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The Fossil Pattern

Evolution implies that the fossil record should show a general pattern of creatures slowly, incrementally transforming into more sophisticated creatures, leading eventually to the living organisms we have on Earth today. Some breaks in the record are to be expected, but if a large number of fossils have been deposited, we should expect to see the overall pattern implied by the theory. Instead, the fossil record shows something very different.

Single-celled life appeared almost immediately (about 4 billion years ago). No mullet-cellular organisms existed until about 550 million years ago, when numerous complex plant and animal species appeared virtually simultaneously, then persisted unchanged for millions of years, each eventually become extinct or surviving to the present. Several other sudden appearances of collections of new species occurred more recently, the most recent being the appearance of humans alone.

It is always possible to present a few unusual fossil specimens as credible supporting evidence for evolution, but it is not possible to reconcile the general pattern of the fossil record with the naturalistic evolutionary concept. To confirm evolution we need long, incremental transitions, not inexplicable sudden appearances followed by well-documented stasis.

Evolution assumes that the beneficial function of a complex system can be slowly accumulated, as the parts of the system are accumulated. This concept is vital, because for complex systems to arise by the guidance of natural selection, the accumulating parts of the system must provide a benefit which natural selection can select. Studies of biology show that all life forms, from the simplest microbes to humans, are filled with complex systems that do not appear to be amenable to this evolutionary requirement. Instead of a smooth path from non-existence to the modern state, most biological systems exhibit what might be described as a "benefit cliff," impassable by chance mutation.

To illustrate--consider the car. There are many parts on the car, which are beneficial, but not strictly necessary. It is safer to drive with a rear-view mirror, but we could still drive without one. It is comfortable and fun to have air conditioning and a stereo, but we could still drive from one city to another without those things. Suppose we remove all of these frills, stripping the car down to only what is absolutely necessary to drive from point A to point B, at a level of utility greater than could be provided by a bicycle. The car would still be very complex. A large number of critical parts (particularly in the engine) could not be removed.

The obvious problem is that natural selection doesn't even get to start selecting until a rather large amount of complex functionality is achieved. But if natural selection didn't design the complexity, then what did? Most evolutionists today are aware of this problem, but insist that the incremental path required by evolution does exist; it just "hasn't been discovered yet." Of course, any false theory could be defended this way: "It only looks false; its truth hasn't been discovered yet." How might the path be traversible? It is conceivable that a beneficially neutral part could arrive, and stick around until--by unbelievably spectacular chance--other parts arrived that would work together with that one. But then we should expect to see most life forms rife with unused parts that may one day be beneficial in combination with as-yet-non-existent parts. We do not observe anything of the sort. Useless or apparently useless features, such as the human appendix, are very unusual exceptions, not the general rule.

The problem of interrelated parts is especially bad for the concept of evolution, because this problem indicates that it can't happen at all.