Refuting Darwinism, point by point

EVOLUTION WATCH Refuting Darwinism, point by point Author's new book presents case against theory in just 83 pages

Editor's note: In 1999, author James Perloff wrote the popular "Tornado in a Junkyard," which summarizes much of the evidence against evolution and is considered one of the most understandable (while still scientifically accurate) books on the subject. Recently, WND talked with Perloff about his new book, "The Case Against Darwin."

ANSWER: This past March I got a call from Ohio. There has been a battle there to allow critical examination of evolutionary theory in public schools, and a gentleman wanted 40 copies of Tornado to give to state legislators and school board members. I was delighted to send him the books, but I also knew that a state legislator isn't likely to pick up anything that's 321 pages long.

A: Right. We live in an age when parents often don't have time to read anything long, and their kids, who are usually more into video, may not have the inclination.

A: I've divided it into three chapters. The first is called "Is Darwin's Theory Relevant to Our Lives?" In other words, is the subject of this book worth my time or not? A lot of people think this is simply a science issue. And to some of them, science is booooring. But actually, it's the teaching of Darwin's theory as a "fact" that starts many young people doubting the existence of God. Once we stop believing in God, we discard his moral laws and start making up our own rules, which is basically why our society is in so much trouble. In short, Darwinism is very relevant – it's much more than a science matter.

Q: You, yourself, were an atheist for many years, were you not, as a result of evolutionary teaching?

A: That's right. I thought evolution had discredited the Bible. In my books, I give examples of notables who became atheists from being taught evolution, such as Stalin and Carnegie. In fact, the atheist Boy Scout who's been in the news reportedly attributes his atheism to being taught evolution.

A: First, it's taught as "scientific fact." When kids hear "scientific fact," they think "truth." Who wants to go against truth? Second, it's the only viewpoint that's taught. After the Supreme Court kicked God out of schools in the '60s, kids heard the evolutionist viewpoint exclusively. It's like going to a courtroom – if you only heard the prosecutor's summation, you would probably think the defendant guilty. But if you only heard the defendant's attorney, you'd think "innocent." The truth is, we need to hear both sides, and kids haven't been getting it on the subject of origins.

A: The second chapter is "Evidence Against the Theory of Evolution." Let's face it, no matter what Darwinism's social ramifications, that alone would not be a sufficient basis to criticize it, if it were scientifically proven true.

Q: In a nutshell – if that's possible – what is the scientific evidence against Darwinism?

A: In the book, I focus on six areas of evidence. First, mutations – long claimed by evolutionists to be the building blocks of evolutionary change – are now known to remove information from the genetic code. They never create higher, more complex information – even in the rare cases of beneficial mutations, such as bacterial resistance to antibiotics. That has been laid out by Dr. Lee Spetner in his book "Not By Chance."

A: Second, cells are now known to be far too complex to have originated by some chance concurrence of chemicals, as Darwin hypothesized and is still being claimed. We detail that in the book. Third, the human body has systems, such as blood clotting and the immune system, that are, in the words of biochemist Michael Behe, "irreducibly complex," meaning they cannot have evolved step-by-step. Behe articulated that in his book "Darwin's Black Box." And then there is the whole issue of transitional forms.

A: Darwin's theory envisioned that single-celled ancestors evolved into invertebrates (creatures without a backbone), who evolved into fish, who evolved into amphibians, who evolved into reptiles, who evolved into mammals. Now, a transitional form would be a creature intermediate between these. There would have to be a great many for Darwin's theory to be true.

A: There are three places to look for transitional forms. First, there's the living world around us. We see that it is distinctly divided – you have invertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals. But we don't see transitionals between them. If these creatures ever existed, why did none survive? It is too easy to explain it away by saying they all became extinct. And of course, there is the question: Why aren't these creatures evolving into each other today? Why aren't invertebrates evolving into fish today? Why aren't fish growing little legs and so forth?

A: In the fossil record. And here we have a problem of almost comparable magnitude. We find no fossils showing how the invertebrates evolved, or demonstrating that they came from a common ancestor. That's why you hear of the "Cambrian explosion." And while there are billions of fossils of both invertebrates and fish, fossils linking them are missing. Of course, there are some transitional fossils cited by evolutionists. However, two points about that. First, there should be a lot more if Darwin's theory is correct. Second, 99 percent of the biology of an organism is in its soft anatomy, which you cannot access in a fossil – this makes it easy to invest a fossil with a highly subjective opinion. The Piltdown Man and the recent Archaeoraptor are examples of how easy it is to be misled by preconceptions in this arena.

A: Microscopically, in the cell itself. Dr. Michael Denton, the Australian molecular biologist, examined these creatures on a molecular level and found no evidence whatsoever for the fish-amphibian-reptile-mammal sequence. He summarized his findings in his book "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis."

The last chapter is "Re-evaluating Some Evidences Used to Support the Theory" of evolution. That would include evidences that have been discredited, and also some evidences presented as proof that in fact rest on assumptions.

A: Ernst Haeckel's comparative embryo drawings. The human body being laden with "vestigial structures" from our animal past. Human blood and sea water having the same percentage of salt. Babies being born with "monkey tails." These are not foundational evidences, but they still hold sway in the public mind.

A: Yes. Anatomical similarities between men and animals are said to prove common ancestry. But intelligent design also results in innumerable similarities, as in the case of two makes of automobile. Also, what has been called "microevolution" – minor adaptive changes within a type of animal – is extrapolated as evidence for "macroevolution" – the changing of one kind of animal into another. However, a species is normally endowed with a rich gene pool that permits a certain amount of variation and adaptation. Certainly, those things happen. But the change is ordinarily limited to the confines of the gene pool. It doesn't mean a fish could adapt its way into being a human.

Q: You covered a lot of this ground in "Tornado in a Junkyard." Can readers expect something new from "The Case Against Darwin"?

A: There is a bit of new material, but no, if you've read "Tornado," or for that matter, if you read the July 2001 Whistleblower, where we looked at evolution, you already know most of the points. What's new is the size. This is a book to give to a busy friend, a book for a high-school student to share with his science teacher.

The problem is that the differences detailed between egg-laying and live bearing animals are individual only for purposes of detailing, but they very much form a system which requires all the parts to work together:

You're dodging again. When I point out specific problems in your claims, you dodge and shift to grandiose generalities. When I point out the problems with your generalities, you dodge by xeroxing page after page of vaguely related minutiae from various websites.

You clearly love dancing, but since you keep stepping on your own feet, let's turn off the music and cut to the chase.

Your original claim was that "gradualistic" development of placental birth from an egg-laying predecessor was "impossible" because it couldn't have happened in "one mutation" or "one generation". You asserted that it *must* have happened "all at once" (or else not at all) because otherwise the embryo would have "starved" for lack of nourishment.

I demolished this on several grounds.

First, I showed that you had completely overlooked the mechanism of developing placental feeding *in addition to* the pre-existent yolk-feeding method, not as an immediate *replacement* for it to which you had simplistically limited your thinking. This opens the door for a *multi-generational* development of the placenta instead of the "single generation" method you had considered to be the "only" possibility.

To date, you have not attempted to refute that point at all. Nor, unfortunately, have you conceded it. Instead, you've just danced around it hoping to distract attention from it by reprinting pages of various websites for us, while *continuing* to cling to your flawed "one mutation, one generation" scenario.

Second, you have grasped for as much as you can get your hands on (including the aforementioned spews of website cut-and-pastes) and flung it against the wall in the hopes that something sticks. Your hope was that you could find something that would show that a placenta is (allegedly) so much more complex than egg-laying mechanisms that its development would boggle the mind (well, *your* mind, anyway).

Unfortunately, all of your specific examples have so far fallen into the following categories:

1. Structures or processes *already present* in egg-hatched reproduction. Sorry, no cigar, since these hardly need to be "developed" in order to be put into service for placental birth.

2. Structures or processes which clearly are not necessary for a primitive placenta, they are merely improvements (albeit sometimes great improvements) on the minimum configuration, and could be added at any later point after the "first" successful placenta was developed. I include in this category those structures/processes which you simply *declare* to be absolutely necessary but for which you have not provided any sort of actual evidence. *You're* the one making the claim of impossibility, *you* document the alleged impossibilities and demonstrate that they are, indeed, absolutely necessary steps. You have the burden of proof.

3. Structures or processes which may have been necessary novel developments for the first primitive placenta, which you claim (without any real support) are somehow impossibly difficult. See #2 for a discussion of your responsibility for a burden of proof. I'm afraid that your just saying, "gosh-a-roony, that sure looks hard to me" doesn't even begin to approach the standards of actual evidence.

And as a further flavor of error in your argument:

4. We haven't even yet touched on the topic of your presumptions of "irreducible complexity". For example, the placenta could have started out as something else useful before it became useful as a nutritional conduit. For just one scenario, it may first have served as just an "anchor" to the womb while the embryo subsisted off its yolk prior to early (e.g. marsupial-like) birth. Only many generations later, once it was already reliably attaching to the uterine wall, might it have developed a way to pass nutrients. I don't think this is necessarily what happened, but the point is that in order to actually cover all bases in your "can't get there from here" claims, you need to make sure you've considered and examined *every* possible series of stages, and then eliminated each and every one of them. Otherwise, your claims are just empty declarations, devoid of any real rigorous support.

The above is the evolutionist 'leap of faith' through a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon.

No, sorry, *you're* the one claiming that it *couldn't* have worked without *all* modern features in place. *You're* the one making a "leap of faith" if you haven't already examined and discredited *every* possible pathway by which one could get to "here" from "there". My job in this discussion is simply to point out all the possibilities you clearly *hadn't* already considered.

The only purpose of a placenta is the transfer of nutrients from the mother to the baby through the uterine wall. This alone requires both changes in the uterine wall of the mother,

Oh? Prove it. Prove that the embryo-side of the placenta couldn't "leech" enough nutrients out of an *unmodified* uterine wall to be at least partially useful (especially since this is pretty much how the ruminant placenta works *now*). Until you have proven this, you *can't* claim that you've made your case. Admit it -- you're operating off of feelings, without evidence (and until I informed you of a great deal and corrected your many errors, without any real knowledge of how the whole system actually works).

the attachment of the placenta to the uterine wall,

Hardly a major feat, due to point #1 above ("already works that way in eggs").

and the non-rejection of the 'foreign' body by the mother.

We already dealt with that in a prior post, don't pretend we haven't. That problem would already have been addressed long before placental development commenced.

Furthermore, it's clear that rejection isn't automatic failure for gestation, since equine (horse) gestation *always* involves immunilogical rejection of the "chorionic girdle" which develops at about 25 days into gestation, and becomes completely rejected by the mother at about day 100-140. But no matter, since by then it has already done its job. Didn't know that, did you?

This by itself requires numerous changes in the growing baby and the mother as well as numerous specific proteins to be secreted to achieve a successful change in nutritional system.

In *modern* placentas. Do get back to us when you show that they were a necessary component of the *first* eutherian placenta. For elucidation you might want to do some research and find out how many of them *aren't* present in the perfectly workable shark and marsupial placentas.

Ooh, better yet, let's compare your account to *other* eutherian mammalian placentas to see how much of that is actually "necessary", shall we?

Ruminant (cows, sheep, etc.) placentas work in a pretty straightforward manner, much simpler than human placentas which you erroneously focus on as if they were the *only* workable kind.

The uterine wall of the ruminant undergoes essentially *no* changes in preparation for the attachment of the placenta. The placenta nestles up to wavy tissues of the uterus which are *always* present in the ruminant uterus, pregant or not. It just plasters up against the uterine wall as it grows and doesn't do any kind of "invasion". And it doesn't do any of the fancy "coordination" you believe is necessary for a functioning placenta. Oops.

As the following shows:

[cut-and-paste snipped]

Um, it "shows" nothing of the kind, you might want to read your own sources more carefully. Note the following passage, "It will induce the uterine cells to form the maternal portion of the placenta, the decidua". See the mention of the "decidua"? This is discussing only *deciduate* placentas. Guess what? Ruminant placentas work just fine *without* all this rigamarole. So much for your presumption that this mechanism is a necessary ingredient of primitive placentas, eh? Oops again.

Let's look at the above problem more closely:

Let's not, since cows get along just fine without all that overcomplication.

[Cut-and-paste says:] While the embryonic epiblast is undergoing cell movements reminiscent of those seen in reptilian or avian gastrulation,

*AHEM*... Free clue for the clueless -- and from your own sources, too...

There are numerous 'little' problems within the above that need to be solved for the system to work properly, one of them is oxygen:

Why is this a "problem"? Sure, having a fetal hemoglobin with a higher oxygen affinity than the maternal hemoglobin increases the efficiency of the transfer, but can you demonstrate that it's *necessary*? Some lemurs, for example, appear to use the same hemoglobin throughout both their fetal and post-birth lives. Even theoretically, oxygen transfer would still take place with identical hemoglobins on both sides of the placental barrier, just not as efficiently.

But even if were actually a necessity before placentas became feasible, it's hardly an insurmountable step. A proliferation of hemoglobin types is the norm among animals, not the exception. For all you know, birds and reptiles may very well already use a fetal hemoglobin during the egg stage, where respiration is performed quite differently than during "post hatch" life (I wasn't able to find any specific information either way on that).

I could go on and on,

Oh, I'm sure you could... But wouldn't it be simpler to just admit holes in your original faulty claim? Like, say, admitting that it *needn't* have happened in "one generation" after all?

however, let's just show the problem of adhesion: [Implantation]

Cows don't bother with any of that and they work just fine... How many more times am I going to have to instruct you on basic biology?

Finally, lets show the developmental system of an egg: [picture snipped] Compare the above to the picture of the human developmental system in Post# 257 .

Looks pretty much the same to me -- did you have a point to make? And, by the way, it *really* looks like the intra-uterine cow embryo.

Again, each step requires numerous other steps as well as coordination of all the steps.

Again, cows do fine with about 3/4 fewer steps than you have listed as "essential". Try again.

The reductionism of evolutionists does not cut it.

And yet, cows still live... Maybe it's your assumptions that are wrong.

The steps are numerous and have to be precisely timed, they need various genes, proteins and organs.

Mooooooooooooo!

I'm going to summarize with the statement I used to start this whole discussion -- if you were smart, you'd have made sure that you actually *knew* enough about gestation to be able to discuss it intelligently and not trip over something that's already known, like for example how other animals already manage to reproduce.

Now that I've dealt with your latest round of "throw another website at the wall and hope something sticks", let's get back to basics...

Do you admit that your original presumption that it "had" to occur "in one mutation, in one generation" was faulty? Yes or no.

Do you admit that you erred when you presumed that mammals would have had to "develop" structures and processes which, oops, were already present in the egg-laying method of reproduction? Yes or no.

Do you withdraw your original claim that gradualistic development of placental birth would be "impossible"? Yes or no.

Note: This is a test of your intelligence and honesty. Respond accordingly.

"You totally misunderstand the point of the study, but oh well."

The point of the study is that they have absolutely no examples of old DNA, they have no fossils showing when this happened so they are trying to create evidence where there is none by pure rhetoric.

Nice try, but minute analysis of DNA and cross-species anatomical comparisons yield a great deal of evidence. They're hardly "creating" it.

What they are saying is that by looking at the differences between the different DNA's,

Oh, look, evidence after all!

if one assumes that: 1. evolution is true.

No need to assume that for the study they were doing.

2. the egg layers came first,

They didn't assume that, it's demonstratable from their data.

3. that mutations occur on a clockwork basis (regardless of the number of individuals in a species, the time it takes to reproduce, environmental conditions, or anything else).

You show a gross misunderstanding of how mutation differentials are used to derive timescales.

4. that such a time frame has ever been scientifically determined or is even determinable.

Sure it is. Long-term average mutation rates are easily calibrated by fossil dating.

5. that all mutations are the same and in no way affect anything worthwhile (except when the evolutionists need it to affect something worthwhile).

Now you're just babbling, and not talking about anything that actually relates to the study.

Only if all the assumptions above are true, can the study be correct.

Nice try, but no.

Of course, since the first one is that evolution is true, the evolutionists are trying to prove that evolution is true by assuming that it is true which of course is a logical fallacy.

It would be if that's what they were doing, but since that's your *own* mistake and not theirs...

So therefore it follows that the study above is a total abomination written no doubt because the authors were complete failures and needed to write something to justify their paychecks.

Or, you've just failed to understand it. But hey, that could *never* happen, right?

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