“Other examples including the much-repeated ‘gradual’ evolution of the modern horse, have not held up under close examination.” (Biology The Unity and Diversity of Life, Wadsworth 1992, p. 304)
Today, in your town, the children are being taught that the horse is proof for Evolution. The erroneous evidence presented will be because the horse supposedly used to have four toes.
Is that true?
Did the horse originally have four toes?
As we will discover, this is just one of many fallacies associated with the Eohippus Equus Series.
According to the textbooks, the Eohippis was the size of a fox, was a meat eater and had 18 pairs of ribs. What they fail to mention is that the next horse had 15 ribs, then 19 ribs then back to 18. This is clearly not the same animal evolving.
Problems with Horse Evolution:
1. Made up by Othniel C. Marsh in 1874 from fossils scattered across the world, not from the same location.
2. Modern horses are found in layers with and lower than “ancient horses”.
3. The “ancient horse” (hyracotherium) is not a horse but is just like the hyrax still alive in Turkey and East Africa today!
4. Ribs, toes and teeth are different.
5. South American fossils go from 1 toed to 3 toed (reverse order)
6. Never found in the order presented.
7. 3 toed and 1 toed horses grazed side by side.
Therefore, we know scientifically that the horse did not evolve from a four toed ancestor. Why is this still peddled as truth in museums and textbooks around the world?
“Many examples commonly cited, such as the evolution of the horse family or of the sabertooth ‘tigers’ can be readily shown to have been unintentionally falsified and not to be really orthogenetic.” (George G. Sympson, “Evolutionary Determinism and the Fossil Record”. Scientific Monthly, Vol. 71 October 1950, p. 264).
Across the Fruited Plain 
If I need to choose between believing I came from a tribe of monkeys or believing in a creator God. I will choose God. The other is rather insulting.
The sad thing is people do not feel funny teaching the earth is millions and millions of years old. How can they do teach with a straight face?
I really enjoyed reading all of your post, but i want to respond to them all on this article in particular, mainly beacuse I’m intrigued by what J. David posted. First and foremust i must commend you on how well written and in depth all of your post are, it’s my own nature to respect a good writer no matter what the subject is. As a writer i hope that you do not take offense to any response that i might give you, I’m just merely giving you feedback.
Through out the ages of man, we have proven in many areas of life that there is no God. We have explained through scientific research that there is no God for water (Poseidon), the sun (Apollo), or underworld (Hades). Our origins in the universe are one of the last few mysteries i feel that are left in the world. I don’t feel that it can ever be proven 100% that we came to be through evolution, or creation. But what i can look at in order to help me make my decision, is the evidence.
I’ve never once talked with a museam curator about discovering the age of the earth through fossil records. When i ask them how do we know? they tell me its through various dating methods, Carbon dating and Potassium-Argon dating are just to name a few. It’s through these scientific methods that we know that the earth is approximately 4.6 billion years old. As you stated in your “Refuting Fossil Evidence” article, scientist date fossils by dating the layer of rock around the fossil itself. but we do this dating through the various dating methods of which i sampled for you before. This is the reason why i wanted to refer to what J. Davis posted. I think that he is mighty ignorant in regards to what science has proven through out the decades. maybe he should travel to a museam, and really open his mind and not shut out anything that might go against his own beliefs. So J. David i hate to tell you, but you and your family are just another species of monkey, just like everyother person in this world. It’s a beautiful fact, get over it.
As far as evolution goes, you say that there is no evidence for it. Well i regret to inform you that there is an abundent amount of fossil records that show evolution. the fossils are there, in museams, in web articles written by scientist, if you want to see them go look at them. in that same article as i reffered to befor, you state “Not one change of species into another is on record … we cannot prove that a single species has been changed.” (Charles Darwin, My Life & Letters). Darwin had no fossil records of evolution, he had nothing to work with, evolution was still a hypothosis in his own mind. But since his time we have accumulated hundreds of thousands of fossils, proving his theory to be true.
If the fossils cant convince you, maybe the DNA evidence will. Before recently we used a method called DNA Hybridization. This is the method that was used to calculate the percentage of similarity between two species. It does this not by comparing the chromosomes as a whole, but by comparing the DNA letters, or Base Pairs as they’re called. through this method, we have found Humans and Chimpanzees share 98% of their genes. This is the method in which we discovered that all life on earth is connected. This method used the process of heating a sample, and gene break down. the newest method uses a system of actually reading the DNA letters and comparing to another, it was the same method which was used in The Human Genome Project.
These are just a few examples I can give you in regards to the side of evolution. But now i want to ask you a question. Where is your proof? You are obviously an individual of faith, since you stated that fossil evidence supports the biblical worldwide flood. I have done much research and have not found a thread of believable evidence, backed by scientific examination, that proves the theory of creation.
I hope that you do not take offense to anything i have written, I am merely showing an alternative. I can see that you enjoy the topic of Evolution. If you want a very good read on the evidence for it, i would recommend the book “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution” by Prof. Richard Dawkins, it was a facinating book. There was also a television special called Curiosity: Did God Create The Universe, hosted by Stephen Hawking, another very interesting look into science.
I really enjoyed writing this response, and I hope you will enjoy reading it. I want to end with one of my favorite quotes, taken from another book written by Richard Dawkins “The God Delusion”.
“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful, without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” Douglas Adams.
Thank you again for your kind words. Regardless of position, I hope that we can keep in touch and dialogue about these matters; if for no other reason, we are in WordPress’s Freshman Class together! =)
J David is not ignorant. He is absolutely correct.
God does exist and He loves you very much! He desires to have a relationship with you through his Son, Jesus Christ who died for you.
He completely changed my life and gave my newborn baby daughter a ventricle she was not born with.
I will be addressing all of the dating methods in future posts. Please stay tuned. Carbon 14, since you mentioned it, has a half life of 5,720 years and cannot date anything beyond 4 or 5 half-lives, or things roughly 25,000 years old or older. So if anyone is telling you that they are using Carbon 14 to date the earth, they are either ignorant or they are lying to you. I will be posting exclusively on this topic soon.
Once again, there is no fossil evidence for evolution and the dating by strata involves circular reasoning as I clearly laid out. You say the fossil evidence is there? Please show me one transitional form or intermediary species. Apparently you know more than Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History which has the largest fossil collection in the world. Because He published a book professing evolution theory yet was forced to make this admission:
“I will lay it on the line–there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.” “It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another…. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test. …. I don’t think we shall ever have any access to any form of tree which we can call factual.” Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist, British Museum of Nat. History, Harper’s, Feb.1984, p.56.
There is no DNA Evidence for evolution. If you knew the first thing about the complexity and mathematical properties of DNA, you would know that there is no possible way that DNA could have evolved. It not only contains a language, it also contains the glossary for that complex language.
Where is my proof you ask?
You.
You cannot even employ the laws of logic or absolute truth without borrowing it from MY worldview.
Answer me this question…
Absolute Truth Does Not Exist:
A. Absolutely True
B. False
R.K.
I want to start by thanking you for taking the time to respond to my comments. these days i cant seem to get anyones attention to this subject without breaking the ice with “What happened last night on The Jersey Shore?”, and then soon being dismissed after mentioning DNA Hybridization. So thank you.
I am looking forward to your blog about scientific dating methods. I find it interesting that out of the two methods i proposed to you to you used Carbon-Dating to refer to. I never stated that carbon-dating was used to date the earth, in fact it is rarely used to date fossils, but i mentioned it because it is one of the most known (thats a contradiction aint it?). Potassium-Argon dating is much more effective, as it has a half life of 1.26 billion years. Here is a link of different dating methods i found through some research, i hope it helps you alittle bit. its interesting because its information on scientific dating with a christian perspective, i thought you might get a kick out of it.
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html#page 4
As far as fossil evidence goes, i’m not a scientist so i can’t name off the top of my head the fossils themselves, but here is another link to a very detailed time line of our hominid history
http://darwiniana.org/hominid.htm
i encourage you to read the book i reffered you to earlier, it has information on all of the topics we are talking about, no matter what the position of the individual is, anyone who appreciates science would enjoy it. it names various fossils that show transition between one species to another. It gives examples of modern animals that still have traces of their ancestory in their own body, along with mistakes in the body that an “all powerfull or knowing” God would not have made. it also gives examples of geological isolation that causes an animal to evolve in order to adapt to its environment for its own survival (microevolution). and after all the adaption over thousands of years it eventually changes so drasticaly that it can no longer mate with the original species, making it a new species (macroevolution). It is a very fascinating book.
I’m new to the whole “absolute truth” topic, so bear with me as i try to answer your question to the best of my knowledge as possible, and please correct me if im wrong. after doing a short read on Absolute Truth, It seems to me that that question is a trick one. Either answer i chose, is right in my own mind, making it my own Absolute Truth, leaving the gap for you to say “aha! Absolute Truth does exist!”. is that you sneaking in some phycology i sense there? I hope so i have an interest myself i would love for you to teach me some things ( i wasn’t kidding about not having anyone around to converse about these subjects with).
so in regards to the origins of man, the world, and the universe, i think that there is no absolute truth, because we could not possibly know 100% what happened back then. I think it will always be a topic of debate with heated sides, because religion is deeply inbedded in alot of our lives. But the proccess of debate i feel is a great thing for this world, because it alows our minds to expand with new ideas, with evidence from both sides, letting us make our own decisions.
the only reason i dont buy into the whole creation story, is because there is no evidence for it. I can go to a museum and see fossils, i can research and find answers to my questions through science, and experimentation. But i can’t go to a museum and see evidence for creation, the great flood, or any dating method that has shown the earth to be around 10000 years old. if the evidence pops up somewhere for the story of creation, and it outweighs the present evidence for evolution, then i will gladly change my beliefs and accept which ever god has been proven to be true.
to conlcude this response i just wanted to ask you a question. do you have a career in these areas? or is this all self taught? the reason i ask is because i’m 20 years old, and a manager at Dominos Pizza. I teach myself on all these topics through vigouris reading and research. i plan on obtaining an associates degree in Biology and joining the Air Force as a scientist. these topics are a huge interest of mine and i would love to know how you got started in them.
sincerely,
Ryan
Hello Ryan!
Thank you for your response, sentiment and honesty. I have a feeling that we are kindred spirits and appreciate the opportunity to dialogue as well.
I mentioned Carbon 14 because you referred to it. Carbon 14 is also one of the most misunderstood as well as little understood dating methods out there, yet people who don’t even know the half-life, throw out Carbon 14 because they believe it refutes Creationism, when in fact it does not. Living mollusk shells were carbon dated at 25,000 years old. A living penguin was carbon dated at 6,000 years old. Two different bones from within the same mammoth were carbon dated 40,000 years apart. Therefore, we observe that when something is a known age, Carbon 14 doesn’t reveal its true age that we DO KNOW, yet when dating things of unknown age, we assume that it works. That is a logical fallacy which I will be addressing in greater detail as I mentioned.
Addressing fossils yet again, you cannot name them because they do not exist. Just ask Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History. He’s sitting on the world’s largest fossil collection and says there is no evidence. Don’t just take my word for it. And yet Mr. Patterson shares your worldview. Also, as I will lay out in a future article, there are no missing links—the entire CHAIN is missing. Every single “discovered” missing link from Nebraska Man, constructed from a pig tooth to Java Man and Lucy have all proven to be hoaxes. Why should deception be necessary to prove something that’s true? What is “true” if there is no absolute truth?
Ryan, you were fearfully and wonderfully made according to Psalm 139:14, by a Creator who loves you. The fact that you represent 50 trillion cells, 20 interlocking biological systems, and can reason and articulate logic PROVES that you Ryan, were designed! And a design requires a designer. Could I convince you that even something as simple as a pencil could somehow NOT have been designed, but was instead the product of random chance? How about something more intricate? Could a pocket watch, with its scores of springs and gears have just happened? How much more complex are humans, plants and animals? One plant cell is more complex than an entire space shuttle.
I did not ask you a “trick” question. I am absolutely not trying to “trick” you.
I asked a question that backed you into an intellectual corner based on your worldview. That is not a trick. That is a question that makes you evaluate your stance. If there is no absolute truth, are you absolutely sure of that?
I have a heavy burden on my heart to reveal to you that you have a Heavenly Father who loves you so much, that he sent his son, Jesus, to die on a cross for you Ryan! He wants to spend all eternity with you! And He paid the highest price heaven could afford, to pay a debt He didn’t owe, because we had a debt we could not pay.
Please stay tuned,
Rudy
Hi, I realise that this is an old post but I absolutely feel obligated to respond at least to one classc mistake you commited in an earlier reply while quoting Colin Patterson.
I’m willing to accept that you are merely copy pasting this quote from another creationist website without checking the origin or the actual content. What Patterson was talking about was not about common ancestry but being able to directly say that one fossil is the direct grand-grand-grand….father of of fossil of a younger ago. That is what he is referring to with a “water tight argument” (i.e it is impossible to say that e.g specimen X of Lucy in the Museum of Natural History in London is my direct ancestor). What these fossils do, however, point out is a descent through common ancestry (“ancestrial species” would supposedly be more accurate).
Here is a link to how Mr. Patterson has been quote mined on this topic with a copy of his personal response on the issue.
I hope that you are willing to admitt your mistake, correct it, not use it anymore and correct others who are trying to use it.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/patterson.html
Antti,
Thank you for your thoughts. You make a number of assessments about me that could not be further from the truth. I believe that given the opportunity, I can demonstrate to you, (as I have to many others), that I place a premium on accuracy and am quite teachable and correctable when presented with legitimate evidence to the contrary. No matter how old an article is on Across the Fruited Plain, if you find errors, I am grateful and want to know about them immediately so that I can correct them without delay. That, of course, is a far cry from the textbook manufacturers and teachers who continue to use lies in the textbooks proven wrong in 1875 such as the human fetus having gill slits like a fish or 60 year old lies like this one, the evolution of the horse.
That being said, I am quite familiar with talkorigins.org and its dripping vitriol for Christians and Creationists.
Now, I’m not sure if you just have an axe to grind or you’re simply not a careful reader, but if you read the whole page, the Colin Patterson quote:
“I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. . .I will lay it on the line, There is not one such fossil for which one might make a watertight argument.”
– Dr. Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History.
is exonerated by none other than…Colin Patterson!
“The specific quote you mention, from a letter to Sunderland dated 10th April 1979, is accurate as far as it goes.”
Colin Patterson may not like that his quotations are being used to discredit his and your religion, but nowhere does he state that they did not originate with him.
Therefore, I humbly submit that the mistake is yours.
On a separate note, it is also quite self-evident to me that you are not aware of the limitations of the Carbon dating methods on sea creatures. It is a very well know fact that the measurable amount of C14 in sea creatures does not accumulate at the same rate as it does with land dwelling animals. Therefore, the dating results are unreliable and rejected. This same applies e.g snails with shells. All this information is very much available online with a few google searches.
Actually, I am quite aware and familiar with how marine samples date older via carbon dating due to marine carbon from older samples.
My question to you is, when observing any sample, how would you determine if it’s getting it’s carbon from an older source, thus making its date unreliable?
Furthermore, when I point out that different samples of Baby Dima dated wildly apart, critics explain it away by saying the sample(s) became contaminated by objects with which they were stored. Well then, if that is true, how can we know if ANY sample we are observing has been contaminated over time by other carbon sources?
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