What are some flaws in the theory of evolution?

Whichever way you turn, evolution is met with insurmountable difficulties, and faced with facts, which are absolutely destructive of the theory. Transmutation is necessary for the theory, yet there is not one single bit of proof that such ever took place. If the theory is true, then transmutation must have occurred millions of times, and yet no fossil remains, no skeleton remains, nothing living on this earth bears evidence to it. It were impossible to have fossils and skeletons of the different species, and yet have none of the far more numerous intermediate forms demanded by evolutionists, which must according to their theory have needed millions of years and numberless generations for their evolution.

Then again, many of the developments demanded would be a hindrance rather than a help. For instance, take the wing of a bird as example. If the bird were created a bird with fully developed wings, one can understand the wings would be highly useful and necessary. But if the wing evolved from small beginnings, in all its intermediate stages it would be a hindrance and a danger rather than a help. And seeing natural selection is claimed to produce only that which is useful and necessary, natural selection would refuse an immature wing as a useless and dangerous appendage. The theory is self-destructive. Furthermore, the sterility of hybrids is another death blow to the theory.

142 As to change of species, I must say, though I cannot enter into it here, there is no ground for asserting it. Mummies and geology all give us the same continuous species, as has been fully shewn, and no passing from one to another. Facts fail the assertors of it; and facts only are of any worth here. And as to evolutionism, while within the same species there is clearly development from the sperm to the plant, from the ovum to the full-grown creature, species appear perfect in starting, though in the kind of creature there is, as a general rule, progress up to man himself. And, so far from the stronger driving out the weaker during the subsistence of a race, the stronger are those that disappear.

One of the strongest arguments of the evolutionist is that certain changes take place in the pre-natal history of the human embryo which answer to the supposed descent of man from the bit of protoplasm, via, fishes, reptiles, and mammals to man.

Robert Chambers in his well known book, “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation,” 1844, traces the brain of the human embryo as first similar in development to that of a fish’s, then of a reptile’s, then of a bird’s, then of a mammal’s, and finally it attains to the brain of a man. He traces the same with the human foetal heart. First, he says, it is like the heart of an insect, then divided into ventricle and auricle it becomes similar to that of a fish, then a sub-division of the auricle, making a triple-chambered form, it becomes like a reptile’s, and lastly the ventricle being sub-divided, taking on a quadruple-chambered form it becomes a full mammal heart.

Granted that this is so, it only shows how all creation physically is related. But changes which take place out of sight during a short nine months do not prove that evolution, demanding according to the scientists millions of years, is a true theory. The out-of-sight evidence should surely have evidence within sight to answer to and confirm it. In other words, if the theory as to pre-natal changes is to be effective, it must be accompanied by post-natal corroboration, and this is QUITE LACKING. The foetus of a fish always produces a fish; of a reptile, a reptile; of a mammal, a mammal; of man, a man. After all, the vast difference in the finished product, say the difference between a worm and a man, between an insect and an elephant, between a spider and an eagle, shows that there must be an essential difference in the embryo, even in its first stage.

122 Page 410. "Lamarck, when speculating on the origin of the long neck of the giraffe, imagined that quadruped to have stretched himself up in order to reach the boughs of lofty trees, until by continued efforts, and longing to reach higher, he obtained an elongated neck. Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace simply suppose that, in a season of scarcity, a long-necked variety, having the advantage in this respect over most of the herd, as being able to browse on foliage out of their reach, survived them, and transmitted its peculiarity of cervical conformation to its successors." How perfectly ridiculous all this is about giraffes! Who ever heard there were once short-necked giraffes? Or how came it that we have not long-necked gnus or antelopes from the same cause? All this is trash.

Page 411. "Every naturalist admits that there is a general tendency in animals and plants to vary; but it is usually taken for granted, though we have no means of proving the assumption to be true, that there are certain limits beyond which each species cannot pass under any circumstances, or in any number of generations. Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace say that the opposite hypothesis, which assumes that every species is capable of varying indefinitely from its original type, is not a whit more arbitrary, and has this manifest claim to be preferred, that it will account for a multitude of phenomena which the ordinary theory is incapable of explaining." When it is said "it is no more arbitrary" to suppose it may vary and make a new species, than to suppose it may not, the answer is in the paragraph which follows, "Should we find that a variable species can no longer be made to vary," it is ordinary human deduction to say it cannot. It has been tried under all known circumstances and it does not. To assume, "it might under more favourable circumstances, or if more time were allowed" is more arbitrary. All existing proof is that it does not - to assume it might is then more arbitrary than to believe it will not. But hybridisation is a strong proof against it, because out of the deduced species there is no propagation. God has made a manifested barrier, allowing sufficient to show it cannot go beyond its kind so as to form a species. When it is said "community of descent is the hidden bond" - naturalists looking for an unknown plan of creation - I do not know what wise men are seeking after, but every simple one believes in genealogical descent making species, and it is plainly stated in Genesis 1.

Further, though man ventures pretty far, and no man denies variety in species, big cows and little cows, and horned or unhorned, yet it seems to me that fixed laws and evolution are difficult to reconcile. It is all well to fancy that circumstances so act on an ape that he takes the human form, and say that this operation of fixed laws must have produced that consequence, habit begetting a second nature; but it is not science - phenomena and deduction from it.

Species are, and the fixed law is that they remain species, and always have; change into other species, arbitrarily, from circumstantial influences, is not a fixed law of nature. At first it is an accident, if it has a natural effect, i.e., the consequence of an antecedent, but this is individual, and goes no farther than will, and need; there is no change of race in it. All apes did not shorten their arms, and turn hands into feet together, and, if one did, we should have as many races as circumstances, i.e., there would be no fixed laws at all; but the truth is, the thing, as far as known phenomena go, is disproved really.

If evolution, as daily seen, takes place in four weeks where necessary conditions exist, or waits four years till they do, it is evident divine power could at once produce, I mean produce, so as to set the principle at work, in a moment. The foetus they tell us on its train goes through all classes of life from beginning to end in nine months; be it so. Why not in nine seconds - be formed so as to do so? But men producing fishes, or fishes producing men, have not been found. It is a mere hypothetical conclusion of what may have been, but this is not science. Science may arrive at a general principle of what is, and so find what will be on the principle which is known in existing facts. But permanent change of species has not been found; varieties from circumstances are common, union of kindred species forming none may be found, but "after its kind" in nature remains "after its kind."

We answer decidedly in the negative, if we think of evolution in the Darwinian meaning. Of course, there is the development of the flower from the bud, the butterfly from the caterpillar, the chick from the egg, the man from the infant, but there is no instance of one species evolving from another species, and on this vital point the doctrine of evolution utterly fails.

The third blow that Christianity has sustained, according to Principal Griffith-Jones, is from evolution as contradicting the account given of the creation of Adam in Genesis 1. Principal Griffith-Jones is right in calling evolution a theory, for it is a theory unscientific and unproved. It is not one missing link that is necessary to complete the proof of the theory, but millions, and they are ALL missing. There is no trace in nature of transmutation of species whatever, and the theory rests on that, an idea without a shadow of proof. Natural selection, another necessary part of the theory, utterly fails to furnish an iota of proof. Let man by his skill and arrangement produce superior varieties of pigeons, such as fantail, pouter, etc., then let the birds loose into the woods and in a few generations natural selection will have wiped out all the differences, and the descendants of these fantails and pouters will have got back to the common rock pigeon, the basic type.

Absurd as is the notion of transmigration or metempsychosis, we could more readily believe it than that of evolution, and think the doctrine of Pythagoras just about as reasonable as that of Darwin, both being in fact, and in effect, simply heathenish. All that believe the Bible know very well that there are such beings as angels, — that they were created long before man, and that as an order of creation (we speak not now of what redemption will accomplish in due time, and in this respect) they are superior to man. Yet the pre-existence of a superior class of creatures is antagonistic to the theory of transmutation. In all points, Divine revelation, human experience, and geological records are opposed to it. We readily acknowledge that Mr. Darwin in his work on the "Origin of Species" has brought together many highly interesting facts — facts of importance in truly scientific investigation; but there is an infinite gap between any conclusion or conclusions they really support and justify, and the monstrous conclusion it is simply assumed that they warrant. Interesting natural phenomena are here most artfully intermixed with ingenious but unfounded surmises, whilst not a thing which essentially makes for the Darwinian or Lamarckian theory is proved, nor is one which makes for the Bible account of creation disproved. Whether we go back to the period of Egyptian history, or much farther back to the glacial period, or to any geological period whatever, the necessary links in the chain of evidence are wholly wanting. That every germinal vesicle in nature has sprung from one primordial spore, — vesicles which, whatever may be their apparent resemblance, are each endowed with its own form of life, and each requiring a principle of life peculiar to itself, in order to fertilise it, — that vesicles thus specially distinct could have sprung from one primordial spore, and this from some inherent power of development, amounts to a moral contradiction, and is even more absurd than to say that all the chemical elements have originated from one pure and simple; for here, at least, it could be no question of opposed organic tendencies leading to separate and independent existence.

The fact that a species consists of individuals bearing a common resemblance and reproducing their like by generation, remains (allowance being made for a certain range in each case within which variation is possible, though unstable) unaltered and unalterable. That the two processes are going on at the same time, viz. propagation by generation, and transmutation, would seem an extraordinary state of things, yet this must be if transmutation is true, for what is there to put a stop to it? — and if stopped, why (for each genus and species) just where it is, — the relative proportions, of the various parts of animate nature so beautifully observed. But the gap between even the highest developed ape and the lowest example of humanity is immense; — how is this, and what has become of the missing links? It seems to us, in short, that the Darwinian theory is sufficiently refuted by those cases of evolution which nature does exhibit. For instance, the egg, the larva, the chrysalis, the butterfly, and then the egg again, — yet from the egg to the butterfly but one life, but one act of generation. So again we find the egg, the tadpole, the frog, and again the egg, i.e. the circle of evolution completed in one life and with only one act of generation, — all originating in one germinal vesicle, to which, specifically, it returns. In no other way or sense is evolution possible. The doctrine of development, whether as applied to biology or to theology is really infidel, — an attempt to stamp with the Divine sanction, and thus to justify, thorough and fatal departure from the truth as contained in Divine revelation.

But the reader, who desires to find a calm and full and exact exposition of the facts can find it in D'Orbigny's "Cours de Paléontologie et de Géologie Stratigraphiques,'' especially chapter 9 vol. 2. pp. 251-258. There is hardly a finer instance of patient induction, nor a more distinct contradiction of the alleged law of continuity, and this without an allusion to Genesis or a thought beyond the largest collection of the facts of geological science known to me. Even the tertiary period alone he shows must be divided into five distinct successions, and in them, of 6042 species 91 only common to two or more, but all distinct from the existing species of the Adamic earth. "Une première création s'est montrée avec l'étage silurien. Aprés l'anéantissement de celle-ci, par une cause géologique quelconque, aprés un laps de temps considérable, une seconde création a en lieu dans l'étage devonien; et successivement vingt-sept fois des créations distinctes sont venues repeupler toute la terre de ses plantes et de ses animaux, à la suite de chaque perturbation géologique qui avait tout détruit dans la nature vivante. Tel est le fait nous bornons à constater, sans chercher à percer le mystère surhumain qui l'environne." This witness is true; but the Bible conducts the simplest believer with sure foot and opened eyes where the mere man of science finds himself arrested by an impenetrable veil. Scripture asserts original creation, and then destruction: how often renewals and destructions may have followed it does not say; but, having given us the key to both facts, it does tell us, what it most concerned us morally to learn, the details of the construction of the world where the human race was to be tried and fall, where the Creator was to become in sovereign grace the woman's Seed, and by His suffering and death win more than was lost for the creature's blessing to the glory of God.