• Do similarities between creatures prove that they had a common ancestor (evolved)?
• Is human and chimp DNA very similar?
• Do human embryos go through animal stages as they develop?
• Do we have useless left-over bits of animals in us?
• What about ‘apemen’?
WE are similar in many respects to animals, especially the apes, and evolutionists argue that therefore we are related to them; we must have a common ancestor with them.
What does the Bible say? In Genesis 1 we are told that God made mankind, a man and a woman, specially:
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” (Gen. 1:26)
God created mankind in His image, not in the image of animals. Furthermore, man was to rule, have dominion, over the animals.
In Genesis 2, we are given more details of the creation process and we find that Adam was created from “the dust of the ground” (Gen. 2:7), not from an ape. When God pronounced judgment on Adam, He affirmed that Adam came from the ground:
“In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” (Gen. 3:19)
Some wish to allegorize the Genesis account of man’s creation to make it conform to the current evolutionary fashion that man evolved from the apes. They are countered right here: if the dust Adam was made from represents the ape that he evolved from, then Adam must have turned back into an ape because of his sin! Of course not; the Bible is clear that man is a special creation.
Indeed, various kinds of animals and plants were created individually, not just humans. Plants were to produce seed “after their kind” meaning that bean plants were to produce bean seeds; and cattle would give birth to cattle, etc. (Gen. 1:11, 12, 21, 24, 25). So there is no hint in Scripture of any kind of an evolutionary process where one kind of organism would change into another kind.
Evolutionists believe not only that mankind evolved from an ape-like creature, but that ultimately everything evolved from a single-celled organism which happened to arise from non-living matter. They claim that the similarities between living things are proof that they evolved from common ancestors. They cite such things as the similarity between human and chimp DNA, similarities between embryos, claimed vestigial organs, and claimed transitional fossils between different kinds—such as, supposed apemen.
The idea that human beings and chimps have close to 100% similarity in their DNA is often asserted. Early studies, using crude techniques and based on a small fraction of the genetic code, led to claims of 97% to 99% similarity, depending on who was telling the story. However, with the chimp DNA now decoded, the similarity when all the DNA is included is not more than 87%3 and arguably below 70%.4 So, as more information has come to hand, the less tenable has become the evolutionary claim that we are just (slightly) evolved apes.
However, similarity is not evidence for common ancestry (evolution), but rather for a common designer (creation). Think about the original Porsche and the Volkswagen ‘Beetle’ cars. They both have air-cooled, flat, horizontally-opposed, 4-cylinder engines in the rear, independent rear suspension, two doors, trunk in the front, and many other similarities.
Why do these two very different cars have so many similarities? Because they had the same designer! Whether similarity is morphological (shape, form) or biochemical, it is not an argument for evolution over creation. If humans were entirely different from all other living things, or indeed every living thing was entirely different, would this reveal the Creator to us? No, we could think that there must be many creators rather than one. The unity of the creation is testimony to the One True God who made it all (Romans 1:20).
Also, if humans were entirely different from all other living things, then how could we live? We have to eat other organisms to gain nutrients and energy to live. How could we digest them and how could we use the amino acids, sugars, etc., if they were different to the ones we have in our bodies? Biochemical similarity is necessary for us to have food.
DNA in cells contains much of the information necessary for the development of an organism. So, if two organisms look similar, we expect there to be similarities also in their DNA. The DNA of a cow and a whale, two mammals, should be more alike than the DNA of a cow and a worm. If it were not so, then the idea of DNA being the information carrier in living things would have to be questioned.
Organisms descended from the same original created kinds would be expected to be very similar biochemically, showing downhill changes in the information. Indeed, creationist biologists can use the data from DNA comparisons in studies to determine the bounds of the original created kinds.5
Humans and apes are similar in appearance, so we would expect there would be similarities in their DNA. Of all the animals, chimps are most like humans, so we would expect that their DNA would be most like human DNA.
Certain biochemical capacities are common to all living things, so there is even a degree of similarity between the DNA of yeast, for example, and that of human beings. Because human cells can do many of the things that yeast can do, we share similarities in the DNA sequences that code for the enzymes and proteins that do the same jobs in both types of cells. Some of the sequences, for example those that code for the proteins involved in chromosome structure, are almost identical.
What if human and chimp DNA were, say, 98% homologous? What would that mean? Would it mean that humans could have evolved from a common ancestor with chimps? Not at all. DNA carries its information in the sequence of four chemical compounds known as nucleotides, abbreviated C, G, A, T. Groups of three at a time of these chemical ‘letters’ are ‘read’ by complex translation machinery in the cell to determine the sequence of amino acids, of which there are 20 different types, to be incorporated into proteins. The human DNA has 3 billion nucleotides. The amount of information in these 3 billion base pairs in the DNA of every human cell has been compared to that in 1,000 books of 500 pages each.6 So, if humans were ‘only’ 2% different, this still amounts to 60 million base pairs, equivalent to about 20 large books of information. Even this is an impossible barrier for mutations (random changes) to cross, even given the several million years claimed as the time available for this to happen.
Furthermore, does a high degree of similarity mean that two DNA sequences have the same meaning or function? No, not necessarily. Compare the following sentences:
• There are many scientists today who question the evolutionary paradigm and its atheistic philosophical implications.
• There are NOT many scientists today who question the evolutionary paradigm and its atheistic philosophical implications.
These sentences have 97% homology and yet have almost opposite meanings! There is a strong analogy here to the way in which large DNA sequences can be turned on or off by relatively small control sequences. Indeed, large differences between humans and chimps are being discovered in the gene control sequences.7
There are also almost no similarities in the ‘hot spots’ where chromosomes rearrange pieces of DNA during sexual reproduction. The Y-chromosomes are also extremely different, with the human one being much larger and containing genes not present in chimps.
There is no way that mutations could bridge the gap between chimps and humans. Chimps are just animals. We are made in the image of God (no chimps will be reading this or discussing it with one another).
Most people have heard of the idea that the human embryo, during its early development in the womb, goes through various evolutionary stages, such as having gill slits like a fish, a tail like a monkey, etc. Abortion clinics have used the idea to soothe the consciences of clients, saying, ‘We’re only taking a fish from your body.’
This concept was pretentiously called the ‘biogenetic law’, which the German evolutionist Ernst Haeckel popularized in the late 1860s. It is also known as ‘embryonic recapitulation’ or ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’, meaning that during an organism’s early development it retraces its evolutionary history. So, a human embryo supposedly passes through a fish stage, an amphibian stage, a reptile stage, and so on.
Within months of the popular publication of Haeckel’s work in 1868, L. Rütimeyer, professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at the University of Basel, showed it to be fraudulent. Wilhelm His Sr, professor of anatomy at the University of Leipzig, and a famous comparative embryologist, corroborated Rütimeyer’s criticisms.8 These scientists showed that Haeckel fraudulently modified his drawings of embryos to make them look more alike. Haeckel even printed the same woodcut several times, to make the embryos look absolutely identical, and then claimed they were embryos of different species! Despite this exposure, Haeckel’s woodcuts appeared in textbooks for many years.9
Has the ‘biogenetic law’ any merit? In 1965, evolutionist George Gaylord Simpson said, “It is now firmly established that ontogeny does not repeat phylogeny.”10 Prof. Keith Thompson (biology, Yale) said,11
“Surely the biogenetic law is as dead as a doornail. It was finally exorcized from biology textbooks in the fifties. As a topic of serious theoretical inquiry, it was extinct in the twenties.”
However, even textbooks in the 1990s were still using Haeckel’s fraudulent drawings, including a textbook used in introductory biology courses in many universities, which said,12
“In many cases the evolutionary history of an organism can be seen to unfold during its development, with the embryo exhibiting characteristics of the embryos of its ancestors. For example, early in their development, human embryos possess gill slits like a fish … .”
Despite the fraudulent basis of the idea and its debunking by many high-profile scientists, the idea persists.
Scientists who should have known better promoted the myth of embryonic recapitulation in the 1990s. For example, science popularizer, the late Carl Sagan, in a popular article titled ‘Is it possible to be pro-life and pro-choice?’,13 described the development of the human embryo as follows:
“By the third week … it looks a little like a segmented worm. … By the end of the fourth week, … something like the gill-arches of a fish or an amphibian have become conspicuous … . It looks something like a newt or a tadpole. … By the sixth week … reptilian face … . By the end of the seventh week … the face is mammalian, but somewhat pig-like. … By the end of the eighth week, the face resembles a primate, but is still not quite human.”
This is straight from Haeckel. A human embryo never looks reptilian or pig-like. A human embryo is always a human embryo, from the moment of conception; it is never anything else, contrary to what Sagan implies! It does not become human sometime after eight weeks. This is just what the Bible says—the unborn baby is a tiny human child (Gen. 25:21–22, Psalm 139:13–16, Jer. 1:5, Luke 1:41–44), so abortion takes an innocent human life.

Replicas of human embryos at various stages of development
The university textbook referred to above14 claims that “human embryos possess gill slits like a fish”, although it has been known for many decades that human embryos never have ‘gill slits’. There are markings on a human embryo which superficially look like the ‘gill slits’ on a fish embryo. These ‘pharyngeal clefts’, as they are properly called, which delineate ‘throat pouches’, never have any breathing function, and are never ‘slits’ or openings. They develop into the thymus gland, parathyroid glands and middle ear canals—none of which has anything to do with breathing, under water or above water!
Specialist embryology textbooks acknowledge that human embryos do not have gill slits. For example, Langman said,15
“Since the human embryo never has gills—branchia—the term pharyngeal arches and clefts has been adopted in this book.”
However, most evolutionists still use the term ‘gill slits’, especially in public presentations and when teaching students. The term prevails in school and university textbooks.
While the popularizers of evolution, when pressed, will admit that human embryos do not have gill slits and that Haeckel’s drawings were to some extent fraudulent, they still believe that similarities between embryos are evidence for evolution (common ancestry). But this confidence rests, consciously or unconsciously, on the woodcuts published by Haeckel and reproduced, in whole or in part, in many textbooks since.16 These drawings are widely believed to bear some resemblance to reality. But apparently no-one had bothered to check.

Wrong terms are used to label human embryos, indoctrinating students in evolutionary belief.

Haeckel’s fraudulent drawings (top row) and photographs of the actual embryos (bottom row). After Richardson et al.17 Used with permission.
Now it comes to light that Haeckel’s fraud was far worse than anyone realized. An embryologist, Dr Michael Richardson, with the co-operation of biologists around the world, collected and photographed the types of embryos Haeckel supposedly drew.17 Dr Richardson found that Haeckel’s drawings bore little resemblance to the embryos.18,19 Haeckel’s drawings could only have come from his imagination, which was harnessed to produce ‘evidence’ to promote the acceptance of evolution.
Haeckel’s drawings should no longer be used to support the evolutionists’ claim that embryos are similar and that this supports evolution.
To construct anything, you begin with something without shape, or with a basic form and then build upon that. An illustration from pottery may help. A potter starts with a lump of clay. For a goblet or a slender vase, the potter would shape it initially into a cylinder. At this stage both the goblet and the vase look similar—they have the same basic plan. Further work results in the goblet and vase looking more and more different. The analogy with embryos breaks down in that the potter could change his mind and make either a vase or goblet at the completion of the basic plan. A fish embryo, however, could never become a human embryo (or vice versa) because a fish embryo has the coded instructions only for making a fish.
Some principles known as von Baer’s Laws express this concept in regard to embryo development. Namely, the general features of a large group of animals appear earlier in the embryo than the specialized features. Less general characters are developed from the more general, and so forth, until finally the most specialized appear. Each embryo of a given species, instead of passing through the stages of other animals, departs more and more from them as it develops.
Von Baer’s laws indicate that the younger the embryonic stage, the more closely organisms tend to resemble each other because they share the more generalized features, which appear first. Development can be likened to the radial spokes on a wheel. The spokes start at the hub and diverge outward, getting further and further apart.
There are interesting exceptions to von Baer’s Laws. If we compare vertebrate embryos at the pharyngula stage (i.e. the stage showing the pharyngeal clefts), they look somewhat similar, but at earlier stages they are quite different! Ballard said,20
“… from very different eggs the embryos of vertebrates pass through cleavage stages of very different appearance, and then through a period of morphogenetic movements showing patterns of migration and temporary structures unique to each class. All then arrive at a pharyngula stage, which is remarkably uniform throughout the subphylum, consisting of similar organ rudiments similarly arranged (though in some respects deformed in respect to habitat and food supply).”
After ‘converging’ together, the embryos then diverge away from each other in the classic von Baer pattern. How can this be explained through evolution? ReMine21 argues that it points to an intelligent designer who designed living things. God made things similar to show that there is one Creator (similarity at the pharyngula stage), but with a pattern of similarity that could not result from common ancestry (the earlier stages of embryo development differ). The differences at the earlier stages give no support to a naturalistic explanation for similarities at the later pharyngeal stage being due to common descent.
Likewise, with the mode of development of amphibian and mammal foot bones in the embryo. They can end up looking very similar, but the amphibian’s toes develop by growth from buds outwards, whereas the mammal’s toes develop from a plate where the material between the toes dissolves. Thus the similarities we see in amphibians and mammals are due to common design, not common ancestry.
Sir Gavin de Beer, embryologist and past Director of the British Museum of Natural History, addressed the problem of the lack of a genetic or embryological basis for homology more than 40 years ago in a monograph titled Homology, an Unsolved Problem (1971, Oxford Biology Reader, Oxford University Press). Although De Beer believed in evolution, he showed that similarity is often only apparent and is not consistent with common ancestry.
Patterns of embryo development point to creation, not evolution! We are indeed “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).22
Evolutionists often argue that such things as flightless birds’ small wings, pigs’ toes, male nipples, legless lizards, the rabbit’s digestive system, the human appendix, and hip bones and teeth in whales are useless and have no function. They claim these features are ‘leftovers of evolution’ and evidence for evolution.
The ‘vestigial’ organ argument for evolution is an old chestnut, but it is not valid.
First, it is impossible to prove that an organ is useless. The function may simply be unknown and its use may be discovered in future. This has happened with more than 100 formerly alleged useless vestigial organs in humans that are now known to be essential.
Second, even if the alleged vestigial organ were no longer needed, it would prove ‘devolution’ not evolution. The creation model allows for deterioration of a perfect creation since the Fall. However, the particles-to-people evolution model needs to find examples of nascent organs, i.e. those which are increasing in complexity.
There are at least two possibilities as to why flightless birds such as ostriches and emus have wings:
1. The wings are indeed ‘useless’ and derived from birds that once could fly. This is possible in the creationist model. Loss of features is relatively easy by natural processes, whereas acquisition of new characters, requiring significant specific new DNA information, is impossible. Loss of wings most probably occurred in a beetle species that colonized a windy island. Again, this is loss of genetic information, so it is not evidence for microbe-to-man evolution, which requires masses of new genetic information.23
2. The wings have a function. Some possible functions, depending on the species of flightless bird, are: balance while running, cooling in hot weather, warmth in cold weather, protection of the rib-cage in falls, mating rituals, scaring predators (emus will run at perceived enemies of their chicks, mouth open and wings flapping), sheltering of chicks, etc. If the wings are useless, why are the muscles functional, allowing these birds to move their wings?

The emu’s wings are not useless.
Does this mean that the shorter toes have no function? Not at all. Pigs spend a lot of time in water and muddy conditions for cooling purposes. The extra toes probably make it easier to walk in mud (a bit like the rider wheels on some long trucks, which only touch the road when the truck is heavily loaded). Perhaps the muscles attached to the extra toes give strength to the ‘ankle’ of the pig.
Males have nipples because of the common plan followed during early embryo development. Embryos start out producing features common to male and female—again an example of ‘design economy’. Nipples are a part of this design economy. However, as Bergman and Howe24 point out, the claim that they are useless is debatable.
What is the evolutionist’s explanation for male nipples? Did males evolve (devolve) from females? Or did ancestral males suckle the young? No evolutionist would propose this. Male nipples are neither evidence for evolution nor evidence against creation.
This is an incredible proposition. One of the most successful species on Earth would have to be the rabbit! The rabbit’s mode of existence is obviously very efficient (what about the saying ‘to breed like rabbits’?). Just because eating feces may be abhorrent to humans, it does not mean it is inefficient for the rabbit! Rabbits have a special pouch called the caecum, containing bacteria, at the beginning of the large intestine. These bacteria aid digestion, just as bacteria in the rumen of cattle and sheep aid digestion. Indeed, rabbits ‘chew the cud’ in a manner that parallels sheep and cattle.
The rabbit produces two types of fecal pellet, a hard one and a special soft one coming from the caecum. It is only the latter that is eaten to enrich the diet with the nutrients produced by the bacteria in the caecum. In other words, this ability of rabbits is a design feature; it is not something they have learned to do because they have ‘digestive systems that function so poorly’. It is part of the variety of design, which speaks of creation, not evolution.

Skeptics have claimed that rabbits are poorly designed, yet they are one of the most successful animals, in terms of reproduction.
Skeptics have claimed the Bible is in error in saying that the rabbit ‘chews the cud’ (Lev. 11:6). The Hebrew literally reads, “raises up what has been swallowed”. The rabbit does re-eat what has been swallowed—its partly digested fecal pellets. The skeptics are wrong.
It is quite likely that legless lizards could have arisen through loss of genetic information from an original created kind, and the structures are consistent with this. ‘Loss’ of a structure is of no comfort to evolutionists, as they have to find a mechanism for creating new structures, not losing them. Loss of information cannot explain how evolution ‘from ameba to man’ could occur. Genesis 3:14 suggests that snakes may have once had legs.25
Adaptation and natural selection are biological facts; ameba-to-man evolution is not. Natural selection can only work on the genetic information present in a population of organisms—it cannot create new information. For example, since no known reptiles have genes for feathers, no amount of selection will produce a feathered reptile. Mutations in genes can only modify or eliminate existing structures, not create new ones. If in a certain environment a lizard survives better with smaller legs, or no legs, then varieties with this trait will be selected for. This might more accurately be called devolution, not evolution.
Rapid minor changes in limb length can occur in lizards, as demonstrated on Bahamian islands by Losos et al.26 The changes occurred much faster than evolutionists thought they could. Such changes do not involve new genetic information and so give no support to microbe-to-man evolution. They do illustrate how quickly animals could have adapted to different environments after the Flood.
It is now known that the human appendix contains lymphatic tissue and helps control bacteria entering the intestines. It functions in a similar way to the tonsils at the upper end of the alimentary canal, which are known to fight throat infections.
The appendix also functions as a bacterial ‘safe house’ to protect beneficial gut microbes from gastro-intestinal upsets. Also, the appendix is present in such a diverse array of mammals that evolutionists have had to propose that it evolved independently 30 or more times! The appendix is now yet another problem for the evolutionary story. Tonsils also were once thought to be useless organs.27,28

The human appendix helps protect
the small intestine from microbes in
the large intestine.
Some evolutionists claim that these bones show that whales evolved from land animals. However, Bergman and Howe29 point out that they are different in male and female whales. They are not useless at all, but help with reproduction (copulation).30
Evolutionists claim that these teeth show that baleen whales evolved from toothed whales. However, they have not provided an adequate mechanism for scrapping one perfectly good system (teeth) and replacing it with a very different system (baleen or whalebone). Also, the teeth in the embryo function as guides for the correct formation of the massive jaws.
As Scadding, an evolutionist, said, “…vestigial organs provide no evidence for evolutionary theory.”31
Is there really evidence that man descended from the apes? Many people believe that the ancestry of mankind has been mapped faithfully and nearly completely. They have heard about ‘missing links’, and regard them as scientific proof of man’s evolution. However, no ancestor for man has ever been convincingly documented. The ‘missing links’ are still missing. Here is a summary of facts relating to some of the best known fossils.32,33

Homo erectus, a variant of the human kind,
was once promoted as ‘the missing link’.
These are ones claimed at various times as intermediates between apes and humans but now rejected by evolutionists themselves.
• Homo sapiens neanderthalensis (Neandertal man)—150 years ago Neandertal reconstructions were stooped, very much like an ‘ape-man’. Many now admit that the stooped posture was due to disease (such as rickets) and that Neandertals were human, fully able to speak, artistic, and religious.34
• Ramapithecus—once widely regarded as the ancestor of humans, it has now been recognized as an extinct type of orangutan (an ape).
• Eoanthropus (Piltdown man)—a hoax based on a human skull cap and an orangutan’s jaw. It was widely publicized as the missing link for 40 years, and it was not even a competent forgery.
• Hesperopithecus (Nebraska man)—based on a single tooth of a type of pig now living only in Paraguay.
• Pithecanthropus (Java man)—now regarded as human and called Homo erectus.
• Australopithecus africanus—this was at one time promoted as the missing link. It is very ape-like and evolutionists no longer consider it to be transitional (between apes and humans).
• Sinanthropus (Peking man)—has now been reclassified as Homo erectus, of the human kind.
These ‘apemen’ adorn the evolutionary trees today that supposedly trace how Homo sapiens evolved from a chimp-like creature.
• Australopithecus—various species of these have been proclaimed at times as human ancestors. One remains: Australopithecus afarensis, popularly known by the fossil ‘Lucy’. Dr Charles Oxnard, a prominent evolutionary anatomist, did a thorough statistical study of meticulous measurements of australopithecine and other fossils to conclude that, “The various australopithecines are, indeed, more different from both African apes and humans in most features than these latter are from each other.” In other words, Lucy’s kind does not link apes and humans.35
• Homo habilis—there is a growing consensus among many palaeoanthropologists that this is a ‘junk’ category. It actually includes bits and pieces of various types—such as Australopithecus and Homo erectus. It is therefore an ‘invalid taxon’, which means such a creature never existed. Other evolutionists acknowledge that it does not constitute a link between apes and humans.36 This was formerly claimed as the ‘clear link’ between apes and humans.
• Homo erectus—many remains of this type have been found around the world. This classification now includes Java man (Pithecanthropus) and Peking man (Sinanthropus), which were once promoted as ‘missing links’. Their skulls have prominent brow ridges, similar to Neandertals; their bodies were similar to those of people today, only more robust. The brain size is within the range of people today and studies of the inner ear have shown that Homo erectus walked just like us. Both morphology and associated archaeological/cultural findings in association suggest that Homo erectus was fully human. Some evolutionists now agree that erectus is fully human and should be included in Homo sapiens.37
There are three camps of evolutionists who variously propose chimps, orangutans and an unidentified aquatic ape as our ancestor, which underlines that there is no clear fossil or genetic evidence for human evolution from an ape.38 The whole chain of missing links is still missing because they simply never existed. The Bible clearly states, “then the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7). Considering the history of defunct ‘apemen’, all new claims should be treated skeptically.
If the evolutionary story about the origin of living things were true there should be millions of fossils showing the transitions from one kind of organism to another. After all, they say there have been hundreds of millions of years of mutations and natural selection, and the rock layers recorded this ‘natural history’ as fossils. Yet there are precious few, and even evolutionists cannot agree on their significance. Claimed evidence of fossils linking different kinds of organisms does not stand scrutiny.39
The lack of transitional fossils even drove evolutionists to propose a new mode of evolution in the late 1970s so they could go on believing in evolution without the need to find transitional fossils. This idea—punctuated equilibrium—basically says that the evolutionary changes occurred so quickly, geologically speaking, that no fossils were preserved to show them.40
The supposed evidence for evolution does not withstand critical examination.41 The evidence is better understood in the context of God creating different basic kinds of organisms. These were capable of adapting to different environments by sorting the original created genetic information (reshuffled by sexual reproduction), via natural selection. Some variation has been generated by mutations, but these are degenerate changes involving loss of genetic information, or at best horizontal changes where information is not lost or gained.
The probability of natural processes generating new genetic information is so low that evolution could not possibly account for the origin of the vast amounts of complex coded information in living things.42 Creation is the explanation consistent with the evidence.
1. See Chapter 1 for some evidences for creation.
2. Known technically as ‘homologies’ when they fit an evolutionary story, but ‘homoplasies’ when they don’t.
3. Tomkins, J., and Bergman, J., Genomic monkey business—estimates of nearly identical human-chimp DNA similarity re-evaluated using omitted data, Journal of Creation 26(1):94–100, 2012; creation.com/chimp.
4. Buggs, R., Chimpanzee? Reformatorisch Dagblad; refdag.nl/chimpanzee_1_282611, October 2008, available via web.archive.org. Dr Buggs is a research geneticist.
5. Molecular homology studies could be quite useful to creationists in determining what were the original created kinds and what has happened since to generate new species within each kind. For example, the varieties/species of finch on the Galápagos Islands obviously derived from an original small number that made it to the islands. Recombination of the genes in the original migrants and natural selection could account for the varieties of finch on the islands today—just as all the breeds of dogs in the world today were artificially bred from the original wild dog kind not long ago. Molecular homology studies have been most consistent when applied within what are probably biblical kinds. However, the results contradict the major predictions of evolution regarding the relationships between the major groups such as phyla and classes.
6. Denton, M., Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Burnett Books, UK, 1985.
7. Keightley, P.D. et al., Evidence for widespread degradation of gene control regions in hominid genomes, PLoS Biol. 3, e42, 2005. Comment from Nature Reviews Genetics 6(3):163, March 2005.
8. Rusch, W.H. Sr, Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, CRSQ 6(1):27–34, 1969.
9. Grigg, R., Ernst Haeckel: evangelist for evolution and apostle of deceit, Creation 18(2):33–36, 1996; creation.com/haeckel.
10. Simpson, G.G. and Beck, W.S., An Introduction to Biology, p. 241, 1965.
11. Thompson, K., Ontogeny and phylogeny recapitulated, American Scientist 76:273, 1988.
12. Raven, P.H. and Johnson, G.B., Biology (3rd ed.), Mosby–Year Book, US, p. 396, 1992. The idea surfaced in the Higher School Certificate examination in Australia in 2012; creation.com/biology-exam-fraud.
13. Parade Magazine, 22 April 1990.
14. Raven and Johnson, 1992.
15. Langman, J., Medical Embryology (3rd ed.), p. 262, 1975.
16. For example, Gilbert, S., Developmental Biology (5th ed.), Sinauer Associates, US, pp. 254, 900, 1997. Gilbert wrongly credits the drawings to ‘Romanes, 1901’.
17. Richardson, M. et al., There is no highly conserved stage in the vertebrates: implications for current theories of evolution and development, Anatomy and Embryology 196(2):91–106, 1997, © Springer-Verlag GmbH & Co., Heidelberg.
18. Grigg, R., Fraud rediscovered, Creation 20(2):49–51, 1998; creation.com/fraud.
19. van Niekerk, E., Countering revisionism—part 1: Ernst Haeckel, fraud is proven, Journal of Creation 25(3):89–95, 2011; creation.com/haeckel-fraud.
20. Ballard, W.W., Problems of gastrulation: real and verbal, Bioscience 26(1):36–39, 1976.
21. ReMine, W.J., The Biotic Message: Evolution versus Message Theory, St Paul Science, US, 1993; p. 370; see review: creation.com/biotic.
22. For more information on embryos: Vetter, J., Hands and feet—uniquely human, right from the start! Creation 13(1):16–17, 1990; creation.com/hands-feet, Glover, W. and Ham, K., A surgeon looks at creation, Creation 14(3):46–49, 1992; creation.com/glover.
23. Wieland, C., Beetle bloopers: even a defect can be an advantage sometimes, Creation 19(3):30, 1997; creation.com/beetle.
24. Bergman, J. and Howe, G., ‘Vestigial Organs’ are Fully Functional, Creation Research Society Monograph No. 4, Creation Research Society Books, US, 1990.
25. Brown, C., The origin of the snake (letter), Creation Research Society Quarterly 26(2):54–55, 1989. Brown suggests that monitor lizards may have been the precursors of snakes.
26. Losos, J.B., Warheit, K.I. and Schoener, T.W., Adaptive differentiation following experimental island colonization in anolis lizards, Nature 387:70–73, 1997. See comment by Case, T.J., Nature 387:15–16, 1997, and Creation 30(1):35–37; creation.com/lizard.
27. Catchpoole, D., Appendix shrieks ‘Creation’ (at least 18 times!), April 2013, and linked articles; creation.com/appendix4.
28. Glover, J.W., The human vermiform appendix—a general surgeon’s reflections, Journal of Creation 3:31–38, 1988; creation.com/appendix2.
29. Bergman and Howe, 1990.
30. Wieland, C., The strange tale of the leg on the whale, Creation 20(3):10–13, 1998; creation.com/whaleleg.
31. Scadding, S.R., Do vestigial organs provide evidence for evolution? Evolutionary Theory 5:173–176, 1981.
32. For details, see Lubenow, M., Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils (revised and updated), Baker Books, US, 2004; creation.com/s/10-2-173.
33. For a documentary on so-called ‘apemen’, see The Image of God, Keziah Films; creation.com/iog.
34. Oard, M., Neandertal Man—the changing picture, Creation 25(4):10–14, 2003; creation.com/neandertal.
35. Oxnard, C.E., Fossils, Teeth and Sex—New Perspective on Human Evolution, University of Washington Press, Seattle and London, p. 227, 1987.
36. Bell, P., Homo habilis hacked from the family tree; creation.com/habilis, 14 Sept. 2007.
37. For example, Milford Wolpoff—see Lubenow, pp. 124–134, 2004.
38. Batten, D., Human evolution: oh so clear? Creation 32(2):46–47, 2010; creation.com/human-evolution-stories.
39. Gish, D.T., Evolution: The Fossils Still Say No! Institute for Creation Research, US, 1995. See also Fossils Q&A: creation.com/fossils.
40. Batten, D., Punctuated equilibrium: come of age? Journal of Creation 8(2):131–137, 1994; creation.com/punc.
41. For further reading on the claimed evidence for evolution: Wieland, C., Stones and Bones, Creation Book Publishers, US, 2011; creation.com/sab, and Sarfati, J., Refuting Evolution, 5th ed., Creation Book Publishers, US, 2012; creation.com/re-index. For in-depth reading see Carter, R., (Ed.), Evolution’s Achilles’ Heels, Creation Book Publishers, US, 2014; creation.com/eah-book.
42. Spetner, L.M., Not by Chance, Judaica Press, US, 1998.