The Hopeful Monsters of Evolution
By Dr. David N. Menton, Ph.D.
This version copyright (c) 1994 by:
Missouri Association for Creation
[No. 12 in a series] June 1994, Vol. 4, No. 6
Since the time of Darwin, evolutionists have looked to the
fossil
record for historical evidence of evolution. Most evolutionists
now
concede, however, that the fossil record fails to show the
progressive
transformation of any living organism into a distinctly different
kind
of organism. This has presented some nasty difficulties for
evolutionists -- but they have made it clear that they will not
be
dissuaded by the mere lack of evidence, nor will they turn to a
Creator
to explain this enigma. Rather, evolutionists hope that
_monsters_ may
come to their rescue!
All animals and plants appear suddenly in the fossil record and
are
not preceded by continuous transitional stages. While some of
these
fossilized organisms have become extinct, many have persisted
right up
to the present time in what appears to be essentially their
original
form, showing only a limited range of variation. Bats, for
example,
appear suddenly in the fossil record with no evidence of
"pre-bat"
ancestors. Fossil bats have all the same distinctive features we
see in
bats today, including extraordinarily long webbed fingers on
their fore
limbs and "backward" facing hind limbs. (Bat knees and toes face
to the
rear!) Even the distinctive shape of the bat skull, which serves
to
channel sound to their ears for navigation by sonar (echo
location), is
found in fossil bats just as it is in all modern bats.
The absence of even a single example of a continuous fossil
sequence
showing the progressive stages of evolution of any plant or
animal would
certainly seem to be an insurmountable problem for evolutionism.
Evolutionists have long been aware of this problem and have felt
compelled to try to explain it away by any means possible, short
of
abandoning their faith in evolutionism itself. In 1944, the
evolutionist George Gaylord Simpson spoke of these missing
transitional
forms in his book "Tempo and Mode In Evolution":
"Their absence is so nearly universal that it cannot, off hand,
be imputed to chance, and does require some attempt at special
explanation as has been felt by most paleontologists."
Paleontologists have indeed been trying to imagine some "special
explanation" for how progressive evolution could occur without
leaving
any fossil evidence. Since evolutionary speculations have rarely
been
restricted by the demands of experimental verification,
evolutionists
have allowed their imaginations to run free and have now devised
a
really outrageous explanation for their lack of evidence.
In the 1930s, paleontologist Otto Schindewolf concluded that the
missing links in the fossil record were not really missing at
all, but
rather were never there in the first place! Schindewolf proposed
that
all the major evolutionary transformations must have occurred in
"single
large steps". He proposed, for example, that at some point in
evolutionary history, a reptile laid an egg from which a bird
was
hatched! This bizarre notion was championed in 1940 by the
geneticist
Richard Goldschmidt of the University of California at Berkeley.
Like Schindewolf, Goldschmidt resigned himself to the fact that true
transitional forms were not found despite over a hundred years
of
searching for them, and that evolutionary theory would simply
have to
accommodate this fact.
Goldschmidt sought to advance Schindewolf's notion of evolution
through single large steps by trying to imagine a plausible
mechanism
for it. He suggested that the answer might lie in what are known
as
embryological monsters, such as the occasional birth of a
two-legged
sheep or a two-headed turtle. Goldschmidt conceded that such
monsters
rarely survived very long in nature, but he hoped that over a
long
period of time some monsters might actually be better suited to
survive
and reproduce than their normal siblings.
Goldschmidt named this
monstrously hopeless speculation the "hopeful monster theory"."
Since
there was not even the slightest shred of evidence to support
the
hopeful monster theory, it was dismissed with derision by almost
all
evolutionists of his time. But Goldschmidt was quick to point
out to
his critics that there wasn't the slightest evidence for their
gradual
evolution either!
The hopeful monster theory would have joined the "recapitulation
theory" in the scrap heap of abandoned evolutionary
speculations, were
it not for Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldredge. In 1972, these
influential evolutionists resurrected the long-discredited
hopeful
monster theory and gave it a more respectable name -
"punctuated
equilibrium." This theory speculates that the intermediate
stages in
the evolution of organisms do not appear in the fossil record
because
these transitional organisms were short-lived, extremely
unstable
species which, as luck would have it, quickly evolved into
stable
species.
Thus, the evolution of any organism is characterized by
long
periods of equilibrium (no evolutionary change) during which
time many
offspring, and thus many fossils, are produced - punctuated
by
relatively rapid bursts of evolution that left no fossil record.
In the
May 1981 issue of Discover magazine, Gould explained that "two
outstanding facts of the fossil record - geologically sudden
origin of
new species and failure to change thereafter" actually
"predicted"
this new evolutionary theory!
While most evolutionists have now reluctantly accepted
punctuated
equilibrium as the only way out of a difficult situation (i.e.,
no
evidence), a few stubbornly cling to classical Darwinism, and
indeed it
is this discredited version of evolution that is generally
taught as
"fact" in our schools. Eldredge challenged classical Darwinists
by
reminding them that they could disprove punctuated equilibrium
theory if
they were to find so much as a single series of intermediate
forms in
the fossil record; no one has. Of course the sudden appearance
of
relatively unchanging organisms in the fossil record is
perfectly
consistent with special creation, but most evolutionists find
the idea
of an omnipotent Creator to be simply unthinkable.
Many of the arguments that Eldredge and Gould have used to
refute the
beliefs of classical Darwinists sound like they are actually
trying to
support special creation, but this is hardly their intent. For
example,
in his regular column in _Natural History_ magazine (May 1977
pp. 12-16),
Gould chided the gradual evolutionists for appealing to the
"_extreme
imperfection_" of the fossil record in an effort to explain the
missing
links. He countered that even if we were to grant this
"_traditional
escape_," it still would not answer the biggest question - the
viability of the transitional forms themselves. Gould pointed
out that
it is difficult to even imagine how transitional animals passing
through
the intermediate stages of evolution would be benefited or even
survive.
He asked:
"Can we invent a reasonable sequence of intermediate forms, that
is, viable, functioning organisms, between ancestors and
descendants? Of what possible use are the imperfect incipient
stages of useful structures? What good is half a jaw or half a
wing?"
Now that's a good question: One only needs to imagine a
mouse-like
creature slowly transforming into a bat to appreciate what Gould
is
saying. The reader may well ask at this point, of what use is
evolutionary speculation itself - and why is it being taught as
a
"fact" in our schools?
Dr. Menton received his Ph.D. in Biology from Brown University.
He has
been involved in biomedical research and education for over 30
years.
Dr. Menton is President of the Missouri Association for
Creation, Inc.
Originally published in:
St. Louis MetroVoice
PO Box 220010
St. Louis, MO 63122
