Life--How Did It Get Here? By Evolution or By Creation?

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Anon, 1985. Life--How Did It Get Here? By Evolution or By Creation? Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc.

A creationist book from the Jehovah's Witnesses, filled with gross inaccuracies and creationist falsehoods.

Contains the following claims:

• Many scientists find problems with evolution (p. 14)
• The Origin of Species does not address speciation (p. 16)
• Francis Hitching is an evolutionist (p. 16)
• Evolution is no strictly scientific theory (p. 17)
• The eye is too complex to have evolved (p. 17)
• The ear is too complex to have evolved (p. 17)
• The brain is too complex to have evolved (p. 17)
• Darwin on evolution of the eye (p. 18)
• After more than a century there are even less examples of transitions than at Darwin's time (p. 20)
• Punctuated equilibrium is the opposite of standard evolutionary theory (p. 22)
• The descendants of an X (cat, dog...) will remain X (p. 23)
• Evolution is baseless without a theory of abiogenesis (p. 23)
• Evolution will soon be widely rejected (p. 23)
• Mutations don't produce new features (p. 23)
• Since many details of evolution are questioned by evolutionists, one should question the whole theory (p. 24)
• Evolution doesn't explain the grammar of the genetic code (p. 24)
• Evolution doesn't explain how a bauplan is written in the genes (p. 24)
• Evolution should be treated as a matter of belief (p. 24)
• Babylonian creation myth does not resemble Genesis account (p. 35)
• Genesis 1 got the order of events right (p. 36)
• Evolution excludes the existence of a creator (p. 37)
• Darwin acknowledged a creator, today's evolutionists don't mention Him anymore (p. 38)
• Pasteur proved life only comes from life (law of biogenesis) (p. 38)
• Dawkins acknowledges that generation of a self-replicator is more than improbable (p. 39)
• Not all amino acids needed for life have been formed experimentally (p. 40)
• Miller's experiments had invalid assumption of type of atmosphere (p. 40-41)
• Earth's early atmosphere had abundant oxygen (p. 41)
• Early molecules would have decayed (p. 41)
• Early molecules would have been destroyed by UV light (p. 41)
• Richard Dickerson had no explanation for generation of macromolecules (p. 42)
• Generation of macromolecules is one of the hardest problems evolutionists have to fight (p. 42)
• Life uses only left-handed amino acids (p. 43)
• The odds of life forming are incredibly small (p. 44)
• First cells couldn't come together by chance (p. 44)
• Mathematicians regard events with probabilities smaller than x as impossible (p. 44)
• Membranes are too complex to have existed during abiogenesis (p. 44)
• DNA needs proteins to form; Proteins need DNA (p. 45)
• Genetic code is too complex to have come to be in one step (p. 46)
• Evolution can't explain photosynthesis (p. 46)
• Hoyle and Wickramasinghe are evolutionists (p. 47)
• Acceptance of evolution instead of creation has psychological rather than scientific reasons (p. 50)
• Abiogenesis has never been observed (p. 50)
• Were you there? (p. 50)
• Evolution is only a theory (p. 51)
• Evolution is a religion (p. 53)
• Many scientists are willing to bend observations to make them fit evolution (p. 53)
• There is no other working explanation besides creation (p. 53)
• Creation can't be disproved (p. 53)
• Macroevolution has never been observed (p. 54)
• Evolution hasn't been observed nowadays (p. 54)
• Organisms come in discrete kinds (p. 54)
• There should be transitionals among living creatures (p. 54)
• We should see a smooth continuum through the fossil record (p. 55)
• We should see transition between gills and lungs (p. 56)
• We don't see creatures in various stages of completion (p. 57)
• Transitional fossils are lacking (p. 57-59)
• Fossil record doesn't show transition from simple organisms to complex ones since bacteria are already complex (p. 60)
• Cambrian explosion shows all kinds of life appearing suddenly (p. 60)
• Creationism and evolution are the only 2 models (p. 62)
• Some fossil species are still living (p. 63)
• There are no fossil ancestors of insects (p. 63)
• There are no fossil ancestors of dinosaurs (p. 64)
• Fossil record doesn't show progress (p. 64)
• There are no fossil giraffes with shorter necks (p. 64)
• There are gaps between plant-animal (p. 65)
• Some species don't seem to evolve for millions of years (p. 65)
• Stebbins on no transitional forms between phyla (p. 65)
• Speciation hasn't been observed in the fossil record (p. 65)
• Whales, bats, horses, primates, elephants, hares, squirrels were as different when they first appeared as they are now (p. 65)
• Moore on mammals appearing suddenly in the fossil record (p. 65)
• Horse fossils don't show evolution (p. 67)
• There are no fossil ancestors of monkeys (p. 69)
• Samuel on evolution being no strong scientific explanation (p. 70)
• Carl Sagan agreed with Coffin that the fossil record points to creation (p. 70)
• There are gaps between invertebrate-vertebrate (p. 71)
• There are gaps between fish-amphibian (p. 72)
• There are gaps between amphibian-reptile (p. 73)
• There are gaps between reptile-bird (p. 75)
• Lecomte du Noüy is an evolutionist (p. 75)
• Archaeopteryx is fully bird (p. 79)
• There are gaps between reptile-mammal (p. 80-81)
• There is no fossil evidence for transition from reptile maxilla to mammal ear bones (p. 81)
• Evolution isn't supposed to go backwards (p. 81)
• Mayr on man's uniqueness (p. 81)
• Evolution doesn't explain human intelligence (p. 82)
• Transitional fossils between man and ape are evolutionist's only hope to find evidence for a relationship (p. 84)
• Evolutionists think that apes became ever fitter when climbing the evolutionary ladder (p. 84)
• If we're descended from apes, why are there still apes around? (p. 84)
• Theory of human evolution was based on wishful thinking from the beginning (p. 85)
• All human fossils would fit on a billiard table (p. 86)
• We don't have any evidence of change since Homo sapiens first appeared as a fossil 50,000 years ago (p. 87)
• Anthropologists disagree (p. 88)
• Richard Leakey found a normal human skull under a layer of rock dated at 212 million years (see p.91!) (p. 88)
• Identity of human ancestors is lost in the past (p. 89)
• All hominid fossils are fully human or fully ape (p. 89)
• Pictures of apemen are based on imagination (p. 89)
• Piltdown man was a hoax (p. 90)
• Australopithecus was fully ape, closer to chimp (p. 93)
• Neanderthal was based on a disfigured human (p. 95)
• Radiometric dating gives unreliable results (p. 96)
• Carbon dating gives inaccurate results (p. 97)
• Variable C14/C12 ratio invalidates C14 dating (p. 97)
• Humans are a few thousand years old, not millions (p. 97)
• Carbon dating gives unreliable results for objects older than about 2,000 years (p. 97)
• Civilization, agricultural revolution, writing, and reliable historical texts are only a few thousand years old (p. 97)
• W. F. Libby was surprised that history goes back only 5,000 years (p. 98)
• Posterity will be surprised and amused that such sloppy theorizing could capture the thought of the 20th century (p. 98)
• Mutations are rare (p. 100)
• Most mutations are harmful ("Evolutionist admits", quote-mining) (p. 100)
• Would you hire an artisan, driver, or doctor who is known for doing it wrong 999 out of 1,000 times? (p. 102)
• Mutations are accidents; things don't get built by accident (p. 102)
• Mutations don't produce new features (p. 103)
• Fruit fly experiments produce only fruit flies (p. 104)
• Experimentally mutated fruit flies are mostly without exception inferior to wild fruit flies (p. 104)
• DNA will repair itself, thus preventing speciation (p. 105)
• Changes induced by mutations are so small, one thousand of them wouldn't be enough for speciation (p. 105)
• Peppered moths remained the same species (pp. 105-107)
• Antibiotic-resistent bacteria remained the same species (p. 107)
• Antibiotic-resistent bacteria weren't mutations but already existent variations (p. 107)
• Range of variation is limited within kinds (p. 107)
• Genetic code prevents speciation (p. 107)
• The Law of Biology - life comes from life, and ancestors and descendants belong to the same species - has been proven (p. 108)
• Range of variation is limited within kinds (p. 109)
• Instincts are too complex to have evolved (p. 160-167)
• The brain is too complex to have evolved (pp. 168-178)
• Scientists are pressured not to challenge established dogma (p. 182)
• Bible says the earth is unsupported (p. 200)
• Bible got water cycle right (pp. 201-202)
• Sea fossils have been found on mountaintops (p. 203)
• Mammoths have been found quickly frozen (p. 203)
• Bible specifies good medical and hygienic practices (p. 204-206)
• Bible specifies best time for circumcision (p. 205-206)
• The Bible must be accurate because archaeology supports it (p. 207-214)
• Bible is harmonious throughout (p. 215)
• Prophecies prove the accuracy of the Bible (p. 216-223)

External Links

• Richard Keatinge, Science, Jehovah's Witness style [1]
• DiMaggio, Mario, A critical analysis of the scientific material in the book: Life - How did it get here? By evolution or by creation? [2]
• Feuerbacher, Alan. The WTS View of Creation and Evolution.