“Each According to Its Kind”.
by Dr. Werner Gitt.
From the creation account, it is clear that all living beings were created in clearly separate groups—each according to its kind.
For biologists, kinds of organisms are the fundamental building blocks, just as the chemical elements are for a study of chemistry. Rolf Siewing defines “kind” according to two criteria:
From the view of reproductive biology, a kind is a fertile community which exists under natural conditions and amongst whom unrestricted gene interchange is possible (biospecies).
From the structural viewpoint a kind possesses the same constructional plan (morphospecies).
Evolution: In the evolutionary view, all systematic categories are assumed to be related, and, consequently, that a phylogenetic tree exists. In setting up this tree, evolution is faced with an irresolvable problem. Peters and his co-authors concede that one cannot set up any reconstruction that is inherently plausible. Some yardstick for measuring its plausibility must be available. In any case, we have a preordained theory, namely the theory of evolution. The circularity of this reasoning becomes clear: What has to be proved, has already been assumed to start with. The problem of evolutionary systematics to trace unknown, untraceable relationships, is painted as follows by Siewing:
It is like an observer who views a flooded orchard with only the tips of the branches visible above the water. He does not know how these branches connect with one another, nor how they eventually connect with the tree trunks. The major part of evolution containing the gaps in the lines of descent is hidden under water. These gaps must be bridged methodically.
Scientific Objections: The essential quantity in all life-forms is the information contained in the genes. The pre-supposed evolutionary tree of descent (phylogenesis) is not controlled nor guided by information; thus, it is an impossibility according to informatics theory. On the other hand, the development of embryos (ontogenesis) is a process which is controlled and guided by information. Recent discoveries in molecular biology have shown that very many mechanisms in living cells exist for the purpose of transferring exact information. This basic requirement for the constancy of the various kinds of organisms is conceded by G Osche, an evolutionary biologist:
The set of genes of an organism is a finely tuned team, a balanced “genome” whose harmonious cooperation determines the orderly development of a living being. This finely balanced genome is extremely important for the organism, and is always transmitted unchanged at every single step of cell division and the division of cell nuclei and chromosomes. Before every cell division, the genetic code must be replicated, in such a way that exactly the same chemically defined configuration is formed. This identical replication of the genes guarantees the constancy of genetic information. Roughly speaking, this replication is responsible for the phenomenon that storks always hatch from stork eggs with all the characteristics of this kind of bird.
Mutations and selection cannot be a source of new or different information. The evolutionist assumption that simple construction plans could produce more complex plans by means of mutations and selection is false according to information theory. No such event has ever been observed; on the contrary, the inverse is valid: The main result of heredity is to keep the distinguishing characteristics of all kinds of organisms constant.
In the process of sexual reproduction, new gene combinations are being formed continuously, so that every single individual has an unrepeatable, unique set of genes. Mammals possess approximately one million genes. Such large quantities, together with the very large number of possible combinations, are the reason why no two persons are identical. The same holds for all bisexual organisms. Reproduction is only possible within fixed boundaries; it cannot take place outside these boundaries. With their definition of basic types, Reinhard Junker and Siegfried Scherer express a similar view:
All individuals who are directly or indirectly linked by cross-breeding, are regarded as belonging to one basic type, or whose germ cells, after actual fertilization, at least begin to develop into an embryo having hereditary characteristics of both parents.
The Bible: From the creation account, it is clear that all living beings were created in clearly separate groups—each according to its kind. This concise formulation has some important results which totally repudiate the evolutionary view:
Man as well as all the kinds of plants and animals were created separately. This excludes the possibility of phylogenetic relationships.
The great number of reproductive mechanisms did not evolve, but were created at the beginning: “. . . seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds” (Gen. 1:11).
Life did not begin as a single primordial cell from which all other life-forms developed.
The kinds form closed, complete groups. And there was also no primitive tree, no protofish, no first bird, and no primitive humanoids.
The “kinds” mentioned in Genesis (Hebrew min; used only in singular!) could best be described as being similar to the basic types defined above. God created the original kinds with the ability to diversify into races.
According to the view of theistic evolution, God started the process of evolution and guided and steered it over millions of years. As an information scientist, Werner Gitt critically analyzes and rejects the assumptions and consequences of the doctrine of theistic evolution.
© 2024 Answers in Genesis, Artist Jerry LoFaro
St. Alphonsus Liguori: “It is a certain rule, received in common by all [the Fathers], that the words in Scripture are not to be distorted to an unnatural sense, except in the sole case when the literal meaning is repugnant to faith or morals.” — The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection
“In the beginning was the Word.”
Variation within species of anti-Darwinists
Note: Notwithstanding his cheerful approach to the back-and-forth about name-calling in scientific circles mentioned towards the end of this video excerpt, pardon the use of “destroyed” in the YouTube title here. I’m certain Dr. Berlinski would not approve its use. “Explains” would be more appropriate to his thinking and approach to science in general. Video link.
+ Dr. David Berlinski on Science After Babel (Jan. 14, 2024)
The Deniable Darwin
Commentary Magazine
June 1996
by David Berlinski
Charles Darwin presented On the Origin of Species to a disbelieving world in 1859—three years after Clerk Maxwell had published “On Faraday’s Lines of Force,” the first of his papers on the electromagnetic field. Maxwell’s theory has by a process of absorption become part of quantum field theory, and so a part of the great canonical structure created by mathematical physics. By contrast, the final triumph of Darwinian theory, although vividly imagined by biologists, remains, along with world peace and Esperanto, on the eschatological horizon of contemporary thought.
“It is just a matter of time,” one biologist wrote recently, reposing his faith in a receding hereafter, “before this fruitful concept comes to be accepted by the public as wholeheartedly as it has accepted the spherical earth and the sun-centered solar system.” Time, however, is what evolutionary biologists have long had, and if general acceptance has not come by now, it is hard to know when it ever will.
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In its most familiar, textbook form, Darwin’s theory subordinates itself to a haunting and fantastic image, one in which life on earth is represented as a tree. So graphic has this image become that some biologists have persuaded themselves they can see the flowering tree standing on a dusty plain, the mammalian twig obliterating itself by anastomosis into a reptilian branch and so backward to the amphibia and then the fish, the sturdy chordate line—our line, cosa nostra—moving by slithering stages into the still more primitive trunk of life and so downward to the single irresistible cell that from within its folded chromosomes foretold the living future.
This is nonsense, of course. That densely reticulated tree, with its lavish foliage, is an intellectual construct, one expressing the hypothesis of descent with modification. Evolution is a process, one stretching over four billion years. It has not been observed. The past has gone to where the past inevitably goes. The future has not arrived. The present reveals only the detritus of time and chance: the fossil record, and the comparative anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry of different organisms and creatures. Like every other scientific theory, the theory of evolution lies at the end of an inferential trail.
The facts in favor of evolution are often held to be incontrovertible; prominent biologists shake their heads at the obduracy of those who would dispute them. Those facts, however, have been rather less forthcoming than evolutionary biologists might have hoped. If life progressed by an accumulation of small changes, as they say it has, the fossil record should reflect its flow, the dead stacked up in barely separated strata. But for well over 150 years, the dead have been remarkably diffident about confirming Darwin’s theory. Their bones lie suspended in the sands of time—theromorphs and therapsids and things that must have gibbered and then squeaked; but there are gaps in the graveyard, places where there should be intermediate forms but where there is nothing whatsoever instead.1 … Continue…
+ Evolution, Science and Progressivism
Catholic Critique 