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Creation 15(3):19, June 1993

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Evolution—the non-starter

by Renton Maclachlan

For a race to be run, it must have a start. If the contestants are corpses no race will be run, because none of them will come out of the blocks.

In a similar way, if it can be proved that evolution could not have started occurring, then it could not have occurred. So, if it is impossible to get a first cell up and running naturalistically, as all the evidence to date indicates, then biological evolution is dead on the starting blocks.

It is no good saying, as a Professor of Zoology from the University of Otago in New Zealand said to me, that ‘… any difficulties encountered by those concerned with chemical evolution and biogenesis (origin of life] are irrelevant to the status of organic evolution itself.’ The evidence from zoology and biology, he said, ‘is such that we can be highly confident that evolution did indeed “get going”.’

With all due respect to the learned gentleman, these difficulties are not at all irrelevant. They are the death knell of evolution. No matter how ingenious the evidence for later evolution, if the process could not have started, it could not have occurred. It is as simple as that.

It follows that if evolution could not have begun, and therefore has not occurred, the things that are taken to be evidence that it has occurred must have been misinterpreted and need to be thought about some other way.