Fossil Sufficiency

In Darwin's day, the living cell was thought of as merely a sac filled with liquid. Scientists of the Victorian era were ignorant of the organelles in the cell and its other microscopic structures. Nobody knew that the DNA molecule contained enough information to fill many volumes of an encyclopedia. It was thought that if a baby was born handicapped, that was because of fears the mother had experienced during the gestation process.

In Darwin's time it was believed that the soil of a land being plowed away could change that region's climate. People imagined that outer space was a colorless fluid known as ether and that if people's hands were severed over the course of a few generations eventually children without any hands would be born. The electron microscope did not yet exist in 1859. Neither did the refrigerator (which was invented only in 1938), the telephone (1876), the typewriter (1867), or even the ballpoint pen (1863). Researchers of the time tried to understand natural phenomena by means of such rudimentary equipment as compasses, thermometers and the like.

Accordingly, in the days when Darwin was making his studies and conjectures, research into biology and the knowledge resulting from that research were very limited.

In Darwin's day, it was estimated that the Cambrian Period extended no further back than 60 million years. According to this view, the Earth was estimated to be only around 200 million years old.9 (It is now estimated to be 4.6 billion years old.)

In Darwin's day, all branches of science were in a relatively primitive state. For that reason, conjectures regarding the imaginary evolutionary process were left dependent upon advancing science and technology and the opportunities that these were expected to provide. The expectation that future fossil discoveries would shed light on what was then unknown led the public to regard the theories put forward as completely reasonable.

Ever since, in fact, attempts have continued uninterrupted to find specimens of intermediate forms that might account for species' sudden appearance in the Cambrian Period. Paleontologists still hope to find a few specimens from the pre-Cambrian that are recognizably similar to Cambrian fossils, which can let them construct a supposedly evolutionary progression between the Cambrian and earlier periods.

150 years went by. Advances in science and technology elicited important information. Developments in such specialized fields as biochemistry, biophysics, genetics and molecular biology demonstrated there is such complete perfection in Earth's living things at the molecular level that they could not possibly have evolved.

Discoveries in the field of paleontology have unearthed a large portion of the fossils still concealed in the Earth's sedimentary crust, but revealed not one single intermediate form that might justify the illusory process of evolution that Darwin had postulated.

This was the 21st century's most important contribution with regard to paleontology. A large part of the world had been excavated, and many fossil specimens had been obtained as a result of wide-ranging research. In terms of the missing Cambrian "intermediate form" fossils that Darwin imagined would be eventually discovered, the fact that emerged was a most surprising one for Darwinists: All complex organisms thought to be half a billion years old and more in fact belonged to the Cambrian Period.

Charles Darwin's Working Conditions In Darwin's day, the cell was thought to be just a sac of liquid. No one realized that it was a very complex structure whose DNA contained enough information to fill millions of encyclopedia pages. Laboratories and the equipment they employed were also very primitive. Such branches of science as genetics and biochemistry were virtually unknown.

Pre-Cambrian fossil beds gave up no specimens revealing any transition to the Cambrian species. In the Cambrian Period, a stunning complexity and variety emerged quite suddenly all of which disappeared again after the Cambrian. This was really a most extraordinary state of affairs.

However, the claims made by Darwin's followers that there are insufficient fossils, made as an excuse for the missing fossils in question, were proved to be totally unfounded. The Harvard University evolutionist paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould had no qualms about making this admission:

Stephen Jay Gould

The most famous such burst, the Cambrian explosion, marks the inception of modern multicellular life. Within just a few million years, nearly every major kind of animal anatomy appears in the fossil record for the first time. . . . The Precambrian record is now sufficiently good that the old rationale about undiscovered sequences of smoothly transitional forms will no longer wash.10

The realization that the present-day fossil record is entirely adequate represents a major disappointment for evolutionist paleontologists. Along with providing no evidence for evolution, the fossils obtained so far have also eliminated a number of false pieces of evidence.

The fabricated and deceptive evidence put forward by proponents of evolution has been entirely eliminated with (1) detailed studies of the fossils obtained, (2) examples of "living fossils" that go back, unchanged, for millions of years, and (3) the realization of the existence of stasis (stability) in fossils of the same creatures from different periods in time. (For more specifics, see www.living-fossils.com.) In other words, far from confirming Darwin's expectations, fossil research has provided results that he never foresaw.

The evolutionist David M. Raup, former director of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, has this to say:

We are now about 120 years after Darwin, and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species, but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information-what appeared to be a nice, simple progression when relatively few data were available, now appear to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. So Darwin's problem has not been alleviated in the last 120 years . . .11

The evolutionist zoologist David Kitts interprets the facts presented by the fossil record as a "difficulty" for evolutionists:

. . . paleontology. . . had presented. . . difficulties. . . the most notorious of which is the presence of ‘gaps' in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms . . . paleontology does not provide them.12

The fact revealed by paleontology is that the pre-Cambrian Period was one in which only single-celled organisms existed. In the environment of 1.2 billion years ago, single-celled organisms with a nucleus containing DNA were the dominant form of life. Towards the beginning of the Cambrian, sponge-like organisms emerged, consisting of only a few different cells. Those cells were now specialized, with each performing its own separate functions. However, these organisms still had no comprehensive internal structures, nervous systems or muscle fibers.13 In other words, they were very different from the later Cambrian life forms.

The Cambrian fossil record has revealed the characteristics of an enormous variety of living things, all appearing suddenly and independently of one another. And these are not the descendents of the organisms described above!

The California University evolutionist biologist James W. Valentine makes this confession:

The fossil record is of little use in providing direct evidence of the pathways of descent of the phyla or of invertebrate classes. Each phylum with a fossil record had already evolved its characteristic body plan when it first appeared, so far as we can tell from the fossil remains. And no phylum is connected to any other via intermediate fossil types [emphasis added]. Indeed, none of the invertebrate classes can be connected with another class by a series of intermediates. The relationships among phyla and classes must be inferred on the basis of their resemblance. However, even the most sophisticated techniques of phylogeny analysis have thus far failed to resolve the great differences of opinion concerning the relationships among phyla (or among many classes as well).14

A time 1.2 billion years before our own, when single-celled organisms with a single nucleus dominated the Earth... Towards the beginning of the Cambrian Period, however, sponge-like organisms containing a few different cells appeared. The Cambrian is not when the supposed descendants of these life forms emerged, but when living things completely independent of them, complex and in an enormous variety, did so. This sublime creation, which Darwinists are unable to explain, is one of the flawless works of Allah.

Valentine admits that the fossil record constitutes no evidence for evolution, and that living things emerged suddenly wherever on Earth they may be found. To put it another way, he-and other experts-are forced to admit that no evolution took place in the ages preceding the Cambrian. Instead of imaginary pre-Cambrian intermediate-form fossils, we encounter an increasing number of complex Cambrian organisms. This fact prompted Bruce Runnegar, the California University evolutionist and professor of paleontology, to make this admission:

Bruce Runnegar

As might be expected, the paleontologists have concentrated on the fossil record and have therefore provided wealth of information on the early history of a great variety of invertebrate groups, but little insight into their origins.15

The fossil record is the sole foundation on which the theory of evolution relies. However, the fossil record's very sufficiency-the fact that a large part of the Earth's strata have been excavated-is enough to make it abundantly clear that living things never underwent evolution. No evolutionary process ever took place.

Statements by evolutionists to the effect that "the fossil record is sufficient and no intermediate form has yet been encountered" are actually a simple admission that there's not the slightest evidence to support the theory of evolution.

This fact makes the existence of Almighty Allah, His creative artistry and infinite power, abundantly clear. Living things, with all their astonishing attributes, are created by Allah's will, at whatever moment He chooses.

Yes, everything in the heavens and Earth belongs to Allah. Yes, Allah's promise is true but most of them do not know it. He gives life and causes to die and you will be returned to Him. (Surah Yunus, 55-56)

What is in the heavens and in the Earth belongs to Allah. Allah encompasses all things. (Surat an-Nisa', 126)