God resting after Creation, Cathedral of Monreale, Sicily

Available from St. Bonaventure Publications and Amazon

Book Length: 204 pages

The doctrine of Evolutionism, despite its inherent incompatibility with the Faith, has few voices from within the Church that are willing to challenge it. This is not, as is imagined by some, because this scientific theory is a “settled fact” which we must now twist our theology around. To the contrary, there is much evidence which weighs against its “infallible” arguments; a good number of these surprisingly come from scientists who are firmly in the Evolutionist camp, yet have dared to question the supposedly undeniable proofs which are continually presented as unquestioned facts to the public. Rather, it is a combined result of human respect and ignorance which leads Catholics to refuse to challenge the world in this doctrine, which implies not only a “scientific” explanation of the origins of man and animals, but an entirely oppositional worldview to that of Christianity.

Wallace Johnson, author of this book and once a “convinced evolutionist” himself, puts it plainly that this system of thought must be attacked, for he writes: “Discredit Evolution and you topple Marxism, Humanism, and their apostate ‘Christian’ ally, Modernism” (7). As Johnson explains in his excellent opening to this work, this unholy trinity of error all derive key aspects of their teachings from the warped anthropology which emanates from an acceptance of Darwinism. Following these and other points, he takes the reader on a journey through many branches of science and the ages of dim time to demonstrate how baseless this materialist explanation of history really is. Due to the wide range of subject matters discussed, only some of them will be therefore evaluated in this review.

The proponents of Evolution have claimed that their theory cannot be tested in the way that scientific ideas usually are, because its modern iteration (neo-Darwinism) principally relies on the idea that mutations in the genetic code create variations within species that—over the course of thousands and even millions of years—forms new species.¹ According to them, the massive quantity of time it would take to observe these changes makes it impossible for humans to observe them in nature or in a laboratory. Thus, we must rely on their interpretation of the fossil record as evidence that this speciation has occurred in the distant past, since it cannot possibly be observed happening now. Yet, the problem at hand is not really one of time; it is a problem of generations, for a breeding population of animals with incredibly brief lifespans should be able to produce the kind of results proposed by Evolutionism. There have been experiments on such creatures in an attempt to “prove” the “fact” of Evolution has actually been tried in the case of the fruit fly—which has an average lifespan of 40 to 50 days—as Johnson explains:

The hopelessness of mutations to produce evolution was confirmed by classic experiments on the fruit fly. Fruit flies breed rapidly. Furthermore, they were given doses of radiation which speeded up their mutation rate by 15,000 percent. After a long experiment involving 25-million fruit flies, they refused to turn into anything else. Certainly there was plenty of variation: stunted wings, lack of wings, yellow eyes, useless eyes, abnormal feet and bodies. There was grotesqueness; there were freaks. Perhaps the strangest was an apparent foot instead of a proboscus. But it was a fruit fly’s foot, not a bull’s foot. And they were fruit fly wings and bodies, though deformed. Never was there a start of a new organ of a different species. And, most important: No matter how monstrous the offspring, it was able to breed with the parent stock, if it was capable of breeding at all. This meant that it remained the same fruit fly species. Mutations can do all sorts of things to the organs of a species, but never produce a new organ. For example, a mutation can produce a baby with deformed arms, but that is a different thing from producing a baby with wings, or a baby with wheels.

(25)

It is, unfortunately, quite apparent why these experiments² are never taught to impressionable middle school students. The present system—and not just the scientific establishment, but indeed the political and cultural establishments as well—need the big lie of Evolutionism to justify the inhumane nature of modern society. They can only justify the carelessly constant technological “progress” under a Darwinian perspective, for those who “adapt” to the new society are its elect; those who are left behind are the “unfit” and those who simply dare to question this alleged need for progress are branded as “luddites”.

If the system was to adopt a vision of humanity rooted in God’s truth—that is, man being made in the image and likeness of the Almighty—its elite could not justify their promotion of sexual deviancy as social progress, for such deviancy obscures the image of God in man. Moreover, without Darwinism they could not justify their exploitation and dehumanization of those lower in society than themselves, from the African child slave miner to the White American suburbanite. In order to ensure loyalty to their atheistic system, the elites must not allow the competing Christian anthropology to usurp the materialist one provided by Evolutionism; therefore, doubt in this doctrine must never be given a fair presentation in the so-called “free market of ideas”. That is the real reason why both Liberal Democratic and Communist societies never have—and indeed never will—allow examples like the fruit fly experiments to be taught to their youth in their state schools.

One of the most prevalent points upon which the Evolutionist doctrine is justified today is in the alleged “proof” that dinosaur feathers prove a “common ancestor” between the saurians and the birds. Such an argument precedes even the last decade by many years, as it was answered in this work written in the 1980s. Though Johnson is right in his classification of the famous Archaetopteryx as a bird rather than a true dinosaur—a point which even mainstream paleontologists accepted in his time and ours, despite the continued usage of this creature as proof of a “transitional species” in science textbooks—his comment that “feathers happen only to birds” is seemingly dated (48). This is because, since the late 1990s, there have been discoveries of various specimens which evidently belong in the gens Dinosauria yet exhibit signs of feathers. I use the word “signs” here to convey that, indeed, there has been notable resistance by some paleontologists in the classification of these filaments as feathers.³

Of course, even if these true dinosaurs such as Sinosauropteryx or Yutyrannus huali did possess structures which can accurately be termed feathers, this does not prove the Evolutionists’ argument in the slightest. In order for these feathers to prove an ancestral tie which has been traced from “earlier” dinosaurs to this category of feathered dinosaurs to modern birds, a sufficient mechanism must exist to make the gradual development of feathers on animals that never had them before possible. As conveyed before, the development of any new structure via mutation has been proven impossible; the idea that dinosaurs could have “evolved” feathers only becomes more absurd when one considers that, as the author writes:

Feathers are a problem for evolution; they are miracles of natural engineering. There is a main shaft with dozens of barbs coming at it on a slant. A microscope reveals that the barbs carry hundreds of thousands of little barbules. And, on the barbules, are millions of tiny barbacelles. Then, on many of the barbacelles, are the tiniest hooks, which, in flight, interlock the whole wing into a plane of wonderful firmness and elasticity and lightness. Then, in an instant, the whole structure can be suddenly unlocked to let the air pass through.

(48-49)

Johnson then summarizes his argument in the best way possible when he quotes an expert about the supposed evolution of feathers from dinosaur scales over the span of millions of years:

Douglas Dewar, fellow of the Zoological Society, said: “If this is serious science, then so is the story of Cinderella.”

(49)

It is far less fabulous, therefore, to envision that in the case of these “feathered dinosaurs” the Creator simply reapplied this structure from the birds to these animals. There are extant animals which, after all, seem to have traits which would be expected in another kind of animal. For instance, the platypus is a mammal: it is warm-blooded and possesses fur suited for an amphibious lifestyle like that of the beaver. Yet this creature does not give live births as other mammals do, but instead lays eggs like birds or reptiles, out of which its young hatch.

If Johnson has thus dismantled the possibility of a transitional species between dinosaurs and birds, what then does he write about the numerous specimens which have been proposed as the “missing link” between ape and man? Not only does the author dedicate the fourth chapter of this work to examining and debunking these alleged transitional forms, but he also furthers his argument by evaluating the impossibility of human evolution from the domain of linguistics. In his coverage of the strange and unfortunate case of feral children in a later chapter, entitled “Cultural Evolution or Devolution?”, he writes:

These are children who had been abandoned in infancy but somehow survived in forests, cut off from all human contact…They were all strange, seemingly half-witted creatures with no interest in what went on around them. They had the organs of speech, but they seemed unable to be taught to speak.

Some of the many reported cases are well-authenticated; for example, Peter, the Wild Boy (near Hanover, 1723); Victor, “The Savage of Aveyron” (France, 1799); also two little girls, aged about 8 and 1-1/2 years, Amala and Kamala, who had been nurtured by a she-wolf.

Victor was about 12 years old. Patient effort was spent, but he could be taught only a few single words, and they seemed to mean nothing to him.

Amala and Kamala had each other, but there was no childish chatter between them. They did not speak. Amala, the younger, died. Kamala, in a civilized environment, was almost incapable of conversing. After six years she had learned about 40 words, could make sentences of two or three words, but never spoke unless spoken to.

(131)

The implications of these cases reveals something quite contrary to what the Evolutionists would have us believe, as Johnson concludes:

Feral children make manifest human nature deprived of cultural teaching. Humanity has not that something within its genes whereby, unaided, it can raise itself up culturally. It needs a culture gifted to it, infused into it.

Wild children highlight the mystery of human speech—the great chasm between man and beast. Man is unique. By language, sounds and symbols, men exchange information and ideas, material and abstract.

(132)

If wild men cannot manifest speech on their own, what then of wild “ape-men”? The arrogance of the humanist in assuming that man has “progressed” by his own efforts is demonstrated for the folly it is. How absurd is that image of humanity which these charlatans have created for us! Men born from beasts in the forests and then dwelled in caves, who communicated there by grunts and shouts, but slowly under unimaginable quantities of time gathered to build great cities like Ur and Nineveh and “evolved” to speak the complex ancient languages…is here tested, and found an utter fiction. Man therefore needs a teacher to learn even the rudiments of language and culture. Thus as Johnson points out:

But there was no man to teach the first man—no one, except his Maker.

(133)

Critical to the two major aforementioned errors is the underlying assumption of vast ages of time. Though the belief that the world is far older than what the Biblical account records has been around even before the Incarnation, such a teaching was rejected from the beginning of Christendom, only making its reappearance with the birth of the Uniformitarian theory of James Hutton and Charles Lyell. It is no coincidence that this then-novel geological theory was adopted by Darwin.

For without the proposed existence of these millions and billions of years, the claims of evolution become far less believable, as these incalculable sums of time are given as the reason why the changes the Evolutionists claim can happen do not happen at present. According to them, the change of scales into wings has occurred, for we must rely on their interpretation of the fossil record—but a similar change cannot be reproduced in a lab to properly authenticate this interpretation, for it would take “too long” for that to happen (despite the failure of the previously mentioned experiments on fruit flies). Fittingly then, the author of this work dedicates a chapter to this subject in which he discusses the history of this assumption, and the many examples in nature which illustrate this theory to be nothing but a nineteenth century superstition.

One such example is the existence of polystrate fossils. These are the remains of plants and animals which protrude through at least one geological strata, though these often breach multiple of these levels. Thus these organisms are perplexingly found cutting through layers which supposedly represent differences of millions of years. Johnson, elaborating on these fossils, writes that:

There is a good account of them by N. A. Rupke of the State University of Groningen, the Netherlands, in Why Not Creation (pp. 152-157).

Although polystrate animals are not as common as polystrate tree trunks, Rupke refers to a report by Dutch authorities. In the United States there is found deposition of sand and clays “in which the entire bodies with the skin impression of huge prehistoric reptiles are met with.” Rupke says that, if sedimentation had been uniform, these great bodies would need 5,000 years to be covered. Therefore, the report concludes: “The only possibility is that, immediately after the death, the dead body was covered and, as it were, ensiled by a thick bed of sediment.”

Rupke’s article gives examples of polystrate tree trunks in Germany and France. It mentions that such tree trunks are also found at different levels. For example, at The Joggins on Nova Scotia there have been reported tree trunks at 20 levels distributed at intervals through about 2,500 of sediment.

(95)

And as the author continues:

These polystrate fossils are common. They are fatal to uniformitarian geology, but perfectly fit Deluge geology. They offer clear evidence that the sedimentary rocks were not laid down slowly, but were deposited rapidly and by an unimaginable scale of water action.

(Ibid)

Thus the geologic column stands refuted by the very means which it was purported to be accurate—empiric observation. Based on this fact alone, Deluge geology, which posits that the existing geologic strata and structures are the byproducts of the Great Flood, is proved far more credible than the prevailing Uniformitarian theory of gradual deposition and erosion. Even a non-believer must admit, when faced with this evidence, that the cataclysm which lasted approximately “a hundred and fifty days” (Genesis 7:24) could have produced these results; the millions and billions of Hutton and Lyell could not.

This book is a marvelous work, though dated in terms of its research and its illustrations. It demonstrates that many fallacies of Evolutionism remain with us today, uncorrected by the “infallible” institutions of the scientific establishment. Johnson here fulfilled the need for a strong Catholic response to Evolutionism which covers not one, but practically all the avenues which the disciples of Darwin use to assault the doctrine of Creation, impressively refuting them one by one.

There are many references to both evolutionist and creationist literature in these pages, and yet the work itself manages to be short and comprehensive. The appendices and references at the end of this book are insightful and further add to its value. Its style, as can be inferred from the selections presented, is concise while maintaining a wide range of subject matter. This is especially to be admired, alongside the skill of the author in his ability to use Evolutionist sources to refute their ideas. Therefore, I recommend it as a resource for all Catholics.

1. Creationists do not dispute the fact of variation within species, for as Johnson succinctly puts it:

   “There is no argument about variation. The argument is about the limits of variation. Variation within limits has produced races of men, breeds of rabbits, varieties of pigeons.” (23)

2. For more information concerning the experiments in question, the following article is recommended:

   Thomas Ph.D., Brian. “100 Years of Fruit Fly Tests Show No Evolution.” ICR. July 29, 2010. https://www.icr.org/article/a-100-years-fruit-fly-tests-show-no-evolution.

3. Sarfati Ph.D., Johnathan and Brian Thomas Ph.D. “Researchers remain divided over ‘feathered dinosaurs’.” Creation.com. September 7, 2018. https://creation.com/feathered-dinosaur-debate.