References and Notes 1. The Law of Biogenesis a. And yet, leading evolutionists are forced to accept some form of spontaneous generation. George Wald, formerly of Harvard University and a winner of the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine, acknowledged the dilemma. "The reasonable view was to believe in spontaneous generation; the only alternative, to believe in a single, primary act of supernatural creation. There is no third position." With no rationale given, Wald goes on to accept the impossible odds of spontaneous generation rather than creation. "One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we areãas a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation." George Wald, "The Origin of Life," Scientific American, Vol. 190, August 1954, p. 46. "The beginning of the evolutionary process raises a question which is as yet unanswerable. What was the origin of life on this planet? Until fairly recent times there was a pretty general belief in the occurrence of `spontaneous generation.' It was supposed that lowly forms of life developed spontaneously from, for example, putrefying meat. But careful experiments, notably those of Pasteur, showed that this conclusion was due to imperfect observation, and it became an accepted doctrine [the law of biogenesis] that life never arises except from life. So far as actual evidence goes, this is still the only possible conclusion. But since it is a conclusion that seems to lead back to some supernatural creative act, it is a conclusion that scientific men find very difficult of acceptance. It carries with it what are felt to be, in the present mental climate, undesirable philosophic implications, and it is opposed to the scientific desire for continuity. It introduces an unaccountable break in the chain of causation, and therefore cannot be admitted as part of science unless it is quite impossible to reject it. For that reason most scientific men prefer to believe that life arose, in some way not yet understood, from inorganic matter in accordance with the laws of physics and chemistry." J. W. N. Sullivan, The Limitations of Science (New York: The Viking Press, Inc., 1933), p. 94. 2. Acquired Characteristics a. While almost all biologists agree with this statement, many unconsciously slip into the belief, called Lamarckism, that the environment can directly and beneficially change egg and sperm cells. On occasions, Darwin did. This desire for a mechanism for macroevolutionary change reflects the insufficiency of presently claimed mechanisms. Some biologists are actively seeking ways to justify Lamarckism. The minor acquired characteristics they are claiming have no real significance for any present theory of organic evolution. For example, see "Lamarck, Dr. Steel and Plagiarism," Nature, Vol. 337, 12 January 1989, pp. 101-102. 3. Mendel's Laws a. Monroe W. Strickberger, Genetics, 2nd edition (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1976), p. 812. o Alfred Russel Wallace, who independently proposed the theory of organic evolution slightly before Charles Darwin, was opposed to Mendel's laws of genetics. Wallace recognized that Mendel's experiments showed that the general characteristics of an organism remained within distinct boundaries. In a letter to Dr. Archdall Reid on 28 December 1909, Wallace wrote: "But on the general relation of Mendelism to Evolution I have come to a very definite conclusion. This is, that it has no relation whatever to the evolution of species or higher groups, but is really antagonistic to such evolution! The essential basis of evolution, involving as it does the most minute and all-pervading adaptation to the whole environment, is extreme and ever-present plasticity, as a condition of survival and adaptation. But the essence of Mendelian characters is their rigidity. They are transmitted without variation, and therefore, except by the rarest of accidents, can never become adapted to ever varying conditions." James Marchant, Letters and Reminiscences (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1916), p. 340. b. Francis Hitching, The Neck of the Giraffe: Where Darwin Went Wrong (New Haven, Connecticut: Ticknor and Fields, 1982), p. 55. o "All competent biologists acknowledge the limited nature of the variation breeders can produce, although they do not like to discuss it much when grinding the evolutionary ax." William R. Fix, The Bone Peddlers: Selling Evolution (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1984), pp. 184-185. o "A rule that all breeders recognize, is that there are fixed limits to the amount of change that can be produced." Lane P. Lester and Raymond G. Bohlin, The Natural Limits to Biological Change (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), p. 96. o Norman Macbeth, Darwin Retried: An Appeal to Reason (Ipswich, Massachusetts: Gambit, 1971), p. 36. o William J. Tinkle, Heredity (Houston: St. Thomas Press, 1967), pp. 55-56. c. ". . . the distinctions of specific forms and their not being blended together by innumerable transitional links, is a very obvious difficulty." Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 6th edition (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1927), p. 322. o "Indeed, the isolation and distinctness of different types of organisms and the existence of clear discontinuities in nature have been self-evident for centuries, even to non-biologists." Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (London: Barnett Books, 1985), p. 105. 4. Bounded Variations a. "The awesome morphological complexity of organisms such as vertebrates that have far fewer individuals on which selection can act therefore remains somewhat puzzling (for me at least), despite the geological time scales available and notwithstanding the insights provided by John Banner in his book The Evolution of Complexity and Richard Dawkins' demonstration of the power of selection in The Blind Watchmaker." Peter R. Sheldon, "Complexity Still Running," Nature, Vol. 350, 14 March 1991, p. 104. 5. Natural Selection a. "[Natural selection] may have a stabilizing effect, but it does not promote speciation. It is not a creative force as many people have suggested." Daniel Brooks, as quoted by Roger Lewin, "A Downward Slope to Greater Diversity," Science, Vol. 217, 24 September 1982, p. 1240. b. "The genetic variants required for resistance to the most diverse kinds of pesticides were apparently present in every one of the populations exposed to these man-made compounds." Francisco J. Ayala, "The Mechanisms of Evolution," Scientific American, Vol. 239, September 1978, p. 65. c. "Darwin complained [that] his critics did not understand him, but he did not seem to realize that almost everybody, friends, supporters and critics, agreed on one point, his natural selection cannot account for the origin of the variations, only for their possible survival. And the reasons for rejecting Darwin's proposal were many, but first of all that many innovations cannot possibly come into existence through accumulation of many small steps, and even if they can, natural selection cannot accomplish it, because incipient and intermediate stages are not advantageous." S¯ren L¯vtrup, Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth (New York: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 274-275. d. In 1980, the "Macroevolution Conference" was held in Chicago. Roger Lewin, writing for Science, described it as a "turning point in the history of evolutionary theory." He went on to say: "The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the positions of some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No." Roger Lewin, "Evolution Theory under Fire," Science, Vol. 210, 21 November 1980, p. 883. "In a generous admission Francisco Ayala, a major figure in propounding the Modern Synthesis [neo-Darwinism] in the United States, said `We would not have predicted stasis [the stability of species over time] from population genetics, but I am now convinced from what the paleontologists say that small changes do not accumulate.'" Ibid., p. 884. o "One could argue at this point that such `minor' changes [microevolution], extrapolated over millions of years, could result in macroevolutionary change. But the observational evidence will not support this argument . . . [examples given] . . . Thus, the changes observed in the laboratory are not analogous to the sort of changes needed for macroevolution. Those who argue from microevolution to macroevolution may be guilty, then, of employing a false analogyãespecially when one considers that microevolution may be a force of stasis [produce stability], not transformation. . . . . For those who must describe the history of life as a purely natural phenomenon, the winnowing action of natural selection is truly a difficult problem to overcome. For scientists who are content to describe accurately those processes and phenomena which occur in nature (in particular, stasis), natural selection acts to prevent major evolutionary change." Michael Thomas, "Stasis Considered," Origins Research, Vol. 12, Fall/Winter 1989, p. 11. 6. Mutations a. "Ultimately, all variation is, of course, due to mutation." Ernst Mayr, "Evolutionary Challenges to the Mathematical Interpretation of Evolution," Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, editors Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan, proceedings of a symposium held at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology, 25 and 26 April, 1966 (Philadelphia: The Wistar Institute Press, 1967), p. 50. o "Although mutation is the ultimate source of all genetic variation, it is a relatively rare event, . . . ." Ayala, p. 63. b. "The process of mutation is the only known source of the raw materials of genetic variability, and hence of evolution . . . . the mutants which arise are, with rare exceptions, deleterious to their carriers, at least in the environments which the species normally encounters." Theodosius Dobzhansky, "On Methods of Evolutionary Biology and Anthropology," American Scientist, Winter, December 1957, p. 385. o "Accordingly, mutations are more than just sudden changes in heredity; they also affect viability, and, to the best of our knowledge, invariably affect it adversely." C. P. Martin, "A Non-Geneticist Looks at Evolution," American Scientist, January 1953, p. 102. "Mutation does produce hereditary changes, but the mass of evidence shows that all, or almost all, known mutations are unmistakably pathological and the few remaining ones are highly suspect." Ibid., p. 103. "[Although mutations have produced some desirable breeds of animals and plants,] all mutations seem to be in the nature of injuries that, to some extent, impair the fertility and viability of the affected organisms. I doubt if among the many thousands of known mutant types one can be found which is superior to the wild type in its normal environment, only very few can be named which are superior to the wild type in a strange environment." Ibid., p. 100. o "If we say that it is only by chance that they [mutations] are useful, we are still speaking too leniently. In general, they are useless, detrimental, or lethal." W. R. Thompson, "Introduction to The Origin of Species," Everyman Library No. 811 (New York: E. P. Dutton & Sons, 1956; reprint edition, Sussex, England: J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., 1967), p. 10. o Visible mutations are those genetic changes that are easily detectable such as albinism, dwarfism, and hemophilia. Winchester quantifies the relative frequency of several types of mutations. "Lethal mutations outnumber visibles by about 20 to 1. Mutations that have small harmful effects, the detrimental mutations, are even more frequent than the lethal ones." A. M. Winchester, Genetics, 5th edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1977), p. 356. o John W. Klotz, Genes, Genesis, and Evolution, 2nd edition, revised (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1972), pp. 262-265. o ". . . I took a little trouble to find whether a single amino acid change in a hemoglobin mutation is known that doesn't affect seriously the function of that hemoglobin. One is hard put to find such an instance." George Wald, Mathematical Challenges to the Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, editors Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan, pp. 18-19. Yet, evolutionists have taught for years that alpha hemoglobin A changed through mutations into beta hemoglobin A. This would require, at a minimum, 120 point mutations. In other words, the improbability Wald refers to above must be raised to the 120th power to produce just this one protein! o "Even if we didn't have a great deal of data on this point, we could still be quite sure on theoretical grounds that mutants would usually be detrimental. For a mutation is a random change of a highly organized, reasonably smoothly functioning living body. A random change in the highly integrated system of chemical processes which constitute life is almost certain to impair itãjust as a random interchange of connections in a television set is not likely to improve the picture." James F. Crow (Professor of Genetics, University of Wisconsin), "Genetic Effects of Radiation," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 14, January 1958, pp. 19-20. o "The one systematic effect of mutation seems to be a tendency towards degeneration." [emphasis in original] Sewall Wright, "The Statistical Consequences of Mendelian Heredity in Relation to Speciation," The New Systematics, editor Julian Huxley (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), p. 174. o In discussing the many mutations needed to produce a new organ, Koestler says that: "Each mutation occurring alone would be wiped out before it could be combined with the others. They are all interdependent. The doctrine that their coming together was due to a series of blind coincidences is an affront not only to common sense but to the basic principles of scientific explanation." Arthur Koestler, The Ghost in the Machine (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1968), p. 129. c. "There is no single instance where it can be maintained that any of the mutants studied has a higher vitality than the mother species." N. Heribert Nilsson, Synthetische Artbildung (Lund, Sweden: Verlag CWK Gleerup, 1953), p. 1157. "It is, therefore, absolutely impossible to build a current evolution on mutations or on recombinations." [emphasis in original] Ibid., p. 1186. o "No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution." Pierre-Paul GrassÈ, Evolution of Living Organisms (New York: Academic Press, 1977), p. 88. o "I have seen no evidence whatsoever that these [evolutionary] changes can occur through the accumulation of gradual mutations." Lynn Margulis, as quoted by Charles Mann, "Lynn Margulis: Science's Unruly Earth Mother," Science, Vol. 252, 19 April 1991, p. 379. o "It is true that nobody thus far has produced a new species or genus, etc., by macromutation. It is equally true that nobody has produced even a species by the selection of micromutations." Richard B. Goldschmidt, "Evolution, As Viewed by One Geneticist," American Scientist, Vol. 40, January 1952, p. 94. o "If life really depends on each gene being as unique as it appears to be, then it is too unique to come into being by chance mutations." Frank B. Salisbury (Plant Science Department, Utah State University), "Natural Selection and the Complexity of the Gene," Nature, Vol. 224, 25 October 1969, p. 342. o "Do we, therefore, ever see mutations going about the business of producing new structures for selection to work on? No nascent organ has ever been observed emerging, though their origin in pre-functional form is basic to evolutionary theory. Some should be visible today, occurring in organisms at various stages up to integration of a functional new system, but we don't see them: there is no sign at all of this kind of radical novelty. Neither observation nor controlled experiment has shown natural selection manipulating mutations so as to produce a new gene, hormone, enzyme system or organ." Michael Pitman, Adam and Evolution (London: Rider, 1984), pp. 67-68. 7. Fruit Flies a. Strickberger, p. 44. b. "Most mutants which arise in any organism are more or less disadvantageous to their possessors. The classical mutants obtained in Drosophila [the fruit fly] usually show deterioration, breakdown, or disappearance of some organs. Mutants are known which diminish the quantity or destroy the pigment in the eyes, and in the body reduce the wings, eyes, bristles, legs. Many mutants are, in fact, lethal to their possessors. Mutants which equal the normal fly in vigor are a minority, and mutants that would make a major improvement of the normal organization in the normal environments are unknown." Theodosius Dobzhansky, Evolution, Genetics, and Man (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1955), p. 105. o "A review of known facts about their [mutated fruit flies] ability to survive has led to no other conclusion than that they are always constitutionally weaker than their parent form or species, and in a population with free competition they are eliminated. Therefore they are never found in nature (e.g. not a single one of the several hundreds of Drosophila mutations), and therefore they are able to appear only in the favourable environment of the experimental field or laboratory . . . ." Nilsson, p. 1186. o "In the best-known organisms, like Drosophila, innumerable mutants are known. If we were able to combine a thousand or more of such mutants in a single individual, this still would have no resemblance whatsoever to any type known as a [new] species in nature." Goldschmidt, p. 94. o "It is a striking, but not much mentioned fact that, though geneticists have been breeding fruit-flies for sixty years or more in labs all round the worldãflies which produce a new generation every eleven daysãthey have never yet seen the emergence of a new species or even a new enzyme." Gordon Rattray Taylor (former Chief Science Advisor, BBC Television), The Great Evolution Mystery (New York: Harper & Row, 1983), p. 48. o "Fruit flies refuse to become anything but fruit flies under any circumstances yet devised." Hitching, p. 61. END**************************************************************************