFE GOT ITS LONG NECK
The
giraffe used to look just like other grazing animals in Africa. But
while the other animals were content to eat the grasses growing in the
field and the leaves on the lower branches, the giraffe felt that the
survival of his fittest depended on reaching up and plucking leaves from
still higher branches. This went on for a time, as he and his brothers
and sisters kept reaching ever higher. Only those that reached the
highest branches of leaves survived.
All the other giraffes
in the meadow died from starvation (all
because they were too proud to bend down and eat the lush vegetation
that all the other short-necked animals were eating). So only the
longest-necked giraffes had enough food to eat while all their brother
and sister giraffes died from lack of food. Sad story; don’t you
think? But that is the story of how the giraffe grew its long neck.
Picture the tragic tale:
Dead giraffes lying about in the grass while the short-necked grazers,
such as the antelope and gazelle, walked by them, having plenty to eat.
So there is a lesson for us: Do not be too proud to bend your neck down
and eat. Oh, you say, but their necks were by that time too long to bend
down to eat grass! Not so; every giraffe has to bend its neck down to
get water to drink. *Darwin’s giraffes died of starvation, not thirst.
So that is how the
giraffe acquired its long neck, according to the pioneer thinkers of a
century ago, the men who gave us our basic evolutionary theories.
Oh, you don’t believe
me. Read on.
"We know that this
animal, the tallest of mammals, dwells in the interior of Africa, in
places where the soil, almost always arid and without herbage [not
true], obliges it to browse on trees and to strain itself continuously
to reach them. This habit sustained for long, has had the result in all
members of its race that the forelegs have grown longer than the hind
legs and that its neck has become so stretched, that the giraffe,
without standing on its hind legs, lifts its head to a height of six
meters."—*Jean-Baptist de Monet (1744-1829), quoted in
Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations, p. 87.
"So under nature
with the nascent giraffe, the individuals which were the highest
browsers, and were able during dearths to reach even an inch or two
above the others, will often have been preserved . . By this process
long-continued . . combined no doubt in a most important manner with the
inherited effects of increased use of parts, it seems to me almost
certain that any ordinary hoofed quadruped might be converted into a
giraffe."—*Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species (1859), p.
202.
Gather around and listen; we’re not
finished with giraffes yet. There is even more to the story: "Once
long ago, the giraffe kept reaching up into the higher branches to
obtain enough food to keep it from perishing. But, because only those
giraffes with the longest necks were fittest, only the males
survived—because none of the females were as tall!
That is why there are no female giraffes in Africa today."
End of tale. You don’t believe it? Well, you need to attend a
university.
Three
Fairy Tales
"This
issue [of how the giraffe got its long neck] came up on one occasion
in a pre-med class in the University of Toronto. The lecturer did not
lack enthusiasm for his subject and I’m sure the students were duly
impressed with this illustration of how the giraffe got its long neck
and of the power of natural selection.
"But I
asked the lecturer if there was any difference in height between the
males and the females. He paused for a minute as the possible
significance of the question seemed to sink in. After a while he said,
‘I don’t know. I shall look into it.’ Then he explained to the
class that if the difference [in male and female giraffe neck lengths]
was substantial, it could put a crimp in the illustration unless the
males were uncommonly gentlemanly and stood back to allow the females
‘to survive as well.’
"He
never did come back with an answer to my question; but in due course I
found it for myself. According to Jones the female giraffe is 24
inches shorter than the male. The observation is confirmed by Cannon.
Interestingly, the Reader’s Digest publication, The Living World
of Animals, extends the potential difference to 3 feet!
"Yet Life
magazine, a while ago, presented the giraffe story as a most
convincing example of natural selection at work."—Arthur C.
Custance, "Equal Rights Amendment for Giraffes?" in Creation
Research Society Quarterly, March 1980, p. 230 [references cited: *F.
Wood Jones, Trends of Life (1953), p. 93; *H. Graham Cannon, Evolution
of Living Things (1958), p. 139; *Reader’s Digest World of Animals
(1970), p. 102].
Sunderland compares the
tall tale with scientific information:
"It is speculated
by neo-Darwinists that some ancestor of the giraffe gradually got longer
and longer bones in the neck and legs over millions of years. If this
were true, one might predict that there would either be fossils showing
some of the intermediate forms or perhaps some living forms today with
medium-sized necks. Absolutely no such intermediates have been found
either among the fossils or living even-toed ungulates that would
connect the giraffe with any other creature.
"Evolutionists
cannot explain why the giraffe is the only four-legged creature with a
really long neck and yet everything else in the world [without that long
neck] survived. Many short-necked animals of course existed side-by-side
in the same locale as the giraffe. Darwin even mentioned this possible
criticism in The Origin, but tried to explain it away and ignore
it.
"Furthermore it is
not possible for evolutionists to make up a plausible scenario for the
origination of either the giraffe’s long neck or its complicated blood
pressure regulating system. This amazing feature generates extremely
high pressure to pump the blood up to the 20-foot-high brain and then
quickly reduces the pressure to prevent brain damage when the animal
bends down to take a drink. After over a century of the most intensive
exploration for fossils, the world’s museums cannot display a single
intermediate form that would connect the giraffe with any other
creature."—Luther D. Sunderland, Darwin’s Enigma (1988), pp.
83-84.
5 - HOW
THE CATFISH LEARNED TO WALK
There is
a fish or two known to walk on land, for a short distance, and then jump
back into the water. But there are none that stay there and change into
reptiles! Luther Sunderland interviewed several of the leading fossil
experts. Each paleontologist was asked about that great evolutionary
"fish story": the first fish that began walking on
land—which then became the grandpa of all the land animals!
Although this is a basic teaching of evolutionary theory, none of the
interviewed experts knew of any fossil evidence proving that any fish
had ever grown legs and feet and begun walking on land!
Here is a more recent
fish story that recalls to mind that highly honored one found in
evolution books:
"The Kingston
Whig-Standard for 7 October 1976, on page 24, had a brief account,
from Jonesboro, Tennessee, of the U.S. National Storytelling Festival
held there. One particular tall story was as follows:
" ‘The
storyteller, as a boy, while fishing one day caught a catfish, but he
threw it back. The following day he caught it again. This time he kept
it out of the water for a little longer, and then threw it back. And so
it continued all summer; the fish staying out of the water for longer
and longer periods, until it became accustomed to living on land.
" ‘At the end of
the summer, as the boy was walking to school, the fish jumped out of the
water and began following him like a dog. All went well until they
started across an old bridge with a plank missing. Then the catfish,
alas, fell through the hole in the bridge into the water below, and
drowned.’ "—Harold L. Armstrong, news note, Creation
Research Society Quarterly, March 1977, p. 230.
6 - A
LIVING CREATURE EMERGES FROM DUST
We
have another story for little children. Gather around and listen
closely, for only the gullible could find it believable:
"Long ago and far
away, there was a pile of sand by the seashore. It looked just like
regular sand, and so it was! Water was lapping at the shore. It looked
just like regular water, and so it was! Then a storm arose and lightning
flashed. Nothing ran for cover, for nothing was alive. Then the bolt of
lightning hit the water—and a living creature came into existence! It
swam around for a time, had children, and thousands of years later, its
descendants gradually figured out how to invent organs necessary for
survival and they eventually learned how to reproduce their own, and
bear young. And that’s how we began."
That story would only
work for children below the age of six. Above that, they would reply,
"Come on, now, you’re just fibbing!" A competent geneticist
would die laughing.
Here is another story of
life arising out of the soil, where no life had been before. This tale
was originally told, not to modern folk but, to ancient ones. It is a
pagan myth::
"Phoenix was a
fabulous, eagle-like bird which existed in the folklore of ancient
Egypt. It is said that no more than one of these great birds ever lived
at any one time. The solitary nature of Phoenix naturally presented a
problem from the standpoint of procreation. Reproduction, however, was
solved in a rather unique way. At the end of its life span of no less
than 500 years, the bird would construct a nest of combustible materials
and spices, set the nest on fire, and be consumed in the flames.
"Then, lo and
behold, from the inert ashes would spring a new Phoenix!
"In the history of
mythology, the story of Phoenix is one of the few instances, if not the
only one, in which something complex is constructed from lifeless
matter, completely unaided."—Lester J. McCann, Blowing the
Whistle on Darwinism (1988), p. 101.
Concern not yourself
with the foolish prattle of Creationists about scientific facts—such
as DNA and amino acid codes, concentrated chemical compounds, food
requirements, complex reproduction systems, cell contents, bone
construction, hormones, gastrointestinal tract, brain, heart, nerves,
circulatory system, lymphatics, and all the rest.
Instead, be content with
the marvelous tale:
"Lightning hit some seawater and changed it into a living organism,
complete with DNA coding, and then that organism had enough brains to
continually redo its DNA coding so it could gradually change into
transitional forms and make itself into ever-new species."
"Lightning hit some seawater and changed it into a living organism,
complete with DNA coding, and then that organism had enough brains to
continually redo its DNA coding so it could gradually change into
transitional forms and make itself into ever-new species."
Ignore the fact that it
has never happened today, and no evidence is available that it has ever
occurred in the past. Evolutionists say you should believe it, and you
should bow to their superior intelligence. Do not question; do not
think.
7 - HOW
THE FISH GOT ITS SHAPE
We could
cite a remarkable number of other examples from evolutionary literature,
but a couple should suffice. First, here is how the fish got its
shape:
"The fish has
assumed its present shape through many millions of years of natural
selection. That is, the individuals of each species best suited for
their particular environment had a better chance to survive long enough
to reproduce and pass on their genetic material to their offspring, who
then did the same. Those less suited either moved to more suitable
environments or died before reproducing and passing their genes to
offspring."—*Ocean World of Jacques Cousteau: Vol 5, The Art
of Motion, p. 22.
In the above book, a
wide variety of fish shapes are described. But the reader is told
that each fish shape was, in effect, the result of Lamarckian
inheritance. Each fish subtly changed its DNA code, passed these changes
on to its offspring; and, by environmental effects, one species
changed itself into another. That is Lamarckian evolution. The book
tells of fast fish and slow fish, all doing well in the water. But
the claim is essentially made that the fast fish made themselves fast or
they would have perished,—and the slow fish made themselves slow or
they would have perished also! Each fish made the changes, with
genetic alterations passed on to its immediate children.
We know that gene
shuffling can produce some changes within species, but none across
species, and not the kind of radical changes suggested here. This
fish story is akin to the giraffe’s long neck. Just as a giraffe
cannot grow a longer neck, so a fish cannot change its shape.
Are
you still wondering about that whale of a story that *Darwin
told? Charlie later may have waffled a little over it; but, to close
friends, he remained staunchly in defense of the principle of the
thing: It was obvious to him that a bear had changed to a whale!
"Extremes of
adaptation—such as the whale provoke wonder about how such a creature
could have evolved. Sometimes larger than a herd of elephants, this
intelligent mammal loads on tons of tiny plants and animals (plankton)
it extracts from seawater. Since it is air breathing, warm-blooded and
milk giving, it must have developed from land animals in ancient times,
then gone back to the sea. But 150 years ago, who could imagine how such
a transformation could come about?
"Charles Darwin
could. He had noticed in a traveler’s account that an American black
bear was seen ‘swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus
catching, like a whale, insects in the water.’ If this new
food-getting habit became well-established, Darwin said in the Origin
of Species (first edition, 1859) . . [Darwin’s statement quoted].
"
‘Preposterous!’ snorted zoologists. Such an example, they thought,
sounded so wild and far-fetched it would brand Darwin as a teller of
tall tales. Professor Richard Owen of the British Museum prevailed on
Darwin to leave out the ‘whale-bear story,’ or at least tone it
down. Darwin cut it from later editions, but privately regretted giving
in to his critics, as he saw ‘no special difficulty in a bear’s
mouth being enlarged to any degree useful to its changing habits.’
Years later he still thought the example ‘quite reasonable.’
"—*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 483.
There is a lot more to
changing a bear into a whale—than just enlarging its mouth!
The fact is that Darwin was right in giving
that illustration, for it exactly fitted his theory. The problem was
that, as long as we airily stay with theory, it all sounds good; but,
when we give concrete examples of how the theory would have had to
occur, reasoning men recognize it to be a fantastic absurdity.
9 -
CHANGING A MAMMAL INTO A WHALE
Adapting
*Darwin’s theory that a land animal, the bear, changed itself into a
whale, evolutionists went ahead and expanded it into an even more
complex fish story. With serious faces, they declare that after that
first fish got out of water, it began walking and then changed itself
into a land animal; still later another land animal stepped back into
the water and became a whale!
"The cetaceans,
which include the whales, dolphins, and porpoises, have become adapted
to a totally aquatic life since their ancestors returned to the sea
nearly 70 million years ago. There is little evidence of cetaceous
ancestors, but most people consider them to have been omnivorous animals
possibly like some hoofed animals today.
"The most important
changes were those having to do with the way the animals moved and
breathed. They reassumed the fusiform [torpedo-like] shape of early
fish. The bones in their necks became shorter until there was no longer
any narrowing between head and body [their necks disappeared]. With
water to support their weight they became rounded or cylindrical in body
shape, reducing the drag irregularities. Front limbs adapted by becoming
broad, flat, paddle-like organs . . The tails developed into flukes
[horizontal tail fins] . .
"Another change the
cetaceans underwent in adapting to their reentry to the sea was the
position of their nostrils. From a position on the upper jaw as far
forward as possible, the nostrils moved upward and backward until they
are today located atop the head, sometimes as a single opening,
sometimes as a double opening. And these returned-to-sea mammals became
voluntary breathers, breathing only upon conscious effort—unlike man
and other mammals who are involuntary breathers. The development or
return of a dorsal fin for lateral stability was another change that
took place in some of the cetaceans upon their return to the
sea."—Op. cit., pp. 26-27 [bold ours].
This
story is even more stretched than Kipling’s story about the crocodile
stretching the elephant’s nose! A
mammal walked into the ocean and, instead of drowning,—continued to
live for the rest of its life as it swam around in the ocean! THAT
is really a fish story! Gradually it and its offspring made changes so
that they could get about easier in the ocean. But how did they survive
until those changes were made?
"Particularly
difficult to accept as chance processes are those prolonged changes
which lead to a new lifestyle, such as the evolution of birds from
reptiles or—perhaps odder—the return of mammals to a life in the
sea, as in the case of dolphins and whales."—*G.R. Taylor,
Great Evolution Mystery (1983), p. 160.
Even *Gould
classifies them as children’s stories:
"What good is half
a jaw or half a wing? . . These tales, in the ‘Just-So Stories’
tradition of evolutionary natural history, do not prove anything . .
concepts salvaged only by facile speculation do not appeal much to
me."—*Stephen Jay Gould, "The Return of the Hopeful
Monsters," Natural History, June/July, 1977.
10 - IT
WAS A HOOFED ANIMAL THAT TURNED INTO
A WHALE
But
there is still more: *Milner explains that it was not a bear that
went swimming one day and turned into a whale,—it was a cow, deer, or
sheep! "No problem," someone will reply, "It didn’t
happen all at once; evolutionary change never does. It took thousands of
years for the cow to change into a whale."
So that cow was swimming
around out in the ocean all that time, till the change came?
*Milner will now explain
why it was a cow, deer, or sheep—and not a bear—that went swimming
that day:
"Transitional forms
have been scarce, but a few suggestive fossils were recently discovered
in India of a four-legged mammal whose skull and teeth resemble whales.
[No creature on land has teeth like the whales which Darwin was
referring to—the baleen whale which keeps its mouth open and strains
in tiny creatures through immense bristles.] And, during the 1980s,
serum protein tests were made on whales’ blood, to compare it with the
biochemistry of other living animal groups. The results linked them
not to bears or carnivores, but to hoofed animals (ungulates).
Forerunners of whales were closely related to the ancestors of cattle,
deer and sheep!
"Such a conclusion
fits with the general behavior of the great baleen whales, who move in
pods or herds and strain the sea for plankton; they are, like antelopes
or cattle, social grazers."—Ibid [bold ours].
Can a cow live on a diet
of fish? How could it catch them? According to the story, after it
changed into the shape of a fish, it had no way to breathe since it
could only breath atmospheric air and its nose was in the front of its
head with the outlet downward (such as all land mammals have). EITHER
that cow made a dramatic single generation changeover or ALL its
descendants suffocated to death, for thousands of years, UNTIL they
gradually moved that nose to the top of their heads and became voluntary
breathers. (Perhaps the cow learned to swim upside down, so it could
keep its nose out of water.)
Differences between
whales and hoofed animals could be discussed at some length. (For
example, the baby whale has the milk pumped into its mouth; otherwise
water pressure would keep it from obtaining enough to survive. If it did
not have totally voluntary breathing, it would have drowned as soon as
it was born.) In hundreds of thousands of ways, the whale is totally
different than a cow, deer, or sheep; yet we are told that some such
hoofed animal walked into the sea and, over a period of millions of
years, changed into a whale. Now, that IS a tall story. It is but
another in a series of myths for gullible people willing to believe
whatever evolutionists tell them.
The Just-So Stories
are still being told.
Of course, there is a
way to settle this matter once and for all: Drop a cow into the ocean
and see what happens to it.
Ridiculing the
possibility that it could have any application to the Theory, a
confirmed evolutionist quotes a statement by the Opposition:
"As one
creationist pamphlet put it, ‘A frog turning instantaneously into a
prince is called a fairy tale, but if you add a few million years,
it’s called evolutionary science.’ "—*Op. cit., p. 399.
11 -
MILLIONS OF YEARS
FOR THE COW TO
CHANGE INTO A WHALE
I am still
worried about that cow. She had to stay out in that water, swimming, and
chomping on orchard grass that might, by chance, float by while her calf
nursed underwater; and she and her descendants had to continue on like
that for A MILLION YEARS
before that cow could change into whale!
"It
takes a MILLION YEARS
to evolve a new species, ten million for a new genus, one hundred
million for a class, a billion for a phylum and that’s usually as far
as your imagination goes.
"In a billion years
[from now], it seems, intelligent life might be as different from humans
as humans are from insects . . To change from a human being to a cloud
may seem a big order, but it’s the kind of change you’d expect over
billions of years."—*Freemen Dyson, 1988 statement, quoted in
Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations, p. 93 [American
mathematician; caps ours].
Another evolutionist
agrees: millions of years before the cow would change into a whale.
"The
change in gene frequencies of populations over the generations in time
produces new species. Darwin called it [the change of one species to
another] ‘descent with modification’: a slow process, usually
operating over HUNDREDS
OF THOUSANDS, and even MILLIONS,
of years."—*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p.
157 [caps ours].
Oh, you’re worried
about the calf? Needn’t fear. It was holding its nose shut with its
hoof while it nursed. Calves have to be persistent, you know, or they
don’t live very long.
*Louis Bounoure, former
director of the Strasbourg Zoological Museum and later director of
research at the French National Center for Scientific Research,
summarized the situation in 1984:
"Evolutionism is a
fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the
progression of science. It is useless."—*Louis Bounoure, Le
Monde et la Vie (October 1983); quoted in The Advocate, March 8, 1984.
James Perloff concluded
a survey of evolutionary theory with these words:
" ‘The princess kissed the frog,
and he turned into a handsome prince.’ We call that a fairy tale.
Evolution says frogs turn into princes, and we call that
science."—James Perloff, Tornado in a Junkyard (1999), p. 274
CHAPTER
22 - STUDY AND REVIEW QUESTIONS
EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE FICTION
GRADES 5 TO 12 ON A GRADUATED
SCALE
Much of what we have
discovered in this series of books is humorous. The claims of evolution
are, frankly, funny. Select one of the "fairy tales" in
section 1 and evaluate it scientifically. Show why it could not possibly
be true.
EVOLUTION
COULD NOT DO THIS
The U.S. military wishes it had
a cheaper stealth bomber (presently the most expensive plane in the
world). But the tiger moth has a sonar jamming device which switches on
as soon as a bat heads toward his way—and the bat cannot locate him!
The Department of Defense needs to ask the little fellow how he does it.
The tiger moth never paid a dollar for his equipment. It was given to
him.
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Chapter
22 Evolutionary Science Fiction
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