Papa's Post: Evolution*
THE EVOLUTIONISTS are not wrong when they illustrate all life on earth as a tree — the "Tree of Life". The question, however, is the consistency and completeness of their theories. For they omit the characteristic that makes a tree the highest specie of the plant kingdom—the seed bearing fruit. For precisely, if life on earth is a tree, each part is to remain as it is, a root as a root, the trunk as a trunk, and a leaf as a leaf, that the tree be a tree. A tree which in the fullness of time produced as the fruit, the crowning glory of creation—Man. Man, the seed-bearing fruit whose source is neither root nor trunk nor branch, but the Maker of that tree.
And the science of Genetics (which we owe largely to the Austrian monk, Gregor Mendel) confirms this. For a branch by itself cannot produce (evolve) the seed-bearing fruit of a tree even though, to all appearances, it seemingly does. Nemo dat quod non habet. No thing can give what it does not have.
Non sequiturs
Similarity is not identity. And yet because evolutionists see in the growth of man, from conception to maturity, a similarity with the nature of life from the simplest cellular structures to the most complex primates, and their fossils are found chronologically one after the other, ergo, man evolved from them. It is one thing to say that a weed is similar to a rose bush and to a mango tree. And why not, when these are all plants. But it is another thing to conclude that the mango evolved from the bush and the weed. No botanist today has even claimed that he planted a weed and got a rose or much more a mango tree. A rose is a rose is a rose. No biologist has ever claimed that he mated two primates in the most ideal conditions for mutation and he got a human baby. A man is a man is a man. Why? Genetics.
Their theory of "adaptive evolution" is belied by Genetics. For what determines the physical characteristics and, in man, mental capacity, is not the use or disuse of the parts of the body but the genes. Athletes whose physical powers are taxed to the utmost still retain the physical balance of their bodies and do not "evolve" into grotesque proportions. How many non-congenital cripples are there who begot children who are perfect physical specimens of health? How many parents whose mental faculties, because of deprivation, had never been developed have nevertheless begotten gifted offsprings?
Why should evolution suddenly stop somewhere in the misty epochs of the Pleistocene and the Pliocene? Since evolution is a continuing change, a higher development, and the apes and primates of today are more developed than those of eons ago, why do we not have evolution today? Why should the less developed primates of a million years ago evolve into man, when the more developed primates now cannot? Why should evolution into man suddenly, unceremoniously and arbitrarily stop somewhere in that ambiguous past?
Unscientific
Metabolism in living organisms is one primary reason against evolution and for diversity. For even a grade school child knows that metabolism in plants is exactly the opposite of that in animals. Plants cannot live on oxygen, they need carbon dioxide. Animals cannot live on carbon dioxide, they need oxygen. Animal-life giving oxygen is an end product of plant metabolism while plant-sustaining carbon dioxide is an end-produce of animal metabolism. Diversity. Symbiosis. Each without the other will perish from this earth.
Thus the order in which life appeared on earth — plant, animal and rational. For plant life could exist on earth. Animal life could not exist without previous plant life. And man, while physically can subsist on either or both plants and animals, must feed on the entire creation, both life and non-life, for his rational life.
A separate kingdom
Why should man not be a separate kingdom? A study of the categories by which biologists classify mineral, plant and animals shows the primary reason to be because plants have all the elements that minerals have but they have something minerals do not have — life; the power to grow and reproduce. Animals have all the elements of vegetative life, but they have something more — sentient life and organic locomotion. The power to see, taste, feel, hear, smell, to move from one place to another. And man has all these—existence, vegetative and sentient life—and more: rational life, paraphrasing Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, reflection, the power to know that he knows. Hence Man is not a mere genus in the order of primates in the animal kingdom. Mankind is a separate, distinct, in fact, unique kingdom.
Within not from
Science has neither claimed nor proven evolution from one genus to another, much more, ascendingly, from order to order, class to class, phylum to phylum, or from one kingdom to another. Scientific evidence is to the contrary. For, if evolution is not within but from one to another specie, from the simplest to the most complex form of life, then at this late stage of evolution — estimated to be at least 4 billion years, there should no longer be any simple form of life. And yet, why are there still sponges and sea anemones, the living representatives of the earliest multicellular animals already highly diversed 600 million years ago? Why has the Lingula, a living brachiopod genus kept its present form for over 400 million years? Why are the present ray-finned, lobe-finned fishes and lung fishes still like the bony fishes of 400 million years ago? Why are the algae of the plant kingdom of today still similar to the calcareous algae found in the Precambrian era rock formations over a billion years ago?
No, the testimony of Science is not towards evolution. It is towards diversity. "Plurality" in the words of Chardin. And, coming back to our tree of life, as the tree grows, the roots (minerals) increase, the trunk (vegetation) becomes bigger, the branches and leaves (animals) increase and there are more and more seed-bearing fruits - Man.
No "great leap"
Mutation —spontaneous genetic change—is the last recourse used to justify the "great leaps" of evolution. Again, this is disproven by the science of Genetics. For mutation has been found to have two characteristic results: 1) harmful, or 2) neutral effects upon the mutant. But since evolution is to result in a higher order of being, mutation, therefore, cannot be the answer. For if the effect, at best, is neutral, the specie remains the same. There is no "great leap" higher. But, if, at worst, the mutation is harmful, what results is a freak of nature. Examples of harmful mutation that can best be appreciated in this regard are those in man, such as for instance, haemophilia, color-blindness, albinism, and quite recently, the "thalidomide babies".
The result is not evolution but devolution. Not progress but retrogression. Ugliness instead of beauty. In fact, beauty, the Muse that has lifted man to heights of contemplation is another argument against evolution. For an ape as an ape, a tiger as a tiger, a bird as a bird, a rose as a rose, these are things of beauty. But mutants, such as the theorized human ape, would be a freak — ugly.
Lastly, the important fact about mutation—even of the neutral mutation—is that there is no change from one genus to another. The mutant hornless Hereford cow remains a cow. The thornless cactus is still cactus, the hybrid corn remains corn, the hybrid "miracle" rice is still rice.
The answer
There being no evolution strictly-so-called what is the answer then? The explanation of the phenomenon that is man? Creation. And the most solid scientific arguments is the history of Man himself. The history of his "continuing creations" —the totality of the inventions of his creative genius which chronologically range from the simplest stone axe to the most complex computers. The totality of thought that gives undeniable scientific proof that Man, indeed, as the Bible has said, was made "unto the image and likeness of his Creator."
*Condensed from "Chardin,
Evolution and Creation",
The Rainbow, Sept. 1969
License: (license)
Comments