How Did Life on Earth Start? - SC2541

SPEAKER 1 Welcome to Science Conversations. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. What are 12 reasons why evolution cannot explain the origin of life on Earth? Joining me to discuss part two of this topic is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome once again, Dr. John. SPEAKER 2 Hello, Kaysie. SPEAKER 1 Dr. John Ashton has written a book entitled Evolution Impossible and today we will be looking through the next three reasons covered in his book. of why evolution is impossible. And these all have something to do with the fossil record. So can you take us through these reasons? What about the fossil record is there evidence for that suggests we cannot trust that evolution was the way life became what it is today? SPEAKER 2 So essentially the fossil record is the main evidence that is put forward for evolution. So it purportedly shows change over very long periods of time and these are the depth of the rocks. So we look at the rocks that are deeper down, they have different fossils to the rocks that are higher up and these rocks are believed to be laid down sequentially. And so this is the main reason that we find these change in animals or life different life forms, plants and animals all the way up through the fossil record. And this is the evidence that, yes, there's been this gradual change that animals have evolved through the different pathways that are explained in the textbooks. SPEAKER 1 So that's how an evolutionist would explain it and would see it. SPEAKER 2 Yeah, sure. And they looked at what they call phylogenetic trees. And so that is where we looked at the similarities of animals. There's other ones where we look at the actual genetic codes and match them that way. And there actually are some different as well. But it's the fossil record that essentially underpins the theory of evolution and how these changes occur, of course, was underpinned by the whole idea of natural selection that as different animals competed or plants, whatever, the weaker ones were weeded out, the stronger ones went on to develop into the next animals and so forth. So this was the picture that was put together. But we need to look and I raise a number of facts there and that is that the fossil record is a record of fully formed animals. We don't find intermediate species. So we don't find fossils of one species of plant slowly changing into another or one type of fish slowly changing into another with all these tiny little intermediate steps. Now there are a few claimed intermediate fossils between reptiles and birds and different types of fish. There are a handful and they're certainly disputed. because the point is there should be millions and millions of these fossils. It should have been happening all the time, all these gradual changes, and we don't observe that. What we observe is fully formed animals that remain the same while they're there, and then they become extinct. So we don't actually observe these intermediate species. and we don't observe these changes occurring. The animals just stay the same, become extinct, or else they're the same as they are today, like the coelacanth and crocodiles and, you know, different sharks and this sort of thing, fish that we find. The other thing is that when we go to the records, these very, very old layers that are at the bottom also contain very complex animals. So, like, for example, trilobites are found. that in the Cambrian layers. Now these are right down at the bottom and yet they're very complex animals. They've got eyes, digestive systems, segmented bodies, multiple legs, you know, with all sorts, extremely complex. And if life has evolved gradually from, you know, very simple to more complex, how come these really complex animals are found right at the bottom? It just doesn't fit. But one of the other fascinating things is that we really don't observe fossilisation occurring today. We don't observe it occurring. So, for example, a few years ago, we had massive floods in Queensland that covered an area of Queensland, I think, the size of New South Wales or Victoria anyway, a massive area was covered with massive floods. But it didn't result in a whole lot of fossilized kangaroos or, you know, lizards or galanos or even mice, you know? Yeah, there would be heaps of those. you'd think that they'd be, where are all the fossils? Where are all the fossils of cockroaches and grubs and these sort of things? We actually don't observe fossils forming today. Now there may be one or two really rare cases where we see, like for example, we know during volcanic eruptions some things get buried there, some things have been very buried, perhaps very rapidly under volcanic ash, might be a few exceptions. But with the fossil record we observe, you know, multiple trillions of fossils around the world that have been buried in these layers, right, and preserved. So in the mountains of Peru, for example, we find fossil rails. We've talked about that and dolphins and other marine animals. We find Mount Everest, you know, fossil seashells and this sort of thing. We don't find these fossils forming now. today, they break down, get broken up, we don't find it. So in other words, this points to the fossil record points to a catastrophic event that occurs. And they've done experiments showing that the only way that you can form fossils is to bury them and then put them under pressure as well. And also they've tried, done experiments where they've put a creature, dead creature in between, say, two concrete blocks and left it there for a while and it just goes to a liquid. So in other words, for fossils to form, they generally have to be buried under some sedimentary layer that absorbs the body fluids and allows them to be dehydrated and yet preserved at the same time. So it requires pretty specific conditions. SPEAKER 1 Very specific, yeah. SPEAKER 2 And when we look at the size of some of these fossil beds, like, you know, Morrison Formation, where we find a lot of dinosaurs that stretches from New Mexico to Canada. It's a huge area. It's buried these big animals as well as little ones, of course. And so you've got to, the conditions to do that are catastrophic. Now, the ages on which they worked out the ages of these layers, the where, and worked out these very long ages, again, on the basis of the fossil record originally, were based on very slow burial, very slow sedimentation rates. and hence when they looked at these deep layers, like the thickness of the Grand Canyon, you know, over a kilometer deep in places and so forth of sedimentary layers on top of one another, they say they must have represented hundreds of millions of years. But again, we can see we had evidence now hang on, these things must have been deposited very rapidly. They must have been buried very rapidly because we, you know, we have fossils of fish eating, we have fossils of reptiles giving birth, all these sort of things. We have fossils of animals that that would normally disintegrate very quickly, like jellyfish and so forth like this. So they were buried under catastrophic conditions, very different to what we see today. We don't see massive amounts of, and very, very few fossilization of fossils forming today, or over the past, you know, scientists doing measurements, people making observations, the past hundreds of years. And so this is powerful evidence that the conditions that laid down the fossils all through all those layers, and we find fossils in all those different layers, means that catastrophic conditions occurred at all those different time periods to lay down and produce those fossils. And that's something that most people aren't aware of. When we talk about the fossils, oh yeah, they were buried in all this sort of thing, it doesn't happen. It doesn't happen under the type of conditions that we see today. So the fossil evidence isn't evidence for evolution. It's not evidence for long time periods. It's not evidence for slow deposition over these long periods of time. Also in the fossil records themselves, we don't see this gradual change of one animal into another. They're just the same. They stay the same all the time. And even leading paleontologists point out the fossil record isn't evidence of evolution. It's just evidence of buried dead animals in the past that must have been buried under catastrophic conditions. So this whole area that is claimed to underpin and be foundational to the theory of evolution doesn't actually point to evolution at all. It just points to the fact that very, in the earliest forms, highly complex life existed. and was buried rapidly. So again, it fits the biblical model of a global flood, destroying everything, destroying mixing up all these animals, often in these layers. Many animals are mixed up. People don't again realize that we find fossils of mammals mixed up with dinosaurs and so forth. SPEAKER 1 And all the sea creatures thrown in. SPEAKER 2 Yes, that's right. Yes, that's right. SPEAKER 1 How did they get there? SPEAKER 2 That's right, yes, in some of the, you know, fossils of trees going through different layers. Inside the trees, we found different types of animals all mixed up in there, marine and non-marine animals. So all points to a totally different picture of the Earth's past, but one that fits the biblical picture of a supernatural creator and then a supernatural destruction of the surface of the world in global flood. and so again we have this powerful evidence that refutes evolution that isn't being taught to young people today. The way they're taught it is they're taught that the fossil record is evidence for evolution. When we look at the facts, when we analyse the data, it's evidence that evolution did not occur. SPEAKER 1 Wow. That's really quite compelling to a just in a nutshell go through those key reasons because, yeah, as you say, it's one of the first things that people turn to say, oh, evolution exists. Look at this, look at the fossils. Boom. But hey, there's so many things in there which even just logically talking about them, it's like, oh, oh yeah, that doesn't make sense, does it? Exactly right. So yeah, it really highlights how we have to think carefully about what we see around us in the experiments. SPEAKER 2 And that was one of the purposes, again, of writing the book, to set this information out, set it out with the peer review references that, again, all point to the fact that evolution did not occur at this time. And the whole idea of putting it out there in the book is that people can go, they can read what I've said, they can look at those references and actually see the raw data that's published in the scientific literature. SPEAKER 1 And think it through for themselves, which is really important. Excellent. Thank you for sharing about those. We have a few more to cover in the next section. And as we continue to examine the question, what are the 12 reasons why evolution cannot explain the origin of life on Earth? Be sure to join us for that.