Page 21 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

Harun Yahya

"MISSING LINK DISCOVERED" HEADLINES

ARE AN UNSCIENTIFIC DECEPTION

If you've ever read a newspaper headline announcing the dis- Pro-Darwinist reports appear-

covery of a "missing link," then you can be certain that the report has ing so frequently in the evolu-
tionist media consist of
no scientific value. Serious scientists long ago abandoned the idea of
conjecture and propaganda.
"missing links" and accepted that it is unscientific to make evolu- These reports are written to
tionary conjectures based on fossils. conceal the fact that
Darwinism has been defeated.
Henry Gee, a paleontologist and editor of the scientific journal
Nature, writes this on the subject in his 1999 book In Search of Deep
Time:

Given the ubiquitous chatter of journalists and headline writers about
the search for ancestors, and the discovery of missing links, it may

come as a surprise to learn that most professional palaeontologists do
not think of the history of life in terms of scenarios or narratives, and
that they rejected the storytelling mode of evolutionary history as un-
scientific more than thirty years ago. 14

These persistent reports about missing links aim to give the im-

pression that simply making a discovery will confirm the hypothesis
that one species develops into another. Yet excavations over the last
century and more have left totally unfounded the expectations that
intermediate forms between species would be discovered. The emi-
nent palaeontologist A. S. Romer admitted this as far back as 1963:

"Links" are missing just where we most fervently desire them [to point
to a transition between species] and it is all too probable that many
"links" will continue to be missing. 15

Paleontologists have kept their missing links on the "missing
list." Yet their own admissions run contrary to the impression that

certain media outlets seek to give. For example, Niles Eldredge, and
Ian Tattersall lack the media's positive air of expectation:

One of the most pervasive myths in all of paleontology...is
the myth that the evolutionary histories of living beings are
essentially a matter of discovery. … But if this were really

so, one could confidently expect that as more hominid fos-
sils were found the story of human evolution would be-
come clearer. Whereas if anything, the opposite has
occurred. 16

To sum up, the missing link is not a
creature waiting to be discovered, but an

idea that palaeontologists have long since
abandoned, and which cannot be the sub-
ject of any truly scientific inquiry.
Therefore, why is it the subject of so much

insistent propaganda?
The answer to this question lies in the
world-view espoused by the theory of evo-
lution. Materialists and atheists have at-

Adnan Oktar 19