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Series Code: EI
Program Code: EI190005S
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00:36 Hi, I'm Sven string, and you are joining us
00:39 for another episode of, Evolution Impossible; 00:42 a series where we're exploring whether evolution, 00:45 the major scientific theory about the origin of life, 00:48 is even possible. 00:49 It's great to have you back in the studio, Ellie. 00:52 And a new member of our panel is Justin Torossian. 00:56 ~ Good to have you. - Good to be here. 00:57 And of course, Morgan Vincent, good friend of mine. 00:59 Thanks for joining us as well. 01:01 And of course, it's really good to have Dr. John Ashton 01:04 with us once again, taking us on this journey 01:06 with your expertise and research as well. 01:10 So it may sound like our discussion is going to be 01:13 fairly dead today. 01:14 We will be focusing on the remains of animals 01:17 that are no longer alive. 01:18 But let me assure you that this is really very interesting. 01:22 And what is really surprising is that the fossil record 01:25 actually supports the Bible and not evolution. 01:29 Isn't that amazing. 01:30 So let's jump right into the deep today. 01:33 And my question for you at the start, John, is this: 01:36 How are fossils actually formed? 01:39 Right, so the fossils are the remains of animals 01:45 that have lived in the past and have died, and have been 01:49 preserved in some way. 01:51 So normally when animals die, or plant matter, 01:57 plant matter rots away, it's eaten by bacteria, 01:59 worms, so forth. 02:00 Animals similarly are eaten by worms, maggots, 02:03 or other animals, broken down by bacteria. 02:06 So they decay fairly quickly. 02:08 So, for example, a few years ago we had massive floods 02:12 in Queensland. 02:14 I think an area the size of the state of 02:16 New South Wales was flooded. 02:18 But it didn't result in a whole lot of fossilized kangaroos, 02:23 possums, emus, lizards, and so forth. 02:26 So we require fairly unique conditions to fossilize 02:32 a previously living organism. 02:35 So tell us, what are those conditions that we need 02:38 to have fossilization? 02:39 Right, so very quickly we have to protect 02:42 that organism from the natural breakdown 02:47 mechanisms or predators, and so forth. 02:50 And that usually requires very rapid burial, 02:54 in a way too that is going to preserve it from 02:56 rotting mechanisms and so forth. 02:59 So very rapid burial is usually the key situation. 03:04 Now this requires if you have a large animal like, you know, 03:07 a big dinosaur or whale, or something like that, 03:10 then you need enormous amount of material 03:12 to fossilize something like that. 03:14 But we find fossils of, you know, insects, plants. 03:17 One of the fascinating things, of course, is that we find 03:20 fossils of soft bodied animals like jellyfish 03:24 and octopus, and this sort of thing. 03:26 So again, here we require very rapid 03:30 covering of the material and burying of the material. 03:36 Also we find fossilized 03:38 footprints and this sort of thing. 03:39 We know, you know, you go walk along the beach, 03:41 everybody walks along the beach, it doesn't mean 03:42 that you're going to leave fossil footprints behind. 03:45 So it requires pretty unique conditions to do that. 03:49 Other types, particularly of wood, can become fossilized 03:53 by, once the wood is buried, it can be prevented by rotting 03:58 as minerals seep through the rock strata, 04:02 and cell by cell the material might be replaced by silica. 04:06 And so, this way we can actually observe the structures, 04:10 internal structures, of animals and plant matter 04:15 that has lived previously. 04:17 So that's how we know, for example, about the structure 04:19 of trilobite eyes and this sort of thing 04:21 that lived, you know, hundreds of millions of years ago. 04:23 So it's a fascinating process. 04:25 But it only occurs under unique situations that enable 04:29 very rapid burial. 04:31 And that generally is some sort of really major catastrophe. 04:35 And so, if we consider sort of like the Queensland floods, 04:39 that was a major area in terms of our life, our current, 04:44 you know, experiences in the world today. 04:46 But what buried whales and dinosaurs and all these 04:50 massive beds of fossils that we find where we have 04:53 thousands of fossilized creatures? 04:55 A catastrophic event totally unlike anything else 04:59 recorded in human history other than in 05:02 the flood account of the Bible. 05:04 Very, very interesting. 05:06 Just wanted to ask you, did you have any questions 05:08 for John about how fossils are formed, and fossils in general? 05:13 I was interested to know, Dr. Ashton, I read in your book 05:16 about different graveyards of fossils that have been found, 05:20 like dinosaur graveyards. 05:21 And I'm interested to know whether there's ever been 05:24 human fossil graveyards found? 05:25 And if not, why you think that might be. 05:28 Yes, well that's a very challenging question. 05:30 We don't find those human fossil graveyards 05:36 to my knowledge. 05:37 We find occasionally fossil hominoid species, 05:41 but they're probably interpreted as being fairly recent, 05:45 I would say, although they're dated sometimes as 05:48 a couple of million years old. 05:50 But there are isolated skeletons or remains of 05:54 skeletons that are found. 05:55 Of course, these are the basis that people argue for 05:59 the evolution of humans when they find some of these 06:02 hominoid type fossils. 06:04 But no, we don't find fossil graveyards like that. 06:08 But humans are pretty intelligent, of course. 06:11 But I don't have an answer for that. 06:15 I was wondering, you know, you brought up in this chapter, 06:18 it was very interesting that 98 to 99 percent 06:22 of the species that we find in the fossil record are extinct. 06:26 ~ Yes. - And I was amazed to hear that. 06:29 Because evolutionary theory would suggest 06:31 that you go from very few and very simple organisms 06:35 to more complex and more numerous, and more complex 06:38 and more numerous. 06:39 But it seems that the fossil records suggest the opposite. 06:43 That there were many more species, you know, 06:45 that existed before than now. 06:48 And so, does that turn evolutionary theory on its 06:51 head in that sense? 06:53 And if so, how do your average evolutionary scientists 06:57 explain that? 06:59 ~ Well, I don't think... 07:00 Well, I don't know of any explanation, but it's true. 07:03 What we find in the fossil record is a record of 07:06 fully formed creatures, and then they become extinct. 07:11 So the picture that is portrayed in the textbooks 07:15 and the standard books on evolution, and this sort of 07:18 thing, is that we have these layers over time, 07:22 we have these more primitive creatures at the bottom layers, 07:25 and then as we get up to higher layers they're more complex. 07:28 And therefore this is this pattern of evolution 07:30 from simpler creatures up to more complex, you know, 07:34 more advance creatures over that period of time. 07:37 So that's what is portrayed in the textbooks. 07:40 But what we actually find is very different to that. 07:45 And I guess it's probably good to understand 07:47 how this whole concept of geology and paleontology 07:53 came about if we look at the history. 07:55 Because the history explains the thinking now 07:59 of how geologists and paleontologists 08:01 have been taught, and how they then interpret what they find. 08:05 So if we go back in the mid 1600's, for example, 08:10 there was a geologist, a scientist, and he proposed 08:17 that the lowest layers were older than the upper layers. 08:21 And that's very logical. 08:23 And then he proposed that if there was a volcanic intrusion 08:26 that went through those, that had to happen after 08:29 all those layers were laid down. 08:31 And again, that all makes sense. 08:33 And then there was a guy who was a contractor digging canals 08:39 in London and Europe, William Smith in the late 1700's, 08:44 and he was very observant. 08:46 His men were digging the canals and he noticed, 08:48 "Well look, I've got a layer of rocks here." 08:51 It might be a mudstone, then a limestone, 08:53 and then a shale, and then a conglomerate, 08:56 and then another mudstone. 08:58 And he observed this same pattern when he was digging 09:02 canals over in France. 09:03 And he also noticed that they had certain fossils in them. 09:06 And he proposed that from the fossils in a particular layer, 09:10 you could identify that strata. 09:12 And that strata was not just local, it was wide spread. 09:16 You know, so the same strata in England were over in France. 09:20 Now about 30 or so years later, Lyell was doing research 09:24 in the Alps, and he observed all these layers. 09:28 And the fossils again seemed to be more, or the creatures seemed 09:32 to be more complex, or higher sort of creatures. 09:36 The higher up the layers, they were more complex. 09:39 And of course, this meant that they were younger 09:43 or further along in our timescale. 09:45 And he proposed that these fossils could be actually 09:49 used to identify the layers worldwide 09:52 in the geologic column. 09:54 And so, hence they set up this dating system of the columns. 09:58 They were set up that way. 10:01 So when scientists look at these fossils now, 10:07 they're interpreting them in terms of these ages. 10:11 Now these ages were actually calculated on the basis 10:15 of the thickness of the deposit. 10:17 So if you had a deposit that might be a kilometer deep 10:21 and had millions of layers, then Lyell proposed, 10:25 well that must be millions of years old 10:27 because these layers probably represented 10:29 annual layers coming down. 10:31 Another geologist, James Hutton, had proposed around again 10:37 in the late 1700's that the processes on earth were 10:41 millions of years old and it happened very gradually. 10:44 So when scientists look at these particular situations, 10:50 this is the way we're taught in university. 10:56 You know, I can remember actually I got a high 10:58 distinction in stratigraphy when I was doing geology. 11:02 And when we look at these structures, 11:05 that's how we interpret those fossils layers; 11:08 as over long periods of time. 11:10 Now when Darwin's theory is superimposed on this, 11:13 the whole thing is, oh, well this is the gradual 11:15 progression of creatures. 11:18 And that's what is in their mind. 11:19 When we step back, though, and we look at it, 11:23 and we find, well hang on, there's actually no evolutionary 11:28 development of particular animals. 11:30 So for example, you've got trilobites, which are those 11:33 little sort of like pill bug type creatures 11:36 that lived at the bottom and that had segmented bodies, 11:39 lots of legs, big head, very complex eyes. 11:44 A lot of genetic code. 11:46 Their digestive system, all this sort of thing. 11:49 And they're right at the very lower of the Cambrian rocks, 11:53 which are among the oldest fossil bearing rocks. 11:56 And then under them we can find thousands of meters, 12:01 well thousands of feet, a thousand meters or so, 12:04 of layers of rock with no fossils in them. 12:08 So they just suddenly appear fully formed. 12:11 And it's the same with insects, flying insects, 12:15 that just suddenly appear in the fossil record. 12:17 Flowering plants, they just suddenly appear. 12:20 They don't change. 12:22 And then they become extinct. 12:24 And this whole pattern, as you talked about earlier, 12:29 is a pattern of extinction. 12:31 Al these creatures are there, they don't change, 12:35 and then they're extinct and we don't see them again. 12:39 And as you say, 98% to 99% of all the creatures 12:45 that have been preserved as fossils, 12:47 and we know living today, are now extinct. 12:52 It's huge. 12:53 And it's directly opposite, as you were saying, 12:56 to what the theory of evolution would teach. 12:58 But because scientists are enamored with this 13:01 gradual progression and that evolution occurred, 13:04 that thinking is just superimposed 13:06 and I guess they're just blinded to it. 13:08 And it's never questioned. 13:10 So John, where can we go to actually see this 13:13 geological column? 13:15 Is there a place where we can see the entire column? 13:18 No, well as far as I know, there is no 13:22 complete section of column. 13:23 There's a big slab, of course, exposed in the Grand Canyon. 13:28 There's a section there on the east face, I think it is, 13:33 that covers about 300 million years, 13:37 conventional dating sort of thing. 13:41 And one of the fascinating aspects of that, 13:43 again this fits the flood model. 13:45 See, the geology textbooks tell us that there are about 13:51 five extinction events that occurred. 13:56 But they space them. 13:58 There's one extinction event they date 14:00 about 450 million years ago, 14:02 another one about 400 million years ago, 14:03 another one 250 million years ago, 14:06 another one 200 million years ago, 14:08 and another one 65 million years at the end of the Cretaceous. 14:11 So the geologists acknowledge that these were global 14:19 extinction events involving water. 14:22 ~ Hmm, interesting. 14:23 Involving water. It's amazing. 14:25 Right. 14:27 Now okay, they're dated, as we can see, up to hundreds 14:30 of millions of years apart. 14:33 But the thing is, if we look at that Grand Canyon section there, 14:36 we've got 300 million years of parallel layers 14:42 conformably laying on top of one another. 14:44 Now by the way, "conformably," geologists mean there's no 14:47 signs of erosion in between. 14:49 ~ Interesting. 14:51 This just blows the whole concept of million years of age. 14:55 You know, I've got a gravel driveway... 14:56 What would the evolutionist's explanation be for those layers 15:00 where there's no erosion in between the layers? 15:03 Well I don't think they have one. 15:04 - There is no answer. - This is the whole puzzle. 15:07 There's a few paleontologists and people that speak out 15:12 about this, you know; and this is a major problem. 15:15 And they recognize, well hang on, we don't actually see 15:19 evolution occurring in the fossil layers. 15:22 We just see, you know, animals formed, they stay the same, 15:26 they then become extinct. 15:28 And also, we don't see this erosion occurring in between. 15:34 And so, the answer they have runs along the lines, 15:39 well, these conditions must have been laid down 15:42 under or in some sort of lake, and it was very uniform, 15:46 it was very contained. 15:48 And so over this long period of time, yeah, it was just 15:51 stable for a long period of time. 15:53 But these same layers that span this period 15:57 also contain fossils of dinosaurs. 16:01 You know, great big animals that we know 16:04 have to be buried under catastrophic conditions. 16:07 And so, this is the major problem that they have. 16:10 We've got no erosion in between the layers, 16:13 and yet we have to bury these animals like big whales, 16:18 dinosaurs, stegosaurus, you know, that are 16:20 sort of 30 meters long, and this sort of thing. 16:22 - That would have been buried in flood type events. 16:24 Well, you have to have a massive catastrophic event 16:28 to bury those things. 16:30 But the other thing that we find too in these layers 16:33 that, again, conformably sit on one another, 16:36 we can find cross-bedding. 16:38 Now cross-bedding, if you'll imagine a sand dune, 16:40 and you're blowing sand over the top of it, 16:42 you get a layer here, and a layer here. 16:44 And so this layer is on an angle. 16:46 From this angle we can actually calculate 16:49 the velocities of the fluid that is causing the dune. 16:52 Now the same effect occurs under water. 16:55 And from the slope of these and the study of these 16:58 bedding angles, no not bedding, cross-bedding, 17:02 we can actually calculate the speed of the water. 17:04 And the speeds of the water are equivalent to 17:09 what you get in a tsunami type scenario. 17:12 The other thing is too, when we look at these beds, 17:15 like that are exposed in the Grand Canyon, 17:18 like if you look at the Morrison Formation 17:21 that goes through there, this is a massive formation. 17:25 Over 1.5 million square kilometers. 17:29 ~ So this is a huge. 17:30 1.5 million square kilometers is huge. 17:33 It spreads from New Mexico up to Canada. 17:36 Right, that's a huge slab. 17:38 And so, we have water that's been carried, 17:42 the material that has been carried and spread 17:45 as a thin layer over this massive area of land. 17:48 This is no little lake sediment sort of settling down. 17:52 This is a massive event. 17:55 And as I said, so we have this massive event occurring 18:00 at these different times. 18:02 The other fascinating thing that often isn't portrayed 18:05 is that if we look at the surface of the earth, 18:09 only about 5% of the earth's crust is sedimentary rock; 18:13 that is, rock laid down under water. 18:15 ~ So it's a very thin layer? 18:16 Well, there's a thin layer of crust, about the thickness 18:20 comparatively of an eggshell on an egg. 18:22 That's the earth's crust. 18:24 But only about 5% of that crust is sedimentary rock. 18:30 So only a very small percentage of it. 18:32 But yet, 75% of the earth's surface is covered 18:37 with sedimentary rock. 18:39 And so, what it means is that we've got this very thin layer 18:44 of sedimentary rock spread all over the earth. 18:47 Matter of fact, at the end of the Cretaceous, 18:49 the textbooks tell us the entire earth was covered by water. 18:53 ~ So you sort of think... 18:54 So it's the Noah's flood scenario. 18:57 So if you're thinking that the earth was billions of years, 19:00 you'd think that the sedimentary layers would be much thicker. 19:03 There would be more layers than just this small 19:06 amount that we actually have. 19:07 Well, I think it's more that, what they're saying is that 19:10 there's got to be gradual processes that have occurred 19:15 over a period of time and that they are more of 19:17 a series of localized floods. 19:20 But the other scientific observation that mitigates 19:23 against that is, that we find the same pattern of rock layers 19:28 all over the world. 19:30 And so your layers of quartzite, conglomerates, 19:34 and so forth, this same pattern, same pattern of limestone 19:37 and this sort of thing. 19:38 If there are a whole series of local floods and local lakes, 19:41 and all this sort of thing, that laid down all these 19:43 beautiful parallel layers, you wouldn't expect to find 19:46 the same ones in Europe, North America, Australia, 19:49 South Africa, and Asia. 19:50 Right? 19:51 And so, the evidence is so clear that we had a global 19:56 catastrophic event and it buried all these animals all at once. 20:01 So this period of time that they spread over 450 million... 20:07 Or was it from 450 to 65? 20:10 400 million years, thereabouts. 20:13 All those different extinction events, 20:15 we have all this overwhelming evidence 20:17 that it must have been at the same time. 20:20 Otherwise, we'd have massive erosion in between. 20:24 Massive erosion in between. 20:26 That's an amazing amount of detail. 20:27 Morgan, we do want to bring you into the conversation as well. 20:30 So, do you have any questions for John today? 20:33 Sure, yeah, touching on what we've spoken about so far, 20:36 just a question surrounding the time frame of the fossils. 20:40 Often science is something to be testable, observable. 20:45 And we can see these large, very large time frames. 20:48 How do we reconcile that with realizing that, you know, 20:53 was someone there to observe 450 million years ago? 20:57 ~ Yeah, sure. 20:58 So this is very interesting. 21:00 Those time scales are based on the uniformitarian 21:05 principle; assuming that the surface of the earth 21:10 after millions of years has undergone steady processes. 21:14 And so, when they count up all the layers, 21:17 that's what they've done. 21:19 They've look at sedimentary layers, they've counted up 21:21 how many of those we've got per meter, 21:24 and then we've got something that's a thousand meters thick, 21:27 so therefore it must be so many millions of years old. 21:29 But just by calculation. 21:31 And that's how the geologic column was essentially dated 21:34 by Lyell and the geologists that followed him. 21:38 It was simply on the basis of the thickness of the layers. 21:42 And there's no place on the earth where 21:44 the entire column is there. 21:46 Sections are exposed in different areas. 21:49 So they measure the thickness in the different layers, 21:52 and they'd say, "Look, the top of this layer we've got 21:54 this particular fossil. 21:55 That particular fossil corresponds to the 21:57 bottom of that particular layer. 21:59 So we're going to put that on top of that." 22:01 And we kept on adding these. 22:03 And we assign then ages to the particular types of fossils 22:08 that are used to identify the layers. 22:10 So that's how the different layers you hear about; 22:12 Jurassic, Ordovician, and all of this, and so forth, 22:15 Jurassic, Cretaceous, all these sort of particular periods, 22:19 they are characterized by particular fossils 22:22 that are the key fossils that label those particular layers. 22:27 And that's how those ages were worked out. 22:29 Now later on we can talk about radiometric dating, 22:34 but radiometric dating gives a wide variability of results. 22:39 And generally they can find a result that will 22:42 match the fossil age. 22:43 And once that happened in the 1940's in particular, 22:47 that more or less cemented these time scales. 22:50 But there's a lot of problems with these time scales 22:52 that we can discuss probably another time. 22:55 Dr. Ashton, I'm curious to know, taking you back to the 23:00 fossils that are found in the different rock layers 23:02 and the different time periods that they assign to those, 23:06 it seems obvious to me from what you've already said 23:08 that it doesn't support evolutionary theory, 23:10 but I'm curious to know what the creationist theory is 23:13 about why there's different types of fossils 23:16 found in the different rock layers, 23:17 and how those animals got separated. 23:19 Is there a particular explanation to that? 23:23 Okay, now there's two aspects to that. 23:25 And firstly, down at the very bottom layers we tend to find 23:29 creatures that lived under water. 23:32 They lived at the ocean bottom. 23:33 And fair enough, that's where we would expect to 23:36 find them in those layers. 23:37 But the other thing is, that the fossil layers 23:39 are much more mixed up than we see these 23:42 nice clear outlines. 23:45 For example... 23:47 So it's a real simplification of the fossil record 23:49 to have this gradual transition. 23:51 And earlier on, we need to remember that these 23:55 key fossils were set up fairly early on before, you know, 24:00 all the fossils had been discovered. 24:03 And there were major issues. 24:04 For example, they found fossils, polystrate fossils, for example, 24:08 in Nova Scotia, a classic example, where you've got 24:11 trees going through a whole series of layers. 24:14 And then inside the trees they find the remains of animals 24:18 that have been washed in there, and so forth. 24:20 So what about the explanation that somehow the trees just 24:24 got jammed in by a violent kind of force, volcanic activity, 24:27 just straight down through the geological column? 24:30 Does that sort of count, does that make sense 24:33 in terms of why the trees are all the way through? 24:37 Well no, I think studies that might have happened after 24:40 Mount St. Helens and so forth suggest that, no, 24:42 these trees are there, they are floating in the water, 24:45 and then they're sort of buried. 24:46 And that's why they tend to be more vertical. 24:50 But the other thing is, yes, the fossils are far more mixed up. 24:53 For example, there are lots of mammals that existed 24:58 at the same time as dinosaurs. 25:00 And in some of the huge fossil beds in Mongolia, for example, 25:04 we find this; we find the fossils of mammals mixed up 25:07 with the fossils of dinosaurs, and this sort of thing. 25:10 But one of the guys, Dr. Carl Werner, published some books, 25:15 and he did a study of museum displays. 25:19 And he reports that in none of the museum displays 25:21 did he see mammals on display with dinosaurs. 25:25 They were always sort of as being occurring later, 25:28 but yet they're mixed up. 25:29 And this is the thing, that they tend to be mixed up 25:33 much more, and not as separated as often portrayed. 25:41 ~ Very interesting. 25:43 So how would evolutionists explain the fact that you have 25:46 dinosaurs and mammals in the same geological layer? 25:52 What would their explanation for that be? 25:55 Well, they have to accept that they had evolved by that stage. 25:58 - Don't they? - Right. 26:00 Look, there are so many problems with the standard 26:05 paleontological long age interpretation. 26:08 There are absolutely massive problems with it. 26:11 But they've got nowhere else to go 26:13 other than, you know, the Bible record. 26:15 I mean, up to the 1830's and 1840's 26:18 flood geology was taught in British universities, 26:22 most European universities, and it made a lot of sense. 26:25 But the attempt to accommodate Darwinian evolution and stretch 26:29 everything out, we run into a whole lot of problems. 26:33 And really, the best fit of the data is Noah's flood exactly. 26:37 It fits the data perfectly. 26:40 I have one other question for you Dr. Ashton, 26:42 just regarding the way fossils are dated. 26:45 And you mentioned that evolutionists usually use 26:48 uniformitarianism. 26:50 They assume that everything was the same in the past 26:52 as it is today. 26:53 And I'm wondering why they use uniformitarianism 26:56 when they themselves believe in things like ice ages and 26:59 that kind of thing that would obviously skew those results? 27:03 Well, that's a question that we will have to look at 27:05 in our next episode. 27:07 And so, the fossil record is actually evidence 27:10 of extinction and not evolution. 27:13 That's quite an eye opening insight. 27:15 And with another key beam in the theory of evolution collapsing, 27:19 where does that leave the theory? 27:21 I'd highly recommend that you go to your favorite 27:23 online bookstore and get Dr. John Ashton's book, 27:26 Evolution Impossible. 27:28 You know, as Ellie was pointing out, 27:30 there's so many details about the fossils 27:32 that we just could not talk about. 27:34 But don't worry, his book is easy to understand. 27:38 We'll be continuing our investigation of evolution 27:41 next time, looking to see whether the fossil record 27:44 shows the evolutionary links which are needed. 27:47 Now if you've missed any of our past programs, 27:49 you can go to the 3ABN website and watch them there. 27:52 We look forward to seeing you next time. |
Revised 2020-02-24