Why do some creationists think that the fossil record does not prove evolution or disprove creationism?

The “fossil record” is a term used by paleontologists to refer to the total number of fossils that have been discovered, as well as to the information derived from them. The problem with interpreting the fossil record is that most paleontologists also subscribe to the theory of evolution. They interpret the fossil record in the terms of a particular theory of evolution, inspect the interpretation, and note that it confirms the theory, which is not a surprise considering the starting point. Creationists, on the other hand, ascribe to the biblical account of creation. How, then, do creationists interpret the fossil record?

Read more: http://www.gotquestions.org/fossil-record.html#ixz...

The fossil record could conceivably be interpreted as evidence of a different process--IF we disregard all the other evidence. Darwin's work on morphology and distribution of extant species was pretty convincing even in his own time. When Watson and Crick worked out the structure of DNA, a century later, they unleashed a new field for collecting evidence that left no room for reasonable doubt.

The fossil record, absent these other huge heaps of evidence, could have been consistent with other explanations. Lamarckian evolution, in which every species originates separately but each species adapts and therefore evolves, is one possibility. Another is Agassiz' notion: that periodically all species were wiped out, in such events as the ice ages, and new ones were created afterward.

These seem silly to most of us now. But actually reading "The Origin of Species," I was struck by how hard Darwin had to struggle with the very implications of the word "species." Its very derivation implies a separate creation. (Think of the related term "specie" in a financial context.) Even highly skilled naturalists like Agassiz floundered for excuses to reject the notion species were not what the term implied.

A century and a half later, of course, creationism (understood not merely as belief in creation, but specifically as the denial of the role of evolution) is reduced to desperate attempts to keep its followers ignorant of the evidence, and equally ignorant of evolution. Most creationist arguments were invented early enough to be debunked directly by Darwin in his edition of 1872. Creationists then and now lean on the tactic of inventing some notion of evolution which is utterly silly, a strawman at which they can aim their objections.

There are three earth ages in The Bible. There are millions/billions of years between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2.

The katabole makes sense to me that magnetic north and true north are not currently aligned which causes the extremes in weather. Science shows the arctic regions were at one time lush. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=200809... The land masses are all broken apart now, but would fit together like a perfect puzzle piece. There are African type animal fossils preserved in Ashfalls, Nebraska. http://ashfall.unl.edu/

http://www.kjvbible.org/katabole.html

http://www.biblestudygames.com/biblestudies/threew...

http://levendwater.org/companion/append146.html

It is not just creationists. (Knowledgeable) evolutionists know full well that fossils do not show evolution.

The fossils show stasis or extinction. That is, fossil creatures are extinct or identical to those living.

Hence the abundance of so-called 'living fossils'. Crocodiles, Coelacanth fish, Gingko tree, horseshoe crab, etc. are examples of fossils which are supposedly hundreds of millions of years old but unchanged from those living today.

The fossil record refutes evolution :)

Dr Patterson had written a book for the British Museum simply called Evolution. Luther Sunderland wrote to Dr Patterson inquiring why he had not shown one single photograph of a transitional fossil in his book. Patterson then wrote back with the following amazing confession which was reproduced, in its entirety, in Sunderland’s book Darwin’s Enigma:

‘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. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic licence, would that not mislead the reader?’

He went on to say:

‘Yet Gould [Stephen J. Gould—the now deceased professor of paleontology from Harvard University] and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. … You say that I should at least “show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.” I will lay it on the line—there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.’

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution."

Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University)

Contrary to what most scientists write, the fossil record does not support the Darwinian theory of evolution because it is this theory (there are several) which we use to interpret the fossil record. By doing so we are guilty of circular reasoning if we then say the fossil record supports this theory." Ronald R. West, PhD (paleoecology and geology) (Assistant Professor of Paleobiology at Kansas State University),

‘Palaeoanthropologists seem to make up for a lack of fossils with an excess of fury, and this must now be the only science in which it is still possible to become famous just by having an opinion. As one cynic says, in human palaeontology [the study of fossils] the consensus depends on who shouts loudest.’

J.S. Jones, Department of Genetics and Biometry, University College, London

In part because they've taken the idea of "transitional fossils" and turned it into a twisted version of Zeno's paradox: first, they demand a fossil that shows a link between species 1 and species 2. You show them fossil 1.5 Rather than accepting this as a transitional form, they then demand two MORE transitional fossils, between 1 and 1.5, and 1.5 and 2. So then you have to dig up 1.25 and 1.75, and that *still* doesn't satisfy them... and so on, ad infinitum.

Some of them, as one of the posters here has already kindly demonstrated, play fast and loose with the definition of the word "information" to deny that beneficial mutations or additions to the genome can exist, based on nothing but their own lack of understanding of genetics.

Mostly, they'll take any information or evidence with which they are presented, and come up with some nonsensical babble to dismiss it, typically using a contorted straw-man understanding of some field of science or other to justify their denial.

Because it CANNOT be proven that fossils of bones are RELATED to another set of bone fossils. This is ONLY someone's GUESS.

Where are the supposed millions and millions of transitional fossils that Darwin expected to see? THERE ARE NONE.

The sad thing is that some Athiests hold these people up as being an example of a typical Christian when its the furtherist thing from the truth that you can get.

In Genesis, you have 2 accounts, and those are different.

This time period is a dispensation. There is much argument by

young earth/old earth creationists.

I just stay creationist and anti-evolutionist due to many reasons.

Far too much diversity, no need for it at all, not at all 'survival of the fittest',

no intermediate forms,

no simple forms at all.

No simple cell.

Extreme needs by many creatures to reproduce which it is a matter of

faith for evolutionists to believe as they do.

A good book where they know so much more is this one:

I don't have enough faith to be an atheist.

That's for sure.

I can't imagine being in limbo-land of the nothing.

But then...if you can't imagine creation, then you have alternatives.

Just the Cambrian period and the period before it deals the theory of evolution a hard blow!

“Going back in time to the age of the oldest rocks,” says Evolution From Space, “fossil residues of ancient life-forms discovered in the rocks do not reveal a simple beginning. Although we may care to think of fossil bacteria and fossil algae and microfungi as being simple compared to a dog or horse, the information standard remains enormously high. Most of the biochemical complexity of life was present already at the time the oldest surface rocks of the Earth were formed.”

From this beginning, can any evidence at all be found to verify that one-celled organisms evolved into many-celled ones? “The fossil record contains no trace of these preliminary stages in the development of many-celled organisms,” says Robert Jastrow. Instead, he states: “The record of the rocks contains very little, other than bacteria and one-celled plants until, about a billion years ago, after some three billion years of invisible progress, a major breakthrough occurred. The first many-celled creatures appeared on earth.”

Thus, at the start of what is called the Cambrian period, the fossil record takes an unexplained dramatic turn. A great variety of fully developed, complex sea creatures, many with hard outer shells, appear so suddenly that this time is often called an “explosion” of living things. A View of Life describes it: “Beginning at the base of the Cambrian period and extending for about 10 million years, all the major groups of skeletonized invertebrates made their first appearance in the most spectacular rise in diversity ever recorded on our planet.” Snails, sponges, starfish, lobsterlike animals called trilobites, and many other complex sea creatures appeared. Interestingly, the same book observes: “Some extinct trilobites, in fact, developed more complex and efficient eyes than any living arthropod possesses.”

Are there fossil links between this outburst of life and what went before it? In Darwin’s time such links did not exist. He admitted: “To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer.” Today, has the situation changed? Paleontologist Alfred S. Romer noted Darwin’s statement about “the abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear” and wrote: “Below this [Cambrian period], there are vast thicknesses of sediments in which the progenitors of the Cambrian forms would be expected. But we do not find them; these older beds are almost barren of evidence of life, and the general picture could reasonably be said to be consistent with the idea of a special creation at the beginning of Cambrian times. ‘To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system,’ said Darwin, ‘I can give no satisfactory answer.’ Nor can we today,” said Romer.

Some argue that Precambrian rocks were too altered by heat and pressure to retain fossil links, or that no rocks were deposited in shallow seas for fossils to be retained. “Neither of these arguments has held up,” say evolutionists Salvador E. Luria, Stephen Jay Gould and Sam Singer. They add: “Geologists have discovered many unaltered Precambrian sediments, and they contain no fossils of complex organisms.”

These facts prompted biochemist D. B. Gower to comment, as related in England’s Kentish Times: “The creation account in Genesis and the theory of evolution could not be reconciled. One must be right and the other wrong. The story of the fossils agreed with the account of Genesis. In the oldest rocks we did not find a series of fossils covering the gradual changes from the most primitive creatures to developed forms, but rather in the oldest rocks, developed species suddenly appeared. Between every species there was a complete absence of intermediate fossils.”

Zoologist Harold Coffin concluded: “If progressive evolution from simple to complex is correct, the ancestors of these full-blown living creatures in the Cambrian should be found; but they have not been found and scientists admit there is little prospect of their ever being found. On the basis of the facts alone, on the basis of what is actually found in the earth, the theory of a sudden creative act in which the major forms of life were established fits best.”

It's hard for people to admit that

their beliefs are based on lies.

So, they deny anything and everything

that could possibly bring those beliefs

into question..