Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood,
by Dr. Walt Brown. Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
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a . “... the definitive mammalian middle ear evolved independently in living monotremes and therians (marsupials and placentals).” Thomas H. Rich et al., “Independent Origins of Middle Ear Bones in Monotremes and Therians,” Science, Vol. 307, 11 February 2005, p. 910.
u “Because of the complexity of the bone arrangement, some scientists have argued that the innovation arose just once—in a common ancestor of the three mammalian groups. Now, analyses of a jawbone from a specimen of Teinolophos trusleri, a shrew-size creature that lived in Australia about 115 million years ago, have dealt a blow to that notion.” Sid Perkins, “Groovy Bones,” Science News, Vol. 167, 12 February 2005, p. 100.
b . Also, for mammals to hear requires the organ of Corti and complex “wiring” in the brain. No known reptile (the supposed ancestor of mammals), living or fossil, has anything resembling this amazing organ.
c . “By this we have also proved that a morphological similarity between organisms cannot be used as proof of a phylogenetic [evolutionary] relationship ... it is unscientific to maintain that the morphology may be used to prove relationships and evolution of the higher categories of units, ...” Nilsson, p. 1143.
u “But biologists have known for a hundred years that homologous [similar] structures are often not produced by similar developmental pathways. And they have known for thirty years that they are often not produced by similar genes, either. So there is no empirically demonstrated mechanism to establish that homologies are due to common ancestry rather than common design.” Jonathan Wells, “Survival of the Fakest,” The American Spectator, December 2000/January 2001, p. 22.
d . Fix, pp. 189–191.
u Denton, pp. 142–155.
u “Therefore, homologous structures need not be controlled by identical genes, and homology of phenotypes does not imply similarity of genotypes. [emphasis in original] It is now clear that the pride with which it was assumed that the inheritance of homologous structures from a common ancestor explained homology was misplaced; for such inheritance cannot be ascribed to identity of genes. ... But if it is true that through the genetic code, genes code for enzymes that synthesize proteins which are responsible (in a manner still unknown in embryology) for the differentiation of the various parts in their normal manner, what mechanism can it be that results in the production of homologous organs, the same ‘patterns’, in spite of their not being controlled by the same genes? I asked this question in 1938, and it has not been answered.” [Nor has it been answered today.] Gavin R. deBeer, formerly Professor of Embryology at the University of London and Director of the British Museum (Natural History), Homology, An Unsolved Problem (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 16.
e . “Structures as obviously homologous as the alimentary canal in all vertebrates can be formed from the roof of the embryonic gut cavity (sharks), floor (lampreys, newts), roof and floor (frogs), or from the lower layer of the embryonic disc, the blastoderm, that floats on the top of heavily yolked eggs (reptiles, birds). It does not seem to matter where in the egg or the embryo the living substance out of which homologous organs are formed comes from. Therefore, correspondence between homologous structures cannot be pressed back to similarity of position of the cells of the embryo or the parts of the egg out of which these structures are ultimately differentiated.” [emphasis in original] Ibid., p. 13.