The Death of Evolution
Wallace Johnson
Tan Books, 2000
204 pages
Imprimatur
$10 (sale price) + S&H
See TAN books for ordering information ($10.00 + S&H).
Wallace Johnson, an Australian creationist, used to be an evolutionist. However, after reading Science of Today and the Problems of Genesis by Rev. Patrick O'Connell (also available from Tan Books), he suddenly became aware of the counter-arguments against evolution and its threat to religion. He then studied the issue in depth and began speaking about it, developing a two-hour session entitled, "The Case Against Evolution." His work eventually led him to write this book.
The book opens with a quotation from Newman Watts, author of Britain Without God, "Every attack on the Christian faith made today has, as its basis, the doctrine of evolution." It goes on to explain how the Communist/Masonic revolution uses the theory of Evolution to destroy religion and morality, and advance its goal of a secular society.
Johnson shows that modernists have attempted to destroy traditional religion by harmonizing the theory of Evolution with Christianity. They cast doubt on the literal interpretation of Genesis with its concepts of a six-day creation and an original sin, and explain that God used Evolution to create. The person most responsible for bringing this idea into the Catholic Church was Jesuit Father Teilhard de Chardin.
Teilhard replaced the idea of the Creation and Fall with matter evolving into consciousness and eventually into a super-consciousness which he called the Omega Point. At this point all creation is united with the Cosmic Christ, the force of evolution in the world, and absorbed into God. Teilhard was even so bold as to say, "Christ saves. But must we not hasten to add the Christ, too, is saved by evolution?" For him, evolution was superior to Jesus Christ!
Mr. Johnson says in his book that the ideas of Father Teilhard de Chardin have done more damage to orthodox Catholicism than probably any other person in history. He quotes Jacques Maritain in The Peasant of the Garonne, "Teilhard, the obsessed evolutionist, has a basic conception of the world which cannot admit traditional original sin. Consequently his world has no place for the Jesus Christ of the Gospels, because, without original sin, the redemption of man through Christ loses its inner meaning."
After this brief opening on the theological dangers of evolution, the book goes on to describe the scientific problems with the theory. It mentions a conference in Chicago in October, 1980 where evolutionists from around the world gathered and were forced to admit that the fossil record showed no links between one species and another. This led them to conceive of a concept whereby evolution makes huge jumps without leaving fossil evidence. This was once discredited as the "hopeful monster" theory, but then became accepted as the "punctuated equilibria" theory since there was no where else to turn, except creationism.
The rest of the book goes into some detail of how scientific evidence argues against evolution and for creationism. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that nature moves from order to disorder, from more complex to more simple, not the other way around. DNA works to preserve its structure, mutations are almost always eliminated and when they are not, the effects are generally benign or harmful.
Johnson demonstrates that the fossil record shows no transitional links. The archaeopteryx is a bird, not half-bird, half-dinosaur. The horse series is meaningless. Some horse-type creatures have more toes than others. The so-called ape-men fossils are either apes, men, or frauds. Fr. Teilhard de Chardin was involved in the Piltdown Man hoax which led many to accept that men had evolved.
Mr. Johnson explains how geological record is constantly used to support evolution. However, the geologic column, with its neatly structured eras, only exists in the minds of the evolutionists. Nowhere in the world is the column complete. Layers are always missing, or out of order, or reversed, or repeated. There are many fossils protruding through several layers indicating that the layers were deposited rapidly.
What the layers really show is a record of the Flood. The layers were deposited in the Flood with the dead animals mixed in with the sediment. Human remains and artifacts have even been found encased in coal.
There are sections of the book dealing with the problems of radioactive dating and plate tectonics. Johnson presents archaeological evidence supporting the historical truth of Genesis and demonstrates the impossibility of spontaneous generation of life. In another section he shows how astronomy reveals that the universe is relatively young, not billions of years old. There are appendices concerning the Church's traditional stand on evolution and the writings of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin. Finally, a list of selected questions and answers appears at the end.
The Death of Evolution is an excellent book for the person who would like an understanding of the important issues involved in the Creation/Evolution debate. Mr. Johnson presents the evidence clearly and concisely. The Imprimatur is a plus for Catholics.
Reviewed by Eric Bermingham
July 16, 2006
