AFTER ITS KIND
From the book by the same name (1958)
THE "PROOF" FROM GEOLOGY
What is considered by many evolutionists as the strongest proof for evolution is now to be considered. Throughout the world in many places there are known be rock-lavers of various thicknesses lying horizontally one upon another. These layers, or "strata," as they are also called, can often be seen along railroad cuts and river banks. The horizontal deposits were evidently made by the agency of water. Those that are lowest in the earth were deposited first, those on the top deposited last. The evolutionists say that these layers of rock were deposited thus through periods of hundreds of millions of years. The first to be deposited, they say, was, laid down almost a billion years ago. The latest is being de-
Fig. 14. Leaf of a living hickory compared with the leaf of a hickory from the so-called Pliocene epoch. Fossil from United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 98 [very much the same]
posited today. And all through the intervening ages deposits were being made. Furthermore, the evolutionists say, during the immense periods when these deposits were being made, living things were evolving upon the earth. Starting with some
Fig. 15. Leaf of a living Japanese oak compared with a leaf of a fossil Japanese oak from the so-called Eocene age. Fossil from United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 91 [very much the same]
very simple form, life changed and developed until man and all the host of plants and animals of today were produced. And, evolutionists say these developing forms left records of their evolution through the ages in the layers of soil that were deposited contemporaneously with them. Consequently, in the lowest strata are found as fossils the simplest forms of life, those which were evolved first, while in the top or most recently deposited—lasers are found the most complex forms, the forms of life last to be evolved.
It is the statement, therefore, in substance, that the deeper down into the earth we dig the simpler and stranger will be the forms of fossil-life discovered, until we come to a place where no traces of past life exist, which constitutes the geological argument for evolution.
Fig. 16. Leaf of a living walnut compared with the leaf of a walnut from the so-called Cretaceous age. Fossil from United States Geological Professional Paper 101 [very much the same]
The criticism of this "proof" from the creationist's point of view is so ample and varied that it will be considered under the following heads:
(l) Do the fossils themselves show this evolution, or are they essentially the same as corresponding forms today?
Granting, for the time being, that some fossil forms are many millions of years old, the fact remains that those that have, living representatives, no matter how old they are, are the same in appearance as living forms. The world in which we live is as it has been called, "a zoologically impoverished" world, by which is meant a world which has no longer the large numbers of species with which it was once stocked. Of those that were created a considerable portion have been unable to withstand the rigors and hardships that a changed condition 48 in the world has produced, and have ceased to exist. But those
Fig. 17. Leaf of a living grape compared with the leaf of a grape from the so-called Cretaceous age. Fossil from United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 101. [very much the same]
which have survived correspond exactly with those of their— kind whose remains have been unearthed as fossils.
In 1938 deep-water fishermen, who were fishing off the coast of South Africa, brought to the surface a fighting, threshing fish, five feet long and a hundred and twentv-seven pounds in weight, such as they had never seen before. Scientists, being called in to investigate, called "it a Coelacanth (Fig. 18), identical in every respect with the Coelacanths whose fossils are found in considerable numbers buried in the strata of the United States, Germany, and elsewhere. These strata are said bv evolu-
48 The Deluge offers to the believer in the Bible a likely point in world history when the changed condition began.
(BUT THE DELUGE OF WATER ALL OVER THE EARTH WAS NOT IN THE TIME OF NOAH, BUT SOMETIME IN THE UNKNOWN PAST, AS WE THEN COME TO THE EARTH IN GENESIS 1:1-2, WHERE THE EARTH IS COVERED BY WATER. THIS WAS THE TIME WHEN THE AGE OF DINOSAURS CAME TO AN END. ALL SHOWN IN OTHER STUDIES ON THIS WEBSITE - Keith Hunt)
tionary geologists to have been formed in the Triassic Age, or "Age of Reptiles," and the Coelacanths whose fossils these strata contain are said to have become extinct "90.000.000 years ago." 49
Fig. 18 Above, photo of a living Coelacanth caught in a net in very deep water
off the coast of South Africa in December, 1938. Below, photo of a fossil Coelacanth from the "Triassic" strata of Germany, said to agree in every detail with the living Coelacanth.
49 Life, April 3, 1939; Time, April 3, 1939. Some geologists place the Triassic Age at 400,000,000 years ago. A second fish of the Coelacanth species was caught near Madagascar in December, 1952.
In the so-called oldest rocks, those supposed to be always deepest down in the earth, the "Paleozoic," there are fossil remains of star-fish, which, when compared with living forms, are found to be essentially the same. (Fig. 21). In spite of supposed hundreds of millions of years of evolution the present star-fish, corals, and crinoids of our modern seas are still today easily recognized as the same creatures as their, remote ancestors.
Fig. 19. Leaf of a living magnolia compared with the leaf of a magnolia from the so-called Cretaceous age. Fossil from United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 101.
In those "ancient" rocks, also, are found various kinds of fishes that have their exact couterparts in living fishes of today. The so-called Devonian rocks of Ohio, extending entirely across the state, contain fish remains in great numbers, chiefly sharks, of which it has been said that
Fig. 20. Ginko or Maiden hair leaves from the "Jurassic Epoch" compared with leaves of the living Ginko. Living leaves from one tree. Fossils from United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 85. [virtually the same]
their jaws and teeth "were established essentially as at present." 50 In the group of layers called "Mesozoic," which are supposed to contain the remains of those creatures that came into existence midway through the long-
50 J. E. Hyde in Natural History Magazine, Sept.-Oct., 1926, page 500.
Fig. 21. Above are varieties of star-fish as they exist today. (Smithsonian Institute Bulletin 100). Below are varieties of star-fish found as fossils in so-called "Ordovician Rocks." (Smithsonian Institute Bulletin 88). Three quarters of a billion years are said to separate the living from the fossil types. There is no essential difference between them. How is this persistency of species to be accounted for?
period of supposed evolution, there are remains of plants of various kinds (Fig. 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20)—laurel leaves, oak leaves, willow leaves, beech and alder leaves-— which, by all the straining in the world, cannot but be called by the names by which their living representatives are known. Though the trees have had, according to the theory, at least a hundred million years in which to change, they are readily identified as ancestors of the living forms. When we come down to the fossils of only a supposed ten million years ago, the period called "Tertiary" we find that the creatures of that day—pigs, elephants, tigers, bears, apes, are similar in type to living forms. All of which points to the truth of the Biblical principle that living things have brought forth after their kind.
To impress the reader with this persistence of types as shown. by the geological record we can do no better ,than to quote the famous evolutionist, Thomas Pfuxlev. If we confine ourselves to positively ascertained facts. the total amount of change in the forms of animals and vegetable life, since existence of such forms is recorded. is small. When compared with the lapse of time since the first appearance of these forms, the amount of change is wonderfully small. Moreover, in each great group_oj the animal and vegetable kingdom there are certain forms which I termed persistent types which have remained with but little apparent change from their first appearance to the present time." 51 And we might add the following quotation from a more recent geologist, "Perhaps the first and most obvious lesson to be gleaned from the study of fossils is the elementar}*' truth that life, even in the earliest times, differed in no way from the life of today. Further, we observe that the lowly types of life that appear in the oldest rocks have persisted through all geological times up<to the present day." 52
(2) Do the fossils reveal the transition stages that the geological "proof requires?
If throughout past ages life was actually drifting over in one continual stream from one form into another, it is
51 Critiques and Addresses, page 182.
52 Prof. James Park, Textbook of Geology, page 265 (1925).
to be expected that as many samples of the intermediate stages between species should be discovered in fossil condition as of the species themselves. According to the theory invertebrates gradually turned into fishes, fishes gradually
Fig 22. Missing links exist not only between men and apes but in many other places along the supposed line of evolution. Above is the theoretical line of evolution from fish to land animals. Fossil fish (left) in great numbers are found. Fossil amphibians, lizards, salamanders, crocodiles (right) in great numbers are also found. But no fossil transition forms (center) between fish and amphibians are found, although they ought to exist in as great abundance as either of the other types if evolution has taken place. Below is the only geological proof of the transition from fish to amphibians. "A single impression of a three-toed footprint in the upper Devonian shales of Pennsylvania constitutes at present (1925) the sole paleontological proof of the long period of transition of the vertebrates from the fish type to the amphibian type."-—-H. F. Osborn. Lull describes this impression as "baffling in its obscurity." We readily agree. Footprint illustration and quotation from Osborn's Origin and Evolution of Life, pages 176, 7.
became four-legged amphibians, amphibians drifted over into reptiles. Reptiles with scales gradually transformed their scales into feathers and their front feet info bird's wings, while other reptiles slowly transformed themselves into fur-bearing quadrupeds. The quadrupeds in turn drifted over gradually into apes, and apes drifted in herds over into men. If these things actually happened, it is certainly fair to suppose that we should find vast numbers of the drifting-over forms. There is no reason why we should not. It is difficult to imagine why there should be definite, fixed types such as we find in the fossil world at all. All should be in a state of flux. But these missing links are wanting. There are no fossils of creatures whose scales were changing into feathers or whose feet were changing into wings, no fossils of fish getting legs (Fig. 22) or of reptiles getting hair. The real task of the geological evolutionist is not to find "the" missing link, as if there were only one. The task is to find those thousands upon thousands of missing links that connect the many fossil species with one another. The lack of transition forms described above is acknowledged by Prof. T. D. A. Cockerell of the University of Colorado in the following words, "There are innumerable missing-links in all groups, and we can never hope to complete the history of life from fossil remains." 53 The existence of these gaps is further testified to by Dr. Austin H. Clark of the United States National Museum, whose statements in 1929 caused a furor in evolutionary camps, where it was felt that he was giving the case away. The theory of evolution is that an original, primitive cell slowly and gradually branched out into all modern forms of life like so many branches of a tree. This view, Clark says, must be modified, for, says he, "gaps are found in all these evolutionary lines, and many of these gaps appear to be real—that is, they were never, so far as we have been able to learn, bridged by so-called missing-links. To take a concrete example, it is quite obvious that the gap between cats and dogs is broad, and it remains broad throughout the fossil record. Cats never became dogs, nor dogs cats; but both are cannvorous mammals. Be-
53 Zoology, page 140.
tween the backbones in animals and the invertebrates the gaps are very wide, and those peculiar types which are intermediate between them are widely different from either. Between the various invertebrate groups, as the arthropods, echinoderms, nemerteans, and so forth, the gaps are still wider. Indeed, so broad are the gaps between these various types of lower animals that they can not be arranged in any sort of evolutionary line. . . . The gaps between the various invertebrate phyla go back quite unchanged to the very earliest fossils that are adequately known, those of Cambrian time." 54
The above gives the gist of Clark's view of missing-links. He is of the evolutional school, however, and the way he manages to reconcile these gaps with evolution is to hold that, in some unaccountable way, great leaps were made in the evolutionary process, such that widely differing forms suddenly appeared without any transition steps at all. In later pages of this book the matter of "mutations" will be discussed, a process by which new varieties within species are at present being produced —new forms of dogs among dogs, new forms of poppies among poppies. The mutations or leaps which Clark maintains have occurred are not of this order, but far greater. There is nothing in nature now to which we can compare them.
A late [1938] acknowledgement of the lack of transitional forms comes from Prof. Caullery of the Chair of Evolution of the University of Paris: "The general fact that paleontology shows us few transitional forms, and still fewer primitive forms is very disturbing." 55
(3) The "imperfection" of the geological record.
The manner in which the absence of connecting links among the fossils is accounted for is seen in the following quotation from Charles Darwin. "Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graded organic chain: and this perhaps is the most obvious and serious objection which can, be urged against the theory. The explanation lies however, in the extreme imperfection of the geological
54 Science, March 8, 1929.
55 Science, 1938.
record." 56 It should be noted where this great champion puts the blame when conditions are not right for the theory which he made famous. Imperfection as an excuse for the absence of links, however, leaves a dangerous hole in the geological argument. If the record is so imperfect that the necessary connecting links are not found, what assurance can the evolutionists give that the same imperfection does not hide more important facts—such, for example, as that horses lived in the "age of reptiles" and apes in the "age of fishes"? If the record is imperfect, how do they know that the bones of such "higher" types of animals as deer or pigs will not some day be found in strata—supposed to have been deposited millions of years before those types were evolved? How do they know that the remains of the modern horse will not be found in a so-called "Cretaceous" stratum (Cretaceous strata being the deposits supposed to have been made when reptilian forms were ruling the world as the highest forms of life)? If the record is imperfect they do not know, and therefore horses may have roved in one part of the earth in "Cretaceous" time while reptiles lived in another part. Apes may have lived as early as the "Devonian" age, the so-called "age of fishes." Bateson pointed to this hole in the geological "proof" when he said to the assembled scientists of America, "It has been asked how we know that there were mammals (e. g. rabbits, sheep, horses in the the Paleozoic time. May there not have been mammals somewhere on the earth, though no vestige of them has come down to us ?" 57 Of course, mammals will never be found in "Paleozoic" strata—not for very long. Of that we are absolutely positive for this reason: Mammals did not live in "Paleozoic" time (i e. when fishes are supposed to have been the most advanced form of life) according to the evolutionists. Mammals evolved later. If remains of any mammal should ever be found in a layer that had previously been called "Paleozoic," the evolutionists would say a mistake had been made, and the age-name would be changed. Such renaming of strata has been done again
56 Origin of Species, volume 2, page 49, 6th ed.
57 Science, Jan. 20, 1922
and again in the last seventy-five years, and the evolutionists now have the strata labelled about as they want. 58 The evolutional labellers of the rocks simply will not let things get out of order for their theory, and to keep the order right an astonishing method is sometimes used, i. e. the order of the strata is said to have been reversed (See Fig. 23).
No one need expect that such a thing—a mammal being found in "Paleozoic" rock or a horse in "Cretaceous"—will ever occur so long as the evolutionists are in control of the labelling of the rocks. The creationists, however, should know the reason. Which leads to the question:
(4) Is one fossil necessarily any older than any other? May not the vast majority of plants and animals whose remains have been unearthed have lived and been destroyed at the same time? We touch here upon the very vitals of the proof from geology.
The evolutionists say that the simplest forms of life (corals, star-fish, crinoids) are very old, and the very complex forms (bears, elephants, camels) are very young. The former being several hundreds of millions of years old, the latter being only five or ten millions of years old. The youngest have evolved out of the oldest. These statements are made on the basis of the supposed fact that the simplest forms (corals, star-fish) are found in the lowest layers of earth, and the most complex forms found in the highest layers.
Is this, however, always the case? In the fossil world are the simplest forms always found at the bottom and the complex structures at the top? In other words, are corals, crinoids, star-fish-—-forms of life supposed to have
58 The evolutionary rule governing the designation of the age of strata is this: if a deposit contains the remains of several forms, as many do, some higher and some lower in the evolutionary scale, the higher form gives the age to the strata. To illustrate: if a snake and a horse and a turtle are found as fossils in a stratum, the horse is the form that gives the age to the stratum. As long as remains of turtles and snakes alone are found in a rock that rock might be called "Cretaceous." If later a fossil horse is found with the turtle and snake, the age of the rock is changed to "Tertiary."
Geological column
Pleistocene
Tertiary
Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic 400,000,000 yr. old
Permian 500,000,000 yr. old
Carboniferous 600,000,000 yr. old
Devonian 700,000,000 yr old
Silurian 800,000,000 yr old
Ordovician 900,000,000 yr old
Cambrian 1,000,000,000 yr. oldl
Algonkian
Fig. 23. "We may even demonstrate that strata have turned completely upside down if we can show that fossils in what are the uppermost layers ought properly to lie underneath those in the beds below them." Sir Archibald Giekie, Textbook of Geology, p. 837. The regions of the earth's surface pictured above, which are but a few of hundreds of similar examples, are parts of areas thousands of square miles in extent which have been "demonstrated" to have "turned completely upside down," because, forsooth, the most complex fossils are at the bottom and the most simple at top. Evolutionists say there are "faults" here. The "faults" are not evident in the mountainous regions themselves. The real fault is in the paper column, built upon an assumed evolution, in the center.
been the first to appear in the evolutionary process—never found in earth-layers that are above those containing fishes and reptiles-—-forms of life supposed to have evolved later? The answer is yes, they are. The order of superposition in which fossils are found is very often upside-down for the theory of evolution. Such upside-down areas are known in China, Norway, the Alps, Scotland, New York, Tennessee, Georgia, Idaho, Montana, Alberta and elsewhere and they extend in some instances for thousands of square miles. Where such embarrassing conditions exist, and prove, according to the evidence of superposition, such interesting things as that great monster reptiles became tiny sponges, corals, and trilobites, 59 the evolutionist has an explanation to offer that puts the blame upon innocent Nature, and makes her, instead of the theory he upholds, the deceiver. It is said by him that wherever the order of the fossil-bearingers are in reverse to that which the theory of evolution demands there have been great cataclysms of nature, i. e., monster thrusts or tremendous folds of the strata, whereby thousands of square miles have risen up somehow out of the earth and slid or turned over so that they now lie perfectly horizontally, the top on the bottom and the bottom on the top. Where such things have occurred it is said that the earth has a "fault."
For the full consideration of the attempted evolutionary explanations of the manner in which these griddle-cake stunts of nature, have occurred the reader will have to turn to other books on the subject. 60 Suffice it to be said here that areas of 20,000 square miles or more are involved in the "faults" in nature which have gotten evolutionary geologists into such great difficulties. Further, it should be known, in the regions where these things are said to have occurred there is no real evidence whatever that any great disturbance of normal conditions has ever
59 In Montana and Alberta over a vast territory reptile-bearing "Cretaceous" rocks underlie trilobite "Paleozoic" rocks (Fig. 24).
60 For a full account of the absence of a true chronological sequence, in the fossil containing earth-layers The New Geology and Evolutionary Geology and the New Catastrophism by George McCready Price are recommended, also the author's Deluge Story in Stone.
taken place. Layers of earth containing "lower" organisms lie perfectly naturally on top of layers that contain "higher" forms. (See Fig. 23, 24.)
(5) Is not the argument from geology mere reasoning in a circle. The fact of the matter is that such is the case. Modern historical geology is built on the assumption of evolution. The earth has been compelled by evolutionists to testify the way their theory requires.
In the middle of the last century certain geologists were told by biologists that evolution was an established fact. The geologists believed what they heard, and, believing, began to make an arrangement of the earth-strata on paper so as to conform to the supposed historical fact of evolution. If a layer of earth were discovered which contained fossils of plants and animals said by the biologists to have evolved first, that layer was put at the bottom of their paper diagram, regardless of the actual position in nature. If a layer were discovered which contained fossils of plants and animals which the biologist told them were evolved last, they put that layer at the top, regardless of its actual physical position. Thus, by ignoring upside-down conditions in nature, by describing them as "deceptions," and by concocting impossible explanations of how tremendous areas come to be upside-down, the geological evolutionists got up a "geologic column" based entirely on the assumption that evolution was a fact. Historical geology rests on evolutionary biology. It is an amusing spectacle today, therefore, to find evolutionary biologists, feeling the need of support for their theory, sometimes turning to historical geology for help. The evolutionary geologist and the evolutionary biologist today often present a picture of two men trying to-sit on each other's shoulders.
To establish in the mind of the reader the fact that the above statements concerning the geological proof are true we will quote several foremost modern evolutionary geologists. First, in order to show that evolution is accepted by geologists on the basis of what they are told by biological evolutionists we will quote Grabau, 61 "That the modern animal and plant world has developed by
61 Textbook of Geology, volume 2, page 53.
Fig. 24. Diagram showing how the evolutionists explain the presence of "Paleozoic" rocks, which are supposed to have been deposited when life first began to evolve, on the top of "Cretaceous" rocks, which are supposed to have been deposited hundreds of millions of years later. A (opposite page) shows the situation as the evolutionists imagine it in Montana, Alberta, and British Columbia at the close of the "Cretaceous epoch." Only three of the Paleozoic series of deposits are represented in the diagram (Devonian, Cambrian, Algonkian). B illustrates the situation a little later as the evolutionists imagine it. For some reason the land to the west raised up from the depth of at least 10,000 feet and pushed over the land to the east, upon which, at the end of the shove or "thrust," it was lying horizontally. C illustrates the situation at the present time. During the millions of years that passed since the "thrust" occurred, the winds and rain carried away all the layers above the "Algonkian," leaving it exposed on top of the "Cretaceous." The area of the earth's surface in this region where the order of the fossil-containing-earths is upside-down for the theory of evolution, and where the "thrust" is said to have occurred, is 350 miles long and totals about 7,000 square miles. All this is very clever. The trouble is that it is based merely on the necessity of accounting somehow for a natural condition of earth layers that is in opposition to what the proof of evolution from geology demands. The pushing of so enormous a mass and weight of rock over another mass could not but leave unmistakable evidence of its having done so in the form of cracks and broken fragments and disturbances of various kinds. Yet there is no such evidence. R. G. McConnel of the Canadian Geological Survey says that the upper, "Paleozoic" (Algonkian) rocks and the lower, "Cretaceous" rocks are "nearly horizontal," and "appear to succeed one another conformably." (Annual Report, 1886, Part D.) This means, in geological parlance, according to Webster's Dictionary, that the "Paleozoic" layers lie on the "Cretaceous" as if both "were formed by uninterrupted deposition under the same general conditions." In other words, it appears as if the same action of water that deposited the sediment that became "Paleozoic" rock also deposited the sediment that became "Cretaceous" rock. That the above explanation of this "upside-down" area is not thoroughly satisfactory to evolutionary geologists, although they have nothing better to offer, is revealed by the following statement by Prof. W. W. Watts, President of the Geology Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science: "The problem of the overthrust 'nappes' (surfaces) of mountain regions is one of our greatest difficulties, and all explanations hitherto proposed are so hopelessly inadequate that we have sometimes felt compelled to doubt whether the facts really are as stated (i.e. upside-down). But the phenomena have now been observed so carefully and in so many different districts that any real doubt as to the facts is out of the question, and we must still look for some adequate method by which the over-thrusting could have been brought about." (Smithsonian Institute Report, 1925,
page 283.) " To account for a more distressing situation which exists in the Alps (see Fig. 23) European evolutionary geologists have offered more wonderful explanations. They have published diagrams showing how the once level strata in that region, totalling ten thousand feet in thickness, pushed up many miles in the air and turned completely over, in the manner of a loose rug which has been folded by a kick, and were not broken in any manner. The "upside-down" strata in the Alps offer no evidence save that they were deposited just as they are and have never been disturbed. If creationists ever invented such explanations in order to maintain their views, the evolutionists would heap untold reproach and ridicule upon them.
natural methods from pre-existing simpler forms . . . has been clearly demonstrated by the labours of biologists." Just how clearly it has been demonstrated has been shown in the preceding pages. Second, in order to show that geologists make evolution the basis of their geological history, we will quote Schuchert and Pirsson, 62 "The fundamental principle underlying all endeavor to make out the geological past is evolution." The same authors also say, 63 "After one hundred years of endeavour a great deal of knowledge has been worked out as to the evolutionary sequence of organisms, and this knowledge can be relied upon to fix in turn the stratigraphical sequence (relate order of the earthlayers)." Third, to show that if the natural order of the layers on the face of the earth is contrary to what the evolutionary hypothesis demands, the natural order is considered wrong. We will quote Nicholson,64 who says that because of the assumed truth of evolution, "It may even be said that in any case where there should appear to be clear any decisive disordance between the physical (layer-order) and the paleontological (fossil) evidence as to the age of a given series of beds, it is the former that is to be distrusted rather than the latter." On this point we also quote Geikie,65 who says that because of the assumed fact that life has evolved on the earth, "We may even demonstrate that . . . strata have turned completely upside down if we can show that the fossils in what are now the uppermost layers ought properly to lie underneath those in the beds below them." Having this information in mind it is not difficult to see the fault in all genealogies based on fossil remains, whether in whole as from fish to man, or in part, as in the case of the horse. Definite reference may be made to the horse, since the ancestral line of man's domestic friend, is claimed by evolutionists to be the best established of all genealogies based on paleontology. Fossils of five animals are found. These are of four extinct animals called respectively Eohippus, Protorohippus, Mesophippus,
62 Textbook of Geology, volume 2, page 446.
63 Volume 2, page 24.
64 Ancient Life History of the Earth, page 40.
65 Textbook of Geology, 1903 ed., page 837.
Protohippus, and the modern horse, Equus. The horse as we know it is found as a true fossil here in America, where it was extinct when Columbus discovered the land. There is no difference whatever in the manner, in which these animals (including the horse) exist as fossils. The places in which they are found are widely scattered, hundreds of miles apart, and the strata in which the fossils are found are surface strata. One fossil is not found below the other in any sense of the word. For all geological evidence there is to the contrary all the animals mentioned may have lived and died at the same time. Yet names are given to the rocks in which the fossils are found suggesting different ages (Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene, Recent), and the fossils themselves are arranged in a series from the smallest, Eohippus, a four-toed creature about the size of a fox, up to the largest, the modern single-toed horse, and people are told that this is the time order in which the'y lived, and that this is the line of ancestry of the horse. 66
In the "proof of evolution from geology old mother Earth is thus coached, nay even brow-beaten, to testify for evolution. A forced witness is not a good one.
(6) How, in the light of Revelation, can conditions of the fossils and the natural relative orders of the earth's strata be accounted for? Up until the early part of the nineteenth century the existence of fossils was explained on the basis of the Biblical Deluge. (See the author's The Deluge Story in Stone—A History of the Flood Theory of Geology. Augsburg Publishing House, 1931.) With the rise of the modern evolutionary "theory of uniformity," i. e.. that nature!s ways have always been calm and slow, camp the doctrine
66 Osborn's genealogy of the horse has been the basis of this discussion. Another authority, Marsh, gives the horse a somewhat different line of ancestors. According to all genealogies the horse began as a four-toed animal. Coming from a reptile it was once even a five-toed animal. The horse in an early stage of embryological development should, therefore, "recapitulate" that stage and show the five toes well developed. It does not. Which, therefore, is wrong, paleontology or embryology? Nor does the whale, which was once a four-footed land animal, according to theory, ever in embryological development have four legs.
Fig. 25. A deceptive diagnm. According to this drawing it appears as if "Hyra-cotherium" (Eohippus), the smallest animal at the bottom, was geologically much older than Equus (our common horse), the largest animal at the top, and that therefore "Hyracotherium" must have evolved into Equus through a long period of time. It must be remembered, however, that geology itself does not show that "Hyracotherium" is older than Equus. For all that geology proves to the contrary, both animals may have been living side by side, or at the same time in different parts of the world, since the Wasatch formation (see diagram) in which the fossils of "Hyracotherium" are found is a surface formation of the earth, found in Idaho, and the Sheridan formation in which fossils of the true horses are found is also a surface formation of the earth, found in Nebraska. Neither formation can be clearly said to be older than the other. For all that the evolutionists know about the matter, the Wasatch formation and the Sheridan formation may have been "deposited" at nearly the same time, not one million of years before the other as their theory requires. These things show how much the 'proofs' of evolution are nothing but assumptions. Evolution is first assumed to be true; a scheme is then made up to conform to that assumption; then the scheme is used to show that evolution is true.
that all the past changes upon the earth were made not by great, physical forces working fast and violently as in a Deluge, but calmly through long ages. Evolutionists assume, without proof, that events have never occurred in the past in a different manner from that in which they are, occurring now. Only present laws have ever been in operation, they say. The Flood, however, still remains a challenging explanation of conditions as they are found in the earth. Certain respects in which the Deluge readily accounts for the conditions in nature may be mentioned:
Nowhere on the earth is there any considerable number of fossils being formed today. Leaves falling from the trees rot away quickly. Rarely, under modern uniform conditions are they buried in such a way as to form a fossil. Yet, in many places the world over, leaves of trees, vines, ferns and palms are unearthed in the greatest numbers and in the most wonderful state of preservation. Many parts of the so-called "Cretaceous" and "Tertiary" rock are fairly jammed full with marvelous preserved leaf fossils. The coal-beds of the "Carboniferous" strata are composed of the pressed remains of tree-ferns, whose modern representatives make up a large part of the tropical forests of today. These buried tree-ferns have left their beautiful leafy imprints in millions of chunks of coal. Coal-beds of other "ages,", e. g. the "Cretaceous," and "Tertiary" are composer of such plant remains as sassafras, laurel, magnolia, poplar, willow, maple, birch, beech and elm, showing flowers and fruits in a marvelous state of preservation—as the great geologist Dana has said, "with all the perfection they have in a herbarium." Coal is undoubtedly a catastrophic formation, not a "peat-bog" formation as the evolutionists say. No "peat-bog" theory can account for the way many coal layers on top of one another, some thick and some as thin as a sheet of paper, are spread out in horizontal and parallel layers over an area many thousands of square miles, as in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. Only a flood-like action of some sort can do that.
Fish, when they die under modern uniform conditions, immediately come to the surface of the water. flat with stomach up, begin to decompose within a few hours and fall apart bit by bit. Yet the hardened strata of the earth in all continents contain literally millions of fish buried in whole shoals in a perfect state of preservation. Miners in Wallace, Idaho, dig out again and again from deep down in the earth the most perfectly kept fish forms. Hugh Miller, in The Old Red Sandstone, 67 describes fully the fish fossils as they are found in Scotland. He says that over an area of ten thousand square miles fish remains are found bearing "unequivocably the marks of violent death. The figures are contorted, contracted, curved, the tail in many instances is bent around to the head, the spines stick out, the fins are spread to the full" as fish would be which were dying as earth sediment, stirred up from the surfaces
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of the continents by the Flood, settled thicker and heavier upon them. William Buckland 68 thus describes the petrified fish found in the Alps: "They are always entire, and so closely packed on one another that many individuals are often contained in a single block. All these fish must have died suddenly on this fatal spot, and have been buried speedily in the sediment then in the course of deposition. From the fact that certain individuals have even preserved traces of color upon their skin, we are certain that they were entombed before decomposition of their soft parts had taken place." In the so-called Devonian rocks of Ohio, hundreds of "feet thick" from the top to the bottom are found the remains of sharks of all sizes, and the remains of these fishes when unearthed tell the following tale. They died in the natural Swimming position, belly down, and the weight of the mud that settled upon them from above flattened them to the thickness of a quarter of an inch. Such things point to a catastrophe of the nature of the Flood.
In Sioux County, Nebraska, there is a hill called "Carnegie Hill" which has been formed by the erosion of the level Nebraska prairie by the Niobara River and its tributary streams. The hill was once an integral part of the entire Nebraska plateau and the horizontal layers in the hill are the same as in other, similar hills nearby and in the Nebraska plateau as much as fifty miles away. In that one hill, forty feet below the top, is a horizontal layer of the jumbled remains of nine thousand (estimated) animals not now native of America, embedded in the almost pure, white limestone of which the hill and the plateau is composed. The remains of other kinds of animals are entombed in the same sort of horizontal strata in the entire western part of Nebraska. (Fig. 26.)
Evolutionary geologists are not able to deny the numerous indications of the catastrophic, watery deaths and burials of immense numbers and quantities of plants and animals whose remains are found in the earth, but being determined to ignore the meaning and truth of what the Bible says about the Flood throughout its pages, they attribute these watery deaths and burials to a large number
68 Geology and Mineralogy, volume 1, page 124, 5th ed., 1858.
Fig. 26. Remains of camels, pigs and rhinoceroses entombed in limestone at Agate Springs, Sioux County, Nebraska. The rock has been carefully removed from the bones. Evolutionists claim that these were buried when the animals fell into a sink-hole at a watering place, but the fact that they are entombed in pure limestone and are in a horizontal layer which extends for miles beneath the prairie belies that claim. (Photo by the American Museum of Natural History.)
of catastrophes which occurred at different times during hundreds of millions of years. There is, however, no need of this. One catastrophe, the Flood, when properly understood can account for all. It is not sensible to multiply causes when one will do. No thoughtful Flood-geologist will call the Deluge a simple affair nor deny that its geological work is not always easy to interpret, although he has good reason to insist that his task is always very simple compared with the magnitude of the task which faces the evolutionary geologist as he attempts to explain the countless difficult situations which confront him on the basis of his non-Flood or "uniformitarian" theory. 69 In the light of Scripture and nature the Flood is to be regarded as having continued, in its geological effects, for many thousands of years 70 after it had once begun—-until a condition of earth-stability was reached. It can not be thought that the entire world's surface was uprooted by the Flood in the manner in which the Bible implies 71 and a geological situation not arise whereby great natural changes would continue to occur for a long time. Some fossils which would not at first be regarded as having been caused by the Flood, and which can not be directly attributed to it, can be indirectly attributed to it. The Deluge of the Bible can account for the fact that such deep-sea creatures as the star-fish, crinoids and corals are usually, though not always, found today in the deepest layers of earth. It can explain why the higher vertebrates the land animals, supposed to have evolved last, are usually, but not always, found in the upper earth deposits.
69 The immense quantities of oil in the earth are today analyzed by chemists as the altered remains of immense quantities of ancient animal life, particularly ancient sea-animal life. Oil is somewhat of the nature of coal. Nothing taking place in nature today can account for the presence of such great quantities of animal life deep in the entire earth's strata. The Flood, a distinctly supernatural and divinely ordered event, can account for it.
70 Ussher's chronological system, which places the Flood about 2353 B.C., must be regarded as totally false both to the Bible itself and the evadence of nature. See the chapter on Biblical chronology in the author's Before Abraham.
71 Genesis 6:13, "I will destroy them with the earth"; II Peter 3:6, "the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished."
As the believer in the Bible enters into any of the large museums of the land, such as the Museum of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D. C, where many thousands of fossils of plants and animals are exhibited, he should divest himself of all notions that one fossil is millions of years older or younger than any other merely because some evolutionist has so labeled them, and conceive of them all as having lived at one time and died together.
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THE AUTHOR BRINGS OUT MANY GOOD TRUTHS; BUT THE SUBJECT OF THE "FLOOD" HAS THE AUTHOR LIKE MANY OF HIS DAY, BELIEVING IT WAS NOAH'S FLOOD THAT DID ALL THIS. THE FACTS ARE THERE WAS ONLY ONE WORLD WIDE FLOOD AND IT WAS NOT IN THE TIME OF NOAH. THE WORLDWIDE FLOOD THAT DESTROYED THE WORLD OF THE DINOSAUR IS GENESIS 1:1-2. WE COME ON THE SCENE WHEN THE EARTH WAS COVERED WITH WATER. I GO INTO DETAIL IN OTHER STUDIES AS TO WHY AND HOW THIS ALL HAPPENED.
ALSO TO BE NOTED IS THAT SOME BURIAL OF SOME FISH AND ANIMALS MAY HAVE BEEN DONE BY LOCAL FLOODS AND DISASTROUS UPHEAVALS IN THE EARTH IN PAST HISTORY.
CERTAINLY THE DEPOSIT OF THE OIL AND COAL BEDS WAS DONE BY THE GLOBAL FLOOD OF GENESIS 1:1-2.
IT SHOULD ALSO BE NOTED THAT IN THE DINOSAUR WORLD, THERE WERE PROBABLY ALSO MANY CREATURES, PLANTS AND SEA FISH ETC. THAT WERE EXACTLY AS WE HAVE SOME OF THEM TODAY. FOR IT IS ALSO TRUE THAT WITH MAN WAS CREATED SOME CREATURES THAT BACK THEN WERE DINOSAUR TYPE. THE BOOK OF JOB GIVES US DESCRIPTIONS OF A FEW CREATURE THAT HARDLY FIT ANY CREATURES WE HAVE IN THE WORLD TODAY. LEGENDS TALK ABOUT FIRERY DRAGONS. THE ANSWER AS TO WHY WE STILL DO NOT HAVE THEM IS VERY SIMPLE…… AS TODAY WE HAVE LOST CERTAIN SPECIES OF ANIMALS. WE TODAY HAVE OUR LISTS OF ANIMALS ON THE "DANGER OF EXTINCTION" LIST AND WE TRY TO PRESERVE LOOSING THEM. SOME PARTS OF THE EARTH THE DINOSAURS WERE NOT COVERED WITH HUNDREDS OF FEET OF MUD, SILT ETC. AS THEY HAVE BEEN FOUND RELATIVELY NEAR THE TOP, SOMETIMES BY PEOPLE JUST NOTICING A BONE STICKING OUT; WEATHER OVER TIME HAVING WASHED AWAY EX NUMBER OF FEET AND SO EXPOSING A BONE. I THINK IT QUITE POSSIBLE IN GOD FORMING THE LAND MASSES IN GENESIS ONE FROM THE WATER, SOME STRATA HE MAY PURPOSELY HAVE BROUGHT UP WHILE OTHER STRATA WENT DOWN. GOD HAS DONE THINGS TO CONFUSE PEOPLE, AND TO KEEP THE MASSES BLINDED TO TRUTHS. HE IS ONLY CALLING A SMALL FEW TO SALVATION IN THE AGE OF MAN, AND WILL CALL THE MASSES OF PEOPLE IN THE GREAT WHITE THRONE JUDGMENT PERIOD, AS EXPLAINED IN MY STUDY CALLED "THE GREAT WHITE THRONE JUDGMENT." Keith Hunt
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TO BE CONTINUED