Evolution's instability highlighted by new study

Evolution's instability highlighted by new study
Expert says without reliable foundation, assumptions get wacky
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Posted: December 28, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

A new report by "Geology" magazine that a newspaper cited as linking humans to the die-off of Australia's "prehistoric" animals really doesn't advance knowledge, either in advocacy of or opposition to evolution, according to an expert in the field and president of a Christian apologetics ministry.

That's because without a firm foundation, the rafters always are always shaky, according to Ken Ham, the president of Answers in Genesis, which advocates for the truth and integrity of the Bible, starting from the first verse beginning: "In the beginning, God…"

The report comes from The Australian, which said the new article in the January 2007 edition of "Geology" says 90 percent of Australia's "megafauna – prehistoric animals such as giant goannas, three-metre tall kangaroos and rhino-sized marsupials – died out within 20,000 years of human arrival."

The newspaper report notes that while data still is lacking, a variety of animals had flourished under changing climatic conditions, but then disappeared with the advent of man.

The report said, "An analysis of fossils found in south-eastern Australia found they became extinct during environmental conditions similar to those under which they thrived," thus man was implicated.

"Although populations fluctuated locally in concert with cyclical climatic changes, with larger species favored in wetter times, most if not all of them survived even the driest times - then humans arrived.'' said Gavin Prideaux, a paleontologist from the Western Australian Museum and Flinders University.

But Ham, an Australian who is in demand as a Christian conference speaker on topics including the reliability of the Bible, said such reports never add substantively to the sum of knowledge.

"It's a good example of the fact that evolutionary ideas change all the time. They are reinterpreting their ideas as they look at the evidence," he told WND. "The result is that there's no real knowledge there."

He said such articles base their many assumptions on such concepts as the fossil layers that are discovered.

"If they find animals and plants in the fossil record together, they assume they were living together," he told WND. "That's not necessarily so. They could have been transported and dumped together."

Just because they were buried together, doesn't mean they lived together, he noted. "You didn't see them moving together," he said.

From a biblical perspective, such issues are more logical, he said. Such fossil circumstances could have happened during the worldwide flood described in Genesis at the time of Noah. And after the flood either climate changes or people could have had an impact on various species.

"This is the interpretation they've now come up with," he said. "It can change."

"When you're in the present trying to understand the past, you don't have the past, so you try to reconstruct it. You have to have certain assumptions to try to re-create it. If one assumption is that the Bible is not true, and your dating methods are absolute, (you get one result)."

"If you change those assumptions, you get a whole different interpretation of the past."

WND was unable to obtain a response from scientists who are involved in the field through the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Ham, who has written "The Lie: Evolution" as well as several children's books, is founder and president of the organization, whose introduction notes that "facts" don't speak for themselves, and must be interpreted.

"There aren't separate sets of 'evidences' for evolution and creation – we all deal with the same evidence (we all live on the same earth, have the same fossils, observe the same animals, etc.). The difference lies in how we interpret what we study.

"The Bible – the 'history book of the universe' – provides a reliable, eye-witness account of the beginning of all things, and can be trusted to tell the truth in all areas it touches. Therefore, we are able to use it to help us make sense of this present world."