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History of Evolutionary
Theory, 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 curricula. 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 1 |
History of Evolution Part 3
Overview
of Evolution |
