Evolution / Creation Reading List
The numbered list is of books I found most worthwhile, in the order I recommend reading them. They're linked to annotations. The list below is alphabetical by author. This bibliography does not include all books I read and excellent books and articles have been written since I finished my investigation. You'll notice from the dates that it's been awhile. This is meant to provide a starting point for others who would like to explore the arguments and counterarguments regarding evolution and creation.
- Behe, Michael J. Darwin's Black Box.
- Lewin, Roger. "Evolutionary Theory Under Fire." Science 210 (November 21, 1980): 883-887.
- Denton, Michael. Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.
- Johnson, Phillip E. Darwin on Trial.
- Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species.
- Ross, Hugh, Ph.D. The Creator and the Cosmos.
- Blackmore, Vernon and Andrew Page. Evolution: The Great Debate.
- Lubenow, Marvin L. Bones of Contention.
- Ham, Ken. The Lie: Evolution.
- Lewis, C.S. Miracles: A Preliminary Study.
- Bender, David L. & Bruno Leone, ed. Science and Religion: Opposing Viewpoints.
- Wile, Jay L. Reasonable Faith: The Scientific Case for Christianity.
Adler, Jerry and John Carey. "Is Man a Subtle Accident?" Newsweek (November 3, 1980):95-96.
The debate in the scientific community about Darwinism is revealed in this article. "Evidence from fossils now points overwhelmingly away from the classical Darwinism which most Americans learned in high school. Increasingly, scientists now believe that species change little for millions of years and then evolve quickly, in a kind of quantum leap—not necessarily in a direction that represents an obvious improvement in fitness." A revised theory holds that new species arise by some different mechanism—perhaps even a gross random mutation in a single generation (an egg laid by a reptile hatches into a bird, for example). This is the theory of "hopeful monsters" which many scientists hotly contest. The iron law of Darwinism, that each species arises gradually and represents an advance in fitness over its predecessor, seems to have been breached. Scientists part reluctantly with Darwin. There are no alternatives and no (acceptable) explanations.
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Behe, Michael J. Darwin's Black Box, The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. New York: The Free Press, 1996.
This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the question of origins. According to Peter van Inwagen, a philosophy professor at Notre Dame, "If Darwinians respond to this important book by ignoring it, misrepresenting it, or ridiculing it, that will be evidence in favor of the widespread suspicion that Darwinism today functions more as an ideology than as a scientific theory. If they can successfully answer Behe's arguments, that will be important evidence in favor of Darwinism." This book presents the story of the impact of biochemistry on evolutionary theory, with a focus on the problem of irreducible complexity. In Darwin's day, it was expected that the basis of life would be exceedingly simple. That expectation has been smashed. Even the cell was a "black box" that technology of the day could not explore. The anatomical steps and structures that Darwin thought were so simple actually involve staggeringly complicated biochemical processes, many of which have only recently been discovered. For the Darwinian theory to be true, it has to account for the molecular structure of life. It is the purpose of Behe's book to show that it does not, and that intelligent design is the only reasonable conclusion to be drawn from the facts.
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Bender, David L. & Bruno Leone, ed. Science and Religion: Opposing Viewpoints. St. Paul: Greenhaven Press, 1988.
This book is part of a series on "Opposing Viewpoints" and is an anthology of essays by well-known experts with varying perspectives, including Albert Einstein, William Jennings Bryan, Jacques Monod, Robert Jastrow, Isaac Asimov, the National Academy of Science, The Humanist, American Atheist, Steven Jay Gould and Henry Morris. A quote from the cover, "It can be said that those who do not completely understand their adversary's point of view do not fully understand their own." One section of this book deals with creation/evolution. It is out of print but may be available used or through a library.
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Blackmore, Vernon and Andrew Page. Evolution: The Great Debate. Batavia, Illinois: Lion Publishing Corp., 1989.
This book is heavily illustrated and fascinating to read. It deals with not only the scientific but the historical background of Darwinism. It concludes with a chapter detailing the effects on society of evolutionary thought. Julian Huxley is quoted, "The ultimate task will be to melt down the gods and magic and all supernatural entities." The book is quite factual, well written, well documented, and apparently unbiased in its presentation. The authors conclude that the Christian faith is the most logical conclusion to be drawn from the facts. The book is out of print but may be available used or through a library.
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Byers, David M. "Pace Galileo: The Present and Future of Religion / Science Dialogue." America (April 9, 1994): 26-28.
The author, director of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Science and Human Values, claims that "scientific creationism" threatens not only science but Christianity. "Many religious leaders, having done decades of penance for Darwin and centuries for Galileo, are eager for dialogue with scientists." A new natural theology is needed, he claims, based on the anthropic principle, the discovery that the basic constants of physics are fine-tuned for the emergence of life.
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Chmelynski, Carol. "The 'C' Word Is Back: Creationism." School Board News (November 1994): 14-17.
According to Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education, "teaching biology without evolution is like teaching chemistry without the periodic table of elements." She claims that evolution is no more anti-religious than long division. To scientists, there are no arguments against evolution, the article claims. The greatest victory of creationists so far was in Vista, California. In August 1993, the school board adopted a policy stating, "No theory of science shall be taught dogmatically and no student shall be compelled to believe or accept any theory presented in the curriculum."
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Creationist Controversy, PBS program.
Stephen Jay Gould, prominent evolutionist, was interviewed. He said, "Evolution to professional biologists is as well-established as the roundness of the earth." He expresses impatience with "anti-intellectuals" who are "sniping unfairly and illogically." A conflict in Vista, California was explored in depth. In August 1993, Christian conservatives on the school board passed a resolution that evolution could not be taught dogmatically. This spurred recall petitions and defiant refusals to comply from teachers. The recalls were successful and now it is illegal there to teach intelligent design theory or abrupt appearance theory. Only Darwin's theory may be taught.
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Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. New York: Random House, 1993.
The publication of this book in 1859 is said to have ushered in the greatest intellectual revolution since the advent of Christianity. Although the idea of evolution had been proposed centuries before in ancient Greece, Darwin was the first to propose a plausible mechanism of evolution: natural selection, or "survival of the fittest." The essence of his thesis is that all species descended from other species, rather than being created separately as had been previously believed. He had observed the wide variety of forms that artificial breeding could produce from a single ancestral pair and proposed that, without the intermediate forms, such animals would likely be classed as different species. He also noticed that animals on islands were closely related to mainland animals, yet differed in important ways. They had "evolved" (changed) to fit the different circumstances of life. Once he had determined that "species are not immutable", he proposed that all species descended from other species through natural processes, perhaps from a single primordial cell. This is called the "general theory of evolution." I read this book twice and plan to read more of Darwin's work. Just as I suggest that every atheist read the Bible, I recommend that every Christian read The Origin of Species and be able to discuss it intelligently. Note: It is not easy reading!
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Dawkins, Richard. The Blind Watchmaker. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1986.
In Dawkins' words: "The basic idea of The Blind Watchmaker is that we don't need to postulate a designer in order to understand life, or anything else in the universe." He attempts to explain in this book how adaptive complexity could have arisen through mutation and natural selection alone. His bias is clearly revealed on page 6: "Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." Although he concedes the incredible complexity of living things, noting that there is enough digital storage capacity in a single human cell to store the Encyclopedia Britannica (all 30 volumes of it) three or four times over, he says that "to explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer." He uses imperfections in design, such as the backwards photon-receptor wiring in vertebrate eyes, the distorted body plan of the halibut, convergent evolution and the large amount of "junk" DNA (do scientists really know that it's "junk"?), to ridicule the idea of intelligent design. No one has come up with an acceptable (naturalistic) competing theory, and Darwinism, in his mind, explains everything perfectly, except for a few details upon which we can only speculate, such as the origin of the first DNA and the exact way speciation takes place. He states that no serious biologist doubts the fact that evolution has happened, nor that all living creatures are cousins of one another, and that modern theologians of any sophistication have given up believing in instantaneous creation. The evidence for some sort of evolution, he claims, has become too overwhelming.
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Denton, Michael. Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. Bethesda, Maryland: Adler & Adler Publishers, 1986.
This book is a must read for those who have studied biology or are interested in details about what's wrong with Darwinism. Although the author, a scientists, rejects Genesis, he claims in the preface that "the problems (of evolution) are too severe and too intractable to offer any hope of resolution in terms of the orthodox Darwinian framework, and that consequently the conservative view is no longer tenable." He also states that "despite the attempt of liberal theology to disguise the point, no biblically derived religion can really be compromised with the fundamental assertion of Darwinian theory." A description of the bird's lung is given as an example of how impossible it would be for the lung of a reptile to evolve by successive small steps into the lung of a bird without loss of functionality in the process. In a chapter entitled "The Puzzle of Perfection", he says of DNA: "The information necessary to specify the design of all the species of organisms which have ever existed on the planet. . .could be held in a teaspoon and there would still be room left for all the information in every book ever written."
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Gillis, Anna Maria. "Keeping Creationism out of the Classroom." Bioscience 44 (November 1994): 650-656.
Biologists regularly argue about the details of evolution, but not about whether evolution occurs. A landmark Arkansas case, decided in 1987 by the Supreme Court, determined that evolution is not religion, and creation science is not science. Science must be guided by natural law, testable against the empirical world, and falsifiable. Its theories must be tentative and subject to revision. The author sees anti-evolutionism as a threat to the integrity of all branches of science.
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Godfrey, Laurie. Scientists Confront Creationism. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1983.
This book includes essays from a large number of scientists specifically answering the claims of creation science. According to the introduction, "The facts of evolution are clear and are not disputed by any serious scientific worker." Creationism, it is claimed, is nothing but an ill-willed attempt to suppress truth in the interest of propping up a failing institution (Christianity). Protestant Christians outlined "five fundamentals" in 1910: the miracles of Christ; His virgin birth; His bodily resurrection; His sacrifice upon the cross constituting atonement for mankind's sins; and the Bible as the directly inspired Word of God. These principles, according to this book, must be accepted entirely on faith because they contradict experience and science. Anti-evolutionism, it is claimed, is best understood as an aspect of the anti-intellectual tradition. Specific evidences for an old earth are presented, including the growth rings of bristlecone pines, continental drift, magnetic pole reversals, radioactive dating, time of travel of light from stars, and time since the Big Bang. The essence of Darwin, according to one author, is the creativity of natural selection. Variation is random, and supplies the raw material only. In a telling essay, it is admitted that biologists accept evolution because "spontaneous generation of complex organisms has been shown not to occur and because evolution is the only materialistic alternative." This book is technical and specific, but understandable.
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Gore, Rick. "Extinctions." National Geographic (June 1989): 662-698.
According to this article, "Mass extinctions change the rules of evolution. When one strikes, it's not necessarily the most fit that survive; often it's the most fortunate." Uniformitarianism, the idea that natural processes working over long periods of time are responsible for everything we see in the world today, has been proven false. Scientists have found the crater responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, and meteorite impacts are now being blamed for several of the twelve mass extinctions. Five of these were immense, claiming up to 96% of earth's species at a time. (We are currently in the midst of another mass extinction, mostly caused by humans. An estimated 100 species a day are becoming extinct.) The periods between mass extinctions vastly reduce the time available for complexity to evolve. Yet, according to the author, "Mass extinctions promote new beginnings, new eras of experimentation." He also asserts that "reef life, aborted early in the Cambrian, evolved anew in the Ordovician," (some 100 million years later).
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Gore, Rick. "Neanderthals." National Geographic (January 1996): 2-35.
Were Neanderthals ancestral to modern humans or a separate species driven to extinction by modern humans? Evidence has been found that indicates Neanderthals cared for grievously wounded individuals for long periods of time, and gave their dead special treatment. In Israel, they lived concurrently with modern humans for "millennia." Their tools required a high level of craftsmanship and mental skills. Some researchers think Neanderthals were a variety of modern Homo sapiens which eventually interbred with modern man to become one species.
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Ham, Ken. The Lie: Evolution. El Cajon, CA: Creation-Life Publishers, 1987.
In Ken Ham's words, "It is not a matter of lack of evidence to convince people that the Bible is true; the problem is that they do not want to believe the Bible. The reason for this is obvious. If people believed in the God of the Bible, they would have to acknowledge His authority and obey the rules He has laid down. However, every human being suffers from the same problem, the sin which Adam committed in the Garden of Eden, a 'disease' which we all inherit. Adam's sin was rebellion against God's authority." Answers to common criticisms of the creationist view are presented in the appendix. This is a good overview of the rationale for young-earth creationism.
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Hitching, Francis. "Where Darwin Went Wrong." Reader's Digest (September 1982): 9-16.
"Although evolution is a virtual certainty, the theory Darwin put forward to explain it is not. In fact 'natural selection' is currently under scientific scrutiny from all sides." According to this article, nothing in the fossil record remotely suggests that there was a slow, Darwinian evolution from a walking limb to a wing. The idea of "hopeful monsters" is presented, but the conclusion is that we have tested natural selection and found it wanting. We are left once again with a sense of ignorance about origins.
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Huse, Scott M. The Collapse of Evolution. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1993.
This book has sections on geology, physics, mathematics, biology and anthropology that list evidences from that field for recent creation of the universe, earth and life. For example, in the geology section, findings that contradict the geologic column, processes that indicate a young earth, and processes that indicate a young solar system and universe are listed and explained more clearly that in any other book I've read so far. There is a concise outline of evidences for creation / against evolution. The conclusion compares evolution to the "Emperor's New Clothes."
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Johnson, Phillip E. Darwin on Trial. Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1993.
Written by a Christian lawyer, Darwin on Trial examines the assumptions underlying evolution. Scientific naturalists, says Johnson, force nature into their own paradigm, insisting that what is outside of science is outside of reality. Yet there is no more solid proof for the appearance of complex life by evolution than by creation. Darwin's most formidable opponents in his time were not clergymen, but fossil experts. The outstanding characteristics of the fossil record are stasis (no change) and sudden appearance. The explosion of life in the Cambrian is unexplainable. The many mass extinctions (proven since Darwin's time), mitigate against new improved species gradually causing extinction of parent species. Despite 130 years of very determined efforts to confirm Darwinism, scientists have no more than a few ambiguous supporting examples of "transitional forms" between major biological groups. In addition, the problem of hypothesizing a naturalistic origin of life is a major difficulty facing evolutionists. Darwinists insist that varieties gradually change into species, genera, families, etc., yet artificial selection, used by Darwin as important evidence for evolution, is powerful testimony against the theory. Despite intense artificial selection, no new species have ever arisen. Change is limited by the gene pool. Johnson claims that the prevailing assumption in evolutionary science seems to be that speculative possibilities, without experimental confirmation, are all that are really necessary. On this view, nature must have provided whatever evolution had to have, because otherwise evolution wouldn't have happened. Evolutionary science has become the search for confirming evidence and the explaining away of negative evidence. Negative evidence is considered uninteresting and generally unpublishable.
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Johnson, Phillip E. "Shouting 'Heresy' in the Temple of Darwin." Christianity Today (October 24, 1994): 22-26.
Secularists employ a definition of rationality that allows no place for a supernatural Creator. The contemporary academic world takes for granted a philosophy called scientific naturalism. "God" in this system of thought, is a product of the human imagination and largely a remnant of prescientific ignorance. The Darwinian story is the creation myth of this philosophy, according to the author. "The evidence that the mutation /selection mechanism can create new complex organs or new types of organisms is somewhere between very weak and nonexistent." The task of scientists, as they have defined it, has been to find the most plausible, or the least implausible, description of how biological creation could occur in the absence of a creator. "The primary point is not how long it took God to create, or whether He created things abruptly or gradually, or whether the first chapters of Genesis are to be interpreted literally or figuratively. These are all important issues in their way, but they are secondary. The primary issue is whether God created us at all."
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Kadlecek, Jo. "Science Gets Religion." Christianity Today (September 12, 1994): 58-59.
In Cambridge, 400 astronomers, physicists, biologists, philosophers and theologians joined writers and performing and visual artists at the C.S. Lewis Summer Institute to discuss the theme, "Cosmos and Creation: Chance or Dance?" The doctrine of creation, according to one speaker, is not about what happened at a certain time or a certain event. It's about the explanation of the existence of anything at all. Another speaker questioned why biologists have steadfastly resisted the idea of intelligence or design in the origin of life and he concludes that the problem is philosophical. There are many theories in science that include unobservable evidence from which we can derive indirect inferences.
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Leakey, Mary D. "Footprints in the Ashes of Time." National Geographic (April 1979): 446-457.
This article describes the estimated 3.6 million year old footprints found in Laetolil. The footprints, remarkably similar to those of modern man, signal that hominids walked erect half a million years earlier than believed. They walked fully upright with a bipedal, free-striding gait. The form of the foot was exactly the same as ours. Upon discovering these prints, Mary Leakey could not bring herself to believe it was so.
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Leakey, Richard and Alan Walker. "Homo Erectus Unearthed." National Geographic (November 1985): 561-623.
At Lake Turkana in Kenya, almost an entire skeleton of a boy was unearthed in a rock layer previously dated at 1.6 million years old. This find "dramatically confirms the antiquity of the human form." "Suitably clothed and with a cap to obscure his low forehead and beetle brow, he would probably go unnoticed in a crowd today." The boy was 5'4" tall, "contradicting a long-held idea that humans have grown larger over the millennia."
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Lewin, Roger. "Evolutionary Theory Under Fire." Science 210 (November 21, 1980): 883-887.
This article, published in the most well-respected scientific journal in America, is of historic importance. A wide spectrum of researchers, ranging from geologists and paleontologists through ecologists and population geneticists to embryologists and molecular biologists, gathered at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History to discuss macroevolution in "one of the most important conferences on evolutionary biology in 30 years." The central question of this conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution (a proven fact that explains Darwin's finches and the peppered moth), can be extrapolated to explain the process of macroevolution (evolution from one major group of animals to another). "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." The principle feature of individual species within the fossil record is stasis, not change. Species abruptly disappear, to be replaced by something substantially different. In the long term, microevolution is oscillation about a mean, not accumulated, directional change.
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Lewis, C.S. Miracles: A Preliminary Study. New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1947.
C. S. Lewis examines the question of whether miracles are possible. He examines naturalism, or the theory that nature and natural law is all. "What naturalism cannot accept is the idea of a God who stands outside Nature and made it." He uses impeccable step-by-step reasoning to make the case that miracles are possible, even likely. "Rationality is the little telltale rift in Nature which shows that there is something beyond or behind her." Although only New Testament miracles are examined in detail, the argument for the possibility of miracles extends to the creation / evolution controversy. He states that "A naturalistic Christianity leaves out all that is specifically Christian."
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Lubenow, Marvin L. Bones of Contention. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1992.
This excellent book examines the human fossil record. Carl Sagan said in a speech to the American Association for the Advancement of Science that "not all scientific statements have equal weight." Some scientific statements, including the laws of thermodynamics, are on extremely sound footing. They have been verified by millions of experiments and observations. On the contrary, there are no direct observations or experiments that can confirm the process of macroevolution. Although there are thousands of fossil hominids, they are all of the same types. No clear intermediate forms have been discovered. In fact, fossils of more "recent" humans have been discovered in older rocks than the more "primitive" forms from which they are supposed to have descended. Scientists ignore data that does not support evolution, making it impossible to falsify the concept. "Bad data is that which does not fit evolution, and it is to be discarded." An appendix entitled "The Dating Game" details a major find which could have cast serious doubt on human evolution and shows how radiometric dating is twisted to fit evolution.
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Marshack, Alexander. "Exploring the Mind of Ice Age Man." National Geographic (January 1975): 62-89.
The author challenges the assumption that the thinking of Ice Age man gradually developed from simple to more complex. He gives a great deal of evidence that "early man's way of thinking [was] exceedingly complex and surprisingly modern."
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Meyer, Stephen C. "Open the Debate on Life's Origins." Insight (February 21, 1994): 26-28.
This is a point and counterpoint article on the question of whether a university biologist should have the right to challenge evolutionary theory in his lectures. Dean Kenyon, a distinguished biology professor at San Francisco State University, was reassigned from teaching to a lab position because he had stated in his classes that some biologists see evidence of intelligent design and have problems with the dominant view. The author claims that "insisting upon strictly materialistic explanations, whatever the evidence, may force scientists to reject a true theory for the sake of an arbitrary convention." The article postulates that it is not religion, in this case, which is unwilling to revise dogma, but materialistic fundamentalism.
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Miller, Kenneth R. "Life's Grand Design." Technology Review (February/March 1994): 25-32.
The author speaks against the arguments for God. He attempts to explain how a complex organ such as the eye could have developed one tiny improvement at a time. "Chance plays a role in presenting random genetic variations. But natural selection, which is not random, determines which variations will become fixed in the species." He argues that there are flawed designs and errors that no intelligent designer would have committed. Examples given are the flawed neural wiring of the human retina and the poorly designed human knee. Hen's teeth are another example: "No intelligent design could account for the presence of tooth-producing genes in chicken cells." Evolution can explain these as a genetic mark of history. DNA is another example. "The human genome is littered with pseudo-genes, gene fragments, 'orphaned' genes, 'junk' DNA, and so many repeated copies of pointless DNA sequences that it cannot be attributed to anything that resembles intelligent design. In fact, the genome resembles nothing so much as a hodgepodge of borrowed, copied, mutated, and discarded sequences and commands that has been cobbled together by millions of years of trial and error against a relentless test of survival." The author believes that evolution is not inconsistent with belief in God.
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Nash, Madeleine. "Evolution's Big Bang: When Life Exploded." Time (December 4, 1995): 66-74.
This article describes the early Cambrian, now being described as biology's Big Bang. In an instant of geological time, nature "sketched out the blueprints for nearly the whole of the animal kingdom." This occurred simultaneously all over the world. "Scientists used to think that the evolution of phyla took place over a period of 75 million years, and even that seemed impossibly short." Now evidence shows it happened within 5-10 million years. Dr. Bowring of M.I.T. says, "What I like to ask my biologist friends is, How fast can evolution get before they start feeling uncomfortable?" The Cambrian explosion, according to this article, "has caused experts to wonder if the twin Darwinian imperatives of genetic variation and natural selection provide an adequate framework for understanding evolution. . . . There also seems to be a non-Darwinian kind of evolution that functions over extremely short time periods, and that's where all the action is."
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Numbers, Ronald L. The Creationists. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1992.
The history of the modern creation-science movement is traced in this book. Interestingly, conservative Christians were at first apathetic toward Darwinism. The big threat to Christianity in the 1800s was perceived to be higher criticism, or treating the Bible as a historical document rather than as God's word. The Creationist movement began with Seventh Day Adventists, who are committed to a six-day creation. Millions of evangelicals, including Billy Graham, subscribe to old-earth creationism. Many disagreements have split creationist ranks. Did God create each species separately, or several basic "kinds" from which modern species evolved by natural selection? Does God use evolution as a creative process, serving as a sort of "genetic engineer"?
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Osborn, Henry Fairfield. "The Evolution of Human Races." Natural History (April 1, 1980): 129.
This is a reprint of an article originally printed in 1926 which shows how racial prejudice was considered a logical result of an evolutionary world view. The author claims that the Negroid stock is the most ancient, therefore the most primitive. This type of thinking was at the root of Nazism.
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Ostrom, John H. "A New Look at Dinosaurs." National Geographic (August 1978): 152-185.
This article presents evidence that many or most dinosaurs may have been active and warm-blooded. "The climate of regions where dinosaur remains have been discovered appears to have been tropical to sub-tropical, and only mildly seasonal." Dinosaur remains are found from pole to pole, even in Antarctica. Remains of a dinosaur 20% larger than Brachiosaurus have been found in Colorado. This is 15 times as large as an African bull elephant, which consumes its weight in food each month, and spend up to 18 hours a day feeding. It's hard to imagine how such an animal could survive in conditions similar to those in today's world.
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Putnam, John J. "The Search for Modern Humans." National Geographic (October 1988): 439-477.
According to Dr. Jean Clottes, quoted in this article, "These people (Ice Age humans) had the same potentials as we have and were as clever. No less, no more. . . . If we speak about the level of thinking, we are not far from them." Neanderthal Man had a brain as large as ours, and lived at the same time as modern man in Europe. The distinctive thing about the Neanderthal was the shape of the face, large front teeth and a big brow ridge. (Some modern-day groups have similar characteristics. Creationists would call Neanderthal a variety of Homo sapiens.) Surprisingly, to me, many scientists now believe that modern humans evolved independently in areas all over the world, after Homo erectus had populated that world and provided the basis for further evolution. It's remarkable enough that it could have happened once! Professor Phillip Tobias, who worked closely with the Leakeys, said, "We've hardly shown any anatomical changes in our bodies for 100,000 years. And I don't think we're suddenly going to start again showing anatomical change. I believe what has happened is that our physical and anatomical evolution has become less and less significant, whilst our cultural, behavioral, linguistic, and spiritual evolution has become more and more important."
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Ridley, Mark. The Problems of Evolution. Oxford, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1985.
This book is by a scientist who dismisses the Biblical account of creation by stating that the radio-isotopic evidence of the antiquity of the earth provides a decisive argument against Genesis, and that natural selection is the only theory we have to explain evolution. He says that the most powerful argument for evolution is that no sensible alternative is known. Creationists fail to specify the mechanism of creation. Natural selection is the mechanism of evolution. The problems of evolution he acknowledges and attempts to explain include: the origin of the first cell, the theory of variability (is there constraint on genetic variation?), the exact nature of speciation and the rate of evolution.
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Ross, Hugh, Ph.D. The Creator and the Cosmos: How the Greatest Scientific Discoveries of the Century Reveal God. Colorado Springs, Colorado: NavPress Publishing Group, 1994.
This 155-page book does not address the issue of a six-day creation, but claims that "the idea that God created the universe is a more respectable hypothesis today than at any time in the last hundred years" because of information gathered by the COBE satellite. The author claims that astronomers who do not draw theistic or deistic conclusions are becoming rare. He claims that even with the longest possible defensible time line, there is insufficient time for blind evolution. The universe is tailor made for life. The slightest deviation in any number of variables would have made life impossible. Using statistics of known parameters, he concludes that, "with considerable security, we can draw the conclusion that much fewer than a trillionth of a trillionth of a percent of all stars could possibly possess, without divine intervention, a planet capable of sustaining advanced life." Not even one planet in the known universe could be expected to possess the necessary conditions by natural processes alone.
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Scott, Eugenie C. "Keep Science Free from Creationism." Insight (February 21, 1994): 29-31.
Although Scott concedes that scientists do not know how life began, she claims that resorting to the supernatural violates a major canon of modern science: explain only through natural causes. She claims better answers are found when only natural causes are specified, and uses the example of an experiment involving two plots of corn, one fertilized and the other not. If both plots yield the same number of ears, it could be claimed that "God wanted both plots to produce the same number of ears." This way of thinking cuts off investigation which may reveal that nitrogen is needed for the fertilizer to work. "How can I establish general explanatory principles if I can explain away my results by invoking a capricious creator?" She claims that there are plenty of examples of questionable design, and that there is nothing in science that forces someone to accept naturalism as a philosophy.
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Scott, Eugenie C. "The Struggle for the Schools." Natural History (July 1994): 10-13.
Eugenie Scott is a member of the National Center for Science Education, and is concerned about the threat of anti-evolutionism. One statement: "Just because the first amendment protects against the government establishment of religion doesn't mean it will be a protection against bad science." The perceived threat to science is that, without evolution as an organizing theory in biology, students will learn "a pile of sundry facts" and be deprived of one of the great enriching ideas of science (evolution). According to geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."
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Tiffin, Lee. Creation's Upside-Down Pyramid. Amherst, NJ: Prometheus Books, 1994.
The author, a botanist with a Master's Degree in Divinity, accepts the scientific version of origins. He criticizes creationists for building an "upside-down pyramid" by placing the Bible as the foundation, then looking for scientific evidence to support the Bible and making suppositions and guesses to support their claims. The vapor canopy proposed by creationists, he says, would have caused a runaway greenhouse effect, trapping carbon dioxide in the lower atmosphere in lethal amounts. How could so much water have stayed aloft for the centuries before the flood? Creationists say there was no wind before the flood, but how could water circulate otherwise? Water vapor equivalent to a half-meter liquid depth would block passage of virtually all far-red light, important in regulating plant respiration. To raise sea level above Mt. Ararat would have taken 2.2 times the water currently in the oceans. (Creationists say the highest mountains were raised soon after the flood.) If the maximum height of floodwater occurred in 40 days, water had to rise an average 175 feet per day to cover the 7,000 foot pre-flood mountains creationists propose. He questions if plants could survive deep submergence in salty water, and how enough food for a year for all of the animals could be carried on the ark. He criticizes the hibernation theory, saying the Bible clearly indicates that Noah was instructed to bring food. How long did it take for re-vegetation to occur? Did every species in today's world (estimated to be over a million) travel on the ark? If not, how did these "kinds" diversify into today's species? How could insects have been housed? Tiffin does not address the issue of evolution or any creationist arguments other than those related to Noah's Flood.
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Trager, George L. Languages of the World. 1989.
This book was part of a previous line of inquiry on the English language, but has implications for evolution as well. Charles Darwin himself believed it was impossible to conceive of human thought without language. Linguists believe speech is hardwired into our species, and is a defining difference between humans and animals. You can't stop people from learning to speak (or sign if speech is impossible). The languages which have been most widely spoken, such as English, have simplified through time rather than increased in complexity. The languages of the most "primitive" cultures are the most complex. A quote: "For culture to have developed as it did, languages must very quickly have had to acquire the same complexity and general structure that they have now. If these views are correct, all languages on earth are approximately equally old, and all are equally complex."
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Villiers, Alan. "In the Wake of Darwin's Beagle." National Geographic (October 1969): 449-495.
Of most interest to me in this article is the statement from Darwin's Descent of Man concerning his horror at the lifestyle of the natives of Tierra del Fuego: "The main conclusion . . . namely, that man is descended from some lowly organized form, will, I regret to think, be highly distasteful to many. But there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barbarians. . . . Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale."
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Weaver, Kenneth F. "The Search for Our Ancestors." National Geographic (November 1985): 561-623.
According to this article, "Most of what we know about early hominid ancestors has been learned in the past 25 years." This is an excellent introduction to the evidence used by evolutionists to explain the origin of man. Of particular interest: "Many a proposed classification has later been dropped. A number of fossils once thought to represent different genera or species have been regrouped into a single classification."
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Whitcomb, John C. The Early Earth. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1986.
John Whitcomb is one of the founders of the Creation Research Society. The first sentence of the Foreword is, "To interpret the Bible literally is simply to take God at His Word." Scientific evidence that casts doubt on the theory of evolution is presented, as well as explanations of apparent inconsistencies in Genesis, such as why the sun was created after the earth, how the ark could hold all the animals, etc. An interesting quote from Francis Crick, a Nobel Prize winner and atheist, is included: "An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going."
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Whitcomb, John C. and Henry M. Morris. The Genesis Flood. Phillipsburg, New Jersey: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1961.
This book is the classic apologetic for Biblical creationism and the universality of the Flood. As it states, "The most absurd improbabilities are considered more probable than the alternative of real creation." In my opinion, the book sorely needs to be updated as science has progressed a lot since 1961. The book serves a useful purpose in presenting basic arguments for and against a universal flood, an overview of attempted harmonizations of the Bible and geology, the inadequacy of uniformitarian explanations, and a proposed framework which explains the geological phenomenon in harmony with the Biblical account. It's pointed out that the entire geologic column is never found in any one place, and is based on principles of uniformity. I found this book a difficult read.
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Wile, Jay L. Reasonable Faith: The Scientific Case for Christianity. Anderson, IN: Apologia Educational Ministries, 1998.
The argument from design, according to Dr. Wile, is an admission that we can only explain the intricate world around us by putting faith in the existence of a designer whom we have never seen. The alternative, however, is placing faith in the idea that order can spontaneously arise out of chaos. Faith in a designer, he claims, is more scientifically sound than the alternative. We see the effects of the work of designers all the time: buildings, bridges, watches and other systems. We can determine that systems have been designed without actually seeing them being designed or meeting the designer. There is no evidence that order can spontaneously arise from chaos or life can arise from non-life. Apparent design cannot come from natural selection alone because natural selection can only occur in living, reproducing systems, and there is no such thing as a "simple" life form. The first half of the book addresses evidence that contradicts the theory of evolution, the second half presents evidence that the Bible is God's word.
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Related articles on this web site:
- Is Evolution True?
- Is the Bible True?
- Whatsoever Things Are True (a book I wrote a few years after the articles above)
Source: www.SusanCAnthony.com, ©Susan C. Anthony