Evolution Over Time

No matter what specific topic you’re discussing regarding the creation/evolution debate, whenever an article or video is posted where the comment section is open, comments like the one above are sure to appear. (And those are some of the nicer ones!)

And I can honestly see why. Growing up the way I did—with no influence from the church, the Bible, or even any deistic religious viewpoint whatsoever—the story of evolution was so firmly established in my mind as science and fact that anyone who questioned it seemed rather untethered from reality to me.

I found it hard not to view them with intellectual contempt, as anyone denying the overwhelming proof of the story of evolution based on facts like dinosaur fossils, ape-men skulls, the 98% similarity between chimp and human DNA, the geologic column etc., seemed idiotic to put it bluntly. I truly remember feeling just that harshly towards those I considered (what would today be called) “science deniers.”

And when you feel as if you have the full weight of “science” and an avalanche of “truth” in support of your beliefs, any opinion in contradiction to it seems so weak and dismissible as to be beneath serious consideration. And of course, the internet tends to encourage some bad behavior sometimes.

Standing on Sinking Sand

I think of it metaphorically like a gang leader that is so sure of himself with all his backup behind him ready to help out whenever he wants. But what if he spun around to find out there was no one standing there to rely on?

You see, that’s what happened to me when I was finally challenged in my belief in materialism and had to present the evidence in support of it. And when I was asked what the best proofs of evolution I could muster were, I turned around with all this cockiness and confidence I could portray and found out many of the proofs I’d put my faith and trust in had disappeared without me knowing it . . .

Change over Time

A hallmark of evolutionary thinking is the idea of change over time. And this notion certainly plays itself out whenever someone asks the question, “What are the best proofs of evolution?” especially if we were to do so throughout history.

What if we were to do that from way back in the day, all the way up to the 2000s? For example, let’s begin by asking that question at the time of the launch of the book that is the bedrock of modern evolutionary thought—Darwin’s Origin of Species.

Neanderthal Man

In 1859, you might have been presented with neanderthal man as proof of our evolutionary ancestry (even though they’d been found four years earlier and had already been declared fully human by a professional anatomist).

However, the release of Darwin’s book fueled the search for fossils of imagined “apelike ancestors” of man in the evolution believing community. And, lo and behold, four years later, Irish geologist William King decided to reexamine the fossil skull of neanderthal man and promptly decided that he was an apelike creature. And many variations of this idea were propagated as science and fact for well over 150 years afterwards.

Today, of course, evolutionists have admitted their true humanity, which is why they are designated as Homo (which means human) neanderthals. And definitive confirmation comes from no less than Dr. Erik Trinkaus, an evolution-believing paleoanthropologist considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on neanderthal man, who’s concluded,

Detailed comparisons of Neanderthal skeletal remains with those of modern humans have shown that there is nothing in Neanderthal anatomy that conclusively indicates locomotor, manipulative, intellectual or linguistic abilities inferior to those of modern humans.1

Now obviously, humans evolving into humans isn’t exactly proof of evolution whatsoever. So, you can scratch them off the list as neanderthals certainly aren’t “proof positive” of evolution anymore.

Archaeopteryx

However, moving on to 1861, you may have finally found yourself presented with some rock-solid proof in the form of a missing link between dinosaurs and birds called Archaeopteryx. Good old Archae was used for decades to convince people that a true transitional fossil between lizards and birds had been found.

But alas, in 1977, an admitted true bird was found which dates (according to evolutionists’ methods) at 60 million years older than Archaeopteryx, which means Archae couldn’t be the transition to birds from lizards if birds already existed.

Professor John Ostrom of Yale acknowledged,

We must now look for the ancestors of flying birds in a period of time much older than that in which Archaeopteryx lived.2

Indeed, far from being some unique dino-bird, Archae shared much of its supposed unique anatomical structures with true birds that exist today (like the South American Hoatzin for example). So much for Archaeopteryx as undeniable proof of evolution.

Haeckel’s Embryo Drawings

Now by 1868, maybe the most “cutting edge” proof presented to you might have been the supposed shocking similarity of animal and human embryos, and the discovery that humans recapitulated (or relived) their evolutionary ancestry while developing in the womb!

Of course, modern science has shown the idea that you start off like a worm, become more like a fish, then an apelike creature, and finally, a human while growing in your mom is absolutely ridiculous and would be laughed at by any educated person today.

And Haeckel’s embryo drawings have now been admitted to being completely fraudulent, forgeries made by this supposed great scientist’s own hand, and the “similarity” argument has been shown false as well. And yet they were in textbooks up until my youngest daughter was in school just 15 years ago here in Canada!

As evolution-believing embryologist Michael Richardson concluded,

This is one of the worst cases of scientific fraud. It's shocking to find that somebody one thought was a great scientist was deliberately misleading. It makes me angry. . . . What he [Haeckel] did was to take a human embryo and copy it. . . . These are fakes.3

So obviously, those embryo arguments are no longer proof of evolution either.

Fossil Horse Series

Now by 1879, you may have felt scientists finally had the proof of evolution, as the American Journal of Science published an impressive diagram showing the supposed evolutionary development of horses, which “found its way into many other publications and textbooks” for years.4

Now, today this proof of evolution has been abandoned because of the many severe challenges brought against it. For example, “if it [the series] were true, you would expect to find the earliest horse fossils in the lowest rock strata. But you don’t. In fact, bones of the supposed ‘earliest’ horses have been found at or near the surface. Sometimes they are found right next to modern horse fossils!”5 But instead of me listing all the challenges, I’ll quote the evolutionist curator at the American Museum of Natural History, Dr. Niles Eldredge:

I admit that an awful lot of that has gotten into the textbooks as though it were true. For instance, the most famous example still on exhibit downstairs (in the American Museum) is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps 50 years ago.

That has been presented as literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that that is lamentable, particularly because the people who propose these kinds of stories themselves may be aware of the speculative nature of some of the stuff.6

So, obviously, the horse evolution series isn’t irrefutable proof of evolution either.

Vestigial Organs

Well, maybe by 1893 they’d show you the good stuff, the so-called scientific evidence of vestigial organs inside us. These were supposed evidence of useless, leftover parts inside us from our supposed evolutionary past.

And by this time, evolution-believing scientists like German anatomist Robert Wiedersheim was claiming our bodies contained over 86 of these useless organs, including the thymus, tonsils, adenoids, valves in veins, the parathyroid, and the pineal and pituitary glands.

Of course, not only have all now been shown to be functional, but some have been shown to be critical for life itself! Today’s doctors would consider that old list laughable, and over the years, the list of so-called vestigial organs has shrunk to a handful of highly questionable examples even within the evolutionary community itself.

Even the most commonly touted of all, the appendix, is now recognized as a highly specialized organ with a rich blood supply that manufactures several types of antibodies, it’s not some useless relic.

And it’s not just the fact that these vestigial organ claims kept getting knocked off the list, it’s the fact that the whole concept itself is a terrible “proof” of evolution to begin with.

Ultimately, evolution is about how supposedly new structures, forms, functions, and features came to exist, not about the degeneration of existing structures over time. Something that used to have a function but no longer does is no direct help to the story of evolution, so these once great proofs of evolution have ended up in the dustbin as well.

Piltdown Man

Now, by 1912, you’d finally have been shown some truly dynamic fossil evidence found in a gravel pit near Piltdown, England. The skull of an ancient ape-man (dubbed Piltdown Man) was presented as overwhelming proof of our evolutionary ancestry.

And for 40 years, this supposed proof was displayed in museum exhibits and textbooks as proof positive that human beings had descended from ape-like ancestors with hand-drawn, scientific images of what the creature must have looked like.

But once again, four decades later, the evidence was reexamined and revealed as a fraud. It wasn’t even a good fraud, as you could easily see how the teeth from the jawbone had been filed down to make them look more human, and the bones had been chemically treated to make them look very old. It was simply a combination of an old human skull and a modern ape jawbone stuck together.

So much for that proof of evolution.

Nebraska Man

But wait, by 1917, just five years later in the US, they found some powerful evidence for evolution when a Nebraskan rancher found what he thought was a special kind of tooth on his farm. And an evolution-believing paleontologist friend of his was excited at the prospect it might have come from an ape-man.

And after an artist applied a healthy helping of evolutionary imagination to his picture, he produced a portrait of Nebraska Man, a hairy ape-man, along with his ape-woman wife in a scientific journal. And this was touted as great scientific proof for evolution.

However, several years later, scientists confirmed that the tooth had come from a pig. The whole fiasco had nothing to do with apes or people; it had everything to do with evolutionary presuppositions that drove false conclusions, all based on laughably flimsy evidence. So, you can toss that proof of evolution away as well.

Samurai Crabs

Let’s jump through time here a bit and get some more modern supposed examples of proofs of evolution, because sometimes critics think, “Well, that was way back then when Darwinian evolution was in its infancy, and scientists obviously found way better proofs as time went along.”

Well, here’s an example of evidence for naturalism that’s persisted since 1952, and from the grandson of Charles Darwin’s “bulldog” T. H. Huxley, Julian Huxley, who published an article titled “Evolution’s Copycats.”

“His goal was to use an easily understood example of natural selection in action to explain its undoubted ability to cause creatures to adapt. Then he would extrapolate that idea to try and persuade his audience that all of life’s incredible design could be explained naturalistically.”7

Huxley’s original article in Life magazine described how he believed samurai crabs supposedly evolved. He reasoned that the resemblance of these crab’s carapace to that of an angry Japanese warrior was far too specific and detailed to be “accidental” and, thus, could “only have been brought about by means of natural selection operating over centuries of time.”8

And his argument was basically that “when superstitious Japanese fisherman saw crabs with any likeness to a Samurai’s mask they threw them back,” benefiting crabs with a “face,” resulting in more and more crabs with a more clearly “designed” samurai mask over time.9 And eventually, this argument became quite popular when it was used by famous evolutionist Carl Sagan on his Cosmos TV series in the 70’s.

Well, unfortunately for evolutionists, besides the fact that these “samurai” face shapes occur in nearly all members of this crab family whether they live near Japan or not and that there are examples of fossil dorippid-type crabs which predate the samurai warrior caste by thousands of years by their evolutionary timeline (i.e., there were samurai crabs before there were samurai), the story really doesn’t make much sense at all when the truth came out.10

And the absolute kill shot for this supposed evolutionary proof comes from evolution-believing marine biologist and crustacean expert Joel Martin, former Associate Curator of Invertebrate Zoology at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles. He showed the absolute absurdity of the entire story when he revealed,

The fishermen who make their living from the Sea of Japan do not eat any of these crabs. Whether they resemble a samurai, a human face, or merely a crab is a moot point; all are thrown back. For Dorippe japonica reaches a maximum size of only 31 mm [1.2 in] across the back, not at all worth the trouble of retrieving from the nets, let alone sorting through to see which ones resemble a face and which do not.11

So, in addition to the other facts of the matter, if the entire story was based on fishermen selecting these crabs, the samurai crab is obviously not proof of evolution.

The Miller/Urey Experiment

Now, a year later in 1953, you may have thought you’d hit the evolutionary evidential jackpot when you started seeing a diagram in textbooks showing some glass containers containing gases, electrodes, and a small “organic trap” at the bottom.

Based on a recent experiment, this promoted the idea that scientists had basically found a way to make life in a test tube, simply because they had synthesized a mixture of amino acids (the supposed building blocks of life) in a laboratory. All with the takeaway message science had shown that life can happen through purely natural processes.

Highly lauded for years as powerful proof in support of an evolutionary worldview, today, we hear modern comments like the following from a Time magazine article:

This textbook picture of how life originated, so familiar to college students just a generation ago, is under serious attack. . . . “It was,” says [planetary scientist and White House fellow Christopher] Chyba, “a beautiful picture.” “Unfortunately,” he adds, “it is probably wrong.”12

The article (written from a pro-evolution standpoint) goes on to describe the many reasons this experiment fails to live up to its initial claims and admits that the origin of life is still a mystery.

Indeed, Stanley Miller himself, the main scientist involved in the original experiment (that was basically promoted to laypeople as having made life in a test tube), commented on it 38 years later in an article in Scientific American where he admitted,

The problem of the origin of life has turned out to be much more difficult than I, and most other people, envisioned.13

So, unlike what many thought, this experiment comes nowhere near being proof of chemical evolution.

Peppered Moths

OK, let’s move on to 1959, when a certain Dr. Kettlewell published an article in Scientific American summarizing his studies of the “textbook story” of England’s famous peppered moths, that became what some evolutionists considered the prize horse in the stable of evolutionary proofs for years thereafter.

The story went like this. The particular moths normally came in light and dark forms, but when pollution from the Industrial Revolution darkened the tree trunks, the lighter colored moths which had previously been well camouflaged, now stood out against the dark background making them more vulnerable to predation by birds.14

The result? Well, the proportion of dark moths increased over the light ones, and later on, when the pollution was cleaned up, the light moths became more dominant again. Survival of the fittest. Voila, evolution has been observed!

And this professed example of “evolution in action” has been taught to countless students as positive proof for the story of evolution, with Kettlewell himself saying that if Darwin had seen these results,15

He would have witnessed the consummation and confirmation of his life’s work.16

But some rather recent and damning truths have come out surrounding his experiments, including the fact that Kettlewell glued moths to trees instead of deriving conclusions based on what he was observing naturally.

Indeed, evolutionary biologist and vocal atheist Jerry Coyne commented on the downfall of this icon of evolution:

Until now, however, the prize horse in our stable of examples has been the evolution of “industrial melanism” in the peppered moth.17

Coyne described his feelings, saying,

My own reaction resembles the dismay attending the discovery, at the age of six, that it was my father and not Santa who brought the presents on Christmas Eve.18

However, regardless of the fudged results Kettlewell produced, it doesn’t make a bit of difference anyway. Eminent British evolutionist zoologist L. Harrison Matthews admitted, when writing his introduction to Darwin’s 1971 edition of Origin of Species,

The experiments beautifully demonstrate natural selection—or survival of the fittest—in action, but they do not show evolution in progress, for however the populations may alter in their content or light, intermediate or dark forms, all the moths remain from beginning to end Biston betularia.19

Indeed, moths of different colors evolving into moths of different colors isn’t really that impressive at all, and once again an iconic proof of evolution gets tossed out.

Junk DNA

OK, we should probably move up to the 1970s where we can get into the really good stuff. Because even though the term had been around in the ‘60s, evolutionists really began declaring that junk DNA strongly supported the story of evolution in 1972.

The basic idea was similar to the old vestigial organ argument, that there must be useless leftovers in our body from our evolutionary past applied to our DNA. And because scientists didn’t know what much of our DNA did, they declared it was “junk.” Of course, they were wrong about that, much to the detriment of science.

Indeed, this evolutionary view impeded progress for decades because researchers considered 98% of DNA to be junk, so many (but luckily not all) evolutionists didn’t even bother to research the noncoding (supposedly junk) regions.

However, one scientist who didn’t buy into the idea of junk DNA was Professor John Mattick, a leading figure in the science of genetics, who concluded,

The failure to recognize the implications of the non-coding DNA will go down I think as the biggest mistake in the history of molecular biology.20

Why did he say that? Because as usual, with more research scientists have discovered (shock of shocks) that what had been designated “junk” isn’t evolutionary junk after all. As a recent 2021 paper published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution stated,

The days of “junk DNA” are over.21

Why? Well, the international team of 442 scientists involved in the ENCODE (Encyclopedia of DNA elements) project began trying “to identify all functional elements in the human genome.”22 Discover magazine’s website reported,

ENCODE has shown that the rest of the genome–the non-coding majority–is still rife with “functional elements.” That is, it’s doing something. . . . According to ENCODE’s analysis, 80 percent of the genome has a “biochemical function.” . . . the key point is: it’s not “junk.”23

And even that number was too low. “Dr. Ewan Birney (Lead Analysis Coordinator for ENCODE since 2007) explained that after looking at 147 of the few thousand types of cells in the human body,”24

It’s likely that 80 percent will go to 100 percent. . . . We don’t really have any large chunks of redundant DNA. This metaphor of junk isn’t that useful.25

So clearly, “junk DNA” as a proof of evolution is absolutely unjustified.

98% Human/Chimp DNA Similarity

Well, let’s move on to 1975, where we’ll take a look at a long enduring proof of evolution that many believed was truly convincing. And one you would almost surely have been taught, based on a scientific study done that year, is one of the most powerful arguments for evolution. And that is, human and chimp’s DNA are incredibly similar, up to 98% in fact.

Indeed, it’s still often said in schools, colleges, museums, TV shows, and documentaries that there’s less than 1–2% difference in our DNA as if it was a fact and has been for years now. However, it’s simply not the case. As our understanding of these differences grow, we’ve seen several studies revealing significant differences.

• There is a 13.3% difference in sections of our immune systems when insertions and deletions are considered.26
• The chimpanzee genome was 12% larger than the human genome.27
• Gene copy numbers revealed a 6.4% difference.
• There is a 17.4% difference in gene expression in the cerebral cortex.28

And if all the presently known differences were counted and combined, the 600 million differences between human and chimp DNA drops the similarity down to only 80%.29

So, the fact of only 1–2% DNA difference argument can certainly no longer be claimed as proof of evolution.

Tiktaalik

OK, we finally land in the 2000s to find what was declared as one of the most convincing evidences of evolution, so much so that in 2004 famous evolutionist Professor Richard Dawkins called it,

The perfect missing link—perfect, because it almost exactly splits the difference between fish and amphibian, and perfect because it is missing no longer.30

And what was this marvelous discovery? The famous “fishapod” called Tiktaalik, a supposed transitional fish-to-tetrapod that was declared positive proof that fish had evolved into amphibians millions of years ago.

But not long after, some fossil footprints were found of a creature that preceded the existence of Tiktaalik by millions of years—according to the evolutionary timescale.

Obviously (like the Archaeopteryx example), if there were fully formed tetrapods walking around 10 million years before Tiktaalik came on the scene, then the famous “fishapod” was neither the missing link nor proof of the story of evolution.

There Will Always Be New Evidence

Now, I could obviously go on, but I have to stop somewhere. And I understand that no matter how many, or precisely which, of the supposed examples of evolutionary evidence I list, I know someone out there is going to howl in protest that I didn’t deal with the exact evidence they feel is the real deal, the silver bullet that proves evolution beyond a doubt.

But I want to point out something. All the particular evidences I just went through were once presented as exactly that—undeniable proof that the story of evolution is credible, reliable, and scientific. In fact, I chose to cover some of the most iconic, powerful, and influential of them all.

And where are they now? Thrown out by the very people that still cling to the story of evolution based on evidence that will eventually drop off just like the others have. These revelations are likely contributing factors to why someone like evolutionary geologist Derek Ager would admit,

It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student . . . have now been “debunked.”31

The Fallout Due to False Facts

And yet, they hung around long enough for the next great “proof” of evolution to be revealed, so even as one or two dropped off, new evidence sprung up to convince the next generation of the materialistic story of our supposed origins, despite it being propped up by “facts of science” that would eventually be overturned by their own community.

And for many, they were never made aware that those “facts of evolution” were ever debunked, so in their mind, they believe that the evidence just keeps stacking up higher and higher all the time! Hence, many bark their protests, “How could anyone deny the overwhelming facts of evolution? I’ll show you the proof—its undeniable!”

However, like confronting a bully that stands in front of you shouting what he intends to do to you, my response is “You and what army?” Where is this supposed army of facts to make me kowtow to this unobservable evolutionary story, this fairy tale for grown-ups that is supposed to make me disbelieve the authority of the Word of God, the revelation of the One who knows all things because he created all things?

Because it seems as though all we see is a field of fallen disposable heroes that did their duty for a time and were then cast onto a trash heap after they were no longer useful, long enough until another bunch of recruits lined up to fill the gaps.

It’s truly tragic that many people have had their faith corrupted and others have simply never considered the true claims of God’s Word because of these many false “proofs of evolution.” For while these supposed “truths” are ever-changing, the truth of God’s Word has never failed.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Isaiah 40:8