History of Evolution Part Two
Where did this idea come from?
Source: The Evolution Cruncher
1898 to 1949
Bumpus’ Sparrows (1898). Herman Bumpus was a zoologist at Brown
University. During the winter of 1898, by accident, he carried
out one of the only field experiments in natural selection. One
cold morning, finding 136 stunned house sparrows on the ground,
he tried to nurse them back to health. Of the total, 72 revived
and 64 died. He weighed and carefully measured all of them, and
found that those closest to the average survived best. This
frequently quoted research study is another evidence that the
animal or plant closest to the original species is the most
hardy. Sub-species variations will not be as hardy, and evolution
entirely across species (if the DNA code would permit it) would
therefore be too weakened to survive (R. Milner, Encyclopedia of
Evolution, 1990, p. 61).
Hugo deVries (1848-1935) was a Dutch botanist and one of the
three men who, in 1900, rediscovered Mendel’s paper on the law of
heredity.
One day while working with primroses, deVries thought he had
discovered a new species. This made headlines. He actually had
found a new variety (sub-species) of the primrose, but deVries
conjectured that perhaps his "new species" had suddenly sprung
into existence as a "mutation." He theorized that new species "saltated"
(leaped), that is, continually spring into existence. His idea is
called the saltation theory.
This was a new idea; and, during the first half of the 20th
century, many evolutionary biologists, finding absolutely no
evidence supporting "natural selection," switched from natural
selection ("Darwinism") to mutations ("neo-Darwinism") as the
mechanism by which the theorized cross-species changes occurred.
Mutations cannot produce evolution either, for they are almost
always harmful. In addition, decades of experimentation have
revealed they never produce new kinds.
In order to prove the mutation theory, deVries and other
researchers immediately began experimentation on fruit flies; and
it has continued ever since--but totally without success in
producing new species.
Ironically, deVries’ saltation theory was based on an
observational error. In 1914 Edward Jeffries discovered that
deVries’ primrose was just a new variety, not a new species.
Decades later, it was discovered that most plant varieties are
produced by variations in gene factors, rarely by mutations.
Those caused by gene variations may be strong (although not as
strong as the average original), but those varieties produced by
mutations are always weak and have a poor survival rate.
Walter S. Sutton and T. Boveri (1902) independently discovered
chromosomes and the linkage of genetic characters. This was only
two years after Mendel’s research was rediscovered. Scientists
were continually learning new facts about the fixity of the
kinds.
Thomas Hunt Morgan (1886-1945) was an American biologist who
developed the theory of the gene. He found that the genetic
determinants were present in a definite linear order in the
chromosomes and could be somewhat "mapped." He was the first to
work intensively with the fruit fly, Drosophila (Michael Pitman,
Adam and Evolution, 1984, p. 70). But research with fruit flies,
and other creatures, has proved a total failure in showing
mutations to be a mechanism for cross-species change (Richard B.
Goldschmidt, "Evolution, as Viewed by One Geneticist," American
Scientist, January 1952, p. 94).
H.J. Muller (1927). Upon learning of the 1927 discovery that
X-rays, gamma rays, and various chemicals could induce an
extremely rapid increase of mutations in the chromosomes of test
animals and plants, Muller pioneered in using X-rays to greatly
increase the mutation rate in fruit flies. But all he and the
other researchers found was that mutations were always harmful
(H.J. Muller, Time, November 11, 1946, p. 38; E.J. Gardner,
Principles of Genetics, 1964, p. 192; Theodosius Dobzhansky,
Genetics and the Origin of the Species, 1951, p. 73).
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was deeply indebted to the evolutionary
training he received in Germany as a young man. He fully accepted
it, as well as Haeckel’s recapitulation theory. Freud began his
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1916) with Haeckel’s
premise: "Each individual somehow recapitulates in an abbreviated
form the entire development of the human race" (R. Milner,
Encyclopedia of Evolution, 1990, p. 177).
Freud’s "Oedipus complex" was based on a theory of "primal horde"
he developed about a mental complex that caveman families had
long ago. His theories of anxiety complexes, and "oral" and
"anal" stages, etc., were based on his belief that our ancestors
were savage.
H.G. Wells (1866-1946), the science fiction pioneer based his
imaginative writings on evolutionary teachings. He had received a
science training under Professor Thomas H. Huxley, Darwin’s chief
defender.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), like a variety of other
evolutionist leaders before and after, was an avid spiritist.
Many of his mystery stories were based on evolutionary themes.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was so deeply involved in
evolutionary theory, that he openly declared that he wrote his
plays to teach various aspects of the theory (R. Milner,
Encyclopedia of Evolution, 1990, p. 461).
Piltdown Man (1912). In 1912, parts of a jaw and skull were found
in England and dubbed "Piltdown Man." News of it created a
sensation. The report of a dentist, in 1916, who said someone had
filed down the teeth was ignored. In 1953 the fact that it was a
total hoax was uncovered. This, like all the later evidences that
our ancestors were part ape, has been questioned or repudiated by
reputable scientists.
World War I (1917-1918). Darwinism basically taught that there is
no moral code, our ancestors were savage, and civilization only
progressed by violence against others. It therefore led to
extreme nationalism, racism, and warfare through Nazism and
Fascism. Evolution was declared to involve "natural selection";
and, in the struggle to survive, the fittest will win out at the
expense of their rivals. Frederich von Bernhard, a German
military officer, wrote a book in 1909 extolling evolution and
appealing to Germany to start another war. Heinrich von Treitsche,
a Prussian militarist, loudly called for war by Germany in order
to fulfill its "evolutionary destiny" (Heinrich G. von Treitsche,
Politics, Vol. 1, pp. 66-67). Their teachings were fully adopted
by the German government, and it only waited for a pretext to
start the war (R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution, 1990, p.
59).
Communist Darwinism. Marx and Engels’ acceptance of evolutionary
theory made Darwin’s theory the "scientific" basis of all later
communist ideologies (Robert M. Young, "The Darwin Debate," in
Marxism Today, Vol. 26, April 1982, p. 21). Communist teaching
declared that evolutionary change, which taught class struggle,
came by revolution and violent uprisings. Communist dogma
declares that Lamarckism (inheritance of acquired
characteristics) is the mechanism by which this is done.
Mendelian genetics was officially outlawed in Russia in 1948,
since it was recognized as disproving evolution. Communist
theorists also settled on "synthetic speciation" instead of
natural selection or mutations as the mechanism for species
change (L.B. Halstead, "Museum of Errors," in Nature, November
20, 1980, p. 208). This concept is identical to the sudden change
theory of Goldschmidt and Gould.
John Dewey (1859-1952) was another influential thought leader. A
vigorous Darwinist, Dewey founded and led out in the "progressive
education movement" which so greatly affected U.S. educational
history. But it was nothing more than careful animal training
(Samuel L. Blumenfeld, NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education,
1984, p. 43). The purpose was to indoctrinate the youth into
evolution, humanism, and collectivism. In 1933, Dewey became a
charter member of the American Humanist Association and its first
president. Its basic statement of beliefs, published that year as
the Humanist Manifesto, became the unofficial framework of
teaching in most school textbooks. The evolutionists recognized
that they must gain control of all public education (Sir Julian
Huxley, quoted in Sol Tax and Charles Callender (eds.), Evolution
after Darwin, 3 vols., 1960). Historically, American education
was based on morals and standards; but Dewey declared that, in
order to be "progressive," education must leave "the past" and
"evolve upward" to new, modern concepts.
The Scopes Trial (July 10 to July 21, 1925) was a powerful aid to
the cause of evolution, yet scientific discoveries were not
involved. That was unfortunate, since, except for a single tooth
(later disproved), the evolutionists had nothing worthwhile to
present (The World’s Most Famous Court Trial: A Complete
Stenographic Report, 1925).
The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) had been searching for
someone they could use to test the Butler Act, which forbade the
teaching of evolution in the public schools in Tennessee. John
Scopes (24 at the time) volunteered for the job. He later
privately admitted that he had never actually taught evolution in
class, so the case was based on a fraud; he spent the time
teaching them football maneuvers (John Scopes, Center of the
Storm, 1967, p. 60). But no matter, the ACLU wanted to so
humiliate the State of Tennessee, that no other state would ever
dare oppose the evolutionists. The entire trial, widely reported
as the "Tennessee Monkey Trial," was presented to the public as
something of a comic opera. (A trained ape was even sent in, to
walk around on a chain in the streets of Dayton.) But the
objective was deadly serious, and they succeeded very well.
Although the verdict was against Scopes, America’s politicians
learned the lesson: Do not oppose the evolutionists.
SCOPES TRIAL--Evolutionists turned the Dayton trial into
ridiculous circus in order to frighten later State governments
into banning creationism from their school curicula. The first
event nationally broadcast over the radio, it was a major victory
for evolutionists throughout the world. Ridicule, side issues,
misinformation, and false statements were used to win the battle.
Nebraska Man Debunked (1928). In 1922 a single molar tooth was
found and named Hesperopithecus, or "Nebraska Man." An artist was
told to make an "apeman" picture based on the tooth, which went
around the world. Nebraska Man was a key evidence at the Scopes
trial in July 1925 (The evolutionists had little else to offer!).
Grafton Smith, one of those involved in publicizing Nebraska Man
was knighted for his efforts in making known this fabulous find.
When paleontologists returned to the site in 1928, they found the
rest of the skeleton,--and discovered the tooth belonged to "an
extinct pig"! (R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution, 1990, p.
322). In 1972, living specimens of the same pig were found in
Paraguay.
George McCready Price (1870-1963) had a master’s level degree,
but not in science. Yet he was the staunchest opponent of
evolution in the first half of the 20th century. He produced 38
books and numerous articles to various journals. Price was the
first person to carefully research into the accumulated findings
of geologists, and he discovered that they had no evidence
supporting their claims about strata and fossils. Since his time,
the situation has not changed (R. Milner, Encyclopedia of
Evolution, 1990, p. 194).
Along with mutations, the study of fossils and strata ranks as
the leading potential evidences supporting evolutionary claims.
But no transitional species have been found. Ancient species
(aside from the extinct ones) were like those today, except
larger, and strata are generally missing and at times
switched--with "younger" strata below "older." Because there is
no fossil/strata evidence supporting evolution, the museums
display dinosaurs and other extinct animals as proof that
evolution has occurred. But extinction is not an evidence of
evolution.
Oliver Wendel Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935), powerfully affected the
U.S. Supreme Court in both viewpoint and legal precedents. He was
forceful in his positions and a leading justice for 30 years. The
prevalent view since his time is that law is a product of
evolution and should continually evolve in accord with social
policy. But this, of course, keeps taking America further and
further from the U.S. Constitution.
Vladimir (Nikolai) Lenin (1870-1924) and Josef Stalin
(1879-1953). Lenin was an ardent evolutionist who, in 1918,
violently overthrew the Russian government and founded the Soviet
Union.
According to Yaroslavsky, a close friend of his, at an early age,
while attending a Christian Orthodox school, Stalin began to read
Darwin and became an atheist (E. Yaroslavsky, Landmarks in the
Life of Stalin, 1940, pp. 8-9). Stalin was head of the Soviet
Union from 1924 to 1953. During those years, he was responsible
for the death of millions of Russians who refused to yield to his
slave-state tactics. The Soviet Union under Stalin was an
outstanding example of Darwinist principles extended to an entire
nation.
Austin H. Clark (1880-1954), an ardent evolutionist, was on the
staff of the Smithsonian Institute from 1908 to 1950 and a member
of several important scientific organizations. A prominent
scientist, he authored several books and about 600 scientific
articles. But, after years of trying to disprove the fact that
there is no evidence of cross-species change, in 1930 he wrote an
astounding book, The New Evolution: Zoogenesis. In it, he cited
fact after fact, disproving the possibility that major types of
plants and animals could have evolved from one another. The book
was breathtaking and could not be answered by any evolutionist.
His alternate proposal, zoogenesis, was that every major type of
plant and animal must have evolved--not from one another--but
directly from dirt and water! (A.H. Clark, The New Evolution:
Zoogenesis, 1930, pp. 211, 100, 189, 196, 114). The evolutionary
world was stunned into silence, for he was an expert who knew all
the reasons why trans-species evolution was impossible.
Richard Goldschmidt (1878-1958). The same year that Clark wrote
his book (1930), Goldschmidt gave up also. An earnest
evolutionist, he had dedicated his life to proving it by applying
X-rays and chemicals to fruit flies at the University of
California, Berkeley, and producing large numbers of mutations in
them. After 25 exhausting years, in which he had worked with more
generations of fruit flies than humans and their ape ancestors
are conjectured to have lived on our planet, Goldschmidt decided
that he must figure out a different way that cross-species
evolution could occur. For the next ten years, as he continued
his fruit fly research, he gathered more evidence of the
foolishness of evolutionary theory;--and, in 1940, he wrote his
book, The Material Basis of Evolution, in which he exploded point
after point in the ammunition box of the theory. He literally
tore it to pieces (Norman Macbeth, Darwin Retried, 1974, p. 152).
No evolutionist could answer him. Like them, he was a confirmed
evolutionary atheist, but he was honestly facing the facts. After
soundly destroying their theory, he announced his new concept: a
megaevolution in which one life-form suddenly emerged completely
out of a different one! He called them "hopeful monsters." One
day a fish laid some eggs, and some of them turned into a frog, a
snake laid an egg, and a bird hatched from it! Goldschmidt asked
for even bigger miracles than A.H. Clark had proposed! (Steven M.
Stanley, Macroevolution: Pattern and Process, 1979, p. 159).
American Humanist Association (1933). Humanism is a modern form
of atheism. As soon as it was formed in 1933, the AHA began
working closely with science federations, to promote evolutionary
theory, and with the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), to
provoke legal action in the courts forcing Americans to accept
their evolutionary beliefs. Signatories included Julian Huxley (T.H.
Huxley’s grandson), John Dewey, Margaret Sanger, H.J. Muller,
Benjamin Spock, Erich Froom, and Carl Rogers (American Humanist
Association, promotional literature).
Trofim Lysenko (1893-1976) rose to power in the 1930s in the USSR
by convincing the government that he could create a State Science
that combined Darwinian evolution theory in science, animal
husbandry, and agriculture with Marxist theory. With Stalin’s
hearty backing, Lysenko became responsible for the death of
thousands, including many of Russia’s best scientists. Lysenko
banned Mendelian genetics as a bourgeois heresy. He was ousted in
1965 when his theories produced agricultural disaster for the
nation. (He claimed to be able to change winter wheat into spring
wheat, through temperature change, and wheat into rye in one
generation.)
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was chancellor of Nazi Germany from 1933
to 1945. He carefully studied the writings of Darwin and
Nietzsche. Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, was based on evolutionary
theory (Sir Arthur Keith, Evolution and Ethics, 1947, p. 28). The
very title of the book (My Struggle [to survive and overcome])
was copied from a Darwinian expression. Hitler believed he was
fulfilling evolutionary objectives by eliminating "undesirable
individuals and inferior races" in order to produce Germany’s
"Master Race" (Larry Azar, Twentieth Century in Crisis, 1990, p.
180). (Notice that the "master race" people always select the
race they are in as the best one.)
Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), the Italian Fascist dictator, was
also captivated by Darwin and Nietzsche; and Neitzsche said he
got his ideas from Darwin (R.E.D. Clark, Darwin: Before and
After, 1948, p. 115). Mussolini believed that violence is basic
to social transformation (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1962, Vol. 16,
p. 27).
Coelacanth Discovered (1938). It was once an "index fossil," used
to date a sedimentary strata. Evolutionists declared it as having
been dead for 70 million years. If their strata theory was
correct, no living specimens could occur, since no coelacanth
fossils had been found in the millions of years of higher strata.
But then, on December 25, 1938, a trawler fishing off South
Africa brought up one that was 5 feet in length. More were found
later. Many other discoveries helped disprove the evolutionists’
fossil/strata theories. Even living creatures like the trilobite
have been found! ("Living Fossil Resembles Long-extinct
Trilobite," Science Digest, December 1957).
Hiroshima (1945), is an evolutionist’s paradise; for it is filled
with people heavily irradiated, which--according to evolutionary
mutation theory--should be able to produce children which are
new, different, and a more exalted species. But this has not
happened. Only injury and death resulted from the August 6, 1945,
nuclear explosion. Mutations are always harmful and frequently
lethal within a generation or two (Animal Species and Evolution,
p. 170, H.J. Muller, Time, November 11, 1946, p. 38).
First Mechanism Changeover (1940s). Darwin originally wrote that
random activity naturally selects itself into improvements (a
concept which any sensible person will say is totally
impossible). In a later book (Descent of Man, 1871), Darwin
abandoned "natural selection" as hopeless, and returned to
Lamarckism (the scientifically discredited inheritance of
acquired characteristics; if you build strong muscles, your son
will inherit them). But evolutionists remained faithful to
Darwin’s original mechanism (natural selection) for decades. They
were called "Darwinists." But, by the 1940s, many were switching
over to mutations as the mechanism of cross-species change. Its
advocates were called "neo-Darwinists." The second changeover
would come in the 1980s.
Radiocarbon dating (1946). Willard Libby and his associates
discovered carbon-14 (C-14) as a method for the dating of earlier
organic materials. But later research revealed that its
inaccuracy increases in accordance with the actual age of the
material (C.A. Reed, "Animal Domestication in the Prehistoric
Near East," in Science, 130, 1959, p. 1630; University of
California at Los Angeles, "On the Accuracy of Radiocarbon
Dates," in Geochronicle, 2, 1966 [Libby’s own laboratory]).
Big Bang Hypothesis (1948) Astronomers were totally buffaloed as
to where matter and stars came from. In desperation, George Gamow
and two associates dreamed up the astonishing concept that an
explosion of nothing produced hydrogen and helium, which then
shot outward, then turned and began circling and pushing itself
into our present highly organized stars and galactic systems.
This far-fetched theory has repeatedly been opposed by a number
of scientists (G. Burbidge, "Was There Really a Big Bang?" in
Nature 233, 1971, pp. 36, 39). By the 1980s, astronomers which
continued opposing the theory began to be relieved of their
research time at major observatories ("Companion Galaxies Match
Quasar Redshifts: The Debate Goes On," Physics Today, 37:17,
December 1984). In spite of clear evidence that the theory is
unscientific and unworkable, evolutionists refuse to abandon it
Steady State Universe Theory (1948). In 1948, Fred Hoyle, working
with Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold, proposed this theory as an
alternative to the Big Bang. It declared that matter is
continually "blipping" into existence throughout the universe
(Peter Pocock and Pat Daniels, Galaxies, p. 114; Fred Hoyle,
Frontiers of Astronomy, 1955, pp. 317-318). We will learn that in
1965, the theory was abandoned. Hoyle said it disagreed with
several scientific facts.
History of Evolution Part Three