so let's spend some time going through
the facts and how evolution explains
them all so well first fossils now
fossils provide really good evidence for
evolution and by studying these fossils
we can see how organisms have changed
throughout the past as we're able to see
the small incremental changes that took
place over millions of years
the farther back we go
the more we see that everything alive
has evolved from a single starting point
yeah that's what i was taught in school
too but is the fossil record really good
evidence for evolution i asked dr gunter
beckley a fossil expert he has
discovered 180 new species in the fossil
record and published over 160 scientific
papers it is often believed that the
fossil record is great support for
darwin's theory actually this is not the
case at all the theory predicts slow
changes but the fossil record shows
rapid changes the theory predicts that
new forms accumulate by
addition of little small steps but the
fossil record shows they appear out of
nothing suddenly let's start with the
most famous sudden appearance of life
forms in geologic history the cambrian
explosion geologist casey luskin
explains
nearly all of the major living animal
phyla appear abruptly in the cambrian
period in a geological eye blink a 5 to
10 million year window in the cambrian
explosion we see many diverse body
plants appear without any direct
evolutionary precursors in fact one
invertebrate zoology textbook says that
the animal phyla appear fully formed
such that the fossil record is of no
help to understanding how these species
and these diverse body plans arose but
is the cambrian explosion the exception
because we usually hear the fossil
record clearly demonstrates that
organisms don't suddenly appear
the phenomenon of sudden appearances in
the fossil record is not just an
exceptional case but actually is a
pattern that is found everywhere the
origin of life the origin of
photosynthesis the avalon explosion the
great ordovician biodiversification
event
the silurio devonian terrestrial
revolution the devonian nectar
revolution and the odentold revolution
the carboniferous insect explosion the
triassic explosions the original
flowering plants the original
butterflies the neo-avian revolution of
modern birds the placental mammal
radiation the origin of the genus homo
and finally the upper paleolithic human
revolution
[Applause]
now that is a serious list of big jumps
in the fossil record if you look at the
technical literature we can see
references to a fish explosion a bird
explosion a dinosaur explosion a mammal
explosion and even the origin of our own
genus homo has been referred to as a big
bang theory of human evolution because
we see in throughout the fossil record
different types of organisms appearing
abruptly without this gradual change
that darwin's theory predicted
in the middle of the carboniferous
period we find the first flying insects
and the striking thing is there are no
fossil precursors for them there are no
credible transitions just presto this
fully articulated models just how bad is
the fossil record for darwin's theory
anthropologist jeffrey schwartz who
supports evolution is blunt most major
groups of organisms he says appear in
the fossil record full-blown and raring
to go in contradiction to darwin's
depiction of evolution some scientists
say the transitions in the fossil record
just look abrupt and that will find the
gradual transitions if we just keep on
digging beckley thinks that explanation
is no longer credible and here's why
imagine you have a new hobby and you
walk along the beach and you collect
starfish and shells and snails every day
you find something new but over time
repetition sets in and ultimately you
reach a day where you only find over and
over again what you already found and
then you know that you have sampled
enough to know what is out there
exactly this method is applied in
paleontology to statistically test the
completeness of the fossil record is
called the collector's curve
in most groups of organisms we know that
the fossil record is sufficiently
complete to be sure that the gaps that
we see are not artifacts of
undersampling or of an incomplete fossil
record but actually data to be explained
some evolutionists basically admit that
the many expected transitional fossils
don't actually exist they argue that the
fossil record simply didn't have enough
time to record the transitions that was
the view of two leading evolutionists
who proposed a theory called punctuated
equilibrium which said that basically
species change so abruptly they don't
have enough time to leave any
transitional forms and that was how they
accounted for the lack of transitional
forms in the fossil record but
punctuated equilibrium has a problem if
major transitions really took place too
quickly to be captured by the fossil
record there would be even less time
available for genetic copying errors to
accumulate into beneficial features and
evolutionary theory already faces a huge
time crunch
when we do mathematical calculations
using standard textbook methods of
population genetics there simply is not
enough time in the fossil record for
random mutation and natural selection to
produce the changes that we observe
let's look at whale evolution whales are
said to have evolved from a land mammal
in under 11 million years but was that
enough time to produce all the mutations
required to create a whale
richard sternberg has two phds in
biology and was a researcher at the
smithsonian he has studied the evolution
of whales in detail
imagine you were going to take your
volkswagen and have a submersible if you
go down a few thousand feet
how many engineering changes would you
have to make to your vehicle to
accomplish that well it's similar going
from a four-legged fully
terrestrial mammal to an organism that
can complete its life cycle out at sea
uh give birth there suckle the young
dive down a thousand feet or so hunt
fishes etc
just how many changes are we talking
about here i would say from ten thousand
to 20 000 maybe more traits had to
change
could unguided evolution engineer that
many changes in the time allowed how
about even a single new body part let's
say the origin of tail fluke so if you
imagine say that two genes are involved
according to some estimates that would
take about 43 million years for those
two changes there simply is not enough
time in this case we can prove
mathematically that it is impossible
that darwinian evolution
was the mechanism by which these
supposed whale transitional forms
evolved in the series in other words
darwinian evolution can't even engineer
a tail fluke in the time allowed never
mind the tens of thousands of changes
needed to convert the land mammal into a
fully operational whale so if darwinian
mechanisms can't get it done in the time
available what can stephen meyer author
of the new york times bestseller darwin
stout explains whenever you see new
forms of life arising you also have to
have new information it's very much like
in our computer world you want to give
your computer a new function you have to
provide information in the form of
software and something very similar is
true in life if you want to build a new
form of animal life you have to have new
organs and tissues but new organs and
tissues require new genetic information
and other forms of information and this
information has to come from somewhere
we know it where it does come from
if it is software programmers if it is
architects if it is engineers if it is
artists they are all capable of creating
something complex and new because they
are intelligent minds and intelligent
minds are the only causes we know in the
whole known universe which are capable
of creating this effect this is not
based on an argument from ignorance but
it's just based on a rational influence
to the best explanation
scientists have been studying the fossil
record for hundreds of years and the
evidence is now clear if we just take
off our materialist glasses and look
living things full of function purpose
and design do not just appear by
accident a mind played a role in the
creation of new forms of life including
you and me we are not materialists
we see the human soul
we experience flow
we live with purpose
we fight for justice
we are the quiet majority and we will be
quiet no longer
[Music]