Guest Post: Chauncey C. Riddle
Chauncey C. Riddle is a long-time friend and colleague. He has recently read and reviewed the book, “Tornado in a Junkyard” by James Perloff. I found Chauncey’s observation of the material to be worth considering. I asked him if I could share his thoughts with my readers and he consented.
Chauncey is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He is a religious leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has written many articles for the Ensign, Sunstone, and BYU Studies. He has also written countless articles and published his book, “Think Independently”.
Book Report:
Tornado in a Junkyard: The Relentless Myth of Darwinism
(The author says that believing in organic evolution is like believing a tornado went through a junkyard and produced a functioning Boeing 747.)
Author: James Perloff, Refuge Books, Burlington, Massachusetts, 1999
Ch1. Baby Boomer Tunes Out, Turns On, Bums out, Burns out.
The author’s life as a hippie.
Ch.2 Problems Carved in Stone.
A repeat of the current Darwinian hypothesis, with wondering why some fossils stay the same through supposed millions of years.
Ch.3 Marvelous Mutations.
The discovery of genes proved a roadblock to the theory of evolution, but the idea of mutations came to the rescue. But most mutations are deadly and are not passed on. The chances of creating a new species by mutation alone are calculated by some evolutionists to be one over 3.6 x 102738.
Ch.4 Logic Storms Darwin’s Gates
If gradual mutations made new species, how do the intermediate forms survive? Would a half-ling enable survival? The transition from scales to feathers does not seem to offer a survival advantage. How did the human eye evolve gradually to advantage its possessors? All the organs of the human body would need to mutate together to produce a working harmony.
“No matter how far back we go in the fossil record of previous animal life upon the earth we find no trace of any animal forms which are intermediate between the major groups or phyla.”(Austin H. Clark, a zoologist of the Smithsonian Institution.) “Evolution is not visible in the past, via the fossil record. It is not visible in the present, whether we consider an organism as a whole, or on the microscopic planes of biochemistry and molecular biology, where, as we have seen, the theory faces numerous difficulties.”
Ch.5 Origin of the Specious
Darwin’s supposed 13 species of finches in the Galapagos Islands turned out all to be only one species. There are no recorded occurrences of a new species arising. Darwinists invoke breeding experiments as evidence of evolution but breeding only produces variations of pheno-type, never of the genotype. Microevolution does occur, but macroevolution (new species) has never been observed. (CCR note: On the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin Time Magazine published a cover story on his life, giving evidence of evolution. But all the evidence were the changes within species and not one of them was a change of species.)
Ch. 6 Darwin vs. Design
Could chance have created the sculptures at Mt. Rushmore? The biology of the human being is far more complicated than Mt. Rushmore. Could chance have done that in a billion years? The design proves a designer. We never suppose that chance produced any of the clothing we buy in a store. Creationism can’t be true, say the evolutionists, because it cannot be observed. But evolution has the same problem; it also cannot be observed.
Ch. 7 Vegas Odds on Life
Natural selection may be used to explain the change in living forms, but it does not explain how life itself came to be. No case of spontaneous generation has ever been proved. The amino acids found to have been produced by chance under very favorable conditions are only a fraction of the complexity required to create and sustain life. “Like evolution’s other branches, theories of origins require as much faith as religion.” (p. 75)
Ch. 8 An Ape Man for All Seasons
By 1950 all supposed human-like remains had been shown to be frauds.
Ch. 9: The Reigning World Chimp
Search for missing links as required by Darwinian theory has produced nothing substantial.
Ch. 10 Old Myths Never Die-They Only Fade Away.
Haeckel’s “biogenetic law” has been shown to be a fraud produced by altering embryo representations. But it is still used by proponents of evolution. Evolutionists invented “punctuated evolution” to explain the rapid change necessary for the theory. In spite of its many deficiencies, the theory of evolution refuses to die because so many want it to be true.
Ch. 11 The Big Bang goes Blooey
The Big Bang theory defies the First Law of Thermodynamics, the conservation of energy.
“Design is suggested not only by the Earth but by the very structure of the universe.” p. 129
Ch. 12 Earth, Dahling, You don’t look a Day Over Five Billion
Our sun is observed to be shrinking. That rules out billions of years for the earth. If the earth is as old as evolution requires, there are millions of missing meteorites. Comets present a problem to evolution. There should be a lot more helium if the earth is very old. If the earth is very old, the magnetic field would have made life impossible because the magnetism of the earth is declining at a steady rate. The Mississippi River delta seems to be only 4400 years old. If mankind has been on the earth for a long time, drastic overpopulation should be the case.
The ocean’s salt content and sediments suggest a young earth.
Ch. 13 Assumptions Aplenty.
Carbon dating gives widely varying results and rests on a number of unprovable assumptions.
Radiometric dating depends on many assumptions and requires as much faith as believing in creation.
Ch. 14 Rocks of Ages
The ages of rocks are usually assigned by the fossils they contain, assuming the theory of evolution. Then those fossils are used to justify the theory of evolution. Bending layers of rock strata should be greatly shattered if they were formed long ago and bent later, but they are not.
The bones in many fossil beds show that there was some great destruction that contorted them.
Ch. 15 The Flood Remembered
More than 200 human cultures have traditions of a universal flood.
Ch. 16 Dinosaurs, Dragons, and Ice.
Many cultures not only have traditions of the flood but also of dragons. Dragons are like dinosaurs. If there was a universal flood, it would have created the conditions necessary for an Ice Age.
Ch. 17 Trial by Hollywood
The theory of evolution was greatly advanced by the play and movie Inherit the Wind, a twisted recollection of the Scopes trial about evolution in Tennessee.
Ch. 18 Have You Murdered Anyone Since Breakfast?
Darwinism provided so-called “scientific” grounds for racism. This was one justification for eugenics and for the Nazi theory of a superior race and for Stalin’s murder of millions.
Ch. 19 The Boomers Doomed
The rising generation today is fed on evolution and prefers to believe it and not the Christianity taught by parents. Teen suicides have greatly increased. It became illegal to teach about God but perfectly legal to teach there is no God. The Supreme Court legislated by its actions.
Ch. 20 Good Company
People who believe in creation are prevented from publishing their views in most university situations. People who advocate creationism or intelligent design are discriminated against.
Isaac Newton would have a hard time getting published today because of his firm belief in God.
Ch.21 You and the Man Upstairs.
Science should be based on supporting observations, but evolution has few. It is poor science.
Christianity is more about your personal relationship with God than about going to church.
Thank you, Chauncey
David W. Allan
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