The Fossil Record Reveals an Important Fact:
Evolution Never Happened
These words from Stephen Jay Gould’s Book of Life provide an important summary regarding the present glorious variety of life on Earth:
Animal life today is phenomenally diverse, more so than any other of life’s six kingdoms. Over the past three centuries, scientists have described an estimated 1.5 million species of living animals, but so many more species have not yet been studied—particularly small ones in the tropics—that true totals of 5 or even 50 million have been guessed at. Most of these species (mostly arthropods and parasites, 75 percent of all species) live on the land. Far fewer species live in the oceans (about 295,000 have been recognized). Yet it is the ocean that contains more of the main divisions of the animal kingdom, the phyla—almost every one of them . . .153
With the theory they propose, evolutionists must explain this extraordinary variety and what happened before it. They must show how a one-celled bacterium could eventually develop into a whale as well as give rise to millions of other animal species. Evolutionists must produce an evolutionary scenario for each one of these species, and prove it by pointing to signs in the fossil record that this process actually took place.
But in the fossil record, there is no trace of such a process. Not a single fossil shows the change from any one of the millions of different species to another. According to evolutionists, a bacterium must have turned into a whale through stages, and that fictitious gradual process must have lasted billions of years. Yet there’s not a single intermediate form to show that such a change took place over that long time frame. Although even bacteria have left traces of themselves in rocks, and although there are countless fossil fish perfectly preserved in rock strata, there is no trace of any intermediate- stage “pre-fish” creatures.
Douglas Futuyma : (on the left)
If they did appear in a fully developed state, they must indeed have been created by some omnipotent intelligence.
If they did appear in a fully developed state, they must indeed have been created by some omnipotent intelligence.
Jeffrey S. Levinton: (on the right) Therefore, something special and very mysterious—some highly creative “force”—existed...
That is because evolution never happened. Living things did not develop through evolution and did not give rise to other species by changing into one another. The evolution stories that evolutionists have been spinning for the last 150 years are just imaginary. Not a single claim of the theory of evolution has ever been proved scientifically. The theory of evolution has been unable to come up with a single piece of evidence from the fossil record, which should be its most important foundation and witness.
Not a single mechanism has ever been observed to bring evolution about. No branch of science supports the theory of evolution in any way whatsoever, but rather, they all produce evidence that totally refutes it.
In essence, living things did not evolve.
Cambrian life forms, which leave evolutionists in a state of shock, are a striking proof of all this. This era from 530 million years ago, in which some 50 phyla containing all the basic structures of the animal world were alive, has radically undermined the theory of evolution. Evolutionists are still trying to recover from this surprise and to gloss over this extraordinary phenomenon. Yet the Cambrian explosion remains a fact, in the face of which evolution has melted away.
Duane Gish, a well-known biochemist and at the same time, an adherent of the fact of creation, expresses this important truth:
These anti-creationists have enshrouded this profound discontinuity in the history of life in an enormous fog of silence. They not only make no attempt to offer “just-so stories” how this may have occurred, they completely ignore it. It is too embarrassing to evolutionary theory even to discuss in their anti-creation polemics.154
The evolutionist biologist Douglas Futuyma sets out this clearly:
Organisms either appeared on the earth fully developed, or they did not. If they did not, they must have developed from pre-existing species by some process of modification. If they did appear in a fully developed state, they must indeed have been created by some omnipotent intelligence.155
As Futuyma puts it, the Cambrian explosion shows that living things on Earth emerged “fully developed.” Jeffrey S. Levinton, a New York State University professor of ecology and evolution, accepts this in “The Big Bang of Animal Evolution,” an article he wrote for Scientific American: “Therefore, something special and very mysterious—some highly creative ‘force’—existed...”156
It is now pointless for evolutionists to debate evolution and seek to provide evidence for it, because in the presence of Cambrian life forms, it is meaningless to tell tales about how evolution has perfect mechanisms and set out exaggerated scenarios of the fictitious transition from water to land and from land to the air. Paleontologists have proof dating back 530 million years, an astonishing phenomenon that needs to be accounted for. Yet evolution is unable to explain how this perfection came into being.
What this shows is that 530 million years ago, a miracle of creation took place, as many other times since the Earth was first created. Countless individual members of thousands of different species comprising 50 very different phyla were created out of nothing, together with their such unique characteristics as eyes, nervous systems, gills, appendages for hunting, limbs for locomotion and magnificent shells.
All amazing forms of life, including those which appeared in the Cambrian, are the work of Omniscient and Almighty Allah. Whether or not evolutionists choose to accept this, this truth is right before their eyes, and falsehood is doomed to disappear in the face of it.
We did not create heaven and Earth and everything in between them as a game. If We had desired to have some amusement, We would have derived it from Our Presence, but We did not do that. Rather We hurl the truth against falsehood and it cuts right through it and it vanishes clean away! Woe without end for you for what you portray! Everyone in the heavens and the Earth belongs to Him. Those in His presence do not consider themselves too great to worship Him and do not grow tired of it. (Surat al-Anbiya’, 16-19)
Darwin’s Tree of Life Has Been Chopped Down
Darwin’s False Tree of Life
According to Darwin, life must have originated from a single ancestor, and species must have formed through small, gradual changes. The concept of the tree of life, in which a single phylum broadens and develops, was based on this thesis. However, Darwin’s tree of life was a deception. Fifty different phyla, including those in existence today, have revealed themselves right from the start in the Cambrian fossil record. Darwin’s tree of life has thus been chopped down!
Darwinism maintains that life emerged from a single common ancestor and branched out by way of small changes. That being so, life must first have appeared in simple forms, all very similar. According to this same claim, the way that organisms grew different from one another, increasing in complexity, must have taken place over long periods of time. Therefore, according to Darwinism, life must have grown like a tree, starting from a single root and then spreading into various branches.
Indeed, this hypothesis is stressed in Darwinist sources, where the term “tree of life” is frequently employed. According to this metaphor, there must have been just one phylum initially, because the first imaginary cell also constituted the first basic body plan of life, or phylum. This hypothetical first species must later—and over an infinitely long period of time—have branched out into others.
The farther the new forms departed from their illusory evolutionary ancestors, the greater the differences in their appearances must have been. There must also have been a gradual increase in the number of phyla comprising these species.
Darwin depicted this imaginary tree of life in his The Origin of Species. He claimed that species (A) in the diagram branched out, like a tree, over a long period he divided into 14 time frames, and that differences between varieties would increase over the course of time. As an amateur biologist, Charles Darwin expressed his flights of fantasy on this subject: “I see no reason to limit the process of modification, as now explained, to the formation of genera alone... These two groups of genera will thus form two distinct families, or orders.”.157
Darwin’s unrealistic expectation imposes certain conditions: According to him, first of all species must have diverged, followed by the emergence of higher taxa and eventually, phyla. Therefore, the number of phyla should increase with time. Therefore, taxa should follow a “bottom-up” course in their appearance in the fossil record. If we think of the tree of life as a cone, then the course of biological variation over time should be one of “increasing diversity.” Therefore, the cone of diversity should assume a V shape. However, the fossil record shows that these expectations of Darwinism are fundamentally incorrect:
Refutation of Darwin No. 1: Taxa follow a top-down course in the fossil record, not a bottom-up one. And phyla emerged first!
The fact revealed by the fossil record is that first phyla came into being, followed by the emergence of lower taxa such as species.
The conclusions drawn by the researchers Douglas H. Erwin, James W. Valentine and J. J. Sepkowski from their comparison of the variation in life confirm this:
The fossil record suggests that the major pulse of diversification of phyla occurs before that of classes, classes before that of orders, orders before that of families. . . the higher taxa do not seem to have diverged through an accumulation of lower taxa.158
By claiming that lower taxa, such as classes and families, would diverge and vary over time and that species varied from a single phylum would in turn give rise to other phyla, Darwin assumed a “bottom-up” development.
Yet the Cambrian explosion reveals the exact opposite, as described by the science writer Roger Lewin:
Several possible patterns exist for the establishment of higher taxa, the two most obvious of which are the bottom-up and the top-down approaches. In the first, evolutionary novelties emerge, bit by bit... The Cambrian explosion appears to conform to the second pattern, the top-down effect.159
The course of appearance of taxa in the fossil record is top-down. Moreover, the number of phyla, which should increase by stages over long periods of time, actually reduces. Fifty different phyla appeared in the Cambrian, but today there are only around 35. (See “The Fossils Are Examined” section earlier in this book.) Darwin’s assumptions have been literally overturned in the face of the fossil record, and paleontology has definitely and clearly invalidated his theory.
Refutation of Darwinism No. 2: The cone of diversity is the exact opposite of what Darwin claimed.
While branching the tree of life, Darwin hypothesized that life would diversify in the form of a cone of increasing diversity. Yet life does not increasingly expand and diversify; on the contrary, it began with great variety and then narrowed.
Philip Johnson, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, describes the contradiction between Darwinism and this fact revealed by paleontology:
Darwinian theory predicts a “cone of increasing diversity,” as the first living organism, or first animal species, gradually and continually diversified to create the higher levels of taxonomic order. The animal fossil record more resembles such a cone turned upside down, with the phyla present at the start and thereafter decreasing.160
Darwin has thus been refuted. The variety assumed by Darwin to be a cone shaped “V” is now in the form of a line “_”.
The fact that Darwin’s famous tree of life is actually a falsehood is a major disappointment for the theory itself and for its proponents. In his book Icons of Evolution, the American biologist Jonathan Wells describes this fact:
Since higher levels of the biological hierarchy appear first, one could even say that the Cambrian explosion stands Darwin’s tree of life on its head. If any botanical analogy were appropriate, it would be a lawn rather than a tree. Nevertheless, evolutionary biologists have been reluctant to abandon Darwin’s theory. Many of them discount the Cambrian fossil evidence instead.161
Life appeared suddenly, and with a great variety, with the Cambrian explosion. Clearly there was no process of evolution, beginning with a single bacterium and extending eventually as far as human beings, of the sort Darwinists still believe in. Darwin’s tree of life has been chopped down in a single moment.
According to Darwin Himself, the Cambrian Explosion
Deals His Theory a Deadly Blow
The fossil record had caused Darwin more grief than joy. Nothing distressed him more than the Cambrian explosion, the coincident appearance of almost all complex organic designs....162
In Darwin’s time, the Cambrian explosion was a newly discovered fact. For a biologist who claimed that organisms emerged by chance in slow stages, this phenomenon was unexpected and surprising. Darwin admitted this severe difficulty in his book The Origin of Species:
There is another and allied difficulty, which is much more serious. I allude to the manner in which species belonging to several of the main divisions of the animal kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks.163
Elsewhere, Darwin openly admitted that he was unable to come up with an explanation appropriate to his theory:
To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer.164
Under normal circumstances, one would expect such a great fact to consign the theory of evolution to the shelf and to silence its supporters. Yet that is not what happened. Darwin hoped that in the future, an explanation would be provided for this extraordinary variety of life that emerged in the Cambrian. Yet he did recognize that if no explanation were forthcoming—in other words, if the fossil record failed to produce the expected intermediate forms—this would be a lethal blow for his theory:
The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations, has been urged by several paleontologists—for instance, by Agassiz, Pictet, and Sedgwick—as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of species. If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of evolution through natural selection [emphasis added].165
This admission of Darwin’s expresses in his own words the persistent flaw in the theory of evolution. No examples of the intermediate forms have turned up that Darwin expected would be found in the future. It is increasingly obvious that the countless numbers of species began life immediately, with no foregoing process of evolution. The fact that 50 separate phyla existed all together in an era when there should have been only single-celled organisms, is sufficient to constitute that coup de grâce..
The Idea of Ascent from the Simple to the Complex is a Deception
According to the Darwinist hypothesis, such complex structures as a dolphin’s sonar, a chameleon’s precisely aimed tongue, a bird’s wings or the grasping tentacles of an octopus must have developed in stages from more rudimentary systems. The theory was based, at the very start of the fictitious process of evolution, on an imaginary single cell with none of these complex systems. Therefore, according to Darwinism, the alleged evolution of life forms should be an increasing scale of complexity throughout the course of natural history.
Darwin’s theory claimed that all the complexity in present-day forms of life emerged as the result of an imaginary evolutionary process that allegedly has continued over millions of years. Complex structures such as a dolphin’s sonar system, a chameleon’s tongue, the wing of a hummingbird or an octopus’s tentacles must—according to this hypothesis—have developed gradually from inferior, rudimentary systems.
Darwin’s hypothesis placed an imaginary first cell, with none of these complex systems, at the start of the fictitious evolutionary process. Therefore, according to Darwinism, the supposed natural evolution of life forms must have followed a developmental course from the simple to the complex. But the Cambrian explosion irrefutably demolished that claim.
Darwin’s hypothesis placed an imaginary first cell, with none of these complex systems, at the start of the fictitious evolutionary process. Therefore, according to Darwinism, the supposed natural evolution of life forms must have followed a developmental course from the simple to the complex. But the Cambrian explosion irrefutably demolished that claim.
First of all, the living things that appeared in the Cambrian already had very complex structures. University of London biochemist D. B. Gower states this fact in clear terms:
In the oldest rocks we did not find a series of fossils covering the gradual changes from the most primitive creatures to developed forms, but rather in the oldest rocks developed species suddenly appeared.166
Second, both the fossil record and the species that lived in the period after the Cambrian suggest the exact opposite of Darwin’s gradual-development model. They indicate no gradualism. George Gaylord Simpson, one of the 20th century’s foremost paleontologists, expresses this:
It is a feature of the known fossil record that most taxa appear abruptly. They are not, as a rule, led up to by a sequence of almost imperceptibly changing forerunners such as Darwin believed should be usual in evolution.167
Third, despite all the searching by evolutionists, there is not the slightest evidence that any biological complexity ever emerged by way of evolution. Ernst Mayr, a Harvard University biologist and one of the 20th century’s most influential proponents of Darwinism, admitted evolutionists’ despair on this point:
[Research reveals that there is] no clear evidence … for the gradual origin of an evolutionary novelty.168
Kevin Kelly, a researcher into complexity, makes a similar confession:
No one has yet witnessed, in the fossil record, in real life, or in computer life, the exact transitional moments when natural selection pumps its complexity up to the next level.169
Life began with already complex creatures. There is no evidence that complexity increased through evolution. Therefore, the idea of an increasing scale of complexity throughout natural history was a deception, since the true course that complexity followed was totally at odds with the Darwinist scenario.
A pamphlet of the American Geological Institute, an authority on fossil strata, makes this admission:
The old Darwinian view of evolution as a ladder of more and more efficient forms leading up to the present is not borne out by the evidence.170
Scientists seeking to gather evidence that complexity could have developed out of simpler structures encountered the exact opposite. The vertebrate jaw, for example, is a complex structure whose every component functions in a very sensitive manner. According to Darwinism, this complex structure must have been simpler in fish, at the lower branches of the imaginary tree of life, and then have evolved further in later vertebrates. Yet the facts reveal the very opposite; the jaw is more highly developed in fish, in the supposedly lower section of the vertebrate tree of life. John G. Maisey from the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History expresses this fact:
As we move back down our evolutionary ladder, jaw structure becomes more instead of less complex, and in fishes the jaws are very elaborate indeed.171
Another important example in this regard is the eye of the extinct trilobite. The complexity of this organ in one of the most ancient animals was not passed on to any subsequent arthropod. The counterexamples are not confined to trilobites. No life form possesses any fossil record of such a kind as to confirm the kind of development hypothesized by Darwinism. Stephen Jay Gould writes:
The eyes of early trilobites, for example, have never been exceeded for complexity or acuity by later arthropods . . . I regard the failure to find a clear “vector of progress” in life’s history as the most puzzling fact of the fossil record.172
The fossil record has always reminded paleontologists just how much Darwin’s theory is at odds with the scientific facts. As Ernst Mayr admits:
Paleontologists had long been aware of a seeming contradiction between Darwin’s postulate of gradualism . . . and the actual findings of paleontology.173
As you can see from these statements, the natural history of life forms cannot be explained in terms of Darwinism. The complexity displayed in the Cambrian explosion was already at an exceedingly high level. In later periods, species did not progress from the simple to the complex, but remained exactly as they were when first created by Almighty Allah.
The Imaginary Mechanisms of Evolution Are Bankrupt
When Darwin proposed genetic variation and natural selection as the mechanisms of the imaginary process of evolution, he assumed that life was based on very simple foundations. He was unable to even imagine the complexity inside the cell, given the primitive scientific climate of his day. In the second half of the 20th century, however, advances in the field of molecular biology illuminated the cell’s complex structure, and it emerged that the cell contained features that could not be imitated even using the most advanced technologies. Life, even at the most basic level, refuted claims based on chance.
This totally eliminated the claim of evolution by way of natural selection. Professor of biochemistry Garret Vanderkooi describes this process:
In the past, evolutionists were confident that the problem of the origin of life would be solved by the new science of biochemistry. To their dismay, the converse has occurred. The more that is learned about the chemical structure and organization of living matter, the more difficult it becomes even to speculate on how it could have developed from lower forms by natural processes. From the scientific point of view, evolution may have been a plausible hypothesis in Darwin’s day, but it has now become untenable, as a result of fairly recent developments in molecular biology[emphasis added].174
Developments in molecular biology on the one hand and advances in the understanding of the Cambrian explosion on the other led to a fundamental realization that the combination of natural selection and mutation could not cause supposed evolution. Long before the 1980s, when the facts regarding the Cambrian explosion began to emerge, molecular biology had already revealed that mutation and natural selection had no evolutionary impact.
Darwinists claimed that mutations were the mechanism for genetic variation in the living world, before it emerged that their effect on an organism were always destructive.
To recapitulate briefly, mutations are random changes in the base sequences of genes. An organism’s body is constructed according to its DNA’s genetic blueprint. This blueprint, in turn, is encoded through nucleotides arranged in the DNA, which contains sufficient information to fill volumes of encyclopedias.
In the same way that Burgess Shale life forms had very different bodily structures from one another, they also had very different life styles. No evolutionary mechanism can give rise to even a single cell in any one of these organisms. In the face of the Cambrian life forms, Darwinism is bankrupt.
Each protein structure is based upon a very particular nucleotide sequence, and every cell contains tens of thousands of proteins. Mutations consisting of random changes have no ability to bring about such large amounts of information.
Pierre Paul Grassé, former president of the French Academy of Sciences, compared mutations to spelling mistakes in the copying of a written text, which comment is particularly illuminating. Spelling mistakes cannot represent information, only damage information that already exists. As Grassé explains:
Mutations, in time, occur incoherently. They are not complementary to one another, nor are they cumulative in successive generations toward a given direction. They modify what preexists, but they do so in disorder, no matter how. . . . As soon as some disorder, even slight, appears in an organized being, sickness, then death follow. There is no possible compromise between the phenomenon of life and anarchy. 175
For that reason, “No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution,” to quote from another statement by Grassé.176
Even in 1977, when Grassé published this statement, it was perfectly well known that natural selection was not a mechanism that caused organisms to evolve. In 1982, Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at London’s Natural History Museum, said:
No one has ever produced a species by the mechanisms of natural selection. No one has ever got near it, and most of the current argument in neo-Darwinism is about this question. 177
In the 1980s, in short, although Darwinism’s mechanisms of natural selection and random mutation served no purpose and were of no use, they were on display for want of a better alternative, like junk in an antique shop.
The emergence of the facts regarding Burgess Shale and the later discovery of new Cambrian beds created a wave of information contradicting Darwinism. Darwinists, already reeling from the findings of molecular biology, were now under fire from paleontology. Cambrian animals had emerged with already highly complex structures. All the phyla existing today appeared at that period. Their numbers had decreased up to the present, rather than increasing. Phyla had diversified before species did.
All these facts about the Cambrian explosion definitively revealed the invalidity of Darwinist interpretations of natural history. In the 1990s, another fact about the Cambrian struck Darwinism from yet another direction, striking its mechanisms. This was the “great complexity in little time” paradox, confirmed by the use of zircon dating. All the phyla in the animal world emerged within a mere 5 million years. Indeed, James Valentine estimated that the phylum Brachiopoda appeared in much less than 5 million years, probably in less than 1 million years.178He even spoke of a time span of just hundreds of thousands of years in some cases.179
The pre-Cambrian had single-celled organisms and Ediacaran life forms with no complex organs. These constituted three phyla. To these were added more than 45 more, in the 5 million years between 530 and 525 million years ago. In that interval were added organs and structures such as eyes, antennae, limbs and guts, with no previous examples pre-dating them, as well as immune systems, nervous systems, physiological and developmental systems. In addition, this happened not locally but on a world-wide ecological basis.
Since Darwin was aware of the damaging effect of wide-ranging random changes on complex systems, he allowed for only very small changes and fantasized that this evolutionary process could produce new species only over long periods of time, in a large portion of the history of the Earth. The establishment of all the phyla in the animal world in as brief a time as roughly one thousandth of the history of the Earth was not something that the slow workings of natural selection and mutation could explain.
Darwinists were perfectly aware that mutations had yet to produce a single new protein and always had damaging effects on genetic information. Discoveries regarding the complexity in life made it increasingly difficult to defend the mutation scenario. In addition, the Cambrian explosion added the problem of time, and reducing its duration to 5 million years narrowed the window still further. It was already realized that the mechanism of natural selection could not bring about evolution. Now, the Cambrian’s increase in genetic information through mutations alone emerged as a mathematical impossibility. In other words, the scenario of evolution through its illusory mechanisms consisted of a deception.180
Today, no evolutionist claims to explain the Cambrian explosion in terms of the Darwinian combination of natural selection and mutation. On the contrary, evolutionist experts openly state that the mechanisms of Darwinism are invalid in light of the Cambrian explosion. Darwinists who still hope for assistance from these mechanisms are in dire straits, and all their endeavors consist of stumbling around in the dark. As Almighty Allah states in Surat al-An‘am:
Those who deny Our signs are deaf and dumb in utter darkness. Allah misguides whoever He wills, and puts whoever He wills on a straight path. (Surat al-An‘am, 39)
Evolution is a Deception, As the Cambrian Explosion Makes Clear
A person may choose any group of animals or plants, large or small, or pick one at random. He may then go to a library and with some patience he will be able to find a qualified author who says that the evolutionary origin of that form is not known.181
The theory of evolution depends entirely on an ideological belief that was put forward as an objection to the fact of creation. No matter how much it was disseminated all over the world as a speculation, gradually it has been realized that the theory is not based on facts or supported by any scientific evidence. For that reason, Darwinists resort to fraudulent methods in order to keep the theory alive and deceive people into thinking that it’s true. Recent history is full of examples of fake fossils being assembled for display; of feathers being added to dinosaur fossils; of reconstructions of imaginary intermediate forms being produced on the basis of sometimes, only a single tooth; of fake “evolutionary” equine sequences being invented and fake embryo drawings prepared. However, the extraordinary life that appeared with the Cambrian explosion is so major a phenomenon that it eliminates all forms of speculation and fraud. The evidence is so clear, so complete, and so copious that evolutionists have been unable to cover it up or explain the gaps in the fossil record.
The evolutionists James Valentine and Douglas Erwin attempted to account for the Cambrian explosion for many years, and for that reason, they proposed the unsuccessful Hox gene theory. Now, they openly admit:
The sections of Cambrian rocks that we do have (and we have many) are essentially as complete as sections of equivalent time duration from similar depositional environments. . . explosion is real; it is too big to be masked by flaws in the fossil record.182
In fact, evolutionists are aware that life forms did not evolve. That is why they must come up with false and deceptive proofs, in order to keep an incorrect theory alive. But they do this in a highly comprehensive manner, covering up the significance of every new discovery that refutes evolution by using false evidence. However, in the face of such extraordinary facts as the Cambrian explosion, they are helpless and unable to come up with even unrealistic claims.
Cambrian Facts Yet Again Reveal the Darwinists’ Dogmatism
An article in Scientific American, known for its devotion to Darwinism, has described the Cambrian explosion as “Evolutionary biology’s deepest paradox.”183The Cambrian explosion has totally overturned the basic assumptions—development from the simple to the complex, the transitional form claim, the claim that species diversified first, the assumptions regarding mechanisms—on which the evolutionist perspective is based. However, Darwinists have adopted their theories as a dogma, as laws of nature. Because of their stubborn beliefs, they have grown accustomed to questioning the evidence wherever it conflicts with the theory, rather than the theory itself.
The theory of evolution that they have so blindly adopted has so dominated their world views that they find it almost impossible to feel the slightest doubt about the idea. The only doubt they experience concerning Darwinism concerns those who doubt the theory itself!
Marjorie Grene, a historian of science, describes this closed mindset:
It is as a religion of science that Darwinism chiefly held, and holds, men’s minds. . . The modified, but still characteristically Darwinian theory has itself become an orthodoxy preached by its adherents with religious fervor, and doubted, they feel, only by a few meddlers imperfect in scientific faith.184
Darwinists maintain this mindset and never question their blind beliefs when dealing with a phenomenon such as the Cambrian explosion that loudly contradicts evolution in all respects. The Cambrian fossils are scientific fact. Therefore, any mindset that rejects their implications is dogmatic and totally illogical. This mindset inevitably compels Darwinists to engage in unscientific behavior.
The most telling example of this is certainly Walcott’s covering up of the evidence. Academically, Walcott was a knowledgeable and talented scientist who worked for the United States Geological Survey for 27 years, serving as its director for 12 of them. Later, he became the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and held this post for 20 years, and rose to the position of president of the US National Academy of Sciences. His career made him one of the most important figures in American scientific history.
But despite his knowledge and experience, his blindness in the face of the Burgess Shale fossils was seldom to be equaled. Many Burgess Shale life forms told science of the existence of brand new phyla. It was clear to him that these needed to be considered and added alongside other known phyla. Yet Walcott completely ignored the Cambrian explosion, described by paleontologists as “the most remarkable and puzzling event in the history of life.”185Instead of naming these new phyla, he tried to fit the fossils into already existing phyla—a most superficial and contrived approach. The world of paleontology realized how rottenly distorted Walcott’s analyses were thanks to Stephen Jay Gould’s award-winning book Wonderful Life (1989), and studies by Morris et al.
Gould examined Walcott’s notes and photographs and subjected them to fierce criticism in his book. He wrote that Walcott had ignored the extraordinary nature of the Burgess Shale fossils because of his Darwinist preconceptions. Because of his devotion to Darwin’s scenario, Walcott had described a story of his own invention, rather than the facts before him.
In fact, Walcott was only the first of scientists in denial. In the face of the Cambrian explosion, present-day evolutionists have also adopted a far from scientific approach. This dogmatism displayed by Darwinists did not change even in the face of the zircon dating that reduced the time span of the Cambrian explosion to a mere 5 million years.
Darwinists have failed to accept such powerful evidence, something which is an easy requirement of both science and logic. When it comes to their own world view, they immediately set to one side any scientific doubts.
Scientific progress is only possible by way of skepticism. If skepticism is the basis of science, then in the same way that Darwinists believe that chance can give rise to all things, so should they also admit the possibility that everything was created by Allah. Since science requires skepticism, they should allow a 50% possibility that species did not evolve, but were created. But they insistently deny that, assuming evolutionary origins for the Cambrian explosion right from the outset, because they reject the possibility of deliberate creation. And they insistently ignore the facts obtained about the Cambrian explosion as the result of a great deal of research and hard work. Although science gives them the answer, they prefer to ignore it. What a blindly held belief Darwinism is!
Cambrian Life Forms: Marvels of Creation
What you have seen this far regarding the Cambrian clearly reveals that new species came into existence suddenly and flawlessly in their final forms, some 530 million years ago, with no forerunners behind them, without evolving from one another. As the Swedish scientist Jan Bergstrom stated, the Cambrian explosion was "a revolution perhaps more than evolution."186
The Cambrian evidence reveals that a miracle of creation took place on Earth 530 million years ago. Countless individuals belonging to different species comprising 50 distinct phyla were brought into being, together with hundreds of features such as eyes, nervous systems, gills, appendages for hunting, limbs for locomotion, and magnificent exoskeletons. The structures of these life forms are all marvels of creation, matchless works of art whose extraordinary details originated millions of years ago in the past.
These works belong to Almighty Allah, Lord of the worlds and Creator of all things. It is sufficient for Him to issue the command “Be!” at a time of His choosing. That is the fact that evolutionists have misunderstood and failed to comprehend for so many years. And as long as they fail to realize it, their search for non-existent intermediate forms will continue. They will continue to try to deceive people with their frauds, and they will spend their entire lives chasing an empty hope.
The Originator of the heavens and Earth. When He decides on something, He just says to it, “Be!” and it is. (Surat al-Baqara, 117)
That all living things on Earth appeared suddenly and in a perfect form 530 million years ago is a miracle of Allah. The Cambrian explosion is such a great, astonishing and extraordinary phenomenon that no matter how much evolutionists seek to come up with their own explanation, even if they spend hundreds of years on research, so long as they refuse to see the fact of creation exhibited, they will never obtain any results.
The Swedish evolutionist scientist Stefan Bengtson set out the despairing position of evolutionists in the face of this great phenomenon exhibited millions of years ago:
If any event in life’s history resembles man’s creation myths, it is the sudden diversification of marine life when multicellular organisms took over as the dominant actors . . . . Baffling (and embarrassing) to Darwin, this event still dazzles us and stands as a major biological revolution on a par with the invention of self-replication and the origin of the eukaryotic cell. The animal phyla emerged out of the Precambrian mists with most of the attributes of their modern descendants.187
The Cambrian explosion was described as the “major mystery of the history of life” by the Harvard University evolutionist paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson"188. But it’s actually just one example of the greatness, might and matchless creative artistry of Allah. It is He Who creates, knows and controls at every moment the universe; the galaxies and their extraordinary balances; life on Earth; all the different forms of life, both familiar and unknown to us; the destiny of mankind and of everyone who has ever lived; every single enzyme that functions in the cell possessed by each one of them; a single leaf falling from just one of the billions of trees on Earth; a single micro-organism on that leaf; and the organelles of these micro-organisms that make photosynthesis possible.
No doubt it is a very easy matter for Almighty Allah, Who constantly brings these into being and Who knows all secrets, the most hidden things, to create countless varieties of life forms whenever He wills.
The Cambrian explosion is described as “the major mystery” because it occurred when evolutionists least expected it, in an entirely unexpected manner. Yet in fact, the existence of the matchless, flawless, extraordinarily complex and amazing life that currently exists on Earth is the greatest of all mysteries for evolutionists. They seek to portray the Cambrian explosion as the greatest difficulty facing them, as if they were perfectly able to account for life’s present magnificent variety.
The Cambrian explosion is indeed a major problem and a great secret that evolutionists are unable to explain. But the real problem facing them grows every time they look at their own bodies, when they examine any living thing and obtain a new piece of information regarding the complexity in a single cell:
It is Allah Who created the heavens with no support—you can see them—and cast firmly embedded mountains on the Earth so that it would not move under you, and scattered about in it creatures of every kind. And We send down water from the sky and make every generous species grow in it. This is Allah’s creation. Show me then what those besides Him have created! The wrongdoers are clearly misguided. (Surah Luqman, 10-11)
