NO. 586 THE EVOLUTION THEORY - PART TWO

THE POPULATION: The human population offers another staggering blow to evolution. There is great argument among them about the age of man, some claiming 100,000 years, and others claiming as much as 2,000,000 years. But mathematics prove that even the lowest of these estimates is an absurdity, for it is altogether too short a time for such a method as evolution to bring from apes a being like man into existence and into his present condition. The 1922 Berlin statistics, the latest then available, gives the population as 1,804,187,000 (it is now more than twice that figure). To reach this number the human race must have doubled itself 30.75 times; for, if we raise the num­ber 2 to that figure, the result is 1,073,741,824. Thus the race had to double itself between 30 and 31 times.

The Bible chronology tells us that the flood began in the Fall of 2473 B.C.; and to the Spring of 1922 this would give us 4,393.5 years. Now Shem (the eldest son of Noah) was begotten a few months less than 100 years before the flood (see Gen. 11:10; 5:32; 7:6). Therefore, in that year one human couple and their descendants came through the flood to populate the earth anew. Hence, in the 4,393.5 years before the Spring of 1922 the race doubled itself 30.75 times. This gives us an average of 146.13 years for each doubling of the population. Thus the time from Jacob's marriage to 1922 was 3,798 years. Raising 2 to its 23.8758th power we get 15,393,815 ─ the Jewish population in 1922. Dividing 3,798 by 23.8758 we get 159.07, which would be the average number of years for Jacob's descendants to double themselves ─ to become a population of 15,398,815 from Jacob's marriage until 1922.

Also, Abraham's descendants thru Ishmael (the Arabs not only in Arabia, but in the rest of Asia and in Africa) number approximately 25,000,000. According to the Bi­ble chronology, Abraham entered Canaan at 75 (Gen. 12:4), in the Spring of 2045 B.C.; hence, 3,966 years before the Spring of 1922. Ishmael was born when Abraham was 86 years old (Gen. 16:16); hence 3,955 years before the Spring of 1922. Hence the Spring before Abraham and Hagar were a childless couple, which was 3,956 years before the Spring of 1922. But 25,000,000 is the 24.4901th power of 2. Hence Abraham and Hagar doubled themselves in their descendants every 161.53 years ─ 3,956 divided by 24.4901. These investigations show that the whole race doubled itself since Noah and his wife were childless every 146.13 years, the Jews doubling themselves every 159.07 years and the Arabs doubling themselves every 161.53 years.

Doubtless why the entire race kept doubling itself on an average of about 15 years sooner than the Jews and the Arabs is due to the fact that it is written of both typi­cal and antitypical Ishmaelites that their hand would be against every man and every man's hand would be against them (Gen. 16:12). The result was that more of them on the average met with untimely deaths and propagating hindrances than the average of the rest of the race, like the starving conditions of Asiatic and African deserts and con­stant wars and feuds for the Arabs, and among others, the Assyrian, Babylonian and Ro­man conquests and Gospel-Age persecution for the Jews. But, with these limitations, that the figures for all three should be practically alike proves that the principle on which they have been obtained is on the average reliable.

Let us now consider some of the wild statements of the evolutionists, who claim man has been on this earth perhaps two million years. The mildest guess of any of them is a hundred thousand years, and we shall give them all the advantage by using that figure. Let us assume that the population doubles one-tenth as fast as did the Arabs; that is, once every 1,161 years. In one hundred thousand years the population would have doubled itself 86 times (we are omitting fractions); and 2 raised to the 86th power is 4,660,210,253,138,204,300 ─ or more than two and one-half billion times as many people as are now on earth. This destroys even the mildest form of evolution on man's age on the earth. If there had been no flood in Noah's day, the increase in the population would be such a staggering figure that human minds could not grasp it; in other words, about 2,500 times its present population. Thus it should be clear enough that the Bible record of man's history is readily acceptable, whereas, that of evolu­tionists appears as self-evident nonsense.

All the foregoing is based upon the fact that all human beings came from one pair; but this is also farfetched if we consider that it would be just as reasonable for men to evolve from apes in Asia, Africa, Europe or America as from any one pair. And such a conclusion simply complicates the situation still more for the evolutionists. The figures prove conclusively that man could not have evolved from the ape, because in two million years the race would have doubled once in every 65,040 years. On that basis, there would be less than four Arabs and four Jews on earth now. All of this certainly disputes evolution, and shows that man was a direct creation at the hand of God, as the Genesis account tells us it was.

As mentioned aforegoing, a strong second argument against evolution is the unity of the human race. That "God hath made of one blood all nations" is clearly proven by the fact that all races interbreed, and their offspring is fertile; but this would not be true if we are as the animals, because even the most closely related animals can produce another, but that one cannot reproduce itself, thus avoiding continuance of any evolutionary theory.

Thus, the ability of human beings to interbreed, whereas none of the animals can do this, certainly is a compelling argument against evolution. All languages are de­rived from five others, and all basically have one language. So words like “father” and “mother” are very similar in many languages of the five groups, which proves the early origin of home and civilization. If certain forms of evolution were true, our present languages could not be reduced to five linguistic groups, and these five in turn reduced to one; but they would have to be traced to thousands of non-related lan­guages, such as the thousands of evoluted species that mankind would have invented, had there been such a situation.     

The unity of the race in religious beliefs also militates against evolution. Had evolution been true, there would certainly be at least one section of the race ─ one nation ─ that would have reared a population of atheists; and probably more, but there is not a single one that does so. Thus all races hold the following religious idea: A supreme God surrounded by subordinate gods, such as the angels recognized by the Chris­tian part of the world. In the Greek and Roman mythology much is related about such, showing their bickerings, their weaknesses, etc., but the Bible clearly states in Gen. 1:31 that "God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." The record of all the heathen gods clearly disputes that all their gods (angels, etc.) are "very good." The cheapest kind of quarrels and intrigues are recorded of many of them; and those records are certainly not "by inspiration," as our Christian Bible is by in­spiration (2 Tim. 3:16,17).

Furthermore, if evolution were true, why not have all the lower species passed out of existence through evolving into higher species until by now there would be only one left ─ man, and he on the way to evolving to some higher species? Also, why have some species become so large, like the ancient saurians, and our modern elephants and al­leged later species than these, e.g., monkeys become so small, if evolution is true? And why did Romanes, while yet an evolutionist, find that the collective intelligence of all species lower than man equals the intelligence of the average child of fifteen months, if evolution is true? Why should all males but one, and all females but one die as members of the 3,000,000 species, and two not die as such, but as members of the next higher species? Would not this be as unlikely as if untold decillians of dollars being tossed into the air, should all fall heads down except two?

If as Huxley, a leading evolutionist, said "There is an enormous gulf, a divergence practically infinite, between the lowest man and the highest beast," then why are there not between man and ape many other species in existence, if evolution is true? Surely Huxley's gulf between them is evident when we consider man's immense superiority to the ape in physical and mental respects, letting out of consideration entirely the moral and religious aspects, of the latter of which the ape is entirely destitute. Why are the senses of seeing, hearing and smelling on the wane in man, why are people now more nerv­ous than formerly, why do more people become bald than formerly, and why are distresses ─ physical, mental and moral ─ increasing if evolution is the law of existence? Cer­tainly such and other like considerations refute evolution as a law of existence. De­generation is the trend, not evolution. Even in the better civilized of the nations we find insanity and nervous disorders increasing to such an extent it is taxing the au­thorities over the limit to know how to cope with these things.

Freely do we admit our limitations when it comes to gauging the age of this planet in its early formative stage as a molten mass. Nor do we consider it necessary that we understand this. Our main argument here has to do with man, and very little else. It seems that a sort of specialized evolution was carried on for some years after the first life came into the pristine mud and species that followed thereafter; but we are not in position definitely to prove any of it, nor does it greatly concern us.

We have already shown that history contains not one hint of the transmutation of one species into another. We now add that, like history, geology confounds the evolu­tionist by not furnishing even one fossil showing anything in process of change from one into another species. We have many fossils of plants and animals, but they entirely lack an example showing a transition from one to another species. If evolution were true, we should have millions of these on earth's strata.

The distribution of plant life and certain animal life disproves evolution. If all plants came evolved from an original germ, how came they to be distributed in conti­nents separated by oceans, and that before man appeared on earth, as many fossils of them prove? So, too, we find certain animals whose power of locomotion is but very slight scattered widely. The oyster is found in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and North and South America. How could they have crossed oceans? Again, if all plant life originated in a single germ, how did it happen that some plants are scattered among all continents, and others when found by civilized man were limited to but one, like Indian corn, tobacco, potatoes, etc.? If these once existed in the eastern hemisphere, as ev­olution requires, why were they found only in America? Certainly we must accept the conclusion of Agassiz, one of the greatest scientists of all times, to the effect that evolution "is a scientific mistake, untrue in its facts, unscientific in its methods and mischievous in its tendencies."

Evolution denies design in creation, which is the corollary of a wise purposeful Creator, and must fall back on chance as the line along which the universe and its life manifestations came into being and move. The universe and plant and animal life liter­ally overflow with the expressions of design ─ which imply a designer. Almost infinite in number are these design expressions. We shall offer but a few: The human body is packed to overflowing with evidence at design and adaptation. The most intricate ma­chine, like the Hoe printing press, shows design decidedly much less markedly than the human body. How manifold is design manifest in the nervous system, with its relations to thought, affection, will, the five senses, our blood and its channels and vital or­gans! How wonderfully designed are our blood and its channels, our muscles, glands, skin, brain, vital organs, hands, fingers, joints, arms, feet, toes, legs, eyes, ears, nose, tongue, teeth, excretory organs, reproductive organs, etc. Their locations, their protectors, etc., as well as their nature and functions, also evidence design. And we think it is well worth repeating here that man is the only animal who has a chin, and none of the lower animals have this physical characteristic.

It would be a millionfold more foolish to say that man came by chance than to say that a Hoe printing press came by chance! Marvelously formed is our body. The princi­ples underlying its activities are followed by inventors of dynamos, steam engines, etc., and yet how greatly inferior are such inventions to the human body! Nevertheless, evolutionists would attribute its origin to blind chance, while denying the possibility of a steam engine coming by chance! William Jennings Bryan pointedly expressed himself on the folly of this chance theory as follows: "According to evolutionists, there was a time when animals had no legs and so legs came by accident. How? Well, the guess is that a little animal was wiggling along on its belly one day, when it discovered a wart ─ it just happened so ─ and it was in the right place to be used to aid it in locomo­tion; so it came to depend on the wart, and use finally developed it into a leg. And then another wart, and another leg at the proper time, by accident, and accidently in the proper place. Is it not astonishing that any person, intelligent enough to teach school, would talk such tommyrot to students and look serious while doing so?"

Nature is a proof that design marked man's coming. Earth's coal, gas, petroleum and electrical power, that no being but man uses, and that are so necessary for him, were stored up in the earth for him long before he came. The metals, so useful to man and useless to all other animals, were on deposit in the bank of the earth for man to check on as needed. Fruits, vegetables, grains and flesh having the chemical elements needed to replace waste tissue in man were prepared for him. The resources of nature needful for man's protection from inclement nature were made abundant for him. Every­thing in the earth shows design, and that for the most part in anticipation of man's ar­rival on earth; and this only a less loud voice in him, with harmonious chorus of the universe and its living creatures, cries out design, as against chance, which the evolu­tionist, discordantly with the universe, the earth and plant and animal life, and their associated supplies, shouts is the course of nature. Chance, the course of nature in the face of the laws of nature!

Foregoing we showed the almost infinite improbability of the transmutation of spe­cies from the lowest of them in plant life through all successive species of plant life in­to the lowest form of animal life and then through all the successive species of animal life up to man, i.e., through evolution's 3,000,000 species. We now present an argument against evolution based upon the genera of life as forming eight impassable gulfs, all of which evolution would have to prove to have been passed, if it were to be proven true, and not even one of which has been proven to have been passed by evolution.

These eight impassable gulfs separating the genera of being are the following: (1) from the non-living to the living; (2) from vegetable to the animal kingdom in the lowest form of invertebrates; (3) from the invertebrates to the vertebrates; (4) from marine beings to amphibians; (5) from amphibians to reptiles (the Reptilian Age ─ ani­mals who live partly in the water and partly on the land ─ snakes, crocodiles, etc.); (6) from reptiles to birds; (7) from birds or reptiles to mammals; and (8) from mam­mals to humans. "And God said, Let us make man... and the evening and the morning were the sixth day." (Gen. 1:26-31) In the above we have ignored the multitudes of species in each genus simply giving the classification according to genera in harmony with the Biblical week of 49,000 years. But how does evolution meet this progress? The atheistic materialist and the spontaneous-generation evolutionist are forced to make the first gulf be passed by the lowest form of plant life after the manner of the Topsy of Uncle Tom's Cabin, who, when asked when she was born, answered that she was not born at all, but just grew up!

Spontaneous generation is a senseless guess that experiments under the most favor­able experimental conditions have failed to achieve, these having broken down in com­plete non-success. Neither of these kinds of evolutionists know how to get life from the non-life; for if anything is scientifically true, the proposition is true that what is in effect must have been in the cause; hence, non-life could not have produced life. Therefore, these two kinds of evolutionists have found an impassable gulf between the non-living and the living, on the assumption which they make: A living being did not cause the first form of life.

The hopelessness of the task of getting life from the non-living without the agency of a living being, i.e., without a creative act of God, forced Mr. Darwin and all Dar­winian evolutionists to assume that God created at least one, at most a few, forms of the lowest plant life. Therefore they had to have a God to pass this gulf; and there­after, as it were, they mummified Him for all future times. But little good did that do them; they are equally helpless to bridge the next gulf, i.e., that which lies between the highest form of plant life and the lowest form of animal life, endowed with con­sciousness and locomotion. How could they overcome this great gulf? for which question they have no real answer.

Then comes the next puzzler: that which lies between the highest form of inverte­brates to vertebrates. Here again, so far as a real answer is concerned, they are "dumb dogs that cannot bark"; "watchmen that are blind, ignorant, sleeping, lying down." (Isa. 56:10) However, their guttural growls are usually more or less audible.

Now we compare the highest form of marine invertebrates with amphibians. And here they are as helpless as on the previous points; for they cannot tell how fish, which do their breathing with water, could have changed to do it with air as well as water. Then comes the next question: How and why do amphibians develop into reptiles? Then comes the same question between reptiles and birds, and between reptiles or birds (they do not know which) and mammals. But the most unyielding of all obstacles for the evolutionists is that between the highest mammal and man ─ where Huxley admitted there was a gulf to pass whose passage he could not explain, calling it almost infinite.

The only rational explanation for any of the foregoing is an intelligent and pur­poseful Creator; and their failure to explain satisfactorily any one of the questions raised is a complete refutation in itself of evolution.

It would seem in order here also to consider the magnificent pageantry of the hea­vens. In Psalms 8:3-9 David says this: "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man that thou art mindful of him... Thou hast put all things under his feet: All sheep, and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea... O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth." It should be emphasized here that in all the centuries since records have been kept we find not one instance whether any of the great heavenly constellations have ever collided; it would seem there is some intelligent and powerful force guiding their movements.

Here we mention just a small incident which occurred some forty years ago. We went deep-sea fishing off the coast of Florida, and hooked a 90-inch sailfish. There was a 25-foot piano wire lead at the hook end of the line to prevent a catch from snapping the fabric line. During the fight the fish jumped out of the water, attempting to dis­lodge the hook. In about five minutes the fish came to the surface, dead as a stone.  The captain of the ship said he had drowned himself (which was indeed a surprising piece of news to us). How could a fish, who lived in the water all the time, drown himself? Well, he had lodged that piano-wire lead through his gill, which cut off his breathing and he drowned ─ just as you and I would have done under similar circumstances. This also is a telling blow to evolution.

Each of the foregoing presents so many unexplainable differences, that it should discourage the boldest evolutionist; e.g., some of them claim that mammals are descended from some (unknown) reptiles, and birds from other (unknown) reptiles. But how did the first mammal get breasts, a four-chambered heart instead of the three-chambered heart of the reptile, hair, or fur, or wool and a womb for developing young, all of which reptiles lack? How was the reptile's blood temperature raised from 40 degrees and in the extremist cases from 60 degrees to nearly 100 degrees in mammals? And from reptiles to birds, how was that same temperature raised to 107 degrees? How were wings and feathers developed? Evolutionists offer for this gulf two fossils of what they call the archae­opteryx, which was nothing but birds with abnormal tails and bills. Of real logical evidence they have not even one link, whereas millions would be required to fill up each of the above-mentioned eight gulfs. These eight genera, to say nothing of their three million species, say at each of their separating gulfs: "Thus far and no farther."

Much more could be said about this subject, but we now close by offering a solemn indictment of it. It has had its vogue among "the intelligentsia," though now among the leaders of science it is dead with many of them undergoing preparation for burial; but among the superficially educated and the shallow thinking it has worked, and will con­tinue to work the direst of evils. It has made atheists, agnostics and infidels of many.  It is demoralizing many of our youth, who by it are made to believe in their superiority to their elders and kinship to brutes; hence, their growing disrespect for law and or­der in the home, state, society and church, and their increased indulgence in the lower elements of their nature. From the thought of no God, no responsibility to law, no higher authority, no hereafter and a brute descent, it becomes but a natural step to youthful disrespect to religion and government, disobedience toward parents, immorality as to sex, drunkenness as to intoxicants, and a materialistic outlook on and practice in life. A generation of evolutionist professors and teachers has produced the moral, so­cial and religious havoc that we behold in so many of our youth. The pessimism and brute instincts inculcated by evolution have in large part produced the collapse every­where manifest in church and state and contributed largely to producing the World War, as it also does a large share in the work of leading the nations to Armageddon and World Anarchy. And when these shall have wrought their unexampled havoc on mankind, it will in great resentment arise and repudiate forever every feature of unbelieving evolution.

VARIOUS PROOFS: In the past hundred years or so evolutionists have made frenzied effort to prove their contention to offset the devastating attacks that have been made upon it. In their activities they came upon three specimens which they claim upholds their teaching, these three particularly being the Piltdown, the Heidelberg and the Ne­anderthal Man. When we were in the colporteur work a college-graduate business man whom we accosted one day just sneered when we told him we had no confidence in the "proof" derived from these three distorted skulls.

Comes now in the April 1979 issue of a prominent newspaper some very damaging statements concerning the Piltdown Man, which we now quote:

“PILTDOWN MAN” ─ WHOSE APRIL FOOL'S JOKE OF 1912?

"New evidence concerning a most far-reaching April's hoaxes in the history of science ─ the bogus 'Piltdown Man' ─ has stirred up a dispute in which some scientists are questioning the integrity of their own profession. The bones purporting to be the fossils of Piltdown Man began to be 'discovered' in 1912 in a gravel pit in the English County of Sussex. They were soon accepted by most scientists as the 'missing link' be­tween apes and man, a link that had been postulated by the evolutionary theory of Charles Dawson [It is now reported that toward his death Darwin himself repudiated much of his evolution tommyrot], the lawyer and amateur geologists who found them. The new species was named Eoanthropus Dawson, or Dawson's Man.

"The fragments of two skulls found at the site suggested that the creature's jaw­bone was similar to that of an ape, while its brain case was closer to that of modern man. Dawson turned up stone tools at the site as well as an object strikingly resem­bling a modern cricket bat, lending to Piltdown Man a peculiarly British character. Darwin's monumental theory appeared to have been confirmed at one dramatic stroke, and the world recognized in Piltdown Man a discovery of the first magnitude. Dawson and his collaborator, the anthropologist Arthur Smith Woodward, achieved immediate fame.

"But in the 1920s real fossils of early man began to be discovered in Africa, and they were entirely different from the Piltdown bones. Their jaws were human and their brows simian ─ the reverse of the English fossils. Increasing numbers of the real fos­sils were found, and because none of them resembled Piltdown Man, doubts began to stir about the authenticity of Eoanthropus Dawson.

"In 1953, modern analysis, including dating techniques using the decay of radio­active carbon, were applied to the Piltdown fossils. Piltdown Man was finally and devastatingly proved to be a forgery in which human and simian bones had been skillfully blended and artificially aged. One of the three investigators who exposed the fraud, J. S. Weiner, described the achievement in a book, 'The Piltdown Hoax.' The circumstan­tial evidence indicated that the hoax had been perpetrated by Dawson himself, who died in 1916.

"All that was scandal enough and many scientists were angry and embarrassed that the scientific establishment could have been fooled so completely, and for so long. But just before his death last Fall, Dr. James A. Douglas, professor of geology at Oxford University from 1937 until 1950, made a tape recording in which he disclosed new and even more disturbing evidence. Douglas said he believed the Piltdown hoax had been per­petrated by his world-famous predecessor at Oxford, Professor W. J. Sollas, as a way of making an academic rival look ridiculous. The rival was Dawson's collaborator, Smith Woodward.

"Douglas said that Sollas had assisted in an earlier hoax in which some schoolboys presented to Smith Woodward a purportedly prehistoric drawing of a horse on a piece of bond. That hoax also fooled Smith Woodward, according to Douglas, and may have given Professor Sollas the idea for the much more elaborate Piltdown hoax, including the bogus prehistoric cricket bat.

"The report has prompted a lively and sometimes heated exchange in leading scienti­fic journals. In a recent issue of the Journal 'Nature' for example, L. B. Halstead, a University of Reading geologist, commented that the Piltdown hoax went far beyond a practical joke and deeply affected scientific, philosophical and even theological think­ing. The scientific establishment found it easier to accept the idea that Dawson, a non-scientist, had acted alone, he said, preferring not to believe that one of its own respected members could do such a thing.

"Inferring the guilt of the amateur Dawson, is far the most acceptable to scien­tists, Halstead said, 'as it absolves the academic world from any involvement. The other view is that Dawson was the scapegoat and the hoax was part of a conspiracy on the part of the scientists to delude the public in accepting the anti-religious idea of hu­man evolution,' he added. But while Halstead believes the scientific establishment has been proved by the Piltdown hoax to be vulnerable to criticism, his views are not shared by all scientists.

"Nature also published a letter from Weiner himself, discounting the evidence presented in Douglas' tape recording, including Douglas' recollection of 68 years ago of a packet of potassium bichromate, allegedly used by Sollas to stain the bone fragments and make them look old. One thing that the late Professor Douglas succeeded in doing, Weiner said, was adding a mystery of his own devising to the Piltdown saga ─ why should Douglas on such incredibly weak evidence take the trouble to besmirch Solla's reputation.

"The debate continues, but those who had direct knowledge of the Piltdown hoax are now dead. The ultimate truth may never be known, but most interested scientists agree. But there is a nagging suspicion among some of them that the spirit of April's Fool Day dies hard, and science may not have suffered its last stupendous hoax."

BEECHER AND INGERSOLL

The renowned minister and preacher Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) ─ an ardent fundamentalist ─ is said to have been a close friend to Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), prominent agnostic, lawyer and lecturer. It needs no argument to visualize the elabo­rate controversies that often arose between the two; and we are told that on one occa­sion some one gave a very attractive global atlas to the preacher; and Ingersoll was warm in his praise as soon as he saw it. Who made it? he asked. Answered the preacher: No one; it just made itself. Of course, Ingersoll was crestfallen; but this is just another evidence that evolution cannot be proved.

Some of our readers will undoubtedly realize that much of what has been given here­in has been borrowed from the writings of the Parousia and Epiphany Messengers; and it is our fond hope that this treatise on evolution will convince all of our readers of the shabby fallacy of evolution and to accept the truth on creation as it is contained in the inspired Word of God. "To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not ac­cording to this word, it is because there is no light in them." (Isa. 8:20) As our Lord tells us: "If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:31,32 ─ free from "science falsely so called" ─ 1 Tim. 6: 20)

"Now the Lord of peace himself give you peace always by all means.  The Lord be with you all" (2 Thes. 3:16)

(Brother John J. Hoefle, Reprint No. 389, June 1988)