Page 80 - Confessions of the Evolutionists

78 CONFESSIONS OF THE EVOLUTIONISTS

general argument in favour of Darwinian interpretations of the history of
life. Unfortunately, this is not strictly true. 186

Edmund J. Ambrose is Professor Emeritus at the University of
London and heads the department of Cell Biology at the Chester Beatty
Research Institute University of London:
We have to admit that there is nothing in the geological records that runs
contrary to the views of conservative creationists. 187
Gareth Nelson of the American Museum of Natural History:
It is a mistake to believe that even one fossil species or fossil "group" can
be demonstrated to have been ancestral to another. The ancestor-descen-
dant relationship may only be assumed to have existed in the absence of
evidence indicating otherwise... The history of comparative biology
teaches us that the search for ancestors is doomed to ultimate failure,
thus, with respect to its principal objective, this search is an exercise in fu-
tility. Increased knowledge of suggested "ancestors" usually shows them
to be too specialized to have been direct ancestors of anything else. 188

Dr. Colin Patterson is an evolutionist paleontologist and curator of
London's Natural History Museum:
In a letter of reply to Luther D. Sutherland, who asked why he never re-
ferred to intermediate forms in his book Evolution, he says:
I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evo-
lutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would
certainly have included them. As a paleontologist myself, I am much oc-
cupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in
the fossil record. You say that I should at least "show a photo of the fossil
from which each type of organism was derived." I will lay it on the line-
there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argu-
ment. 189
David B. Kitts is Professor of the History of Science at Oklahoma
University:
Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of "see-
ing" evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists,
the most notorious of which is the presence of "gaps" in the fossil record.
Evolution requires intermediate forms between species, and paleontology
does not provide them. 190